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In 1823, President James Monroe drew a firm line in the sand: the Western Hemisphere would be closed to further European interference and, most importantly, America’s primary domain of industrial, political, and military control. The Monroe Doctrine, while audacious, proved effective and laid the groundwork for the Western Hemisphere as America’s stepping stone to the rest of the world. America was not yet a superpower and could not enforce it alone, however. Instead, America aligned British naval dominance with our interests to build a coalition of opportunity. America asserted its position, secured a partner through alignment against common rivals, and laid the groundwork for its emergence as a global superpower.

We find ourselves at a similar inflection point. The battleground isn’t about territory or shipping lanes, however. Today, it’s about computing power and associated techno-industrial dominance. Given the rate of change and speed of adoption, the stakes are higher than ever. 

Artificial intelligence turns data centers into industrial hubs for exponential innovation. Today, a country’s value lies not only in human capital and raw resources but also in hardware, the sovereignty to choose its own destiny, and control of the global AI technology ecosystem. 

To maintain dominance in this new era, America needs a new Monroe Doctrine, for AI: one founded on realism, committed to fostering hemispheric stability, and laser-focused on expanding our technological sphere of influence to secure the future.

Three Core Operating Principles for a Monroe Doctrine of AI

1. Flood the world with American AI Hardware

Export controls have become the default tool for U.S. policymakers attempting to contain China’s rise in AI, but they are backfiring. Instead of crippling China, they have harmed America’s most important tech company: NVIDIA. Its market share in China has plummeted from 95% to 50% in just four years, not due to superior Chinese competition, but because U.S. policy rendered the sale illegal. 

This created a vacuum in the world’s second-largest AI market. Into that vacuum stepped Huawei, offering not only rival chips but also building an entire AI ecosystem from the ground up: rare earth mining, chip design, infrastructure, and models. They aren’t just catching up. We’re handing them the advantage.

Rather than making ourselves an unreliable trading partner for countries eager to buy our most critical export, the U.S. should saturate the free world with American chips, which are hardened at the hardware level for security and compliance. This isn’t merely about defeating China. It’s about becoming the system that others rely on. The goal is to make our stack, our chips, our software, our standards, as indispensable as the dollar. Power comes from ubiquity, not scarcity.

2. Re-anchor the Western Hemisphere

The Western Hemisphere remains America’s home-field advantage. Leaders like Nayib Bukele in El Salvador and Javier Milei in Argentina are discarding outdated anti-American orthodoxies. They are pragmatic, growth-focused, and receptive to deeper cooperation. Now is the time to act.

Nearshoring involves more than just mitigating supply chain risks; it represents an industrial strategy. The U.S. should concentrate on high-end manufacturing: data center infrastructure, power systems, and semiconductors. Meanwhile, our neighbors in the Americas can handle lower-margin but crucial production that supports AI infrastructure at a lower cost than China, along with enhanced trust and transparency. Mexico is among the most affordable locations globally for manufacturing and assembly.

Artificial intelligence turns data centers into industrial hubs for exponential innovation. Today, a country’s value lies not only in human capital and raw resources but also in hardware, the sovereignty to choose its own destiny, and control of the global AI technology ecosystem. 

Re-anchoring our hemisphere to America’s AI ecosystem is how we create a foundation for the AI age, a Marshall Plan for computing, chips, and code. Let China maintain its Belt and Road of low-cost spyware. We’ll develop a hemisphere of excellence and trust.

3. Protect the Indo-Pacific Front, The Ring of Fire

Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are the front lines of U.S.-China tech competition. Their fabrication facilities, standards, and developer ecosystems shape the global AI ecosystem. If we don’t support them with open access to U.S. technology and customers for U.S. products, China will. China is willing, and increasingly able, to fill any vacuum we leave behind.

And it’s not just the big three who are part of the Ring of Fire. Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam are all in play. Each has a tense, complex relationship with Beijing and is actively seeking deeper tech and trade ties with the U.S. The window is open, but not forever.

That means rethinking how we deploy tools like export controls and tariffs. Tariffs misalign incentives, punish allies, and raise the cost of the very inputs we need to reshore advanced manufacturing. Export restrictions that limit friendly access only help China’s competitors build alternatives. Export controls and tariffs should hamper our adversaries, not our companies and platforms.

Let’s be clear: the primary goal isn’t to slow China down. China is going to China. The goal is to stay ahead and play to our strength: open markets that scale. That’s how we win.

