Category: iran

  • With tensions escalating in the Iran-Israel conflict, which has claimed many civilian lives since it began on June 13, a video of an Israeli soldier in tears, begging for mercy, has gone viral. In the video, the soldier looks at the camera and urges the Iranian army to stop the destruction, while injured soldiers are seen lying in the rubble of destroyed buildings in the background. “Iran, we beg you. Please stop the attacks. Half of Israel is gone. We surrender. Just stop this destruction,” he says.

    The conflict between the two, which is threatening to turn into an all-out war, started with Israel attacking nuclear and military sites in Iran on June 13. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the attack ‘Operation Rising Lion‘ – supposedly launched to disconcert Iran’s nuclear program. However, the strikes resulted in the deaths of many ordinary citizens, after which Iran, too, resorted to retaliatory missile strikes.

    X user (@Skylar_Soul_) posted the viral video on June 16. When this article was written, the post had accumulated more than 100,000 views and was reshared over 1,000 times. (Archive

    Another X user, @dpsingh1313, posted the same video, which was viewed over 160,000 times at the time this article was written. (Archive)

    The viral video was also shared by several other X users, including @Deb_livnletliv, @SanjeevCrime, @Ayesha786Majid, @armanofficial00 and @hammehaiindia62(Archived links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

    Click to view slideshow.

    The same video was viral on Facebook with similar claims.

    Click to view slideshow.

    Fact Check

    A reverse image search on one of the key frames from the clip led us to the same video on YouTube posted around the same time, but with better resolution.

     

    We noticed that the YouTube version had a clear watermark ‘Veo’ on the bottom right corner. The same watermark can be seen in the viral video as well, but owing to lower resolution, it is faint and not very apparent.

    Veo is an artificial intelligence-based video generation tool, launched by Google this year. It allows users to create 8-second-long realistic videos without anatomical abnormalities.

    Note that the viral video is precisely 8 seconds long. Moreover, what makes Veo stand out from other video generation models is its ability to integrate audio and dialogue without distortions, which is evident in the viral video.

    To be sure, we also ran the video through HIVE’s AI detection tool. According to this, there is an 88% likelihood that the viral video was AI-generated.

    Based on these findings, we were able to conclude that the viral video showing an Israeli soldier crying and pleading with Iran to stop the retaliatory strikes against Israel is artificially generated through Google Veo, and not real.

    The post Viral video of Israeli soldier pleading Iran for mercy is AI-generated appeared first on Alt News.

    This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Prantik Ali.

  • With tensions escalating in the Iran-Israel conflict, which has claimed many civilian lives since it began on June 13, a video of an Israeli soldier in tears, begging for mercy, has gone viral. In the video, the soldier looks at the camera and urges the Iranian army to stop the destruction, while injured soldiers are seen lying in the rubble of destroyed buildings in the background. “Iran, we beg you. Please stop the attacks. Half of Israel is gone. We surrender. Just stop this destruction,” he says.

    The conflict between the two, which is threatening to turn into an all-out war, started with Israel attacking nuclear and military sites in Iran on June 13. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the attack ‘Operation Rising Lion‘ – supposedly launched to disconcert Iran’s nuclear program. However, the strikes resulted in the deaths of many ordinary citizens, after which Iran, too, resorted to retaliatory missile strikes.

    X user (@Skylar_Soul_) posted the viral video on June 16. When this article was written, the post had accumulated more than 100,000 views and was reshared over 1,000 times. (Archive

    Another X user, @dpsingh1313, posted the same video, which was viewed over 160,000 times at the time this article was written. (Archive)

    The viral video was also shared by several other X users, including @Deb_livnletliv, @SanjeevCrime, @Ayesha786Majid, @armanofficial00 and @hammehaiindia62(Archived links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

    Click to view slideshow.

    The same video was viral on Facebook with similar claims.

    Click to view slideshow.

    Fact Check

    A reverse image search on one of the key frames from the clip led us to the same video on YouTube posted around the same time, but with better resolution.

     

    We noticed that the YouTube version had a clear watermark ‘Veo’ on the bottom right corner. The same watermark can be seen in the viral video as well, but owing to lower resolution, it is faint and not very apparent.

    Veo is an artificial intelligence-based video generation tool, launched by Google this year. It allows users to create 8-second-long realistic videos without anatomical abnormalities.

    Note that the viral video is precisely 8 seconds long. Moreover, what makes Veo stand out from other video generation models is its ability to integrate audio and dialogue without distortions, which is evident in the viral video.

    To be sure, we also ran the video through HIVE’s AI detection tool. According to this, there is an 88% likelihood that the viral video was AI-generated.

    Based on these findings, we were able to conclude that the viral video showing an Israeli soldier crying and pleading with Iran to stop the retaliatory strikes against Israel is artificially generated through Google Veo, and not real.

    The post Viral video of Israeli soldier pleading Iran for mercy is AI-generated appeared first on Alt News.

    This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Prantik Ali.

  • The Israeli attack on Iran continues. Since Friday, IDF jets and missiles have hit sites across the country, carrying out targeted assassinations of key leaders and hitting buildings and other civilian infrastructure. Iran has retaliated in kind, firing missiles into Israel.

    The Trump administration, which knew about the secret Israeli attack from the beginning, appears to be on the brink of fully entering the war on Israel’s side. Thus, the question arises: Are we on the verge of a major new war? And what does all this mean for the rest of the world?

    Joining MintCast to discuss this is Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran.

    The post Mohammad Marandi: This War Was Supposed To Break Iran appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • In response to Donald Trump’s recent declaration that the U.S. could become involved in Israel’s attacks on Iran, U.S. lawmakers are pushing efforts to curb the President’s war powers.

    Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY.) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) are introducing a bipartisan bill that would force Trump to obtain congressional approval to enter the war.

    “This is not our war,” tweeted Massie. “But if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution. I’m introducing a bipartisan War Powers Resolution tomorrow to prohibit our involvement. I invite all members of Congress to cosponsor this resolution.”

    The post Bipartsan Lawmakers Push To Limit Trump’s War Powers On Iran appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Israel’s attack on Iran last week has opened a stark danger — a predictable pattern of escalation ushering in a new phase of the long-standing crises roiling the Middle East region. Certainly Israel has a long history of attacking Iran — including bombing raids; assassinations of political and military leaders as well as nuclear scientists; cyberattacks; assaults on Iranian allies in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and beyond — and Iran has on occasion struck back. But while it is too soon to know exactly how this latest assault will fully play out, it now holds the prospect of full-scale war between the two strongest military forces in the region, one of them backed by the strongest military power in the world.

    The post The United States Must Force Israel To End Its War On Iran appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.


  • This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • As Donald Trump considers a U.S. war with Iran and the Pentagon builds up military forces in the Middle East, I find myself returning, oddly, to a question posed by Leo Tolstoy: “How many men are necessary to change a crime into a virtue?” He wondered this in his 1894 treatise on Christian nonviolence, The Kingdom of God is Within You, paraphrasing a pamphlet by Christian anarchist and…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The head of the leading intergovernmental watchdog for nuclear energy and atomic weapons has confirmed that the agency has not found “any proof” of an effort to obtain a nuclear weapon by Iran, lending yet more evidence contradicting Israel’s “self-defense” narrative for its war on the country. In an interview this week, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  •  

    Imagine for a moment that Country A launched an illegal and unprovoked attack on Country B. In any sort of objective world, you might expect media coverage of the episode to go something along the lines of: “Country A Launches Illegal and Unprovoked Attack on Country B.”

    Not so in the case of Israel, whose special relationship with the United States means it gets special coverage in the US corporate media. When Israel attacked Iran early last Friday, killing numerous civilians along with military officials and scientists, the press was standing by to present the assault as fundamentally justified—no surprise coming from the outlets that have for more than 20 months refused to describe Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as genocide.

