Tag: iran

Iran’s Response to Australia’s Bondi Beach Terror Attack Raises Questions

The mass-casualty terror attack targeting a Hanukkah gathering at Sydney’s Bondi Beach was the predictable outcome of a global environment in which antisemitic incitement is normalized, rationalized, and, in some cases, actively encouraged by state actors.

In the hours following the attack, attention has turned to Iran—not because Tehran immediately claimed responsibility, but because of how Iranian officials, state media, and regime-aligned commentators have responded.

Iran’s reaction follows a familiar pattern. There has been no direct praise for the murders.

Instead, Iranian outlets have worked to reframe the attack as an understandable—or even defensible—reaction to the Israel-Hamas war, while redirecting outrage toward Israel and the West.

This strategy allows the regime to distance itself from operational responsibility while sustaining the ideological climate that fuels antisemitic violence worldwide.

Iranian state media coverage was notably clinical on the surface. The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Tehran’s official media, reported the basic facts: a shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration, multiple fatalities, and ongoing investigations by Australian authorities.

Missing, however, was any moral condemnation of the attack or recognition of antisemitism as a motivating factor. Instead, IRNA quickly pivoted, characterizing Israeli reactions as “harsh” and “unprecedented” and situating the massacre within the broader narrative of Gaza.

Iranian coverage repeatedly emphasized claims about civilian deaths in Gaza, citing figures from Hamas-run authorities and presenting them as uncontested fact.

The implication was clear: violence against Jews abroad should be understood through the lens of Israel’s military actions, rather than as terrorism targeting a religious minority.

By embedding the Bondi Beach attack within a Gaza-focused narrative, Iranian media effectively shifted blame from the perpetrators to Jewish collective identity itself.

That narrative was taken further by regime-aligned commentators. Lebanese journalist Hadi Hoteit, who identifies himself as a correspondent for Iran’s state-run Press TV, posted on social media questioning whether the attacker should even be labeled a terrorist.

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Democrat Hank (Guam Might Tip Over) Johnson Agrees With Iran That America is the ‘Great Satan’

You may remember Democrat Rep. Hank Johnson for his famous suggestion that Guam could ‘tip over’ if there are too many people there. He is not exactly known for his intellect.

During a recent appearance on the Dean Obeidallah podcast, Johnson said that America is in fact, the ‘Great Satan’ as it has been called by our enemies. Johnson did not mention Iran specifically, but this is a line they are known for.

How is this idiot still a member of congress? Aren’t the people of Georgia embarrassed by this?

Mediaite has details:

Johnson offered his evaluation of his country after host Dean Obeidallah submitted that President Donald Trump’s strikes on alleged drug runners in the Western Hemisphere were “defining us as some kind of-, like a Putin-esque type of nation.”

“Yeah, we are the world’s No. 1 bully, and we’re using our immense, unrivaled power to rule over those who have less power. And we’re doing it with impunity,” declared Johnson. “And this sends a shocking message to the world that America is indeed the-, what did they used to call? The great hand of Satan, or something like that?

I mean, America under the Trump regime is demonstrating that that moniker was entirely accurate. The Great Satan, that’s what we have become in this country when we can start killing people with impunity. It’s really shocking to the conscience, and it’s an affront to our basic humanity. No longer can Americans say that we are exceptional.”

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Iran’s Executions Reach Decade High

Iranian authorities have executed over 1,000 people between January and September 2025, the highest number of yearly death penalties conducted in Iran that Amnesty International has recorded in at least 15 years.

As Statista’s Tristan Gaudiat shows in the chart below, within less than nine months, the number of people executed by the regime has already surpassed last year’s grim total of 972 executions.

These figures are likely low estimates due to the Iranian authorities not publishing such data publicly.

According to Amnesty, the Iranian regime has increased its use of the death penalty since the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement uprising, as a tool of state repression and to crush dissent.

