Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Majority of Israelis Back War with Iran as Anti-War Minority Faces Stigmatization

teleSUR | March 7, 2026

Israelis who oppose the war with Iran face threats and stigmatization, according to testimonies collected by a Spanish news agency. However, they represent a small minority, as 93% of Jewish Israelis support the offensive, a new poll by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) shows.

“Opposing the war and war crimes in Israel is practically a punishable offense. Even leftists and pacifists consider this a ‘just war,’” Adam Eli, secretary of the Jewish-Arab leftist coalition Hadash in Tel Aviv said.

Among those few critics is 19-year-old activist Itamar Greenberg, known in Israel for refusing to serve in the military in 2024. That decision, he recounted, cost him six months in prison and ostracism at his university, where he still leads a student circle while studying law.

Nearly one year after walking out of prison, Greenberg found himself back in custody on Tuesday for attending an anti-war rally that barely mustered 20 people across a nation of 10 million.

“About 40 police officers charged at us, confiscated our signs, and beat us. I was arrested and stripped naked for a search,” Greenberg said. He is also the founder of Mesarvot, a network of Israeli youth refusing military service.

An anti-war demonstration scheduled for Saturday at Habima Square in Tel Aviv will test wartime restrictions that cap gatherings at 50 people.

Meanwhile, restrictions on the right to assembly have been applied loosely during recent Purim celebrations—a sort of Jewish carnival—while Israeli authorities continue to bar Palestinians from praying at Al Aqsa Mosque despite Ramadan, and have militarily sealed off much of the West Bank.

March 7, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism | , | Comments Off on Majority of Israelis Back War with Iran as Anti-War Minority Faces Stigmatization

Are the Jews indigenous to Palestine?

By David Miller | Al Mayadeen | August 3, 2022

There is a rising tide of claims from apologists for the crimes of Zionism that they have been misunderstood. Palestinians might be indigenous to Palestine, but the Jews definitely are. What is called the ‘Israel-Palestine’ conflict, they say, is competition over the same small piece of land by two rival groups of indigenous people. But are the Jews indigenous to the Levant? And what are the consequences of the argument?

In fact, most of the power structure of the Zionist state is dominated by Ashkenazi Jews who have no ancestral link to Palestine. Overall despite very significant financial and infrastructural contributions from Western European countries (especially the US, UK and France, for example via the Rothschild family), Eastern European Ashkenazim have been at the centre of the Zionist power structure since the early years of the 20th Century.

Ukraine and the origins of Zionism

For example most members of the Jewish National Council in Palestine prior to the founding of the Zionist state in 1948 were Ukrainian. As is well known key leaders of the Zionist movement hailed from Ukraine.  Many, but not all, Ukrainian Zionists were close to the Ukrainian nationalist movement.

For example, the far right Revisionist Zionist Vladimir Yevgenyevich Jabotinsky (later renamed Ze’ev Jabotinsky) was himself a direct descendant of Ukrainian Jewish settlers in Odessa. He famously consorted with the leader of the Ukrainian nationalists, Symon Petliura, a proto-Nazi responsible for pogroms against the Jews and others. As the Polish political scientist and Zionist, Shlomo Avineri has written, “throughout his life”, Jabotinsky “harbored an affinity for Ukrainian nationalism despite its shades of anti-Semitism”.

Arguably Zionism and Ukrainian nationalism share certain commonalities, which perhaps helps to contextualise the Zionist regime’s ongoing support for Zelensky today. As early as January 2022, “Israel” began planning to transfer Ukrainian Jews to become colonists in the land of the Palestinians. “Israel’s” Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption proclaimed: “We call on the Jews of Ukraine to immigrate to Israel – your home.” But of course, it is not their home.

Another Zionist colonist from Ukraine, was Golda Mabovitch (later known as Golda Meir),  who was Prime Minister of the Zionist entity from 1969-1974. She once claimed ‘I’m a Palestinian’ but also denied that the Palestinian people ever existed.

Eastern European origins of the Zionist leaders

All in all, seven of the fourteen Zionist Prime Ministers, so far, came directly from Russia, Poland, Ukraine or Belarus.  The other seven were children of parents from modern Ukraine and/or Belarus (Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Yitzhak Rabin), Lithuania (Ehud Barak), Poland (Benjamin Netanyahu) Hungary/Romania (Yair Lapid) or Poland, and America (Naftali Bennet). All presidents of the Zionist entity, bar three, came directly or indirectly from Poland, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, or in one case Austria.

The obsession with proving that the Jews, all the Jews, are indigenous to Palestine flies in the face of the overwhelming evidence of the settler colonial nature of Zionism and the fact that most of those in charge originate in Eastern Europe.

Even the Zionist paper Haaretz has published an article claiming that the argument that Jews are indigenous to Palestine ‘swims in fascist waters’.

The fantasy of the ‘decolonised Judean’

The term ‘decolonized Judean’ is used by Zionists, often white European settlers, to describe themselves. But is there any remnant of the original ‘Jewish people’ which inhabited the Levant two millennia ago amongst the two major groups of Jews in the world today?

The dominant group, massively over-represented at all levels of the power structure in what is called ‘Israel’ today are Ashkenazi Jews. They are conventionally said to be the “Jews of France, Germany, and Eastern Europe and their descendants.” The adjective “Ashkenazic” is  said to be “derived from the Hebrew word ‘Ashkenaz,’ which is used to refer to Germany.”

