Mena Today

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, has been an inveterate foe of the West, crushing internal opposition while supporting proxy forces across the region in the hope of making his country respected and feared.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi called UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan Saturday to express Cairo's "condemnation and strong denunciation" of Iranian attacks targeting the UAE and several Arab states.

Lebanon's Hezbollah expressed solidarity with Iran on Saturday as it came under attack from the United States and Israel, warning in a statement of dire consequences for the region without saying whether it would get involved.

Among the first targets in U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on Saturday was the headquarters of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, an inveterate foe of the West who has crushed internal opposition while supporting proxy forces across the region.

Iran's Defence Minister Amir Nasirzadeh and Revolutionary Guards commander Mohammed Pakpour are believed to have been killed in Israeli attacks, two sources familiar with Israel's military operations and one regional source said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi may have been killed in a targeted operation, according to multiple sources in Tehran, Mena Today has learned. 

Four people were killed and several others wounded when an Iranian missile struck a building in the southern Syrian city of Sweida on Saturday, the state news agency SANA said.

Like clockwork, Emmanuel Macron rushed to his keyboard Saturday to remind the world that he exists. As US and Israeli strikes reshaped the Middle East in real time, France's increasingly irrelevant president issued yet another carefully worded statement that will change absolutely nothing.

Global airlines suspended flights across the Middle East on Saturday after the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran, plunging the region into a renewed military confrontation.

Several Gulf Arab states said they were targeted by Iranian missiles on Saturday after Tehran pledged to retaliate against strikes by the United States and Israel, bringing conflict to a part of the Arab world that prides itself on relative safety. 

For decades, the Islamic Republic of Iran has said, loudly and repeatedly, that it wants Israel wiped from the face of the earth. The world mostly nodded, filed the rhetoric away, and moved on. Israel could not afford to.

Long queues formed at gas stations and many Iranians began heading out of cities in search of safety, witnesses said, as an attack by the United States and Israel on Iran spread fear and panic throughout the country.