Two coalition lawmakers have publicly come out against ultra-Orthodox attempts to advance a law aimed at preserving daycare subsidies for Haredi children, further indicating a schism on the matter within the coalition.

The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party backed away this week from a threat to derail government budget talks — which would have imperiled the coalition — if a law maintaining the widespread exemption of Haredi yeshiva students from military service isn’t advanced first.

UTJ has since pivoted to advancing the daycare subsidies bill instead.

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has ordered the payments halted, arguing that the government is legally barred from funding daycare subsidies for the children of ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students who are obligated to perform military service but are not doing so. The issue has been a sore point for the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, community, which typically has large families but low incomes.

Likud MK Dan Illouz says on X: “There will be no enlistment [of Haredim] without significant personal sanctions. Exempting such a large group from the duty to serve in the IDF in such a critical period is a non-Zionist act that is unworthy of us as a nation — whether it be called ‘the enlistment law’ or ‘the daycare law,’ whose purpose is to cancel the daycares sanction and restore the funding.”

He says any cancelation of the sanction on daycare funding must be replaced with another meaningful sanction on those who refuse to enlist.

Meanwhile, Immigration Minister Ofir Sofer of Finance Minister Bezalel’s Religious Zionism party tells Army Radio that the daycare law “won’t be advanced before there is progress on the enlistment law.” He also slams Haredi political leaders, saying that “we have received a spit in the face from them on the enlistment process” and adding that the military desperately needs more people.

In June, the High Court of Justice ruled that there is no legal basis for the decades-long practice of exempting Haredi men from the military draft. A bill that seeks to regulate the issue, known as the enlistment law, is currently stuck in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, whose chairman, Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, has said that it will only pass if lawmakers can reach a “broad consensus” on the matter.

Sam Sokol contributed to this report.

A powerful airstrike killed 11 people in central Beirut on Saturday, the health ministry said, shaking the capital as Israel pressed its offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.

An eight-story building was struck with four missiles, including bunker-penetrating types designed to hit underground targets, said a Lebanese security source.

Israel has used bunker-busting weapons to kill senior Hezbollah figures, including its veteran leader Hassan Nasrallah in a strike on southern Beirut in September.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at United Nations General Assembly last year. Experts believe that Israel has been expanding its secretive nuclear program.

The war that Israel launched against Iran seeks to take out its nuclear program, which much of the world views with alarm and experts say is growing to the point that it could make an atomic weapon within months.

Israel has its own secretive nuclear weapons program, one that it doesn’t publicly acknowledge but that, some experts believe, is also expanding.

“From an official diplomatic posture perspective, the Israelis will not confirm or deny” their nuclear arsenal, said Alexander K. Bollfrass, a nuclear security expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Instead, Israel has said it will not be the first country to “introduce” nuclear weapons to the Middle East. That deliberately vague wording amounts to what Mr. Bollfrass called an “obfuscation over what is clearly an established nuclear weapons program.”

How big is Israel’s nuclear arsenal?

Israel is widely believed to have at least 90 warheads and enough fissile material to produce up to hundreds more, according to the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation and the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog for the United Nations, has assessed that 30 countries are capable of developing nuclear weapons but only nine are known to possess them. Israel has the second-smallest arsenal among the nine, ahead only of North Korea, according to a Nobel Prize-winning advocacy group, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Israel could fire warheads from fighter jets, submarines or ballistic missile ground launchers, experts said.

Israel is one of five countries — joining India, Pakistan, North Korea and South Sudan — that is not a signatory to the U.N. Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The agreement, which came into force in 1970, generally commits governments to promoting peaceful uses of nuclear energy and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

(Iran is a signatory to the treaty, although Israel and world powers have accused Tehran of violating it by unnecessarily enriching uranium at high enough levels to build a nuclear weapon.)

Israel would have to give up its nuclear weapons to sign the treaty, which recognizes only five countries as official nuclear states: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. All had detonated a nuclear weapon by 1967, the cutoff date in the treaty to qualify for the designation.

How long has Israel had nuclear weapons?

Israeli leaders were intent on building a nuclear arsenal to safeguard the country’s survival soon after it was founded in 1948 in the wake of the Holocaust, historical records indicate.

The Israel Atomic Energy Commission was established in 1952, and its first chairman, Ernst David Bergmann, said that a nuclear bomb would ensure “that we shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter,” according to the Jewish Virtual Library.

