Latest news with #IranStrikes
India Today
08-07-2025
- Business
- India Today
BRICS criticises US strikes, Trump responds with trade threats
Trump has called BRICS 'anti-American' after the bloc condemned US strikes on Iran. In response, he has threatened a 10% tariff on countries aligning with the BRICS. With 11 member nations and a population of 4 billion, BRICS holds significant global weight. Watch the video to learn more. #BRICS #Trump #TradeWar #GlobalEconomy #TariffThreat #USForeignPolicy #Geopolitics #IranStrikes #DollarVsBRICS #GlobalSouth #TrumpTariffs
CTV News
07-07-2025
- Politics
- CTV News
Trump and Netanyahu may take a victory lap on Iran, but the Gaza war looms over their meeting
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, is greeted by President Donald Trump as he arrives at the West Wing of the White House in Washington, April 7, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File) WASHINGTON — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump might look to take a victory lap on Monday after their recent joint strikes on Iran, hailed by both as an unmitigated success. But as Netanyahu arrived at the White House for his third visit this year, the outwardly triumphant visit will be dogged by Israel's 21-month war against Hamas in Gaza and questions over how hard Trump will push for an end to the conflict. Trump has made clear that following last month's 12-day war between Israel and Iran he would like to see the Gaza conflict end soon. The meeting between Trump and Netanyahu could give new urgency to a U.S. ceasefire proposal being discussed by Israel and Hamas, but whether it leads to a deal that ends the war is unclear. 'The utmost priority for the president right now in the Middle East is to end the war in Gaza and to return all of the hostages,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters ahead of the leaders' private dinner. Before departing for Washington on Sunday, Netanyahu praised the cooperation with the U.S. for bringing a 'huge victory over our shared enemy.' He struck a positive note on a ceasefire for Gaza, saying he was working 'to achieve the deal under discussion, on the terms we agreed to.' The prime minister met on Monday with special envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio before his dinner with Trump. Netanyahu is slated to meet Tuesday with Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson. 'I think that the discussion with President Trump can certainly help advance that result, which all of us hope for,' Netanyahu said. `It changes from day to day' White House officials are urging Israel and Hamas to quickly seal a new ceasefire agreement that would bring about a 60-day pause in the fighting, send aid flooding into Gaza and free at least some of the remaining 50 hostages held in the territory, 20 of whom are believed to be living. Leavitt announced on Monday that Witkoff will travel later this week to Doha, Qatar, for ceasefire and hostage talks. But a sticking point is whether the ceasefire will end the war altogether. Hamas has said it is willing to free all the hostages in exchange for an end to the war and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Netanyahu says the war will end once Hamas surrenders, disarms and goes into exile -- something it refuses to do. Demonstrators, including hostage family members, gathered outside the U.S. Capitol before the leaders' meeting to press for the release of all remaining hostages in any agreement. 'We cannot accept a deal for a partial release,' said Ilan Dalal, father of Guy Gilboa-Dalal. 'A partial deal would mean that some of the hostages will stay in the tunnels for more time and this would be a death sentence.' Trump has been pressuring Israel and Hamas to wrap up the conflict, which has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, ravaged Gaza, deepened Israel's international isolation and made any resolution to the broader conflict between Israel and the Palestinians more distant than ever. But the precise details of the deal, and whether it can lead to an end to the war, are still in flux. In the days before Netanyahu's visit, Trump seemed to downplay the chances for a breakthrough. Asked on Friday how confident he was a ceasefire deal would come together, Trump told reporters: 'I'm very optimistic -- but you know, look, it changes from day to day.' On Sunday evening, he seemed to narrow his expectation, telling reporters that he thought an agreement related to the remaining hostages would be reached in the coming week. Trump and Netanyahu are more in sync than ever Those mood swings also have embodied Trump's relationship with Netanyahu. After Trump's decision to get involved in Israel's war in Iran with strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, the two leaders are more in sync than ever. But that's not always been the case. As recently as Netanyahu's last visit to Washington in April, the tone was markedly different. Trump used the photo-op with Netanyahu to announce that the U.S. was entering into negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program -- appearing to catch the Israeli leader off guard and, at the time, slamming the brakes on any Israeli military plan. Trump, whose policies have largely aligned with Israel's own priorities, pledged last week to be 'very firm' with Netanyahu on ending the war, without saying what that would entail. Pressure by Trump has worked on Netanyahu in the past, with a ceasefire deal having been reached right as the president was taking office again. Netanyahu has to balance the demands of his American ally with the far-right parties in his governing coalition, which hold the key to his political survival and oppose ending the war. But given the strong U.S. support in Israel's war against Iran, highlighted by joint airstrikes on a fortified underground Iranian nuclear site, Netanyahu may have a tough time saying no. Trump also may expect something in return for his recent calls for Netanyahu's corruption trial to be canceled -- a significant interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state. 