Recent research in linguistics and genetics shows that the ‘Rhineland hypothesis’ which suggests that Ashkenazim come originally from the Levant and that Yiddish originates in Germany is unable to explain the genetic, linguistic and cultural data now available. It suggests instead an Iranian-Turkish-Slavic origin for Ashkenazi Jews and a Slavic origin for Yiddish.

A killer detail in the argument is the existence along the ancient Silk Road trade route, in northeastern Turkey, of four primeval villages whose names resemble “Ashkenaz:” such as İşkenaz. Ashkenazi Jews, then, appear to have no historical connection to the original Jews of Palestine.

The Arab Jews

The Sephardi Jews, are the second main group of Jews in the world. The standard vision is that they are the Jews of ‘Spain, Portugal, North Africa and the Middle East and their descendants’. The adjective “Sephardic” is said to be derived from the Hebrew word “Sepharad,” which refers to Spain. So-called ‘Sephardim’ are increasingly populous and according to some accounts now make up a majority of Jews in occupied Palestine. But they also face a well known pattern of discrimination by the white European Ashkenazi Jews.

When they arrived in occupied Palestine  – mostly after 1948 – these Sephardic Jews often spoke a kind of Arabic and were sometimes referred to as ‘Arab Jews’. This was a threat to Zionism which made sure to discourage their use of Arabic and assiduously worked to “de-racialise” them. As Lital Levy notes: “These were indigenous communities… whose unique syncretic cultures have since been completely expunged as a result of emigration… to Israel, where they were subjected to a systematic program of deracination and resocialisation”.

Some left Zionist or anti Zionist groups try to present the Sephardim as a benighted ethnic minority. But, if the aim is to wean Sephardim away from ultra-Zionism, this is a strategy doomed to failure. Once they became settler colonists and their connections with the Arabs were severed, their primary loyalty came to be with the Zionist project. But, this cannot erase the fact that the “Sephardim” are Arab Jews as is widely accepted in the humanities and social science research literature. Even more pointedly linguistic and genetic research shows that contrary to the idea that they are so-called indigenous Jews of the Levant, in fact they are predominantly descended primarily from North African Berbers and Arabs.

The truth is that Ashkenazi Jews come mostly from Eastern Europe, with origins in the Caucasus, Turkey and Iran. Sephardim, are mostly of Arab and Berber origins. They are ‘Arab Jews’ with perhaps as little connection to Palestine as the Ashkenazim. There is, in other words, no unitary ‘Jewish people’ with any historically continuous claim to the land of Palestine.

March 7, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Comments Off on Are the Jews indigenous to Palestine?

Stanislav Krapivnik: Russia-Iran Cooperation & Escalation in Ukraine

Glenn Diesen | March 6, 2026

Stanislav Krapivnik is a former US Army officer, supply chain exec and military-political expert, now based in Russia. He was born in Lugansk during the Soviet times, migrated to the US as a child and served in the US army. Krapivnik discusses how Russia cooperates with Iran, and why the Iran War is creating immense pressure on Putin to escalate.

Follow Prof. Glenn Diesen:

March 6, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , , , | Comments Off on Stanislav Krapivnik: Russia-Iran Cooperation & Escalation in Ukraine

Indonesia suspends participation in Board of Peace following attack on Iran

MEMO | March 6, 2026

Indonesia has announced the suspension of all discussions on the proposed Board of Peace, an initiative launched by US President Donald Trump, as military tensions rise in the Middle East.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Sugiono said the decision to suspend participation was taken because of the latest military escalation in the region, which has directly affected the foreign policy priorities of countries involved in the initiative.

He explained that international attention has now shifted to the consequences of the conflict with Iran. He added that Indonesia would hold intensive consultations with its partners in the Gulf region, as they are directly affected by the ongoing attacks and rising tensions.

Indonesia’s participation in the council has faced strong criticism from domestic political and religious groups. They argue that joining an initiative led by the Trump administration could undermine Jakarta’s long-standing position in support of the Palestinian cause.

In the same context, the Indonesian Ulema Council called for an immediate withdrawal from the initiative, saying it lacks effectiveness while the military offensive continues.

March 6, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Indonesia suspends participation in Board of Peace following attack on Iran

‘Operation Epic Fury’ burns an estimated $5.82 billion in just 100 hours

MEMO | March 6, 2026

The first 100 hours of “Operation Epic Fury” have cost US forces at least an estimated $5.82 billion, or about 0.69% of the entire 2026 US defense budget, according to data compiled by Anadolu.

Anadolu estimates that the US spent $779 million in the first 24 hours of the operation. As operations have continued, the total operational cost of US offensives has tallied to approximately $3.3 billion, with figures from the Center for Strategic and International Studies showing a similar total.

In addition to operational costs, the US has lost significant military assets in Iran’s retaliatory strikes. According to estimates by Anadolu, the US has already lost roughly $2.52 billion.

US asset losses

The primary contributor to the losses is a US AN/FPS-132 early warning radar system at Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, valued at $1.1 billion, which was struck by an Iranian missile on Saturday. Qatar confirmed that the radar was hit and damaged.

