Tag: iran

How Democratic Party Leaders Quietly Support Trump’s March to War With Iran

As President Donald Trump barrels toward a direct war with Iran, the most powerful Democrats in Congress are issuing statements that are at best tepid and confusing. At worst, they are cheering escalation.

Even with some Democrats on Capitol Hill pushing for a War Powers Resolution and other legislation to stop Trump from attacking without congressional approval, the Democratic Party’s most powerful politicians refuse to mount any meaningful opposition to a strike. Many outright favor direct U.S. involvement in yet another regime change war.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the most powerful Democrat in the Senate, where he is the minority leader, presents himself as a major opponent of Trump. As recently as June 15, for example, he boasted about his participation in the No Kings Day mass protest against Trump.

Yet when it comes to the prospect of a direct war with Iran, Schumer is not only supporting Trump, but less than three weeks ago was goading the administration to be “tough” on Iran and not make any “side deals” without Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approval.

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Trump Confirms Strikes On Iran’s Nuclear Sites: Fordow, Natanz, And Esfahan “Successfully Targeted”

Hours after U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bombers departed Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri en route to the Indo-Pacific region, President Trump announced that U.S. forces had “successfully attacked” three nuclear sites in Iran—Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan.

The president wrote on his Truth Social:

We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space.

A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home.

Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

There has been no confirmation from President Trump regarding what type of USAF bombers conducted the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. However, based on timing and strategic capability, it is plausible that B-2 Spirit stealth bombers—previously observed departing Whiteman Air Force Base—were involved in the operation.

At this time, operational details remain limited.

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CIA’s Ratcliffe acts as ‘Mossad stenographer’ on Iran

A Trump official tells The Grayzone that Israel’s Mossad is using CIA Director John Ratcliffe and US CENTCOM’s Gen. Michael Kurilla to influence Trump with cooked intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program. Inside the White House, dissenters have been isolated, setting the stage for a regime change war that could cost American lives.

An official in the administration of President Donald Trump has told The Grayzone that CIA Director John Ratcliffe and US CENTCOM Commander Gen. Michael Kurilla have become vehicles for Israel’s Mossad and military as they seek to manipulate the US into attacking Iran. The official referred to Ratcliffe as “Mossad’s stenographer.”

According to the official, Ratcliffe and Kurilla have pressured Trump to join Israel’s war more directly by regurgitating overblown briefings they received from the Israeli military and Mossad director David Barnea – but without informing the president they the intelligence derived from a foreign third party.

During the Trump administration’s meetings with Israeli intelligence officials including Barnea, the official said the Israelis have demonstrated a single-minded focus on regime change, clamoring for authorization to assassinate Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The official have emphasized that the moment to take out Khamenei is now.

The issue of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity is of secondary concern in the Israelis’ presentations, which the official characterized as tactless, hyper-aggressive exercises in fear-mongering. At one point, the Trump official recalled, an Israeli intelligence briefer declared that Iran could transfer a nuclear weapon to Yemen’s Houthi militia in less than a week.

According to the official, Trump’s lead negotiator with Iran, Steve Witkoff, has been pushing the president to preserve the diplomatic track. However, an Israeli assassination of Khamanei would almost certainly be the nail in the coffin of nuclear negotiations – which is precisely why the Israelis seem so determined to do it.

If the US enters the war by attacking Iran, the official fears that Iran will activate IRGC-backed Popular Mobilization Units to attack US troops and bases in Iraq and Syria, leading to American casualties and triggering escalation well beyond the initial scope of Iran’s nuclear program.

Having launched a damaging war of attrition with Iran, Tel Aviv is deploying every mechanism at its disposal to compel the US to lurch headlong into the conflict it initiated, but which it can not finish on its own.

Inside the Trump administration, the source told The Grayzone that top officials who have questioned the logic of attacking Iran, such as Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and her deputy, former CIA officer and director for the National Counter-Terrorism Center Joe Kent, have been excluded from meetings by White House Chief of Staff Suzie Wiles.

Taking the lead in briefing the president is a highly suggestible CIA director whom Israel has groomed since he first entered Congress.

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American B-2 stealth bombers with terrifying capabilities ‘are on the move’ as Iran tensions heat up

Deadly stealth bombers, which only the US has in their arsenal, are on their way to a US Air Force base in Guam amid growing tensions with Iran, according to reports.

Six B-2 stealth bombers, docked at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, appeared to be on the move on Saturday morning, according to Fox News.

The bombers are said to have been refueled, which means they could have launched without full tanks due to the extraordinarily heavy bunker-buster bombs.

The B-2 is capable of carrying a 30,000-pound bomb, which experts have concluded could be the only way to destroy Iran’s most heavily fortified nuclear site, Fordo.

The bomb, known as the GBU-57 or the Massive Ordinance Penetrator, is something only the US military possesses.

The Fordo fuel enrichment plant is buried deep within a mountain system in Iran, but experts don’t know exactly how deep, which complicates a potential US mission to neutralize it.

Experts who spoke to The New York Times believe the facility at its shallowest is 250 feet deep, but could be as much as 30 feet deeper.

Nonetheless, GBU-57 is the only way to assuredly wipe out the facility, short of using a nuclear device. 

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Report: Pentagon Agency Believes US Needs To Drop A Nuke To Destroy Iran’s Fordow Nuclear Plant

The Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has told US officials that in order to destroy Iran’s Fordow nuclear plant, which is buried deep underground, the US may need to drop a nuclear weapon, The Guardian has reported.

According to the report, Pentagon officials who received the briefing were told that dropping GBU-57s, conventional 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs, would not penetrate deep enough underground and that it would only do enough damage to collapse tunnels and bury the facility under rubble.

The officials were told that in order to destroy Fordow completely, the US would likely need to first soften the ground with conventional bombs and then ultimately drop a tactical nuclear weapon from a B2 bomber.

The report said that President Trump is not considering using a nuclear weapon and that the option was not presented to him by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. According to a report from Axios, Trump is casting doubt on the idea that the GBU-57s could do enough damage to destroy the facility.

Israel wants the US to drop the bunker-busting bombs on Fordow since it lacks the capability, but so far, Trump has not given the order for US airstrikes on Iran. The president said on Thursday that he would decide within two weeks, although there are indications that attacks could begin this weekend.

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U.S. Ramps Up Surveillance Amid Fears Of Iran-Backed Sleeper Cells 

President Trump stated Thursday that a potential U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear targets could occur within a two-week window. This announcement aligns with an uptick in U.S. military activity across the USNORTHCOM, USEUCOM, and USCENTCOM theaters, including airlift missions, the deployment of aerial refueling tankers, and the repositioning of naval assets—indicators consistent with pre-strike staging. While officially framed around countering Iran’s nuclear program, the operation so far suggests regime change. 

Simultaneously, in the Homeland, concerns are flourishing over the possible activation of Iran-backed operatives. According to CBS News, intelligence and law enforcement officials remain focused on Hezbollah-linked sleeper cells and IRGC proxy networks, which could be directed to carry out retaliatory actions if the U.S. initiates kinetic attacks against Iran to support Israel. 

Here’s more from CBS News, citing multiple sources… 

As President Trump is contemplating potential U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, law enforcement officials have stepped up surveillance of Iran-backed operatives in the United States, multiple sources told CBS News.

FBI Director Kash Patel has increased efforts to monitor possible domestic sleeper cells linked to Hezbollah — a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization backed by Iran — since Israel’s Operation Rising Lion offensive began earlier this month, U.S. officials said.

. . . 

The threat from Iranian operatives has worried current and former administration officials since Iranian General Qasem Soleimani was assassinated on Mr. Trump’s orders in January 2020.

CBS noted:

Late last year, federal prosecutors charged an operative of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and two U.S.-based people with plotting to surveil and assassinate critics of the Iranian regime. The IRGC operative allegedly told investigators he was pushed by unnamed IRGC officials to plan an attack against Mr. Trump.