    ‘Preemptive strike’

    AP: Israel strikes Iran’s nuclear sites and kills top generals. Iran retaliates with missile barrages

    AP‘s headline (6/18/25) highlights that Israel struck “Iran’s nuclear sites and kills top generals”; the article doesn’t note that Iran says the “overwhelming majority” of the 78 people killed at that point by Israel were civilians (Times of Israel, 6/14/25).

    From the get-go, the corporate media narrative was that Israel had targeted Iranian military and nuclear facilities in a “preemptive strike” (ABC, 6/13/25), with civilian casualties presented either as an afterthought or not at all (e.g., AP, 6/18/25). (As the Israeli attack on Iran has continued unabated for the past week in tandem with retaliatory Iranian strikes on Israel, the Iranian civilian death toll has become harder to ignore—as, for example, in the Washington Post’s recent profile of 23-year-old poet Parnia Abbasi, killed along with her family as they slept in their Tehran apartment building.)

    On Monday, June 16, the fourth day of the assault, the Associated Press reported that Israeli strikes had “killed at least 224 people since Friday.” This figure appeared in the eighth paragraph of the 34-paragraph article; the first reference to Iranian civilians appeared in paragraph 33, which informed readers that “rights groups” had suggested that the number was a “significant undercount,” and that 197 civilians were thus far among the upwards of 400 dead.

    Back in paragraph 8, meanwhile, came the typical implicit validation of Israeli actions:

    Israel says its sweeping assault on Iran’s top military leaders, uranium enrichment sites and nuclear scientists, is necessary to prevent its longtime adversary from getting any closer to building an atomic weapon.

    That Israel’s “preventive” efforts happened to occur smack in the middle of a US push for a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear issue has not proved to be a detail that is overly of interest to the US media; nor have corporate outlets found it necessary to dwell too deeply on the matter of the personal convenience of war on Iran for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu—both as a distraction from the genocide in Gaza, and from his domestic embroilment in assorted corruption charges.

    In its own coverage, NBC News (6/14/25) highlighted that Netanyahu had “said the operation targeted Iran’s nuclear program and ‘will continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.’” Somehow, it is never deemed worth mentioning in such reports that it is not in fact up to Israel—the only state in the region with an (undeclared) nuclear arsenal, and a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—to be policing any perceived nuclear “threat.” Instead, Israeli officials are given ample space, time and again, to present their supposed cause as entirely legitimate, while getting away with murder—not to mention genocide.

    ‘Potential salvation’

    WaPo: Iranian officials project strength but their people decry silence on safety

    A Washington Post article (6/16/25) manages to blame the Iranian officials for not keeping their people safe from Israeli missiles.

    Its profile of the young poet Abbasi notwithstanding, the Washington Post has been particularly aggressive in toeing the Israeli line. Following Netanyahu’s English-language appeal to Iranians to “stand up” against the “common enemy: the murderous regime that both oppresses you and impoverishes you”—a pretty rich accusation, coming from the man currently presiding over mass murder and all manner of other oppressionPost reporter Yeganeh Torbati (6/14/25) undertook to detail how some Iranians “see potential salvation in Israel’s attack despite risk of a wider war.”

    In her dispatch, Torbati explained that in spite of reports of civilian deaths, “ordinary Iranians” had “expressed satisfaction” at Israel’s attacks on Iran’s “oppressive government.” As usual, there was no room for any potentially relevant historical details regarding “oppressive” governance in Iran—like, say, the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup d’état against the democratically elected Mohammad Mossadegh, which paved the way for the extended rule-by-terror of the torture-happy Iranian shah, whose oppression was aided by manic acquisition of US weaponry.

    On Monday, Torbati was back with another report on how, amid Israel’s attacks on Iran, the Iranian population had “lamented the lack of adequate safety instructions and evacuation orders” from its government, “turning to social media for answers.” The article quotes a Tehran resident named Alireza as complaining that “we have nothing, not even a government that would bother giving safety suggestions to people”—although it’s anyone’s guess as to what sort of suggestions the government is supposed to offer given the circumstances. Try not to be sleeping in your apartment when Israel decides to bomb it?

    We thus end up with an entire article in a top US newspaper suggesting that the issue at hand is not that Israel is conducting illegal and unprovoked attacks on Iran, but rather that the Iranian government has not publicized proper safety recommendations for dealing with said attacks. At one point, Torbati concedes that “the government did provide some broad safety instructions,” and that “a government spokeswoman, Fatemeh Mohajerani, recommended that Iranians take shelter in metros, mosques and schools.”

    Refusing to leave it at that, Torbati goes on to object that “it was unclear why mosques and schools would be safer than other buildings, given that Israel had already targeted residential and other civilian structures”—which again magically transforms the issue into a critique of the Iranian government for lack of clarity, as opposed to a critique of Israel for, you know, committing war crimes.

    ‘It’s all targeted’

    NYT: Israel’s Attack in Iran Echoes Its Strategy Against Hezbollah

    To the New York Times (6/15/25), mass assassination of Iranian leaders is a “playbook” and “following the script.”

    Which brings us to the New York Times, never one to miss a chance to cheerlead on behalf of Israeli atrocities—like that time in 2009 that the paper’s resident foreign affairs columnist literally advocated for targeting civilians in Gaza (FAIR.org, 1/30/25), invoking Israel’s targeting of civilians in Lebanon in 2006 as a positive precedent. Now, a Times article (6/15/25) headlined “Israel’s Attack in Iran Echoes Its Strategy Against Hezbollah” wonders if another Lebanese precedent might prove successful: “Israel decimated the group’s leadership last fall and degraded its military capabilities. Can the same strategy work against a far more powerful foe?”

    After reminiscing about “repeated Israeli attacks on apartment buildings, bunkers and speeding vehicles” in Lebanon in 2024—which produced “more than 15 senior Hezbollah military commanders eliminated in total”—the piece speculates that Israel’s ongoing attacks on Iran and assassinations of top Iranian officers seem “to be following the script from last fall” in Lebanon. Swift confirmation comes from Randa Slim at the Middle East Institute in Washington: “It’s all targeted, the assassination of their senior officials in their homes.”

    Never mind that Israel’s activity in Lebanon last fall amounted to straight-up terrorism—or that somehow these “targeted assassinations” managed to kill some 4,000 people in Lebanon between October 2023 and November 2024 alone. In unceasingly providing a platform to justify Israeli aggression and mass civilian slaughter throughout the region, the US corporate media at least appears to be following its own script to a T.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was caught stumbling to answer basic questions about Iran and the U.S.’s role in Israel’s war in an eye-opening interview airing Wednesday, despite his full-throated support for overthrowing the Iranian government and deeper U.S. involvement in the fighting. In clips of the interview with far right provocateur Tucker Carlson posted on social media on Tuesday…

    Source


  • This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • While it is widely known that American progressives overwhelmingly oppose the war on Iran at which President Donald Trump is increasingly hinting, new polling published Tuesday revealed that a thin majority of respondents who voted for the Republican president are also against U.S. involvement in the widening Israel-Iran war. According to the Economist/YouGov survey of 1,512 U.S.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • We’ve seen it repeatedly: You invent a pretext based on deliberate lies, fake news, exaggerations or a false flag operation which serves to construct a story that country or leader X is a threat to “us” which legitimates that we do a ‘preemptive’ strike against that against – obviously invented – threat to eliminate it.

    Mainstream media’s task is to propagate the ploy, not to ask questions or reveal the lie.

    Take Serbia’s ‘genocide’ in Kosovo, Afghanistan’s responsibility for 9/11, Saddam’s possession of nukes in Iraq, Assad’s use of chemical weapons against the Syrians, Russia’s planning to occupy and administer not only Ukraine but also a series of European countries thereafter, Hamas’ attack on Israel – that Israel knew everything about before it happened – and now you have the blatant lie about Iran’s being just about to become a nuclear power.

