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      in Elections

      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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      in US Politics

      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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      in Elections

      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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      in Elections

      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

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      In Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv, Iran’s missile barrages killed at least six people.

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      Most of those confirmed dead were women and children, according to the authorities, although they have yet to name the victims publicly.Orange-vested emergency workers were clambering over rubble on Sunday morning in the central Israeli coastal city of Bat Yam in the wake of an Iranian missile strike that killed at least six people and wounded scores of others.Paramedics were still trying to save three people who were trapped under debris, according to the Israeli military, hours after the missile evaded Israel’s air defenses. Four people remained unaccounted for, the military said.Most of those confirmed dead were women and children, according to the authorities, although they have yet to publicly name the victims. Chaotic scenes were replicated across northern and central Israel after a long night of Iranian missile attacks.Many Israelis have a certain nonchalance about missile fire, the product of both near-constant rocket attacks and the country’s sophisticated aerial defenses. But the destructive attacks in Bat Yam and elsewhere overnight — in which 10 people were confirmed killed — underscored how Israel’s current escalation with heavily armed Iran differs from fighting armed paramilitaries like Hamas and Hezbollah.In Rehovot, another city south of Tel Aviv, debris from the overnight attack filled the streets. Bloodstained bandages and white surgical gloves lay by a roadside bench. Rescue workers picked through shattered glass, searching for survivors.“Is there anyone inside?” a police officer shouted, peering into a shop damaged by the strikes.In Bat Yam, hundreds of residents who had evacuated their homes near the blast site — many of which were left uninhabitable by the explosion — gathered at a nearby school to wait for officials to tell them where to go.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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      in Elections

      What to Know About Iran’s Ballistic Missiles and the Attacks on Israel

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      Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel presented Iran’s sophisticated ballistic missiles as a critical threat to Israel’s survival.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said that the sweeping attacks on Iran that began early Friday are essential to cripple what he describes as not one, but two “existential” threats to his country.Alongside Iran’s nuclear program, which Mr. Netanyahu has warned about for decades, he cites a newer menace: Iran’s ballistic missiles, more than 200 of which have been launched against Israel in waves of retaliatory barrages this weekend.Even as Israel has pummeled Iran with its own sophisticated missiles, setting oil facilities in Tehran ablaze, it still fears Iran’s capacity for fierce retaliation.In a video statement on Friday night, Mr. Netanyahu said Iran had accelerated production and aimed to manufacture 300 ballistic missiles a month, which would amount to 20,000 missiles within six years. He said each one was like “a bus-full of explosives” primed to land on Israeli cities.Here’s what you need to know:How many missiles has Iran fired, and how many of them hit Israel?What have the Iranians been trying to hit?How many missiles does Iran have left?How powerful are the missiles hitting Israel?What has Israel learned about Iran’s missile capabilities?How many missiles has Iran fired, and how many of them hit Israel?Iran has launched about 200 missiles at Israel since Friday night, in addition to scores of explosive drones, according to the Israeli authorities.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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      Two Major Energy Facilities in Tehran Hit in Israeli Strikes

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      Across Iran’s capital, flames and smoke covered the sky.Israel’s latest wave of attacks on Iran took out Tehran’s main gas depot and its central oil refinery in separate parts of the capital, engulfing its sky in smoke and flame early Sunday.The Shahran fuel and gasoline depot, which has at least 11 storage tanks, was hit and set afire during the Israeli attack that began on Saturday night, Iran’s oil ministry said in a statement. Shahran is in an affluent neighborhood of luxury high rises.“The fire is terrifying, it’s massive; there is a lot of commotion here,” said Mostafa Shams, a resident of the area. “It’s the gasoline depots that are exploding one after another, it’s loud and scary.”Separately in the city’s south, Shahr Rey, one of the country’s largest oil refineries, was also struck, according to Iranian state news media. Emergency crews were trying to contain the fire, and a resident of Tehran, Reza Salehi, said he could see the flames from miles away.Israel’s targeting of Iran’s energy facilities, a crucial source of export cash for the country as well as of domestic energy, represented a significant escalation in its military campaign against Tehran.Earlier on Saturday, Israel had struck two key Iranian energy sites, including a section of the South Pars Gas Field, which is one of the world’s largest and critical to Iran’s energy production.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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      Iran’s Vital Oil Industry Is Vulnerable in an Escalating Conflict

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      The country’s exports mostly come from Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf. But Israel’s energy facilities are also at risk.The conflict between Israel and Iran appeared to be spreading on Saturday to Iran’s energy infrastructure, raising fears about energy supplies from the Middle East.Iran’s oil ministry blamed Israeli drones for attacking part of the South Pars natural gas field, one of the world’s largest, and a refinery, causing fires at both.It is not clear how far Israel intends to go in attacking Iran’s energy facilities, a crucial source of export cash for the country as well as domestic energy that looks particularly vulnerable.“This is a first salvo into energy and a warning shot that Israel is willing to hit Iranian energy infrastructure if Israeli civilians are targeted,” said Richard Bronze, head of geopolitics at Energy Aspects, a research firm.Other Iranian installations are at risk, analysts say.“There is one clear target that would make it very easy if Israel or the United States wanted to impact Iran’s oil exports,” Homayoun Falakshahi, senior analyst for crude oil at Kpler, a research firm, said during a webinar on Friday. “And this is Kharg Island.”Nearly all of Iran’s oil exports leave from tankers at berths around Kharg Island, a small coral land mass in the northern part of the Persian Gulf off the Iranian coast, potentially making it a target in a protracted war, 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