Jerusalem (AFP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Saturday to carry on the war with Iran, saying Israel had a “systematic plan to eradicate the Iranian regime,” as Tehran insisted it would not surrender. The Israeli premier’s pledge in a televised address to pursue the war “with all our force” came on a day when Iran launched wave after wave of missiles and drones at its Gulf neighbors. Israel and the United States, meanwhile, pounded Iran again, with one air strike setting a Tehran airport ablaze and another hitting an oil depot, even as Tehran continued to retaliate.
Its Revolutionary Guards said they had struck America’s Juffair base in Bahrain, adding that it had been used to attack an Iranian desalination plant earlier Saturday. There were air raid warnings and blasts in Jerusalem in Israel and Doha in Qatar, and attacks on the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The UAE said its air defenses intercepted 15 missiles and 119 drones on Saturday morning, and video footage showed one projectile crashing at Dubai airport. AFP journalists heard blasts in Baghdad, Erbil, and Dubai on Saturday evening, while Saudi Arabia also reported an attack.
“Evidence from Iran’s armed forces shows that the geography of some countries in the region is openly and covertly at the disposal of the enemy,” said Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, Iran’s hardline judiciary chief. “The heavy attacks on these targets will continue.” Earlier, President Masoud Pezeshkian had issued an apology to Iran’s neighbors, which host major US military bases. Pezeshkian struck a defiant tone in a speech in which he also appeared to address Trump’s demand for “unconditional surrender.” Iran’s enemies “must take their wish for the unconditional surrender of the Iranian people to their graves,” the president said.
Israel launched some of its biggest raids since the bombardment began last Saturday, with a military academy, an underground command center, and a missile storage facility named as targets. Fire and smoke billowed from Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport after a predawn attack in which Israel said it had destroyed 16 aircraft and fighter jets. In his speech, Netanyahu declared that Israel had achieved almost total control of the skies over the Iranian capital. Meanwhile, his close partner in the war, Trump, had posted on his Truth Social platform earlier: “Today Iran will be hit very hard!”
“Under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran’s bad behavior, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time.” Later, in Florida, he repeated his claim that Iran had been close to having a nuclear weapon, saying: “They’re crazy and they would have used it. So we did the world a favor.” Now into a second week, the war was sparked by joint Israeli and US air strikes that killed Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei. The conflict has since widened to Lebanon, as well as Cyprus, Turkey, and Azerbaijan, and reached as far as the seas off Sri Lanka where US forces sank an Iranian warship with a torpedo.
Inside Iran, damage to infrastructure and residential buildings is mounting, while residents of Tehran report growing anxiety and a heavy presence of security forces. “I don’t think anyone who hasn’t experienced war would understand it,” a 26-year-old teacher told AFP on condition of anonymity. “When you hear the bombs, you have no idea where they will hit.” The Iranian health ministry put the civilian death toll at 926 on Friday, with around 6,000 injured – numbers that AFP could not independently verify.
Israel has intensified its air strikes on Lebanon, repeatedly bombing and ordering the evacuation of Beirut’s southern suburbs and vast areas of the country’s south, where the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah holds sway. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz warned Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Saturday that his country would pay a “very heavy price” if it failed to disarm Hezbollah. Israeli commandos launched an unsuccessful mission overnight to retrieve the remains of an air force navigator lost in 1986, killing 41 people in the process in the town of Nabi Sheet. Lebanon’s health ministry said at least 294 people have been killed in Israeli air strikes over the last week, while Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has warned of a “humanitarian disaster.”
The consequences of the conflict reach far beyond those in the immediate firing line. Global stock markets have slumped, while crude oil prices have surged, with analysts warning that there appears to be no clear path to ending a conflict that US and Israeli officials have suggested could last a month or more. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had hit two oil tankers with exploding drones in the Gulf on Saturday as they continue to paralyze oil and gas traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint for global energy shipments. Trump has promised to help rebuild Iran’s economy if Tehran installs someone “acceptable” to him to replace its late supreme leader.
But Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, said the US would have no role in selecting Khamenei’s successor. “The selection of Iran’s leadership will take place strictly in accordance with our constitutional procedures and solely by the will of the Iranian people, without any foreign interference,” he added. China and Russia have so far stayed largely out of the fray despite their ties to the Islamic republic, but there are reports that Moscow is providing intelligence to Iran on US troop positions and movements. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the US was “not concerned” about the reports. The war has killed six US service members and Trump was to attend a ceremony for the return of their bodies on Saturday.
© 2024 AFP
