Israel Expands Attack to Include Iran’s Oil and Gas Industry

The Israeli strikes have killed more than 70 people, including four top security chiefs, and damaged Iran’s main nuclear site at Natanz.

Iran, in turn, has launched barrages of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel, targeting what it says are military assets, but with less apparent success. At least three people have been killed and dozens wounded in the attacks.

It is the most intense fighting in decades between the two heavily armed countries, and it has stirred anxiety over the prospect of an increasingly deadly conflict that could draw in the United States and other major powers.

The salvos of missiles scuttled talks between the United States and Iran aimed at halting Iran’s progress toward obtaining a nuclear weapon. The talks had been scheduled to resume in Oman on Sunday, but the American and Omani officials said they were canceled.

Israel has conducted roughly 150 strikes on Iran over two days, while Iranian forces have fired roughly 200 ballistic missiles at Israeli territory in addition to scores of drones, according to an Israeli military official.

Fars News, an Iranian outlet affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, reported on Saturday that Israel had struck the South Pars gas field in the Bushehr province, which was on fire, and a refinery in the city of Asalouieh. The Israeli military declined to comment.

The Iranian state news media said that the Israeli targets overnight had included a military jet hangar at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport.

Across Israel, people huddled in reinforced bomb shelters as air-raid sirens wailed outside, warning of incoming missile fire. Loud explosions reverberated overhead as Israel’s antimissile defenses intercepted many of the incoming missiles.

Here’s what else to know:

• Dozens dead in Iran: Precise casualty figures in Iran could not be confirmed, but Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, told the Security Council that Israel’s strikes had killed 78 people and injured about 300.

• Central Israel: On Saturday morning, at least two people were dead and about 19 injured in central Israel in the wake of an Iranian missile attack, according to Israeli health workers. Israel’s emergency service published footage from the scene showing heavily damaged homes that appeared to have been bombed. A third person was killed earlier during an Iranian missile barrage in Ramat Gan, a suburb east of Tel Aviv, the police said.

• 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 U.S. involvement in the strikes. But President Trump also did not call for Israel to rein in its assault, and U.S. officials said they were moving warships and other military assets in the Middle East to help protect Israel and American troops in the region.

• Top Iranians killed: Two high-ranking military commanders, Mohammad Bagheri and Gen. Hossein Salami, were killed, Iran said, as was Ali Shamkhani, who had been overseeing the nuclear talks with the United States, officials said. Read more ›

• Nuclear sites: Rafael Grossi, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, told the Security Council that Israel’s strike had destroyed the aboveground enrichment plant in Natanz, causing some chemical and radiological contamination. But he said the leak was “manageable.” He said the Iranian authorities had reported strikes on nuclear facilities in Fordo and Isfahan as well. Read more ›

Israel has killed at least six senior commanders from Iran’s top military chain of command since Friday.

Iran is one of the world’s major energy producers. It has the second-largest gas reserves in the world and fourth-largest crude oil reserves.

Videos posted to social media and verified by The Times showed a large fire burning at the South Pars gas refinery in Iran’s southern Bushehr Province.

The explosions took production lines at both facilities offline, the ministry statement said, even as firefighters and emergency crew had largely contained the blazes.

An Israeli military spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on the strikes.

The attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure on the second day of the Israel-Iran conflict represented a widening of the fighting, which began on Friday with Israel launching attacks on Iran’s military and nuclear sites and assassinating its top military chain of command. Iran retaliated by firing ballistic missiles and drones on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Both sides have said the fighting will go on despite international calls for de-escalation.

“We have entered the second phase of the war, which is extremely dangerous and destructive,” said Abdollah Babakhani, an expert on Iran’s energy sector based in Germany. Attacking Iran’s energy infrastructure, he added, “will be a disaster because repairing them will be costly and take time.”

A senior official at the oil ministry said that the ministry had previously placed its staff at refineries and energy fields on full alert and its emergency and fire crews on highest alert, anticipating that Israel might target energy infrastructure. The official said that damages were still being assessed and officials were holding a series of emergency meetings.

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said that in light of Israel’s attacks across Iran, the country would launch a fiercer retaliation strike on Israel, Iranian news media reported.

Hamid Hosseini, a member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce energy committee, said that, in addition to the two attacks on infrastructure sites, Israel had also struck an office building in northern Tehran that belonged to the oil ministry. The building housed an engineering department involved in expanding Iran’s oil and energy fields, Mr. Hosseini said in a telephone interview.

Iran has been battling an acute energy crisis for months because of gas shortages. The country’s power plants and electricity production rely nearly completely on natural gas, and to manage the shortages, the government started scheduling widespread power cuts for residential, commercial and industrial usage.

