At least 20 people have been killed and 52 more are injured after a “terrorist attack” on a Greek Orthodox church in the Syrian capital on Sunday, according to the country’s health ministry.

He opened fire on the congregation of Mar Elias Church in Damascus, before “detonating himself using an explosive vest,” the ministry said in a statement.

A mass was being held at the church at the time of the attack, according to Syria’s state news agency SANA.

A video circulating on Syrian social media from inside the church shows dead bodies, significant destruction, shattered glass and broken chairs in the area where mass was being held, with blood visible throughout the scene.

Syria’s civil defense, popularly known as the White Helmets, said emergency teams were working to transfer the bodies to hospitals and secure the area.

A member of the Syrian security force inspects the damage after a reported attack at the Mar Elias Church in the Dweila neighbourhood of Damascus, Syria on June 22.

“The treacherous hand of evil struck” on Sunday, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch said in a statement, writing that “an explosion occurred at the entrance of the church, resulting in the deaths of numerous martyrs and causing injuries to many others who were inside the church or in its immediate vicinity.”

“We offer our prayers for the repose of the souls of the martyrs, for the healing of the wounded, and for the consolation of our grieving faithful. We reaffirm our unwavering commitment to our faith and, through that steadfastness, our rejection of all fear and intimidation,” the church said.

The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Geir O. Pedersen, expressed “outrage” at the “heinous crime,” his office said in a statement.

“Mr. Pedersen calls on all to unite in rejecting terrorism, extremism, incitement and the targeting of any community in Syria. He sends his deepest condolences to the families of the victims and his hope for the recovery of those injured,” the statement said.

The United States’ Special Envoy for Syria, Thomas Barrack, called the attack an act of “cowardice,” saying in a statement that it has “no place in the new tapestry of integrated tolerance and inclusion that Syrians are weaving.”

The foreign ministries of Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Israel, Greece, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Ukraine, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands also spoke out in condemnation of the attack.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities puts the Middle East in a volatile position, with all eyes now on Tehran’s next move.

Speaking in Istanbul, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Sunday his country has “a variety of options” when deciding how to respond to the US attacks.

From striking US bases in the region, to possibly closing a key waterway to global shipping, Iran is likely mulling its next moves. All carry inherent risks for the Islamic Republic, Israel and the United States.

Here’s what to know:

Iran could hit US military interests in the region

Direct US involvement in the conflict could see Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) activate what remains of its proxies across Iraq, Yemen and Syria, groups which have previously launched attacks on American assets in the region.

While Iran’s strongest ally in the region was once Lebanon’s Hezbollah, that group has been significantly weakened by Israeli attacks.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) says the US maintains a presence at 19 sites in total across the region, with eight of those considered by analysts to have a permanent US presence. As of June 13, the CFR estimated some 40,000 US troops were in the Middle East.

In Iraq, for example, there were 2,500 US troops as of late last year. An Iranian attack on these forces is not inconceivable. In 2020, an Iranian missile attack on a US garrison left more than 100 soldiers with traumatic brain injuries.

A resurgence of attacks from Yemen against US assets is already on the table. Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels previously vowed to attack American ships in the Red Sea should the US join Israel’s conflict with Iran. A prominent Houthi official said in a social media post early Sunday that “Trump must bear the consequences” of the US airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

It is unclear if this marks the end of a US-Houthi ceasefire struck in May, in which Washington said it would halt its military campaign against the Houthis in exchange for the group stopping its attacks on US interests in the region.

Knowing that it can’t outright win a conflict against Israel and the US, experts have said that Tehran could seek to engage in a war of attrition, where it tries to exhaust its adversary’s will or capacity to fight in a drawn-out and damaging conflict, which Trump at the outset of his presidency said he wanted to avoid.

Iran could disrupt global oil trade

Iran also has the power to influence the “entire commercial shipping in the Gulf,” Ravid said, should it decide to close the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil shipping route.

There have so far been no material disruptions to the global flow of oil. But if oil exports are disrupted, or if Iran tries to block the Strait of Hormuz, the global oil market could face an existential crisis.

