Iran’s air defenses were diminished in rounds of conflict, giving Israel greater aerial freedom.

As Iranian state news media outlets shared photographs and videos of damaged residential buildings and smoke billowing from the center of Tehran, Israel’s military refused to comment on what it described as “potential ongoing operations.”

President Trump urged Israel and Iran to reach an agreement to end their armed conflict. “Iran and Israel should make a deal, and will make a deal,” he wrote this morning in a post on Truth Social, his social media platform. “We will have PEACE, soon, between Israel and Iran! Many calls and meetings now taking place.” It remains unclear, however, if and when Israel and Iran will agree to stop attacking each other, and Trump did not say in his post what he believed “a deal” between the two sides should entail.

Overnight, Israeli fighter jets bombarded Tehran, setting the sky ablaze with flames from burning fuel reservoirs from the country’s vital energy industry, while Iran launched volleys of ballistic missiles at Israel, some of which eluded the country’s air defenses.

Iranians and Israelis have been bracing for further violence. On Sunday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps warned that it would escalate its attacks if Israel continued carrying out strikes on Iran, according to state news media.

Not long after, Israel’s military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin, said Israel was not ceasing its attacks on Iran “for a moment.”

“At this hour, too, we continue to strike dozens of additional targets in Tehran. We are deepening the damage to Iran’s nuclear program and its military capabilities,” he said in a televised address, without elaborating.

The path to diplomacy appears limited after officials called off talks set for Sunday between Tehran and Washington on the future of Iran’s nuclear program.

The Israeli strikes, which began Friday in a surprise attack that took aim at the Iranian regime, have killed at least 128 people in Iran, according to the country’s health ministry. Six top Iranian security chiefs were among the dead, and more than 900 people have been injured. In Israel, at least 13 people, identified as civilians, have been killed during Iran’s retaliatory barrages since Friday.

Here’s what else to know:

• Expanding scope of attacks: Israeli strikes, initially focused on nuclear sites, air defenses and military targets, are also now targeting the energy industry that underpins much of Iran’s economy. The Israeli military’s chief spokesman said its forces had achieved “freedom of action” in the skies over Tehran, indicating they could strike targets without expecting major interference.

• Israeli attack on the Houthis: In an apparent bid to cripple one of Iran’s strongest remaining proxy forces in the region, Israel targeted a meeting of Houthi leadership in Yemen on Saturday night. An Israeli military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in line with army rules, said the airstrike targeted Mohamed Al-Ghamari, the Houthi military’s chief of staff.

• Nuclear talks scuttled: The salvos of missiles scuttled talks between the United States and Iran on the future of Iran’s nuclear program. The talks had been scheduled to resume on Sunday in Oman, but American and Omani officials said they had been canceled. Read more ›

• Washington’s view: The United States’ possible role in the spiraling conflict remains unclear. While Israeli officials had hoped the Trump administration would participate in a joint attack, Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied American involvement in the strikes. But Mr. Trump also did not call for Israel to rein in its assault.

“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.

“I thought, ‘This is monstrous,’” she said. “I saw images of little boys in Shiraz, which to me is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, sitting on the ground, bloodied. It has been heartbreaking.”

Many Jewish Americans have met the outbreak of war with feelings of “frustration and helplessness,” especially after recent attacks on Jews in Washington, D.C., and Colorado, said Mitchell Silber, the executive director of the Community Security Initiative, which provides security guidance to Jewish institutions in the New York area.

“Everything is compounded after the last few weeks because of the attack in D.C. and the attack in Boulder,” he said. “The level of anxiety in the Jewish community is about as high as I have ever seen it.”

The war began on Friday when Israel launched a surprise attack that took aim at the Iranian regime. Since then, the two countries have launched waves of attacks at each other. Israel’s strikes have killed at least 128 people in Iran and injured more than 900 others, according to the country’s health ministry. In Israel, at least 13 people, identified as civilians, have been killed during Iran’s retaliatory barrages since Friday.

The conflict comes after years of shadow warfare and roughly 18 months of Israeli military action against Iranian allies across the Middle East, including the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Israel has blamed Iran, in part, for the Hamas-led terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed roughly 1,200 Israelis. Israel invaded Gaza in response, and the war there has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, led to war crimes charges against Israeli and Hamas leaders, and radically reshaped the Middle East.

On Saturday, Mike Huckabee, the American ambassador to Israel, said there were roughly 700,000 U.S. citizens living in the country. A smaller number of Americans live in Iran, but many people in the United States have family or personal ties there as well.

In recent days, Jewish organizations in New York have been following advice that was prepared by Mr. Silber’s organization. It is advice they are sadly familiar with after years of rising antisemitism in the United States.

They have been told to go about their usual activities but to keep an eye on who may be hanging around their facilities and to stay in touch with law enforcement agencies. In New York on Friday, the Police Department said it had been providing extra security to Jewish institutions, like synagogues, schools and community centers.

But those protocols can do little to vanquish feelings of unease.

“We ourselves have friends who are in Israel, and no one is straying very far from the shelters,” said Mr. Silber, who hid in a bomb shelter in Ashdod during the Oct. 7 attack, when he was in Israel for work. “You never know when the next siren is going to go off and you’ll have to scramble for shelter.”

Fear has been widespread in Iran as well, where few people have access to the sort of shelters or early warning system that has helped save lives in Israel.

After watching the devastation in Gaza and Lebanon over the past year, it has been frightening for Iranians in New York to contemplate the destruction that war could cause in Iran.

“My friends and family in Tehran have been terrified — this is terrorizing a country of 80 million people,” said Leili, who hopes to one day see a democratic government in Iran. “I am not pro-regime, but this is damaging to all life in Iran and all possibility of a more hopeful future there."

In some places, residents were close enough to see missiles streaking across the sky and the fireballs, smoke and rubble left behind their impacts. Behzed, a 40-year-old copyright expert, saw the aftermath of Israel’s attack on a fuel depot in northern Tehran from the rooftop of her home a few miles away.

“The explosion was clearly visible, its glow illuminating the nearby mountain,” she said. “I never imagined witnessing such a scene in my city during my lifetime.”

Ali, a 43-year-old engineer in Tehran, said that “on the first night of the attacks, we thought it would be temporary.”

“But the second night was overwhelming; we barely slept,” he added.

He said he and his wife have tried to shield their young children “from the situation, avoiding TV and words like ‘war’ to keep them from sensing our anxiety.”

“We still hope this will pass soon,” he continued, “but deaths and casualties are hitting closer to home.” He had hoped that Iran would resume negotiations with the United States to end the war, but after talks scheduled to take place in Oman this weekend were canceled, his mood shifted. “My hope is fading,” he said.

That sentiment was echoed by Arash, a 42-year-old psychologist, who said this conflict seemed different from earlier clashes with Israel.

“Many people remain in denial, hoping this crisis will end soon, but the atmosphere is gradually shifting,” he said.

“Increasingly, people are realizing that this wave of attacks differs from previous ones, which typically involved a single strike followed by a two-week lull,” he added. “Now, life feels like it’s on hold.”

Internet access has been restricted since the first attacks, adding to the uncertainty, Arash said. “Residents are desperate for news about the explosions,” he explained, and are trying to find virtual private networks to bypass restrictions.

In recent days, some Iranians have also expressed anger at the leaders of Israel and sometimes their own country, with many saying that the violence reminded them of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s or the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Sepideh, a teacher, blamed the Iranian government’s “misguided decisions” for economic hardships, including inflation and the heavy sanctions imposed on it, which had weakened the country before the conflict.

She said that she had seen videos circulating on social media, showing some Iranians celebrating after the Israeli assault. “They believe that attacks targeting Iranian leaders could lead to their freedom, even at the cost of national resources,” she said.

Most of those confirmed dead were women and children, according to the authorities, although they have yet to publicly name the victims. Chaotic scenes were replicated across northern and central Israel after a long night of Iranian missile attacks.

Many Israelis have a certain nonchalance about missile fire, the product of both near-constant rocket attacks and the country’s sophisticated aerial defenses. But the destructive attacks in Bat Yam and elsewhere overnight — in which 10 people were confirmed killed — underscored how Israel’s current escalation with heavily armed Iran differs from fighting armed paramilitaries like Hamas and Hezbollah.

In Rehovot, another city south of Tel Aviv, debris from the overnight attack filled the streets. Bloodstained bandages and white surgical gloves lay by a roadside bench. Rescue workers picked through shattered glass, searching for survivors.

“Is there anyone inside?” a police officer shouted, peering into a shop damaged by the strikes.

In Bat Yam, hundreds of residents who had evacuated their homes near the blast site — many of which were left uninhabitable by the explosion — gathered at a nearby school to wait for officials to tell them where to go.

