The Israeli military struck Iran early Friday, according to two Israeli defence officials, in what appeared to be Israel's first military response to Iran's attack on Israel five days earlier.
Three Iranian officials confirmed that a strike had hit a military air base near the city of Isfahan, in central Iran, early Friday, but did not say which country had mounted the attack. Fars News, an Iranian news agency affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, said that explosions were heard near Isfahan’s civilian airport, adding that the cause of the blasts was not immediately clear. Several Iranian news agencies reported that nuclear facilities in the area had not been hit.
Flight tracking websites showed that civilian planes had diverted their routes away from the area.
The Israeli military declined to comment. All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss it publicly.
The explosions came less than a week after Iran fired more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel, its first direct attack on the country, in response to an Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria that killed seven Iranian officials on April 1.
For days, Israeli leaders have threatened to respond to Iran's strikes, which turned the two years long shadow war into a direct confrontation.
Iran's army chief, Maj Gen Abdolrahim Mousavi, said Wednesday that Iran would respond to any Israeli aggression, according to remarks carried by the IRNA state news agency.
United States President Joe Biden has advised Israel against responding, amid fears that an Israeli counterattack would escalate into an all-out war. For more than six months, Israel has been fighting on two other fronts — against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both are allies of Iran.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.