Live Updates: Trump Says He Hasn’t Made Up His Mind on Iran Strikes
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June 18, 2025, 5:52 p.m. ET
Isabel KershnerDavid E. SangerEphrat Livni and Richard Pérez-Peña
President Trump said Wednesday that he had not made a final decision on whether to order American forces to join Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites, after the supreme leader of Iran warned that the United States would suffer “irreparable” harm if it did so.
“I have ideas as to what to do,” Mr. Trump said during an Oval Office event. He added, “I like to make a final decision one second before it’s due, you know, because things change.”
Earlier in the day, on the White House lawn, Mr. Trump told reporters: “I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”
Mr. Trump’s cryptic remarks were being watched closely for clues about his intentions. Israel has pressed him to use powerful American weaponry to attack Iran’s underground nuclear sites, and the prospect that he would order direct American involvement in the war has added to fears of a wider conflagration in the Middle East.
There were conflicting signals from Iran as well on Wednesday, with a senior diplomat telling The New York Times that Iran was open to negotiations with the United States, hours after the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rejected Mr. Trump’s call for an “unconditional surrender.”
“Intelligent people who know Iran, the nation and the history of Iran will never speak to this nation in the language of threats, because the Iranian nation cannot be surrendered,” Mr. Khamenei said in a televised statement, according to Iranian state media. “The Americans should know that any U.S. military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage.”
Mr. Trump suggested it was not too late for diplomacy to head off a wider war, and he has he held out the possibility that his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, or even Vice President JD Vance could meet with Iranian officials to seek a negotiated deal. A senior official in Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that the country’s foreign minister would accept such an offer to talk.
As Israel’s strikes on Iran continued for a sixth straight day, and Iran fired missiles in response, the American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, issued an “urgent notice” saying the embassy was arranging evacuations for American citizens wanting to leave Israel.
Here’s what else to know:
Diplomatic effort: A senior Iranian official from the Foreign Ministry said that Iran would accept President Trump’s offer to meet soon. The Iranian official said the country’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, would accept a meeting with senior American representatives to discuss a cease-fire with Israel, though Mr. Trump has indicated he wants talks to focus on Iran’s nuclear program. Read more ›
U.S. involvement: Israel has been pressing for the United States to assist in the effort to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, and in particular to use its largest bunker-busting bombs — which Israel does not have, nor the planes capable of delivering them — against underground Iranian nuclear facilities. Mr. Trump said, “Nobody knows what I’m going to do.” Read more ›
Life in Tehran: Before internet disruptions left many Iranians essentially cut off from communicating with the outside world, some managed to send text messages, phone calls and voice memos describing what life has been like. Read more ›
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June 18, 2025, 5:03 p.m. ET
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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivered a recorded address from a bunker on Wednesday. Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Wednesday rejected negotiations with Washington and warned that if it attacked Iran, the United States “without doubt will face irreparable harm.”
But a senior Iranian official from the Foreign Ministry, who asked that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said that Iran would accept President Trump’s offer to meet soon. On Monday, Mr. Trump held out the possibility of a meeting with his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, or even with Vice President JD Vance.
The Iranian official said Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi would accept such a meeting to discuss a cease-fire with Israel and Iran’s nuclear program.
Mr. Araghchi said this week that Iran would return to diplomacy if Israel halted its attacks, and that Mr. Trump could force an end to the conflict with one phone call to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Since the 1979 revolution that installed a theocratic government in Iran, no U.S. vice president or president has met with Iranian officials, and even meetings with U.S. cabinet officers have been rare.
Before war with Israel broke out last week, Iran and the United States were in the midst of negotiations, mediated by Oman, and had exchanged written proposals for frameworks of a deal addressing Iran’s nuclear program, though they remained far apart.
On Friday, two days before a scheduled meeting between Mr. Araghchi and Mr. Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, Israel began airstrikes in Iran, with the stated intention of destroying its nuclear program and preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The talks with the United States in Oman were called off.
Mr. Netanyahu has appealed to Mr. Trump to join the war, and to use powerful weapons Israel does not have to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear sites. Mr. Trump has mused publicly this week about the possibility of bombing Iran, and even of killing Mr. Khamenei. On Wednesday, he said he still had not made up his mind how to proceed, but also said it was not too late for diplomacy.
Mr. Khamenei, in a televised address on Wednesday from a safehouse bunker, dismissed the idea of negotiations and said, “They cannot impose either war or peace on the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
He downplayed the impact of the war, claiming that “ordinary life” goes on in his country. But many Iranians say their lives have been upended, with tens of thousands of people having fled Tehran and many struggling to find safe shelter, food and clean water.
