Israel

US president doubles down on claim Iran is building nuclear weapon, again contradicting US intelligence community.

United States President Donald Trump has said his director of national intelligence was “wrong” when she testified that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had not re-authorised the country’s suspended nuclear weapons programme.

The comments come after Trump earlier this week cast doubt on Tulsi Gabbard’s March 25 report to Congress, in which she reiterated the US intelligence community’s assessment. On Tuesday, Trump told reporters, “I don’t care” that the intelligence community’s finding contradicted his own claims, saying Iran was in the late stages of developing a nuclear weapon.

But speaking on Friday, Trump went further.

A reporter asked, “What intelligence do you have that Iran is building a nuclear weapon? Your intelligence community said they have no evidence.”

The president responded, “Then my intelligence community is wrong. Who in the intelligence community said that?”

“Your DNI [director of national intelligence], Tulsi Gabbard,” the reporter replied.

“She’s wrong,” Trump said.

It is extremely rare for a US president to openly contradict the country’s intelligence community, with critics accusing Trump of flagrantly disregarding evidence to justify potential direct US involvement in the fighting, according to Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara.

“This is not just one person, one team saying something,” Bishara said. “It’s the entire intelligence community in the United States. That he would dismiss them … it’s just astounding.”

Speaking on Friday, Trump also appeared to downplay the prospect of the US brokering a ceasefire agreement between Iran and Israel, saying he “might” support such a deal, while adding, “Israel’s doing well in terms of war, and I think you would say that Iran is doing less well.”

“It’s hard to make that request right now. When someone’s winning, it’s harder than when they’re losing,” he added.

Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera’s Heidi Zhou Castro noted that Trump was “really making a point that he’s not going to make an effort to ask Israel to ease up on its aerial bombing of Iranian targets”.

“It seems that Trump is very squarely on Israel’s side as things are progressing, and … it appears that he is not leaning towards the diplomacy route, though, again, he is giving himself that two weeks’ time to make a final decision,” she said.

Trump on Thursday said he would take two weeks to decide the US response to the conflict. Experts say the decision would likely be transformative.

The US is seen as one of the few countries with the leverage to pressure Israel to step back from the brink of wider-scale regional war.

At the same time, the involvement of the US military is seen as key to Israel’s stated mission of completely dismantling Iran’s nuclear programme, which hinges on destroying the underground Fordow enrichment plant.

A successful attack on the facility would require both Washington’s 30,000-pound (13,000kg) GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator and the B-2 bombers needed to deliver it.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump also downplayed the potential role of European countries in de-escalating the situation. That came hours after Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met the top diplomats from France, the UK, Germany and the EU in Geneva.

“Europe is not going to be able to help,” the US president said.

An EU diplomatic service audit report, seen by Reuters and AFP, looked at Israel’s actions in Gaza and occupied West Bank.

There are indications Israel may have breached its human rights obligations under the terms of a pact governing its ties with the European Union, a review of the agreement shows.

According to an EU document seen by the Reuters and AFP news agencies on Friday, the European External Action Service said that Israel’s actions in Gaza were likely not in line with rules laid out in the EU-Israel Association.

“On the basis of the assessments made by the independent international institutions … there are indications that Israel would be in breach of its human rights obligations,” the audit drafted by the EU’s diplomatic service read.

The report comes after months of deepening concern in European capitals about Israel’s operations in Gaza and the humanitarian situation in the enclave.

“Israel’s continued restrictions to the provision of food, medicines, medical equipment, and other vital supplies affect the entire population of Gaza present on the affected territory,” it said.

The document includes a section dedicated to the situation in Gaza – covering issues related to denial of humanitarian aid, attacks with a significant number of casualties, attacks on medical facilities, displacement and lack of accountability – as well as the situation in the occupied West Bank, including settler violence, Reuters reported.

The document said it relies on “facts verified by and assessments made by independent international institutions, and with a focus on most recent events in Gaza and the West Bank”.

The audit was launched last month in response to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza, in a push backed by 17 states and spearheaded by the Netherlands.

The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, is expected to present the findings of the report to the bloc’s foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday.

