Netanyahu says Israel doesn’t need help to reach its goals in Iran.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy to the Middle East, has maintained correspondence with Iranian officials. She declined to provide any further details. Iran pulled out of talks with American officials about a nuclear deal after Israel began attacking Iran last week.

Ms. Leavitt said any nuclear deal with Iran would have to include a ban on enriching uranium and block Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

After days of back-channel discussions, the Europeans, who have been effectively sidelined since the war started, are now trying to exert what limited leverage they have as weapons suppliers or potential peacemakers to try to end the war.

At talks in Geneva on Friday, they are expected to urge the Iranians to return to negotiations, even as Mr. Trump mulls the possibility of American military action against Iran. The meeting would be the first formal gathering between Iranian and Western officials since Israel began attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The diplomatic efforts came as the Israeli military launched its latest wave of strikes on Thursday against targets in Iran, including a nuclear complex. Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said the country would step up its attacks on Iran to “remove the threats to the state of Israel,” after a barrage of Iranian missiles hit several locations, including a major hospital complex in southern Israel.

Here’s what else to know:

• Potential U.S. involvement: Israel has pressed Mr. Trump to use powerful American weapons to attack Iran’s underground nuclear sites, and the prospect of American involvement has added to fears that the war could spiral into a wider conflagration in the Middle East. The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has warned that the United States would suffer “irreparable” harm if it joined the Israeli campaign.

• Hospital attack: At the Soroka Medical Center in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, melted plastic and burned wiring in the ruins of the building hit by an Iranian missile filled the air with a foul smell. The hospital said the building had been largely evacuated in recent days, and that it was treating several patients with minor injuries. It is the first Israeli hospital to be hit directly since the war with Iran began last Friday, the Israeli military said. Read more ›

• Damage in Iran: The Israeli military said it struck a number of targets in Iran — including an inactive reactor at Arak, to prevent the site from producing material for nuclear weapons, and a nuclear production facility in the Natanz region. Iranian state media reported that Israeli warplanes struck the nuclear facility at Arak and said that there was no serious damage.

• Missile interceptors: Israel has a world-leading missile interception system, but as the war drags on, Israel is firing interceptors faster than it can produce them. That has raised questions within the Israeli security establishment about whether the country will run low on air defense missiles before Iran uses up its ballistic arsenal, according to eight current and former officials.

“The matter of changing the regime or the fall of this regime is first and foremost a matter for the Iranian people,” he added.

Though the United States has not struck Iran, Mr. Netanyahu said, it was already helping Israel a lot with its defense.

“American pilots are intercepting drones alongside our pilots,” he said. He added that almost none of the thousand or so drones launched by Iran and its proxies over the past week of fighting had penetrated Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu also mentioned the THAAD advanced missile defense system that the United States sent to Israel last October and the deployment of U.S. destroyers equipped with the Navy’s Aegis combat system.

Mr. Trump has not ruled out the possibility that the United States might join Israel’s war against Iran, saying on Thursday that he would decide “within the next two weeks.”

Israel has struck several Iranian nuclear sites over the past week but a crucial facility, Fordo, is deep inside a mountain. While Israel could probably inflict some damage on Fordo, according to experts, it does not possess either the heavy bunker-busting bombs that might destroy it or the warplanes needed to deliver them. The United States has both.

Mr. Netanyahu said he had been prepared to launch the attack on Iran with or without a green light from President Trump, because the rapid advancement of Iran’s nuclear weapons program had left Israel no choice. But he said Mr. Trump “didn’t try to stop” the operation from taking place.

Almost a week into the assault, Mr. Netanyahu said Israel was ahead of schedule, in terms of both “timing and results.”

On Monday, when asked in ABC News interview about possibly killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Mr. Netanyahu said: “It’s not going to escalate the conflict. It’s going to end the conflict.”

Asked by Kan on Thursday about the implied threats that his defense minister, Israel Katz, made earlier in the day against Mr. Khamenei, after a ballistic missile hit a major hospital in southern Israel, Mr. Netanyahu said he had given instructions that “nobody in Iran should be immune.”

Mr. Katz compared Mr. Khamenei to a “modern Hitler” and said that he “cannot continue to exist.”

Mr. Netanyahu said, “Actions should speak louder than words.”

Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.

