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Israel-Iran air war enters sixth day, Trump calls for Iran’s ‘unconditional surrender’
A White House official said Trump spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone on Tuesday.
Iran and Israel launched new missile strikes at each other on Wednesday as the air war between the two longtime enemies entered a sixth day despite a call from U.S. President Donald Trump for Tehran’s unconditional surrender, Reuters reported.
The Israeli military said two barrages of Iranian missiles were launched toward Israel in the first two hours of Wednesday morning. Explosions were heard over Tel Aviv.
Israel told residents in a southwestern area of Tehran to evacuate so its air force could strike Iranian military installations. Iranian news websites said Israel was attacking a university linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the east of the capital.
Iranian news websites said Israel was also attacking a university linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the country’s east, and the Khojir ballistic missile facility near Tehran, which was also targeted by Israeli airstrikes last October.
The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence says Iran is armed with the largest number of ballistic missiles in the Middle East. Iran has said its ballistic missiles are an important deterrent and retaliatory force against the U.S., Israel and other potential regional targets.
Trump warned on social media on Tuesday that U.S. patience was wearing thin. While he said there was no intention to kill Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “for now,” his comments suggested a more aggressive stance toward Iran as he weighs whether to deepen U.S. involvement.
“We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” he wrote on Truth Social. “We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now … Our patience is wearing thin.”
Three minutes later Trump posted, “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!”
Trump’s sometimes contradictory and cryptic messaging about the conflict between close U.S. ally Israel and longtime foe Iran has deepened the uncertainty surrounding the crisis. His public comments have ranged from military threats to diplomatic overtures, not uncommon for a president known for an often erratic approach to foreign policy, read the report.
A source familiar with internal discussions said Trump and his team are considering a number of options, including joining Israel on strikes against Iranian nuclear sites.
A White House official said Trump spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone on Tuesday.
Trump also met for 90 minutes with his National Security Council on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the conflict, a White House official said. Details were not immediately available.
The U.S. is deploying more fighter aircraft to the Middle East and extending the deployment of other warplanes, three U.S. officials told Reuters. The U.S. has so far only taken indirect actions in the current conflict with Iran, including helping to shoot down missiles fired toward Israel.
A source with access to U.S. intelligence reports said Iran has moved some ballistic missile launchers, but it is difficult to determine if they were targeting U.S. forces or Israel.
However, Britain’s leader Keir Starmer, speaking at the Group of Seven nations summit in Canada that Trump left early, said there was no indication the U.S. was about to enter the conflict.
Khamenei’s main military and security advisers have been killed by Israeli strikes, hollowing out his inner circle and raising the risk of strategic errors, according to five people familiar with his decision-making process.
With Iranian leaders suffering their most dangerous security breach since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the country’s cybersecurity command banned officials from using communications devices and mobile phones, Fars news agency reported.
Israel launched a “massive cyber war” against Iran’s digital infrastructure, Iranian media reported.
Ever since Iran-backed Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, and triggered the Gaza war, Khamenei’s regional influence has waned as Israel has pounded Iran’s proxies – from Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq. Iran’s close ally, Syria’s autocratic president Bashar al-Assad, has been ousted, Reuters reported.
Israel launched its air war, its largest ever on Iran, on Friday after saying it had concluded the Islamic Republic was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons and has pointed to its right to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, including enrichment, as a party to the international Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Israel, which is not a party to the NPT, is the only country in the Middle East believed to have nuclear weapons. Israel does not deny or confirm that.
Netanyahu has stressed that he will not back down until Iran’s nuclear development is disabled, while Trump says the Israeli assault could end if Iran agrees to strict curbs on enrichment.
Before Israel’s attack began, the 35-nation board of governors of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in almost 20 years.
The IAEA said on Tuesday an Israeli strike directly hit the underground enrichment halls at the Natanz facility.
Israel says it now has control of Iranian airspace and intends to escalate the campaign in coming days.
But Israel will struggle to deal a knock-out blow to deeply buried nuclear sites like Fordow, which is dug beneath a mountain, without the U.S. joining the attack.
Iranian officials have reported 224 deaths, mostly civilians, while Israel said 24 civilians had been killed. Residents of both countries have been evacuated or fled.
Global oil markets are on high alert following strikes on sites including the world’s biggest gas field, South Pars, shared by Iran and Qatar.
