Biting The Bullet

 

"All gatherings, including synagogue services and public assemblies, are strictly forbidden at this time."

"Residents are urged to keep at least one phone on in every household to receive real-time alerts."

"It is also recommended to keep a radio tuned to an open emergency frequency." 

Israeli Home Front Command notice

 

"President Trump has deftly used the Israeli attack to, in effect, say to the Iranians: 'I am still ready to negotiate a peaceful end to your nuclear program and you might want to go there fast -- because my friend, Bibi is C-R-A-Z-Y."

"I am waiting for your call." 

Mockup of imagined call from Trump to Ayatollah Khamenei: NYT columnist Thomas Friedman 

Israeli security and rescue forces at the scene of a ballistic missile impact in Rehovot, June 15, 2025. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)

 

Attack sirens sound throughout Israel these days on a regular basis. Messages reach Israelis  constantly from the Home Front command urging people to be aware and to make themselves knowledgeable about the risks they face now that the Israel Defense Forces have been committed finally by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to square off with the Islamic Republic of Iran with the intention of destroying the Islamist Theocracy and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, along with the country's nuclear sites, military bases, weapons depots and select military leaders.

 

People are being urged to shelter in place with news of a major attack expected. Messages update Israelis over the massive attacks the Israeli Air Force is engaging in over Iran and retaliation is expected with all its devastating potential. Reservists have received call-up notices and present at their bases. Israelis value their safe rooms, installed in their homes, if they're fortunate. Enter, seal the door shut, and look around at their preparations; fresh water, food, emergency batteries. Or head straight over to community-based shelters and bide the time there until it's deemed safe to emerge.

 

Responders are seen next to a damaged building following a strike by an Iranian missile in the Israeli city of Petah Tikva, east of Tel Aviv, on June 16, 2025. (Jack GUEZ / AFP)

 

They call their loved ones wherever they live around Israel, to ensure that there have been no casualties among them. The Israeli precision strikes on Iranian targets are discussed and hopes expressed that this will be a mercifully short conflict, and everyone can be released in good order from the unbearable fear and tensions that have descended. Some among them even extend their concerns to the Iranian civilian population for whom the IRGC and the Ayatollahs have been a dreadful life burden. The shorter the conflict, the fewer the civilian victims -- whether in Israel or Iran.

 

Israelis take shelter in a bomb shelter during a barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles, in the city of Bat Yam, on June 15, 2025. (Gili Yaari / Flash90)

 

The waves of Israeli attacks targeted the top echelons of the Iranian military, air force and civilian leadership. The Iranian chain of command has been decimated. The nuclear scientists instrumental in developing the country's nuclear capabilities were targets as well. Key nuclear sites were set on fire, and massive secondary explosions rocked the nearby areas. Air bases were bombed, and planes on the tarmac destroyed. Iran's state news broadcaster was bombed.

 

Swarms of drones were launched at Israel from Iran and inside Iraqi territory. It takes seven hours for these missives to reach Israel. Ballistic missiles can reach Israel within a two-hour period, and they do. Yemen too has sent missile fire into Israel. Israelis expect that most of these weapons of destruction will be intercepted before they can reach their targets, and most are -- an estimated 90 percent of them. The few that do get through hit apartments and other civilian infrastructure, resulting in injuries and thus far, a handful of deaths.

 

Residents shelter in  Jerusalem school during a missile attack, June 16, 2025. (Zev Stub/Times of Israel)

 

Russia's War Of Defence And Security

"We are not in an easy situation. The enemy is increasing its army."

"Our people are braver and need more powerful weapons. We will pass it on [Ukrainian flag ] and pass it on from the boys [Ukrainian servicemen at the front] to the Congress, to the president of the United States."

"We are grateful for their support, but it is not enough."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Washington visit

"We have no restrictions on funding. The country and the government are giving the army everything it is asking for."

"We're not going to militarize our country or our economy. We simply don't need it."

"[Russia's nuclear arsenal remains the main guarantee for our security and territorial integrity".

Russian President Vladimir Putin

The launch of Russia’s new ‘Sarmat’ or ‘Satan II’ intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Arkhangelsk on 20 April 2022

 

While Russia is destroying its neighbour's territorial integrity, its president remains focused on his own 'territorial integrity'. Which includes of course annexed territories Putin has torn from its rightful owner. Both countries have exhausted their supplies of munitions. Hundreds of missiles are shot off by both sides daily; from the Russian military to strike at Ukraine's civilian infrastructure; from the Ukrainian counteroffensive to rout the Russians and to strike down their missiles before they hit their targets.

