Iran fired missiles at a major United States military base in Qatar on Monday in retaliation for the American attack on three Iranian nuclear sites this past weekend.
But President Trump, saying that Iran had given advance warning of the strike, immediately thanked Tehran for exercising restraint and said it was “time for peace.”
Iran launched 14 missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, but they caused no casualties, 13 were intercepted, and one was allowed to land because, Mr. Trump said, it was headed in a “nonthreatening direction.” The strike’s limited scale raised hopes that the Middle East region could avoid a wider conflagration.
Mr. Trump, who appeared to be looking for an off-ramp from the conflict, described Iran’s barrage in a series of social media posts as “a very weak response” and said he hoped “they’ve gotten it all out of their ‘system.’”
“I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice,” he added, “which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured. Perhaps Iran can now proceed to Peace and Harmony in the Region, and I will enthusiastically encourage Israel to do the same.”
Writing in all-caps, he ended his posts: “CONGRATULATIONS WORLD, IT’S TIME FOR PEACE!”
The Iranian strike came after the United States sent a squadron of B-2 stealth bombers on Sunday to unleash 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs on Iran’s heavily fortified nuclear site, Fordo, which is buried in the side of a mountain. The United States also used American submarines to launch 30 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites. American officials said the attack severely damaged, but did not destroy, the Iranian nuclear sites.
As the world braced for the Iranian response, citizens in the region were warned to shelter in place. Qatar announced that it had closed its airspace before the missiles flew. Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates did the same after the attack. The closures disrupted flights into and out of Doha and Dubai, two major hubs of international air travel.
A spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry, Majed Al Ansari, called Iran’s strike a “flagrant violation” of Qatar’s sovereignty. Qatar and the United States said their forces had shot down the Iranian missiles.
The Pentagon said there were no reports of casualties after Al Udeid Air Base was attacked by short-range and medium-range ballistic missiles. It is the largest American military installation in the Middle East and the forward headquarters for the U.S. Central Command. It has 10,000 military and civilian personnel and is equipped with air defenses that had been on high alert in anticipation of the Iranian attack.
Three Iranian officials familiar with Tehran’s plans confirmed that Iran had given advance notice of the attack — as a way to minimize casualties. The officials said that Iran needed to strike back at the United States but also wanted to allow both sides a possible off ramp.
They described the strategy as similar to one Iran used in 2020 when it gave Iraq a heads up before firing ballistic missiles at two American bases in Iraq in the wake of the U.S. assassination of Iran’s top military commander, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani.
An Israeli official also said that Iran had given a warning, though the official did not say through which channel or which country. The Israeli and Iranian officials all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.
Even though Iranian officials described the strike as calibrated to limit casualties, it had stoked fears that it could draw the United States further into a conflict that could ripple across the region.
Video verified by The New York Times and filmed from the Pearl Island, a man-made island in Doha, Qatar’s capital, appears to show about a half-dozen missile interceptors flying across the sky to shoot down incoming Iranian missiles on Monday.
Three residents of Doha said they heard what they believed to be several interceptions of missiles in the distance. Loud booms were heard, and lights were visible as they streaked upward, apparently part of a missile-defense system. Some objects were seen falling to earth.
World leaders had urged all sides to de-escalate the conflict.
“I call on all parties to exercise maximum restraint, de-escalate and return to the negotiating table,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said on social media Monday. “The spiral of chaos must end.”
The volleys of missile and drone attacks began earlier this month, when Israel started bombing Iran in order, it said, to eliminate the threat from Iran’s ballistic missiles and wipe out its nuclear program. Mr. Trump then ordered the United States to join the conflict with the strikes on Sunday.
Mr. Trump later pronounced the mission a “spectacular” success, saying the United States had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites. But the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, gave a more measured description of the mission’s results, saying an initial assessment showed the three nuclear sites had suffered “severe damage.”
Senior U.S. officials later conceded they did not know the whereabouts of Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade nuclear material.
Before the Iranian missile strike, the country’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, met in Russia on Monday with President Vladimir V. Putin, a key ally of Tehran. Mr. Putin denounced the American attack on the Iranian nuclear sites as “unfounded and unjustified” but stopped short of offering concrete support.
With hopes for diplomacy appearing to dim, the Israeli military continued to pound Iran on Monday, with strikes targeting structures that belong to the Iranian government, according to the office of Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz.
The office said the Israeli strikes had targeted Evin prison, on a hilltop in northern Tehran, where hundreds of dissidents and political prisoners are held, along with the headquarters of the Basij, a volunteer force under the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that has cracked down on protests in Iran.
Evin prison has long been regarded as a symbol of repression, and rights groups and former prisoners say people are routinely tortured and executed there.
Video footage verified by The Times shows an explosion at a prison entrance and emergency workers clearing debris and metal beams from a gaping hole in the entrance. Other verified footage shows damage to buildings after another explosion by a second prison entrance. There were no immediate reports of injuries, and Iran said it still had control of the prison.
The strike on Evin — which is close to apartment buildings and a popular hiking trail — hit a main power line and caused brief outages in two large districts of Tehran, according to the national electricity company, Tavanir.
France criticized the strike on the prison, noting that two French citizens, Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, have been held there for more than three years on what France calls bogus spying charges. Ms. Kohler and Mr. Paris were not harmed in the attack, but the strike put them in danger, France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, said in a statement that demanded their release.
Since launching its bombing campaign against Iran this month, the Israeli military has killed some of the country’s nuclear scientists and senior Iranian military commanders. It has also struck targets that do not have a clear link to Iran’s nuclear program or ballistic missiles, including the state broadcaster.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Sunday night that Israel was “very, very close” to realizing its objectives in the conflict, which he said revolved around two “concrete, existential threats: the nuclear threat and the ballistic missile threat.”
“We are advancing, step by step, to achieve these goals,” he said.
Most of Israel’s barrage on Monday, which the military said included access routes to the Fordo nuclear enrichment site bombed by the U.S. military, came after Iran fired salvos of missiles that sent Israelis running to shelters.
Later on Monday, the Israeli military said it had targeted other forces under the Revolutionary Guards and hit missile and radar production sites, along with missile storage infrastructure.
Iranian news outlets reported that Israeli strikes hit a building in Tehran that is next to the Red Crescent Society, an organization similar to the Red Cross. A video posted by the Mehr news agency and verified by The Times shows white smoke billowing in front of the building.
Reporting was contributed by Aaron Boxerman, Ronen Bergman, Ismaeel Naar, Euan Ward, Jonathan Swan, Michael D. Shear, Vivian Nereim, Anushka Patil, Jeanna Smialek, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Aurelien Breeden, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Erika Solomon, Aric Toler and Amelia Nierenberg.
Farnaz Fassihi is the United Nations bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the organization. She also covers Iran and has written about conflict in the Middle East for 15 years.
Adam Rasgon is a reporter for The Times in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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