Satellite images and videos of an Iranian girls school damaged by large explosions at the start of a U.S.-Israeli airstrike campaign targeting the Islamic Republic indicate a targeted attack from the air hit the building. That's according to military experts who spoke to The Associated Press. Iran says the blast killed at least 165 people, most of them children. The location of the strike, its affiliation to a coastal defense unit of Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and the tight pattern of the damage suggest a targeted airstrike on the site. Several factors point to a U.S. strike, given the proximity of American forces to the school and focus on missile sites and naval forces in the war.

Many Iranians are worried as the United States assembles its greatest military firepower in decades in the Middle East and the next round of talks in Geneva get closer. There is a belief that the talks on Thursday may give their country's theocracy its last chance to strike a deal with President Donald Trump. There is also a feeling of hopelessness in a country battered by decades of sanctions, heightened by Trump's 2018 decision to withdraw from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers. Iranians also last month suffered through the bloodiest crackdown on dissent in the country's modern history, with security forces killing thousands of people and detaining tens of thousands more.

President Donald Trump says he decided to move a second aircraft carrier into the Middle East as he presses Iran to make a deal over its nuclear program. The USS Gerald R. Ford is being sent from the Caribbean Sea to the Mideast to join other warships and military assets that the U.S. has built up in the region. Trump told reporters Friday that "in case we don't make a deal, we'll need it." He says the carrier will be "leaving soon." Days ago, Trump suggested another round of talks with Iran was at hand. That didn't materialize as a top Iranian security officials visited Oman and Qatar this week and exchanged messages with the U.S. intermediaries.

The White House says talks between special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian officials are still planned after a Navy fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone that was approaching a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea. U.S. Central Command said Tuesday the drone "aggressively approached" the aircraft carrier and kept flying toward it "despite de-escalatory measures taken by U.S. forces." The U.S. military says the shootdown occurred within hours of another incident in which Iranian forces harassed a U.S.-flagged merchant vessel in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's president says he's instructed his foreign minister to pursue fair negotiations with the U.S. The White House says President Donald Trump wants to "pursue diplomacy first."