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Category: War on Iran

  • MIL-Evening Report: Caitlin Johnstone: We are, of course, being lied to about Iran

    Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. –

    COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

    Iran and Israel are at war, with the US already intimately involved and likely to become more so. Which of course means we’ll be spending the foreseeable future getting bashed in the face with lies from the most powerful people in the world.

    The most immediately obvious of these is the Netanyahu-promoted narrative that Israel initiated this conflict because Iran was on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon.

    With absolutely no self-consciousness or sense of irony, the Israeli prime minister followed the attacks with a statement accusing Iran of “genocidal rhetoric” which it has backed up “with a programme to develop nuclear weapons.”


    We are, of course, being lied to about Iran           Video: Caitlin Johnstone

    Israel, as we all know, has an unacknowledged nuclear arsenal, and its leaders are presently committing genocide in Gaza while spouting genocidal rhetoric.

    “And if not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time,” Netanyahu claimed. “It could be a year. It could be within a few months  —  less than a year. This is a clear and present danger to Israel’s very survival.”

    The Western political/media class have been dutifully promoting this line and uncritically parroting Israel’s claim that its unprovoked attack on Iran was “pre-emptive”, but there is absolutely no evidence that any of this is true.

    Benjamin Netanyahu has spent literally decades falsely claiming that Iran was a year or two away from developing a nuke, only to have the calendar prove him wrong with the passage of time over and over again.

    Iran and Israel (and the US) at war.         Video: Anti-war News

    US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard testified just weeks ago that “The IC [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003.”

    As journalist Séamus Malekafzali recently noted on Twitter, one of the strongest arguments that Iran had not reversed its decision to refrain from obtaining nuclear weapons is that Iranian nuclear scientists have been publicly expressing frustration about the fact that their government won’t allow them to construct a nuke.

    They want to do it, but Tehran won’t let them.

    US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth helped pave the way for Netanyahu’s claims this past Wednesday when he told the Senate that “there have been plenty of indications” Iran has been “moving their way toward something that would look a lot like a nuclear weapon.”

    This claim by Hegseth was swiftly scooped up and promoted by warmongers like Tom Cotton who said that Hegseth had “confirmed that Iran’s terrorist regime is actively working towards a nuclear weapon”.

    Cotton’s claim was then picked up by war pundit Mark Levin, who has been personally lobbying Trump to green light an attack on Iran, sarcastically quipping on Twitter, “So, SecDef Hegseth must by lying, too. Everyone’s lying except the isolationists, Koch-heads, Islamists, Chatsworth Qatarlson and their media propagandists.”

    But let’s back up and look at what Hegseth actually said. He did not say “Iran is building a nuclear weapon.” He said “there have been plenty of indications” Iran has been “moving their way toward something that would look a lot like a nuclear weapon”.

    If the US had intelligence that Iran was building a nuke, Hegseth would have just said so. But instead he performed this freakish verbal gymnastics stunt muttering about indications of something that might kinda sorta look like a nuclear weapon, which his fellow Iran hawks then falsely took and ran with as a positive assertion that Iran was building a nuke.

    There are other lies being circulated to help market this war as well. As Moon of Alabama notes, the Washington Post’s odious war propagandist David Ignatius is pushing the narrative that Iran has been cultivating a relationship with de-facto al-Qaeda leader Saif al-Adel. The lie that Saddam Hussein was in league with al-Qaeda was used two decades ago to sell the invasion of Iraq.

    At the same time, Trumpian pundits are currently circulating the narrative that the United States is full of Iranian “sleeper cells” who could activate at any moment and begin attacking Americans.

    The most egregious of these is Laura Loomer’s repeated claims that there are “millions” of such cells awaiting Iran’s orders to strike  — possibly the single most bat shit insane claim I have ever seen anyone with any major platform make, since it would mean a very sizable percentage of the US population is actually a secret Iranian proxy army.

    The fountain of lies is just getting started. There will be more. Believe nothing unless it is substantiated by mountains of evidence. These freaks have been caught lying to sell wars to the public far too many times for any of their claims to be taken on faith.

    Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

    This article was first published on Café Pacific.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: NZ’s Islamic Council calls on Luxon to condemn Israel over ‘unprovoked’ military strikes

    Asia Pacific Report

    The Islamic Council of New Zealand (ICONZ) has protested over Israel’s “unprovoked military strikes” against Iran, killing at least 80 people — 20 of them children, and called on the NZ government to publicly condemn Israeli’s actions.

    An open letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, read out to a Palestine rally in Henderson yesterday by advocate Dr Adnan Ali, said the attacks — targeting residential areas as well as military and nuclear facilities — represented a “grave escalation in regional tensions and pose a serious threat to global peace and stability”.

    “This act of aggression undermines international diplomatic efforts and risks igniting a broader conflict that could engulf the Middle East and beyond,” the letter said.

    The council’s letter, signed by ICONZ president Dr Muhammad Sajjad Haider Naqvi, said it was “particularly alarmed by the timing of the strikes, which come amid ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme”.

    The ICONZ letter sent to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on Friday protesting over the Israeli attacks on Iran. Image: APR

    It said the Israeli attack set a “dangerous precedent” and violated international law and sovereignty.

    The council urged the NZ government to:

    • Publicly condemn the Israeli government’s actions and call for an immediate cessation of hostilities;
    • Engage diplomatically with international partners to de-escalate tensions and promote peaceful resolution;
    • Support humanitarian efforts to assist affected civilians in Iran; and
    • Reaffirm NZ’s commitment to international law, peace and justice.

    The council said New Zealand had “long been a voice of reason and compassion on the global stage” and it hoped that this would guide Luxon’s leadership.

    In retaliatory missile attacks by Iran, at least four people have been killed and 200 wounded in Israel.

    Meanwhile, Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Amman, Jordan, because Israel has banned Al Jazeera from reporting on its territory, said attacking Iran allowed Israel to deflect attention away from Gaza.

    “Israel says the focus of its military activities is now on Iran and not on Gaza. But it also conveniently allows . . . the focus of attention on what’s happening in Israel to move from Gaza to Iran,” he said.

    “Until Israel hit those targets in Iran, it was coming under increasing international scrutiny over the conduct of the war in Gaza.”

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: NZ’s Islamic Council calls on Luxon to condemn Israel over ‘unprovoked’ military strikes

    Asia Pacific Report

    The Islamic Council of New Zealand (ICONZ) has protested over Israel’s “unprovoked military strikes” against Iran, killing at least 80 people — 20 of them children, and called on the NZ government to publicly condemn Israeli’s actions.

    An open letter to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, read out to a Palestine rally in Henderson yesterday by advocate Dr Adnan Ali, said the attacks — targeting residential areas as well as military and nuclear facilities — represented a “grave escalation in regional tensions and pose a serious threat to global peace and stability”.

    “This act of aggression undermines international diplomatic efforts and risks igniting a broader conflict that could engulf the Middle East and beyond,” the letter said.

    The council’s letter, signed by ICONZ president Dr Muhammad Sajjad Haider Naqvi, said it was “particularly alarmed by the timing of the strikes, which come amid ongoing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme”.

    The ICONZ letter sent to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on Friday protesting over the Israeli attacks on Iran. Image: APR

    It said the Israeli attack set a “dangerous precedent” and violated international law and sovereignty.

    The council urged the NZ government to:

    • Publicly condemn the Israeli government’s actions and call for an immediate cessation of hostilities;
    • Engage diplomatically with international partners to de-escalate tensions and promote peaceful resolution;
    • Support humanitarian efforts to assist affected civilians in Iran; and
    • Reaffirm NZ’s commitment to international law, peace and justice.

    The council said New Zealand had “long been a voice of reason and compassion on the global stage” and it hoped that this would guide Luxon’s leadership.

    In retaliatory missile attacks by Iran, at least four people have been killed and 200 wounded in Israel.

    Meanwhile, Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith, reporting from Amman, Jordan, because Israel has banned Al Jazeera from reporting on its territory, said attacking Iran allowed Israel to deflect attention away from Gaza.

    “Israel says the focus of its military activities is now on Iran and not on Gaza. But it also conveniently allows . . . the focus of attention on what’s happening in Israel to move from Gaza to Iran,” he said.

    “Until Israel hit those targets in Iran, it was coming under increasing international scrutiny over the conduct of the war in Gaza.”