EU-Israel agreement

Under the EU-Israel agreement, which came into effect in 2000, the two parties agreed that their relationship would be based on “respect for human rights and democratic principles”.

Suspending the agreement would require a unanimous decision from the bloc’s 27 members, something diplomats have said from the beginning was virtually impossible.

According to AFP, diplomats have said that they expect Kallas to propose options on a response to the report during the next foreign ministers’ meeting in July.

“The question is … how many member states would still be willing not to do anything and still keep on saying that it’s business as usual,” an unnamed diplomat told the news agency ahead of the review’s findings.

“It’s really important to not fall into the trap of Israel to look somewhere else,” they said.

The EU is Israel’s largest commercial partner, with 42.6 billion euros ($48.2bn) in goods traded in 2024. Trade in services reached 25.6 billion euros ($29.5bn) in 2023.

Israel’s mission to the EU did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment about the contents of the document.

“You’re a wolf pretending to be a diplomat”

Iranian and Israeli officials clashed during a heated UN Security Council session. Iran said it would continue to defend itself until Israeli attacks end, while Israel vowed to keep striking until Iran’s “nuclear threat” is dismantled.

The head of the UN atomic watchdog, Rafael Grossi, told the Security Council that an Israeli strike on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant would cause a nuclear disaster. The Israeli military had said on Thursday that it had struck the facility, but later clarified that the comment had been made in error.

As the war between Israel and Iran continues, Yemen’s Houthi rebels say they are coordinating with Tehran.

The Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, have since 2023 launched attacks on Israel and shipping in the Red Sea in what they say is support for Palestinians in Gaza.

The Houthis are also a close ally of Iran, and now they say that their latest attacks are on behalf of the “Palestinian and Iranian peoples”, according to the Telegram account of Houthi spokesperson Yahya Saree, who added that the Yemeni group were coordinating with “the operations carried out by the Iranian army against the criminal Israeli enemy”.

On Sunday, two days after Israel first attacked Iran in the early hours of June 13, the Houthis announced that they had targeted Israel.

In a televised address, Saree said the group fired several ballistic missiles at Jaffa.

The Houthis are timing their attacks with the Iranians, according to Hussain Albukhaiti, a pro-Houthi political commentator.

The Houthis are launching missiles “after Iran launched its missiles”, Albukhaiti told Al Jazeera. “This way the Zionist settlers [Israelis] keep going back and forth to their shelters so they can live a small fraction of the fear they caused the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

The Houthi attacks are essentially a continuation of their previous periodic missile and drone attacks on Israel. The Israelis have mostly been able to intercept the attacks but some have gotten through, most notably an attack in early May on Ben Gurion airport that injured six people and led to a suspension of flights.

But the Houthi attacks have also had another consequence for Israeli defences, according to Yemen expert Nicholas Brumfield.

“The constant threat of Houthi attacks coming from the south requires Israel to spread out its air defences rather than positioning them all to more effectively [defend] counterattacks coming from Iran,” he told Al Jazeera.

Shipping routes

In November 2023, the Houthis began attacking ships they say were linked to Israel in the Red Sea. International ships that travel to the Red Sea are forced to pass Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.

The attacks have ceased in recent months, particularly after the Houthis and the United States came to an agreement to stop attacking each other in early May, following a US bombing campaign that is reported to have killed more than 200 people in Yemen.

But the attacks could still resume, and the Houthis never agreed to stop targeting Israel, which itself has also continued to bomb Yemen.

“We had an agreement with the US to stop attacking each other, but Yemen will not obey this agreement if the US joins the Zionists in their attacks against Iran,” Albukhaiti said.

“We remember that Trump cancelled the nuclear deal between Iran and the US,” he said, referring to the US president’s unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear deal between Iran and several Western countries in 2018. Albukhaiti accused Trump of cancelling the deal because it was not in Israel’s interest.

“Yemen will do the same, and will cancel the agreement with the US, because it’s not in the interest of Iran, which is an important ally of Yemen,” he said, referring to the Houthi rebel group as “Yemen”, although the group’s government is not recognised internationally.

Iran has also threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, which lies between it and Oman. About 20 million barrels per day (BPD), or the equivalent of about 20 percent of global petroleum liquids consumed, pass through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Analysts said the Houthis could potentially do the same in the Red Sea.

