Tag: iran

Hamas Leader Haniyeh Killed in Tehran, Iran Says

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and one of his bodyguards were killed while in Tehran, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said early July 31.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the killings, but Hamas blamed Israel for the attack, saying Haniyeh was killed during an airstrike on his residence in Tehran. Iran’s state media also blamed Israel for the attack.

Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, was in Tehran for the swearing-in of Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Ziyad al-Nakhaleh was also in Tehran for the inauguration.

The IRGC said in a statement that the incident is under investigation, state media reported.

Israel has been fighting Hamas in Gaza since the terrorist group launched an attack on border cities in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 civilians and military members as hostages.

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Butcher of Gaza Netanyahu Repeatedly Lied to Congress about Iraqi “Nukes,” and Now Wants US War on Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a master of misdirection, the technique master illusionists use to divert the viewer’s attention from the trick and to pull the wool over their eyes. He uses his slick American accent, his bulging eyes, his rhetorical flourishes, his maniacal certainty, to fool people whenever and however he can. 

Netanyahu, the Butcher of Gaza, boasted of destroying the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords that would have resulted in a Palestinian state and an Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Palestinian Territories by 1997. He has consistently attempted to annex Palestinian private property and covertly has paid for a movement of Israeli squatters onto Palestinian land. He has engaged in collective punishment of innocent noncombatants in order to quash any resistance to his vast acts of grand larceny. He bankrolled Hamas for a decade with Egyptian and Qatari funds deposited in Israeli accounts, which he transferred to Gaza, in hopes of taming the organization by giving it Gaza as a fief. He thereby hoped to continue to split the Palestinians, most of whom support instead the secular, nationalist Palestine Liberation Organization. Most Israelis recognize that Netanyahu’s brain-dead policies led to the October 7 terrorist attack.

One of the twenty-first century’s worst war criminals, responsible for more deaths of innocents and children than Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Netanyahu needs a bright shiny object to distract the world from the threat his racist, fascist Likud-led government, armed with 200 nuclear devices, poses to the planet.

Ben Norton at The Real News Network has reviewed Netanyahu’s long history of blatant warmongering lies:

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Ben-Gvir Endorses Trump, Says He’s More Likely to Back War on Iran

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir endorsed former U.S. President Donald Trump – the 2024 Republican nominee – for the White House in an interview published Wednesday in which he accused the Biden administration of preventing Israel from winning its war on Gaza.

“I believe that with Trump, Israel will receive the backing to act against Iran,” Ben-Gvir, who heads the far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, told Bloomberg. “With Trump, it will be clearer that enemies must be defeated.”

“A cabinet minister is supposed to maintain neutrality,” the 48-year-old minister conceded, “but that’s impossible to do after [U.S. President Joe] Biden.”

“The U.S. has always stood behind Israel in terms of armaments and weapons, yet this time the sense was that we were being reckoned with – that we were trying to be prevented from winning. That happened on Biden’s watch and fed Hamas with lots of energy,” added Ben-Gvir, who was convicted in 2007 of incitement to racism after he advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

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FALSE FLAG? CNN Runs Iranian ‘Plot’ to Kill Trump ‘Exclusive’ After Vance’s Call for War

CNN ran an exclusive story on Tuesday claiming that “U.S. authorities obtained intelligence from a human source in recent weeks on a plot by Iran to try to assassinate Donald Trump.”

Citing “multiple people briefed on the matter,” the report said there is no evidence that the deceased gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks was connected to the plot.

the news outlet tried to stand up its flimsy story by stating that Iran “has repeatedly vowed revenge for the U.S. military’s killing of Qasem Soleimani.”

The timing of the report could not have been any better for Trump and his pro-Israel campaign.

Sen. J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s VP pick, made it his top priority to call for war with Iran and said the U.S. needs to stop with little pinpricks against Iran, and “punch Iran hard.”

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CNN Report Claims Secret Service Ramped Up Security Based on Intel of Iran Plot Against Trump

CNN claimed on Tuesday that the US Secret Service ramped up security around Donald Trump in recent weeks based on intelligence from a single “human source” that Iran was plotting to assassinate the former president, accusations Tehran rejected as “unsubstantiated and malicious.”

The report offered no evidence for the claim and only cited unnamed people “briefed on the matter.” They said there was no indication that Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who tried to assassinate Trump over the weekend, had any connection to the alleged plot.

The idea that the Secret Service increased security around Trump has been contested since Crooks was able to get off multiple shots from a nearby rooftop that wasn’t secured.

The report connected the alleged Iranian plot to Trump ordering the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, who headed Iran’s Quds Force, a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

In response to the report, Iran’s mission to the UN said, “These accusations are unsubstantiated and malicious. From the perspective of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Trump is a criminal who must be prosecuted and punished in a court of law for ordering the assassination of General Soleimani. Iran has chosen the legal path to bring him to justice.”

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Geopolitical Events Could Escalate To Global War

The latest reports coming out of the Middle East indicate that Israel and Hezbollah have each drafted “battle plans” of their own and are currently trying to obtain more weapons in preparation for a significant war. Another potential escalation could be the pact between Russia and North Korea, both enemies of the West.

