Biden Orders US Military To Aid Israel, Shoot Down Iranian Missiles; UN Calls For Ceasefire

US president Joe Biden on Tuesday ordered the US military to aid Israel and shoot down Iranian missiles, the White House said.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a ceasefire amid heightened tensions between Israel and Iran.

Israel was under missile attack from Iran on Tuesday, the Israeli military and Iranian state media said, the latest escalation after Israeli raids against Iran-backed militants in Lebanon.

“A short while ago, missiles were launched from Iran towards the State of Israel,” the military said in a statement. Sirens sounded across Israel, with AFP journalists reporting hearing explosions over Jerusalem.

Iran’s official news agency IRNA said it had launched “a missile attack on Tel Aviv”, Israel’s commercial hub.

Its Revolutionary Guards Corps said the attack was in response to Israel’s killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last week as well as the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a Tehran bombing widely blamed on Israel.

Israeli airspace was closed with all flights diverted, a spokesman for the airport authority said.

Iraq and Jordan, while lie between between Iran and Israel, closed their airspace too.

As the missiles made their way to Israel from the east, blasts were heard over the Jordanian capital  Amman, as Israel’s allies moved to intercept them, an AFP correspondent said.

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant had earlier discussed the Iran threat with Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, a statement from his office said.

While Iran-backed groups across the region had already been drawn into the Gaza war, sparked by Palestinian group Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, Tehran had largely refrained from direct attacks on its regional foe.

Early Tuesday, the Israeli military said troops had started “targeted ground raids” in south Lebanon, across Israel’s northern border, though officials have provided few details of the scale of the operation or its timeframe.

The Israeli ground offensive came despite growing calls for de-escalation after a week of air strikes that killed hundreds in Lebanon, including Hassan Nasrallah, the powerful leader of Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

Iran has said Nasrallah’s killing would bring about Israel’s “destruction”, though the foreign ministry said Monday that Tehran would not deploy any troops to confront Israel.

The Pentagon said the United States was boosting its forces in the Middle East by a “few thousand” troops.

(With inputs from AFP)