He Lost His Wedding Ring on a 50-Acre Farm. It Was Returned 15 Years Later.
Bostic wrote Corprew's name and cellphone number on a yellow sticky note that she pinned onto a bulletin board in her office.
'Lost wedding Ring Band,' the note said. 'Do not throw Away.'
Fifteen years later, Corprew was shocked to receive a call from Joe's Trees in Newport, Virginia.
The farm's new owners found the ring covered in dirt while planting corn last month. Then they leafed through the sticky notes on the bulletin board, each one with a handwritten name and lost item, and called Corprew with the news. Corprew, who gave up on retrieving the ring a few months after he lost it, was shocked. Roanoke news channel WDBJ first reported the story.
'How in the world, in 50 acres of Christmas trees, you're walking all around it, and you get a call 15 years later and they find it?' Corprew, 61, told The Washington Post.
Corprew said he and his then-wife, Teresa, found an 8-foot tall tree with the 'perfect shape' at Joe's Tree's in December 2010. Corprew cut it with a handsaw and – for a reason he can't remember – removed his gloves. He dragged the Fraser fir to a nearby trail, where a tractor picked it up and took it to the front of the farm. Corprew and Teresa rode a trailer with a man dressed as Santa Claus to the same location.
When Corprew loaded the tree into the bed of his Ford F-350, he noticed his yellow and white gold wedding band was missing from his left ring finger. Corprew had bought the wedding band in the summer of 2008 from Ginger's Jewelry in Roanoke for about $1,100.
Corprew searched every nook and cranny in his truck before reporting it missing to Bostic. Corprew placed the tree beside a window in his living room in Roanoke, but he returned to the farm the next day with a metal detector to search the ground, which was covered by a few inches of snow. He and Bostic's son, Jake, searched again in the following months to no avail.
'That was literally like trying to look for a needle in a haystack,' Bostic said.
In the summer of 2011, Corprew gave up and bought an identical wedding band. Still, Corprew's mother, Jean Bowman, visited the farm in the following years to ask about it. Corprew still looked for the ring whenever he cleaned his car.
The wedding band lost sentimental value to Corprew when he got divorced in September 2013. But the farm did not give up. When Bostic sold the business to her nephew, Darren Gilreath, in April 2018, she told him to never lose the note.
'This is important,' she recalled telling him. 'If you ever find this ring, you need to keep this.'
The note remained on the bulletin board even as Gilreath and his wife, Samantha Gilreath, pinned thank you cards, family photos and other mementos there. Corprew remarried in December 2022 and now wears a black and blue titanium wedding ring.
Last month, Darren, 47, tilled parts of the farm's pumpkin patch. Amid the smell of hay, fresh cut grass and evergreen trees on a hot and sunny day, Samantha was planting corn along a tilled row on June 11 when she spotted a small ring covered in dirt.
'The thought never crossed our mind to not return it,' said Samantha, 43.
The next day, Darren looked through a handful of lost-and-found notes – from missing bracelets, necklaces, rings, credit cards and glasses – on the bulletin board. He found the note with Corprew's name near the back. Darren said he wasn't sure if the phone number would still work.
Corprew was driving for his job delivering expedited freight when he answered the phone and Darren asked Corprew to describe the ring he lost. Corprew recited the inscription inside the ring: 'WITH THIS RING I THEE WED.'
When Corprew picked up the ring the next day, the Gilreaths showed him the spot they found it. Corprew recognized the spot as the same place he cut the tree in 2010.
Corprew doesn't know what he'll do with the ring. He might sell it, but he's also considering keeping it. He has a great story to tell about it.
At the farm, there are still a handful of missing items the Gilreaths are searching for. Finding Corprew's ring 'leaves hope' they'll locate the others too, Darren said, even if it takes another decade or two.
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Yomiuri Shimbun
13-07-2025
- Yomiuri Shimbun
The Lingering Mystery of the Trump Shooting: Why Did This Young Man Do It?
