Live updates: Iran warns US strikes will have ‘everlasting consequences’ as Trump says nuclear sites ‘obliterated’ | CNN (2025)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks to reporters on the US operation.

Top US officials are holding a news conference at the Pentagon after the attack on key Iranian nuclear facilities early Sunday.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine are briefing reporters on the US operation.

President Donald Trump has claimed the sites were “totally obliterated” and warned in a White House address of more US strikes if Iran does not make peace.

Israel has “a variety of goals” in Iran, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Sunday, noting that the IDF was continuing its military offensive in the country after the United States launched strikes against Iranian nuclear sites overnight.

“We have plans and goals, and we constantly operate to achieve them. We’re also preparing for the campaign to prolong,” IDF spokesperson Effie Defrin said at a media briefing.

Israel still has a “variety of goals” in Iran, he added, without specifying what they are.

He said the IDF is “examining” the results of the US bombing of a key Iranian nuclear site and that Israel is “constantly examining and looking into the situation” at Iran’s Fordow nuclear enrichment facility, which was struck by the US in its attack along with the facilities of Natanz and Isfahan.

“Our coordination with the American partner has been close over the years and has become even closer more recently,” Defrin said. “Simultaneously, the IDF continues to strike in Iran.”

Concerned by the escalating conflict in the Middle East, world leaders have reacted after the United States struck Iran’s nuclear facilities.

UK: Foreign Secretary David Lammy urged Iran “to show restraint and reach a diplomatic solution to end this crisis” in a post on X, insisting that the UK did not participate in the US strikes. Prime Minister Keir Starmer earlier urged Iran to return to the negotiating table after the US’ strikes, calling Iran’s nuclear program “a grave threat to international security.”

France: Foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot said France had noted the US strikes overnight “with concern,” adding that it had not participated. “France has repeatedly expressed its very firm opposition to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. France is convinced that a lasting resolution to this issue requires a negotiated solution within the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” he continued. “It remains ready to contribute to this in collaboration with its partners.”

Germany: Government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said the German cabinet met on Sunday after American bombs were dropped on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “The Federal Chancellor and the ministers of the Security Cabinet will consult closely with their partners in the EU and the USA on further steps during the course of the day. Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz reiterated his call on Iran to enter into immediate negotiations with the USA and Israel and to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict,” he said.

China: A spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry said: “China strongly condemns the US attack on Iran and the nuclear facilities under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency. This move by the US seriously violates the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law, and exacerbates tensions in the Middle East.”

“China calls on the parties to the conflict, especially Israel, to cease fire as soon as possible, ensure the safety of civilians, and start dialogue and negotiations. China is willing to work with the international community to pool efforts, uphold justice, and make efforts to restore peace and stability in the Middle East” it added.

Japan: Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said “a de-escalation as soon as possible is more important than anything” but that “at the same time, Iran’s nuclear weapons development must be stopped.” He told reporters in Tokyo on Sunday that “we are closely monitoring the situation there with grave concern.”

The European Union: President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said “stability must be the priority” and “respect for international law is critical.” She said: “Now is the moment for Iran to engage in a credible diplomatic solution. The negotiating table is the only place to end this crisis.”

European Council President Antonio Costa said he was “deeply alarmed by the news arriving from the Middle East.” He said: “Diplomacy remains the only way to bring peace and security to the Middle East region. Too many civilians will once again be the victims of a further escalation. The EU will continue engaging with the parties and our partners to find a peaceful solution at the negotiating table,” he added.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said its response to the United States strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities will “cause deep regret”.

The IRGC — an influential military parallel to Iran’s conventional army — has trained, armed and funded the network of Iranian proxies that span the Middle East.

“The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is well-versed in the realities of this full-scale hybrid war and will never be intimidated by the noise of Trump or the criminal gangs ruling Washington and Tel Aviv,” the statement said.

Federal authorities and leaders in several major US cities and states are increasing security measures and monitoring for potential threats after US strikes on key Iranian nuclear facilities.

“Our assets are fully engaged. We remain vigilant. God bless America, and all those who defend Her,” FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino posted on X.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said, “We will work unceasingly to protect the American homeland.”

