Closing summary
Iran’s armed forces chief of staff Abdolrahim Mousavi said Tehran is not convinced Israel will honour a ceasefire that ended their 12-day war earlier this month. “We did not start the war, but we have responded to the aggressor with all our power, and as we have serious doubts over the enemy’s compliance with its commitments including the ceasefire, we are ready to respond with force” if attacked again, he said.
The UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said Iran likely will be able to begin to produce enriched uranium “in a matter of months”, despite damage to several nuclear facilities from US and Israeli attacks.
At least 56,500 Palestinian people have been killed and 133,419 others injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said. Over 85 Palestinian people were killed and 365 others injured in the last 24 hours alone, the ministry said in its regular update.
An Israeli court has postponed Benjamin Netanyahu’s testimony in his corruption trial after he requested a delay with the support of Donald Trump.
Iran’s judiciary said that the Israeli airstrike on the notorious Tehran’s Evin prison on Monday killed at least 71 people.
Thanks for joining us. We are closing this blog now. You can find all our latest coverage of the Middle East here.
Updated
The Israeli military has launched an investigation into possible war crimes following growing evidence that troops have deliberately fired at Palestinian civilians gathering to receive aid in Gaza.
Hundreds of people have been killed in recent weeks after being subjected to air attacks, shootings and bombardments by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) while waiting for food to be distributed or while making their way to distribution sites.
On Friday the Israeli newspaper Haaretz quoted unnamed Israeli soldiers as saying they had been told to fire at crowds near food distribution sites to keep them away from Israeli military positions. The soldiers said they had concerns about using unnecessary lethal force against people who appeared to pose no threat.
You can read the full story by my colleagues Jason Burke and Malak A Tantesh here:
Iran will likely be able to produce enriched uranium ‘in a matter of months’, nuclear watchdog chief says
The UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi has said Iran likely will be able to begin to produce enriched uranium “in a matter of months”, despite damage to several nuclear facilities from US and Israeli attacks.
“The capacities they have are there. They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told CBS News in an interview.
“Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there,” he added, according to the transcript of an interview due to air on Sunday.
For now, Iranian lawmakers voted to suspend cooperation with the IAEA and Tehran rejected Grossi’s request for a visit to the damaged sites, especially Fordow, the main uranium enrichment facility.
“We need to be in a position to ascertain, to confirm what is there, and where is it and what happened,” Grossi said. You can read more of his comments in this story.
Iran demands UN recognise Israel and US as being responsible for the 12-day war
Iran has demanded that the UN recognise Israel and the US as being to blame for their recent 12-day war, in a letter to the secretary-general published on Sunday.
“We officially request hereby that the security council recognise the Israeli regime and the United States as the initiators of the act of aggression and acknowledge their subsequent responsibility, including the payment of compensation and reparations,” Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi wrote in a letter to UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres. There has not been an official response to this from Israel or the US yet.
Israel relentlessly attacked Iran beginning on 13 June, targeting its nuclear sites, defence systems, high-ranking military officials and atomic scientists. But the attacks killed at least 627 people, including many civilians, according to Iran’s health ministry.
The US then struck three nuclear facilities in Iran - Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan - with “bunker buster” bombs over the weekend, prompting Iran to launch missiles at a US military base in Qatar in response. There were no reported casualties.
Retaliatory missile attacks by Iran on Israel killed 28 people during the 12-day war, according to Israeli authorities.
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Israeli court postpones Benjamin Netanyahu's appearance in corruption trial
An Israeli court has postponed Benjamin Netanyahu’s testimony in his corruption trial after he requested a delay with the support of his ally, US president Donald Trump.
“Following the explanations given... we partially accept the request and cancel at this stage Mr Netanyahu’s hearings scheduled” for this week, the Jerusalem district court said in its ruling.
Netanyahu’s lawyers had asked the court to excuse him from testifying over the next two weeks so he could focus on national security issues following a ceasefire with Iran and amid Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.
Netanyahu is standing trial for three charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He denies the charges.
The Israeli leader has been on trial for a long time: since May 2020, partially because he has been employing numerous legal delay tactics.
Trump has called for the long-running corruption trial to be cancelled or, at least, for the Israeli leader to be pardoned.