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Twyford condemns weak action by NZ over Israel’s ‘ruthless’ apartheid

    Asia Pacific Report

    Labour MP for Te Atatu Phil Twyford criticsed the New Zealand government today for failing to take stronger action against Israel over its genocide and starvation strategy in Gaza, saying that at the very least the ambassador should be expelled.

    Speaking at a rally in Henderson organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa in West Auckland suburbs for the first time in the 88th week of protest, Twyford said: “The Israeli government is operating in an apartheid state.

    “They subject the Palestinian people under their military.

    “People who are under international law they are obliged to protect,” he told about 500 protesters.

    “They are subjecting them to the most ruthless, most brutal system of apartheid.”

    It was a story of “ethnic cleansing, dispossesion, terror routinely visited upon Palestinian people on a daily basis in their land”, said Twyford, who is Labour Party spokesperson on immigration, disarmament and foreign affairs.

    “And it is being done, not only by the forces of Zionism, but by the Western world complicit, knowing, understanding and actively conniving in that dispossession and repression.”

    Widely condemned move
    Twyford referred to the government’s move this week alongside four other countries to impose sanctions on two far-right ministers in the the Israeli cabinet, illegal settlers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, which has been widely condemned as too little and too late.

    Labour MP Phil Twyford speaking at the Henderson pro-Palestinian humanitarian rally today . . . Palestinians are subjected by Israel to “the most ruthless, most brutal, system of apartheid.” Image: Asia Pacific Report

    Leading British journalist Jonathan Cook this week criticised Britain, Australia, Canada and Norway along with New Zealand, saying they may have been “seeking strength in numbers” to withstand retaliation from Israel and the United States.

    “But in truth, they have selected the most limited and symbolic of all the possible sanctions they could have imposed on the Israeli government.”

    Israel was also condemned by speakers at the rally for its “unprovoked attack” on Iran and its strategy of forced starvation on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the repression in occupied West Bank.

    The death toll in Gaza was almost 62,000 Palestinians — more than 17,000 of them children — and Israel had also killed at least 78 people in the first waves of attacks on Iran.

    Meanwhile, in a statement today, the PSNA said it was appalled at the deportation of a Palestinian New Zealander from Egypt.

    PSNA said it had conveyed to the Egyptian government its “shock and anger” at the deportation of Rana Hamida who had travelled to Egypt to take part in the Global March to Gaza.

    “This Jew stands for Palestine” and “Sanction Israel now” placards at today’s Henderson rally. Image: APR

    Egyptian deportations over ‘global march’
    Egyptian authorities have deported dozens of people, including Spanish, Swedish, Finnish, Moroccan, Greek and US citizens.

    The Global March to Gaza is due to start this weekend in Egypt with thousands of people from throughout the world taking part.

    PSNA co-chair John Minto said the march was to “express humanity’s outrage” at the ongoing Gaza-wide bombing and starving of the Palestinian population by Israel.

    “Egypt’s action in deporting activists can only be seen as assisting Israel’s attacks against the Palestinian population,” he said.

    “Unfortunately, Egypt has a long history of collaboration with the US and Israel to stifle the Palestine liberation struggle. This is in sharp contrast to the Egyptian people who are as appalled and angry as the rest of humanity at Israel’s horrendous war crimes.”

    Minto said the following message from Rana as she returned to New Zealand — she was due at Auckland International Airport this afternoon:

    ‘The more we will roar’
    “The Egyptian authorities, along with other governments, think that blocking humanity from this act of solidarity will stop because of them blocking people from being there and doing the job that they continue failing to do.

    “They are so mistaken — the more complicit and enabling they get in their inaction and in this case their active participation, the more we will rise, and roar.

    “We are escalating as you awaken the dragons within us.

    “We will sing louder and we will walk longer — with our hiking shoes in the Sinai desert, or barefoot towards your embassies.

    “We will disrupt your meetings, we will crowd your phone with calls and emails, and we will be the light that blinds your robotic heart and melts it alongside the lies you stand for.

    “This is not about us, it is about HUMANITY within us that is dying and being oppressed in various forms, it is about the humans enduring hell in Gaza, West Bank and Falastine as a whole.

    “Muslims, Jews and Christians together.

    “It is about NEVER AGAIN.

