
Israel Confirms Major Strike On Iran's Air Defence System In Western Region
The Israeli Air Force jets, guided by precise intelligence, targeted nuclear facilities, military commanders, and soldiers, destroying dozens of radars and surface-to-air missile launchers, according to a statement by the country's War Room on social media platform X.
It further said that Israel was carrying out repeated military actions to degrade not only Iran's defence systems but also its proxies across the region.
IDF: The IDF carried out a major strike against Iran's air defense system in western Iran.
Air Force jets, guided by precise intelligence, destroyed dozens of radars and surface-to-air missile launchers.
This operation is part of ongoing efforts to degrade the Iranian regime's… pic.twitter.com/4Ajr4t7fO5
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) June 13, 2025
Where Did The Strikes Happen?
The explosions happened after Israel's military said it had struck "dozens of military targets, including nuclear targets in different areas of Iran".
Along with the the targets on nuclear sites, multiple strikes were reported.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that the Natanz site had been hit.
Brigadier General Effie Defrin said that Israel intercepted around 100 drones that Iran launched towards Israeli territory as a form of retaliation. "These strikes expand the Israeli Air Force's freedom of aerial operations," the statement added.
"Most of the drones launched by Iran toward Israel were intercepted. The rest likely crashed," Israeli sources told multiple media outlets.
Most of the drones launched by Iran toward Israel were intercepted. The rest likely crashed, according to Israeli defense sources.
Vigilance remains high in case any slipped through. - @BittonRosen
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) June 13, 2025
The clip shared by War Room showed Israeli fighter jets attacking Iran's Natanz nuclear site earlier on Friday. This was one of the key locations where Iran worked on its nuclear programme.
Footage circulating online shows Israeli airstrikes targeting Iran's Natanz nuclear facility earlier today.
Israeli defense officials now believe the site sustained significant damage, marking a major blow to Iran's nuclear program. - @manniefabian pic.twitter.com/FuSLdkwjxf
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) June 13, 2025
An IDF spokesperson also confirmed that their Air Force fighter jets destroyed ballistic missiles directly aimed at Israel.
INCREDIBLE: Israeli Air Force fighter jets destroyed ballistic missiles aimed directly at Israel.
???????? Total precision. Zero hesitation.
– IDF Spokesperson pic.twitter.com/o0Ep9i6S9W
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) June 13, 2025
Iran's Revolutionary Guards Commander-in-Chief Hossein Salami was killed in the attack on the IRGC headquarters. There were also reports of several children dying in the attack.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Israeli attack was launched to protect the country from Iran's threat. The operation was meant to stop serious threats from Iran but it would take several days to do this, reported The Guardian.
He said, "We targeted Iran's main enrichment facility in Natanz. We targeted Iran's leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb. We also struck at the heart of Iran's ballistic missile programme."

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Business Standard
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- Business Standard
Pak, Iran agree to increase bilateral trade volume to $10 billion annually
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Time of India
40 minutes ago
- Time of India
US and Israeli officials float idea of 'all or nothing' Gaza deal
For months, the Israeli government had focused on negotiating a two-phased deal for a 60-day ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the release of some hostages, leaving discussions about a permanent end to the war for a later stage. With the talks now at an impasse, U.S. and Israeli officials appear to be sharply changing their tone by signaling that they will push for a comprehensive deal. But Israel and Hamas remain far apart, and analysts said this new approach would also face steep challenges. The shift, at least in rhetoric, comes as the Israeli government faces rising domestic pressure to secure the release of hostages still held in Gaza. Israel believes that about 20 are still alive and that the bodies of 30 others remain in the enclave. 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Business Standard
an hour ago
- Business Standard
Scott Anderson captures US' hubris, Iran's revolution in exceptional detail
