Live Updates: Iran Fires Missiles in Retaliation, Israel Says, After Strikes on Nuclear Sites

The divergent reactions reflected a political divide over President Trump’s leadership, the use of military force, the role of diplomacy and America’s obligations in the Middle East.

Some Republicans in Congress applauded the operation even before President Trump praised it.

“Game on,” declared Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and one of the most vocal Iran hawks on Capitol Hill, moments after the news broke. In a later statement, Mr. Graham said: “Hats off to Israel for one of the most impressive military strikes and covert operations in Israeli history.”

The House speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, also offered unequivocal support for the strikes, saying in a social media post late Thursday that “Israel IS right — and has a right — to defend itself!”

After Mr. Trump weighed in Friday morning, saying that Iran had brought the attacks on itself, Mr. Johnson applauded the administration’s decision to back Israel’s security goals and echoed the president’s position that Iran “must never obtain a nuclear weapon.”

Mr. Johnson, who recently announced a trip to Israel later this month to address a special session of the Knesset, displayed the same frustration that many on Capitol Hill have expressed in recent weeks over Tehran’s refusal to shelve its nuclear ambitions.

“President Trump and his administration have worked tirelessly to ensure that outcome. Unfortunately, Iran has refused to agree and even declared yesterday its intent to build a new enrichment facility,” he said in a statement on Friday.

Senator James E. Risch, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, had a similar message, saying, “We stand with Israel tonight and pray for the safety of its people and the success of this unilateral, defensive action.”

Neither of the top two Democrats in Congress, Representative Hakeem Jeffries or Senator Chuck Schumer, both of New York, issued a statement on the strikes, though Mr. Jeffries called for de-escalation in an television interview.

“I’m hopeful that cooler heads will prevail in the Middle East and the situation is de-escalated,” Mr. Jeffries said on MSNBC on Thursday night. “We certainly believe that Iran should never be allowed to become nuclear-capable — they are an enemy not just to Israel, but to the United States and to the free world — but we also want to see a reduction in hostilities.”

Among Democrats, no lawmaker has been more vocally supportive of Israel than Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who has carved out a distinct role as the party’s most unapologetic defender of the U.S.-Israel alliance.

In the hours after the strike, Mr. Fetterman posted on social media: “Our commitment to Israel must be absolute and I fully support this attack. Keep wiping out Iranian leadership and the nuclear personnel. We must provide whatever is necessary — military, intelligence, weaponry — to fully back Israel in striking Iran.”

And several strongly pro-Israel Democrats in the House praised the strikes. Representative Greg Landsman of Ohio swiftly issued a statement proclaiming: “Israel is justifiably defending itself and its people.”

But other Democrats called for de-escalation or expressed concern that Israel’s military action could lead to broader regional instability.

“Israel’s strikes against Iran represent an escalation that is deeply concerning and will inevitably invite counterattacks,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. “This risks not only U.S. negotiations with Iran, but the safety of American service members, diplomats, their families and expats around the region.”

Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat of the Armed Services Committee, echoed those concerns.

“I urge both nations to show immediate restraint, and I call on President Trump and our international partners to press for diplomatic de-escalation before this crisis spirals further out of control,” he said. “The world cannot afford more devastating conflict born of shortsighted violence.”

Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said in a statement a war between Israel and Iran “may be good for Netanyahu’s domestic politics, but it will likely be disastrous for both the security of Israel, the United States, and the rest of the region.” He added that the United States has “ no obligation to follow Israel into a war we did not ask for and will make us less safe.”

At least one right-wing Republican voiced the same the sentiment. “I’m sad to say but some members of Congress and US Senators seem giddy about the prospects of a bigger war,” Representative Warren Davidson, Republican of Ohio, wrote on social media.

As Israel continued attacking Iran, Michael Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, confirmed his country’s intention to target the site.

“The entire operation,” he told Fox News in an interview, “really has to be completed with the elimination of Fordo.”

Here is what we know about the site:

Where is the Fordo enrichment center?

