Why has Iran attacked Israel?
Iran launched drones and missiles towards Israel after vowing retaliation for a deadly strike on its consulate in the Syrian capital Damascus.
Israel has not said it carried out the consulate strike, but is widely believed to have been behind it.
It is the first time that Iran has attacked Israel directly.
Previously Israel and Iran had been engaged in a years-long shadow war - attacking each other's assets without admitting responsibility.
Those attacks have ratcheted up considerably during the current war in Gaza sparked by the Palestinian group Hamas's assault on nearby Israeli communities last October.
Why are Israel and Iran enemies?
The two countries were allies until the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, which brought in a regime that has used opposing Israel as a key part of its ideology.
Iran does not recognise Israel's right to exist and seeks its eradication.
The country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has previously called Israel a "cancerous tumour" that "will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed".
Israel believes that Iran poses an existential threat as evidenced by Tehran's rhetoric, its build-up of proxy forces sworn to Israel's destruction, its funding and arming of Palestinian groups including Hamas and of the Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah, and what it believes is Iran's secret pursuit of nuclear weapons, though Iran denies seeking to build a nuclear bomb.
Iran wanted to hit back after attack on consulate
Iran says Saturday night's bombardment of Israel is a response to the 1 April air strike on an Iranian consulate building in the Syrian capital Damascus, which killed senior Iranian commanders.
Iran blames Israel for the air strike, which it saw as a violation of its sovereignty. Israel has not said it carried it out but is widely assumed to have done so.
Thirteen people were killed, including Brig Gen Mohammad Reza Zahedi - a senior commander in the Quds force, the overseas branch of Iran's elite Republican Guards (IRGC). He had been a key figure in the Iranian operation to arm the Lebanese Shia armed group Hezbollah.
What message is Iran sending through its attack?
"We blocked. We intercepted. Together we will win," was how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assessed things.
But Tom Fletcher, a foreign policy advisor to several UK prime ministers and a former UK ambassador to Lebanon, said the Iranian salvo was a "chilling signal of Iran's capability and reach."
ISRAEL says" it will respond to IRAN'S Attack as world leaders urge restraint."
Israel’s military chief said Monday that the country will respond after Iran launched an attack involving hundreds of drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. World leaders are urging Israel not to retaliate.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says “all sides must show restraint” to avoid a rising spiral of violence in the Middle East. French President Emmanuel Macron said Paris will try to “convince Israel that we must not respond by escalating.”
The Iranian attack on Saturday marked the first time Iran has launched a direct military assault on Israel, despite decades of enmity dating back to the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The attack happened less than two weeks after a suspected Israeli strike in Syria that killed two Iranian generals in an Iranian consular building.
An Israeli military spokesperson said that 99% of the drones and missiles launched by Iran were intercepted.
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