The Israeli Defense Forces says it killed another top Iranian commander as Israel continues pressing its “pre-emptive” war against Iran, ostensibly to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Latest: After four days of intense air and missile attacks, Israeli leaders are now “contemplating regime change in the Islamic Republic,” Axios reported Tuesday following various interviews—including this one on Fox—that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given since Sunday. When asked on Fox if “regime change” was part of Israel’s goals, Netanyahu replied, “Could certainly be the result because the Iran regime is very weak.” He reiterated that point several more times Monday, including on an Iranian opposition program with the unsubtle title, “Regime Change In Iran.”
About that Iranian commander Israel says it has killed: His name is Ali Shadmani, and the IDF claimed Tuesday he was “Iran’s senior-most military official” and the “closest military advisor” to Iran’s leader, Ali Khamenei. The IDF says Shadmani “was killed in an [Israeli air force] strike in central Tehran, following precise intelligence.”
By the way, U.S. President Trump on Monday called for the 10 million people in Tehran to evacuate the city, writing on social media before departing a conference of G7 leaders early, “IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”
Trump also said Tuesday he’s trying to get Iran to the negotiating table sometime this week, and could dispatch Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff or Vice President JD Vance for that job.
In video: Get to better know Iran’s underground Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, which has so far apparently gone undamaged, and how U.S.-made bunker-buster bombs could change the direction of the conflict. David Risling of the Associated Press posted a 70-second video on Tuesday.
Warning for Golden Dome salesmen: “Iran has been firing barrages of ballistic missiles at Israel. Even the world’s best defenses can’t always stop them,” the New York Times reports in a new multimedia feature all about “How Missile Defense Works (and Why It Fails).”
Additional reading:
Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 2015, a 21-year-old white supremacist shot and killed nine Black Americans during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Defense industry
Boeing says they can build F/A-XX and F-47. The company’s defense chief rejected the Navy secretary’s contention that U.S. defense companies can’t handle building two sixth-generation fighter jets at once. “Absolutely we can do it, and so can the industrial base, and so can the engine manufacturers. So I don’t see that as being an issue,” Steve Parker told reporters Monday. Defense One’s Audrey Decker reports from the Paris Air Show.
Lockheed: TR-3 upgrade package for F-35 is ready. Nearly two years late, Technology Refresh 3 now merely awaits government approval, officials said in Paris. Decker, here.
Related reading:
Troops on U.S. soil
Developing: U.S. appeals court to rule on Trump’s dispatch of troops to LA. “A three-judge panel will determine whether National Guard troops can remain under President Trump’s command in Los Angeles as protests against immigration raids continue,” the New York Times writes. Find related coverage from Reuters and AP.
Domestic extremism
The alleged shooter in the weekend killing of Democratic lawmakers in Minneapolis targeted several other officials’ homes that night, prosecutors said Monday as their investigation proceeds.
Authorities arrested the suspect, Vance Luther Boelter, Sunday and began piecing together his trail of carnage that began around 2 a.m. Saturday morning when he dressed as a masked police officer and shot and wounded Minn. State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. He then visited the homes of two more elected officials, one of whom was not there, before visiting a fourth home where he fatally shot former Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark at about 3:30 a.m. The Associated Press mapped the attacks across the city, here.
“It is no exaggeration to say that his crimes are the stuff of nightmares,” acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson told reporters Monday. “Political assassinations are rare. They strike at the very core of our democracy. But the details of Boelter’s crime are even worse. They are truly chilling,” he said.
He kept a list of targets in his car. “Court records said the lists contained names and home addresses of mostly or all Democrats,” the Wall Street Journal reports, noting, “more than 45 state and federal elected officials, including those who support abortion rights.”Worth noting: “Friends and former colleagues interviewed by AP described Boelter as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for President Donald Trump,” the Associated Press reported Monday evening. He’s also “not believed to have made any public threats before [the] attacks,” according to prosecutors. Read more, here.
The case has also triggered a storm of misinformation from the right:
Additional reading:
NATO news
Inside the alliance’s new Russia deterrence plans. European officials worry that NATO’s ambitious targets for military capability may not be enough to deter Russia from “testing” how the alliance would respond to an attack on a member nation in the next three to five years, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports off conversations at the GLOBSEC security conference in Prague.
So at the NATO summit later this month, members will discuss new operational concepts to respond immediately to a Russian attack—including counterstrikes inside Russia. “The new concept is that if Russia is coming, then we will bring the war to Russia. That’s what we are talking about,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna told Tucker. “We have no time then to discuss whether we can use one of the other weapons or whatever. We have no time. We need to act within the first minutes and hours.” Read on, here.
Meanwhile: “At G7, Trump Renews Embrace of Putin Amid Rift With Allies,” the New York Times reported from Alberta.
Related reading:
- “NATO allies ‘not prepared’ for war, top UK defense adviser warns,” writes Politico off a conversation with Grace Cassy, an adviser to the British government’s defense review.
- “Britain’s MI6 spy agency gets its first female chief,” AP reports: Blaise Metreweli, currently “the MI6 director of technology and innovation — the real-world equivalent of Bond gadget-master Q.”
Drones
China’s burgeoning drone arsenal shows the power of its civil-military fusion. “On June 6, President Trump signed two executive orders designed to build back up the U.S. civilian drone industry: one orders various agencies to promote American drone exports, and the other limits government purchases of drones linked to the Chinese government,” write BluePath Labs’ John S. Van Oudenaren and New America’s Peter W. Singer. “Whether these measures are too little, too late to turn around a global market that has been dominated by China for over a decade remains to be seen. But what it does miss is that China’s drone industry is not merely a story of civilian systems, but of military ones as well—and a strategic plan that yokes multiple parts of government and industry to a central goal.” Read on, here.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy showed off its giant Triton drone and how it will operate with the P-8 maritime patrol aircraft. Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams went to Naval Air Station Pax River, Maryland, to watch. Read, here.