Sea mines are “very low-tech, easy-to-make mines that would nevertheless introduce considerable uncertainty for global shippers,” Brumfield said.

“I don’t think that Iran or Yemen will hesitate to use sea mines if necessary to block the entire shipping lines in our region,” Albukhaiti added.

Risks to Gulf states

There are also fears that the conflict could drag in other countries in the region. The US has bases in a number of countries in the Middle East, and the Houthis have previously been involved in fighting with many of them, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

If the current conflict spirals, Gulf countries may find themselves threatened by Houthi attacks.

“The Houthis are trying to recover from the US strikes we saw between mid-March and May, and probably aren’t begging to restart those more intensive strikes if they don’t have to,” Brumfield said. “But I also think they’d be amenable to restarting them if they saw themselves as participating in a grand regional war between the US-Israel and the Axis of Resistance, especially if a lot of US military resources are diverted to Iran.”

Albukhaiti said Houthi forces “could also target US bases in the region”, specifically those involved in the coalition against Yemen, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, because “we are still at war with these countries”, he said.

The Saudi-led coalition intervened militarily in the war in Yemen between the Houthis and the country’s internationally recognised government in 2015, unleashing a years-long campaign of air strikes. Saudi Arabia ceased hostilities in Yemen in 2022, but has yet to officially reach a deal with the Houthis.

And before that, it had come under Houthi attack. In 2019, Saudi oil production was cut by around 50 percent after Houthi drone strikes on oil plants. Since then, analysts say the Saudis have worked hard to keep more stable relations with the Houthis in order to avoid further attacks.

But despite these efforts, the detente could be forgotten if the Houthis see fit to resume hitting their northern neighbour.

“I don’t think [attacks on Saudi Arabia are] off the table,” Brumfield said. “If elements in Houthi leadership in favour of a military-first approach win out, it’s plausible they would attack the Kingdom [of Saudi Arabia] as part of a general escalation in both the regional and Yemen conflict.”

Brumfield added that the Houthis would, however, have to also keep in mind that Saudi Arabia has provided “diplomatic cover” for the Houthis in the past few years, as it seeks to find a final deal to end the conflict in Yemen. Any attacks from the Houthis would likely make Saudi Arabia abandon that strategy.

Internal strife

Anti-Houthi groups in Yemen have been watching events carefully over the past few months, as they sense an opportunity with the initial US campaign against the Houthis, and now the weakening of the Houthis’ principal ally, Iran.

“The most [the Houthis are] capable of doing is continuing symbolic attacks on Israel or potentially restarting activity in the Red Sea,” Raiman Al-Hamdani, an independent Yemen analyst, told Al Jazeera. “But doing so could provoke a renewed military response from the US, Israel, and the UK, which might weaken their position domestically and open space for anti-Houthi groups to exploit any resulting instability.”

However, analysts say that few of the groups that oppose the Houthis, including the Yemeni government, are in a position to take and effectively govern territory from the Houthis.

And, should those groups mobilise, the Houthis would likely respond, Albukhaiti said.

Houthi forces could target any domestic opponents through “oil and gas fields and platforms” as well as the “airports and water distillation plants” of the countries he said backed the groups, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Violence against children in conflict zones reached ‘unprecedented levels’ in 2024, with most violations committed in Gaza, occupied West Bank, UN says.

The United Nations has kept Israel on its “blacklist” of countries committing abuses against children in armed conflict for a second straight year, as its war on Gaza continues for nearly 20 months.

The listing on Thursday came as the UN said in a new report that violence against children in conflict zones reached “unprecedented levels” in 2024, with the highest number of violations committed in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank by the Israeli army.

The annual report on Children in Armed Conflict detailed “a staggering” 25 percent surge globally in grave violations against children below the age of 18 last year from 2023. It said it had verified 41,370 grave violations against children, including killing and maiming, sexual violence, and attacks on schools and hospitals.

Among them were 8,554 grave violations against 2,959 children – 2,944 Palestinian, 15 Israeli – in the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel.

