US President Donald Trump is closer to a major military confrontation with Iran than many Americans realize, Axios reported, citing US and Israeli sources.
The report said a potential US operation could be a weeks-long campaign, possibly conducted jointly with Israel, and broader in scope than previous strikes on Iranian targets.
Trump has paired nuclear talks with a significant military buildup in the region, including aircraft carriers, warships, fighter jets and air defense systems. More than 150 US military cargo flights have moved weapons and ammunition to the Middle East in recent weeks, according to the report.
While US and Iranian officials described recent talks in Geneva as making progress, gaps remain wide and US officials are not optimistic about a breakthrough, Axios said.
Some Israeli officials are preparing for a possible war within days, the report added, while US officials differ on the timeline. Axios said there is no clear sign of a diplomatic breakthrough but growing indications that military action could follow if talks collapse.

For two nights in January, Kazem says he was deployed in Tehran. He says he didn’t shoot at protesters but watched others and helped load bodies into refrigerated trucks, including a little girl whose earrings were torn off before she was thrown inside.
His account, given in an extended interview, offers a detailed insider description of how forces were assembled, armed and deployed – and how protesters were shot and bodies removed. Certain personal and operational details are not being published for security reasons.
Kazem, a 40-year-old Tehran resident, says he was present as part of the state’s repression apparatus during two nights of mass violence, January 8 and 9.
He says he had previously spent a relatively long time in detention by the IRGC Intelligence Organization and was released after promising cooperation. He maintains that he did not kill anyone and that he fired only into the air.
The call-up
Kazem says that on the afternoon of January 7, while returning home from work, he received a call from a security contact instructing him to report to the IRGC’s Vali-e Asr garrison at 10 a.m. the next morning.
The compound houses intelligence operations for Tehran province and coordinates deployments of security and plainclothes forces across the capital.
“I assumed it was related to Pahlavi’s call for January 8 and 9,” he said.
He says dozens of men were present when he arrived, some of whom he had seen during previous security mobilizations.
“There were two types of people,” he said. “Some looked like office employees or shopkeepers – probably like me, under their knife – and others looked like thugs and hooligans. Those were especially violent.”
Roughly 50 to 60 men were taken into a hall, he says, where an intelligence official outlined the “possibility of unrest” and said they would assist in “controlling riots.”
Those without firearms experience received brief weapons instruction. Pre-prepared authorizations were distributed for Kalashnikov rifles, handguns and ammunition.
“The document I received was a temporary mission order,” he said, “on the letterhead of the Mohammad Rasoulallah Corps” – the IRGC’s main Tehran command, responsible for coordinating IRGC Ground Forces and Basij operations in the capital – signed by a senior operations official at the Imam Ali headquarters, a Basij-affiliated security structure created to respond to street protests and internal unrest.
“I received a weapon from the armory and was told to report at 5 p.m. to the Qods Basij Resistance Base in Jannat Abad, northwestern Tehran”
From there, he says, groups were assigned geographic zones. Some moved two by two on motorcycles; others in Toyota Hilux or Peugeot vehicles. He says he was deployed to western Tehran before 8 p.m.
Hunting leaders and death ambushes
Kazem describes Sadeghieh, a bustling northwestern neighborhood of the capital, as one of the primary confrontation zones.
He says he observed what he calls two distinct operational patterns.
The first he describes as “hunting leaders.”
According to Kazem, experienced intelligence operatives infiltrated protest crowds while appearing to join demonstrators. Their task, he says, was to identify individuals perceived as organizers or focal points – often those who appeared physically fit or athletic.
“After identifying targets, at an opportune moment – such as in dark streets where lights had been cut – they would shoot them from behind at close range with handguns,” he said. “Or they would communicate with snipers stationed on nearby rooftops, giving descriptions of clothing so the target could be shot.”
He says rooftop snipers were positioned on multiple buildings in the area.
The second pattern, he says, involved steering crowds into enclosed spaces.
“They would drive and direct frightened people into dead-end alleys or places already under control,” he said. “This pattern was repeated many times Friday night in the part of Tehran where I was. The goal was to kill as many as possible. No one was meant to be arrested there. Many fell into ambushes and were killed.”
Multiple videos sent to Iran International, along with documented reports published by outlets including Reuters and verified by Amnesty International, indicate that snipers were positioned on rooftops – including on top of a police station – and fired at protesters’ heads and upper bodies.
One eyewitness told Iran International that on Sunday morning, January 11, even after municipal water trucks had washed the streets, blood traces were still visible along Ashrafi Esfahani Street in Sadeghieh.
According to information shared with Iran International, during an emergency meeting with Tehran medical officials on the morning of January 9, a senior health official said that aggregated figures from the city’s treatment centers up to that point showed at least 1,800 people had been killed in the crackdown on the evening of January 8.
Finishing shots
Kazem describes encountering injured protesters in southern Tehran in the early hours.
In one instance, he says, he approached a man who had lost a significant amount of blood.
“He pleaded, ‘I have a small child, don’t shoot,’” Kazem recalled.
