Ukrainian girl who fled to Israel for leukemia treatment killed in Iranian strike
Seven-year-old Nastia Borik, who came to Israel from Ukraine's Odessa for life-saving leukemia treatment, was killed in an Iranian missile strike on a residential building in Bat Yam, alongside four members of her family. Israeli President Isaac Herzog confirmed the deaths in a deeply emotional statement.'She came seeking life. Instead, she was murdered — along with her mother Maria, her young cousins Konstantin and Ilya, and her grandmother Lena — by a murderous Iranian missile,' Herzog said.advertisementThe missile strike, which Israeli officials say was launched at civilians, claimed the lives of five Ukrainian citizens: Nastia; her mother Mariia Pieshkurova, 30; her grandmother Lena, 60; and her two cousins, Ilya, 13, and Konstantin, 9.
'They were civilians. Refugees. A family clinging to hope. Burned alive by the Ayatollahs' missiles — fired deliberately at innocent people,' Herzog added.'The world must condemn Iran's indefensible crimes — and stand with Israel against Tehran's Empire of Evil.'Mariia Pieshkurova had documented her daughter's cancer battle on Instagram, frequently updating followers on Nastia's condition. Diagnosed in August 2022, Nastia had suffered two relapses, most recently in April 2025.In a haunting final post on May 27, Pieshkurova wrote: 'I will save my daughter, no matter what it takes Because Nastya is my life. She is all I have. And as long as I breathe, I scream, I beg, I believe, I fight.' Nastia's father, Artem Borik, is a Ukrainian soldier currently deployed on the front lines against Russia.Must Watch
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Hindustan Times
24 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
‘Nobody knows what…': Donald Trump's cryptic threat amid escalating Israel-Iran conflict
As the Israel-Iran conflict entered its seventh day on Thursday, US President Donald Trump declined to reveal whether the United States would join Israel's military campaign targeting Iranian nuclear sites. Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump said, 'I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do.' Later, President Trump said Iranian officials had expressed interest in visiting Washington for talks, adding, 'We may do that.' However, he noted, 'It's a little late' for such discussions. Meanwhile, the foreign ministers of Germany, France, and Britain are set to meet their Iranian counterpart in Geneva on Friday for nuclear talks. A German diplomatic source told Reuters the discussions aim to secure firm assurances from Iran that its nuclear programme will remain strictly civilian. While diplomatic efforts were underway, many Tehran residents sought safety on Wednesday, crowding highways in an attempt to flee the capital amid intensified Israeli airstrikes. According to The Wall Street Journal, President Trump informed senior aides that he had approved attack plans on Iran but was delaying the final order to see whether Tehran would abandon its nuclear programme. When asked whether he believed the Iranian government could collapse due to Israel's military campaign, Trump responded, 'Sure, anything could happen.' Referring to the possible destruction of Iran's Fordow nuclear enrichment facility, Trump said, 'We're the only ones that have the capability to do it. But that doesn't mean I'm going to do it — at all.' Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, criticised US President Donald Trump in a televised speech on Wednesday, his first appearance since Friday. 'The Americans should know that any US military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage,' Khamenei warned. 'The Iranian nation will not surrender,' he added. Meanwhile, Israel said its air force had destroyed Iran's police headquarters in its latest round of bombings. The Israeli military also reported that air raid sirens were activated in northern Israel just before 2 a.m. local time on Thursday (23:00 GMT Wednesday). It said a drone launched from Iran was intercepted, followed by the downing of another drone in the Jordan Valley minutes later. With Reuters inputs
Hindustan Times
25 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Exclusive: inside the spy dossier that led Israel to war
