Thousands mourn top Iranian military commanders and scientists killed in Israeli strikes
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Thousands of mourners lined the streets of downtown Tehran on Saturday for the funeral of the head of the Revolutionary Guard and other top commanders and nuclear scientists killed during a 12-day war with Israel.
The caskets of Guard's chief Gen. Hossein Salami, the head of the Guard's ballistic missile program, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh and others were driven on trucks along the capital's Azadi Street as people in the crowds chanted: 'Death to America' and 'Death to Israel.'
Salami and Hajizadeh were both killed on the first day of the war, June 13, as Israel launched a war it said meant to destroy Iran's nuclear program, specifically targeting military commanders, scientists and nuclear facilities.
There was no immediate sign of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the state broadcast of the funeral. Khamenei, who has not made a public appearance since before the outbreak of the war, has in past funerals held prayers for fallen commanders over their caskets before the open ceremonies, later aired on state television.
Over 12 days before a ceasefire was declared on Tuesday, Israel claimed it killed around 30 Iranian commanders and 11 nuclear scientists, while hitting eight nuclear-related facilities and more than 720 military infrastructure sites. More than 1,000 people were killed, including at least 417 civilians, according to the Washington-based Human Rights Activists group.
Iran fired more than 550 ballistic missiles at Israel, most of which were intercepted, but those that got through caused damage in many areas and killed 28 people.
Saturday's ceremonies were the first public funerals for top commanders since the ceasefire, and Iranian state television reported that they were for 60 people in total, including four women and four children.
Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes. But Israel views it as an existential threat and said its military campaign was necessary to prevent Iran from building an atomic weapon.
Khamenei's last public appearance was June 11, two days before hostilities with Israel broke out, when he met with Iranian parliamentarians.
On Thursday, however, he released a pre-recorded video, in his first message since the end of the war, filled with warnings and threats directed toward the United States and Israel, the Islamic Republic's longtime adversaries.
The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, Rafael Grossi, has characterized the damage done by American bunker-buster bombs to Iran's Fordo nuclear site, which was built into a mountain, as 'very, very, very considerable.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
12 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
What's next for birthright citizenship after the Supreme Court's ruling
WASHINGTON — The legal battle over President Trump's move to end birthright citizenship is far from over despite his major Supreme Court victory Friday limiting nationwide injunctions. Immigrant advocates are vowing to fight to ensure birthright citizenship remains the law as the Republican president tries to do away with a more than century-old constitutional precedent. The high court's ruling sends cases challenging the president's birthright citizenship executive order back to the lower courts. But the ultimate fate of Trump's policy remains uncertain. Here's what to know about birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court's ruling and what happens next. Birthright citizenship makes anyone born in the United States an American citizen, including children born to mothers in the country illegally. The practice goes back to soon after the Civil War, when Congress ratified the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, in part to ensure that Black people, including formerly enslaved Americans, had citizenship. 'All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States,' the amendment states. Thirty years later, Wong Kim Ark, a man born in the U.S. to Chinese parents, was refused reentry into the U.S. after traveling overseas. His suit led to the Supreme Court explicitly ruling that the amendment gives citizenship to anyone born in the United States, no matter their parents' legal status. It has been seen since then as an intrinsic part of U.S. law, with only a few exceptions, such as for children born in the U.S. to foreign diplomats. Trump signed an executive order upon assuming office in January that seeks to deny citizenship to children born to parents who are living in the U.S. illegally or temporarily. The order is part of the president's hard-line anti-immigration agenda, and he has called birthright citizenship a 'magnet for illegal immigration.' Trump and his supporters focus on one phrase in the amendment — 'subject to the jurisdiction thereof' — which they contend means the U.S. can deny citizenship to babies born to women in the country illegally. A series of federal judges have said that's not true and issued nationwide injunctions stopping his order from taking effect. 'I've been on the bench for over four decades. I can't remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one is. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,' U.S. District Judge John Coughenour said at a hearing this year in his Seattle courtroom. In Greenbelt, Md., a Washington suburb, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman wrote that 'the Supreme Court has resoundingly rejected and no court in the country has ever endorsed' Trump's interpretation of birthright citizenship. The high court's ruling was a major victory for the Trump administration in that it limited an individual judge's authority in granting nationwide injunctions. The administration hailed the ruling as a monumental check on the powers of individual district court judges, whom Trump supporters have argued are usurping the president's authority with rulings blocking his priorities on immigration and other matters. But the Supreme Court did not address the merits of Trump's bid to enforce his birthright citizenship executive order. 