On Sunday, three F-15E Strike Eagles were lost in a friendly fire incident involving Kuwaiti air defenses. While all six aircrew survived, the planes did not — with the cost of replacing them estimated at $282 million.

US officials speaking to CBS News said that three MQ-9 Reaper Surveillance and Attack Drones belonging to the US Air Force have been downed so far, at an estimated cost of $90 million.

During its initial attack on Saturday, Iran struck the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain, destroying two satellite communications terminals and several large buildings.

Open-source intelligence reports identified the targeted SATCOM terminals as AN/GSC-52Bs, with an estimated cost of $20 million, factoring in deployment and installation costs.

In addition to the SATCOM terminals lost in Bahrain, satellite imagery analyzed by the New York Times of Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, shows three more radomes destroyed, adding roughly $30 million in costs.

Since initial reports of a destroyed AN/TPY-2 radar component of the THAAD Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) System deployed at Al-Ruwais Industrial City in the United Arab Emirates, at least one other AN/TPY-2 system in Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan appears to have been destroyed. The damaged radar components are estimated to be worth $500 million each. There are also reports that another system has been hit in the UAE, however, there has been no official confirmation or satellite imagery to support this claim.

Altogether, Iran has damaged an estimated $2.52 billion worth of US military assets in the region.

US offensive costs

According to analysis by the CSIS, Anadolu’s initial estimate of $779 million appears to represent roughly a daily expenditure for US forces.

CSIS estimates it will cost $3.1 billion to replenish the US munitions inventory on a like-for-like basis for the first 100 hours, with the costs increasing by $758.1 million per day.

As the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Gerald R. Ford remain in the region with their contingent of destroyers and littoral combat ships, they continue to expend an estimated $15 million a day.

US defensive systems were also heavily used to intercept Iranian attacks. According to estimates by the Payne Institute, the US has fired approximately 180 SM-2/SM-3/SM-6 naval interceptors, 90 Patriot PAC-2/PAC-3 missiles, and 40 THAAD interceptors.

March 6, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , | Comments Off on ‘Operation Epic Fury’ burns an estimated $5.82 billion in just 100 hours

How Israel and the FBI manipulated assassination plots to goad Trump into Iran war

By Max Blumenthal | The Grayzone | March 6, 2026

The FBI manufactured plots to convince Trump that Iran sought to kill him, while Israel and its administration allies exploited the president’s deepest fears to keep him on the war path.

“I got him before he got me,” an ebullient President Donald Trump remarked to a reporter when asked about his motives for authorizing the killing of Iran’s Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on February 28, 2026.

With his off-the-cuff remark, Trump revealed that anxiety about his own assassination at the hands of Iranian agents influenced his decision to initiate a US-Israeli regime change war that has already resulted in American casualties, the bombings of schools and hospitals inside Iran, devastating Iranian retaliatory strikes on US military bases and embassies, and a spiraling global economic crisis.

Trump’s generalized fears of assassination were well-founded. He was nearly killed in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024 by a 20-year-old engineering student named Thomas Crooks who managed to fire eight rounds at the former president from a rooftop, slicing his ear and missing his head by a hair’s breadth. Two months later, a drifter named Ryan Routh was arrested after hiding for hours in the shrubbery outside the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida. Routh had been spotted after pointing an assault rifle toward a Secret Service agent as Trump played golf 400 yards away.

Officials have yet to produce any evidence that Iran played a role in either of these attempts on Trump’s life. Yet since those fateful events, Israel-aligned Trump advisors, Israeli intelligence, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself have gone to extreme lengths in order to tie Tehran to the plots. More shocking still is the fact that the FBI has manufactured a series of assassination plots, successfully convincing Trump that Iran was hunting him on US soil with highly sophisticated teams of hit men.

The man accused of leading the most significant of these operations, Asif Merchant, is currently on trial in a Brooklyn, NY federal court. After the US granted him a visa despite his presence on a terror watchlist, Merchant was in the constant company of an FBI confidential informant who ultimately steered the contrived plot to its conclusion. He never stood a chance of realizing his plans, and did not appear serious about doing so.

Independent journalist Ken Silva puts it succinctly in his forthcoming investigative book, “The Trump Assassination Plots”: “A closer look at the Merchant case reveals that at the very least…it was a highly controlled FBI sting operation that never posed a threat to Trump. More nefariously, records and whistleblower disclosures indicate that Merchant may have been the patsy in a case totally fabricated by the undercover agents.”

Authorities arrested Merchant on July 12, 2024 – just one day before Crooks attempted to kill Trump in Butler. Hours after the failed Butler assassination, FBI agents interrogated Merchant about whether it was in fact Iran that had Crooks under its control.

At that point, Trump was still campaigning to be a “President of Peace. On the campaign stump, he warned that his opponent, Kamala Harris, “would get us into World War III guaranteed.” Trump vowed to resolve the war between Ukraine and Russia in one day, and distanced himself from pro-war Republicans who sought regime change in Iran.

Pro-war elements in Trump’s coterie exercised multiple points of leverage to reverse the president’s anti-interventionist instincts. Ultra-Zionist billionaires supplied vital and well-documented influence over Trump’s policies by keeping his campaign war chest flush. But Trump remained an erratic personality whose petty grievances kept his aides in a perpetual state of uncertainty.

