Residents line streets to welcome home Israeli-American hostage

Hundreds of cheering supporters, many waving Israeli flags and holding 'Welcome Home Edan' signs, lined the streets of Tenafly to greet his passing vehicle.
A smiling Mr Alexander held his arm out the passenger-side window to wave and touch the hands of people in the crowd.
The militant group Hamas released Mr Alexander, 21, on May 12 after 584 days. He has been in Israel since he was freed.
Thursday marked his first trip home to Tenafly, the suburb of New York City where he grew up and where his family still lives.
Mr Alexander was 19 when militants stormed his base in Israel and dragged him into the Gaza Strip.
He was among the 251 people taken hostage in Hamas' attack on October 7 2023.
Mr Alexander moved to Israel in 2022 after finishing high school and enlisted in the military.
Since his capture, there's been a huge outpouring of support for him in Tenafly, located in a county with a large Jewish and Israeli-American population.
The community held regular walks to raise awareness about him and the other hostages. Many gathered in May to celebrate his release.
'Edan's return is the return of everybody's child, every organisation, every family, every Israeli family, and non-Israeli, and non-Jews,' Orly Chen, a Tenafly resident, told CBS News New York on Thursday.

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Spectator

25 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.

South Wales Guardian

32 minutes ago

• South Wales Guardian

US strikes three Iranian nuclear sites

Iran's state-run IRNA news agency, quoting a provincial official, confirmed attacks on Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz nuclear sites. Addressing the nation from the White House, Mr Trump asserted that Iran's key nuclear plants were 'completely and fully obliterated'. There was no independent damage assessment. It was not clear whether the US would continue attacking Iran alongside its ally Israel, which has been engaged in a nine-day war with Iran. Mr Trump acted without congressional authorisation, and he warned that there would be additional strikes if Tehran retaliated against US forces. 'There will either be peace or there will be tragedy for Iran,' he said. The decision to directly involve the US in the war comes after more than a week of strikes by Israel on Iran that have moved to systematically eradicate the country's air defences and offensive missile capabilities, while damaging its nuclear enrichment facilities. US and Israeli officials have said that American stealth bombers and the 30,000-pound (13,500-kg) bunker buster bomb they alone can carry offered the best chance of destroying heavily-fortified sites connected to the Iranian nuclear programme buried deep underground. 'We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan,' Mr Trump said in a post on social media. 'All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home.' Mr Trump added in a later post that he would address the national audience at 10pm eastern time, writing: 'This is an HISTORIC MOMENT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ISRAEL, AND THE WORLD. IRAN MUST NOW AGREE TO END THIS WAR. THANK YOU!' Trump said B-2 stealth bombers were used but did not specify which types of bombs were dropped. The White House and Pentagon did not immediately elaborate on the operation. The strikes are a perilous decision for the US as Iran has pledged to retaliate if it joined the Israeli assault, and for Mr Trump personally, having won the White House on the promise of keeping America out of costly foreign conflicts and scoffed at the value of American interventionism. Trump told reporters on Friday that he was not interested in sending ground forces into Iran, saying it's 'the last thing you want to do.' He had previously indicated that he would make a final choice over the course of two weeks, a timeline that seemed drawn out as the situation was evolving quickly. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the United States on Wednesday that strikes targeting the Islamic Republic will 'result in irreparable damage for them'. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei declared 'any American intervention would be a recipe for an all-out war in the region'. Trump has vowed that he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon and he had initially hoped that the threat of force would bring the country's leaders to give up its nuclear program peacefully. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 21, 2025 Israel's military said on Saturday it was preparing for the possibility of a lengthy war, while Iran's foreign minister warned before the US attack that American military involvement 'would be very, very dangerous for everyone'. The prospect of a wider war threatened, too. Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen said they would resume attacks on US vessels in the Red Sea if the Trump administration joins Israel's military campaign. The Houthis paused such attacks in May under a deal with the US. The US ambassador to Israel announced the US had begun 'assisted departure flights', the first from Israel since the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, that sparked the war in Gaza. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at Thursday's press briefing that Trump had said: 'I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.' Instead, the US president struck just two days later. Mr Trump appears to have made the calculation — at the prodding of Israeli officials and many Republican lawmakers — that Israel's operation had softened the ground and presented a perhaps unparalleled opportunity to set back Iran's nuclear programme, perhaps permanently. The Israelis say their offensive has already crippled Iran's air defences, allowing them to already significantly degrade multiple Iranian nuclear sites. But to destroy the Fordo nuclear fuel enrichment plant, Israel appealed to Mr Trump for US bunker-busting bomb, which uses its weight and sheer kinetic force to reach deeply buried targets and then explode. The penetrator is currently only delivered by the B-2 stealth bomber, which is only found in the American arsenal. The bomb carries a conventional warhead, and is believed to be able to penetrate about 200 feet (61 metres) below the surface before exploding, and the bombs can be dropped one after another, effectively drilling deeper and deeper with each successive blast. The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Iran is producing highly enriched uranium at Fordo, raising the possibility that nuclear material could be released into the area if the GBU-57 A/B were used to hit the facility. Previous Israeli strikes at another Iranian nuclear site, Natanz, on a centrifuge site have caused contamination only at the site itself, not the surrounding area, the IAEA has said. Mr Trump's decision for direct US military intervention comes after his administration made an unsuccessful two-month push — including with high-level, direct negotiations with the Iranians — aimed at persuading Tehran to curb its nuclear programme. For months, Mr Trump said he was dedicated to a diplomatic push to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. And he twice — in April and again in late May — persuaded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off on military action against Iran and give diplomacy more time. The US in recent days has been shifting military aircraft and warships into and around the Middle East to protect Israel and US bases from Iranian attacks. All the while, Mr Trump has gone from publicly expressing hope that the moment could be a 'second chance' for Iran to make a deal to delivering explicit threats on Mr Khamenei and making calls for Tehran's unconditional surrender. 'We know exactly where the so-called 'Supreme Leader' is hiding,' Mr Trump said in a social media posting. 'He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.' The military showdown with Iran comes seven years after Mr Trump withdrew the US from the Obama-administration brokered agreement in 2018, calling it the 'worst deal ever'. The 2015 deal, signed by Iran, US and other world powers, created a long-term, comprehensive nuclear agreement that limited Tehran's enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Mr Trump decried the Obama-era deal for giving Iran too much in return for too little, because the agreement did not cover Iran's non-nuclear malign behaviour. Mr Trump has bristled at criticism from some of his Maga faithful, including conservative pundit Tucker Carlson, who have suggested that further US involvement would be a betrayal to supporters who were drawn to his promise to end US involvement in expensive and endless wars.

Spectator

42 minutes ago

• Spectator

Trump's Iran strike is a victory for the free world

Tel Aviv To America and Israel, the free world owes a debt – for courage, for clarity, for doing what had to be done. When the moment came, they did not hesitate. They bore the weight, braved the cost, and moved with the strength history demands. When Israel first struck inside Iran nine days ago, its government made a fateful decision: to sound the sirens and send its people into bomb shelters across the country. It was a moment of collective alertness, a signal that the threat was near and real. Last night, there were no sirens. No mass alerts. Most of Israel slept soundly as the United States acted with precision, strength, and resolve to bomb Iran's nuclear sites. That difference – between fear and confidence, between warning and control – speaks volumes about what has changed. This was perhaps the most complex and devastating non-nuclear strike in modern history This was a historic moment, and not because it came out of nowhere. Quite the opposite. This was the logical and necessary conclusion of a path the Islamic Republic of Iran refused to abandon. The United States and Israel did not want this war. They offered negotiations. They extended time. They warned. They gave the regime in Tehran every opportunity to reverse course, to step back from its genocidal ambitions, its nuclear obsession, and its campaign of regional subversion. But Iran did not flinch. It lied, stalled, cheated, plotted, and prepared. It never paused its pursuit of the bomb or its dream of erasing Israel. And so, at the hour of consequence, America acted. Twelve GBU-57 'bunker-buster' bombs, delivered by American B-2 Spirit bombers, struck Iran's fortified nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. Fordow – long regarded as the crown jewel of the regime's clandestine enrichment programme – was among the primary targets. Dozens of Tomahawk missiles were launched at Natanz and Fordow from submarines. This was not symbolic. It was strategic, surgical, and overwhelming. According to President Trump, the sites were 'completely and totally obliterated.' Iran's nuclear infrastructure has suffered a decisive and unprecedented blow. President Trump, in a nationally televised address, declared the operation a 'spectacular military success.' And he was right. But what is most telling is what he said next: that the Iranian regime must now make peace, or face far greater destruction. 'Tonight's was the most difficult of them all,' he warned, 'and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill.' No bravado. Just clarity. Just strength. Peace is not the fruit of balance, but of victory. From Carthage to Berlin, it is the victor who dictates the terms, who defines the future, who writes the rules. So it must be again. This clarity is what Britain and much of the West have lacked. While Israel acted, Britain and countless others criticised, threatened, and tried every diplomatic lever to tie Israel's hands and halt its response. They failed. Where others equivocated, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu planned, prepared, and executed. For over a year and a half, Israel has dismantled Iran's network of proxies – Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis – with discipline and endurance. Each strike, each operation, was a message: step back. Iran refused. Now the regime is left with rubble, not leverage. Some voices will say this is escalation. One of them, predictably, was António Guterres. The UN Secretary-General, whose career has been defined by impotence in the face of aggression, condemned the strikes and warned of catastrophe. The United Nations, once conceived as a guardian of peace, has become an echo chamber of moral equivocation, paralysed by autocrats and irrelevant in moments of actual consequence. While Iran built centrifuges, armed proxies, and threatened genocide, the UN debated terminology. Now, when action has finally been taken, it issues pleas for de-escalation, because that is all it has left. But the catastrophe began long ago – with the regime's drive to build a bomb, to wage war through terror, to dominate its region by force and fanaticism. What the world witnessed last night was not provocation. It was justice delayed, finally delivered. This action was not impulsive. A year ago, ABC News now confirms, the United States and Israel practised this strike in joint military exercises. Trump's much-maligned two-week 'pause' was not weakness. It was discipline. It was preparation. It was statesmanship. While the world speculated, while critics sneered with slogans like 'Trump Always Chickens Out,' the President and his team were aligning assets, coordinating allies, and positioning for impact. What followed was perhaps the most complex and devastating non-nuclear strike in modern history. And still the Iranian regime insists it will not relent. Its Atomic Energy Organisation struck a defiant tone, denying the extent of damage and accusing the United States of violating international law. But facts are stubborn things. The sites are gone. The enrichment has stopped. And the world, quietly or openly, knows who preserved peace. Leading Republicans, even those who have broken with Trump in the past, voiced their support. Mike Pence, his former Vice President, said Trump 'should be commended for his decisive leadership.' Mitch McConnell, ever measured, said the President made the right call. That unity matters. Because this was not an act for one country. It was for all free nations. Israel now has operational dominance over Iranian skies. Intelligence cooperation has reached new levels. Thousands of Iranian operatives, long working quietly for the West, have proved decisive. And Israel will continue its campaign, as its own media made clear: 'Israel will continue to attack Iran.' This is how you fight tyranny. This is how you dismantle terror. Not with platitudes, but with power. Not with moral fog, but with moral clarity. The remaking of the Middle East began on 7 October, when Israel awoke to unimaginable horror. It has continued ever since – with resilience, resolve, and ruthless strategic logic. Last night, that logic reached its inevitable conclusion. The question for the rest of the world is simple: which side are you on?