Local leaders and law enforcement are also on heightened alert.

“We’re tracking the situation unfolding in Iran. Out of an abundance of caution, we’re deploying additional resources to religious, cultural, and diplomatic sites across NYC and coordinating with our federal partners,” the New York Police Department said.

The Los Angeles Police Department is also increasing patrols near places of worship and other sensitive areas, according to Mayor Karen Bass.

“We will remain vigilant in protecting our communities,” Bass said.

Police in Washington, DC, will maintain an “increased presence” at religious institutions, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. Mayor Muriel Bowser said, “Together, we are monitoring intelligence and, as always, ask everyone to stay vigilant.”

Authorities and leaders in New Jersey, Texas, Illinois and others have announced that security will be heightened and threat monitoring increased following the US strikes

This satellite picture by Planet Labs PBC shows Iran's underground nuclear enrichment site at Fordow, after a US airstrike targeted the facility on Sunday.

Iran has condemned the US for striking its nuclear facilities on Sunday. The actions were described by President Donald Trump as successful, but the strikes also risk escalating the two-week conflict further, with Iran saying it has to respond to defend itself.

Here are the latest developments:

President Donald Trump has no public events on his schedule today as he and his team closely track the Iranian response to his decision to launch strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites.

The White House did not list any specific meetings on the president’s agenda, but CNN has inquired about that possibility.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are set to brief reporters on the US operation at the Pentagon at 8 a.m. ET.

Vladimir Putin attends a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier today in Moscow during WWII Memory and Sorrow Day commemorations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has no plans to speak to his US counterpart, Donald Trump, the Kremlin said Sunday following US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, but added that a call could be arranged quickly, state news agency TASS reported.

Russia and Iran signed a “comprehensive partnership agreement” in January, cementing their close strategic alliance, though the agreement stopped short of requiring the two countries to come to the other’s defense if one is attacked.

Meanwhile, in a call Thursday, Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping had strongly condemned Israel’s attacks on Iran, according to readouts from the Kremlin and China’s foreign ministry.

Although the statements did not mention the United States, Xi — in a thinly veiled message to Trump — emphasized that “major powers” that have a special influence on the parties to the conflict should work to “cool the situation, not the opposite.”

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi went on to say he does not know how “much room is left for diplomacy” after the United States struck Iranian nuclear facilities.

“They crossed a very big red line by attacking nuclear facilities… We have to respond based on our legitimate right for self-defense,” Araghchi said.

Araghchi said Iran has a “variety of options available” when he was asked if his country is considering closing the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway in the Persian Gulf that, if shut, could affect global oil and gas exports.

Iran’s top diplomat said he’s been in touch with several foreign ministers from the region and “almost all of them are very much concerned” and are interested in playing a role in stopping “the Israeli aggression.”

This post has been updated.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi speaks during a press conference at the Lutfi Krdar Congress Center, on the sideline of the 51st session of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul on Sunday.

We’re hearing from Iran’s foreign minister, who has condemned the US strikes on the country’s nuclear facilities, saying the “warmongering” White House will be “fully responsible” for the consequences of its actions.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran condemns in the strongest terms the United State’s brutal military aggression against Iran’s peaceful nuclear facilities. It is an outrageous, grave and unprecedented violation of the fundamental principles of the charter of the United Nations and international law,” Abbas Araghchi said at a news conference in Istanbul on Sunday.

He said the “warmongering and lawless administration in Washington is solely and fully responsible for the dangerous consequences and far-reaching implications of its act of aggression.”

“Silence in the face of such blatant aggression will plunge the world into an unprecedented level of danger and chaos. Humanity has come too far as a species to allow a lawless bully to take us back to the law of the jungle,” he added.

Araghchi called on the United Nations’ Security Council to convene an emergency session “to unequivocally condemn the criminal act of aggression by the United States against Iran and to hold the administration in Washington accountable for its violations of fundamental principles of the United Nations charter and of norms of international law.”

Araghchi went on to say Iran continues to defend itself by all means necessary against not just US military aggression, but also the reckless and unlawful actions of the Israeli regime.”

This post has been updated.

Images highlight the impact of Iranian missiles on Israel, launched after the US struck several key Iranian nuclear facilities early Sunday, including Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.

