DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — President Donald Trump’s met with advisers in the Situation Room on Tuesday afternoon, a White House official confirmed, as Israel and Iran continue to trade strikes.

The meeting occurred shortly after Trump returned to Washington, having left the G7 summit in Canada prematurely. He cited tensions in the Middle East as the reason and directed his national security team to be prepared in the Situation Room upon his return on Monday night. Pool reporters were informed that the meeting was happening shortly after 2:20 p.m. ET, though the precise start time was not specified.

On Tuesday morning, Trump denied having communicated with Iranian leaders, stating that he had not made contact about a possible ceasefire and that he was “not too much in the mood” to negotiate with Iran.

“I’ve been negotiating. I told them to do the deal,” Trump remarked. “They should have done the deal. The cities have been blown to pieces, lost a lot of people. They should have done the deal. I told them do the deal, so I don’t know. I’m not too much in the mood to negotiate.”

He also seemed to dismiss a recent assessment from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who had said Iran wasn’t working on a nuclear weapon. Trump said on Tuesday he thought Iran was “very close” to having such a weapon.

Trump in a post on his Truth Social network also said that he hadn’t reached out to Iran “in any way, shape or form,” calling reports that he had done so “fabricated.”

“If they want to talk, they know how to reach me,” Trump said in a post early on Tuesday. “They should have taken the deal that was on the table — Would have save a lot of lives!!!”

Israel on Friday began an attack on Iran, launching a series of aerial strikes that Israeli officials described as a preemptive strike. Israeli leaders and Trump have separately called for Tehran to put an end to efforts to create nuclear weapons.

Diplomats from the United States and Iran held a series of talks in Muscat, Oman, beginning in April, with the sixth round due to begin last Sunday. Those talks were cancelled as the conflict between Israel and Iran began.

Trump was asked on Tuesday about Gabbard’s testimony in March in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, where she said Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.

When pressed about Gabbard’s comments, Trump dismissed them.

“I don’t care what she said, I think they were very close to having one,” Trump said.

Trump has not ruled out American participation in the conflict, although the U.S. has remained on the sidelines so far. Trump has issued, however, a stern warning to Iran on Tuesday over U.S. troops and assets in the region, instructing Tehran “not to touch our troops.”

“We’ll come down so hard if they do anything to our people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Israel targets more Iranian leaders

The Israeli military claimed to have killed another top Iranian general in a strike on Tehran.

Iran did not immediately comment on the reported killing of Gen. Ali Shadmani, whom Israel described as the most senior military commander in Iran.

Shadmani was little-known in the country before being appointed last week to a chief-of-staff-like role as head of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters. That appointment followed the killing of his predecessor, Gen. Gholam Ali Rashid, in an Israeli strike.

The Israeli military warned the population to stay close to shelters as Iran fired new salvos of missiles, but officials said most were intercepted. Sirens blared in southern Israel, including in the desert town of Dimona, the heart of Israel’s never-acknowledged nuclear arms program.

Iran has fired fewer missiles in each of its barrages, with just a handful launched late Tuesday. It has not explained the drop in missiles fired, but the decline comes after Israel targeted many Iranian launchers.

Israeli military spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin announced a new wave of strikes on Iran on Tuesday evening as explosions and anti-aircraft fire boomed throughout Tehran, shaking buildings across the capital. The Israeli military said its warplanes had targeted 12 missile launch sites and storage facilities.

Shops closed, lines for gas in Iran’s capital

Echoing an earlier Israeli military call for some 330,000 residents of a neighborhood in downtown Tehran to evacuate, Trump warned on social media that “everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran.”

Tehran is one of the largest cities in the Middle East, with around 10 million people, roughly equivalent to the entire population of Israel. People have been fleeing since hostilities began.

Asked why he had urged the evacuation of Tehran, Trump said: “I just want people to be safe.”

Downtown Tehran emptied out early Tuesday, with many shops shuttered, even the ancient Grand Bazaar, which has closed only in times of crisis, such as during the 2022 anti-government protests and the coronavirus pandemic.

On the roads out of Tehran to the west, traffic stood bumper to bumper. Many middle- and upper-class Iranians were headed to the Caspian Sea, a popular getaway spot. Long lines snaked from Tehran’s gas stations.

Signs that Iran is restricting access to outside world

Iranian authorities appeared to be curbing the public’s access to the outside world. Phone and internet service was disrupted, with landline phones unable to receive or dial international calls. NetBlocks, an internet monitoring group, reported that it had detected a significant drop in internet traffic from the country.

Iran, which has crippled important communications tools in past nationwide protests and during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war, did not acknowledge any restrictions.

International websites appeared to be blocked, but local websites were functioning, likely signaling that Iran had turned on the so-called “halal net,” its own locally controlled version of the internet aimed at restricting what the public can see.

Iran’s state TV on Tuesday urged the public to remove the messaging app WhatsApp from their cellphones, alleging without evidence that the app gathered user information to send to Israel.

In a statement, WhatsApp said it was concerned that “these false reports will be an excuse for our services to be blocked at a time when people need them the most.”

Nuclear agency reports more damage to enrichment site

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Tuesday that it believed that Israel’s first aerial attacks on Iran’s Natanz enrichment site had directly affected the facility’s underground centrifuge facility.

Satellite imagery collected after Friday’s attacks showed “additional elements that indicate direct impacts on the underground enrichment halls,” the watchdog said.

Located 220 kilometers (135 miles) southeast of Tehran, the Natanz facility was fortified by anti-aircraft batteries, fencing and Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

The IAEA earlier reported that Israeli strikes had destroyed an above-ground enrichment hall at Natanz and knocked out electrical equipment that powered the facility.

However, most of Iran’s enrichment takes place underground to protect from airstrikes.

Israel has struck Natanz repeatedly and claims to have hurt its underground facilities, which experts assess contain 10,000 centrifuges that enrich uranium up to 60%. But Tuesday’s IAEA statement marked the first time the agency has acknowledged damage there.

Iran maintains its nuclear program is peaceful, and the U.S. and others have assessed that Tehran has not had an organized effort to pursue a nuclear weapon since 2003. But the IAEA has repeatedly warned that the country has enough enriched uranium to make several nuclear bombs should it choose to do so.

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Monday that Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites have set the country’s nuclear program back a “very, very long time,” Israel has not been able to reach Iran’s Fordo uranium enrichment facility, which is built deep into a mountainside.

Hitting Fordo would require the U.S. to get involved militarily and deploy B-2 stealth bombers to drop its bunker-busting bomb. The 30,000-pound (14,000-kilogram) GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator uses its weight and sheer kinetic force to reach deeply buried targets.

Trump leaves G7 early to focus on conflict

Before leaving the summit in Canada, Trump joined the other leaders in a joint statement saying that Iran “can never have a nuclear weapon” and calling for a “de-escalation of hostilities in the Middle East, including a ceasefire in Gaza.”

French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters that discussions were underway on a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, but Trump shot that down in his comments on social media.

Macron “mistakenly said that I left the G7 Summit, in Canada, to go back to D.C. to work on a ‘cease fire’ between Israel and Iran,” Trump wrote. “Wrong! He has no idea why I am now on my way to Washington, but it certainly has nothing to do with a Cease Fire. Much bigger than that.”

Trump posted that there were no plans to kill Khamenei “at least not for now.” Despite warning that U.S. “patience is wearing thin,” he indicated that diplomatic talks remained an option.

He said he could send Vice President JD Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet with the Iranians.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.