Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian attends a press conference in Tehran, Iran, Sept. 16, 2024. Photo: WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Majid Asgaripour via REUTERS

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday warned that if “enemies” attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, the country will quickly rebuild and multiply them, seemingly responding to new reports of a possible Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites by the middle of this year.

“[Enemies] threaten us that they will hit our nuclear facilities … If you strike a hundred of those, we will build a thousand other ones,” Pezeshkian said during a speech in the southern province of Bushehr, according to Iranian state media.

“You can target the buildings and locations, but you cannot target those who build them,” he said, adding that Iranian “experts” will continue to expand the country’s nuclear program.

Pezeshkian’s comments came after a Washington Post report claimed that Israel may launch a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities in Fordow and Natanz by mid-year, citing US intelligence assessments. Such an operation could exploit extensive damage done to Iran’s military capabilities in October, when Israel devastated Iranian air defense systems and ballistic missile production facilities in a coordinated, three-wave strike. The attack was a response to Iran targeting the Israeli homeland with 181 ballistic missiles weeks earlier.

During his meeting in Bushehr, Pezeshkian criticized the United States for pursuing a “contradictory” approach to Iran, saying that while President Donald Trump claims he wants to negotiate a nuclear deal, he also imposes harsh sanctions on Tehran.

“The enemy wants us to be humiliated before them with sanctions and threats, but we will not be subjugated and we will solve our problems by relying on our people,” Pezeshkian said. “We will run the country by relying on our domestic capabilities.”

Last week, Trump signed a presidential memorandum restoring his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran that includes efforts to drive its oil exports down to zero in order to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. However, Trump has also denied that the US and Israel are planning to carry out a military strike on Iran, saying he instead wants to reach a “nuclear peace agreement” with Tehran.

In response to Trump’s comments, Iran’s so-called “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rejected the idea of negotiating with Washington, calling the idea “unwise” and “dishonorable” days later.

In an interview with Fox News, Trump also mentioned the possibility of Israel striking Iran, emphasizing that he would rather reach an agreement with Tehran to stop it from obtaining nuclear weapons.

“Everyone thinks Israel, with our help or our approval, will go in and bomb the hell out of them. I would prefer that not to happen,” Trump said.

Amid increasing tensions, the commander of Iran’s conventional air force, Hamid Vahedi, also threatened to retaliate against any attack on Tehran.

“We tell all countries, friends and foes alike, that our country’s doctrine is defensive, but we will respond with force against any enemy attack,” he said.

The US, Israel, and other allied countries fear that Iran’s nuclear program is ultimately designed to produce nuclear bombs.

Iran has claimed that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes rather than building weapons. However, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reported in December that Iran had greatly accelerated uranium enrichment to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, at its Fordow site dug into a mountain.

The UK, France, and Germany said in a statement at the time that there is no “credible civilian justification” for Iran’s recent nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”

According to US intelligence reports detailed in The Wall Street Journal, US officials believe that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would only delay Tehran’s program for a few weeks or months, yet Israeli officials believe it would have a significant impact.

Israel is reportedly considering two potential strike options, both of which would require US support for aerial refueling, intelligence gathering, and surveillance.

Of these two options, one is reported to involve Israeli fighter jets launching ballistic missiles from the air without entering Iranian territory, while the other would see aircraft deploying bunker-busting bombs over Iranian nuclear sites. The Trump administration recently approved the sale of training kits for this type of strike.

In November, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Iran was “more vulnerable than ever to attacks on its nuclear facilities.”

“We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal – to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” he said in a post on X.

In my first meeting today with the @IDF General Staff Forum, I emphasized: Iran is more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal – to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel. pic.twitter.com/HX4Z6IO8iQ

— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) November 11, 2024

Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas, providing the terrorist group with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to invade southern Israel and massacre and kidnap civilians on Oct. 7, 2023, months in advance.

The post Iran to Build 1,000 Nuclear Sites if ‘Enemy’ Destroys 100, President Says Amid Reports of Possible Israeli Strike first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Illustrative: Anti-Israel protesters set up camp on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, CA on April 25, 2024. Photo: Alberto Sibaja via Reuters Connect.

