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DUBAI: Israel has attacked Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor, Iranian state television said Thursday.

The report said there was “no radiation danger whatsoever” and that the facility had already been evacuated before the attack.

Israel had warned earlier Thursday morning it would attack the facility and urged the public to flee the area.

The warning came in a social media post on X. It included a satellite image of the plant in a red circle like other warnings that preceded strikes.

The Israeli military said Thursday’s round of airstrikes targeted Tehran and other areas of Iran, without elaborating. It later said Iran fired a new salvo of missiles at Israel and told the public to take shelter.

Israel’s seventh day of airstrikes on Iran came a day after Iran’s supreme leader rejected US calls for surrender and warned that any military involvement by the Americans would cause “irreparable damage to them.” Israel also lifted some restrictions on daily life, suggesting the missile threat from Iran on its territory was easing.

Already, Israel’s campaign has targeted Iran’s enrichment site at Natanz, centrifuge workshops around Tehran and a nuclear site in Isfahan. Its strikes have also killed top generals and nuclear scientists.

A Washington-based Iranian human rights group said at least 639 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 1,300 wounded. In retaliation, Iran has fired some 400 missiles and hundreds of drones, killing at least 24 people in Israel and wounding hundreds. Some have hit apartment buildings in central Israel, causing heavy damage.

The Arak heavy water reactor is 250 kilometers southwest of Tehran.

Heavy water helps cool nuclear reactors, but it produces plutonium as a byproduct that can potentially be used in nuclear weapons. That would provide Iran another path to the bomb beyond enriched uranium, should it choose to pursue the weapon.

Iran had agreed under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers to redesign the facility to relieve proliferation concerns.

In 2019, Iran started up the heavy water reactor’s secondary circuit, which at the time did not violate Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

Britain at the time was helping Iran redesign the Arak reactor to limit the amount of plutonium it produces, stepping in for the US, which had withdrawn from the project after President Donald Trump’s decision in 2018 to unilaterally withdraw America from the nuclear deal.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, has been urging Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites. IAEA inspectors reportedly last visited Arak on May 14.

Due to restrictions Iran imposed on inspectors, the IAEA has said it lost “continuity of knowledge” about Iran’s heavy water production — meaning it could not absolutely verify Tehran’s production and stockpile.

As part of negotiations around the 2015 deal, Iran agreed to sell off its heavy water to the West to remain in compliance with the accord’s terms. Even the US purchased some 32 tons of heavy water for over $8 million in one deal. That was one issue that drew criticism from opponents to the deal.

WASHINGTON/DUBAI/JERUSALEM: President Donald Trump kept the world guessing about whether the United States will join Israel’s bombardment of Iranian nuclear sites as the Israel-Iran conflict entered its seventh day on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Trump declined to say if he had made any decision on whether to join Israel’s campaign. “I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” he said.

Trump in later remarks said Iranian officials wanted to come to Washington for a meeting and that “we may do that.” But he added, “It’s a little late” for such talks.

The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain plan to hold nuclear talks with their Iranian counterpart on Friday in Geneva aimed at persuading Iran to firmly guarantee that it will use its nuclear program solely for civilian purposes, a German diplomatic source told Reuters.

But while diplomatic efforts continue, some residents of Tehran, a city of 10 million people, on Wednesday jammed highways out of the city as they sought sanctuary from intensified Israeli airstrikes.

The Wall Street Journal said Trump had told senior aides he approved attack plans on Iran but was holding off on giving the final order to see if Tehran would abandon its nuclear program.

Asked if he thought the Iranian government could fall as a result of the Israeli campaign, Trump said: “Sure, anything could happen.”

Referring to the destruction or dismantling of Iran’s Fordow nuclear enrichment center, Trump said: “We’re the only ones that have the capability to do it. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to do it — at all.”

Military analysts believe that Israel might need US military help to destroy Fordow, dug beneath a mountain near the city of Qom.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, rebuked Trump in a recorded speech played on television, his first appearance since Friday.

The Americans “should know that any US military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage,” he said. “The Iranian nation will not surrender.”

In its latest bombings, Israel said its air force destroyed Iran’s police headquarters.

Israel’s military said sirens sounded in northern Israel just before 2 a.m. local time on Thursday  and that it had intercepted a drone launched from Iran. It said several minutes later that another drone was intercepted in the Jordan Valley area.

The Iranian missile salvoes mark the first time in decades of shadow war and proxy conflict that a significant number of projectiles fired from Iran have penetrated defenses, killing Israelis in their homes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a video released by his office on Wednesday, said Israel was “progressing step by step” toward eliminating threats posed by Iran’s nuclear sites and ballistic missile arsenal.

“We are hitting the nuclear sites, the missiles, the headquarters, the symbols of the regime,” Netanyahu said.

Israel, which is not a party to the international Non-Proliferation Treaty, is the only country in the Middle East believed to have nuclear weapons. Israel does not deny or confirm that.

Netanyahu also thanked Trump, “a great friend of the state of Israel,” for standing by its side in the conflict, saying the two were in continuous contact.

Trump has veered from proposing a swift diplomatic end to the war to suggesting the United States might join it.

In social media posts on Tuesday, he mused about killing Khamenei.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, asked what his reaction would be if Israel did kill Iran’s Supreme Leader with the assistance of the United States, said on Thursday: “I do not even want to discuss this possibility. I do not want to.”

A source familiar with internal discussions said Trump and his team were considering options that included joining Israel in strikes against Iranian nuclear installations.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations mocked Trump in posts on X, describing him as “a has-been warmonger clinging to relevance.”

Israel’s military said scores of Israeli jets had struck targets in and around Tehran and in western Iran in the previous 24 hours in three waves, hitting sites producing raw materials, components and manufacturing systems for missiles.

Fleeing Tehran

Arezou, a 31-year-old Tehran resident, told Reuters by phone that she had made it out of the city to the nearby resort town of Lavasan.

“My friend’s house in Tehran was attacked and her brother was injured. They are civilians,” she said. “Why are we paying the price for the regime’s decision to pursue a nuclear program?”

In Israel, sirens rang out anew at dusk on Wednesday warning of further incoming Iranian missiles. A motorist was injured by missile debris, Israeli medics said. The army later advised civilians they could leave protected areas, signalling the threat had passed.

At Ramat Gan train station east of Tel Aviv, people were lying on city-supplied mattresses or sitting in the odd camping chair, with plastic water bottles strewn about.

“I feel scared, overwhelmed. Especially because I live in a densely populated area that Iran seems to be targeting, and our city has very old buildings, without shelters and safe spaces,” said Tamar Weiss, clutching her four-month-old daughter.

Iran has reported at least 224 deaths in Israeli attacks, mostly civilians, but has not updated that toll for days.

Since Friday, Iran has fired around 400 missiles at Israel, some 40 of which have pierced air defenses, killing 24 people, all of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities.

Leverage

Iran has been exploring options for leverage, including veiled threats to hit the global oil market by restricting access to the Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important shipping artery for oil.

Inside Iran, authorities are intent on preventing panic and shortages. Fewer images of destruction have been allowed to circulate than in the early days of the bombing, when state media showed pictures of explosions, fires and flattened apartments. A ban on filming by the public has been imposed.

The communications ministry said on Wednesday that temporary restrictions on Internet access would be imposed to help prevent “the enemy from threatening citizens’ lives and property.”

Iran’s ability to hit back hard at Israel through strikes by proxy militia close to Israeli borders has been limited by the devastating blows Israel has dealt to Tehran’s regional allies — Hamas and Hezbollah — in conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon since 2023.