Like many Israelis, they had been ordered to go to fortified bomb shelters when the Israeli military announced early on Sunday morning that Iran had fired ballistic missiles at Israeli territory.

One resident at the school, Michael Guberman, 22, was staying with his father in Bat Yam when an Iranian missile struck, half-destroying the building. They had gone to a shared bomb shelter on the sixth floor after air raid sirens started, he said.

The sirens had died down when suddenly, everything shook.

“There was a huge explosion,” said Mr. Guberman, clutching their pet dog. “The door flew off its hinges.”

The shelter was suddenly dark, full of choking dust and the screams of people inside, Mr. Guberman recalled. Much of the multistory apartment building had been destroyed, he said.

Paramedics arrived to help them navigate, slowly, out of the damaged building. In the light from emergency workers’ flashlights, Mr. Guberman said he could see blood on the floor.

“I still can’t believe that this was real, that this happened,” he said. “It was like a movie.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured the scene in Bat Yam on Sunday afternoon flanked by aides. He gave a brief statement arguing that the Iranian missile attack strengthened his justification for the Israeli government’s offensive launched against Iran on Friday: that Iran’s nuclear ambitions were an existential threat.

“That is why we have embarked on a war of salvation against a double threat of annihilation,” Mr. Netanyahu said.

The blast blew out the windows in the apartment in Bat Yam where Eldad Albow, a 47-year-old father of two young girls, lived with his family. City officials later told them that the building was no longer safe to live in, leaving them uncertain about their next steps.

Speaking in the school gymnasium as he waited to hear where his family would go next, Mr. Albow said his two daughters were still in shock from the explosion.

Mr. Albow said he supported attacking Iran and wanted the government to act even more aggressively against Tehran’s nuclear program. But he said if Israel was unable to get the United States to join its campaign — which could help the Israeli Air Force destroy some of the best-guarded Iranian sites — the government should consider finding an exit.

“It might be better to say at that point: We both got blows in, let’s wrap it up,” he said. “Otherwise we’re in for even crazier and more difficult days.”

Brig. Gen. Vahidi is best known outside Iran as a suspect in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and wounded hundreds more.

Prosecutors in Argentina have issued arrest warrants for five Iranian officials, including General Vahidi, for “conceiving, planning, financing and executing” the attack. Interpol issued an alert, known as a Red Notice, in 2007 to inform the international law enforcement community that a national arrest warrant was outstanding.

General Vahidi was born in 1958 in the central Iranian city of Shiraz. During the Iranian revolution in 1979, he had been studying electronic engineering at Shiraz University and around that time he joined the I.R.G.C., as well as revolutionary committees, according to Iranian media. He later received a Ph.D. in strategic studies.

During the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, which began in 1980, he held a number of senior security roles. He went on to lead the I.R.G.C.’s Quds Force, which specializes in intelligence and directs operations outside Iran, from 1988 until 1998.

From 2005, General Vahidi served as deputy defense minister and he was made defense minister in 2009, holding the post until 2013. He was also Iran’s interior minister for three years until last August.

The United States, the European Union, Canada and Britain have imposed sanctions on General Vahidi for human rights violations.

A senior Houthi political official, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, told The New York Times that Israel “has not succeeded in targeting any leader” from the group.

“As for us, we are all prepared for martyrdom — from the smallest fighter to the highest-ranking leader,” he said. “We will continue to fight in defense of ourselves and our nation”

The bombing in Yemen raised the possibility that a regional conflict that is already being waged on multiple fronts, as Israel and the Houthi have traded attacks in recent months, could escalate.

The Houthis, who have received support, weaponry and training from Iran, have frequently fired ballistic missiles at Israel, saying they were acting in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. Most of the Houthi missiles were intercepted by Israeli and American air defenses, although one landed near Israel’s main international airport in May, injuring several people.

The Israeli military said that the Houthis fired at least one ballistic missile at Israel overnight.

Israel has also struck Yemen repeatedly. The attacks include a strike that caused severe damage to Yemen’s main international airport and others that targeted a vital port controlled by the Houthis.

A Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Saree, said on Sunday that the group had also launched ballistic missiles at Israel in coordination with the Iranian military’s strikes. He called on “the rest of the Arab and Islamic countries and peoples” to take up arms “to stop the Israeli crimes against your people in Gaza — for what befalls them today will befall you tomorrow.”

