Israel launched air strikes against military targets in western and central Iran early Monday, the Israeli military announced, hours after Iran fired ballistic missiles at Israel in the first such attack since a ceasefire took effect on April 8.
“The Israeli Air Force struck military targets belonging to the Iranian terrorist regime in western and central Iran,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement posted on Telegram.
Iranian state media reported multiple explosions in Tehran and in Karaj, to the city’s west. A US official told Axios the Israeli strikes were “relatively limited in scale.”
Earlier, the IDF said it had identified and intercepted missiles fired from Iran, adding that emergency services reported no casualties.
Oil markets reacted sharply. Brent crude rose 3.83% to above $96 a barrel, while WTI gained 3.69% to $93.88 a barrel. The US dollar strengthened against all major G10 currencies.
The exchange marks one of the gravest tests for the ceasefire agreed on April 8 to end hostilities between the United States, Israel and Iran, coming as Washington and Tehran have made limited progress in talks on an interim deal. Despite repeated statements from US President Donald Trump that a deal is close, no agreement has been reached.
After the Israeli strikes, Saudi Arabia issued a warning of a possible missile threat near the Prince Sultan air base, which hosts US forces, according to the Associated Press.
Trump had asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a Sunday phone call not to retaliate against the Iranian missile attack and to allow more time for diplomacy, Axios reported. In a separate interview with the Financial Times, Trump said Netanyahu would have to accept any deal the US reaches with Iran. “I make the decisions. I make all the decisions,” Trump said, adding that Netanyahu “is not the one who decides.”
The strikes followed a fresh flare-up between Israel and Hezbollah. The Lebanese group attacked targets in northern Israel in the early hours of Sunday, drawing an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs that killed two people and wounded eleven.
Mohsen Rezaei, a military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, told the Iranian Students’ News Agency that the missile launches toward Israel were “a warning to stop the hostile actions” in Lebanon.
Hezbollah had rejected the previous week a US-brokered Israel-Lebanon ceasefire announced by the State Department. Iran has continued to demand a ceasefire in Lebanon as a condition for reaching a deal with Washington.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Israel used air-launched ballistic missiles to strike multiple targets inside Iran in the early hours of Monday.
In Washington, a plan is under discussion to use frozen Iranian assets held in the United States to fund reconstruction projects in Gulf states damaged by actions of the Islamic Republic. Trump ruled out releasing Iranian funds or lifting sanctions as part of an initial deal, however, in a Sunday interview.
“If they behave properly, if they do a good job, then we’ll start talking” about releasing the assets, Trump told Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, Kazem Gharibabadi, rejected the idea in a post on X, saying Iranian assets were “neither Washington’s war spoils nor a compensation fund for its allies.” He repeated Tehran’s demand for “full compensation” for war damages, which Iran attributes to actions by Israel and the United States beginning on February 28.
(information from newmoney.gr)
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