News live: Albanese heads to Fiji talks en route to G7; authorities ‘urgently following up' whether any Australians affected by Air India crash
Update:
Date: 2025-06-12T21:23:52.000Z
Title: Welcome
Content: Good morning, Nick Visser here to guide you through today's breaking news. Here's what's on the cards this morning:
Prime minister Anthony Albanese will leave Canberra this morning en route to the G7 meeting in Canada early next week. The trip will include stops in Fiji and the US, will all eyes on a potential sideline meeting with Donald Trump, although nothing has been confirmed.
The Department of Foreign Affairs expressed condolences to those affected by the Air India crash in the city of Ahmedabad last night. The Australian high commission and consulate-general are 'urgently following up' with local authorities to determine if any Australians were impacted.
Defence minister Richard Marles again downplayed the US review of the Aukus submarine deal, telling the ABC last night he believes it is 'completely appropriate' for the Trump administration to look into it.
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The Guardian
39 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Trump scrambles to claim credit for Israel's Iran attack he publicly opposed
Donald Trump is walking a tightrope as he claims that he was fully aware of Israel's plans to launch massive airstrikes against Iran while continuing to distance the US from those strikes and deny Washington took any active role in the preparations. The White House's messaging has shifted quickly from Marco Rubio's arms-length description of the Israeli attack as a 'unilateral action', to Trump claiming on Friday morning that he was fully in the loop on the operation and that it came at the end of a 60-day ultimatum he had given Iran to 'make a deal' on its nuclear programme. 'Today is day 61,' he wrote on Truth Social. 'I told [Iran] what to do, but they just couldn't get there.' Trump's framing presents a good cop-bad cop dynamic of his approach with Benjamin Netanyahu, the embattled Israeli leader with whom he has a notoriously combative relationship. The US president has scrambled to now present the Israeli strikes, which he publicly claimed he did not want on Thursday, as a means of continuing his efforts to convince Iran to negotiate. 'They should now come to the table to make a deal before it's too late,' he said. But the discordant US response from to the strikes, including Rubio's Thursday evening statement, a hasty evacuation of some US personnel from the region and ambiguity over whether the US provided intelligence or would actively take part in Israel's defence from a likely counterattack, has raised questions over whether Israel may have moved ahead of the Trump administration as a way to present Washington with a fait accompli. 'They made a bet on President Trump,' said Elliott Abrams, a former diplomat and senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, suggesting that Israel had pushed harder for strikes while the Trump administration had sought to maintain a diplomatic route. 'The Israelis struck and then today Trump called it 'excellent'.' While Israel had clearly given the United States advanced warning of the strike, claims that it was fully coordinated in Israeli state media have been subject to speculation: was Trump actually on board or was he repositioning himself on Friday in order to present the strikes as part of a coherent strategy. On Thursday, in remarks from the White House's East Room, Trump said that strikes on Israel could 'blow up' his diplomatic efforts to negotiate with the Iranian leadership and said he 'didn't want them going in'. He defended his decision to begin evacuating personnel because a strike 'could well happen'. 'The US started evacuating voluntarily non-essential personnel on Wednesday, barely 24 hours ahead of time, not enough time to really get people out of harm's way,' said Rosemary Kelanic, the Middle East director for Defense Priorities, a thinktank that pushes for a more restrained US foreign policy. 'So the question for me is what did the president know and when did he know it?' On Friday, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that he was not caught unaware by the strike: 'Heads-up? It wasn't a heads-up. It was, we know what's going on.' And he indicated that he had been apprised of future Israeli plans, writing that the 'next already planned attacks' would be 'even more brutal'. Senior Israeli officials also began to brief media that Trump had only pretended to oppose an Israeli attack and that they in fact had a 'green light' for the attack. But Kelanic and others noted that Israel may be seeking a means to 'entrap' the US into a war. In either case, it is doubtful that Israel could have prepared the attack in the past week without US knowledge. Officials at the Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies would have seen the preparations for the airstrike – involving more than 200 Israeli fighter jets striking more than 100 targets across Iran – and probably understood that Israel was planning a major attack against Tehran. Late on Thursday, administration officials told Fox News that the US had replenished missiles for Israel's Iron Dome anti-air batteries in recent weeks in preparation for an expected counterattack. And the US in recent weeks had deployed B-52 bombers to its airbase on the remote Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, where multiple B-2 bombers have also been stationed since late March. B-2s stationed at the base took part in airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen earlier this year, but the base would also serve as a launching point for airstrikes against Iran if the US were to join the conflict. But there are other explanations for the resupply of anti-air missiles to Iron Dome, particularly following the unprecedented barrage of ballistic missiles launched by Iran against Israel last year. And the US could have employed those B-2s and B-52s to strike the Fordow uranium enrichment centre, which is located deep underground and was not apparently struck in Friday morning's strikes. Still intact, it represents an important element in Iran's nuclear program that was not eliminated – at least in the first round of the Israeli attacks.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Trump warns Iran ‘make nuclear deal or face slaughter' as fears of all-out Middle East war grow
Donald Trump has warned Iran to make a nuclear deal now or face 'slaughter' amid growing fears of all-out war in the Middle East. Benjamin Netanyahu launched 'Operation Rising Lion' in the early hours of Friday morning with an attack on Tehran 's nuclear facilities and military commanders. Israel said around 200 Israeli Air Force aircraft dropped 330 munitions on around 100 targets in total, which included ballistic missile factories. In all, at least 20 senior commanders were killed, two regional sources said, reportedly including the head of the Revolutionary Guards aerospace force. Iran warned 'the gates of hell will open' in retaliation, while Israel said the strikes were only the start of its campaign as tensions in the region reach boiling point. The US president issued a stark warning to Tehran while also indicating there was still time to avert further attacks. 'I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal," he said Friday morning. 'There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left.' Britain and the US both denied any involvement in Israel's attack. But while Sir Keir Starmer convened an emergency Cobra meeting and urged restraint, Mr Trump labelled the attack 'excellent' and said Washington had been informed beforehand. 'We gave them a chance [to strike a nuclear deal] and they didn't take it,' said the US president, who in 2018 pulled out of a deal struck with Iran by his predecessor Barack Obama. 'They got hit hard, very hard. They got hit about as hard as you're going to get hit. And there's more to come. A lot more. 'We knew everything, and I tried to save Iran humiliation and death,' he said. 'I tried to save them very hard because I would have loved to have seen a deal worked out. They can still work out a deal however, it's not too late.' Tehran was among six cities struck in the overnight attack, which Iran said killed six nuclear scientists and several top commanders, including Hossein Salami, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, along with Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, and the army's deputy commander in chief, Gholamali Rashid. Mossad operatives situated deep within Iranian territory also conducted a series of covert sabotage missions targeting the country's air defence systems. This involved building a drone base near Tehran, a security source told the Times of Israel. Israel has made clear its intentions to wipe out Iran's nuclear capability, with Mr Trump previously warning they 'cannot get a nuclear weapon'. While Iran insists its nuclear programme is intended merely for energy purposes, Tehran's leadership has repeatedly called Israel a 'cancer' in the Middle East. The Israeli military claimed on Friday it had been forced to act by new intelligence information showing that Iran was 'approaching the point of no return' in the development of a nuclear weapon. But a source familiar with US intelligence reports said there had been no recent change in Washington's assessment that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had not authorised a resumption of the nuclear weapons programme that was shut in 2003. As Iran retaliated with a salvo of 100 drones, Jordan's military said it had intercepted a number of missiles and drones that entered its airspace and which had been likely to fall in Jordanian territory, including populated areas. As sirens reportedly sounded in Amman, civilians on the ground in Baghdad told The Independent that they initially believed Iraq was under attack as they heard explosions overnight. Iran's main nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz was damaged in the overnight attack, but investigations have not shown any radioactive or chemical contamination outside the site, the country's atomic energy organisation said. 