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Here’s where things stand on Saturday 21 June 2025:
- The US has moved several B-2 stealth bombers, along with refueling tankers, to the Pacific, as Trump continues to dither on whether or not the US will join Israel’s assault.
- Israel launches attacks on northwestern Iran as Iran fires more drones towards Israel on day nine of the conflict.
- Iran says more than 400 people have been killed and at least 3,056 others wounded since Israel launched its attack on June 13.
- French President Emmanuel Macron says he and Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian, have agreed to “accelerate” nuclear negotiations between European powers and Iran.
- US President Donald Trump has publicly rebuked his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, saying she was wrong to state there was no evidence Iran is building a nuclear weapon.
‘I was thrown across the room and hit the wall’, survivor of Israeli strike says
The Associated Press has spoken to some of the thousands of Iranians injured in Israeli strikes across the country since it launched its assault on June 12.
Turning in pain as she spoke in Tehran’s Rasool Akram hospital, a patient named Nasrin described how she was in her apartment when she heard a noise that sounded like gunfire.
“My cat went toward the window, I grabbed her and tossed her aside. Then I was thrown across the room and hit the wall. It felt like my apartment was directly hit,” she said.
“I somehow dragged myself to the door. I have to thank my neighbours; they were packing to leave, but they called an ambulance, and it drove me here.”
She said she had had five surgeries. “It feels like inside my belly, everything was replaced. And my leg … I don’t even know. I just survived.”
Another patient, a delivery driver named Shahram Nourmohammadi, said he was making a delivery when “something blew up right in front” of him at an intersection.
“I realised my head was bleeding, I touched it and saw blood on my hand,” he told the AP. “Then, someone offered to take me to the hospital.”
Iran’s health ministry says at least 430 people have been killed and more than 3,500 injured in the Israeli strikes so far.
Iran launches new wave of attacks on Israel: Report
Mehr news, Iranian state television is reporting that Tehran has launched a new wave of attacks on Israel.
The nature of the attack is unclear at this time.
We will bring you more on this as it develops.
Nuclear complex in Isfahan has been targeted again: IAEA
A large nuclear complex in Isfahan has been targeted for a second time during Israel’s attacks on Iran over the past nine days, Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has said.
The IAEA said in a statement that the site in central Iran was first hit on 13 June when four buildings were damaged: the central chemical laboratory, a uranium conversion facility, a reactor fuel manufacturing plant and an enriched uranium metal processing facility under construction.
It stated that six other buildings at the same site have also been attacked: a natural and depleted uranium metal production facility that had not yet begun operations, a fuel rod production facility, as well as several other buildings.
The facilities targeted today either contained no nuclear material or small quantities of natural or low-enriched uranium, meaning any radioactive contamination is limited to the buildings that were damaged or destroyed, it said.
“Based on our analysis of the nuclear material present, we don’t see any risk of off-site contamination”, Grossi was quoted in the statement as saying.
Who has the authority to approve a US strike on Iran is a point of debate
The US Constitution says quite starkly that the US Congress has the authority to declare war.
But in practice, the US has not declared war since World War II.
Of course, there have been numerous US military strikes against foreign actors in the time since issued by presidents of both parties, and Trump certainly is leaning on his presidential power to do the same and avoid having to go to Congress first.
However, that doesn’t mean everyone in Congress is happy about it, particularly Republican Representative Thomas Massie on X, who, noting this circumstance, said, “This is not our war.”
He is the co-crafter of a resolution that would seek to bar Trump from using military action without congressional approval.
Many are seeing, though, that this is unlikely to pass, and even if it does, the authority under which it operates only stipulates that the president needs to consult with Congress.
That consultation can happen after the president authorises a military strike.
Protesters In Israel worry Iran conflict hinders return of captives in Gaza
Israeli protesters demanding that Netanyahu’s government end the war in Gaza and strike a deal to return captives held by Hamas say they fear the conflict with Iran is hindering their cause.
Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Amman, Jordan, says that the small groups of protesters that had returned to Israeli streets were asking: “Why Iran? What about the captives?”
Supporters and relatives of the captives rallied outside the headquarters of Netanyahu’s Likud party in Tel Aviv, carrying placards saying “Stop the war” and large pictures of those held by Hamas since an attack on October 7, 2023.
