Call him ‘Daddy’ – President Trump left the NATO summit Wednesday in a good mood about NATO nations’ commitment (except Spain) to spending 5% of their GDP on defense. Scroll down center column for more …
THURSDAY 6/26/25
Defending Operation Midnight Hammer – Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth held a news conference Thursday morning praising “the highly successful strikes in Iran,” in a strike-back against a leaked initial intelligence report that Operation Midnight Hammer did little damage to Iran’s nuclear weapons program (per The New York Times).
“If you want to know what’s going on at Fordow, you’d better get a big shovel,” Hegseth, who appeared with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine at the Pentagon, said. DefSecHeg also cited a statement by International Atomic Energy Agency Director Gen. Rafael Mariano Grossi Thursday that the strike on three key Iranian sites last weekend “caused enormous damage.”
Meanwhile … On NPR’s Morning Edition former Trump 45 national security advisor John Bolton said Iran has achieved a lot of progress on its nuclear arms facilities, and he believes the work to destroy it is not done. (In fact, Bolton has long suspected that Iran may have some nuclear operations in North Korea.) However …
“These targets that were struck clearly are the targets that deserved to be struck,” Bolton told Steve Inskeep.
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NATO Butter-Up – Ahead of the NATO summit in The Hague earlier this week, President Trump was showing off a note from NATO Secretary Gen. Mark Rutte calling Trump “Daddy” after the president criticized Israel and Iran for continuing strikes heading into their fragile ceasefire after their “12 Day War.”
“Mr. President, dear Donald. Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary, and something no one else has dared to do. It makes us all safer,” (per The Associated Press).
“You are flying into another big success in The Hague this evening. It was not easy but we’ve gotten them all signed to 5%!”
That refers to NATO nations’ commitment to spending 5% of their annual Gross Domestic Product on defense – Trump has demanded NATO nations increase their contributions in order for the US to ease up on it since before his first administration.
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WEDNESDAY 6/25/25
Sore Thumbs – Operation Midnight Hammer, the US military’s strike last weekend on three of Iran’s facilities didn’t do much to slow Tehran’s development of nuclear weapons, likely setting it back only by months, according to an early intelligence assessment by sources briefed on it described to CNN.
The report Tuesday evening by the news network drew outcries from MAGA faithful. Speaking Wednesday morning from the NATO summit in The Hague, President Trump said the intelligence was “inconclusive” and preliminary. Trump maintained the strikes on Iran caused “total obliteration.”
Check that leak … The FBI has begun an investigation of how the preliminary assessment of the attack on Iran became public, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced at the NATO summit, The Wall Street Journal reports. Trump, meanwhile, called minimizing the bombings’ success “disrespectful.”
Ceasefire, meanwhile … Despite the president’s comments about Israeli and Iranian leadership not knowing what they are doing, or perhaps because he made those comments as he left for the NATO summit Tuesday, the ceasefire between the two countries is going swimmingly so far.
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Cuomo Clobbered in NYC Mayoral Race – Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo came in a distant second to democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in Tuesday’s rank preference New York Democratic primary, The New York Times reports. With 93% of the vote in, Mamdani took 43.5% of the rank preference vote to Cuomo’s 36.4%. State assemblyman Mamdani’s 70,465 vote margin was decisive enough for Cuomo, who resigned as New York State’s governor in 2021 amidst allegations of sexual harassment, to concede without waiting out a second round in the rank preference.
Candidate Brad Lander, who cross-endorsed with Mamdani and appeared with him as a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Tuesday took 11.3% of the vote.
Pundits have been characterizing the Democratic primary as an indication of the direction of the party going into next year’s midterms. US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) both endorsed Mamdani in the race, but even with past New York mayors having (failed) runs for president, the mayor’s constituency is pretty distinct.
Mamdani faces perennial Republican candidate and Guardian Angels co-founder Curtis Sliwa as well as New York’s ethics-challenged current Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, who is running for this November’s election as an independent. Cuomo also has floated the possibility of running as an independent.
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Israel-Iran Ceasefire, Moscow-Style
TUESDAY 6/24/25
This is How the Ceasefire Between Israel and Iran Went – President Trump announced a ceasefire deal. There were no details and some skepticism of whether Israel and Iran agreed, but on Tuesday, both nations said they had agreed to stop fighting, NPR reports.
Then, in a statement to NPR, the Israeli military accused Iran of firing two missiles toward Israel after the ceasefire was to take effect. Israel said the missiles were intercepted. Iran’s state media reported a denial by Iran that it fired missiles after the ceasefire deadline.
Israeli defense minister Israel Katz ordered the military to “respond forcefully” anyway, and “continue the intensified operations targeting regime assets and terrorist infrastructure in Tehran.”
Trump expressed his anger toward both parties, though primarily Israel, when departing for the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague, according to Morning Edition.
