Israel says it has begun intercepting Iranian drones launched in retaliation of Israel’s “pre-emptive” strikes.

Israel’s initial strikes early on Friday appeared to be the most significant attack Iran has faced since its 1980s and raised the potential for an all-out war between the two bitter Middle East adversaries.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Israel attacks Iran, raising fears of all-out war between old enemies.

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Multiple sites around the country were hit, including Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facility, where black smoke could be seen rising into the air.

The leader of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, General Hossein Salami, was confirmed dead, Iranian state television reported, a development that would be a body blow to Tehran’s governing theocracy and an immediate escalation of the nations’ long-simmering conflict.

Top military officials and scientists were also believed killed.

The strikes came amid simmering tensions over Iran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program and appeared certain to trigger a reprisal, with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warning of “severe punishment” for Israel.

Iran has retaliated by launching more than 100 drones towards Israel, Israel’s military said.

Jordanian state media said the country’s Air Force is intercepting missiles and drones in its air space.

The state news agency quoted an unnamed senior military official as saying that the interceptions were carried out based on military assessments indicating that the missiles and drones were likely to fall within Jordanian territory, including populated areas, posing a potential threat to civilian safety.

In Washington, the Trump administration, which had cautioned Israel against an attack during continued negotiations over Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, said it had not been involved and warned against any retaliation targeting US interests or personnel.

Israeli leaders cast the pre-emptive assault as a fight for the nation’s survival that was necessary to head off an imminent threat that Iran would build nuclear bombs, though it remains unclear how close the country is to achieving that or whether Iran had actually been planning a strike soon.

“It could be a year. It could be within a few months,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said as he vowed to pursue the attack for as long as necessary to “remove this threat”.

“This is a clear and present danger to Israel’s very survival,” he said.

Khamenei issued a statement saying Israel “opened its wicked and blood-stained hand to a crime in our beloved country, revealing its malicious nature more than ever by striking residential centres”.

For Netanyahu, the operation distracts attention from Israel’s ongoing and increasingly unpopular war in Gaza, which is more than 20 months old.

Target sites

Multiple sites in the Iranian capital were hit in the attack, which Netanyahu said targeted both nuclear and military sites.

Also targeted were officials leading Iran’s nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal.

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that an Israeli strike hit Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz and said it was closely monitoring radiation levels.

The potential for an attack had been apparent for weeks as angst built over Iran’s nuclear program.

President Donald Trump on Thursday said he did not believe an attack was imminent but also acknowledged it “could very well happen”.

As tensions rose, the US pulled some diplomats from Iraq’s capital and offered voluntary evacuations for the families of US troops in the wider Middle East.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Israel took “unilateral action against Iran” and that Israel advised the US that it believed the strikes were necessary for its self-defence.

“We are not involved in strikes against Iran, and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” Rubio said in a statement.

Trump is scheduled to attend a meeting of his National Security Council on Friday, were he is expected to discuss the conflict with top advisers.

Israel has long been determined to prevent Iran developing nuclear weapons, a concern laid bare on Thursday when the Board of Governors at the International Atomic Energy Agency for the first time in 20 years censured Iran over its refusal to work with its inspectors.

Iran immediately announced it would establish a third enrichment site in the country and swap out some centrifuges for more-advanced ones.

In a sign of the conflict’s implications, Israel’s main airport was closed and benchmark Brent crude spiked on news of the attack, rising nearly eight per cent.

Both Iran and Israel closed their airspace.

A timeline of key events:

1979: Iran’s pro-Western leader, Mohammed Reza Shah, who regarded Israel as an ally, is swept from power in an Islamic Revolution that installs a new Shi’ite theocratic regime with opposition to Israel.

1982: As Israel invades Lebanon, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards work with fellow Shi’ite Muslims there to set up Hezbollah.

1983: Iran-backed Hezbollah uses suicide bombings to expel Western and Israeli forces from Lebanon.

1992-94: Argentina and Israel accuse Iran and Hezbollah of orchestrating suicide bombings at Israel’s embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and a Jewish centre in the city in 1994, each of which killed dozens of people.

2002: A disclosure that Iran has a secret program to enrich uranium stirs concern that it is trying to build a nuclear bomb in violation of its non-proliferation treaty commitments, which it denies.

2009: In a speech, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calls Israel “a dangerous and fatal cancer”.

2010: Stuxnet, a malicious computer virus widely believed to have been developed by the US and Israel, is used to attack a uranium enrichment facility at Iran’s Natanz nuclear site.

2018: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hails President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of the US from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers after years of lobbying against the agreement.

2020: Israel welcomes the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, commander of the overseas arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, in an American drone strike in Baghdad.

2021: Iran blames Israel for the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, viewed by Western intelligence services as the mastermind of a covert Iranian program to develop nuclear weapons capability.

2022: US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid sign a joint pledge to deny Iran nuclear arms.

April 2024: A suspected Israeli air strike on the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus kills seven Revolutionary Guards officers. Israel neither confirms nor denies responsibility.

October 2024: Iran fires over 180 missiles at Israel in what it calls revenge for the killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on September 27 and the killing of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31.

June 2025: Israel carries out strikes in Iran it says were aimed at disrupting the Islamic Republic’s nuclear infrastructure and targeted scientists working on a nuclear bomb. The US denies providing assistance for the operation.