Behind The ’12-Day War’

Operations “The Rising Lion” and “Midnight Hammer” were demonstrations of force mobilizing considerable resources. They lasted no more than 12 days in total. Their results are unknown, but much has been learned about those who planned them. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which relied on AI software rather than the observations of its inspectors, is now demonetized. The damage committed at Iranian nuclear research sites is questionable. Only the assassinations of military leaders and civilian scientists have been established.

Several elements of the “12-Day War” remain unexplained, which doesn’t stop each major player (Israel, the United States, and Iran) from claiming to have won it. Above all, the questions raised about fundamental elements make it difficult to establish with certainty whether Washington deliberately violated international law or whether it believed it had to do so to avoid much worse.

THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR RESEARCH PROGRAM

We have, in these columns, explained at length the conflict surrounding Iranian nuclear research [1]. It began in 1981 when the Islamic Republic of Iran demanded the enriched uranium to which it was entitled under the Iranian-French nuclear program, proposed by President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, as part of the US “Atoms for Peace” program. It was in this context, and in the face of France’s refusal to give the Islamic Republic what it had intended for imperial Iran, that attacks by the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions, linked to Iran, eliminated US and Israeli diplomats in France.

This conflict developed following the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Iraq (2003). Washington and London, which had invented the fabrication of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, extended it to that of Iran’s weapons of mass destruction. They succeeded in having the United Nations Security Council adopt Resolutions 1737 (December 23, 2006) and 1747 (March 24, 2007), which were intended to pave the way for war against Iran. However, following the Iraq Study Group, known as the “Baker-Hamilton Commission,” these fantasies were abandoned by Washington, and the conflict with France was resolved.

The conflict flared up again when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched a vast research program on nuclear fusion; a project that was inherently dual, meaning it could have both civilian and military applications. [2] Supported by a majority of UN member states, he then rightly refused to allow the Security Council to demand that Iran surrender one of its rights in order to “restore the confidence” of others in it (resolution 1696 of 31 July 2006); a polemic exemplary of the drift that the West has influenced in the United Nations following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Iran, which had already experienced the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, when he attempted to nationalise Iranian oil, could not fail to resist this Western attempt to prevent it from finding an inexhaustible source of energy. The controversy worsened with the adoption, again by the Security Council against the General Assembly, of resolution 1929 of 9 June 2010,

The “revisionist Zionists” (i.e., the disciples of the fascist Vladimir Jabotinsky)—not to be confused with the “Zionists” tout court, i.e., the disciples of Theodor Hertzl—seized on the issue. Fifteen years later, they succeeded in infiltrating the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), of which Israel is not a member, and influencing its director, the Argentinian Rafael Grossi [3].

On April 2, 2025, Jean-Noël Barrot, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, declared before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly: “We only have a few months before the expiration of this agreement [the JCPOA, from which the United States withdrew]. If it fails, a military confrontation seems almost inevitable.” » [4] He added that the new EU “sanctions” against Iran related to the detention of foreign citizens would be approved in the coming weeks.

On April 28, 2025, the United Nations Security Council held two closed-door meetings on the “Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction.” We do not know precisely what was discussed, but the meeting was stormy, as evidenced by the publication the following day of a letter of protest from the Islamic Republic of Iran (S/2025/261 [5]). According to this document, Jean-Noël Barrot, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, who had flown in from Paris specially for the occasion, allegedly claimed that “Iran [is] on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons.”

Jean-Noël Barrot and his Minister Delegate for Europe, Benjamin Haddad, took office in Michel Barnier’s government and were reappointed in François Bayrou’s. While Jean-Noël Barrot’s thinking is not well known, that of his Minister Delegate is. Benjamin Haddad is not simply a former senior official in the European Union’s foreign service; he was also a long-time employee of the Tikvah Fund of the “revisionist Zionist” Elliott Abrams [6]. It was he who defined Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy to convince Europeans to support Israel against the Palestinians [7].

A month later, the IAEA asserted, in its two quarterly reports on Verification and Monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in Light of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015) [8] and on the NPT Safeguards Agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran, that Iran [9] and Tehran were hiding something. However, these documents were not based on objective observations, but on the conclusions of the artificial intelligence software Mosaic. However, this software, designed to detect terrorist plots from an infinite amount of data, did not simply analyze them, but presented alerts as certainties. For the first time, an AI, designed to detect anomalies, was used to describe reality. As a result, the anomalies detected in Iran were interpreted as the preparation of an atomic bomb. On this grotesque and expensive basis, Rafael Grossi alerted the Agency’s Board of Governors on June 12.

The Mosaic software is produced by Palantir Technologies, a company whose main clients include the CIA, the Pentagon, the IDF, and the Mossad, as well as the French Directorate General for Internal Security (DGSI). It is owned by the South African-American-New Zealander Peter Thiel, director of the Bilderberg Group.

During a particularly heated meeting on June 12, the IAEA Board of Governors adopted a resolution [10] stating that “the Director General, as stated in document GOV/2025/25, cannot provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful.” Despite China and Russia’s protests, the IAEA referred the matter to the United Nations Security Council. The Russian delegation to the UN then urgently distributed an analysis (S/2025/377) denouncing the duplicity of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom and their misleading interpretation of IAEA data [11]. Reading this document, it is clear that these three countries were not fooled by Rafael Grossi, but participated in its staging.

OPERATION “RISING LION”

Without waiting, Israel launched Operation “Rising Lion.” At this point, it is unclear whether the three European countries conspired to pave the way for this operation. They may simply have been manipulated into supporting it. However, previous episodes, such as that of June 2024 [12], attest that these states and their allies were no longer respecting their obligation to lift their “sanctions” against Iran, particularly as signatories to the Vienna Agreement (JCPoA). Just as in the 1980s, they no longer considered themselves bound by their signature of the nuclear agreement with Iran after the Islamic Republic succeeded the Iranian Empire, so today, they no longer consider themselves bound by their signature of the JCPoA after the United States denounced it. The first hypothesis is therefore the most likely.

Officially, US President Donald Trump was also reportedly convinced that Iran was preparing to build a nuclear bomb within two weeks. At least, that’s what he said, shutting up his National Intelligence Director, Tulsi Gabbard, who claimed that Iran had no military nuclear program [13].

In any case, informed by Tulsi Gabbard of the imminence of an Israeli nuclear attack on Iran (“Samson Option”) against its nuclear research centers, President Trump proposed supporting a conventional Israeli attack on Iran, rather than allowing it to carry out a nuclear bombing. The Israeli Air Force therefore launched a massive attack against Iranian nuclear research centers, its ballistic missile system, and several of its military leaders and nuclear scientists. All this was based on intelligence from US radars at Camp al-Udeid (Qatar), as Israeli radars do not cover Iran.

According to the presentation that Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar made to the Security Council (S/2025/390 [14]), Israel claims to have sought to “neutralize the existential and imminent threat posed by Iran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.” It relies on IAEA discussions (based not on observations, but on the artificial intelligence of the Mosaic software) to falsely claim that Iran is not complying with its obligations to the IAEA and has “accelerated its clandestine efforts to develop nuclear weapons.” However, even assuming that Israeli leaders believed that Iran would soon acquire an atomic bomb and use it against them, “The Lion Rising” also targeted the ballistic missile system, several of the military leaders and nuclear scientists. The Israeli attack therefore does not aim at the stated objective, but at the destruction of Iranian defense and research resources.

The question of the violation of international commitments by Israel and the United States, that is, international law [15], arises once again. Israel’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Danny Danon, spoke of a “preventive and preemptive” war. Thus, Israel would have acted without being provoked (preventively) and in the interest of the international community (preemption). In this game, anyone could assassinate their neighbor at any time. It has already been noted, even before Operation Iron Swords in Gaza, that Israel behaves without regard for the human lives of civilians, that is, to use the words of the 1899 Hague Conference (foundation of international law), not “like a civilized nation, but like barbarians.” The military participation of the United States, with the radars at the al-Udeid base, allows us to make the same judgment about Washington’s behavior.

Israel has not limited itself to bombings from its planes. The IDF has also used drones, present in Iran, to assassinate military leaders and nuclear scientists in their homes. This is the second time this method has been used, the first being the attack by Ukraine on Russian strategic bombers (Operation “Spider’s Web”) on June 1, 2025. How can we not draw parallels between the two operations, especially since it was noted at the time that this action had been coordinated with a foreign secret service, whether American or Israeli? Besides the fact that we should reconsider the possibility that Israel could have declared war on Russia, we must remember that the “integral nationalist” General Vasyl Maliuk, director of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), is a great admirer of SS officer Otto Skorzeny [16]. However, after World War II, Skorzeny, protected by the CIA and MI6, founded an agency, the “Paladin Group,” which worked for Israel, among other things. Of course, Israel did not bomb the Bushehr nuclear power plant, where many Russian engineers work.

Moreover, the day before the Israeli attack, the Iranian press published the first nuclear documents stolen by Iranian intelligence from Israel. One of these is a list of nuclear scientists provided to Tel Aviv by Rafael Grossi. It turns out that this is the exact list of scientists assassinated during Operation “The Rising Lion.” This does not mean that the IAEA director himself designated the men to be killed, but it does make him complicit in their deaths.

OPERATION MIDNIGHT HAMMER

President Donald Trump launched Operation Midnight Hammer on the night of June 21-22. The goal was to destroy three Iranian nuclear research sites. According to the official version, the GBU-57 bombs could be launched one after the other into the same hole, penetrating 80 meters of granite. Maybe, maybe not. In any case, by assuring that the mission was accomplished, the US president intended to deprive West Jerusalem of any justification for continuing its attack on Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu made no secret of the fact that he was also working to overthrow the “regime,” and Donald Trump appeared not to be opposed to it.

While a controversy erupted in Washington with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the IDF continued to bomb Iran, destroying fuel stocks and various infrastructure. This was a far cry from the stated objectives, just as in Gaza, starving the civilian population has no connection with the sole stated objective of defeating Hamas.

President Trump then banged his fist on the table, and the Israeli planes still heading towards Iran were forced to halt their mission and return to their bases.