Israel

Iran launched waves of air strikes at Israel as the deadline approached for a ceasefire to which Tehran is reported to have agreed.

The launches came on Tuesday after 4am local time (7:30 GMT) in Tehran, the time Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran would stop its attacks if Israel ended its air strikes.

Waves of missiles sent Israelis to bomb shelters for almost two hours in the morning.

Several people were reported killed in the early morning barrages, but there was no immediate word of further attacks.

Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue services said at least eight more people were injured.

The Israeli military later said people could leave the shelters but cautioned the public to stay close to protection in the coming hours.

Trump’s announcement that Israel and Iran had agreed to a “complete and total ceasefire” came soon after Iran launched a limited missile attack on Monday on a US military base in Qatar, retaliating for the US bombing of its nuclear sites.

Israel said later on Tuesday that it has agreed to the ceasefire after having “achieved all objectives” in its war with Iran.

US President Trump calls for calm as truce agreement raises hope of an end to the dangerous conflict.

Iran and Israel are reported to have agreed to a ceasefire following 12 days of exchanging intense air strikes, including a “last-minute” barrage fired by Tehran.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement on Tuesday morning that Israel had agreed to the truce proposal announced by United States President Donald Trump overnight. Earlier, Iranian state television reported that the ceasefire had begun.

The Israeli statement came not long after Trump had said in a post on social media that the ceasefire was under way.

“The ceasefire is now in effect. Please do not violate it!” he said.

While Netanyahu threatened that Israel would respond forcefully to any violation of the ceasefire, the agreement raises hopes for a de-escalation in a conflict that intensified dramatically in recent days, as the US bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities and Tehran attacked a US base in Qatar.

“In light of the achievement of the objectives of the operation, and in full coordination with President Trump, Israel has agreed to the President’s proposal for a bilateral ceasefire,” he said.

Waves of missiles

A fragile peace appeared to take hold early on Tuesday, with reports of hostilities ceasing following six waves of missile launches by Iran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi implied the strikes were launched just before a 07.30 GMT deadline announced by Trump.

“The military operations of our powerful Armed Forces to punish Israel for its aggression continued until the very last minute,” he wrote on social media.

Several people were killed in the attacks, emergency services and the Israeli military said. Not long afterwards, Israelis were told they could leave missile shelters, and no further launches have been reported.

Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi said Israeli strikes on the capital had halted, calling the calm “a promising indication about the prospect of the ceasefire”.

But he noted that the situation remains fragile, with Iran, like Israel, having pledged to strike back in case there is any resumption of attacks against it.

‘Now Gaza’

Following Netanyahu’s announcement that his government had agreed to the ceasefire, Israel’s opposition called for him to seal a truce to end the 20-month war with Hamas in Gaza.

“And now Gaza. It’s time to finish it there too. Bring back the hostages, end the war,” opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote on social media.

However, hardliners criticised the agreement, insisting Iran remains dangerous.

The “regime in Iran is not a regime with which agreements are made but a regime that must be defeated,” wrote Dan Illouz, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party.

“If not defeated” Iran will find new means against Israel, he declared.

Israel attacked Iran on June 13 saying that Tehran was close to developing a nuclear weapon. Trump made a similar assertion before the US strikes on Saturday.

The United Nations nuclear watchdog IAEA on Monday demanded access to Iran’s nuclear facilities to confirm the location and state of the country’s enriched uranium.

There has been speculation that Iran may have moved its stock of the nuclear material ahead of the US strikes on the Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz facilities.

Mohammad Eslami, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said on Tuesday that Tehran is assessing damage to its nuclear industry and arrangements have been made for its restoration, the Reuters news agency reported.

“The plan is to prevent interruptions in the process of production and services,” Eslami said.

June 23 (UPI) — President Donald Trump early Tuesday announced a cease-fire between Israel and Iran was in effect, seven hours after he announced plans for the truce, half a day after Iran struck a U.S. military base in Qatar and 11 days after Israel’s first airstrikes.

After his 6 p.m. Monday truce plans, Trump posted on Truth Social after 1 a.m. EDT: “THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!”

On Tuesday morning in Iran and Israel, media in both countries reported the cease-fire began after strikes were reported on both sides.

Earlier, Trump posted on Truth Social that the war pause would take effect just after midnight on the U.S. East Coast, with the war slated to officially end a day later.

The U.S. president said there are two 12-hour cease-fire periods, starting with Iran and then Israel.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said his nation would stop fighting if Israel stops strikes, posting on X: “The military operations of our powerful Armed Forces to punish Israel for its aggression continued until the very last minute, at 4 a.m. [8 p.m. EDT[.”

Israel hadn’t confirmed the cease-fire and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was meeting with his security cabinet, a source told CNN.

“During each CEASEFIRE, the other side will remain PEACEFUL and RESPECTFUL.” Trump wrote. “On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, ‘THE 12 DAY WAR’. This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will! God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!”

Trump later told NBC News in an interview that “I think the cease-fire is unlimited. It’s going to go forever.” Trump said he doesn’t believe Israel and Iran “will ever be shooting at each other again.”

And in a follow-up post on Truth Social at 10:18 p.m., Trump wrote: “Israel & Iran came to me, almost simultaneously, and said, “PEACE!” I knew the time was NOW. The World, and the Middle East, are the real WINNERS! Both Nations will see tremendous LOVE, PEACE, AND PROSPERITY in their futures. They have so much to gain, and yet, so much to lose if they stray from the road of RIGHTEOUSNESS & TRUTH. The future for Israel & Iran is UNLIMITED, & filled with great PROMISE. GOD BLESS YOU BOTH!”

Trump and his U.S. Vice President JD Vance negotiated with top Qatari leaders, who took the proposal to Iran, a diplomat told NBC News and CNN. Trump spoke with Netanyahu and Emir of Qatar Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.

“We were actually working on that just as I left the White House to come over here,” Vance told Fox News. “So that’s good news, that the president was able to get that across the finish line.”

Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also is Trump’s National Security adviser, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff negotiated the terms, CNN reported.

The United States entered the war early Sunday with B-2 bomber airstrikes on three nuclear sites two days ago in an effort to present Iran from having an atomic bomb. The seven planes took 18 hours to fly from Missouri to Iran. Decoys also flew west to Guam.

After Trump’s announcement, Israel military told residents in the Tehran neighborhoods of Mehran and District 6 that it will carry out operations there. And Iran warned people in the Ramat Gan suburb of Tel Aviv to evacuate, according to the semi-official Mehr News Agency.

A residential building in southern Israel took a “direct hit” from an Iranian missile strike early Tuesday in the city of Beer Sheva , according to Israel’s emergency services, Magen David Alom. At least three people were killed and six others were being treated with light to moderate injuries,.

Before Trump’s announcement, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei posted on X: “Those who know the Iranian people and their history know that the Iranian nation isn’t a nation that surrenders.”

It was his first comments since U.S. struck the nation.

Iran strikes major U.S. base

Iran retaliated though it gave the United States advance notice it would strike the U.S. airbase in Qatar.

Qatar’s defense ministry said its air defenses “successfully” intercepted the missiles, and there were no deaths or injuries. The U.S. also used Patriots to stop the missiles.

The base in Doha was attacked “by short-range and medium-range ballistic missiles originating from Iran,” a U.S. defense official told CNN.

“At this time, there are no reports of U.S. casualties,” the official said. “We are monitoring this situation closely and will provide more information as it becomes available.”

Iran’s Armed Forces said they “targeted the Al Udaid base in Qatar with destructive and forceful missiles,” according to a statement obtained by The New York Times.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran, relying on Almighty God and the faithful, proud people of Iran, will never leave any aggression against its territorial integrity, sovereignty, or national security unanswered,” the statement read.

