Live Updates: Europe Pushes for De-Escalation After Nearly 1 Week of War
European officials, who have been effectively sidelined, are trying to exert limited leverage to end the war between Israel and Iran. The efforts came as both countries traded more attacks.
Tehran
Air defense systems over the Iranian capital.
Obtained by Agence France-Presse
Beersheba, Israel
Soroka Medical Center after an Iranian missile strike on Thursday.
Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
Beersheba
The hospital after the strike.
Reuters
Khondab, Iran
Smoke from an Israelistrike rises above the Arak nuclear facility in Iran.
European officials are making a diplomatic push to de-escalate the conflict between Israel and Iran after nearly a week of deadly fighting, even as Israel’s defense minister warned on Thursday that the country’s military would intensify its strikes on “strategic targets” in Iran.
After days of back-channel discussions, the Europeans, who have been effectively sidelined since the war started, are now trying to exert what limited leverage they have as weapons suppliers or potential peacemakers to try to end the war.
At talks in Geneva on Friday, they are expected to urge the Iranians to return to negotiations, even as President Trump mulls the possibility of American military action against Iran. The meeting would be the first formal gathering between Iranian and Western officials since Israel began attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The diplomatic efforts came as the Israeli military launched a wave of strikes on Thursday against targets in Iran, including a nuclear complex. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said the country would step up its attacks on Iran to “remove the threats to the state of Israel,” after a barrage of Iranian missiles hit several locations, including a major hospital complex in southern Israel.
Shlomi Codish, the director general of the Soroka Medical Center in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, said that the complex’s old surgical building had been directly hit, adding that the departments in the building had been evacuated in recent days. No one was killed, but the hospital was treating several patients for minor injuries. Rubble and shattered glass blanketed the surrounding area.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, claimed the attack “eliminated” an Israeli military command center, and said it had “caused superficial damage to a small section” of the hospital. Iranian officials offered no evidence for the claim that the country’s forces were targeting military facilities.
The threat from Mr. Katz came after the Israeli military launched a wave of attacks against targets in Iran, including nuclear sites.
The Israeli military said it struck a number of targets in Iran — including an inactive reactor at Arak, to prevent the site from producing material for nuclear weapons, and a nuclear production facility in the Natanz region. Iranian state media reported that Israeli warplanes struck the nuclear facility at Arak and said that there was no serious damage.
The latest exchange of fire came as uncertainty hung over the Middle East about whether or not Mr. Trump would send American forces to join Israel’s sweeping campaign against Iran’s nuclear program and military. “I have ideas as to what to do,” Mr. Trump said during an Oval Office event on Wednesday. He added, “I like to make a final decision one second before it’s due, you know, because things change.”
Here’s what else to know:
Potential U.S. involvement: Israel has pressed Mr. Trump to use powerful American weapons to attack Iran’s underground nuclear sites, and the prospect of American involvement in the war has added to fears that it could spiral into a wider conflagration in the Middle East. The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has warned that the United States would suffer “irreparable” harm if it joined the Israeli campaign.
Hospital attack: At the Soroka Medical Center in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, melted plastic and burned wiring in the ruins of the building hit by an Iranian missile filled the air with a foul smell. The hospital said the building had been largely evacuated in recent days, and that it was treating several patients with minor injuries. It is the first Israeli hospital to be hit directly since the war with Iran began last Friday, the Israeli military said. Read more ›
Missile interceptors: Israel has a world-leading missile interception system, but as the war drags on, Israel is firing interceptors faster than it can produce them. That has raised questions within the Israeli security establishment about whether the country will run low on air defense missiles before Iran uses up its ballistic arsenal, according to eight current and former officials.
Reporting from Jerusalem
Israel’s tourism ministry says it has registered 22,000 tourists seeking to leave the country. Israel’s airspace has been closed since the fighting started nearly a week ago, other than for special flights dedicated to bringing back Israelis stranded abroad. Those flights began operating yesterday but they are not yet authorized to fly passengers out for security reasons. Of the roughly 40,000 tourists who were in Israel at the start of the war, about 32,000 remain in the country, the ministry said in a statement, adding that some had left Israel via land crossings with Jordan and Egypt.
