Firefighters work at the scene of a damaged building in the aftermath of Israeli strikes, in Tehran, Iran, June 13, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

Israel launched a broad preemptive attack on Iran overnight on Friday, targeting military installations and nuclear sites across the country in what officials described as an effort to neutralize an imminent nuclear threat. 

Iranian state television confirmed that among those killed was Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Iranian Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri, along with several other senior military figures. Iranian nuclear scientists Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi were also reported dead following strikes on facilities linked to Tehran’s nuclear program. 

Israeli warplanes struck around 3 am local time, triggering emergency protocols throughout Israel and setting off explosions in Tehran, Isfahan, and Arak. Iran activated its air defenses and halted flights at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport as airspace was cleared. Fires broke out at several sites, with footage on state TV showing damaged buildings. Iranian media reported that the strikes hit Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps headquarters as well as residential buildings. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that the strikes will “continue for as many days as it takes to remove this threat.” He added that it will “roll back the Iranian threat to Israel’s very survival.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio emphasized that the United States had no role in the Israeli operation. “Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region,” Rubio said in a statement late Thursday. 

He also urged Tehran not to retaliate against US personnel or interests.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded to the strikes with a message on Friday morning, saying that Israel will face a “bitter and painful fate” while acknowledging that several of Iran’s commanders and scientists were killed.

“To the great Iranian nation, the Zionist regime carried out with its evil and bloody hand a crime in our dear country and revealed its wicked nature further by hitting residential areas,” Khamenei said. “The regime should await a harsh response. By God’s grace, the powerful arm of the Islamic Republic’s Armed Forces won’t let them go unpunished.”

An Israeli military official, speaking in a briefing after the attack, said the strikes targeted three components of Iran’s military capabilities, with particular focus on what was called the “nuclear trigger.” The official stated Iran had been preparing to manufacture tens of thousands of ballistic missiles capable of striking Israel even without nuclear warheads.

“Today, Iran is closer than ever to obtaining a nuclear weapon. Weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the Iranian regime are an existential threat to the State of Israel and a significant threat to the wider world. The State of Israel will not allow a regime whose objective is to destroy it to obtain weapons of mass destruction,” he said. 

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel was expecting an imminent missile and drone assault targeting both civilian areas. 

Air raid sirens sounded nationwide, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ordered schools, public gatherings, and non-essential workplaces to shut down on Friday. 

Netanyahu argued that Israel’s operation was necessary to protect not only its own citizens but also regional partners and the broader international community. “We are defending the free world from the terrorism and barbarism that Iran fosters and exports across the globe,” Netanyahu said. “Many around the world, even if they won’t say so openly, know in their hearts: thanks to your determination and courage, citizens of Israel, and thanks to the bravery of Israel’s fighters, the world will be a safer place.”

Speaking directly to the Iranian population, Netanyahu added: “We do not hate you. You are not our enemies. We have a common enemy: a tyrannical regime that tramples you. For nearly 50 years, this regime has robbed you of the chance for a good life. I have no doubt that your day of liberation from this tyranny is closer than ever. And when that day comes, Israelis and Iranians will renew the alliance between our two ancient peoples. Together, we will build a future of prosperity, a future of peace, a future of hope.”

Netanyahu, in his remarks, thanked US President Donald Trump “for his steadfast stance,” adding that Trump had repeatedly made clear that “Iran must never be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons.”

Following the initial wave of strikes, dubbed Operation Rising Lion, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said that the military was mobilizing tens of thousands of soldiers and deploying forces across multiple fronts. “I warn that anyone who tries to challenge us will pay a heavy price,” Zamir said. “We cannot wait for another time to act; we have no choice. We have been preparing this operation for a long time; unprecedented efforts have been made across all branches and directorates to achieve readiness against the tangible and present threat.”

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the signing of MOUs with Argentine President Javier Milei. Photo: Amos Ben-Gershom (GPO)

Argentine President Javier Milei was awarded the $1 million Genesis Prize in Jerusalem on Thursday, in recognition of his unwavering support for Israel and commitment to Jewish values, during a three-day visit to the Jewish state.

During a ceremony at the Museum of Tolerance, Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Genesis Prize Foundation Chairman Stan Polovets presented the award to Milei, praising the Argentine leader as a “moral voice of clarity” on the international stage.

Milei waived his $1 million prize, and at his behest the Genesis Prize Foundation will donate the money to a nonprofit organization established to support Milei’s Isaac Accords initiative. The idea is modeled after the Abraham Accords — a series of historic US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries — aimed at strengthening diplomatic ties between Israel and Latin American nations.

