Latest news with #Soleimani
Boston Globe
13 hours ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
In crisis with Iran, US military officials focus on Strait of Hormuz
In several days of attacks, Israel has targeted Iranian military sites and state-sponsored entities, as well as high-ranking generals. It has taken out many of Iran's ballistic missiles, though Iran still has hundreds of them, US defense officials said. Advertisement But Israel has steered clear of Iranian naval assets. So while Iran's ability to respond has been severely damaged, it has a robust navy and maintains operatives across the region, where the United States has more than 40,000 troops. Iran also has an array of mines that its navy could lay in the Strait of Hormuz. The narrow 90-mile waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the open ocean is a key shipping route. A quarter of the world's oil and 20 percent of the world's liquefied natural gas passes through it, so mining the choke point would cause gas prices to soar. It could also isolate US minesweepers in the Persian Gulf on one side of the strait. Two defense officials indicated that the Navy was looking to disperse its ships in the gulf so that they would be less vulnerable. A Navy official declined to comment, citing operational security. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Advertisement Iran has vowed that if attacked by US forces, it would respond forcefully, potentially setting off a cycle of escalation. 'Think about what happened in January 2020 after Trump killed Soleimani and times that by 100,' said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. Qassem Soleimani, a powerful Iranian general, was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad during Trump's first administration. Iran then launched the largest-ever ballistic missile barrage at US bases in Iraq, leaving some 110 troops with traumatic brain injuries and unintentionally hitting a Ukrainian passenger jet, killing all 176 people aboard. 'Iran is strategically weaker but operationally still lethal across the region,' Katulis said, 'and Americans still have troops across that part of the world.' Iran has mined the Strait of Hormuz before, including in 1988 during its war with Iraq, when Iran planted 150 mines in the strait. One of the mines struck a US guided missile frigate, the USS Samuel B. Roberts, nearly sinking it. General Joseph Votel, a former leader of US Central Command, and Vice Admiral Kevin M. Donegan, a former commander of US naval forces in the Middle East, each said Wednesday that Iran was capable of mining the strait, which they said could bring international pressure on Israel to end its bombing campaign. But such an action would probably invite a massive US military response and further damage Iran's already crippled economy, Donegan added. Advertisement 'Mining also hurts Iran; they would lose income from oil they sell to China,' he said. 'Now, though, Iranian leadership is much more concerned with regime survival, which will drive their decisions.' Military officials and analysts said missile and drone attacks remained the biggest retaliatory threat to US bases and facilities in the region. 'These would be shorter-range variants, not what they were launching against Israel,' Donegan said. 'That Iranian capability remains intact.' Donegan also expressed concerns about the possibility that the Quds Force, a shadowy arm of Iran's military, could attack US troops. 'Our Arab partners have done well over the years to root most of that out of their countries; however, that Quds Force and militia threat still remains in Iraq and to some extent in Syria and Jordan,' he said. Iranian officials are seeking to remind Trump that, weakened or not, they still can find ways to hurt US troops and interests in the region, said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert and a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Striking Iran, he said, 'gets into such big unknowns.' He added, 'There are a lot of things that could go wrong.' Much is at stake for Iran if it decides to retaliate. 'Many of Iran's options are the strategic equivalent of a suicide bombing,' said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 'They can do enormous damage to others if they mine the Strait of Hormuz, destroy regional oil facilities, and rain a missile barrage against Israel, but they may not survive the blowback.' But Iran can make it hugely expensive and dangerous for the US Navy to have to conduct what would most likely be a weekslong mine-clearing operation in the Strait of Hormuz, according to one former naval officer who was stationed on a minesweeper in the Persian Gulf. He and other Navy officers said that clearing the strait could also put American sailors directly in harm's way. Advertisement Iran is believed to maintain a variety of naval mines. They include small limpet mines containing just a few pounds of explosives that swimmers place directly on a ship's hull and typically detonate after a set amount of time. Iran also has larger moored mines that float just under the water's surface, releasing 100 pounds of explosive force or more when they come in contact with an unsuspecting ship. This article originally appeared in
