📰 Investigating October 7, By October 7’s Own Coalition

Israel just invented a new kind of “inquiry”: a committee to investigate October 7, appointed by the people who were in charge on October 7.

The Knesset passed, in first reading, the bill to establish a political inquiry committee into the October 7 massacre — 59 in favor, zero against, because the opposition left the hall and boycotted the vote.

Half of the committee members are to be chosen by Netanyahu’s coalition, half by the opposition. The law lets the committee operate with a minimum of three out of six members — which means it can function even if the opposition never appoints anyone and only the coalition’s picks show up.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid calls it exactly what it is: “a false show” whose aim is to whitewash and prevent real investigation of “the greatest disaster to befall the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”

The October Council, representing bereaved families, says “the voice of our brothers, children and relatives is crying out from the ground,” and that this vote felt like “a second tearing” for those who lost loved ones.

One of its founders, Rafi Ben Shitrit — father of Elroi Ben Shitrit, killed at Nahal Oz — accuses the “October 7 coalition” of trying to bury the truth.

Former chiefs and politicians across the spectrum converge on the same line. Gadi Eisenkot says only someone who knows the truth and fears it would create a “political committee of inquiry.”

Avigdor Lieberman calls it a “whitewashing committee.” Naftali Bennett says bluntly: “Without an inquiry, there is no correction.” Others hammer the basic absurdity: a mechanism that lets those under investigation appoint their own investigators — and proceed even if the other side refuses to legitimize the process.

On the coalition side, the bill’s author insists the committee will deliver a “full, thorough and independent” investigation, and the official text dresses it up as a “national” body.

The final image from the vote is simple: 59 hands raised in favor, a room of empty opposition seats, and a law that says you can investigate a disaster without ever letting those who weren’t in power touch the steering wheel.

#israel #october7 #commission #netanyahu #opposition #bereavedfamilies #fakeInquiry

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📰 Turkey’s Peripheral Doctrine: Evict Israel, Own the Map

Ben-Gurion’s periphery doctrine is broken. Iran and Turkey, once the non‑Arab rim that balanced Israel’s environment, now sit at the heart of two hostile axes.

The partial defeat of the Shiite arc didn’t remove the threat; it opened space for a Sunni front with Ankara in the middle and Syria, Hamas-in-Istanbul, Qatar, Saudi Arabia–Pakistan, and reactivated jihadist networks around it. Israel emerges from simultaneous wars depleted, while its main military patron (the US), economic partner (the EU) and Arab pillar (Saudi Arabia) all cool at once.

Turkey’s challenge is threefold and cumulative. Politically, Erdoğan’s camp now brands Israel a regional danger and warns that “after Iran, Israel cannot live without an enemy,” casting Turkey as the next target.

Geopolitically, Ankara pushes pan‑Turkic and “Blue Homeland” projects, drawing in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan — even Baku criticized Israel’s recognition of the Armenian genocide while keeping energy ties with Turkey.

Economically, Turkey and Syria are building an India–EU route that runs via Jordan and Syria to Latakia and Tartus, ports locked into 30‑year concessions with CMA CGM and DP World, backed by Turkish–Saudi rail memoranda reviving the Hejaz corridor.

Paris has entrenched itself as the Western anchor at Syria’s terminus: Macron’s Damascus visit, EU sanctions relief, UN delisting of Syrian leaders, and CMA CGM’s expanded Latakia concession mean any Syrian–Turkish branch of the India–EU corridor ends in a French‑operated port.

Brussels’s parallel sanctions ladder and “peace triangle” logic tie support for an Israeli endpoint to Palestinian conditions no Israeli government can meet.

Washington, meanwhile, arms Turkey with F‑110 engines and flirts with restored F‑35 access, tests Syria as a tool against Hezbollah, and seats Ankara and Doha in Gaza governance under Trump’s “Board of Peace,” all while Israel’s air defense remains tuned to long‑range Iranian threats rather than short‑range Turkish and Syrian vectors.

Five forces now converge on pushing Israel out of the corridor: French control of Latakia, Turkish–Saudi logistics deals, a US pivot to Ankara and Damascus, an EU conditionality built on Palestinian attachments, and Turkey’s grip on Levantine ports and rails.

Iran’s reopening of Hormuz may soften the urgency of overland bypasses, but it doesn’t restore Israel’s centrality.

The new peripheral doctrine belongs to Ankara — and it draws the region’s arteries around Israel, not through it.

#israel #turkey #syria #IMEC #latakia #nato #periphery #fakeCentrality

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📰 Trump’s Favorite Ally: Praise for Erdogan, Hedge on F‑35s

At Ankara’s NATO summit, Trump is doing two things at once: turning Erdogan into his model ally, and testing how far he can bend U.S. law without saying it out loud.

On camera, he gushes over the Turkish leader as “a friend and ally,” talks about their “good chemistry,” jokes that sometimes you get along best with “the toughest people, like him,” and says F‑35 sales to Turkey “make sense” and are “certainly something we will consider.”

