Posts Tagged ‘Friedrich Merz’

“President Trump Has Joined The Revolution”

Tuesday, January 13th, 2026

Tousi TV says that President Trump is fully on the side of the Iranian Revolution against the Mullahs:

  • “President Donald J. Trump has officially joined the revolution against the Islamic occupation in Iran!”
  • Reza Pahlavi and his mother, the last Empress of Iran, have also issued statements continuing to support the ousting of the Islamist regime.
  • The Iranian people are still out on the street.
  • President Trump has issued a statement stating the U.S. has broken off negotiation with the Islamist regime. “Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING – Take OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.” MIGA stands for Make Iran Great Again.
  • President Trump said he would meet with the Islamist regime, but his preconditions were they had to stop killing protesters and release all political prisoners. Obviously that didn’t happen.
  • Tousi thinks symbolic airstrikes are off the table and now only regime change will suffice.
  • “On the ground, the situation is escalating very quickly.”
  • Internet and lighting blackouts remains in place.
  • The top of the regime is dug in and continues to kill the people. “This is war-level gunfire.”
  • “The BBC is the propaganda arm of the Iranian regime.”
  • Khamenei’s inner circle is “falling apart.”
  • Reza Pahlavi: Efforts to reestablish communications are underway.
  • “Massive reactions from the international community. Countries are jumping on the wagon, left, right and center, except for one country, that’s the United Kingdom, which is doubling down on support for the Islamic Republic.” More proof that Keir Starmer is a complete asshole.
  • “Australia are saying the current Islamic regime in Iran does not have legitimacy.”
  • Apart from Israel and the United States, the country most supporting the Iranian people has been Germany. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz: “I believe we are witnessing the final days of the regime. It has no legitimacy among the population.” It sounds like that vaunted “international community” Democrats are always nattering on about are ready for the mullahs to go.
  • American military assets are coming into the Middle East from Europe.
  • Over 12,000 Iranians have been killed by Ali Khamenei’s regime. “There’s been a huge number of defections from those refusing to follow orders, realizing Khamenei is on the way out.”
  • Khamenei is supposedly in a bunker on the desert.
  • Tousi seems to be getting key details about the situation right before the MSM reports them.

    Possibly more later.

    Update: Blog was briefly down due to excessive hits from 45.134.225.250. Reverse DNS doesn’t resolve a domain name. Anyone know what that could be?

    LinkSwarm for August 29, 2025

    Friday, August 29th, 2025

    The Trump Administration guts two lefty slop buckets of graft, Israel lights up the Houthis big time, crazy tranny shooter might have been in satanic cult too crazy for the Church of Satan, Ukraine bombs the snot out of Russia’s oil infrastructure (again), Scotland and Germany continue to favor unassimilated Muslim immigrants over their own citizens, a secret Spinal Tap concert, and the full weight of Plano ISD comes down on a nefarious…a choir booster club?

    It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Another court win for Trump47. “Supreme Court Rules 5-4 That Trump Can Slash $783 Million In DEI Research Funding.”

    The Trump administration is free to eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of research funding on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) following last week’s ruling by the United States Supreme Court.

    In a 5-4 vote, the justices lifted an order from a federal court judge in Boston that blocked $783 million in cuts made by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on health research grants that were being used to advance DEI efforts as well as “gender ideology extremism.”

    The Supreme Court was split on the 5-4 decision which marks another win for President Trump and clears the way for his administration to move forward with canceling hundreds of grants after U.S. District Judge William Young ordered the health-related grants restored in June.

    Chief Justice John Roberts was among the dissenters in the high court’s decision and Justice Amy Coney Barrett voted with conservative majority to let the administration stop the grant funding.

    Roberts and Barrett did land on the side of the dissent and allowed to stand a portion of the lower judge’s order that voided a number of NIH policies that targeted DEI programs at the direction of the White House.

  • Speaking of self-dealing garbage corrupt Biden Administration toadies were cutting themselves in for, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick voided ‘illegal’ $7.4B payment to Biden ally-staffed nonprofit for semiconductor research.

    Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick canceled an Biden administration agreement Monday to distribute billions of dollars for semiconductor research through a nonprofit set up and staffed by former political appointees, according to a letter obtained by The Post.