Iran said it used the same number of bombs the U.S. used to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, the secretariat of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said. The seven B-2’s dropped 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators. U.S. Tomahawk missiles also were used.

Trump thanked Iran for giving advance notice of the airstrikes.

“Iran has officially responded to our Obliteration of their Nuclear Facilities with a very weak response, which we expected, and have very effectively countered,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “There have been 14 missiles fired – 13 were knocked down, and 1 was ‘set free,’ because it was headed in a nonthreatening direction. I am pleased to report that NO Americans were harmed, and hardly any damage was done. Most importantly, they’ve gotten it all out of their “system,” and there will, hopefully, be no further HATE.”

Qatar called the attack “a flagrant violation of Qatar’s sovereignty and airspace.”

“We affirm that the state of Qatar reserves the right to respond directly, proportionate to the nature and scale of this blatant aggression and in accordance with international law,” Majed Al-Ansari, a spokesperson for the Qatari Foreign Ministry, said in a statement Monday.

Video by CNN shows burning debris falling next to a highway in Qatar after Iranian missiles fired at US base Al-Udeid were intercepted.

Air raid sirens sounded in Bahrain, which is close to Qatar and where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is headquartered. In addition to Qatar, United Arab Emrites, Kuwait and Iraq closed their airspace. But they later were reopened.

Airspace remains closed in Iran but flights resumes in Israel on Monday.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine were in the Situation Room, a White House official told CNN.

The New York Times reported loud booms were heard in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Lights were going upward, apparently part of a missile defense system, and some objects were seen falling to earth.

The base, which is heavily fortified, has been on high alert in the past few days for Iranian retaliatory attack after missiles targeted nuclear facilities early Sunday local time.

The base is the headquarters of U.S. Central Command and has 10,000 military and civilian personnel.

Non-sheltered American planes were moved from the base, according to a satellite image taken Thursday that shows tarmacs nearly empty.

Also, all U.S. Navy ships deployed at the base Bahrain left port last week. The U.S. has two aircraft carriers in the region — the USS Carl Vinson and the USS Nomitz — and the USS Ford, the newest carrier in the 11-ship fleet, will deploy from Norfolk Va., this week. Destroyers are part of the strike group.

The State Department has also begun organizing departure flights from Israel, and Americans can leave through Jordan via land crossings. Approximately 250 U.S. citizens, permanent residents and their immediate family members departed Israel on U.S.-facilitated flights, a State Department official said Monday.

The United States has not fought Iran since the B-2 bombers’ attacks.

Israeli attacks

Israel’s military targeted Iran’s Evin prison in Tehran where dissidents and political prisoners are held.

France’s foreign minister condemned the strikes on the prison, which houses two French nationals.

“The strike aimed at Evin Prison in Tehran put in danger two of our nationals, Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, hostages for the past three years. It’s inacceptable,” Jean-Noël Barrot said in a post on X.

The Israeli strikes on Tehran also damaged the main power lines in the northern part of Iran’s capital, according to the Iranian government-affiliated Mehr news agency. The area has more than 1 million people.

In Vienna, Rafael Grossi, the head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, warned on Monday at an emergency meeting in Vienna that “violence and destruction could reach unimaginable levels” if Iran, Israel and the United States do not find a pathway to diplomacy.

Israel has carried out near-daily violations of the November ceasefire that ended its 14-month war with Hezbollah.

Israeli air raids have targeted the outskirts of several areas in south Lebanon, including the villages of Zrariyeh, Kfrar Milki and Ansar, according to the country’s National News Agency.

The attacks on Monday appear to have targeted open areas outside of the towns. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Monday’s airstrikes were reportedly more intense than the usual, near-daily, violations — that Israel has carried out — of the November 2024 ceasefire that ended its 14-month war with Hezbollah.

The Israeli military says it struck rocket launchers and an arms depot for Hezbollah, but provided no evidence of that.

Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem warned last week that the group may take “appropriate” measures if the conflict between Israel and Iran escalates further. So far, the Iran-allied group has not militarily intervened in the conflict.

Demonstrators gathered for a rally in solidarity with Iran after Friday prayers in Beirut.

Al Jazeera has verified video in on of the locations of the Israeli bombing.

#عاجل – مشاهد من الغارات الإسرائيلية على جنوبي لبنان الآن https://t.co/diuMbH1zUZ pic.twitter.com/xaD5GpwSYS

— Annahar النهار (@Annahar) June 23, 2025

Translation: Scenes from the Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon now.

Earlier this month, launched a series of strikes targeting Beirut’s southern suburbs, sending huge numbers of residents fleeing their homes on the eve of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday after issuing a forced evacuation order an hour earlier.

Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz warned at the time that “there will be no calm in Beirut” and “no order or stability in Lebanon” unless Hezbollah is disarmed.

That Israeli attack was the fourth, and heaviest, carried out targeting Beirut’s southern suburbs – a Hezbollah stronghold – since the ceasefire ended hostilities.

Russia called the US strikes on Iran ‘unjustified’ and ‘unprovoked’, while China warned they ‘set a bad precedent’.

Russia and China have strongly condemned US attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, warning they could drag the world into a broader war and set a dangerous international precedent.

The reactions came just hours before Iran launched missiles at the US base in Qatar on Monday in response to Sunday’s strikes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday described the American strikes as “unjustified” and said they were pushing the world towards a perilous tipping point.

Speaking after talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi at the Kremlin, Putin said Moscow would try to help the Iranian people but stopped short of detailing how.

“The absolutely unprovoked aggression against Iran has no basis and no justification,” Putin told Araghchi. “For our part, we are making efforts to assist the Iranian people.”

The Chinese government also weighed in, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi condemning both the Israeli strikes on Iran and the US bombardment of its nuclear facilities. He said the rationale of attacking over “possible future threats” sent the wrong signal to the world and urged a return to diplomacy.

Wang called for all parties to “immediately resume dialogue and negotiation”, warning the escalation risked destabilising the region.

Bringing the world ‘to a very dangerous line’

Tensions have soared in recent days, with US President Donald Trump and Israeli officials openly discussing the possibility of assassinating Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and pushing for regime change – moves the Kremlin warned could plunge the region into a full-blown war.

During the high-level Kremlin meeting on Monday, Araghchi reportedly handed Putin a message from Khamenei, though the contents were not disclosed. A senior Iranian source told the Reuters news agency the letter called for increased Russian support, but Moscow has not confirmed receiving any such appeal.

Later, while addressing a gathering of elite military recruits, Putin spoke more broadly about growing instability. “Extra-regional powers are also being drawn into the conflict,” he said. “All this brings the world to a very dangerous line.”

Despite signing a 20-year strategic pact with Iran earlier this year, Russia has avoided making concrete military commitments to defend Tehran, and the agreement lacks any mutual defence clause.

Iranian frustration

Iranian officials, speaking anonymously to Reuters, expressed frustration with Moscow’s perceived inaction. They said Tehran felt let down by both Russia and China, despite repeated calls for support.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov declined to say whether Iran had asked for weapons or military aid but insisted Moscow’s ties with Tehran remained strong. “Our strategic partnership with Iran is unbreakable,” Ryabkov said, adding that Iran had every right to defend itself.

Still, the Kremlin appears wary of any move that might provoke a direct confrontation with Washington, particularly as Trump seeks to ease tensions with Moscow amid the war in Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said US-Iran developments would not affect the Russia-US dialogue, calling them “separate processes”.

Memories of US-led wars in the Middle East still linger. At Sunday’s United Nations Security Council session, Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia drew comparisons with the 2003 Iraq invasion. He recalled how the US falsely claimed Iraq held weapons of mass destruction.

“Again, we’re being asked to believe the US’s fairytales,” Nebenzia said. “This cements our conviction that history has taught our US colleagues nothing.”