It has now been 24 hours since Iran imposed a near-total internet shutdown, cutting off most Iranians from the outside world, according to NetBlocks, an internet monitoring group. The blackout is the most severe recorded since the 2019 protests that swept the country, the group said.
Israel’s defense minister visited the scene of an Iranian missile strike today where he said that a “dictator” like Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “cannot continue to exist.”
“We determined that the war’s objectives are harming the nuclear program and removing the existential threat to Israel, and within that – the IDF has been instructed and knows that to achieve all objectives, this man should not continue to exist,” he added. Asked if the Israeli military’s orders had changed, a military official said its main goals were still to target Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs but declined to talk about future targets.
Emergency workers at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, Israel, on Thursday.Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
Large slabs of concrete were all that remained from what was once the top floor of the hospital building. Rubble and shattered glass blanketed the surrounding area, even hundreds of feet away. Melted plastic and burned wiring filled the air with a foul smell.
Hours after an Iranian missile hit part of the Soroka Medical Center, a major hospital complex in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Thursday, firefighters brought the blaze under control while rescue teams scoured the site and medical teams transferred patients to other facilities.
“There was a massive boom and blast wave,” said Dr. Vadim Bankovich, head of the Orthopedics Department, whose office faces the floor of the old surgical building that took a direct hit.
Shlomi Codish, the director general of the hospital, said that much of the building had been evacuated in recent days. Mr. Codish said that all patients and medical staff had been in protected spaces when the missile struck, and that the hospital was treating several patients with minor injuries.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed it had targeted Israeli military facilities next to the hospital, according to the Fars news agency, an Iranian outlet affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards. It offered no evidence for the claim, and Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the claim.
When he received an alert on his cell phone warning him of incoming missile fire, Dr. Bankovich said he and his team rushed to a windowless safe space, where patients at his department were already gathering. After leaving the safe space 10 minutes later, he found cabinets toppled, ceiling panels scattered on the ground, and medical devices shattered.
“Windows blew out everywhere, even those reinforced with iron in the protected rooms,” said Dr. Bankovich, referring to the hospital’s safe rooms. He and his team had been sitting 100 feet away from the site of the missile strike. Now, the view from his office is one of destruction.
Dr. Bankovich said that his department would have to be shut down because of the damage.
“We felt the warmth of the blazes,” he said.
The strike on Soroka Medical Center came on the seventh day of the war, and was the first time a hospital has been directly hit since Iran began launching missiles and drones at Israel, in retaliation for Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and senior military commanders.
In recent days, Iran has scaled back its missile fire, and the Israeli military has eased some of its wartime directives for civilians, signaling that it believes the threat from Iran’s missile fire has diminished. But the strike on the hospital underscored that Iran can still inflict serious damage within Israel, despite the Israeli military’s strikes on missile launchers in Iran and its advanced air defense systems, which have intercepted most projectiles midair.
Since the war began on Friday, Iranian attacks have hit several population centers — including high-rise residential buildings and a research institute — killing at least 24 people and injuring more than 800, according to Israeli health authorities.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel vowed to avenge the strike on the hospital. “We will make the tyrants from Tehran pay the full price,” he said in a post on X.
Standing in a staff parking lot carpeted with rubble and shattered glass, as damaged cars were towed away, Avichay Amrami, 38, a hospital attendant, recalled how “people were running in different directions after the strike. There was chaos.”
Concerned that the hospital building was at risk of collapse, Mr. Amrami and his co-workers immediately began evacuating patients to safer areas.
“Luckily, the floor that was hit was empty,” Mr. Amrami said.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said talks between Iranian and Western officials were scheduled for Friday in Geneva.Hassan Ammar/Associated Press
Foreign ministers from Germany, France and Britain, along with the European Union’s foreign policy chief, are scheduled to hold talks on Friday with Iranian representatives over the escalating war between Israel and Iran.
They would be the first formal talks between Iranian and Western officials since Israel and Iran began exchanging strikes last week. But Israeli and American officials will not take part, leaving European officials under no illusions that the meeting will have any immediate influence on the war.