The Strategic Moment

With America’s AI lead established and our exports increasingly central to global tech supply chains, it’s time to seize the moment, not squander it. If the goal is to contain China, rather than ceding market share and fueling anti-American resentment, then we need to reassess what AI means to us and the world.

With America’s AI lead solidified and our exports increasingly anchoring global tech supply chains, now is the moment to act boldly, not cautiously. If the goal is to contain China, not cede ground or fuel anti-American resentment, we must rethink what AI represents, not just as a tool, but as a geopolitical weapon of alignment.

Misguided export controls and blanket tariffs don’t protect us—they shrink U.S. market share, raise production costs, and hand China the time and space to build behind a wall of protectionism. That’s not industrial strategy. That’s industrial retreat.

The solutions are simple. What’s required is political will. If China achieves independent AGI and exports its standards to our current allies, we won’t just lose influence; we’ll lose the framework that made us a superpower. But if we establish the U.S. as the default AI stack, flood friendly markets with our computers, and build a hemispheric manufacturing base around it, we won’t just hold the lead and we’ll lock it in for a generation.

The original Monroe Doctrine laid the groundwork for the American century. It worked because we had aligned allies and clear strategic priorities. In the AI era, we need the same: nearshored production, fortified Indo-Pacific alliances, and a trade regime that builds markets, not walls.

That’s how you make Beijing panic.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

FMR Resources Limited (ASX:FMR) (FMR or Company) is pleased to announce it has entered into a conditional Binding Term Sheet giving it the right to earn up to a 60% interest in a highly prospective copper-gold-molybdenite project in central Chile (Transaction). The Company will joint venture (JV) into selected tenements (the JV Tenements or Concessions) within the Llahuin Project (Llahuin or the Project) held by Southern Hemisphere Mining Ltd (SUH) which overlie the Southern Porphyry Target.

Highlights

  • Large Cu-Au-Mo porphyry target untested at depth
  • Coincidental datasets suggest substantial copper porphyry system
  • Shallow historic drilling confirms porphyry mineralisation above target
  • Drilling of targets to commence early Q4 2025
  • Oliver Kiddie joins FMR as Managing Director
  • Firm commitments received for $2.2m capital raising at $0.16 through a placement to existing and new sophisticated investors
  • Mark Creasy to join the FMR register as major shareholder

The Southern Porphyry JV gives FMR exposure to a potential Company-making discovery. Coincidental datasets captured across the Southern Porphyry target area suggest a large, untested copper porphyry system below historic exploration. With proven fertility along a ~6km corridor at Llahuin, including historic shallow copper porphyry mineralisation directly above the Southern Porphyry target, this JV delivers FMR drill-ready targets for Q4 2025. The Company looks forward to updating shareholders as we progress towards maiden drilling of these exciting targets.

In conjunction, FMR is pleased to announce the appointment of Oliver Kiddie as Managing Director. Mr Kiddie is a geologist with over 20 years’ experience across exploration, resource definition, project development, and production throughout Australia and internationally. He has extensive experience in base metal and gold exploration through senior management, executive, and directorship positions, including Dominion Mining, European Goldfields, the Creasy Group, and Legend Mining.

Oliver Kiddie said:“I am very excited to be joining the FMR team as the Company expands its exploration portfolio with the Llahuin Project in Chile. I look forward to leading the Company through the next stage of growth and working with the experienced SUH team as the compelling Southern Porphyry drill targets are tested in Q4 this year, with the clear aim of a Company-making discovery.”

Project Description

Porphyry-style Cu-Au-Mo mineralisation identified to date at the Llahuin Project is largely hosted in three main mineralised zones – the Central Porphyry Zone, Cerro do Oro and Ferrocarril, which occur along a +2.5 km N-S strike (open north and south, with a total strike length of up 6 km). These zones are coincident with a north-south trending valley, potentially reflecting weathering of more regressive units or a structure.

Llahuin was initially acquired in July 2011 by SUH through an intermediary from Antofagasta plc. Drilling completed across the project to date comprises 296 holes for 64,503m with a total of 62 holes for 11,927m completed on the JV Tenements, of which 9,156m reports to the Ferrocarril zone and are therefore not relevant to the Southern Porphyry Target. Drilling has resulted in the delineation of Mineral Resources which do not form part of the JV and do not form part of the transaction (see Figures 1 and 7).

