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      Why Did Israel Attack Iran?

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      Israel carried out a series of airstrikes against Iran on Saturday, the Israeli military said.The strikes, which residents in the capital, Tehran, reported hearing, came weeks after Iran fired a wave of ballistic missiles at Israel, forcing millions of Israelis to take cover in bomb shelters. Iran said it fired the missiles at Israel in response to Israel’s killing an Iranian commander and several leaders of Iranian-backed groups in the region.The recent exchanges between Israel and Iran have bucked both countries’ longstanding practice of avoiding direct military clashes.Information about how the strikes were carried out and what they targeted is still emerging.But here’s a look at everything we know about the Israeli military action against Iran and the events that brought the countries to this point.Here’s what you need to know:What happened?How have Israel and Iran arrived at this point?What were Israel’s potential targets?What are Israel’s military capabilities?What is the U.S. government’s stance?What happened?The Israeli military said in a statement at 2:30 a.m. on Saturday that it was “conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran,” adding that it was acting in response to more than a year of attacks on Israel by Iran and its allies across the Middle East. It has rarely, if ever, acknowledged Israeli military activity on Iranian territory.Residents of Tehran reported hearing explosions in and around the city.Israel did not immediately say where or how the strikes were being carried out. More

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      Zelensky Outlines Ukraine’s ‘Victory Plan’ to EU Leaders

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      President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine made an urgent plea in Brussels, though it’s unclear to what extent the officials gathered there will go along with it.President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine told leaders of the European Union’s 27 member states in Brussels on Thursday that his country desperately needed their support for his plan to end the war, which he maintains could happen no later than next year, but which it is unclear how much Ukraine’s allies will embrace.Mr. Zelensky made the impassioned plea on his latest trip abroad as he tries to attract sustained international support for Ukraine, two and a half years into the war, and as Ukrainian forces steadily lose ground to Russian troops. He had hoped to present the plan to European leaders in Germany earlier in the month, but that gathering was postponed when President Biden canceled his participation to deal with the effects of Hurricane Milton.“You all know Russia’s psychology,” Mr. Zelensky told E.U. leaders on Thursday. “Russia will resort to diplomacy only when it sees that it cannot achieve anything by force.”Mr. Zelensky is scheduled to speak at a news conference with Mark Rutte, the head of NATO, later on Thursday and will make the case for Ukraine’s accession into the military alliance — a key point in his proposals.The Ukrainian leader acknowledged in a news conference on Thursday that the United States was wary that his country’s accession to NATO had the potential to drag the United States directly into the war. But he said, “Invitation to NATO is not at all crossing any red lines, and crossing red lines with whom — with a murderer?”Mr. Zelensky’s strategy, which he refers to as his “victory plan,” also calls for the West to lift restrictions on Kyiv’s use of Western-delivered missiles to strike ammunition depots and other military facilities inside Russia, and to share more satellite data that Ukraine can use to identify and strike Russian targets.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 Likely to Have Enough Weapons for Multiple Conflicts

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      Over the last week alone, Israel launched more than 2,000 airstrikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon and continued its near-daily bombings against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Its air defenses also fended off attacks, in one instance intercepting a ballistic missile headed for Tel Aviv.And there are no signs of the onslaught slowing. “We’re not stopping, while simultaneously preparing plans for the next phases,” the Israeli military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said on Wednesday.But how long can Israel keep it up?Military and weapons experts say that is not clear. Israel, like many countries, is highly secretive about the weapons in its stockpile, and government spokespeople who vigorously safeguard that information did not respond to requests for comment.Yet there are several reasons why experts believe Israel could outlast its adversaries in its two-front offensive, even while defending itself from approaching strikes. Israel’s defense industry churned out so many weapons last year that it was able to export some, even despite the war in Gaza beginning in October. The United States has sent Israel at least tens of thousands of missiles, bombs and artillery rounds in recent years.And given the threats it has faced, Israel has almost certainly built up its stockpiles to sustain multiple conflicts at once — especially if Iran rallies its allied groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen to strike at the same time.“It will not run out, because in the Middle East, you cannot run out of weapons,” said Yehoshua Kalisky, a military technology expert at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “The leaders know how to calculate the amount of weapons that are needed, and what they would have to have in the stockpile, because in this jungle you have to be strong.”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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      Videos From Kiryat Bialik Show Hezbollah Missile Striking Residential Area

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      A missile fired by Hezbollah slammed into a residential neighborhood in the Israeli town of Kiryat Bialik on Sunday morning, setting cars and a building ablaze and blowing out the windows of nearby apartments, numerous videos verified by The New York Times show.The missile was part of a large overnight barrage that Israel’s military said included around 150 rockets, cruise missiles and drones. Air defenses intercepted most, according to the military, but Kiryat Bialik, near the city of Haifa, suffered a direct hit.A dashcam video recorded inside a parked car in a densely populated neighborhood of the town captured the sound of loud booms before a missile was seen exploding with a flash and smoke around 30 yards away.A second video showed at least two vehicles engulfed in flames and a building next to them on fire, as people ran toward the vehicles and sprayed extinguishers. “Firefighters are on the other side,” one person says. “Get closer, get closer.”Across the street from the strike, a resident filmed inside an upper-floor apartment. The force of the blast shattered the apartment’s windows, scattered glass across the floor and kitchen countertops and knocked photographs off a wall, the video shows.A later video showed the scene after the blaze was extinguished. A large hose lay on the ground, the cars were smoldering and smoke was rising from a window of the building that had been alight but was now blackened. Debris had pockmarked the walls of other buildings in the area. More

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      Ukraine Strikes Two More Russian Munition Depots

