Emergency and rescue soldiers search for trapped people around heavily damaged buildings after an overnight missile strike from Iran on June 15, 2025 in Bat Yam Israel. Iran launched a retaliatory missile strike on Israel starting late on June 13, after a series of Israeli airstrikes earlier in the day targeted Iranian military and nuclear sites, as well as top military officials.
Amir Levy | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Israel launched an expanded assault on Iran on Sunday, targeting its energy industry and Defense Ministry headquarters, while Tehran unleashed a fresh barrage of deadly strikes.
The simultaneous attacks represented the latest burst of violence since a surprise offensive by Israel two days earlier aimed at decimating Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.
New explosions boomed across Tehran as Iranian missiles entered Israel’s skies in attacks that Israeli emergency officials said caused deaths around the country, including four in an apartment building in the Galilee region. A strike in central Israel killed an 80-year-old woman, a 69-year-old woman and a 10-year-old boy, officials said.
Casualty figures weren’t immediately available in Iran, where Israel targeted its Defense Ministry headquarters in Tehran as well as sites that it alleged were associated with the country’s nuclear program. Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard claimed that Iranian missiles targeted fuel production facilities for Israeli fighter jets, something not acknowledged by Israel.
Amid the continued conflict, planned negotiations between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s nuclear program were cancelled, throwing into question when and how an end to the fighting could come.
“Tehran is burning,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on social media.
People observe fire and smoke from an Israeli attack on the Shahran oil depot on June 15, 2025 in Tehran, Iran. Iran’s foreign minister said the country would respond “decisively and proportionally” to a wave of attacks that Israel launched beginning in the early hours of June 13. The attacks targeted multiple military, scientific and residential locations, as well as senior government officials.
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Both Israel’s military and Iran state television announced the latest round of Iranian missiles as explosions were heard near midnight, while the Israeli security cabinet met.
Israel’s ongoing strikes across Iran have left the country’s surviving leadership with the difficult decision of whether to plunge deeper into conflict with Israel’s more powerful forces or seek a diplomatic route.
already on edge as Israel makes a new push to eliminate the Iranian-backed militant group Hamas in Gaza after 20 months of fighting.
Israel — widely believed to be the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East — said its hundreds of strikes on Iran over the past two days have killed a number of top generals, nine senior scientists and experts involved in Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s U.N. ambassador has said 78 people were killed and more than 320 wounded.
Missiles launched from Iran towards Israel are intercepted, as seen from Gedera, Israel, on June 14, 2025.
Ilan Assayag | Reuters
U.S. intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency have repeatedly said Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon before Israel unleashed its campaign of airstrikes targeting Iran beginning Friday. But Iran’s uranium enrichment has reached near weapons-grade levels, and on Thursday the U.N.’s atomic watchdog censured Iran for not complying with obligations meant to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has made the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program his top priority, said Israel’s strikes so far are “nothing compared to what they will feel under the sway of our forces in the coming days.”
In what could be another escalation if confirmed, semiofficial Iranian news agencies reported an Israeli drone struck and caused a “strong explosion” at an Iranian natural-gas processing plant. It would be the first Israeli attack on Iran’s oil and natural gas industry. Israel’s military did not immediately comment.
The extent of damage at the South Pars natural gas field was not immediately clear. Such sites have air defense systems around them, which Israel has been targeting.
main nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz. Satellite photos analyzed by AP show extensive damage there. The images shot Saturday by Planet Labs PBC show multiple buildings damaged or destroyed. The structures hit include buildings identified by experts as supplying power to the facility.
U.N. nuclear chief Rafael Grossi told the Security Council that the above-ground section of the Natanz facility was destroyed. The main centrifuge facility underground did not appear to have been hit, but the loss of power could have damaged infrastructure there, he said.
Israel said it also struck a nuclear research facility in Isfahan, including “infrastructure for enriched uranium conversion,” and said it destroyed dozens of radar installations and surface-to-air missile launchers in western Iran. Iran confirmed the strike at Isfahan.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said four “critical buildings” at the Isfahan site were damaged, including its uranium conversion facility. “As in Natanz, no increase in off-site radiation expected,” it added.
An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with official procedures, said that according to the army’s initial assessment “it will take much more than a few weeks” for Iran to repair the damage to the Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites. The official said the army had “concrete intelligence that production in Isfahan was for military purposes.”
Israel denied it had struck the nuclear enrichment facility in Fordo, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Tehran.
Among those killed were three of Iran’s top military leaders: one who oversaw the entire armed forces, Gen. Mohammad Bagheri; one who led the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Hossein Salami; and the head of the Guard’s aerospace division, which oversees its arsenal of ballistic missile program, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh. On Saturday, Khamenei named a new leader for the Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace division: Gen. Majid Mousavi.
