71 killed in Israeli attack on Iran prison, official says
President Donald Trump told ABC News on Tuesday morning he is “not happy” with either Israel or Iran after the opening hours of a nascent ceasefire between the two combatants were marred by reported exchanges. Trump said Iran and Israel both “violated” the ceasefire that he announced late on Monday.
Through last week, the president and his administration continued to push back on an early intelligence report suggesting that the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities may have only set Tehran’s nuclear program back by months.
Top Israeli official to travel to Washington on Monday
Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer — a top adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — will arrive in Washington, D.C. on Monday for talks with President Donald Trump’s administration, an Israeli official told ABC News.
Dermer’s visit is expected to include discussions on the war in the Gaza Strip, the recent conflict with Iran and Netanyahu’s planned visit to the White House next month.
71 killed in Israeli attack on Iranian prison, official says
The Israeli airstrike on Tehran’s Evin Prison on June 23 killed 71 people, according to a spokesperson for the Iranian judiciary quoted by the semi-official Iranian ISNA News Agency.
Asghar Jahangir said Sunday that victims included “the prison’s administrative staff, conscripts, prisoners, families of prisoners who were at the prison to visit or pursue their cases in court and neighbors who lived near the prison.”
The Israeli strike on Evin was part of a wave of attacks on what Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said were “regime targets and government bodies in the heart of Tehran.”
The attack on the prison prompted criticism. Nobel Peace Prize laureate and imprisoned Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, for example, said the attack was “undoubtedly a clear example of a war crime.”
United Nations human rights spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan said Evin “is not a military objective and targeting it constitutes a grave breach of international humanitarian law.”
The Israel Defense Forces claimed the strike was conducted in a “targeted manner in order to avoid harming uninvolved people,” but families of prisoners have expressed serious concerns about the safety of their loved ones. Several accounts on Iranian media describe scenes in which civilians and prisoners were injured or killed.
There are also reports of prisoners being moved from Evin to other prisons in Tehran, raising concerns among families and human rights activists.
Trump doesn’t believe Iran hid uranium before strikes
President Donald Trump does not believe Iran hid its enriched uranium before the U.S. launched strikes on its nuclear facilities, he told Fox News in an interview.
“I don’t think they did. No, first of all, it’s very hard to do. It’s very dangerous to do, it is very heavy, very, very heavy. It’s a very hard thing to do plus we didn’t give much notice because they didn’t know we were coming until just then. And nobody thought we’d go after that site because everybody said that site is impenetrable,” Trump said.
“They moved themselves, they were all trying to live, they didn’t move anything,” Trump said.
Senate votes down Iran War Powers Resolution
Senate Republicans did not agree to push forward a resolution on Friday that would block President Donald Trump’s ability to use additional military force against Iran without explicit authorization from Congress.
By a vote of 53-47, a motion to advance Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia’s measure invoking the 1973 War Powers Resolution failed, with Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania — a staunch supporter of Israel — joining Republicans in opposing it.
One Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, crossed party lines to support the measure, which would have needed just a simple majority of 51 votes to pass.
Seven Republicans currently serving in the Senate voted for a similar Iran resolution back in 2020 — a measure that was also championed by Kaine.
Ahead of the vote on Friday, one of those Republicans — Sen. Todd Young of Indiana – said that he “does not believe an Iran war powers resolution is necessary at this time,” in the wake of a security briefing held on Thursday by top members of Trump’s cabinet.
The resolution that failed on Friday would have required that any further hostilities with Iran have authorization by a declaration of war or an authorization of military force from Congress.
Kaine introduced the measure a few days before the U.S. bombed three of Iran’s critical nuclear sites.
On Friday during a speech on the Senate floor, Kaine said there is a prevailing need for the measure due to the shaky nature of the current ceasefire between Iran and Israel, which was announced by Trump earlier this week.
“I pray the ceasefire continues, but I fear we’re going to be back here on this floor,” he said. “And I hope when we are on this floor again, members of this body will stand for the proposition that has been part of our history — that war is too big an issue to allow one person to make the decision that sends our sons and daughters into harm’s way.”