Erdogan, more confident, tells his audience Trump has promised five jets and that “Mr. Trump always stands by his word.” The choreography — blue carpet, honor guard, fighter jets drawing red‑white‑blue contrails, Trump greeting Erdogan with a shoulder grab and a few words in Turkish — is designed to make clear who he thinks his real partner is.

But the stealth part of the story is in Washington, not Ankara. Congress passed a law at the end of Trump’s first term barring any F‑35 transfer to Turkey as long as it still possesses the Russian S‑400 air‑defense system, with Republicans and Democrats warning that Moscow could use the batteries to strip secrets from the stealth jet’s radar.

Vice President JD Vance has already said the administration is “reviewing” whether a sale can legally go ahead, and lawmakers are preparing resolutions to block any move that doesn’t meet those conditions.

NATO leaders, meanwhile, arrive armed with defense‑spending charts and a headache. They’ve just agreed — under heavy U.S. pressure — to double targets to 5 percent of GDP by the mid‑2030s, only to watch Spain opt out and insist it will stop at about 2 percent.

Other major economies like Britain and Italy are trying to ramp up, but the strain is real, and Trump is simultaneously demanding they buy as many weapons as possible from U.S. firms — a political win for him that drains money from European industry at home.

Turkish officials talk about mediating between allies, positioning Ankara as broker as well as host. U.S. senators fly in to reassure nervous Europeans that Congress still values NATO “for the long term,” even as the president publicly calls some members disloyal and hints that Turkey is “much more loyal than other countries that we think would be loyal.”

The alliance’s story today is clear: Trump’s favorite partner is the one who bought Russian air defenses and jails critics, and the jet he wants to sell him is the same one Congress thought needed a red line.

#trump #erdogan #turkey #f35 #nato #congress #defensespending #fakeLoyalty

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Trump Took Umbrage With Iran’s Leaders Calling Them “Scum”


Trump has declared that the ceasefire with Iran is over as he arrived at the Nato summit in Ankara, launching an angry broadside in which he complained about the military alliance and repeated his demand for Greenland.

The US president, sitting alongside the Nato secretary general Rutte called Iran’s leadership scum and “sick people”, and added that he was very upset with the alliance and even threatened to cut off all trade with Spain in a row over defence spending.

Overnight, the US had launched strikes on more than 80 Iranian targets around the strait of Hormuz and revoked a temporary sanctions waiver for Tehran to export oil after Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels on Tuesday.

When asked whether he thought the ceasefire was still in place as he met Rutte in Turkey, Trump said: “I think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them any more. They’re scum. You know what scum is? They’re scum.

“They’re sick people. They’re led by sick people and they’re vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they’d use it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.” However, he added that US negotiators wanted to keep talking.

European leaders were concerned Trump was in a bad mood after a Nato dinner on Tuesday night and were bracing themselves for a difficult summit meeting on Wednesday morning as the situation in the Middle East deteriorated.

Trump said he was “very upset with Nato” and complained that alliance members “didn’t want to help us with the number one state sponsor of terror, that’s Iran”, a reference a refusal by European countries apart from the UK to allow the US to carry out bombing missions from Europe’s airbases.

There was a specific jibe aimed at the UK, which did not initially allow the US to use RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire for bombing missions in Iran before Starmer changed his mind and allowed limited attacks on Iranian missile sites.

“The United Kingdom wouldn’t let us use the island for two weeks, so we had to fly back,” Trump said, reiterating complaints he made against Starmer and Britain in the spring as the Iran war continued without the regime in Tehran collapsing.

The 15-minute introduction next to Rutte became a litany of complaint. “Greenland is a big problem for us,” Trump said as he renewed his claim on the self-governing Arctic territory “very important for the United States, but it’s not important for Denmark”.

Earlier, the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, said as she arrived that Denmark would defend “every inch” of its own territory and emphasised that Greenland was “of course not for sale”.

There was a familiar complaint about Nato defence spending from Trump, despite last year’s agreement by all members, with the exception of Spain, to lift national defence budgets to 3.5% of gross domestic product by 2035 – and so bring spending by Europe and Canada in line with the US.

“I’m very upset with Nato, that we pay far, far too much,” he said. “Billions and billions of dollars, too much, because it’s unfair, because we’re protecting them, so we protect them, but they’re not there for us.”

Fresh ire was reserved for Madrid given its decision to reject the 3.5% target. “Spain doesn’t agree to anything, and you shouldn’t carry them,” Trump told Rutte.

“I don’t want to do any trade with them, alright?” the president said, turning to Bessent, the US Treasury secretary, who ‌replied: “Yes, sir.”

Nato leaders have worked hard to try to Trump-proof the Ankara summit by agreeing a short draft communique in advance. It is expected to reiterate the alliance’s commitment to mutual self-defence if it is signed off by the leaders.

However, a Nato might not hold a summit in 2027. The hope would be to avoid a repeat of the outburst that has dominated this year’s summit, which was supposed to showcase more than $50bn in joint arms procurements, designed to show Nato members were bolstering defence spending to deter ‘Russian aggression.’

#trump

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#trump #oncle #energy #nuclear

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📰 How to Lose an Election and Never Admit It

Israel’s opposition is already writing the excuse note: “We didn’t lose — the election was hacked.”

Opposition leader Yair Lapid, head of Yesh Atid, is framing the government’s open defiance of the High Court over the Second Authority Council as part of a deliberate strategy to go into the next vote “without a court.”

The logic is simple and frightening: break the only institution that can stop you, then claim “security reasons” to postpone elections, or simply refuse to accept the results — with no one left to appeal to.

In his telling, the coalition is slowly teaching the public that the court “does not determine what the law is,” so that one day, madness will sound reasonable.

Europe already has a test case for this kind of story, and it’s ugly. In Romania, 2024–2025, the Constitutional Court actually annulled the first round of a presidential election, citing substantial Russian interference via social media and suspicious funding for an ultra‑nationalist candidate.

Intelligence reports showed coordinated TikTok, Telegram and Facebook operations inflating his support; the court ordered a full reset, and the candidate was later barred from running again.

What was an emergency fix under security and judicial pressure has become, in political discourse, a manual:

“If interference is real, you cancel. If the system’s own players judge what counts as interference, you can cancel whatever you need.”

Israeli liberals are quietly importing that script. Lapid and others are building a narrative in advance: the coalition is “preparing to steal or rig the elections,” dismantling judicial oversight, playing with media regulators, and leaving open the option to say, after the fact, that the vote was deformed by external operations and internal manipulation.

For a fractured, competing opposition, this is a comfortable insurance policy: if the election ends badly, you say the field was poisoned and the result “does not reflect the will of the people.”

The catch is that the people who decide whether an election was poisoned are not talk‑show hosts, but security services and courts.

In Romania, the move came from a national court backed by national intelligence. In Israel, the same institutions — Shin Bet, military and cyber units, the High Court — are expanding their domestic role amid war and crisis, while being fought over politically.

If someone tomorrow wants to declare the vote “infected” by Moscow or Tehran, these bodies become the arbiters: either they hand the opposition an official stamp of “outside interference,” or they leave everyone with pure political shouting.

At the same time, internal players on both sides are eyeing the “Romanian model” as a handy legend: those in power can justify stretching or bending procedures in the name of security; those out of power can blame their own weakness and fragmentation on manipulated voters and hacked systems.

Once the phrase “elections annulled due to external interference” becomes normal in a political vocabulary, every future vote becomes easier to question and easier to excuse. In that world, nobody really loses anymore. They were always “robbed.”

#israel #lapid #netanyahu #elections #courts #russia #romania #fakeLegitimacy

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📰 Shin Bet vs. “Monsters”: When Human Rights Become ‘Nonsense’

The head of Israel’s internal security service just said the quiet part out loud: human rights are “nonsense,” and lawyers are “monsters” that need to be tamed.

In the leaked tape, Shin Bet chief David Zini lays out his worldview with chilling clarity. Ministers are “confused,” the elected level “is not really capable of managing its own frameworks,” and it’s a “miracle” when a cabinet decision gets implemented within eight months.

In his own telling, the political class is incompetent — and the real governing brain sits in the security apparatus.

So when he says he told Netanyahu he should get the job because he is “more qualified than others” and “able to be loyal to the elected echelon,” it’s not humility.

It’s a security official explaining that he will run the state while politely saluting the politicians.

Zini complains about “how many lawyers we have,” saying “from there come monsters who harm human rights, the economy, security, every direction.”

The irony is baked in: lawyers are “monsters” who “use human rights” as “nonsense,” and yet human rights themselves, in his framing, are just noise that obstructs “real” work.

Legal professionals, he concedes, are “important,” but only as an “auxiliary tool” — assistants, not guardians, meant to support the mission rather than limit it.

The chief of the domestic security service believes his role is to advance his own worldview and agenda, be loyal to the political echelon’s goals, and treat human rights and legal checks as secondary, inconvenient, and expendable.

He doesn’t see himself as someone who sits between power and abuse. He sees himself as the executor of power, whose job is to cut through “monsters” with minimum friction.

For a state that still likes to describe itself as “Jewish and democratic,” this is the real alarm. Not a stray soldier’s tweet, not a minister’s outburst, but the head of the service that holds files, runs surveillance, and decides who gets knocked on the door at 4 a.m., openly mocking human rights as “nonsense” and redefining lawyers as obstacles.

When the man in charge of internal security talks this way, it’s not a debate about legal philosophy. It’s a warning about where the system thinks the line between rights and “mission” should be — and how easily it’s prepared to erase it.