Russia, China and Pakistan have jointly submitted a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the Middle East.

After the recent military escalations between Iran and Israel, where the U.S. was involved symbolically but in a limited manner, the focus of the international strategic community has shifted back to one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints: the Strait of Hormuz. Although the matter of closing such a waterway has been around in various forms of threats since the 1980s, the current situation in the Middle East is a clear signal that those threats are going to be actual events instead of mere rhetoric. Accordingly, the issue of how the world would react to a decision of Iran to shut down or impose restrictions on the Strait is now not a merely theoretical discussion—it is a current situation that is capable of affecting the whole world.

Why Hormuz Matters

The Strait of Hormuz acts as the main artery through which around 20% of the world’s oil for trade and more than 30% of global liquefied natural gas are transported each day. Its narrow geography—only 33 kilometers wide at the narrowest point—makes it a region that is unstoppably within Iran’s influence. This location is critical as it is the area where the Middle East’s vast oil resources are transported to the world’s markets. A conflict here would not only be equivalent to cutting off the energy export infrastructure in Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar but also to a power outage in international energy markets. In a global economic scenario currently facing various challenges such as supply chain realignments, inflationary trends, and geopolitical rivalries, the closure of Hormuz would not just be an energy crisis; it would be a major systemic event.

Military Feasibility and Constraints

Technically, Iran definitely has the capabilities to disrupt or block the Strait for a short period. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has multiple layers of assets in the region, such as fast-attack boats, coastal missile batteries, naval mines, and drone systems. It has been building and rehearsing asymmetric strategies that are intended to fool the shipping lanes and stop the U.S. from intervening in its navy; these strategies are implemented through repeated exercises. On the other hand, Iran could carry out such a closure or be the major disruptor, but the continuation of it would be difficult. This move would most probably incite a very strong and well-coordinated military counterattack from the United States and its partners, which may also include a multinational maritime security coalition, apart from those opponents mentioned. Besides that, the international community would certainly impose severe penalties on Iran in the form of retaliatory actions, diplomatic isolation, and economic free-fall. Therefore, it is possible that Tehran wants to continue to calibrate its harassment or partial closures instead of implementing a full-scale blockade.

Energy Security and Economic Fallout

An incident in the Strait of Hormuz would cause a very rapid increase in oil and gas prices, and Brent crude would probably go up to more than $150 a barrel in the first few days of the crisis. Energy-exporting countries—especially in Asia, where China, India, South Korea, and Japan are the main players—would not only have energy shortages but also energy price inflation. After the Ukraine crisis, Europe changed the direction of its gas imports to Gulf LNG, but it is still going to be affected. Though some capacity exists in the form of overland pipelines, like Saudi Arabia’s East-West system, these alternatives are not sufficient to make up for the shortage of the flow through Hormuz. The impact would be felt globally—through inflation, increased shipping insurance charges, currency instability, and lack of investor confidence in emerging markets. At the end of the day, the economic cost would not be limited to energy consumers alone; it would also hit the very core of the global economic interdependence structure.

Diplomatic and Legal Implications

International law legally defines the Strait of Hormuz as an international strait—that means it is the free navigation route allowed for ships under the law of the sea. This right of passage is given to ships registered as UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea). Although Iran is not a party to UNCLOS and they firmly believe that they have the right to issue regulations for traffic, especially at times of insecurity, they are nonetheless free to assert their prerogatives. This situation of uncertainty in the interpretation of the laws only goes to highlight a bigger issue: necks like Hormuz are not only regulated by law but also by power. When the legal norms conflict with geopolitical situations, the implementation of the law is more influenced by the use of force, negotiations, or peacekeeping units than by court decisions. In the course of the global order’s evolution toward multipolarity, traditional means of enforcement are more and more divided; the international community has to come to terms with the fact that maritime governance is at its end.

Global Responses and Strategic Calculus

If Iran were to interfere with the transit in the Strait of Hormuz in a serious manner, it would necessitate a strong reaction from the United States. The latter has always considered the freedom of navigation as a vital interest. To this end, they could send their naval forces, form coalitions as in 2019 and carry out Operation Sentinel, or ask the UN Security Council to solve the issue, though Russia or China are likely to block any resolution. European countries could request the de-escalation and the mediation of the conflict, but they do not have a unified military force in the region. China and India, on the other hand, need to think about their next moves: they can’t lose their energy security, but they shouldn’t look like they’re sticking with the West; otherwise, they’ll be in trouble with their other friends. Russia might be in a good position to profit from the rising oil prices, but on the other hand, it has to be careful not to damage its partnerships in the region. Most importantly, nations in the Gulf region such as Oman, Qatar, and the UAE are expected to be at the forefront of diplomatic efforts to calm down tensions, using their secret communication channels to reach a truce, thus preventing the situation from spiraling into open warfare.

Conclusion: A Chokepoint as a Global Fault Line

The hypothetical closing of the Strait of Hormuz has attracted attention not only to it as a regional conflict but also as a challenge for the international system. It displays, first of all, the weakness of energy and trade flows, which are extremely dependent on special narrow geographic corridors. Oddly enough, after so many years of discussions about energy diversification and supply chain resilience, the world still remains terribly dependent on several maritime corridors that are at the center of geopolitical struggles. The second point is that this event shows the absence of any credible regional security framework in the Persian Gulf. Several next attempts to build inclusive architectures—whether led by the United States, Russia, or even China—were not successful in creating crisis prevention or conflict resolution mechanisms. As a result of this situation, the region is no longer strategically stable but becomes reactive all the time.

On the third point, the whole situation with Hormuz undermines those sea governance foundations that still remain. Legal concepts like transit passage only work when they are supported by a multilateral consensus and have credible enforcement. In their absence, rules give way to power politics, and coercive signaling becomes a tool of diplomacy. Way, The precedent it would establish at Existing even time would lead to other chokepoints at play: the Suez Canal, the Bab el-Mandeb, and the South China Sea. In conclusion, the crisis would be a strong reassertion of the supply of preventive diplomacy. The current escalatory spiral between Iran and Israel, compounded by the lack of sustained dialogue mechanisms, leaves the door open for miscalculation and unintended conflict. Restoring regional diplomacy, be it through a new Gulf security initiative or improved nuclear talks, is not an option—it is a must.

In conclusion, the Strait of Hormuz is definitely not only a maritime corridor. It is a political fault line where local crises meet with global insecurity. The manner in which the international community deals with or neglects the danger could be the factor that decides the path of world peace in the next ten years.

Here are the key events on day 11 of the Israel-Iran conflict.

Here’s where things stand on Monday, June 23:

Fighting

• Iran has fired ballistic missiles at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the United States’ largest military installation in the Middle East. Doha said the attack was intercepted and there were no casualties.
• Fellow Gulf countries Bahrain and Kuwait – which also host US facilities – joined Qatar in closing their airspace, then reopened them.
• Earlier, Israel had struck Tehran’s Evin Prison, notorious for holding political activists. Iranian state television shared surveillance footage of the strike, which reportedly blew the facility’s gate open.
• Explosions were heard on the western outskirts of the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz, capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province, the Fars news agency reported.
• Tasnim news agency reported a strike at an electricity feeder station in the Evin neighbourhood in north Tehran.
• Earlier, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said his country had attacked “regime targets and government repression bodies in the heart of Tehran”, including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) command centres.
• Israel also carried out a strike on the Fordow enrichment facility, a day after the US hit the underground site south of Tehran with so-called “bunker buster” bombs.
• The Israeli military issued an evacuation threat to residents of Tehran, telling them to stay away from weapons production centres and military bases.
• Iranian state television said on Monday that the country had targeted the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv. It claimed the majority of its projectiles fired since the early hours of the day had successfully reached their targets.
• Sirens sounded across Israel before noon on Monday, with a large number of impacts recorded in several areas, including the Ashdod area in southern Israel and the Lachish area, south of Jerusalem.

