• Israel targeted nuclear and military sites in Iran in airstrikes early Friday morning.
• The strikes are a major escalation that threatens to expand into a wider regional conflict.
• These are five key questions in the wake of Israel's air war.

Israel's widespread airstrikes on Iran effectively damaged the country's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, which officials said was a primary goal.

The strikes hit over 100 targets, including Iran's air defense systems, missile launchers, and senior military leadership.

Now, all eyes are on Tehran's response and the specter of a wider conflict. And there are questions over whether the US will get pulled into the fight.

Here are some main questions stemming from the attacks.

How has Iran responded?

Iran initially responded to the attack by firing 100 drones at Israel on Friday, which the Israel Defense Forces said were mostly intercepted.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Israel "should anticipate a severe punishment" in response to the strikes, and that Iran "won't let them go unpunished."

Hours later, the IDF said Iran had launched "dozens" of missiles at Israel in what appeared to be several waves. The military said its air defenses were actively intercepting threats, and video footage captured several impacts.

"The Iranian response might be delayed or split into multiple phases," said Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the UK-based Royal United Services Institute think tank.

"But their main weapon will be ballistic missiles," he added, "which have the best chance of inflicting damage on Israel, whereas drone and cruise missile attacks will face more extensive Israeli defences."

It is not unprecedented for Iran to launch powerful weapons at Israel; Tehran fired hundreds of missiles and drones at its foe in April and October last year. However, those strikes were mostly intercepted by Israel and its allies, including the US.

Beyond direct strikes, another way that Iran could retaliate is through the so-called "Axis of Resistance," a vast network of militias it is aligned with throughout the region, including Lebanon's Hezbollah and Yemen's Houthis.

Israel has been battling these forces, and Hamas in Gaza, since the October 7, 2023, attacks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long advocated for destroying Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran claims is for civilian purposes.

The US, however, has been trying to reach a new deal with Iran (and has threatened violence if a deal isn't done). The strikes could derail those efforts and even goad Iran into racing to build a nuclear arsenal.

Could this trigger a wider conflict?

Israel's strikes threaten to spark a wider regional conflict, analysts at London's Chatham House think tank warned Friday.

"Far from being a preventive action, this strike risks triggering a broader regional escalation and may inadvertently bolster the Islamic Republic's domestic and international legitimacy," Sanam Vakil, Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa program director, said.

Last year, Tehran reportedly threatened to target Gulf state oil facilities if they allowed Israel access to their airspace for strikes against Iran. It's unclear what routes Israeli aircraft used in the attacks, but there's been speculation Israel could exploit the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria to get its aircraft directly over Iraq for strikes.

Russia is also a close ally of Iran, and the two have increased their defense cooperation since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

However, Nikita Smagin, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment, said in December that the Kremlin is unlikely to come to Iran's direct aid in order to avoid direct confrontations with Israel and the US.

Will the US be pulled into a fight?

The US has helped arm and defend Israel, notably in the wake of Hamas' October 7 attacks. The world will be watching to see how President Donald Trump responds.

Trump has sought to broker a new nuclear deal with Iran, and in the wake of the Israeli attacks overnight, warned of "even more brutal" strikes from Israel if Iran refuses a new agreement.

Last year, the US Navy helped shoot down Iranian missiles fired at Israel in two major attacks, and it has rotated multiple aircraft carriers and many warships into the region since 2023, in a show of support for Israel and to deter its enemies, including Iran.

The US and other NATO countries have also defended international shipping routes in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden from attacks by the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen.

What forces does the US have in the region?

The US has a substantial military presence in the Middle East, including naval forces, ground troops, and strike aircraft.

A Navy spokesperson told BI that the Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group — consisting of an aircraft carrier, a cruiser, and three destroyers — is in the Arabian Sea.

There are also three American destroyers in the Red Sea and another in the Eastern Mediterranean.

All of these warships, and the carrier's dozens of embarked aircraft, are capable of carrying out air defense missions to defeat incoming drones and missiles.

Were the strikes effective?

IDF spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin said Israel's strikes "significantly harmed" Iran's main uranium enrichment site at Natanz.

"For many years, the people of the Iranian regime made an effort to obtain nuclear arms in this facility," he said, adding that the site "has the necessary infrastructure to enrich uranium to a military grade."

The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed the site was struck, but the extent of the damage remains unverified.

Satellite imagery appeared to show significant damage at the surface level.

There was also a report Friday that Israel had struck Fordow, a nuclear fuel enrichment site guarded deep under a mountain.

The IDF said that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Hossein Salami and other senior military commanders were also killed in targeted strikes.

• NATO member Poland has put on hold plans to buy 32 Black Hawk helicopters.
• It suggested that Russia's invasion of Ukraine shows they're not the right weapon to focus on.
• It's not abandoned helicopters, but they have proven vulnerable in Ukraine.

