RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/13/iran-brendan/

The world has awoken to news of a decapitation. Early this morning, Israel time, the air force of the Jewish State struck with astonishing precision against the tyrants and infrastructure of the Iranian regime. The top dogs of the Islamic republic have been taken out. Its nuclear facilities have been reduced to ashen wreckage. None of us can afford the luxury of political aloofness in this moment, far less that moral cowardice that masquerades as pacifism. Too much is at stake. Events compel us to stir from our insouciance and take a side for once.

From what we know, this would appear to be one of the most laser-focussed strikes against a hostile regime in the history of warfare. Those images of apartment blocks entirely intact aside from the floor where one of Iran’s despots lived are a testament to the exactness of Israel’s daring raid. The list of the dead is astounding. They include General Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of military staff, and Hossein Salami, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Imagine the glee of the families of the 500 youths who were butchered by Salami’s guards in 2022 for the crime of believing that women deserve ‘life and freedom’.

Just like that, the regime’s two chief military autocrats are gone. The man responsible for Iran’s murderous, imperial foreign ventures (Bagheri) and the man charged with maintaining the unforgiving diktats of the republic against its own freedom-dreaming citizens (Salami) are no more. Just this week, Salami said: ‘Our next confrontation with the Israelis will be far more crushing, devastating and destructive.’ Yes, for you.

Other military leaders were assassinated, too. So were nuclear scientists, including Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the former head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation. Israel says these regime boffins were developing a ‘nuclear programme’ for ‘military objectives’. They’ve been ruthlessly pursuing the ‘weaponisation’ of uranium, it says. Indeed, the prime justification for Operation Rising Lion, as the mission has been christened, was to ‘eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat’.

Naturally, given this is a military venture by the state that luvvies and activists love to hate, Israel’s operation already finds itself shrouded in misinformation and shrill censure. Israel is a ‘rogue’ nation launching an ‘unprovoked’ assault on poor Iran, cry the morally lost leftists of the West. They echo the Iranian regime itself, which tweeted: ‘Remember we didn’t initiate it.’ Excuse my language, but yes you fucking did. You initiated this when you sponsored the largest mass murder of Jews since the Nazis and the largest exiling of Jews since the Arab wars of the 1940s.

As Israel embarked on its bold mission, Iran was on the doorstep of achieving a nuclear weapon. The Wall Street Journal warned that Iran is moving in defiance of the IAEA:

The IAEA board of governors passed a resolution finding Iran in noncompliance with its Safeguards Agreement, a crucial part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that has done much to stop the spread and use of nuclear weapons. Treaties are no substitute for American deterrent power, but the NPT has been among the more successful.

In reply Iran announced a major expansion of its nuclear-breakout capability—revealing more NPT violations—which would make it harder to detect or stop an Iranian move to enrich uranium to weapons-grade. Tehran is calling the world’s bluff on whether it takes non-proliferation seriously.

The IAEA finds that Iran has been hiding nuclear material. Accordingly, “the Agency is not able to verify that there has been no diversion of nuclear material required to be safeguarded under the Agreement to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices,” it writes.

Iran covered up its nuclear weapons sites amidst negotiations with the U.S.:

Then there are Iran’s attempts to cover all of this up. Consider its Marivan site. The IAEA assesses that Iran conducted four tests there in 2003 of “full-scale hemispherical implosion systems” for nuclear weapons. It was also preparing for a cold test that would have contained nuclear material and planned to make neutron initiators there. When the IAEA asked to inspect Marivan in 2019, Iran promptly razed the site’s support area. It didn’t allow inspectors to visit the control bunker, which it also subsequently demolished.

The IAEA concludes that Marivan and at least two other sites were “part of an undeclared structured nuclear programme,” and that Iran kept nuclear material or equipment from this program at another location, Turquzabad, from 2009 to 2018, with current whereabouts unknown.

https://www.theeditors.com/p/five-early-lessons-from-israels-strikes-against-iran?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2110503&post_i

Last night’s attack by Israel on Iran is just the beginning of what the Israeli ambassador in Washington, Yechiel Leiter, said is a “long haul” that “will be measured in days, not in hours.”

Yet it is not too soon to draw some preliminary conclusions.

First, the show of strength positions Israel as the regional superpower. Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times June 10, 2025 of Israel in a situation where “the Jewish state is a pariah state — a source of shame, not of pride.” This operation puts Israel in the opposite position. The same way that the Hezbollah pager operation won Israel respect, the technical military feat of carrying out a long-range strike with surprise against high-value targets with minimal Israeli casualties will also translate into admiration.

This was visible even in President Trump’s comments, where he associated U.S technology with Israel’s breathtaking achievements: “the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come – And they know how to use it.”

As former Pentagon analyst Harold Rhode put it, “Now, in Muslim world, they are in total shock and awe at the power and will/determination of the Jewish State. What Israel is accomplishing in this war totally negates the Muslim narrative that the Jewish people (and the Christians) are at best ‘2nd class citizens’ and abandoned by G-d.”

Rhode went on, “In the Middle East and the Muslim world in general, two things are respected: the ability and the will to win. And that is exactly what Israel is demonstrating.”

