SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
science
US Military Told Mideast Ally That Trump Attack on Iran is 'Imminent': Report
"This isn’t about the nukes or the missile program. This is about regime change," a former senior intelligence official told Drop Site News.
Jan 30, 2026
Senior officials in the US military have told a key Middle East ally that President Donald Trump may strike Iran as soon as this weekend, as part of an operation that may seek to decapitate the Islamic Republic's government, according to a report published Friday by Drop Site News.
While the Trump administration reportedly envisions attacks against nuclear, ballistic, and other military sites around Iran, a former senior US intelligence official who is acting as an informal advisor to Trump told the outlet: "This isn’t about the nukes or the missile program. This is about regime change."
As Iran has been roiled by the largest wave of protests since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Trump has repeatedly threatened to launch strikes, which he has claimed would be in retaliation for the nation's security forces killing demonstrators.
While counts vary widely, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported Friday that Iranian security forces have killed more than 6,000 protesters in a brutal crackdown that has largely quelled the unrest seen earlier this month.
According to the senior official, who has worked as a consultant for Arab governments, Trump's war planners hope that a strike on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) would galvanize Iranians to return to the streets and eventually deliver a knockout blow to their government.
He said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long sought to push the US to engage in direct conflict with Iran, “is hoping for an attack,” and is “assuring Trump that Israel can help put in place a new government that is friendly with the West.”
In the Oval Office on Friday, Trump told reporters that the US has a “large armada, flotilla, call it whatever you want, heading towards Iran right now." He said that the armada was "larger than Venezuela," referring to the buildup of ships leading up to the US invasion of the Latin American country earlier this month to overthrow its president, Nicolás Maduro.
According to Drop Site, two senior intelligence officials from an unnamed Arab country said they received word that a US attack could come “imminently," potentially as soon as Sunday.
Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia, Iran’s military spokesperson, in an interview on Iranian TV on Thursday, said that a strike against Iran would likely play out very differently from the one launched in June against three Iranian nuclear sites. Iran's response was limited: an attack on a single US military base in Qatar, which it telegraphed beforehand.
“If such a miscalculation is made by the Americans, it will certainly not unfold the way Trump imagines—carrying out a quick operation and then, two hours later, tweeting that the operation is over,” Akraminia said.
“The scope of war will certainly extend across the entire region, he added. "From the Zionist regime to countries that host American military bases, all will be within range of our missiles and drones.”
Trump has said "time is running out" for Iran to come to the table to negotiate a new nuclear agreement with the United States, one with much more stringent restrictions than the one the president ripped up in 2018.
According to the New York Times:
US and European officials say that in talks, they have put three demands in front of the Iranians: a permanent end to all enrichment of uranium and disposal of its current stockpiles, limits on the range and number of their ballistic missiles, and an end to all support for proxy groups in the Middle East, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis operating in Yemen.
As the Times pointed out, "Notably absent from those demands... was any reference to protecting the protesters."
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated on Friday that Tehran would “welcome negotiations that ensure Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear activity” and that it would not “negotiate anything related to our conventional arms, including missiles. This is something we cannot risk.”
He said Iran would not agree to any deal that halts uranium enrichment on its soil, which it has said it has the right to pursue under the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). "We do not want to enter into any kind of negotiation that is doomed to failure and can then be used as another pretext for another war," he told Al-Monitor.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday, Trump said Iran “wants to make a deal” but did not elaborate on what that meant. “We’ll see what happens. I can say this: They do want to make a deal."
Mohamed ElBaradei, former director general of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, has condemned Trump's threats.
"The continued unilateral threats of a military strike against Iran in the absence of any clear and present danger and in violation of international law, bring to mind the same grim scene before the illegal and immoral Iraq war with its lies and horrifying consequences," he wrote on social media. "Human life and regional destruction don’t seem to matter."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Sanders Secures Vote on His Amendment to Cut $75 Billion in ICE Funding and Redirect Those Funds to Medicaid
Jan 30, 2026
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today secured a Senate vote on his amendment to the government funding package to repeal the $75 billion funding increase for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — originally included in Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB). The amendment would use those savings to reverse Medicaid cuts in the OBBB, preventing 700,000 Americans from losing their health care.
