Tag: iran

Guess Which Crazy Place Just Criminalized WALKING THE DOG

The ruling elites of the Islamic Republic of Iran are not known worldwide for their friendly, sunny dispositions; in fact, they have a long and ever-growing list of pet hates, including America, Israel, women (at least if their heads are uncovered and they’re out in public), and man’s other best friend, dogs. The ruling Iranian mullahs have now extended a ban that was already in effect in over twenty Iranian cities to the entire country: it is now against the law to walk the dog. That means, of course, that while private ownership of dogs as pets is ostensibly permitted in Iran, it has for all intents and purposes been outlawed.

Wamiz, a French-language site devoted to news of our four-legged friends, reported on Tuesday that anyone walking a dog “on the streets of Iran now risks more than just a fine – and it’s all down to deeply religious reasons.” Walking a dog has been illegal for years in Tehran and many other cities, and now there is nowhere in the entire Islamic Republic that you can take your dog for a walk and not risk running afoul of the nation’s feared morality police. 

The ban is designed, according to Iranian authorities, to “maintain public order, ensure security and protect public health.” Wamiz, however, notes that “critics suspect a cultural-political message behind the crackdown.” This because for many Islamic hardliners in Iran, having a dog as a pet is not just unclean, but also shows that the dog owner has succumbed to the Satanic lure of the Western lifestyle. There are few things one can do to arouse more suspicion among Iranian authorities.

Owning a dog is such a bad thing to do in the Islamic Republic of Iran that the Ayatollah Khamenei himself has emphasized that “keeping dogs for reasons other than herding, hunting, and guard dogs is to be considered reprehensible.” He explained that “walking dogs damages Islamic culture as well as hygiene and the peace of others.”

Why would walking a dog damage Islamic culture? Quite simply, because Islam hates dogs. This goes for Shi’ite Islam, the dominant religion of Islam, as well as Sunni Islam, to which the overwhelming majority of Muslims worldwide adhere. Shi’ite collections of Muhammad’s words and deeds attribute quotes to him including “It is detestable for a Muslim to allow a dog to live in his house” (Al-Kafi H 12735, ch. 12, h 1); “Whoever keeps a dog, every day one qirat (a certain unit of measurement) is reduced from the (good) deeds of his owner” (Al-Kafi H 12736, ch. 12, h 2); and “There is nothing good in dogs except hunting dogs or that which guards cattle.” (Al-Kafi 12738, Ch. 12, h 4)

And so, Wamiz says, while “officially, keeping dogs isn’t banned in Iran, but anyone who has a four-legged friend lives an increasingly dangerous life.” The Iranian authorities are notorious, and feared and hated, worldwide for killing a woman they had arrested, Mahsa Amini, for not wearing her headscarf properly. In light of that and so many other incidents like it, it is no small matter for ordinary citizens even to consider flouting the rules of the regime. And those rules appear to be forever multiplying: “Authorities have repeatedly issued bans in recent years that prohibit taking dogs in cars or to parks or public spaces.”

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French Intelligence Chief: US Overstated Iran Strike Impact & We Don’t Know Where The Uranium Is

The head of France’s foreign intelligence agency stated Tuesday that last month’s Israeli and American airstrikes on Iran had destroyed only part of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, though the reality is that the exact whereabouts of the remaining material are unknown.

Chief of the country’s Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) Nicolas Lerner said in a televised interview the strikes had merely delayed Iran’s nuclear program by several months.

“Our assessment today is that each of these stages has been very seriously affected, very seriously damaged,” he said. “The nuclear program, as we knew it, has been extremely delayed, probably many months,” he added.

While France has some indications of where Iran’s uranium might be, Lerner emphasized in the remarks that definitive confirmation would only be possible once the UN’s atomic watchdog resumes inspections in the country; however, the problem is that Tehran just formally booted IAEA inspectors from the country.

“Today we have indications (on where it is), but we cannot say with certainty as long as the IAEA does not restart its work. It’s very important. We won’t have the capacity to trace it (the stocks),” Lerner said.

Iranian officials have accused IAEA officials of actually spying on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program, secretly passing information on to Tel Aviv and Washington, which helped with targeting in the recent 12-day war.

Lerner’s assessment somewhat partially aligns with the view of US intelligence and the military, given that last week Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the strikes likely pushed Iran’s nuclear ambitions back by one to two years.

But the Trump admin has consistently claimed that Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan had been destroyed, amid conflicting reports and some international pushback on his assertions.

Other Western officials have indicated a setback of merely “months”. And even some US intelligence officials have been quoted in CNN and the NY Times giving a similar assessment.

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Iran ‘Rapidly’ Beefs Up Air Defenses With Chinese Help After Israel Ceasefire

Iran has taken possession of Chinese surface-to-air missile batteries as Tehran rapidly moves to rebuild defensives destroyed by Israel during their recent 12-day conflict, sources have told Middle East Eye.

The deliveries of Chinese surface-to-air missile batteries occurred after a de-facto truce was struck between Iran and Israel on June 24, an Arab official familiar with the intelligence told MEE.

Another Arab official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive intelligence, said that the US’s Arab allies were aware of Tehran’s efforts to “back up and reinforce” its air defenses and that the White House had been informed of Iran’s progress. 

The officials did not say how many surface-to-air missiles, or SAMs, Iran had received from China since the end of the fighting. However, one of the Arab officials said that Iran was paying for the SAMs with oil shipments.

China is the largest importer of Iranian oil, and the US Energy Information Administration suggested in a report in May that nearly 90 percent of Iran’s crude and condensate exports flow to Beijing.

For several years, China has imported record amounts of Iranian oil despite US sanctions, using countries such as Malaysia as a transshipment hub to mask the crude’s origin.

“The Iranians engage in creative ways of trading,” the second Arab official told MEE. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump likely heavily discussed Iran and its nuclear program when they meet on Monday. 

MEE reached out to the White House for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication. 

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Iran: Reward to Assassinate President Trump Rises – Jumps to $21 Million

The THAAR.IR regime-linked website in Iran is offering over $21 million to the person who assassinates President Donald Trump.

The reward size increased by several million in recent weeks.

The reward was first reported at the Iran So Far Away Substack.

The website was also includes several reasons why they are urging the assassination of the US leader.

The so-called crimes include bombing the Iranian nuclear sites, calling the regime ‘terrorists’, killing terror leader Qassem Soleimani and exiting the lousy JCPOA nuclear agreement.

An Iranian Ayatollah in June issued a fatwa calling on Muslims worldwide to assassinate President Trump.

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Israel covered up Iranian hits on military sites – Telegraph

Israel concealed that Iranian missiles hit several key military sites across the country during the recent 12-day war, The Telegraph reported on Saturday, citing radar data.

The data, provided to the British paper by Oregon State University researchers who track bomb damage using satellite radar, indicates that six Iranian missiles hit five military facilities in the north, south, and center of Israel, including a major air base, an intelligence gathering center, and a logistics base. The extent of the reported damage is unclear.

However, the hits were not publicly reported due to heavy military censorship, according to the report. When pressed on the issue, the Israel Defense Forces, declined to comment, only saying that “all relevant units maintained functional continuity throughout the operation.”

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This Is Israel’s War – Not Our War

President Trump, to his credit, demanded a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Both countries agreed to it. Then, the president became very angry with Israel because, as he said, “As soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs the likes of which I’ve never seen before.”

But as I write this column, the ceasefire is still in effect. I hope it lasts. However, just two days before the ceasefire, we dropped ten 30,000-pound bunker bombs on Iran, a country that had not even shot one bullet at us.

Please, God, let this be the end of our involvement in the war between Israel and Iran.

This is Israel’s war. It is not our war. Netanyahu and Israel First neocons led us into a very unnecessary war in Iraq that cost the lives of so many young Americans, and led to the blinding and maiming of thousands more. It was not worth their sacrifice.

Donald Trump was elected as president in 2016 primarily because of his opposition to the war in Iraq, and because he promised to put America First.

The overwhelming majority of Americans – both Democrats and Republicans – do not want this country stuck in another war in the Middle East.

This is not our war; it is Netanyahu’s war. The very respected foreign policy expert and Columbia professor, Jeffrey Sachs, a Jew, has described Netanyahu as “one of the most violent and dangerous people in this world.”

Tom Friedman, the longtime New York Times columnist and also a Jew, wrote in his column of May 9 that “Netanyahu is not our friend.”

Israel claimed it had killed Iran’s top eight generals and its nine leading nuclear scientists even before the U.S. dropped its bombs.

Israel also claimed it had destroyed Iran’s ground-based air defense capabilities and had achieved total air superiority even before we got involved.

If their claims are true, Israel was already winning this war. They started this war, let them finish it – without us.

Israel supposedly had two main goals in invading Iran: To stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program and to foster regime change there.

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MI6 fueled Ukraine proxy war and fabricated intel on Iran – Grayzone investigative journalist

The UK Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6, has played a central role in spreading false intelligence and engaging in provocative actions aimed at escalating global conflicts, British whistleblower and investigative journalist for The Grayzone, Kit Klarenberg, has told RT.

Speaking to host Rick Sanchez on Thursday, Klarenberg said MI6 was at the forefront of efforts to push the West deeper into the Ukraine conflict.

