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Israel launches strikes on nuclear sites as Iran warns of retaliation

Uranium facility, steel plants and heavy water complex among targets hit as IRGC warns of escalation.

By Al Jazeera Staff, AFP, Reuters and The Associated Press, 27 Mar 2026

Israel has struck a uranium processing facility in the central Iranian city of Yazd, the Israeli military confirmed, in an escalatory move that comes as regional diplomats have been attempting to broker an agreement to halt the joint US-Israeli war on Iran.

The Israeli Air Force said it hit a plant used to extract raw materials essential to the uranium enrichment process, describing it as a “unique facility” in Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization confirmed the strike, but said there were no casualties or radiation leaks.

A projectile also hit near the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation said. The attack caused “no casualties, financial, or technical damage,” the organisation said.

Friday marked day 28 of the conflict, and the assault by the Israeli army was part of a broad wave of attacks on sites across the country.

Strikes also hit areas in and around Tehran, the city of Kashan and Ahwaz, while 18 people were killed in Qom.

More than 1,900 people have been killed in US-Israeli attacks on Iran since the war began on February 28.

Iranian officials said US-Israeli strikes have damaged at least 120 museums and historical sites across the country since hostilities began.

Negar Mortazavi, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy, told Al Jazeera that even Iranians who had been critical of their own government increasingly view the war as an assault on the Iranian people rather than its leadership, saying the targeting of water, electricity, gas, cultural heritage, schools and hospitals was “unacceptable.”

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel would “intensify” its campaign and expand the range of sites it targets, accusing Tehran of deliberately directing missiles at Israeli civilians.

IRGC Aerospace Commander Seyed Majid Moosavi warned that the conflict was entering new territory, saying “the equation will no longer be an eye for an eye.” He urged employees of US and Israeli-linked industrial companies across the region to immediately vacate their workplaces.

Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem, reporting from Tehran, noted that the strikes on two major Iranian nuclear facilities could prompt the IRGC to target Dimona again, Israel’s nuclear site, as it did last week.

Prior to Friday’s strikes, US President Donald Trump said Thursday he had pushed back planned attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure by 10 days, to April 6, saying negotiations to end the war were “going very well”.

Iranian officials flatly rejected that characterisation, describing Washington’s proposal to end the war as “one-sided and unfair” and outlining their own list of conditions, which include war reparations and the recognition of Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz.

On Friday, an an Iranian official said the ongoing strikes, while simultaneously discussing talks, were “intolerable”……………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/27/israel-launches-strikes-on-iran-nuclear-sites-as-war-enters-fifth-week

March 29, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump White House plagiarized Iran war manifesto from Israel-aligned think tank

Wyatt Reed and Max Blumenthal.The Grayzone, March 20, 2026

The Trump White House plagiarized its justification for attacking Iran from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the main DC outfit promoting war with Tehran. The think tank was originally founded to “enhance Israel’s image,” and partners closely with the Israeli government.

The Trump Administration appeared to plagiarize its official justification for its war on Iran, copying almost word-for-word a document originally produced by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), a pro-war think tank with close ties to Israeli intelligence which was originally founded to “enhance Israel’s image.”

The FDD document was authored by Tzvi Kahn, the former assistant director for policy and government affairs at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

A March 2, 2026 statement issued by the White House accusing Tehran of 44 instances of terrorism against American citizens is “virtually identical” to the list published by FDD in June 2025, analyst Stephen McIntyre noted Thursday.

While the White House did make superficial alterations to the text, they largely consisted of appending the label “Iran-backed” to every mention of groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. In the few instances where Trump administration officials bothered to make significant changes to the original FDD list, the edits were almost always made in service of “ratcheting up the underlying allegation,” McIntyre concluded.

Among the most egregious examples was a 1996 attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which FDD originally said merely that Hezbollah al-Hejaz was “deemed responsible” for. In the White House version, however, the group’s responsibility was “asserted as factual,” explained McIntyre, noting that serious questions about the incident remain unanswered to this day. “Clinton’s Defense Secretary William Perry subsequently wondered (along with many others) whether Khobar Towers should have been attributed to Al Qaeda,” he wrote.

A 2009 investigation by journalist Gareth Porter based on interviews with over a dozen former CIA, FBI and Clinton administration officials demonstrated that the FBI’s inquiry into the Khobar Towers attack was precooked to blame Iran, when Al Qaeda was most likely the culprit. Porter found that Shia citizens of Saudi Arabia had been tortured into confessing to the crime by Saudi secret police.

While the White House declined to join FDD in blaming Iran for the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, it echoed the Israel-oriented organization in blaming Tehran for 603 military deaths in Iraq, which both documents attributed to “Iran-backed militias.” But there are major discrepancies with the figure, which amounts to 60% of the total US combatant deaths attributed to Iran. As McIntyre noted, such a claim is “not made in the State Department annual reports on Global Terrorism.”

At least four of the Americans the Trump administration claims were killed by Iran had served in Israel’s military. These included a US citizen who died while invading Lebanon in 2006 and two Americans in the IDF’s Golani brigade who were killed while invading Gaza in 2014. The fourth American, who was born in Israel and had also served in the Golani brigade, was killed amid violent reprisals against settlers in the West Bank in 2015.

A number of the claims are undermined by the very sources they cite, including a December 2019 incident in which the Trump administration insisted “Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah terrorists killed an American civilian contractor and wounded several U.S. service members in a rocket attack at K1 Air Base in Kirkuk, Iraq.” But the Reuters article cited by the White House as proof that Iran was responsible made no such claim, explicitly cautioning that “no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.” In reality, Reuters suggested the attack was the work of “Islamic State militants operating in the area [who] have turned to insurgency-style tactics.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….https://thegrayzone.com/2026/03/20/trump-plagiarized-iran-israel-think-tank/

March 29, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, Israel, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Dramatic high-risk US Delta Force plan to snatch Iran’s nuclear stocks revealed

Chris Hughes Defence and Security Editor, 25 Mar 2026, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/dramatic-high-risk-delta-force-36921080

American special forces could be used to smash Iran’s nuclear ambitions as war-chiefs weigh up high-risk mission amid fears of casualties and a repeat of 1980 ‘Op’ Eagle Claw’ disaster

American military chiefs are considering one of the biggest special forces raids ever-launched in a bid to cripple Iran’s nuclear programme.

The massive helicopter-borne insertion of thousands of assault troops supporting a large number of Delta Force specialists could take at least 24 hours to conduct.

It would try to seize 450kg of 60% enriched uranium believed still to be hidden deep beneath one of Tehran’s nuclear facilities and is an immensely high-risk operation.

Although below the ‘weapons grade’ 90% of enriched uranium needed to make a nuclear weapon some US intelligence experts fear Iran could use it in the future.

Two British military sources have told the Mirror the operation plan has been drawn up, although both said it has been assessed as “very high-risk, with high probability of casualties and low probability of absolute mission success since the exact location of the uranium is uncertain.”

After fighting their way into the complex, the elite Delta Force soldiers would secure the site for specialist engineers to drill and blast their way into the underground complex.

The immensely complex operation would involve scores of spy planes and fighter jets helping to secure the approach to the mission targets.

