CMR is the leading provider of funding and management support for small to medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs 

Via Remix news,

Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder has come out with an aggressive plan to prep Germany for war. Support for Ukraine, defense against Russia, and efforts to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on nuclear weapons are the priorities. 

“Compulsory military and civilian service is the future,” said Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder, according to Magyar Nemzet.

“It is not enough to simply send out questionnaires to young people asking if they would be willing to serve; more decisive steps are needed,” he added. 

Germany suspended compulsory military service in 2011, but the service could be reactivated via a parliamentary ruling. The German government’s coalition agreement currently only allows for voluntary military service. However, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has already indicated that a much more ambitious bill is in the works, which would allow for the introduction of compulsory military service if necessary. 

In addition to the issue of conscription, Söder also urged the maximum deployment of the Bundeswehr —the German army — and again called for the development of a national missile defense system. 

“This also requires technology – an Iron Dome system is absolutely necessary to protect not only Berlin, but all of Germany,” he said, emphasizing that urgent action, including more sanctions, is needed to deter Russia. 

Söder also called for full support for Ukraine, including supplying the country with arms. Thorsten Frei, the head of the German Chancellery, warned on Monday that the threat to U.S. military bases in Germany had increased significantly after the U.S. air strikes on Iran. 

“We stand with the United States and Israel,” Frei stated, adding that German security agencies are doing everything they can to protect American facilities. 

Regarding the attacks on Iran, the politician highlighted:

“The fact is that it was not only Israel that was in serious danger. If a terrorist regime were to obtain nuclear weapons, it would also pose a serious threat to world peace.”

Read more here...

33-year-old socialist Zohran Mamdani beat 67-year-old former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday night, and is well on his way to becoming the city's first Muslim mayor. 

Cuomo conceded the race earlier in the evening after Mamdani received nearly 44% of the votes with 90% of the votes counted at 10:30 p.m. ET. The former governor said at a watch party: "He deserved it. He won." He told the NY Times that he may still run in the November mayoral election as an independent, saying "I want to analyze and talk to some colleagues." 

That said, as the Guardian notes, given how left-leaning NYC is along with the unpopularity of incumbent mayor Eric Adams, Mumdani is likely to become New York's 11th mayor.

Mamdani's proposals include rent freezes, free buses, and city-run grocery stores which would be funded by $10 billion in new taxes on corporations and the wealthy. 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders congratulated Mamdani on his win, with AOC writing on X "Billionaires and lobbyists poured millions against you and our public finance system. And you won." 

Congratulations, @ZohranKMamdani!

Your dedication to an affordable, welcoming, and safe New York City where working families can have a shot has inspired people across the city.

Billionaires and lobbyists poured millions against you and our public finance system.

And you won. https://t.co/YbJFsYjemm

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 25, 2025

Which may not bode well for the city's corporate tax revenues. As The Free Press noted last week, New York business owners plan to flee both the city and the state if Mamdani wins...

"We may consider closing our supermarkets and selling the business," said 76-year-old billionaire John Catsimatidis of Gristedes Supermarkets, adding "We have other businesses. Thank God, we have other businesses."

He also suggested that his real estate conglomerate - Red Apple Group, may move to New Jersey too.

"There’s the possibility we’d move our corporate offices to New Jersey. Why not?" he said. "Then you’d have four years of peace."

Probably not a bad idea...

NEW: Former rapper and socialist New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has pulled ahead of Andrew Cuomo in the city’s primary, according to a new poll.

Mamdani, 33, has pulled ahead of Cuomo in a new Emerson poll, leading him 52% to 48%.

Mamdani is accused of voicing his… pic.twitter.com/bMmwDV0AnI

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) June 23, 2025

*  *  *

 

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

They came. They bunker-busted. They fled.

And then they set the stage to control the narrative via a massive P.R. operation.

POTUS hailed the “spectacular” victory of B-2s flying from the US to West Asia to release MOPs (“Massive Ordnance Penetrators) over Fordow in the middle of the night of June 22 (significantly, the same date of the start of Operation Barbarossa in 1941).

Trump 2.0 functionaries gloated that the Iranian nuclear program was now gone.

