CBS News – March 21, 2025
Ayatollah Khamenei. Click to enlarge
Iran’s supreme leader said Friday that U.S. threats against his country “will get them nowhere,” after President Trump warned of possible military action against the Islamic republic if it refuses to negotiate a new nuclear deal.
“The Americans should know threats will get them nowhere when confronting Iran,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in his live annual televised speech marking Nowruz, the Persian New Year.
He said Americans “and others should know that if they do anything malign to the Iranian nation, they will get a hard slap.”
On March 7, Mr. Trump said he had written to Khamenei, urging negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program and warning of potential military action if it refused.
On Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the letter was “more of a threat” but also said it appeared to offer opportunities. Araghchi added that Tehran was still weighing its response, which he said would be issued in the coming days.
On Wednesday, U.S. news website Axios, citing a U.S. official and other sources, said Mr. Trump’s letter set a “two-month deadline for reaching a new nuclear deal.” The report did not specify a start or end date for the two months, and the White House has not confirmed that Mr. Trump’s letter presented Tehran with a deadline.
Mr. Trump announced the letter in an interview with Fox News, telling the network he “would rather negotiate a deal” with Iran, but warning: “The time is coming up. Something’s going to happen one way or the other. I hope that Iran — and I’ve written him a letter, saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate.’ Because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing — for them.”
In the interview, Mr. Trump said he believed Iran wanted to negotiate, adding that “the other alternative is, we have to do something. Because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”
Khamenei has previously dismissed Mr. Trump’s overtures for talks, accusing the U.S. president of attempting to deceive global public opinion by portraying the United States as willing to negotiate and Iran as unwilling to engage.
Mr. Trump, who began his second term in January, has reinstated his policy of “maximum pressure” against Tehran. During his first term, he unilaterally withdrew the United States in 2018 from the landmark nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers and reimposed sweeping economic sanctions on the Islamic republic.
Iran initially adhered to the deal for a year after the U.S. withdrawal, but it then started scaling back its commitments, bolstering its uranium enrichment program. Under the original nuclear deal, Iran was permitted to enrich uranium up to 3.67% purity and maintain a stockpile of no more than 661 pounds at that level. At that purity level, uranium can be used for medical, research and other civilian purposes, but not to build a nuclear weapon.
The most recent report by the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, found Iran was enriching more uranium to 60% purity — much closer to the level required for weapons, which is about 90%, and a level at which it was only confirmed to have started enriching after Mr. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear agreement. Its stockpile of that highly enriched uranium had risen as of February to about 606 pounds, according to the IAEA report.
Both Israel and the United States have warned they will never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, leading to fears of a military confrontation.
Late in August, Khamenei opened the door to possible talks with the U.S., saying there is “no harm” in engaging with the “enemy.” However, more recently the supreme leader tempered that, saying negotiations with America were “not intelligent, wise or honorable” given the pressure applied by Mr. Trump.
Efforts to revive the nuclear deal have so far failed.
Iran “definitely will not negotiate directly while facing pressure, threats, and increased sanctions,” Araghchi said on Thursday.
U.S. and Israeli officials are expected to meet next week to discuss Iran’s nuclear program, and Russia, an ally of Iran that has been trying to improve ties with Washington since Mr. Trump’s return to office, has offered to help broker a deal between Washington and Tehran.
Speaking Friday in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Iran, “like all other countries, has the right to develop the peaceful atomic sector, peaceful nuclear energy, and is taking important steps in this direction.”
“We are convinced that the problem of Iran’s nuclear program should be resolved exclusively by peaceful political and diplomatic means, and we believe that everything necessary is available for this,” Peskov said, according to the Reuters news agency. “All that is needed is political will.”
I don’t really care, but I have two questions:
1. Why is he the “supreme” leader? Is he a donna summer fan?
2. How do the “good guys” know the “bad guys” have such and such an amount of goo at such and such a percent “enrichment”? If I were them and I wanted to “take over the world”, I’d bury it all deep underground and tell no one about it. Apparently, they’re either telling the “good guys” all about it or else letting them “inspect” it.
The other option of course, as always, is that all of the above is a lie and donna never said anything about anything during his yearly concert.
Nuclear weapons: – Israel can have them – Iran cannot.
BS.
Labour eyes up new deportation scheme with failed asylum seekers sent to the BALKANS as channel crossings skyrocket
what ? it was the labour party in 1945 who started this and said multiculturalism blue sky thinking and welcoming in our neighbor slogans caused all this ,ess
they are now admitting it wasa huge mistake and want them out
the public told them this over and over
anyone who voted for a rothschild party such as labour tory or lib debs is a racist traitor to his own people
What a scam “alternative media” is. Jamie white, so called, gets killed by people trying to steal his car (not immigrants). Alex jones does the “immigrant dance” for a day or so, until it comes out they weren’t immigrants. So he gets one of his other “crew” to post a givesendgo begathon for $100,000. Dumbasses get that to $90,000, so Jones bumps it up to $150,000, because all of a sudden “the family” need an extra $50,000. What a scam. The “funds” will be given to “Racheal Salazar”, who’s the wife of another of jones’ “crew”. Yep, she ain’t even working for jones, and she certainly ain’t related to jamie white in any way. Can you spell “money laundering”? Or would it be plain old theft?
The Top 10 Most Endangered Animals and How We Can Save Them
Story by Trizzy Orozco • 1mo
top of the endangered list
the white englishman
The US is the only country acknowledged to have dropped atomic bombs when nobody else had any to reply with, while Israel is suspected of using small nukes while denying it has any, so these two countries are the last two on Earth with any right to dictate to any other what their nuclear defences should be.
Which begs the question….how is it that Pakistan is not being targeted…..an Islamic nation with nuclear weapons????.
It doesn’t add up does it??.
All of this is thanks to Israel.
Would Israel proceed with this if it meant harming Americans?….yes of course….they’re fanatics.But they’ve got an ace up their sleeves….Trump who is without doubt a crypto jew.They also own the media….
Recall that it is the jews promoting mass alien immigration into Western countries….IN THE FIRST …….PLACE.
just BUY a monthly LIEcence from the Jews! The Jews have lots of nukes all set to go they have used them on their peaceful neighbors a few times,and will do it again and again, and nobody bothers THEM!
Although there are reasons to hate Israel e.g. the booby-trapping of British corpses to kill the rescuers, Iran hates Israel because it is not Moslem, and Moslems attack any non-Moslems
To lewis jones:
Stop the ridiculous narrative of “Iran hates Israel”. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation, to which all “Moslem” countries belong, have long stated that full diplomatic recognition of Israel and normalization of relations would be provided if Israel recognized UNSC Resolution 242, which means a Palestinian State.
Zionism is a cancer. My mother’s sister married a Jew. His family believed in a Jewish state, but were shocked by the made up excuses for the 1967 Israeli invasions and carnage. There are plenty of Jews like that, even today.
As for the Iranian nuclear programme, over 20 years ago, former Reagan advisor and weapons tester Dr Gordon Prather was writing articles demonstrating that, as a Non-Proliferation Treaty signatory, Iran was doing nothing that it was not entitled to do. This is just another example of in political influence of Zionists on our so-called Western liberaldemocracies.
starmer is a jew so is macron and trump
time to sweep out the stables methinks
they are a bit smelly
Lewis Jones is an Israel worshipping full on Zionist, has learned nothing from the articles featured and proves it every single time he contaminates this site with his ignorant insults on both Islam and Iran.
@lewis jones
Quote: “…Iran hates Israel because it is not Moslem, and Moslems attack any non-Moslems…”
All you have to do is to name enemies and friend of US, and enemies and fiends of Iran and put them in a list sorted by their ideology/religion.
