Israel And Iran On Thursday, American president Donald Trump exchanged more attacks when he said that he would decide in the two weeks to find out if the US military would be involved directly in the conflict, seeking to stay open to diplomacy on the Tehran nuclear program.
“Based on the fact that there is a substantial chances of negotiations which may or may not occur with Iran in the near future, I will decide or not in the next two weeks,” Karoline Leavitt, a press secretary of the White House, to journalists, told Trump’s declaration.
Trump assessed whether I was necessary to attack Iran by hitting its well-defined uranium enrichment factory, which is buried under a mountain and widely considered beyond the reach of all the “bunker-business” bombs in America.
Earlier in the day, the Israeli Defense Minister threatened Iran’s supreme leader after Iranian missiles collapsed in a large hospital in southern Israel and hit residential buildings near Tel Aviv, injuring at least 240 people. While the rescuers brought out patients from the smoking hospital, Israeli war aircraft launched their last attack on the Iranian nuclear program.
The Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz blamed the supreme Iranian chief of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for Thursday’s dam and said that the army “was educated and knows that to achieve all his objectives, this man should absolutely not continue to exist”.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he trusted Trump “would do what is best for America.”
“I can tell you that they already help a lot,” Netanyahu said from rubble and broken glass around the Soroka Medical Center in the southern city of Beersheba in Israel.
The open conflict between Israel and Iran broke out last Friday with a wave of Israeli air strikes targeting nuclear and military sites, superior generals and nuclear scientists. At least 639 people, including 263 civilians, were killed in Iran and more than 1,300 injured, according to an Iranian human rights group based in Washington.
Iran retaliated by pulling 450 missiles and 1,000 drones in Israel, according to estimates by the Israeli army. Most were shot dead by aerial defenses on several levels of Israel, but at least 24 people in Israel were killed and hundreds injured.
Many hospitals have transferred patients underground
The command of the Israel’s home front said that one of the Iranian ballistic missiles drawn Thursday morning had been rigged with fragmenting bunch ammunition. Rather than a conventional warhead, a cluster’s ammunition warhead transports dozens of submunitions that can explode on the impact, showering small bombs around a large area and placing major security risks on the ground. The Israeli army did not say where this missile had been dismissed.
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At least 80 patients and medical workers were injured during the strike at the Israel Soroka medical center. The vast majority has been slightly injured because a large part of the hospital building had been evacuated in recent days.
Iranian officials insisted that they had not sought to strike the hospital and said that the attack had struck an installation belonging to the technological unit of elite of the Israeli army, called C4i. The Gav-Yam Negev Advanced Technologies Park website, about three kilometers (2 miles) from the hospital, said C4i had a branch campus in the region.
The Israeli army did not respond to a request for comments. An Israeli military official, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with regulations, admitted that there was no specific information that Iran had planned to target the hospital.
Many hospitals in Israel, including Soroka, had activated emergency plans last week. They converted parking garages into neighborhoods and transferred vulnerable patients underground. Israel also has a fortified underground blood bank which entered the action after the October 7 attack in Hamas, the attack ignited the current war in the Gaza Strip.
Soroka’s doctors said the Iranian missile struck almost immediately after the sirens of the air raids died, causing an explosion that could be heard from a safe part. The strike imposed the largest damage of 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, took care of 700 patients at the time. After the strike, the hospital closed all patients with the exception of potentially fatal cases.
Iran rejects calls to surrender or end its nuclear program
Iran has long maintained that 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 in the levels of quality of arms of 90%.
Israel is widely considered the only country with a nuclear weapon program in the Middle East, but has never recognized the existence of its arsenal.
The Israeli air campaign has targeted the Iranz enrichment site in Natanz, centrifuge workshops around Tehran, a nuclear site in Isfahan and what the army assesses most of the Iranian ballistic missile launchers. The destruction of these launchers has contributed to the constant decline in Iranian attacks since the start of the conflict.
On Thursday, anti-aircraft artillery was audible through Tehran and witnesses to the central city of Isfahan said they saw anti-aircraft fires after nightfall.
Trump’s announcement of a decision in the next two weeks has opened diplomatic options, the apparent hope that Iran would make concessions after having undergone major military losses.
A new diplomatic initiative seemed to be underway while the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Arabhchi prepared Friday in Geneva for meetings with the first diplomat of the European Union and with counterparts in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
But at least publicly, Iran hit a hard line.
On Wednesday, the supreme head of Iran rejected calls to the United States and warned that any American military involvement would cause him “irreparable damage”.
The president of the Parliament Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf criticized Trump for having used military pressure for obtaining an advantage in nuclear negotiations. The latest indirect discussions between Iran and the United States, which took place last Sunday, were canceled.
“The delusional American president knows that he cannot impose peace by imposing war and threatening us,” he said.
Iran has agreed to rethink Arak to respond to nuclear concerns
The Israeli army said that its fighter planes had targeted the Arak heavy water reactor, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) southwest of Tehran, to prevent it from being used to produce plutonium.
Iranian state television said that there was “no danger of influence” around the Arak site, which he said had been evacuated before the strike.
Heavy water helps to cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a by-product which can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. This would provide Iran with another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, if he chose to continue the weapon.
Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear agreement with the global powers to rethink the installation to mitigate proliferation problems. This work has never been completed.
The reactor became a discord point after Trump withdrew from the agreement in 2018. Ali Akbar Salehi, a high -ranking nuclear official in Iran, said in 2019 that Tehran had bought additional parts to replace part of the reactor in which he had paid concrete under the agreement.
Israel said strikes “to prevent the reactor from being restored and used for the development of nuclear weapons”.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said that due to the restrictions imposed by Iran on the inspectors, the United Nations nuclear custody has lost “continuity of knowledge” on the production of heavy water from Iran – which means that it could absolutely not check the production and stocks of Tehran.
Melzer reported on Tel Aviv, Israel and Gambrell de Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The writers of the Associated Press Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed.