Tag: iran

US Demands of Iran Make Another War Likely

The Trump administration is committed to ramping up the pressure on Iran, The Washington Post has reported, and the demands that the US is making of Tehran make another US-Israeli war on the country more likely.

According to the report, the US is demanding that Iran accept four conditions as a baseline for negotiations, including committing to “meaningful” and direct talks, agreeing to end its uranium enrichment program, imposing curbs on its ballistic missile program, and ceasing funding of its allies in the region.

Before the 12-Day War, Iran made it clear that it wouldn’t end its uranium enrichment altogether, although it was willing to reduce its enrichment to much lower levels and was exploring the idea of an enrichment consortium involving other regional countries. But those negotiations were abruptly ended when Israel launched the war on June 13, two days before Washington and Tehran were set to hold another round of talks.

In the wake of the US-Israeli bombing campaign, Iran has maintained that it won’t give up its nuclear enrichment program, framing it as a matter of national pride. Iranian officials have also made clear they will never accept a deal that would impose limits on its ballistic missile program since the weapons are the only real deterrent Tehran has.

The Post report comes after the UN Security Council reimposed sanctions on Iran under the “snapback” mechanism under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which was triggered by France, the UK, and Germany. Both Iran and Russia have rejected the reimposition of the sanctions as “illegal,” pointing to the fact that the US quit the nuclear deal back in 2018.

Arab officials told the Post that they’re worried another war could be coming. “The region today cannot go through the same Iranian-Israeli war or the other wars of the last two years. The cost is too high,” a senior Arab government official told the paper.

Israeli officials have been threatening that another attack on Iran may come soon. “We are monitoring what is happening across the Middle East and in Iran and are preparing for a variety of scenarios and options; one of them is that we may need to act again against Iran,” a senior IDF official told the Israeli newspaper Maariv on Monday.

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What is a sleeper cell, and why are US officials on high alert?

As tensions escalate between the United States and Iran, the threat of sleeper cells has “never been higher,” according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, although no specific or credible threats have yet emerged.

In a memo obtained by NewsNation, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott said, “Thousands of Iranian nationals have been documented entering the United States illegally and countless more were likely in the known and unknown got-a-ways.”

While there is no current actionable intelligence, Scott emphasized the need for vigilance: “Though we have not received any specific credible threats … the threat of sleeper cells or sympathizers acting on their own, or at the behest of Iran has never been higher.”

U.S. President Donald Trump said on social media that Israel and Iran have agreed to a “complete and total ceasefire” to be phased in over 24 hours.

Trump said on Truth Social that the ceasefire would bring an “Official END” to war, a major change in the hostilities that follows a U.S. strike over the weekend on three Iranian nuclear sites.

What are sleeper cells, and how do they operate?

Sleeper cells are spies or terrorists who operate in rival countries and remain inactive until they are essentially ordered to act.

NewsNation national security contributor Tracy Walder explained that while the concept of Iranian sleeper cells in the U.S. is not new, there may have been a recent influx of agents.Timeline: How US conducted bombings on Iranian nuclear sites 

“They have sleeper cells here. Quite frankly, they have for decades. … They are just waiting for the right moment,” Walder said.

A recent Homeland Security threat assessment confirms that Iran remains a primary state sponsor of terrorism and continues efforts to target both current and former U.S. officials. That assessment echoes similar warnings issued by the Biden administration in 2024.

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Israel Wants ‘Aerial Corridor’ Over Syria to Strike Iran

Tel Aviv’s primary objective in discussions with Damascus is to establish an aerial corridor over Syria so Israel can restart its war against Iran. 

Axios reports that Israel presented the Syrian government, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, with a maximalist agreement that would establish a no-fly zone over Syria. Additionally, Tel Aviv wants a large swath of Syria, from the Israeli border to Damascus, to become a demilitarized zone. 

An Israeli source told the outlet that an essential part of the agreement will be maintaining the ability to use Syrian airspace to attack Iran. “A central principle of the Israeli proposal is maintaining an aerial corridor to Iran via Syria, which would allow for potential future Israeli strikes in Iran,” they said. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started an unprovoked war with Iran in June. Tel Aviv targeted leadership in Tehran, nuclear facilities, and scientists. President Donald Trump joined the war by striking three Iranian nuclear sites that Israel lacked the military capability to destroy. 

Israeli forces currently occupy southern Syria. Israel promised to withdraw its troops from Syria if Damascus accepted the agreement. On Wednesday, Sharaa said a deal with Israel was possible “in the coming days.”

Tel Aviv made a similar agreement with Hezbollah, where Israeli soldiers were scheduled to withdraw from South Lebanon after Hezbollah moved its forces out of the region. However, after the Hezbollah withdrawal, Tel Aviv maintained its occupation. Israel is now demanding that Hezbollah entirely disarm. 