The strait links the Persian Gulf to the open ocean and is a key channel for oil and liquefied natural gas exports from the Middle East to the global market. About 20 million barrels of oil flow through the strait each day, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

A prominent adviser to Iran’s supreme leader has already called for missile strikes and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

“Following America’s attack on the Fordow nuclear installation, it is now our turn,” warned Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor-in-chief of the hardline Kayhan newspaper, a well-known conservative voice who has previously identified himself as a Khamenei “representative.”

Iran could race to build a bomb

Some experts say that Iran is very likely to race for a nuclear bomb now, even if the current regime collapses and new leaders come in place.

“Trump just guaranteed that Iran will be a nuclear weapons state in the next 5 to 10 years,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute in Washington, DC, said on X. “Particularly if the regime changes.”

Parsi has said that even if the regime collapses and new military elements assume power, they are likely to be much more hawkish than the current regime and race toward a nuclear weapon as their only deterrent.

Experts have previously said that Iran likely moved its stocks of enriched uranium from its key nuclear facilities amid Israeli strikes.. Nuclear power plants that generate electricity for civil purposes use uranium that is enriched to between 3.5% and 5%. When enriched to higher levels, uranium can be used to make a bomb Israel and the US accuse Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons; Tehran insists its program is peaceful.

Iran is also likely to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or the NPT, under which it has pledged not to develop a bomb.

“Iran’s response is likely not just limited to military retaliation. NPT withdrawal is quite likely,” Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, said on X.

Iran could just keep hitting Israel for now

Iran’s first response to the US’ attack on its nuclear sites was to attack Israel, not US bases.

Iranian missiles hit a group of buildings in Tel Aviv, where 86 people were admitted to hospital with injuries overnight and on Sunday morning, according to Israel’s ministry of health.

Knowing it may not be able to sustain a full-on confrontation with the US, and hoping that Trump will scale back on his involvement following Sunday’s strike, Iran may merely seek to perpetuate the status quo, fighting only Israel.

Trump at the time wanted to “send a big message, get the headlines, show US resolve, but then avoid a wider war,” Shabani said.

While Iran may feel it has to retaliate to save face, it may be a bloodless response, similar to what happened in 2020, when it launched a barrage of missiles at US bases in Iraq, which resulted in traumatic brain injuries to personnel but no deaths.

Iran could resort to cyberattacks or terrorism

Two military analysts have said Iran could resort to “asymmetric” measures – such as terrorism or cyberattacks – to retaliate against the US because Israeli attacks have reduced Iran’s military capabilities.

“I think (the IRGC is) going to be a little bit careful, and I suspect that’s going to take us to all of the asymmetric things they can do: cyber, terrorism. I think that they’re probably going to be looking for things where the US cannot just put up the traditional defenses,” he added.

But, “albeit wounded,” the IRGC still has “some tremendous capacity,” he said. “It has capabilities that are already within the region and then outside the region. We are vulnerable… around the world, where the IRGC has either influence or can make things happen asymmetrically.”

Iran could resume nuclear talks

Iran has refused to return to the negotiating table while under Israeli attacks.

On Sunday, Araghchi said he does not know how “much room is left for diplomacy” after the US military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

“They crossed a very big red line by attacking nuclear facilities. … We have to respond based on our legitimate right for self-defense,” Araghchi said.

Parsi said that by doing so, “the Iranians have cornered themselves.”

“Their aim is to force Trump to stop Netanyahu’s war, and by that show his ability and willingness to use American leverage against Netanyahu,” Parsi wrote. “But the flip side is that Tehran has given Israel a veto on US-Iran diplomacy – by simply continuing the war, Israel is enabled to block talks between the US and Iran.”

Iranian and European officials met Friday in Geneva for talks, which an Iranian source said started out tense but became “much more positive.”

Speaking Sunday, Araghchi said the US had decided to “blow up” diplomacy.

“Last week, we were in negotiations with the US when Israel decided to blow up that diplomacy. This week, we held talks with the E3 (group of European ministers)/EU when the US decided to blow up that diplomacy,” Araghchi said on X.

“The more likely situation is that the talks are over for now.”

The smile on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s face was impossible to hide.