It was only by exploiting Trump’s deepest psychological vulnerability – his fear of an assassin’s bullet – that Israel and its cutouts in his administration were able to secure their influence over the president, keeping him on the warpath against Iran.

The assassination escalation trap

On June 3, 2020, as the commander of Iran’s IRGC Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, deboarded an airplane at Baghdad International Airport, on his way to peace talks with Saudi officials, a US drone killed him with a Hellfire missile. The strike had been ordered by Trump following a sustained campaign of military escalation against Iranian allies orchestrated by his National Security Council Director John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

As journalist Gareth Porter reported for The Grayzone, by the time Trump authorized Soleimani’s assassination, Netanyahu was planning unilateral strikes on Iran aimed at drawing the US into direct conflict. Trump issued orders to kill the general under sustained pressure by Pompeo and Bolton, two pro-Israel hardliners. Both former Trump officials have lobbied for the Israeli and Saudi-funded Mojahedin El-Khalk (MEK), a cult-like exiled militia that has carried out numerous assassinations of Iranian officials at the behest of Israel’s intelligence services.

By killing Soleimani, Trump set the US on a collision course for all-out war with Iran – just as Netanyahu had hoped. What’s more, the president invited the prospect of violent retaliation against himself and his national security advisors.

So long as Trump feared the specter of IRGC agents lurking behind every corner, it stood to reason that he was more likely to authorize a regime change war on Iran. And so the FBI went to work, concocting a series of plots that helped forge Trump’s belligerent attitude toward Tehran.

Brought to you by the FBI: Iran’s plot to kill John Bolton

The first major Iranian plot arrived in 2022, when the Department of Justice filed charges against an Iranian national, Shahram Poursafi, for supposedly hiring a hitman to kill Bolton. However, the hitman turned out to be an FBI informant, and the plot was largely contrived by the Bureau. Poursafi, for his part, could not be arrested because he lived in Iran.

As journalist Ken Silva reported, the FBI officer who oversaw the manufactured plot to kill Bolton, Steven D’Antuono, was the same official who ran the Detroit field office that relied on paid informants to concoct the 2020 plot by right-wing militia members to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. In a 2025 federal appeal court ruling, the judge acknowledged that defendants in that case “are correct that the government encouraged them to settle on a plan” to kidnap Whitmer. The FBI’s D’Antuono also oversaw the probe into the suspicious planting of pipe bombs at Republican and Democratic Party headquarters in Washington on January 6, 2021. In the course of his failed investigation, he misled Congress about having received “corrupted” evidence.

Though Bolton was never in danger from Iran, the FBI-contrived plot began to fuel paranoia among Trump administration veterans. Pompeo now believed that he too was being targeted by Iranian assassination teams. In his 2023 campaign memoir, “Never Give an Inch,” the former CIA director claimed Poursafi had also paid $1 million to a hitman to kill him.

However, Pompeo provided no additional details on the plot, which was never mentioned in DOJ documents charging Poursafi for attempting to kill Bolton. According to those affidavits, Poursafi sent just $100 to the FBI’s confidential human source before the DOJ concluded its investigation.

Asif Merchant, accused ringleader of an FBI-managed Iranian plot to assassinate Trump

Iran’s hapless hitman granted special visa, introduced to FBI informant

In April 2024, as Trump launched his comeback presidential campaign, an itinerant salesman named Asif Merchant arrived from Pakistan to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas. He was quickly flagged as a “Qualified Person of Interest” who’d been placed on a Department of Homeland Security watchlist. Agents from an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) team then discovered through a search of Merchant’s devices that he had visited Iran, where his wife and adopted son lived. Whether they’d received a tip from Israel, which furnishes reams of intelligence to the FBI on foreign Muslim visitors to the US, remains an open question.

According to JTTF documents obtained by pro-Trump reporter John Solomon, Merchant was “released without incident” and designated as “free to travel to desired destination.” In fact, the FBI had granted him a “Special Public Benefit Parole,” which, as Solomon explained, “would allow agents to try to flip Merchant as a cooperator or try to determine why he was coming to the United States and who he might be working with.”

The FBI whistleblower who provided Solomon with the documents on Merchant’s airport interview compared the “Special Public Benefit Parole” to the scandalous “Fast and Furious” program, in which President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice facilitated the delivery of automatic weapons from US gun dealers to Mexican cartels in order to supposedly surveil the gangs’ criminal activities.

Almost as soon as Merchant entered the US, the FBI introduced him to a confidential informant posing as a potential business partner and operating under the alias, Nadeem Ali. The informant had served as translator for the US military during its occupation of Afghanistan.

Though Merchant did not propose any crimes, the FBI wiretapped a meeting between him and the informant, Ali, in a hotel room on June 3, 2024. There, Merchant was taped making a supposed “finger gun” motion while mentioning an unspecified “opportunity.” This grainy minute-long hidden camera recording is presented as the linchpin of the DOJ’s indictment of Merchant.

According to the FBI, Merchant had outlined a highly complex plot which required the hiring of two hitmen, “twenty five people who could perform a protest after the distraction occurred, and a woman to do ‘reconnaissance.”

For the elaborate flash mob-style assassination extravaganza, Merchant was asked by the informant to fork over a mere $5000. The Pakistani visitor had no means of scrounging up the fee, however, raising further questions about the seriousness of the plot. “I did not think I was going to be successful,” Merchant would later state in court.

