Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged' — Iran FM spox Esmaeil Baghaei
From Hezbollah through Syria to the Houthis in Yemen the Israeli Air Force hammered the tentacles of the Islamic Revolutionary octopus and established air superiority over Iranian airspace in the first 72 hours of air operations. A lion rose and roared throughout the middle east.
Tehran must understand that as far as the United States is concerned nothing has changed. Iran must give up its nuclear strategic assets or face continued air operations.
Trump won’t call Israel back if Tehran backs out of nuclear talks with DC, or breaks the ceasefire with Jerusalem again. If DC gains intelligence that Iran is trying to mate a warhead we’ll be back at it.
The fragile ceasefire currently in place is based on the same progression as Israel’s war with Hamas. Except the Ayatollah threatens to hold the world captive in a tactical nuclear hostage crisis.
The CIA, forint partner assessments, and the IAEA, pooled intelligence rapidly that contested the preliminary low-confidence DIA’s snapshot leaked to a CNN investigator. The airstrikes had severely degraded Iran’s nuclear capabilities, with setbacks measured in years, rather than in the months window of the DIA leak assessment.
Classification is put in place to prevent opsec or diplomatic exposure. Evidence shows the agency conveyed it was a one-day snapshot lacking coordinated interagency corroboration. Leaking unvetted material posed clear national security and reputational risks at a national level, compounded by strategic risk scenarios activated by Iran’s nuclear posture.
After 36 hours of dangerous flight through enemy territory, US elite pilots returned from one the most raw displays of US precision engineered capability sets, previously unseen in combat and most of it unknown and unmatched in the world.
It’s never be a good moment to contradict the actions of the United States’ Commander in Chief with bad intel, when we’re all facing strategic consequences downstream. CNN corrected the record in its subsequent reporting.
70% of Iranians who strongly prefer secular governance according an Interior Ministry survey leaked in 2023, and other surveys. If the global community can agree that a theocracy such as Iran cannot pose strategic threats in the Gulf and globally, then concerted focus may be placed on them and their future.
That sort of international coordinationp at the Security Council is on the table. The international community has the authority within the Security Council to adopt a resolution invoking Article VII to form an international contact group for peaceful rights groups inside Iran. America is not just waving a big stick. It’s making offers and it always does.
But China invoked Resolution 487—passed in 1981 by every Security‑Council member, including the United States, in a vote to condemn Israel’s preventive strike on Iraq’s Osiraq reactor—to condemn the United States.
Instead it should come together to help the international community stabilize Iran for the Iranian people. It claims to be a champion of humanitarian rights. Do one thing to demonstrate that Xi Jinglin.
If 70% want Ali Khamenei out, then retire him from Supreme Leader and adopt an interim government protected by the Artesh. The Revolutionary Guards corp can support the security for an interim government under the conventional forces’ protection. That cooperation is a given of the parties agree on operational guidelines.
China can change its approach in return for guarantees on its $400 billion 25 year strategic energy deal signed in 2021. An Iranian state apparatus under an interim government can uphold international agreements.
Retire Ali Khamenei by formally separating the clerical regime from governance. He is a wicked man and has brought ruin upon millions of lives in Israel, across the region, and to his own people.
This can continue peacefully within Iran, but not in command of strategic weapons.
All the great clans and tribesmen’s elders, as appointed local representatives, can agree that secession is strictly forbidden, and that security cooperation through the Artesh continues smoothly.
People need to be able talk about their future and be heard—by each other, and by the world. Elections among representatives must determine the transition’s political composition in cooperative steps. Not a minority of theocrats or a dominant proxy of technocrats
With UN security council support for separation of clerics and state, the Ayatollah may be compelled let his people speak, and to step down as a cultural figure with clerics playing adjudicative roles among their 30% adherents. Religious courts can maintain jurisdiction over non-criminal matters among the Shia community. The state architecture is already robust to support secular governance.
But consider who needs to support this peaceful transition: China and Russia. That’s a pipe dream. Iran could be free, but major powers resist empowering the legitimate representatives of over 70 percent of the country. They choose to prop up a dangerous nuclear proliferator instead. They support the Ayatollah.
An Israeli military exercise will take place today (Thursday) from morning until afternoon in the Jordan Valley and Jezreel Valley regions.
There is no fear of a security incident.
The End, for now.
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