MIDDLE EAST « nuclear-news

How Iran could build a bomb in secret – despite Trump’s $30bn offer

Iran enters ‘era of nuclear ambiguity’ with its capabilities ‘hidden and unverifiable’

Radina Gigova, 27 June 25, https://inews.co.uk/news/world/how-iran-build-bomb-secret-despite-trumps-30bn-offer-3775501

Despite US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, the Trump administration is reportedly prepared to offer Tehran financial incentives to strike a deal over its nuclear programme.

Sources familiar with current plans told CNN that Washington could offer investment in a civilian energy worth up to $30bn (£21.9bn) if the regime is willing to abandon uranium enrichment and adopt transparency measures, as well as sanctions relief.

But Iran has signaled that it intends to rebuild the programme after acknowledging heavy damage by US strikes, and it could do so in secret after passing a law to suspend co-operation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which would block inspections on its nuclear sites and pave the way to withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

How far Iran has progressed towards nuclear weapons, and what steps it could take next, could now be hidden from view, experts say.

“The truth is, no one really knows – and that’s exactly the problem,” said Sina Toossi, an Iran specialist and senior fellow at the Centre for International Policy, a Washington DC think-tank.

“Iran is entering an era of nuclear ambiguity, where its capabilities are deliberately hidden and unverifiable,” he said.

The ambiguity has been heightened after President Donald Trump said he would consider bombing Iran again.

Trump said he had spared Khamanei’s life during the original raids. US officials told the Reuters news agency on June 15 that Trump had vetoed an Israeli plan to kill the supreme leader.

“His Country was decimated, his three evil Nuclear Sites were OBLITERATED, and I knew EXACTLY where he was sheltered, and would not let Israel, or the U.S. Armed Forces, by far the Greatest and Most Powerful in the World, terminate his life,” Trump said in a social media post.

“I SAVED HIM FROM A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH,” he said.

Iran’s decision to suspend IAEA co-operation just two days after a ceasefire “marks a turning point in the decades-long nuclear dispute”, and is “a strategic setback for both the United States and Israel”, Toossi added.

Iran retains nuclear capabilities

Donald Trump claimed last Saturday that US “bunker-buster” bombs had thoroughly destroyed Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, including sites at Natanz and Fordo – the latter located deep underground – and a storage site in Isfahan.

“The strikes were a spectacular military success,” the US President declared, adding that Iran’s core enrichment infrastructure had been “completely and totally obliterated”.

Iranian officials, for their part, continue to deny any intention of developing a nuclear bomb.

But experts caution that Iran retains the potential to weaponise.

“Yes, Iran retains the technical capability and infrastructure to eventually build a nuclear bomb behind the scenes, despite the recent Israeli and US strikes,” said Dr Andreas Krieg, senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London, Royal College of Defence Studies and fellow at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies.

The strikes caused substantial damage to critical nuclear facilities, including the enrichment and conversion sites at Natanz, Fordo, and Esfahan, according to US officials. However, intelligence reports and satellite imagery indicate that Iran likely relocated a large portion of its enriched uranium stockpile – and possibly even advanced centrifuges – to secret locations ahead of the attacks.

“This preserved the most critical elements of its breakout capability. Moreover, Iran’s knowledge base – its cadre of nuclear scientists and engineers – is intact. Human capital, unlike physical infrastructure, is difficult to eliminate and can reconstitute programmes even after significant setbacks,” said Dr Krieg.

Krieg noted that the IAEA has acknowledged that although inspections at declared sites have been hindered, there is only limited visibility into any potential undisclosed or secret facilities.

“This opens the possibility of a clandestine parallel programme – especially given that Iran has previously experimented with such pathways during the AMAD programme in the early 2000s,” he said, referring to an alleged secret Iranian nuclear weapons development project believed to have been active at the start of the century.

“Therefore, while recent military operations may have delayed Iran’s ability to assemble a bomb, they have not eliminated the potential,” he said.

“If Iran were to exit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or reduce co-operation with the IAEA, concerns about a hidden weapons programme would intensify. In the absence of a durable diplomatic solution, Iran’s latent capability remains a central strategic risk in the region.”

Dr Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher and nuclear specialist at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research, said the US and Israel could struggle to keep track of a hidden programme.

“It would be very difficult without IAEA access,” he said. “Look at North Korea – and North Korea wasn’t really making a special effort to hide facilities underground.”

A clandestine “breakout” would prioritise storage of any remaining highly enriched uranium, he added, which could potentially be further enriched to weapons-grade at an unknown facility.

Basis of a deal may already exist

Krieg believes “it is imperative that the Trump administration, through mediators like Qatar, is transforming this current momentum of the ceasefire into a sustainable and mutually acceptable nuclear deal, including enrichment constraints and effective oversight mechanisms”.

Uranium is the central element in question, and according to the UN’s nuclear watchdog, no other country has as much enriched uranium at this level as Iran does without also engaging in a nuclear weapons programme.

John Erath, senior policy director at the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, agrees that Iran may have the capability to build a nuclear weapon and that negotiating a new agreement, similar to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal reached in 2015 and abandoned by Trump in 2018 – could be the basis of a new deal.

“We have an example of an arrangement that provided confidence that closed off the path to nuclear weapons for Iran,” he said, referring to the JCPOA, “and so, if I were negotiating a new arrangement, I would use that as a starting point but I would have something that would not have an expiration date.”

“If you want to demonstrate that you do not have nuclear weapons, be completely transparent, be completely open, and they were not that,” Erath claimed, referring to the Iranian government. “They were doing things that they wanted to keep hidden, that they wanted to keep in secret, that were only things that you could do if you were considering a nuclear weapons programme.”

Iranian officials have indicated reluctance to re-enter talks after the US and Israeli attacks, citing a lack of trust, although Tehran’s ambassador to the UN left the door open to a regional nuclear consortium involving Gulf states – a previous proposal floated by the US.

The 12-day war has “certainly put the possibility of further negotiations under serious threat”, Erath said. “[But that’s] what happened, and we have to live with the consequences.”

June 29, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

What if Iran withdraws from the NPT?

Bulletin. By Mark Goodman, Mark Fitzpatrick | June 25, 2025

As the Iranian nuclear program saga plays out, one diplomatic action has been widely expected: Iran may declare its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).^[1] Such a withdrawal would eliminate the legal prohibition on Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and the requirement that Iran accept international safeguards monitoring. Over the past decade, Iran has threatened many times to play this card in retaliation for far less serious assaults.

NPT withdrawal is one of the few actions available to Iran that would have a significant effect. It would facilitate reconstitution of Iran’s bombed nuclear capabilities and enable Tehran to use them to develop nuclear weapons without international oversight.^[2] Even with the loss of the 14 nuclear scientists and engineers assassinated by Israel this month, Iran surely retains the knowledge on how to build centrifuges and assemble them into cascades, plus the expertise acquired during the secret work to date on weapons development. Iran may also have taken steps to remove equipment and material from its enrichment facilities before the US attacks against three Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend.

