Latest news with #IslamicRevolutionaryGuard
Wall Street Journal
8 hours ago
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Poised for More Power
Israeli strikes have taken direct aim at the backbone of its enemy's military power: Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But the attacks are also increasing the chance of a change in leadership that would concentrate power in the hands of the elite military force, potentially resulting in a more hawkish and anti-Israeli Iran.
The Sun
11 hours ago
- Politics
- The Sun
If Donald Trump strikes Iran, Britain MUST back US and Israel to the hilt
NO ONE knows exactly how close Iran is to making a nuclear weapon. Not least because it has banned international inspectors from finding out. 2 But their intention is clear. Iran is the only non-nuclear-armed country in the world to have enriched uranium at such high levels. Tehran's fanatical Islamists also want desperately to fire a nuke warhead at Israel and wipe it out. Donald Trump already offered Iran a way out — by giving up its nuclear programme. It responded with a bombing attack on an Israeli hospital. There is a powerful case for Trump to now order a bunker-buster bomb raid on Iran's underground network Not only could it destroy the mad mullahs' ambitions for a nuclear holocaust. It could also define his presidency. Strong intervention now will show other despots the US is back as a global deterrent force after Joe Biden 's humiliating Afghanistan withdrawal. So far, Sir Keir Starmer 's response has been insipid — trotting out the usual Foreign Office lines about the need for de-escalation. But if America strikes, Britain MUST back them and Israel to the hilt. Iran — with secret agents from its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operating on our streets — is a threat to us, too. It's no surprise to learn that Attorney General Lord Hermer has warned Starmer that UK involvement 'could' be illegal. When it comes to national security, he has been on the wrong side of every argument so far. The Prime Minister needs to be crystal clear with Lord Hermer — and everybody else — that British interests lie with Israel and America. The stakes could not be higher. Paradise last SUCH is the new Europe-wide anti-immigration crackdown, Britain remains the last paradise for illegal migrants. Countries such as Denmark and Sweden are turning asylum-seekers away at the door. 2 Meanwhile, the UK escorts them across the Channel and puts them up indefinitely in hotels. If only we could follow Australia's example and cut numbers to next to nothing with a scheme to send migrants to a third country. Except we did have one. The Rwanda plan — spitefully scrapped by Labour — WAS working to deter migrants, who had started heading to Ireland instead. Australia's former foreign minister Alexander Downer, the architect of his country's successful scheme, calls that decision a 'tragedy' for Britain. We can only agree. One day, ministers will have to admit what a terrible mistake they made.
LBCI
12 hours ago
- Politics
- LBCI
Iran's IRGC launches massive drone and missile attack on Israeli military targets
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced the start of a new wave of coordinated attacks targeting Israel, involving a barrage of missiles and more than 100 drones. According to a statement, the attack is focused on military targets in Haifa and Tel Aviv.
CNN
17 hours ago
- Politics
- CNN
Iran watches decades-old red lines vanish from view, but Trump still faces a huge risk
It's a big decision, but one where the outcomes get slowly better, either way, every day. President Donald Trump has yet to determine whether to militarily involve the United States on Israel's side in its six-day old conflict with Iran. But there is only so much further that the fight can escalate. There is a very palpable – and growing – limit on what Tehran can do. Israel has already crossed every red line imaginable in Iran's diplomatic lexicon. It has bombed Iran's nuclear facilities, killed so many military leaders the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is on its third commander in a week, and claimed air supremacy over the country. Short of killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and convincing the US to bomb the Fordow fuel enrichment plant, it is running out of taboos to break. Iran, for its part, has launched barrages of ballistic missiles at Israel, terrifying civilians, causing some extensive damage, killing nearly 30 people and wounding hundreds more. Yet this is not the existential catastrophe many feared Tehran could unleash. Iran lost nearly 10 times as many civilians as Israel did in the opening 48 hours of the conflict, according to its ministry of health. Tehran is already having to temper its punches – the volleys of missiles it fires vacillating wildly night by night – as it struggles with a depleting inventory of the medium-range ballistic missiles that can hit Israel. Daily, the list of targets Israel is steadily hitting – at will, largely unopposed – grows. And with that, Iran's ability to threaten the region shrinks. This must be key to Trump's impenetrable calculations. And it echoes lessons perhaps learned after his decision – unprecedented and rash as it seemed at the time – to kill the most prominent figure in Iran's military, Qassem Soleimani, in 2020. At the time, the assassination, in response to rocket attacks that killed an American soldier in Iraq, seemed a fantastical 'gloves off' moment, in which Tehran's great military might could be unleashed. But that failed to transpire – Iran responded by hitting another American base, where the injuries were mostly concussion. It just did not have the muscle to risk an all-out war with the United States, and that was five years ago. Things have since got a lot worse for the Iranians. Their main strategic ally, Russia, has come unstuck in an attritional three-year war of choice with Ukraine, meaning Tehran will likely have heard little back from Moscow if it asked for serious military support. Iran's nearby proxies – Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Assad regime in Syria – have been removed as effective fighting forces. Hezbollah was undone in a staggeringly brief, brutal but effective Israeli campaign last fall, revealing the militant group to be a hollow threat wildly outdone by the superior technology and intelligence of its southern adversary. The Assad regime suddenly collapsed in December – following years of diplomatic isolation over its horrific