Measured Comments From Israel and Iran on New Round of Strikes

Israel’s prime minister said Israeli airstrikes on Iran had achieved their goals, and Iranian officials did not threaten retaliation.

Iran’s leaders emphasized on Sunday that they had a right to respond to Israel’s airstrikes a day earlier but appeared to take a measured tone, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the assault had achieved its objectives.

Their comments came as Israeli and American negotiators headed to Qatar in an effort to revive long-stalled talks aimed at brokering a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. Earlier, Israel carried out more deadly attacks in northern Gaza and in southern Lebanon.

In his first public comments since Israeli warplanes struck Iran on Saturday, Mr. Netanyahu said the strikes — carried out in retaliation for a missile barrage Iran fired at Israel on Oct. 1 — had severely damaged Iran’s defensive capabilities and its ability to produce missiles.

Iranian and Israeli officials told The New York Times that the strikes had destroyed air-defense systems that protect important energy sites but did not hit the facilities themselves. The Biden administration had urged Israel not to attack Iran’s oil and nuclear sites.

Iran must now decide whether to respond.

On Sunday, in his first public comments about the strikes, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the strikes “should neither be magnified nor downplayed,” the Iranian state news agency IRNA reported. He did not appear to be explicitly calling for retaliation.

Although Iranian officials emphasized that their country has the right to respond, Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said late Saturday that the country would “answer any stupidity with wisdom and strategy.”

The Israeli military’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, signaled that Israel was prepared to strike back even harder if attacked.

“We used only a portion of the capabilities,” he said. “We can do much more. We hit strategic arrays in Iran. This is of very high importance. And we’ll see how things evolve now. We’re ready for all scenarios on all fronts.”

On Sunday, the head of Israel’s foreign intelligence service, David Barnea, was scheduled to take part in cease-fire talks in Qatar. The C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, along with Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, were also expected to participate.

The planned talks were the first since Israeli soldiers killed Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, almost two weeks ago. U.S. officials had accused him of being the main obstacle to a truce, but U.S. and Qatari officials have said it is unclear whether Hamas would now re-engage in negotiations.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office has said that the talks would focus on several initiatives, including one proposed by Egypt, which, along with Qatar, has acted as a mediator between Israel and Hamas.

On Sunday, Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, said the proposal calls for an initial 48-hour truce. During that period, Palestinian militants would release four of the remaining hostages seized during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel would release Palestinians from its prisons.

Israel and Hamas would then hold intensive talks over the next 10 days to try to reach a permanent agreement, Mr. el-Sisi said at a news conference.

The proposal is a sharp departure from the current framework, which calls for a phased cease-fire beginning with a six-week truce. Israel and Hamas have been unable to break a logjam over that plan, despite months of intermittent negotiations.

Hamas officials have repeatedly said that any deal must involve Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza and an end to the war there. Mr. Netanyahu has said that Israel will not end its military campaign in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed and all of the hostages are freed. At least a third of the 101 hostages still in Gaza are believed to be dead.

On Sunday, Israel marked an anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack tied to the Hebrew calendar with a series of official memorial ceremonies. Flags on government buildings were lowered to half-staff at 6:29 a.m., when the attack began.

At one of the ceremonies, Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, alluded to the possible need for a diplomatic agreement with Hamas, saying that “not every goal can be achieved through military action.”

“Force is not an end in itself,” he said. “When it comes to returning the hostages, we will be required to make painful compromises.”

But there has been no end to Israeli strikes in Gaza. On Saturday, a strike on the town of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza killed and wounded dozens of people, according to the territory’s civil defense officials.

The Israeli military said it had struck Hamas fighters and had taken steps to “mitigate the risk of harming civilians.” Israel renewed a military offensive in northern Gaza several weeks ago, targeting what it said was a regrouped Hamas presence in the area.

Since then, 60,000 people in northern Gaza have been displaced and conditions there have become “unbearable,” Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for the United Nations secretary-general, said on Sunday.

Mr. Dujarric described “harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction in the north, with civilians trapped under rubble, the sick and wounded going without lifesaving health care, and families lacking food and shelter.”

In southern Lebanon, where Israeli forces have been mounting a campaign against the militant group Hezbollah, a strike near the coastal city of Sidon killed eight people and wounded 25 others, Lebanon’s health ministry said on Sunday.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Israel has invaded southern Lebanon to dislodge Hezbollah, the powerful Shiite Muslim group that like Hamas is backed by Iran. Sidon is largely Sunni Muslim, and many Lebanese have fled there from other parts of the country.

The Lebanese authorities have said that more than 2,600 people had been killed since last October, when Hezbollah started firing missiles and drones at Israel in support of Hamas and Israeli forces responded with airstrikes.

The Israeli military said on Sunday that Hezbollah had launched about 90 rockets or missiles into Israel, some of which were intercepted.

In a separate incident, a truck crashed into a group of passengers getting off a bus at a stop near a military base in central Israel on Sunday, killing one person and injuring about 30 others, Israeli officials said. Civilians at the scene fatally shot the driver, an Arab citizen of Israel.

The Israeli police said they were investigating the incident as a suspected terrorist attack, but had not determined whether the driver hit the crowd deliberately or by accident.

Reporting was contributed by Cassandra Vinograd, Aaron Boxerman, Matthew Mpoke Bigg, Gabby Sobelman and Johnatan Reiss.