@dan
Answer 1: He is ولی فقیه which can be roughly translated as “Jurisprudent Guardian” for lack of words! We can discuss Quran, Hadith and History along with etymology of ولی/مولی, and the Sunni-Shia differences on this subject which is very important but that subject can be approached from different angles and would be out of scope, so I try to give you a compact version:
Leadership comes attached with guardianship in Shia understanding and is ولایت, so a
Vali/Moula (مولی/ولی) is a guardian who is responsible for wellbeing and growth of all of his human subjects be them Muslim or not, and naturally his subjects would love him too, after all the society is to be governed by the least number of rules/laws and self-governance rather than direct control and discipline. You might immediately ask: “how can he provide/ensure/respect freedom of all of his subjects? What if they don’t want to wear hijab?” : )
Well, for starters that is the language most people are brought up with, but the concept of freedom and freewill is very misleading.
He has to “use” or “not use” power in order to allow his subjects including the elites and officials to grow. So he never ridicules officials or dictates to them unless it is against the safety of the entirety of his subjects by crossing the red lines defined in Islam. You might say: “what kind of funny language is this? ‘his subjects’?!” A bus driver transporting the passengers… would you say they are his subjects? What if he takes them down the cliff?! Would it be that those passengers were subjected to his driving?! If I am holding your hand and you can’t move, if I let go would it mean that I gave you freedom? of course not, freedom is not a tangible thing or a real commodity you can show, you might say: “I feel the freedom, it is so real!” But that is just the consequence of not being limited by a greater power and thus being able to exercise your own power that you already had. There is power, more of it or less of it; but everyone has a degree of it in various forms and types. You either:
1- Use your power.
2- Not use your power.
Likewise you are affected by everybody else who use or not use their powers against you or affecting you indirectly in your immediate vicinity!
You have to understand most of our actions are automatic/deterministic/predictable, and it is not like we are constantly using our willpower, things like Life-Style and Habits, Muscle Memory, brain’s Reticular Activating System (RAS), DNA and environmental motivation, etc… here is an example using the correct language to better understand it:
You have a little Power of Speech (power to speak + power in the speech) because of healthy vocal cords, lips and tongues and a decent upbringing… speech to harm or sooth and to guide based on your experience and understandings. But you are not going to worry about your Freedom of Speech this time! Instead you’re going to take responsibility for your Power of Speech no matter how small it is! So at home when you get angry with your mother and you are pushed to automatically and quickly use your Power of Speech just to feel better… your willpower resists and you sacrifice your Power of Speech. Next day you are outside when you see someone is oppressed by two guys, fear is pushing you to leave the scene and you can tell it is also affecting your logic by skewing arguments in favor of not saying anything, your mind brings up fear induced excuses but your willpower resists and so you use your Power of Speech in defense of the oppressed.
*Disclaimer: Based on how sick your society has become above examples may not work instead try the next one!
Here is another easy example that will work for sure even in the sickest environment:
If you are a man: You walk down the street, you happen to accidentally cast a glimpse on a nice curve on that chick, you immediately lower your gaze and abstain from further comments and paying further attention even inside your mind, guarantees to develop willpower!
If you are a woman: You walk down the street wearing Hijab or if not at least appearing in a way not to use your power of primal attractiveness! Negative energy of men will not focus on you, despite your desire and urge to be more attractive you sacrifice your power, less stress, kindness towards less attractive women and weaker men who can’t compete, rewires your RAS, develops your willpower!
The more people do this, the healthier the society becomes!
The primal emotions that oppose you are part of your primal brain, they kick in automatically, the lesser and egotistic angers, fears, hopes and pleasures. In other words there is no Will unless you feel the resistance of your choice. For a similitude, think of pouring a glass of water on the ground, it will move in the direction of surface slopes and crevices. When your choice is not paired with resistance it is just that automatic behavior. If you study brain’s RAS, you’ll see that everything is automatic and most of the input is filtered, based on the level of your developed willpower. The more you practice this resistance the more willpower you develop and previous hard choices become easier or even automatic again. You define a new bar for your brain and it learns that your survival is not threatened by ignoring certain popular inputs and focusing on other neglected inputs and so you can tackle more challenging choices; that is how you grow.
Indeed of Respecting Freedom of others which is ambiguous you should say how much of your power you are willing to use or not use in favor of others or in reaching a goal.
