Category: World news

(LONDON) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday again claimed “total obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear program during the NATO summit in the Netherlands, escalating his pushback on an early Pentagon intelligence report suggesting joint U.S.-Israeli strikes may have set back Iran’s nuclear program back by only a matter of months.

“I believe it was total obliteration,” Trump told reporters speaking alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in The Hague, Netherlands.

A preliminary analysis of the strikes by the Defense Intelligence Agency and U.S. Central Command prompted questions as the efficacy of the operation. Two people familiar with the report told ABC News it suggested the strikes did limited damage and that Iran was able to relocate highly enriched uranium stocks before the strikes occurred.

Later on Wednesday, during a solo news conference, Trump continued to push back on that analysis and claimed American pilots who carried out the strikes were being demeaned by news reports about the Pentagon’s preliminary assessment.

“Since then, we’ve collected additional intelligence,” he said. “We’ve also spoken to people who have seen the site, and the site is obliterated, and we think everything nuclear is down there. They didn’t take it out.”

“They presented something that wasn’t finished,” Trump said of U.S. intelligence reports on the impact of the U.S. strikes. Over the course of the news conference, Trump highlighted Israeli and Iranian reports of the damage caused by the strike.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said Wednesday that the country’s nuclear facilities had been “badly damaged,” as quoted by the Associated Press — which Trump repeated.

On Iran, Trump told reporters he’s not interested in restarting negotiations and didn’t view it as “necessary.” Though he also said that the U.S. would be talking with Iran “next week” and “we may sign an agreement. I don’t know.

“I don’t see them being back involved in the nuclear business anymore,” Trump said of Tehran.

Trump earlier Wednesday insisted Iran’s nuclear program had been set back “basically decades,” adding, “It’s gone for years.”

“I believe they didn’t have a chance to get anything out, because we acted fast,” Trump said. “If it would have taken two weeks, maybe. But it’s very hard to remove that kind of material, very hard and very dangerous. Plus, they knew we were coming, and if they know we’re coming, they’re not going to be down there.”

Asked if they could rebuild and whether the U.S. would strike again, Trump said that would be someone else’s problem.

“I’m not going to have to worry about that,” he said. “It’s gone for years, years, very tough to rebuild, because the whole thing is collapsed. In other words, inside, it’s all collapsed. Nobody can get in to see it, because it’s collapsed.”

Asked if he trusted U.S. intelligence, the president said the initial report was “very inconclusive. The intelligence says we don’t know, it could have been very severe, that’s what the intelligence says. So I guess that’s correct, but I think we can take the ‘we don’t know.’ It was very severe. It was obliteration.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio also spoke in support of the president’s position, having accompanied Trump to The Hague.

Like Trump, Hegseth (whom the president described as the “secretary of war”) claimed what he called “fake news” about the Pentagon assessment as demeaning the B-2 pilots who carried out the strikes.

“These pilots these refuels these fighters, these air defenders, the skill and the courage took to go into enemy territory flying 36 hours on behalf of the American people in the world to take out a nuclear program is beyond what anyone in this audience can fathom,” Hegseth said, speaking next to Trump at his news conference.

The defense secretary also rejected the early Pentagon analysis of the damage done by the military operation.

“Given the 30,000 pounds of explosives and capability of those munitions, it was devastation underneath Fordo,” Hegseth said.

“Any assessment that tells you it was something otherwise is speculating with other motives,” Hegseth continued. “And we know that because when you actually look at the report, by the way, it was a top secret report, it was preliminary, it was low confidence.”

Hegseth suggested the leak of the report had “a political motive,” adding, “We’re doing a leak investigation with the FBI right now because this information is for internal purposes.”

Rubio also claimed that the leak of the preliminary report was politically motivated, saying that the attacks led to “complete and total obliteration.”

“But all this leaker stuff, these leakers are professional stabbers,” he said. “They go out and they read this stuff, and then they tell you what it says against the law, but they characterize it for you in a way that’s absolutely false.”

The report prompted further consternation among Trump’s opponents in Washington. Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Chris Coons told ABC News at the NATO summit it is too soon to determine the success of U.S. strikes, adding that the recent round of fighting could have been avoided if Trump had not withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal in his first term.