In 2025, the authorities have further intensified executions in the aftermath of the escalating hostilities between Israel and Iran, under the guise of national security.

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Incoming: Millions of Water Refugees from Iran

Tehran is at risk of becoming uninhabitable due to a severe drought that has led to a severe water shortage. The drought has been the catalyst to expose decades of government mismanagement that caused Iran’s water supply to run dry. Now, the government is prepared to issue a city-wide evacuation notice in Tehran if the situation worsens.

Rain will not be sufficient to fill the dry reservoir, which was brought about by government mismanagement—farmers protested against the government in 2018 when water levels were low. Protests erupted in 2021 in the southern Khuzestan province as the people blamed the government for water mismanagement. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) controls construction over the main, poorly planned dam, which has resulted in dry rivers and wetlands. Salinity of the water supply has led to a loss of fertile agricultural land. For example, the Govtvand Damn on the Karun River caused saltwater to destroy nearby land over a decade ago, and the situation has not been resolved.

Over 75% of Iran’s land is experiencing groundwater depletion. IRGC-controlled industries receive water as a first priority, and this is used for everything from agriculture to crypto mining. Rural areas are the last to receive water, as it is carefully regulated and rationed by the government. The government has built several new dams with no concern for the ecological implications of diverting water. It is well-known that the nation uses outdated agricultural practices that often require a vast amount of water.

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Iran begins cloud-seeding operations as severe drought bites

The Iranian authorities have launched cloud-seeding operations to induce rainfall as the country 

faces its worst drought in decades, state media reported.

“Today, a cloud-seeding flight was conducted in the Urmia Lake basin for the first time in the current water year (which begins in September),” the official Irna news agency said late on Nov 15.

Urmia, in the north-west, is Iran’s largest lake, but has largely dried out and turned into a vast salt bed due to drought.

Irna added that further operations would be carried out in the provinces of East and West Azerbaijan.

Cloud seeding involves spraying particles such as silver iodide and salt into clouds from aircraft to trigger rain.

In 2024, Iran announced it had developed its own technology for the practice.

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Iran Tells UN It Holds US Responsible for Israeli Bombing Campaign That Killed Over 1,000

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has sent a letter to top UN officials calling for the US to be held accountable for Israel’s attacks on Iran during the 12-Day War, which killed more than 1,000 people, including senior military officials, nuclear scientists, and many civilians.

In the letter, Aragchi cited Trump’s recent comments about how he was “in charge” of the Israeli attacks. “Israel attacked first. That attack was very, very powerful. I was very much in charge of that,” Trump told reporters on November 6. “When Israel attacked Iran first, that was a great day for Israel because that attack did more damage than the rest of them put together.”

Aragchi said the attacks on Iran violated international law and called for compensation. “The Islamic Republic of Iran reserves its full and unimpeachable right to pursue, through all available legal means, the establishment of accountability for the responsible States and individuals and to secure compensation for the damages sustained,” he wrote.

The only direct airstrikes that the US launched during the war were the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, but the US supported the Israeli attacks by refueling Israeli jets throughout the 12 days, according to reports in Israeli media. The Trump administration also engaged in a deception campaign aimed at keeping Iran off guard before the initial Israeli attack.

Israel conducted its first airstrikes on Iran on June 13, two days before the US and Iran were scheduled to hold another round of nuclear negotiations. Hours before the initial bombing started, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was committed to a “diplomatic solution” with Iran.

According to Iran’s Foundation for Martyrs and Veterans Affairs, at least 1,100 people were killed in Iran during the bombing campaign, including 132 women and 45 children. The US-funded Washington-based NGO Human Rights Activists in Iran, which is very critical of the Iranian government, has said that it identified 436 civilians and 435 members of Iran’s security forces who were killed. According to Israeli figures, 28 people were killed in Israel by Iranian missile attacks, all but one of them being civilians.