One protester, 61-year-old Tsipi Haitovsky, told Reuters that she did not know or care why Netanyahu had started a conflict with Iran.
“I care about one issue, and that’s the issue of the hostages,” she said.
“As far as I’m concerned, this issue is now neglected because the government of Israel and the entire world is now looking at what’s going on between Israel and Iran, and people have forgotten about the hostages.”
Trump due to arrive at White House shortly
The US president is en route to Washington after departing New Jersey, cutting a golf trip short.
Trump is set to arrive at 21:00 GMT, in about 25 minutes, to hold a meeting with his National Security Council to consider his options regarding striking Iran.
Stay here for updates.
Trump has a relatively free hand to order strikes without congressional approval
As president of the United States, Donald Trump has fairly broad authority to order military strikes if he believes that the US is being attacked, or is about to be attacked.
If conflict became sustained and substantial, then he would have to go to Congress and ask for their support in the form of an official war declaration.
But no one suggests you would need to go to Congress every time you order any sort of military strikes. Certainly, we’ve seen that kind of action carried out in the past by presidents from both parties.
What may be interesting is the question of international law on whether or not the US can carry out such attacks.
An imminent attack towards the US would give them cover under international law.
But as we heard from Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence in March, it was the assessment of the US intelligence community that Iran was not building a bomb and the supreme leader had not decided to restart the nuclear weapons programme he had suspended years earlier.
That, of course, is an assessment that Donald Trump has just said in the past 24 hours is wrong.
Thousands gather in Iraqi capital to show solidarity with Iran
Inspired by a recent call from the highest religious authority in the country, the march called on the Iraqi government to prevent Israel and its allies from using Iraqi airspace and soil to attack Iraq’s neighbours.
This comes amid escalating regional tensions and recent U.S threats against Iran’s leadership.
“We support the stance of our grand leader. We totally reject arrogance and aggression. We will win by God’s willing, not only in Iran but in Palestine, Gaza, Lebanon and Syria”, one protester told Al Jazeera.
“We call on other Arab and Muslim states to reject the aggression on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Where are they [during] this campaign against a Muslim nation? The Iranians are our neighbours and we stand by them”, said Haytham Al-Juburi, a Baghdad resident, whom we also spoke to.
What are B-2 stealth bombers, bunker buster bombs?
- “Bunker buster” is a general term for bombs designed to destroy targets located deep underground that conventional bombs cannot reach.
- The US military’s most powerful bunker buster is the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator. Weighing about 30,000 pounds (13,600 kg), including a 2,700kg (6,000-pound) warhead, this precision-guided bomb is made of high-strength steel and built to penetrate up to 200 feet (61 metres) underground before exploding.
- The B-2 Spirit, a US stealth bomber, is currently the only aircraft designed to deploy the GBU-57 and can carry two bunker buster bombs at a time.
- The US Air Force states that multiple bombs can be dropped sequentially, either by the same aircraft or by several, allowing each strike to burrow deeper and amplify the overall impact.
- Israel also operates US-made bunker busters, including the GBU-28 and BLU-109, which are typically dropped from fighter jets such as the F-15. These weapons, however, have a much shallower penetration range and are not capable of reaching extreme depths of fortified sites like Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility.
Trump under pressure from two camps as he weighs strikes on Iran
As speculation grows over the US military’s motivations for moving several B-2 stealth bombers out of the country, a political scientist says he does not believe Donald Trump has made up his mind yet on whether to strike Iran.
“Trump is under tremendous pressure from his base not to attack, but also from the Republican right to attack,” Mehran Kamrava, professor of government at Georgetown University Qatar, tells Al Jazeera.
“I think he’s listening very carefully to his military advisers.”
He said that Iran’s pledged that, if it were attacked by Washington, then all options would be on the table, would be “weighing heavily” on Trump’s mind, given the number of US military bases in the region.
But he believed that Iran would be unlikely to respond to US aggression with an attack on US bases.
“Although the rhetoric of war tends to be extreme and full of hyperbole, realistically, I’m not sure the Iranians would attack American bases,” he said. “That would definitely rally everyone around behind Donald Trump, and that would cost them dearly.”
He said it seemed that neither Israel nor Iran seemed to be clearly winning or losing the conflict, with the only real losers the civilians in both countries.