Virtually penniless, Merchant was forced to gather the cash from an anonymous “associate,” according to the DOJ indictment. Next, the FBI informant took him on a winding journey from Boston to New York City, where he allegedly handed the money to two other FBI informants posing as hit men. The DOJ claims Merchant made plans to fly to Pakistan on June 12, but was arrested in his residence that day.

Merchant interrogated about Butler, kept incommunicado

The following day, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks arrived at a fairground in Butler, Pennsylvania where former president Trump was scheduled to speak. He flew a drone in the air for 15 minutes, surveying the area as he finalized plans to assassinate the candidate. In an odd coincidence, the Secret Service’s anti-drone system was offline all morning and into the afternoon — until roughly 15 minutes after Crooks flew his drone. When Trump took the stage, Crooks climbed atop a slanted rooftop 130 yards away and fired eight shots at the president, missing his head by an inch, until a local police officer fired back. He was killed by a Secret Service sniper who had inexplicably hesitated to fire for a full 15 seconds.

Thirty hours later, FBI agents flew to Houston to interrogate Merchant in his jail cell about a possible Iranian connection to the assassination attempt in Butler. An FBI source told the Washington Post the Bureau “took the extraordinary step of interviewing him without his lawyer to determine whether he knew Crooks.”

The grilling continued even after Merchant was transferred to the maximum security Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn – the same prison where Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of United Healthcare’s CEO, is currently being held. There, he was held under harsh conditions in solitary confinement, unable to interact with anyone but the guards who brought him food and his lawyers because, as then-Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco argued, he might use code words to initiate further assassination plots. “It appeared they thought I was some kind of super spy,” Merchant later reflected.

Not only was Merchant prevented from calling his family in Pakistan, he was blocked from reviewing recordings of conversations he held with undercover FBI informants, as the DOJ had marked them “Sensitive.” In March 2025, his lawyer protested that US Marshals repeatedly refused to allow him to meet with this counsel and review discovery at the courthouse. This, too, was justified on the basis of specious national security grounds.

However, as the journalist Ken Silva discovered, an internal memo by the Bureau Of Prisons Director Colette Peters confirmed that Merchant had no contact with any Iranian intelligence assets in the US. “Law enforcement has not identified any IRGC associates of Merchant operating in the United States who could continue to orchestrate violent acts,” Peters wrote.

Indeed, the only Iranian assassins with whom Merchant appeared to have interacted inside the US were undercover informants working for the FBI.

Merchant “had never been close to realizing” Trump assassination

During his trial this March 4, Merchant’s lawyer, Avraham Moskowitz, took the highly unusual step of allowing his client to take the stand. Merchant proceeded to present a version of events that contrasted sharply with the account he provided in his initial FBI proffer. For example, the defendant claimed he had been coerced into the plot by an IRGC agent, and went forward with a plan “to maybe have someone murdered” only because he feared for his wife and adopted son back in Iran.

After his arrest by the FBI, Merchant said he engaged in discussions with federal authorities about becoming an informant himself, but they ultimately broke down for unknown reasons.

“I was not wanting to do this so willingly,” he insisted in Urdu, adding, “I did not think I was going to be successful.”

In its coverage of the trial, the New York Times concluded Merchant “had never been close to realizing the vision of his Iranian handler.”

But back in 2024, as word spread of Merchant’s arrest, Israel-adjacent figures in Trump’s inner circle exploited the case to exacerbate the candidate’s anxiety about the Ayatollah’s wrath.

Israel-aligned forces blur Butler with Iran

Just three days after Trump’s campaign was nearly ended by a lone American assassin’s bullet in Butler, officials burrowed within the architecture of the national security state took measures to shift the focus to Iran.

“The Biden administration obtained intelligence in recent weeks about an Iranian assassination plot against former President Donald Trump, and the information led the Secret Service to ramp up security around the former president, according to three U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter,” reported NBC’s Ken Dilanian on July 16, 2024. (Dilanian had been fired from his previous gig at the LA Times after he was exposed for allowing the CIA to review his reports before publication).

The unnamed officials were clearly referring to the plot which the FBI manufactured for Merchant. The revelation not only seemed like a cynical attempt to obscure the reality of the near-assassination in Butler, which was conducted by a friendless American man who had never left the country. It also suggested the FBI had been so focused on concocting Iranian plots on American soil that it ignored the years-long trail of YouTube comments left by the would-be assassin bluntly declaring his intention to kill US politicians and police officers, and his hopes to instigate a civil war.

Though FBI leadership misled the public about the nature of the Butler plot, falsely claiming, for instance, that Crooks was not communicating with others online, they were never able to connect it to Iran. This clearly frustrated Rep. Mike Waltz, a close Trump ally seated on the House committee to investigate the Butler plot.

“These plots from Iran are ongoing. And when Biden says nothing, Harris says nothing, the DOJ tries to bury it, what message does Iran get? They get that we can keep trying to take Trump out and have no consequences,” Waltz fulminated on Fox News in August 2024.

Referencing the FBI-manufactured Merchant operation, Waltz thundered, “You have multiple assassination plots from the Iranians. This Pakistani national was recruiting females as spotters. He had recruited hit men and had made a down payment. He was even recruiting protesters as a distraction.”

