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HOLON: A masked Zionist policeman stands guard outside a building that was hit by an Iranian missile on June 19, 2025. - AFP
HOLON: A masked Zionist policeman stands guard outside a building that was hit by an Iranian missile on June 19, 2025. - AFP

Iran, Zionists trade massive blows

TEL AVIV/TEHRAN: The Zionist bombed nuclear targets in Iran on Thursday and Iran fired missiles and drones at the Zionist entity, as a week-old air war escalated with no sign yet of an exit strategy from either side. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on Thursday strongly condemned the Zionist attacks on Iran in a phone call and stressed the need for a diplomatic solution, Moscow and Beijing said.

Putin and Xi “strongly condemn (the Zionist entity’s) actions”, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters after the call. He added that Moscow and Beijing believed the end to the hostilities “should be achieved exclusively by political and diplomatic means”. Xi told Putin that a ceasefire was the “top priority” and urged the Zionist entity to halt its attacks, Chinese state media reported.

“Promoting a ceasefire and cessation of hostilities is the top priority. Armed force is not the correct way to resolve international disputes,” Xi said, according to China’s state news agency Xinhua. “Parties to the conflict, especially (the Zionist entity), should cease hostilities as soon as possible to prevent a cyclical escalation and resolutely avoid the spillover of the war,” he added.

Following a strike that damaged the Soroka medical center in the southern Zionist city of Beersheba, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tehran’s “tyrants” would pay the “full price”. “Are we targeting the downfall of the regime? That may be a result, but it’s up to the Iranian people to rise for their freedom,” Netanyahu said. “Freedom requires these subjugated people to rise up, and it’s up to them, but we

may create conditions that will help them do it.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had targeted Zionist military and intelligence headquarters near the hospital. Zionist Defense Minister Israel Katz said the military had been instructed to intensify strikes on strategic-related targets in Tehran in order to eliminate the threat to the Zionist entity and destabilize the “Ayatollah regime”.

Three diplomats told Reuters that Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi have spoken by phone several times since the Zionist entity began its strikes last week. In an apparent reference to the US, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said on Thursday it would use a different strategy if a “third party” joined the Zionist entity in the war.

In the latest wave of attacks, the Zionist entity said it had struck Iran’s Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites. It initially said it had also hit Bushehr, site of Iran’s only functioning nuclear power plant, but a spokesperson later said it was a mistake to have said this. An Iranian diplomat told Reuters Bushehr was not hit and the Zionist entity was engaged in “psychological warfare” by discussing it. Any attack on the plant, near Arab neighbors and housing Russian technicians, is viewed as risking nuclear disaster.

A week of Zionist air and missile strikes has wiped out the top echelon of Iran’s military command, damaged its nuclear capabilities and killed hundreds of people. Iranian retaliatory strikes have killed at least two dozen people in the Zionist entity. Both countries have not issued an updated official toll. Iran’s state media have ceased showing widespread images of destruction. The Internet has been almost completely shut down, and the public has been banned from filming.

On Thursday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement it had launched combined missile and drone attacks at military and industrial sites linked to the Zionist entity’s defense industry in Haifa and Tel Aviv. The Zionist entity reported missiles launched from Iran towards its territory.

Iran has been weighing its wider options in responding to the biggest security challenge since its 1979 revolution. A member of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security Committee Presidium, Behnam Saeedi, told the semi-official Mehr news agency Iran could consider closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of daily global oil consumption passes. Oil prices jumped on Thursday. Iran was maintaining crude oil supply by loading tankers one at a time and moving floating oil storage much closer to China, two vessel tracking firms told Reuters, as the country seeks to keep a key source of revenue while under attack.

Earlier, the Zionist military said it targeted the Khondab nuclear site near Iran’s central city Arak overnight, including a partially-built heavy-water research reactor. Heavy-water reactors produce plutonium, which, like enriched uranium, can be used to make the core of an atom bomb. Iranian TV showed footage of smoke billowing from the direction of Arak, but Iran’s atomic energy agency said the attack caused no casualties. The Zionist military also said it attacked launch sites in western Iran after attempts to restore them were detected

Arash, 33, a government employee in Tehran, said a building next to his home in Tehran’s Shahrak-e Gharb neighborhood had been destroyed in the strikes. “I saw at least three dead children and two women in that building. Is this how Netanyahu plans to ‘liberate’ Iranians? Stay away from our country,” he told Reuters by telephone. Thousands of residents have fled Tehran, a city of 10 million, jamming the highways out. Samira, 11, moved in with her grandparents in the northwestern city of Urmia after her family fled Tehran when a shopping center near their house was struck.

Inside the Zionist entity, the missile strikes over the past week are the first time a significant number of projectiles from Iran have pierced defenses and killed Zionists in their homes. The director general of the Zionist hospital that was damaged in Beersheba, Shlomi Kodesh, told reporters at the site that a missile strike had destroyed several wards and wounded 40 people, mostly staff and patients. Missiles also hit a building in Ramat Gan, east of Tel Aviv. “It’s very scary,” said Yaniv, 34, who lives nearby. He said he heard a deafening explosion when the missile hit, shaking his apartment tower. – Agencies

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