In addition to drilling SUH has completed extensive geochemical and geophysical surveys at Llahuin, including detailed magnetics (MAG), induced polarisation (IP), and magnetotellurics (MT). These datasets have indicated a “blind” porphyry-style target at the southern end of the Llahuin Project named the Southern Porphyry Target. This target is defined by a coincident magnetic anomaly, IP resistivity anomaly, and MT resistivity anomaly. The target is modelled as a circular feature 1.5km – 2km in diameter and centred approximately 1,000m below surface (see Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5).

Click here for the full ASX Release

This post appeared first on investingnews.com

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that concerns over national security risks posed by Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion bid for U.S. Steel can be resolved if the companies fulfill certain conditions that his administration has laid out, paving the way for the deal’s approval.

Shares of U.S. Steel rose 3.5% on the news in after-the-bell trading as investors bet the deal was close to done. Trump, in an executive order, said conditions for resolving the national security concerns would be laid out in an agreement, without providing details. “I additionally find that the threatened impairment to the national security of the United States arising as a result of the Proposed Transaction can be adequately mitigated if the conditions set forth in section 3 of this order are met,” Trump said in the order, which was released by the White House.

The companies thanked Trump in a news release, saying the agreement includes $11 billion in new investments to be made by 2028 and governance commitments including a golden share to be issued to the U.S. government. They did not detail how much control the golden share would give the U.S. Shares of U.S. Steel had dipped earlier on Friday after a Nippon Steel executive told the Japanese Nikkei newspaper that its planned takeover of U.S. Steel required “a degree of management freedom” to go ahead after Trump earlier had said the U.S. would be in control with a golden share.

The bid, first announced by Nippon Steel in December 2023, has faced opposition from the start. Both Democratic former President Joe Biden and Trump, a Republican, asserted last year that U.S. Steel should remain U.S.-owned, as they sought to woo voters ahead of the presidential election in Pennsylvania, where the company is headquartered.

Biden in January, shortly before leaving office, blocked the deal on national security grounds, prompting lawsuits by the companies, which argued the national security review they received was biased. The Biden White House disputed the charge.

The steel companies saw a new opportunity in the Trump administration, which began on January 20 and opened a fresh 45-day national security review into the proposed merger in April.

But Trump’s public comments, ranging from welcoming a simple “investment” in U.S. Steel by the Japanese firm to floating a minority stake for Nippon Steel, spurred confusion.

At a rally in Pennsylvania on May 30, Trump lauded an agreement between the companies and said Nippon Steel would make a “great partner” for U.S. Steel. But he later told reporters the deal still lacked his final approval, leaving unresolved whether he would allow Nippon Steel to take ownership.

Nippon Steel and the Trump administration asked a U.S. appeals court on June 5 for an eight-day extension of a pause in litigation to give them more time to reach a deal for the Japanese firm. The pause expires Friday, but could be extended.

June 18 is the expiration date of the current acquisition contract between Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel, but the firms could agree to postpone that date

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Authorities were searching Saturday for two Australian gunmen suspected of fatally shooting an Australian tourist and injuring another at a villa on the Indonesian resort island of Bali.

The shooting just after midnight on Friday at Villa Casa Santisya near Munggu Beach in the district of Badung killed Zivan Radmanovic, 32, from Melbourne. The second victim, who is 34 and also from Melbourne was beaten, said Badung Police chief Arif Batubara.

“We cannot yet determine the motive,” Batubara said, adding that an investigation is underway. The two Australians were rushed to hospitals in Denpasar, the provincial capital.

According to police, the villa had only three rooms occupied with a total of five guests when the shooting happened. The two victims’ wives were also there and another foreign tourist, Batubara said.

Radmanovic was shot in a bathroom, where police found 17 bullet casings and two intact bullets.

At least three witnesses at the villa told investigators that two gunmen, one wearing orange jacket with a dark helmet and another wearing a dark green jacket, a black mask and a dark helmet, arrived on a scooter at the villa around midnight.

Radmanovic’s wife, Gourdeas Jazmyn, 30, told police that she suddenly woke up when she heard her husband screaming. She cowered under a blanket when she heard multiple gunshots.

She later found her husband’s body and the injured Australian, whose wife has also testified to seeing the attackers.

The Australian Consulate in Bali has been contacted by authorities and an autopsy for further investigation is still waiting permission from the family of the victim, Batubara said.