'I woke up to deafening explosion. People on my street rushed out of their homes in panic, we were all terrified,' said Marziyeh, a 39-year-old from Natanz. Explosions were also reported in Tehran and other cities including Bandar Abbas, Arak, Isfahan and Kermanshah. Despite strikes being reported in Isfahan, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran's nuclear facilities there had not been impacted, citing Iranian officials. But the UN's nuclear watchdog warned that any military action jeopardising the safety and security of nuclear facilities risks grave consequences for the people of Iran, the region, and beyond. Further Israeli strikes were reported on Friday, including at Iran's military airport in Tabriz and at the Shiite holy city of Qom, according to Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency. Tensions in the region were already ramped up after 20 months of war in Gaza, sparked by Iranian-backed Hamas 's attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. Over that period, Israel has also decimated Iran's powerful Lebanese ally Hezbollah, while trading fire with the Houthis in Yemen, who had been targeting Gulf shipping in retaliation for the Gaza war. However, Israel's major escalation will raise fears of all-out conflict between the region's most powerful militaries and a destabilising wider escalation, with concerns that US military sites and shipping in the Persian Gulf could become targets. Iran's defence minister Aziz Nasirzadeh had warned on Wednesday that it would retaliate by hitting US bases in the region if Iran was subjected to strikes. The US has a military presence at bases across the Middle East. In an acknowledgement of the heightened risk, the US on Wednesday announced the partial closure of its embassy in Baghdad, while authorising the 'voluntary departure' of military dependents from bases in Bahrain and Kuwait. Also on Wednesday, the UK's maritime agency warned that increased tensions in the Middle East may lead to an escalation in military activity that could impact shipping in critical waterways. It advised vessels to use caution while travelling through the Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Straits of Hormuz, which all border Iran. While Hezbollah indicated on Friday that it would not respond to Israel's attack on Iran, the Tehran-allied regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria has also been toppled since Iran's major attack on Israel last April. However, there are fears that Iran-aligned paramilitaries in Syria sought by the nascent rebel-led administration established after the fall of Assad December.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Pentagon pizza monitor predicted ‘busy night' ahead of Israel's attack on Iran
The timing of Israel's plan to attack Iran was top-secret. But Washington pizza delivery trackers guessed something was up before the first bombs fell. About an hour before Iranian state TV first reported loud explosions in Tehran, pizza orders around the Pentagon went through the roof, according to a viral X account claiming to offer 'hot intel' on 'late-night activity spikes' at the US military headquarters. 'As of 6:59 pm ET nearly all pizza establishments nearby the Pentagon have experienced a HUGE surge in activity,' the account Pentagon Pizza Report posted on Thursday. Not confining its analysis to pizza, the account noted three hours later that a gay bar near the Pentagon had 'abnormally low traffic for a Thursday night', and said this probably pointed to 'a busy night at the Pentagon'. While far from scientific, the Pentagon pizza theory 'is not something the internet just made up', the Takeout, an online site covering restaurants and food trends, noted earlier this year. Pentagon-adjacent pizza joints also got much busier than usual during Israel's 2024 missile strike on Iran, it said, as there are 'a multitude of fast food restaurants in the Pentagon complex, but no pizza places'. Pizza deliveries to the Pentagon reportedly doubled right before the US invasion of Panama in December 1989, and surged again before Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Donald Trump told the Wall Street Journal he was fully aware in advance of the bombing campaign, which Israel says is needed to end Iran's nuclear program. 'We know what's going on.' For the rest of Americans, pepperoni pie activity was not the only way to tell something was about to happen. Washington had already announced it was moving some diplomats and their families out of the Middle East on Wednesday. And close to an hour before Israel unleashed its firepower on Iran, the US ambassador in Jerusalem, Mike Huckabee, sent out a rather revealing X post: 'At our embassy in Jerusalem and closely monitoring the situation. We will remain here all night. 'Pray for the peace of Jerusalem!''