Ground troops would form a vast perimeter around the site to fight off attacks from the IRGC. Plans were drawn up by Joint Special Operations Command which has a poignant link to Iran as it was set up in 1980 following the disastrous Operation Eagle Claw whose aim was to rescue US hostages from Tehran.

Then eight US Navy Sea Stallion helicopters took off from the deck of an American aircraft carrier for a 600-mile trip to rendezvous in the Iranian desert with six C-130 transport aircrafts.

They were hit by a violent wind-driven sand storm common in the desert which damaged the aircrafts and President Carter abandoned the mission.

As the force prepared to depart, a RH-53D helicopter crashed into a C-130 plane carrying extra fuel for refueling, igniting a fire that killed five Airmen and three Marines.

America vowed it would never happen again and sought to bring its special forces and intelligence elites together for better mission planning and execution.

In 1980 JSOC was launched forming combined units from the Army Delta Force, Navy SEAL Team Six, and the Air Force’s 24th Special Tactics Squadron to ensure they could operate seamlessly together, a key failing during the Iran hostage crisis.

One source, from the intelligence community, told the Mirror: “The plan does exist but the risks of failure are very high and it may have been discounted as too difficult.

“However it is known that President Trump is extremely belligerent and not exactly risk-cognisant so there is always the possibility he could still give the go-ahead for it to happen.

“Certainly the US military has given the President options, along with their risk assessment and the uranium seizure is top of his list. Troops movements we are seeing towards the Gulf indicate something bigger than, or as well as, a Strait of Hormuz -specific operation.”

The operational planning includes crack paratroopers entering Iranian airspace in fast-moving Chinook troop carrier helicopters and uniquely-adapted special forces planes for an unusually large number of elite Delta Force special forces soldiers.

A second, military source, told the Mirror: “If it goes ahead this could be the biggest Special Forces operations ever launched, with diversions elsewhere in Iran and major air-raids to cast confusion into the ranks of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It has been looked into for some time but it is exceptionally high risk.

“The final word will go to Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump with input from Pete Hegseth, his so-called Secretary of War, who has been extremely enthusiastic about this war. It is a major decision as a lot can go wrong in an operation of this size but US administration may see it as the only way to secure the enriched uranium. The question is whether Trump is prepared to give it the go-ahead.”

Earlier this month the Mirror revealed exclusively how US forces had sent a number of uniquely adapted MC-130J Commando II special forces planes from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk to the Middle East, indicating a major covert operation was being planned.

The Lockheed Martin US Air Force Special Operations Command planes are for clandestine, low-visibility infiltration, exfiltration, and resupply of special operations forces.

They perform high-speed, low-level air refueling, cargo airdrops, and air to land missions in hostile or sensitive areas. It comes amid reports President Trump has now ordered thousands of elite US paratroopers to the Middle East, perhaps to invade Kharg Island, the oil-exporting hub on which the Iranian economy relies.

Based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the Immediate Response Force is a brigade of about 3,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division that can deploy anywhere in the world within 18 hours.

But at least 5,000 marines are also en route for the Gulf, supposedly also to support an operation to secure Kharg Island, despite Trump’s claims peace negotiations are underway.

These claims have been vehemently denied by Iran’s foreign ministry. The first of two marine expeditionary units is due to arrive in the Middle East on Friday, comprising the USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship carrying 2,200 troops, the USS New Orleans, an amphibious docking ship, F-35B Lightning II stealth fighters and MV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

Our sources told the Mirror the two operations against Kharg Island and the site of the hidden nuclear facility, which we have chosen not to identify, may yet happen simultaneously.

March 28, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

A War Built on Lies, Sold by Lobbyists, with Innocent Children as its Price

23 March 2026 David Tyler, Australian Independent Media

On 27 February 2026, the night before the bombs fell, Oman’s foreign minister, Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, announced that a breakthrough had been reached. After months of back-channel diplomacy, Iran had agreed to never stockpile enriched uranium, to full IAEA verification, and to irreversibly downgrade its existing stock to the lowest possible level. Peace, he said, was “within reach”. Technical talks were scheduled to continue in Vienna the following week.

Fourteen hours later, at 7:00 AM Tehran time on 28 February, the first wave of missiles arrived. China had been working to improve Iran’s situational awareness. It did not matter. The attack came without warning. Reports from Arab media, undenied by Tehran, claimed that Esmail Qaani, commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, had been arrested and executed as a Mossad agent.

Within twelve hours, the United States and Israel had conducted more than 900 strikes. Two hundred Israeli aircraft, the largest combat sortie in its history, dropped over 1,200 bombs on 500 sites across western and central Iran. US Tomahawk missiles, launched from destroyers in the Arabian Sea, hit leadership compounds, missile factories, naval installations, and the National Security Council offices where Ali Khamenei was meeting his senior advisers. They knew he was there. Netanyahu had personally briefed Trump on the location days earlier. Khamenei was above ground, in daylight, when the strike came. He was dead before midday.

Forty-eight hours later, US forces had flown more than 1,700 sorties and struck over 1,250 targets across 29 of Iran’s 31 provinces. The first six days of Operation Epic Fury cost the United States more than $11 billion.

In that same period, Amnesty International confirmed that a US Tomahawk missile struck a girls’ primary school in Minab. Debris bearing the inscription “Made in USA” and the name “Globe Motors, Ohio” was recovered at the site. At least 170 people were killed. Most were children aged seven to twelve.

Then Donald Trump, in the second year of his second term, appeared on Truth Social to claim the war was about freedom.

The Lobbyists and the Lie

The question corporate media has avoided is simple. Who wanted this war, and how did they get it?

The Washington Post reports that Trump acted after sustained lobbying from Israel and Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman urged him to strike. Netanyahu’s government pressed the case repeatedly. Their interests converged. Israel sought to restore deterrence and reshape a regional order drifting beyond its control. Saudi Arabia saw an opportunity to weaken a rival it had failed to contain by other means. Together, they found a willing president.

The deeper breach was internal. Pentagon briefers told congressional staff on 1 March that Iran was not preparing to attack US forces or bases unless Israel struck first. The intelligence did not support the war. It was set aside. This was not a failure of information. It was a decision to ignore it.

US intelligence had already assessed that Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons and would not have the capacity to build one before the end of the decade, even if it chose to do so. The IAEA had affirmed it. At the same time, Badr Al Busaidi was moving between delegations, and Iran’s chief negotiator was describing the talks as the most substantive in years. A framework for Vienna was in place. Technical teams were on standby.

Inside the administration, advisers discussed the advantages of letting Israel strike first to create a cleaner pretext for US entry after Iranian retaliation. That is not strategy. It is sequencing. Diplomacy was not the alternative to war. It was its cover.

Behind the push stood the familiar architecture of American intervention. Senator Lindsey Graham. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The American Enterprise Institute. Donor networks that have spent decades advocating regime change in Iran. They did not invent the policy. They sustained it, funded it, and waited for a president prepared to act on it.

Trump supplied the rest. On different days he has offered regime change, nuclear prevention, Iranian freedom, mineral security, and the Venezuela model as justification. None align. That is because the rationale followed the decision, not the other way around.

Congress, meanwhile, has largely abdicated its role. War powers have withered into ritual complaint. Democratic leadership has offered little more than procedural discomfort. The constitutional check on executive war-making is now
political theatre, observed and ignored.

