European foreign ministers urged Iran on Friday to engage with the United States over its nuclear program after high-level talks in Geneva aimed at opening negotiations for a new nuclear deal ended with little sign of progress.

The talks between the foreign ministers of Germany, Britain, France, and the EU with their Iranian counterpart sought to test Tehran’s readiness to negotiate despite there being scant prospect of Israel ceasing its attacks soon, diplomats said.

“The Iranian Foreign Minister has expressed his willingness to continue discussions on the nuclear program and more broadly on all issues, and we expect Iran to commit to the discussion, including with the United States, to reach a negotiated settlement,” said French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot.

Britain’s foreign minister David Lammy said the European countries were eager to continue talks with Iran.

“This is a perilous moment, and it is hugely important that we don’t see regional escalation of this conflict,” he said.

Tehran, under mounting pressure to agree tough curbs on its nuclear program to prevent the potential development of an atomic weapon, has repeatedly said it will not talk to the Trump administration until Israeli attacks end.

European ministers spoke ahead of their Geneva meeting with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio who signaled that Washington was open to direct talks even as it considers joining Israeli strikes intended to smash Tehran’s nuclear capacity, diplomatic sources said.

Washington did not confirm that, though broadcaster CNN quoted a US official saying President Donald Trump supported diplomacy by allies that could bring Iran closer to a deal.

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Researchers at Israel’s prestigious Weizmann Institute of Science have been scrambling to save their experiments after an Iranian missile destroyed a building containing dozens of cutting-edge laboratories.

The missile struck the institute’s campus at Rehovot, on the southern periphery of Tel Aviv, in the early hours of Sunday, damaging multiple buildings and prompting researchers to clamber into the ruins to save samples even as fire raged.

No one was hurt as the campus was empty overnight, but one part of a building collapsed, while in the remaining part the walls were blown out, exposing a tangle of twisted metal, blasted debris and blackened cement.

“We did our best to save as much of the samples as we could from the labs, from the buildings, while we were fighting the fire,” physicist Roee Ozeri, Weizmann’s vice president for development and communications, told Reuters.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the devastated site on Friday and praised the researchers as well as the rescuers of the country’s emergency services, describing both groups as the “best of Israel.”

“This building behind me, next to me, says everything,” Netanyahu said, pointing to the massive pile of rubble.

“Iran is the pre-eminent terrorist regime in the world. It must not, cannot have nuclear weapons. That is the purpose of Israel’s actions – to save itself from the Iranian threat of annihilation, but by doing so, we are saving many, many others.”

Israel began attacking Iran on June 13, saying its longtime enemy was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran, which says its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes, retaliated with missile and drone attacks on Israel.

Israel’s strikes have killed several prominent Iranian nuclear scientists, wiped out the top echelon of Iran’s military command, and damaged nuclear capabilities.

Iran has not said if or why it targeted the Weizmann Institute.

Last Thursday, the UN nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation Board of Governors declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations for the first time in almost 20 years.

Iran’s attacks have killed 24 civilians in Israel and damaged hundreds of structures, including a hospital in the southern city of Beersheba.

While most of the institute’s research is in areas with potential benefits for medicine and scientific knowledge, it also has connections with defense. It announced in October 2024 a collaboration with Israel’s largest defense firm Elbit on “bio-inspired materials for defense applications.”

A multidisciplinary institution which carries out research in fields including genetics, immunology and astrophysics, Weizmann was founded in 1934 and is considered world-class within the international scientific community.

It is Israel’s most important science research institute, with 286 research groups, 191 staff scientists and hundreds of PhD students, master’s students and postdoctoral fellows.

‘EVERYTHING IS LOST’

The Iranian missile hit the work of researchers such as Eldad Tzahor, who focuses on regenerative medicine with particular relevance to adult heart diseases. He said many samples and tissues that had been part of long-running experiments had been destroyed.

“Everything is lost,” he told Reuters TV. “I would estimate that it will take us about a year to get into a full year of research and with everything working again.”

In financial terms, the damage is estimated at $300-$500 million, according to the institute, which operates costly, complex machines, often shared between several labs or research groups.

Jacob Hanna, who runs a molecular genetics team focused on embryonic stem cell biology, told the scientific journal Nature that his lab’s ceiling had collapsed and the staircase had detached.