Israel began building a nuclear weapons development site in 1958, near the southern Israeli town of Dimona, researchers believe. A recently declassified U.S. intelligence report from December 1960, by the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee, stated that the Dimona project included a reprocessing plant for plutonium production. The report concluded that the project was related to nuclear weapons.

Image Part of the nuclear power plant near Dimona, Israel, in 2014. The site has long been a symbol of fascination and, to some, anger over Israel’s nuclear weapons program. Credit… Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Around 1967, Israel secretly developed the ability to build nuclear explosives, according to the Arms Control Association. By 1973, the United States “was convinced Israel had nuclear weapons,” the Federation of American Scientists later wrote.

Israel is not among the three dozen countries — all in Europe or Asia — considered to be protected by the United States’ so-called nuclear umbrella. That protection not only serves as an American deterrent against adversaries but also aims to encourage the countries not to develop their own nuclear weapons.

Experts said that the fact that Israel was not part of the American nuclear umbrella was another unspoken acknowledgment that Israel had its own atomic weapons and did not need protection or deterrence.

“Ultimately, there is a sense of responsibility that Israel’s security rests with Israel, and they will do what is necessary to provide for that,” Mr. Bollfrass said.

Has Israel used its nuclear weapons in war?

No.

The Jewish Virtual Library, which is considered among the world’s most comprehensive Jewish encyclopedias, has cited reports that Israel prepared its nuclear bombs during the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973, but the weapons were not used.

There have been a few reports over the past 50 years that Israel has tested its nuclear weapons at underground sites, including in the Negev desert in southern Israel.

The most prominent episode — and one that remains under debate — was in September 1979, when an American satellite designed to detect nuclear explosions reported a double flash near where the South Atlantic and Indian oceans meet. Some scientists believed that the double flash was likely to have been the result of a nuclear test, by Israel or South Africa, or possibly by both.

Image The International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters in Vienna, Austria. There is no agreement with Israel that would allow the U.N. watchdog agency to monitor the nuclear site in Dimona, according to experts. Credit… Joe Klamar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Israel denied involvement in what is known as the Vela incident, for the satellite’s name. Former President Jimmy Carter’s White House diaries, published in 2010, cited “growing belief” at the time that Israel had tested a nuclear explosion near the southern tip of South Africa. But that was never proven, and “relevant documents for the Vela incident are still classified,” the scientists Avner Cohen and William Burr wrote in 2020, citing the diaries.

Where does Israel build its nuclear weapons?

It’s widely believed that Israel’s nuclear weapons program is housed in Dimona.

Experts said it appeared that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency had never been to the site, and that there was no agreement with Israel that would allow the U.N. watchdog agency to monitor it. American scientists visited Dimona in the 1960s and concluded that the nuclear program there was peaceful, based on increasingly limited inspections, historical records show. But there is no public evidence that American inspectors have been back since.

Satellite photos show new construction at Dimona over the past five years. At a minimum, experts said, the facility is undergoing repairs and much-needed modernization.

There is also a growing belief among some experts that Israel is building a new reactor in Dimona to increase its nuclear capability. A report released this week by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said Israel appeared to be upgrading a reactor site there to produce plutonium, which can be used both for nuclear weapons and some peaceful purposes, like in space.

Because of its secrecy, Dimona has long been a symbol of fascination and, to some, anger over Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

In a rare public event at the site in 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel used it as a backdrop to warn enemies that “those who threaten to wipe us out put themselves in a similar danger — and in any event will not achieve their goal.”

A US federal judge says that prosecutors can proceed with a hate crime charge against a man accused of hurling Molotov cocktails at a group of people demonstrating in Boulder, Colorado, in support of Israeli hostages.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, appears in federal court in Denver for a preliminary hearing following the June 1 attack in Boulder that injured at least eight people.

Investigators say he planned the attack for a year and was driven by a desire “to kill all Zionist people.”

Soliman’s defense attorney, David Kraut, urges Magistrate Judge Kathryn Starnella not to allow the case to move forward. Kraut says Soliman’s anti-Zionist statements and his online search for a “Zionist” event to attack shows he targeted the demonstrators because of their perceived political views — their assumed support for the nation of Israel and Zionism. An attack motivated by someone’s political views is not considered a hate crime under federal law.

