Who are the officials killed in the Israeli attack on Iran?
(NewsNation) — Israel launched an attack on Iran on Friday, which resulted in a major blow to Iran's military chain of command.
The strikes targeted Iran's nuclear facilities, ballistic missile factories and military commanders to prevent Tehran from developing an atomic weapon, killing at least three top military leaders and six nuclear scientists.
At least 20 senior Iranian commanders, including Aerospace Force Commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh, were killed in the strikes, two regional sources told Reuters.
Here's what we know about those killed:
Four other scientists killed in Friday's strikes are Abdolhamid Manouchehr, Ahmad Reza Zolfaghari, Amirhossein Feghi and Motalibizadeh.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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USA Today
44 minutes ago
- USA Today
American students reveal how they fled the Israel-Iran war
They left with excitement to visit a new country, connect with their Jewish identity and gain first-hand knowledge about one of the world's most storied regions. They left with memories of air raid sirens and bomb shelters. After Israel's surprise attack on Iran earlier this month, young Americans on study abroad programs and birthright trips to Israel made harrowing escapes back to the U.S. as the two countries traded missiles and the American military directly entered the conflict, bombing three Iranian nuclear sites. The thousands of escapees included 17 high schoolers from Arizona who huddled in bomb shelters before boarding a cruise ship to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. A dozen Florida State University students studying geopolitics in the Middle East fled to Israel's mountainous Dead Sea region and crossed into Jordan. "It was a fear that I have never felt before," Aidan Fishkind, who was in Israel for a two-month birthright and internship program, told USA TODAY. "We had a missile land two miles from our hostel." The conflict, which has calmed under a delicate ceasefire, came during Israel's busiest tourism season – when birthright trips and programs affiliated with American universities were in full swing. According to the Birthright Israel Foundation, a nonprofit that sponsors young people to visit Israel, the group safely evacuated approximately 2,800 young adults from the country – many of them aboard a luxury cruise ship. The nonprofit canceled its scheduled programs through July 10, according to its website. Meanwhile, the spiraling war also sent Americans in Iran looking for a safe place to wait out Israeli bombardments. Hundreds of Americans fled the country as the conflict escalated, according to an internal State Department cable seen by Reuters last week. More: Iran-Israel conflict leaves Iranian Americans feeling helpless, hopeless 'I was scared for my life' Fishkind, of Detroit, Michigan, arrived in Israel on June 3 for what was to be a two-month trip where he'd intern in the marketing department at the Jaffa Institute, a nonprofit based in Tel Aviv. But a little after his first week, the war broke out and left him and his fellow students scrambling for safety. He recalled the first night after Israel launched its attack on Iranian nuclear sites and Iran responded with a barrage of missiles. He and his group of Detroit-area students received phone alerts about incoming rocket fire and rushed into rooms and stairwells designated "safe zones." Throughout the night, he heard deep dooms that shook the building. He considered whether the rumbles were the sound of Israel's air defense system intercepting rockets or Iranian missiles landing in the city. It was both, he would later learn. "I was scared for my life," he said. In Detroit, his mother, Jennifer Fishkind, booked him multiple flights back home. But one-by-one each flight was canceled as Israeli officials closed the country's airspace. "You just feel helpless being thousands of miles away," she said. "We kept telling him 'You're going to be OK. You're going to be OK.'" The next day, Fishkind and his group left for the Dead Sea region in the south, which was considered much safer than Tel Aviv. There, Fishkind stayed in a hotel and met scores of other students from across the U.S. and Canada. After almost a week, he boarded a cruise ship to Cyprus. Once on the island, he immediately got on a flight to Rome and, eventually, Detroit. Fishkind, who is preparing for his junior year at Elon University in North Carolina, said being back home has been an adjustment. The memories of the sirens and the night he spent sheltering from missiles will take time to process, he said. "When I got back home and laid in bed, I kept thinking 'Did that actually happen?'" Tallahassee student recounts memories of sirens and bunkers Madeline King traveled to Israel with a group of over 20 Florida State University students as part of a mission trip to examine and study the Israel-Gaza conflict. It was organized by FSU's Hillel, the university's largest Jewish campus organization. The group was set to leave Israel and return to Florida on Saturday, June 14 – the day after the Israeli