Israel strikes Iranian state TV, warns people to evacuate Tehran after accusing Iran of targeting civilians
Tel Aviv, Israel — Israel attacked Iranian state television Monday and warned hundreds of thousands of people in the middle of Iran's capital, Tehran, to evacuate. The strike came after Iran fired another wave of missiles at Israel, killing at least eight civilians, according to the Israeli military.
The developments came on the fourth day of open warfare between the regional foes, which has shown no signs of slowing down.
Israel's warning affected up to 330,000 people in a part of central Tehran that includes the country's state TV and police headquarters, as well as three large hospitals, including one owned by Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
An hour after Israel's warning, the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, an Iranian state-run television network, stopped a live broadcast when an explosion occurred. Anchor Sahar Emami was seen rushing off camera as the screen behind her cuts out and debris and smoke fill the studio. The broadcast quickly switched to prerecorded programs.
Soon, Emami came back live from another studio and was seen speaking with another anchor. She said that "bodies of reporters" were at the site of the initial broadcast, and images showed smoke and flames in the sky.
CBS News' Seyed Bathaei in Tehran reported hearing antiaircraft weapons firing on Monday. He said many people were trying to flee the city, causing long traffic jams on major thoroughfares. He said state TV remained on the air, but the network's headquarters appeared to be on fire. Bathaei estimated that as many as 80% to 90% of businesses in the capital were closed on Monday.
Israel's defense minister took credit for the attack on the television studio.
Iran announced it had launched some 100 missiles and vowed further retaliation for Israel's sweeping attacks on its military and nuclear infrastructure, which Tehran said have killed at least 224 people in the country since Friday.
Near the American Consulate in Tel Aviv, one missile caused minor damage, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee on social media. He said no American personnel were injured. Later in the day, the State Department raised its travel advisory for Israel to the highest level and warned U.S. citizens not to travel to the country. House Speaker Mike Johnson announced he was postponing a planned address to Israel's parliament in Jerusalem later this month.
At the summit of leading industrialized nations in Canada, President Trump does not intend to sign a G7 statement on the escalating conflict, U.S. officials told CBS News. Mr. Trump will continue to work toward ensuring that Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon, one official said.
The president said Iranian leaders would "like to talk," but they had already had 60 days to reach an agreement on their nuclear ambitions and failed to do so before an Israeli aerial assault began four days ago. "They have to make a deal," he said. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country's strikes have set Iran's nuclear program back a "very, very long time."
The U.S. is sending multiple refueling aircraft to preposition in Europe to be closer to the Middle East as part of providing options for the administration, U.S. officials told CBS News.
The aircraft could support defensive operations by keeping fighter jets that are used to intercept incoming drones aloft, but those same refueling aircraft could support offensive operations if Iran were to strike U.S. troop locations in the Middle East.
The USS Nimitz carrier strike group is also headed to the Middle East, according to U.S. officials, which, when it arrives, would give the U.S. two carrier strike groups in range of Iran.
Israel said Iranian missiles had killed a total of 24 people and wounded some 500 others by Monday morning, and the Israel Defense Forces accused Tehran of deliberately targeting civilians with its strikes.
"We are hitting military targets and capabilities designed to destroy the State of Israel, and they are firing at population centers with the aim of hitting civilians," an IDF spokesperson said Monday morning.
In response, "50 fighter jets and aircraft carried out strikes and destroyed over 120 surface-to-surface missile launchers" in Iran, IDF spokesman Big. Gen. Effie Defrin said in a televised statement on Monday. He said Iran's Quds Force, an elite arm of its Revolutionary Guard that conducts military and intelligence operations outside Iran, was the primary target, and that the strikes had destroyed "one-third of the surface-to-surface missile launchers possessed by the Iranian regime."
Defrin also said Israel's air force had established "full aerial superiority" over the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Monday that Tehran's residents would "pay the price" for Iranian strikes on Israeli civilians, according to the French news agency AFP.
The fighting led to the cancellation of talks on Iran's nuclear program slated for Sunday between the U.S. and Iran.
Separately, three U.S. officials told CBS News on Sunday that Mr. Trump had opposed a recent Israeli plan to kill Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The Israelis had the opportunity to assassinate Khamenei, and Mr. Trump conveyed to Netanyahu that it wasn't a good idea, one U.S. official told CBS News. They said the conversation between Netanyahu and Mr. Trump came since Israel launched its massive attack on Iran last week.
Netanyahu's office has rejected the assertion as fake.
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department had issued a directive to all American embassies and consular posts to, "at their discretion," relay or reiterate to their host governments that the United States "is not involved in Israel's unilateral action against targets in Iran and did not provide tanker support," a source familiar with its contents told CBS News.
Powerful explosions, likely from Israel's defense systems intercepting Iranian missiles, rocked Tel Aviv shortly before dawn on Monday, sending plumes of black smoke into the sky over the coastal city.
Authorities in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva said Iranian missiles had hit a residential building there, charring concrete walls, shattering windows and ripping the walls off multiple apartments.
The Israeli Magen David Adom emergency service reported that two women and two men — all in their 70s — and one other person were killed in the wave of missile attacks that struck four sites in central Israel.
"We clearly see that our civilians are being targeted," Israeli police spokesman Dean Elsdunne said outside the bombed-out building in Petah Tikva. "And this is just one scene. We have other sites like this near the coast, in the south."
Petah Tikva resident Yoram Suki rushed with his family to a shelter after hearing an air raid alert and emerged after it was over to find his apartment destroyed.
"Thank God we were OK," the 60-year-old said.
Despite losing his home, he urged Netanyahu to keep up the attacks on Iran.
"It's totally worth it," he said. "This is for the sake of our children and grandchildren."
In addition to those killed, the MDA said paramedics had evacuated another 92 wounded people to hospitals, including a 30-year-old woman in serious condition, while rescuers were still searching for residents trapped beneath the rubble of their homes.
"When we arrived at the scene of the rocket strike, we saw massive destruction," said Dr. Gal Rosen, a paramedic with MDA who said he had rescued a 4-day-old baby as fires blazed from the building.
During an earlier barrage of Iranian missiles on central Israel on Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran would stop its strikes if Israel did the same.
But after a day of intense Israeli aerial attacks that extended to targets beyond military installations to hit oil refineries and government buildings, the Revolutionary Guard struck a hard line on Monday, vowing that further rounds of strikes would be "more forceful, severe, precise and destructive than previous ones."
Health authorities also reported that 1,277 were wounded in Iran, without distinguishing between military officials and civilians.
Rights groups, including the Washington-based Iranian advocacy group Human Rights Activists, have suggested the Iranian government's death toll is a significant undercount. Human Rights Activists says it has documented more than 400 people killed, among them 197 civilians.
Israel argues that its assault on Iran's top military leaders, uranium enrichment sites and nuclear scientists was necessary to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, which Netanyahu claimed Iran was "racing" toward.
Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is peaceful, and the U.S. and others have assessed that Tehran has not pursued a nuclear weapon since 2003.
But Iran has enriched ever-larger stockpiles of uranium to near weapons-grade levels in recent years and was believed to have the capacity to develop multiple weapons within months if it chose to do so.