“The American public needs answers for what what’s really going on,” Shaheen, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said. “If what we see is Iran’s nuclear program has not been obliterated, then we need to try and get Iran back to the negotiating table,” she added.

Shaheen said further nuclear tensions are also possible, as Tehran may “be convinced their race to get a nuclear weapon is even more important — given North Korea’s example — and they will do everything possible to get there as quickly as possible.”

Meanwhile, Trump said the ceasefire is “going very well” despite Tuesday’s continued exchanges, which prompted him to lambast both Israel and Iran and to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to warn him off further attacks.

“Israel came back yesterday,” he said. “I was so proud of them, because they came back, you know, they went out because they felt it was a violation. And technically they were right, but it just wouldn’t have worked out very well. And they brought the planes back.”

“They’re not going to be fighting each other,” he added of Israel and Iran. “They’ve had it. They’ve had a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard. You know, they fight like hell. You can’t stop them. Let them fight for about two, three minutes. Then it’s easier to stop them.”

Trump said the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities on Saturday proved decisive. “That hit ended the war,” he said, likening the U.S. atomic bomb attacks on Japan at the end of World War II.

“I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima, I don’t want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing that ended that war,” Trump said. “If we didn’t take that out, they would have been, they’d be fighting right now,” he continued.

The president expressed optimism about the future of U.S. and Iranian relations.

“I think we’ll end up having somewhat of a relationship with Iran,” he said. “I’ve had a relationship over the last four days. They agreed to the ceasefire, and it was a very equal agreement. They both said, that’s enough. They both said it.”

ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, Luis Martinez, Anne Flaherty and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.

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LONDON — President Donald Trump again claimed “total obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear program during the NATO summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday, dismissing an early Pentagon report suggesting the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Tehran’s facilities may have only set its program back by a matter of months.

“I believe it was total obliteration,” Trump told reporters speaking alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in The Hague, Netherlands.

A preliminary analysis of the strikes by the Defense Intelligence Agency and U.S. Central Command prompted questions as the efficacy of the operation. Two people familiar with the report told ABC News it suggested the strikes did limited damage and that Iran was able to relocate highly enriched uranium stocks before the strikes occurred.

“I believe they didn’t have a chance to get anything out, because we acted fast,” Trump said. “If it would have taken two weeks, maybe. But it’s very hard to remove that kind of material, very hard and very dangerous. Plus, they knew we were coming, and if they know we’re coming, they’re not going to be down there.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said Wednesday that the country’s nuclear facilities had been “badly damaged,” as quoted by the Associated Press.

Trump insisted Iran’s nuclear program had been set back “basically decades,” adding, “It’s gone for years.”

Asked if they could rebuild and whether the U.S. would strike again, Trump said that would be someone else’s problem.

“I’m not going to have to worry about that,” he said. “It’s gone for years, years, very tough to rebuild, because the whole thing is collapsed. In other words, inside, it’s all collapsed. Nobody can get in to see it, because it’s collapsed.”

Asked if he trusted U.S. intelligence, the president said the initial report was “very inconclusive. The intelligence says we don’t know, it could have been very severe, that’s what the intelligence says. So I guess that’s correct, but I think we can take the ‘we don’t know.’ It was very severe. It was obliteration.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio also spoke in support of the president’s position, having accompanied Trump to The Hague.

“Given the 30,000 lbs of explosives and capability of those munitions, it was devastation underneath Fordo,” Hegseth said.

“Any assessment that tells you it was something otherwise is speculating with other motives,” Hegseth continued. “And we know that because when you actually look at the report, by the way, it was a top secret report, it was preliminary, it was low confidence.”

Hegseth suggested the leak of the report had “a political motive,” adding, “We’re doing a leak investigation with the FBI right now because this information is for internal purposes.”

Rubio also claimed that the leak of the preliminary report was politically motivated, saying that the attacks led to “complete and total obliteration.”

