IRAN: Iran said it launched a military attack on an American base in Qatar, the largest U.S. military installation in the Middle East, according to a statement by the country’s armed forces.
The base, which serves as the forward headquarters for the U.S. Central Command, was considered a prime potential target should Iran retaliate over American strikes on its nuclear installations over the weekend.
A senior White House official earlier confirmed that the United States was aware of a potential attack by Iran against Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. An Israeli official also said Iran was poised to strike the base.
The officials all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.
Earlier in the day, the United States and Britain warned their citizens in Qatar to shelter in place, and Qatar announced that it had closed its airspace.
The warnings came as Israel launched wide-ranging strikes on Tehran on Monday and promised more “in the coming days,” pressing on with its bombing campaign a day after the United States attacked three Iranian nuclear sites.
The new Israeli barrage, which a military spokesman said targeted a paramilitary headquarters, a notorious prison and access routes to the Fordo nuclear enrichment site that the U.S. military bombarded over the weekend, came as Iran fired salvos of missiles that sent Israelis to huddle in shelters.
The strikes came despite calls from world leaders for de-escalation, and as President Trump’s decision to join Israel’s campaign against Iran raised fears that the war would intensify. American military and intelligence officials detected potential signs that Iran-backed militias were preparing to attack American bases in Iraq, and possibly Syria.
Iran’s attack came after its foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, met with a key ally, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. While the Russian leader called the U.S. strikes “absolutely unprovoked aggression,” he stopped short of offering concrete support for Iran.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, in a televised address on Sunday night, said that his country was “very, very close” to realizing its objectives in the conflict but did not say when its bombing campaign would end. On Monday, an Israeli military spokesman issued a new warning to residents of Tehran and said that the army “will continue attacking military targets in the Tehran region in the coming days.”
Though Mr. Trump declared that Iran’s nuclear program had been “totally obliterated” by the U.S. bombings, the actual state of the program seemed far more murky, with senior officials conceding they did not know the fate of Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium.