#israel #shinbet #zini #humanrights #lawyers #securitystate #fakeDemocracy

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📰 Sovereign Digital Money: Europe Builds a New Gun, Japan Builds a New Switch

While the U.S. Congress bans a digital dollar until 2030, Europe and Japan quietly weaponize their money.

In Brussels, the “digital euro” is sold as a cute tech upgrade. In reality, it’s a state rail line for every tap, swipe and online payment in the eurozone.

Right now, 61% of card transactions run on Visa/Mastercard, and 13 of 21 eurozone countries don’t even have their own card scheme — they rent the rails from the U.S. For the ECB, that’s not “convenience,” it’s vulnerability.

A public, mandatory‑acceptance CBDC is the answer: Europe owns the pipes, not American processors.

In Tokyo, the Bank of Japan pretends to be cautious — no retail CBDC, lots of talk about cash and privacy. But the megabanks are building a different weapon: yen stablecoins, fully regulated, backed at 1:1, running on their own platform.

The state doesn’t print the chips itself; it draws the regulatory box and lets MUFG, Mizuho and SMBC wire corporate payments onto a Japanese‑controlled rail, away from offshore dollar stablecoins.

Both projects are sold as “modernization.” Both are, in practice, sovereignty plays. The EU wants infrastructure independence: less Visa/Mastercard, more ECB. Japan wants issuance control: no unregulated dollar tokens quietly becoming de facto money inside its borders.

Each scores higher on “monetary sovereignty” — the ability to keep payments running if Washington turns off the tap, to decide who gets blocked and who doesn’t.

And the fun part is programmable money. Once every euro or yen on these rails is a line of code, you don’t just process payments. You can set rules: where it’s spent, when it expires, which categories are allowed, which regions are blacklisted.

Official speeches pretend this is not the point; the architecture quietly makes it possible.

So the headline is simple: America says “no” to a state digital dollar and leaves the battlefield to Visa, Mastercard and Tether.

Europe and Japan say “yes” to sovereign digital money — one through a central bank app, one through a megabank cartel — and lock in a future where your balance is not just a number, it’s a policy tool.

The only real question isn’t whether states will take that control. It’s how long it takes before “financial autonomy” turns into a new way to switch people off.

#cbdc #digitaleuro #digitalyen #visa #mastercard #sovereignty #fakeModernization

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Trump Is Doing a Complete About-Face

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Just two weeks ago, opening the Great American State Fair, President Trump triumphantly declared: “For the first time in 3,000 years, we are going to have peace in the Middle East.”

It was typical bravado for Trump. But the “peace” he was celebrating — the cease-fire with Iran that on Wednesday he declared “over” after less than a month — was already beginning to unravel.

The result was perhaps predictable for a 14-paragraph memorandum of understanding that skirted major issues and was hastily assembled so Trump could declare he had reached a deal, any deal.

Now Trump appears to be confronting the consequences of his haste, and of his assumption, born of his time in the real estate business, that his adversary would prize economic benefits over the revolutionary ideology that has driven its politics since the 1979 Iranian revolution.

That has left him facing a range of unpalatable options amid seemingly intractable sticking points over the fate of Iran’s nuclear program — to say nothing of its missile program, its support for terrorist groups and its repression of its own people.

At the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, on Wednesday after the two sides had exchanged strikes, he threatened major new combat operations.

Those included seizing a key Iranian oil processing island and attacking the country’s infrastructure and desalination plants, which experts have said could constitute a war crime. (Trump did say he was most hesitant to hit the desalination facilities.)

The president could instead reimpose the American blockade of Iranian ports, an attempt to cut off the country’s economic lifeline. But that would require a continued, intense American presence in the region, and while Trump contended in April that it would lead to Iranian economic collapse, his earlier imposition of it did not.

Or he could elect to live in a world of neither war nor peace, an era of episodic skirmishes in the Persian Gulf, punctuated by periodic negotiations, with traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil-shipping route, greatly reduced from the 130 or so ships that passed through each day before the war. The energy markets would most likely adjust; to some degree they already have.

But for a president who promised a quick, cost-free confrontation with an old adversary — “four to six weeks” was the White House prediction in the opening weeks — an ongoing conflict would amount to near-total failure on the mission he initially set out upon.

And the price would be staggering: The Pentagon has already asked Congress for about $70 billion to cover the early operations around Iran, and the cost rises every week.

“The problem is that all the options — endure, escalate or agree — are unattractive in different ways,” Richard Fontaine, the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security and a former aide to Senator John McCain, said on Wednesday.

“The likeliest outcome is a continuing series of low-level, tit-for-tat attacks, followed by frantic diplomacy by mediators, the emergence of a new and fragile cease-fire, and then probably another round of strikes.

Fontaine added: “It will be a long oscillation between cold war and low-level hot war.” Many of the problems Trump is facing today were exacerbated by the cease-fire deal itself.

#iran #trump #war #strait #hormuz

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It left unresolved, for a later negotiation that Trump now says he has little interest in pursuing, the fate of Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade nuclear fuel, the most prominent among the administration’s shifting reasons for attacking Iran on Feb. 28.

The agreement appeared to hand Iran at least some control over passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the superweapon that Tehran, and specifically the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, has skillfully manipulated to drive up oil prices, and now has used to justify attacks on tankers and cargo ships not hewing to its new rules.

“What we’re seeing now is Iran, and more specifically the I.R.G.C., trying to exert control over the strait and declaring that this control is their sovereign right,” said Kevin Donegan, a retired Navy vice admiral who served as a Navy commander in the Middle East.

“That’s the main card they have to play, and as a result we can expect they will continue to try to disrupt any ship traffic that uses routes different from the ones they have published.”

The deal was silent on Iran’s missile arsenal, the key issue for Israel. And it depended on a cease-fire in Lebanon, though the parties to that conflict, Israel and Hezbollah, were not signatories of the agreement. And it set an unrealistic deadline, 60 days, to deal diplomatically with those and other issues that months of active combat had failed to resolve.

There are, of course, many more turns ahead in this drama. Trump threatened again on Wednesday to try to seize Kharg Island, where giant tankers collect Iran’s oil and head to world markets.

He may seek to seize the 60 percent enriched nuclear material deep underground at Isfahan, a mission for which Special Operations forces have trained extensively, though he dismissed the need for it on Wednesday.

“We’ve already got the nuclear material, because it’s so far underground,” he said, noting that the Iranians do not have the heavy equipment needed to unearth it.

If Trump is right about that, and many nuclear experts agree that the material would be enormously difficult to recover, it raises a fundamental question: If the nuclear fuel was successfully buried in the June 2025 American bombing of three major nuclear sites, why did he go to war to begin with?

His statement on Wednesday, a repeat of comments he has made several times in recent months, undercuts the argument he made in the days after the initial attack in February that there was an “imminent” threat.

That initial justification has been overtaken by subsequent contradictions. Trump has periodically praised the new Iranian leadership, and even its new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the slain ayatollah, as more “reasonable.”

He has said many times that, unlike their predecessors, the new leaders would open up the strait and dilute the nuclear stockpile because it will be in their economic interest.

Vance sounded exactly that note last month, when he was signing the memorandum of understanding in Switzerland.

“The coolest thing about the progress we’ve made over the last few weeks is that you see people within the Iranian system, senior leadership, even I.R.G.C. officials say, ‘You know what, we may have some animosity, we may have some mistrust, but we recognize the way that we’ve done business with the United States for 47 years is a mistake,” he said.

On Wednesday, Trump had a different word for those leaders: “scum.”

#iran #trump #war #strait #hormuz

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📰 Cease-Fire Over, Straits Closed: Trump’s “Quick” War That Never Ends

Three weeks after the U.S.–Iran cease-fire, American jets are again hitting Iranian military targets along the southeastern coast, officially to “protect shipping” in the Strait of Hormuz after attacks on three commercial vessels.

Traffic through the strait has halted, oil jumped about 5% to roughly $78 a barrel, and the head of the International Maritime Organization is now telling operators to avoid the waterway entirely.

On paper, the strikes are retaliation for “unjustified aggression” against tankers and crews. In practice, they blow a hole straight through the deal that was supposed to reopen Hormuz and park the war under a 60‑day negotiation window on uranium and the nuclear program.

Washington has already revoked the sanctions waiver on Iran’s oil — Tehran’s big prize from the cease-fire — and Iran claims to have answered with attacks on U.S. sites in Bahrain and Kuwait.

Trump, from the NATO summit in Turkey, says the cease-fire is “over,” promises to hit Iran “hard,” and insists this won’t return to full‑scale war because “it’s going to go very quickly.”

At the same time he boasts that “all” Iranian leaders are “gone,” calls himself “No. 1 on the kill list,” and watches as Mojtaba Khamenei’s account posts a doctored image of a snake crawling out of Trump’s signature on the cease-fire document. The funeral procession for Ali Khamenei moves from Iran to Najaf; the war procession moves from pause back to escalation.

Hormuz remains the leverage point. Mines, fast boats and land‑based launchers give Tehran the ability to choke off the energy lifeline of U.S. partners like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and every “protective” strike deepens the message that transit is a bargaining chip, not a neutral right.

The cease-fire promised free passage; the reality is a narrow channel controlled by a country that just watched the man at the top of its system killed and is now being told the deal that followed his death is dead too.

Trump calls this denuclearization and insists it won’t “start again.” Tankers turning around in Hormuz, oil spiking, and Iranian media calling for “the official end” of the deal suggest something else: a war that never quite stops, and a corridor that keeps becoming the battlefield.

#iran #us #trump #hormuz #oil #khamenei #ceasefire #fakePeace

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📰 The Bridge to China: When “Precision” Hits the Trade Route

Among those ninety “targets,” one wasn’t on the coast, wasn’t IRGC, and wasn’t shooting at anyone.

Before dawn, cruise missiles hit the Aq-Tekeh Khan railway bridge near the village of Aq-Qala in Golestan province, northeast of Tehran. It’s the first time since the April 8 cease-fire that the U.S. hit civilian infrastructure deep inside Iran.

That bridge is a critical node on the International North–South Transport Corridor, the overland artery tying Iran to Central Asia, Russia — and more and more to China.

Iranian media kindly did the strategic mapping: Russia has been routing its exports through this line since November, and Chinese freight traffic on the corridor has tripled since the naval choke in Hormuz shut the “wet” route.

Iran’s rail company announced a temporary halt to train traffic between Tehran and Mashhad “following the American-Zionist aggression at dawn.”

The same morning, authorities quietly delayed the funeral ceremony for Khamenei in Mashhad by several hours. Official excuse: “the ceremony in Karbala was extended due to the large number of participants.” Apparently geopolitics now travels by train.

Israeli channels rushed to mock the strike: the bridge, they claimed, could be repaired “in a few hours with 200 workers,” and the whole thing was “for show.”

Maybe. But a state that publicly calls this bridge its trade lifeline to two major powers, then stops rail traffic to the city where it’s burying its supreme leader because that bridge was hit, does not act like it’s dealing with theater. It acts like someone just punched through its logistics spreadsheet.

Not only are boats, piers, and coastal radars fair game — the dry corridor that replaces blocked sea lanes is too. The target list now includes the route that lets Iran, Russia, and China pretend they’ve found a clean detour around American pressure.

#iran #us #china #russia #railway #tradeRoute #sanctions #instc #fakeResilience

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“Trump's New Attacks On Iran Would Devastate The Middle East”

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The US has launched new airstrikes against Iran, hours after Trump threatened to escalate the conflict unless Iran stopped attacking ships in the strait of Hormuz.

Iran, which was burying its former supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, on Thursday, responded by targeting US-allied Kuwait and Qatar and accused the US of striking near its sole nuclear power plant.

The tit-for-tat strikes were the largest since Tehran and Washington signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on 17 June aimed at extending the ceasefire and giving space for negotiations for a permanent truce.

They came as Israel’s defence minister Katz said his country was prepared to resume its military campaign against Iran if needed, threatening to do so “with even greater force”.

Sirens sounded at least three times in Bahrain, where the US navy’s fifth fleet is headquartered. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it fired 10 ballistic missiles at Jordan’s Azraq military base on Thursday afternoon, which the US air force uses. There were no immediate reports of any damage in Jordan or the Gulf.

In Iran, officials said strikes targeted the perimeter of Iran’s only civilian nuclear plant in Bushehr province, an area where the UN’s nuclear watchdog has previously warned that attacks could “pose a very real danger to nuclear safety”.

“Several areas in Bushehr province were targeted today, including the perimeter of the nuclear power plant, a military base in the town of Choghadak and a fishing pier in the south of the province,” said Ehsan Jahanian, the deputy governor of Bushehr, adding there were no reports of casualties so far.

The attacks came hours after Trump said the MoU was “over” because of Iranian attacks on ships in the strait of Hormuz.

“This is in retribution for yesterday’s bombing of ships by Iran. If it happens again, it will get much worse!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. Hours before, he had promised strikes would not lead to long-term fighting but would be “very fast”.

His comments and the exchange of fire prompted worries that the ceasefire could break down and raised concerns about the long-term prospects of negotiations.

Significant gaps remain between the two countries over issues such as Iran’s control over the strait, as well as inspections of nuclear facilities.

#trump #attacks #iran #qatar

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Back-and-forth attacks have happened since the MoU was signed, but Thursday’s strikes were the most intense in weeks. The attacks caused oil prices to rise, before they recovered later in the day after calm was restored.

They came as Iran prepared to bury Khamenei in his home city of Mashhad. A fighter jet escorted the plane carrying Khamenei’s coffin amid the tense security situation. Crowds of people gathered for the occasion, some holding banners promising vengeance against the US.

More than 10 million people took part in a funeral procession for the late leader in Iraq, according to an Iraqi official, while thousands rallied in the southern suburbs of Beirut in a ceremony organised by Hezbollah on Wednesday night.

Observers waited to see if Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, would attend the burial. He was wounded in the same series of strikes that killed his father and has since communicated only through written statements.

The US military said it hit about 90 targets in Iran, showing footage of strikes on missile launchers and a runway.

Iran accused the US of war crimes after it said two bridges in the eastern provinces leading to Mashhad were targeted. The bridges constitute key infrastructure for Iran’s cross-border trade with China, which has sharply increased since the start of the war.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to hit bridges, power plants and other civilian infrastructure in Iran. Targeting civilian infrastructure if it is not a military objective could amount to a war crime.

