Iranian missiles struck major Israeli cities on Monday while Israel’s prime minister said his country was on its way to eliminating “threats” from nuclear and missile facilities in Iran and civilian casualties mounted on both sides.
After four days of conflict between the regional foes, Iran said its parliament was preparing a Bill to leave the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), adding that Tehran remained opposed to developing weapons of mass destruction.
Passing the Bill could take several weeks but the move risks stoking deeper concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme in western countries which have long suspected Tehran wants to build nuclear weapons, a charge Iran denies.
“Government has to enforce parliament Bills but such a proposal is just being prepared and we will co-ordinate in the later stages with parliament,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei, when asked at a press conference about Tehran potentially leaving the NPT.
Israel, which said its military campaign will escalate in the coming days, began bombing Iran on Friday, saying Tehran was on the verge of building a nuclear bomb and targeting the nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
Israel warned hundreds of thousands of people in the middle of Tehran to evacuate ahead of new strikes. The military has issued similar evacuation warnings for civilians in parts of Gaza and Lebanon ahead of strikes.
The warning affected up to 330,000 people in a part of central Tehran that includes the country’s state TV and police headquarters, as well as three large hospitals, including one owned by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
The military said it had destroyed more than 120 surface-to-surface missile launchers in central Iran, a third of Iran’s total.
“We are on our way to achieving our two main objectives: eliminating the nuclear threat and eliminating the missile threat,” Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said in comments to soldiers at the Tel Nof airbase.
Israeli military officials also said fighter jets had struck 10 command centres in Tehran belonging to Iran’s Quds Force, an elite arm of its Revolutionary Guard that conducts military and intelligence operations outside Iran.
Iran’s state-run news agency reported that state-run television abruptly stopped a live broadcast after an Israeli strike.
During the broadcast, an Iranian state television reporter said the studio was filling with dust after “the sound of aggression against the homeland”.
The broadcast quickly switched to pre-recorded programmes.
Iran, meanwhile, announced it had launched some 100 missiles and vowed further retaliation for sweeping attacks on its military and nuclear infrastructure that have killed at least 224 people in the country since Friday.
Iran has always said its nuclear programme is peaceful, although the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), declared last week that Tehran was in violation of its NPT obligations.
Israel is presumed to have a sizeable nuclear arsenal but neither confirms nor denies it. It is the only Middle East state that has not signed the NPT.
Before dawn on Monday, Iranian missiles struck Israel’s Tel Aviv and the port city of Haifa, killing at least eight people and destroying homes, prompting Israel’s defence minister to warn that Tehran residents would “pay the price and soon”. He later rowed back on the comments.
Israeli authorities said a total of seven missiles fired overnight had landed in Israel. At least 100 people were wounded in Israel.
Israel’s military, which has gutted Iran’s nuclear and military leadership with air strikes, said on Monday it had killed four senior intelligence officials, including the head of the elite Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence unit.
Tehran, facing its worst security breach since the 1979 Islamic revolution toppled a US-backed secular monarch, said dozens of alleged saboteurs and “spies” linked to Israel had been arrested since the start of the conflict.
Its currency has lost at least 10 per cent of its value against the US dollar since the start of Israel’s attack.
Geopolitical stability in the Middle East has already been undermined by spillover effects of the Gaza war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas.
– Reuters
