Global Security on Edge as Iran, Israel Trade Missiles, and Trump Hints at Regime Change

(NYT) Israel fired a new round of strikes at Tehran and other Iranian cities early on Monday, and the Israeli military said it had identified missiles launched from Iran, hours after President Trump raised the prospect of regime change in the Islamic Republic.

The new attacks came a day after U.S. bombers and submarines unleashed heavy strikes on a trio of Iranian nuclear facilities, and as the state of Tehran’s nuclear program remained unclear. Top U.S. officials said it was too soon to say whether Iran still retained the ability to make a nuclear weapon and the location of its existing stockpile of enriched uranium was unknown.

Residents in Iran said they could see and hear heavy strikes in central Tehran early Monday. Strikes were also heard in Tabriz, a city in the northwest. In Israel, sirens sounded across several areas of the central part of the country, but the military later announced that residents were safe to leave protected spaces.

The U.S. strikes on Sunday stoked fears of a dangerously escalating conflict across the Middle East and urgent calls from world leaders for diplomacy. But after officials in his administration emphasized that the United States did not want an all-out war with Tehran, Mr. Trump suggested on social media that a change in Iran’s government was not unthinkable.

“If the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change???” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.

His remarks came one day after the United States announced that it had joined Israel in striking Iran to deter its nuclear program. Three Iranian nuclear sites — at Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan — sustained what Pentagon officials called “severe damage.” But senior officials conceded they did not know the whereabouts of Iran’s supply of near-bomb-grade uranium.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, said he believed that the stockpile — which is stored in special casks small enough to fit in the trunks of about 10 cars — had been moved. There was also evidence, according to two Israeli officials with knowledge of the intelligence, that Iran had moved equipment and uranium from the site in recent days.

Iranian officials castigated the United States for the strikes, with the country’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, saying at a news conference in Istanbul that Iran “reserves all options to defend its security interests and people.” He declined to be more specific, including about whether Iran would retaliate against U.S. military assets in the Middle East, where more than 40,000 American military personnel and civilians are on bases and warships.

The U.N. secretary general, António Guterres, called for diplomacy at an emergency meeting of the Security Council, saying that the world now risked “descending into a rathole of retaliation after retaliation.”

American military and intelligence officials had already detected signs that Iran-backed militias were preparing to attack U.S. bases in Iraq, and possibly Syria, in response. Iraqi officials were working hard to dissuade militia action, a U.S. official said on Sunday.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, thanked Mr. Trump on Sunday night, adding that Israel was “very close” to achieving its goals of removing the nuclear and ballistic threats Iran poses to Israel. But Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, said the United States had “recklessly chosen to sacrifice its own security merely to safeguard Netanyahu.”

Mr. Iravani accused the United States, the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons in combat, of waging war on Iran under the “fabricated and absurd pretext” of preventing it from acquiring nuclear weapons. “What a bitter and tragic irony,” he said.

Potential damage: The nuclear sites attacked by the United States include Iran’s two major uranium enrichment centers: the heavily fortified mountain facility at Fordo and a larger enrichment plant at Natanz. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Dan Caine, said the initial battle damage assessment indicated that all three sites had sustained “severe damage and destruction,” but added that a final assessment would take time. The International Atomic Energy Agency said it had not detected any increases in radiation outside the sites.

Possible response: Mr. Trump’s decision to attack Iran was likely to dim hopes for a negotiated solution to end the fighting, only days after the president had indicated he would wait for as long as two weeks to give diplomacy a chance. While U.S. officials say that Iran has depleted its stockpile of medium-range missiles, the country still has an ample supply of other weapons, including rockets and drones.

The strikes: Pentagon officials described a tightly choreographed operation that included B-2 bombers carrying 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs and submarine-fired Tomahawk cruise missiles hitting a trio of sites in less than a half-hour. A senior U.S. official acknowledged that the attack on Fordo had not destroyed the heavily fortified site, but it had been severely damaged.

Mood in Iran: After the strikes, many Iranians expressed a combination of sorrow and anger. “We’re all in shock — none of us expected that, within six or seven days, we’d reach this point,” one Iranian said. Read more ›

International reaction: America’s allies and adversaries responded with condemnations and calls for restraint, while Gulf nations expressed dismay amid fears of retaliation. Mr. Araghchi arrived in Moscow to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin, a key ally, on Monday, but there was little sign that Moscow was prepared to provide military assistance.

Global markets: Oil prices rose moderately as the market opened on Sunday evening, a sign that traders were concerned, though not panicked, about how Iran may respond to the U.S. bombing.

Source: New York Times