Live Updates: Israel and Iran Trade Strikes as Conflict Enters 2nd Day

Perhaps because of that complacency, precautions that had been planned were ignored, the officials said.

This account of how Iranian officials were preparing before Israel conducted widespread attacks across their country on Friday, and how they reacted in the aftermath, is based on interviews with half a dozen senior Iranian officials and two members of the Revolutionary Guards. They all asked not to be named to discuss sensitive information.

Officials said that the night of Israel’s attack, senior military commanders did not shelter in safe houses and instead stayed in their own homes, a fateful decision. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ aerospace unit, and his senior staff ignored a directive against congregating in one location. They held an emergency war meeting at a military base in Tehran and were killed when Israel struck the base.

By Friday evening, the government was just beginning to grasp the extent of damage from Israel’s military campaign that began in the early hours of the day and struck at least 15 locations across Iran, including in Isfahan, Tabriz, Ilam, Lorestan, Borujerd, Qom, Arak, Urmia, Ghasre Shirin, Kermanshah, Hamedan and Shiraz, four Iranian officials said.

Israel had taken out much of Iran’s defense capability, destroying radars and air defenses; crippled its access to its arsenal of ballistic missiles; and wiped out senior figures in the military chain of command. In addition, the aboveground part of a major nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz was severely damaged.

In private text messages shared with The New York Times, some officials were angrily asking one another, “Where is our air defense?” and “How can Israel come and attack anything it wants, kill our top commanders, and we are incapable of stopping it?” They also questioned the major intelligence and defense failures that had led to Iran’s inability to see the attacks coming, and the resulting damage.

“Israel’s attack completely caught the leadership by surprise, especially the killing of the top military figures and nuclear scientists. It also exposed our lack of proper air defense and their ability to bombard our critical sites and military bases with no resistance,” Hamid Hosseini, a member of the country’s Chamber of Commerce’s energy committee, said in a telephone interview from Tehran.

Mr. Hosseini, who is close to the government, said Israel’s apparent infiltration of Iran’s security and military apparatus had also shocked officials. Israel has conducted covert operations in Iran against military and nuclear targets and carried out targeted assassinations against nuclear scientists for decades as part of its shadow war with Iran, but Friday’s multipronged and complex attack involving fighter jets and covert operatives who had smuggled missile parts and drones into the country suggested a new level of access and capability.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has been moved to an undisclosed safe location where he remained in contact with remaining top military officials, said in a televised speech that Israel had, with its attacks, declared war on Iran. As he spoke, vowing revenge and punishment, Iran launched several waves of missile attacks on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

“They should not think they attacked and it is over,” Mr. Khamenei said. “No, they started it. They started the war. We will not allow them to escape from this crime unharmed.”

Earlier Friday morning, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, a 23-person council responsible for national security decisions, held an emergency meeting to discuss how the country should respond. In the meeting, Mr. Khamenei said he wanted revenge but did not want to act hastily, according to two officials familiar with the discussions.

Divisions emerged on when and how Iran should respond, and whether it could sustain a prolonged war with Israel that could also drag in the United States, given how badly its defense and missile capabilities were damaged. One official said in the meeting that if Israel responded by attacking Iran’s infrastructure or water and energy plants, it could lead to protests or riots.

A member of the Revolutionary Guards briefed on the meeting said that officials understood that Mr. Khamenei faced a pivotal moment in his nearly 40 years in power: He had to decide between acting, and risking an all-out war that could end his rule, or retreating, which would be interpreted domestically and internationally as defeat.

“Khamanei faces no good options,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director of the International Crisis Group. “If he escalates, he risks inviting a more devastating Israeli attack that the U.S. could join. If he doesn’t, he risks hollowing out his regime or losing power.”

Ultimately, Mr. Khamenei ordered Iran’s military to fire on Israel. Initially, the plan was to launch up to 1,000 ballistic missiles on Israel to overwhelm its air defense and ensure maximum damage, according to two members of the Guards. But Israel’s strikes on missile bases had made it impossible to move missiles quickly from storage and place them on launchpads, they added.

In the end, Iran could only muster about 100 missiles in its first waves of attacks. At least seven sites were struck around Tel Aviv, killing one person and injuring at least 20 more, and damaging residential buildings.

