News Roundup - June 16th, 2025
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You are listening to an ART Media Podcast. It's 10 p.m. on Monday, June 16th here in Washington, D.C. It's 5 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday, June 17th in Israel as Israelis get ready to start a new day, even though many have been up for much of the night.

News has been rushing in over the past few days, and one of our regular listeners, shout out here to Idan Cohn, suggested that we help our listeners separate signal from noise by providing quick news updates, basically just the most important things you need to know. So we're going to try and add these quick news roundups in addition to our regular episodes, and we'll just do them wherever I am. Right now, I'm in a car in Washington, D.C., but here's what we know so far. Okay.

In a major development over the past few hours, President Trump announced an evacuation warning for residents of Tehran, saying, quote, Iran should have signed the deal. Simply stated, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran, close quote.

The president also departed the G7 meeting in Canada early, a day early, headed back to the White House. According to reporters, this is due to the Israel-Iran war. Members of the National Security Council have been told to be on standby.

As we speak, a third barrage of Iranian missiles was headed towards Israel, this time, though, smaller than previous strikes. Last night, a total of eight people were killed by the strikes, with almost 300 wounded. Of the casualties, four were in Petah Tikva, three in Haifa, and one in Bnei Brak. This brings the total number of civilian casualties from Iranian missile attacks to 24.

since Israel launched its preemptive strike on Iran last Friday morning. The destruction to Israeli property has also been, by some counts, staggering. Hundreds of buildings have been severely damaged, leaving countless homes destroyed and families seeking shelter.

Meanwhile, in Iran, the Israeli Air Force has continued targeting nuclear and military sites across the country. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, told the BBC Today that it's very likely that all of the roughly 1,500 centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant have been damaged or completely destroyed.

This comes after an Israeli strike hit the power supply of the Natanz facility, which is the largest enrichment site in Iran. Overnight, the Israeli Air Force also struck the command center of the Quds Force, a branch of the IRGC specializing in unconventional warfare and military intelligence located in Tehran. There has been confirmation that the Quds Force head of intelligence and his deputy were killed.

During the day today, the Israeli Air Force struck the Iranian state TV and radio broadcast buildings in an effort to further weaken the regime. A news anchor was seen rushing off camera while broadcasting live when the explosion took place. In an interview on Monday with ABC News, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not rule out killing Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, saying that doing so would, quote, end the conflict.

As these massive developments are unfolding, we've been speaking to people with pretty important insights and analysis. On Friday, we launched ARK Media's first episode of For Heaven's Sake, co-hosted by Danielle Hartman and Yossi Klein-Halevi. Today, we dropped a second episode of For Heaven's Sake.

It's an emergency episode titled The War Is Real, where Danielle and Yossi speak about the war's devastating cost inside Israel and the overwhelming emotions Israelis are experiencing at this moment. I highly recommend you listen to this episode, which you can find linked to in the show notes.

The Call Me Back team has also been busy. Over the weekend, we released an episode with Call Me Back regular Nadab Ayal, where we spoke about how the IDF prepared for last Friday's attack.

And on Monday, today, we dropped an episode with Call Me Back regular Amit Segel. We discussed the previous night's devastating attack on Israel, as well as the key question of the moment, including this moment right now. Will the U.S. join Israel's offensive against Iran? We might actually find out that answer in the coming hours.

That's all for now. As long as there is so much historic news in the Middle East to process, we will do our best to stay on top of it with rich analysis and discussion with our regular cast of insightful guests. And be sure to watch this space for the next episode of Call Me Back in the days ahead. Until next time, this is Dan Senor.