The government has said the gas shortage is because demand outmatches production and economic sanctions have crippled Iran’s ability to upgrade and invest in its energy infrastructure.

Iranian news media reported that air defenses had been activated in several locations, including Bandar Abbas, Tabriz, Isfahan and Tehran, because of Israeli attacks late on Saturday night. Bandar Abbas is a major shipping port, and Isfahan and Tabriz both have energy refineries and military bases. Residents of Tehran said they could hear loud explosions and air defenses firing nonstop.

Tehran’s governor announced that government employees of Tehran province would work remotely until Wednesday with the exception of military, intelligence, banks, medical centers and municipal services, the state news agency IRNA reported.

It is not clear how far Israel intends to go in attacking Iran’s energy facilities, a crucial source of export cash for the country as well as domestic energy that looks particularly vulnerable.

Other Iranian installations are at risk, analysts say.

“There is one clear target that would make it very easy if Israel or the United States wanted to impact Iran’s oil exports,” Homayoun Falakshahi, senior analyst for crude oil at Kpler, a research firm, said during a webinar on Friday. “And this is Kharg Island.”

Nearly all of Iran’s oil exports leave from tankers at berths around Kharg Island, a small coral land mass in the northern part of the Persian Gulf off the Iranian coast, potentially making it a target in a protracted war, analysts say.

Iran has been developing another terminal in Jask, a coastal city just outside the Strait of Hormuz on the Gulf of Oman, but its capacity appears to be limited, Mr. Falakshahi said.

Israel’s energy system also looks exposed, analysts say, which could potentially restrain its attacks.

Were the fighting to escalate to major energy installations across the region, the consequences could be serious not only for Iran and its neighbors but for their customers, especially in Asia, and world markets.

Oil prices have already jumped since the Israeli attack early Friday. Any escalation that might appear to threaten international supplies could send prices soaring.

Iran’s coastline stretches along the northern shore of the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passageway through which tankers and other ships must pass on their way from the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. Iran has a history of interfering with shipping in the area.

Kpler has estimated that 21 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas, most of it from Qatar, flowed through this gauntlet in 2024. A hefty 14 million barrels of crude oil a day also moves through the strait, according to Kpler’s estimates.

The conflict with Israel comes at a delicate point for Iran’s petroleum industry, which is a crucial pillar for its economy and its ability to fund its nuclear program.

Strikes on the Iranian facilities could potentially negate years of effort to rebuild production from the low levels at the beginning of this decade when President Trump pulled out of a deal reached by President Barack Obama under which Iran agreed to curbs on its nuclear program in return for an easing of sanctions, including on its oil sales.

Oil production in Iran has increased around 75 percent to about 3.4 million barrels a day from depressed 2020 levels, while exports have roughly tripled, according to estimates from the International Energy Agency and Kpler.

FGE, an energy consulting firm, estimates that Iranian energy export revenues, including oil products and electricity, have almost quadrupled since 2020 to $78 billion in 2024.

Even before the Israeli strikes, Iran faced major handicaps. Although it has some of the world’s richest troves of oil and natural gas, it has strained to exploit them largely because of protracted political tensions with the West dating to the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

“Western firms have been locked out for several decades” by sanctions, said Richard Bronze, head of geopolitics at Energy Aspects, a research firm.

Lack of capital and expertise has limited development of oil and natural gas fields and access to major investment projects like liquefied natural gas facilities that might have benefited the Iranian industry.

Qatar, whose huge gas fields in the Persian Gulf border Iran’s, has become rich through L.N.G. development with western partners like Shell and Exxon Mobil, which allow the natural gas to be exported to Europe and Asia.

Despite having large natural gas resources, Iran has recently struggled to produce enough fuel to prevent power cuts.

Much of Iran’s petroleum infrastructure, including the refineries that supply products like gasoline to local markets, are old. If these facilities suffered significant damage, Iran “might struggle more than maybe other countries” to find the spare parts and international support to repair them, Mr. Bronze said.

Sanctions also mean that few customers are willing to buy Iranian oil. Nearly all of Iran’s crude exports go to China. The main buyers are small refiners there, known as “teapots” Mr. Falakshahi said, that are able to extract a substantial discount of up to $7 a barrel from the Iranians.

If those refiners were unable to buy Iranian crude, they would need to look elsewhere, potentially tightening global markets.

Even before the current conflict, signs were emerging of pressure on Iranian oil exports. The Trump administration has been tightening sanctions that saw a de facto easing in the Biden administration. Chinese imports dropped substantially in May, according to Kpler’s estimates.

