Iran-Israel war: latest developments
Israel and Iran exchanged fire again on Thursday, the seventh day of the war between the longtime enemies.
Here are the latest developments:
- Hospital strike -
A hospital in southern Israel was hit as Iran fired a barrage of "dozens" of missiles, officials said, while another impact was reported by emergency services in the Tel Aviv area.
"A direct hit has been reported at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, southern Israel," the Israeli foreign ministry posted on X.
A spokesperson for the hospital reported "damage to the hospital and extensive damage in various areas. We are currently assessing the damage, including injuries. We ask the public not to come to the hospital at this time."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tehran would pay a "heavy price" for the attack, while defence minister Israel Katz vowed Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be "held accountable".
Israel's Magen David Adom rescue service said Thursday that at least 47 people were injured following Iran's latest strikes, with another 18 injured while rushing to shelters.
- Israel says struck nuclear sites -
The Israeli army said it had struck an "inactive nuclear reactor" in Arak in Iran during overnight raids that also saw the Islamic republic's Natanz nuclear site targeted again.
A statement said "the nuclear reactor in the area of Arak in Iran was targeted, including the structure of the reactor's core seal, which is a key component in plutonium production".
- Near-total internet blackout -
An update from internet watchdog Netblocks on Thursday showed Iran had been "offline for 12 hours".
Iran announced last week that it was placing temporary restrictions on the internet, with the communication ministry saying Wednesday that heavier limits were being imposed due to Israel's "abuse of the country's communication network for military purposes".
Iranian media later reported that Israel briefly hacked the state television broadcast, airing footage of women's protests and urging people to take to the streets.
Numerous sites and apps have remained at least partially inaccessible in Iran.
- Trump on strikes, talks -
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he was considering whether to join Israel's strikes, and that Iran had reached out seeking negotiations on ending the conflict.
"I may do it, I may not do it," Trump told reporters. "I can tell you this, that Iran's got a lot of trouble, and they want to negotiate."
Trump said Tehran had even suggested sending officials to the White House for talks, an assertion Iranian officials denied.
Asked if it was too late for negotiations, Trump said: "Nothing is too late."
The Wall Street Journal reported Trump has told aides he has approved attack plans but is holding off to see if Iran will give up its nuclear programme.
He is due to receive an intelligence briefing on Thursday, a US holiday, the White House said, while top US diplomat Marco Rubio will meet his UK counterpart for talks expected to focus on the conflict.
- Khamenei warns US -
Iran's supreme leader Khamenei said in a speech on state television: "This nation will never surrender."
"America should know that any military intervention will undoubtedly result in irreparable damage," he said.
Trump had said on Tuesday that the United States knows where Khamenei is located but will not kill him "for now".
- 'Painful losses' -
Foreign governments have scrambled to evacuate their citizens from both countries, with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee announcing plans on Wednesday to get Americans out by air and sea.
Israel's attacks have hit nuclear and military facilities around Iran, as well as residential areas.
Residential areas in Israel have also been hit.
Netanyahu acknowledged "painful losses", but added: "The home front is solid, the people are strong."
The prime minister's office said Monday that at least 24 people have been killed in Israel and hundreds wounded since Iran's retaliatory strikes began Friday.
Iran said on Sunday that Israeli strikes had killed at least 224 people, including military commanders, nuclear scientists and civilians.
Both countries have not updated their official tolls since.
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Two of the administration's primary targets have already been subjected to treatment that wildly exceeds reasonable and lawful oversight. In a March 25 letter to Columbia, the Trump administration demanded not only that the university 'complete disciplinary proceedings' related to campus encampments, but that it impose a minimum penalty of expulsion or multiyear suspensions. But what if, in a given case, a one-year suspension is most just? The administration told Columbia to 'centralize all disciplinary processes under the Office of the President.' What statute empowers it to dictate how administrators and faculty divide power? It demanded that the institution 'formalize, adopt, and promulgate' a definition of anti-Semitism, as if institutional neutrality about that topic of debate is somehow at odds with Title VI. 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The letter even seeks to micromanage student groups; funding decisions 'must be made exclusively by a body of University faculty,' it states. Harvard has rejected these demands in court filings, and it is suing the administration to stop it from enforcing the letter's terms. Still, the overall effect of the administration's enforcement is aptly summed up by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. In an amicus brief supporting Harvard's lawsuit, the organization declared that the state's 'coercion of Harvard violates longstanding First Amendment principles and will destroy universities nationwide if left unchecked.' An aggressive regime of civil-rights enforcement is easy to defend in theory. Without bureaucrats focused on the obligations that colleges have under Title IX and Title VI, institutions can neglect the statutory rights of students. Federally dictated policies and procedures can enhance consistency and impartiality. Investment in the Office of Civil Rights and campus-compliance structures can reduce sexual assaults and bigoted harassment. And penalties can be meted out justly to particularly bad actors. But that isn't how the civil-rights regime that arose in 2011 has worked in practice. Listen: Why Trump wants to control universities The new Title IX bureaucracy cost colleges hundreds of millions of dollars to implement, from 2011 to 2016. And for all the bureaucracy's illiberal excesses, colleges ultimately reported an overall increase in forcible sex offenses during the same period. Meanwhile, policy making through the bureaucracy rather than Congress sowed dysfunction, with appointees of different presidents imposing wildly different, sometimes contradictory, accounts of what the law required, such that satisfying one administration got you in trouble with the next. Similarly dismal results are likely as the Trump administration applies the Title IX playbook to Title VI. There is no reason to assume that Jewish students will be better off if colleges comply with every Trump-administration dictate. As Republican administrations used to understand, intense bureaucratic attention to a problem doesn't automatically improve it. And often, state coercion can invite state abuses, yield unintended consequences (see the Israeli students who will have to leave Harvard if Trump succeeds in banning foreign students), and crowd out better solutions. Returning to pre-2011 norms would be better than the status quo. But at this point, an act of Congress might be the only way to stop what one attorney has called the 'regulation by intimidation' that threatens higher education. Congress could clarify what Title IX and Title VI require of colleges, in particular establishing that colleges can never be punished by the administrative state for allowing speech protected by the First Amendment or extending due-process rights to accused students that they would enjoy in a court of law. It could raise the bar for launching an investigation. It could afford colleges more due process before penalties are imposed. And it could silo penalties, so that violations in one part of a university, such as the law school, do not threaten another part, such as a cancer-research center. Many kinds of reform are possible. It is, in any case, unsustainable for colleges to be micromanaged by rival factions of coercive ideologues. Yet many Trump critics are still focusing on his administration's glaring procedural violations, rather than the enforcement model that underlies them. Even if Trump's team were as procedurally diligent as its predecessors (a low bar), the overly aggressive approach to civil-rights enforcement that began in 2011 and persists today would serve academia ill. Civil-rights enforcement on campuses has mutated into something with costs that outweigh its benefits.
