Israeli warplanes and standoff cruise missiles struck at least 27 targets across Iran in a sweeping overnight operation that ranged from uranium-enrichment infrastructure near Natanz to the country’s largest oil-export terminal at Bandar Abbas, military officials in Tel Aviv said Saturday, in what the Israel Defense Forces described as the most extensive single operation against Iranian territory since the war began five weeks ago.

The strikes, executed in three coordinated waves beginning shortly after midnight local time, were ordered Friday night by Israel’s security cabinet in response to the Iranian missile barrage that killed 16 people in central Israel on Thursday, including 11 in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan, according to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office. Operation Black Iris, as the IDF designated the campaign, was carried out by more than 90 aircraft, including F-35I “Adir” stealth fighters, F-15I strike platforms and refueling tankers operating from bases inside Israel and a forward dispersal site believed to be in northwestern Saudi Arabia, defense officials said.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, addressing reporters at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv Saturday morning, said the targets included the surface support buildings and electrical substations serving the Natanz enrichment complex, a centrifuge-component workshop at Karaj, two IRGC missile command bunkers in Lorestan and Khuzestan provinces, and infrastructure at the Bandar Abbas refinery and adjacent oil-export jetties. Halevi said all aircraft had returned safely and that “the operational objectives have, in the main, been achieved.”

“The regime in Tehran chose this week to fire 180 missiles at our cities and hospitals,” Halevi said. “Tonight, Israel answered. The answer was lawful, proportionate and very precise. It will not be the last answer if Iran continues down this road.”

Iranian state television confirmed multiple strikes but disputed the targets and the damage. Brig. Gen. Ramezan Sharif, an IRGC spokesman, said in a televised statement read shortly after dawn in Tehran that “Zionist aggression” had killed 41 people, including civilian workers at a petrochemical facility and a number of conscript soldiers at the Khuzestan base. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, in a separate statement carried by IRNA, said no radioactive release had been detected at any of its facilities and that the Natanz enrichment hall, which is buried beneath roughly eight meters of reinforced concrete, “remained intact and operational.”

Satellite imagery analyzed by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security and released Saturday afternoon showed extensive damage to surface structures at Natanz, including what the institute identified as the destruction of two transformer yards and the centrifuge assembly building on the southern edge of the complex. David Albright, the institute’s president, said in a briefing that the strikes appeared aimed at “degrading Iran’s ability to bring new cascades online for many months, without producing the kind of contamination that would internationalize the conflict overnight.”

Within hours of the operation, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi recalled the Iranian delegation that had arrived in Islamabad on Friday for the Pakistani-Saudi-Egyptian mediation effort, saying in a statement that Iran “cannot conduct serious diplomacy while its sovereignty is being violated by the hour.” The delegation’s lead negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi, departed Islamabad for Tehran on Saturday morning, according to two Pakistani officials briefed on the talks.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, in a brief appearance outside the Foreign Office in Islamabad, said the mediators were “in continuous contact with all parties” and that he had spoken twice overnight with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan and once with Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty. Dar said the talks were “paused but not suspended” and that an Egyptian-Saudi delegation would travel to Tehran early next week if Iranian authorities accepted.

“Restoring the conditions for dialogue is now the urgent task,” Dar said. “Everyone in this region, and beyond it, understands what happens if those conditions do not return.”

In Washington, the White House said President Donald Trump had been briefed on the Israeli operation in advance but had not authorized any U.S. military participation. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a written statement, said the United States had “moved additional defensive assets into position to protect our forces and our partners” and that the president would convene a National Security Council meeting Saturday afternoon. Trump, in a Truth Social post just after 7 a.m., wrote: “ISRAEL DID WHAT IT HAD TO DO. AYATOLLAH MADE HIS BED. AMERICAN FORCES STAY READY.”

Two senior administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations, said the Pentagon had repositioned a second Patriot battery to the U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad and ordered the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, currently in the eastern Mediterranean, to begin a transit toward the Red Sea. The officials said no decision had been made on whether to expand direct U.S. strikes against Iranian targets in response to the Thursday attack on Al-Asad Air Base that killed four American soldiers and pushed the cumulative U.S. military death toll of the war past 290.

Reaction from European capitals was sharply divided. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in a statement issued from Berlin, said Israel had “the right and the duty to defend its civilian population” but urged “the greatest possible restraint with respect to civilian infrastructure.” French President Emmanuel Macron, addressing reporters during a visit to Marseille, called the strikes on the Bandar Abbas oil terminal “a particularly serious step” and said France would push for an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council on Monday. China’s foreign ministry condemned the operation as “a dangerous expansion of the conflict” and called for an immediate ceasefire.

Oil markets, which had spent much of the past week absorbing the OPEC+ supply increase agreed in Vienna on Tuesday, reversed sharply on the news. Brent crude, which had settled near $109 on Friday, surged to $118.40 in early Asian trading before easing toward $114 by midday in Europe. “The Bandar Abbas hit changes the calculus on what ‘spare capacity’ actually means,” said Layla Hassan, a Beirut-based regional energy analyst. “OPEC can pump more barrels, but it cannot un-bomb a loading terminal.”

Saudi and Emirati air defenses intercepted three projectiles overnight, including one Houthi-launched cruise missile aimed at a target near the Saudi city of Yanbu, the Saudi Defense Ministry said. No casualties were reported on either coast of the Gulf.

By late Saturday, Israeli officials had begun to brace publicly for an Iranian counterstrike. Home Front Command Maj. Gen. Rafi Milo, in remarks to Channel 12, urged Israelis to “treat the coming 72 hours with the seriousness they deserve” and said municipal authorities had been ordered to ensure that bomb shelters in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Be’er Sheva were fully provisioned through the weekend.

Israeli officials said additional details about the operation, including a fuller accounting of the targets struck and the munitions used, would be released in the coming days.