Putin says Russia has shared peace proposals with Israel and Iran

President Vladimir Putin said Friday he has secured Israel's pledge to keep Russian personnel at Iran's Russia-built nuclear power plant secure and that he has reached out to both sides to try to end the week-old war.
Answering questions on a variety of issues at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Putin also warned Ukraine that it could lose more territory if it keeps rejecting Russia's conditions for peace.
Putin said Russia has proposed 'some ideas' for a possible settlement between Iran and Israel that are currently being discussed.
He said Moscow asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to ensure the security of Russian personnel who are working to construct two more reactors at the nuclear power plant in Iran's port of Bushehr and that he also raised the issue with US President Donald Trump.
'Prime Minister Netanyahu has agreed with that, and President Trump has promised to support our legitimate demands,' Putin said.
But he strongly rejected allegations that Moscow has failed to back its ally, Tehran, saying the Kremlin has maintained good ties with both Iran and Israel. He noted that Israel is home to nearly 2 million people from Russia and other former Soviet nations, 'a factor that we always have taken into account'.

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Asia Times

42 minutes ago

• Asia Times

US attacks hurt but Iran's nuclear ambition will endure

With stealth bombers and bunker busters, the US just punched a hole through the heart of Iran's fortified nuclear program. Multiple news outlets reported that US forces struck Iran's three primary nuclear sites, Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, late Saturday (June 21) in a significant escalation of Middle East tensions. The operation follows Israel's June 13 air offensive, which targeted suspected Iranian weapons development sites and other military targets. In a televised address, US President Donald Trump declared the 'spectacular' operation had 'completely and totally obliterated' Iran's enrichment facilities while warning of more precision strikes if Tehran refuses peace. The US strikes involved B-2 bombers, six so-called bunker-buster bombs on Fordow and 30 Tomahawk missiles on Natanz and Isfahan. Iranian media said the sites were evacuated earlier. The IAEA said no radioactive contamination was detected from the attacked facilities. Trump emphasized the US does not seek regime change and reached out diplomatically after the attack. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the strikes, calling them historic. Iran maintains its program is peaceful and vowed to continue nuclear advancement. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the attack as a 'dangerous escalation,' warning of global fallout. The coordinated use of stealth bombers and deep-penetration munitions against Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan demonstrated a calibrated show of force aimed at degrading Iran's breakout capability without crossing the threshold of full-scale war or regime decapitation. Describing the defenses and importance of the Iranian nuclear sites just hit, CNN reports that Natanz, Iran's largest enrichment complex, houses 50,000 centrifuges in hardened underground layers, where targeting subterranean power is key to disruption. CNN adds that Fordow lies 80–90 meters beneath mountainous terrain, is impervious to most munitions and can rapidly produce weapons-grade uranium. It adds that Isfahan, central to Iran's nuclear research and development, hosts three research reactors and multiple conversion and fuel production lines operated by 3,000 scientists. CNN observes that these deeply embedded, high-output sites are both extremely resilient and strategically essential, making them high-risk yet high-priority in any strike calculus. While Israel has previously attacked those facilities, it does not have any ordnance that could destroy deeply embedded facilities such as Fordow. A ground raid similar to the January 2025 operation against Iranian underground missile facilities in Syria is its only plausible option. However, those nuclear sites are arguably much more distant, complex, heavily defended and fortified compared to the missile bases Israel raided in Syria, making an air attack with US-delivered ordnance was the better option to take them out. According to Defense Today, the GBU-57 can penetrate over 200 feet of reinforced concrete using a high-density Eglin steel (ES-1) casing. According to the report, the GBU-57 carries 2,400 kilograms of AFX-757 and PBXN-114 explosives, ten times the power of its predecessor, the BLU-109. Defense Today states the 20.5-foot GBU-57 is deployable only by B-2 bombers, two per plane, and is the US Air Force's top option against fortified Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) targets. Regarding the Tomahawk cruise missile, Naval Technology notes that the munition is designed for precision land-attack missions from naval platforms. The report states that the 1,300-kilogram, 5.56-meter subsonic cruise missile flies at 880 kilometers per hour and has a range of 1,600 kilometers. Naval Technology says that, although in service since the 1980s, the Tomahawk's Block V upgrade adds advanced navigation, satellite communications and in-flight retargeting capabilities. It adds that the missile could be armed with W80 nuclear warheads or a unitary 450-kilogram high-explosive warhead, with variants supporting submunitions and maritime strikes. The War Zone (TWZ) notes that while specifics of the operation remain classified, the B-2s may have launched from Diego Garcia or forward locations under extreme secrecy, supported by extensive electronic warfare to disrupt Iranian command and control. TWZ reports that the mission aimed to degrade critical enrichment infrastructure while minimizing exposure, marking the US's kinetic entry into the Israel-Iran conflict. While it may be too early to say whether the US strikes destroyed Iran's nuclear sites, as Trump has claimed, Newsweek reports the targeted facilities were evacuated beforehand, suggesting significant quantities of highly enriched uranium (HEU) may have been removed. Further, it remains unclear how Iran will respond to the massive blow to its nuclear program. According to Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi, military strikes alone won't destroy Iran's nuclear program; Israel's goal, as Brookings notes, is complete dismantlement, but that may be wishful thinking. Underscoring this point, Carlo Caro writes in Cipher Brief that Iran's nuclear infrastructure includes redundant nodes across military, academic and industrial sectors, possibly enabling rapid reconstitution after a strike. Caro notes that Iran's domestic centrifuge manufacturing eliminates reliance on foreign supply chains, while its passive defense doctrine mirrors North Korean survivability strategies. He states that crucial assets, such as design archives, simulation models and trained personnel, are mobile, concealed and legally ambiguous under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Thus, he suggests precision air campaigns will merely delay progress and cannot dismantle Iran's institutionalized nuclear latency or strategic breakout potential. Given those caveats, Brookings notes that overthrowing the Iranian theocratic regime may be the only way to eliminate Iran's nuclear program. However, it warns that regime change is difficult and that a successor regime, most likely led by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), is unlikely to be less interested in nuclear weapons than its predecessor. Highlighting the difficulty of engineering regime change in Iran, Narges Bajoghli writes in Time that the Islamic Republic's deeply entrenched, multilayered defense architecture and institutional resilience make regime change unfeasible. Bajoghli points out that, unlike Iraq or Libya, Iran fields a dual military, the regular Artesh and the elite IRGC, backed by the pervasive Basij network, enabling asymmetric warfare and internal control. She emphasizes that decades of siege doctrine, hardened by war and sanctions, have fostered a system built for survival, not collapse. Bajoghli also writes that Iran's leadership is decentralized under a competitive authoritarian framework, enabling continuity even under duress. She stresses that foreign-imposed regime change would likely galvanize nationalist resistance, replicating Iraq's catastrophic aftermath after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Rather than destabilize the Iranian regime, Bajoghli says airstrikes risk reinforcing Iran's nuclear deterrence doctrine and undermining prospects for diplomacy. Further, an emboldened and determined Iran doubling down on its nuclear program could lead to a Middle Eastern nuclear arms race. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, for one, has warned his country would acquire nuclear weapons if Iran crossed that threshold.