The meeting is set to be held in Geneva, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, was quoted as saying by IRNA, an Iranian state news agency.
A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said the meeting would focus on “the nuclear issue and the latest developments in the region.”
As Iran and Israel continue to trade strikes, violence persisted in the Gaza Strip. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Israeli aircraft struck tents sheltering displaced people near its operational medical facility, Al-Quds Hospital, in southwest Gaza City. The organization reported five people were killed and 30 others were injured in the attack. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
China reporter
China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, spoke to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia today to discuss the war in the Middle East, according to Chinese state media. It reported that Xi warned of the danger of attacking Iranian nuclear facilities and put forth four points to address the crisis. They included calling on “the parties in the conflict, especially Israel” to agree to a cease-fire; ensuring the safety of civilians; opening talks to resolve the crisis; and having “major countries with special influence on the parties to the conflict” – an oblique reference to the United States – to work toward de-escalating the situation, “rather than the opposite.”
Long lines have formed at gas stations in Tehran this week, as residents look to stock up after Israel launched a massive military assault on Iran.Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
When Shahnaz, a retired professor who lives in Tehran, went out on Wednesday, she found deserted streets, empty bakeries and a city in turmoil. At one supermarket, workers told her they were out of half their inventory. At another, she said she was told that cooking oil was being rationed to one bottle per customer.
The Iranian capital, home to 10 million people, has been turned upside down since Israel launched its military campaign last week. A near-total internet blackout descended on Iran on Wednesday evening, rendering communication with the outside world almost impossible. But before things connectivity was cut off, voice notes and text messages from residents painted an increasingly dire picture of life in the city.
Huge lines of traffic have been snaking out of Tehran for days as people try to flee the city; on Wednesday the lines to get gas were actually shorter than on previous days because of the exodus, according to Shahnaz, who asked that her last name not be used because of concern over reprisals from the authorities.
At least 224 people have been killed in Iran since the start of Israel’s military assault, according to the Iranian health ministry. Israel has said it is trying to strike locations and people connected to Iran’s government and its nuclear program, and does not target Iranian civilians.
In recent days, Israel has expanded its attacks on the capital itself. The Israeli military on Monday ordered residents of an upscale neighborhood, District 3, to leave. Hours later, President Trump told the city’s entire population to “immediately evacuate.” On Tuesday, Israel issued another evacuation order for another area of Tehran.
Even the city’s landscape has been affected. Smoke obscured a mountain that towers over northern Tehran and fires still burned at the Shahran oil depot in the west of the city for days after it was hit.
Smoke from the Shahran oil depot, northwest of Tehran, after it was hit by an Israeli strike, on Monday.Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“The atmosphere in Tehran is terrifying,” said Nima, 44, a former bookseller who also asked that his last name not be used.
Nima said he has hunkered down with his family because he did not know anyone to stay without outside Tehran, and said that a dearth of trustworthy media reports has added to his unease.
But his larger fear, Nima said, was that the United States could join Israel in its attack on her country. “I’m deeply uncertain about what this would mean for us here,” he said.
Iranian representatives will meet with delegations from Britain, France, Germany and the European Union on Friday in Geneva, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in an interview with IRNA, an Iranian state news agency. A spokesman for the foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said the meeting would be held to discuss “the nuclear issue and the latest developments in the region.”
Tom Barrack, a U.S. envoy and close ally of President Trump, visited Beirut on Thursday and met with senior Lebanese officials. At a news conference, he warned against Hezbollah joining the fighting: “I can say on behalf of President Trump, which he has been very clear in expressing, as has special envoy Witkoff — that would be a very, very, very bad decision,” he said. Still reeling from its recent war with Israel, Hezbollah has for now indicated that it does not intend to intervene, according to senior Lebanese officials and Western diplomats.