Illegal, Immoral and Known to Be Both

The legal position is clear. The UN Charter permits the use of force only with Security Council authorisation or in self-defence against an armed attack. Neither condition applied. Iran had not attacked the United States or Israel. The Security Council had authorised nothing. The strikes began during active negotiations.

Ben Saul, the UN special rapporteur on counterterrorism, called it what it is: a crime of aggression. Oona Hathaway described it as “blatantly illegal”. The European Council on Foreign Relations reported broad consensus among legal scholars that no valid justification exists. This was not a contested case. It was an unambiguous one.

Within the United States, dissent has come from the margins of power. Rashida Tlaib. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Bernie Sanders. They are not describing a grey area. They are describing what the law already recognises.

What the Bombs Actually Did……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The Catastrophe in Progress

………………………….This is not a regional disruption. It is a global economic shock. Energy prices feed directly into inflation, into transport, into food. The cost of this war will not be confined to the battlefield. It will be paid at petrol stations, in grocery aisles, and in central bank decisions across the world.

………..Senator Thom Tillis has asked the only question that matters. What are we trying to accomplish?

There is no coherent answer because coherence was never the point. This is the Venezuela model applied to a country four times larger, with a military doctrine built to resist precisely this kind of intervention, and a political system shaped by decades of confrontation with the United States. The architects of this war designed Iraq. The pattern is familiar. The outcome will be too. https://theaimn.net/a-war-built-on-lies-sold-by-lobbyists-with-innocent-children-as-its-price/

March 27, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump’s battle plan for Iran

Bruce Gagnon, Mar 26, 2026, https://brucegagnon177089.substack.com/p/trumps-battle-plan-for-iran?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3720343&post_id=192096004&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Europe key to US ops in Iran

Another very interesting piece from the WSJ. These details have been available through OSINT sources but it’s a good roundup showing how key Europe is to US operations against Iran:

The central command center for US operations against Iran is within Ramstein Air Base in Germany (unsurprising)
US drone operations are conducted from there as well
Ramstein is increasingly being used as a hub by the Americans. Military transport aircraft, in particular, land there and took off for the Middle East, including several Boeing C-17 Globemaster III (77.5 tons of load) and Lockheed C-130 aircraft (20 tons).
American media reported that F-16 fighter jets had been transferred from US Spangdahlem AFB, Germany to the Middle East. According to the trade magazine Air and Space Forces, they are to be used in Iran to combat air defenses. BBC reported that the base is now operating “around the clock.”
American aircraft stationed in Spain have been relocated to France and Germany after the Spanish government denied the use of the Morón and Rota air bases for attacks on Iran
Bomber aircraft sorties out of bases in the UK like RAF Fairford
Refueling operations are based out of Aviano Air Base in Italy and Tubé Air Base in France
Lajes Air Base in the Azores (Portugal) is serving as a major logistical hub, with dozens of aircraft stationed there at various times during the conflict
RC-135 Rivet Joint spy planes are operating out of Souda Bay in Crete
Unspecified “logistics and intelligence assets” are being hosted by Romania
The piece paints an amusing picture of European attitudes towards this. Keir Starmer’s justification for overcoming his reticence to allow the US to base out of British facilities in the initial wave of strikes is that bomber operations are now “defensive” in nature.
Merz has said publicly that this “isn’t [Germany’s] war,” but he has no choice but to allow US operations out of German air bases due to pre-existing legal agreements.
Meloni has spun Italian involvement as minor because only refueling missions are flown out of Aviano. Similarly, French defense minister Vautrin said, “a refueling aircraft is a gas station, not a fighter jet.”
These technicalities may work on the European public, but it’s difficult to imagine they’ll work on the Iranians.

Let’s focus not on what Trump says, but on what he does.

These are the U.S. military units recently deployed to the Middle East against Iran.

160th SOAR (Night Hunters): An elite helicopter unit that secretly inserts and extracts special forces, often at night, using skilled pilots and modified aircraft.
75th Airborne Brigade: A light infantry force for rapid raids, airfield seizures, and close-quarters combat missions against high-value targets.
Delta Force (1st SFOD-D): A top-tier counterterrorism and hostage rescue unit focused on high-risk, precision missions targeting high-value individuals.
1st Special Forces Group (1st SFG): Operates primarily in the Asia-Pacific; trains allied forces, conducts unconventional warfare, and supports insurgencies or partner militaries.
5th Special Forces Group (5th SFG): Focused on the Middle East; It specializes in counterterrorism, unconventional warfare, and advising local forces.
US Navy SEALs: Special operations focused on the sea—raids, reconnaissance, direct action, and covert missions from the sea, air, or land.
But for what mission?
Islands within or near the Strait of Hormuz—Small but strategically important islands used by Iran to control shipping lanes. US special forces could quickly seize them to reopen the strait.
An island outside—Iran’s main oil export terminal. Seizing or destroying it would cripple Iranian oil revenues.
Iranian nuclear facilities or other high-value sites—Potential raids to destroy stockpiles of enriched uranium or related infrastructure.

March 26, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

No Good Exit

21 March 2026 David Tyler, Australian Independent Media

John Mearsheimer sees war with Iran as a strategic folly, arguing it is unwinnable, will not destroy Iran’s nuclear knowledge, and could, instead, boost Iran’s interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.

No stranger to irony, or paradox, Dr Mearsheimer does not mince words. The West Point graduate and former Air Force Captain, now a distinguished scholar at Cornell, has spent two decades documenting exactly how an American Eagle could get sucked into the vortex of wars that serve its bovver-boy, or Middle-East proxy, Israel, and its bellicose aspirations at enormous cost.

When Mearsheimer speaks about a US military adventure in Iran, he is not waffling. He is quoting from the autopsy he wrote in advance. And Mearsheimer’s verdict on Operation Epic Fury, is that Trump has dug himself into a deep hole; an opinion all the more damning for its formal, almost courteous understatement:

“I think President Trump has put himself in a situation where he really doesn’t have a good exit strategy.”

Trump’s catastrophe may be complex and irretrievable, but it was not inevitable. It was predicted, in detail, by experts whose job it was to predict it, and who were systematically ignored, discredited or sacked for saying so. Trump ignored the experts. This is how he can always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The pretext for the attack doesn’t bear scrutiny. Before the first double-tap Tomahawk missile crushed and burned alive 168 schoolchildren on 28 February, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Al-Busaidi was announcing what could have been a diplomatic coup: Iran had agreed to never stockpile enriched uranium, had accepted full IAEA verification, and was prepared to irreversibly downgrade its enriched uranium to the lowest level possible.

Peace, he said, was “within reach.” Further talks were due to resume on 2 March.

Iran now says that the US President never intended to avoid war and that the talks were a ruse to get more time to set up a military attack. It’s true. It’s also true that Trump and Netanyahu are driven by the need to stay out of court. Both are hell-bent in quest of a more enduring diversion-and both would have always pulled the trigger anyway. Even without Saudi encouragement……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

……………………………………….. Many missile strikes in the war’s opening phase are seen by UN human rights experts as potential war crimes under the Rome Statute. At least a million Lebanese people have been displaced.

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Meanwhile, Donald Trump, on his Truth Social, calls Iran “militarily ineffective and weak.”…………………………………………………………………………………..

