Israel threatens ‘Tehran will burn’ after Iran revenge strikes

Sto­ry by Dan Mor­ri­son, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON − Israel’s defense min­is­ter warned that “Tehran will burn” if Iran con­tin­ues retal­ia­to­ry strikes on the Israeli “home­front,” as fears grew of a long, dis­rup­tive con­flict between the region­al arch-ene­mies.

Iran and Israel con­tin­ued trad­ing mis­siles and airstrikes on June 14, a day after Israel launched a sweep­ing air offen­sive against its old ene­my, killing com­man­ders and sci­en­tists and bomb­ing nuclear sites in a bid to pre­vent Tehran from build­ing a nuclear weapon.

Short­ly before 10pm local time, Iran’s state TV said “heavy and destruc­tive” attacks against Israel were devel­op­ing.

“Our pilots over the skies of Tehran,” Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu said from an undis­closed loca­tion. “We will strike every site, every tar­get of the aya­tol­lahs’ regime and what they have felt so far is noth­ing com­pared with what they will be hand­ed in the com­ing days.”

Iran­ian state TV report­ed that around 60 peo­ple, includ­ing 20 chil­dren, had been killed in an attack on a hous­ing com­plex, with more strikes report­ed across the coun­try as Israel said it had attacked more than 150 tar­gets.

Air raid sirens sent Israelis into shel­ters as mis­siles streaked across the sky and inter­cep­tors rose to meet them, killing at least three peo­ple. An Israeli offi­cial said Iran had fired around 200 bal­lis­tic mis­siles in four waves.

Despite U.S. help in shoot­ing down incom­ing mis­siles, Iran­ian fire hit res­i­den­tial dis­tricts. Israeli Defense Min­is­ter Israel Katz said Iran had crossed a line.

“If Khamenei con­tin­ues to fire mis­siles at the Israeli home front, Tehran will burn,” he said in a state­ment, sin­gling out Iran­ian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has laud­ed Israel’s strikes and warned of much worse to come unless Iran quick­ly accepts the sharp down­grad­ing of its nuclear pro­gram the U.S. has demand­ed in talks that had been due to resume on June 15.

But with Israel say­ing its oper­a­tion could last weeks, and urg­ing Ira­ni­ans to rise up against their Islamist cler­i­cal rulers, fears have grown of a region­al war drag­ging in out­side pow­ers, with glob­al eco­nom­ic and finan­cial reper­cus­sions.

Britain is mov­ing addi­tion­al mil­i­tary assets, includ­ing fight­er jets, to the Mid­dle East, Prime Min­is­ter Keir Starmer said on June 14.

Iran vowed to avenge the June 13 Israeli onslaught, which gut­ted Tehran’s nuclear and mil­i­tary lead­er­ship and dam­aged nuclear plants and mil­i­tary bases, killing 78 peo­ple − includ­ing civil­ians, accord­ing to Iran’s U.N. envoy.

Tehran warned Israel’s allies that their region­al mil­i­tary bases would come under fire too if they help shoot down Iran­ian mis­siles, Iran­ian state tele­vi­sion report­ed.

Also on June 14, Iraq called on the Unit­ed States to pre­vent Israeli air­craft from breach­ing Iraqi air­space to car­ry out attacks against Iran, cit­ing bilat­er­al agree­ments and inter­na­tion­al law.

“The Iraqi gov­ern­ment urges the Unit­ed States to uphold its respon­si­bil­i­ties under the agree­ments signed between the two coun­tries and pre­vent air­craft belong­ing to the Zion­ist enti­ty from once again vio­lat­ing Iraqi air­space,” mil­i­tary spokesman Sabah al-Numan said in a state­ment.

Iran’s allies falter

Iran’s own ally, the Yemeni Houthi group, fired mis­siles at Israel the night of June 13; at least one appeared to go astray, injur­ing five Pales­tini­ans, includ­ing three chil­dren, in the Israeli-occu­pied West Bank, the Pales­tin­ian Red Cres­cent said.

How­ev­er, 20 months of war in Gaza and a con­flict in Lebanon last year have dec­i­mat­ed Tehran’s strongest allies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbol­lah in Lebanon, reduc­ing its abil­i­ty to project pow­er across the region along with its options for retal­i­a­tion.

“Iran spent decades build­ing up its so-called Axis of Resis­tance that was sup­posed to be the van­guard that made Israel think twice about attack­ing Iran,” Mohamad Bazzi, direc­tor of New York Uni­ver­si­ty’s Mid­dle East cen­ter, told USA TODAY. “That’s dis­ap­peared.”

