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SACP throws weight behind Iran in ongoing battle with Israel, US

SACP throws weight behind Iran in ongoing battle with Israel, US

IOL News5 hours ago

An angry Donald Trump berated Iran and Israel on Tuesday for violating a ceasefire deal, adding that he was "really unhappy" with Israel in particular.
Image: Kamil Krzaczynski / AFP
ANC alliance partner, the South African Communist Party (SACP) has weighed in on the tense Middle-East standoff, condemning the US military attacks on Iran'.
'In condemning attacks on Iran and genocide on the Palestinian people by Israel, on 14 June 2025, the SACP appealed to the international community not to be silent in the face of the warmongering United States-backed apartheid Israeli settler regime but to condemn the violations. The SACP reiterates this same call against the United States' militarism, unilateralism and violations of others' rights,' said SACP spokespersonMbulelo Mandlana.
Their statement came as US President Donald Trump expressed anger and disappointment over the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iran. Trump took credit for having brokered the ceasefire, but it appears to have faltered mere hours after its announcement.
Speaking outside the White House on Tuesday, Trump said he was not happy with both countries and was looking to reprimand the two nations.
"We have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what they're doing," Trump said, criticising both Israel and Iran for their actions while using profanities.
Despite acknowledging that the ceasefire might not be entirely broken, Trump expressed his discontent with Israel saying the country attacked Iran just after they had made the deal.
"Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I've never seen before,' Trump said.
He called on Israel to 'calm down'.
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The Iranian media reported that an Israeli strike on Monday had killed a senior commander of Iran's Basij paramilitary force, linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
'The commander of Basij counterintelligence protection forces was martyred in a Zionist regime attack,' the Fars news agency said, citing a statement from the IRGC.
The conflict between Israel and Iran escalated after Israel launched a massive airstrike on Iranian military and nuclear sites on June 13, prompting Iran to retaliate with a drone and missile campaign.
The US subsequently conducted airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, leading to further retaliation from Iran.
The ongoing conflict has resulted in significant humanitarian concerns, with Iran reporting over 400 deaths, including 13 children, and at least 3,056 wounded since Israel launched its attack. In Israel, at least 24 people have been killed in Iranian strikes.
Iran has denied allegations of violating the ceasefire and has warned its forces stand ready to respond decisively to any Israeli violations.

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Kenyans take to the streets for protest anniversary

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time2 hours ago

  • IOL News

I hate Khamenei's regime, but I love Iran even more.

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But instead of celebrating the Israeli strikes, I'm gripped with fear and trepidation about my country's future. I always knew a military intervention would be ugly: It would be ordinary Iranians, not state elites, paying the biggest price. That belief was confirmed this week as illusions about Israel's 'precision strikes' were put to rest; hundreds of Iranian civilians have fallen. They include Parnia Abbasi, a 23-year-old poet; Mehrnoosh Haji-Soltani, a soulful young flight attendant; Amir Ali Amini, a student of taekwondo - he looks no older than 9. But mine isn't only a humanitarian concern but also a political one. The idea that this conflict will lead to a popular uprising which will bring down the regime is pure fantasy. This has been made clear this past week. 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There is no one-and-done on Iran
There is no one-and-done on Iran

IOL News

time2 hours ago

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There is no one-and-done on Iran

