Iran launches missiles at Israel amid ground invasion of Lebanon

BEIRUT — Iran launched a missile strike Tuesday against Israel, hours after Israel invaded Lebanon with ground troops for the first time in decades.

Israel has vowed to retaliate. Air raids sirens were reported sounding in the country and civilians fled to bomb shelters in response to the incoming Iranian attack, the Israeli military said.

Iran is striking in retaliation for Israel’s steady assault on the Tehran-backed militant organization Hezbollah.

It marked another major escalation of the war engulfing larger parts of the Middle East.

Iran’s strike would be only the second time Iran has directly attacked Israel, preferring usually to fight its archenemy through proxies like Hezbollah. But the damage Israel has inflicted on Hezbollah, including the assassination last week of its top leader, Hassan Nasrallah, became more than Iran could let go unanswered, officials said.

The previous Iranian attack on Israel was in April, when the Islamic Republic launched a barrage of some 300 rockets and drones in response to Israel’s killing of a senior Iranian commander in Syria. But Israel’s allies had advance notice of that attack, and, led by the U.S., scrambled a coalition that included Arab states and succeeded in intercepting nearly all the projectiles. Damage was minimal.

U.S. officials have reason to believe this attack could be different, and it was unclear whether the same coalition could be mustered. Although the officials continue to believe Iran does not want a wider regional war, the country’s leadership is under mounting pressure to respond to Israel’s operations.

“We are watching developments very carefully at this moment,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Tuesday morning when asked about Iran. “The United States is committed to Israel’s defense.”

The fast-moving developments came as Israel moved ground forces backed by tanks into southern Lebanon, vowing a “limited” operation, but raising the specter of another occupation.

It reported scattered firefights around the southern Lebanese villages it was raiding. Israel continued to pound parts of Beirut and other sites with airstrikes that in recent days have killed dozens of people, including Nasrallah.

Israel, through an Arabic-language spokesman using the X social media platform, ordered the evacuation of nearly two dozen towns and villages in southern Lebanon, telling the residents to move northward some 40 miles from the border.

Some of the areas listed for evacuation were near Tyre, south Lebanon’s most populous city, including Rashidiyah, where Bassam Abdo and his son, Khaled, lived.

Khaled stood atop their Citroen van, lashing down overstuffed suitcases with rope. “I’ve left so much stuff behind, but I just took what I needed,” Khaled said, adding that they were heading to Tripoli, Lebanon’s northernmost city.

“I need to get out of here,” Bassam Abdo said. “I’m getting a heart attack from the panic.”

Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif said Israeli troops had not actually penetrated the border, but that Hezbollah fighters were prepared. He said Hezbollah fired medium-range missiles toward central Israel earlier Tuesday.

Israel said the ground offensive began with a covert border crossing overnight under the cover of heavy air and artillery strikes.

Three brigade combat teams that had been fighting together in the Gaza Strip moved to occupy areas in southern Lebanon that had already been heavily damaged by recent Israeli air strikes.

The Israeli army “is conducting limited and targeted raids along Israel’s northern border against the threat that Hezbollah poses to civilians in northern Israel,” army spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said in a statement. “These localized ground raids will target Hezbollah strongholds that threaten Israeli towns, kibbutzim and communities along our border.”

The Biden administration — largly sidelined by Israel as it expanded the conflict with Lebanon in recent days — said it supported Israel’s ground offensive and had received assurances from the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the operation would be limited. Those assurances from Netanyahu have often proven hollow, U.S. officials concede.

Israel’s massive assault on the Gaza Strip was aimed at wiping out the Hamas militant organization that attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 Israeli. It has stretched into a year. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed there, according to Gaza health officials.

This is not the first time Israel and Lebanon have clashed. In 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon in what it described as a mission to root out Palestinian guerrillas. At one point Israeli troops marched on Beirut before eventually pulling back to a 400-square-mile “buffer zone” to, then as now, prevent attacks from Lebanon into northern Israel.

Israel withdrew — nearly two decades later. They fought again in 2006 in a month-long war.