Kiriakou treats the Iranian response to the June 2025 American strikes on Iran as choreography rather than combat — but choreography that went slightly wrong.
The sequence
“When the United States bombed Iran, the Iranians, of course, in order to save face had to respond. And so they bombed Al Udeid airbase in Qatar.” The critical qualifier follows immediately: “they informed the United States 2 hours before that they were going to launch.” [1]
The result was a strike with no element of surprise. “So they launched a missile. The US knew it was coming.” [1]
What was actually hit
Kiriakou disputes the initial American account. “At first the US said that it dropped harmlessly in an isolated part of the base. It turned out that wasn’t true.” In his telling, “it hit a communications dome, a geodesic dome that housed top secret communications.” His summary of the outcome is that “the Iranians got lucky.” [2]
What mattered more, in his reading, was that nothing followed. “But the US didn’t respond. The Iranians saved face. Everybody decided, okay, we’re all even. Now we can move on.” He offers that as the reason Tehran could then announce it remained open to talks. [2]
The wider judgement
The episode sits inside a broader argument Kiriakou makes about the same exchange: that Israeli air defences had already been shown to be porous. He recalls that in the earlier round the Iranians sent hundreds of slow drones, warned the Israelis in advance and warned the Iraqis and Jordanians of the overflight, and that seven still got through — “a lesson for everybody that this Iron Dome is actually penetrable.” When Iran later chose ballistic missiles, he says, it was able to hit IDF headquarters and IDF communications. [3]
His explanation for the ceasefire that followed is logistical rather than diplomatic: he believes it came “not at the request of the Iranians, but at the request of the Israelis because they were out of missiles.” The stock is finite and bought from the United States, and in his account they had used it. [3]