Given these realities, Iran likely will be able to build and operate a secret underground enrichment plant capable of producing significant quantities of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU). This process will be sped if Iran was able to protect from Israeli bombing the over 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent uranium 235 content the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says Iran had as of May^[3] and, until recently at least, stored in easily transportable cylinders. At a time when much of the world sees Iran as the victim of Israeli aggression, NPT withdrawal could be accomplished with less political blowback than if it were employed in response to economic sanctions.

Iran’s adversaries would see NPT withdrawal as tantamount to a declaration of nuclear weapons intent. There is no such legal connection, however, and the logical case is not airtight. It is conceivable that Iran could withdraw from the treaty and maintain a policy of nuclear hedging, even as it reconstituted its enrichment program in secret. A decision to actually build a nuclear weapon could be made down the road when the capabilities are again in place. Invoking the NPT’s withdrawal clause in the near term would risk military escalation with few immediate benefits, though ending IAEA inspections would reduce the transparency and vulnerability of a reconstituted nuclear program.

Iran’s NPT status. Iran signed the NPT in 1968 and became one of its original parties when the treaty entered into force in 1970. As a non-nuclear-weapon state, Iran is prohibited from acquiring nuclear weapons and from seeking or receiving assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. As an NPT party, Iran is also required to accept IAEA safeguards—international monitoring and inspections—on all its peaceful nuclear activities. To that end, Iran concluded a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA in 1974…………………………………………………………………………………….

Implications of withdrawal. Article X of the NPT allows withdrawal from the treaty if a party “decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country.” To do so, it must give three months’ advance notice to all other NPT Parties and to the UN Security Council, including a statement of those “extraordinary events.” After those three months, the obligations not to acquire nuclear weapons and to accept safeguards would cease.

…………………………………………………………………Some NPT parties have never accepted North Korea’s withdrawal as valid in meeting the requirements of Article X, questioning whether its notification cited “extraordinary events” that were “related to the subject matter of the [NPT].”^[13]

In Iran’s case, such questions are unlikely to be raised, since the “extraordinary events” are obvious.

…………………………………………………………… There is little prospect of effective multilateral responses to an Iranian withdrawal notification, aside from toothless requests for Iran to reconsider its decisions. Such responses would require consensus at least among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

……………………………………………….There is little prospect of effective multilateral responses to an Iranian withdrawal notification, aside from toothless requests for Iran to reconsider its decisions. Such responses would require consensus at least among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

……………………………….. The NPT-based nonproliferation regime has often worked best by slowing developments and giving countries time and incentives to reconsider fateful decisions. In Iran’s case, Israel’s war of choice is likely to have the opposite effect of speeding up a step off the cliff. If Iran announces formal withdrawal from the NPT, other members should do whatever they can during the three months’ notification period to persuade it not to follow through.
https://thebulletin.org/2025/06/what-if-iran-withdraws-from-the-npt/

June 29, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

The Chris Hedges Report: Starvation and Profiteering in Gaza (w/ Francesca Albanese)

Francesca Albanese joins Chris Hedges to break down the current starvation campaign in Gaza, and her upcoming report detailing the profiteering corporations capitalizing on the erasure of Palestinians

Chris Hedges, Jun 26, 2025

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

There is not much more that can be said about the unfathomable levels of devastation the genocide in Gaza has reached. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has been chronicling the genocide and joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to shed light on the current situation in Gaza, including parts from her upcoming report on the profiteers of the genocide.

Israel’s siege on the Palestinians is leaving the population starving, and Albanese lambasts other nations for not stepping up and completing their obligations under international law. “[Countries] have an obligation not to aid, not to assist, not to trade with Israel, not to send weapons, not to buy weapons, not to provide military technology, not to buy military technology. This is not an act of charity that I’m asking you. This is your obligation,” she explains.

Albanese compares Gaza and Israel’s siege to a concentration camp, stating it is unsustainable but also allows the world to witness how a Western settler colonial entity functions. “There is a global awareness of something that has for a long time been a prerogative, a painful prerogative of the global majority, the Global South, meaning the awareness of the pain and the wounds of colonialism,” Albanese tells Hedges.

In her forthcoming report, Albanese will detail exactly how Palestine has been exploited by the global capitalist system and will highlight the role certain corporations have played in the genocide. “[T]here are corporate entities, including from Palestine-friendly states, who have for decades made businesses and made profits out of the economy of the occupation, because Israel has always exploited Palestinian land and resources and Palestinian life,” she says.

“The profits have continued and even increased as the economy of the occupation transformed into an economy of genocide.”……………………………………………TRANSCRIPT………………………………….. …………..https://scheerpost.com/2025/06/25/the-chris-hedges-report-starvation-and-profiteering-in-gaza-w-francesca-albanese/

June 27, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

Why Limit Iranian Enrichment Peacefully When You Can Bomb Them Instead?

A deal was limiting Iran’s enrichment of uranium until Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of it. Instead the Dealmaker bombed Iran, threatening to set the region on fire, writes Joe Lauria. With a ceasefire what does he do now?

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News. June 24, 2025, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/06/24/why-limit-iranian-enrichment-peacefully-when-you-can-bomb-them-instead/

In the last great achievement of international diplomacy, the United States and its allies Britain, France and Germany, concluded a deal in 2015 with Russia, China and Iran — something that today would be unthinkable — to limit Iran’s nuclear enrichment to purely civilian uses at 3.67 percent.

Negotiations on the deal began in November 2013, just three months before the U.S.-backed unconstitutional change of government in Kiev that started the long slide in U.S.-Russian relations. That did not prevent the nuclear deal from being concluded in July 2015 and endorsed by the Security Council in October of that year.

Seven years later, Washington and its European allies began fighting a hot war against Moscow through its proxy Ukraine. Relations with China have also sharply deteriorated. The idea of such cooperation on Iran now is unthinkable.

But in 2013 such wise diplomacy was still possible and the result was a peaceful resolution of the Iranian enrichment issue.

Iran agreed to stringent monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency and in exchange, the United States, Europe and the United Nations lifted economic sanctions against Tehran.

The IAEA certified that the deal was working. Iran was sticking to 3.67 percent enrichment. Diplomacy worked. Iran’s nuclear program was in check.

But the Israelis had opposed it all along because Israel’s aim has long been to overthrow the government in Iran in Israel’s quest for regional dominance.

Netanyahu could not stop Barack Obama from working with the Chinese and the Russians to conclude the deal that solved the nuclear issue and left the Iranian government in a more secure position.

Then Donald Trump became president. He did what Netanyahu wanted. He pulled the U.S. out of the deal, saying it was a lousy agreement and he could do better. But there was no new deal. Iran continued to cooperate with the existing agreement for a year before increasing enrichment, eventually to 60 percent for leverage in the negotiation. (90 percent is needed for a bomb, but U.S. intelligence and the IAEA said in recents months that Iran is not pursuing a bomb).

Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, did nothing to return the U.S. to the deal to save it when he got into the White House, dishonoring probably Obama’s greatest achievement.

Trump 2.0’s idea of a better deal to limit Tehran’s enrichment was to demand zero percent after Iran agreed to return to 3.67 percent. Trump would look like a fool if he accepted 3.67 percent, as that would mean agreeing to the very deal that was working well before he tore it up.

So it was bombs away instead.

Clearing Smoke Reveals Trump’s Lies

More than 24 hours after the smoke cleared above Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities Trump’s lies during his address Saturday night came clearly into view.

The strikes were not “a spectacular military success.” Iran’s “key nuclear enrichment facilities” were not “completely and totally obliterated.” There is no evidence that a single centrifuge was damaged and Iran’s 60 percent enriched fuel had already been removed and is in a location unknown to Israel, the U.S. and the IAEA.

Trump called Iran the “bully of the Middle East” when any neutral person knows that bully is Israel backed by the U.S., the bully of the world.

In just the past few months, with U.S. backing, Israel has invaded Lebanon and Syria, launched an unprovoked attack on Iran and is committing genocide in Gaza. The last time Iran invaded anyone was Iraq in 1982 but only after Iraq had invaded it first in 1980.

Israel gets away with this by portraying itself as the perpetual victim of an imminent new Holocaust 80 years after the fact and thus needs to invade and bomb its neighbors in “self defense” to pre-empt this from happening.

Regional hostility toward Israel does not stem from a reaction to its decades of aggression against Palestinians and its neighbors but purely from anti-semitic hatred. These countries must constantly be attacked to wipe out this hatred, not to reconstitute an ancient Hebrew empire from (beyond) the River to the Sea.

One power that empire never conquered was Persia

With their overlapping empires — Israel’s regional and the U.S.’s global — Iran, the land of Darius and Cyrus, is the prime target. The U.S. has sought to control it since at least its 1953 coup restored the shah to power for its oil and because of its Cold War rivalry with Russia.

Trump mimicked Israel, calling Iran “the world’s number one state sponsor of terror,” when an objective analysis would correctly award that title to the Gulf Sunni monarchies, principally Saudi Arabia, all allied with the United States.

They have sponsored al-Qaeda and ISIS and all their offshoots and rebrandings, while Iran has mostly supported militia resisting occupations in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Gaza.

Though formed in 1982 in response to Israel’s invasion and occupation of Lebanon, Hezbollah was only designated a terrorist organization by the European Union in 2013, for instance. Though founded in 1987, the EU did not view Hamas as a terrorist group until 2001.

Then Trump said of Iran:

“They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs with roadside bombs. That was their specialty. We lost over 1,000 people, and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate.”

This is a bizarre statement that can only be related to attacks by militia against U.S. occupation forces in Iraq after the U.S. 2003 invasion. But only some of these groups were Iranian-backed and they killed not a thousand, but 169 U.S. soldiers, whom Trump referred to as “our people,” as if they were tourists and not an occupying army.

Trump’s thousand U.S. victims appears to come from propaganda put out by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which calls itself “a leading independent research institute, serving as Israel’s global embassy for national security and applied diplomacy.”

It combats what it calls “apartheid antisemitism.” It falsely called the 2015 nuclear agreement that Trump withdrew from “a deal that would allow Iran to become a nuclear-armed state.” In 2015, Haaretz named Sheldon Adelson, Trump’s principal donor, “one of the main financers of JCFA in recent years.”

Israel had to cut short its ambitions to conquer Iran (at least overtly) and agree to a ceasefire because it was running out of interceptor missiles; it’s economy, already weakened by Gaza, was threatened at $200 million a day; and it sustained far more damage than it will admit.

Now that there is a ceasefire, Trump is back to square one. The New York Times reported:

“Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, welcomed news of a cease-fire. In a social-media post, he said he has invited Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi to meet to discuss a diplomatic solution on Iran’s nuclear program.”

That solution would be a return to 3.67 percent enrichment and Iran giving up its 60 percent stockpile, in other words, returning exactly to the deal Trump tore up to plunge the region into extreme danger with his bombing stunt.

Where will he turn now?

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.

June 27, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Iran Shows Us Why The US And Israel Should Not Be Allowed To Have Nukes.

Caitlin Johnstone, Jun 25, 2025

Well it’s been a crazy couple of days.

Trump bombed Iran’s civilian nuclear energy facilities in an attack that CNN reports did no lasting damage, and Iran exercised extraordinary restraint with symbolic retaliatory strikes on US military bases coordinated to avoid American casualties — a move many are comparing to Iran’s non-lethal response to the US assassination of General Qassem Soleimani in 2020.

After pumping out deception and fake diplomacy for weeks in order to assist Israel’s unprovoked war on Iran and launch an unprovoked attack on his own, Trump took to social media to proudly celebrate his administration’s facilitation of a ceasefire to the war he himself needlessly started, like an arsonist giving himself a trophy for extinguishing one of his own house fires.

And, for the moment at least, the ceasefire appears to be holding. Which is good. There are a lot of terrible people who did everything they could to get Iran to kill US troops and spark a horrific war, but Iran didn’t take the bait. Iran doesn’t want war at all. Trump found out that Americans disapproved of the airstrikes and opposed war with Iran. And Israel found out that fighting an actual military force is a lot less easy than fighting hospital patients and children.

So for now we’ve got a ceasefire.

We have never been shown any evidence that Iran was working on obtaining nuclear weapons, which given the US empire’s extensive history of lying about this sort of thing means we should assume it was not. But it has certainly been given every incentive to obtain them now, given that that’s probably the only thing that can stop the US and Israel from casually committing these egregious acts of aggression whenever they feel like it.

And isn’t it interesting how Iran keeps demonstrating a degree of restraint that we all know we’d never see from the United States or Israel if another country bombed their energy infrastructure or assassinated their military leaders, and yet Iran is the country we’re told can never be trusted with nuclear weapons?

The US empire and Israel both exist in a perpetual state of war and attack other countries constantly; Iran never invades other countries and avoids war like Melania Trump avoids missionary position. But we’re meant to accept that it’s fine for the US and Israel to have nukes and do anything necessary to prevent Iran from getting any?

Even if you accept the evidence-free premise that Iran would do crazy and reckless things if it became a nuclear-armed state, there is no rational argument that Trump and his handlers have been going about preventing this outcome intelligently. As Joe Lauria explains in Consortium News, the Iran nuclear deal was a remarkable achievement of international diplomacy that was working fine until Trump shredded it in 2018. Iran was following all the agreed upon rules and its nuclear enrichment was capped at 3.67 percent, but Trump killed it because the Zionists and warmongers who brought him to power want more aggression toward Iran instead of less.

It’s so intensely stupid that we have to keep doing this horrifying dance every few years just because there are too many war-horny freaks with way too much power inside the US empire. And every time they get closer to getting their wish. Iran is being given more and more reasons to view the US and Israel as an existential threat, more and more motive to obtain nuclear weapons, and less and less reason to negotiate anything with Washington.

