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      Russia Stands Aside as Israel Attacks Iran

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      Analysts say the Kremlin is prioritizing its own war against Ukraine, as well as its relations with Gulf nations that don’t want to see a stronger Iran.Iran aided the Kremlin with badly needed drones in the first year of its Ukraine invasion, helped Moscow build out a critical factory to make drones at home and inked a new strategic partnership treaty this year with President Vladimir V. Putin, heralding closer ties, including in defense.But five months after that treaty was signed, the government in Iran is facing a grave threat to its rule from attacks by Israel. And Russia, beyond phone calls and condemnatory statements, is nowhere to be found.Iranian nuclear facilities and energy installations have been damaged, and many of the country’s top military leaders killed, in a broad Israeli onslaught that began Friday and has since expanded, with no sign that Moscow will come to Tehran’s aid.“Russia, when it comes to Iran, must weigh the possibility of a clash with Israel and the United States, so saving Iran is obviously not worth it,” said Nikita Smagin, an expert on Russia-Iran relations. “For Russia, this is just a fact.”The situation reflects a dispassionate political calculus by Moscow, which is prioritizing its own war against Ukraine, as well as its need to maintain warm relations with other partners in the Middle East, which have helped Moscow survive Western economic sanctions, analysts say.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Choice on Israel-Iran: Help Destroy Nuclear Facility or Continue to Negotiate

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      Iranian officials have warned that U.S. participation in an attack on its facilities will imperil any chance of the nuclear disarmament deal the president insists he is still interested in pursuing.President Trump is weighing a critical decision in the four-day-old war between Israel and Iran: whether to enter the fray by helping Israel destroy the deeply buried nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo, which only America’s biggest “bunker buster,” dropped by American B-2 bombers, can reach.If he decides to go ahead, the United States will become a direct participant in a new conflict in the Middle East, taking on Iran in exactly the kind of war Mr. Trump has sworn, in two campaigns, he would avoid. Iranian officials have already warned that U.S. participation in an attack on its facilities will imperil any remaining chance of the nuclear disarmament deal that Mr. Trump insists he is still interested in pursuing.Mr. Trump had at one point encouraged his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, and possibly Vice President JD Vance, to offer to meet the Iranians, according to a U.S. official. But on Monday Mr. Trump posted on social media that “everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran,” hardly a sign of diplomatic progress.Mr. Trump also said on Monday that “I think Iran basically is at the negotiating table, they want to make a deal.” The urgency appeared to be rising. The White House announced late on Monday that Mr. Trump was leaving the Group of 7 summit early because of the situation in the Middle East.“As soon as I leave here, we’re going to be doing something,” Mr. Trump said. “But I have to leave here.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump to leave G7 summit early and return to Washington – as it happened

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      Donald Trump will leave the G7 summit early and return to Washington DC on Monday, the White House said about an hour after the president said people in Iran’s capital Tehran should evacuate immediately.Trump’s evacuation warning on Truth Social followed a warning from the Israeli defense forces issued a formal evacuation order to residents of Tehran warning them of the imminent bombing of “military infrastructure”.Trump was originally supposed to arrive back in the US in the early hours of Wednesday morning, according to people familiar with the matter.That’s it for today. My colleagues are continuing coverage of the developments in the Middle East here.Here’s what happened today:

      Donald Trump is leaving the G7 Summit early and return to Washington DC on Monday. “You probably see what I see and I have to be back as soon as I can,” Trump said in an apparent nod to the intensifying conflict in the Middle East.

      President Trump has directed national security staff to convene in the situation room, both CNN and Fox News are reporting.

      Trump says ‘everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran’ and that Iran “should have signed the ‘deal’”.

      The Republican-run Senate Finance Committee published a modified text of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that proposes Medicaid reforms and a new federal deduction for state and local taxes.

      Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met with President Trump on the sidelines of the G7 meeting on Monday to discuss import auto tariffs Washington imposed on Japan, Reuters is reporting.

      European leaders at G7 trying to bring Iran back to negotiating table. But Iran is demanding a joint ceasefire with Israel, while Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is resisting the move, and Donald Trump praised the Israeli campaign, suggesting he did not yet believe it was time to relieve the pressure on Iran.

      Britain and the United States should finalize “very soon” the implementation of a trade deal agreed last month, Keir Starmer has said ahead of a meeting with Donald Trump in Canada.

      The US justice department has asked a federal appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging race-conscious admissions at the US Naval Academy after the elite military school said it changed its policy under Donald Trump. The Naval Academy disclosed in March that it was no longer considering race or ethnicity in its admissions decisions following directives from Trump and defense secretary Pete Hegseth

      US House speaker Mike Johnson said he has postponed his planned 22 June trip to Israel to address its parliament, as an escalating battle between Israel and Iran has raised fears of a broader conflict.

