Here are the key events on day seven of the Israel-Iran conflict.
Here’s where things stand on Thursday, June 19:
Fighting
- Israel struck dozens of sites in Iran, including Natanz and a heavy water nuclear reactor, which was originally called Arak and is now named Khondab.
A projectile fired by Iran struck the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, southern Israel – one of the main hospitals where Israeli troops are sent – leaving dozens injured.
IRNA, the Islamic Republic News Agency, said on Telegram that the “main target” of Thursday’s missile attack “was the large [Israeli army] Command and Intelligence [IDF C4I] headquarters and the military intelligence camp in the Gav-Yam Technology Park”, and not the hospital.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tehran would pay a “heavy price” for the strike.
- Israel says it destroyed Iran’s internal security headquarters in Tehran as more explosions are reported in the Iranian city of Karaj and the nearby Payam airport.
- Several explosions were heard over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as a new wave of Iranian missiles targeted the country, resulting in at least four impact sites.
- Bloomberg News, citing anonymous sources, reported that senior US officials are “preparing for the possibility of a strike on Iran in the coming days”. It said the development is a sign that Washington “is assembling the infrastructure to directly enter a conflict with Tehran”.
- On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that President Donald Trump would decide whether the US will join the Israel-Iran conflict in the “next two weeks”. Previously, Trump had declined to say if he had made any decision. “I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” he said.
- Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is urging Trump to “go all in” and attack Iran’s Fordow nuclear site, which is dug deep into a mountain in central Iran.
- The Al Udeid Air Base outside Doha, Qatar – a major US military base in the Middle East – has seen many of the aircraft typically on its tarmac dispersed, The Associated Press reported.
- Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz threatened to eliminate Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Such a person is forbidden to exist,” he said in a statement cited by the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
- In a post on X, Khamenei said: “The very fact that the Zionist regime’s American friends have entered the scene and are saying such things is a sign of that regime’s weakness and inability.”
- Turkiye has increased the security of its border with Iran as the Israel-Iran conflict continues, a Turkish Defence Ministry source told Reuters, adding that Ankara had not seen any irregular migration flow from Iran.
Casualties and disruptions
- Israel said that at least 24 people have been killed in Iranian attacks on Israel.
- Israel said more than 200 people were wounded in the Iranian strike that hit Soroka Hospital.
- At least 639 people have been killed in Israeli attacks across Iran, according to the Washington-based group, Human Rights Activists.
- Iran has not given regular death toll figures during the intense attacks by Israel. Its last update put the death toll at more than 240 people killed and 1,277 others wounded.
- Iranian police announced on Thursday they had arrested 24 people accused of spying for Israel, according to a statement carried by the Tasnim news agency.
- The IRIB state broadcaster said Iranian authorities extended the cancellation of takeoffs and landings of domestic and international flights until 2pm (10:30 GMT).
- Thousands of people in Israel have become homeless as a result of Iran’s retaliatory missile attacks, the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported. The Israeli Ministry of Interior classified 5,110 people as homeless, including 907 from Tel Aviv, the report said.
- London-based internet watchdog Netblocks said it had been 24 hours since Iran imposed a nationwide internet shutdown.
Diplomacy
- Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has confirmed plans to meet with his British, French and German counterparts, as well as the European Union’s top diplomat, in Geneva on Friday, according to the IRNA news agency.
- Iranian human rights activists and Nobel Peace Prize laureates Narges Mohammadi and Shirin Ebadi urged that the war between Israel and Iran end. “Stop the war and choose dialogue over destruction,” they said in a statement on the Nobel Women’s Initiative website.
- When asked by a reporter about the potential assassination of Iran’s Khamenei by Israel or the US, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “I do not even want to discuss this possibility. I do not want to.”
- Putin also said he believed a peaceful “solution can be found” to the conflict, as he called for parties to ensure Iran’s interests in pursuing “peaceful nuclear activities”, as well as ensure the “unconditional security of the Jewish state”.
- UN rights chief Volker Turk urged restraint from both Iran and Israel, saying it is “appalling to see how civilians are treated as collateral damage in the conduct of hostilities”.
- French President Emmanuel Macron’s office says Paris is planning, along with European partners, to suggest a negotiated solution to end the conflict between Iran and Israel.
- IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi told Al Jazeera the nuclear watchdog does not have evidence showing Iran is actively trying to build nuclear weapons.
- Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson has accused IAEA chief Grossi and his organisation of being complicit in the ongoing conflict, saying their “biased” reporting on Iran’s nuclear activities was used as a “pretext” for Israel to attack.
- Iraq’s top Shia leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani warned there will be “dire consequences on the region” if Iran’s “supreme religious and political leadership” are targeted. He called on the international community to “make every effort to end this unjust war and find a peaceful solution” to Iran’s nuclear programme.
Prime Minister Netanyahu said on Thursday that the change or fall of the Iranian regime was not a goal but could be a result. “The matter of changing the regime or the fall of this regime is first and foremost a matter for the Iranian people. There is no substitute for this. And that’s why I didn’t present it as a goal. It could be a result, but it’s not a stated or formal goal that we have,” he told Israeli public broadcaster Kan.
