Israel, Iran trade strikes as air war escalates with no end in sight

Israel bombed nuclear targets in Iran on Thursday and Iran fired missiles and drones at Israel after hitting an Israeli hospital overnight, as a week-old air war escalated with no sign yet of an exit strategy from either side.

On Thursday, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said in a statement it had launched combined missile and drone attacks at military and industrial sites linked to Israel's defence industry in Haifa and Tel Aviv. Israel reported missiles launched from Iran towards its territory.

Following the strike that damaged the Soroka medical centre in Israel's southern city of Beersheba, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tehran's "tyrants" would pay the "full price." "Are we targeting the downfall of the regime? That may be a result, but it's up to the Iranian people to rise for their freedom," Netanyahu said.

"Freedom requires these subjugated people to rise up, and it's up to them, but we may create conditions that will help them do it."

Israeli emergency services stand next to charred vehicles at the site of an Iranian missile attack in Ramat Gan in central Israel near Tel Aviv, on Thursday. AFP

Defence Minister Israel Katz said the military had been instructed to intensify strikes on strategic-related targets in Tehran in order to eliminate the threat to Israel and destabilise the "Ayatollah regime."

Israel's sweeping campaign of airstrikes aims to do more than destroy Iran's nuclear centrifuges and missile capabilities. It seeks to shatter the foundations of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's government and leave it near collapse, Israeli, Western and regional officials said.

Netanyahu wants Iran weakened enough to be forced into fundamental concessions on permanently abandoning its nuclear enrichment, its ballistic missile programme and its support for militant groups across the region, the sources said.

An Israeli woman hugs her partner after she sailed back to Israel from Cyprus together with other Israelis, in Haifa port. Reuters

US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has kept the world guessing, veering from proposing a swift diplomatic end to the war to suggesting the United States might join it.

On Wednesday, he said nobody knew what he would do. A day earlier he mused on social media about killing Khamenei, then demanded Iran's unconditional surrender. Three diplomats told Reuters that Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi have spoken by phone several times since Israel began its strikes last week.

A view of the Iranian nuclear facility at Arak in central Iran. AFP

In an apparent reference to the US, Iran's Supreme National Security Council said on Thursday it would use a different strategy if a "third party" joined Israel in the war.

STRAIT OF HORMUZ THREAT

In the latest wave of attacks, Israel said it had struck Iran''s Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites. It initially said it had also hit Bushehr, site of Iran's only functioning nuclear power plant, but a spokesperson later said it was a mistake to have said this.

An Iranian diplomat told Reuters Bushehr was not hit and Israel was engaged in "psychological warfare" by discussing it.

Any attack on the plant, near Arab neighbours and housing Russian technicians, is viewed as risking nuclear disaster.

A week of Israeli air and missile strikes has wiped out the top echelon of Iran's military command, damaged its nuclear capabilities and killed hundreds of people.

Iranian retaliatory strikes have killed at least two dozen civilians in Israel.

Reuters