military attacked Iran's nuclear program. The unrest left them temporarily stranded in Tel Aviv, which had become a target of Iranian missiles. "We would hear sirens through the night ... and at every time we would find ourselves going down to the bunkers," King told the Tallahassee Democrat, part of the USA TODAY Network. Like Fishkind, her group headed to the Dead Sea region near the West Bank. They then crossed into Jordan, where they boarded a flight bound for Cyprus. There, King and hundreds of others got on flights to Florida in an operation coordinated with the state's Division of Emergency Management agency. In all, more than 1,400 state residents have been evacuated from Israel by plane and passenger ferry, Florida state officials said last week. A tearful reunion The group of 17 high school students from Arizona arrived in Israel on June 4 and traveled through the country for a week, learning Jewish religious traditions and the culture and history of Israel. Like their fellow American students, the group soon discovered they couldn't leave by plane as they had originally intended. 'It is such a helpless, scary feeling to have your child thousands of miles away going into a bomb shelter multiple times a day as warning sirens ring out and missiles approach Israel,' Brett Kurland, a parent to one of the Arizona students, said in a statement, according to the Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network. With the help of Arizona Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, the students managed to get on a luxury cruise ship departing for Cyprus. After an 18-hour voyage they made it to the island and then flew back to the U.S. Scores of families waited for the students at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on June 25. Some stood anxiously with homemade signs while others held flowers and balloons. When the students emerged from the jet bridge, the families cheered and embraced their loved ones in a tearful reunion. Similar scenes unfolded at international airports across the U.S. In Michigan, Jennifer Fishkind and a group of parents embraced their children as they descended from their plane at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. "After all that, you're just waiting to get your arms around them," Fishkind said. "It was the best feeling."
Atlantic
an hour ago
- Atlantic
Trump's One-and-Done Approach to Military Force
Weeks before he ended his first term, in December 2020, President Donald Trump was outraged that leaders in Tehran had announced plans to accelerate its nuclear program. He had a simple question: Why don't we just bomb Iran? His advisers walked him through the options but cautioned that such an operation would likely result in the downing of American planes and the start of a regional war. Trump dropped the idea. 'He didn't want to leave a shit sandwich for his successor,' a former official told us. 'He also recognized it wasn't time yet.' Last weekend, with Iranian defenses worn to a nub by days of Israeli attacks, the time finally came. The surprise assault by B-2 bombers, which dropped 30,000-pound 'bunker-buster' bombs onto underground enrichment facilities, marked the most dramatic military action that Trump has ordered in either of his terms as president. The attack showed how Trump's attitudes toward the use of force have evolved as he has grown more confident in his instincts as commander in chief and surrounded himself with advisers disinclined to challenge him. But it also reflected what hasn't changed: Trump is willing to embrace serious risk in approving military operations, so long as it's in a discrete burst rather than a sustained campaign. The president described the weekend bombing as a one-off that 'obliterated' Iran's nuclear program, not the start of a larger war. If any Trump doctrine for military action does exist, it is perhaps best understood as the One-and-Done Doctrine. 'Trump likes to think he can fire a bullet and leave the O.K. Corral, that the first move is decisive and the end of activity,' Kori Schake, the director of defense and foreign-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing writer at The Atlantic, told us. It's not clear, however, that one attack will be enough. Assessments of the operation's impact on Iran's nuclear capability are divided, and Tehran is already vowing to push ahead, suggesting that additional U.S. action may be required if a diplomatic solution isn't reached. During his first term, Trump railed against the 'endless' and 'forever wars' he had inherited, clashing repeatedly with his top security advisers as he sought to end counterinsurgent missions and pull troops from allied nations as part of his 'America First' agenda. He also demonstrated willingness to deploy military force at significant moments, lobbing cruise missiles at Syria after chemical-weapons attacks, intensifying the air campaign against the Islamic State, and authorizing high-stakes operations such as the commando raid targeting ISIS boss Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the drone strike killing Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani. Trump took office in 2017 boasting that he knew better than 'the generals.' But just days into the job, the first military operation he authorized—a hostage-recovery raid in Yemen—went badly awry: A Navy SEAL and numerous civilians were killed, and a $70 million aircraft was destroyed. Other ventures were more successful: Trump oversaw a surge in progress in the campaign against ISIS, which began under President Barack Obama, as U.S. war planes beat back the militants in Syria. But when the advances slowed, Trump began to push for an end to the American presence—much to the chagrin of his military advisers. The turn revealed Trump's discomfort with sustained campaigns that didn't show measurable results, or that carried any whiff of a quagmire. In Afghanistan, the president pressed for a negotiated exit after the initial surge in military action he authorized—including the bombing of drug labs and the use of an explosive dubbed the 'Mother of All Bombs'—failed to yield decisive results. All the while, Trump was feuding with some of his closest military aides. Jim Mattis, the Marine general who served as Trump's first defense secretary, resigned in protest in 2018 after having attempted to block what he viewed as dangerous actions by the president. Mattis even defied demands from then–National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster for the Pentagon to send options for striking Iran. Trump also railed against historic arrangements he believed exploited American generosity, including U.S. support for NATO and the presence of American troops in places such as Germany and South Korea. One outside adviser said that characterizing Trump as an isolationist misses the mark. 'He has a pretty well-established history of dramatic short bursts of kinetic action, but not sustained military involvement in things,' the adviser told us. He suggested a precedent in President Andrew Jackson, who embraced nationalism and economically motivated expansionism for 19th-century America. Trump 'doesn't have an ideology, but if you had to try to sum it up, it's more Jacksonian than isolationist or anti-interventionist,' the adviser told us. Many of the president's advisers told us they believe that his blunt, tough-guy talk and his unpredictable tendencies—akin to Richard Nixon's 'madman theory'—have been effective in establishing deterrence with foreign adversaries. But Trump's volatility has also at times frustrated his own advisers. In 2019, he made an eleventh-hour decision to call off a planned retaliatory strike on Iranian missile batteries in response to the country's downing of a large U.S. drone over the Strait of Hormuz. The decision was based on an estimate of potential casualties on the ground in Iran that one military official said was wildly inaccurate. Then–National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were aghast at the choice to call off the strike, which they believed was proportionate and would deter future attacks. 'He's capable of changing his mind right up until the very end, and when he's finally decided that the decision has been carried out and he can't reverse it, it's very stressful for him,' Bolton told us. He said the recent Iran strikes tracked with the president's preference for stand-alone, epic actions: 'It fits with his short attention span, and it fits with the fact he doesn't have a philosophy; he doesn't have a grand strategy.' When Bolton worked in the first Trump administration, he was frequently at odds with the president. This time around, Trump has few people questioning his calls. Even those who are leery of foreign entanglement have fallen in line to support the strikes. Vice President J. D. Vance, for instance, has led the charge in recent days in messaging that the Iran operation was not about regime change, but rather the more narrow goal of debilitating the country's nuclear program. Vance is 'going to be supportive of whatever the president wants to do, and there's never going to be any daylight between the two of them, even privately,' the outside adviser told us. Marco Rubio, now serving as secretary of state and national security adviser, has been 'very deferential' to Trump, the adviser added. CIA Director John Ratcliffe, meanwhile, has kept to his position's traditional lane, laying out the intelligence but not pushing any particular policy actions. 'If he is putting his thumb on the scale one way or the other, then people aren't going to trust his intelligence,' the adviser told us. The White House is adamant both that Trump gets the advice he needs and that he never gets his decisions wrong. 'President Trump has assembled a talented, world-class team who evaluate all angles of any given issue to provide the President a fulsome view,' White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly wrote to us in an emailed statement. 'Ultimately, the President evaluates all options and makes the decision he feels is best for the country—and he has been proven right about everything time and again.' Retired General Frank McKenzie, who commanded U.S. forces in the Middle East when Trump targeted Soleimani, noted that the most dire possible scenarios following the Soleimani strike and after those on the nuclear sites haven't borne out—at least so far. That may be because, in his view, Trump has accrued more credibility than other American presidents when it comes to threatening Iran. 'He's got a verifiable, auditable trail. He struck Iran twice; no other American president has done that,' McKenzie told us. Trump's Iran operation marked an unexpected deviation from what has been his administration's second-term focus on negotiations. Trump has said he wants diplomatic deals that not only halt Iran's nuclear ambitions but also end the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and beyond. Now Trump may have more leverage in those talks. 'This guy really wanted a negotiation, and now he's done his one-and-done, and he wants to go back to negotiations,' Ian Bremmer, who leads the consultancy and research firm Eurasia Group, told us. One of Trump's more curious moves since returning to office was his decision to authorize a weeks-long air campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Biden administration had occasionally struck military targets in Yemen but had judged that the Houthis were unlikely to drop their tactic of attacking commercial and naval vessels, no matter what kind of military beating they received. Trump abruptly halted the campaign and declared victory in May, even though the Houthis retain significant military capability and vowed to continue their assaults on Israel. But Trump had moved on. That may not be so easy if Iran resumes its nuclear activity or continues to support proxy militant groups throughout the Middle East. 'You're going to have a hard time ignoring Iran,' the former official told us, 'and it's going to be much harder to change the subject.'
The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
Democrats howling over Iran forced to defend own party's history
Democrats bashing President Trump for striking Iran without congressional consent are bumping into an inconvenient history: Democratic presidents have done the same thing for decades. From Bill Clinton, to Barack Obama, to (most recently) Joe Biden, every Democratic president of the modern era has employed U.S. military forces to attack targets overseas, including strikes in Bosnia, Syria, Libya and Yemen. While they sought approval from Capitol Hill in some of those cases, Congress never provided it. That history has muddled the Democrats' current argument that Trump, in striking three Iranian nuclear facilities last weekend, violated the Constitution by acting on his own, without the formal approval of Congress. The dynamic has not been overlooked by Republican leaders, who have hailed the strikes on Iran as a national security necessity and defended Trump's powers to launch them unilaterally. Those voices are pointing specifically to the actions of Clinton, Obama and Biden to bolster their arguments. 'Since [World War II] we've had more than 125 military operations from Korea and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. They have occurred without a Declaration of War by Congress,' House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters after the strikes. 'Presidents of both parties have exercised that authority frequently.' Johnson ticked off a few examples under the most recent Democratic administrations. Biden, he noted, ordered strikes against terrorist groups in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Obama sustained a months-long bombing campaign in Libya. And Clinton had bombed parts of the former Yugoslavia during the Bosnian war of the mid-1990s. 'Every one of those actions were taken unilaterally and without prior authorization from Congress,' Johnson said. That background is forcing Democrats to reckon with that past just as many of them are now demanding that Trump cease all military operations in Iran without explicit congressional approval. Some of them are quick to acknowledge the incongruity, voicing something like regret that Congress didn't stand more firm in the face of those unilateral Democratic missions. 'Just because it was wrong then doesn't mean it's not wrong now,' said Rep. Ted Lieu (Calif.), a former Air Force attorney who's now the vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. 'The Constitution is the Constitution. And it says only Congress has the power to declare war. And it's been a bipartisan problem, with Congress ceding way too much power to the executive branch.' Rep. Pete Aguilar (Calif.), the chairman of the Democratic Caucus, seemed to agree. He lamented that the politics of Washington have sometimes curtailed Congress's appetite for asserting its war powers as a check on the president, especially when Congress and the White House are controlled by opposing parties. 'That part is unfortunate. Maybe we've missed a few opportunities,' Aguilar said. 'But that doesn't mean that we turn a blind eye right now,' he quickly added. 