Iran and Israel traded air and missile strikes as the world braced on Monday for Tehran's response to the U.S. attack on its nuclear sites and U.S. President Donald Trump raised the idea of regime change in the Islamic republic.
Iran vowed to defend itself on Sunday, a day after the U.S. joined Israel in the biggest Western military action against the country since its 1979 Islamic Revolution, despite calls for restraint and a return to diplomacy from around the world.
Commercial satellite imagery indicated the U.S. attack on Saturday on Iran’s subterranean Fordow nuclear plant severely damaged or destroyed the deeply buried site and the uranium-enriching centrifuges it housed, but the status of the site remained unconfirmed, experts said.
In his latest social media comments on the U.S. strikes, Trump said "Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran."
"The biggest damage took place far below ground level. Bullseye!!!" he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Trump earlier called on Iran to forgo any retaliation and said the government "must now make peace" or "future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier."
The U.S. launched 75 precision-guided munitions including bunker-buster bombs and more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles against three Iranian nuclear sites, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Caine, told reporters.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said no increases in off-site radiation levels had been reported after the U.S. strikes. Rafael Grossi, the agency's director general, told CNN that it was not yet possible to assess the damage done underground.
A senior Iranian source told Reuters that most of the highly enriched uranium at Fordow had been moved elsewhere before the attack. Reuters could not immediately corroborate the claim.
Tehran, which denies its nuclear program is for anything other than peaceful purposes, sent a volley of missiles at Israel in the aftermath of the U.S. attack, wounding scores of people and destroying buildings in Tel Aviv.
But it had not acted on its main threats of retaliation, to target U.S. bases or choke off oil shipments that pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
Attempting to strangle Gulf oil supply by closing the strait could send global oil prices skyrocketing, derail the world economy and invite conflict with the U.S. Navy's massive Fifth Fleet based in the Gulf.
Oil prices jumped on Monday to their highest since January. Brent crude futures LCOc1 rose $1.88 or 2.44% at $78.89 a barrel as of 1122 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude CLc1 advanced $1.87 or 2.53% at $75.71.
Iran's parliament has approved a move to close the strait, which Iran shares with Oman and the United Arab Emirates. Iran's Press TV said any such move would require approval from the Supreme National Security Council, a body led by an appointee of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Caine said the U.S. military had increased protection of troops in the region, including in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. State Department issued a security alert for all U.S. citizens abroad, calling on them to "exercise increased caution."
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday called on China to encourage Iran to not shut down the strait, telling Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo" show it would be a "terrible mistake."
"It's economic suicide for them if they do it. And we retain options to deal with that, but other countries should be looking at that as well. It would hurt other countries' economies a lot worse than ours," he said.
The Israeli military reported a missile launch from Iran in the early hours of Monday morning, saying it was intercepted by Israeli defenses.
Air raid sirens blared in Tel Aviv and other parts of central Israel. Iran has repeatedly targeted the Greater Tel Aviv - a metropolitan area of around 4 million people - the business and economic hub of Israel where there are also critical military assets.
Iranian news agencies reported air defenses were activated in central Tehran districts to counter "enemy targets", and that Israeli air strikes hit Parchin, the location of a military complex southeast of the capital.
REGIME CHANGE
In a post to the Truth Social platform on Sunday, Trump raised the idea of regime change in Iran.
"It’s not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!" he wrote.
Trump's post came after officials in his administration, including U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, stressed they were not working to overthrow Iran's government.
Israeli officials, who began the hostilities with a surprise attack on Iran on June 13, have increasingly spoken of their ambition to topple the hardline Shi'ite Muslim clerical establishment.
As Tehran weighed its options, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi is expected to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday. The Kremlin has a strategic partnership with Iran, but also close links with Israel.
Speaking in Istanbul on Sunday, Araqchi said his country would consider all possible responses and there would be no return to diplomacy until it had retaliated.
Russia's foreign ministry condemned the U.S. attacks which it said had undermined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and warned of the conflict spreading in the Middle East.
The U.N. Security Council met on Sunday to discuss the U.S. strikes as Russia, China and Pakistan proposed the 15-member body adopt a resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the Middle East.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council the U.S. bombings in Iran marked a perilous turn in the region and urged a return to negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.
Commercial airlines were weighing how long to suspend Middle East flights after the U.S. struck Iran. The Middle East route has become more important for flights between Europe and Asia but flight tracking website FlightRadar24 showed empty space on Sunday over Iran, Iraq, Syria and Israel.
© Thomson Reuters 2025.
41 Comments
HopeSpringsEternal
MIGA makes sense to most across the world, meaning Iran should pursue peace and prosperity, like the Suni Gulf States, not Illegal Nuclear Weapons Development
wallace
Most of the world does not know the meaning of MIGA and have not heard about the Trump bombing.
bass4funk
After next week, they will.
wallace
What is special about next week. Most people in the world are busy with their lives and trying to survive.
HopeSpringsEternal
Let's inform the world then, as Iran deserves great leadership needed to achieve Peace and Prosperity!
Desert Tortoise
The Saudis and Turks have nuclear weapons aspirations. The Saudis co-produce ballistic missiles with China at a factory in Saudi Arabia.
https://research.sharqforum.org/2022/04/03/saudi-chinese-cooperation/
https://georgetownsecuritystudiesreview.org/2024/12/18/the-nuclear-kingdom-accessing-saudi-arabias-nuclear-behavior/
https://www.iar-gwu.org/blog/erdogans-nuclear-itchstrong-strongwhy-turkeys-nuclear-program-is-a-threat-to-regional-stability-and-the-international-nonproliferation-regime
And all this because the US and other nations looked the other way when Israel developed a nuclear arsenal.
HopeSpringsEternal
Seems MIGA has a better and better chance, as financial markets steadily recovering early losses and oil prices trending downward, since the market opened!
bass4funk
News cycle will spread
So you’re saying most people know about the war, know about the nuke attacks but they’re too dumb to google MIGA?
Glad you have a lot of faith in the human intellect.
Desert Tortoise
HopeSpringsEternal. Quite the opposite. Oil prices spiked to a five month high
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/oil-gas-prices-us-strikes-iran-nuclear-sites-hormuz-shipping-2025-6?op=1
https://www.businesstoday.in/markets/stocks/story/oil-prices-climb-as-us-strikes-irans-nuclear-facilities-481330-2025-06-22
wallace
bass4funk
What is special about next week.
Just not to most world citizens some might see a headline.
Most people in the world are busy with their lives and trying to survive.
You said it wasn’t a war but I never said that. Most don’t know what is happening between the US-Israel-Iran. Stupid. The majority do not have the internet.
Maybe you should travel more to poorer countries. Nothing to do with intellect.
lincolnman
Nothing better shows the emptiness and hypocrisy of MAGA-world better than this...
The title of the article previous to this: *U.S. operation against Iran *not aimed at regime change, Trump administration says.
The first sentence in this article:* Iran and Israel traded air and missile strikes as the world braced on Monday for Tehran's response to the U.S. attack on its nuclear sites and U.S. President Donald Trump raised the idea of regime change in the Islamic republic.*
MAGA-world - all lies, all the time....
wallace
Oil is up $15 a barrel.
Tamarama
Why should Iran show any restraint now? No-one else is.
They may as throw everything the have at US forces in the region.
Capuchin
The brain doesn't appear to be connected to the arse. So to speak.
Seems Trump now has delusions of "liberating" Iran. The arse is also not connected to reality.
Blacklabel
Oh I see.
So that new narrative presented today actually came from repeating Iranian propaganda.
ouch.
Blacklabel
my chart says $1.10 so that’s interesting.
Some dude
As long as someone's blowing someone up, doesn't matter who or why, the Americans are happy.
Desert Tortoise
The right wing chest thumpers are but please don't lump all of us into that category.
Bob Fosse
No. It didn’t. It came from satellite images showing dozens of trucks lined up.
Try harder or better yet don’t.
Jimizo
Good to see a rational, grown-up is deliberating this very dangerous situation with maturity.
itsonlyrocknroll
Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei, negotiate, concede honourable terms.
