Tel Aviv kills top Iranian commander

Iran deems European proposals to curb its nuclear programme unrealistic and a hurdle to agreement, a senior Iranian official said on Saturday, while Israel said it killed a veteran Iranian commander during attacks by both sides.

The more than week-long air war between longtime foes Israel and Iran continued with reports of strikes on an Iranian nuclear facility.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met British, French and German counterparts, plus the EU, on Friday in Geneva in search of a path back to diplomacy.

But proposals made by the European powers were “unrealistic”, the senior Iranian official told media, saying that insistence on them would not bring agreement closer.

“In any case, Iran will review the European proposals in Tehran and present its responses in the next meeting,” the official said, adding that zero enrichment was a dead end and Tehran would not negotiate over its defensive capabilities.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said that Saeed Izadi, who led the Palestine Corps of the Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ overseas arm, was killed in a strike on an apartment in the city of Qom.

Calling his killing a “major achievement for Israeli intelligence and the Air Force”, Katz said Izadi had financed and armed the Palestinian militant group Hamas ahead of its October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

The Revolutionary Guards said five of its members died in attacks on Khorramabad, according to Iranian media. They did not mention Izadi, who was on US and British sanctions lists, but said Israel had also attacked a building in Qom, with initial reports of a 16-year-old killed and two people injured.

At least 430 people have been killed and 3,500 injured in Iran since Israel began its attacks, Iranian state-run Nour News said, citing the health ministry.

In Israel, 24 civilians have been killed by Iranian missile attacks, according to local authorities, in the worst conflict between the longtime enemies.

Trump snubs Tulsi Gabbard

Trump has said that his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was “wrong” when she previously said that the US believed Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon, and he suggested that it would be “very hard to stop” Israel’s strikes on Iran in order to negotiate a possible ceasefire.

After landing in New Jersey for an evening fundraiser for his super political action committee on Friday, Trump was asked about Gabbard’s comments to Congress in March that US spy agencies believed that Iran wasn’t working on nuclear warheads.

The president responded, “Well then, my intelligence community is wrong. Who in the intelligence community said that?”

Informed it had been Gabbard, Trump said, “She’s wrong.” In a subsequent post on X, Gabbard said her testimony was taken out of context “as a way to manufacture division”.

She wrote, “America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalise the assembly.”

Israel sabotaged talks: Turkiye

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said that Israel’s attacks on Iran right before a new round of nuclear talks with the United States aimed to sabotage the negotiations, and it showed Israel did not want to resolve issues through diplomacy.

Speaking at a foreign ministers’ meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul, Erdogan urged countries with influence over Israel not to listen to its “poison” and to seek a solution to the fighting via dialogue without allowing a wider conflict.

He also called on Muslim countries to increase their efforts to impose punitive measures against Israel on the basis of international law and United Nations’ resolutions.

B-2 bombers moving to Guam in Pacific

The United States is moving B-2 bombers to the Pacific island of Guam, two US officials told the international media on Saturday, as President Donald Trump weighs whether the United States should take part in Israel’s strikes against Iran. It was unclear whether the bomber deployment is tied to West Asia tensions. Experts and officials are closely watching to see whether the B-2 bombers will move forward to a US-British military base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Experts say that Diego Garcia is in an ideal position to operate in the region.

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