Trump is demanding NATO allies help secure the Strait of Hormuz. NATO is, to put it charitably, otherwise engaged.

Retreat? Mearsheimer is equally clear-eyed. Declare victory and withdraw, and it will be “perceived as a humiliating defeat for the US.” And that assumes Iran cooperates. “They have many cards to play,” he notes. “They can inflict significant losses. Therefore, even if we retreat, it’s unclear whether this will solve the problem.”

Trump promised a generation of winning. He has delivered a generation’s worth of losing, compressed into twenty days. And let’s not forget his Latin American fiasco. El Presidente, who endeared himself to millions south of the border with his talk of “shithole” countries, has rather a lot of Venezuelans on the warpath after his regime change curdled almost on contact into a neocolonial farce, with Maduro gone, sovereignty shredded and the gringos already with their fingers in the till.

Cuba could be next on Hegseth’s hit-list? Trump does need to keep the distractions going. Meanwhile disinformation is being pumped as vigorously as the Ford plumbing. And with similar effect.

Fox News cheerleaders and the Netanyahu communications office have been carefully not telling the American public: Iran is not the isolated, backward, sanction-crippled military of the pre-war briefings.

It is fighting with Russian eyes and Chinese precision. Together, those two contributions have changed the strategic calculus in ways that neither Washington nor Tel Aviv appear to have seriously gamed………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

The Netanyahu Factor: Closing Every Window

Mearsheimer’s analysis cuts deepest on the question of diplomacy.

On Day 19, Israeli strikes killed two of Iran’s most consequential figures: security chief Ali Larijani and Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani. Larijani’s death was not a military decapitation strike in the conventional sense. It was the targeted elimination of Iran’s most experienced nuclear negotiator; a pragmatic, sophisticated operator whom analysts had consistently identified as one of the few figures capable of opening a negotiated exit.

Israel killed the man who could have brokered the ceasefire Netanyahu claims to want.

Netanyahu told Sean Hannity that Operation Epic Fury “will usher in an era of peace that we haven’t even dreamed of” and create conditions for Iranians to form “their own democratically elected government.” He said something substantially similar about Iraq in 2003. About Libya in 2011. The script is laminated. The outcomes are identical. The lesson is never drawn.

He is currently in a bunker, hinting with characteristic coyness that perhaps the Iranian regime survives after all. Of course it does. The Islamic Republic has outlasted everything the West has thrown at it: the Iran-Iraq war, decades of sanctions, assassination campaigns, Stuxnet, and the twelve-day bombing campaign of last June………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The Intelligence Scandal Underneath It All

One more thread demands to be pulled. Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, has been accused of altering her Senate testimony on Iran; specifically, of omitting intelligence details that contradicted Trump’s claim that Tehran posed an imminent threat. The IAEA had found no evidence Iran was moving toward a nuclear weapon. Oman had just brokered what its foreign minister described as a breakthrough agreement……………………………….

What Australia Needs to Ask

An Iranian projectile struck near Australia’s military headquarters in the UAE this week. Anthony Albanese confirmed it. Then said nothing else useful.

Pine Gap is almost certainly providing targeting intelligence that has enabled strikes now characterised by UN human rights experts as potential war crimes. Under laws amended by the Howard government in 2001 and never restored, the Prime Minister can take Australia to war on Cabinet agreement alone, no parliamentary debate, no public mandate, no vote. Nobody in the national media is asking whether that authority has been invoked. Nobody is asking whether it should be.

The question Mearsheimer asks about Washington; what’s the exit, and who owns the consequences, deserves to be asked in Canberra. With the same urgency. And considerably more honesty than we are currently getting.

……………………. Trump got his war with Iran, on the urging of a foreign government, on the basis of intelligence his own Director of National Intelligence allegedly falsified, over a diplomatic resolution that was days from signature.

History won’t be interested in who did the urging. He owns this. Every schoolgirl in Minab. Every barrel at Ras Laffan. Every day the Hormuz stays closed.

It has, as Mearsheimer warned, no good exit. https://theaimn.net/no-good-exit/

March 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘Iran Posed No Imminent Threat’: Trump’s Counterterrorism Director Resigns in Protest

Trump decided to attack Iran despite Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testifying before Congress last year that it “is not building a nuclear weapon,” and that late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei—who was assassinated last month by an Israeli airstrike—“has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

US intelligence agencies have repeatedly come to the same conclusion since the George W. Bush administration.

“I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people,” the far-right former Army Ranger and CIA officer

Brett Wilkins, Mar 17, 2026, https://www.commondreams.org/news/joe-kent-resigns

National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent announced his resignation Tuesday, accusing President Donald Trump of being manipulated by Israel into launching a war on Iran.

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent—a former Army Ranger and CIA paramilitary officer often described as a white nationalist and conspiracy theorist—wrote in his resignation letter to Trump.

National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent announced his resignation Tuesday, accusing President Donald Trump of being manipulated by Israel into launching a war on Iran.

“Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage war with Iran,” Kent continued. “This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory.”

“This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq War that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women,” he claimed.

While there is no solid evidence that Israel “drew” the US under then-President George W. Bush into invading Iraq and toppling longtime dictator and erstwhile US ally Saddam Hussein, then-Israeli opposition leader Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in 2008 that the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States—which Iraq had nothing to do with—were “benefiting” Israel. He also said two years later that “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.”

Kent, whose first wife, Navy intelligence officer Shannon Smith, was killed in a 2019 bombing targeting US forces invading Syria, said that “I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives,” said

“I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for,” he told the president.

US intelligence agencies have repeatedly come to the same conclusion since the George W. Bush administration.

Kent—who has been a staunch Trump loyalist—is the most prominent US official to resign as the president, who infamously campaigned for reelection on a promise of no new wars, has attacked seven countries since returning to the White House and 10 over the course of his two terms.

In contrast to his vehement opposition to waging war on Iran, Kent led an effort to rewrite intelligence so that it did not clash with Trump’s dubious claim that the government of Venezuela was involved with the Tren de Aragua drug trafficking gang ahead of the recent US invasion of the South American country and kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro.

While Kent’s resignation drew praise from many opponents of Trump and the illegal US-Israeli war of choice in Iran, others focused on his troubling record and associations.

“Joe Kent isn’t suddenly a good guy,” former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said on X. “He’s a straight-up white nationalist. But there are fissures in the MAGA base.”

MeidasTouch News CEO Ron Filipowski also took to social media, writing, “Just for the record, I’m glad Joe Kent resigned but he is still a POS.”

March 22, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UN preparing for nuclear catastrophe ‘worst case scenario’ including use of nukes in Middle East

By ELIANA SILVER, SENIOR FOREIGN NEWS REPORTER, 18 March 2026

The United Nations is preparing for a nuclear catastrophe if the Middle East war escalates further.

World Health Organization officials are monitoring the consequences of joint US-Israeli strikes on Iranian atomic sites and are remaining ‘vigilant’ for nuclear threats in the region.

WHO director Hanan Balkhy said: ‘The worst-case scenario is a nuclear incident, and that’s something that worries us the most.’

‘As much as we prepare, there’s nothing that can prevent the harm that will come … the region’s way – and globally if this eventually happens – and the consequences are going to last for decades,’ she told POLITICO.

