Just hours before Israel launched strikes on Iran early Friday, President Donald Trump was still holding onto tattered threads of hope that a long-simmering dispute over Tehran's nuclear program could be resolved without military action.

But with the Israeli military operation called "Rising Lion" now underway — something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says will go on for "as many days as it takes" — Trump will be tested anew on his ability to make good on a campaign promise to disentangle the U.S. from foreign conflicts.

Investigators searched the site of one of India's worst aviation disasters and Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with the lone surviving passenger Friday, a day after an Air India flight fell from the sky and killed 241 people on board and several people on the ground.

The London-bound Boeing 787 struck a medical college hostel when it fell in a residential area of the northwestern city of Ahmedabad minutes after takeoff Thursday.

Israel's massive strike on Iran on Friday morning came after decades of mutual hostility and a long-running shadow war of covert strikes and sabotage.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long identified Iran as its greatest threat, citing the country's nuclear program, its hostile rhetoric and support for anti-Israel militant groups across the region. Iran has championed the Palestinian cause and portrayed Israel as a malicious Western encroachment on the Middle East.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards confirmed that its aerospace commander had been killed with fellow officers in an Israeli air strike on their command center on Friday.

"Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps aerospace force Major General Amirali Hajizadeh... along with a group of brave and dedicated fighters of this force, were martyred" in an Israeli attack on their command center, the Guards said in a statement.

A fresh round of explosions was heard in northwestern Iran on Friday, state television reported, after Israel carried out a wave of strikes on multiple cities.

Israel launched fresh attacks on a key underground uranium enrichment facility in central Iran on Friday, Iranian state media reported.

U.S. President Donald Trump urged Iran on Friday to "make a deal," warning that there will be more "death and destruction" after Israel launched deadly strikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities.

His comments on his Truth Social platform came after Israel pounded Iran in a series of air raids on Friday, striking 100 targets.

U.S. President Donald Trump told Fox News he was aware Israel was going to conduct strikes on Iran before it happened, and stressed that Tehran "cannot have a nuclear bomb," according to the US broadcaster.

His comments to Fox came after Israel pounded Iran in a series of air raids on Friday, striking 100 targets including nuclear and military sites.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei swiftly appointed new Revolutionary Guards and armed forces chiefs to replace those killed in targeted Israeli strikes on Friday.

In separate decrees, Khamenei named Mohammad Pakpour to replace Hossein Salami as commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Abdolrahim Mousavi to replace Mohammad Bagheri as chief of the armed forces general staff.

The Israeli military said it hit the underground uranium enrichment centrifuges at Iran's vast Natanz facility as part of the wave of strikes it carried out on Friday.

"The underground area of the site was damaged. This area contains a multi-storey enrichment hall with centrifuges, electrical rooms and additional supporting infrastructure," the military said in a statement.

Iran sharply criticized the UN nuclear watchdog on Friday, accusing it of "silence" over Israel's strikes on its nuclear facilities and scientists.

In a statement, Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said it considers the "silence" from the International Atomic Energy Agency "as a form of cooperation with the Zionist regime," adding that the Israeli attack was a "defeat for the IAEA resulting from its unjustifiable shortcomings".