Iranians awoke on Saturday to the sound of explosions that rattled their windows and shook their homes in the predawn hours as Israel carried out retaliatory strikes in at least three provinces, including Tehran.
But as daylight broke, state television and media outlets affiliated with the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps played down the attacks, which Iran’s military said had killed two soldiers.
In a state television broadcast episode titled “An Ordinary Day in Tehran,” reporters stationed around Tehran, the capital, cheerfully proclaimed that all was well. Live shots showed a vegetable market and morning rush-hour traffic.
“Initial assessments suggest Israel’s operation was weak,” reported Tasnim, a semiofficial news agency affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards.
By midmorning, life in Tehran looked normal, according to people in the city. Children were in school, and adults had gone to work.
In the attack, Israel struck military bases in the provinces of Tehran, where the capital is located, Ilam and Khuzestan, according to Iran’s national air defense. Khuzestan is the center of Iran’s oil and gas fields and refineries.
Israel’s military said in a statement that it was “conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran” in response to more than a year of attacks on Israel by Iran and its allied militias across the Middle East.
Iran supports Hamas, which led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Israel, which responded by launching a war in the Gaza Strip, says it is aiming to eradicate Hamas.
Iran’s national air defense said in a statement that the Israeli attacks had caused “limited damage” to the military bases and that further assessment was underway. It also said Iran’s air defense system had reduced the damages.
Maryam Naraghi, an Iranian journalist, said she had heard “the sound of bombs and explosions” from her home in Tehran.
Yashar Soltani, a journalist, said he had woken up in Tehran to the sounds of an attack that seemed to be nearby.
“I saw very big lights in the sky,” he said.
Houri, a 42-year-old mother of two in Tehran, said in a telephone interview that after a terrifying night of loud explosions and consoling her crying children, she was anxious about what lay ahead for the country and people, many of whom are weary of conflict and economic hardship. She spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.
She said her husband had stayed glued to satellite television and social media all night for updates on the attacks because the state news media offered such little information.
Two Iranian officials, one a member of the Revolutionary Guards, said that among the sites targeted in Tehran Province was the S-300 air defense of Imam Khomeini International Airport that provides defense cover for parts of the sprawling capital. The officials familiar with the attacks asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
In Tehran Province, at least three Revolutionary Guards missile bases were attacked, the officials said. In a second round of Israeli strikes, the officials said, Israeli drones targeted the secretive Parchin military base in the outskirts of Tehran and one drone hit the base while others were shot down, they added.
Pundits close to the government ridiculed Israel on social media to say that unlike Israelis, who fled to bunkers during Iran’s previous barrage of missile attacks, Iranians were on their roofs watching the “fire crackers.”
“We didn’t see anything, but they have seen a lot,” Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to the conservative speaker of Parliament, said in a post on X.
Analysts said that the attempts to persuade Iranians that the Israeli airstrikes were not a big deal could be an effort to allow the government an exit ramp if it decides to not respond and end the threat of wider war.
Iranian officials said before the attack that Iran’s response would depend on the severity and scope of Israel’s assault.
“The downplaying of the attacks by Israel, regardless of its scale or targets, indicates a deliberate effort to avoid escalating tensions and going to war,” said Omid Memarian, an Iran expert at DAWN, a Washington-based think tank that focuses on American foreign policy in the Middle East. “The Iranian regime knows it is at a significant disadvantage militarily.”
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