New Indian Express
3 days ago
- Business
- New Indian Express
Reshaping West Asia's strategic map
The immediate global concern is for energy and maritime security. Even a limited conflict near the Strait of Hormuz can send oil prices surging, rattle insurance markets and provoke panic. A price rise of $10 per barrel has already been reported. Iran, despite its rhetoric, is unlikely to deliberately disrupt traffic through the strait, as it would be suicidal for its already sanctions-battered economy. Yet, calibrated retaliation, such as using proxies to harass Gulf shipping lanes or launch drone attacks near infrastructure, could be used as capability projection. If this conflict stretches beyond 10 days, global supply chains will feel the tremors. A war of over three weeks could create a full-blown energy crisis, especially for economies such as India and China. In the broader international arena, Russia, China and Turkey all have stakes. Russia, already embroiled in Ukraine, will avoid direct entanglement. China, having recently brokered a thaw between Iran and Saudi Arabia, will push for restraint— more out of economic self-interest than moral calculus. Turkey will try to play both sides, issuing rhetorical support for Palestine while maintaining quiet ties with Israel and NATO. Global multilateral forums remain ill-equipped to manage such rapidly escalating regional wars. For India, the stakes are significant. Its energy security, maritime trade routes and diaspora interests are all in play. Israel has become one of India's closest strategic partners, offering critical intelligence and defence support—including during Operation Sindoor. Iran also remains vital to India's plans for regional connectivity through the Chabahar port and as a counterweight to both Pakistan and China in the western neighbourhood. India must avoid the appearance of passive neutrality, but also refrain from overt alignment—a challenging call. Strategic autonomy remains the main consideration. Backchannel diplomacy, quiet engagement with both Tel Aviv and Tehran, and readiness to protect Indian interests in the Gulf must shape our response. Arab countries find themselves in an awkward position. Violent containment of Iran could be counterproductive in the long run. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain, signatories to the Abraham Accords, would prefer neutrality. Yet, they would fear public unrest and a possible spillover of conflict onto their own territories. Egypt and Jordan will worry about public reaction more than state-level consequences. Overall, the Arab Street, although insufficiently supportive of the Palestinian cause, would find itself struggling for choice. What follows now is uncertain. Iran has chosen to target Israeli urban centres, which has invited a similar response from Israel. I anticipate a subsequent Iranian drawdown, similar to the one after Soleimani's assassination. The conflict could also drag into a prolonged suicidal exchange. However, its effects will definitely go far beyond redrawing the regional security map. The world may be witnessing just another episode in the Iran-Israel hostility, but the shaping of a new West Asian balance of power could also be on the cards. Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd) is the former Commander, Srinagar-based 15 Corps; Chancellor, Central University of Kashmir (Views are personal) (atahasnain@
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
Killing foreign leaders is a western tradition
Iranian leaders are not safe. Israel has killed Iran's top military commander, Ali Shadmani, less than a week after they killed his predecessor. Although president Donald Trump has reportedly vetoed an Israeli plan to kill Iran's supreme leader, 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the ageing cleric clearly still feels in danger – he is said to be skulking with his son and heir Mojtabi in an underground bunker outside Tehran. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted that assassinating the Middle East's most durable religious and political leader remains an option that is still very much on the table. Questioned about the alleged assassination plan, Netanyahu replied that Israel 'will do whatever it needs to do'. Assassinating foreign leaders perceived as enemies of western democracies may seem an extreme and undiplomatic act, but it is a method that has been used more than once in recent history. In fact, President Trump himself ordered the killing of another prominent Iranian leader during his first term in the White House, when Major General Qassim Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, was blown to bits along with ten of his aides by a US drone outside Baghdad Airport in January 2020. Soleimani was the mastermind behind many terrorist acts by Iran's proxies across the Middle East, and paid the ultimate price for his activities. Trump's apparent squeamishness about inflicting the same rough justice on the Grand Ayatollah comes from his fears that Khamenei's enraged followers would unleash a bloody revenge on US assets if their beloved leader is harmed. Such fears did not stop previous American leaders from paying back the worst humiliation in American history: Japan's deadly aerial assault on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, which brought a reluctant United States into World War Two. In April 1943, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, chief planner of the Pearl Harbour raid, was flying over the Solomon Islands when his aircraft was shot down by US fighter planes. This was no accident but a deliberate assassination plan candidly codenamed Operation Vengeance. Japan's military cyphers had been cracked by Allied boffins, and Yamamoto's flight plans were known in advance. Britain, too, has not been backward when it comes to killing foreign leaders deemed too dangerous to let live. In May 1942 Czechoslovak agents, trained and parachuted in by Britain, ambushed and assassinated the fearsome SS chief Reinhard Heydrich, Hitler's 'man with the iron heart' in Prague. Heydrich – who had planned and ordered the Holocaust just months before his demise – is the perfect example of the dangers raised by such extrajudicial killings. In retaliation for Heydrich's death, the Nazis razed the Czech village of Lidice to the ground and murdered its entire population of 600 innocent men, women and children. It was a high price to pay for eliminating such a monster. Towards the end of the war an even more deserving and tempting target came into British crosshairs: Adolf Hitler himself. Britain's spying and sabotage agency the Special Operations Executive (SOE) devised Operation Foxley, a scheme to drop a 'Day of the Jackal' style sniper close to Hitler's Bavarian mountain retreat, the Berghof , and shoot him on one of his daily exercise strolls. The plan was only aborted at the last minute as it was thought that the Fuehrer was so manic by then that he was doing more damage to Germany alive than dead. Even as late as 1956, a British prime minister was still attracted by the idea of assassinating a foreign enemy. During the Suez Crisis caused by Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser's nationalisation of the British owned Suez Canal, Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden rang his Foreign Office minister Anthony Nutting at the Savoy Hotel and demanded: ' Don't you understand? I want Nasser murdered'. Later still, in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War, America's CIA Intelligence Agency devised numerous plans to kill Cuba's Communist dictator Fidel Castro. Poisoning Castro's cigars or his skuba diving suit were among the absurd options considered, along with more conventional killing methods. None succeeded, but the lethal intention was perfectly serious. So does Khamenei deserve to die violently? According to Israel, very much so – whatever the consequences. After all, this is a man who since coming to power in 1989 has issued regular blood curdling threats to wipe the 'Zionist entity' and all its inhabitants off the face of the earth. He has made similar threats to the 'Great Satan', as Iran calls the US, and Iranian agents inside America have plotted to kill Trump. Israel has already, within the past week, amply demonstrated its formidable expertise in the assassination game by killing much of Iran's political and military elite, along with the top scientists working at its nuclear facilities. There is no doubt that their intelligence services and special forces have both the capacity and the courage needed to strike at the very top of the Islamic Republic should the order be given. For the Jewish state it is not a matter of moral or diplomatic scruples, but a question of sheer survival in the face of an existential and mortal threat.