An oil tanker, Adalynn, collided with another oil tanker, Front Eagle, causing “a small oil spill,” the Emirati government said Wednesday in a statement. Twenty-four members of the Adalynn’s crew were evacuated from the site of the collision, about 24 nautical miles off the Emirati coast, the Emirati National Guard said. No injuries were reported among either vessel’s crew.

Frontline, a shipping company based in Cyprus that owns the Front Eagle, said in a statement that a fire had broken out on the Front Eagle’s deck and that the incident was “a navigational incident and not related to the current regional conflict.”

But Iran and Israel have accused each other of endangering international maritime security and the global energy supply chain. About 1,000 vessels have been affected by GPS interference since the onset of increased tensions in the Middle East, according to Windward, a maritime analytics firm.

Around one-third of the volume of crude oil exported by sea and 20 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas, another vital commodity, flow through the Strait of Hormuz.

Jean-Charles Gordon, senior director of ship tracking at Kpler, a research firm, said hundreds, if not thousands, of vessels had experienced navigational interference since Friday, when Israel launched its surprise attack on Iran.

“The latitude and longitudes they’re receiving are completely false,” Mr. Gordon said, noting that marine traffic data showed ship positions that were abnormal and inaccurate. He said military-grade spoofers interfere with the location services of ships, leading their navigational systems to indicate that they are somewhere where they are not. This can increase the chance of collision, but ships also have other systems for navigation, he said.

“It’s electronic warfare, essentially,” Mr. Gordon said. “If the conflict continues, we expect these interferences to continue as well.”

The uncertainty in the region is troubling shipowners, said Jeff McGee, the managing director of Makai Marine Advisors. Across different sizes of vessel, he said, freight rates in the Persian Gulf have “pretty much doubled in the last few days.”

“They’re being hesitant about putting their ships in harm’s way,” he said.

Greenpeace, the environmental group, said satellite imagery showed a large amount of oil stretching up to 1,500 hectares, or nearly six square miles, from the site.

“This is just one of many dangerous incidents to take place in the past years,” said Farah Al Hattab, a campaigner at Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa, adding that oil spills endanger marine life and can lead to widespread environmental damage.

Israel says it is attacking now to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. In 1953, it was oil that motivated outside powers to intervene.

Here is a look at the 1953 coup, which had a major impact on the Middle East and beyond that still resonates with Iranians today:

Who was Dr. Mossadegh?

Many Iranians consider Dr. Mossadegh to be a 20th century nationalist hero and someone who in effect sacrificed himself for his country.

He was born in 1882 to a prominent political family at a time when Iran, also known as Persia, was ruled by the Qajar dynasty. He studied at Sciences Po in Paris and earned a Ph.D in law in Switzerland before returning to Iran and serving as a minister and governor in the 1920s.

In 1925, Reza Pahlavi, a military leader and politician, deposed the Qajar dynasty and became shah, or king. Dr. Mossadegh opposed Reza Shah’s accession, fearing among other things that it would weaken the country’s fragile rule of law, and was imprisoned.

In 1941, during World War II, Britain and the Soviet Union invaded Iran and forced Reza Shah from power in favor of his son, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

Dr. Mossadegh became a member of Parliament, and was hailed as a hero by many in Iran for his speeches on the evils of British control of Iran’s oil industry.

In 1951, when the Iranian Parliament voted to nationalize the industry, the shah appointed Dr. Mossadegh as prime minister. He was, however, unable to reach an oil compromise and, as Britain negotiated with Iran, it also won the support of the major oil companies in imposing an effective global boycott on Iranian oil.

Why did oil matter so much in Iran?

Iran was a significant oil producer in the first half of the 20th century, decades before other Gulf States, including Saudi Arabia.

That oil became particularly crucial for Britain’s empire, especially during the world wars, and securing Middle East oil resource became a top priority for Western governments. The British government gained a controlling stake in the Anglo-Persian Oil company, which later became British Petroleum and is now the energy giant BP.

During World War II, Britain accused Reza Shah of being pro-German, potentially threatening access to Iranian oil.

After the war, however, the question of who should control Iran’s oil resources and how its revenue should be shared increasingly fueled Iranian nationalism.

What happened during the coup?

Events surrounding the coup that overthrew Dr. Mossadegh took place over several weeks in August 1953. Initially, The New York Times presented it as an action taken by the army to restore the shah, who had fled into exile weeks earlier.

But C.I.A. documents have since confirmed that U.S. and British intelligence planned and funded the coup under the U.S. code name Operation Ajax, fearful that Iran and its oil fields could fall into Communist hands.