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“We May Have To Evacuate Tehran”: Iranian President’s Remarks Stun Amid Water Crisis

Coming off a very ‘hot’ geopolitical summer which saw Israel and the US attack Tehran and the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy facilities, Iran is now facing yet another immensely threatening crisis amid historic drought: lack of water for the population of 90+ million.

Rainfall has been at record lows, causing reservoirs to be nearly empty, in an already arid Middle East climate. The situation has grown so acute that President Masoud Pezeshkian has warned that if the drought persists for another month, Tehran’s water would have to be rationed. But this appears to be happening currently, as no rain is expected for at least the next ten days.

Already Iranians are being urged to conserve water and only use what’s available for the most pressing needs. Pezeshkian has actually said something stunning and unprecedented on Monday, though some are describing it as obvious hyperbole: 

“If rationing doesn’t work,” Pezeshkian said, “we may have to evacuate Tehran.“

The alarming statement resulted in an avalanche of criticism in Iranian media, also with former Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi dismissing the idea as “a joke” and saying that “evacuating Tehran makes no sense at all”.

Some regional analysts and officials report an over 90% decrease in rainfall compared with last year. The NY Times summarizes of how dire the situation is:

Iran’s officials have begun rationing water in the capital, Tehran, amid a drought so severe that the president has warned the capital may need to be evacuated.

The country is facing the worst drought in six decades, and major dams are at critically low levels. Water authorities this week said the main dams feeding Tehran, on which more than 10 million people depend, were at 5 percent capacity.

On Sunday, the spokesman for Iran’s water industry, Isa Bozorgzadeh, told reporters that water pressure would be lowered from midnight until the morning “so that we can both reduce urban leakage and create an opportunity for city reservoirs to refill.”

People have in some cases taken to TikTok and other social media to show that faucets in their homes have stopped producing water for hours at a time.

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Tulsi Gabbard Claims Trump Has Ended Regime Change Wars, Ignoring His Regime Change Wars In Iran and Venezuela.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently claimed that under the current Trump administration, America’s regime change wars are over.

At a Bahrain security summit, Gabbard said, “For decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation building, It was a one-size-fits-all approach, of toppling regimes, trying to impose our system of governance on others, intervene in conflicts that were barely understood and walk away with more enemies than allies.”

Along with this, she implied that “America’s former strategy of ‘regime change or nation building’ had ended under President Donald Trump”.

The idea that America’s regime change policy has ended under Trump would be news to Iran and Venezuela, where Trump has attempted/is attempting to carry out regime change.

Last June, Trump joined in on Israel’s bombing of military infrastructure in Iran.

While the bombing was sold as an attempt to stop Iran from getting Nuclear Weapons, Trump’s own annual threat assessment report from the intelligence community from March of this year found no evidence Iran was building or planning on building a nuclear weapon, writing, “We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003” .

In a later interview with The Daily Caller, Trump admitted he carried out the Iran bombing for Israel, saying, “nobody has done more for Israel than I have, including the recent attacks with Iran”.

In a speech to the Israeli Knesset last month, Trump bragged about his Iran bombing, along with a list of other pro-Israel policies and went on to brag that his pro-Israel donor Miriam Adelson was, “responsible for so much”, adding, “I actually asked her once, I said, ‘So, Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more, the United States or Israel?’ She refused to answer. That means, that might mean, Israel”.

As for Israel’s intention behind the Iran bombing, the Israeli paper Times of Israel reported that leaked Israeli transcripts during the bombing, “make it clear that Israel was also looking to destabilize the regime and even to kill Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei”.

The paper reported that, “Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that Israel needed to ‘keep searching for the leader,’ referring to Khamenei, whom (Israeli defense minister Israel) Katz later said Jerusalem sought to kill”.

The paper reported that, “Netanyahu said entire Iranian neighborhoods and districts should be evacuated, and that Israel should work on destabilizing the Islamic regime”, quoting him saying, “if Khamenei reacts to an American strike, it could be the end of the regime”.

