Live Updates: Israel Says It Attacked Headquarters of Powerful Iranian Military Unit

Israel seems motivated to continue until the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, either by force or renewed negotiations. Yet Iran has shown no sign of voluntarily ending enrichment, a process crucial to building a nuclear bomb, and Israel has no known ability to destroy a pivotal enrichment site that is buried deep underground.

“We’re weeks rather than days away from this ending,” said Daniel B. Shapiro, who oversaw Middle Eastern affairs at the Pentagon until January.

“Israel will keep going until, one way or another, Iran no longer retains an enrichment capability,” added Mr. Shapiro, now a fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research group. “It’s now clear that if Israel leaves this unaddressed, its campaign will have failed.”

While Israel has easily struck Iran’s main enrichment site at Natanz, central Iran, it lacks the American-made “bunker-buster” bombs needed to destroy a smaller subterranean site dug deep into a mountain near Fordo, northern Iran. Israeli officials hope that their strikes on other targets — including Iran’s top military commanders, nuclear scientists and its energy industry — will inflict enough pain to encourage Iran to willingly end operations at Fordo.

For now, Iran seems far from such a capitulation, even if Israel has shown increasing dominance in Iranian airspace, according to Sanam Vakil, who leads analysis of the Middle East at Chatham House, a London-based research group. Though Israel hopes to prompt its collapse, the Iranian government remains in full control of Iran and still has substantial stocks of ballistic missiles, even if Israel has limited its ability to fire some of them.

“I don’t see any surrender coming from Tehran right now — there are no white flags being waved,” said Dr. Vakil. “It’s very hard to see Iran walking back its enrichment rights while Iran’s program still looks operational and Iran is intact as a state,” she added. “Their goal is to survive, to inflict damage and show their resilience.”

Much depends on how President Trump reacts. Unlike Israel, the United States has the munitions and the aircraft to destroy Fordo. Analysts like Mr. Shapiro say that Mr. Trump could consider such an approach if Iran chooses to accelerate its efforts to build a nuclear bomb instead of reaching a compromise.

“That will create a critical decision point for Trump, about whether the United States should intervene,” Mr. Shapiro said.

It may also now be easier for Mr. Trump to intervene without serious security consequences, given that Israel’s attacks have already degraded Iran’s defensive abilities.

Others say that Mr. Trump is likelier to avoid direct confrontation with Iran unless the Iranian military shifts its attacks from Israel to U.S. interests and personnel in the Middle East, narrowing Mr. Trump’s room for maneuver. Since Friday, Iran has avoided providing such a pretext for U.S. involvement, and has also avoided attacks on the U.S.’s other allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The president’s statements since Friday indicate that his current preference is to use Israel’s military gains as leverage for renewed talks with Tehran.

For months, Mr. Trump has overseen negotiations with Iran, hoping that Tehran would agree to end its enrichment program without Israel’s military intervention.

Those talks stumbled after Iran refused to back down. In comments over the weekend, Mr. Trump suggested that Iran, chastened by Israel’s attacks, might finally make compromises that its had not previously considered. As a result, some analysts say that Mr. Trump could press Israel to end its attacks — when and if he judges that Iran has become more malleable.

“This will end when Trump decides to end it, which will probably happen when he thinks Iran is ready to compromise,” said Yoel Guzansky, an expert on Iran at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

Such a U-turn has historical precedent, even if it feels unlikely for now, experts said. The Iranian leadership made a similarly unexpected compromise at the end of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, according to Meir Javedanfar, who teaches Iranian studies at Reichman University in Israel. After rejecting numerous offers to end the war, Ayatollah Khomeini eventually agreed to a deal after the costs of the war became too great, Dr. Javedanfar said.

“Khomeini made a 180-degree change,” he said. “This is again what Israel is hoping for.”

But history also suggests this may take time. The deal that ended the Iran-Iraq war took eight years to reach.

Gabby Sobelman in Rehovot, Israel; Myra Noveck in Jerusalem and Johnatan Reiss in Tel Aviv contributed reporting.

Sigal Kovalski, 47, who lives in Petah Tikva, said that she and her family heard an explosion and saw dust trickling into the room where they were sheltering. When they emerged, they found their apartment completely ruined.

“The windows were broken, the floor was covered with shattered glass and the furniture was in pieces,” she said.

Photos and videos from Petah Tikva showed a high-rise residential building with several floors blackened and visibly blown outward, with concrete and debris dangling from the blast site.

Nearly 100 people were injured across central Israel on Monday, including in Haifa and Tel Aviv, and search and rescue operations were continuing, according to Magen David Adom, the national emergency service.

Iranian missiles also hit Israel’s largest oil refinery, in Haifa Bay in northern Israel, according to footage verified by The New York Times. Firefighters were trying to contain a blaze ignited by the strike and to rescue people trapped in the area, said Tal Volvovitch, a spokeswoman for the Israel Fire and Rescue Authority.

The attacks followed a day of strikes on multiple locations in Iran and Israel, including a rare daytime Israeli air raid on Tehran that caused casualties and damage to buildings and infrastructure. Internet traffic from Iran dropped significantly, according to NetBlocks, an internet monitoring group. That left many Iranians unable to contact emergency services or connect with the outside world.

The fighting, which began on Friday with an Israeli attack on Iran, has been the fiercest and most prolonged between Israel and Iran in decades. It has stoked fears of a wider regional conflict that could draw in the United States and other powers.

The Israeli strikes have killed at least 224 people in Iran, according to the country’s health ministry. Several top Iranian security chiefs are among the dead, and more than 1,400 people have been injured.

In Israel, at least 21 people have been killed in Iran’s retaliatory barrages since Friday, according to the national emergency service.

“My biggest concern is nothing other than radioactive leaks and the bombing of areas that have nuclear facilities. I haven’t personally received any official guidance,” Ilya, 28, from the city of Karaj, near Tehran, said via text. Ilya asked to be identified only by his first name for security reasons.

The surprise attacks on Iran, which began on Friday, have highlighted the country’s apparent lack of preparedness for war — including its paucity of shelters, bunkers or functioning air-raid sirens. Without much clear direction from the government, Iranian musicians, artists, chefs and influencers have been sharing infographics on social media with titles including “What You Should Do if You’re in the Metro During an Airstrike” or “How to Speak to Children in War Times.”

Several people in Iran whom The New York Times messaged and spoke with said they were unsure whether to go to work or whether students should go to school — a fraught dilemma at the height of final exam season.

Many Iranians are unsure of what information they can trust and what to believe — regardless of whether it comes from the government or from unofficial channels.

“I keep seeing Instagram stories with guidance and information but they don’t have a clear source and are pretty scattered,” Ilya said. He added:

“Honestly, I don’t know which ones are accurate and which aren’t, because it’s all scattered and unclear, and everyone seems to have their own opinion.”

In family WhatsApp groups, confusion abounded. Many comments came from Iranian women who cited their experience during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, offering tips to distinguish the sounds of strikes from those of air-defense interceptions, to help inform their current situation. Other people have struggled to access the internet, with communication networks in the country increasingly spotty.

On Sunday, the third consecutive day of Israeli attacks, the Iranian government stressed that measures were being taken to protect the population.

“Mosques are shelters for all people, and starting tonight, the metros will also open so that people can have access to safe spaces 24/7,” said Fatemeh Mohajerani, a government spokeswoman, referring to Tehran’s rapid transit system, which is mostly underground. In remarks carried by Iranian news media, she added that many schools could also be used as shelters.

It was unclear, though, how many people would be reassured. Long lines formed at gas stations in Tehran, the capital, and the city’s roads were choked with traffic as terrified families scrambled to leave.

In Isfahan, a city in central Iran that has been struck by the Israeli military campaign, one woman, Farangis, said she tried on Saturday night to convince a friend to join her in leaving the city for a village further south.

“Just like last time,” Farangis, who is in her 70s, said she told her friend. That was all that Farangis, who for security reasons asked that only her first name be used, needed to say: Decades ago, both women had fled their homes when Iraq was bombing Iran.

But her friend refused, Farangis said, saying that she could not leave her children and grandchildren — who had “school and work that doesn’t seem to have been canceled.”

A few hours later, a spokesman for the Israeli military posted a photo of a plane at the same location engulfed in flames and confirmed the military had attacked the airport. “The Air Force is operating to achieve aerial superiority across all of Iran,” he said in the statement.

The location of the attack, at Mashhad Airport in the far east of the country, shows “at the very least that Israel can hit just about any target it wants in Iran,” said Afshon Ostovar, an Iran military expert at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

Dr. Ostovar added that the attack is a sign “that most if not all of the country’s major air defenses have either been destroyed, made inoperable, or are otherwise unable to protect Iran’s airspace from Israeli jets.”

The Iranian Air Force only has seven refueling planes, according to a 2024 annual report on air forces globally by FlightGlobal, an aviation industry website.

But Dr. Ostovar said that taking the plane out will not affect Iran’s air operations. These aircraft — which are Boeing 707s — are used to refuel fighter jets and other planes while they’re in the air, which Dr. Ostovar said Iran does not currently do.

But the strikes have not yet meaningfully affected the flow of oil in the region, which is a key energy transit hub, said Tom Kloza, chief market analyst for Turner, Mason & Company, an energy consulting firm.

Oil prices gained about 11 percent last week. That alone could cause gasoline prices to rise about 20 cents a gallon in the coming weeks, according to ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington research firm.

Crude oil and fuels like gasoline and diesel had been relatively cheap leading up to Israel’s strikes on Iran, which could cushion the blow to consumers. A gallon of regular gasoline costs $3.14 on average, down from $3.45 this time last year, according to the AAA motor club.

How Iran responds to Israel’s latest strikes will have a big effect on oil prices. The country is a large oil producer and its position on the northern side of the Strait of Hormuz, a major thoroughfare for oil and liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G., means that it could severely disrupt global energy markets.

If Iran were to close the waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman for even a short time, oil prices could rise anywhere from $8 to $31 a barrel, according to ClearView Energy Partners.

“Escalation of the conflict presents many supply risks, but — at peril of stating the obvious — the greatest is probably an Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz to maritime energy cargoes,” the firm’s analysts wrote on Saturday.

Iran has an economic incentive to allow tankers to continue passing through the strait, as it ships oil through that channel, much of it to China.

And although the United States has been buying less and less oil from the Persian Gulf, the commodity is traded globally, leaving consumers and businesses exposed to price increases. Should U.S. oil companies respond to higher prices by drilling more, it would still take many months for that oil to start flowing.

Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.

“We have opened up the skies of Iran, achieving near-air superiority,” Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, said on social media.

Still, Israel does not have complete freedom of operation in Iran, and Iranian officials have claimed to have shot down Israeli drones in recent days.

Some of Iran’s air defense systems remain intact, requiring Israeli pilots to navigate through carefully mapped aerial corridors, according to an Israeli defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. The Israeli military, the official said, relies on real-time intelligence to track possible threats to its aircraft as they enter and exit Iranian airspace.

At least 128 people in Iran have been killed, according to the country’s health service. The toll included top security chiefs, nuclear scientists and civilians.

Opening up Iran’s airspace was a gradual process. During two clashes with Iran in April and October of last year, Israeli security forces struck important air-defense systems. In the October attack, Israel hit four S-300 systems, according to Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister at the time.

Since Friday, Israel has continued to target Iran’s air defenses, carving out a pathway for Israeli fighter jets to reach Tehran freely, according to two Israeli military officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational details. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News in an interview on Sunday that Israel had worked to “peel off the layers of protection” of Iranian defenses.

Israeli aircraft, in turn, now have the ability to fly through much of Iranian airspace almost as easily as they can over Lebanon and Syria, according to Zohar Palti, a former senior official in Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service.

“Let’s say I have a target that I missed or that I’m not happy with the result,” said Mr. Palti, now an international fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I can go back tomorrow and the day after tomorrow again, again, and again.”

Even Iranian officials have acknowledged shortcomings in their defenses.

In private text messages shared with The New York Times on Friday, 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?”

Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting to this article.