Tag: iran

IAEA Chief Says There’s ‘No Proof’ Iran Working Toward a Nuclear Bomb

Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reaffirmed on Tuesday that his organization had “no proof” that Iran decided to build a nuclear bomb ahead of Israel’s attacks on the country.

Grossi made the comments in an interview with CNN host Christiane Amanpour, who brought up the fact that US intelligence had also assessed there was no evidence Iran was working toward a nuclear weapon.

“What we informed and what we reported was that we did not have — as in coincidence with some of the sources you mentioned there, that we did not have any proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon,” Grossi said.

He added that the IAEA couldn’t say whether or not there was “clandestine” activity that it wasn’t aware of, but based on available evidence, there was no indication that Iran was attempting to weaponize its nuclear program.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched his war with Iran based on the claim that Iran was advancing toward nuclear weapons. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the US was not convinced by Israel’s intelligence that Iran had made the decision to build a nuclear bomb, and other reports say the US still assessed Tehran wasn’t seeking one ahead of Israel’s attacks.

Grossi brought up the fact that Iran has a stockpile of uranium enriched at the 60% level, but it has not attempted to enrich at the 90% level needed for weapons-grade, and Iranian officials had made clear they were willing to reduce enrichment levels and get rid of the stockpile of highly enriched uranium in exchange for sanctions relief as part of a deal with the US.

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Working Hard to Justify Israel’s Unprovoked Attack on Iran

Imagine for a moment that Country A launched an illegal and unprovoked attack on Country B. In any sort of objective world, you might expect media coverage of the episode to go something along the lines of: “Country A Launches Illegal and Unprovoked Attack on Country B.”

Not so in the case of Israel, whose special relationship with the United States means it gets special coverage in the US corporate media. When Israel attacked Iran early last Friday, killing numerous civilians along with military officials and scientists, the press was standing by to present the assault as fundamentally justified—no surprise coming from the outlets that have for more than 20 months refused to describe Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as genocide.

From the get-go, the corporate media narrative was that Israel had targeted Iranian military and nuclear facilities in a “preemptive strike” (ABC, 6/13/25), with civilian casualties presented either as an afterthought or not at all (e.g., AP, 6/18/25). (As the Israeli attack on Iran has continued unabated for the past week in tandem with retaliatory Iranian strikes on Israel, the Iranian civilian death toll has become harder to ignore—as, for example, in the Washington Post’s recent profile of 23-year-old poet Parnia Abbasi, killed along with her family as they slept in their Tehran apartment building.)

On Monday, June 16, the fourth day of the assault, the Associated Press reported that Israeli strikes had “killed at least 224 people since Friday.” This figure appeared in the eighth paragraph of the 34-paragraph article; the first reference to Iranian civilians appeared in paragraph 33, which informed readers that “rights groups” had suggested that the number was a “significant undercount,” and that 197 civilians were thus far among the upwards of 400 dead.

Back in paragraph 8, meanwhile, came the typical implicit validation of Israeli actions:

Israel says its sweeping assault on Iran’s top military leaders, uranium enrichment sites and nuclear scientists, is necessary to prevent its longtime adversary from getting any closer to building an atomic weapon.

That Israel’s “preventive” efforts happened to occur smack in the middle of a US push for a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue has not proved to be a detail that is overly of interest to the US media; nor have corporate outlets found it necessary to dwell too deeply on the matter of the personal convenience of war on Iran for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu—both as a distraction from the genocide in Gaza, and from his domestic embroilment in assorted corruption charges.

In its own coverage, NBC News (6/14/25) highlighted that Netanyahu had “said the operation targeted Iran’s nuclear program and ‘will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.’” Somehow, it is never deemed worth mentioning in such reports that it is not in fact up to Israel—the only state in the region with an (undeclared) nuclear arsenal, and a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—to be policing any perceived nuclear “threat.” Instead, Israeli officials are given ample space, time and again, to present their supposed cause as entirely legitimate, while getting away with murder—not to mention genocide.

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President Trump Told Netanyahu To ‘Keep Going’ in Iran

President Trump said on Wednesday that he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call a day earlier to “keep going” with his attacks on Iran.

The president told reporters that Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for his role in war crimes in Gaza, is a “good man” who has been treated “very unfairly” by his own country. “He’s a wartime president. Going through this nonsense — ridiculous,” Trump said.

Trump’s comments about Netanyahu come amid anticipation over whether or not the US will enter Israel’s war with Iran directly by launching airstrikes. The US has supported the assault by providing weapons and intelligence and intercepting Iranian missiles and drones, but so far hasn’t launched direct strikes of its own.

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AIPAC Demands Democrats “Stand With Israel” on Iran

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been furiously urging House Democrats to release messages of steadfast support for Israel in its war with Iran, the Prospect and Drop Site News have learned, even as bipartisan lawmakers come together on a War Powers Act resolution to prevent U.S. troops or funds being used in yet another Middle East conflagration.

One member relayed that a colleague had received literally 100 phone calls from members of AIPAC and its allied pressure groups. AIPAC wants House Democratic members to state explicitly that they “stand with Israel” in its actions against Iran aimed at destroying the Islamic Republic’s nuclear capability, and add that Iran “must never have a nuclear weapon.”

In addition, AIPAC has taken particular pains to denigrate the moderate pro-Israel group J Street, both in private conversations with members of Congress and in public, picking a fight aimed at blocking any Democrats from using J Street as cover to deviate from AIPAC’s maximalist position. “They’re worried their members in Congress may start to shift toward J Street and they’re trying to head that off,” said an aide to one Democrat.

“I did see that AIPAC took issue with my statement,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state. “They were taking on J Street for endorsing me, which was ridiculous.” To get a sense of how extreme AIPAC’s demands are, note that J Street’s own statement merely calls for diplomacy while still supporting Israel. “We urge the Trump Administration to meaningfully pursue a diplomatic resolution to this conflict as quickly as possible while making clear the US will do what is necessary to defend Israel and US troops from retaliation,” the statement read.

AIPAC issued the same tweet in response to any statement that fell short of its expectations, such as one by Rep. Greg Casar of Texas, which called for a diplomatic resolution: “Consistent pattern: J Street endorsees issue anti-Israel statements. @jstreetdotorg is many things, but it’s not pro-Israel.”

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Discredited Neocon Talking Points From The Iraq War Are Back, Lazily Re-Purposed For Iran

Remember all the infamous one-liners from the Global War on Terror? In the years after 9/11, when the neocon establishment in Washington was pushing ahead with its disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were everywhere. 

It’s a slam dunk case! We have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here. We’ll be greeted as liberators. Islam is a religion of peace. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom.

Those last two are direct quotes from President George W. Bush, the man most responsible — whether through extreme naiveté or extreme duplicity — for propagating these ridiculous slogans and using them to justify decades-long wars that ended in ignominy for the United States. You’d think that after Iraq and Afghanistan this kind of rhetoric would be totally discredited. But you’d be wrong.

Over the past few days, almost since the moment Israel began bombing Iran, we’ve seen the reappearance of almost all the old GWOT rhetoric. Then as now, the purpose is to justify a U.S. military adventure abroad and gaslight the American people into supporting regime change in Iran.

For those of us who were in high school and college during and immediately after 9/11, who saw the propaganda play out in real time, it’s an amazing thing to witness what’s happening now.

In particular, the point about needing to stop Iran before it gets a nuclear weapon is almost word-for-word how Iraq hawks argued for a preventative war against Saddam Hussein in 2003. Iraq’s WMDs had to be destroyed, we were told, before they could be used in a terror attack against the U.S. that would dwarf 9/11. 

For those keeping track, we have been hearing about Iran’s impending nuclear weapon for at least 20 years. Tehran, we’re told, is always just months or weeks away from having deployable nukes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Iran was getting “extremely close” to a nuclear weapon — in 1996.

Similarly, the point about how we have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here — a ubiquitous line in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 — is exactly what Netanyahu argued recently on ABC News. “You want these people to have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to your cities? Today, it’s Tel Aviv. Tomorrow, it’s New York. Look, I understand ‘America First.’ I don’t understand ‘America Dead.’” (It’s worth noting, too, that Netanyahu was a loud voice in the build-up to the Iraq War warning against Saddam’s non-existent nuclear program.)

Remember how we would be “greeted as liberators” in Iraq? That was Vice President Dick Cheney’s line. Turns out the Iranians are also waiting to be liberated and will greet western militaries with open arms! After all, God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom, right? According to Mark Levin, who is old enough to know better, isolationists “stand in the way of Trump and Netanyahu transforming the Middle East” — as if transforming the Middle East is both a feasible and desirable thing for the United States to do.

It’s the same with all these neocon arguments. Remember Ahmed Chalabi? He was the western-friendly Iraqi dissident politician and founder of the Iraqi National Congress, which became a major source of evidence of Iraq’s WMD program and ties to Al Qaeda for the Bush administration. Chalabi himself was at one point floated as a possible post-Saddam leader of Iraq.

Yet nearly all the information Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress provided to U.S. intelligence agencies in the lead-up to the war turned out to be false, including information from an Iraqi defector codenamed named “Curveball,” whose first-hand descriptions of mobile biological weapons factories wound up in intelligence dossiers that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq. In the end, Chalabi’s fabrications were exposed (no WMDs were ever found in Iraq), and he was revealed as almost certainly an Iranian agent.

Now we have a new Chalabi: Reza Pahlavi, the exiled Shah of Iran, who this week released a pro-regime change video. “The Islamic Republic has come to an end and is falling,” he said. “What has begun is irreversible. The future is bright and together we will navigate this sharp turn in history. Now is the time to stand; it is time to take back Iran. May I be with you soon.”

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Suspected Israeli hackers claim to destroy data at Iran’s Bank Sepah

An anti-Iranian government hacking group with potential ties to Israel and a track record of destructive cyberattacks on Iran claimed in social media posts on Tuesday that it had destroyed data at Iran’s state-owned Bank Sepah.

The group — known as Gonjeshke Darande, or “Predatory Sparrow” — hacked the bank because they accused it of helping fund Iran’s military, according to one of the messages posted online.

The hack comes amid increasing hostilities between Israel and Iran, after Israel attacked multiple military and nuclear targets in Iran last week. Both sides have launched multiple missile attacks against each other in the days since.

Reuters could not immediately verify the attack on Bank Sepah. The bank’s website was offline on Tuesday and its London-based subsidiary, Bank Sepah International plc, did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Customers were having problems accessing their accounts, according to Israeli media.

Gonjeshke Darande did not respond to multiple messages sent via social media.

“Disrupting the availability of this bank’s funds, or triggering a broader collapse of trust in Iranian banks, could have major impacts there,” Rob Joyce, the former top cybersecurity official at the NSA, said in a post on X.

In 2022, Gonjeshke Darande claimed responsibility for a cyberattack against an Iranian steel production facility. The sophisticated attack caused a large fire at the facility, resulting in tangible, offline damage. Such attacks are usually beyond the capabilities of activist hackers, security experts say, and would be more in line with the capabilities of a nation state.

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Tulsi Gabbard Breaks Silence After Trump Publicly Rebukes Her Over Her Iran Nuclear Program

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has broken her silence after President Donald Trump publicly refuted her earlier congressional testimony regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The firestorm ignited when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, ever the mouthpiece for the left, pressed President Trump aboard Air Force One about Gabbard’s March testimony before Congress.

“Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that the intelligence community said Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon,” Collins prodded, clearly fishing for a gotcha.

Trump shut her down, stating, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.”

Vice President JD Vance also stepped into the fray on X: “First off, Tulsi’s testimony was in March, and a lot has changed since then. Second, if you look at what she said then, her point about uranium enrichment is consistent with what I wrote above.”

Vance clarified that while Iran is permitted nuclear energy for civilian use, the regime has repeatedly violated its obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), proving its intent to weaponize its nuclear program.

Gabbard, refusing to let the media twist her words, fired back in a statement shared by CNN Capitol Hill reporter Sarah Ferris and confirmed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), according to The Daily Caller.

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Tehran denies western media reports about ‘seeking mediation’ to end war

Iran has categorically denied requesting that regional countries pressure Washington for an end to Israel’s war against the country, as some recent reports in western media have said. 

Sources close to the Iranian Foreign Ministry confirmed to The Cradle on 17 June that no such contacts have been made with any country. 

Lebanese journalist Radwan Mortada also reported on Tuesday that “Iran has not requested any mediation to halt the Israeli war against it.”

“All claims circulating among journalists or foreign reports about its mediation with Arab or foreign countries to halt the war are pure fabrication. All Iranian officials involved in this matter have categorically denied these claims,” Mortada said. 

“This systematic campaign aims to portray Iran as begging for a ceasefire, when in reality, Iran is escalating its attacks more violently by the day. Tehran has made it clear that Israel started the war, but it certainly won’t decide when it ends,” he added. 

On 16 June, Reutersreported that Iran has asked Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Oman to pressure US President Donald Trump to “use his influence” to get Israel to agree to a ceasefire.

The report, which cites two Iranian and three regional sources, also said “Iran is willing to be flexible in the nuclear talks if a ceasefire is reached.”

One of the sources told the outlet that Gulf states are “deeply concerned the conflict will spin out of control,” and have “all appealed to Washington to press Israel to agree to a ceasefire and to resume talks with Tehran towards a nuclear deal.”

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The regime change maniacs are back: Iran is in their sights, and they’ve learned nothing

In 2002, the Bush administration was met with scant resistance from the mainstream media or wider establishment as it drummed up the case for toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. But there were a handful of dissenters, above all Brent Scowcroft. The two-time former national-security adviser (under Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush) urged the nation to consider the law of unintended consequences — and to open its imagination to nightmare scenarios.

A similar imagination is desperately needed today, as hawks in Washington and Jerusalem gleefully fantasize about collapsing the Iranian regime. It’s a bewildering replay of the same overconfidence that gave birth to the Iraq catastrophe — with some of the same figures who pooh-poohed counsels of caution and restraint back then doing the same thing today.

An invasion of Iraq, Scowcroft argued early on, would distract Washington from the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the actors behind 9/11. Drawing on his experience as the elder Bush’s adviser during the Gulf War, he warned that regime change would mean “occupation of an Arab land, hostile Arab land”. Not for months, but for years. In short, Scowcroft predicted everything that went wrong with Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The war’s advocates quickly dismissed his warnings. Reuel Marc Gerecht, the ex-CIA officer turned uber-hawk writing in 2002 in the now-defunct Weekly Standard, insisted that “these fears for the war on terrorism are unfounded”. While William Kristol, speaking to the New Yorker in 2005, “laughed” about Scowcroft’s emphasis on foreign-policy realism and Middle-East stability: “When things go bad, realists look good, until things look really bad.”

By the time Kristol made those remarks, optimism about regime change in Iraq had begun to curdle. An insurgency, incipient at the time, would grow to expand Iran’s influence in Iraq and give rise to what became the Islamic State. This new jihadist group would go on to carve a vast swath across Iraqi and Syrian territory, massacring and enslaving Iraq’s Christian and Yazidi communities, and prompting America to extend its presence in the region, where it remains still.

More than two decades on, all but a few unreconstructed war boosters consider the project a costly, colossal mistake. Contra Kristol et al, the realism of Scowcroft — his anticipation of potential nightmare scenarios — was on the money. Yet here we are, in 2025, poised to attempt the same in Iran: a country that is vaster, more populous, and significantly more complex than Iraq. And we’re doing it with even less planning and forethought.

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Germany’s Merz: Israel Is ‘Doing Dirty Work for Us’ In Iran

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has strongly backed Israel’s war on Iran and said on Tuesday that Israel was “doing dirty work” for the West by launching the assault.

“This is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us. We are also victims of this regime. This mullah regime has brought death and destruction to the world,” Merz said.

The German leader also said that Iran’s nuclear program must be destroyed and suggested that the US should do it since it has heavy bunker-busting bombs that the Israeli military doesn’t possess. “The Israeli army is obviously unable to accomplish that. It lacks the necessary weapons. But the Americans have them,” he said.

When Israel first launched its aggressive war against Iran on Friday, Germany’s Foreign Ministry released a statement condemning the Iranian counterattack. “We strongly condemn the indiscriminate Iranian attack on Israeli territory,” the ministry said.

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