MIDDLE EAST « nuclear-news

‘National scandal’: The BBC’s Gaza cover-up

Britain’s ‘public service broadcaster’ is keeping the public in the dark about UK support for Israel’s assault on Gaza, new research finds.

MARK CURTIS, DECLASSIFIED.UK, 15 January 2025

Declassified researched the BBC’s online coverage of 16 aspects of UK policy towards Israel and the pro-Israel lobby.
“It is high time for the corporation to be truly held to account and be reformed in the public interest”, leading media professor says.

The BBC is failing to report the various ways in which the UK government has supported Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, Declassified’s new analysis finds.

Our research into the BBC’s written outputs since October 2023 finds the corporation has mainly not reported at all the major ways the UK government has been working with Israel.

It found that the BBC has reported just four times in 15 months that the Royal Air Force (RAF) has been conducting surveillance flights over Gaza.

Only one BBC report on the subject has been written since December 2023, despite the fact that hundreds of such spy missions have been conducted, almost daily, in aid of Israeli intelligence.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) says these flights are solely to aid the rescue of hostages held by Hamas. Only one BBC online report mentions the UK may be providing targeting information to Israel or flying weapons to the country.

None of the articles otherwise raise concerns about the UK being willing to collaborate militarily with Israel at a time it is devastating Gaza.

Omitting the news

When Israel’s chief of staff, General Herzi Halevi, was allowed to attend a British military meeting in London last November, this also went unreported by the BBC in its written outputs.

Halevi’s visit was highly controversial, given he has led Israeli military operations throughout its destruction of Gaza. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant are wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.

Our research also finds that the BBC has never reported that the British military has been training Israeli armed forces personnel in the UK during the Gaza war. ……………………………………………………………………………………….

Arms exports

In sharp contrast to other UK government policies concerning Israel, the BBC has published many articles mentioning British arms exports to Israel.

In these reports, the BBC has occasionally cited concerns by human rights groups and MPs about the possible use by Israel of these arms, at the same time as citing pro-Israel figures.

However, article headlines have rarely been critical of these weapons sales.

………………………………………. many headlines are conciliatory towards Israel. These include:

‘Deputy PM: It’s still legal for the UK to sell arms to Israel’

‘UK defends partial Israel arms ban as Netanyahu calls it “shameful”’

‘UK ban on selling arms to Israel would benefit Hamas, says Cameron’

‘Boris Johnson: Shameful to call for UK to end arms sales to Israel’

There are no headlines about the possible use of UK arms by Israel in Gaza, or any directly reflecting the repeated calls by groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, to halt all UK arms exports and military assistance to Israel.

The prominent legal action against the government for arming Israel brought by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), the Global Legal Action Network and Al-Haq, has been ignored by the BBC. Declassified could find no BBC written coverage of this at all.

The most prominent group challenging British arms exports, the Campaign Against Arms Trade, has been mentioned six times on the BBC website in 15 months.

Declassified has uncovered three other disturbing aspects of Britain’s arming of Israel, none of which appears to have been covered by the BBC.

Voluntary censorship

Neither has the BBC covered the possible role of UK spy agency GCHQ or the army’s special forces, the SAS, in facilitating Israeli military operations.

These are live issues given that GCHQ operates an extensive intelligence operation on Cyprus, from where the RAF planes are flown over Gaza.

GCHQ is known to have aided past Israeli combat operations in Gaza. Yet Declassified could find no reports on the BBC website mentioning GCHQ in the context of Gaza.

Reporting on the SAS was subject by the government to a D-Notice – a voluntary gagging order not to publish ‘sensitive’ information concerning ‘national security’- in October 2023.

It followed reporting by the Mail that an SAS team was positioned on Cyprus, reportedly to help rescue British hostages held by Hamas.

Since then, it appears the entire UK national media, including the BBC, has complied with this. The BBC has no articles covering or speculating on an SAS role in Israel or Gaza.

Unreported collusion

There are other ways in which the British government is in effect colluding with Israel which have gone unreported by the BBC.

Perhaps incredibly, the BBC has not reported in its written outputs since October 2023 that the UK is engaged in negotiations with Israel to secure a free trade agreement.

Conservative and Labour ministers have since 2022 held five rounds of talks with the Israeli government, whose economy minister, Nir Barkat, is an outspoken supporter of its attacks on Palestinians.

Jonathan Reynolds, the current trade minister pursuing the prospective new deal, is a recipient of funding from Britain’s Israel lobby.

Neither has the BBC reported on the arrests by the UK authorities of pro-Palestinian journalists in Britain. ……………………..

Lobby, what lobby?

Neither has any effort been made by BBC journalists to highlight the influence in the UK parliament exercised by the Israel lobby, notably Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI).

This is a major gap in reporting since these are among the largest lobbying forces in British politics, funding dozens of MPs to go on “fact-finding” visits to Israel………………………………………………………

‘National scandal’

Des Freedman, professor of media and communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, said: “The BBC is clearly utterly failing to inform the public about how the UK military and government is complicit in the horrors of Gaza. This is a national scandal, showing how far away the corporation is from being a public service broadcaster.”

He added: “The BBC’s failure to accurately report on Israel’s genocide in Gaza is as much to do with what it refuses to report as with what it does report. It is high time for the corporation to be truly held to account and be reformed in the public interest”…………………………………………… more https://www.declassifieduk.org/national-scandal-the-bbcs-gaza-cover-up/

January 19, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, media | Leave a comment

Chris Hedges: The Ceasefire Charade

By Chris Hedges ScheerPost, January 16, 2025 m https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/16/chris-hedges-the-ceasefire-charade/

Israel, going back decades, has played a duplicitous game. It signs a deal with the Palestinians that is to be implemented in phases. The first phase gives Israel what it wants — in this case the release of the Israeli hostages in Gaza — but Israel habitually fails to implement subsequent phases that would lead to a just and equitable peace. It eventually provokes the Palestinians with indiscriminate armed assaults to retaliate, defines a Palestinian response as a provocation and abrogates the ceasefire deal to reignite the slaughter.

