Category World News

Israel on Friday morning struck multiple Iranian military and nuclear facilities, as well as residential homes in Tehran known to house senior security officials, pulling the region to the brink of a full-fledged war between the rivals.

The attacks killed multiple senior members of Iran’s military. They included General Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces and the country’s highest-ranking military official.

Who was Bagheri?

Bagheri was born Mohammad Hossein Afshordi in the 1960s. In his current role, he oversaw both the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the rest of the country’s military, also ensuring coordination between those different arms of the country’s security apparatus.

He reportedly had a distinguished military career with the IRGC; however, little is known about him outside of his record of service, academic achievements and multiple sanctions imposed by various international bodies.

“A lot [of] higher-ranked intelligence and military officials in Iran tend to be more on the secretive side,” Reza H Akbari, Middle East and North Africa programme manager at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, told Al Jazeera.

Bagheri joined the IRGC in 1980, a year after the Iranian revolution and the same year the Iran-Iraq war began. That conflict lasted eight years and saw hundreds of thousands of people killed on both sides, with Iran enduring the greater losses.

One of those killed was Bagheri’s older brother, Hassan, who had reportedly founded the IRGC’s military intelligence branch in 1980 and who, aged 27, led a division.

Bagheri fought in the Iran-Iraq war, according to a United States congressional research report, which described him as “an early IRGC recruit who fought against a post-revolution Kurdish uprising and in the Iran-Iraq War”.

According to Iranian media, Bagheri became the head of the IRGC’s intelligence operations in 1983, after the death of his brother. After the war, he also served as deputy head of intelligence and operations, and as the head of the armed forces’ common affairs.

He played a “special role” in a 1997 operation in Iraq against Kurdish forces, according to Rokna, an Iranian state-affiliated news agency. In 2016, he replaced Major-General Seyyed Hassan Firoozabadi as the chief of staff of the IRGC.

He was affiliated with an “elite force within the IRGC,” according to Akbari, tasked with “carrying out the most sensitive missions, especially those related to the air force unit”.

Bagheri was sanctioned by the US in 2019, when the first Trump administration levelled sanctions against what they called the “inner circle” of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

The European Union, meanwhile, reportedly sanctioned Bagheri for supplying Russia with drones, while he was further sanctioned by the US, Canada and the United Kingdom for his role in the crackdown on the 2022 protests in Iran following the killing of Mahsa Amini.

Following Bagheri’s assassination, Iran appointed Ahmad Vahidi, a former defence and interior minister, as his interim replacement.

In addition to Bagheri, Israel also assassinated Hossein Salami, commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and Gholamali Rashid, deputy commander-in-chief of the armed forces.

They also killed multiple nuclear scientists in the Friday morning attacks.

The attacks came as the US and Iran were preparing for their next round of nuclear talks on Sunday in Muscat. Rhetoric over a possible attack from Israel and the US had intensified in recent days and US embassy staff had been put on alert in numerous locations, while Iran had responded with its own warnings of potential retaliation if struck.

The attacks were condemned by many in the international community, including many Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar, who called it a “flagrant violation” of international law.

US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said on Friday morning that he still expected talks to continue on Sunday.

But Akbari of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting said he saw little likelihood of the US-Iran negotiations continuing. “I find the plausibility of talks continuing as slim to none,” he said.

Israel has carried out a series of air strikes on Iran, targeting military facilities, nuclear sites and residential areas of the capital, Tehran, and killing at least two senior military commanders and top nuclear scientists.

The strikes early on Friday come amid simmering tensions over Iran’s nuclear programme and appeared certain to trigger a reprisal. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned that “severe punishment” would be directed at Israel. Hours later, Israel’s military said it had begun intercepting Iranian drones launched in retaliation.

US President Donald Trump says he was aware of recent attacks on Iran but insists the United States were not involved militarily. He warned that the US will respond if Iran targets Israel. Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher has this update.

Scottie Scheffler has kept coming back to the same answer when asked in different ways about how a day that began with optimism at the United States Open turned into a five-and-a-half-hour slog that left him well off the front page of the leaderboard.

“I’ve probably got to give myself a few more looks,” the world’s top-ranked player said Thursday after a 3-over 73 left him seven shots behind frontrunner JJ Spaun.

Scheffler was talking about looks for reasonable birdie putts. Those didn’t happen nearly enough during those often arduous hours at the Oakmont Country Club in Oakmont, Pennsylvania. As for plain old “looks”, however, well, the three-time major winner had those in abundance.

Looks of frustration, like when his drive on the par-5 12th landed in the middle of a fairway that slopes massively from left to right and kept rolling, and rolling, and rolling until it was in the first cut of the course’s signature ankle-deep rough.

Looks of bafflement, like when his 1.8-metre (6ft) par putt at the par-3 13th slid by, causing him to put his hand over his mouth and turn to caddie Ted Scott as if to say, “What just happened?”

Looks of anger, like when his wedge from 76 metres (83 yards) on the easy (by Oakmont standards) par-4 14th landed 12 metres (40ft) past the hole. Scheffler slammed the club into the ground before collecting himself to two-putt.

Looks of annoyance, when his 3.7-metre (12ft) birdie attempt at the par-4 17th lipped out. Scheffler bent over, pressed his hands on his knees and appeared to sigh before standing back up.

That doesn’t even include what he described as “sloppy” bogeys on the par-4 third and par-5 fourth when he found the sand off the tee.

It added up to tying his worst opening round in a major ever. He did that at the 2021 Masters, a year before he began a run of dominance not seen since Tiger Woods’s prime two decades ago. Heck, he even managed a 1-under 69 at Oakmont as a 19-year-old amateur in 2016.

Nine years later, Scheffler’s life is very different. When he walked out of the scoring area in the late spring twilight, his toddler son, Bennett, and wife, Meredith, and other members of his family were waiting.

The course, however, remains the same physically and mentally draining task it has always been.

There’s a reason Scheffler teed off at 1:25pm and didn’t tap in for par on 18 until 6:52pm even though there wasn’t a hint of rain or wind or any other external factors to gum up the works. There was only Oakmont being Oakmont.

The fairways that Spaun navigated to a 4-under 66 in the morning dried up throughout the kind of muggy, sun-baked day that’s been uncommon during Western Pennsylvania’s cool, wet spring.

Scheffler made only two putts over 3 metres (10ft), none over the final seven holes and three-putted the par-3 13th. How? He has no idea. Yet he also knows one middling round doesn’t necessarily ruin his chances of winning the third leg of the grand slam.

Play a little “sharper” in the second round, and he thinks he might be in a better position come the weekend.

“When you’re playing these types of tests that are this challenging, there’s usually still a way to score,” he said.

He might find them sooner rather than later. In each of Scheffler’s 16 PGA Tour victories, he found himself inside the top 30 after 18 holes. He’ll be outside that number when he puts his tee in the ground at No 10 on Friday morning to start his second round.

“I’ll clean up some of those mistakes, a couple three putts and stuff like that,” he said on Thursday. “And I think tomorrow will be a better day.”

Rory McIlroy, still looking to regain the form that helped him complete a career Grand Slam at the Masters in April, started on the back nine and made two early birdies to reach the turn just two shots back of Spaun before a wayward second nine.

World number two McIlroy made four bogeys over a seven-hole stretch out of the turn, followed by a double bogey at the par-3 eighth, where he left his tee shot in the thick rough and failed to get out on his first attempt. He signed for a 74.

Defending champion Bryson DeChambeau, one of 14 LIV Golf players in the field and looking to become the first repeat US Open winner since Brooks Koepka in 2018, spent too much time in Oakmont’s penal rough and opened with a 73.