Residents of Tehran were urged to leave their homes due to increased Israeli attacks. The corresponding statement was made by US President Donald Trump, who called for the total surrender of Iran. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it will soon operate on a broader scale. However, as Western officials admit, there is a limit to Israeli arsenals, and if the pace of the operation continues, the Jewish state will need US assistance.
The American leader made an appeal to the residents of Tehran to leave their homes immediately on the Truth Social network. Returning from the G7 summit on board No. 1, Trump at the same time indicated that he was counting not on a cease-fire between Israel and Iran, but on the refusal of the top leadership of the Islamic Republic from any initiatives on uranium enrichment.
Iran must “completely surrender,” the head of the White House stressed, speaking to reporters. “Iran cannot have nuclear weapons, it’s very simple,” the US president repeated his traditional formula. However, he did not give an unambiguous answer to the question of whether Washington is trying to reach out to Tehran these days in order to resume negotiations.
Israel officially recognizes that the bank of targets within Tehran will become wider and wider. Probably, not only the offices of major television companies will now be under attack, but also more sensitive facilities. The Minister of Defense of the Jewish state, Israel Katz, said on June 17 that the Israeli Air Force had been instructed to disable “important targets, strategic facilities, regime elements and infrastructure” in the capital region. He drew attention to the fact that more than 10 elements of the nuclear program are located in the vicinity of Tehran, which are “on the verge of destruction” due to the superiority of the Israeli Air Force in the air, which was recently established due to the defeat of a significant part of the Iranian air defense systems.
“We are striking at the terrorist regime, not at people who deserve a better future,” Major General Oded Basyuk, head of the IDF General Staff’s operations Directorate, said on June 17, probably responding to the growing accusations of attacks on civilian targets these days. “The one who is putting us in danger is the leadership in Tehran, not the people walking the streets of Shiraz.” The military commander noted that the army of the Jewish state continues to bomb nuclear facilities in order to “consolidate the results achieved, in accordance with the plan.” These are a number of targets located in the western part of the Islamic Republic and located deep underground.
The head of the Israeli military Intelligence Directorate, Major General Shlomi Binder, informed that soon his subordinates will have to operate on a larger scale on enemy territory. “You have obtained intelligence data that paved the way to Tehran and gave the opportunity to strike at the supreme command of Iran,” the military commander drew attention to the officers on June 17. – Soon you will start operating in other areas. You have proven that you can break through boundaries and achieve any goal.”
Binder added: “Always remember that we are not fighting in just one arena. We are at war with Iran, but our eyes are also on our hostages in Gaza and the various threats facing the military on the front lines and civilians on the home front.”
The IDF urges not to forget that the Iranian side still has impressive capabilities to destroy targets on Israeli territory. On June 17, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of Iran announced that it had carried out a missile attack on the headquarters of Israel’s military intelligence and the operations planning center of the MOSSAD intelligence agency. Local media reported significant losses on the Israeli side. Among other things, reports that have no connection with reality are becoming routine that the Jewish state regularly loses its American fifth-generation F-35 fighter jets in the Iranian sky.
As for the damage caused to Iran’s nuclear program, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recorded a “direct impact” on an important research facility in Natanz on June 17 based on satellite images. “Based on the ongoing analysis of high-resolution satellite images collected after Friday’s strikes, the IAEA has identified additional traces indicating a direct impact on the underground enrichment facilities at Natanz,” the organization said in a statement. According to her calculations, Iran has already disabled 14 thousand centrifuges.
At the same time, there is evidence that the deepening of the armed conflict is gradually pushing Iran towards a nuclear catastrophe. Thus, Behrouz Kamalvandi, a representative of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, reported a leak of radioactive substances, but with the caveat that the pollution has not yet affected the external environment. “In Natanz, the damage is mostly superficial, because the main part of the facility in this place is underground. There was a very small leak inside the facility, and the contamination did not spread to the outside environment,” Kamalvandi said.
The Natanz Research Center has been “dealt a serious blow,” Eyal Pinko, a researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, who worked in the Israeli Defense Ministry in the past, told the Globes business publication. “We have not destroyed it, but we have seriously disrupted the enrichment process, so it will take many years for Iran to recover,” the researcher noted. – People tend to talk about the Fordo uranium enrichment plant, a nuclear facility on the outskirts of Qom, as the arrowhead of the Iranian nuclear project. However, in order to damage the project, it is not enough to damage only Fordo – we also need to damage the ballistic missile and cruise missile projects.”
According to Pinko, few people in Israel and beyond its borders believe that it is realistic to completely destroy all these elements. “The Chinese and Russians will eventually return to Iran and help them restore their activities even faster than before,” the expert suggested. “What can be done is to throw them (the Iranians. – NG) years ago and hope that we will be able to instill in them a lack of motivation regarding the course of the nuclear project.”
As a senior Western source told the Financial Times, the Israeli government’s ability to continue fighting at the current intensity may be limited because the Jewish state has its own “store depth,” that is, a limit on weapons stocks.
The fact that Israel will need help with shells is already being calculated by US officials, quoted by The Middle East Eye portal. According to the newspaper’s sources, there are serious concerns in some circles of the Trump administration that a possible direct US strike on Iran could lead to a larger-scale Iranian response against Israel, as a result of which Washington would have to intervene, and the US reserve of interceptor missiles in these circumstances would reach a “terrifying” level.