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In an earlier post, we showed images of Palestinian people mourning loved ones killed overnight by an Israeli airstrike in the southern city of Khan Younis. Here is a video of footage compiled in the aftermath of the attack:
Death toll from Israeli attacks on Gaza reaches 56,500, says health ministry
At least 56,500 Palestinian people have been killed and 133,419 others injured in Israeli attacks on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Sunday.
Over 85 Palestinian people were killed and 365 others injured in the last 24 hours alone, the ministry said.
It added in its post on Telegram:
A number of victims are still under the rubble and on the roads, and ambulance and civil defence crews cannot reach them.
In further updates to reports of the death toll in Gaza on Sunday, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli airstrikes and gunfire killed at least 17 people including three children.
Civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told AFP that 16 people died in airstrikes at five locations around the Gaza Strip, and another from Israeli fire near an aid distribution centre.
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli attacks have killed at least 14 people, including three children, so far on Sunday.
Civil defence spokesperson Mahmud Bassal told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency that 13 people were killed in airstrikes at four locations around the Gaza Strip, and another from Israeli gunfire near an aid distribution centre.
Gaza’s Government Media Office said on Wednesday that at least 549 Palestinian people had been killed and 4,066 others injured by Israeli forces while trying to access humanitarian supplies over the last month.
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Iran says it has 'serious doubts' over Israel’s commitment to ceasefire
Back to some news regarding Iran. The country’s armed forces chief of staff Abdolrahim Mousavi has said Tehran is not convinced Israel will honour a ceasefire that ended their 12-day war earlier this month.
“We did not start the war, but we have responded to the aggressor with all our power, and as we have serious doubts over the enemy’s compliance with its commitments including the ceasefire, we are ready to respond with force” if attacked again, Mousavi was quoted as saying by state TV, six days into the ceasefire which Donald Trump hastily announced on Tuesday.
Iran has insisted that it will not give up its nuclear program. Its parliament has agreed to fast-track a proposal that would effectively stop the country’s cooperation with the IAEA, which has monitored the program for years.
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Here are some of the latest images being sent to us over the newswires from Gaza.
These pictures show mourners weeping during the funeral held for Palestinian people killed in overnight Israeli airstrikes on Khan Younis:
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Lisa O’Carroll is the Guardian’s acting Ireland correspondent and also writes about the EU and Brexit
The EU must come up with a more assertive response to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the violations of international law, the bloc’s former chief diplomat has said.
In a strongly worded article, Josep Borrell said the EU had a “duty” to intervene and must come up with its own concerted plan to end the war instead of relying on the US.
“Europe can no longer afford to linger at the margins,” he said in the article that was co-authored with Kalypso Nicolaïdis, an occasional adviser to the EU and professorial chair in international affairs at the Florence school of transnational governance at the European University Institute.
“Not only is Europe’s own security at stake, but more important, European history imposes a duty on Europeans to intervene in response to Israel’s violations of international law,” they say, adding: “Europeans cannot stay the hapless fools in this tragic story, dishing out cash with their eyes closed.”
Their intervention in Foreign Affairs magazine comes as EU member states continue to struggle to unite on action. Last week Borrell’s successor, Kaja Kallas, said it was “very clear” that Israel had breached its human rights commitments in Gaza but said the “concrete question” was what action the member states could agree on.
Her remarks were made after a review of the EU-Israel association agreement, a trade and cooperation pact, was triggered last month by 17 member states in protest at Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
You can read the full story here:
Deadly Israeli attacks across Gaza continue
In Khan Younis, a city in the south of the Gaza strip, five people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a tent encampment near Mawasi, medics said.
Meanwhile, medical sources at al-Ahli Baptist hospital in Gaza City told Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, that five bodies were received at the facility following an Israeli airstrike on a home in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood, northeast of the city.
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Germany’s interior minister Alexander Dobrindt expressed support for Israel this morning during a visit to the site of an Iranian missile strike near Tel Aviv.
It was the first visit by a senior foreign official since Israel’s war with Iran ended on Tuesday after a ceasefire was announced.
“We must deepen our support for Israel,” Dobrindt said, speaking amid the rubble in Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv, where an Iranian strike killed nine people, including three children.