      The American Bar Association has sued the Trump administration, seeking an order that would bar the White House from pursuing what the ABA called a campaign of intimidation against major law firms. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington DC, said the administration violated the US Constitution in a series of executive orders targeting law firms over their past clients and lawyers they hired.

      Minnesota shooting suspect had more than 45 names of elected officials, prosecutors say. Reuters reports that notebooks recovered from Boelter’s car, as well as the home where he had been staying, showed that he had meticulously planned the attacks for some time. He had the names and, in some cases, home addresses for more than 45 elected officials – “mostly or all Democrats” – according to an affidavit from an FBI agent.

      The suspect in the assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband this weekend drove to the homes of two other state politicians before he succeeded in killing one of the targets of his carefully planned attack, federal authorities said today.

      A federal judge has said she would issue a brief extension of an order temporarily blocking Donald Trump’s plan to bar foreign nationals from entering the US to study at Harvard University while she decides whether to issue a longer-term injunction.

      Trump once again complained about removing Russia from what was once the G8. Russia used to be a part of the exclusive club of major economies but was kicked out following its 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

      Trump says Iran wants to talk about de-escalating hostilities with Israel, and he advises that they should do so immediately “before it’s too late”.

      Iran has been urgently signaling that it seeks an end to hostilities and resumption of talks over its nuclear programs, sending messages to Israel and the US via Arab intermediaries, the Wall Street Journal reports.

      The Trump Organization has launched a self-branded mobile service and a $499 smartphone, dubbed Trump Mobile, signaling a new effort to court conservative consumers with a wireless service positioned as an alternative to major telecom providers. The new mobile venture will include call centers based in the United States and phones made in America, the organization said.
      Trump aide Alex Pfeiffer said Israeli news reports that indicate US fighter jets are participating in airstrikes on Iran are not true.“This is not true,” Pfeiffer posted on X. “American forces are maintaining their defensive posture, and that has not changed. We will defend American interests.”“You probably see what I see and I have to be back as soon as I can,” Trump said in an apparent nod to the intensifying conflict in the Middle East, when asked why he’s cutting short his G7 trip and heading back to Washington tonight.President Trump has directed national security staff to convene in the situation room, both CNN and Fox News are reporting, citing a White House official. Trump will be leaving the G7 Summit in Canada early.There are few other details available.Donald Trump will leave the G7 summit early and return to Washington DC on Monday, the White House said about an hour after the president said people in Iran’s capital Tehran should evacuate immediately.Trump’s evacuation warning on Truth Social followed a warning from the Israeli defense forces issued a formal evacuation order to residents of Tehran warning them of the imminent bombing of “military infrastructure”.Trump was originally supposed to arrive back in the US in the early hours of Wednesday morning, according to people familiar with the matter.The scientist responsible for overseeing the CDC team that collects data on COVID-19 and RSV hospitalizations resigned on Monday.Dr. Fiona Havers told colleagues in an email that she no longer had confidence the data would be used “objectively or evaluated with appropriate scientific rigor to make evidence-based vaccine policy decisions,” according to Reuters.She resigned before a planned meeting of a new vaccine panel put in place by Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. after he fired all 17 members of the CDC’s independent vaccine advisory panel. Kennedy also dropped a recommendation to get the Covid shot for healthy children and pregnant women.A Health and Human Services spokesperson told Reuters that the agency is committed to “gold standard science.”Trump says everyone should evacuate Tehran and that Iran “should have signed the ‘deal’”.“I told them to sign,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “What a shame, and waste of human life. IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he thinks he and Trump will be able to wrap up a new economic and security deal between the US and Canada within 30 days. His office did not say whether that means he had accepted Trump’s earlier emphasis on tariffs.Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he ordered the deployment of additional defensive capabilities to the Middle East over the weekend “to enhance our defensive posture in the region,” according to a statement he posted on X on Monday. He did not disclose what military capabilities he sent to the region.“Protecting U.S. forces is our top priority and these deployments are intended to enhance our defensive posture in the region,” Hegseth posted.The Republican-run Senate Finance Committee published a modified text of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act that proposes Medicaid reforms and a new federal deduction for state and local taxes.The proposed changes will now be debated by Senate Republicans.Among the proposed changes are:

      An end to the $7,500 tax credit on new electric vehicles 180 days after the law is enacted. And an end to the $4,000 used-vehicle EV tax credit 90 days after the law is passed.