The Israeli invasion of Syria began after President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by al-Sharaa last year. Al-Sharaa, formerly Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, is the founder of al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate. President Donald Trump has met with Sharaa and lifted some sanctions on Syria in a push to get Damascus to make a deal with Tel Aviv.

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Discussions Before Iran War Indicate Nuclear Weapons Issue Was Less Pressing Than Netanyahu Claimed

Private discussions between Israeli officials before launching the war against Iran in June indicate that Tehran’s development of nuclear weapons was not an immediate concern. At the time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran’s nuclear program was an immediate threat. 

“We are at a historic moment with a crucial decision. If we don’t stop [them], within a few years, they will get tens of thousands of kilograms of [nuclear] explosives,” the Prime Minister said at a top-secret meeting the day before launching the war. “Iran has already enriched fissile material at a level that is enough for eight to nine bombs, and they are working on the weaponization.” 

According to The Times of Israel, one unnamed senior military official said the attack would prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon in “the long term” and the war would “improve Israel’s strategic balance.”

Publicly, Netanyahu gave far more alarming warnings about Tehran’s breakout time to build a nuclear weapon. He said, “Iran’s nuclear teams were racing to build nuclear warheads. The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad claimed Iran could assemble a nuclear weapon within 15 days. 

The private discussions also reveal that Israeli officials believed that they would not be able to destroy Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and were depending on Trump entering the conflict. “The basic assumption is that at the end of the operation, Iran will still possess enriched material,” one official said.

Tel Aviv needed the US to destroy the Fordo nuclear facility. One senior official admitted, “Fordo will be destroyed only if the US attacks it.” Setergetic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer was confident that Trump would decide to bomb Fordo and provide Israel with assistance in shooting down Iranian missiles. 

The conversations additionally reveal that Tel Aviv was trying to overthrow the Iranian government, not just destroy its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. 

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U.S. Plan To Disarm Hezbollah Is a Diplomatic Dead End

The United States has given Lebanon until the end of the year to disarm Hezbollah in exchange for ending Israeli military operations there. This proposal, delivered to President Joseph Aoun, offers incremental Israeli withdrawals over the next few months in return for Hezbollah’s gradual dissolution—an outcome that’s nearly impossible in practice and already rejected by the group. Washington’s attempt to link Israeli withdrawals to Hezbollah’s disarmament ignores military and political realities. Disarming the terrorist group is not a matter of transactional diplomacy, but a near-impossible task that risks wasting diplomatic capital while the greater Middle East sinks deeper into instability.

Deputy Special Envoy to the Middle East Morgan Ortagus and U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack delivered the offer, which outlines an Israeli concession of five border points in cooperation with the Lebanese military. Ideal as it sounds, the Iran-backed group has had its teeth sunk into Lebanese civil, political, and even military sectors for decades, and it is the first watershed moment for the legitimacy of Aoun’s new administration. A former army chief, Aoun countered with a point-for-point trade that Israel has since rejected, given the terrorist group’s outright refusal to disarm.

The Lebanese Army still presented the disarmament plan, which won cabinet approval in early September despite Shiite ministers walking out in protest—but it still sidesteps the core problem: Disarmament cannot be bargained with a terrorist organization that’s already embedded in the political and military state. 

In fact, the same Shiite cabinet members who walked out during the discussion were members of Hezbollah’s Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party, the allied Shiite Amal party, and one independent Shiite minister. Simultaneously a foreign terrorist organization and a political party, Hezbollah is a “state within a state,” with deep-seated influence in the Lebanese government that has blocked legislative business and influenced elections. 

Two possible outcomes could have resulted from the deal: Aoun could attempt to disarm Hezbollah and risk another civil war, or the government could stall and prompt Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to intervene militarily. 

Given Israel’s strike in Qatar against Hamas leadership earlier this week, the latter was more probable. Any hope for the former was lost last week when Ortagus visited Lebanon alongside U.S. Army commanders, indicating clearly that the U.S. is lending strategic expertise to help the Lebanese Army execute the plan. Israel has already begun its campaign against Hezbollah sites in northeast Lebanon. Additionally, Israel recently refocused its military personnel and hardware to their two-pronged effort in Gaza and Lebanon, backed by American shipments of military aid as well.

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Israeli intel campaign used US comedian in effort to flip Iranian scientists

A mysterious online campaign linked to Israel’s intelligence services attempted to recruit Iranians to overthrow their government. Some appear to have been placed by an Atlanta-based comedian and influencer.

Desi Banks, an Atlanta comedian and content creator, is known for his light-hearted comic sketches and currently has more than nine million followers on the social media platform Instagram. There is no public record of Banks commenting on sensitive Middle East issues, and each of his ad campaigns on Meta’s platforms relates to his work as an entertainer.

The comedian, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment, seems to have served a surprising role in an apparent Israeli intelligence operation over the last year to recruit members of Iran’s security and intelligence services – including those working in nuclear centers – into aiding the overthrow of their government. Would-be defectors were offered both money and the protection of their families.

Google advertising transparency records show that a production company owned by Banks, Desi Banks Productions LLC, served a set of four Persian-language recruitment ads across at least 19 countries, including the U.S., Sweden, France, Germany, India, and numerous others across the Middle East and Africa.

The four ad campaigns included both overt and deceptive redirections into recruitment pages purporting to be run by Israel’s foreign intelligence services, the Mossad. Others advertise lucrative, tax-free jobs at apparently fictitious international consulting firms.

The most aggressive campaign redirected users to the Mossad’s official, Persian-language recruitment form, advising viewers to activate their virtual private network (VPN) before clicking. According to Google’s ad disclosure portal, this campaign was the sole instance of a Google ad directly linking to the Mossad’s official website, mossad.gov.il.

Germany-based family members of Iranian nuclear engineers appear to be a major focus of the effort, as Germany is the only country identified by the Google ad transparency portal as being targeted with all four ad campaigns.

“You are just one click away from making history,” read the Mossad recruitment ad, captioned atop a darkened cartoon of a man walking down a multi-lane road. “Call Now. The future belongs to you.”

This direct call to espionage was targeted to viewers in at least 18 countries, including the United States.

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US-E3 Snapback Sanctions on Iran: Diplomacy out of the Barrel of a Gun

Iran has voiced a strong rebuke against the recent decision made by France, Germany, and the UK to invoke the UN Security Council’s “snapback” mechanism, which seeks to reimpose sanctions on Tehran regarding its nuclear program. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described this action as “unjustified, illegal, and lacking any legal basis.” He emphasised that Iran is prepared to respond decisively to safeguard its national rights and interests.

Tensions rose in 2025 after Trump’s return to the presidency in January, leading the US to reinstate its “maximum pressure” strategy against Iran amid ongoing negotiations for a new agreement. In June, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), sometimes referred to as “Israel’s spy agency,” declared Iran non-compliant with its nuclear safeguards under the NPT. Following US and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, Tehran ceased cooperation with the IAEA, denying access to its facilities. However, in June, IAEA inspectors had been allowed to return to Iran for the first time since Israel and the US targeted its nuclear facilities. European officials warned that the lack of monitoring and unverified stockpiles of highly enriched uranium pose serious proliferation risks, even though President Trump boasted about having obliterated Iran’s Nuclear facilities. France, Germany, and the UK— also known as the “E3” threatened that if Iran does not engage in meaningful negotiations by the end of August, they would activate the snapback mechanism to conclude by October, when Russia will assume the Council presidency.

DOCUMENT: NPT Safeguards Agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran Resolution adopted on 12 June 2025 during the 1769th session (Source: IAEA)

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Trump Bluntly Explains The US Bombed Iran For Israel

President Trump said in an interview published on Tuesday that no one has done more for the state of Israel than himself and cited his recent airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities as an example.

“So, Israel is amazing, because, you know, I have good support from Israel,” the president told the Daily Caller. “Look, nobody has done more for Israel than I have, including the recent attacks with Iran, wiping that thing out. We, that plane, wiped them out like nobody ever saw before.”

Trump made the comments when asked if he was worried about the growing skepticism among young Republicans when it comes to the US relationship with Israel, and he noted the Israel lobby’s control over Congress, saying it has waned in recent years.

“But when, if you go back 20 years. I mean, I will tell you, Israel had the strongest lobby in Congress of anything or body, or of any company or corporation or state that I’ve ever seen. Israel was the strongest. Today, it doesn’t have that strong a lobby. It’s amazing,” Trump said.

“There was a time where you couldn’t speak bad, if you wanted to be a politician, you couldn’t speak badly. But today, you have, you know, AOC plus three, and you have all these lunatics, and they’ve really, they’ve changed it,” he added.

The criticism of Israel among a small number of members of Congress is no longer limited to Democrats, as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who is considered a strong supporter of President Trump, has recently come out strongly against Israel’s campaign in Gaza and became the first Republican in Congress to label it a genocide. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is also known for his opposition to US aid to Israel and the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC.

“Israel, you would understand this very much, Israel was the strongest lobby I’ve ever seen. They had total control over Congress, and now they don’t, you know, I’m a little surprised to see that,” Trump said.

