Israel-Iran live: Israel strikes nuclear site after Trump sets two-week timeline

Israeli defence minister Israel Katz warned Lebanon’s Hezbollah to exercise caution, saying Israel’s patience with “terrorists” who threaten it had worn thin.

The head of Iran-backed Hezbollah, Naim Qassem, said yesterday that the Lebanese group would act as it saw fit in the face of what he called “brutal Israeli-American aggression” against Iran.

In other statements, the group has made no explicit pledge to join the fighting and a Hezbollah official told Reuters last week that the group did not intend to initiate attacks against Israel.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has information that key buildings at Iran’s Khondab heavy water research site were damaged in Israeli strikes, including the distillation unit, it said in an X post.

The information was an update on an assessment from yesterday, in which the IAEA said the reactor has been hit but there were no radiological effects.

Major US airlines have suspended some flights to the Middle East amid the Israel-Iran conflict.

Delta Air Lines and United Airlines have suspended flights to Tel Aviv amid the strikes and now US carriers are grounding flights to other Middle Eastern countries as the conflict intensifies.

United Airlines suspended flights between Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and Dubai yesterday, citing, “conflict in the region,” CBS News reported.

The head of Russia’s nuclear energy corporation has warned that an Israeli attack on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant could lead to a “Chernobyl-style catastrophe”.

An Israeli military spokesperson said Israel had struck the site, but an Israeli military official later called this statement “a mistake” and said he could neither confirm nor deny that the Bushehr site on the cost of the Gulf had been hit.

Bushehr is Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant and was built by Russia.

President Vladimir Putin told reporters yesterday that Israel had promised Russia that Moscow’s workers – who are building more nuclear facilities at the Bushehr site – would be safe, even as Israel tries to degrade Iran’s nuclear capabilities by force.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio met British foreign minister David Lammy yetserday and held separate calls with Australian foreign minister Penny Wong, French foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot and Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani to discuss the conflict between Israel and Iran.

The state department said that Mr Rubio and the foreign ministers agreed that “Iran can never develop or acquire a nuclear weapon”.

Mr 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”.

While Iranian officials continue to issue confident claims that they are “fully prepared”, “responding decisively” and “managing the crisis”, the reality on the ground tells a very different story.

On day six of Israeli strikes, Iranians are facing streets filled with fear, empty shelves at stores, long queues for bread and fuel, and promises of bomb shelters that do not actually exist.

In a country that does not even have functioning air raid sirens, what people are feeling deeply, in every sense, is a slow collapse of both safety and hope.

Even if they survive the missiles, the trauma of these days will linger for years.

Reports from Tehran and other Iranian cities reveal that despite decades of threats against Israel, the Islamic Republic has no real plan in place to protect civilians during wartime.

Now, the same population already battered by the regime’s chronic mismanagement and deepening economic hardship is facing the added burden of war, and all the suffering that comes with it.