Thursday Briefing: Will the U.S. attack Iran?

June 19, 2025

	By Natasha Frost

Good morning. We’re covering the prospect of U.S. strikes on Iran and Austria’s plan to toughen its gun laws.

Plus: A chair worth sitting up straight for.

Three people in Tehran watch the aftermath of an Israeli strike.

Tehran after an Israeli strike yesterday. Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

Trump was noncommittal about attacking Iran

As Israel bombed targets in Iran for the sixth straight day and Iran fired missiles in response, President Trump said he hadn’t decided whether to order American forces to join Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites.

“I have ideas as to what to do,” he said yesterday, adding, “I like to make a final decision one second before it’s due, you know, because things change.”

Earlier in the day, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rejected Trump’s call for “unconditional surrender,” warning that the U.S. would suffer “irreparable” harm if it entered the fray. Hours later, a senior Iranian diplomat said Tehran was open to negotiations with the U.S.

Follow the latest updates, and see what strategic infrastructure Israel has damaged in Iran. These maps show which American troops on bases in the Middle East would be vulnerable if Iran decided to retaliate against the U.S.

Analysis: The specter of the American war in Iraq — which was also supposed to be a swift, relatively painless intervention — hangs over an anxious Washington, my colleague Elisabeth Bumiller writes.

U.S. lawmakers visiting Gulf Arab states said officials there privately supported stopping Iran’s nuclear program, though they’d prefer that it be done peacefully.
The American ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said the embassy was arranging evacuations for American citizens wanting to leave.
Israel’s broad assault on Iran shows how much its military doctrine has changed since Hamas attacked it in October 2023, our Jerusalem bureau chief writes.
Trump’s apparent openness to joining Israel’s assault has divided his base along isolationist and interventionist lines, my colleague Jess Bidgood writes.

Two men stand facing each other in conversation with two gray chairs and two flags in the background.

Narendra Modi and Mark Carney, the prime ministers of India and Canada, at the Group of 7 summit in Alberta on Tuesday. Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

India and Canada began to mend fences

India and Canada signaled a diplomatic thaw, nearly two years after the killing of a Canadian Sikh cleric opened a rift that led to both countries expelling each other’s top diplomats.

After their leaders met at the Group of 7 nations summit in Alberta on Tuesday, the countries said in separate statements that they would appoint new ambassadors, restart trade talks and restore visa processing and other services. Neither side referred to the reason their relations had deteriorated.

Background: In 2023, Canada accused India of orchestrating the fatal shooting of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, an activist who supported carving out a Sikh homeland, Khalistan, from India. The Indian government, which considered Nijjar a terrorist, accused Canada of harboring extremists.

G7: The summit ended with Ukraine securing a $1.7 billion support package from Canada, but little else. Attention was focused on the conflict in the Middle East.

People light candles at a memorial in front of a cream-colored building.

A vigil last week for victims of the school shooting in Graz, Austria. Darko Bandic/Associated Press

Austria moved to tighten its gun laws

The Austrian government proposed a bundle of new laws on private gun ownership, eight days after the deadliest school shooting in the country’s history.

The measures include raising the minimum age to own some firearms to 25 from 21, strengthening the mandatory psychological test that must be passed to buy a gun, and instituting a four-week waiting period between the purchase and the delivery of a first weapon.

Quotable: “Nothing we do, including what we have decided today, will bring back the 10 people we lost last Tuesday,” Chancellor Christian Stocker said. “We are painfully aware of this. But I can promise you one thing: We will learn from this tragedy.”

MORE TOP NEWS

Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, flanked by several federal agents who are holding his handcuffed arms behind his back. Two of them are wearing masks, and other people behind them are holding up their phones to record the incident.

Olga Fedorova/Associated Press

U.S. politics: As Democrats push back against Trump’s mass deportation policies, federal agents have clashed with or arrested a growing number of the party’s officials.

Climate: Britain is bracing for its first heat wave of the year. Highs are expected to reach 33 degrees Celsius.
Business: Nippon Steel completed its acquisition of U.S. Steel in a deal that gives the White House extraordinary control over the new company.
Health: A top C.D.C. vaccine researcher resigned in protest over changes to vaccine policy made by the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Federal Reserve: Officials left interest rates unchanged, bracing for Trump policies’ effects on trade, taxes and immigration. Read an analysis of their decision.
Medicine: Health officials in the U.S. approved a twice-yearly injection that provided a nearly perfect shield against H.I.V. infection in clinical trials.
Immigration: New travel and visa restrictions threaten patient care at U.S. hospitals that depend on medical residents recruited from overseas.
Tech: U.S. researchers found that children who used phones, video games or social media addictively were two to three times as likely to have thoughts of suicide or self-harm.
Royals: Catherine, the Princess of Wales, who is recovering from cancer, canceled plans to attend the horse races at Royal Ascot.
Italy: An 80-year-old man drove his Mercedes down the Spanish Steps in Rome. It didn’t go well.
Anthropology: About 70,000 years ago in Africa, humans expanded into more extreme environments, setting the stage for our global migration, according to a new study.

News From China

Autos: Chinese carmakers doubled their share of the European car market in April compared with a year earlier, according to a research firm.
Currency: Beijing outlined a plan for a global financial system that relies on several major currencies, not just the U.S. dollar, as part of an effort to weaken the dollar’s primacy.
Metals: Chinese investors have poured their savings into gold, attracted by promises of rising prices.
A.I.: Chinese spy services have invested heavily in artificial intelligence, according to a new report.

SPORTS NEWS

A model with curly hair poses with hands in their pockets, wearing a dark jacket and dark jumpsuit underneath.

Matt Lee Morgan

Sportswear: FIFA is putting its name on a “functional luxury” fashion line.
Soccer: The Premier League has released its schedule for the 2025-26 season. Which team has the toughest start to the new campaign?
Doping: Chelsea winger Mykhailo Mudryk has been charged with a violation of the Football Association anti-doping rules and is facing a lengthy ban from the sport.
Cricket: India’s cricket team is a global powerhouse, with stars as big as their N.F.L. equivalents. But is their dominance an issue?

MORNING READ

A series of Tarot cards being manipulated by a pair of hands with red nails.

Saiyna Bashir for The New York Times

In Pakistan, many people seek solace in astrology, palmistry and fortune telling, even though orthodox Islamic scholars have long declared such practices incompatible with faith.

Now, the government is cracking down. A new bill could impose prison terms of up to seven years and thousands of dollars in fines on people who provide occult services.

Lives lived: Anne Burrell, a chef and a vibrant television personality, died at 55.

CONVERSATION STARTERS

An image from surveillance video shows a man sitting on a chair in a museum as a woman records the moment with a phone. Both of their faces have been blurred.

Palazzo Maffei Museum, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Sit-and-run: A tourist squatted atop a Swarovski-studded chair in a museum in Verona, Italy. The chair didn’t make it.
Mezuzas with a story: The company Mi Polin