UK Foreign Office cuts hit Iran war response team - Bloomberg

Iran has restarted some drone production during the ceasefire, a sign it is rapidly rebuilding military capabilities damaged by US-Israeli strikes, CNN reported on Thursday, citing sources familiar with US intelligence assessments.

Four sources said that US intelligence indicates Iran’s military is rebuilding much faster than initially estimated.

Some US intelligence estimates indicate Iran could fully restore its drone attack capability in as soon as six months, a US official was quoted as saying.

“The Iranians have exceeded all timelines the IC had for reconstitution,” the official said.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told CNN in a statement that “America’s military is the most powerful in the world and has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the President’s choosing.”

“We have executed multiple successful operations across combatant commands while ensuring the US military possesses a deep arsenal of capabilities to protect our people and our interests,” Parnell added.

Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has adopted an Osama bin Laden template to survive by staying out of public view, Fox News reported, citing a counterterrorism analyst.

“For the first time in the history of the Islamic Republic, the United States has done to Tehran what it spent two decades doing to al-Qaeda and ISIS,” Omar Mohammed told Fox News Digital.

“The US has driven its leader into the same kind of operational invisibility that bin Laden lived in for 10 years in Abbottabad,” he said.

Mohammed said both men “responded the same way: by ceasing to exist publicly,” adding that bin Laden stopped releasing dated videos around 2007 and relied on audio messages carried by hand.

“Bin Laden stayed hidden for the rest of his life because the moment he surfaced was the moment he died. Mojtaba Khamenei won’t emerge,” he said.

Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of Iran’s hardline Kayhan newspaper, said on Thursday that Iran should seize vessels belonging to Israel or carrying oil and goods for the country.

Shariatmadari also called for killing US President Donald Trump and removal of US bases in the region.

“Even after the defeat of the United States and its allies in the war, the strait must remain closed to them until damages are paid by the US and its Western and Arab allies, US bases are removed from the region, and above all, Trump and his criminal gang are killed,” he wrote.

He also called on parliament to pass a law tightening Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, including charging transit fees on all vessels without exception.

Iran secretly executed two Iraqi nationals in April on accusations of spying for an Arab country, Hengaw Human Rights Organization said.

The rights group identified the men as Ali Nader al-Ubeidi, 27, and Fazel Sheikh Karim, 29, both from Amarah in Iraq, saying they were executed in Karaj central prison, west of the capital Tehran on April 6.

Citing informed sources, Hengaw said the two men were arrested last year in Karaj by intelligence forces and were held for 11 months in detention centers run by the intelligence authorities, where they were allegedly tortured.

Iranian officials’ recent comments about Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei are aimed at showing he remains in charge and will ultimately decide whether Tehran accepts a deal with the United States to end the war, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.

The report said officials had begun speaking more openly about Khamenei’s condition amid speculations that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards were effectively running decision-making.

“They are projecting that there’s no change . . . the supreme leader was the apex of the system and is still the apex,” Vali Nasr, a former US official and professor at Johns Hopkins University was quoted as saying. “And that he’s alive, functioning and in control.”

He added that the guards were also seeking to project that “they are not running the show and [Khamenei is] not just a figurehead.”

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