Iran hits Israel with ballistic missiles; Netanyahu vows to strike back

“This evening, Iran made a big mistake — and it will pay for it,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of the security cabinet meeting. “The regime in Tehran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves and to exact a price from our enemies.”

No deaths from the attack were reported Tuesday within Israel’s internationally recognized borders; one Palestinian man was reported killed in the occupied West Bank.

Iran said the attack was retaliation for the assassinations of Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah in Beirut last week, in a strike that also killed an Iranian general, as well as Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in July. It came as the Israeli military announced the start of ground operations in southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah militants launched drones and rockets into northern Israel.

Hezbollah is a key ally of Iran and the most formidable of the militias Tehran supports across the Middle East.

“This attack will have consequences,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said shortly after it concluded. “We have plans, and we will operate at the place and time we decide.”

It was unclear how many missiles landed in Israel, but videos shared on social media — some of which were geolocated by The Washington Post — showed direct impacts in Tel Aviv and the Nevatim Airbase in the Negev desert.

The blitz started about two hours after U.S. officials said they had intelligence that Iran was planning an imminent ballistic missile strike on Israel. The U.S. Embassy instructed personnel and their family members to shelter in place, while Israeli authorities told residents to stay close to protected areas.

Shortly before 7 p.m. local time, Hagari warned in a news briefing that the expected attack from Iran was “likely to be extensive in scope.”

About 7:30 p.m., sirens began blaring in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, parts of the West Bank and the Negev. The IDF ordered Israelis to head to bomb shelters, saying the missiles had been launched.

At a hotel in West Jerusalem, guests hunkered down in a stairway, most of them joking and passing around water. For others, the fear was more palpable: An older man drank straight from a bottle of whiskey and guests tried to calm a young woman who was crying.

Israel’s security cabinet met in a bunker in Jerusalem for the first time since the beginning of the war, according to an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with reporters.

As the barrage was underway, the IDF said that the explosions it was hearing were “from interceptions or fallen projectiles” and that aerial defenses were taking down the missiles. U.S. destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea also shot down multiple missiles, said U.S. defense officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive military operation.

In Jaffa, in southern Tel Aviv, a shooting carried out by two gunmen left seven people dead and 11 injured just as the Iranian barrage was starting, heightening the sense of unease. Normally bustling bars and restaurants in the area were abruptly shuttered.

From a hotel in Haifa in northern Israel, meanwhile, Moti Maman, 36, and his two children were glued to the TV in the building’s salon. Maman is from Kiryat Shmona, along the border with Lebanon, and has been living in the hotel for nearly a year — one of the approximately 63,000 Israelis displaced by Hezbollah’s cross-border attacks.

His children pointed toward images of Israel’s air defenses intercepting rockets. “What do the Jews have that no one else does?” he asked Milan, 4, and Yan, 6. They paused. “The Iron Dome,” he answered.

Israel has a sophisticated, multilayered air defense system, the most well-known component of which is the Iron Dome. But for longer-range missiles coming from Iran, Israel would be likely to deploy Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 interceptors, said Fabian Hinz, a researcher with the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

In the West Bank, a Palestinian man was killed by shrapnel in the city of Jericho as a result of the attack, local authorities said. Palestinian residents of Umm al-Khair, a Bedouin village in the south Hebron hills, shared photos of missiles streaking across the night sky.

“Rockets over Umm al-Khair, pray for the people who don’t have any shelters,” Awdah al-Hathaleen, a resident of the village, wrote in a message.

By 8:30 p.m. local time, the attack appeared to be over, and Israeli authorities announced that residents could leave their shelters. Minutes later, Alex Abboudi, 30, was out walking his dog and talking to his mother on the phone. Sirens had sounded repeatedly in his West Jerusalem neighborhood, but Abboudi said he wasn’t too nervous.

“If I have one message for Iran,” Abboudi said, as he walked on quiet streets, “it is: ‘You have to try way harder next time.’”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi signaled late Tuesday that the response was over, saying in a statement that it was carried out after Iran exercised “tremendous restraint” as Israel escalated its attacks in the region.

“Our action is concluded unless [the] Israeli regime decides to invite further retaliation,” he wrote in a statement posted on X.

Iranian media hailed the attack, claiming that most of the missiles had hit their targets and that launches were observed in Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz and Shiraz, among other cities. “Do not enter into a conflict with Iran,” President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a statement carried by state media.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s most powerful military and security institution, also warned Israel against retaliating, while its proxy groups in Iraq threatened to target U.S. bases there.

But “Israel has made it clear that there will be a response — that is almost a foregone conclusion,” said Naysan Rafati, the International Crisis Group’s senior Iran analyst. “That question is the timing and scale of it.”

Iran will then have to decide, Rafati said, whether to de-escalate or fire back — risking an even stronger Israeli response.

“Iranians will either have to take it on the chin, and say, ‘Okay, that was the exchange and we are content to stop this cycle,’ or to move up the ladder in terms of escalation,” Rafati said. “And the worst-case scenarios can get pretty bad.”

After Haniyeh was killed in a bomb blast in Tehran — a covert operation for which Israel was responsible, according to U.S. officials — Iran’s military elite had pushed for a response. But through diplomatic channels, Tehran was persuaded to stand down, with assurances from Western countries that they were closing in on an agreement to halt the fighting in Gaza and in Lebanon, Pezeshkian told his cabinet Sunday, entreaties he described as “complete lies.”

“There is a view in Iran now that their lack of response to Haniyeh paved the way for the degradation of Hezbollah,” said Nicole Grajewski, an Iran expert and fellow at the Carnegie Endowment. Tehran could be looking for another way to restore deterrence with Israel “or establish a new equation or equilibrium,” she said.

The White House’s Sullivan called the attack Tuesday a “significant escalation” but said it was too early to say how Israel would, or should, react. The Biden administration was looking at “appropriate next steps to secure primarily American interests,” he said.

One option would be for Israel to go after Iran’s nuclear capabilities, said Joost Hiltermann, the International Crisis Group’s program director for the Middle East and North Africa — but such an operation would probably require help from the United States.

It’s also possible that both sides will step back from the brink, he said. “The pressure became too great and they had to do something,” Hiltermann said of Tehran.

But international condemnation of the missile attack poured in Tuesday night. “Iran must stop the attack immediately. It is leading the region further to the abyss,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock wrote on X as the assault was underway.

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres also condemned “escalation after escalation” in the region.

“This must stop. We absolutely need a ceasefire,” he said in a statement.

Chason reported from Jerusalem, Rom from Tel Aviv, Berger from Haifa and Lamothe from Washington. Shira Rubin in Tel Aviv, Missy Ryan in Washington, and Susannah George and Suzan Haidamous in Beirut contributed to this report.