The facilities, buried deep underground in a mountain in the village of Fordo, are roughly 20 miles from the holy city of Qom.

While it is likely that construction on the plant began as early as 2006, the existence of the site was publicly revealed in 2009.

What is done there?

Fordo is a uranium enrichment location where Iran has developed centrifuges to process weapons-grade uranium up to 60 percent purity, an amount far higher than the 3.7 percent purity levels needed for civilian use.

The site was built to hold roughly up to 3,000 centrifuges, which spin quickly to produce fuel for nuclear weapons or reactors, said Richard Nephew, an Iran expert at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy.

Iran, he said, had planned to install even more advanced centrifuges, called IR6s, that could process uranium three to five times more efficiently than the technology currently at the facility.

Considering the facility’s size and configuration, Mr. Nephew said it was well-suited to producing weapons.

“If you don’t deal with Fordo,” Mr. Nephew said, “it’s got enough centrifuges that it could produce a nuclear weapon pretty quickly,”

Who runs the facility?

While it is not exactly clear who manages operations at the facility, experts said it was likely that a combination of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, the military and scientists at the plant were in charge.

The security around the facility is maintained by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mr. Nephew said.

Can Israel destroy Fordo?

Given the facility’s location and fortifications, it would be difficult for Israel to penetrate it with traditional strikes, said Daniel Shapiro, a security expert at the Atlantic Council.

Compared to Natanz, the largest Iranian nuclear facility, which Israel struck early Friday, Fordo is much less exposed. Its destruction would require much more specific bunker-busting equipment.

“If you were to just sort of drop bombs on it, it wouldn’t penetrate it,” Mr. Nephew said.

However, even if Israel doesn’t breach the parts deepest underground, it still may be able to make Fordo inaccessible, by destroying the entrance to it.

Experts agreed that a plan to disable the site — perhaps a combination of special and covert operations, they said — would be essential to stopping Iran’s nuclear program.

“The Israelis have got a multiday campaign plan,” Mr. Nephew said. “It is inconceivable to me that Israelis would launch this attack without an idea of how to deal with Fordo.”

The military assets are not being moved to take part in any offensive against Iran, one Defense Department official said. He said that Pentagon officials are still waiting on decisions that might come out of President Trump’s meeting with senior national security officials on Friday morning at the White House. Until then, the official described much of American military posture in the region as still to be determined.

The repositioning of the naval destroyers, first reported by The Associated Press, could supplement Israel’s ability to shoot down ballistic missiles fired as part of an Iranian retaliation.

While U.S. military officials said Friday that Israel has good air defenses, there was some worry that it would need assistance if Iran tried to overwhelm those defenses with a coordinated, large-scale attack.

Last October, United States forces helped Israel thwart a large barrage of missiles and drones launched by Iran after Israel killed a high-ranking a Hamas leader as he visited Iran and then assassinated the leader of Hezbollah in Libya.

There are around 40,000 American troops in the region.

This time around, after an audacious wave of attacks that targeted nuclear facilities and military leaders, there was less understanding and more concern.

Some European allies worried that Israel was ratcheting up a military conflict with Iran after eight months of simmering tensions but no overt warfare.

“Escalation serves no one in the region,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain said, while the European Union’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, called the situation “dangerous.”

Those remarks followed a growing chorus of European condemnation of Israel over the past few months for escalating the war in Gaza after a cease-fire collapsed in mid-March, and for holding back humanitarian aid as the population in the enclave edges closer to the brink of starvation.

The tepid support from some countries that traditionally are among Israel’s strongest allies reflected what Ellie Geranmayeh, a senior Middle East policy expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, called an “unprecedented” and “unprovoked” attack against Iran that risked “an active war scenario between the two countries.”

Some of the sharpest condemnation on Friday came from countries in the region. Egypt, which has a longstanding peace treaty with Israel, called the latest Israeli strikes a violation of international law and “a direct threat to regional and international peace and security.”