The figure includes confirmation of 1,259 Palestinian children killed and 941 wounded in Gaza, which has come under relentless Israeli bombardment following an attack led by the Palestinian group Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza has reported much higher figures, and the UN said it is currently verifying information on an additional 4,470 children killed in 2024 in the besieged territory.

The UN said it has also verified the killing of 97 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, where a total of 3,688 violations were recorded.

The report also called out Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, where more than 500 children were killed or injured last year.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said he was “appalled by the intensity of grave violations against children in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel”, citing the widespread use of explosive weapons in populated areas.

Guterres also reiterated his calls on Israel to abide by international law requiring special protections for children, protection for schools and hospitals, and compliance with the requirement that attacks distinguish between fighters and civilians and avoid excessive harm to innocent people.

There was no immediate comment by Israel’s UN mission.

The armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, and the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, were also included in the blacklist for a second time.

Following the Palestinian territory, the countries where the UN registered the most violence against children in 2024 were the Democratic Republic of the Congo (more than 4,000 grave violations); Somalia (more than 2,500); Nigeria (nearly 2,500); and Haiti (more than 2,200).

The sharpest percentage increase in the number of violations was recorded in Lebanon (545 percent), followed by Mozambique (525 percent), Haiti (490 percent), Ethiopia (235 percent), and Ukraine (105 percent), it added.

Trump’s base is splintering from GOP hawks over possible US strikes on Iran. While some Republicans push for military action and regime change, key MAGA allies warn war could derail Trump’s domestic agenda. Trump says he’ll decide within two weeks on action in Iran.

The Israeli government has issued new directives restricting how its media covers its current war with Iran.

On Wednesday, a circular from Israel’s military censor, Brigadier General Kobi Mandelblit, announced new rules on what Israeli media organisations and journalists within the country can – and cannot – publish about the effect of Iranian strikes.

The legal underpinnings of censorship in Israel are older than the country itself.

Restrictions on media freedom in the territory were first established by the British during their Mandate for Palestine in 1945, before being incorporated into Israeli law after the state was created three years later.

However, restrictions on press freedom in Israel go further than just outlawing aspects of journalists’ reporting.

According to figures from the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Israel has killed at least 164 journalists in Gaza since October 7, 2023. More have been killed in Lebanon, the occupied West Bank and, now, Iran.

Since May 2024, the Israeli government has banned Al Jazeera from its territory and, since November, has sanctioned the Israeli liberal daily, Haaretz, over coverage considered critical of its actions.

So, what are the new restrictions on journalists and how does media freedom in Israel stack up against that in other countries?

Here’s what we know.

What do the new restrictions involve?

The new regulations relate specifically to the conflict with Iran. They place special restrictions on the way journalists and editors can report the impact of Iranian strikes on Israel.

In a circular, published on Wednesday, titled Rising Lion – IDF Censor Guidelines for Media Coverage of Attack on the Israeli Home Front, the office of Israel’s chief military censor ordered editors to take “strict measures” when reporting on missile and drone attacks.

The censor is also warning against reporting anything that could indicate attack positions or air defence operations, or damage assessments that could “assist the enemy” and pose “a tangible threat to state security”.

Specifically, journalists and editors are prohibited from:

• Filming or broadcasting images from impact sites, particularly near military installations.
• Using drones or wide-angle cameras to show impact areas.
• Detailing the precise location of affected areas near security installations.
• Broadcasting images of Israeli missiles being launched or of Iranian missiles being intercepted.
• The directive also bans the sharing of videos from social media without prior review by the censor, cautioning – as a side note – that some may be “enemy-generated fake news”.

The new restrictions have taken immediate effect. Photographers in the port city of Haifa were arrested in the early hours of Tuesday morning while setting up cameras to capture images of potential strikes on the port.

What restrictions were already in place before this?

Journalists and editors were already required to submit any article that could touch upon Israel’s security to the military censor for approval ahead of publication.

Under the existing regulations, the censor has the power to halt publication of any article if “there is a “near certainty that real damage will be caused to the security of the state” by its publication.

It may not, however, restrict articles or reports on the grounds that they might damage the reputation of either the Israeli army or the country’s politicians.

