But before the sea-going phase of the exercise commenced on January 13, the South African government requested that the Iranians withdraw their active participation from the exercise and become observers instead, a request to which the Iranian acceded.
The South African move was prompted by the realization at this late stage, that diplomatically it did not look good to be aligned with an Iranian regime which by some estimates has now killed 12,000 of its own citizens in anti-government riots. The South Africans also realized that its highly favorable trade position under the African Growth and Opportunity Act was in jeopardy, with the Act is coming before the U.S. House of Representatives this week for its scheduled three-year renewal.
These dangers were already apparent back in September, when The Maritime Executive noted that South African Chief of Staff General Rudzani Maphwanya had visited Tehran to issue an invitation to the exercise, a visit not apparently approved beforehand by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. President Ramaphosa objected to the visit, but did not fire the General for his freelancing in the political arena. Political opponents of the President said at the time that his response was weak, exceedingly so as events have turned out.
Iran is drought-prone; indeed, it is the middle of the most severe drought in 57 years, but that isn’t what is causing the current crisis. It is the logical and foreseeable outcome of decades of environmental neglect and Soviet-style mismanagement that has turned a naturally arid climate into a national emergency.
Iran’s groundwater has been depleted, primarily in an effort to surge agriculture to deal with a booming population. Tehran is sinking at a rate of 25 cm per year as the aquifers collapse. This poses a threat to utilities, subways, and the structural integrity of buildings. It is hard to imagine that the settling hasn't caused leaks in water mains.
To be clear, this is not a Tehran problem; this is an Iran problem. The drought affects the whole country, and 30 of Iran’s 31 provinces are experiencing land subsidence due to unchecked groundwater extraction. //
roggeo
9 hours ago
The Caspian Sea is only about 70 miles from Tehran, and while brackish, it has only about 1/3 the salt of seawater. The Mullahs should have spent their money on desalination plants rather than nuclear weapons, and if I can come to that conclusion in 30 seconds, I bet the Iranian people can as well.
20th Century Ltd roggeo
8 hours ago edited
And guess who the local experts are in water desalination? Yes, the inventor of the reverse osmosis (RO) process - those dastardly Jews in Israel.
Imagine how much it grinds the Mullah's gears to think about that fact. //
Buzzkill59
9 hours ago edited
If I remember correctly,several years ago Israel offered Iran and other countries in the area plans for desalination plants free of charge in the interest of regional peace but Iran and several other Muslim nations refused because they didn’t trust Israel! Now they’re thirsty… //
American by Nature Nashvillian
6 hours ago
Iran's situation reminds me of ancient Ephesus at the time of Saint Paul. Ephesus was a bustling sea port, an important hub of Mediterranean commerce.
One day his preaching caused a riot. Paul was expelled to Rome where he was eventually executed.
The Meander River which meandered through the countryside and through Ephesus to the sea, began depositing mega tons of silt until Ephesus was miles inland and no longer a port city.
Ephesus died.
Iran is dying.
Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh
·
🚨 JUST IN: President Trump wants total peace to break out in the Middle East. He has now called on EVERY country in the region to join the Abraham Accords.
7:33 AM · Aug 7, 2025
So far, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan have endorsed the Abraham Accords. In the next phase of the diplomatic push, President Trump wants the leading Arab Gulf state, Saudi Arabia, to enter the framework agreement. “It’s my fervent hope, wish and even my dream that Saudi Arabia will soon be joining the Abraham Accords.” It will be a special day in the Middle East,” the president said during his visit to Saudi Arabia in mid-May. //
Babak Taghvaee - The Crisis Watch @BabakTaghvaee1
·
#Breaking: The #IRGC intelligence org. of #Iran's Islamic regime has arrested nearly all top #Iranian nuclear scientists who weren’t assassinated by #Mossad. They’re accused of being Israeli spies—simply because Mossad didn’t kill them. Roozbeh Moradi was one of them who was Show more
9:19 AM · Aug 7, 2025
“For decades, Israel has been observing activities inside Iran,” said Dr Efrat Sopher, an Iranian-Israeli analyst who chairs the Ezri Centre for Iran and Gulf States Research at the University of Haifa UK.
“Mossad has played a pivotal role in the success in thwarting the Iranian threat, where its successful operations vis-à-vis Iran and its proxies will be chronicled in the history books.”
