A dozen of the world’s most advanced fighter jets touched down in Israel this week, signaling a sharp escalation in America’s military posture as President Donald Trump warned Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions or face consequences.
According to The Times of Israel, twelve U.S. F-22 stealth fighters arrived Tuesday at an Israeli Air Force base as part of the American buildup across the Middle East. Open-source flight tracking data showed the aircraft departing from Royal Air Force Lakenheath in the United Kingdom, though one jet reportedly turned back because of a technical issue before completing the trip.
An Iranian opposition group took credit for a coordinated assault on Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s Tehran headquarters this week, reporting “heavy clashes” with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) that allegedly left more than 100 of its fighters killed, wounded, or arrested.
The Command Headquarters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) said the operation began at dawn Monday, February 23, during the call to morning prayer, and continued into the afternoon around the Motahari Complex in central Tehran — one of the Islamic Republic’s most heavily fortified seats of power.
While Iran engages in fake negotiations to stall, deceive, and lie to the Trump Administration, they announce that they will be buying anti-ship missiles from China. President Trump must stop these asinine negotiations with Iran. Iran’s butchers will never honor an agreement with the U.S, most especially when President Trump leaves office in January 2029. History will not be kind to President Trump if he signs a bad nuke deal with Iran.
PRESIDENT TRUMP on IRAN: My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy, but one thing is certain: I will NEVER allow the world’s number one sponsor of terror to have a nuclear weapon.
Trump said that for 47 years the Iranian regime and its proxies “have spread terrorism and hate,” killing thousands of people in the region, including American soldiers and at least 32,000 civilians during protests that erupted last December.
Washington — President Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with what aides describe as the limits of military leverage against Iran, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter who spoke to CBS News under condition of anonymity to discuss national security issues.
Unlike previous targeted operations, including the recent one removing Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from power, Mr. Trump has been told that any strike on Tehran’s assets would almost certainly not be a singular, decisive blow. Instead, limited strikes could open the door to a wider confrontation — one that risks drawing the United States into a protracted conflict in the Middle East.
Iranian university students for the last two days have engaged in a new wave of anti-government demonstrations across the country, marking the first major rallies since a violent state crackdown in January.
The protests have reportedly taken place on at least seven campuses as students demand increased political freedom, leading to confrontations with government loyalists, according to various news reports, citing videos of the incidents.
The protests “come as Iran’s clerical leaders struggle to manage uprisings at home and a looming risk of war with Washington,” the New York Timesreported.
For years, the fight over Iran has centered on centrifuges, uranium stockpiles, and enrichment percentages. That framework may now be outdated. If the latest assessments are accurate, Tehran is not merely edging back toward nuclear capability but pairing advanced ballistic missiles with alleged chemical and biological payload potential. That is not incremental pressure. It is strategic escalation.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Monday that the Iranian regime would face “a force they cannot even imagine” should it attack the Jewish state, as U.S. refueling and cargo aircraft landed at Ben Gurion Airport and an American carrier strike group advanced toward the eastern Mediterranean amid escalating regional tensions.
Addressing the Knesset — Israel’s parliament — during a special debate, Netanyahu said the country is navigating “very complex and challenging days,” cautioning that “no one knows what tomorrow will bring.”
He said he had conveyed a direct message to Tehran: if it makes “perhaps the most serious mistake in its history” and strikes Israel, the response will be overwhelming.
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a segment from today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. President Donald Trump is positioning the largest naval and air forces with submarines off the coast of Iran—in the Persian Gulf, in the Mediterranean, in the Red Sea—that we’ve seen since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And there are pros and cons about striking Iran.
We’re not at war with them right now, so this is what we would call either a preventive war, long-term threat, or a preemptive war, that there’s a short-term threat that has to be precluded by the use of force.
President Trump has been moving more U.S. military assets, including carrier groups, into the Persian Gulf region as he threatens war with Iran while continuing to engage diplomatically with Iran. China and Russia have participated in a joint military exercise with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. At home, the President faces a potential congressional challenge to his authority to start a war with Iran. While protests continue sporadically in Iran, and reports of explosions continue to leak out, the regime appears fully in charge as it continues to slaughter the opposition.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran and the United States leaned into gunboat diplomacy Thursday as nuclear talks between the nations hung in the balance, with Tehran holding drills with Russia and the Americans bringing another aircraft carrier closer to the Mideast.
The Iranian drill and the arrival of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier near the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea underscore the tensions between the nations. Iran earlier this week also launched a drill that involved live-fire in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow opening of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes.
The movements of additional American warships and airplanes don’t guarantee a U.S. strike on Iran — but it does give President Donald Trump the ability to carry out one should he choose to do so. He’s so far held off on striking Iran after setting red lines over the killing of peaceful protesters and Tehran holding mass executions, while reengaging Tehran in nuclear talks earlier disrupted by the Iran-Israel war in June.
“Should Iran decide not to make a Deal, it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia, and the Airfield located in Fairford, in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous Regime,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website, seeking to pressure the United Kingdom over its plans to settle the future of the Chagos Islands with Mauritius.
Meanwhile, Iran struggles with unrest at home following its crackdown on protests, with mourners now holding ceremonies honoring their dead 40 days after their killing by security forces. Some of the gatherings have included anti-government cries, despite threats from authorities.
The drill Thursday saw Iranian forces and Russian sailors conduct operations in the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported. The drill will be aimed at “upgrading operational coordination as well as exchange of military experiences,” IRNA added.
China had joined the “Security Belt” drill in previous years, but there was no acknowledgment it participated in this round. In recent days, a vessel that appeared to be a Steregushchiy-class Russian corvette had been seen at a military port in the Iranian city of Bandar Abbas.
Iran also issued a rocket-fire warning to pilots in the region, suggesting they planned to launch anti-ship missiles in the exercise.
Meanwhile, tracking data showed the Ford off the coast of Morocco in the Atlantic Ocean midday Wednesday, meaning the carrier could transit through Gibraltar and potentially station in the eastern Mediterranean with its supporting guided-missile destroyers.
Having the carrier there could allow American forces to have extra aircraft and anti-missile power to potentially protect Israel and Jordan should a conflict break out with Iran. The U.S. similarly placed warships there during the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip to protect against Iranian fire.
Mourning ceremonies for those killed by security forces in the protests last month also have increased. Iranians traditionally mark the death of a loved one 40 days after the loss. Both witnesses and social media videos showed memorials taking place at Tehran’s massive Behesht-e Zahra cemetery. Some memorials included people chanting against Iran’s theocracy while singing nationalistic songs.
The demonstrations began Dec. 28 at Tehran’s historic Grand Bazaar, initially over the collapse of Iran’s currency, the rial, then spread across the country. Tensions exploded on Jan. 8, with demonstrations called for by Iran’s exiled crown prince, Reza Pahlavi.
Iran’s government has offered only one death toll for the violence, with 3,117 people killed. The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in previous rounds of unrest in Iran, puts the death toll at over 7,000 killed, with many more feared dead.
___
Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
DONALD Trump has slammed the UK Chagos Islands deal as “a big mistake”.
He called the 100-year lease agreed by PM Sir Keir Starmer “tenuous, at best” and claimed that the US could need Diego Garcia to hit back at Iran if a nuclear deal is not agreed.
If this adviser is correct, there’s a good chance the United States will be at war with Iran.
A senior adviser to President Trump has revealed that there’s a 90% chance the United States will launch a strike against Iran.
The potential attack comes as the United States has sent a large number of Navy and Air Force assets to the Middle East, which includes two of the largest U.S. aircraft carriers.
After reports of Iranian missile fire in the most strategically important shipping lane in the Persian Gulf, Tehran announced that the Strait of Hormuz would be closed to all maritime traffic for several hours due to a “Smart Control” exercise conducted by the naval arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps…. At the same time, Russia, China and Iran deployed naval vessels to the Strait of Hormuz for joint maneuvers, Russian presidential aide Nikolai Patrushev said Tuesday. It was not immediately clear whether the Russian and Chinese ships had already joined the ongoing Iranian drill or were expected to participate in the coming days (Israel Hayom).
Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner head the U.S. team and are responsible for Russia-Ukraine talks nearby, meaning they may be shuttling quickly between venues.
from www.washingtonpost.com
Iran fired live missiles into the Strait of Hormuz during naval drills Tuesday and signaled it is prepared to close the strategic waterway if ordered by senior leadership, according to Iranian state-affiliated media.
The drills come as President Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are meeting senior Iranian officials in Geneva for a second round of nuclear talks.
In the latest escalation of America’s pressure campaign against Iran, the Pentagon has ordered the deployment of the Navy’s most powerful aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, from the Caribbean to the Middle East.
The move will bring two of the 11 U.S. carrier strike groups into Middle Eastern waters. The Ford, the largest and most advanced carrier in the world, is expected to join USS Abraham Lincoln and a growing number of guided-missile destroyers, fighter jets, and surveillance aircraft already in the region.
This is the same regime accused of unleashing one of the bloodiest crackdowns in its modern history, gunning down its own citizens for the crime of demanding basic freedom. While Iranian families bury their dead, the head of the world’s so-called premier humanitarian body sends warm wishes to their oppressors.
Iran’s atomic energy chief says Tehran is open to diluting its highly enriched uranium if the United States ends sanctions, signalling flexibility on a key demand by the US.
Mohammad Eslami made the comments to reporters on Monday, saying the prospects of Iran diluting its 60-percent-enriched uranium, a threshold close to weapons grade, would hinge on “whether all sanctions would be lifted in return”, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency.
Eslami did not specify whether Iran expected the removal of all sanctions or specifically those imposed by the US.
“The U.S. and Iran held several hours of nuclear negotiations in Oman on Friday, and officials from both countries indicated they expect further meetings in the coming day,” Axios reported. “These were the first face-to-face talks between the U.S. and Iran since the 12-day war last June.”
In the waning days of World War II, even the drug-addled Adolf Hitler knew the end was near. On March 19, 1945, Hitler issued what became known as the “Nero Decree.” As Allied forces closed in, Hitler ordered a scorched-earth policy within Germany’s own borders.
The Middle East does not need another confrontation between the US and Iran, and Tehran should reach a nuclear deal with Washington, Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, said today.
Speaking at a panel at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, Gargash said the region had already endured a series of “calamitous confrontations” and warned against further escalation.
The last time Ottawa resident Mahnoosh Naseri spoke to her father, he had decided to take to the streets of Tehran to protest the Iranian regime.
It was Jan. 7 and Iranians fed up with the corruption, economic mismanagement and repressive religious rules of the regime were rallying like never before.
Two days later, her father left his apartment to join the demonstrators and never came home. It took his family four days to find him. He had been shot dead.
“He didn’t care anymore about his safety. What he cared about was the future of Iranian children,” Naseri told Global News in an interview.
Almost a month after Iranians mounted their biggest challenge to the Islamic regime that has ruled them for a half century, the shocking death toll is becoming more clear.
The protests began in late December and were growing by the day on Jan. 8, when Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s deposed Shah, called for mass demonstrations.
Millions marched in major cities, reassured by U.S. President Donald Trump, who had vowed that if Iran killed protesters, he would “come to their rescue.”
The uprising was the largest since the 1979 Islamic revolution, and fighters loyal to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei responded with predictable violence. Activists say tens of thousands may have been killed.
To cover up the carnage, the regime cut off internet access, but as the bodies have piled up, families like Naseri’s have been finding out just how bad it was.
Hossein Naseri, seen here in Canada in 2025, was killed by Iran’s regime forces on Jan. 9.
Handout
“This has touched a lot of people in the community,” said Ali Ehsassi, an Iranian-Canadian and the Member of Parliament for the Willowdale riding in Toronto.
Ehsassi said he had been hearing from community members whose friends and relatives had been detained or killed, and that Jan. 8 and 9 were “particularly bloody.”
While he did not know the Canadian government’s casualty estimates, the regime’s own figures mean it ranks as one of the bloodiest confrontations of its type in modern history.
“I have no doubt that the number of people who have died is very, very high, even by the standards of the Iranian regime,” the MP said in an interview.
In recent interviews, Global News spoke to Iranian-Canadians about the fate of those close to them who participated in the anti-regime events of Jan. 8 and 9.
“Slowly we learned the truth, and the truth was a massacre had taken place,” said Azam Jangravi, a tech industry professional in Toronto.
Among the casualties were 10 family members, Jangravi said, including one who was shot in the chest at a demonstration in Iran’s third-largest city, Esfahan.
The relative did not die at first but was afraid to seek medical help because the security forces were trolling hospitals to arrest protesters, she said.
After hiding in a house for two days, he succumbed to his injuries, said Jangravi, who fled Iran after she was convicted of showing her hair in public.
Muhammad Reza Madani was killed by Iranian security forces, according to his family in Ottawa.
Handout
Another Iranian-Canadian, Pieman Azimi, said his nephew, a 20-year-old mechanic, had been gunned down during the demonstration.
His family searched police stations and hospitals for a day until finding him among the sea of bodies, said Azimi, who lives in Ottawa.
Another Ottawa resident described the shooting of a friend, who survived a bullet to the waist. Later, the friend told her how the suppression tactics had escalated.
“The first two days, they were shooting with paintballs,” said Nona Dourandish. “And then they decided to bring in military powers and their special units.”
The authorities used drones to monitor the city, and when a crowd gathered to chant anti-regime slogans, gunmen were quickly on the scene, she said, relaying her friend’s account.
“He said basically they were shooting people in their face, in their chest, so they would not get up. So they would not survive,” Dourandish said.
A retired accountant, shot dead
Naseri was close to her father, Hossein. “I can’t believe that my dad is gone,” she said. Harder still to believe was that he was among so many killed that day.
When Naseri was growing up in Tehran, she said she was repeatedly taken into custody for violating the regime’s strict dress code for women.
Her infractions included not covering all her hair with a headscarf and wearing shirts and pants that were deemed too short or too tight, she said.
Following the regime’s brutal crackdown against women’s rights advocates in 2022, she joined her brother in Ottawa in September 2023.
Hossein Naseri, seen here in Ottawa last year, joined the protests in Iran and was shot dead, family members said.
Handout
A 73-year-old retired Tehran accountant, her father visited her in Ottawa last summer. He spent three months in the capital, attending her wedding and her brother’s graduation ceremony.
“I’m so glad that I had the chance to show him some cities in Canada. He really loved the nature here, the museums and the freedom,” Naseri said.
Although he disliked the Islamic government, Hossein had previously refrained from taking part in protests, fearing that it could impact his two children.
But early last month, Naseri spoke to him on WhatsApp, and he had decided that it was time to go out to support the demonstrations.
“He told me, ‘I know you are safe. You are there. There is no danger for you two. And right now I feel free to go and, like others, ask for what we want,’” she said.
Hossein left home at about 7 p.m. on Jan. 9, she said.
Videos and eyewitness testimony amassed by Amnesty International show that, on that night, security forces positioned themselves on rooftops and opened fire.
The “deadly crackdown” was carried out primarily by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Iranian police, the human rights organization said.
Thousands died, making last month “the deadliest period of repression by the Iranian authorities in decades of Amnesty’s research,” according to the group.
Anti-government protest in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP, File).
Naseri began to worry when she didn’t hear from her father. She sent a message to a friend who had internet access. A week later, her aunt called.
The family had searched through bodies until finding Hossein. He had been shot in the main artery in his leg, his daughter said.
Communicating with her family has been a challenge, amid fears that international calls are being monitored. Naseri still knows very little about what happened, but she believes her father could have been saved had made it to a hospital.
She blames the Revolutionary Guard, whose mission is to defend the Islamic government from both internal and external threats. “The IRGC has long experience killing protesters.”
The Mujahedin-e-Khalq, an anti-regime militant group, announced Hossein’s death, calling him one of the “martyrs of the heroic nationwide uprising.”
Canada joined Australia and the European Union on Jan. 9 in condemning “the killing of protestors, the use of violence, arbitrary arrests, and intimidation tactics by the Iranian regime against its own people.”
But Deputy Conservative leader MP Melissa Lantsman said the federal government had to do more than issue statements.
“Canada must exploit the regime’s fragility,” she said in a statement to Global News that called on the government to set up a registry for those engaged in foreign interference.
She also urged Ottawa to expel members of Iran’s regime who have arrived in Canada, and to “work with allies to keep information flowing freely to the brave Iranian people.”
“Anything would be a step above nothing.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at a graduation ceremony for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Tehran, Oct. 13, 2019. Photo by SalamPix/ABACAPRESS.COM.
Liberal MP Ehasassi said the government was working on a collective response together with allies, and that Canada had already listed the IRGC as a terrorist group.
But Ehsassi said Canada has been “well ahead” of other countries in adopting measures against Iran, including banning senior regime members from the country.
Last week, the European Union followed suit, sanctioning the Revolutionary Guard, saying that “Repression cannot go unanswered.”
“Our officials in various departments are in touch with each other, deciding what there is that we can possibly do,” Ehsassi said. “Obviously, I would like to see us do a lot more. I think the Iranian-Canadian community would like to see that,” he said.
“And I have every confidence that there are going to be a suite of measures.”
The U.S. has been moving military assets to the Middle East, and on Monday, Trump warned Iran of “bad things,” but he has so far refrained from an attack and Khamanei said an American strike would trigger a regional war.
Naseri thinks the era of an Iran run by extremist mullahs has come to an end. “This protest shows that the people of Iran, they don’t accept this regime anymore.”
“When we bring down the Islamic regime in Iran, the world will see real peace again.”
150,000 people took to the streets of downtown Toronto on Sunday to march in solidarity with the people of Iran and call for regime change and freedom from the authoritarian Islamic regime. Many carried photos of Iranian protestors who have been killed by the regime during their ongoing crackdown against civilians. Many similar massive events have been occurring in Toronto and around the world in recent weeks.
For those of us who fled the Islamic Republic decades ago, watching the images of mosques burning across our homeland evokes a complex, visceral cocktail of emotions. To the outside observer, a mosque in flames is a tragedy of religious intolerance. But to the Iranian people – and specifically to those of us who have lived under the suffocating veil of theocratic absolute power – these fires are not acts of “terrorism.” They are acts of exorcism.
We are witnessing more than a political protest; we are seeing a definitive, civilizational uprising against the very concept of the Islamic state. As the smoke rises from Tehran to Mashhad, it signals the end of a forty-seven-year experiment in forced piety. The Iranian people are not just demanding a change in government; they are demanding the return of their soul – a soul that was systematically suppressed in 1979.
To understand why an ex-Muslim Iranian might cheer for the destruction of a “house of God,” one must understand what the mosque has become in the Islamic Republic. For decades, the regime has used the mosque not as a sanctuary, but as a command center.
PARIS: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has ordered the start of nuclear talks with the United States, local media said on Monday (Feb 2), after US President Donald Trump said he was hopeful of a deal to avert military action against the Islamic republic.
Following the Iranian authorities’ deadly response to anti-government protests that peaked last month, Trump has threatened military action and ordered the dispatch of an aircraft carrier group to the Middle East.
While piling pressure on Iran, Trump has maintained he is hopeful of making a deal, and Tehran has also insisted it wants diplomacy while vowing an unbridled response to any aggression.