    The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act provided for $11 billion in semiconductor research and development funding to be given out by the Commerce Department’s National Semiconductor Technology Center.

    “Rather than establishing these operations within the Department, however, Biden Administration officials spent significant time, effort, and resources creating an unaccountable, outside entity–Natcast–to administer taxpayer funds,” Lutnick wrote Natcast CEO Deirdre Hanford.

    Four days before Biden left office on Jan. 20, Lutnick noted, the Commerce Department agreed to set aside $7.4 billion in “advance payments” to Natcast after spending nearly two years setting it up and tapping administration officials, advisers and allies to fill out positions.

    That arrangement both effectively removed the incoming Trump administration from being involved in the process and provided “virtually all” of Natcast’s funding — prompting incoming Departments of Justice and Commerce officials to take another look at the Sunnyvale, Calif., nonprofit.

    “These actions do not just give the appearance of impropriety; they flout federal law,” Lutnick told Hanford, pointing out that no provisions in the CHIPS Act authorized an outside entity like Natcast to distribute semiconductor research funds.

    “The GCCA [Government Corporation Control Act] plainly prohibits agencies from establishing a corporation to act as an agency without specific authorization, and the January 16, 2025, agreement does nothing other than set forth the terms of the Biden Administration’s attempt to do just that.”

    Natcast’s selection committee included Biden White House alums like Jason Matheny, former deputy director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and Kendra Wilkerson, the CEO of a nonprofit that “promotes greater equality for women and nonbinary professionals in technology fields,” according to the Biden Commerce Department.

    Donna Dubinsky, another Natcast executive, worked as senior counselor to former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and signed off on the nonprofit’s 501(c)(3) status.

    Susan Feindt, the Biden Commerce Department’s vice chair of its CHIPS Act advisory committee, is now the senior vice president of ecosystem development at Natcast.

    Jeremy Licht, the former chief counsel on semiconductor incentives at the Biden Commerce Department, is now the general counsel at Natcast.

    They weren’t robbing Peter to pay Paul, they were robbing you to line their own pockets. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Try to contain your shock, but D.C.’s Democrat government was lying about crime statistics.

    White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller told reporters Monday that the Trump administration has uncovered a “massive scandal” in Washington D.C. involving the doctoring of crime statistics.

    He said the alleged corruption is currently under investigation and said details of the corruption will soon be brought to light.

    “The results will stun you,” he said.

    Miller made the remarks in the Oval Office after President Trump signed a slew of new executive orders to end cashless bail throughout the United States and in the District of Columbia, prosecute the burning of the American flag, and additional measures to address crime in Washington D.C.

    Miller said D.C. already had the worst crime statistics in the United States when “honestly measured,” but those stats “dramatically understated how bad it was.”

    The White House advisor told reporters that murders and homicides were allegedly being reported as accidents instead of murders.

    “This is how severe the manipulation of the crime data has been in the city and it will all be uncovered and it will all be brought to light,” he said.

    For the past two weeks—since the D.C. crime crackdown began—the city has not seen a single murder or homicide.

    “No police officer working in the city can remember a time in their lives when there has been no murders,” Miller asserted.

    He said police officers have told him that members of the public have been thanking them for making D.C safe again.

    “For the first time in their lives, they can use the parks, they can walk on the streets, you have people who can walk freely at night without worrying about being ribbed or mugged,” he said. “They’re wearing their watch again, they’re wearing jewelry again, they’re carrying purses again.”

    Miller explained that D.C. residents had been forced to “change their who lives for fear of being murdered, mugged or carjacked.”

    He added that Trump had freed the 700,000 residents of the city from “the rule of criminals and thugs.”

    Miller credited Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrator Terrance C. Cole with discovering that street criminals in Washington D.C. have been “doing business directly with the transnational criminal cartels,” which are foreign terrorist organizations.

    “So not only was the city being run by these criminal thugs, but they were working with some of the most dangerous terrorist organizations on the planet to traffic weapons and drugs into this city,” he explained.

  • Israel gets tired of the Houthis tugging on their cape.

    Israel’s military conducted airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital, Sanaa, on Sunday, targeting high-profile sites in a significant escalation of hostilities.