      A full phase-out of solar and wind energy tax credits by 2028, but an extension of the incentive for Trump administration-favored hydropower, nuclear and geothermal energy to 2036.
      Minnesota senator Ann Rest says she is “so grateful” for the work of law enforcement after learning that the shooting suspect, Vance Boelter, was allegedly parked outside her home before going to former Rep. Melissa Hortman’s home.“I have been made aware that the shooting suspect was parked near my home early Saturday morning,” Rest said in a statement. “I am so grateful for the heroic work of the New Hope Police Department and its officers. Their quick action saved my life.I am also thankful for the work of state and local law enforcement to apprehend the suspect before he could take any more lives.While I am thankful the suspect has been apprehended, I grieve for the loss of Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and I am praying for the recovery of John and Yvette Hoffman.”At the G7 summit, Trump said a new economic deal with Canada was possible but that he wanted tariffs to be a part of it, according to Reuters.“I have a tariff concept. [Canadian Prime Minister] Mark [Carney] has a different concept … we’re going to see if we can get to the bottom of it,” Trump said when meeting Carney on the sidelines of a G7 summit in Alberta. “I’m a tariff person.”Canada is the top supplier of steel and aluminum to the United States and currently faces tariffs imposed by Trump on both metals as well as on auto exports.“We are in the middle of a discussion – we are not at the end of the discussion. Our position is that we should have no tariffs on Canadian exports to the United States,” Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to Washington, told reporters after Carney met Trump.“We will continue to talk until we find a deal that is the best deal we can achieve for Canada,” Hillman said.Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met with President Trump on the sidelines of the G7 meeting on Monday to discuss import auto tariffs Washington imposed on Japan, Reuters is reporting.Tokyo is urging Washington to drop the tariffs because they threaten to slow Japan’s economy, the Japanese government said.Ishiba wants Trump to end the 25% auto tariff he imposed on Japanese cars and a 24% reciprocal tariff paused until July 9. More

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      Iran Has Sustained Blow After Blow Since October 2023

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      Iran is often portrayed as one of the world’s most dangerous actors. But with attacks on its defenses, nuclear sites and proxy militias, Israel has exposed a compromised and weakened adversary.An airstrike on an Iranian Embassy building in Syria last year that killed several senior Iranian commanders. The assassination three months later of one of Iran’s top partners while he was visiting Tehran, the Iranian capital. The Israeli bombings of Iranian air defenses in April and October 2024. The systematic decimation or defeat of Iran’s strongest allies around the Middle East, including the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and former President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.Iran is often portrayed as one of the world’s most dangerous villains, a rogue state whose growing nuclear program and shadowy military capabilities threaten Israel, the United States and beyond. But the country has suffered blow after blow since war erupted between Israel and Hamas in October 2023, soon drawing in Hezbollah and then Iran itself.Those losses culminated on Friday in the start of an Israeli campaign that has gone after targets across Iran, crippled its air defenses and killed several of its top military commanders and a number of prominent nuclear scientists. The new round of conflict has killed hundreds of people in Iran and at least 24 in Israel.Earlier attacks and assassinations in Iran humiliated Tehran, causing recriminations among military officials and pushing it to launch retaliatory barrages against Israel. But the renewed fighting has shown, as never before, just how compromised and weak Iranian forces really are.“Iran has basically demonstrated again that it was outgunned and outsmarted again by Israel,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations.Lacking anything close to the conventional military might of Israel or the United States, its longtime enemies, Iran’s strategy for protecting itself had for years rested on the idea that the combination of its partners in the region and its own missile capabilities would be enough to deter attacks on Iranian soil.Hezbollah sat on Israel’s northern border. Iran-backed militant groups in Iraq could target American military installations there. And Tehran could launch a barrage of missiles and drones into Israel that would potentially overwhelm Israeli air defenses and shatter the country’s sense of security.Or so the thinking went.Instead, Israel demolished Hezbollah in a war on Lebanon last year, then turned the same playbook on Iran. Israeli intelligence managed to penetrate Iran so thoroughly that Israel was able to launch drone attacks on Iranian targets from inside Iran on Friday and killed some of the most senior figures in the Iranian military’s chain of command.That in turn delayed Iran’s retaliatory response, giving Israel time to prepare for Iran’s missiles, and to launch more attacks. More

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      Israel and Iran Trade Attacks as Toll From Conflict Mounts

