Another week, another war: Trump pivots from America first to talk of a bunker buster
Story of the Week
Another week. Another war. The prospect of carnage and thousands of deaths. Worrying questions about its impact on the region and beyond, the impacts on global stability.
Israel
's launch of
a war
against
Iran
was not defensive or triggered by any attack. Rather it is a war of choice. Its stated aims at the start – eliminating Iran's nuclear threat – quickly
pivoted into something else
, regime change, or, more accurately, regime destruction.
True to his make-it-up-as-you-go-along presidency,
Donald Trump
had pivoted within a day from his strict America first non-interventionist stance on international wars (a strong position with his MAGA base) to cheerleading the Israelis and threatening to deploy the only piece of arsenal the
Israel Defense Forces
do not have. That is, the 14-tonne so-called bunker-buster bomb which just might be able to penetrate into Fordo, the mountain where the Iranian regime has its main underground nuclear enrichment facility.
[
Netanyahu's ruling party gets popularity boost in wake of Iran conflict
Opens in new window
]
True to form, Trump tells the whole of Tehran (population 10 million) to evacuate. Which, by all reports, most citizens have done. Meanwhile the Israelis and Iranians continue to pound each other.
READ MORE
The move has drawn attention away from Israel's continuing onslaught against the population of
Gaza
. The statement of the G7 was read by some as troubling as it seemed to give almost unconditional support for what Israel had done. Of course, a war between Israel and Iran is a different proposition than its siege of Gaza, as the Iranian regime is unsavoury by any yardstick.
It seems that Israel's move to being an international pariah – even in the eyes of erstwhile supporters – has been modified, with some ambivalence expressed. Make no mistake it will employ the same ruthlessness and indifference to civilian casualties as it has done in Gaza and elsewhere.
There is a long and sad history of intervention by big global powers in this region, where regime-change unfortunately leads to a new regime that is in some cases worse than the henchmen they replaced.
Meanwhile
Ireland continues to work
to try to assist the few hundred citizens still in Iran and Israel. The Tánaiste has spoken to foreign affairs ministers in the region but, in truth, there is little our State can do bring influence to bear.
Bust-up
Row of this week. And every week. When you meet all the leaders outside the chamber they are all so civil. But there's something about the cauldron of the Dáil chamber that brings out the raspiness in
Micheál Martin
,
Mary Lou McDonald
,
Simon Harris
and
Pearse Doherty
.
No matter what the issue it descends within seconds into a dogfight. If you want a perfect summary of what happened this week there no better place to start than these two (verbal) blow-by-blow accounts Miriam Lord. The first is
here
and the second is
here
.
All very well but does it affect me?
The story was almost missed given everything else that was happening this week but it was a significant moment in recent Irish political and financial history.
AIB
bought the very last part of its shareholdings back from the State making it a fully independent entity once more.
After the financial crash, the State took shares in our two biggest pillar banks, Bank of Ireland and AIB, in order to make sure they survived. Bank of Ireland, which was less exposed to the property crash, came out of State ownership relatively quickly but it has been a long and slow process for AIB, taking almost a decade and a half.
But the moment finally arrived this week. And Joe Brennan
has a wonderful account of it
, including that enticing line that at one stage the bank's art collection was worth more than the bank.
Banana Skin
When you go on a solo run as a Minister, just make sure the ball does not slip form your grasp. Minister for Arts and Media Patrick O'Donovan found out all about that this week, when he got a
slap on the wrist
from the bean counters in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER).
In recent months, O'Donovan brought two memos to Cabinet, 'under his arm', without informing DPER first. The memos related to the
Arts Council
's half-abandoned ICT project as well as a plan to spend €10 million bringing an American football NFL game to Croke Park later this year.
As Ellen Coyne
reports
, a senior DPER official said this practice 'makes it very difficult for this department, and indeed for Government generally, to thoroughly and properly consider issues and their implications, particularly regarding substantial expenditure implications and serious governance issues'.
O'Donovan's spokespeople said there were time pressures involved which required him to bring both matters to Cabinet at short notice.
He would not want to make a habit of it, as far as DPER is concerned.
Winners and losers
Winner: Colin Hunt, AIB's chief executive and former special adviser ministers for Finance. This week, the bank
bought back the last of the shares
held by the State since the banking collapse in 2010.
Loser: Children's Hospital Ireland, which
faced a grilling
and dressing-down for its many failings at the Oireachtas Committee on Health.
The Big Read
Jack Horgan-Jones is on political column duty this week.
Miriam Lord's Saturday column is a must-read.
Martin Wall and Jack also have a big piece looking at the CHI in crisis.
