World leaders gather to discuss defence amid Israel-Iran tensions
Tensions between Israel and Iran could dominate discussions among world leaders at the Nato summit amid a fragile ceasefire.
Sir Keir Starmer is among those in The Hague for a gathering of the alliance, having called on the Middle Eastern nations to maintain the pause in hostilities.
In a conversation with the French and German leaders at the summit on Tuesday, Sir Keir 'reflected on the volatile situation in the Middle East,' according to a Downing Street spokeswoman.
The leaders agreed that 'now was the time for diplomacy and for Iran to come to the negotiating table', the spokeswoman added.
It comes as intelligence reports in the US suggested that the American attack on Iran's nuclear programme over the weekend have only set it back by a few months, rather than destroyed it as Donald Trump previously suggested.
The White House pushed back on the reports on Tuesday evening, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying it was 'flat out wrong'.
'The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran's nuclear programme,' she said in a statement.
Mr Trump also condemned the leak in a post on Truth Social, calling the US raid 'one of the most successful military strikes in history'.
'THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!' he wrote.
Earlier on Tuesday, Sir Keir had said that the US had helped in 'alleviating' the threat of nuclear capability for Iran with their strikes on Saturday.
Asked on his visit to The Hague whether he personally felt safe with Mr Trump in the White House and why others should, the Prime Minister told Channel 5 News: 'Look, I think what we've seen over the last few days is the Americans alleviating a threat to nuclear weaponry by the Iranians and bringing about a ceasefire in the early hours of today.
'I think now what needs to happen is that ceasefire needs to be maintained, and that will be the focus of our attention, our engagement, our discussions, because that ceasefire provides the space for the negotiations that need to take place.'
After the ceasefire was initially struck early on Tuesday, Israel claimed Iran had violated the deal by carrying out strikes after it came into force.
Mr Trump called for Israel to withdraw its warplanes, and claimed both it and Iran 'don't know what the f*** they're doing' as he departed for the summit in the Netherlands.
The UK has continued to evacuate Britons out of Israel, and a second flight left Tel Aviv on Tuesday.
The Foreign Office confirmed the plane had left Israel and said further flights would be considered depending on demand.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats have said that MPs should be given a vote in the event of any future deployment of troops.
The party's foreign affairs spokesman Calum Miller said: 'With the Middle East in the throes of an all-out regional war, we are reckoning once again with the prospect of the UK becoming embroiled in foreign conflict.
'No one knows the fragility of peace in that region, or the price paid for our safety, better than our British troops. It's critical that, if they are asked to put their lives on the line for the UK in active conflict zones, this decision is subject to the strongest democratic scrutiny our country can offer.'
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Reuters
26 minutes ago
- Reuters
U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear sites set up "cat-and-mouse" hunt for missing uranium
VIENNA, June 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. and Israeli bombing of Iranian nuclear sites creates a conundrum for U.N. inspectors in Iran: how can you tell if enriched uranium stocks, some of them near weapons grade, were buried beneath the rubble or had been secretly hidden away? Following last weekend's attacks on three of Iran's top nuclear sites - at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan - President Donald Trump said the facilities had been "obliterated" by U.S. munitions, including bunker-busting bombs. But the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Tehran's nuclear program, has said it's unclear exactly what damage was sustained at Fordow, a plant buried deep inside a mountain that produced the bulk of Iran's most highly enriched uranium. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said on Monday it was highly likely the sensitive centrifuges used to enrich uranium inside Fordow were badly damaged. It's far less clear whether Iran's 9 tonnes of enriched uranium - more than 400 kg of it enriched to close to weapons grade - were destroyed. Western governments are scrambling to determine what's become of it. Reuters spoke to more than a dozen current and former officials involved in efforts to contain Iran's nuclear program who said the bombing may have provided the perfect cover for Iran to make its uranium stockpiles disappear and any IAEA investigation would likely be lengthy and arduous. Olli Heinonen, previously the IAEA's top inspector from 2005 to 2010, said the search will probably involve complicated recovery of materials from damaged buildings as well as forensics and environmental sampling, which take a long time. "There could be materials which are inaccessible, distributed under the rubble or lost during the bombing," said Heinonen, who dealt extensively with Iran while at the IAEA and now works at the Stimson Center think-tank in Washington. Iran's more than 400 kg of uranium enriched to up to 60% purity - a short step from the roughly 90% of weapons grade - are enough, if enriched further, for nine nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick. Even a fraction of that left unaccounted for would be a grave concern for Western powers that believe Iran is at least keeping the option of nuclear weapons open. There are indications Iran may have moved some of its enriched uranium before it could be struck. IAEA chief Grossi said Iran informed him on June 13, the day of Israel's first attacks, that it was taking measures to protect its nuclear equipment and materials. While it did not elaborate, he said that suggests it was moved. A Western diplomat involved in the dossier, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said most of the enriched uranium at