Israeli author and analyst Hen Mazzig reports that Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, and the UAE all “participated in intercepting Iranian missiles and drones attack against Israel.” Some of that reflects Sunni Muslims siding against Shiite Muslim Iran, but some of it reflects realpolitik respect for Israeli military, economic, and scientific power, which its neighbors want to benefit from. Medium- to long-term, as David Wurmser has explained in some of his pieces for us here, a diminished Iran may allow the rise of Turkey and Qatar as a kind of Sunni Muslim Brotherhood threat, so a defeated Iran would not mean a total regional “all clear” for Israel or American interests, but that is for another day.

Second, the Iranian people, with Israeli help, will have to decide if this is a moment for regime change. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government have oscillated between calling for a “free Iran” and emphasizing the need to keep the current regime from obtaining nuclear weapons. Netanyahu has been doing some of both, and it may ultimately be up to Iran and Iranians which direction this goes. Last night, Netanyahu spoke to the Iranian people, saying, “The day of your liberation is near….we roll back a murderous tyranny.” By far the best outcome is a regime change in Iran rather than a setback to the nuclear program and ballistic missile program that stops short of a regime change. Israelis understand that from the example of Gaza, where, between 2007 and 2023, Israel repeatedly went in and “mowed the lawn” with strikes against Hamas. Each time, Hamas rebuilt until, with Iranian backing, it ultimately launched the October 7, 2023, attack.

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-ultimate-deception-how-trump?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

They died in their own beds. Hossein Salami and Ali Shamkhani—Iran’s most senior military officers and the stewards of Iran’s nuclear weapons program—had spent years threatening Israel with destruction. They issued taunts, organized terrorist attacks, and orchestrated, since October 7, the encirclement of the Jewish state in a ring of fire of their terror proxies. And they knew—without the slightest illusion—that Israel had the capability and resolve to kill them.

This cohort saw the Israeli air force bury Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah in his bunker, hundreds of meters beneath the streets of Beirut. They saw Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh vaporized in a presidential guesthouse—in Tehran, no less. Yet on Thursday night, they came home as usual and went to sleep—unguarded, unworried, carefree. Like insurance salesmen and bank tellers following their daily routines, it never occurred to them that they might not wake in the morning.

But they didn’t.

In 1967, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser made a similar mistake. He moved forces to Israel’s border, declared war in all but name, and left his MiG fighter jets parked in neat rows. Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol hesitated publicly—then struck with speed, ferocity, and total surprise. By the time Nasser understood what had happened, his air force was already in ruins.

History just repeated itself. But why did these seasoned Iranian officers—veteran warriors, intelligence chiefs, regime survivors—lower their guard so completely? How did Israel achieve strategic surprise?

The simple answer: Benjamin Netanyahu read Donald Trump better than the Iranians.

Beginning around April 12, Trump gave Iran a 60-day deadline, which ended near June 11. The Israeli strike that killed Shamkhani came on June 13—just after the deadline expired. In that interval, Trump repeatedly warned Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons infrastructure or face violent consequences. In an early May interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, the American president offered Iran’s leaders two stark options for dealing with their nuclear facilities: “blow them up nicely”—meaning under international supervision—or “blow them up viciously.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/israel-strikes-back/

On Thursday evening, the long-anticipated Israel strikes began, targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear sites and other key military facilities. The objective of Operation Strength of a Lion is to end the Iranian nuclear threat once and for all, as well as to destroy, as much as possible, the Islamic Republic’s ability to continue to wage war against the Jewish state via its proxies, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Houthis. The entire state of Israel was on emergency alert; the Israeli Home Front Command issued instructions to all Israeli citizens to comply with guidelines that would be issued as part of “preparations for a significant threat.”

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2025/06/12/breaking-israel-bombs-iran-in-preemptive-strike-n4940748?utm_source=breakingemail&utm_medium=email
The Israel Defense Forces [IDF] confirmed that it has bombed Iran’s nuclear assets in a preemptive strike against the Islamic regime that has vowed to wipe Israel off the map.

The Israeli Air Force launched its attack, dubbed “Operation Rising Lion,” late Thursday on Iran’s nuclear program. According to The Times of Israel. “Home Front Command spokesman says Israel could experience ‘heavy missile attack’ in coming hours, but no fire from Iran as yet and no need to go to bomb shelter.” 

Israel has declared a state of emergency, according to the Jerusalem Post, and has closed its airspace. 

It appears that an all-out war could be beginning between Iran and Israel rather than the unending wars by proxy in which Iran has been engaging. 

The Post reported, “Iran developed a plan with Hezbollah and Hamas and other proxies to destroy the State of Israel, potentially including attempts to attack via all borders, including Egypt and Jordan. This was the point of no return, according to the IDF.”

The Times of Israel stated:

The IDF confirms it has launched an aerial campaign against Iran’s nuclear program.

Dozens of targets across Iran related to the nuclear program and other military facilities are being struck by the Israeli Air Force, it says.

In a statement, the IDF said, “A short while ago, following the directive of the political echelon, the IDF launched a preemptive, precise, combined offensive based on high-quality intelligence to strike Iran’s nuclear program, and in response to the Iranian regime’s ongoing aggression against Israel.”