The body of martyred Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei is being transferred from Iraq to the holy city of Mashhad for the final funeral procession and interment after unprecedented funeral ceremonies in Najaf and Karbala drew millions of mourners. | The body of the martyred Leader departed Najaf Airport on Thursday bound for the holy city Mashhad, where the final stage of the funeral ceremonies and burial will take place at the holy shrine of Imam Reza (AS). ● The transfer follows historic and unprecedented funeral processions held over the past day in the Iraqi holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. ● According to organizers, the body's arrival in Mashhad has been delayed by several hours because of the extraordinary size of the crowds and repeated pauses during the funeral processions, particularly in Karbala, where mourners repeatedly surrounded the cortege to pay their final respects.

The US carried out strikes in southern Iran for the second night in a row on Thursday after President Donald Trump said the fragile ceasefire was effectively over. | Hostilities resumed after the US and its Arab allies in the region blamed Iran for attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. [...] Iranian media reported explosions along the southern coast, including in the port cities of Bushehr, Chabahar, and Konarak, as well as on Lavan Island. At least two blasts were recorded near the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, Fars News Agency reported.

The spat came as the US resumed strikes in Iran in the most serious flare-up of hostilities since the countries signed a preliminary peace framework last month. | Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi did not mention Trump by name, Iranian state broadcaster Press TV said he was responding to comments the US president made earlier that day during a NATO summit in Türkiye. During a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Trump said he considered the ceasefire with Iran to be “over.”

The US struck targets in Iran for the second consecutive night on Thursday in what Trump called “retribution” for attacks on commercial ships attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. ● Iran said the renewed attacks violated the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed on June 17 and vowed to retaliate. ● Although Tehran has not officially admitted responsibility for the attacks on three tankers earlier this week, Iranian media cited officials as saying that the targeted ships attempted to cross the Strait of Hormuz without authorization.

■ UPDATE -- U.S. ***DENIES*** July 9, 2026 2:20 PM EDT - The U.S. Is Attacking Iran Again (Hal Turner)
■ RESUMING UPDATES 10:25 PM EDT -- The U.S. is Attacking Iran, Again, Now. (Hal Turner)

The Russian Defense Ministry said it hit military-industrial enterprises and fuel and energy facilities in and around the Ukrainian capital | The Ukrainian capital and its suburbs were hit by a combined missile and drone strike early Monday morning, in what the Russian Defense Ministry called a response to terrorist attacks by Vladimir Zelensky’s government. ● The first wave of blasts in Kiev was heard at around 1:30 AM local time, followed by more explosions in multiple waves until 5 AM. Videos shared on social media showed numerous powerful blasts around the Ukrainian capital, some followed by secondary detonations, suggesting that a weapons depot, production facility, or air-defense system had been hit. ● The Russian Defense Ministry said it used long-range precision weapons and attack drones to hit Ukrainian military-industrial enterprises, fuel and energy facilities in Kiev and Kiev Region, and military airfield infrastructure across several regions in retaliation for “terrorist attacks” on civilian infrastructure inside Russia.

Almost 8,500 Russian civilians have been killed and 22,500 people have been injured by the attacks of the Ukrainian armed forces since February 2022, Russian Foreign Ministry Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik said on Friday. | "From February 2022 to June 30, 2026, the number of injured has already reached 30,913 people, of whom almost 8,434 people died," Miroshnik said at a briefing. From April to June, 422 Russian civilians were killed and more than 2,500 were injured by Ukrainian troops' attacks, the ambassador-at-large said, adding that 371 civilians were killed and 2,300 were injured in drone attacks during the given period.

