Israel-Iran war in second week as Donald Trump sends mixed signals

Israeli soldiers and first responders check the damage caused to a building from an Iranian strike in Beit She'an

Israel and Iran launched new strikes in a second week of hostilities, with the Isfahan nuclear facility targeted again, as Donald Trump deepened uncertainty about his readiness to join the conflict.

Israeli jets attacked Iran’s Isfahan site for the second time, targeting a centrifuge production section, the Israel Defense Forces said. There were no leaks of hazardous material, Iran’s semi-official Fars News reported. The IDF earlier said it had identified missiles launched from Iran and was working to intercept them.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Saeed Izadi, who led part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ overseas arm linked to financing and arming Hamas in Gaza, was killed in the Iranian city of Qom. Behnam Shahriyari, another IRGC member linked to supplying Lebanon’s Hezbollah and other militias, was also killed, along with a third commander, according to an Israeli military official. Iranian state TV said five members of the IRGC were killed in the western province of Lorestan on Saturday.

After stepping up threats against Iran earlier this week, Trump appeared to dial back tensions Thursday, saying that he would hold off for two weeks to give diplomacy a chance. On Friday, he hinted at shortening the deadline, but also suggested he “might” support a ceasefire while talks were underway. Iran has demanded the attacks stop before it enters negotiations, something Israel has refused to do.

“I’m giving them a period of time,” Trump told reporters in New Jersey, after meeting earlier Friday with his national security team. “I would say two weeks would be the maximum.”

Foreign ministers from the UK, France and Germany met their Iranian counterpart in Geneva on Friday. They made little apparent headway.

“Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us,” Trump said. “Europe is not going to be able to help them.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran is ready to hold another meeting with the Europeans in the near future, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. No follow-up meeting has yet been scheduled and there was no agreement on where or in what format such talks would take place, according to a European official.

Oil prices fell on Friday following a Reuters report that Iran is ready to discuss limitations on uranium enrichment, though they’re still up significantly from before the conflict. A jittery week ended with losses in stocks as investors weighed geopolitical and trade developments. The dollar had its best week since February.

Araghchi was in Istanbul on Saturday to attend a summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, according to state-run TV. He is also scheduled to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the sidelines.

“Israel is dragging our region into instability with the backing of western powers,” Erdoğan told the summit.

Before a two-month-old negotiation process with the US was suspended in the wake of Israel’s attack, Tehran had signaled its willingness to accept some restrictions on its enrichment activities. Israel and the US have said the Islamic Republic shouldn’t be allowed to enrich uranium at all.

“We don’t know how we can trust them anymore,” Araghchi said of possible talks with the US, in an interview with NBC on Friday. “What they did was in fact a betrayal to diplomacy.”

Most experts say a successful strike against the subterranean nuclear enrichment site at Fordow would require American participation, since Israel doesn’t have the kind of munitions — like the most powerful bunker-buster bombs — with the ability to penetrate that deep underground. But there’s a debate on the issue, with some claiming Israel has the necessary tools.

Trump repeated his stated belief that Iran was a matter of weeks from getting a nuclear bomb when Israel attacked, and again dismissed US intelligence findings that Iran’s leadership wasn’t seeking to do so. He is due to attend a national security meeting again on Saturday.

While some argue that US participation would shorten the war by eliminating Fordow quickly, others say it would in fact escalate the conflict and risk spreading it to the wider region, including neighboring Gulf states.

“This war flies in the face of the regional order the Gulf countries want to build, which is focused on regional prosperity,” Anwar Gargash, a senior diplomatic adviser to the United Arab Emirates’ president, told reporters in a briefing Friday. “There are many issues in the region, if we choose to tackle everything with a hammer nothing will be left unbroken.”