Tag: perpetual war

Iran Has Nuclear Energy, Not Nuclear Weapons

Last week, on May 5, 2026, President Trump told a group of young children in the Oval Office that “we have to make a journey down to Iran to take the nuclear weapon. They would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks.”

Trump also told the children, “Iran with a nuclear weapon…maybe we wouldn’t all be here right now… I can tell you, the Middle East would have been gone. Israel would have been gone. And they would have trained their sights on Europe, first, and then us.”

According to the White House website, Trump warned Iran against having nuclear weapons on 74 occasions prior to the war.  Since the war began on February 28, 2026, Trump has discussed Iranian nuclear issues in at least 20 documented public appearances, based on the Senate Democrats’ Trump transcript archive and Roll Call’s Factbase transcript database.

Some of Trump’s more pointed claims:

About six weeks into the current war, on April 16, 2026, Trump said Iran “would have had a nuclear weapon within one month” if the U.S. had not used B-2 bombers to strike Iranian civilian nuclear energy facilities during the June 2025 war on Iran.

About one month after the war began, Trump said on March 27, 2026, “the Iranian lunatics refused to cease their pursuit of nuclear weapons” after the June 2025 war.

And on February 24, 2026, just four days before starting the current war in Iran, Trump said that Iran was “warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, and in particular nuclear weapons, yet they continue. They’re starting it all over…”.

Trump’s statements go beyond saying ‘Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.’ He has repeatedly claimed that Iran was weeks away from having one, that U.S. strikes stopped Iran from obtaining one, and that Iran was trying to rebuild or continue a nuclear weapons program.

But Trump’s claims are not supported by the record. In fact, official statements from U.S. intelligence, the State Department, the IAEA, and others state that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, is not currently building one, and does not seek to build one.

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When one man, a civilian, controls the kill switch for military ops

In September 2022, Ukrainian forces prepared to launch a drone strike on the Russian naval fleet anchored off Crimea. The drones never arrived.

Elon Musk had decided, unilaterally, not to activate Starlink coverage over the region. But he wasn’t simply declining to help. SpaceX had already been managing battlefield access for both sides: restricting Russian use, imposing speed limits to prevent drone integration, and maintaining a verified whitelist with Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense. One private citizen, with no security clearance and no accountability to any electorate, was governing the battlefield connectivity of an active war.

The public debate treats this as a story about Elon Musk — his politics, his proximity to the White House, his X posts. That framing lets the actual problem off the hook. Replace Musk with the most patriotic, internationalist, apolitical CEO imaginable and the structural problem remains identical. The Pentagon has spent a decade building critical military functions on infrastructure it can’t legally compel, and the consequences are now arriving in real time.

A common reflex is to argue that private defense contractors have always been central to American military power. Lockheed Martin builds the F-35; Raytheon builds the Patriot. What’s different now is the control plane: who has real-time administrative control during use. When the government buys a tank, it owns it. The keys don’t expire. The manufacturer can’t disable it mid-mission or impose terms in combat. Software and AI are different. Vendors keep ongoing control — updates, access, and usage limits. They don’t sell a capability; they license access to one, and the license has conditions.

Those conditions have already collided with active operations. After months of failed negotiations, the Pentagon formally designated the AI firm Anthropic a supply-chain risk because of restrictions on how its model could be used. The Pentagon was explicit in its decision: “The military will not allow a vendor to insert itself into the chain of command.” Emil Michael, the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, described the moment he fully grasped the vulnerability: Anthropic’s models were already embedded across combatant commands and intelligence agencies, wired into classified workflows. Anthropic retained the control plane inside the Pentagon’s cloud — able to update, restrict, or shut off access. When Michael raised hypothetical crisis scenarios, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, offered exceptions case by case. “Just call me if you need another exception,” Michael recalls him saying. In a genuine crisis, a commander can’t call a vendor to authorize military action, nor should he have to.

This isn’t about whether Anthropic’s rules are reasonable. They weren’t set by anyone accountable to the joint force, there’s no override mechanism, and the Pentagon had made itself dependent on systems it doesn’t control.

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Bahrain Intensifies Crackdown On Shia Communities, Arrests Dozens Over Alleged IRGC Links

Bahrain’s Interior Ministry announced on Saturday the arrest of 41 citizens, including multiple Shia religious leaders, over alleged ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The ministry said security services uncovered the alleged network through “investigations, security reports, and previous Public Prosecution cases related to espionage involving foreign entities.” The detainees are accused of “espionage involving foreign entities and sympathy with blatant Iranian aggression.”

Around 30 Shia Muslim clerics were among the 41 arrested, as the Gulf monarchy intensifies a campaign of raids and arrests predominantly targeting Shia religious figures and seminary teachers in Bahrain.

The arrests mark a new security escalation by Manama and form part of a continued policy of restrictions against clerics in the country. The Bahrain News Agency reported that legal proceedings are now underway against the 41 detainees.

Earlier this week, Bahrain stripped three lawmakers of their seats in parliament after they publicly criticized the monarchy’s crackdown on dissent over its support for the US–Israeli war on Iran:

In a vote in Manama on Thursday, the Bahraini House of Representatives revoked the memberships of Abdulnabi Salman, Mahdi al-Shuwaikh, and Mamdouh al-Saleh. The three lawmakers publicly opposed the monarchy’s move last week to revoke the citizenship of 69 Bahrainis and their families, accusing them of “sympathizing with Iran.”

Bahrain has a majority Shia population but is ruled by the Sunni Al-Khalifa royal family. The kingdom hosts the largest US naval base in the region, home to the US Fifth Fleet.

That decision came less than two weeks after Bahrain revoked the citizenship of 69 people over alleged support for Iranian retaliatory attacks on the country.

The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy described the move as “dangerous” and a “blatant abuse of power,” saying the individuals had not been publicly named and that their legal status remained unclear.

Since the launch of the US-Israeli war on Iran on February 28, Bahrain has escalated a sweeping domestic crackdown tied to alleged support for Tehran and opposition to the country’s western alignments.

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Kim Jong Un Creates Ultimate Deadman Switch: North Korea To Auto-Launch Nukes If Assassinated

North Korea just casually revised its constitution to automatically launch a nuclear strike if leader Kim Jong Un is assassinated, or if the country’s nuclear command-and-control system is placed in danger by hostile forces’ attacks. 

The change was adopted during the first session of the 15th Supreme People’s Assembly in Pyongyang on March 22 and was disclosed this week by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, which briefed senior officials on the details.

The updated Article 3 of North Korea’s nuclear policy law states: “If the command-and-control system over the state’s nuclear forces is placed in danger by hostile forces’ attacks … a nuclear strike shall be launched automatically and immediately.”

South Korean intelligence officials said the revision codifies procedures for retaliatory nuclear attacks in the event that Kim is killed or incapacitated during an attack, Reuters reports.

The policy update comes months after the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials in U.S.-backed Israeli strikes in February 2026. Analysts have described those operations as a “wake-up call” for Pyongyang, highlighting the effectiveness of leadership-targeted strikes.

Professor Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul told The Telegraph that the constitutional emphasis gives added weight to what may have been existing policy: “This may have been policy before, but it has added emphasis now it has been enshrined in the constitution. Iran was the wake-up call.”

The nuclear policy revision was adopted alongside broader changes to North Korea’s constitution, also passed in March and revealed earlier this week. Those amendments remove all references to unification with South Korea, add an explicit territorial clause defining the country’s borders (including with the Republic of Korea to the south), and formally state that command authority over nuclear forces rests with Kim Jong Un as chairman of the State Affairs Commission.

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A Pointless War: How Iran Hawks Finally Got Their Way

The Strait of Hormuz is straight out of a storybook. Named for an ancient Persian god, the 24-mile-wide waterway flows between jagged cliffs, inlets that look like a desert version of Scandinavian fjords, and multicolored salt formations. Centuries-old Portuguese castles dot both sides of the straits, and traditional sailboats called dhows still ply the waters, carrying tourists and small wares.

Hormuz, the only connection between the oil-rich Persian Gulf and the wider ocean, is also the artery of the modern industrial economy that is most vulnerable to war. On February 28, 2026, shortly after Israel and the United States attacked Iran, the Iranian military broadcast on the radio that the strait was closed for shipping. Two days later, a (presumably Iranian) weapon smashed into an oil tanker, killing two crew members. Iran began charging multimillion-dollar ransoms for the few ships that continue to pass.