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has suspended two leading anti-Zionist groups on campus — Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine — following their vandalizing the home of a Jewish member of the Board of Regents, the governing body for the University of California system.

According to The Daily Bruin, the university’s official campus newspaper, the decision is punishment for a Feb. 5 incident in which some 50 SJP members, along with Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine, amassed on the property of UC Regent Jay Sures and threatened that he must “divest now or pay.” As part of the demonstration, the students imprinted their hands, which had been submerged in red paint to symbolize the spilling of blood, all over Sures’ garage door and cordoned the area with caution tape.

The behavior crossed the line, UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk said in an email, portions of which were quoted by The Bruin and can be found online, sent to the entire student body.

“Rigorous, healthy dialogue is central to everything we do to advance knowledge,” he explained. “What there should never be room for is violence. No one should ever fear for their safety. Without the basic feeling of safety, human cannot learn, teach, work, and live — much less thrive and flourish. This is true no matter what group you are a member of — or which identities you hold. There is no place for violence in our Bruin community.”

He continued, “I am personally letting you know that the UCLA Office of Student Conduct has issued an interim suspension today to two registered student organizations, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine (GSJP), based on its review of initial reports about the groups’ involvement in an incident last week at the home of UC Regent Jay sures. Any act of violence undermines the foundation of our university … as your chancellor, I can commit to you that whenever an act of violence is directed against any member of the university community, UCLA will not turn a blind eye. This is a responsibility I must take seriously.”

Numerous reports suggest that SJP intends to defy the university’s sanctions by holding a demonstration to call for a “future free of Zionism.” Also, on Wednesday, the group told its social media followers to “stay tuned” for forthcoming developments, saying, “turn on our story & post notifications.”

Antisemitism at UCLA has been pervasive, Jewish students and faculty have reported.

On Sunday, a Jewish faculty group at the university sounded the alarm about the problem, issuing an open letter which called attention to a slew of indignities to which they are subjected.

One primary agent of anti-Jewish hatred named by the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group (JFrg) is the Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Muslim Racism (AAAR), a university-created body that has allegedly violated its mission to promote pluralism by lodging defaming accusations at the pro-Israel Jewish community in a series of reports, the latest of which contained what JFrg described as intolerable distortions of fact.

“The [AAAR] has released a deeply misleading report that falsely accuses Jewish faculty, staff, and students of harassment while ignoring the documented, escalating antisemitism at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM),” JFrg’s letter said. “DGSOM and UCLA’s ongoing silence concerning rising antisemitism continues to encourage more antisemitism, as we can plainly see in this report. JFrg unequivocally rejects this baseless and inflammatory report, and calls on the UCLA administration, DGSOM leadership, and the public to confront the reality of antisemitism at UCLA.”

JFRG’s letter went on to enumerate a slew of falsehoods included in the AAAR’s report, including that Jewish faculty have conspired to undermine academic freedom with “coordinated repression, involving university and non-university actors,” align itself with conservative groups, and harm minority students by opposing “racial justice.” It added that life for faculty at the Geffen medical school has wreaked demonstrable harm on Jewish students and faculty. Student clubs, it said, are denied recognition for arbitrary reasons; Jewish faculty whose ethnic backgrounds were previously unknown are purged from the payrolls upon being identified as Jews; and anyone who refuses to participate in anti-Zionist events is “intimidated” and pressured.

In 2024, a lawsuit accusing UCLA of fostering a discriminatory learning environment was filed in federal court.

The suit — which named UCLA students Yitzchok Frankel, Joshua Ghayoum, and Eden Shemuelian as plaintiffs — excoriated UCLA’s handling of a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” that an anti-Zionist student group erected on campus in the final weeks of spring semester, explaining that it was a source of antisemitism from the moment it went up, as students there chanted “death to the Jews,” set up illegal checkpoints through which no one could pass unless they denounced Israel, and ordered campus security assigned there by the university to ensure that no Jews entered it.