In 2023, Israel’s already tight restrictions were increased via an amendment to the country’s anti-terrorism law which punishes those who “systematically and continuously consume terrorist publications” or who broadcast  “a direct call to commit an act of terrorism”.

According to media freedom organisations, such as the Index on Censorship, even before the new restrictions on reporting the Iran conflict were introduced, the censor’s definition of “security issues” was very broad, covering topics as diverse as the army, intelligence agencies, arms deals, administrative detainees, aspects of Israel’s foreign affairs, and more.

Any journalist, publication or media group can appeal a decision by the censor to the Supreme Court, which has the power to overturn its decisions.

How often does the censor take action?

Frequently.

In May, the Israeli-Palestinian magazine, + 972, described what it called an “unprecedented spike in media censorship” since the start of the war on Gaza.

According to the magazine, throughout 2024, Israel’s military censor fully blocked 1,635 articles from being published and imposed partial restrictions on another 6,265.

This amounted to an average of roughly 21 interventions in news stories every day; more than twice the highest previous daily tally of about 10 interventions during the 2014 Gaza conflict (Operation Protective Edge), and more than three times that typically recorded during peacetime of 6.2 per day.

Complicating matters are regulations banning outlets from stating whether parts of an article have been censored, so readers cannot be certain what information has been censored and what has not.

None of the countries that Israeli leaders typically compare themselves with has any institution comparable to Israel’s military censor.

According to the Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, Israel currently stands at 112th place out of 180 countries for freedom of the press – below Haiti, Guinea Bissau, South Sudan and Chad.

According to the RSF: “Press freedom, media plurality and editorial independence have been increasingly restricted in Israel since the start of the war in Gaza, launched by Israel on 7 October 2023 following the deadly Hamas attack.”

RSF also noted the importance given to political connections in choosing the leadership of Israel’s broadcasting regulatory bodies and that only firmly pro-government networks, such as Israel’s Channel 14, are generally selected to host interviews with senior figures.

US President Donald Trump has made his administration “a subcontractor, a junior partner” to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s objectives in the Middle East, argues Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen.

As the president mulls further involvement in Israel’s attack on Iran, Senator Van Hollen tells host Steve Clemons that “This notion that you can just drop a few big bombs and be done with it misunderstands history, because there is a real risk that the United States will get dragged deeper and deeper into this war.”

Van Hollen also criticised the US-Israeli Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as “death traps” for Palestinians.

Israel has bombed the northern Iranian city of Rasht, causing a massive fireball to rise through the night sky, not long after it sent out a warning for people to evacuate the area. One of the strikes reportedly hit the Sefidrood Industrial park.

Israel has been making plans to attack Iran for years, so why is it happening now?

Start Here with Sandra Gathmann explains.

This episode features:

Barbara Slavin | Distinguished fellow, Stimson Center

Gideon Levy | Israeli journalist & Author

James Bays | Al Jazeera diplomatic correspondent

Ali Akbar Dareini | Writer and researcher, Center for Strategic Studies, Tehran

Washington, DC – Over the past week, United States President Donald Trump has been issuing statements on Iran that appear to be contradictory.

He has called for ending the war and hinted at peace coming “soon”, only to then suggest that assassinating Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei could be an option for the US along with joining Israel’s bombing campaign.

In the latest turn, the White House said on Thursday that Trump will make a decision on whether to join the war within two weeks.

These changes in the president’s stance have some observers thinking that Trump may not have a clear strategy or endgame; rather he is being dragged to war by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been seeking US attacks on Iran for decades.

Alternatively, could Trump be using his increasingly bellicose rhetoric against Iran to compel Tehran to agree to entirely give up its nuclear programme?

If so, experts warn that brinkmanship could turn into an all-out war between the US and Iran.

Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council, said Trump could be attempting to build leverage with threats to strongarm Iran into accepting his demands of “total surrender”.

“I think he’s trying to present himself as this madman who is unpredictable, and in so doing, he can then insist on this very hard line that Iran has refused to accept for decades of full dismantlement of its enrichment programme,” Abdi told Al Jazeera.

Another possible explanation of Trump’s latest statements, Abdi added, is that he is “being taken for a ride by Bibi Netanyahu to commit the United States to a full-on war with Iran”.