Shuaib Almosawa contributed reporting from Sana, Yemen.

Iran’s oil ministry had said in a statement last night that the Shahran fuel and gasoline depot, in northern Tehran, was hit in an Israeli attack. In addition, Iranian state news media said one of the country’s largest oil refineries, Shahr Rey, was struck separately, in the city’s south. Earlier on Saturday, Israel struck two key Iranian energy sites, including a section of the South Pars Gas Field, located offshore in Iran’s southern Bushehr province.

But the Iranians say they still want a deal, as does President Trump. The shape of future talks will inevitably depend on when and how the fighting stops.

“We are prepared for any agreement aimed at ensuring Iran does not pursue nuclear weapons,” the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told foreign diplomats in Tehran on Sunday. But his country would not accept any deal that “deprives Iran of its nuclear rights,” he added, including the right to enrich uranium, albeit at low levels that can be used for civilian purposes.

Mr. Araghchi said Israel did not attack to pre-empt Iran’s race toward a bomb, which Iran denies trying to develop, but to derail negotiations on a deal that Mr. Netanyahu opposes.

The attacks are “an attempt to undermine diplomacy and derail negotiations,” he continued, a view shared by various Western analysts. “It is entirely clear that the Israeli regime does not want any agreement on the nuclear issue,” he said. “It does not want negotiations and does not seek diplomacy.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has argued that the attack on Iran was to stop Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon, even as a sixth round of talks to prevent that very outcome was scheduled between the United States and Iran.

While Israel argues that it had to strike now to prevent an Iranian race to bomb, American and European judgments were that Iran was still many months away from building a bomb and has not yet decided to do so.

Mr. Netanyahu believes that a deal that would allow Iran to enrich uranium would mean a nuclear-armed Iran in the future, and he has been bent on preventing that outcome. He has apparently judged that a U.S.-Iran deal would have kept him from his goal of destroying Iran’s nuclear program, and, perhaps, he hopes, bringing about the fall of the Islamic Republic.

But Israel is considered highly unlikely to meet the goal of destroying Iran’s nuclear program without active American involvement, which Mr. Trump has so far resisted.

The president continues to say that he wants negotiations to succeed. He seems to believe that the attack will bring Iran back to the table in a weaker and more conciliatory position, ready to accept his latest demand that it halt all enrichment of uranium. But Iran insists that it has the right to enrich for civilian uses under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Mr. Trump clearly sees the war as a form of diplomacy. On Friday, he wrote: “Two months ago I gave Iran a 60-day ultimatum to ‘make a deal.’ They should have done it! Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there. Now they have, perhaps, a second chance!”

Early on Sunday, Mr. Trump warned Iran against attacking American forces in a message on Truth Social. “However, we can easily get a deal done between Iran and Israel, and end this bloody conflict,” he said. Whether Israel would accept such a deal, if Iran is allowed to enrich at all, is an open question.

At the same time, Mr. Trump, who has said he knew about the Israeli attack beforehand, has done nothing in public to restrain the Israelis. When Washington announced last week that the talks would continue on Sunday, it is not clear whether it knew when Israel would attack, but the Iranians are convinced that Washington was complicit in trying to fool them into believing that any Israeli attack would come afterward.

A quick deal now that would give up enrichment would be seen as a surrender, said Vali Nasr, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies who served in the State Department during the Obama administration. That could make the Iranian government more vulnerable at home. “They won’t give up enrichment, not this easily,” he said. “They’re not going to surrender.”

For now negotiations with Iran are on hold, said Robert Malley, a former U.S. official who negotiated with Iran on the nuclear issue under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. But their future shape and timing will depend on the length of the Israeli attack and what it achieves.

“When Iran feels comfortable to come back to the table with the United States, which it believes is deeply complicit with the attack, and in what position Iran comes back depends on how significantly Israel has degraded its nuclear program,” he said.

For now, Washington is backing the Israeli operations, but “at some point, better sooner than later, they will try to exercise some restraint” to limit the conflict, Mr. Malley said. Mr. Trump still seems eager to get a deal and avoid being dragged into the war.

Karin von Hippel, a former State Department official and former director of RUSI, the London-based defense research group, agrees. “We’ll get back to the table eventually but at what cost to Israel and the region?” she said. “The challenge is going to be that the Iranians want a face-saving way to get back to the table,” while Mr. Trump prefers “to back people to the edge and get them to capitulate.”