    The strikes hit areas near the presidential palace, the Asar and Hizaz power plants, and Houthi facilities suspected of housing artillery, including ballistic missiles, according to regional reports.

    The operation was a direct response to recent Houthi attacks on Israel, including projectile launches on Friday, a military source told the Jerusalem Post. While Israel has previously targeted Houthi infrastructure, its strikes have largely focused on the strategic port city of Hodeida, a critical economic and military hub. The shift to Sanaa signals a broader and more aggressive approach to the conflict.

    At least two people were killed and five others injured, Al Masirah, a Houthi-affiliated media outlet reported, according to Al Jazeera.

    “The attacks were carried out in response to repeated attacks by the Houthi terrorist regime against the state of Israel and its citizens, including the launch of surface-to-surface missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles towards the country’s territory,” the Israeli military said in a statement.

  • There’s video:

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Crazy trans-cult member Robert Paul Westman, who hated Donald Trump and Jews, murdered children at a Minneapolis church this week.
  • Weirdly, the crazy murderous tranny’s manifesto name-checked Brandon Herrera. He is not pleased. (And there is a previous parallel.)
  • “Westman’s videos, posted hours before the shootings, may only suggest he used ‘very similar to the symbolism used by violent global satanic cults called Order of 9 Angles and 764.'” I reached out to a “left-hand path” guy I knew from science fiction for background, and he offered the following:

    Many years ago Dr. Anton LaVey asked Micheal Aquino to write two “Lovecraftain Pieces” for the _Satanic Rituals — “Th Cermony of the Nine Angles”and “The Call to Cthulhu”.

    Then back in the 1990s a weirdo (named Myall back in the day) claimed that family knew the REAL SECRET of the nine angles. It was mainly Neo_Nazy stuff — “Kill a Jew for Satan” The guy claimed 100s of followers and had several Orders he was running –my favorite was the “lesbian: Order of the Sapphic Satanists. He tried to join Islam and run an atisemetic Islamic Runic brotherhood that worshipped Azathoth. It did not go well. The ONA shows occasionally with anti-Jewish slogans.

    According to this piece last year, 764 is a global Satanic child predator network.

  • Zohran Mamdani’s advisors are just as filled with lunacy as him.

    The likely next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, is, as President Donald Trump put it, a “100% Communist lunatic,” and so you won’t exactly be dumbfounded to learn that his advisors are a rogue’s gallery of political hacks and psychopaths the likes of which have not been seen since Chairman Mao sat down for a tete-a-tete with his fellow cultural revolutionaries. It’s clear that one way or another, once this clown moves into Gracie Mansion, New York City is in for it: skyrocketing crime, an inundation of illegal migrants, bankruptcy, the destruction of the city’s economic base — all that and more is on the table.

    Fox News reported Thursday Mamdani’s “growing circle of influence is littered with activists who have espoused anti-Israel views and socialist principles as he attempts to dispel the narrative that he is too ‘radical’ to run the nation’s largest city.” Yeah, these advisors show that he is indeed far too radical to be mayor of New York, but that’s not likely to keep him from being elected.

    Among those advisors is Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), which advocates ending “state support for detention, deportation, and mass incarceration.” Awawdeh insists that illegal migrants “deserve” healthcare, presumably at the expense of the American taxpayer. He has also ranted: “NO LISTEN… SEEKING ASYLUM AT THE BORDER IS A LEGAL RIGHT. ASYLUM SEEKERS ARE FLEEING FOR THEIR LIVES FROM VIOLENCE, PERSECUTION, & IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE. THE U.S. HAS A LEGAL OBLIGATION TO PROVIDE REFUGE. #WelcomeWithDignity”

    A legal obligation to provide refuge for anyone fleeing any kind of difficulty? Do tell. Anyway, NYIC has “taken in $175,000 from the sprawling George Soros nonprofit network,” and if that connection of Soros to Mamdani is too tenuous for you, there is plenty more. Fox News reported on Aug. 14 that “A former top executive for liberal billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) between 2017 and 2020 is back in the spotlight amid reports highlighting his involvement with Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign and connecting Obama world to the campaign.”