What is the legacy of the coup?

After the coup, British and American oil companies resumed their operations. Dr. Mossadegh was sentenced to prison and then held under house arrest until his death in 1967.

The coup returned the shah to power and he ruled as a pro-Western monarch and autocrat, relatively friendly to Israel, heading a regime that became associated with brutal repression.

The 1979 Iranian revolution forced the shah into exile and ushered in a bitterly anti-United States, anti-Israel theocracy.

The events of 1953 also fomented deep-seated suspicion in Iran and beyond about Western interference. At the same time, Dr. Mossadegh became an important figure for anticolonial movements in Africa and Asia.

Pentagon officials are considering all of the ways Iran could retaliate, as President Trump cryptically hints at what he might do, saying on Wednesday that he had not made a final decision.

In several days of attacks, Israel has targeted Iranian military sites and state-sponsored entities, as well as high-ranking generals. It has taken out many of Iran’s ballistic missiles, though Iran still has hundreds of them, U.S. defense officials said.

But Israel has steered clear of Iranian naval assets. So while Iran’s ability to respond has been severely damaged, it has a robust navy and maintains operatives across the region, where the United States has more than 40,000 troops. Iran also has an array of mines that its navy could lay in the Strait of Hormuz.

The narrow 90-mile waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the open ocean is a key shipping route. A quarter of the world’s oil and 20 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas passes through it, so mining the choke point would cause gas prices to soar.

It could also isolate American minesweepers in the Persian Gulf on one side of the strait. Two defense officials indicated that the Navy was looking to disperse its ships in the gulf so that they would be less vulnerable. A Navy official declined to comment, citing operational security. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Iran has vowed that if attacked by American forces, it would respond forcefully, potentially setting off a cycle of escalation.

“Think about what happened in January 2020 after Trump killed Suleimani and times that by 100,” Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, said.

Qassim Suleimani, a powerful Iranian general, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad, during Mr. Trump’s first administration. Iran then launched the largest ever ballistic missile barrage at American bases in Iraq, leaving some 110 troops with traumatic brain injuries, and unintentionally hitting a Ukrainian passenger jet, killing all 176 people aboard.

“Iran is strategically weaker but operationally still lethal across the region,” Mr. Katulis said, “and Americans still have troops across that part of the world.”

Iran has mined the Strait of Hormuz before, including in 1988 during its war with Iraq, when Iran planted 150 mines in the strait. One of the mines struck an American guided missile frigate, the U.S.S. Samuel B. Roberts, nearly sinking it.

Gen. Joseph Votel, a former leader of U.S. Central Command, and Vice Adm. Kevin M. Donegan, a former commander of U.S. naval forces in the Middle East, each said on Wednesday that Iran was capable of mining the strait, which they said could bring international pressure on Israel to end its bombing campaign.

But such an action would probably invite a massive American military response and further damage Iran’s already crippled economy, Admiral Donegan added.

“Mining also hurts Iran; they would lose income from oil they sell to China,” he said. “Now though, Iranian leadership is much more concerned with regime survival, which will drive their decisions.”

Military officials and analysts said missile and drone attacks remained the biggest retaliatory threat to U.S. bases and facilities in the region. “These would be shorter-range variants, not what they were launching against Israel,” Admiral Donegan said. “That Iranian capability remains intact.”

Admiral Donegan also expressed concerns about the possibility that the Quds Force, a shadowy arm of Iran’s military, could attack U.S. troops. “Our Arab partners have done well over the years to root most of that out of their countries, however, that Quds Force and militia threat still remains in Iraq, and to some extent in Syria and Jordan,” he said.

Iranian officials are seeking to remind Mr. Trump that, weakened or not, they still can still find ways to hurt American troops and interests in the region, said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert and a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Striking Iran, he said, “gets into such big unknowns.” He added, “There are a lot of things that could go wrong.”

Much is at stake for Iran if it decides to retaliate. “Many of Iran’s options are the strategic equivalent of a suicide bombing,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “They can do enormous damage to others if they mine the Strait of Hormuz, destroy regional oil facilities and rain a missile barrage against Israel, but they may not survive the blowback.”

But Iran can make it hugely expensive, and dangerous, for the U.S. Navy to have to conduct what would most likely be a weekslong mine-clearing operation in the Strait of Hormuz, according to one former naval officer who was stationed on a minesweeper in the Persian Gulf. He and other Navy officers said that clearing the strait could also put American sailors directly in harm’s way.

