US Strikes Iran Trump Says Iran Sites Hit Hard, Slams 'Fake News' Coverage News18
After Iran's missile strikes on US bases in Qatar and Iraq, President Trump claimed US attacks on Iran caused total destruction while blasting major US media as fake news. Iran's retaliation, named Operation Besharat Fatah, targeted key bases, with Tehran warning it will continue until US and Israeli strikes stop. News18 Mobile App - https://onelink.to/desc-youtube
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Business Standard
23 minutes ago
- Business Standard
A look at Al Udeid Air Base, US military site in Qatar that Iran attacked
The US has military sites spread across the region, including in Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the United Arab Emirates AP Washington Iran retaliated Monday for the US attacks on its nuclear sites by targeting Al Udeid Air Base, a sprawling desert facility in Qatar that serves as a main regional military hub for American forces. A US defence official says no casualties have been reported. As of this month, the US military had about 40,000 service members in the Middle East, according to a US official. Many of them are on ships at sea as part of a bolstering of forces as the conflict escalated between Israel and Iran, according to the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations research and policy centre. Bases in the Middle East have been on heightened alert and taking additional security precautions in anticipation of potential strikes from Iran, while the Pentagon has shifted military aircraft and warships into and around the region during the conflict. The US has military sites spread across the region, including in Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. Here's a look at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar: Al Udeid hosts thousands of service members The sprawling facility hosts thousands of US service members and served as a major staging ground for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the height of both, Al Udeid housed some 10,000 US troops, and that number dropped to about 8,000 as of 2022. The forward headquarters of the US military's Central Command, Al Udeid is built on a flat stretch of desert about 20 miles (30 km) southwest of Qatar's capital, Doha. Over two decades, the gas-rich Gulf country has spent some $8 billion in developing the base, once considered so sensitive that American military officers would say only that it was somewhere in southwest Asia. Trump has visited Al Udeid Trump visited the air base during a trip to the region last month. It was the first time a sitting US president had travelled to the installation in more than 20 years. Al Udeid cleared its tarmacs Last week, ahead of the US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, Al Udeid saw many of the transport planes, fighter jets and drones typically on its tarmac dispersed. In a June 18 satellite photo taken by Planet Labs PBC and analysed by The Associated Press, the air base's tarmac had emptied. The US military has not acknowledged the change, which came after ships off the US Navy's 5th Fleet base in Bahrain also had dispersed. That's typically a military strategy to ensure your fighting ships and planes aren't destroyed in case of an attack. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Time of India
33 minutes ago
- Time of India
Pinky's got Trumpache
So much drama this Trump is doing. My best friend Pinky's mother-in-law's visa expired and Pinky's husband said fine, we'll fast track a new visa for Mummy but no. Now there is chaos and long long queues and poor Aunty is stuck in Delhi summer and can't see her newborn grandson, Pinky's sister-in-law's sweet sa fair baby in San Francisco. When will this Trump die, Aunty was shouting when I met her, will I not see my grandson till he becomes a teenager or something? Aunty does too much drama like Trump only but it is true. This Trump is stopping everyone doing everything. Pinky and her husband have visas, till 2030, but her husband is now saying let it be, Mummy will feel bad if we go to America without her. Pinky is so angry but she can't say anything bad about her mother-in-law so she tells her husband we can go to only Manhattan and not to California, we don't have to see the baby. Pinky is smart, and she's right, no one needs to see the baby, bas. Pinky's husband says you are being selfish to Pinky as if he wants her to be Nirupa Roy or something, you know that mother in a white sari. And then if that isn't enough, Pinky's nephew who studies in Harvard is also in some trouble, some flag he was waving in America, stupid boy, so when Pinky goes crying to her own Mummy about her mother-in-law and husband she says keep quiet Pinky, Deepak bhaiya's son in Harvard loves Gaza or something and now what will happen? Pinky's cousin sister Meenu is very political, she got excited and said forget about US, think of the state of education in our country, professors being jailed for social media posts. This Meenu talks too much but it was good only, everyone stopped saying mean things to Pinky and got angry with Meenu instead. What is this Meenu even saying? We give visas and say come come see the Taj Mahal to foreigners. The Mughals were killing the Hindus and all that, but we are forgiving, peace-loving, and we say it's fine only, Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal, so good. Our country is not bad like America, she should go and stay there if she doesn't like India but hai ram how will she get a visa? Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email Disclaimer Views expressed above are the author's own.
