Jonathan Schanzer

وزارة الداخلية في دولة الإمارات: تتعامل الدفاعات الجوية مع تهديد صاروخي

Senior U.S. official denies a U.S. ship was hit by Iranian missiles

IRAN'S FARS NEWS AGENCY: TWO MISSILES HIT U.S. WARSHIP NEAR JASK ISLAND AFTER IT IGNORED IRAN WARNINGS Last night, Trump launched "Project Freedom." The goal of it was to escort neutral ships through the Strait of Hormuz so they could not be stuck in the region. Iran said that regardless of what the reason was for ships trying to leave the Strait, they would respond militarily to any US ships that tried to escort other ships through the strait. As of this latest news update from Iran, it seems they attacked a US Warship for beginning the process of helping other ships leave the region. Futures went from green to red, we'll need confirmation now from the US if this happened and what escalation there could be. Crude spiked as well, now at $106.

Israel is using Greece to advance its regional goals and will exploit its fears, UN rapporteur Francesca Albanese said. “You think that you have chosen Israel… I don’t think so,” she said. “Israel has chosen you, and it’s going to exploit your fears and your insecurity.” Source: Al Jazeera

This merits a response. JCPOA proponents always focus on the enriched uranium stockpile and not its underlying infrastructure, which the JCPOA freed up to expand — legally and massively — starting in 2024, following sunsetting arms and missile restrictions in 2020 and 2023. Under the JCPOA, Iran was always permitted to engage in R&D on advanced centrifuges and to deploy them starting in 2024. Just a few hundred advanced centrifuges are sufficient for a secret enrichment plant to go to weapons-grade uranium. At what point in this timeline would Iran diplomatically renegotiate? After Oct. 2025, when it would have been freed from the enrichment suspension and have no incentive to do so? That same year when it would be allowed to legally import anything it desired for its nuclear program? But let's say the JCPOA was still intact. In 2020 and 2023: • UN conventional arms embargo on imports to and exports from Iran lapsed (Oct. 2020); • Select UN-sponsored visa bans on Iranian officials lifted; • UN-sponsored ban on imports/exports of missile-related equipment and technology expired (Oct. 2023); • UN prohibition on Iranian ballistic missile launches ended; • U.S. and EU/UK sanctions on select proliferation-linked entities lapsed; • UN-sponsored asset freezes on select entities terminated; Iran's permitted activities from 2024-2026: • Up to 5,060 IR-1 centrifuges would have been allowed to enrich at Natanz; 1,044 IR-1s held idle at Fordow; • Tests with up to 30 IR-6 and 30 IR-8 centrifuges would have been permitted; manufacture of up to 200 IR-6 and 200 IR-8 per year - without rotors - would have been allowed; • JCPOA procurement channel would have dissolved, removing oversight of nuclear-related imports; • Past UNSC resolutions related to Iran's nuclear program would have terminated - in particular, the demand for a suspension of enrichment and reprocessing; • "Snapback" mechanism to restore international sanctions would have expired Oct. 18, 2025. From 2027-2029: • 2,500-3,500 IR-2m or IR-4 centrifuges would have been installed at Natanz - output potentially exceeding all 5,060 permitted IR-1s; • IR-8 infrastructure would have been installed at Natanz; rotors fitted to stockpiled IR-6 and IR-8 machines under IAEA monitoring; • Uranium tests in cascades of up to 150 IR-6 and 84 IR-8 would have been permitted. By 2029: • No further limits on advanced centrifuge manufacture or enrichment would have applied; • Up to 1,200 IR-6 and 1,200 IR-8 centrifuges could have been stockpiled by this date; • Breakout time would have been reduced to weeks or less - Iran would have been a de facto nuclear threshold state. By 2031: • No cap on enrichment purity level or enriched uranium stockpile would have applied; • Enrichment at Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant would have been permitted; new enrichment plants permitted; • Plutonium reprocessing prohibition would have been lifted; heavy water reactors permitted; no cap on heavy water production or stockpiling; • No limits on centrifuge types or quantities would have remained; • Powered by a fully deployed fleet of advanced centrifuges, Iran would have faced near-zero breakout time - able to produce weapons-grade uranium within days In fact, the JCPOA was a very specific plan to progressively allow a state sponsor of terrorism and growing threat to the U.S., Israel, and their allies to enrich uranium legally and on an industrial scale with zero breakout time! Instead, thanks to military strikes: • These thresholds were never reached. • The JCPOA was formally terminated Oct. 18, 2025. • Iran is not enriching uranium for the first time in nearly 20 years. • No functioning enrichment facilities, feedstock production, or accessible enriched uranium stockpile currently exist. • Strikes have eliminated Iran's entire enrichment fuel supply chain: the Isfahan uranium conversion facility that produced UF6 feedstock has been destroyed; the Isfahan tunnel enrichment plant under construction has been struck and buried; the centrifuge manufacturing base that would have built the advanced machines has been demolished; and the enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow that would have run them have been severely damaged or rendered inaccessible. • Without UF6 feedstock, functioning centrifuges, or operational enrichment halls, Iran cannot produce the enriched uranium fuel required for a nuclear weapon. • The uranium metal conversion and fuel fabrication lines at Isfahan - essential for fashioning enriched material into weapon cores - have also been eliminated. • Iran's plutonium pathway has been closed by strikes on the Arak reactor. • UN resolutions once again prohibit enrichment and reprocessing. The near-zero breakout timeline has been foreclosed. • Snapback restored all UN prohibitions on Iran's imports of arms and missiles. And most importantly, the United States and its allies are no longer bribing Tehran with sanctions relief and other incentives to directly augment its threat capacity — they instead eliminated the great majority of these threats militarily.

Voting for Hamas’s political bureau leadership, between Khalil al-Hayya and Khaled Mashal, has completed in the Gaza Strip, sources told Qatar’s Al Araby TV. The voting in the West Bank and abroad will begin soon, with the final results expected to be announced later this week. The Gaza Strip will Hold separate elections for the leadership position in the Strip if al-Hayya, Hamas’s current leader in Gaza, wins the vote for the political bureau leadership.

After members of Congress asked for a classified briefing 🇹🇷 ties to & activities related to Hamas in December 2024, I spoke to a staffer who informed me that our documenting of the relationship was as good as open source would permit, but the fuller picture was “staggering” Your choice of words to include “ignorance” and “stupid” is reflective of your mission to exonerate Erdogan at any cost. No seriously-coming to terms with where this country has been dragged to, the depths of Erdogan’s depravity, enmeshing 🇹🇷 with the very worst is too hard to accept, so you choose to argue against it. Whether it is bc “no way! my country can’t be this bad” or “let’s not validate these claims because doing so would bar me from going home” I have no idea. The best part is—- that this track record of ties to the MB and its offshoots is all manufactured to help Israel. OK Do you have a count of how many persons and entities of Turkish origin have been sanctioned by the US, UK, and Israel due to their ties to MB and other jihadist organizations-and how many more merit it? The only barriers that hold back further US condemnation and sanctioning activity that would directly name Turkish officials inc Erdogan is Trump and Barrack-that’s it. Western FP and security org’s at state levels are very well aware that TR needs to be reined in, but are prevented by political actors. Members of Congress, the natsec establishment, UK security services, FCDO are very much aware of Turkey’s ties. What hold these actors from holding Ankara to account is simple: better to keep TR in the tent than outside and lose it completely. But sure, continue the insults, calling the exposure of TR’s ties to extremist-jihadist entities as influence operations for Israel. I suppose this probably makes one feel better when they have interesting discussions with other fellow ostriches, but remember this: this is how Erdogan continues to win: by getting “critics” who start with “I hate Erdogan too, BUT” and finish the rest of their sentence by defending his track record in FP

A new chapter for the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz is unfolding.

Fact: FDD’s graphs on “enriched uranium” omit the large build-up in low enriched uranium during the first Trump admin. This build-up enabled the highly enriched uranium production shown in the graphs.