‘He says one thing. He does another’

Iranian American analyst Negar Mortazavi also said that Trump is being “outmaneuvered” by Netanyahu.

“I don’t even know if President Trump knows what he wants,” Mortazavi told Al Jazeera.

“He campaigned as the president of peace … he promised he’s going to end conflicts. Russia-Ukraine hasn’t ended. Gaza has escalated, and he just let the third big Middle East war – which looks like a regime-change war – start under his watch. So, he says one thing. He does another.”

Israel launched its bombing campaign against Iran last week, two days before US and Iranian officials were set to meet for a sixth round of talks in Oman.

Hours before the Israeli assault began, Trump renewed his commitment to diplomacy. And the initial US response to the Israeli strikes was to stress that Washington is not involved in the attacks.

In subsequent days, however, Trump appeared to take credit for the Israeli bombing campaign.

“We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” he wrote in a social media post on Tuesday, without elaborating on who the “we” was.

“Iran had good sky trackers and other defensive equipment, and plenty of it, but it doesn’t compare to American made, conceived, and manufactured ‘stuff.’ Nobody does it better than the good ol’ USA.”

Israel’s strikes have targeted Iran’s air defences, military and nuclear facilities, oil infrastructure and residential buildings, killing hundreds of people, including top military and political officials as well as many civilians. Iran has responded with hundreds of ballistic missiles that have killed at least 24 Israelis and left widespread destruction across the country.

Israeli officials claim they are trying to destroy Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes, but also note that their military campaign could lead to the collapse of the Iranian governing system, which they say would be a welcome development.

However, it is widely believed that Israel would need US help to destroy Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility, Fordow, which is buried inside a mountain.

Mortazavi said war hawks and Israeli officials appear to be making the case to Trump that bombing Fordow will be an easy task.

“Instead of a regime change war – a devastating, unnecessary war with Iran, which he has been warning everyone and running against in his campaigns, they’re just making this look like, ‘Oh, you just use your bunker busters once and done.’”

But Iran has promised to retaliate harshly against any US attack.

Thousands of US troops in the region could come under Iranian missile strikes. If the war escalates, Iran could also disrupt shipping lanes in the Gulf – a major lifeline for global energy.

Iranian lawmakers have already suggested that Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz that connects the Gulf to the Indian Ocean and through which 20 percent of the world’s oil flows.

‘Catastrophic’ war

Mortazavi said escalating the conflict will have “catastrophic” consequences for the region.

“It will look like Iraq and Afghanistan combined, if not worse. Iran is a big country,” she said.

In Iraq, Bush’s regime-change war led to years of sectarian bloodshed and the rise of groups like ISIL (ISIS). In Afghanistan, US forces fought for 20 years after deposing the Taliban from the capital Kabul, only to see the group swiftly return to power as US troops withdrew.

Even if Iran’s governing system is toppled under US and Israeli blows, experts warn that US war hawks should be careful what they wish for.

Iran is a country of more than 90 million people. The fall of the government could lead to internal conflict, displacement crises and regional – if not global – instability, analysts say.

“This is not a colour revolution. This is going to be war and chaos, potentially civil war, and unrest,” Mortazavi said.

Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the rights group DAWN, said that even if Trump is trying to gain leverage with his threats and is not seeking war or regime change in Iran, it’s a risky strategy.

“The possibilities of the assaults on Iran escalating into not just a broader regional war, but potentially a global war, are extremely high,” Whitson told Al Jazeera.

“And so, continued belligerence and hostile rhetoric from President Trump is only throwing fuel on the fire.”

BEERSHEBA, Israel — As Israel and Iran exchanged more attacks on Thursday, President Trump sought to keep open the door to diplomacy on Tehran’s nuclear program, saying he would make up his mind within two weeks on whether the U.S. military will get directly involved in the conflict.

“Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters, reading out Trump’s statement.

Trump has been weighing whether to attack Iran by striking its well-defended Fordo uranium enrichment facility, which is buried under a mountain and widely considered to be out of reach of all but America’s “bunker-buster” bombs.