The Hill
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Hill
Trump can and should force Iran's unconditional surrender
Since the Mullahs seized power in Tehran in 1979, the U.S. has been playing for a tie in Iran. Now, it is time for President Trump to play for a win. For forty-six years, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his predecessors have been waging a war against the U.S. and our allies in the Middle East. 'Death to America' and 'Death to Israel' have not been just slogans but decades-long causes. Iran's war against Washington has at times been overt, as when the regime sanctioned Iranian students storming the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979. For 444 days, fifty-two Americans were held hostage. In the process, Iran also destroyed the second half of President Jimmy Carter's only term in the Oval Office. At other times, the war has been indirect. On October 23, 1983, 241 U.S. servicemen were killed and another 100 wounded in the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut, Lebanon. Although responsibility for the bombing was claimed by the shadowy Islamic Jihad Organization, it is widely understood that Hezbollah was behind the attack, and that it had been planned and funded by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The origins of Iran's proxy war against the U.S. and later Israel were born on that day. Other attacks would follow, including the June 1996 attack by Hezbollah Al-Hejaz — an Iranian-backed Shia terrorist group — on Khobar Towers in 1996 that killed 19 United States airmen. In October 2000, a suicide bomber hit the USS Cole using a small boat carrying C4 explosives, killing 17 sailors. In 2015, a U.S. court found that Iran was part of the al-Qaeda attack. Subsequently, Tehran's so-called 'Axis of Resistance' would repeatedly attack U.S. interests or allies. While Iran officially has been designated by the State Department as a State Sponsor of Terror since 1984, Tehran's proxies have actually been operating as paramilitary groups waging war on Washington. Operationally, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has been in command. Paramilitary groups under its umbrella of control include Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and the Houthis in Yemen. In Iraq, it controls Kataib Hezbollah, Asaib Ahl al Haq, Harakat Hezbollah al Nujaba, Badr Organization, and Kataib Sayyad al Hamas Shuhada. In Bahrain, it controls the al Ashtar Brigades and Saraya al Mukhtar. Washington's response across five administrations, between 1995 and 2022, has been to sanction Iran. It was not until Trump in 2020 that the U.S. responded in kind to Iranian violence by ordering, as he put it, 'a flawless precision strike that killed the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world, Qasem Soleimani.' Soleimani commanded the Quds Force, the wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps responsible for funding, training and coordinating its 'Axis of Resistance Proxies.' Trump held that Soleimani was responsible for the Iraqi Shia militia that stormed the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq and the Kata'ib Hezbollah rocket strike on the K-1 Air Base in Kirkuk, Iraq. After decades of countless Iranian proxy-attacks on U.S. targets and allies across the Middle East, Oct. 7 changed everything. Up to that point, Iran's nuclear weapons program had been viewed as the greatest existential threat to Israel. But suddenly, given Hamas's tactical surprise with aid from Iran and Russia, Israel was forced to treat Iran's decades-in-the-making 'Axis of Resistance' as an existential threat too. The wolf closest to the sled was Hamas. Next came Hezbollah and the Houthis. Now, after eliminating Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps command and control groups in Syria after the fall of Bashir Assad, Israel is focusing on eliminating Iran's Armageddon-like nuclear threat. Getting to this point, however, has told us a lot about Iran's long-term intentions if left unchecked by Washington. Not only has Tehran expanded its partnership with Russia becoming a critical part of Russian President Vladimir Putin's Arsenals of Evil in his war against Ukraine by supplying Shahed drones, but Khamenei also ordered his militias to take the fight directly to U.S. forces stationed in the Middle East. By November 2023 — just a month after Oct. 7. — those same paramilitary forces had attacked U.S. forces more than 50 times. This was on top of nearly 100 other attacks that resulted in Americans being killed by Iranian proxies since former President Biden had taken office in 2021. So Iran is not only in a hot war with Israel. It is also in a 46-year-old hot war with the U.S. This war could get and has gotten worse, including when Kata'ib Hezbollah attacked Tower 22 in Jordan, killing three U.S. soldiers. Tehran has long been a destabilizing force throughout the region. Alex Plitsas, an Atlantic Council counterterrorism expert, notes that a key element of Khamenei's motivation for backing Hamas and Oct. 7. was to scuttle the Saudi-Israeli normalization process. In addition to undermining regional diplomacy, Iran has also destabilized the Egyptian economy by encouraging Houthi rebels to attack commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Consequently, at times, Suez Canal traffic and revenues have grinded to a halt as shipping companies avoid the area. Given Iran's nuclear ambitions, and given Khamenei's use of his ballistic missiles and drones to target Israeli civilians, it is time for Trump to demand the country's unconditional surrender. No more wash and repeats — rather, regime change. This would not only eliminate Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile threats, but it would also, as make CENTCOM's task of ensuring the security of U.S. allies and interests in the Middle East far more manageable — especially given Beijing's rising economic and military involvement in the region. If Khamenei's regime survives and Iran achieves nuclear breakout, CENTCOM's ability to safeguard both will become exponentially more difficult. Why take that chance? Iran and its proxies have effectively been at war with the U.S. since 1979, and the possibility of a lasting peace in the Middle East is right there, dangling. Why also risk letting Tehran entering into a grand alliance to create an 'Islamic Army,' as Mohsen Rezaee is suggesting — possibly involving a nuclear Pakistan as well — when this decades old U.S. and Middle East nightmare can be swept aside into the ash heap of history right now? Trump must enable Israel to complete its mission. It is time for Trump to say, 'no deal' — to put Khamenei and his regime down for the count. Trump can achieve that by providing Jerusalem with the munitions to destroy Fordow and to help Israel topple Khamenei's regime. Doing so would transform the Middle East, putting wins on the board against Russia, and sending a strong message to China and our Asia-Pacific allies. Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as an Army intelligence officer.
Fox News
5 days ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Netanyahu reveals Iran marked Trump as 'enemy number one' with assassination plot
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed in his first interview since Israel launched its blistering attacks on Iran that the country's Islamic regime had pinpointed President Donald Trump as a threat to its nuclear program and actively worked to assassinate him. "They want to kill him. He's enemy number one. He's a decisive leader. He never took the path that others took to try to bargain with them in a way that is weak, giving them basically a pathway to enrich uranium, which means a pathway to the bomb, padding it with billions and billions of dollars," the prime minister told Fox News' Bret Baier during a special Sunday edition of "Special Report." "He took up this fake agreement and basically tore it up. He killed Qasem Soleimani. He made it very clear, including now, 'You cannot have a nuclear weapon, which means you cannot enrich uranium.' He's been very forceful, so for them, he's enemy number one." Netanyahu revealed he was also a target of the regime after a missile was fired into the bedroom window of his home. He went on to call himself Trump's "junior partner" in threatening Iran's ability to weaponize nuclear arms. Netanyahu said his country was facing an "imminent threat" of nuclear destruction and was left with no choice but to act aggressively in the "12th hour." "We were facing an imminent threat, a dual existential threat," he said. "One, the threat of Iran rushing to weaponize their enriched uranium to make atomic bombs with a specific and declared intent to destroy us. Second, a rush to increase their ballistic missile arsenal to the capacity that they would have 3,600 weapons a year…. Within three years, 10,000 ballistic missiles, each one weighing a ton, coming in at mach 6, right into our cities, as you saw today… and then in 26 years, 20,000 [missiles]. No country can sustain that, and certainly not a country the size of Israel, so we had to act." Netanyahu said, by doing so, Israel is not only protecting itself but also protecting the world. Iran has since retaliated with a large-scale ballistic missile attack on Israeli cities, although many of the projectiles were thwarted. Netanyahu told Fox News he believes Israel's offensive measures have set back the Iranian nuclear program "quite a bit," sharing his belief that negotiations with the terrorism-sponsoring regime were clearly "going nowhere." He also said his country is prepared to do whatever is necessary to eliminate the nuclear and ballistic missile threat Iran poses to the world. Netanyahu has described the operation, coined as Operation Rising Lion, as "one of the greatest military operations in history." Addressing the Iranian people, he said they had been oppressed for 50 years by the same Islamic regime that has long threatened to destroy the State of Israel. An encore of Netanyahu's special interview with Bret Baier will also run at 5 PM/ET on Sunday.
