Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Sky News that said Russia would react “very negatively” if Israel were to assassinate Iran’s leader with U.S. assistance.

Peskov said regime change in Iran was “unimaginable,” adding that “even talking about that should be unacceptable for everyone.”

“President Trump’s sudden announcement that he could take up to two weeks to decide whether to plunge the United States into the heart of the Israel-Iran conflict is being advertised by the White House as giving diplomacy one more chance to work,” the New York Times reports.

“But it also opens a host of new military and covert options.”

“Assuming he makes full use of it, Mr. Trump will now have time to determine whether six days of relentless bombing and killing by Israeli forces — which has taken out one of Iran’s two biggest uranium enrichment centers, much of its missile fleet and its most senior officers and nuclear scientists — has changed minds in Tehran.”

Stephen Collinson: Why Trump’s two-week pause on Iran makes sense — and why it may not work.

A new Economist/YouGov poll finds 60% of Americans think the U.S. military should not get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran.

Only 16% support U.S. military action, and 24% are unsure.

“President Donald Trump may have touted the latest trade deal between the US and China as a win for America. But it’s Chinese leaders who have walked away with an extra spring in their step,” CNN reports.

“While full details of the agreement, reached by negotiators in London last week, remain under wraps, it appears largely to restore an earlier arrangement sealed in May, which had rapidly deteriorated as mistrust and tension between the two sides spiraled.”

“This time around, China has learned a key lesson: the power of its leverage over the US — and how it can use that to its advantage in the months ahead.”

Leaders aren’t racing to make deals despite White House pressure, Bloomberg reports.

“Beneath Israel’s bombs lies an unpopular and repressive Iranian regime that has spent billions of dollars on a nuclear program and on projecting the Islamic Revolution through armed regional proxies, while presiding over a domestic economic disaster and stifling paralysis,” the New York Times reports.

“An 86-year-old autocrat, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rules this restive nation, as he has for 36 years, in his role as guardian of the revolution, a conservative calling at which he has proved adept. The supreme leader is no gambler. But his system, remote from a youthful and aspirational society, looks sclerotic to many, and he is now up against the wall.”

“European officials are making a diplomatic push to de-escalate the conflict between Israel and Iran after nearly a week of deadly fighting, even as Israel’s defense minister warned on Thursday that the country’s military would intensify its strikes on ‘strategic targets’ in Iran,” the New York Times reports.

“After days of back-channel discussions, the Europeans, who have been effectively sidelined since the war started, are now trying to exert what limited leverage they have as weapons suppliers or potential peacemakers to try to end the war.”