(c) 2025 , The Washington Post · Carol D. Leonnig · NATIONAL, POLITICS · Jul 13, 2025 – 3:32 AM On the morning of Sunday, July 14, just 16 hours after a gunman tried to kill Donald Trump, top officials gathered in the White House Situation Room to brief President Joe Biden on what the FBI knew about the would-be assassin. Could Iran be behind this plot to murder the former president, Biden asked? Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray told Biden they were indeed concerned Iran might have recruited the man who fired at Trump during his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, according to three people with knowledge of the briefing. Hours earlier, in fact, FBI agents had rushed to Texas in the middle of the night to interview an alleged Iranian operative the bureau had arrested Friday on suspicion of recruiting hit men to kill U.S. politicians, two said. Wray, appearing by video feed, said they had found no clear link between the shooter and the Iran plot, but they continued to run down every possibility. This account reveals previously unreported details about the urgent efforts to find any possible Iran connection – though after months of investigation and extraordinary steps, the bureau ultimately concluded there was none – and determine what motivated the shooter. A year later, largely by process of elimination, investigators have concluded that Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, acted alone. Crooks left no writings explaining his actions, but officials said he fit a profile of assassins the bureau has studied: socially isolated, educated but friendless, motived not by politics or ideology but by a sense of insignificance and a desire to become known. He was fatally shot by a Secret Service countersniper after he wounded Trump and killed rally attendee Corey Comperatore. 'The most frustrating thing in the world for law enforcement is not getting an answer on what caused this,' said one former FBI official, who like some others interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. 'We just can't quite say for certain, but that's where all the evidence points to.' The case remains classified as open, but a current senior FBI official said no new leads are being actively mined. 'Absent anything new, there's not much to do,' the official said. The lack of a clear, definitive motive has spawned numerous conspiracy theories and led to suspicions among some Trump supporters that the FBI was withholding information about the gunman, a registered Republican who also donated $15 to a Democratic organization and spent weeks planning an attack on the once and future Republican president. As a high school student, Crooks scored a 1530 on his SAT, putting him in the top 1 percent of all test takers. He earned straight A's at his community college near Pittsburgh and won plaudits from teachers, as when he designed a complex Braille chessboard. Yet starting in the month he turned 16 he was searching online for information about explosives, and in the year before the shooting he was trying to buy chemicals for homemade bombs. He also searched the internet for information about major depressive disorder. The investigation ran around-the-clock in the early weeks, with Wray getting briefed at all hours by his deputy director, Paul Abbate, and chief of staff, Jonathan Lenzner. It consumed FBI agents and analysts from half of the bureau's field offices, nearly every headquarters division and some international offices. Early on, in the hopes of tamping down baseless speculation, FBI leaders decided to share far more details about the probe than they typically would. Within two weeks, the FBI had conducted over 450 interviews, including with witnesses, neighbors, classmates, teachers and family members, and had served legal requests on 64 companies to obtain phone, email, gaming and other accounts linked to Crooks. By late August, six weeks after the shooting, agents had interviewed about 1,000 people, accessed Crooks's communications on three encrypted applications, and gained an understanding of his interests and obsessions as revealed through hundreds of his computer searches. Yet in some respects, Crooks remained a cipher. 'I remember thinking, 'We have all of the tools and investigative power of the mighty United States trained on this 20-year old kid. And we just don't know,'' said one former law enforcement official involved in the probe. 'That's kind of scary.' Just before 11 p.m. on the night of the shooting, Matthew Crooks called 911 to report that his son had not returned home nearly 10 hours after saying he was going to the shooting range. Federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, along with local police, were already stationed outside the Crooks home in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles south of the Butler fairgrounds, surveilling it and waiting for a warrant. ATF agents had been dispatched to the home about 9:20 p.m. after determining that Matthew Crooks owned the rifle that was used in the shooting. But while the agents were en route, investigators found that the driver's license picture for his son, Thomas Crooks, appeared to match the dead shooter. When the father called 911 for help, the agents changed their strategy and walked up to his front door, according to an account one gave to a House task force that investigated the attack. The father opened the screen door and said instantly: 'Is it true? Did Thomas shoot Trump?' 