It comes as in recent days, Donald Trump‘s AI adviser David Sacks warned that Israel could be on a path to ‘escalate the war by contemplating using a nuclear weapon.’

The UN nuclear watchdog said Wednesday that Iranian authorities had reported projectile impact at the country’s only operational nuclear power plant that caused no damage.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) ‘has been informed by Iran that a projectile hit the premises of the Bushehr NPP on Tuesday evening’, the Vienna-based agency posted on social media.

‘No damage to the plant or injuries to staff reported.’

Agency head Rafael Grossi ‘reiterates his call for restraint during the conflict to avoid any risk of a nuclear accident’, the statement said.

The Bushehr plant in southwestern Iran has the Islamic republic’s only operational nuclear power reactor and was first connected to the grid in 2011, according to the IAEA.

Tehran has been under biting US sanctions since 2018, when Washington withdrew from a deal that granted Iran sanctions relief in return for curbs on its nuclear activities designed to prevent it from developing an atomic warhead.

The US and Israel say that destroying whatever remains of Iran’s nuclear program is one of the central aims of the war.

They have long suspected Iran seeks nuclear weapons, while the Islamic Republic says its nuclear program is peaceful.

In June of last year, the US and Israel targeted shadowy nuclear infrastructure in Iran, hitting sites in Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.

Balkhy explained that although there have not yet been any signs of radioactive contamination in the region, a nuclear incident could cause extreme health problems to those affected………………….

…………………….Donald Trump said those who claim Iran didn’t pose a threat are ‘not smart’ and ‘not savvy,’ adding, ‘We don’t want those people.’

His comments came after America’s top counterterrorism official resigned over the war with Iran.

In an extraordinary and unprecedented move for this administration, National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent announced he was stepping down over his objections to the US launching joint strikes with Israel.

‘It’s a good thing that he’s out because he said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat – every country realized what a threat Iran was,’ the President insisted.

Trump’s AI advisor recently warned that there are ‘risks’ of an ‘escalatory approach’ by Israel.

Speaking on a podcast, David Saks said: ‘Israel could get seriously destroyed.’

‘And then you have to worry about Israel escalating the war by contemplating using a nuclear weapon.’

Sacks urged Trump to find an ‘off-ramp’ and bring the war with Iran to a swift close.

‘This is a good time to declare victory and get out,’ he added. ‘I agree that we should try to find the off-ramp.’

Intelligence gathered in the months after the strikes in June revealed the Islamic Republic desperately reconstructing a program Trump said was obliterated.

The Daily Mail exposed Iranian ‘chillers’ – sophisticated industrial equipment essential for cooling uranium – being frantically moved back into fortified underground positions as early as September 2025…………………https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15656871/UN-preparing-nuclear-catastrophe-worst-case-scenario-including-use-nukes-Middle-East.html

March 21, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant ‘hit in strike’ as radiation update issued

A projectile struck the grounds of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant sparking fears of a terrifying nuclear incident, according to the CEO of the Russian company which runs the plant.

Joe Smith, 18 Mar 2026, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/breaking-irans-bushehr-nuclear-power-36887601

An Iranian nuclear power plant has been hit, sparking fears of a nightmare radioactive incident.

A projectile struck the grounds of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, both Russia and Iran said. Neither country has confirmed whether there has been a release of nuclear material in the incident on Tuesday evening.

Russia’s state-run Tass news agency quoted Rosatom CEO Alexey Likhachev late Tuesday as claiming “a strike hit the area adjacent to the metrology service building located at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant site, in close proximity to the operating power unit.” Russian technicians from Rosatom operate the plant, using Russian-made, low-enriched uranium.

Any strike on a nuclear plant risks radioactive material being released into the environment, a nightmare scenario in any war. Bushehr sits on the Persian Gulf meaning contamination of the waters could spell disaster for millions living in the Gulf States, which rely on desalination plants for their water supplies.

“There were no casualties among Rosatom State Corporation personnel,” Likhachev said. “The radiation situation at the site is normal.”

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran later issued a statement saying “no financial, technical, or human damage occurred and no part of the plant was harmed.” Tass later reported that Iran blamed the strike on the United States and Israel.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said: “The IAEA has been informed by Iran that a projectile hit the premises of the Bushehr NPP on Tuesday evening.”

The United Nations agency added: “No damage to the plant or injuries to staff reported.”

It remains unclear what the “projectile” that hit the complex was and neither Iran nor Russia have published images of the damage.

March 21, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Iran’s nuclear materials and equipment remain a danger in an active war zone

March 17, 2026 , Matthew Bunn, The Conversation

Before launching his war on Iran, President Donald Trump said his most important goal was that Iran would “never have a nuclear weapon.” Yet it is not clear what, if anything, his administration has planned for dealing with Iran’s stock of enriched uranium that could be used to make nuclear bombs – or its remaining deeply buried nuclear facilities and the nuclear equipment that might be in them, or hidden elsewhere.

U.S. and Israeli strikes in June 2025 seriously damaged Iran’s major nuclear facilities and killed several prominent scientists associated with the country’s nuclear program. However, contrary to Trump’s claim that the Iranian nuclear program had been “completely obliterated,” it appears that Iran had stored much or all of its enriched uranium in deep tunnels that were not destroyed.

The Trump administration’s demand, just two days before the attacks began, that Iran export its enriched uranium stocks represented a tacit acknowledgment that Iran’s government still had control of this material or could get access to it.

So, as airstrikes on Iran continue, an unclear fate faces several elements of Iran’s nuclear program, including:

Its stock of enriched uranium.
Its centrifuges for enriching more uranium, and parts for more centrifuges.
Any equipment it may have for turning enriched uranium into metal, shaping it into nuclear weapons components and taking other weapons-assembly steps.
The documents and expertise from its past nuclear weapons program.
Its as-yet-intact nuclear facilities that are deep underground.

I have been studying steps to stop the spread of nuclear weapons – including managing the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program – for decades. My conclusion is that if all these capabilities remain in place, the war will have accomplished little in reducing Iran’s nuclear capability, while likely increasing the government’s belief that it needs a nuclear weapon to defend itself.

Where could Iran’s uranium be?

The most immediate concern is roughly 970 pounds (441 kilograms) of highly enriched uranium containing 60% of the U-235 isotope that is relatively easy to split. That’s what Iran was believed to have before the summer 2025 bombings, and much of it reportedly survived those strikes.

Over 440 pounds (200 kilograms) of it is reportedly stored in deep underground tunnels near Isfahan. Other stocks of this material are thought to be in a deep underground facility near Natanz known as Pickaxe Mountain, and in Fordow, one of the sites bombed in summer 2025.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has reportedly acknowledged that the Isfahan tunnels are too deep to destroy with bunker-buster bombs like those used on the underground Fordow facility last summer. Pickaxe Mountain, under granite, would be at least as challenging a target.

What could the uranium be used for?

With just 100 centrifuges, Iran could further enrich the 60% enriched material to be 90% or more U-235 in a few weeks. That is the concentration needed for the nuclear weapon design that Iran was working on in the secret nuclear weapons program it largely stopped in late 2003.

Even without further enrichment, the 60% enriched material could be used in a bomb, either exploding with less power or using more material and explosives.

