Israel and Iran traded attacks on Friday, marking the first week of open conflict between the two nations, as former President Donald Trump deliberated over potential US military action and fresh diplomatic initiatives seemed to be taking shape. Stay tuned for all the LIVE Updates from the ongoing war in West Asia.
Trump is reportedly considering a strike on Iran’s heavily fortified Fordo nuclear facility — a site embedded deep within a mountain and regarded as nearly impenetrable except by the U.S.’s specialized “bunker-buster” munitions.
He stated that a decision on American military involvement could come within the next two weeks, citing a “significant possibility” that talks concerning Iran’s nuclear ambitions might resume.
Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi appeared to be heading to Geneva for discussions with the European Union’s chief diplomat and foreign ministers from the UK, France, and Germany.
Flight data from FlightRadar24 showed a plane linked to Araghchi taking off from Van, a city near Iran’s border in eastern Turkey. Tehran often delays confirming such departures for several hours.
As the attacks from both sides continue, researchers at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science have been scrambling to save their experiments after an Iranian missile destroyed a building containing dozens of cutting-edge laboratories.
The missile struck the institute’s campus at Rehovot, on the southern periphery of Tel Aviv, in the early hours of Sunday, damaging multiple buildings and prompting researchers to clamber into the ruins to save samples even as fire raged.
No one was hurt as the campus was empty overnight, but one part of a building collapsed entirely, while in the remaining part the walls were blown out, exposing a tangle of twisted metal, blasted debris and blackened cement.
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