Trump urges Tehran evacuation as Iran-Israel conflict enters fifth day
17 June 2025 06:35
TEL AVIV (REUTERS)Israel and Iran attacked each other for a fifth straight day on Tuesday, and U.S. President Donald Trump urged Iranians to evacuate Tehran, citing what he said was the country's rejection of a deal to curb nuclear weapons development.Trump was due to leave the Group of Seven summit in Canada later on Monday, a day early, due to the Middle East situation, the White House said. Fox News reported he would convene his National Security Council."Iran should have signed the 'deal' I told them to sign. What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!" Trump wrote on his Truth Social media platform.French President Emmanuel Macron said Trump's early departure from the G7 was positive, given the immediate objective was to get Israel and Iran to agree to a ceasefire that the US had proposed."There is an offer that has been made, especially to have a ceasefire and to initiate broader discussions. And I think this is a very good thing," Macron told reporters. "So now we need to see what the stakeholders will do."Iranian media reported explosions and heavy air defence fire in Tehran early on Tuesday. Air defences were activated also in Natanz, home to key nuclear installations 320 km (200 miles) away, the Asriran news website reported.A White House aide said it was not true that the US was attacking Iran. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News that Trump was still aiming for a nuclear deal with Iran, while adding the US would defend its assets in the region.In Israel, air raid sirens wailed in Tel Aviv after midnight and an explosion was heard as Iranian missiles targeted the country again.Iranian officials reported 224 deaths, mostly civilians, in five days, while Israel said 24 civilians had been killed. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said nearly 3,000 Israelis had been evacuated due to damage from Iranian strikes.Sources told Reuters that Tehran had asked Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to urge Trump to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to an immediate ceasefire. In return, Iran would show flexibility in nuclear negotiations, according to two Iranian and three regional sources.Speaking to Reuters on Friday, the first day of Israel's assault, Trump said he had given the Iranians 60 days to come to an agreement to halt uranium enrichment and that the time had expired with no deal. Iran says its nuclear programme is only for peaceful purposes.Oil prices rallied more than 2% early in Asia on Tuesday after Trump's evacuation warning, reversing losses on Monday amid reports that Iran was seeking an end to hostilities.
Chinese urged to leave Israel With security concerns growing and Israeli airspace closed because of the war, the Chinese embassy in Israel urged its citizens to leave the country via land border crossings as soon as possible.The Iran-Israel air war - the biggest battle ever between the two countries - escalated on Monday with Israel targeting Iran's state broadcaster and uranium enrichment facilities.Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the BBC that the Natanz plant sustained extensive damage, likely destroying 15,000 centrifuges, while Iran's Fordow plant remained largely intact.Talks between the United States and Iran, hosted by Oman, had been scheduled for June 15 but were scrapped, with Tehran saying it could not negotiate while under attack.
Israel launched its air war with a surprise attack that has killed nearly the entire top echelon of Iran's military commanders and its leading nuclear scientists.
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Middle East Eye
44 minutes ago
- Middle East Eye
BBC coverage of Israel's war on Gaza 'systematically biased against Palestinians'
The BBC's coverage of Israel's war on Gaza is 'systematically biased against Palestinians', according to an analysis of over 35,000 pieces of content produced by the UK's public broadcaster. The study, conducted by the Muslim Council of Britain's Centre for Media Monitoring (CFMM), which monitors how the national media reports on Islam and Muslims, found that the BBC gives Israeli deaths 33 times more coverage than Palestinian ones. In an analysis of 3,873 articles and 32,092 broadcast segments from 7 October 2023 to 6 October 2024, the CFMM found that the BBC used emotive terms four times as much for Israeli victims and applied 'massacre' 18 times more to Israeli casualties than Palestinian ones. According to its authors, the report 'reveals a systematic omission of key historical and contemporary context that has acquired an institutional quality at the BBC', including the genocidal rhetoric used by Israeli leaders – notably Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog - and a failure to scrutinise Israeli claims and denials. While the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October were referenced in at least 40 percent of the BBC's online coverage, just 0.5 percent of articles mentioned Israel's decades-long occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters According to the analysis, the BBC pressed a total of 38 interviewees to condemn the 7 October attacks, but at no point applied the equivalent questioning to Israeli actions. BBC presenters have referred to 'Hamas-controlled Gaza', despite Israeli forces now controlling more than half of the devastated enclave. The study also found that the BBC had interviewed significantly more Israelis (2,350) than Palestinians (1,085) on TV and radio, while BBC presenters shared the Israeli perspective 11 times more frequently than the Palestinian perspective (2,340 v 217). Unrest at the BBC The report comes as the BBC continues to withhold the release of Gaza: Medics Under Fire, a documentary it commissioned that tells the story of Palestinian doctors working in Gaza. Despite being signed off by the British broadcaster's lawyers, the film has not been aired because of a furore that erupted over How to Survive a Warzone, another BBC documentary on children in Gaza. The film did not mention that the father of one of the child narrators was a technocrat in Gaza's Hamas-run government. 