Israel and Iran broaden strikes during third day of escalating war

Trump calls for end to conflict and warns Tehran against striking US targets in the region

Israel and Iran have broadened their strikes against each other on the third day of an escalating war that has killed and injured hundreds of people, as Donald Trump called for an end to the conflict and warned Tehran against striking US targets in the region.

G7 leaders flying to Canada for a summit that starts on Monday are likely to try to use their time with the US president to urge him to keep the US out of the conflict and use his influence with Israel to broker a ceasefire.

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Tehran accuses Israel of seeking to expand conflict after attack on gas facility

Dragging conflict into the Gulf is a strategic mistake, says Iran’s foreign minister after drone strike on coastal facility

Iran’s foreign minister has accused Israel of seeking to expand the war beyond Iran by attacking a major gas facility in Bushehr province on the Gulf coast.

Speaking to diplomats in his first public appearance since the initial Israeli strikes, Abbas Araghchi said: “Dragging the conflict into the Persian Gulf is a strategic mistake and its goal is to drag the war outside Iranian territory. Any military development in this region can affect the entire world.”

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How the dismantling of Iran’s regional proxies paved way for Israel’s attack

Netanyahu has been systematically and successfully weakening his regional foes, now Tehran is in the crosshairs

Israel’s offensive against Iran is the latest link in a chain of events triggered by the attack launched by Hamas from Gaza into Israel on 7 October 2023. All have successively weakened Tehran and, militarily at least, empowered Israel. Without each, it is difficult to see how the new offensive it launched directly against Iran on Friday might be possible.

The first was the Israeli offensive in Gaza. This has now killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, but within weeks had militarily degraded Hamas sufficiently for the Islamist militant organisation to no longer pose a significant current threat to Israeli citizens.

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Mehdi Taremi to miss Club World Cup after Israeli strikes close Iran’s airports

  • Iranian forward remains in Tehran due to closed airspace

  • Inter to start Club World Cup campaign on Wednesday

The Inter forward Mehdi Taremi will not be able to join his teammates at the Club World Cup in the United States as he is stuck in Tehran because of the escalating conflict between Iran and Israel.

Flights from all Iranian airports have been grounded after an exchange of military strikes between Iran and Israel over the past two days. That meant the Iran international was unable to take his scheduled flight on Saturday to join his teammates in Los Angeles.

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Israel claims it has gained control of airspace over Tehran

Defence minister Israel Katz says Iranian capital ‘will burn’ if more missiles are fired at his country

Israel has claimed to have gained control of the skies over the Iranian capital and warned that “Tehran will burn” if more missiles are fired at its territory, but the Iranian leadership remained defiant, vowing a “more severe and powerful response” and threatened to widen the war by striking ships and bases of Israeli allies.

The mutual threats reflected the risks of a dramatic escalation in the conflict, as US-Iranian negotiations planned before the war in Oman were abandoned after Tehran said they would be “meaningless”, and Israel appeared to target Iran’s gas industry. Israeli rhetoric reflected its leaders’ growing confidence that they have gained the upper hand, and raised questions over whether Israeli war aims could go beyond the stated objective of crippling Iran’s nuclear programme.

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UK moves jets to Middle East as Starmer refuses to rule out defending Israel

Military assets to provide ‘contingency support’ as PM repeats call for de-escalation after Iran’s retaliatory strikes

The UK is moving jets and other military assets to the Middle East, Keir Starmer has said, refusing to rule out defending Israel from Iranian strikes despite Tehran’s threat that such an action could lead to British bases in the region being targeted.

Speaking to reporters on the plane to the G7 summit, Starmer reiterated his call for de-escalation, saying he had held a series of calls with other world leaders in the hours after Israel’s attack on Iran, including the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Donald Trump.

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Strikes on Iran ease pressure on Israel to end starvation in Gaza

Critics of war will be more reluctant to press for its end while missiles from Tehran are killing people in Tel Aviv

In the hours after Israel attacked Iran, food shipments and distribution in Gaza stopped and a French-Saudi summit meant to pave the way for wider recognition of a Palestinian state was postponed indefinitely.

International pressure over starvation and civilian killings in Gaza had apparently dissipated in little more than the time it took for the smoke of the first missile strikes to clear over Tehran.

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Out of the shadows: drone-op claims show Israel’s Mossad leaning in to its legend

Footage purported to show spy agents launching missiles inside Iran is marked contrast to the intelligence service’s history of secrecy

Israelis were celebrating on Friday what many see as a stunning new success by their country’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad.

Hours after launching 200 warplanes in a wave of strikes against Iran, Israeli officials released footage they said showed the Mossad agents deep inside Iran assembling missiles and explosive drones aimed at targets near Tehran.

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Trump scrambles to claim credit for Israel’s Iran attack he publicly opposed

Discordant US response as president says he was fully aware of plans for what Marco Rubio called a ‘unilateral action’

Donald Trump is walking a tightrope as he claims that he was fully aware of Israel’s plans to launch massive airstrikes against Iran while continuing to distance the US from those strikes and deny Washington took any active role in the preparations.

The White House’s messaging has shifted quickly from Marco Rubio’s arms-length description of the Israeli attack as a “unilateral action”, to Trump claiming on Friday morning that he was fully in the loop on the operation and that it came at the end of a 60-day ultimatum he had given Iran to “make a deal” on its nuclear programme.