NATO member Poland has postponed its purchase of 32 S-70i Black Hawk helicopters, with military officials there suggesting the way Russia is fighting in Ukraine shows they're not the right equipment for it to focus on.

General Wieslaw Kukula, the Polish armed forces chief of staff, said at a Friday press conference that "we have decided to change the priorities of the helicopter programs" in order to "better adapt to the challenges of future warfare," Reuters reported.

Poland's deputy defense minister, Pawel Bejda, said on X that his country's military, pilots, and experts were analyzing the geopolitical situation, as well as "the war in Ukraine" and what Russia is buying and equipping its military with.

Poland shares a land border with Ukraine.

Grzegorz Polak, a spokesman for Poland's Armament Agency, which buys equipment for its military, told Reuters that its priorities needed "some correction" and that it might be necessary to buy other equipment instead of the helicopters, "such as drones, or tanks, or some kind of communication."

He also told Polish outlet Defence24 that the armed force's priorities have changed amid evolving threats.

Poland, like other European countries, has warned that Russia could attack elsewhere on the continent.

Its prime minister, Donald Tusk, warned in March that Russia's big military investments suggest it's readying for a conflict with someone bigger than Ukraine in the next three to four years.

Poland is already the highest spender on defense in NATO, as a proportion of its GDP, and has been a major ally of Ukraine throughout the invasion.

Helicopters over Ukraine

Helicopters have played a role in Russia's invasion, with both sides using them to counter drones, offer air support, and launch attacks.

They were particularly effective for Ukraine against Russia's attempts to seize a key airfield shortly after the invasion began in February 2022, and for Russia during Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive.

But they have also proved vulnerable.

The proliferation of air defenses has meant that they, like other aircraft, have had to hang back from frontline fighting more than in past conflicts, making them far less useful.

Ukraine's success at taking down Russia's Ka-52 helicopters in 2023 meant Russia started using them less. Many were hit by US-provided M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS.

Reports suggest that Russia lost more than 100 helicopters in the first two years of the war.

Ukraine has also destroyed some Russian helicopters at bases far from the front lines.

Even so, losses could have been higher. Mark Hertling, a former commander of United States Army Europe, told BI in January that Russia has been "very poor" in the way it used helicopters and other air assets, but also that Ukraine's air-defense shortages have protected them.

Andrew Curtis, an independent defence and security researcher who spent 35 years as a UK Royal Air Force officer, told BI last year that one lesson Western countries could take from the war is "about the vulnerability of helicopters in the modern battlefield where hiding and seeking is not a child's game, it's a matter of life and death."

A helicopter strategy

The S-70i is a variant of the UH-60 Black Hawk made by PZL Mielec, a Polish company owned by the US's Lockheed Martin.

Poland's plan to buy them began in 2023, under a previous government. The aim was for the helicopters to be used for combat and logistics, and to work with AH-64E Apache Guardian attack helicopters ordered from the US.

Bejda, the deputy defense minister, said the latest move did not involve terminating a contract, as one was never signed.

But it has still led to some domestic issues.

Mariusz Blaszczak, Poland's former defense minister, described the decision as a disgrace in a post on X, saying it would lead to job losses, delays in replacing the country's helicopter fleet, and a loss of interoperability because Poland's military already uses some Black Hawks.

The postponement comes after Poland spent years investing in helicopter technology, including ordering 96 Apache Guardians in a deal signed last year, and 32 Leonardo AW149s in a deal signed in 2022.

Bejda said Poland would still prioritize some helicopters, including training and combat helicopters, a heavy transport helicopter, and search and rescue helicopters.

But the government, which took office at the end of 2023, clearly views increasing the fleet as less important than investing in other military assets.

The war in Ukraine has led Western countries to boost their own defense spending and to change their priorities, including through buying more air defenses and drones, investing more in tanks, and even bringing back old types of training like trench warfare.

• The Royal Navy is building 12 new SSN-AUKUS attack submarines.
• They're set to replace the UK's Astute-class attack submarines by the 2030s.
• It comes as part of the UK government's bid to boost its armed forces amid rising global threats.

The UK plans to build 12 new attack submarines as part of sweeping plans to boost the country's military.

The Ministry of Defence said Sunday that the SSN-AUKUS vessels would be built as part of the UK's Strategic Review to enhance its military strength amid rising global threats.

They'll be deployed as part of the AUKUS alliance between the UK, Australia, and the US, with the submarines having been developed alongside the Australian navy.

"Our outstanding submariners patrol 24/7 to keep us and our allies safe, but we know that threats are increasing and we must act decisively to face down Russian aggression," UK Defence Secretary John Healey said.

He added: "With new state-of-the-art submarines patrolling international waters and our own nuclear warhead programme on British shores, we are making Britain secure at home and strong abroad, while delivering on our Plan for Change with 30,000 highly-skilled jobs across the country."

The submarines are set to replace the UK's current fleet of seven Astute-class attack submarines by the 2030s.

