Benjamin Netanyahu has evoked the spirit of London during the blitz, and pointed to his own family’s sacrifice amid the blood, toil, tears and sweat of his nation: the second postponement of his son’s wedding.

The Israeli prime minister’s remarks, solemnly delivered to the cameras against the backdrop of a missile-struck hospital building in the southern city of Beersheba, set off a howl of derision that echoed around the Hebrew-language internet, at the height of a war that Netanyahu unleashed on Friday.

The stunning comments also added grist to the arguments of his critics that the PM is increasingly cut off emotionally from the daily realities of Israel and the region, after more than 17 years in office.

Seeking to underline his family’s shared hardship with ordinary Israelis, Netanyahu adopted a Churchillian tone when pointing out that this was not the first time his son Avner’s wedding had needed to be postponed, and that Avner’s fiancee was also disappointed, not to mention the thwarted mother of the groom, Netanyahu’s wife, Sara.

“It really reminds me of the British people during the blitz. We are going through a blitz,” Netanyahu said, referring to the wartime Nazi bombing of Britain in which 43,000 civilians died.

“There are people who were killed, families who grieved loved ones, I really appreciate that,” he went on.

The Israeli authorities say 24 Israeli civilians have so far been killed. Washington-based human rights activists have estimated the Iranian civilian death toll to be 263.

“Each of us bears a personal cost, and my family has not been exempt,” Netanyahu said at the Soroka hospital, which was struck on Thursday morning by an Iranian missile, causing light injuries.

“This is the second time that my son Avner has cancelled a wedding due to missile threats. It is a personal cost for his fiancee as well, and I must say that my dear wife is a hero, and she bears a personal cost.”

Avner Netanyahu’s wedding was first scheduled for November but was postponed for security reasons. Then it was due to take place on Monday, despite the threat of opposition protests.

Reports that the prime minister was going to take a few days off for the event may have contributed to Iran’s complacency on Friday morning when its leadership was taken unawares by Israel’s aerial attack.

The Israeli backlash to Netanyahu’s nuptial comments was instant and furious. Anat Angrest, whose son Matan has been held hostage since the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, observed that the suffering “didn’t go unnoticed by my family either”.

“I have been in the hellish dungeons of Gaza for 622 days now,” Angrest said in a post on the social media platform X.

Gilad Kariv, a Knesset member for the Democrats, called Netanyahu a “borderless narcissist”.

“I know many families who were not forced to postpone a wedding, but who will now never celebrate the weddings that were once meant to take place,” Kariv said.

He was contemptuous of Netanyahu’s claim that his wife, Sara, notorious in Israel for her expensive tastes, was a hero.

“The doctors who leave home for night shifts are the heroes,” Kariv said. “The teachers who keep our children together on Zoom and phone calls are the heroes.”

Amir Tibon, an Israeli journalist, argued that public figures whose children had been killed in combat would never draw attention to the fact.

“But there are no surprises with Netanyahu,” Tibon said. “Even in moments when a personal example is most needed, he is first and foremost concerned with himself.”

A video of a beach turning blood red amid heavy rainfall has evoked mixed feelings of horror and amazement among people. Some social media users floated theories of extreme weather or unexplained phenomena, but the truth is rather simple. This truly unique scene results from a particular type of soil present in the region. A glimpse of the ‘blood rain’ phenomenon from the ‘rainbow island’ in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran. (Instagram/@hormoz_omid)

The video captured people’s attention a few days ago despite being originally posted last month. A tour guide shared it on Instagram. When translated from Persian into English, the caption posted along with the video reads, “The start of the heavy rain of the famous Red Beach of Hormoz. Serasima tourists seeing this rain is amazing.”

In the video, torrential rain carries crimson soil down to the beach. When that mixes with the seawater, the tides, too, turn bright red.

Take a look at the video here:

Where is the beach located?

It is the ‘rainbow island’ in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran. The region remains largely undisturbed as the entire region is sparsely inhabited.

When does the “blood rain” phenomenon happen?

This is a year-round attraction that the tourists visiting this place, located miles from the Iranian mainland, can witness.

What causes the red colour?

According to an Iranian tourism board, as reported by CNN, the red colour is caused by the high concentration of iron oxide in the soil. The minerals in the soil further get mixed with the sea water, leading to a unique reddish glow in the beach.