Gulf Arab states that have long mis­trust­ed Iran but fear com­ing under attack in any wider con­flict have urged calm as the price of crude rose by about 7% on June 13.

Blasts and fear in Israel and Iran

A res­cue work­er walks past a dam­aged vehi­cle at an impact site fol­low­ing mis­sile attack from Iran on Israel, in Ramat Gan, Israel, June 14, 2025.© Ronen Zvu­lun, REUTERS

Iran’s overnight fusil­lade includ­ed hun­dreds of bal­lis­tic mis­siles and drones, an Israeli offi­cial said. Three peo­ple, includ­ing a man and a woman, were killed and dozens wound­ed, the ambu­lance ser­vice said.

The Israeli mil­i­tary said it had inter­cept­ed sur­face-to-sur­face Iran­ian mis­siles as well as drones, and that two rock­ets had been fired from Gaza.

With Iran’s air defences heav­i­ly dam­aged, Israeli Air Force chief Tomer Bar said “the road to Iran has been paved.”

In Iran, explo­sions were heard overnight across the cap­i­tal, state media report­ed.

A man uses his smart­phone in front of destroyed cars at an impact site fol­low­ing mis­sile attack from Iran on Israel, in Ris­hon LeZion, Israel, June 14, 2025.© Ammar Awad, REUTERS

Peo­ple look at fire burn­ing at South Pars gas field, in Ton­bak, Bushehr Province, Iran, in this screen grab from a hand­out video released on June 14, 2025.© UGC, via REUTERS

Gas pro­duc­tion was par­tial­ly sus­pend­ed at part of Iran’s off­shore South Pars field — the world’s largest gas field — fol­low­ing an Israeli attack on June 14, the semi-offi­cial Tas­nim news agency report­ed.

Iran nuclear sites damaged

Israel sees Iran’s nuclear pro­gramme as a threat to its exis­tence, and said the bom­bard­ment was designed to avert the last steps to pro­duc­tion of a nuclear weapon — even though U.S. intel­li­gence says it has seen no sign that this is immi­nent.

“We were at the 90th minute,” Netanyahu said. “There was a race by Iran’s nuclear teams to bring about the cre­ation of nuclear bombs, atom­ic weapons intend­ed for the destruc­tion of Israel.”

Israel said it had killed nine Iran­ian nuclear sci­en­tists, and that the dam­age to the nuclear facil­i­ties at Esfa­han and Natanz would take “more than a few weeks” to repair.

The Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency said Israel hit four “crit­i­cal build­ings at Esfa­han nuclear site” on June 13, includ­ing “the Ura­ni­um Con­ver­sion Facil­i­ty and the Fuel Plate Fab­ri­ca­tion Plant.” No radi­a­tion leaks were detect­ed.

A satel­lite image shows the Natanz nuclear facil­i­ty in Iran in this hand­out image dat­ed Jan­u­ary 24, 2025.© Maxar Tech­nolo­gies, via REUTERS

Tehran insists the pro­gram is entire­ly civil­ian in line with its oblig­a­tions under the nuclear Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty (NPT) and that it does not seek an atom­ic bomb.

How­ev­er, it has repeat­ed­ly hid­den parts of its pro­gram from inter­na­tion­al inspec­tors, and the Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency has report­ed it’s in vio­la­tion of the NPT.

Israel, which is not an NPT sig­na­to­ry and is wide­ly under­stood to have devel­oped a nuclear bomb, has said it can­not let its main region­al foe gain atom­ic weapons.

Iran­ian talks with the Unit­ed States to resolve the nuclear dis­pute have stut­tered this year.

Oman’s for­eign min­istry said June 15 talks between the U.S. and Iran were can­celed. A U.S. offi­cial told USA TODAY Wash­ing­ton remained com­mit­ted to nego­ti­a­tions.

A drone pho­to shows the dam­age over res­i­den­tial homes at the impact site fol­low­ing mis­sile attack from Iran on Israel, in Ramat Gan, Israel June 14, 2025.© YAIR PALTI, REUTERS

“The oth­er side (the U.S.) act­ed in a way that makes dia­logue mean­ing­less. You can­not claim to nego­ti­ate and at the same time divide work by allow­ing the Zion­ist regime (Israel) to tar­get Iran’s ter­ri­to­ry,” state media quot­ed for­eign min­istry spokesper­son Esmaeil Baghaei as say­ing.