A new diplomatic effort has taken shape in hopes of brokering a cease-fire before the conflict draws in others in the region, or the United States. European, Turkish and Arab foreign ministers and heads of state have been talking with both Iran and the United States.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations requested an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Wednesday. The meeting is scheduled for Friday morning.
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June 18, 2025, 4:22 p.m. ET
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The United States Embassy in Jerusalem in 2023. Credit...Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The United States Embassy in Jerusalem is working on arranging flights and cruise ships for American citizens looking to leave Israel, the American ambassador, Mike Huckabee, announced on Wednesday, after days in which Americans trying to depart the country could not get evacuation assistance from the embassy.
The announcement came as the conflict between Israel and Iran continued for a sixth day and fears grew that the United States could more directly enter the conflict. Israel and Iran have closed their airspaces since the fighting began, leaving foreigners visiting those countries scrambling to find avenues to leave by land or sea as governments around the world have issued travel warnings and urged their citizens to return home.
It was not immediately clear when evacuation flights and cruise ships arranged by the State Department would depart or how many passengers would be involved. In a post on social media, Mr. Huckabee directed Americans seeking to leave Israel to enroll in the State Department’s Smart Traveler program to receive information.
The announcement was the first from the State Department indicating that the United States would help evacuate its citizens from Israel since the country began a surprise attack on Iran on Friday. Israeli strikes have killed at least 224 people in Iran, according to Iran’s Health Ministry, and retaliatory strikes by Iran have killed at least 24 people in Israel, according to the Israeli government.
The State Department had warned of extreme risk in traveling to Israel and authorized some family members and nonessential personnel to depart. But since Friday, the American Embassy in Jerusalem has had little guidance for people trying to leave. “We have no announcement about assisting private U.S. citizens to depart at this time,” the embassy said in a statement on Tuesday, adding it was aware that third parties were helping to arrange some travel but that it was unable to endorse them.
Several countries have helped evacuate their citizens from Iran in recent days, largely through land routes into neighboring countries. India’s Foreign Ministry said that its embassy had evacuated 110 Indian students from northern Iran on Tuesday, helping them travel by road to Yerevan, the Armenian capital, to await flights to New Delhi. A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, Guo Jiakun, said on Wednesday that the Chinese Embassy and consulate in Iran had coordinated the evacuation of nearly 800 Chinese citizens from the country and that around 1,000 others were still to be relocated and evacuated.
The State Department warned U.S. citizens not to travel to Iran in March and does not maintain a diplomatic presence there. President Trump’s travel ban fully barring its citizens from entering the U.S. went into effect on June 9, before the latest conflict began.
Robert Reichelscheimer, an American lawyer who has been visiting Jerusalem with his wife since Thursday, described Mr. Huckabee’s announcement as a long-awaited “acknowledgment that we are here” after what he said had been multiple attempts to reach the U.S. Embassy, as well as senators back home in New York, with no luck.
“I don’t expect them to come and rescue me the next day, while missiles are flying,” he said. “But I do expect the federal government to keep me abreast of what steps are being taken.”
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June 18, 2025, 3:47 p.m. ET
Parin Behrooz has spoken with people inside Iran via text, phone calls and voice memos over the last week. She received this account of a Tehran resident’s days over messages on Instagram.
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Internet and phone service has become unreliable in Iran. Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
Iranians were essentially cut off from communicating with the outside world on Wednesday, as internet disruptions reached their most severe point since Israel’s first strike last week.
But before the disruptions reached their peak, some Iranians managed to send text messages, phone calls and voice memos describing what life has been like.
Asad, an engineer from Tehran in his 20s, was outside Tehran when the Israeli attacks began there last week. He sent me a series of messages on Instagram on Tuesday night to describe what he had seen, using only his nickname for security reasons.
“The first thing that caught our eye was a tower in the east of the city — the upper floors had been destroyed,” he said. “That was the first time I saw war so close to me. I could feel the worry brewing in my stomach.”
As the attacks and Iran’s retaliations went on, people began to leave Tehran, filling the streets and lining up for food and fuel. Others, including Asad, who had returned to the city by then, either decided to stay or were unable to leave. People started to get used to the sounds of defense systems and explosions, he said: “Sometimes the blasts are so loud and so close that people rush out of their homes and look up at the sky.”
Most of the time, he said, residents do not receive any emergency alerts about attacks, instead only learning about them from the sound of explosions. Asad said the pervasive feeling of anxiety was mixed with a sense of unity, shown in the way people sometimes raced to help after strikes.
