19 June 2025
This writer heard the Jordanian civil defense warning sirens sound in Amman just after 7 am local time.
A few minutes later a barrage of Iranian missiles could be clearly seen from Jordan falling towards the Tel Aviv area.
Israel’s ferocious surprise attack that began on 13 June has targeted Iranian residential neighborhoods, journalists, scientists, government and military facilities and elements of Iran’s nuclear program that Israel claims, without evidence, are aimed at building a nuclear bomb.Israel’s strikes have killed several members of Iran’s top military leadership.
On Thursday morning, Israel said it attacked two more nuclear-related sites in Iran.
While further escalation appears inevitable, whether there will be more direct US involvement was the key question I discussed with Iranian analyst Dr. Mohammad Marandi and journalists Lowkey and Danny Haiphong on Haiphong’s YouTube program on Wednesday night.
“We will not lose. We will definitely defeat the [Israeli] regime,” Marandi asserted. “We are determined not to allow aggressors to get their way.”
Marandi added that Israel would be “forced to recognize that this was a catastrophic mistake.”
“I have no doubt that if the United States enters this fight, Trump will either be removed from office, or he will have to find a way to step down, because Iran will not relent,” Marandi said.
Another regime-change war
A high profile commentator and literature professor at the University of Tehran, Marandi revealed that he has had to separate himself from his family, as he has been warned by Iranian security officials that he could become an Israeli target – just as hundreds of Palestinian journalists and academics have been murdered in the Israeli genocide.
We also discussed openly biased and distorted Western media coverage and how Western countries are lining up to justify the Israeli attack on Iran.
We talked about how the real goal of Israel’s attack has little to do with Iran’s nuclear program. Rather, what Israel and its backers seek is regime change and the subjugation of Iran primarily due to its support for the Palestinian liberation struggle.
All of us emphasized the need to stay focused on Israel’s escalating genocide in Gaza, where Israeli massacres across the territory killed at least 144 Palestinians in the previous 24 hours, as Palestinian health officials reported on Wednesday.
You can watch the whole program in the video at the top of this article.
Israel targets Iranian civilians
By 16 June, Israeli bombings had killed at least 224 people in Iran and injured almost 1,300.
Ninety percent of the casualties are civilians, according to Iranian health officials.
An Israeli strike on Monday hit the Farabi hospital in Kermanshah, a city in western Iran, causing severe damage to the ICU and injuring patients.Iran says strike that damaged hospital aimed at military base
The latest Iranian missile volley was the 14th since Tehran began retaliating for the Israeli aggression and it appeared to be one of the most powerful.
At least 24 Israelis have been killed and more than 800 injured by Iranian retaliatory attacks since Israel started the war.
At least 76 people were injured in Thursday morning’s missile barrage which caused “significant damage in two suburbs of Tel Aviv, Holon and Ramat Gan, as well as Jaffa,” Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported.
On Tuesday, Iran’s military chief of staff, Major General Sayyid Abdolrahim Mousavi, had warned Israelis that what they had experienced up to that point had only been intended as a deterrent and that “punitive operations” were yet to begin.
With relatively few missiles – Israel estimates some 30 were fired Thursday morning – Iran was able to evade Israel’s dwindling air defense systems and strike direct blows. Video emerged of a powerful missile strike that caused significant damage and chaos at Soroka Medical Center, a major Israeli civilian and military hospital in Beersheba, which its American fundraising arm calls “Israel’s medical Iron Dome.”“The building was severely damaged and there is extensive damage from the blast,” hospital director Shlomi Kodesh told media. “All patients and staff were in protected areas, and all of the injuries we’ve treated are minor.”
The Israeli government and military, which have systematically targeted or destroyed every hospital in Gaza, were quick to make propaganda out of the damage at Soroka.
The Israeli military even published a video claiming that the “Iranian regime targets hospitals.”
However, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said that the “main target” of the attack near Soroka “was the large [Israeli army] Command and Intelligence (IDF C4I) headquarters and the military intelligence camp in the Gav-Yam Technology Park.”A March 2025 article in The Jerusalem Post confirms the “walking distance” proximity of the IDF C4I Directorate to the Soroka Medical Center.
The article also reveals that the area contains housing or planned housing for thousands of Israeli military personnel.
Will the US bomb Iran?
US President Donald Trump has given Israel his explicit support for its attack on Iran and of course Israel would be unable to act without the massive amounts of weaponry and logistical support it receives from the United States and other Western countries.
But Trump says he has yet to make up his mind about whether to join the Israeli attack directly by deploying US heavy bombers in an attempt to destroy Iran’s heavily fortified nuclear facility at Fordo.
Only the US military possesses and can deliver the massive conventional bombs that are believed capable of damaging the facility built into a mountainous region about 200 kilometers south of Tehran.
But at least one experienced analyst doubts that even these American bombs can do the job.
As Marandi emphasized during Haiphong’s program, not only does he predict that the US would fail to achieve its goal, but getting directly involved would unleash catastrophic consequences for itself and the world, particularly in the oil-rich Gulf region where the US has many military bases.Iran could, for example, close the Strait of Hormuz, a shipping lane through which one fifth of daily world oil consumption passes.
Marandi noted that Iran possesses thousands of short-range missiles that could easily traverse the Persian Gulf and hit US assets or bases located in Gulf monarchies allied with Washington.
Erratic Trump
This writer noted that Trump seemed to have made up his mind to go ahead with a US attack on Iran as he flew back early from the G7 summit in Canada on Monday night.
Speaking to journalists aboard Air Force One, the president summarily dismissed the findings of Tulsi Gabbard, his own director of national intelligence, who told Congress in March that the US intelligence community did not believe that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.
Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iran’s nuclear facilities, reaffirmed this week that his agency has found no proof of any Iranian effort to develop a nuclear weapon. Trump, however, was busy issuing warlike threats that seemed to rule out the very negotiations with Iran that he claimed to want – demanding “unconditional surrender” and threatening to kill the country’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But after meeting with his national security team in the White House situation room, Trump appeared to have retreated from his headlong rush to war – perhaps having heard more sobering advice about the potential risks and costs.“I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do,” Trump said on Wednesday.
Iran has made clear that it has no plans to surrender, but that it would cease its retaliation if Israel stops its aggression.
Israel is in a desperate situation entirely of its own making. While it can cause death and destruction in Iran, it is unlikely to be able to strike a fatal blow against the vastly larger country, or bring about the regime change it desperately yearns for.
Halting its assault now would be an admission that its dangerous gamble has failed, but continuing it means that the Israeli home front will be exposed to ever more devastating Iranian responses.
US publicly strongly opposes involvement in war
Israel needs the United States to enter the war directly, and on past performance Israel usually gets from Washington whatever it wants.
But there are enormous risks for Trump who has touted himself as a “peace president,” vowing to focus on “America First” and turn away from foreign adventures and regime-change war.
Just 16 percent of respondents think the US should get directly involved in the war, while 60 percent say it should not, according to a new YouGov poll in the United States.
Even among supporters of Trump’s own Republican Party, 53 percent oppose direct US involvement in the war and just 23 support it.
More Americans (37 percent) think that the war is more likely to make the US less safe, with just 14 percent thinking it will make the US safer, according to the poll.Half of Americans say that Israel’s war on Iran will make the whole world less safe.
As of this writing, there seems no clear way out.
Following Thursday morning’s Iranian missile strike, Israeli defense minister Israel Katz called Khamenei “the modern Hitler” and declared that the Iranian leader “cannot continue to exist.”
Katz indicated that he had given the Israeli military instructions to murder the Iranian leader.
Given that the United States and Israel are under the command of unstable leaders who have no limits, and who – unlike Iran – do possess nuclear bombs, the prospects are truly terrifying.
Comments
Great interview with Ali,
Permalink Jamila replied on
Great interview with Ali, Professor Merandi and Lowkey, so well said, thank you all!!!
Add new comment