Netanyahu says Israel brought Iran's nuclear program 'to ruin'
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. (Special to the American Press)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel's war against Iran brought the country's nuclear program 'to ruin.'
Speaking in a televised statement, he listed Israel's achievements in the war, including its attacks on top generals and nuclear scientists. He said Israel destroyed nuclear facilities in Natanz and Isfahan, along with the Arak heavy water reactor.
'For dozens of years, I promised you that Iran would not have nuclear weapons and indeed … we brought to ruin Iran's nuclear program,' Netanyahu said.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP's earlier story follows below.
A fragile ceasefire between Iran and Israel appeared to hold Tuesday after initially faltering, and U.S. President Donald Trump expressed frustration with both sides, saying they have fought 'for so long and so hard' that they do not know what they are doing.
Israel had earlier accused Iran of launching missiles into its airspace after the truce was supposed to take effect, and the Israeli finance minister vowed that 'Tehran will tremble.'
The Iranian military denied firing on Israel, state media reported, but explosions boomed and sirens sounded across northern Israel in the morning, and an Israeli military official said two Iranian missiles were intercepted.
Trump told reporters at the White House before departing for a NATO summit that, in his view, both sides had violated the nascent agreement. He had particularly strong words for Israel, a close ally, while suggesting Iran may have fired on the country by mistake.
But later he said the deal was saved.
'ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly 'Plane Wave' to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect!' Trump said in his Truth Social post.
Indeed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said he held off on tougher strikes against Iran after speaking to Trump.
The conflict, now in its 12th day, began with Israel targeting Iranian nuclear and military sites, saying it could not allow Tehran to develop atomic weapons and that it feared the Islamic Republic was close. Iran has long maintained that its program is peaceful.
If the truce holds, it will provide a global sense of relief after the U.S. intervened by dropping bunker-buster bombs on nuclear sites over the weekend — a move that risked further destabilizing the volatile region.
Trump phoned Netanyahu after the American bombing on Sunday and told him not to expect additional U.S. military attacks and that he should seek a diplomatic solution with Iran, a senior White House official said.
Trump's position was that the U.S. had removed any imminent threat posed by Iran, according to the official who was not authorized to comment publicly about sensitive diplomatic talks and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Israel followed up the U.S. air attacks by expanding the kinds of targets it was hitting.
After Tehran launched a limited retaliatory strike Monday on a U.S. military base in Qatar, Trump announced the ceasefire.
A protracted conflict could have a broad economic impact if Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, a major shipping channel.
China, which is Iran's largest trading partner and only remaining oil customer, condemned the U.S. attacks and said it was concerned about a 'spiral of escalations' without a ceasefire.
Trump suggested the ceasefire would allow Iranian oil to continue to flow, saying on social media that China could keep purchasing crude from Iran.
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The Hill
22 minutes ago
- The Hill
House Republicans advance 2026 Homeland Security funding bill
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Life on the other side: Refugees from 'old media' flock to the promise of working for themselves
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Yahoo
25 minutes ago
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Iraq Accelerates This Oil Megaproject To Meet 7 Million Bpd Production Target
Even before the latest potentially game-changing developments began involving its longtime financial, political, and military ally Iran, it was clear that Iraq needed to focus more on the independent development of its own resources -- most notably in energy -- for its future. In the weeks leading up to the Western-backed Israeli attacks on Iran, the U.S. removed the longstanding waivers that allowed Iraq to keep importing electricity and gas from its neighbour to power 40% of its grid and rolled out new sanctions aimed at cutting Baghdad's support for Tehran. For years, Iraq has been talking about increasing its oil production to various figures – 6 and bit million barrels per day (bpd), 7 and a bit million, 8 and a bit million– whatever; they have all amounted to nothing. Now though, Baghdad will need to start doing something to achieve these increases. So, can it meaningfully increase its oil production, and will it do so? Theoretically, Iraq has the natural resources to increase its oil production to way above the current average of just over 4 million bpd. Iraq officially holds 145 billion barrels of proved crude oil reserves (nearly 18% of the Middle East's total, and the fifth biggest on the planet). Unofficially, it likely holds much more oil than this, with the Oil Ministry stating in October 2010 that its undiscovered resources amounted to around 215 billion barrels. This number had independently been arrived at back into 1997 by highly respected oil and gas firm, Petrolog. That said, the figure did not include the parts of northern Iraq in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan. With conservative estimates for these included, the International Energy Agency underlined that Iraq's ultimately recoverable resources totalled about 246 billion barrels of crude and natural gas liquids. Given this, the 'Integrated National Energy