Some people were volunteering to help the Red Crescent with rescue work, he said, adding that he had gone out after a strike in central Tehran. He said he saw a woman in her 70s “in shock” and a man who “had jumped out of the building onto his own car in just an undershirt, terrified.”
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As Israeli attacks increased and Iran mounted retaliations, some residents have sought to leave Tehran. Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
Security forces were also increasingly visible on the streets of Tehran, he said, with checkpoints set up around the city. Internet service was “heavily throttled” during Israeli attacks, he said, although calls and texts within Iran were working fine.
Asad said he did not personally know anyone hurt in the attacks so far, although one friend’s windows had been shattered by a blast wave. The danger, he said, “keeps getting closer and closer.”
He also said he was stunned by how Tehran, normally a city of 14 million people, had come to feel “deserted” now that many people have fled and others have chose to remain inside their homes. Most shops are closed, or only open during the day.
“It still feels like a nightmare we haven’t woken up from,” Asad said. “Even though we’re getting used to it, it doesn’t feel real.”
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June 18, 2025, 3:14 p.m. ET
Reporting from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
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Smoke rising after an Israeli strike in Tehran on Wednesday. Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
A bipartisan group of Congress members, visiting Gulf Arab states this week, said they heard a different message about the Israel-Iran war from those countries than what their governments have said publicly.
The lawmakers said the officials they spoke to in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain emphasized a desire to calm tensions in the region. But instead of condemnation of Israel, they heard an openness to continued partnership with the Jewish state, four Congress members said in interviews on Wednesday.
And instead of expressions of solidarity with Iran, they said, they heard warnings about the threat posed to the Middle East by Iran’s nuclear program — and the need to eliminate it.
“Obviously they would prefer a more peaceful way of getting rid of the nuclear weapons, but they all made clear that a nuclear armed Iran is an existential threat to them,” said Representative Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, in a phone interview from the Emirates. “They prefer peaceful ways — but this way is working as well.”
The government of Saudi Arabia did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. The Bahraini government responded to questions about the delegation’s remarks by sharing a previously-issued statement in which they condemned the Israeli attack on Iran and called for restraint.
The Emirati government, in a statement to The New York Times, also reiterated its position that it “strongly condemns the Israeli military escalation against Iran.”
“The U.A.E. considers de-escalation an urgent priority and continues to engage with regional and international partners to prevent further instability,” it said.
In 2020, Bahrain and the Emirates established diplomatic ties with Israel for the first time, in what are called the Abraham Accords, and Israeli and American officials have held out hope of normalizing relations with other states in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia. But Bahraini and Emirati ties with Israel have been strained since the war in Gaza began in 2023.
The countries visited by the congressional delegation have long viewed Iran with distrust, but have shifted over the past few years to a policy of courting Iran with diplomacy — viewing it as a more pragmatic way to contain their neighbor.
Publicly, all three countries swiftly condemned the devastating Israeli bombing campaign against Iran that began on Friday and set off the fiercest conflict in their long history of hostility. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said that Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities to ward off a threat to Israel, and has raised the possibility of toppling the Iranian government.
The Emirati ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, called the Iranian president on Tuesday to express “solidarity with Iran and its people during these challenging times.” Saudi Arabia, long viewed as Iran’s bitter rival, denounced “the blatant Israeli aggressions against the brotherly Islamic Republic of Iran.” Bahrain warned of the attack’s “grave repercussions on regional security and stability.”
But in private this week, the congressmen said, senior officials in each country presented a different perspective, though they also heard criticism of Israel.
“What we heard was a continued sense of optimism for the future,” said Representative Brad Schneider, a Democrat from Illinois and co-chairman of the Congressional Israel Allies Caucus. “And a concern and understanding that a nuclear Iran is a threat to that future but that the Abraham Accords are a pathway to secure that future.”
Arab leaders in the region are wary of public alignment with Israel, knowing that among their people, Israel and its occupation of Palestinian territories are deeply unpopular.
“We’ve traveled to this region enough times to realize that there’s some Kabuki theater that goes on,” said Representative Jimmy Panetta, Democrat of California. “However the consistent message was basically pointed at Iran and their deep destabilizing forces — not just with their nuclear capabilities but also with their proxies.”
Gulf officials also seemed encouraged that the Israeli attack had shown “that maybe Iran is not nearly as strong as it is reported to be,” said Representative Zach Nunn, Republican of Iowa.
During their meetings in Saudi Arabia, the congressmen discussed the prospect of the kingdom recognizing Israel.
“Where we are today, that is not likely to be the next step going forward,” Mr. Schneider said, adding, “But what we did hear was a progress and commitment to a peaceful future in the region.”
