U.K. government says it will ban pro-Palestinian group after activists broke into military base

US military and intelligence officers have detected signs that Iran-backed groups are preparing to attack US bases in Iraq and, possibly, Syria, the New York Times (NYT) reported.

According to the newspaper, "so far the groups have held off, and Iraqi officials are working hard to dissuade militia action.".

#IRAN nuclear site!

How the U.S. #bombarded Iranian nuclear sites without detection.

U.S. pilots dropped 30,000-pound bombs early Sunday on two key underground uranium enrichment plants in Iran, delivering what American military leaders believe is a knockout blow to a nuclear program that Israel views as an existential threat and has been pummeling for more than a week. American sailors bolstered the surprise mission by firing dozens of cruise missiles from a submarine toward at least one other site.

Dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, U.S. officials say the plan was characterized by a “precision strike” that “devastated the Iranian nuclear program,” even as they acknowledged an assessment was ongoing. For its part, Iran denied that any significant damage had been done, and the Islamic Republic pledged to retaliate.

Taking off from the U.S. heartland, B-2 stealth bombers delivered a total of 420,000 pounds of explosives, aided by an armada of refueling tankers and fighter jets — some of which launched their own weapons. U.S. officials said Iran neither detected the inbound fusillade, nor mustered a shot at the stealthy American jets.

The operation relied on a series of deceptive tactics and decoys to maintain the secrecy, U.S. officials said hours after the attack, which was preceded by nine days of Israeli attacks that debilitated Iran’s military leadership and air defenses.
A decoy plan

Even before the planes took off, elements of misdirection were already in play. After setting parts of the plan in motion, Trump publicly announced Thursday that he’d make a decision within two weeks on whether to strike Iran — ostensibly to allow additional time for negotiations, but in actuality masking the impending attack.

One group of B-2 stealth bombers traveled west from Missouri on Saturday as decoys, drawing the attention of amateur plane spotters, government officials and some media as they headed toward a U.S. air base in the Pacific. At the same time, seven other B-2s carrying two “bunker buster” bombs apiece flew eastward, keeping communications to a minimum so as not to draw any attention.

Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at Sunday’s briefing that it was all “part of a plan to maintain tactical surprise” and that only “an extremely small number of planners and key leaders” knew about it in Washington and Florida, where U.S. Central Command is based.

After 18 hours of furtive flying that required aerial refueling, the armed B-2 Spirit bombers, each with two crew members, arrived on time and without detection in the Eastern Mediterranean, from where they launched their attack runs. Before crossing into Iran, the B-2s were escorted by stealthy U.S. fighter jets and reconnaissance aircraft.

A graphic released by the Pentagon showed the flight route as passing over Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. It was unclear whether those countries were notified of the U.S. overflight in advance. Most U.S. lawmakers were also kept in the dark, with some Republicans saying they were provided a brief heads-up by the White House before the strike.

“Our B-2s went in and out and back without the world knowing at all,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters Sunday.
A multifaceted attack

About an hour before the B-2s entered Iran, Caine said that a U.S. submarine in the region launched more than two dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles against key targets, including a site in Isfahan where uranium is prepared for enrichment.

As the U.S. bombers approached their targets, they watched out for Iranian fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles, but encountered none.

At 6:40 p.m. in Washington and 2:10 a.m. in Tehran, the first B-2 bomber dropped its pair of GBU-57 massive ordnance penetrators on the deeply buried Fordo uranium enrichment plant. It was the first time these so-called “bunker busters” had ever been used in combat. Each 30,000-pound bomb is designed to burrow into the ground before detonating a massive warhead.

The Fordo site received the bulk of the bombardment, though a couple of the enormous bombs were also dropped on a uranium enrichment site at Natanz.

The U.S. bombs fell for about half an hour, with cruise missiles fired from submarines being the last American weapons to hit their targets, which included a third nuclear site at Isfahan, Caine said.

Both #Iran and the U.N. nuclear watchdog said there were no immediate signs of radioactive contamination around the sites.
A look at the numbers

The mission included:

— 75 precision-guided weapons: these included 14 GBU-57 “bunker buster” bombs deployed by the seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, and more than two-dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from a U.S. submarine.

— 125 aircraft, including the B-2 bombers, fighter jets and refueling planes.

A female pilot

Hegseth said Sunday that “our boys in those bombers are on their way home right now.”

But a U.S. official said one woman was among those piloting the B-2 bombers. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the mission publicly.

A bit of history

Caine said the use of the bunker-buster bombs made the mission historic, as did other elements.

“This was the largest B-2 operational strike in U.S. history, and the second longest B-2 mission ever flown, exceeded only by those in the days following 9/11,” he told reporters Sunday.

Lolita C. Baldor in Narragansett, Rhode Island and Nicholas Ingram in Knob Noster, Missouri, contributed reporting. Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina.

Farnoush Amiri And Meg Kinnard, The Associated Press

Oil rises and U.S. stock futures slide as markets react to U.S. strike on Iran nuclear sites,The price of oil rose and U.S. stock futures fell as global markets react to the U.S. strike against nuclear targets in Iran.

The price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose 3.9% to US$80 a barrel. U.S. crude rose 4.3% to $77 a barrel.

Futures for the S&P 500 fell 0.6%. Treasury yields fell slightly.

On Saturday, U.S. forces attacked three Iranian nuclear and military sites, further increasing the stakes in the war between Israel and Iran.

The conflict has sent oil prices yo-yoing over the last week, which has in turn caused see-saw moves for the U.S. stock market, because of rising and ebbing fears that the war could disrupt the global flow of crude. Iran is a major producer of oil and also sits on the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the world’s crude passes.

#ISRAEL'S air defense system is CLEARLY COLLAPSING and will get MUCH WORSE in the coming days - Maariv

Suicide bomber strikes Syrian church near Damascus during mass, The attack took place in Dweil’a on the outskirts of Damascus inside the Mar Elias Church, according to state media SANA, citing the Health Ministry for the toll of dead and wounded. Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were at least 19 peopled killed and dozens wounded, but did not give exact numbers. Some local media reported that children were among the casualties.

The attack on the church was the first of its kind in Syria in years, and comes as Damascus under its de facto Islamist rule is trying to win the support of minorities. As President Ahmad al-Sharaa struggles to exert authority across the country, there have been concerns about the presence of sleeper cells of extremist groups in the war-torn country.

No group immediately claimed responsibility Sunday. Syrian Interior Ministry spokesman Noureddine Al-Baba said in a news conference that their preliminary investigation points to the extremist Islamic State group. The ministry said one gunmen entered the church, fired at the people there before detonating himself with an explosives vest, echoing some witness testimonies.

“The security of places of worship is a red line,” he said, adding that IS and remaining members of the ousted Assad government are trying to destabilize Syria.

Syrian Information Minister Hamza Mostafa condemned the attack, calling it a terrorist attack.

“This cowardly act goes against the civic values that brings us together,” he said on X. “We will not back down from our commitment to equal citizenship and we also affirm the state’s pledge to exert all its efforts to combat criminal organizations and to protect society from all attacks threatening its safety.”

Witnesses said the gunman with his face covered entered and fired at the people. When a crowd charged at him to remove him from the church, he detonated his explosives at the entrance.

Syria’s Social Affairs and Labor Minister Hind Kabawat, the country’s Christian and female minister, met with the clergy at the church in the evening to express her condolences.

“People were praying safely under the eyes of God,” said Father Fadi Ghattas, who said he saw at least 20 people killed with his own eyes. “There were 350 people praying at the church.”

However, Meletius Shahati, a church priest, said there was a second gunman who shot at the church door before the other person detonated himself.

Issam Nasr who was praying at the church said he saw people “blown to bits.”

“We have never held a knife in our lives. All we ever carried were our prayers,” he said.

Security forces and first-responders rushed to the church. Panicked survivors wailed, as one lady fell to her knees and burst into tears. A photo circulated by Syrian state media SANA showed the church’s pews covered in debris and blood.

U.S. strikes 3 #Iranian nuclear sites, inserting itself into Israel’s war with #Iran.

The U.S. also fired dozens of missiles, and U.S. President Donald Trump said in a televised address from the White House that the combination of strikes “completely and fully obliterated” three nuclear sites. However, U.S. defense officials said an assessment of the damage wrought by the attack still was ongoing.

Hours later, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the time for diplomacy had passed and that his country had the right to defend itself. Araghchi said he would immediate fly to Moscow to coordinate positions with its ally, Russia.

“The warmongering and lawless administration in Washington is solely and fully responsible for the dangerous consequences and far-reaching implications of its act of aggression,” he told reporters in Turkey in the first comments by a high-ranking Iranian official since the strikes. “They crossed a very big red line by attacking nuclear facilities.”

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran confirmed that attacks took place on the Fordo and Natanz enrichment facilities as well as its Isfahan nuclear site, but it insisted that its nuclear program will not be stopped. Both Iran and the U.N. nuclear watchdog said there were no immediate signs of radioactive contamination around the three locations following the strikes.

Countries around the globe are calling for diplomacy and no further escalation.

It was not clear whether the U.S. would continue attacking Iran alongside its ally Israel, which has been engaged in a war with Iran for nine days. But U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. does not “seek war” and that the operation would not be “open-ended,” though Trump earlier warned there would be additional strikes if Tehran retaliated against U.S. forces.

“There will either be peace or there will be tragedy for Iran,” said Trump, who acted without congressional authorization.

With the attack, the United States has inserted itself into a war it spent decades trying to avoid because of the dizzyingly high stakes. Success would mean ending Iran’s nuclear ambitions once and for all and eliminating the last significant threat to Israel’s security. But failure -- or overreach -- could plunge the U.S. into the vortex of another long and unpredictable conflict in the Middle East.

For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this is the culmination of a decades long campaign to get the U.S. to strike Israel’s chief regional rival and its disputed nuclear program. For Iran’s supreme leader, the 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, it could mark the end of a similarly ambitious campaign to transform the Islamic Republic into a regional power and counterweight to the West.

Hours after the U.S. strikes, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard said it launched a barrage of 40 missiles at Israel, including its Khorramshahr-4, which can carry multiple warheads. Israeli authorities reported that more than 80 people suffered mostly minor injuries, though one multistory building in Tel Aviv was significantly damaged, with its entire facade torn away to expose the apartments inside. Houses across the street were almost completely destroyed.

Following the Iranian barrage, Israel’s military said it had “swiftly neutralized” the Iranian missile launchers that had fired, and that it had begun a series of strikes toward military targets in western Iran.
The US helped Israel strike Iran’s toughest nuclear site

Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only, and U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Tehran is not actively pursuing a bomb. However, Trump and Israeli leaders have argued that Iran could quickly assemble a nuclear weapon, making it an imminent threat.

The decision to directly involve the U.S. in the war comes after more than a week of strikes by Israel that significantly degraded Iran’s air defenses and offensive missile capabilities, and damaged its nuclear enrichment facilities.

But U.S. and Israeli officials have said the 30,000-pound (13,500-kilogram) bunker-buster bomb offered the best chance of destroying sites program buried deep underground -- and the U.S. is the only military that has both the munitions and the planes to drop them.

Fourteen of the bombs were used on two nuclear sites, including Fordo, according to Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In all he said, 75 precision-guided weapons were used, including missiles fired from a submarine.

He said the final damage assessment would take time, but that all three sites “sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.”

Satellite images taken by Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by The Associated Press showed damage to the Fordo facility, which is dug deep into a mountain, while light gray smoke lingered in the air.

Several Iranian officials, including Atomic Energy Organization of Iran spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi, have claimed that Iran moved nuclear material out of the targeted sites before the strikes. Satellite images suggest the entrance tunnels to Fordo were packed with dirt ahead of the attack.

“Questions remain as to where Iran may be storing its already enriched stocks ... as these will have almost certainly been moved to hardened and undisclosed locations, out of the way of potential Israeli or U.S. strikes,” said Darya Dolzikova, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute focused on nonproliferation issues.

“It is also unclear what secret facilities may exist inside Iran that Tehran could use for continued centrifuge production enrichment and weapons-relevant activities.”