“I told him to pretend to be dead so they wouldn’t give him a coup de grâce,” he said.
Minutes later, he says, a motorcycle stopped beside the wounded man.
“The officer kicked him to confirm he was alive, then shot him in the head at close range.”
Killing children and refrigerated trucks
Kazem says children were among those killed. Based on what he says he personally observed in Sadeghieh and in one southern Tehran district, he estimates that at least 200 children died over the two nights.
He says bodies were collected using refrigerated trucks belonging to the Mihan ice cream company, similar to methods he says were used during earlier protests.
“Like in the 2022 protests, refrigerated Mihan ice cream trucks were used,” he said. “I personally helped load corpses.”
According to Kazem, the trucks were used to remove bodies from streets and transport them to undisclosed locations.
He describes a scene that remains vivid to him.
“We were loading bodies into a Mihan truck when I saw the man next to me tear the necklace and earrings off a 9- or 10-year-old dead girl before throwing her into the truck. I looked at him in fear. He looked back in a way that frightened me. I said, ‘It’s your right, take it, what’s it to me?’”
Kazem says he did not intervene and continued loading bodies.
Reports suggest the removal operation was systematic.
Iran Human Rights said in a report published on February 3 that, citing an eyewitness in Lorestan province, security forces transported the bodies of those killed in refrigerated Mihan ice cream trucks to the courtyard of a hospital in the province.
Iran International contacted Mihan to ask whether the company’s trucks were used to move bodies during the January 8-9 protests and whether the company confirmed the account. No response had been received by the time of publication.
France 24 and Amnesty International’s Switzerland office have also reported the use of food transport vehicles and containers to move the bodies of those killed.
Burning property and foreign forces
Kazem says he personally witnessed security personnel setting fire to banks and mosques after first clearing valuables.
“They would first evacuate valuables before burning the site,” he said. “I personally witnessed instructions to remove valuable items from a mosque before it was set on fire.”
He also says he saw a small number of fighters affiliated with Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces in Sadeghieh on the first night.
“The absolute majority were IRGC, plainclothes, Basij and security forces,” he said. “But I did see a small number of Hashd al-Shaabi.”
In the areas where he was present, he says regular police and special units appeared less directly engaged in lethal force.
“I think they weren’t prepared for killing on that scale,” he said.
Media reports have confirmed a limited presence of Hashd al-Shaabi forces in some areas during the crackdown. Videos from inside Iran also suggest that damage to public property was carried out by security forces footage – that several outlets, including Le Monde, have verified.
Payment for the dead
Kazem says he returned his weapon to the Vali-e Asr garrison on Saturday morning and was no longer required.
He says that afterward he heard from contacts that families seeking the bodies of loved ones were sometimes required to pay money, calculated according to neighborhood and reported property damage.
“They couldn’t charge everyone for bullets,” he said. “But when they did, it was based on how much damage the neighborhood had suffered.”
Iran International has documented in multiple reports that authorities extorted money from bereaved families in exchange for returning the bodies of their loved ones.
Kazem describes January 8 and 9 not as spontaneous security responses but as a coordinated operation across multiple districts of Tehran.
Russia has expressed readiness to accept enriched uranium from Iran as part of efforts to resolve Tehran’s nuclear issue, but the outcome of negotiations between the United States and Iran should not be prejudged, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday.
“We had an initiative and stated our readiness to accept enriched uranium, that was discussed,” Peskov told reporters.
He said resolving the Iranian nuclear issue was a matter for talks between Tehran and Washington and added it would be wrong to anticipate the outcome.
The Wall Street Journal reported eariler that Iran had signaled readiness to pause enrichment and transfer part of its stockpile to a third party such as Russia.
A Russian corvette, Stoikiy, has docked at Iran’s First Naval District ahead of joint naval exercises between the two countries, state media reported.
Rear Admiral Hassan Maghsoodloo, spokesperson for the combined naval drill, was shown at the port during a news briefing, the reports said.
The joint naval exercise between the Iranian and Russian navies is due to take place on Thursday in the Sea of Oman and the northern Indian Ocean, according to the reports.





Iran’s nuclear negotiations are being conducted at the “peak of coordination” between the government and the armed forces, Elias Hazrati, head of the government’s information council, said.
“In all periods, there has been good coordination between the field, the armed forces and our diplomatic sector,” he said. “Now we are at the height of this coordination and unity prevails.”
Hazrati added that “everyone speaks with one voice and has one plan” managed and directed by the Supreme National Security Council, chaired by the president, and that all are moving “under the flag of the Supreme Leader.”

Former Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin said a military confrontation between the United States and Iran could begin in the coming days, even as diplomatic efforts continue.
“We are much closer than we were before,” Yadlin told Israel’s Channel 12, adding that a superpower does not go to war in a matter of days and that a diplomatic path must first be exhausted.
Yadlin, who now heads a national security consultancy, said the statement that “all options are on the table” was backed by a credible military threat, pointing to US preparations off Iran’s coast and in the skies.






