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Israel has warned that its war with Iran could be lengthy, as United States President Donald Trump dismissed European peace efforts and signalled he “might” support a ceasefire between the two Middle Eastern nations, “depending on the circumstances”.
The comments were made on Friday, as the conflict entered its second week and Israeli forces targeted Tehran, while Iranian missiles wounded many in the Mediterranean port city of Haifa.
Iran and Israel exchanged fresh attacks early on Saturday, with Iran’s Fars news agency saying Israel had targeted the Isfahan nuclear facility, one of the nation’s biggest, but there was no leakage of hazardous materials.
Iranian media also said Israel had attacked a building in the city of Qom, with initial reports of a 16-year-old killed and two people injured.
The Israeli military said it had launched a wave of attacks against missile storage and launch infrastructure sites in Iran. It also said Iran had fired five ballistic missiles at Israel on Saturday but there were no immediate indications of any impacts.
Israeli defence minister Israel Katz said on Saturday that the military had killed two Iranian Revolutionary Guards commanders, including one who “was responsible for all weapons transfers from the Iranian regime to its proxies across the Middle East”.
‘Difficult days ahead’
On Friday, Israeli Foreign Minister Eyal Zamir warned his citizens in a video address to prepare for a “prolonged campaign” with “difficult days ahead”.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told a meeting of European diplomats in Geneva that Iran would not resume talks over its nuclear program while under attack.
Trump, meanwhile, dismissed the European diplomatic efforts, saying it was up to the US to find a solution to the current conflict.
“Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this one,” Trump said.
Trump also asserted that his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was wrong to suggest that there is no evidence Iran is building a nuclear weapon.
On Friday, Gabbard said the media had taken her March testimony “out of context” and was trying to “manufacture division”.
In a post on the social media platform X, she said: “America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly. President Trump has been clear that can’t happen, and I agree.”
Araghchi’s meeting with European counterparts on Friday was aimed at establishing a path back to diplomacy over Iran’s nuclear program.
European foreign ministers urged Iran to engage with Washington in the current ongoing negotiations, but the talks ended with few signs of progress.
In a press conference following the meeting, Araghchi told reporters that Iran would be ready to “consider diplomacy once again once the aggression is stopped” and “the aggressor is held accountable for the heinous crimes committed”, referring to Israel.
Trump keeps world guessing as conflict continues
The air assault between the two nations began on 13 June, after Israel attacked Iran, and has raised alarms in a region that has been on edge since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023.
Trump and the White House say he will decide in the next two weeks whether the US will involve itself further in the conflict.
In the meantime, Trump has kept the world guessing about his plans, switching back and forth between proposing a swift diplomatic solution and suggesting Washington might join the fight.
When asked on Friday whether he would be willing to send US soldiers into Iran if the conflict escalated, Trump said: “I’m not going to talk about ground forces, because the last thing you want to do is ground forces.”
He’s also said he was unlikely to press Israel to scale back its airstrikes to allow negotiations to continue.
“I think it’s very hard to make that request right now. If somebody is winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody is losing, but we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens,” he said.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East widely believed to have nuclear weapons. It said it struck Iran to prevent Tehran from developing its own nuclear weapons.
Israel’s envoy to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told the UN Security Council on Friday that his country would not stop its attacks “until Iran’s nuclear threat is dismantled”.
Iran’s UN envoy Amir Saeid Iravani called for Security Council action and said Tehran was alarmed by reports that the US might join the war.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, has retaliated with its own strikes on Israel. Iran is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Israel is not.
A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Iran was ready to discuss limitations on uranium enrichment but that it would reject any proposal that barred it from enriching uranium completely, “especially now under Israel’s strikes”.
At least 430 people were killed and 3,500 were wounded in Iran since 13 June, Iranian state-run Nour News reported on Saturday, citing the country’s health ministry.
The Human Rights Activists News Agency, a Washington-based Iranian human rights group, has previously said Israeli strikes had killed 639 people in Iran.
Israel says Iranian attacks have killed 24 civilians in Israel.
