International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi arrives on the opening day of the agency’s quarterly Board of Governors meeting at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, Nov. 20, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Lisa Leutner

There is a chance that much of Iran’s highly enriched uranium survived Israeli and US attacks because it may have been moved by Tehran soon after the first strikes, UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday.

Israel repeatedly struck Iranian nuclear facilities during its 12-day war with Tehran, and US forces bombed Iran’s underground nuclear facilities at the weekend, but the extent of the damage to its stocks of enriched uranium is unclear.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Grossi said earlier this week that Iran had informed the IAEA on June 13 – the first day of Israeli strikes – that it would take “special measures” to protect its nuclear materials and equipment.

“They did not get into details as to what that meant but clearly that was the implicit meaning of that, so we can imagine that this material is there,” Grossi told a press conference on Wednesday with members of the Austrian government.

“So, for that, to confirm, for the whole situation, evaluation, we need to return [IAEA inspectors to Iran’s nuclear facilities].”

He said ensuring the resumption of IAEA inspections was his top priority as none had taken place since the bombing began although Iran’s parliament approved moves on Wednesday to suspend such inspections.

The IAEA needs to determine how much remains of Iran’s stock of uranium enriched to up to 60 percent purity – a level that is close to the roughly 90 percent of weapons grade.

Uranium enrichment has both civilian and military applications. Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons and says its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.

The IAEA says no other country has enriched to such a high level without producing nuclear weapons, and Western powers say there is no civil justification for it.

‘HOURGLASS APPROACH’

The last quarterly IAEA report on May 31 indicated that Iran had, according to an IAEA yardstick, enough uranium enriched to up to 60 percent purity for nine nuclear weapons if enriched further. It has enough for more bombs at lower enrichment levels such as 20 percent and 5 percent, the report showed.

A preliminary US intelligence assessment determined that the US strikes at the weekend set back Tehran’s program by only a matter of months, meaning Iran could restart its nuclear program in that time, three sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

“This hourglass approach is something I do not like … It’s in the eye of the beholder,” Grossi said.

“When you look at the … reconstruction of the infrastructure, it’s not impossible. First, there has been some that survived the attacks, and then this is work that Iran knows how to do. It would take some time.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Tuesday that Tehran’s view on the nuclear program and the non-proliferation regime would now “witness changes, but it is not possible to say in what direction.”

Iran’s parliament approved a bill on Wednesday on suspending cooperation with the IAEA and stipulating that any future IAEA inspection would need approval by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. The bill still requires approval by Iran’s unelected Guardian Council to become law.

Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf was quoted by state media as saying the IAEA “has put its international credibility up for sale” and that Iran would accelerate its civilian nuclear program.

“This would be, of course, very regrettable,” Grossi said of Iran’s threat to withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

“I hope this is not the case. I don’t think this would help anybody, starting with Iran. This would lead to isolation and all sorts of problems and, why not, perhaps, if not the unravelling a very, very, very serious erosion in the NPT structure,” he said.

The post UN Nuclear Chief Says It’s Possible Iran’s Highly Enriched Uranium ‘Is There’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A satellite image shows airstrike craters over the underground centrifuge halls of the Natanz Enrichment Facility, following US airstrikes amid the Iran-Israel conflict, in Natanz County, Iran, June 22, 2025. Photo: Maxar Technologies/Handout via REUTERS

US President Donald Trump compared the impact of American strikes on Iranian nuclear sites to the end of World War II on Wednesday, arguing that the damage was severe even though available intelligence reports were inconclusive.

His comments followed reports by Reuters and other media outlets on Tuesday revealing that the US Defense Intelligence Agency had assessed that the strikes had set back Iran‘s nuclear program by just a few months, despite Trump and administration officials saying it had been obliterated.

“The intelligence was … very inconclusive,” Trump told reporters while meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte ahead of a summit in The Hague.