'What makes you say that?' the agent asked. 'The news called me,' Crooks said, then invited them inside to conduct a sweep of his tidy brick home. Inside, the ATF agent opened the door to Thomas Crooks's bedroom. He saw at the foot of the bed a .50-caliber military-grade ammunition can with a white wire coming out of it, which he suspected was a homemade bomb. He spotted a one-gallon jug with a black label reading 'nitromethane,' a volatile fuel, in an open closet. The agent ordered the house evacuated and summoned the county bomb squad. Close to midnight, agents began interviewing Thomas Crooks's parents. Agents asked Matthew Crooks run-of-the-mill questions: names of his son's friends, if his son ever had a girlfriend, if he knew about his son's co-workers or workplace. The father said that he didn't know anyone in his son's life and that he and his son didn't talk about friends or work. 'No, I don't know anything about my son,' the agent recalled the father saying. That same night, prosecutors at the U.S. attorney's office in the Western District of Pennsylvania were busy opening a grand jury probe to gather as much evidence as possible about Thomas Crooks and his communications, even though he was dead and it wasn't clear that anyone would face charges. About 2 a.m., prosecutors in the Pittsburgh-based office were drafting a search warrant for the Crooks house, the first in a series of searches they would use to obtain the gunman's phones and laptop so they could better trace his activity in the weeks leading up to the shooting. From the earliest moments of the probe, investigators viewed the possibility of an Iran connection as urgent to figure out. Tehran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had vowed revenge against Trump and his top advisers for the U.S. government's 2020 drone strike that killed Gen. Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad. Senior government leaders braced for fallout if the FBI were to learn Iran had orchestrated the hit, three administration officials said. 'It would mean war,' one said. Alarm that Iran may have been involved was heightened by the arrest – one day before the assassination attempt – of Asif Merchant, the alleged Iranian operative accused of plotting to kill U.S. politicians. Merchant, a Pakistani national, had boasted to undercover FBI agents posing as hit men that he was recruiting others like them, according to court documents. Merchant had told the undercover agents he planned to leave the U.S. and would relay instructions to them about whom to kill and where after he was gone. Agents arrested him midday on Friday, July 12, in Houston as he was loading his luggage to go to the airport. He has since pleaded not guilty. Before dawn on Sunday, July 14, just hours after the Butler shooting, FBI agents were dispatched to Merchant's jail cell in Texas and took the extraordinary step of interviewing him without his lawyer to determine whether he knew Crooks, according to one person briefed on the interview. Citing a potential threat to public safety, they invoked special authority under Justice Department policy to question him while he was in custody and without some standard legal rights, according to two people familiar with the interview. Agents continued questioning Merchant after he was formally charged with a murder-for-hire plot and transferred to federal detention in Brooklyn. An FBI summary of a July 17 interview was leaked to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who briefly posted it online before the FBI asked that it be removed. The Washington Post retrieved the summary, which is partially redacted, from internet archives. According to the FBI document, Merchant said he had agreed to help the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps arrange to recruit hit men and pay up to $1 million to kill American political figures. Though his Iranian handler had not said so outright, Merchant said he inferred that the ultimate target was Trump and that the plot was connected to Soleimani's death. Merchant said he reported back to his handler his assessment of Trump security after watching videos of a Trump rally: 30 security guards, 20 cameras, four to five areas where audience members had to be scanned for weapons. The Justice Department arranged to keep Merchant separated from other prisoners in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to prevent him from communicating with anyone other than his attorney and guards who delivered his food, according to a person familiar with his detention. In a memo months later about the restrictions on