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US and Iran presidents sign ceasefire agreement, but Trump says he could still resume attacks
The 14-point agreement extends a ceasefire announced in April by another 60 days, including in Lebanon, to allow the two sides to negotiate a final truce.
The U.S. and Iran released the text of an interim agreement their presidents have signed to end their war on Wednesday, with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening to resume attacks and kill Iranian officials if they failed to honour their commitments, Reuters reported.
Trump, attending the G7 with other leaders in France, also withdrew at least one of his stated rationales for attacking Iran in the first place, saying it would be “unfair” for Tehran not to have ballistic missiles, having previously vowed to obliterate them.
“We’re going to bomb the hell out of them if they violate the agreement,” Trump said of Iran at a press conference. “I don’t want them to. I want them to honor the agreement.” He also called Iranians “smart people” as U.S. and Iranian negotiators work on a permanent truce over the coming 60 days, which Trump said he hoped would usher in peace in the Middle East and lower oil prices.
Earlier, he had said: “If I don’t like it, if they don’t behave, we’ll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head, OK?”
Iran’s leaders did not address the new threats while celebrating the moment, releasing photographs of what is believed to be the first agreement signed by both a U.S. and Iranian president since the Islamic Republic’s founding in 1979.
“Everything we sought to achieve through military action, we obtained several times over through negotiation; it was not even comparable,” Iran’s lead negotiator Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf told state television about the agreement, which includes the unfreezing of billions of dollars in Iranian assets.
The U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on February 28, assassinating the 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and military leaders on the first day. It quickly spiralled into a regional conflict that has killed more than 7,000 people, mostly in Iran and Lebanon; driven up energy prices; renewed inflationary pressures and sparked concerns about a major food supply crisis in developing countries.
The 14-point agreement extends a ceasefire announced in April by another 60 days, including in Lebanon, to allow the two sides to negotiate a final truce. Both Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian have digitally signed the memorandum in English and Farsi, U.S. and Iran officials said, with Iran’s foreign ministry saying the agreement was already in effect as of Wednesday, read the report.
Trump signed just before a grand dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Palace of Versailles, the site of the signing of the eponymous treaty that formally ended World War One.
The memorandum includes an immediate end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, the full resumption of maritime traffic “with no charge” in the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of a U.S. blockade of Iranian ports, the waiving of U.S. sanctions on Iran, the unfreezing of its assets, and a $300 billion investment fund for the Islamic Republic’s post-war reconstruction.
Oil prices fell again on Wednesday on prospects for the reopening of the Hormuz, the slender, vital waterway between Iran and Oman, with Brent crude futures below $80, at their lowest level since the war’s start. They later regained more than 1% after Trump threatened renewed violence.
Iran also undertakes not to build nuclear weapons, reaffirming a vow it had made for decades. It also agreed to the on-site “down-blending” of its stockpile of enriched uranium under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, although Trump had wanted to take it out of the country, which Iran has rejected.
Despite his combative rhetoric, Trump appears to have achieved little of what he said he wanted in going to war, while Iran appears much closer to sanctions relief worth billions of dollars than before it was attacked.
Iran’s theocratic government remains in place, its stockpile of highly enriched uranium has not been surrendered, its ballistic missile capabilities have not been destroyed and it has not ended its support for anti-Israel militias like Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Trump recanted his February promise to destroy all of Iran’s missiles and “raze their missile industry to the ground.”
“I’m saying that if other countries have them, it’s a little bit unfair for them not to have some,” Trump told reporters in Paris after leaving the summit.
G7 leaders hailed the agreement at their summit, held in the French town of Evian-les-Bains, an hour’s drive along the shore of Lake Geneva from where the U.S. has said a formal signing ceremony for the U.S.-Iran agreement was due to be held across the Swiss border on Friday, Reuters reported.
But Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei cast doubt on this, telling IRIB’s News Network that, because the two presidents had already signed, “No signing ceremony will be held in Switzerland.”
European leaders share U.S. concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, but never endorsed his decision to go to war without United Nations authorization, and worry Iran has gained leverage by withstanding the superpower onslaught and asserting control over the strait.
The leaders of France, Germany, Britain, Japan, Italy, Canada and the U.S. demanded in a joint statement an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon, where the memorandum calls for a halt to hostilities between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah group that have killed thousands of people and displaced more than a million more.
