Israel hits back at Iran with targeted strike on Ayatollah's birthday

ISRAEL early today retaliated against Iran with a limited air strike targeting the region housing the nerve centre of the Islamic state’s nuclear programme, US officials said.

- Jitendra Joshi

One Iranian official played down the incident — which came on the 85th birthday of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — as a foreign “infiltration” that did not necessitate a response, seeming to lessen fears of all-out war.

Rishi Sunak stressed this morning that it was a “developing situation”. The PM reiterated UK condemnation of Iran’s “reckless and dangerous barrage of missiles” against Israel on Saturday.

“But as I said to Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu when I spoke to him last week, and more generally, significant escalation is not in anyone’s interest. What we want to see is calm heads prevail in the region,” Mr Sunak said.

There was no formal acknowledgment from Israel’s government, but US officials briefed that at least one Israeli missile had hit Iran in the region around the central city of Isfahan, home to a major airbase and important nuclear sites including the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.