Israel said on Monday it hit a petrochemical plant in Iran’s southwest, along with strikes elsewhere on military targets, after U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from further attacks.
In the first hit on an energy site inside Iran since the April 8 ceasefire, Israel said it struck targets at the Mahshahr petrochemical complex, while a provincial official told Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency parts of the plant were damaged.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis pledged to stop Israel’s maritime navigation in the Red Sea, and said it was behind the first missile attack on Israel since the ceasefire, which spurred the Israeli military to activate aerial defence systems.
“We consider all enemy movements to be legitimate military targets for our armed forces,” the Houthis added in a statement.
Hours earlier, Trump had said new strikes by Israel and Iran would not affect his administration’s peace talks with Tehran, adding that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “doesn’t call the shots.”
Trump has leaned on Israel to stop its attacks in Lebanon to allow room for a deal to end the wider war with Iran, including rebuking Netanyahu with obscenities in a phone call last week.
However, earlier on Sunday Israel launched strikes in the Beirut area for the first time since the U.S. announced a truce plan for Lebanon last week.
Iran fired salvos of missiles at Israeli targets in retaliation, but Trump insisted that an agreement to end the wider war remained within reach.
“It’s not going to have any impact on the deal,” Trump told the Financial Times. “I call the shots. I call all the shots. He (Netanyahu) doesn’t call the shots.”
A few hours later, Israel’s defence forces said they had struck Iranian military targets. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Israel used air-launched ballistic missiles in its attacks.
Iran had fired 11 ballistic missiles at Israel, its ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, said on X, adding, “Everyone has had enough of this maniacal Iranian regime.”
Israel was targeting Iran’s surface-to-surface missile launch sites and infrastructure facilities, he added.
The latest hostilities drove oil prices up more than 3% on Monday, with benchmark Brent futures back above $96 a barrel.
In a brief statement, Israel’s defence forces said they struck several targets at Mahshahr.
Authorities there ordered all employees to evacuate, but there were no injuries and damage was being assessed, Iran’s state media reported, adding that five production lines at the complex had been hit since the Iran war began on February 28.
The IRGC said it had targeted Ramat David air base, near Nazareth. The Israeli military said it identified missiles launched from Iran and its defence systems had intercepted them.
Trump spoke with Netanyahu by telephone from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, for a little less than half an hour on Sunday, an Israeli official said, without giving details.
