By Steve Holland, Parisa Hafezi and Alexander Cornwell
WASHINGTON/DUBAI/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Iran and Israel traded further air attacks on Thursday as President Donald Trump kept the world guessing about whether the United States would join Israel’s bombardment of Iranian nuclear facilities.
A week of Israeli air and missile strikes against its major rival has wiped out the top echelon of Iran’s military command, damaged its nuclear capabilities and killed hundreds of people, while Iranian retaliatory strikes have killed two dozen civilians in Israel.
The worst-ever conflict between the rivals has raised fears that it will draw in world powers and rock regional stability already undermined by the spillover effects of the Gaza war.
Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Wednesday, Trump declined to say if he had made any decision on whether to join Israel’s air 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.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rebuked Trump’s earlier call for Iran to surrender in a recorded speech played on television, his first appearance since Friday.
The Americans “should know that any U.S. military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage,” he said. “The Iranian nation will not surrender.”
Iran denies it is seeking nuclear weapons and says its program is for peaceful purposes only. The International Atomic Energy Agency said last week Tehran was in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in 20 years.
The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain plan to hold nuclear talks with their Iranian counterpart on Friday in Geneva to urge Iran to return to the negotiating table, 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.
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 programme?”
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.
Senior U.S. officials are preparing for the possibility of a strike on Iran in the coming days, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
DRONE ATTACKS
Early on Thursday, air defences were activated in Tehran, intercepting drones on the outskirts of the capital, the semi-official SNN news agency reported. Iranian news agencies also reported it had arrested 18 “enemy agents” who were building drones for Israeli attacks in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
Israel’s military said sirens sounded in northern Israel and in the Jordan Valley on Thursday and that it had intercepted two drones launched from Iran.
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 defences, 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” towards 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.”
Putin said all sides should look for ways to end hostilities in a way that ensured both Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear power and Israel’s right to the unconditional security of the Jewish state.
A source familiar with internal discussions said Trump and his team were considering options that included joining Israel in strikes against Iranian nuclear installations.
Since Friday, Iran has fired around 400 missiles at Israel, some 40 of which have pierced air defences, killing 24 people, all of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
Iran has reported at least 224 deaths in Israeli attacks, mostly civilians, but has not updated that toll for days.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Saad Sayeed)
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