If this latest three-phase ceasefire deal is ratified — and there is no certainty that it will be by Israel — it will, I expect, be little more than a presidential inauguration bombing pause. Israel has no intention of halting its merry-go-round of death.

The Israeli cabinet has delayed a vote on the ceasefire proposal while it continues to pound Gaza. At least 81 Palestinians have been killed in the last 24 hours.

The morning after a ceasefire agreement was announced, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of reneging on part of the deal “in an effort to extort last minute concessions.” He warned that his cabinet will not meet “until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement.”

Hamas dismissed Netanyahu’s claims and repeated their commitment to the ceasefire as agreed with the mediators.

The deal includes three phases. The first phase, lasting 42 days, will see a cessation of hostilities. Hamas will release some Israeli hostages – 33 Israelis who were captured on Oct. 7, 2023, including all of the remaining five women, those aged above 50, and those with illnesses – in exchange for up to 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

The Israeli army will pull back from the populated areas of the Gaza Strip on the first day of the ceasefire. On the 7th day, displaced Palestinians will be permitted to return to northern Gaza. Israel will allow 600 aid trucks with food and medical supplies to enter Gaza daily.

The second phase, which begins on the 16th day of the ceasefire, will see the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. Israel will complete its withdrawal from Gaza during the second phase, maintaining a presence in some parts of the Philadelphi corridor, which stretches along the eight-mile border between Gaza and Egypt. It will surrender its control of the Rafah border crossing into Egypt.

The third phase will see negotiations for a permanent end of the war.

But it is Netanyahu’s office that appears to have already reneged on the agreement. It released a statement rejecting Israeli troop withdrawal from the Philadelphi Corridor during the first 42-day phase of the ceasefire. “In practical terms, Israel will remain in the Philadelphi Corridor until further notice,” while claiming the Palestinians are attempting to violate the agreement. Palestinians throughout the numerous ceasefire negotiations have demanded Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza. Egypt has condemned the seizure of its border crossings by Israel.

The deep fissures between Israel and Hamas, even if the Israelis finally accept the agreement, threaten to implode it. Hamas is seeking a permanent ceasefire. But Israeli policy is unequivocal about its “right” to re-engage militarily. There is no consensus about who will govern Gaza. Israel has made it clear the continuance of Hamas in power is unacceptable. There is no mention of the status of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the U.N. agency that Israel has outlawed and that provides the bulk of the humanitarian aid given to the Palestinians, 95 percent of whom have been displaced. There is no agreement on the reconstruction of Gaza, which lies in rubble. And, of course, there is no route in the agreement to an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.

Israeli mendacity and manipulation is pitifully predictable.

The Camp David Accords, signed in 1979 by Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, without the participation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and Egypt. But the subsequent phases, which included a promise by Israel to resolve the Palestinian question along with Jordan and Egypt, permit Palestinian self-governance in the West Bank and Gaza within five years, and end the building of Israeli colonies in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, were never honored.

Or take the 1993 Oslo Accords. The agreement, signed in 1993, which saw the PLO recognize Israel’s right to exist and Israel recognize the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people, and Oslo II, signed in 1995, which detailed the process towards peace and a Palestinian state, was stillborn. It stipulated that any discussion of illegal Jewish “settlements” was to be delayed until “final’ status talks, by which time Israeli military withdrawals from the occupied West Bank were to have been completed. Governing authority was to be transferred from Israel to the supposedly temporary Palestinian Authority. The West Bank was carved up into Areas A, B and C. The Palestinian Authority has limited authority in Areas A and B. Israel controls all of Area C, over 60 percent of the West Bank.

The right of Palestinian refugees to return to the historic lands seized from them in 1948 when Israel was created — a right enshrined in international law — was given up by the PLO leader Yasser Arafat, instantly alienating many Palestinians, especially those in Gaza where 75 percent are refugees or the descendants of refugees. Edward Said called the Oslo agreement “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles” and lambasted Arafat as “the Pétain of the Palestinians.”

The scheduled Israeli military withdrawals under Oslo never took place. There was no provision in the interim agreement to end Jewish colonization, only a prohibition of “unilateral steps.” There were around 250,000 Jewish colonists in the West Bank at the time of the Oslo agreement. They have increased to at least 700,000. No final treaty was ever concluded.

The journalist Robert Fisk called Oslo “a sham, a lie, a trick to entangle Arafat and the PLO into abandonment of all that they had sought and struggled for over a quarter of a century, a method of creating false hope in order to emasculate the aspiration of statehood.”

Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo agreement, was assassinated on Nov. 4, 1995 following a rally in support of the agreement, by Yigal Amir, a far-right Jewish law student. Itamar Ben-Gvir, now Israel’s National Security Minister, was one of many rightwing politicians who issued threats against Rabin. Rabin’s widow, Leah, blamed Netanyahu and his supporters — who distributed leaflets at political rallies depicting Rabin in a Nazi uniform — for her husband’s murder.

Israel has carried out a series of murderous assaults on Gaza ever since, cynically calling the bombardment “mowing the lawn.” These attacks, which leave scores of dead and wounded and further degrade Gaza’s fragile infrastructure, have names such as Operation Rainbow (2004), Operation Days of Penitence (2004), Operation Summer Rains (2006), Operation Autumn Clouds (2006) and Operation Hot Winter (2008).

Israel violated the June 2008 ceasefire agreement with Hamas, brokered by Egypt, by launching a border raid that killed six Hamas members. The raid provoked, as Israel intended, a retaliatory strike by Hamas, which fired crude rockets and mortar shells into Israel. The Hamas barrage provided the pretext for a massive Israeli attack. Israel, as it always does, justified its military strike on the right to defend itself.

Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), which saw Israel carry out a ground and aerial assault over 22 days, with the Israeli air force dropping over 1,000 tons of explosives on Gaza, killed 1,385 — according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem — of whom at least 762 were civilians, including 300 children. Four Israelis were killed over the same period by Hamas rockets and nine Israeli soldiers died in Gaza, four of whom were victims of “friendly fire.” The Israeli newspaper Haaretz would later report that “Operation Cast Lead” had been prepared over the previous six months.

Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, who served in the Israeli military, wrote that:

the brutality of Israel’s soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesman…their propaganda is a pack of lies…It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel’s objective is not just the defense of its population, but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers.

These series of attacks on Gaza were followed by Israeli assaults in November 2012, known as Operation Pillar of Defense and in July and August 2014 in Operation Protective Edge, a seven week campaign that left 2,251 Palestinians dead, along with 73 Israelis, including 67 soldiers.

These assaults by the Israeli military were followed in 2018 by largely peaceful protests by Palestinians, known as The Great March of Return, along Gaza’s fenced-in barrier. Over 266 Palestinians were gunned down by Israeli soldiers and 30,000 more were injured. In May 2021, Israel killed over 256 Palestinians in Gaza following attacks by Israeli police on Palestinian worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem. Further attacks on worshippers at Al-Aqsa mosque took place in April 2023.

And then the breaching of the security barriers on Oct. 7, 2023 that enclose Gaza, where Palestinians had languished under a blockade for over 16 years in an open air prison. The attacks by Palestinian gunmen left some 1,200 Israeli dead — including some killed by Israel itself — and gave Israel the excuse it had long sought to lay waste to Gaza, in its Swords of Iron War.

This horrific saga is not over. Israel’s goals remain unchanged – the erasure of Palestinians from their land. This proposed ceasefire is one more cynical chapter. There are many ways it can and, I suspect, will fall apart.

But let us pray, at least for the moment, that the mass slaughter will stop.

January 18, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Gaza, Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

Report: Israel and Hamas Agree ‘in Principle’ to Ceasefire and Hostage Deal

According to media reports, the deal on the table doesn’t commit Israel to a permanent ceasefire

by Dave DeCamp January 14, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/01/14/report-israel-and-hamas-agree-in-principle-to-ceasefire-and-hostage-deal/

CBS News reported Tuesday that both Israel and Hamas have agreed “in principle” to a draft hostage and ceasefire deal that could be finalized this week.

The report, which cited US, Arab, and Israeli officials, said if the final details are worked out and the Israeli government approves it, the deal could be implemented as soon as this weekend, before the January 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.

The Associated Press had a similar report that said Hamas had accepted a draft deal and that details were still being finalized before Israeli approval. The deal is largely based on a proposal President Biden put forward in May 2024, which Hamas accepted months ago.

According to Israeli media reports, pressure on Netanyahu from Trump’s incoming Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, is the reason why there’s been progress in recent days.

The deal involves three phases, but according to AP, it would not commit Israel to a permanent ceasefire or full withdrawal from Gaza.

The AP report reads: “Details of the second phase still must be negotiated during the first. Those details remain difficult to resolve — and the deal does not include written guarantees that the ceasefire will continue until a deal is reached. That means Israel could resume its military campaign after the first phase ends.”

According to media reports, the first phase involves a 42-day ceasefire, and during that time, Hamas would release 33 Israeli hostages, including women, children, the elderly, and five female IDF soldiers. Some of the hostages released in the first phase may be dead, but Israeli officials said they believe most are still alive. In exchange, Israel is expected to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

During the first phase, Israeli troops will withdraw from population centers in Gaza, and Palestinians will be able to return to north Gaza, although there is nothing for them to return to since IDF has destroyed nearly every building in sight. Aid deliveries will also be surged, with 600 trucks per day expected to enter the Strip.

The second phase of the deal would involve the release of all male Israeli hostages from Gaza and a full IDF withdrawal, with many details still needing to be worked out. The third phase would involve the exchange of bodies and the start of the reconstruction of Gaza.

January 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Gaza, Israel, politics | Leave a comment

Outgoing CIA director says ‘no sign’ Iran developing nuclear weapons

William Burns stated that the Islamic Republic made a decision in 2003 not to pursure nuclear weapons and has not changed its policy

The Cradle, News Desk, JAN 12, 2025

Outgoing CIA director William Burns stated in an interview on 10 January that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, following a decision it made in 2003, and that the US is concerned about the revival of ISIS.

In an interview with state broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR) to discuss his time as director of the notorious spy agency under President Joe Biden, Burns was asked whether Iran may accelerate its efforts to obtain nuclear weapons given the setbacks the Islamic Republic and its allies in the regional Axis of Resistance have sustained over the past year.

Burns answered that “the Iranian regime could decide in the face of that weakness that it needs to restore its deterrence as it sees it and, you know, reverse the decision made at the end of 2003 (an oral fatwa issued by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei) to suspend their weaponization program.”

However, Burns clarified, “We do not see any sign today that any such decision has been made, but we obviously watch it intently. “

He added that Iran’s weakness could instead lead to negotiations for a nuclear deal similar to the one signed by Iran and the United States under President Obama in 2014. President Trump later withdrew from the deal following intense lobbying by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“You know that that sense of weakness could also theoretically create a possibility for serious negotiations, too. And, you know, that’s something the new administration is going to have to sort through. I mean, it’s something I have a lot of experience in with the secret talks a decade ago, a little more than a decade ago with the Iranians. So, you know, that’s that’s also a possibility,” Burns stated.

Regarding the negotiations for a possible ceasefire and prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Burns said he believes there is a chance for an agreement.

“I think the gaps between the parties have narrowed. There’s an Israeli delegation in Doha right now working through proximity talks managed by the Qataris, with the support of the Egyptians and with our support. So, I think there’s a chance.”……………………………………………………. https://thecradle.co/articles/outgoing-cia-director-says-no-sign-iran-developing-nuclear-weapons

January 17, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Saudi Arabia plans to enrich and sell uranium as Iran commences nuclear talks with E3

Jan 13, 2025,
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202501135824

audi Arabia plans to monetize all its mineral resources, including uranium, by enriching and selling it, while Iran begins nuclear talks with the E3 in Geneva.

