Israel says it killed Iran's new wartime commander in airstrike
Major General Ali Shadmani, chief of staff of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps' Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, was appointed as the new head of the IRG's Emergency Command to replace one of the five of Iran's most senior military commanders killed in the initial phase of Israel's surprise attack early Friday. Photo courtesy Supreme Leader of Iran's office via EPA-EFE
June 17 (UPI) -- Israel claimed Tuesday it had killed Iran's highest-ranking military chief after just days in the job in an airstrike by Israeli warplanes.
"Ali Shadmani, Iran's senior-most military official and Khamenei's closest military adviser, was killed in an Israeli Air Force strike in central Tehran, following precise intelligence," the Israel Defense Forces said.
Shadmani was appointed as the new head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Emergency Command to replace Gholam Ali Rashid in the hours after Rashid was among five of Iran's most senior military commanders killed in the initial phase of Israel's surprise attack early Friday.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is the commander-in-chief of the country's armed forces.
The development came as both sides continued to trade deadly attacks into a fifth day -- Israel leveraging its stranglehold on Iranian airspace to ramp up its airborne assault on key military and nuclear targets while Iran launched 30 ballistic missiles with blasts reported in northern Israel.
Israel's health ministry said another 154 people had been injured overnight, with 149 admitted to hospital in a moderate condition or with only minor injuries.
However, Israel said there had been noticeably fewer missiles incoming than on previous days.
Two dozen people in Israel have been killed since Friday, mainly in missile strikes on residential districts in the center and north of the country, while Iran's Health Ministry says Israel's attacks have killed 224 people and injured more than 1,200, mostly in Tehran.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One after cutting short his meeting with world leaders at a G7 summit in Canada to head back to Washington, President Donald Trump, in a somewhat cryptic comment, denied an Israel-Iran truce was afoot, saying "we're looking at better than a cease-fire."
Before departing Calgary, Trump had told Iranians they needed to evacuate Tehran immediately.
Analysts were trying to figure out whether Trump intends to try to go the diplomatic route and get Tehran to return to the negotiating table to deal on its nuclear development program or double down on his support for Israel.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian issued renewed but vague threats Tuesday, warning Iran "will have to show more painful responses," unless the United States reined in Israeli aggression and repeated the claim that none of what was occurring could take place without Washington's involvement.
"If the U.S. government does not prevent the spread of insecurity to the region by bridling that savage [Israeli] regime, Iran will be obliged to give heavier and more painful responses beyond what has occurred so far," Pezeshkian warned in a call with Omani sultan Haitham bin Tariq.
Oman has been hosting talks on Iran's nuclear program between top U.S. negotiator Steve Witkoff and Iranian officials that began in April.
Pezeshkian insisted all regime officials, political factions of all persuasions and the people of Iran were willing the armed forces to succeed in their fight against Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, similarly, gave away no indication of wanting to end the conflict any time soon, saying Israeli air power was operating freely while the city of Tehran burned.
"The Israeli Air Force controls the skies over Tehran. We strike regime targets -- not civilians. That's the difference between us and Iran's terrorist regime that aims to murder women and children," he said in a post on X.
"I am proud of our security forces and our wonderful people. Together we will win."
At least two European countries have already begun implementing plans to evacuate their citizens from the region.
A Czech government evacuation flight touched down Tuesday with 66 people on board, according to Defense Minister Jana Cernochova, with another 11 due to be brought out on a Slovakian government flight in the coming hours.
Another flight that landed in Bratislava from Jordan on Monday evening had 14 other Czech citizens aboard.
Poland is sending planes to collect up to 300 of its nationals who have asked to be repatriated from Israel, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Monday.