So a Vali/Moula can’t move ahead of his subjects, he has to wait and show flexibility for them to catch up in their understanding and willpower, because ultimately it is the community as a living collective that has to move forward and quick results and shortcuts while may provide quick results, they won’t be permanent or real! This way that Moula leads, might translate to concessions and deviations from the path forcing some of the weaker elite to accuse the Moula of weak political performance, other times a Moula will be much more strict on certain matters such that many of the same would be elites can’t understand the harshness on the seemingly unimportant issue, so they accuse the Moula for his dictatorship and rigidity!
The ultimate Moula is God who has absolute power and also absolute love and understanding which is why God also sacrifices the most power in favor of his creation, he is not into quick rewards and punishments not for imaginary freedom and freewill, rather to ensure independence and growth of willpower of his subjects. Next in line is the Imam of time or God’s chosen Moula, this moves down the chain of authority/power until reaches parents.
Children are literally hanging from their parents, they are absolutely needy and powerless particularly at birth; yet if I say parents are masters and children are slaves many find it dehumanizing but this is the exact truth!
Moula is a guardian that cares for his subjects and is willing to sacrifice his power and use his power in such a way to ensure growth and wellbeing of his subjects. It would be an act of pure evil if God/Moula/Master/Parent/Creator/Teacher was to abandon/neglect/free his Creations/Subjects/Children/Slaves/Students while they are still not empowered and weak!
As you can see this worldview is revolutionary and will wreck anything that is ungodly standing in front of it, the economic dimension will be a huge chapter on its own.
Shia leaders have been in the forefront of Sacrifice of Power when it is due and controlled Use Power, they live pious lives and when they are assassinated or killed, people show their love in huge funeral gatherings. You can clearly see where on earth most willpower exist today.
A Jurisprudent Guardian (ولی فقیه) can see that the entire universe is the domain of God so God’s promise will come true when the time is ripe, and he is the Moula until the conditions are right for the greater Moula which is Mahdi عج to reveal himself. The “Chosen One” Jews have also prepared for their own Messiah. But you can see that they are the party with the least willpower and least capacity to abstain from using their power. They are also the most scared and so they are the ones who would easily abuse their power, the Shia Resistance Axis however is very calm, restrained and measured to avoid millions of deaths, despite losses.
Today people ask why is it that only the Shia is fighting the Zionists and help Sunnis in Gaza. With all of that you should be able to answer how a Supreme Leader should be!
There are 4 main schools of thought when it comes to state/governance security; each one has to deal with the Threat that is outside and the Vulnerability that is inside.
The 1st School is centered around the Vulnerability (Russia):
To improve and cover our vulnerabilities in order to survive and as a result defeat the threat.
Let the enemy come in and wait for winter!
The 2nd school is centered around the Threat (Zion):
Forget about our vulnerabilities and focus on eliminating the Threat.
Nip it in the bud, preempt, assassinate, violently attack and threaten the enemy with maximum force with no delay! It does not matter if you are hated as long as you are feared!
The 3rd school is centered around Opportunity (US):
Define the threat and derive opportunity from it in order to survive and defeat the enemy.
Draw the SWOT, milk the situation! No more threats? Make some!
The 4th school is centered around Occasion (Iran):
This may sound new to most people so first look up the philosophy of “Occasionalism” and then think on this allegory to understand better: An Oyster has soft tissue inside of its shell and when a small sharp pebble enters it, it has no defensive mechanism to get rid of it, instead it generates nacre around it that eventually turns it inro a valuable round pearl!
Define the threat on the cosmic divine map and deal with it in accordance to the divine creed in order to create a more valuable thing out of it that not only nullifies the threat but upgrades you in the process!
Note that practitioners of these security schools in military domain may have more or less similar technical, tactical or strategic weapons, however they are different in how they behave and plan. As for nukes, I’ll explain in the second answer.
:::::::::::::::::
Answer 2: As Boris Johnstein posted in a comment here, Pakistan too has nukes, why that does not bother the west? What if Taliban gets their hand on a Pakistani nuke, or what if the now pro-west Pakistani government decide to give their nuke to others?
