Author: Mick Hartley

proxies. The once-lauded Shia crescent surrounding Israel is looking a lot less threatening. Hezbollah has been destroyed, Hamas and the Houthis have been severely weakened, and Syria – though the aims of the new regime are still unclear – is now clearly sided with Sunni Turkey. Next, Iran itself… 

What all this means is that, little noticed by western commentators who were busy with their myopic focus on Gaza, Israel has, over the last 18 months, effectively reversed two decades of Iranian advance across the Middle East. The result is that Iran now finds that its intended envelopment of Israel with proxy militias has been dismantled. Tools for Iran to exert pressure from the ground no longer exist.

This means that the current confrontation looks set to focus on air, missile and drone warfare. As to how things proceed, much will depend on the continued capacities of Israel’s air defences, its ability to keep its current air corridor to Iran open and to continue reaping a toll on Iranian regime assets and personnel.

The goal must be the crippling or drastic weakening of both the regime’s nuclear programme and its ability to govern. The result: either the permanent weakening of the Islamic Republic to a point where it can no longer busy itself with seeking to project power and aggression against its neighbours, or, preferably, the reduction of the regime’s capacities to a point where the Iranian people are able to free themselves from the mullah’s yoke. The latter outcome would be an appropriate end both to Tehran’s two-decade project of aggression in the Middle East, and to its ally Hamas’s decision to launch war in October 2023.

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I was on a flight from London to Tel Aviv Thursday night, set to land at 3:30 a.m. – just as the Iran attacks began. Minutes from landing, we were suddenly diverted to Cyprus.

For two days I was stranded in Paphos, but everywhere I went – from the streets to the hotel to the… pic.twitter.com/X3w0hA9N6w

— Yaakov Katz (@yaakovkatz) June 16, 2025

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For two days I was stranded in Paphos, but everywhere I went – from the streets to the hotel to the Chabad House that opened its doors within hours – I met Israelis who had one goal: get back home. Not to safety. To Israel.

This afternoon, I finally did. On a tugboat.

Nine of us squeezed onto a vessel captained by Eli, a veteran Israeli sailor who didn’t ask questions – just took the wheel. Among us: a brother and sister who are farmers and grow flowers in the Arava. They’d been in Holland on a sales trip. The brother insisted on returning to report for reserves.

Another was a CEO from Karmiel. His company has 100 employees and global orders he’s now fighting to fulfill despite a country under fire. There was a woman – an energy worker – who left the Ivory Coast to come home, a high-tech investor who wanted to be back with his children and grandkids holed up at his house and two young men, fresh out of the army, who cut short their trip in the Philippines, coming under physical attacks in Greece and elsewhere because they spoke Hebrew.

No one asked if it was safe. But that’s not how Israelis think.

We are a people who run toward home, not away from it. Toward our families, our communities, our nation. Even in war.

That’s the difference. That’s what makes us who we are.

Another one down:

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Tehran's Chief of Police Ahmadreza Radan has been assassinated.

This creature is responsible for crushing Iranian uprisings and carrying out massacres. pic.twitter.com/m70EmZobev

— Sander (@SanderRegter) June 15, 2025

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Some background:

In the early 2000s, when the "Islamic Morality Police" was established, Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Radan was one of the leading defenders of this special division and openly supported the arrest of women who did not follow the obligatory hijab. In 2007, he ordered the police to arrest "boys" with what he called "perverted hairstyle", and during the 2009 uprising, his forces demonstrated a new level of brutality by killing protestors. In 2011, he banned the physicians and specialists practising in private health centres from putting on ties….

Radan is the police commander to whom, in a 2008 live TV program, the presenter said, "There is no one who sees you and is not scared of you".

Wikipedia:

In October 2010, the United States Treasury Department sanctioned Radan for human rights violations. According to their statement, Radan, while serving as deputy commander of the police force, was responsible for the beatings, murders, and detentions of protesters during the protests following the 2009 Iranian presidential election.

On 13 April 2011, Radan was sanctioned by the European Union for widespread and severe violations of the rights of Iranian citizens, and for a series of murders. According to the EU statement, he, as deputy commander of the police force, was involved in "beatings", "murders", "arbitrary detentions," and "arrests of protesters" by the police during the 2009 post-election protests.

On 18 September 2024, the Canadian government sanctioned Radan, in addition to four other officials of the Islamic Republic who are directly responsible for implementing oppressive and discriminatory policies against women, girls, and minorities. The sanctions regulations prohibit transactions with the listed individuals, freeze their assets in Canada, and make any immigration to Canada of these individuals prohibited and inadmissible under Canadian immigration law.

Radan claimed that being sanctioned by the US and EU was an honor for himself and all military commanders. He stated that "becoming a martyr and being sanctioned are equally enjoyable" to him. Radan views these sanctions as a "badge of honor", comparing them to an honorary medal for serving the Islamic Republic.

At last his dream of martyrdom has been realised.

– "to access women's private spaces or play on women’s sports teams, or require that people speak as if they accept, for example, that trans-identified males are women". That's why they never spell it out. It sounds good, but it's a con. 

The maddest thing about this monstrous man and Iranian stooge is that until a a few years ago he was a respected Professor at one of the UK’s top universities and that when he was fired hundreds of other academics rode to his defence. https://t.co/t70nJveO4q

— Nicole Lampert (@nicolelampert) June 15, 2025

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Not just academics. The UN's 'Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories', Francesca Albanese, expressed her support in a now-deleted tweet – "I stand with Justice, against racism, against Apartheid, and WITH Professor Miller."