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Israel’s unprecedented attacks on Iran had at their core an elusive and high-risk goal: eradicating the country’s controversial nuclear program.

Israel targeted three key Iranian nuclear facilities – Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow – and a number of top scientists involved in nuclear research and development.

The extent of the damage – and whether Iran’s nuclear program can survive – is not immediately clear. An Israeli military official said at a briefing Saturday that strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in Natanz and Isfahan were able to damage the sites “significantly;” Iran said that damage to the facilities was limited but acknowledged the deaths of nine experts.

“We are at a key point where, if we miss it, we will have no way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons that will threaten our existence,” Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Friday.

“We have dealt with Iran’s proxies over the past year and a half, but now we are dealing with the head of the snake itself.”

Iran insists its program is peaceful – here’s what we know about the damage to the three sites.

Natanz

“This was a full-spectrum blitz,” said another source familiar with the assessments.

The strikes destroyed the above-ground part of Natanz’s Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant, a sprawling site that has been operating since 2003 and where Iran had been enriching uranium up to 60% purity, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Weapons-grade uranium is enriched to 90%.

That aspect of the operation is crucial, because much of the Natanz facility is heavily fortified and underground, so wiping out the power to those parts of the facility is the most effective way to impact underground equipment and machinery.

It does not appear that Israel damaged those underground parts of the plant directly, the IAEA said, but the loss of power to the underground cascade hall “may have damaged the centrifuges there.”

Natanz has six above-ground buildings and three underground buildings, two of which can hold 50,000 centrifuges, according to the non-profit Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). Centrifuges are machines that can enrich uranium by spinning the gas at high speeds.

There is no wider radiological impact. “The level of radioactivity outside the Natanz site has remained unchanged and at normal levels,” the IAEA said. “However, due to the impacts, there is radiological and chemical contamination inside the facilities in Natanz,” it added – though the levels would be manageable.

Isfahan

The extent of damage at the Isfahan nuclear site in central Iran was more difficult to parse in the hours after it was struck, with conflicting claims over the attack’s impact emerging in Israel and Iran.

Behrouz Kamalvandi, the spokesperson of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said Saturday that damage at the site – Iran’s largest nuclear research complex – was limited.

Equipment at the two facilities was moved in anticipation of the strikes, Kamalvandi said. A shed at the facility caught fire, he added, and there is no risk of contamination.

But Israel were more bullish; an IDF official said during a Saturday briefing that the site took significant damage.

The facility was built with support from China and opened in 1984, the NTI says. According to the non-profit, 3,000 scientists are employed at Isfahan, and the site is “suspected of being the center” of Iran’s nuclear program.

It “operates three small Chinese-supplied research reactors,” as well as a “conversion facility, a fuel production plant, a zirconium cladding plant, and other facilities and laboratories,” the NTI says.

At a Saturday briefing, an IDF official said Israel had “concrete intelligence” that Iran was “moving forward to a nuclear bomb” at the Isfahan facility. Despite advancing its uranium enrichment significantly, Iran has repeatedly said that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and denied that it was developing an atomic bomb.

Fordow

The Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant is a far more difficult site to target. The plant is buried deep in the mountains near Qom, in northern Iran, and houses advanced centrifuges used to enrich uranium up to high grades of purity.

Israel targeted the site during its Friday attacks, but the IAEA said it was not impacted and the IDF has not claimed any significant damage there. Iranian air defenses shot down an Israeli drone in the vicinity of the plant, Iranian state media Press TV reported Friday evening.

Fordow’s fate could be pivotal to the overall success of Israel’s attacks.

In 2023, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that uranium particles enriched to 83.7% purity – which is close to the 90% enrichment levels needed to make a nuclear bomb – had been found in Fordow.

“If Fordow remains operational, Israel’s attacks may barely slow Iran’s path to the bomb,” James M. Acton, the co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote on Friday.

Acton said Israel might be able to collapse the entrance to the facility, but noted that destroying much more of the Fordow site will be a difficult task for Israel.

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On a recent evening in Kyiv, 4-year-old Olexander Reshetnik made a simple suggestion to his parents: “Let’s go to the parking garage now so we can sleep properly, and you don’t have to wake us up twice to take us there and back.”

The family lives on the 18th floor of a high-rise building and getting into the underground garage that doubles as a bomb shelter during Russian attacks is an uncomfortable experience. With aerial attacks becoming more common, it made sense to Oleksander to simply stay there.

Even at his young age, he knew the Russians would likely attack again.

His mother Khrystyna Reshetnik said the family has gotten used to seeing drones being shot down in the skies over Ukraine’s capital. In days gone by there would be one or two, maybe three, but things have changed.

Russia has ramped up its airborne attacks against Ukraine in recent weeks, launching as many as 479 drones and missiles in a single night. These assaults are not just bigger and more frequent; they are also more concentrated and executed in a way that makes them a lot more difficult to combat – as they are flown at higher altitudes, out of reach of machine guns.

Russia ramps up drone production

Russia successfully scaled up the domestic production of its most frequently used drone – the Iranian-designed Shahed – last fall and is now churning out hundreds of these killing machines every day.

Christina Harward, a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, said that according to current estimates, Moscow can now produce about 2,700 Shahed drones per month, as well as some 2,500 decoy drones.

The fact that some of the drones are decoys makes little difference to the Ukrainian defenses as Moscow has adapted them in a way that makes it very difficult to distinguish them from the real thing.

“So, either Ukrainian forces spend time trying to identify the decoys or they spend precious resources shooting them down. Either way, this helps the Russian missiles and Shaheds – with their large payloads – (as they) have the chance to get through to their targets,” Harward said.

The increased number of drones launched each night is overwhelming Ukrainian air defenses, especially since Russia began to zero in on handful of locations at a time.

On Monday night, it targeted the Ukrainian capital and the Black Sea port city of Odesa. The following night, it was Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.

Russia maintains that it does not target civilians, but evidence to the contrary continues to mount. At least 154 Ukrainian civilians – including children – have been killed by drones, in Russian missile assaults and by artillery across the country in the last four weeks. A further 900 civilians have been injured.

The deadly attacks are designed to undermine Ukrainian morale and create the illusion that Russia has the upper hand in the war – even though Moscow is far from “winning.”

The front line in Ukraine has not moved in any significant way since Ukrainian forces liberated the southern city of Kherson in November 2023.

Russia has only managed to seize about 5,000 square kilometers (1,900 square miles) of Ukraine’s territory since then. Russian troops have advanced in some areas in eastern and northern Ukraine in recent months but have not managed to break through or take over a major city.

‘Impossible to shoot them down’

Yuriy Chumak spends many of his nights perched on Kyiv’s rooftops, machine gun in hand. A Supreme Court judge by day, he is part of a volunteer drone-hunting unit by night. He said the skies have gotten significantly busier in recent weeks.

He said after Moscow started flying drones at higher altitudes, it has become much harder, if not impossible, for his unit to destroy them.

Previously, Russian forces would fly the drones low, for example along a riverbed, to avoid being detected by Ukraine’s air defenses for as long as possible.

“The time to respond was very short because we only detected it when it was (close),” he said.

These days, he said, Russian drones are flying two to five kilometers (1 to 3 miles) above the ground.

“We can see them all. Radars can track them. But it has become impossible to shoot them down with machine guns,” Chumak said, adding that Ukraine now has to use missiles to thwart them.

But missiles are in much shorter supply. This is pushing Ukrainian forces to find new solutions on the go. Melnyk said that the efficiency of Ukraine’s air defense system remains remarkable. “Even now, about 80% of drones are being intercepted. A few months ago, this percentage was about 95. (But) we can see the impact of Russia increasing the number (of drones) and changing tactics,” he added.

Speaking to reporters last month, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky praised the Ukrainian Air Force and volunteers like Chumak for pivoting as Russia ramped up its air war.

He added that Kyiv was now using drone-to-drone interceptors to combat the higher altitude bombardment. “We have the technology. The question is when we will be able to expand,” he said.

Zelensky said that Russia can produce some 300 to 350 drones a day, while Ukraine can only make 100.

“The issue is no longer about production capacity. It’s financial,” he said.

‘The norm for our children’

Kyiv mom Khrystyna Reshetnik said one of the worst things about the Russian aerial assaults is that they have become commonplace to her three boys, aged 4, 8 and 11. Olexander regularly asks whether the noise he hears is a Kalibr cruise missile or a drone.

“He’s just a little boy and he already understands what’s going on,” Reshetnik said. As the attacks have intensified in size and scope, the family has been spending more time in the underground parking garage, where Olexander and his two brothers sleep in the trunk of their car.

