Israel-Iran war in 2025

Kind of can't believe i'm typing this. Tehran residents urged to evacuate.

Spoke to my mom minutes ago. They’re leaving Tehran. Everyone is trying to leave Tehran. Whether they will be able to is a different question. The roads are packed to the point of literal non-movement.

— kev joon (@never_oppressed) June 17, 2025

Just to recap

Israel is bombing Iranian nuclear sites, military targets and oil fields. Iran has responded with fairly weak missile attacks that are not very accurate. All of these overfly Iraq, Syria and Jordan.

Israel has been building to this for awhile, taking strategic positions in Syria.

There is no evidence that Iran has developed a nuclear weapon. In fact there is an edict against developing these weapons by Iran's religious leadership. Iran maintains it is trying to develop nuclear power for domestic energy generation. (The UK has recently announced a "golden age of nuclear" and £14b for a reactor at Sizewell C)

Israel does possess nuclear weapons, though it carries on a pretense that it doesn't. It does not allow IEAE inspectors into its sites, it has not signed the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty.

The US had prior warning of Israel's attacks and pulled diplomats from the region. Trump has been very publicly supportive. Most experts think to succeed, Israel needs active US support, particularly its specialised bombs which can penetrate Iran's deeper research bunkers.

Maybe also worth saying that during its razing of Gaza, Israel has kneecapped Iranian allies Hezbollah and Hamas who might have been expected to help Iran militarily via missiles, sabotage etc

I don't have any idea if Iran can withstand this, or what the prospects are of them landing any sort of damaging blow to Israel that might even the odds, nor what the story is with Syria, Iraq etc - how they will respond to being potentially in the crossfire.

In any case this all seems very bad and I would imagine that any other US administration would, even in the context of the war on Gaza, tell Israel that this is unacceptable, but that is not happening. It appears Israel is just going to go ahead and bomb whoever it wants, whenever it wants. We are living in a total breakdown of the famous "rules based international order" and a return to barbarism.

be careful Tracer, that’s antisemitic

I mean to be fair there never really was a rules based international order but that phrase was a useful figleaf to lock in US hegemony.. feels like the figleaf is gone now

table wtf

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/17/politics/israel-iran-nuclear-bomb-us-intelligence-years-away?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc

so the question is whether trump will use some kind of cluster bomb to destroy the facility at fordow. (israel apparently doesn't have the capacity to destroy this).

i have a sinking feeling that he will authorize this action and not realize that it will draw us into a prolonged direct conflict.

the stupidest part of this situation is that --- whether or not iran was close to a bomb (and i happen to think they were at least trying to posture as a "threshold state") --- they *wouldn't* have been close if trump hadn't pulled out of the iran nuclear agreement negotiated by obama.

it's such deja vu to iraq.

if Trump vetoed the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei he might not want to supply very messy US bunker busters to fuck up Iranian infrastructure either. I mean at least that was some modicum of moderation against the IDF if true. He's got to honour to his peace president mandate at some point, grim lol.

I think Netanyahu is hitting everything in sight while he can, because who knows when is the next window of opportunity, because political survival, and because it deflects the attention from Gaza / West Bank.

Iran feels pretty isolated, and I don't have a clue who could possibly miss the regime - apparently they have to suppress Iranian tweets that support the targeting of officials; sounds unlikely to me, and like a weak justification, but I guess everyone is waiting to see.

As if razing the Gaza strip to the ground wasn't enough of a demonstration of power / impunity.

i think you are right that pat of this is about deflecting attention from gaza. a tipping point seems to have been reached in the past few weeks and even mainstream pro-israel voices in america have condemned the violence there.

table wtf

given that we can’t call a spade a spade without people on this board getting up in arms about it— Zionism is a fascist settler colonial ideology, plain and simple— i was simply warning Tracer that associating “Israel” with barbarism might not be taken well.

Cool in that case the israeli government is guilty of barbarism

I both reject and denounce it

Probably won't listen (bcz I can hardly ever listen to podcasts) but Seamus has always been good at covering this conflict.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/131640530

is Seamus Malekafzali a nom de twitter? It's always struck me like those "comedy" food trucks about 10 years ago named like "Confucius O'Reilly" and serving ill thought out fusion food.

Think his background is Lebanese - American

Russia ought to give Iran a single nuke just for the hell of it.

things i did not want to learn in june 2025: the difference between "air superiority" and "air dominance"

Think his background is Lebanese - American

he's irish-iranian-american (for real) but was living in beirut until israel started bombing it last year

table wtf
given that we can’t call a spade a spade without people on this board getting up in arms about it— Zionism is a fascist settler colonial ideology, plain and simple— i was simply warning Tracer that associating “Israel” with barbarism might not be taken well.

― czech hunter biden's laptop (the table is the table), Tuesday, June 17, 2025 9:33 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I really don't want to relitigate this conversation, and certainly not here shitting up a quasi-unrelated and important thread, but I do want to clarify that my objection to your comment was not to say that you can't criticize the State of Israel's unconscionable actions. Quite the opposite -- by making a sarcastic straw man comment that criticizing Israel will inevitably get you accused of antisemitism, you are adding fuel to the notion that calling out antisemitism is nothing more than a disingenuous weapon to defend Israel. It gets used that way all the time which is pretty damn painful enough as is for us Jews who are trying to call out and fight actual antisemitism which actually does exist. And nothing Tracer wrote in his opening posts was remotely antisemitic.

I do take some issue with your characterization of Zionism but definitely don't want to get into that here

Table is still wrestling with his shit, apparently.

I mean we can certainly characterize what the Israeli government is doing as barbaric, I hope we all agree?

yes.

fair enough, LS, i will keep that in mind.

all good, thanks!

Grimly amusing to read the likes of Keir Starmer insisting that Trump wants peace because he told him so at the G7, only for trump to post psychotic assassination threats on social media two minutes later

The mistake you made there was paying attention to something Keir Starmer said. Trump would never do that.

Breaking: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz says "Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us" to ZDF network at G7 summit

— James Jackson (@derJamesJackson) June 17, 2025

Something happened yesterday, and Trump is now determined to take the country to a war of choice. He can change his mind at the last minute, as he did in 2019, but short of that, there will be war.

It is important to understand that capitulation is most likely not an option for Iran for a variety of reasons.

First, Trump's conduct in the past ten days has destroyed any confidence Tehran has in him and his desire for a peaceful outcome. For the Iranians to ever back down from their long-standing position to never give up enrichment, they must have confidence that backing down ends the conflict. They have no such confidence in Trump at this moment. They don't think he will stop there.

Second, Tehran has lost confidence in Trump's ability or willingness to say no to Israel (that confidence existed earlier to some extent). And Israel will not be content with even a complete dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program.

If the nuclear program is destroyed, Israel will turn to Iran's missile program. It will not accept Iran having missiles that can wreak havoc on Israel - as Iran has done in the last few days. Without missiles, an air force, and a nuclear deterrent, Iran will be completely exposed and defenseless. Once that is achieved, the Israelis will push for regime change or regime collapse. And after that, as the Israelis have done in Syria after Assad fell, they will push to destroy the rest of Iran's conventional military so that Iran won't be able to challenge Israel's emerging regional military hegemony for decades to come. Iran's territorial integrity will also be put at risk.

As a result, Tehran does not view capitulation - even if they desired it, which I don't think they do - as a stable outcome.

In their view, their only chance is to fight back. By making the war as costly as possible for the US - even if they will lose it - they think they can either deter Trump, or make him cut the war short. As he did in Yemen.

Thus, if new talks take place and Trump insists on capitulation, he will get war. Iran will pay an immeasurable price. As will the region. But the US will also pay a very heavy price. Scores of American soldiers may be killed. Oil prices will skyrocket, and gas prices in hot summer months in the US will soar. Inflation will go up. Trump's Iran war may destroy his presidency as Bush's Iraq invasion destroyed his.

Iran will lose. But so will the US. Israel is perhaps the only country that will benefit from this war of choice.

^ The tweet in full. We'll find out in a few days whether that will hold. The taboo not discussed here -- as I've seen in any analysis -- is the use of nukes..

Something happened yesterday, and Trump is now determined to take the country to a war of choice. He can change his mind at the last minute, as he did in 2019, but short of that, there will be war.

It is important to understand that capitulation is most likely not an option for…

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) June 17, 2025

Pakistan, China, North Korea, Russia...these countries have nukes.

Libya, Iraq, Syria...and Iran...do not.

under what scenario does a nuclear missile get fired

If the US wanted an end with no American casualties? I haven't seen any discussion or analysis of that possibility.

I don't know about Israel, but I suspect that Trump does not want to the first post-war president to employ nukes

especially on a nation that we've been in nuclear talks with

A nuclear capability is basically a defensive capability. Iran wants the bomb to ensure regime survival. Russia, China, Pakistan and North Korea all had a similar motivation for pursuing the bomb.

Really? I can totally see Trump being down with launching nukes. Why are we spending money on the things if we’re not using them?!? We’ve got the best nukes.

xp

well, Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize and that drives him bonkers.. so he's paying lip service to being a broker of peace so he can get one as well

"Truman in 1945"

Trump shared a message from his ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who told him he was “chosen by God” for this moment and compared him to Truman in 1945—just before the U.S. nuked Japan.

These are the same people calling Iran a theocratic threat. pic.twitter.com/dgl6vx4Ja6

— Mondoweiss (@Mondoweiss) June 17, 2025

It's hard for me to imagine Israel deploying a nuke against Iran, aren't they too close?

Yes, I am not sure that either Trump or his followers would view "first postwar president to use a nuke" as a bad thing. Totally hope to be wrong tho!

xposts

its just so hard to predict anything, this entire administration is full of inexperienced morons who do whatever FOX News tells them to

I mean isn’t it the thing about nukes in general that they have a much higher chance of being launched than any rational person would like to think, like the argument for why proliferation is fine is that nobody would be insane enough to actually use them which is not comforting because that is a fucking insane thing to argue

Major irony in the fact that Trump is busily committing impeachable offenses on a near-daily basis without consequence, but he is legally authorized and empowered by an act of Congress to fire off ICBMs without a declaration of war. Try not to think too hard about it and just work to bring Congress to its senses before the price of their cowardice becomes unthinkably high.

M.A.D. ceases to seem prudent once you're talking about death cults

It ceases to seem prudent once you’ve thought about it for eight seconds but yeah

Insiders said Trump constantly talked about using nukes in his first term. No reason to believe he isn’t still obsessed. It’s the ultimate last word!

Fun to watch the hairline progression

You go to war with the president you have

Or so I hear. Also hmmm

Sadly taking notice of Hersh saying US will attack at the weekend.

― xyzzzz__, Friday, June 20, 2025 2:39 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Not sure how reliable Hersh is these days.

― Zelda Zonk, Friday, June 20, 2025 3:08 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

More reliable than I thought!

Broken brain clock

i think chris broussard had the scoop before hersh

ugh sorry, what am i doing here

I think Hersh was right, but its not exactly an amazing bit of prediction. It was on the cards.

https://www.forever-wars.com/war-on-terror-nightmare-arrives-as-trump-bombs-iran/

Not for a day in Trump's political career has he been interested in peace. People with his politics are never interested in peace. Domination is what they are interested in, particularly after they sign onto wars of aggression in Iraq that turn into fiascoes. Cultivating humiliation and fueling revenge is what they are interested in, rather than the peacebuilding efforts found in addressing the imperial and material root causes that seeded the fiascoes. Paying attention to that distinction is a good way to determine who is actually interested in peace.

But the whole Project For A New American Century blueprint clearly isn’t guiding Trump’s approach to Russia. So what gives? Is there any consistency at all? Is it just might makes right?

― recovering internet addict/shitposter (viborg), Sunday, 22 June 2025 bookmarkflaglink

What's the approach to Russia meant to be?

Hersh reported that the White House had signed off on an all-out bombing campaign designed to bring about the overthrow of the government. The bit about not hitting Fordow until the weekend was correct. Unclear whether anything else was / is.

He publishes what he gets leaked by factions within the CIA - so it’s sometimes accurate, sometimes off and sometimes intended to influence what happens.

so Medveydev has posted on Telegram that Russia could supply some nuclear warheads to Iran. I don't know if it was some drunken shitposting or this is some serious doomsday shit.

The guy's a clown. If he was in the US he'd be Defence Secretary though.

We did that for Israel, so Putin has a precedent to cite.

Attacks in Qatar?

not sure how reliable: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2025/06/iran-retaliates-fires-missiles-us-bases-qatar

all pretty easily intercepted, hopefully just a token effort

Most likely they're saving their rockets for Israel and trying not to provoke the US into full scale bombing mode.

it was, from all descriptions, a symbolic retaliation to save face. however...

While consensus is clearly building that the nature of these Iranian strikes is to give everyone a chance to stand down, Trump still has a decision to make. He
threatened “far greater” attacks if Iran didn’t respond peacefully to the US bombing over the weekend, and it’s hard to argue this counts as peaceful.

If Iran didn’t respond peacefully to the US bombing over the weekend

WTF? 'thank you sir, may I have another?'

The mullahs need to give him a plane, or a superyacht

Trump has also said Iran gave advance warning and that he ‘hopes they got it out of their system’ or words to that effect. Doesn’t seem particularly bothered.

Nobel Peace Prize in the bag for the big man.

Ceasefire announced, Trump takes credit

it's great when you can just stop doing some unprovoked bombing of a country and then declare you have brokered a ceasefire! And it wouldn't even place him the top wrung of worst ever Nobel Prize recipients, lol.

Obama got it, why not Trump

... hold that Peace Prize, the ceasefire is off already.

The latest from Donnie.

“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”

Turns out diplomacy is tricky!

All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly “Plane Wave” to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect!

Thank goodness.

the jet pilots waaaave etc.

diplomacy by an ultra-vain shit-hearted super-greedy sundowning drug-addled moron is hard to watch, let alone pursue.

cue the inevitable AI-generated clip of a group of fighter jets in tight formation doing a "wave" (whatever that is) while Trump, Bibi and Supreme Leader (and a gaggle of Nobel representatives) salute from below and toast each other amongst the glitzy casinos ands fountains of a newly-developed Gaza Strip.

can we poll the albums on this guy's shelf?
https://bsky.app/profile/bluetapes.bsky.social/post/3lsc7po4yps2b

thank god we've prevented the rise of an aggressive, unpredictable nuclear power with a lust for genocide, a a politically repressive and unjust society, and violent animosity to its neighbors

Game recognize game.

can we poll the albums on this guy's shelf?
https://bsky.app/profile/bluetapes.bsky.social/post/3lsc7po4yps2b

― jaymc, Tuesday, 24 June 2025 13:16 (forty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

he probably posts here, let him do his own poll imo

I guess my question is, does he post the shit he posts so his cult knows he's a Big Man Taking Charge, or as a desperate cry into the darkness because Netanyahu won't take his calls?

yes

can we poll the albums on this guy's shelf?

previously on ilm

haha nice

on NPR: some anonymous dude from the Defense Dept now claims the U.S. strikes probably set their nuke program back a few months, but far from obliterated it as previously claimed

guess they have to bomb again

I think israel will hit pause so trump can take a little victory lap, then start bombing again

if fact I can almost guarantee it

and all it cost us was a quarter billion dollars

midnight hammer was just a stammer

Strike Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program by Only a Few Months, U.S. Report Says

Classified findings indicate that the attack sealed off the entrances to two facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings.

wait the operation was called Midnight Hammer? lol of course

strangely it was two US officials who urged Iran to start a nuclear program, during the Ford Administration... and their names are Rumsfeld & Cheney

wait the operation was called Midnight Hammer? lol of course

that's Hegseth's favorite part of the job, where he gets to show his cinematic leanings

Midnight Hammer is a pretty good porn name imo

Lol

that's Hegseth's favorite part of the job, where he gets to show his cinematic leanings

In Hegseth's case Hammered By Noon would be more accurate.

actually me as well ;-)