Tag: iran

Iran fires 10 missiles at two US bases in the Middle East in retaliation for Trump bombing

Iran has launched at least 10 missiles at the United States’ biggest base in the Middle East and another in Iraq in response to President Trump bombing nuclear labs over the weekend. 

Aerial defenses were activated shortly after a ‘credible threat’ alert was issued to the Al Udeid base in Qatar, which hosts over 10,000 US troops as well as over 100 aircraft, strategic bombers and tankers. 

US bases in Kuwait, Iraq and Bahrain also sounded their air raid sirens shortly after the Al Udeid base was targeted by Iranian missiles. 

President Trump has convened his national security team in the White House as US targets across the world are put on high alert.  

It comes as Iran warned the United States will ‘directly pay’ for strikes on its nuclear facilities ‘rather than standing behind Israel,’ with the Islamic Republic prepared for a war lasting up to two years, a senior Iranian official told reporters.

Tehran’s mission to the UN said the US and Israel, as well as the United Kingdom, France and the International Atomic Energy Agency director personally, will all ‘bear full responsibility for the death of innocent civilians in Iran.’

Trump used 30,000 pound bunker buster bombs to hit its nuclear facilities on Saturday night, then sparked Iranian fury when he raised the prospect of regime change the next day. 

Iranian state media warning that up to 50,000 American soldiers would be returned to Washington in ‘coffins’.

Israel also launched an attack on ‘regime targets’ in Tehran on Monday, with ‘hundreds’ of members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps said to have been killed in a huge wave of strikes.

Keep reading

I’ll Slug You, and If You Resist, I’ll Slug You Harder

U.S. messaging to Iran, courtesy of President Trump, is quite simple: We slugged you (with our bombing attacks on three nuclear sites in your country), and if you don’t like it, we’ll slug you again, even harder, much, much harder.

Iran’s only real choice: “unconditional surrender,” according to the president.

Well, it’s a strategy, I suppose, the one of the abuser, the bully. Do what I want, else you’ll get slugged. Try to fight back, I’ll slug you much much harder. Oh, by the way, I believe in peace. And you can have peace by totally capitulating to me.

Another way of looking at or labeling this stategy: Bombing for Bibi. Yes, I know it’s not just Bibi Netanyahu behind it all. But he’s the chief flatterer, the skilled string-puller, the master manipulator of Trump. Not that it’s entirely hard to manipulate a narcissist who’s driven by money and consumed by his own ego.

So, we have to look to Iran to show a measure of restraint, since the U.S. and Israel won’t. If Iran chooses to fight, especially to hit back at U.S. targets in the region, all bets are off as our country stumbles into what could become World War III.

As Jimmy Dore put it today, No matter who you vote for, you get John McCain. A warmonger. Someone proud to joke about bombing Iran – and crazy enough to do it. Does it really matter if the warmonger is named Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden – or Donald Trump?

Keep reading

Trump Accomplishes Nothing by Bombing Iran While he Endangers U.S. Troops and Citizens

As everyone knows by now, President Trump ordered the U.S. Military in the Middle East to bomb three nuclear sites in Iran last night.

As events rapidly unfolded last night, it was very obvious that this was pre-planned and well choreographed by the U.S. media which basically all reported the same thing at about the same time.

Very shortly after the bombings, President Trump, along with Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Rubio, and Defense Secretary Hegseth gave a brief update to the nation.

Trump proudly announced that Iran’s nuclear sites were “completely obliterated”, something that would have been impossible to verify in such a short time, and that only the U.S. military could accomplish this destruction of Iran’s nuclear program.

Then, he gave thanks to “God” for being able to bomb Iran.

Iranian officials later stated that there was only minor damage at one of the facilities, and that the other two had already been evacuated due to previous Israeli bombings.

From Al Jazeera (live updates):

Iran official says Fordow ‘evacuated, has not suffered irreversible damage’

Mahdi Mohammadi, an adviser to Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, says Iran had been anticipating the US attack on Fordow.

“The site has long been evacuated and has not suffered any irreversible damage in the attack,” Mohammadi wrote in a social media post.

“Two things are certain: First, knowledge cannot be bombed, and second, the gambler will lose this time.”

Keep reading

Closing The Strait Of Hormuz Will Be A Nightmare Scenario For The Global Economy

Our way of life depends on cheap energy.  If you remove cheap energy from the equation, our society will be thrown into a state of chaos.  The Iranians know that closing the Strait of Hormuz is one of the most powerful forms of leverage that they possess, because the world is deeply dependent on the oil that travels through that waterway.  We don’t know exactly how this crisis will play out, because the Strait of Hormuz has never been closed in modern times.  But as I pointed out earlier this month, we were warned that Israel would attack Iran, the global price of oil would rise, and the increase in the price of oil would be blamed on Israel.  And that is precisely what has happened.  Israel has attacked Iran, the global price of oil has been increasing, and many are blaming Israel for what has transpired.  Unfortunately, the truth is that this crisis is just getting started.

On Sunday, it was being reported that the Iranian Parliament “has approved a measure to close the Strait of Hormuz”…

The Iranian Parliament has approved a measure to close the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global oil choke point, after the United States bombed three nuclear sites in Iran, according to Iranian state media on Sunday.

While the Parliament has voted in favor of closing the strait, the final decision rests with the country’s Supreme National Security Council, according to state media.

Of course the Iranian Parliament never would have held this vote if the Supreme National Security Council had not already decided what it was going to do.

At a time when the regime is under threat, there is no way that we are going to be shown any signs of disunity among Iranian leaders.

So what does this mean?

It means that the price of oil is going to go higher.

A lot higher.

Keep reading

US and Israeli Officials Say US Bombing Didn’t Destroy Iran’s Fordow Nuclear Site

Israeli officials and a senior American official have told The New York Times that the US bombing of Iran’s underground Fordow nuclear site didn’t destroy the facility despite President Trump’s pronouncement that the attack “completely and totally obliterated” the nuclear facilities that were targeted.

Two Israeli officials told the paper that the Israeli military’s initial assessment, which is based mainly on satellite images, was that the strikes seriously damaged Fordow but didn’t completely destroy it. They said it appeared that Iran had evacuated the facility and removed enriched uranium, which aligns with a statement from Tehran.

The senior US official also said the bombing didn’t destroy Fordow but insisted the strike had severely damaged it, taking it “off the table.” The official added that not even 12 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs could have destroyed Fordow.

Before the attack, reports said that the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) said in a briefing to officials that in order to destroy Fordow, the US would likely have to drop a tactical nuclear weapon after softening the ground with conventional bombs.

The US military said that in the attack on Fordow and two other nuclear sites in Natanz and Isfahan, US B-2 bombers dropped 14 30,000-pound bunker-busters, known as GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators, or MOPs. Each B-2 can carry two MOPs, suggesting seven bombers were involved in the attack.

The US military, which dubbed the attack “Operation Midnight Hammer,” said a total of 125 aircraft were involved in the bombing and that the aircraft fired a total of 75 guided munitions at two of the sites. US Navy submarines also fired Tomahawk missiles at a third site.

The official line from the Trump administration is that the three nuclear sites that it targeted suffered “severe damage and destruction” but a final assessment is still being made. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi said that Tehran was still “calculating the damages.”

Keep reading

Trump Admits Iran Strikes A “Regime Change” Operation After US Bombed Three Nuclear Sites Saturday

President Donald Trump posted to Truth Social on Sunday, saying it’s “not politically correct to use the term ‘Regime Change,’” before admitting that’s exactly what the U.S. and Israel have in mind when it comes to the ongoing military operations targeting the Middle Eastern nation.

“It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change,’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!” he wrote.

Keep reading

Satellite images undermine Trump’s claim that Iran’s atomic sites were destroyed

President Donald Trump’s decision to order US forces to attack three key Iranian nuclear installations may have sabotaged the Islamic Republic’s known atomic capabilities, but it’s also created a monumental new challenge to work out what’s left and where. 

Mr Trump said heavily fortified sites were “totally obliterated” late on June 21, but independent analysis has yet to verify that claim. Rather than yielding a quick win, the strikes have complicated the task of tracking uranium and ensuring Iran doesn’t build a weapon, according to three people who follow the country’s nuclear programme.

International Atomic Energy Agency monitors remain in Iran and were inspecting more than one site a day before Israel started the bombing campaign on June 13.

They are still trying to assess the extent of damage, and while military action might be able to destroy Iran’s declared facilities, it also provides an incentive for Iran to take its program underground.

Mr Trump dispatched B-2 stealth jets laden with Massive Ordnance Penetrators, known as GBU-57 bombs, to attempt to destroy Iran’s underground uranium-enrichment sites in Natanz and Fordow.

Satellite images taken on June 22 of Fordow and distributed by Maxar Technologies show new craters, possible collapsed tunnel entrances and holes on top of a mountain ridge.

They also show that a large support building on the Fordow site, which operators may use to control ventilation for the underground enrichment halls, remained undamaged. There were no radiation releases from the site, the IAEA reported. 

New pictures of Natanz show a new crater about 5.5 metres in diametre. Maxar said in a statement that the new hole was visible in the dirt directly over a part of the underground enrichment facility.