Assistant US Attorney Melissa Hindman says the government alleged that the attack was a hate crime because Soliman targeted people based on their national origin — their perceived connection to Israel. Prosecutors are not alleging that Soliman targeted demonstrators, who carried Israeli and American flags, because he believed they were Jewish, noting that he has said that not all Jewish people are Zionists.

Hindman says Soliman did not use the term Israel. But she points out that he doesn’t support its existence on what he called “our land,” which he defined as Palestine.

“He is targeting Israel, and he is targeting anyone who supports the existence of Israel on that land,” she says.

Starnella acknowledges that some of the evidence undercut the government’s allegation that the demonstrators were targeted because of their perceived national origin but said other evidence supported it. At this stage, the government gets the benefit of the doubt on questions about evidence, she says.

Investigators say Soliman told them he had intended to kill the roughly 20 participants at the weekly demonstration on Boulder’s Pearl Street pedestrian mall, but he threw just two of his over two dozen Molotov cocktails while yelling “Free Palestine.” Soliman told investigators he tried to buy a gun but was not able to because he was not a “legal citizen.”

Federal authorities say Soliman, an Egyptian national, has been living in the US illegally with his family.

During his Wednesday appearance, Soliman’s lower right arm and hand were wrapped in a thick bandage, with handcuffs around his wrists. Police previously said he was taken to a hospital for unspecified injuries right after the attack. FBI agent Timothy Chan testifies that Soliman burned himself as he threw the second Molotov cocktail.

Soliman wrote “1187” with a marker on the shirt he was wearing during the attack, a reference to the year that Muslims liberated Jerusalem from Christian Crusaders, Chan says. The significance of that year and battle were also discussed in documents found in Soliman’s car, he testifies.

Soliman did not carry out his full plan “because he got scared and had never hurt anyone before,” police wrote in an arrest affidavit.

One of the injured suffered burns over 60% of their body, Chan testifies. An unspecified number of those injured remain in the hospital, he says.

Authorities consider 15 people and a dog as victims of the attack. One is a Holocaust survivor. Some are considered victims because they could have been hurt.

Soliman is charged separately in state court with multiple counts of attempted murder, assault and offenses related to more than a dozen additional Molotov cocktails police say he did not use.

The American B-2 stealth bomber is the only plane capable of carrying the bombs needed to strike Iran’s deepest nuclear facilities, but the decision to use them is not without risk.

It sounds so surgical, so precise, exactly the kind of air attack that only the U.S. Air Force can execute.

A series of B-2 bombers lifts off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri or the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Refueled in the air, they head for a remote mountain in north-central Iran, far from civilians, where they get Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear site, Fordo, in their sights.

They drop their giant 30,000-pound bunker-busters, one after another, blasting a giant hole down to the centrifuge halls that have been in the bull’s-eye of the American military since President Barack Obama and the leaders of Britain and France revealed the existence of the plant in the fall of 2009, charging Iran with a great “deception.”

Few potential operations, with the possible exception of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, have been so examined, rehearsed and debated. Technically, the military and geological experts say, it should be doable.

And yet it is full of risks — known unknowns and unknown unknowns, as the former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld used to say in the context of the Iraq War, another rabbit hole of American military action in the Middle East. That is why it has given pause to every American president who has looked at it for the past 16 years.

President Trump on Wednesday emphasized that he had yet to make a decision to drop what in private he calls “the big one.” But gone was the bellicose tone that characterized his public utterances a day earlier. In its place was a note of caution. “I may do it,” he told reporters on the White House’s South Lawn. “I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

Meanwhile, the Iranians, after five days of remarkable losses to the Israelis, seemed to be looking for a way out. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a defiant response to Mr. Trump’s call for “unconditional surrender,” but Mr. Trump said there were indications that the Iranians wanted to talk, and reports of an official Iranian plane landing in Oman, where many of the negotiations with Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, had taken place before Israel’s attack.

If Mr. Trump is taking a pause, it may be because the list of things that could go wrong is long, and probably incomplete. There’s the obvious: It’s possible that a B-2 could get shot down, despite Israel’s success of taking out so many of Iran’s air defenses. It’s possible the calculations are wrong, and even America’s biggest conventional bomb can’t get down that deep.

“I’ve been there, it’s half a mile underground,” Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said last week, as the Israeli operation began.

