Israeli military says it struck military and nuclear sites in Iran

The Israeli military has confirmed that it carried out strikes against Iran, using dozens of jets, saying that it targeted military and nuclear sites.

It called the attack “a precise and integrated preemptive strike based on high-quality intelligence, with the aim of striking the Iranian nuclear programme”.

US not involved in strikes against Iran, says top diplomat

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio warns Iran against targeting US bases in the region, stressing that Washington is not taking part in the Israeli strikes.

“We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region. Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense,” Rubio said in a statement.

“President Trump and the Administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target US interests or personnel.”

All indications that US was aware of Israel’s plans to attack Iran

Certainly all the arrows point in that direction that Donald Trump was told that there was going to be some sort of strike.

You’ll remember that just 48 hours ago the United States, in fact 24 hours ago the United States, announced that it was going to start moving non-essential personnel out of the embassy in Baghdad and also recommending that others in embassies around the region could also leave if they wish.

That seemed to suggest that there was going to be an attack of some sort.

Donald Trump in the last few hours put out a post on his Truth Social platform saying that he had directed his entire government to move towards a diplomatic solution with Iran.

The bottom line was he didn’t want Iran to get a nuclear weapon but he was hoping that there would be talks. The fact that the Israelis have gone ahead would suggest that while the US was not involved, and that’s what we’re hearing, they were informed about what was likely to happen.

Donald Trump currently at the congressional picnic at the White House would have been informed in what exactly the Israelis were going to do.

The big question now of course is how the United States react to any response from Iran.

Egypt detains pro-Palestinian activists ahead of Gaza solidarity march

Egyptian authorities have detained more than 200 pro-Palestinian activists who arrived in Cairo by plane as part of a solidarity march to Gaza to push for increased humanitarian aid access to the enclave. A convoy that left Tunisia for Gaza is currently blocked in Libya.

"Over 200 participants were detained at Cairo airport or questioned at hotels across Cairo," the march's spokesperson, Saif Abukeshek, told France's AFP news agency on Thursday.

The detainees included people from  Algeria, Australia, France, Morocco, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States, he said.

Plainclothes officers entered Cairo hotels on Wednesday with lists of names, questioning activists, and in some cases, confiscating phones and searching personal belongings, Abukeshek said.

"After interrogations, some were arrested and others were released."

More than 20 French activists who had planned to join [Friday's] march were held at Cairo airport for 18 hours, he said.

"What happened was completely unexpected," Abukeshek said.

French people were abducted from their hotels in Cairo and taken to this room, their passports were taken away, police wouldn't tell them anything and treated them "like dogs" according the woman who recorded this video

They planned to join the Global March to Gaza this weekend https://t.co/vHCY1wDaWD pic.twitter.com/PIMsGRo1QC

— Eli Gerzon (@eligerzon) June 12, 2025

Nah, was completely expected with Egypt on US' payroll and not having lift a finger to lift the blockade.

Security concerns 

Egyptian authorities said the measures were the result of failure to follow proper procedures, including obtaining prior consent from embassies and securing visas. Cairo maintains that the march towards Rafah constitutes a threat to both its own security and that of the participants.

After 21 months of war, Israel is facing mounting international pressure to allow more aid into Gaza, which the United Nations has dubbed "the hungriest place on Earth". In a statement, the organising collective said: “We hope we can work with the Egyptian authorities … Our priorities are the same – calling for an end to the Palestinian genocide.”

Humanitarian convoy blocked

Egyptian authorities have also deployed reinforcements at its border with Libya to block a convoy of around 1,500 people that set out from Tunisia on Monday.



The caravan, dubbed Soumoud meaning "resiliance" in Arabic, left Tunis with the aim of reaching Gaza to symbolically “break the Israeli blockade”. Around 1,500 people, including Algerian and Tunisian medics, activists and supporters, are travelling in a dozen buses and a hundred cars.

The convoy arrived in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Wednesday, but is currently blocked in Sirte in the centre-north of the country, which is under the control of forces led by Marshal Khalifa Hafta.

"The caravan was prevented from proceeding at the entrance to the city of Sirte,” said one of the organisers, Wael Naouar, in a video on Facebook. “So far we do not know whether we will be able to continue or not,” Naouar added, while insisting they would not turn back.    

The Global March to Gaza, which is coordinating with Soumoud, said around 4,000 participants from more than 40 countries are expected to take part in Friday's event. According to the plan, participants are set to travel by bus to the city of El-Arish in the heavily secured Sinai Peninsula before walking 50 kilometres towards the border with Gaza.

Israel has called on Egyptian authorities "to prevent the arrival of jihadist protesters at the Egypt-Israel border". Egypt's foreign ministry said that while it backs efforts to put "pressure on Israel", any foreign delegations visiting the border area must receive approval through official channels.

Madleen activists return 

Earlier this week, Israel intercepted a ship carrying Western pro-Palestinian activists and aid for Gaza. The twelve activists aboard, including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, were deported.

Rima Hassan, a French MEP from the hard-left France Unbowed  (LFI) party who is of Palestinian descent, returned to France on Thursday evening having been held in solitary confinement in Israel.

Gaza humanitarian fund ordered to step down as further war expected

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has been told to stand down by the IDF as further regional war throughout the Middle East is expected.

In a statement, the GHF wrote: "The last 24 hours in Israel and the Middle East have tested the resolve and challenged emergency food delivery to the Palestinians in Gaza, but the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) is prepared.

"Earlier this morning (Friday, May 13), GHF was successful in quickly delivering 35,520 boxes of food aid with approximately 2,051,280 meals into Gaza. The deliveries occurred after the reported attacks on Iran by Israel.

You do not get 58 meals out of those puny boxes... Propaganda lies.

"We had additional trucks ready to unload and deliver, but we were ordered to stand down. We have asked the IDF to facilitate the ongoing delivery of aid as soon as possible. We are ready to serve the Gazan people.

"GHF was the only organisation delivering food into Gaza last night and today. All of our activities have been in direct response to President Trump's call earlier this year to provide aid to Gazans through alternative means."

Confirmed, It's always been Trump's plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza, using starvation to lure people to the South. Trump gave Israel the green light for the total block of all aid since march 2nd. The GHF has been in the planning stages since early Februari. 

Genocide Joe and Holodomor Donald. 

Recognise Palestine now to avoid ‘deadly status quo’, says its UK ambassador


_{Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, at a Tolpuddle Martyrs festival rally in July 2024}

Making recognition of a Palestinian state subject to ever more conditions will only reinforce a “deadly status quo” and will be seen as siding with an apartheid regime, the Palestinian ambassador to the UK has said.

Writing in the Guardian, Husam Zomlot made an impassioned plea to the Labour government to fulfil a manifesto commitment by recognising Palestine in the run-up to a high-level UN conference on the two-state solution in New York next week.

Zomlot wrote: “Recognition is neither a reward for one party nor a punishment for another. It is a long-overdue affirmation of the Palestinian people’s unconditional right to exist and live freely in our homeland.”

Discussions behind the scenes between western powers are going down to the wire before the conference starting on 17 June, while the US is warning that the conference is counterproductive and should be boycotted. At issue is whether a group of countries that have not yet recognised Palestine do so around the conference or instead say recognition is being offered but on a credible timeline and subject to conditions. France and the UK are conferring intensely.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/13/recognise-palestine-now-to-avoid-deadly-status-quo-says-its-uk-ambassador

Attack dogs: how Europe supplies Israel with brutal canine weapons

Military dogs involved in attacks on Palestinian civilians – including children – are likely to have been exported from European countries, investigation finds



It was only seconds after soldiers entered the Hashash family’s home in the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank that the dog attack began. As military raids rolled out across her neighbourhood one morning in February 2023, Amani Hashash says she took her four children into a bedroom. When she heard Israeli military coming into their home she called out that they were inside and posed no threat.

Moments later the bedroom door was opened and a large, unmuzzled dog launched itself into the room, plunging its teeth into her three-year-old son, Ibrahim, who was asleep in her lap. Hashash fought to get the animal away as it mauled and shook her screaming son and started to drag him out of the room. “But it was such a big dog, not like any other dog I have seen,” she says. “It kept biting and pulling my son away from me. I screamed and hit it, but it kept pulling at him.”

She says she begged the soldiers to call off the attack but they couldn’t control the animal. By the time they managed to drag the dog away, Ibrahim was unconscious and bleeding heavily. The soldiers injected Ibrahim with sedatives and called an ambulance, which took him to hospital where he was rushed into surgery.

“When I saw his wounds I was distraught because they were so extensive,” says Hashash. “The doctors said his condition was critical. One wound was six and a half centimetres, another was four centimetres. There were so many wounds the dog had caused, it hadn’t left any of Ibrahim’s back untouched."

Ibrahim needed 42 stitches for internal and external injuries and 21 injections to treat an infection contracted from the bites. Photographs of the injuries sustained in the attack seen by the Guardian and ARIJ show extensive wounding and bite marks.

More than a year later, Hashash says Ibrahim still has nightmares and his wounds have not healed. “They did this to terrorise us,” she says. Hashash says one of the Israeli commanders had told her that the dog had been trained to attack the first person it saw. “He’s just a child,” she says. “He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

The IDF refused to comment on the case.

The dog that attacked Ibrahim is likely to have been a Belgian malinois, which Hashash identified from pictures of different dogs used by the military. Originally used to herd sheep, the breed is now widely used by Oketz, Israel’s specialist canine unit, feted in Israel and widely feared across the Palestinian territories.

According to an investigation by Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) and the Guardian, it is also likely that the animal used was sent to Israel from Europe, where a steady flow of dogs are traded from specialist trainers into the ranks of the Israeli military.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jun/12/weapons-war-israel-europe-dogs-joint-investigation

Last year, commanders in the Oketz unit told US urban warfare researcher John Spencer, who has embedded with the IDF on multiple operations, that 99% of the approximately 70 military dogs it buys every year were sourced from companies in Europe, a figure that the IDF did not dispute when asked to confirm.

One organisation, Euro Med Human Rights Monitor, says it has documented 146 cases of attack dogs being used against civilians by the Israeli army since October 2023.

...

In the West Bank, the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq has also documented 18 cases of military dog attacks on civilians since October 2023, including children.

The UN says that the use of military dogs against Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention throughout the war constitutes a violation of international human rights law. According to testimonies from former detainees reported by Physicians for Human Rights, dogs have been ordered to bite and maul prisoners and urinated and defecated on them.

Amnesty International says that the use of dogs against civilians needs to be urgently recognised in legal instruments and laws regulating the use and sale of conventional weapons.

...

Benjamin Netanyahu says strikes on Iran will continue ‘as long as necessary’

The Israeli prime minister says the attacks are aimed at Iran’s nuclear programme, ballistic missiles and military capabilities. “This operation will continue as long as necessary, until we complete the mission,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

‘Game on,’ says key US senator

Hawkish Republican lawmaker Lindsey Graham – a Trump ally – voices support for Israel as it attacks Iran. “Game on. Pray for Israel,” he wrote in a social media post.

Iran’s Press TV says Natanz nuclear facility targeted

The state-owned media outlet has shared footage of fire and smoke billowing from a site that it said is “reportedly” the Natanz nuclear facility in central Iran.

Civilians killed in Israel strikes on Tehran: Iran state media

Israeli strikes on residential buildings in the Iranian capital killed a number of civilians, including children, according to Iranian state media. “A number of people, including women and children, were martyred in a residential complex in Tehran,” the official IRNA news agency reported.

_{Onlookers and rescue teams gather near a building hit by an Israeli strike early on Friday}

IRGC chief killed in Israeli attacks: Reports

Iran’s Tasnim news agency and Tehran Times newspaper say Hossein Salami, commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has been killed in an Israeli strike.

Two Iranian nuclear scientists killed in attacks: Tasnim agency

Iran’s Tasnim news agency reports that nuclear scientists Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi and Fereydoon Abbasi were killed in the Israeli strikes. Tehranchi was a nuclear scientist and the head of the Islamic Azad University, while Abbasi was the former chief of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

Israel attacked at least 6 military bases around Tehran: Report

The Israeli military has attacked at least six military bases around Tehran, The New York Times reports, citing four unnamed senior Iranian officials. The sources said the Parchin military complex was targeted, as well as residential homes at two highly secure complexes for military commanders and multiple residential buildings in what appear to be targeted assassinations.

Israel says it had dialogue with US, but attack was independent decision

Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, has said his country is holding ongoing dialogue with Washington, but its decision to strike Iran was an independent Israeli move. Danon said he doesn’t want to “go into speculation” when asked during an interview with CNN whether Israel expected the US to assist it in case of an Iranian response.

Iranian military spokesperson promises ‘heavy price’ for Israeli strikes

According to several Iranian news outlets, Abolfazl Shekarchi, the spokesperson for Iran’s armed forces, has said that Israel will pay a “heavy price” for its attacks.

