About 400 passengers have left Israel on US-assisted flights
The State Department is sharing information with over 27,000 people about leaving the regionThe US started some limited assisted-departure flights for US citizens WASHINGTON: The United States has helped about 400 US citizens and others to fly out of Israel since Saturday amid conflict with Iran and hopes to accommodate more in the coming days, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday.'We very much know that there's still capacity, still US citizens seeking to leave Israel, that the airspace is not reliably opened up. It is incredibly dynamic,' the official said.The State Department is sharing information with over 27,000 people about leaving the region and safety and security, the official said, up from 25,000 last week.The US started some limited assisted-departure flights for US citizens, lawful permanent residents and their immediate family members on Saturday.The official said thousands had also left Israel overland for Jordan, while several hundred had departed through Egypt over the past two days. Several thousand US citizens have gone to Cyprus on ships, mostly arranged by Birthright or other private groups.Hundreds have left Iran through Azerbaijan, the official said. Turkmenistan has been restricting the entry of US citizens but is now allowing them in after weekend diplomatic efforts.The State Department is aware of reports of a couple of US citizens detained in Iran in this process but has no additional information to share, the official said.US President Donald Trump announced on Monday that Israel and Iran had reached a ceasefire deal, although violations were reported.Israel launched a surprise attack on June 13, hitting Iran's nuclear sites and killing the top echelon of its military command.Retaliatory missile strikes have killed 28 people in Israel.Adam Goldstone, who arrived in Florida on Tuesday after leaving Israel through an effort to evacuate Americans organized by Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Department of Emergency Management, said his family tried any way to get out of the country but that there were not many options.'It was pretty indescribable. We left Sunday morning. There were sirens. We took a bus all the way to the Jordanian border. We spent hours at the border there trying to cross over,' Goldstone said.Florida contracted the operation with Grey Bull Rescue, a Tampa-based foundation aiming at rescuing Americans from conflict zones, as well as the state's Department of Transportation.His wife, Donna Goldstone, said they had had to run to bomb shelters over 25 times.'Sleepless nights for the past week and a half. It has been really intense,' she said.
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Israel claims victory as US intel says Iran nuclear sites not destroyed
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Arab News
an hour ago
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Beijing, a longtime friend of Tehran, turns to cautious diplomacy in Iran's war with Israel
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After the Iranian parliament floated a plan to shut down the strategically located Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, China spoke against it. 'China calls on the international community to step up efforts to de-escalate conflicts and prevent regional turmoil from having a greater impact on global economic development,' said Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry. On Tuesday, following the ceasefire announcement, US President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post: 'China can now continue to purchase Oil from Iran,' suggesting the ceasefire would prevent the disruption of Iranian oil production. A 2024 report by the US Energy Information Administration contained estimates suggesting that roughly 80 percent to 90 percent of the oil exported by Iran went to China. The Chinese economy could struggle to preserve its industrial production without the roughly 1.2 million barrels of oil and other fossil fuels provided by Iran. Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, summed up Beijing's responses as 'steady oil buys and ritual calls for 'dialogue'.' 'That's about it,' Singleton said. 'No drones or missile parts, no emergency credit line. Just words calibrated to placate Tehran without rattling Riyadh or inviting US sanctions.' Beijing's muted responses also expose the gap between China's great-power rhetoric and its real reach in the region. Said Singleton: 'China's Gulf footprint is commercial, not combat-ready. When missiles fly, its much-touted strategic partnership with Iran shrinks to statements. Beijing wants discounted Iranian oil and a 'peace-broker' headline, while letting Washington shoulder the hard-power risks.' 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Wang later spoke with foreign ministers of Oman and Egypt; both nations are key mediators in the region. And late last week, before the US got involved militarily, Xi spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin; the two agreed to stay in closer contact over Iran and work toward de-escalation. But China stayed away from any direct involvement, and Russia also had muted responses to the Israel-Iran conflict. Iran is an important link in Xi's ambitious global project Belt and Road Initiative, and in 2023 joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security group by Russia and China to counter the US-led NATO. It has conducted joint exercises with China, including this year's 'Maritime Security Belt 2025' in the Gulf of Oman, in which Russia also took part. On Wednesday, Beijing will convene a meeting of defense ministers of SCO member nations. 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Arab News
3 hours ago
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Israel killed at least 14 scientists in an unprecedented attack on Iran's nuclear know-how
PARIS: Israel's tally of the war damage it wrought on Iran includes the targeted killings of at least 14 scientists, an unprecedented attack on the brains behind Iran's nuclear program that outside experts say can only set it back, not stop it. In an interview with The Associated Press, Israel's ambassador to France said the killings will make it 'almost' impossible for Iran to build weapons from whatever nuclear infrastructure and material may have survived nearly two weeks of Israeli airstrikes and massive bunker-busting bombs dropped by US stealth bombers. 'The fact that the whole group disappeared is basically throwing back the program by a number of years, by quite a number of years,' Ambassador Joshua Zarka said. But nuclear analysts say Iran has other scientists who can take their place. European governments say that military force alone cannot eradicate Iran's nuclear know-how, which is why they want a negotiated solution to put concerns about the Iranian program to rest. 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Nine of them were killed in Israel's opening wave of attacks on June 13, the Israeli military said. It said they 'possessed decades of accumulated experience in the development of nuclear weapons' and included specialists in chemistry, materials and explosives as well as physicists. Zarka spoke Monday to the AP. On Tuesday, Iran state TV reported the death of another Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohammad Reza Sedighi Saber, in an Israeli strike, after he'd survived an earlier attack that killed his 17-year-old son on June 13. Targeted killings meant to discourage would-be successors Experts say that decades of Iranian work on nuclear energy — and, Western powers allege, nuclear weapons — has given the country reserves of know-how and scientists who could continue any work toward building warheads to fit on Iran's ballistic missiles. 'Blueprints will be around and, you know, the next generation of Ph.D. students will be able to figure it out,' said Mark Fitzpatrick, who specialized in nuclear non-proliferation as a former US diplomat. Bombing nuclear facilities 'or killing the people will set it back some period of time. Doing both will set it back further, but it will be reconstituted.' 'They have substitutes in maybe the next league down, and they're not as highly qualified, but they will get the job done eventually,' said Fitzpatrick, now an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London think tank. How quickly nuclear work could resume will in part depend on whether Israeli and US strikes destroyed Iran's stock of enriched uranium and equipment needed to make it sufficiently potent for possible weapons use. 'The key element is the material. So once you have the material, then the rest is reasonably well-known,' said Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based analyst who specializes in Russia's nuclear arsenal. He said killing scientists may have been intended 'to scare people so they don't go work on these programs.' 'Then the questions are, 'Where do you stop?' I mean you start killing, like, students who study physics?' he asked. 'This is a very slippery slope.' The Israeli ambassador said: 'I do think that people that will be asked to be part of a future nuclear weapon program in Iran will think twice about it.' Israel is widely believed to be the only Middle Eastern country with nuclear weapons, which it has never acknowledged. Previous attacks on scientists Israel has long been suspected of killing Iranian nuclear scientists but previously didn't claim responsibility as it did this time. In 2020, Iran blamed Israel for killing its top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, with a remote-controlled machine gun. 'It delayed the program but they still have a program. So it doesn't work,' said Paris-based analyst Lova Rinel, with the Foundation for Strategic Research think tank. 'It's more symbolic than strategic.' Without saying that Israel killed Fakhrizadeh, the Israeli ambassador said 'Iran would have had a bomb a long time ago' were it not for repeated setbacks to its nuclear program — some of which Iran attributed to Israeli sabotage. 'They have not reached the bomb yet,' Zarka said. 'Every one of these accidents has postponed a little bit the program.' A legally grey area International humanitarian law bans the intentional killing of civilians and non-combatants. But legal scholars say those restrictions might not apply to nuclear scientists if they were part of the Iranian armed forces or directly participating in hostilities. 'My own take: These scientists were working for a rogue regime that has consistently called for the elimination of Israel, helping it to develop weapons that will allow that threat to take place. As such, they are legitimate targets,' said Steven R. David, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. He said Nazi German and Japanese leaders who fought Allied nations during World War II 'would not have hesitated to kill the scientists working on the Manhattan Project' that fathered the world's first atomic weapons. Laurie Blank, a specialist in humanitarian law at Emory Law School, said it's too early to say whether Israel's decapitation campaign was legal. 'As external observers, we don't have all the relevant facts about the nature of the scientists' role and activities or the intelligence that Israel has,' she said by email to AP. 'As a result, it is not possible to make any definitive conclusions.' Zarka, the ambassador, distinguished between civilian nuclear research and the scientists targeted by Israel. 'It's one thing to learn physics and to know exactly how a nucleus of an atom works and what is uranium,' he said. But turning uranium into warheads that fit onto missiles is 'not that simple,' he said. 'These people had the know-how of doing it, and were developing the know-how of doing it further. And this is why they were eliminated.'
