‘Adrenaline, freak out and panic': Israeli resident describes the horrors of Iran's attacks
Tel Aviv resident Bonni describes life in Israel during the Israel-Iran war.
Bonni says she has been warned that there are more missiles 'on the way'.
'It's been a really, really rough night,' Bonni told Sky News Australia.
'The adrenaline and the freak out and the panic is just insane.
'We haven't slept for two nights.
'They don't strategically attack; they just randomly shoot, so we have no idea where these things land.'
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News.com.au
3 hours ago
- News.com.au
Ukraine warns against drop in aid due to Israel-Iran escalation
Ukraine said on Saturday it hoped the military escalation between Israel and Iran would not lead to a drop in aid to Kyiv, at a time when European support is stalling without US engagement. Israel unleashed large-scale attacks on Iran on Friday, targeting nuclear and military facilities, high-ranking generals and atomic scientists. Iran in return launched barrages of drones and missile at Israel. The escalation sparked international calls for restraint as fears of broader conflict grow. In Kyiv it also sparked anxiety about future supplies of military aid, fearing Washington might relocate more resources to beef up the defence of its close ally Israel. "We would like to see aid to Ukraine not decrease because of this," President Volodymyr Zelensky said. "Last time, this was a factor that slowed down aid to Ukraine." The Ukrainian leader warned that Europe's support was already stalling without Washington's engagement. "Europe has not yet decided for itself what it will do with Ukraine if America is not there," he said. The return to the White House of US President Donald Trump has upended the West's provision of aid to Kyiv. It has left Europe scrambling to work out how it can fill any gap in supplies if Trump decides to pull US military, financial and intelligence support. Zelensky urged the United States to "shift tone" in its dialogue with Russia, saying it was "too warm" and would not help to end the war. Trump has sought rapprochement with Moscow and held three phone calls with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin so far this year. He has stunned NATO allies with the stark change in policy from that of the previous US administration, which aborted almost all contacts with Moscow after Russia invaded Ukraine. The Israeli attacks on Iran also drove oil prices up, which Zelensky said would benefit Russia. "The attacks led to a sharp rise in oil prices. This is bad for us," he added, reiterating a call for the West to introduce price caps on Russian oil exports. The Ukrainian leader said he hoped to raise the issue of price caps at a possible meeting with Trump in the near future. He added, however, that the Israeli strikes might prove favourable for Kyiv if they lead to a drop in Iranian supplies of military equipment to Russia, which has relied heavily on Iranian-made attack drones. - More soldiers return home - Ukraine and Russia exchanged prisoners on Saturday, the fourth such swap this week, under agreements clinched in Istanbul earlier this month. Kyiv also said it had stopped Russian advances in the northeastern Sumy region. The deals to hand over killed soldiers and exchange captured ones are the only agreements to have come out of two rounds of peace talks in Istanbul. Russia has rejected calls to halt its three-year invasion. It has demanded Ukraine cede even more territory and renounce Western military support if it wants peace. Since Russia invaded in February 2022, the war has forced millions of people to flee their homes as towns and cities across eastern Ukraine have been flattened by heavy bombardments. As part of the Istanbul agreements, Kyiv also said it had received another 1,200 unidentified bodies from Russia. It said Moscow had said they were those of "Ukrainian citizens, including military personnel" Ukraine did not say whether it returned any bodies to Russia. Meanwhile, Russia intensified its offensive along the front line, especially in the northeastern Sumy region, where it seeks to establish a "buffer zone". This zone is designed, ostensibly, to protect the Russian border region of Kursk, previously partly occupied by Ukraine. Zelensky said Russia's advance on Sumy was stopped and that Kyiv's forces had managed to retake one village. He said 53,000 men Russian soldiers were involved in the Sumy operation.
The Australian
4 hours ago
- The Australian
Israel-Iran: How Donald Trump decided to back Israel's attacks on Iran
The first act of 'Les Misérables' had just ended at the Kennedy Center Wednesday night when Sen. Lindsey Graham (Republican, South Carolina) pulled President Trump aside for a quick conversation about Iran. Graham applauded the Trump administration's handling of the nuclear issue without people getting killed. 'Yeah, we're trying,' Trump said about the sputtering negotiations with Tehran. 'But sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do,' he said. Graham took that remark to mean Trump was referring to the possibility of an Israeli strike on its longtime enemy. The encounter came midway through a week that would see Trump go from trying to head off an Israeli attack to backing its sudden campaign of air strikes targeting Iran's nuclear facilities and senior military and civilian leaders, an abrupt shift that underscored the fraying prospects for a deal. Trump said Friday that he had been aware of Israel's attack plans and argued that the punishing operation makes a nuclear deal even more likely, though Iran said they were pulling out of a sixth round of talks scheduled for Sunday. 'They should have made a deal and they still can make a deal while they have something left — they still can,' Trump told The Wall Street Journal. Trump had seemed far less optimistic earlier in the week. On Sunday, he summoned his national-security team to Camp David and told them during a discussion on the Middle East that he was increasingly pessimistic Tehran would agree to a deal, according to US officials. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were due to speak the next day, and the president said he would tell the Israeli leader to delay any attacks until special envoy Steve Witkoff's diplomatic effort had run its course, US officials recounted. In a letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in March, Trump had set a two-month time limit once talks got under way to reach a deal, a deadline that was due to expire this week. But Khamenei rejected a US proposal to allow Iran to temporarily continue uranium enrichment in the country if it agreed to eventually halt its domestic centrifuge operation. Always in the background was Netanyahu's push to launch strikes against Iran's nuclear sites, a threat that loomed ever larger. In a call Monday with Netanyahu, Trump said he wanted to see diplomacy with Tehran play out a little longer, according to US officials. But even Trump was losing faith in his strategy. Netanyahu raised his oft-expressed objection that Iran wouldn't make the deal Trump wanted and that Israel needed to keep preparing strikes, the officials added. Trump seemed to internalise the message. 'I'm getting more and more — less confident about it,' he said of the prospects for a nuclear deal with Iran in a New York Post interview published Wednesday. 'They seem to be delaying, and I think that is a shame, but I'm less confident now than I would have been a couple of months ago.' Netanyahu had been seeking to head off a US-led negotiation with Iran over its nuclear program for years, arguing that only the destruction of its vast enrichment centrifuges and other facilities could guarantee Tehran wasn't secretly developing a bomb. The Israeli leader rejoiced when Trump in his first term tore up the 2015 nuclear deal brokered by then President Barack Obama, and he recoiled when Trump pushed for a tougher agreement during his second term in office. US intelligence agencies concluded in January that Israel was considering strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. The intelligence analysis concluded Israel would push Trump's new team to back the assault, viewing the incoming president as more likely to join an attack than former President Joe Biden. The Israelis, according to the assessment, believed the window for halting Tehran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon was closing. In a sign of mounting concern about an Israeli attack and Iranian response, the State Department on Wednesday ordered the departure of all non-essential personnel from the US Embassy in Baghdad and authorised the departure of non-essential personnel and family members from Bahrain and Kuwait. At the same time, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth authorised the voluntary departure of military dependants from across the Middle East. Army Gen. Erik Kurilla, the top US commander in the Middle East, cancelled a congressional testimony scheduled for the next day and returned to Central Command's headquarters in Tampa. As anxiety grew in the Middle East and Washington, Trump was enjoying the performance of his favourite musical at the Kennedy Center, joined by Graham and other supporters. When Trump and Netanyahu spoke again on Thursday, the Israeli leader told Trump that it was the last day of his 60-day timeline for Iran to make a deal. Israel could wait no longer, Netanyahu said, according to officials familiar with the call. Israel had to defend itself and enforce the deadline Trump himself had set. Trump responded that the US wouldn't stand in the way, according to administration officials, but emphasised that the US military wouldn't assist with any offensive operations. At the White House, Trump told reporters he wouldn't describe an attack as imminent, 'but it is something that could very well happen.' While the US and Iran were close to a deal, he claimed, Israeli strikes could 'blow it.' Israel launched its operation as Trump was at a picnic Thursday evening on the White House grounds for members of Congress. He later joined Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Hegseth, and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and other senior officials in the Situation Room to monitor events. Israel had acted unilaterally and the US played no role in the attack, Rubio said in a statement that acknowledged Israel notified Washington before the operation began. That was the only comment from the US as the attack unfolded. Bombs struck and damaged a key Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz, and senior military leaders including Major Gen. Hossein Salami, commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, were killed. In all, Iran claimed that Israel's first attack killed 78 people and injured around 320 more in multiple waves of Israeli strikes. Netanyahu pledged that the operation would last for as long as necessary. Trump, who began the week resistant to an assault on Iran, quickly embraced it as a successful campaign that could boost his diplomatic effort. 'Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left,' he posted on social media Friday, 'and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.' Wall Street Journal Read related topics: Donald TrumpIsrael The Wall Street Journal The conflict in the Middle East is exacerbating a schism between conservatives over foreign policy. The Wall Street Journal Tehran's bruising fight with Israel has left its military weakened and unable to respond in kind to Israeli attacks.
The Age
9 hours ago
- The Age
Trump desperately wants to play ‘peacemaker'. This is the time to prove he can
Witkoff had sought unsuccessfully to persuade Netanyahu to remain patient while United States-Iran negotiations proceeded. Those talks have been deadlocked. Some Trump allies privately acknowledge that his diplomatic efforts were faltering even before Israel's attack. His second term in office started with what seemed like a foreign policy win. Shortly before Trump's inauguration, Witkoff worked with aides to then-president Joe Biden to secure a long-sought ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas militants. But that accord fell apart within weeks. The US has also made little discernible progress towards a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, whose conflict Trump vowed to end before even taking office. And his administration has taken no visible steps towards expanding the Abraham Accords, a landmark pact brokered in Trump's first term to forge diplomatic ties between Israel and several Arab neighbours. Loading 'Spiral of escalation' As Trump has struggled to seal peace accords, foreign policy divisions have opened inside his own administration. Dozens of officials, from the National Security Council to the Pentagon and the State Department, have been jettisoned amid the infighting. Even before Israel's attack, several administration officials had begun to privately question if Witkoff, who lacks diplomatic experience but has emerged as Trump's top negotiator, had overstayed his welcome. As Israel's attacks unfolded, some prominent Democrats expressed frustration that Trump had scrapped during his first term a deal between the US, Iran and European allies forged during the Obama administration. Trump and Republicans had condemned that deal, saying it would not have kept a nuclear bomb out of Tehran's hands. Democrats fault Trump for not yet coming up with a credible alternative. 'This is a disaster of Trump and Netanyahu's own making, and now the region risks spiralling toward a new, deadly conflict,' Democratic senator Chris Murphy said in a post on X. Whether these strikes will trigger a regional conflict remains unclear. Even so, analysts said, Tehran could see US assets in the region as legitimate targets. For example, Tehran-aligned Houthi rebels in Yemen could resume their bombing campaign against ships transiting the Red Sea. Also unclear is Israel's ability to permanently impede Iran's nuclear program. Loading Analysts doubt in particular the ability of Israel to destroy Iran's Fordow enrichment plant, which is buried deep underground. While Israel could probably do extensive damage, experts say a more lasting blow would require US military assistance, which US officials said had not been provided. Another question mark is just how effectively Tehran can respond. Israel has indicated that it has targeted several Iranian leaders in the bombing campaign, which is expected to continue in coming days. All these factors will decide if the blow to Trump's aspirations to be seen as a global peacemaker will be a terminal one, or merely a setback. 'If Israel is to be taken at its word that tonight's strikes were the first round in an all-out Israeli campaign against Iran's nuclear and missile programs, Iran's regime is now knee-deep within a potentially existential, life-or-death moment,' said Charles Lister, head of the Syria Initiative at the Middle East Institute. 'That paints tonight's strikes in a whole new, unprecedented light and makes the risk of a major spiral of escalation far more real than what we've seen play out before.'