Merchant, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco asserted that he was trained to use coded messages to arrange hits on high-profile political figures and that 'there is substantial risk that his communications or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury.' She wrote that he 'could continue to pass valuable information regarding his efforts in organizing the assassination scheme.' Upon searching Thomas Crooks's phones, investigators discovered several encrypted messaging and email applications. His use of encrypted communications didn't prove anything nefarious, but it amped up investigators' suspicion that Crooks may have been exchanging messages with a co-conspirator or helper, former law enforcement officials said. By late August, Republican members of Congress were registering concern about the apps. 'Why does a 19-year-old kid who is a health care aide need encrypted platforms not even based in the United States, but based abroad, where most terrorist organizations know it is harder for our law enforcement to get into?' Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Florida), who served on the House panel investigating the assassination attempt and later became Trump's national security adviser, said in an interview with reporters Aug. 21. In one of the update calls with reporters a week later, Kevin P. Rojek, the head of the FBI's Pittsburgh field office, said investigators had pierced the applications and read the encrypted messages but found no indications of collaborators or ties to foreign adversaries. Rojek also described how Crooks had searched online for information about improvised explosives, including 'how remote detonators work' and 'how to make a bomb from fertilizer.' Rojek said Crooks had searched more than 60 times for information about Trump and Biden and events for both candidates before becoming 'hyper-focused' on the Butler rally after it was announced July 3. Rojek laid out Crooks's movements and computer searches before the shooting: On July 6, Crooks registered for the Butler rally and searched 'how far was Oswald from Kennedy'; on July 7, he visited the site; on July 8, he searched 'AGR International,' the building he would eventually use as his shooting platform; on July 12, the day before the rally, he went to a gun range and practiced shooting. The FBI also obtained details of Crooks's internet usage and emails from the Community College of Allegheny County, where he majored in engineering science and had graduated with honors in May. The emails suggested he received occasional attaboys from teachers but had little connection to other people. When an assignment required that he speak in front of five adults, Crooks asked whether he could enlist two or three instead. He said in an email that he did 'not have access to any other adults' besides his parents and older sister. In January, he made plans to take his community college credits and transfer to Robert Morris University, a private four-year college just 40 minutes from his home, to get an engineering degree. But at roughly the same time, he placed an online order for about $100 worth of nitromethane, a fuel for racecars that can also be used to make explosives. Twelve days later, he used his community college email to ask the chemical retailer when his order would arrive. 'Hello, my name is Thomas. I placed an order on your website on January 19. I have not received any updates of the order shipping out yet and I was wondering if you still have it and when I can expect it to come,' Crooks wrote in the email, which was obtained by CBS News. Investigators learned that Crooks had been overheard chanting or talking to himself at times, one former law enforcement official said. The official noted that the one activity he and his father appeared to bond over was shooting at a gun range where Crooks had recently become a member. After interviewing family members, teachers, classmates and others who knew Crooks, they found no one who had witnessed any signs of a clear psychological break or personal crisis that could have sparked his plot, according to three officials briefed on the probe. 'He was not formally diagnosed,' said one former investigator. 'Something was not quite right with him though.' Crooks's parents and their attorneys declined to comment for this report. Sometime between late August and mid-September, the Justice Department received a startling tip that set off new alarm bells. A confidential source overseas relayed that they believed Crooks had been tied to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' plots to kill Trump, according to two people briefed on the intelligence. But after sifting through mountains of classified intelligence obtained through the National Security Agency and foreign allies, national security officials concluded the tip could not be corroborated and was deemed not to be credible. 'Nothing credibly connected him to Iranian plots,' one of the two people said. 'If there was involvement from Iran we would have seen it here.' After Trump took office again in January, his new picks to lead the FBI – Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino – asked to be briefed on the investigative steps that had been taken before they arrived, they said in a televised interview. They personally visited the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, to view the evidence, including laboratory and ballistics evidence, and examined Crooks's rifle. Bongino, who in August had complained on his podcast that he didn't entirely trust the FBI's claim that Crooks had no political ideology, had a professional reason to be obsessive as he poked and prodded his briefers with questions. He had served as a Secret Service agent for 12 years, including on threat investigations and on the protective details for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Bongino had a deep knowledge of the Secret Service's landmark Exceptional Case Study Project, which documented striking similarities among people who had tried to kill presidents and prominent political figures. In studying and interviewing 83 people known to have attempted or plotted such an assassination from 1949 to 1996, the research found they were overwhelmingly White males who were relatively well educated. They were also deeply isolated, often friendless and suffering from a mental health disorder. Often, after a personal crisis or break, they began to fixate on assassinating a high-profile figure as a route to fame or affirmation. After reviewing the evidence, Bongino firmly agreed with the conclusion of his FBI predecessors. Crooks was just 'a lost soul' akin to the many would-be assassins interviewed for the Exceptional Case Study Project, he told colleagues. There was 'no there there' to the conspiracy theories about an inside job or Iran. In a Fox News interview on May 18, Maria Bartiromo asked Patel and Bongino why the public had almost no information about what led to the shooting in Butler as well as an apparent attempted assassination of Trump on a golf course in Florida. Bongino stressed that there was no 'big explosive' evidence tying Crooks to an international conspiracy or any larger plot. 'I'm not going to tell people what they want to hear. I'm going to tell you the truth. And whether you like it or not is up to you,' Bongino told Bartiromo. 'The there you are looking for is not there. … It's not there. If it was there, we would have told you.'
Yomiuri Shimbun
07-07-2025
- Yomiuri Shimbun
He Lost His Wedding Ring on a 50-Acre Farm. It Was Returned 15 Years Later.
Wayne Corprew cut down a Christmas tree for his family at a farm in 2010 – and when he got to his truck to drive it home, he realized his wedding ring was missing. He searched to no avail, then reported it to Sue Bostic, who owned the 50-acre farm. Bostic wrote Corprew's name and cellphone number on a yellow sticky note that she pinned onto a bulletin board in her office. 'Lost wedding Ring Band,' the note said. 'Do not throw Away.' Fifteen years later, Corprew was shocked to receive a call from Joe's Trees in Newport, Virginia. The farm's new owners found the ring covered in dirt while planting corn last month. Then they leafed through the sticky notes on the bulletin board, each one with a handwritten name and lost item, and called Corprew with the news. Corprew, who gave up on retrieving the ring a few months after he lost it, was shocked. Roanoke news channel WDBJ first reported the story. 'How in the world, in 50 acres of Christmas trees, you're walking all around it, and you get a call 15 years later and they find it?' Corprew, 61, told The Washington Post. Corprew said he and his then-wife, Teresa, found an 8-foot tall tree with the 'perfect shape' at Joe's Tree's in December 2010. Corprew cut it with a handsaw and – for a reason he can't remember – removed his gloves. He dragged the Fraser fir to a nearby trail, where a tractor picked it up and took it to the front of the farm. Corprew and Teresa rode a trailer with a man dressed as Santa Claus to the same location. When Corprew loaded the tree into the bed of his Ford F-350, he noticed his yellow and white gold wedding band was missing from his left ring finger. Corprew had bought the wedding band in the summer of 2008 from Ginger's Jewelry in Roanoke for about $1,100. Corprew searched every nook and cranny in his truck before reporting it missing to Bostic. Corprew placed the tree beside a window in his living room in Roanoke, but he returned to the farm the next day with a metal detector to search the ground, which was covered by a few inches of snow. He and Bostic's son, Jake, searched again in the following months to no avail. 'That was literally like trying to look for a needle in a haystack,' Bostic said. In the summer of 2011, Corprew gave up and bought an identical wedding band. Still, Corprew's mother, Jean Bowman, visited the farm in the following years to ask about it. Corprew still looked for the ring whenever he cleaned his car. The wedding band lost sentimental value to Corprew when he got divorced in September 2013. But the farm did not give up. When Bostic sold the business to her nephew, Darren Gilreath, in April 2018, she told him to never lose the note. 