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Israel-Iran air war enters second week as Europe pushes diplomacy

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Israel and Iran’s air war entered a second week on Friday and European officials sought to draw Tehran back to the negotiating table after President Donald Trump said any decision on potential U.S. involvement would be made within two weeks.

Israel began attacking Iran last Friday, saying it aimed to prevent its longtime enemy from developing nuclear weapons. Iran retaliated with missile and drone strikes on Israel. It says its nuclear programme is peaceful, Reuters reported.

Israeli air attacks have killed 639 people in Iran, said the Human Rights Activists News Agency. Those killed include the military’s top echelon and nuclear scientists. Israel has said at least two dozen Israeli civilians have died in Iranian missile attacks. Reuters could not independently verify the death toll from either side.

Israel has targeted nuclear sites and missile capabilities, and sought to shatter the government of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to Western and regional officials.

“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,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.

Iran has said it is targeting military and defence-related sites in Israel, although it has also hit a hospital and other civilian sites.

Israel accused Iran on Thursday of deliberately targeting civilians through the use of cluster munitions, which disperse small bombs over a wide area. Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

With neither country backing down, the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany along with the European Union foreign policy chief were due to meet in Geneva with Iran’s foreign minister to try to de-escalate the conflict on Friday.

“Now is the time to put a stop to the grave scenes in the Middle East and prevent a regional escalation that would benefit no one,” said British Foreign Minister David Lammy ahead of their joint meeting with Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s foreign minister.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also met Lammy on Thursday and held separate calls with his counterparts from Australia, France and Italy to discuss the conflict.

The U.S. State Department said that Rubio and the foreign ministers agreed that “Iran can never develop or acquire a nuclear weapon.”

Lammy said the same on X while adding that the situation in the Middle East “remained perilous” and a “window now exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic solution.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping both condemned Israel and agreed that de-escalation is needed, the Kremlin said on Thursday.

The role of the United States remained uncertain. Lammy also met Trump’s special envoy to the region, Steve Witkoff, on Thursday in Washington, and said they had discussed a possible deal.

Witkoff has spoken with Araqchi several times since last week, sources say.

The White House said Trump will take part in a national security meeting on Friday morning. The president has alternated between threatening Tehran and urging it to resume nuclear talks that were suspended over the conflict.

Trump has mused about striking Iran, possibly with a “bunker buster” bomb that could destroy nuclear sites built deep underground. The White House said Trump would decide in the next two weeks whether to get involved in the war.

That may not be a firm deadline. Trump has commonly used “two weeks” as a time frame for making decisions and has allowed other economic and diplomatic deadlines to slide.

With the Islamic Republic facing one of its greatest external threats since the 1979 revolution, any direct challenge to its 46-year-long rule would likely require some form of popular uprising.

But activists involved in previous bouts of protest say they are unwilling to unleash mass unrest, even against a system they hate, with their nation under attack.

“How are people supposed to pour into the streets? In such horrifying circumstances, people are solely focused on saving themselves, their families, their compatriots, and even their pets,” said Atena Daemi, a prominent activist who spent six years in prison before leaving Iran.

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Iran, US continue escalating attacks, recriminations over peace deal

US Central Command said earlier that its forces had carried out fresh strikes after a Panama-flagged tanker was attacked by an Iranian drone on Saturday.

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Iran and the US continued their attacks in the Gulf as each accused the ​other of violating an increasingly precarious interim deal signed less than two weeks ago to end their four-month-old war, Reuters reported.

Shortly after President Donald Trump warned the US might “militarily complete the job”, Iran early on Sunday ‌launched missiles and drones on US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain, continuing a series of escalating attacks.

Beyond the Gulf, Israel said it had struck Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in southern Lebanon as fighting continued in an area Tehran says is key to its peace deal with Washington.

The U.S. military said earlier it had struck Iran again, hours after a tanker was hit in the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important energy shipping route, which Iran had largely cut off for most of ​the conflict.

The 14-point U.S.-Iran interim agreement was meant to halt the fighting, which the US and Israel started on February 28, and reopen the strait to shipping while ​talks proceeded on more deep-seated issues, such as Iran’s nuclear programme.

One round of mediated talks, led by Vice President JD Vance and Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, ⁠was held in Switzerland a week ago and Washington then waived sanctions on Tehran, but the fighting and recriminations have since resumed and intensified.