The president, who is strongly backing Israel’s assault in Gaza, said the military campaign is not good for Israel’s public image. “They may be winning the war, but they’re not winning the world of public relations, you know, and it is hurting them. But Israel was the strongest lobby 15 years ago that there has ever been, and now it’s, it’s been hurt, especially in Congress,” he said.

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Tim Kaine shockingly compares the Declaration of Independence to Iran’s theocratic regime: ‘Extremely troubling’

Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia failed to understand one of America’s basic founding principles and instead likened it to the Iranian regime.

In a Wednesday committee hearing, Kaine insisted that our natural rights are derived from the government, not from God. Kaine went on to say that the notion that our natural rights come from the Creator is “extremely troubling” and compared it to Iran’s theocracy.

Unfortunately for Kaine, the founding fathers disagree with him.

“The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator. That’s what the Iranian government believes,” Kaine said. “It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia law [sic] … and they do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator.”

“The statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.”

Unfortunately for Kaine, the founding fathers disagree with him.

The Declaration of Independence makes very clear that our natural rights come from God and not from the government, as Kaine suggested. In the second paragraph, the Declaration states that “all men are created equal” and that “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Prominent conservatives and politicians were quick to correct Kaine’s misunderstanding of our nation’s core values, even suggesting that he is “not fit to serve.”

“This is a remarkable moment from Tim Kaine,” the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh said in a post on X. “He just announced that the core foundational principle of our country, affirmed in the Declaration of Independence, is ‘extremely troubling’ and ‘theocratic.’ He should be immediately removed from office. Anyone who rejects our nation’s foundational principles is obviously not fit to serve.”

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The U.S. Should Be Skeptical about ‘Iran-Backed’ Militants

Israel carried out airstrikes on Thursday that killed the civilian political leaders of Yemen’s Houthi movement. Though they grossly violated international law, the bombings were nonetheless celebrated in Washington.

Corporate media like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported the strikes as a “symbolic and psychological blow” that demonstrated “improved Israeli intelligence” against the Houthis and their Iranian sponsors, while neocons like Mark Dubowitz of the mysteriously funded Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a pro-Israel think tank, applauded the attack on the “Houthi-controlled terror leadership.”

But despite the “mission accomplished” attitude from Israel and its neoconservative loyalists in America, the attacks will likely do very little to stop the Houthis, whose campaigns reflect Yemen’s own history of resistance rather than Iranian control. The group remains extraordinarily independent, producing much of their own weaponry and pursuing a strategy driven by their own political grievances with Israel and the United States.

Their central grievance is the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide and famine currently being perpetrated against the Palestinians in Gaza, with whom the Houthis identify—because, as political scientist Norman Finkelstein explains, “what was done to Gaza was done to them.”

Before Israel set out to fulfill the demands of its ultra-nationalist politicians to “destroy all of Gaza’s infrastructure to its foundation” and “erase the Gaza strip from the Earth,” Yemen was the country considered to have the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, with over 23 million people in need of humanitarian assistance by 2022.

Yemen’s humanitarian crisis, like Gaza’s today, has been entirely man made. More specifically, it has been perpetrated by Saudi Arabia, the U.S., and Israel. They imposed a brutal blockade and bombing campaign that reportedly caused the deaths of nearly 377,000 people in Yemen between 2015 and 2021, more than 85,000 of whom were children who starved to death.

The Houthis’ identification with the Palestinians of Gaza is therefore neither rooted in religious “fundamentalism” nor in subservience to Tehran—it reflects a deep sense of solidarity forged through parallel suffering at the hands of U.S.-backed clients in the Middle East. This explains why, despite the assassination of its civilian leadership, the Houthis have vowed to “escalate [their] operations as long as Israel continues its policy of genocide and starvation.”

The corporate media largely ignores these motivations, obfuscating the political grievances of Israel’s enemies by recasting them as irrational and intractable. Treating the Houthis as mere Iranian proxies has about as much explanatory power—and serves the same propagandistic function—as George W. Bush’s claim that America suffered the 9/11 attacks because “they hate us for our freedoms.”

By erasing the role of U.S. military action on behalf of Israel in generating the very groups that threaten it, Israel and its American lobby are able to portray Houthi attacks as further evidence of a region-wide Iranian conspiracy to destroy Israel. This axis of resistance, the story goes, simply can’t be reasoned with and potentially threatens the United States as well, therefore requiring unlimited funds and unconditional support from American taxpayers.

As the Israeli government pushes President Donald Trump to attack its regional adversaries, Washington ought to be skeptical of Israel’s intelligence about them, especially regarding the purported threat posed by the so-called “Iran-backed” network of militant groups.

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