- Tel Aviv is capable of striking all of Iran’s nuclear facilities but all help is welcome: Israeli PM
- Israel, Iran trade strikes as air war escalates with no end in sight
- Iran strikes Israeli defence sites in Haifa, stock exchange in Tel Aviv with missiles and drones as Israel targets Iranian nuclear sites
- Khamenei says Israel calling on Americans for help ‘sign of weakness’
- US military takes several steps to protect its assets and equipment in the Middle East
TEL AVIV/TEHRAN: US President Donald Trump has said he will decide whether to join Israel’s strikes on Iran within the next two weeks as there is still a “substantial” chance of negotiations to end the conflict.
US President’s remarks come as Israel bombed nuclear targets in Iran on Thursday and Iran fired missiles and drones at Israel after hitting an Israeli hospital overnight, as a week-old air war escalated with no sign yet of an exit strategy from either side.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt read out a message from Trump on Thursday, saying there had been “a lot of speculation” about whether the United States would be “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,” Trump said in the statement.
The announcement could lower the temperature and give space for diplomacy, after a fevered few days in which Trump said Iran’s leader was an “easy target” and vowed that Tehran could never have a nuclear weapon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he welcomed “all help” with destroying Iran’s nuclear sites, nearly a week into major Israeli air raids on the Islamic republic.
Israel is “capable of striking all of Iran’s nuclear facilities” but “all help is welcome”, Netanyahu told public broadcaster Kan on Thursday, also saying that US President Donald Trump “will do what is good for the United States, and I will do what is good for the State of Israel”.
But Leavitt also told reporters that Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in the space of a “couple of weeks.” “Iran has all that it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon. All they need is a decision from the supreme leader to do that, and it would take a couple of weeks to complete the production of that weapon,” she said.
Trump said on Wednesday that Iran had asked to send officials to the White House to negotiate a deal on its nuclear program and end the conflict with Israel. Iran denied it would do so.
Leavitt would not give details of what had led Trump to believe that negotiations with Iran were possible, but denied he was putting off a decision. “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,” she said.
The spokeswoman said “correspondence has continued” between Washington and Tehran when asked about reports that Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff had been in touch with Iran’s foreign minister.
Trump held his third meeting in three days in the White House’s highly secured Situation Room on Thursday as he continued to mull whether to join Israel’s bombing campaign.
The US president had said on Wednesday that “I may do it, I may not do it” when asked if he would take military action against Iran.
Trump had spent weeks pursuing a diplomatic path towards a deal to replace the nuclear deal with Iran that he tore up in his first term in 2018. But he has since backed Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities and military top brass, while mulling whether to join in.
A key issue is that the United States is the only country with the huge “bunker buster” bombs that could destroy Iran’s crucial Fordo Iranian nuclear enrichment plant.
The White House, meanwhile, urged Trump supporters to “trust” the president as he decides whether to act. A number of key figures in his “Make America Great Again” movement, including commentator Tucker Carlson and former aide Steve Bannon, have vocally opposed US strikes on Iran.
Trump’s promise to extract the United States from its “forever wars” in the Middle East played a role in his 2016 and 2024 election wins. “Trust in President Trump. President Trump has incredible instincts,” Leavitt said.
Following the strike that damaged the Soroka medical centre in Israel’s southern city of Beersheba, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tehran’s “tyrants” would pay the “full price”.
“Are we targeting the downfall of the regime? That may be a result, but it’s up to the Iranian people to rise for their freedom,” Netanyahu said. “Freedom requires these subjugated people to rise up, and it’s up to them, but we may create conditions that will help them do it.”
Defence Minister Israel Katz said the military had been instructed to intensify strikes on strategic-related targets in Tehran in order to eliminate the threat to Israel and destabilise the “Ayatollah regime”.
Israel’s sweeping campaign of airstrikes aims to do more than destroy Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and missile capabilities. It seeks to shatter the foundations of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s government and leave it near collapse, Israeli, Western and regional officials said.
Netanyahu wants Iran weakened enough to be forced into fundamental concessions on permanently abandoning its nuclear enrichment, its ballistic missile programme and its support for militant groups across the region, the sources said.
