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Here’s where things stand on Friday 20 June 2025:
- The White House says, due to “chance of negotiation”, President Trump will decide in the next two weeks whether the US will join the Israel-Iran conflict.
- Iran’s foreign minister is scheduled to meet today in Geneva with counterparts from France, Germany and the United Kingdom for talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme and ending Israel’s attacks.
- More than 200 injured in Israel, including four in critical condition, following an Iranian missile attack on Thursday.
- Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Naim Qassem said the threatened assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is an “aggression” against all the people of the region.
Photos: Venezuelans march in support of Iran
De-escalation hopes as Iran FM heads to Geneva talks but ‘reality on ground’ is more strikes
Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, said attacks continued across Iran on Thursday – the seventh day of the conflict – and late into the night with the sound of air defences operating in the capital city.
Officials in Tehran have also escalated their rhetoric in step with the escalating military action.
“We’ve heard a lot of statements from the Iranian side saying that they are going to continue retaliations as long as Israeli strikes continue,” Asadi said.
While Iran’s foreign minister is travelling to Geneva to meet with European counterparts in the hope of de-escalating the situation, Asadi said Iranians are ready to “step back” but that would only be possible if the “Israelis step back”.
“The reality on the ground seems to be far from that as we see the continuation of Israeli strikes,” he said.
“We are hearing strong messages sent by different Iranian military officials saying that they are going to continue to provide Israelis with the repercussions of these strikes, and there is going to be a crushing answer down the road,” he added.
Which leaders are set to take part in Geneva talks?
As we’ve been reporting, Iran is holding discussions with European leaders in the Swiss city later today to try to reach a solution to end the conflict with Israel.
Here’s a quick look at who’s expected to take part:
- Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi
- British Foreign Secretary David Lammy
- French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot
- German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul
- European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas
European leaders have been calling for de-escalation amid concerns the US could launch attacks on Iran alongside Israel.
France, Germany, Britain and the EU were all signatories of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, which saw Tehran curtail its nuclear programme in exchange for a lifting of global sanctions.
Trump unilaterally withdrew from the pact in 2018 during his first term in office.
Israel believes ‘cluster munitions’ used in Iranian missile attack
Iranian missiles have continued to target Israel.
About 40 missiles, and most causing damage, on Thursday morning – with a hospital area damaged and residential areas near Tel Aviv, including residential buildings in Holon and Ramat Gan.
The Israelis think one of those missiles had cluster munitions in it, which explode in the atmosphere and send smaller missiles in an eight-kilometre radius (4.9 miles) and are much harder, the Israelis say, for their defences to intercept.
‘Says one thing, does another’: What’s Trump’s endgame in Iran?
Recent changes in Trump’s stance on the Israel-Iran conflict have some observers thinking that Trump may not have a clear strategy or endgame.
Rather, they argue that the US president is being dragged to war by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been seeking American attacks on Iran for decades.
Iranian American analyst Negar Mortazavi told Al Jazeera that Trump is being “outmanoeuvred” by Netanyahu.
“I don’t even know if President Trump knows what he wants,” Mortazavi said.
“He campaigned as the president of peace … he promised he’s going to end conflicts. Russia-Ukraine hasn’t ended. Gaza has escalated, and he just let the third big Middle East war – which looks like a regime-change war – start under his watch. So, he says one thing. He does another.”
Read more in our story here.
Israeli forces open fire in central Gaza, killing at least 22
The Israeli military has carried out another mass casualty attack in Gaza.
Our Al Jazeera Arabic colleagues, citing a source at al-Awda Hospital in Deir el-Balah, report that Israeli forces have opened fire on aid seekers near the Netzarim axis in central Gaza, killing at least 22 people and injuring more.
In total, at least 31 people have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the four and a half hours since midnight.
We will bring you more information when we have it.
Ex-US official says diplomatic push has limited chance of success
Mark Pfeifle, a former US national security adviser, has noted that Washington’s position on whether to get involved in the Israel-Iran conflict comes amid disagreements between Trump’s Republican base.
On one hand, isolationists who have embraced Trump’s “America First” foreign policy doctrine are against US involvement, while on the other, anti-Iran hawks are pushing for US attacks against the country.
“Also, I think Mr Trump is kind of tepid about going in. He, of course, campaigned against these kinds of excursions internationally,” Pfeifle told Al Jazeera.
He added that while he believes the push to reach a diplomatic solution to resolve the conflict has a less than 50-percent chance of success, “everything has to be tried”.
Israeli officials ‘convinced’ of US role despite Trump’s two-week attack decision timeline
Shortly before the statement from the White House, Israel’s broadcasting authority published quotes from Israeli officials suggesting they had prior notification of what the US was going to say.
The Israelis say that, without US involvement, the operation against Iran will last two to three weeks. With US involvement, the war’s objectives can be achieved within days.
And it goes on to say that Israel is convinced the US will join the attack, including the attack on Fordow.
This is the mountain, where the centrifuges are said to be based and which needs American bunker-busting bombs to have a chance of reaching and destroying those centrifuges.
And the Israelis say, “We appreciate the Americans joining in if they decide to, but we will know how to achieve the mission and to accomplish its ends on our own.”
Israeli military bombs home in central Gaza, killing at least 8
The Israeli military’s attacks across Gaza are continuing overnight.
Citing a source at the Al-Aqsa Hospital, our Al Jazeera Arabic colleagues report that Israeli fighter jets have bombed a house west of Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, killing at least eight people and injuring more.
We will bring you more information when we have it.
What could the US, Iran offer to reach a deal?
