Guest: Yassamine Mather
The unthinkable has happened -- after warning Iran it had two weeks to make a deal, Trump went ahead and unleashed the raw military might of at least six 30,000-pound bunker busters, delivered by B2 bombers on Fordo, and submarines fired 30 TLAM cruise missiles at Natanz and Isfahan. With typical Trumpian bombast, he bragged that Iran's nuclear sites "are totally obliterated." Yet Iranian officials claim that Iran had already moved its nuclear materials out of the three facilities the US struck months ago.

I spoke to Yassamine Mather before Trump bombed to get her analysis of Israel’s “Operation Rising Lion” — a unilateral military strike on Iran that marks a dangerous new escalation in an already volatile region.

The attack comes amid Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Gaza, accelerating dispossession of Palestinians in the West Bank, pager bomb assassinations of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and land grabs in Syria following the collapse of the Assad regime. Netanyahu’s war cabinet is committed to military solutions on all fronts — and now, Iran.
Tehran’s regime is retaliating deep inside Israeli territory. This is a first for Israel, and it is dangerous in every way. Although the US was fully informed of Israel's intentions, Netanyahu disregarded Trump's public opposition to the strike. Trump then switched, and endorsed Netanyahu's attack, warning Iran to make a deal or else. Now we see the 'or else.'

The timing of Israel's attack on Iran raises key questions: Was the strike aimed at derailing renewed nuclear diplomacy? To deflect attention from Israel’s failure to rescue hostages after 20 months of genocidal violence in Gaza? Does it signal a refusal by Netanyahu’s government to accept any peaceful settlement with Iran?

Israel is fast becoming a pariah state, waging war with impunity. It's ironic that Iran, a pariah state for more than 45 years, whose deeply unpopular and repressive regime is now attacked by Israel, whose destruction and starvation of Gazans, political assassinations, and military strikes are turning it into an international outlier. Yassamine Mather helps us make sense of this dangerous turning point in Middle East politics.