Tag: nuclear weapons

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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What do we know about Israel’s own nuclear weapons?

Donald Trump has repeated in recent days, often in capital letters on his Truth Social account, that Iran cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. 

His view is shared by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, who has said that Israel’s surprise attack on Iran, which has killed hundreds since 13 June, is a pre-emptive measure to stop Iran from creating a nuclear weapon. 

Iran denies it is trying to produce nuclear arms, and that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.

It is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which says that states that do not already have nuclear weapons cannot obtain them. 

The NPT gives the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) the power to monitor and verify that non-nuclear states are complying.

Last week, the watchdog said that Iran had breached its obligations – an action Tehran strongly condemned, and claimed provided a pretext for Israel’s surprise assault.

But unlike Iran, Israel has not signed the NPT, and is one of only five countries not to be party to the 1968 treaty. This means that the IAEA has no way to monitor or verify Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

Little is known about Israel’s nuclear programme, which it has a policy of neither confirming nor denying.

However, declassified documents, investigative research and whistleblower revelations from the 1980s have pointed to what it has.

What nuclear weapons does Israel possess?

Israel is one of nine countries that are known to have nuclear weapons, along with the US, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea.  

It is believed to possess around 90 nuclear warheads and enough plutonium to produce around 200 more nuclear weapons, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

Israel has between 750 and 1,110kg of plutonium, which would be enough to build 187 to 277 nuclear weapons.

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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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No evidence of nuclear threat from Iran – ex-UK ambassador

There’s no evidence that Iran poses a nuclear threat to Israel, former UK Ambassador to Iran Richard Dalton has said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Iran was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons shortly after Israel launched air strikes on Iranian territory last week.

Speaking to Sky News last week, Dalton said, “There is no evidence in the public domain” that Iran was on the brink of nuclear weaponization. He noted that US intelligence shows “no change in the basic assessment” that Tehran has decided “to develop nuclear weapons in accordance with their own defense doctrine, which is to eschew weapons of mass destruction.”

“So, we are entitled to disbelieve Netanyahu’s claims that there was some recent change in Iranian policy and behavior until evidence is put in the public domain,” Dalton said.

Israel began bombing Iran last Friday, claiming that the country was nearing the completion of a nuclear bomb. Iran denied the accusations and responded to the Israeli military operation with waves of drone and missile strikes on the Jewish state.

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IAEA Chief Says There’s ‘No Proof’ Iran Working Toward a Nuclear Bomb

Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reaffirmed on Tuesday that his organization had “no proof” that Iran decided to build a nuclear bomb ahead of Israel’s attacks on the country.

Grossi made the comments in an interview with CNN host Christiane Amanpour, who brought up the fact that US intelligence had also assessed there was no evidence Iran was working toward a nuclear weapon.

“What we informed and what we reported was that we did not have — as in coincidence with some of the sources you mentioned there, that we did not have any proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon,” Grossi said.

He added that the IAEA couldn’t say whether or not there was “clandestine” activity that it wasn’t aware of, but based on available evidence, there was no indication that Iran was attempting to weaponize its nuclear program.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched his war with Iran based on the claim that Iran was advancing toward nuclear weapons. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, the US was not convinced by Israel’s intelligence that Iran had made the decision to build a nuclear bomb, and other reports say the US still assessed Tehran wasn’t seeking one ahead of Israel’s attacks.

Grossi brought up the fact that Iran has a stockpile of uranium enriched at the 60% level, but it has not attempted to enrich at the 90% level needed for weapons-grade, and Iranian officials had made clear they were willing to reduce enrichment levels and get rid of the stockpile of highly enriched uranium in exchange for sanctions relief as part of a deal with the US.

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Discredited Neocon Talking Points From The Iraq War Are Back, Lazily Re-Purposed For Iran

Remember all the infamous one-liners from the Global War on Terror? In the years after 9/11, when the neocon establishment in Washington was pushing ahead with its disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they were everywhere. 

It’s a slam dunk case! We have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here. We’ll be greeted as liberators. Islam is a religion of peace. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom.

Those last two are direct quotes from President George W. Bush, the man most responsible — whether through extreme naiveté or extreme duplicity — for propagating these ridiculous slogans and using them to justify decades-long wars that ended in ignominy for the United States. You’d think that after Iraq and Afghanistan this kind of rhetoric would be totally discredited. But you’d be wrong.

Over the past few days, almost since the moment Israel began bombing Iran, we’ve seen the reappearance of almost all the old GWOT rhetoric. Then as now, the purpose is to justify a U.S. military adventure abroad and gaslight the American people into supporting regime change in Iran.

For those of us who were in high school and college during and immediately after 9/11, who saw the propaganda play out in real time, it’s an amazing thing to witness what’s happening now.

In particular, the point about needing to stop Iran before it gets a nuclear weapon is almost word-for-word how Iraq hawks argued for a preventative war against Saddam Hussein in 2003. Iraq’s WMDs had to be destroyed, we were told, before they could be used in a terror attack against the U.S. that would dwarf 9/11. 

For those keeping track, we have been hearing about Iran’s impending nuclear weapon for at least 20 years. Tehran, we’re told, is always just months or weeks away from having deployable nukes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Iran was getting “extremely close” to a nuclear weapon — in 1996.

Similarly, the point about how we have to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here — a ubiquitous line in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 — is exactly what Netanyahu argued recently on ABC News. “You want these people to have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to your cities? Today, it’s Tel Aviv. Tomorrow, it’s New York. Look, I understand ‘America First.’ I don’t understand ‘America Dead.’” (It’s worth noting, too, that Netanyahu was a loud voice in the build-up to the Iraq War warning against Saddam’s non-existent nuclear program.)

Remember how we would be “greeted as liberators” in Iraq? That was Vice President Dick Cheney’s line. Turns out the Iranians are also waiting to be liberated and will greet western militaries with open arms! After all, God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom, right? According to Mark Levin, who is old enough to know better, isolationists “stand in the way of Trump and Netanyahu transforming the Middle East” — as if transforming the Middle East is both a feasible and desirable thing for the United States to do.

It’s the same with all these neocon arguments. Remember Ahmed Chalabi? He was the western-friendly Iraqi dissident politician and founder of the Iraqi National Congress, which became a major source of evidence of Iraq’s WMD program and ties to Al Qaeda for the Bush administration. Chalabi himself was at one point floated as a possible post-Saddam leader of Iraq.

Yet nearly all the information Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress provided to U.S. intelligence agencies in the lead-up to the war turned out to be false, including information from an Iraqi defector codenamed named “Curveball,” whose first-hand descriptions of mobile biological weapons factories wound up in intelligence dossiers that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq. In the end, Chalabi’s fabrications were exposed (no WMDs were ever found in Iraq), and he was revealed as almost certainly an Iranian agent.

Now we have a new Chalabi: Reza Pahlavi, the exiled Shah of Iran, who this week released a pro-regime change video. “The Islamic Republic has come to an end and is falling,” he said. “What has begun is irreversible. The future is bright and together we will navigate this sharp turn in history. Now is the time to stand; it is time to take back Iran. May I be with you soon.”

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Tulsi Gabbard Breaks Silence After Trump Publicly Rebukes Her Over Her Iran Nuclear Program

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has broken her silence after President Donald Trump publicly refuted her earlier congressional testimony regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The firestorm ignited when CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, ever the mouthpiece for the left, pressed President Trump aboard Air Force One about Gabbard’s March testimony before Congress.

“Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that the intelligence community said Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon,” Collins prodded, clearly fishing for a gotcha.

Trump shut her down, stating, “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one.”

