Germany's Merz urges moderation in call with Netanyahu, source says
BERLIN, June 19 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Friedrich Merz had a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which Merz called for moderation in Israel's campaign against Iran, a German government source told Reuters on Thursday.
Merz voiced Germany's support in principle for Israeli military attacks on Iran's nuclear infrastructure during the call on Wednesday evening but stressed the importance of seeking diplomatic solutions to the conflict, the source said.
Germany plans to host nuclear talks with its European partners and the Iranian foreign minister at its permanent representation in Geneva on Friday, a source told Reuters on Wednesday, with the goal of getting assurances from Iran that its nuclear programme is used solely for civilian purposes.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi confirmed that he will attend the meeting with his counterparts from Germany, Britain and France.
In a separate call, Merz agreed with the Emir of Qatar that there should be no escalation of the conflict into the wider region and in this context, Merz pointed to the Geneva talks, his spokesperson said in a statement.
Israel has said the goal of its strikes is to eliminate Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon - but Iran says its nuclear programme is purely civilian.
Merz and Netanyahu also discussed the situation in Gaza during their phone call, according to the source.
The German government has called on Israel to adhere to international law in its war against Hamas in Gaza, where tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and aid restrictions are exacerbating a humanitarian crisis.
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Daily Mail
14 minutes ago
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EXCLUSIVE Cornered Iran could unleash sinister attacks on US soil as it runs out of options against Israel, insiders say
Desperate Iranian mullahs could lash out at America ordering deadly cyber attacks on our dams and electricity grids – or even terror attacks from 'sleeper cells', security experts are warning. spoke to former top diplomats, cybersecurity and national security experts who said that although the Iranian regime is on the back foot and reeling from Israeli bombardment, it still has the ability to wreak havoc on US soil. A former senior diplomat who had extensive Top Secret security briefings on Iran told that the new 'hot war' between Iran and Israel, and Ayatollah Khameini's increasingly desperate position, has ratcheted up the risk of the regime taking drastic action in the US. 'I can't imagine, seeing how this war is going, that Iran is going to hold back,' said the top ex-US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. 'They're running out of options, and this is one of the areas in which they've unfortunately been quite effective. 'You can't manufacture new missiles or centrifuges overnight. But you can empower whatever proxies are remaining to act with even more deadly results. 'Assassination attempts, terror attacks, they will of course still try to do those things. It's no secret they have made assassination attempts on US soil, in Washington DC. 'Their capabilities for doing so are becoming less both because of their degrading situation, and also because we're on much higher alert here in DC. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his fellow Ayatollah, an honorific title for high-ranking Shia clergy, have become increasingly desperate, which has ratcheted up the risk of the regime taking drastic action in the US 'But If they employ hacking capabilities on mass infrastructure, our energy grid, our nuclear facilities, major dams, these are all things that are vulnerable.' The former top State Department official said Iran had been pouring money for years into political opposition to US Iran hawks and promoting critiques of its enemies such as Israel on university campuses. But a hail-Mary strategy for the regime action could see Iranian government-backed online activity turn to more dangerous hacking. 'It's not just about stoking up anti-American fervor on campus. It's also about finding the weakest parts of the systems that keep us all safe,' the ex-official said. 'You don't need to bomb trains. You could just have the signals mixed up due to a digital hack and have them run into each other.' Rex Booth, who worked as the chief of cyber threat analysis at the government's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, gave a stark warning that Iran's hackers have already infiltrated critical US infrastructure. 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'The idea is that they can open dams, release water when they're not supposed to, and potentially cause, depending on how the dam is situated, catastrophic consequences downstream,' Booth said. 'We learned, based on observations that the private sector makes as well as government has made, that there is substantial intrusion into our national critical infrastructure by a variety of nation-state actors. 'And our visibility into that intrusion, we know is limited. We know it's happening, we see a portion of it, but we suspect that's a pretty small percentage. 'So when we go to engage adversarial nations in conflict, we have to do so with the knowledge that we don't have full visibility into the extent of the infiltration of these nations into our systems that we depend on day in, day out. And with that comes real risk.' Oregon Senator Ron Wyden has railed against outdated and vulnerable security systems for private dams in his state, stating in a congressional hearing last year: 'I don't want to wake up to a news report about a small town in the Pacific Northwest getting wiped out because of a cyberattack against a private dam upriver.' In 2024, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) had just four full-time employees tasked with overseeing 2,500 dams across the US and had not updated its cybersecurity requirements for commercial dam operators since 2016. FERC proposed new cybersecurity standards in September but has not yet implemented them. One insider, EJ Kimball, said Israel has been so effective in its assassination of Iranian and Hezbollah military leaders that terrorists may be confused as to who to take orders from Kimball, who works as Director of Christian Outreach and Engagement for the nonprofit Combat Antisemitism Movement and is a national security consultant, said the FBI has testified in Congress for years that Iranian support networks operate inside the US National security consultant EJ Kimball told there is 'certainly a risk that the Iranians may escalate things regarding the US.' 'The FBI has reported in congressional testimony over the years about Iranian support networks operating inside the US,' added Kimball, who works as Director of Christian Outreach and Engagement for the nonprofit Combat Antisemitism Movement. 'It's certainly a big risk that those networks could be activated to carry out terrorist attacks here. 'We know that Hezbollah has been operating in the US for over 25 years, probably over 30 years at this point. Hezbollah is controlled by Iran.' But Kimball added that Israel had been so effective in its lightning assassinations of Iranian and Hezbollah military leaders that potential terrorists may not know who to take orders from anymore. 'Obviously a desperate regime will lead to desperate measures being taken. But those can only be taken if someone is there to give the orders,' he said. 'If you're one of those sleeper cells in the United States that's been here, you would have to be a die hard to actually move forward with it, because there is essentially no path to victory for the Iranian cause. 'The quicker that this war with Iran ends, the less likelihood that those agents would actually activate.' 'There's a lot of bluster. The question is, what is their actual capability? We have to plan for the worst, but expect the best,' Kimball said.
Daily Mail
24 minutes ago
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Who will launch nukes first amid WW3 fears, according to experts
As fears of all-out nuclear war intensify, scientists are sounding the alarm that the decision to launch a catastrophic strike could soon rest not with world leaders, but with a machine. In a stark warning, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), an independent group that monitors global security issues, reported that the decades-long decline in global nuclear arsenals has come to an end. Instead, nations are now modernizing, expanding, and deploying their stockpiles at a rapid and alarming pace, signaling the onset of a new, high-tech arms race. While AI and similar technologies can accelerate decision-making during crises, scientists warn they also raise the risk of nuclear conflict through miscommunication, misunderstanding, or technical failure, the report stated. In a nuclear standoff, decision-makers often have only minutes to assess threats and respond. AI systems can process vast amounts of information in real time, potentially aiding faster decisions, but possibly at the expense of caution. Dan Smith, the director of SIPRI, wrote: 'We see the warning signs of a new nuclear arms race at a particularly dangerous and unstable moment for geopolitics.' 'If the decision to launch nuclear weapons is ever fully handed over to AI, we'd be approaching true doomsday scenarios,' Smith continued. The report follows Israel's attack on Iran's nuclear and missile facilities last week, sparking fears that WWIII may be imminent. While the White House played no direct role in the strike, President Donald Trump suggested that Iran had brought the attack on itself by resisting an ultimatum in talks to restrict its nuclear program. Iran does not possess such weapons yet, but its allies, Russia and China, have more than 6,000 nuclear warheads combined. On Thursday, the White House confirmed that Trump will decide within the next two weeks whether to launch a military strike on Iran aimed at crippling its nuclear capabilities. The announcement came as Israel and Iran exchanged missile fire and drone attacks for the seventh consecutive day. According to the report, an estimated 12,241 nuclear warheads are currently held by nine countries: the US, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. Nuclear powers, including the US and China, are ramping up production of new, more sophisticated weapons at a faster pace than they are retiring older stockpiles. Smith and his team warned that incorporating AI into nuclear launch systems could significantly raise the risk of an accidental war. Despite the risks, SIPRI said that governments are increasingly drawn to the speed and processing power AI offers. 