The news coming from the Middle East came straight from two senior American officials who were briefed on intelligence about the moves, which contradicted public statements by both sides that they were not interested in going to war. According to a report by Politico, officials believe that the risk of a major escalation is higher than it has been in a long time.

Israel continues to pursue its goal of the elimination of Hamas, while Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon could throw even more fuel on the fire. Iran has been warning that should the IDF enter southern Lebanon, the Jewish state should expect an “obliterating war.”

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Israeli Lawmaker Says Iran is Israel’s Main Target

Shortly after the 7 October Hamas attack, U.S. politicians — who get patted on their heads for their loyalty to Israel before anything else — were tripping over themselves to assign blame on Tehran.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, the neocon warhawk who can’t fight his way out of a paper bag, Graham announced that he would introduce a resolution to “allow military action by the United States in conjunction with Israel to knock Iran out of the oil business.”

“Iran, if you escalate this war, we’re coming for you,” the nothing of a man said.

Israel has made it clear since the beginning of the war that Tehran is the “head of the snake” and its ultimate target. Once again, U.S. forces could be compelled to fight in a war to make sure Israel remains the only nuclear power in the region.

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Senior Israeli Lawmaker Suggests Nuclear Attack on Iran

A longtime Israeli lawmaker and former defense minister took to the airwaves and social media on Wednesday to suggest his country should do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

“It is not possible anymore to stop the Iranian nuclear program with conventional means,” Avigdor Liberman of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party said during a Channel 12 interview. “And we will have to use all the means that are available to us.”

“We will have to stop with the deliberate policy of ambiguity, and it needs to be clear what is at stake here,” Liberman continued, apparently referring to Israel’s refusal to say whether it has nuclear weapons. “What is at stake here is the future of this nation, the future of the state of Israel, and we will not take any risks.”

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Iran vows to protect Hezbollah from Israeli attack

Iran will throw all of its military power behind Hezbollah if Israel launches a full-scale attack on the Lebanon-based Islamist movement, a senior official in Tehran has warned. He added, however, that his country does not want an all-out war in the Middle East.

Tensions between the Jewish state and the Shia group, which has close ties with Iran, reached boiling point after the start of the Hamas-Israel war in October, with the two belligerents exchanging cross-border strikes. However, they have so far managed to avoid a major engagement.

In an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday, Kamal Kharrazi, a foreign affairs adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reiterated that Iran is “not interested” in a regional war. He urged the US, Israel’s key ally, to put pressure on West Jerusalem to prevent such escalation.

However, Kharrazi insisted that “all Lebanese people, Arab countries, and members of the axis of resistance will support Lebanon against Israel” if efforts to avoid a major conflict prove unsuccessful. “In that situation, we would have no choice but to support Hezbollah by all means,” he said.

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Could US have used a kill switch to assassinate Raisi?

May 2024 will be remembered as one of the most turbulent months in recent times. First we had the assassination attempt on Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico, while just four days later Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian both died when their US-made Bell 212 went down near the city of Varzaqan in northwestern Iran. Seven other high-ranking officials, including the governor-general of Tehran’s East Azerbaijan province Malek Rahmati, as well as the state representative in the region Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem, were also killed in this highly controversial helicopter crash. Ever since the tragic incident, there’s been speculation about what exactly happened. This includes some rather disturbing reports and details that suggest this wasn’t a mere accident.

Iranian authorities are yet to confirm there was foul play, but the possibility certainly shouldn’t be excluded. The mainstream propaganda machine’s reaction to the assassination attempt on PM Fico and the death of President Raisi also raises serious concerns. Both the British Sky News and Financial Times published reports where they effectively tried to justify the terrorist who attempted to murder PM Fico, while the state-run BBC called the death of Raisi tragic, but still didn’t miss pointing out that he was supposedly “hardline”. These incidents are highly beneficial to the political West, which fuels speculation about the possibility of its involvement in both cases. Concerned with the possibility of escalation, Fico was always highly critical of NATO’s aggression on Russia, insisting that Slovakia doesn’t want to take part in it.

On the other hand, while Fico is seen as “dangerous” for the image of monolithic obedience within EU/NATO, Raisi was considered a capable leader who was highly respected in the multipolar world. It can be argued that the Iranian President and his FM Abdollahian were instrumental in normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia, which is a crucial stepping stone toward the stabilization of the US-orchestrated volatile situation in the Middle East. Tehran’s role in the region has become all the more important after it joined BRICS+, while improved relations with Riyadh could speed up the latter’s decision to join the world’s most important (truly) international organization. Obviously, the political West would do almost anything to prevent such a scenario. And the glee with which many in the US reacted to Raisi’s death suggests it might have.

The highly controversial details about the helicopter crash certainly haven’t helped dispel speculation about the possible foreign involvement. For instance, according to Turkey’s Transport Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu, the Bell 212 helicopter that Raisi and Abdollahian flew in either didn’t have its emergency signal transmission system turned on or didn’t have one at all. It’s highly unusual that an aircraft transporting such top-ranking officials wouldn’t have a functioning system that could possibly prevent incidents like this, which further suggests that it could’ve been sabotaged. A malfunction is always a possibility and certainly shouldn’t be rejected entirely, but there are other peculiarities that suggest foul play. For instance, there was the highly unusual arrival of a USAF C-130 aircraft to the neighboring Azerbaijan.

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