Israel Strikes Iran's Nuclear Program
'Israel will never allow those who call for our annihilation to develop the means to achieve that goal," says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Israel launched airstrikes against Iran's nuclear program and military targets. (Source: Bloomberg)
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Fox News
26 minutes ago
- Fox News
Trump quips 'they didn't die of COVID' when asked if Israel killed Iranian officials
President Donald Trump joked on Friday morning about the fate of Iranian officials in the wake of Israel's recent airstrike, according to CNN's Dana Bash. After months of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, Israel attacked Iran's nuclear and missile infrastructure early Friday, taking out at least 20 senior Iranian commanders and inflicting a significant blow to Tehran's government. Two of the most prominent officials killed in the strikes were Gen. Hossein Salami, the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces. Bash spoke on Friday about her phone call with Trump, where she asked him about Secretary of State Marco Rubio's initial statement about Israel's strikes, which did not explicitly say that the U.S. supported them. "We, of course, support Israel, obviously, and supported it like nobody has ever supported it," Trump said, according to Bash. "It was a very successful attack. Iran should have listened to me when I said - you know, I gave them, I don't know if you know, but I gave them a 60-day warning. And today is day 61." "They should now come to the table to make a deal before it's too late. It will be too late for them. You know, the people I was dealing with are dead," he added, though he wouldn't give specific names, only that the "hardliners" were dead. "This is as a result of the attack last night?" Bash asked him. "Yeah. They didn't die of the flu. They didn't die of COVID," Bash described him saying "quite sarcastically." Trump also told Fox News' Bret Baier on Friday that "The Iranians were hit 10 times worse than they thought they would be." "They weren't ready to negotiate. I think they may be now. We'll see," Trump said regarding the future of Iran's nuclear program. Senior U.S. officials told Fox News that a long list of nuclear scientists and military leaders were targeted by Israel's surprise airstrikes Friday. The officials added that 90% of Iran's top nuclear scientists, as well as other senior military officers and other Iranian leaders, may have been targeted in the strikes.
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Lawmakers, media dinged for blaming Trump or ripping Israel on Iran: 'You think Kamala could've stopped them?'
Lawmakers and mainstream media figures were blasted online Friday morning over some of their responses to the development that Israel executed a widespread bombing campaign against key Iranian targets. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-CT., wrote on X that Israel's attack was "clearly intended to scuttle the Trump administration's negotiations with Tehran," and is "further evidence of how little respect world powers - including our own allies - have for President Trump." Murphy, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe, was later mocked for using the situation to slam Trump: "Do you think Israel respected Biden, Obama, or Bush? Now is not the time for a partisan bromide," one critic replied. "You think Kamala could've stopped them?" riffed another. Former Ohio State Sen. Nina Turner, D-Cleveland, an occasional media figure and former campaign staffer for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., replied to Murphy's critics, saying that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has "always wanted a broader war." Read On The Fox News App "This was inevitable, given the U.S. foreign policy towards Israel. Arms embargo now," Turner added. Left-wing former ESPN and MSNBC host Keith Olbermann informed Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on X that "your soul is lost" after the lawmaker celebrated Iran being attacked. "Game on, pray for Israel," Graham originally wrote. The oft-profane pundit did, however, receive some backhanded support from the right for the remarks, with one respondent saying, "you know society is about to collapse when I agree with Keith" – while another shared a "holy s---" meme featuring actor Keegan Michael Key. Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who has become one of President Donald Trump's loudest critics, went after Trump's supporters following the bombings. "Yesterday: Trump scared to death of action against Iran." On X, several pro-Trump ripped Kinzinger, saying he "lives in a bottle," "was too scared to run for reelection" in his swing Kankakee district because of his break with Trump, and should "cry harder." Kinzinger, however, did appear to celebrate Israel's killing of Iranian military commander Hossein Salami -- sharing a grinning GIF of the late Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain in response to a news alert. Global Calls To Avoid Escalation Pour In After Israel Strikes On Iran Several "Squad" members also got in on the action Friday, including Rep. Gregorio Casar of Texas. Casar said Netanyahu's "reckless strike risks provoking a wider war and pulling in the United States." He called on Trump to oppose Netanyahu's escalation and "not violate the Constitution" by involving U.S. troops without congressional approval. Reaction to Casar was mixed, with some respondents asking what his own strategy would be, while one defender of the Austin lawmaker shared a meme of Trump dressed as a chambermaid standing aside Netanyahu in his office. Meanwhile, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., actively sparred with critics of her statement that "regardless of what Trump thinks, Israel knows America will do whatever they want and feels confident about their ability to get into war and have the American government back them up." "Everyone in America should prepare themselves to either see their tax dollars being spent on weapon supplies to Israel or be dragged into war with Iran if this escalates." "Somalians belong in Somalia," one critic responded. "And in Congress," Omar shot back. Olbermann Leads Liberal Meltdown Against Cnn, Calling To 'Burn It Down' After Biden's Performance When another critic said she should focus more on issues in her Minneapolis district, the congresswoman replied, "I am focusing on my district and we don't believe our tax dollars should go to war. Thank for your input." "This is all planned," tweeted "Squad" colleague Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. "Both [U.S. and Israel] are liars." Tlaib then claimed Jerusalem's government is "genocidal" and that "war criminal Netanyahu will do anything to maintain his grip on power." "Squad" member Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., followed by tweeting support for her "Block the Bombs Act" to withhold weapons sales to Israel in response to actions in Gaza. The far-left lawmaker, who took over longtime moderate Democrat Dan Lipinski's district, said that Netanyahu "cannot be trusted with offensive weapons that enable dangerous actions like what we saw last night." Elsewhere on social media, other liberal figures were raging at the Trump administration for other recent developments, like the brief detainment of Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., after he crashed Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's Los Angeles press conference. Col. Alexander Vindman, now retired, but a key figure in the Trump-Ukraine impeachment saga and a twin brother of Rep. Yevgeny "Eugene" Vindman, D-Va., railed against Noem multiple times, calling her a "fascist b---h." "Hey Kristi, f--- off," Vindman wrote. Frequent "Special Report" All-Star panelist Mollie Hemingway responded to Vindman, remarking on how the mainstream media regularly characterized him as a "stable," nonpartisan article source: Lawmakers, media dinged for blaming Trump or ripping Israel on Iran: 'You think Kamala could've stopped them?'