'The Trump administration made a strategic decision, which I think quite clearly paid off, that they were going to challenge not the judges' decisions on the merits, but on the scope of relief,' said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi told reporters at the White House that the administration is 'very confident' that the high court will ultimately side with the administration on the merits of the case. The justices kicked the cases challenging the birthright citizenship policy back down to the lower courts, where judges will have to decide how to tailor their orders to comply with the new ruling. The executive order remains blocked for at least 30 days, giving lower courts and the parties time to sort out the next steps. The Supreme Court's ruling leaves open the possibility that groups challenging the policy could still get nationwide relief through class-action lawsuits and seek certification as a nationwide class. Within hours after the ruling, two class-action suits had been filed in Maryland and New Hampshire seeking to block Trump's order. But obtaining nationwide relief through a class action is difficult as courts have put up hurdles to doing so over the years, said Suzette Malveaux, a Washington and Lee University law school professor. 'It's not the case that a class action is a sort of easy, breezy way of getting around this problem of not having nationwide relief,' said Malveaux, who had urged the high court not to eliminate the nationwide injunctions. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who penned the court's dissenting opinion, urged the lower courts to 'act swiftly on such requests for relief and to adjudicate the cases as quickly as they can so as to enable this Court's prompt review' in cases 'challenging policies as blatantly unlawful and harmful as the Citizenship Order.' Opponents of Trump's order warned there would be a patchwork of policies across the states, leading to chaos and confusion without nationwide relief. 'Birthright citizenship has been settled constitutional law for more than a century,' said Krish O'Mara Vignarajah, president and chief executive of Global Refuge, a nonprofit that supports refugees and migrants. 'By denying lower courts the ability to enforce that right uniformly, the Court has invited chaos, inequality, and fear.' Sullivan and Richer write for the Associated Press. AP writers Mark Sherman and Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington and Mike Catalini in Trenton, N.J., contributed to this report.
12 minutes ago
A week of shifting descriptions of Iran attack spark ongoing questions about extent of damage and goals
A week after President Donald Trump ordered a U.S. attack on three Iranian nuclear sites, the explanations and descriptions of what happened voiced by him, top aides and early intelligence reports paint contrasting pictures of the extent of the damage to Iran's nuclear program. While the president and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth repeatedly claimed that Iran's nuclear program has been "obliterated," preliminary assessments — including from the Pentagon's own intelligence wing — painted an evolving picture as the week went on. Trump said he ordered the attack on June 21 to strike a uranium enrichment site located in 300 feet deep in a mountain in Fordo in northwestern Iran, an uranium enrichment site in Natanz and the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center following reports that Iranian officials failed to comply with international nuclear regulations. And as those early damage assessments cast doubt on the extent to which Iran nuclear program was crippled, several of Trump's top aides and allied lawmakers also appeared to scale back the stated goals of the attack. Here are some of the accounts and characterizations over the last week. Officials label mission a success, but provide few details to start On Sunday morning, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth echoed Trump's statement from Saturday night, just after the strikes, that the sites had been "obliterated." "It was clear we devastated the Iranian nuclear program," he added. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, however, declined to go as far, saying it would take more time to assess the extent of the damage done. Hegseth acknowledged that damage assessment was ongoing but stuck by the description he and Trump were using. "All of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect, which means especially the primary target here, we believe we achieved destruction of capabilities there," he said. Pentagon initial damage report leaks Officials and inspectors from outside Iran have not been able to gain direct access to the bombed sites to make a first-hand assessment. Trump officials had a more nuanced take after news reports surfaced Tuesday about an initial Defense Intelligence Agency assessment that said the attack set back Iran's nuclear program only by months. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the leaks of the military's report but did not go as far as to claim that the sites were obliterated. Instead, he insisted that "very significant, substantial damage was done" to key components of Iran's nuclear program, "and we're just learning more about it." At the same time, Rubio provided more details about the attack, including that the bunker-buster bombs were dropped on ventilation shafts leading deep inside Fordo's heavily fortified facility -- buried, officials and experts said, 200 to 300 feet inside a mountain. He ultimately acknowledged that it was difficult to get a read on damage inflicted to Fordo at this point, but asserted "the bottom line is real damage was done." That same day, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard claimed in a statement that the three facilities were destroyed. The director general of the U.N.'s nuclear oversight agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, said Wednesday that he believed some of Iran's enriched uranium had been moved from the sites before the attacks. Trump refuted that analysis. "It would have taken two weeks, maybe. But it's very hard to remove that kind of material, very hard and very dangerous. Plus, they knew we were coming, and if they know we're coming, they're not going to be down there," he said Wednesday. Trump reiterated that the sites and the uranium were buried under rubble and inaccessible, adding that trucks seen in satellite images at the plant before the attack -- which some speculated could have been used to move the nuclear material -- were construction vehicles being used to cover the ventilation shaft openings with protective concrete. According to the two people familiar with the DIA's classified report, the bombing sealed off the entrances to two of the three nuclear sites targeted in the attack but most of the damage was done to structures above ground, leaving the lower structures intact. The assessment also found that at least some enriched uranium remained – possibly moved from the nuclear sites ahead of the blasts. The next day, on Thursday, Hegseth held a news conference where he slammed the news media over reporting but did not make the same assessment on the nuclear materials. Asked twice during the briefing if he could be more definitive about whether the enriched uranium was moved before the attack, Hegseth said the Pentagon was "watching every aspect." At that same Thursday briefing, Caine noted it's not his job to assess the damage, saying, "We don't grade our own homework." Facility destruction downplayed by officials, ceasefire emphasized Hegseth also highlighted what appeared to be a different goal of the mission, arguing the attack had succeeded because it led to stopping the fighting between Iran and Israel — rather than the facilities' destruction because it destroyed Iran's nuclear program. "We got that peace, that ceasefire, that option because of strength, because of [Trump's] willingness to use American military might that no one else on the planet can do with the kind of planners and operators that the chairman just laid out," he said. Then, on Friday, Trump echoed that sentiment. "They put out that fire once that happened, once those bombs got dropped out, that war was over," he said. Still, the president claimed again that the sites were obliterated during a news conference. "We finished them off," he said, adding, "I don't believe that they're going to go back into nuclear anytime soon." Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister said on Iranian State TV Thursday, however, the facilities were not destroyed and his country will have leverage in negotiations. The fate of the enriched uranium On Capitol Hill on Thursday, after administration officials gave lawmakers a classified briefing on the strikes, Republican lawmakers acknowledged that the U.S. strikes may not have destroyed Iran's cache of enriched uranium. But they said that wasn't part of the mission. "The purpose of the mission was to eliminate certain particular aspects of their nuclear program. Those were eliminated. To get rid of the nuclear material was not part of the mission,' Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., told CNN. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said the "program was obliterated at those three sites," but added, "I don't know where the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium exists. But it wasn't part of the targets there."
San Francisco Chronicle
21 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Guyana to crack down on gold smuggled in from Venezuela at the urging of the US government
GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) — Guyana has pledged to crack down on gold smuggled across the border from neighboring Venezuela at the urging of the U.S. government. President Irfaan Ali said late Friday that the government of the South American country is dedicating 'enormous resources' to thwart the smuggling, which has long been a problem. He said authorities have increased border patrols and improved monitoring in mining regions. Local officials have said they suspect that Venezuelan-sanctioned gold is being mixed with gold mined in Guyana and then passed off as local production and sold to markets in the U.S., Canada, the Middle East and elsewhere. In 2021, the Royal Canadian Mint suspended gold purchases from a major export company in Guyana because officials suspected some shipments had been mixed with Venezuelan gold, an allegation the company denied. Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Guyana has suspended the visas of several miners suspected of smuggling Venezuelan gold overseas. Gold is Guyana's second most important export after oil, generating nearly $1 billion last year. Some 434,000 ounces of gold were produced last year, up from 432,000 ounces the previous year, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources. It noted that up to 50% of local gold production is smuggled out of Guyana. U.S. Ambassador Nicole Theriot on Friday praised Guyana's cooperation, noting that the countries have worked together to secure Guyana's border with Venezuela. Relations between the two South American neighbors remain tense given a bitter dispute over the Essequibo region, which Venezuela has long claimed as its own. It represents two-thirds of Guyana and is rich in gold, diamonds, timber and other natural resources. It also is located close to massive offshore oil deposits, with current production averaging some 650,000 barrels daily.
