Barak Ravid in Axiosreports that , “The Trump administration is closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize. It could begin very soon” in reference to Iran.
According to a source in the Trump administration, “it would likely be a joint U.S.-Israeli campaign that’s much broader in scope — and more existential for the regime — than the Israeli-led 12-day war last June.”
The report adds, “Trump’s armada has grown to include two aircraft carriers, a dozen warships, hundreds of fighter jets and multiple air defense systems. Some of that firepower is still on its way” adding, “The Israeli government — which is pushing for a maximalist scenario targeting regime change as well as Iran’s nuclear and missile programs — is preparing for a scenario of war within days, according to two Israeli officials.”
If this report is accurate, and the Trump administration actually is about to carry out a regime change war in Iran, there is only one driving motive behind it: the Zionist lobby’s control over Trump and broader U.S. foreign policy.
A Zionist Regime Change Campaign
During the June U.S./Israeli “12 day war”, Trump claimed it was about stopping Iran from obtaining Nuclear weapon, but Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence report from March found no evidence Iran was building a Nuclear weapon, writing, “We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003”.
The real motive behind the Israeli pushed war, was regime change in Iran.
An inside source in the Trump administration told journalists Max Blumenthal and Anya Parampil that Israeli intelligence officials who were pushing for U.S. involvement in the war “have demonstrated a single-minded focus on regime change, clamoring for authorization to assassinate Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Israeli officials have emphasized that the moment to take out Khamenei is now.”
The Times of Israellater reported on leaked transcripts of Israeli officials during the June bombing, which showed that the real motive was to “find an opportunity to assassinate Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and destabilize Tehran’s regime”.
One senior Israeli intelligence official was quoted as saying that “for years” there was an Israeli “intelligence operation to disrupt enemy activities, including activity to destabilize the regime”.
The Times of Israel noted, “While not initially publicly stated as a goal of the war, the transcripts make it clear that Israel was also looking to destabilize the regime and even to kill Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei” adding, “Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that Israel needed to ‘keep searching for the leader,’ referring to Khamenei” and “Netanyahu also said entire Iranian neighborhoods and districts should be evacuated, and that Israel should work on destabilizing the Islamic regime.”
Israel’s real motive behind the bombing, being regime change, is also underscored by the fact- uncovered by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab – that during the bombing, social media bots backed by Israeli intelligence ran a propaganda campaign “promoting regime change in Iran”. During the bombing, the Israeli bot network “published a series of posts highlighting the alleged economic upheaval in Iran after the first few rounds of bombings. The network told followers to head to ATMs to withdraw money, emphasized that the Islamic Republic was ‘stealing our money to escape with its officials,’ and urged followers to rise up against the regime,” and “urged followers to get on their balconies at 8 p.m. each evening and shout ‘Death to Khamenei’”.
In a later interview with the Daily Caller, Trump boasted that he took part in the bombing at the behest of Israel, boasting, “Israel is amazing, because, you know, I have good support from Israel. I have. Look, nobody has done more for Israel than I have, including the recent attacks with Iran”.
Following the “12-day war,” the U.S. and Israel exploited protests in Iran in an attempt to destabilize the Iranian government before the apparent upcoming regime change war.
After protests started in Iran due to citizens’ economic concerns, Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent repeatedly boasted that the protests were the intended effect of U.S. sanctions on Iran designed to crash the Iranian economy, saying:
What we can do at treasury, and what we have done, is created a dollar shortage in the country, at a speech at the Economic club in New York in March I outlined the strategy, it came to a swift -and I would say grand- culmination in December when one of the largest banks in Iran went under, there was a run in the bank, the central bank had to print money, the Iranian currency went into free fall, inflation exploded and hence we have seen the Iranian people out on the street
If you look at a speech I gave at the economic club of New York last March, I said that I believe the Iranian currency was on the verge of collapse, that if I were an Iranain citizen, I would take my money out.
President Trump ordered treasury and our OFAC division, (Office of Foreign Asset Control) to put maximum pressure on Iran, and it’s worked because in December, their economy collapsed, we saw a major bank go under, the central bank has started to print money, there is a dollar shortage, they are not able to get imports and this is why the people took to the streets.
This is economic statecraft, no shots fired, and things are moving in a very positive way here
(Emphasis: Mine)
Similarly, the former Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, boasted in response to the question, “Is there a way to bring about the (Iranian) regime falling without using American force?” : “Use economic force, there are ways that you can cripple their economy and some of that has been in the works. It’s more about just weaken their economy and it weakens the support they do have, because they do have support in the rural areas in the more conservative Imams and the rest of that, but we have to make them feel the pain as well”.
Following the protests sparked by economic sanctions on Iran, the Mossad and CIA infiltrated the protests to turn them into a pro-regime change direction.
A Mossad-connected social media account wrote in Persian, to Iranian protestors, “Come out to the streets together. The time has come. We are with you. Not only remotely and verbally. We are also with you in the field,” while former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote , “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.”
Israel’s Channel 14 similarly reported that, “foreign actors are arming the protesters in Iran with live firearms, which is the reason for the hundreds of regime personnel killed” while Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said , “When we attacked in Iran during ‘Rising Lion’ we were on its soil and knew how to lay the groundwork for a strike. I can assure you that we have some of our people operating there right now”.
Afterwards, the mainstream media ran a propaganda campaign claiming that Iran had killed tens of thousands of Iranian protestors, citing anonymous sources and explicitly pro-war and pro-regime change sources, including the German-Iranian eye surgeon Amir Parasta – a lobbyist for the Israeli puppet Reza Pahlavi – and Iran International, an outlet which journalist Barak Ravid said , “the Mossad is using… quite regularly for its information war”.
Given the likelihood of a U.S./Israeli regime change war happening, the propaganda campaign can be seen in the context of previous “atrocity propaganda” campaigns used to justify war such as the false claims that Saddam Hussein was throwing babies out of incubators in Kuwait used to justify the first Iraq war, false claims that Muammar Gaddafi was killing civilians in Libya used to justify the 2011 regime change war, and false claims that Hamas committed mas rape and beheaded babies on October 7th used to justify the genocide in Gaza.
Trump Controlled By The Zionist Lobby
If Trump launches a regime change war in Iran, his main motivating factor is the Zionist lobby’s influence over him.
While Trump began diplomatic talks with Iran in Oman, Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Washington to pressure Trump to make unrealistic demands, including demanding Iran give up its ballistic missiles, in order to sabotage diplomacy and force a U.S. war on Iran.
As journalist Glenn Greenwald noted , “Israel is demanding that the U.S. go to war with Iran even if Tehran satisfies Trump’s demands on its nuclear program. Netanyahu is insisting that Trump also require Iran to give up its ballistic missiles before any deal can be signed: something no country would ever do.”
Given Trump’s record, it is highly likely that he will follow the demands of the Zionist lobby and go to war with Iran on behalf of Israel.
Trump has repeatedly boasted that the Zionist lobby- more specifically, pro-Israel mega donor Miriam Adelson – controls his Middle East policy.
Trump boasted during his speech to the Israeli Knesset that Miriam Adelson -and during his first term her late husband Sheldon- were “responsible for so much” of his Middle East policy, adding, “I actually asked her (Miriam Adelson) once, so Miriam, I know you love Israel, what do you love more, the United States or Israel? She refused to answer, which might mean Israel.”
Trump boasted that at the behest of the Adelsons, he “terminated the disastrous Iran nuclear deal”, “authorized the spending of billions of dollars which went to Israel’s defense” and “officially recognized the capital of Israel and moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem”.
Trump later boasted that , “Miriam (Adelson) gave my campaign $250 million” adding that during his first term in office, “her husband Sheldon was an amazing guy, he’d come up to the office, and there was nobody more aggressive than Sheldon … he would always say ten minutes it turned out to be an hour and a half and what he did was he fought for Israel, it’s all he really fought for”.
Along with Trump’s self-admitted capture by the Zionist lobby, there is even the possibility – given Trump’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein and the growing body of evidence that Epstein was an Israeli intelligence asset – that Israel will use sexual blackmail to get its way on Iran.
This was argued by former Israeli intelligence official Ari Ben-Menashe who said , “The Israeli’s are holding some of the sensitive stuff (in the Epstein files) and they might let it out when they feel threatened by Trump” adding, “I believe the Israelis have quite a bit of information that they can release that the Department of Justice doesn’t want to release” and adding that Israel is “very much against the talks with the U.S. and Iran”.
The Final Phase Of The ‘Clean Break’
An Israeli pushed American regime change war in Iran is nothing new, and is in reality the final phase of a long-term Zionist plot to “reshape the Middle East” in Israel’s favour, going back to the Iraq war.
In 1996, Netanyahu and his American advisors devised a ‘Clean Break’ strategy. They advocated that Israel would not withdraw from the Palestinian lands captured in the 1967 war in exchange for regional peace. Instead, Israel would reshape the Middle East to its liking. Crucially, the strategy envisioned the US as the main force to achieve these aims—waging wars in the region to dismantle governments opposed to Israel’s dominance over Palestine. The US was called upon to fight wars on Israel’s behalf.
The Clean Break strategy was effectively carried out by the US and Israel after 9/11. As NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark revealed, soon after 9/11, the US planned to “attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years—starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.”
The first of the wars, in early 2003, was to topple the Iraqi government. Plans for further wars were delayed as the US became mired in Iraq. Still, the US supported Sudan’s split in 2005, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006, and Ethiopia’s incursion into Somalia that same year. In 2011, the Obama administration launched CIA operation Timber Sycamore against Syria and, with the UK and France, overthrew Libya’s government through a 2011 bombing campaign. Today, these countries lie in ruins, and many are now embroiled in civil wars.
Netanyahu was a cheerleader of these wars of choice–either in public or behind the scenes–together with his neocon allies in the U.S. Government including Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Victoria Nuland, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, and others.
Sachs documented that war with Iran in the final phase of this plan, noting:
In September 2023, Netanyahu presented at UN General Assembly a map of the ‘New Middle East’ completely erasing a Palestinian state. In September 2024, he elaborated on this plan by showing two maps: one part of the Middle East a “blessing,” and the other–including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran–a curse, as he advocated regime change in the latter countries.
Israel’s war on Iran is the final move in a decades-old strategy. We are witnessing the culmination of decades of extremist Zionist manipulation of US foreign policy.
Lindsay Graham – one of Israel’s closest allies in the U.S. Senate outright admitted that the hope behind a U.S. regime change war in Iran is that it will cripple resistance in the Middle East to Israel and cause Arab States to normalize with Israel without a Palestinian State – paving the way for the “New Middle East” laid out by Netanyahu at the UN in 2023.
Graham boasted referring to regime change in Iran, “If we can pull this off, it would be the biggest change in the Mid East in a thousand years: Hamas, Hezbollah gone, the Houthis gone, the Iranian people an ally not an enemy, the Arab world moving towards Israel without fear, Saudi-Israel normalize, no more October the 7th”.