Iran is believed to maintain a variety of naval mines. They include small limpet mines containing just a few pounds of explosives that swimmers place directly on a ship’s hull and typically detonate after a set amount of time. Iran also has larger moored mines that float just under the water’s surface, releasing a hundred pounds of explosive force or more when they come in contact with an unsuspecting ship.

More advanced “bottom” mines sit on the seafloor. They use a combination of sensors — such as magnetic, acoustic, pressure and seismic — to determine when a ship is nearby and explode with hundreds of pounds of explosive force.

The Navy has four minesweepers in the Persian Gulf, each with 100 sailors aboard who have been based in Bahrain and are trained in how to deal with underwater hazards.

Should Iran place mines in the Strait of Hormuz or other parts of the Persian Gulf, a small Navy contingent in Bahrain called Task Force 56 would respond.

Usually led by a senior explosive ordnance disposal officer, the task force would take advantage of technologies like autonomous underwater vehicles that can scan the seafloor with sonar much more quickly than the last time Iranian mines threatened the strait.

And while the Navy has been experimenting with underwater robots to destroy mines, the task force will still need to deploy small teams of explosive ordnance disposal divers for the time-consuming and dangerous task of approaching each mine underwater and carefully placing charges to destroy it.

“There was a massive boom and blast wave,” said Dr. Vadim Bankovich, head of the Orthopedics Department, whose office faces the floor of the old surgical building that took a direct hit.

Shlomi Codish, the director general of the hospital, said that much of the building had been evacuated in recent days. Mr. Codish said that all patients and medical staff had been in protected spaces when the missile struck, and that the hospital was treating several patients with minor injuries.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed it had targeted Israeli military facilities next to the hospital, according to the Fars news agency, an Iranian outlet affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards. It offered no evidence for the claim, and Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the claim.

When he received an alert on his cell phone warning him of incoming missile fire, Dr. Bankovich said he and his team rushed to a windowless safe space, where patients at his department were already gathering. After leaving the safe space 10 minutes later, he found cabinets toppled, ceiling panels scattered on the ground, and medical devices shattered.

“Windows blew out everywhere, even those reinforced with iron in the protected rooms,” said Dr. Bankovich, referring to the hospital’s safe rooms. He and his team had been sitting 100 feet away from the site of the missile strike. Now, the view from his office is one of destruction.

Dr. Bankovich said that his department would have to be shut down because of the damage.

“We felt the warmth of the blazes,” he said.

The strike on Soroka Medical Center came on the seventh day of the war, and was the first time a hospital has been directly hit since Iran began launching missiles and drones at Israel, in retaliation for Israel’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and senior military commanders.

In recent days, Iran has scaled back its missile fire, and the Israeli military has eased some of its wartime directives for civilians, signaling that it believes the threat from Iran’s missile fire has diminished. But the strike on the hospital underscored that Iran can still inflict serious damage within Israel, despite the Israeli military’s strikes on missile launchers in Iran and its advanced air defense systems, which have intercepted most projectiles midair.

Since the war began on Friday, Iranian attacks have hit several population centers — including high-rise residential buildings and a research institute — killing at least 24 people and injuring more than 800, according to Israeli health authorities.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel vowed to avenge the strike on the hospital. “We will make the tyrants from Tehran pay the full price,” he said in a post on X.

Standing in a staff parking lot carpeted with rubble and shattered glass, as damaged cars were towed away, Avichay Amrami, 38, a hospital attendant, recalled how “people were running in different directions after the strike. There was chaos.”

Concerned that the hospital building was at risk of collapse, Mr. Amrami and his co-workers immediately began evacuating patients to safer areas.

“Luckily, the floor that was hit was empty,” Mr. Amrami said.

The meeting is set to be held in Geneva, Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, was quoted as saying by IRNA, an Iranian state news agency.

A spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said the meeting would focus on “the nuclear issue and the latest developments in the region.”

Huge lines of traffic have been snaking out of Tehran for days as people try to flee the city; on Wednesday the lines to get gas were actually shorter than on previous days because of the exodus, according to Shahnaz, who asked that her last name not be used because of concern over reprisals from the authorities.

At least 224 people have been killed in Iran since the start of Israel’s military assault, according to the Iranian health ministry. Israel has said it is trying to strike locations and people connected to Iran’s government and its nuclear program, and does not target Iranian civilians.