NDTV
36 minutes ago
- NDTV
How Iran, US And Israel's Closest Ally In The Middle East, Became Their Bitterest Enemy
On March 13, 1978, Iran's omnipotent monarch Mohammad Reza Cyrus Pahlavi received two visitors at his vacation residence on the island of Kish in the Persian Gulf, a few miles off the Iranian coast. These two visitors weren't just anybody. They were Uri Lubrani, the Israeli ambassador to Iran; and Reuben Morhav, the Mossad station chief in Iran. It was a time when germs of revolution had taken seed in Iran and the country was on the brink of a historic change. But the Shah had no way of knowing any of that. Out there on Kish, with unimaginable extravagance and hedonism for company, Pahlavi was fine. He could not perceive a threat to his government. The Shah's guests, however, had their apprehensions. Iran was simmering. The Shah's incoherent dialogue did not make much sense to the two Israelis, who were on Kish to gauge how much of a chance the regime stood, with the political situation outside rapidly changing. A Monarch Who Wanted Iran "More Developed Than France" Mohammad Reza Cyrus Pahlavi had come back to power after a UK- and US-backed coup helped reinstate him on the throne of Iran. That was 1953. Pahlavi became the absolute monarch in control of Iran, with one palm locked firm in a handshake with the Americans. Pahlavi also oversaw a rapid Westernisation of Iran; and wanted the country to become a land "more developed than France". Not everyone was on board with the Shah. But no voice of opposition was tolerated. Pahlavi ensured an iron fist while dealing with his opponents. It had been 25 years of this regime in Iran when the Israeli duo dropped by to pay Pahlavi a visit. In these 25 years, while some in Iran were looking for someone else to turn to, there appeared one from among the religious opposition in the country. The man was Ruhollah Khomeini, from the village of Khomein in Iran, a cleric who came with the hereditary title of ' sayyid ', or a descendant of Prophet Mohammed. He had also earned the highest Shiite clerical rank, that of the Grand Ayatollah. He was a well-known preacher, but had a problem: he didn't exactly possess the gift of the gab. A Preacher With "A Message From Gabriel" In 1962, nine years after Pahlavi was put on the throne of Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini emerged from his bedchamber after a period of isolation. Khomeini, 60, was convinced that he had been visited by the Archangel Gabriel, who had told him that Allah had great things in store for him. Khomeini's mission of achieving this great destiny that had been destined for him began with a transformation. He gave up speaking the way he did. He fell back on the power of repetition. He chose phrases and hammered them into the minds of his followers till they took on the form of a magical incantation. Among these mantras was the famous "Islam is the solution". The world became a canvas painted in black and white; where the good of Islam had to uproot the evil that the Shah manifested as. The Ayatollah re-shaped the Shiite world. He discarded all distinction between civil and religious authority and said that the Islamic world no longer needed rulers governed by religious sages. The religious sages could themselves be rulers. Khomeini also turned death from a dreaded punishment into a desired reward. Families that lost their sons in Iran's holy war, Khomeini declared, should celebrate them as martyrs. The state was deemed toothless. Khomeini's influence rose as Shah Pahlavi wondered what was to be done with him. The Ayatollah In Exile In 1964, the Shah decided that he had had enough. But killing Khomeini was not an option. He couldn't risk it. So, Khomeini was exiled. The Ayatollah went to Turkey and Iraq before moving to France, from where he continued to fight his cause. By 1978, Khomeini, from his Paris headquarters, had flooded Iran with over 6,00,000 cassettes of his religious sermons. People listened to the Ayatollah say that the Shah of Iran was a "Jewish spy, an American snake whose head should be crushed with a stone". While Shah Pahlavi underwent cancer treatment, the rumblings against him rose from within the public, guided by the voice of the Ayatollah from Paris. Israel and the US refused to believe that the situation in the Middle East was fast disintegrating. They believed in the Shah's omnipotence