Casualties and disruptions

• Eleven days into the conflict, large numbers of Tehran’s 10 million population have reportedly fled.
• After Israel’s strike on Evin Prison, Iran’s IRIB state broadcaster released video showing rescue workers combing the flattened wreckage of a building at the prison, carrying a wounded man on a stretcher.
• Iranian power company Tavanir said there were power cuts in the Iranian capital, Tehran.
• In Qatar, prior to Iran’s attack on Al Udeid, the US and the United Kingdom had urged their citizens in the country to “shelter in place”.
• Britain said on Monday that a Royal Air Force flight carrying 63 British nationals and their dependents out of Israel had left Tel Aviv.
• A number of airlines, including Kuwait Airways, Finnair and Singapore Airlines, have suspended operations in the Middle East. Air India said it was not only halting operations to the region, but also stopping flights to and from the US east coast and Europe.

Politics and diplomacy

• Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that Israel and Iran had “fully agreed” a “Complete and Total CEASEFIRE” to be phased in over a 24-hour period, after which “THE 12 DAY WAR” would be officially over. Iran or Israel have yet to comment on the plan.

• His announcement came after Iran’s attack on Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Trump thanked Tehran for giving him ”early notice” of the attack, which he described as a ”very weak response” to the US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. In a separate post, he thanked the emir of Qatar for his peace efforts.

• A spokesperson for the Qatari Foreign Ministry said that the country considered the Iranian attack to be a “surprise”, announcing the situation in the country was safe.

• Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei posted on his Farsi-language X account: “We have not violated anyone’s rights, nor will we ever accept anyone violating ours, and we will not surrender to anyone’s violation; this is the logic of the Iranian nation.”

• Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said in a statement posted by his ministry on Telegram that Iran would be ready to respond again in case of further action by the US.

• Earlier in the day, Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Khamenei, said bases used by US forces “in the region or elsewhere” could be attacked – that evening, Iran targeted Al Udeid in Qatar.
• Abdolrahim Mousavi, Iran’s armed forces chief of staff, pledged that the country would take “firm action” in response to US strikes on key nuclear sites the day before. “This crime and desecration will not go unanswered,” he said on state television.
• Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesperson for Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya central military headquarters, addressed US intervention in the war in a video statement, saying: “Mr Trump, the gambler, you may start this war, but we will be the ones to end it.”
• Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said a parliamentary committee had approved a general plan to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
• Iran’s mission to the United Nations said the US, the UK, France, Israel and IAEA chief Rafael Grossi were responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians and the destruction of infrastructure.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin slammed attacks on Iran as “unprovoked” and “unjustified” in a Moscow meeting with Tehran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said, “Our strategic partnership with Iran is unbreakable,” but was not drawn on the question of whether Iran had requested military help – or whether any help would be forthcoming.
• After Israel’s attack on Tehran’s Evin Prison, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar wrote “Viva la libertad!”, Spanish for “long live liberty”, on X.
• French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said that the Israeli strike on Tehran’s Evin Prison, which holds some French prisoners, was unacceptable.
• China’s UN ambassador, Fu Cong, said US credibility was “damaged” after its bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites, warning the conflict could “go out of control”, according to the state broadcaster.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said of Sunday’s US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites: “Yes, it is not without risk, but leaving it as it was wasn’t an option either.”
• British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said his country stood ready to “defend our personnel, our assets and those of our allies and partners”.
• NATO chief Mark Rutte said alliance members had “long agreed that Iran must not develop a nuclear weapon” and called an Iranian atomic bomb his “greatest fear”.
• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on China to help deter Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply and a potential lever for retaliatory action.
• The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said closing the strait would be “extremely dangerous”.
• US President Trump posted an online message on oil production to the US Department of Energy, encouraging it to “drill, baby, drill”, and saying, “I mean now.”
• Reza Pahlavi, the long-exiled son of Iran’s toppled shah, but not seen as a player with any real influence in Iran itself, warned the US and Europe not to throw a “lifeline” to Iran’s current leadership. “This is our Berlin Wall moment,” he said in an interview with the AFP news agency.

United States President Donald Trump says that Iran and Israel have agreed to a “complete and total” ceasefire that will come into effect in the coming hours.

Trump’s announcement on Monday came shortly after an Iranian missile attack on Al Udeid Air Base hosting US troops in Qatar.

“On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, ‘THE 12 DAY WAR,’” Trump said in a social media post.

“This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will! God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!”

Neither Israel nor Iran has confirmed the agreement.

More to come…

THE HAGUE — Whether the United States launches a broader war against Iran after bombing its nuclear facilities may come down to President Trump’s meetings with NATO partners this week at a summit of the alliance, a gathering long scheduled in the Netherlands now carrying far higher stakes.

So far, Washington’s transatlantic partners have praised the U.S. operation, which supplemented an ongoing Israeli campaign targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, air defenses and military leadership. But European officials told The Times their hope is to pull Trump back from any flirtation with regime change in Iran, a prospect that Trump and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have openly discussed in recent days.

Trump is scheduled to arrive in The Hague on Tuesday morning for two days of meetings, now expected to focus on the nascent crisis, as U.S. intelligence and military officials continue to assess the outcome of U.S. strikes over the weekend against Iran’s main nuclear sites at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan.

NATO was directly involved in the last two U.S. wars in the Middle East, taking part in a U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks and helping to train and advise security forces in Iraq. And while not a member of NATO, Israel coordinates with the security bloc through a process called the Mediterranean Dialogue, which includes work against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

At the Mauritshuis on Monday evening, overlooking The Hague’s historic court pond and under the gaze of Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” NATO officials, European military leaders and U.S. senators discussed the obvious: A summit that had been seen as an opportunity to show Trump that Europe is willing to pay more for its defense — with NATO members now committing to spend 5% of their GDP on military essentials and expenditures — will now be consumed instead with the possibility of a new war.

As the event was ending, Iran struck the U.S. military base in Qatar, its largest in the Middle East. But the Iranians gave Doha advance notice of the strike in an effort to avert casualties, the New York Times reported, indicating Tehran might be looking for an off-ramp from continuing escalation with Washington.

While the Pentagon said the U.S. bombing run, dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, American and Israeli officials acknowledged to The Times that it is not entirely clear how much equipment and fissile material Tehran was able to salvage before the attacks began.

And as concerns emerge that Iran may have been able to preserve a breakout capability, Israel’s target list across Iran seemed to broaden on Monday to reflect military ambitions beyond Iran’s nuclear program, including the headquarters of the Basij militia and a clock in downtown Tehran counting down to Israel’s destruction.

“Trump spoke too soon,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute, of the president’s declaration that the United States had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capacity with its weekend strikes.

“We may have simply waited too long with our hand-wringing, and given the Iranians time to evacuate their enriched stockpiles. If so, that represents a failure of leadership,” he added, noting reports that trucks could be seen at the Fordo site leading up to the U.S. attack. “If they then scattered and the U.S. intelligence community lost track of where they went, then that is an intelligence failure that could potentially be as costly as the one that preceded the Iraq war.”

European powers, particularly France, Germany and the United Kingdom, have been careful to praise Trump for ordering the strikes. But they have also urged an immediate return to negotiations, and expressed concern that Israel has begun targeting sites tangential and unrelated to Iran’s nuclear program.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, warning of “volatility” in the region, encouraged Iran “to return to the negotiating table and reach a diplomatic solution to end this crisis.” And Germany’s foreign minister, Johann Wadephul, questioned whether Tehran’s nuclear knowledge could be bombed away. “No one thinks it’s a good thing to keep fighting,” he told local media.

“I called for deescalation and for Iran to exercise the utmost restraint in this dangerous context, to allow a return to diplomacy,” said French President Emmanuel Macron. “Engaging in dialogue and securing a clear commitment from Iran to renounce nuclear weapons are essential to avoid the worst for the entire region. There is no alternative.”

Later Monday, after Israel had struck Iran’s notorious Evin prison, where foreign nationals are held, France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, issued a more scathing rebuke. “All strikes must now stop,” he said.

One European official said that efforts would be made once Trump arrives to underscore his military successes, noting the example he has made — using military force to deter an authoritarian foe — could still be applied to Russia in its war against Ukraine. Now that Trump has demonstrated peace through strength, the official said, it is time to give diplomacy another chance.

But it’s unclear if Iran would be receptive to pleas for a diplomatic breakthrough.

In a post on X on Sunday, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, noted that Israel’s attacks last week and the U.S. strikes this week coincided with negotiations, torpedoing any chance for talks to succeed.

“Last week, we were in negotiations with the U.S. when Israel decided to blow up that diplomacy. This week, we held talks with the E3/E.U. when the U.S. decided to blow up that diplomacy,” he wrote, adding that European calls to bring Iran to negotiations were misplaced. The E3 represents France, Germany and Italy.

“How can Iran return to something it never left, let alone blew up?” he added.

On Monday, before its strikes against the U.S. base in Qatar, Iranian military leaders vowed vengeance against the United States for the strikes.

The retaliation “will impose severe, regret-inducing, and unpredictable consequences on you,” said Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaqari, head of the Iranian military’s central command headquarters, in a video statement on Iranian broadcaster Press TV. He added that the U.S. attack “will expand the range of legitimate and diverse targets for Iran’s armed forces.”

Times staff writer Nabih Bulos in Beirut contributed to this report.

Intelligence operations years in the making were behind Israel’s targeting of key military positions and leaders in Iran this month, according to the Israeli press.

The strikes that took out much of Iran’s key defensive infrastructure and killed military commanders are credited to an Israeli intelligence service that is claimed to have infiltrated much of Iran’s security apparatus.

Inside Iran, scores of people have reportedly been arrested and accused of spying for Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, providing media support for Israel or disturbing public opinion.

Just a few days ago, the Iranian government ordered senior officials and their security teams not to use smartphones connected to the internet to avoid Israeli hacking of sensitive communications. Iranian security services, meanwhile, are understood to have asked the public to report any building they have rented to companies or individuals in the last couple of years.

Iran’s crackdown follows what has been framed as an unprecedented Israeli intelligence operation that led to its recent strikes on the country, but how extensive has the infiltration been, and how long has it been in the works?

How large a role did Israeli intelligence play in its initial strikes on Iran?

A significant one.

Shortly after Israel’s strikes on Iran, stories of the intelligence operations that preceded the “unprecedented” attack flooded the media. In interviews given by senior members of Israel’s intelligence community, details were given about how both human intelligence and AI were used in tandem to stage the attack, which they claimed hobbled much of Iran’s air defences.

On June 17, just days after the strike, The Associated Press published interviews with 10 Israeli intelligence and military officials with knowledge of the strike.

“This attack is the culmination of years of work by the Mossad to target Iran’s nuclear program,” Sima Shine, the former research director of Mossad, told the AP. The piece also detailed how Israeli agents were able to smuggle in a series of drones and missile systems into Iran, which were then used to strike numerous targets determined by a United States AI model working on data provided to it by Israeli agents within Iran, as well as information gained from previous strikes.

Are the intelligence operations ongoing?

They appear to be.

Israel claimed that the locations of two senior officers in Iran’s Quds force, Saeed Izadi and Behnam Shahryari, who were killed over the weekend, had been determined by its intelligence networks.

Earlier, on June 17, Israel was able to locate and kill one of Iran’s most senior military figures, Major-General Ali Shademani, and that was just four days after the assassination of his predecessor in a targeted air strike.

“I don’t think people realise how much audacity we have,” Israeli military intelligence specialist Miri Eisin told The Observer in the United Kingdom, noting that a target would have to entirely rid themselves of any electronic devices that could connect to the internet to avoid detection. “Most people don’t take themselves off the grid,” she said. “You can get to anybody.”

“Israel likely has around 30 to 40 cells operating inside Iran,” defence analyst Hamze Attar told Al Jazeera from Luxembourg, “with most of those made up of collaborators, rather than Israeli agents, which also makes Iran look weak,” he said, citing the assembly instructions found on the hardware seized by authorities.

“Some of those cells will be responsible for smuggling weapons from Israel, others for carrying out attacks and others for intelligence gathering,” he said.

How long has this been going on?

Israeli intelligence operations inside Iran are nothing new. According to analysts, operations designed to monitor, infiltrate, sabotage and undermine Iranian defences date back to the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Speaking in November 2024, Ali Larijani, a senior adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, acknowledged the extent of Israeli operations in Iran, telling the ISNA news agency that the “problem of infiltration had become very serious in recent years”.

“There have been some instances of negligence for years,” the former parliamentary speaker and nuclear negotiator added.

The detonation of communication devices used by the armed Lebanese group Hezbollah in September 2024 was only possible after the infiltration of the group’s supply chain by Israeli intelligence. Likewise, the assassination of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was carried out after details of his location were obtained by Israeli agents. Similar subterfuge was also used in the targeted assassination of Hamas’s political chief Ismael Haniyeh in Tehran in July 2024, when an explosive device placed in his residence weeks before was detonated.

In the last two decades, Israel has killed a number of Iran’s nuclear scientists, including Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was assassinated by a remote-controlled gun mounted on the back of a pick-up truck. Israel was also responsible for the release of the Stuxnet computer virus in 2010, which was thought to have infected 30,000 computers across at least 14 nuclear facilities in Iran.

Does Iran also spy on Israel?

Absolutely.

In late October, Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet, announced the arrest of seven Israeli citizens on suspicion of spying for Iran. A day earlier, authorities had detained another group of seven in Haifa, alleging they had assisted Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence during wartime.

At the time, Israeli police sources indicated that additional covert networks with ties to Iran may be active within the country.

If this is a covert operation, why do we know so much about it?

Because, according to analysts, publicity can also be a powerful tool in an intelligence agency’s toolkit.

Publicising the degree to which an opposing country’s security infrastructure can be infiltrated and sabotaged undermines that country’s morale while scoring points at home.

“It’s psychological warfare,” Attar said. “If I keep saying that I’ve broken into your house and you keep denying it, then I present proof of having done that, how do you look? You look weak. Israel will keep bragging about the extent of their infiltration in the hope that Iran will deny it, then they’ll provide further proof of it.”

On Sunday at approximately 2 a.m. Tehran time, seven B-2 stealth aircraft attacked the Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan, strikes enabled as much by the belief that Iran had this coming as the particular technology of the American bombers. A drawling President Trump put it in stark terms shortly after the operation ended. “For 40 years, Iran has been saying death to America, death to Israel. They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs, with roadside bombs. That was their specialty.”

Convention drives coverage of Iran in the United States, from stock images of anti-American murals to the enduring menace of “Iranian-backed militias.” Now there is an emerging consensus that overthrowing the government in Tehran will accomplish what Israeli and U.S. missiles and air assaults have not: an end to Iran’s nuclear program and that country’s destabilizing aspirations for regional hegemony, not to mention an end of the oppressive Islamic Republic itself. A series of headlines, analysts and politicians have in recent days presented regime change as a natural certainty, nothing less than a magic bullet. This too is seen as Iran’s due.

