Quotes of the Day:

“Nevertheless, at the moment that I write, geopolitics has a very particular tendency. Let me explain. A worldwide, bipolar military conflict has begun. It will progress in stages, feature hot war in certain places for extended periods of time, and cold war in other places and times. It will be the organizing principle of geopolitics for a few years to come. It is not a “clash of civilizations,” as Samuel Huntington put it, but it is a clash: a clash of broad value systems, which, while having their roots in national cultures and age-old traditions, are essentially modern and postmodern in their origins. It is a bipolar struggle that fuses the Global War on Terrorism with great-power conflict. Rather than the latter replacing the former as many had supposed would occur following the conclusion of our post-9/ 11 Mideast wars and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the two dramas now run together—as a result of the Gaza War and the mass casualty terror attacks it may yet spawn. One pole of this bipolar world features gangster states like Russia and North Korea; totalitarian states like China and, again, North Korea; a revolutionary and terrorist state like clerical Iran, with all of its proxies; and a movement that, as I shall explain, is at once age-old, Industrial, and post-Industrial: anti-Semitism. These are enemies more formidable and in ways more nihilistic than the old Soviet Union and Mao Zedong’s China. The Soviet leaders, who, because they were in many cases survivors of World War II and Stalin’s purges, were generally conservative and risk-averse in their actions. And when they weren’t, like Nikita Khrushchev in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, they paid the price by being ousted from power. Leonid Brezhnev’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan led eventually to the collapse of the Soviet system altogether. As for Mao, with all of his atrocities against his own people, he could be a rational actor in foreign affairs, as the Nixon Administration demonstrated. The current crop of villains constitute a more unstable, harder-to-predict human element than what we were used to dealing with during the Cold War. And these villains are all interlocked.”

— Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis by Robert D. Kaplan

https://a.co/ewkF8FA

"Carry out a random act of kindness with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you." 

– Diana, Princess of Wales

"When the hour of crisis comes, remember that 40 selected men can shake the world".

– Yasotay, Mongol Warlord (Chinggis Khan’s "Special Forces" Commander)

1. Trump Says U.S. Has Struck Three of Iran's Nuclear Sites

2.The War That Was Always Coming

3. We Need to Double the Production Rate of the B-21

4. Why Countries Are Suddenly Broadcasting Their Spies’ Exploits

5. America Bombs Iran by Mick Ryan

6. U.S. Strikes 'Obliterated' Iran's Nuclear Sites, Trump Says

7. Trump Gave Final Go-Ahead for Iran Attack Hours Before Bombs Fell

8. Backed into a corner, Iran may unleash hackers, spies, sleeper cells and terror proxies worldwide

9. Trump Meets the Moment on Iran

10. How a Papa Johns pizza surge near the Pentagon tipped off social media before Trump's decisive Iran strike

11. Sheltering in a Bunker, Iran’s Supreme Leader Prepares for the Worst

12. Why Countries Are Suddenly Broadcasting Their Spies’ Exploits

13. Trump used 12 bunker buster bombs and 30 Tomahawk missiles to 'obliterate' Iran's nuclear sites

14. Western democracies are actually pretty good at war

15. Pringles cans on drones: Ukraine’s weapons ingenuity takes all forms

16. Executions, forced labour and starvation persist in North Korea, UN official says

17. US strike on Iran changes everything

18. Latvia bans Russians from buying property, calling it hybrid warfare threat

19. Access Without Troops: The Rise of Private Security in Southeast Asia

20. The Next National Defense Strategy: Mission-Based Force Planning

21. Strategic Narratives to Counter Global Threats

22. America's War With Iran

1. Trump Says U.S. Has Struck Three of Iran's Nuclear Sites

Trump Says U.S. Has Struck Three of Iran's Nuclear Sites

'We have completed our very successful attacks,' Trump said in his post. 'All planes are now outside of Iran air space.'

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-israel-conflict-latest-news

Last Updated: 

June 21, 2025 at 8:43 PM ET

The U.S. joined Israel’s attacks against Iran's nuclear program, putting more pressure on the country’s battered regime and risking further escalation of the conflict.

President Trump said on social media the U.S. attacked three of Iran’s nuclear sites: Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. The three sites the U.S. hit represent the core of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure.

The president says he will address the nation at 10 p.m. ET

What else to know:

Trump followed up his announcement of the strikes with a call for a return to diplomacy.

Earlier today, U.S. officials said multiple B-2 stealth bombers had left their base in Missouri and were heading west over the Pacific. The bombers can carry giant “bunker busting” bombs.

On Wednesday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said his country wouldn’t surrender and warned any U.S. military intervention would bring irreparable consequences.

Iran has threatened to strike at American troops around the region in the event the U.S. got involved in the conflict.

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Updated 17 min ago

Trump: U.S. Completed Strikes on Iran

By

Michael R. Gordon

and

Drew Dowell

Satellite image from earlier this year of the Fordow uranium-enrichment facility, south of the capital Tehran. (Maxar Technologies/AFP/Getty Images)

The U.S. joined Israel’s attacks against Iran's nuclear program, putting more pressure on the country’s battered regime and risking further escalation of the conflict.

President Trump said on social media the U.S. attacked three of Iran’s nuclear sites: Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan--hardened targets where analysts have said special U.S. munitions have the best chance of success.

“We have completed our very successful attacks,” Trump said in his post. “All planes are now outside of Iran air space.”

Earlier today, U.S. officials said multiple B-2 stealth bombers had left their base in Missouri and were heading west over the Pacific. The bombers can carry giant “bunker busting” bombs specifically designed to take out sites like Iran's hardened nuclear facilities at Fordow, an enrichment site that is built inside a mountain.

Trump followed up his announcement of the strikes with a call for a return to diplomacy.

“NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!,” he wrote.

While the U.S. strikes appeared to be limited, America’s intervention threatens to widen a conflict being fought in the middle of some of the world’s most important energy facilities. Iran has threatened to strike at American troops around the region in the event the U.S. got involved in the conflict, and the oil and gas rich Gulf states that host U.S. bases are concerned the violence could spread to their territories.

On Wednesday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said his country wouldn’t surrender and warned any U.S. military intervention would bring irreparable consequences.

Now a week into its campaign against Iran’s nuclear program and military leadership, Israel has largely cleared the way for the U.S., wiping out many of the country’s air defenses with intelligence operations and hundreds of airstrikes.

Trump pushed for a diplomatic solution to the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program for much of the year, but turned more bellicose as the success of Israel’s early strikes became evident. The president has recently called for Iran’s unconditional surrender and has approved of attack plans.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio in recent days told European allies that Trump’s preferred course was to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program via a diplomatic agreement. But a meeting between Iran’s foreign minister and European leaders Friday produced no breakthrough.

The White House said Thursday that Trump would decide “within two weeks,” which suggested military action wasn’t imminent. Iran has said it felt it was tricked when Israel’s original attack last week came just days before the U.S. and Iran were to meet for another round of talks.

The U.S. military has already moved forces to Europe and the Middle East, including tanker planes to refuel aircraft in flight, warships capable of shooting down ballistic missiles, a second aircraft-carrier battle group and advanced F-22 air-to-air fighters.

2. The War That Was Always Coming

It looks like we may have begun to rise to the occasion with this B2 attack.

Excerpts:

This is also not a challenge that can be resolved solely through airstrikes and force posture. While military planners execute the present campaign, it will take deliberate, high-level diplomacy to shape the post-strike order. The U.S. must begin planning for what comes next - whether that means securing nuclear sites, supporting transitional structures, or deterring adversaries like Russia and China from filling the vacuum. These outcomes will not be secured through tactical victories alone. They require a strategic framework that transcends partisan cycles and speaks to long-term American interests across the region.

At the same time, this moment is too consequential to be left solely in the hands of military planners. While CENTCOM and the Pentagon may manage the operational tempo, a broader, enduring diplomatic strategy is essential to securing U.S. interests in the region for the next generation. The next phase must be shaped by statesmanship, not electoral cycles, but principles and objectives that will carry American influence deep into the second half of the 21st century.

The central question facing Washington is this: will the United States rise to meet this moment, or will it repeat the familiar pattern of disengagement and delay? The battlefield has changed. Our strategy must evolve accordingly.

The War That Was Always Coming

By Mike Lyons

June 21, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/06/21/the_war_that_was_always_coming_1117803.html

The recent Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear infrastructure did not emerge from a vacuum. It represents the culmination of a decades-long military doctrine, grounded in strategic inevitability and sharpened by years of intelligence operations and targeted disruption. For those who have tracked Iran’s nuclear ambitions, this moment was not a surprise; it was inevitable.

Israel has confronted this scenario before. In 1981, under Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Israeli aircraft executed a preemptive strike against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. The message was unequivocal - no hostile regime in the region would be permitted to acquire a nuclear weapon. That policy became known as the Begin Doctrine: a unilateral strategy to neutralize existential threats before they could materialize.

Syria received the same message in 2007 when Israel destroyed a covert nuclear reactor in Deir ez-Zor, constructed with North Korean assistance. Over the past two decades, Israel has viewed Iran’s nuclear ambitions through the same lens. Tehran, however, proved a more capable and sophisticated adversary. Iranian leadership studied the lessons of Iraq and Syria and adapted accordingly. Their nuclear program was dispersed, fortified underground, and shielded by air defenses and a robust proxy network. The goal was to render the program immune to a single, decisive strike.

Despite these challenges, Israel remained vigilant. When kinetic options were unavailable, Israeli intelligence services turned to sabotage. In 2010, the Stuxnet cyberattack, which was widely believed to be a joint Israeli-American operation, successfully disrupted thousands of Iranian centrifuges. Mossad operations eliminated key Iranian nuclear scientists. In recent years, Israeli efforts across Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon have systematically degraded Iran’s proxy architecture, targeting Hezbollah, the Houthis, and various Shia militias. This broader conflict has been unfolding in parallel for years. The recent escalation marks merely the visible phase.

The events of October 7 marked a turning point. Although initially caught off guard, Israel responded with comprehensive force. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated unequivocally, "There is a time for peace and a time for war." Israel has remained on a war footing ever since. The precision and scale of the strike on Iran suggest long-term planning. This was not reactionary. It was a strategic execution, calibrated and deliberate. The intent is not deterrence alone, but the achievement of permanent outcomes.

Much like Operation Desert Storm, where the stated objective was the liberation of Kuwait, Israel's campaign may carry unspoken but widely understood implications. In 1991, the U.S. military mission officially stopped short of toppling Saddam Hussein, but few doubted that regime collapse would have been viewed as an acceptable or even desirable consequence. Similarly, while Israel’s explicit aim is to dismantle Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a secondary effect, whether intended or not, could be the political unraveling of the Islamic Republic itself. That possibility is increasingly plausible as strikes continue.

Much like the United States during Operation Desert Storm, Israel’s objectives extend beyond battlefield metrics. The elimination of Iran’s nuclear capability may be the central goal, but additional effects, such as degrading the IRGC command structure, unraveling Iran's regional influence, and accelerating diplomatic realignments are already taking shape. Some of these outcomes may have been unintended, but all will carry long-term strategic consequences.

For the United States, this moment presents not only a challenge but an opportunity.

For decades, successive U.S. administrations pursued the notion that Iran could be contained, managed, or normalized through engagement. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was, at best, a temporary delay. Iran never relinquished its nuclear aspirations; it merely paused them. That pause has now expired.

The current reality is stark. The proxy infrastructure that once provided Iran with strategic depth has been severely degraded. The deterrence that Iran projected has been largely exposed. For the first time since the 1979 revolution, the United States has an opportunity to help guide the region toward a fundamentally new security architecture.

The United States must seize this opportunity to reshape the region’s security architecture. By leading diplomatic efforts to expand the Abraham Accords and engage Syria, Washington can accelerate Saudi-Israeli normalization and support Lebanon’s reconstruction beyond Hezbollah’s influence. This requires statesmanship, not short-term gestures, to secure American interests for decades to come.

Nevertheless, significant uncertainties remain. Turkey continues to behave as a regional wildcard, oscillating between a NATO partner and disruptive actor. Iraq’s future remains a contested territory, vulnerable to influence from both Tehran and Washington. And while Iran has suffered a serious setback, its regime retains asymmetric capabilities, including cyber warfare and unconventional retaliation.

This is, fundamentally, a military moment. It is not a time for reactive diplomacy or symbolic gestures. Strategic resets are not achieved through communiqués but through precision, strength, and follow-through.

This is also not a challenge that can be resolved solely through airstrikes and force posture. While military planners execute the present campaign, it will take deliberate, high-level diplomacy to shape the post-strike order. The U.S. must begin planning for what comes next - whether that means securing nuclear sites, supporting transitional structures, or deterring adversaries like Russia and China from filling the vacuum. These outcomes will not be secured through tactical victories alone. They require a strategic framework that transcends partisan cycles and speaks to long-term American interests across the region.

At the same time, this moment is too consequential to be left solely in the hands of military planners. While CENTCOM and the Pentagon may manage the operational tempo, a broader, enduring diplomatic strategy is essential to securing U.S. interests in the region for the next generation. The next phase must be shaped by statesmanship, not electoral cycles, but principles and objectives that will carry American influence deep into the second half of the 21st century.

The central question facing Washington is this: will the United States rise to meet this moment, or will it repeat the familiar pattern of disengagement and delay? The battlefield has changed. Our strategy must evolve accordingly.

3. We Need to Double the Production Rate of the B-21

Excerpt:

History has shown us the perils of settling for what seems affordable rather than what is necessary. The United States cannot afford to make the same mistake with the B-21 Raider. Quantity, as much as quality, will define the strategic balance of the 21st century. By investing in a second production line, the nation can ensure that this balance tips decisively in its favor.

We Need to Double the Production Rate of the B-21

By Robert Peters & Shawn Barnes

June 21, 2025

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/06/21/we_need_to_double_the_production_rate_of_the_b-21_1117782.html

The Air Force’s newest strategic bomber, the B-21 Raider, is a technological marvel many years in the making. It builds on decades of stealth technology and provides vital long-range, deep-strike capability necessary to deter adversaries for the next several decades.

That’s the good news. The bad news: we aren’t producing as many of them as quickly as we should.

Given the appropriate secrecy surrounding the program, we don’t know the current B-21 inventory or production rate. However, the Air Force has stated it needs at least 100 aircraft and that it expects to procure 10 aircraft per year once in full-rate production. At best, the nation is unlikely to have even 100 aircraft until the late 2030s. This is both too little and too late.

The nation needs a second production facility for the B-21, regardless of the final number of aircraft to be procured. The Defense Department should set a production rate of 20 aircraft per year. This demand signal will allow the B-21’s producer, Northrop Grumman, to build a second production plant. Although the cost of building a second facility is likely to approach $800M, the return on investment is extraordinarily high.

An additional facility will increase the rate at which the nation can build, field, and operate the B-21 fleet. Deterring China from aggression is a long-term strategy that requires action today. Deterrence cannot be achieved without credible, survivable, and sufficient long-range conventional strike capability.

The B-21 provides this foundational capability. We simply cannot wait until the late 2030s to field sufficient capacity for this vital deterrence role.

A second facility will also allow the US to increase total B-21 inventory. We must procure the number of aircraft we need, not the number that fits under some arbitrary budget topline. The Air Force has an unfortunate history of taking the opposite approach, albeit by the direction of their political masters. The F-22 Raptor and B-2 Spirit are prime examples of programs curtailed by budgetary constraints rather than strategic necessity.

The F-22, an unmatched air superiority fighter, saw its production capped at 187 aircraft, far short of the original requirement for over 700. Similarly, the B-2 Spirit was limited to a fleet of only 21 operational aircraft, falling dramatically short of the envisioned 132 units. Both decisions were driven by the incorrect belief that smaller, technologically superior forces could substitute for larger fleets.