Anwar Amro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Iranian state media reported that Israeli warplanes struck the nuclear facility at Arak at around 6 a.m. Thursday, but said that there was no serious damage, no casualties and no radiation reported in the wake of the strike. The report, from the Tasnim News Agency, quoted several Iranian officials reassuring Iranians that there was no reason to worry about the strikes. The Israeli military said earlier that it was conducting strikes on a number of targets in Iran, including an inactive reactor at Arak.
Reporting from Haifa, Israel
The International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations watchdog, said in a post on social media that it had information that a “heavy water research reactor, under construction, was hit” at Arak. “It was not operational and contained no nuclear material, so no radiological effects.”
Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful regional ally, said on Thursday that any assassination of Iran’s supreme leader would have “grave consequences,” denouncing recent U.S. and Israeli threats as “foolish and reckless.” But the Lebanese militant group again stopped short of vowing a military response — a sign, analysts say, that it may be too weakened by its recent war with Israel to intervene in the escalating conflict. The Israeli military said overnight that it had killed a Hezbollah commander in southern Lebanon. In a statement, the Israeli military said the group was attempting “to increase its readiness to strike the State of Israel under the cover of the war with Iran.”
Smoke is still billowing and there’s a potent smell of fire here at the Soroka Medical Center after the Iranian missile strike. An entire floor of the building that was hit has completely collapsed, and the surrounding structures have shattered windows.
Natan Odenheimer/The New York Times
Reporting from Beersheba, Israel
Firefighting teams have managed to bring the blaze under control, and rescue teams are searching for anyone who might have been trapped and injured.
Natan Odenheimer/The New York Times
Reporting from Jerusalem
The casualty count in Israel from the latest barrage of missiles from Iran is rising. Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service said at least 44 people sustained minor injures from shrapnel and blast trauma. And more were injured running for shelter.
Reporting from Beersheba, Israel
Clouds of smoke are still rising above Soroka Medical Center, a hospital in southern Israel that was directly hit by an Iranian missile over two hours ago, highlighting the extent of the explosion.
Smoke billowed from the Soroka Medical Center after its old surgical building was directly hit, according to the hospital’s director general.Leo Correa/Associated Press
An Iranian missile struck a large hospital in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Thursday, causing serious damage.
The missile strike on the Soroka Medical Center was the first direct hit on a hospital since Iran started launching missiles at Israel last week in response to Israel’s attacks on its nuclear infrastructure and senior military leadership.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed that Iran had targeted Israeli military facilities near a hospital, according to the Fars news agency, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, though it offered no evidence to support that.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, claimed in a post on social media that the attack had “eliminated” an Israeli military command center, and said it had “caused superficial damage to a small section” of the hospital. Iranian officials offered no evidence for the claim that the country’s forces were targeting military facilities.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether a military headquarters was hit.
The attack came as part of a large barrage of Iranian missiles that also caused damage in other parts of Israel, including to tall buildings in Ramat Gan and apartment structures in Holon, both cities near Tel Aviv. More than 30 people suffered minor injuries in Ramat Gan, according to Zaki Heller, a spokesman for Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service. In Holon, Mr. Heller said, 18 were wounded, including three people seriously.
Photos and videos taken inside the hospital and shared by the Israeli fire and rescue service showed fires, broken glass and ceiling panels scattered on the floor, and damaged elevators. Shlomi Codish, the director general of the hospital, said that the old surgical building had been directly hit, adding that the departments in the building had been evacuated in recent days.
Mr. Codish said that all patients and medical staff had been in protected spaces when the missile struck the building. The hospital said its emergency department was treating several patients with mild injuries.
The strike on the hospital highlighted how the fighting is endangering civilians in Israel and Iran. At least 24 people have been killed in Israel by Iranian attacks and at least 224 people have been killed in Iran by Israeli strikes since the war started, according to each government. Some of those killed in Iran were senior military commanders.
It also illustrated that while Israel’s air defenses have prevented the overwhelming majority of Iran’s missiles from causing serious damage, some have managed to evade interception systems.
Responding to the strikes on Thursday, the Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, said Iran was committing “war crimes.” Under international law, it is forbidden to target medical facilities except in rare cases. During the war in Gaza, Israel has been widely condemned for repeatedly raiding and damaging health facilities that it says are used by militants.