“There may come a point when we are no longer able to be ​reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started,” Trump posted on social media. “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

About an hour after Trump’s post, ​the Kuwaiti army said its air defences were responding to “hostile” missile and drone attacks, while sirens sounded in Bahrain, according to that country’s interior ministry.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said its navy and air forces had launched missile and drone operations targeting US military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain in response to recent US strikes against Iran, read the report.

The Guards said in a statement the US strikes had violated the ceasefire and “will result in the complete halt of all diplomatic processes”, according to state-run Press ​TV. The IRGC navy command said American bases in the region “will experience hell in the coming days”.

A US official, confirming the attacks on US facilities, told Reuters there were no reported US casualties or major damage to US ​sites in the Middle East but that the situation was still unfolding.

Hours later, alarms sounded for a second time in Bahrain, and the foreign ministry there condemned the attacks as a deliberate and repeated violation of the kingdom’s sovereignty ‌and security. It ⁠urged the U.N. Security Council to hold an urgent session to hold Iran accountable.

US Central Command said earlier that its forces had carried out fresh strikes after a Panama-flagged tanker was attacked by an Iranian drone on Saturday.

“Iran was given a chance to honor the ceasefire agreement but elected not to,” Central Command said in a statement, adding that its strikes were “in direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping” and targeted Iranian military surveillance, communications, air defence, drone storage and mine-laying facilities.

Iranian state broadcaster IRIB said explosions were heard in Sirik in southern Iran, without providing details. The Guards said “America’s blind shots at ​Sirik will not resolve our dominance over the Strait ​of Hormuz. But our shots at violators will ⁠remind the rest of the vessels of the clear passage route.”

Saturday’s tanker attack in the strait followed one on a cargo ship on Thursday that triggered the latest escalation. Iran is seeking to assert control over the strait, which carried one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies before the war and which had just begun ​to reopen after months of disruption, Reuters reported.

Hundreds of ships, including tankers laden with oil, have been blockaded inside the Gulf since war broke out. As they began ​leaving through the strait over ⁠the past two weeks, oil prices have tumbled close to pre-war levels on the surge in supply.

Washington has been promoting a southern lane along the coast of Oman, while Tehran, which ultimately aims to charge fees for use of the strait, wants ships to use a northern route through its waters and under its control.

In Lebanon, Israel said on Sunday it had killed Hezbollah militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and struck a rocket launcher in the ⁠Nabatieh area.

Iran ​accuses the US of violating its commitment under the peace deal to sustaining a ceasefire in Lebanon, which US ally Israel invaded ​in March in pursuit of Hezbollah.

Israel, which is not a party to the US-Iran deal, and Lebanon have repeatedly agreed to US-brokered ceasefires, the latest on Friday. But these have had only limited effect, with Israel insisting it will not withdraw from Lebanese territory it ​has seized and Hezbollah repeatedly rejecting calls to give up its arms as long as Israeli troops remain in place.

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US strikes Iran in response to attack on cargo ship in Strait of Hormuz

The U.S. did not immediately respond to Iran’s report of striking American targets, a tactic that has sought to undermine U.S. allies in the region during the conflict.

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The U.S. military attacked Iran on Friday in response to an Iranian drone strike on a cargo ​ship in the Strait of Hormuz, with each country accusing the other of violating terms of a ceasefire agreed on last week, Reuters reported.

U.S. Central Command said aircraft struck missile and drone ‌storage locations and coastal radar sites, later publishing a grainy black-and-white video of an explosion labeled “unclassified.” A U.S. official reported the operation had concluded.

Iran said a projectile struck the area around a pier in Sirik in southern Iran, and that Iranian naval forces responded by striking U.S. military targets in the region. Tehran did not provide details about what may have been hit.

Elsewhere, however, there were signs of progress in ending the four-month-old conflict, as Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement to end the fighting between Israel ​and Iran-backed Hezbollah. Both sides framed the deal as an initial step that calls for Hezbollah to disarm and Israel to withdraw troops from Lebanon, but it was not clear how it would ​be enforced. Hezbollah said it would not cooperate.

Tehran has said it would control the Strait of Hormuz and warned Gulf ⁠states not to side with Washington after Thursday’s attack on a cargo ship traveling near Oman’s coast. President Donald Trump blamed the attack on Iran and said it violated last week’s interim agreement.