Capacity is a quality all its own. This is true for both the industrial capacity to build, and the operational capacity to deter and fight our nation’s wars. US Strategic Command Commander General Tony Cotton, USAF, recently testified before Congress that the nation needs at least 145 B-21s. Some speculate that the nation will need more – at least 250.

China has ambitions of global hegemony; Russia is increasingly fixated on recreating their once-dominant Soviet power; Iran and North Korea show few signs of comity. The foundation to address 21st century challenges is sufficient force structure. A second production plant will allow the US to build, field, and operate the inventory that it needs and on a timeline that respects these threats.

Additional B-21 production capacity will also allow the US to consider sales of the aircraft to other nations. Our closest allies have signaled an interest in buying the B-21. Unlike the F-22, the F-35 was designed as a capability to be shared with allies and partners. The value of this approach increased the warfighting capability of our allies, improved operational and technical interoperability for our warfighters, bolstered the US defense industry, and signaled to our enemies the strength of US-led alliances around the world. We should strongly consider a similar approach for the B-21 and must be able to make such decisions unconstrained by self-imposed industrial capacity limitations.

Finally, building a second B-21 production plant is a smart industrial policy decision. Diversification of production limits risk posed by man-made and natural disasters. It increases workforce demands for high-pay, high-skilled labor and improves local economies outside the Palmdale, Calif. location where the B-21 is being built. The current plant in Palmdale was previously used to build the B-2. A second plant will also provide the infrastructure for follow-on industrial capacity beyond the B-21.

The B-21 Raider represents the future of America’s strategic bomber force, a platform designed to ensure dominance in an era of complex and evolving threats. But the success of this program hinges not only on its advanced capabilities but also on the ability to produce it at scale and speed. The House version of the reconciliation bill takes an important first step, adding $4.5 billion to help accelerate production and allow for an inventory above 100 Aircraft. But a second production facility is essential to meeting both the nation’s operational requirements and the broader demands of allied collaboration.

History has shown us the perils of settling for what seems affordable rather than what is necessary. The United States cannot afford to make the same mistake with the B-21 Raider. Quantity, as much as quality, will define the strategic balance of the 21st century. By investing in a second production line, the nation can ensure that this balance tips decisively in its favor.

Robert Peters is a Senior Research Fellow for Strategic Deterrence in The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security, where Shawn Barnes is a Visiting Fellow.

4. Why Countries Are Suddenly Broadcasting Their Spies’ Exploits

Why Countries Are Suddenly Broadcasting Their Spies’ Exploits

https://www.wsj.com/world/why-countries-are-suddenly-broadcasting-their-spies-exploits-f455a666?st=d4Y4g1&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Commandos, secret operations and drones now offer action video that is effective for messaging on social media

Gift unlocked article

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(8 min)

Israeli attacks on Tehran have been guided by covert operations. Photo: Getty Images

By Daniel Michaels

Follow and Drew Hinshaw

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June 21, 2025 9:00 pm ET

Key Points

What's This?

• Belligerents increasingly broadcast their covert triumphs, with messages amplified in real time by social-media networks.
• Fighting in Ukraine and the Middle East is bringing a new doctrine to spycraft stemming from changes in what organizers seek to achieve and how information spreads.

Israel’s airstrikes on Iran exploded across the world’s screens as a public display of military firepower. Underpinning that was a less visible but equally vital Israeli covert operation that pinpointed targets, guided the attacks and struck Iran from within.

Agents from Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, operated inside Iran before and during the initial attacks earlier this month, Israeli officials said. The disclosure was itself an act of psychological warfare—a boast of Israel’s ability to act with impunity inside Iran’s borders and Tehran’s failure to stop it.

Israel flaunted its tactical success by releasing grainy video emblazoned with Mossad’s seal that it said showed operatives and drone strikes inside Iran. 

Not long ago, such covert operations stayed secret. Today, belligerents from Ukraine to the U.S. increasingly broadcast their triumphs, with messages amplified in real time by social-media networks.

When T.E. Lawrence wanted to publicize his World War I secret forays deep into Ottoman territory, he wrote a book and articles. Nobody saw those commando raids for half a century until the blockbuster film “Lawrence of Arabia” recreated his exploits.

T.E. Lawrence played a clandestine role in the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule during World War I. Photo: Pierre Perrin/Sygma/Getty Images

These days, barely hours pass before the world sees action footage of Ukraine’s latest drone attacks on Russian military targets. Israel’s detonation of explosives hidden inside Hezbollah militants’ pagers played out in almost real time across the internet. The U.S. repeatedly fed social media the details—and sometimes imagery—of its special-operations strikes on Islamic State leaders in recent years.

The result is a major shift in warfare: Call it the battle of timelines. Spying and clandestine operations, in the traditional sense, have never been so difficult. Biometric data makes document forgery obsolete. Billions of cameras, attached to phones, rearview mirrors and doorbells, stand ready to capture the movements of any operative hoping to lurk invisibly. In seconds, artificial intelligence can rifle through millions of photos to identify the faces of foreign spies operating in the wild.

Instead, fighting in Ukraine and the Middle East is bringing a new doctrine to spycraft stemming from changes in both what their organizers seek to achieve and how information spreads. Operations that would have once been designed to remain under wraps are now meant to be seen, to produce spectacular optics. They play out not just on the battlefield, but also on social media, boosting morale at home while demoralizing the enemy watching from the other side of the screen.

“A major goal of covert operations is often to show an adversary’s leadership that we have identified and can damage elements involved in lethal activity,” said Norman Roule, a former senior U.S. intelligence officer. “Demonstrating this capability is hoped to act as a deterrent and even to encourage an adversary to seek diplomatic solutions.” Such operations aren’t done lightly, because they are dangerous and risk exposure of sensitive sources and methods that once compromised can’t be used in the future, he added.

A video posted on social media shows an apparent explosion and a man falling to the floor at a vegetable market during Israel’s September detonation of booby-trapped pagers used by Hezbollah.

“You don’t waste such critical capabilities for a cheap political win,” Roule said. “That said, in addition to the operational impact, you can exploit such operations for propaganda, psychological impact or diplomatic gain.”

Covert operations once remained secret long after they wrapped up, or they were revealed by chance. Allied World War II code-breaking efforts stayed largely unknown for three decades. Countless Cold War-era espionage operations gained public attention only after the Soviet Union collapsed. Central Intelligence Agency efforts to raise a sunken Soviet submarine went public accidentally, following an office burglary in Los Angeles.

Exploits dubbed black ops—because the operations stay in the dark—traditionally fed into a quiet game of signaling and deception. One reason the release of the Pentagon Papers alarmed the White House in 1971 was that some information in them could have only come from a U.S. bug planted in Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s car, former President Richard Nixon said in 1984.

Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers, outside a Boston federal courthouse in 1971. Photo: William Ryerson/Boston Globe/Getty Images

Fast forward to 2021, when President Joe Biden took the exceptional step of going public with highly sensitive intelligence about Moscow’s plans to attack Ukraine. The pre-emptive disclosure of hard-won secrets didn’t stop the invasion, but it did restore allies’ perception of the U.S.—and American spycraft—which had been tarnished by the warnings of weapons of mass destruction that led to the Iraq War.

These days, secrecy is often beside the point. Almost weekly, Ukrainian drone attacks deep in Russia’s interior play out to the same script: An ordinary bystander whips out a phone to capture the flicker of a Ukrainian drone against the night sky, seconds before it reduces some strategic target—an oil refinery, an air base or a rail depot—into a fiery ball.

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Soon, the footage circulates on social media. In come amateur war analysts posting commercial satellite photos of the damage, followed by declarations of responsibility from the Ukrainian special services eager to demonstrate their capabilities to ordinary Russians scrolling at home. 

“Ukraine does an excellent job in planning out these operations, and they know that in this day and age every attack is going to be filmed,” said Samuel Bendett, a Russian-studies adviser at the Center for Naval Analyses in Arlington, Va., a federally funded nonprofit research organization. “They’re trying to design their attacks so that more and more Russians are aware of the war and are impacted by the war.”

A June video shows how Ukrainian drones landed on Russian planes. VIDEO: Security Service of Ukraine

Kyiv feels obliged to wage a public propaganda war against Moscow because it isn’t winning the shooting war. Israel goes public with results of its espionage and covert operations against Iran and its proxies to convince foreign governments and populations that Tehran is both dangerous and vulnerable.

The communication war is raging in an information free-for-all. Governments and elites that until the middle of the 20th century controlled their information environment are today trying just to navigate it, said Ofer Fridman, a former Israeli officer and a scholar of war studies at King’s College London. “Now they’re struggling to communicate with their target audience through overwhelming noise,” he said.

Compounding that is the digitization of almost all information—both new memos and dusty archives—meaning that no event is guaranteed to remain secret from hackers or publicity-minded politicians with access to files. The impact of data leakers including the National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and the National Guard airman Jack Teixeira weighs heavily on intelligence officials.

Edward Snowden spoke by video at a September conference in Singapore. Photo: Suhaimi Abdullah/Bloomberg

Russia is still adjusting to this new form of warfare. The country has made filming or posting sensitive details about military attacks a crime in its front-line regions, punishable by fines. Not even the country’s police and special services have been able to discourage civilians who, almost by instinct, take out their phones when Ukrainian saboteurs strike. Soldiers on the front lines, disobeying their own codes of conduct, regularly capture battlefield operations.

For its part, Russia has made minimal effort to cover its own tracks in its barely disguised spree of covert operations in Europe. The GRU, the Russian military-intelligence organization, has repeatedly hired European civilians over social media, paying them to burn down a shopping mall in Warsaw, or an IKEA in Lithuania, according to Western officials. When a Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine was shot dead in Spain last year, Russia’s spy chiefs didn’t deny involvement—they all but boasted of it.

“This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse at the very moment he was planning his dirty and terrible crime,” Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, told state media.

Write to Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com and Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com

5. America Bombs Iran by Mick Ryan

Implications for other nations? Korea is not mentioned (except it is noted as part of the CRInK - yes, my bias is showing).

America Bombs Iran

A quick assessment of how America's offensive operations against Iran changes the character of the war in the Middle East.

https://mickryan.substack.com/p/america-bombs-iran?utm

Mick Ryan

Jun 22, 2025

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Source: The War Zone

Just because the U.S. administration thinks it is done with Iran for now, that does not mean the Iranians are done with America. What that means in the hours and days ahead remains to be seen.

While I was sitting down to write this week’s Big Five, the news came through that the United States has conducted missions to bomb three different nuclear sites in Iran.

The three sites that President Trump said were struck around 2.30am Iran time included two of Iran’s major uranium enrichment sites. These are the deeply buried facility at Fordow and the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. While it is unknown if Israel had previously targeted Fordow, Israel had attacked Natanz several days ago. A third site struck by America, near Isfahan, is where Iran stores its near-bomb-grade enriched uranium.

The U.S. President is due to address the American people at 10pm U.S. eastern standard time.

Source: Twitter / X

Not long before the U.S. strike, the International Atomic Energy Agency released several updates on the status of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. These updates included the following:

• The Natanz enrichment site contains two facilities. The first is the main Fuel Enrichment Plant. Initial attacks on the 13th of June targeted and destroyed electricity infrastructure at the facility, including an electrical sub-station, the main electric power supply building, and emergency power supply and back-up generators. On the same day, the main cascade hall appears to have been attacked using ground-penetrating munitions.
• The second facility at Natanz is the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant. It consists of aboveground and underground cascade halls. On the 13th of June the above-ground part was functionally destroyed and the strikes on the underground cascade halls were seriously damaging.
• A large nuclear complex in Esfahan was targeted for a second time during Israel’s attacks on Iran over the past nine days. Six buildings at the site have now also been attacked: a natural and depleted uranium metal production facility which had not yet begun operations, a fuel rod production facility, a building with low-enriched uranium pellet production as well as a laboratory and nuclear material storage, another laboratory building, a workshop handling contaminated equipment and an office building with no nuclear material.
• The Khondab Heavy Water Research Reactor under construction in Arak, was hit on the 19th of June.
• The Tehran Research Center, one building, where advanced centrifuge rotors were manufactured and tested, was hit. At the Karaj workshop, two buildings, where different centrifuge components were manufactured, were destroyed.
• Fordow is Iran’s main enrichment location for enriching uranium to 60%. The Agency is not aware of any damage at Fordow at this time.

I guess that last dot point will need updating now!

Strike Assessment

The details of what aircraft were used in the American strikes, or the munitions used, remain unknown. The damage assessments for the three sites struck are yet to be released.

Some details are beginning to leak out however. Eric Schmitt in the New York Times has just posted the following update:

A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence, said that multiple 30,000-pound bunker bombs were dropped on Fordo and that initial damage assessments indicated that the facility had been “taken off the table.”

Implications for the war and region

The character of this war has now changed.

Regardless of whether the U.S. administration sees this as a ‘one and done’ raid or something else, Iran (and its friends) will now see this as a war between Iran on one side, and Israel, the United States and the west more broadly on the other side. This will broaden Iran’s potential conduct of missile strikes, and Iran’s proxy operations in the Middle East, Europe and possibly America.

Over the past couple of weeks, America had evacuated many of its personnel, aircraft and ships from Persian Gulf bases, and families of diplomats had also been evacuated from posts. U.S. bases however remain potential targets for Iran. This could then prompt responses from the Americans and / or host countries. The map below shows the locations of U.S. bases in the Middle East.

Source: U.S. Overseas Basing: Background and Issues for Congress, Congressional Research Service, 10 July 2024.

While Iranian operations to close the Straits of Hormuz or interfere with shipping in the gulf are an option for Iran, there were reports just before the American strike was announced that Iran’s main naval facility on the Persian Gulf, at Bandar Abbas, had been attacked. Clearly Israel and/or the U.S. were hoping to reduce Iran’s response options for the ongoing strikes throughout Iran.

While Iran’s ballistic missile launches have reduced in intensity over the past week, it may have been keeping reserve stocks that the Israelis have not yet found in order to respond to an American attack. While Israel has done an admirable job finding and killing missile launchers and stocks of the missiles themselves, it is yet to find and destroy the full stock of over 2000 missiles Iran is thought to have possessed before the Israeli attacks began nine days ago. Therefore, missile attacks throughout the region are on the cards in the next day or two.

But these are just the immediate effects. How might the American attacks unify the Iranian people for a longer, broader struggle against Israel and America that plays out over months and years?

A quick final thought - it will be interesting to see the degree to which the Saudis (or other Middle East nations) were consulted as part of the American decision-making process and how they will react now. Back in 2010, a story leaked that King Abdullah repeatedly urged the U.S. to bomb Iran’s nuclear program.

Implications for Iran’s key partners

Iran is part of an alignment of the four major authoritarian powers of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. Thus far, besides sending ‘thoughts and prayers’ the Russians and Chinese have done very little to intervene in the Israeli campaign against Iran. With America’s entry into the war, might this change the posture of China and Russia?

Russia. From a Russian perspective, America being distracted in the Middle East is a good thing, particularly if munitions and missile interceptors are being diverted from Ukraine to Israel, or to defend U.S. bases in the Middle East. Additionally, the American attack will be employed in their global misinformation campaigns. It will also inform Putin’s domestic influence operations that focus on the threat from NATO as a key rationale for ‘taking all of Ukraine’ as he once again emphasised in a speech this week.

Finally, the media focus on this widening war in the Middle East takes attention away from the nightly atrocities that Putin and his military are executing against the Ukrainian people. The night of 20-21 July saw another large-scale missile and drone attack against Ukraine.

China. Earlier this week, the Chinese president stated that “If the Middle East is unstable, the world will not be at peace. If the conflict escalates further, not only will the conflicting parties suffer greater losses, but regional countries will also suffer greatly.” Xi also supported a Russian initiative to mediate an end to the conflict.

China is Iran’s largest trading partner and export market. Oil is the key commodity being traded in the relationship. Iran is part of the BRICS, China’s attempt to build a competitor to the Western-oriented G7, and is also a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. China and Iran have also signed a 25-year cooperative agreement.

Despite this, China is (so far) offering no material assistance to Iran.

Given the rises in the price of oil in the past week, and the potential further rises with the entry of America into the war, China will be keen see the conflict end. Around 40% of China’s crude oil imports are sourced from the Middle East.

Finally, despite the downsides of surging energy prices for China, the Chinese Communist Party may be content to see America get tangled up in another Middle East conflict. Every ship, every missile, every bomb, every aircraft that the U.S. military has to deploy to the Middle East further reduces the American deterrent in the western Pacific, and the ability to respond to a surprise Chinese strike against Taiwan.

There is a big ‘but’ here however. This week, as the U.S. Navy’s Ford carrier battle group moved swiftly from the Pacific to the Gulf region, China exercised with two of its aircraft carriers to the east of Taiwan and increased the number of ships and aircraft operating around Taiwan. This will only highlight to American strategists the need to limit their involvement in the Middle East. If the Chinese were the brilliant strategists that they continuously attempt to bluff us into believing, they would have actually toned down their activities around Taiwan in order to convince the American’s that it was OK to send more assets to the Middle East. I don’t think the Chinese approach in the western Pacific this week was smart long-term strategy.

Implications for other nations

A couple of quick impressions on this topic.

First, the American bombing will clearly complicate the European efforts to mediate a ceasefire or some other deal with Iran. The Europeans will have some tough choices about whether they distance themselves from the American strike and engage Iran, or demonstrate solidarity with their American allies. The EU is yet to issue a statement on today’s strike on Iran. NATO is also yet to issue any statement.

Second, those nations that are seeking to evacuate their troops from Iran may find these evacuation operations a little more difficult now. Iran will suspect all foreigners of collecting intelligence for Israel, America or others.

Finally, we should expect an uptick in misinformation and strategic influence operations that either support Iran or support Palestinian causes around the world. Demonstrations in support of Iran have already taken place in various western cities. These might increase in the coming days.

Implications for U.S. Domestic Politics

I will leave the experts on U.S. domestic politics to write up their assessments on what the U.S. strike means for the American polity. However, there are likely to be domestic ramifications of these strikes as well.

The American Strikes Increase Uncertainty

I will wrap up this quick assessment as I want to publish it and then watch the address by President Trump.

But before I finish, I think it is fair to assert that the trajectory of the war in the Middle East is now much more uncertain. Just because the U.S. administration thinks it is done with Iran for now, that does not mean the Iranians are done with America. What that means in the hours and days ahead remains to be seen.

6. U.S. Strikes 'Obliterated' Iran's Nuclear Sites, Trump Says

Are we getting accurate BDA this quickly?

U.S. Strikes 'Obliterated' Iran's Nuclear Sites, Trump Says

The U.S. attacked three nuclear sites in Iran, and Trump warned he could go after more targets if Iran doesn't agree to a diplomatic solution over its nuclear program.

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-israel-conflict-latest-news

Last Updated: 

June 22, 2025 at 1:11 AM ET

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The U.S. struck three nuclear sites in Iran, joining Israel's attacks against Tehran's nuclear program and risking further escalation of the conflict.

President Trump, speaking to the nation late Saturday, called the strikes "a spectacular military success" and said Iran's nuclear sites were "completely and totally obliterated."

The sites attacked—Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan—represent the core of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure. Fox News presenter Sean Hannity said Trump told him the U.S. used “five to six” bunker-buster bombs in its attack on Fordow.

Trump warned that he could go after more targets in Iran if the country doesn't agree to a diplomatic solution. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Trump’s decision to strike, saying the U.S. “has done what no other country could do.”

While the U.S. strikes appeared to be limited, America’s intervention threatens to widen a conflict being fought in the middle of some of the world’s most important energy facilities. Iran has threatened to strike at American troops around the region in the event the U.S. got involved in the conflict, and the oil- and gas-rich Gulf states that host U.S. bases are concerned the violence could spread to their territories.

What else to know:

Israel is imposing restrictions on public activities following the U.S. attack. The new guidance comes as the nation anxiously awaits a response from Tehran.

Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said the U.S. strikes contradict international law. On Wednesday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said his country wouldn’t surrender.

Tanker owners and the oil market are on edge to see if Iran follows through with threats to disrupt shipping at the Strait of Hormuz.

The top two GOP leaders in Congress were briefed on the planned Iran attacks ahead of time. The strikes drew sharp criticism from some lawmakers, renewing calls for a vote to rein in the White House.

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2 min ago

Commercial Vessels at Risk of Collateral Damage After U.S. Attacks, Consulting Firm Warns

By

Benoit Faucon

Maritime security consultancy Vanguard advises vessels in the region to reassess routing to avoid Iranian territorial waters after U.S. attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites.

Commercial vessels sailing through the Strait of Hormuz—the gateway to the Persian Gulf—and nearby waters face a risk of collateral damage and misidentification amid high risk of attack on U.S.-affiliated vessels, with the U.S. having now actively entered the conflict, Vanguard says in a note to clients.

U.S.-affiliated vessels—both flagged and unflagged—are at a high risk of being targeted by the Houthis in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, it says.

7. Trump Gave Final Go-Ahead for Iran Attack Hours Before Bombs Fell

Trump Gave Final Go-Ahead for Iran Attack Hours Before Bombs Fell

He had vowed to give Iran up to two weeks but ordered the attack abruptly, hoping it would catch Tehran off guard

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-gave-final-go-ahead-for-iran-attack-hours-before-bombs-fell-17df9dc4

By Michael R. Gordon

Follow, Josh Dawsey

Follow and Alexander Ward

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June 22, 2025 12:56 am ET

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President Trump on Saturday. Photo: Jose Luis Magana/AP

Key Points

What's This?

• President Trump authorized a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities after weeks of deliberation.
• U.S. B-2 bombers and submarines attacked key Iranian nuclear sites, including Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, with Trump calling it a success.
• Uncertainty remains if Iran’s program was fully destroyed and whether Iran will retaliate against the U.S. or its allies.

WASHINGTON—President Trump had been saying he would give Tehran up to two weeks to yield to U.S. demands before ordering an attack. Then Saturday afternoon at his private club in New Jersey, he gave the final go-ahead to strike in a few hours.

“The goal was to create a situation when everyone wasn’t expecting it,” said a senior administration official.

His order to the military to proceed unleashed a military operation that has been the focus of top-secret planning. Within hours U.S. B-2 bombers penetrated Iranian airspace and dropped half a dozen bunker bombs on Iran’s underground nuclear facility at Fordow. U.S. attack submarines launched Tomahawk cruise missiles against sites in Isfahan and Natanz.

In a White House address Saturday night, Trump called the attack “a spectacular military success” that left Iran’s nuclear sites “completely and totally obliterated.”

But key questions remain unknown, including whether the Iranian program was fully destroyed and whether Iran will respond with its own attacks on the U.S. or its allies—or possibly try to shut down oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran vowed Saturday not to give up its efforts. The organization “won’t allow the progress of this national industry—built on the blood of nuclear martyrs—to be halted,” it said in a statement.

The Fordow fuel enrichment facility in Iran. Photo: Maxar Technologies

U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff has been authorized to talk with the Iranians, as Trump tried to keep open the long-shot possibility of some sort of diplomatic understanding that could quiet the region. 

A U.S. official said the Trump administration had reached out to Iran to make clear the attack was a one-off assault, not the start of a regime-change war.

The decision to attack came after weeks of White House deliberations, closely held military preparations and direct coordination with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had launched a similar sudden attack on Iran a week earlier.

But Trump seemed conflicted about whether to proceed with the operation over the past week. His advisers also worried about getting pulled into a Middle East conflict despite the frustrations with the diplomatic track aimed at getting Iran to halt its uranium enrichment.

In a Tuesday meeting in the Situation Room, Trump approved of plans to strike Iran but withheld a final order, giving time to assess once more if Iran would be willing to entirely end its enrichment of nuclear fuel.

“There was real debate earlier in the week about what we should do,” said the senior official. “But Trump signaled on Tuesday he was leaning toward going forward, so that changed everything.” 

Trump also wanted to create uncertainty about his intentions—and his timeline. The White House said Thursday Trump would give Iran up to two weeks to show its interest in a diplomatic resolution to the crisis. Only a day later he hinted that his patience was wearing out. 

“We’re going to see what that period of time is, but I’m giving them a period of time, and I would say two weeks would be the maximum,” he told reporters, adding that he still viewed himself as a peacemaker.

Trump made the decision to go ahead with the operation after Iran continued to rebuff his demand to give up its uranium enrichment and Israel paved the way with more than a week’s worth of strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and air defenses. 

In his Saturday night address, Trump said that his target was Iran’s three principal nuclear sites—Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan—and wasn’t aimed at Iran’s leaders.

President Trump holding a meeting in the Situation Room Saturday, in this photo released by the White House. Photo: white house/Reuters

The White House released photos of Trump wearing a red Make America Great Again hat with his national-security team in the Situation Room Saturday, where they received updates on the attack as it unfolded.

Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was among those flanking the president around the table. Caine was a leading architect of the plans to strike Iran, U.S. officials and people familiar with the deliberations said. 

Trump spoke with Netanyahu just after the operation, and the Israeli leader was “incredibly grateful,” the senior official said.

Trump vowed to carry out additional strikes if Iran lashed out at U.S. forces in the region and balked at diplomatic efforts to establish a peace. 

“Future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier,” he warned. “There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days.” 

The Israeli Air Force attacked Iranian warships and weapons storage facilities at the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas on Saturday, a military action that appeared to have been intended to blunt Tehran’s ability to retaliate in the Persian Gulf. 

Trump said Saturday that the strikes had been closely coordinated with Israel. But the U.S. role changed dramatically over the following weeks. 

On June 9, Netanyahu said he was preparing strikes and intended to move forward with an assault. Trump replied he wanted to see diplomacy with Tehran play out a little longer, according to U.S. officials. 

Three days later, Trump and Netanyahu spoke again, only this time the Israeli leader made clear he was going to launch a campaign against Iran imminently. The 60-day deadline Trump had initially set for a diplomatic accord had passed, and Israel could wait no longer, Netanyahu said, according to officials familiar with the call. 

Trump responded that the U.S. wouldn’t stand in the way, according to administration officials, but emphasized that the U.S. military wouldn’t assist with any offensive operations.

As the bombs started falling that June 12 evening in Washington, Secretary of State Marco Rubio released a statement confirming the U.S. played no role in Israel’s unilateral attack. The initial U.S. military role was defensive and focusing on protecting Israel against Iranian drone and missile attacks.

As the success of Israel’s opening salvos became clear, Trump started to claim credit for enabling the operation with U.S. weapons and saying the strikes could ultimately help compel Iran to make a deal.

Over the following days, Trump held lengthy discussions with key aides about his options, ranging from leveraging Israeli strikes to compel Iran to negotiate its nuclear program away to authorizing American attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities.

After Trump made the final call Saturday in New Jersey, B-2 stealth bombers dropped six 30,000 pound bunker busting bombs on Fordow. More than two dozen cruise missiles were fired by U.S. submarines at Natanz and Isfahan, two other sites where Iran has carried out nuclear work and enriched uranium. 

“We won’t know for sure until the morning what was taken out, but our belief is that we took out everything we wanted to,” said the senior official.

Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com, Josh Dawsey at Joshua.Dawsey@WSJ.com and Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com

8. Backed into a corner, Iran may unleash hackers, spies, sleeper cells and terror proxies worldwide

Backed into a corner, Iran may unleash hackers, spies, sleeper cells and terror proxies worldwide

Global DeskLast Updated: 22 June, 2025 05:45 AM +8 GMT

Read more at:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/backed-into-a-corner-iran-may-unleash-hackers-spies-sleeper-cells-and-terror-proxies-worldwide/articleshow/121997888.cms?utm

Synopsis

Israel has launched multiple airstrikes against Iran, targeting nuclear sites and key Revolutionary Guard leaders. While Iran’s military strength is affected, the country’s ability to retaliate using cyberattacks, proxy groups and intelligence networks remains.

Israel has carried out a series of strikes on Iran in recent days. These attacks have destroyed parts of Iran’s nuclear program and weakened its military defense systems. Despite the losses, Iran is still able to respond using irregular warfare methods that have long been part of its strategy, a The Conversation report said.

Israeli Strikes Focus on Nuclear and Military Targets

Israel’s airstrikes have damaged two nuclear sites and destroyed several air defense systems. The attacks took place in different cities and reportedly killed 14 nuclear scientists and some top members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The strikes have also disrupted Iran’s missile and drone programs.

Impact on Iran’s Warfare Capabilities

The strikes have reduced Iran’s ability to use traditional military hardware. It may take time before Iran can return to previous levels of uranium enrichment. However, the country still maintains influence through other channels. Iran’s use of proxy groups, organized crime links, and cyberattacks could still be used for retaliation, the report added.

Forward Deterrence as a Strategic Tool

Iran’s military strategy, called “forward deterrence,” encourages striking threats outside the country’s borders. This idea dates back to the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War. Groups like the Badr Corps were formed under this doctrine. Iran has since developed relationships with groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis to pursue regional goals.

Quds Force Remains Active

Israel reportedly struck a Quds Force command center in Tehran. It is unclear if its leader, Esmail Qaani, survived. Some of Iran’s partners like Hezbollah and Hamas have also suffered setbacks. However, Iran’s proxy network is still present across the region and can be activated when needed, the report further added.

Iran’s Global Reach

Iran has a history of targeting opponents abroad. These efforts have included kidnappings and assassinations using its Ministry of Intelligence and Quds Force operatives. Several incidents, including attempts in the US and Europe, show the reach of Iran’s network. These threats remain even if military strength has declined.

Cyberattacks as a Response Option

Iran has also focused on cyber warfare. Following recent Israeli strikes, a cybersecurity firm observed a sharp increase in malicious activity linked to Iran. These cyberattacks may involve disinformation, sabotage, or data theft. Iran is also using AI tools to spread propaganda and false media during conflicts.

Unconventional Threats Still a Concern

While Iran’s conventional military is weakened, its ability to conduct irregular warfare remains. The more Iran is attacked directly, the more likely it is to use these hidden methods. Its network of proxies and cyber operatives can respond without warning and pose long-term challenges for Israel and the US.

FAQs

What is Iran’s 'forward deterrence' strategy?

It is a policy where Iran targets threats outside its borders using proxy groups and cyber tools, aiming to prevent danger before it reaches Iranian territory.

How might Iran respond after Israeli attacks?

Iran could use cyberattacks, intelligence operatives, or proxy groups to target Israeli or US assets without direct military engagement.

9. Trump Meets the Moment on Iran

Trump Meets the Moment on Iran

The President bombs three nuclear sites to spare the world from an intolerable risk.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-meets-the-moment-on-iran-1794ade3?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

By The Editorial Board

Follow

June 22, 2025 1:01 am ET

President Donald Trump addresses the nation from the White House following the announcement that the U.S. bombed nuclear sites in Iran on Saturday. Photo: carlos barria/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

President Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s three most significant nuclear sites on Saturday helped rid the world of a grave nuclear threat and was a large step toward restoring U.S. deterrence. It also creates an opportunity for a more peaceful Middle East, if the nations of the region will seize it.

“Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” Mr. Trump said Saturday night. He made clear Iran brought this on itself. “For 40 years, Iran has been saying ‘death to America,’ ‘death to Israel.’ They’ve been killing our people,” he said, citing 1,000 Americans killed by Iran-supplied roadside bombs and other means. A nuclear Iran was a perilous threat to Israel, the nearby Arab states, and America.

Mr. Trump gave Iran every chance to resolve this peacefully. The regime flouted his 60-day deadline to make a deal. Then Israel attacked, destroying much of the nuclear program and achieving air supremacy, and still the President gave Iran another chance to come to terms. The regime wouldn’t even abandon domestic uranium enrichment. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wanted a bomb more than peace.

Military conflict is often unpredictable and the potential for Iranian retaliation can’t be dismissed, no matter how self-destructive it would be. Iran and its Iraqi proxies have threatened U.S. regional bases with missile fire, but Mr. Trump warned that “future attacks will be far greater” if Iran goes down that road. The U.S. has evacuated some personnel and brought military assets into the region. If the regime values self-preservation, it will give up its nuclear ambitions and stand down.

Much of the press has fixated on the idea that Mr. Trump has now joined or even started a conflict. But Iran has been waging regional and terrorist war for decades. It’s as likely that he has helped end it. Leaving Iran with a hardened nuclear enrichment facility after an Israeli military campaign would have been a recipe for maximum danger, all but asking Iran to sprint to a bomb.

At the same time, the Israeli campaign yielded a unrivaled strategic opportunity. Suddenly, Iran’s airspace was uncontested. Its substantial ballistic-missile program was degraded. Several of its proxies had been bludgeoned into silence. Its nuclear program had been reduced to a few key sites, one of which only U.S. weapons could be trusted to penetrate.

The opportunity to act and the danger of standing pat may have proved decisive. We would say that they left Mr. Trump little choice, except U.S. Presidents always have a choice, and have been known to kick the can down the road. To his credit, Mr. Trump didn’t, hitting the Fordow enrichment site as well as Natanz and Isfahan. This shows the President wanted to leave no doubt about Iran’s nuclear program and take it all down.

Good for him for meeting the moment, despite the doubts from part of his political base. The isolationists were wrong at every step leading up to Saturday, and now they are again predicting another Iraq, if not a road to World War III. Mr. Trump had to act to stop the threat in front of him to protect America, which is his first obligation as President.

“History will record that President Trump acted to deny the world’s most dangerous regime the world’s most dangerous weapons,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday night. Mr. Trump thanked him and said “we worked as a team.” The Israelis, who proved their strategic value as an ally, would like to complete the mission by destroying what remains of Iran’s missile infrastructure. They deserve a green light, especially as those missiles are threatening U.S. bases.

The chatter about TACO—“Trump always chickens out”—will now quiet down, but the more significant reassessment has to do with U.S. foreign policy. The Obamaites of the left, and lately of the right, counseled that the world had to bow to Iranian intimidation. The best we could hope for was a flimsy deal that bribed Iran with billions and left open its path to a bomb. They were wrong.

10. How a Papa Johns pizza surge near the Pentagon tipped off social media before Trump's decisive Iran strike

Only in America.

How a Papa Johns pizza surge near the Pentagon tipped off social media before Trump's decisive Iran strike

The Pentagon Pizza Report detected 'HIGH' pizza traffic an hour before the US military action against Iranian nuclear sites

 By Alexandra Koch Fox News

Published June 21, 2025 10:39pm EDT

foxnews.com · by Alexandra Koch Fox News

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BREAKING: US launches attack against Iranian nuclear sites

Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier reports on the announcement from the Trump administration.

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The Pentagon Pizza Report, a social media account that claimed to have accurately predicted Israel’s initial June 12 military strikes on Iran, posted that local pizza traffic near the Pentagon was "HIGH" within an hour of the U.S. launching attacks against Iranian nuclear sites Saturday night.

President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social the U.S. military completed an attack on three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.

"A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow," the president wrote in the post. "Thank you for your attention to this matter."

A map shows where Iran's most important nuclear facilities are situated. (Fox News/FDD)

US TROOPS IN THE MIDDLE EAST COULD FACE INCREASED THREATS AMID IRAN CONFLICT: ‘IRREPARABLE DAMAGE’

Less than an hour before the announcement, the account said "HIGH activity is being reported at the closest Papa Johns to the Pentagon."

Account administrators added Freddie's Beach Bar, a restaurant and bar near the Pentagon that has also been previously used as an indicator of impending military action, was reporting abnormally low activity levels for a Saturday night.

"Classic indicator for potential overtime at the Pentagon," the account wrote.

TRUMP PROMISES TO RESPOND WITH 'FULL STRENGTH AND MIGHT' OF US MILITARY IF IRAN ATTACKS AMERICA

Following the president's announcement on Truth Social, the account posted a simple, "Thank you for your attention to this matter," echoing the wording in Trump's post.

About half an hour before Trump's address to the nation, the pizza account noted there was a "HUGE traffic surge" at the Domino's closest to MacDill Air Force Base, home of CENTCOM, as of about 9:36 p.m. eastern time.

US Vice President JD Vance, from left, US President Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, US secretary of state, and Pete Hegseth, US secretary of defense, during an address to the nation in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Saturday, June 21, 2025. Trump said the US military struck three sites in Iran on Saturday, marking the first American involvement in direct attacks against Iranian nuclear assets in its conflict with Israel. (Carlos Barria/Reuters/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

During the address, the president warned Iranian officials future attacks would come, if they did not "make peace."

Alexandra Koch is a breaking news writer for Fox News Digital. Prior to joining Fox News, Alexandra covered breaking news, crime, religion, and the military in the southeast.

foxnews.com · by Alexandra Koch Fox News

11. Sheltering in a Bunker, Iran’s Supreme Leader Prepares for the Worst

Did he publish a "target list" for us?

Sheltering in a Bunker, Iran’s Supreme Leader Prepares for the Worst

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has picked replacements in case military commanders die in Israeli strikes. He has also named possible replacements for himself.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/world/middleeast/iran-ayatollah-israel-war.html

People marching under a mural of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Friday in Tehran.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

By Farnaz Fassihi

Farnaz Fassihi has lived and worked in Iran, has covered the country for three decades and was a war correspondent in the Middle East for 15 years.

Published June 21, 2025

Updated June 22, 2025, 12:12 a.m. ET

Wary of assassination, Iran’s supreme leader mostly speaks with his commanders through a trusted aide now, suspending electronic communications to make it harder to find him, three Iranian officials familiar with his emergency war plans say.

Ensconced in a bunker, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has picked an array of replacements down his chain of military command in case more of his valued lieutenants are killed.

And in a remarkable move, the officials add, Ayatollah Khamenei has even named three senior clerics as candidates to succeed him should he be killed, as well — perhaps the most telling illustration of the precarious moment he and his three-decade rule are facing.

Ayatollah Khamenei has taken an extraordinary series of steps to preserve the Islamic Republic ever since Israel launched a series of surprise attacks last Friday.

Though only a week old, the Israeli strikes are the biggest military assault on Iran since its war with Iraq in the 1980s, and the effect on the nation’s capital, Tehran, has been particularly fierce. In only a few days, the Israeli attacks have been more intense and have caused more damage in Tehran than Saddam Hussein did in his entire eight-year war against Iran.

Iran appeared to have overcome its initial shock, reorganizing enough to launch daily counterstrikes of its own on Israel, hitting a hospital, the Haifa oil refinery, religious buildings and homes.

Image

The aftermath of an Iranian missile strike in Haifa, Israel, on Friday.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

But then the United States entered the war as well. President Trump announced late Saturday that the U.S. military had bombed three of Iran’s nuclear sites, including its uranium-enrichment facility deep underground at Fordo, broadening the conflict significantly.

“Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror,” Mr. Trump said in an address to the nation from the White House on Saturday night.

Peering inside Iran’s closely guarded leadership can be difficult, but as of late this week its chain of command still seemed to be functioning, despite being hit hard, and there were no obvious signs of dissent in the political ranks, according to the officials and to diplomats in Iran.

Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Iran and Israel? Sign up for Your Places: Global Update, and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox.

Ayatollah Khamenei, 86, is aware that either Israel or the United States could try to assassinate him, an end he would view as martyrdom, the officials said. Given the possibility, the ayatollah has made the unusual decision to instruct his nation’s Assembly of Experts, the clerical body responsible for appointing the supreme leader, to choose his successor swiftly from the three names he has provided.

Normally, the process of appointing a new supreme leader could take months, with clerics picking and choosing from their own lists of names. But with the nation now at war, the officials said, the ayatollah wants to ensure a quick, orderly transition and to preserve his legacy.

“The top priority is the preservation of the state,” said Vali Nasr, an Iran expert and professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University. “It is all calculative and pragmatic.”

Succession has long been an exceedingly delicate and thorny topic, seldom discussed publicly beyond speculations and rumors in political and religious circles. The supreme leader has enormous powers: He is the commander in chief of the Iran Armed Forces, as well as the head of the judiciary, the legislature and the executive branch. He is also a Vali Faqih, meaning the most senior guardian of the Shiite faith.

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Ayatollah Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, also a cleric and close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, who was rumored to be a front-runner, is not among the candidates, the officials said. Iran’s former conservative president, Ibrahim Raisi, was also considered a front-runner before he was killed in a helicopter crash in 2024.

Image

Ayatollah Khamenei delivering a public message on Wednesday. His retreat into a bunker shows how furiously Tehran has been struck.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

Since the war started, Ayatollah Khamenei has delivered to the public two recorded video messages, against a backdrop of brown curtains and next to the Iranian flag. “The people of Iran will stand against a forced war,” he said, vowing not to surrender.

In normal times, Ayatollah Khamenei lives and works in a highly secure compound in central Tehran called the “beit rahbari” — or leader’s house — and he seldom leaves the premises, except for special occasions like delivering a sermon. Senior officials and military commanders come to him for weekly meetings, and speeches for the public are staged from the compound.

His retreat to a bunker shows how furiously Tehran has been struck in a war with Israel that Iranian officials say is unfolding on two fronts.

One is being waged from the air, with Israeli airstrikes on military bases, nuclear facilities, critical energy infrastructure, commanders and nuclear scientists in their apartment buildings in tightly packed residential neighborhoods. Some of Iran’s top commanders were summarily wiped out.

Hundreds of people have also been killed and thousands of others injured, with civilians slain across Iran, human rights groups inside and outside the country say.

But Iranian officials say that they are fighting on a second front, as well, with covert Israeli operatives and collaborators scattered on the ground across Iran’s vast terrain, launching drones at critical energy and military structures. The fear of Israeli infiltration among the top ranks of Iran’s security and intelligence apparatus has rattled the Iranian power structure, even Ayatollah Khamenei, officials say.

Image

Smoke north of Tehran after Israeli airstrikes on Monday. Hundreds of people have been killed and thousands of others injured, officials say.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

“It is clear that we had a massive security and intelligence breach; there is no denying this,” said Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Iran’s speaker of Parliament, Gen. Mohammad Ghalibaf, in an audio recording analyzing the war. “Our senior commanders were all assassinated within one hour.”

Iran’s “biggest failure was not discovering” the months of planning Israeli operatives had conducted to bring missiles and drone parts into the country to prepare for the attack, he added.

The country’s leadership has been preoccupied with three central concerns, officials say: an assassination attempt against Ayatollah Khamenei; the United States’ entering the war; and more debilitating attacks against Iran’s critical infrastructure, like power plants, oil and gas refineries and dams.

Iran has threatened to retaliate against the United States by attacking American targets in the region, but the options for Iran’s government are complicated, at best. If it retaliates against the American strikes on its nuclear facilities, it could be thrust into a major war with a military superpower.

The fear of assassination and infiltration within Iran’s ranks is also widespread enough that the Ministry of Intelligence has announced a series of security protocols, telling officials to stop using cellphones or any electronic devices to communicate. It has ordered all senior government officials and military commanders to remain below ground, according to two Iranian officials.

Almost every day, the Ministry of Intelligence or the Armed Forces issue directives for the public to report suspicious individuals and vehicle movements, and to refrain from taking photographs and videos of attacks on sensitive sites.

Image

A demonstration in Tehran last week. Israel’s attacks have set off a resurgence of nationalism among many Iranians.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

The country has also been in a communication blackout with the outside world. The internet has been nearly shut down, and incoming international calls have been blocked. The Ministry of Telecommunications said in a statement that these measures were to find enemy operatives on the ground and to disable their ability to launch attacks.

“The security apparatus has concluded that, in this critical time, the internet is being abused to harm the lives and livelihoods of civilians,” said Ali Ahmadinia, the communications director for President Masoud Pezeshkian. “We are safeguarding the security of our country by shutting down the internet.”

On Friday, the Supreme National Security Council took it a step further, announcing that anyone working with the enemy must turn themselves into the authorities by the end of the day on Sunday, hand over their military equipment and “return to the arms of the people.” It warned that anyone discovered to be working with the enemy after Sunday would face execution.

Tehran has largely emptied out after orders by Israel to evacuate several highly populated districts. Videos of the city show highways and desolate streets that are typically clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic. In interviews, residents of Tehran who remained in the city said security forces had set up checkpoints on every highway, on smaller roads and at entry points in and out of the city to conduct ad hoc searches.

Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformist politician and a former vice president, said in a telephone interview from Tehran that Israel had miscalculated Iranians’ reaction to the war. Mr. Abtahi said that the deep political factions that are typically in sharp disagreement with one another had rallied behind the supreme leader and focused the country on defending itself from an external threat.

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Checking for updates on a rooftop in Tehran on Thursday as the war raged on.Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

The war has “softened the divisions we had, both among each other and with the general public,” Mr. Abtahi said.

Israel’s attacks have set off a resurgence of nationalism among many Iranians, inside and outside the country, including many critical of the government. That sense of common cause has emerged in a torrent of social media posts and statements by prominent human rights and political activists, physicians, national athletes, artists and celebrities. “Like family, we may not always agree but Iran’s soil is our red line,” wrote Saeid Ezzatollahi, a player with Iran’s national soccer squad, Team Melli, on social media.

Hotels, guesthouses and wedding halls have opened their doors free of charge to shelter displaced people fleeing Tehran, according to Iranian news media and videos on social media. Psychologists are offering free virtual therapy sessions in posts on their social media pages. Supermarkets are giving discounts, and at bakeries, customers are limiting their own purchases of fresh bread to one loaf so that everyone standing in line can have bread, according to videos shared on social media. Volunteers are offering services, like running errands to checking on disabled and older residents.

“We are seeing a beautiful unity among our people,” said Reza, 42, a businessman, in a telephone interview near the Caspian Sea, where he is taking shelter with his family. Using only one name to avoid scrutiny by the government, he added: “It’s hard to explain the mood. We are scared, but we are also giving each other solidarity, love and kindness. We are in it together. This is an attack on our country, on Iran.”

Narges Mohammadi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the country’s most prominent human rights activist, has spent decades in and out of jail, pushing for democratic change in Iran. But even she warned against the attacks on her country, telling the BBC this past week that “Democracy cannot come through violence and war.”

Farnaz Fassihi is the United Nations bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the organization. She also covers Iran and has written about conflict in the Middle East for 15 years.

A version of this article appears in print on June 22, 2025, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Hiding in a Bunker, Iran’s Supreme Leader Names Potential Successors. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

12. Why Countries Are Suddenly Broadcasting Their Spies’ Exploits

Why Countries Are Suddenly Broadcasting Their Spies’ Exploits

Commandos, secret operations and drones now offer action video that is effective for messaging on social media

https://www.wsj.com/world/why-countries-are-suddenly-broadcasting-their-spies-exploits-f455a666

Israeli attacks on Tehran have been guided by covert operations. Photo: Getty Images

By Daniel Michaels

Follow and Drew Hinshaw

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June 21, 2025 9:00 pm ET

Key Points

What's This?

• Belligerents increasingly broadcast their covert triumphs, with messages amplified in real time by social-media networks.
• Fighting in Ukraine and the Middle East is bringing a new doctrine to spycraft stemming from changes in what organizers seek to achieve and how information spreads.

Israel’s airstrikes on Iran exploded across the world’s screens as a public display of military firepower. Underpinning that was a less visible but equally vital Israeli covert operation that pinpointed targets, guided the attacks and struck Iran from within.

Agents from Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, operated inside Iran before and during the initial attacks earlier this month, Israeli officials said. The disclosure was itself an act of psychological warfare—a boast of Israel’s ability to act with impunity inside Iran’s borders and Tehran’s failure to stop it.