Is the soil valuable?

As per Dailymail, the ‘gelack’ soil is used across different industries. It is used for industrial purposes, cosmetics, dyeing, ceramics, and glass. Citing a local tourist board, the outlet further reported that the soil is used in local cuisine – mainly to make jams and sauces.

Is it a good tourist destination?

According to the Iran Tourism and Touring Organisation, as cited by Dailymail, “Walking along the shore you will encounter parts where sand glitters with metal compounds, especially mesmerising at sunset or sunrise.”

“The soil color around you keeps changing as you walk or ride and you can visit a unique red edible soil and other 70 colorful minerals in Hormuz Island,” the board continued.

Videos from the beach have earlier been shared with false claims. Last year, a clip capturing the blood-red view went viral with the claim that the colour resulted from an extreme weather condition.

Smoke rises from the headquarters of the state broadcaster in Tehran following an Israeli airstrike.

The greatest impact of this war is fear and anxiety. We don’t know whether this situation will last for weeks, months or even years. Our lives have been thrown off routine, I spend most of my time just reading the news. I’m constantly afraid that a missile might hit my home, my city or the homes of my relatives and friends in other places.

I get the news from X and Instagram because we don’t have any reliable news networks and broadcasts that are not censored by the regime. We follow the updates through videos shared by people from different parts of the country on social media. The internet in Iran has become very slow and it was completely down yesterday [Wednesday].

My workplace is in Tehran. I left the city on Saturday, two days after the attacks began. My home is in the east of the city, in the Tehranpars area, which has been repeatedly hit by missiles.

It was very difficult [to get out] because gasoline was rationed – each person is allowed only 25 litres – and at every gas station we had to beg and plead to get more fuel.

We had to go south through Natanz. The Natanz nuclear facilities have been bombed and we don’t know if there is a risk of radiation or not. The government does not tell us this.

After Saturday, leaving Tehran became even harder. There is heavy traffic on the roads out of the city and the road to Qom, one of the main exit routes, was bombed.

I left in my car with my friends. There are no longer any buses, trains or flights on these routes and if someone doesn’t have a car, they can’t leave.

Many of my friends and colleagues weren’t able to leave Tehran. Some have pets, some don’t have a car and many don’t have the money or a place to stay in other cities. One of my friends’ mothers is very old and cannot be moved. Another friend is a nurse and can’t leave her job.

If everyone is forced to leave the capital, the entire country will come to a halt. The banks, government offices and almost everything else depends on Tehran.

I’m now in Kerman where I also have family. Fortunately, we haven’t had any bombings so far. Kerman is currently safe but there are military facilities and ammunition depots here as well, and such sites have been bombed in other cities across the country.

Inflation has skyrocketed. The price of all food items has shockingly doubled or even tripled and not even a full week has passed since the war began.

Many food products are no longer as easily available as before – for example, fruit that used to be brought in from other provinces – because no truck drivers are willing to travel on intercity roads. Rice, chicken, meat and fruit have doubled in price.

Dairy products have gone up by 20% but all of these items are still available, just with less variety than before. However, I know that the situation in Tehran is much worse.

Due to business closures, there is also a high chance we won’t receive our salaries. My next fear is the high cost of living and not having enough money.

I work for a company that [works internationally]. We haven’t completely shut down but in practice we can no longer operate because all the embassies processing visas have closed. If these conditions continue, our company will be completely shut down and I will lose my job.

Our situation in Iran is very complicated. Many people oppose the regime. For years we have been striving to change this government but the government arrests, suppresses and executes us.

At the same time, we absolutely do not want war either. War kills civilians, destroys our infrastructure, causes poverty and inflation and sets the country back.

But now that this war – against the will of the Iranian people – is destroying our lives, we at least hope it will lead to regime change.

My biggest fear? That if the war continues, more civilians will be killed, more infrastructure will be destroyed and in the end the government will still not change. That would be the worst outcome.

When Israel triggered a war last Friday after it sent a wave of airstrikes into Iran, Saina Salemi and Oscar were at work in Melbourne, sitting at arm’s length away from each other at their desks.

Salemi saw the news headline first. She turned to Oscar and said: “I think you and I are at war.”

