As Trump strikes Iran, the US - which launched Iran's nuclear programme - now seeks to end it

So the country which launched Iran's nuclear programme is now the country seeking to end it.
Seven decades after President Eisenhower and the Shah cooperated on the Atoms for Peace programme, President Trump is at war with Iran, insisting not doing so risks global security.
Unfortunately, for the region and the world, by doing so he risks exactly the same thing.
Trump gave diplomacy a two week deadline, that deadline lasted less than two days.
With Trump's demands for an 'unconditional surrender' ignored by the Islamic leadership, it fell to the B2 bombers of the United States Air Force to try and destroy Iran's nuclear assets, taking over where Israel failed.
The consequences are likely to stretch far beyond their targets.
Iran says any form of US military intervention will be met with 'irreparable harm'.
'This nation will never surrender to imposition from anyone,' the Ayatollah has already warned.
American bases in the region are likely to be the first to be targeted. The assets in Iraq are likely to be particularly hard hit by in country Shia militia loyal to Iran.
It is likely Iran's other proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen may also enter the fray. Though significantly weakened by a structural decapitation by Israel over the past 18 months, Hezbollah do still have the weapons to strike Israel.
The Houthis have the power to strike Israel and ships in the Red Sea. They have form for both and could step up their actions.
A easy target would be the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow shipping lane between Iran and Oman. Around a quarter of global oil supplies and a third of liquified natural gas production moves though that stretch. So too thousands of containers ships.
You don't need to be an expert in trade or economics to work out the knock-on effect of Iran effectively closing it.
And let's not forget global terrorism would be another weapon in Iran's arsenal.
All that is before we even consider the other objective, regime change. The regional destabilisation that would trigger would destroy that 'golden age' vision Trump spoke of on his recent Middle East trade tour. Then he eulogised a region defined by commerce not chaos. His own actions may render his words worthless.
Without doubt his allies in the Gulf have sought his ear over these past weeks, desperate to avoid such a scenario. It seems even their bank balances have not been enough to reign in their erstwhile ally or weaken the seemingly unbreakable alliance with Israel.
Iran in its current form may not be the neighbour the Gulf states would chose but it is better than a chaos of a power vacuum.
By taking action President Trump may hope he can bring this conflict to a speedier end. He may yet discover, like so many before, the dreadful dangers of a Middle Eastern war. They take political lives as well as civilian ones.

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Times

15 minutes ago

• Times

I looked into Ayatollah Khamenei's eyes. He's willing to die a martyr

The closest I ever came to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was in the summer of 2009, during the Green Movement that brought millions of Iranians on to the streets to protest against a presidential election that had been rigged in favour of the Ayatollah's preferred candidate. One Friday in June that year I was one of two foreign journalists, and the only Brit, in the press section of a huge open air prayer space in the centre of Tehran while, a few yards away, the supreme leader delivered one of the most consequential sermons of his life. Amid chants from the congregation of 'Death to America!' and 'Death to Israel!' Khamenei abandoned his long-maintained pose of neutrality between Iran's political factions, declaring the election results legitimate and ordering the protesters to end their agitation or face 'blood, violence and chaos'. • US bombs Iran – follow live Accusing western countries of being behind the protests, Khamenei suddenly fixed his eyes on mine, declaring: 'And the most evil of them all are the British.' The faithful bayed dutifully: 'Death to Britain!' In the weeks that followed, as the Green Movement was obliterated by truncheon charges and pepper gas, show trials and prison rapes, I never forgot that look. Years later and now 86 years old, Khamenei is the least known of the three national leaders who will decide the future of Iran, and with it that of the Middle East. For Binyamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, the war that Israel started on June 12 is about Iran's ability to acquire nuclear weapons and threaten the Jewish state, which Khamenei has described as a 'cancerous tumour' that needs removal. Now, Trump has done what he previously seemed unwilling to do. Late on Saturday night, the US president ordered military strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities: Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. For Khamenei, this is a moment of truth in which his 46 years of service to the Islamic Revolution, 36 of them spent as the country's all powerful supreme leader — effectively its head of state, head of religion and commander-in-chief — will either be vindicated or reduced to ashes. It was Khamenei's mentor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the 1979 revolution that toppled Shah Mohammad RezaPahlavi after spending 15 years in exile. In the 1980s he waged an epic eight-year war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. (If you find the surnames of the two successive supreme leaders confusingly similar, you're in good company; from Trump down, the US administration calls Khamenei 'the Ayatollah', even though there are actually many ayatollahs in Iran.) Khomeini trusted his mentee and valued his commitment to revolutionary principles. When he died in 1989, Iran's Assembly of Experts, the body of more than 80 clerics who choose the supreme leader, elected Khamenei in his place. • Who is Iran's ruthless supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? As supreme leader, Khamenei is the ultimate power in Iran. Presidential nominees are vetted by the Guardian Council, which is partially selected by Khamenei and also vets laws passed by parliament. Critically, Khamenei also controls the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran's elite military force that acts an ideological shield for the revolution, controls the ballistic missile programme and runs the country's foreign military operations. In recent years, Khamenei has presided over what until last year looked like an unstoppable expansion of Iranian influence through the Middle East, backing militias in Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq, as well as Bashar al-Assad's Syria (a network that came to be known as its 'axis of resistance') — all the while enriching uranium to ever higher levels. Hubris took hold. The death in 2017 of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president of Iran and Khamenei's only equal among his peers in the political elite, robbed the supreme leader of the restraining influence of a pragmatist, a man who was more interested in reaching an accommodation with the West than in fighting it. Meanwhile, the rest of the religious establishment elevated this cleric of only middling expertise to the status of a major divine. The Revolutionary Guard commanders whom he coddled with lucrative sanctions-busting opportunities made his overseas mission their own. All this came to an abrupt halt after Hamas's attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. This led to the mauling of Hezbollah at the hands of the same brutally effective Israeli intelligence services and air force that are now mauling Iran. To make matters worse, last year Assad's Syrian regime was overthrown, denying Iran its most important foreign client. The Islamic Revolution has been boxed back to its heartland on the Persian plateau. For the past week Israel's air force has been hammering nuclear, military and civilian targets in Iran, in the process killing more than 600 people, a third of them civilians. Unable to protect their own skies, Iran has retaliated by sending waves of missiles into Israel, including a device that got through Israel's defences and hit the Sorokah hospital, in Beersheeba, on Thursday. Trump has announced that he will decide within two weeks whether to enter the war — giving him enough time to ready his stealth bombers and aircraft carriers, but also to have a last crack at diplomacy. The world is waiting to see whether Trump uses his bunker-busting bombs to try to take out Iran's still intact Fordow uranium enrichment facility, near the seminary city of Qom, where Khamenei once studied 'at the feet', as the Persian saying goes, of his mentor Khomeini. If Trump does decide to fight, Khamenei's response will be just as critical. This could range from the 'unconditional surrender' that Trump demanded on Tuesday to attacking US forces in the Middle East by conventional means and — as a possibly suicidal last resort — further enriching the 60 per cent enriched uranium that Iran already possesses and going flat out for a bomb, assuming that Iran retains the materiel and expertise to do so. • The Iran-Israel conflict in maps, video and satellite images At stake now for the supreme leader is not simply the country's territorial integrity but also the ideologically radical and socially repressive ethos he has imposed on it. Revolutionary Iran is a country where the hijab remains mandatory for women, even if a large minority abandoned it during the 'Woman, Life, Freedom' protests of 2022-23, and have resisted the authorities' best efforts to force them to adopt it again. Modesty codes are imposed by the police and criticising the supreme leader is punishable by prison. Married women need their husband's permission to obtain a passport. Religious minorities face discrimination and the state executed 901 people in 2024, according to the UN. Conventional political careers are assessed on the basis of positions attained and policies enacted. But Khamenei, warrior, prophet and moral scourge, has made it his life's work to preserve the purity of the Islamic Revolution and deny Israel a moment's peace. It is by these measures that he asks to be judged. The style of the man is the antithesis of his adversaries. While they love to be seen, Khamenei is sparing in his appearances, a stranger to vanity and reportedly frugal in his tastes. A globetrotter he is not: he last set foot out of Iran in 1989 (destination: North Korea) and rarely accepts visits from westerners (an exception is made for Vladimir Putin). Gone even are the modest fripperies of his early adulthood in the shrine city of Mashhad, where he indulged an interest in poetry and music and cultivated the image of a worldly intellectual by smoking a pipe. From his earliest years, Khamenei was raised by his father, Javad, also a Shia cleric, to value austerity and devotion to Islam. Two of his brothers also became clerics. 'My father was a well‑known religious scholar who was very pious and a bit of a recluse,' Khamenei recalled. 'We had a difficult life. I remember that sometimes we didn't have anything in the house for dinner at night. Nevertheless, my mother would try to scrape something up, and that dinner would be nothing but bread and raisins.' Today, when Khamenei engages in verbal jousts with his current — and perhaps final — adversaries in Israel and the West, it is in his mind the confrontation of the implacable man of God, soft of voice, hard of will, and the histrionics of the fragile western ego. On Wednesday, in an address ostensibly to the Iranian people — but in reality directed at Trump — Khamenei made it clear that he won't capitulate. Occasionally raising his left hand to emphasise a point (he lost the use of his right hand in 1981 after an opposition group tried to kill him using a booby-trapped tape recorder), and frequently licking his lips, an old habit, the supreme leader said in his calm, even voice: 'The Iranians are not the kind of people who surrender … if America enters the fray it will suffer irreparable harm.' As I learnt to my cost at Friday prayers that day in 2009, Khamenei is an amateur historian who remembers with rancour the sway that Britain enjoyed over Iran for many decades, without, however, ever formally colonising the country. He hates sell-outs, particularly the last Shah's father, Reza Shah. Reza was brought to power by the British and, having made the mistake of favouring the Germans in the Second World War, was bundled into exile by the Allies when they invaded in 1941. An Iranian friend recently sent me a clip of Khamenei in a hall of people discussing the moment when the British told Reza to leave Iran. His style is conversational, intimate, grandfatherly — but above all virile. 'They told him to go,' Khamenei told his rapt audience, 'and he went! Can you imagine a greater humiliation for a country?' And, as if addressing Reza himself, he went on: 'If you're a man … if you possess a drop of spunk, you'd say, 'I won't go!' You'd let them kill you!' So when Khamenei issues his warnings from his bunker, do not confuse them with the empty fulminations of a Colonel Muammar Gaddafi or a Saddam Hussein, made while their praetorian guards melt into the night. Do not expect this man who has lived his life for a noble cause — and in his pious eyes has everything to gain from dying a martyr to it — to do an Assad and willingly exchange the leadership of his country for a Russian dacha. Right now, from exile in America, a second Reza Pahlavi — the grandson of Reza Shah, for whom Khamenei has such fierce contempt — has been calling for the Iranians to take advantage of the Israeli assault and topple their tyrannical ruler. It's true that millions of Iranians hate Khamenei for his callousness, his machinations, his driving of the country to the brink of disaster. But, if they are forced to choose between a foreign beast and a domestic monster, a great many will choose the latter. From his base near Washington DC, Pahlavi taunts the supreme leader, calling him a rat in his lair. But he knows, and everyone knows, the basic history. His father cut and ran when things got tough in 1979 and his grandfather did the same in 1941. Not, I think, Ali Khamenei. Christopher de Bellaigue is the former correspondent of The Economist in Iran and author of The Golden Throne: The Curse of a King

