The ISRAELI Air Force is currently training to attack in Iran
The Saudi daily online newspaper "Elaph" reported that a security source in the West said that Israel will attack targets deep in Iran - if it responds to the assassination of the senior officials in Damascus and bombards sites in Israel
• According to the report, the Air Force is currently training to attack facilities in Iran.
CNN report: American intelligence estimates that Iran is not likely to attack Israel directly by itself in response to the killing of a senior Revolutionary Guards officer in Syria, and predicts that a combined attack of missiles and UAVs against Israel is planned to be carried out in coordination and simultaneously by some of Iran's proxy forces in the region.
It is estimated that the attack could be carried out as early as this week, and one of the sources was quoted: "The threat is very clear and credible. They put all the pieces in place to now mount an attack. They are just waiting for the right timing."
The US military announced that it destroyed an air defense system of the Houthis yesterday with two missiles that were ready for launch and a UAV that was launched towards the Red Sea
STRONG SIGNS’ FROM GOD Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says earthquakes and eclipses are ‘STRONG SIGNS’ FROM GOD for AMERICA ‘TO REPENT’
As millions of Americans gear up to witness the rare total solar eclipse on April 8, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks it’s a bad omen!
The Georgia Republican took to X, formerly Twitter after a 4.8-magnitude earthquake struck New York and New Jersey. In the now-viral tweet, Greene somehow managed to connect the two entirely different topics- one being a celestial event and the other, a natural calamity; to claim that “God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent.”
“Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come. I pray that our country listens,” the 49-year-old GOP Representative continued. From the time it was shared on the platform to the time of writing, Greene's tweet garnered 2.9 million views.
Many called her out for ignoring the scientific aspects of earthquakes and eclipses.
After drawing severe criticism for her theory, readers even added context to her tweet, “Earthquakes happen all the time, all around the world, we can follow them realtime using USGS resources.”
Shortly after Greene tweeted her theory about today's earthquake and April 8's total solar eclipse, her name started trending on the platform.
Over 11K X, formerly Twitter users replied to her tweet. Social media personality, @JoJoFromJerz shared a GIF of Donald Trump along with the message, “Earthquakes and eclipses happen all the time Marge. Remind me who the president was when we were met with a once in a lifetime global pandemic.”
5.5M killed in Congo: 🥱 500K killed in Syria 🥱 500K killed in Sudan 🥱 400K killed in Yemen: 🥱 300K killed in Iraq: 🥱 250K killed in Afghanistan:🥱 30K killed in Gaza: GENOCIDE!!!
No Jews, no news. You care about Gaza only because of your antisemitism.
BIDEN to NETANYAHU: ‘WE WON'T’ BE ABLE TO SUPPORT YOU’ IF YOU DON'T’ CHANGE COURSE ON GAZA
US President Joe Biden warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their tense phone call yesterday that Washington “won’t be able to support” Israel unless it drastically changes its prosecution of the war in Gaza, the Axios news site reports, citing three sources familiar with the matter.
The sources say Biden didn’t specify what a loss of US support would mean, but his aides have not explicitly ruled out the possibility that the administration could start conditioning aid to Israel when asked repeatedly by reporters.
Yesterday’s call was the toughest Biden has held with Netanyahu — both in tone and in substance — since the start of the war, Axios reports.
Biden told Netanyahu that there needed to be a pause in the fighting following the IDF’s deadly strike on a World Central Kitchen convoy. WCK and other aid groups announced a suspension of operations in Gaza following the attack and Biden indicated a pause would prevent a total breakdown in aid distribution.
Netanyahu responded that a pause wouldn’t be necessary since Israel was implementing new procedures on the ground. Moreover, he said a truce must be contingent on Hamas releasing hostages — a position the US has long held, but has apparently been moving away from in recent weeks as the humanitarian situation worsens.
Biden’s request for a pause in fighting outside the context of a hostage deal surprised Netanyahu, a senior Israeli official tells Axios.
During a security cabinet meeting after the call, Netanyahu noted that the White House readout similarly didn’t explicitly condition a ceasefire on a hostage deal. It said that Biden told the Israeli premier “that an immediate ceasefire is essential to stabilize and improve the humanitarian situation and protect innocent civilians, and he urged the prime minister to empower his negotiators to conclude a deal without delay to bring the hostages home.”
An Israeli official noted that after asking the White House to privately and publicly clarify whether it has changed its position regarding the need to condition a ceasefire on a hostage deal, the administration followed through both privately and publicly.
