In a dramatic escalation of Middle East tensions, the United States on Sunday struck three key nuclear facilities in Iran. Among the targeted sites were Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan — major centers of Iran’s nuclear enrichment infrastructure.

US President Donald Trump described the assault as a “very successful military operation” and a “historic moment for the United States, Israel, and the world.” Speaking at Truth Social, Trump confirmed all aircraft involved were safely returning and warned of further action ahead.

“This marks the beginning of a broader campaign to eliminate Iran’s nuclear threat. The next wave will be far more intense,” Trump said, vowing to dismantle what he called “the world’s number one state sponsor of terror.”

Six bunker-buster bombs were deployed against Fordow, while 30 Tomahawk missiles targeted Isfahan and Natanz. The attack reportedly involved B-2 stealth bombers, the only aircraft capable of carrying the 30,000-lb GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator.

Though Israel has claimed significant progress in its Operation Rising Lion, officials in Jerusalem acknowledged that the US military’s involvement — particularly the deployment of B-2 bombers — was crucial in striking deeply buried facilities like Fordow.

Iran Condemns ‘Act of War’

Tehran strongly condemned the strikes, calling them a blatant violation of international law and national sovereignty. The Iranian government vowed retaliation and maintained that there was no radiation leak or environmental contamination at the impacted sites — a claim partially backed by independent experts.

At Isfahan, however, damage to the facility’s power infrastructure may have crippled one of the country’s most advanced centrifuge networks. The full extent of the damage remains unclear. However, Iran has said that it had already evacuated critical elements of these facilities before the attack.

IAEA Reacts

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) condemned the strikes, labeling them a breach of international agreements. The agency emphasized it would not allow political conflicts to derail what it termed the peaceful development of Iran’s “national industry,” a thinly veiled reference to its nuclear program.

Diplomatic efforts appear to have been sidelined, with many analysts warning that the US involvement marks a shift toward full-scale war in the region. What started with October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, expanded to major parts of the Middle East amd West Asia, including Israel’s classes with Hamas in Gaza, Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

On the sacred day of Eid-al-Adha, when Muslims worldwide gather in prayer and celebration, grief descended upon the village of Muski Anzarbad in Mir Ali, North Waziristan. Maulana Noor Rehman, a respected cleric known for his peace advocacy, was gunned down by unknown assailants outside his mosque. The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) has strongly condemned the killing, accusing the Pakistan Army of orchestrating yet another targeted assassination of a prominent Pashtun voice.

The Pashtun National Jirga, a local court and rights forum allied with PTM, issued a scathing statement on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), calling the killing a “state-sponsored crime” aimed at silencing dissent within the marginalized Pashtun community. “Instead of the joy of Eid, the state has given the Pashtun people a gift of tears and sorrow,” the statement read. “Maulana Noor Rehman, who was a wise and peace-loving person, was martyred in a targeted assassination by the state.”

‘State injustice’ will be held accountable: Pashtuns

The Jirga emphasised that this act is part of a broader pattern of systemic violence against Pashtun leaders and community figures. “The person who used to preach peace from the mihrab of the mosque, today his body was lying on the funeral pyre. This is not the first time,” the statement continued. “These targeted killings, this state injustice and continued oppression will go down in history and will definitely be held accountable.”

The PTM and affiliated groups have long accused the Pakistani establishment, particularly the powerful military, of carrying out extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, and other forms of state-sponsored repression against non-Punjabi ethnic communities, especially Pashtuns and Baloch.

This is not the first time such violence has marred religious celebrations. In previous years, both Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr have seen incidents of brutality reported in restive regions like North Waziristan and Balochistan, further fueling allegations of targeted ethnic and political oppression by state forces. The Pashtun and Baloch communities have often raised concerns over the worse than death condition of the communities on Eids.

From the photos of Saturday’s grand dinner (24 May 2025) hosted by Pakistan’s newly promoted Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir to “honour the political leadership, steadfast commitment of the armed forces, and the indomitable spirit of the people of Pakistan as demonstrated during Marka-e-Haq, Operation Bunyanum Marsoos” it appears that this formal event went off quite well.

Attended by Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif along with several top political leaders and army Generals, this event followed Sharif’s announcement that May 10 would henceforth be observed annually as the Youm-e-Marka e Haq [Day for the Battle for Truth], which has unilaterally declared an unqualified military victory by Rawalpindi.

Field Marshal Munir’s idea to present Sharif with a framed photograph of a salvo of Pakistani rockets being fired during Operation Bunyanum Marsoos was also a face saver to make up for the complete absence of photographic evidence supporting Pakistan’s claims of having wreaked massive destruction on the Indian armed forces. Remember Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khwaja Asif citing “social media” as proof of his claim that five Indian Air Force fighters had been shot down?

Unfortunately, the photograph the Field Marshal publicly presented to the Prime Minister of Pakistan turned out to be the copy of a 2019 photograph attributed to Huang Hai featuring China’s PHL-03 multiple rocket launchers being fired during a PLA military exercise. Field Marshal Munir’s embarrassing faux pas not only credibly validates the old dictum that cameras don’t lie but photographs do, but also once again exposes Pakistan’s proclivity for brazenly peddling falsehood.

However, this isn’t the first time that Islamabad has plagiarised photographs to mislead the world. Readers would recall that in September 2017, Pakistan’s then permanent representative to the United Nations, Maleeha Lodhi displayed a photograph showing the badly scarred face of a young girl whom she said was a Kashmiri injured due to pellet gun firing on protesters by Indian law enforcement agencies.

Her dramatic attempt to use the image of a badly injured girl as proof of “Indian brutality” in Kashmir to draw attention of the international community backfired as her assertion was factually incorrect. It subsequently turned out that this photograph was clicked by award-winning photographer Heidi Levine and the subject was not a Kashmiri but a 17-year-old Palestinian girl injured during an Israeli attack in 2014. Regrettably, despite this massive embarrassment Islamabad failed to learn any lessons.

The very next year, Pakistan released a set of 20 stamps titled “Atrocities in Indian-Occupied Kashmir.” One of stamps in this series carries the image of a group of protesters with the words “Missing Persons” printed on it, conveying the impression that they were protesting against missing Kashmiris allegedly disappeared by security forces. However, just like the photograph flashed at the UN by Lodhi and the one that Field Marshal Munir presented to Sharif, the image used in this stamp too was plagiarised.

 A fact-check revealed that the image on the stamp in question has been copied from a photograph credited to the Press Trust of India. It was clicked by Shirish Shete on January 19, 2014 during a peaceful protest at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, by Roots in Kashmir, an ethnic Kashmiri Pandit group observing the 24^th anniversary of the forced exodus of this community from Kashmir Valley by Pakistan sponsored Islamic terrorists.

Even during the latest Indo-Pak standoff, Islamabad shockingly tried to pass off video game footage as actual combat recording. Commenting on ‘X’, UK Defence Journal, an independent defence news and analysis website posted the footage lifted by Islamabad from a video game and mentioned that “the official account of the Government of Pakistan has posted footage from the video game ARMA 3, claiming it shows a real military response to alleged Indian aggression.”

Repeated use of such infantile ploys raises a question- does Islamabad really believe that it can fool the international community with such dim-witted assertions? The answer is a firm ‘No’; simply because Pakistan’s diplomatic corps as well as the army’s media wing Inter Services Public Relations [ISPR] are definitely not a congregation of morons.  But if both Islamabad and Rawalpindi know that their ‘fairy tales’ don’t impress the international community, why do they persist with the same? 

It’s a well known fact that Pakistan’s disinformation programme is overseen by Rawalpindi and not Islamabad. Since Rawalpindi fiercely protects both its turf and extra-constitutional powers that it enjoys, the target audience for the army’s propaganda is not the international communitybut the very people of Pakistan. Though it may sound odd, a dispassionate analysis will definitely confirm this inference.

Daft attempts like unashamedly plagiarising photographs or lifting clips from video games and passing them off as actual combat footage may not impress world leaders. Nevertheless, it works wonders for the gullible masses in Pakistan who have been subtly conditioned to believe that any faceoff between India and Pakistan is essentially a Hindu versus Islam clash or ‘jihad’. And Field Marshal Munir’s recent rant highlighting the irreconcilable existential incompatibility between Hindus and Muslims validates this assertion.

Furthermore, during his May 11 press briefing on Operation Bunyanum Marsoos, DGISPR Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif [who is reportedly the son of a UN designated global terrorist] openly admitted that “Jihad drives us; it is not merely part of our personal belief, but central to our institutional faith and training.” He went on to say that “We have an army chief who has a strong belief in it. The leadership and his belief and commitment translates into different operations.” It is left to the reader to decide whether these revelations were meant for the international community or the domestic audience?

It’s therefore amply clear that the sole target of Rawalpindi’s perception management efforts are the gullible people of Pakistan who have already been radicalised by the heady mix of intolerant religious beliefs and hyper-nationalism fed to them over the years. For Rawalpindi, this is what matters and so, this is exactly what it ensures.

Tailpiece: All pictures may not be worth a thousand words, but this thousand word piece it has inspired proves that the photograph presented by Field Marshal Munir to Shehbaz Sharif definitely is!

Fountainhead of Terrorism
When he stated that “Terrorism is not something that is being conducted in dark corners of Pakistan; it’s done in broad daylight,” India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar wasn’t revealing a secret but merely stating something already known to the international community. Didn’t US President Donald Trump say the same very thing in his 2018 post on Twitter [now X] stating that “They [Pakistan’s government and army] give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan”?

But Trump isn’t the first one to expose sponsorship of terrorist groups by the Pakistan Army. Way back in 2002, President George W Bush had told media persons that, “I think it’s very important for President Musharraf to make a clear statement to the world that he intends to crack down on terror.” The then UK Prime Minister Tony Blair had also warned Pakistan that “The very strong feeling in the international community is that people want to see the circumstances brought about where dialogue
and the political process can take the place of extremism and terrorism.”

In 2017, the European Foundation for South Asia Studies [EFSAS] also confirmed that “Apart from training and funding the terrorist organizations, the ISI [Pakistan Army’s spy agency] has fundamentally altered the dimensions of the conflict in Kashmir by transforming it to a movement being carried out by foreign militants on Pan-Islamic religious terms.” Two years later, the European Union also stressed on the need for Pakistan to “continue addressing terrorism including clear and sustained actions targeting not only all UN-listed transnational terrorist groups but also individuals claiming responsibility for such attacks.”

Tokenism and Selective Approach
On the one hand, the international community’s passionate endorsement of the inescapable need for concerted action against terrorism and creation of The United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism [UNOCT] in June 2017 through a UN General Assembly Resolution to combat terrorism at the global, regional, and national levels is a reassuring development. However, while the whole world appears to be one on the need for combating terror, the international community regrettably doesn’t walk its talk.

On its part, Washington does deserve due credit for taking down several high-profile terrorists belonging to Al Qaeda, Daesh/Islamic State and other terrorist groups in the course of its global war on terror. However, its discernable selectivity while dealing with Pakistan for sponsoring and sheltering terrorists’ reeks of motivated selectivity. The fact that the US kept Islamabad completely in the dark regarding Operation Neptune Spear launched to eliminate Osama bin Laden staying in Abbottabad clearly indicates that it was aware that the ISI was complicit in arranging this ‘safe house’ for the 9/11 mastermind. Yet it didn’t take any action against Islamabad for providing refuge to the world’s most wanted terrorist.

Conversely, even after Bin Laden was tracked down to a compound just a stone’s throw from the Pakistan Military Academy, Washington continued to treat Pakistan as a “major non-NATO ally” in its war on terror. After the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 166 persons [including six American nationals] were killed by Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT] terrorists, Washington announced a $10 million bounty on its mastermind Hafiz Saeed under the Rewards for Justice Programme. 

This document mentions that “The United States continues to seek information on Saeed because the Pakistani judicial system has released convicted LeT leaders and operatives in the past,” and this unambiguously confirms that Washington has no faith whatsoever in the sincerity of its major ally in the global war on terror. Yet it keeps overlooking Pakistan’s unending perfidy.

