Pakistan's Army Chief Set to Meet Trump Amid Iran Tensions
By and Faseeh Mangi
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President Donald Trump is expected to meet Pakistan's army chief for talks as the US considers supporting Israeli airstrikes on Iran — a partner of the government in Islamabad.
The lunch meeting between Trump and Pakistan's Asim Munir is scheduled to take place at 1 p.m. Washington time Wednesday in the White House Cabinet Room, according to the president's daily public schedule. It would be the first of its kind with a high-ranking Pakistani official since Trump returned to the White House.
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The Hill
7 minutes ago
- The Hill
Fear stalks Tehran as Israel bombards, shelters fill up and communicating grows harder
NEW YORK (AP) — The streets of Tehran are empty, businesses closed, communications patchy at best. With no bona fide bomb shelters open to the public, panicked masses spend restless nights on the floors of metro stations as strikes boom overhead. This is Iran's capital city, just under a week into a fierce Israeli blitz to destroy the country's nuclear program and its military capabilities. After knocking out much of Iran's air defense system, Israel says its warplanes have free rein over the city's skies. U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday told Tehran's roughly 10 million residents to evacuate 'immediately.' Thousands have fled, spending hours in gridlock as they head toward the suburbs, the Caspian Sea, or even Armenia or Turkey. But others — those elderly and infirm — are stuck in high-rise apartment buildings. Their relatives fret: what to do? Israeli strikes on Iran have killed at least 585 people and wounded over 1,300, a human rights group says. Local media, themselves targets of bombardment, have stopped reporting on the attacks, leaving Iranians in the dark. There are few visible signs of state authority: Police appear largely undercover, air raid sirens are unreliable, and there's scant information on what to do in case of attack. Shirin, 49, who lives in the southern part of Tehran, said every call or text to friends and family in recent days has felt like it could be the last. 'We don't know if tomorrow we will be alive,' she said. Many Iranians feel conflicted. Some support Israel's targeting of Iranian political and military officials they see as repressive. Others staunchly defend the Islamic Republic and retaliatory strikes on Israel. Then, there are those who oppose Iran's rulers — but still don't want to see their country bombed. The Associated Press interviewed five people in Iran and one Iranian American in the U.S. over the phone. All spoke either on the condition of anonymity or only allowed their first names to be used, for fear of retribution from the state against them or their families. Most of the calls ended abruptly and within minutes, cutting off conversations as people grew nervous — or because the connection dropped. Iran's government has acknowledged disrupting internet access. It says it's to protect the country, though that has blocked average Iranians from getting information from the outside world. Iranians in the diaspora wait anxiously for news from relatives. One, an Iranian American human rights researcher in the U.S., said he last heard from relatives when some were trying to flee Tehran earlier in the week. He believes that lack of gas and traffic prevented them from leaving. The most heartbreaking interaction, he said, was when his older cousins — with whom he grew up in Iran — told him 'we don't know where to go. If we die, we die.' 'Their sense was just despair,' he said. Some families have made the decision to split up. A 23-year-old Afghan refugee who has lived in Iran for four years said he stayed behind in Tehran but sent his wife and newborn son out of the city after a strike Monday hit a nearby pharmacy. 'It was a very bad shock for them,' he said. Some, like Shirin, said fleeing was not an option. The apartment buildings in Tehran are towering and dense. Her father has Alzheimer's and needs an ambulance to move. Her mother's severe arthritis would make even a short trip extremely painful. Still, hoping escape might be possible, she spent the last several days trying to gather their medications. Her brother waited at a gas station until 3 a.m., only to be turned away when the fuel ran out. As of Monday, gas was being rationed to under 20 liters (5 gallons) per driver at stations across Iran after an Israeli strike set fire to the world's largest gas field. Some people, like Arshia, said they are just tired. 'I don't want to go in traffic for 40 hours, 30 hours, 20 hours, just to get to somewhere that might get bombed eventually,' he said. The 22-year-old has been staying in the house with his parents since the initial Israeli strike. He said his once-lively neighborhood of Saadat Abad in northwestern Tehran is now a ghost town. Schools are closed. Very few people even step outside to walk their dogs. Most local stores have run out of drinking water and cooking oil. Others closed. Still, Arshia said the prospect of finding a new place is too daunting. 'We don't have the resources to leave at the moment,' he said. No air raid sirens went off as Israeli strikes began pounding Tehran before dawn Friday. For many, it was an early sign civilians would have to go it alone. During the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, Tehran was a low-slung city, many homes had basements to shelter in, and there were air raid drills and sirens. Now the capital is packed with close-built high-rise apartments without shelters. 'It's a kind of failing of the past that they didn't build shelters,' said a 29-year-old Tehran resident who left the city Monday. 'Even though we've been under the shadow of a war, as long as I can remember.' Her friend's boyfriend was killed while going to the store. 'You don't really expect your boyfriend — or your anyone, really — to leave the house and never return when they just went out for a routine normal shopping trip,' she said. Those who choose to relocate do so without help from the government. The state has said it is opening mosques, schools and metro stations for use as shelters. Some are closed, others overcrowded. Hundreds crammed into one Tehran metro station Friday night. Small family groups lay on the floor. One student, a refugee from another country, said she spent 12 hours in the station with her relatives. 'Everyone there was panicking because of the situation,' she said. 'Everyone doesn't know what will happen next, if there is war in the future and what they should do. People think nowhere is safe for them.' Soon after leaving the station, she saw that Israel had warned a swath of Tehran to evacuate. 'For immigrant communities, this is so hard to live in this kind of situation,' she said, explaining she feels like she has nowhere to escape to — especially not her home country, which she asked not be identified. For Shirin, the hostilities are bittersweet. Despite being against the theocracy and its treatment of women, the idea that Israel may determine the future does not sit well with her. 'As much as we want the end of this regime, we didn't want it to come at the hands of a foreign government,' she said. 'We would have preferred that if there were to be a change, it would be the result of a people's movement in Iran.' Meanwhile, the 29-year-old who left Tehran had an even more basic message for those outside Iran: 'I just want people to remember that whatever is happening here, it's not routine business for us. People's lives here — people's livelihoods — feel as important to them as they feel to anyone in any other place. How would you feel if your city or your country was under bombardment by another country, and people were dying left and right?' 'We are kind of like, this can't be happening. This can't be my life.'
