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      Israel’s Strike on Iran Highlights Its Ability to Evade Tehran’s Air Defenses

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      The retaliatory attack damaged a defense system near Natanz, a city in central Iran that is critical to the country’s nuclear weapons program.An Israeli airstrike on Iran on Friday damaged an air defense system, according to Western and Iranian officials, in an attack calculated to deliver a message that Israel could bypass Iran’s defensive systems undetected and paralyze them.The strike damaged a defensive battery near Natanz, a city in central Iran that is critical to the country’s nuclear weapons program, according to two Western officials and two Iranian officials. The attack — and the revelation on Saturday of its target — was in retaliation for Iran’s strike in Israel last week after Israel bombed its embassy compound in Damascus. But it used a fraction of the firepower Tehran deployed in launching hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel.The strike on Friday was the latest salvo in a series of tit-for-tat attacks between the two countries this month that have heightened fears of a broader regional conflict. But the relatively limited scope of Israel’s strike and the muted response from Iranian officials seem to have eased tensions.Iran and Israel have conducted a yearslong shadow war, but the conflict intensified on April 1, when Israeli warplanes killed seven Iranian officials, including three senior commanders, at an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria, which Israel asserts was used as a military site. Iran responded last week by firing a barrage of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles at Israel, almost all of which were shot down by Israel and its allies. But the strikes nevertheless rattled Israelis.That attack was Iran’s first-ever direct assault on Israeli soil, thrusting the countries’ clandestine warfare — long fought by land, air, sea and cyberspace — into open view. The Israeli government vowed to respond, even as world leaders and Western allies, including the United States, rushed to de-escalate the situation, urging Israel not to respond in a way that could lead to a regional war.A protest against Israel after Friday prayers in Tehran.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel Strikes an Iranian Military Base, but Damage Appears Limited

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      The drone attack may have been launched from inside Iran, once again demonstrating Israel’s ability to carry out clandestine operations there.The Israeli military struck Iran early on Friday in retaliation for an aerial attack on Israel last weekend, according to two Israeli and three Iranian officials, but the strike appeared to be limited in scope and the reaction from both Israel and Iran was muted.Iranian officials said that the strike had hit a military air base near the city of Isfahan, in central Iran, and that it had been carried out by small drones. They said the drones might have been launched from inside Iran, whose radar systems had not detected unidentified aircraft entering Iranian airspace.If the drones were launched within the country, it would demonstrate once again Israel’s ability to mount clandestine operations in Iranian territory. Iranian officials said that a separate group of small drones was shot down in the region of Tabriz, roughly 500 miles north of Isfahan.Israeli warplanes also fired missiles during the retaliatory strike, a Western official and two Iranian officials said. It was not immediately clear whether Iran’s defenses intercepted the missiles or where they landed.The Israeli military declined to comment. A senior U.S. official said that Israel had notified the United States through multiple channels shortly before the attack. All the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.Addressing reporters at a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 7 nations in Italy, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the United States had “not been involved in any offensive operations” in Iran. But he declined to comment further and would not even confirm the Israeli strike, referring instead to “reported events.” More

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      U.S. Military to Withdraw Troops From Niger

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      The status of a $110 million air base in the desert remains unclear as the West African country deepens its ties with Russia.More than 1,000 American military personnel will leave Niger in the coming months, Biden administration officials said on Friday, upending U.S. counterterrorism and security policy in the tumultuous Sahel region of Africa.In the second of two meetings this week in Washington, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt M. Campbell told Niger’s prime minister, Ali Lamine Zeine, that the United States disagreed with the country’s turn toward Russia for security and Iran for a possible deal on its uranium reserves, and the failure of Niger’s military government to map out a path to return to democracy, according to a senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic talks.The decision was not a particular surprise. Niger said last month that it was revoking its military cooperation deal with the United States following a highly contentious set of meetings in Niger’s capital, Niamey, with a high-level American diplomatic and military delegation.That move was in keeping with a recent pattern by countries in the Sahel region, an arid area south of the Sahara, of breaking ties with Western countries. Increasingly, they are partnering with Russia instead.American diplomats have sought in the past several weeks to salvage a revamped military cooperation deal with Niger’s military government, U.S. officials said, but in the end they failed to strike a compromise.The talks collapsed amid a growing wave of ill feelings toward the U.S. presence in Niger. Thousands of protesters in the capital last Saturday called for the withdrawal of American armed forces personnel only days after Russia delivered its own set of military equipment and instructors to the country’s military.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel’s Strike on Iran: A Limited Attack but a Potentially Big Signal

