U.S. officials believe Israel intends to target Iranian military and energy

U.S. officials believe Israel has narrowed down what they will target in their response to Iran’s attack, which these officials describe as Iranian military and energy infrastructure. There is no indication that Israel will target nuclear facilities or carry out assassinations, but U.S. officials stressed that the Israelis have not made a final decision about how and when to act.

The U.S. does not know when the response could come but officials said the Israeli military is poised and ready to go at any time once the order is given. U.S. officials stressed that they have no information to indicate the response will come today but admitted that Israel has not shared a specific timeline with them — and it is not clear Israeli officials have even agreed on one yet. U.S. and Israeli officials said a response could come during the Yom Kippur holiday. 

Israel has shared more information with the U.S. about the retaliation, the officials said, but they withheld many details out of operational security concerns. The U.S. is poised to defend its assets in the region from any immediate counterattack from Iran but is not likely to provide direct military support to the operation.

The Iranian president’s latest stop in a diplomatic drive aimed at blunting Israel’s promised attacks was a meeting today with Russian President Putin in Turkmenistan.

“Relations with Iran are a priority for us,” the Kremlin said, as it released video of the two leaders together. “We work together actively in the international arena, and our assessment of events happening in the world are often very close.”

The relationship is about more than agreeing on anti-Western ideology. Russia has an air defense system that would help Iran if it comes under attack from Israel.

Iran, meanwhile, has supplied Russia with weapons like Shahed drones for its war in Ukraine. And support for Iran by a nuclear-armed Russia will inevitably factor into any assessment of a strike on the country.

The meeting between Putin and Iran's Pezeshkian appears to have been arranged in a hurry. Russian media only announced it on Monday. And it underscores the ways in which events around the world are pushing America’s adversaries toward one another.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for countries to stop selling arms to Israel following a meeting with Pope Francis at Vatican City.

“I do believe that it is urgent that under the spotlight of all that is happening in the Middle East, the international community should cease to export arms to the Israeli government,” Sánchez told reporters.

The prime minister’s message came after peacemakers with the United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) were injured in Israeli attacks today. The Israeli military said its forces were responding to an “immediate threat” when it hit the UNIFIL post.

The leaders of Spain, Italy and France earlier Friday issued a joint statement condemning the attacks, saying they constitute an Israeli violation of international law.

More than 100 medical and emergency workers have been killed in Lebanon since last October, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“There are recurring reports of essential civilian infrastructure having been struck, including hospitals, clinics, ambulances and schools — along with destruction of housing,” the U.N. office warned in a statement, adding that Lebanese civilians are “bearing the brunt” of the latest phase of the conflict.

The office said the only way the conflict will end is at the negotiating table.

“Widening conflict and progressive escalation put the lives and wellbeing of potentially millions of people across the region at risk,” the agency said.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned Israel’s attack on an army center in Kafra, southern Lebanon, that killed two soldiers and wounded two others.

“This ongoing Israeli crime against Lebanon has not spared even the brave soldiers who fulfill their national duty in protecting the land and defending the people,” Mikati said in a statement. “It is a call for the international community, which remains silent about Israel’s violations, to take a global stand that puts an end to this aggression.”

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said it's “appalled” by recent “inflammatory language” from Israel amid its military campaign in Lebanon.

“Recent language threatening Lebanese people as a whole and calling on them to either rise up against Hezbollah or face destruction like Gaza, risks being understood as encouraging or accepting violence directed against civilians and civilian objects, in violation of international law,” spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said in a statement Friday.

Shamdasani warned that this conflict will “have an impact that will reverberate across many generations of people in the Middle East.”

“The trauma of families, the impunity that has marked this conflict, which means that it is going to continue to feed cycles of revenge, injustice, revenge, injustice, revenge, injustice,” Shamdasani said at a news briefing. “It’s so difficult to see it.”

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus called plans to ban the operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in Gaza and the West Bank “unacceptable.”

“If implemented, a ban would, in effect, deprive Palestinians of lifesaving services, such as health care,” Ghebreyesus wrote Tuesday on X. “UNRWA was established by the countries of the world — the @UN members — to ensure health and well-being of Palestinians and it has done so for over 70 years.”

The leaders of the Spanish, French, and Italian governments on Friday issued a joint condemnation of the deadly attack on the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), specifically saying the Israeli military had violated international law.

“As longstanding contributing nations to UNIFIL and partners of Lebanon and Israel, We, leaders of France, Italy and Spain, condemn the recent targeting of UNIFIL by the IDF,” read the statement co-signed by French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. “We express our outrage after several peacekeepers were injured in Naqoura. These attacks constitute serious violation of the obligations of Israel under UNSCR 1701 and under humanitarian international law. Those attacks are unjustifiable and shall immediately come to an end.”

The joint statement continued: “We recall that all peacekeepers must be protected and reiterate our praise for the continued and indispensable commitment of UNIFIL troops/personnel in this very challenging context. We count on Israel’s commitment to the security of UN and bilateral peacekeeping missions in Lebanon as well as international organisations active in the region.”

In a Friday phone call with Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin reaffirmed U.S. support for Israel’s right to defend itself amid its escalation in Lebanon.

“Secretary Austin also emphasized the importance of ensuring the safety of UNIFIL forces in the area and urged coordinating efforts to pivot from military operations to a diplomatic pathway as soon as feasible,” according to a readout of the call from Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary.

Austin and Gallant also discussed “the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and the Secretary called for urgent steps to address it,” per the readout.

The defense secretary also said the U.S. is ready to defend its personnel, allies and partners against attacks from Iran and their proxies.

Thousands are trapped in the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza as Israeli forces intensify their offensive in the area, the international medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders said.

“Nobody is allowed to get in or out. Anyone who tries is getting shot,” project coordinator Sarah Vuylsteke said in a statement. "Five of our staff are trapped in the camp, fearing for their lives."

According to the charity, the Israel Defense Forces issued evacuation orders for Jabalia on Monday "while carrying out attacks at the same time, preventing people from leaving the area safely."

"Forced evacuations of homes and bombing of neighbourhoods by the Israeli forces is turning north Gaza into uninhabitable ruins," the charity said.

Doctors Without Borders is calling on Israel "to stop the all-out war on people in Gaza," ensure the protection of civilians and hospitals, and allow humanitarian aid to the north.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Bracing itself for a retaliatory strike from Israel, Iran has been urging its Arab neighbors not to allow Israel to use their airspace, two diplomats from Gulf nations told NBC News on Friday. 

Israel has vowed to respond to last week’s ballistic missile attack by Iran, prompting Tehran to warn countries that helping Israel in any way could potentially escalate into war, one of the diplomats said. Both asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the sensitive issue.

“The Gulf Cooperation Council is not interested in being caught in a crossfire,” one diplomat said. “Our focus has been on de-escalation.”

Many Arab nations such as Jordan and the United Arab Emirates host U.S. bases and oil facilities vital to the world economy, and Iran’s warning about helping Israel is raising fears in the region that these sites could become targets.

Read the full story here

Israel has criticized a United Nations inquiry that accused it of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

The report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, is a fact-finding mission set up by the U.N. Human Rights Council. It said that Israeli forces had “deliberately killed, detained and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles while tightening their siege on Gaza.”

It also accused Israel of the “institutionalized mistreatment of Palestinian detainees” held in its prisons, which are under the authority of Itamar Ben-Gvir, the country’s ultranationalist minister of national security.

Israel said the report is another “blatant attempt” by the U.N. to delegitimize the State of Israel and “obstruct its right to protect its population, while covering up the crimes of terrorist organizations,” according to Reuters.

Israel’s mission to the U.N. also said in the statement that the country was “fully committed to international legal standards regarding the treatment of detainees,” Reuters reported. Several Israeli and international human rights organizations have documented testimony from former detainees, and have accused Israel of widespread systemic abuse of Palestinians detainees.

The Israeli military said its soldiers were responding to “an immediate threat against them” when they fired on United Nations peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon, injuring two soldiers.

United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) spokesman Andrea Tenenti said that one of the injured soldiers had shrapnel wounds and was evacuated to a hospital in Tyre, southern Lebanon, in serious condition.

In a statement shortly after the incident, the Israel Defense Forces said that an initial examination indicated that “during the incident, a hit was identified on a UNIFIL post” around 165 feet from the source of the threat.

“Hours before the incident, the IDF instructed UNIFIL personnel to enter into protected spaces and remain there. This instruction was in place at the time of the incident,” the statement said.

"The Hezbollah terrorist organization deliberately operates with the intent to harm Israeli civilians from civilian areas and near UNIFIL posts, thereby endangering UNIFIL personnel," it added.

NBC News has reached out to UNIFIL for comment on the IDF's allegations.

Araeb el Shoga, a commander in the Hezbollah Radwan Forces’ Anti-tank Missile Unit, was killed in a strike in southern Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces said today.

The IDF said he was responsible for numerous anti-tank missile attacks on the area of Ramot Naftali in northern Israel. 

Several people have been wounded by Israeli gunfire at a school in northern Gaza, Mahmoud Basal, a spokesperson for Gaza’s Civil Defense said in a post on Telegram. 

Basal said that Al-Fawqa school provides shelter to displaced people in the Jabalia refugee camp. “Our crews have so far transferred 15 wounded to Kamal Adwan Hospital in three batches and are still transferring more wounded,” he said.

Israeli attacks on Gaza, particularly in the north, have increased over the last week.

The Palestinian health ministry said today that 61 people had been killed and 231 people injured over the past 24 hours.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian accused Western nations, including the U.S., of backing Israel as it has killed innocent people.

“I would like to say to Israel: Stop, stop killing innocent people,” he told Rossiya 24, a state-owned Russian TV channel. “They do it because they know that the U.S. and the E.U. have their backs."

Pezeshkian was speaking in Turkmenistan where he was attending an international summit.

There, he formally accepted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invitation for a state visit.

Video captured by NBC News shows the aftermath of yesterday's deadly strike by the Israeli military on a school sheltering displaced Palestinians in the central Gazan city of Deir al-Balah.

In the video, a Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulance can be seen pulling up outside a hospital. Men gather to help carry the dead and injured into the facility.

Blooded body parts appear to spill out as they open the backdoors of the vehicle and one ambulance worker turns away and raises his hands to head with a horrified expression. NBC News is not showing the video due to its graphic nature.

Later, a number of bodies are removed from an ambulance that had traveled from the the Rafidah school where the strike hit. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said at least 27 people were killed and more than 50 wounded.

The Israeli military said it had conducted a “precise strike” on militants operating a command and control center that was embedded in the compound.

It is unlikely that Israel has the weaponry required to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities permanently, according to Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.  

“It is generally assessed that the deepest facilities require large weapons that can only be dropped from U.S. bombers,” Savill told NBC News today. As a result, he added that Israel would have to convince the Biden administration to drop one of the world’s largest non-nuclear weapons.

The alternative, he said, was “multiple hits on exactly the same point.” This would require a first strike “and then a second wave would have to hit the same point as the first strike, and then a third strike would have to hit the same point that the second strike hit,” he added. 

“Doing that multiple times in multiple waves is not easy,” he said. 

Savill added that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if Israel ignored Syrian and Iraqi protestations about using their airspace to launch an attack on Iran “and fly through.” The alternative, he added was “a very long route around, down the Red Sea and up.”

U.N. peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon were attacked again today at their base near the country’s border with Israel, injuring two soldiers and marking the second time in as many days that the forces sustained casualties, a spokesman told NBC News.

United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) spokesman Andrea Tenenti said that one of the injured soldiers had shrapnel wounds and was evacuated to a hospital in Tyre, southern Lebanon, in serious condition. 

The other injured soldier was receiving treatment at a hospital in the southern Lebanese city of Naqoura, where the base is that came under attack today and yesterday, he said.

Tenenti declined to identify who was responsible for today’s attack nor give any additional details, saying that UNIFIL was still investigating the cause and perpetrators.

NBC News has reached out to the Israeli military for comment.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday there was deep concern in Asia about the plight of people in Gaza and conflict in the Middle East and stressed Washington was doing everything in its power to prevent those from spreading.

Speaking in Laos after the East Asia Summit, Blinken said concerns about the Middle East came up in conversations with other leaders, during which he reiterated Washington was dedicated to diplomacy to control the situation in the face of what he called an Iranian-led axis of resistance.

“The intense focus of the United States, which has been the case going back a year, and doing just that, (is) preventing these conflicts from spreading. And we’re working on that every day,” Blinken said at a news conference.

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister, Najib Mikati, has strongly condemned Israeli attacks against U.N. peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon, known as UNIFIL. 

It comes after a news attack was reported on a UNIFIL outpost in southern Lebanon this morning. The organization announced yesterday that two peacekeepers had been injured when an Israeli tank fired at a watchtower in Naqoura, causing them to fall. It said that UNIFIL’s Naqoura headquarters and nearby positions have also been repeatedly hit.

"The Israeli aggression against UNIFIL forces is a crime that we strongly condemn," Mikati said. He also said he had received a call from Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding efforts to achieve a cease-fire. 

Israeli strikes killed at least 22 people and injured more than 100 in central Beirut, Lebanese officials said. The U.N. has also accused Israel of targeting its peacekeeping force along the Lebanese border.

An academic from Gaza who was separated from her children for months after leaving the enclave shortly before Israel launched its deadly offensive a year ago has described her family’s joy — and recovery — since being reunited in the U.K.

“Other people couldn’t hold their children in this war,” Amani Ahmed told NBC News in a video interview yesterday from Edinburgh, Scotland, where she is now completing her doctorate in management. “But I was lucky enough to have the chance to hold them again and to be together.”

Pope Francis has today called "for an immediate ceasefire in all theatres of conflict in the Middle East, including Lebanon"

In a post on X, the pontiff urged people to pray "for the Lebanese people, especially for residents in the south who have been forced to flee their homes. May they soon be able to return and live in #Peace."

Today’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has likened the fallout of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza.

The Noble Prize went to Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots organization comprising survivors from the 1945 atomic blasts.

Its chairman, Toshiyuki Mimaki, said at a news conference of the pictures coming out of Gaza, “When I saw the children being carried, as they’re covered in blood, it was the same as Japan 80 years ago. The images overlap.”

Read the full story here.

Israel's military chief and the head of the Shin Bet have held a security assessment inside southern Lebanon, the IDF said this morning.

“We continue to operate against the enemy and will not stop until we ensure that we can safely return the residents, not just now, but with a future outlook,” Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said at the gathering yesterday.

Civilians in Lebanon were left terrified after Israeli strikes in the Beirut city center killed at least 22 people and injured 117 others, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.

“This no longer a war, this is a massacre," Ali Mehio, a warehouse worker in Beirut, told NBC News.

"Israelis sometimes send warnings for evacuations, and sometimes they strike without any previous warning," he said, adding that he felt there were "no more boundaries to this war. They kill civilians, rescuers, they bomb hospitals, the Lebanese army, even UNIFIL."

"Is this self defense?" Mehio, 53, asked. "All that’s happening is more killings and more destruction."

The IDF has not responded to a request for comment on last night's Beirut strikes.

A 27-year-old Thai worker was killed in a missile attack fired at agricultural land in the Upper Galilee, the Magen David Adom ambulance service said.

The ambulance service said in a post on X today that paramedics along with an IDF medical team responded to the scene and pronounced the foreign worker dead. They did not identify the 27-year-old by name or provide any further details.

The IDF said later that the Thai laborer and another person who was injured at kibbutz Yir’on were hit by a fallen munition that exploded in the area and not a anti-tank missile as initially reported.

Smoke billowing from the site of an overnight Israeli strike on the Lebanese city of Baalbek in the southern Bekaa Valley today.

Israel is facing growing international condemnation over repeated attacks on the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon, including an attack that left two soldiers injured and hospitalized.

"The international community is obligated to ensure that Israel abides by the international law," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding it contributes to the UNIFIL Maritime Task Force with one frigate and five personnel at the UNIFIL headquarters.

China also expressed “grave concern and strong condemnation” at a Foreign Ministry briefing this morning.

Hezbollah's media office had postponed a planned public appearance by its chief, Hajj Mohamad Afif, following Israeli attacks on Lebanon's capital, Beirut.

Afif was expected to hold talks with the minister information, the minister of culture and the speaker of the National Media council, with a news conference scheduled to take place after. But the media office said in a statement the news conference would be rescheduled "to a time to be determined later."

However, Hezbollah said later that Afif will hold a news conference later today after all, "to shed light on political and media developments on the ground."

The United Nations has accused Israel of attacking its peacekeeping force on the Lebanese border. The accusation came as Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of people in Gaza’s Deir Al-Balah and Lebanon’s capital, Beirut.

Hundreds of peacekeepers with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon have had to be moved to larger bases due to safety concerns, UNIFIL has said.

Addressing the U.N. Security Council, UNIFIL chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix said the force relocated at least 300 peacekeepers to larger bases earlier this month due to safety concerns amid Israeli strikes.

And in the days since, Lacroix warned that UNIFIL forces were "increasingly in jeopardy" and forced to remain at their bases due to the repeated strikes on and around UNIFIL sites, including a recent attack that left two UNIFIL peacekeepers injured and hospitalized.

Still, he said peacekeepers were determined to remain at their posts, with countries contributing to the force agreeing to keep deploying thousands of peacekeepers between the Litani River in the north and the Blue Line in the south, which marks the U.N.-recognized border between Lebanon and Israel, despite the risks.

The Israeli military says its forces have killed the head of the Islamic Jihad militant group's network in Nur Shams, a Palestinian refugee camp in the the Tulkarm Governorate in the occupied West Bank.

The IDF said it killed Muhammad Abdullah in a joint operation with the Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet, in an airstrike in the area of Tulkarm. It said a second militant was also killed, but did not identify them.

Abdullah was the successor of Muhammad Jabber, head of the Islamic Jihad network in Tulkarm who was killed by Israeli forces in August, the Israeli military said. The IDF said Abdullah had been responsible for "numerous" attacks and had deployed explosives against IDF soldiers in the area of Tulkarm.

The militant group did not comment.

Iran has been urging Arab nations not to allow Israel to use their airspace as part of any retaliatory strike, two Gulf diplomats have told NBC News.

The diplomats asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Iran says countries that help Israel in such a way during any response to Tehran’s ballistic missile barrage could potentially become part of a war, one senior diplomat said.

Iran’s president and its foreign minister have been meeting with Gulf countries including Qatar and Saudi Arabia this week. Many Arab nations such as Jordan and the United Arab Emirates host U.S. bases and oil instillations vital to the world economy. The sentiment expressed by Iran is raising fears in the region that these could potentially become targets.

“The Gulf Cooperation Council is not interested in being caught in a cross fire,” one diplomat told NBC News. “Our focus has been on de-escalation.”

A second diplomat told NBC News that it appeared unlikely that any Arab nation would agree to allow their airspace to be used by the Israelis for a strike on Iran.

Iran’s message to Arab nations through diplomatic backchannels was first reported by Reuters.

People gather at the site of an Israeli air strike in the Basta neighborhood of Beirut this morning, where residential buildings lay in ruins as excavators worked to remove rubble.

• Destruction like Gaza or civil war? Netanyahu’s warning adds to questions over Israel’s goals in Lebanon
• Israel has not briefed U.S. military officials on its plans for retaliation against Iran, U.S. officials say
• They were Israel’s eyes on the border, but their warnings about Hamas went unheard