Fighting there has abated but not ceased since the agreement was reached on Sunday, and Israel, which was not part of the negotiations and whose military is occupying southern Lebanon, says it retains the right to use force.
Trump on Wednesday gently rebuked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has distanced Israel from the U.S.-Iran agreement, over his tactics in Lebanon against Hezbollah. The two men have repeatedly clashed over Israel’s refusal to constrain its pursuit of Hezbollah in Lebanon, where a cessation of hostilities is a key Iranian demand, read the report.
“Netanyahu happens to be a good man, gets a little excited sometimes,” Trump told reporters. “We have a little dispute over Lebanon. I say you can do a little softer touch, Bibi,” he said, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “You don’t have to knock down a building every time somebody walks into it that’s from Hezbollah.”
Lebanese state media reported fresh Israeli air strikes and artillery fire in several southern towns throughout Wednesday. Lebanese security sources said Hezbollah had also launched two drone attacks on Israeli forces in the south. The group did not publicly claim the attacks.
Israel later said five of its soldiers had been injured in two Hezbollah drone attacks in southern Lebanon.
Regional
Global leaders react to announcement of US-Iran peace agreement
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer: “We are clear that toll-free freedom of navigation must now be restored in the Strait of Hormuz… Iran must never have a nuclear weapon.”
U.S. and Iranian officials said on Sunday they have agreed on a deal to end their war, halt the U.S. blockade of Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, possibly leading to lower energy prices once oil shipments resume through the critical waterway, Reuters reported.
Below is international reaction to the agreement:
A spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres:
“The Secretary-General welcomes the announcement that the United States and Iran have agreed on a peace deal that provides for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, as well as a framework for further negotiations. This represents a critical step towards the peaceful settlement of the conflict.”
Joint statement from E4 leaders Britain, France, Germany and Italy:
“Iran must never acquire a nuclear weapon. We stand ready to work with the U.S., Iran and the IAEA to this end.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese:
“The Australian Government welcomes the agreement by the United States and Iran. Australia has long called for de-escalation and an end to the conflict, including in Lebanon. As we have said, the longer this war goes on, the greater the impact will be. Continued restraint and constructive engagement will be essential to prevent further escalation and secure a lasting agreement.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer:
“We are clear that toll-free freedom of navigation must now be restored in the Strait of Hormuz… Iran must never have a nuclear weapon.”
French President Emmanuel Macron:
“I welcome the agreement reached between the United States and Iran, the result of a diplomatic effort to which several partners contributed. I call for its swift and full implementation by all belligerents. This agreement must allow for the urgent and unconditional reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which the international mission established with the United Kingdom is ready to support.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz:
“I welcome the agreement between the U.S. and Iran and congratulate President Trump and the Iranian side on this diplomatic breakthrough. This can pave the way towards a reinvigorated global economy and a more secure Middle East. It is crucial to implement it with determination.”
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi:
Japan “strongly hopes” that “free and safe navigation through the Strait of Hormuz will be ensured in practice, and that a final agreement on Iran’s nuclear issue and other matters will be reached as soon as possible.”
New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters:
“This pivotal, constructive deal is a step towards reducing tensions and promoting stability in a region that is critical to global economic security… Dialogue and diplomacy remain the most effective means of resolving longstanding issues.”
Regional
Iran banks hit by major cyber attack
Officials said a technical investigation confirmed that the disruptions were the result of a cyberattack.
Several major Iranian banks experienced service disruptions on Saturday following a cyberattack, according to the Coordinating Committee of Iran’s state-owned banks.
The outage affected four major financial institutions, including Bank Melli Iran, Bank Saderat Iran, and Bank Tejarat, causing interruptions to mobile and online banking services, automated teller machines (ATMs), point-of-sale (POS) terminals, and some card transactions.
Officials said a technical investigation confirmed that the disruptions were the result of a cyberattack.
The affected banks stated that their technical teams immediately implemented precautionary measures after detecting the incident in an effort to safeguard customer information and protect banking infrastructure.
Qatasi, secretary of the Coordinating Committee of Iran’s state-owned banks, said necessary recovery and repair measures had been carried out.
Authorities said there is currently no evidence that customer data was accessed without authorization, and no data breach has been reported.
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