Israel says it killed longtime Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida

Israel aimed to suppress Yemen’s support for Palestinians by targeting its leadership, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said in a statement on Sunday.

“This crime will not weaken the Yemeni people,” the statement said. “It will fuel greater anger and broaden the front of resistance.”

“This savage crime will not weaken the determination of the Yemeni people,” the statement said. “It will ignite greater anger and expand the geography of resistance.”

The Guards described the attack as a “war crime against humanity” and said Israel carried it out “with full US support and the silence of international institutions.”

'Yemen has shaken Israel and the US'

Judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said the assassination of al-Rahwi and his ministers was a sign of Israel’s failure to defeat Yemen militarily. “Yemenis have exhausted both the Zionist regime and its American patron,” he said in a message of condolence.

Ejei praised the Yemeni leadership’s support for Gaza and said that in the face of international silence, their resistance had changed the balance of power in the region.

Pezeshkian urges international response

President Masoud Pezeshkian also condemned the strike, calling it a terrorist act that highlighted “the criminal nature of the ruling clique in occupied Palestine.”

In a statement addressed to the people of Yemen and the broader Muslim world, Pezeshkian said, “The international community must act urgently to stop this regime’s lawlessness, which now poses the greatest threat to peace, justice, and humanity.”

Al-Rahwi was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Sanaa earlier this week, alongside several ministers, while they were holding a cabinet meeting. Israeli officials said the operation targeted senior Houthi political and military figures in response to attacks on Israel, including the use of cluster munitions.

The Houthis have vowed to continue their campaign against Israel and have appointed a new acting prime minister.

The group has targeted international shipping in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab, and Gulf of Aden since the Gaza war began, with some attacks reaching the Indian Ocean. The group has also launched missiles and drones at Israel, describing the strikes as support for Palestinians.

The US says it recently secured a halt to attacks on its vessels, but the Houthis say the pause does not apply to Israel and have pledged to continue those operations.

The judiciary has accelerated death sentences since Israel struck the prison on June 23.

Human rights lawyers said the attack gave judges a pretext for vengeance.

“A spirit of vengeance has taken over the judiciary,” one Tehran lawyer, who asked not to be named, told the Times.

“A judge told me: ‘Our generals and officials have been killed, and we should take revenge.’ He didn’t even allow me to speak.”

Motahareh Gounei, a 28-year-old dental student arrested for criticizing the state, survived the bombing in Ward 209. “I thought, ‘This is it. I’m dead. I’ll be buried here,’” she said in a phone interview after being released on bail.

Rights groups say many of those now marked for execution were jailed for protest activity, not espionage, and their cases rest on confessions extracted under torture.

Asghar Jahangir, spokesperson for the Islamic Republic’s judiciary, announced on June 29 that in the Israeli attack on Evin Prison, 71 people were killed.

“The casualties included administrative staff, soldiers, inmates, family members who had come for visits or legal follow-ups, and neighbors living near the prison,” he said.

From ‘Evin University’ to collective punishment

Evin has long been notorious for torture yet also carried symbolic weight for the opposition. Political detainees staged hunger strikes, organized discussions and even confronted judges visiting the prison. It became known among activists as Evin University.

That fragile space was erased by the airstrike. The following day, authorities transferred 61 women to Qarchak, a facility notorious for disease and overcrowding.

“Since we were transferred to Qarchak, we’ve lost the right to work in workshops and to cover our living expenses. That means we can no longer buy groceries and are forced to eat the prison’s food, which is mostly plain rice,” one inmate said in a monitored call.

Gounei was later moved to an intelligence-run safe house. “Your name isn’t recorded anywhere,” she said. “My interrogator told me: ‘I’ll rape you and dump your body in the desert.’”

Rising executions

Iran Human Rights, an NGO, recorded 511 executions in the first five months of 2025, nearly double the same period last year. The judiciary has announced 700 arrests for alleged espionage during the war, vowing to show “no mercy.”

Male inmates from Evin have also faced brutality. About 500 transferred prisoners were returned in chains and beaten by riot police. Roughly 100 condemned prisoners were separated from the rest, including Mohammad-Bagher Bakhtiar, a 67-year-old former Revolutionary Guard commander turned dissident.

His son, Ali Reza, said: “Since the transfer to Evin, due to lack of access to medical staff, the full extent of the injuries to my father and other detainees is still unknown.”

Israel said its strikes on Evin aimed at guards and were designed to embolden the opposition. Officials accused Tehran of exploiting the attack to justify executions while presenting the war as a domestic victory.

Officials from Middle East countries pressed for answers after the strikes, but US embassies could only point to Trump’s public remarks, the Journal said, citing people involved in the talks.

The report said Trump has sidelined the National Security Council, slashed staff to under 150, and merged key roles. Secretary of State Marco Rubio now also serves as national security adviser.

“It is a top-down approach,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Journal. “We don’t really care if your feelings are hurt. We just need to get a job done.”

“In many respects, the national security process has ceased to exist,” said David Rothkopf, a historian of the NSC. Trump, he added, effectively is the national-security system—“the State Department and the Joint Chiefs and the NSC all rolled into one.”

Some aides say the system cuts leaks and speeds decisions. Others warn it leads to confusion and leaves officials guessing what Trump wants.

'Every bomb hit its target'

The US struck nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan using B-2 bombers and submarine-launched missiles. Trump later confirmed the use of 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs that entered Iran’s underground facilities through ventilation shafts.

“They went right down those chutes,” Trump said. “Dark at night, no moon, no nothing. Every target, every bomb went right down.”

The operation, called Operation Midnight Hammer, was carried out with long-range aircraft and 52 aerial refueling tankers. General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said 14 Massive Ordnance Penetrators were used against Fordow and Natanz.

Iran tried to restart talks, got no answer

In the weeks after the strikes, Iranian officials said Tehran sent at least 15 messages to the US through various channels seeking to resume talks but received no reply, Iran International reported, citing senior diplomats.

European powers triggered the UN’s snapback sanctions process, citing Iran’s nuclear activity, and said US-Iran dialogue was key to delaying new penalties.

Trump told reporters in July he was in “no rush” to talk. “They would like to talk. I’m in no rush because we obliterated their site,” he said.

Iran’s top leaders remain opposed to direct talks. “Given America’s true objective in its hostility toward Iran, these issues are unsolvable,” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said this month.

“Although Khamenei was not eliminated in this round, his elimination must be part of any plan of the State of Israel if a campaign against us is launched,” Gallant said in an interview with Israeli Channel 12's Meet the Press.

He added that Iran will rebuild some of its strength, particularly its ballistic missile arsenal, and that Israel must be ready for a different war.

Israel launched a 12-day air campaign against Iran in June, striking nuclear facilities and killing senior military officials and scientists. The Israeli military said the operation crippled much of Iran’s air defense system and damaged its missile capabilities.

“The main thing that is not talked about is that the Iranians do not understand how we penetrated them in terms of intelligence, and they do not know what we know,” said Gallant.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump both mooted killing Khamenei at the height of the conflict and Trump hinted at favoring Iranian regime change.

"It’s not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!" Trump said in a post on Truth Social in late June.

After disappearing from public view for three weeks, Khamenei reappeared and resumed his hardline rhetoric.

“Today our enemy, the one standing against us — the Zionist regime — is the most despised government in the world,” said Khamenei in a speech last week.

Khamenei added that enemies had underestimated Iran’s resilience and wrongly believed attacks would separate the people from the state.

“We know senior officials and commanders did not carry phones, but their interlocutors, security guards and drivers had phones, they did not take precautions seriously and this is how most of them were traced,” the report said citing Iran's former deputy vice-president Sasan Karimi.

An Israeli defense official told the paper: “Using so many bodyguards is a weakness that we imposed on them, and we were able to take advantage of that.”

The tactic enabled Israeli warplanes on June 16 to strike a bunker in western Tehran where President Masoud Pezeshkian, the heads of the judiciary and intelligence ministry, and senior commanders were holding an emergency security meeting, the report added.

Earlier this month, the chief of staff to Iran's president said Israel’s attack on a Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) meeting on June 16 was a targeted attempt to kill Masoud Pezeshkian, who escaped with a minor injury.

Israel targeted the building’s entrances and exit points with six bombs to block escape routes and cut off airflow, Revolutionary Guards affiliated Fars News reported last month.

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  What we know about alleged Israeli strike on Iran's National Security Council

None of the leaders were killed, but several guards died outside, according to The Times.

Bodyguards had long been excluded from strict phone bans imposed on top commanders, even after earlier assassinations of nuclear scientists and military figures, The New York Times reported.

Lapse now addressed

That lapse has since been addressed, with guards now restricted to carrying only walkie-talkies, the report said.

The strikes formed part of a broader Israeli campaign that killed at least 30 senior commanders and more than a dozen nuclear scientists during the war’s first week.

Iranian officials later said dozens of suspects from the military and government had been arrested or placed under house arrest on suspicion of spying for Israel.

President Pezeshkian, who was lightly injured in the attack, later told clerics: “There was only one hole, and we saw there was air coming and we said, we won’t suffocate. Life hinges on one second.”

He added that if the leadership had been killed, “people would have lost hope.”