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Blasts heard in Tehran as Israel defence minister announces strikes on Iran – live

Explosions heard in capital Tehran as Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, says counter attack is expected

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has addressed the nation, saying the IDF had targted Iran’s leading nuclear scientists working on the Iranian bomb.

He said that Iran’s main enrichment facility in Natanz had been targeted.

This operation will continue for as many days as it takes … We are at a decisive moment in Israel’s history.

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Israel’s Iran threat is familiar, but it is unlikely to attack without US backing

Israel has threatened to destroy Tehran’s nuclear programme before, ultimately holding back in absence of Washington’s support

The withdrawal of non-essential US personnel from parts of the Middle East and the anonymously sourced US reports in the past 24 hours that Israel is on the brink of an all-out attack on Iran are all deeply alarming, but they are also familiar.

The Israeli government has approached the same precipice, of a war to destroy Tehran’s nuclear programme, several times in the past two decades, going as far as honing detailed plans and conducting practice air sorties.

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US orders non-essential embassy staff out of Iraq amid growing Middle East tensions

State department move comes amid increasing concerns about nuclear talks between US and Iran that appear to be deadlocked

The United States has ordered the departure of “non-essential” diplomatic staff and their families from embassies in the Middle East amid growing diplomatic tensions in the region.

The US diplomatic draw-down came as Iran threatened to target US military bases in the region if conflict breaks out, while Donald Trump said he was “less confident” about reaching a nuclear deal.

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Iran says it will release Israeli nuclear secrets as pressure grows to reimpose sanctions

Tehran threat comes as European powers press for vote that could lead to reimposition of UN sanctions

Iran has said it will soon start releasing information from a hoard of Israeli nuclear secrets it claims to have obtained, as European countries push for a vote this week on reimposing UN sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear programme.

The unverified claims by Iranian intelligence of a massive leak of Israeli secrets may be designed to turn the focus away from what Iran argues is its own excessively monitored civil nuclear programme.

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Iran extends ban on dog-walking for ‘public order, safety and health’

Many cities said to have imposed prohibition in recent days that echoes 2019 police directive in Tehran

Iranian authorities have expanded a ban on walking dogs in public to many cities nationwide, citing public health, social order and safety concerns, domestic media have reported.

The ban, which echoes a 2019 police directive that barred walking dogs in Tehran, was expanded to Ilam city in the west on Sunday, according to reports.

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Iran blasts Trump for ‘racist mentality’ and hostility to Muslims over travel ban

Tehran condemns Donald Trump’s order barring 12 countries’ citizens from entering US as violation of ‘fundamental principles of international law’

Tehran has denounced the US travel ban on Iranians and citizens of 11 other mostly Middle Eastern and African countries, saying Washington’s decision was a sign of a “racist mentality”.

Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday reviving sweeping restrictions that echo the US president’s first-term travel ban, justified on national security grounds after a firebomb attack at a pro-Israel rally in Colorado.

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Iran on brink of rejecting US proposal on nuclear programme

Offer gives no ground on Tehran’s demand to continue to enrich uranium inside country, sources say

Iran is on the brink of rejecting US proposals on the future of its nuclear programme after the US draft insisted that Tehran would have to suspend the enrichment of uranium inside Iran and set out no clear route map for lifting US economic sanctions.

The US proposals were the first in written form since five rounds of indirect talks started, but Iranian diplomatic sources said the US proposals gave no ground on Iran’s demand to continue to enrich uranium inside the country.

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Trump says he warned Israel against attack on Iran as nuclear deal ‘very close’

US president claims he told Tel Aviv he thought agreement on Tehran’s nuclear programme could come within weeks

Donald Trump has claimed he warned Israel against attacking Iran because he believed he was very close to a deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme in which US inspectors will be given unparalleled access to sites to ensure the country is not planning to build a nuclear bomb.

At a White House press conference on Wednesday, the US president confirmed he held talks last week with Israel and told them it was “not appropriate” to attack Tehran because he believed he could reach a deal within weeks.

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Jafar Panahi returns to Iran in triumph after Cannes Palme d’Or win

The director of It Was Just an Accident was cheered by supporters as he arrived back in his home country, where his work has previously landed him in jail

Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi was given a hero’s welcome on his return to Tehran on Monday after winning the top prize at the Cannes film festival, footage posted on social media showed.

After being banned from leaving Iran for years, forced to make films underground and enduring spells in prison, Panahi attended the film festival in person and sensationally walked away with the Palme d’Or for his latest movie It Was Just an Accident.

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Iran-US nuclear talks end with no agreement but ‘possibility of progress’

There were fears latest meeting could collapse but both sides appear willing for more talks on uranium enrichment

Talks between Iran and the US on whether Iran will be allowed to continue to enrich uranium inside the country have ended without an agreement, but apparently without the feared breakdown.

The indirect talks between the two sides were mediated by Oman and held in Rome.

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Iran would view US as ‘participant’ in any Israeli attack on its nuclear sites

Warning issued after US intelligence reportedly understood Israel might attack if Iran-US talks broke down

Iran has said it will hold the US responsible for any Israeli attack on its nuclear sites in remarks that set a fraught backdrop for the fifth and probably most important round of talks between Iran and the US on the future of Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, issued the warning on Thursday after reports appeared in the American media claiming US intelligence understood Israel was planning an attack on Iranian nuclear sites – with or without American support – if the talks broke down.

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