Tag: iran

Israel Vows To Maintain Air Superiority Over Iran

Though U.S. President Donald Trump helped broker a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, officials in Jerusalem are taking no chances. On Friday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to prepare an “enforcement plan” against Iran that includes a clear threat of future kinetic actions.

The plan calls for “maintaining Israel’s air superiority, preventing nuclear advancement and missile production, and responding to Iran for supporting terrorist activities against the State of Israel,” Katz proclaimed on X. “We will act consistently to thwart threats of this kind. I suggest that the toothless snake’s head in Tehran understand and beware: Operation Rising Lion was just the preview of a new Israeli policy.”

“After October 7th,” Katz added, “immunity is over.” That was a reference to the day in 2023 that Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel that touched off the latest round of bloodshed in the Middle East.

Keep reading

The Real Winners: The Strategic Fallout of the Israel-Iran War

On June 24, US President Donald Trump announced a truce between Israel and Iran following nearly two weeks of open warfare.

Israel began the war, launching a surprise offensive on June 13, with airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, missile installations, and senior military and scientific personnel, in addition to numerous civilian targets.

In response, Iran launched a wave of ballistic missiles and drones deep into Israeli territory, triggering air raid sirens across Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Beersheba and numerous other locations, causing unprecedented destruction in the country.

What began as a bilateral escalation quickly spiraled into something far more consequential: a direct confrontation between the United States and Iran.

On June 22, the United States Air Force and Navy carried out a full-scale assault on three Iranian nuclear sites – Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan – in a coordinated strike dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer. Seven B-2 bombers of the 509th Bomb Wing allegedly flew nonstop from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to deliver the strikes.

The following day, Iran retaliated by bombing the Al-Udeid US military base in Qatar and firing a new wave of missiles at Israeli targets.

This marked a turning point. For the first time, Iran and the United States faced each other on the battlefield without intermediaries. And for the first time in recent history, Israel’s long-standing campaign to provoke a US-led war against Iran had succeeded.

Keep reading

‘War Industry’ Silenced Democrat Opposition On Iran Strikes: Sen. Murphy

A leading Democratic senator has offered a frank and rare explanation for why many in his party are disconnected from everyday Democratic voters when it comes to foreign policy, which for a brief spell during the Bush years was dubbed ‘anti-war’—a platform which pretty much disappeared during the Obama years and later Biden admin.

Senator Chris Murphy was on MSNBC this week to talk about President Trump’s strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, which was not so much as debated much less formally approved by Congress. Murphy pointed out to Chris Hayes that an overwhelming 87% of Democrats expressed disapproval, according to a recent poll, and that 56% of Americans overall opposed the military action.

“I gotta say, if you just looked at elected Democratic members of Congress I don’t think you would think the voting members of the party were as overwhelmingly against this strike as they are compared to the people they send to go represent them in Congress,” Hayes told Murphy in the Tuesday interview, asking, “Do you feel like there’s a pretty big distance on these kinds of issues, between Democratic voters and democratic electeds?”

“I mean yes,” Murphy responded without hesitation. “That’s because, listen, there is a war industry in this town. There just is. There’s a lot of people who make money off of war.

“The military, I love them, they’re capable. But they are always way overly optimistic about what they can do,” the senator added.

“So the American people get it,” Murphy then said. “This town, you know, has, like I said, a degree of optimism and hubris about military action that is derivative of the fact that the war industry spends a lot of money here in Washington telling us that the guns and the tanks and the planes can solve all of our problems.”

Keep reading

The truth behind Trump’s bombings and the huge Iran secret kept from the world that’s hoodwinked all of America

Two days before American B-2 stealth bombers dropped the biggest payload of explosives since World War II on Iran, trucks were seen lining up outside the primary target at Fordow.

Satellite images showed scores of cargo vehicles outside a tunnel entrance to Iran’s key nuclear base inside a mountain.

Donald Trump has insisted that the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program was destroyed in the precision strikes, an assessment backed by the CIA and Israeli intelligence.

But there was also a frantic effort to move centrifuges and highly enriched uranium before US bombers attacked, the key question for the Pentagon now is: where did it go?

One possibility, according to experts, is a secret facility buried even deeper under another mountain 90 miles south of Fordow: ‘Mount Doom.’

In Farsi, the potential new ground zero for Iran’s nuclear program is Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, otherwise known in English as ‘Pickaxe Mountain,’ located in the Zagros Mountains in central Iran on the outskirts of one of the regime’s other nuclear sites at Natanz.

‘It is plausible that Iran moved centrifuges and highly enriched uranium (HEU) to secret or hardened locations prior to the recent strikes – including possibly to facilities near Pickaxe Mountain,’ Christoph Bluth, professor of international relations and security at the University of Bradford, told the Daily Mail.

