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Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian threatened Israel on a “even more devastating” response on Saturday to his attack. He excluded any judgment of the nuclear program in his country on the ninth day of war.
(Keystone-ATS) Donald Trump warned him on Friday the Iran which he had at the “maximum” of two weeks to avoid possible American strikes. He returned to the White House on Saturday to chair a security council while B-2 bomber planes, from a Missouri base (center), headed west, above the Pacific, without knowing if they flew to Iran.
“Our response to the continuation of the assault of the Zionist regime will be even more devastating,” Pezeshkian warned on Saturday during a call to his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, according to the official agency Irna.
“Long” campaign
The head of Israeli diplomacy Gideon Saar for his part warned that the military “campaign” of the Hebrew State would be “long”. According to him, she has already “delayed at least two or three years the possibility” for Tehran “to have the atomic bomb”.
Iran denies wanting to acquire the atomic weapon, but defends its right to a civil nuclear program. “We do not agree to reduce our nuclear activities to zero whatever the circumstances,” Pezeshkian told Mr. Macron, according to Irna.
Iran and Israel exchanged new strikes on Saturday and explosions sounded in the evening in the center and the north of Tehran, AFP noted.
Three officers from the guards killed
The Israeli army has announced that it had killed three commanders of the revolution guards, the Iran’s ideological army, including Saïd Izadi, in charge according to coordination with Hamas, against which Israel is also at war in Gaza.
The others are Aminpour Joudaki, presented as having directed “hundreds” of drone attacks on Israel, and Behnam Chahriyari, described as “manager” of the transfers of weapons of Tehran “to his agents in the Middle East”.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (AIEA) has confirmed that Israeli strikes had also affected a centrifuge production workshop – used to enrich uranium – on the Ispahan nuclear site (center), without consequence “in terms of radiation”.
Since June 13, Israeli strikes have killed more than 400 people and 3056 injured, mostly civilians, according to the latest report on Saturday from the Ministry of Health. The American NGO Human Rights Activists News Agency (Hrana) reported at least 657 dead. Iranian response to Israel left 25 people.
In Qom, in the center of Iran, a teenager died in a building affected by an Israeli strike, according to the Irna agency. Four goalkeepers were killed in an attack in Tabriz (northwest), according to the ISNA agency and five army officers in western Iran, according to Fars.
An ex-Garde of the body of the deceased head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli strike near the Iraqi border, an official of the Pro-Iranian Lebanese movement told AFP. Internet access remains strongly unstable and limited to Tehran, according to AFP journalists.
“Fear and a kind of emptiness”
In the center of Israel, the fall in debris of an intercepted missile affected a building, according to the media. In Beit Shean (North), a home was damaged by a drone, without reported victim. The Iranian guards said they had launched two night salvas of drones and missiles against military sites in the center of Israel.
“I am afraid, I feel a kind of emptiness,” said Aviv, Avram, 58 years old. Despite the nights spent in a shelter with his children, another resident, Omer, supports the offensive, “because the next step for Iran will have been the manufacture of a nuclear bomb”.
After a meeting Friday in Geneva with his German, French and British counterparts, the head of Iranian diplomacy Abbas Araghchi clarified that Tehran would not take up nuclear negotiations with Washington constantly Israeli attacks.
Donald Trump estimated “very hard to make this request” to Israel when he “is winning”. He announced Thursday that he would decide a possible American intervention “in the next two weeks”, then said that he could decide before.
The Houthis rebels of Yemen, which concluded in early May a cease-fire agreement with Washington, threatened on Saturday to attack American ships in the Red Sea, in the event of intervention by the United States.
“Accelerate negotiations”
Reporting to his telephone interview with Mr. Pezeshkian, Mr. Macron said that Europeans were going to “accelerate negotiations” with Iran to “get out of the war”. “Iran should never have nuclear weapons” and must guarantee “that its intentions are peaceful”. The day before, Trump said that “Iran does not want to speak to Europe”, which “will not be able to help”.
Gideon Saar has also announced that an attempted attack on Iran against Israelis in Cyprus had been thwarted with the help of the Nicosia authorities. Cypriot police had just announced the arrest of a man suspected of “espionage” and “terrorism”, to whom Cypriot media have lent links to Iran.