By this point, Waltz was on his way to a short stint as Trump’s National Security Council Director, where he would help direct a failed war on Iran’s allies among the Ansurallah movement in Yemen. (Waltz was demoted to US ambassador to the UN after he accidentally included the Atlantic Magazine editor-in-chief and former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg in a private administration Signal chat where classified information about US attack plans on Yemen was shared).

Throughout his career, the Israel lobby and Netanyahu’s allies had quietly propelled his rise. As AIPAC CEO Elliot Brandt remarked in private comments exclusively revealed by The Grayzone, Waltz was one of Israel’s “lifelines” inside the Trump administration, as he had been groomed by the Israel lobby since he first ran for Congress.

For Waltz and other Israel-aligned figures close to Trump, connecting the Butler incident to Iran appeared to offer a direct path to conflict with Iran. As an unnamed high-level US official told the Washington Post, if Tehran had been found responsible for Crooks’ attempt to kill Trump, “it would mean war.”

Certain foreign actors were also working to steer the US toward blaming Iran for Butler. In the late summer of 2024, the Justice Department received an urgent alert from abroad which connected Crooks directly to IRGC plots to kill Trump. According to the Washington Post, the tip arrived through a “confidential human source overseas” – almost certainly Israeli intelligence.

After a thorough investigation, DOJ officials decided the tip was not credible. “Nothing credibly connected him to Iranian plots,” one official told the Post.

But in the wake of the shooting in Butler, the constant chatter about looming Iranian threats had indelibly altered Trump’s outlook. Reporters who followed Trump on the campaign trail described a palpable sense of panic from the candidate and his inner circle about IRGC-directed hitmen stalking them at every stop.

“Ghost flights” for Trump triggered by imaginary Iran missile threats

With the Trump campaign already consumed with anxiety, the FBI delivered an alert that sent them spiraling into the depths of paranoia.

According to the Bureau, Iran had placed operatives inside the country with access to surface-to-air missiles. This dubious warning prompted Trump’s already militarized security team to take an extraordinary step. Fearing that Iran would down the famous “Trump Force One” airliner at any moment, Trump was placed on a “ghost flight” owned by his golf buddy, real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff, while the rest of his campaign traveled on the main jet.

Joining Trump on the secret decoy plane was his campaign manager, Suzie Wiles, who would go on to become White House chief of staff, controlling access and the flow of information to the president. Unbeknownst to the public, Wiles had served as a paid advisor to Israel’s Netanyahu during his 2020 re-election campaign, consolidating her role as a key point of contact between Tel Aviv and Trump.

Journalist Ken Silva has revealed that the FBI alert which prompted Trump’s use of a “ghost plane” was based on a cynical deception. As Silva explains in his forthcoming book on the assassination plots surrounding Trump, federal investigators had discovered that Routh, the would-be assassin at Mar-a Lago, had attempted to purchase a rocket launcher, and may have been in contact with Iranian nationals during his time in Ukraine. The Bureau likely massaged that information into the bogus report it provided the Trump campaign, conjuring up imaginary Manpad-toting IRGC operatives to exacerbate the candidate’s fears.

Once he entered the Oval Office, Trump was encircled by Israel-aligned advisors and staunchly committed to the belief that Iran had attempted to eliminate him on the campaign trail. As commander-in-chief of the US military, he was hellbent on revenge.

Netanyahu nudges Trump with Butler plot

On June 15, 2025, days after launching an unprovoked war on Iran, Netanyahu took to Fox News to manipulate Trump into joining the assault. The Israeli leader appeared to know exactly which psychological vulnerabilities to exploit.

“These people who chant death to America, tried to assassinate President Trump twice,” Netanyahu declared, asserting without a shred of evidence that Iran was behind both the Butler assassination attempt and the one at Mar a-Lago.

“Do you have intel that the assassination attempts on President Trump were directly from Iran?” a visibly startled Fox News host Bret Baier asked.

“Through proxies, yes. Through their intel, yes. They want to kill him,” stated Netanyahu with a cocksure gaze.

One week later, Trump authorized a series of US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in support of Israel’s military assault. Though Trump arranged a ceasefire soon after the attack, Israel’s influence over his administration – and over his psyche – guaranteed that another, much more violent round of conflict was just over the horizon.

In a graphic promoted by the White House’s official Twitter/X account on July 21, 2025, Trump implied that he had begun to turn the tables on his would-be Iranian assassins: “I was the hunted, and now I’m the hunter,” he declared.

Israel claims to eliminate would-be Trump assassin in Iran

By March 2026, Trump was back to war with Iran. Within four days, the US-Israeli joint assault had predictably expanded into an open-ended regional war following the failure of an opening series of decapitation strikes to induce regime change.

On the afternoon of March 4, the glowering US “Secretary of War” and former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth appeared before a lectern at the Pentagon and vowed to unleash “death and destruction from the sky all day long” over the people of Iran.

As his cartoonishly violent screed built to a crescendo, Hegseth issued a dramatic announcement: “The leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed. Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh.”

Though Hegseth did not name the figure, an Israeli journalist who functions as one of Netanyahu’s favorite stenographers, Amit Segal, revealed that Israel had assassinated an IRGC official named Rahman Mokadam who was supposedly responsible for directing a plot to kill Trump. But once again, the details of the plot revealed layers of FBI chicanery, confidential informants masked as “co-conspirators,” and a compromised witness.


