Israel-Iran War: A timeline of covert strikes and open threats

Israel-Iran War: Explosions rocked Tehran on 13 April as Israel carried out a major attack on the country’s nuclear program, Israeli officials said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the launch of ‘Operation Rising Lion’ and claimed that Israel had struck at the core of the Islamic regime’s nuclear programme, including its main enrichment facility in Natanz. The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed the damage.

Hours after the attack, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that Israel would face a “severe punishment”. Khamenei issued a statement carried by the state-run IRNA news agency. The statement confirmed that top military officials and scientists had been killed in the attack.

With Friday's attack, the conflict between Israel and Iran has seemingly escalated yet again. Iran and Israel had been engaged in a years-long shadow war.

For quite some time now, Iran has pledged to destroy Israel while it supported regional groups that have declared Israel their enemy. Israel, on its part, views Iran as an existential threat and has vowed to prevent it from building a nuclear bomb.

“The impasse in the US-Israel talks over the issue of enrichment, where Iran insists that it is not going to give up enrichment, and the US insists that there has to be no nuclear enrichment,” Deepika Saraswat, Associate Fellow at Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, told LiveMint.

IAEA resolution against Iran

The United Nations nuclear watchdog’s Board of Governors, Saraswat said, has recently approved a resolution declaring Iran is not complying with its commitment to international nuclear safeguards.

"That resolution basically gives Israel a cover, or an immediate cause, as one could put it. Israel has been wanting to target Iran's nuclear sites for a long time," said Saraswat who has also written the book – 'Between Survival and Status: The Counter-Hegemonic Geopolitics of Iran'

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Board of Governors resolution against Iran was passed on 12 June with 19 votes in favour, three against and 11 abstentions.

Israel and Iran have traded airstrikes before, too. Here is a recent history of the conflict:

2025 – Donald Trump's warning

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed to President Donald Trump a plan to strike Iranian nuclear sites, which Trump administration members debated for months.

In April, President Trump decided to pursue diplomacy instead.

A senior Iranian official told Reuters on 12 June that Iran will not abandon its right to uranium enrichment because of mounting frictions in the region, A day before, President Trump said US personnel were being moved out of the Middle East because it could become a dangerous place, adding that the United States would not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

In a conversation with Fox News after Friday's attack, Trump said, “Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb and we are hoping to get back to the negotiating table."

2024 – Strikes, drones and pagers

In April 2024, an Israeli airstrike on an Iranian Embassy building in Damascus killed three top Iranian commanders and four officers. Iran retaliated weeks later and launched more than 300 drones and missiles at Israel. Israel thereafter attacked an anti-aircraft system in Iran that protects a nuclear facility.

In July, Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader, was assassinated in an explosion in a guesthouse in Tehran run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Israel later confirmed that it was behind the killing.

In September, Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amini, lost an eye in a massive simultaneous pager attack targeting Hezbollah members. Similar attacks on electronic devices in subsequent days, killed dozens of people and injured thousands. Israel later confirmed it conducted the attacks.

The same month, Israel killed Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in airstrikes near Beirut, Lebanon’s capital. In retaliation launched in October 2024, Iran fired about 180 ballistic missiles at Israel.

In the same month, Israel claimed it had destroyed air-defence systems in Iran intended to protect critical infrastructure.

2023 – The year of the 7 October attack

Hamas, which is said to be backed by Iran, attacked Israel, triggering a deadly war in Gaza. Iranian-backed militias in the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, also attacked Israel. Khamenei has denied Iran’s role in the 7 October attacks.

Iran accused Israel of killing a high-level Iranian officer in a missile strike in Syria in December, 2023.

2022- The food poisoning deaths

Two motorcycle-borne assailants killed Col Sayad Khodayee, an officer in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in May 2022. Israeli officials said he helped command a covert operations unit that conducted assassinations and abductions. Israel confirmed its role in the killing to the United States, New York Times reported.

The same month two Iranian scientists -- Ayoub Entezari, an aeronautical engineer at a military research facility, and Kamran Aghamolaei, a geologist -- died after developing symptoms of food poisoning. Iran alleged that Israel poisoned them. Israel did not respond

2021 – The fight at the seas

In 2021, Iran and Israel attacked each other at sea.

Prime Minister Netanyahu accused Iran of being behind a February 2021 explosion on an Israeli-owned ship transporting vehicles sailing off the coast of Oman. A month later, Iran accused Israel of targeting an Iranian cargo ship about 50 miles off the coast of Israel.

2020 – Another assassination

Israel killed Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, with a remote-controlled machine gun in November 2020

2019 – Israel hits Iran allies

In 2019, Israel carried out a series of attacks in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq to prevent Iran from equipping its allies with sophisticated weapons. Israel had then accused Iran of trying to establish an arms supply line through Iraq and northern Syria into Lebanon, where Iran had long backed the militant group Hezbollah.

(With inputs from New York Times)