Iranian supreme leader Khamenei hiding in bunker, picks successors

As Israeli strikes pound Tehran with a force not seen since the Iran-Iraq war, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has gone underground -- literally.

- Agencies

Agencies [e-mail] JERUSALEM: Israel claimed on Saturday it has already set back Iran's presumed nuclear programme by at least two years, a day after US President Donald Trump warned that Tehran has a "maximum" of two weeks to avoid possible American air strikes.

Trump has been mulling whether to involve the United States in Israel's bombing campaign, indicating in his latest comments that he could take a decision before the two-week deadline he set this week.

Israel said on Saturday its air force had launched fresh air strikes against missile storage and launch sites in central Iran, as it kept up a wave of attacks it says are aimed at preventing its rival from developing nuclear weapons -- an ambition Tehran has denied.

"According to the assessment we hear, we already delayed for at least two or three years the possibility for them to have a nuclear bomb," Israel's foreign minister Gideon Saar said in an interview published on Saturday. Saar said Israel's week-long onslaught would continue. "We will do everything that we can do there in order to remove this threat," he told German newspaper Bild.

Top diplomats from Britain, France and Germany met their Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi in Geneva on Friday and urged him to resume talks with the US that had been derailed by Israel's attacks.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said "we invited the Iranian minister to consider negotiations with all sides, including the United States, without awaiting the cessation of strikes, which we also hope for."

But Araghchi told NBC News after the meeting that "we're not prepared to negotiate with them (the US) anymore, as long as the aggression continues." Trump was dismissive of European diplomacy efforts, telling reporters, "Iran doesn't want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this."