    “Boycott, divest — we will not stop we will not rest.”

    Pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide protesters at the Henderson rally today with Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford speaking. Image: APR

    Expel Israeli ambassador call
    In an earlier statement in the wake of Israel’s attack on Iran, PSNA called on the government to immediately expel the Israeli ambassador from New Zealand.

    Minto said Israel’s strikes on Iran were “unprovoked, unilateral and a massive threat to humanity everywhere”.

    “This is such a dangerous action, that diplomatic weasel words about Israel are not acceptable. Israel is an out-of-control rogue state playing with the future of humanity. We must send it the strongest possible message.”

    “Israel’s using its often repeated lies and misinformation to attempt to justify it’s unconscionable violence and aggression.”

    Minto pointed to Iran’s right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes.

    “Even US intelligence officials have made is clear very recently that Iran is NOT on the way to produce a nuclear weapon.”

    “And neither is Iran committed to the ‘annihilation’ of Israel.

    ‘Liberation for Palestine’
    “Iran does not support Israel as a racist, apartheid state and wants to see liberation for Palestine.

    “In this, Iran has, along with the overwhelming majority of countries in the world, called for an end to Israel’s military occupation of Palestine, the end of its apartheid policies directed against Palestinians and the return of Palestinian refugees.”

    New Zealand had the same policies, Minto said.

    However, he condemned NZ’s “appeasement of this apartheid state, as our government and other Western countries have done over 20 months”.

    A “Save the world from evil Zionism” placard at the Henderson rally today. Image: APR

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Eugene Doyle: Team Genocide and the West’s war on Iran

    COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    I have visited Iran twice. Once in June 1980 to witness an unprecedented event: the world’s first Islamic Revolution. It was the very start of my writing career.

    The second time was in 2018 and part of my interest was to get a sense of how disenchanted the population was — or was not — with life under the Ayatollahs decades after the creation of the Islamic Republic.

    I loved my time in Iran and found ordinary Iranians to be such wonderful, cultured and kind people.

    When I heard the news today of Israel’s attack on Iran I had the kind of emotional response that should never be seen in public. I was apoplectic with rage and disgust, I vented bitterly and emotively.

    Then I calmed down. And here is what I would like to say:

    Just last week former CIA officer Ray McGovern, who wrote daily intelligence briefings for the US President during his 27-year career, reminded me when I interviewed him that the assessment of the US intelligence community has been for years that Iran ceased its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 and had not recommenced since.

    The departing CIA director William Burns confirmed this assessment recently.  Propaganda aside, there is nothing new other than a US-Israeli campaign that has shredded any concept of international laws or norms.

    I won’t mince words: what we are witnessing is the racist, genocidal Israeli regime, armed and encouraged by the US, Germany, UK and other Western regimes, launching a war that has no justification other than the expansion of Israeli power and the advancement of its Greater Israel project.

    This year, using American, German and British armaments, supported by underlings like Australia and New Zealand, the Israelis have pursued their genocide against the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza, and attacked various neighbours, including Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Iran.

    They represent a clear and present danger to peace and stability in the region.

    Iran has operated with considerable restraint but has also shown its willingness to use its military to keep the US-Israeli menace at bay. What most people forget is that the project to secure Iran’s borders and keep the likes of the British, Israelis and Americans out is a multi-generational project that long predates the Islamic Revolution.

    I would recommend Iran: A modern history by the US-based scholar Abbas Amanat that provides a long-view of the evolution of the Iranian state and how it has survived centuries of pressure and multiple occupations from imperial powers, including Russia, Britain, the US and others.

    Hard-fought independence
    The country was raped by the Brits and the Americans and has won a hard-fought independence that is being seriously challenged, not from within, but by the Israelis and the Western warlords who have wrecked so many countries and killed millions of men, women and children in the region over recent decades.

    I spoke and messaged with Iranian friends today both in Iran and in New Zealand and the response was consistent. They felt, one of them said, 10 times more hurt and emotional than I did.

    Understandable.

    A New Zealand-based Iranian friend had to leave work as soon as he heard the news.  He scanned Iranian social media and found people were upset, angry and overwhelmingly supportive of the government.

    “They destroyed entire apartment buildings! Why?”, “People will be very supportive of the regime now because they have attacked civilians.”