These bastards keep pushing us toward something very ugly. Let’s hope people keep waking up to the depravity of Israel and the US empire before the warmakers succeed in obtaining their long-sought prize.

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June 27, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US didn’t destroy Iran’s nuclear programme: Here’s what new intel says

US President Trump doubles down on his assertion that the Iranian nuclear programme has been set back by decades.

By Al Jazeera Staff, 25 Jun 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/25/us-didnt-destroy-irans-nuclear-programme-heres-what-new-intel-says

The United States’ strikes on three key Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday failed to destroy underground facilities, and set Tehran’s nuclear programme back only by a few months, according to an assessment of a confidential American intelligence report.

The “top secret” document prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) – the intelligence arm of the Pentagon – and published by major US news outlets on Tuesday is at odds with President Donald Trump’s claims about the strikes. Trump has insisted that the nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan were “obliterated” by a combination of bunker busting and conventional bombs.

Trump and his administration’s senior officials are dismissing the intelligence report and calling out the reporting over the DIA’s assessment as “fake news”.

Speaking at a NATO summit in The Hague, the US president said he believed Iran’s nuclear programme was set back by decades.

So, what did the DIA assessment say about US strikes? What has Iran said about the attacks? And how does the intelligence report contrast with the Trump administration’s public claims?

What did the DIA report say?

A preliminary report prepared by the DIA noted that rather than obliterating Iran’s nuclear programme, the US bombings had only set it back by a few months.

Before Israel attacked Iran on June 13, US agencies had noted that if Iran rushed to assemble a nuclear weapon, it would take it about three months.

The DIA’s five-page report now estimates this to be delayed by less than six months, reported The New York Times. As per the early findings, the US strikes blocked the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse the underground facilities.

The DIA report also reveals that the US agency believes that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, which destroyed little of the nuclear material.

Shortly after the US strikes on June 22, Mehdi Mohammadi, an adviser to the chairman of the Iranian parliament, claimed that the authorities had evacuated the Fordow facility in advance. “Iran has been expecting strikes on Fordow for several days. This nuclear facility was evacuated, no irreversible damage was sustained during today’s attack,” Mohammadi had said.

The US president on Wednesday said he doesn’t buy Iranian claims that they moved enriched uranium out of the Fordow nuclear facility. “I believe they didn’t have a chance to get anything out because they acted fast,” said Trump. “If it would have taken two weeks, maybe, but it’s very hard to remove that kind of material… and very dangerous.

“Plus, they knew we were coming,” Trump added. “And if they know we’re coming, they’re not going to be down there.”

CNN first reported on the DIA report, quoting unnamed officials that the US strikes’ effect on all three sites – Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan – was largely restricted to aboveground structures, which were severely damaged.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration told the United Nations Security Council that the US strikes had “degraded” the Iranian facilities – short of Trump’s earlier assertion that the attacks had “obliterated” the sites.

The strikes have reportedly badly damaged the electrical system at the Fordow facility. However, it was not immediately clear how long Iran could take to gain access to the underground facilities and repair these systems.

On Monday, Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA, said that while “no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow”, it is expected to be “very significant”.

Two people familiar with the DIA’s assessment told CNN that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed and the centrifuges are largely “intact”.

Some analysts cautioned against drawing final conclusions. Analysts told the Reuters news agency that the extent of damage to the Fordow uranium enrichment facility would not necessarily be revealed if the assessment was based on satellite imagery.

How did the US strike Iranian nuclear sites?

After 10 days of fighting between Israel and Iran, the US had militarily intervened on June 22 by hitting the Iranian nuclear sites.

Fordow is a highly fortified underground uranium enrichment facility reportedly buried hundreds of metres deep in the mountains in northwestern Iran. While Natanz is Iran’s largest and most central enrichment complex, containing vast halls of centrifuges, some underground, Isfahan is a major nuclear research and production centre that includes a uranium conversion facility and fuel fabrication plants.

How did the US strike Iranian nuclear sites?

After 10 days of fighting between Israel and Iran, the US had militarily intervened on June 22 by hitting the Iranian nuclear sites.

The US forces dropped 14 30,000-pound (13,000kg) bunker-buster bombs, while Navy submarines are said to have coordinated strikes by cruise missiles at the Natanz and Isfahan sites.

The GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) – the most powerful bunker-buster bomb in the US military arsenal weighing nearly 13,000kg (30,000lb) – was used in the strike.

The US intervention was understood to be critical for the Israeli campaign against Iranian nuclear facilities, especially Fordow, due to its depth that kept it out of reach for the Israeli military.

How did the DIA report contrast with Trump’s claims?

In March this year, the US spy chief Tulsi Gabbard had informed Congress that there was no evidence Iran was building a nuclear weapon, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had not authorised the nuclear weapons programme that he had earlier suspended in 2003.

On June 17, as Israel and Iran continued to trade ballistic missiles, Trump was returning to Washington from the G7 summit in Canada, when he snubbed his own administration, including the spy chief Gabbard, saying she and the intel agencies had gotten it “wrong”.

He claimed that Iran was “very close” to having a nuclear weapon. On June 22, the US struck Iranian nuclear facilities. “The strikes were a spectacular military success,” Trump said in a televised address. “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”

The next day, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “The damage to the Nuclear sites in Iran is said to be ‘monumental.’ The hits were hard and accurate. Great skill was shown by our military. Thank you!”

On Wednesday, at the NATO summit, he reiterated his stance. “The last thing they [Iran] want to do is enrich anything right now… They’re not going to have a bomb and they’re not going to enrich,” he said at The Hague.

Top officials from his administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have repeated the obliteration claims since then.

“Based on everything we have seen – and I’ve seen it all – our bombing campaign obliterated Iran’s ability to create nuclear weapons,” Hegseth said in a statement provided to Reuters.

“Our massive bombs hit exactly the right spot at each target – and worked perfectly. The impact of those bombs is buried under a mountain of rubble in Iran; so anyone who says the bombs were not devastating is just trying to undermine the President and the successful mission.”

How has Trump, the White House reacted?

Trump spent a good amount of time letting off steam on his Truth Social platform after the DIA report dropped.

“THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!” Trump wrote in all-caps, referring to the reporting by The New York Times and CNN.

“FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY,” Trump said in a post.

The US president also posted a series of apparently bizarre videos, including one of B-2 bombers taking off to a “bomb Iran” song in the background.

Trump is currently in the Netherlands, attending this week’s NATO summit, and reiterated to reporters that the damage from the strikes was significant. “I think it’s been completely demolished,” he said, adding, “Those pilots hit their targets. Those targets were obliterated, and the pilots should be given credit.

“That place is under rock. That place is demolished,” Trump responded to a question on the possibility of Iran rebuilding its nuclear program.

He took further shots at CNN, saying: “These cable networks are real losers. You’re gutless losers. I say that to CNN because I watch it – I have no choice. I got to watch it. It’s all garbage. It’s all fake news.”