“But all this leaker stuff, these leakers are professional stabbers,” he said. “They go out and they read this stuff, and then they tell you what it says against the law, but they characterize it for you in a way that’s absolutely false.”
The report prompted further consternation among Trump’s opponents in Washington. Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Chris Coons told ABC News at the NATO summit it is too soon to determine the success of U.S. strikes, adding that the recent round of fighting could have been avoided if Trump had not withdrawn from the Iran nuclear deal in his first term.

“The American public needs answers for what what’s really going on,” Shaheen, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said. “If what we see is Iran’s nuclear program has not been obliterated, then we need to try and get Iran back to the negotiating table,” she added.

Shaheen said further nuclear tensions are also possible, as Tehran may “be convinced their race to get a nuclear weapon is even more important — given North Korea’s example — and they will do everything possible to get there as quickly as possible.”

Meanwhile, Trump said the ceasefire is “going very well” despite Tuesday’s continued exchanges, which prompted him to lambast both Israel and Iran and to speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to warn him off further attacks.

“Israel came back yesterday,” he said. “I was so proud of them, because they came back, you know, they went out because they felt it was a violation. And technically they were right, but it just wouldn’t have worked out very well. And they brought the planes back.”

“They’re not going to be fighting each other,” he added of Israel and Iran. “They’ve had it. They’ve had a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard. You know, they fight like hell. You can’t stop them. Let them fight for about two, three minutes. Then it’s easier to stop them.”

Trump said the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities on Saturday proved decisive. “That hit ended the war,” he said, likening the U.S. atomic bomb attacks on Japan at the end of World War II.

“I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima, I don’t want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing that ended that war,” Trump said. “If we didn’t take that out, they would have been, they’d be fighting right now,” he continued.

The president expressed optimism about the future of U.S. and Iranian relations.

“I think we’ll end up having somewhat of a relationship with Iran,” he said. “I’ve had a relationship over the last four days. They agreed to the cease fire, and it was a very equal agreement. They both said, that’s enough. They both said it.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

ABC News’ Joe Simonetti, Luis Martinez, Anne Flaherty and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.

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(LONDON) — Police in France say that 14 people have been arrested after 145 people reported being ‘pricked’, possibly by syringes, at a nationwide music festival on Saturday.

Most of the victims were women and the attacks happened during France’s annual “Festival of Music” — Fête de la Musique — which is a series of musical events in towns and cities across the country.

The 145 people who were either pricked, or believe they were pricked, were typically attacked when they were in a crowd and were pricked either in the arm or the back, police say. Most of the victims didn’t see their attacker.

Victims reported feeling an array of symptoms such as hot flushes, dizziness, loss of consciousness and visible marks or bruises on their skin.

Some victims were treated by medics at the festival, but some were taken to hospital where they gave saliva, urine and blood samples to detect whether they had been injected with substances, according to police.

It is not yet clear whether substances have been detected following those tests.

In a video posted on X on Monday evening, French police said they have so far arrested 14 suspects in connection with the attacks.

French police are now warning people attending future events to be vigilant and to seek help immediately if they feel any symptoms. They have also urged people to contact the police and visit a hospital to be tested for any potential substances.

Just before the Festival of Music, a French feminist influencer had posted on social media warning women that men were threatening to prick people during Saturday’s nationwide event in France.

The investigation into the incident is currently ongoing.

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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said on social media Monday evening that Israel and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire, signaling a possible end to nearly two weeks of escalating air assaults by the two countries.

The agreement described by Trump involved two 12-hour ceasefire periods, starting at about 12 a.m. EDT starting with Iran. That would come “when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in progress, final missions,” Trump said in the Truth Social post.

Israel would then follow with a second 12-hour ceasefire, Trump said.

After 24 hours, the war would be officially declared ended, according to Trump.

“On the assumption that everything works as it should, which it will, I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, ‘THE 12 DAY WAR,'” Trump wrote in the post.
In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s announcement, neither Israeli nor Iranian officials publicly commented on the proposal.

In the final hours before the ceasefire was set to go into effect, under the terms described by Trump, Israel said Iran had launched a barrage of missiles, killing at least three people.