Mr. Panetta, who met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia in 2023, shortly before the war in Gaza began, said he had left that meeting “with great optimism and hope” for a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. But, he said, the war in Gaza had changed the calculus.
“I’ve been back to Saudi Arabia twice since then, and there is obviously another part to the equation,” he said. “That is obviously going to be the Palestinian question, which needs to be addressed.”
The congressional delegation’s trip had been planned months ago. The congressmen decided to go ahead with their visit despite the escalating violence between Israel and Iran.
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June 18, 2025, 2:17 p.m. ET
Reporting from Jerusalem
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Israelis gathering near the water in Herzliya. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
An Israeli woman who returned from abroad on Wednesday grinned for the television cameras as she knelt and kissed the floor of the airport terminal. Sidewalk cafes in Jerusalem were filled with people excused from work because of the war, sipping lattes in the sunshine.
Even Benjamin Netanyahu, the beleaguered prime minister who was fighting for his political survival just a week ago, was getting a break. Some of his fiercest critics were giving him full credit for daring to take on Iran, Israel’s most feared enemy. The danger from Iran’s retaliatory ballistic missile strikes aside, morale among Jewish Israelis, at least, appeared to be soaring on the sixth day of the war.
Israeli warplanes continued to operate at will in Iranian airspace, pummeling targets, and many Israelis were getting their hopes up that the United States would join the bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear program, long viewed by Israelis as a threat to their future.
The war with Iran is far from over and the outcome is unclear. But with Israel’s initial successes, the sense of unity and national pride represented a sharp turnaround for a country that was deeply traumatized by the deadly, Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that set off the war in Gaza.
Mr. Netanyahu, a conservative and a political phoenix, has risen again, seemingly imbued with a renewed confidence and a sense of his historical significance.
“We are getting rid of the evil Iranian empire that threatens our existence,” he said in a television interview on Israel’s right-wing Channel 14 on Tuesday night. “Within five days we’ve turned the tables,” he said, having opened what he called “an aerial expressway to Iran.”
“This is an enormous moment, a moment of pride for the nation of Israel,” he added.
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Iranian missiles have struck several Israeli cities, including Bnei Brak, east of Tel Aviv. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
Matan Kahana, a centrist lawmaker in the opposition and a former fighter pilot, said, “There is unity from wall to wall in Israel over the campaign to remove the Iranian nuclear threat.”
“Now people are asking ‘Why didn’t we do it earlier?’” he said, adding that Israelis see this as “a war of no choice” and that so far, Iran is enduring the worst of it.
The newfound unity has not erased older political and social rifts that have plagued Israel, including over exemptions from military service for ultra-Orthodox religious seminary students, the security lapses that enabled the October 2023 attack, and the fate of hostages still held in Gaza.
But some of Mr. Netanyahu’s veteran detractors are reassessing him.
“The decision to go to war was entirely Netanyahu’s,” wrote Nahum Barnea, a leading political columnist, in the popular Yediot Ahronot newspaper this week. He noted that Mr. Netanyahu had become known as risk-averse over the years.
“We shouldn’t downplay the importance of the decision,” Mr. Barnea added, comparing it to the kind of decision that Israel’s revered founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, might have made.
“Maybe we misread him; maybe he’s changed,” Mr. Barnea wrote of Mr. Netanyahu.
To be sure, many Israelis are sleep deprived. Air raid sirens have sent millions of people rushing for protected spaces and bomb shelters in the middle of the night day after day. At least two dozen people have been killed so far by Iranian missiles that evaded Israel’s air defenses.
Some people are spending the night in approved underground parking lots and train stations.
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Israelis sheltering in Ramat Gan, Israel, on Sunday. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
Many citizens are anxious. Sales of tranquilizers are up by a third, Israel’s Channel 12 television reported.
And before ordering their coffee, customers can be heard asking shop staff members where the nearest fortified shelter is. Israelis generally get a 10-minute warning for incoming missile fire.
Still, Israeli television pundits brag that whereas residents of Tehran are fleeing their city, tens of thousands of Israelis who were stranded abroad after Israel abruptly closed its airspace on Friday have been clamoring for seats on the special flights arranged to bring them home.
The intensity of the Iranian missile strikes has waned in recent days and the Israeli authorities slightly relaxed restrictions on Wednesday evening, permitting small gatherings and allowing people to go back to work — so long as their workplace provides easy access to a bomb shelter.
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June 18, 2025, 12:44 p.m. ET
Lara Jakes writes about weapons and global conflicts.
About 40,000 U.S. troops are currently stationed across the Middle East.
Long-term U.S. military bases
Other military sites with recent U.S. military presence
Kuwait Five installations are located here. They can hold more than 13,500 troops.
Al Udeid Air Base U.S. Central Command regional headquarters can accommodate more than 10,000 troops.
Al Asad Air Base Many of the approximately 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq are located at this Iraqi base.
Al Asad Air Base Many of the approximately 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq are located at this Iraqi base.
Iran
Iran
Israel
Iraq
Syria
Saudi Arabia
Afghanistan
U.A.E.
Turkmenistan
Qat.
Bahrain
Oman
Yemen
Egypt
Egypt
Sudan
Jordan
Djibouti
Eritrea
Turkey
Tehran
Tel Aviv
Source: Congressional Research Service
Note: Troop numbers and locations are approximate and fluctuate.
By Daniel Wood and Lazaro Gamio
Thousands of American troops could be in Iran’s direct line of fire if President Trump joins Israel in attacking Tehran’s nuclear program and military, as he said on Wednesday that he may or may not do.
Many would have only minutes to take cover from an incoming Iranian missile.
Experts expect that if Mr. Trump orders the American military to directly participate in Israel’s bombing campaign, Iran will quickly retaliate against U.S. troops stationed across the Middle East.
“The Americans should know that any U.S. military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage,” Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned on Wednesday, according to state news media.
More than 40,000 U.S. active-duty troops and civilians are working for the Pentagon in the Middle East, and billions of dollars in weapons and military equipment are stored there. Over decades, both during and after war, the American military has fortified its defenses in the region, said Dana Stroul, the Pentagon’s top official for Middle East policy during the Biden administration.
The United States further strengthened those defenses, she said, after Hamas’s brutal attacks on Israel in October 2023, which set off a broader conflict between Israel and Iran’s regional allies.
“In some ways, the U.S. military has absolutely set the theater to respond to Iranian attacks, should the regime choose to turn its missiles or activate its militias against U.S. forces,” Ms. Stroul said on Wednesday.
She added, “The tipping point in whether this expands, is what decisions the United States makes in the coming days, with respect to partnering with Israel in offensive operations.”
Hundreds of, if not a few thousand, American troops are stationed elsewhere in the Middle East, including in Jordan, Syria and Oman, on bases run by those countries. The precise numbers weren’t available as the Trump administration looks to trim its footprint in some places, like Syria.
Adel Abdel Ghafar, a senior analyst at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs in Doha, Qatar, predicted that American troops stationed in Iraq, Bahrain and Kuwait would be Iran’s first targets. Nonessential American personnel and family have already been withdrawn from the embassies in those three countries.
Iran’s proxy fighters in neighboring Shiite-majority Iraq and elsewhere pose a formidable ground threat to American military and diplomatic outposts, Mr. Abdel Ghafar said. And it would take only three or four minutes for a ballistic missile fired from Iran to hit bases in Gulf countries housing U.S. troops, he said.
“This gives much less time for air defenses” to intercept incoming missiles, he said, “so it would be disastrous.”
Here is where American troops in the Middle East might be most vulnerable.
As many as 2,500 American troops and military contractors are in Iraq, based in the capital, Baghdad, as well as in the northern Kurdish region and in the western desert. The Al Asad desert base, which is controlled by the Iraqi military, was targeted by Shiite forces backed by Iran earlier this week in drone strikes. American forces stationed there shot down the weapons.
The American military has a fraught relationship with the Iraqis, after the eight-year war and the occupation that ended in 2011, but U.S. troops were welcomed back just a few years later to fight Islamic State militants who had seized control of areas in the country’s north and west. In 2020, the Trump administration ordered an airstrike that killed the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, as he arrived in Baghdad to meet with Iraq’s prime minister. The strike escalated tensions between Washington and Tehran.
The headquarters of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet are in Manama, Bahrain, and host about 9,000 U.S. military and civilian personnel. Part of its mission is to ensure safe passage for commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, where 20 percent of the world’s oil supply flows through. Iran has threatened to seed the strait with as many as 6,000 naval mines, a tactic meant to pin American warships in the Persian Gulf. It would also disrupt global oil trade, especially for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which ship a lot of oil through the strait, as well as energy buyers like China and India.
Five bases in Kuwait, where about 13,500 American troops are stationed, have served for decades as an essential staging point for forces, weapons and military equipment on their way to battlefields around the world.