“I have since the very start of the Ukraine proxy war been reporting on how Britain is leading this effort,” he said, adding that many see MI6 as merely a tool of the CIA, but “no, they go into business for themselves all the time.”

Klarenberg pointed to the 2022 bombing of the Kerch Bridge, which connects Crimea with mainland Russia, claiming it was orchestrated by British operative and NATO adviser Chris Donnelly as part of an effort to pull Washington further into the conflict.

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Britain’s Long History of Spying on Iran

As bombs fell on Iran last month, the U.K. government claimed it had “not participated” in the military action led by Israel and the U.S. 

But British spy agencies have a long history of meddling in Iran, with everything from covert influence operations, to secretly selling chemical weapons materials to the regime.

In one case, the U.K. spy agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) even created a network of fake Twitter accounts to secretly monitor Iranian opposition activists – the very people working to remove supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei from power.

Coup

British spies have targeted Iran for decades, driven by commercial profit and regional control.

In 1951, when the country’s secular prime minister, Mohammed Mosaddeq, nationalised the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later known as BP), the British ambassador wrote: “It is so important to prevent the Persians from destroying their main source of revenue … by trying to run it themselves.”

Two years later, the U.K. and U.S. secretly backed a coup to oust Mosaddeq and centralise power under a repressive “pro-Western” regime. 

Declassified files have since revealed the central role played by MI6, which recruited agents and bribed members of Iran’s Parliament. In doing so, one former spy claimed they spent “well over a million and a half pounds”. 

The U.K. and U.S. then supported Iran’s dictator, the shah, for the next 25 years. 

By 1979, the Iranian Revolution saw the establishment of the Islamic Republic led by another dictator, Ayatollah Khomeini. But this did not stop British spies from collaborating with the regime when it was in their interests.

For instance, in 1983, British intelligence provided Khomeini with a list of Iranians allegedly working for the Soviet Union. The intelligence was used to round up over 1,000 communists, as many as 200 of whom were executed. Meanwhile Iran’s communist party, the Tudeh, was banned and forced underground. 

Secret relations were again exploited in the early 1990s, when MI6 helped supply Iran with materials to make chemical weapons — despite its own ban on such sales. 

Britain’s aim was supposedly to use the deals as a way to insert operatives into the Iranian government and gather intelligence about its weapons programmes.

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Media Celebrate International Aggression Against Iran

Aggression is widely understood as the most serious form of the illegal use of force under international law. At the post–World War II Nuremberg Trials, British Judge Norman Birkett said:

To initiate a war of aggression…is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 lists seven acts that constitute aggression, including:

  • The invasion or attack by the armed forces of a state of the territory of another State….
  • Bombardment by the armed forces of a state against the territory of another state, or the use of any weapons by a state against the territory of another state.

In a clear instance of such aggression, 125 US military aircraft (along with a submarine) unleashed 75 weapons against Iran on June 21, including 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs), each of which weighs 30,000 pounds (BBC, 6/23/25). The MOPs are the most powerful non-nuclear weapons in the US arsenal (Democracy Now!, 6/23/25).

Rather than condemning this blatant violation of international law, US corporate media commentators gushed over what the Boston Globe (6/24/25) called a “brilliant military operation.” The Wall Street Journal (6/22/25) gave President Donald Trump “credit…for meeting the moment.”

To the New York Times’ Bret Stephens (6/22/25), Trump made “a courageous and correct decision that deserves respect.” “The president acted before it was too late,” he wrote. “It is the essence of statesmanship.

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Report Estimates US Used $1.25 Billion Worth of THAAD Interceptors To Defend Israel From Iranian Missiles

A report from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz estimates that the US used 93 interceptors from its THAAD missile defense system to defend Israel from Iranian missiles during the 12-day US-Israeli war against Iran.

At $13 million per interceptor, that means the US launched an estimated $1.25 billion worth of THAAD munitions during the war. The Israeli military also used its Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 interceptors, which are jointly produced with the US. The Haaretz report said that the total cost of the Arrow and THAAD interceptors used was about $1.5 billion.

Haaretz reached its figures using open-source videos that showed 84 interceptors being launched from Israel during eight Iranian missile salvos. Extrapolating from there, the paper estimated that the US and Israel launched an estimated 195 interceptors, including the 93 THAADs, 80 Arrow 3s, and 22 Arrow 2s.

A report from Military Watch Magazine came up with similar numbers, estimating the US used 60 to 80 THAAD interceptors during the war, accounting for 15% to 20% of its global THAAD arsenal. The Biden administration first sent a THAAD system to Israel and about 100 troops to operate it in October 2024, ahead of an Israeli attack on Iran.

In April of this year, reports said the US sent a second THAAD battery to Israel, which would mean that the US has two of its seven THAAD missile defense systems stationed in Israel.

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