Around 03:13 UTC on 21 June (22:13 local time) a flight of US Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker aerial refueling aircraft departed Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma. Operating in two flights of four aircraft, the Stratotankers headed northeast toward Missouri. Those aircraft quickly climbed to the top of Flightradar24’s most tracked flights list—not because thousands of people find aerial refueling aircraft over the central US fascinating, but for the inference of their purpose.
Townhall.com
@townhallcom
·
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President Trump, before leaving the WH for NATO, reacts to the ceasefire being broken last night.
"These guys gotta calm down. It's ridiculous."
7:17 AM · Jun 24, 2025 //
Just an old soldier...
an hour ago
I understand that Trump wants peace. But the enemy gets a vote. If they say no peace, then you should give them what they want. Good and hard, until they beg for peace.
Real GOP 690 Just an old soldier...
35 minutes ago edited
Agree.
"People want peace."
No, they don't. MAGA wants "peace", because the neocons once gave them a sad, and Democrats want "peace" because they have basically been p*ssies since Vietnam, and they oppose anything Trump does.
The problem is that Israel doesn't really want peace with Iran under its current leadership, and Iran certainly doesn't want peace with Israel under any circumstances. Israel wants regime change, and all Iran wants is time. This forced, premature and desperate "ceasefire", engineered by Trump because MAGA was starting to push back, will not hold, because neither Israel nor Iran really gives a shit if Trump's base gets squeamish every time a bomb drops.
WASHINGTON — President Trump announced in a Monday evening post on Truth Social that Israel and Iran have agreed in principle to a cease-fire that would halt what he branded “the 12 Day War.”
“CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERYONE! It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE (in approximately 6 hours from now, when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in progress, final missions!), for 12 hours, at which point the War will be considered, ENDED!” Trump wrote.
“Officially, Iran will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 12th Hour, Israel will start the CEASEFIRE and, upon the 24th Hour, an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR will be saluted by the World. During each CEASEFIRE, the other side will remain PEACEFUL and RESPECTFUL.”. //
“We have to talk to Iran and, of course, Israel about what the future holds … to build a long-term settlement.”
Trump announced the apparent breakthrough hours after Iran lobbed rockets at an American military facility in Qatar in symbolic retribution for Saturday’s US bomb-and-missile attack on three Iranian nuclear sites.
The president said Tehran provided a heads-up in advance of its response and most of the rockets were shot down before reaching their target, the Al Udeid Air Base southwest of Qatar’s capital, Doha.
Satellite images appeared to show scores of trucks lined up at Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility just days before the US carried out its large-scale airstrikes — as speculation swirled that Tehran may have been able to move its uranium stockpiles before the attacks.
The images, released by US defense contractor Maxar Technologies, captured more than a dozen cargo-style trucks lined up outside the Fordow nuclear enrichment site’s tunnel entrance on Thursday and Friday.
The vehicles, which came and went over a 24-hour stretch, appeared to move unidentified contents roughly half a mile away, the Free Press reported, citing US officials.
Case uncovered: How Iranian intelligence duped a yeshiva student into spying on Israel
Elimelech Stern, a Hasidic man from Beit Shemesh, bought a phone to trade crypto; a message from 'Anna' drew him into espionage for a hostile power; living a double life, he feared being used for assassinations and begged for help—outside the law
What we said to the Iranians is we do not want war with Iran, we actually want peace. But we want peace in the context of them not having a nuclear weapons program. And that's exactly what the president accomplished last night. I really think there are two big questions for the Iranians here. Are they going to attack American troops, or are they going to continue with their nuclear weapons program? And if they leave American troops out of it, and they decide to give up their nuclear weapons program, once and for all, then I think the president has been very clear. We can have a good relationship with the Iranians. We can have a peaceful situation in that region of the world. //
we negotiated aggressively with the Iranians to try to find a peaceful settlement to this conflict. It was only when the president decided that the Iranians were not negotiating in good faith, that he took this action. He didn't take it lightly, but I actually think if provides an opportunity to reset this relationship, reset these negotiations, and get us in a place where Iran can decide not to be a threat to its neighbors, not to be a threat to the United States, and if they're willing to do that, the United States is all ears.
In the early hours of the war, it was reported that dozens of top Iranian military leaders were taken out in a single strike, and how that strike came to be is just as incredible as the result. According to a new report, the subterfuge used to get all those IRGC generals into a single bunker is like something right out of a spy novel.
Amit Segal told the Call Me Back podcast on Monday: “What Israel did was create a fake phone call for 20 members of the air force senior staff an calling them to a specific bunker in Tehran.”
This meant there was no one to give the order to fire the initial salvo of 1,000 ballistic missiles as Iran had previously threatened to do, he added.
) The added bonus for the Israelis was that Iranian military leadership was essentially crippled from the moment of Israel’s first strike against the world’s top sponsor of terrorism.
As The Chronicle reported, Mossad had used “falsified communications through Iranian channels” to call the meeting — which successfully lured “the entire senior leadership of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force, including Commander General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, his deputies, and key technical personnel, into a fortified bunker outside Tehran.”
Mossad, Israel's intelligence service, infiltrated Iranian backchannels and then placed 20 different fake phone calls to IRGC leaders. Those calls instructed them to all meet a reinforced bunker in Tehran, an order none of them questioned. It's safe to speculate that Mossad agents were on the ground to confirm their arrival, and shortly after, the entire place was blown sky-high. //
How did that happen? The answer lies in how antiquated and authoritarian Iran's military structure was and remains. When you serve at the behest of an Islamic dictator who tortures and kills people who step out of line, you aren't exactly in a position to question an order. When the calls came in to head to the bunker, wondering if things seemed a little suspicious wasn't an option. So all the generals blindly listened.
But weren't there just other leaders ready to step up and carry out the Mullahs' decrees? Not really. Unlike the U.S. military structure, where junior officers are trained and placed in a defined, highly redundant chain of command, Iran's top brass were insular loyalists. With them out of the way, chaos ensued.
Dieter Schultz NtxTwenty6
9 minutes ago
There is little reason to accept the increased risk of a non stealth (non bomber), turbo prop aircraft like a C-130.
As someone has pointed out here, as long as we have undisputed, and unchallenged, control of the Iranian skies it doesn't matter whether we use a B-2 stealth aircraft or a C-130.
It may be more esthetically pleasing to use a B-2 but using a C-130 has one thing that using the B-2 can never have... the deniability that the US conducted the mission.
The implication isn't exactly subtle. Iran is now claiming it has a nuclear weapon to launch at Israel or U.S. positions in the Middle East. What that actually amounts to is a pretty big question, and there are two ways to look at this.
Firstly, I think you have to take this seriously. When a nation led by Islamist lunatics says they are going to launch a nuke, that's not something you can just write off as rhetoric. No doubt, Israeli and American forces are on high alert, and all possible countermeasures are ready to be used.
This does seem to put to bed the idea claimed by isolationists that the entire case against Iran is manufactured and that they had no intention of developing a nuclear weapon. As the vice president, who is the furthest thing from a warhawk, explained on Tuesday, the intelligence they've seen is clear, and even if it weren't, there is no other reasonable explanation for the levels of enrichment Iran has sought and achieved. //
What we do know is that given this latest threat, there's no way this war can end with a negotiated settlement that allows Iran to keep its nuclear program. That has to be completely off the table at this point, and all indications from President Donald Trump are that it is. The job must be finished, and Iran's nuclear threat taken off the board for good. //
Ashram, the Black Knight
3 hours ago edited
Gee, didn't Iran claim that their interests in nuclear research didn't include the development of a weapon because it was against their religion?
Now they are basically admitting that was a lie.
How surprising.
The poll, which was prepared by GrayHouse for the Senate Republican Committee, showed MAGA far from being fractured, with a staggering 80 percent of Trump voters voicing their support for the U.S. providing Israel with offensive weapons in its efforts to destroy Iran's military and nuclear capabilities.
That's not all. Poll results show that 83 percent of Trump voters support the strikes on Iran's nuclear program, with 72 percent supporting the U.S. taking "direct military action" to prevent Tehran from developing its nuclear capabilities. //
Perhaps the most telling bit of information to emerge from this new poll is how MAGA feels about relying on diplomatic efforts to resolve the escalating conflict. In short, they're against it, with 73 percent stating they don't trust Tehran to keep their end of any diplomatic deal. This is the number that shatters the narrative that one side of MAGA supports diplomacy while the other side is in favor of military action. MAGA, it seems, is united in its determination that ensure that Iran does not develop and use nukes, and they're behind the president taking all necessary action to stop them. The schism that some X users love to talk about simply doesn't exist.
Bret Baier @BretBaier
·
Israeli Prime Minister @netanyahu on intel of Iranian attempts to assassinate President @realDonaldTrump-- "he's enemy number one.." and on when he let President Trump know of the plans for launching the strikes #FoxNews #SpecialReport #Israel
12:17 PM · Jun 15, 2025. //
Netanyahu said his country was facing an "imminent threat" of nuclear destruction and was left with no choice but to act aggressively in the "12th hour."
"We were facing an imminent threat, a dual existential threat," he said.
"One, the threat of Iran rushing to weaponize their enriched uranium to make atomic bombs with a specific and declared intent to destroy us. Second, a rush to increase their ballistic missile arsenal to the capacity that they would have 3,600 weapons a year…. Within three years, 10,000 ballistic missiles, each one weighing a ton, coming in at mach 6, right into our cities, as you saw today… and then in 26 years, 20,000 [missiles]. No country can sustain that, and certainly not a country the size of Israel, so we had to act."
Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 @MarinaMedvin
·
Axios is reporting that Netanyahu and Trump pulled off a great deception as part of Israel’s preparation to strike Iran. If true, this would go down in history books.
7:35 AM · Jun 13, 2025. //
That seemed to be confirmed when the president put out the following post, which mirrored a longer post that slammed Iran for not taking the deal he put on the table.
Note: This is not the troll I'm talking about in the headline. That's coming next.
TRUMP: Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb, and we are hoping to get back to the negotiating table. We will see. There are several people in leadership that will not be coming back. //
Dallas
13 hours ago
Israel put the "dead" in deadline. Kudos //
TXavatar
13 hours ago
Reminds me of Bruce Willis’ great line in The 5th Element-
“Anybody else want to negotiate?”
AG
@AGHamilton29
Reminder that on April 12th, Trump publicly gave the Islamic Republic 60 days to seriously come to the table on dismantling their nuclear program or face military consequences.
Today was day 61….
The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a confidential report circulated to member states that Iran had grown its stockpile of 60%-enriched uranium to 408.6 kilograms from 274.8 kilograms in early February, an increase of around 50%. The Wall Street Journal viewed a copy of the report.
That means Iran has enough highly enriched uranium for roughly 10 nuclear weapons, based on IAEA measures of the minimum fissile material required, up from at least six at the time of the last report.
U.S. officials say it could take Iran less than two weeks to convert this highly enriched uranium into enough weapons-grade 90% fissile material for a nuclear weapon. //
anon-eruj
9 hours ago
They're not lying about peaceful use. You just have to understand what peace means to them. Once they kill all the jews and trigger Armageddon, the 12th imam will return and there will be world peace.
Eric Daugherty
@EricLDaugh
·
Follow
🚨 BREAKING: Trump just confirmed he told Israel to not attack Iran.
REPORTER: Did you warn PM Netanyahu against taking action against Iran?
TRUMP: "Well...yes, I did."
"I did. Yeah."
"I said, I don't think it's appropriate right now."
PRESIDENT OF PEACE.
1:15 PM · May 28, 2025. //
There have been indications, as recently as last week, that Israel may be planning an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.
The US has obtained new intelligence suggesting that Israel is making preparations to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, even as the Trump administration has been pursuing a diplomatic deal with Tehran, multiple US officials familiar with the latest intelligence told CNN.
The history of Western nations making deals with Iran has not been a happy one.
There are as yet no details as to what's on offer, but we can assume there are both carrot and stick elements, and it's a safe bet that there won't be any late-night deliveries into Tehran of pallets loaded with American currency. //
"They are at the threshold of a nuclear weapon. If they decided to do so, they could do so very quickly. If they stockpile enough of that 60 percent enriched, they could very quickly turn it into 90 and weaponize it. That's the danger we face right now. That's the urgency here," he said.
Here's the thing, and I'm going to tell you: "Weaponizing" a nuclear device is generally used to mean putting it in an air-droppable bomb or making it fit on a missile. Iran doesn't have to do that, and Secretary Rubio, the president and the Pentagon certainly know this. All they have to do is assemble a device that goes "boom" when torched off, load it into an old tramp freighter with a skeleton suicide crew - these kinds of useful idiots are common enough in that part of the world - sail it into a darkened harbor some night and set it off. The target might be Haifa or Tel Aviv, or it might be New York. //
Whatever deal is struck, there is one thing we can rely on utterly, as long as Iran's current theocracy is in place: Whatever they agree to, they will lie about it. If they offer to stop enriching uranium, they will just try to move their enrichment facilities out of sight. If they agree to stop trying to produce a bomb, they will keep trying, but their efforts will be moved to some cave in the Alborz Mountains. Whatever they agree to, they will harbor no notions of actually keeping the agreement.
That's what they have done since 1979. That's what they always will do, as long as the mullahs are running Iran.