Israel said on Saturday it had killed a veteran Iranian commander as the countries traded attacks, a day after Tehran said it would not negotiate over its nuclear programme while under threat and Europe tried to keep peace talks alive.
Saeed Izadi, who led the Palestine Corps of the Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ overseas arm, was killed in a strike in an apartment in the Iranian city of Qom, said Israeli Defense minister Israel Katz.
Calling his killing a “major achievement for Israeli intelligence and the Air Force”, Katz said in a statement that Izadi had financed and armed the Palestinian militant group Hamas in advance of its October 7th, 2023, attack on Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza.
The Revolutionary Guards said five of its members had been killed in attacks on Khorramabad, according to Iranian media reports that did not mention Izadi, who was on US and British sanctions lists.
Iranian media had said earlier on Saturday that Israel had attacked a building in Qom, with initial reports of a 16-year-old killed and two people injured.
Iran’s Fars news agency said Israel had targeted the Isfahan nuclear facility, one of the nation’s biggest, but there was no leakage of hazardous materials.
The Israeli military said it had launched a wave of attacks against missile storage and launch infrastructure sites in Iran.
Ali Shamkhani, a close ally of Iran’s supreme leader, said he had survived an Israeli attack. “It was my fate to stay with a wounded body, so I stay to continue to be the reason for the enemy’s hostility,” he said in a message carried by state media.
Early on Saturday, the Israeli military warned of an incoming missile barrage from Iran, triggering air raid sirens across parts of central Israel, including Tel Aviv, as well as in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Interceptions were visible in the sky over Tel Aviv, with explosions echoing across the metropolitan area as Israel’s air defence systems responded. There were no reports of casualties.
Israel began attacking Iran on June 13th, saying its long-time enemy was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran, which says its nuclear programme is only for peaceful purposes, retaliated with missile and drone strikes on Israel.
Israel is widely assumed to possess nuclear weapons. It neither confirms nor denies this.
Its air attacks have killed 639 people in Iran, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a US-based human rights organisation that tracks Iran. The dead include the military’s top echelon and nuclear scientists.
Iran’s health minister, Mohammadreza Zafarqandi, said on Saturday that Israel has attacked three hospitals during the conflict, killing two health workers and a child, and has targeted six ambulances, according to Fars.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An Iranian missile hit a hospital in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Thursday.
Iran’s Nournews on Saturday named 15 air defence officers and soldiers it said had been killed in the conflict with Israel.
In Israel, 24 civilians have been killed in Iranian missile attacks, according to Israeli authorities.
US president Donald Trump said on Friday he thought Iran would be able to have a nuclear weapon “within a matter of weeks, or certainly within a matter of months”. He told reporters at the airport in Morristown, New Jersey: “We can’t let that happen.”
He said his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was wrong in suggesting there was no evidence Iran is building a nuclear weapon.
Russia has repeatedly told Israel that there is no evidence Iran is aiming to get nuclear weapons, Sky News Arabia on Saturday quoted Russian president Vladimir Putin as saying in an interview.
“Russia, as well as the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], has never had any evidence that Iran is preparing to obtain nuclear weapons, as we have repeatedly put the Israeli leadership on notice,” Sky News Arabia quoted Mr Putin as saying.
Russia is ready to support Iran in developing a peaceful nuclear programme, Mr Putin was quoted as saying, adding that Iran has the right to do so.
Speaking at an economic forum in St Petersburg on Friday, Mr Putin said Russia was sharing its ideas on how to stop the bloodshed in the Iran-Israel conflict with both sides. He did not give details of those ideas.
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araqchi said there was no room for negotiations with the US “until Israeli aggression stops”. But he arrived in Geneva on Friday for talks with European foreign ministers at which Europe hopes to establish a path back to diplomacy.
On Saturday French president Emmanuel Macron said he had received a call from his Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian, and that they had agreed to accelerate negotiations between European powers and Iran over its contested nuclear programme.
“I am demanding: Iran must never acquire nuclear weapons, and it is up to it to provide every assurance that its intentions are peaceful,” Macron said on social media X. “I am convinced that there is a way out of the war and to avoid greater dangers.”
Mr Trump has said he would take up to two weeks to decide whether the United States should enter the conflict on Israel’s side, enough time “to see whether or not people come to their senses”, he said.
Mr Trump said he was unlikely to press Israel to scale back its air strikes to allow negotiations to continue.
“I think it’s very hard to make that request right now. If somebody is winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody is losing, but we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens,” he said.
The Geneva talks produced little signs of progress, and Mr Trump said he doubted negotiators would be able to secure a ceasefire.
“Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this one,” Trump said.
Hundreds of US citizens have fled Iran since the air war began, according to a US State Department cable seen by Reuters.
Israel’s envoy to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told the Security Council on Friday his country would not stop its attacks “until Iran’s nuclear threat is dismantled”. Iran’s UN envoy Amir Saeid Iravani called for Security Council action and said Tehran was alarmed by reports that the US might join the war.
Russia and China demanded immediate de-escalation.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Iran was ready to discuss limitations on uranium enrichment but that it would reject any proposal that barred it from enriching uranium completely, “especially now under Israel’s strikes”. – Reuters
