Israel on Friday struck military targets in Iran, a long-awaited response to what officials in Jerusalem said were months of drone and missile attacks by Iran and its proxy network across the Middle East. The Israeli strikes mark yet another escalation of a Mideast conflict that is now raging across the region.

Explosions were reported in the Iranian capital of Tehran, the city of Karaj and elsewhere across the country, suggesting that Israel is hitting a range of targets across a wide area.

The Israeli Defense Forces said that Friday’s strikes against Iran were necessitated by relentless attacks on Israel by Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthi rebels and, on two occasions, the Iranian military itself. Those attacks have continued in the year since Hamas, another Iran-backed group, launched its Oct. 7 attack that killed some 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians.

IDF officials said the strikes were hitting military targets only, suggesting that Jerusalem is going to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties in Iran.

“Right now, the Israel Defense Forces is conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesman, said in a statement. “The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since Oct. 7 — on seven fronts — including direct attacks from Iranian soil.”

As a sovereign state, Israel has the right and the duty to respond to attacks, Adm. Hagari said.

“Our defensive and offensive capabilities are fully mobilized,” he said. “We will do whatever necessary to defend the state of Israel and the people of Israel.”

Iran’s state-run Mehr News Agency confirmed that “several” explosions were heard in Tehran early Saturday local time.

“The cause of the sounds is not known yet. Reports suggest that some of the loud sounds were caused by the operation of air defense systems,” the news agency reported. “The situation in the capital is calm.”

International flights began diverting around western Iran as news of the strikes broke, flight-tracking data showed.

White House National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said in a statement that “we understand that Israel is conducting targeted strikes against military targets in Iran.” He referred further questions to the IDF. The White House was told about the strikes shortly before they began, according to media reports, and officials said that the U.S. did not have a hand in the attacks.

The Israeli strikes came just hours after Secretary of State Antony Blinken left the region. He was in the Mideast again this week pressing for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, a deal aimed at ending a year of fighting in the Gaza Strip and securing the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas.

Separately, there were also reported explosions in Syria on Friday evening, suggesting that the IDF may be targeting Iran-backed militias in that country. Israel also has targeted the Houthi rebels in Yemen on multiple occasions as it seeks to dismantle Iran’s proxy network piece by piece.

Israel’s direct strike on Iran has been expected since Iran fired a barrage of nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel earlier this month. Tehran said that attack was retaliation for the recent killings by the IDF of senior Hezbollah and Hamas officials. Israel recently has killed Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, Hamas militant leader Yahya Sinwar, and other leaders of Iran’s proxy network, known as the “axis of resistance.”

Israel also has killed key figures in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

A senior Iranian cleric on Friday vowed that Israel will be annihilated if it launches an attack against them.

“The armed forces of the country are the vigilant arms of the Iranian nation and have repeatedly announced that if the criminal Zionist regime makes a mistake, they will be crushed by the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Ayatollah Mohammad Khatami said during prayers at Tehran University.

Iran has attacked Israel directly twice this year, the first time in April and again on Oct. 1. In both instances, most of the missiles fired by Iran were intercepted by Israel’s air defense network and with the help of U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers in the region.

Some observers said that given the near-constant attacks on Israel by Iran and its proxies, retaliation was the only option.

“How should a people react when threatened with annihilation by a fanatical neighbor? And what should it do when this neighbor launches 180 missiles, stopped only by a miracle of technology,” noted French intellectual Bernard Henri-Levy said Friday in a post on X. “It does exactly what Israel is doing in Iran, just now. And it is right.”

The Biden administration pushed Israel to restrict its response to Iran’s military targets, rather than the country’s nuclear facilities or oil industry. It appears Jerusalem may have heeded the White House’s request. There is a major nuclear power plant in Karaj, but it was not immediately clear whether it might have been a target.

• This article is based in part on wire-service reports.