Iranian state media also reported explosions in several cities, including Bushehr, which houses Iran’s nuclear power plant complex. At least three people were killed in Iran’s south-western Khuzestan province, while a firefighter was killed in an airport in the south-eastern city of Iranshahr. Nine members of Iran’s military also died in strikes on Wednesday.

The US attack came after Iran struck three ships in the strait of Hormuz on Tuesday. Iran stopped virtually all shipping out of the strait during the war, sending global energy prices soaring and putting pressure on Trump domestically before midterm elections.

Iran continues to view its control over the strait as an important source of leverage in its negotiations with the US, while Trump appears to view strikes on Iran as a way of increasing pressure on Tehran.

Iran’s navy claimed in a statement that the number of ships transiting the strait had been restored to 50% of prewar levels and that permission to go through the strait was only being given to ships using routes designated by Iran. It further warned that any further US military action would trigger a “crushing response”.

Mediators attempted to de-escalate tensions between the US and Iran in an effort to salvage negotiations. The Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, a key intermediary between the countries, said in a local Arabic press that “Trump's new attacks on iran would devastate the Middle East and bring about the most undesirable consequences one can imagine”.

#trump #attacks #iran #qatar

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📰 Bushehr: The Nuclear Plant That Was Struck, And Wasn’t

An Iranian deputy governor in Bushehr province told state media that “several points,” including the area around the Bushehr nuclear power plant, were hit in the latest U.S. strikes.

Iranian TV reported that an American projectile landed near the facility, and a few hours later there were more explosions reported in its vicinity.

Almost simultaneously, other Iranian outlets insisted there had been no strike on the Bushehr plant itself, and none on Kharg Island either.

That contradiction isn’t bad translation. It’s policy. Opposition-linked Iranian channels say the blasts in the province came from an attack on a “secret” Revolutionary Guards air base — a site that, by definition, does not officially exist and therefore cannot be “hit” in any authorized narrative.

Pro-regime voices, meanwhile, need the nuclear site to appear under threat enough to justify anger and retaliation, but not so damaged that Iran looks naked and incompetent.

Israeli media took the opposite route: they published footage under headlines like “Strike on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant,” then added breathless notes that a U.S. radioactive particle collection aircraft had crossed the Atlantic, proof (they implied) that nuclear facilities were now firmly in the crosshairs.

Reports of strikes also surfaced near Isfahan, home to another nuclear-related site, further feeding the sense that the atom, not just the coastline, is in play.

Iran denies a hit on the plant so it doesn't look exposed, and confirms hits "near" it so escalation stays justified.

Supporters abroad — whether cheering Washington or cheering Tehran — pick the version that fits their own storyline. The nuclear program itself remains the one thing everyone talks about, waves around in speeches, and uses to scare markets, while almost nobody claims to have actually seen damage to the core.

In this war, Bushehr is less a building and more a talking point: a place that’s always “almost” struck, “nearly” contaminated, “possibly” targeted — forever close enough to sell fear, never clear enough to admit what really happened.

#iran #us #bushehr #nuclear #propaganda #mediaWar #fakeTransparency

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📰 Patriots, Antennas, Fuel Tanks: Iran’s 4-Country “Response”

The Revolutionary Guards laid out the timeline like a press release: after Khamenei’s funeral ceremonies, the U.S. hit Iran’s southern coastal provinces and two bridges leading to Mashhad “to distract from the funeral.”

Then came “the first stage of the response”: missiles and drones at four American-linked bases — Camp Arifjan and Ali Al Salem in Kuwait, and Al-Jufair and Sheikh Isa in Bahrain. The warning was simple: any further aggression will be met with “expanded” strikes.

Iran’s regular army, separate from the Guards and always eager to claim its own role, issued a different list: suicide drones on a Patriot air-defense battery in Kuwait, on a satellite warning antenna in Qatar, and on U.S. fuel tanks in Bahrain.

The language stayed maximalist: the armed forces “will not under any circumstances allow the insane U.S. president to achieve his goals and ambitions” and “will defend the ideals of the Islamic Revolution until final victory.”

Bahrain’s defense ministry said it intercepted “several air attacks” and that forces were at peak defensive readiness. Kuwait reported one person wounded. In Qatar, civilians got a phone alert about “heightened security threat” and went on with their day.

By midday, the fire shifted to Jordan: launches from Khomayn, Qom, Zanjan, Lorestan, Shiraz and Tehran toward the Muwaffaq Al-Salti base in Zarqa.

The Guards claimed ten ballistic missiles at “the enemy’s command-and-control center in the Middle East” and the air base at Azraq, plus a promise that “other American bases in the region will not be safe from our heavy fire” if Washington hits again.

Jordan’s military answered in three words: “We intercepted eight.”

Ten launched, eight intercepted, and nobody bothered to say clearly where the other two went. Amman’s airport delayed flights, the U.S. embassy told staff to shelter, an Ethiopian flight to Tel Aviv circled, and sirens in Jordan were heard in Israeli communities along the valley.