That’s the reality show. Now for reality. Mannan Raisi, a member of the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) from the holy city of Qom, summed it all up: “Contrary to the statements of the lying US President, the nuclear facilities at Fordow were not seriously damaged. Only the above-ground structures, which can be restored, were destroyed. In addition, everything that could pose a danger to the population was evacuated in advance. There are no reports of any nuclear emissions. Trump’s false claims about the ‘destruction of Fordow’ are refuted by the fact that the attacks were so superficial that there were not even any fatalities at the facility.”

What really matters is that the Empire of Chaos, in a single – spectacularly criminal – raid, bunker-busted the UN charter (again); international law (again); the NPT (perhaps for good); the US constitution; the “international community”; and Trump’s own MAGA base.

The Global South is now doing the math – and drawing the necessary conclusions.“Peace through strength” POTUS now owns two wars; a genocide; and an unprovoked attack by a nuclear superpower on behalf of a nuclear power against a non-nuclear power.

The IRGC’s response was swift: the real war starts now. The Zionist axis will pay – in spades. It will not be a full-scale war against the Empire: that’s supremely un-strategic. What will develop is multi-layered death by a thousand cuts.

That was already in effect in the morning of June 23. Iran launched no less than five multi-directional waves of missiles – covering the whole of Israel, including new targets such as Ashdod port and power station. The Israeli interception rate fell below 50%. All hell broke loose – from alert siren malfunctions to power outages. Knesset members fled. An El Al rescue flight from New York was forced to turn back in mid-air when missiles started flying.

The message: the whole of Israel is now a legitimate target – reached within minutes by Kheybar-Shakan, Emad, Qadr, and Fattah-1 missiles.

The Strait of Hormuz: the ultimate card

Iran’s upgraded priorities include: stop the war on Gaza and southern Lebanon; “evolve” the nuclear doctrine (all bets are off); targeted assassinations of Zionist leaders; more strikes on Mossad; more missile barrages on Tel Aviv, Haifa and Dimona.

There will be no direct war on the Empire of Chaos. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is the ultimate Iranian card, not the nuclear card: it won’t be played in full for now. At best there could be a partial blockade of oil shipping to the – fragmented – collective West.

A top former Deep State source confirmed that “the CIA advised the Trump administration that China was resolutely against the shutting down of the Strait of Hormuz, so Trump went ahead with the bombing.”

Shutting down the Strait of Hormuz will detonate a global depression of unforeseem magnitude. The loss of over 20% of the world’s oil supply will trigger the implosion of over two quadrillion dollars of derivatives, as was already speculated by Goldman Sachs projections in the late 2010s. Warren Buffett described it as a chain reaction after a nuclear explosion.

As it stands, Tehran learned a lesson the hardest way. It’s not that the Iranian leadership acted immorally: on the contrary, its belief in diplomacy and serious negotiations proved totally at odds at with the US empire’s totally debased modus operandi.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi summed it all up. Iran was negotiating with the US “when Israel decided to blow up that diplomacy.” Then Iran was talking “with the E3/EU when the US decided to blow up that diplomacy.” Ergo, it’s absurd to order Iran to “return” to the table: “How can Iran return to something it never left, let alone blew up?”

At the St. Petersburg forum, President Putin was very clear that “we support Iran and the struggle for its legitimate interests, including peaceful use of atomic energy.” He added, crucially: “Those who say Russia is not a reliable partner are provocateurs.”

Putin himself said earlier that week that Russia had previously offered to bolster Iran’s air defenses, but was not taken up on that offer. It also is no secret that unlike the treaty with North Korea, the Russia-Iran strategic partnership agreement didn’t feature a collective security provision.

That may be about to change.

There have been no substantial leaks yet on the Putin-Araghchi meeting – but supremely touchy issues would have to have been discussed. Putin reaffirmed, “the absolutely unprovoked aggression against Iran has no basis and no justification.” Then, he added, cryptically: “Russia is taking steps to support the Iranian people.”

Today, Putin meets Iranian FM Araghchi in Moscow.

No one should be surprised if Iran decides that it now has to possess a nuclear weapon as a deterrent to the Zionist axis. One option floated by some analysts – although extremely touchy on several levels – would be a full security partnership with Russia and perhaps China, with Iran positioned under their nuclear umbrella.

