Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service coming to you live from

London I'm Paul Henley the Iranian government says it is entitled to defend its country following Israel's

airstrikes overnight last night on military targets near Tehran. A series of strikes

hit several locations killing two Iranian soldiers,

but the authorities have played down the damage and the significance of the attacks

while Israel says it has achieved its aims. Let's hear live now from Paham Gubadi from BBC

Persian who's been monitoring reporting of all this in the Iranian media and

engaging reaction among members of the public there.

Paham, what are people saying? Are they giving clues as to how severe these strikes were?

So there are mixed reactions to the attack when the explosions took place almost at the same time

last night. It was midnight after midnight here local time and many people messaged me personally and saying that they were scared because they woke up to the sounds of explosions in Tehran.

Later on we realize that there were three waves of attacks.

So the first one, it was in western and southwestern Tehran.

We didn't see any images, no videos came out,

but after a few hours when the second and the third waves unfolded, especially in the eastern part of Iran,

videos that started surfacing showing Iranian air defense missile systems getting activated and you know engaging with

projectiles in the skies of Tehran. Now this these these are some surreal

scenes for many Iranians, including myself, because the last time

Iranian, especially the residents of Tehran that have seen such scenes goes back to 35 years ago when I was almost six years old and I'm now

over 42 years. So it hasn't it has been 35 years that Iranians haven't seen you

know a bombardment or you know aerial

engagement like that in the skies of Tehran and given that perhaps it's not

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