He said the intelligence following the strikes in Iran was “inconclusive”. “The intelligence says we don’t know. It could’ve been very severe. That’s what the intelligence suggests.”

“It was very severe. There was obliteration,” he reiterated on Wednesday.

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, called the DIA assessment “flat-out wrong” and leaked to the press “by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community”.

“The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” she said in a statement. “Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000 pound bombs perfectly on their targets: Total obliteration.”

June 26, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israeli, US bombing of Iran a failure of epic proportions

25 June 2025 AIMN Editorial, By Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL https://theaimn.net/israeli-us-bombing-of-iran-a-failure-of-epic-proportions/

The illegal, criminal bombings on Iran which killed over 800 and wounded over 2,500 have failed spectacularly.

While still going on, there are indications from the Trump administration a ceasefire may soon be possible.

What has 11 days of bombings accomplished?

It has not destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities or its enriched uranium. It has not achieved regime change in Iran. It has not shattered Iran into failed state status. It has likely rallied Iran’s population to coalesce around besieged Iranian leadership.

It has brought retaliation bombings to Israel killing dozens and wounding hundreds, the largest such attacks in its 77 year existence.

It has likely motivated Iran to repair and rebuild its nuclear capabilities outside of oversight of nuclear inspectors. Iran may decide to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) designed to give signatories the inalienable right to civilian nuclear development. When they observe how Israel and the US cavalierly bomb non-nuclear weapons states, Iran may decide they have no choice but to join the nuclear club. Since Iran was not developing nuclear weapons, the Israeli, US misadventure may speed up the very thing they claimed urgency in preventing.

Possibly the worst bombing campaign failure was to obliterate US credibility as a responsible diplomatic partner. By using the duplicity of negotiating an end to the imagined nuclear crisis to enable Israel’ sneak attack, US now ranks dead last of all 194 other countries to negotiate anything of consequence. Check that, the US can still negotiate with Israel which has complete trust in US backing of their ongoing genocide in Gaza and lust to topple Iran as their only hegemonic rival in the Middle East.

The US has made of shambles of international law. It has substituted its Orwellian ‘Rules Based Order’ allowing it to wage regime change, including outright war, on any targeted state at the point of a smart bomb fired by dumb, international war criminals.

But no matter how badly deranged US policy turns out, the current CICW (Commander in Criminal War) will call it “a spectacular success.”

June 26, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Radiation risks from US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites seen as minimal

Negar Mojtahedi, Iran International, Jun 23, 2025, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202506228904

S airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities are unlikely to cause serious radioactive fallout, nuclear experts told Iran International despite fears of a nuclear disaster.

Their assessments come as Iran threatens retaliation, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) holds an emergency meeting on Monday in response to the escalating crisis.

“For most facilities the impact of direct strikes will, to a large extent, most likely be very localized,” said Dr. Kathryn Higley, distinguished professor of nuclear science and engineering at Oregon State University and president of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements told Iran International.

“While enriched uranium is radioactive, it is not terribly so. If the uranium is present and released as hexafluoride, that could also pose a serious but still localized hazard due to the fluorine in the compound being reactive,” she said.

Dr. David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, told Iran International that concerns over radiation from a strike on Fordow are overblown when compared with past incidents.

“One way to understand the low radiological risk of bombing Fordow is from a comparison to the underground Natanz enrichment site with over 15,000 centrifuges and many tons of uranium,” he said.

“It was attacked with earth penetrators and there is no off-site radiation risk. Fordow has about 2,700 centrifuges and much less uranium, and is more deeply buried underground. Hard to expect worse than Natanz.”

Albright emphasized that the design and location of Iran’s underground enrichment sites inherently limit the spread of radioactive.

Temporary contamination risks are primarily limited to areas near uranium conversion and enrichment plants, according to Andrea Stricker, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).

“Response teams going near the destroyed facilities, for example, would need to wear protective gear temporarily due to risks of inhaling or ingesting aerially dispersed uranium chemical compounds,” said Stricker. “There is not concern for dispersal beyond the immediate plants.”

The US strike on the heavily fortified Fordow facility has likely trapped radioactive material underground, limiting any broader hazard, Stricker said.

Iran’s response: ‘no signs of contamination’

Their comments follow US President Donald Trump’s announcement on Sunday that American forces had struck Iran’s Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz nuclear sites, which he described as “completely and fully obliterated.”

While Iran confirmed the strikes, it insisted its nuclear program would continue undeterred.

Iran’s National Nuclear Safety System reported that radiation detectors at the affected facilities showed “no signs of contamination” and stated, “There is no danger to the residents living around the aforementioned sites,” according to Iran State media.

The IAEA said it had observed “no increase in off-site radiation levels” and would continue monitoring the situation.

Director General Rafael Grossi announced an emergency meeting of the agency’s 35-member board of governors. In response, Iran’s nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami called for an investigation and accused Grossi of “inaction and complicity.”

Isfahan and Natanz—both previously targeted by Israeli airstrikes—have not shown any evidence of radiation release, according to IAEA monitoring.

Experts say Bushehr not likely to be targeted

Bushehr, Iran’s only operational nuclear power reactor, is not expected to be targeted.

“Israel will not have the Bushehr nuclear power plant on its target list, as striking the reactor would cause a radiological disaster in the region,” Stricker said.

Bushehr is used for civilian energy production, not enrichment. The plutonium it generates is not suitable for nuclear weapons, and spent fuel is required to be returned to Russia.

Still, the plant contains significant quantities of nuclear material, and Grossi has warned that an attack on Bushehr could have the most serious radiological consequences of any site in Iran.

Tehran continues to maintain that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but Trump and Israeli officials argue Iran is moving dangerously close to weapons capability.

“There will either be peace,” Trump said during a national address following the strikes, “or there will be tragedy for Iran.”

June 26, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | environment, Iran | Leave a comment

Did the US wipe out Iran’s nuclear programme? What researchers know

Nuclear-policy specialist David Albright told Nature how his organization is monitoring for damage to nuclear sites following US and Israeli strikes.

By , Davide Castelvecchi, Nature, 23 June 25

On 22 June, many people woke to the news that the United States had bombed nuclear sites in Iran, with the goal of destroying its ability to produce nuclear weapons. The raids targeted Iran’s uranium-enrichment facilities in Fordow and Natanz, and its nuclear research centre in Esfahan, using stealth bombers — which dropped massive ‘bunker-busters’ — and cruise missiles.

Although Iran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, experts have long assessed that Iran was close to having the capability of building nuclear weapons, if it chose to do so. The US attacks followed a bombing campaign by Israel, which has since carried out further attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities. On 23 June, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that “very significant damage is expected to have occurred” at the underground Fordow site.

