April 19, 2024 - Iran targeted in aerial attack

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Israeli counterpart on Friday, according to a readout from the Pentagon.

This comes one day after Israel carried out strikes in Iran. The readout makes no mention of the Israeli strikes, and the Biden administration has been tight-lipped following the actions. 

Austin and Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant discussed “regional stability,” as well as the ongoing war in Gaza, according to the Pentagon.

Austin also spoke with Gallant on Thursday before the strikes took place. The readout of the earlier call had slightly more information, saying the two discussed “Iran’s destabilizing actions in the Middle East.”

In a previous call, Austin had asked Gallant for Israel to notify the US before taking any action in retaliation for a massive Iranian barrage fired at Israel last weekend.

The scope of Israel’s military response to Iran’s first-ever direct attack on the country remains murky. Israeli officials have yet to publicly acknowledge responsibility for reported overnight explosions in parts of Iran on Friday. Tehran has dismissed these as attacks by “tiny drones” that were shot down by its air defense systems.

Iran may be downplaying what was likely to have been a significant but limited Israeli attack, but that seems to be secondary to the larger forces at play. What is plain to see is that both Iran and Israel are keen to wrap up the most dangerous escalation between the two regional powerhouses to date.

This month’s dramatic escalation, which kicked off with an apparent Israeli airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, followed by a largely foiled Iranian attack of over 300 airborne weapons on Israel, seems to have given way to a rapid climbdown. Shortly after the Friday morning attack in Iran, a regional intelligence source told CNN that Iran was not expected to respond further, and that the direct state-to-state strikes between the two enemy states were over.

The latest flare-up brought the stakes into sharp focus, but it also exposed the limits of a direct confrontation between Iran and Israel.

Remember: What happens between Iran and Israel rarely stays between Iran and Israel. The region is deeply intertwined. That heightens the risks of military action, but it also acts as guardrails against a potential conflagration. So when US officials said last weekend that Washington would not participate in an Israeli response to Iran’s attack on Israel, that seemed to immediately take the wind out of the sails of a potential escalation.

The European Union has imposed sanctions on “extremist settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem,” the European Council announced on Friday, listing four people and two entities.

According to the statement, the entities Lehava, a “radical right-wing Jewish supremacist group,” and Hilltop Youth, a “radical youth group consisting of members known for violent acts against Palestinians and their villages in the West Bank,” were added to the EU sanctions regime alongside two leading figures of Hilltop Youth, Meir Ettinger and Elisha Yered.

Neria Ben Pazi, who the EU's governing body said has been “accused of repeatedly attacking Palestinians,” and Yinon Levi, who the council said has “taken part in multiple violent acts against neighbouring villages,” were also added to the listing.

The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said in a post on X that “the EU has decided to sanction extremist settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem for serious human rights abuses against Palestinians. We strongly condemn extremist settler violence: perpetrators must be held to account.”

Belgium’s Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib said that she “welcomes” the sanctions, adding that the “recent escalation of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop; these settlers must be held accountable.”

Yered responded later Friday, saying he was “honored to be included in this respected list” and that “we shall continue holding onto the land of our forefathers — until the victory.”

This post has been updated with comment from Elisha Yered.

There does not appear to be any extensive damage at an air base purportedly targeted by an Israeli military strike, according to exclusive satellite images obtained by CNN from Umbra Space. 

The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite images were taken around 10:18 a.m. local time. 

There does not appear to be any large craters in the ground and there are no apparent destroyed buildings. Additional visual satellite imagery will be needed to check for burn scars – which cannot be seen by SAR images -- around the complex.

SAR images are not like normal satellite images. 

The SAR images are created by a satellite transmitting radar beams capable of passing through clouds, like the ones currently preventing satellites from imaging the area. Those radar beams bounce off objects on the ground, and echo back to the satellite.

Iranian news agency FARS said that an army radar at the Isfahan province military base was one of the possible targets, and that the only damage from the attack was broken windows on several office buildings.

The images also show that the Iranian F-14 Tomcats that have been stationed at the air base in the past are not there at the moment. Additional archival satellite imagery reviewed by CNN shows that those F-14 Tomcats have not been there for some time.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged both sides to cease retaliating after Israel carried out a military strike on Iran, a spokesperson said in a statement on Friday. 

The US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on two organizations on Friday for fundraising on behalf of two violent Israeli extremists in the West Bank.

The two groups -- Mount Hebron Fund and Shlom Asiraich – established crowdfunding campaigns to raise thousands of dollars for Yinon Levi and David Chai Chasdai respectively. Both of those men were sanctioned by the US in February under a new executive order targeting those perpetrating violence in the West Bank. 

The executive order, issued by President Joe Biden in early February, came amid increased violence in the occupied West Bank in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack. That violence has only continued in subsequent months.

The order angered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who complained to the administration, calling it “inappropriate” and “highly problematic,” according to Axios.

Gopstein responded later on Friday, saying: “We overcame Pharaoh; we shall overcome Biden too,” which is his rephrasing of the commonly used expression said during Israel at Passover: "We overcame Pharaoh; we shall overcome this."

This post has been updated with comment from Ben-Zion Gopstein.

The death toll in the Gaza Strip has risen to at least 34,012, following more than six months of war between Israel and Palestinian militants, the Ministry of Health in Gaza said on Friday.

In the last 24 hours, 42 Palestinians had died following Israeli attacks, the ministry reported.

A further 63 people had been injured over the same time period, taking the overall number of wounded in the Gaza Strip since the war began to 76,833, it said.

CNN cannot independently verify the ministry's casualty figures.

A total of 276 aid trucks carrying humanitarian supplies underwent inspection and were admitted into Gaza on Friday, according to a statement from the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli military body that administers Israeli policy in Gaza and the West Bank.

In addition to ground transportation, 144 pallets containing tens of thousands of aid packages were airdropped into northern Gaza on Friday, COGAT added.

Additionally, COGAT stated that new routes also saw significant activity, with 20 trucks passing through the Jordanian Route and eight trucks of flour arriving via the port of Ashdod in Israel.

Israel last week said it had begun to take several major steps to ramp up humanitarian aid to Gaza amid intense pressure from the United States.

However, humanitarian officials said progress was slow-going and that much more needed to be done, as warnings grew of famine in the Palestinian enclave.

Germany’s Lufthansa airline has canceled its flights to Tel Aviv until Saturday morning and will avoid Iraqi airspace due to the security situation in the region.

LOT Polish airlines, meanwhile, canceled Friday’s flights to Tel Aviv and Beirut. It is not scheduled to fly to Israel on Saturday, and will decide about Sunday flights on Saturday, the airline said.

Lufthansa is scheduled to resume flights to Tel Aviv and plans to again fly through Iraqi airspace from Saturday 1 a.m. ET (8 a.m. in Israel).

The announcement follows the airline’s decision to extend its suspension of flights to the capitals of Iran and Lebanon.

Lufthansa said Wednesday that flights to Tehran and Beirut will remain cancelled and the airline will not use Iranian airspace up to and including April 30.