A fireball erupts following an Israeli strike near a tent encampment sheltering peope displaced by war in the central Gaza Strip on March 25
Daily Mail
The Iranian hardliners running Tehran since Donald Trump killed the ayatollah are now ramping up calls to build a nuclear bomb as the regime claims it has one million fighters on stand-by for a US ground invasion.
Leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are now considering publicly pursuing a nuclear weapon in defiance of US-Israeli strikes.
Following the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the start of the war, the IRGC hardliners have become a dominant force in the country. Trump claims to have wiped out Iran’s hardline mullahs, but the Islamic regime is proving to be a hydra, with each new head tougher and more intent on vengeance than the last.
The regime has long denied it would pursue a nuclear bomb, with Khamenei banning nuclear weapons as forbidden under Islam. However, Western intelligence agencies have publicly stated that Iran has been secretly enriching and stockpiling uranium in pursuit of a weapon.
Tehran’s leaders are now considering quitting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and scrapping their posturing on nuclear weapons altogether.
Sources told Reuters the relentless US-Israeli strikes have persuaded the regime it has nothing to gain by holding back from building a bomb.
Iranian state media, meanwhile, claims more than one million troops have been mobilized in preparation for a US ground invasion to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The buildup comes amid growing threats from Trump to seize Kharg Island, a key oil hub that helps control the vital waterway.
Iran has begun reinforcing the island by laying traps such as anti-personnel and anti-armor mines along likely landing zones.
US officials have warned the administration that any ground operation would carry significant risks, including the potential for high numbers of American casualties.
Pentagon chiefs ordered around 2,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East last night to join some 4,500 Marines already en route to the region, as Trump’s peace push shows signs of collapse.
Hardline politician Mohammad Javad Larijani, brother of senior official Ali Larijani who was killed in a strike last Tuesday, was quoted by state media this week urging Iran to suspend its membership of the NPT.
‘The NPT should be suspended. We should form a committee to assess whether the NPT is of any use to us at all. If it proves useful, we will return to it. If not, they can keep it,’ he said.
Earlier in the month, state television aired a segment with conservative commentator Nasser Torabi in which he said the Iranian public demanded: ‘We need to act in order to build a nuclear weapon. Either we build it or we acquire it.’
The President has said he is prepared to pull the trigger on a full-scale invasion if Tehran continues to rebuff his diplomatic overtures, according to members of his inner circle.
‘Trump has a hand open for a deal, and the other is a fist, waiting to punch you in the f***ing face,’ a Trump aide told Axios.
The 15-point plan, modeled on Trump’s Gaza deal, would require Iran to dismantle all nuclear and long-range missile capabilities, open the Strait of Hormuz, and abandon proxy terror groups.
But Iranian state TV on Wednesday said that the regime had rejected the ceasefire proposal. Instead, Tehran is demanding the closure of all US bases in the Gulf, reparations, and an end to Israeli military strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Tehran is also seeking to bring the strait – a chokepoint for roughly a fifth of the world’s oil – under its control, allowing it to charge transit fees on passing vessels, much like Egypt does with the Suez Canal.
A Trump official described Iran’s demands as ‘ridiculous’ and ‘unrealistic’, warning that reaching a deal is now more difficult than before the war began as the President prepares a potential ground invasion force.
Daily Mail