President Donald Trump said over the weekend that Iran’s new leadership has made overtures to restart diplomatic negotiations with the U.S. — which he plans to accept — after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during Israeli and U.S. strikes in the country. 

Still, the president warned that strikes would continue until their objectives had been achieved. 

When more than 1,500 people gathered in Washington this weekend for J Street’s national conference, the progressive Israel advocacy group’s first major convening in four years, the gathering was billed as an opportunity to reflect on building regional peace in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Gaza war. 

Instead, a major U.S. and Israeli military operation against Iran that began Saturday undercut the group’s pledge to focus on peace between Israelis and Palestinians and came to dominate the discussion. J Street quickly came out against the attacks. 

President Donald Trump’s decision to launch a military campaign against Iran has earned unexpected support from Western leaders who have otherwise sparred with Trump, particularly on trade policy. Canada and Australia, both of which are led by liberal parties, robustly backed the strikes that began on Saturday morning. 

“We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement on Saturday. 

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) took aim at the pro-Israel advocacy group AIPAC during an address on Sunday morning at the opening plenary of J Street’s convention in Washington and accused it of being un-American. 

Van Hollen elicited a loud chorus of boos in response to his description of AIPAC’s opposition to legislation he had sponsored seeking to place conditions on U.S. military assistance to Israel.

Columbia University distanced itself from Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of over 80 university student groups, after it posted “death to America” in Farsi in response to U.S. strikes on Iran, denying that current students are behind the account. 

“Marg bar Amrika,” CUAD posted on X on Saturday after U.S. and Israel’s joint strikes killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader — using a phrase that was frequently invoked by Khamenei. The post was deleted, but CUAD doubled down, writing in a new post, “X forced us to delete our ‘marg bar amrika’ tweet in order to gain back access to our account but the sentiment still stands.”

Three U.S. servicemembers have been killed since the start of hostilities with Iran on Saturday, CENTCOM announced on Sunday morning, with five more seriously wounded.

In addition, several others “sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions — and are in the process of being returned to duty,” the statement read, without details of where the injured troops were located or when the fatal strikes occurred.

At least nine people were killed in an Iranian missile strike on a residential neighborhood in Beit Shemesh, about 35 miles west of Jerusalem, the Israeli emergency medical service, Magen David Adom, reported on Sunday, bringing the Israeli death toll from the war with Iran launched a day earlier to 12.

Another 28 people, including young children, were injured, with two in serious condition. 

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani slammed joint U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran in a statement Saturday — without placing fault with Tehran in his reaction. 

Mamdani released a statement that reiterated his police department’s earlier pledge to boost local security, and also attacked Israel and the United States for “an illegal war of aggression.” But unlike other Democrats who have spoken out against the air campaign, he mentioned neither the atrocities committed by the Iranian regime against its own citizens, nor President Donald Trump, with whom he met just days ago.