Turkey accused Israel of resorting to military force instead of diplomacy to resolve tensions.

Still, a number of important allies stood behind Israel and expressed mounting frustration with Iran’s advancing nuclear program. And should Iran launch a powerful counterattack against Israel, allies could still come to the country’s defense militarily.

President Trump told CNN that “we of course support Israel,” and called the strikes “a very successful attack.” He urged Iran to limit its nuclear activities “before it will be too late for them.”

President Emmanuel Macron of France, who has recently sparred with Israel over its ongoing war in Gaza and the limiting of humanitarian aid to hungry and desperate Palestinians, said Israel has a “right to protect itself and ensure its security.”

Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said Iran has refused to abide by agreements to limit its nuclear program and added that Tehran “poses a serious threat to the entire region, especially to the State of Israel.”

Daniel B. Shapiro, who was a deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East during the Biden administration, said the fact the United States did not participate in the attack “does not mean the United States won’t assist in Israel’s defense. It will.”

That effort is being put to the test as never before on Friday amid waves of Israeli attacks on Iran aimed at destroying key facilities and decapitating the military and civilian leadership running its nuclear programs.

“I think the tension is palpable and everybody is concerned about possible blowback,” said Firas Maksad, the managing director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Eurasia Group, a New York-based risk analysis organization. “This is a moment of great uncertainty throughout the region. It is the big war the region has been both fearing and anticipating for years.”

The Gulf Arab states, and indeed much of the Arab world, were quick to issue robust condemnations of the Israeli attacks like this one from Riyadh: “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia expresses its strong condemnation and denunciation of the blatant Israeli aggression against the brotherly Islamic Republic of Iran, which undermine its sovereignty and security and constitute a clear violation of international laws and norms.”

The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, and several others from the region called their Iranian counterpart to repeat the condemnation.

With the Arab world already inflamed by the Gaza conflict, a related war in Lebanon, a long-running civil war in Yemen and Syria barely staggering to its feet after 14 years of violence and civil war, there was also frustration that attempts at de-escalation had failed. It was tensions over Yemen that had prompted the 2019 attack against Saudi Arabia.

“We are frustrated and fatigued,” said Bader al-Saif, a professor of history at Kuwait University. “The region has been doing its best for the past few years to come to terms with everyone, including Israel,” he added. “But Israel is trying to reset the region to their own tune and they are trying to do this violently.”

The United States was considered part of the problem. Although President Trump kept a certain distance from the prospect of conflict between the Middle East’s two most powerful militaries, and had been trying to negotiate a new deal to defuse Iran’s nuclear program, he had not blocked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel from launching the attack.

“After the triumphant Trump visit to the Gulf and serious mediation efforts, there will also be some frustration that Trump has proved unwilling or unable to restrain Netanyahu,” said Dr. Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, a London-based research institute.

Part of the equation is that the region depends heavily on American military power for its defense, with U.S. forces deployed at air bases in Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia as well as a major naval base on Bahrain, along with troops scattered across Iraq and northeastern Syria.

While the Gulf bases were established in recent decades not least as a deterrent for Iran, there was fear that Tehran might miscalculate by targeting them, widening the conflict by drawing in the United States.

Gulf countries have all committed billions of dollars to major, futuristic development projects meant to wean their economies off oil, so a major war would also jeopardize those plans.

The attacks by Israel against Iran immediately threatened the region’s economy, with airlines canceling countless flights for the foreseeable future. Israel, Iran, Iraq and Jordan all closed their airspace. Countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt that depend heavily on tourist dollars had been hoping for a revival.

Jordan said it was shooting down Iranian projectiles that violated its airspace, but underscored that it was protecting itself and not joining the war. Syria was considered completely out of this conflict.

Of course, Arab states had been worried about Iran’s acquiring nuclear weapons as well, even if there was some sense that Israel had exaggerated the threat. Crippling the Iranian nuclear program would provoke some satisfaction, analysts said, but it seemed an enormous gamble.