and absolute powers when it came to crushing the opposition. They did not heed any warnings from Tehran. From his headquarters in Paris, the Ayatollah directed thousands of protesters in cities across Iran. When it became clear that there was no stopping the Ayatollah, and that without American backing the Shah wasn't going to be around forever, Pahlavi decided to leave Iran. The Shah Leaves Iran On the morning of January 16, 1979, Shahpour Bakhtiar was appointed the Prime Minister of Iran. He was chosen by the Shah to govern the country. A few hours later, Mohammad Reza Cyrus Pahlavi, tears in his eyes, along with his wife Shahbanu Farah, and a few clods of Iranian soil in a box, left the country. Iran's first couple went to exile in Egypt, never to return. Bakhtiar dissolved SAVAK, the Iranian intelligence agency. The day after the Shah's exit, the Prime Minister went to new Mossad chief Eliezer Tsafrir with a request: will the Mossad please kill the Khomeini at his Paris headquarters? A Request For The Mossad The proposal was lucrative to Israel. Mossad debated the pros and cons. The biggest of the pros was that it would place the Shah of Iran in debt of the Israelis forever, and they would benefit from it. Killing the Khomeini would also perhaps change the course of history. But the Mossad hesitated. Killing a religious leader, that too on French soil, was a gamble they weren't willing to play. In his book Rise and Kill First (Random House, 2018), author Ronen Bergman writes, "The benefits for Israel were obvious. The SAVAK would owe a deep debt of gratitude to the Israelis. Furthermore, it was possible that a hit would divert the course of history and prevent Khomeini, who had made his views on Israel and Jews quite clear, from seizing power in Iran. The attendees of the meeting discussed several points: Was the plan operationally feasible? Did the Ayatollah actually represent such a grave danger? If so, would Israel be prepared to take upon itself the risks of eliminating a top clerical figure, and to do so on French soil?" The answer from Mossad, after much deliberation, was in the negative. They weren't going to kill Khomeini in Paris. "History Might Have Taken A Better Course" "Looking back," Bergman writes, "Alpher [Yossi Alpher, senior research analyst dealing with Iran at that meeting] would say that 'as early as a few months after that meeting, I realised what he [Khomeini] was all about', and that he was 'very sorry' about the decision. If the Mossad had killed Khomeini, according to Alpher, history might have taken a better course." It was a course bitter for Israelis and the Americans that followed the departure of the Shah from Iran. On February 1, 1979, an Air France Boeing 747 was chartered from Paris to Tehran. The Ayatollah boarded the plane for the Iranian capital. The plane circled the city of Tehran three times before landing at the Mehrabad airport, where he was met with millions of supporters. Khomeini, 78, had to be airlifted on to a helicopter after his motorcade was met with a crush of enthusiastic crowds. Khomeini was taken to Behesht-Zahra cemetery, where many martyrs of Iran's holy revolution were buried. He prayed and delivered a half-hour oration for the martyred men. It was clear who called the shots in Iran, and it wasn't going to be the government chosen by the Shah. Bakhtiar had hoped for Khomeini a Vatican-like sanctuary in the Iranian city of Qom. Khomeini, he hoped, would be a religious leader who would let his government be. Iran Becomes A Theocracy In his first speech after getting back to Iran, Khomeini thundered, "I will break their teeth. I appoint the government, I appoint the government in support of this nation." Bakhtiar's government wasn't the one the Ayatollah wanted. The US, who Khomeini called "Great Satan", and Israel, who he referred to as "Little Satan", were also mistaken in their measurement of the Ayatollah. They thought Khomeini was going to be a passing phase. On February 11, 1979, the non-Islamist government collapsed. Bakhtiar escaped Iran in disguise, only to be assassinated in Paris in 1991. Iran became a theocracy. Under the reign of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran, a country with the sixth largest military force in the world and the largest arsenal in Asia, once the US' and Israel's closest ally in the Middle East, became their bitterest enemy.