'There's just an absurd culture of fear here, as well as a desire to follow the state line' - BBC filmmaker A BBC spokesperson told Middle East Eye a review into Gaza: Medics Under Fire was still ongoing. The film has cleared all internal 'editorial policy' teams, sources at the BBC said. The same sources, who work across multiple BBC departments, said that director-general Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, the BBC's CEO, are unwilling to release the film, despite Turness telling editorial meetings that she wants the corporation to be 'on the right side of history'. During an AMA (ask me anything) session with BBC management last week, multiple employees asked about the fate of the film. According to two employees present, management 'ignored most of the Gaza questions'. Employees opposed to the broadcaster's coverage of the Gaza war have multiple WhatsApp groups to vent their frustrations in, including one called 'Middle East coverage'. BBC accused of 'political censorship' over failure to release Gaza medics documentary Read More » A member of the group told MEE that the CFFM analysis had been widely discussed and that it was 'so incredible to see it all laid out like that'. Multiple members of the group pointed out that the BBC has promised to conduct its own review into coverage of the Gaza war, 'and now they have been beaten to it'. 'This review is probably much better than anything the BBC would have done,' one BBC filmmaker told MEE. 'There's just an absurd culture of fear here, as well as a desire to follow the state line,' the source said. 'If Starmer was stronger I'm sure it'd make a difference.' The BBC is also still dealing with a furore surrounding Gary Lineker, who presented its flagship football programme Match of the Day for 25 years and recently left the broadcaster early after reposting a piece of content about Zionism that contained a rat emoji, historically used in antisemitic propaganda. Lineker apologised. In an interview with fellow BBC presenter Amol Rajan, which was conducted and broadcast prior to the episode that prompted his departure, the former footballer said that Israel's war on Gaza and the 'mass murder of thousands of children' was more important than what was happening internally at the broadcaster and was 'probably something we should have a little opinion on'. Lineker said the BBC needed to be 'factual' and that the broadcaster was 'not impartial about Ukraine and Russia'. The CFMM report compared the BBC's Gaza coverage to 7,748 articles on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, concluding that the broadcaster is 'more willing to cover the full facts in Ukraine than Gaza'. Report heralded by public figures The CFFM report was heralded by public figures including Sayeeda Warsi, former Conservative Party co-chair; journalist Owen Jones, who has also reported on alleged bias at the BBC; Palestinian ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot; Middle East Eye columnist Peter Oborne; and Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former director of communications who also endorsed the report, said: 'All too often, on domestic issues, the BBC's response to criticism from the right is to accept rather than challenge it and adapt coverage accordingly. 'We see the same pattern in some of its approach to international issues too, notably Israel and Palestine. The Israelis and the right-wing media do a very good job of persuading people that the BBC is biased in favour of Palestinians. This report suggests otherwise.' 'All too often the BBC shapes its agenda according to the views of those who shout loudest and fight the hardest to have their narrative dominant' - Alastair Campbell, former Downing Street director of communications Campbell said that it 'remains a scandal that a BBC commissioned film on the Israeli destruction of Gaza health facilities has yet to be aired.' The former Labour adviser, who now presents The Rest is Politics podcast, told Middle East Eye that he was 'not at all worried about speaking out' on BBC bias on Gaza. 'The only thing that sometimes holds me back is that in criticising what seems to be an overall position I do not want to denigrate the considerable good journalism done by a number of people at the BBC,' Campbell said. 'But my central point stands - all too often the BBC shapes its agenda according to the views of those who shout loudest and fight the hardest to have their narrative dominant.' A BBC spokesperson said: 'We welcome scrutiny and reflect on all feedback. Throughout our impartial reporting on the conflict we have made clear the devastating human cost to civilians living in Gaza. We will continue to give careful thought to how we do this. 'We believe it is imperative that our journalists have access to Gaza, and we continue to call on the Israeli government to grant this. 'We agree that language is vitally important but we have some questions about what appears to be a reliance on AI to analyse it in this report, and we do not think due impartiality can be measured by counting words. We make our own, independent editorial decisions, and we reject any suggestion otherwise. 'However, we will consider the report carefully and study its findings in detail.' The CCFM report used AI to process the transcripts, label speakers, and structure the content.
Middle East Eye
44 minutes ago
- Middle East Eye
Israel's war on Iran: Why the UK must stay out
For three decades, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been telling the world that Iran is on the cusp of joining the nuclear weapons club. He has obsessed about bombing it, engaging in a full-scale war, and bringing about regime change. In 2002, Netanyahu pressed the US and others to invade Iraq, on the falsehood that it had a nuclear weapons programme. He proclaimed how much safer the region would be in evidence to the US Congress. 'If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region,' Netanyahu said. 'And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people, and many others, will say the time of such regimes, of such despots is gone.' As ever, it is best to ignore Netanyahu's advice. The Anglo-US war on Iraq and its subsequent occupation ended Washington's period as the world's sole hyper-power. It paved the way for Iran to dominate not just Iraq, but Syria and Lebanon too. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters It allowed al-Qaeda to prosper and open a new murderous front in Iraq, and it saw the genesis of the Islamic State group, which took over much of Iraq and Syria for a period of time, and mounted deadly attacks across Europe and elsewhere. Fast forward to 2015, when Netanyahu was in Congress hammering former President Barack Obama's Iran nuclear deal, the one mechanism that could limit Iranian nuclear ambitions and put its facilities under detailed and intensive supervision and monitoring. He then persuaded President Donald Trump to rip up the deal in 2018. Had that deal been adhered to, war with Iran would not be happening today. It was not Iran that pulled out of the agreement, but the US. War of choice On Iraq, Netanyahu pressed the US to do the job while Israel watched. 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Netanyahu has a coterie of useful idiots on both sides of the Atlantic willing to echo and amplify his every warlike utterance It was Israel that unilaterally launched major strikes on Iran, almost certainly a violation of international law and a crime of aggression. This was a war of choice, and the choice was Netanyahu's. The UK was not even given prior warning. Israel's attacks might have incapacitated Iran's nuclear and ballistic-missile programmes for a time, but more likely, this will drive Tehran to pursue both as a priority for its own preservation. Netanyahu has a coterie of useful idiots on both sides of the Atlantic willing to echo and amplify his every warlike utterance. Very few of them demonstrate any sophisticated understanding of the Middle East, let alone the countries targeted for bombing and invasion. In the UK, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson is goading Starmer with the childish argument that his government is 'so weak they make Neville Chamberlain look positively robust'. Starmer has dispatched additional British military assets to the region and will not rule out a deployment in defence of Israel. Even by saying this, the UK government has lurched - without proper strategic assessment or parliamentary debate - closer towards a war that it should stay well clear of. Bulldozing red lines If British forces are deployed to defend Israel, they would be actively facilitating the attacks on Iran. This is how Tehran and others would see it. Britain would not only be complicit, but it would have zero influence on Israel's aggression against Iran, or whether it was in accordance with international law. Imagine, as Israel has done repeatedly in Gaza and Lebanon, that Israeli bombs took out civilian infrastructure, including power stations and waterworks. A complaint from Starmer or his foreign secretary, David Lammy, would not stop the next round of Israeli bombing. UK military assistance might start out with the intent of just knocking out Iranian drones and missiles. But it would not end there. Iran would not hesitate in responding, and it could include British targets as a result. If Britain dips its toes into the bloody waters, before long, it will be up to its neck. If British targets are hit and personnel killed, then British forces would soon be in active participation against Iranian targets as part of a war that Netanyahu orchestrated. The Iraq play book is back for Israel's attack on Iran. But it fools no one Read More » Above all, the UK should not be treating Israel in any way, shape or form as an ally. This Israeli government, as it prosecutes a war on Iran, is simultaneously carrying out a genocide in Gaza. It has bulldozed through every red line. It has systematically destroyed all of Gaza's healthcare system, forcibly displaced almost the entire population of two million people, and openly used starvation as a weapon of war. Its ministers have routinely and without consequence uttered chilling genocidal comments, calling for the annihilation and destruction of Gaza - a threat that is being played out every single day. One hopes that this is not a government with whom the UK shares interests or values. Starmer claims to support international law, but allies himself with a state that the International Court of Justice is investigating for genocide. Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is, as so many leaders have found out over decades, a brazen liar and deeply untrustworthy. Staying out of this conflict would not be weakness, but a wise choice to avoid a reckless gamble on a war pursued by a leader desperate to save his own skin and political future. The UK should take the lead in returning to a rules-based international order where war is the last resort. It is not de-escalation that is required, but credible conflict resolution, secured with iron-clad diplomatic deals to end the Iran-Israel war and the genocide in Gaza. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Tahawul Tech
an hour ago
- Tahawul Tech
Trump-Musk feud leads to reevaluation of SpaceX contracts
The White House recently directed the Defence Department and NASA to gather details on billions of dollars in SpaceX contracts following the public blowout between President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk. Sparking an ongoing review, the administration ordered a scrutinization of Musk's contracts to ready possible retaliation against the businessman and his companies. The review shows the administration is following through on a threat by Trump during his spat with Musk to possibly terminate business and subsidies for Musk ventures. 'We'll take a look at everything,' the president said, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on June 6. The people familiar with the order said the contract scrutiny is intended to give the administration the ability to move fast if Trump decides to act against Musk, who until recently was a senior advisor to the president and the head of the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The review is 'for political ammunition,' one of the people said. Whether the U.S. government could legally, or practically, cancel existing contracts is unclear. But the possibility underscores concerns among governance experts that politics and personal pique could improperly influence matters affecting government coffers, national security and the public interest. 'There's an irony here that Musk's contracts could be under the same type of subjective political scrutiny that he and his DOGE team have put on thousands of other contracts', said Scott Amey, a contracting expert and general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group based in Washington. 'Any decision shouldn't be based on the egos of two men but on the best interests of the public and national security'. Source: Reuters Image Credit: Public Image