Speaking at a conference in Dhahran, Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said on Monday, “We will enrich it and we will sell it and we will do a ‘yellowcake,'” referring to the powdered concentrate used to prepare uranium fuel for nuclear reactors.

According to Iranian media, Iran’s two-day discussions with the E3 (Britain, France, and Germany), along with a European Union representative, will focus on negotiations for a nuclear deal and regional issues.

The talks follow November meetings amid tensions following the UN nuclear watchdog’s Board of Governors’ resolution censuring Iran, demanding that Tehran resolve outstanding issues with the IAEA over its advancing nuclear program.

January 16, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Saudi Arabia, Uranium | Leave a comment

Report: Israel Refusing To Commit to a Permanent Gaza Ceasefire as Part of Hostage Deal

According to Haaretz, Israel’s position is one of the main disputes in the current negotiations

ANTIWAR.com by Dave DeCamp January 12, 2025

One of the main disputes in the ongoing Gaza hostage and ceasefire negotiations in Qatar is Israel’s refusal to commit to ending the war after a potential deal’s second phase, Haaretz reported on Sunday.

A permanent ceasefire has been one of Hamas’s main demands, and the report said the Palestinian group wants the genocidal war to end after the second phase of the deal.

Instead of committing to a permanent ceasefire, the report said there will be an attempt to present a US commitment to “work with Israel towards ending the war.” That would mean the deal would hinge on a US promise to pressure Israel to end military operations in Gaza, and there would be no actual commitment from Israel.

The Haaretz report comes as US officials are insisting that a deal is “very close.” Hamas officials have also told the media that negotiations have been moving in a positive direction and that they were waiting for the Israeli officials Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent to Qatar to approve their latest draft proposal.

Officials from the incoming Trump administration are also saying that a deal could happen soon, including Steve Witkoff, who will serve as Trump’s envoy to the Middle East and has been involved in the latest negotiations.

Trump himself has repeatedly threatened there would be “hell to pay” if Hamas didn’t start releasing Israeli hostages by his inauguration. Vice President-elect JD Vance elaborated on what that might mean in an interview on Sunday.………………………………… more https://news.antiwar.com/2025/01/12/report-israel-refusing-to-commit-to-a-permanent-gaza-ceasefire-as-part-of-hostage-deal/

January 15, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

CBS’ 60 Minutes Exposes the Biden Administration’s Complicity in Gaza Genocide, Interviews the Whistleblowers

Here is the segment on YouTube:

Biden policy on Israel-Gaza sparks warnings, dissent, resignations | 60 Minutes

Juan Cole, 01/13/2025 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) https://www.juancole.com/2025/01/administrations-complicity-whistleblowers.html

– The amazingly brave Cecilia Vega at CBS’ 60 Minutes did a groundbreaking segment on Sunday in which she interviewed US government officials involved with the Israeli war on Gaza, who resigned in protest either explicitly or implicitly. She also screened the sort of horrific footage of the aftermath of Israeli attacks in Gaza, with the gory parts left in. Here is the transcript.

American television news has almost completely ignored Israeli (and US) war crimes in Gaza, which have been taking place daily, but are not apparently deemed “news” at CNN, MSNBC, Fox, CBS, ABC, etc.

Here let me just excerpt some statements by the former US government officials:

Hala Rharrit was an American diplomat working on human rights: “What is happening in Gaza would not be able to happen without U.S. arms. That’s without a doubt.”

“I would show the complicity that was indisputable. Fragments of U.S. bombs next to massacres of– of ch– mostly children. And that’s the devastation. It’s been overwhelmingly children.” (Emphasis added.)

“I would show images of children that were starved to death. In one incident, I was basically berated, “Don’t put that image in there. We don’t wanna see it. We don’t wanna see that the children are starving to death.”

Hala Rharrit: The level of anger throughout the Arab world, and I– I’ll say beyond the Arab world– is palpable. Protests began erupting in the Arab world, which I was also documenting, with people burning American flags. This is very significant because we worked so hard after the war on terror to strengthen ties with the Arab world.

[Cecilia Vega: You believe that this has put a target on America’s back, you’ve said.]

Hala Rharrit: 100%.

Hala Rharrit: Yes. I don’t say them lightly. And I say it as someone that myself has survived two terrorist attacks. My first assignment was in the U.S. Embassy in Yemen. I survived a mortar attack. I say it as someone who has worked intensely on these issues and has intensely monitored the region for two decades.

After three months of the Gaza War in 2023, she was told her reports were no longer needed.

Josh Paul spent 11 years as a director in the State Department’s Bureau of Political – Military Affairs.

Josh Paul: Most of the bombs come from America. Most of the technology comes from America. And all of the fighter jets, all of Israel’s fixed-wing fleet– comes from America.

Josh Paul: There is a linkage between every single bomb that is dropped in Gaza and the U.S. because every single bomb that is dropped is dropped from an American-made plane.

Josh Paul: After October 7th, there was no space for debate or discussion. I was part of email chains where there were very clear directions saying, “Here are the latest requests from Israel. These need to be approved by 3:00 p.m.”

Josh Paul: “This came from the president, from the secretary and from those around them.”

Josh Paul: I would argue exactly the opposite. I think the moment of October 7th was a moment of incredible worldwide solidarity with Israel. And had Israel leveraged that moment to press for a real, just and lasting peace, I think we would be in a very different place now in which Israel would not be facing this increasing isolation around the world and in which its hostages would be free.

Andrew Miller was the deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs.

Andrew Miller: The Israelis were using those bombs in some instances to target one or two individuals in densely packed areas. And in enough instances, we saw that was in question, how Israel was using it. And those weapons were suspended.

Andrew Miller: There were conversations from the earliest days about U.S. desires and expectations for what Israel would do. But they weren’t defined as a red line.

