Netanyahu declares historic win, says Israel removed Iran's nuclear threat in 12-day war
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday Israel in its 12 days of war with Iran had removed the threat of nuclear annihilation and was determined to thwart any attempt by Tehran to revive its programme.
'We have removed two immediate existential threats to us: the threat of nuclear annihilation and the threat of annihilation by 20,000 ballistic missiles,' he said in video remarks issued by his office.
'If anyone in Iran tries to revive the project, we will work with the same determination and strength to thwart any such attempt. I repeat, Iran will not have nuclear weapons.'
He called it a historic victory that would stand for generations.
He said Israel never had a better friend in the White House than President Donald Trump, whose US military had dropped massive bunker-buster bombs on Iran's underground nuclear sites in an attack over the weekend.
'Our friend President Trump has rallied to our side in an unprecedented way. Under his direction, the US military destroyed the underground enrichment site at Fordow,' Netanyahu said.
He spoke hours after Trump directed stinging criticism at Israel over the scale of strikes Trump said had violated a truce with Iran negotiated by Washington, Israel's closest ally.
Netanyahu said Israel's work was unfinished. He cited the war against Iran's ally Hamas in Gaza, where 50 hostages remain in captivity since the Palestinian militant group carried out a surprise attack on October 7 2023.
About 20 hostages are believed to be alive.
Netanyahu said: 'We must complete the campaign against the Iranian axis, defeat Hamas, and bring about the release of all the hostages, living and dead.'
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IOL News
2 hours ago
- IOL News
I hate Khamenei's regime, but I love Iran even more.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at a cabinet meeting in Tehran last year. Israel may frame its strikes on Iran as an attempt to remove the theocratic regime, but the reality is what follows could be worse. Image: Reuters Arash Azizi I've loathed the dictatorship of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I'd roll my eyes every morning during the obligatory salute to our supreme leader in the schoolyard. I resented the strictures, the atmosphere of moral probity the man in robes presided over. In other words, you'd think I would be applauding Benjamin Netanyahu's attack against the Iranian regime. And yet, I'm not sold. Since launching airstrikes against Iran on June 13, the Israeli prime minister has insisted that the bombs raining down on Tehran serve the interests of people like me. Framing his attack as a battle for liberation, he urges Iranians to rise up against Iran's decades-long theocratic regime. He has even gone as far as to dub the Israeli operation 'Rising Lion,' a reference to a cherished Iranian national emblem. Arash Azizi is author of 'What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom.' Image: Supplied 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 It's true, Khamenei's regime jails and kills dissidents, stifles expression, censors our culture and pursues disastrous foreign policies that have climaxed in the current quagmire. It's the primary reason myself and millions of other Iranians live in exile. 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. The leaders of Iran's diverse domestic protest movements are united in opposition to Israel's attack, among them trade unionists and protagonists of the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' movement that took the country by storm in 2022. Busy trying to stay alive, such activists are in no state to stage Netanyahu's longed-for revolution. Wartime life is hell for Iranians, especially for the near 10 million denizens of my beautiful hometown of Tehran who have been warned to evacuate by Israel and the United States. Like many Iranians abroad, I've spent much of the past few days checking on friends and family in the city, many of whom - if they are able - have now left Tehran for safer areas, even as Israel moves to bomb Iranian provinces outside of the capital. Instead of bringing down Khamenei, Iranians are engaging in mutual aid and solidarity with their fellow citizens. If they have time left for political commentary, they condemn both Israel for launching the attacks and the regime for the policies that have led to the current conflict. They demand a ceasefire and a democratic transition, a sentiment echoed by Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former deputy interior minister with a large following, currently locked up in Tehran's notorious Evin prison. It's hard not to be struck by the spirit of humanity and resistance that Tehranis and other Iranians have exhibited in the past days. Landlords have been forgiving rents or offering rooms without charge for sheltering families. At hospitals around the capital, volunteer nurses and doctors have shown up in droves, risking their lives to help the injured. Bakers and gas station workers have worked nonstop to service their fellow Iranians. One video shows a baker fast at work in the central Iranian city of Malayer, a mere half an hour after his brother was killed in an Israeli strike. Another video reveals two young mechanics roaming a busy Tehran highway at night, fixing the cars of families scrambling to flee the bombing. Hoping to reap political benefits