שר החוץ גדעון סער סייר עם שר הפנים של גרמניה אלכסנדר דוברינדט באתר נפילת הטיל בבת ים. השר סער קרא לגרמניה, בריטניה וצרפת ליישם את מנגנון ה-Snapback, המאפשר החזרה של סנקציות שהוסרו מעל איראן@diklaaharon pic.twitter.com/7P9n9RIOvA
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) June 29, 2025
The comments came after Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, reportedly told lawmakers in the Bundestag last week that his country’s “reason of state is to defend the state of Israel in its existence” as he backed Israel’s “right to defend” itself against Iran.
On the sidelines of a G7 summit in Canada on 17 June, he had said Israel was doing the “dirty work... for all of us” by targeting Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
Germany authorized €326.5m in arms exports to Israel in 2023 — a sharp increase from previous years, according to Reuters.
But approvals fell last year amid mounting legal and political pressure over Israel’s assault on Gaza, which has been increasingly described as a genocide against the Palestinian civilian population.
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During the 12-day war, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 627 people, including civilians, and injured nearly 4,900 others in Iran, according to official figures.
The war on Iran – cast as a preemptive attack for self-defence – was launched by Israel and later joined in by the US.
Both countries struck Iranian nuclear facilities but did not destroy the Iranian nuclear programme, likely setting it back by a couple of months, according to an early Pentagon intelligence assessment of the attack.
Israel claimed the attacks were necessary before its adversary got any closer to building an atomic weapon, although experts and the US government had assessed that Iran was not actively working on such a weapon before the strikes.
Israel has acknowledged being hit by more than 50 missiles during its war with Iran, resulting in 28 deaths, but the true extent of the damage may never be known due to stringent media restrictions.
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Israeli airstrike on Tehran’s Evin prison killed at least 71 people, Iran's judiciary says
Iran’s judiciary has said that the Israeli airstrike on the notorious Tehran’s Evin prison killed at least 71 people.
Judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir posted on the office’s official Mizan news agency website that those killed on Monday included staff, soldiers, prisoners and members of visiting families.
We have not been able to independently verify these claims.
The 23 June attack, the day before the ceasefire between Israel and Iran took hold, hit several prison buildings and prompted concerns about the safety of the inmates, many of whom were detained for political reasons by the Iranian government
France’s foreign minister, for example, said the attack was “unacceptable” because it endangered the lives of two of its citizens held there.
Jahangir did not break down the casualty figures but said the attack had hit the prison’s infirmary, engineering building, judicial affairs and visitation hall, where visiting family members were killed and injured.
Donald Trump said on Saturday that the US was “not going to stand” for what he framed as the continued prosecution of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges.
“The United States of America spends Billions of Dollar a year, far more than on any other Nation, protecting and supporting Israel. We are not going to stand for this,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.
An Israeli court on Friday rejected Netanyahu’s request to postpone giving testimony in his corruption trial, ruling that he had not provided adequate justification for his request.
Netanyahu is standing trial for three charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. He denies the accusations levelled against him and say they are politically motivated.
Israel relies heavily on the US, a vitally important strategic ally that provides diplomatic cover and weapons that allow it to continue its assault on Gaza.
Trump reiterates calls for Gaza ceasefire after saying a truce could be secured within a week
We are continuing our live coverage of the latest developments in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Israel’s war on Gaza.
US president, Donald Trump, has reiterated calls for a ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel.
Posting to Truth Social on Sunday morning, he wrote: “MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!!”
Trump said on Friday that he believed it is possible that a ceasefire could be reached within a week, despite intense bombardment of the strip by the Israeli military and continued deadly Israeli attacks on Palestinian civilians.
Some 50 hostages remain in Gaza, with less than half believed to still be alive.
They were among 251 hostages taken in the Hamas-led 7 October attack on southern Israel in 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed.
Indirect talks between the two sides have faltered since Israel shattered a previous ceasefire in March that had come into effect in January.
A Hamas official told Reuters the group had informed the mediators it was ready to resume ceasefire talks, but reaffirmed the group’s outstanding demands that any deal must end the war and secure an Israeli withdrawal from the coastal territory.
As efforts to bring about a truce continue, Israel’s military has issued an evacuation order for the northern Gaza Strip, warning Palestinian people in parts of Gaza City and nearby areas of imminent strikes there.
“The defense army is operating with extreme force in these areas, and these military operations will escalate, intensify, and extend westward to the city center to destroy the capabilities of terrorist organizations,” military spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on X.
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