Unless the Iranian government collapses — or Israel tries to kill the political and clerical leadership of Iran, as it did with Hezbollah — any deal is likely to be very similar to the original 2015 nuclear pact negotiated under President Barack Obama, and which Mr. Trump, in his first term, abandoned in 2018.

“It will probably be a very similar deal as the one with Obama, but Trump will want to put his own spin on it,” Ms. von Hippel said. “Trump can declare victory no matter what. And if the deal has enough safeguards on Iran he can get away with it,” she said, even if some Republicans and Israel criticize it for not ending Iran’s enrichment altogether.

Mr. Trump has miscalculated in thinking Israel’s attack would force Iran to accept a deal based on zero enrichment, said Rajan Menon, professor emeritus of international relations at the City College of New York, in an email post and an article in The New Statesman. Mr. Trump is unlikely to miscalculate again and join Israel’s war, but “this much is certain: Netanyahu wanted to scuttle the U.S.-Iran negotiation, and he has succeeded,” Mr. Menon said, at least for now.

But Iran clearly wants to come back to negotiations, since a deal is still the best protection it has from continuing or subsequent Israeli attacks on a country that has lost most of its own air defenses and has limited ways of striking Israeli territory.

Even if the government is not about to fall, it is weakened and at profound risk, for the first time since Iraq and Saddam Hussein invaded in 1980, said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert and director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution.

A pathway to a deal is unclear for now, but the Iranians must still consider diplomacy as “the best way to extricate themselves from what is an existential crisis,” she said.

There will inevitably be a sharp debate inside the Iranian regime about whether to accept a diplomatic solution out of weakness or to continue to try to strike back and even race for a nuclear weapon, Mr. Malley said.

The alternatives, of course, include widening the war by damaging regional energy assets of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, closing the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, assaulting institutions and even synagogues abroad or attacking American troops and interests in the region. But there is probably no surer way of bringing the United States into the war, which Mr. Netanyahu deeply desires.

For their part, the Europeans who were instrumental in the 2015 nuclear deal, and who have been sidelined by Mr. Trump, say they are ready to hold talks with Iran on its nuclear program. “I hope that’s still possible,” the German foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, said late Saturday in Oman. “Germany, together with France and Britain, are ready,” he told the German broadcaster ARD.

Iran must never have a nuclear weapon, he said, but other than wanting the violence to end, he indicated no European move to pressure either side to desist. “There’s a shared expectation that within the next week, a serious attempt must be made on both sides to interrupt the spiral of violence,” he said.

Even as Israel has pummeled Iran with its own sophisticated missiles, setting oil facilities in Tehran ablaze, it still fears Iran’s capacity for fierce retaliation.

In a video statement on Friday night, Mr. Netanyahu said Iran had accelerated production and aimed to manufacture 300 ballistic missiles a month, which would amount to 20,000 missiles within six years. He said each one was like “a bus-full of explosives” primed to land on Israeli cities.

How many missiles has Iran fired, and how many of them hit Israel?

Iran has launched about 200 missiles at Israel since Friday night, in addition to scores of explosive drones, according to the Israeli authorities.

The Israeli military has so far not released data about the number of missiles it has intercepted or how many have evaded its air defenses, saying such details could aid the enemy. But the Israeli prime minister’s office said on Saturday afternoon that 17 sites had been identified where missiles made impact. Some have hit Tel Aviv and its suburbs of Ramat Gan and Rishon LeZion, in central Israel’s coastal plain. On Saturday night, a barrage was aimed at the northern city of Haifa and its surroundings.

Missile strikes on Friday night and Saturday have killed at least seven Israeli civilians and injured more than 200 people, including seven soldiers, according to the authorities.

Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin, Israel’s chief military spokesman, said on Saturday that Israel’s air defenses were “among the best in the world” but were “not hermetic.”

What have the Iranians been trying to hit?

Many of the sites struck by Iranian missiles appear to be inside Israeli cities. Israel has accused Iran of intentionally aiming at civilian areas.

It is unclear whether any sensitive military or infrastructure sites have been hit. Officials do not disclose such information, saying it would aid the enemy.

But Israel is a relatively small country — only slightly larger than New Jersey. Most of its population lives in the crowded coastal plain. And the military maintains bases and camps in many populated areas, as well as in more remote parts of the country.

A residential tower block that suffered a direct hit early Saturday is part of a popular entertainment district, filled with cafes and restaurants. It is also close to the main military and government headquarters in Tel Aviv, which was most likely the intended target.

Later on Saturday, missiles were aimed at the port city of Haifa. Israel’s largest oil refinery is in the Haifa Bay area.

How many missiles does Iran have left?

The Israeli military has been striking Iran’s stocks of ballistic missiles and missile launchers, reducing the number it has left to launch at Israel.

Military officials and experts say Iran still has hundreds of missiles — perhaps up to 2,000 — with ranges that can reach Israel. If Iran continues launching missiles at its current rate, it could most likely sustain the pace of fire for a few more days.

How powerful are the missiles hitting Israel?

Mr. Netanyahu said each Iranian missile carried a ton, or 2,000 pounds, of explosives, although military officials and experts say the weight can vary.

Tal Inbar, an Israeli space and missile expert, said Iran’s ballistic missiles carried from 300 to 700 kilograms, or about 660 to 1,540 pounds, of explosives and that the total weight of the warhead could be up to 2,200 pounds.

What has Israel learned about Iran’s missile capabilities?

Mr. Inbar, the space and missiles expert, said that Israel was not surprised by Iran’s missile capabilities, having already been the target of large barrages of similar projectiles in April 2024 and October 2024, when Iran retaliated for Israeli strikes on its territory and interests.

The Houthi militia, an Iran-backed group based in Yemen, has also been firing ballistic missiles at Israel, saying it is acting in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.

But the Houthis tend to fire a single missile in a day, and most of them have been intercepted by Israeli and American air defense systems.

The difference this time, Mr. Inbar said, was the quantity of missiles that Iran fired simultaneously, in an effort to overwhelm air defenses, and the fact that some impact sites have been in densely populated areas, where just the shock waves cause extensive damage.

He said some footage released by the Israeli military on Saturday showed at least one type of missile that Iran had not fired at Israel before. Named the “Shahed Haj Qassem,” it has a range of nearly 1,000 miles.

It is a solid propellant missile that does not need to be refueled before launching, Mr. Inbar said, meaning that it can sit underground for years and become operational within minutes.

“The fire is terrifying, it’s massive; there is a lot of commotion here,” said Mostafa Shams, a resident of the area. “It’s the gasoline depots that are exploding one after another, it’s loud and scary.”

Separately in the city’s south, Shahr Rey, one of the country’s largest oil refineries, was also struck, according to Iranian state news media. Emergency crews were trying to contain the fire, and a resident of Tehran, Reza Salehi, said he could see the flames from miles away.

Israel’s targeting of Iran’s energy facilities, a crucial source of export cash for the country as well as of domestic energy, represented a significant escalation in its military campaign against Tehran.

Earlier on Saturday, Israel had struck two key Iranian energy sites, including a section of the South Pars Gas Field, which is one of the world’s largest and critical to Iran’s energy production.

“We have entered the second phase of the war, which is extremely dangerous and destructive,” Abdollah Babakhani, an expert on Iran’s energy sector based in Germany, said on Saturday.

But the multiple massive explosions targeting energy and fuel targets in and around the capital spread fear among residents.

Israeli warplanes also struck sites in Tehran related to Iran’s nuclear program, including experimental laboratories, according to two Israeli defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive operational details.

A woman named Shirin, who lives near the gasoline depot in northern Tehran and asked that only her first name be used out of fear for her safety, said neighbors were frantically calling each other asking what to do. She said the explosion was so loud that her mother fainted. Shirin’s husband was worried about fuel and gasoline shortage following the attack.

“Israel is attacking left and right; it’s not just military targets, this is our livelihood and our lives,” Shirin said in a phone interview from Tehran. She was also angry at the government in Iran, she said, for not providing any guidance or shelter for civilians caught in the crossfire.

Hamid Hosseini, a member of the energy committee of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, said Iran’s municipality had been discussing moving the Shahran fuel depot from the residential area in northern Tehran for years, fearing an attack or an accident could be catastrophic.

The attack on the depot set off massive explosions, according to an official at the oil ministry, who said the depots were exploding one after another and threatened to significantly damage residential neighborhoods in the area.

The depot has about 8 million liters per day of gasoline entering its storage tanks and has a capacity to hold about three full days of fuel needs for Tehran, according to the ministry official.

Israel did not immediately respond to request for comment on the strike.