Deputy Foreign Minister Henryka Moscicka-Dendys said initial evacuations would be via Egypt and Jordan, with a government-chartered aircraft due to depart Sharm el-Sheikh early Wednesday, followed by a military flight out of Amman on Thursday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
German industry sees 'longer' path out of recession as tensions climb
German industry faces a "longer and more difficult path out of recession" as a result of shocks to the global economy, a trade association leader said on Monday. Peter Leibinger, president of the Federation of German Industries (BDI), highlighted "flashpoints" such as the tariff conflict with the United States and the escalation in the Middle East. Speaking at an event to mark the "Day of Industry" in Berlin, Leibinger said he was worried about Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial shipping lane for oil transport. A temporary blockade in response to the Israeli and US attacks on Iran could have massive implications for oil prices, he argued. Leibinger also warned of tighter export restrictions in China on rare earth minerals, which are needed for many high-tech sectors. The BDI now expects the German economy to fall 0.3% this year, down from its January forecast of a 0.1% drop. Managing director Tanja Gönner said the association's forecast - which is markedly lower than those of other institutes - takes into account growing uncertainty, for example in US customs policy. The BDI assumes that planned US tariffs will come into effect, expecting a 20% duty on some EU goods from July 10. The German government has recently expressed confidence that an agreement between the European Commission and the United States would soon be signed. Looking ahead to 2026, Leibinger said there is "a real chance of an upturn ... If the German government continues to pursue the announced path, then there is a real chance of an upturn next year." Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative-led coalition wants to stimulate the economy with tax relief and reductions in energy prices, after Germany experienced two consecutive years of recession. Leibinger spoke of a "confidence problem" in the country, which he argued is slowing down investment. 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
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘My son went to get flour. He came back in a coffin': As the world focuses on Iran, Palestinians are being shot dead seeking aid
'My son went to get some flour for his family, but came back in a coffin and a death shroud.' These are the words of father-of-six Iyad Abu Darabi describing how Israeli forces killed his 25-year-old son Mussa in southern Gaza in the first few weeks of June. Desperate and starving, the young man had snuck off against his family's wishes to collect food from a specially designated distribution site backed by Israel and run by the deeply controversial US-based non-profit Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). Almost all aid going into Gaza now runs through the American aid group, which started operations in May following a months-long Israeli blockade of nearly all food and aid. Food is handed out at overcrowded and deadly sites overseen by American private security contractors and the Israeli army. Gazans have described the sites as 'American death zones' because of the contractors who patrol them. The foundation has been shrouded in secrecy, with obscure sources of funding and several changes in leadership and management since its launch. Gaza's health ministry said that Israeli forces opening fire on crowds trying to reach the GHF food distribution points have killed nearly 400 Palestinians and wounded more than 3,000 since aid deliveries were reinstated in late May. Several videos from the sites show people cowering or running from gunfire, struggling to carry bags of food as they escape. Despite the carnage, the Trump administration is said to be considering funding the organisation to the tune of $500m (£370m) through the recently downsized US Agency for International Development (USAID). This week though, the world's focus has been on the growing clashes between Israel and Iran. The two sides have traded thousands of missiles, drones and bombs in a conflict that threatens to engulf the entire Middle East and draw in countries from around the world. It has overshadowed the desperate events in Gaza, where the two-million-strong population is trapped in a snare of famine, according to the United Nations. An unprecedented Israeli bombardment of the tiny 35-mile-long strip has killed over 55,000 people since Hamas militants' bloody attacks on southern Israel in October 2023. Mussa was just one of hundreds who have lost their lives in the desperate search for food. Witnesses and families of those killed say Israeli forces opened fire on the massive crowds gathered that day as hungry civilians scrambled for food in a desert wasteland. He was hit by tank fire, and killed instantly alongside women and children, Iyad says. 'The aid is a death trap for young people: in a barren land surrounded by fences, the gates are opened for tens of thousands to fight over supplies without any order. Israel leaves people fighting each other over food,' Iyad says in desperation. 'He went without my knowledge and because of extreme hunger. But this is not aid, it is an opportunity for more killing.' The Israeli military has admitted firing warning shots at people gathered for aid, but denies targeting civilians in Gaza or turning aid distribution sites into 'death traps'. It told The Independent that at least one incident is 'under review'. 'The IDF regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and operates to minimise harm as much as possible to them, while maintaining the safety of our troops,' it added. The GHF said this incident did not occur at a GHF site, and in a press release on Monday claimed it had distributed more than three million meals at its four sites 'without incident'. The latest – and deadliest – incident took place on Tuesday. The health ministry said that 59 people were killed and more than 200 wounded while waiting for United Nations and commercial trucks to enter the territory with desperately needed food. Palestinian witnesses said that Israeli forces carried out an airstrike on a nearby home before opening fire towards the crowd in the southern city of Khan Younis. While the shooting did not appear to be related to the newly launched Israeli-backed GHF network — it is an indication of the deadly struggle Palestinians face every day to get food, at a time when a kilo of sugar is now $70. Randa Youssef, 42, a single mother-of-three, says her cousin Mohammed was killed on 5 June while attempting to get food from a GHF site in Rafah. She said Mohammed was due to be married just three days later. 'He was shot in the back and fell to the ground. There was no means of transport. He bled to death for three hours amid continuous gunfire,' Randa explains. 'We can't afford the basic necessities. A kilo of sugar costs $70 today. That's why we risk our lives. My son sometimes cries. I honestly don't know what to feed him. 'This American aid is deliberate chaos.' The Biden administration paid lip service to trying to convince Israel to allow aid into Gaza without achieving much in the way of results, but the Trump administration has largely taken a hands-off approach. Israel cut off the supply of most food and aid to Gaza in March, causing hunger to skyrocket across the Strip. Humanitarian groups have warned that most of Gaza's 2.2 million people are at risk of starvation unless aid deliveries are ramped up. The GHF system began in May, but aid groups have warned it is wholly insufficient to meet the needs of the population. The UN and other humanitarian organisations have also warned of the risk of friction between Israeli troops and civilians seeking supplies, and continue to call for an immediate ceasefire and unrestricted aid access. Former officials from the US state department and USAID who have worked on emergency aid delivery described the new system as 'grotesque', 'dangerous' and part of a larger plan to use aid to control the movement of Palestinians. 'What is so infuriatingly tragic about this is that it's playing out exactly as any experienced humanitarian could have predicted,' said Jeremy Konyndyk, who oversaw famine relief for three years during the Obama administration and is now president of Refugees International. 'When you have an aid distribution model that is premised on forcing huge crowds of desperately hungry people to cluster directly adjacent to IDF military installations, you're going to get massacres,' he added. Mr Konyndyk said it was 'not a coincidence' that most of the distribution sites were in the south of Gaza, at a time when the Israeli army was trying to force Palestinians out of the north of the territory. 'A basic principle of humanitarian response is you move the aid as close to you can to where the people are. They're doing the opposite of that, the diametric opposite of that, which suggests that they want to draw people to the south,' he said. 'I think that is highly suggestive of the longer-term agenda here,' he added. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans last month to force Palestinians to move to southern Gaza after his security cabinet approved an expanded military operation in the northern and central parts of the territory. 'There will be a movement of the population to protect them,' he said of the operation. Stacey Gilbert, who resigned from the state department in 2024 over the Biden administration's failure to hold Israel accountable for blocking aid to Gaza, called the sites 'another stunt'. 'It's a stunt like the air drops. It's a stunt like the floating pier debacle. These are all ways that both the Biden administration, now the Trump administration, are using to try to obscure the fact that they're going to these extraordinarily dangerous and extraordinarily expensive efforts because Israel is blocking aid. There's no other way to see it,' she told The Independent. 'It is so humiliating and undignified and just dangerous, straight out dangerous for everyone involved,' she added. Ms Gilbert, too, believes the sites are located primarily in the south to draw Palestinians away from the north. 'This is trying to draw them all to one area, to get them away from the area that Israel doesn't want them in,' she said. Despite hundreds of deaths at the GHF sites and an insufficient level of aid getting into Gaza, the Trump administration appears to be leaving the door open to backing it financially. A state department spokesperson told The Independent that the GHF was 'an independent organisation. It does not receive USG funding.' 'Nevertheless, we are constantly looking for creative solutions to get aid into Gaza without it being looted by Hamas,' the spokesperson added. Israel insists the new system was necessary because aid was being diverted to Hamas under the previous long-established system, managed by the United Nations, a charge denied by the UN and by Hamas. For Salwa al-Daghma, from the southern city of Khan Younis, 'this aid is a morsel of food soaked in blood'. Her brother Khaled, a father-of-five, was shot dead by a sniper earlier this month at another GHF site in Rafah when he tried to get just a kilo of flour for his children – the youngest just over two years old. Again, Israeli forces opened fire on the massive crowds when chaos broke out. 'He was hit by a bullet directly in the head. His brain came out the other side, and he was killed instantly,' she said. 'Israel closed the crossings and banned food, and they came to us with a method to kill our children and families. 'This is a death trap, not an aid point. They don't want to help us – they are actually killing us.'