US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has kept the world guessing, veering from proposing a swift diplomatic end to the war to suggesting the United States might join it. On Wednesday, he said nobody knew what he would do.
A day earlier he mused on social media about killing Khamenei, then demanded Iran’s unconditional surrender. Three diplomats told Reuters that Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi have spoken by phone several times since Israel began its strikes last week.
In an apparent reference to the US, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said on Thursday it would use a different strategy if a “third party” joined Israel in the war.
STRAIT OF HORMUZ THREAT
In the latest wave of attacks, Israel said it had struck Iran’s Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites. It initially said it had also hit Bushehr, site of Iran’s only functioning nuclear power plant, but a spokesperson later said it was a mistake to have said this.
An Iranian diplomat told Reuters Bushehr was not hit and Israel was engaged in “psychological warfare” by discussing it. Any attack on the plant, near Arab neighbours and housing Russian technicians, is viewed as risking nuclear disaster.
A week of Israeli air and missile strikes has wiped out the top echelon of Iran’s military command, damaged its nuclear capabilities and killed hundreds of people. Iranian retaliatory strikes have killed at least two dozen civilians in Israel.
On Thursday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement it had launched combined missile and drone attacks at military and industrial sites linked to Israel’s defence industry in Haifa and Tel Aviv. Israel reported missiles launched from Iran towards its territory.
Iran struck the Israeli stock exchange building in Ramat Gan, in a fresh wave of retalliatory attacks on the morning of June 19 pic.twitter.com/qd4rY7T6WG
— TRT World (@trtworld) June 19, 2025
Iran has been weighing its wider options in responding to the biggest security challenge since its 1979 revolution.
A member of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security Committee Presidium, Behnam Saeedi, told the semi-official Mehr news agency Iran could consider closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of daily global oil consumption passes.
Oil prices jumped on Thursday. Iran was maintaining crude oil supply by loading tankers one at a time and moving floating oil storage much closer to China, two vessel tracking firms told Reuters, as the country seeks to keep a key source of revenue while under attack.
Earlier, the Israeli military said it targeted the Khondab nuclear site near Iran’s central city Arak overnight, including a partially-built heavy-water research reactor. Heavy-water reactors produce plutonium, which, like enriched uranium, can be used to make the core of an atom bomb.
Iranian TV showed footage of smoke billowing from the direction of Arak, but Iran’s atomic energy agency said the attack caused no casualties. The Israeli military also said it attacked launch sites in western Iran after attempts to restore them were detected.
It has severely weakened Iran’s regional allies, Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and has bombed Yemen’s Houthis.
The extent of the damage inside Iran has become more difficult to assess in recent days, with the authorities apparently seeking to prevent panic by limiting information.
Iran has stopped giving updates on the death toll, and state media have ceased showing widespread images of destruction. The internet has been almost completely shut down, and the public has been banned from filming.
Thousands of residents have fled Tehran, a city of 10 million, jamming the highways out.
Inside Israel, the missile strikes over the past week are the first time a significant number of projectiles from Iran have pierced defences and killed Israelis in their homes.
The director general of the Israeli hospital that was damaged in Beersheba, Shlomi Kodesh, told reporters at the site that a missile strike had destroyed several wards and wounded 40 people, mostly staff and patients.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had targeted Israeli military and intelligence headquarters near the hospital. An Israeli military official denied there were military targets nearby. Missiles also hit a residential building in Ramat Gan, east of Tel Aviv.
Khamenei says Israel calling on Americans for help ‘sign of weakness’
“The very fact that the Zionist regime’s American friends have entered the scene and are saying such things is a sign of that regime’s weakness and inability”, Iran’s supreme leader posted on X.
The very fact that the Zionist regime’s American friends have entered the scene and are saying such things is a sign of that regime’s weakness and inability.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) June 19, 2025
“I would like to tell our dear nation that if the enemy senses that you fear them, they won’t let go of you. Continue the very behavior that you have had up to this day; continue this behavior with strength”, Khamenei continued.
Iran arrests 24 for spying for Israel, tarnishing country’s image: police
Iranian police has announced the arrest of 24 people accused of spying for Israel and of seeking to tarnish the country’s image, AFP reports citing a statement carried by Tasnim news agency.
“Twenty-four individuals who were spying for the Zionist enemy offline and online, and who were … trying to disturb public opinion, and to tarnish and destroy the image of the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran, were arrested,” said police commander for west Tehran Kiumars Azizi.
US military has moved some planes and ships in Middle East: defence officials
The US military has taken several steps to protect its assets and equipment in the Middle East as the conflict between Israel and Iran continues, including evacuating all non-sheltered planes from its sprawling base in Qatar and moving US Navy ships stationed in Bahrain, two defence officials told CNN.
US Central Command has also pre-positioned additional supplies of blood in the region, the officials and a source familiar said, which is standard operating procedure any time there is a possibility of an attack on US forces.
One of the officials described the changes as prudent, precautionary planning amid threats by Iran that it will attack US troops and bases in the Middle East if the US decides to join Israel in striking Iranian nuclear facilities.
Iranian Nobel Peace laureates call for end to war
Iranian human rights activists and Nobel Peace Prize laureates Narges Mohammadi and Shirin Ebadi have urged that the war between Israel and Iran end, Al Jazeera reports.
“Stop the war and choose dialogue over destruction,” they said in a statement on the Nobel Women’s Initiative website.
NO TO WAR!
To the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, Human Rights Orgs, people of the world peace lovers,
I urge you to take action to stop the war between Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Six days have passed since the beginning of this horrific war. The violence is… pic.twitter.com/QheINPMBjE
— Narges Mohammadi | نرگس محمدی (@nargesfnd) June 19, 2025
“This war, initiated by Israel in violation of international law, is already causing immense suffering and threatens to ignite a broader regional and global conflict. Civilians, including women and children, are being killed,” the statement read.
Iran held direct talks with US amid intensifying conflict with Israel, diplomats say
US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi have spoken by phone several times since Israel began its strikes on Iran last week, in a bid to find a diplomatic end to the crisis, three diplomats told Reuters.
According to the diplomats, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, Araqchi said Tehran would not return to negotiations unless Israel stopped the attacks, which began on June 13.
Iran able to produce nuclear bomb in ‘a couple of weeks’: White House
Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in the space of a “couple of weeks,” the White House has said as US President Donald Trump debates whether to take military action against the Islamic republic, AFP reports.
“Iran has all that it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon. All they need is a decision from the supreme leader to do that, and it would take a couple of weeks to complete the production of that weapon,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
Continuing to closely monitor, assess situation in Iran following Israeli strikes: IAEA
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said that it is continuing to closely monitor the situation in Iran following Israeli attacks on nuclear sites, Reuters reports.
According to a statement, IAEA Director General Mariano Grossi has said that the body is “providing frequent public updates about developments and their possible consequences for human health and the environment”.
IAEA continues to monitor & assess impact of Israeli attacks on nuclear sites in Iran, providing frequent public updates about developments and their possible consequences for people & environment, @rafaelmgrossi said today.
Update on developments in Iran: https://t.co/pg07twNIW7 pic.twitter.com/RB2udVFcAx— IAEA – International Atomic Energy Agency ⚛️ (@iaeaorg) June 19, 2025
“Since the military attacks began almost a week ago, the IAEA has been reporting on damage at several of these facilities, including at nuclear-related sites located in Arak, Isfahan, Natanz and Tehran, and their potential radiological impact,” the statement read.
“IAEA inspectors remain present in Iran, ready to be deployed at nuclear sites when possible, even though the number of Agency staff has been reduced somewhat in light of the security situation.”
Trump’s two-week deadline could be a ploy: analyst
Al Jazeera senior analyst Marwan Bishara says Trump may still carry out strikes on Iran within the two-week deadline that his spokesperson just announced.
“He could actually use that as a pretext in order to camouflage whatever his intentions are and attack tomorrow,” Bishara said.
He also said the US president could be pausing his decision to allow talks between Iranian and European officials tomorrow and see where they may lead.
“If one has to over-interpret, I would say the following: He’s giving the Europeans some time so that everyone could save face,” he said.