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      The path to diplomacy appeared to narrow after officials called off talks that had been set for Sunday between Tehran and Washington on Iran’s nuclear program.Israel and Iran exchanged more missile attacks on population centers on Sunday, brushing aside international calls to halt what has quickly become the fiercest clash in decades between the two sworn enemies.The path to diplomacy appeared to narrow after officials called off talks that had been set for Sunday between Tehran and Washington on the future of Iran’s nuclear program.In unleashing a series of powerful strikes starting on Friday, Israel said its goal was to disable Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. It appeared unlikely that this has been accomplished, experts say, and with each side vowing to pursue attacks, civilians in both countries were seeking shelter where they could.A semi-official Iranian news agency, ISNA, released photos of what it said was the aftermath of an Israeli strike Sunday that hit a residential neighborhood in central Tehran. The photos showed some people fleeing, carrying young children. Two men could be seen lying on the pavement bleeding as people tried to tend to their injuries. And a woman stood crying as she held an infant whose clothes and feet were covered in blood.Noa Shkuri, a resident in Rehovot, Israel, after her home was struck by a missile on Sunday morning.Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York TimesThe skies of Tehran, the Iranian capital, were aglow with flames from burning fuel reservoirs overnight after Israeli fighter jets bombarded the country’s vital oil and gas industries.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump vetoed Israeli plan to kill Iran’s supreme leader – report

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      President Donald Trump vetoed an Israeli plan in recent days to kill Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, two US officials told Reuters on Sunday.“Have the Iranians killed an American yet? No. Until they do we’re not even talking about going after the political leadership,” said one of the sources, a senior US administration official.The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said top US officials have been in constant communications with Israeli officials in the days since Israel launched a massive attack on Iran in a bid to halt its nuclear program.They said the Israelis reported that they had an opportunity to kill the top Iranian leader, but Trump waved them off of the plan.The officials would not say whether Trump himself delivered the message. But Trump has been in frequent communications with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.When asked about Reuters report, Netanyahu, in an interview on Sunday with Fox News Channel’s Special Report With Bret Baier, said: “There’s so many false reports of conversations that never happened, and I’m not going to get into that.”“But I can tell you, I think that we do what we need to do, we’ll do what we need to do. And I think the United States knows what is good for the United States,” Netanyahu said.Trump has been holding out hope for a resumption of US-Iranian negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program. Talks that had been scheduled for Sunday in Oman were canceled as a result of the strikes.Trump told Reuters on Friday that “we knew everything” about the Israeli strikes. More

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      Diplomacy With Iran Is Damaged, Not Dead

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      The push to do a deal on the country’s nuclear program could be revived, even after the Israeli strikes scuppered the latest round of talks.If war is diplomacy by other means, diplomacy is never finished. While Israel and Iran are in the midst of what could be an extended war that could spread, the possibility of renewed talks to deal with Iran’s expanding nuclear program should not be discounted.Negotiations are on hold while the war continues, and the future of diplomacy is far from clear. Iran will feel compelled to respond to Israel, and the Israeli campaign could last for days or weeks. For now Washington does not appear to be doing anything to press both sides to stop the violence and start talking again.But the Iranians say they still want a deal, as does President Trump. The shape of future talks will inevitably depend on when and how the fighting stops.“We are prepared for any agreement aimed at ensuring Iran does not pursue nuclear weapons,” the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told foreign diplomats in Tehran on Sunday. But his country would not accept any deal that “deprives Iran of its nuclear rights,” he added, including the right to enrich uranium, albeit at low levels that can be used for civilian purposes.Mr. Araghchi said Israel did not attack to pre-empt Iran’s race toward a bomb, which Iran denies trying to develop, but to derail negotiations on a deal that Mr. Netanyahu opposes.The attacks are “an attempt to undermine diplomacy and derail negotiations,” he continued, a view shared by various Western analysts. “It is entirely clear that the Israeli regime does not want any agreement on the nuclear issue,” he said. “It does not want negotiations and does not seek diplomacy.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Know About the New Head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps

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      Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi was appointed to lead the group after his predecessor, Gen. Hossein Salami, was killed in an Israeli airstrike.Iran named Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi as the new head of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps after his predecessor, Gen. Hossein Salami, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Friday.Here’s what to know about the new leader of a group created to defend Iran’s Islamic system.Brig. Gen. Vahidi is best known outside Iran as a suspect in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and wounded hundreds more.Prosecutors in Argentina have issued arrest warrants for five Iranian officials, including General Vahidi, for “conceiving, planning, financing and executing” the attack. Interpol issued an alert, known as a Red Notice, in 2007 to inform the international law enforcement community that a national arrest warrant was outstanding.General Vahidi was born in 1958 in the central Iranian city of Shiraz. During the Iranian revolution in 1979, he had been studying electronic engineering at Shiraz University and around that time he joined the I.R.G.C., as well as revolutionary committees, according to Iranian media. He later received a Ph.D. in strategic studies.During the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, which began in 1980, he held a number of senior security roles. He went on to lead the I.R.G.C.’s Quds Force, which specializes in intelligence and directs operations outside Iran, from 1988 until 1998.From 2005, General Vahidi served as deputy defense minister and he was made defense minister in 2009, holding the post until 2013. He was also Iran’s interior minister for three years until last August.The United States, the European Union, Canada and Britain have imposed sanctions on General Vahidi for human rights violations. More