    “My parents are in the capital. I was so scared for them.”

    Just a couple of years ago scholars like Professor Amanat estimated that core support for the regime was probably only around 20 percent.  That was my impression too when I visited in 2018.

    Nationalism, existential menace
    Israel and the US have changed that. Nationalism and an existential menace will see Iranians rally around the flag.

    Something I learnt in Iran, in between visiting the magnificent ruins of the capital of the Achaemenid Empire at Persepolis, exploring a Zoroastrian Tower of Silence, chowing down on insanely good food in Yazd, talking with a scholar and then a dissident in Isfahan, and exploring an ancient Sassanian fort and a caravanserai in the eastern desert, was that the Iranians are the most politically astute people in the region.

    Many I spoke to were quite open about their disdain for the regime but none of them sought a counter-revolution.

    They knew what that would bring: the wolves (the Americans, the Israelis, the Saudis, and other bad actors) would slip in and tear the country apart. Slow change is the smarter option when you live in this neighbourhood.

    Iranians are overwhelmingly well-educated, profoundly courteous and kind, and have a deep sense of history. They know more than enough about what happened to them and to so many other countries once a great power sees an opening.

    War is a truly horrific thing that always brings terrible suffering to ordinary people. It is very rarely justified.

    Iran was actively negotiating with the Americans who, we now know, were briefed on the attack in advance and will possibly join the attack in the near future.

    US senators are baying for Judeo-Christian jihad. Democrat Senator John Fetterman was typical: “Keep wiping out Iranian leadership and the nuclear personnel. We must provide whatever is necessary — military, intelligence, weaponry — to fully back Israel in striking Iran.”

    We should have the moral and intellectual honesty to see the truth:  Our team, Team Genocide, are the enemies of peace and justice.  I wish the Iranian people peace and prosperity.

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Caitlin Johnstone: Staring down the barrel of war with Iran once again

    Report by Dr David Robie – Café Pacific. –

    COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

    Well it looks like the US is on the precipice of war with Iran again.

    US officials are telling the press that they anticipate a potential impending Israeli attack on Iran while the family members of US military personnel are being assisted with evacuation from bases in the region.

    This comes as Tehran issues a warning that it will strike all US military bases within range of its missiles if it comes under attack. There are reportedly some 50,000 US troops in 10 bases which could come under fire should this occur.

    The US is also evacuating its embassy in Iraq, and has authorised the departure of non-essential personnel from its embassies in Kuwait and Bahrain.

    Asked by the press about the evacuations, President Trump said, “They are being moved out because it could be a dangerous place, and we’ll see what happens. We’ve given notice to move out.”

    Trump is openly declaring a willingness to strike Iran if nuclear negotiations fall through, while saying he is now “much less confident” that any deal will be made.


    Staring down the barrel of war with Iran.    Video: Caitlin Johnstone

    “If they don’t make a deal, they’re not gonna have a nuclear weapon; if they do make a deal they’re not gonna have a nuclear weapon too,” the president said in an interview published on Wednesday, adding that “it would be nicer to do it without warfare, without people dying.”

    If the US backs an Israeli attack on Iran and then Iran retaliates by killing a bunch of US military personnel, we could be looking at a full-scale direct war between the US and Iran.

    As I’ve said in this space many times before, this would be the absolute worst-case nightmare scenario for the Middle East, unleashing horrors that dwarf all the other terrible abuses currently happening in the region.

    As Trump’s now-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in 2019 (back when she publicly opposed Trump’s warmongering), “What is important that the American people know is a war with Iran would make the war in Iraq look like a cakewalk.”

    It’s so stupid that this keeps happening. This could all be avoided by the US simply ceasing to support the genocidal apartheid state of Israel no matter what it does.

    The fact that Washington has continued to pour weapons into Israel despite all its warmongering and genocide since 2023 means the US supports everything that Israel has been doing.

    If a war with Iran does occur, you will doubtless hear Western pundits and politicians trying to spin this as America getting “drawn into” another war in the Middle East, or Trump being tricked or manipulated into war.

    But make no mistake: the US could have turned away from this path at any time, and still can.

    If this Pandora’s box is opened, it will be because the US empire knowingly chose to open it.

    Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

    This article was first published on Café Pacific.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –