Trump approves plan for US to attack Iran, pending final order

President Trump has probably “already taken the decision to hit” Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility, according to Sir Niall Ferguson, the historian.

Sir Niall, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, told The Times CEO Summit: “My Israeli sources and some of my sources in Washington think it happens tonight.”

President Putin, asked how he would react should Israel kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, with the assistance of the United States, said: “I do not even want to discuss this possibility. I do not want to.”

All sides should look for ways to end hostilities in a way that ensured Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear power and Israel’s right to the unconditional security of the Jewish state, he said.

The Conservatives have signalled that they would support Sir Keir Starmer if he considers it necessary to join the military fight.

Dame Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, told ITV: “While we want peace in the region, we’re crystal clear that Iran should not be able to obtain nuclear weapons.

“And if the government judges that such action is necessary to avoid that then we would absolutely support the government if it deemed it necessary to ensure that we can defend our country, our citizens and effectively a lot of our strategic equities in the Middle East region.”

She added that she believed the opposition would be able to hold the government to account without a vote in parliament on military action.

Sir Keir Starmer will keep a “cool, calm head” and prioritise a “diplomatic solution” to ending the current conflict between Israel and Iran, a minister has said.

The prime minister’s top priority is “de-escalating the situation”, said Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy minister. Events were “very volatile” and “fast moving”, and Starmer and David Lammy, the foreign secretary, were “monitoring the situation and calibrating our response”.

The prime minister was also in regular contact with President Trump as he weighed up whether to launch a US attack on Iran, Fahnbulleh told Sky News.

She said the government was working “to make sure that we are doing our bit to work with all sides in order to de escalate — that has got to be the objective — and to get people negotiating away again so that we can find a diplomatic solution”.

Fahnbulleh would not be drawn on reports that the attorney general, Lord Hermer, had cautioned against Britain launching offensive action.

An Iranian missile hit a block of flats in Holon, a coastal city south of Tel Aviv

CHEN KALIFA/REUTERS

Dozens of Iranian missiles hit Israeli cities overnight

AMIR LEVY/GETTY IMAGES

JACK GUEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Gaza’s civil defence agency said that Israeli forces have killed at least 18 people today, including 15 who had gathered at a food aid distribution site in central Gaza.

Mohammad al-Mugghayyir, a civil defence official, said that “18 people have been killed due to ongoing Israeli shelling on the Gaza Strip since dawn today, 15 of whom were waiting for aid”. The other three were killed by shelling near Gaza City.

Earlier this week, Gaza’s health ministry, run by Hamas, said 397 Palestinians had been killed while trying to get food and more than 3,000 had been wounded since aid deliveries restarted in late May,

People in Tel Aviv take refuge from Iranian missiles in an underground car park

NIR KEIDAR/ANDALOU/GETTY IMAGES

People — and their pets — set up camp in a station on Tel Aviv’s light rail network

ABIR SULTAN/EPA

Iran’s deputy foreign minister has warned against any direct US involvement in the escalating conflict, saying Iran had “all the necessary options on the table”.

“If the US wants to actively intervene in support of Israel, Iran will have no other option but to use its tools to teach aggressors a lesson and defend itself … our military decision-makers have all necessary options on the table,” Kazem Gharibabadi said.

“Our recommendation to the US is to at least stand by if they do not wish to stop Israel’s aggression.”

Israel has struck nuclear facilities, eliminated senior commanders and attacked a state broadcaster, while Tehran has hit back with numerous missile barrages.

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Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service says that scores of people were injured in Iran’s latest missile strikes, 18 of whom were injured “while running to shelter”.

Three people were seriously injured, MDA said. “An additional 42 people sustained minor injuries from shrapnel and blast trauma, and 18 civilians were injured while running to shelter”.

Israel’s defence minister has called Iran’s attacks a “war crime” and vowed to hold Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, “accountable for his crimes”.

Israel Katz also said he had instructed Israel’s military to intensify attacks in order to “undermine the ayatollahs’ regime”.

“The cowardly Iranian dictator sits in the depths of the fortified bunker and fires aimed shots at hospitals and residential buildings in Israel,” Katz wrote on X. “These are war crimes of the most serious kind — and Khamenei will be held accountable for his crimes.”

He added: “The prime minister and I have instructed the IDF to increase the intensity of attacks against strategic targets in Iran and against government targets in Tehran in order to remove threats to the State of Israel and undermine the ayatollahs’ regime.”

Israeli president Isaac Herzog said the Soroka Medical Center, which was hit by an Iranian ballistic missile this morning, was a symbol of harmony between Jews and Arabs.

Medical staff continue their work at Soroka Medical Center following the missile strike overnight

AMIR COHEN/REUTERS

“A baby in intensive care and his caring mother at his bedside, a dedicated doctor going from patient to patient, an elderly woman in a nursing home — these were the targets of the Iranian missile attack on Israeli citizens this morning,” Herzog wrote on X.

He said the hospital in Beersheba was one of the best in Israel.

“The dedicated hospital staff — both Jewish and Arab — work shoulder to shoulder in extraordinary harmony, united in the sacred mission: saving the lives of the residents of the Negev of all religions, beliefs and lifestyles — Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

Israel says it has targeted the nuclear reactor in the area of Arak in Iran overnight and struck what it called a nuclear weapons development site in the area of Natanz.

Among its nuclear sites, Iran had a partially built heavy water research reactor, originally called Arak and now named Khondab. Heavy water reactors pose a nuclear proliferation risk because they can easily produce plutonium which, like enriched uranium, can be used to make the core of an atom bomb.

At Natanz, Iran built a complex that lies at the heart of its nuclear programme. It includes two enrichment plants, and has already been struck in the six days since Israel launched its air war.

Itamar Ben Gvir, the Israeli minister of national security who was recently sanctioned by the UK, said that “Nazis” had launched missiles at hospitals in Israel.

Writing on X after a dawn missile attack hit a hospital in the desert city of Beersheba, Ben Gvir said that if Iran had a nuclear weapon, they would fire it “without even a second thought.”

“Nazis launch missiles at hospitals, the elderly, and children — if they had atomic weapons, they would fire them without even a second’s thought. This is the most righteous campaign that Israel has ever embarked on in history,” he said.

Ben Gvir belongs to Netanyahu’s hardline coalition government and is a leader of the movement to resettle Palestinian lands in the West Bank and Gaza. The UK and other countries imposed sanctions upon him for incitement of violence and abuses of Palestinian rights.

By Marc Bennetts in Beersheba

An Iranian attack on a hospital in Israel that injured dozens of people was “criminal” and “deliberate,” the Israeli government has said.

Smoke rises from Soroka medical centre in Beersheba after the Iranian missile strike

AMIR COHEN/REUTERS

At least 32 people were injured across Israel on Thursday morning in a barrage of ballistic missile strikes. Emergency services said two people were in serious condition, while 30 had less severe blast and shrapnel injuries. The number of casualties at the hospital was unclear.

Binyamin Netanyahu has said Israel will “exact the full price from the tyrants” in his first response to Iran’s missile attack on a hospital in southern Israel.

“This morning, Iran’s terrorist tyrants launched missiles at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba and at a civilian population in the center of the country,” he wrote on X. “We will exact the full price from the tyrants”

President Trump has told senior aides that he approved plans for a US attack on Iran but was waiting to see if Tehran abandoned its nuclear programme before giving the final order, it has emerged.

The Wall Street Journal said that the US military was poised to directly join Israel’s war with Iran, pending the president’s approval.

Trump’s separate comments at the White House on Wednesday morning that “I may do it, I may not do it” confirmed what had been widely reported in the past 24 hours: that the president, who came to power on an electoral platform of ending US involvement in Middle East wars, was considering joining forces with Israel in its bombardment of Iran.

Iranian missiles hit a high-rise flat block in Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv, and other sites in central Israel.

A hospital in Tel Aviv said it was treating 16 wounded people, three with serious injuries.

Emergency personnel work at the site of an Iranian strike in Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv

NIR ELIAS/REUTERS

Israeli paramedics at separate scenes in central and southern Israel said one man, aged 60, was in a serious condition with shrapnel injuries.

Magen David Adom, of Israel’s ambulance service, said one person was seriously injured and 22 more were “lightly injured” after an Iranian missile hit a hospital in southern Israel, as well as other locations.