Military ties between Kuwait and the United States have remained strong since the Persian Gulf war of 1991. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the United States led a coalition to contain Saddam Hussein’s forces in the region and keep him from seizing Saudi Arabia. Within months, U.S. forces had chased Saddam’s troops back into Iraq, liberating Kuwait. American troops have been based in Kuwait ever since.
More than a decade later, in 2003, U.S. and international troops used Kuwait as a launchpad to invade Iraq and oust Saddam.
The Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar is the largest U.S. military site in the Middle East and is the regional headquarters for the U.S. Central Command, which oversees forces in the region. About 10,000 troops are stationed there.
The U.S. military has been using Al Udeid since the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, when it positioned planes there to target the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Two years later, Al Udeid became the main U.S. air operations hub in the region. U.S. commanders used it to coordinate a wide variety of missions during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as strikes against ISIS in Syria. The Air Force has deployed a wide variety of aircraft there, from advanced fighters and long-range bombers to drones, transport planes and in-flight refueling tankers.
It also became the central evacuation point for tens of thousands of Afghans and Americans who fled Afghanistan in 2021 when the U.S. military withdrew.
About 3,500 U.S. military personnel are at the Al Dhafra Air Base, outside Abu Dhabi, where the United States has deployed F-22 fighter jets in recent years, including to protect Emirati fuel tankers that were attacked by Iran-linked Houthi fighters in 2022.
The 380th Air Expeditionary Wing of the U.S. Air Force is based at Al Dhafra, from where it has launched combat operations against the Islamic State and the Houthis, and in Afghanistan. It also has been used as an intelligence-gathering and surveillance unit during the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as for aerial refueling.
Graphic by Daniel Wood .
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June 18, 2025, 12:15 p.m. ET
Reporting from Washington
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Tucker Carlson berated Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, for his hawkish stance on Iran and quizzed him about his knowledge of the country. Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times; Saul Martinez for The New York Times
Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas and one of his party’s most outspoken hawks, and Tucker Carlson, the right-wing media personality and a vocal isolationist, were unlikely to see eye to eye when it came to whether and how deeply the United States should involve itself in Israel’s bombing campaign against Iran.
So it came as little surprise when Mr. Carlson turned an interview with Mr. Cruz into a chance to challenge him on the topic, berating the senator for his bellicose rhetoric and suggesting he was ignorant about Iran.
The confrontation reflected a bitter rift in President Trump’s coalition, between hawkish Republicans like Mr. Cruz who back aggressive action against Iran and an “America First” coalition including Mr. Carlson that is warning against further entangling the United States in the Middle East.
“You’re a senator who’s calling for an overthrow of the government and you don’t know anything about the country!” Mr. Carlson told Mr. Cruz during a heated exchange on his program that he posted on social media on Tuesday night. Mr. Carlson has warned against American military involvement in the Middle East, and in a full version of the interview with Mr. Cruz he posted on Wednesday, he said it was “one of the weirdest conversations I’ve ever had.”
“I agree with Tucker on 80 percent of the issues,” Mr. Cruz said on his own podcast Wednesday as he reflected on the testy interview. He added, “On foreign policy, Tucker has gone bat-crap crazy. He’s gone off the rails.”
Ted Cruz on Iran. Full interview tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/hJNwAHAnxZ
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 18, 2025
The confrontation began with Mr. Carlson quizzing Mr. Cruz about his understanding of Iran’s demographics, starting with whether he knew the population — even a ballpark figure. Mr. Cruz confessed he did not.
“You don’t know the population of the country you seek to topple?” Mr. Carlson said, adding: “How could you not know that?” (The C.I.A. World Fact Book estimated Iran’s population at 88.4 million people last year; Mr. Carlson put the figure at 92 million.)
After they argued whether it was a relevant statistic, Mr. Carlson asked Mr. Cruz if he knew the ethnic makeup of the country. Mr. Cruz said it was mainly Persian and predominately Shiite Muslims, then blew up when Mr. Carlson asked what percentage.
“OK, this is cute,” Mr. Cruz said as Mr. Carlson continued pressing him. “OK, I am not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran.”
(Persians are Iran’s majority ethnic group. The country is also home to large populations of Azeris, who are estimated to make up as much as a quarter of the population, and Kurds, who are believed to make up as much as 10 percent of the population. Shiite Muslims make up the majority of the Iran’s population.)
The interview came as the United States is weighing whether to join Israel’s effort to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program with a bombing campaign. In the last several days, Israel has inflicted considerable damage to Iran’s uranium enrichment center in Natanz and its laboratories in Isfahan. But it is unlikely that it will be able to strike the enrichment center at Fordo, which is buried deep in a mountain, without the firepower of U.S. bombs.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump took to his social media platform to call for Iran’s “unconditional surrender” and hinted that the United States could assassinate its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He also raised eyebrows when he wrote “we” — not Israel — now had “total control” of Iranian airspace.