A satellite photo shows the Isfahan nuclear enrichment facility in central Iran after US strikes. Image: Planet Labs PBC / AFP) Marc Champion Donald Trump's decision to bomb Iran's hard-to-reach nuclear site at Fordow couldn't have worked out better. Operationally, it was flawless, and the response it drew from Iran was the best the US president could have hoped for - bloodless and de-escalatory by design. Most important of all, Trump then tried to bounce Israel and Tehran into a ceasefire. Kudos where it's due. And yet, this is not over. There will be more tough decisions for the White House to make, with profound implications for the cause of nuclear non-proliferation. The problem here isn't that the ceasefire announced on Monday night was breached within hours. That's hardly unusual and, in this case, there's a good chance it takes hold over the coming days. Israel has run through most if not all of its target list; Iran is running low on ways to meaningfully respond without putting the regime's survival at risk. Even so, we aren't where Trump says we are. Trump says his ceasefire will hold for all time, but there will be no forever-peace between the Islamic Republic and Israel. No doubt, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his politically powerful generals will take time to regroup and lick their wounds. They've suffered a severe military humiliation, and there will be some form of reckoning at home. But hostility to Israel is in their political DNA. There is no one-and-done here. Nor has Iran's nuclear programme been wiped from the face of the earth, never to be rebuilt, as Trump claims. Let's say all the enrichment equipment at the sites that the US and Israel bombed over the last 10 days have indeed been destroyed. That's as-yet unknown except to the Iranians, but it seems very plausible. The point, however, has always been that Iran has the know-how and capacity to replace whatever gets destroyed. We also don't know the whereabouts of Iran's stockpile of uranium enriched to 60%, a short step to weapons grade. Nor can even Mossad be sure there are no sites that were missed because they simply weren't known. These are just some of the reasons for which US presidents resisted bombing Iran's nuclear programme in the past, preferring to achieve delays and visibility through diplomacy. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad Loading US President Donald Trump (Right) and Vice President JD Vance (Left) in the Situation Room of the White House on June 21 as the US military attacked three Iranian nuclear sites, including the underground uranium enrichment facility at Fordow. 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The system had its share of failure - North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel itself - but granted that the technology to build nuclear weapons has long been within the scope of most of the treaty's 191 signatories, and three of the four outliers never signed up, the list is mercifully short. The NPT's primary tool has been the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Though disparaged by many hawks in Washington and Israel, this has become a unique depository of expertise and provided the means to keep eyes on Iran's program. Of course, Iran could and did avoid full compliance, and the threat of force always hovered in the background. It also took national intelligence agencies to expose that the Iranians even had an enrichment programme for the IAEA to monitor, in 2002. Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), arrives for the Board of Governors meeting at the agency's headquarters in Vienna this month. American strikes on Iran's nuclear programme have made the agency's work substantially more difficult. Image: Joe Klamar / AFP Nonetheless, the NPT and IAEA have together provided a constraining framework for proliferation that would be sorely missed. In a might-makes-right, '(name-your-nation) First' era, it's already in trouble. It may not be able to survive, much as Cold War arms-control treaties have been abandoned, one after the other, until today only one - New Start - remains, and it expires next year. The choices Trump makes now will play a big role in either accelerating or slowing the NPT's demise. One route would rely on intelligence agencies and military action to counter proliferation, in place of diplomacy. This was always the implication of Trump's decision to collapse the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. It's also the scenario Vice President JD Vance sketched out on Monday, when he warned that if the Iranians 'want to build a nuclear weapon in the future, they're going to have to deal with a very, very powerful American military again.' In Gaza, Israel called this approach 'mowing the lawn,' but as the tragedy of Oct. 7, 2023, showed, that's no guarantee of success. And how many lawns does the US want to mow? Relying solely on the threat of force also assumes that Iran doesn't learn a few critical lessons from the drubbing it just received. The first is to clean house, rooting out the Israeli intelligence assets that made its airstrikes so devastating. Expect a period of extreme regime paranoia. A second is to buy a much more capable air-defense system. A third will be to replenish its missile and drone arsenals. Absent a diplomatic track, there will also be no incentive for Iran to allow further international inspections. It's already accusing the IAEA of complicity with the US and Israeli assaults. Other countries will draw their own conclusions. The agreement was based on a grand bargain in which the existing five nuclear powers were supposed to disarm, while non-nuclear nations agreed to stay that way. Disarmament went a considerable distance, but in recent years has been thrown into reverse. US actions in first reneging on the 2015 deal with Iran, and then bombing it, won't inspire confidence. The alternative path Trump could take is to restart nuclear negotiations in the clear expectation that the Iranians won't simply capitulate. There will have to be something in it for them. That means Trump and his team will face many of the same questions as they did before what's been, in reality, just the hottest stage to date in a long-running Iran-Israel war. Those include whether to lift at least some economic sanctions and whether to accept a heavily monitored civilian grade enrichment programme, limited to 3.5% fuel. Of course the Islamic Republic could collapse, to be replaced by something less fanatical. That's an outcome that very few would mourn, but you don't plan for luck. Trump needs to assume that Iran will now learn, rearm and refocus its nuclear program to produce a weapon as quickly and quietly as possible. Diplomacy and inspections remain the best and least hazardous way to prevent that. | Bloomberg Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He was previously Istanbul bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.

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