Syed Ali Khamenei the leader of the Resistance Axis said over ~14 times that Iran does not need nuclear weapons. Not only because they are killing ordinary people and is against Islam but because they bring no real power to table for Iran. A few years ago in a gathering with Nuclear scientists he said:
We want to prove to the world that having nuclear weapons does not create/bring power; because the countries that have them today are suffering from the worst of problems. They had become dominant by threat of nukes, however this threat no longer has any use. We want to say that we are not after nukes and we do not see power in them and we can break any power relying on nuclear weapons!
How is that possible? With Deterrence Doctrine it becomes clear:
1- Balance of terror (To be able to scare your enemy)
2- Flexible response (To have many response options against an enemy action and thus be able to surprise, preferably asymmetric)
3- Big Retaliation/pay back (To be able to respond to an enemy action with a bigger counter-action and to maintain secondary-strike-capability)
4- Total war (Ability to manage escalation effectively and being able to control the situation up to total annihilation or total war such that cost of victory is reduced as much as possible)
So all Resistance Axis groups maintain “secondary-strike” capability with underground bases and tunnels, from tiny Gaza to Yemen to Lebanon to Iran all have gone underground to varying degrees! Missiles and drones provide supreme “Flexible Response” and to be the top in missile and drone technology that is effective and economically viable you need decades of serious work, as Gen McKenzie former head of CENTOM during his testify before the House Armed Services Committee on 20th of April 2021 had to say:
“The CENTCOM area of responsibility is the most cyber-contested theater in the world; it is also a proving ground for the proliferation and employment of unmanned weaponized systems, many emanating from Iran. This difficult and complex operational environment provides units inside CENTCOM opportunities to operate and to conduct realistic training within an environment that exists nowhere else in the world.”
Resistance Axis could wreck havoc on Zion and take out their airbases and end it in a few days but the cost would be too high and Zion would use nukes and kill millions, besides there are many traitor Arab and Muslim states that need to be pacified through soft-war. As you can see Turkey is facing internal unrest that could develop into armed uprising. Fall of Erdogan will greatly affect Syria. Therefore the long war is the preferred choice.
So moral of the story is Nukes are overrated, as weapons to be used last. Netanyahu or Trump love to be seen as mad, but that’s a clear bluff! Iran can destroy Zion’s ammonia stockpiles or Dimona resulting in a similar MAD scenario because of Zion’s lack of geographic depth.
Making or obtaining nukes is easy for a resourceful country like Iran, but it would be costly to maintain and a security liability while also negatively impact Iran’s soft-power in the region and in the Muslim world.
Nuclear weapons could not save Soviet Union.
Had Ukraine kept their nukes there would not have been much difference to the result of war with Russia!
Nuclear weapons do not help US/Zion to keep the Red Sea open.
Nuclear weapons do not deter the Resistance Axis.
Pakistani nukes did not prevent US from conducting many drone attacks in Pakistan.
If you have no Flexible Response but you have nukes, you will lose as your enemy will slowly chip away from your power that will ultimately lead to internal civil unrest and economic melt-down, while you will be unable to use nukes as they are unjustified. Resistance Axis regularly use the term “using suitable weapons” for their particular objectives, indeed even the most basic rockets that AlQassam launch from Gaza are extremely effective specially if part of a greater puzzle.
Western powers in particular US and Zion keep saying that Iran is after nukes to indirectly convey the message that Nukes are the ultimate weapons and they have it but Iran does not and also whatever else Iran has is not enough! They have kept the specter of nuke through mass media and Hollywood to bully nations, but this is not the case any more.
Some Iranian officials have pushed for nukes and had they the courage to say what is in their hearts they would accuse supreme leader of being naïve. They say we want to deal our nukes with US… but enemies of Iran know very well that nukes are just an excuse.
Sorry it is too long, a multidisciplinary topic, I hope this helps.
There might be typos and errors in the text, apologies!
my two tomans
ایها صهیون نحن المقاومون و نحن المنتقمون