After all these are three top BRICS nations – the revamped Primakov triangle and the Empire war is fundamentally a war against BRICS.

This new deal would at least keep Iran’s own nuclear enrichment as a civilian, scientific and non-military process, allowing the Russia-China strategic partnership to supervise uranium enrichment while providing security guarantees to Iran.

Additionally, that would be a security guarantee for the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) – which is in the strategic national interest of Russia.

The Chinese view is another very complex matter. There’s some sort of consensus among Chinese think tanks that Iran should now, more than ever, strengthen their air defense system. That likely means taking up Russia on its earlier offer to cooperate in this area.

A long dark cloud is coming down

Trump entering the – suicidal – war of Israel/US neocons on Iran just adds a new layer to the Big Picture. That was predictable since at least the late 1990s: the same playbook of controlling West Asia’s energy resources to enhance the economic power of the Empire of Chaos, while intimidating the Global South: don’t even think of deviating from our unilateral order.

Even POTUS himself gave away the game, in caps: “If the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change? MIGA!”

Inestimable Prof. Michael Hudson, among a few others, has summarized the stakes: “Iran is not only the capstone to full control of the Near East and its oil and dollar holdings. Iran is a key link for China’s Belt and Road program for a New Silk Road of railway transport to the West. If the United States can overthrow the Iranian government, this interrupts the long transportation corridor that China already has constructed and hopes to extend further West. Iran also is a key to blocking Russian trade and development via the Caspian Sea and access to the south, bypassing the Suez Canal. And under U.S. control, an Iranian client regime could threaten Russia from its southern flank.”

So it’s no wonder that regime change in Tehran – that’s what the whole war is all about – is a matter of supreme national interest for US elites, in the sense stressed by Prof. Hudson of a “coercive empire of client states observing dollar hegemony by adhering to the dollarized international financial system.”

Now compare all of the above with the tenor of the discussions at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) last week. The forum ended in the evening of June 20. The US attacked Iran in the middle of the night of June 22.

Virtually the whole Global South was in St. Petersburg; at least 15,000 people. Over a thousand deals were signed, amounting to over $80 billion, according to Executive Secretary of the SPIEF Organizing Committee Anton Kobakov.

There were enlightening panels all around: on the challenges of the Northern Sea Route, one of the key connectivity corridors of the 21st century; on Russia-China mutual investments; on the reform of the international financial system; on the fight against fake news – an industry the West excels in – and AI controlling all narratives; on BRICS, the SCO, the EAEU, ASEAN, the INSTC.

At the plenary session, the Global South and BRICS were fully represented: Russia, China, Indonesia (President Prabowo was the guest of honor), South Africa, Bahrain. President Putin cut to the chase: “Russia and China aren’t shaping the new world order – it’s rising naturally, like the sun. We’re only paving the way to make it more balanced.”

Yet along dark cloud is coming down, as the Empire of Chaos will go no holds barred to block the sunrise. Russia’s representative at the UN Vasily Nebenzya nailed it, sharp as a dagger: “The US has opened Pandora’s box (…) No one knows what new catastrophes and suffering it will bring.”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.

Florida officials are building a massive detention facility for illegal aliens, dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz” for its swampy location teeming with deadly predators.

The proposed facility’s site is the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, tucked along the eastern edge of Big Cypress National Preserve, about 55 miles west of Miami. Florida had big plans for it back in the day, aiming to transform it into the "Everglades Jetport," a massive airport poised to dwarf all others. But eco-activists and environmental worries slammed the brakes on that dream in the 1970s, leaving the project grounded.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) announced plans for the project last week, expressing support for President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. "I think this is the best one, as I call it: Alligator Alcatraz," Uthmeier quipped, nodding to the infamous San Francisco Bay prison island, Alcatraz.

"This 30-square mile area is completely surrounded by the Everglades. It presents an efficient, low-cost opportunity to build a temporary detention facility because you don't need to invest that much in the perimeter,” the top Florida official said. "If people get out, there's not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons."