Accept terms and conditions, spare your people,
The consequence of any failure to seize this moment will be devastation.
bass4funk
No lies, no change. Again, when troops are on the ground and shooting up the place, you can vent then.
XCAndtheband
sigh Do I really have to say this?
You’ve pointed out the price per gallon. And that’s just the price before it gets to the pump, which factors in a whole lot of other factors that drive the price up.
Tamarama
Desert tortoise
Spot on.
The Nuclear non-proliferation treaty stinks a fair bit to be honest, and the world is going to have to re-think nuclear power and weapons, because frankly it’s a very select club of ‘haves’ dictating terms to the ‘have nots’, which is the majority of the world. Since the NNPT was signed, the ‘haves’, mainly the US and Russia have added a net 15,000 nuclear weapons. They have actually created 55,000 weapons in that time, but decommissioned around 40,000.
Think about that for a second. Think about the hypocrisy and power imbalance here. It's just vulgar.
And Israel was just allowed to create an arsenal anyway. Guess you have to have the right friends, ay?
Blacklabel
No. it came from “a senior Iranian source”. Article says so:
Desert Tortoise
I saw the imagery. Those trucks had open tops and appeared to be dump trucks. I used to be nuclear weapons courier and I can say with authority they were not moving highly enriched uranium in those trucks. Trucks for that purpose are extremely specialized. You get even two small chunks of uranium that is enriched to the percentage the IAEA says they detected at Fordow and you get something we called "popcorn effect". Use your imagination. It's exactly what you think. Even whey you have well assembled and safed nuclear weapons you don't get too many together in the same space or really bad things happen. But the uninformed think you can dump highly enriched uranium into dump trucks and just drive off.
The more likely story based on the presence of bulldozers in the same images is those trucks were delivering dirt or some other material to fill the tunnel entrances. An IRG General said some months ago that the GBU-57 could not penetrate the tunnels at Fordow. We don't know yet if he was right. But one could imagine the Iranians wanting to plug the tunnel entrances to stop a guided munition from enter their tunnels that way. They know how accurate US PGMs are. They have a little first hand experience with that.
u_s__reamer
Millions of folks around the world would be delighted if Iran put Netanyahu back in his box via the Hague and brought regime change to the USA to "Make America Great Again".
Jimizo
What chart is that?
Blacklabel
Yeah with the “they moved it all” narrative being so implausible I was really expecting the “nothing was really damaged and the attack was a total failure” narrative.
Slightly surprised.
Raw Beer
The west has demonstrated that it cannot be trusted in any negotiations.
bass4funk
You have millions of Jew haters that don’t have the foggiest clue about the ME.
Bob Fosse
Cope however you need to. I was talking about satellite images, US satellite images, and did not mention Iranian sources once. You know this but have to pretend you don’t, I get it.
Blacklabel
What are you downvoting? lol
oil price is up 34 CENTS.
the oil price chart, obviously.
Blacklabel
of course you wouldn’t “mention” you were pushing Iranian propaganda told to Reuters as being accurate/legitimate and as being your actual source.
Jimizo
A barrel?
Could you post the link to the chart you are looking at?
I think we need to have a look at it.
XCAndtheband
Critcizing Israel, Netanyahu, or Zionism is not anti-semitism.
And no one was talking about “the YOU”.
Blacklabel
yes a barrel, that’s the price unit of oil.
You can easily Google “oil price chart”
Blacklabel
actually no, you seem completely confused what was being claimed and what I corrected.
maybe shouldn’t have “say this”. Sigh.
bass4funk
No, but the underlying connected comments usually are
And?
Jimizo
Up 34 cents a barrel? From when?
Tell you what, just post the link to the chart you are looking at.
Saves the back and forth and the no doubt unfounded suspicion you are being evasive here.
This is not a minor point. A spike in the price of oil has serious consequences.
As a man extraordinarily qualified in the sciences, I’m sure you see the need to be accurate here.
wallace
If Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz, oil is predicted to go to $90 a barrel.