The Soroka Medical Centre, the main hospital in Israel’s south, has reported “extensive damage”.

Israelis are now permitted to leave shelters in several parts of the country, Israel’s military said on Thursday.

“Following the situational assessment, the Home Front Command published that it is now permitted to leave protected spaces in several areas across the country,” the Israel Defence Forces said in a statement.

A military official added that “dozens of ballistic missiles were launched at Israel in the last barrage from Iran”.

The US embassy in Qatar has issued an alert temporarily restricting its personnel from accessing the Al Udeid airbase.

The base in the desert outside Doha is the largest US military installation in the Middle East.

The embassy on Thursday told personnel and US citizens in Qatar to step up vigilance in “an abundance of caution and in light of ongoing regional hostilities”.

Australia has started evacuating almost 3,000 citizens caught up in the conflict.

However, efforts had been hampered by missile barrages that made it “too risky” for civilian aircraft to land in either country, Penny Wong, the foreign minister, said on Thursday.

About 1,500 Australians had registered to be evacuated from Iran, while more than 1,200 were seeking to get out of Israel, said Wong.

“There’s no capacity for people to get civilian aircraft in, it is too risky, and the airspace is closed,” she told ABC. “We have taken the opportunity to get a small group of Australians out of Israel through a land border crossing. We are seeking to try and do more of that over the next 24 hours.”

New Zealand closed its embassy in Iran, evacuating two staff members and their families to neighbouring Azerbaijan by land. “If and when opportunities arise to assist the departure of other New Zealanders in Iran and Israel, we will pursue them with urgency,” the foreign minister, Winston Peters, said.

Israel has struck an area near a partially built Iranian research reactor, the Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA) said on Thursday.

Officials announced that the Khondab heavy-water facility was evacuated before the attack and there was no radiation risk, ISNA added.

The research reactor, part of Iran’s nuclear programme, was partially built and previously known as Arak. Tehran had informed the UN nuclear watchdog that it planned to operate the facility next year.

Israel came under heavy rocket attack at dawn on Thursday as Iranian missiles hit the Soroka hospital in Beersheba, southern Israel.

Video posted on social media showed a direct hit on the hospital, with the sound of impact and a mushroom cloud billowing out the top. The emergency room, from pictures posted, appeared to have sustained damage.

A spokesman for the hospital reported “damage to the hospital and extensive damage in various areas. We are currently assessing the damage, including injuries. We ask the public not to come to the hospital at this time.”

Reports also indicated that other sites in Tel Aviv and central Israel had been hit.

The rocket barrage came after an air-raid siren was sounded at midnight, with that volley causing no damage or injuries.

The Israeli military said it was carrying out new strikes on Tehran and other parts of Iran on Thursday morning, telling two villages, Arak and Khondab, to evacuate.

“The Air Force has now begun a wave of strikes in Tehran and other areas in Iran,” the Israel Defence Forces wrote on X.

Israel’s military said it was “flying over surface-to-surface missile launch and storage sites … [and] striking those attempting to reactivate sites that have already been hit”.

Air-raid sirens sounded across Israel as Iran’s state news reported a new wave of missiles fired at the country.

Several explosions were reported over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

“A short while ago, sirens sounded in several areas across Israel following the identification of missiles launched from Iran toward the State of Israel,” the military said in a post on Telegram.

Earlier, Israel’s military said it had intercepted a drone launched from Iran.

An Israeli military official said that Iran had fired about 400 ballistic missiles and 1,000 drones since Friday. About 20 missiles had struck civilian areas in Israel, the official added.

Donald Trump was still deciding whether to join Israel’s strikes on Iran on Wednesday.

Claiming Tehran now wants talks at the White House the US President added they may have waited too long.

Trump held his second Situation Room meeting in two days with his national security team, leaving the world guessing about his potential order of military action.

“I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” Trump told reporters at the unveiling of one of two giant new flagpoles at the White House.

“I can tell you this, that Iran’s got a lot of trouble, and they want to negotiate.”

He added that “the next week is going to be very big” when it comes to determining Iran’s fate.

The White House said Trump would be briefed in the Situation Room again on Thursday, a holiday in the United States.

Trump’s comments came after the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected his demands for an unconditional surrender and warned the United States of “irreparable damage” if it intervenes.