After Ted Cruz's humiliation by Tucker Carlson, attention has focused on a top staffer of the self-proclaimed "leading defender of Israel in the United States Senate."

On June 18, former Fox host Tucker Carlson published a video which, though marketed as an interview, was more of a snuff film. Over the course of two hours, Carlson can be seen rhetorically disemboweling his debate opponent, US Senator Ted Cruz, on the politician's determination to see the US attack Iran on Israel's behalf.

While Cruz presents himself as a Christian Zionist moved by his own zealotry to support Israel, the politician's Tel Aviv-driven policy line can also be traced back to his Senior Advisor for Policy and Communications, an Israeli-born Zionist lobbyist named Omri Ceren.

They came. They bunker-busted. They fled.

And then they set the stage to control the narrative via a massive P.R. operation.

POTUS hailed the "spectacular" victory of B-2s flying from the US to West Asia to release MOPs ("Massive Ordnance Penetrators) over Fordow in the middle of the night of June 22 (significantly, the same date of the start of Operation Barbarossa in 1941).

Trump 2.0 functionaries gloated that the Iranian nuclear program was now gone.

That's the reality show. Now for reality. Mannan Raisi, a member of the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) from the holy city of Qom, summed it all up: "Contrary to the statements of the lying US President, the nuclear facilities at Fordow were not seriously damaged. Only the above-ground structures, which can be restored, were destroyed. In addition, everything that could pose a danger to the population was evacuated in advance. There are no reports of any nuclear emissions. Trump's false claims about the 'destruction of Fordow' are refuted by the fact that the attacks were so superficial that there were not even any fatalities at the facility."

What really matters is that the Empire of Chaos, in a single - spectacularly criminal - raid, bunker-busted the UN charter (again); international law (again); the NPT (perhaps for good); the US constitution; the "international community"; and Trump's own MAGA base.

The Global South is now doing the math - and drawing the necessary conclusions."Peace through strength" POTUS now owns two wars; a genocide; and an unprovoked attack by a nuclear superpower on behalf of a nuclear power against a non-nuclear power.

The IRGC's response was swift: the real war starts now. The Zionist axis will pay - in spades. It will not be a full-scale war against the Empire: that's supremely un-strategic. What will develop is multi-layered death by a thousand cuts.

That was already in effect in the morning of June 23. Iran launched no less than five multi-directional waves of missiles - covering the whole of Israel, including new targets such as Ashdod port and power station. The Israeli interception rate fell below 50%. All hell broke loose - from alert siren malfunctions to power outages. Knesset members fled. An El Al rescue flight from New York was forced to turn back in mid-air when missiles started flying.

The message: the whole of Israel is now a legitimate target - reached within minutes by Kheybar-Shakan, Emad, Qadr, and Fattah-1 missiles.

U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that Israel and Iran had agreed to a "complete and total ceasefire" soon after Iran launched a limited missile attack Monday on a U.S. military base in Qatar, retaliating for the American bombing of its nuclear sites. Israel and Iran did not immediately acknowledge any ceasefire and heavy Israeli strikes continued in Tehran and other cities early Tuesday.

Trump posted on Truth Social that the 24-hour phased-in ceasefire will begin at approximately midnight Tuesday eastern time, giving the two countries six hours to have "wound down and completed their in progress, final missions." He said it would bring an "Official END" to the war.

The Israeli military declined to comment on Trump's statement and the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. There was also no immediate comment from Iran.

Iran's U.N. mission also declined to comment on Trump's ceasefire post, and the Israeli mission said it had no immediate comment.

Bullion has gained in prominence as central banks increasingly seek to diversify reserve assets.

Gold has overtaken the euro to become the world's second-largest reserve asset by market value, according to the European Central Bank. The ECB attributes the shift to record central bank purchases and rising geopolitical tensions.

Central banks increased their gold holdings by more than 1,000 tonnes in 2024 - twice the average annual amount seen in the previous decade - bringing total official holdings to 36,000 tonnes, close to the 1965 peak during the Bretton Woods era, according to the ECB.

"This stockpile, together with high prices, made gold the second-largest global reserve asset at market prices in 2024 - after the US dollar," the ECB said on Wednesday in its annual review of the international role of the euro.

By market value, gold accounted for 20% of global official reserves at the end of 2024, ahead of the euro at 16%. The price of gold surged nearly 30% in 2024, hitting record highs above $3,500 per troy ounce, significantly boosting its share in reserve portfolios.

The ECB found that "two-thirds of central banks invested in gold for purposes of diversification, while two-fifths did so as protection against geopolitical risk." Many of the largest buyers were emerging economies, particularly those geopolitically less aligned with the West.

On June 13th, the Zionist entity carried out an unprovoked, criminal military strike on Iran. While its impact was limited, with Tehran's counterattack far more devastating, Israel's targeted assassination of a number of Iranian nuclear scientists indicates Tel Aviv knew their identities and locations with some precision. Coincidentally, a day prior to the entity's broadside, Press TV published documents indicating the International Atomic Energy Agency previously provided Israeli intelligence the names of several Iranian nuclear scientists, who were subsequently killed.

Other documents indicate IAEA chief Rafael Grossi enjoys a close, clandestine relationship with Israeli officials, and has frequently acted upon their orders. The files are part of a wider trove obtained by Iran's Intelligence Ministry, containing unprecedented insights into Tel Aviv's secret, illegal nuclear weapons capability, and its relationships with Europe, the US and other countries, among other bombshell material. The tranche could well shed further light on the IAEA's brazen, murderous collusion with the entity.
Further reinforcing interpretations the IAEA assisted Israel's June 13th strike on Iran, a day prior, the Association's Board of Governors declared Tehran "in breach of its non-proliferation obligations." The basis for this finding, which provided Tel Aviv with a propaganda pretext for its illegal attack, was an IAEA report published two weeks prior. The document provided no new information - its dubious charges related "to activities dating back decades" at three sites where allegedly, until the early 2000s, "undeclared nuclear material" was handled.

Under the terms of Tehran's July 2015 deal with the Obama administration, for years the IAEA was granted sweeping access to Iran's nuclear complexes, to ensure the Islamic Republic was not using the facilities to develop nuclear weapons. Association inspectors collected vast amounts of information on and within the sites, including surveillance camera photos, measurement data, and documents. The question of whether this yield was shared with the Zionist entity, and in any way assisted its June 13th strike, is an open and obvious one.

With the "12 day war" between Iran, Israel, and its Western puppet masters now over, US President Donald Trump has expressed optimism he can both broker peace between Tehran and the Zionist entity, and finalise a new nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic. Both outcomes seem highly implausible. At the very least, there is little chance of IAEA inspectors being permitted anywhere near Iran's nuclear sites ever again, given the Association's intimate covert relationship with officials in Tel Aviv, and complicity in its attacks old and potentially new.

It behooves states the world over - particularly those in the crosshairs of the Empire, and its assorted proxies and puppets - to think twice before granting entry to representatives not merely of the IAEA, but a panoply of supposedly neutral, international, intergovernmental organisations. Especially if they seek access to sensitive information and installations. It is almost inevitable any intelligence gleaned from such operations will be shared, to the immense detriment of the countries and governments that have allowed these entities access to their soil.

The IAEA Board's 'Non-Compliance' Resolution on 12 June 2025 was the planned precursor for Israel's 'bolt from the blue' strike on Iran the next day. Israelis say the plan to go to war with Iran was grounded in 'the opportunity' to strike, and not the intelligence that Iran was speeding towards a bomb (that was the peg for war).

The sudden claim of Iran being very close to a bomb (that seemingly jumped out of 'nowhere' to leave Americans puzzling how could it happen that - in the blink of eye, we are going to war - was subsequently refuted by IAEA Chief Grossi to CNN on 17 June (but only after the abrupt attack on Iran already had taken place):

"We did not have any evidence of a systematic effort [by Iran] to move to a nuclear weapon", Grossi confirmed on CNN.
This statement drew the following riposte from Iran by its Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Esmaeil Baqaei on 19 June:

"This is too late, Mr. Grossi - you obscured this truth in your absolutely biased report that was instrumentalized by E3/U.S. to craft a resolution with baseless allegation of [Iranian] 'non-compliance'; the same resolution was then utilized, as a final pretext, by a genocidal warmongering regime to wage a war of aggression on Iran and to launch an unlawful attack on our peaceful nuclear facilities. Do you know how many innocent Iranians have been killed/maimed as a result of this criminal war? You turned IAEA into a tool of convenience for non-NPT members to deprive NPT members of their basic right under Article 4. Any clear conscience?!".

To which Dr Ali Larijani, Advisor to the Supreme Leader, added:

"When the war ends, we will hold the director of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, accountable".

What they are saying:

The Russian Foreign Ministry's Statement, in relation to the escalation of the Iranian-Israeli conflict -

"It was precisely these "sympathisers" [EU3] who exerted pressure on the leadership of the [IAEA] Agency to prepare a controversial "comprehensive assessment" of Iran's nuclear programme, the flaws of which were subsequently exploited to push through a biased anti-Iran resolution at the IAEA Board of Governors on 12 June [2025]. This resolution effectively provided a green light to actions by West Jerusalem, leading to tragedy" [i.e. to the sneak attack on the immediate day after, 13 June].

Behind the scenes:

The underpinnings to the 12 June 2025 IAEA Resolution - giving pretext for Israel to strike Iran (and crafted to sway President Trump to dismiss his own Director of National Intelligence's warnings that there was no evidence of Iran moving towards weaponisation) - reportedly were drawn not from Mossad or other western intelligence services, but from IAEA software. As DD Geo-politics outlines, since 2015, the IAEA has relied on Palantir's Mosaic platform, a $50-million AI system that sifts through millions of data points - satellite imagery, social media, personnel logs - to predict nuclear threats:

"Iran's stockpile [of enriched uranium] had been growing steadily for months — yet the narrative of an imminent breakthrough surged only after the IAEA's censure on June 6, 2025. That resolution, adopted 19-3, provided Israel the diplomatic cover it needed. Palantir's Mosaic platform played a critical role in this pivot. Its data shaped the May 31 report, flagging anomalies at Fordow and Lavisan-Shian, and recycling prior allegations from Turquzabad — despite years-old Iranian denials and sabotage ... Mosaic was conceived originally to identify insurgent activity in Iraq and Afghanistan".

Its algorithm looks to identify and infer 'hostile intent' from indirect indicators - metadata, behavioral patterns, signal traffic - not from confirmed evidence. In other words, it postulates what suspects may be thinking, or planning. On 12 June, Iran leaked documents, which it claimed showed IAEA chief Rafael Grossi sharing Mosaic outputs with Israel. By 2018, Mosaic had processed more than 400 million discrete data objects and had helped impute suspicion to over 60 Iranian sites such as to justify unannounced IAEA inspections of those sites, under the JCPOA. These outputs, though dependent largely on the algorithmic equations, were incorporated into formal IAEA safeguard reports and were widely accepted by UN member states and non-proliferation regimes as credible, evidence-based assessments. Mosaic however is not a passive system. It is trained to infer from its algorithm hostile intent, but when repurposed for nuclear oversight, its equations risk translating simple correlation into malicious intent.


What leading Israeli commentators are saying:

Leading Israeli centre-right commentator, Ben Caspit (Ma'ariv):

"Was Iran's 'breakthrough' to the nuclear weapon actually detected? Probably not. Was the [Supreme] Leader's "order" to achieve a military nuclear weapon actually given? Probably not. So why did we go to war? Because there was no choice. They were promoting an Israeli annihilation plan and we had no choice... October 7: A cold shower woke up an entire country. All those involved need to understand that anyone who contemplates our destruction will be destroyed. Eyes on the ball and a bullet between the eyes ... From now on, every move one of our enemies makes somewhere must be followed by action. Every snake's head that rises must be beheaded ... And there is something else: the rare and one-time historical window of opportunity that suddenly opened before us ... All of this made the decision to go to this war the right one ... Netanyahu is currently in euphoria".

Israeli commentator, Nahum Barnea (Yedioth Ahoronot):

"The decision to start a war was all Netanyahu's. And here he is, deciding and responsible: all the credit is his. Trump gave Israel the green light to start a war, provided that it does not present America as a partner and responsible. The Trump method does not distinguish between Zelensky's Ukraine and Khamenei's Iran: humiliation along the way is the guarantee of an agreement in the end".

Israeli & NY Times commentator, Ronan Bergman (Yedioth Ahoronot):

"The need for the series of assassinations last week first emerged as a thought last September, among senior officials in Unit 8200, the research division in the Intelligence Directorate, the Mossad, and other parts of the system. The trigger was the defeat inflicted by the IDF on Hezbollah, followed by the successful attack on Iran and the destruction of its air defence system in October, followed in December by the collapse of the Assad regime in Damascus and the destruction of its air defence system by the IDF. The sequence of events led many senior Israeli officials to believe that an unprecedented opportunity had arisen, a window of a lifetime, to attack Iran... And so the beheading forum, which decided the fates of scientists thousands of miles away, sat down and decided who would be ranked at level A - the highest importance - and who at levels B, C or D - the lowest".

Big Picture:

Seemingly, Trump had been convinced by Netanyahu, Ron Dermer and CENTOM's General Kurilla (Politico reports that Kurilla was instrumental in persuading Trump that DNI Tulsi Gabbard was wrong in her assessment that Iran had 'no bomb'). Trump sided with the Israelis, asserting that Iran was "very close" to having a bomb, and added that he 'didn't care what she [Gabbard] thinks'. Trump did speculate out loud - the day before the sneak 13 June - that an Israeli attack (on Iran) "could speed [up] a deal". There is little doubt that Syria's unexpectedly sudden 'fall' galvanized the neo-cons to imagine they might quickly repeat the exercise in Iran. This is why, too, so much emphasis is being laid on assassinating the Supreme Leader. When Iran did not collapse; when the Iranian system rebooted itself unexpectedly swiftly; and when Iran's retaliatory strikes on Israel began, the pro-Israeli bloc panicked and exerted tremendous pressure on Trump for the U.S. to enter the war on Israel's behalf.

This left Trump facing a terrible dilemma - having to choose between the sirens, Scylla and Charybdis - either to alienate his MAGA support base (who voted for him precisely to prevent the U.S. joining another forever war (thus likely causing a GOP loss at the next midterms)), or to alienate his ultra-rich Jewish donors (such as Miriam Adelson, whose money holds sway over Congress, and whose resources are harnessed by the Deep State to pursue mutual interests with the Israeli-Firsters), who would turn against him.

Shades of Iraq and the Colin Powell role...

The 2006 book Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran was among the first to document up close the chaos of post-Saddam Iraq and the attempt of American and coalition forces to hold the country together, and settle in for the 'forever' war and occupation.

Chandrasekaran observed that Bush's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) government, which ruled from Baghdad under Paul Bremer, was filled with young American officials who in many instances had never been out of the United States. Astoundingly, and illustrating the utter blind hubris of Bush's 'nation-building' project, young State Department personnel were being sent to Iraq, where they would make fateful decisions over the future of the country and its day-to-day running, yet some were receiving US passports for the first time in their lives.

Further, so-called country 'experts' often couldn't so much as speak a traveler's level of Arabic, and officials had little clue what historical and doctrinal differences separated Sunni from Shia. Such ignorance while overseeing the destruction of an entire ancient society continues at the highest levels of US government. And now we are about to Iraq Iran.

Tehran says Rafael Grossi's "biased report" has helped justify Israel's attack.

Iran has accused International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi of distorting facts in a past report that led to Israel's military strike on Tehran's nuclear facilities, calling it a betrayal of the agency's mandate.

In a statement posted on X on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei accused Grossi of issuing a "biased report" that was used by the US and three European countries to pass a resolution with "baseless allegations of non-compliance."

In a report earlier this month, Grossi stated that "Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon state in the world that is producing and accumulating uranium enriched to 60%."

However, in an interview with CNN on Tuesday, the IAEA chief said UN inspectors have not found any evidence that Iran was undertaking "a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon."

Iranians have a lot of old scores to settle and Israel and NATO leave them no choice but to exact the most fearsome price, Declan Hayes writes.

What we are doing here is historic - we are changing the face of the Middle East.
~ IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir

Although the IDF are changing the face of the Middle East, they are also changing the global rules of war, as well as the laws of God and man to achieve their aims and none of that is good for any of us.

In one of their recent spectaculars, the IDF blew up a television station in downtown Tehran, an outrage that made global headlines because the Iranian lady who had been reading the news at the time maintained a traditionally stiff upper British lip as the building came crashing down around her ears and those of her colleagues. Not only was Israeli warlord Netanyahu quick off the mark cackling that an important tentacle of the Iranian "regime" had been hit, but he was preempted by Sky News Australia's Sharri Markson, who likewise cackled that the attack had cripped Iran's propaganda arm.

US Vice President J.D. Vance does not support his country's involvement in the conflict between Israel and Iran, Reuters has reported, citing two informed sources.

A Reuters article revealing his stance came out on Saturday, hours before US President Donald Trump ordered strikes on Iran's Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan nuclear sites.

According to the sources, Vance made his opinion clear during a "tense" phone call between Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials from Washington and West Jerusalem on Thursday.

Netanyahu and his associates used the exchange to try to persuade the US president to give up on the two-week deadline that he had given to Tehran to reach a deal on the country's nuclear program and immediately take part in the Israeli attacks on Iran, the report read. The Israelis argued that there is only a limited window of opportunity to use the American bunker-busting bombs against Iran's deeply-buried Fordow facility, it said.

During the call, the Iraq War veteran "pushed back" against West Jerusalem's demands, insisting that Washington "should not be directly involved" in the conflict, the sources claimed.

His concern was that "the Israelis were going to drag the country into war," they added.