Iran launched around 100 drones toward Israeli territory in retaliation for the strikes, an Israeli military spokesman said.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has said that three of Iran’s top military leaders were killed in early morning airstrikes carried out by Israel across Iran on June 13.
In a statement on the social media platform X, an IDF spokesperson said Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, and the commander of Iran’s Emergency Command were killed in the Israeli strikes.
The spokesperson said the airstrikes were carried out by more than 200 Israeli fighter jets.
"These are three ruthless mass murderers with international blood on their hands. The world is a better place without them," the spokesperson said.
Iranian state TV also confirmed Bagheri was killed in an Israeli strike in Tehran, the Iranian capital.
Iranian state media reported that at least two nuclear scientists died in Israeli strikes in Tehran.
The Israeli Air Force described the strikes as a "preemptive, precise, combined offensive" focusing on military targets, nuclear facilities, ballistic missile factories, and military commanders as part of alleged efforts to prevent Tehran from building an atomic weapon.
In a televised address shortly after the strikes began, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the early morning strikes were conducted under "Operation Rising Lion," which he described as a "targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival."
Netanyahu said the operation would "continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat."
Pointing to Iran's nuclear enrichment program, the Israeli leader alleged that in recent years, Tehran has produced "enough highly enriched uranium for nine atom bombs."
"If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time—it could be in a year, it could be within a few months, less than a year. This is a clear and present danger to Israel's very survival," Netanyahu said.
The Israeli prime minister said the strikes targeted the leading Iranian nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz and an individual he described as Iran’s leading scientist working on nuclear weapons.
"We struck at the heart of Iran’s ballistic missile program," Netanyahu said in his televised address.
Iranian media and witnesses reported explosions across the country, including at Natanz on Friday. The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Natanz was among the sites targeted but said there had been no increase in radiation levels at the Natanz nuclear site, citing information given to them by Iranian authorities.
Iranian state media reported the headquarters of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps in Tehran had been hit. Several children were killed in a strike on a residential area in the capital, it said.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemned the strikes in a statement, stating that Israel had "unleashed its wicked and bloody" hand in a crime against Iran and that it would receive "a bitter fate for itself."
"The Zionist regime has committed a crime in our dear country today at dawn with its satanic, bloodstained hands," Khamenei said. "That regime should anticipate a severe punishment"
Iran launched around 100 drones toward Israeli territory in retaliation for the strikes, which Israel is working to intercept, Israeli military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin said.