Analysts say Israel’s energy infrastructure could also prove vulnerable.

Already, the Israeli government has as a precaution ordered a production halt at two of the country’s three offshore natural gas platforms, including Leviathan, which is operated by Chevron. Gas fuels most of Israel’s electric power generation. If this stoppage continued, it could also reduce or halt gas exports to Egypt, hurting customers there.

Israel is also heavily dependent on imported oil brought through the port of Ashkelon in the south of the country. “They are also very fragile,” Mr. Falakshahi said of Israel.

The Saudis and the United Arab Emirates have worked in recent years to ease tensions with Iran and head off future incidents like the attack on a Saudi Aramco facility called Abqaiq in 2018 that temporarily knocked out about half of the kingdom’s export capacity. Those attacks were claimed by the Houthi militant group in Yemen, but the United States at the time blamed Iran for them.

Analysts have said it is conceivable that if Iran feels sufficiently threatened, it could target petroleum installations in those countries again.

The question is,” Mr. Bronze said, how would Iran respond “if it feels like its core economic interests, its energy system, have been attacked.”

Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting.

“Everyone is speaking about Iran now,” said Khalil al-Halabi, a 71-year-old retired U.N. official living in a partially destroyed home in Gaza City. “Gaza has become a secondary matter.”

Aid distribution sites in Gaza have been shuttered since Friday morning, which was shortly after the initial Israeli attacks on Iran began.

Finding flour, Mr. al-Halabi said, had become a nightmare for his family, with some street vendors selling a 55-pound sack for more than $350 dollars.

More concerning, he said, was that the Israel-Iran conflict could undermine desperately needed efforts to hammer out a cease-fire in Gaza.

Repeated efforts to clinch a deal between Israel and Hamas have failed in recent months, with Israel saying it would end the war only after dismantling Hamas, and Hamas saying it will not surrender.

Sharif al-Buheisi, 56, a resident of Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, said he thought the war would continue regardless of the fight between Israel and Iran.

“Israel and Hamas are in agreement about the continuation of the war,” he said. “They both benefit in their own way.”

Still, Mr. al-Buheisi, who was a university administrator before the war, said that any diminished focus on Gaza would have negative consequences for Palestinians. He argued that Israel would now be able to make contentious moves “without a real response from the international community.”

In particular, he said, he worried that the international community would not put enough pressure on Israel to fix the new system for delivering aid to Palestinians, which has had a chaotic, and often deadly, roll out.

Mr. al-Buheisi, who said he has hypertension, said the system was not an option for him because he could not fight through frequently unruly crowds of people to get a box of handout food.

Since the new aid effort began in May, scores of hungry and desperate Palestinians have been killed or wounded on their way to collect parcels of food at aid distribution sites in Gaza, which is operated by American security contractors. Palestinian witnesses say at least some of them were killed by Israeli soldiers who guard the perimeters of these aid sites.

The Israeli military has said that its forces have fired warning shots toward people advancing in what was described as a threatening manner.

Mr. al-Halabi, the former U.N. official, said the world’s shifting attention was a reminder of the helpless situation of Palestinians in Gaza.

“We’re living through misery here,” he said. “But what can we do?”

Speaking on Friday evening, Mr. Macron said the postponement would be brief with a new date to be set in the coming days. It was needed because leaders in the region, including Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, would be unable to travel because of the fighting.

“For logistical, physical, security and political reasons, they could not get to New York,” Mr. Macron said. But he added that the movement toward a two-state outcome symbolized by the conference was “unstoppable.”

That view is not shared by the United States or Israel, both of which had indicated that they would not attend the conference. The United States, in a cable a few days ago that was first reported by Reuters, urged countries to shun the talks, which it said would “coerce Israel during a war, thereby supporting its enemies.”

France, like a growing number of European states, including many that have previously supported Israel, has taken the view that the most right-wing government in Israel’s history is leading the country down a destructive blind alley at devastating cost in Palestinian lives. This conviction has driven France to seek a political framework for the aftermath of the war in Gaza that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has persistently declined to outline.

“Whatever the circumstances, I have stated my determination to recognize a Palestinian state,” Mr. Macron said on Friday. “That determination is whole, and it is a sovereign decision.”

Among his many utterances on the subject, this was perhaps his most forthright, possibly reinforced by disquiet or irritation over the Israeli attack on Iran. Mr. Macron said that Iran’s uranium enrichment program “without any civilian justification” gave Israel legitimate cause to defend itself, but that France did not support Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to bomb Iran.

Turning to Gaza, Mr. Macron suggested that the decisions made by Mr. Netanyahu were bad for Israel’s security.

