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President Donald Trump told Time magazine in an interview published Friday that he will “very willingly” lead the U.S. into attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities if the regime does not make a deal to stop its program. Trump was, as usual, bullish about the prospects of making a deal and avoiding war, especially given the economic pressure he has restored on the regime. He added that he had not stopped Israel from attacking Iran on its own, but had not made it “comfortable” for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make that choice. Asked if Netanyahu would “drag” the U.S. into...

Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) says the Trump administration should drop nuclear negotiations with Iran and finish off the country's nuclear facilities with a military strike. "Waste that s—t," the Pennsylvania Democrat told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview on Wednesday. "You're never going to be able to negotiate with that kind of regime that has been destabilizing the region for decades already, and now we have an incredible window, I believe, to do that, to strike and destroy Iran's nuclear facilities." Fetterman dismissed the foreign policy experts who warn that striking Iran would lead to the outbreak of...

Ten years ago, when President Barack Obama and other leaders reached a deal with Iran to limit its nuclear program, Saudi Arabia was dismayed.Saudi officials called it a "weak deal" that had only emboldened the kingdom's regional rival, Iran. They cheered when President Trump withdrew from the agreement a few years later.Now, as a second Trump administration negotiates with Iran on a deal that might have very similar contours to the previous one, the view from Saudi Arabia looks quite different.The kingdom's Foreign Ministry issued a statement recently saying that it hoped the talks, mediated by neighboring Oman, would enhance...

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Friday the U.S. should prepare for a “hard slap” if it dares challenge Tehran, after President Donald Trump warned of possible military action against the Islamic republic. “The Americans should know threats will get them nowhere when confronting Iran,” Khamenei said in his live annual televised speech marking Nowruz, the Persian New Year. AFP reports he said Americans “and others should know that if they do anything malign to the Iranian nation, they will get a hard slap.” The warning echoes a long standing Iranian opposition to everything the U.S. is involved in...

Is this another Godfather-esque play to make Ali Khamenei an offer he can't refuse? Is it a reversal on Barack Obama's JCPOA? Or is it a way to de-escalate with both Russia and China and dial down tensions by restoring commerce as the main medium of international relations? Or is this just spitballing to suss out the possibilities? Perhaps Khamenei is asking himself the same questions after receiving a letter from Donald Trump asking to negotiate an end to Iran's nuclear-weapons program:President Trump said he sent a letter on Thursday to Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei and stressed that he...

ran has hit back against social media claims that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is close to death or in a coma, by publishing a picture of him meeting a Lebanese official. The photo on X, formerly Twitter, purports to show a meeting between the Iranian leader and Mojtaba Amani, Iran's ambassador to Lebanon at noon Sunday, November 17, in Tehran. Its publication followed tweets claiming Khamenei was in a coma or dead which had erupted on November 16.

As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House after scoring a spectacular victory in the US presidential election, Iranians wonder what his second term could mean for their country. The results of the "elections are an opportunity to review and revise the wrong approaches of the past," Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said, according to Iranian media. "We have very bitter experiences with the policies and approaches of different US governments in the past," Baghaei said. Relations between the United States and Iran have been extremely tense for nearly four decades. Sources of contemporary tension include Iran's nuclear...

An earthquake of moderate intensity occurred in Iran and Israel on Saturday night, October 5. Strangely enough, both the countries experienced the earthquake at a marginal difference in the timing. In such a situation, it is being speculated whether Iran has conducted its nuclear test. The earthquake occurred in the Aradan city of Semnan province in Iran. Its intensity was 4.5 on the Richter scale. The earthquake occurred at around 10:45 pm local time and its epicentre was at a depth of only 10 kilometers from the ground. The tremors were felt in Tehran which is 110 kilometers away from...

On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” White House National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby acknowledged that keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons capability through diplomacy “hasn’t worked.” After playing video of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) discussing a resolution he put forward to authorize military force by the U.S. to prevent a nuclear breakout by Iran, co-host Dana Perino asked, [relevant exchange begins around 3:25] “Has President Biden actually ever ruled that out?”

Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton on Thursday argued the Middle East is already in the middle of a “wider war” as concerns grow about an escalating conflict following the apparent assassination of a top Hamas political leader in Tehran this week. Bolton argued the larger regional conflict began after Oct. 7, when the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched a surprise assault on southern Israel, where they killed 1,200 people and kidnapped 250 others. “We’re not dealing with conflict in Gaza or the conflict with Hezbollah and North Lebanon or a conflict with the Houthis closing the Red Sea...

Iran is capable of producing fissile material for use in a nuclear weapon within "one or two weeks," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday. News of Iran's capabilities follows the recent election of President Masoud Pezeshkian, who has said his goal is to "get Iran out of its isolation," and who favors reviving the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and global powers. Blinken said that "what we've seen in the last weeks and months is an Iran that's actually moving forward" with its nuclear program. The United States unilaterally withdrew in 2018 from the Iran nuclear deal, which...

• The United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently issued an unusually jarring warning, highlighting a development in Iran's nuclear program. IAEA inspectors confirmed that, for the first time, Iran has commenced the process of feeding uranium gas into three cascades of advanced IR-4 and IR-6 centrifuges at its Natanz enrichment facility. • By waiving sanctions on Iran, the Biden administration has effectively provided financial support amounting up to an estimated $100 billion to the mullahs. Worse, the Biden administration has turned a blind eye to Tehran's destabilizing and aggressive policies, both within the region and without. • Iran's...

There have been four wild developments on Wednesday and in recent days which will have major impacts on the future of the Iranian nuclear standoff. 1. Ahmedinejad ‘reveals’ who Mossad recruited within Iranian intelligence to steal nuclear secrets Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told Iran International that the Mossad recruited the highest-ranking Iranian counter-intelligence official in charge of catching Israeli spies in order to steal the Islamic Republic’s nuclear secrets. The January 31, 2018, raid altered the region’s geopolitics, leading to the US withdrawing from the JCPOA nuclear deal and setting the International Atomic Energy Agency into a years-long...

Hardline Iranian parliamentarian and member of Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Javad Karimi Ghodousi tweeted on April 22 implying that if granted permission, Iran could test its first nuclear weapon within one week.[17] Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Deputy Chairman Shahriar Heydari stated on April 22 in response to Karimi Ghodousi’s tweet that Iran has no ”intention” to build or use nuclear weapons.[18] Heydari cited Khamenei’s 2003 fatwa as the reason Iran is not seeking to acquire or use nuclear weapons. Heydari stated that Karimi Ghodousi's tweet may have been taken out of context.

In 2009, as the newly elected President, Obama made a move which enabled yesterdays attack by Iran. What Obama did was stop Iran’s Green Revolution, keeping the Mullahcracy in place. Additional actions by the Obama administration, most notably handing Iran pallets of money and negotiating the JCPOA set the stage for Iran to produce nukes. "Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium, cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98%, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of its gas centrifuges for 13 years. For the next 15 years, Iran agreed to enrich uranium only...

Currently, Iran has a uranium stockpile to create 8 to ten nuclear bombs. But thanks to this nuclear deal, Iran must reduce its stockpile of uranium by 98%, and will keep its level of uranium enrichment at 3.67% — significantly below the enrichment level needed to create a bomb. On January 16, 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency verified that Iran has completed the necessary steps under the Iran deal that will ensure Iran's nuclear program is and remains exclusively peaceful. Before this agreement, Iran's breakout time -- or the time it would have taken for Iran to gather enough...

But even the Israelis have yet to absorb the full scope and magnitude of Biden’s accommodation of Iran. The problem is not that Sullivan and Blinken are failing to restrain Malley, but that they are marching in lockstep with him. A consensus reigns inside the administration, not just on the JCPOA but on every big question of Middle East strategy: Everyone from the president on down agrees about the need to complete what Obama started—which means that the worst is yet to come. If the control that Obama’s project exercises over every mind in the Biden administration is not already...

Oct 16 (Reuters) - Iran's top envoy said that a "preemptive action" could be expected in the coming hours, state TV reported on Monday, adding that Israel will not be allowed to take any action in the Gaza Strip without facing consequences. "Leaders of the Resistance will not allow the Zionist regime to take any action in Gaza. ... All options are open and we cannot be indifferent to the war crimes committed against the people of Gaza," Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, told state TV. "The resistance front is capable of waging a long-term war with the enemy (Israel)... in...

The Biden administration’s now-suspended Iran envoy Robert Malley helped to fund, support, and direct an Iranian intelligence operation designed to influence the United States and allied governments, according to a trove of purloined Iranian government emails. The emails, which were reported on by veteran Wall Street Journal correspondent Jay Solomon, writing in Semafor, and by Iran International, the London-based émigré opposition outlet which is the most widely read independent news source inside Iran, were published last week after being extensively verified over a period of several months by the two outlets. They showed that Malley had helped to infiltrate an...

In the spring of 2014, senior Iranian Foreign Ministry officials initiated a quiet effort to bolster Tehran’s image and positions on global security issues — particularly its nuclear program — by building ties with a network of influential overseas academics and researchers. They called it the Iran Experts Initiative. The scope and scale of the IEI project has emerged in a large cache of Iranian government correspondence and emails reported for the first time by Semafor and Iran International. The officials, working under the moderate President Hassan Rouhani, congratulated themselves on the impact of the initiative: At least three of...