Israel’s defense minister threatened Iran’s supreme leader on Thursday after Iranian missiles damaged a hospital in southern Israel and hit residential buildings near Tel Aviv, wounding at least 240 people. Israel, meanwhile, struck a heavy water reactor linked to Iran’s nuclear program.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz blamed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and said the military “has been instructed and knows that in order to achieve all of its goals, this man absolutely should not continue to exist.”
U.S. officials said earlier this week that President Donald Trump had vetoed an Israeli plan to kill Khamenei. Trump later said there were no plans to kill him, “at least not for now.”
Israel carried out strikes on Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, in its latest attack on the country’s nuclear program. The conflict began last Friday with a surprise wave of Israeli airstrikes targeting military sites, senior officers and nuclear scientists.
A Washington-based Iranian human rights group said at least 639 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 1,300 wounded. In retaliation, Iran has fired hundreds of missiles and drones, killing at least 24 people in Israel and wounding hundreds.
More than 200 wounded, including dozens in the hospital strike
At least 240 people were wounded by the latest Iranian attack, four of them seriously, according to Israel’s Health Ministry.
Iran used a missile with multiple warheads, according to an Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.
Such missiles can pose a more difficult challenge for air defense systems, like Israel’s Iron Dome, because they have to track more than one warhead.
An immediate independent analysis was not possible. However, Iran has hinted in the past that it was pursuing such weaponry.
The vast majority of those injured Thursday were lightly wounded, including more than 70 people from the Soroka Medical Center in the southern city of Beersheba, where smoke rose as emergency teams evacuated patients. There were no serious injuries from the strike on the hospital.
The hospital said the main impact was on an old surgery building that had been evacuated in recent days. After the strike, the medical facility was closed to all patients except for life-threatening cases, it said. Soroka has over 1,000 beds and provides services to around 1 million residents of Israel’s south.
Many hospitals in Israel activated emergency plans in the past week, converting underground parking to wards and moving patients to them, especially those who are on ventilators or are difficult to move quickly. Israel also boasts a fortified, subterranean blood bank that kicked into action after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack ignited the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
Two doctors told The Associated Press that the missile struck almost immediately after air raid sirens went off, causing a loud explosion that could be heard from a safe room. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the attack and vowed a response, saying: “We will exact the full price from the tyrants in Tehran.”
Iran has fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel, though most have been shot down by Israel’s multitiered air defenses.
Israel says it has taken out most of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers
An Israeli military official said Thursday that airstrikes have destroyed around two-thirds of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said Israel estimates Iran still has over 100 operational launchers, but that its losses have contributed to the steady decline in attacks since the start of the conflict.
Israel estimates that Iran had around 2,000 ballistic missiles at the start of the conflict, and says it has fired around 450 missiles and 1,000 drones toward Israel since hostilities began.
Israel lifted some restrictions on daily life Wednesday, suggesting the missile threat from Iran was easing.
Iran rejects calls to surrender or end its nuclear program
Iran has long maintained its program is for peaceful purposes. However, it also enriches uranium up to 60%, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon state to enrich at that level.
Israel is widely believed to have nuclear weapons — making it the only such state in the Middle East — but does not acknowledge having such arms.
Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday rejected U.S. calls for surrender and warned that any American military involvement by the Americans would cause “irreparable damage to them.”
Already, Israel’s campaign has targeted Iran’s enrichment site at Natanz, centrifuge workshops around Tehran, and a nuclear site in Isfahan. Its strikes have also killed top generals and nuclear scientists.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said he would travel to Geneva for meetings with his counterparts from the United Kingdom, France and Germany, as well as the European Union’s top diplomat, indicating a new diplomatic initiative might be underway.
Trump has said he wants something “much bigger” than a ceasefire and has not ruled out the U.S. joining in Israel’s campaign. Iran has warned of dire consequences if the U.S. deepens its involvement, without elaborating.
Iran agreed to redesign Arak to address nuclear concerns
Israel’s military said its fighter jets targeted the Arak heavy water reactor, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) southwest of Tehran, in order to prevent it from being used to produce plutonium.
Iranian state TV said there was “no radiation danger whatsoever” around the Arak site, which it said had been evacuated ahead of the strike.
Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. That would provide Iran another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, should it choose to pursue the weapon.
Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign the facility to alleviate proliferation concerns. That work was never completed.
The reactor became a point of contention after Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018. Ali Akbar Salehi, a high-ranking nuclear official in Iran, said in 2019 that Tehran bought extra parts to replace a portion of the reactor that it had poured concrete into under the deal.
Israel said strikes were carried out “in order to prevent the reactor from being restored and used for nuclear weapons development.”
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, has been urging Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites. IAEA inspectors reportedly last visited Arak on May 14.
Due to restrictions Iran imposed on inspectors, the IAEA has said it lost “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s heavy water production — meaning it could not absolutely verify Tehran’s production and stockpile.