Vice President JD Vance also stepped into the fray on X: “First off, Tulsi’s testimony was in March, and a lot has changed since then. Second, if you look at what she said then, her point about uranium enrichment is consistent with what I wrote above.”

Vance clarified that while Iran is permitted nuclear energy for civilian use, the regime has repeatedly violated its obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), proving its intent to weaponize its nuclear program.

Gabbard, refusing to let the media twist her words, fired back in a statement shared by CNN Capitol Hill reporter Sarah Ferris and confirmed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), according to The Daily Caller.

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Is Washington Preparing for War? U.S. Air Force Reportedly Sends Out Two Mysterious Encrypted Nuclear Emergency Codes

Over the weekend, the U.S. Air Force dropped not one but two enigmatic Emergency Action Messages (EAMs).

On June 14, a 246-character encrypted code blasted across the High‑Frequency Global Communications System (HFGCS)—the same system used to transmit emergency alerts to our nuclear-capable bombers, missiles, and subs.

The very next day, June 15, another code—this time clocking in at nearly 290 characters—was broadcast .

EAMs usually top out at around 30 characters. These extended transmissions are, quite frankly, unprecedented, according to The Express.

Emergency Action Messages (EAMs) are not casual communications—they are highly encrypted, time-sensitive directives used to convey nuclear-launch orders.

According to U.S. military doctrine, EAMs can initiate Major Attack Options (MAOs) or Limited Attack Options (LAOs), and are cryptographically secured to prevent interception or tampering.

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FLASHBACK: Trump’s Director of National Intelligence Testified That Iran is NOT Building a Nuke in March

President Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified in March that the intel community continues to assess that Iran has not resumed trying to build a nuclear weapon since the program was suspended by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2003.

Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 27 to provide the Intelligence Community’s 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, Gabbard stated in no uncertain terms, the United States intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

“The IC is monitoring if Tehran decides to reauthorise,” Gabbard added.

The annual threat assessment is the consensus of the 18 U.S. intelligence elements making up the U.S. Intelligence Community.

The testimony made few waves when she gave it, and was minimally reported on in the media, but went viral on Saturday after being shared by WikiLeaks.

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Iran claims without evidence that it took Israeli nuclear files

Iran’s intelligence minister claimed without offering evidence Sunday that Tehran seized an “important treasury” of information regarding Israel’s nuclear program, ahead of a week in which the Islamic Republic likely will face new diplomatic pressure over its own program.

The remarks by Esmail Khatib follow Iranian state television claiming Saturday that Iranian intelligence officials seized documents, again without any evidence. Israel, whose undeclared atomic weapons program makes it the only country in the Mideast with nuclear bombs, has not acknowledged any such Iranian operation targeting it — though there have been arrests of Israelis allegedly spying for Tehran amid the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Iran, meanwhile, will likely face censure this week from the Board of Governors at the International Atomic Energy Agency over longstanding questions about its program. Iran has also signaled it will reject a proposal from the United States after five rounds of negotiations over its nuclear program — setting the stage for that long-running crisis to potentially spike as well.

‘Treasury’ of secrets claim comes without evidence

Responding to questions from an Iranian state TV reporter Sunday after a Cabinet meeting, Khatib said members of the Intelligence Ministry “achieved an important treasury of strategic, operational and scientific intelligence of the Zionist regime and it was transferred into the country with God’s help.”

He claimed thousands of pages of documents had been obtained and insisted they would be made public soon. Among them were documents related to the U.S., Europe and other countries, he claimed, obtained through “infiltration” and “access to the sources.”

He did not elaborate on the methods used. However, Khatib, a Shiite cleric, was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2022 over directing “cyber espionage and ransomware attacks in support of Iran’s political goals.”

For Iran, the claim may be designed to show the public that the theocracy was able to respond to a 2018 Israeli operation that spirited out what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as a “half ton” of documents related to Iran’s program. That Israeli announcement came just before President Donald Trump in his first term unilaterally withdrew America from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, which greatly limited its program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

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