“The intelligence says, ‘We don’t know, it could have been very severe.’ That’s what the intelligence says. So, I guess that’s correct, but I think we can take the ‘we don’t know.’ It was very severe. It was obliteration,” Trump added.

SUCCESS OF IRAN STRIKES CRUCIAL FOR TRUMP

Trump has an uneasy relationship with the US intelligence community, and the success of the strikes is politically critical to him.

Some of his right-leaning supporters had argued loudly beforehand that such military intervention was inconsistent with Trump‘s domestic-focused “Make America Great Again” agenda and his promise to avoid foreign entanglements.

Trump has countered by insisting that Iran must never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon – a line that an accurate, decisive attack would support.

Trump said the US strikes were responsible for ending the war between Israel and Iran and compared them to the United States’ use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, which brought an end to World War II in 1945.

“I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima, I don’t want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war. This ended the war,” Trump said.

Trump argued that Iran‘s nuclear program had been set back “basically decades, because I don’t think they’ll ever do it again” and he turned to top advisers to reinforce that message.

Broadly, he has argued that the strikes were much more successful than has so far been reported in the US media.

The White House on Wednesday shared what it said was a statement from the Israel Atomic Energy Commission – that country’s nuclear regulator – assessing that Iran‘s nuclear program had been set back by “many years.”

Al Jazeera quoted an Iranian official on Wednesday saying that the country’s nuclear installations had been “badly damaged.”

HEGSETH AND RUBIO REINFORCE TRUMP‘S MESSAGE

Trump, who arrived in the Netherlands late on Tuesday for NATO’s annual summit, was sitting beside Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who both also cast doubt on the reliability of the DIA assessment.

“When you actually look at the report – by the way, it was a top secret report – it was preliminary, it was low-confidence,” Hegseth said. “This is a political motive here.”

He said the FBI was investigating a potential leak. Rubio suggested that those responsible for sharing the report had mischaracterized it, saying: “This is the game they play.”

All three men criticized media reports about the intelligence assessments.

At the summit, NATO member states were set to announce their joint intention to raise defense spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product.

While some countries have suggested they may not in fact reach that threshold, the Trump administration has pointed to the expected commitment as a significant foreign policy victory.

The post Comparing US Strike on Iran to Hiroshima, Trump Plays Down Intelligence Report first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Pro-Hamas protesters at Columbia University on April 19, 2024. Photo: Melissa Bender via Reuters Connect

When a movement demands absolute loyalty, rewrites history, and silences dissent, we’re no longer dealing with activism. Rather, it signals the rise of a dangerous cult. The global response to the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel has become exactly that: a sprawling, toxic cult masquerading as justice while hiding a deadly agenda.

Now, over 600 days later, after horrific events like the murders of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim in Washington D.C., and the firebombing in Boulder, Colorado, we have borne witness to its lethal consequences.

A few days ago, I came across a video of one of the loudest and cruelest pro-Hamas agitators leading a group of students in a chant that defiled the Holocaust. Coldly and maliciously, she appropriated the horrors of the Shoah, declaring that the “real genocide” is happening in Gaza, while her audience echoed her words in a slow, droning murmur, as if in a trance. As if part of a cult.

The term “cult” is often tossed around loosely, but it has a specific meaning. A cult offers simple answers to complex problems. It demands extreme devotion to an ideology, blind loyalty, and enforces a rigid us-versus-them worldview. Cults reinvent history, suppress dissent, and zealously protect their ranks, often resorting to intimidation or violence to maintain control.

When protesting, students repeat slogans like “From the river to the sea” as if they were scripture, and now, when they openly support Iran’s murderous, nuclear-obsessed regime, it becomes clear that this is no ordinary movement. Convinced they are advancing justice, their refusal to scrutinize the cause they have embraced speaks of the movement’s cult-like character. They are not merely misguided social justice warriors; they form a global cult whose ultimate aim is not just control, but the annihilation of a nation, a people, and the Western way of life.