'This is important,' she recalled telling him. 'If you ever find this ring, you need to keep this.' The note remained on the bulletin board even as Gilreath and his wife, Samantha Gilreath, pinned thank you cards, family photos and other mementos there. Corprew remarried in December 2022 and now wears a black and blue titanium wedding ring. Last month, Darren, 47, tilled parts of the farm's pumpkin patch. Amid the smell of hay, fresh cut grass and evergreen trees on a hot and sunny day, Samantha was planting corn along a tilled row on June 11 when she spotted a small ring covered in dirt. 'The thought never crossed our mind to not return it,' said Samantha, 43. The next day, Darren looked through a handful of lost-and-found notes – from missing bracelets, necklaces, rings, credit cards and glasses – on the bulletin board. He found the note with Corprew's name near the back. Darren said he wasn't sure if the phone number would still work. Corprew was driving for his job delivering expedited freight when he answered the phone and Darren asked Corprew to describe the ring he lost. Corprew recited the inscription inside the ring: 'WITH THIS RING I THEE WED.' When Corprew picked up the ring the next day, the Gilreaths showed him the spot they found it. Corprew recognized the spot as the same place he cut the tree in 2010. Corprew doesn't know what he'll do with the ring. He might sell it, but he's also considering keeping it. He has a great story to tell about it. At the farm, there are still a handful of missing items the Gilreaths are searching for. Finding Corprew's ring 'leaves hope' they'll locate the others too, Darren said, even if it takes another decade or two.
Yomiuri Shimbun
14-06-2025
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Iran Retaliates against Israel with Barrage of Ballistic Missiles
Heidi Levine/For The Washington Post First responders at the scene of a residential building in Ramat Gan, Israel, that was heavily damaged by Iran's barrage of ballistic missiles Friday. Iran unleashed a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel late Friday as it retaliated for the waves of Israeli strikes that killed top military leaders and nuclear scientists, and damaged a key uranium enrichment site. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced the start of the retaliatory attack in a recorded message carried by state television. 'We will not allow them to get away with this great crime they committed,' he said. 'The Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic will deal heavy blows to this enemy.' Most of the missiles were intercepted or fell short, the Israel Defense Forces said Friday, but at least one appeared to have slammed into central Tel Aviv in an area where a major military base is located. 'Iran has crossed red lines by daring to fire missiles at civilian population centers in Israel,' Defense Minister Israel Katz said. 'We will continue to defend the citizens of Israel and will ensure that the Ayatollah regime pays a very heavy price for its criminal actions.' Israeli leaders have portrayed the campaign as a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear program. For years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that only military force would denuclearize Iran. But after a year of crippling military and strategic setbacks, including the loss of key allies in Lebanon and Syria, Iran has a limited arsenal with which to fight back. And it's unclear how Tehran plans to match Israel's escalation, which could last days or weeks, according to Israeli officials. Iran and Israel, longtime rivals, began openly trading blows last year as part of the regional spillover from the war in Gaza. But the attacks – including an Israeli strike on the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria – were more narrowly calibrated to avoid spiraling into a wider conflict. Now, Tehran is much more isolated, with its partner, Hezbollah, decimated in Lebanon and the regime it propped up in Syria gone. In October, Iran fired nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel after a covert Israeli operation killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. But on Friday, the IDF said fewer than 100 missiles were launched from Iran, although around 40 people were injured in the strike, according to medics and emergency services in Israel. In Iran, the Israeli strikes 'crossed all red lines,' Ali Larijani, a prominent Iranian politician and adviser to the supreme leader, said in an interview with state television. Larijani spoke by phone, pledging: 'There are no limits left to respond to this crime, and the hand of divine vengeance will grip the brutal terrorist regime and its supporters.' Previous Israeli strikes targeted Iranian military sites and hardware, many of them far from major cities, but Friday's raids included attacks on military leaders at their homes in residential areas. 