Iran-Israel conflict: Trump says Iran’s capital should evacuate ‘immediately’

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is headed to the White House Situation Room to meet with President Donald Trump and his national security team amid tensions in the Middle East.

It comes as the U.S. has repositioned both warships and military aircraft in the region to respond if the conflict between Israel and Iran further escalates.
Hegseth didn’t provide details on what prompted the meeting but said on Fox News late Monday that the movements were to “ensure that our people are safe.”

Hegseth’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, tweeted that “American Forces are maintaining their defensive posture.” The U.S. has helped Israel shoot down Iranian missiles.

“President Trump had a great day at the G7, even signing a major trade deal with the United Kingdom and Prime Minister Keir Starmer,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on social media. “Much was accomplished, but because of what’s going on in the Middle East, President Trump will be leaving tonight after dinner with Heads of State.”

The summit is scheduled to continue on Tuesday, when Trump had scheduled his first one-on-one meeting with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Trump was also supposed to meet Tuesday in Canada with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

President Donald Trump on Monday posted on his social media site an ominous message calling for the immediate evacuation of the Iranian capital of Tehran while he’s in Canada attending the G7 summit.

Trump had said more than once during the day that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. He emphasized that again in his social media post, writing “IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON.”

He said Iran should have signed the ‘deal’ he told them to sign to prevent what he said was “a shame, and waste of human life,” referring to Israel’s attack last week. Trump ended the post with, “Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”

The city is home to around 9.5 million people.

The former Fox News pundit called Trump “complicit in the act of war” in his subscriber newsletter last week.

“I don’t know what Tucker Carlson is saying,” Trump told reporters Monday with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer by his side. “Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen.”

Carlson, who for years hosted a popular prime-time show for Fox News, was ousted in 2023 amid a cascade of bad legal news for the network.

There has been some debate among Trump’s supporters about how far the president should go in backing Israel.

Georgia U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk and other prominent Trump allies have argued voters backed Trump because he would not entangle the nation in foreign clashes and should be wary of expanding U.S. involvement in the conflict.

“The domino effect here is massive,” said retired pilot and aviation safety expert John Cox, who said the disruptions will have a huge price tag.

“You’ve got thousands of passengers suddenly that are not where they’re supposed to be, crews that are not where they are supposed to be, airplanes that are not where they’re supposed to be,” he told the AP.

Iran’s airspace is completely closed, and Israel has closed its main international Ben Gurion Airport “until further notice.”

Although airspace is still partially open in Lebanon and Jordan, the situation is chaotic at airports there. Neighboring Iraq’s airports have all closed due to its close proximity to Iran. Some Iraqis stranded there have opted to leave by land.

The military said defense systems were operating to intercept the missiles. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

While no opinion polls have been released since Israel launched a surprise attack Friday, much of the Israeli public seems to be lining up behind the operation in these early days.

As they surveyed the damage and moved to hotels or the homes of loved ones, some Petah Tikva residents said Israel must keep up its attacks to survive.

One woman said four of her neighbors were killed and much of her apartment destroyed.

Miryam, who spoke to AP on condition that her last name not be used because she serves in the military, called it the scariest thing she’s experienced.

“But the right thing is to attack Iran; I don’t want them to have this power over us,” she said.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported on its Telegram channel that Tehran’s air defense has become “highly active.”

Medics in Gaza say at least 34 Palestinians were killed Monday when Israeli troops opened fire as crowds tried to reach new food distribution centers, according to witnesses.

“Fire was coming from everywhere,” said Heba Jouda, one of thousands trying to feed her family. Gaza’s Health Ministry says hundreds have been killed in similar shootings since the Israeli- and U.S.-supported aid system began last month.

Israel claims the new system prevents Hamas from diverting aid, but U.N. agencies and groups like Doctors Without Borders argue it has failed to meet urgent needs and turned food into a weapon. The nearby Red Cross field hospital in Rafah reported treating 200 wounded Monday, the highest single mass casualty event it has seen. Aid groups warn Gaza is nearing famine after months of near-total siege and say the current system creates “lethal chaos.”

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on Monday’s shootings.

▶Read more about the war in Gaza

Rebuilding Iran’s air defenses will be difficult due to both logistics and geopolitics, according to Hinz. He described Iran’s air defenses as a “hodgepodge” of Russian, Chinese, Iranian and outdated American systems.