Fordow would appear to have been moved days in advance of the attacks, "almost as if they knew it was coming". Some experts have said a line of vehicles including trucks visible on satellite imagery outside Fordow before it was hit suggests enriched uranium there was moved elsewhere, though U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Thursday said he was unaware of any intelligence suggesting Iran had moved it. Trump has also dismissed such concerns. In an interview due to air on Sunday with Fox News Channel's "Sunday Morning Futures", he insisted the Iranians "didn't move anything." "It's very dangerous to do. It is very heavy - very, very heavy. It's a very hard thing to do," Trump said. "Plus we didn't give much notice because they didn't know we were coming until just, you know, then." The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The State Department referred Reuters to Trump's public remarks. A second Western diplomat said it would be a major challenge to verify the condition of the uranium stockpile, citing a long list of past disputes between the IAEA and Tehran, including Iran's failure to credibly explain uranium traces found at undeclared sites. "It'll be a game of cat and mouse." Iran says it has fulfilled all its obligations towards the watchdog. Before Israel launched its 12-day military campaign aimed at destroying Iran's nuclear and missile capabilities, the IAEA had regular access to Iran's enrichment sites and monitored what was inside them around the clock as part of the 191-nation Non-Proliferation Treaty aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, to which Iran is a party. Now, rubble and ash blur the picture. What's more, Iran has threatened to stop working with the IAEA. Furious at the non-proliferation regime's failure to protect it from strikes many countries see as unlawful, Iran's parliament voted on Wednesday to suspend cooperation. Tehran says a resolution this month passed by the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors declaring Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations paved the way for Israel's attacks, which began the next day, by providing an element of diplomatic cover. The IAEA denies that. Iran has repeatedly denied that it has an active program to develop a nuclear bomb. And U.S. intelligence - dismissed by Trump before the airstrikes - had said there was no evidence Tehran was taking steps toward developing one. However, experts say there is no reason for enriching uranium to 60% for a civilian nuclear program, which can run on less than 5% enrichment. As a party to the NPT, Iran must account for its stock of enriched uranium. The IAEA then has to verify Iran's account by means including inspections, but its powers are limited - it inspects Iran's declared nuclear facilities but cannot carry out snap inspections at undeclared locations. Iran has an unknown number of extra centrifuges stored at locations the U.N. nuclear watchdog is unaware of, the IAEA has said, with which it might be able to set up a new or secret enrichment site. That makes hunting down the material that can be enriched further, particularly that closest to bomb grade, all the more important. "Iran's stockpile of 60% enriched uranium may not have been part of the 'mission' but it is a significant part of the proliferation risk - particularly if centrifuges are unaccounted for," Kelsey Davenport of the Washington-based Arms Control Association said on X on Friday. The IAEA can and does receive intelligence from member states, which include the United States and Israel, but says it takes nothing at face value and independently verifies tip-offs. Having pummelled the sites housing the uranium, Israel and the U.S. are seen as the countries most likely to accuse Iran of hiding it or restarting enrichment, officials say. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office did not respond to a request for comment for this story. U.N. inspectors' futile hunt for large caches of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which preceded the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, showed the enormous difficulty of verifying foreign powers' assertions about hidden stockpiles of material when there is little tangible information to go on. As in Iraq, inspectors could end up chasing shadows. "If the Iranians come clean with the 400 kg of HEU (highly enriched uranium) then the problem is manageable, but if they don't then nobody will ever be sure what happened to it," a third Western diplomat said. The IAEA, which answers to 180 member states, has said it cannot guarantee Iran's nuclear development is entirely peaceful, but has no credible indications of a coordinated weapons program. The U.S. this week backed the IAEA's verification and monitoring work and urged Tehran to ensure its inspectors in the country are safe. It is a long journey from there to accounting for every gram of enriched uranium, the IAEA's standard. The above-ground plant at Natanz, the smaller of the two facilities enriching uranium up to 60 percent, was flattened in the strikes, the IAEA said, suggesting a small portion of Iran's enriched uranium stockpile may have been destroyed. Fordow, Iran's most deeply buried enrichment plant, which was producing the bulk of 60%-enriched uranium, was first seriously hit last weekend when the United States dropped its biggest conventional bombs on it. The damage to its underground halls is unclear. An underground area in Isfahan where much of Iran's most highly enriched uranium was stored was also bombed, causing damage to the tunnel entrances leading to it. The agency has not been able to carry out inspections since Israel's bombing campaign began, leaving the outside world with more questions than answers. Grossi said on Wednesday the conditions at the bombed sites would make it difficult for IAEA inspectors to work there - suggesting it could take time. "There is rubble, there could be unexploded ordnance," he said. Heinonen, the former chief IAEA inspector, said it was vital the agency be transparent in real time about what its inspectors have been able to verify independently, including any uncertainties, and what remained unknown. "Member states can then make their own risk assessments," he said.