During his interview with Mr. Carlson, Mr. Cruz echoed that language, saying, “We are carrying out military strikes today.”
Mr. Carlson seized on the pronoun. “You said Israel was,” he interjected.
“Right, with our help. I said ‘we’ — Israel is leading them, but we’re supporting them,” Mr. Cruz retorted.
“Well you’re breaking news here,” Mr. Carlson said, noting that the White House had previously denied that the United States was acting on Israel’s behalf.
“This is high stakes; you’re a senator,” Mr. Carlson added, barely holding in a grin. “If you’re saying the United States government is at war with Iran right now, people are listening.”
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June 18, 2025, 11:55 a.m. ET
Reporting from Jerusalem
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Israeli military vehicles along the border with the Gaza Strip last week. Credit...Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Israeli military says it has withdrawn some troops from the Gaza Strip in favor of bolstering its forces along Israel’s northern and eastern borders with Lebanon and Jordan, as the country’s attention turned toward the six-day-old war with Iran.
Troops from one of the main divisions operating in Gaza were pulled out of the enclave after Israel began bombarding Iran on Friday, the military said, although soldiers from four divisions are still operating there as part of the 20-month-old war.
Israel long feared that striking Iran’s nuclear facilities would prompt an immediate and overwhelming response from Tehran’s network of allies and proxy militias across the region. Of particular concern was Hezbollah, the politically powerful Lebanese armed group, whose ranks of armed fighters and arsenal of rockets Iran had helped build up, in part as a deterrent against an Israeli attack.
But over the past year and a half, Iran’s allies have been severely weakened or eliminated. The war in Gaza has decimated Hamas, the Iran-allied group that led the Oct. 7, 2023 assault on Israel.
After months of cross-border attacks by Hezbollah in support of Hamas, the Israeli military last year killed much of Hezbollah’s leadership, including its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah; killed or wounded many of its fighters; and depleted its weapons stockpiles.
Hezbollah so far has stayed out of the current round of fighting between Israel and Iran, and the Lebanese government has warned the group not to get involved.
The Iranian-backed government of Bashar al-Assad in neighboring Syria fell last December, toppled by Islamist rebels who are not friendly to Tehran. Almost immediately, Israeli forces bombed Syrian weapons caches and advanced into southern Syria to create a buffer zone, arguing that Mr. Assad’s departure had created a dangerous vacuum on their border.
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June 18, 2025, 11:13 a.m. ET
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Can you answer questions about whether you are moving closer or you believe the U.S. is moving closer to striking Iranian nuclear facilities, where’s your mindset on that. I can’t say that right. You don’t seriously think I’m going to answer that question. No I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do. I can tell you this, that Iran’s got a lot of trouble and they want to negotiate. And I say, why didn’t you negotiate with me before all this death and destruction. Why didn’t you. I said to the people, why didn’t you negotiate with me two weeks ago. You could have done fine. You would have had a country. Do you think it’s too late to now. Really nothing is too late.
During an event to install flag poles outside the White House, President Trump said that he couldn’t say whether the U.S. would strike Iranian nuclear facilities.
President Trump said on Wednesday that he had not made a final decision about whether the United States would join the Israeli bombing campaign against Iran, a day after he called for Tehran to evacuate and threatened Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“I have ideas as to what to do, but I haven’t made a final — I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due, you know, because things change,” he said in the Oval Office.
Earlier the day, Mr. Trump said he might — or might not — enter the war between Israel and Iran, as millions of people in the United States, Israel and Iran waited for him to decide.Israel has asked the United States to use its more advanced military capability to help further cripple Iran’s nuclear program.
Just a day earlier, Mr. Trump issued bellicose threats to Iran, telling the more than 10 million people living in Tehran, the capital, to evacuate. In a separate post on social media, he cited the possibility of killing the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump blamed Iran’s leaders for the violence, reiterating that they should have negotiated sooner with the United States to reach a nuclear deal that might have prevented Israel from beginning its strikes. He said Iran now wants to negotiate.
“Why didn’t you negotiate with me before all this death and destruction?” Mr. Trump said. “Why didn’t you negotiate? I said to the people, ‘Why didn’t you negotiate with me two weeks ago? You could have done fine. You would have had a country.’”
But in response to a question about whether it was now too late to negotiate, Mr. Trump said, “Nothing’s too late.”
Iran was, in fact, in talks with the United States about its nuclear program, but suspended them after Israel’s bombing campaign began on Friday.
Mr. Trump said the Iranians have reached out to him and that the two sides may meet, though he declined to provide details of the outreach.
“They even suggested they come to the White House,” he said of the Iranians.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations appeared to deny Mr. Trump’s claim that Iran has asked recently to negotiate, saying “no Iranian official has ever asked to grovel at the gates of the White House.”
“Iran does NOT negotiate under duress, shall NOT accept peace under duress, and certainly NOT with a has-been warmonger clinging to relevance,” it said in a statement on X, calling Trump’s threat against the country’s supreme leader “cowardly.”
On Monday, Mr. Trump left a meeting of the leaders of the Group of 7 nations in Canada a day early to return to Washington to deal with the conflict between Israel and Iran. On Tuesday, he met with his national security team at the White House, and the president said he would return to the Situation Room for another meeting later on Wednesday.
Mr. Trump said he was not looking for a war with Iran.
“But if it’s a choice between them fighting or having a nuclear weapon, you have to do what you have to do,” he said. “And maybe we don’t have to fight.”
Mr. Trump’s public consideration of joining Israel’s military campaign has sharply divided the Republican Party, and left some of the president’s most prominent supporters in disbelief. Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, and Stephen K. Bannon, a former top aide to Mr. Trump, have both warned the president about allowing the United States to be drawn into the conflict. Mr. Trump shot back, describing Mr. Carlson as “kooky” on social media.
Vice President JD Vance has sought to reassure the anti-interventionist part of the party, writing his own lengthy social media post on Tuesday.
“Of course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy,” Mr. Vance wrote on X. “But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue. And having seen this up close and personal, I can assure you that he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people’s goals.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Trump downplayed any rift among his supporters. He said that his position had always been clear: Iran, he said, cannot have a nuclear weapon.
“So I may have some people that are a little bit unhappy now, but I have some people that are very happy,” he said. “We have people outside of the base that can’t believe that this is happening, they’re so happy.”
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June 18, 2025, 10:26 a.m. ET
Missile facilities
Nuclear facilities
Energy facilities
TURKMENISTAN
Caspian
Sea
Tabriz
Mashhad
Tehran
Most of the attacks so far have occurred in the western part of the country, where the largest number of facilities and cities are located.
Kermanshah
Natanz
AFGHANISTAN
IRAQ
Isfahan
IRAN
Kerman
Shiraz
KUWAIT
Bandar Abbas
SAUDI ARABIA
Persian
Gulf
QATAR
100 miles
U.A.E
TURKMENISTAN
Caspian
Sea
Tabriz
Mashhad
Tehran
Most of the attacks so far have occurred in the western part of the country, where the largest number of facilities and cities are located.
Kermanshah
Natanz
IRAQ
Isfahan
IRAN
AFG.
Kerman
Shiraz
KUWAIT
Bandar Abbas
SAUDI ARABIA
Persian
Gulf
QATAR
200 miles
U.A.E
TURKMENISTAN
Caspian
Sea
Tabriz
Tehran
Mashhad
IRAN
Kermanshah
Natanz
AFG.
IRAQ
Isfahan
Kerman
Shiraz
KUW.
Bandar Abbas
SAUDI
ARABIA
Persian
Gulf
250 miles
U.A.E
Most of the attacks so far have occurred in the western part of the country, where the largest number of facilities and cities are located.
Sources: Nuclear Threat Initiative, International Atomic Energy Agency, Global Oil and Gas Features Database, New York Times analysis of satellite imagery from Airbus, Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs, local news reports, and verified social photos and videos
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Wednesday that Israel struck two centrifuge production facilities in Iran, the latest hit to the country’s nuclear and missile infrastructure amid ongoing strikes that began last Friday.
Earlier attacks severely damaged Iran’s largest uranium enrichment center at Natanz. On Tuesday, the I.A.E.A. — the nuclear watchdog of the United Nations — confirmed “direct impacts” on the site’s underground enrichment halls.
The Israeli military also struck laboratories that work to convert uranium gas back into a metal — one of the last stages of building a weapon — at a complex outside the ancient capital of Isfahan where Iran’s most likely repository of near bomb-grade nuclear fuel is stored. The stockpile has so far been spared from attack.
Iranian missile capability has also been degraded by the strikes. Israel said it struck 12 missile launch sites and storage facilities on Tuesday alone.
See a more detailed look at the damage to strategic infrastructure at the link below.
Israel has attacked nuclear, military and energy facilities in Iran. Here is a look at the destruction so far.
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……Read full article on The New York Times-World
America Politics Middle East Iran Israel
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