US president Donald Trump on Monday urged “everyone” to immediately evacuate Tehran, and reiterated that Iran should have signed a nuclear deal with the US, as the Israel-Iran conflict continued.
“IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!” he said in a post on his platform Truth Social.
Israel and Iran had earlier issued evacuation orders to residents of both countries as the conflict escalated on a fourth day, underlining the potential to trigger a broader war.
Iran on Monday threatened to leave the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and separately told the United Nations Security Council that its strikes on Israel were self-defence.
In a letter to the Security Council, Iran’s UN envoy Amir Saeid Iravani added that any co-operation with Israel would make countries “complicit in the legal responsibility and consequences of this crisis”.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces issued an evacuation order to residents of a large part of Tehran, warning them of the imminent bombing of “military infrastructure” in the area in a social-media post very similar to those regularly directed at Palestinians in Gaza over the past 20 months.
The post on X was from the account of the Israel Defense Forces’ Arabic spokesperson, Col Avichay Adraee, and is a further sign of the evolving nature of the Israeli campaign against Iran, which began with attacks on air defences, nuclear sites and the military chain of command, but appears to have drifted towards a war of attrition focused on Iran’s oil and gas industry and on the capital.
Meanwhile, Iranian state television reported on Monday evening that a new wave of missile attacks on Israel had begun. The attacks include drones and missiles, believed to be targeting the Israeli cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv.
The death toll in Iran has reached at least 224 with more than 1,800 injured since Israel launched its attack on June 13th, according to the country’s health minister. A total of 24 people in Israel have been killed so far in the Iranian missile attacks, all of them civilians.
In another sign of the changing targets of the Israeli offensive, Iran’s state TV announced on Monday evening that it was under attack, and had to cease live broadcasting.
The sound of an explosion could be heard in a live transmission, and the news presenter hurried off camera as dust and debris appeared in the studio.
Speaking to personnel at Tel Nof air force base, the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, confirmed the evacuation orders on the Iranian capital.
“The Israeli air force controls the skies over Tehran. This changes the entire campaign,” he said.
“When we control the skies over Tehran, we strike regime targets, as opposed to the criminal Iranian regime which targets our civilians and comes to kill women and children. We tell the people of Tehran to evacuate, and we act.”
Netanyahu later said killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, would “end the conflict” in what would be another ominous escalation.
After the surprise Israeli attack on Friday morning, Iran has carried out retaliatory missile strikes on Israeli cities, focusing on the most populated areas between Tel Aviv and the port of Haifa.
Both sides have targeted each other’s oil and gas facilities, increasing the threat of environmental disaster, and explosions were reported on Monday near oil refineries in southern Tehran.
Earlier on Monday, Iran threatened to leave the NPT as Israeli bombing raids entered a fourth day, underlining the conflict’s potential to trigger a broader war and Tehran’s race to construct a nuclear weapon.
The human cost of the war continued to escalate with both sides broadening their range of targets, as G7 leaders convened in the Canadian Rockies with no clear plan to end the conflict. There were reports on Monday that Mr Trump was refusing to sign a joint statement calling for the conflict to be scaled down.
“They should talk, and they should talk immediately,” Mr Trump said of Tehran during the summit. “I’d say Iran is not winning this war.”
[ Israelis under attack from Iran shift to full-scale war modeOpens in new window ]
The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baghaei, announced on Monday that Iran’s parliament, the Majlis, was preparing a Bill that would withdraw the country from the 1968 NPT agreement, which obliges it to forgo nuclear weapons and to undergo international inspections to verify compliance. Baghaei added that Tehran remained opposed to the development of weapons of mass destruction.
Israel is the only Middle East state with nuclear weapons and did not sign the NPT, but has never formally acknowledged its arsenal.
US forces have so far helped Israel intercept Iranian missiles, but have not taken part, at least overtly, in offensive bombing operations. – Guardian/Reuters