WHEN ISRAEL launched its war on Iran on June 13th it did so on the basis of intelligence that it claimed showed Iran had reached a 'point of no return' in its quest for a nuclear weapon. That evidence galvanised Israel's own security establishment to support an attack now. It has been shown to America and other Western partners, presumably playing an important role in their ongoing decision-making over whether to support or even join the war. The Economist has not seen the material directly, but has gained exclusive insights from an authoritative source, giving a view of Israel's dossiers, as shared with its allies, and the claims they make over enriched uranium and the speeding-up of Iran's programme. Some of the details are already known; some are new. These claims are proving contentious, with the intelligence services of some Western countries cautious about the imminence of the Iranian threat, and signs of divisions within President Donald Trump's administration. Our report provides context on these disputes. We understand that the information presented by Israel includes a detailed account of a recent, more urgent, push by Iranian scientists towards 'weaponisation', or the creation of an explosive nuclear device. The dossier provides two key pieces of reported evidence for this claim. The first is that an Iranian scientific team has squirrelled away a quantity of nuclear material, of unclear enrichment status, that is unknown to the monitors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a UN watchdog (on June 9th the IAEA assessed Iran had official stockpiles of over 400kg of highly enriched uranium). The second piece of reported evidence is that the scientists have accelerated their work and were about to meet commanders of Iran's missile corps, apparently to prepare for the future 'mating' of a nuclear warhead with a missile. More on the war between Israel and Iran: Much of Iran's previous dabbling with research and activity related to nuclear weapons was in the public domain already. The IAEA has published several reports documenting this, drawn in part from intelligence supplied by Israel and other countries. In 2018 a team at Harvard University also published their own analysis of Iranian documents purloined by Israel. Taken together, these sources described a broad and sustained Iranian effort towards making a uranium core for a bomb, the explosives required to implode that core in order to cause a chain reaction and a programme to place a spherical payload onto Iran's Shahab-3 ballistic missile. In a report published on May 31st, the IAEA noted that in 2003 Iran had planned to conduct what the Institute for Science and International Security, a think-tank, calls a 'cold test'—a simulated nuclear weapon which uses natural or depleted uranium rather than weapons-grade uranium. Israel's intelligence assessments repeat some of this information. They allege that a cohort of Iranian scientists have been working on overt and covert weapons-related research for years. This effort was originally part of Iran's formal nuclear-weapons research programme, known as AMAD, that it shut down in 2003, probably because it feared an American attack. The scientists' ongoing work is thought to be carried out under Iran's Organisation of Defensive Innovation and Research (also known by its Farsi acronym, SPND), under the cover of activity in fields like covid-19 vaccines and laser technology. One of a small number of non-scientists who were aware of the work was Major-General Mohammad Bagheri, who as chief of staff of Iran's military had oversight of both the regular armed forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). But the Israeli intelligence dossiers also contain information that, if correct, is genuinely new. They suggest that roughly six years ago the scientists formed a secret 'Special Progress Group', under the auspices of the former AMAD director, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. This group's aim was to prepare the way for a much quicker weaponisation process, if and when a decision was made by Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, to rush for a bomb. Mr Fakhrizadeh was assassinated by Israel in November 2020. On June 13th in the first hours of the war, the Israeli government published slides describing this backstory. But we have been told that it also shared further assessments with allies that suggest the Special Progress Group stepped up its research at the end of last year. Iran had a new incentive to advance to a bomb. It was reeling from the limited impact of its missile attacks on Israel, and the depletion of its air defences by Israeli strikes in October 2024. And it was facing the collapse of its proxies, Hamas and Hizbullah, in Gaza and Lebanon. Lastly, Israel's intelligence states that a meeting had been scheduled between the scientists and commanders of the IRGC's air force, who are in charge of ballistic missiles. The information shared by Israel with its allies argues this proposed meeting was a rubicon, with the missile chiefs being let in on the secret for the first time, suggesting in turn that planning for the 'mating' process of a nuclear device to a missile warhead was about to begin. Iran had done some of this work in the past—in 2011 the IAEA cited claims that Iran had done computer modelling studies to see how a 'spherical payload', such as a warhead, would stand up to the stresses of being launched on a ballistic missile. Miniaturising and mating a warhead to a missile are highly complex tasks that could still take Iran a substantial time to master. Israel's new claims are feeding into an American intelligence community that already has a range of views on the Iranian threat. In March Tulsi Gabbard, America's director of national intelligence—and a longstanding opponent of war with Iran—repeated the view that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. In recent days the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and CNN have reported that American intelligence agencies are sceptical of the new Israeli claims. On June 17th Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the IAEA, said that his agency had not been presented with 'proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon', although a week before the IAEA confirmed that Iran 'did not declare nuclear material and nuclear-related activities' at three undeclared locations in Iran. Mr Trump may nonetheless have been influenced by the Israeli view. On June 17th he declared, 'I don't care what she said,' referring to Ms Gabbard. 'I think they were very close to having one [a bomb].' David Albright, an American nuclear physicist and weapons expert who is consulted by intelligence agencies, says that most of the claims contained in the recent Israeli dossiers are 'generally accepted among [Western] intelligence communities'. However he accepts that there are claims that are new to him, over the diversion of nuclear material and the suggestion of an imminent meeting with missile forces. And he says that American intelligence analysts also agree that Iran has accelerated preparations for weaponisation—in July last year the director of national intelligence omitted the traditional wording that Iran 'isn't currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device' in a report to Congress, according to the Wall Street Journal. Assuming Israel's dossiers are factually accurate, there is still room for what Mr Albright calls the 'the interpretation of the facts'. Even if American analysts accept that Iran has the intent to pursue a bomb and has accelerated its push, they may disagree that it has crossed a threshold or that the threat is truly imminent. Meanwhile, the Israelis, he says, 'may think it's a bit faster and worry about their own ability to detect and act in time'. Israeli officials used to present their assessments of Iran's nuclear push using timelines measured in months and years. Since the war began, they have talked of the 'point of no return'—a moment at which Israel would no longer be capable of halting an Iranian dash to a bomb. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, has spent decades warning of the threat from Iran. That means confirmation bias is a risk. But the stance of Israel's intelligence community is unified and consistent with the government's view. Perhaps it has been put under political pressure, but it has clashed with Mr Netanyahu and other prime ministers on the nuclear file in the past. Now it backs the war. Nuclear physics is a science. Intelligence assessment is not, but has enormous real-world consequences. In 2003 America and its allies went to war in Iraq based on faulty assessments of its alleged weapons of mass destruction. In the opening strike of the war on June 13th, Israel assassinated key scientists and officials. Nuclear facilities have been bombed. The Israelis claim they have removed the imminent danger of Iran dashing towards weaponisation. Still, setting Iran's nuclear programme back by years also depends on destroying, or at least inflicting significant damage, on Iran's main underground uranium-enrichment plants in Natanz, and in Fordow, which has not yet been hit. Mr Trump may decide this is a job for America, whatever his spooks say. Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines to 100 year archives.
The Hindu
31 minutes ago
- The Hindu
Israel-Iran conflict LIVE: Khamenei vows Iran will never surrender; warns against U.S. intervention
Iran's supreme leader on Wednesday (June 18, 2025) rejected U.S. calls for surrender in the face of more Israeli strikes and warned that any military involvement by the Americans would cause 'irreparable damage to them.' The second public appearance by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei since the Israeli strikes began six days ago came as Israel lifted some restrictions on daily life, suggesting that the missile threat from Iran was easing. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to help mediate an end to the conflict between Israel and Iran, suggesting Moscow could help negotiate a settlement that could allow Tehran to pursue a peaceful atomic program while assuaging Israeli security concerns. Asked how Russia would react if Israel kills Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mr. Putin refused to answer, saying that 'I don't even want to discuss such a possibility.' President Donald Trump said he doesn't want to carry out a U.S. strike on Iran but suggested he stands ready to act if it's necessary to extinguish Iran's nuclear program. Mr. Trump continued his increasingly pointed warnings about the U.S. joining Israel in striking at Tehran's nuclear program as Iran's leader warned anew that the United States would be greeted with stiff retaliation if it attacks.