“I thought she was kidding,” Oscar, who asked for his last name to not be used, recalled. “I didn’t understand. And then we went to the news, and it had all started, and my heart just sunk immediately.”

Salemi, who is 26, moved to Australia from Tehran when she was 7, and Oscar, who is 24 and from Israel, says for the past week they’ve shared in a grief that feels unending – but there has been a release in sharing it together.

The pair became friends when they started work the same day as each other 18 months ago. Since last week, finding out what is happening overseas and if it is affecting their families has become a shared obsession.

While sitting next to each other at work, they keep track of the rolling live coverage. Salemi also watches Persian news sources while Oscar watches the Hebrew channels.

“We’re translating documents for each other. We’re tracking where the missiles are being hit and seeing if they’re close to our family members,” Oscar tells Guardian Australia, both he and Salemi speaking on the phone together from their office.

“If we find out information we want the other to know, we text each other, no matter what time of night it is,” Salemi says.

Oscar’s parents, who were visiting Israel when tensions flared are – for now – stuck there. Salemi’s grandparents, aunts, and uncles live in Tehran.

Their shared grief has not just been defined by doomscrolling and sharing news about loved ones. Salemi says their focus is on the civilians suffering and the governments “making the choice” to continue it.

“My people, Palestinians and Israelis are being used as political shields for geopolitical aims,” Salemi says.

Oscar says he is also battling a feeling of guilt, despite having no control over what is going on.

“I really care about her family. I feel so guilty, and even though obviously I’m not responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, but nevertheless, it really pains me to just see even more suffering being inflicted.”

“I don’t want people to become desensitised to what is happening in the region, and the … scale of pain that is taking place every day. It’s getting worse.”

A sense of numbness

By Friday, Israeli strikes on Iran had killed at least 657 people and wounded 2,037 others, according to Washington-based group Human Rights Activists. Of those dead, the group identified 263 civilians and 164 security force personnel.

Iran has not given regular death tolls during the conflict and has minimised casualties in the past. In its last update, delivered last Monday, it put the death toll at 224 people and 1,277 wounded.

According to the latest figures cited by Israel’s health ministry on Thursday morning, there have been no casualties yet from Iranian missile strikes on Israel. The Associated Press reported that at least 240 people had been wounded.

Salemi says she has not heard from her family since the Iranian authorities blocked the internet.

“My auntie woke up in the middle of the night thinking that she was having a heart attack because the initial missile was so close to where she lived,” she says.

View image in fullscreen Oscar and Salemi say the war has inflamed the grief they were already feeling for the thousands of people killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza. Photograph: Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/The Guardian

“I haven’t heard from my family members in 36 hours, and there’s a great sense of numbness when you worry that maybe that’s the last time you’ve ever heard from your family members,” she says.

Oscar says he sometimes has difficulty reaching his parents by phone to check in on how they are. He struggled with the news that a hospital – where his nan had gotten care once after she had a stroke – had been hit by an Iranian rocket.

Salemi says while the bombs are falling from Israel, she also blames the Iranian regime – unpopular among many – for failing to protect its people. She points to there being no bomb shelters for people to turn to and disruptions to internet access that could help in planning escape routes with loved ones.

Despite the ruling regime being unpopular, Salemi is frustrated by rhetoric from Israel’s president, Benjamin Netanyahu, that Israel could support regime change. “Regime change in Iran will come internally, at the hands of my own people,” she says.

‘When will this end?’

Oscar and Salemi say the war has inflamed the grief they were already feeling for the thousands of people killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza. Oscar said on top of this he is also grieving loved ones that died when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October.

Since Israel and Iran began trading strikes, over 100 people in Gaza have been killed while seeking aid.

“The safety of Israel can’t come from anything other than peace – lasting, negotiated peace,” Oscar says. “I want a serious political solution and a lasting peace.”

Asked if there is anything they want the Australian government to do, Salemi says it should focus on getting Australian citizens out of each conflict zone.

Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong said on Friday there were about 2,000 Australians and their families in Iran and approximately 1,200 in Israel who wanted to evacuate.

“The security situation is obviously very difficult,” Wong said. “ The airspace remains closed.”