In fact, the supposed assassination plan which Mokadam was accused of directing did not initially focus on Trump. Instead, the target was said to be Masih Alinejad, an Iranian expat and regime change activist on the US government payroll. The only evidence that Trump was a possible target at all came from the claims of a convicted drug dealer and con man named Farhad Shakeri, who had also been a defendant. Shakeri spoke to the FBI by telephone from Iran, providing dubious information in exchange for a reduced prison sentence for an unnamed associate in the US.

It was during these remote interviews that Shakeri seemingly claimed he had an IRGC handler who had directed him to kill Trump. But according to the FBI’s criminal complaint against him, that handler’s name was “Majid Soleimani,” not Mokadam.

The FBI agent who interviewed Shakeri clearly recognized his penchant for fabulism, writing that “certain of Shakeri’s statements appear to be true and others appear to be false.” Shakeri had indeed lied throughout his interviews, yet the agent still concluded that “it appears” he was planning to kill Trump. He did not explain why he considered the confession credible, and the allegation about a plot to kill Trump was notably absent from the grand jury indictment filed a month later.

After killing Mokadam on March 4, the Israelis went straight to the president to boast of their supposed achievement – and reignite his anxiety about Iranian assassins.

As Amit Segal noted, “Trump was informed of this in the past few hours by Israel.” In doing so, the Israelis reinforced Trump’s sense that he had been hunted by Iran – and that by fighting their war, he was saving his own skin.

As it had in the past, the White House posted a video on its official Twitter/X account proclaiming Trump’s triumph over Iranian assassins: “I WAS THE HUNTED, AND NOW I’M THE HUNTER.”

Thomas Crooks may have narrowly missed Trump’s cranium in Butler, Pennsylvania, but Israel had found a way into the president’s head.

March 6, 2026 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on How Israel and the FBI manipulated assassination plots to goad Trump into Iran war

Iranian Strikes Dispel the Illusion of US Security Umbrella

Sputnik – 06.03.2026

Almost all the Gulf states, including the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, that host American military bases or troops, have been targeted by Iran in the latest military confrontation between the Islamic Republic and the US and Israel.

The current war between arch-foes Iran and Israel and its all-weather friend, the US, has laid bare the hollow security assurances that the Gulf nations have been assured of for decades, retired Colonel Rajeev Agarwal, a West Asia expert and a Senior Research Consultant at the New Delhi-based think tank, the Chintan Research Foundation, told Sputnik.

“It was under this illusion that a large number of Gulf countries had agreed to not only buy very expensive American weapon platforms but also host American military bases in the region,” he said.

The story of American security guarantees goes back to the period of 1979-80, soon after the Iranian revolution, when most countries in the region felt threatened by the Islamic regime in Iran.

At his 1980 State of the Union Address, in reaction to the 1979 Iranian revolution, then-US President Jimmy Carter had assured the region, stating, “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force”.

The failure of the US to protect its military bases and the host Gulf countries is, therefore, a major embarrassment for the US, the Indian Army veteran underscored.

“The fact that Iranian missiles have caused large-scale damage, including the Fifth Fleet HQ and the Naval base in Bahrain as well as military bases in Kuwait, Doha, UAE, Jordan, etc., is proof. In fact, on the night of 1-2 March, the US base in Ebril, Iraq, which is basically a huge ammunition depot, was targeted and completely destroyed,” Agarwal highlighted.

Strikes into the Gulf countries are proof that the security guarantees offered by the US are ineffective and that the Gulf countries cannot rely on American security assurances for their safety in the future, he added.

In fact, the strikes into Doha, Qatar, lay bare the iron-clad security guarantees that the US had assured Qatar after Israel had fired missiles into Doha in September 2025, targeting the Hamas leadership, the defence commentator stressed.

“As regards Iran’s ability to strike into the Gulf nations, all the US bases are well within the reach of Iranian missiles and drones. Despite a large number of missiles getting intercepted, a fair number do escape the Air and Missile Defence Shield to reach their targets. The strikes by drones and missiles in Gulf countries were also a part of the pre-determined military strategy of Iran,” Agarwal noted.

It had, in fact, announced it well before the start of the conflict that, in case of a war started by Israel and the US, all American bases and assets in the region would be considered legitimate military targets and that would bear the brunt of Iran’s punitive response. Iran had also informed the neighbouring Gulf countries that such strikes would not be aimed at targeting their sovereignty and that would be restricted to US, Israeli and Western targets, he pointed out.

There is no doubt that this is the biggest eye-opener for the region on the illusion of a security umbrella by the US. There were previous instances too, though isolated in nature, where the Gulf nations felt betrayed but were convinced that the American security guarantees were still vital for their collective security, the strategic affairs pundit reckoned.

“This war is a lesson not only for the Gulf countries but also for any other nation wanting to secure its national security exclusively through external players. And the lesson is ‘National security cannot be bought’. Integral and organic security systems are vital to ensure a nation’s security. Once this war is over, the region will have to seriously review its security architecture and come up with solutions that are more inclusive and collaborative in nature,” Agarwal concluded.