■ Russia bombards Kyiv in deadliest strike this year, killing at least 27 people (CNA)
■ Deadly Russian Attack On Kyiv Kills 27 As Drones, Missiles Pound City; Zelenskyy Vows To Retaliate

Trump weighs resuming ‘all-out war’ on Iran, chooses diplomacy ‘for now’: Report https://t.co/k4sluMfIMh

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) July 1, 2026

Maryanne Demasi, PhD | By the time Covid emerged in 2020, many of the global health power players moved seamlessly into roles they had spent years preparing for. | A cache of internal emails obtained from within the US National Institutes of Health has exposed years of strategic planning for future pandemics involving governments, foundations, international organisations, and pharmaceutical companies. The documents, stretching back to at least 2016, show that Dr Francis Collins, Director of the NIH from 2009 to 2021, was at the centre of these efforts. ■ In that role, he oversaw the allocation of the agency’s substantial research budget, which ran into tens of billions of dollars annually. The emails reveal Collins working closely with the Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, World Bank, World Economic Forum, the African Academy of Sciences, and major pharmaceutical companies to strengthen research infrastructure, regulatory readiness, and international coordination well before Covid appeared. ■ For the public, the Covid response was presented as an unexpected crisis. Governments appeared to be making difficult decisions while navigating profound uncertainty. But these emails tell a different story.

■ Strike on Kyiv. A detailed analysis of the targets hit (Lord Of War)

■ Leader of the Islamic Revolution martyred in cowardly Israeli-American aggression (03/01/26)

Tarik Cyril Amar | While railways stall, hospitals fail and scandals spread, Brussels still finds endless billions for its pet proxy war | NATO-EU Europe, that tense, unhappy realm of deeply unpopular yet aggressively doctrinaire centrist regimes, has many grifts. ■ Its elites, whether national or EU, in business, politics, and the mainstream media and think-tank sinecure system are stunningly inept when it comes to addressing the urgent, even vital problems of their subjects. They could not care less about critical economic decline and general impoverishment, crumbling infrastructure, withering education, and scarce, unequal health care, to name only a few. ■ But the same elites are endlessly creative and tirelessly busy when looking after themselves, from top to bottom. Recent and countless examples of this ever more shameless divergence between not doing their job of looking after the public interest, on one side, and extensive as well as exclusive “self-care,” on the other, are easy to come by.

Alastair Crooke | Russia has now made the strategic decision in response to prepare for war in Europe.

 ■  Firstly, senior Kremlin aides, notably Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s spokesman, have been saying over the past three days the ‘spirt’ of the Anchorage summit, and its concomitant understandings, “have effectively collapsed” — “The U.S. abandoned them”. Moscow no longer expects those commitments to be honoured and is focused solely on securing its own “victory” through military means. Foreign Minister Lavrov went further, describing the Alaska meeting as an American “ploy” designed to buy time for Ukraine to rebuild and rearm its military — essentially likening them to the Minsk Accords that similarly were mounted as a deceit.

 ■  The second development stems from President Putin’s address at the St George’s Hall to military cadets on 23 June. Putin, in summary, told the young officers that the West manufactures a Russia threat, then accuses Russia of creating that very threat. This, said Putin, is a historically repeated pattern going back to 1941. Putin implied that a threshold had now been crossed. He stated that whilst, until recently, NATO countries had limited themselves to supporting the Kiev regime to wage war on Russia, the West today is openly talking about preparing for a war against Russia, and is building up their military offensive budgets.

■ Russia hearing the European clamour for war, announces it is ready (06/30/26) (VIDEO)
■ Larry Johnson: Putin Warns the West - Russia is Ready for War (06/29/26) (VIDEO)

For many around the world, wars cause death and destruction. But for Eric Prince, the founder of American private security company Blackwater, it’s a method for profit.

📌 The US military lobby is looking for revenge against Iran (Elena Panina)

Larry Johnson discusses NATO's increasingly direct involvement in attacks against Russia, and Putin's warnings to the West about war. Johnson is a former CIA intelligence analyst who also worked at the U.S. State Department's Office of Counterterrorism.

Russia has warned that the Baltic states are ready to let Kiev use their territory for strikes | Latvia and Ukraine will establish a joint drone production facility in Latvia’s eastern border region near the Russian and Belarusian borders, Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs has said. ● Ukrainian UAVs have repeatedly targeted northwestern Russia in recent months, including energy infrastructure in Leningrad Region near St. Petersburg. Some drones veered off course and crashed in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Finland. ● Moscow has warned the Baltic states against allowing Ukraine to use their airspace for strikes, saying it could trigger retaliation. ● Kulbergs announced the project on Saturday during a visit to the Luznava military base in Latvia’s eastern Latgale region. According to LSM, the initiative is intended to promote cooperation between Latvia and Ukraine in the defense industry. [...] Russia has warned that Western countries have become de facto parties to the conflict by supplying weapons to Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin has said, however, that Russia will not attack a NATO member unless it is attacked first.

