Israel strikes Iranian nuclear sites, Iran retaliates against military targets

JERUSALEM -- Israel and Iran on Thursday exchanged major airstrikes overnight, targeting each other's critical infrastructure and military facilities.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced in a statement on Thursday that it had launched a broad aerial campaign across Iran, including a strike targeting the inactive Arak nuclear reactor in western Iran.

The IDF said the operation involved over 100 munitions, 40 fighter jets and intelligence coordination, targeting dozens of military sites throughout Iran, including its capital Tehran.

According to the statement, the strike on the Arak facility focused on the reactor's core seal — an essential component in plutonium production.

Though the reactor, whose construction began in 1997, was never completed due to international pressure, the IDF claimed that in recent years, Iran had been converting it to produce low-grade plutonium, which is technically unsuitable for nuclear weapons.

However, the strike targeted the plutonium production component to prevent the reactor from being restored and used for nuclear weapons development, it noted.

Further strikes were carried out on a nuclear weapons development site in Natanz, central Iran, a location that, according to the IDF, contained specialized equipment for advancing Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities and hosted projects to accelerate its nuclear program.

In addition to nuclear-related targets, Israeli warplanes reportedly struck a range of military production sites across Iran, it said.

These included factories manufacturing ballistic missile components, facilities assembling Iranian air defense systems, various logistical infrastructures such as air defense batteries, missile storage sites, radar detection systems and detection equipment.

In response to the Israeli offensive, Iran targeted Israel's military intelligence facilities in its strikes on the southern part of the country on Thursday morning, not a hospital as was reported by some media outlets, Iran's state news agency IRNA said.

The strikes were aimed at the Israeli army's C4I telecommunications corps headquarters and an intelligence facility, IRNA said, adding that the hospital in question was affected by the blast's shockwave.

Several media outlets reported that an Iranian missile hit Soroka Medical Center in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, with officials reporting "extensive damage."

The rapid escalation marks the most direct and large-scale confrontations between the two regional adversaries in recent years.