As Israel's war with Iran nears the end of its first week, each side continued to inflict destruction from above in Thursday's opening hours. In a development certain to be exploited by proponents of US intervention, the largest hospital in southern Israel reportedly received "extensive" damage after suffering a hit from an Iranian ballistic missile. Meanwhile, defying warnings of radiation dangers from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Israeli Air Force bombed Iran's Arak heavy water reactor, even though Iran modified it pursuant to the 2015 nuclear deal to make it incapable of producing weapons-grade plutonium. 

In other important recent developments: 

• Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said "the prime minister and I have instructed an escalation in the intensity of strikes against government targets in Tehran to destabilize the Ayatollah regime"

• Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that direct US participation in Israel's war on Iran would spark a terrible spiral of escalation" 

• President Trump has reportedly approved a Pentagon plan for attacking Iran, but is holding off on giving the green light as he continues to seek Iran's capitulation to foregoing any uranium enrichment -- something Iran views as an intolerable infringement on its sovereignty. "I may do it, I may not do it," he told reporters. 

• The foreign ministers of Iran, the UK, France and Germany are set to discuss the nuclear impasse in Geneva on Friday.

• MAGA conservatives continue to erupt in angry rejection of US involvement in the war Israel started, as evidenced by Tucker Carlson's merciless evisceration of Iran hawk Ted Cruz in a viral interview