Previous intelligence had showed ‘large tunnels being bored into the mountain, with possible infrastructure for an advanced enrichment facility,’ he claimed.

‘The site may be buried 100 meters below the surface. So it is conceivable that advanced centrifuge cascades have been hidden there, but there is no specific evidence at this time to confirm where centrifuges and fissile material has been moved to.’

Keep reading

The Battle over Battle Damage Assessment at Fordo

There are some questions being raised over the absolute confidence that the damage at the Fordo nuclear site in Iran was actually destroyed.  A solidly reliable source of Fake News, CNN, has now assumed the role of expert “Battle Damage Assessor”. Anyone can be a Battle Damage Assessor – it is very similar to being a “Sniper Profiler” in the 2002 Washington D.C. Sniper Episode – a conveyor belt of “Sniper Profilers” appeared out of nowhere flooding the airwaves with commentary and descriptions that proved to be wildly inaccurate.

CNN reported on their view of the Battle Damage Assessment (BDA):

“The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months, according to an early US intelligence assessment that was described by seven people briefed on it.

The assessment, which has not been previously reported, was produced by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm. It is based on a battle damage assessment conducted by US Central Command in the aftermath of the US strikes, one of the sources said.”

CNN continued on:

“Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said the centrifuges are largely “intact.” Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes.

“So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops,” this person added.”

Karoline Leavitt responded like a flamethrower against CNN:

“This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community. The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

There are several matters that come to mind with the contrived effort of CNN to assert themselves as the self-appointed Gatekeepers of truth for BDA.

Keep reading

US Navy Used Munitions at ‘Alarming Rate’ To Intercept Iranian Missiles Fired at Israel

A senior US military official told Congress on Tuesday that the US Navy used munitions at an “alarming rate” while defending Israel from Iranian missiles during the 12-day war that Israel started with massive strikes on Iran.

Adm. James Kilby, the acting chief of naval operations, was asked during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing whether the US Navy had enough SM-3 interceptors, an advanced missile that can reach space and can cost between $10 million and $30 million for a single missile.

“We do, sir, but we are, to your point, using them at an alarming rate,” Kilby told Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), who said the US was using a large number of munitions to defend Israel.

Kilby continued, “As you know, those are missiles procured by the Missile Defense Agency and then delivered to the Navy for our use. And we are using them quite effectively in the defense of Israel.”

It’s unclear how many SM-3 missiles the US Navy fired to defend Israel during the 12 days of war. The munitions were also used last year when Iran fired missiles and drones at Israel in April 2024 in response to the Israeli bombing of its consulate in Damascus and in October when Iran launched another attack over Israel’s assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, when he was in Tehran.

The US also expended a lot of munitions during its bombing campaigns against the Houthis in Yemen. President Trump’s airstrikes in Yemen, which lasted from March 15 to May 6, were particularly violent and killed more than 200 civilians. Despite the heavy attacks, the Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, were able to keep up attacks on US warships, and Trump eventually gave up trying to stop them from firing at Israel.

Keep reading

NATO chief calls Trump ‘Daddy’ after president drops F-bomb over Iran-Israel strikes

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Wednesday called President Trump “Daddy” after the commander-in-chief furiously dropped the F-bomb when he was ripping into Iran and Israel for temporarily breaking a cease-fire deal.

Rutte made the remark as Trump was comparing the fighting between Israel and Iran to children scrapping in a schoolyard — a day after the prez launched a blistering attack on both countries over the ongoing barrage of missiles being fired at each other.

“They’ve had a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard. You know, they fight like hell, you can’t stop them. Let them fight for about 2, 3 minutes, then it’s easy to stop them,” Trump said as the pair gave a joint press conference ahead of the NATO summit at The Hague.

Rutte laughed and quickly added: “Daddy has to sometimes use strong language to get it stopped.”

Elsewhere, the NATO boss gushed that Trump was a “good friend” and praised the prez for making the summit a success by “finally” getting Europe to boost military spending.

“When it comes to Iran, the fact that he took this decisive action, very targeted, to make sure that Iran would not be able to get his hands on a nuclear capability — I think he deserves all the praise,” he said.

Keep reading

Claims Swirl Over Extent Of Damage From Attacks On Iranian Nuclear Facilities

There are new claims saying Iran’s nuclear program was “badly damaged” in attacks by Israel and the U.S. These differ from earlier published reports that the strikes had a limited effect, highlighting the precarious nature of parsing through preliminary assessments.

Wednesday afternoon, CIA John Radcliffe said that his agency “can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes,” according to a public statement. “This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years. CIA continues to collect additional reliably sourced information to keep appropriate decision-makers and oversight bodies fully informed. When possible, we will also provide updates and information to the American public, given the national importance of this matter and in every attempt to provide transparency.”

Radcliffe’s analysis follows statements from Israeli intelligence officials on Wednesday said that U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities have caused “very significant” and “long-term damage,” according to Israeli media reports. Iran also confirmed its sights were “badly damaged.” Those assessments are in line with what U.S. President Donald Trump has said. At the same time, they differ significantly from U.S. media reports citing a now-confirmed preliminary Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report stating that Operation Midnight Hammer, the U.S. attack on Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz, had limited results. Experts in the non-proliferation community are also giving their takes on the state of Iran’s nuclear program, some of which are conflicting and even Iran has chimed in.

Clearly this issue is highly politicized at this point and there are many agendas at play when it comes to propagating specific narratives surrounding it. These range from political motivations to state-sponsored disinformation. Unless there are trusted moles with actual access to these sites — or who have direct knowledge from those who do — within the Iranian government, and only if Iran has even gained access into critical areas themselves, conclusions can only be made in a preliminary fashion based on very limited information. Even intercepted intelligence can be falsified in order to throw foreign assessments off. Intelligence reports, as a practice, also range in confidence, and it’s unlikely the confidence is extremely high this soon after the attack. So maybe the B-2’s didn’t have the desired effect and maybe they destroyed huge amounts of critical nuclear infrastructure and materials. It’s still not very clear and conclusions in key intelligence products can change drastically based on new information.

Regardless, here is the state of play of the battle damage assessment situation as it sat prior to the CIA report. You can also catch up with our past reporting about the Israel-Iran conflict here.

Keep reading

The Algorithm Behind IAEA Iran Nuke Allegations: ‘Minority Report for Uranium’

On May 31, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) disclosed that there were 408.6 kg of uranium enriched to 60%, including 166.6 kg located at the Fordow nuclear site in Iran, issuing a caution regarding a possible “nine-bomb” breakout. According to Reuters, which reviewed the IAEA confidential report, the UN nuclear watchdog concluded that “three locations (Lavisan-Shian, Varamin, and Turquzabad), and other possible related locations, were part of an undeclared structured nuclear programme carried out by Iran until the early 2000s and that some activities used undeclared nuclear material.” This report eventually led to a censure on June 6 (with a vote of 19–3), thereby facilitating Israel’s strike on June 12. A separate IAEA report sent to UNSC member states indicated that Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to around 60% purity has risen by 50% to 408.6 kg, nearing the 90% threshold for weapons-grade material. The IAEA stated this quantity could potentially produce nine nuclear weapons if further enriched.  What wasn’t explained is how the IAEA came to these conclusions with zero evidence to back up their allegations…

On June 12, 2025, Israel initiated “Operation Rising Lion,” aimed at Iran’s Natanz nuclear site and the heavily fortified Fordow bunker, leading to numerous fatalities, among them two IRGC commanders and one nuclear scientist. Prime Minister Netanyahu was quick to characterise Israel’s unprovoked strike as a direct assault on the heart of Iran’s nuclear aspirations. Meanwhile, President Trump, with the backing of CENTCOM’s General Kurilla, cautioned of dire repercussions.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei Hamaneh’s response was immediate, with Tehran strongly criticising the UN nuclear watchdog, accusing its head, Rafael Grossi, of bias and alleging IAEA alignment with Israel amidst Tel Aviv’s aggression on Iran. Hamaneh’s allegations arose following Grossi’s statement, which unfortunately came too late,  that the regulatory body lacked any evidence of a coordinated attempt by Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.

Keep reading

Biden Admin Let 729 Iranian Border-Crossers Loose Into America: Report

Out of 1,504 Iranians the Border Patrol caught illegally crossing the southern border under the Biden administration, they released 729 into the United States, a senior border patrol official told Fox News on Sunday.

Fox News National Correspondent Bill Melugin reported that just under half of all illegal Iranian immigrants caught at the southern border between 2021-2024 were released into the nation, according to the Customs and Border Patrol official. Additionally, Border Control recorded more than 2 million illegal immigrants that were never arrested, including an unknown number of Iranians.

The 1,504 that were caught by authorities excludes any northern crossings or unquantified getaways. This means that the 729 released illegal Iranian immigrants likely represent a significant underestimation of the total illegal Iranians who remain unauthorized in the United States.

Melugin explains that because Iranian immigrants have a higher likelihood of presenting a potential terrorism threat, they qualify as “Special Interest Aliens,” and therefore, require more intensive examination prior to admission. The United States officially classified Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism in 1984, and since then, they have become the largest state sponsor of terror. For decades, they have funded and assisted terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas. As a precautionary measure, SIAs require heightened screening.

Melugin reported that the Biden administration had denied him information on how many of the illegal immigrants Border Control caught were on the Terror Watchlist over “privacy concerns.”

Keep reading