Earlier, in a post on social media, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi had denied there was a ceasefire agreement. However, he said if Israel halted its strikes by 4 a.m. Tehran time (8:30 p.m. EDT) “we have no intention to continue our response afterwards.”

Araghchi said a final decision “on the cessation of our military operations” would be made later and he thanked Iranian armed forces who he said “responded to any attack by the enemy until the very last minute.”

Trump’s surprise ceasefire announcement came two days after the U.S. joined Israel’s war, launching strikes on three Iranian nuclear targets.

The war began June 12 when Israel launched a series of strikes against Iran that included dozens of military targets, including the country’s nuclear program. Defending what it called a “preemptive” strike, Israel cited intelligence that it said indicated Iran had “significantly advanced” toward obtaining a nuclear weapon — claims Iran denied.

Earlier Monday, Iran fired missiles targeting Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar — the largest U.S. military base in the region — raising concerns about potential escalation after the U.S.. However, a U.S. official told ABC News the U.S. intercepted the missiles with assistance from Qatar and Trump, who called the response “very weak,” struck a de-escalatory tone on social media. One source later called Iran’s move a “failed retaliation.”

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(LONDON) — At least seven people were killed and 28 injured in Kyiv overnight as Russian drone and missile attacks again rocked Ukraine’s capital, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Monday, describing Moscow’s latest attack as “terrible.”

Most casualties came from a single strike on a residential building in Kyiv’s northwestern Shevchenkivskyi district, Klitschko said in a post to Telegram, alongside which he published a video from the impact site showing extensive damage to nearby apartment blocks.

Ukraine’s air force said in a post to Telegram that Russia launched 352 drones and 16 missiles into the country overnight, with Kyiv the primary target. Of those, the air force said 339 drones and 15 missiles were shot down or otherwise neutralized.

Direct hits were reported in six locations, the air force said, with falling debris reported in 25 locations.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted a statement on Telegram condemning the “cynical strike,” which he said included the use of North Korean ballistic missiles.

Noting Russia’s condemnation of recent Israeli and U.S. strikes on Iran, Zelenskyy said Moscow remains “silent” on its own ongoing bombardment of Ukrainian cities using Iranian-supplied attack drones.

“A significant part of the drones and missiles were shot down by our sky defenders,” Zelenskyy wrote. “But not all. And everyone in countries close to Russia, Iran and North Korea should think about whether they will be able to protect lives there if this coalition of killers persists and continues to spread terror.”

The Ukrainian president will visit the U.K. on Monday, as British leaders prepare for the NATO summit in the Netherlands on Tuesday.

Zelenskyy said that air defense capabilities will be among the topics to be discussed, capabilities he said “should become the basis for a much stronger joint defense.”

“And we will also agree on new and strong steps to put pressure on Russia for this war and to stop the strikes,” Zelenskyy wrote in his statement.

Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its forces shot down 23 Ukrainian drones overnight.

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(LONDON) — Russia announced on Thursday that it is returning to Ukraine five children who have been separated from their families by the war.

Maria Lvova-Belova, the Kremlin’s commissioner of children’s rights, told reporters that the Ukrainian children will be reunited with their families in Ukraine by the end of this month.

The children were on a list of 339 children that Ukrainian officials gave their Russian counterparts during the last round of peace talks earlier this month in Istanbul, Turkey — negotiations that failed to bring the three-year war to an end.

In response to a question from the Russian news agency Interfax, Lvova-Belova, speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, said the delay in sending the Ukrainian children back to their county was “due to their studies.”

“They are finishing the school year and after that they will return to their relatives in Ukraine,” she said.

Lvova-Belova did not mention status of the other children on Ukraine’s list.

According to Lvova-Belova, Russia is preparing its own list of Russian children believed to be in Ukraine. She said it will be handed over to Ukrainian officials whenever the next round of negotiations is scheduled.

“We also have children in Ukraine who require reunification with Russian families,” Lvova-Belova said. “At the moment, we have eight children on the list who are in EU countries. They were evacuated there from Ukraine, and their parents are in Russia. And from Ukraine, we have about 10 people, with whom we are also currently negotiating their return.”