 

Western intelligence estimates that 100,000 servicemen on both sides have died in this contest of wills and war machinery. On average 500 members of each side's military are killed daily. Numbers hard to credit considering the wholesale bloodbath they represent. Which does not include the tens of thousands of civilians injured and killed by continual Russian attacks and deliberate murder.

 

Ukraine's dire need for additional munitions to allow it to continue its hugely successful counteroffensive which has succeeded in good measure in pushing back Russian troops, securing some of the territory that Russia had declared incorporated into the Russian Federation. The rate at which munitions are being used is unsustainable. The manufacture of replacement weapons in the West is unable to keep pace with the dwindling arsenals.

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Chief of the General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov in Moscow, Russia, on Dec. 21, 2022. (Mikhail Kuravlev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Vladimir Putin has declared yet again his intention to continue pursuing his goal; destroying Ukraine and enriching Russia in the process. He is now claiming that he has the most profound love for Ukraine, brotherly love that moans in pain at Ukraine's losses. But it is not his fault that Russia's 'special military operation' has destroyed Ukraine's power grids leaving its people to freeze in the dark without water and sufficient medical supplies. 

The nefariously malicious actions of the United States whose purpose it is to destroy Russia is to blame, along with its manipulations through NATO, intruding on Russia's near abroad despite Moscow's warning that it was intolerable, that its incursions toward the former Soviet satellites' wish to join NATO impairs Russia's security. Leaving the Kremlin no option but to impose its own response on Ukraine as a lesson to the Baltic nations that their future is with Russia, not NATO.

Russia's defence minister Sergei Shoigu, has requested that his army's strength be increased from a million to one-and-a-half million troops. When it was announced months ago that new recruits were needed, a rushed stampede of Russian men sought to salvage their futures by fleeing abroad. New recruits were brought to the front insufficiently trained and ill equipped. Where will another half-million fighting men be drawn from?

Mercenaries and reluctant holdbacks, raising the age of acceptable qualifications to fight the noble fight until the goal has been achieved. The earlier mobilization saw drafted men reporting reluctantly at the front lines lacking adequate kit, but this is not to happen again; corruption and inefficiency and poor management are to become the sins of the past. In praising the performance of the Russian army, no mention was made of Russian losses in Ukraine on the battlefield.

 

Next on the agenda for the Russian Army, receipt of state-of-the-art Sarmat (Satan II) intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying ten nuclear warheads and decoys.  

The launch of Russia’s new ‘Sarmat’ or ‘Satan II’ intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Arkhangelsk on 20 April 2022   EPA

Deadly Russian Malice

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appears on screens as he speaks via a video link at the opening session of the International Crimea Platform Parliamentary summit, organized by Ukraine and Croatia, in Zagreb, on Tuesday. (Damir Sencar/AFP/Getty Images)

"Our countries made clear that we all reject Russia's transparently false allegations that Ukraine is preparing to use a dirty bomb on its own territory."

"The world would see through any attempt to use this allegation as a pretext for escalation."

France, Britain, United States joint statement

 

"[The aim of a] dirty bomb [attack by Ukraine would be to blame the resulting radioactive contamination on Russia by accusing Moscow of detonating a low-grade nuclear weapon]."

"The aim of the provocation would be to accuse Russia of using a weapon of mass destruction in the Ukrainian military theatre and by that means to launch a powerful anti-Russian campaign in the world."

Russian Defence Ministry

"If Russia calls and says that Ukraine is allegedly preparing something, it means one thing: Russia has already prepared all this."

"So when today the Russian Minister of Defence organizes a phone carousel and calls foreign ministers with stories about the so-called 'dirty' nuclear bomb, everyone understands who is the source of everything dirty that can be imagined in this war."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Ukrainian National Guard soldiers fire at Russian positions with a mortar near Kharkiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday. (Andrii Marienko/The Associated Press)

Ukrainian forces are advancing toward the Dnipro River, a counteroffensive to retake Kherson the province and the city, from Russian occupation. All the more disconcerting to the Kremlin in the wake of its announcement of the annexation of the area along with three other south-eastern areas of Ukraine. Following hard on claims that those four provinces are Russian territory, Moscow advised the world and Ukraine in particular, that any action taken to recover the territory would be construed as an 'act of war' against Russia.\, with predictble consequences including nuclear.

 

A sanctimonious charge so arse-backwardly absurd it would make a good script for a theatrical comedy lampooning Russia, if it were not so obviously the work of a land-grabbing, nation-destroying, anti-human rights national government whose invasion exploits are the stuff of nightmares. A self-righteousness so deranged that the Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu had the unmitigated call to  to call his counterpart ministers of France, Britain and the United States to inform them of an odious plot Ukraine was engaging in.

In fact it became almost instantly transparent that the revelation was in reverse order; that Russia is scheming to make use of a radioactive bomb of limited power and range that would be used as 'evidence' of Ukraine's willingness to begin a nuclear war between Russia and NATO, spurring Russia to self-protection, to respond in kind. Not Russia's fault, goes the plotline, if the 'neo-Nazi' government of Ukraine provoked Russia to such an extent it had little option but to reciprocate.

In a follow-up call with Russia's military Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov, British Chief of Defence Staff Tony Radakin made it quite clear his government rejected the Russian allegations, even while taking pains to convey the sensible message that both sides continue to maintain open channels of communication as a vital commitment.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, when asked to comment on Western skepticism of Russia's Ukraine accusations, responded "their disbelief doesn't mean there's no threat. The threat is evident." In ostensible response to which Moscow has ordered civilian evacuation of the territory in advance of the Ukrainian forces' advance. Should Russia suffer a defeat in Kherson it would represent a massive setback of the Russian 'special military invasion' agenda.

The west bank of the Dnipro River represents Russia's sole foothold of the area. That area where the Dnipro i\bisects Ukraine is a gateway to the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014.  

Energoatom, Ukraine's state nuclear plant operator, said it assumes ... the Russians to be preparing a terrorist act using nuclear materials and radioactive waste stored at [the plant]. It said there were 174 containers at the plant's dry spent fuel storage facility, each of them containing 24 assemblies of spent nuclear fuel. 

"Destruction of these containers as a result of explosion will lead to a radiation accident and radiation contamination of several hundred square kilometres of the adjacent territory."

People shelter inside a subway station during a Russian missile attack in Kyiv on Tuesday. (Vladyslav Musiienko/Reuters)

Who's For World War III?

"Kyiv is well aware that such a step would mean a guaranteed escalation to World War III."

"The suicidal nature of such a step [NATO welcoming Ukraine into its membership] is understood by NATO members themselves."

Alexander Venediktov, deputy secretary, Russian Security Council

"[In the event of a Russian military use of nuclear weaponry]: We will not go into exactly how we will respond, but of course this will fundamentally change the nature of the conflict."

"It will mean that a very important line has been crossed."

"Even any use of a smaller nuclear weapon will be a very serious thing, fundamentally changing the nature of the war in Ukraine, and of course that would have consequences."

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg

Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses a Sept. 30 rally in Moscow's Red Square.  ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP via Getty Images

A rational mind -- which under current circumstances making it clear that it excludes Russian President Vladimir Putin -- would understand that what Russia has embarked on, in a bid to swiftly and relatively without much cost, restore Ukraine to the orbit of the Russian Federation, integrating it geographically, reminiscent of the good old days of the USSR's hegemonic stranglehold on Ukraine -- would understand that a violent intrusion and annexation of its neighbour, and consequent desperate threats of nuclear dimensions is itself suicidal.

Unfortunately, the Kremlin sees the issue through its own dark lens of history, heritage and conquest, illuminating the greatness that is Russia. Ukraine, on the other hand, thinks quite rationally. It sees itself in the talons of a neighbour that plans to expunge its history, tradition and culture. A neighbour that once saw fit to bring down upon Ukraine the spectre of a managed famine that wiped out millions of people through the starvation called the Holodomor.

Moscow does not withhold its bellicose intentions, making it clear that Ukraine has no right to exist as a proudly independent, fully autonomous nation. And despite protests from those Russians most affected by the war; mothers of sons conscripted to the conflict, oligarchs made persona non grata, their assets abroad seized, and Russian Ukrainians along with human-rights personnel --- the greater Russian public is fully supportive of pounding Ukraine into the ground, and absconding with what is left.

Until, that is, more Russian troops die, over the official count of 20,000 dead and countless more wounded. Mr. Putin has called an end to the call-up, stating his goal of an additional 300,000 conscripts for the front lines has been accomplished. That would be the front line that keeps wavering and being shunted back toward the Russian border as the great, fearless, ill-trained Russian army panics under the counteroffensive of the Ukrainian military advance and flees, leaving its weapons behind.