Oscar says that last Friday, after Israel first struck Iran, he and Salemi sat on the steps outside their work together. They already felt it could be different to the “tit-for-tat” strikes in past months.

“I remember I turned to her and said, ‘when will this end? How much longer does this have to go on?’.”

In the week since Israel first unleashed its surprise attack on Iran, many of the assumptions underpinning the balance of power in the Middle East have been swept away, leaving the fate of the region more uncertain than at any time since the Arab spring.

Iranian defences, which had once seemed so formidable, crumbled in the first minutes as the bombs began to fall soon after 3.30am on the morning of Friday 13th.

Like the Palestinians of Gaza, the people of Tehran now know what it is like to look upwards and see Israeli drones hovering above them, and to receive evacuation orders from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on social media, telling them when to abandon their own homes.

View image in fullscreen People attempt to leave Tehran through an arterial road in the city’s west. Photograph: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images

Some of the crown jewels of Iran’s nuclear programme – built up over a quarter of century and identified by the Islamic Republic regime as being synonymous with the nation’s very sovereignty and identity – lay in ruins by the end of the first week of Israeli bombardment.

The above-ground uranium enrichment hall in Natanz was destroyed in the initial wave, along with the facility’s power plant. The interruption in electricity supply was likely to have ruined many of the delicate centrifuges spinning at very high speeds enriching uranium hexafluoride gas in the underground facilities, according to an assessment by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The nuclear complex outside the ancient city of Isfahan was also pounded in one of the opening salvoes, which hit its uranium conversion plant and another facility for making nuclear fuel for reactors. Satellite images emerged showing these sites pockmarked with holes.

The regime in Tehran, with all its pretensions of being a regional power, had told its population that the privations it had suffered over decades were a necessary sacrifice for the nation’s defence against its enemies, near and far. But under fire, the Islamic Republic was impotent to protect its own people, or even its top generals.

The Iranian leadership appears to have stuck to the conventional wisdom that Israel could not destroy Iran’s deeply buried facilities such as the underground chambers at Isfahan and more importantly the Fordow enrichment plant, built into the side of a mountain, without US help.

That assumption, at least, did turn out to be half true. By Monday, Israeli bombs appeared to have burrowed their way down to the Isfahan subterranean facility, but after a week, Israeli officials were still saying they needed US help to do significant damage to Fordow.

What Iran did not expect was that Benjamin Netanyahu would start the war without US participation in the attack. Israeli officials said they had received a tacit green light from Donald Trump and guarantees of assistance in defence, though not in offence.

By defying expectations and going to war anyway, Israel’s prime minister gained the great advantage of total surprise. Iranian intelligence had been lulled into complacency by plans for a sixth round of US-Iran negotiations due to take place last Sunday, and by Trump’s public remarks warning that an Israel attack would “blow” the chances for his own diplomacy.

Iran’s spies would have also noted that Netanyahu’s son’s wedding was due on Monday, and that the prime minister was planning to take a few days off. Surely the long-threatened war would wait.

View image in fullscreen Mourners attend a funeral in Ahvaz for those killed in Israeli strikes. Photograph: Alireza Mohammadi/ISNA/Reuters

When the bombs began to fall on Friday then, the shock was absolute. The first wave killed the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Gen Hossein Salami, and the army chief of staff, Maj Gen Mohammad Bagheri, the nation’s top military commanders, among several generals targeted.

Six of Iran’s nuclear scientists were also killed, most if not all by airstrikes on their homes. By the end of the week, the Israelis claimed to have killed 14 scientists in an attempt to wipe out Iran’s nuclear knowhow.

In the first sortie, 200 Israeli warplanes hit 100 distinct targets in part of an intricately planned operation, codename Rising Lion, which had been at least eight months in the making.

The success Israel had in destroying Iranian air defences in a previous missile strike in October convinced the Israeli leadership that it had opened up a window of opportunity, during which Iran would be uniquely vulnerable, but the window would close over time.

Netanyahu said this week that Rising Lion was originally planned for April. However, the timetable was set back two months to allow Trump an opportunity to strong-arm Iran into giving up its enrichment programme at the negotiating table, so he could claim to have averted a new war in the Middle East.

In a letter in March to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Trump gave diplomacy 60 days to produce results and the clock began to tick with the first meeting between American and Iranian negotiators in Oman on 12 April. Last Thursday 12 June, was day 61 on that calendar, and that night the Israeli fighter-bomber squadrons took off for targets 1,000 miles (1,600km) away.

Trump later claimed to have been in the loop all along. He bristled at the suggestion that he was merely given a “heads-up”. It was far more than that, he claimed.

View image in fullscreen The damaged headquarters of Iranian state television in Tehran. Photograph: Vahid Salemi/AP

It now appears that, having decided to attack after Trump’s 60-day pause, the timetable for Rising Lion was locked in by military requirements. The Mossad special forces and drones had been put in place inside Iran, specifically to target the sinews of Iran’s ability to strike back – its air defence and its ballistic missile launchers. They could not be left behind the lines for long. Their discovery would have compromised the whole operation.

In the preceding days, as the rumours of war swirled around the region, Iran boasted it was primed to strike back with devastating effect. In the event, it was hamstrung. The generals who were supposed to give the orders were already dead by the time Iran knew it was under attack.

The only Iranian response in the first hours of the war were 100 drones, which were easily shot down by Israel and the US before they reached Israeli territory. By the end of last Friday, Iran’s hastily appointed replacement commanders had scrambled to launch 200 ballistic missiles. Israel was able to intercept most with its multi-tiered, US-supported air defences, with Israeli interceptors rising up in clusters to meet the incoming threat, lighting up the night sky.

A handful of Iranian strikes hit home, however, killing Israelis in Tel Aviv and Rishon LeZion who had not sought shelter.

Over the course of the first week of the war, the confirmed Israeli death toll had reached 24, less than a 10th of the number of Iranian civilians killed by Israeli pilots striking residential areas in their hunt for regime figures and scientists.

In response to the first Israeli casualties, the defence minister, Israel Katz, vowed that “Tehran will burn” if Khamenei continued to fight back with missiles. The Iranian missile salvoes kept coming throughout the week, however, though with smaller numbers in each barrage, as Israel hunted down and destroyed Iranian launchers.

View image in fullscreen Israeli security forces inspect destroyed residential buildings that were hit by a missile fired from Iran. Photograph: Ariel Schalit/AP

By Friday, IDF briefers claimed to have destroyed two-thirds of the estimated 400 launchers Iran had started the war with, suggesting Israel could be winning the race to blunt Iran’s primary deterrent before Israel ran out of stocks of its most effective and expensive missile interceptor, the Arrow 3.

Meanwhile, it was Iranian civilians who took the brunt of the war. Over the course of the week, the roads out of Tehran have been clogged by families using their 25-litre fuel ration to try to flee the capital. The obstacles to leaving the city were doubled when one of the main routes out, the road to Qom, was blocked by bombing.

From the first day of the offensive, it was clear that Israel was aiming at more than Iran’s nuclear and missile programme. A gas refinery on the coast was hit, as was an oil storage facility on the outskirts of Tehran. Israeli leaders have referred to these as “ayatollah regime targets”, the pillars of the Iranian economy.

Netanyahu has been increasingly clear that, while regime change was not a formal war aim, it was the desired outcome. Visiting a damaged hospital in Beersheba on Thursday, the prime minister called on Iranians to rise up against their rulers, while Katz declared that Khamenei “cannot continue to exist”.

For all the Israeli grandstanding in the wake of a week of constant military successes, the ultimate outcome of the war hung in the balance on Friday. Trump declared he would take up to two weeks to decide whether he would send in US bombers into the fray, to target Fordow and other hard targets, potentially including Khamenei himself.

View image in fullscreen A baby is evacuated from the site of a direct hit from an Iranian missile strike in Ramat Gan. Photograph: Oded Balilty/AP

The announcement appeared to create an opportunity for diplomacy, with foreign ministers from the UK, France and Germany meeting their Iranian counterpart in Geneva. It was questionable whether anything short of a complete Iranian surrender of the right to enrich uranium would satisfy Trump, and it would definitely fall short of Israeli demands.

With US involvement, the damage inflicted on Iran would undoubtedly be more profound, but it is far from evident it would bring down the Iranian regime.

The only real certainty as the war enters it second week, regardless of whether American planes join the Israel air force in the skies over Iran, is that the misery of ordinary Iranians is sure to deepen.