Earlier in the day, Israel’s defense minister threatened Iran’s supreme leader after Iranian missiles crashed into a major hospital in southern Israel and hit residential buildings near Tel Aviv, wounding at least 240 people. As rescuers wheeled patients out of the smoldering hospital, Israeli warplanes launched their latest attack on Iran’s nuclear program.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz blamed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for Thursday’s barrage and said the military “has been instructed and knows that in order to achieve all of its goals, this man absolutely should not continue to exist.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he trusted that Trump would “do what’s best for America.”

“I can tell you that they’re already helping a lot,” Netanyahu said from the rubble and shattered glass around the Soroka Medical Center in Israel’s southern city of Beersheba.

The open conflict between Israel and Iran erupted last Friday with a surprise wave of Israeli airstrikes targeting nuclear and military sites, top generals and nuclear scientists. At least 639 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 1,300 wounded, according to a Washington-based Iranian human rights group.

Iran has retaliated by firing hundreds of missiles and drones, killing at least 24 people in Israel and wounding hundreds.

More than 200 wounded, including dozens in the hospital strike

At least 240 people were wounded by the latest Iranian attack on Israel, including 80 patients and medical workers wounded in the strike on the Soroka Medical Center. The vast majority were lightly wounded, as much of the hospital building had been evacuated in recent days.

Israel’s Home Front Command said that one of the Iranian ballistic missiles fired Thursday morning had been rigged with fragmenting cluster munitions. Rather than a conventional warhead, a cluster munition warhead carries dozens of submunitions that can explode on impact, showering small bomblets around a large area and posing major safety risks on the ground. The Israeli military did not say where that missile had been fired.

Iranian officials insisted that they had not sought to strike the hospital and claimed the attack hit a facility belonging to the Israeli military’s elite technological unit, called C4i. The website for the Gav-Yam Negev advanced technologies park, some 2 miles from the hospital, said C4i had a branch campus in the area.

The Israeli army did not respond to a request for comment. An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, acknowledged that there was no specific intelligence that Iran had planned to target the hospital.

Many hospitals in Israel, including Soroka, had activated emergency plans in the last week. They converted parking garages to wards and transferred vulnerable patients underground.

Israel also has a fortified, subterranean blood bank that kicked into action after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack ignited the latest war in the Gaza Strip.

Doctors at Soroka said that the Iranian missile struck almost immediately after air raid sirens went off, causing a loud explosion that could be heard from a safe room. The strike inflicted the greatest damage on an old surgery building and affected key infrastructure, including gas, water and air-conditioning systems, the medical center said.

The hospital, which provides services to around 1 million residents of Israel’s south, had been caring for 700 patients at the time of the attack. After the strike, the hospital closed to all patients except for life-threatening cases.

Iran has fired 450 missiles and 1,000 drones at Israel since the conflict began, according to Israeli army estimates, though most have been shot down by Israel’s multitiered air defenses.

Iran rejects calls to surrender or end its nuclear program

Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. But it is the only non-nuclear-weapon state to enrich uranium up to 60%, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

Israel is widely believed to be the only country with a nuclear weapons program in the Middle East, but has never acknowledged the existence of its arsenal.

In the last few days, the Israeli air campaign has targeted Iran’s enrichment site at Natanz, centrifuge workshops around Tehran, a nuclear site in Isfahan and what the army assesses to be most of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers. The destruction of those launchers has contributed to the steady decline in Iranian attacks since the start of the conflict.

On Thursday, antiaircraft artillery was clearly audible across Tehran and witnesses in the central city of Isfahan reported seeing antiaircraft fire after nightfall.

In announcing that he would take up to two more weeks to decide whether to strike Iran, President Trump opened up diplomatic options with the apparent hope Iran would make concessions after suffering major military losses.

Already, a new diplomatic initiative seemed to be underway as Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi prepared to travel Friday to Geneva for meetings with the European Union’s top diplomat, and with his counterparts from the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

But at least publicly, Iran has struck a hard line.

Iran’s supreme leader on Wednesday rejected U.S. calls for surrender and warned that any American military involvement by the Americans would cause “irreparable damage to them.”

Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf on Thursday criticized Trump for using military pressure to gain an advantage in nuclear negotiations.

“The delusional American president knows that he cannot impose peace on us by imposing war and threatening us,” he said.