The image doesn’t offer conclusive evidence that the attack breached the underground site, buried 40 metres under ground and reinforced with an 8-metre think concrete and steel shell.

US Air Force General Dan Caine told a news conference earlier on June 22 that an assessment of “final battle damage will take some time.”

IAEA inspectors, meanwhile, haven’t been able to verify the location of the Persian Gulf country’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium for more than a week. Iranian officials acknowledged breaking IAEA seals and moving it to an undisclosed location. 

Keep reading

Rubio says it’s ‘irrelevant’ whether Iran was actively pursuing a nuke

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday it’s “irrelevant’’ whether the US had intelligence that Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon before bombing it.

Rubio said the mere fact that Iran had “everything they need to build nuclear weapons” justified President Trump’s decision to take action against the theocratic regime.

“That’s irrelevant,” Rubio told CBS’ “Face the Nation” when pressed about US intelligence on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “They have everything they need to build a weapon.”

Earlier this year, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified, “The IC [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

President Trump has split with that assessment, and Gabbard has since contended her words were taken out of context and highlighted other portions of her testimony in which she warned about Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium.

Keep reading

Trump’s attack on Iran is ‘unconditional surrender’ to Israel

Since his election in 2016, Donald Trump’s political opponents have portrayed him as a dangerous, unstable fabulist doing the bidding of a malign, nuclear-armed foreign power.

Having returned to the White House this year, Trump is proving his detractors correct on all counts but one: the location on the map. The rogue state that he’s colluding with — at great peril to the planet — is not Russia, as his most vocal detractors alleged, but Israel.

Israel’s June 13th attack on Iran sabotaged the then-ongoing talks on a new nuclear deal with the United States, and Trump has gone to unprecedented lengths to support its aggression. Trump undercut his own Secretary of State’s claim that Israel had undertaken “unilateral action” by acknowledging that “we knew everything” in advance of what he called a “very successful attack.” Administration officials then disclosed that Trump had previously authorized giving Israel intelligence support for the bombing. Trump then called on Tehran’s 9.8 million residents to evacuate, mused about killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and declared that “we” – meaning Israel – “have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.”

After Iran rejected his demand for “unconditional surrender”, Trump imposed a new deadline of two weeks, only to break it three days later by ordering a US military attack on three Iranian nuclear energy sites, including the deeply buried mountain complex Fordo, which he quickly hailed as a “great success.” Just as with Trump’s diplomacy with Iran, his two-week deadline turns out to have been a ruse whose “goal was to create a situation when everyone wasn’t expecting it,” a senior administration official said.

To wage war on Iran, Trump and his allies have employed the traditional Iraq WMD playbook of ignoring or manipulating the available evidence to fear-monger about a foreign state marked for regime change. Unlike the Iraq war, where the fraudulent case for invading was mostly concocted in-house, Trump has outsourced the job to Israel, while not even pretending to care about public opinion or Congressional approval.

Keep reading

Washington’s Strike on Iran: A Betrayal of Diplomacy, a Gift to War

While global diplomats were still exchanging draft terms to revive the nuclear agreement with Iran, the United States launched airstrikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure. This sudden act of aggression shattered any illusions of American commitment to peaceful negotiation and revealed the enduring pattern of militarized policy in the Middle East.

U.S. officials justified the attack as a response to “escalating nuclear threats.” But Iran had been actively engaged in indirect diplomacy with Washington through European intermediaries. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had not reported any significant violations that would warrant such unilateral military action at this stage. By attacking during ongoing talks, the United States undermined the very framework it once helped build.

The parallels with the 2003 invasion of Iraq are hard to ignore. Once again, Washington leans on threat inflation and manufactured urgency to justify the use of force. Back then, it was Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. Today, it’s Tehran’s enrichment facilities – none of which, according to IAEA data, are currently weaponizing uranium.

Furthermore, the U.S. strike aligns seamlessly with Israeli strategic interests. The Israeli government, facing internal pressure and a prolonged war effort across Gaza and Lebanon, benefits politically from a broadened regional conflict that redirects international scrutiny and consolidates domestic support. As former Iranian diplomat Abbas Araghchi noted, “America’s intervention is a gift to Netanyahu.”

This is not the behavior of a peace-seeking nation. True diplomacy demands restraint, patience, and consistency – traits that Washington increasingly fails to exhibit. If Iran responds with military force, the U.S. will likely frame it as unprovoked aggression, continuing the cycle of demonization that justifies endless intervention.

If the world hopes to prevent another disastrous war in the Middle East, we must call out these reckless actions for what they are: a betrayal of diplomacy and an affront to international law. Instead of protecting global stability, the U.S. has once again opted to provoke instability – for reasons that serve neither peace nor justice.

Keep reading