CNBC
7 minutes ago
- CNBC
Stealth aircraft and 30,000-pound bombs: Why destroying Iran's nuclear program is a such a difficult feat
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran is staring down the possibility of seeing its most important nuclear facilities hit by a 30,000-pound American bomb. White House officials on Tuesday told NBC News that U.S. President Donald Trump is considering a range of options including striking Iran directly, after the American leader repeatedly asserted that his administration would not allow Iran to continue its nuclear program or reach bomb-making capability. Trump called for Iran's "unconditional surrender" and wrote in a post on Truth Social that the U.S. has the ability to assassinate Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "He is an easy target, but is safe there - We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now," Trump wrote shortly after declaring "total control" over Iranian airspace. The rapidly escalating conflict, triggered by Israel's surprise attacks on Iranian military and nuclear facilities on June 13, has sent oil prices surging and put a region on edge. Initially encouraging of diplomatic talks with Tehran, Trump's statements have become increasingly threatening as populations across the Middle East brace for what comes next. But destroying Iran's nuclear program — which Tehran asserts is for civilian energy purposes only — is no easy feat. Iran's most advanced and hardened nuclear facility, the Fordow plant in the country's northwest, is a fortress. Built inside a mountain some 300 feet underground and reinforced by layers of concrete, the plant — which is the most likely target of a potential American strike — is impenetrable by any bomb except the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). The U.S. is the only country in the world that has this "bunker buster" weapon, as well as the only country with the aircraft capable of transporting and deploying it: the B2 Spirit stealth bomber. This is in part why Israel has been so eager for U.S. involvement in its offensive operations against Iran in addition to its defensive ones. But a strike in itself would not be a one-and-done job, military experts say. "So you have two challenges. You would have to drop two of these penetrators at the exact same site" and likely need multiple bombing rounds, according to David Des Roches, a professor and senior military fellow at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. "And then you would never be precisely sure how much of the facility you've damaged," he added, meaning personnel may need to be deployed on the ground. "This leads me to believe that for those facilities, Israel will ultimately gain control of the air and then land forces on the ground, force their way into the facility by detonating the doors, and then go and place explosive charges, exfiltrate whatever intelligence they can get, and just detonate it from the inside," Des Roches told CNBC. Iran's military capabilities have been severely degraded over the past few days by Israeli attacks, which have taken out substantial parts of its air defenses, ballistic missile batteries, command-and-control nodes, and dozens of top commanders. Still, such a strike by the U.S. could trigger Iran to respond by striking at U.S. assets in the region like embassies and military bases. Trump has made clear that any attack on U.S. personnel would draw a fierce American response, which would then pull the world's most powerful military more deeply into a regional conflict. "The Iranians have signaled that they are ready to attack U.S. bases in the region in the event of a U.S. attack on their domestic soil," said Gregory Brew, senior analyst on Iran and energy at risk consultancy Eurasia Group, noting that American bases in Iraq are particularly vulnerable. "There are risks in that environment that an Iranian retaliation causes U.S. casualties, kills U.S. servicemen, and potentially compels President Trump to expand the scope of U.S. action and order additional strikes on Iran and that, of course, would threaten general escalation and drag us into not just a single operation, but potentially a protracted air campaign." Despite its enormous scale, the GPU-57 bunker buster would not create wide-scale damage beyond the area of the facility, Des Roches said. But it would have a "profound psychological effect on the Iranians," he added, who have already seen significant damage and radioactive contamination risk wrought to the infrastructure of several of its nuclear sites in other parts of the country. A further critical question remains whether the Trump administration will limit itself to targeting nuclear sites, or whether it will expand operations beyond that — something Israel's government has also been urging, as it conveys its desire to see regime change for its longtime adversary. "I think the conflict will end when Israel is confident that Iran has lost, for a significant period of time, the ability to make a nuclear weapon, and that its defenses are weakened enough that Israel will be able to go back and effectively disrupt any further effort by Iran to make a nuclear weapon," Des Roches argued. If Fordow remains operational, Israel's attacks would barely slow Iran's ability to build a bomb, nuclear analysts say. The decisions from the While House in the coming days will therefore prove decisive not only for the trajectory of Iran's nuclear program, but for the survivability of the Islamic Republic's regime as a whole. Ali Vaez, Iran project director at non-profit Crisis Group, believes that "Iran can survive and rebuild its nuclear program," even without a diplomatic avenue for a deal with the U.S. "The U.S. entering the war will close the door on diplomacy," Vaez told CNBC. "Trump might be able to destroy Fordow, but he won't be able to bomb away the knowledge that Iran has already acquired."
CNBC
8 minutes ago
- CNBC
Oil prices will rise everywhere if Iran moves to close the Strait of Hormuz, says BCA's Marko Papic
Marko Papic, BCA Research macro and geopolitical analyst, joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the latest developments in the Israel-Iran conflict, implications for U.S. and global markets, the role of U.S. in the conflict, and more.