In Iraq, alarms sounded in Baghdad and Erbil bases, intercepts were reported over Camp Victoria. Parallel to the “response against the superpower,” Iranian drones were sent at Iranian Kurdish opposition camps — proof that even under the banner of resistance to America, the regime finds time to shoot at other Iranians.

The head of Iran’s parliament national security committee wrapped it in one sentence: if the U.S. hits Iran’s national security again, “we will take their security anywhere they are.”

#iran #us #kuwait #bahrain #qatar #jordan #missiles #patriot #fakeDeterrence

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📰 Hormuz™: A Closed Strait and Oil on the Run

Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has slowed to a near halt after back‑to‑back U.S. strikes on Iran, with most observable movements hugging the Iran‑approved northern route while the U.S.-backed Omani corridor sits almost empty.

Transponders on or off, insurers now know whose “security arrangements” actually move ships.

The IRGC Navy is selling this as faith beating firepower.

In its statement, it boasts that traffic has been “restored” to roughly 50% of pre‑war levels — after Iran itself slammed the strait shut — and insists further reopening depends on vessels obeying routes and procedures mandated in Tehran.

The shortfall is pinned on “the adventurous terrorist U.S. military” and its meddling in transit lanes, accused of slowing the gradual reopening and “endangering the interests” of states that rely on Hormuz.

Parliament speaker Mohammad Qalibaf offers the condensed version: hit Iran and “you’ll get hit,” and Hormuz will only open under Iranian arrangements, not American threats.

An unnamed security source adds the punchline nobody asked for: if Trump wants oil prices to rise, “we welcome that.” Iran is happy to weaponize the strait for price spikes, as long as it’s the one holding the valve.

At the same time, the state that cheers higher prices is scrambling to sell as much crude as it can. Maritime trackers have already logged single‑day export spikes in the tens of millions of barrels during this crisis, with huge chunks of monthly volume pushed out in just hours.

Whoever believes Hormuz will be closed “for good” behaves like Iran: rushing to drain storage while the corridor is still, technically, open.

Qatar’s prime minister and foreign minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al‑Thani, condemned attacks on commercial vessels in his call with Iran’s Abbas Araghchi, warning that such actions “undermine trust,” threaten international shipping security and damage regional stability efforts.

His message was delivered to a country firing ballistic missiles at tankers, over the head of a country firing cruise missiles in the same waterway — without naming either one. In Hormuz, even diplomacy sails under flags of convenience.

#iran #us #hormuz #oil #shipping #tankers #sanctions #fakeSecurity

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📰 Funeral in Three Acts: A Corpse, Flying Stones, and a Price Tag on Trump

Ali Khamenei’s body has been on tour: mass ceremonies in Karbala and Najaf in Iraq, a military‑escorted flight to Mashhad — with one of the escorts reportedly an aging F‑5 fighter barely younger than the Islamic Republic itself — and a delayed burial in his hometown.

Authorities announced hours‑long postponements and blamed “huge crowds” in Karbala, even as reports of a strike on the Tehran–Mashhad rail line surfaced the same night. Religious tradition demands a fast burial; the regime needed time — to appoint new leaders, stabilize the inner circle, and choreograph a succession under fire.

Saudi‑owned Al Arabiya highlighted the trick behind the long goodbye: instead of chemical embalming, the system relied on deep refrigeration at very low temperatures to slow decay. Islamic law wants the dead in the ground quickly; the political calendar wanted a week‑long spectacle across multiple cities and borders.

In a state whose sole claim to legitimacy is religious, the taboo got bent quietly to fit the schedule.

During the Tehran procession, hardline supporters physically attacked President Masoud Pezeshkian, tried to push him down and shouted “death to the appeaser,” forcing his guards to drag him out as he stumbled, visibly shaken.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, identified with the moderate camp, was hit by a stone and chased down an alley by flag‑waving, screaming men calling for his murder. Regional sources told CNN and others that Khamenei’s successor, his son Mojtaba, was not expected to appear at any funeral event — not even the private burial.

In Mashhad and Qom, huge English banners appeared: “Kill Trump – $100 Million Iranian Bounty.” Iran International and other outlets documented billboards and hotel‑front signs promising a nine‑digit reward for anyone who assassinates the U.S. president, turning mourning into an open contract killing campaign.

Kayhan, the supreme leader’s mouthpiece, ran an editorial under the line “I want Trump’s head,” whose editor urged the state to declare Trump, his inner circle and even the pilots who carried out strikes as legitimate targets, and to formalize a cash prize for whoever kills them — claiming more than $100 million has already been raised “by the public.”

The front page message was blunt: “Trump does not have to stay alive.”

The funeral was sold as proof of unity and devotion. What it delivered was a president pelted with stones, a foreign minister chased down an alley, and millions marching under banners that turn a sitting U.S. president into a line item: body, price, deadline.

#iran #khamenei #funeral #trump #bounty #succession #fakePiety

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