Senior adviser to Ali Khamenei ‘critically injured’: Report

Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been “critically injured” during Israel’s attacks on Tehran over recent hours, according to state-run news outlet Nour News.


_{Firefighters work at the scene of a damaged building in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, in Tehran, Iran, on June 13}

Israeli military chief says army ‘mobilising tens of thousands’ of soldiers

In a televised address, Israeli military chief of staff Eyal Zamir said the army is “mobilising tens of thousands of soldiers and preparing across all borders”, as he warned that “anyone who tries to challenge us will pay a heavy price”.

“People of Israel, I can’t promise absolute success. The Iranian regime will attempt to attack us in response. The expected cost will be different from what we are used to,” Zamir said.

“We have been preparing this operation for a long time; unprecedented efforts have been made across all branches and directorates to achieve readiness against the tangible and present threat,” he added.

Iran’s Supreme Leader: Israel must prepare for ‘bitter and painful’ fate following attack

Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency, or IRNA, has published a statement from the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei:

The great nation of Iran!

The Zionist regime, at dawn today, opened its dirty and bloody hand to a crime in our beloved country and revealed its evil nature more than ever by striking residential centres.

The regime must expect severe punishment. The powerful hand of the Islamic Republic’s armed forces will not abandon him, God willing. Several commanders and scientists were martyred in the enemy attacks. Their successors and colleagues will immediately resume their duties, God willing.

With this crime, the Zionist regime prepared for itself a bitter and painful fate, and it will definitely receive it.

Third wave of Israeli attacks on Iran under way: Report

Israeli fighter jets have begun a third wave of attacks targeting radars and air defences in Iran, The New York Times reports, citing two unnamed Iranian officials.

Initial reports suggest that the Israeli military has carried out air strikes in six locations across Iran.

Iranian state media reports that there have been at least two waves of attacks so far over recent hours. A third wave of attacks may now be under way, according to unconfirmed reports.

Strikes have been confirmed in the following locations:

Iran says US will also be responsible for Israel’s ‘adventure’

Iran’s Foreign Ministry says Tehran has a “legal and legitimate” right to respond to Israeli attacks under the UN Charter.

“The dangerous and far-reaching effects and consequences of the Zionist regime’s aggression against our beloved homeland of Iran will be the responsibility of this regime and its supporters,” the ministry said in a statement.

“The Zionist regime’s aggressive actions against Iran cannot have been carried out without the coordination and authorisation of the United States. Accordingly, the United States government, as the main supporter of this regime, will also be responsible for the dangerous effects and consequences of the Zionist regime’s adventure.”

Iran’s nuclear and military facilities

Iran’s command and control remains in place: Analyst

Continuing with his interview with Al Jazeera from Tehran, Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Dareini said Iran’s military structure remains intact despite the loss of key military leaders such as Hossein Salami, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“That is a big loss for Iran, but the command-and-control structure remains in place. No matter whether one or two top military commanders are assassinated, the structure remains intact,” he said.

“Iran is in the process of making a fateful decision in the hours to come. There will be retaliation. This time, very much different from the previous ones,” he added.

Rights group calls on US to ‘decouple’ interests with Israel

DAWN, a human rights advocacy group based in Washington, DC, says the Israeli attacks on Iran are “unlawful” and “unprovoked”.

“The United States should completely decouple its interests from Israel’s reckless war-making and refuse any support, material or political, for these attacks on Iran,” Raed Jarrar, DAWN’s advocacy director, said in a statement.

“We are now seeing Israel unlawfully bombarding Iranian neighborhoods allegedly housing Iranian officials with the same maliciousness it has bombed Lebanon and Gaza.”

Jordan closes its airspace

The Hashemite kingdom’s civil aviation authority says it “temporarily” closed Jordanian airspace to all flights “in anticipation of any dangers resulting from the escalation happening in the region”.

Last year, some Iranian missiles that targeted Israeli military bases flew over Jordan.

Mostly women and children among 50 injured in Israeli attack: Report

Iran’s Tasnim news agency is reporting that at least 50 people injured in the Israeli attack have been transferred to the Chamran Hospital in the northern Tehran district of Tajrish. According to Tasnim, 35 of those who were injured were women and children.

Israel and Iran attacks in 2024 versus now

Al Jazeera correspondent Dorsa Jabbari explained that the scope and scale of today’s attack by Israel is much greater than two tit-for-tat attacks last year.