Tag: israel

Satellite images undermine Trump’s claim that Iran’s atomic sites were destroyed

President Donald Trump’s decision to order US forces to attack three key Iranian nuclear installations may have sabotaged the Islamic Republic’s known atomic capabilities, but it’s also created a monumental new challenge to work out what’s left and where. 

Mr Trump said heavily fortified sites were “totally obliterated” late on June 21, but independent analysis has yet to verify that claim. Rather than yielding a quick win, the strikes have complicated the task of tracking uranium and ensuring Iran doesn’t build a weapon, according to three people who follow the country’s nuclear programme.

International Atomic Energy Agency monitors remain in Iran and were inspecting more than one site a day before Israel started the bombing campaign on June 13.

They are still trying to assess the extent of damage, and while military action might be able to destroy Iran’s declared facilities, it also provides an incentive for Iran to take its program underground.

Mr Trump dispatched B-2 stealth jets laden with Massive Ordnance Penetrators, known as GBU-57 bombs, to attempt to destroy Iran’s underground uranium-enrichment sites in Natanz and Fordow.

Satellite images taken on June 22 of Fordow and distributed by Maxar Technologies show new craters, possible collapsed tunnel entrances and holes on top of a mountain ridge.

They also show that a large support building on the Fordow site, which operators may use to control ventilation for the underground enrichment halls, remained undamaged. There were no radiation releases from the site, the IAEA reported. 

New pictures of Natanz show a new crater about 5.5 metres in diametre. Maxar said in a statement that the new hole was visible in the dirt directly over a part of the underground enrichment facility.

The image doesn’t offer conclusive evidence that the attack breached the underground site, buried 40 metres under ground and reinforced with an 8-metre think concrete and steel shell.

US Air Force General Dan Caine told a news conference earlier on June 22 that an assessment of “final battle damage will take some time.”

IAEA inspectors, meanwhile, haven’t been able to verify the location of the Persian Gulf country’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium for more than a week. Iranian officials acknowledged breaking IAEA seals and moving it to an undisclosed location. 

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Rubio says it’s ‘irrelevant’ whether Iran was actively pursuing a nuke

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday it’s “irrelevant’’ whether the US had intelligence that Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon before bombing it.

Rubio said the mere fact that Iran had “everything they need to build nuclear weapons” justified President Trump’s decision to take action against the theocratic regime.

“That’s irrelevant,” Rubio told CBS’ “Face the Nation” when pressed about US intelligence on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “They have everything they need to build a weapon.”

Earlier this year, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified, “The IC [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamanei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

President Trump has split with that assessment, and Gabbard has since contended her words were taken out of context and highlighted other portions of her testimony in which she warned about Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium.

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Trump’s attack on Iran is ‘unconditional surrender’ to Israel

Since his election in 2016, Donald Trump’s political opponents have portrayed him as a dangerous, unstable fabulist doing the bidding of a malign, nuclear-armed foreign power.

Having returned to the White House this year, Trump is proving his detractors correct on all counts but one: the location on the map. The rogue state that he’s colluding with — at great peril to the planet — is not Russia, as his most vocal detractors alleged, but Israel.

Israel’s June 13th attack on Iran sabotaged the then-ongoing talks on a new nuclear deal with the United States, and Trump has gone to unprecedented lengths to support its aggression. Trump undercut his own Secretary of State’s claim that Israel had undertaken “unilateral action” by acknowledging that “we knew everything” in advance of what he called a “very successful attack.” Administration officials then disclosed that Trump had previously authorized giving Israel intelligence support for the bombing. Trump then called on Tehran’s 9.8 million residents to evacuate, mused about killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and declared that “we” – meaning Israel – “have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.”

After Iran rejected his demand for “unconditional surrender”, Trump imposed a new deadline of two weeks, only to break it three days later by ordering a US military attack on three Iranian nuclear energy sites, including the deeply buried mountain complex Fordo, which he quickly hailed as a “great success.” Just as with Trump’s diplomacy with Iran, his two-week deadline turns out to have been a ruse whose “goal was to create a situation when everyone wasn’t expecting it,” a senior administration official said.

