Iran launched rockets towards Israel on Saturday, February 28, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said in a post on social networking site X.
“Defence systems are working to intercept the threat. In the past few minutes, the Home Front Command has sent an alert directly to mobile phones in the relevant areas,” the military said.
According to the IDF, sirens went off in several areas across the country following the detection of rockets launched from Iran towards Israel.
“At the moment, the Israeli Air Force is intercepting and striking the threats,” the Israeli military noted.
It later emerged that Iran had launched missile strikes on military installations in the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain, with explosions also reported in Kuwait. A huge traffic jam formed at the exit of Dubai, local media reported.
Bahrain described the attacks on its territory as “insidious” and confirmed that they targeted facilities and infrastructure.
The UAE defence ministry confirmed that the country had been “targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles” and air defence systems had “successfully intercepted some” of them. The statement said that falling shrapnel in a residential neighbourhood in Abu Dhabi caused property damage and the death of one person of Asian nationality.
It added that the country was “fully prepared to respond to any threats”.
Earlier, on the morning of February 28, the Israeli military struck Iranian territory, with explosions in Tehran, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said. According to the Israeli side, “the attack was sudden”. At the same time as it began, the IDF sent out a nationwide warning urging citizens to stay close to secure premises.
“This is a preventive message to prepare the population for the possibility of rockets being launched towards the State of Israel,” the military said in a statement.
According to Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, the country has launched a “preventive military operation” against Iran, which “aims to neutralise the potential threat from Tehran as well as to prevent possible strikes on Israeli territory”.
A United States official confirmed America’s participation in the operation against Iran in comments to Radio Liberty. The US official says the airstrikes are aimed at “weakening Iran’s security infrastructure”.
US leader Donald Trump later noted that America had indeed launched a military campaign against Iran “to eliminate threats from the current regime”. He called the country’s leadership a “brutal group of people” whose activities pose a direct danger to the US, “our troops, our bases overseas and our allies around the world.”
The media also wrote that according to the Iranian official, the country is preparing to retaliate and “the response will be crushing.”
In 2015, a group of world powers reached a landmark nuclear agreement with Tehran to prevent Iran from building an Iranian bomb. Western economic sanctions were relaxed at the time, but Iran began reneging after Donald Trump, during his first term as US president, withdrew from the agreement in 2018 and reimposed sanctions.
On 13 February, the US president said regime change in Iran would be “the best thing that could happen”.
He also confirmed that a second aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, would soon join the “massive” US armada in the Arabian Sea.
17 Feb US and Iranian officials met in Geneva, Switzerland, for a second round of talks on an agreement aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear programme and preventing war.
The two sides held indirect talks in early February in Oman, the first since Israeli and U.S. strikes on key Iranian nuclear sites during the brief conflict in June.
The talks come amid a significant U.S. military buildup in the Middle East. Tensions have been rising since massive nationwide protests in Iran last month, during which authorities launched a brutal crackdown that human rights groups say has left thousands dead.