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Iran, Israel trade fresh air attacks as Trump weighs US involvement
Senior U.S. officials are preparing for the possibility of a strike on Iran in the coming days, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Iran and Israel traded further air attacks on Thursday as President Donald Trump kept the world guessing about whether the United States would join Israel’s bombardment of Iranian nuclear facilities, Reuters reported.
A week of Israeli air and missile strikes against its major rival has wiped out the top echelon of Iran’s military command, damaged its nuclear capabilities and killed hundreds of people, while Iranian retaliatory strikes have killed two dozen civilians in Israel.
The worst-ever conflict between the rivals has raised fears that it will draw in world powers and rock regional stability already undermined by the spillover effects of the Gaza war.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Wednesday, Trump declined to say if he had made any decision on whether to join Israel’s air campaign. “I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” he said.
Trump in later remarks said Iranian officials wanted to come to Washington for a meeting and that “we may do that.” But he added, “It’s a little late” for such talks.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rebuked Trump’s earlier call for Iran to surrender in a recorded speech played on television, his first appearance since Friday.
The Americans “should know that any U.S. military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage,” he said. “The Iranian nation will not surrender.”
Iran denies it is seeking nuclear weapons and says its program is for peaceful purposes only. The International Atomic Energy Agency said last week Tehran was in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years, read the report.
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain plan to hold nuclear talks with their Iranian counterpart on Friday in Geneva to urge Iran to return to the negotiating table, a German diplomatic source told Reuters.
But while diplomatic efforts continue, some residents of Tehran, a city of 10 million people, on Wednesday jammed highways out of the city as they sought sanctuary from intensified Israeli airstrikes.
Arezou, a 31-year-old Tehran resident, told Reuters by phone that she had made it out of the city to the nearby resort town of Lavasan.
“My friend’s house in Tehran was attacked and her brother was injured. They are civilians,” she said. “Why are we paying the price for the regime’s decision to pursue a nuclear programme?”
The Wall Street Journal said Trump had told senior aides he approved attack plans on Iran but was holding off on giving the final order to see if Tehran would abandon its nuclear program.
Senior U.S. officials are preparing for the possibility of a strike on Iran in the coming days, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Early on Thursday, air defences were activated in Tehran, intercepting drones on the outskirts of the capital, the semi-official SNN news agency reported. Iranian news agencies also reported it had arrested 18 “enemy agents” who were building drones for Israeli attacks in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
Israel’s military said sirens sounded in northern Israel and in the Jordan Valley on Thursday and that it had intercepted two drones launched from Iran, Reuters reported.
The Iranian missile salvoes mark the first time in decades of shadow war and proxy conflict that a significant number of projectiles fired from Iran have penetrated defences, killing Israelis in their homes.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a video released by his office on Wednesday, said Israel was “progressing step by step” towards eliminating threats posed by Iran’s nuclear sites and ballistic missile arsenal.
“We are hitting the nuclear sites, the missiles, the headquarters, the symbols of the regime,” Netanyahu said.
Israel, which is not a party to the international Non-Proliferation Treaty, is the only country in the Middle East believed to have nuclear weapons. Israel does not deny or confirm that.
Netanyahu also thanked Trump, “a great friend of the state of Israel,” for standing by its side in the conflict, saying the two were in continuous contact.
Trump has veered from proposing a swift diplomatic end to the war to suggesting the United States might join it.
In social media posts on Tuesday, he mused about killing Khamenei.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, asked what his reaction would be if Israel did kill Iran’s Supreme Leader with the assistance of the United States, said on Thursday: “I do not even want to discuss this possibility. I do not want to.”
Putin said all sides should look for ways to end hostilities in a way that ensured both Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear power and Israel’s right to the unconditional security of the Jewish state.
A source familiar with internal discussions said Trump and his team were considering options that included joining Israel in strikes against Iranian nuclear installations, read the report.
Since Friday, Iran has fired around 400 missiles at Israel, some 40 of which have pierced air defences, killing 24 people, all of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
Iran has reported at least 224 deaths in Israeli attacks, mostly civilians, but has not updated that toll for days.
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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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