Iran warned Israel on Friday morning lethal strikes on its military and nuclear sites amount to a “declaration of war.”
Tehran delivered its public denouncement of the Jewish state after the Iranian military fired 100 drones at Israel as the opening salvo of its expected retaliation which it swore would be “harsh and decisive,” the Daily Telegraph reports.
As Breitbart News reported, Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) confirmed in the early hours of Friday morning local time that Israeli airstrikes targeting Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure in the country also eliminated Major General Hossein Salami, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), along with 20 other senior military commanders.
Iran does not recognise Israel’s right to exist and seeks its eradication.
Salami regularly appeared in Iranian state media condemning America as a “small and weak” country with no true political allies and predicted the collapse of the states of both Israel and America.
In total Israel claimed to have hit 100 targets using 200 warplanes, striking one of Iran’s nuclear facilities, wiping out dozens of its air defence systems and assassinating its military top brass besides General Salami.
In a letter to the United Nations, Abbas Araghchi, Iran foreign minister, described the large-scale strikes as a “declaration of war” and “called on the Security Council to immediately address this issue.”
Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, also cast the Islamic dictatorship as an innocent victim, pledging Israel had “sealed for itself a bitter and painful destiny.”
Khamenei has previously called Israel a “cancerous tumour” that “will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed.”
People hold pictures of Major general Gholam Ali Rashid, senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as they gather for a protest against Israel’s wave of strikes on Iran in central Tehran on June 13, 2025. ( ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images)
Earlier Friday, Jordan and Iraq, which both lie between Israel and Iran, announced they had closed their airspace and grounded all flights after Israel’s strikes.
Jordan’s military said it intercepted drones and missiles that had violated the kingdom’s airspace, after Iran further vowed there would be “no limits” in its response to Israeli attacks, AFP reports.
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