ShareWASHINGTON/JERUSALEM/TEHRAN: The Zionist entity and Iran launched fresh attacks on each other on Sunday, killing scores of civilians and raising fears of a wider conflict, and US President Donald Trump said it could be ended easily while warning Tehran not to strike any US targets. In Washington, two US officials told Reuters that Trump had vetoed a Zionist plan in recent days to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Have the Iranians killed an American yet? No. Until they do we’re not even talking about going after the political leadership,” said one of the sources, a senior US administration official. In the Zionist entity, rescue teams combed through rubble of residential buildings destroyed by Iranian missiles, using sniffer dogs and heavy excavators to look for survivors after at least 10 people, including children, were killed, raising the two-day toll to 13.
Sirens rang out across the country after 4 pm on Sunday in the first such daylight alert, and fresh explosions could be heard in Tel Aviv. In Iran, images from the capital showed the night sky lit up by a huge blaze at a fuel depot after the Zionist entity began strikes against Iran’s oil and gas sector - raising the stakes for the global economy and the functioning of the Iranian state.
Local media citing Iran’s health ministry had reported at least 128 people killed in Zionist attacks from Friday to Saturday, including women and children, with 900 more injured, including in a single attack that killed 60 on Saturday, half of them children, in a 14-storey apartment block flattened in Tehran.
Trump said the conflict – which has raised fears of a wider conflagration – could be ended easily, while also warning Iran that the US could get involved if Iran hits any American targets. When asked about the Reuters report on a plan to kill Khamenei, Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News on Sunday: “There’s so many false reports of conversations that never happened, and I’m not going to get into that.” “We do what we need to do,” he told Fox’s “Special Report With Bret Baier.”
Netanyahu also strongly suggested to Fox News that the Zionist entity had killed Iran’s intelligence chief Mohammad Kazemi, saying it had recently “got the chief intelligence officer and his deputy in Tehran” as its jets carried out raids over the capital. Regime change in Iran could be a result of the Zionist military attacks on the country, Netanyahu said, adding that the Zionist entity would do whatever is necessary to remove what he called the “existential threat” posed by Tehran.
Financial markets are holding their breath to see whether oil prices surge further when trading resumes on Monday after the weekend, with potentially punishing consequences for the global economy, or settle down on hopes that Gulf exports will escape relatively unscathed. Oil prices already shot up by 9 percent on Friday before the Zionist entity had struck any Iranian oil and gas targets.
Long lines snaked around gas stations as most businesses remained closed, while the head of Tehran’s traffic police told the IRNA news agency that “heavy traffic was reported at the capital’s exit points”. Some residents, however, were determined to stay put. “It is natural that war has its own stress, but I will not leave my city,” Shokouh Razzazi, 31, told AFP.
The Zionist entity said its forces had struck the defense ministry headquarters in Tehran, where Iranian news agency Tasnim reported damage. The Zionist military also said it had struck nuclear sites, including the secretive Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND), fuel tankers and other targets. Iranian media later said that police had arrested two suspects over alleged links to the Zionist Mossad spy agency. Israel, in turn, said it had taken two individuals into custody over alleged links to Iranian intelligence.
The Zionist entity launched “Operation Rising Lion” with a surprise attack on Friday morning that wiped out the top echelon of Iran’s military command and damaged its nuclear sites, and says the campaign will continue to escalate in coming days. Iran has vowed to “open the gates of hell” in retaliation in what has emerged as the biggest ever confrontation between the longstanding enemies.
The Zionist military warned Iranians living near weapons facilities to evacuate. “Iran will pay a heavy price for the murder of civilians, women and children,” Netanyahu said from a balcony overlooking blown-out apartments in the town of Bat Yam, where six people were killed. Iran’s armed forces told residents of the Zionist entity to leave the vicinity of “vital areas” for their safety, in a video statement broadcast by state TV on Sunday evening around the time that Iran sent a new barrage of missiles towards the Zionist entity.
“We have a data bank of vital and critical areas in occupied territories and call upon you not to let the brutal regime use you as human shields. Do not stay or travel near these critical areas,” an armed forces spokesperson said. An official said the Zionist entity still had a long list of targets in Iran and declined to say how long the offensive would continue. Those attacked on Saturday evening included two “dual-use” fuel sites that supported military and nuclear operations, he said. The Zionist entity also said it hit an aerial refueling aircraft in eastern Iran in its longest-range attack of the conflict.
President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran’s responses will grow “more decisive and severe” if the Zionist entity’s hostile actions continue. Zionist skies have been streaked with barrages of Iranian missiles and Zionist interceptor rockets. Some 22 of Iran’s 270 ballistic missiles fired over the past two nights breached the anti-missile shield, Zionist authorities say.
Trump has lauded the Zionist offensive while denying Iranian allegations that the US has taken part in it. “If we are attacked in any way, shape or form by Iran, the full strength and might of the US Armed Forces will come down on you at levels never seen before,” he said in a message on Truth Social. “However, we can easily get a deal done between Iran and (the Zionist entity), and end this bloody conflict.”
Trump had earlier said the US had no role in Israel’s attack and warned Tehran not to widen its retaliation to include US targets. The US military has helped shoot down Iranian missiles that were headed towards the Zionist entity, two US officials said on Friday. Since Saturday, the Zionist entity has hit the oil depot in Tehran and facilities at Iran’s huge South Fars gas field, the world’s largest, which produces gas for domestic consumption. Iran said the situation at the burning Shahran oil depot in the capital was under control. It told citizens to seek shelter in mosques, schools and subways. – Agencies
