Wake up West, Iran is a threat to us all
A t four o'clock yesterday morning, after my phone shrieked an ear-piercing warning of an imminent missile attack from Iran, I stumbled down to our underground shelter here in Jerusalem as the air-raid siren began to wail. With other residents of our apartment complex enduring another disturbed night under the nerve-shattering stream of alerts and sirens, I wondered if the ominous booms and thuds meant missiles were being shot down by Iron Dome or were direct hits. As the sun rose we had the answer: the attack had left at least eight Israelis dead and hundreds injured.
These Iranian ballistic missiles are far more powerful than the rockets fired at Israel for decades from Gaza, Lebanon and most recently Yemen. And so many are being fired at once that some are getting through Israel's fabled air defences. So the toll of civilian deaths and injuries is rising.
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Reuters
17 minutes ago
- Reuters
G7 expresses support for Israel, calls Iran source of instability
WASHINGTON, June 16 (Reuters) - The Group of Seven nations expressed support for Israel in a statement, opens new tab issued late on Monday and labeled its rival Iran as a source of instability in the Middle East, with the G7 leaders urging broader de-escalation of hostilities in the region. The air war between Iran and Israel - which began on Friday when Israel attacked Iran with air strikes - has raised alarms in a region that had already been on edge since the start of Israel's military assault on Gaza in October 2023. "We affirm that Israel has a right to defend itself. We reiterate our support for the security of Israel," G7 leaders said in the statement. "Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror," the statement added and said the G7 was "clear that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon." Israel attacked Iran on Friday in what it called a preemptive strike to prevent Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. Since then the two Middle Eastern rivals have exchanged blows, with Iranian officials reporting over 220 deaths, mostly civilians, while Israel said 24 civilians were killed. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons and has said it has the right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, including enrichment, as a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel, which is not a party to the NPT, is the only country in the Middle East widely believed to have nuclear weapons. Israel does not deny or confirm that. President Donald Trump planned to leave the G7 summit in Canada early to return to Washington due to the Middle East situation. The United States has so far maintained that it is not involved in the Israeli attacks on Iran although Trump said on Friday the U.S. was aware of Israel's strikes in advance and called them "excellent." Washington has warned Tehran not to attack U.S. interests or personnel in the region. "We urge that the resolution of the Iranian crisis leads to a broader de-escalation of hostilities in the Middle East, including a ceasefire in Gaza," the G7 statement said, adding the nations were also ready to coordinate on safeguarding stability in energy markets. An Israeli strike hit Iran's state broadcaster on Monday while Trump said in a social media post that "everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran." Separately, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also discussed the Israel-Iran war in phone calls with his British, French and European Union counterparts on Monday. Washington said Trump was still aiming for a nuclear deal with Iran.
Daily Mail
21 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Javier Bardem sparks backlash with anti-Israel rant on The View as he is cut off after claiming he's suffering
Actor Javier Bardem was cut off on The View after suggesting he 'suffers on a daily basis' for the people of Gaza and said Israel was committing 'genocide.' The Oscar-winner was speaking to conservative panelists Alyssa Farah Griffin and Sara Haines, who wear yellow pins everyday to support Israeli hostages being held in Gaza. 'I see your [pins] and, of course, they have to return those hostages obviously,' Bardem said. 'But the situation in Gaza has come to a term now where I cannot express the pain that I, along with many millions of people there, suffer on a daily basis watching those horrible images of children being murdered and starving to death.' The actor stated his case for Israel committing 'genocide' based on his belief that international law and human rights experts and even Holocaust survivors agree with him. 'First of all, because the impunity that is taking Israel in doing these actions, and the lack of action on any government of course the back up of the United States with all those weapons and the economics, and also the silence of Europe, is creating a scenario where there is such impunity that if we really don't do something about that we are going towards, well, what is happening now,' he said. Host Whoopi Goldberg clearly wanted to get to a commercial break but Bardem tried to continue. 'And also, with this I will finish, the most important thing is to not lose the humanity and really denounce when we have to denounce and who we have to denounce,' he said. Abruptly, the show cut back to Goldberg, who said: 'Javier, come back.' The long-running ABC chatfest then went straight to commercial to a somewhat muted applause. A source at the show told Decider that they were simply running out of time and needed to head to break. However, several viewers were alarmed by Bardem's statements. 'Again, The View becomes a hot bed for political hatred and antisemitism,' wrote Nicholas Fondacaro of MRC and Newsbusters. 'Actor Javier Bardem claims he's suffering as much as the people in Gaza as he parrots Hamas propaganda.' Another social media user reminded people that 'ABC considers this part of their news product.' 'English is Javier Bardem's second language, stupid is his first,' added another on X. Leftist YouTube channel The Serfs spoke in favor of Bardem's comments and mocked the liberal ABC show for cutting away. 'Javier Bardem went so hard on the genocide of Palestinians that the View had to cut to commercial break.' None of the reaction nor the cut to break stopped Bardem from making similar statements at the premiere of his new movie, F1, later that night. 'Thousands of children are dying… It's a genocide happening before our eyes. The American support has to stop.' Many on the far left and even mainstream Democrats have accused the Israelis of genocide in their response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attack on an Israeli music festival. Significant protesting has come from American college campuses, who have received smackdowns from the Trump administration for refusing to protect Jewish students and fostering antisemitism.