On Friday, after Israeli attacks had somewhat subsided for part of the day, Iran’s military hurried to repair some of its damaged air defenses and install new ones, according to officials. Iran’s airspace remained closed with flights grounded and airports closed.

Some residents of Tehran spent Friday, a holiday, waiting in gas station lines to fill up their vehicles’ tanks and flocking to grocery stores to stock up on essentials like bread, canned food and bottled water. Many families gathered in parks late into the night, spreading blankets and picnics on the grass, and said in telephone interviews they feared remaining indoors after Israel had struck residential buildings in various neighborhoods targeting scientists and military and government officials.

Mehrdad, 35, who did not want his last name used because of fears for his safety, shared a video of his kitchen wall and windows destroyed when an Israeli missile struck the high-rise next door in his upscale neighborhood in northern Tehran. He said that he had been lucky to have been in the bedroom when the attack occurred, but some civilians in the neighborhood, including children, had been injured.

In the early hours of Saturday, Israel resumed its attacks on Tehran. Some residents, including Fatemeh Hassani, who lives in the Mirdamad neighborhood, said they heard drones buzzing overhead and nonstop explosion sounds followed by the rat-tat-tat of air defenses firing in eastern and central Tehran.

Mahsa, a 42-year-old computer engineer who lives in the capital’s north and similarly did not want to give her last name out of fear of her safety, said she and her family were unable to sleep. They not only could hear the booms but also could see traces of fire and smoke from their window.

“We are in the middle of a war, this much is clear to all of us, and we don’t know where it will go or how it will end,” she said.

“It was frightening,” said Noa Shekel, 23, who was taken out of a deep sleep when the sirens blared across Jerusalem.

Iran fired three waves of missiles at Israel on Friday night and Saturday morning, wounding dozens of people, including some seriously. The Iranian attacks came after Israeli strikes that targeted Iran’s nuclear sites and killed senior commanders.

In the shelter, signs of exhaustion were apparent: families lying on the floor, teenagers sleeping upright on the stairs, a pregnant woman slouching on a wooden bench.

Dozens of people — secular and religious Jews — were huddling in the shelter, which young people use as a community center on normal days.

For some, there was frustration that special weekend plans had been interrupted.

“We decided to spend Shabbat in Jerusalem to celebrate my daughter’s bat mitzvah,” said Rivkah Sharabi, 40, who was sitting beside her husband and their five children. “Instead, we’re spending it in a shelter.”

In the aftermath of the attack, some also spoke to The New York Times, sending voice notes amid flickering internet service and offering a glimpse of people’s experiences in a country where many don’t feel comfortable speaking to international news outlets. They described confusion, fear and anger against Israel, whose widespread attacks drew comparisons to the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

‘We were not ready’

Shakiba, a 37-year-old occupational therapist based in Tehran, was only comfortable using her first name because of the heightened security situation in the country. She had been getting ready for bed at home with her two cats when the bombing began.

She looked outside and saw neighbors gathering on balconies and roofs, everyone trying to see what was happening. She added:

“The first sound was really shocking, because we were not ready, we were not expecting it. And it wasn’t just one sound — we heard a couple of sounds at the first. And I know all the people around the country and around the city were following the news, but we were not expecting it to happen.”

She later called two of her patients, an elderly couple who live alone, their children out of the country like many other Iranian families. They were near an area that came under attack, but their health conditions prevented them from leaving their home.

“The woman just cried by the phone, and she said that ‘I was really afraid because we can’t move’,” Shakiba recalled. She tried to reassure them, stuck in their home.

She also called another patient, a man with a neurological condition. He told her, “I’m OK now, but the sounds were so loud and so terrifying and I just felt that I am near to heart attack,” Shakiba said.

Describing the bombardment, Shakiba said that people like her patients — children with special needs, the elderly, frail and ill — had few resources to help them. “They are in shock,” she said.

Nor did she feel confident about her own plans. “I have two cats and they’re both heavy,” she said. “It sounds silly with everything going on, but I keep thinking about how I can evacuate with them if the need comes.”

