Washington Post staff — President Donald Trump urged Iran to “make a deal” with Israel “before it is too late,” after Israel launched what it called a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear program and military targets.
The strikes killed four senior commanders, including Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to the Israeli military and Iranian state media.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, promised “severe punishment” for the attacks.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump warned that if a deal isn’t reached, Israel’s next “already planned attacks” would be even more brutal.
Multiple explosions were reported across Iran early Friday, including in Tehran and at the Natanz nuclear facility. The strikes killed three senior commanders and two nuclear scientists, according to Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim News Agency.
In a televised address, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the goal of the operation was “to damage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, its ballistic missile factories and military capabilities.”
Iran launched more than 100 drones, the Israel Defense Forces said. Israel began to intercept these outside Israeli territory, according to a military official.
Leaders across the Middle East and Europe have called for de-escalation. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres called for both sides to show “maximum restraint,” his spokesperson said.
Iran considers Israel’s attacks to be a “declaration of war,” Iranian Foreign Minster Abbas Araghchi said in a letter addressed to the United Nations and shared on his Telegram channel.
Araghchi described the attacks as “a gross violation of Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and called for an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council.
Israel’s attacks on Iran early Friday dealt a severe blow to Tehran’s military leadership, killing three senior commanders including the army’s chief of staff and the head of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC.
Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, the army chief of staff and a veteran of the IRGC, reported directly to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Salami, as commander of the Revolutionary Guard, presided over an elite, sprawling organization founded in parallel to Iran’s military that includes the Quds Force, which trains and directs Iranian overseas proxy forces, and the Basij militia, focused on enforcing domestic security.
The attacks also killed Maj. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid, who was responsible for coordinating operations among Iran’s military forces, Iran’s state broadcaster announced.
Analysts said that as Iran prepared its retaliation for the attack, the killings of the military leaders could shape its response.
The deaths may “greatly hinder Iran’s ability to make decisions and coordinate a response, similar to what happened recently in Lebanon, when Israel killed most of Hezbollah’s top leadership,” the Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm, said in an analysis Friday, referring to Israel’s strikes on commanders and leaders of the Lebanese militant group, including Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader.
Friday’s attacks could also be “forcing a generational turnover in IRGC leadership,” Afshon Ostovar, author of “Wars of Ambition: The United States, Iran, and the Struggle for the Middle East,” wrote in a post on X.
“The ruling generation has been ideologically inflexible but also bore the scars of the Iran-Iraq war. That made them wary of direct, open conflict. The incoming generation might not be as cautious,” he wrote.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Friday strongly condemned Israel’s overnight strikes on Iran’s nuclear program and other military targets, in a shift from President Vladimir Putin’s policy of largely balancing its partnerships in the Middle East.
Russia has aligned more closely with Iran since its invasion of Ukraine, when it received drones and missiles from Iran, but has maintained ties with Israel. Friday’s statement adopted a more strident tone toward Israel, describing the strikes as “atrocities.”
Russia had earlier offered to help the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts with Iran, led by President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, designed to prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon.
The ministry said Israel’s actions were “categorically unacceptable” and a “dangerous escalation of tension” that was a “violation of the charter of the United Nations and the norms of international law.”
“We express our extreme concern about the dangerous escalation of tension in the Middle East. We strongly condemn the forceful action of the State of Israel in violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international law on the night of June 13,” the statement said.
“Unprovoked military strikes against a sovereign U.N. member state, its citizens, sleeping peaceful cities, nuclear energy infrastructure facilities are categorically unacceptable. The international community cannot afford to be indifferent to such atrocities, which destroy the world and damage regional and international security.”
The ministry said there was “no military and violent solution” to the resolution of Iran’s nuclear program.
Russian analysts predicted that Moscow would benefit from the crisis, with higher oil prices helping to fuel the war against Ukraine, and global attention directed away from Russia’s war.
– – –
Graphic:
