US and Israel launch a major attack on Iran and Trump urges Iranians to ‘take over your government’

The U.S. and Is­rael launched a ma­jor at­tack on Iran on Sat­ur­day, with Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump call­ing on the Iran­ian pub­lic to “seize con­trol of your des­tiny” and rise up against the Is­lam­ic lead­er­ship that has ruled the na­tion since 1979.

Some of the first strikes ap­peared to hit ar­eas around the of­fices of Supreme Leader Ay­a­tol­lah Ali Khamenei, and Iran­ian me­dia re­port­ed strikes na­tion­wide. Smoke could be seen ris­ing from the cap­i­tal. It wasn’t im­me­di­ate­ly clear whether the 86-year-old leader was in his of­fices at the time of the strike.

“When we are fin­ished, take over your gov­ern­ment. It will be yours to take. This will be prob­a­bly your on­ly chance for gen­er­a­tions,” Trump said in a video an­nounc­ing “ma­jor com­bat op­er­a­tions” were un­der­way. “For many years, you have asked for Amer­i­ca’s help, but you nev­er got it.”

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu echoed that sweep­ing goal. “Our joint op­er­a­tion will cre­ate the con­di­tions for the brave Iran­ian peo­ple to take their fate in­to their own hands,” Ne­tanyahu said.

The strikes opened a stun­ning new chap­ter in U.S. in­ter­ven­tion in Iran and marked the sec­ond time in eight months that the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has used mil­i­tary force against the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic. They al­so came just weeks af­ter Trump or­dered a mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion to cap­ture Venezuela’s pres­i­dent, Nicolás Maduro, and bring him and his wife to New York to face fed­er­al drug con­spir­a­cy charges.

The op­er­a­tion al­so comes as ten­sions have soared in re­cent weeks as Amer­i­can war­ships moved in­to the re­gion, and Trump said he want­ed a deal to con­strain Iran’s nu­clear pro­gram at a mo­ment when the coun­try is strug­gling at home with grow­ing dis­sent fol­low­ing na­tion­wide protests.

Iran re­spond­ed as it had been threat­en­ing to do for months — first launch­ing a wave of mis­siles and drones tar­get­ing Is­rael. It fol­lowed with strikes tar­get­ing U.S. mil­i­tary in­stal­la­tions in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. The Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates and Iraq shut down their air­space.

Iran’s For­eign Min­istry is­sued a de­fi­ant state­ment, say­ing that the coun­try “will not hes­i­tate” in its re­sponse. In a state­ment post­ed on X, the min­istry said: “The time has come to de­fend the home­land and con­front the en­e­my’s mil­i­tary as­sault.”

Forty peo­ple were re­port­ed killed at a girls’ school in south­ern Iran in the Is­raeli-U.S. strikes, ac­cord­ing to Iran’s state-run IR­NA news agency. At least 45 oth­ers were wound­ed in the at­tack in Minab in Iran’s Hor­moz­gan province.

The White House did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment on re­port­ed strike on the school.

Four peo­ple were al­so killed by an Iran­ian mis­sile strik­ing a build­ing in Syr­ia’s south­ern city of Swei­da, ac­cord­ing to Syr­i­an state tele­vi­sion.

Shrap­nel from an Iran­ian mis­sile at­tack on the cap­i­tal of the UAE killed one per­son, state me­dia said.

At­tack was co­or­di­nat­ed be­tween Is­rael and US

The at­tacks came af­ter weeks of the U.S. mil­i­tary mass­ing forces in the re­gion even as U.S. and Iran­ian en­voys held talks in Switzer­land and Oman aimed at find­ing a diplo­mat­ic so­lu­tion to head off Amer­i­can mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion.

Oman’s For­eign Min­is­ter Badr al-Bu­sai­di, a key me­di­a­tor in the U.S.-Iran nu­clear talks, said in a post on X that he was dis­mayed that U.S. and Is­rael moved for­ward with the op­er­a­tion.