“When he leads a massive ground operation that kills so many civilians in Gaza, we consider that this is a betrayal of the history and identity of Israel and dangerous for the security of Israel today and tomorrow,” the French president said.

Similar statements by Mr. Macron in the run-up to the now delayed conference have angered Israel, which has accused him of leading “a crusade against the Jewish state.” Israel has also said that any decision to recognize a Palestinian state in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel would reward terrorism.

Tensions between France and Israel are running high, but Mr. Macron did speak to Mr. Netanyahu on Saturday.

Mr. Macron said he had told him that the Israeli strikes on Iran had created “a new era of war in the region” and should lead Israel to accept a cease-fire in Gaza, leading to the release of the Israeli hostages there and “political discussions.”

Video filmed by a witness in Tehran and verified by The New York Times showed thick black smoke billowing from the part of airport where military hangars are located.

Dozens of Israeli warplanes struck sites in Tehran overnight, including surface-to-air missile systems, as part of an effort to weaken the capital’s aerial defenses, the Israeli military said.

Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin, the Israeli military’s chief spokesman, told reporters, “Tehran is no longer immune.” He said dozens of Israeli fighter jets had flown over the Iranian capital for more than two hours overnight alongside drones now stationed there on a standing basis, showing that the Israeli military had achieved “freedom of action.”

“This is the deepest we have ever operated in Iran,” General Defrin said.

An Iranian missile struck homes south of Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest metropolitan area, killing two people, according to Israeli authorities.

These attacks followed the launch of Israel’s shock assault on Iran on Friday, which began with a surprise, predawn attack on an array of targets connected to the country’s nuclear program and military.

Iran later responded with waves of ballistic missiles and drones that sent Israelis scrambling for reinforced shelters. Israel has conducted roughly 150 strikes on Iran over two days, an Israeli military official said on Saturday afternoon, while Iranian forces have fired roughly 200 ballistic missiles at Israeli territory, in addition to scores of drones.

At least four top Iranian military figures have been killed by Israel. The Israeli military also said on Saturday that it had killed nine senior scientists and experts in the country’s nuclear program.

Iran said on Friday that at least 78 people had been killed and more than 300 wounded in the Israeli attacks. An updated figure was not yet available by Saturday.

An Iranian missile landed overnight in a residential area of Rishon LeZion, a city south of Tel Aviv, killing two Israelis and wounding 19, according to the Israeli authorities.

One of those killed was Yisrael Aloni, a 73-year-old man, said Moria Malka, a city spokeswoman. The identity of the second person killed, a woman, has not been made public.

Malachy Browne and Adam Rasgon contributed reporting.

Israel and Iran have closed their airspace since they began exchanging fire on Friday and Saturday, and neighboring Iraq, Jordan and Syria followed suit.

On Saturday, Iran’s state news media reported that Iran’s airspace would remain closed until 2 a.m. the next morning. And in Israel, Ben Gurion Airport remains closed until further notice. Israel’s three major airlines have also moved their fleets outside the country to prevent them from being damaged in Iranian airstrikes, the Israeli news media reported.

Jordan reopened its airspace at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday, and Syria’s Civil Aviation Authority also announced the full reopening of Syrian airspace to civilian air traffic. The Iraqi Civil Aviation Authority said that Iraq’s airspace would remain largely closed “in light of rising regional tensions”; on Saturday, it partly opened the country’s airspace to allow daylight flights in and out of Basra International Airport.

Some airlines canceled flights, while others altered their routes to avoid the conflict. Many carriers opted to fly over Saudi Arabia, while others flew over Turkey and Azerbaijan to avoid Iranian airspace, flight tracking data showed.

Emirates, a major carrier and Dubai’s flagship airline, canceled all flights to and connections via Iran, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon until Sunday. FlyDubai, a budget carrier, suspended flights to 16 destinations.

In Lebanon, Middle East Airlines, the national carrier, suspended its flights on Friday, sending rumors swirling through the country that something terrible was looming, given that the airline had continued flying throughout the conflict with Israel last year. By Saturday afternoon, the airline said its flights would resume.

Lufthansa, Germany’s largest commercial airline, said it was canceling all flights to Tehran and Tel Aviv until July 31, while all flights to Amman, Beirut and Iraq’s Erbil airport were canceled until June 20. United Airlines has paused all flights to and from Tel Aviv until July 31, and Delta Air Lines has canceled all flights from Tel Aviv to New York until Aug. 31.

On Friday, Air India, which flies over the Middle East to reach destinations in Europe and North America, canceled or diverted more than a dozen flights. In some cases, it was operating alternative extended routes in a bid to avoid further cancellations, the carrier said on Saturday. Two days earlier, Air India suffered its own unrelated deadly disaster when one of its commercial flights crashed in Ahmedabad, India, killing more than 270 people.