Graham’s comments mirror Netanyahu’s at the UN weeks before the start of the Gaza genocide.
Just two weeks before the October 7 attacks, the Israeli leader delivered a speech at the UN General Assembly in New York, brandishing a map of what he promised could be the “New Middle East.” It depicted a state of Israel that stretched continuously from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Gaza and the West Bank, as Palestinian lands, were erased.
During that speech, Netanyahu portrayed the full normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia as the linchpin of his vision for this “new” reality, one which would open the door to a “visionary corridor that will stretch across the Arabian Peninsula and Israel. It will connect India to Europe with maritime links, rail links, energy pipelines, fiber-optic cables.”
In 2024, Netanyahu held up another map at the UN portraying Iran and the axis of resistance as a “curse” in the way of this Israeli goal.
It is surely not a coincidence that Israel is hoping to resume the full-scale genocide in Gaza in a few months.
The Times Of Israelreported that , “Israel plans to afford Hamas a 60-day period to disarm, and if it does not, the Israeli military will go back to war in the Gaza Strip, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday.”
This is an obvious attempt to force the failure of ceasefire negotiations in Gaza to justify resuming the full scale genocide, given the fact, as journalist Jeremy Scahil reported , that, “Hamas will not accede to sweeping demands that the Palestinian resistance unilaterally disarm, nor will it submit to a total demilitarization of the Gaza Strip” adding, “the group is willing to negotiate on disarmament of resistance forces only if it is linked to a long-term ceasefire that restrains Israel and is accompanied by a political process that leads to the establishment of a Palestinian state and armed force capable of defending itself”.
Israel hopes that after a regime change war in Iran, it will be clear to carry out its ethnic cleansing plan in Gaza and the West Bank without opposition – and it wants to get the U.S. to carry out the operation on its behalf.
Israel was humiliated in the 12 day war with Iran and is seeking a similar humiliation for its rival, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former Pentagon analyst, tells Sputnik.
“Israeli demands for no nuclear capability, no enrichment, and no ballistic missiles for Iran is overtly ludicrous, but has been cultivated by numerous visits by Netanyahu to the White House to push for a big and damaging war,” Kwiatkowski says.
The Israeli leadership believes Iran is at its weakest point now — an opportunity that may not come again — and is pressing the US to act.
“Reports of excessive and invasive IDF and Mossad presence inside the Pentagon and Joint Staff planning arenas have made mainstream news, and that is likely due to leaks from inside the Pentagon, by Americans who are concerned about what the US stands to lose by fighting this final war for Israel,” the pundit points out.
How might the US-led operation unfold?
This time, unlike before, the US and Israel are likely to strike together, combining major electronic and cyber attacks to blind Iran and simultaneous military action
Experienced Pentagon planners know the risks, so if war comes, they’ll strike hard early hoping to limit Iranian missile retaliation and losses from Persian-controlled sea, land and air
US forces are likely to play a more overt role in the early phase, partly because there’s limited loitering time for the USS Gerald Ford and Abraham Lincoln
Throughout, US and Israeli forces will be coordinated by US Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS)
However, they have to bear in mind that “Iranian forces and leadership are well aware of US and Israeli tendencies and styles in offensive warfare,” Kwiatkowski stresses.
This interview with Theodore Postol, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), specializing in nuclear weapons technology, missile defense, and national security policy, examines rising tensions between the U.S., Iran, and Israel. Ted Postol argues that Israel crossed from military to urban targets, opening the door to devastating retaliation. He claims Iran’s growing ballistic missile numbers and improving accuracy could bring Israeli cities to a halt, while missile defenses are overstated. The discussion expands to nuclear risks, great-power involvement, and parallels with Ukraine, warning of strategic miscalculation and dangerous escalation.
Host: We are somehow concerned about a new war in West Asia between the United States and Iran, which we know would include Israel as well, and which would be devastating for all the parties involved, in my opinion.
When we look at the current situation, the United States is bringing a lot of weapons to the region. The Iranians are not like in the 12-day war; they are prepared. They know the attack is coming. Israelis are prepared. Americans are prepared. Iranians are prepared. How do you see the current situation? And how do you see a confrontation between the two parties?
Ted Postol: Well, at a political level, I must admit I am a little baffled by the whole thing. It is clear that the leader of Israel, Netanyahu, is hellbent on attacking Iran and taking Iran’s military capacity away from it. I should point out that Iran has not instigated any attacks against Israel except in retaliation to attacks made by Israel against Iran. The rhetoric in the West is not very informed, unfortunately. Basically, the situation is being driven mostly by Israel and also by the United States.
It seems—I cannot be sure, since I am not what I would call a deeply knowledgeable political observer—that things did not go well between Netanyahu and Trump in the very recent meeting that just ended. It is clear that Netanyahu wanted the Americans to go against Iran again. It may well happen, given all the weapon systems that are being moved into place. But it does appear that Trump at least did not indicate to Netanyahu that he was just going to go ahead, which again does not necessarily mean he won’t, because this man is so erratic.
The problem really is that the Israelis have really made what I consider an extraordinary strategic blunder. I will talk a little about this so your audience understands what I mean by it. This strategic blunder is basically putting the Iranians in a position where they are justified in attacking Israeli cities.
Prior to the most recent situation, the Iranians were very careful to focus their attacks on Israeli military installations. But the most recent attack by the Israelis—I don’t know why they believe they could do it, but basically an attempt to take off the head of the Iranian government and cause it to collapse—involved a large number of attacks on urban installations. What that did was make it justifiable—and it is justifiable, sad but justifiable, in terms of retaliation—for the Iranians to focus on Israeli cities.
Israel has several big cities, but only a few. It is a small country. As I will show with some of my briefing slides, as Iran’s capacity with ballistic missiles increases—and it is going to increase, and I will explain what I mean by that shortly—as Iran’s ability increases with its ballistic missiles, it is going to become more and more possible for Iran to cause catastrophic disruptions of Israeli urban areas. I mean catastrophic.
It won’t be at the level of what the Israelis have done to Gaza, but it will in some ways begin to approach that kind of damage and disruption. Societies are organized systems. When you do damage to a society, you cannot measure the full extent of the damage by saying, “We destroyed 20 percent of the buildings.” If 20 percent of those buildings are embedded in a structure where they are connected to 75 percent of the other buildings in terms of supplies, relationships, services, etc., you are crippling a society in a major way.
Iran either already has, or soon will have, the ability to do that to Israel. That is not going to be tolerable for the Israelis. I do not know what they can do about it. I guess they could retaliate with nuclear weapons against Iran, but that would be suicidal, because Iran has the capacity to build nuclear weapons and use them.
It is one thing for the Iranians not to go ahead and build nuclear weapons, as they say they are not doing, and as American intelligence seems to agree that it’s not what they’re doing. But they have the capacity. The one way to assure that a country will use nuclear weapons on you, if they have the capacity, is to use nuclear weapons on them.
So it is a dilemma. It is a deep dilemma for Iran, but it is just as deep a dilemma for Israel. Iran is a bigger country. Nuclear weapons are enormously destructive, but you have to use a significant number of them if you are going to destroy urban areas and military assets. The number of military assets and cities in Iran is tremendously larger than what exists in Israel. This is not a good mathematical relationship from the point of view of the Israelis.
They have, in effect, opened the door to a potentially very dangerous confrontation and ladder of escalation of some kind. But the biggest immediate problem is the non-nuclear threat that Iran now has and will predictably grow.
It is not just that they have it now. As the size of Iran’s ballistic missile forces grows—by size, I mean numbers—as the numbers grow and the accuracy improves, it will have increasing meaning. The Russians are now talking about helping the Iranians improve their accuracy technology in ballistic missiles. That seems to be an arrangement the Russians are working on with the Iranians, and that is going to have big significance, as I’ll show you shortly.
China could choose to do that as well, because they have advanced missile guidance and control technology. Iran is only a small step away from improving its accuracy significantly. It already has tremendous technical capabilities, but it could get a good boost from either Russia or China. The increase in accuracy does not have to be enormous.
The evidence suggests that the accuracy of most of Iran’s ballistic missiles, as measured from the 12-day war, is probably around one thousand meters—a kilometer. When you have one-kilometer accuracy, getting to 500 meters is not a gigantic step. Getting to 100 meters would be a lot, but getting to 500 meters is not a lot in terms of improvements and technology.
Iran is poised to be able to do that, especially with Russian help. As this confrontation continues over time, Iran will have more missiles, because it is clear they understand these missiles are a unique tool to threaten and stand off Israel. As the guidance and control systems improve and accuracy increases, the effectiveness of those missiles for disrupting, possibly even closing down, the function of civil society in Israel will increase dramatically.
The clock is not on Israel’s side. This strategic blunder—among many strategic blunders—has put Israel in a very bad situation that can only get worse over time, and significantly worse.
So why don’t we start with slide two? I have a couple of simple slides.
The point I made earlier is that the attack on Tehran was a gigantic strategic blunder. In slide three, the reason for it is that it crossed the line from attacks on purely military targets to attacks on cities.
If we go to slide four, all we are saying is that Israel only has a small number of cities. The combination of large numbers of ballistic missiles and improved accuracy will, over time, give Iran an extraordinary and growing strategic lever against Israel.
Two factors will increase this capability to leverage against Israeli society. The first is obvious: the number of missiles will grow. The second is less obvious: the improved accuracy of those missiles.
Slide 6 [the 5 first slides only contain text that was read out loud]
Slide six is a conceptual slide. Small problems in shutting down the rocket motor—when you are trying to place the rocket at a certain speed before the motor shuts down—create small differences in the angle at which the rocket is flying when the motor shuts down. Those small differences must be reduced if you want to increase the accuracy of the missile.
At the far end of the trajectory, errors are also introduced by the atmosphere. The missile may wobble a bit. But those kinds of errors can be reduced tremendously. The evidence suggests that the Iranians already know how to do that.
So, to significantly improve their accuracy—from about 1,000 meters to 500 meters—they mainly need to do better at shutting down the rocket motor at the right time and ensuring that the orientation of the missile at shutdown is accurate enough. They will likely get help with that from the Russians, if not from the Chinese.
If we look at the situation, what we know —we go to slide seven— is that we have an estimate of the accuracy of these ballistic missiles from the attack on the Nevatim Air Base during the October war in 2024. They obviously wanted to damage the base. The distribution of warheads shows what their accuracy capabilities were at that time. One of the warheads actually hit a building and probably destroyed an F-35 inside. There is a lot of discussion about that. These are probabilistic events.
The distribution shown is how you estimate the accuracy of Iran’s ballistic missiles at that time. That does not mean it cannot improve. It will improve, and that has meaning in a different situation from the one people tend to focus on.
The possibility that the accuracy of Iran’s ballistic missiles will become so high that they can selectively target aircraft and shelters and things like that is very low in the near future. The technologies involved are extremely advanced and will be very difficult to implement, even for an advanced country like Iran. These technologies are very difficult to master for ballistic missiles.