abuses in a savage civil war – after Syria's northern neighbor, Turkey, helped rebels overwhelm Damascus. Iran has found itself outmatched locally. It has known for years it cannot take on the US. Those two facts considered, the risk of conflagration ebbs, and Trump's choices look easier. He could simply hit Fordow, and other relevant nuclear sites, in a single wave of stealth B-2 bomber strikes, inform the Iranians that the US seeks no further confrontation, and anticipate a muted, acceptable retaliation. Iran lacks the inventory to seriously bombard Israel, let alone another, better equipped adversary's military bases in the region. Trump could continue to let the Israelis hit targets at will for weeks, while permitting European foreign ministers, who will meet their Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi in Geneva on Friday, to present Tehran with slowly worsening terms for a diplomatic settlement. Or Trump could do nothing, and permit Iran's broad powerlessness to come more clearly into view as its missile stocks dwindle. But inaction might make Trump look weak and ponderous. Resolving the issue of Iran and the prospect of it developing nuclear weapons would be a much-needed foreign policy win for a White House mired in bratty spats with allies, a stop-start trade war with China, and erratic diplomacy with Moscow over Ukraine. Even Germany's chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said Israel was doing the Western world's 'dirty work' by taking out the Iranian nuclear threat. Barely anybody apart from Iranian hardliners thinks an Iranian nuclear bomb is a good idea. The one remaining, huge risk Trump faces is that Iran, which has always insisted its program is peaceful, has a more advanced and secretive nuclear program than his bunker-busters can disable – perhaps now removed from Fordow or other publicly known sites after days of speculation they might be hit. Such fears seem to fit with the Israeli intelligence assessments they claim expedited their recent campaign. But they would also seem to clash with the idea that further strikes can end any Iranian ambition for an atomic bomb indefinitely. Secondly, one might argue that, by now, with its Supreme Leader directly threatened and capital's skies wide open, Iran would have decided to race for nuclear weapons already, if it could. What else would Iran need to have happen to it? The 'known unknowns' – the things we know we do not know, as Donald Rumsfeld would have put it before Iran's neighbor, Iraq, was invaded by the US in 2003 – are plentiful. And they more or less point in a direction where Iran is weakened, and whatever choice Trump makes is met with a muted or manageable response from Tehran, which will soon need a diplomatic solution to ensure the survival of what remains of its government and military. The 'unknown unknowns' are what mired the US in Iraq. They probably abound, although by definition we don't know what they are. But they are overshadowed by the simple fact that neither Israel nor the US intends to occupy Iran. And Iran is increasingly too weak to strike back meaningfully, as it watches its decades-old red lines vanish fast from view.
News.com.au
21 hours ago
- Politics
- News.com.au
Iran's hidden uranium plant ‘only the US can destroy'
A uranium enrichment plant crucial to Iran's nuclear ambitions has found itself at the centre of an unspeakably tense military standoff. Tucked deep beneath a mountain ridge south of Tehran lies the Fordo plant. It is currently out of reach for Israel's highly sophisticated missile systems, which have now claimed air superiority over most of Iran. Fordo sits approximately 96 km south of the capital of Tehran. It was originally a series of tunnels used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but Iran publicly disclosed its use as a nuclear facility in 2009 following Western pressure. The site consists of two large tunnels that power uranium-enrichment centrifuges, connected by smaller passages. Its depth poses a major challenge for Israel. The IDF reportedly has armaments capable of penetrating up to 10m of underground, but Fordo lies roughly 80–90m beneath the surface. Only the United States is believed to possess a weapon capable of inflicting serious damage on the facility — the 13,000kg GBUâ€'57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), or 'bunker buster'. Experts warn that deploying such a bomb could dramatically expand the Middle Eastern conflict, which is already sitting on a knife's edge after seven full days of traded blows. The US GBUâ€'57 comes in at a whopping 13 tonnes, giving it the ability to bury through around 18m of concrete or 61m of earth with relative ease. It will be high on Israel's list of requests should Donald Trump make the highly controversial call to intervene. But analysts caution that even a 13-tonne bunker buster may not be enough, and an attempt to destroy Fordo would likely rupture regional stability. But leaving it standing leaves a vital Iranian nuclear asset unscathed. Decisions made now — and whether a warhead flies from American skies — will define this chapter of Middle East security. Though the US has already helped intercept Iranian missiles en route to Israel, it has not launched any direct strikes on Iran. President Trump has remained vague, which has sent a ripple through the MAGA ranks, many of whom are opposed to the idea of US interventionism. 'I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do,' and added that his patience with Tehran 'had already run out.' Iran battered but not broken In less than a week, the Israeli army has taken out Iranian military commanders and damaged numerous surface installations, raising more questions than answers. 'The regime's missile stockpiles, launchers, military bases, production facilities, nuclear scientists, military command and control has taken a very severe beating,' said Behnam Ben Taleblu, director of the Iran program at the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a conservative-leaning group. 'But there are still outsized questions as to how efficacious of a strike Israel had against the beating hearts of Iran's nuclear program,' Taleblu said. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reported no damage at Fordo, a uranium enrichment plant south of Tehran. Unlike the Natanz and Isfahan sites in central Iran, Fordo is buried deep underground, beyond the reach of Israeli bombs. 'All eyes will be on Fordo, which is buried under about 300 feet of rock in central Iran,' Taleblu said.