In recent days, Israel has expanded its attacks on the capital itself. The Israeli military on Monday ordered residents of an upscale neighborhood, District 3, to leave. Hours later, President Trump told the city’s entire population to “immediately evacuate.” On Tuesday, Israel issued another evacuation order for another area of Tehran.

Even the city’s landscape has been affected. Smoke obscured a mountain that towers over northern Tehran and fires still burned at the Shahran oil depot in the west of the city for days after it was hit.

“The atmosphere in Tehran is terrifying,” said Nima, 44, a former bookseller who also asked that his last name not be used.

Nima said he has hunkered down with his family because he did not know anyone to stay without outside Tehran, and said that a dearth of trustworthy media reports has added to his unease.

But his larger fear, Nima said, was that the United States could join Israel in its attack on her country. “I’m deeply uncertain about what this would mean for us here,” he said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations watchdog, said in a post on social media that it had information that a “heavy water research reactor, under construction, was hit” at Arak. “It was not operational and contained no nuclear material, so no radiological effects.”

Firefighting teams have managed to bring the blaze under control, and rescue teams are searching for anyone who might have been trapped and injured.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed that Iran had targeted Israeli military facilities near a hospital, according to the Fars news agency, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, though it offered no evidence to support that.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, claimed in a post on social media that the attack had “eliminated” an Israeli military command center, and said it had “caused superficial damage to a small section” of the hospital. Iranian officials offered no evidence for the claim that the country’s forces were targeting military facilities.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether a military headquarters was hit.

The attack came as part of a large barrage of Iranian missiles that also caused damage in other parts of Israel, including to tall buildings in Ramat Gan and apartment structures in Holon, both cities near Tel Aviv. More than 30 people suffered minor injuries in Ramat Gan, according to Zaki Heller, a spokesman for Israel’s Magen David Adom emergency service. In Holon, Mr. Heller said, 18 were wounded, including three people seriously.

Photos and videos taken inside the hospital and shared by the Israeli fire and rescue service showed fires, broken glass and ceiling panels scattered on the floor, and damaged elevators. Shlomi Codish, the director general of the hospital, said that the old surgical building had been directly hit, adding that the departments in the building had been evacuated in recent days.

Mr. Codish said that all patients and medical staff had been in protected spaces when the missile struck the building. The hospital said its emergency department was treating several patients with mild injuries.

The strike on the hospital highlighted how the fighting is endangering civilians in Israel and Iran. At least 24 people have been killed in Israel by Iranian attacks and at least 224 people have been killed in Iran by Israeli strikes since the war started, according to each government. Some of those killed in Iran were senior military commanders.

It also illustrated that while Israel’s air defenses have prevented the overwhelming majority of Iran’s missiles from causing serious damage, some have managed to evade interception systems.

Responding to the strikes on Thursday, the Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, said Iran was committing “war crimes.” Under international law, it is forbidden to target medical facilities except in rare cases. During the war in Gaza, Israel has been widely condemned for repeatedly raiding and damaging health facilities that it says are used by militants.

Video broadcast on Israeli TV channels showed smoke billowing from the hospital and smoke-filled corridors.

Lia Lapidot contributed reporting to this article.

The shutdown appeared to be the result of an internal decision rather than a consequence of an Israeli strike. Earlier in the week, the Tasnim news agency, affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, had said that Iran would disconnect from the global internet on Tuesday night, and that Iranians could still use a national internet service that allows people to message on government-approved platforms.

Experts and citizens say that the government is likely throttling internet access to prevent people from sharing information about where Israel has struck and for fear of Israeli cyberattacks.

Residents in Iran have reported severe disruptions to internet and phone services since the war began. Internet connectivity deteriorated slightly, by about ten percent, in the first five days following Israel’s initial strikes on Iran last Friday.

Iranian officials told The New York Times on Tuesday that services had been restricted in an effort to combat Israeli operatives that they said were still carrying out covert operations. The claim could not be independently verified.

Since the blackout started, reaching people by phone inside the country has become extremely difficult and many news media sites have stopped updating. The disruptions may be affecting residents’ ability to see evacuation notices, including ones that the Israeli military has posted on social media ahead of strikes inside Iran.

Iran’s state broadcaster on Tuesday urged people to delete WhatsApp from their phones, claiming that the messaging app was collecting user information to aid Israel. WhatsApp said the allegations were false.