Global crude oil prices nearly doubled in the first few weeks of war—and oil isn’t the whole story. Many critical manufacturing processes around the world rely on inputs from the gulf’s petrochemical industry, which Iran has also bombed directly and which will take months to restart once the coast is clear. Electronics manufacturers in South Korea and Taiwan are suddenly short on helium, which they need to produce semiconductors. So ends the age of uninterrupted artificial intelligence growth. The plastic, metal, and pharmaceutical industries are running into similar shortages of raw materials. And the world is staring down a food crisis next year as farmers struggle to find fertilizer for the current planting season.

President Donald Trump has made reopening the strait a major goal of the war and the negotiations to end it during the mid-April 2026 ceasefire. In other words, Trump’s struggle is now to reverse the consequences of choosing to start the war.

Starting this war was indeed a choice. The Trump administration spent months building up military forces in the Middle East while issuing constantly shifting demands. Iran had agreed to negotiate; the U.S. attacked on a weekend between two scheduled rounds of talks.

Although the war came out of the blue for most Americans, the Iran hawks spent decades working to put the United States in this position. They made it politically easier to go to war than not go to war. Politicians took it for granted that Israel and the Arab monarchies’ problems with Iran were also America’s problems. But hawkish factions from both parties also shot down any attempt to solve those problems through compromise or even containment of Iran. They pushed the U.S. to take greater and greater risks while avoiding a public debate on war.

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Report: Israel built secret Iraq base, struck forces that nearly exposed it

Israel established a secret military outpost in the Iraqi desert to support its air campaign against Iran and carried out airstrikes against Iraqi forces that nearly discovered it at the start of the war, people familiar with the matter, including senior U.S. officials, told The Wall Street Journal.

According to the sources, Israel built the facility shortly before the war began, with U.S. knowledge. It housed special forces and served as a logistics hub for the air force. Rescue teams were also stationed there in case Israeli pilots were shot down. No Israeli pilots were downed during the war.

When a U.S. F-15 was shot down near Isfahan, Israel offered to help, but American forces rescued the crew themselves. However, according to the report, Israel did carry out airstrikes to help secure the rescue operation.

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Ukraine has violated Victory Day ceasefire – Moscow

The Ukrainian military has violated the Victory Day ceasefire on 8,970 occasions since it took effect at midnight on Friday, including drone and artillery strikes, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Moscow said on Friday that it had ordered all of its troops along the Ukraine front line to halt combat operations and stay at their positions.

In a statement on Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry stressed that its forces were continuing to abide by the ceasefire. By contrast, the Ukrainian military had conducted “strikes on our forces’ positions involving unmanned aerial vehicles and artillery,” military officials in Moscow reported. On top of that, a number of Russian regions, including Crimea, Bryansk Region, Belgorod Region, Kursk Region, and Moscow Region, have come under Ukrainian attacks.

According to the ministry, of the 8,970 ceasefire violations on Kiev’s part, 1,173 attacks were conducted by Ukrainian artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, mortars and tanks. The Russian military has additionally recorded a total of 7,151 enemy drone strikes.

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Trump Considering Moving the Troops Withdrawn From Germany to Poland

Goodbye Germany, hello Poland?

We have been reporting here on TGP about the repercussions of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s offensive comment about the US operations in the Middle East, and the fierce response by Donald J. Trump, as you can read in Trump Hits Back at Germany’s Merz for Suggesting that Iran ‘Is Humiliating the US’, as Foreign Minister Wadephul Tries To Walk Back the Absurd Comments by failing Chancellor.

This is an unforced error by Merz that showed his true colors and his lack of appreciation for his US allies.

In fact, Merz is failing badly as head of government, as we reported in a post on Merz’s first year as Chancellor:

“Merz’s numbers are a record low: a mid-April poll shows only 18% of voters are satisfied with his work, while as much as 80% are dissatisfied. Even the majority of Merz voters are reportedly unhappy.”

Now that the withdrawal of US troops from Germany is considered a done deal, Trump is constantly asked whether the US troops withdrawn from Germany will be moved to Poland.

Now, Trump said that Warsaw favors the idea, and he considers it to be feasible.

Euronews reported:

“US President Donald Trump has admitted he is considering moving some of the American troops being withdrawn from Germany to Poland.”

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WaPo Satellite Analysis: Iran Hit More Than 225 U.S. Military Assets Across Region Through Mid-April

Iranian airstrikes that were launched to retaliate for the unprovoked U.S.-Israeli attack on the country have hit almost 230 U.S. military assets across the region, a review of satellite imagery by The Washington Post shows.

The damage, the Post reported, exceeds that reported by the Defense Department.

The report comes a week after the department’s head bean-counter low-balled the cost of the war during testimony before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee.

In late March, The New York Times revealed that Iranian strikes had wrecked 13 military bases across the Middle East.

But this latest report suggests that Iran hit back hard. And, it shows, Trump’s war planners underestimated Iran’s ability to defend itself and inflict costly damage.

The airstrikes “have damaged or destroyed at least 228 structures or pieces of equipment at U.S. military sites across the Middle East since the war began, hitting hangars, barracks, fuel depots, aircraft and key radar, communications and air defense equipment,” the imagery showed:

The amount of destruction is far larger than what has been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported.

The threat of air attacks rendered some of the U.S. bases in the region too dangerous to staff at normal levels, and commanders moved most of the personnel from these sites out of the range of Iranian fire at the start of the war, officials have said.

While imagery of the region is difficult to obtain, the newspaper scrutinized more than 100 images that Iran released. It validated 109 against the European Union’s low-resolution Copernicus system and the Planet system’s high-resolution imagery. While the Post excluded some images, none was manipulated.

“In a separate search of Planet imagery, Post reporters found 10 damaged or destroyed structures that were not documented in the imagery released by Iran,” the newspaper continued:

In all, The Post found 217 structures and 11 pieces of equipment that were damaged or destroyed at 15 U.S. military sites in the region.

In other words, Iran had no trouble hitting targets:

“The Iranian attacks were precise. There are no random craters indicating misses,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a retired Marine Corps colonel, who reviewed the Iranian images at The Post’s request. The Post previously revealed how Russia provided Iran with intelligence to target U.S. forces.

Some of the damage may have occurred after U.S. troops already left the bases, making protection of the structures less vital. Cancian and other experts said they do not believe the attacks have significantly limited the U.S. military’s ability to conduct its bombing campaign in Iran.

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Deep State Leaks CIA Iran War Dossier to WaPo

The Deep State leaked a CIA Iran war dossier to the Washington Post that refutes Trump’s claims that the Iranian Regime’s missiles are mostly decimated.

On Wednesday, President Trump sparred with a reporter in the Oval Office during a meeting with UFC fighters.

The reporter asked Trump about his decision to pause Project Freedom amid a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump told the reporter that the US military has decimated Iran’s missile capabilities and they probably only have about 18 percent left.

“You’re facing an opponent right now in Iran that has refused to submit. You seem optimistic announcing you may be closer to a deal – but what’s different now?” a reporter asked Trump about his latest decision to pause Project Freedom.

“Well, why do you say they refused to submit? You don’t know that! You don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors,” Trump said.

The reporter tried to interject: “They were firing on US troops a few days ago…”

“Yeah, a few days ago is a long time ago. You know, in the world of war, a few days ago, no, they want to make a deal badly. And we’ll see if we get there,” Trump said.

“If we get there, they can’t have nuclear weapons. You know, it’s very simple. But what’s not to submit? So they had a Navy with one hundred and fifty nine ships and now every ship is blown to pieces and lying at the bottom of the water,” Trump added.

“They had an air force, lots of planes, and they don’t have any planes. They don’t have any anti aircraft. They don’t have any radar left,” the president said.

“Their missiles are mostly decimated. They have some. They have probably 18, 19 percent, but not a lot by comparison to what they had,” he said.

“And their leaders are all dead. So I think we won. Now it’s only a question of, look, if we left right now around, it would take them 20 years to rebuild!” Trump said. “We’re in good shape.”

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