Video broadcast on Israeli TV channels showed smoke billowing from the hospital and smoke-filled corridors.
Lia Lapidot contributed reporting to this article.
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to increase “the intensity of the attacks on strategic targets in Iran and governmental targets in Tehran.” Stepping up Israel’s attacks, Katz said, was meant “to remove the threats to the state of Israel and to destabilize the ayatollahs’ regime.”
Reporting from Tel Aviv
The Soroka Medical Center said it was treating several people for light injuries after the direct hit. The strike had a “significant impact” on a building used for surgeries, the hospital said. Most of the people in the building had been evacuated as a precaution before the strike, according to Kan, Israel’s national broadcaster.
Leo Correa/Associated Press
The Israeli military said the targets of its latest airstrikes in Iran included an inactive reactor at Arak, to prevent the site from producing material for nuclear weapons. The military said it also struck an Iranian nuclear facility in the Natanz region.
Reporting from Jerusalem
Israeli TV channels are airing smoke billowing from Soroka Hospital in the southern city of Beersheba after the medical facility was hit by an Iranian missile fired at Israel this morning.
Soroka Hospital in the southern city of Beersheba said the medical center sustained wide-scale damage and called on the public not to come to the hospital. It said it was assessing the damage.
John Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Reporting from Jerusalem
Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service said a man was seriously wounded and 22 others were lightly injured in the latest barrage of missiles fired from Iran at Israel.
Reporting from Jerusalem
The latest missiles from Iran struck Soroka Hospital, a large medical facility in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, the Israeli military said. Soroka is the first hospital in Israel to be hit directly since the war started seven days ago.
Japan’s defense minister said Thursday that his country is preparing to send military aircraft to evacuate Japanese citizens who may be stranded in Israel and Iran. Japan’s Self-Defense Force will send two transport aircraft to Djibouti, which will serve as the hub for the operation. He said there are currently 1,000 Japanese nationals in Israel and 280 in Iran.
The Israeli military said on Thursday morning that missiles had been launched from Iran toward Israel. It called on the public to enter protected spaces such as communal shelters or safe rooms until further notice.
A near-total internet blackout that began in Iran on Wednesday evening essentially prevented Iranians from communicating with the outside world, as Israeli military strikes hit the country for a sixth day.
Connectivity to the global internet dropped to about 3 percent in Iran at around 5:30 p.m. local time, according to data from the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis project at the Georgia Institute of Technology that monitors internet outages worldwide. There was a short-lived recovery a few hours later, followed by a quick return to a near-complete shutdown, the data showed.
The shutdown appeared to be the result of an internal decision rather than a consequence of an Israeli strike. Earlier in the week, the Tasnim news agency, affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, had said that Iran would disconnect from the global internet on Tuesday night, and that Iranians could still use a national internet service that allows people to message on government-approved platforms.
Experts and citizens say that the government is likely throttling internet access to prevent people from sharing information about where Israel has struck and for fear of Israeli cyberattacks.
Residents in Iran have reported severe disruptions to internet and phone services since the war began. Internet connectivity deteriorated slightly, by about ten percent, in the first five days following Israel’s initial strikes on Iran last Friday.
Iranian officials told The New York Times on Tuesday that services had been restricted in an effort to combat Israeli operatives that they said were still carrying out covert operations. The claim could not be independently verified.
Since the blackout started, reaching people by phone inside the country has become extremely difficult and many news media sites have stopped updating. The disruptions may be affecting residents’ ability to see evacuation notices, including ones that the Israeli military has posted on social media ahead of strikes inside Iran.
Iran’s state broadcaster on Tuesday urged people to delete WhatsApp from their phones, claiming that the messaging app was collecting user information to aid Israel. WhatsApp said the allegations were false.
There has been a near-total internet blackout in Iran for over 12 hours, NetBlocks, a connectivity monitor, said late Wednesday. There have been severe internet disruptions and cyberattacks in Iran since the war started. Press TV, a state news outlet, said Iran was taking steps to prevent Israel from using its networks for intelligence and military operations.
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