‘Scenes of blood and flesh and burned feet’

Jila Baniyaghoob, a journalist and women’s rights activist in Tehran, said that there had been a large focus on Israel’s military targets, but that civilians had been harmed in the attacks as well.

She had a close friend at an apartment complex in the Saadat Abad district of Tehran, where residents include many faculty members from Tehran’s various universities, and which was struck during the attack early Friday.

A major fire spread after the attack, according to Ms. Baniyaghoob and photos of the scene.

Ms. Baniyaghoob said that she had heard most of the people killed in the strike were not members of the military or involved in Iran’s nuclear program. The exact toll of the attacks remained unclear on Friday night, although Iran’s Fars news agency, citing unofficial figures, said that dozens had been killed and more than 300 others injured.

Ms. Baniyaghoob said that her friend’s family had grabbed their young children and raced down stairwells to escape the complex. They passed “really awful scenes of blood and flesh and burned feet,” she said. “Most of the people who lived near the strike sites are feeling a collective fear, especially their children.”

‘The people are paying the price’

Bahman Ahmadi Amouee, an economic journalist, said he, along with many others, had been feeling optimistic before the attacks, noting that Iran was engaged in diplomatic talks with the United States and that there were hopeful economic signs within Iran.

But he believes the West and Israel took advantage of the circumstances, calling Israel’s leadership extremist and far right. “We’re seeing the same policy in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria — policies that contradict with what the West says it values, like democracy and human rights.”

Mr. Ahmadi Amouee has written for newspapers that call for change within Iran and spent five years in Evin prison in 2009 amid a government crackdown on journalists.

In conflict with Israel, “the people are paying the price,” he said. “Once the stores open on Sunday, the prices will have undoubtedly gone up. There’s long lines of gas everywhere, people are nervous.”

He added:

“Whenever there’s war, or earthquake, or famine, people start feeling unstable, and the most vulnerable people in these situations are usually women, children and impoverished people. As soon as the markets open after the two day holiday, we’ll see the price of dollar going up, and the instability and lack of security will only multiply.”

The most dangerous kind of threat would arise from successful attacks on nuclear reactors. Over time, the splitting of atoms in reactor fuel results in buildups of highly radioactive spinoffs. Among the worst are Cesium 137, Strontium 90 and Iodine 131.

If Iodine 131 is inhaled or ingested, it ends up in a person’s thyroid gland. There, its intense radioactivity raises dramatically the risk of thyroid cancer, particularly in children. The other isotopes can also result in cancers.

But so far, no reports or evidence suggest that Iran’s nuclear reactors were hit in the Israeli attacks. Apparently spared were a power plant on the Persian Gulf, a research reactor in Tehran and a heavily guarded site ringed by antiaircraft weapons and miles of barbed wire.

Known as Arak, that isolated complex was long suspected of being built to produce plutonium, one of the two main fuels for atom bombs. But the Obama administration’s 2015 deal with Iran turned the complex into a nuclear relic unusable for that purpose. The Arak reactor never came to life.

A lesser threat to human health revolves around uranium, the other fuel of atom bombs. In recent years, Iran has focused on it with great intensity, building an increasingly wide array of industrial plants and complexes to refine the fissile element.

Uranium ore that miners dig up is relatively harmless. But it contains tiny amounts of a rare radioactive isotope, Uranium 235, that can be used to power nuclear reactors at low levels of enrichment, and to fuel atom bombs at higher levels. The percentage of U-235 in mined uranium is less than 1 percent.

The goal of uranium enrichment is to raise the percentage, which is often done through the use of centrifuges — machines that spin at extremely high speeds. Iran started with low percentages and, over decades, has increasingly raised its enrichment levels. The highest now stand at 60 percent, which is just short of bomb grade.

For human health, the higher the level of U-235 enrichment, the greater the danger. The isotope and its decay products emit three types of radiation: alpha particles, beta particles and gamma rays. The first two are relatively weak. Alphas cannot penetrate skin. Betas can be stopped by a layer of clothing.

But gamma rays are highly energetic and can penetrate the human body, damaging DNA and sowing the seeds of cancer. It takes thick concrete or lead to stop the penetrating rays.