Strategy' (INES) report of 2012 that was funded and developed by the World Bank, with further assistance from management consultancy firm then-Booz & Company, identified three realistic future oil production scenarios, as analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order. These showed how the country could increase its oil output to either the 'Low Production' scenario of 6 million bpd by 2025, the 'Medium Production' scenario of 9 million bpd by 2020, or the 'High Production' scenario of 13 million bpd by 2017.A combination of indolence on the part of some of those in charge of Iraq's oil strategy and corruption from others in the corollary political apparatus meant years of little tangible progress being made on any of these scenarios. It also eventually resulted in the withdrawal of many Western firms from Iraq that could effect such significant oil output increases, as repeatedly detailed by At that point onwards, it had become increasingly clear that the intention of the Federal Government of Iraq in Baghdad (and its key backers China and Russia) was to push the West out of a unified Iraq, having subsumed the northern semi-autonomous Kurdistan region into the rest of the country. However, given this scenario, the U.S. and its allies have pushed back with the opposite agenda, as also analysed in full in my latest book. To put it plainly: the U.S. and its key allies ultimately want to the northern Kurdistan region of Iraq to terminate all links with Chinese, Russian and Iranian companies connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps over the long term. This could then be used as a bridgehead to reassert the West's influence in the rest of Iraq through big investment deals firstly and then related infrastructure developments. On the other side of the equation, China and Russia have long been behind the idea of rolling the Kurdistan Region into the wider Iraq and keeping the West out forever. As a senior political source in Moscow exclusively told many months ago: 'Iraq will be one unified country and by keeping the West out of energy deals there, the end of Western hegemony in the Middle East will become the decisive chapter in the West's final demise.' The West's recent strategic push in this context has seen not just the US$25bn five-oil field development by the U.K.'s BP in the north of the country around the Kurdistan Region announced but also the US$27 billion four-pronged deal by France's TotalEnergies in the south of the country as well. Several other deals by Western firms are in the making too, all of which are aimed at preventing the final move of Iraq into the China-Russia sphere of influence and eventually reversing it. Indeed, May 19 saw two deals signed by U.S. firms HKN Energy, and WesternZagros, to develop two fields – the Miran gas field and the Topkhana oil and gas field -- in the Kurdistan area. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright made it very clear about the deeper intention behind these deals, saying that they align with the administration's broader strategy of striking commercial deals with allies to counter Iran's influence. By extension, given the extremely strong links between Tehran and Beijing and Moscow, this also means countering China's and Russia's influence across Iraq as well. More recently in this precise regard was the announcement that the Iraqi Drilling Company (IDC) is making steady progress on its project to drill 15 oil wells in the North Rumaila oil field, alongside the U.S.'s Halliburton and the Basra Energy Company, with the latter being wholly owned by BP and also PetroChina, for the time being at least. The entire Rumaila field – split into North and South -- lies around 30 kilometres north of Iraq's southern border with Kuwait and, together with Kirkuk, has produced around 80% cent of Iraq's cumulative oil production to date. BP has long been in talks with Iraq's Oil Ministry to push production up to 2.1 million bpd from the current circa-1.2 million bpd which, given the field's estimated 17 billion barrels in proven reserves, should not be difficult. However, there is a catch – and this is that in order to achieve this step up in production substantial sustained water-injection would be needed to maintain the required pressure. Happily for the West's plans for Iraq, this is exactly what one of TotalEnergies' four key projects is geared to do in the shape of the Common Seawater Supply Project (CSSP). This involves taking seawater from the Persian Gulf and transporting it to oil production facilities to boost pressure at key oil reservoirs. Both the longstanding stalwart fields of Rumaila and Kirkuk -- the former beginning production in the 1950s and the latter in the 1920s -- require major ongoing water injection on this scale from this project. Rumaila produced more than 25% of its oil in place before water injection was required because its main reservoir formation (at least its southern part) connects to a very large natural aquifer that has helped to push the oil out of the reservoir. In Kirkuk's case, production dropped significantly after output of only around 5% of the oil in place. Most of Iraq's oil fields fall between these two cases in terms of water injection requirements, but its other big fields -- West Qurna (1 and 2), Majnoon, and Zubair – are at the higher end. This means that for Iraq to reach any of the significant increases in oil production envisaged in the key 2012 INES report – from 6 million bpd up to 13 million bpd – Iraq's Oil Ministry, and whichever government is in power at the time, will need the CSSP up and running and working sustainably, and this means TotalEnergies and the West. Given this confluence of geopolitical and economic imperatives, the chances of Iraq finally meaningfully increasing its oil production to a level even vaguely commensurate with its huge reserves look better than they have ever done. By Simon Watkins for More Top Reads From Read this article on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
