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Israel has struck Iran’s nuclear facility near Isfahan, pressing ahead with its aerial assault while President Donald Trump decides whether the US will enter the war in the Middle East.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had launched a big overnight assault involving 50 warplanes, with some targeting two centrifuge production facilities at Isfahan.
However, the crown jewel of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme, a sprawling uranium enrichment facility built deep under a mountain in Fordow, remains out of reach of Israel’s conventional weapons. American “bunker-buster” bombs carried by B-2 Stealth fighters are considered to have the best chance of destroying the facility, although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted at clandestine capabilities, including sabotage.
The White House said on Thursday that Trump would decide “within the next two weeks” if the US would strike Iran, a decision that would mark a significant escalation in the conflict.
Israel’s near-complete domination of Iranian skies has severely diminished the Islamic Republic’s missile launch capabilities and eliminated much of its senior military leadership since its surprise attack on June 13.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has rarely been seen in public since Israel’s defence minister said that he too could be assassinated.
The Israeli military’s success has left Trump reluctant to agree to an Iranian demand that any talks take place under the cover of a ceasefire.
“It’s very hard to stop when you look at it, Israel’s doing well in terms of war and I think you would say that Iran is doing less well,” Trump said on Friday, describing the first round of Europe-led negotiations in Geneva as ineffective. “Europe is not going to be able to help with this.” The US did not attend the talks.
A person briefed on Friday’s negotiations said the French, German and UK foreign ministers warned their Iranian counterpart that Tehran may have to give up its red line of refusing to negotiate with Washington while under Israeli attack to “prevent the US from joining the operation”.
“We sent them away to think very carefully about their red line,” the person said. “We told [the Iranians] that US military intervention is something that is actually being planned right now.”
Trump has dismissed the US intelligence community’s assessment that Iran was not using Fordow’s uranium enrichment capabilities to build material for a nuclear weapon. Instead, he has agreed with Netanyahu’s claims that Tehran was weeks from building a bomb.
“She’s wrong,” Trump told reporters when asked about national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard’s testimony to Congress this year, which contradicted Netanyahu’s insistence that Iran was building a bomb.
Gabbard said in March that the US intelligence community believed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei had not revived the programme he suspended in 2003.
But late on Friday night, Gabbard wrote on X that if Iran decided to finalise the assembly of a bomb, it could “produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months”.
According to the Iranian Fars news agency, Israel’s overnight military actions appear to have hit some parts of the nuclear facility, but there were no signs of radiation leakage.
The Israeli military also said it had killed two senior leaders in the Quds Force, an arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. It said that both leaders were involved in financing and training Iran’s proxy militias in the region.