“Ac­tive and se­ri­ous ne­go­ti­a­tions have yet again been un­der­mined,” said al-Bu­sai­di, who trav­eled to Wash­ing­ton on Fri­day to meet with Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance for talks. “Nei­ther the in­ter­ests of the Unit­ed States nor the cause of glob­al peace are well served by this. And I pray for the in­no­cents who will suf­fer. I urge the Unit­ed States not to get sucked in fur­ther.”

Is­rael said the op­er­a­tion was car­ried out as a “broad, co­or­di­nat­ed, and joint op­er­a­tion against the regime” that has been planned for months be­tween the Is­raeli and U.S. mil­i­taries.

Trump, in jus­ti­fy­ing the mil­i­tary ac­tion, claimed that Iran has con­tin­ued to de­vel­op its nu­clear pro­gram and plans to de­vel­op mis­siles to reach the U.S.

He al­so ac­knowl­edged that there could be Amer­i­can ca­su­al­ties, say­ing “that of­ten hap­pens in war.”

It was a no­table call on Amer­i­cans to brace them­selves from a U.S. leader who swept in­to of­fice on an “Amer­i­ca First” plat­form and vowed to keep out of “for­ev­er wars” that had bogged down his re­cent pre­de­ces­sors.

Trump’s state­ment in­di­cat­ed the U.S. was strik­ing for rea­sons far be­yond the nu­clear pro­gram, list­ing griev­ances stretch­ing back to the be­gin­ning of the Is­lam­ic Re­pub­lic fol­low­ing a rev­o­lu­tion in 1979 that turned Iran from one of Amer­i­ca’s clos­est al­lies in the Mid­dle East in­to a fierce foe.

The U.S. pres­i­dent said he was aim­ing to “an­ni­hi­late” the Iran­ian navy and de­stroy re­gion­al prox­ies sup­port­ed by Tehran.

He al­so called on the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard to lay down its arms, pledg­ing that mem­bers would be giv­en im­mu­ni­ty, while warn­ing they would face “cer­tain death” if they didn’t.

“They’ve re­ject­ed every op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­nounce their nu­clear am­bi­tions, and we can’t take it any­more,” Trump said.

Trump had threat­ened mil­i­tary ac­tion — but held off — fol­low­ing Iran’s re­cent crack­down on protests spurred by eco­nom­ic griev­ances and evolved in­to a na­tion­wide, an­ti-gov­ern­ment push against the rul­ing cler­ics.

The Hu­man Rights Ac­tivists News Agency says it con­firmed more than 7,000 deaths in the crack­down and that it is in­ves­ti­gat­ing thou­sands more. The gov­ern­ment has ac­knowl­edged more than 3,000 killed, though it has un­der­count­ed or not re­port­ed fa­tal­i­ties from past un­rest.

Iran has said it hasn’t en­riched since June, but it has blocked in­ter­na­tion­al in­spec­tors from vis­it­ing the sites Amer­i­ca bombed dur­ing a 12-day war then. Satel­lite pho­tos an­a­lyzed by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press have shown new ac­tiv­i­ty at two of those sites, sug­gest­ing Iran is try­ing to as­sess and po­ten­tial­ly re­cov­er ma­te­r­i­al there.

Iran cur­rent­ly has a self-im­posed lim­it on its bal­lis­tic mis­sile pro­gram, lim­it­ing their range to 2,000 kilo­me­ters (1,240 miles). That puts all the Mideast and some of East­ern Eu­rope in their range. There is no pub­lic ev­i­dence of Iran seek­ing to have in­ter­con­ti­nen­tal bal­lis­tic mis­siles, though Wash­ing­ton has crit­i­cized its space pro­gram as po­ten­tial­ly al­low­ing it to one day.

Iran had hoped to avert a war, but main­tains it has the right to en­rich ura­ni­um and does not want to dis­cuss oth­er is­sues, like its long-range mis­sile pro­gram or sup­port for armed groups like Hamas and Hezbol­lah.

The strikes could al­so have a huge im­pact on glob­al mar­kets, par­tic­u­lar­ly if Iran is able to make the Strait of Hor­muz un­safe for com­mer­cial traf­fic. More than 14 mil­lion bar­rels per day of oil passed through the strait in 2025, about a third of to­tal world­wide oil ex­ports trans­port­ed by sea.

DUBAI, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (AP)