Republicans in Washington, DC have said that similarly disruptive and extremist political activity on college campuses “will no longer be tolerated in the Trump administration.” Meanwhile, the US President Donald Trump has enacted a slew of policies aimed at reining in disruptive and discriminatory behavior.

Continuing work started during his first administration — when Trump issued Executive Order 13899 to ensure that civil rights law apply equally Jews — Trump’s recent “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism” calls for “using all appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise … hold to account perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.” The order also requires each government agency to write a report explaining how it can be of help in carrying out its enforcement. Another major provision of the order calls for the deportation of extremist “alien” student activists, whose support for terrorist organizations, intellectual and material, such as Hamas contributed to fostering antisemitism, violence, and property destruction.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post UCLA Suspends Students for Justice in Palestine After Vandalizing University Board Member’s Home first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in Chatsworth, South Africa, May 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rogan Ward

South Africa has vowed to continue pursuing its case against Israel at the United Nations’ top court accusing the Jewish state of committing genocide in Gaza, saying it will not change course despite strong US opposition.

There is “no chance” of South Africa withdrawing its case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola told the Financial Times in a new interview.

“Standing by our principles sometimes has consequences, but we remain firm that this is important for the world, and the rule of law,” he added.

The comments from South Africa’s top diplomat came after US President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order to “halt foreign aid or assistance” to South Africa partly in response to the country’s ICJ case and anti-Israel stance.

Trump’s order was also a response to South Africa’s new land expropriation law, which the US argues discriminates against Afrikaners, a minority South African ethnic group of European descent.

During the interview, Lamola denied such accusations, stating that the White House’s statements were “misinformation.” He also argued that the land reform is not “arbitrary,” but an essential measure to rectify the land ownership inequalities left by apartheid.

Trump also accused South Africa in his executive order of working with Iran “to develop commercial, military, and nuclear arrangements.”

“While we do have a good relationship with Iran, we don’t have any nuclear programs with them, nor any trade to speak of,” Lamola said.

US intelligence agencies have for years described Iran as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, and Iranian leaders routinely declare their intention of destroying Israel.

Trump’s executive order puts at risk not only $440 million in aid to South Africa but also tariff-free access to US markets under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, presenting a major challenge for the South African coalition government, which took power last year after the ruling African National Congress (ANC) lost its majority in parliament for the first time in South Africa’s post-apartheid democratic history. The ANC still remained the largest party and retained power at the national level through a coalition.

“We are willing to engage with them to persuade them, if they are willing to be persuaded,” Lamola said.

Since December 2023, South Africa has been pursuing its case at the ICJ accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.

Israeli leaders have condemned the case as an “obscene exploitation” of the Genocide Convention, noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign. Meanwhile, South Africa’s Jewish community have lambasted the case as “grandstanding” rather than actual concern for those killed in the Middle Eastern conflict.

Last year, the ICJ ruled there was “plausibility” to South Africa’s claims that Palestinians had a right to be protected from genocide. However, the top UN court did not make a determination on the merits of South Africa’s allegations, which may take years to go through the judicial process, nor did it call for Israel to halt its military campaign. Instead, the ICJ issued a more general directive that Israel must make sure it prevents acts of genocide. The ruling also called for the release of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the terrorist group’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Last month, Cuba officially became the latest country to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, following Ireland, Nicaragua, Colombia, Mexico, Libya, Bolivia, Turkey, the Maldives, Chile, Spain, and “Palestine.”

Since the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, the South African government has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel’s military campaign, which seeks to free the hostages kidnapped by the terrorists and dismantle Hamas’s military and administrative control in Gaza.

In late 2023, South Africa temporarily withdrew its diplomats from Israel and shut down its embassy in Tel Aviv, saying the government was “extremely concerned at the continued killing of children and innocent civilians” in Gaza.

Then in December of that year, South Africa hosted two Hamas officials who attended a government-sponsored conference in solidarity with the Palestinians. One of the officials had been sanctioned by the US government for his role with the terrorist organization.

Months later, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa led the crowd at an election rally in a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a genocidal call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The post South Africa Says ‘No Chance’ It Will Withdraw Genocide Case Against Israel Despite US Pushback first appeared on Algemeiner.com.