Israeli Weapon Damaged Iranian Air Defenses Without Being Detected, Officials Say (2024)

Strike was meant to show Iran that Israel could paralyze its defenses, Western officials say.

The strike on Friday was the latest salvo in a series of tit-for-tat attacks between the two countries this month that have heightened fears of a broader regional conflict. The relatively limited scope of Israel’s strike and the muted response from Iranian officials, however, seem to have eased tensions.

The two Iranian officials said the strike on Friday had damaged an S-300 antiaircraft system at a military base in the nearby province of Isfahan. The officials’ account is supported by satellite imagery analyzed by The New York Times, which showed damage to the radar of an S-300 system at the Eighth Shekari Air Base in Isfahan.

It was unclear what sort of weapon struck the Iranian air defense system. Three Western and two Iranian officials confirmed on Friday that Israel had deployed aerial drones and at least one missile fired from a warplane. Previously, Iranian officials said the attack on the military base had been conducted by small drones, most likely launched from inside Iranian territory.

A missile, two Western officials said, was fired from a warplane far from Israeli or Iranian airspace and included technology that enabled it to evade Iran’s radar defenses. Neither the missile nor the aircraft that fired it entered Jordanian airspace, the Western officials said, a gesture meant to keep the kingdom out of the conflict after it helped shoot down Iranian weapons last week.

The two Iranian officials said that Iran’s military had not detected anything entering Iran’s airspace on Friday, including drones, missiles and aircraft. Iran’s state news agency, IRNA, reported that no missile attacks had occurred and that Iran’s air defense system had not been activated.

Israel, the two Western officials said, had scrapped an earlier plan to fire back on Iran with a large-scale attack. That plan, they said, was replaced with a strike intended to send a quiet but decisive message with the aim of ending the cycle of reprisal.

Israel’s use of drones launched from inside Iran and a missile that it could not detect, the Western officials said, was intended to give Iran a taste of what a larger-scale attack might look like. The attack, they said, was calibrated to make Iran think twice before launching a direct attack on Israel in the future.

Officials from both Iran and Israel refrained from speaking publicly about Friday’s attack, a move that appeared aimed at de-escalating a conflict some fear could spiral into a broader regional war. Israel’s silence on the attack, an Iranian official said, would allow Tehran to treat the strike as it had previous clandestine attacks in the countries’ long-running shadow war and not prompt an immediate response.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

Deadly Israeli airstrikes again hit Rafah.

The Israeli military would not immediately comment on the strikes. It has said the goal of its offensive in Gaza is to eradicate Hamas, the armed group that has controlled the Gaza Strip for nearly two decades.

“It was like an earthquake,” Mohammad al-Masri, a 31-year-old accountant who is sheltering with his family in a tent in a large Rafah encampment, said of the shaking from the strikes.

The first strike hit at a little past midnight, shaking the earth and lighting up the night sky, and a second one came soon after, he said. “When we hear these strikes we don’t know what to do,” he said. “Everyone is saying the same thing, ‘Where can we go?’”

President Biden and other world leaders have urged Israel not to invade Rafah because it would make an already dire humanitarian crisis even worse.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not heeded those calls and claims a ground offensive is necessary to “complete the elimination of Hamas’s battalions” and to destroy its tunnel networks.

Saturday’s strikes stoked fears for Palestinians in Rafah that an invasion could be imminent.

In a briefing to the Security Council this week, Secretary-General António Guterres said that Israel’s military offensive in Rafah would “compound this humanitarian catastrophe.”

Rahaf Al-Madhoun, 17, was streaming live on TikTok to talk about the living conditions in Rafah, when the first airstrike hit very close, she said. She stopped to collect herself before continuing. Then she described the terror sown by the strikes and the ever-present buzz of surveillance drones overhead.

“We’re at a loss, I swear,” she said. “The fear itself is killing us.”

Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.

Israeli raid on a refugee camp in the West Bank kills at least 10 people.

The Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank confirmed that at least 13 people including a 15-year-old, have been killed with several more wounded during the clashes in the area, which have been going on since Thursday evening.

Violence in the occupied West Bank has sharply escalated since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on Oct. 7. Across the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, more than 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since the start of the war, according to the United Nations. Many were killed during near-daily Israeli military raids in Palestinian cities and towns, while others had carried out or attempted attacks on Israelis.

There were clashes elsewhere on the West Bank on Saturday.

Yesh Din, an Israeli rights group that tracks Jewish extremist violence in the West Bank, reported that a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance had been fired at while responding to armed settler attacks in another town farther south, Al-Sawiya.

It was unclear who fired at the ambulance, but the 50-year-old paramedic who was driving the vehicle, Mohammed Awad Allan, was killed while treating injured people, the Palestinian Health Ministry and the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

Mustafa Taqatqa, the Palestinian Authority governor in the Tulkarem area, said residents there were “seeing violence and destruction like there is in Gaza.” He said that Israeli military patrols had also deployed outside the Nur Shams refugee camp — the focus of the raid.

“There are very few people out in the streets, and a feeling of danger is everywhere,” Mr. Taqatqa said.

Israeli tractors and heavy vehicles had torn some streets in and around the refugee camp, he said. Municipal officials had just finished repaving a major road damaged in another recent Israeli raid, only for Israeli tractors to damage it once again when the military operation began on Thursday night, Mr. Taqatqa said.

The Palestinian Authority has also sought to crack down on armed militants and has worked closely with Israeli security forces to arrest them, a policy known as security coordination. Mr. Taqatqa said that shortly before the raid, militants and Palestinian security forces had clashed in the city of Tulkarem over what he called a “misunderstanding.” He declined to provide further details.

“But in Nur Shams, it’s not just militants,” he said. “There are civilians in the line of fire, all the residents of this refugee camp. We feel that everyone is facing an unrestrained assault.”

The House, with a bipartisan vote, approves an aid package for Israel.

The House approved assistance to Israel by a vote of 366 to 58. Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan and a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, voted “present.”

Thirty-seven liberal Democrats opposed the aid package for Israel because the legislation placed no conditions on how Israel could use American aid, even though there have been thousands of civilian casualties and Gaza faces the risk of famine.

That was a relatively small sliver of opposition given that left-wing lawmakers had pressed their colleagues to vote “no” on the bill to send a message to President Biden about the depth of anger within his political coalition over his backing for Israel’s tactics in the war.

“Sending more weapons to the Netanyahu government will make the U.S. even more responsible for atrocities and the horrific humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which is now in a season of famine,” said Representative Jonathan L. Jackson, Democrat of Illinois, speaking of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. “The United States Congress must be the moral compass. I continue to call for the release of all prisoners and hostages. I continue to pray and work for peace, security and stability.”

The Senate is expected to pass the legislation as early as Tuesday and send it to President Biden’s desk, capping a tortured journey through Congress.

The Palestinian Authority’s president threatens to reconsider relations with the United States.

The Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, said that the resolution was part of an effort to assert its right to self-determination. The United States, the only nation among the council’s 15 members that wielded its veto power, said the recognition of a Palestinian state must come as part of a negotiated settlement with Israel to end the 75-year-old conflict. Britain and Switzerland abstained from the vote.

Mr. Abbas also accused the United States of abandoning its promises to work toward a two-state solution and of funding Israel’s war in Gaza, which Gazan health officials say has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, and destroyed much of the enclave’s infrastructure.

At a meeting in Turkey, Hamas’s political leader and Erdogan discussed how to achieve a ‘fair and permanent peace in the region.’

“Israel will certainly pay the price of the atrocities it has been inflicting on Palestinians one day,” Mr. Erdogan told reporters.

Turkey’s relationship with Israel has been turbulent during Mr. Erdogan’s two decades as the country’s dominant politician, but it has sharply deteriorated over the last six months during the war in Gaza. Mr. Erdogan has strongly backed the Palestinian cause, which has widespread public support in Turkey, and has said that Hamas was not a terrorist organization, a position contrary to that held by most Western countries.

On Saturday, Mr. Erdogan’s office said he and Mr. Haniyeh had discussed Israel’s attacks against “Palestinian land, primarily against Gaza.” They also talked about what needed to be done for adequate humanitarian aid to reach Gaza and how to achieve “a fair and permanent peace in the region.”

Three weeks after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel ignited the war, and which Israeli officials say killed roughly 1,200 people, Mr. Erdogan gave a televised address excoriating Israel and defending Hamas.

He said Israel’s goal in Gaza was “not self-defense, but savagery, to commit the premeditated act of crime against humanity.” He defended Hamas as “not a terror organization.”

“It is an organization of liberation,” he said, “of mujahedeen, who fight to protect their land and citizens.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said it “wholeheartedly rejected” Mr. Erdogan’s comments.

Since then, Mr. Erdogan has strongly condemned Israel and its leaders. He has compared Mr. Netanyahu to Hitler and called Israel a terrorist state. He has said Turkey would provide evidence in the case accusing Israel of genocide before the United Nations’s high court and has restricted Turkish exports to Israel.

In January, Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, struck back, saying that Mr. Erdogan came “from a country with the Armenian genocide in its past” and “now boasts of targeting Israel with unfounded claims.”

“Israel stands in defense, not destruction, against your barbarian allies,” he added, in reference to Hamas.

Turkey was once Israel’s closest friend in the Muslim world, and even under Mr. Erdogan the two countries have maintained significant trade ties despite their political differences. But Turkey cut diplomatic ties with Israel after a confrontation in 2010 between Israeli commandos and activists on a Turkish ship that was trying to breach Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza. Nine Turks were killed, including one who also had American citizenship.

The countries restored full diplomatic ties in April 2022, after President Isaac Herzog of Israel made a state visit to Turkey, the highest-level meeting with an Israeli leader in the country in 14 years.

An explosion damages a military base in Iraq used by an Iran-backed armed group.

According to Iraq’s joint command, the base is used by several elements of the Iraqi security forces including the Iraqi army and police as well as the Popular Mobilization Forces, or P.M.F., an umbrella organization.

The P.M.F. includes some brigades that are backed by Iran. The one stationed at this base, Harakat al Nujaba, has participated in attacks on U.S. installations in Iraq and Syria. More recently it has joined with other Iranian-backed forces in Syria and Lebanon to attack Israeli territory.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the strike.

The U.S. military, which has carried out strikes on Iranian-backed armed groups in Iraq in the past, said in a statement released shortly after the attack that it had not participated in strikes on locations in Iraq. The Israeli military declined to comment.

The explosion came a day after Israel attacked a military air base near the city of Isfahan in central Iran, according to two Israeli and three Iranian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. That attack, on Friday, appeared to be Israel’s first military response to Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israeli soil nearly a week ago.

Falih Hassan contributed from Baghdad.

Satellite imagery shows that a precision attack damaged an air defense system at an Iranian base.

The radar is typically surrounded by several vehicles, including four trucks carrying missiles. Before the strike, the missiles were seen positioned next to the radar. After the strike, they had been moved and did not appear visibly damaged. It was not clear why the missiles had been moved. However, the fact that they appear undamaged indicated that the attack had a very precise target, according to Mr. Biggers.

Other areas of the air base and adjacent airport also appeared to be undamaged. The precision of the strike, deep within Iran and with several sensitive sites close by, suggested Israel chose the specific and narrow target, the air defense system.

According to the Missile Defense Project of the Washington think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, Iran has acquired Russian-made S-300 air defense systems to deter Israeli and other airstrikes.