Beyond Iran using this material itself, there are other concerns. Nobody knows who might get it if Iran’s government collapses. Some lower-level people managing it might decide to try to sell it as part of trying to save themselves from the current crisis, as happened after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Government studies have warned that even a sophisticated terrorist group might be able to make a crude nuclear bomb if it had the needed uranium.

Could it be removed peacefully?

One possibility is that the current Iranian government, or a future one, might be willing to cooperate or at least acquiesce in getting rid of the country’s nuclear material. The existing Iranian government reportedly offered to blend it down to a lower concentration in the negotiations that Trump ended by attacking Iran in February 2026.

Highly enriched uranium has been removed from many cooperative countries over the years. One early example was Project Sapphire, in 1994, in which U.S. teams worked with Kazakhstan to fly some 1,280 pounds (580 kilograms) of highly enriched uranium to safe storage in Tennessee. Similar efforts have removed tons of plutonium and highly enriched uranium from scores of sites around the world, removing the risk that terrorists could get hold of that material.

Could it be captured?

Without cooperation, and with the uranium in tunnels too deep to destroy from the air, the only other option for eliminating them could be sending in a team of either U.S. or Israeli soldiers and experts while the war continues.

U.S. special forces troops have long trained with federal scientists and experts to disable or secure adversaries’ nuclear weapons and material. But it wouldn’t be easy: Mark Esper, a defense secretary in Trump’s first term, has warned that actually doing so in Iran would take a large force and be “very perilous.”

Trump has said he would only do so if Iran was “so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight on the ground level.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Fundamentally, Iran’s nuclear knowledge cannot be bombed away. Ultimately, I believe, U.S. security would be best served through agreements to limit Iran’s nuclear efforts, coupled with effective international inspection, keeping watch year after year. Provisions to do that were central to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal between China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union and Iran. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement in 2018, enabling Iran to make the highly enriched uranium that now poses a danger.

In my view, only diplomacy can again provide strict limits and effective monitoring in the future. But this war may well have ruined the chances for such diplomatic options for many years to come. https://theconversation.com/irans-nuclear-materials-and-equipment-remain-a-danger-in-an-active-war-zone-278008

March 18, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, Uranium | Leave a comment

Iran signals a ‘fight to the end’ with choice of new ayatollah

Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, Mon, 09 Mar 2026

Meanwhile, the US struggles to define Israeli-coordinated endgame

Summary:

Lebanon wants direct peace talks with Israel to end fighting but Israeli rejects it, also amid US skepticism: Axios.
Trump says too soon to talk about seizing Iran’s oil but does not rule it out, tells NBC.
Analyst consensus on question of potentially protracted conflict: Iran Signals a Fight to the End With Appointment of Khamenei’s Son
Senator Graham: “The American Embassy is being evacuated in Riyadh because of sustained attacks by Iran against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
Timeline to end Iran war? Trump signals decision will be only after ‘mutual’ decision with Netanyahu.
Trump Truth Social post calls for Australia to give Iran National Woman’s Soccer team Asylum, but it remains unclear if the whole team is actually requesting it, or if individuals are.
Iranian official to Al Jazeera: “we are able to continue the war for a long time and there is no room for diplomacy now.”
G7 ‘closely monitoring’ energy markets, ‘ready’ to take necessary measures, including possible oil stockpile release.
Younger, reportedly more ‘hardline’ Ayatollah takes command as regime stability continues: Military and political elites have pledged allegiance to Mojtaba Khamenei, who replaces his slain father as supreme leader and is viewed as a figure favored by the IRGC.
Offramp, or more global shock & pain ahead? Trump after seeing oil prices: Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!
Threat of whole regional war ongoing: Turkey says second Iranian ballistic missile shot down by NATO defenses in airspace, but then NATO quickly contradicts – saying no 2nd missile was intercepted.
Nation-building, nation-smashing, divergent US-Israeli aims? More from Trump”…will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.” But US officials distance themselves from big weekend attacks on Iranian oil.
Iran shuts door on ceasefire talk possibility, accuses US of seeking ‘partition’: as several countries have begun mediation efforts; however Foreign Ministry says: “While military aggression continues, there is little room to talk about anything other than a decisive response.”
CENTCOM confirms 8th US troop death; More Iranian missile/drone hits on Gulf sites, IDF ground operations expand inside Lebanon

Update(1240ET): Iran on Monday is seeking to showcase its continuity and ‘stability’ of government after a week of heavy US-Israeli bombardment failed to produce regime change. Instead, Tehran is vowing to fight back, saying it can keep the war going for as long as needed. Analysts have pointed out Iran needs to inflict a cost on the US and Israel, fearing it will just be attacked again somewhere down the line, even if years from now.

And yet, Trump admin officials have been signaling the American public there won’t be a protracted war. But on this big looming question, The Wall Street Journal is out Monday with the following ominous headline suggesting a lengthy conflict ahead:

Iran Signals a Fight to the End With Appointment of Khamenei’s Son…

The elevation of Mojtaba Khamenei, a conservative long close to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, shows that Trump’s efforts so far to cow the regime into surrender have failed. It also appears to have put hard-liners in firm control of the country, with moderate and reformist factions long marginalized. The 56-year old Khamenei is expected to take a confrontational stance toward the West.

His appointment also shows that Iran won’t acquiesce to Trump’s demand that he approve the country’s new top cleric. Trump told Axios last week that “Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me.”

The younger Khamenei’s ascendance “suggests the continuation of the same old strategy: repression at home and resistance internationally,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House.

There remains the question of if US and Israeli goals and objectives are truly aligned on the Iran war. Some of Trump’s latest remarks are cause for concern, and highlight the aforementioned question: “Iran was going to destroy Israel and everything else around it. We’ve worked together. We’ve destroyed a country that wanted to destroy Israel,” Trump asserted.

The President indicated that he would keep the ultimate prerogative but while consulting directly with Netanyahu.

“I think it’s mutual, a little bit. We’ve been talking. I’ll make a decision at the right time, but everything’s going to be taken into account.”

Some admin officials are likely looking for a quick exit ramp, which would probably involve a politically expedient moment to declare ‘victory’ and get out. But will the Israelis cooperate when/if that moment comes?……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

As for ‘what’s next’ – escalation or offramp… the following from Bloomberg suggests there could be a gateway to ground troops if things take an escalatory war path: “Trump is weighing the option of deploying special forces on the ground to seize Iran’s near bomb-grade uranium, according to diplomats. He told the Times of Israel that a decision on when to end the war will also involve Benjamin Netanyahu,” Bloomberg reviews of prior weekend reporting.

This as there are claims that Washington and Tel Aviv don’t see eye to eye on ultimate war aims and strategy: “Israel’s strikes on 30 Iranian fuel depots Saturday went far beyond what the U.S. expected when Israel notified it in advance, sparking the first significant disagreement between the allies since the war began eight days ago, according to a U.S. official, Israeli official and a source with knowledge.” But all of this fresh reporting of ‘distance’ between the close allies who are executing Trump’s Operation Epic Fury could by design be meant to create artificial distance between the president and what might prove to be an unpopular war. https://www.sott.net/article/505074-Iran-signals-a-fight-to-the-end-with-choice-of-new-ayatolla

March 12, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

In US/Israeli war on Iran, all roads point to rise in global nuclear weapons.