Falih Hassan contributed reporting.

The civil defense of the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the West Bank, said that its teams had responded to 40 reports of injuries and property damage from shrapnel falling in the West Bank on Friday. Seven children were among the injured, the civil defense said.

The latest escalation of violence in the region is adding to the fear and insecurity that many of the almost three million Palestinian residents in the West Bank already face living under Israeli military rule and a poorly managed Palestinian administration.

“It’s a terrifying experience,” said Yaqoub al-Rabi, 57, a resident of Biddya, a village near the border between the West Bank and Israel.

He was able to hear sirens at a nearby Israeli settlement in the West Bank blare late Friday, and he and six of his children and grandchildren crowded into his living room, crouching against a wall away from the windows.

But they did not feel safe, Mr. Rabi said. The most difficult part was seeing the fearful faces of his grandchildren as they heard powerful booms in the distance, he said.

While many Palestinians said they were fearful of the missiles, others said they had gone up to their rooftops to witness the spectacle of them flying overhead.

Maj. Gen. Anwar Rajab, the spokesman of the Palestinian Authority security forces, said Palestinians in the territory were encouraged to stay in their homes during missile attacks. The authority, he said, could not afford to build public shelters, noting that the governing body was facing a steep financial crisis.

Mohammed Abu al-Rub, the director of the Palestinian Government Communications Center, said that the West Bank lacked the technological infrastructure needed for the type of advance warning systems used in Israel.

“There are no sirens in the West Bank, because they require technologies and systems we simply don’t have,” he said.

Ala al-Khabass, 37, a resident of village outside Jenin in the northern West Bank, said the missiles were “frightening,” recalling a fragment of an Iranian missile that killed a Palestinian man in the West Bank town of Jericho in October when Iran fired a barrage of missiles at Israel.

“It’s horrifying, but what can we do?” he said. “The only thing we can do is accept we can’t do anything.”

Badr Albusaidi, the foreign minister of Oman, which had been mediating the talks, announced the cancellation in a social media post on Saturday, and a senior Trump administration official confirmed that there would be no meeting with the Iranians on Sunday.

In his post, Mr. Albusaidi said “diplomacy and dialogue remain the only pathway to a lasting peace.”

Earlier Saturday, Iran had appeared to adopt a slightly ambiguous stance on further negotiations, calling the talks “meaningless” while also suggesting that a final decision on whether to participate was still pending.

But Iran’s stance hardened as the day went on, with Ismail Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, telling reporters at a news conference in Tehran that Iranian participation would be suspended until Israel halts its attacks.

“It is obvious that in such circumstances and until the Zionist regime’s aggression against the Iranian nation stops,” he said, “it will be meaningless to participate in dialogue with the party that is the biggest supporter and accomplice of the aggressor.”

The senior Iranian figures killed by Israel included Ali Shamkhani, a former secretary of the Supreme National Council, who was overseeing the talks as part of a committee named by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iranian officials described the killing of Mr. Shamkhani as targeting nuclear diplomacy.

On Saturday, Mr. Baghaei, the foreign ministry spokesman, had also accused Washington of undermining the talks. The United States “acted in a way that makes dialogue meaningless,” he was quoted by Iran’s state news media as saying, accusing Washington of claiming to want to negotiate while also giving Israel its consent to attack.

Although Washington has denied direct involvement, Mr. Baghaei said it was “unimaginable” for Israel to have carried out such “adventurous aggression” without a green light from the Americans.

Israel had a constant desire to entangle Western nations in the region’s conflicts, he said. “It seems that it has succeeded this time as well and has somehow influenced a diplomatic process with this adventure,” he added. “This actually shows that American policymakers are still heavily affected and influenced by this regime.”

President Trump and his administration have repeatedly urged Iran to continue with the dialogue as a means to halt further attacks.

“Iran’s leadership will be wise to negotiate at this time,” McCoy Pitt, a senior State Department official, said in a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Friday focused on the crisis.

The senior U.S. administration official echoed that sentiment again on Saturday, saying, “While there will be no meeting Sunday, we remain committed to talks and hope the Iranians will come to the table soon.”

Mr. Trump has written on social media that even more brutal attacks are in store for Iran if it does not make a deal. Iran has denied seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

Leily Nikounazar contributed reporting.

Video filmed by a witness in Tehran and verified by The Times showed pillars of thick black smoke billowing from the part of Mehrabad airport where military hangars are positioned. The hangars appeared to be ablaze.

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.