Israel flaunted its tactical success by releasing grainy video emblazoned with Mossad’s seal that it said showed operatives and drone strikes inside Iran. 

Not long ago, such covert operations stayed secret. Today, belligerents from Ukraine to the U.S. increasingly broadcast their triumphs, with messages amplified in real time by social-media networks.

When T.E. Lawrence wanted to publicize his World War I secret forays deep into Ottoman territory, he wrote a book and articles. Nobody saw those commando raids for half a century until the blockbuster film “Lawrence of Arabia” recreated his exploits.

T.E. Lawrence played a clandestine role in the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule during World War I. Photo: Pierre Perrin/Sygma/Getty Images

These days, barely hours pass before the world sees action footage of Ukraine’s latest drone attacks on Russian military targets. Israel’s detonation of explosives hidden inside Hezbollah militants’ pagers played out in almost real time across the internet. The U.S. repeatedly fed social media the details—and sometimes imagery—of its special-operations strikes on Islamic State leaders in recent years.

The result is a major shift in warfare: Call it the battle of timelines. Spying and clandestine operations, in the traditional sense, have never been so difficult. Biometric data makes document forgery obsolete. Billions of cameras, attached to phones, rearview mirrors and doorbells, stand ready to capture the movements of any operative hoping to lurk invisibly. In seconds, artificial intelligence can rifle through millions of photos to identify the faces of foreign spies operating in the wild.

Instead, fighting in Ukraine and the Middle East is bringing a new doctrine to spycraft stemming from changes in both what their organizers seek to achieve and how information spreads. Operations that would have once been designed to remain under wraps are now meant to be seen, to produce spectacular optics. They play out not just on the battlefield, but also on social media, boosting morale at home while demoralizing the enemy watching from the other side of the screen.

“A major goal of covert operations is often to show an adversary’s leadership that we have identified and can damage elements involved in lethal activity,” said Norman Roule, a former senior U.S. intelligence officer. “Demonstrating this capability is hoped to act as a deterrent and even to encourage an adversary to seek diplomatic solutions.” Such operations aren’t done lightly, because they are dangerous and risk exposure of sensitive sources and methods that once compromised can’t be used in the future, he added.

A video posted on social media shows an apparent explosion and a man falling to the floor at a vegetable market during Israel’s September detonation of booby-trapped pagers used by Hezbollah.

“You don’t waste such critical capabilities for a cheap political win,” Roule said. “That said, in addition to the operational impact, you can exploit such operations for propaganda, psychological impact or diplomatic gain.”

Covert operations once remained secret long after they wrapped up, or they were revealed by chance. Allied World War II code-breaking efforts stayed largely unknown for three decades. Countless Cold War-era espionage operations gained public attention only after the Soviet Union collapsed. Central Intelligence Agency efforts to raise a sunken Soviet submarine went public accidentally, following an office burglary in Los Angeles.

Exploits dubbed black ops—because the operations stay in the dark—traditionally fed into a quiet game of signaling and deception. One reason the release of the Pentagon Papers alarmed the White House in 1971 was that some information in them could have only come from a U.S. bug planted in Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev’s car, former President Richard Nixon said in 1984.

Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers, outside a Boston federal courthouse in 1971. Photo: William Ryerson/Boston Globe/Getty Images

Fast forward to 2021, when President Joe Biden took the exceptional step of going public with highly sensitive intelligence about Moscow’s plans to attack Ukraine. The pre-emptive disclosure of hard-won secrets didn’t stop the invasion, but it did restore allies’ perception of the U.S.—and American spycraft—which had been tarnished by the warnings of weapons of mass destruction that led to the Iraq War.

These days, secrecy is often beside the point. Almost weekly, Ukrainian drone attacks deep in Russia’s interior play out to the same script: An ordinary bystander whips out a phone to capture the flicker of a Ukrainian drone against the night sky, seconds before it reduces some strategic target—an oil refinery, an air base or a rail depot—into a fiery ball.

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Soon, the footage circulates on social media. In come amateur war analysts posting commercial satellite photos of the damage, followed by declarations of responsibility from the Ukrainian special services eager to demonstrate their capabilities to ordinary Russians scrolling at home. 

“Ukraine does an excellent job in planning out these operations, and they know that in this day and age every attack is going to be filmed,” said Samuel Bendett, a Russian-studies adviser at the Center for Naval Analyses in Arlington, Va., a federally funded nonprofit research organization. “They’re trying to design their attacks so that more and more Russians are aware of the war and are impacted by the war.”

A June video shows how Ukrainian drones landed on Russian planes. VIDEO: Security Service of Ukraine

Kyiv feels obliged to wage a public propaganda war against Moscow because it isn’t winning the shooting war. Israel goes public with results of its espionage and covert operations against Iran and its proxies to convince foreign governments and populations that Tehran is both dangerous and vulnerable.

The communication war is raging in an information free-for-all. Governments and elites that until the middle of the 20th century controlled their information environment are today trying just to navigate it, said Ofer Fridman, a former Israeli officer and a scholar of war studies at King’s College London. “Now they’re struggling to communicate with their target audience through overwhelming noise,” he said.

Compounding that is the digitization of almost all information—both new memos and dusty archives—meaning that no event is guaranteed to remain secret from hackers or publicity-minded politicians with access to files. The impact of data leakers including the National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and the National Guard airman Jack Teixeira weighs heavily on intelligence officials.

Edward Snowden spoke by video at a September conference in Singapore. Photo: Suhaimi Abdullah/Bloomberg

Russia is still adjusting to this new form of warfare. The country has made filming or posting sensitive details about military attacks a crime in its front-line regions, punishable by fines. Not even the country’s police and special services have been able to discourage civilians who, almost by instinct, take out their phones when Ukrainian saboteurs strike. Soldiers on the front lines, disobeying their own codes of conduct, regularly capture battlefield operations.

For its part, Russia has made minimal effort to cover its own tracks in its barely disguised spree of covert operations in Europe. The GRU, the Russian military-intelligence organization, has repeatedly hired European civilians over social media, paying them to burn down a shopping mall in Warsaw, or an IKEA in Lithuania, according to Western officials. When a Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine was shot dead in Spain last year, Russia’s spy chiefs didn’t deny involvement—they all but boasted of it.

“This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse at the very moment he was planning his dirty and terrible crime,” Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, told state media.

Write to Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com and Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com

13.  Trump used 12 bunker buster bombs and 30 Tomahawk missiles to 'obliterate' Iran's nuclear sites

Graphics at the link: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14835443/Trump-used-SIX-bunker-buster-bombs-30-Tomahawk-missiles-obliterate-Irans-nuclear-sites.html

Trump used 12 bunker buster bombs and 30 Tomahawk missiles to 'obliterate' Iran's nuclear sites

By NICK ALLEN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

Published: 02:13 BST, 22 June 2025 | Updated: 09:02 BST, 22 June 2025

Daily Mail · by NICK ALLEN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM · June 22, 2025

Donald Trump 'completely obliterated' Iran's Fordow nuclear site with 12 massive 30,000-pound 'bunker buster' bombs.

Two other nuclear sites in Iran were also 'wiped out' with 30 Tomahawk missiles launched from U.S. submarines 400 miles away.

The details were first revealed by Sean Hannity of Fox News, who spoke to the president shortly after the strikes.

Hannity added that he had been told by Trump officials that Fordow was 'gone.'

The extent of the devastating bombing mission was later confirmed by U.S. military official who suggested Fordow had been 'taken off the table.'

It had previously been suggested that only two bunker busters would be needed to destroy the site.

Trump said B-2 stealth bombers were used to deliver the bunker busters.

Israel had said their offensive already crippled Iran's air defenses, allowing them to degrade multiple Iranian nuclear sites.

But to destroy the Fordow nuclear fuel enrichment plant, Israel appealed to Trump for the bunker busting American bomb known as the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator.

It uses its weight and kinetic force to reach deeply buried targets and then explode.

The bombs can only be delivered by the B-2 stealth bomber, which is only found in the American arsenal.

If the bunker busters were indeed deployed in the attack, it will have been the first combat use of the weapon.

The precision-guided bomb is designed to attack deeply buried and hardened bunkers and tunnels, according to the U.S. Air Force.

It’s believed to be able to penetrate about 200 feet below the surface before exploding.

The bombs can be dropped one after another, effectively drilling deeper and deeper with each successive blast.

On Saturday morning the B-2 stealth bombers left from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri and flew non-stop for about 37 hours, refueling several times mid-air, a US official told the New York Times on condition of anonymity.

The B-2, which is capable of carrying nuclear arms, is only flown by the Air Force, and is produced by Northrop Grumman.

A United States Air Force (USAF) B-52 bomber

In this photo released by the U.S. Air Force on May 2, 2023, airmen look at a GBU-57, or the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb, at Whiteman Air Base in Missouri

The Fordow nuclear site in Iran before it was hit

It first saw action in 1999 in the Kosovo War, and is rarely used by the U.S. military in combat as each aircraft is worth some $1 billion.

The strategic long-range heavy bomber has a range of about 7,000 miles without refueling and 11,500 miles with one refueling, and can reach any point in the world within hours, according to Northrop Grumman.

Prior to the attack in Iran, the military last used the warplane in October of last year to combat Yemen's Houthi rebels and their underground bunkers. It has dropped bombs in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as well.

Trump did not immediately specify what types of bombs were dropped. The White House and Pentagon did not immediately elaborate on the operation.

Iran has pledged to retaliate if the U.S. joined the Israeli assault.

Trump deployed 12 bunker busters in Iran

Trump had previously indicated that he would make a final choice on whether to bomb Fordow over the next two weeks.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the United States on Wednesday that strikes targeting the Islamic Republic would result in 'irreparable damage' for America.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei declared 'any American intervention would be a recipe for an all-out war in the region.'

Trump has long vowed that he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.

He had initially hoped that the threat of force would bring the country's leaders to give up its nuclear program peacefully.

Daily Mail · by NICK ALLEN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM · June 22, 2025

14. Western democracies are actually pretty good at war

Quite a headline.

Excerpts:

Nor is China likely to rush clumsily into war the way Putin did. In the 20th century, China did get involved in some reckless, stupid wars — in Korea in 1950 and Vietnam in 1979, neither of which it won.

But since then, China has shown extreme caution. Its leaders definitely seem determined to build up overwhelming power before taking Taiwan or other territories in Asia. If the U.S. has to fight China, it will be at a time and place of their choosing, not ours — and they will likely have most of their people unified behind the effort.

This doesn’t mean the democracies would have no advantage against China. The structural problems of autocracies — poor information flow, overcentralization of power, paranoid infighting — all seem present, as Xi Jinping completes his transformation of Deng Xiaoping’s bureaucratic, technocratic system into something closer to a traditional dictatorship.

Xi has already made a ton of mistakes, many of them related to micromanagement — Zero Covid, Belt and Road, the crackdown on IT in 2021, the real estate bust, “wolf warrior” diplomacy, and so on. It’s likely he would micromanage a war as well. Meanwhile, Xi has been purging his top military officers, many of whom he himself appointed, at a stupendous rate, for reasons unknown.

So if China does fight America, it will have some of the same sorts of disadvantages that Russia has with Putin. But it’s far from clear whether these would be enough to overcome China’s massive manufacturing advantage. Democracy is a lot tougher than people give it credit for, but it’s not magic.

Western democracies are actually pretty good at war - Asia Times

The authoritarian advantage is hype but China is the real deal and unlike Russia won’t rush clumsily into war

asiatimes.com · by Noah Smith · June 21, 2025

“They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too.” — William T. Sherman

I am not a military analyst or expert. Usually, I look at the world through the lens of economics, which I actually have some training in. But if you want to get a good holistic picture of the world, you need to understand at least a little bit about war and conflict.

I think most pundits intuitively understand this, which is why you see them weighing in on things like the usefulness of military aid to Ukraine, or the cost-effectiveness of the F-35, or the need to establish military deterrence against China. And so I do the same, while being careful to remember that I’m not any kind of expert in the field.

One of the most persistent and annoying tropes I see, in discussions about war, is the idea that autocracies are inherently tough and martial, and that democracies — especially Western democracies — are irresolute, decadent, flaccid, and generally not very good at fighting.

You see this when rightists praise Russian military ads where soldiers do a bunch of push-ups, and decry the state of America’s “they/them army” in comparison. You can see it when leftists declare that America loses every war it fights (which is obviously false).

The idea is ingrained in our deep history — Thucydides lamented that “a democracy is incapable of empire”, and plenty of modern people will cite autocratic Sparta’s victory over democratic Athens in the Peloponnesian War.1

In fact, if you just looked at the results of the last two decades, you might be forgiven for buying the authoritarian hype. America was pushed out of Afghanistan, and its proxies quickly collapsed under the Taliban assault. Most people also say the US lost the Iraq War.2

Democratic Armenia quickly lost a war to autocratic Azerbaijan in 2020, Israel broke its teeth on Hezbollah in 2006, Russia smashed Georgia easily in 2008, and Russia easily took Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Since the turn of the century, military victories for Western democracies have been few and far between.

But over the past three years, the tide seems to have turned once more. Ukraine, astonishing the entire world, fought mighty Russia — a country four times its size and with far higher GDP per capita — to a standstill. In 2024, Israel smashed Hezbollah within just a few weeks; the Iranian-backed militia retreated from the border and its authority is now being replaced by the elected Lebanese government.

And now there’s the war between Israel and Iran. The war just started; all of us are still just monitoring the situation. It seems hard to think that Israel can prevail in a protracted confrontation with a nation with nine times its population and more than three times its GDP (PPP).3

But as of right now, the tiny David is smacking around the big Goliath. Israel quickly established air supremacy over much of Iran itself, despite the huge distances between the countries, using a mix of traditional aircraft and drones:

Just four days into its ferocious air campaign, Israel appears to have gained a decisive edge in its escalating conflict with Iran: aerial supremacy over Iran…The Israeli military said Monday that it can now fly over the country’s capital, Tehran, without facing major resistance after crippling Iran’s air defenses in recent strikes, enabling Israel to hit an expanding range of targets with relative ease…Such control over Iran’s skies, military analysts say, is not just a tactical advantage—it’s a strategic turning point…Israel has carried out one of the most intense and far-reaching air operations in its history, targeting nuclear sites, missile launchers, airports, and senior figures in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps…

For Israel to claim this over Iran just days after the strikes began is an impressive military accomplishment, says Michael Knights, the Bernstein Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute who specializes in Middle Eastern security. “It’s exceptional to get this level of freedom. I’m quite surprised that they’ve managed it,” he says[.]

Israel has destroyed Iran’s best fighter jets on the ground. Iran has been reduced to firing off ballistic missiles into Israeli cities in retaliation. But the strikes, while visually impressive, have not been very deadly (the Israelis all have bomb shelters). And the Israelis are managing to quickly degrade Iran’s missile capabilities:

Iran is firing fewer missiles at Israel each day after Israel secured dominance over Iranian skies, enabling it to destroy launchers and take out missiles before they even leave the ground…Israel said on Sunday that it had created an air corridor to Tehran. By Monday, it said its air force had complete control over the skies of Tehran…This aerial control is proving crucial. Iran fired some 200 missiles in four barrages in its first round of attacks against Israel on Friday and Saturday. But between Tuesday and Wednesday, Iran fired 60 missiles at Israel over eight different waves of strikes, at times sending fewer than a dozen at a time…Israel’s aircraft and other security forces have destroyed 120 missile launchers[.]

Israel hasn’t yet decapitated the Iranian regime, but it’s killing lots of key figures. This is a pretty stunningly bad performance for Iran — a country that is sometimes touted as a key member of a new Axis with Russia and China — against a country with the population and land area of New Jersey.

Israel isn’t quite Western — more than half of its population is descended from Middle Easterners — and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has shown some authoritarian tendencies. Nor is Israel a particularly liberal state, at least as far as its treatment of the Palestinians goes. But it’s a heck of a lot closer to being a “Western democracy” than Iran is.