“In this difficult moment, I stand with you in solidarity, offering a fraternal embrace and a heartfelt ‘Am Yisrael Chai,’” Milei said during his acceptance speech, referring to the Hebrew expression meaning “the people of Israel live.”

Established in 2013, the annual $1 million prize — dubbed the “Jewish Nobel” by TIME magazine — honors individuals “for their outstanding professional achievements, contribution to humanity, and deep commitment to Jewish values.”

According to the Genesis Prize Foundation, Milei is the first non-Jewish recipient of the award and the first head of state to receive it in recognition of his unwavering support for Israel, commitment to democratic values, and resolute stand against terrorism and antisemitism.

“We must end Israel’s isolation on the world stage. Together with President Milei, we will start in Latin America and help make his dream of Isaac Accords a reality,” Polovets said during the ceremony.

“Milei’s support is not only symbolic. His Isaac Accords vision is a geopolitical strategy that can bring tangible results in Latin America,” he continued. “This is more than a prize. It’s a call to action.”

Polovets continued, “We want to encourage South and Central American countries to emulate Argentina’s example by strengthening relations with Israel, voting with – not against – Israel in the UN, cooperating on security matters, and promoting market-oriented democratic reforms across the region.”

The Genesis Prize Foundation announced it will partner with organizations such as StandWithUs, the Israel Allies Foundation, the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, and Yalla Israel to support the launch of Milei’s initiative.

Since taking office over a year ago, Milei has been one of Israel’s most vocal supporters, strengthening bilateral relations to unprecedented levels and in the process breaking with decades of Argentine foreign policy tradition to firmly align with Jerusalem and Washington.

Last week, Milei embarked on a 10-day international tour — the longest since he took office — with planned stops in Italy, France, Spain, and Israel, where he spent the most time.

During his visit to the Jewish state, Milei announced that Argentina would move its embassy to Jerusalem next year, joining the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Paraguay, and Papua New Guinea in doing so and recognizing the city as Israel’s capital.

On Thursday, the Argentine leader also signed a “Memorandum of Understanding for Democracy and Freedom” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strengthen cooperation against terrorism and antisemitism.

The agreement is intended as a counterweight to the MoU signed by former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner with Iran, which allegedly covered up the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

The post Argentina’s Milei Receives Genesis Prize in Jerusalem, Award Money to Support Israel-Latin America ‘Isaac Accords’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

An “Apartheid Wall” erected by Harvard University’s Palestine Solidarity Committee. Photo: X/Twitter

A pro-Hamas student group whose campus activism heightened scrutiny of antisemitism and far-left extremism at Harvard University has filed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit the school filed to halt the Trump administration’s confiscation of its taxpayer-funded grants and contracts.

Legal counsel for the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC), provided by the controversial Palestine Legal nonprofit, submitted the document on Monday to the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, The Algemeiner has learned. Endorsing Harvard’s push for a summary judgement in its favor, the court filing argues that the school’s alleged neglecting to restrict antisemitic demonstrations did not violate the civil rights of Jewish students.

“The expression of views critical of Israel — even where it personally offends — is not actionable harassment under Title VI [of the US Civil Rights Act],” wrote Palestine Legal attorney Radhika Sainath. “Defendants have not specifically alleged what actions they believe created a severe or pervasive hostile environment for Jewish students in violation of Title VI — or what educational programs or activities were limited or denied by such acts.”

Sainath continued, comparing Jewish Zionists to segregationists who defended white supremacy during Jim Crow, while comparing anti-Zionists — who have been trafficking racial slurs and epithets about African Americans on social media during the Gaza war — to the civil rights activists of the 1960s.

“Many white parents who supported segregation were discomforted — even frightened — by the prospect of Black children attending schools with their children. But advocacy for the rights of Black Americans to live as equal citizens was not anti-white any more than advocacy for the equal rights of Palestinians is anti-Jewish,” Sainath charged. “In fact, it is opposition to equal rights of Black people that is discriminatory, just as opposition to equal rights for Palestinians is discriminatory.”

The PSC’s entrance into Harvard’s historic legal fight with the Trump administration comes 20 months after it prompted worldwide outrage and condemnation for endorsing Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel in a statement which alleged that “millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison.”

Mere hours after images and videos of Hamas’s atrocities — which included sexual assaults, abductions, and murders of the young and elderly — spread online, the campus group said, “The coming days will require a firm stand against colonial retaliation. We call on the Harvard community to take action to stop the ongoing annihilation of Palestinians.”

Those remarks triggered a cascade of events in which Harvard was accused of fostering a culture of racial grievance and antisemitism and important donors suspended funding for various programs. Additionally, the school’s first Black president, Claudine Gay, resigned in disgrace after being outed as a serial plagiarist. Her tenure was the shortest in Harvard’s history.

More incidents followed over the next several months. In one notorious episode, a mob of anti-Zionists — including Ibrahim Bharmal, editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review — were filmed following, surrounding, and intimidating a Jewish student. A pro-Hamas faculty group also shared an antisemitic image depicting a left-hand tattooed with a Star of David, containing a dollar sign at its center, dangling a Black man and an Arab man from a noose.

Meanwhile, Harvard acted disingenuously to deceive the public and create a false impression that it was working to combat antisemitism, according to a shocking report issued by the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce. One section of the report claimed that the university formed an Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG) largely for show and did not consult it in key moments, including when Jewish students were harassed and verbally abused. So frustrated were a “majority” of AAG members with being part of what the committee described behind closed doors as a public relations facade that they threatened to resign from it.

The slew of incidents made Harvard University the face of campus antisemitism and a major target for a surging conservative movement, led by US President Donald Trump, which blamed elite higher education for declining civic patriotism, the rise of antisemitic violence across the US, and the spread of “woke” ideologies which undermine faith in liberal, Western values. After Trump won a historic second, non-consecutive term in office, the school was, within a matter of months, pummeled by a volley of punitive measures, including the confiscation of some $3 billion in federal funds.

“Harvard is an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institute, as are numerous others, with students being accepted from all over the World that want to rip our Country apart,” Trump said in April, writing on his Truth Social media platform. “The place is a Liberal mess, allowing a certain group of crazed lunatics to enter and exit the classroom and spew fake ANGER and HATE [sic]. It is truly horrific. Now, since our filings began, they act like they are all ‘American Apple Pie.’ Harvard is a threat to democracy.”

In suing the administration to stop the actions, Harvard said the Trump administration bypassed key procedural steps that must, by law, be taken before sequestration of federal funds is enacted. It also charged that the administration does not aim, as it has publicly pledged, to combat campus antisemitism at Harvard but to impose “viewpoint-based conditions on Harvard’s funding” — an argument it supported by pointing to the funding freeze being connected to Trump’s calling for “viewpoint diversity in hiring and admissions,” the “discontinuation of [diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives],” and “reducing forms of governance bloat,” a wishlist of conservative policy reforms.

Now, PSC is defending Harvard by arguing that the very policies which set off what is arguably the most tumultuous period in Harvard’s history should be preserved. Drawing more comparisons to unrelated political conflicts, Sainath called for both ruling in Harvard’s favor and rescinding the university’s recent adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

“Though the university purports to be addressing antisemitism, conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism via a politicized definition does not make it so, any more than it would be an act of anti-Russian discrimination to protest Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or anti-Hindu discrimination to protest India’s human rights violations in Kashmir,” she concluded. “Indeed, it is only Palestinians on campus, and those advocating on their behalf, who are constrained from engaging in political critiques of their own peoples’ subjugation, dispossession, and killing.”

Other entities have come rushing to Harvard’s defense by citing different reasons for restoring Harvard’s federal funding that stayed clear of Palestine Legal’s arguments seemingly justifying calls for a genocide in Israel. In another amicus brief, attorneys Daniel Cloherty, Victoria Steinberg, and Alexandra Arnold stressed on behalf of two dozen American colleges and universities — including Brown University, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Dartmouth College — the importance of the federal government’s role as a benefactor of higher education.

“For over 80 years, the federal government has invested heavily in scientific research at US universities,” the attorneys wrote. “This funding has fueled American leadership at home and abroad, yielding radar technology that helped the Allies win World War II, computer systems that put human on the Moon, and a vaccine that saved millions during the global pandemic.”

They added, “Broad cuts to federal funding endanger this longstanding, mutually beneficial arrangement between universities and the American public. Terminating funding disrupts ongoing projects, ruins experiments and datasets, destroys the careers of aspiring scientists, and deters investment in the long term research that only the academy — with federal funding — can pursue, threatening the pace of progress and undermining American leadership in the process.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Pro-Hamas Student Group That Cheered Oct. 7 Massacre Wants to Defend Harvard in Legal Fight Against Trump first appeared on Algemeiner.com.