This terror-supporting, anti-Israel cult began its rapid ascent after the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel’s military success transformed the country into a leftist scapegoat. Arab regimes elevated the Palestinian cause as a convenient proxy to dismantle Israel. The cause became a symbol of “resistance,” led by Yasser Arafat and the PLO. This narrative offered a binary worldview: oppressed versus oppressor, good versus evil — a worldview that appeals to those with little understanding of the conflict and even less interest in learning.

The cult did not rise in a vacuum. It was seeded by radical Islam, which long framed Jewish existence as an affront. It took root in a broader Muslim world where anti-Jewish hatred has often been normalized through education, media, and politics, absorbed unquestioningly from childhood. This is starting to change in places like the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but it is a generations-long problem and still out of control in many parts of the Arab world, including all the Palestinian territories.

In the decades since Arafat’s heyday, the anti-Israel and blindly “pro-Palestinian” cult has spread globally, infiltrating institutions, NGOs, and universities. It is a malignant worldview rooted in old-school European and Muslim antisemitism, feeding on echo chambers, deliberate naiveté, and a universal need for moral validation. All this is sustained by disinformation and false moral certainty.

What makes this movement cult-like, however, is not sympathy for Palestinians, who are indeed a tormented people betrayed by their own leaders and neighboring regimes. The suffering is real, and peace remains a shared hope. But peace cannot take root while the world, led by this cult, continues to invert blame, chastising Israel while excusing or ignoring the atrocities committed by Hamas, including the ongoing hostage crisis. Such warped morality and its underpinnings clearly reveal a cult anatomy.

Cults reject facts. October 7, the single deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, is whitewashed or denied. Attackers are reframed as “freedom fighters,” and the victims labeled “colonizers.” Students cry “genocide,” and media and politicians echo the lie. Cults divide the world into pure good and absolute evil. In this narrative, the Palestinians are blameless and Israel demonic. This binary view is fueled by billions in funding from Hamas, Qatar, and Iran, and left largely unchallenged by Israel’s weak public diplomacy. Building the cult around these lies was almost effortless.

There is no single charismatic leader, but countless clones – even US members of Congress like Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). Some are grifters; others zealots. All stoke the same fire, blurring the line between condemnation and incitement, normalizing antisemitism and calls for Israel’s destruction. The cult’s symbols and rituals include the keffiyeh, encampments, chants, and performative arrests. They claim moral heroism while aligning with Palestinian terror groups that massacre civilians and oppress their own people.

Dissent is not tolerated. Jewish students are silenced. Faculty are labeled racist. Institutions either join in or fold. Governments, NGOs, and the media fan the flames. Politicians seek votes; social media outlets and influencers chase clicks; Hamas grows emboldened. Every chant denying October 7, every “resistance” sign empowers terror. This cult doesn’t just poison minds, it costs lives.

Can the curse be broken? Followers join by choice but become trapped in systems rewarding obedience and punishing doubt. While accountability is essential, so too is the need for remedies: deprogramming, public pressure, and legal consequences. But real change starts with leaders and institutions. Dismantling this cult requires bold action: prosecutions, curbing hate speech, holding institutions and the media accountable, and stopping terror funding and disinformation.

Most of all, we must call this movement what it is: a cult. Not a protest, not a peace movement, not advocacy. A cult. It took history’s bloodiest war and a Jewish Holocaust to end the Nazi cult. What will it take now? There has to be a better way. I just pray we find it in time.

Oren Bar-Ner is a writer and consultant. He advises technology startups and crafts business and marketing content for clients around the world. After more than two decades in senior roles within the software industry, he now channels his expertise into pro-Israel advocacy, a mission inspired by his late father, a lifelong Israeli diplomat and former ambassador to Turkey.

The post The Anti-Israel, Pro-Palestinian Movement Is a Cult Based on Indoctrination and Lies first appeared on Algemeiner.com.