from the chaos, certain Iranian political activists abroad have called upon their countrymen to rise up. They include Reza Pahlavi, Iran's former crown prince, who has styled himself as the leader of a democratic transition. Pahlavi has gained some media visibility, but the idea that he could lead a revolution is quixotic at best. In all his years of positioning himself as a leader of the opposition, Pahlavi has not built a single organization with meaningful membership. His supporters have barely organized a major rally outside Iran, let alone inside. The idea that Pahlavi - a man who has not set foot in Iran for 45 years - might win and maintain power in a country of more than 90 million is not a serious one. Pahlavi's close association with the Israeli attacks, along with previous meetings he has staged with Netanyahu, have turned even some of his own most ardent supporters away. In a country whose history has been marked by foreign invasions and machinations, such collaboration with a foreign body comes at a high political cost. Iranians are nothing if not proud. But if Pahlavi is ineffective, so are the rest of us in the Iranian opposition. It has been 45 years since a popular revolution ushered in an Islamic Republic and in that time, Iranians have not built durable opposition political organizations - inside and outside the country. Without such vital organizations, revolution will be difficult to achieve. Meanwhile, I'm kept up at night by countless terrible worst-case scenarios. Even if regime change doesn't come about, the Israelis could debilitate Iran as a nation-state, hitting it hard and regularly. Worse, if the conflict continues, Iran could descend into civil war or become a failed state. The historical grievances of Iran's many ethnic groups - Kurds, Azeris and Baluch among them - could be leveraged into sectarian conflict, threatening Iran's territorial integrity. A best-case scenario for Iran, one that would minimize death and maintain its territory, is an evolution toward more pragmatic sections of the existing regime. This might happen via internal coup d'état or it might happen organically in the aftermath of the supreme leader's death. While it is not the miraculous and instant change that many Iranians - myself included - dream of, it is one we can live with and one that, crucially, doesn't carry with it the stigma of foreign intervention. Of course, our struggles for democracy and justice won't end even after such a shift of power. But they can be pursued on more stable grounds, when bombs aren't falling on our heads, and the country isn't threatened with disintegration. As the old Solomonic parable goes, I would do anything to not see my country harmed. Arash Azizi is a contributing writer at the Atlantic and author of 'What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom.'
IOL News
2 hours ago
- IOL News
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. "We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran," Trump said on his Truth Social platform. Experts disagree. Image: WHITE HOUSE / AFP In other words, the risk that Iran acquires a nuclear arsenal remains. It will continue until the day that either this regime or a successor decides not to pursue one. And right now, there's no doubt - even if hardline officials weren't saying so in public - that the argument for Iran to get itself a nuclear deterrent has never been more compelling. Nobody, after all, is bombing North Korea. The attractions of acquiring a bomb have been clear for a long time, and not just to Iran. That's why the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT, exists. 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.
The Herald
2 hours ago
- The Herald
Netanyahu declares historic win, says Israel removed Iran's nuclear threat in 12-day war
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday Israel in its 12 days of war with Iran had removed the threat of nuclear annihilation and was determined to thwart any attempt by Tehran to revive its programme. 'We have removed two immediate existential threats to us: the threat of nuclear annihilation and the threat of annihilation by 20,000 ballistic missiles,' he said in video remarks issued by his office. 'If anyone in Iran tries to revive the project, we will work with the same determination and strength to thwart any such attempt. I repeat, Iran will not have nuclear weapons.' He called it a historic victory that would stand for generations. He said Israel never had a better friend in the White House than President Donald Trump, whose US military had dropped massive bunker-buster bombs on Iran's underground nuclear sites in an attack over the weekend. 'Our friend President Trump has rallied to our side in an unprecedented way. Under his direction, the US military destroyed the underground enrichment site at Fordow,' Netanyahu said. He spoke hours after Trump directed stinging criticism at Israel over the scale of strikes Trump said had violated a truce with Iran negotiated by Washington, Israel's closest ally. Netanyahu said Israel's work was unfinished. He cited the war against Iran's ally Hamas in Gaza, where 50 hostages remain in captivity since the Palestinian militant group carried out a surprise attack on October 7 2023. About 20 hostages are believed to be alive. Netanyahu said: 'We must complete the campaign against the Iranian axis, defeat Hamas, and bring about the release of all the hostages, living and dead.' Reuters