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Contributor: How should the U.S. respond to Israel's attack on Iran?
Israel's decision to launch a wide-scale military operation against Iran may have come as a shock to many, but it's something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been itching to do for more than decade. The question now is whether President Trump will end up sustaining an Israeli bombing campaign that could last for days, if not weeks. The fact that Israel conducted the operation several days before Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, was scheduled to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for a sixth round of nuclear talks in Oman wasn't lost on most observers. Netanyahu hasn't been particularly supportive of the Trump administration's diplomatic outreach to the Iranians and reportedly pressed the White House to green-light joint U.S.-Israeli strikes against Tehran's nuclear facilities last month. Trump demurred, choosing diplomacy instead, but Netanyahu seems never to have believed the talks would result in anything substantial. Read more: Israel attacks Iran's capital; blasts rock Tehran Israel's negotiating position has long been entirely maximalist: Every nuclear complex on Iranian soil must be destroyed, and under no circumstances could Iran be left with even a rudimentary uranium enrichment capability. Trump's position isn't as definitive as Netanyahu's. At times, U.S. officials have talked about striking a deal that would allow the Iranians to continue enriching at a low level with strict, comprehensive international oversight. At other times, Trump has declared that Washington wouldn't sign any deal that allowed Iran to enrich at all. Various proposals have been floated in the months since those negotiations began, including a regional nuclear consortium involving Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other powers, which could prevent an indigenous Iranian enrichment program but still supply the region with peaceful nuclear energy, and also stem the possibility of an arms race in the Middle East. The Iranians, however, didn't buy into the idea that no enrichment would be permitted on Iranian soil. Read more: Israel launches withering attack on Iran, spurring retaliation and fears of all-out war Israel's military attack upends the diplomatic chessboard, such as it is, turning the last few months of U.S.-Iran discussions into empty theater. Trump claims he knew what Israel was up to all along and congratulated Netanyahu on the attack. That alone makes it difficult to imagine Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei authorizing his subordinates to continue discussions with the Americans. Doing so would be a very public act of weakness on Tehran's part. Even so, the White House still expects Iranian officials to show up for the next round of talks. As Trump argued after the initial Israeli salvo, Iran is in no position to refuse anymore. 'I couldn't get them to a deal in 60 days,' Trump said, referring to the Iranians. 'They were close, they should have done it. Maybe now it will happen.' In reality, what we are likely to see instead is a collapse of the current diplomatic process and a situation that will be far messier to handle. Israeli political and military officials have made it abundantly clear that military operations will persist well into next week and perhaps go on even longer than that. The Iranians, in turn, will feel pressure to continue to retaliate with each passing day, whether it's in the form of drones and missiles aimed at Israel's air defenses, terrorist attacks on Western targets or sabotaging cargo vessels in the Persian Gulf. In any case, the Middle East is as close to a full-scale war as it has ever been. Read more: What to know about Iran's nuclear sites This is a critical moment for the Trump administration, and how it chooses to act in the hours and days ahead will be the determining factor in whether the United States gets dragged into another regional conflagration or not. Israel will do what it believes it needs to do to maintain its security. Even assuming Trump would try to pressure Netanyahu into stopping the bombings — the evidence for that scenario is slim — it's hardly guaranteed the Israeli premier would listen. For better or worse, Israel's strategic calculus has changed after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. Netanyahu is now far less risk-adverse than during his previous stints in office. The United States can only control what it can control. As much as Trump might like to see the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism hammered, he also doesn't want to aid a conflict that could expose tens of thousands of U.S. troops based in the Middle East to imminent risk. Besides, any U.S. involvement in offensive Israeli military operations would be a betrayal of Trump's core supporters and his campaign promises to avoid the fruitless, unending wars. In addition, U.S. offensive involvement would kill any grand diplomatic ambitions Trump may have in the Middle East and nip in the bud the administration's pivot to the Indo-Pacific as China tries to consolidate its power in Asia. Sometimes, the best response to a dangerous situation is to do nothing. It won't satisfy the more hawkish elements in Washington, but let's hope Trump holds his fire. Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities. If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