'This was in the center of Tehran, entire apartment buildings collapsed. So this was not the kind of restrained engagement we saw last year,' said Nicole Grajewski, an Iran researcher and nuclear policy fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Rescue teams in Tehran dug through the rubble for hours Friday at strike sites where senior military officials and nuclear scientists were targeted. At least 78 people were killed in the Israeli strikes across Iran on Friday, according to Iran's ambassador to the United Nations. It was not clear if that toll included both civilians and military forces. Among the senior officers killed were Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the IRGC Aerospace Forces; Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, the army chief of staff who reported directly to the supreme leader; and Maj. Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid, who was responsible for coordinating operations among Iran's military forces, according to Iranian broadcasters. Grajewski said the conflict could expand if Iran determines there was U.S. involvement in the attacks. 'It would give Iran more targets,' she said. In anticipation of the Israeli strikes, the Trump administration drew down the number of personnel it had in the region, scaling back diplomatic operations in Iraq, as the Pentagon authorized military families to withdraw from other places in the Middle East. Patriot and THAAD missile defense batteries, operated by U.S. military personnel and originally deployed under the Biden administration, participated in Israeli air defense Friday evening, according to U.S. defense officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject. That represented a more limited participation in Israel's defense than last year, when American air and sea assets helped shoot down incoming Iranian missiles during two retaliatory Iranian attacks. Among Israel's targets Friday were enrichment sites at Natanz and Fordow, as well as a nuclear facility in Isfahan, according to Israeli officials and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog. The agency's director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, told the U.N. Security Council that damage to Natanz had caused 'radioactive and chemical contamination at the site.' The potential impact on other facilities was unclear. There were reports of military activity around Fordow, but there was no confirmation it was hit. Iran had been in talks with the Trump administration to negotiate a new nuclear deal, after the U.S. president withdrew in his first term from a comprehensive agreement Tehran struck with world powers, including the United States under President Barack Obama. Iran's foreign minister and President Donald Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, were supposed to meet Sunday in Oman for another round of negotiations. 'There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end,' Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday. 'Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left.' Inside Iran, many residents were taking stock of the damage and preparing for the possibility of a drawn-out confrontation. The sheer scale of destruction from hours of relentless strikes that simultaneously hit multiple parts of the country appeared to initially frustrate the official Iranian response. In Tehran, state television broadcast back-to-back coverage of the strikes' aftermath, with correspondents reporting from rubble-strewn streets. Outside a residential building in central Tehran, a television reporter said that a number of civilians had been pulled from the rubble, including children. 'The rescue teams are now lifting debris from one unit that hasn't been cleared yet,' he said, gesturing to a partially collapsed building facade. 'A few minutes ago, the bodies of two martyrs, a woman and a young kid, were taken out,' he said. A small crowd gathered behind him to watch the rescue teams work. In the Saadat Abad neighborhood in northwestern Tehran, another strike targeted an apartment block that neighbors said housed some nuclear scientists. 'As you can see, the complex behind me has been badly hit. Three floors have collapsed,' a reporter said, adding that the force of the explosion triggered a fire and sent debris flying. Other Iranians described terrifying scenes that stretched into early dawn Friday. 'It was scary at some points at night, of course. We live very close to one of the targets in Nobonyad. I think it was a military target,' said 32-year-old Saba, a housewife who lives in a neighborhood on Tehran's northern edge. Neda, a swimming instructor from Tabriz, said the waves of attacks in her area seemed to grow louder as the day went on. Like Saba, Neda spoke on the condition that she be identified by only her first name because of fear of retribution. Now, Neda said, her neighbors are scrambling to prepare for what's expected to be another night of heavy strikes. 'I heard from friends that there is already a kilometers-long petrol line,' she said.