Ukrainian officials have alleged that many of the country’s children have been abducted and taken to Russia since the war began in February 2022, when Russian troops invaded Ukraine.

In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued warrants for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin on war crimes charges related to the abduction of Ukrainian children.

The Kremlin, however, has denied the allegations, saying the children were taken out of war zones for their own protection.

ABC News’ Anna Sergeeva contributed to this report.

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(OAXACA, Mexico) — Hurricane Erick, which rapidly intensified overnight, made landfall Thursday morning on Mexico’s Pacific Coast as a powerful Category 3 storm, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.

Erick came ashore in Mexico’s western state of Oaxaca packing sustained winds of 125 mph and heavy rain, accordin to the NHC.

The hurricane was located on Thursday morning about 20 miles east of Punta Maldonado and was moving northwest at about 9 mph, according to the NHC.

Before making landfall, the Erick had spooled up to an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, but was downgraded to a Cat 3 before making landfall, the NHC center reported.

Erick is the first Pacific Category 3 hurricane on record to make landfall over Mexico in June.

A hurricane warning remained in effect Thursday from Acapulco to Puerto Angel.

It remained unclear if villages along Mexico’s populated Pacific Coast had sustained damaged. There have been no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.

The major hurricane appeared to hit he coastline between the resort towns of Acapulco and Puerto Escondido in an area near the border of Oaxaca and Guerrero states, according to the NHC.

As it sweeps across the state of Oaxaca, Erick is expected to slam parts of the region with strong winds and heavy rain for most of Thursday before weakening over land by Friday.

Erick will produce heavy rainfall up to 6 to 8 inches across southeastern Guerrero and west-coastal Oaxaca through Friday and likely trigger life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides — especially in areas of steep terrain.

Erick formed as a tropical storm early Tuesday in the Pacific Ocean near southern Mexico and rapidly intensified, reaching hurricane strength by Wednesday, according to the NHC.

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(LONDON) — The repercussions of Israel’s surprise campaign against Iran’s nuclear program and military leadership launched last Friday were evident within hours.

“We are racking up achievements,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the opening salvo, which appeared to have devastated Iran’s anti-aircraft defense network and decapitated its military, killing many among the top brass, according to Israeli officials.

Netanyahu, his top officials and the Israel Defense Forces have made clear some of their war goals — the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program plus the erasure of the country’s ballistic missile arsenal.

But, as in Israel’s operations in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, there are already signs of “rapid mission creep” in Iran, Julie Norman, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in the U.K., told ABC News.

Iran’s weakened defense has prompted fresh questions about “regime change” — long a priority for Iran hawks in Israel and the U.S. seeking to topple Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the theocratic system he heads. Critics of such a policy, though, warn that government collapse in Iran could unleash regional chaos.

“The record of regime change is not great, to say the least,” Yossi Mekelberg of the Chatham House think tank in the U.K. told ABC News, warning that the regime’s collapse would more likely produce a dangerous power vacuum in Iran than a coherent and pliant successor.

“You want to experiment with chaos? Well, good luck,” Mekelberg said.

The nuclear front

Netanyahu faces significant challenges to achieve his two expressed goals — an end to Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile threats.

On the nuclear front, Israel has inflicted damage at several of Iran’s key sites. The International Atomic Energy Agency has reported damage to surface facilities at the Natanz and Isfahan enrichment sites. On Tuesday, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said the body “identified additional elements that indicate direct impacts on the underground enrichment halls at Natanz.”

But Israel does not have the capabilities needed to destroy the Fordow enrichment plant — where the IAEA says no damage has been reported — which is built deep inside a mountain outside the city of Qom. Only American strategic bombers could deliver a payload capable of punching through up to 300 feet of mountain to reach the underground facility.

Netanyahu is trying to press the White House into intervention.

“Today, it’s Tel Aviv, tomorrow, it’s New York,” the prime minister told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl on Monday.

Trump responded to Israel’s opening attacks by calling for Iran to return to negotiations over its nuclear program. He has since dismissed talk of a ceasefire, said he wants a “real end” to the Iran nuclear issue and warned residents of Tehran — of whom there are around 17 million in the wider metropolitan area — to evacuate.