    Basic facts about Iran that we are not hearing

    Just a few facts you almost never hear but which are extremely important no matter what you think of the Iranian theocracy: It was the US/CIA and UK that made a regime-change in 1953 that deposed the democratically elected Dr. Mossadegh. The US installed the Shah – at the time the most ruthless and militarist leader in the world, and gave him nuclear technology.

    Since 1979, when the Iranian revolution sent him running and occupied the US Embassy in Tehran, the US has done nothing – nothing – but harass Iran and its 90 million innocent Iranian citizens with the hardest sanctions thinkable (that have destroyed the middle class that could, if any, have changed the country’s leadership). The US and other NATO countries have systematically been building up Israel militarily – knowing full well that Netanyahu’s 30-year-old pathological dream is to eliminate Iran.

    The leading actors in this drama are therefore “USrael” and not Iran.

    Furthermore, Iran does not have nuclear weapons; Israel has – estimates state up to 400. Iran is a member of the NPT, the Non-Proliferation Treaty; Israel is not. Iran has been under constant inspection by the IAEA, but Israel has never accepted that. Around 2003, the present Supreme Leader, Khamenei, issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons, which is considered by some to be consistent with Islamic tradition.

    More recently, in 2015, the JCPOA Agreement was concluded, which was rightly considered a major diplomatic victory for all involved parties. It led Iran to significantly decrease its uranium enrichment. Iran kept itself within the limits of that agreement, but the boastful, grumpy Donald Trump cancelled the US’ participation in 2018, and Iran has since used its enrichment as a bargaining chip while never getting near the level that would permit it to produce a nuclear weapon. In March, Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, confirmed that there was no indication that Iran was nearing the threshold. On June 17, Trump said that he did not care about what she said; he knew that Iran was ‘very close.’ More information on these matters can be found in my article from yesterday, available here.

    This will do as a broader background to the prediction in the headline. The West’s stockpile of lies, misinformation and media deception seems to me to be way more fateful than any Iranian military fact or activity.

    Specific reasons for the prediction and the laws of war

    Now to the more specific reasons, which point in one direction, only: A larger war on Iran with aim of changing the Iranian regime.

    According to media reports, Netanyahu had told Trump that Israel could kill the Supreme Leader, and Trump said he would not accept that. Israel has bombed civilian areas and the Iranian IRIB broadcasting complex in Iran, and Israeli agents have blown up cars inside Iran. None of that would be necessary to destroy nuclear research facilities. Trump left the G7 meeting early and stated that he was not working on a ceasefire between Iran and Israel but working on an “end, a real end,” and he has called for Iranian “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” and demanded that Tehran’s population leave the city.

    He also talked about something bigger to come and that Iran better accept his demands before there would be nothing left of it. In the afternoon, US time today, he had a meeting in the White House Situation Room with his national security team. He talks about knowing exactly where the Supreme Leader is hiding, but that he has no plans to kill him – “at least not now.” (I leave aside at this point what to think about these international law-violating, fascist statements. Trump would have no qualms about killing Iranian top leaders, remember the 2020 liquidation of Qassem Soleimani).

    There are, while I write this, movements of huge US and British naval vessels to the region and talk about B52’s delivering bunker busters.

    There is no doubt that the Trump Regime gave the green light to the Netanyahu Regime’s unprovoked and fake-preemptive attack on Iran. Trump said that he knew “everything” about it well in advance. This, in my view, means that he has also faced the possibility that the US will be drawn in if the Iranian response over time would be too hard for Israel – already in war with several neighbouring states – to handle alone.

    This time, Iran has responded more forcefully than before, and it probably sees the USraeli threat as existential. If Iran continues to respond to Israeli attacks, this would drag in the US – and sooner rather than later. Trump would simply have no choice. He also knows that NATO allies in Europe will remain supportive of both him and Netanyahu if he goes down that slippery slope: A repetition of the Iraq war.

    Some may object here that Trump is just bluffing. First, bluffing whom? If Iran perceives this as a threat to its very existence, it is, of course, not going to unconditionally surrender. It will fight to the last Iranian, and the idea that the Iranians would stand along the roads when the US and Israeli forces roll into Tehran is as delusional as it was in the case of Iraq. (After one day in Baghdad in 2002, I understood that there would be no one, no matter what they thought of Saddam).

    No, there is another dynamic that is both much more powerful and relevant: the escalation of conflicts and violence, up to the outbreak of wars, pretty much follows its own dynamics and laws. If you’ve said “A” you have to move on and say “B” and do tit-for-tat – “C”… to the end of the alphabet, or the world.

    De-escalation is extremely difficult, but phoney/pious statesmen love to advocate de-escalation because they have nothing else to suggest and because they themselves caused the escalation in the first place by pumping in weapons, supporting one side and demonise the other in a conflict and have no clue about conflict-resolution, mediation, peace-making, reconciliation and that sort of – to them totally irrelevant – professional knowledge. Simply put, they are conflict and peace illiterates.

    Given what has already happened, I do not have the imagination to see how Trump and Netanyahu can now back down from their words and deeds without losing face, and that is not exactly what they are known for. They will soon be guided less by their own decisions than by the laws of militarism, escalation and eventually full warfare: warfare for regime-change in Iran.

    De-nuclearise Israel and have both under NPT and IAEA

    To some extent, the nuclear issue is a pretext. To some extent, it is a real issue too. The tragedy is that it is impossible for anyone to destroy nuclear technology facilities and equipment, perhaps 100 meters down in massive mountains. Secondly, if they could succeed, Iran is capable of re-establishing its capacity and will likely have become convinced by the USrael policies that it has, against its will, to acquire nuclear weapons.

    Since Israel has nuclear weapons and thereby violates all the non-binding UN resolutions about the Middle East as a zone free of weapons of mass destruction, the simple, effective solution would be for the international community to deprive Israel of its nuclear weapons and place both countries in the NPT and under IAEA surveillance. The West’s stupid insistence that Israel shall have nuclear weapons while Iran shall not is simply illogical, conflict- and war-promoting as well as morally unsustainable and discriminatory.

    The dissolution of the messianic West: Evil, exceptionalism, escalation and eschatology

    None of these decision-makers is burdened with ethics, long-term thinking or analyses of the consequences of their actions. They are driven by emotions, groupthink, lack of basic security knowledge, hubris, hate (of an Iran they do not know as anything but ‘mullahs’), of self-aggrandisement and a belief that they are exceptionalist. After all, the US and Israel are the two exceptionalist states par excellence. They see themselves as standing above the laws, ethics, and norms that the rest of the world feels obliged to respect at least to some extent.

    In their delusional omnipotence, they seem to accept a kind of modern-day eschatological paradigm supplemented with the catharsis that the use of nuclear weapons may seem to promise: The birth of a new world in which Evil – that of the ‘others’ has been eradicated. That that evil is merely a psycho-political projection of their own evil system, such as militarism, and personalities, is of course, an unthinkable thought. However, it is an end-time view that is deeply embedded in Western Christian and Jewish social cosmology, which probably steers more in situations such as this than any rational thought, analysis, or prudent statesmanship.

    Macro-historically, it belongs to a civilisation, an Empire, in rapid decline, decay and dissolution. And at the micro-level, it would be foolish to underestimate Trump’s and Netanyahu’s messianic zeal in times of their systems’ decay. I fear weapons, yes. But I fear these types of people more.

    The post Prediction with the Main Reasons: The US Will Bomb Iran to Bring about a Regime Change first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Jan Oberg.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • It all started in the early morning hours of 13 June 2025, with what Israel calls “Operation Rising Lion”. Israel’s Air Force launched dozens of air strikes against Iran, targeting its nuclear [energy] program. According to BBC, in Iran’s own words, this is the biggest assault on Iran’s territory since the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988.

    Iran has no nuclear weapons program, as confirmed multiple times by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), belonging to the UN system. However, after a 2024 inspection, the IAEA apparently reported enrichment to about 60%. This is not enough to make an atomic bomb, requiring at least 90%.

    But for Israel which has a nuclear warheads arsenal of several hundred, this justified an unprecedented attack on Iran – a clear declaration of war. Israel’s nuclear bomb stockpile is outside of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement, all quietly tolerated by the west led by the United States.

    Only with the explicit backing of the White House, Israel would dare such an assault on a country with a military power that could by far exceed that of Israel.

    As these lines are written, the situation on the Israel-Iran war is constantly changing.

    The latest state of affairs is that within the last 48 hours the tables have turned by 180 degrees.

    According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ – 13 June 2025), on Monday, 9 June 2025, Prime Minister Netanyahu raised the possibility of strikes against Iran in a phone conversation with President Trump, confirmed by two U.S. officials. Trump responded that he would like to see diplomacy run its course before turning to military options. In an alert to the world, and short-circuiting diplomacy, on Wednesday 11 June, the U.S. pulled some non-essential personnel out of the region in case of an attack.

    On Thursday, before the Israeli strike, Trump said he would not describe an attack as imminent, “but it is something that could very well happen.” Clearly, Trump has given Israel green light for an assault, before diplomacy could run its course. Thereby he was betraying not only Iran, but the entire Middle East, or better called Western Asia, but also the entire world, since by doing so he gave Israel carte blanche to potentially start WWIII.

    Since Israel’s “surprise” air raid in the darkest early morning hours of Thursday, 13 June, the situation has changed dramatically. Iran has launched hundreds of high-speed warheads most of which penetrated unharmed Israel’s Anti-Ballistic Missile systems. The Iranian missiles could not be stopped by the US THAAD missile defense. See this.

    Watch on X.

    See also this from Fox News – 14 June 2025:

    Watch on X.

    Other dramatic headlines point to “All of Israel is under fire!” Blasts and smoke as Iran launches hundreds of missiles | ITV NEWS, as Iran launched hundreds of missiles towards Israel; only few were intercepted.” Question: Does Iran have enough missiles and rockets to overwhelm and outlast Israel? The next 72 hours will be crucial.

    Iranian missiles have hit key locations in Tel Aviv and other major cities in Israel, also targeting Israeli nuclear arsenal and military sites, leaving untold casualties and massive destruction of infrastructure. To what extent Israel’s nuclear stockpiles were affected, may never be known.

    President Putin, while supporting Iran’s defense, has called on both parties to instantly stop aggressions.

    He offered Russia’s good services for mediation. Once upon a time, when Switzerland was still neutral, Bern could have offered Switzerland’s diplomacy to mediate for Peace. No longer, as Switzerland drifts towards NATO, an enemy of Iran – and everything not considered the west.

    Mr. Putin most likely warned President Trump to make sure Israel does not retaliate Iran’s response with nuclear weapons. If not Trump, then his Pentagon advisors, must know and understand what this means.

    At the behest of Israel, Trump had started negotiations with Iran to reduce their enrichment program to zero, i.e. destroy their enriched uranium which Iran planned to use for civilian purposes. He warned or blackmailed Iran – you agree, or else – which meant you will be assaulted. He gave Iran five days to respond, but Israel launched her attack after day three, certainly not without Trump’s agreement, which meant a flagrant betrayal by the US on Iran and the world.

    President Trump entered his second term on 20 January 2025 as a so-called “Peace President,” but resulted instead as a war-President; as one of the biggest deceptions not only for US citizens, but for the world at large.

    Instead of making good on his promise, stopping the horrendous bloodshed and genocide caused by Israel in Gaza and now also in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, Trump supports Netanyahu with more weapons to continue his ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and in all of Palestine.

    In the proxy war Ukraine-Russia, Trump is far from reaching an agreement. After this unprecedented US-supported assault by Israel on Iran – a Peace Agreement with Russia has slipped away farther than ever.

    Israel also targeted military facilities in Teheran, as well as throughout Iran, killing what is reported dozens high-ranking military officers, including Iran’s top two commanders.

    Iran confirmed that the attacks killed Major General Hossein Salami, commander of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and Major General Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, along with several nuclear scientists. Iran’s envoy to the UN, Amir-Saeid Iravani, stated that 78 people were killed and 320 others injured.

    This totally illegal, devastating large-scale attack pushed the Middle East into a new war, if not into a deep abyss. Images on Iranian state television said the Natanz site in central Iran, one of the country’s two main nuclear [energy] plants, was struck around 4.15 AM on Thursday, 13 June.

    Trump hails Israel’s airstrike (RT 13 June 2025), as “excellent” and warned that there is “more to come.” He warns Iran, “either make the nuclear deal (zero uranium enrichment) or face slaughter” – see this US President Donald Trump has called Israel’s strike on Iran “excellent” and warned that there is “more to come”.

    On the other hand, President Putin (RT – 13 June 25) holds phone conversations with Israeli’s PM and the Iranian President. Mr. Putin condemned the Israeli attack and extended his condolences to Iran, according to the Kremlin press service.

    Some of Iran’s nuclear facilities are 800-plus meters below the ground and cannot be reached by Israel’s missiles. It is not clear how much of Iran’s nuclear energy program has been destroyed. It may never be known.

    Trump’s green-lighting Israel’s attack, makes him complicit in this new Israel-initiated Middle East conflict, that might possibly degenerate into a WWIII scenario.

    The Financial Times (FT – 13 June 2025) reports that President Trump warned Teheran on his Truth Social Platform, that the next “already planned attacks” on Iran would be “even more brutal,” adding that “Iran must make a deal [on its nuclear program], before there is nothing left.” “No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” he wrote. Yes, the deal-maker has spoken again.

    Trump added that the US “makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come — and they know how to use it.” The usual megalo-ego-centric rhetoric which is typically not substantiated, and ever less believable, but ever more provoking a sad smile.

    Mr. Trump’s notion of negotiations refers to the recent US-imposed reduction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program to zero, when in earlier accords – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated in 2013 to 2015 with the US Obama Administration and their western allies plus China and Russia, Iran was allowed to enrich uranium to no more than 5%. For 15 years, Iran agreed to enrich uranium only up to 3.67% and not to build heavy water facilities. They complied with the 15-year condition.

    Nevertheless, the Israeli Air Force barrage on Iran follows a months-long stand-off over Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran insists and has always done so, its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian purposes, mostly nuclear energy. The UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is closely following Iran’s nuclear program and has never found any evidence that Iran was attempting to build an atomic bomb.

    Please NOTE and be reminded that Israel has hundreds of nuclear warheads, outside of the Non-Proliferation Agreement, tolerated by the west, led by the US of A.

    The IAEA, like most UN agencies, is following politically the “mandate” of the west. So, it does perhaps not come as a surprise that on Thursday, 12 June, the day before the Israeli attack on Iran, the agency declared that Iran was in breach of its non-proliferation obligations, the first such censure in two decades. It may have been the ultimate justification for Israel’s devastating air raid.

    Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said,

    Israel “Should expect a severe punishment. The Zionist regime, through this crime, has created a bitter and painful fate for itself — one it will certainly face,” he said. “With God’s permission, the powerful hands of the Islamic republic’s armed forces will not leave it unpunished.”

    For more details see FT 13 June 2025

    This new Middle Eastern war is in a constant state of change, possibly escalating and putting the world in danger, once more the works of the Zionist elite, attempting to control the globe, and achieving Greater Israel which would ideally expand their current map to also include Iran.

    Peace in the Middle East or better Western Asia would be a great step towards world Peace – an engine for socioeconomic prosperity.

  • First published on Global Research. You may read it here.
  • The post Israel Attacks Iran: The Turning of the Tables first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • US voters don’t want to join Israel’s unprovoked war on Iran, or for it to become Iraq 2.0. Donald Trump and other politicians, however, are essentially admitting the US is already involved.

