Israel has launched a “preemptive strike” on Iran, the country’s defence minister said, after US President Donald Trump had warned that Israel could soon strike Iran’s nuclear sites.

Iran state media is reporting deaths after buildings were hit in the attack.

Residential buildings in the Iranian capital were hit in the Israeli attack, state media reported. Iran Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami was killed in the attack, acocrding to local media.

“A fire and smoke is being seen at IRGC General Command Headquarters in Pirouzi St in the east of Tehran,” state TV said.

“Several buildings in Tehran... have been targeted by attacks,” the official IRNA news agency said, naming neighbourhoods in multiple locations in the capital.

Blasts were heard on Friday morning in Natanz city in Iran’s central province of Isfahan, which hosts one of the main uranium enrichment facilities, state TV reported.

Israel army chief called the strikes a “historic campaign unlike any other” and the country declared a state of emergency, Defence Minister Israel Katz saying retaliatory action from Tehran was possible after the operation.

”A missile and drone attack against the State of Israel and its civilian population is expected in the immediate future.”

Explosions were heard today (NZ Time) in the Iranian capital, state TV reported.

“Loud explosions being heard in different locations of the capital Tehran,” state TV reported, adding that Iran’s air defences were at “100% operational capacity”.

AFP correspondents have also heard the blasts.

Iraq closed its airspace and suspended air traffic across the country, state media said, after Israel said it carried out strikes against Iranian nuclear and military sites.

“The Ministry of Transport closes Iraqi airspace and suspends air traffic at all Iraqi airports,” the Iraq News Agency reported.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attack aimed to “roll back” the “Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival” and would “continue for as many days as it takes”. He called the operation “Rising Lion”.

“We struck at the heart of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme. We targeted Iran’s main enrichment facility at Natanz ... we also struck at the heart of Iran’s ballistic missile programme,” he said, adding that Israel had also hit Iranian nuclear scientists “working on the Iranian bomb”.

The top Democrat on the US Senate Armed Services Committee sharply criticised Israel for its strikes on Iran, accusing it of putting the region and American forces at risk.

“Israel’s alarming decision to launch airstrikes on Iran is a reckless escalation that risks igniting regional violence,” Senator Jack Reed, of Rhode Island, said.

Oil prices surged as much as 6% on the strikes, which came after Trump warned of a possible Iranian attack and said the US was drawing down staff in the region.

“I don’t want to say imminent, but it looks like it’s something that could very well happen,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday when asked if an Israeli attack loomed.

Trump said he believed a “pretty good” deal on Iran’s nuclear programme was “fairly close”, but said an Israeli attack on its arch foe could wreck the chances of an agreement.

The US leader did not disclose the details of a conversation on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but said: “I don’t want them going in, because I think it would blow it.”

Trump quickly added: “Might help it actually, but it also could blow it.”

A US official said there had been no US involvement in the Israeli strikes on Iran.

Existential threat

The United States on Wednesday said it was reducing embassy staff in Iraq - long a zone of proxy conflict with Iran.

Israel, which counts on US military and diplomatic support, sees the cleric-run state in Tehran as an existential threat and hit Iranian air defences last year.

Netanyahu has vowed less restraint since the unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Tehran-backed Hamas, which triggered the massive Israeli offensive in Gaza.

The United States and other Western countries, along with Israel, have repeatedly accused Iran of seeking a nuclear weapon, which it has repeatedly denied.

Israel again called for global action after the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) accused Iran on Wednesday of non-compliance with its obligations.

The resolution could lay the groundwork for European countries to invoke a “snapback” mechanism, which expires in October, that would reinstate UN sanctions eased under a 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by then US president Barack Obama.

Trump pulled out of the deal in his first term and slapped Iran with sweeping sanctions.

Iran’s nuclear chief, Mohammad Eslami, slammed the resolution as “extremist” and blamed Israeli influence.

In response to the resolution, Iran said it would launch a new enrichment centre in a secure location.

Iran would also replace “all of these first-generation machines with sixth-generation advanced machines” at the Fordo uranium enrichment plant, said Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran.

Iran currently enriches uranium to 60%, far above the 3.67% limit set in the 2015 deal and close, though still short, of the 90% needed for a nuclear warhead.

-Agence France-Presse