“This has become the norm for our children. It hurts my heart,” she said.

Yet despite the daily horrors they experience, the Reshetniks are among the lucky ones. They live in Kyiv, a city that is relatively well defended. The majority of the explosions they hear are Ukrainian air defenses intercepting Russian drones.

Many others elsewhere around the country are left without protective shields because Ukraine’s access to air defenses is limited by what its Western allies are willing to spare. Closer to the front lines, Russian troops have been using smaller drones to target civilians.

“There is (a) ballistic missile coming, so I am going to go into the shelter. My point is that this is the daily life of Ukrainian citizens and civilians.”

This post appeared first on cnn.com

French President Emmanuel Macron is due to land in Greenland Sunday, in a move designed to bolster European support for the Danish territory, which is still batting away advances from the Trump administration to acquire it for the United States.

Macron will be the first foreign leader to visit the resource-rich island since US President Donald Trump began his campaign to buy or annex Greenland, which he insists the US needs for national security purposes.

A source at the Élysée Palace said that the French president’s trip had a “dimension of European solidarity and one of strengthening sovereignty and territorial integrity,” without mentioning the Trump administration’s threats to purchase Greenland, or take it by force.

Additionally, Macron’s visit would focus on Arctic security, climate change and Greenland’s economic development, the source added.

During his time on the world’s biggest island the French leader will tour a glacier, a hydroelectric power station and a Danish warship moored near the semiautonomous territory’s capital, Nuuk, per the Élysée.

“The deeps are not for sale, any more than Greenland is for sale, any more than Antarctica or the high seas are for sale,” Macron said on June 9 as he opened a United Nations conference on the oceans in Nice, France.

Trump’s intentions for Greenland can’t be far from the French president’s thoughts on his first visit to the Arctic territory, which Macron will conduct alongside Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland’s political leader, Jens-Frederik Nielsen.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said in January that Paris had “started discussing (the deployment of French troops) with Denmark,” but that Copenhagen did not want to proceed with the idea.

Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in buying the island, or the US taking it by military or economic coercion, even as NATO ally Denmark and Greenland have firmly rejected the idea. Last month, the US president renewed his threat of using military force to annex the territory.

US Vice President JD Vance also made a stopover to visit American troops in Greenland in late March. During that trip, the vice president made a high-profile case for US control of the island. He said Greenland would be better off “coming under the United States’ security umbrella than you have been under Denmark’s security umbrella.”

In a move widely seen as an effort to ease American ambitions for the territory, on June 12 Denmark’s parliament widened a military agreement with Washington to allow US bases on Danish soil. US soldiers had previously been based at Danish facilities.

Denmark is also moving to bolster its military presence in Greenland, some 1,500 miles from the Danish mainland, including with fighter jets to patrol the western coastline toward the US and a navy frigate, per Greenland’s parliament.

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A senior Israeli intelligence official exclusively told Fox News on Saturday, ‘We have more surprises coming up’ for Iran following the initial wave of strikes during ‘Operation Rising Lion.’ 

The high-ranking source, speaking to Fox News Chief Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst, said Israeli intelligence projected Iran would have an arsenal of 8,000 ballistic missiles over the next two years and that this was part of the reason a decision was made to launch the operation. Right now, Israel believes Iran has about 2,000 missiles.   

‘We cannot end this operation knowing that we will be in the same spot two years from now,’ the official said. ‘Everything is going as planned. Actually, better than planned.’ 

The official added: ‘We have lots of surprises. Not just the ones we already did. We have more surprises coming up.’ 

Forty Iranian air defense systems have been hit since the beginning of the operation, which is based on three goals — targeting Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and removing the Iranian existential threat against Israel.

During the initial strike against a meeting of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) air force officials, Israeli intelligence assessed that 30 commanders were killed. 

‘It’s a historic achievement,’ the official said. 

Israel now expects more incoming Iranian missiles in the days ahead that will cause casualties and destruction.   

However, the bulk of the conflict with Iran could largely be over in a matter of days.   

‘I think we can finish it in days… It’s a good thing that we have the U.S. by our side,’ the official said. 

The official also told Fox News that the U.S. is ‘fully coordinated’ with Israel, yet declined to go into specifics.  

‘The way the U.S. is standing beside Israel is unprecedented,’ he said. ‘We feel it.’ 

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