Satellite images and expert analyses show that a main target of the Israeli strikes was the Natanz complex, the largest of Iran’s enrichment sites. Fully destroyed was the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant, where Iran was producing uranium enriched to near 60 percent. The images show a dark craterlike scar. And videos from a distance show clouds of dark smoke.

It’s possible that some of that smoke contained U-235 particles, which may pose a regional health hazard. But the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors the Iranian site, said it had so far detected no such danger.

“The level of radioactivity outside the Natanz site has remained unchanged and at normal levels indicating no external radiological impact to the population or the environment from this event,” Rafael Mariano Grossi, the agency’s director general, said Friday before the U.N. Security Council.

He mentioned concerns about alpha particles inside the Natanz facility, but called them “manageable” with appropriate radiation protection measures.

Acknowledging reports of attacks at Fordo and Isfahan, two other nuclear fuel sites in Iran, he said “we do not have enough information.”

Aside from the radiation danger, a complicating factor in the health calculus is that uranium in all its forms is a toxic heavy metal, similar to lead. If ingested it can produce a cascade of adverse health effects, with the kidneys a main target. Acute exposure can lead to renal failure. The main routes of exposure are ingestion of contaminated food and water, inhalation of airborne dust, and, to a lesser extent, contact with the skin.

The inhalation of uranium dust — a common hazard in mining and milling — is also a hazard. Inhaled particles can lodge in the lungs, leading to respiratory irritation, inflammation, and, over time, such lung diseases such as fibrosis.

A number of diplomats expressed their worries before the Council about the radiation threats from Israel’s strikes.

“We are particularly concerned by the potential radiological consequences,” said Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s permanent representative to the U.N. They can lead, he added, “to the most dire consequences not just for the Middle East region, but for the world as a whole.”

Mr. Nebenzya said Russia was following closely the status of the inspectors in Iran of the I.A.E.A.

“The life and health of its personnel has been threatened,” he said. “And we expect that the director general of the agency is going to provide us with objective assessment and analysis of the developing situation, including from the viewpoint of radiological consequences.”

Mr. Trump appears caught between the two sides, veering back and forth as he tries to distance the United States from Israel’s assault while celebrating the success of the attacks and warning Iran that more is coming.

“This, right now, is going to cause, I think, a major schism in the MAGA online community,” Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist and podcaster, said Thursday on his podcast.

Mr. Trump had several times this year dissuaded Israel from launching an attack, saying he wanted to pursue a negotiated settlement with Iran. Shortly after the assault began, the White House sent out a statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, emphasizing that the United States was not involved in the initial military operation.

“Israel took unilateral action against Iran,” Mr. Rubio said. “We are not involved in strikes against Iran, and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.”

But in subsequent interviews, the president said he spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Thursday, knew the attacks were planned and called the strikes “excellent.” In a post on Truth Social, he wrote Israel has “already planned attacks” that would be “even more brutal.” And the U.S. military helped Israel intercept some of the ballistic missiles Iran fired in retaliation, an American official said.

While running for president, Mr. Trump promised to end wars around the world, and in his inaugural address, he said he wanted to be remembered as a peacemaking president. So far, Mr. Trump’s diplomatic efforts have failed to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, which he had promised to do within 24 hours, or the war between Israel and Hamas.

Over the past several months, the Trump administration had been trying to strike a new nuclear deal with Iran, and the president had urged Mr. Netanyahu to hold off any military actions as the talks continued.

“I don’t want them going in because that would blow it,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House just hours before the attacks.

After Israel launched the missiles, Mr. Trump put the blame on Iran, faulting its leaders for refusing to accept a proposal that would have stopped it from enriching uranium.

“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal,” he wrote on Truth Social 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.”

Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted that Mr. Trump had flipped his position on whether Israel should strike Iran. But he said Israel made a calculated gamble that Mr. Trump would go along with the idea.

“They made a bet on President Trump,” he said, adding: “Trump, for a long time — most of the time he’s been in office — has been saying ‘no, we’re negotiating, no, don’t do it.’ The Israelis strike, and today Trump called it excellent.”

For many Republicans, Israel’s military strikes were long overdue amid growing fears that Iran was moving closer to full nuclear capabilities.