Added: 2021 letter from academics "in support of Professor Miller".

Iranians are worried because people didn’t choose war.
But listen closely… that’s not silence, that’s laughter.
Laughter at the faces of IRGC commanders who once ruled by fear, now reduced to billboards.

I’ve received thousands of messages from inside Iran showing young women… pic.twitter.com/TrMuoWde6k

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) June 14, 2025

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I’ve received thousands of messages from inside Iran showing young women dancing in the streets, or families cheering in their kitchens. They remember these commanders as the ones who gave the orders to shoot protesters in the eyes, jail teenage girls, and lie to the world while building bombs in secret.

One mother in Tehran who was imprisoned for protesting the 2019 murder of her child wrote to me that “waking up to the news of Salami’s death, I started to scream out of joy that I’m seeing justice.” She told me that “soon you’ll be back to Iran and we’ll dance on the graves of these killers.”

2023, shortly after Hamas’ October 7 massacre.… pic.twitter.com/pjP8S7tQyB

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) June 15, 2025

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The regime had been secretly working on building a nuclear device since the end of 2023, shortly after Hamas’ October 7 massacre.

The IDF monitored Iranian nuclear progress and was left with no doubt that they were building a weapon—and it may have been at a more advanced stage than Israeli intelligence knew. This was crucial to the decision to carry out a preemptive strike.

A nuclear weapon in the hands of the regime is not only a threat to Israel, but a threat to the entire world.

left: 40px”>The Bristol Museum and Art Gallery is one of those places that makes me feel uncomfortable. I feel picked-on even visiting the website. At the top of the screen – before any mention of the collections and exhibitions – we are all told that ‘Bristol Museums welcomes trans and gender-diverse visitors, volunteers and members of staff’.

Perhaps this is a response to the Supreme Court judgement that biological sex quite rightly takes precedence over paperwork when distinguishing women from men? But I find it unhelpful and intrusive. I might be transsexual, but I am a human being just like everyone else, and I don’t need special treatment.

I certainly don’t want images that appear to promote elective double mastectomy – mutilating surgery in other words – emblazoned on two giant murals three metres high on either side of the main entrance hall of the museum. This, after all, is a place where groups of primary school children gather to be briefed before being shown the various collections held by the city.

Get 'em young – that's the trans way. "You are loved".

The language, the methods and the imagery – there was a space filled with shifting lights, colours and sounds in the exhibition to ‘recharge and heal’ – could have been taken straight from a religious cult on a recruitment drive. ‘You are loved’, we kept being told. From where else might we hear messages like that?

Art can be an educator, and sometimes it educates in a way that the creator did not anticipate. This exhibition certainly educated me. It left me with the distinct feeling that this is a cult and we need to be on our guard against it. The risk is not from society as a whole, but an activist lobby that appears to encourage victimhood and creates vulnerability. That’s no way to live.

Maybe others in the room had come to similar conclusions? But I didn’t ask. We were all under the beady eye of the museum staff and despite the ‘all are welcome here’ mantra, I got the feeling that heterodox views would be poorly received.

Times are changing fast, though, and in some ways this exhibition marked the great heresy of the past ten years – that gender identity trumps biological sex. Perhaps a museum is a good place for it?

Yep. A vision of a dying cult.

aq, Syria and other countries. They had felt they could inflame wars but they didn’t believe it would to Tehran’s own doorstep. Even after the Israeli strikes in 2024, which followed Iran’s attacks on Israel, the IRGC felt secure. It saw the talks with the Trump administration and assumed all was fine. It even likely saw the tensions grow on June 11 and 12 with reports of US State Department personnel preparing to evacuate Iraq and other countries. However, Salami and his commanders felt nothing would happen. After years of threatening Israel, they felt that they would never pay a price.

Iran often accused Israel and the US of being “arrogant powers.” In 2020 Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani described the US as "the wicked hands of the global arrogance, with the usurper Zionist regime as the mercenary.” Despite the regime’s claims that others were arrogant, it was Iran’s arrogance at assuming it could terrorize the entire Middle East and spread proxy wars across the region and not face any pushback. It must have noted that fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 and wondered if it had miscalculated. However, it didn’t seem to heed the lesson.

or western leaders. It might work with Russia too: do you think Putin — with his looted billions, young girlfriend and grotesque venality — wants to die? Not a chance. Not even the criminal Kim Jong-un wishes to perish, marinading, as he does, in the imperial harem with the monstrous privileges he steals from his impoverished people.

Religious fanatics are different. Radically different. They want to die. It’s why it is not just conceivable but probable that an ageing fundamentalist leader would launch a nuclear strike against Israel, and feel closer to Allah as the inevitable response loomed large on the radar screen. Do western commentators still not understand that this is precisely why so many sane Iranians (the majority) are thrilled by the Israeli attack? They know only too well that an Iranian nuclear weapon isn’t only an existential threat to the “Zionists” but, just as surely, to themselves. They would be incinerated in the counterstrike, their lives lost as collateral damage in another person’s sick fantasy.

Wake up, world. Every conversation I had in Israel in February, including with three former PMs, opposition leaders and security experts, circled back to the Iranian threat. Remember, too, that Iran gaining a nuclear weapon would lead instantly to proliferation across the region and the wider world. In other words, it would be the first domino that could, in time, lead to the destruction of humanity. It is why the phrase I keep hearing — that Israel is doing the world a “favour” — is so inadequate. A favour? It is facing reprisals and death for hitting the head of the snake on behalf of us all.