Latest news with #Ayatollah
The Sun
6 hours ago
- Politics
- The Sun
Where is the Ayatollah? Madcap ‘Supreme Leader' holed up in lair – but still an ‘easy target' for Trump's bunker busters
IRAN'S supreme leader has scurried away to an underground bunker in a Tehran suburb amid threats to his life, according to reports. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is believed to be cowering away in the secret lair as Israeli missile attacks rain down nearby. 9 9 9 9 9 Two informed sources inside the country told Iran International the country's ageing dictator is holed up in the bunker in Lavizan, a neighbourhood in Tehran. It is among the areas in Iran to have been rocked by explosions over the past few days. Khamenei's family are also with him, the sources added, including his son Mojtaba - who is seen as a potential heir to the supreme leader. The Ayatollah also reportedly sought refuge in this bunker during Iranian strikes in April 2024 and October 2024. It comes as the conflict between Israel and Iran continues to escalate - and Donald Trump weighs up whether to get directly involved. Both countries having fired missile barrages at each other over the past week. Israel claims its attacks against Iran are necessary to stop it crafting a nuclear bomb - which Israeli officials claim is an imminent risk. However, this view is disputed by some in the US intelligence world, and Iran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful. Donald Trump withdrew from a nuclear deal with Iran and several other countries during his first term in 2018. A diplomatic source told Iran International that Israel could have taken out Khamenei on the first night of its operations. Iran's murderous hospital blitz foiled by Israel at last minute, president reveals But Israel reportedly chose to give him a final chance to abandon Tehran's uranium enrichment programme. Trump will decide whether the US will get directly involved in a war with Iran within the next two weeks, the White House has said. In a Truth Social Post, Trump said: "We know exactly where the so-called 'Supreme Leader' is hiding. "He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. "But we don't want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin." The US is currently the only country to wield 30,000lb "bunker buster" bombs that could take out underground targets beyond the reach of conventional munitions. 9 9 These Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) bombs can burrow deep inside the ground before blowing up. Trump claims he vetoed an Israeli proposal to assassinate Khamenei, according to US officials. But one senior Israeli official has put out a strongly worded threat to the Iranian supreme leader. Defence minister Israel Katz said: "Khamenei openly declares that he wants Israel destroyed – he personally gives the order to fire on hospitals. "He considers the destruction of the state of Israel to be a goal. Such a man can no longer be allowed to exist." Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel is ready to "remove" the nuclear threat from Iran. Israel is itself widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, although the country maintains ambiguity over this. However, other top Israeli figures have taken a more cautious tone on regime change. President Isaac Herzog told Axel Springer Global Reporters: "We don't have a goal on Khamenei, nor do we have a goal on regime change. "But it could be historically a clear side effect of major historical consequences that will do good to the Iranian people." Russia, a close international partner of the Iranian regime, has said it would react "very negatively" if Khamenei is killed. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Sky News that the supreme leader's assassination would "open the Pandora's box". 9 9
Miami Herald
20 hours ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Trump plans to decide within 2 weeks on whether to strike Iran
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump will decide within two weeks whether to strike Iran, his spokeswoman said, as Israel hit more Iranian nuclear sites and warned its attacks may bring down the leadership in Tehran. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Trump's message Thursday is that "based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks." Leavitt declined to elaborate on Trump's timeline, including on how he views the chances of success in any further talks with Iran. The president's goal - halting Iranian enrichment of uranium and preventing the country from obtaining nuclear weapons - remains intact, though he also believes in diplomacy if there's a chance to use it, Leavitt told reporters at the White House. Trump has for days publicly mused about joining Israel's strikes on Iran, a move that would escalate the conflict in the oil-rich Middle East. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier Thursday that while Israel's military objective remains the destruction of Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, "we may create the conditions" to help change the government. In answer to whether that meant targeting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Netanyahu said "no one is immune." Defense Minister Israel Katz earlier mentioned Khamenei by name, saying he would "be held accountable" after Iran's missiles struck an Israeli hospital with the two countries continuing to exchange fire. Senior U.S. officials are preparing for the possibility of a strike on Iran in coming days, people familiar with the matter said, with some pointing to potential plans for a weekend strike. Top leaders at a handful of federal agencies have begun getting ready for an attack, one person said. With no indication of a pause in hostilities, other international governments stepped up efforts to rein in the conflict. United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer called on Trump to keep the door open to resuming talks over Iran's nuclear program, a sign of his concern about possible American military action. Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, called for an end to hostilities and a return to dialogue. The foreign ministers of Germany, France and the UK plan to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in person for talks in Geneva on Friday. The European Union's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, will be present. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has spoken with his Italian counterpart and is scheduled to meet UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy in Washington on Thursday. Araghchi said Wednesday that Iran remains "committed to diplomacy" and has never sought and would never seek nuclear weapons. Khamenei said the same day he won't surrender. A missile from Iran on Thursday struck an Israeli hospital for the first time since the war started, a reminder of the risks to civilians in both countries. Israel's Health Ministry said there were only a number of light injuries in the incident at Soroka Medical Center in the south of the country, as the missile landed in a department that had been evacuated hours earlier. The impact of the morning salvo was magnified by what Israel described as Iran's use of a missile with a warhead that broke into dozens of submunitions that scattered widely before exploding on the ground. A Bloomberg reporter heard a blast overhead before the impacts, which appeared to correspond to the Israeli military's analysis of the kind of missile used. The fragmented-warhead missile was unveiled by Iran in 2017, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Israel's campaign shows no sign of letting up, with jets striking dozens of military targets in Iran overnight, including an inactive nuclear reactor in the area of Arak. The country will escalate attacks on Iranian strategic and government targets, Katz said. Arak has long been the focus of international scrutiny due to its potential role in plutonium production, which could be used in future nuclear-weapon production if reprocessing capabilities were developed. The Arak-Khondab region area, situated in central Iran, is itself strategically significant as it is home to some of the country's most critical atomic infrastructure. European stocks and U.S. futures edged lower on geopolitical uncertainty and concerns about the inflationary impact of higher crude prices. Brent rose 1.6%, trading close to $78 per barrel. Cash trading in US stocks and Treasuries is closed for the Juneteenth holiday. On Saturday, the Iranian minister is expected to attend the Organization of Islamic Cooperation meeting in Istanbul, Turkish news channel NTV reported, citing diplomatic sources it didn't identify. A special session on the war between Israel and Iran is planned. Iran also imposed a nationwide internet and telephone blackout on Thursday, telling civilians it's necessary to prevent Israeli cyberattacks. Trump told reporters at the White House Wednesday he has "ideas as to what to do" and that he prefers to make the "final decision one second before it's due" because the situation is fluid. A few hours earlier, Trump had said, "I may do it. I may not do it," when asked if he was moving closer to attacking Iran. A White House official said that all options remain on the table. Change of Tone The president's openness to war is a reversal from his public remarks a week ago, when Trump was urging diplomatic talks to reach a nuclear disarmament deal with Iran. Waiting a few days to strike gives Iranian leaders additional runway to demonstrate to Trump they are willing to give up some uranium enrichment capabilities to deter a U.S. attack. International Atomic Energy Association inspectors "have not seen" any structured effort by Iran to produce nuclear weapons, but "no country in the world is enriching uranium at this level," the United Nations watchdog's director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, told Bloomberg Television on Wednesday. Since Israel first attacked Iran last Friday, hundreds of people have been killed. At least 224 Iranians have died, mostly civilians, according to Iran's health ministry. Israel says 400 ballistic missiles and hundreds of drones fired by Iran killed 24 people and injured more than 800, according to the Israeli emergency services. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Channel 4
a day ago
- Politics
- Channel 4
What will Israel do if Trump doesn't attack Iran?
Israel and Iran have continued attacking each other overnight with more airstrikes, as both countries wait for Donald Trump to decide if America will bomb nuclear sites in Iran. What will happen next if the US decides to attack? Will the Ayatollah's regime fall? And what will Israel do if America doesn't intervene? To discuss all this and more on the latest episode of The Fourcast, Matt Frei is joined by former Israeli Defence Forces general Amos Yadlin who also served as the head of Israel's Military Intelligence Directorate for five years.