On Tuesday, Trump raised the prospect of killing Khamenei and wrote on his social media platform that “we now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” while lauding the impact of U.S. weaponry. The president has also demanded “unconditional surrender,” a concept Iran’s supreme leader rejected.

Despite Trump’s rhetoric, the U.S. has not joined Israel in attacking Iran offensively. Last year the U.S. twice assisted Israel in helping to shoot down Iranian drones and ballistic missiles Iran had launched in retaliation for Israeli attacks in Syria and Tehran. This marked the first time the U.S. actively participated in Israel’s defense, which has historically taken the form of weapons sales, transfers and intelligence sharing support.

As the conflict escalated this week, the U.S. deployed additional fighter jets and refueling tankers to the Middle East. The USS Nimitz aircraft carrier has also been diverted to the region, to join the USS Carl Vinson carrier which was already deployed there. The deployments, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, are “intended to enhance our defensive posture in the region.”

President Trump told top advisers Tuesday that he approved attack plans for Iran that were presented to him, but said he was waiting to see if Iran would be willing to discuss ending their nuclear program and has not made a final decision on US involvement in the conflict, sources familiar with the matter said. The news of the attack plan approval was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

“As President Trump said himself today, all options remain on the table,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.

Without destroying Fordow, Mekelberg said, the job of neutralizing Tehran’s nuclear program will be incomplete. “If you want to set it three years back, that is not a good enough reason to go for a war of such scale,” he said.

“If the idea was to push Iran to the negotiation table and to scare them — the Iranians are not easily scared. They fought eight years with Iraq in a much inferior situation, and they prevailed. This is not Hezbollah, this is not Hamas, this is not Islamic Jihad.”

Sina Toossi, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy think tank, told ABC News that Israel and the U.S. — if Trump opts to engage militarily against Iran — could face a “quagmire.”

“To verifiably destroy what they’ve said they want to destroy, they need boots on the ground eventually,” Toossi said, referring to Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Ballistic missiles

Erasing Iran’s ballistic missile threat is another key goal, Netanyahu has said. The IDF claims to have destroyed at least one-third of Iran’s launch vehicles, along with an unknown number of stockpiled missiles.

The IDF estimated that Tehran started the conflict with 2,000 missiles and as of Tuesday had fired around 400 toward Israel. The number will have been further eroded by ongoing IDF strikes across the country.

“That capacity is going to be weakened,” Norman said, though added that Iran has “a pretty deep arsenal, and I think those will keep coming for some time.”

Toossi noted that American involvement would raise the stakes for Tehran, which still has the capacity to hit American and allied targets in Iraq, across the Persian Gulf and elsewhere. If faced with an existential conflict, “they can inflict a lot of damage in their periphery,” Toossi said.

As time wears on, the burden on Israeli and U.S. anti-missile systems will grow, Toossi said. Interceptor missiles are finite and expensive, plus their production takes time. “There’s an economics to this warfare right now that’s not necessarily in the favor of Israel and the U.S..” Toossi said.

“I think there’s sometimes an overestimation as to how quickly other groups will surrender, or in this case other states will surrender,” Norman said of Netanyahu and his government. While Israel sees its conflicts as existential, so do its enemies, Norman added.

Regime change

Pushing for regime change — a goal the IDF has explicitly denied and Netanyahu has dodged questions on — might prove the biggest gamble of Israel’s attack, experts told ABC News.

Such a policy makes two assumptions, Mekelberg said. “First, that you can bring down the regime, and second, that you’ll get the people that you want.”

Indeed, the 1979 revolution that birthed the Islamic Republic “started with the liberals, not with the religious,” Mekelberg said. “Look how it ended.”

“In any such episode, there is the best case scenario — which usually doesn’t happen — and there is the worst-case scenario,” he said. “And in between, there is the war with its own dynamics and momentum.”

Even if the regime is at risk of collapse, it would be hard to say when. Israel, Mekelberg said, will need to be prepared for an open-ended war of attrition with levels of destruction inside the country that “people are not used to seeing.”

Netanyahu has repeatedly appealed to the people of Iran to act against the government in Tehran. “This is your opportunity to stand up,” he said over the weekend.

But a population under fire may have different priorities. “People are going to be focusing on surviving and getting out, not on starting a revolution,” Norman said.

Continued attacks may also produce a rallying effect. “Many people do not like the Islamic Republic, the theocracy. But Iranians, despite their disgruntlement with the government, when it comes to Iran, its sovereignty, its stability, its territorial integrity, there’s a strong sense of nationalism across the board from secular to religious, to young to old,” Toossi said. “And that is really being stirred right now.”

Skylar Thomson of the Human Rights Activists in Iran NGO — which is based in the U.S. — told ABC News there is a “real atmosphere of fear” among Iranians she is in contact with.

“In the initial days, people were seeing the assassinations of these Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders that were notoriously cruel” and considered “the leading oppressors in their world,” Thomson said. But fear and uncertainty have spread as hospitals, residential areas, infrastructure and other non-military targets have been attacked, she added.

“You’re talking about a population of people that are already struggling because of external matters,” Thomson said. “And this is just another layer of that.”

ABC News’ Katherine Faulders and Luis Martinez contributed to this report.

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(SEOUL and LONDON) — North Korea launched “more than a dozen” rockets on Thursday morning, the South Korean Ministry of Defense said.

The rockets were launched at about 10 a.m. local time from the Sun’an area of North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang, the ministry said, adding that “the details are being analyzed by the Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities.”

“Our military maintains the ability and posture to respond overwhelmingly to any provocation while paying attention to various trends in North Korea under a strong joint defense posture between Korea and the United States so that North Korea does not misjudge in the current security situation,” the ministry said in a statement.

South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that the rockets were fired into the Yellow Sea, which is known in the south as the West Sea.

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(KYIV, Ukraine) —  Massive overnight Russian strikes on Kyiv killed 15 people, Ukrainian officials said, as Moscow launched hundreds of drones and missiles at targets across the country.

The strikes wounded at least 177 others in the Ukrainian capital, according to officials. A United States citizen was among the 15 killed, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Nearly 150 residential buildings were damaged in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said, with search and rescue efforts ongoing.

“Rescuers and police officers continue to work at the sites where residential infrastructure was hit,” Ihor Klymenko, Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. “The rescue operation is ongoing at two locations in Kyiv. There are still people trapped under the rubble, so the work will not stop until everyone is found.”

At a residential building in the Solomianskyi district, “an entire entrance collapsed,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said in an update on Telegram.

The mayor posted a video to Telegram showing what he said were Russian cluster munitions found at one of the impact sites in the capital. Klitschko later declared Wednesday a day of mourning for the victims of the attack.

Ukraine’s air force said in a post to Telegram that the attack consisted of 440 drones and 32 missiles — of which 402 drones and 26 missiles were shot down or otherwise neutralized. The air force reported impacts in 10 locations and downed debris in 34 locations. The attack is believed to have been one of the largest on the capital in several months.

Kyiv bore the brunt of the strikes, Zelenskyy said, with impacts also reported in Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Kirovohrad and Mykolaiv.

At least two people were killed and 18 injured in Odesa, according to officials. The deceased were recovered from under rubble, Klymenko said.

“Such attacks are pure terrorism,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram. “And the whole world, the U.S. and Europe must finally react the way a civilized society reacts to terrorists.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zelenskyy said, “is doing this solely because he can afford to continue the war. He wants the war to continue. It is bad when the powerful of this world turn a blind eye to this. We are contacting all partners at all possible levels to ensure an appropriate response. It is the terrorists who should feel the pain, not normal, peaceful people.”

The attacks came as G7 leaders gathered in Canada, where Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine is one of several key topics of discussion. President Donald Trump on Monday suggested that Russia — previously a member of the group when it was known as the G8 — should not have been expelled from the bloc in 2014 after its invasion and annexation of Crimea.

Putin “sends a signal of total disrespect to the United States and other partners who have called for an end to the killing,” Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X. “Putin’s goal is very simple: make the G7 leaders appear weak. Only strong steps and real pressure on Moscow can prove him wrong.”

ABC News’ Ellie Kaufman contributed to this report.

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