An Unrepentant Terrorist Sponsor
Perhaps it’s the international community’s lack of meaningful action against states using terrorism as an instrument of foreign policy that’s emboldened Pakistan to openly accept and even flaunt its links with proscribed terrorist groups. A few examples:
* In 2009, the then President of Pakistan Asif Ali Zardari confessed that “Militants and extremists emerged on the national scene and challenged the state not because the civil bureaucracy was weakened and demoralised but because they were deliberately created and nurtured as a policy to achieve short-term tactical objectives.”
* In 2015 TV interview, President Pervez Musharraf admitted that in the 1990s, “Lashkar-e-Taiba and 11 or 12 other [terrorist] organisations were formed. We supported them and trained them as they were fighting in Kashmir at the cost of their lives.”
* In 2019, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Imran Khan while on a trip to the US revealed that “when you talk about militant groups, we still have about 30,000-40,000 armed people who have been trained and fought in some part of Afghanistan or Kashmir.”
* Earlier this month, when asked about Islamabad’s long history of supporting terrorist outfits, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif while accepting the same tried to evade complicity by saying “We have been doing this dirty work for the US and the West, including Britain, for three decades.”
* Just the other day, Pakistan’s former Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari confirmed Asif’s revelation by saying, “I don’t think that it’s a secret that Pakistan has a past as far as extremist groups are concerned.”

Ultimate Proof of Rawalpindi’s Perfidy
Islamabad has consistently denied any link with terrorists and rejects any evidence furnished thereof as inadequate. However, the airstrikes against nine terrorist centres/ facilities carried out by the Indian armed forces as part of Operation Sindoor has finally provided clinching evidence of Rawalpindi’s ongoing romance with terrorist groups. A few irrefutable facts that have emerged after the Operation Sindoor airstrikes on terrorist facilities:
* Abdul Rauf Azhar, the brother of Jaish-e-Mohammad [JeM] chief Masood Azhar is amongst the five high profile terrorists killed. He had masterminded the 1999 IC-814 hijack that saw the release of three terrorists including Al Qaeda operative Omar Saeed Sheikh who was subsequently involved in the kidnapping and gruesome decapitation of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.
* Photographs of this event show US-designated global terrorist and senior LeT commander Hafiz Abdul Rafiq leading the funeral prayers of the terrorists killed in the airstrikes. A large turnout of Pakistan Army officers and soldiers in uniform is clearly visible in the background.
* Coffins of the terrorists were draped with Pakistan’s national flag, a protocol reserved only for state funerals accorded to members of the armed forces and high-ranking dignitaries.
* The funeral of terrorists was attended by Lt General Fayyaz Hussain Shah, Corps Commander IV Corps, Lahore, Maj Gen Rap Imran Sartaj, Brig Mohammad Furkan Shabbir, Dr Usman Anwar, Inspector General of Police, Punjab, Malik Sohaib Ahmed Bherth, Member of Punjab’s Provincial Assembly and several other members of Pakistan Army and civilian dignitaries.

International Reaction
The international community has welcomed the end of current hostilities between India and Pakistan. However, its stoic silence on the perverse public display of solidarity exhibited by the Pakistan Army and government officials with the deceased terrorists is astonishing. But then, the counter argument is that why should the international community worry about something that isn’t directly affecting it?    

Overlooking the unabashed institutional support being provided to terrorists by the Pakistan Army is tantamount to mainstreaming terrorism, and keeping silent on this grave issue is what gives Islamabad the nerve to accord a state funeral to terrorists who have the blood of innocents on their hands.

Providential Coincidence
When the international community failed to come together and consider instituting consequential actions against Pakistan for sponsoring the terrorists who perpetrated the cold-blooded massacre of 26 tourists in Pahalgam, J&K on April 22, New Delhi decided to take things into its own hand and dispense justice by itself. Operation Sindoor, which was accordingly launched on May 7, was a total success and the Indian armed forces achieved the national objective of inflicting a telling blow to Pakistan’s terror infrastructure. May 7 also marks the birth anniversary of India’s Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, who penned down the popular patriotic song titled ‘Ekla Chalo Re’ [Walk Alone], 120 years ago. The opening line of this inspiring composition reads, “If no one responds to your call, then go your own way alone.” And India did exactly this on Tagore’s 164th  birth anniversary by singlehandedly pummeling nine terrorist facilities both in Pakistan occupied J&K [PoJK] and mainland Pakistan.   
Isn’t this a providential coincidence?