White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters earlier today, “Let’s get a deal in place so that we can get a ceasefire for a matter of weeks in place, so that it’s easier to meet those commitments on humanitarian assistance being increased.”
Asked earlier today whether he had threatened to withhold aid from Israel during the call, Biden responded that Netanyahu did what he asked him to do regarding Gaza aid.
The senior Israeli official tells Axios he expects the steps taken by Israel to significantly improve the humanitarian situation
“We think it will also calm down the situation between the US and Israel,” he says.
US officials, on the other hand, are waiting to see results before passing judgment.
“We’ll be looking at all of this in the days to come and we’re looking to see not just what steps are being taken, but the results that follow from them,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier today.
Iran has vowed to avenge the deaths of several high-ranking officers of the Quds Force, the elite unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who were killed in an air strike that hit the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital on Monday.
Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack, the first on an Iranian diplomatic building in Syria. But the New York Times reported on Tuesday that Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel had carried out the strike.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday that 16 people were killed in the attack, including eight Iranians, five Syrians ,one member of Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, all of them fighters and two Civilians.
A LOSS ‘COMPARABLE TO THAT OF Qassem Soleimani’
Israel has repeatedly targeted Iranian interests in Syria in the past. The most high-profile victim at the Damascus consulate was General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a veteran of the IRGC and a leading Iranian military adviser in Syria.
"This is the most important Iranian official killed since the war triggered by the Hamas attacks on Israeli soil on October 7," notes Ahron Bregman, a political scientist and specialist in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at King's College London.
"For Iran, it's a loss comparable to that of Qassem Soleimani, the former commander-in-chief of the Quds Force, killed by an American drone in 2020," adds Shahin Modarres, Iran specialist at the International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS) Verona.
Zahedi joined the IRGC in 1981, just two years after the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He served in many roles until his death at the age of 63, including as commander of the Revolutionary Guards' ground troops and air force.
Zahedi "was particularly close" to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, says Clive Jones, a specialist in Israel and the Middle East at Durham University in the UK. Zahedi had been subject to sanctions by the United States, which has accused him of being in charge of supplying Hezbollah with Iranian missiles.
Zahedi was the Quds Force's military attaché in Syria and Iraq, and had also been stationed in Lebanon. He thus played a "central role in coordinating the various Islamist groups supported by Iran", notes Modarres, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis in Yemen.
The Iranian officials killed in Damascus on Monday all played a common role, says Modarres.
"They were all responsible, in different capacities, for relations with Iranian-affiliated groups, particularly Hamas and Hezbollah," he says.
If the attack was indeed of Israeli origin, it had a "preventive dimension – Israel wanted to minimise Iran's ability to coordinate with all these groups in anticipation of a possible extension of the conflict".
By attacking some of the most prominent members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, Bregman says the Israelis "want to make Tehran understand that they also consider Iran to be responsible for what's happening in Gaza and on the border with Lebanon”.
“It's a way of making it clear that they won't just try to strike Iran's satellite groups," he says.
Filippo Dionigi, a specialist in Islamist movements and the Middle East at the University of Bristol, agrees that Monday's air strike could indicate that Israel is ready to escalate the conflict with Iran. "This is an unprecedented escalation of tensions since the start of the war against Hamas," he says.
According to Jones, the Damascus strike is linked in particular to Israel's strategy for dealing with the clashes on its border with Lebanon, which have increased since the war in Gaza began. "There is a strong sense among most Israelis that something must now be done against Hezbollah, given that most of the towns and villages on the Israeli side of the border remain evacuated and around 100,000 Israelis are internally displaced. In short, Israel has raised the stakes to see how Iran will respond."
But Israel didn't just want to send a message to its enemies, says Jones – the strike was also a way of sending a signal to the United States. Washington and Tehran have been trying to lower tensions since January. "This attack would suggest that Tel Aviv places its own security first and foremost," saying to the Americans: "We will not allow our freedom of action to be limited by your concerns."
"I can imagine that the White House, once again, will be having sharp words with the Israelis behind the scenes," he adds.
The assassination of Zahedi, an attack that seriously undermines the Revolutionary Guard Corps, is likely to result in exactly what the United States fears: an Iranian retaliation.
"Mohammad Reza Zahedi's death deprives the organisation of an element that had very good tactical knowledge and great experience in the field," Modarres notes.
THE RETALIATION DILEMMA
Zahedi will, of course, be replaced, says Dionigi, but he notes that [b]the attack "risks shaking the faith" of pro-Iranian militant groups in Iran's “ability to foil Israeli plans". By succeeding in killing seven Iranian officials gathered in the same place, "Israel is proving that its intelligence services are very well-informed", [/b]Dionigi says.