Researchers at academic institutions and think tanks are also assessing the potential impacts of the attacks on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Analysts have said that the attacks probably set the nuclear programme back substantially, but not permanently. In particular, Iran could have moved stockpiles of highly-enriched uranium, and perhaps some enrichment centrifuges, elsewhere. David Albright, a nuclear-policy specialist and president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington DC, spoke to Nature about what researchers know.

How do you assess the impact of the bombings on Iran’s nuclear capabilities?

There aren’t many researchers who are able to assess the impact of the bombings. We have decades of experience with the Iranian nuclear programme, so we know their facilities and activities very well. And we have great access to satellite imagery — which we have to buy. We try to buy some every day. And we utilize analysts who have decades of experience to analyze these images. We also have lots of contacts with governments, and we have colleagues who also have contacts with governments.

A lot of the damage is on the surface, so it’s a question of knowing what the building did [in terms of its role in the nuclear program]. We rely on our repository of information about the sites that are attacked. So it’s pretty straightforward.

Obviously, more problematic are the underground sites. When we initially assessed Israel’s bombing of Natanz, three days later I saw a very small crater above the underground hall. I could work out and link it to a type of Earth-penetrating weapon that Israel is known to have. It would leave a really small crater when it went in, and the damage would be underground. The United States bombed it with a much more powerful Earth penetrator, so the damage is probably more extensive.

How and when will the extent of the damage be known for sure?

As nuclear experts, we’d like to see this done with diplomatic agreements, where Iran would allow intrusive inspections into its programme. If that does not happen, then it’s the job of US and Israeli intelligence to assess the damage. They’re looking at communications intercepts, or trying to recruit people on the inside to reveal information.

Would radioactive material be detected outside Natanz, Esfahan and Fordow if the attacks were successful?

So far, the IAEA reports no such leaks. And it appears that Iran had moved the enriched uranium stockpiles in the days before the bombings. The United States has said that the target of its bombings was the facilities, so they understand they are not getting at the nuclear material………………………….… (Subscribers only)
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01992-2

June 26, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

William Hague: Long term, this makes an Iran bomb likelier.

We do not know how much of the regime’s nuclear material and knowledge survives and how quickly it can be put to use. In the long term, the efforts to prevent Iran
possessing nuclear weapons are more likely to have been weakened than
strengthened.

This is the key judgment. It is why we did the deal with Iran
a decade ago and why it should have been renegotiated now. It is why Trump
was pursuing a diplomatic strategy until diverted from it. We do not know
what has happened to the 400kg of uranium that Iran has enriched. But we
should not be surprised if future Iranian leaders will have drawn the
lesson from recent events that the case for a nuclear bomb has now been
demonstrated beyond all doubt.

Times 23rd June 2025,
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/long-term-this-makes-an-iran-bomb-likelier-wrnvnx90w

June 26, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Trump Claims Iran Nuclear Sites ‘Totally Destroyed’—But That Clashes With Vance And Experts

By Ty Roush, Forbes Staff. https://www.forbes.com/sites/tylerroush/2025/06/23/did-the-us-destroy-irans-uranium-supply-or-not-vance-experts-clash-with-trumps-claims/

President Donald Trump on Monday said U.S. strikes “totally destroyed” nuclear facilities in Iran and criticized “sleazebags” in the media for suggesting otherwise—but comments from Vice President JD Vance, military officials and nuclear watchdogs all suggest the damage to Iran’s nuclear program remains unconfirmed.

Key Facts

“The sites we hit in Iran were totally destroyed, and everyone knows it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, disputing “Fake News” he claims “would say anything different in order to try and demean, as much as possible—and even they say they were ‘pretty well destroyed!’”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told ABC on Monday the U.S. is “confident” Iran’s nuclear program was “completely and totally obliterated,” noting there is a “high degree of confidence” the locations the U.S. strikes took place is where Iran stored its enriched uranium and that Iran “no longer [has] the capability … to threaten the world.”

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi appeared to dispute Trump’s claims in a statement earlier Monday by suggesting the agency would need to verify damage to Iran’s underground Fordow facility, including whether the site’s uranium enrichment halls were impacted, though he noted the U.S. strikes likely caused “very significant” damage.

On Sunday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said an assessment on damage to Iran’s nuclear sites was “still pending,” and Caine claimed it was “way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there.”

Vance, in an interview with ABC on Sunday, suggested the U.S. strikes only set back Iran’s potential to weaponize its uranium stockpile and said the U.S. was “going to work in the coming weeks to ensure that we do something with that fuel.”

Jeffrey Lewis, a professor of nonproliferation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, wrote on X he was “unimpressed” by the U.S. strikes while citing satellite images of the attacks, claiming the U.S. “failed to target significant elements of Iran’s nuclear materials and production infrastructure.”

How Large Is Iran’s Uranium Stockpile?

Iran stored about 400 kilograms (about 881 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60%, near weapons-grade enrichment of 90%, according to Grossi. It’s unclear whether Iran’s uranium stockpile is still this large, Grossi noted, adding IAEA’s inspectors last verified Iran’s stockpile a “few days” before Iran’s conflict with Israel began earlier this month.

Could Iran Rebuild Its Uranium Stockpile?

It’s possible Iran could rebuild its nuclear program, but a timeline for development would depend on how much damage was done to Iran’s nuclear sites, according to the Centers for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S.-based think tank. Recent U.S. strikes would make Iran “more motivated than ever” to obtain nuclear weapons, Rosemary Kelanic, a director at the U.S.-based think tank Defense Priorities, told the New York Times. Some American officials estimated an attack on Fordow set back Iran’s nuclear program by as much as five years, the Times reported.

June 25, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Iran Fires Missiles at US Base in Qatar

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said the missiles were intercepted and that there were no casualties

by Dave DeCamp | Jun 23, 2025, https://news.antiwar.com/2025/06/23/iran-fires-missiles-at-us-base-in-qatar/

The Iranian military announced on Monday that it launched an attack on the US’s Al Udeid base in Qatar in response to the US bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The attack was first reported by Axios reporter Barak Ravid, who cited Israeli sources that said Iran fired at least 10 missiles at the US base. Initial reports said that another missile targeted a US base in Iraq, but US officials later said the attack targeted only a base in Qatar.

“This base is the headquarters of the Air Force and the largest strategic asset of the US terrorist army in the West Asia region,” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said of the US base in Qatar.

The IRGC said Iran would not “leave any attack on its territorial integrity, sovereignty, and national security unanswered under any circumstances.”

The Qatari Foreign Ministry issued a statement that said Qatar’s air defenses “successfully thwarted the attack and intercepted the Iranian missiles” and that there were no injuries or deaths caused by the attack.

The reported missile launch comes after Fox News and other outlets said that an Iranian attack on US assets in the region was “imminent” and Qatar announced that it was closing its airspace, signaling the US has at least a few hours’ notice that the barrage was coming.

The New York Times reported that Iran had notified Qatar of its plans to attack in order to minimize casualties, signaling Tehran is seeking de-escalation with the US. In 2020, after the US assassinated Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran launched a similar attack on a US base in Iraq, which the US didn’t respond to.