Andrew Miller: I’m unaware of any red lines being imposed beyond the normal language about complying with international law, international humanitarian law, the law of armed conflict.

Andrew Miller: I believe the message that Prime Minister Netanyahu received is that he was the one in the driver’s seat, and he was controlling this, and U.S. support was going to be there, and he could take it for granted.

Andrew Miller: There is a danger– that if the U.S. was not providing support to Israel, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran would see that as an opportunity to go after Israel. However, we could have said, we are taking this step because we believe this class of weapons– is being used inappropriately. But if you use this moment to accelerate your attacks against Israel, then we are going to immediately lift our prohibition.

Andrew Miller: Yes. I think it’s fair to say Israel does get the benefit of the doubt. There is a deference to Israeli accounts of what’s taken place.

Here is the segment on YouTube:

Biden policy on Israel-Gaza sparks warnings, dissent, resignations | 60 Minutes

January 15, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Gaza, media, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

The UK military’s secret visits to Israel

Top British officers have made at least five unpublicised trips to Tel Aviv to meet Israeli officials, one to discuss ‘future operations’ in the Middle East.

MARK CURTIS, 9 January 2025, https://www.declassifieduk.org/the-uk-militarys-secret-visits-to-israel/?utm_source=drip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=What+you+might+have+missed

The most senior figures in the UK military made at least five unpublicised visits to Israel in the months after it began striking Gaza in October 2023, Declassified has found.

British government data shows that Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff and the UK’s top soldier, visited Israel on 21 January 2024.

On the trip he met the Israeli military’s chief of staff, Herzi Halevi, “to discuss future operations in the region”.

By then, Israel had already killed around 25,000 Palestinians, as international condemnation mounted.

This was Radakin’s second known visit to Israel, after he accompanied then defence secretary Grant Shapps on an official trip in December 2023. Shapps’ visit was disclosed at the time by the British government.

Radakin is also known to have visited Halevi again in Israel in August last year, while in November the Israeli soldier was invited by Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) to attend a meeting in London.

Halevi was given special immunity by the UK authorities to avoid the possibility of being arrested for war crimes while in Britain.

Another senior UK figure who has visited Israel is the head of the Royal Air Force (RAF), Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, who undertook a trip on 9 January 2024, for purposes which are undeclared in the government data.

The RAF has since flown hundreds of spy missions over Gaza, in aid of Israeli intelligence. The UK says that only information related to Hamas hostage-taking is passed to Israel from these flights, which take off from the UK’s sprawling military and intelligence base on Cyprus.

‘UK-Israel bilateral’

James Hockenhull, the head of Strategic Command – the UK military’s senior leadership body – also quietly visited Tel Aviv for a “UK-Israel bilateral” on 28 December 2023.

This was one day before the South African government filed its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.

Six weeks later, on 13 February 2024, Hockenhull hosted an Israeli general, Eliezer Toledano, in London, in a further unpublicised visit.

Toledano serves as the head of the Israeli military’s Strategy and Third-Circle Directorate, which focuses on Iran.

Also visiting Israel have been other senior MoD officials, such as General Charles Stickland, the Chief Joint Operations at the UK’s Permanent Joint Headquarters which is responsible “for the command and integration of UK global operations”.

Stickland visited Israel on 18 March 2024, described in the government documents as “MoD Directed attendance at meetings to be held in Tel Aviv”.

On the same day, Paul Wyatt, the MoD’s Director General for Security Policy, was also “meeting counterparts” in Tel Aviv.

‘Tacit approval’

The unpublicised visits by senior UK figures raise further concerns about the level of military assistance Britain is providing to Israel.

Chris Law, the SNP MP for Dundee Central said: “This new information will only fuel suspicions that successive UK governments have given tacit approval to and are complicit in what many are now considering to be a genocide in Gaza.

“The UK government must be up-front about the full extent of the British armed forces’ involvement in Gaza and detail precisely what support they have given throughout this conflict to the Israeli Defence Forces. This must include details of any further visits by senior military figures to Israel.”

He added: “The UK government may think that it is being clever by withholding this information, but ultimately it will only cede ground to misinformation and encourage guesswork. By detailing the exact involvement of British military figures, the UK government can prove once and for all that they are not complicit in this tragedy.”

In addition to the RAF’s surveillance flights over Gaza, Declassified has also documented British military training of Israeli personnel in the UK, arms supplies to the Israeli military after Britain announced limited sanctions, and the use of UK airspace to send weapons to Israel.

An MoD spokesperson said: “As part of the concerted UK effort, along with allies and partners, to reach a peaceful resolution to the ongoing conflict in Gaza, senior defence officials have visited Israel for routine diplomatic visits.”

They added: “Discussions included the UK calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the need for all parties to comply with international humanitarian law while recognising Israel’s right to security.”

January 15, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, politics international, UK | Leave a comment

Outgoing CIA director says ‘no sign’ Iran developing nuclear weapons

William Burns stated that the Islamic Republic made a decision in 2003 not to pursure nuclear weapons and has not changed its policy

The Cradle News Desk, JAN 12, 2025

However, Burns clarified, “We do not see any sign today that any such decision has been made, but we obviously watch it intently. “

January 13, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Lancet Study: Gaza Health Ministry Undercounted Death Toll By 41%

The study doesn’t account for indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege

by Dave DeCamp January 9, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/01/09/lancet-study-gaza-health-ministry-undercounted-death-toll-by-41/

A new study published in the British medical journal The Lancet found that the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip has significantly undercounted the number of Palestinians killed by Israel’s genocidal war.

The study reviewed the period between October 7, 2023, and June 30, 2024, and found there were 64,260 “traumatic injury deaths” in that timeframe. At the end of June 2024, Gaza’s Health Ministry said there were 37,877 dead, an undercount of about 41%.

As of October 2024, the study said the number of Palestinians killed by Israeli military action likely exceeds 70,000. The latest numbers from Gaza’s Health Ministry put the death toll at 46,006.