'Trump thinks that Netanyahu owes him,' said Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S.-Israel affairs at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. 'And if Trump thinks that he needs to end the war In Gaza, then that is what he will need to do.' Leaders to discuss keeping Iran from trying to revive its nuclear program The two men are expected to discuss the ceasefire with Iran following last month's strikes on three key Iranian nuclear sites, Leavitt said. Trump on Sunday told reporters he continues to look for a 'permanent deal' with Tehran to ensure Iran doesn't try to restart its nuclear program. Trump administration officials maintain that Iran's nuclear program has been set back by years. They point in particular to intelligence findings that show the strikes destroyed Iran's lone metal conversion facility. Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian in an interview published Monday said the U.S. airstrikes so badly damaged his country's nuclear facilities that Iranian authorities still have not been able to access them to survey the destruction. Pezeshkian added in the interview with conservative American broadcaster Tucker Carlson that Iran would be willing to resume cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog but cannot yet commit to allowing its inspectors unfettered access to monitor the sites. 'We stand ready to have such supervision,' Pezeshkian said. 'Unfortunately, as a result of the United States' unlawful attacks against our nuclear centers and installations, many of the pieces of equipment and the facilities there have been severely damaged.' Tia Goldenberg And Michelle L. Price, The Associated Press Goldenberg reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Ellen Knickmeyer, Matthew Lee, Lisa Mascaro and Aamer Madhani contributed reporting.
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Yahoo
Everything We Just Learned About The GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator Strikes On Iran
The Pentagon has shared extensive new information about the use of 30,000-pound GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bunker buster bombs in recent strikes on Iran, a mission it says was 15 years in the making. Additional details have also been provided about how the specific need to hold the deeply buried Iranian enrichment facility at Fordow at risk was a primary design driver for the MOP program and its evolution. All of this comes amid still evolving and often competing assessments, at least from what we know so far, about what the strikes on Iran actually achieved. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Air Force Gen. Dan 'Razin' Caine talked extensively about the GBU-57/B's development and its employment in strikes on Iran this past weekend, dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, at a press conference at the Pentagon today. Caine spoke to TWZ and other outlets alongside Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. The Pentagon previously disclosed that B-2 stealth bombers dropped 12 MOPs on Fordow and another two on an underground portion of the Iranian nuclear facility at Natanz during the mission. Targets on the surface at the Iranian nuclear site Isfahan were struck separately by Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles launched from a U.S. Navy submarine. 'The GBU-57/B, which all of you I know know [sic], is a 30,000-pound weapon dropped only by the B-2. It's comprised of steel, explosive, and a fuze,' Caine said. For the actual strike on Fordow this past weekend, the MOPs each had their 'fuze programmed bespokely' in order for 'each weapon to achieve a particular effect inside the target,' and that each of the 12 bombs 'had a unique, desired impact angle, arrival, [and] final heading,' he explained. A pair of ventilation shafts, with their openings above ground, were the primary targets, something that sounds right out of a Hollywood blockbuster, like the first Star Wars movie or, more recently, Top Gun: Maverick. 'In the days preceding the attack against Fordow, the Iranians attempted to cover the shafts with concrete to try to prevent an attack,' according to Caine. 'I won't share the specific dimensions of the concrete cap, but you should know that we know what the dimensions of those concrete caps were. The planners had to account for this. They accounted for everything.' Earlier this week, TWZ explored in great detail evidence of Iranian efforts to seal up Fordow against a potential ground raid in the days leading up to the Operation Midnight Hammer strikes, which you can find here. Capping the ventilation shafts would also have denied another potential access point to any forces on the ground. In the end, six MOPs were dropped on each of the two shafts at Fordow, with both groups of munitions being employed in the same general fashion, Caine further explained. 