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Trump to Ponder Iran Attack for 2 Weeks06/20 05:59
President Donald Trump said Thursday he will decide within two weeks whether
the U.S. military will get directly involved in the conflict between Israel and
Iran given the "substantial chance" for renewed negotiations over Tehran's
nuclear program, as the two sides attacked one another for a seventh day.
BEERSHEBA, Israel (AP) -- President Donald Trump said Thursday he will
decide within two weeks whether the U.S. military will get directly involved in
the conflict between Israel and Iran given the "substantial chance" for renewed
negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program, as the two sides attacked one
another for a seventh day.
Trump has been weighing whether to attack Iran by striking its well-defended
Fordo uranium enrichment facility, which is buried under a mountain and widely
considered to be out of reach of all but America's "bunker-buster" bombs. His
statement was read out by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Earlier in the day, Israel's defense minister threatened Iranian Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after Iranian missiles crashed into a major
hospital in southern Israel and hit residential buildings near Tel Aviv,
wounding at least 240 people. Israel's military "has been instructed and knows
that in order to achieve all of its goals, this man absolutely should not
continue to exist," Defense Minister Israel Katz said.
As rescuers wheeled patients out of the smoldering hospital, Israeli
warplanes launched their latest attack on Iran's nuclear program.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he trusted that Trump would "do
what's best for America." Speaking from the rubble and shattered glass around
the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, he added: "I can tell you that they're
already helping a lot."
A new diplomatic initiative appeared to be underway as Iran's Foreign
Minister Abbas Araghchi prepared to travel Friday to Geneva for meetings with
the European Union's top diplomat and counterparts from the United Kingdom,
France and Germany.
Britain's foreign secretary said he met at the White House with U.S.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and envoy Steve Witkoff, to discuss the
potential for a deal that could cool the conflict.
"A window now exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic
solution," Britain's David Lammy said in a social media post after Thursday's
meeting.
The open conflict between Israel and Iran erupted last Friday with a
surprise wave of Israeli airstrikes targeting nuclear and military sites, top
generals and nuclear scientists. At least 657 people, including 263 civilians,
have been killed in Iran and more than 2,000 wounded, according to a
Washington-based Iranian human rights group.
Iran has retaliated by firing 450 missiles and 1,000 drones at Israel,
according to Israeli army estimates. Most have been shot down by Israel's
multitiered air defenses, but at least 24 people in Israel have been killed and
hundreds wounded.
Many hospitals have transferred patients underground
Israel's Home Front Command asserted that one of the Iranian ballistic
missiles fired Thursday morning had been rigged with fragmenting cluster
munitions. Rather than a conventional warhead, a cluster munition warhead
carries dozens of submunitions that can explode on impact, showering small
bomblets around a large area and posing major safety risks on the ground. The
Israeli military did not say where that missile had been fired.
At least 80 patients and medical workers were wounded in the strike on
Soroka Medical Center. The vast majority were lightly wounded, as much of the
hospital building had been evacuated in recent days.
Iranian officials insisted they had not sought to strike the hospital and
claimed the attack hit a facility belonging to the Israeli military's elite
technological unit, called C4i. The website for the Gav-Yam Negev advanced
technologies park, some 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the hospital, said C4i had
a branch campus in the area.
The Israeli army did not respond to a request for comment. An Israeli
military official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations,
acknowledged that there was no specific intelligence that Iran had planned to
target the hospital.
Many hospitals in Israel, including Soroka, had activated emergency plans in
the past week. They converted parking garages to wards and transferred
vulnerable patients underground. Israel also has a fortified, subterranean
blood bank that kicked into action after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack ignited
the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.
Doctors at Soroka said the Iranian missile struck almost immediately after
air raid sirens went off, causing an explosion that could be heard from a safe
room. The strike inflicted the greatest damage on an old surgery building and
affected key infrastructure, including gas, water and air-conditioning systems,
the medical center said.
The hospital, which provides services to around 1 million residents, had
been caring for 700 patients at the time. After the strike, the hospital closed
to all patients except for life-threatening cases.
Iran rejects calls to surrender or end its nuclear program
Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. But
it is the only non-nuclear-weapon state to enrich uranium up to 60%, a short,
technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.
Israel is widely believed to be the only country with a nuclear weapons
program in the Middle East but has never acknowledged the existence of its
arsenal.
The Israeli air campaign has targeted Iran's enrichment site at Natanz,
centrifuge workshops around Tehran, a nuclear site in Isfahan and what the army
assesses to be most of Iran's ballistic missile launchers. The destruction of
those launchers has contributed to the steady decline in Iranian attacks since
the start of the conflict.
Israeli airstrikes reached into the city of Rasht on the Caspian Sea early
Friday, Iranian media reported. The Israeli military had warned the public to
flee the area around Rasht's Industrial City, southwest of the city's downtown.
But with Iran's internet shut off to the outside world, it's unclear just how
many people could see the message.
On Thursday, anti-aircraft artillery was audible across Tehran, and
witnesses in the central city of Isfahan reported seeing anti-aircraft fire
after nightfall.
Trump's announcement of a decision in the next two weeks opened up
diplomatic options, with the apparent hope Iran would make concessions after
suffering major military losses.
But at least publicly, Iran has struck a hard line.
Iran's supreme leader on Wednesday rejected U.S. calls for surrender and
warned that any U.S. military involvement would cause "irreparable damage to
them."
Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf on Thursday criticized Trump for
using military pressure to gain an advantage in nuclear negotiations. The
latest indirect talks between Iran and the U.S., set for last Sunday, were
cancelled.
"The delusional American president knows that he cannot impose peace on us
by imposing war and threatening us," he said.
Iran agreed to redesign Arak to address nuclear concerns
Israel's military said its fighter jets targeted the Arak heavy water
reactor, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) southwest of Tehran, to prevent it
from being used to produce plutonium.
Iranian state TV said there was "no radiation danger whatsoever" around the
Arak site, which it said had been evacuated ahead of the strike.
Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a
byproduct that potentially can be used in nuclear weapons. That would provide
Iran another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, should it choose to
pursue the weapon.
Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign
the facility to alleviate proliferation concerns. That work was never completed.
The reactor became a point of contention after Trump withdrew from the deal
in 2018. Ali Akbar Salehi, a high-ranking nuclear official in Iran, said in
2019 that Tehran bought extra parts to replace a portion of the reactor that it
had poured concrete into under the deal.
Israel said strikes were carried out "in order to prevent the reactor from
being restored and used for nuclear weapons development."
The International Atomic Energy Agency has said that due to restrictions
imposed by Iran on inspectors, the U.N. nuclear watchdog has lost "continuity
of knowledge" about Iran's heavy water production -- meaning it could not
absolutely verify Tehran's production and stockpile.
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