    Trump isn’t just ignoring US intelligence saying Iran was not developing nuclear weapons (which Israel already has). He isn’t just ripping up his previous ‘anti-war’ mask. He’s making it very clear that the attack on Iran is a joint effort between the US and its useful junior partner, Israel. Because he has said:

    We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran

    Warhawk senator Ted Cruz basically said the same in a carcrash inteview, saying:

    we are carrying out military strikes today

    Iran’s foreign ministry didn’t hesitate in pointing the finger at the US after Israel’s initial attack, highlighting that it held the apartheid state‘s “primary supporter” responsible. But it seems Washington isn’t even trying to hide its participation anymore.

    Israeli intelligence service Mossad allegedly has significant influence in the US, and in the interview above Cruz himself admitted he was fine with Israel spying on people inside the US. Pro-Israel lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), meanwhile, exercises massive power in US politics. A simple look at how politicians display US and Israeli flags with equal pride represents an essential merging of the two settler-colonial states:

    It may indeed be the case that Israel is doing most of the West’s “dirty work” in Iran (as German chancellor Friedrich Merz put it), but it simply couldn’t do that without the US.

    They’re not even trying to fool people anymore

    Over half of the 2024 Trump voters oppose the US joining Israel’s war on Iran, as do 60% of all voters. A poll in Britain shows the same opposition to backing Israel’s crimes.

    That’s hardly surprising. Because there haven’t been meaningful efforts to fool people into backing Israeli crimes. And the facts are clear: Iran was showing good will in negotiations, ready to pledge never to develop nuclear weapons; US intelligence believed Iran was not currently developing such weapons; Israel blew up the negotiating table by openly engaging in international terrorism in Iran like it did in Lebanon last year, threatening Iranian civilians with collective punishment and demanding that they leave the capital en masse (which is almost certainly illegal).

    Israel – along with its US backers – is the aggressor. And Iran is the victim. We don’t need to delve into the long history of Western interference in Iran to see that.

    We must not allow our misanthropic rulers to push ahead with another devastating regime-change operation. Because they’re not just flamethrowing international law to cinders. They’re creating a world where only countries with their own nuclear weapons can escape this kind of aggression.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Department for Work and Pensions publishes text of bill cutting benefits and claims three-month transitional period is ‘one of most generous ever’

    Angela Rayner, the deputy PM, will be taking PMQs shortly. And she will be up against Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary.

    When Kemi Badenoch became Tory leader, she did not appoint a deputy (or even a “de factor deputy”, a post that has existed in Tory politics in recent years) and she said she would decide who would stand in for her at PMQs on a case by case basis. Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, got the gig the first time Starmer was away.

    Chris Philp follows Alex Burghart in rotating for Kemi Badenoch at PMQs. One Westminster wag asks “When is it going to be Robert Jenrick’s turn?”

    We have this profound challenge of the number of people joining the armed forces being outweighed by the outflow the people leaving. So ultimately its about retention.

    And the number one issue reason cited in last month’s attitude survey for the armed forces for leaving was family life. We know the quality of housing is unfortunately poor. It’s due to the basically to the structural nature of those homes.

    To wrap up this topic, the state of housing for the armed forces is in a poor state because your government did not do enough for it?

    [The housing] which is not in a good enough state because of your government?

    What did I do about it? I did something that hasn’t been done for 30 years – yes, it completed under Labour – and now we would recommend to the government, when they bring forth their housing defence white paper, that we set up a housing association.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Pacific Media Watch

    The Big Picture Podcast host, New Zealand-Egyptian journalist and author Mohamed Hassan, interviews Middle East Eye editor-in-chief David Hearst about the rapidly unfolding war between Israel and Iran, why the West supports it, and what it threatens to unleash on the global order.

    What does Israel really want to achieve, what options does Iran have to deescalate, and will the United States stop the war, or join it as is being hinted?

    Hearst says the war is “more dangerous than we imagine” and notes that while most Western leadership still backs Israel, there has been a strong shift in world public opinion against Tel Aviv.

    He says Israel has lost most of the world’s support, most of the Global South, most African states, Brazil, South Africa, China and Russia.

    Hearst says the world is witnessing the “cynical tailend of the colonial era” among Western states.


    The era of peace is over.             Video: Middle East Eye

    Iran ‘unlikely to surrender’
    Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, says Iran is unlikely to “surrender to American terms” and that there is a risk the war on Iran could “bring the entire region down”.

    Vaez told Al Jazeera in an interview that US President Donald Trump “provided the green light for Israel to attack Iran” just two days before the president’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, was due to meet with the Iranians in the Oman capital of Muscat.

    Imagine viewing, from the Iranian perspective, Trump giving the go-ahead for the attack while at the same time saying that diplomacy with Tehran was still ongoing, Vaez said.

    Now Trump “is asking for Iranian surrender” on his Truth Social platform, he said.

    “I think the only thing that is more dangerous than suffering from Israeli and American bombs is actually surrendering to American terms,” Vaez said.

    “Because if Iran surrenders on the nuclear issue and on the demands of President Trump, there is no end to the slippery slope, which would eventually result in regime collapse and capitulation anyway.”

    Most Americans oppose US involvement
    Meanwhile, a new survey has reported that most Americans oppose US military involvement in the conflict.

    The survey by YouGov showed that some 60 percent of Americans surveyed thought the US military should not get involved in the ongoing hostilities between Israel and Iran.

    Only 16 percent favoured US involvement, while 24 percent said they were not sure.

    Among the Democrats, those who opposed US intervention were at 65 percent, and among the Republicans, it was 53 percent. Some 61 percent of independents opposed the move.

    The survey also showed that half of Americans viewed Iran as an enemy of the US, while 25 percent said it was “unfriendly”.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Trump may be about to drag the United States directly into a devastating regional war in the Middle East with an attack on Iran. In these critical days and hours, all people who oppose the war machine need to be in the streets! Protests across the country will take place on June 18, as part of a national day of action.  Already, the administration has backed the brutal Israeli bombardment that has caused widespread civilian casualties — carried out with an arsenal paid for with our taxpayer dollars. But now, Trump may be on the verge of ordering direct U.S. strikes that would escalate the war to unspeakably dangerous new heights.

    The post National Day Of Protest June 18: No War On Iran! appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • For nearly 30 years, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has driven the Middle East into war and destruction.

    The man is a powder keg of violence.

    Throughout all the wars that he has championed, Netanyahu [who is wanted by the International Criminal Court] has always dreamed of the big one: to defeat and overthrow the Iranian government.

    His long-sought war, just launched, might just get us all killed in a nuclear Armageddon, unless Netanyahu is stopped.

    Netanyahu’s fixation on war goes back to his extremist mentors, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin.

    The post Stop Netanyahu Before He Gets Us All Killed appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • On June 17, Trump demanded the unconditional surrender of Ayatollah Khamenei, and said “Our patience is wearing thin.”

    On June 16, Trump posted to his Truth Social and to Facebook, this warning for everyone in Tehran to evacuate the City:

    He has said there that America is in this war not to invade Iran but to protect Israel. However if Iran will have any success, then Americans, and not ONLY Israelis, will be bombing Iran. (And, of course, virtually all of Israel’s weapons do already come from America.)

    The U.S. Government, and not ONLY Israel’s, actually invaded Iran on June 13 and had co-planned that aggression together.

    So, this invasion of Iran IS the policy of the U.S. Government, and not (as the propaganda describes it) ONLY the policy of Israel’s Government.

    And here was Trump’s Truth Social post on that day:

    In that post, he unintentionally made clear that he never actually “negotiated” with Iran; he ORDERED Iran to do Netanyahu’s bidding. And, NOW, he and Netanyahu intend to forcibly (militarily) regime-change Iran, simply because Iran refused to comply with Netanyahu’s (and Trump’s, and Biden’s) DEMAND (that Iran be subordinated to Israel).