Atlantic
21 minutes ago
- Atlantic
A Military Ethics Professor Resigns in Protest
Seven years ago, Pauline Shanks Kaurin left a good job as a tenured professor at a university, uprooted her family, and moved across the country to teach military ethics at the Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island. She did so, she told me, not only to help educate American military officers, but with a promise from the institution that she would have 'the academic freedom to do my job.' But now she's leaving her position and the institution because orders from President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, she said, have made staying both morally and practically untenable. Remaining on the faculty, she believes, would mean implicitly lending her approval to policies she cannot support. And she said that the kind of teaching and research the Navy once hired her to do will now be impossible. The Naval War College is one of many institutions—along with the Army War College, the Air War College, and others—that provide graduate-level instruction in national-security issues and award master's degrees to the men and women of the U.S. armed forces. The Naval War College is also home to a widely respected civilian academic post, the James B. Stockdale Chair in Professional Military Ethics, named for the famous admiral and American prisoner of war in Vietnam. Pauline has held the Stockdale Chair since 2018. (I taught for many years at the Naval War College, where I knew Pauline as a colleague.) Her last day will be at the end of this month. In January, Trump issued an executive order, Restoring America's Fighting Force, that prohibits the Department of Defense and the entire armed forces from 'promoting, advancing, or otherwise inculcating the following un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational theories,' such as 'gender ideology,' 'race or sex stereotyping,' and, of course, anything to do with DEI. Given the potential breadth of the order, the military quickly engaged in a panicky slash-and-burn approach rather than risk running afoul of the new ideological line. The U.S. Military Academy at West Point, in New York, for example, disbanded several clubs, including the local chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers. Other military installations, apparently anticipating a wider crackdown on anything to do with race or gender, removed important pages of American history about women and minorities from their websites. All of this was done by bureaucrats and administrators as they tried to comply with Trump's vague order, banning and erasing anything that the president and Hegseth might construe as even remotely related to DEI or other banned concepts. Some Defense Department workers 'deemed to be affiliated with DEI programs or activities' were warned that Trump's orders 'required' their jobs to be eliminated. Many professors at military institutions began to see signs that they might soon be prohibited from researching and publishing in their fields of study. Phillip Atiba Solomon: Am I still allowed to tell the truth in my class? At first, Pauline was cautious. She knew that her work in the field of military ethics could be controversial—particularly on the issues of oaths and obedience. In the military, where discipline and the chain of command rule daily life, investigating the meaning of oath-taking and obedience is a necessary but touchy exercise. The military is sworn to obey all legal orders in the chain of command, but when that obedience becomes absolute, the results can be ghastly: Pauline wrote her doctoral dissertation at Temple University on oaths, obedience, and the 1969 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, in which a young U.S. officer and his men believed that their orders allowed them to slay hundreds of unarmed civilians. For more than 20 years, she taught these matters in the philosophy department at Pacific Lutheran University, and once at Newport, she wrote a book on the contrasting notions of obedience in military and civilian life. When the Trump order came down, Pauline told me that Naval War College administrators gave her 'vague assurances' that the college would not interfere with ongoing work by her or other faculty, or with academic freedom in general. But one day, shortly after the executive order in January, she was walking through the main lobby, which proudly features display cases with books by the faculty, and she noticed that a volume on LGBTQ issues in the military had vanished. The disappearance of that book led Pauline to seek more clarity from the college's administration about nonpartisanship, and especially about academic freedom. Academic freedom is an often-misunderstood term. Many people outside academia encounter the idea