For most Americans, the hostage crisis was the revolution's defining event NYT KING OF KINGS: The Iranian Revolution: A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation By Scott Anderson Published by Doubleday 481 pages $35 In September 1979, Michael Metrinko, the pugnacious political officer at the US Embassy in Tehran, was back in the US for a brief vacation when he was surprised to receive a summons to a high-level meeting at the State Department. For the previous several months — indeed, several years — Metrinko had been the Iran mission's black sheep, wholly out of step with the official flow of upbeat information from the country. That flow had been dead wrong. The US diplomats and intelligence officers charged with managing relations with Iran had not just missed the first signs of the Islamic Revolution; they had suppressed reports that it was coming. By September, the supposedly invincible shah had abdicated. Mobs ruled the streets. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had returned triumphantly from exile in France and installed himself in Qom. Yet the experts at the American Embassy were still playing a hopeful tune. Metrinko knew better. One of very few fluent Farsi speakers at the Tehran mission, he was better attuned to the depth of Iranian anger toward America. His pointed dispatches had earned him a dressing-down by the clueless ambassador, William Sullivan. Nevertheless, someone at the State Department had decided to give Metrinko his moment. He arrived at the meeting early, with notes, only to be asked to leave before it began because he lacked the appropriate security clearance. He protested that he had been specifically invited — to no avail. A little more than a month later, Metrinko became one of 52 American diplomats, embassy staffers, and military personnel, and a handful of civilians, held hostage for 444 days in Iran by a radical Muslim student group. The story of Metrinko's aborted meeting, recounted in Scott Anderson's King of Kings, his masterly new account of the Iranian revolution, illustrates the stubborn American blindness that hastened the shah's demise and helped the mullahs prevail. For most Americans, the hostage crisis was the revolution's defining event. An unprecedented and prolonged public exercise in humiliation, it riveted the nation for more than a year, dashed Jimmy Carter's bid for a second presidential term and ushered in the Reagan era. But in Iran, as Anderson shows, it was the final act in a much larger and more consequential drama. The fall of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the slight, pompous, pathetically dithering Shah of Shahs, or King of Kings, 'brought an abrupt end to one of the most important economic and military alliances the United States had established anywhere in the world,' Anderson writes. 'The radically altered Middle Eastern chessboard created by the revolution has led directly to some of America's greatest missteps in the region over the past four decades.' Propped up by a succession of presidents, the shah was an American creation first and last. His story is another sad chapter in the long history of self-defeating, misguided US meddling in the internal affairs of less powerful nations — Cuba, Nicaragua, and Vietnam already by 1978. In the case of Iran, US involvement meant toppling a constitutional monarchy (albeit an imperfect one) and supporting an increasingly capricious autocrat. Cold War priorities provided the initial impetus — containing the Soviet Union — but in time that motivation devolved into an ugly greed fest, as the shah, prized for his weakness by his masters and fabulously rich with oil money, developed an irrational appetite for new weapons systems. The shah had lived his life in a make-believe world, its fantasy enforced by a security apparatus, Savak, that terrorised anyone who refused to play along. With all sensible, independent voices silenced, deliberate misinformation, conspiracy theory, and superstition rushed into the vacuum. The most compelling voice in this haboob was the angry fundamentalist ranting of the exiled Khomeini. His sermons moved hand-to-hand under Savak's nose on cassette tapes, diligently collected by the CIA, most never listened to or transcribed. By early 1979, the storm incited by those sermons blew away the Peacock Throne, American influence and any hope for popular rule. This is an exceptional book. Scrupulous and enterprising reporting rarely combine with such superb storytelling. Anderson leavens his sweeping and complex chronicle with rich character portraits: Of the Shah and his discerning wife, Farah (whom Anderson interviewed); the harsh, cruel Khomeini; the bullheaded, ignorant Jack Miklos, the deputy US chief of mission and the shah's biggest 'cheerleader'. Yet the figure who stands out most is Metrinko, who took the trouble to learn Farsi, which enabled him to hear what Iranians said, and he paid attention to what he saw. Asked why he had foreseen what so many of his colleagues missed, he told Anderson, 'Because the guys in the political section of the embassy who were supposed to keep watch for this kind of stuff were lousy at their jobs. Is that overly harsh? I think it's deserved.'