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Articles

Iran-Israel war outcome talked up by commentators that’s actually highly unlikely

Article published in The Daily Express, 18 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

There’s a surprising truth that may seem counterintuitive to those watching from the West.

We now have an argument about whether Iran is really in pursuit of a bomb, with an apparent spat between President Trump and his Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. In March, she assessed that Iran had not yet decided to build a bomb. That may have been true. But it is also irrelevant. Iran has been enriching uranium to near weapons grade for years.

The International Atomic Energy Agency a few days ago said the Islamic Republic now has enough such material to manufacture around 10 bombs, with the final stages to achieve weapons grade possible within two weeks, according to US intelligence. Iran has some missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads. We have seen their ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defences in the last few days. The final component is weaponisation, turning weapons grade uranium into a viable nuclear device.

The ability to identify that programme through intelligence has always been a major challenge given it can be achieved very discreetly. Recently Israel confirmed it had intelligence that Iran is now in fact making progress on weaponisation.

So with the components in place, all that would be needed is for Ali Khamanei to give the order to put them together. It would be suicidal to wait until intelligence confirmed that order had been given. And anyway there could be no certainty such a decision would be identified by intelligence.

Given the enormous stakes Israel had no other choice than to strike when it did. There are some risks you do not take. Perhaps the greatest is to allow acquisition of nuclear weapons by a fanatical religious tyranny with a track record of unrestrained violence that repeatedly declares its intention to annihilate you.

No Israelis that I have spoken to over here in the days since Israel launched its pre-emptive war doubt the need for it. Even opposition leaders, sworn political rivals of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are four-square behind his actions, unheard of in this country.

Of course all Israelis recognise the current dangers to themselves, and almost all of them have been forced to take refuge in bomb shelters several times every day since last weekend. But they do understand they would face hugely greater dangers in just sitting back and watching Iran becoming a nuclear armed state.

Another concern is escalation into a region-wide conflict. That is Continue reading →

Articles

Real reason Israel had to launch pre-emptive strike against Iran

Article published in The Daily Express, 17 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Israel and Iran are not ‘trading blows’ as some have phrased it. Israel is dealing strategic devastation on Iran, eliminating much of the terrorist regime’s military top brass and key nuclear scientists , and attacking nuclear weapons sites, air defence systems, and offensive drone and missile capabilities.

Meanwhile Iran is lashing out with drones and ballistic missiles, fired into Israel’s population centres, deliberately killing and wounding civilians in places like Tel Aviv, the most densely populated city in the country. Here, for the last two nights I have heard ballistic missiles roar overhead and seen Israel’s impressive air defences knock some of them out of the sky.

Those missiles that did get through told a terrifying story. What if just one of them had been armed with a nuclear warhead? Vast numbers would have been killed. That’s why Israel had to launch this pre-emptive assault on the Islamic Republic. Israeli intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency both saw that Iran was on the cusp of obtaining nuclear weapons capability.

Had they been allowed to get to that point we must assume they would use them in pursuit of their frequently declared intent of destroying Israel. That Jerusalem has nuclear weapons would not have deterred them.

The fanatical ayatollahs in Tehran wouldn’t care how many of their own people were sacrificed in pursuit of their religious duty of annihilating the Jewish state. As for the rest of the world, it should be grateful to Israel because a nuclear armed Iran would have threatened us all.

The ayatollahs have repeatedly shown their unbridled thirst for violence before, including killing British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and attempting terrorist attacks in our country.

All wars are terrible but sometimes they have to be fought to prevent an even worse evil.

Image: Mehr/Wikimedia Commons

Articles

Iran strikes back: but Israel is talking less and hitting harder

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 13 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

When I was woken up this morning at 3am by sirens that sounded across Israel I knew exactly what was happening. Now the sirens are sounding here again as Iran attempts to retaliate against Israel’s deadly, effective strikes against its nuclear weapons enterprise.

But the signs had been piling up for the last few days: International Atomic Energy Agency declaring Iran in breach of its obligations, US pulling non-essential staff out of embassies, hospitals in Israel made ready, a warning issued to Hezbollah in Lebanon against attacking; the list goes on. But the signs of the inevitable had also been there for many years before.

Iran has been a rogue state since the ayatollahs seized power in 1979. The Islamic Revolution that year was built on ‘death to Israel’ and ‘death to America’. The US was the ‘Great Satan’, Israel and Britain the ‘Little Satans’. These were not mere words. Iran was behind the suicide bombings that killed 241 US and 58 French military personnel plus six civilians in Beirut in 1983, as well as 63 deaths at the US Embassy there six months before.

Iran’s dirty work was also responsible for the killing of 85 people at a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, as well as 29 in an attack on the Israeli embassy in the same city in 1992. Iran and its proxies killed at least 1,100 British, American and allied troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2007 as well as an unknown number of coalition troops during the Afghanistan campaign. They have targeted US bases, international shipping and oil fields in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

And they have been attacking and killing Israeli soldiers and civilians for decades. That eventually culminated in the October 7 pogrom in Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and many were taken hostage. There is much more to add to Iran’s catalogue of terror: a bomb factory in London, for instance, that was disrupted by British security services in 2015 and alleged attempted terrorist attacks in the UK leading to arrests last month. Iran has also been the major supplier of drones and missiles to Russia which have been used against civilian and military targets in Ukraine.

For decades the Tehran regime has been working to develop nuclear weapons. Although Iran sometimes paused its programme when it feared punitive action from either the US or Israel, it has refused to stop; its upward trajectory has now reached a point where the IAEA believes it now has enough highly enriched uranium to make at least ten bombs.

Iran’s ballistic missile capability has also been proceeding apace, giving it a nuclear capability to span the region, and of course there are also other more covert means of delivering nuclear weapons. Until recently the missing part of the intelligence jigsaw was weaponisation, the ability to turn fissile material into a viable bomb. Today Israeli prime minister Netanyahu revealed that Iran has indeed been working on that important final step.

With all diplomatic pathways to prevent Iran becoming a nuclear armed state closed off, Israel had no choice but to attack. The alternative would have been unthinkable: a regime that has repeatedly proven its capacity for unlimited violence acquiring nuclear weapons capability.

But Iran’s dictators are now in a desperate situation. Israel has decapitated their armed forces and destroyed significant parts of their offensive capability. The IDF will continue to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and to degrade its capacity to strike, although we don’t yet know whether it will be completely neutralised.

If not, like Hitler in his bunker, the unhinged ayatollahs might try to lash out at oil states in the region – either with their own remaining armoury and or using what terrorist proxies remain to them. They might even attack US bases in the Middle East, which they have threatened to do, even though they know that could bring about their Armageddon.

All of that might lead to insurrection in the country. Much of the population in recent years has reached new heights of hatred for rulers that have oppressed, imprisoned, tortured, murdered and impoverished them. But it is far from clear that there is a viable opposition able to step up; one scenario is perhaps some kind of military coup.

Until then Iran and Israel will trade blows: but my money is on Israel talking less and hitting harder.

Articles

Khamenei and his Guards are militarily defeated. The rest is up to Iranians

Article published in The Daily Express, 1 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Operation Rising Lion has inflicted on Iran the most grievous penalty possible in Middle Eastern culture: humiliation. And the ayatollahs’ attempts to restore honour have only led to even more humiliation. Their retaliation so far has been ineffectual.

Three hundred and fifty ballistic missiles each containing half a ton of high explosives as well as more than 100 drones have killed 24 Israeli civilians and damaged or destroyed a few buildings. Each of these deaths is a tragedy, but this is hardly the devastation repeatedly promised by Khamenei and his henchmen following Israel’s pre-emptive attack. The IDF has shot down around 90 per cent of missiles fired from Iran and only about 5-10 per cent have hit residential areas.

The sporadic missile attacks we have seen so far, only 30-60 in each barrage, were always far less likely to overwhelm Israeli air defences than a smaller number of mass strikes combined with drone swarms. IDF interdiction may have prevented hundreds being fired at a time, but it seems almost as if the Iranians have been trying to show strength to their own people rather than having any real hope of inflicting severe damage on Israel.

They have a dire need to show such strength because all they have shown so far is weakness. Israel has total superiority over Iranian air space. IDF planes can fly as freely over Tehran as they can over Tel Aviv. The ayatollahs have been unable to protect even the upper levels of their military command, which has been decimated almost at a stroke. This is unprecedented in the annals of warfare.

The same goes for some of the most important nuclear scientists who should have been among the most protected people in the country. Heavily guarded nuclear sites have been repeatedly struck, as has energy infrastructure. Substantial numbers of ballistic missiles and drones have been destroyed before they could be launched. Israeli special forces have been operating on the ground in Iran with impunity and the extent of intelligence penetration of the regime and its military seems breathtaking.

An evacuation order from Israel is enough to see huge numbers of Tehran’s citizens on the move. In short, the regime has lost sovereignty over its own territory. Can it survive this and the even more powerful blows that are likely to come? Israel is a long way from the culminating point of its military domination. We have already seen protesters on the streets in large numbers, chanting “death to Khamenei” and “death to the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]”. Multiple car bombs have exploded near government buildings.

Israel denies involvement, so who is doing it? There are many underground groups representing various factions in Iran and they will certainly be emboldened by the increasingly glaring weakness of the regime. The army, not thought to be the greatest fans of Khamenei or his IRGC, perhaps might step into the breach.

Israel is not seeking to impose a new government on the people of Iran. But as a by-product of its actions in the last few days, for the first time since 1979 it is giving an opportunity to Iranians to replace the widely hated dictators with whatever leadership they themselves decide. Prime Minister Netanyahu has appealed directly to the Iranian people to unite against the regime and free themselves from oppression, a message met with widespread enthusiasm among many Iranians.

Other world leaders should also do what they can to encourage an end to the rule of the ayatollahs that have been responsible for so much bloodshed, repression and instability, rather than more empty talk about the dangers of a nuclear Iran accompanied by contradictory calls for de-escalation.

Articles

Britain is inciting violence with sanctions against Israeli ministers

Article published by Ynetnews.com, 12June 2025. © Richard Kemp

The British government has sanctioned two Israeli ministers for incitement to violence. By this despicable action against the State of Israel it is they who are inciting violence, both at home and abroad.

First, they are guilty of the most appalling double standards. The British, along with Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Norway, indict Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich but completely ignore the dictatorial Palestinian Authority’s encouragement, financing and glorification of terrorism.

Why has UK Foreign Minister David Lammy not sanctioned their ministers and officials, at the very least? What about Mahmoud Abbas, time-expired PA president and infamous Holocaust denier, who has praised Hamas’s genocidal invasion on 7th October? Instead, accusing Israel and not the PA, Lammy is de facto approving of their violent actions and encouraging them to do more. There is no other way to read it.

Lammy does concede a half-hearted condemnation of Hamas and says he wants the hostages returned. But his actions say something entirely different. With Britain and its four international accomplices ganging up on Israel, they are sabotaging a potential peace deal and hostage exchange in Gaza by giving Hamas hope at a time they sorely need it.

The fact that Hamas applauded an earlier statement from Britain, France and Canada threatening sanctions should surely have told Lammy something. Instead he demands that Israel end the conflict. What does that mean? Israel withdraws from Gaza, Hamas survives and the hostages remain captive. That is the only alternative to prosecuting the war until Hamas is destroyed or forced to give up.

The British Foreign Office cites the two ministers’ inflammatory rhetoric. That is undeniable, but how many other government ministers around the world has the UK sanctioned for such words, and you can be sure there is no shortage of targets for such ire if they wanted to find them. But unlike many of them, Israel is a democracy with a hugely powerful judicial system. It can itself deal with such allegations if they amount to a crime, without the former Mandatory power shoving its nose in where it has no business to be.

Israel has done exactly that many times before. Indeed Ben-Gvir was convicted in 2007 for incitement and support for extremist groups. In any case, should Britain really be casting the first stone? Don’t forget that until 2017 the murderous IRA terrorist leader, Martin McGuinness, was Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, part of the UK’s apparatus of government. His crimes were infinitely worse than anything Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have been accused of. And McGuinness was far from the only former terrorist to hold political office in the UK, and many are still in power.

The reality is that none of this is about Israel. It’s all about British domestic politics and a Labour Party plunging in the polls and desperate to shore up its position ahead of the next elections. Continue reading →

Articles

Trump is running out of time to crush Iran’s nuclear ambitions

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 8 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

As President Trump works to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran, the Islamic Republic is feverishly building up its offensive military capabilities. The most recent International Atomic Energy Agency report says Tehran has been producing enough 60 per cent enriched uranium to make one nuclear weapon every month and now has enough material to build ten bombs.

It would take no more than two weeks to further enrich this to the 90 per cent required to achieve weapons-grade. It seems likely that the pace of enrichment has if anything increased since nuclear negotiations began.

The IAEA board is due to meet today and may vote on a noncompliance resolution against Iran. Logically, this would lead to snapback UN sanctions under the 2015 Obama nuclear deal, unless Tehran starts to comply with IAEA inspections which it has failed to do up to now. Snapback wouldn’t necessarily happen immediately and no doubt the European signatories would coordinate with the White House given Trump’s live negotiations.

The president gave the ayatollahs two months to reach a deal, threatening military action if not. That two months is up now and all proposals have apparently been rejected.

Iran’s nuclear programme threatens the world and especially the Middle East, with Sunni Arab countries viewed as sworn enemies in Tehran’s maniacal eyes. But Israel is most immediately in Khamenei’s cross-hairs with his repeated guarantees to annihilate it. It is the only country other than the US that is capable of damaging Iran’s nuclear project, but is now on the horns of a dilemma.
Israel can hardly attack while its number one ally is in negotiations on exactly this issue. And if Trump eventually agrees a deal which does not fully dismantle nuclear production facilities – which is a distinct possibility – it will be faced with a decision on whether to go ahead anyway against Trump’s likely desire.

Israel is also certain to face obstruction from European leaders who will cravenly do what they can to avoid conflict no matter the consequences. If Trump’s negotiations grind to a halt and snapback Continue reading →

Articles

D-Day

Article published in The Daily Mail, 6 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Imagine yourself storming the beaches of Normandy into the teeth of enemy fire. Around 62,000 British men did exactly that on 6th June 1944. Many were mere youths, the youngest, Jack Banks of the Durham Light Infantry, just 16. Like others in that war he’d falsified his age to sign up, which tells you a great deal about a generation that willingly took their lives into their hands to fight for family, friends and country.

Returning to our visualisation, before the invasion you were  crammed onto the decks and holds of your ship for days, waiting for the weather to break. Even when it became calm enough, the crossing still made you violently sick, bucking through heavy waves for hours on end. The landing craft hit the beach, you ran down the ramp with your stomach churning, jumping off to wade through the lashing waves: cold, tired, terrified and weighed down by helmet, rifle, bullets and grenades. Then you were on the mine-infested  beach, charging into a wall of machine gun fire, some of your friends left and right ripped apart by enemy bullets.

That is what we asked of our young men on that day of hell, and the way they rose to the challenge can’t fail to fill our hearts with pride even 81 years later.

D-Day was and remains the largest amphibious landing in the history of warfare. It was a critical turning point, leading to the liberation of Europe from the Nazi savages. But back then the success of the D-Day landings was far from certain, like everything in war. The Supreme Commander, American General Dwight D Eisenhower, wrote a speech on 5th June which he would read if it failed, taking the blame fully onto his own shoulders.

That D-Day and the invasion of Europe did not fail was due to a miracle of intensive planning and vigorous command. The landings included over 5,000 ships, 11,000 planes, and more than 160,000 ground troops. That supreme effort and the months of fighting that followed could not have succeeded without extraordinary cooperation across the whole of society and across Allied nations.

But above all it was due to the courage, fortitude and sacrifice of thousands of men from Britain, America, Canada and many other nations, to whom we all owe our liberty and way of life today.

Articles

The appalling truth: Putin might now fire a tactical nuke – and even get away with it

Article published in The Daily Mail, 3 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Russia is wounded, far more badly than the Kremlin ever believed possible. Ukraine’s extraordinary special forces mission deep inside enemy territory has done vast damage to Putin’s war machine.

There will be retaliation. The Russian president, afraid more than anything of appearing weak, cannot be seen to let such a devastating attack go unanswered.

Since he first ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin has frequently warned he is willing to use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield – often issuing these threats through lackeys in Russia’s state-controlled media.

Now he might well calculate that, by unleashing such a device, he can demonstrate his invincibility and force Ukraine’s surrender. The appalling reality is that such a calculation might be right.

Europe does not have an effective nuclear deterrent. Britain, once the predominant nuclear power of the continent, has shamefully dismantled its own arsenal. We used to have tactical nuclear weapons, with immense blast power but limited radiation yields, which could be dropped from Vulcan bombers.

We also possessed short-range Lance tactical ballistic missiles capable of being armed with atomic warheads. But no longer. Our only nuclear option now is the Doomsday weapon, a strategic missile of cataclysmic power, designed solely for self-defence, to deter an enemy from waging all-out war on Britain.

To use one of these against Russia as punishment for anything they do in Ukraine would be a suicidal escalation. A global holocaust would ensue. And Putin knows we will never provoke that.

The French do have tactical nuclear weapons, which can be delivered by cruise missiles launched from the air. But these also are intended for last-ditch self-defence. Continue reading →

Articles

Scaring Putin is the only route to a just peace

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 3 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Nobody in their right mind thought Putin would come to the latest round of peace talks in Istanbul with any seriousness. And so it has proven. His demands are straight out of Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko’s negotiating playbook: demand the maximum, present ultimatums and do not give one inch.

Putin’s terms for a final settlement are no different from his diktats from the start, including international recognition of Moscow’s occupation of the four regions he considers Russian territory, and a guarantee Ukraine never joins any international alliances. Even Putin’s pathways to a temporary ceasefire require withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from all of the four regions, demobilisation of the armed forces, cessation of international military aid and electing a new government.

In other words: total capitulation, with Ukraine surrendering its sovereignty, partitioned, isolated, disarmed and a Russian puppet government in Kyiv. That doesn’t mean negotiations shouldn’t continue in the hope of achieving less punitive terms. The Ukrainian government has already signalled it would be ready to accept the temporary occupation of territory Russia has already captured. But it is hard to see how Putin will climb down from his maximalist position without significant changes on the battlefield or to the economic situation.

President Trump tried a softball approach with Putin, extending the prospect of major economic benefits through a return to normalisation in US-Russia relations. Putin hasn’t bought that even though he has ham-fistedly attempted to mollify Trump and encourage him to abandon Ukraine with his disingenuous ploy of engaging in negotiations. Trump obviously sees right through that. He said he was ‘p—-d off’ by Putin’s proposal that Ukraine should be placed under external administration with elections overseen by the UN.

The US now needs to try a different approach. Trump can say he did everything he could to end the bloodshed in the first months of his presidency but Putin’s intransigence now demands different tactics.

What would those tactics be? Continue to hold out an olive branch while doubling down on US military backing to Ukraine and Continue reading →

Articles

Dropping tactical nuclear weapons was a major strategic error. We must correct it

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 1 June 2025. © Richard Kemp

Britain must urgently restore tactical nuclear weapons to its defence arsenal. That thought understandably fills many minds with horror but the logic of strategy means that these weapons would in fact make us safer. If the enemy possesses a devastating capability that we do not he is far more likely to use it on us. And Putin, not to mention China, has vast and growing stockpiles of tactical nuclear weapons while we have none. Now it seems the Government may be thinking about tackling this vulnerability in the defence review due to be unveiled this week.

After the Cold War ended Britain dropped tactical nuclear weapons from its inventory. Before that, faced by the conventional superiority of the Warsaw Pact, these bombs had been intended to halt Soviet armoured thrusts into Western Europe if our ground and air forces couldn’t hold them back. They are relatively low yield, including in radiation, and are intended to obliterate major military targets such as troop concentrations, massed tank formations and airbases, rather than laying waste to entire cities and creating wide area nuclear fall-out.

With highly inadequate European conventional forces now confronted by a violent menace, shown only too clearly by the war in Ukraine, we are again back in a situation where Nato nations are faced with the choice of resorting to tactical nuclear weapons or losing everything to Russian advances. Of course our strategic nuclear forces are intended to deter enemy aggression, but their credibility in a situation short of nuclear Armageddon now lies exposed. Is Putin likely to think that our response to his tactical nuclear strikes would be to go to ultimate escalation with a nuclear attack against Moscow or St Petersburg? And if not, what?

The Americans have tactical nukes deployed in Europe but they can withdraw them at any time. And with so much at stake, can we any longer rely absolutely on the US nuclear umbrella to defend us and our Nato allies? Hopefully yes, but optimism is a fool’s strategy. Continue reading →