✅ Ukrainian Armed Forces Present in the Baltic (Richards Vinkelis)

Iran and Oman have held the first meeting of their newly established joint Hormuz committee, with discussions focusing on the future governance of the Strait of Hormuz. | Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, Kazem Gharibabadi, made the announcement in a post on X on Monday.Gharibabadi said the meeting took place during his visit to Muscat and was attended by Abdulaziz al-Hinai, Omani minister of state for foreign affairs. According to the former, the two sides discussed both current issues concerning the Strait of Hormuz and its future governance. Iran closed the waterway to enemies and their allies following the launch of the latest bout of unprovoked American-Israeli aggression against the Islamic Republic.

■ What is Article 5 of Iran-US MoU, and why is it blamed for Hormuz strikes? (Al Jazeera)

The Hezbollah resistance movement says Israel continues to repeatedly violate the ceasefire agreement, adding that it is monitoring all breaches and reserves the right to defend Lebanon and its people. | In a statement released early on Monday, Hezbollah reported that Israeli warplanes targeted a residential structure in the city of Nabatieh, while a separate airstrike hit another residential building in the town of Meifdoun. ● Additionally, Israeli drones bombarded an open area on the outskirts of Frun in southern Lebanon. The resistance movement further slammed the Israeli occupation forces for persistently intimidating civilians by deploying stun grenades near residents in the towns of Burj Qalawayh and Braashit. ● It also noted that Israeli aircraft released suspicious objects over Nabatieh al-Fawqa and Kfar Tebnit. ● Hezbollah referenced the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding signed between Iran and the United States, highlighting that its initial provision mandates an immediate halt to hostilities on all fronts, including Lebanon, and contending that the ongoing Israeli attacks represent a direct violation of that agreement.

📌 What Lebanon actually signed away in its deal with 'Israel' (06/28/26)

The newspaper claimed that the outgoing UK prime minister is considering becoming the military bloc’s chief in 2028 | UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is stepping down following a revolt within his own party, is interested in becoming the next secretary-general of NATO, The Observer reported on Sunday. ● Starmer teared up last week when he announced that he would resign as prime minister and Labour Party leader in response to mounting pressure. Several ministers left his cabinet, and more than 80 Labour MPs urged him to step down after the party lost nearly 1,500 local council seats in last month’s elections. ● Former Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who won the Makerfield by-election on June 18, is widely seen as Starmer’s successor.

📌 Hala Farhat | Lebanon's framework with "Israel" never mentions withdrawal. It legitimizes occupation and lets "Israel" alone judge when Lebanese sovereignty has been earned. | What's worse than signing away sixty southern Lebanese villages to the Israeli occupation in exchange for nothing? Doing it when a far better alternative was sitting on the table. And what's worse than that? Doing it in the name of "sovereignty." ■ Lebanese and Israeli officials are both calling Friday's trilateral framework, signed in Washington under US sponsorship, "historic." In a narrow sense, they are right. The Lebanese state has legitimized the continued occupation of the South, handed "Israel" an outcome it could never have secured through war, and thrown a lifeline to a Netanyahu government that badly needed one. ■ Yet, calling Friday's framework "trilateral" is somewhat misleading. The word suggests three sides walked into the room, when in essence, there was one. The Lebanese delegation arrived with its friends and enemies already settled, just as the US and Israeli delegations did. ■ Lebanon's friends, by this framework's own logic, are Washington and the occupation. Its enemies, based on the March 2 governmental decree to criminalize the Resistance, are Hezbollah and, behind it, Iran.

■ Lebanon parl. speaker rejects deal with Israel as 'imposition' on Lebanon (Press TV)
■ War On Iran: – New Clash Over Strait Passage – Lebanon’s Capitulation Ignites New Civil War (06/28/26)

Iranian mother dies of broken heart weeks after losing family in US-Israeli strike

Follow: https://t.co/mLGcUTS2ei pic.twitter.com/bRLvKezobx

— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) June 22, 2026

Humaira Ahad | Standing atop the ruins of what had once been her family home, Seyedeh Elham Sadeghi clutched a piece of paper that rescuers had recovered from the debris. The note had belonged to one of her children. | As she read its contents, her voice broke, and tears streamed down her face. Around her lay shattered concrete, twisted steel and the remnants of a life that had disappeared in the early hours of March 26, when an Israeli-American attack struck the Hafton neighborhood of Isfahan, a city in central Iran otherwise known for historical palaces and iconic bridges. ● The video spread rapidly across social media, drawing an outpouring of sympathy from viewers across Iran. Many saw in the 31-year-old mother a symbol of the suffering endured by Iranians caught in the US-Israeli war of aggression against the Islamic Republic. Less than three months later, Sadeghi herself would be gone. ● After surviving seven hours beneath the rubble, enduring severe injuries and undergoing months of medical treatment, she died months later after “an overwhelming period of grief” resulting from the deaths of her husband and two young sons. ● Her story has become one of the most heartbreaking accounts to emerge from the US-Israeli attacks, illustrating how their consequences continued long after the aggression ended.

Moon of Alabama | In the last days there were two developments in Lebanon and Iran that will likely cause the war to reignite into a much larger conflagration. | Iran insists on having control over the Strait of Hormuz. But at least half of the passage way is under Oman’s jurisdiction. Oman is, unlike Iran, a member of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and has as such a different view of the international law with regards to the Strait situation. On Thursday the UN’s International Maritime Organization (IMO) had arranged for a convoy of ships that had been stuck in the Persian Gulf for weeks to sail through the Strait right next to the coast of Oman.

■ Trump says US hit Iran again, may be ‘forced to militarily complete the job’ (South China Morning Post)
■ 'Decisive response': IRGC strikes eight US military installations after renewed American attacks (Press TV)
■ Iran hits Kuwait, Bahrain again after 'additional' US strikes (Türkiye Today) + THIS
■ Iran Will Respond Even More Forcefully to US Violations of Ceasefire - IRGC (Sputnik)
■ Trump threatens Iran as US conducts new strikes (VIDEO) (RT)
■ US and Iran Exchange Strikes in the Strait of Hormuz: What Is Known So Far (Sputnik)
■ Netanyahu and Katz say Israel will remain in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza 'without time limit' (06/28/26)
✅ With Iran and the US Exchanging Blows in the Persian Gulf, the MoU’s Survival is in Doubt (L. C. Johnson)
📌 What Lebanon actually signed away in its deal with 'Israel' (Hala Farhat)
📌 The US military lobby is looking for revenge against Iran (Elena Panina)

The new rules in Finland will permit the deployment of NATO nuclear weapons on Russia’s doorstep | CIA asset, Finnish President Alexander Stubb has signed amendments to the Nuclear Energy Act allowing nuclear weapons to be deployed on the country’s territory. The Nordic nation’s parliament supported lifting the long-standing ban earlier this month. The removal comes three years after Helsinki renounced its decades-long policy of military neutrality and joined NATO. Finland’s accession into the US-led military bloc has led to serious tensions with Russia, with which it shares a 1,340 km border. [...] Stubb, a known Russia hawk, signed the amendments into law just a day after he stated he was “realistically optimistic” about the outcome of the Ukraine conflict in an interview with Politico, while still talking about the “strategic failure” of Russia.

■ Former Finnish premier Stubb reveals his CIA-contacts as Plame and Lavery (UMV-Lehti)(02.09.2017)

The Israeli leaders, speaking during graduation for combat officers, also threaten to attack Iran again | Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz have said that troops will maintain an indefinite presence in southern Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip. They were both speaking at a graduation for combat officers in southern Israel on Thursday.

