Two key Iranian nuclear scientists are among six scientists killed in Israeli strikes on sites in Iran on Friday.

More than 200 Israeli Air Force fighter jets hit more than 100 nuclear, military and infrastructure targets across Iran, including its main nuclear facility in Natanz.

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The Israeli army said it had damaged the Natanz uranium enrichment site’s underground structures, including a multistorey enrichment hall with centrifuges, electrical rooms and additional supporting infrastructure.

It added that “vital infrastructure at the site that allows for its continuous functioning and the continued advancement of the Iranian regime’s project to obtain nuclear weapons was attacked”.

This came just a day after United States President Donald Trump said his administration was “fairly close to a pretty good agreement” with Iran and that military action “could blow it” and lead to a “massive conflict”.

However, on Thursday, Washington also hinted at the possibility of an imminent escalation when it announced it was partially evacuating its embassy in Iraq and had authorised “the voluntary departure” of dependants of US personnel from other locations across the Middle East.

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On Thursday, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), declared that Iran had not complied with its nonproliferation obligations for the first time in almost 20 years. Tehran maintains that its nuclear programme focuses on peaceful purposes and is not developing weapons.

The spokesperson for Iran’s armed forces, Abolfazl Shekarchi, warned that Israel would pay a “heavy price” for its attacks, which also killed three senior military figures, including Mohammad Bagheri, the country’s highest-ranking official.

Who are the Iranian nuclear scientists who have been killed?

In total, six Iranian scientists have been killed in the Israeli strikes.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency described two of the victims, Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi and Fereydoun Abbasi, as “major nuclear scientists”.

Tehranchi, a theoretical physicist, was the president of the Islamic Azad University of Iran. He was added to the US Department’s Entity List of actors “acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests” in March 2020.

The building housing the residence of Tehranchi and several other Iranian scientists was severely damaged in Friday morning’s attacks.

Abbasi was a former head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and a former member of the Iranian parliament. He held a PhD in nuclear physics and had conducted nuclear research at the defence ministry.

In 2010, Abbasi survived twin blasts in Tehran that killed fellow nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari. Iran blamed Israel for the incident, although Israel neither confirmed nor denied the assassination.

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The news agency identified the other slain scientists as:

• Abdolhamid Minouchehr, holder of a PhD in nuclear engineering, who served as dean of the nuclear engineering faculty at Shahid Beheshti University and conducted extensive research on improving the efficiency and safety of nuclear plants
• Ahmad Reza Zolfaghari, professor of nuclear engineering at Shahid Beheshti University
• Amir Hossein Faghihi, who belonged to the engineering faculty at Shahid Beheshti University and previously served as vice president of the AEOI and head of the Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute
• Motallebzadeh, a nuclear scientist who was targeted and killed along with his wife

Which nuclear facility did Israel target in Iran?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the so-called “Operation Rising Lion” had struck Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility in Natanz.

The IAEA said there was no increase in radiation levels at the site following the strike. No casualties have been reported.

Natanz, a heavily fortified facility located outside the Shia holy city of Qom, houses an underground fuel enrichment plant and an above-ground pilot fuel enrichment plant.

The IAEA said it had not received reports of strikes or damage at other key Iranian nuclear sites, including a large nuclear technology centre on the outskirts of Isfahan, a nuclear power plant in Bushehr and a fuel enrichment plant in Fordow.

More sites could be targeted in the coming days, however. Netanyahu said the military operation aimed to “roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival” and would “continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.”

Has Israel killed Iranian nuclear scientists before?

The killing of the six Iranian scientists is only the latest in a long line of assassinations blamed on Israel.

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In 2020, top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was shot dead by a remote-controlled machine gun in the town of Absard, east of Tehran. Iranian authorities blamed the assassination on Israel, which again neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, an academic who worked at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was killed in 2012 by a magnetic bomb stuck to his car as he was driving in Tehran.

The explosion occurred on the second anniversary of the killing of Masoud Ali Mohammadi, another nuclear scientist killed by a remote-control bomb.

In November 2010, Majid Shahriari, a top nuclear scientist and a member of the nuclear engineering department of Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, was killed in one of two explosions in Tehran. The then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accused “Western governments” and Israel of being behind the assassination.

The second blast caught Abbasi, the scientist killed in Israel’s attacks on Friday, and his wife. Both were injured but survived the event.

Has Israel targeted nuclear sites in Iran before?

Yes. While Israel has never used missiles in direct attacks on Iran’s nuclear military sites before, it has targeted Iran’s primary nuclear facility at Natanz by other means.

In April 2021, Iran accused Israel of causing an explosion and power cut at the nuclear site that damaged centrifuges in its underground fuel enrichment plant. Ali Akbar Salehi, who headed the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), said the attack was an act of “nuclear terrorism” but did not specify who was responsible.

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The same site was also damaged by an explosion in August 2020. Iran accused Israel of “sabotage” on that occasion, but it did not specify what had caused the blast.

What is different about this latest attack?

Israel has stepped up its cultivation of human intelligence sources inside Iran, and has improved its technological capabilities for spying with the help of European and US satellites.

Muhanad Seloom, an assistant professor in critical security studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, told Al Jazeera that the Israeli attack was a demonstration of its progress in this sector.

“The Israeli side have already sent the message clearly to Tehran that we know where your leaders are, we know who they are, we have accurate intelligence, and we have the technological means to reach inside Iran,” he said.

“The significance is not about the type of weapons used, but the intelligence success that Israel has been able to achieve inside Iran,” he said.

Al Jazeera correspondent Dorsa Jabbari said Iran’s civilian population had been caught off guard by the latest escalation. “They have not seen anything like this since the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988,” she said. “These scenes are very new to the new generation in Iran. It’s something they’ve never seen before and something they thought they’d never see.”

Jabbari added that the scope and scale of Friday’s attacks by Israel were much greater than the tit-for-tat missile attacks the two countries engaged in last year, when Israel targeted non-nuclear sites such as military facilities and infrastructure.

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“This was completely by surprise. And the scale of this attack is much larger and broader,” she said. “It’s not a one-off. This is not a strategic in-and-out kind of attack, they are continuing as we speak, and we have no idea when they will end.”