Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday that Israel and the United States would “significantly intensify” their attacks against Iran in the coming days, in statements made just hours after Washington indicated it was considering ending the conflict.
The Iranian leadership would be the target of the attacks, Katz said after consultations with senior military officials at the army headquarters in Tel Aviv, according to his office.
He stated that Israel is determined to continue its campaign against Iran’s power structure, aiming to “decapitate its commanders and destroy its strategic capabilities” until all threats to Israel’s security and US interests in the region are eliminated.
His comments came after US President Donald Trump said on Friday he was considering “terminating” the campaign against Iran, adding that the US was close to achieving its goals in the conflict.
Attacks by Israel and Iran continue
Israel attacked additional targets in Iran and Lebanon on Saturday and intercepted attacks from Iran, the army said.
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The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said rocket attacks were launched from Iran into Israel overnight and into the morning. According to media reports, a kindergarten in the city of Rishon LeZion, southeast of Tel Aviv, was hit, although no one was inside at the time of the attack. It was also reported that Iran used cluster munitions in the attack.
This came after the Israeli military continued to attack Iran and Lebanon overnight.
The US later said its military had struck more than 8,000 targets in Iran since the attacks began.
Among those targets were 130 Iranian vessels, said Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), in a video posted on X. He called the attack “the largest elimination of a navy in a three-week period since World War II.”
He said the military also remains focused on “dismantling Iran’s decades-long threat to the free flow of trade in the Strait of Hormuz.” The US dropped several 5,000-pound (2,268-kilogram) bombs on an underground facility located off the Iranian coast earlier this week, he said.
Tehran was using “the hardened underground facility to discreetly store anti-ship cruise missiles, mobile missile launchers and other equipment that posed a dangerous risk to international shipping,” Cooper said.
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Maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important shipping routes for oil exports, has virtually stopped due to the war with Iran.
Nuclear installation also hit
Iran reported another attack on its Natanz nuclear facility, one of the country’s most important uranium enrichment sites.
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The underground plant was targeted in an attack on Saturday, but no radioactive material was released, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, citing Iranian officials.
There is no danger to the population living near the facility, according to the report.
The White House has said a fundamental objective of the war it launched alongside Israel on February 28 is to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
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Israel considers Iran’s nuclear and missile programs its greatest existential threat.
Earlier this month, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed further damage to the entrance buildings of the underground uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.
The United States and Israel had already bombed Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in June 2025. Following these attacks, President Donald Trump stated that Iranian nuclear facilities had been “completely and utterly destroyed.”
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The IAEA later called on the warring parties to exercise military restraint following the latest attack. It is essential to avoid any risk of nuclear accident, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi wrote in a press release.
Tehran denies having plans to develop nuclear weapons.
Base in Diego Garcia hit
For the first time, Tehran also fired missiles at the remote joint US-UK military base Diego Garcia.
Two ballistic missiles were fired at the military base in the Indian Ocean, according to state television.
However, none of them reached the joint use baseline, the Wall Street Journal and CNN reported, citing senior US officials. One missile failed in flight and the second was intercepted, the sources said. The base is located about 4,000 kilometers southeast of the Iranian coast, twice the officially confirmed range of Iran’s missile arsenal to date.
Iran promises revenge
Iran appeared defiant on Saturday, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ intelligence arm saying it had analyzed the enemy’s “vulnerabilities” and was preparing a new wave of attacks “using new strategies and more advanced systems.”
The Guard also renewed threats of retaliation for attacks on the country’s infrastructure, according to state broadcaster IRIB.
Ali Akbar Velayati, the supreme leader’s foreign policy adviser, was quoted by the ISNA news agency as saying that the US and Israel were “talking so much about victory, as if they were trying to convince themselves of it.”
He added that the world would be different after the end of the war — “multipolar and with Iran as the main axis of the Islamic pole.”
(with international agencies)