Minutes after President Donald Trump announced that the US had bombed three of Iran’s nuclear facilities, Netanyahu effusively praised the American leader as someone whose decisions could lead the region to a “future of prosperity and peace.”

Since Israel launched its attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities and other targets, Netanyahu and the country’s other political echelon had been careful not to be perceived as dragging Trump into another war in the Middle East. In the end, the US joining the campaign – and taking credit for the results – is arguably an even bigger success for Netanyahu, who brought the world’s superpower into what had been Israel’s mission.

Netanyahu has talked about the threat of Iran for much of his political career, parading out visual aids on occasion – like a cartoon of a bomb at the UN General Assembly in 2012 – to help his audience. But the longstanding criticism was that Netanyahu’s rhetoric was all bark, no bite.

For all the talk of the threat Iran posed to Israel and the wider region, Netanyahu never pulled the trigger on a major military operation. Instead, he authorized sporadic high-risk, high-reward operations from Israel’s Mossad spy agency, including the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and the stealing of the country’s nuclear archive.

But Iran’s nuclear program survived largely unscathed, and Netanyahu was left for years with no measurable achievement against an issue he came to see as an existential threat to Israel.

The last 10 days rewrote the script.

Aviv Bushinsky, who worked with Netanyahu during his first term in the late-90s, called the attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities “no doubt his greatest accomplishment.”

Israel’s initial waves of attacks and its establishment of air superiority over Iran began a clear string of military successes, which the Trump administration ultimately joined.

The scale of the success is so great that Bushinsky argued it made Netanyahu’s one of the country’s top two or three leaders since the country’s founding in 1948. The “stain” of failing to stop the Hamas-led attack on October 7 remains with Netanyahu, Bushinsky said, but the attack on Iran has immediately become part of his legacy.

“Netanyahu has a signature of taking down the nuclear capabilities of the Iranians,” he said.

Now Netanyahu immediately faces another challenge: deciding what to do next. At least publicly, the US has made it clear that it sees the Iran strikes as finished as long as Iranian forces don’t attack US troops in the region.

But after starting the campaign alone, Israel is still pressing its advantage. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said Sunday that Israel was preparing for the “campaign to prolong.” Before the weekend, Israel had conducted the military campaign against Iran on its own, and it has since carried out more strikes after the US bombing of the nuclear facilities.

“If the war was designed to obliterate Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, and the president of the United States says they destroyed the three facilities, then why isn’t Israel announcing mission accomplished?” former Israeli consul general Alon Pinkas asked rhetorically. “This military solution for everything is fine, as long as you understand that it is aligned with political goals. And I don’t see them.”

Since the start of the Trump administration, the friction between Trump and Netanyahu has been on full display as the White House pursued a series of steps in the region that left Israel sidelined. Trump’s first trip to the Middle East blew right past Israel without stopping, the American president signed a ceasefire deal with the Houthis in Yemen that cut out Israel, and he surprised Netanyahu in April by announcing nuclear negotiations with Iran.

The US decisions raised questions about whether Netanyahu was able to handle a second Trump administration, especially one with a far more vocal isolationist wing.

All of those questions disappeared in a puff of bunker buster smoke in the aftermath of the US strikes as the two leaders heaped praise on one another

The issue of Iran had broad consensus among much of Israeli society, with a majority of the country viewing a nuclear Iran as an existential threat.

According to a survey from the Israel Democracy Institute done before the US strikes, approximately 70% of Israelis supported the campaign against Iran, while nearly as many believe it was right to launch the strikes without a guarantee of US involvement.

That level of support has drawn accolades for Netanyahu even from his detractors.

“You don’t have to like Netanyahu in order to admit yes, he achieved something,” said Ben-Dror Yemini, a political analyst for Israel’s prominent Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

But the current moment – one in which Israel and the US have carried out punishing strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities – requires sensitive diplomacy and a willingness to back off the military successes that appear to have come so easily, Yemini said.

The decision to act and the decision to wait each involved its own elements of risk, according to former US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro.

“There’s risk in any use of forces and certainly in a major decision like this one from the United States,” Shapiro said. “But there was risk in not acting and leaving Iran within weeks of a nuclear bomb at the time of their choosing.”

But having made the critical choice to go after Iran’s nuclear facilities, Shapiro said it would be a grave mistake to assume the conflict is over.

Asked if the Middle East was safer now than it was before US involvement in the strikes against Iran, Shapiro said it depends on whether the bombing campaign destroyed or significantly damaged Iranian nuclear facilities. It also depends on how Iran chooses to respond, which he said requires the international community to lead Iran away from escalation.

“It’s too early to celebrate the achievement.”

Warplanes. Submarines. Cruise missiles. Bombs that weigh 30,000 pounds.

After initially favoring diplomacy, US President Donald Trump resorted to an extraordinary use of force against Iran on Saturday night, striking three of the regime’s key nuclear sites.

Trump claimed Iran’s nuclear facilities had been “obliterated,” but some Iranian officials downplayed the impact of the strikes – just as they did when Israel first struck Iran’s facilities on June 13.

With satellite imagery of the overnight strikes beginning to emerge, here’s what we know about the damage the US inflicted on Iran’s nuclear program.

Fordow

Fordow is Iran’s most important nuclear enrichment facility, buried deep inside a mountain to guard it from attacks.

The main halls are believed to be some 80 to 90 meters (262 to 295 feet) below ground. Analysts have long said that the US is the only military in the world with the kind of bomb required to burrow that deeply – the enormous, 30,000-pound GBU-57.

The images, captured by Maxar, showed six separate impact craters in two nearby locations at Fordow. The craters are visible along a ridge running over the underground complex.

“Of course, one cannot exclude (the possibility) that there is significant damage there,” he said.

“Total destruction of the underground hall is quite possible,” Albright said, while stressing that a full assessment of the damage will take time.

N.R. Jenzen-Jones, a munitions specialist and director of the research company Armament Research Services (ARES), concurred that there are at least six entry points in Fordow following the US strikes.

“This is consistent with the theory of an attack on such a deeply buried target as the Fordow site, which would require multiple precisely delivered, and carefully calibrated, penetrating munitions to essentially ‘smash’ and blast their way through to the deeper, more protected areas of the site,” he added.

Satellite imagery also showed significant changes to the color of the mountainside where the facility is housed, indicating a vast area was covered with a layer of grey ash in the aftermath of the strikes.

Although Iran’s foreign minister said the US had crossed a “very big red line,” other Iranian leaders downplayed the strikes’ impact. Manan Raeisi, a lawmaker representing the city of Qom, near Fordow, said the damage from the attack was “quite superficial.”

Natanz

Natanz is the site of Iran’s largest nuclear enrichment center and was targeted in Israel’s initial attack on Iran on June 13. The site has six above-ground buildings and three underground structures, which house centrifuges – a key technology in nuclear enrichment, turning uranium into nuclear fuel.

The above-ground facilities were damaged in Israel’s initial attack. The IAEA said the strikes damaged electrical infrastructure at the plant.

Although it is not clear if Israel’s strikes caused direct damage to the underground facilities, the IAEA said the loss of power to the underground cascade hall “may have damaged the centrifuges there.”

The US also targeted Natanz in its Saturday night operation. A US official said a B-2 bomber had dropped two bunker-busting bombs on the site.

US Navy submarines also fired 30 TLAM cruise missiles at Natanz and Isfahan, the third Iranian site targeted by the US.

Isfahan

Isfahan, in central Iran, is home to the country’s largest nuclear research complex.

The facility was built with support from China and opened in 1984, according to the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). Some 3,000 scientists are employed at Isfahan, NTI says, and the site is “suspected of being the center” of Iran’s nuclear program.

Albright said initial reports suggested that the US also struck tunnel complexes near the Isfahan site, “where they typically store enriched uranium.”

If confirmed, Albright said this would show that the US was trying to take out Iran’s stocks of uranium that had been enriched to 20% and 60%. Weapons-grade uranium is enriched to 90%.

At a Pentagon news conference Sunday, Gen. Dan Caine, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a US submarine had “launched more than a dozen Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles against key surface infrastructure targets” at the Isfahan site.