“The number of Republicans who do not see a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat to Israel and the world is exceedingly small,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina and a close ally of the president. “The overwhelming majority of Republicans back Israel’s use of military force to neuter the Iranian nuclear threat.”

Another faction of Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters see it differently. Israel’s strikes and the prospect of U.S. involvement in the conflict, they argue, run counter to Mr. Trump’s “America First” foreign policy agenda.

“The emails are so largely overwhelmingly against Israel doing this, I’d say it’s probably a 99 to one,” Mr. Kirk said on Thursday night of feedback he was receiving from his listeners.

Some MAGA supporters argued that Israel’s targeted strikes of both nuclear sites and top military commanders were part of an effort to ignite a bigger conflict and draw the United States into it. U.S. officials said on Friday that the Pentagon was positioning warships and other military assets in the Middle East to help protect Israel and U.S. troops in the region from any further Iranian retaliation.

“The bottom line is we cannot be dragged into, inexorably dragged into, a war on the Eurasian land mass in the Middle East or in Eastern Europe,” Stephen K. Bannon, a former top adviser to Mr. Trump who remains close to the president, said on Friday on his “War Room” podcast.

On Israel, he said: “Hey, you guys did it. You’re putting your country first. Your country’s defense first. That’s fine, but we’ve got to put our defense first.”

But Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said the Trump administration was just “shouting from the sidelines.”

“Trump will likely keep the U.S. out of conflict and offer mediation, but at this point, he’s just basically treading water,” he wrote in an email. “The big issue will play out in Congress during debates about Israel aid and replenishing Israeli stockpiles.”

Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper contributed reporting.

The damage to Natanz, a facility roughly 140 miles south of Tehran, appeared to be severe. The site, which hosts a range of advanced centrifuges, is mainly underground.

As a result of Friday’s attack, Mr. Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said there had been “radiological and chemical contamination” within the facility. But he said the leak was “manageable” with appropriate protection measures. Electricity infrastructure, main power supplies and generators at the facility have been destroyed, he added.

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

Mr. Grossi also said that Iran had informed the nuclear agency that its facilities at Isfahan and Fordo had also come under attack. The extent of the damage, he said, was unknown.

“We do not have enough information beyond indicating that military activity has been taking place around these facilities as well,” he told members of the Security Council.

Israel has indicated it would attack the site at Fordo, Iran’s second-largest but most heavily fortified nuclear enrichment installation, which is buried beneath a mountain.

Experts said that without disabling Fordo, where Iran possesses enough centrifuges to quickly produce weapons-grade uranium, Israel’s operation would fail to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.

On Thursday, the I.A.E.A. said Iran had not complied with its nuclear nonproliferation obligations and passed a vote of censure against the country for the first time in 20 years.

Steven Erlanger contributed reporting.

Mr. Netanyahu also discussed Israel’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities and top military officials with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, India and Russia, according to officials in Israel and several of the other countries.

In Britain, a Downing Street spokesman said that Prime Minister Keir Starmer told Mr. Netanyahu that Israel had a right to self-defense, but he “reiterated the need for de-escalation and a diplomatic resolution, in the interests of stability in the region.”

Mr. Starmer also spoke with Mr. Trump, according to the prime minister’s office, which said that Mr. Starmer “reiterated the U.K.’s grave concerns about Iran’s nuclear programs” and told the president that they “agreed on the importance of diplomacy and dialogue.”

The calls between world leaders underscored the anxiety in global capitals about another Middle East war that could further destabilize the region, hike oil prices and increase the possibility of global terror attacks.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office focused on expressions of support for Israel, saying in a statement that “the leaders showed understanding of Israel’s need to defend itself from Iran’s threat of annihilation.”

But President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia condemned the Israeli strikes after speaking with Mr. Netanayhu and President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran.

“Russia condemns Israel’s actions, which contravene the United Nations’ statute and the international law,” the Kremlin said in a statement on Friday.

Mr. Putin offered to mediate the conflict, claiming that Russia offered “concrete initiatives” to Iran and Israel to achieve peace.

Axios reported that Mr. Trump had also talked with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia to discuss the need to stop the escalation between Iran and Israel.

Abbas Araqchi, the Iranian foreign minister, rejected calls for restraint from Iran in a call with David Lammy, the British foreign secretary, Reuters reported.

Those layers of protection are now being put to the test, with Israeli authorities confirming that missiles hit multiple sites. In previous exchanges between the two countries, Iran mostly targeted Israeli military bases. But the scope of Israel’s assault, which devastated Iran’s military chain of command, could prompt a much wider Iranian counterstrike.

“One of the most effective tactics to inflict maximum damage on the Israeli home front would be to overwhelm its air defense systems,” said Joe Truzman, a senior analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal.

He said Israel will have “only a brief window to detect, assess, and respond to this looming threat.”

Here’s what to know about Israel’s defenses against Iranian attack.

What are Israel’s air defense systems?

Israel’s anti-missile systems include:

• Iron Dome: Israel’s best-known air defense system fires interceptors to take down short-range rockets.

• David’s Sling: This stationary weapon can shoot down short- and medium-range ballistic and cruise missiles. It has a range of about 185 miles. Like the Iron Dome, it is a “hit-to-kill” weapon that takes down targets by flying into them.

• Arrow 2 and 3: These ground-based mobile launchers fire fragmentation warheads packed with explosives that blow up near incoming missiles. The Arrow 2 can intercept targets high in the atmosphere, at an altitude of about 30 miles and a range of about 60 miles. The Arrow 3 can go beyond the atmosphere into space, with a range of up to 1,500 miles. It is one of Israel’s most advanced defenses.

• Iron Beam: This high-powered laser was developed to intercept rockets, drones and anti-tank missiles. It was first deployed in the field after Hamas’s 2023 attack on southern Israel, which prompted wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

What are the biggest threats to Israel’s defenses?

One of the most serious threats posed by Iran comes from its heavyweight ballistic missiles, which fly at the edge of space at many times the speed of sound. They can cross the roughly 1,000 miles between Iran and Israel in just a few minutes.

Antimissile systems like Arrow 3, which have a limited supply of expensive interceptors, do not always hit their ballistic missile targets.

Last October, analysts at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, in California, concluded that Israel had run low on interceptors, after about 30 Iranian ballistic missiles landed near a military base in southern Israel unscathed. Last month, a Houthi missile launched from Yemen evaded Israeli and American air defense systems to strike near Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.

It can take years to produce enough missile interceptors to keep them reliably stockpiled, and Israel “has been expending them,” said Tom Karako, a missile defense expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Another problem for Israel will be tracking and destroying unmanned drones, which fly low and slow, making them much harder to detect. In the past, Israel has scrambled fighter jets to shoot down drones beyond Israel’s borders; failing that, Israeli forces have used the Iron Dome system, which is most effective against short-range rockets.

What about Israel’s allies?

The United States is also helping to defend Israel’s skies.

Days after Iran fired a barrage of about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel in October, the United States sent a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, to bolster Israeli defenses. The THAAD is a mobile surface-to-air interceptor designed to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles, which its radar can detect from more than 1,800 miles away. THAAD can strike incoming targets both within the Earth’s atmosphere and above it.

The Trump administration sent Israel a second THAAD battery earlier this spring, said Yehoshua Kalisky, a military technology expert at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy has deployed the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson to the Arabian Sea; there are more than 60 aircraft aboard the Vinson, including advanced F-35 stealth strike fighters. The American military also has several dozen attack and fighter jets deployed in the Middle East, which were used extensively to defend Israel from Iranian strikes last year.

Neighboring Jordan has said it is continuing to intercept hostile missiles and aircraft entering its airspace, protecting not only its own territory but also serving as a de facto layer of security for Israel.

What’s in Iran’s arsenal?

Iran keeps its military stockpiles and capabilities secret, so experts said it is impossible to know how extended or powerful its airstrikes could be.

Mr. Truzman said Iran could also amass support from its regional proxy militias, in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen. On Friday, sirens were triggered in Israel after an incoming ballistic missile was detected from Yemen, but it reportedly landed in an uninhabited area in the West Bank.

Mr. Karako and Mr. Kalisky said Israel likely destroyed many of Iran’s weapons systems with its strikes on Friday.

“It will take the Iranians sometimes to organize the missile force again,” Mr. Kalisky said. “We have several layers of defense, so I don’t worry.”