The Trump administration “will need to show patience, allow negotiations to proceed and invite an offer from Tehran” if it truly wants to reach a deal in the next two weeks, the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank says.
The ICG said that, for its part, Iran should “proffer a concession capable of persuading President Trump to force an end to the war”.
“As for what that should entail, though few in Tehran will want to hear it, the best course of action – perhaps the only one on offer now that can stave off US military involvement – is to concede that Iran will no longer enrich uranium on its sovereign soil,” the group said.
But as we’ve been reporting, so far, Washington’s push for zero uranium enrichment has been a “non-starter” for Tehran.
“As an alternative, Iran could accept the principle of entering a multinational nuclear consortium with regional states, as discussed in theory during its negotiations with the Trump administration. The US could be a stakeholder in such an initiative, with international monitoring complementing mutual inspections by regional parties,” the ICG said.
“If Iran decides not to offer a deal of this nature, that does not mean the US should jump into what could be a disastrous conflict. But under the circumstances, Tehran should not bank on cooler heads prevailing in Washington.”
Two more drones intercepted in Dead Sea area: Israeli army
The Israeli Air Force intercepted the drones, which the army says were launched from Iran.
This follows an earlier drone interception in the same area that we reported on a few minutes ago.
UK’s Lammy says next two weeks present ‘window’ for diplomatic solution
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s comment comes as he will be travelling to Geneva for talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi later today.
“We are determined that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon … A window now exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic solution,” Lammy said in a statement.
“Now is the time to put a stop to the grave scenes in the Middle East and prevent a regional escalation that would benefit no one,” he said.
The British foreign minister also discussed the conflict in a meeting with his US counterpart, Marco Rubio, on Thursday.
“They discussed the conflict between Israel and Iran and agreed Iran can never develop or acquire a nuclear weapon,” the State Department said in a readout of the talks.
US push for zero uranium enrichment a ‘non-starter’ for Iran
They’re not going to stop enriching uranium – this is the sticking point, this is why we’re at an impasse.
Initially, the Americans were open to the idea of Iran reducing its uranium enrichment levels from 60 percent, where it is right now, to 3.67 percent, which was agreed upon in the 2015 nuclear deal.
That figure of 3.67 percent was agreeable to everybody: the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the European countries, and the United States at that time. And the Iranians went back to that figure, knowing that it was going to be something that would be acceptable.
But the US, since they started negotiations with Iran – they had five rounds of discussions – somewhere at the halfway mark of these talks, we started hearing from particularly Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy, that enrichment at any level was not acceptable.
Israeli military continues attacks across Iran
The Israeli military has continued to attack targets across Iran over recent hours. Incidents include:
- An explosion has been heard and air defence systems activated at the Safidrood Industrial Town in the city of Rasht in northern Iran.
- Israel has also targeted an industrial complex in the Sefid-Rud area in Iran’s northern provinces along the coast of the Caspian Sea.
- Iran’s air defences intercepted hostile targets in the city of Isfahan, central Iran.
- Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it shot down an Israeli drone in the Kahrizak area south of Tehran.
The Israeli Home Front Command has also said air raid sirens have sounded in the Dead Sea area in response to a suspected drone infiltration.
Trump’s ‘two-week’ Iran decision timeframe ‘eases pressure’ on the president
There has been a voracious debate among Trump’s own supporters about whether or not the US should be directly involved in these attacks against Iran.
The president has really been torn between these two sides.
There are some very prominent MAGA voices who are isolationist, who say the US should not interfere in another foreign war. Certainly, that is something that Trump had promised he would not do as president.
But then there are also those that are war hawks, that are among his advisers, as well as perhaps Trump’s own tendency, given he has publicly threatened to bomb Iran in the past and he has been very applaudatory of Israel’s military successes in Iran.
But there is also a caveat. We heard that “two weeks” mentioned in the deadline.
It may not be literal. It could be. But perhaps it isn’t, given Trump has often used that phrase to mean he will make a decision shortly or even indefinitely.
It’s just hard to say. But it certainly does buy him some more time and eases the pressure to make an immediate decision.
Israeli army says intercepted Iranian drone
The military says the drone was intercepted in the Dead Sea area, which borders the occupied West Bank, Israel and Jordan.
It added that sirens were activated in response to the incident.
Trump to decide on US action in Iran ‘within two weeks’
As we have been reporting, President Trump will decide on whether the US will join the Israel-Iran conflict in the next two weeks.
“Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks. That’s a quote directly from President Trump,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Thursday.
A recap of recent developments
- The White House has said US President Donald Trump will make a decision on whether the US will join in the Israel-Iran conflict in the next two weeks.
- Israel and Iran exchanged fire for a seventh consecutive day, with Israel’s military saying it bombed dozens of sites across Iran, including the Arak heavy-water nuclear reactor.
- Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 639 people and wounded 1,329 others, according to the Washington-based human rights group, Human Rights Activists.
- More than 250 Israelis were injured in a volley of dozens of Iranian missiles, including four in critical condition, with the Soroka medical centre in the southern city of Beersheba among the structures hit.
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he will not exclude the possibility of targeting Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, after Defence Minister Israel Katz said “eliminating” Iran’s supreme leader is one of the country’s war goals.
- Israeli forces have continued their attacks on Gaza, with health authorities reporting at least 92 deaths on Thursday, including 16 Palestinians gunned down while waiting for food assistance near the Netzarim Corridor.
Welcome to our live coverage
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the conflict between Israel and Iran, as well as Israel’s war on Gaza.
Stay with us for the latest developments, reactions and analyses.
You can find all our updates from Thursday, June 19, here.