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      Israel hit a strategic city with carefully measured force, but made the point that it could strike at a center of Iran’s nuclear program.For more than a decade, Israel has rehearsed, time and again, bombing and missile campaigns that would take out Iran’s nuclear production capability, much of it based around the city of Isfahan and the Natanz nuclear enrichment complex 75 miles to the north.That is not what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet chose to do in the predawn hours of Friday, and in interviews, analysts and nuclear experts said the decision was telling.So was the silence that followed. Israel said almost nothing about the limited strike, which appeared to do little damage in Iran. U.S. officials noted that the Iranian decision to downplay the explosions in Isfahan — and the suggestions by Iranian officials that Israel may not have been responsible — was a clear effort by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to avoid another round of escalation.Inside the White House, officials asked the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence agencies to stay quiet about the operation, hoping to ease Iran’s efforts to calm the tensions in the region.But in interviews, officials quickly added they worried that relations between Israel and Iran were now in a very different place than they had been just a week ago. The taboo against direct strikes on each other’s territory was now gone. If there is another round — a conflict over Iran’s nuclear advances, or another strike by Israel on Iranian military officers — both sides might feel more free to launch directly at the other.Mr. Netanyahu was under competing pressures: President Biden was urging him to “take the win” after a largely ineffective aerial barrage launched by Iran last week, while hard-liners in Israel were urging him to strike back hard to re-establish deterrence after the first direct effort to strike Israel from Iranian territory in the 45 years since the Iranian revolution.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Israel’s Conflicts Could Escalate

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      Since Iran’s large missile and drone attack on Israel last weekend, Israel’s allies have warned its leaders to avoid responding in a way that could provoke a regional war. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel appeared to rebuff those warnings on Wednesday, saying the country would “do everything necessary to defend itself.”Here is a look at where Israel has been drawn into conflicts, some of which could escalate quickly:IranLast Saturday, Iran launched its first direct attack on Israel. The attack itself caused little damage, as almost all the missiles and drones were intercepted by Israeli air defenses, supported by the United States, France, Britain and Jordan. But it took a clandestine war between the two nations that has gone on for decades to a different level.Iranians on Monday expressing support for their government’s missile and drone attack on Israel over the weekend.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesTehran was responding to a strike on April 1 in which seven officers overseeing Iran’s operations in the Middle East died in an attack on the Iranian Embassy complex in Damascus, Syria. Iran said Israeli warplanes had conducted the strike and vowed to retaliate for what it considered an unusually brazen attack.Iranian officials have signaled in recent months that they want to avoid a war with Israel. Officials in Israel and the United States have said that Israel miscalculated with its embassy strike, thinking that Iran would not react strongly. That strike, they said, effectively broke the unwritten rules of engagement in the long confrontation between the two sides. Israel has signaled that it will respond, and Iranian leaders have warned that if it does so, Iran will react forcefully, with deadlier weapons than in the last strike.LebanonInstead of attacking Israel directly, Iran typically goes after it through groups in the region that it supports, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, its most powerful proxy. On Wednesday, Hezbollah claimed responsibility for a cross-border drone and missile attack in northern Israel that the Israeli military said had injured 14 soldiers, six of them severely.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      I.M.F. Sees Steady Growth but Warns of Rising Protectionism