His students managed to save hundreds of frozen mouse and human cell lines by transferring them to back-up liquid-nitrogen tanks that Hanna had stored in the basement, Nature reported.

“I was always worried that if a war actually happens, I don’t want to lose these,” he said.

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Iran said on Friday it would not discuss the future of its nuclear program while under attack by Israel, as Europe tried to coax Tehran back into negotiations and the United States considers whether to get involved in the conflict.

A week into its campaign, Israel said it had struck dozens of military targets overnight, including missile production sites, a research body it said was involved in nuclear weapons development in Tehran, and military facilities in western and central Iran.

The Israel Defense Forces later said they had also struck surface-to-air missile batteries in southwestern Iran as part of efforts to achieve air superiority over the country.

At least five people were injured when Israel hit a five-story building in Tehran housing a bakery and a hairdresser’s, Fars news agency reported.

Iran fired missiles at Beersheba in southern Israel early on Friday and Israeli media said initial reports pointed to missile impacts in Tel Aviv, the Negev, and Haifa after further attacks hours later.

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog warned against attacks on nuclear facilities and called for maximum restraint.

“Armed attack on nuclear facilities … could result in radioactive releases with great consequences within and beyond the boundaries of the state which has been attacked,” Rafael Grossi, director of the International Agency for Atomic Energy, told the UN Security Council on Friday.

He spoke a day after an Israeli military official said it had been “a mistake” for a military spokesperson to have said Israel had struck Bushehr, Iran’s only nuclear power plant. He said he could neither confirm nor deny that Russian-built Bushehr, located on the Gulf coast, had been hit.

Iran said on Friday its air defenses had been activated in Bushehr, without elaborating.

Israel says it is determined to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities but that it wants to avoid any nuclear disaster.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, also speaking at the world body’s Security Council, said the Iran-Israel conflict could ignite a fire no one can control and called on all parties to “give peace a chance.”

The White House said on Thursday President Donald Trump would decide on US involvement in the conflict in the next two weeks.

Fars news agency quoted an Iranian military spokesman as saying Tehran’s missile and drone attacks on Friday had used long-range and ultra-heavy missiles against military sites, defense industries and command and control centers.

About 20 missiles were fired in those latest Iranian strikes, an Israeli military official said, and at least two people were hurt, according to the Israeli ambulance service.

In a sign of increasing concern about any strikes on energy facilities in Iran or elsewhere in the Gulf that could affect supplies, Qatar held crisis talks this week with energy majors, an industry source and a diplomat in the region told Reuters.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said there was no room for negotiations with the US “until Israeli aggression stops.” But he later arrived in Geneva for talks with European foreign ministers at which Europe hopes to establish a path back to diplomacy over Iran’s nuclear program.

Before the meeting with France, Britain, Germany, and the European Union’s foreign policy chief, two diplomats said Araqchi would be told the US is still open to direct talks. But expectations for a breakthrough are low, diplomats say.

URANIUM ENRICHMENT

A senior Iranian official told Reuters Iran was ready to discuss limitations on uranium enrichment but that any proposal for zero enrichment – not being able to enrich uranium at all – would be rejected, “especially now under Israel‘s strikes.”

Israel began attacking Iran last Friday, saying its longtime enemy was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran, which says its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes, retaliated with missile and drone strikes on Israel.

Israel is widely assumed to possess nuclear weapons. It neither confirms nor denies this.

Israeli air attacks have killed 639 people in Iran, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a US-based human rights organization that tracks Iran. The dead include the military’s top echelon and nuclear scientists.

In Israel, 24 civilians have been killed in Iranian missile attacks, according to authorities.

Trump has alternated between threatening Tehran and urging it to resume nuclear talks. His special envoy to the region, Steve Witkoff, has spoken to Araqchi several times since last week, sources say.

The Trump administration announced on Friday fresh Iran-related sanctions against various entities with the aim of disrupting Tehran’s efforts to obtain dual-use technology.

Western and regional officials say Israel is trying to shatter the government of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iranian opposition groups think their time may be near, but activists involved in previous protests say they are unwilling to unleash mass unrest with their nation under attack.

Iranian state media reported rallies in several cities, describing them as rallies of “solidarity and resistance.”

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