Very few of these expert voices have taken the next step by asking, “Then what?” Where does the magic bullet land? Sovereign imperatives await the next group to come into power. Democratic or otherwise, the government that replaces the current regime will be laser-focused on Iran’s survival. And there is very little reason for Israel or the U.S. to think that a reconstituted Iran will become more conciliatory toward either country once the war ends.

The reality is that nationalism, not theocracy, remains what what the historian Ali Ansari calls the “determining ideology” of Iran. There is a robust consensus among scholars that politics in Iran begins with the idea of Iran as a people with a continuous and unbroken history, a nation that “looms out of an immemorial past.” Nationalism provides the broad political arena in which different groups and ideologies in Iran compete for power and authority, whether monarchist, Islamist or leftist.

And that means that the patriotic defense of Iran isn’t a passing phase, produced under the duress of bombs, but the default position, the big idea that holds Iran together, hardened over the last two centuries of Iranian history and the trauma of the loss of territory and dignity to outside powers, including the Russians, the British and the Americans.

Getting rid of Islamic rule won’t change this dynamic; it is almost sure to guarantee that something worse will come along, sending Iranian politics in unexpected and more corrosive directions. Americans, after all, need only look to their current administration (or past interventions in the Middle East) for examples of how populist responses to foreign invasions, real or imagined, can lead to unthinkable outcomes.

“Trump just guaranteed that Iran will be a nuclear weapons state in the next 5 to 10 years, particularly if the regime changes,” Trita Parsi of the U.S.-based Quincy Institute wrote Saturday night. This is especially true if a new regime is democratic. The promised “liberation” of the Iranian people through devastating bombing campaigns presents the worst-case scenario for Israel and the U.S., as no future elected government would survive unless it sustained, and perhaps surpassed, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s current belligerence.

There is tragedy here. Ordinary Iranians, like most people, want peace and security, preferably through diplomacy and dialogue. The unprovoked attacks of the last week and their subsequent justification by not only the U.S. but also nearly all of the European Union, a disastrous sequence that began with Trump’s wanton violation of President Obama’s Iran deal in 2018, have convinced an increasing number of Iranians that the restraint of arms, nuclear or otherwise, is national suicide.

Insofar as the Islamic Republic can claim that it is the only Iranian government in more than 200 years to have lost “not an inch of soil,” it continues to cling to power. Of course, such legitimacy comes with a dual edge. This regime may survive in the short term, but if and when it does fall it will be because its leaders failed to keep Israeli and American arms out, munitions that have already killed more than 800 of their fellow citizens in less than a week, according to the Washington-based group Human Rights Activists.

One of the most common conventions when it comes to Iran, typically presented as a gesture of grace, is to draw a distinction between its government and the people, to lay blame on “the mullahs” and not the country’s long-suffering citizens for their country’s status as a rogue actor. As a way to appeal to Iranians of the righteousness of his cause, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his surrogates have deployed tropes of civilizational greatness that would make even the most ardent Persian chauvinist blush. On Thursday, the Israeli prime minister announced that the time had come for the Jews to repay an ancient debt: “I want to tell you that 2,500 years ago, Cyrus the Great, the king of Persia, liberated the Jews. And today, a Jewish state is creating the means to liberate the Persian people.” Regime change, by this logic, is a project of recovery and revivalism, a surefire way to make Iran great again.

Iranians are proving to be less nuanced, and unconvinced. The distance between the Iranian state and society has in the last week been reduced to almost nothing. Across the range of experience and suffering, from imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureates and formerly imprisoned Palm D’Or winners to working-class laborers left behind by the revolution, the overriding sentiment today in Iran is clear: These clerics may be scoundrels, but they’re our scoundrels, our problem to solve.

Nearly 50 years into an unwanted dictatorship, Iranians have developed a refined capacity for identifying bad faith. They know who has Iran’s interests at heart and who is trying to save his own skin.

Iranian American Shervin Malekzadeh is a visiting assistant professor of political science at Pitzer College and author of the forthcoming book, “Fire Beneath the Ash: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Democracy in Iran, 2009-2019.”

The RAF has evacuated 63 British nationals from Israel as the country continues to exchange fire with Iran, the foreign secretary has said.

The flight left Tel Aviv on Monday afternoon, taking vulnerable Britons and their immediate family to Cyprus.

A British national was also injured in Israel during an Iranian missile attack, David Lammy said.

In a statement to MPs, Lammy repeated his plea to Iran to return to the negotiating table following the US’s strike on its nuclear programme.

He said: “My message for Tehran was clear, take the off ramp, dial this thing down, and negotiate with the United States seriously and immediately.

“Be in no doubt, we are prepared to defend our personnel, our assets and those of our allies and partners.”

The RAF A400 aircraft departed Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport with 63 British nationals plus their immediate family who are eligible to travel.

The BBC understands Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis is one of the passengers returning to the UK after being evacuated from Israel by the RAF.

The Foreign Office said further flights would be based on demand and the security situation. British nationals still in Israel have been urged to register their presence with the UK government.

Downing Street said “around 1,000” people had asked for a seat on an evacuation flight – a quarter of the 4,000 who had registered their presence in Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territories with the Foreign Office.

Israeli airspace has been closed – leaving thousands of British nationals stranded – since the conflict started earlier this month when Israel attacked nuclear sites in Iran, prompting Tehran to respond with missile strikes.

Lammy said the British national injured in a strike in Israel was being offered consular support.

BBC News has approached the Foreign Office for more details.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump have claimed that Iran has been preparing to build a nuclear weapon. Iran has repeatedly denied planning to do so.

Urging Iran to return to the negotiating table, Lammy told the Commons: “The alternative is an even more destructive and far-reaching conflict, which could have unpredictable consequences.”

He added the situation “presents serious risk to British interests” in the Middle East.

British nationals in Qatar have also been advised to shelter in place until further notice.

Among the dozens killed are 13 aid seekers, as NGO warns Israel is also deliberately blocking energy access.

At least 43 people have been killed in various Israeli attacks since dawn as the military relentlessly pounds the besieged enclave, medical sources say, with the overall Palestinian death toll in the war surpassing a staggering 56,000.

Those killed on Monday include at least 20 aid seekers who lost their lives while desperately trying to access food for their families at distribution centres run by the controversial United States- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which the United Nations has condemned for its “weaponisation” of aid.

The killings are the latest in a wave of daily carnage, targeting hungry Palestinians who continue to make the perilous journey to the food distribution points. Critics have slammed the sites as “human slaughterhouses” amid a worsening hunger and looming famine crisis.

Israeli attacks on Palestinians near aid centres have killed more than 400 people and wounded about 1,000 since the GHF began distributions on May 27.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said Israel is engaged in its conflict with Iran while it also continues “the killing of Palestinians across the Gaza Strip with deadly air strikes on tents or residential homes”.

“Hungry crowds gather at food distribution centres in Rafah or the Netzarim Corridor. So far, 13 aid seekers have been shot dead today. They are among 30 people killed by Israel’s military since the early hours,” Mahmoud said.

Meanwhile, the Wafa news agency reported that at least four people were killed and several others wounded by an Israeli air attack on a residential building in northern Gaza’s Jabalia.

Three others, all brothers, were killed by Israeli forces while they were inspecting their damaged home in the al-Salateen area of Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza.

In central Gaza, al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp announced it had received the bodies of two Palestinians and treated 35 others injured in Israeli strikes on crowds gathered along Salah al-Din Street.

Sixteen of the wounded were in critical condition and transferred to other hospitals in the central governorate, Wafa said.

Israeli artillery also shelled the Shujayea neighbourhood in eastern Gaza City.

The latest casualty figures bring the number of people killed in the territory since the start of Israel’s 20-month war more than 56,000, with at least 131,559 wounded.

Energy crisis

The attacks come as the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) warned that the lack of reliable energy sources is a key threat to survival in Gaza.