Russia, once a key supplier, is unlikely to sell Iran more systems amid its war in Ukraine and because Moscow doesn’t want to hurt its “working relationship” with Israel, Hinz said. Any Russian air defense deliveries to Iran would likely be attacked by Israel, he said, and wouldn’t offer an immediate fix because training and setup take time.

China has sold Iran short-range air defense systems, anti-drone lasers, and missile-related chemicals in the past, he said. But future sales are uncertain, since Beijing may be unwilling to risk diplomatic fallout with the West or Israel.

Iran has few viable options for striking back at Israel, largely because its key regional proxy Hezbollah has been “decapitated,” according to Fabian Hinz of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

The Houthi rebels in Yemen, another of Iran’s allies, depend on long-range Iranian missiles but supplies are limited, Hinz said. If Iran chose to strike using short-range missiles, he speculates it could transfer them to Shiite militias in Iraq, which are nearer to Israel.

Three Israeli mini-drones struck South Pars, the country’s main gas production center, according to the state-run IRINN television channel. The report did not specify the extent of the damage.

Videos circulating on social media show the Iranian state TV building, known as “the glass building,” is still burning.

Following the attack, live programs have been transferred to another studio that resembles those used for radio broadcasts.

The four European leaders met on the eve of the G7 summit Sunday night without President Donald Trump, who had yet to arrive at the venue in the Canadian Rockies.

It started when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer bumped into German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in a restaurant-bar area of the venue in the resort of Kananaskis. French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni dropped by and it became an hour-long informal meeting that discussed the conflict between Israel and Iran.

Efforts to de-escalate that conflict are a main focus of the two-day summit that officially started Monday.

The images captured Saturday by Planet Labs PBC show multiple buildings damaged or destroyed. The structures hit include buildings identified by experts as supplying power to the facility.

U.N. nuclear chief Rafael Grossi has said Iran’s main underground enrichment site at Natanz was untouched by Israeli strikes.

Grossi told the U.N. Security Council on Friday that the above-ground section of the Natanz facility was destroyed. The main centrifuge facility underground didn’t appear to be hit, but the loss of power could have damaged infrastructure there, he said.

Grossi said Monday that radiation levels outside the complex are presently normal.

He is the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Journalists at the United Nations are pressing Israel’s ambassador on why Iran’s state television was attacked.

His reply: “Whoever is cooperating with this terror regime should be considering steps,” adding that Israel now has “very good control over the skies of Tehran.”

Ambassador Danny Dannon sidestepped questions about U.N. nuclear chief Rafael Grossi’s claim that Iran’s underground Natanz facility was untouched by Israeli strikes, but said Israel had “pushed back the nuclear program” and stressed the current operation is more complex than past strikes on reactors in Iraq or Syria.

As for peace talks, Danon said Iran must prove it’s serious about dismantling its “machine of terror” before Israel would engage.

A significant number of explosions have been ringing out in Tehran for minutes on end.

It’s unclear where the Israeli strikes may have hit in the Iranian capital, and there were no official announcements about the latest round of attacks.

Netanyahu added that Israel was not attempting to topple the Iranian government, but said he would not be surprised if that happened as a result of the strikes.

“The regime is very weak,” he said. Netanyahu also said he is in daily touch with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Roughly 24 hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a blistering assault on Iran, Israel’s opposition was scheming to bring down his government.

Now, just days into the ongoing operation against Iran, the opposition has closed ranks behind the effort, suspending months of bitter criticism against Netanyahu and his handling of the war in Gaza.

It’s a sharp about-face for a constellation of parties that have criticized Netanyahu throughout the war for what they have charged is his politically motivated decision-making.

“It’s not the right moment to do politics,” opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid told The Associated Press on Monday in his first international media interview since the start of the operation against Iran.

The website for Iranian state TV, iribnews.ir, which was targeted by an Israeli strike hours ago, is currently inaccessible.

The site displays a message saying: “The website server is temporarily unavailable.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesman, Tom Wells, told reporters that “significant destabilization in the region is in nobody’s interests.”

Speaking Monday on the sidelines of a G7 summit where conflict in the Middle East is the dominant issue, Wells said “this summit is an opportunity to try and press for de-escalation and that is the priority, certainly for the prime minister and I believe for other world leaders too.”

Still, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country’s ongoing strikes on Iran could result in the government’s overthrow, and on Friday urged Iranians to rise up against their leaders.

Anchor Sahar Emami came back on-air from another studio soon after rushing off-camera when Israel struck the state-run Iranian TV station.

Speaking with another anchor, Emami said that “bodies of reporters” were at the site of the initial broadcast, and images showed smoke and flames in the sky.

“The Iranian regime’s propaganda and incitement broadcasting authority was attacked by the IDF after a widespread evacuation of the area’s residents,” Israel Katz said in a statement. “We will strike the Iranian dictator everywhere.”

Human rights groups say deliberately targeting journalists is a war crime.

The German Foreign Office said Monday a charter flight from the Jordanian capital of Amman to Frankfurt is scheduled for Wednesday. Those who want to get on the flight must independently arrange their travel from Israel to Amman.

The spokesperson for the Iranian foreign minister condemned the Israeli strike on Iran’s state TV broadcaster and called on the international community to demand justice for the attack on media.

“The world is watching: targeting Iran’s news agency #IRIB‘s office during live broadcast is a wicked act of war crime,” Esmaeil Baqaei wrote on X.

After the strike, the Israeli military released a statement saying it struck “a communication center that was being used for military purposes by the Iranian Armed Forces.” It was not immediately clear if that referred to the state TV building.

Throughout the war in Gaza, Israel has struck hospitals, U.N. facilities and schools, accusing Palestinian militants of operating from within civilian infrastructure, often without providing visual evidence.

Early Monday morning, Iranian missiles hit an oil refinery in the northern city of Haifa for the second night in a row.

Now Israel’s fire and rescue services are saying the strike killed three workers, ignited a significant fire and damaged a building.

The workers were sheltering in the building’s safe room when the impact caused a stairwell to collapse, trapping them inside. Firefighters tried to extinguish the fire and rescue them, but were too late.

Lebanon’s president and prime minister say any engagement would be detrimental to the small nation, which is already engulfed in an economic crisis and struggling to recover from the latest war between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Hezbollah, funded and armed by Iran, has long been considered Tehran’s most powerful ally in the region but its latest war with Israel also saw much of Hezbollah’s political and military leadership killed in Israeli airstrikes.

The remarks from Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam during a Cabinet meeting Monday amounted to a message to Hezbollah to stay out of the fray.

▶ Read more about Iran’s ties to Hezbollah

Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul says Iran must make a “credible renunciation” of any military use of nuclear technology in order to bring its conflict with Israel to an end.

Wadephul said there’s no justification for Iran to enrich uranium to such high levels for civilian use, as the international nuclear watchdog agency IAEA recently confirmed. He spoke during a brief stopover in Cyprus after a tour of the Middle East.

He added that Iran would be further marginalized if it withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and urged Tehran to “refrain from such ideas.”

Israel, which has an undeclared nuclear weapons program, has not signed the non-proliferation treaty.

The movements provide President Donald Trump additional options to defend U.S. bases and personnel in the region in wake of the ongoing ballistic missile attacks by Iran and Israel’s continued air operations against Tehran, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press.

The refueling tankers are vital to supporting any major U.S. air operation, whether it would be evacuations or a potential strike by U.S. fighter jets. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide details not announced publicly.

At the Gurbulak-Bazargan border crossing from the Iranian city of Urmia into Turkey, observers noted an increase in arrivals since the Israel-Iran conflict started.

“About a week or 10 days ago, there would be between three and five people (Iranians) who would come for shopping or tourism,” said bus driver Ferit Aktas. “But now, I can say, that there are at least 30 Iranians in my vehicle per day.”

Shirin Talebi, who crossed with her family, said they are planning to stay for a month or two in Turkey.

“Hopefully, it is over in one or two months so we can return to our country,” she said.

Turkey, which shares a 569 kilometer-long (348 miles) border with Iran, has expressed deep concern over the escalating armed conflict, though Turkish officials have dismissed social media reports of a large-scale refugee influx. Turkey has not provided any official figures.

The conflict between Israel and Iran has wreaked considerable damage in both countries and caused casualties on both sides.

As Israel pummels Iran with airstrikes and Iran sends volleys of ballistic missiles towards Israel, here’s a breakdown of the key sites struck so far and the casualties on both sides, as of Monday:

▶ Read more about the conflict so far

The U.S. president declined to answer what it would take for U.S. to be directly involved in the growing conflict between Israel and Iran, saying he did not want to talk about the issue.

Instead, he continued to press Iran on negotiations on its nuclear program.

“They should talk, and they should talk immediately,” Trump said during a bilateral meeting with the Canadian prime minister during the G7 summit.

Trump added: “I’d say Iran is not winning this war.”

Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi appeared to make a veiled outreach Monday for the U.S. to step in and negotiate an end to dayslong hostilities between Israel and Iran.

In a post on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, Araghchi wrote that if Trump is “genuine about diplomacy and interested in stopping this war, next steps are consequential.”

“It takes one phone call from Washington to muzzle someone like Netanyahu,” Iran’s top diplomat continued. “That may pave the way for a return to diplomacy.”

The message to Washington comes as the most recent round of talks between U.S. and Iran was canceled over the weekend after Israel targeted key military and political officials in Tehran on Thursday.

During a live broadcast, an Iranian state television reporter said the studio was filling with dust after “the sound of aggression against the homeland, the sound of aggression against truth and righteousness.”

Suddenly, an explosion occurred, cutting out the screen behind her as she hurried off camera amid dust and debris wafting in the air, and sounds of “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) were heard from off-screen. The broadcast quickly switched to pre-recorded programs.

Israel had issued a warning the evacuate the area of Iran’s capital where the TV studios are located an hour earlier.

Two American warships, the USS The Sullivans and the USS Arleigh Burke, were used to shoot down Iranian ballistic missiles over the weekend, according to a U.S. official.

The Sullivans and the USS Thomas Hudner are currently in the Mediterranean, while the Arleigh Burke has moved away from the area. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations.

The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier is in the Arabian Sea with the four warships in its strike group. They are not participating in the defense of Israel.

The USS Nimitz has been long scheduled to take over for the Carl Vinson and is heading west from the Indo-Pacific region. The official said it is slated to arrive in the region by the end of the month, and the two carriers would likely overlap in the Middle East at least for a short time before the Vinson heads home to San Diego.

As the conflict with Iran threatens to escalate, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Monday that “we’re giving advice today to register their presence, so there will be a portal for that.”

The online portal is expected to be up and running later Monday. It would make it easier for British citizens to be evacuated if the situation worsens. The U.K. took similar actions for British citizens in Lebanon last year amid the Israel-Hezbollah fighting, and at other times as well.

Over the weekend, Britain changed its travel advice to urge U.K. nationals not to travel to Israel.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says all G7 leaders agree that “have to find a way to de-escalate the situation” in the Middle East because the conflict between Israel and Iran risks inflaming the “tinderbox” of Gaza and hurting the global economy.

Starmer said he’d spoken to President Donald Trump “and to pretty well all of the G7 leaders yesterday, and I do think there’s a consensus for de-escalation.

He spoke to reporters Monday at the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alberta.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told reporters Monday ahead of the G7 summit in Canada that together with his European colleagues at the summit, Germany is planning to draw up a final communique proposal on the Israel-Iran conflict in which the European will stress that “Iran must under no circumstances be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons-capable material.”

The chancellor added the communique would also emphasize Israel’s right to defend itself, and that he and the other European leaders would discuss possible further steps to reach a diplomatic solution.

Merz rejected the idea that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be involved in mediating a diplomatic solution for the hostilities between Israel and Iran and said that instead “it would be good if Russia ended its war in Ukraine.”

Israel’s military issued the evacuation warning for a part of central Tehran that includes the country’s state TV and police headquarters, as well as three large hospitals, including one owned by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

U.S. stocks are rallying Monday, while oil prices are giving back some of their initial spurts following Israel’s attack on Iran at the end of last week.

The S&P 500 climbed 1.1% and was on track to reclaim nearly all of its drop from Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 449 points, and the Nasdaq composite rose 1.4%. They joined a worldwide rise in stock prices, stretching from Asia to Europe.

The price for a barrel of benchmark U.S. oil fell by more than 3%, while gold’s price eased.