Iran agreed to redesign Arak to address nuclear concerns

Israel’s military said Thursday its fighter jets targeted the Arak heavy water reactor, some 155 miles southwest of Tehran, in order to prevent it from being used to produce plutonium.

Iranian state TV said there was “no radiation danger whatsoever” around the Arak site, which it said had been evacuated ahead of the strike.

Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. That would provide Iran another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, should it choose to pursue the weapon.

Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign the facility to alleviate proliferation concerns. That work was never completed.

The reactor became a point of contention after Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal in 2018. Ali Akbar Salehi, a high-ranking nuclear official in Iran, said in 2019 that Tehran bought extra parts to replace a portion of the reactor that it had poured concrete into under the deal.

Israel said strikes were carried out “in order to prevent the reactor from being restored and used for nuclear weapons development.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency has said that due to restrictions imposed by Iran on inspectors, the U.N. nuclear watchdog has lost “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s heavy water production — meaning it could not absolutely verify Tehran’s production and stockpile.

Mednick, Melzer and Gambrell write for the Associated Press. Melzer reported from Tel Aviv, and Gambrell from Dubai. AP writer Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed to this report.

United States President Donald Trump will decide on whether his country will join the Israel-Iran conflict in the next two weeks, the White House has said, amid growing speculation of US involvement and fears of wider escalation.

On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump had shared a message: “Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks. That’s a quote directly from President Trump,” she said.

“The president is always interested in a diplomatic solution … he is a peacemaker in chief. He is the peace through strength president. And so if there’s a chance for diplomacy, the president’s always going to grab it. But he’s not afraid to use strength as well,” the press secretary added.

The US described its ally Israel’s initial June 13 strike on Iran as a “unilateral action”. But Trump himself has signalled that he knew of the attack in advance and supported Israel’s military campaign.

At the same time, according to the Reuters news agency, which cited three unnamed diplomats, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff has spoken to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi several times on the phone since Israel began its attacks.

Amid the talk of diplomacy, Tel Aviv and Tehran have continued to trade attacks.

On Thursday, Israel targeted Iran’s Arak heavy water nuclear reactor. Iran, in turn, hit the Soroka Medical Centre, which it claimed was near an Israeli military and intelligence centre.

At the same time, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz threatened to eliminate Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Such a person is forbidden to exist,” he said in a statement cited by the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

‘Camouflaged’ intentions

Over the past few days, Trump has hinted at joining Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, but at the same time has proposed a swift diplomatic solution in a confusing message from Washington.

Following a report by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday night that Trump had already signed off on striking Iran but had not decided on when they would do it, the president took to his Truth Social social media account to deny the report.

“The Wall Street Journal has No Idea what my thoughts are concerning Iran!” Trump wrote.

But Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said that Leavitt’s comments could well be a ploy, and if so, Trump would be able to use it as a “pretext in order to camouflage whatever his intentions are and attack tomorrow”.

As Araghchi is expected to meet his British, French and German counterparts in Geneva on Friday, along with the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, to discuss Tehran’s nuclear programme, Bishara said Trump could be waiting to hear the outcome of those talks before making his decision to attack.

“If one has to over-interpret, I would say the following: He’s giving the Europeans some time so that everyone could save face,” Bishara said.

Al Jazeera’s Doha Jabbari, reporting from Doha, said the lack of trust between Tehran and Washington will make it difficult for the Iranians to fully believe Trump is open to diplomacy.

“Assuming that the Israelis have the green light from the Americans to carry out these attacks inside Iran, there is going to be very little trust there,” Jabbari said.

“But really, this is the diplomatic game they have to play,” she added, referring to the upcoming talks in Geneva. “If they [Iran] don’t go, they’re going to be accused of basically saying we’re not going to talk, we just want war. They’re going to have to travel, and the Europeans are acting as a mediator between Iran and the US.”

At the same time, Russia and China have repeatedly warned against the US’s involvement in the conflict and called for a ceasefire.

A White House spokesperson has delivered a message from President Trump, saying he will decide whether to attack Iran “within the next two weeks”. Karoline Leavitt says US and Iranian officials are still in contact and US action rests on the outcome of talks.