'One component of the coming arms race will be the attempt to gain and maintain a competitive edge in artificial intelligence, both for offensive and defensive purposes,' Smith said in the SIPRI report. 'AI has a wide range of potential strategic utility; there are benefits to be found, but the careless adoption of AI could significantly increase nuclear risk,' Smith cautioned. The 2025 report also pointed out that at multiple times in the history of nuclear weapons, a cataclysmic war has almost taken place completely by accident. One of the most well-known incidents occurred in September 1983, when a Soviet early-warning system falsely reported five incoming US missiles. Fortunately, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, the duty officer at the time, questioned the validity of the alert. He reasoned that a real American first strike would involve far more warheads and chose not to escalate the alert. His decision is widely credited with preventing a possible global catastrophe. 'Had he believed the information, he would have passed it up the line and, though there is no certainty either way, his superiors, wrongly thinking they were under attack, might have decided upon retaliation,' Smith wrote. Smith added that the speed at which AI operates means that in future conflicts, people like Petrov might not have the time to prevent a computer's decision to launch a retaliatory strike. The SIPRI report also cited recent revelations about the secret arms race taking place among the world's nuclear superpowers. Officially, five countries, China, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea, have increased their nuclear stockpiles by over 700 warheads over the past 40 years. That's according to a 2024 report by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a nonprofit global policy think tank. The fastest-growing arsenal is China's, with Beijing adding about 100 new warheads per year since 2023, according to SIPRI's latest count, which claimed the Chinese now have 600 nuclear bombs as of 2025. China could potentially have at least as many intercontinental ballistic missiles as either Russia or the US by the 2030s. Of the estimated 12,241 nuclear warheads worldwide, about 9,614 were in the active military stockpiles for potential use. Approximately 2,100 of the warheads that have been actively deployed are currently in a state of high operational alert - attached to ballistic missiles on ships, submarines, or planes. 'The era of reductions in the number of nuclear weapons in the world, which had lasted since the end of the Cold War, is coming to an end,' the SIPRI report warned. 'Instead, we see a clear trend of growing nuclear arsenals, sharpened nuclear rhetoric and the abandonment of arms control agreements.' SIPRI said Russia and the US, which possess around 90 percent of all nuclear weapons, kept the sizes of their respective arsenals relatively stable in 2024. However, both were implementing extensive modernization programs that could increase the size of their arsenals in the future.
Reuters
26 minutes ago
- Reuters
Netanyahu says fall of Iran's leadership not a goal but could be a result
June 19 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that the change or fall of Iran's leadership was not a goal of Israel's attacks but could be a result. "The matter of changing the regime or the fall of this regime is first and foremost a matter for the Iranian people. There is no substitute for this. "And that's why I didn't present it as a goal. It could be a result, but it's not a stated or formal goal that we have," Netanyahu said in an interview with Israel's Kan public television. He said Israel had the power to remove all of Iran's nuclear facilities, whether U.S. President Donald Trump decides to join in or not. Netanyahu spoke before the White House said Trump would decide in the next two weeks whether to get involved. Military analysts believe Israel might need the help of U.S. military bunker-busting bombs to destroy the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, the crown jewel of Iran's nuclear program buried beneath a mountain near the city of Qom. Asked whether Fordow could be addressed with or without the Americans, Netanyahu said: "We have the power to remove all our targets, all their nuclear facilities, but the president's decision whether he wants to join or not is again his decision. "He will do what is good for the United States and I will do what is good for the State of Israel and I must say that up to this moment everyone is doing their part," Netanyahu said. On Wednesday, Trump said the United States alone had the capability to destroy or dismantle Fordow. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to do it - at all," Trump said.