The “deliberate denial of energy access”, like electricity and fuel, “undermines fundamental human needs” in the enclave, the NRC said in a new report.

Israel has maintained a crippling aid blockade on Gaza, sealing vital border crossings, and preventing the entry of aid spanning from food, to medical supplies and much-needed fuel.

“In Gaza, energy is not about convenience – it’s about survival,” Benedicte Giaever, executive director of NORCAP, which is part of NRC, said.

“When families can’t cook, when hospitals go dark and when water pumps stop running, the consequences are immediate and devastating. The international community must prioritise energy in all humanitarian efforts,” she added.

NRC’s report noted that without power, healthcare facilities in Gaza have been adversely affected, with emergency surgeries having to be delayed, and ventilators, incubators and dialysis machines unable to function.

Donald Trump’s coalition has always been a Frankenstein’s monster — stitched together from parts that were never meant to coexist.

Consider the contradictions: fast-food fanatics hanging out with juice-cleanse truthers chanting “Make America Healthy Again” between ivermectin doses, immigration hardliners mixing with business elites who are “tough on the border” until they need someone to clean their toilets or pick their strawberries, and hawkish interventionists spooning with America Firsters.

Dogs and cats living together — mass hysteria — you know the bit.

Navigating these differences was always going to be tricky. But in recent days — particularly following Israel’s bombing of Iran, an operation widely believed to have been greenlit by Trump — the tension has reached new highs.

Signs of strain were already emerging earlier this year. We got early hints of discord during the “Liberation Day” tariff fiasco — where Trump declared an “emergency” and imposed steep tariffs, only to suspend them after they riled markets and spooked his business-friendly backers.

The tariff blunder was a harbinger of things to come. But it was the House’s passage of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” — a budgetary monstrosity that self-respecting Freedom Caucus deficit hawks should’ve torched on principle — that truly exposed the rift.

Enter Elon Musk, the billionaire tech bro and MAGA ally, who publicly trashed both the bill and Trump in a flurry of posts. He even referenced Trump’s name reportedly appearing in Jeffrey Epstein’s files — a claim that, though unverified, was tantamount to “going nuclear.”

But before there was enough time to say “Republican civil war,” Musk deleted his mean tweets, adding to the evidence that this is still Trump’s party; that modern Republicans view deficits the way the rest of us view library late fees — technically real, but nothing to lose sleep over; and that ketamine is a hell of a drug.

The next internecine squabble was over immigration. Trump proudly ran on rounding ’em all up. Mass deportations! Load up the buses! But then it turned out that his rich buddies in Big Ag and Big Hospitality weren’t so keen on losing some of their best employees.

So Trump floated a carve out to protect some “very good, long time workers” in those particular industries.

It even started to look like some exemptions were coming — until his Department of Homeland Security said “no mas.” (The raids will presumably continue until the next time a farmer or hotelier complains to Trump in a meeting.)

But the real fissure involves some prominent America First non-interventionists who thought Trump was elected to end the “forever wars.”

In case you missed it, Israel has been going after Iran’s nuclear capabilities with the same gusto that Trump aide Stephen Miller applies to deporting Guatemalan landscapers, and Trump is all in, calling for an “unconditional surrender” of the Iranian regime.

This didn’t sit well with everyone in the MAGA coalition.

“I think we’re going to see the end of American empire,” warned Tucker Carlson on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. “But it’s also going to end, I believe, Trump’s presidency — effectively end it — and so that’s why I’m saying this.”

And Carlson (co-founder of the Daily Caller, where I worked) didn’t stop there. “The real divide isn’t between people who support Israel and those who support Iran or the Palestinians,” he tweeted. “It’s between warmongers and peacemakers.”

Then he named names, alleging that Fox’s Sean Hannity, radio firebrand Mark Levin, media titan Rupert Murdoch and billionaire Trump donors Ike Perlmutter and Miriam Adelson were among the warmongers.

Trump hit back, calling Tucker “kooky” and repeating his new mantra: “IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON.”

It’s tempting to see this spat as the beginning of a schism — a break that might finally yield a coherent Trump Doctrine, at least, as it pertains to foreign policy (possibly returning the GOP to a more Reaganite or internationalist party). But that misunderstands the nature of Trump and his coalition.

These coalitional disagreements over public policy are real and important. But they mostly exist at the elite level. The actual Trump voter base? They care about only one thing: Donald Trump.

And Trump resists ideological straitjackets.

If Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu rubs him the wrong way next week (as he did by congratulating Joe Biden in 2020), or if Israel’s military campaign starts slipping in the polls, Trump could flip faster than a gymnast on Red Bull.

There is no coherent philosophy. No durable ideology. What we’re watching is a guy making it up as he goes along — often basing decisions on his “gut” or the opinion of the last guy who bent his ear.

So if you’re looking for a Trump Doctrine to explain it all — keep looking. There isn’t one.

There’s only Trump.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

The Norwegian Refugee Council says the ‘deliberate denial of energy access’ undermines human needs in Gaza.

The lack of reliable energy sources is a key threat to survival in war-torn Gaza, an NGO has warned.

The “deliberate denial of energy access”, like electricity and fuel, “undermines fundamental human needs” in the war-torn enclave, a report published on Monday by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) cautioned. The alert is just the latest regarding the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which is driven by Israel’s blockade amid its war against Hamas.

Israel halted the entry of food, water and fuel in March, putting the Palestinian territory’s population at risk of famine.

Electricity supply has also been limited. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that 2.1 million people in Gaza have no access to power.

“In Gaza, energy is not about convenience – it’s about survival,” Benedicte Giaever, executive director of NORCAP, which is part of NRC, said.

“When families can’t cook, when hospitals go dark and when water pumps stop running, the consequences are immediate and devastating. The international community must prioritise energy in all humanitarian efforts,” she added.

NRC’s report noted that without power, healthcare facilities in Gaza have been adversely impacted, with emergency surgeries having to be delayed, and ventilators, incubators and dialysis machines unable to function.

Lack of electricity has also impacted Gaza’s desalination facilities, leaving 70 percent of households without access to clean water and forcing households to burn plastic or debris to cook, NRC said.

The humanitarian organisation also highlighted how the lack of power has increased the risks of gender-based violence after dark.

“For too long, the people of Gaza have endured cycles of conflict, blockade, and deprivation. But the current crisis represents a new depth of despair, threatening their immediate survival and their long-term prospects for recovery and development,” NRC’s Secretary General Jan Egeland said, urging the international community to ensure the people in Gaza gain access to energy.

Amid the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, hundreds of people have been killed by the Israeli military as they have sought food and other vital supplies from aid stations set up by the controversial Israel- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

In its latest daily update released on Monday, the Health Ministry in Gaza said the bodies of at least 39 people had been brought to hospitals over the previous 24 hours. At least 317 people were wounded, it added.

Since Israel eased its total blockade last month, more than 400 people are reported to have died trying to reach food distribution points.

The UN’s top humanitarian official in the occupied Palestinian territory issued a stark warning on Sunday over the deepening crisis.

“We see a chilling pattern of Israeli forces opening fire on crowds gathering to get food,” said Jonathan Whittall, who heads OCHA in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

“The attempt to survive is being met with a death sentence.”

Move follows campaign accusing Maersk of links to Israel’s military and occupation of Palestinian lands.

Maersk will cut ties with companies linked to illegal Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank, the Danish shipping giant has said.

The decision follows months-long pressure by activists on Maersk on issues related to Palestine.

Its shipments have come under scrutiny as part of an international campaign led by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), a grassroots organisation. The group has focused mainly on Maersk’s shipments of US foreign military sales, but PYM has also researched the transport of cargo from companies tied to settlements.