■ Israeli minister calls for annexation of southern Lebanon (03/24/26)
■ Trump’s SHOCKING Plan for Greater Israel EXPOSED (02/14/25)
■ Sizing Up Israel Foreign Ministry's Biblical Map: ‘Promised Land’ Provocation or Expansion Plan? (01/08/25)
■ Israel's future borders would extend beyond Jordan River — minister (10/11/24)

[Plus this: The Land of Israel + Ezekiel and the Tribes]

Vessel sustains damage to bridge in latest maritime security incident as authorities investigate | A tanker was struck by "an unidentified projectile" while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said Saturday. ● In a maritime security warning, UKMTO said it had received a report from the vessel's master at 0800GMT of an incident within the strategic waterway. "The Master of Tanker has reported being struck by an unidentified projectile," the agency said, adding that the vessel sustained damage to its bridge. All crew are safe and no environmental damage has been reported. A map accompanying the UKMTO warning showed the incident occurred in the Strait of Hormuz off Oman's Musandam Peninsula.

■ IRGC Navy strikes US military targets in retaliation for attack on Iranian coastal areas (Press TV)
■ 115 vessels, 2,500 seafarers evacuated from Strait of Hormuz: UN agency (Anadolu Ajansi)

Andrew Korybko | Russia can either decisively “escalate to de-escalate” in its own right to swiftly end the conflict on as many of its terms as possible, carry on as usual amidst this new “war of attrition” at tremendous risk to itself, or freeze the conflict. | Lavrov sheepishly said during a roundtable event last week that “I do not even want to suspect that Alaska, like the actions of the Europeans, was designed to buy time to rearm the Kyiv regime. I don’t even want to think about it. But in reality, things turned out the way they did.” This came three and a half years after former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted in December 2022 that the Minsk Accords were just a ruse to buy time for Kiev to rearm. [...] Putin famously responded a month later that “We endured for a long time, tried to reach an agreement for a long time. But, as it turns out now, we were simply led by the nose, deceived.

Jeremy Kuzmarov | Russian Spy Was Killed as Part of CIA-MI6 Psychological Warfare Operation Says Former Commander of French Anti-Terrorism Group | On November 1, 2006, a former Russian spy turned British MI6 agent, Alexander “Sasha” Litvinenko, was poisoned with polonium while meeting with two alleged Russian agents, Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun, and an Italian security consultant, Mario Scaramella, at the bar of a hotel. Litvinenko died 23 days later in a London hospital. ■ The U.S. media at the time reported that Litvinenko had made a death-bed accusation that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind his killing, though Litvinenko never in fact actually said that but was made to sign a form stating so in a state of incapacitation. ■ However, in 2016, Paul Baril, a former French counter-terrorism army unit commander and security adviser to French presidents Giscard D’Estaing and François Mitterrand, gave a YouTube interview that turns the official narrative of Litvinenko’s killing on its head.

Iran has attacked and hit a Singapore-flagged cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz southern corridor, per two senior US officials. This is the first attack since the MOU was signed and comes after Iran's IRGC Navy issued a warning to all vessels against using the US-backed Omani corridor without Iranian approval. Three oil tankers turned around earlier today following Iran's warnings while the Singapore-flagged vessel continued through and was attacked.

■ BULLETIN: IRAN ANNOUNCES "WARSHIPS ARE APPROACHING HORMUZ" (Hal Turner)

Craig Murray | A lie repeated often enough enters the public consciousness, so I am republishing this in the hope of stimulating the honest and the intellectually awake. | I still do not know what happened in the Skripal saga, which perhaps might more respectfully be termed the Sturgess saga. I cannot believe the Russian account of Boshirov and Petrov, because if those were their real identities, those identities would have been firmly established and displayed by now. But that does not mean they attempted to kill the Skripals, and there are many key elements to the official British account which are also simply incredible. ■ Governments play dark games, and a dark game was played out in Salisbury which involved at least the British state, Russian agents (possibly on behalf of the state), Orbis Intelligence and the BBC. Anybody who believes it is simple to identify the “good guys” and the “bad guys” in this situation is a fool. When it comes to state actors and the intelligence services, frequently there are no “good guys”, as I personally witnessed from the inside over torture, extraordinary rendition and the illegal invasion of Iraq. But in the face of a massive media campaign to validate the British government story about the Skripals.