Stephen Ukandu, Umuahia
The United States and Israel launched a wave of strikes against targets in Iranian cities on Saturday, triggering explosions and sending columns of smoke into the sky over the capital, Tehran.
The attacks came after US President Donald Trump expressed frustration over Iran’s stance in negotiations on its nuclear and missile programmes.
Trump said Washington’s goal was “eliminating imminent threats” from Iran, while Israel’s Defence Minister, Israel Katz, described the action as a “preventive strike.”
“The United States military began major combat operations in Iran,” Trump said in a video message posted on his social media platform while spending the weekend at his Florida golf club.
“We are going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally, again, obliterated. We’re going to annihilate their navy,” he added.
He offered the Iranian military “immunity” or “certain death” and told Iranians that the “hour of your freedom is at hand.”
Iranian state television reported that President Pezeshkian was “safe and sound,” while the Fars news agency said “seven missile impacts were reported in the Keshvardoost and Pasteur districts” of Tehran.
“I saw with my own eyes two Tomahawk missiles flying horizontally toward targets,” an office worker told AFP on condition of anonymity. “At first, we heard a dull noise and thought it was a fighter jet.”
In Tehran, AFP journalists reported hearing blasts and seeing two large columns of smoke rising over the city centre. The health ministry said ambulances had been dispatched, but there was no immediate confirmation of casualties.
Iran, Iraq and Israel all closed their airspaces to civilian traffic once the strikes began, while US embassies in Qatar and Bahrain urged American citizens to take shelter.
Sirens sounded in Jerusalem, and Israeli authorities issued cellphone alerts to residents.
Trump had earlier ordered one of the largest US military build-ups in decades in the Middle East, with the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, approaching the coast of Israel.
A day after the United States and Iran held talks in Geneva, Trump said on Friday that the cleric-run state was “not willing to give us what we have to have.”
However, Oman, which mediated the Geneva talks, offered a more optimistic assessment, saying Iran had agreed to zero stockpiling of uranium, effectively rendering moot the question of enrichment levels.
Iran also agreed to convert current stockpiles into fuel, according to Oman’s Foreign Minister, Badr Albusaidi, who was in Washington meeting US Vice President JD Vance.
The strikes come weeks after Iranian authorities reportedly killed thousands of people while suppressing mass protests.
Iran had agreed to restrictions on low-level uranium enrichment under a 2015 nuclear deal that Trump withdrew from during his first term in office.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to travel to Israel on Monday for talks on Iran, the State Department said.
In a rare break from longstanding precedent, the top US diplomat will travel without reporters aboard his plane.
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump alleged that Iran was developing missiles capable of striking the United States.
Rubio later said it would be a “very big problem” for Iran if it refused to discuss its missile programme, while Tehran has maintained that ongoing talks should focus solely on the nuclear issue.
Increasing pressure, Rubio on Friday designated Iran as a state sponsor of wrongful detentions under a new US blacklist, citing the jailing of American citizens.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Friday that “success in this path requires seriousness and realism from the other side and avoidance of any miscalculation and excessive demands.”
The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said it would hold technical discussions with Iran on Monday and called on Tehran to cooperate “constructively,” according to a confidential report.