“The unwarranted aggression against commercial shipping by ​Iranian forces clearly violated the ceasefire,” U.S. Central Command said in its statement announcing strikes, which it called “a powerful response to yesterday’s attack on a commercial ship that was transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”

The U.S. military said it ​would continue to provide “safe passage coordination and support” to commercial vessels transiting the strait.

Vice President JD Vance, once seen as a skeptic on U.S. intervention in Iran but now a Trump administration point person on the conflict, said the Americans have honored the ceasefire deal, also known as a memorandum of understanding.

“Iran signed a ceasefire agreement. We have honored it. If they have disagreements about how the MOU is being applied, they can pick up the phone. But violence will be met with violence,” ​Vance said on X.

Iranian state media, citing an unnamed military source, reported the strike at the port of Sirik after an explosion was heard there. The source said several warning shots had been fired from Sirik ​toward vessels that violated Strait of Hormuz regulations about five hours earlier, adding two warning missiles had also been launched from the nearby Karpan area toward the strategic waterway, read the report.

On Saturday, Iran’s Mehr news agency cited the head of ports at ‌eastern Hormozgan as ⁠saying that there was no damage to the port of Sirik after the attack by the U.S. The official said the port was operating normally with no damage reported to facilities and equipment.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that in response its navy “struck the locations where the terrorist U.S. military is stationed in the region” and warned that any further U.S. attacks would be met with a broader response, according to the statement carried on state media.

The ceasefire agreement gives Iran control over ship traffic in the strait, the Guards said.

“However, the United States, by provoking various fronts, sought to violate this commitment, and the necessary response was given and will continue to be given. ​If the aggression is repeated, our response will ​be broader than this,” the Revolutionary Guards said.

The U.S. did not immediately respond to Iran’s report of striking American targets, a tactic that has sought to undermine U.S. allies in the region during the conflict.

Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, said in response to the latest strikes that Trump has failed to show a ​commitment to the principles of negotiation or ceasefire.

“This reckless violation of the ceasefire will, as always, lead to retreat and regret on their part,” Azizi posted ​on X.

Before the renewed outbreak ⁠of violence, oil prices fell about 3% on Friday, on course for steep weekly losses, in response to oil tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies before the U.S. and Israel launched the war on February 28, Reuters reported.

Saudi Aramco resumed crude loadings at its Ras Tanura terminal in the Gulf, the world’s biggest oil port, after a nearly four-month halt, shipping data showed.

Fertilizer shipments through the strait have also picked up, helping to ⁠assuage concerns ​about a spike in global food prices.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — wrapping up a tour of the Gulf to reassure regional allies ​about the interim pact — issued a joint statement with the Gulf Cooperation Council calling for “free, unconditional, and unrestricted navigation” in the strait without tolls or “attempts to assert control.”

Iran’s foreign ministry said the strait should be governed by Iran and Oman, while Ali Akbar Velayati, top adviser ​to Iran’s supreme leader, warned Washington’s Gulf allies their survival depended on Tehran’s tolerance.

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Iran’s Pezeshkian says without missiles his country would be ‘just like Gaza’

The Iranian president stressed that Tehran’s defensive capabilities are not open to negotiation.

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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has defended Iran’s ballistic missile program, saying the country would have suffered the same fate as Gaza without its missile capabilities.

Speaking during a visit to Pakistan, which has played a mediating role in discussions between Tehran and Washington aimed at securing a lasting end to the Middle East conflict, Pezeshkian said Iran’s missiles serve as a critical deterrent.

“If the missiles we have for our defense did not exist, Israel and the United States would have ploughed Iran just like Gaza, showing no mercy to either the old or the young,” he said.

The Iranian president stressed that Tehran’s defensive capabilities are not open to negotiation.

“We will never negotiate with anyone, under any circumstances, ever, about our defensive capabilities,” he added.

Before the recent conflict, the United States had pushed for Iran’s ballistic missile program and its support for regional armed groups to be included in talks over Tehran’s nuclear activities.

However, U.S. President Donald Trump has recently signaled a more flexible position on the missile issue. Speaking at the G7 summit in France last week, Trump said, “If other countries have them, it’s a little unfair for them not to have some,” referring to missile capabilities.

 
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