Explaining the methodology, the study said it used “capture-recapture methods to estimate total deaths from traumatic injury in the Gaza Strip from Oct 7, 2023, to June 30, 2024. By combining three data lists—official hospital lists, an MoH survey, and social media obituaries—we provide an estimate of mortality that accounts for under-reporting.”

The study accounts only for deaths caused by violence and not indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege and the destruction of medical and other civilian infrastructure.

The figures coming from Gaza’s Health Ministry have been under significant scrutiny from Israeli officials and their supporters in the West. In the early days of the genocidal war, President Biden cast doubt on their accuracy, but a high-level US State Department official later acknowledged the real number of dead was likely higher than what the Health Ministry was reporting.

The number of indirect deaths caused by the Israeli siege is unclear but is likely significantly higher than the violent deaths. A letter written by experts and published by The Lancet in July 2024 estimated that if the war ended at that time, the conflict could account for 186,000 deaths, including 37,396 violent deaths (based on June 2024 Health Ministry figures) and indirect deaths.

January 13, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Gaza, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ireland formally joins ICJ genocide case against Israel

Ireland is the latest country to join South Africa in attempting to hold Israel accountable at the International Court of Justice in the Hague

News Desk, JAN 7, 2025, https://thecradle.co/articles/ireland-formally-joins-icj-genocide-case-against-israel

Ireland has submitted a declaration to join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide.

“Ireland, invoking Article 63 of the Statute of the Court, filed in the Registry of the Court a declaration of intervention in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip,” or South Africa versus Israel, the ICJ said in a statement on 7 January.

Under Article 63, any state party to a convention that is under judicial consideration has the right to intervene, making the ICJ’s interpretation of that convention binding on them as well.

Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin announced in December his government would join the ICJ case.

Israel closed its embassy in Dublin in response, while the Israeli Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, described Ireland’s Prime Minister, Simon Harris, as antisemitic.

Harris responded by saying, “You know what I think is reprehensible? Killing children, I think that’s reprehensible. You know what I think is reprehensible? Seeing the scale of civilian deaths that we’ve seen in Gaza. You know what I think is reprehensible? People are being left to starve, and humanitarian aid is not flowing.”

US-Palestinian entrepreneur and art curator Faisal Saleh said he has begun efforts to lease the closed Israeli embassy building and convert it into a Palestinian museum.

“This will be a very powerful symbolic move where Palestinian art replaces the genocidal entity representation in Ireland,” Saleh told Anadolu Ajansi on 3 January.

Israel began its war on Gaza in October 2023, placing the strip under total siege and unleashing a horrific bombing campaign targeting Palestinian civilians and Hamas fighters alike.

In December of that year, South Africa filed an application instituting proceedings against Israel, claiming its actions in Gaza were in violation of the Genocide Convention.

Several countries have since joined the case, including Nicaragua, Colombia, Libya, Mexico, Palestine, Spain, and Turkiye.

In fifteen months of war, Israeli forces have killed over 46,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, while injuring over 105,000.

The campaign has laid waste to much of the enclave, including homes, mosques, schools, hospitals, universities, agricultural land, and water infrastructure, making Gaza largely unlivable.

Israeli soldiers and politicians have declared it their goal to forcibly expel all 2.3 million Palestinians from Gaza and to build Jewish settlements on the ruins of the destroyed Palestinian cities and refugee camps.

January 12, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ireland, Israel, Legal | Leave a comment

Genocidal President, Genocidal Politics

The presidential genocide and the active acquiescence of the vast majority of Congress are matched by the dominant media and overall politics of the United States.

Jan 6, 2025, Norman Solomon, https://www.laprogressive.com/war-and-peace/genocidal-president?utm_source=LA+Progressive+NEW&utm_campaign=c01ae947cf-LAP+News+–+%288%29+18+NOVEMBER+2022_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_61288e16ef-c01ae947cf-287023764&ct=t(EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_11_17_2022_10_46_COPY_01)&mc_cid=c01ae947cf&mc_eid=02629a6e14

Then news broke over the weekend that President Biden just approved an $8 billion deal for shipping weapons to Israel, a nameless official vowed that “we will continue to provide the capabilities necessary for Israel’s defense.” Following the reports last month from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch concluding that Israeli actions in Gaza are genocide, Biden’s decision was a new low for his presidency.

It’s logical to focus on Biden as an individual. His choices to keep sending huge quantities of weaponry to Israel have been pivotal and calamitous. But the presidential genocide and the active acquiescence of the vast majority of Congress are matched by the dominant media and overall politics of the United States.

Forty days after the Gaza war began, Anne Boyer announced her resignation as poetry editor of the New York Times Magazine. More than a year later, her statement illuminates why the moral credibility of so many liberal institutions has collapsed in the wake of Gaza’s destruction.

While Boyer denounced “the Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza,” she emphatically chose to disassociate herself from the nation’s leading liberal news organization: “I can’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.”

The acclimatizing process soon became routine. It was most crucially abetted by President Biden and his loyalists, who were especially motivated to pretend that he wasn’t really doing what he was really doing.

For mainline journalists, the process required the willing suspension of belief in a consistent standard of language and humanity. When Boyer acutely grasped the dire significance of its Gaza coverage, she withdrew from “the newspaper of record.”

Content analysis of the war’s first six weeks found that coverage by the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times had a steeply dehumanizing slant toward Palestinians. The three papers “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians,” a study by The Intercept showed. “The term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.”

After a year of the Gaza war, Arab-American historian Rashid Khalidi said: “My objection to organs of opinion like the New York Times is that they see absolutely everything from an Israeli perspective. ‘How does it affect Israel, how do the Israelis see it?’ Israel is at the center of their worldview, and that’s true of our elites generally, all over the West. The Israelis have very shrewdly, by preventing direct reportage from Gaza, further enabled that Israelocentric perspective.”