To wage war on Iran, Trump and his allies have employed the traditional Iraq WMD playbook of ignoring or manipulating the available evidence to fear-monger about a foreign state marked for regime change. Unlike the Iraq war, where the fraudulent case for invading was mostly concocted in-house, Trump has outsourced the job to Israel, while not even pretending to care about public opinion or Congressional approval.

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Washington’s Strike on Iran: A Betrayal of Diplomacy, a Gift to War

While global diplomats were still exchanging draft terms to revive the nuclear agreement with Iran, the United States launched airstrikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure. This sudden act of aggression shattered any illusions of American commitment to peaceful negotiation and revealed the enduring pattern of militarized policy in the Middle East.

U.S. officials justified the attack as a response to “escalating nuclear threats.” But Iran had been actively engaged in indirect diplomacy with Washington through European intermediaries. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had not reported any significant violations that would warrant such unilateral military action at this stage. By attacking during ongoing talks, the United States undermined the very framework it once helped build.

The parallels with the 2003 invasion of Iraq are hard to ignore. Once again, Washington leans on threat inflation and manufactured urgency to justify the use of force. Back then, it was Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. Today, it’s Tehran’s enrichment facilities – none of which, according to IAEA data, are currently weaponizing uranium.

Furthermore, the U.S. strike aligns seamlessly with Israeli strategic interests. The Israeli government, facing internal pressure and a prolonged war effort across Gaza and Lebanon, benefits politically from a broadened regional conflict that redirects international scrutiny and consolidates domestic support. As former Iranian diplomat Abbas Araghchi noted, “America’s intervention is a gift to Netanyahu.”

This is not the behavior of a peace-seeking nation. True diplomacy demands restraint, patience, and consistency – traits that Washington increasingly fails to exhibit. If Iran responds with military force, the U.S. will likely frame it as unprovoked aggression, continuing the cycle of demonization that justifies endless intervention.

If the world hopes to prevent another disastrous war in the Middle East, we must call out these reckless actions for what they are: a betrayal of diplomacy and an affront to international law. Instead of protecting global stability, the U.S. has once again opted to provoke instability – for reasons that serve neither peace nor justice.

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US Military Integration Means Canada Already at War With Iran

On X a former advisor to Quebec’s economics minister Jean Phillipe Fournier posted, “The US will likely join the Iran-Israel conflict eventually. Canada should stop morally equivocating and do all it can to help Israel defend itself as well, with whatever capabilities it can spare. Preventing Iran from getting a bomb is in the World’s interest.”

A few others have made similar statements. As I’ve written, Canada has emboldened Israel to attack Iran by isolating and demonizing that country. They’ve also justified Israel’s attacks and enabled Zionist expansionism.

But are Canadian soldiers directly involved in its attacks? That’s likely.

The Canadian military is so entangled with their US counterparts that if its forces are engaged significantly somewhere, it’s likely Canadians forces are as well. And we know the US military is assisting Israeli operations. While it’s probably far more extensive than what has already been reported, US forces are refuelling Israeli fighter jets, delivering it arms and providing significant intelligence assistance to Israel’s war on Iran.

How might Canadian forces be assisting?

Through NORAD hundreds of Canadian soldiers assist the US with monitoring West Asia. NORAD supports missions led by US commands stationed worldwide.

Through Operation FOUNDATION Canadian forces members directly support the US Central Command’s (USCENTCOM) Middle East operations. Eighteen Canadian forces members are deployed to support these efforts in Qatar, Bahrain, Tampa and Jordan.

A few Canadian troops have also been coordinating US-UK strikes on Yemen. Three Canadian officers were formally added to the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian.

Other Canadians soldiers deployed at Canada’s base in Kuwait may also be assisting the US or Israelis.

The Canadian navy has also assisted US forces in the region. Through Operation ARTEMIS hundreds of Canadian personnel have been contributing to the Bahrain-based Combined Maritime Forces (CMF), a United States-led naval coalition of 44 member nations to monitor the region.

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“War Starts Right Now”: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Vows Retaliation After Trump Orders Bombing of Three Nuclear Sites

President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. military to carry out precision airstrikes on three strategic nuclear facilities in Iran, declaring them “completely and totally obliterated”.

The targeted sites—Fordow, Natanz, and a facility near Isfahan—were struck using B-2 stealth bombers loaded with GBU‑57 bunker-buster munitions and Tomahawk missile fire from U.S. submarines and drones.

In his televised address and accompanying Truth Social proclamation, Mr. Trump justified the strikes as a critical blow to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, citing its status as the world’s “number one state sponsor of terror.”

The president asserted that U.S. forces “made it out safely” and warned that any Iranian counterattack would be met with “force far greater than what was witnessed tonight.”

Trump said during the press conference:

Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not. Future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier.

For 40 years, Iran has been saying. Death to America, death to Israel. They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs, with roadside bombs. That was their specialty. We lost over 1,000 people and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East, and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate in particular. So many were killed by their general, Qassim Soleimani. I decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen. It will not continue.

[…]

There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran, far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight’s was the most difficult of them all, by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes. There’s no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight. Not even close. There has never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago.

Last week, Tehran issued blunt threats, warning of an “all-out war” and specifically referencing American bases in Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE and Syria as high-value targets.

Within hours of the attack, Tehran reacted sharply.

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Iran accuses US of violating nuclear treaty with airstrikes

Iran has accused the US of violating international law and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) following overnight airstrikes on three of its key nuclear facilities. However, Tehran says preliminary inspections have found no signs of radioactive contamination.

In a statement issued early on Sunday, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) confirmed that US strikes targeted its nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. The operation, conducted in coordination with Israel, was condemned by the Iranian authorities as an illegal and “brutal” act.

“This act of aggression was carried out under the shadow of international indifference, and with the apparent support or silence of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” the AEOI said.

Iran’s Center for the National Nuclear Safety System reported that emergency inspections had been completed at all three locations. “No signs of contamination have been recorded,” the agency said, adding that there is “no danger to residents living near the affected sites.”

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U.S. military braces for Iran counterstrikes on ‘bases and facilities’ after Trump destroys critical nuclear sites

In the wake on America’s attack on Iranian nuclear sites Saturday, U.S. military leaders are telling their troops to prepare for potential retaliatory attacks.

Military leaders are telling troops that tonight’s attack ‘will likely result in counterstrikes on U.S. bases and facilities’ in the Middle East.

In addition, it will ‘likely activate Iran and other foreign terrorist organizations cells abroad including the U.S. to conduct strikes against U.S. persons and facilities.’

There are about 40,000 U.S. troops stationed across the Middle East spread across multiple countries.

The U.S. military joined forces with Israel to launch military strikes against Iran Saturday using B-2 ‘bunker bomber’ planes.

Just before 8:00 p.m. ET Saturday night, Trump posted on his social media site Truth Social confirming the attacks.

‘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.’

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“Well Done, President Trump” Outspoken War-Pig Lindsey Graham CHEERS the News that President Trump Bombed Iran

President Trump announced on Saturday night that the US dropped bombs on three Iranian nuclear sites on Saturday.

Cristina Laila reported:

President Trump on Saturday evening announced the US dropped bombs on three nuclear sites in Iran.

“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,” Trump said on Truth Social on Saturday.

Trump later announced on TRUTH social that the Fordow nuclear sight was “gone.”

As many Americans withdrew in horror upon hearing this news and what it means for the country, the warmongers were out in force cheering the news that the US had bombed Iran.

War-Pig Lindsey Graham cheered the news that Trump had taken his advice and bombed Iranian sites.

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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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