President Volodymyr Zeleskyy announced an emergency bid for fast-tracking membership into NATO immediately his Russian counterpart announced the formal annexation of four Ukrainian provinces accounting for 18 percent of its vast territory. Mr. Putin identifies his misfortune in the campaign-gone-awry to U.S. meddling and, its encouragement of Ukraine to counter the Russian invasion, providing a massive amount of highly technical military equipment for good measure to Ukraine's advantage.

A cornered Vladimir Putin snarls a reminder now and again that he possesses a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons and his nuclear division has been placed on 'alert'. These may be desperate threats, but they are not empty ones. Now that the industrial heartland of Ukraine is purportedly in Russia's possession, any further forays by Ukrainian troops into the four provinces to regain their possession, is to be treated as an 'act of war' to be defended by any measures, including nuclear.

 

Intercontinental ballistic missiles are launched from the Sea of Okhotsk by a Russian nuclear submarine in 2020.   Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP

 

Which implies that Russia's 'special military invasion' was no act of war, but Ukraine's response certainly is, in Russia's regard. It is Ukraine's intransigence in prolonging the war by denying Russia's claims of history, heritage and possession, and therefore the deaths accruing from the conflict as well as the destroyed infrastructure is Ukraine's fault, fully and without equivocation. Russia is only doing what is right;  unseating a fascist government to free Ukrainians from servitude to a neo-Nazi regime.

Russia warns it would be justified in the use of nuclear devices, given the West's and NATO's interference in its near abroad and the special invasion of Ukraine. In fact, should the West consider the gift to Ukraine of more powerful missiles that could conceivably wreak damage over the border into Russia, nuclear arms could be pointed directly at NATO-member assets in the region.  Not an idle threat, Putin reiterates.

"We have a [nuclear] doctrine, which is clear."

"The dissuasion is working. But then, the less we talk about it the less we brandish the threat, the more credible we are.:"

"Too many people are talking about it."

French President Emmanuel Macron

France, stated President Macron in a television interview, would not respond with a nuclear strike. 

Ukrainian servicemen fire a mortar at their Russian counterparts on the front line in Donetsk on Oct. 5. Donetsk is one of four Ukrainian territories illegally annexed by Moscow, which has said its forces will defend the areas as if they were Russian soil.        ANTOLII STEPANOV/AFP via Getty Images

Cornered and Snarling Nuclear

"I believe that NATO would not directly interfere in the conflict even in this scenario [should Moscow strike Ukraine with nuclear weapons]."

"The demagogues across the ocean and in Europe are not going to die in a nuclear apocalypse [by striking Russia and risking a nuclear war]."

Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian President/Prime Minister, currently deputy chairman, Russian Security Council

Russian nuclear weapon Topol-M near the Kremlin    Getty Images

 

Dmitry Medvedev is Vladimir Putin's man. Infamously when Mr. Putin had exhausted his then-constitutional two-terms in office, Medvedev obligingly played musical chairs with Mr. Putin, taking on the presidency while Putin was demoted to the Prime Ministership (manipulating the presidency through Medvedev), creating a temporary break from the presidency for Putin, enabling the exchange, once the term had expired to reverse, with Putin returning to the presidency. At which time he adroitly managed to alter the constitution effectively granting him the presidency in perpetuity.

Mr. Medvedev remains devoted to Mr. Putin's Russia, parroting the very same lines that his president gravely intones in expressing the 'no-choice' situation of Ukraine's very existence posing an existential threat to the Russian Federation through the Machiavellian evil of Ukraine's neo-Nazi government. A government so steeped in fascism that it has the temerity to fight back against the Kremlin's 'special military invasion' that isn't a war unless that kind of nomenclature is worth a 15-year jail term.

Through Mr. Medvedev, obediently responding to his guide and mentor's instructions, the world is on notice once again that, sufficiently shoved against a wall, Russia viz-a-viz a presidential decree is prepar3ed to go nuclear in and on Ukraine. In effect, countering both the Ukrainian military's hugely successful counteroffensive in the east and northeast of Ukraine, and the efforts of the West, NATO nations and the United States to shore up Ukraine's resolve in the supply of technologically advanced weaponry to match and outmatch Russia's.

Vladimir Putin is spittin' mad and he isn't going to take it any more. An ungrateful world condemns his war crimes in Ukraine, promising that in the end there will be a payment in kind for such evil, while in very fact, Russia is sacrificing itself for the greater good of humanity in taming a fascist serpent it has identified as Ukraine. So far, Russia's pay-back of cutting gas supplies to Europe has failed to temper the EU's sanctions.

But then, Russia has its fall-back position of nuclear strikes, but not necessarily nuclear strikes. Unless they do indeed become necessary and that decision will be left to Putin's discretion. He is wavering, just as his troops are receding under the dominating blowback of the Ukrainian military. Which, without the West-supplied weapons would be an entirely spent force. Some take the none-too-veiled threats that have erupted on occasion of its readiness to use its nuclear arsenal seriously, while other analysts fail to.

Their interpretation is that this is a warning device meant to deter Ukraine and the West from their adamant defence of a sovereign nation overrun by a savage occupation known to have committed and to continue to commit war crimes. The use of tactical nuclear weapons in defence of Russia's determination to defend the dignity of its irredentist strategy intended to pave the way for a resumption of Russia's former status in conquest of its Soviet satellites, a mere ploy to ensure the West and Ukraine pull back sensibly.

The strategy behind the recently-concluded vote in the four regions of Ukraine that Russia means to annex, is to demonstrate to the world that the population of those contested regions, the Industrial heartland of Ukraine, is eager to join Russia and leave Ukraine. So that once the formal declaration of sovereignty is made, Moscow will be entirely justified in using nuclear strikes in response to Ukraine's military continuing to strike at territory that Moscow considers its own.

Trio of Territorial Terrorists

"[Russia and Iran need to remain vigilant against ] Western deception."

"[You/Putin ensured Russia] maintained its independence [from the United States; countries need to use their own national currencies when trading goods]."

"The U.S. dollar should be gradually taken off global trade, and this can be done gradually."

"If  you had not taken the initiative, the other side [the West], would have caused a war on its own initiative."

Islamic Republic of Iran Grand Ayatollah, Ali Khamenei

"Both our countries have good experience in countering terrorism and this has provided much security to our region."

"I hope your visit to Iran will increase co-operation between our two independent countries."

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan meet in Tehran, Iran July 19, 2022.  (photo credit: Turkish Presidential Press Office/Handout via REUTERS)

 

Like two powerful magnets the dictatorial leaders of the two countries had much to discuss, brought together by their common interests. Both seen as pariah states by the democratic Western nations of the world who deplore Russia for its war-mongering, its presence in Syria aiding and abetting Bashar al-Assad in his ideological/denominational war against his own citizens, and Vladimir Putin's decision to shed blood in Ukraine while destroying its infrastructure and creating millions of refugees there as in Syria.

The 'terrorists' that the Iranians speak of are not those whom they sponsor like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, their Iranian-funded and armed militia-clients, but freedom-aspiring ordinary citizens of the country that was once on its way to achieving firmer alliances with the West. In consenting to unseat the Pahlavi dynasty, Persians had no idea that the stopper they pulled unleashing a theological genie would imprison their spirits and souls.

That they were joined by Turkey's Tayyip Erdogan, a controversial member of NATO, loathed by both Tehran and Moscow, illustrates just how manipulative, sinister, corrupt and Medieval politics can be in the Middle East. That all three leaders are pathologically invested in empire building to the extent that they are overlapping rivals who see common purpose in plotting against more powerful states interfering with their aspirations speaks of the realpolitik alliance of unsavoury intent.

Ukraine, Syria and Israel are in their crosshairs for the moment. All three are in fact at odds with one another, yet can find a common understanding in the grater goal of persevering against the travails their threats to world stability and abuse of human rights that have earned them sanctions, suspicion and arms-length diplomatic relations with the West. Hard pressed to achieve their goals, they find sudden unity of purpose.

Turkey's Erdogan anxious to play the deal-maker to convince Putin to open passage to grain shipments out of Ukraine's blockaded Black Sea ports to a grain-starved world. In exchange, Erdogan foresees a grateful world allowing him to increase his territorial holdings beyond the Syrian border while pounding resistant Kurds whose territory it is, within Syria.

Vladimir Putin is solidifying the Russian Federation's business ties in guaranteed oil and gas sales to China, and India so that beyond reduced shipments to the quavering European market heavily dependent on Russian energy, he is assured sufficient state income to continue prosecuting his war in Ukraine while garnering greater swaths of territory there.

Bellicose and threatening themselves, neither Turkey nor Russia see any reason why the Islamic Republic should not have a nuclear arsenal of its own. Tehran has done very well in drawing Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Qatar to its circle of intimates turning the minority Shiite strain of Islam into a power base to overwhelm the majority Sunni sect in the Arab-centric region of the Middle East. And with its own power bloc, Iran feels more comfortable viewing the threat it perceives from its regional opposition.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan meet in Tehran, Iran July 19, 2022. (credit: CEM OKSUZ/TURKISH PRESIDENTIAL PRESS OFFICE/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)