“The ultimate losers are Iranians and Israeli civilians, it’s not necessarily the militaries. I think they can fight each other almost indefinitely,” he said.
“But certainly this is not the quick and decisive victory that Israeli military commanders seem to have thought it would be.”
Two killed in southern Gaza
Our colleagues at Al Jazeera Arabic, citing a source at Nasser Medical Complex, are reporting that two Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli drone strike east of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
They also report that, according to medical sources, 41 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes across the Gaza Strip today.
Photos: Pro-Palestine protests take place in Rome, London, Berlin, Stockholm
Israel continuing strikes on Iran’s drone capabilities
The Israeli army says on X that is still carrying out strikes in Iran’s unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) array.
The army is “currently attacking unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) depots and a weapons depot in southwestern Iran, in the Bandar Abbas area”, it said.
Earlier, Israel said that Iran had launched about 40 drones towards its territory in its latest attack.
‘Tulsi Gabbard is telling the truth’
People are conflating enrichment with a nuclear weapon for obvious purposes, a former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, tells Al Jazeera.
He said that the US administration seems to be “hell bent on dismissing all intelligence and going ahead with what they intend to do”.
“Tulsi Gabbard is telling the truth,” he said, referring to Trump saying his director of national intelligence was “wrong” when she testified that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.
“The intelligence community, no matter how bad it has been on Ukraine and other issues, has stayed firm on a judgment made unanimously … in November 2007, that Iran stopped working on a nuclear weapon at the end of 2003”, he noted.
Israeli strike on Tehran kills bodyguard of slain Hezbollah chief: Report
A member of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah was killed in an Israeli air strike on Tehran alongside a member of an Iran-aligned Iraqi armed group, according to a senior Lebanese security source, speaking to Reuters, and the Iraqi group.
The source identified the Hezbollah member as Abu Ali Khalil, who had served as a bodyguard for Hezbollah’s slain chief Hassan Nasrallah. The source said Khalil had been on a religious pilgrimage to Iraq when he met up with a member of the Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada group.
They travelled together to Tehran and were both killed in an Israeli strike there, along with Khalil’s son, the senior security source said. Hezbollah has not joined in Iran’s air strikes against Israel from Lebanon.
Witnesses in Beirut told Al Jazeera that small arms fire, including tracer rounds, were seen emanating from Dahiyeh, Beirut’s southern suburbs, a typical sign of mourning. Nasrallah was killed in an Israeli aerial attack on Beirut’s southern suburbs in September.
Kataeb Sayyed Al-Shuhada published a statement confirming that both the head of its security unit and Khalil had been killed in an Israeli strike.
Israel and Iran have been trading strikes for nine consecutive days since Israel launched attacks on Iran, saying Tehran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran has said it does not seek nuclear weapons.
Five killed in Gaza City
Wafa is reporting that five Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli air strike targeting Gaza City’s Tuffah district.
More than 30 Palestinians have been killed today in Israeli attacks across the Gaza Strip, with almost a dozen killed while seeking aid.
Cyprus arrests UK man over suspected terror plot, Israel says Iran responsible
Police in Cyprus say they have arrested a UK man on suspicion of “terror-related” offences and espionage, with Israel saying it had thwarted an Iranian attack on Israelis on the island.
A court in Cyprus ordered that the man, who wasn’t identified, be detained for eight days pending further investigations, news agencies reported.
Police would not comment further on the man’s arrest for national security reasons.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said in a post on X that a plot by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to attack Israelis in Cyprus had been foiled, “thanks to the activity of the Cypriot security authorities, in cooperation with Israeli security services”.
The UK’s Foreign Office confirmed that UK officials were in contact with Cyprus “regarding the arrest of a British man”.
The Israeli military says it has attacked Iranian F14 jets
In its latest war update, it says that an Israeli aircraft attacked three Iranian F14 fighter jets in central Iran.
The Israeli military said that, in addition, Israeli fighter jets are currently attacking military infrastructure in central Iran.
Air defences activated in Iranian city of Isfahan
Iranian media is reporting that air defences have been activated in the central Iranian city of Isfahan to counter an Israeli drone attack.
Trump, Netanyahu want a ‘controllable and not free Iran’
Iran could “easily become the hegemonic power in the region in a matter of a few years”, Professor Lorenzo Kamel, an assistant professor of global history and history in the Middle East and North Africa at the University of Turin, tells Al Jazeera.
Iran has the second-largest oil reserves in the world, the third-largest gas reserves, and approximately 90 million inhabitants, which creates a very strong internal market he said.
The potential of its oil and gas industry means that Trump and Netanyahu want a “controllable Iran, and not a free Iran”, Kamel explained.
This is not the first time the US had acted to control oil production, he noted, including the events of 1953, when the CIA, along with the UK’s MI6, orchestrated the overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who had moved to nationalise Iran’s oil industry from the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
Iranian flags flown in large pro-Palestinian rally in London
Marchers in a huge pro-Palestinian rally in London waved Iranian flags, as they called urgent aid to be sent to Gaza and for Israel to stop bombing Iran.
Thousands of people took part in the march through central London, which ended with speeches in Whitehall from figures including independent MP Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of the governing Labour party, and pop singer Paloma Faith.
Independent MP Zarah Sultana told the crowd: “This isn’t complicated, it’s not a conflict, it’s not self defence. It is colonisation, it is domination, it is genocide.”
Settlers attack village near Ramallah: Report
Wafa, citing local sources, is reporting that settlers under the protection of Israeli forces have attacked the village of Deir Jarir, east of Ramallah.
The Palestinian news agency said local residents confronted the settlers to repel the attack and that Israeli forces fired live ammunition and stun grenades at the residents. No injuries were reported.
The occupied West Bank is home to more than 3 million Palestinians who live under Israeli military rule with the Palestinian Authority governing in limited areas.
Israel has so far built more than 100 settlements across the West Bank, which are home to about 500,000 settlers.
Settlers are Israeli citizens living illegally on private Palestinian land in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
Could movement of American B-2 bombers signal a US attack is on the way?
I’ve been speaking to an expert about the recent movements of US assets, and what they could potentially signal.
As we reported earlier, two B-2 stealth bombers have moved from their base in Missouri. We understand these have refuelled in Hawaii before moving on.
They could go to Guam and base themselves there, and that would still put them within reach of Iran by using refuelling planes they’ve brought with them.
Or they could go to the base in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which takes them much closer to Iran and would make military and diplomatic sense.
These are the bombers that have the capability of carrying the 30,000-pound [about 13,607-kg] bombs, the bunker buster bomb that would potentially be used to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
So there are a couple of scenarios that this expert has described to me in terms of how this could play out.
One is that they base themselves there in Diego Garcia, which wouldn’t be unusual, just to add that little bit of threat. The reason they would pick Diego Garcia is that Arab countries wouldn’t want any attack to be launched from their country because that would drag them into the war.
Alternatively, given that these bombers are travelling with refuelling tankers, there’s also the possibility, albeit a very small one, that this could be the start of the US attack on Iran.
Add to this the fact that Donald Trump has cut short a golfing trip to return to Washington for a National Security Council meeting tonight, and has another planned on Sunday.
It could be that they’ll be reviewing plans and deciding what options they have.
Or it could be, according to the expert I spoke with, that they will be following the attack, because it will take some time for the aircraft to get over Iran.
It’s clear when Trump says he will make a decision on whether to attack Iran within two weeks, that that’s the outer limit of when he will decide.
It could be that the decision’s already been made. Perhaps we might get more clarity after the National Security Council meeting
There is a sense in Gaza that Israel is taking advantage of media focus on Iran-Israel conflict
For the past three hours, the entire Gaza Strip has been in a telecommunications blackout due to the ongoing deliberate attacks on the telecommunications division.
There is also a sense that the Israeli army is taking advantage of the diverted attention away from Gaza to carry out more deadly attacks on Palestinians.
At food distribution centres, there has been a daily routine, a pattern of ongoing deliberate shooting and killing of aid seekers.
There’s also the drone attacks. A recent one in the city of Khan Younis killed three people from the same family.
We were at al-Shifa Hospital to pay a visit for our field cameraman, whose mother was critically injured from yesterday evening’s drone attacks.
The hospital remains in a dire condition, with a minimal level of medical care available due to the acute shortage of medical supplies.
We are talking about a health complex that has been reduced to a single department, an emergency ward serving thousands of people.
US begins assisted departure flights for Americans in Israel
The US has started evacuating assisted departure flights from Israel to repatriate Americans wishing to leave amid the conflict with Iran, the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, says.
He urged US citizens and lawful permanent residents in Israel and the West Bank, who wanted help from the government to return home, to complete a form on a government website.
The US is also using cruise ships to evacuate its citizens.
Death toll in today’s Israeli attacks on Gaza rises
Here is your reminder that, in parallel with Israel’s constant attacks on Iran, and its periodic attacks on Lebanon, it is continuing to kill tens of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip daily.
More than 30 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since midnight today, medical sources tell our team on the ground. At least 11 of those were killed while waiting for aid.
Here is a breakdown of the death toll by location:
- 16 people have been killed in south Gaza.
- 5 in central Gaza.
- 5 in Gaza City, in the Shujayea and Zeitoun neighborhoods.
- 5 in were killed in an air strike that targeted a group of people in the Tuffah neighborhood in east Gaza City.
Today’s Iranian drone barrage just latest attack on Israel
Israel has signalled that its campaign may take longer to achieve its objectives than originally indicated. So, what damage is it sustaining from Iran in return?
On Saturday, there have been no missiles so far, but at least 40 drones were sent from Iran, with at least one of those infiltrating Israeli airspace. Israel says some fires were caused by falling debris.
Israel says, since the start of this fighting, that some 450 missiles have been fired from Iran and more than 400 drones.
It says that 5-10 percent of those missiles get through its defence systems, and that it allows some of them through deliberately. That’s because they know they’re going to fall on open ground, so they don’t want to waste interceptor weapons on them.
Nevertheless, 25 people have been killed, and hundreds wounded so far, according to official Israeli statistics.
If Bushehr is hit you might get an ‘accident on the scale of Fukushima’
It would be very dangerous if the Bushehr facility, which contains two large reactors, one of which is still under construction, were bombed, Robert Kelly, a former IAEA inspector and distinguished fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, tells Al Jazeera.
“If it were hit with a bomb or the cooling systems were interrupted, you might get an accident on the scale of Fukushima, where the reactor would melt down inside its building and maybe release small amounts of gas into the environment”, he said, adding that nobody was killed at Fukushima, and the radiation “didn’t go very far”.
“What people don’t seem to be understanding is that Bushehr is a town, and if somebody attacks the town, it may not be the reactor, he explained.
He also said Moscow would take issue with a strike on either reactor at the Russian-built Bushehr facility.
Yemen’s Houthis say they will target US ships if Washington strikes Iran
Yemen’s Houthi rebels will target US ships in the Red Sea if Washington gets involved in Israel’s attacks on Iran, the group’s military spokesperson says.
Yemeni state media reported the statement, which the spokesperson said reaffirmed the group’s firm stance against “Zionist aggression” directed at any Arab or Islamic country.
Since 2023, the Houthis have launched attacks on Israel and shipping in the Red Sea in what they say is support for Palestinians in Gaza.
In May, the US and the Houthis agreed to a ceasefire in which neither side would target the other.
Trump is set to attend a meeting of the National Security Council
According to the US military, a number of aircraft carriers moving into the region are doing so on a normal rotation or to relieve those already there.
However, in the last 24 hours, it has been reported that two B-2 stealth bombers have moved from the US, from their base in Missouri, to Guam in the Pacific, with the intention of moving to the base in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
So why is this important? Well, Diego Garcia puts them within one refuelling stop of hitting Iran.
And the B-2 stealth bombers are really the only planes that can carry the so-called bunker buster bombs, which would target Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Here’s a thing for Donald Trump to consider. Experts are saying that even the bunker buster bombs will not be able to penetrate deep enough into the mountains to inflict any real damage on Iran’s nuclear facilities there.
So, he will consider this when he flies back to hold a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) at the White House and will look at his options.
Qatar’s PM meets Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi
Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani has met Iran’s foreign minister on the sidelines of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation summit.
Sheikh Mohammed discussed with Abbas Araghchi “the continued Israeli aggression against the territory of the sisterly Republic of Iran”.
The Foreign Ministry described Israel’s action as a “flagrant violation of Iran’s sovereignty and security, and a clear breach of the principles of international law”.
Qatar’s prime minister stressed the need to “de-escalate tensions and resolve disputes”.
Photos: Pro-Palestine protests across Europe
