Here’s where things stand on Monday, June 17:
Fighting
- Several explosions rocked areas across Iran, including its central and western provinces as well as the densely populated capital, Tehran, as Israel stepped up bombardment.
- The Israeli military said it struck “12 missile launch and storage sites”.
- Isfahan province and Tabriz city were among those attacked by Israel, while attacks on Tehran were “continuous and intense”, according to Iranian state media IRNA.
- Israel’s military claimed that one of its strikes in Tehran assassinated the Iranian army’s war chief of staff, Ali Shadmani.
- Iran launched retaliatory strikes towards parts of northern Israel and Tel Aviv, and said its missile attacks hit a military intelligence centre and a Mossad operations planning centre.
- Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said strikes are targeting the Israeli airbases from which attacks on Iran were launched.
- Iran’s army also said it tracked and intercepted 28 “hostile aircraft” in the past 24 hours, adding that one of them was a spy drone trying to gain intelligence on “sensitive” sites.
- Abdolrahim Mousavi, the Iranian army’s chief of staff, said that the attacks carried out so far have been a “warning for deterrence”, and said that “the punitive operation will be executed soon”.
Casualties and disruptions
- Several people were killed in Israel’s attack on an Iranian television building on Monday, Tehran reported, and three others died in strikes on the central city of Kashan.
- Israel did not report any deaths on Tuesday.
- The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it conducted more satellite imagery analysis of Israel’s recent attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, and added that it had further evidence indicating “direct impacts” on the “underground enrichment halls” in the Natanz facility.
- The IAEA said its analysis did not show any such change at two of Iran’s other major nuclear facilities attacked by Israel – Isfahan and Fordow.
- The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned of a devastating toll on civilians and potential health risks associated with Israel’s nuclear-site attacks on Iran.
- More than 600 foreign nationals have crossed from Iran into neighbouring Azerbaijan in recent days, including citizens of Russia, Germany, Spain, Italy, Romania and the United States.
- Ukraine, China and South Korea have become the latest countries to advise their citizens to leave Israel and Iran, citing a “significant deterioration of the security situation” in the region.
Diplomacy
- United States President Donald Trump, after leaving the G7 summit early, said he was not pushing for an Israel-Iran ceasefire but wanted a “real end”, with Iran “giving up entirely” on nuclear weapons.
- He also wrote on his Truth Social platform that “we now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran”, without clarifying further, and made a thinly veiled threat to assassinate Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
- The remarks come as US Vice President JD Vance said Trump may take “further action to end Iranian enrichment”.
- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was ready to act as a mediator, but added that there is a “reluctance, at least on the part of Israel”, to start talks.
- Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced Israel’s continued attacks as illegal.
- Jordan’s King Abdullah II warned that Israel’s attacks on Iran threatened to dangerously escalate tensions and were “a threat to people everywhere”.
- Qatar also said it “strongly condemns” Israel’s attacks, calling them “an uncalculated measure that will have very dire repercussions”.
- French President Emmanuel Macron said he was against military action against Iran that could lead to regime change and potential “chaos”.
- Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of Yemen’s Houthi movement’s political bureau, said the group would come to the aid of any Arab or Muslim nation under attack and that it would “intervene to support Tehran against Zionist aggressions”.
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