Sky News

16 minutes ago

• Sky News

What happens next after US strikes is largely in Iran's control - but there are no good choices

As the sun rises above Jerusalem this morning, Israelis will be waking to the news that America has joined their war and attacked Iran. It will be met with mixed feelings. While the new day brings a comfort in US military support there will also be deep trepidation that this war has entered a dangerous and potentially uncontrollable phase. Benjamin Netanyahu released a video statement praising the US president and saying peace comes through strength; Donald Trump addressed the American nation and warned Iran he would not hesitate to order further action if it retaliates. What happens next is largely in Iran's control. What they choose to do, will determine the future of this region. The question is now not whether they will respond, but how? 1:45 Iran has faced a humiliating pounding from Israeli jets over nine days and now suffered massive attacks on their celebrated nuclear facilities by a country they call "The Great Satan"; there will be a feeling of national humiliation and anger, and the government will need to show its people it remains strong. Developing a nuclear programme has taken many decades and comes at vast cost: billions and billions of dollars and heavy international sanctions. That all now lies in tatters. How does the government explain that to its people, many of whom have suffered at the expense of these grand ambitions and are opposed to the draconian leadership they live under? Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is often described as the world's longest-serving dictator. He hasn't survived by being reckless but even though the US strikes weren't aimed at regime change, Khamanei's future is now more precarious than ever. The government rhetoric and state television channels will promise fire and victory, but the reality isn't simple. There will be voices close to the Supreme Leader, especially in the Revolutionary Guard, encouraging a strong response. The moderates will likely urge caution, wary of dragging the US into a wider, more sustained conflict that Iran couldn't win. It's unclear how much more Iran can throw at Israel. Ballistic missiles have been fired at the country every day since the war began, but in decreasing numbers as Israel has systematically targeted launch sites and stockpiles. Iran's proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, are severely degraded and the Assad regime in Syria is no more. This was all supposed to be the first line of defence, a deterrence against an Israel attack. That shield has collapsed. The Houthis remain defiant but their firepower is limited. 1:44 The US attacks were against Iran's nuclear sites, not senior Iranian officials. Strikes on US bases in the region would therefore be the most logical 'like-for-like' response. If they choose to widen the conflict, Iran could now target oil facilities in the Gulf or try to close off the globally important Strait of Hormuz. Either of those options would have international consequences. 2:48 Shia militia in Iraq could be hard to control if they decide to act unilaterally. Iraqi security forces have reportedly surrounded the US Embassy in Baghdad in anticipation of violence. There is a possibility Iran could do something smaller and symbolic as a way of saving face, having the final word and giving the region an off-ramp. That will be the hope in Washington. But even in that best-case scenario, it will surely have to be something more than a token response; Iran is reeling, severely weakened internally and externally. If they escalate, they risk a severe US response that could be a death blow. If they capitulate, the government faces major domestic dissent and reputational damage from which it might never recover.

Spectator

36 minutes ago

• Spectator

Prepare for Iran to retaliate

On Thursday, President Trump gave Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the regime he has led for more than 35 years an ultimatum: start negotiating over your nuclear programme, or face the full consequences. He would allow another two weeks, at most, for Tehran to prove its willingness to negotiate sincerely. The armchair warriors on cable TV news are gloating about how great the operation turned and how resolute Trump proved to be, but none appear particularly interested in the first, second and third order effects of the decision The two weeks, however, was only two days. Trump's decision to drop 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs on Fordow, Iran's deeply-buried underground uranium enrichment facility, as well as on facilities at Natanz and Isfahan, was the culmination of eight days of deliberations within the Trump administration. It was a long eight days for Trump, no doubt, with Senator Lindsey Graham on one side urging him to take care of Iran's nuclear programme militarily; former Fox News host Tucker Carlson was on the other, counselling the president to stick with his 'America First' principles of non-interventionism. Ultimately, Trump split the baby – or at least tried to. The way the White House describes it, Trump is taking decisive military action on Iran without getting bogged down in another long, drawn-out, convoluted mess in the Middle East. There will be no regime change as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants, nor will there be US boots on Iranian soil. Trump shared these details with Fox host Sean Hannity, and added that all of the Iranian nuclear sites targeted were completely destroyed. But let's face it: America's capabilities were never in dispute. The question wasn't whether the United States could bomb buildings both above and below ground, but whether bombing was the right way to address the Iranian nuclear issue. The armchair warriors on cable TV news are gloating about how great the operation turned and how resolute Trump proved to be, but none appear particularly interested in the first, second and third order effects of the decision. And there are plenty to mention. The most immediate consequence will be Iranian retaliation. Khamenei has virtually assured that some kind of military retaliation against US bases in the region will occur. There are plenty of those bases around, and Tehran has quite a few options at its disposal. By entering a war Israel started, Trump has now opened up the possibility of US troops having targets on their backs. While the Iranians have used perhaps as many as half of their ballistic missile inventory against Israel over the past eight days, there are still hundreds upon hundreds of them available to sail across the Persian Gulf into an American military installation. Some pundits will dismiss the Iranians as a fairly weak conventional power – not worthy of our concern. Yet even a weak power has some arrows in its quiver. If one of those quivers kills an American, Trump will feel an even greater amount of pressure to plunge further into the muck. Zooming out, another potential consequence: will Khamenei react to this US strike by throwing up his hands and begging for forgiveness – or by rebuilding what was destroyed? You won't find many analysts who know Iranian history and how the Islamic Republic operates betting on the former scenario. The only thing more dangerous to Khamenei than US military force is submitting to American demands. Indeed, it's one of the reasons why the Iranians refused to meet the Trump administration's nuclear demands when Washington imposed maximum pressure sanctions on the regime. Doing so would have been viewed as an embarrassment on the international stage – and from the regime's perspective, it would have served as a stepping-stone for America issuing even stronger demands in the future. In sum, don't expect the Iranians to wave the white flag. Instead, the regime is more likely to use the US strikes as a rationale to boot all international inspectors out of the country, suspend or withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and redouble their efforts to reconstruct the nuclear infrastructure the Americans and Israelis just wiped out. Those within the regime who were arguing that a nuclear weapon was absolutely essential to keep foreign powers at bay will be further empowered. And the Supreme Leader, who the US intelligence community assessed had yet to give the order to actually build a bomb, will have more reason to change his strategic calculations. Trump claims he's a master negotiator. On Iran, he claimed diplomacy was his preferred choice and authorised his old pal Steve Witkoff to get a deal done. But in the end, he opted for bombing and tweeting over negotiating.