ISTANBUL 

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed to take vengeance against Israel after Iran was hit by strikes targeting its nuclear facilities and long-range missile capabilities Friday.

“The Zionist regime has committed a crime in our dear country today at dawn with its satanic, bloodstained hands,” Khamenei said on X, saying that Israel “has revealed its malicious nature even more than before by targeting residential areas.”

In response to their attacks, Khamenei said the “regime should anticipate a severe punishment.”

“By God’s grace, the powerful arm of the Islamic Republic’s Armed Forces won’t let them go unpunished,” he said.

Several senior Iranian military commanders and veteran nuclear scientists were assassinated in large-scale Israeli airstrikes that targeted Tehran and other cities across Iran in the early hours of Friday, according to Iranian state media.