There are 4 things to know as the war between Israel and Iran escalates
Tehran, the third day of the Iran-Israel air strikes war: a story of anger and frustration in the country’s most populous capital
There was panic and confusion in Iran’s capital city of Tehran as Israel warned hundreds of thousands of civilians to evacuate ahead of more potential strikes as the broadening conflict between the two countries spilled into its fifth day.
Cars filled with people fleeing waited in miles-long lines at gas stations, trying to buy fuel. The roads out of the city were full of traffic. On Tuesday, the Israeli military said it had launched a “large scale attack wave in the heart of Iran,” with dozens of fighter jets targeting 12 different sites.
Zahra, an unemployed fashion designer in Tehran, told NPR she was trying to get out of the city to head to her hometown in western Iran but all the roads were blocked. She wanted her first name used because she was afraid of reprisals for speaking to the media.
Israeli Air-Strike Control of the Fordow in the Middle East: Comment on Ayatollah Khamenei
We don’t know what to do. What decisions can we or should we make? We don’t have a internet connection. We cannot even hear the news,” she said in a series of voice notes that she says took her more than 18 hours to send due to the lack of signal.
She said each person is only thinking about how they can save their own lives. Everyone is trying to figure out how to avoid these missiles.
On Tuesday, he went a step further, suggesting in a post that the U.S. knew the location of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there — We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”
Israel says it has set dominance of the skies over Tehran and western Iran because of its air strikes. Fordow is one of the hardest sites to destroy because it has been severely damaged in Israel’s attacks.
Those strikes have also killed more than 200 civilians, including at least 20 children, according to the Iranian government. Iran maintains that its nuclear program is peaceful.
Dena, a 48-year-old resident of Tehran – who also asked to be identified only by her first name for fear of government reprisal – says the government has given civilians no information on how to protect themselves.
They don’t give us any tips that are practical. We don’t know which locations are safe to visit and which ones are not. She says that the people don’t talk about it. They are celebrating and shooting missiles at Israel.
Israel and Iran have traded direct fire several times – most recently in October of last year – since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in 2023 sparked the current war in Gaza. The new round was destructive for both sides and has lasted longer.
“Everything that we’re watching is defying expectations,” Aaron Stein, president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told NPR’s All Things Considered. He said Israel has gained control of much of Iran’s airspace and taken out its missile capabilities faster than many experts thought possible.
Stein said that if Iran builds a nuclear weapon at the end of this thing, he will think it was a failure on the Israeli side.
That intervention could prove vital to Israel’s war aims because only the US military has the 30,000-pound bomb that could possibly penetrate the defenses of Iran’s Fordow nuclear site.
The facilities can be used to make enriched-Uranium that could either be used in a nuclear reactor to generate electricity or to build an atomic weapon, experts say.
Speaking to the BBC on Monday, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Director, General Rafael Grossi, said it was likely that all of the 15,000 centrifuges at Natanz, Iran’s largest such facility, had been severely damaged by Israeli airstrikes. He said there was “very limited, if any, damage” visible at the underground Fordo enrichment plant.
Fordo, “is deeply buried,” says Daniel Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, a non-partisan think thank in Washington, D.C. “[Only] the United States has the kind of bunker busting capabilities that can actually destroy that facility. But I don’t rule out that Israel has some surprises up its sleeve.”
The Israeli campaign doesn’t have an objective of changing the regime, says the former ambassador to Israel. “I don’t think it’s possible to do it with this kind of military campaign, and I don’t think that’s even a legitimate objective.”
Instead, Israel is likely relying on a “mowing the grass” strategy, with the expectation of striking again later in an iterative process of setting back Iran’s nuclear program, Miller says.
Trump had earlier demanded an “unconditional surrender” from Iran, which he said meant: “I’ve had it. I’ve had it. I stop fighting. No more. We blow up the nuclear stuff over there.
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Although Israel operates sophisticated U.S.-made warplanes, such as the F-35 fighter, it does not possess the enormous 30,000 pound bunker-busting bombs and the B-2 stealth bombers needed to deliver them – tools only the U.S. possesses.
Whether or not Washington will do that is still a question. When he was asked what it would take for the US to become involved in military intervention in the Middle East, Trump said he didn’t want to talk about it.
A strike would cause the program to be put back by a few weeks. A U.S. attack would set it back by one or two years,” says Ali Vaez, director of the International Crisis Group’s Iran Project.
The door to diplomacy will be shut if the U.S. intervenes. Iran would probably hunker down… while trying to reconstitute its nuclear program and dash for a nuclear weapon.”
It was only a few days ago that the decision was made to carry it out, because Israel had shown the U.S. intel that Iran was going to make a nuclear weapon.
Israel’s President said his country would be happy if the international community came to its aid in the war against Iran’s nuclear program.
The president spoke with NPR in his official residence in Jerusalem, as he weighs whether or not to order B-2 bombers to take out Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear sites with weapons that Israel does not possess.
“There’s a bigger picture here that the world and the American people should understand,” he said, speaking just hours before Iran fired another missile barrage at Israel, which it has done repeatedly since Israel began attacking Iran last Friday.
“We have to stop this empire of evil – No more! – and tell them, get the goddamn nukes out of your hands. And start behaving in a decent way and not be the rogue state. You are all in the same place. It’s impossible,” Herzog said.
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Iran insists it is only enrichment for private uses, but experts say it is enriching to the point where it could be used to make nuclear weapons.
A person familiar with the matter told NPR on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject that Israeli officials aren’t asking the U.S. to join the war but that they would be happy for the US to actively participate, and believe the U.S. will in fact step in militarily.
The war may cause Iran’s regime to fall and change the face of the region, he said, adding that it may also lead to the end of the war in Gaza.
However, some regional security analysts warn that a U.S intervention could widen the conflict and provoke Iranian strikes on U.S. military bases in the Gulf, as well as oil infrastructure in the Gulf, which could send shockwaves through world markets.