Rumors of the weakness and decay of the West, and of the inferiority of democracies in the face of autocratic power, seem to have been at least somewhat exaggerated. What’s going on? In fact, the first two decades of the 21st century may have been an aberration; democracies actually do tend to win wars more often than they lose.

Why do democracies win more wars?

A quick glance at history will disabuse any neutral observer of the notion that Western-style democracies are militarily weak.

Consider how France held off attacks by all of Europe for decades after its revolution, or how the Anglo-American side won both World Wars, or how Israel beat a bunch of its neighbors in a series of wars, etc. Hitler and Mussolini both loudly proclaimed that democracies were weak and decadent, yet it was they who ended up in history’s graveyard.

In fact, there’s pretty robust evidence that democracies — at least, as we currently identify them — tend to win wars more often than autocracies do. Dobransky (2014) finds that “democracies win the large majority (84%) of wars that they are involved in.” Reiter and Stam (2014) find the same:

Analyzing all interstate wars from 1816 to 1982 with a multivariate probit model, we find that democratic initiators are significantly more likely to win wars; democratic targets are also more likely to win, though the relationship is not as strong.

Mathematically, this must mean that democracies tend to defeat autocracies when the two fight, because if two autocracies or two democracies fight each other, a win for one nets out to a loss for the other.

Political scientists have any number of theories to explain why this happens. One obvious possibility is that democratic countries fight fewer wars in the first place, and only tend to fight when they have a good chance of winning. This is David Lake’s theory, which he calls the “powerful pacifists” theory.

Reiter and Stam, who have a book called “Democracies at War“, agree with Lake that autocracies tend to start riskier wars than democracies do. But they have very different reasons for thinking this.

Lake thinks dictators tend to start wars for resources because running a dictatorship is very costly. Reiter and Stam, on the other hand, think that dictators start wars because they’re more secure in their power, and thus are less afraid of the negative consequences from a war going badly.

Honestly, I’m not very convinced by either of these explanations. Yes, there are some wars over economic resources — Saddam Hussein invading Iran to try to capture its oil fields in 1980 comes to mind. But I don’t think most wars are mostly over treasure in the modern age. The World Wars were mostly over ideology and perceived threats rather than imperial conquests.

Putin didn’t invade Ukraine for money, and money has nothing to do with why Iran has been sending proxies to attack Israel for decades. Even when wars do have an economic component, the benefit of winning rarely justifies the cost of fighting in the first place — witness America’s inability to extract significant value from the oil fields of Iraq.

Likewise, I think it’s unlikely that dictators are less afraid of losing wars. Yes, they may be better positioned to cling to power in the event of a loss, while democratic leaders will be promptly voted out of office.

But the lower probability of an autocrat being tossed out of power comes with a much greater severity. A US president who loses a war might be voted out of office; when Mussolini lost a war, he ended up hanging from a gas station, riddled with bullets. So honestly, I’d be more cautious if I were a dictator.

I think there’s a much more obvious reason why democracies choose their wars more carefully. In general, the people who actually have to go fight a war tend to like war less than the leaders who simply order their armies forward from the safety of their bunkers.

So democracies, where the people are more in control, tend to be pacifist; they only tend to fight either when they have a good chance of winning, or when their back is to the wall and they can’t afford to lose. When they are finally moved to fight, the stakes tend to be high, the people tend to be united and motivated, and the cause tends to be one that draws in lots of allies.

Economic factors probably play a role too. Lake thinks democracies have more economic resources to devote to war, because he believes they tend to spend more money on building up their economies, while autocracies tend to be extractive.4

This makes sense sometimes — think of how America outproduced the Axis in World War 2. On the margin, I think it makes a difference, but I’m skeptical of how much it can explain overall, because population size often differs so much between combatants that per capita GDP differences become less important. Consider Israel versus Iran — at PPP, Iran’s economy is much larger, because it’s a much larger country, even though it’s poorer.

There’s another economic factor at work, which is technological advancement; having a higher per capita GDP generally means having better technology, which can be used for weaponry. Israel has a smaller economy than Iran, but because it has a richer, more technologically advanced economy, it can do a lot fancier stuff — with drones, aircraft, missile defense, precision weaponry, hacking, digital intelligence gathering, and so on.

As for whether democracy actually makes a country richer and more technologically advanced, that’s a topic of ongoing debate. Some people think democracy is good for growth; others think that as countries get richer, their citizenry starts to demand a transition to democracy. Other people think it’s a historical accident. But whatever it is, democracies do statistically tend to be richer than autocracies, and being rich helps in war.

Actually, you don’t always need to be richer in order to have superior technology. Ukraine is much poorer than Russia on a per capita basis, but it has a lot of great computer programmers and engineers — it has repeatedly innovated in drone warfare during the current war, forcing Russia to scramble to keep up.

Reiter and Stam also argue that the way dictatorships make decisions is not very conducive to effective war-fighting. In an op-ed written shortly after the start of the Ukraine war, they explain:

[L]ike most dictators, Putin probably has some concerns about being overthrown by his own military. Dictators guard against this potential threat by centralizing military command authority and reducing the ability of lower-level commanders to take the initiative in battle…

These moves may reduce an army’s ability to seize power in a crisis — but also undercut the military’s ability to defeat foreign foes…Putin’s army today demonstrates the calcification and rigidity of a dictatorship. He appears unwilling to delegate decision-making autonomy to lower-level commanders, reducing military effectiveness…

[D]ictators often surround themselves with yes-men and political cronies, who deceive or remain silent rather than tell the unvarnished truth…In contrast, democratic leaders are more likely to have the benefit of robust debate inside and outside government…Every indication is that the Russian president is isolated and getting poor information…Putin’s generals and intelligence chief reportedly refused to tell him the truth before the war: that years of Russian military reform had not made substantial progress, instead producing a “Potemkin military.”

That makes lots of sense. To this I’d add the simple fact that if your country happens to have a dictator, he’s probably simply more politically capable of micromanaging — and mismanaging — the military, whether or not he’s doing it because he’s afraid of a coup.

So I’d say the three main hypotheses for why democracies tend to win more wars are:

1. Democracies fight less, so they tend to only fight more winnable wars
2. Democracies have better economies and technology
3. Autocracies have structural tendencies toward military mismanagement and poor information flow

Most of these make sense in explaining Ukraine’s success in holding off Russia. Ukraine didn’t want to fight this war, or any war; they only fought because their backs were to the wall and the survival of their nation was at stake. They have proven to be technologically innovative and resourceful, even with their much smaller economy. And their decision-making has been consistently better and quicker than that of the plodding Russians.

These factors also help explain Israel’s success against Iran. Israel does fight a lot of wars, but that’s because it has a lot of enemies who attack it a lot; other than their slow colonization of the West Bank, Israel has no imperial designs.

Iran, in contrast, is constantly meddling in conflicts all around it, supporting proxy armies in Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Gaza. With Israel, Iran picked on someone who was able to stand up and punch it in the nose. Israel also has superior technology, better command and control, and a more unified, engaged populace.

China is a different beast entirely

But there’s one other important hypothesis for why democracies have tended to win wars — help from the United States. For about as long as democracy has been around, the US was the world’s mightiest economic and technological power, capable of sending game-changing weaponry anywhere in the world.

That didn’t always guarantee victory, obviously — America’s proxies in Vietnam and Afghanistan were so weak that they collapsed even with US supplies. And no country will be successful in war unless it makes plenty of weapons itself — as Ukraine and Israel both do. But it’s undeniable that American assistance has been at least somewhat important for both Ukraine and Israel in their current conflicts.

And that’s a big problem right now. Because the US is no longer the world’s leading economic power — at least, not by any metric that would matter in a war. And whatever remains of its technological leadership is quickly vanishing. For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, it’s an autocracy — China — that commands the greatest resources.

Even if the US hadn’t allowed its defense-industrial base to wither, China would still manufacture as much as America and all of its democratic allies combined:

As for technology, there are still a few areas where America is ahead, such as leading-edge computer chips and aircraft engines. But in most areas of manufacturing and software, China has caught up or almost caught up, including in AI. And in some crucial areas, like batteries and magnets, America has voluntarily forfeited and isn’t even in the race.

That means that if China does choose to fight America, one big traditional advantage of democracies — economic and technological supremacy — won’t exist. Instead, a best-case scenario is that it would be more like World War I before the entry of the US, where Britain, France and Russia found themselves evenly matched against a somewhat autocratic but technologically and economically advanced Germany.

Nor is China likely to rush clumsily into war the way Putin did. In the 20th century, China did get involved in some reckless, stupid wars — in Korea in 1950 and Vietnam in 1979, neither of which it won.

But since then, China has shown extreme caution. Its leaders definitely seem determined to build up overwhelming power before taking Taiwan or other territories in Asia. If the U.S. has to fight China, it will be at a time and place of their choosing, not ours — and they will likely have most of their people unified behind the effort.

This doesn’t mean the democracies would have no advantage against China. The structural problems of autocracies — poor information flow, overcentralization of power, paranoid infighting — all seem present, as Xi Jinping completes his transformation of Deng Xiaoping’s bureaucratic, technocratic system into something closer to a traditional dictatorship.

Xi has already made a ton of mistakes, many of them related to micromanagement — Zero Covid, Belt and Road, the crackdown on IT in 2021, the real estate bust, “wolf warrior” diplomacy, and so on. It’s likely he would micromanage a war as well. Meanwhile, Xi has been purging his top military officers, many of whom he himself appointed, at a stupendous rate, for reasons unknown.

So if China does fight America, it will have some of the same sorts of disadvantages that Russia has with Putin. But it’s far from clear whether these would be enough to overcome China’s massive manufacturing advantage. Democracy is a lot tougher than people give it credit for, but it’s not magic.

Notes

1 Though note that Sparta itself was promptly defeated by Thebes, which had transitioned to democratic rule several years earlier.

2 This is clearly false. The US didn’t just overthrow Saddam with ease; it also defeated Sunni and Shia militias alike, and then defeated ISIS. The regime that the US set up in Saddam’s wake is still in control in Iraq, and is still friendly to the US By every conceivable past and present definition of what it means to “win” a war, the US won the Iraq War.

However, the victory didn’t benefit the US strategically — it diminished America’s geopolitical standing and broke the global norm of non-aggression that the US had championed since World War 2, paving the way for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So the Iraq War is a demonstration of the fact that victory in war isn’t always worth fighting the war in the first place. In contrast, the Afghanistan War was a loss for the US, but Al Qaeda was effectively destroyed, Osama bin Laden and all other 9/11 planners were captured or killed, and the Taliban were neutralized as a strategic threat.

3 PPP is probably better than market exchange rates when comparing economies for military purposes, since most military goods — especially soldiers’ salaries and provisions — are produced domestically rather than acquired on world markets. This is especially true for Iran, which is under international sanctions.

4 This is a key implication of Selectorate Theory, which is popular among political scientists.

asiatimes.com · by Noah Smith · June 21, 2025

15. Pringles cans on drones: Ukraine’s weapons ingenuity takes all forms

Pringles cans on drones: Ukraine’s weapons ingenuity takes all forms

Defense News · by Tom Mutch · June 20, 2025

LYMAN, DONETSK REGION- “I don’t need your f***ing American shells,” Vadim Adamov muttered as he packed the Pringles can full of sulphate and plastic explosive.

It was early 2024, and he had been fighting outside Avdiivka, a small town near the occupied city of Donetsk that had been a major Russian target since the start of the war.

The town had been a nearly impenetrable fortress, and the Russians expended an extraordinary collection of men and armor trying to capture it.

Adamov usually packed explosives into ready-made metal containers, but the unit had run out. So, after finishing snacking on chips from the tubed Pringles can, he got to work re-filling it. And it worked.

With the help of neighboring drone spotting units, Adamov flew the drone into the sky and dropped the Pringles can onto a Russian armored vehicle.

The hit disabled the vehicle, which was then finished off by additional impacts.

The drone Adamov used was a DJI Mavic, which retails for a few thousand dollars. The explosives, meanwhile, cost less than a hundred. Pringles in Ukraine go for about $1.50.

Together, the combination proved capable of destroying armored vehicles that cost hundreds of thousands to manufacture.

Ukrainian troops prepare drones ahead of an operation. (Tom Mutch)

Although Avdiivka would fall just over a month later, Adamov had learned a valuable lesson.

Ukraine could not always rely on its allies, but it could use quick thinking and ingenuity to stifle Russian advances.

SPIDERWEB

When Ukraine smuggled hundreds of drones in container trucks into Russia to destroy strategic bombers and spy planes — a June 1 assault known as Operation Spiderweb — they were carrying out a similar sort of DIY assault, albeit on a scale that shocked the world.

Near the front line in the Ukrainian city of Lyman, drone unit pilots flipped through videos of Russian weapons and armor positions being destroyed.

Another pilot sitting nearby trained on an FPV, or first-person view, drone, strapping the now distinctive goggles onto his face, controller in hand, while maneuvering the drone through various obstacles.

Here, the entire process has been gamified. Rankings are offered, online medals awarded and financial and equipment bonuses doled out for confirmed kills of Russian equipment.

“The best thing to do if you hear one is to play dead,” one drone pilot said, pointing out that many of the platforms navigate through motion sensing.

However, he added with a shrug, if the drone gets that close you are probably dead already.

NECESSITY

In his poem Arithmetic on the Frontier, Rudyard Kipling uses the example of a well-educated, highly trained British imperial civil servant killed in India with a hastily assembled threadbare rifle.

“Two thousand pounds of education,” Kipling wrote, “falls to a ten-rupee jezail.”

Warfare in the 21st century still has much in common with the 19th. When the Ukraine-Russia war began in 2022, drones had already become a fixture of modern warfare.

While variants that were used in more recent operations like the Global War on Terror were behemoths, hobbyists who employed smaller drones for amateur photography soon realized they could be used in scouting missions.

A Ukrainian soldier operates an FPV drone near the front lines. (Tom Mutch)

The platforms showcased their capability early in the war, when they guided Ukrainian artillery onto an enormous Russian armored column in the Kyiv suburb of Brovary.

From there, it didn’t take long for Ukrainians like Vadim Adamov to realize that drones could carry small explosives to be dropped from overhead or flown into an enemy like a Kamikaze.

When U.S. aid temporarily dried up at the end of 2023, necessity became the mother of invention. A subsequent shortage of artillery shells turned Ukrainian attention to the less expensive drone as their centerpiece of defense.

Ukraine produced 2.2 million drones last year. They expect to make as many as 5 million this year. These drones are not just FPVs used for targeting or reconnaissance, but platforms designed for use on land and sea.

A February 2025 conference in central Kyiv, hosted by an organization called BraveOne, showcased the country’s latest in unmanned development.

There, Sasha Rubina, a Kharkiv-born tech designer for Ukrainian Unmanned Technologies, showed off a UGV, or unmanned ground vehicle, that could be driven remotely and carry food or ammunition to soldiers fighting on the front line.

“The idea is that the person controlling it is in a safe place,” Rubina said. “The less soldiers used on the battlefield itself, the more lives we save and protect our medical personnel.”

An engineer installs components in Kyiv region, Ukraine, on Wednesday, February 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

OFFSETTING WEAKNESS

Such innovations continue to be critical as Ukraine pushes to offset battlefield weaknesses elsewhere.

Since the failure of the counteroffensive of summer 2023, the nation’s military has suffered serious manpower shortfalls, especially among its infantry ranks.

The psychological toll of blood, mud and anguish has washed away much of what was once the hope for an inevitable, hard-fought victory. And any cautious optimism that suggested U.S. President Donald Trump would come down hard on Russia has been dashed against the rocks.

With progress at the negotiating table negligible, Ukraine and Russia continue to be locked in a seemingly endless arms race to both produce and upgrade drones and other battlefield technologies.

It is a tech chess game of sorts, each move eliciting a counter.

In one instance, Ukrainian soldiers began carrying jammers capable of cutting live-feed connections between the Russian pilot and drone, a move that would disable the platform mid-flight.

Russians responded by equipping drones with spools of fiber-optic cable less than a millimeter wide, allowing them to withstand jamming efforts.

Now, Ukrainian trenches, buildings and even roads are often covered with physical netting.

ONE STRIKE AT A TIME

Traveling through Ukraine today reveals basements, back garages and commercial printing factories that have been turned into drone-production facilities.

While the cost of premade DJI Mavic drones continues to drop, amateur, yet increasingly innovative technicians, many of them just teenagers, are finding it cheaper to import the individual parts — rotor blades, batteries and cameras — to build themselves.

In many ways, the national drone-production effort appears as the modern-day opposite of the Manhattan Project. Instead of a super weapon, Ukraine is endeavoring to produce millions of tiny explosives to degrade Russian forces one strike at a time.

Whoever masters mass production and deployment of these drones will likely gain the advantage in the war.

“Strike hard who cares — shoot straight who can," Kipling wrote.

“The odds are on the cheaper man.”

Tom Mutch is a Ukraine-based journalist from New Zealand. He is the author of The Dogs of Mariupol, available now.

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Defense News · by Tom Mutch · June 20, 2025

16. Executions, forced labour and starvation persist in North Korea, UN official says

Human rights are not only moral imperative, they are a national security issue. We need to execute a human right upfront approach.

Executions, forced labour and starvation persist in North Korea, UN official says

Increased repression post-pandemic in the isolated country, says human rights expert

Maroosha Muzaffar

Friday 20 June 2025 18:47 BST

Independent · June 20, 2025

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More than a decade after a landmark United Nations report found North Korea guilty of crimes against humanity, many abuses continue, a UN official has said.

James Heenan, who represents the UN high commissioner for human rights in Seoul, said that while North Korea has engaged more with some international bodies, it has tightened control over its population. Mr Heenan said he was still surprised by the continued prevalence of executions, forced labour and reports of starvation in the authoritarian country.

Mr Heenan, who investigated human rights in the isolated state, told Reuters in an interview that “the post-Covid period for DPRK means a period of much greater government control over people’s lives and restrictions on their freedoms”, referring to North Korea’s official name (Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK).

A follow-up UN report by Mr Heenan’s team at the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in DPRK is expected later this year.

North Korea has repeatedly rejected allegations of human rights abuses, claiming that the UN and foreign nations are using such accusations as political tools to undermine its government.

The 2013 UN report into the human rights situation in North Korea stated: “We heard from ordinary people who faced torture and imprisonment for doing nothing more than watching foreign soap operas or holding a religious belief.”

“Women and men who exercised their human right to leave the DPRK and were forcibly repatriated spoke about their experiences of torture, sexual violence, inhumane treatment and arbitrary detention. Family members of persons abducted from the Republic of Korea and Japan described the agony they endured ever since the enforced disappearance of their loved ones at the hands of agents of the DPRK,” said Michael Kirby, the then-chair of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the DPRK.

A 2023 Reuters investigation revealed that during the Covid-19 pandemic, Kim Jong Un focused on constructing an extensive network of walls and fences along the once loosely controlled border with China, later extending similar barriers around Pyongyang.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, first right, in a meeting with Sergei Shoigu, second left, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, in Pyongyang, on 17 June (KCNA)

According to a new report from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, Covid-19 spread in North Korea for over two years before the regime acknowledged its presence in May 2022, mishandling the crisis in ways that restricted basic freedoms and forced much of the population to survive without adequate support.

In March this year, Human Rights Watch and Transitional Justice Working Group claimed Pyongyang implemented excessive and unnecessary measures to tackle Covid that made the “already isolated country even more repressive”.

On Wednesday, SI Analytics, a satellite imagery firm based in Seoul, reported that North Korea is renovating a major prison camp near the Chinese border, while also tightening physical control over inmates.

Mr Heenan said that interviews with over 300 North Korean defectors revealed deep despair, with some even hoping for war to change the situation.

“Sometimes we hear people saying they sort of hope a war breaks out, because that might change things,” he said.

A number of those interviewees will speak publicly for the first time next week as part of an effort to put a human face on the UN findings.

“It’s a rare opportunity to hear from people publicly what they want to say about what’s happening in the DPRK,” Mr Heenan said.

Independent · June 20, 2025

17. US strike on Iran changes everything

I wonder why these pundits do not explain when they think military force is necessary. I think for them every military action is illegal and immoral.

US strike on Iran changes everything - Asia Times

Behind Trump’s display of force lies a deeper strategic unraveling of deterrence, legality and diplomacy

asiatimes.com · by Naina Sharma · June 22, 2025

On June 21, the United States carried out coordinated strikes on three key nuclear sites in Iran at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, marking a dangerous escalation in an already volatile region.

US President Donald Trump declared the operation a success, describing it as a “decisive blow” to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But beneath the display of force lies a deeper strategic unraveling of deterrence, legality and diplomacy. The implications are not just regional; they strike at the foundations of international order.

Since withdrawing from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the US has steadily dismantled the diplomatic architecture meant to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb.

That agreement, brokered under the Obama administration, had imposed limits on enrichment levels, centrifuge capacity and stockpiles while subjecting Iran’s program to the most intrusive international inspections regime in history.

When Trump exited the deal in 2018, there remained a fragile understanding that military strikes would be a last resort, triggered only by the imminent threat of weaponization. That threshold, too, has now been obliterated. The US attack did not respond to an active Iranian assault nor any verified and credible evidence of an impending breakout.

It was a preventive strike,an action taken not against what Iran had done but what it might someday do. In doing so, Washington has helped normalize a dangerous precedent: the use of force against nuclear latency. If left unchallenged, this will become a new standard where mere suspicion or potential capability is sufficient to justify armed intervention.

Such actions make a mockery of international law, as under the UN Charter military action is permissible only in self-defense against an armed attack or with UN Security Council approval. Preemptive war, particularly in the absence of imminent danger, sits well outside those bounds.

Legal scholars and former officials have pointed to the lack of Congressional authorization as yet another red flag. While some key Republican lawmakers were briefed, the broader legislature was bypassed. For a democracy that proclaims its commitment to constitutional checks and balances, the executive branch’s unilateral decision to strike another sovereign nation’s territory risking regional war should be cause for alarm.

What the strike reveals most clearly, however, is the erosion of nuclear deterrence theory itself. Kenneth Waltz, the late realist theorist, famously argued in his 2012 essay “Why Iran Should Get the Bomb” that nuclear weapons stabilize international politics by imposing extreme caution on all sides.

The logic was simple: no state would launch a major war if the cost could be its own destruction. But this only works if the threat is credible. Iran, despite years of enrichment and hardened facilities, still lacks a nuclear weapon. And that is precisely why it could be bombed. Had it crossed the threshold into full deterrent capability like North Korea, it would likely have been spared.

The consequences of this inversion are profound – the global non-proliferation regime, already weakened, now faces a grim paradox: states that forgo the bomb can be attacked, while those that acquire it are tolerated. This does not incentivize restraint; it rewards defiance. It tells every state watching that nuclear ambiguity is a liability, not a buffer, and it pushes them closer to the edge.

Meanwhile, Israel’s role in this escalation has gone largely unexamined in US discourse. For over a week, Israeli jets and missiles pounded Iranian targets with near-total impunity, including strikes on airports and suspected military sites deep inside the country.

The US not only failed to restrain this aggression is now fully aligned with it. The Israeli campaign, undertaken under the pretext of self-defense, has already killed hundreds and widened the scope of the conflict. Yet international condemnation has been sparse, while the US has provided both rhetorical and operational cover.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called the US intervention a “bold decision for all of humanity,” confirming that the strikes were carried out in full coordination with Tel Aviv. But this coordination isn’t mere partnership – it reflects a troubling permissiveness that allows Israel to act with impunity while escalating conflicts that ultimately entangle Washington.

This pattern is not new. From the 1981 Osirak reactor strike in Iraq to recent operations in Syria and Lebanon, Israel has regularly launched unilateral military action under the banner of preemption. But the current episode is different in scale and consequence.

The integration of US firepower into Israel’s campaign now gives this war a global dimension, destabilizing not only Iran but a broader region reaching at least from southern Lebanon to western Iraq.

The risk of broader escalation is now centered on the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s traded oil passes. Iran has placed its Revolutionary Guard naval units on high alert, and though no direct response has occurred yet, just the hint of disruption in the Strait has sent oil prices soaring, with Brent crude rising by over 12% since the initial Israeli strikes began.

The strikes may have delayed Iran’s technical progress by months, perhaps even a year, but the long-term damage is incalculable. Iran is now more likely to accelerate its nuclear program, less likely to negotiate and more inclined to retaliate via asymmetric or regional means. Every calculation that previously constrained escalation – mutual deterrence, global norms, political cost – is now in flux.

The true casualty is not Iran’s nuclear infrastructure but the idea that global security can be managed without resort to force. The US has made clear: those who hesitate are targets while those who cross the nuclear line are immune. That is not a doctrine of peace; it is a blueprint for proliferation.

asiatimes.com · by Naina Sharma · June 22, 2025

18. Latvia bans Russians from buying property, calling it hybrid warfare threat

Latvia bans Russians from buying property, calling it hybrid warfare threat - Euromaidan Press

Latvia banned property sales to Russian and Belarusian citizens after parliament declared such transactions constitute “hybrid warfare” instruments, passing the measure in its conclusive reading 19 June.

by

Maria Tril

20/06/2025

2 minute read

euromaidanpress.com · by Maria Tril · June 20, 2025

Latvia’s parliament has prohibited Russian and Belarusian citizens from purchasing real estate in the country, passing the legislation in its final third reading on 19 June.

The ban extends to companies with more than 25 % ownership by citizens of these countries, according to Latvian Public Media. The law includes specific exemptions for inheritance from relatives and allows permanent residents of Latvia to buy a single dwelling for personal use. Previously completed transactions remain unaffected by the new restrictions.

Parliament classified real estate deals with Russian and Belarusian citizens as threats to national security. The legislation states that property purchases in other countries constitute “one of the instruments of non-military influence and elements of hybrid warfare.” The law also asserts that the presence of Russian citizens has been used by Moscow as a pretext for initiating wars.

The measure represents Latvia’s latest step in restricting economic ties with Russia and Belarus amid ongoing regional tensions. The legislation specifically targets individual ownership while preserving certain humanitarian considerations through its inheritance and permanent residency provisions.

Latvia has implemented several new restrictions targeting Russian and Belarusian citizens in 2025, citing national security concerns. The most significant recent bans include: ban on working in critical infrastructure, restrictions on border crossings, ban on state officials, traveling to Russia and Belarus, entry bans near strategic sites.

euromaidanpress.com · by Maria Tril · June 20, 2025

19. Access Without Troops: The Rise of Private Security in Southeast Asia

Access Without Troops: The Rise of Private Security in Southeast Asia

https://www.stimson.org/2025/access-without-troops-the-rise-of-private-security-in-southeast-asia/

How China uses private military and security companies to protect its investments

By Amara Thiha

Southeast Asia

• June 20, 2025

Introduction

The role of private military and security companies (PMSCs) in Myanmar has come under scrutiny in recent years. But all across Southeast Asia, the growing presence of PMSCs reflects a shift in how states and external actors manage infrastructure protection, logistical continuity, and political risk. These firms, which can provide a wide range of “specialized military and security services,”1 do not necessarily engage in combat in the region but are intended to serve as site protectors and corridor stabilizers for high-value development projects, often operating in areas where state authority is fragmented or under challenge. This model has gained traction, particularly around Chinese-backed infrastructure projects where private security supports Beijing’s strategic goals without formal military deployment.

This trend reflects dynamics consistent with China’s Global Development Initiative (GDI) and Global Security Initiative (GSI), both of which promote infrastructure-led growth and cooperative approaches to stability. Neither strategy explicitly names PMSCs, but their use aligns with Beijing’s emphasis on development-based security. By operating under host countries’ legal frameworks, these firms enable China to ensure project continuity and extend influence while avoiding the optics of direct intervention. This approach serves China’s interest in presenting itself as a pragmatic development partner, projecting stabilization without boots on the ground. Myanmar in particular illustrates how the PMSC model functions under real political pressure—and how new legal frameworks can facilitate their operation.

PMSCs in Action in Myanmar

In Myanmar, China’s growing use of PMSCs has drawn concerns from key stakeholders in the country’s ongoing civil war, including ethnic armed organizations, many of whom perceive foreign-backed private security as reinforcing state-linked development at the expense of local autonomy. Moreover, anti-Chinese sentiment has reportedly intensified in some regions since China’s increased coordination with the military.

Since the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, large portions of the country have been held by resistance forces and ethnic armed organizations. Despite this, major Chinese-backed infrastructure has remained operational, partly due to the informal use of private security arrangements. In 2024, however, Myanmar’s military government enacted the Private Security Services Law, creating a legal pathway for foreign PMSCs to operate domestically.

A New Legal Framework

While the 2024 law provides a formal structure for PMSC operations, there are no specific regulations yet, and observers have raised concerns that the law’s vague provisions and limited transparency may broaden the scope for abuse. Formal licenses have reportedly been granted but not publicly disclosed. So far, access has been effectively limited to Chinese firms with prior ties to Myanmar’s state-owned enterprises, creating a de facto arrangement shaped by longstanding relationships. Although the law permits companies from Russia, India, and elsewhere, no new approvals from these other countries have been announced. Licensed firms must be majority staffed by Myanmar nationals and unaffiliated with foreign militaries, maintaining formal host-state oversight. However, reports such as that published by Human Rights Myanmar in 2025 warn that Chinese-affiliated contractors could indirectly reinforce the Myanmar military’s operational capacity, particularly by enabling redeployments away from infrastructure protection roles.

Chinese infrastructure projects in Kyaukphyu, near Arakan Army-controlled territory, are illustrative of these issues. Chinese PMSCs reportedly submitted project-specific standard operating procedures, which were approved by Myanmar authorities. On this basis, the PMSCs were allowed to rent weapons from the Myanmar military under an interim arrangement, as the 2024 law’s regulatory framework for carrying weapons remains incomplete. This practice maintains the appearance of civilian oversight while providing functional protection to Chinese projects. This arrangement may also relieve the Myanmar military of some direct security burdens, as its forces could be overextended if the Tatmadaw had to defend the port and the surrounding trade infrastructure without outsourced protection. In this context, Chinese PMSCs may enable the junta to conserve military resources and maintain its position in contested areas like Kyaukphyu.

Other Challenges for PMSCs in Myanmar

The scope of PMSC activity in Myanmar remains limited for now. Many Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects have stalled, and the China–Myanmar Economic Corridor has not progressed. According to conversations with local stakeholders familiar with the situation, Chinese personnel reportedly cost five times more than local guards, limiting feasibility for large-scale use. This cost, along with political caution, has limited deployments to a small number of sites tied to older, long-standing projects.

Chinese companies, for their part, have grown more selective when choosing local partners. Past cases involving Myanmar-based private security firms linked to cross-border criminal networks and scam centers have led to reputational risks. Local stakeholders share that Chinese firms are now avoiding partnerships with actors connected to armed groups or illicit economies, reflecting Beijing’s concern with reputational damage.

The new law for PMSCs in Myanmar is likely to gain greater relevance in reconstruction zones. In post-conflict areas governed by ceasefire arrangements, new roads, rail links, and logistics hubs will likely require customized security provisions. The 2024 law creates a basic framework for this, even if full implementation has not yet begun.

Comparisons Across Southeast Asia

Other countries in mainland Southeast Asia are also using private security for infrastructure protection. Informed stakeholders report that Chinese nationals manage many licensed foreign PMSCs in Cambodia through a combination of methods, including direct management, joint ventures, and the use of Cambodian registration or identities, especially in Sihanoukville’s economic zones. In Laos, similar firms protect Chinese investment corridors along the China–Laos railway and in the Golden Triangle region. These deployments often operate under informal arrangements, with little public reporting or national oversight.

Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines have adopted more restrictive approaches, with foreign PMSCs are banned or limited to indirect roles. Even so, investors often turn to local security firms or advisory consultants to ensure project access and continuity. In Thailand and Vietnam, security provision remains firmly under state control, with limited space for foreign-linked entities to operate independently. The preference is to license domestic firms with ties to the police or military, ensuring tighter political oversight. In the Philippines, legal ambiguity persists, but most foreign clients rely on partnerships with local firms that operate under civilian permits or through advisory channels.

The variety of approaches to PMSCs is unsurprising: ASEAN’s long-standing principles of sovereignty and non-interference make regional standard-setting on security matters unlikely. Regulation of PMSCs is a national prerogative, shaped by local legal traditions and political preferences. Yet the functional logic remains consistent across the region: PMSCs help manage physical risk in areas where public enforcement is unreliable or politically constrained.

Myanmar stands out in this regional landscape. Unlike its neighbors, it has created a legal category for foreign PMSCs, though implementation remains narrow and opaque. The Myanmar model appears closer to Cambodia and Laos, where informal arrangements dominate and enforcement is uneven. However, Myanmar’s case is more politically sensitive due to ongoing conflict and international scrutiny. The 2024 law reflects both an effort to formalize foreign protection for key infrastructure and a strategic move to outsource risk in contested zones.

Implications for China in Myanmar

For China, the use of PMSCs reinforces its diplomatic posture, particularly in Myanmar. Beijing engages with both the military and several ethnic armed groups in Myanmar and has recently played a mediating role in northern Myanmar ceasefires, where key trade routes intersect with the China–Myanmar Economic Corridor and Lancang–Mekong Cooperation zones. China believes its ability to maintain project operations through private security in conflict-affected areas, where infrastructure is vulnerable and authority is fragmented, strengthens its position as a conflict mediator. By avoiding direct military involvement and demonstrating a focus on continuity and asset protection rather than political alignment, Beijing seeks to present itself as a pragmatic development partner and a neutral interlocutor.

This posture is becoming contested. While PMSCs may enhance operational continuity and suggest reliability to state actors, ethnic armed organizations and segments of the public in Myanmar increasingly have interpreted China’s moves as signs of partiality, particularly following Beijing’s overt support for the State Administration Council after August 2023. These perceptions have undermined China’s neutrality in the eyes of some local stakeholders, weakening its credibility as an impartial mediator.

Conclusion

As infrastructure development expands across contested regions, PMSCs are likely to remain a critical part of the security equation. They influence how access for countries in charge of the companies is maintained, how presence is sustained, and how external actors engage with political uncertainty. Across Southeast Asia, the regulatory landscape for PMSCs is uneven. The absence of regional standards means that PMSCs operate under highly variable terms, shaped more by national discretion and investor needs than by shared principles.

In Myanmar, the 2024 Private Security Services Law demonstrates how fragile states can formalize private security under domestic control. The state retains legal authority, while foreign actors receive limited, project-specific access. Oversight remains weak, but the framework enables infrastructure protection without formal alliances or foreign troop presence. This marks a shift towards formalized private security provision, but its effects remain uncertain. Some local actors view Chinese-linked PMSCs as reinforcing the military’s presence, which may affect how they perceive Beijing’s broader role in the country. These risks are rapidly evolving and tied to the law’s ongoing implementation. But one thing is certain: Observers of PMSCs will need to keep an eye on Myanmar for a glimpse of how this model may evolve going forward and how private security is shaping the future of influence in Southeast Asia.

Disclaimer: This analysis draws in part on ongoing consultations with local security firms, legal advisors, and prospective joint venture participants in Yangon and Mandalay between February and May 2025. Due to the sensitivity of these discussions, citations of individual conversations are withheld.

20. The Next National Defense Strategy: Mission-Based Force Planning

​Download Frank Hoffman's entire essay here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3342&context=parameters

The Next National Defense Strategy: Mission-Based Force Planning

https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol55/iss2/3/

Authors

Frank G. Hoffman

Abstract

The Pentagon needs to embrace a new methodology called mission-based planning to size and shape the defense enterprise properly. This article critiques several proposals for reestablishing the long-standing two major theater war construct in the face of ongoing shifts in the strategic environment, including the nation’s $36 trillion debt and prospects of annual interest payments beyond $1 trillion. It presents a mission priority alternative focused on strategic prioritization based on the authors’ four decades of experience in strategy/force planning at the service, the department, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense levels. Strategic-level service planners and students of Joint professional military education / top-level schools will better understand the strategic context and key parameters of the internal debate at the Pentagon about the upcoming National Defense Strategy.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.55540/0031-1723.3342

Recommended Citation

Frank G. Hoffman, "The Next National Defense Strategy: Mission-Based Force Planning," Parameters 55, no. 2 (2025), doi:10.55540/0031-1723.3342.

​21. Strategic Narratives to Counter Global Threats

We have to do better.

Download the article here: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3344&context=parameters

Strategic Narratives to Counter Global Threats

https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol55/iss2/5/

Authors

Jerry E. Landrum

Chase Metcalf

Michael M. Posey

Abstract

This article argues that the current National Security Strategy lacks the necessary coherence and fidelity to mobilize collective action against the emerging Russia-China axis. It merges multiple theoretical concepts to assert that the “rules-based order” theme is insufficient for mobilizing public support. Using textual analysis of the strategy compared with publicly available polling to determine levels of popular resonance, the authors find that the “rules-based order emphasis” does not resonate. This study’s conclusions will assist practitioners as they develop an updated National Security Strategy in the new presidential administration.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.55540/0031-1723.3344

Recommended Citation

Jerry E. Landrum, Chase Metcalf & Michael M. Posey, "Strategic Narratives to Counter Global Threats," Parameters 55, no. 2 (2025), doi:10.55540/0031-1723.3344.

22. America's War With Iran

​Except:

These strikes may work out. In the coming days or weeks, Iran may be forced to accept terms favorable to Israel and the United States and the war may quickly end. But the track record of American military interventions in the Middle East and the nature of war over human history shows that American involvement comes with tremendous risk. The best and most durable option for the United States all along was to pursue a diplomatic deal that verifiably restrained Iran’s nuclear program. Unfortunately, after the events of today, that option is much less likely.

America's War With Iran

Foreign Affairs · by More by Ilan Goldenberg · June 22, 2025

America’s War With Iran

What Comes After U.S. Strikes

Ilan Goldenberg

June 22, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump announcing strikes on Iran, Washington, D.C., June 2025 Carlos Barria / Reuters

ILAN GOLDENBERG is Senior Vice President and Chief Policy Officer at J Street. He previously served as Special Advisor on the Middle East to Vice President Kamala Harris and as Iran Team Chief at the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

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The United States has attacked Iran. Just days after suggesting he might delay any American military action for weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump announced on June 21 that U.S. aircraft had struck three Iranian nuclear sites, including the deeply buried facility at Fordow. Iranian officials confirmed that the strikes had taken place. Although Trump insisted that the sites had been “obliterated,” it remains unclear what damage the attacks have done.

It is clear, however, that with this U.S. intervention, the war Israel launched against Iran over a week ago has entered a new phase. Events could turn in several directions. The American attack could indeed lead to Iranian capitulation on terms friendly to Israel and the United States. But it is equally or even more likely to draw the United States deeper into the war with profoundly negative consequences. Iran will almost certainly seek some manner of retribution, perhaps by attacking nearby U.S. bases and potentially killing U.S. soldiers. That could lead to ever widening escalation, with devastating effects for the region and American entanglement in a war that few Americans want.

THE IRANIAN RESPONSE

More than a week into the war, Israel had refrained from striking one of Iran’s most critical nuclear facilities at Fordow—a facility that before the war began had enough enriched uranium and centrifuges to quickly produce material for multiple nuclear weapons. That wasn’t because Israel didn’t want to level Fordow but because it couldn’t. The facility is burrowed so deep underground that only bunker-busting Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs, which the United States has but Israel does not, could destroy the facility. Any hope of making it impossible for Iran to quickly rush to a nuclear weapon required either the destruction of Fordow or an agreement by Iran to disassemble much of the facility. Ultimately, Trump grew impatient with the diplomatic option and chose to foreclose the possibility of a hurried Iranian nuclear breakout by joining the war and bombing facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.

Washington has suggested that it communicated to Tehran that the strikes would mark the extent of American involvement as long as Iran refrained from retaliating. Trump probably hopes that the United States can absorb limited Iranian retaliation and try to stay out of deeper involvement in the war. Such a ploy could work, but it is incredibly risky.

In the aftermath of this strike, Iran’s most likely response will be to attack U.S. bases in the Arabian Peninsula or in Iraq just as Iran did in response to the American strike that killed the Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani in 2020. Under siege from two powerful adversaries, Iran’s leadership may choose to launch a limited number of missiles at U.S. bases, just as it did in 2020. This response would certainly run the risk of killing American forces. U.S. forces could emerge from such an assault mostly unscathed, since the U.S. military has likely already moved many of its troops away from its bases near Iran, while adding extra missile defense assets to defeat an Iranian attack. If American casualties are limited, Trump can repeat the playbook of 2020 and the United States can choose to stand down.

Another possibility, however, is that Iran could launch a much more comprehensive attack against U.S. forces in the Middle East that could result in significant casualties and draw the United States into a protracted war. Iran’s leadership may have learnt the lesson from Trump’s actions earlier this year in Yemen, where he escalated the military campaign against the Houthis only to back off a month later when American attacks failed to show results. Persistence and aggression, Tehran could reason, are the best way to get Trump to back down. Although Israel has significantly degraded Iran’s longer range missile capabilities, it’s unclear what damage has been done to Iran’s stock of shorter range missiles that could reach U.S. bases in Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and elsewhere.

Iran will seek some manner of retribution.

Accidents and miscalculations could make things much worse. Iran could attempt to pursue a more limited missile response but end up stumbling into “catastrophic success” when one missile breaches American defenses and causes much more damage than the Iranians were expecting, in the process drawing the United States deeper into the conflict.

Iran’s other significant retaliatory capability is its fleet of small boats, which when dispersed are difficult to defeat and could start dropping mines in the Strait of Hormuz or attempting suicide bombing attacks against U.S. ships. This course of action could block roughly one third of the world’s oil trade, causing a spike in prices that could set off a global recession. If Iran were to go down this path, only the U.S. navy could reopen the Strait of Hormuz and a significant naval war would ensue, with U.S. ships and planes battling Iranian ships and coastal defenses.

To be sure, Iran would think twice before closing the Strait of Hormuz. The countries that would suffer the most pain from such an action are China—the largest purchaser of Gulf oil—and the Gulf states themselves. Iran’s entire strategy over the past few years has been to build better relations with both China and Gulf countries in order to end its diplomatic isolation. Going after oil shipping would leave Iran very much alone, which is why even now world oil markets view this as a relatively low probability, pricing in only a 10 percent increase in the global oil price since fighting started on June 13.

It is entirely plausible that in the aftermath of these U.S. strikes, the situation does not escalate. Iran could launch a limited number of missiles at U.S. targets that cause few or no casualties. Trump chooses to take the Iranian strikes and ends the cycle of escalation, and Israel, satisfied with the outcomes of the war, also holds back. Given the number of variables, however, much will depend on the wisdom and restraint of Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameini, and the people around them. And that does not bode well in the short or long term.

THE TROUBLES TO COME

In the long term, the outcomes from the decision to strike Iran are hugely uncertain. It is highly implausible that, as some in Israel and the United States hope, these attacks will precipitate the collapse of the Iranian regime. The regime still has the guns and there is no ground force coming to invade Iran and topple the Islamic Republic. This isn’t Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, a country that was ravaged and hollowed out by a decade of civil war before the regime collapsed in December 2024. And even if the conflict and the death of so many senior Iranian officials does by some chance cause the regime to crumble, the instability and violence that would come with it would be unlikely to produce a democracy and could instead lead to a more radical leadership or a dangerous vacuum.

The best-case scenario is that more moderate voices inside the regime such as Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, former President Hassan Rouhani, and others of their reformist ilk win an internal power struggle and conclude that Iran needs to change course. They could insist that the nuclear program and the country’s support for proxies across the Middle East were expensive and misguided boondoggles that have brought only misery to Iran. They would accept a deal similar to the one Hezbollah accepted last fall—a ceasefire on Israeli and American terms.

But Iran is not Hezbollah. It is a country of 90 million people. Its government is likely to be much more resilient. The more likely scenario is akin to what happened to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq after the first Gulf War. What will be left in Iran is a weakened regime, but one that is more radicalized, hostile to the United States, and willing to take risks.

In this scenario, Iran will certainly attempt to obtain a nuclear weapon. Given the blows already delivered to Iran’s program and its resources, it is unclear how long this would take. Saddam failed to develop a bomb in the 1990s, although Iraq’s program did not have nearly the same level of know-how and capacity as Iran’s does today. And with the International Atomic Energy Association unlikely to regain access to Iran and monitor what happens to Iran’s nuclear program in the aftermath of the war, it is possible an Iranian regime could pick up the pieces and get to a bomb in a couple of years. To be sure, American and Israeli intelligence will certainly keep a close eye on developments in any iteration of a postwar Iran.

These attacks will most likely not lead to the collapse of the regime.

Iran may also pursue other means of retribution, including terrorist attacks on American facilities all over the world. These could include targeted assassinations, such as those the Iranians have already attempted since the killing of Soleimani or as Saddam attempted against President George H. W. Bush after the first Gulf War.

Another danger is that with a more desperate and radicalized Iranian regime, its conflict with Israel could go on in perpetuity. As evident in Gaza, Ukraine, and during the first Iran-Iraq war, it’s much easier to start a war than to end one. For months or even years, Iran could regularly send small missile salvos into Israel and Israel could continue with air strikes on Iran. The United States would largely stay out of such a conflict, apart from providing Israel with defensive support. But this war would be horrible for civilians caught in the middle.

For a superpower like the United States, threats from a weak Iran will be manageable but come at a real cost. They will demand a lot of time and attention from senior American leaders as well as military resources and investments in the Middle East that would otherwise be focused on other theaters. They could also carry notable second order effects. In the aftermath of the Gulf War, the large U.S. military footprint in the Middle East became a rallying cry for al-Qaeda and played a role in the events that ultimately led to the 9/11 attacks.

Finally, if the conflict escalates and the United States finds itself drawn further into the war and again bogged down in the Middle East, the American relationship with Israel could greatly change. In the aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq, blaming Israel for encouraging the U.S. intervention was the realm of fringe conspiracy theorists. However, if the United States gets drawn into a war that most Americans do not believe the country should enter, and it goes badly, the American public will justifiably blame Israel. Already, on the American left, Israel’s conduct in Gaza has dramatically reduced support for the U.S.-Israeli alliance, and an intense debate is now happening on the right about U.S. foreign policy, most notably evidenced by the contentious exchange between the political commentator Tucker Carlson and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz about support for Israel and the decision to go to war in Iran.

STACKED ODDS

These strikes may work out. In the coming days or weeks, Iran may be forced to accept terms favorable to Israel and the United States and the war may quickly end. But the track record of American military interventions in the Middle East and the nature of war over human history shows that American involvement comes with tremendous risk. The best and most durable option for the United States all along was to pursue a diplomatic deal that verifiably restrained Iran’s nuclear program. Unfortunately, after the events of today, that option is much less likely.

ILAN GOLDENBERG is Senior Vice President and Chief Policy Officer at J Street. He previously served as Special Advisor on the Middle East to Vice President Kamala Harris and as Iran Team Chief at the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Foreign Affairs · by More by Ilan Goldenberg · June 22, 2025

De Oppresso Liber,

David Maxwell

Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com