Reports emerged early Friday morning local time that Israel had attacked several Iranian sites — including targets near the suspected locations of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Israel’s Army Radio reported at 5:00 a.m. local time that ABC News had identified Israeli strikes near the town of Isfahan, Iran, as well as in locations in Syria and Iraq.
The Times of Israel reported:
Iran’s Fars news agency says that explosions have been heard near the airport at the country’s central Isfahan city, but the reason is unknown.
“The cause of these sounds is still unknown, and investigations continue until the exact details of the incident are determined,” the semi-official Fars news agency says.
Several Iranian nuclear sites are located in Isfahan province, including Natanz, centerpiece of Iran’s uranium enrichment program.
Speculation mounted on social media that the Syrian and Iraqi targets were linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the external terrorist wing of the Iranian military.
The Israeli strikes apparently came in response to a massive Iranian missile and drone attack on Israel over the weekend. Though the attack was largely intercepted by Israeli and allied air defenses, it marked the first such direct attack by Iran against Israel from Iranian territory.
Israel had promised that if any attack originated from within Iran, Israel would respond with attacks inside Iran.
Israel has also long considered a strike against Iran’s nuclear program, with or without the support of the United States.
The Iranian regime is not thought to have significant air defenses. Dr. Shay Har-Zvi of the Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS) at Reichman University told Breitbart News on Thursday during a press briefing that Iran’s air defenses, which had been supplied from Russia, did not yet include the latest generation, the S-400.
He agreed that Russian-Iranian cooperation might lend urgency to an Israeli response to Iran, because Israel knew it would have a limited window in which to strike back before Russia supplied more advanced air defense systems to Iran. He added that Russia was unlikely to be willing to become directly in a confrontation between Iran and Israel.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.