only when some professor abuses the concept as a license to be an offensive jerk. (A famous case many years ago involved a Colorado professor who compared the victims of 9/11 to Nazis who deserved what they got.) Like tenure, however, academic freedom serves crucial educational purposes, protecting controversial research and encouraging the free exchange of even the most unpopular ideas without fear of political pressure or interference. It is essential to any serious educational institution, and necessary to a healthy democracy. Conor Friedersdorf: In defense of academic freedom Professors who teach for the military, as I did for many years, do have to abide by some restrictions not found in civilian schools. They have a duty, as sworn federal employees, to protect classified information. They may not use academic freedom to disrupt government operations. (Leading a protest that would prevent other government workers from getting to their duty stations might be one example.) And, of course, they must refrain from violating the Hatch Act: They cannot use government time or resources to engage in partisan political activity. But they otherwise have—or are supposed to have—the same freedoms as their colleagues in civilian institutions. Soon, however, jumpy military bureaucrats started tossing books and backing out of conferences. Pauline became more concerned. Newport's senior administrators began to send informal signals that included, as she put it, the warning that 'academic freedom as many of us understood it was not a thing anymore.' Based on those messages, Pauline came to believe that her and other faculty members' freedom to comment publicly on national issues and choose research topics without institutional interference was soon to be restricted. During an all-hands meeting with senior college leaders in February, Pauline said that she and other Naval War College faculty were told that the college would comply with Hegseth's directives and that, in Pauline's words, 'if we were thinking we had academic freedom in our scholarship and in the classroom, we were mistaken.' (Other faculty present at the meeting confirmed to me that they interpreted the message from the college's leadership the same way; one of them later told me that the implication was that the Defense Department could now rule any subject out of bounds for classroom discussion or scholarly research at will.) Pauline said there were audible gasps in the room, and such visible anger that it seemed to her that even the administrators hosting the meeting were taken aback. 'I've been in academia for 31 years,' she told me, and that gathering 'was the most horrifying meeting I've ever been a part of.' I contacted the college's provost, Stephen Mariano, who told me in an email that these issues were 'nuanced' but that the college had not changed its policies on academic freedom. (He also denied any changes relating to tenure, a practice predicated on academic freedom.) At the same time, he added, the college is 'complying with all directives issued by the President and Department of Defense and following Department of the Navy policy.' This language leaves Pauline and other civilian faculty at America's military schools facing a paradox: They are told that academic freedom still exists, but that their institutions are following directives from Hegseth that, at least on their face, seem aimed at ending academic freedom. In March, Pauline again sought clarity from college leaders. They were clearly anxious to appear compliant with the new political line. ('We don't want to end up on Fox News,' she said one administrator told her.) She was told her work was valued, but she didn't believe it. 'Talk is cheap,' she said. 'Actions matter.' She said she asked the provost point-blank: What if a faculty member has a book or an article coming out on some controversial topic? His answer, according to her: Hypothetically, they might consider pulling the work from publication. (Mariano denies saying this and told me that there is no change in college policy on faculty publication.) Every government employee knows the bureaucratic importance of putting things on paper. Pauline's current project is about the concept of honor, which necessarily involves questions regarding masculinity and gender—issues that could turn the DOD's new McCarthyites toward her and her work. So she now proposed that she and the college administration work up a new contract, laying out more clearly—in writing—what the limits on her work and academic freedom would look like. She might as well have asked for a pony. Administrators, she said, told her that they hoped she wouldn't resign, but that no one was going to put anything in writing. 'The upshot,' according to her, was a message from the administration that boiled down to: We hope you can just suck it up and not need your integrity for your final year as the ethics chair. After that, she told me, her choices were clear. 'As they say in the military: Salute and execute—or resign.' Until then, she had 'hoped maybe people would still come to their senses.' The promises of seven years ago were gone; the institution now apparently expected her and other faculty to self-censor in the classroom and preemptively bowdlerize their own research. 'I don't do DEI work,' she said, 'but I do moral philosophy, and now I can't do it. I'd have to take out discussions of race and gender and not do philosophy as I think it should be done.' In April, she submitted a formal letter of resignation. Initially, she had no interest in saying anything publicly. Pauline is a native Montanan and single mom of two, and by nature not the type of person to engage in public food fights. (She used to joke with me when we were colleagues that I was the college's resident lightning rod, and she had no interest in taking over that job.) She's a philosopher who admires quiet stoicism, and she was resolved to employ it in her final months. But she also thought about what she owed her chair's namesake. 'Stockdale thought philosophy was important for officers. The Stockdale course was created so that officers would wrestle with moral obligations. He was a personal model of integrity.' Even so, she did not try to invoke him as a patron saint when she decided to resign. 'I'm not saying he would agree with the choice that I made,' she told me. 'But his model of moral integrity is part of the chair.' She kept her resignation private until early May, when a professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Graham Parsons—another scholar who teaches ethics in a military school, and a friend of Pauline's—likewise decided to resign in protest and said that he would leave West Point after 13 years. Hegseth's changes 'prevent me from doing my job responsibly,' he wrote in The New York Times. 'I am ashamed to be associated with the academy in its current form.' Hegseth responded on X, sounding more like a smug internet troll than a concerned superior: 'You will not be missed Professor Parsons.' The episode changed Pauline's mind. She felt she owed her friends and colleagues whatever public support and solidarity she could offer them. Nor are she and Parsons alone. Tom McCarthy, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland, recently resigned as chair of the history department rather than remove a paper from an upcoming symposium. And last month, a senior scholar at the Army War College, in Pennsylvania, Carrie Lee, also handed in her resignation, a decision she announced to her friends and followers on Bluesky. Jason Dempsey: Hegseth has all the wrong enemies Lee told me in an email that she'd been thinking of leaving after Trump was elected, because it was apparent to her that the Trump administration was 'going to try and politicize the military and use military assets/personnel to suppress democratic rights,' and that academic freedom in military schools was soon to 'become untenable.' Like Pauline, Lee felt like she was at a dead end: 'To speak from within the institution itself will also do more harm than good. So to dissent, I have little choice but to leave,' she said in a farewell letter to her colleagues in April. I asked Pauline what she thinks might have happened if she had decided to stay and just tough it out from the inside. She 'absolutely' thinks she'd have been fired at some point, and she didn't want such a firing 'to be part of the legacy of the Stockdale Chair.' But then I asked her if by resigning, she was giving people in the Trump administration, such as Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought—who once said that his goal was to make federal workers feel 'trauma' to the point where they will quit their jobs—exactly what they want: Americans leaving federal service. She didn't care. 'When you make a moral decision, there are always costs.' She dismissed what people like Vought want or think. 'I'm not accountable to him. I'm accountable to the Lord, to my father, to my legacy, to my children, to my profession, to members of the military-ethics community. So I decided that I needed to resign. Not that it would change anyone's mind, but to say: This is not okay. That is my message.' At the end of our discussion, I asked an uncomfortable question I'd been avoiding. Pauline, I know, is only in her mid-50s, in mid-career, and too young simply to retire. She has raised two sons who will soon enter young adulthood. I asked her if she was worried about her future. 'Sure,' she said. 'But at the end of the day, as we say in Montana, sometimes you just have to saddle up and ride scared.'