'It doesn't mean that we just let Donald Trump walk all over us. It means that we stand up for our authority and speak up on behalf of our constituents at every opportunity.' The Constitution makes clear that Congress and the White House both play crucial roles in conducting military operations. Article I lends Congress the power to declare war, and Article II stipulates that the president is 'Commander and Chief' of the Armed Forces, responsible for executing wars that Congress sanctions. Yet that conceptual balance has tilted heavily toward the executive branch over most of the last century: The last time Congress formally declared war was in 1941, after Pearl Harbor. And since then, the president has assumed virtually all power, not only to steer the Armed Forces, but also to launch them into battle. In 1973, in the wake of Vietnam, Congress sought to reassert its authority by passing the War Powers Act. (President Nixon vetoed the bill, but Congress overrode him). The law requires presidents to 'consult with Congress before introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities,' but it does not demand the formal authorization of the legislative branch. As tensions in the Middle East exploded earlier in the month, lawmakers in both parties sought to limit U.S. involvement with war powers resolutions requiring Trump to get explicit congressional consent before using military force in Iran. One was sponsored by three leading Democrats: Reps. Gregory Meeks (N.Y.), Jim Himes (Conn.) and Adam Smith (Wash.). Another was bipartisan, championed by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). Supporters of the resolutions are quick to acknowledge that the president has the power to act unilaterally in extraordinary circumstances, like if the nation is attacked. But there's no evidence, they say, to indicate that Iran posed an immediate threat to Americans ahead of Trump's strikes. 'Any president has self-defense authority under Article II of the Constitution. But to meet that threshold, you have to show that there was an imminent risk of attack against Americans or U.S. facilities. That's the standard,' said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), a former Army Ranger who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. 'As a member of the Armed Services Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, I have not seen any evidence leading up to the attack that there was an imminent risk to Americans or to U.S. facilities to meet that threshold.' Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) delivered a similar assessment. 'If our country is attacked, all and any powers go to the president to act,' she said. 'That didn't exist here, so the president should have come to Congress.' Complicating their argument are the actions of Democratic presidents who also activated the Armed Services without congressional consent. In 1998, for instance, in response to the terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Clinton ordered the launch of cruise missiles targeting al Qaeda strongholds in Sudan and Afghanistan. He also joined NATO forces in bombing Serbian targets in the former Yugoslavia. Obama infuriated liberals in Congress in launching strikes against numerous countries during his eight-year reign, including an extensive campaign in Libya in 2011, which helped in the toppling of President Muammar Gaddafi, as well as subsequent incursions in Syria, Yemen and Somalia. Obama had asked Congress for specific authorization in some cases, but lawmakers on Capitol Hill couldn't agree on a resolution to provide it. Instead, those operations leaned heavily on a 2001 resolution — known as an authorization of military force, or AUMF — passed by Congress to sanction the Afghanistan War after the attacks of 9/11. In the same vein, Biden used U.S. forces to target terrorist cells in Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Lieu, for one, emphasized that he was opposed to Obama's use of force without Congress giving the OK. 'I publicly stated at the time that Obama needed congressional authorization to strike Syria. I believe Trump needs congressional authorization to strike Iran,' he said. 'My view of the Constitution does not change based on what party the president happens to belong to.' Other Democrats sought to keep the debate focused more squarely on current events. 'We can write books and fill your column inches with regrets under this dome. We'll save that for other days,' Aguilar said. 'But what is in front of us today is: are we going to stand up for our constitutional authority?' A week after the strikes, the debate over war powers may already be academic. On Tuesday, Trump announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel that, if it holds, may make the constitutional disagreement moot. Massie has said he won't force a vote on his war powers measure if the ceasefire continues. Johnson has refused to consider such a resolution in any event, calling the War Powers Act unconstitutional. And Trump officials are expected to meet with Iranian officials later this week, when the U.S. will seek a commitment from Tehran to abandon any plans to produce nuclear weapons. Still, there are plenty of questions swirling about the ultimate success of the strikes in dismantling Iran's nuclear capabilities. And Trump, asked whether he would attack again if necessary, didn't hesitate. 'Without question,' he said. 'Absolutely.'