Trump and Netanyahu are already boasting of success. But the war is not going to plan for any of the parties involved

Paul Rogers, 6 March 2026, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/us-iran-israel-war-lead-to-nuclear-weapons-donald-trump-netanyahu/

One week in, there is little prospect of an early end to the Israeli war with Iran and even less of preventing a regional escalation. Given Binyamin Netanyahu’s success in bringing Donald Trump’s United States on board as Israel’s partner in a widening war, he may feel satisfied with progress so far. In reality, though, the conflict is not going according to plan for any of the three states involved.

Netanyahu’s intended outcome was straightforward regime termination in Tehran, with the assassination of the supreme leader and most of Iran’s senior war leaders. A public uprising would then have followed, ending the power of the theocrats.

Israel and the US could then have brought sufficient force to terminate Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program and cut back its conventional forces, starting with the abolition of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Finally, the removal of the US’s punishing economic sanctions on Iran would have been agreed, allowing some civil recovery for the country – although this would, of course, have been contingent on the new leaders agreeing to oil and gas deals that would prove punitive for Iran and lucrative for the US, likely ensuring Trump’s continued support for Israel.

The Israeli war aims may have been clear, but it is impossible to say for sure what the White House wanted.

A muddle of reasons and statements of intent for bombing Iran have been given by Trump, his secretary of state, Marco Rubio and self-styled secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, who last year sought to rebrand from the ‘secretary of defense’ title that has been used by successive post-holders since the end of the Second World War. While Washington initially embraced Israel’s desire for total regime termination through an uprising, that aim has disappeared from its recent statements. Now it seems that crushing Iran’s military capabilities, starting with its nuclear ambitions, is the US order of the day.

For Iran’s theocratic leadership, the primary war aim was survival in the face of the massive power of the Israeli/US war machine, which would itself have been quite an achievement. Indeed, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, barely survived the first hour or so of the war before being killed in a missile strike.

The unexpected has since become clear: Khamenei is gone, but Iran’s leadership system is likely to survive for now. His successor will probably be his son, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who will quite possibly be as hard-line as his father. Israeli defence minister Israel Katz has declared that whoever is chosen as Iran’s next supreme leader will be “a target for elimination” – a clear indication that for Netanyahu and the Israeli Defence Forces, there is no turning back.

If regime survival is one of the surprises of the conflict, the other is Iran’s continuing ability to fire barrages of armed drones and ballistic missiles, which has been the least expected element of the war so far.

By last July, the IDF and the US believed they had massively damaged Iran’s air defences, with Trump boasting of “spectacular military success” in a press conference. On top of this, the past week has seen the determined and intensive targeting of Iran’s missile systems by the combined power of the IDF and US armed forces. Yet to the genuine surprise of many Western political and military analysts, Iran can still launch its missiles.

Three elements of this survival offer a clue as to what comes next.

One is that the regime in Tehran is likely to continue to survive. Look to Gaza, where Hamas is still active despite the massive destruction that Israel has inflicted over the past two and a half years. This, as I noted in last week’s column, is largely down to its quite extraordinary network of tunnels dug mostly by hand and reinforced with concrete walls. The network, which extends to around the distance from London to Edinburgh, has around 5,700 shafts, as well as electricity, ventilation and communication facilities.

In Iran, the IRGC now looks to have been similarly active in extensively preparing for war. It has built numerous and widely dispersed underground ‘missile cities’ – deep tunnel complexes built into mountains for making and storing armed drones and other weapons – as well as producing undersea armed drones for use against the US Navy, especially if it tries to guide tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.

The second element follows on. There are indications that the IRGC appears to be using its older and least advanced missiles and drones first, aiming to deplete Israeli and US stocks of their anti-missile defences. Quite apart from anything else, this means Israel and the US are depleting their high-cost weaponry to “catch” incoming missiles, while Iran saves its most recently developed drones and ballistic missiles – with greater reach and more power for destruction, as well as improved accuracy and reliability – for later in the war.

Finally, there is the decision to opt for economic warfare against Western interests in many Gulf states. This involves the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, alongside attacks on oil and gas processing plants and distribution systems, as well as tourist infrastructure across the Gulf, with a luxury hotel in Dubai reportedly hit by a retaliatory strike.

This puts states such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates in a difficult position as to how to respond. To react forcefully by joining the war against Iran may be the natural response, but this has consequences. It means allying with an Israel that has killed at least 80,000 Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and enacted violence in the occupied West Bank to make life fraught with difficulty and increasingly dangerous.

This war is barely a week old but is having a worldwide impact and, despite Trump’s bluster, is already problematic for the US. The killing of at least 165 people, many of them children, at the Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls School in Minab is just one example of this, while another may be significant in a different way.

On Wednesday, a US Navy submarine torpedoed an Iranian frigate, the IRIS Dena, killing at least 87 crew members. The Dena had recently left a series of exercises organised by the Indian Navy in the Bay of Bengal, and its sinking was reported with great glee by Hegseth, who told reporters: “Yesterday, in the Indian Ocean, an American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death. The first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II.”

Earlier in the press conference, Hesgeth had used the same celebratory and boastful tone to discuss what he framed as early US success. “We are only four days into this, and the results have been incredible. Historic, really,” he said. “Only the United States of America could lead this – only us. But when you add the Israeli Defence Forces, a devastatingly capable force, the combination is sheer destruction for our radical Islamist Iranian adversaries. They are toast, and they know it. Or at least, soon enough, they will know it. America is winning – decisively, devastatingly, and without mercy.”

The US war secretary’s speech betrayed the sense of impunity in Trump’s White House, confirming that members of his administration are certain in their own minds that in this war, Israel and the US can do what they like.

The consequences of this war are impossible to say for sure, but all roads appear to lead to increased uptake of nuclear weaponry, leaving the world an even less safe and stable place. If Israel and the US fail to terminate the Iranian regime and if any significant part of the IRGC survives, the very first thing it will do is to go to the ends of the earth to put together a crude nuclear device. Across the wider region, any state that sees two nuclear-armed regimes seeking to destroy a non-nuclear regime will see a need to go nuclear itself.

March 11, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

IAEA says no evidence Iran is building a nuclear bomb

Middle East Monitor 4th March 2026

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, has said there is no evidence that Iran is currently building a nuclear bomb, while warning that unresolved issues surrounding Tehran’s nuclear programme remain a serious concern.

Speaking in remarks reported on Tuesday evening, Grossi said Iran possesses a large stockpile of enriched uranium that has reached levels close to weapons-grade. However, he stressed that the agency has not found proof that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon…………………

Oman’s Foreign Minister, Badr al-Busaidi, said one day before the conflict began that Iran had agreed in principle not to retain enriched uranium as part of ongoing diplomatic discussions. According to al-Busaidi, the proposal included relinquishing enriched material and ensuring that no nuclear fuel would be stockpiled, with verification mechanisms in place.

US President Donald Trump, however, insisted that Iran should not enrich uranium at all, including at levels below weapons-grade, reiterating Washington’s long-standing demand that Tehran completely halt enrichment activities. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260304-iaea-says-no-evidence-iran-is-building-a-nuclear-bomb/

COMMENTS:

There has never been evidence and the Ayatollah had banned nuclear weapons due to their religion. Getting a US president to believe this has taken Netanyahu over 30 years. Then along came the ignorant, unintelligent deranged Trump…………..and here we are.

