Iran

[Lonewolf_50]

Selected bits from an online article, Forbes, June 26:

• CIA Director John Ratcliffe on Wednesday said the agency obtained evidence indicating Iran’s nuclear program was “severely damaged” by U.S. strikes, likely setting the program back years—a statement supporting President Donald Trump’s earlier claims, despite a reported U.S. intelligence assessment that found the bombings only set Iran’s program back by a few months.
• In his first televised statement his country’s ceasefire with Israel went into effect, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities didn’t have any major impact and claimed that President Donald Trump acted out of “showmanship.”
• In a post on X Khamenei also wrote: “I offer my congratulations on the victory over the fallacious Zionist regime,” and claimed Israel “was practically knocked out and crushed under the blows of the Islamic Republic.”
• Khamenei also claimed victory against the U.S. and suggested Washington entered the conflict “because it felt” Israel from being completely destroyed.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Chair Rafael Grossi told Radio France Internationale the centrifuges at Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear site are “no longer operational,” after the U.S. strikes.

The war of words continues. A couple of comments:

1. The Supreme Ayatollah is doing a great job of channeling Baghdad Bob.
2. I am sure that Mr Musk is pleased that the Supreme Ayatollah is using X.
3. Lest we forget (moved from a post moved to a different thread):

25 June 1996 – Nineteen Americans were killed at a US base near Dhahran and another 105 suffered serious injuries from a truck bomb estimated at 5,000 pounds at the Khobar Towers apartment complex adjacent to King Abdul Aziz Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
About 5,000 US troops served in Saudi Arabia, along with French and British whose aircraft were flying 100 missions per day over southern Iraq from Saudi Arabia to enforce the no-fly zone.
Later reports said that Osama bin Laden bankrolled the bombing of the US base and that Hezbollah carried out the attack, with support from Iran. In 2000 it was reported that the Bin Laden family firm was awarded the contract to rebuild the Khobar Towers.
More info in the spoiler:

Spoiler

 

 

On July 2001, Saudi Arabia said that eleven of the people indicted in the US were in custody in Saudi prisons, and were to be tried in Saudi court, as the country refused to extradite any of them to the United States to stand trial.[20] The government has not since made public the outcome of the trial or the whereabouts of the prisoners. In August 2015, Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that Ahmed Ibrahim Al-Mughassil, a leader of the gulf shia group Hezbollah Al-Hejaz found to be responsible for the bombing, had been arrested in Beirut and transferred to Saudi Arabian custody; an anonymous American intelligence officer told The New York Times that the Saudi government had not confirmed the arrest, but U.S. intelligence believed the report was accurate.

Attribution to al-Qaeda

Abdel Bari Atwan wrote:
In May 1996 Bin Laden and his entourage moved from Sudan to Afghanistan. As if to make the point that they might have been chased out of Sudan by Saudi Arabia and the US they were not leaving with their tails between their legs, al Qaeda struck again: The June bombing of Khobar Towers. The Saudi authorities were at pains to implicate Shi'i militants backed by Iran in this attack, since the embarrassing truth that they had their very own homegrown militancy problem was inadmissible; they did not want to give the impression that there was domestic opposition to the deployment of US troops on Saudi soil.
In 2004, the 9/11 Commission noted that Osama bin Laden was seen being congratulated on the day of the Khobar attack, and stated there were reports in the months preceding the attack that Bin Laden was seeking to facilitate a shipment of explosives to Saudi Arabia. According to the United States, classified evidence suggests that the government of Iran was the key sponsor of the incident, and several high-ranking members of their military may have been involved.
A U.S. federal court speculated that the Khobar Towers bombing was authorized by Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran.

Nothing in that part of the world is simple; it's usually complicated.[/indent]