Israel Hits Nuclear Sites, Iran Strikes Hospital as War Escalates

President Trump Keeps World Guessing on Whether US Will Join Israeli Campaign

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TEL AVIV/DUBAI - Israel bombed nuclear targets in Iran on June 19 and Iranian missiles hit an Israeli hospital overnight, as the week-old air war escalated with no sign yet of an off-ramp.

Following the strike that damaged the Soroka Medical Centre in Israel's southern city of Beersheba, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tehran's "tyrants" would pay the "full price".

Defence 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 Israel and destabilise the "Ayatollah regime".

Israel's sweeping campaign of air strikes aims to do more than destroy Iran's nuclear centrifuges and missile capabilities. It seeks to shatter the foundations of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's government and leave it near collapse, said Israeli, Western and regional officials.

US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has kept the world guessing about whether Israel's superpower ally would join it in air strikes.

Israel 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 that Bushehr was not hit and Israel was engaged in "psychological warfare" by discussing it. Any attack on the plant, near Arab neighbours and housing Russian technicians, is viewed as risking nuclear disaster.