“You know what we have? We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck their doing,” Trump said (NPR redacted the naughty word in its report).
“Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before, the biggest load that we’ve seen. I’m not happy with Israel.”
Then on Truth Social: ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME NOW.
--TL
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US Attacks Iran's Nuclear Sites (With Updates)
MONDAY 6/23/25
UPDATE III: President Trump says in a social media post that Israel and Iran have agreed to a "complete and total ceasefire," the BBC reports, that could lead to the end of the war.
UPDATE II: Iran signaled Qatar about its attacks on Al Udeid ahead of launching the missiles, NPR’s All Things Considered reports, an indication it needed to take some action but did not want to go to the extreme of a potentially deadly bombardment. But that keeps open the question of what Iran will do next.
UPDATE: Iran has fired missiles at the Al Udeid base in Qatar, the US’ largest base in the Middle East (The New York Times). Qatar reports its air defenses have intercepted Iran’s missiles, and the US Defense Department says there are no reports of injuries from the counterattack.
Sucker Punch? – Is there something in The Art of the Deal playbook that you distract your subject with a “two week” warning, that you will take that long before your next move, only to bombard the other party after a couple of days?
Probably not. But the tactic might prove effective, as President Trump indicated after Saturday’s B-2 bombings of Iran’s nuclear weapons development sites, in particular the Fordow nuclear material enrichment facility north of Tehran.
“I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success,” he said in a special address to the US 10 p.m. ET Saturday (above, with Vice President Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio).
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei responded without referring to the US, saying instead that Israel made a “grave mistake” and “it is being punished right now,” The Wall Street Journal reports.
Analysts are concerned about the potential for Iran blockading the Straits of Hormuz – or worse, targeting US bases in the region.
Meanwhile… Vance has signaled that Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile is in-tact and in the country’s control – so, not addressed by the “spectacular” success.
“We’re not at war with Iran,” the vice president told NBC News’ Kristen Welker, on Meet the Press. “We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program.”
It’s that stockpile, and Iran’s work enriching it to become the world’s seventh nuclear superpower that is the impetus for Israel’s military attack on the country more than a week ago, and now the US response last weekend. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed for decades that Iran was on the brink of developing nuclear weapons.
On April 16, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi issued a warning ahead of his visit there that Tehran was “dangerously close” to building a nuclear bomb. On Monday, Grossi called an emergency meeting to demand Iran give clarity on the whereabouts of its nuclear material, the Deutsche Presse-Agentur press agency reports.
History … This has raised the question of whether President Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) of 2015 was effective. By the time Donald J. Trump began his first term as president a couple of years later, the IAEA’s monitoring of Iran’s nuclear power program indicated the JCPOA was successfully preventing Iran from sufficiently enriching uranium for military purposes.
That’s the basis of the argument that continues to this day, between conservative neocons and MAGA Republicans on the right, and Democrats and Republicans overall, as the Trump administration continues to talk dealmaking for a new agreement that may, or may not, be much like JCPOA, with Iran.
Can the Trump administration convince Tehran to return to the negotiating table even after Israel’s missile attacks and clear calls for regime change? After the US attack, there are serious doubts about that – but Trump apparently thinks it’s still possible. We probably won’t have to wait two weeks to find out.
New red hat? … Rubio joined Vance Sunday in denying “regime change” as the Trump administration’s goal. But the president on his own social media outlet indicated something somewhat different.
“It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why would there be Regime Change??? MIGA!!”
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Correction – Our Wednesday, June 18 report on the then-potential US strike misidentified the bomber capable of dropping GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs on Iran’s nuclear weapons sites. It was, and is, the Northrop B-2 bomber.
We’ve also since learned of a dispute over the spelling of Iran’s underground uranium enrichment facility. The New York Times spells it Fordo, while The Associated Press and CNN spell it Fordow. Zelensky – Zelenskyy.
We are sticking with “Fordow” with the “w.”
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No Joke? – “America’s Finest News Source” The Onion “republished” its recent editorial, “Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your Cowardice,” apparently only in The New York Times and coincidentally a day after the US Air Force bombed Iran’s nuclear weapon sites under authority of President Trump, but without consulting Congress.
The full-page ad, which was in the NYT only on Sunday and not in any other newspapers, says; “Each passing day brings growing assaults on essential liberties like freedom of speech and due process. Meanwhile, our delicately assembled legal system faces a constant barrage of threats. Even as this issue reaches publication, the US military has been deployed against peaceful protesters. We teeter on the brink of collapse into an authoritarian state. That is why, today, The Onion calls upon our lawmakers to sit back and do absolutely nothing.”
Editors of the satirical newspaper note a copy of the issue containing this editorial was delivered to every member of Congress.
Publicity stunt? Advertorial for The Onion’s recently revitalized print edition? Perhaps.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa