Iran has said that the U.S. “decided to destroy diplomacy” with its strikes on the country’s nuclear programme and that the Iranian military will decide the “timing, nature and scale of Iran’s proportionate response”. Iran’s UN Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani on Sunday told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council that it called after U.S. strikes on three of its nuclear facilities that “Iran had repeatedly warned the warmongering U.S. regime to refrain from stumbling into this quagmire”.

The United States inserted itself into Israel’s war against Iran by dropping 30,000-pound bombs on a uranium enrichment site early Sunday (June 22, 2025), raising urgent questions about what remains of Tehran’s nuclear programme and how its weakened military might respond.

Iran lashed out at the U.S. for crossing “a very big red line” with its risky gambit to launch strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites with missiles and the bunker-buster bombs. Amid fears of a wider regional conflict, the Trump administration sent a clear message that it wanted to restart diplomatic talks with Iran. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that the US “does not seek war” with Iran. But Tehran said the time for diplomacy had passed and that it had the right to defend itself.