Iran’s cruise missiles, however—I’m not talking about their drones—have demonstrated tremendous accuracy. In the attack on the Saudi Arabian oil fields, we saw evidence that Iranian cruise missiles have the ability to lock on to an object of a certain shape and home toward the center of that object. I could show that evidence in another discussion. So cruise missiles are extremely accurate, but ballistic missiles are a long way from there.
To understand what kind of damage ballistic missiles could do to an urban area, we need to understand what damage an explosion might cause.
Slide eight shows the ranges at which certain levels of blast overpressure from a general-purpose bomb would occur. These are very general qualitative curves. For example, a 1,000-kilogram warhead, at about 100 meters you might get around two pounds per square inch. It could be 120 meters or 130, but approximately 100 meters. At 50 meters, you might get about five pounds per square inch. At around 15 meters, you might get over 40 pounds per square inch, which is enough to knock down a concrete and steel wall.
Let us look at slide nine to get a sense of what damage might look like.
This is an image from Gaza. We are looking through a hole in the wall of a building. That hole was probably produced by the blast wave from a roughly 500- or 1,000-kilogram bomb that landed 50 to 100 meters away. It depends on the strength of the wall, but this is the kind of damage you can expect at that distance.
At the far end of the image, you can see what a direct hit looks like on a significant structure, concrete and steel, reinforced structure. The structure slightly forward of it was damaged not by a direct hit, but by secondary shock waves, perhaps from a bomb or bombs that landed 30 or 40 meters away.
The point is that there is a lot of damage beyond the point where a bomb hits.
On the left side, we see a building where the exterior walls have largely been knocked out, while the roof and floors appear intact. That was probably done by a blast 40 or 50 meters away, and the walls just collapsed or were blown inward. That is significant damage from bombs that did not directly hit the target.
On the next slide, we see the interior of an apartment in Israel. This apartment was probably 100 to 150 meters away from a 500- to 1,000-kilogram ballistic missile explosion. At that distance—perhaps 50 to 100 meters—there is substantial general damage. The exterior window is blown out, and there is general disruption inside. If the blast had been at half that distance, the exterior wall could have been blown out.
Slide 11 shows damage from a bomb that probably landed 50 or 60 meters away. The walls were shattered, and the interiors were badly damaged. There is evidence of fires in the building, which often occur in such events. There is usually no one around to fight the fires because people are injured or evacuating, and tremendous damage results.
Now that we have a sense of what the damage looks like, let us go to slide 12.
This is a simulated missile impact diagram. In the upper left corner, there is a key explaining the circles. The outer yellow circle represents about two pounds per square inch—damage similar to the apartment we saw earlier, where there was general internal damage without the walls being knocked down.
The five-psi contour shows the range at which a bomb landing nearby would severely damage the exterior walls of a building. It might not knock them down completely, but it would cause serious structural damage.
The 40-psi contour, shown in red, represents the range at which the structure itself would likely collapse or suffer severe structural damage.
This simulation shows 100 missiles with 1,000-meter accuracy, assuming a one-ton warhead. A 500-kilogram warhead would produce similar general conclusions.
If you were firing at Tel Aviv—and we know the Iranians were—a significant number of warheads would land in the downtown area, which we know occurred. There was considerable damage in downtown Tel Aviv, although the Israelis tried to mask it all. But if you went and talked to somebody who was in downtown Tel Aviv, they’d tell you there was bomb damage all over the place, you know. Very very damaging. Real problem. The Israelis tried to downplay it, but there was certainly a lot of reaction from the Israeli population.
And in fact I believe — I conjecture, I don’t know — that a lot of the discussion about running out of missile interceptors, or interceptors not working perfectly, is just a smokescreen. The defense interceptors were not working very well to begin with. These missiles basically came in unopposed, to a first approximation. There may have been some intercepts, but the number was very low—perhaps around five percent. I would be very surprised if it is as much as one in ten. I would be very surprised if it is that high.
There is a mythology that the Israelis have been trying to promulgate, which they cannot hide from their population because the Iranians showed their population what could happen. There is a big set of lies being promulgated to the Israeli people and to other organizations—that the defenses are simply running out of interceptors, that there are minor problems with intercept rates, and similar claims. In fact, these systems have never been effective at all.
Most of what the Iranians fired came through. When you have 1,000-meter precision, many warheads will simply fall into the Mediterranean, for example. That is what happens when you have a weapon that is not very accurate. Now what happens when 100 missiles have 500-meter accuracy rather than 1,000-meter accuracy, as shown in the next slide.
Things look a lot worse. A lot worse. You can see that the downtown Tel Aviv area gets at least twice the density of impacts. That is not a good sign if you are Israeli.
This simulation is for 100 missiles. Iran does not have to restrict itself to that number. Over time, Iran will not only improve its accuracy but also increase the number of missiles it can launch.
Let us look, in the next few slides, at what a 500-missile attack with 500-meter accuracy could look like.
You see two roughly orange circles. One marks 1,000 meters of distance; the other marks 2,000 meters. A very large percentage of the warheads land within the urban built-up area of Tel Aviv.
Slide 16 is a close-up. You can see the buildings and the density of impacts, to try and understand what it means. The red circles show areas where the blast intensity would be enough to knock down the buildings or large parts of them. That would be severe damage.
The blue lines show areas where extensive general damage would occur: interior apartment walls knocked out, fires initiated in many buildings, people injured by flying debris, evacuation under chaotic conditions, and widespread fires.
The yellow lines indicate areas of more general damage—broken windows and more in streets and buildings.
This entire area is covered with general damage and severe damage. It is just one arbitrarily selected area.
Slide 17 shows what the whole city looks like, in this case with 500-meter accuracy missiles: the density of impacts is so great that it blocks out the city. Each red dot represents severe damage to concrete and steel buildings—big, strongly built structures—along with widespread secondary damage to surrounding buildings and interiors.
After an attack like this, Tel Aviv is no longer a functioning city. Haifa is no longer a functioning city. Beersheba is no longer a functioning city. These cities could be shut down completely by a few thousand ballistic missiles with 500-meter accuracy, which you can be sure that in the next let’s say five years, Iran will have. Because Israel cannot stop them from building ballistic missiles. They will have, I think, the outreach from Russia and China, you know, they’ll be plenty of materials available, made available to Iran to continue manufacturing these ballistic missiles. And the technology for improving their accuracy is well in hand, as Iran is a sophisticated country with advanced engineering capabilities. All it needs is a little help from Russia or China or both to refine these missiles to 500-meter accuracy.
So we’re talking about a very big strategic problem that the Israelis have brought upon themselves by this aggressive behavior.
So let me go to slide 21, because I made a point about lying to the Israeli people. This is a slide from 1991. I think this may have occurred in Saudi Arabia, where Patriots were used to defend Saudi Arabia.
A spectacular photograph. Most people misunderstood it. And in fact, the Raytheon Corporation took a great… Let’s just look at what it says: “When a system does everything in combat it was designed to do and more, that’s proof of performance.” This was in Aviation Week & Space Technology, and it ran two pages. Two pages. A total lie by Raytheon, the company that is still building Patriots and claiming they work when they don’t.
This time-lapse photo—let’s stop for a second and understand how it works. The camera is focused on the skyline, and the aperture is open. It does not open and close like a regular photograph; it is just open. When a Patriot interceptor is launched, it has a rocket motor that burns. The rocket motor looks like a point of light, and that point of light traces a line on the film because this is a time exposure.
You see the line in both cases disappears because the Patriot burns out. It finishes its powered flight, then flies like a bullet and maneuvers by changing its orientation in the atmosphere.
Now you see those two dots in the sky. Those two dots are the explosions of the Patriot warheads. They have nothing to do with intercepting a Scud.
We found this engagement on a video camera and analyzed it frame by frame. One Scud came in. They missed it with both explosions. If they had hit the Scud, it should have appeared as a track on the black photo. The Scud was bright enough that you should have seen it as a track. Somebody took that track and blacked it out. So this was consciously a fraudulent photo.
This is what the Israelis tell their own people. This is what American contractors tell the Saudis, the Poles, the Ukrainians, and whoever else is foolish enough to spend money on their system for anti-missile.
It is a very effective system against aircraft, I want to be clear. You do not want to fly against Patriots if you are in an airplane. But as a ballistic missile defense, it is worthless, as we know from Ukraine as well.
What we have here is an example of layers upon layers upon layers of fraud that have been foisted off on the populations of different countries, and on the American taxpayer, who has bought most of these Patriots for other countries, including Israel and Ukraine.
What we have is nothing but a fraud against the American taxpayer, the Israeli public, and the Ukrainian population.
Ukraine is a horrific situation because we, the Americans have put the Ukrainians in a position where their country has been destroyed and will continue to be destroyed if it does not negotiate with what is left of it and with the Russians.
You can still find articles in The New York Times, the paper that is supposed to be the paper of record. Just the other day there was an article —I shouldn’t laugh, because it’s so serious— about how Prosk in Donbass had just fallen. Prosk fell two or three months ago. The New York Times is now reporting it? This is a crime.
You have unbelievably courageous Ukrainian soldiers fighting for their country, for what they believe is the survival of their country, and they are dying at a tremendous rate for nothing. This can all be stopped by carrying out a realistic negotiation.
But the political administration in Ukraine—my best analogy is Hitler letting all these Germans die as the Russians closed in on Berlin when the best thing to do would have been to surrender. The war was over. Why cause all these people to die? They were even executing their own people in the streets for not fighting.
It is this kind of fascism, and it is fascism, that is contributing to the complete destruction of Ukraine. I mean complete, because all of these dying soldiers are altering the demography of Ukraine for the next 20 years. There will be an incredible dip in the birth rate. There already is. Ukraine could potentially even disappear as a culture. I do not think it will, but it could.
All these extremists—banderites, white supremacists—who think they are saving Ukrainian ethnicity are destroying it.
We have all this complexity going on in the world in front of us, and the cynical political leadership of NATO and the United States as well is resulting in extraordinary loss of life. I am beside myself when I think about the loss of life in Ukraine for no reason.
Just negotiate. Stop trying to make yourself an existential enemy of the Russians. Just live beside them and stop this unbelievable slaughter, because the Russians are going to stop it anyway. They can stop it by reaching an understanding, or they can stop it by basically completely destroying Ukraine as a viable state, which I think is what will occur, unfortunately.
Sorry to jump around, but from the point of view of a technologist like myself, who is most deeply concerned with violence in the world and its negative consequences, I look at this with despair.
This talk is simple in some sense. The diagrams took a long time to put together. I did not just make them up. I wanted to make them understandable so you could visualize what 500-meter CEP means. When you see it laid out on a map, you begin to understand what the consequences are. We are visual animals. Our ability to learn is based on visual capabilities, and abstractions come after that.
As part of the US campaign to engineer a regime change in Iran, the US military and intelligence community are using Operational Preparation of the Environmnet aka OPE. OPE is defined in joint publications (e.g., JP 3-05 Special Operations) as non-intelligence activities conducted prior to or in preparation for potential military operations to set conditions for success. It encompasses shaping the operational environment through intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, information operations, civil affairs, psychological operations, and other preparatory actions—often in denied or politically sensitive areas.
I believe that one of the major OPE efforts is to convince the US public that the overwhelming majority of Iranians despise the Islamic Republic and want it overthrown. In my opinion, a major player in this OPE is a polling outfit known as GAMAAN. GAMAAN (Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran)collaborates with Psiphon VPN, which is widely used across Iran. GAMAAN findings have been consistent in painting a picture of massive opposition to the Iranian regime:
According to GAMAAN polls taken prior to 2025, a significant majority of Iranians — around 70% — oppose the continuation of the Islamic Republic. The highest level of opposition, 81%, occurred during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising in late 2022. Support for “the principles of the Islamic revolution and the Supreme Leader” has decreased from 18% in 2022 to 11% in 2024. Opposition to the Islamic Republic is higher among the youth, urban residents, and the highly educated. An overwhelming majority of Iranians (89%) support democracy.
Only about 20% of Iranians support the continuation of the Islamic Republic. When asked about preferred alternatives, about 26% favor a secular republic and around 21% support a monarchy. For 11%, the specific form of the alternative system doesn’t matter. About 22% report lacking sufficient information to choose an alternative system.
But what are the funding sources for GAMAAN and Psiphon VPN? Let’s start with GAMAAN. GAMAAN describes itself as an independent, non-profit research foundation registered in the Netherlands. It emphasizes its academic credentials (e.g., founded by scholars at Dutch universities like Tilburg and Utrecht) and innovative online methods (e.g., anonymity sampling via VPNs like Psiphon) to overcome self-censorship in authoritarian contexts.
GAMAAN operates under the supervision of a board including Dr. Ammar Maleki (founder and director), assistant professor of comparative politics at Tilburg University, and Dr. Pooyan Tamimi Arab, associate professor of secular and religious studies at Utrecht University. Maleki is an assistant professor of Comparative Politics and a self-described activist for democracy in his native Iran. Tilburg University Critically, he does not hide his political stance — his Tilburg University profile explicitly states that he is “a pro-democracy activist and political analyst of Iranian politics” and that he tries “to have an impact on political debates around democratization of Iran.”
This is where the picture becomes more contested. GAMAAN has relied on US government-funded VPN provider Psiphon to disseminate its surveys; collaborated with the USAID-funded Tony Blair Institute; and collaborated with and received funding from historian Ladan Boroumand, co-founder of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, which is in turn supported by the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Psiphon is owned and operated by Psiphon Inc., a Canadian corporation based in Ontario. Psiphon was originally developed by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, with version 1.0 launching on December 1, 2006, as open-source software. In early 2007, Psiphon, Inc. was established as a Canadian corporation independent of the Citizen Lab and the University of Toronto.
It has a notable funding history. In 2008, Psiphon, Inc. was awarded sub-grants from the US State Department Internet Freedom program, administered by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. In 2010, Psiphon began providing services to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (US), the US Department of State, and the BBC. More recently, in April 2024, the Open Technology Fund (OTF) announced increased long-term funding for Psiphon, with subsequent OTF awards totaling US$18.54 million for 2024 and US$5.87 million for 2025.
The Open Technology Fund (OTF) is administered by the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), an independent federal agency of the US government. USAGM provides OTF with its primary funding through annual grants, which originate from Congressional appropriations under the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs budget. OTF operates as an independent nonprofit corporation (since 2019) but remains a grantee under USAGM’s oversight and governance, as authorized by Congress (e.g., via the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act).
So while Psiphon Inc. is technically an independent Canadian company, it has historically been substantially funded by the US government and other Western institutions — a fact worth noting given its role as the methodology partner for the GAMAAN polling inside Iran. In other words, it is a cut out that, in my opinion and based on my experience, is supporting a CIA information operation to portray Iran as a country on the precipice of overthrowing the Islamic Republic.
There is an alternative polling database that paints a radically different picture of the mood in Iran with respect to the Islamic Republic… The Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland has conducted a separate series of surveys using phone-based methods, which show more moderate results. Their findings from 2023 and 2024 found that about 75% of respondents expect Iran’s constitution and political system to be about the same in ten years, and only 17% agreed with protesters’ calls for the Islamic Republic to be replaced. However, three in five now think the government should not be strict in enforcing Islamic laws, distinctly up from 2018, and support for demands that the government fight corruption has been consistently near-unanimous since 2018.
On the protests themselves, asked in 2024 to think about waves of demonstrations over the past ten years, two thirds say their main objective was to demand that officials pay greater attention to people’s problems, while only one in five think their main objective was to demand greater freedoms or bring about change in Iran’s system of government.
President Pezeshkian, based on the polls from 2024, was viewed favorably by 66% of those polled at the start of his term… and 70% expressed confidence that he would be an honest and trustworthy president, though only a quarter were very confident. Majorities expressed some confidence that he can improve relations with neighboring countries and protect citizens’ freedoms, notably women’s rights, but majorities are not confident that he can lower inflation or improve relations with the West.
There have been no new polls in the wake of Israel’s surprise attack on June 13, 2025. Based on my conversations with both Nima Alkhorshid and Professor Marandi, the reaction in Iran has been similar to what happened in the United States in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks… National unity increased.
The failed color revolution launched on December 28, 2025 by the United States and Israel has reinforced support for the Islamic Republic. President Pezeshkian has openly admitted his government’s failures on the economic front and he has taken some steps to institute reforms. A more important development was the signing of the Trilateral Security Agreement with Russia and China at the end of January. Those two countries are now providing more resources and support to stabilize the Iranian government and improve the economic lives of the Iranian people.
Donald Trump’s threats to attack Iran are backfiring among the majority of the population in Iran. Yes, there are some Iranians who still want to bring an end to the Islamic Republic, but they are dramatically outnumbered. Remember the boost in popularity that George W Bush enjoyed in the aftermath of 9-11? He even picked up support from Democrats who had previously despised him. That same phenomena has happened in Iran. Prior to the June 13, 2025 attack, Iranians under the age of 50 had no vivid memory of Iran/Iraq war — where Iran was attacked with the encouragement and support of the United States. The June 2025 attack, coupled with the foreign instigated late December 2025 protests and violence, have awakened a new sense of nationalism among the Iranian public that has strengthened support for the Islamic Republic.
The belief in the West that Iran is more vulnerable now than at anytime in the last 46 years is the creation of a US funded propaganda campaign that relied on an ideologically biased pollster to produce results that have been used to convince most Americans that Iran is yearning to breath free… All we have to do is kill off the leadership in Iran.
In Ankara, the idea of Türkiye one day seeking a nuclear weapons option has never been entirely absent from strategic conversation. Yet in recent days it has acquired a sharper edge, as the region around Türkiye is sliding toward a logic in which raw deterrence begins to look like the only dependable language left.
Türkiye’s foreign policy has expanded far beyond the cautious, status-quo posture that once defined it. It has positioned itself as a mediator on Ukraine and Gaza, pursued hard security aims through sustained operations and influence in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, and inserted itself into competitive theaters from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Horn of Africa. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long framed this activism as a corrective to an international order he portrays as structurally unfair. His slogan that the world is bigger than five – referring to the UN Security Council – is a statement of grievance against a system in which a narrow group of powers retains permanent privileges, including an exclusive claim to ultimate military capability.
Within that narrative, nuclear inequality occupies a special place. Erdogan has repeatedly pointed to the double standards of the global nuclear order, arguing that some states are punished for ambiguity while others are insulated from scrutiny. His references to Israel are central here, because Israel’s assumed but undeclared nuclear status is widely treated as an open secret that does not trigger the same enforcement instincts as suspected proliferation elsewhere. That asymmetry has long irritated Ankara, but it became more politically potent after the war in Gaza that began in 2023, when Erdogan openly highlighted Israel’s arsenal and questioned why international inspection mechanisms do not apply in practice to all regional actors.
Still, for years this was mostly an argument about fairness and legitimacy rather than a declaration of intent. What has changed is the sense that the regional security architecture itself is cracking, and that the cracks are widening at the very moment the US and Israel are escalating pressure on Iran. Türkiye’s leadership has warned that if Iran crosses the nuclear threshold, others in the region will rush to follow, and Türkiye may be forced into the race as well, even if it does not want dramatic shifts in the balance.
This is the key to understanding the new intensity of the debate. Ankara’s signaling is not primarily an emotional reaction to Tehran. Türkiye and Iran remain competitors, but their frictions have also been managed through pragmatic diplomacy, and Türkiye has consistently argued against a military solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. Erdogan has again presented Türkiye as a mediator, insisting on de-escalation and rejecting military steps that could drag the region into wider chaos.
The driver is the fear that the rules are no longer the rules. When enforcement becomes selective, and when coercion is applied in ways that appear to disregard broader stability, the incentives change for every middle power caught in the blast radius. The signal from Ankara is that if the Middle East moves into a world where nuclear capability is treated as the only ironclad guarantee against regime-threatening force, then Türkiye cannot afford to remain the exception.
That logic is dangerous precisely because it is contagious. It turns proliferation into an insurance policy. In an unstable region where trust is thin and the memory of war is always fresh, the idea of nuclear weapons as a shield against interference can sound brutally rational. If possessing the bomb raises the cost of intervention to unacceptable levels, it can be perceived as the ultimate deterrent, a guarantee that outsiders will think twice. But the same logic that appears to promise safety for one actor produces insecurity for everyone else. In practice it fuels an arms race whose end state is not stability, but a crowded deterrence environment in which miscalculation becomes more likely, crisis management becomes harder, and conventional conflicts become more combustible because nuclear shadows hover over every escalation ladder.
The renewed urgency also reflects a broader global drift. Arms competition is intensifying well beyond the Middle East. The erosion of arms control habits, the normalization of sanctions as a tool of strategic coercion, and the return of bloc-like thinking in many theaters all contribute to a sense that restraint is no longer rewarded. For Türkiye, a state that sees itself as too large to be merely a client and too exposed to be fully autonomous, the temptation is to seek leverage that cannot be negotiated away. Nuclear latency, even without an actual bomb, can function as a strategic bargaining chip.
Yet the jump from ambition to capability is not straightforward. Türkiye does have important ingredients for a serious civil nuclear profile, and those capabilities matter because they shape perceptions. The country has been building human capital in nuclear engineering and developing an ecosystem of research institutions, reactors for training and experimentation, accelerator facilities, and nuclear medicine applications. Most visibly, the Akkuyu nuclear power plant project with Russia has served as an engine for training and institutional learning, even if technology transfer is limited and the project remains embedded in external dependence.
Türkiye also highlights domestic resource potential, including uranium and especially thorium, which is often discussed as a long-term strategic asset. Resource endowments do not automatically translate into weapons capability, but they reduce one barrier, the need for sustained and vulnerable supply chains. As a result, Türkiye can credibly present itself as a state that could, if it chose, move from peaceful nuclear competence toward a latent weapons posture.
The real bottleneck is not simply material. It is political and legal. Türkiye is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it operates inside a web of international commitments that would make an overt weapons program extremely costly. Withdrawal from the treaty or large-scale violations would almost certainly trigger sweeping sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and a rupture with major economic partners. Unlike states that have adapted their economies to long-term siege conditions, Türkiye is deeply integrated into global trade, finance, and logistics. The short-term shock of a proliferation crisis would be severe, and Ankara knows it.
This is why the most plausible path, if Türkiye ever moved in this direction, would not be a dramatic public sprint. It would be a careful, ambiguous strategy that expands latency while preserving diplomatic maneuvering room. Latency can mean investing in expertise, dual-use infrastructure, missile and space capabilities that could be adapted, and fuel cycle options that remain justifiable on civilian grounds. It can also mean cultivating external relationships that shorten timelines without leaving fingerprints.
Here the debate becomes even more sensitive, because proliferation risk is not only about what a country can build, but also about what it can receive. The Middle East has long been haunted by the possibility of clandestine technology transfer, whether through black markets, covert state support, or unofficial security arrangements. In recent months, discussions around Pakistan have become particularly salient, not least because Islamabad is one of the few Muslim majority nuclear powers and has historically maintained close security ties with Gulf monarchies.
Saudi Arabia has repeatedly signaled that it will not accept a regional balance in which Iran alone holds a nuclear weapon. Saudi leaders have at times implied that if Iran acquires the bomb, Riyadh would feel compelled to match it for reasons of security and balance. Those statements are not proof of an active weapons program, but they are political preparation, shaping expectations and normalizing the idea that proliferation could be framed as defensive rather than destabilizing.
There have also been unusually explicit hints in regional discourse about nuclear protection arrangements, including arguments that Pakistan could, in some scenario, extend a form of deterrence cover to Saudi Arabia. Even when such claims are partly performative, they underscore how the region’s strategic conversation is shifting from taboo to contingency planning.
Once that door is open, Türkiye inevitably enters the picture in regional imagination. Türkiye, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia are linked through overlapping defense cooperation and political coordination, and analysts increasingly discuss the emergence of flexible security groupings that sit alongside or partially outside formal Western frameworks. The idea that technology, know-how, or deterrence guarantees could circulate within such networks is precisely the nightmare scenario for nonproliferation regimes, because it compresses timelines and reduces the visibility that international monitors depend on.
For Ankara, this creates both opportunity and risk. The opportunity is that Türkiye could enhance its deterrent posture without bearing the full cost of overt development. The risk is that Türkiye could become entangled in a proliferation cascade that it cannot control, while simultaneously inviting a Western backlash that would reshape its economy and alliances.
This is where the question becomes deeply geopolitical. A nuclear-armed Türkiye would not simply change the Middle East. It would alter Europe’s security landscape and challenge the logic that has governed Türkiye’s relationship with the West for decades. Western capitals have tolerated, managed, and constrained Türkiye through a mixture of incentives, institutional ties, defense cooperation, and pressure. Türkiye’s NATO membership, its economic links to Europe, and the presence of US nuclear weapons stored at Incirlik as part of alliance arrangements have all been elements of a broader strategic framework in which Türkiye was seen as anchored, even when politically difficult.
If Türkiye acquired its own nuclear weapons, that anchoring would weaken dramatically. Ankara would gain a form of autonomy that no sanction threat could fully erase. It would also gain the capacity to take risks under a nuclear umbrella, a dynamic that worries Western capitals because it could embolden more confrontational regional behavior. Türkiye’s disputes with Western partners are already intense on issues ranging from Eastern Mediterranean energy politics to Syria, defense procurement, and the boundaries of alliance solidarity. A nuclear deterrent could make those disputes harder to manage because the ultimate escalation dominance would no longer sit exclusively with the traditional nuclear powers.
At the same time, a Turkish bomb could accelerate Türkiye’s drift away from the West, not only because the West would react with pressure, but because the very act of building such a capability would be an ideological statement that Türkiye rejects a Western-defined hierarchy. It would be Ankara’s most dramatic way of saying that it will not accept a subordinate place in a system it considers hypocritical.
None of this means Türkiye is on the verge of producing a weapon. Political obstacles remain huge, and technical challenges would be substantial if Ankara had to do everything indigenously while under scrutiny. A credible weapons program requires enrichment or plutonium pathways, specialized engineering, reliable warhead design, rigorous testing regimes or sophisticated simulation capabilities, secure command and control, and delivery systems that can survive and penetrate. Türkiye has missile programs that could in theory be adapted, but turning a regional missile force into a robust nuclear delivery architecture is not trivial.
The more immediate danger is not that Türkiye will suddenly unveil a bomb, but that the region is moving toward a threshold era, in which multiple states cultivate the ability to become nuclear on short notice. In such an environment, crises become more perilous because leaders assume worst-case intentions, and because external powers may feel pressure to strike early rather than wait. The irony is that a weapon meant to prevent intervention can increase the likelihood of intervention if adversaries fear they are running out of time.
The escalation by the US and Israel against Iran, combined with the broader arms race logic spreading across the Middle East and globally, is making this spiral more plausible. Uncertainty is the fuel of proliferation, because it convinces states that the future will be more dangerous than the present, and that waiting is a strategic mistake.
Türkiye’s rhetoric should therefore be read as a warning as much as a threat. Ankara is telling the world that a selective and force-driven approach to the Iranian nuclear issue could ignite a chain reaction. It is also telling regional rivals that Türkiye will not accept a future in which it is strategically exposed in a neighborhood where others have ultimate insurance.
The tragedy is that this is exactly how nuclear orders unravel. They do not collapse when one state wakes up and decides to gamble. They collapse when multiple states simultaneously conclude that the existing rules no longer protect them, and that deterrence, however dangerous, is the only available substitute. In a stable region, that conclusion might be resisted. In the Middle East, where wars overlap, alliances shift, and trust is scarce, it can quickly become conventional wisdom.
If the goal is to prevent a regional nuclear cascade, the first requirement is to restore credibility to the idea that rules apply to everyone and that security can be achieved without crossing the nuclear threshold. That means lowering the temperature around Iran while also addressing the deeper asymmetries that make the system look illegitimate in the eyes of ambitious middle powers. Without that, Türkiye’s nuclear debate will not remain an abstract exercise. It will become part of a wider regional recalculation, one that risks turning an already unstable region into a nuclearized arena where every crisis carries the possibility of catastrophe.
Murad Sadygzade, President of the Middle East Studies Center, Visiting Lecturer, HSE University (Moscow).
Trump has the option of going to war with Iran and receiving much-needed campaign funds from Israel for the midterms – or opting to defy Bibi and facing certain defeat by losing both houses and facing certain impeachment. Can the Iranians save him?
Is Trump serious about going to war with Iran? To understand this, it’s important to examine his relationship with Netanyahu and to see who has the advantage when it comes to dragging the U.S. into a war, and whether Israel can actually be a greater threat to the U.S. than Tehran can ever be.
The trap that Trump is falling into is one where he has little or no wiggle room at all to control the Iran crisis, whereby Israel can threaten him with isolation while it goes ahead with its strike.
There are two dynamics at play here which are struggling to find a compromise. Trump wants a deal with Iran which takes away their nuclear capability, while Israel wants a war which overthrows the Iranian regime and installs a Mossad/CIA puppet. The problem, though, is that Israel is not an honest broker and keeps shifting the goalposts. The latest demand now is that removing Iran’s ballistic missiles should be at the heart of any deal that Trump pulls off.
Trump is ensnared and is aware of how Bibi is manipulating him. He may, on occasion, swear at journalists and pretend he is his own boss and his own president and that Israel is a client state of Washington which has to toe the line, but in reality, it is clear that Israel is calling the shots.
In recent days, we have heard that the one aircraft carrier the U.S. had in the region, the USS Abraham Lincoln, is to be joined by a second called the USS Gerald Ford. U.S. media report that the Lincoln is in the “Arabian Sea,” which is a comical way of saying that it’s keeping its distance from Iran’s shores and Houthi missiles off the coast of Yemen. But other reports are suggesting that the reason why Trump claims he has sent a second carrier – to beef up the “flotilla” in case of a war breaking out with Iran – is untrue. Some insiders are briefing journalists that the Lincoln has technical problems which will render it useless in a combat situation and so needs to be replaced with the more advanced Ford.
However, even this might be a false narrative offered by Pentagon insiders who are not supporters of Trump. A second explanation about the carriers is that it buys Trump time. He has even told reporters that it will take about a month for the Ford to get there, which he believes should be ample time for a deal to be struck with Iran, or at least will give him four more weeks to work out a way of dealing with the threat – that’s the threat from Israel, not Iran.
Israel threatened Trump before when he went ahead with his bunker buster bombs in June of last year by saying simply, “If you don’t do it, we’ll nuke Iran.” It worked. This time around, the threat is, “If you don’t join us, then we’ll strike Iran alone and you will have to deal with the consequences of being the first U.S. president to have to explain to the Jewish lobby why Iran is wiping Israel off the face of the map.” This second threat is multi-layered and also might work with Trump, given that the midterm elections, which are approaching, will cost twice what the elections cost which got him into office. It will be Jewish money which bankrolls him this time around, with the intention of saving him from losing both houses and facing inevitable impeachment.
And so, in many ways, Trump is closer to and more dependent on the regime in Tehran to help him out. A deal which limits the enrichment of uranium and can guarantee no nuclear bomb can be made might be something he can present to the American people as a great victory. The irony is that the deal might be more or less a carbon copy of Obama’s, which he, Trump, rejected while in his first term in office, a rejection which has created the present crisis.
The trouble with any deal now about enrichment is that it is unlikely to satisfy the Israelis, who have become more aware in recent weeks about the capability of Iran’s latest generation of ballistic missiles both in terms of defence and attack. Moreover, the U.S. attack on Iran last year for 12 days has now raised the stakes to a fever pitch, making the Iranians clearer and more focused about any kind of attack happening against them: all-out war.
According to some credible reports, Trump was recently asking Pentagon chiefs if the U.S. could carry out a single in-and-out strike operation which could be used to warn Iran while satisfying Israel at the same time about the U.S. threat, and he was told no such options are feasible. This is due to Iran being much more prepared now for such attacks, both militarily and intelligence-wise, while the Mossad operation of creating civil strife on the ground failed spectacularly. The U.S. is in a very tight corner right now, as its forces and its allies in the region are in the crosshairs of Iran the moment the first bomb is dropped, and so Trump’s options to go to war are very limited. It would be suicidal for Trump to strike Iran, as the losses to U.S. forces and the disruption to oil distribution via the Straits of Hormuz would be too great, not to mention the destruction of infrastructure in Israel itself.
But there is also another factor which is putting all the pressure on Trump to get a deal with Iran. Since last June’s attack and more recently Trump’s betrayal of cordial relations with Putin conjured up at Alaska, along with the Venezuela coup, both Russia and China have upped their support for Iran. This is a critical factor now preventing Trump from hitting Iran with anything. China recently gave Iran its latest state-of-the-art new radar system which can identify U.S. stealth bombers at a range of 700km. Game changer. If you consider Iran, Israel, and the U.S. as three poker players at the table, it is clear that Iran now has the best hand with the most options. It can maximize its role now and exploit Trump’s vulnerability by going for a deal which involves sanctions being relieved, or it could hold out and play a long game way beyond Trump’s one-month breathing space and really turn up the heat on him leading up to the midterms in November. Iran always plays for time and is good at this strategy. And given that even the kindest analysis of America’s strike capability in Iran is two weeks before depletion of all missile stocks is reached, any hawks close to Trump who are pushing for a strike must have the destruction of the U.S. in their strategy as well, as Iran cannot be pounded into a state of submission in such a short space of time. Surely that can’t be the aim of Bibi. Surely not!
The United States finds itself in an unfamiliar position. After spending approximately one hundred and fifty THAAD interceptors and eighty SM-3 missiles to help defend Israel during the Twelve-Day War in June 2025, the Pentagon faces a stark reality. Its stockpiles are depleted, its production lines cannot keep pace, and another major conflict with Iran would require an air defense umbrella America can no longer fully provide.
The question is not whether the United States wants to strike Iran again. The question is whether it can afford to.
For now, the answer appears to be no. But history suggests this pause may be temporary, with negotiations serving not as a genuine path to peace but as a strategic timeout while Israel restocks its depleted munitions and air defenses. After all, the Twelve-Day War itself kicked off in the middle of active negotiations that critics across the political spectrum described as either a deliberate ruse or a diplomatic process Israel cynically sabotaged.
Throughout the clash with Israel, the Israeli government worked hard to control the narrative about what Iran’s missiles actually hit. Military censorship laws prevented journalists from reporting strike locations near sensitive facilities. But satellite data told a different story.
A report by The Daily Telegraph using radar analysis from Oregon State University revealed that Iranian missiles struck at least five Israeli military facilities withremarkable accuracy. These included Tel Nof Airbase, Camp Glilot housing Unit 8200, Israel’s premier signals intelligence unit, and Zipporit weapons manufacturing facility.
None of these strikes were reported from within Israel. Professor Jerome Bourdon of Tel Aviv University explained, “We probably will never know the full extent of the damage.”
Haifa’s BAZAN oil refinery was shut down for two weeks with an estimated $250 million loss. Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba took a direct hit from Iran’s missile barrage. Most critically, by June 18, a U.S. official disclosed that Israel wasrunning low on Arrow interceptors. The Washington Post reported assessments that Israel could only maintain missile defense for ten to twelve more days. The war’s duration was constrained by the physical limits of both sides’ arsenals.
The United States used approximately 25% of its entire global THAAD stockpile during the Twelve-Day War, firing roughly one hundred and fifty interceptors. It also expended eighty SM-3 interceptors and thirty Patriot PAC-3 interceptors. The problem is that production cannot remotely keep pace with consumption.
THAAD interceptors are manufactured at a rate of only eleven to twelve per year. That means replacing the one hundred and fifty interceptors fired during the Twelve-Day War would takemore than twelve years at current production rates. CSIS analysts warned in late 2025 that no new THAAD interceptors would be delivered until 2027, creating a dangerous gap.
Even after the Pentagon reprogrammed $700 million into THAAD procurement, that only covers about forty-five missiles at $15 million each. As JINSA’s Ari Cicurel warned, “Both Israel and the US used an immense amount of their interceptor stockpiles. We are still very far behind in replenishing to get back to what we had before.”
By January 2026, defense experts were sounding the alarms that depleted interceptor stocks were constraining the Trump administration’s options regarding Iran, since another war would require the same defense umbrella the United States can no longer fully provide.
The interceptor shortage is just one symptom of a deeper structural problem. A Foundation for Defense of Democracies report published in April 2025 audited twenty-five weapons systems committed or potentially committed to Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel. The finding was stark. Only seven of twenty-five had a strong defense industrial base, while the remaining eighteen were either weak orrequired significant attention.
Consider 155mm artillery shells. The Army targeted 100,000 rounds per month by October 2025. As of June 2025, production stood at just 40,000 per month. Even that figure is misleading. Only 18,000 complete rounds with propellant were being produced monthly because the United States depends on a single plant in Canada for artillery propellant and has no domestic production.
Against this backdrop, the United States and Iran resumed negotiations on February 6, 2026, in Muscat, Oman. After eight months of silence following the Twelve-Day War, talks restarted with delegations led by Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
The timing invites skepticism. The Twelve-Day War was launched on June 13, 2025, exactly three days before the sixth round of nuclear negotiations was scheduled. Israel struck while Iran was in what War on the Rocks described as “diplomatic preoccupation with Washington” and “military unpreparedness.”
Araghchi called the strikes a “betrayal of diplomacy,” stating, “We were supposed to meet with the Americans on 15 June to craft a very promising agreement…It was a betrayal of diplomacy and unprecedented blow to the foundations of international law.”
The Wall Street Journalreported “U.S. Diplomacy Served as Cover for Israeli Surprise Attack.” Trump told the New York Post after the strikes, “I always knew the date. Because I know everything.”
Doug Bandow noted that the Cato Institute reported that Israeli officials stated “Israel and the U.S. carried out a multi-faceted misinformation campaign” to convince Iran a strike was not imminent and that Trump “was an active participant in the ruse and knew about the military operation since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to move forward with the strike.”
Whether current negotiations represent genuine diplomacy or another strategic pause remains open. Araghchi stated that “existing mistrust poses a significant hurdle” to progress.
From a military industrial perspective, the current negotiations serve a clear purpose regardless of diplomatic intent. They buy time. Israel’s defense ministry purchased weapons worth 220 billion shekels, approximately $61.5 billion, in 2024, four times previous years, reflecting the desperate need to restock. Israel is now accelerating development and production of Arrow 3, Arrow 4, Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and ground based laser systems in anticipation of a potential second round.
The United States faces the same imperative. The Trump administration has pledged a record $1 trillion defense budget and the 2026 NDAA authorized multiyear procurement for key munitions. But experts warn these measures are necessary but insufficient given the scale of the gap between production capacity and real-world consumption rates.
The fundamental question is how long it takes to rebuild stockpiles sufficiently to contemplate another major conflict. With THAAD production at eleven to twelve interceptors per year and no new deliveries until 2027, the answer is measured in years, not months.
One thing has become clear. Military industrial issues are coming back to the fore. And the United States, despite its constant bragging about being exceptional, faces the same resource constraints that all mortal imperial polities have previously faced.
Wargames by the Center for New American Security found the United States would run out of long range munitions in less than a week in a fight with China over Taiwan. The Twelve-Day War revealed the United States cannot sustain high intensity conflict support for even one ally without severely depleting its stockpiles.
The current negotiations with Iran may represent genuine diplomacy. Or they may represent a tactical pause to allow Israel time to rebuild its defenses before the next round. Either way, the resource constraints are real. The production gaps are real. And the physical limits of America’s military industrial base now constrain its foreign policy options in ways Washington has not experienced in decades.
The quicker the United States recognizes these limits and pursues a more restrained foreign policy, the better off it will be. The alternative is to continue pretending that stockpiles replenish themselves, that production lines can magically accelerate, and that America can wage unlimited war in unlimited theaters without consequence.
The Twelve-Day War proved otherwise. The question is whether Washington has learned the lesson.
Amidst heightened tensions between the US-Israeli alliance and Iran, an enormous amount of focus has been placed in the media on Iran’s missile program and how this will impact any upcoming war. What is often ignored are the origins of the regional threats to Tehran and its stability.
While covering each and every threat to the Islamic Republic of Iran would be beyond the scope of such an article, there are a number of hostile nations surrounding the country that can be used to destabilize the nation. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and, to a lesser extent, Azerbaijan, are often cited as pro-Israeli, but there is another nation that flies under the corporate media’s radar.
Iran shares its second-largest land border with the nation of Turkmenistan, a country that is rarely mentioned as a regional player. What many don’t know is that the nation, long characterized as a neutral player, has strong ties with both the US and Israel.
Turkmenistan: Neutral State or Strategic Corridor?
Unlike many Muslim-majority nations, Turkmenistan has long recognized and maintained ties with the Israelis, their relationship beginning in 1993. Then, in April of 2023, these ties were further cemented with the inauguration of a permanent Israeli embassy in Ashgabat for the first time.
It should therefore be no surprise that Tel Aviv and Ashbagat’s relationship is closest in the intelligence sharing and security cooperation spheres. Afterall, the Israeli embassy – opened back in 2023 – was strategically placed only 17 kilometers away from Iran’s border, marking a major symbolic achievement for Israel, especially as it operates through what are suspected to be thousands of Mossad recruited agents inside the Islamic Republic.
Although Israel has no official military bases inside Turkmenistan, there have been a number of reports indicating that it has set up attack drone bases inside the country. This would make sense, considering that Ashbagat has been purchasing Israeli drone technology since the 2010s, more recently acquiring the SkyStriker tactical loiter munition (suicide drone), developed by Elbit Systems.
Ashgabat has long been in alignment with the West. In May of 1994, it became the first country to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) program. However, the following year, the UN approved granting Turkmenistan the status of a neutral country, meaning it would not join military blocs.
In 2001, following the September 11 attacks, this neutral stance suddenly began to change. While other Central Asian nations – Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – all immediately offered their military bases to the United States, due in large part to their concerns over the advancements of the Taliban, Turkmenistan only publicly admitted to allowing the US to use its airspace for military cargo aircraft to travel in transit.
In reality, the US airforce were operating a team on the ground in Ashgabat in order to coordinate refueling operations. In 2004, the Russian State protested the growing US-Turkmenistan military relationship, after reports emerged stating that American forces had “gained access to use almost all the military airfields of Turkmenistan, including the airport in Nebit-Dag near the Iranian border.”
Reports, which are not possible to independently verify but nonetheless have appeared consistent throughout the years, indicate that the US military has even established remote desert bases throughout different locations inside Turkmenistan.
Clinging to its neutral status on the public stage, Ashgabat rejects any mention of cooperation of this kind, including the denial of a 2015 statement by then US Central Command chief Lloyd Austin that the Turkmens had expressed their interest in acquiring US military equipment.
Signals of Military Activity
Perhaps the most concerning developments are the more recent revelations, revealed through OSINIT channels and Turkmen media, citing flight trackers to monitor the movement of US aircraft in the region. These reports indicate the confirmation that US Air Force transport aircraft C-17A Globemaster III and MC-130 Super Hercules have landed at undisclosed locations in Turkmenistan.
