Published On 19 Jun 202519 Jun 2025
Here’s where things stand on Thursday, June 19:
Fighting
- Israel struck dozens of sites in Iran, including Natanz and a heavy water nuclear reactor, which was originally called Arak and is now named Khondab.
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A projectile fired by Iran struck the Soroka Hospital in Beersheba, southern Israel – one of the main hospitals where Israeli troops are sent – leaving dozens injured.
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IRNA, the Islamic Republic News Agency, said on Telegram that the “main target” of Thursday’s missile attack “was the large [Israeli army] Command and Intelligence [IDF C4I] headquarters and the military intelligence camp in the Gav-Yam Technology Park”, and not the hospital.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tehran would pay a “heavy price” for the strike.
- Israel says it destroyed Iran’s internal security headquarters in Tehran as more explosions are reported in the Iranian city of Karaj and the nearby Payam airport.
- Several explosions were heard over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as a new wave of Iranian missiles targeted the country, resulting in at least four impact sites.
- Bloomberg News, citing anonymous sources, reported that senior US officials are “preparing for the possibility of a strike on Iran in the coming days”. It said the development is a sign that Washington “is assembling the infrastructure to directly enter a conflict with Tehran”.
- On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that President Donald Trump would decide whether the US will join the Israel-Iran conflict in the “next two weeks”. Previously, Trump had declined to say if he had made any decision. “I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” he said.
- Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is urging Trump to “go all in” and attack Iran’s Fordow nuclear site, which is dug deep into a mountain in central Iran.
- The Al Udeid airbase outside Doha, Qatar – a major US military base in the Middle East – has seen many of the aircraft typically on its tarmac dispersed, The Associated Press reported.
- Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz threatened to eliminate Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Such a person is forbidden to exist,” he said in a statement cited by the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
- In a post on X, Khamenei said: “The very fact that the Zionist regime’s American friends have entered the scene and are saying such things is a sign of that regime’s weakness and inability.”
- Turkiye has increased the security of its border with Iran as the Israel-Iran conflict continues, a Turkish Defence Ministry source told Reuters, adding that Ankara had not seen any irregular migration flow from Iran.