South China Morning Post

an hour ago

• South China Morning Post

Ukraine fights back 10,000 Russians at Kursk amid air, drone assault

Around 10,000 Russian soldiers are fighting in Russia's Kursk region, about 90 square kilometres (35 square miles) of which is controlled by Ukraine, Ukraine's top military commander said. 'We control about 90 square kilometres of territory in the Hlushkov district of the Kursk region of the Russian Federation, and these are our pre-emptive actions in response to a possible enemy attack,' Oleksandr Syrskyi said without elaborating, in remarks released by his office for publication on Sunday. The Ukrainian military said the activity in this area prevented Russia from sending a significant number of its forces to Ukraine's eastern region of Donetsk, where some of the heaviest fighting has taken place in the more than three-year-old full-scale invasion. Syrskyi's troops are repelling Russian forces along the frontline, which stretches for about 1,200km, where the situation remains difficult, the Ukrainian military said. Russian gains have accelerated in May and June, though the Ukrainian military says it comes at a cost of high Russian casualties in small assault-group attacks. While the military says its troops repelled Russian approaches toward Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region borders last week, the pressure continues in the country's eastern and northern regions.

RTHK

2 hours ago

• RTHK

Iran launches new waves of missile attacks on Israel

Iran launches new waves of missile attacks on Israel Emergency personnel work at an impact site following a missile attack from Iran on Tel Aviv. Photo: Reuters Israel faced a missile attack on Sunday as Iran said it reserved all options to defend itself after unprecedented US strikes that President Donald Trump said had "obliterated" its key nuclear facilities. Hours after Trump dramatically escalated Middle East tensions by sending B-2 bombers to Iran, the Israeli military warned people to seek cover from a barrage that appeared heavier than the Iranian salvoes fired in the past few days. Three areas of Israel including coastal hub Tel Aviv were hit on Sunday morning by waves of Iranian missile attacks, with at least 23 people injured, according to rescue services and police. Several buildings were heavily damaged in the Ramat Aviv area in Tel Aviv, with holes torn in the facades of apartment blocks. "Houses here were hit very, very badly," Tel Aviv mayor Ron Huldai told reporters at the scene. "Fortunately, one of them was slated for demolition and reconstruction, so there were no residents inside. "Those who were in the shelter are all safe and well. The damage is very, very extensive, but in terms of human life, we are okay." The Israeli police said in a statement that they had been deployed to at least two other impact sites, one in Haifa in the north and another in Ness Ziona, south of Tel Aviv. Eli Bin, the head of Israeli rescue service Magen David Adom, told reporters that a total of 23 people had been wounded nationwide in the attacks. Sirens rang across the country, with air defences activated shortly afterwards, causing loud explosions heard in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. (Agencies)