Netanyahu: 'Precise' Attack Hit The Defences Of Iran Hard

Tehran plays down airstrikes as UN set to discuss escalation

- TOM WATLING

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has praised the country’s retaliatory airstrikes on Iran as Tehran’s religious ruler sought to play down the impact of the attack amid fears of escalation.

“We hit hard Iran’s defence capabilities and its ability to produce missiles that are aimed at us,” Mr Netanyahu said in a speech, calling the attack “precise and powerful” and saying it met all its objectives.

With warfare raging in Gaza and Lebanon, direct confrontation between Israel and Iran risks spiralling into a regional conflagration. But a day after the Israeli airstrikes, there was no sign they would spark another round of escalation.

Iran has not signalled how it will respond to Saturday’s longanticipated strikes, which involved scores of fighter jets bombing targets near the capital Tehran and in the western provinces of Ilam and Khuzestan. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Israel’s attack, which killed four soldiers and damaged several military bases, “should neither be downplayed nor exaggerated”.

US president Joe Biden has called for a halt to escalation after the Israeli strikes, while the United Nations Security Council is expected to meet today to discuss the attack.

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araqchi called on the Security Council to meet over the attack, saying that it constituted “a grave threat to international peace and security and further destabilised an already fragile region”.