'The cap was forcibly removed by the first weapon, and the main shaft was uncovered. Weapons two, three, four, [and] five were tasked to enter the main shaft, move down into the complex at greater than 1,000 feet per second, and explode in the mission space,' Caine continued. The sixth bomb in each group 'was designed as a flex weapon to allow us to cover if one of the preceding jets or one of the preceding weapons did not work.' 'All six weapons at each vent at Fordow went exactly where they were intended to go,' according to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 'A bomb has three effects that causes [sic] damage: blast, fragmentation, and over-pressure. In this case, the primary kill mechanism in the mission space was a mix of over-pressure and blast ripping through the open tunnels and destroying critical hardware. The majority of the damage we assess, based on our extensive modeling, was a blast layer combined with the impulse extending from the shock. ' 'A point that I want to make here, the Joint Force does not do BDA [bomb damage assessment] by design, we don't grade our own homework. The intelligence community does,' Caine noted. 'But here's what we know following the attacks and the strikes on Fordow. First, that the weapons were built, tested, and loaded properly. Two, the weapons were released on speed and on parameters. Three, the weapons all guided to their intended targets and to their intended aim points. Four, the weapons functioned as designed, meaning they exploded.' 'The pilots stated, quote, 'this was the brightest explosion that I've ever seen. It literally looked like daylight,'' according to Caine. Caine's comments confirm much of TWZ's previous analysis of the Operation Midnight Hammer strikes, as well as the general employment methodology for the MOP, including using multiple bombs to drill down on a single point of impact. Caine also took time today to explain how the need to strike Fordow, in particular, was a key aspect in the GBU-57/B MOP's development, and shared videos from past testing of the munition, seen below. 'There's an organization in the U.S. called the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, DTRA. DTRA does a lot of things for our nation, but DTRA is the world's leading expert on deeply buried, underground targets,' Caine said by way of introduction into his remarks about the MOP. 'In 2009, a Defense Threat Reduction Agency officer was brought into a vault at an undisclosed location and briefed on something going on in Iran for security purposes. I'm not going to share his name.' 'He was shown some photos and some highly classified intelligence of what looked like a major construction project in the mountains of Iran. He was tasked to study this facility, [and] work with the intelligence community to understand it, and he was soon joined by an additional teammate,' Caine continued. 'For more than 15 years, this officer and his teammate lived and breathed this single target, Fordow, a critical element of Iran's covert nuclear weapons program. He studied the geology. He watched the Iranians dig it out. He watched the construction, the weather, the discard material, the geology, the construction materials, where the materials came from. He looked at the vent shaft, the exhaust shaft, the electrical systems, the environmental control systems, every nook, every crater, every piece of equipment going in and every piece of equipment going out.' 'They literally dreamed about this target at night, when they slept,' he added. 'They thought about it driving back and forth to work, and they knew from the very first days what this was for. You do not build a multi-layered underground bunker complex with centrifuges and other equipment in a mountain for any peaceful purpose.' 'Along the way, they realized we did not have a weapon that could adequately strike and kill this target,' according to Caine. 'So they began a journey to work with industry and other tacticians to develop the GBU-57.' It is important to note here that DTRA had already been working on what became known as the GBU-57/B for years before 2009, as part of a larger Hard Target Defeat (HTD) program. However, the MOP did not begin to enter operational service until the early 2010s, after Caine said being able to strike Fordow had emerged as a central factor in the munition's development. The design has been upgraded multiple times since then. The chairman also made clear today that the U.S. intelligence community had been aware of work at Fordow prior to 2009, when he says the individuals at DTRA were tasked to focus their efforts on it. Work on Fordow is understood to have first started in 2006. 'They tested it [the MOP] over and over again, tried different options, tried more after that. They accomplished hundreds of test shots and dropped many full-scale weapons against extremely realistic targets for a single purpose: kill this target at the time and place of our nation's choosing,' Caine said. 'Ultimately, weaponeering is determining the right weapon and fuse combination to achieve the desired effects and maximum destruction against a target. In the case of Fordow, the DTRA team understood, with a high degree of confidence, the elements of the target required to kill its functions, and the weapons were designed, planned, and delivered to ensure that they achieve the effects in the mission space.' MOP testing is already known to have occurred at various locations within the U.S. Army's White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Me, standing at the edge of a MOP crater on a mountain top at White Sands Test Range, where detailed studies of massive earth penetrators were studied for effectiveness against deeply buried targets by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) —formerly Defense Nuclear Agency.… — Gary Stradling (@gary_stradling) June 24, 2025 The US military has been understandably reluctant to share detailed information about live tests of the MOP. However, several press releases do mention that MOP tests took place at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico. 2/10 — Fabian Hinz (@fab_hinz) June 25, 2025 All three also appear to have been involved in the testing and development of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). 5/10 — Fabian Hinz (@fab_hinz) June 25, 2025 'By the way, in the beginning of its development, we had so many PhDs working on the MOP program, doing modeling and simulation that we were quietly, and in a secret way, the biggest users of supercomputer hours within the United States of America,' Caine noted today. 'Then, on a day in June of 2025, more than 15 years after they started their life's work, the phone rang and the President of the United States ordered the B-2 force that you've supported to go strike and kill this target,' the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff added. Caine said he met in person yesterday with the two members of DTRA in question. Significant questions do still remain about the exact results of the Operation Midnight Hammer strikes. The leak of an initial intelligence report suggesting that damage to Fordow, specifically, was minimal, directly prompted today's press briefing. By the end of yesterday, Hegseth and several other senior U.S. government officials had already made statements saying that confidence in the initial report was low and/or that additional intelligence had led to updated assessments of more significant damage to the site. You can read more about all of this in our previous reporting. How the damage to Fordow, as well as to Natanz and Isfahan, will impact future nuclear developments in Iran remains to be seen. Iran's parliament approved a bill yesterday to cease all cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Hegseth said at today's press briefing that the 'mission set back a nuclear program in ways that other presidents would [only] have dreamed,' but did not elaborate. He did refer back to statements put out yesterday by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) that Fordow had been functionally destroyed and would require significant effort to rebuild. 'Of course, our IC, the intelligence community, will keep watching what Iran does and pay attention to that,' Hegseth added. When it comes to GBU-57/B, the Air Force is also working now toward a successor to that munition, which you can read more about here. Just like the emergence of Fordow impacted MOP's original development, it is hard not to see post-strike assessments from Operation Midnight Hammer feeding into what is currently referred to as the Next Generation Penetrator (NGP). 'You know, one of the things that I'm trying to do through this journey that we're on together, of course, [is] transparency, but also the requirement to really protect these capabilities,' Caine said today. 'So there's a balance in there, right. We do need to preserve options, should the nation and the joint force be tasked to go do something again. So I'm confident we'll find the middle ground. But there are some things that have passed [that] I want to not release for later.' Regardless, Operation Midnight Hammer has prompted the disclosure of significant and fascinating new details about the MOP and its history. Contact the author: joe@
Washington Post
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Trump and Netanyahu may take a victory lap on Iran, but the Gaza war looms over their meeting
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump might look to take a victory lap on Monday after their recent joint strikes on Iran , hailed by both as an unmitigated success. But as they meet for the third time this year, the outwardly triumphant visit will be dogged by Israel's 21-month war against Hamas in Gaza and questions over how hard Trump will push for an end to the conflict.
Yahoo
29-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump threatens to force journalists to reveal who leaked report undermining his narrative on Iran bombing
Donald Trump threatened in an interview Sunday to force journalists who published an initial U.S. intelligence assessment of his administration's strikes on Iran to reveal their sources or face prosecution as his effort to plaster a positive narrative over the aftermath continues. The U.S. president spoke on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, and insisted once again that U.S. airstrikes targeting three Iranian facilities last weekend completed the task of disabling the Iranian nuclear weapons development program. The strikes, Trump claimed, obliterated the Iranian government's entire (or a majority) of its supply of enriched uranium — he denied claims from Iranian officials that it was moved out of the area before the Fordow site was hit. And the president vowed legal action against Democratic members of Congress and journalists he blamed for publishing parts of a U.S. intelligence assessment of the effects of the three attacks. The administration spent the past week decrying it as one-sided, incomplete, and aimed at producing a narrative critical of the Trump White House. 'You go up and tell the reporter, 'national security, who gave it [to you]?'' Trump told Bartiromo, adding: 'You have to do that. And I suspect we'll be doing things like that.' More to follow...