    The Soros exec in question is Patrick Gaspard, an old political hand on the left; the first campaign he worked on was Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential run. Gaspard “has served in several high-profile political positions, including advising former President Barack Obama’s historic 2008 campaign, serving as the Democratic National Committee’s executive director, and being tapped as the Center for American Progress (CAP) president in 2021.”

  • Another Trump Administration victory over crime.

    Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the co-founder of the Sinaloa cartel, is set to face the rest of his life behind bars as the Trump administration ramps up its efforts to dismantle cartels.

    Zambada, 75, confessed in a Brooklyn, New York, courtroom Monday that he had coordinated with Mexican officials to smuggle drugs into the U.S. for decades — and ultimately pleaded guilty to serving as principal leader of a continuing criminal enterprise and racketeering conspiracy.

    The Trump administration has pledged to take down the cartels — and experts predict Zambada’s guilty plea paves the way for the Justice Department to launch more indictments against high-profile cartel members moving forward and exerts additional pressure on Mexico to comply with U.S. requests.

  • Russia may not have an oil industry at all when this war is over. Ukraine just hit two more oil refineries, Kuybyshevskiy in Samara and Afipsky in Krasnodar. “Multiple swarms hit this refinery, which makes Russia’s air defense look even more incompetent than usual.” It was also 1,000km away.
  • They also hit the Ust-Luga gas processing terminal near St. Petersburg with ten drones. “This terminal is responsible for processing stable gas condenscent in naphtha jet fuel fuel oil and distillates.” The location makes me wonder if a goodly portion was intended for the export market.
  • They also hit Syzran oil refinery again.

    The map of Russian refineries reveals a key strategic problem. The main processing capabilities are in the European part of the country, whilst fuel consumption is rising in the far east. Fuel logistic chains for eastern regions span thousands of kilometers, creating additional costs and risks. Kilometer-long queues in cities are a direct result of the imbalance between western production and eastern consumption.

  • And they hit another fuel train, this one in in Dzhankoi, Crimea.
  • Russia tries to war crime a Ukrainian civilian with a drone, but it gets taken out by another civilian.
  • New problems require…very old solutions? “Ukrainians hunt Russian drones dangling out of prop planes with shotguns.”
  • “Chinese National Charged With Stealing Sensitive Data from UT-MD Anderson.”

    Harris County’s District Attorney Sean Teare has charged Yunhai Li, a 35-year-old former MD Anderson Cancer Center researcher, with attempting to steal and take proprietary cancer-related research back to China. This comes after multiple warnings about research security in Texas higher education.

  • Texas House votes to the Attorney General’s power to prosecute election fraud.
  • “Trump Administration to Retake Control of D.C.’s Union Station amid Crime Crackdown.”

    While the Department of Transportation has owned the historic station since the 1980s, it has allowed a nonprofit, the Union Station Redevelopment Corporation, more control over the station year after year.

    Now, the Department of Transportation says it plans to use a new deal with Amtrak and USRC to fund improvements to elevators, lighting, security and other repairs to the roof and several major systems.

  • “Scottish Girl Arrested For Using Knife And Axe To Ward Off Migrant Stalker.” She was defending her 12-year old sister from unassimilated would-be Muslim statutory rapists, so of course the police had to arrest her…
  • “How can you tell the difference between a police raid and a home invasion?”

    Last week, a Houston resident foiled a home invasion attempt by a couple criminals trying to impersonate the police. According to the news article:

    “Police said the men told the homeowner they were serving a warrant. They were wearing bullet-proof vests, had badges around their necks and were wearing ski masks.”

    The homeowner ended up shooting and killing both offenders.

    There are many more tips in the article, but police don’t wear ski masks while serving a warrant…

  • “Texas Teacher Arrested on Federal Child Porn Charge…Robert Jerome Custer, 56, was arrested on a federal charge of accessing child sexual abuse material, commonly called child pornography. Custer previously worked as an educator and counselor in Palestine, Barksdale, Kingsville, and Abilene, according to a statement from the Texas Department of Public Safety.”
  • Welfare state is not sustainable, says German chancellor.”

    The German welfare state is no longer financially sustainable, Friedrich Merz said on Saturday.

    The chancellor argued for a fundamental reassessment of the benefits system as spending continues to soar past last year’s record of €47bn (£40bn).

    In a state-level party conference meeting on Saturday, Mr Merz said: “The welfare state as we have it today can no longer be financed with what we can economically afford.”

    Once the export champion of Europe, Germany’s economy has slowed dramatically since 2017, with GDP growing by only 1.6 per cent since then versus 9.5 per cent for the rest of the eurozone.

    Germany’s economy shrank by 0.2 per cent last year following a 0.3 per cent dip in 2023 – the first time since the early 2000s the economy has retreated two years in a row.

    Industrial production fell under the Left-leaning “traffic light” coalition of Olaf Scholz and continues to slide under the new government, with GDP declining by 0.3 per cent in the second quarter of 2025.

    Meanwhile, spending on social welfare has exploded, and is set to increase further this year as Germany’s population ages and unemployment rises. Although the majority of benefit recipients are German, large numbers are non-German citizens.

    German elites will do anything to support its welfare state…except stop importing unassimilated Muslim immigrants. Just like all the rest of Europe’s elites. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

  • “Paxton Seeks End to Federal Decree Mandating Release of Harris County Misdemeanor Suspects. The O’Donnell federal consent decree has governed county bail practices since 2019.”
  • A decade after the radical left first started shoving tranny bathrooms down the public’s throat without debate, Texas is finally limiting bathrooms to biological sex.
  • Mark Teixeira, Longtime Major League Baseball Player, Launches Texas Congressional Bid.” He’s running as a Republican for the 21st Texas Congressional District, where incumbent Chip Roy is running for Attorney General.
  • Having a meth habit is going to be disqualifying for a lot of jobs. Like District Attorney for Mariposa County. Thus it’s no surprise that DA Mike McAfee resigned…
  • Another electric bus company goes bankrupt. “Quebec-based Lion Electric, which the Biden administration awarded $159 million ‘to manufacture 435 school buses between 2022 and 2024,’ has fallen into bankruptcy.” (Previously.)
  • LA police can’t catch fleeing suspect…even after he stopped to fill up on gas.  
  • This is a weird story. “Moms Arrested for Running North Texas Choir Booster Club. Cleared of charges, moms still lost choir booster club money to the school district.”

    Local authorities in Collin County, including a school district, have harassed three moms in a quest to control a school booster club and its funds, even going so far as to arrest them.

    Plano Independent School District targeted the Jasper High School Choir Booster Club for control of its bank account after the mothers charged with running the independent organization insisted that the district pay for Jasper High School’s stage—as was the district’s responsibility.

    The district had the Plano police arrest the booster club’s founders—Laura Cervantes, Krisinda Lingenfelter, and Maria Luisa King. Yet, after a Collin County grand jury failed to find enough evidence to prosecute these moms, a Plano municipal judge recently awarded the club’s bank funds to Plano ISD.

    Also this: “Oral arguments were held on May 30 before Judge Paul McNulty, chief judge for the Municipal Court of Plano. Texas Scorecard was in attendance. Recording devices were banned from the trial and the booster club was denied its request to bring a court reporter.” Also, another judge involved in the case, Lisa Bronchetti, evidently wrote a bad check to the club but still failed to excuse herself.

    Like I said, weird…

  • Newark Airport sucks. Objectively. One major culprit? God.
  • Roanoke’s famous lost colony was never lost.
  • Spinal Tap did a secret concert at Stonehenge.

  • Ryan George tackles the difficulties of reading online news sites.
  • “Dear Stupid Bitch, I’m sorry to hear that your cat is a Communist.”
  • “Nation That Once Charged Into Certain Death For Freedom Now Letting Their Daughters Handle The Rape Gangs.”
  • “Travis Kelce Finally Acquires Ring Without Help Of Referees.”
  • Hap, hap, happy dog.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • I’m still between jobs. Feel free to hit the tip jar if you’re so inclined.





    More Iran Strike Followup

    Thursday, July 3rd, 2025

    There’s still more fallout (metaphorical, not literal) from Operation Midnight Hammer, so let’s do a roundup.

  • For all the debate over the extent of damage America inflicted on Iran’s nuclear program, the IAEA seems to think it’s been destroyed.

    Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, discussed the state of Iran’s nuclear program on Sunday on CBS News’ Face the Nation; the interview was taped Friday:

    I think you can pick and choose any adjective to characterize this, but you will see that there is an agreement in describing this as a very serious level of damage. It can be, you know, described in different ways, but it’s clear that what happened in particular in Fordo, Natanz, Isfahan, where Iran used to have and still has, to some degree, capabilities in terms of treatment, conversion and enrichment of uranium have been destroyed to an important degree. Some is still standing. So there is, of course, an important setback in terms of those — of those capabilities. This is — this is clear. And now the important issue — the important thing is, what are the next steps? Now the characterization of the damage, I think we can, you know, speculate, and still, until, of course, the Iranians themselves will have to go there and sift through the, you know, rubble and look at what is the exact degree of the damage. At some point, the IAEA will have to return. Although our job is not to assess damage, but to re-establish the knowledge of the activities that take place there, and the access to the material, which is very, very important, the material that they will be producing if they continue with this activity. This is contingent on other, you see, everything is connected. This is — this is contingent on negotiations which may or may not restart, so — so what we see this here, I think we have a snapshot of- of- of a program which has been very seriously damaged, to quote Dr. Araghchi. And now what we need to focus on is on the next steps. [Emphasis added.]

    Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said on Thursday that the country’s nuclear facilities had sustained “significant and serious damages,” the first official acknowledgment of the extent of the damages caused by U.S. strikes on three nuclear sites.

    The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran was still “surveilling the damages and losses,” Mr. Araghchi said in an interview with Iran’s state television. But, he added, “I have to say, the losses have not been small, and our facilities have been seriously damaged.”

  • “The United States’ B-2 stealth bomber strike on Iran’s Fordow uranium enrichment facility was the culmination of more than 15 years of study and planning.”

    [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan “Razin”] Caine detailed the military planning that began in 2009 to design a purpose-built method to knock out the Fordow facility, which is buried hundreds of feet underground in a mountainous region of Iran.

    Caine shed new light on the role of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), an organization tasked with preparing bespoke solutions to destroy highly sensitive targets, including emerging weapons of mass destruction.

    “DTRA does a lot of things for our nation, but DTRA is the world’s leading expert on deeply buried, underground targets,” Caine said.

    “In 2009, a Defense Threat Reduction Agency officer was brought into a vault at an undisclosed location and briefed on something going on in Iran,” Caine said, declining to identify the DTRA officer by name.

    This DTRA officer, and another unnamed member of the agency, were then tasked to work with the intelligence community to study the construction of the Fordow site.

    “For more than 15 years, this officer and his teammate lived and breathed this single target: Fordow, a critical element of Iran’s covert nuclear weapons program,” Caine said.

    The two DTRA employees spent years studying everything from the geology surrounding Fordow, to the construction materials and other equipment arriving at the facility, so they could model the site and devise a plan.

    “They literally dreamed about this target at night when they slept,” Caine said.

    In the course of their study of the Fordow facility, Caine said the pair of DTRA employees leading the project soon determined the U.S. military did not have a weapon that could adequately address the challenge the fortified Iranian nuclear facility presented.

    “So, they began a journey to work with industry and other tacticians to develop the GBU-57,” Caine said.

    The GBU-57, also known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) or bunker-buster, is a 30,000-pound bomb designed to burrow and explode deep underground.

    Military planners then spent years testing the bomb, specifically for the Fordow facility.

    “They tested it over and over again. … They accomplished hundreds of test shots, and dropped many full-scale weapons against extremely realistic targets for a single purpose: kill this target at the time and place of our nation’s choosing,” Caine said.

    Each GBU-57 is “bespokely” designed for a specific target. He said each one dropped on the Fordow facility “had a unique desired impact angle, arrival, final heading, and fuse” corresponding to its role in the overall mission.n addition to live-testing the GBU-57, Caine said the program to develop the heavy bunker-buster involved extensive and complex computing.

    “In the beginning of its development, we had so many PhDs working on the MOP program, doing modeling and simulation, that we were quietly and in a secret way, the biggest users of supercomputer-hours within the United States of America,” he said.

    Snip.

    While Caine said the intelligence community is still assessing the true damage of the U.S. strike, he indicated military planners are confident the strike was successful, based on their understanding of the weapons they used, and the fact that each weapon was observed acting as it was intended.

    “The weapons were built, tested, and loaded properly,” he said. “Two, the weapons were released on-speed and on-parameters. Three, the weapons all guided to their intended targets and to their intended aim points. Four, the weapons functioned as designed, meaning they exploded.”

    Caine also described the account of a U.S. fighter pilot who escorted the bomber formation and watched the bomb blasts, who Caine quoted as saying, “This was the brightest explosion that I’ve ever seen. It literally looked like daylight.”

    Snip.

    Hegseth then read off a list of statements, including from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, the Iranian Foreign Ministry, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and others, assessing that the June 21 strike caused extensive damage to Iran’s nuclear program.

    (Hat tip: ZeroHedge.)

  • Europe’s response to the Iran strike is now in, and it’s a resounding “meh.”

    For those accustomed to continental condemnation toward Israel on Gaza, European leaders’ support for the nation’s ferocious campaign to strike Iran’s nuclear program was probably one of the many shocks of the past two weeks.

    Consider these statements from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz:

    “There is no reason for us, or for me personally, to criticize what Israel started a week ago, nor is there any reason to criticize what America did last weekend.”

    “The evidence that Iran is continuing on its path to building a nuclear weapon can no longer be seriously disputed.”

    “This is dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us.”

    Merz noted that the actions were not “without risk” and has since turned attention back to Gaza in calling for a cease-fire there. Reactions from other top European leaders were more qualified regarding the Israeli-U.S. operation — but still supportive of the overall goal of preventing a nuclear-armed Iran and understanding of Israel’s desire to eliminate that risk.

    French President Emmanuel Macron said there was “no legality” to America’s strikes, while acknowledging France “supports the objective of preventing Iran from getting the nuclear bomb.” Earlier, he said Israeli strikes that hit “civilian or energy facilities” must stop, while conceding that Iran posed an “existential risk” for Israel. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, calling for de-escalation and negotiation, said in a video on X, “We’ve long had concerns about the Iranian nuclear program,” and described the prospect of Iran getting a nuclear weapon as “the greatest threat to stability in the region.”

    A joint statement from all three leaders last weekend affirmed that Iran “can never have a nuclear weapon” and urged the country to engage in negotiations. It put the onus on Iran “not to take any further action that could destabilize the region.”

    Before the American strike, even European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen “reiterated Israel’s right to defend itself and protect its people” while calling for de-escalation and restraint from both sides. NR’s Michael Brendan Dougherty, marking these “strange days,” also flagged the effusive praise for President Trump’s handling of Iran from NATO’s secretary-general.

    We can infer from these reactions a few things.

    One, the determinations of the International Atomic Energy Agency indeed rattled the Europeans as well as the Israelis. As NR’s original editorial on Israel’s strikes noted, “Iran had significantly ramped up its enrichment capacity, with even the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (not exactly friendly to Israeli militarism) having determined that Iran had been enriching uranium well beyond the level of civilian use, and closer to military grade.”

    Two, Iran’s support for Russia in its war against Ukraine — via cooperation on the production of attack drones for use on the battlefield — has won Tehran few sympathizers inside Europe’s political establishment.

    Three, relatedly, Europe’s well-founded fear of Iran is greater than its misgivings about Israel, given Iran’s history of targeting regime opponents there.

  • “Israel is calling on three European countries to enact the UN Security Council’s ‘snapback’ mechanism regarding Iran sanctions.”

    Israel is calling on three European countries, Britain, France, and Germany — known as the E-3 — to enact the UN Security Council’s “snapback” mechanism regarding Iran sanctions. A clause in the 2015 council resolution that endorsed that year’s Iran nuclear deal allows each of the deal parties to automatically reimpose all global sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

    For now, though, “there’s murmur about snapback, but nothing more than that,” a UN-based diplomat tells the Sun. He noted that time is limited for enacting the mechanism.

    America, Britain, France, Germany, Communist China, and Russia can unilaterally trigger the option, and no veto could block the snapback. Council members, however, rejected an American attempt to snap back the sanctions after President Trump left the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018. The E-3, though, might still enact it.

  • There’s an easy way for Iran to avoid further bombings: Stop trying to build nuclear weapons.