“As we speak, ICE agents are shooting American citizens in cold blood, breaking down doors to arrest people, and sending 5-year-olds to detention centers, all in clear violation of our Constitution,” Sanders said. “Instead of funding Trump’s domestic army, we should instead use that money to prevent hundreds of thousands of Americans from losing the health care they desperately need by investing in Medicaid. I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense amendment and stand up for the rights and dignity of all Americans.”
United States Plunges into Unlawful Rule and Extrajudicial Killings
Jan 30, 2026
Renee Good and Alex Pretti were murdered by federal agents because they were human rights defenders, bearing witness to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) widescale human rights abuses in Minneapolis. As legal observers and protestors, they were scrutinizing and calling attention to an authority that has attempted every measure to evade accountability for its crimes of unlawful kidnapping and deportation.
In light of these and other extrajudicial killings, and as government officials now label civil society solidarity “domestic terrorism,” FIDH and the Center for Constitutional Rights warn of a potentially irrevocable backsliding of human rights and the rule of law in the United States.
The systemic suppression of investigations and evidence, coupled with outright lies and denial of facts, as well as the direct pressure placed on judges mark dramatic escalations of authoritarian tactics by government officials and place serious constraints on the possibility of justice for those whose rights are being violated.
The Trump administration’s efforts to provide unchecked funding and to increase the power of federal law enforcement agencies in the United States increasingly resemble attempts to establish instruments for state-sanctioned intimidation and extrajudicial killing. "The kidnapping and detention of protesters, union leaders, Native community leaders, and many more appear as nothing but direct counterinsurgent measures and a sign of a rapid erosion of civil society’s freedoms,” said Alexis Deswaef, FIDH’s president.
And in the absence of public obedience with such tactics, signs of a permanent state of exception, boosted by unprecedented surveillance, are also taking hold. Popular pressure, protests, and civil society’s mobilization now appear as the sole safeguard for democracy and human rights in the United States. FIDH and the Center for Constitutional Rights commend those taking to the streets and those refusing to back down in this moment of crisis. As organizations from an international network, they are well-aware of the risks human rights defenders take under authoritarian regimes, but also are certain that history is on the side of the protesters refusing injustice.
Keep ReadingShow Less
From Arresting Journalists to Epstein Cover-Up, AOC Says 'Bondi Should Be Up for Impeachment Too'
Another House Democrat ripped President Donald Trump and his Justice Department for making clear that "they intend to withhold roughly 50% of the Epstein files, while claiming to have fully complied with the law."
Jan 30, 2026
US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Friday that Attorney General Pam Bondi should be facing impeachment, pointing to the top Justice Department official's handling of the Epstein files, efforts to force Minnesota to hand over its voter data, and arrest of journalists including former CNN anchor Don Lemon.
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) made the call in response to Bondi's Friday morning announcement that Lemon, independent journalist Georgia Fort, and two others were arrested in connection with a protest at a Minnesota church earlier this month.
"Between this, Epstein, and her attempted extortion of MN voter files, Bondi should be up for impeachment too," Ocasio-Cortez wrote on social media, alluding to the ongoing effort to oust Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Following the arrests of Lemon and others, the Justice Department announced the release of more than 3 million pages of documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein—more than a month after the passage of a deadline established by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Donald Trump signed in November.
But the latest disclosure did not satisfy the lawmakers leading the push for full transparency. The Justice Department indicated Friday that it only released around half of the Epstein documents subject to review.
“Donald Trump and his Department of Justice have now made it clear that they intend to withhold roughly 50% of the Epstein files, while claiming to have fully complied with the law. This is outrageous and incredibly concerning," said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. "The Oversight Committee subpoena directs Pam Bondi to release all the files to the committee, while protecting survivors. They are in violation of the law."
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who floated impeachment proceedings against Bondi last month, said in a statement that he will be "reviewing closely to see if they release what I’ve been pushing for: the FBI 302 victim interview statements, a draft indictment and prosecution memorandum prepared during the 2007 Florida investigation, and hundreds of thousands of emails and files from Epstein’s computers."
"Failing to release these files only shields the powerful individuals who were involved and hurts the public’s trust in our institutions," said Khanna, the author of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular