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Trump’s Strike on Iran Reshapes Global Power Balance, Deals First Blow to Beijing and CRINK Axis

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Sam Cooper's avatar Sam Cooper

Some analysts say the U.S. strike marks the West’s first major blow in an emerging global war against the ‘CRINK’ alliance — China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

At 8:00 p.m. on Saturday, President Donald Trump confirmed that U.S. B-2 stealth bombers had penetrated Iranian airspace overnight and delivered precision strikes on multiple nuclear enrichment facilities—marking the first direct American military action targeting Iran’s nuclear program since the conflict with Israel escalated.

Trump said the strikes were “massive” and necessary to prevent the world’s most dangerous regime from acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapons.

The United States and its military had completed a strike unprecedented in history and that no other military can achieve, Trump declared in a televised address from the Oval Office, arguing that Iran had sought the destruction of Israel and America, and killed many U.S. soldiers.

The president’s remarks confirmed what international observers and Israeli defense officials had begun to piece together in the early hours of Saturday in the Middle East: that American forces had joined Israel’s rapidly expanding campaign to dismantle the Islamic Republic’s nuclear and military infrastructure—a move with historic ramifications for the balance of power in the region and for global security.

This attack, while narrowly focused on nuclear targets, may mark a broader inflection point in the strategic landscape of what some U.S. defense analysts call the “CRINK” war—referring to the de facto alliance of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

This morning Mike Gallagher, the former chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and now a national security adviser, said the strike marked a return to credible power projection.

“Deterrence comes from dominant force and the willingness to use it,” he posted to X. “Last night, President Trump took a critical step toward restoring deterrence in the Middle East and around the world.”

According to senior U.S. defense officials, the strikes involved a small number of stealth bombers supported by aerial refueling tankers and surveillance aircraft operating from bases in the Middle East and Europe. The targets included Iran’s deeply buried Natanz uranium enrichment complex and secondary facilities near Arak and Fordow.

Of these, Fordow is considered Iran’s most fortified nuclear site—tunneled into a mountainside near the holy city of Qom and designed to survive conventional airstrikes. Reaching it requires specialized bunker-penetrating munitions. Only the United States possesses weapons capable of striking such hardened targets: most likely the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound bomb built to bore through hundreds of feet of reinforced rock and concrete. Defense sources say multiple sequential detonations would be required to break through the mountain’s layers and disable the underground enrichment halls.

Early satellite imagery and Iranian state media appeared to corroborate the targeting of Natanz, reporting heavy damage and widespread power disruptions across the site and adjacent military compounds. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a statement vowing retaliation but acknowledged that “enemy aircraft penetrated undetected and struck sensitive infrastructure.”

The United States, by committing its own strategic assets to destroy critical Iranian military infrastructure, has gained the initiative in what could be seen as the first true strategic victory for the West in World War III—a long, undeclared conflict characterized by economic warfare, proxy combat, gray-zone cyber operations, and regional insurgencies. The Pentagon and White House now face critical choices that could significantly shape the remainder of this century.

The strike could come at a high cost, but also could deliver epoch-shifting, decisive strategic benefits. Iran supplies drones to Russia, subsidizes oil to China, and provides weapons to terrorist actors that threaten U.S. bases and allies from the Gulf to the Mediterranean, military and intelligence analysts argue. Its defeat would damage the CRINK axis, remove a key enabler of great power revisionism, and restore American leverage after years of attritional conflict.

Trump’s language Saturday night suggested he may favor such a path.

In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the American action as “a decisive blow against the terror regime in Tehran.” In a national address hours after the U.S. confirmation, Netanyahu said, “This is not just Israel’s fight—the free world has acted.”

Israeli media reported that the Israeli Air Force had provided electronic warfare support and real-time intelligence for the U.S. strikes, though officials declined to confirm operational details. In Tel Aviv, civilians remained under heightened alert, but there were signs of cautious optimism. “The alliance between Israel and the United States is at full strength,” one senior Israeli official told local media. “We have shifted the strategic calculus in the region.”

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council convened an emergency session overnight. Government officials condemned the strikes as an act of war and said Tehran would respond “at a time and place of our choosing.” As of Sunday morning EST, no immediate missile launches had been detected. However, Western intelligence agencies were monitoring known Iranian proxy forces in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen for signs of mobilization.

On Iranian social media channels, state-linked accounts circulated images of damaged facilities alongside calls for retaliatory “martyrdom operations” against U.S. and Israeli targets.

The joint U.S.-Israeli operation followed weeks of escalating hostilities, beginning with Israeli airstrikes deep inside Iranian territory that disabled radar arrays, weapons depots, and drone launch sites. Iranian retaliation—including missile and drone attacks on Israeli cities—prompted increasingly urgent warnings from Western capitals that the situation risked spiraling into open regional war.

In Tehran, BBC correspondents reported a rare mix of panic and defiance among civilians. Some feared a full-scale war was imminent. Others expressed anger at their government for failing to protect key military and nuclear assets.

European leaders called for restraint. In an interview late Saturday night EST, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz described the strike as “a painful but necessary step.” French officials warned of “a dangerous path toward uncontrollable conflict.”

In Washington, current and former intelligence officials said the operation signaled a fundamental shift in U.S. posture.

The Pentagon later confirmed the deployment of additional U.S. forces to the region, including carrier strike groups and long-range missile defense batteries.

Whether the operation succeeds in deterring Iran from restarting its nuclear weapons program—or sparks a wider war in the Middle East—remains uncertain. What is clear is that the seismic shift beneath Fordow began in Iran, but its aftershocks are now reverberating through the war rooms of Beijing and Moscow.

Editor’s Note: The first version of this story was updated to paraphrase President Trump’s remarks, and add a comment from former senator and CCP committee leader Mike Gallagher.

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COVID-19

Sen. Rand Paul: ‘I am officially re-referring Dr. Fauci to the DOJ’

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Fr0m LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

‘Perjury is a crime,’ Sen. Rand Paul declared on X. ‘And Fauci must be held accountable.’

Sen. Rand Paul announced Monday that he is again pressuring the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to launch a criminal probe of Dr. Anthony Fauci after The New York Times revealed his 11th-hour pardon by the Biden administration is likely invalid.

“Today, I will reissue my criminal referral of Anthony Fauci to Trump DOJ!” declared Paul, later adding, “Perjury is a crime. And Fauci must be held accountable.”

By late in the afternoon on Monday, the Kentucky senator had composed a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi citing the times he believed Fauci had lied under oath during congressional hearings and urging the DOJ to finally investigate Fauci.

“In July 2023, I referred Dr. Anthony Fauci to the Department of Justice for lying under oath to Congress. His own emails directly contradicted his sworn testimony,” Paul wrote X.

“NYT reports Fauci was quietly pardoned by an autopen, operated by Biden’s staff. If the President didn’t authorize this pardon personally, then the Department has a duty to investigate and prosecute as it would any ordinary citizen,” Paul said.

“Fauci has been sainted by the extremist Left, but it doesn’t erase his lying before Congress,” Paul said. “I am officially re-referring Dr. Fauci to the DOJ.”

Sen. Paul concluded his letter to Bondi by explaining that his autopen pardon is now seen to be illegitimate:

On January 19, 2025, Dr. Fauci was issued a full and unconditional pardon for any offenses that he may have committed or taken part in since 2014. Dr. Fauci was included among a group of individuals granted unprecedented preemptive pardons on President Joe Biden’s final day in office. However, new information has revealed that these pardons were executed via autopen, with no documented confirmation that the President personally reviewed or approved each individual grant of clemency.

According to reports, White House staff authorized the use of the autopen to issue the clemency documents. This raises serious constitutional and legal concerns about the legitimacy of Dr. Fauci’s Pardon.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that the constant reliance on the autopen by the Biden administration is “one of the biggest scandals that we’ve had in 50 to 100 years.”

“I guarantee (Biden) knew nothing about what he was signing,” Trump asserted.

Fauci’s mendacious relationship with Congress 

The senator from the Bluegrass State and Dr. Fauci have long had a combative relationship.

In 2021, Sen. Paul alleged that Fauci, who then served as director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) and as medical adviser to former President Joe Biden, “lied to Congress” when he claimed that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), of which the NIAID is a part, was not funding and had never funded “gain-of-function” research in Wuhan, China.

Then in 2023, Paul again filed a criminal referral to the DOJ against the White House COVID czar for lying to Congress about his role in subsidizing controversial gain-of-function (GOF) research that was suspected of contributing to the COVID outbreak.

“We have him dead to rights, the problem is this: we have Merrick Garland who I think is a pure rank partisan,” Paul said at the time. “I don’t think he’ll ever be prosecuted. We also have a Democrat Party that is happy to have paid him more than the president, more than any president makes and he actually got a million dollars from a private foundation while he was still a public servant. Everything about this is rotten to the core and if we don’t bring him to justice we’ll never get the control we need on this type of research to try and prevent it from happening again.”

Paul has said multiple times that Dr. Fauci should “go to prison” for lying to Congress.

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Education

Trump praises Supreme Court decision to allow dismantling of Department of Education

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President Trump hailed the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing the continued dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education and the return of its authority and functions to individual states, “a Major Victory to Parents and Students across the Country.”

In a decision issued on Monday, the high court blocked an order by a federal judge in Massachusetts that would require the Department of Education to reinstate nearly 1,400 employees who had been terminated by the Trump administration in March. 

“The United States Supreme Court has handed a Major Victory to Parents and Students across the Country, by declaring the Trump Administration may proceed on returning the functions of the Department of Education BACK TO THE STATES,” wrote the president on Truth Social.

“Now, with this GREAT Supreme Court Decision, our Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, may begin this very important process,” said Trump. “The Federal Government has been running our Education System into the ground, but we are going to turn it all around by giving the Power back to the PEOPLE.”

“America’s Students will be the best, brightest, and most Highly Educated anywhere in the World. Thank you to the United States Supreme Court!” added the president.

“Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies,” noted Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon. “While today’s ruling is a significant win for students and families, it is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution.”

“The U.S. Department of Education will now deliver on its mandate to restore excellence in American education,” explained McMahon. “We will carry out the reduction in force to promote efficiency and accountability and to ensure resources are directed where they matter most – to students, parents, and teachers. As we return education to the states, this Administration will continue to perform all statutory duties while empowering families and teachers by reducing education bureaucracy.”

When leftist Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren took to X to decry the court’s decision and attempted to take the moral high ground by saying, “Every kid in America deserves access to a good public education,” Sec. McMahon used a deft bit of jujitsu to respond.

Sen. Warren wasn’t the only one issuing hyperbolic prophesies of disaster following the court’s decision.

“Trump and his allies” are taking “a wrecking ball to public schools and the futures of the 50 million students in rural, suburban, and urban communities across America,” asserted Becky Pringle, president of the nation’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association.

In her written dissent, in which she was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor predicted nothing short of disaster.

The majority’s decision “will unleash untold harm, delaying or denying educational opportunities and leaving students to suffer from discrimination, sexual assault, and other civil rights violations without the federal resources Congress intended.”

“The Supreme Court has handed Trump one victory after another in his effort to remake the federal government, after lower courts have found the administration’s actions probably violate federal law,” lamented a report by the Associated Press. “Last week, the justices cleared the way for Trump’s plan to significantly reduce the size of the federal workforce. On the education front, the high court has previously allowed cuts in teacher-training grants to go forward.”

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