The threat on the Homeland has never been graver given the Biden-Harris regime of globalists facilitated the greatest invasion this nation has ever seen on the southern border, with millions of unvetted migrants, criminals, cartel gangsters, and terrorists. 

In late 2024, former CIA targeting officer Sarah Adams spoke on the Shawn Ryan Show about Al-Qaeda terrorists on American soil. 

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Top Iranian Nuclear Scientists Killed By Secret Israeli Weapon: Report

As Israeli jets struck military targets, high-ranking officers and nuclear-related facilities in Iran during the opening salvo of Operation Rising Lion, there was another extremely high-stakes clandestine mission taking place. Code-named Operation Narnia, Israeli operatives reportedly used a “secret weapon” to simultaneously kill nine of Iran’s top nuclear scientists as they slept in their beds, according to Israel’s N12 news outlet. It was the latest move in Israel’s long-time effort to blunt Iranian nuclear ambitions by killing off the people capable of advancing the program.

Officials declined to say what this special weapon, “which remains under censorship and has not been disclosed publicly,” was, the Times of Israel explained. The War Zone cannot verify these claims. However, as we have previously reported, Israel hit residences of high-value individuals with smaller munitions and Mossad used drones and anti-tank guided missiles inside Iran (more on those later) on the first night of its attack. These targeted assassinations continue today, although not in the same volume seen during the opening acts of the war. It remains possible that some of these systems were used in the assassination of the scientists.

Israeli intelligence deliberately orchestrated simultaneous hits as the opening blow of the war to avoid any chance of warning or escape, according to the N12 report. In previous incidents, Iranian nuclear scientists had often been targeted with car bombs and drive-by shootings while commuting. As a result, these public events set off alarms and spurred increased protection for other potential high-value targets.

For a reason not yet clear, while nine scientists were killed, a 10th scientist escaped the initial attack but was killed later.

“These scientists believed their homes were safe zones,” a senior Israeli official told N12. “They never imagined they would be reached in their bedrooms.”

Israeli intelligence officials told N12 that killing the scientists was the most important part of the opening phase of Operation Rising Lion. Air defenses, ballistic missile systems, and command and control nodes are important and difficult to replace. However, the officials emphasized that “the knowledge of these people is irreplaceable. It takes many years, if any, to regroup these minds who each worked for 20-40 years on the nuclear and weapons program.”

“There is a long-term effect here for more than many years,” the officials added.

The nuclear scientists who were eliminated “had been involved for decades in promoting nuclear weapons – an essential component of the Iranian regime’s plan to destroy the State of Israel,” according to the publication.

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Trump and the Iran War: perhaps the most openly telegraphed event of all time

Some events are unforeseeable. The current conflagration with Iran wasn’t one of them. Donald Trump first tried to ingratiate himself into the Republican Party by fixating on the purported threat of Iran; you can find tweets to this effect dating all the way back to 2011, when he toyed with running for president during the 2012 primary cycle. To inject himself into the Republican bloodstream, Trump adopted the twofold strategy of harping on Barack Obama’s birth certificate, and fulminating about Iran.

Then he ran for president in 2016 and continued fulminating about Iran. He co-organized a rally with Ted Cruz in September 2015 to rail against the Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA), which he said was the worst deal of all time, in part because it allowed Iran to maintain low-levels of uranium enrichment. He pledged to withdraw from the deal. Then he was elected president and promptly initiated the process of withdrawing from the deal, despite his own Secretary of State certifying that Iran was in compliance. By 2018, he officially withdrew from the deal, warning that it had somehow empowered Iran to “threaten American cities with nuclear destruction.” He proceeded to institute a policy of “Maximum Pressure” on Iran, with the intent of crippling its government and impoverishing its population, so as to destabilize the society and eventually bring about regime change. The sanctions continued to intensify even during COVID, when they hindered Iran’s ability to import medical supplies.