Daily Mail
27 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
New satellite photos show secret activity at Iran nuclear site after US bombing
New satellite photos have revealed that Iran is trying to piece together its nuclear site after the US sensationally bombed it last week. Heavy machinery was seen at the Fordow site as it appeared Iran has intensified its construction and excavation of the nuclear site after US B-2 bombers struck it last Saturday in Operation Midnight Hammer. Activity was seen near the tunnel entrances and near the points where the American buster bombs struck in Trump's early-morning attack. It is unclear how much uranium was left at the site during the bomb, but officials said there is no contamination after the strikes. Earthwork also showed signs tunnel entrances might have been sealed off before the attacks, Newsweek reported. Similar construction activity was seen at the Fordow site prior to the strikes, where Iranians were seen shipping contents from the nuclear site to another location a half a mile away. Despite the extent of the damage being up to question, International Atomic Energy Agency - the UN's nuclear watchdog - said Fordow's centrifuges were 'no longer operational' and suffered 'enormous damage.' A leaked preliminary report from the Defense Intelligence Agency , a US government intelligence group, suggested there was 'low confidence' that that Middle Eastern country's program had been set back. Even Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said the United States hit Tehran's nuclear sites but achieved 'nothing significant.' 'Anyone who heard [Trump's] remarks could tell there was a different reality behind his words - they could do nothing,' the 86-year-old Iranian leader said. The Trump Administration - including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard - pushed back on the report. Hegseth slammed the media for diminishing the strikes, which Trump compared to Hiroshima. 'Your people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn't successful, it's irresponsible,' he said at a press conference. 'There's nothing that I've seen that suggests that what we didn't hit exactly what we wanted to hit in those locations,' he explained without offering further evidence that the uranium was destroyed. Trump has threatened to sue The New York Times and CNN for reporting on the preliminary report. The Times reported Thursday that Trump's personal lawyer Alejandro Brito had reached out to the newspaper and said the article had damaged the president's reputation. The letter demanded The Times 'retract and apologize for' the story, calling it 'false,' 'defamatory' and 'unpatriotic.' The newspaper's lawyer responded by noting that Trump administration officials had confirmed the existence of the report after The Times published its findings. 'No retraction is needed,' The Times' lawyer David McCraw said in a letter. 'No apology will be forthcoming. We told the truth to the best of our ability. We will continue to do so.' A spokesperson for CNN told The Times that the cable news network had responded to Trump's lawyer in a similar fashion. Operation Midnight Hammer marked the end of a 45-year stand-off between the United States and Iran. Trump warned Iran not to try and rebuild its nuclear program. 'I don't think they'll ever do it again,' he said while attending a NATO summit. 'They just went through hell. I think they've had it. The last thing they want to do is enrich.' But the president also didn't rule out another airstrike if necessary. When asked whether the US would strike again if Iran built its nuclear enrichment program, he replied: 'Sure.' In total, the US launched 75 precision-guided munitions, including more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles, and more than 125 military aircraft in the operation against three nuclear sites.
The Guardian
28 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Elon Musk calls Trump's big bill ‘utterly insane and destructive' as Senate debates
The billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk on Saturday criticized the latest version of Donald Trump's sprawling tax and spending bill, calling it 'utterly insane and destructive. 'The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!' Musk wrote on Saturday as the Senate was scheduled to call a vote to open debate on the nearly 1,000-page bill. 'Utterly insane and destructive,' Musk added. 'It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.' Passing the package, Musk said, would be 'political suicide for the Republican Party.' Musk's comment reopens a recent fiery conflict between the former head of the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) and the administration he recently left. They also represent yet another headache for Republican Senate leaders who have spent the weekend working overtime to get the legislation through their chamber so it can pass by Trump's Fourth of July deadline. Earlier this month, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO also came out against the House version of Trump's 'big, beautiful bill', denouncing that proposal as a 'disgusting abomination'. 'This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it, he wrote at the time. Musk's forceful denouncement of Trump's spending plans triggered a deep and public rift between the billionaire and the president, though Musk in recent weeks has been working to mend relations. On Saturday, Musk posted a series of disparaging comments about the senate version of the bill, which argued the legislation would undermine US investments in renewable energy. Musk boosted several comments from Jesse Jenkins, a macro-scale energy systems engineer who teaches at Princeton. After Jenkins wrote, 'The energy provisions in the Republicans' One Big Horrible Bill are truly so bad! Who wants this? The country's automakers don't want it. Electric utilities don't want it. Data center developers don't want it. Manufacturers in energy intensive industries don't want it.' Musk replied: 'Good question. Who?' Musk's continued criticism of Trump's budget proposals comes as the bill faces a rocky path in the senate. Republicans are hoping to use their majorities to overcome Democratic opposition, but several Republican senators are concerned over provisions that would reduce spending on Medicaid and food stamps to help cover the cost of extending Trump's tax breaks. Meanwhile, fiscal conservatives are worried about the nation's debt are pushing for steeper cuts. The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know. If you have something to share on this subject you can contact us confidentially using the following methods. Secure Messaging in the Guardian app The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said. If you don't already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS/Android) and go to the menu. Select 'Secure Messaging'. SecureDrop, instant messengers, email, telephone and post See our guide at for alternative methods and the pros and cons of each.
