Benjamin Netanyahu has spent most of his career pledging to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. On Saturday, the Israeli prime minister and US President Donald Trump embarked on a bigger campaign: overthrowing the regime of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
At about mid-morning in Tehran, US and Israeli forces launched a wave of strikes across Iran, targeting military and intelligence assets as well as numerous high-ranking officials including Khamenei in an operation likely to have huge ramifications for the entire Middle East.
Within hours of the US-Israeli strikes, Iran had launched hundreds of missiles at Israel as well as US bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, halting flights and plunging the region into a new, unpredictable conflict.