Hear here
Sally Hayden joins Inside Politics on Friday from Beirut where
missiles flying overhead
have become a fact of daily life despite the ceasefire agreement Lebanon signed with Israel last November. The rising death toll and continuing aerial attacks from Iran and Israel show no signs of abating. And is the
US on the verge of joining Israel's attack
on Iran? Meanwhile,
Children's Health Ireland
appeared before the Oireachtas Health Committee this week with politicians eager to tear strips off the
embattled group responsible for running children's hospital services in Dublin
.
Could the Israel-Iran war completely destabilise the Middle East?
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Irish Examiner
an hour ago
- Irish Examiner
Israel-Iran war stretches into a second week without diplomatic breakthrough
Hours of talks aimed at de-escalating fighting between Israel and Iran failed to produce a diplomatic breakthrough as the war entered its second week with a fresh round of strikes between the two adversaries. European ministers and Iran's top diplomat met for four hours on Friday in Geneva, as President Donald Trump continued to weigh US military involvement and worries rose over potential strikes on nuclear reactors. European officials expressed hope for future negotiations, and Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said he was open to further dialogue while emphasising that Tehran had no interest in negotiating with the US while Israel continued attacking. 'Iran is ready to consider diplomacy if aggression ceases and the aggressor is held accountable for its committed crimes,' he told reporters. Benjamin Netanyahu visits the site of the Weizmann Institute of Science, which was hit by missiles fired from Iran (Jack Guez/Pool Photo via AP) No date was set for the next round of talks. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel's military operation in Iran would continue 'for as long as it takes' to eliminate what he called the existential threat of Iran's nuclear programme and arsenal of ballistic missiles. Israel's top general echoed the warning, saying the Israeli military was ready 'for a prolonged campaign'. But Mr Netanyahu's goal could be out of reach without US help. Iran's underground Fordo uranium enrichment facility is considered to be out of reach to all but America's 'bunker-buster' bombs. Mr Trump said he would put off deciding whether to join Israel's air campaign against Iran for up to two weeks. The war between Israel and Iran erupted on June 13, with Israeli airstrikes targeting nuclear and military sites, top generals and nuclear scientists. At least 657 people, including 263 civilians, have been killed in Iran and more than 2,000 wounded, according to a Washington-based Iranian human rights group. Iran has retaliated by firing 450 missiles and 1,000 drones at Israel, according to Israeli army estimates. Most have been shot down by Israel's multi-tiered air defences, but at least 24 people in Israel have been killed and hundreds wounded. Israel's defence minister said on Saturday it killed a commander in Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard who financed and armed Hamas in preparation for the October 7 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the 20-month long war in Gaza. Israel said Saeed Izadi was commander of the Palestine Corps for the Iranian Quds Force, an elite arm of the Guard that conducts military and intelligence operations outside Iran, and that he was killed in an apartment in the city of Qom.
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Irish Times
Israel says it killed veteran Iran commander as both sides attack
Israel said on Saturday it had killed a veteran Iranian commander as the countries traded attacks, a day after Tehran said it would not negotiate over its nuclear programme while under threat and Europe tried to keep peace talks alive. Saeed Izadi, who led the Palestine Corps of the Quds Force, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' overseas arm, was killed in a strike in an apartment in the Iranian city of Qom, said Israeli Defense minister Israel Katz. Calling his killing a 'major achievement for Israeli intelligence and the Air Force', Katz said in a statement that Izadi had financed and armed the Palestinian militant group Hamas in advance of its October 7th, 2023, attack on Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza . The Revolutionary Guards said five of its members had been killed in attacks on Khorramabad, according to Iranian media reports that did not mention Izadi, who was on US and British sanctions lists. READ MORE Iranian media had said earlier on Saturday that Israel had attacked a building in Qom, with initial reports of a 16-year-old killed and two people injured. Iran's Fars news agency said Israel had targeted the Isfahan nuclear facility, one of the nation's biggest, but there was no leakage of hazardous materials. The Israeli military said it had launched a wave of attacks against missile storage and launch infrastructure sites in Iran. Ali Shamkhani, a close ally of Iran's supreme leader, said he had survived an Israeli attack. 'It was my fate to stay with a wounded body, so I stay to continue to be the reason for the enemy's hostility,' he said in a message carried by state media. Early on Saturday, the Israeli military warned of an incoming missile barrage from Iran, triggering air raid sirens across parts of central Israel, including Tel Aviv, as well as in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Interceptions were visible in the sky over Tel Aviv, with explosions echoing across the metropolitan area as Israel's air defence systems responded. There were no reports of casualties. Israel began attacking Iran on June 13th, saying its long-time enemy was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. Iran, which says its nuclear programme is only for peaceful purposes, retaliated with missile and drone strikes on Israel. Israel is widely assumed to possess nuclear weapons. It neither confirms nor denies this. Its air attacks have killed 639 people in Iran, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a US-based human rights organisation that tracks Iran. The dead include the military's top echelon and nuclear scientists. Iran's health minister, Mohammadreza Zafarqandi, said on Saturday that Israel has attacked three hospitals during the conflict, killing two health workers and a child, and has targeted six ambulances, according to Fars. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An Iranian missile hit a hospital in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Thursday. Iran's Nournews on Saturday named 15 air defence officers and soldiers it said had been killed in the conflict with Israel. In Israel, 24 civilians have been killed in Iranian missile attacks, according to Israeli authorities. Iranian worshippers sit under banners featuring portraits of people killed in Israeli attacks, in Tehran on Friday. Photograph: Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images US president Donald Trump said on Friday he thought Iran would be able to have a nuclear weapon 'within a matter of weeks, or certainly within a matter of months'. He told reporters at the airport in Morristown, New Jersey: 'We can't let that happen.' He said his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was wrong in suggesting there was no evidence Iran is building a nuclear weapon. Russia has repeatedly told Israel that there is no evidence Iran is aiming to get nuclear weapons, Sky News Arabia on Saturday quoted Russian president Vladimir Putin as saying in an interview. 'Russia, as well as the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], has never had any evidence that Iran is preparing to obtain nuclear weapons, as we have repeatedly put the Israeli leadership on notice,' Sky News Arabia quoted Mr Putin as saying. Russia is ready to support Iran in developing a peaceful nuclear programme, Mr Putin was quoted as saying, adding that Iran has the right to do so. Speaking at an economic forum in St Petersburg on Friday, Mr Putin said Russia was sharing its ideas on how to stop the bloodshed in the Iran-Israel conflict with both sides. He did not give details of those ideas. Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araqchi said there was no room for negotiations with the US 'until Israeli aggression stops'. But he arrived in Geneva on Friday for talks with European foreign ministers at which Europe hopes to establish a path back to diplomacy. Mr Trump reiterated that he would take up to two weeks to decide whether the United States should enter the conflict on Israel's side, enough time 'to see whether or not people come to their senses', he said. Mr Trump said he was unlikely to press Israel to scale back its air strikes to allow negotiations to continue. 'I think it's very hard to make that request right now. If somebody is winning, it's a little bit harder to do than if somebody is losing, but we're ready, willing and able, and we've been speaking to Iran, and we'll see what happens,' he said. The Geneva talks produced little signs of progress, and Mr Trump said he doubted negotiators would be able to secure a ceasefire. 'Iran doesn't want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this one,' Trump said. Hundreds of US citizens have fled Iran since the air war began, according to a US State Department cable seen by Reuters. Israel's envoy to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told the Security Council on Friday his country would not stop its attacks 'until Iran's nuclear threat is dismantled'. Iran's UN envoy Amir Saeid Iravani called for Security Council action and said Tehran was alarmed by reports that the US might join the war. Russia and China demanded immediate de-escalation. A senior Iranian official told Reuters that Iran was ready to discuss limitations on uranium enrichment but that it would reject any proposal that barred it from enriching uranium completely, 'especially now under Israel's strikes'. – Reuters
Irish Times
5 hours ago
- Irish Times
If Netanyahu wants regime change in Iran, it is unlikely to end well
It is not yet certain whether Donald Trump will approve US involvement in Israel 's assault on Iran which began last week. While Israel has inflicted severe losses on Iran and appears to have disabled its air defences, there is a broad consensus that, without US intervention, the goal of disabling Iran's nuclear programme will be unachievable. To this end, a great deal of attention has been paid to the Fordow nuclear facility , close to the city of Qom, which is at the heart of the programme of uranium enrichment and much of which is located 80-90m underground. In 2009, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that the facility held about 3,000 centrifuges which are central to the enrichment process. Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal which Iran signed in 2015, uranium enrichment ceased at Fordow. But, when the US pulled out of that agreement under the first Trump administration, production restarted. Now the assumption is that only the so-called 'bunker buster' bombs possessed by the US are capable of destroying the facility at Fordow. However, the US president's announcement of a two-week deadline to decide if his country will join Israel's attack speaks to uncertainty regarding its likely success and divisions within his support base. Either way, the one-sided nature of the conflict so far – which has seen Israel inflict far more significant losses on Iran, both in terms of military leadership and civilian casualties, than it has sustained – raises the question of whether regime-change in Tehran is on the agenda. From the outset, Israeli leaders have expressly stated that this is not a key objective. However, they have made it equally