The Israeli Air Force has destroyed the Natanz nuclear facility in the massive surprise attacks early Friday morning.

Multiple waves of Israeli strikes were reported throughout Iran for several hours, starting at around 3 a.m. and into the morning. Over 200 Israeli Air Force aircraft were involved in the opening strikes, and fighter jets dropped over 330 munitions on some 100 targets, the IDF said.

Blasts were reported in Natanz, the site of a key nuclear facility, as well as in and around the capital Tehran.

Netanyahu and Iranian state TV confirmed that one target of the strikes was the Natanz enrichment facility, one of two underground nuclear sites in the country, the other being at Fordo.

Iran’s Isfahan nuclear site and Fordow fuel enrichment plant have not been affected, Rafael Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s chief, said in a statement, citing updates from the Iranian authorities.

Iran has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency that there has been no increase in radiation levels at the Natanz nuclear site, and that the Bushehr nuclear power plant has not been targeted, Rafael Grossi, the organization’s chief, said in a statement.

The commander in chief of Iran’s military, Mohammad Bagheri, was killed during the Israeli strikes on Friday morning, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported. Bagheri was Iran’s second highest commander after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His death was earlier reported by semi-official Iranian media.

Also killed was Gen. Hossein Salami, commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iran’s primary military force, Gen. Gholamali Rashid, deputy commander in chief of the armed forces, and nuclear Scientists: Fereydoun Abbasi, the former head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, a theoretical physicist and president of the Islamic Azad University in Tehran.

Iran responded by firing around 100 drones at Israel. The IDF announced that all of them had been successfully intercepted outside of Israel.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)