Time Magazine
a day ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Why Trump May Ignore 80 Years of U.S. Regime Change Mistakes
This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME's politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. Donald Trump expected his first face-to-face meeting with Barack Obama would be all of '10 or 15 minutes.' After all, the pair had spent years circling each other, trading barbs from afar and using the other's political movement as a blend of punching bag and strawman. The mutual enmity was hardly a secret; Obama's trolling of Trump at a White House correspondents' dinner set in motion the New Yorker's serious contemplation of Redemption By White House Win. [time-brightcove not-tgx='true'] The 2016 summit between the President-elect and the incumbent ended up going 90 minutes, during which North Korea was, to Trump's mind, the big takeaway. (Obama's team recalled the conversation differently.) The message was pretty clear: that rogue nation was one of the biggest problems Trump was inheriting as he rose to power after the 2016 election. The election clearly did not go as Obama had hoped so he had this one set piece to convey to his successor just how fraught the situation on the Korean Peninsula was, and how any misstep could be fatal to millions. The outgoing President's concern was that Trump, or some of his top advisers, might want to try to swap regimes. But history is lined with examples why these trades have never gone as planned. And Obama wanted to convey the risks of both a nuclear-armed free agent and a country decapitated without a clear next step. Obama hated the threat of a nuclear North Korea but also understood how things might escalate in some pretty terrible ways if unchecked emotions and amateur gut sense took over. Maybe—despite his own instincts—Trump understood that regime change was not compatible with this worldview. Instead, he courted the North Koreans and broke a half century of protocol in visiting with the reclusive regime's chief. In fact, as a candidate, and even well before that, Trump resisted any suggestion of intervention. That positioning helped Trump remake the Republican Party by elevating its isolationist wing. It's why the current moment is such a challenge for Trump: Israel's strikes on Iran lure dreams of a time after an Ayatollah runs the Islamic Republic. But dreams can easily turn into nightmares, and this particular lullaby is more than a little discordant. 'Regime change' has become shorthand in national-security circles the same way 'nation building' and 'mission accomplished' have devolved from well-considered policy goals into collapsed folly. U.S. intervention into foreign nations' governance in pursuit of friendlier—if not less-lethal—regimes has proven a loser. In recent years, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya have all provided proof of the model's overly optimistic lens on the map. Going back in the post-World War II era, history has shown the United States very capable at both toppling governments and then promptly getting the sequel disastrously wrong. For every regime change at the hands of Americans that went well—think Adolf Hitler's exit from Germany and Benito Mussolini from Italy—there are multitudes that went off the rails: six overt attempts during the Cold War and another 64 in covert operations. And just about no one on the political stage this century has been more clear-eyed on that reality than Trump. Dating to his days as a celebrity host of a reality show, Trump hated foreign adventurism, although he did tell Howard Stern he supported the Iraq war a month before Congress voted on it. After launching his presidential bid in 2015, he campaigned endlessly against so-called 'forever wars' and creeping American meddling. He blasted decisions to engage beyond U.S. borders as simply stupid. He called regime change a dangerous precedent that violated sovereignty and wasted cache. For Trump, the ability to topple rivals was enough of a threat without taking it out of the safe. 'Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake, all right?' Trump said in a February 2016 debate. Months later, after he won election but before he took office, Trump seemed to redouble his skepticism of the military's reach into other governments. 'We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be involved with,' the President-elect said in December of 2016. There's a reason why regime change has been a non-starter. Democrats hated it when George W. Bush tried it, particularly with Iraq. Republicans hated the blowback they faced for Bush's errors. Independents loathed the fallout. Swing-state voters hated that their kids were sent onto battlefields they didn't understand. Fiscal conservatives hated the costs. Fiscal liberals hated the opportunity costs. In Iraq alone, 4,000 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives. Trump gets that. He may not have a grasp on the nuances of the foreign policy but he certainly gets the zeitgeist. And, as has been the case for two decades, the patience for a thrust beyond U.S. borders is limited. Want proof? Look at the post-WW2 landscape. South Korea, Greece, and Syria all fell to U.S. meddling before 1950 even got here. Burma, Egypt, Iraq, Guatemala, Indonesia, Syria (again), Cambodia, and Cuba all followed. Far-flung efforts in the Dominican Republic, Laos, Brazil, Chile, Ethiopia, Bolivia, Afghanistan, and even Poland followed. Grenada, Panama, and Haiti left U.S. administrations in the political muck. Vietnam was the biggest catastrophe to most Americans' memories. Put in the crudest terms, the United States is really good at ignoring what Washington has coined the Pottery Barn Rule: you break it, you own it. Yes, we can break a whole lot, and have. But the United States does not exactly have total control over what it knocks off the shelf. Which brings us back to Iran, which sits dangerously close to the ledge's edge. In public comments, Trump is being very cagey about what he does next. 'I may do it, I may not do it, nobody knows what I'm going to do,' Trump said Wednesday about the prospect of launching an air strike on an Iranian nuclear facility. Read more: A New Middle East Is Unfolding Before Our Eyes Yet undermining that cautiousness is Trump's apparent acceptance of Israel's view that Iran is racing toward building a nuclear weapon. That assessment is at odds with the U.S. intelligence community's view, which remains consistent that that's not the case. 'I don't care what she said,' Trump said on Tuesday, referring to recent testimony of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that Iran isn't actively trying to build a bomb. Trump may have been brutal about Bush getting the intel wrong on Iraq, but it seems he may not have learned the risks of rushing into the mix with incomplete or manipulated facts. Trump is, at his core, a gut-driven figure who has proven adept at finding voices that confirm his instinct—and banishing those who challenge it. Trump might despise the existing regime in Tehran, but he also does not want to be left with another shattered nation in that region with little more than epoxy as a plan. Yet even members of his own base fear he may be about to do just that, dragging the country into the very kind of boondoggle he won office by denouncing and abandoning the isolationism that he inserted into the GOP's new DNA. Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter.
Time of India
a day ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Israel-Iran conflict: Tehran claims first hypersonic missile strike on Israel; what is Fattah-1?
The Israeli Iron Dome air defence system fires to intercept missiles during an Iranian attack over Tel Aviv, Israel, early Wednesday (Image credit: AP) Iran has claimed possession of hypersonic missiles and has begun deploying them against Israel, reported news agency AP. The ongoing Iran–Israel conflict escalated on Wednesday when Iran fired a Fattah-1 hypersonic missile at Tel Aviv. The attack came shortly after US President Donald Trump demanded Tehran's unconditional surrender. On Thursday, Iran released a video showing the launch of the Fattah-1 missile aimed at Tel Aviv. Powerful explosions were reported in both Tel Aviv and in Iranian cities like Tehran and Karaj, following multiple missile attacks and retaliatory airstrikes. Iran Uses 'Undisclosed' Missiles In Operation True Promise III, Overwhelms Already Burdened Iron Dome This is not the first time Iran has used the Fattah-1 missile against Israel. Last year, Iran launched about 200 ballistic missiles under 'Operation True Promise II,' targeting two Israeli military bases and Mossad's headquarters, Israel's intelligence agency. What is the Fattah-1 missile? The Fattah-1 is Iran's first home-made hypersonic ballistic missile, introduced in 2023. It is named after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. According to Iranian state media, the missile has a range of 1,400 kilometres and can penetrate any existing defence system. It reportedly reaches speeds up to Mach 14 (about 15,000 km/h), according to Reuters. Iranian state TV claims that Fattah-1 can target the enemy's most advanced anti-missile defences and represents a major breakthrough in missile technology. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Memperdagangkan CFD Emas dengan salah satu spread terendah? IC Markets Mendaftar Undo CNN experts say that real hypersonic missiles, like glide vehicles and cruise missiles, can change direction throughout their entire flight, not just at the end. This makes them harder to track and stop. According to weapons expert Fabian Hinz, Iran's Fattah-1 missile likely uses a 'manoeuvrable reentry vehicle.' This means it can change direction during the final part of its flight, just before hitting the target, to avoid being shot down by defence systems. What are hypersonic missiles? Hypersonic weapons are defined as missiles that travel at speeds exceeding Mach 5, which is five times the speed of sound. In modern warfare, experts say that hypersonic weapons must also be able to change direction during flight using advanced navigation systems. This makes them difficult to track and intercept using traditional missile defence systems. Unlike traditional ballistic missiles, which follow a predictable path, hypersonic missiles can fly at lower altitudes and change their direction mid-air. Jack Watling, a defence expert at the Royal United Services Institute, explained that radar systems struggle to detect hypersonic missiles in time, especially when terrain blocks their view. "They appear suddenly and leave very little time to respond," he said.
