Netanyahu praises Israeli strikes, Iran warns against ‘exaggeration’

Israeli airstrikes “dealt a major blow” to Iran’s defense and missile production, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday, but Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the damage from Saturday’s attack should not be exaggerated.

With war raging in Gaza and Lebanon, direct confrontation between Israel and Iran risks escalating into a regional conflict. But the day after the airstrikes there was no sign they would trigger a new round of escalation.

But heavy fighting in Lebanon between Israeli forces and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which has sharply intensified in recent weeks, continued on Sunday with an Israeli airstrike killing eight people in a residential area in Sidon, medics said.

“The air force attacked the entire territory of Iran. We have dealt a major blow to Iran’s defense capabilities and its ability to produce missiles aimed at us,” Netanyahu said in a speech, calling the attack “precise and powerful” and saying it achieved all its objectives.

The Islamic Republic has given no indication how it would respond to Saturday’s long-awaited strikes, which saw dozens of fighter jets bomb targets near the capital Tehran and in the western provinces of Ilam and Khuzestan.

The heavily armed sworn enemies have been on a cycle of retaliating against each other for months, with Saturday’s strike coming after an Oct. 1 Iranian rocket attack, most of which Israel said was shot down by its air defenses.

Khamenei said Israel’s calculations “must be thwarted.” He said the attack on Iran, which killed four soldiers and caused some damage, “should neither be downplayed nor exaggerated.”

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baker Qalibaf said Iran has the right to self-defense and its response “will be definite, as required.”

US President Joe Biden has called for an end to the escalation, which has raised fears of a wider war in the Middle East stemming from last year’s conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and an Israeli offensive into southern Lebanon to stop Hezbollah’s rocket bombardment of northern Israel.

In addition, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Iran can no longer use its allies Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israel. The two groups “are no longer an effective tool” for Tehran, he said in a speech.

Gallant added that Hamas no longer functions as a military network in Gaza and that Hezbollah’s high command and most of its missile capabilities have been eliminated.

Hamas has repeatedly said it is still militarily capable, and Israel recently carried out major new operations in the devastated northern Gaza Strip against what it calls a regrouping of Hamas militants.

Hezbollah said its command structure remains intact and that it retains significant missile capabilities.

LEBANESE FIGHTS

On Sunday, the Israeli military called on residents of 14 villages in southern Lebanon to immediately evacuate and move north of the Awali River.

An Israeli strike on Sidon, a city in coastal southern Lebanon, killed at least eight people and wounded 25 on Sunday, the country’s health ministry said.

Elsewhere in the south, a strike in Zawtar al-Sharqiya killed three people, while Saturday’s explosion in Marjayoun killed five people, it said.

Israel said four of its soldiers were killed in fighting in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah also said it fired a large salvo of rockets at the Zebulon military site north of Haifa in northern Israel. Hezbollah rockets hit the house, and vehicles and rescue teams arrived to put out the fire.

One woman was seriously injured, according to the Israeli ambulance service.

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