A White House official told CNN that the US was expecting an Iranian response and claimed President Trump didn’t want more military engagement in the region. “We knew they’d retaliate. They had a similar response after Soleimani,” the official said.

June 25, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

How effective was the US attack on Iran’s nuclear sites? A visual guide

At odds with Trump’s claim of “complete obliteration”, two Israeli officials who spoke to the New York Times described serious damage at Fordow but said the site had not been completely destroyed.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, added: “As for the assessment of the degree of damage underground, on this we cannot pronounce ourselves. It could be important; it could be significant, but no one … neither us nor anybody else could be able to tell you how much it has been damaged.”

Peter Beaumont, Guardian23 June 25 [EXCELLENT PICTURES ON ORIGINAL]

Trump claims the assault ‘totally obliterated’ the key facilities, but what do we know about its impact?

Donald Trump was quick to claim that US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities had “completely and totally obliterated” them. Still, it remains unclear how much physical damage has been done or what the longer-term impact might be on Iran’s nuclear programme.

What was the target?

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) confirmed that attacks took place on its Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz sites, but insisted its nuclear programme would not be stopped. Iran and the UN nuclear watchdog said there were no immediate signs of radioactive contamination around the three locations after the strikes.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society reported no deaths from the US strikes, appearing to confirm Iranian claims they had been largely evacuated in advance. The health ministry said those who were injured showed no evidence of nuclear contamination. In the immediate aftermath, US military officials said the three sites had suffered “severe damage” after an operation that had been planned for weeks, suggesting it was coordinated with Israel.

The Pentagon said a battle damage assessment was still being conducted.

What do we know about the strike on Fordow?

Long regarded as the most difficult military target among Iran’s nuclear sites, the uranium enrichment facilities at Fordow – the primary target of the operation – are buried beneath the Zagros mountains. Reports have suggested that the site was constructed beneath 45-90 metres of bedrock, largely limestone and dolomite.

Some experts have suggested the layering of the sedimentary rocks, including faults, would also make it more difficult to strike the centrifuge array, providing a kind of geological cushioning against a blast wave.

The attack – codenamed Operation Midnight Hammer – was carried out by seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers flying from the US, after a deception flight by other B-2s into the Pacific. Tomahawk missiles were fired from US ships in waters south of Iran.

The site was hit by a dozen 13,600kg massive ordnance penetrators – known as bunker busters – at approximately 2.10am Iranian time. It was the weapon’s first operational use. The number used suggests a lack of confidence that a smaller strike could penetrate through to the target.

The result to a large extent depends on the kind of concrete inside the facility. Estimates of the bunker busters’ penetration are based largely on reinforced concrete resistant to 5,000psi. Iran is believed to have used more resistant concrete.

While video from the site showed evidence of a fire in the immediate aftermath, satellite images published on Sunday were suggestive but far from conclusive.

The main support building at the site appeared to be undamaged, but the topography of a prominent area of ridge line appeared to have altered and been flattened out, with some evidence of rock scarring close to two clusters of bomb craters around the ridge.

Analysts had suggested that a strike could hit the main entrance tunnel to the site, but the main effort appears to have been in a different location.

What was the impact at Isfahan?………………………………………

………. facilities targeted at Isfahan either contained no nuclear material or small quantities of natural or low-enriched uranium.

What was hit at Natanz?………

……….It appears that Natanz’s underground enrichment hall was targeted. Enhancement of satellite images from the site on Sunday showed fresh damage to overground buildings and new cratering in the centre of the site…….

Was Iran’s nuclear programme obliterated?

…………………………..“The enriched uranium reserves had been transferred from the nuclear centres and there are no materials left there that, if targeted, would cause radiation and be harmful to our compatriots,”

Three days before the US attacks, 16 cargo trucks were seen near the Fordow entrance tunnel.

The head of the AEOI, Mohammad Eslami, claimed this month that Iran had another enrichment site “in a secure and invulnerable location” that could house centrifuges.

Analysts have long argued that while it is possible to disrupt the physical function of a nuclear facility and limit the scope of a programme through, for example, the killing of scientists, the breadth of technical knowledge acquired during the decades-long programme is impossible to destroy.

Ultimately, the question is whether the US-Israeli attacks are seen as sufficient for Iran to capitulate, or whether they instead encourage the regime to accelerate its efforts to produce a viable nuclear weapon. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/22/how-effective-was-the-us-attack-on-irans-nuclear-sites-a-visual-guide

June 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, Uranium | Leave a comment

US State Department Spokeswoman Says Israel Is Greater Than America.

Caitlin Johnstone, Jun 23, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/us-state-department-spokeswoman-says?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=166596495&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Journalist Ken Klippenstein has drawn attention to an overlooked remark made by State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce last month saying that the United States is “the greatest country on earth, next to Israel.”

“The pride of being able to be here and do work that facilitates making things better for people and in the greatest country on Earth, next to Israel,” Bruce told Jewish News Syndicate. “It’s an honor to be able to make a difference and to be able to speak in this regard with an administration that I love so much and that I feel genuinely represented by.”

It’s like this administration is doing everything it can to vindicate those who accuse it of being Israel First instead of America First.

I feel like we don’t talk enough about the fact that Donald Trump publicly admitted to being bought and owned by the richest Israeli on earth, Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson.

On the campaign trail last year Trump told the Israeli American Council Summit that the first time he was president, Miriam and her late husband Sheldon “would come into the White House probably almost more than anybody, outside of people that work there.” He said they were always after something, “always for Israel,” and “as soon as I’d give them something, they’d want something else.” He named the US recognition of the occupied Golan Heights as part of Israel as one of the gifts he showered the Zionist state with to please the Adelsons, who pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into his presidential campaigns.

It’s hard to focus on Israel’s airstrikes in Lebanon due to Israel’s invasion of Syria, which is hard to focus on due to Israel’s atrocities in the West Bank, which are hard to focus on due to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which is hard to focus on due to Israel’s war on Iran, which is hard to focus on because of America’s war on Iran.

❖

Top Ten dumbest things we’re being asked to believe about Iran:

1. That the Iranians want to be bombed.

2. That the guy bombing Iran wants peace.

3. That regime change interventionism is a swell idea this time.

4. That anyone who doesn’t want war with Iran hates Jews.

5. That this time the government and the media are telling us the truth about an American war.

6. That this time the neocons are smart and correct.

7. That bombing Iran makes it LESS likely to try to obtain nukes.

8. That Iran is trying to assassinate the US president when all US presidents have the same foreign policy.

9. That Iran (a country that never starts wars) cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons, but Israel (a country that starts wars constantly) can.

10. That attacking Iran benefits Americans.

❖

It blows my mind that there are people trying to argue that Trump does not seek war. What do these idiots think the United States would do if another country started bombing American energy infrastructure?

I’m trying to get an important business deal done, so I firebombed the guy’s house to make him more likely to negotiate with me. I just want peace.

The following things are antisemitic:

– opposing war with Iran

– viewing Palestinians as human

– opposing genocide

– Greta Thunberg

– peace

– journalism

– Ms Rachel

– truth

– critical thinking

– the UN

– Tucker Carlson

– Amnesty International

– Human Rights Watch

– equal rights

It’s hilarious that anyone still takes this “antisemitism” schtick seriously. Oh no there’s a special group of white people who might get hurt feelings if I don’t want to send my kids to invade Iran.

The western world has been on a two-year crash course learning all the reasons why the Muslim world has been correct about Israel this entire time.

It’s kind of nice to be arguing with George W Bush conservatives about US foreign policy again. For the last few years I’ve been getting called a Nazi by western Zionists and a Putin-loving fascist by NATO simps; it’s refreshing to be hated for the hippie moonbat I actually am for once.

June 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Trump’s attack on Iran is ‘unconditional surrender’ to Israel

Aaron Maté, Jun 22, 2025, https://www.aaronmate.net/p/trumps-attack-on-iran-is-unconditional?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=100118&post_id=166521469&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Shunning the US intelligence consensus, Trump and top principals rely on Israeli fraud to bomb Iran.

Since his election in 2016, Donald Trump’s political opponents have portrayed him as a dangerous, unstable fabulist doing the bidding of a malign, nuclear-armed foreign power.

Having returned to the White House this year, Trump is proving his detractors correct on all counts but one: the location on the map. The rogue state that he’s colluding with — at great peril to the planet — is not Russia, as his most vocal detractors alleged, but Israel.

Israel’s June 13^th attack on Iran sabotaged the then-ongoing talks on a new nuclear deal with the United States, and Trump has gone to unprecedented lengths to support its aggression. Trump undercut his own Secretary of State’s claim that Israel had undertaken “unilateral action” by acknowledging that “we knew everything” in advance of what he called a “very successful attack.” Administration officials then disclosed that Trump had previously authorized giving Israel intelligence support for the bombing. Trump then called on Tehran’s 9.8 million residents to evacuate, mused about killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and declared that “we” – meaning Israel – “have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.”

After Iran rejected his demand for “unconditional surrender”, Trump imposed a new deadline of two weeks, only to break it three days later by ordering a US military attack on three Iranian nuclear energy sites, including the deeply buried mountain complex Fordo, which he quickly hailed as a “great success.” Just as with Trump’s diplomacy with Iran, his two-week deadline turns out to have been a ruse whose “goal was to create a situation when everyone wasn’t expecting it,” a senior administration official said.

To wage war on Iran, Trump and his allies have employed the traditional Iraq WMD playbook of ignoring or manipulating the available evidence to fear-monger about a foreign state marked for regime change. Unlike the Iraq war, where the fraudulent case for invading was mostly concocted in-house, Trump has outsourced the job to Israel, while not even pretending to care about public opinion or Congressional approval.

Back in March, the US intelligence community assessed that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon” and “has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program… suspended in 2003.” According to US officials who spoke to the New York Times, “[t]hat assessment has not changed.” Moreover, the US has found that “not only was Iran not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, it was also up to three years away from being able to produce and deliver one,” CNN reports, citing four sources.

Whereas Dick Cheney and company went through the trouble of nudging subordinates to fabricate intelligence, including via torture, Trump does not care about seeking their imprimatur. “[M]y intelligence community is wrong,” Trump told reporters on Friday. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted that “Iran has all that it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon,” and, if authorized by Ayatollah Khamenei, “it would take a couple weeks to complete the production of that weapon.” In White House meetings, CIA chief John Ratcliffe has argued that Iran is close to a nuclear bomb and that claiming otherwise “would be similar to saying football players who have fought their way to the one-yard line don’t want to score a touchdown,” according to one US official who spoke to CBS News. (After the Iraq war, a “Slam dunk” basketball analogy is no longer available).

If Trump’s intelligence community is “wrong,” who does he think is right? As US officials told the New York Times, the claims from Trump and his circle “echoed material provided by Mossad,” Israel’s intelligence agency. And whereas some in the government, undoubtedly those close to Trump, “find the Israeli estimate credible”, others believe that “Israeli assessments have been colored by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to gain American support for his military campaign against Iran.” Moreover, according to multiple officials, “[n]one of the new assessments on the timeline to get a bomb are based on newly collected intelligence,” but instead on “new analysis of existing work.” In other words, Trump is sidelining his own intelligence community to trust a “new analysis” that is based on no new information, just the manipulation of a foreign government.

Trump’s disdain for his own agencies is a particular slight to intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard. “I don’t care what she said,” Trump said this week, referring to Gabbard’s presentation of the US intelligence consensus on Iran in March. “I think they [Iran] were very close to having it.”

Rather than defend the agencies she oversees – and the record she earned challenging previous US-driven regime change deceptions — Gabbard has bent the knee to Trump, and Israel by extension. In a social media post, Gabbard chided “the dishonest media” for taking her March testimony “out of context.” The US, Gabbard now claimed, “has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly.” Gabbard also shared video of that March testimony, without addressing the contradictory fact that it does not include any mention of her newfound claim that Iran has the capability to produce a nuclear bomb “within weeks to months.”

Gabbard is engaging in disingenuous wordplay. If Israel tells America that Iran “can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks”, then yes, American intelligence now “has” that intelligence. That doesn’t mean it is true, or that American intelligence believes it, which it does not. A US official familiar with the available record on Iran tells me that there is no US intelligence assessment concluding that Iran is “weeks” away from building a nuclear weapon. Gabbard is only saying, therefore, that the US intelligence community has received “intelligence” from Israel, without mentioning that the IC does not actually endorse it.

Moreover, pretend for a moment that the Israeli claim is correct. Gabbard’s caveat of “if they decide to finalize” is an acknowledgment that Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon. That’s because Iran has said it does not want one, and is willing to commit to that in a binding agreement — the one they were negotiating with the US until Trump and Israel sabotaged it, and not for the first time. In fact, as US intelligence officials have also predicted, Trump’s bombing now increases the likelihood that Iran will pursue the nuclear bomb that it has long foresworn. Iran claims to have moved enriched uranium stockpiles prior to the US bombing, which preserves its capacity to weaponize.

Trump and Israel insisted, in the president’s words, on “unconditional surrender”: capitulation to maximalist US-Israeli demands that Iran end its uranium enrichment program, which it is entitled to have under the Non-Proliferation Treaty; and that it limit its arsenal of missiles. In other words, Trump and Netanyahu demanded that Iran agree to abandon its sovereignty and right to self-defense just as it is under attack from US-backed Israeli aggression; and all while US-backed Israeli mass murder in Gaza and annexation of the West Bank continues unimpeded.

Iranian officials did not surrender. Trump, by contrast, cannot say the same. By enabling its bombing campaign, parroting its deceptions, and now going to war against Iran on its behalf, Trump has already offered an unconditional surrender to Israel — a betrayal that grows more dangerous by the day.

June 23, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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