    This is now heading into WW3. On June 16, the excellent news-site, which analyzes international-policy issues of protecting Russia from the U.S. empire’s constant aggressions to weaken or replace Russia’s Government, en.topcor.ru/news/, headlined “CRINK Air Force Could Help Iran Stand Up to Israel,” and here was its grim but entirely realistic analysis:

    The military defeat of Iran, if it also leads to the beginning of the process of disintegration of the Islamic Republic into a number of quasi-states, will become the gravest geopolitical defeat [that the] informal anti-Western alliance CRINK led by Russia and China [have faced]. The ally [member, actually: Iran is the “I” in “CRINK”] must be saved, but how, exactly?

    At the moment, the war between Israel and Iran is characterized by a remote exchange of air strikes using aircraft, ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones, as well as sabotage and terrorist attacks by Israeli special services in the Iranian rear.

    Given that they have no common border and the US’s stated non-interference, large-scale ground operations are out of the question, so sending international brigades of Russian, North Korean or Chinese volunteers to help the Persians makes no sense. However, Tehran would certainly not refuse help in the fight against Israeli aviation, so it is worth remembering that something similar has already happened in modern history.

    “Flying Tigers”

    Let us recall that even before the start of World War II, a war between the Chinese Republic and the Japanese Empire that had attacked it had already begun in the European theater of operations in Southeast Asia on July 7, 1937. At the same time, the Japanese were taking out the poorly prepared Chinese aviation with one hand. However, in that historical period, China enjoyed support not only from the USSR, but also from the USA.

    Retired US Air Force Major Claire Lee Chennault, sent there as a military adviser, proposed creating a special air unit in which the pilots would be American volunteers flying American planes. And that was done. President Roosevelt officially allowed US Air Force pilots to take leave and fight on a purely volunteer basis on the side of China against Japan.

    A special aviation unit called the Flying Tigers was then created, consisting of three fighter squadrons flying American aircraft purchased under Lend-Lease. Its pilots signed a contract with the Chinese private firm CAMCO (Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company), under the terms of which they received $500 for each enemy aircraft destroyed.

    American volunteers successfully fought on the side of the Chinese Republic until 1942, after which the Flying Tigers were withdrawn from the Chinese Air Force and included in the 23rd Fighter Group of the 10th Air Force of the US Army, and in 1943 it was transformed into the 14th Air Force of the US Army, consisting of 60 bombers and more than 100 fighters. Their commander, Claire Lee Chennault, became a general.

    Legion “Condor”

    Around the same time, the Condor Legion, created in Nazi Germany to help the future Franco regime in Spain, was operating in the European theatre of military operations. The number of this “volunteer” unit was relatively small, reaching 5,5 thousand people.

    However, in the Third Reich, Condor was seen as a training ground for personnel, a testing ground for modern weapons, and a source of up-to-date combat experience. In addition to four bomber squadrons and four fighter squadrons, the legion included anti-aircraft and anti-tank defense units, an armored group of four battalions, transport sections, anti-tank artillery, and flamethrower units.

    During the Spanish Civil War, the German army trained its best future aces and tested the latest aircraft that later fought in World War II. The Europeans intend to do something similar today, sending a so-called fighter coalition to Ukraine to help the Zelensky regime, which will protect Kyiv and the right bank from Russian missile and air strikes.

    CRINK Air Army?

    Returning to the topic of Iran, one must ask why, in fact, Russia, the DPRK and China should be interested in Tehran not losing and not following the path of Syria, which lost its sovereignty and turned into a terrorist enclave?

    Our country needs Iran as a friendly partner, covering the southern flank and providing access to the Indian Ocean through the Caspian Sea. The oil fields that Israel threatens to bomb already belong to Beijing, which has invested huge amounts of money in the Iranian oil and gas sector. And for Pyongyang, Tehran has long been a technological partner in the development and production of various weapons.

    What could the CRINK alliance actually do to help its ally, who has been dealt a vile blow and is being prepared to be destroyed by “Western partners” at the hands of Israel? Based on the above, there are two possible paths.

    The first is the creation of an international volunteer unit of Russian, North Korean and Chinese “vacationers” who would receive modern fighters and air defense systems purchased by Iran under Lend-Lease and would go to gain real combat experience in air battles against the ultra-modern Israeli aviation.

    Bearing in mind that the Russian Federation is facing a direct conflict with NATO, which has placed its bets on aviation, the DPRK has South Korea right next door, and the AUKUS alliance has already been created against China and a military operation against Taiwan is looming, such relevant experience in air combat would be, to put it mildly, not superfluous. Taking it into account, the Russian and Chinese defense industries could appropriately modify their aircraft and create a center for joint training of pilots from Iran, the DPRK, the Russian Federation and China.

    The second path is a little less demonstrative and involves the creation of a hypothetical aviation PMC, for the needs of which Tehran could buy modern aircraft from Russia and China and hire vacationing pilots from the Russian Federation, China and, possibly, North Korea, who would be ready to cover Iran from Israeli air strikes.

    There are options, if there is a desire.

    All of the propaganda in The West PRESUMES that The West has decency and international law on its side and that all OTHER countries are inferior to it — less good, less decent, than are the U.S.-and-allied nations. The reality is the exact opposite.

    For example, the CIA-edited and written Wikipedia (which blacklists — blocks from linking to — sites that aren’t CIA-approved) article on “CRINK” redirects the reader to their article “Axis of Upheaval”, which opens:

    Axis of Upheaval” is a term coined in 2024 by Center for a New American Security foreign policy analysts Richard Fontaine and Andrea Kendall-Taylor and used by many foreign policy analysts,[1][2][3] military officials,[4][5] and international groups[6] to describe the growing anti-Western collaboration between Russia under Vladimir PutinIranChina, and North Korea beginning in the early 2020s. It has also been called the “axis of autocracies“,[7][8][9] “quartet of chaos“,[10][11][12] the “deadly quartet[4] or “CRINK“.[13][a]

    The loose alliance generally represented itself in diplomatic addresses and public statements as an “anti-hegemony” and “anti-imperialist” coalition with intentions to challenge what it deemed to be a Western-dominated global order to reshape international relations into a multipolar order according to their shared interests. While not a formal bloc, these nations have increasingly coordinated their economic, military, and diplomatic efforts, making strong efforts to aid each other to undermine Western influence.[1]

    Central to its opening paragraph is the Center for a New American Security (CNAS); and, as is made clear at one of the CIA’s NON-approved sites, the “Militarist Monitor”, their article “Center for a New American Security” (which thus is not used as a source by Wikipedia) makes clear that CNAS is totally neoconservative (a marketing-arm of the U.S. weapons-manufacturing industry), but even that site (MM) says nothing about who funds it. Another CIA-banned site, “WSWS”, has a far more comprehensive article about CNAS, titled “Democratic think tank plots war against Russia and China: What is the Center for a New American Security?”, and it makes explicit that CNAS’s main donors are “Defense contractors” (which sell ONLY to the U.S. Government and its allies) and secondarily “High tech” (which sell both to those Governments and to the public). In other words: the CIA represents the billionaires who are heavily invested in those two industries — as well as in the ‘news’-media (such as Wikipedia) that propagandize for America’s armaments companies in their ‘news’, editorials, and ads. (For example: even if a pharmaceutical company is simply advertising in these billionaires’ ‘news’-media, it is thereby funding the necon operation.) In 1922, Walter Lippmann invented the phrase “manufacture of consent” to refer to this then-new type of ‘democracy’; but it became big-time only after Truman started the Cold War and the U.S. global-hegemonic empire, on 25 July 1945.

    The hegemonic (or “hegemoniacal”) global empire that U.S. President Truman started on 25 July 1945, needs now, finally, to be defeated decisively. This means without reaching the stage of a nuclear war against Russia, because that could end ONLY in the defeat of both sides and the end of all human civilization. However, I am personally inclined to think that The West have become SO desperate to rule the entire world, so that Russia — and perhaps all of the CRINK — need now to announce publicly that they will NOT allow Iran to be defeated, and that this means that they ARE willing to go nuclear against America and Israel, in order to PREVENT Iran’s defeat — if that’s what would be needed in order to PREVENT the U.S. from providing such backup to Israel’s invasion of Iran.

    Trump (like Biden) never planned for that possibility. If there is to be a WW3, then the most evil empire in all of history, America’s empire, must be prevented from starting it (e.g., by extending Israel’s war against Iran into becoming fully a U.S.-Israel invasion of Iran). It must instead be started by their main targets — CRINK — if it MUST start, at all. The initiator of a war (such as Israel and the U.S. are, in regard to their joint war against Iran) always has the advantage of surprise (such as on June 13th), and thus the higher likelihood of eliminating the other side’s central command (as Israel has largely done). That way (by CRINK’s joining with Iran on this war), if there will be any future afterwards, it WON’T be dominated by the world’s most evil nations — the U.S.-empire nations. Planning for a post-WW3 world has now become important, because of Trump’s commitment now of greatly increased U.S. backup of Israel’s war to conquer Iran. Post-WW3 would be hell in any case, but simply allowing the U.S.-Israel-UK empire to take the entire world would LIKEWISE be hell. And that’s what we all are now heading toward.

    The post Trump (Like Biden) is Simply Evil first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • In June 2025, the world witnessed the outbreak of a full-scale war between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel. This conflict, extending far beyond the military sphere, is reshaping political, media, and geopolitical landscapes. At the onset of hostilities, Israel initiated a surprise operation targeting several high-ranking Iranian military commanders and scientists. Tel Aviv saw this act as a significant achievement, anticipating it would plunge Iran into psychological disarray and delay its response.

    Yet, this assumption proved gravely flawed. The Islamic Republic swiftly recovered and, within days, launched a series of unprecedented strikes on key Israeli cities such as Haifa and Tel Aviv.

    The post Israel’s Strategic Miscalculation And The Dawn Of A New World Order appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • RNZ Pacific

    The Solomon Islands Foreign Ministry says five people who completed agriculture training in Israel are safe but unable to come home amid the ongoing war between Israel and Iran.

    The ministry said in a statement that the Solomon Islands Embassy in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, was closely monitoring the situation and maintaining regular contact with the students.

    Ambassador Cornelius Walegerea said that given the volatile nature of the current situation, the safety of their citizens in Israel — particularly the students — remained their top priority.

    “Once the airport reopens and it is deemed safe for them to travel, the students will be able to return home.”

    The five Solomon Islands students have undertaken agricultural training at the Arava International Centre for Agriculture in Israel since September 2024.

    The students completed their training on June 5 and were scheduled to return home on June 17.

    The students have been advised to strictly follow instructions issued by local authorities and to continue observing all precautionary safety measures.

    Ministry updates
    The ministry will continue to provide updates as the situation develops.

    Its travel advisory, issued the day Israel attacked Iran last Friday, said the ministry “wishes to advise all citizens not to travel to Israel and the region”.

    Citizens studying in Israel were told they “should now make every effort to leave Israel”.

    Meanwhile, a friend of a New Zealander stuck in Iran said the NZ government needed to help provide safe passage, and that the advice so far had been “vague and lacking any substance whatsover”.

    The woman told RNZ the advice from MFAT until yesterday had been to “stay put”, before an evacuation notice was issued.

    MFAT declined interview
    MFAT declined an interview, but told RNZ it had heard from a small number of New Zealanders seeking advice about how to depart from Iran and Israel.

    It would not provide any further detail regarding those individuals.

    MFAT said the airspace was currently closed over both countries, which would likely continue.

    The agency understood departure via land border crossings had been taking place, but that carried risks and New Zealanders “should only do so if they feel it is safe”.

    Meanwhile, the NZ government said visitors from war zones in the Middle East could stay in New Zealand until it was safe for them to return home.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has suggested to President Donald Trump that he should use a nuclear bomb against Iran, urging Trump to listen to the voice he will “hear from heaven” and follow its guidance in making decisions about Israel’s war on Iran. In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump posted a screenshot of the lengthy text he says was sent to him by Huckabee…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he doesn’t care that his own Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has said that according to the assessment of U.S. intelligence sources, Iran has not been pursuing the development of a nuclear weapon for over two decades — an assessment that undercuts the U.S. and Israel’s stated reason for the current attack on Iran. In March…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • On June 13, Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran. Airstrikes hit buildings across the capital, Tehran, striking residential neighborhoods as well as military sites. In just one night, close to 100 people were killed. Among the dead were dozens killed while asleep in their beds. The attack came after eight months of calm, with not a single shot fired between Iran and Israel.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel is intensifying its war on Iran, bombing the headquarters of the country’s national TV network on Monday and assassinating another top military leader. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also suggested killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran has responded with barrages of long-range missiles targeting Israel. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has shown…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Western powers have given Israel a free pass to livestream its genocide in Gaza. But. with recent weeks bringing increasing criticism and resistance, the apartheid state is now trying to push its Western accomplices into backing its unprovoked war on Iran. Undoubtedly, many in the Western halls of power are salivating over the prospect of regime change in oil-rich Iran. However, it’s still possible to stop Israel’s provocation turning into Iraq 2.0.

    Corporate commentators salivate over Iran’s oil

    Israel has spent decades trying to push for war against Iran. Why? Because Iran and its allies in the Middle East have long been the only ones actually presenting a military challenge to Israel’s settler-colonial crimes in Palestine.

    Before the disastrous US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example, Israeli war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu promised that ousting Saddam Hussein would be great for the region. In reality, his overthrow created ‘a thousand Saddams’, leading to the deaths of up to a million civilians amid skyrocketing non-state terror. Today, Netanyahu and other Israeli officials are repeating this playbook, threatening Iran’s leader with the same fate and trying to convince the world this would actually be good for the region.

    Iran has the planet’s third-biggest crude oil reserves and second-biggest proven reserves of natural gas. And corporate commentators are openly admitting that replacing Iran’s government with a US-submissive regime would be good for fossil-fuel bosses:

    The Western establishment media, meanwhile, is faithfully trying to beat the drums of war on Iran, with headlines like Trump is urged to go “all in” on crushing Iran and What are Trump’s options for dealing with Iran?. From the US to the UK, and from France to Germany, conservative and liberal propagandists alike are acting like we should sympathise with the genocidal aggressor, Israel, over the hundreds of civilians it has already killed with its unprovoked assault on Iran. Even Israeli media admit that the apartheid state is hungry for war, but their Western counterparts fail to point that out.

    The problem is, it’s so easy to expose Israel’s lies

    In 2003, social media was in its infancy and mainstream propaganda still dominated. So the lies, illegality, pointlessness, and heartless chaos of the invasion of Iraq prevailed. But now, a quick search for the facts reveals that:

    Because of this, many people can immediately see straight through the ridiculously embarrassing attempts by Western politicians and media outlets to convince people that the victim is somehow the bad guy and the aggressor is the good guy.

    In 2003, meanwhile, the invasion of Iraq came under two years after the “single largest loss of life resulting from a foreign attack on American soil” on 9/11. So, the massive climate of fear in the US essentially opened the door for overall public support for the invasion. Only years later did many people actually wake up to the absolute disaster that it was.

    2025 is different

    Donald Trump, meanwhile, actually tried to paint himself as some kind of anti-war sage in a break from the Republican Party establishment that destroyed Iraq. He even warned that Barack Obama was going to start a war with Iran. But when Obama – as one of the few good things he did – actually made a deal with Iran, Trump trashed it as soon as he took office, unnecessarily ramping up tensions.

    Israel is a “junior partner” – in Netanyahu’s own words – to US imperialism. But while the US fears few repercussions of the genocide it has funded in occupied Gaza, it is much more wary about taking on the more powerful Iran. And Trump himself knows that a big section of his base is against pointless foreign wars of aggression.

    Israel, meanwhile, is haemorrhaging money protecting itself from Iranian retaliation. It is riling some US figures by holding US citizens hostage. And a full-blown war would impact the US economy at a time when it’s already struggling.

    There was no 9/11 moment pushing the US to act. Trump does not have the overwhelming support of US citizens for a war that Israel stubbornly started amid a genocide that has everyone’s attention. And he risks severely undermining his political brand if he does attack Iran. So while nothing is off the table, and the drums of war are beating just as they were in 2003, there is still reason to believe 2025 will not see Iran become Iraq 2.0.

    Featured image via YouTube screenshot/CBC News

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Israel have continued to terrorise Palestinians during their attack on Iran. Despite focusing their time and energy on attacking journalists in Iran, the genocidal warmongers have continued to kill Palestinians. Middle East Eye reported that:

    Israeli forces killed at least 80 Palestinians and wounded hundreds in two ambushes at US-run aid distribution centres in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday.

    Eyewitnesses told Middle East Eye that Israeli forces ambushed thousands of starving Palestinians, killing and wounding hundreds in the attacks.

    The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that 30 people were killed in Rafah, and almost 50 were killed in Khan Yunis. Israel have reduced the entry of food aid trucks to less than a trickle. And, over the past weeks has made a pattern of attacking a starving population as they gather for what little food there is.

    Israel’s cruelty

    Journalist Sarah Wilkinson shared footage of Palestinians running in terror as Israeli forces opened fire:

    MintPress News also shared footage of panicked scenes in Khan Yunis as people ran for their lives:

    5Pillars shared an interview with Gaza’s deputy minister of health, Dr. Yousef, who explained:

    In Rafah, Al Jazeera spoke to a young girl whose brother was killed by Israeli forces as he tried to find food:

    She said:

    His name was Hamza, and he was very kind to me.

    Israeli ambush

    Abdalla Elyyan, who lives in Khan Younis, told Middle East Eye:

    We headed to the distribution point after hearing that wheat would be handed out – at 7am, we were ambushed in the Tahlia area.

    Chaos erupted. People were strewn across the streets – so many killed and wounded

    Can you imagine shells raining down on thousands of people packed into a small area? The number of people killed was staggering.

    The American-Israeli collaboration, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), has been heavily criticised by legitimate aid distributors. One woman described how it has now become horrifically commonplace for aid spots to be sites of massacres:

    It’s a trap, not an aid organisation. It’s a trap to kill our men…They set up this new aid mechanisms so they can lure our young men and kill them one by one.

    The Canary’s Charlie Jaay reported that:

    The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid distribution mechanism reinforces control over the life-saving supplies that are so desperately needed by Gaza’s population, giving Israel the power to decide who receives aid and who will be left to die, while attempting to mislead the public into believing Palestinians are benefitting.

    Settler attacks

    Israel is currently occupied with retaliation from Iran, after the former’s unprovoked attack. However, it would appear that settler bloodthirstiness knows no bounds. Israeli settlers have been attacking Palestinian properties and setting them on fire.

    Abdel Aziz, who owns a factory in al-Mazra’a al-Sharqiya in the West Bank described:

    When we went to the factory, we found the settlers had set fire to the existing vehicles and mobile rooms.

    They were all armed, and we tried to confront them, unarmed.

    Despite having decimated infrastructure vital to life, Israel remains unsatisfied with the death and destruction it has spread in Palestine. Aziz said:

    The settlers’ goal is to undermine the Palestinian economy in the eastern part of Ramallah, which is concentrated in our town.

    He concluded:

    They don’t want quiet, they want constant problems. They even destroyed the olive trees on the sides of the road. Everything in their ideology is terrorism

    Terrorism

    United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, said:

    Israel’s warfare in Gaza is inflicting horrifying, unconscionable suffering on Palestinians.

    And, he urged those with influence to:

    exert maximum pressure on Israel to bring this unbearable suffering to an end.

    A reminder, were it needed, that the UK and in particular the US, could end Palestinian suffering if they wished to. The fact is that not only have they not exerted “maximum pressure” but have enabled, and facilitated Israel’s genocide. It’s simply not true that they’re complicit. Complicity implies only an implication in the crime. They’re guilty, outright.

    After all, Israel couldn’t unleash all this terror without them.

    Featured image – YouTube screenshot/Al Jazeera English

    By Maryam Jameela

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • This is a case of awakening Iran to really the full deceit and the full evil that is represented by Israel and the United States and Europe in my view this uh you know the history of the last 60 years for my country I’m ashamed of it. You know my country was supposed to be a place of freedom and liberty and promoting freedom, instead we become agents of murder and mayhem, and we kill foreigners with no regard whatsoever and then wonder why people don’t like us.

    — Larry Johnson, “IRAN STRIKES ISRAEL: Rockets Rain Down on Tel Aviv, Haifa, Eilat & More!Dialogue Works, 16 June 2025

    Because of nuclear weapons, and because a lot of countries have a lot of them, we [the United States] can’t defeat those countries. So the world is intrinsically multipolar in the sense: don’t mess with another nuclear superpower [it] can really wreck your day.

    — Jeffrey Sachs, “Washington has the delusion it still runs the show,” Al Jazeera.

    Columbia University economics professor Jeffrey Sachs restates an often heard and obvious maxim that speaks to nuclear deterrence. Military analyst Scott Ritter seems to dissent from the maxim of nuclear deterrence. In a video dated 15 July 2025, Ritter says, “Developing A Nuclear Weapon Will Be THE END Of Iran!”

    “I’ll tell you, the quickest way to get America to drop nuclear bombs on Iran is for Iran to develop a nuclear weapons program. Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. That will not happen. No matter how much people think it’s justified, and all this. it won’t happen uh the United States has made it clear that, it’s uh, it’s red line for it using nuclear weapons against Iran is an Iranian nuclear weapon.”

    “I turn to the Iranians and say: why then do you want to posture as a nuclear threshold state knowing that if you ever cross that line you bring about your inevitable destruction as a nation [by the US] …”

    Yet, in a subsequent video, on 16 July 2025, Ritter seems to contradict himself, saying: “The Iranians are ready for what the United States can bring to bear.”

    Ritter also admits, “The Israelis know that the Iranians don’t have a nuclear weapons program. They know it.”

    Ritter complains, “Iran is being grossly irresponsible for going beyond that which is necessary for um doing its legitimate peaceful [nuclear] program.”

    Providing one’s nation, a nation which is constantly threatened, with an effective military deterrence is irresponsible? Ritter ignores that Israel has been biting at the bit for several decades to attack Iran on the pretense that it is acquiring nuclear weapon capability… a similar trajectory that Israel undertook to acquire its nuclear weapons capability.

    Ritter is flummoxed as to why Iran would pursue enrichment beyond 20% calling it “waving the red flag in front of the Israeli bull.” Well, that Israeli bull did not need a red flag to launch an illegal war, a cowardly war, and that is what a war is when you just sneak up to attack without the courage to first declare war.

    Ritter’s argument is regressivist unless he applies the nuclear standard to all countries.

    A US nuclear attack on a nuclear armed Iran would also threaten the end of the US as a self-preening beacon on the hill — if it isn’t already in the eyes of people around the world.

    Why doesn’t an intelligent analyst like Ritter argue for every nuclear-armed nation to accede to Article 6 of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty instead of focusing his ire solely on a perpetually targeted Iran. If not, it comes across as prejudiced and discriminatory.

    The post Apply the NPT to All Nations Equally first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.


  • This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.