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      The International Monetary Fund offered an upbeat economic outlook but said that new trade barriers and escalating wars could worsen inflation.The global economy is approaching a soft landing after several years of geopolitical and economic turmoil, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday. But it warned that risks remain, including stubborn inflation, the threat of escalating global conflicts and rising protectionism.In its latest World Economic Outlook report, the I.M.F. projected global output to hold steady at 3.2 percent in 2024, unchanged from 2023. Although the pace of the expansion is tepid by historical standards, the I.M.F. said that global economic activity has been surprisingly resilient given that central banks aggressively raised interest rates to tame inflation and wars in Ukraine and the Middle East further disrupt supply chains.The forecasts came as policymakers from around the world began arriving in Washington for the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The outlook is brighter from just a year ago, when the I.M.F. was warning of underlying “turbulence” and a multitude of risks.Although the world economy has proved to be durable over the last year, defying predictions of a recession, there are lingering concerns that price pressures have not been sufficiently contained and that new trade barriers will be erected amid anxiety over a recent surge of cheap Chinese exports.“Somewhat worryingly, progress toward inflation targets has somewhat stalled since the beginning of the year,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the I.M.F.’s chief economist, wrote in an essay that accompanied the report. “Oil prices have been rising recently in part due to geopolitical tensions and services inflation remains stubbornly high.”He added: “Further trade restrictions on Chinese exports could also push up goods inflation.”The gathering is taking place at a time of growing tension between the United States and China over a surge of Chinese green energy products, such as electric vehicles, lithium batteries and solar panels, that are flooding global markets. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen returned last week from a trip to China, where she told her counterparts that Beijing’s industrial policy was harming American workers. She warned that the United States could pursue trade restrictions to protect investments in America’s solar and electric vehicle industries.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Strikes Upend Israel’s Belief About Iran’s Willingness to Fight It Directly

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      Israel had grown used to targeting Iranian officials without head-on retaliation from Iran, an assumption overturned by Iran’s attacks on Saturday.Iran’s unprecedented strikes on Israel this weekend have shaken Israel’s assumptions about its foe, undermining its long-held calculation that Iran would be best deterred by greater Israeli aggression.For years, Israeli officials have argued, both in public and in private, that the harder Iran is hit, the warier it will be about fighting back. Iran’s barrage of more than 300 drones and missiles on Saturday — the first direct attack by Iran on Israel — has overturned that logic.The attack was a response to Israel’s strike earlier this month in Syria that killed seven Iranian military officials there. Analysts said it showed that leaders in Tehran are no longer content with battling Israel through their various proxies, like Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Houthis in Yemen, but instead are prepared to take on Israel directly.“I think we miscalculated,” said Sima Shine, a former head of research for the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency. “The accumulated experience of Israel is that Iran doesn’t have good means to retaliate,” Ms. Shine added. “There was a strong feeling that they don’t want to be involved in the war.”Instead, Iran has created “a completely new paradigm,” Ms. Shine said.Iran’s response ultimately caused little damage in Israel, in large part because Iran had telegraphed its intentions well in advance, giving Israel and its allies several days to prepare a strong defense. Iran also released a statement, even before the attack was over, that it had no further plans to strike Israel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Seeks to Head Off Escalation After Israel’s Successful Defense

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      President Biden and his team, hoping to avoid further escalation leading to a wider war in the Middle East, are advising Israel that its successful defense against Iranian airstrikes constituted a major strategic victory that might not require another round of retaliation, U.S. officials said.The interception of nearly all of the more than 300 drones and missiles fired against Israel on Saturday night demonstrated that Israel had come out ahead in its confrontation with Iran and proved to enemies its ability to protect itself along with its American allies, meaning it did not necessarily need to fire back, the officials said.Whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his government will agree to leave it at that was not immediately clear. Although damage from the attack was relatively light, the scope of the strikes went well beyond the small-bore tit-for-tat shadow war between Iran and Israel in recent years, crossing a red line by firing weapons from Iranian territory into Israeli territory. Had defenses not held, scores or hundreds could have been killed.Emotions were running high among Israeli officials during phone calls with American partners late into the night, and the pressure to fire back was consequently strong. The U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions, stressed that the decision was ultimately up to Israel. Israeli jets early Sunday hit structures in Lebanon controlled by Hezbollah after the Iranian-backed militia sent two explosive drones into Israel, but it was not clear how related that was to the Iranian airstrike.Mr. Biden spoke with Mr. Netanyahu on Saturday after the Iranian attack and repeated his “ironclad commitment” to Israel’s security. While the president did not publicly disclose any advice he offered, in a statement released after the call, he hinted at a desire for restraint.“I told him that Israel demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks — sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel,” Mr. Biden said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More