Alligator Alcatraz: the one-stop shop to carry out President Trump’s mass deportation agenda. pic.twitter.com/96um2IXE7U

— Attorney General James Uthmeier (@AGJamesUthmeier) June 19, 2025

Uthmeier said the area is "virtually abandoned” and was given approval within a week. In a Monday interview with conservative podcaster Benny Johnson, the Florida attorney general said the detention center is on track to house 5,000 beds by early July.

This morning, I joined @bennyjohnson and announced that Alligator Alcatraz will be moving forward!

In Florida, the swamp means something different. pic.twitter.com/KGrHZS2DjT

— Attorney General James Uthmeier (@AGJamesUthmeier) June 23, 2025

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Monday that the federal government will pour money into plan, tapping FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program to foot the bill.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people’s mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens. We will expand facilities and bed space in just days, thanks to our partnership with Florida,” Noem said in a statement.

A DHS official told the Miami Herald that the facility will cost $450 million annually.

How far does a dollar really go across America?

As inflation has raised everything from housing costs to the price of eggs to record levels, consumers are feeling the burden. While tariffs stand to raise prices even further—although no meaningful signs in official data show this yet—price pressures have few signs of abating.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorthy Neufeld, shows price parity by U.S. state based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).

How Price Parity Compares Across America

To show the differences in prices across the country, the BEA compared each state to the national average, represented as 100 as of 2023.

State	Regional Price Parity (U.S. = 100)
California	113
Washington DC	111
New Jersey	109
Hawaii	109
Washington	109
Massachusetts	108
New York	108
New Hampshire	105
Oregon	105
Maryland	104
Connecticut	104
Florida	104
Alaska	102
Rhode Island	101
Colorado	101
Arizona	101
Virginia	101
Delaware	99
Illinois	99
Minnesota	98
Pennsylvania	98
Texas	97
Maine	97
Nevada	97
Georgia	97
Vermont	97
Utah	95
Michigan	94
North Carolina	94
South Carolina	93
Wisconsin	93
Tennessee	93
Indiana	92
Ohio	92
Missouri	92
Idaho	91
Wyoming	91
Kentucky	91
New Mexico	90
Nebraska	90
Montana	90
Alabama	90
Kansas	90
West Virginia	90
Iowa	89
North Dakota	89
Louisiana	88
Oklahoma	88
South Dakota	88
Mississippi	87
Arkansas	87

Ranking as the nation’s most expensive state, prices in California are 13% higher than the national average.

In particular, California’s housing rents are 58% higher overall, second-only to Washington, D.C.. at 69% in 2023. Typically, housing is the primary driver of price disparities across the country.

At the same time, Californians pay more for groceries than any other state—at around 10% higher than the U.S. average.

Ranking in third is New Jersey, driven largely by its proximity to New York. In addition to high housing costs, a separate report shows that people in the Garden State pay 32% more for household bills like utilities and health insurance than the U.S. average.

At the other end of the spectrum, southern states like Arkansas and Mississippi offer some of the lowest costs of living. In August 2024, the median home sale price in Arkansas was just $203,067 compared to the U.S. median of about $385,000. Beyond housing costs, daily expenses like transportation and utilities are also comparatively lower.

Similarly, median home prices in Mississippi stand at just $183,507, however, median household incomes fall below the national average, at $55,060.

To learn more about this topic from an affordability perspective, check out this graphic on home affordability scores by U.S. state.

A week ago there were widespread reports and rumors that Israeli airstrikes and targeted assassinations in Iran had killed Esmail Qaani, who in 2020 had succeeded the top Iranian IRGC Quds Force general Qassem Soleimani, killed by a US strike in Baghdad.

But on Tuesday Qaani appeared before crowds in Tehran, as Iranians take to the streets to support the military and assert their defiance following Israeli and US bombs falling on the country during the current ceasefire.

"Several news outlets affiliated with Iran-allied groups, including the Houthis’ Al Masirah TV, have shared footage they say shows Esmail Qaani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s Quds Force, among the rallying crowds in Tehran," Al Jazeera writes.

"If confirmed, the videos would dispel reports that Qaani was assassinated by Israel," the report concludes.

Below is video which disproves (assuming it is not a deepfake or impersonator) that Qaani was not killed in an Israeli airstrike last week:

Iran's Quds Force commander Qaani reportedly shows up in Tehran. Iranian state media says he is alive. pic.twitter.com/U1t5siDJcP

— Clash Report (@clashreport) June 24, 2025

This latest flare-up in fighting between Israel and Iran is actually not the first time Qaani has falsely been reported dead.