One Trump administration official told the Grayzone that “CIA Director John Ratcliffe and US CENTCOM Commander Gen. Michael Kurilla have become vehicles for Israel’s Mossad and military as they seek to manipulate the US into attacking Iran.” adding “During the Trump administration’s meetings with Israeli intelligence officials … Israelis have demonstrated a single-minded focus on regime change, clamoring for authorization to assassinate Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei”.

The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab uncovered that during the bombing, Israeli intelligence ran a propaganda campaign in Persian on social media, “promoting regime change in Iran.”

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Secret Israeli military bunker located under Tel Aviv tower struck by Iran, analysis shows

The Grayzone has geolocated the underground bunker of an important military command and control center nestled within a densely populated Tel Aviv neighborhood. Known as ‘Site 81,’ the U.S.-built facility houses a hyper-secretive intelligence base.

When Iran struck a series of targets in the heart of north Tel Aviv with ballistic missiles on June 13, Israeli authorities immediately cordoned off the area to prevent journalists from filming the damage. “The building on this compound was just hit,” Trey Yingst of Fox News reported as he arrived that evening at the site of HaKirya, Israel’s Defense Ministry headquarters, and the nearby Azrieli Center. But within seconds, Israeli police officers arrived to aggressively shunt Yingst away from where he was standing, just north of the HaKirya Bridge on the west side of Menachem Begin Road. 

That day, Iranian missiles struck the north tower of the Da Vinci apartment complex roughly 550 meters southwest of Yingst’s location. The Grayzone has determined that the building sits immediately south of the “Canarit” / “Kannarit” Israeli Air Force towers and above an underground military intelligence bunker jointly administered by the US and Israeli militaries. According to an analysis of leaked emails, public documents, and Israeli news reports, the location is host to a highly secretive, electromagnetically shielded intelligence facility known as “Site 81.”

Israel aggressively censors information relating to its urban military and intelligence facilities while simultaneously accusing its adversaries of engaging in ‘human shielding’ – a practice of protecting military targets with civilian populations that is prohibited by international humanitarian law. While the existence of a U.S. Army project to expand Site 81 to a 6,000 square-meter facility was widely reported from government records circa 2013, the specific location remained unknown.

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Trump Threatens To Bomb Iran Again, Says He’s ‘Not Going To Wait So Long’

President Trump on Sunday said that he would bomb Iran again if the country restarts its nuclear program, warning the US was “not going to wait so long this time,” a threat that comes amid growing signs that another US-Israeli war against Iran may be coming.

“The B2s, what they did. Those beautiful flying wings, what they did, they hit every single target. And just in case, we shot 30 Tomahawks out of a submarine,” Trump said in a speech at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, during a celebration of the US Navy’s 250th birthday, referring to the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities on June 22.

Trump claimed in the speech that Iran was going to have a nuclear weapon “within a month,” but before Israel launched the war, US intelligence determined Tehran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon, and even if it chose to, it would take years to actually develop a deliverable weapon.

“They were going to have a nuclear weapon within a month,” Trump told a crowd of US Navy sailors. “And now they can start the operation all over again, but I hope they don’t because we’ll have to take care of that too if they do, I let them know that. You want to do that, it’s fine, but we’re going to take care of that and we’re not going to wait so long.”

Trump went on to say that he had B-2 pilots visit him in the Oval Office, who said the US had been working on plans to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities for 22 years, but that no president before him wanted to do it.

The president has previously acknowledged that he bombed Iran on behalf of Israel. “Look, nobody has done more for Israel than I have, including the recent attacks with Iran, wiping that thing out,” he said in an interview with the Daily Caller published on September 1.

Since the ceasefire that ended the 12-day US-Israeli war on Iran, Trump has threatened to bomb Iran again several times. At the same time, the Trump administration is demanding that Iran enter negotiations to give up its nuclear enrichment program and place limits on its ballistic missiles, demands that Iranian officials have made clear are a non-starter.

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