clear that they would welcome the fall of the Islamic Republic should it happen. Indeed, Binyamin Netanyahu has called on Iranians to 'stand up for their freedom'. As for Trump, his rhetoric has shifted dramatically over the course of the past several weeks, from an initial position which saw him urge restraint on Netanyahu, and talk up the prospect of success in negotiations with Iran on its nuclear programme, to his more recent darker utterances regarding the prospect of direct US involvement to put an end to Iran's nuclear ambitions. All of this, in turn, suggests Trump has been bounced into supporting Israel's assault on Iran through Netanyahu's pre-emptive actions last Thursday. READ MORE Israel needs Trump's 'bunker buster' but will US enter the war? Listen | 31:22 Since Israel launched air strikes on Iran last Friday, the two states have traded missiles with mounting casualties on both military leaders have been killed as have some of its nuclear scientists but the country's citizens have borne the brunt of the air has said its rationale for the middle-of-the-night attack that sparked the war was its need to ensure, for its own protection, that Iran's nuclear programme is close Iran is to actually having a nuclear bomb is unclear but for Israel to obliterate entirely the nuclear threat it needs the US to join the war, to send its 'bunker buster' mega bomb to destroy the Fordo uranium enrichment facility buried deep in the by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon. While the likely course of US action on Iran remains unpredictable, it is clear that neither Israel nor the United States has a plan for – or indeed any coherent understanding of – what might follow from the fall of the regime in Tehran, beyond wilfully optimistic assumptions regarding its positive impact on the country and the region. However, history teaches us that such optimistic assumptions are rarely well placed. The reality is that when we have seen external involvement in the affairs of Iran and the Middle East more generally, the results have never been straightforward and rarely positive. [ Could Israel's attacks on Iran create a nuclear contamination risk? Opens in new window ] In Iran in 1953, the country's democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Mossadeq's government nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (which was a forerunner to BP), a move that was widely popular in the country but alarming to the UK and the US. As events unfolded, the Shah of Iran, fearing the worst, left the country. However, Mossadeq was removed from power in August 1953 and the Shah returned to preside over an increasingly repressive regime, until his removal during the revolution of 1979. As is so often the case with external interventions of this nature, Mossadeq's removal had unintended consequences. The events of 1953 dealt a severe blow to liberal and democratic politics in Iran while the Shah was seen as little more than an American puppet – factors contributing to the revolution which ended his rule in 1979 and inaugurated the Islamic Republic of Iran. More recently, the ill-conceived US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 brought years of violent conflict to the country, led to the sectarianisation of its politics and helped pave the way for the emergence of the so-called Islamic State , while strengthening the position of the Iranian regime in the region, along the way. Likewise, western intervention in Libya in 2011 did nothing to contribute to peace and stability in that country. This is not to say that Iranians cannot mobilise in the face of a repressive regime; Iran has a long history of such mobilisation. As far back as the early 20th century, the 'constitutional revolution' of the period from 1906 to 1911 saw mass demonstrations that forced the Shah to agree to a written constitution and the establishment of an elected parliament. That mobilisation was motivated by a number of grievances, including disillusionment with the ruling elite, as well as resentment at foreign influence and interference in the affairs of the country. While many of the gains of this period were subsequently reversed, the constitution remained in place until the revolution of 1979. Decades later, mass mobilisation led to the end of the Pahlavi dynasty, which had ruled Iran since 1925 with significant western support. However, the post-1979 period has also witnessed expressions of dissent from the governing orthodoxy in the country. In 2009, mass protests broke out when the hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed victory in the presidential election of June 12th that year, despite widespread electoral irregularities and claims by opposition candidates that the vote was rigged. After the announcement of the results, supporters of opposition candidates took to the streets in protest. By June 15th, as many as two million people were on the streets of Tehran. The protests were ultimately suppressed with the deaths of dozens of protesters and the arrests of thousands. Thirteen years later, unrest and protests broke out again on a mass scale following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, whose 'crime' was the violation of Iran's mandatory hijab law by wearing hers 'improperly'. The protest movement that followed adopted the slogan 'Women, Life, Freedom' but subsequently grew into open calls for the removal of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Once more the protests were violently suppressed, and 500 people lost their lives. Popular mobilisation in Iran for more than 100 years has been driven by domestic actors in pursuit of domestic agendas and never by external forces. It is unlikely that Netanyahu's call on the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their government will alter that record. Dr Vincent Durac lectures in Middle East politics in the UCD school of politics and international relations