For Iran, a forceful retaliation would be a way of proving its strength to its affiliated armed movements.
Tehran has accused Israel of targeting its consulate in Syria, a move that Iran will likely feel necessitates a response. The Israeli army has so far only been willing to comment on the location of the strike, insisting it was a military building and not a diplomatic outpost.
After the killing of Soleimani in 2020, "Iran promised to take revenge on the United States and Israel", Modarres says. But "nothing of note happened".
This time, given the context of the war between Israel and Hamas – a group backed by Iran –Tehran "will have to react", says Bregman. This could mean ordering an intensification of attacks against Israel by Hezbollah or the Houthis.
France’s former ambassador to Syria, Michel Duclos, agrees. "Tehran is undoubtedly obliged to retaliate, but I think it will be of a symbolic nature, avoiding further escalation."
"Iran seems to fear an open conflict with Israel," he told FRANCE 24. Tehran could instead "target Israeli diplomatic representations elsewhere in the world, which would be symmetrical with the fact that it was a consulate that was hit", Duclos says.
SEARCH FOR 'INVISIBLE' MATTER THAT POWERS THE UNIVERSE: CERN to test world's most powerful particle accelerator during April's solar eclipse to search for 'invisible' matter that secretly powers our universe
The world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator is set smash protons together on April 8 to search for invisible particles secretly powering our universe.
Theories have suggested there are 17 different particle groups and the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, confirmed the existence of one using its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012.
Now, the team has restarted the LHC with hopes of unraveling more mysteries of the universe - specifically dark matter.
Scientists began preliminary tests by sending billions of protons around the LHC's ring of superconducting magnets to boost their energy and ensure the $4 billion machine was in working condition.
And next month, CERN will shoot them down a 17-mile-long tunnel at nearly the speed of light to recreate conditions a second after the Big Bang.
The LHC will continue the experiment until later this year when it will then be put under a long hibernation for CERN to transform it into the next version - the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC).
The accelerator sits 300 feet underground at the border of France and Switzerland and first went live on September 10, 2008.
The LHC works by smashing protons together to break them apart and discover the subatomic particles that exist inside them, and how they interact.
Scientists turned on the powerful machine this month, injecting it with several proton beams.
CERN researchers use protons due to them being heavier particles.
The weight allows much lower energy loss per turn through the accelerator than other particles like photon.
On March 8, teams from around the world waited inside the underground lab for a glimpse at the beams circling inside the ring of the LHC.
But the first attempt this month did not go as planned after the beam only made it partially around.
But this month's experiments proved the beam trajectory was off as it did complete a full circle.
On April 8, the team will send the beams through the tunnel where they will collide.
The team will be on the hunt for dark matter, which makes up around 28 percent of our massive universe - but it has never been seen or proven.
This work will give them insights into the formation of the universe and even its ultimate fate.
The experiment is scheduled to occur the same day as the Great North American Solare Eclipse.
Scientists believe that a fraction of a second after the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe, an invisible energy field, called the Higgs field, formed.
As particles passed through the field, they picked up mass, giving them size and shape and allowing them to form the atoms that make up you, everything around you and everything in the universe.
This was the theory proposed in 1964 by former grammar school boy Professor Higgs that has now been confirmed.
And while the particles near instantly decayed during the LHC experiment, scientists found they left a footprint behind revealing their existence.
Rende Steerenberg, in charge of control room operations at CERN in Switzerland, said in 2022: ‘This comes with a certain sense of tension, nervousness,' he explained, adding that a lot can go wrong, including obstructions in the tunnel and issues with magnets.’
The IDF Chief of Staff approved plans in the Northern Command
The Chief of Staff today (Monday) approved plans at the Northern Command together with the commander of the Northern Command and members of the General Staff Forum, in which he approved plans for the continuation of the fighting and held a situation assessment.
Syrian Foreign Minister Mikdad, who is staying in the Iranian Embassy building in Damascus, spoke on the phone with his Iranian counterpart Abdulahian.
F-35s launched 6 missiles at the Iranian consulate in Damascus. Between 5 and 7 people were killed. The exact number of dead and their names will be published after the completion of the evacuation process.
Whoever attacked from the air the building next to the Iranian embassy in Damascus (which also belongs to the embassy) wanted to send a clear message to Tehran.
This is not another proxy attack or a close attack. This is an attack against the most significant symbol - an embassy.
Foreign Affairs / Re: World News! Events Happening Around The World by Holiness2100: 9:50am On Apr 09