After the US strikes, Israel’s military said Iran fired a fresh wave of missiles toward the country.

Emergency personnel work at the site of an Iranian missile strike in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Sunday.

A broken car windshield is seen in Nes Ziona, Israel, following a missile strike.

People evacuate their homes following a strike in Ness Ziona.

Damaged buildings in Tel Aviv.

Rescue workers evacuate children from the site of a missile strike in Tel Aviv.

An emergency workers takes a picture of damage in Haifa, Israel.

Members of Israeli security forces and first responders work in Nes Ziona, following an Israeli missile strike.

Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi during a special session of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday.

Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said the United States had decided to “blow up” diplomacy, after its strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities this morning.

“Last week, we were in negotiations with the US when Israel decided to blow up that diplomacy. This week, we held talks with the E3 (group of European ministers)/EU when the US decided to blow up that diplomacy,” Araghchi said on X.

“To Britain and the EU High Rep, it is Iran which must ‘return’ to the table. But how can Iran return to something it never left, let alone blew up?” he said.

A senior fellow at an Israeli think tank told CNN she thinks Israel’s attacks on western Iran Sunday morning targeted “the kind of launchers that just attacked us, but also looking at capabilities that are more short-range and could attack US forces, US allies in the region.”

“What the Iranians have fired in the last hour, that was a very strong attack against Israel, part of which we intercepted and part not,” Miri Eisin of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism told CNN.

“What we’re going to be going after (are) those launchers, the ones that were attacking us just an hour ago, because you want to attack the launchers. Those are the ones that reach Israel.”

Israel’s military said its air strikes on western Iran Sunday morning had hit two F-5 fighter jets belonging to Iran’s armed forces at the Dezful Airport in the Khuzestan province.

“Additionally… eight launchers were neutralized, including six launchers ready to immediately launch missiles toward Israeli territory,” the Israel Defense Forces said.

The fresh wave of Israel’s attacks came after Iran fired its first missiles toward Israel since the United States announced it had attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities earlier on Sunday.

An ultra-Orthodox Jewish man walks past an ambulance in Haifa, Israel, on Sunday, following Iranian strikes in the city.

Eighty-six people were admitted to hospital with injuries overnight and on Sunday morning, according to Israel’s ministry of health, amid fresh Iranian strikes on the country.

Two people were moderately injured, 77 mildly injured and four were suffering from anxiety, while three others are still being assessed, the ministry said in an update Sunday.

Since the start of Iran’s strikes on Israel – which began in retaliation for Israel launching military action against Iran on June 13 – 2,835 Israelis have been admitted to hospital: 23 severely injured, 107 moderately, 2,555 mildly and 119 with anxiety.

Authorities also say they so far know of “about 20 individuals who were lightly injured” after a residential neighborhood in Tel Aviv was struck by Iran, the city’s police spokesperson told CNN at the scene of the attack.

The missiles hit “a few buildings that are clumped together, residential buildings,” international spokesperson for the Israeli police Dean Elsdunne told CNN’s Nic Robertson in the Ramat Aviv neighborhood, adding that responders were still looking for missile fragments and searching through the rubble for anyone who might be trapped.

Responders are also awaiting calls from families who may have lost contact with loved ones living in the neighborhood, Elsdunne said.

The neighborhood that was attacked is near a shopping mall and a school, the spokesperson said.

The aftermath of an Iranian missile strike on an apartment building in northern Tel Aviv Sunday.

An Iranian ballistic missile left a gaping hole in a three- or four-story apartment building in northern Tel Aviv.

The missile ripped apart the building’s top floor. It also tore open the concrete of the building’s walls and shattered all of its windows.

From the street nearby, a CNN crew could see furniture turned over and thrown about from the missile’s explosion. Debris from inside the apartments, such as pieces of mattresses, was strewn on the shredded trees outside.

Heavy equipment began moving in Sunday morning to clear the rubble and begin cleaning up the debris from the impact, as rescue and recovery teams operated in the area.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, said he was calling an emergency meeting for Monday following US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities Sunday.

“In light of the urgent situation in Iran, I am convening an emergency meeting of the (IAEA) Board of Governors for tomorrow,” Grossi wrote in a post on X.

Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer, pictured Thursday.

Britain’s prime minister has urged Iran to return to the negotiating table after the United States struck its nuclear facilities.

“Iran can never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon and the US has taken action to alleviate that threat,” Keir Starmer said in a post on X, calling Iran’s nuclear program a “grave threat to international security.”

“We call on Iran to return to the negotiating table and reach a diplomatic solution to end this crisis,” he said.

Iran’s foreign ministry earlier said the US had begun a “dangerous war against Iran” by striking its nuclear sites, an attack it said was a violation of international law.

Smoke seen rising near Fordow

00:16 - Source: CNN

Smoke seen rising near Fordow

00:16

Video broadcast by Iranian state media and geolocated by CNN shows smoke rising from the direction of the Fordow nuclear facility, after the US struck three nuclear sites on Sunday including Fordow.

The video, shared by Iran’s official news agency IRNA and shot from a moving vehicle on the road, shows a large cloud of dark smoke rising up on the horizon. A voice can be heard saying: “The only smoke visible in the sky over Fordow is from the Fordow nuclear site.”

CNN cannot independently verify the source of the smoke. Based on CNN’s geolocation, the video was taken on the Tehran-Qom Freeway, around 13 kilometers (8 miles) west of the Fordow facility.

US President Donald Trump had claimed nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan had been “totally obliterated” by the strikes. But Iranian authorities have downplayed the impact, with one lawmaker saying Fordow had not been seriously damaged, and anchors on state-run media claiming the strikes had only damaged Fordow’s exit and entry tunnels, not the facility itself.

The Fordow site is buried deep in several mountains, close to the holy city of Qom.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities puts the Middle East in a volatile position, analysts say, with all eyes now on Tehran’s next move.

In a region already on edge, Trump’s airstrikes puts several options on the table for Iran, analysts say. All carry inherent risks for Iran and the future survival of the country’s leaders.

Diplomacy: The first is that Iran could return to the negotiating table.

Iran could “declare that they are coming to negotiate and asking to end the war. Negotiating on the base of zero (uranium) enrichment,” Yadlin said.

Yadlin said Iran might also leave the United Nations’ Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), under which it has pledged not to develop a bomb. However, Iran’s “capabilities to (build a bomb) do not exist in the coming year or two,” he added.

But would Iran’s conservative hardliners tolerate a purely diplomatic response to an attack by US forces on Iranian soil?

Counterstrike: Another option is for Iran to retaliate, potentially dragging the US and the wider Middle East into a complicated and drawn-out conflict.

Iran has said “several times” that if the US “joins this war and attacks their nuclear facilities, they will retaliate against US forces in the region, against US interests, and there are a lot of those,” CNN political and global affairs analyst Barak Ravid said.

Iran could also choose to close the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping oil route, giving it the power to influence the “entire commercial shipping in the Gulf,” Ravid said.

A prominent adviser to Iran’s supreme leader has already called for missile strikes and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

“Following America’s attack on the Fordow nuclear installation, it is now our turn,” warned Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor-in-chief of the hardline Kayhan newspaper, a well-known conservative voice who has previously identified himself as Khamenei “representative.”

Geographic leverage over global shipping gives Iran the “capacity to cause a shock in oil markets, drive up oil prices, drive inflation, collapse Trump’s economic agenda,” Middle East scholar Mohammad Ali Shabani told CNN.

No easy option: Khamenei “has got a decision to make” and is likely to respond, said CNN analyst Aaron David Miller, adding it is “almost impossible” to imagine “that this 86-year-old leader, whose goal essentially is to preserve the revolution and pass it on to one of his successors, can simply do nothing.”

Iraq has warned that the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities threaten the stability of the Middle East.

“This military escalation constitutes a grave threat to peace and security in the Middle East and poses serious risks to regional stability,” Iraqi government spokesperson Basim Alawadi said in a statement.

Alawadi warned that continued attacks would risk “dangerous escalation with consequences that extend beyond the borders of any single state, threatening the security of the entire region and the world.”

Iraq called for immediate de-escalation and said the international community needed to be reminded “that wars leave only destruction in their wake,” said the statement.