In June 2019, Trump said he was minutes away from bombing Iran. By December 2019, Trump, along with Mike Pompeo, manufactured a crisis whereby they connived to assassinate Iran’s top general Qasem Soleimani by drone strike. The administration invoked the 2002 Authorization for Use of Force Against Iraq as their legal justification. So, the same legal architecture to authorize the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was resuscitated by Trump to justify a drone-strike assassination of Iran’s top general in 2020 — supposedly because Soleimani was on a diplomatic mission to Iraq. But the precise logic never really had to make sense. Republican senators such as Mike Lee, who has since become much more “based” and therefore less concerned with Constitutional limits on presidential war-making powers, said at the time that the Administration’s intelligence briefing on the strike was so bad as to be “insulting.” Trump threatened to bomb 52 Iranian cultural sites — the legacy of ancient Persian civilization. Iran fired ballistic missiles at a US military installation in Iraq, inflicting at least 109 troops with traumatic brain injuries.

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The AI Slop Fight Between Iran and Israel

As Israel and Iran trade blows in a quickly escalating conflict that risks engulfing the rest of the region as well as a more direct confrontation between Iran and the U.S., social media is being flooded with AI-generated media that claims to show the devastation, but is fake.

The fake videos and images show how generative AI has already become a staple of modern conflict. On one end, AI-generated content of unknown origin is filling the void created by state-sanctioned media blackouts with misinformation, and on the other end, the leaders of these countries are sharing AI-generated slop to spread the oldest forms of xenophobia and propaganda.

If you want to follow a war as it’s happening, it’s easier than ever. Telegram channels post live streams of bombing raids as they happen and much of the footage trickles up to X, TikTok, and other social media platforms. There’s more footage of conflict than there’s ever been, but a lot of it is fake.

A few days ago, Iranian news outlets reported that Iran’s military had shot down three F-35s. Israel denied it happened. As the claim spread so did supposed images of the downed jet. In one, a massive version of the jet smolders on the ground next to a town. The cockpit dwarfs the nearby buildings and tiny people mill around the downed jet like Lilliputians surrounding Gulliver.

It’s a fake, an obvious one, but thousands of people shared it online. Another image of the supposedly downed jet showed it crashed in a field somewhere in the middle of the night. Its wings were gone and its afterburner still glowed hot. This was also a fake.

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Israel’s Attack on Iran: The Violent New World Being Born Is Going To Horrify You

Western politicians and media are tying themselves up in knots trying to spin the impossible: presenting Israel’s unmistakable war of aggression against Iran as some kind of “defensive” move.

This time there was no rationalising pretext, as there was for Israel to inflict a genocide in Gaza following Hamas’ one-day attack on 7 October 2023.

There was not a serious attempt beforehand to concoct a bogus doomsday scenario – as there was in the months leading up to the US and UK’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. Then we were lied to about Baghdad having “weapons of mass destruction” that could be launched at Europe in 45 minutes.

Rather, Iran was deep in negotiations with the United States on its nuclear enrichment program when Israel launched its unprovoked attack last Friday.

The West has happily regurgitated claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel was forced to act because Iran was on the cusp of producing a nuclear bomb – an entirely evidence-free claim he has been making since 1992.

None of his dire warnings has ever been borne out by events.

In fact, Israel struck Iran shortly after President Donald Trump had expressed hope of reaching a nuclear agreement with Tehran, and two days before the two countries’ negotiators were due to meet again.

In late March Trump’s head of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, had expressly stated as part of the US intelligence community’s annual assessment: “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ali] Khameini has not authorized a nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

This week four sources said to be familiar with that assessment told CNN that Iran was not trying to build a bomb but, if it changed tack, it would be “up to three years away from being able to produce and deliver one [a nuclear warhead] to a target of its choosing”.

Nonetheless, by Tuesday this week Trump appeared to be readying to join Israel’s attack. He publicly rebuked his own intelligence chief’s verdict, sent US warplanes to the Middle East via the UK and Spain, demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender”, and made barely veiled threats to kill Khameini.

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