The Astute class submarines are nuclear-powered and carry Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missiles (TLAM) and Spearfish heavyweight torpedoes, the UK government said.

The Naval Lookout analysis website described the new submarines as an "apex naval predator."

"In preparing for potential conflict with other states, SSNs are arguably the most important conventional assets the UK can deploy," it said, adding that they can be used to take out enemy vessels, create blockades, land special forces operatives, and gather intelligence.

But Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, told journalists that questions remain over how the target of building 12 submarines would be met on schedule.

"There is going to have to be a pretty major culture change within the forces, within the MOD and their relationship with industry to make that more viable," he said.

"I would be fascinated to know how they're going to do that because the record is not great up until now," he added.

The UK government has pledged to boost defense spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027.

Under the plans outlined in its latest Strategic Defence Review, released this week, it will also provide the equivalent of $20 billion in extra funding for the UK's nuclear weapons program.

• Reid Hoffman said he uses OpenAI's Deep Research every day to have a "lens" on AI's future.
• He said using "chain-of-thought" models offered an insight into how these products could be "workers in the future."
• He added that "a bunch of folks" were in the race to develop the best agentic AI.

Reid Hoffman has said he uses a specific tool daily to gain insight into how AI products could be "workers in the future."

The LinkedIn cofounder and investor said he did "at least" one prompt daily with OpenAI's Deep Research tool, an agentic tool for automating complex multi-step internet research. He also said there was many companies building "strong" offerings in the race to make AI agents.

Hoffman, who stood down as an OpenAI director in 2023, citing potential conflicts of interest with his other AI investments, was asked about the startup during an interview on Bloomberg Television on Friday.

He said he was using Deep Research once a day, and that it "gives you the lens to the amplification we're going to get with these products as workers in the future."

The rise of agentic AI, which can independently act on a person's behalf and make decisions without human intervention, has fuelled speculation about how and when AI might replace human workers.

A group of Carnegie Mellon researchers ran a virtual simulation designed to test how AI agents fare in real-world professional scenarios. They found that the top-performing model finished less than one-quarter of all tasks.

"While agents may be used to accelerate some portion of the tasks that human workers are doing, they are likely not a replacement for all tasks at the moment," Graham Neubig, a computer science professor at CMU and one of the researchers, previously told BI.

Hoffman, who cofounded Manas AI, said he saw no clear leader in the race to develop agentic AI, saying there was "a bunch of folks who are doing very strong things," and "not just OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google."

Bloomberg interviewer Ed Ludlow told Hoffman he was increasingly talking to AI in voice mode, which he called "a psychological thing that, as a consumer, you kind of have to get over."

• Trump and Zelenskyy met at the Vatican before Pope Francis' funeral.
• This was their first meeting since a heated exchange at the White House in February.
• "Very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic," Zelenskyy later wrote on X.

Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met on Saturday — their first encounter since a heated exchange at the White House two months ago.

The two leaders held a discussion inside St. Peter's Basilica, ahead of the Pope's funeral, with French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer present during the initial moments.

Zelenskyy and Trump had not met since their heated exchange in the Oval Office on February 28, in which Trump said of Ukraine's war against Russia, "You're either going to make a deal or we're out."

Four days later, Trump announced a pause in US military aid, and the EU declared "an era of rearmament," as it unveiled a defense funding boost.

The Oval Office meeting was in the glare of the world's press, but photos of the Rome meeting show Trump and Zelenskyy seated close together, without aides or interpreters.

Andrii Yermak, a senior aide to Zelenskyy, shared a photo of the leaders in St. Peter's Basilica on Telegram. "Constructive," he wrote.

Steven Cheung, White House communications director, called it a "very productive discussion."

Posting X, Zelenskyy said the encounter had been a "good meeting."

"We discussed a lot one on one. Hoping for results on everything we covered. Protecting lives of our people. Full and unconditional ceasefire. Reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out. Very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results," he said.

The Rome meeting comes after Steve Witkoff, Trump's designated peace envoy, travelled to Moscow for discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Kremlin advisor Yuri Ushakov said the talks centered on "the possibility of resuming direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine."

Following Witkoff's return, Trump said on Truth Social that "most of the major points are agreed to" and that a cease-fire deal between Kyiv and Moscow was "very close."

As he prepared to leave for Rome on Friday, Trump told reporters that the talks were "very fragile." He has also warned that the US might halt its mediation efforts if a deal isn't reached soon.

After the meeting on Saturday, Zelenskyy was greeted with applause when he walked out of St Peter's Basilica after paying his respects in front of the pontiff's coffin.

Trump later wrote a long post on Truth Social, in which he called the war in Ukraine "Sleepy Joe Biden's War, not mine. It was a loser from day one."

The long post ended, "There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days. It makes me think that maybe he doesn't want to stop the war, he's just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through "Banking" or "Secondary Sanctions?" Too many people are dying!!!"