A statement on the Maersk website, dated June, 2025, said, “Following a recent review of transports related to the West Bank, we further strengthened our screening procedures in relation to Israeli settlements, including aligning our screening process with the OHCHR database of enterprises involved in activities in the settlements.”

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) database includes businesses involved in various activities related to the settlements, such as providing services, equipment, or financial operations that support the illegal settlements.

When asked for further details on its decision, Maersk pointed Al Jazeera to the statement on its website. It is unclear which or how many businesses Maersk had links to.

Israel has built more than 100 settlements across the occupied West Bank that are home to some 500,000 settlers. These settlements, illegal under international law, range from small outposts to larger communities with modern infrastructure.

“This sends a clear message to the global shipping industry: compliance with international law and basic human rights is not optional. Doing business with Israel’s illegal settlements is no longer viable, and the world is watching to see who follows next,” said PYM’s Aisha Nizar.

But she called for further action, arguing that Maersk still transports goods for the Israeli military, including components of its F-35 fighter planes.

“Maersk continues to profit from the genocide of our people – regularly shipping F-35 components used to bomb and massacre Palestinians,” Nizar said. “We will continue to build pressure and mobilise people power until Maersk cuts all ties to genocide and ends the transport of weapons and weapons components to Israel.”

Last year, Spain banned Maersk ships transporting military goods to Israel from using its ports.

Earlier this month, PYM revealed how Maersk was using the port of Rotterdam as an essential link in what it called a “supply chain of death”.

Despite a Dutch court ruling that prohibited the Netherlands from exporting F-35 parts to Israel, Rotterdam still played a role in Israel’s F-35 programme, the report showed.

In response to those findings, Maersk told Al Jazeera that it upholds a strict policy of not shipping weapons or ammunition to active conflict zones and that it conducts due diligence, particularly in regions affected by active conflicts, including Israel and Gaza, and adapts this due diligence to the changing context.

It confirmed, however, that its US subsidiary, Maersk Line Limited, was one of “many companies supporting the global F-35 supply chain” with transport services.

EXPLAINER

Iran remains the US’s adversary in the Middle East since the 1979 Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

United States-Iran tensions have surged to the highest point in decades after President Donald Trump on Sunday ordered direct strikes that he said “obliterated” key nuclear facilities across the Middle Eastern country.

Iran remains the biggest adversary of the US in the region since the 1979 Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini toppled pro-Western Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Since then, the two nations have sparred over a multitude of issues, including Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Iran’s backing of proxies in the region, and US political interference.

Israel, which has long considered Iran a threat, launched unprecedented strikes across Iran last week after accusing the country of developing nuclear weapons. Israeli claims have not been backed by any credible proof, but Trump dragged the US into the war following the Israeli strikes.

On Sunday, the US directly hit Iran in what the Trump administration called a highly sophisticated covert attack that involved more than 125 US aircraft and 75 precision bombs. Washington said it “devastated” Iran’s nuclear sites, but Tehran has warned it will retaliate.

Here’s a timeline of US-Iran relations since 1953:

• (1953) US-backed coup and reinstallation of the shah: Tensions initially began brewing over the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh’s efforts to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP). The British colonial power controlled the majority stake in the joint-venture company since oil was discovered in the early 1900s. Mosaddegh’s moves to nationalise the company after his 1951 election angered the British. The US’s Central Intelligence Agency supported the United Kingdom in engineering a coup and backing once-deposed monarch, Pahlavi, back into power as shah.
• (1957) Atoms for Peace: The shah’s ambitions for a nuclear-powered Iran gained support from the US and other Western allies. Both countries signed a nuclear agreement for the civilian use of nuclear power as part of then-US President Dwight D Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace programme. A decade later, the US provided Iran with a nuclear reactor and uranium to fuel it. The nuclear collaboration forms the basis for the current nuclear question.
• (1979) Islamic revolution: While relations between Tehran and Washington flourished, Iranians groaned under the dictatorship of the shah and resisted the perceived overreach of Western influence on their business. Revolutionary protests began rocking the country in late 1978 and forced the shah to flee in January 1979. Exiled Islamic scholar Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to rule the new Islamic republic.
• (1980) US cuts diplomatic ties: Following the US’s move to admit the shah for cancer treatment after his exile, Iranian students broke into the US embassy in Tehran and kidnapped 52 Americans for 444 days. Washington cut off diplomatic ties and imposed sanctions on the country. The shah died in exile.
• (1980-88) US backs Iraqi invasion: Following Iraq’s invasion of Iran under Saddam Hussein, who was eager to push back against Khomeini’s ideology, the US sided with Iraq, deepening tensions between the two nations. The war lasted till 1988 and saw thousands die on both sides. Iraq also used chemical weapons on Iran.
• (1984) Sponsor of terror designation: President Ronald Reagan officially designated Iran as a “state sponsor of terror” after a series of attacks in Lebanon, where the US had been drawn in after Israel invaded the country. In one attack on a military base in Beirut, 241 US service members were killed. The US blamed Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia movement backed by Iran. Later, though, Reagan worked with Iran behind the scenes to free American hostages held by Hezbollah. When it came to light, the Iran-Contra affair, as it was termed, was a huge scandal for Reagan.
• (1988) Iran Air flight shot down: Amid war tensions and even direct attacks on each other’s military warships in the Gulf, a US naval ship breached Iranian waters and fired at the civilian Iran Air flight (IR655) headed to Dubai on July 8. All 290 people on board were killed. The US, which claimed it was a mistake, did not formally apologise or claim responsibility but paid families $61.8m as compensation.
• (1995) Tighter sanctions: Between 1995 and 1996, the US imposed more sanctions. Then, President Bill Clinton’s executive orders banned US companies from dealing with Iran, while Congress passed a law penalising foreign entities investing in the country’s energy sector or selling Iran advanced weapons. The US cited nuclear advancement and support of groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
• (2002) 9/11 aftermath: Following the 9/11 attacks on the US, President George W Bush, in a State of the Union address, said Iran was part of an “Axis of Evil” alongside Iraq and North Korea. At the time, Iran had been parlaying with the US behind the scenes to target their mutual foes – the Taliban in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda. The cooperation was soured, and by the end of 2022, international observers noted highly enriched uranium in Iran, inviting more sanctions.
• (2013) Iran nuclear deal: Between 2013 and 2015, US President Barack Obama began high-level talks with Iran. In 2015, Tehran agreed to the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), that would limit Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for an easing of sanctions. China, Russia, France, Germany, the UK and the European Union were also party to the deal that capped Iran’s enrichment at 3.67 percent.
• (2018) Trump withdraws from the nuclear deal: Under Trump’s first term, the US unilaterally withdrew from the deal in 2018 and slapped back sanctions against Iran. Trump and Israel had been critical of the deal. Iran also called off its commitments and began producing enriched uranium beyond the limits the deal had imposed.
• (2020) IRGC leader assassinated: During Trump’s first term, the US killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, the head of the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in Baghdad in a drone strike. A year earlier, the administration had named the Quds Force a “terrorist” organisation. Iran responded with strikes on US assets in Iraq.
• (2025) Letter to Tehran: In March, Trump shot off a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei proposing new negotiations on a nuclear deal with a deadline of 60 days. But Khamenei rejected the offer, saying the US is not seeking negotiations with Iran but rather imposing demands on it. Talks started unofficially in Oman and Italy, with Muscat acting as the mediator. Trump claimed his team was “very close” to a deal after several rounds of talks and warned Israel against strikes. Tehran, too, expressed optimism but insisted on the right to enrich uranium – a sticking point in the talks. Israel launched strikes across Iran a day before the sixth round of the Iran-US talks.
• (2025) US strikes: The US bombed three key nuclear facilities in Iran, citing security concerns and the defence of Israel.