The significance of this, opposed to the rest of the military buildup that has been occurring in potential preparation for an attack on Iran, is that of the MC-130 Super Hercules, which is used specifically for transporting special forces teams, running night operations, as well as performing unconventional takeoffs and landings.
Paired with a recent report issued by the New York Times, indicating that the US’ options not only include an air campaign against Iranian nuclear and missile sites, but ground raids using special forces, it could be concluded that Turkmenistan is the location from which the US may seek to inject special forces units into Iran.
The Wider Ring around Iran
The Turkmenistan factor clearly cannot be ignored here, despite it often being dismissed as a neutral power that maintains friendly relations with both Russia and China. In fact, because of these relationships, with Moscow in particular, Tehran has refrained from attempting to expand its reach into the Central Asian country.
To Iran’s benefit is that Chinese and, to a lesser extent, Russian influence can reduce the extent to which the US and Israel can use Iran’s neighbors to threaten it. In Pakistan, for example, it is clear that both Islamabad’s joint security concerns – largely over Balochi militant groups – along its border, in addition to Beijing’s influence, make it highly unlikely that Pakistan would remain neutral and is instead inclined to help support Iran; within its limits, it should be added.
Azerbaijan is another potential threat to the stability of the Islamic Republic, due in large part to the large Azeri population in Iran’s own Azerbaijan Province. However, the vast majority of Azeri citizens are in fact loyal to the State and no major separatist movement exists at this time. The Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Ayatollah Khamenei himself are both ethnically part Azeri.
Meanwhile, many supporters of the Israeli puppet Reza Pahlavi openly express their intention to crack down on the Azeri ethnic minority inside Iran. During the reign of the CIA-MI6-installed Shah of Iran, minority groups suffered immensely, due to a clear tradition of ethno-nationalism that exists amongst the current supporters of the deposed monarchy.
Baku, for its part, is the top gas supplier to Israel, maintaining close military, diplomatic and intelligence ties with them. Azerbaijan even made Hebrew media headlines for its use of Israeli suicide drones and other military equipment during its war with Armenia.
On the other hand, Iran is militarily superior to Azerbaijan and has a considerable base of support amongst the nation’s population, of which the majority belong to the Shia branch of the Islamic faith. Therefore, Tehran has major leverage and could not only paralyze its oil and gas infrastructure, but perhaps has the potential of organic movements forming within Azerbaijan that will owe allegiance to Iran.
There is also the threat that the Israelis, in particular, will attempt to use Kurdish militant groups in Iraqi Kurdistan in order to carry out attacks on the Islamic Republic. Israel does not publicly acknowledge its presence in northern Iraq, yet Iran has directly struck its bases housing Mossad operatives in the past, while Kurdish separatist groups have been utilized countless times in attempts to destabilize the country. During the June 12-day-war last year, Israel also weaponized these proxies.
For those also concerned about Afghanistan’s role in threatening Iranian security, this has always historically been a precarious situation, yet Tehran has not only been improving its ties with Kabul, it officially recognized the Islamic Emirate during the past week. Again, this does not mean there is no potential threat there, but an alliance that holds with the Taliban government may prove important.
Gulf States, Jordan and the Regional Balance
Then there are the more obvious players, the UAE and Bahrain, which are not only partners of the Israelis as part of the so-called “Abraham Accords” but are overtly aligned with Tel Aviv’s regional agenda.
The Emiratis are speculated to hold some cards regarding trade, but their leverage is negligible. Both the Bahraini and Emirati leaderships are clearly anxious, because Iran’s responses to the use of their territory to attack the Islamic Republic could quickly collapse their regimes.
Jordan, meanwhile, is where the US appears to be focusing much of its military buildup, even withdrawing forces previously stationed in Syria’s al-Tanf region into the Hashemite Kingdom’s territory.
The Jordanian leadership is evidently permitting its territory to become a key battleground, which will likely be subjected to attacks if the US chooses to use it to aid the Israeli-US offensive, but it is simply powerless in such a scenario.
Jordan has become a Western-Israeli intelligence and military hub in the region, meaning that if King Abdullah II objects to the demands of its allies, he understands well that his rule could be ended in a matter of hours. Therefore, he must risk his country being caught in the crossfire and just hope that an internal uprising doesn’t take shape, which is one of the reasons why he has been so hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood, fearing they could end up leading any revolt as the organization did in Egypt.
Turkiye, on the other hand, which is also a major regional player, is likely to play both sides behind the scenes, attempting to stay out of such a fight. If it takes either side, it will suffer the repercussions. Perhaps the most important role it could play is to prevent its bases or airspace from being used by the US.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar both maintain cordial relations with Iran, clearly favoring a scenario where no war occurs at all, because they are home to US bases. As we saw last June, the US used its CENTCOM headquarters in Doha to direct its attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, and as a result, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) struck US facilities there.
Riyadh and Doha do not want to get dragged into such a scenario. It is also of note that they have a vested interest in neither side winning the war conclusively, because it is in their interests for there to be a multi-polar West Asia, not an Israeli-dominated region that will inevitably consume them.
A Conflict with Wider Consequences
Some have also speculated about Syria’s role in any war. Damascus is clearly in the US-Israeli sphere of influence, but it will have a negligible impact in its current form. If Syria’s military forces assault Lebanon or Iraq, they will suffer enormous blows and fail tremendously. The only wildcard with Syria is whether armed groups there will choose to use the opportunity to attack Israel, although as a military power, the Syrians are a relative non-factor at the current time.
For now, the US-Israeli plot to stir civil war inside Iran and to follow through with an air campaign that aids their proxies has failed. Given the readiness of Iran’s allies in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and even Palestine, perhaps beyond, the US would be entering a point of no return scenario if it were to attempt a regime change operation.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.
President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to increase economic pressure on Iran by attempting to cut oil exports to China.
A US official speaking with Axiossaid during the meeting between Trump and Netanyahu last week, the leaders “agreed that we will go full force with maximum pressure against Iran, for example, regarding Iranian oil sales to China.”
Kpler estimates that 80% of Iranian oil sales are to China. The Trump administration has attempted to cause intense economic suffering in Iran, hoping the result will be the overthrow of the government in Tehran.
Trump recently signed an executive order authorizing the White House to impose 25% tariffs on countries that buy Iranian oil. It’s unclear if the President will be willing to upend the delicate Trump relationship with China to damage the Iranian economy.
The US is ramping up the economic war as talks with Iran are ongoing. US and Iranian negotiators are scheduled to meet in Geneva on Tuesday. The US and Israel are demanding that Iran agree to limits on its nuclear and missile programs. Tehran says it is refusing to place any restrictions on its missile program.
According to officials speaking with Axios, Netanyahu and Trump disagreed during the meeting about negotiations with Iran. The President believes a deal is possible, while Netanyahu told Trump that Iran will not sign an agreement and that, if it did, Tehran would not comply with it.
CBS News reports speaking with two sources who said during a December meeting, Trump told Netanyahu that Israel could strike Iran if Iran does not agree to a deal with the US.
This will be a rather lengthy article, but you need to know what Russia and China are doing in a closely coordinated series of actions that show a serious commitment to counter US actions to punish and isolate Iran and Cuba. Let’s start with Iran… Since the June 2025 12-day Iran–Israel war (which ended with a US-brokered ceasefire on 24 June 2025), Russia and China have provided Iran with a combination of diplomatic, economic, military-technical, and strategic support. This has helped Tehran recover from strikes on its nuclear sites, air defenses, and missile infrastructure, while deepening their “axis” alignment against Western pressure. Support has been pragmatic rather than unconditional—neither offered direct intervention during the conflict, leading to some Iranian frustration—but has accelerated in the months since.
The biggest news — a development that has been largely ignored in the West — was the signing of the Trilateral Strategic Pact (signed 29 January 2026), which provides a comprehensive framework for diplomatic, economic, and security coordination (emphasizing sovereignty, sanctions resistance, and multipolarity; no formal defense alliance). The signing occurred through simultaneous ceremonies in Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow, as confirmed by state media in all three countries and reported across outlets like Middle East Monitor, GV Wire, and others. It represents a significant escalation in coordination among the three nations, building directly on their existing bilateral frameworks.
It formalizes a trilateral coordination mechanism for the first time, linking the three powers in a shared strategic framework. It builds on the bilateral agreements that Iran had signed previously with Russia and China:
The Iran-Russia 20-year Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty (signed January 17, 2025, entered into force October 2025), focused on economic, political, defense, and sanctions-evasion ties.
The Iran-China 25-year Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement (signed 2021), emphasizing trade, infrastructure, energy, and Belt and Road Initiative projects.
While the full text has been released incrementally (with portions still emerging as of early February 2026), public descriptions and official statements highlight the following core elements:
Diplomatic coordination — Unified stances on international issues, including opposition to Western sanctions, support for multipolarity, and mutual backing in forums like the UN.
Economic resilience and cooperation — Enhanced trade (e.g., energy exports, yuan/ruble-based mechanisms), sanctions circumvention, and infrastructure projects (e.g., expanding Belt and Road ties, North-South Transport Corridor involvement).
Strategic and security alignment — Military-technical cooperation, intelligence sharing, and joint exercises (e.g., building on annual “Maritime Security Belt” drills; a major joint naval exercise involving all three that will take place in the Gulf of Oman and northern Indian Ocean in the coming weeks).
Nuclear sovereignty — Emphasis on Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear development and resistance to external interference.
Trilateral nuclear and military talks — Including IAEA discussions and coordinated exercises.
No mutual defense clause — It explicitly stops short of a formal military alliance (unlike NATO’s Article 5), focusing instead on coordination and mutual support without automatic defense obligations.
State media in Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow described it as a “cornerstone” for a new multipolar world order, with Chinese messaging highlighting opposition to “unilateral coercion” and Russian/Iranian outlets framing it as bolstering sovereignty against external threats. While I do not believe that Russia and China will join the fray if Iran is attacked, they are making a concerted, substantive effort to ensure that Iran can effectively defend itself and thwart US attempts at regime change.
Both Russia and China are providing important military assistance to Iran, but China appears to be playing a bigger role in supplying hardware while Russia is supplying Iran with critical intelligence. According to press reports and photographic evidence, Russia has deliveried Mi-28NE attack helicopters (confirmed in early 2026) and possible MiG-29 fighters. Russia also has sent a large number of military transport flights to Iran, but there are no reports about what was on board. The most likely case is that Russia is fulfilling supplies of weapons based on prior contracts and in defiance of reinstated UN/EU arms sanctions via the JCPOA “snapback” mechanism.
China has focused on upgrading Iran’s air defense system by supplying HQ-9B surface-to-air missile systems (a long-range SAMs comparable to Russia’s S-300; deliveries reported from July 2025 onward, with Iranian officials confirming integration to replace losses from Israeli strikes). In addition, China has deployed the YLC-8B long-range surveillance radars (for detecting stealth aircraft like the F-35), and shipped missile components (e.g., solid-fuel propellants, guidance systems) to rebuild ballistic missile production lines damaged in the war. Iran is in a much stronger position militarily than it was on June 13, 2025, when Israel launched its surprise attack.
CUBA
Russia and China also are providing significant political, economic, humanitarian, energy, and material support to Cuba, especially amid the island’s severe fuel/energy crisis, food shortages, and economic strains intensified by the longstanding US blockade and recent US actions under President Trump (e.g., pressure on Venezuelan/Mexican oil supplies and threats of tariffs on countries aiding Cuba).
Russia and China are coordinating rhetorically (both denounce US “inhumane” tactics and reaffirm support in bilateral calls and statements). They also are coordinating the kind of aid that each supplies to Cuba… Russia focuses on supplying direct oil/fuel while China is aiding Cuba with financial/renewables/food assistance. There is not a formal trilateral mechanism like the one they signed with Iran, but both countries frame their support as countering US pressure in the Western Hemisphere. This support is ongoing and responsive to Cuba’s acute needs (fuel rationing, blackouts, food scarcity). Deliveries and projects continue despite US threats, with both countries emphasizing it as humanitarian and sovereign cooperation.
Russia’s Support
Russia emphasizes solidarity, political backing, and practical material/energy assistance, framing it as opposition to “suffocating” US measures. Russia’s help consists of the following:
Energy Aid (Oil and Fuel): Russia is preparing to deliver crude oil and petroleum products to Cuba “in the near future” as humanitarian aid. The Russian Embassy in Havana confirmed this to Izvestia. Russia last sent a major shipment in February 2025 (100,000 metric tons of crude under a $60 million state-backed loan approved by Putin). The Kremlin (via spokesman Dmitry Peskov) states it is in active contact with Havana to discuss assistance options and has described Cuba’s fuel situation as “critical.” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov (Feb 13, 2026) confirmed Russia is providing material assistance, including supplies already underway.
Political and Diplomatic Support: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (phone call with Cuban FM Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Feb 2, 2026) reaffirmed Russia’s “principled position” that economic/military pressure on Cuba is unacceptable and committed to continued political and material/financial support. Russia repeatedly condemns the US blockade, opposes any military intervention, and expresses solidarity with Cuba (and Venezuela). Ambassador Viktor Koronelli has stated Russia “will not abandon Cuba.”
Historical/Longer-Term Ties: Russia wrote off ~90% of Cuba’s Soviet-era debt (~$32 billion) in 2014. Ongoing cooperation includes trade, scientific/academic exchanges, and past energy deals.
China’s Support
China has positioned itself as a major strategic partner, focusing on humanitarian aid, energy infrastructure, food security, and debt/investment cooperation (Cuba is a Belt and Road Initiative partner). The recent Emergency Aid Package (Approved by Xi Jinping, Jan 2026) provides $80 million in financial assistance (in euros equivalent) for purchasing electrical equipment and other urgent needs — specifically to help resolve the energy crisis (blackouts affecting >60% of the country). China also donated 60,000 tons of rice in emergency mode (first shipment of ~4,800 tons arrived Jan 2026; rest in coming months) for food security.
China also is expanding support that builds on prior commitments. Previously it was helping Cuba with a 200 MW photovoltaic (solar) energy projects and, recent days, has delivered 5,000 solar panel kits for isolated homes (new executing company established with Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Trade). Shortly after Venezuelan President Maduro was abducted, China, acting under an emergency program, delivered 30,000 tons of rice (first shipments in Jan 2026)… This was in addition to prior donations of solar lamps, roofing materials, mattresses, and generator sets.
In the face of the US effort to crush Cuba economically, China is helping Cuba with debt restructuring negotiations (banking/financial/corporate debts). Cuba also is being Integrated into China’s CIPS payment system and increased use of yuan in trade (announced 2025). China is in effect helping wean Cuba off of the US dollar. China also is helping Cuba with biopharma (e.g., technology transfers for aspirin production), digital transformation (Phase 4 program), high-definition TV projects, mining, oil exploration, sugar industry recovery, and renewables (China investing in solar to help Cuba reach 25% renewables by 2030).
The support that Russia and China are providing to Iran and Cuba sends a clear message to Donald Trump and to the nations of the global south: i.e., Russia and China are building a new financial and security infrastructure designed to immunize countries against US coercion and threats. They are doing more than just offering words of solidarity… They are backing up their words with concrete economic, diplomatic and military actions. The foundation of the American hegemon is crumbling.
I started my vlogging day with Nima and Colonel Wilkerson:
It appears the main topic of discussion at Wednesday’s meeting between Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu was Iran’s ballistic missile program. It really was not a discussion… Instead it was Bibi, with his advisers, trying to sell Trump and his team on the necessity of ending Iran’s ballistic missile capability. Why the emphasis on those missiles when, until recently, the big concern was whether Iran could build a nuclear bomb? The US and Israeli narrative about Iran’s missile and drone strikes in Israel during the 12-day war in June 2025 insists that Iran did little damage and that the combined might of US and Israeli air-defense systems knocked down 90% of the Iranian ballistic missiles. If that was true, why is Netanyahu pressing Trump touting on the need for Iran to eliminate its ballistic missile force?
I have the answer… We need only look at the damage Iran’s ballistic missiles caused in Israel during the 12-day war in June 2025 — based on reporting and independent analyses of the conflict (much of the detailed damage was initially censored or not fully disclosed by Israeli authorities, but independent and foreign sources have provided information).
Iran launched more than 1,000 ballistic missiles toward Israel over the 12 days, often in large salvos that overwhelmed the Israeli and US air defenses. Israel’s multilayered missile defense systems intercepted some, but a significant number still penetrated and struck targets. Hundreds of buildings in major cities such as Tel Aviv suburbs (Bat Yam, Ramat Gan) were damaged — with some buildings so badly hit they were later demolished. In Tel Aviv alone, analysts mapped damage to around 480 buildings across multiple strike sites.
Iranian missiles damaged key public facilities, such as the Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva, which was hit by an Iranian missile, causing structural damage and chemical leaks; the affected wing was evacuated. Power and water infrastructure also were hit, contributing to service disruptions.
Iran’s ballistic strikes hit high-value facilities as well. The Weizmann Institute of Science (a major research institution in Rehovot) was severely damaged — with an estimated 90% of structures affected, destruction of dozens of labs, and suspension of about 25% of its operations.
Independent radar data and reporting showed that Iranian missiles directly hit around five Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) facilities, including an air base, intelligence center, and logistics base. Israeli authorities did not publicly confirm these hits at the time, due to military censorship. Israeli oil refining infrastructure — especially in Haifa Bay — also suffered direct hits and damage from Iranian missiles, including to critical units and pipelines at the Bazan refinery and associated casualties. The strike on the Bazan oil refinery complex in Haifa Bay, one of Israel’s most important energy facilities, heavily damaged the power generation unit and other infrastructure critical for operation.
Wednesday’s meeting between Trump and Netanyahu lasted nearly three hours (longer than scheduled) and, according to Israeli media, also included US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Israel’s ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter, Military Secretary Maj.-Gen. Roman Gofman, acting director of the National Security Council Gil Reich, Michael Eisenberg, Ziv Agmon, and advisor Ofir Falk.
So what did President Trump and Bibi talk about on Wednesday. According to the Jerusalem Post :
[T]he prime minister presented intelligence on Iran’s military buildup, including developments related to its ballistic missile program. He also conveyed the message that if Trump decides to strike Iran, the operation should include targeting the ballistic missile project as well.
Haaretz echoed the Jerusalem Post’s report, but also noted that Netanyahu is worried that Trump will strike a deal with Iran that ensures Iran does not and will not have a nuke. Netanyahu thinks that would be bad for Israel:
Messages from the Prime Minister’s Office indicate that such a deal would be bad not only for Israel but for the entire Middle East. Netanyahu was expected to attempt to thwart an agreement that does not include significant restrictions on ballistic missile production in Iran, while at the same time avoiding being perceived as encouraging the United States to go to war with unpredictable outcomes.
Remember all the times that Bibi showed up at the UN and the US Congress with pictures of an imaginary Iranian nuclear bomb? The bomb is no longer the Israeli priority… Eliminating Iran’s ballistic missiles is now number one on the hit list because Israel took a severe beating last June and Netanyhu fears what Iran could do if Iran makes good on its threats to unleash its missile force if attacked.
Trump tried to placate Bibi by announcing that he has ordered the Navy to PREPARE to deploy another carrier strike group to the Arabian Sea. The key word is PREPARE… Preparing is not the same as a Deployment Order. I am happy to say that I was wrong about the US launching an attack this week. Based on Trump’s account of the session with Bibi, there is going to be at least one more round of talks in Oman between the US and Iran before a new attack on Iran is unleashed.
Despite Trump’s constant boasting about the mighty prowess of the US military, the US lacks the capability to destroy Iran’s ballistic missile force. For starters, the Iranian missiles are stored below ground in hardened tunnels that are scattered across Iran. The US military embarrassed itself last March when it failed to destroy the Houthi ballistic missiles during the seven weeks of Operation Rough Rider… Finding and destroying a mobile missile launcher is damn hard. Unlike Yemen, which did not have an integrated air-defense system or an air force, Iran has both. The lack of air supremacy by the US complicates the task of locating and destroying ballistic missiles in Iran. And that is assuming that Iran is not also using decoys in order to deplete the US inventory of missiles it would use to destroy the Iranian capability.
Iran is willing and ready to make a deal that will assure Trump that it is not building a nuke. And, based on Rick Sanchez’s recent interview with Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi, Iran is willing to make concessions on the enrichment of uranium. While Trump will be loathe to admit it, if he accepts Iran’s offer then he is in effect reviving the JCPOA.
Israel says it will attack Iran if Tehran does not agree to a deal that includes restricting the range of its missiles to 300 kilometers (186 miles).
According to Ynet, Israel is demanding that any deal the US makes with Iran include Tehran eliminating its uranium enrichment program, limiting the range of its ballistic missiles to 300 kilometers, and cutting ties with its allies in the region.
President Donald Trump has suggested he will order an attack on Iran if Tehran does not make a deal with the US. Tel Aviv says any deal between Washington and Tehran must include missile range restrictions or Israel will attack Iran.
Iranian officials have stated that Tehran is unwilling to place restrictions on its missile program. Limiting the range of its missiles to 300 kilometers would prevent Iran from having a meaningful retaliatory capability.
Israeli officials, according to Ynet, do not believe that Iran will accept limitations on its missile program.
Trump met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday about Iran. Officials said that Washington and Tel Aviv would continue to prepare for war with Iran, and an immediate attack is unlikely.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had ordered a second aircraft carrier strike group to prepare for deployment to the Middle East.
By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
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