“If Israel and or the United States can finish off the threat to the Gulf countries via military means, I don’t think that Arab leaders will be shedding tears,” Mr. Maksad said. “The great concern is a job half-done that then leaves them wide open to retaliation and undermines their national development projects in the process.”

Two rounds of tit-for-tat attacks between Israel and Iran last year ended fairly quickly, but there was anxiety that this new one could escalate. That increased the potential for unforeseen consequences. “For the Iranians, this will require a different kind of response, more sustained and more hurtful,” said Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

For the moment Iran’s beleaguered proxy forces, including Hezbollah, did not react beyond verbal condemnations. Worst-case scenarios include the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point for Persian Gulf oil exports. Since Iran depends on that flow as well, even as it is limited at the moment due to sanctions, that is seen as a possible last desperate step.

“If this continues, we are going into unchartered terrain,” Dr. al-Saif said.

Ismaeel Naar contributed reporting.

In doing so, analysts said, Mr. Netanyahu had short-term motivations: to derail diplomatic negotiations between the United States and Iran, and to prevent the immediate expansion of Iran’s nuclear program.

He also has far grander aspirations. For decades, Mr. Netanyahu has presented the Shiite Islamist regime in Iran as the greatest threat to Israel’s security, both because of its homegrown efforts to build a nuclear bomb, and because of Iran’s support for Palestinian militias and other Arab groups opposed to Israel.

After years of advocating for the overwhelming use of force to quell that danger, Mr. Netanyahu finally seems ready to turn his threats into action — perhaps, analysts said, with an eye on his place in Israeli history

Mr. Netanyahu now risks embroiling the region, and potentially, the United States, in conflict as he faces domestic turmoil at home and greater international censure over his conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza.

“For him, this is personal — for 25 years, he has been talking about this,” said Nadav Shtrauchler, a former adviser to Mr. Netanyahu, and an Israeli political analyst. “This is the big picture that he has been aiming for. This is his legacy.”

Mr. Netanyahu had planned a large-scale attack on Iran more than a decade ago, during a previous term as prime minister. But he ultimately called it off under pressure from the Obama administration and amid concerns in his cabinet about Israel’s military capabilities. In 2015, he risked a rupture with President Obama by making a speech to Congress in which he criticized Mr. Obama’s efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear program through diplomacy.

Recent events have made it easier for the military to strike, likely emboldening Mr. Netanyahu. Over the last year and a half, Israel decimated Iran’s regional alliances and reduced Iran’s own defensive capabilities. Hezbollah, Iran’s ally in Lebanon, is now severely weakened, while the Syrian government, another Iranian ally, was overthrown in December.

Finally, the election of President Trump widened the window of opportunity. Though Mr. Trump pursued a diplomatic arrangement with Iran over its nuclear ambitions and even asked Mr. Netanyahu to delay the strike, the president at times seemed more willing than President Biden to entertain the idea of an attack.

“Diplomatically, Trump’s election gave Netanyahu a president willing to rhetorically back a credible military threat,” said Michael Koplow, an analyst at Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based research group.

“Netanyahu’s preference to deal with Iran’s nuclear program through military action has been crystal clear for years, and he finally had his perfect storm of opportunity,” Mr. Koplow added.

Domestically, Mr. Netanyahu also stands to benefit from a strike on Iran. His reputation as the guardian of Israel’s security was tarnished by Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023, the deadliest security failure in Israel’s history.

If the attack on Friday, which also killed two Iranian nuclear scientists, severely diminishes Iran’s nuclear program, analysts said, Mr. Netanyahu could bolster his national standing ahead of a general election next year.

“Netanyahu wants to start his election year with a visible advantage,” said Mazal Mualem, a biographer of Mr. Netanyahu and a political commentator.

“Instead of bearing the responsibility for Oct. 7, he wants to be able to etch his role in the history of Israel as the statesman who defeated the Iranian nuclear program,” Ms. Mualem said. “But all this of course depends on how things will develop.”

Eventually, it could also present Mr. Netanyahu with an opportunity to end the war in Gaza, Mr. Shtrauchler said. For more than a year, Mr. Netanyahu has refused to consider a permanent truce in Gaza without Hamas’s complete defeat there, amid strong resistance to such an outcome from his right-wing allies.

By inflicting meaningful wounds on Hamas’s biggest benefactor, Iran, it may be easier for Mr. Netanyahu to compromise in Gaza, Mr. Shtrauchler said.

Now, Mr. Shtrauchler said, “He can wrap it up and say we changed the equation for the good. I don’t think it will happen tomorrow, but it’s a huge step toward that.”

Israel also identified and tracked the movements of the key scientists and military officials who were assassinated, including at least four senior commanders.

The effort was planned and carried out jointly by Israeli military intelligence and the Mossad foreign intelligence service, and code named “With the Strength of a Lion,” one of the officials said.

The Israeli and Iranian officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters. The two Iranian officials said they did not know how or when the weapons were smuggled into the country, as the attack was still under investigation.

Iranian officials have condemned the attack and announced the names of officials who were killed but have not spoken publicly in detail about other aspects of the operation.

Friday’s offensive marked a new chapter in Israel’s efforts to leverage intensive intelligence collection into powerful strikes aimed at weakening and deterring its foes across the Middle East.

In recent years, Israel’s intelligence apparatus has located and killed leaders of Iran-backed militant groups across the region, including Hezbollah and Hamas, and key Iranian military officials and nuclear scientists inside of Iran. Its deep infiltration of Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, enabled Israel to severely degrade that group’s military capabilities and leadership during a weekslong war last year.

While Israel has previously bombed sites inside of Iran, Friday’s attacks were much more extensive, both in the number of officials they killed and in their focus on disrupting Iran’s nuclear program. The sites hit included Iran’s main nuclear fuel enrichment facility at Natanz.

The strikes followed more than a year and a half of Israeli military action against Iran and its regional proxies that began after the deadly surprise attack on Israel by Hamas from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023. Since then, Israel has weakened the so-called “axis of resistance” that Iran built to advance its regional interests and deter Israeli attacks.

Wars have depleted Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon; airstrikes on key facilities have damaged the Houthi militia in Yemen; and the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad by rebels in December deprived Iran of its sole state partner in the Arab world.

The degradation of those forces decreased the chances that direct strikes on Iran would prompt an overwhelming response from around the region.

The new strikes also had the potential to disrupt efforts by President Trump to negotiate a new nuclear accord with Iran. Mr. Trump on Friday said that Tehran “must make a deal, before there is nothing left.” The future of the talks remains unclear.

Israeli leaders have said that such an accord would not stop Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

“We are embarking on a campaign that is nothing short of existential — against an enemy that seeks to destroy us,” Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder, head of the intelligence directorate of the Israeli military, said after the attacks on Friday. “We aim to disrupt, degrade, and eliminate this threat.”

The attack was choreographed to simultaneously take down Iran’s defenses, degrade its ability to retaliate, kill key figures and damage nuclear sites.

One of the Israeli officials said that preparations included commando operations inside the Iranian capital, Tehran, and the establishment of positions inside of Iran armed with weapons that targeted Iran’s air defenses and explosive drones that hit long-range missiles that could be fired at Israel.

The Iranian officials said that teams of covert Israeli operatives had launched missiles and drones at targets from inside Iran.

A senior Israeli air force officer said that more than 100 aircraft had taken part in the attacks and that precise tracking enabled the targeting of senior military officials, nuclear scientists and command centers.

Israeli intelligence has been at the heart of a series of operations aimed at Iran and its proxies in recent years.

Israel assassinated Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, with a remote-controlled gun in 2020, and assisted the United States’ killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s top security and intelligence commander, in a drone strike the same year.

In 2022, two assassins on motorcycles shot and killed Col. Sayad Khodayee, an officer in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards; Israel confirmed its role to the United States. Last year, Israel was able to kill Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, by planting an explosive device in a Tehran guesthouse run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

During its battle with Hezbollah last year, Israel targeted its members by remotely detonating their pagers and walkie-talkies, killing dozens of people and injuring thousands. It was also able to infiltrate the group’s communications, culminating in airstrikes in September that killed the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Here are the main centers of Iran’s nuclear program:

Natanz

Roughly 140 miles south of Tehran, Natanz is considered Iran’s main center for uranium enrichment, and it was a prime target of the Israeli strikes. The damage to it appeared to be severe. It is only partially underground and was recently reinforced.

It contains a range of sophisticated centrifuges, including the most advanced models, for enriching uranium to high levels. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, says there are nearly 14,000 centrifuges at work there, with thousands more in place but inactive.

Uranium enriched at low levels can be used as fuel for civilian uses, such as producing energy. Highly enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear weapons.

Natanz has been targeted in the past, with a computer virus, Stuxnet, some 15 years ago, and with sabotage and explosions as recently as 2021. Iran has always in the past repaired the damage and increased the sophistication of its centrifuges.

Rafael Grossi, the head of the I.A.E.A., confirmed on Friday that Natanz had been hit but said that no radiation leak had been detected so far. He condemned attacks on nuclear facilities in general, as he has done in Ukraine, as very dangerous.

“Any military action that jeopardizes the safety and security of nuclear facilities risks grave consequences for the people of Iran, the region and beyond,” Mr. Grossi told the agency’s board of governors in Vienna.

Fordo

Iran’s best-protected nuclear site, Fordo, near the city of Qum, is deep inside a mountain, estimated to be about half a mile below ground to protect it from bombing. Israel did not appear to have attacked it.

To do so would require repeated use of huge “bunker buster” bombs, and most experts think that cannot be done by Israel alone, without American help.

Fordo was operated secretly by Iran until it was exposed in 2009. It contains Iran’s most advanced centrifuges and is considered crucial for Iran to enrich uranium to 60 percent, close to bomb grade. It is said to contain close to 3,000 sophisticated centrifuges, more than half of them the most modern type, with the capacity to install at least 1,000 more.

Parchin

Parchin is a military complex southeast of the capital, Tehran, where Iran has tested high explosives, which can be used as triggers for nuclear warheads. It is widely suspected that the site was used in the past by Iran in efforts to weaponize enriched uranium.

Iran has denied ever doing nuclear work there but has refused to allow the I.A.E.A. access it has demanded.

Bushehr

Bushehr is Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant. Located on the coast of the Persian Gulf, it uses Russian fuel that Russia then takes back when it is spent.

“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal,” he wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform, on Friday morning. “I told them, in the strongest of words, to ‘just do it,’ but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done.”

The negotiations had lasted only two months, and in recent weeks Mr. Trump had told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to hold off on any attack in order to let diplomacy play out. On Thursday afternoon, as Israel’s final attack preparations were underway, Mr. Trump told reporters, “I don’t want them going in” because “I think it would blow it” with the talks. (He immediately added that it “might help actually, but it could also blow it.”)

In his post, Mr. Trump suggested that some Iranian leaders who were opposed to a deal had been targeted in the Israeli attack, which killed several top Iranian military officials and at least two prominent nuclear scientists.

“Certain Iranian hardliner’s spoke bravely, but they didn’t know what was about to happen. They are all DEAD now, and it will only get worse!” Mr. Trump wrote.

During his first term, Mr. Trump pulled the United States out of a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that was signed by President Barack Obama, deriding the agreement as “one-sided” and a “disaster.” It had allowed Iran to keep producing fuel at low levels, suitable for nuclear power plants but not for weapons — a position his own administration considered as recently as two months ago.

American and Iranian negotiators had been planning to meet on Sunday in Oman for a sixth round of talks. Those negotiations are now in limbo, with the Iranian government announcing on state television after the strikes on Friday morning that it would not participate in discussions with the United States on Sunday and until further notice.

Mr. Trump’s social media post attempted to put pressure on Iran to continue negotiating. “The next already planned attacks,” he wrote, would be “even more brutal.”

He added: “Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.” In his often-used capital letters, he concluded, “JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”

In the clearest sign of that weakened stance, Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group seen as Iran’s most powerful proxy, condemned the Israeli attack in a statement but stopped short of vowing any military action in response — a notable omission from a group that has long served as the central pillar of the axis. The Houthis in Yemen also made no mention of responding militarily in their statement condemning the Israeli attack.

“The axis hasn’t been fully destroyed, but it has been significantly diminished beyond the point of return,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon. “It has been transformed into an axis of sitting ducks waiting for the next Israeli strikes rather than taking initiative and pushing Israel into the defense, as was the case just a few years ago.”

Iran fostered the web of armed groups — including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and militias in Iraq — to enable them to carry out attacks on Israel and to provide Iran with allies in the region that could serve as a deterrent against Israeli attacks on Iran.

After the deadly Hamas-led attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s devastating invasion of Gaza, many of those groups carried out their own strikes against Israel. But in the year and a half since, Israel launched audacious attacks on those militias in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran, and the response from the axis has grown increasingly muted.

Hamas, which long governed in Gaza, has been degraded by more than a year of war set off by the October 2023 attack on Israel.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah is battered after its 14-month war with Israel that wiped out the group’s top brass, destroyed much of its arsenal and left the country with a multibillion-dollar bill for reconstruction.

Since a cease-fire agreement in November, Hezbollah has largely not responded to the near-daily Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon that have continued despite the truce — a notable sign of Israel’s degradation of the group, analysts say.

Its stinging defeat also spurred political momentum against the group, undoing its once iron grip on Lebanon’s politics. Hezbollah is now facing growing pressure to disarm, after many Lebanese blamed the group for dragging Lebanon into one of its most destructive wars.

“Beyond military limitations, Hezbollah’s political standing is also strained,” said Johnny Mounayar, a political analyst based in Beirut. “Domestically in Lebanon, opposition to Hezbollah has grown and even former allies are no longer aligned with it.”

Both Hezbollah and Iran also lost a key ally in December, after Syrian rebels — who Hezbollah fought — toppled the Assad government, ousting a key ally of Iran in the region and cutting off the main land route it used to supply weapons and cash to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Syria’s new authorities have made clear that the Iranian government is not welcome in Syria and have shown an initial willingness to engage with Israel.

Among Iran’s proxies, still intact are Iranian-backed Iraqi militias and the Houthis, though both are more peripheral to the conflict with Israel. Among the handful of major Iraqi militias, a leader of only one that operates primarily in Syria and has attacked Israel — Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada — suggested an armed response to the Israeli attack.

“If the war breaks out then hundreds of suicide bombers will be on time,” the militia’s general secretary, Abu Alaa al-Walae, said in a social media post on Thursday night.

The strongest arm of the axis now appears to be the Houthis in northwestern Yemen, who have been launching rockets and drones at Israel and targeting ships in the Red Sea since October 2023, in what Houthi officials have characterized as a campaign of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.

Those attacks appeared to ramp up last month when a Houthi missile landed near a terminal of Israel’s main international airport. In response, Israel bombed the international airport in Yemen, which serves the capital, Sana, causing extensive damage and destroying the last remaining aircraft used by the Houthi government, Israeli officials said.

The Houthis have retained their ability to hit ships in the Red Sea, and last month they expanded their attacks on Israeli interests there to include vessels at or on their way to the port of Haifa.

“Now the Houthis are the most capable and forthcoming of the axis, but at the same time the strikes have had an impact on their capacity,” said Mr. Ali, the analyst. “We’ve seen a diminishing of their capabilities over the past two years, that should be taken into account in the bigger picture.”

Ismaeel Naar, Falih Hassan and Dayana Iwaza contributed reporting.