Israeli broadcasters are featuring the video of his appearance Tuesday in Iranian streets, after the initial claim spread quickly in Israeli media...

?????: ???????? ?????, ???? ??? ???? ??????? ??????, ????? ?"?????? ???????" ?????? - ???? ???? ?? ???????? ?? ?????? @OmerShahar123 pic.twitter.com/ieFP9atcxi

— ??? ????? (@kann_news) June 24, 2025

Like with Russia-Ukraine, the fog of war is thick in the Iranian theatre, and there is evidence that both sides have national censors which are cracking down on what information gets shared, after some 12-days of exchanging deadly airstrikes and missile fire.

Authored by Bill King via RealClearPolitics.com,

For decades, we’ve been told that the world’s biggest problem is too many people. From Malthus in the 18th century to “The Population Bomb” in the 1960s, the warnings were dire: More people would mean more famine, more poverty, more environmental destruction. But something unexpected has happened. The demographic math has changed. And the United Nations, the world’s most cited authority on population forecasts, has taken notice.

Until recently, their models predicted that the global population would continue to grow throughout the 21st century, reaching a peak of nearly 11 billion by the year 2100. But in its 2022 and 2024 revisions, the U.N. quietly lowered its global population projections. The most recent estimate puts the peak at just 10.3 billion, and it comes nearly two decades earlier, around 2084.

That might still sound like a big number. But it’s a sharp departure from the “endless growth” assumptions many policymakers, investors, and institutions still use to guide their decisions. The real story is not just that the U.N. is forecasting fewer people. It’s that many demographers believe that even those numbers are still too high.

Fertility Collapse

The shift in projections isn’t happening because people are dying faster. In fact, life expectancy continues to rise, albeit modestly, in most parts of the world. The big change is that people are having fewer children – much fewer.

Around 1970, the global fertility rate (the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime) was about five children per woman. Today, it’s down to 2.25 and falling. In nearly 70% of the world’s countries, fertility rates are already below the so-called “replacement rate” – the level needed to maintain a stable population. In developed countries, that’s typically pegged at around 2.1 children per woman. In higher-mortality countries, it is slightly higher.

This global fertility decline has happened faster than most experts expected. And that’s why the U.N. has revised its models twice in just the last five years. But not everyone thinks the U.N. has gone far enough.

Over the last decade, several independent teams of researchers have developed alternative population projections. Most of them show that fertility will drop faster than the U.N. is predicting. A team at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), for example, gained wide attention in 2020, when it projected that the global population would peak around 2064 at just over 9 billion and decline to about 8.8 billion by 2100.

Wolfgang Lutz, one of the world’s most respected demographers, has also published projections showing a lower and earlier population peak. Lutz’s group at the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital bases its models on education and urbanization trends, which are closely tied to fertility behavior. In a 2024 analysis of surveys involving over a million women in Sub-Saharan Africa, Lutz and his co-authors concluded that fertility rates there are falling faster than expected, especially as female education improves.

In their 2019 book, “Empty Planet,” Canadian journalists Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson summarized the case for the likelihood of the lower projections. While not academic demographers, they conducted extensive interviews and focus groups in about a dozen countries, asking women about their thoughts on family and childbearing. They concluded that the fertility collapse is as much cultural as economic, and that the cultural factors will drive down fertility rates further and faster than in the past.

“Predictions are hard – especially about the future.”

So said that famous American philosopher, Yogi Beara. As a result, all models use probabilistic variations that incorporate a wide range of possible futures.

For example, while the U.N.’s median projection sees a peak at 10.3 billion in 2084, their model also includes a low-fertility scenario, in which the population peaks around 2060 at 9.5 billion and declines from there.

That lower path aligns more closely with the academic projections.

It’s All About Africa

The fertility rate has already fallen to or below the replacement rate in countries where nearly three-quarters of the world’s population lives. In another 15%, the rate is only just above the replacement rate and is falling fast.