Israel is the only country in the Middle East which has nuclear weapons. But it has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and refuses to place its nuclear facilities under the watch of UN inspectors. This is unlike Iran, whose facilities are monitored constantly and which, as a non nuclear-weapon state which is a signatory to the NPT, has also agreed not to seek or acquire these weapons…

Israel is not only believed to possess 90 nuclear warheads, but also to have produced enough plutonium to produce 100 to 200 more nuclear weapons. And according to new research from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), it is actively modernising its nuclear arsenal.

(‘When it comes to WMDs, Israel’s are very much part of the problem’, Canary 24 June 2025)

March 10, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Trump Says He Must Have a Say in Picking Iran’s New Leader

by Dave DeCamp | March 5, 2026, https://news.antiwar.com/2026/03/05/trump-says-he-must-have-a-say-in-picking-irans-new-leader/

President Trump said in an interview with Axios on Thursday that he must have a say on who is chosen as Iran’s next leader following the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, contradicting other administration officials who say the US’s goal is not regime change.

Trump made clear to Axios reporter Brak Ravid that Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has reportedly emerged as a frontrunner to replace his father, wouldn’t be acceptable to the US.

“They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodriguez] in Venezuela,” the president said, referring to Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez.

The US didn’t choose Rodriguez as Nicolas Maduro’s replacement, but she was the next in line as the vice president and has been willing to work with the US to stave off another attack. A much different dynamic is unfolding in Iran as the killing of Khamenei has not slowed Iran’s military response, and the country’s leadership shows no sign of backing down despite the massive US-Israeli bombing campaign, which has killed over 1,000 civilians.

Trump said that he wouldn’t accept any leader who continues Khamenei’s policies because it would result in the US launching another war within five years. “Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me. We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran,” he said.

Earlier this week, Trump said that all of the people he had in mind to replace Khamenei have been killed and acknowledged that in the end, Iran’s next leader could be “as bad” as Khamenei.

“The worst case would be we do this, and then somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person,” he said. “That could happen. We don’t want that to happen. It would probably be the worst — you go through this and then in five years, you realize you put somebody in who was no better.”

March 10, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

In Iran, Israel’s morbid military cult now has the US fully in its grip

In this catastrophic war of choice, it is Tehran fighting a rearguard action to restore geopolitical sanity. If Iran loses, god only knows where Israel and the US will drag the world next

Jonathan Cook, Mar 06, 2026

The admission this week by US secretary of state Marco Rubio, echoed by Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House of Representatives, that Israel forced Washington’s hand in attacking Iran has rightly caused consternation.

Breathing life into something that would normally be treated as an antisemitic trope, Rubio argued that the Trump administration had been left with no choice but to attack Iran because, had it not, Israel would have launched an attack anyway, exposing US soldiers to retaliation.

Rubio stated: “The president made the very wise decision: We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”

Rubio was using the term “preemptively” in a highly irregular and misleading way.

In international law, aggression is an illegal application of force – the “supreme international crime”, according to the 1950 principles set out by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal. But there is a potential mitigating factor if the attacking state can show it was acting pre-emptively: that is, it was acting to prevent a plausible, immediate and severe threat of attack.

Rubio, however, was not suggesting that the US acted “preemptively” against a threat from Iran. He meant Washington had acted preemptively to stop its ally, Israel, from setting off a chain of military events that would lead to US soldiers being harmed.

Had the Trump administration really been acting preemptively in these circumstances, the US should have attacked Israel, not Iran.

Paper tiger

But Rubio’s comment begged a further question: Why didn’t Washington simply tell Israel it was forbidden from starting a war against Iran without US approval?

After all, Israel would be incapable of mounting any kind of attack on Iran without the critical support provided by the US.

Israel has had to rely on help from US military bases dotted around the region, as well as the Arab states that host those bases.

The attack would have been quite inconceivable without the backup of a massive armada of US war ships sent to the region by Trump.

Israel can withstand Iranian retaliation only because it gets a degree of protection from missile interception systems provided and funded by the US.

And on top of all that, Israel is regional hegemon only because it gets massive subsidies from the US – worth many billions of dollars a year – to preserve it as one of the strongest militaries in the world.

In other words, Israel would have found it impossible to wage war on Iran alone. It is a paper tiger without the US.

Rubio’s comment suggested one of two possibilities: either that the US, with the strongest military in world history, is under the thumb of the tiny state of Israel; or that Trump has made his own military, the strongest-ever, servile to Israel.

Whichever it is, it is hard to square with Trump’s repeated assertion that he is putting America First.

This point is so glaringly obvious it is presumably the reason why Rubio was forced to walk back his comments the next day. Meanwhile, Trump hurriedly suggested it was he who had forced Israel’s hand to attack Iran, not the other way round.

Geopolitical insanity

The more likely truth is not that Israel forced Trump’s hand. It is that he was seduced by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s false claim that an attack on Iran would be a cakewalk – if they struck at a moment when they could be sure of killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

Such a decapitation strike, Trump was led to believe, would be a repeat of his Venezuela “success”, when he kidnapped President Nicolas Maduro from Caracas to bring him to trial in New York.

In Venezuela, the flagrant flouting of international law by the US was intended to be the equivalent of pointing a loaded shotgun at the head of Maduro’s replacement, Delcy Rodriguez. Do as we say, or the new president gets it from both barrels.

Netanyahu knew exactly how to sell Trump, still giddy on the noxious fumes of this lawbreaking venture, the idea that he could repeat the exercise in Iran. The ayatollah’s successor would similarly be putty in his hands.

Which is why, in this catastrophic war of choice by the US and Israel, it is Tehran fighting a rearguard action to restore a little geopolitical sanity. If Iran loses, or the US succeeds without paying a fearsome price, god only knows where Israel and Washington will drag the world next.

The world’s fate, in a real sense, is in Tehran’s hands.

Israelisation’ of the US

What the joint attack on Iran demonstrates most clearly is how much Netanyahu has succeeded over the past quarter of a century in “Israelising” Washington and the Pentagon.

The US has always waged illegal wars of aggression. It has always been more gangster than global policeman. But just because Washington was run by ruthless criminals, it did not mean it was incapable of getting still more deranged, still more psychopathic.

That is what Netanyahu has been working on. And Trump is now giving full rein to the Israelisation of the US. The clues are everywhere.

On Wednesday secretary of war Pete Hegseth – the traditional title of “secretary of defence” presumably sounded too law-abiding – dropped any pretence of being the good guy.

He insisted US forces were acting “without mercy” and that the Iranian regime “are toast”. The US would deliver “death and destruction all day long”.

The previous day he had set out the game plan: “No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The word of God

Central to these beliefs is the gathering of Jews, as God’s Chosen People, into the Land of Israel – a much larger area than that covered by the modern state of Israel.

For Christian fundamentalists such as Hegseth and a growing number of US commanders, Israel is the catalyst for the End Times.

For very obvious reasons, Israel has been nuturing its ties with the huge numbers of Christian fundamentalists in the US. They are politically active – their vote secured the presidency for Trump – and they treat Israel as a critically important domestic issue rather than a foreign policy matter. https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/in-iran-israels-morbid-military-cult

March 9, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

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