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      Strikes on weapons arsenals are crucial to weaken Moscow’s overwhelming superiority in battlefield firepower, analysts said.Ukraine said on Saturday that it had struck two large ammunition depots deep inside Russia overnight. It was the second such attack in less than a week as Kyiv seeks to escalate hits on Russian military bases and warehouses to try to disrupt Moscow’s military logistics and slow its troops’ advance on the battlefield.The strikes announced on Saturday targeted ammunition depots near the towns of Toropets, in northwestern Russia, and Tikhoretsk, in the country’s southwest. The facilities are both more than 200 miles from Ukrainian-controlled territory, and one has been identified as a major storage facility for munitions Russia has acquired from North Korea.The General Staff of the Ukrainian Army said in a statement that its forces had struck both depots, but it stopped short of specifying the types of weapons used in the attack, saying only that the arsenals had been “hit by fire,” raising the possibility that it had used a new kind of weapon.The attack came as Kyiv has been pressing its allies for weeks to let it use powerful, Western-delivered missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia. That authorization has yet to be granted, according to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and in the meantime his country has sought to modify missiles and drones already in its arsenal for long-range use.Moscow has not directly acknowledged the strikes on the depots, but regional authorities said that a drone attack on Tikhoretsk had “caused a fire that spread to explosive objects” and triggered detonations. Some 1,200 residents were evacuated from the area. The Russian state news agency Tass reported that a drone attack near Toropets had forced the evacuation of a train station and the suspension of traffic on a highway.NASA satellites detected multiple fires at the two depots on Saturday. The attack came four days after another ammunition depot near Toropets was hit by Ukrainian drones, causing a huge explosion, with videos showing large fireballs lighting up the night sky.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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      Ukraine Wants Long-Range Weapons. Here’s a Look at What They Are.

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      Much of the public discourse about arming Ukraine has revolved around whether the United States will send “long range” weapons. But that can mean different things.There are roughly 500 miles between Kyiv and Moscow.The United States has weapons that can fly much farther than that, but it is unlikely to supply them to Ukraine for fear that an attack on the Russian capital with American weapons might spark a third world war.So within that 500-mile range the Biden administration has been pushed repeatedly to give Kyiv weapons that can hit targets as far away as possible. Discussion among Ukraine’s supporters often centers on calls for “long range” weapons — a term with no real military definition, but that has an emotional pull Ukrainian leaders have used to pressure the White House for ever more capable munitions.Over two and half years of war, “long range” has evolved in the public forum to describe a host of increasingly advanced U.S. weapons. The trend began soon after Russia’s 2022 invasion, when U.S. government officials first used the term to apply to …ArtillerySeveral 155-millimeter howitzer shells waiting to be fired in Ukraine’s Donetsk region in March.Nicole Tung for The New York TimesThe United States has sent Ukraine the longest-range artillery pieces in its arsenal: 155-millimeter howitzers, which can fire 100-pound shells at targets about 20 miles away. Each shell contains about 24 pounds of explosives.Since the beginning of the war, the United States has shipped three million M795 artillery shells to Ukraine for the weapon to fire. That model can be fitted with a guidance kit that steers the projectile to its target, though there is no evidence to suggest the Pentagon has sent those devices to Kyiv.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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      Houthis Launch Missile at Central Israel

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      The rare attack was an illustration of the evolving conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Iranian proxies.The Houthi militia in Yemen claimed responsibility on Sunday for a rare missile attack on Israel, the second time in two months that the Iranian-backed group has successfully penetrated the skies over the central part of the country.The assault was the latest illustration of the evolving conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Iranian proxies, which have mounted attacks on Israeli territory in what they have said is solidarity with Palestinians under bombardment in Gaza. It also demonstrated the military capabilities of the Houthis, based hundreds of miles from Israel on the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula.Air-raid sirens blared in dozens of towns and villages in central Israel around 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, sending people rushing to fortified safe rooms and bomb shelters.The Israeli military initially said the Houthis had fired a surface-to-surface missile that landed in an “open area” and that no casualties were reported. In a follow-up statement, the military said an initial inquiry indicated the missile had “fragmented midair” and that it was reviewing its attempts to intercept the strike.Yahya Sarea, a Houthi military spokesman, said the armed group had fired a ballistic missile at what he claimed was a military target in central Israel. His claims could not be independently verified.“The enemy should expect more strikes and quality operations,” Mr. Sarea said in a televised statement.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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      D.E.I. in College, Attacked and Defended

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      More from our inbox:Why Trump Doesn’t Want Another DebateTrump’s Mental FitnessCancel the Sentinel Missile ProgramA Walker in Manhattan Eli DurstTo the Editor:Re “D.E.I. Is Not Working in Colleges. We Need a New Approach,” by Paul Brest and Emily J. Levine (Opinion guest essay, Sept. 5):Mr. Brest and Dr. Levine underscore the importance of inclusion for all students’ academic success. I agree: For students to succeed, they must have access to a rigorous learning environment in which they also feel they matter.But I disagree with the professors on the history and roles of diversity offices that are responsible for fostering such a sense of belonging. Diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in higher education are mission-driven, evidence-backed, research-informed and tailored to meet the particular needs of each campus.These practices seek to bring people together and collaboratively eliminate barriers to success, and they have evolved with legislative and judicial efforts to address decades of discrimination against protected categories under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.Given the complexities of differing institutional types, historical legacies and current contexts, the solution includes acknowledging that we live in a pluralist society, that we can value differences as a community of learners, and that doing so is not contrary to academic freedom and critical thinking.There is work ahead to ensure we can continue to meet the needs of our ever-evolving communities. There always will be work ahead; the pursuit of progress is, by definition, unending.Paulette Granberry RussellWashingtonThe writer is the president and C.E.O. of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education.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