However, there are about two dozen countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Southwest Asia where the rate is still very high. Although these countries only account for about 11% of the world’s population, they will contribute nearly all of whatever population growth there is between now and whenever the population peaks. The common denominators in the countries that have kept birth rates high are a blend of religious fundamentalism (particularly fundamentalist Islam), limited international engagement, and weak state capacity.

Nonetheless, the birth rate is falling in these countries, albeit to varying extents. Most of the debate over the trajectory of future global population boils down to how fast and to what extent these countries will follow the same fertility decline seen in the rest of the world over the last 50 years.

Why This Matters

The population projections we rely on shape everything from how we plan cities to how we fund pensions. They inform immigration policy, school construction, military recruitment, and long-term economic growth assumptions. If those projections are off by a billion people or by two decades, that is not just a rounding error. It’s a seismic shift in the underlying math of the future.

However, most institutions continue to operate on autopilot, assuming that a growing population – encompassing more workers, consumers, and taxpayers – is the natural order that will persist indefinitely. However, the data clearly indicate that the era is rapidly coming to a close and the age of population growth is ending. Indeed, in some places, it already has. For the past three years, China has reported a decline in its population. What follows, and how we react to it, is one of the most critical and least understood stories of our time.

Iranian state media is reporting another arrest of alleged spy who was coordinating with Israeli intelligence. Agents working on behalf of Mossad are believed to have played key roles in Israel's military attacks which kicked off nearly two weeks ago (on Friday, June 13).

But the new arrest announced on Tuesday has been identified as a European national - without much more information being provided from Fars News agency, which issued a statement.

The arrested individual was accused of "spying on sensitive and military areas" - according to the report. This comes amid a broader crackdown and search for people who may have been relaying sensitive and secret material, for example concerning the locations of Iran's ballistic missiles and anti-air systems, to the Israeli government.

"Since the outbreak of conflict with Israel, Iran has arrested dozens of people and executed several accused of spying for Israel," Al Jazeera reports.

"Earlier today, Iranian state media reported that six more people were arrested in the western Hamadan province for allegedly spying for Israel’s Mossad," Al Jazeera says of Tuesday developments.

The trials appear to be taking place in rapid format, in military and judicial tribunals, sometimes convened in small rooms, at a moment Israeli warplanes have been striking sites in Tehran and across Western Iran.

It has become clear that Israel was engaged in a massive spying and espionage campaign to pave the way for its 'Operation Rising Lion' - which is intent on destroying Iran's nuclear energy program, and possibly even accomplishing regime change.

The Washington Post reports on what's been revealed as one of the most brazen recruitment operations aimed at top generals:

In the hours after Israel launched its first wave of strikes against Iran on June 13, killing top military leaders and nuclear scientists, Israeli intelligence operatives launched a covert campaign to intimidate senior officials with the apparent aim of dividing and destabilizing Tehran’s theocratic regime, according to three people familiar with the operation.

People working for Israel’s security services who speak Persian, Iran’s primary language, called senior Iranian officials on their cellphones and warned them that they, too, would die unless they ceased supporting the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, according to the three people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss clandestine operations. One of them estimated that more than 20 Iranians in positions of power were contacted.

But what's clear from all the reporting on this is that these generals were more loyal than expected - and this wasn't met with success for Israeli intelligence. WaPo and others have republished an audio recording of one such call that took place June 13 - the day Israeli warplanes initiated their attacks:

Mossad is phoning Iranian regime generals and warning them to flee the country in 12 hours or be killed. @WashPost has the receipts:pic.twitter.com/JHyHwaZWLK

— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) June 23, 2025

According to one translated part of the transcript: 

“I can advise you now, you have 12 hours to escape with your wife and child. Otherwise, you’re on our list right now,” an Israeli intelligence operative told a senior Iranian general close to the country’s rulers, according to the audio recording.

The operative then suggested that Israel could train weapons on the general and his family at any moment. “We’re closer to you than your own neck vein. Put this in your head. May God protect you,” he said.

This is without doubt fueling IRGC efforts to root out Israeli spy networks, amid the general (and understandable) paranoia over potential compromise and Israeli penetration. It's widely believed that Israel uses Iranian dissident groups, like the cultic revolutionary MEK (People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran) group, which currently has its political leadership based in Europe.