Spectator
32 minutes ago
- Spectator
Why is the US so reluctant to fight Iran?
MAGA (Make America Great Again) isolationists all agree: the United States must not be drawn into the Israel-Iran war. Donald Trump was not elected president to become entangled in pointless foreign conflicts. Over on Truth Social, Trump's hokey-pokey routine continues – in, out, in, out, send the Fifth Fleet out? – and America Firsters despair at the prospect of the US fighting 'a war for Israel'. In Jerusalem, the thinking is the exact opposite: Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly concerned that the unpredictable Trump could push Israel to conclude Operation Rising Lion before its military objectives are met. This is all very interesting as Kremlinology, but it also throws up a point of curiosity: why is the US so reluctant to get involved? This is, after all, an offensive conducted by its most reliable ally in the region against a regime where 'Death to America' practically doubles as the national anthem. It kills and kidnaps American citizens, funds Islamist groups that commit terror attacks against the US, and pours cash and arms into every conceivable conflict in the region. Lighting up Ayatollah Khamenei like a nuclear Christmas tree would fall squarely in the category of 'US interests'. Ah, but Iraq. And Afghanistan. And, for those of a certain vintage, Vietnam. Ever since the last Bell 204B took off from the roof of Saigon's Pittman apartments, the American collective consciousness has come to associate military invention with bloody and expensive quagmire, an instinct seemingly vindicated by Mogadishu, Afghanistan and Gulf War II. Why is that? The US armed forces are the mightiest military on the planet, a $1 trillion carnage factory that could obliterate an average-sized European country in the space of a morning – before breakfast if nukes were involved. Is it simply that the US now excels only in aerial firepower in a way it previously also did with boots on the ground? Is it poor leadership among the joint chiefs; substandard intelligence out of Langley, Fort Meade and Anacostia–Bolling; squeamishness in rules of engagement and norms of armed conflict; or hubris in planning and executing action against nations and forces the Pentagon underestimates as primitive or ill-prepared? Is it spiritual? Are civic and military elites so macerated in national and civilisational self-hatred, in an anti-Americanism pervasive in higher education, elite media and high-status culture, that they possess neither the confidence nor the will for American victory that were taken for granted among the pre-1960s generations? If any country should be morally paralysed at the thought of armed conflict, it ought to be Israel Whatever the answer, it prompts a corollary question: why doesn't tiny Israel, vulnerable on all fronts, with its own bitter memories of quagmires and retreats, its own self-lacerating institutions, and its own intelligence failures, evince a similar pessimism about military engagement? After all, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is a conscript army. In theory, every mother's son is on the frontline. If any country should be morally paralysed at the thought of armed conflict, it ought to be Israel. Perhaps in this contradiction lies an answer. Israel's is a drafted army because the threats the country faces are existential. As October 7 confirmed, it is not only possible but relatively easy to murder large numbers of Israelis in a short space of time. Americans are insulated by oceans and land mass and awesome firepower, whereas Israeli security is a much more fragile thing, not a definite but something that must be won and guarded every single day. American isolationists object to what they regard as foreign wars but for Israel, regardless of the theatre of engagement, every war takes place at home. The prospect of defeat, and the unbearable price that would come with it, does not grip Israeli leaders with the same paralysing pessimism as afflicts their US counterparts. When the next battle could be your last, wallowing in military or strategic inadequacies is an indulgence that can ill be afforded. The ability to win might well be downstream of the will to survive.
