Iran has launched missile strikes on a number of US airbases as Tehran seeks revenge for Donald Trump's strikes earlier this week. The announcement was made on state television as martial music played. A caption on the screen called it “a mighty and successful response by the armed forces of Iran to America’s aggression.”

The attack came shortly after Qatar closed its airspace as a precaution amid threats from Iran. Just before the explosions, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on the social platform X: “We neither initiated the war nor seeking it. But we will not leave invasion to the great Iran without answer.”

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has confirmed a strike on the US Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar as a direct response to US attacks on nuclear facilities in the Islamic Republic. According to the Tasnim news agency, the IRGC warned that US bases in the Middle East were now points of “vulnerability”.

The IRGC said it “will never leave any aggression against its sovereignty, territorial integrity, or national security unanswered”.

In the past, Iran has threatened American forces at Al Udeid Air Base, which hosts the forward headquarters of the US military’s Central Command. Qatar, across the Persian Gulf from Iran, maintains diplomatic relations with Iran and shares a massive offshore natural gas field with Tehran.

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