The International Atomic Energy Agency did not respond to a request for comment Sunday over the possibility that nuclear material was moved.
Trump’s decision to strike departs from some previous statements

The decision to attack was a risky one for Trump, who won the White House partially on the promise of keeping America out of costly foreign conflicts and scoffed at the value of American interventionism.

But Trump also vowed that he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, and he had initially hoped that the threat of force would bring the country’s leaders to give up its nuclear program.

For months, Trump said he was dedicated to diplomatic efforts, and he twice persuaded Netanyahu to hold off on military action against Iran and give diplomacy more time.

After Israel began striking Iran, Trump went from publicly expressing hope that the moment could be a “second chance” for Iran to make a deal to delivering explicit threats on Khamenei and making calls for Tehran’s unconditional surrender.

Netanyahu praised Trump’s decision to attack in a video message directed at the American president.

“Your bold decision to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, with the awesome and righteous might of the United States, will change history,” he said.
Fears of a broader war

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the strikes a “dangerous escalation,” as world leaders began chiming in with calls for diplomacy.

Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who had threatened to resume attacks on U.S. vessels in the Red Sea if the Trump administration joined Israel’s military campaign, called on other Muslim nations to form “one front against the Zionist-American arrogance.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei had warned the United States on Wednesday that strikes targeting the Islamic Republic will “result in irreparable damage for them.”

The Israeli military said Saturday it was preparing for the possibility of a lengthy war. Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 865 people and wounded 3,396 others, according to the Washington-based group Human Rights Activists. The group said of those dead, it identified 363 civilians and 215 security force personnel.

David Rising, Jon Gambrell And Farnoush Amiri, The Associated Press

The United States and Israel crossed a major red line in attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran’s top diplomat warned on Sunday, saying he was heading to Russia for talks with President Vladimir Putin.

MOSCOW, June 22. #US jets launched attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure this night, President Donald Trump announced, marking Washington’s direct entry into the escalating conflict nine days after it began with Israeli airstrikes.

TASS has compiled key information about the US strikes on Iran.
Attack

- Trump announced the operation via Truth Social.

- The strikes targeted three nuclear facilities: Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan.

- A "full payload of bombs" was dropped on the Fordow site.

- According to Reuters, the strikes were carried out by B-2 strategic bombers equipped with GBU-57 bunker-buster bombs.

- This marks the first US military strike on Iran since 1979.

- ABC News reported that Israel received advance warning of the operation.
No impact yet

- Experts interviewed by NBC News say the strike on Fordow is unlikely to trigger a nuclear explosion or large-scale radiation release.

- International observers believe the site contained no nuclear warheads or reactors.

- Iranian officials stated that the Fordow facility had been evacuated ahead of time and suffered no irreversible damage.
'Time for peace'

- Following the strikes, Trump declared that the "time for peace" has come

- He called it a "historic moment for the United States of America, Israel, and the world" and urged Iran to "agree to end this war."

- CNN reported that Trump does not currently plan additional strikes and is awaiting a response from Tehran regarding negotiations.

- Earlier, Trump had not ruled out a strike on Iran, particularly on the Fordow site. The White House had indicated a decision would come within two weeks.
Abandoning diplomacy

- Prior to the strikes, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio assured European allies that Washington remained committed to a diplomatic resolution, The Wall Street Journal reported.

- Rubio held talks with officials from the UK, Italy, Cyprus, France, and Sweden over a two-day period.

- Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with European representatives in Geneva, but the negotiations failed to yield progress.
Israel

- For the first time since the conflict began on June 13, no rocket alerts were issued in Israel for over 24 hours.

- In response to the US strikes, the Israeli military tightened civilian restrictions, banning public gatherings and halting non-essential business operations.
Day 10 of escalation

- Israel initiated its military operation on June 13, citing the destruction of Iran’s nuclear and missile programs as its objective.

- Iran responded with retaliatory strikes, including with ballistic missiles and drones.

- Russia condemned Israel’s actions and signaled its willingness to mediate.

- On June 19, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned the US against military involvement, cautioning that such interference could lead to "truly unpredictable negative consequences.".