But assuming that the operation itself is successful, the largest perils may lie in the aftermath, many experts say, just as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are many lessons from that ugly era of misbegotten American foreign policy, but the most vital may be that it’s the unknown unknowns that can come back to bite.

Iran has vowed that if attacked by American forces, it would strike back, presumably against the American bases spread around the Middle East and the growing number of assets gathering in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean. All are within missile range, assuming Iran has missiles and launchers left after the Israelis are done with their systematic targeting.

Of course, that could start a cycle of escalation: If Americans are killed, or even injured, Mr. Trump will be under pressure to exact revenge.

“Subcontracting the Fordo job would put the United States in Iran’s sights,” Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, and Steven N. Simon, a veteran of the National Security Council, wrote in Foreign Affairs on Wednesday. “Iran would almost certainly retaliate by killing American civilians. That, in turn, would compel the United States to reciprocate.”

“Soon enough,” they continued, “the only targets left for Washington to hit would be the Iranian regime’s leaders, and the United States would again go into the regime-change business — a business in which exceedingly few Americans want to be involved any longer.”

The reaction could take other forms. Iran is skilled at terrorism, and reacted to the U.S.-Israeli cyber attack on its nuclear program 15 years ago by building a fearsome cyber corps, not as stealthy as China’s or as bold as Russia’s, but capable of considerable damage. And it has plenty of short-range missiles left to attack oil tankers, making transit in the Persian Gulf too risky.

The last thing the White House wants to do is air these risks in public. Democrats are calling for a congressional role, but they have no power to compel it. “Given the potential for escalation, we must be brought into this decision,” Senator Adam B. Schiff of California, one of Mr. Trump’s political rivals, said on CNN on Wednesday. “Bombing Fordo would be an offensive activity.”

And like most offensive activities, there are longer-term perils, beyond the cycle of attack and retaliation.

Already, the message of these past five days, as interpreted by Iranian leaders or others with nuclear skill, may well be that they should have raced for a bomb earlier, and more stealthily. That was what North Korea did, and it has now ended up with 60 or more nuclear weapons, despite years of American diplomacy and sabotage to stop it. It is a big enough arsenal to assure that its adversaries, South Korea and the United States, would think twice about conducting the kind of operation that Israel executed against Iran.

And history suggests that nuclear programs can be bombed, but not eliminated.

“Nuclear weapons can be stopped through force — the Syrian program is a good example,’’ said Gary Samore, who was the Obama administration’s coordinator for weapons of mass destruction when the existence of the Fordo plant was made public. (It was discovered toward the end of the Bush administration.)

And in Iraq, after the Israelis bombed the Osirak reactor in 1981, to keep Saddam Hussein from getting the fuel for a bomb, the Iraqis “reacted by building a huge, secret program” that went undetected until after the Gulf War in 1991, Mr. Samore said. That was such an embarrassment to American intelligence agencies that more than a decade later they wildly overestimated his ability to do it again, contributing to the second failure — and leading the United States into the Iraq war.

But Mr. Samore added: “I can’t think of a case where air power alone was sufficient to end a program.”

That is an important consideration for Mr. Trump. He must decide in the next few days whether Israel’s attacks on Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility, and its bombing of workshops where new centrifuges are made and laboratories where weapons research may have been taking place, are sufficient to set back the Iranian program.

In short, he must decide whether it is worth the huge risk of direct American involvement for whatever gain would come from destroying Fordo with American pilots, American warplanes and American weapons.

But he also doesn’t want to be accused of missing the chance to set the Iranians back by years. “If this war ends and this Fordo is left intact,” said Mr. Samore, now a professor at Brandeis University, “then it wouldn’t take long to get this going again.”

Mr. Trump has not weighed these questions in public, and it is always hard to know how he is assessing the evidence. He bristled the other day, on Air Force One, when a reporter noted to him that his own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had testified in Congress just a few months ago that Iran had made no decision to produce a bomb, even if its fuel production had surged.

He insisted that there wasn’t much time left — though he cited no evidence to contradict his own intelligence chief.

“Don’t forget, we haven’t been fighting,” Mr. Trump said Wednesday in the Oval Office. “We add a certain amount of genius to everything, but we haven’t been fighting at all. Israel’s done a very good job today.”

Then, muddying the waters anew, he turned to his signature phrase: “But we’ll see what happens.”