Apparent Israeli Attack in Iran Draws Anti-aircraft Fire as Tensions Soar between Mideast Rivals

Military personnel stand guard at a nuclear facility in the Zardanjan area of Isfahan, Iran, April 19, 2024, in this screengrab taken from video. WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters
Military personnel stand guard at a nuclear facility in the Zardanjan area of Isfahan, Iran, April 19, 2024, in this screengrab taken from video. WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters
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Apparent Israeli Attack in Iran Draws Anti-aircraft Fire as Tensions Soar between Mideast Rivals

Military personnel stand guard at a nuclear facility in the Zardanjan area of Isfahan, Iran, April 19, 2024, in this screengrab taken from video. WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters
Military personnel stand guard at a nuclear facility in the Zardanjan area of Isfahan, Iran, April 19, 2024, in this screengrab taken from video. WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters

An apparent Israeli drone attack near a major air base and a nuclear site in central Iran activated Iranian air defenses early Friday, just days after Tehran's unprecedented drone-and-missile assault on Israel.

No Iranian official directly acknowledged the possibility that Israel had attacked, and the Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment. However, what appeared to be Israel’s first military response to Iran’s attack last weekend appeared to be limited, analysts said.

Regional tensions have been high since the Saturday assault on Israel amid its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip and its own strikes targeting Iran in Syria.

Speaking at the G7 meeting in Capri, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said the US received “last-minute” information from Israel about the attack on Isfahan. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not dispute that, but said: "We were not involved in any offensive operations.”

The apparent attack, near a major air base and a nuclear site around the central city of Isfahan, came on Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's 85th birthday. Israeli politicians also made comments hinting that the country had launched an attack.

Air defense batteries fired in several provinces over reports of drones being in the air, Iranian state television reported. Iranian army commander Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi said crews targeted several flying objects, but the incident caused no damage.

Analysts said the relatively limited scope of the Israeli attack and the subdued response by Iran seemed to indicate the threat of an immediate escalation had diminished.

That “both sides downplayed it is the biggest of stories” out of the latest attack, said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran program at the Washington-based Middle East Institute research center. “Neither side is ready to jump over the brink.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an end to the strikes.

“It is high time to stop the dangerous cycle of retaliation in the Middle East,” his office said.

Authorities said air defenses fired at a major air base in Isfahan, which long has been home to Iran's fleet of American-made F-14 Tomcats — purchased before the 1979 revolution.

The Tasnim news agency published a video from one of its reporters, who said he was in the southeastern Zerdenjan area of Isfahan, near its “nuclear energy mountain.” The footage showed two different anti-aircraft gun positions, and details of the video corresponded with known features of the site of Iran's Uranium Conversion Facility at Isfahan.

“At 4:45, we heard gunshots,” he said. “It was the air defense, these guys that you’re watching, and over there too.”

The facility at Isfahan operates three small Chinese-supplied research reactors, as well as handling fuel production and other activities for Iran's civilian nuclear program.

Isfahan also is home to sites associated with Iran's nuclear program, including its underground Natanz enrichment site, which has been repeatedly targeted by suspected Israeli sabotage attacks.

State television described all atomic sites in the area as “fully safe." The United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, also said “there is no damage to Iran’s nuclear sites” after the incident.

The IAEA “continues to call for extreme restraint from everybody and reiterates that nuclear facilities should never be a target in military conflicts,” the agency said.

Iran's nuclear program has rapidly advanced to producing enriched uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels since the collapse of its atomic deal with world powers after then-President Donald Trump withdrew America from the accord in 2018.

While Iran insists its program is for peaceful purposes, Western nations and the IAEA say Tehran operated a secret military weapons program until 2003. The IAEA has warned that Iran now holds enough enriched uranium to build several nuclear weapons if it chose to do so — though the US intelligence community maintains Tehran is not actively seeking the bomb.

Iran then grounded commercial flights in Tehran and across areas of its western and central regions. Iran later restored normal flight service, authorities said.

Around the time of the incident in Iran, Syria's state-run SANA news agency quoted a military statement saying Israel carried out a missile strike targeting a southern air defense unit and causing damage. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said the strike hit a military radar for government forces. It was not clear if there were casualties, the Observatory said.

That area of Syria is directly west of Isfahan, some 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) away, and east of Israel.

Meanwhile in Iraq, where a number of Iranian-backed militias are based, residents of Baghdad reported hearing sounds of explosions. Authorities later found what appeared to be recent fragments of an air-to-surface missile near Latifiya, southwest of Baghdad.  

In Iran's initial attack on Israel, it did not use such weapons — though Israel has several types available for its air force, raising the possibility it was fired Friday as part of the attack.

An official with an Iranian-backed militia in Iraq, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief journalists, said the missile had been shot down as a result of jamming operations. The Iraqi army does not have jamming devices of the type apparently used to down the missile, but Iran has provided such devices to its affiliated militias.

The apparent attack also briefly spooked energy markets, sending benchmark Brent crude above $90 before it fell again in trading Friday.

However, Iranian state-run media sought to downplay the incident after the fact. That could be intentional, particularly after Iranian officials for days have been threatening to retaliate for any Israeli retaliatory attack on the nation.

“As long as Iran continues to deny the attack and deflect attention from it and no further hits are seen, there is space for both sides to climb down the escalation ladder for now,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House.

Vatanka, the Middle East Institute analyst, agreed, but with a major caveat.

“Probably we’re going to go back to the proxy war,” he said, but now it’s a proxy war with the risk of “that sudden eruption of state-to-state war. Which we didn’t have to worry about before.”



Trump Claims Victory over Harris in US Election

Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump takes the stage to address supporters at his rally, at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, US, November 6, 2024. (Reuters)
Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump takes the stage to address supporters at his rally, at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, US, November 6, 2024. (Reuters)
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Trump Claims Victory over Harris in US Election

Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump takes the stage to address supporters at his rally, at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, US, November 6, 2024. (Reuters)
Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump takes the stage to address supporters at his rally, at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, US, November 6, 2024. (Reuters)

Republican Donald Trump claimed victory in the 2024 presidential contest after Fox News projected that he had defeated Democrat Kamala Harris, which would cap a stunning political comeback four years after he left the White House.

"America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate," he said early on Wednesday to a roaring crowd of supporters at the Palm Beach County Convention Center.

Other news outlets had yet to call the race for Trump, but he appeared on the verge of winning after capturing the battleground states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia and holding leads in the other four, according to Edison Research.

Harris did not speak to her supporters, who had gathered at her alma mater Howard University. Her campaign co-chair, Cedric Richmond, briefly addressed the crowd after midnight, saying Harris would speak publicly on Wednesday.

"We still have votes to count," he said.

The former president was showing strength across broad swaths of the country, improving on his 2020 performance everywhere from rural areas to urban centers.

Republicans won a US Senate majority after flipping Democratic seats in West Virginia and Ohio. Neither party appeared to have an edge in the fight for control of the House of Representatives where Republicans currently hold a narrow majority.

Trump went into Election Day with a 50-50 chance of reclaiming the White House, a remarkable turnaround from Jan. 6, 2021, when many pundits pronounced his political career to be over. That day, a mob of his supporters stormed Congress in a violent attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Trump picked up more support from Hispanics, traditionally Democratic voters, and among lower-income households that have keenly felt the sting of price rises since the last presidential election in 2020, according to exit polls from Edison.

Trump won 45% of Hispanic voters nationwide, trailing Harris with 53% but up 13 percentage points from 2020.

About 31% of voters said the economy was their top issue, and they voted for Trump by a 79%-to-20% margin, according to exit polls. Some 45% of voters across the country said their family's financial situation was worse off today than four years ago, and they favored Trump 80% to 17%.

Global investors were increasingly pricing in a Trump win late on Tuesday. US stock futures and the dollar pushed higher, while Treasury yields climbed and bitcoin rose - all flagged by analysts and investors as trades that favor a Trump victory.

At Howard University, where a large watch party was being held for Harris, supporters were leaving in droves, anticipating that the vice president would not address the crowd on Tuesday night.

Cedric Richmond, a co-chair of the Harris campaign, briefly addressed the crowd and said Harris would not speak. "We still have votes to count," he said. "We still have states that haven't been called yet."

TRUMP OUTPERFORMS 2020

Trump was earning a bigger share of the vote than he did four years ago in nearly every corner of the country.

By 12:30 a.m. ET, officials had nearly completed their count of ballots in more than 1,600 counties – about half the country – and Trump's share was up about 2 percentage points compared to 2020, reflecting a broad if not especially deep shift in Americans' support for the president they ousted four years ago.

He improved his numbers in suburban counties, rural regions and even some large cities that are historically bastions of Democratic support; in high-income counties and low-income ones; and in places where unemployment was comparatively high and in places where it is now at record lows.

Harris had banked on big margins among urban and suburban voters, but her support in those places was running well behind President Joe Biden's in the 2020 election.

Nearly three-quarters of voters said American democracy is under threat, according to the exit polls, underscoring the depth of polarization in a nation where divisions have only grown starker during a fiercely competitive race.

Trump employed increasingly apocalyptic rhetoric while stoking unfounded fears that the election system cannot be trusted. Harris warned that a second Trump term would threaten the underpinnings of American democracy.

Hours before polls closed, Trump claimed on his Truth Social site without evidence that there was "a lot of talk about massive CHEATING" in Philadelphia, echoing his false claims in 2020 that fraud had occurred in large, Democratic-dominated cities. In a subsequent post, he also asserted there was fraud in Detroit.

"I don't respond to nonsense," Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey told Reuters.

A Philadelphia city commissioner, Seth Bluestein, replied on X, "There is absolutely no truth to this allegation."

DIZZYING CAMPAIGN

Trump voted earlier near his home in Palm Beach, Florida.

"If I lose an election, if it's a fair election, I'm gonna be the first one to acknowledge it," Trump told reporters.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a prominent Trump backer, watched the results at Mar-a-Lago with Trump.

Millions of Americans waited in orderly lines to cast ballots, with only sporadic disruptions reported across a handful of states, including several non-credible bomb threats that the FBI said appeared to originate from Russian email domains.

Tuesday's vote capped a dizzying race churned by unprecedented events, including two assassination attempts against Trump, Biden's surprise withdrawal and Harris' rapid rise.

No matter who wins, history will be made.

Harris, 60, the first female vice president, would become the first woman, Black woman and South Asian American to win the presidency. Trump, 78, the only president to be impeached twice and the first former president to be criminally convicted, would also become the first president to win non-consecutive terms in more than a century.