Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“Tehran has suspended cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian announced Wednesday, according to state media reports.
The move marks a significant stepback in Iran’s international cooperation after Washington’s dramatic June 21 strikes on its nuclear enrichment facilities.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/iran-halts-cooperation-un-nuclear-watchdog/
“The Pentagon has halted shipments of some air defense missiles and other precision munitions to Ukraine due to worries that U.S. weapons stockpiles have fallen too low.
The decision was driven by the Pentagon’s policy chief, Elbridge Colby, and was made after a review of Pentagon munitions stockpiles, leading to concerns that the total number of artillery rounds, air defense missiles and precision munitions was sinking, according to three people familiar with the issue.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/01/pentagon-munitions-ukraine-halt-00436048?s=09
The Iranian government is corrupt and needs enemies to hold its people together. This is why it treats the U.S. as the great Satan and Israel as the little Satan. There’s no deep reason why Israel and Iran should be enemies or why Iran and the U.S. should be enemies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vS8GGPKtqI
“China on Friday signaled it would approve the export of rare earth minerals to the US, hours after White House officials said the two sides had reached a deal, in what would be a major breakthrough following weeks of negotiations over US access to the key materials.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-china-formalize-deal-rare-075006013.html
“The Iranian parliament, led by the charismatic Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, was trying to limit the power of the monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Mossadegh nationalized the oil fields, provoking a British blockade, while also clashing with the shah over domestic policy.
Mossadegh trusted the United States as a neutral mediator, but the feeling wasn’t mutual. The Eisenhower administration suspected that Mossadegh was too close to communists, and the CIA supported a coup d’etat by destabilizing the country. In August 1953, after months of protests subsidized by the U.S. and the U.K., monarchist generals in contact with the CIA surrounded Mossadegh’s house with tanks, bringing the shah back to near-absolute power.
Instead of allowing Britain to regain its dominance over Iran, the Eisenhower administration forced Iran to accept an American-led oil consortium. And the CIA helped train the shah’s fearsome new secret police, the SAVAK. When the shah finally fell in 1979, young revolutionaries took revenge by raiding the U.S. embassy, which they called a “den of spies,” and holding everyone inside hostage for more than a year. That began a 46-year conflict that continues to this day.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/23/a-brief-bloody-history-of-all-the-times-the-u-s-caused-chaos-in-the-middle-east/
Crossing the U.S. Border? Keep Your Electronic Devices Safe from Searches.
https://reason.com/2025/06/25/crossing-the-u-s-border-keep-your-electronic-devices-safe-from-searches/
Trump wants NATO to spend more on defense. Here’s who is actually paying.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/22/trump-nato-defense-spending-winners-losers-00409979
Eric Edelman, Suzanne Maloney, and Andrew Miller: How Weak Is Iran? | Foreign Affairs Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFdWYUNDwSU
What’s Left of Iran’s Nuclear Bunkers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF3_O7x7IW8&t=903s
“Under the War Powers Act of 1973, the law that governs presidential authority to order military strikes, there are three lawful ways for a commander-in-chief to order the bombing of another country. None of them appears to cover the strikes carried out on Saturday.
Here is the relevant section of the law (emphasis added): “The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”
The first two options provided by the law are clearly not involved here, as Congress did not declare war against Iran and did not pass an authorization for the use of military force (as was done to allow the invasion of Iraq in 2002).
The third circumstance also does not apply to Trump’s attack on Iran, which was not carried out in response to an attack on American troops and did not respond to a crisis threatening American soil.”
…
“The War Powers Act should not be treated as a series of suggestions that can be discarded when they seem inconvenient. Indeed, limits on executive power are most essential at the moments when they are inconvenient—otherwise, they are meaningless. Trump’s attack on Iran was not just an assault on a suspected nuclear weapons program; it was yet another blow against the separation of powers and the fundamental structure of the American constitutional system.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/22/the-attack-on-iran-is-unlawful/