Khalidi summed up: “The mainstream media is as blind as it ever was, as willing to shill for any monstrous Israeli lie, to act as stenographers for power, repeating what is said in Washington.”

The conformist media climate smoothed the way for Biden and his prominent rationalizers to slide off the hook and shape the narrative, disguising complicity as evenhanded policy. Meanwhile, mighty boosts of Israel’s weapons and ammunition were coming from the United States. Nearly half of the Palestinians they killed were children.

For those children and their families, the road to hell was paved with good doublethink. So, for instance, while the Gaza horrors went on, no journalist would confront Biden with what he’d said at the time of the widely decried school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, when the president had quickly gone on live television. “There are parents who will never see their child again,” he said, adding: “To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away. . . . It’s a feeling shared by the siblings, and the grandparents, and their family members, and the community that’s left behind.” And he asked plaintively, “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?”

The massacre in Uvalde killed 19 children. The daily massacre in Gaza has taken the lives of that many Palestinian kids in a matter of hours.

While Biden refused to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing and mass murder that he kept making possible, Democrats in his orbit cooperated with silence or other types of evasion. A longstanding maneuver amounts to checking the box for a requisite platitude by affirming support for a “two-state solution.”

Dominating Capitol Hill, an unspoken precept has held that Palestinian people are expendable as a practical political matter. Party leaders like Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries did virtually nothing to indicate otherwise. Nor did they exert themselves to defend incumbent House Democrats Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, defeated in summer primaries with an unprecedented deluge of multimillion-dollar ad campaigns funded by AIPAC and Republican donors.

The overall media environment was a bit more varied but no less lethal for Palestinian civilians. During its first several months, the Gaza war received huge quantities of mainstream media coverage, which thinned over time; the effects were largely to normalize the continual slaughter. Some exceptional reporting existed about the suffering, but the journalism gradually took on a media ambience akin to background noise, while credulously hyping Biden’s weak ceasefire efforts as determined quests.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came in for increasing amounts of criticism. But the prevalent U.S. media coverage and political rhetoric — unwilling to expose the Israeli mission to destroy Palestinians en masse — rarely went beyond portraying Israel’s leaders as insufficiently concerned with protecting Palestinian civilians.

Instead of candor about horrific truths, the usual tales of U.S. media and politics have offered euphemisms and evasions.

When she resigned as the New York Times Magazine poetry editor in mid-November 2023, Anne Boyer condemned what she called “an ongoing war against the people of Palestine, people who have resisted through decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.” Another poet, William Stafford, wrote decades ago:

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

January 10, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Gaza, politics | Leave a comment

What a second Trump administration may mean for the Saudi nuclear program

By Nour Eid | Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 6th Jan 2025

Donald Trump’s return to the White House could mean the end of the
nonproliferation regime: As the Iranian-Israeli confrontation intensifies,
and the threat of an Iranian nuclear breakout looms, the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia could see in a second Trump administration an opportunity to finally
get the nuclear cooperation the Saudis have been yearning for.

The Saudis argue that it is their right, under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons (NPT), to enrich uranium for domestic energy purposes. They
refuse to be subjected to double standards, given that India and Japan
received “blanket consents” to seek enrichment or reprocessing
capabilities under their respective 123 agreements.

Adding insult to injury, in Saudi eyes: Its main rival, Iran, was allowed to enrich uranium
under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as
the Iran nuclear deal. The Saudis aim to benefit from the same privileges
by developing an indigenous nuclear program………………………………………………….. https://thebulletin.org/2025/01/what-a-second-trump-administration-may-mean-for-the-saudi-nuclear-program/

January 10, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, Saudi Arabia, USA | Leave a comment

Genocide: The New Normal

By Chris Hedges ScheerPost January 7, 2025, https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/07/chris-hedges-genocide-the-new-normal/

Joe Biden’s parting gift of $8 billion in weapons sales to the apartheid state of Israel acknowledges the gruesome reality of the genocide in Gaza. This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. This is a permanent, endless war designed not to destroy Hamas, or free Israeli hostages, but to eradicate, once and for all, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. It is the final push to create a Greater Israel, which will include not only Gaza and the West Bank, but chunks of Lebanon and Syria. It is the culmination of the Zionist dream. And it will be paid for with rivers of blood — Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian.

Minister of Agriculture and Food Security of Israel Avi Dichter was probably offering conservative estimates when he said “I think that we are going to stay in Gaza for a long time. I think most people understand that [Israel] will be years in some kind of West Bank situation where you go in and out and maybe you remain along Netzarim [corridor].”

Mass extermination takes time. It is also expensive. Fortunately for Israel, its lobby in the U.S. has a stranglehold on Congress, our electoral process and the media narrative. Americans, although 61 percent support ending weapons shipments to Israel, will pay for it. And those that express dissent will be frog-marched into Zionist black holes where their voices are silenced and their careers jeopardized or destroyed. Donald Trump and the Republicans have an open disdain for democracy, but so do the Democrats and Joe Biden.

The U.S. provided $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel from October 2023 to October 2024, a substantial increase from the already $3.8 billion in military aid the U.S. gives Israel annually. This is a record for a single year. The State Department has informed Congress that it intends to approve another $8 billion in purchases of U.S.-made arms by Israel. This will provide Israel with more GPS guidance systems for bombs, more artillery shells, more missiles for fighter jets and helicopters, and more bombs, including 2,800 unguided MK-84 bombs, which Israel has a habit of dropping on densely packed tent encampments in Gaza. The pressure wave from the 2,000-pound MK-84 pulverizes buildings and exterminates life within a 400-yard radius. The blast, which ruptures lungs, rips apart limbs and bursts sinus cavities up to hundreds of yards away, leaves behind a 50-foot-wide and 36-foot-deep crater. Israel appears to have used this bomb to assassinate Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, in Beirut on September 27, 2024.

The genocide, and the decision to fuel it with billions of dollars, marks an ominous turning point. It is a public declaration by the U.S. and its allies in Europe that international and humanitarian law, although blatantly disregarded by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and a generation earlier in Vietnam, is meaningless. We will not even pay lip service to it. This will be a Hobbesian world where nations that have the most advanced industrial weapons make the rules. Those who are poor and vulnerable will kneel in subjugation. The genocide in Gaza is the template for the future. And those in the Global South know it.

The “wretched of the earth” who lack sophisticated weapons, who do not have modern armies, artillery units, missiles, navies, armored units and warplanes, will strike back with crude tools. They will match individual acts of terror against massive campaigns of state terror.

Are we surprised we are hated? Terror begets terror. We saw this in New Orleans where a man who was allegedly inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) killed 14 people when he drove his pickup truck into a crowd on New Year’s Day. We will see more of it. But let’s be clear. We started it. The moral void of the suicide bomber is birthed from our moral void.

Israel’s frustration at the dogged resistance in Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen and Lebanon increases the bloodlust. Members of Israel’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee sent a letter to Minister of Defense Israel Katz, calling on the government to intensify the siege of Gaza.

“Effective control of the territory and the population is the only means towards cleansing enemy lines from the strip, and naturally towards decisive victory, rather than treading [water] in a war of attrition, where the side that is most worn is Israel,” they write. “Therefore we end up inserting our soldiers again and again into neighborhoods and alleys that were already conquered by them many times.”

Israel, the letter reads, must carry out “remote elimination of all energy sources, that is fuel, solar panels and any relevant means (pipes, cables, generators etc.)” It should ensure the “elimination of all food sources including warehouses, water and all relevant means (water pumps etc.)” and it must facilitate the “remote elimination of anyone who moves in the area and does not exit with a white flag during the days of the effective siege.”

The letter concludes that “after these actions and the days of siege upon those who remain, [the] IDF must enter gradually and conduct a full cleansing of the enemy nests…. This should be done in the northern Gaza Strip, and similarly in any other territory: encirclement, evacuation of the population to a humanitarian zone, and effective siege until surrender or full elimination of the enemy. This is how every army acts, and so must the IDF act.”

In short, exterminate the brutes.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the 42-year-old U.S. military veteran who plowed his pick-up truck into a crowd of New Year’s revellers in New Orleans killing 14 people and injuring 35 others, spoke to us in the language we use to speak to the Arab world. Indiscriminate death. The targeting of innocents. The callous indifference to life. The thirst for revenge. The demonization of others. The belief that fate or God or western civilization has decreed that we have a right to impose our vision of the world with violence. Jabbar, who posted videos online in which he professed his support for Islamic State, is our murderous doppelgänger. He will not be the last.

“When a society is dispossessed, when the injustices thrust upon it appear insoluble, when the ‘enemy’ is all-powerful, when one’s own people are bestialised as insects, cockroaches, ‘two-legged beasts,’ then the mind moves beyond reason,” Robert Fisk writes in The Great War for Civilization. “It becomes fascinated in two senses: with the idea of an afterlife and with the possibility that this belief will somehow provide a weapon of more than nuclear potential. When the United States was turning Beirut into a NATO base in 1983, and using its firepower against Muslim guerrillas in the mountains to the east, Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Baalbek were promising that God would rid Lebanon of the American presence. I wrote at the time — not entirely with my tongue in my cheek — that this was likely to be a titanic battle: U.S. technology versus God. Who would win? Then on 23 October 1983 a lone suicide bomber drove a truckload of explosives into the U.S. Marine compound at Beirut airport and killed 241 American servicemen in six seconds…I later interviewed one of the few surviving marines to have seen the bomber. ‘All I can remember,’ he told me, ‘is that the guy was smiling.’

These acts of terrorism, or in the case of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Yemen armed resistance, are used to justify endless mass killing. This Via Dolorosa leads to a global death spiral, especially as the climate crisis reconfigures the planet and international bodies, such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court, become hollow appendages.

We are sowing the Middle East with dragon’s teeth and, as in the ancient Greek myth, these teeth are rising from the soil as enraged warriors determined to destroy us.

January 9, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Iran has absolutely no intention to build nuclear weapons, president says

Jan 7, 2025 https://www.iranintl.com/en/202501076906

Tehran has no plan to acquire a nuclear bomb since Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has forbidden it on religious grounds, Iran’s president said on Tuesday.

“The Islamic Republic has absolutely no intention of utilizing its nuclear capabilities for military purposes based on its ideological beliefs and a fatwa by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei,” Masoud Pezeshkian said in a meeting with Britain’s new ambassador to Tehran.

For two decades, the Supreme Leader’s so-called nuclear fatwa has been repeatedly cited by senior officials as proof of Iran’s peaceful intentions. But even supporters of that view say the decree could be amended.

The nuclear engineer went on to say that if Khamenei’s opinion changed, Iran would have the capacity to build a nuclear weapon.

Tehran ready for return to JCPOA

Pezeshkian’s comments came one day after French President Emmanuel Macron warned Tehran’s nuclear program is nearing the point of no return.

Iran says its uranium enrichment program is for peaceful purposes but has accelerated activity since US President-elect Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal – officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – during his first term and reimposed sanctions on Tehran.

“The Islamic Republic is fully prepared for all parties to return to the 2015 agreement and fulfill their mutual commitments,” Pezeshkian added on Tuesday.

Last month, European powers France, Germany, and Britain warned that Iran’s actions had further eroded the agreement, noting that Tehran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium has no credible civilian justification.

In December, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog reported that Iran was dramatically advancing enrichment close to the 90% purity needed only for weapons-grade material.

The three European nations, co-signatories of the 2015 accord, had brokered the deal under which Iran agreed to limit enrichment in exchange for the lifting sanctions.

“According to the Leader’s opinion, going in this direction is now forbidden, because he is a religious authority; (but) maybe he will change his opinion tomorrow,” Shahid Beheshti University President Mahmood-Reza Aghamiri said recently in an interview.

January 9, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries Next Entries »