Iran has “no limits” in defending its territorial integrity, according to its foreign minister, as the country’s state media reported on Saturday that predawn Israeli air strikes targeting military bases killed at least four military personnel and damaged radar systems.
“I think we’ve shown that our determination to defend ourselves knows no limits,” Abbas Araghchi said in an interview with the official website of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Earlier, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Iran was “entitled and obligated to defend itself against external aggressive acts” after the attacks on its soil raising concerns about further regional escalation.
The Israeli army struck military sites in Iran after 2am on Saturday (22:30 GMT on Friday) in response to what it said were months of attacks by “Iran and its proxies” in the region.
Hours later the Israeli military said it had “completed” the strikes and “achieved its objectives”. It warned Tehran against any retaliation.
Iran’s air defence headquarters, in a statement, confirmed that bases in the provinces of Ilam, Khuzestan and Tehran were hit but the attacks were “successfully countered”.
In a statement read out on state television, the country’s military said only radar systems were damaged in the predawn strikes. “Thanks to the timely performance of the country’s air defences, the attacks caused limited damage and a few radar systems were damaged,” the armed forces general staff said. The Iranian army earlier said two soldiers were killed in the attacks.
There was no immediate indication that oil or missile sites were hit.
Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar said while Israel targeted multiple locations across Iran, including the north, east and south, the main focus of the strikes was the Iranian capital.
“The attacks primarily aimed at Iran’s air defence systems, missile bases and drone facilities,” he added.
Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization (CAO) said flights had returned to normal across the country.
Neither Imam Khomeini international airport in Tehran nor other airports were attacked.
Earlier, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a prerecorded video statement, “The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since October 7 … including direct attacks from Iranian soil.”
He said Israel “has the right and the duty to respond”.
Israel’s response was long expected after Iran launched a missile barrage earlier in October, in which about 200 missiles were fired at Israel and one person was killed in the occupied West Bank.
Iran said the attack was in retaliation for assaults in recent months that killed leaders of the Lebanese group Hezbollah, Palestinian group Hamas and the Iranian military.
US calls Iran to break ‘cycle of fighting’
Following the Israeli attacks, the United States urged Iran to stop attacking Israel to break the cycle of violence.
“We urge Iran to cease its attacks on Israel so that this cycle of fighting can end without further escalation,” US National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett told reporters.
“Their response was an exercise in self-defence and specifically avoided populated areas and focused solely on military targets, contrary to Iran’s attack against Israel that targeted Israel’s most populous city,” he added.
Stressing that the US did not participate in the operation, he said, “It is our aim to accelerate diplomacy and de-escalate tensions in the Middle East region”.
President Joe Biden said he hoped that “this is the end.” “It looks like they didn’t hit anything other than military targets,” Biden told reporters.
But Iran’s mission to the UN on Saturday said Israeli warplanes attacked Iran from Iraqi airspace. “Iraqi airspace is under the occupation, command and control of the US military. Conclusion: The US complicity in this crime is certain,” the Iran UN mission said in a post on X.
Several countries condemned the strikes and called for restraint.
Analyst Abas Aslani said this was the first time Israel admitted to a direct strike on Iran, with Tehran downplaying the impact and Israel exaggerating its achievements.
“This indicates that … Israel may be encouraged by the US to avoid a full-scale war in the region,” Aslani, a senior research fellow at the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies, told Al Jazeera from Tehran.
“The initial assessment and the initial reaction here in Tehran indicates that maybe a serious or significant reaction, a direct reaction against Israel, was not as likely.”
However, he added that some sort of response from Iran should be expected.
Tensions between archrivals Israel and Iran have escalated after a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Since then, at least 42,847 people have been killed and 100,544 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza.
Fears that Iran and the US would be drawn into a regional war have risen with Israel’s intensifying assault on Hezbollah since last month, including air strikes on the Lebanese capital, Beirut, and a ground operation.
