Israel-Iran trade fresh blows as B-2 bombers head over Pacific

Israel and Iran launched new strikes in a second week of hostilities, with the Isfahan nuclear facility targeted again, as Donald Trump deepened uncertainty about his readiness to join the conflict.

The U.S. military dispatched several B-2 bombers and refueling tankers over the Pacific Ocean from a base in Missouri, according to several media reports. The move is a possible sign that the planes are being positioned for a possible strike, although the Wall Street Journal cited officials saying that no order has been given to ready an operation.

Israeli jets attacked Iran’s Isfahan site for the second time, targeting a centrifuge production section, the Israel Defense Forces said. There were no leaks of hazardous material, Iran’s semi-official Fars News reported. Israeli jets later on Saturday targeted military infrastructure in southwest Iran. The IDF earlier said it had identified missiles launched from Iran and was working to intercept them.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Saeed Izadi, who led part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ overseas arm linked to financing and arming Hamas in Gaza, was killed in the Iranian city of Qom. Behnam Shahriyari, another IRGC member linked to supplying Lebanon’s Hezbollah and other militias, was also killed, along with a third commander, according to an Israeli military official.

Separately, Yemen’s Houthi militants said they will target U.S. vessels and battleships in the Red Sea if the U.S. gets involved to support the Israeli attack on Iran, according to a statement published on a Houthi spokesperson’s official Telegram account.

After stepping up threats against Iran earlier this week, Trump appeared to dial back tensions Thursday, saying that he would hold off for two weeks to give diplomacy a chance. On Friday, he hinted at shortening the deadline, but also suggested he “might” support a ceasefire while talks were underway. Iran has demanded the attacks stop before it enters negotiations, something Israel has refused to do.

“I’m giving them a period of time,” Trump told reporters in New Jersey, after meeting earlier Friday with his national security team. “I would say two weeks would be the maximum.”

Foreign ministers from the U.K., France and Germany met their Iranian counterpart in Geneva on Friday. They made little apparent headway.

“Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us,” Trump said. “Europe is not going to be able to help them.”

French President Emmanuel Macron, in a post on X Saturday, said he spoke with his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian and that he would accelerate the negotiations. Macron also reiterated his position on Iran’s nuclear program, saying that Iran needed “to provide full guarantees that its intentions are peaceful.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran is ready to hold another meeting with the Europeans in the near future, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. No follow-up meeting has yet been scheduled and there was no agreement on where or in what format such talks would take place, according to a European official.

The proposals made by the Europeans were unrealistic, Reuters cited an unidentified Iranian official as saying.

Oil prices fell on Friday following a Reuters report that Iran is ready to discuss limitations on uranium enrichment, though they’re still up significantly from before the conflict. A jittery week ended with losses in stocks as investors weighed geopolitical and trade developments. The dollar had its best week since February.

The Iranian judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported on Saturday that 430 people were killed and more than 3,500 wounded since the war began June 13. In Israel, at least 24 people have been killed and hundreds injured, the Associated Press reported.

Araghchi was in Istanbul on Saturday to attend a summit of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, according to state-run TV. He is also scheduled to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the sidelines.

“Israel is dragging our region into instability with the backing of Western powers,” Erdoğan told the summit.

Before a two-month-old negotiation process with the U.S. was suspended in the wake of Israel’s attack, Tehran had signaled its willingness to accept some restrictions on its enrichment activities. Israel and the U.S. have said the Islamic Republic shouldn’t be allowed to enrich uranium at all.

“We don’t know how we can trust them anymore,” Araghchi said of possible talks with the U.S., in an interview with NBC on Friday. “What they did was in fact a betrayal to diplomacy.”

Most experts say a successful strike against the subterranean nuclear enrichment site at Fordow would require American participation, since Israel doesn’t have the kind of munitions — like the most powerful bunker-buster bombs — with the ability to penetrate that deep underground. But there’s a debate on the issue, with some claiming Israel has the necessary tools.

Trump repeated his stated belief that Iran was a matter of weeks from getting a nuclear bomb when Israel attacked, and again dismissed U.S. intelligence findings that Iran’s leadership wasn’t seeking to do so. He is due to attend a national security meeting again on Saturday.

While some argue that U.S. participation would shorten the war by eliminating Fordow quickly, others say it would escalate the conflict and risk spreading it to the wider region, including neighboring Gulf states.

“This war flies in the face of the regional order the Gulf countries want to build, which is focused on regional prosperity,” Anwar Gargash, a senior diplomatic adviser to the United Arab Emirates’ president, told reporters in a briefing Friday. “There are many issues in the region, if we choose to tackle everything with a hammer nothing will be left unbroken.”

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(With assistance from Ellen Milligan, Iain Rogers, Hadriana Lowenkron, Sara Gharaibeh, Fadwa Hodali, Skylar Woodhouse, Valentine Baldassari, Samy Adghirni, Jordan Fabian, Chris Martlew, Akayla Gardner, Donato Paolo Mancini, Golnar Motevalli and Asli Kandemir.)