March 6, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Iranian Strikes Dispel the Illusion of US Security Umbrella

US Boasts of Destroyed Iranian Launchers Lack Credibility – Ex-DoD Official

Sputnik – 06.03.2026

As the United States is clearly lying about the number of the US military casualties in the current war with Iran, the veracity of other claims made by the US is dubious, former US Department of Defense officer David T. Pyne tells Sputnik.

Properly assessing Iran’s losses is also difficult due to the fact that it is unclear whether US claims of destroyed Iranian missile launchers take into account the decoys and dummy targets, he points out.

“I believe that US estimates of the total number of Iranian ballistic missiles are likely much lower than is actually the case as I believe Iran may have tens of thousands of missiles in its stockpile,” Pyne adds.

Finally, even though the US and Israel did manage to take out a number of Iranian mobile missile launchers, Iran’s military has become adept at keeping its remaining launchers out of harm’s way.

Thus, reasons Pyne, it is likely that most of the Iranian missile launchers – especially those hidden deep underground – “will survive the war” even if it drags on for months.

US Shortages and Israel’s Weakness

Meanwhile, the US and Israel now deal with their “very limited supply” of offensive missiles and missile defense interceptors alike, with the latter potentially running out by next week, says Pyne.

The US could soon find itself unable to defend all of its assets from Iranian attacks, even as Iran is systematically dismantling US radar capabilities in the region, further degrading the US ability to shoot down Iranian missiles.

At the same time, Israeli air defenses have proven to be “largely ineffective” against Iranian ballistic and hypersonic missiles.

“In a protracted war of attrition like this war is shaping up to be, Iran is likely to emerge victorious,” Pyne remarks.

March 6, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , | Comments Off on US Boasts of Destroyed Iranian Launchers Lack Credibility – Ex-DoD Official

Europe not in position to cooperate with US and Israel against Iran

By Ahmed Adel | March 6, 2026

Although the US-Israeli attack on Iran has worsened the crisis in the Middle East, some European countries approved of the operation, such as the United Kingdom, which provided military bases to the Americans, and Germany, which rhetorically supported the offensive through its Chancellor, Friedrich Merz. However, Europe is not cooperating as actively as it was before.

Recent historical experiences, such as the wars in Iraq (2003-2011), Afghanistan (2001-2021), and the military intervention in Libya (2011), have created deep divisions among European countries regarding military actions outside their continent. Moreover, the European Union already dedicates substantial resources to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. In this context, the economic and military crisis among EU members makes them hesitant to engage in another large-scale armed conflict.

The timing is not very favorable for the Europeans. They are facing an economic crisis mainly caused by energy prices. The EU is attempting to wean off Russian energy without harming itself, but the strategy ultimately failed, and now that there is war in the Middle East, energy prices have spiked even more.

Russian President Vladimir Putin stated on March 4 that Russia could immediately halt the supply of raw materials to European markets, and thus thwarted the EU’s plan to systematically phase out Russian gas. Putin’s words caused psychological trauma to the EU because, instead of a planned embargo on Russian gas for 2027, he suggested that Europe should prepare for an immediate cut.

The Russian president’s warning and ongoing tensions in the Middle East continue to drive up global energy costs. The price increases mirror developments in international energy markets. Oil and gas prices have risen since the war on Iran began, particularly because it has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important transit routes for oil and natural gas.

Disruptions to shipping and decreased production by several Gulf states have tightened global supply. As a result, the price of Brent crude, the European benchmark oil, rose to around $84 per barrel on March 5, roughly 16% higher than before the conflict started, and close to its highest level since mid-2024.

Additionally, from a military perspective, Europe knows that its weaponry is not capable of conducting a high-intensity war due to a technical shortfall. At the same time, the EU wants to replace the US as Ukraine’s main benefactor, a corrupt state that drains many of the bloc’s resources.

Another reason for Europeans to remain impartial is the growth of the Muslim population in these countries, which also holds electoral influence and the power to sway domestic policy outcomes. The Muslim population in Europe is quite sizable, and European attacks in the Middle East could face internal opposition. Besides the Muslim community, most European citizens would be largely unwilling to fight for the Americans, especially in a scenario where the US might not achieve its objectives.

Europe uses rhetoric to avoid commitment. In the current context of hostilities in the Middle East, European leaders are not demonstrating a unified stance, even though some rhetorically support Washington and Tel Aviv’s initiatives. However, this behavior indicates a lack of European political cohesion.

London is not following Washington’s lead, something that has not occurred often since the Second World War. Germany is showing support, but lacks the power to act. Spain initially contradicted the White House but then quickly announced that a warship would be deployed to Cyprus in response to threats of sanctions from US President Donald Trump. In other words, Europe is divided and fragmented and therefore cannot act effectively at this moment.

Another obstacle is Iran’s warning that if Europeans join the offensive, there will be a fierce response. Because of this, Washington’s traditional Western allies are becoming mere observers in the region, even though they also have bases near the epicenter of the crisis. European bases are at risk if Europe attacks Iran, and it is a risk they are unwilling to take, besides not wanting to lose money in yet another conflict.

Furthermore, the Europeans are not even trying to mediate the conflict to avoid antagonizing Trump.

A new reconfiguration of the Middle East might happen after this conflict ends. The US could become weaker, which might impact its close ties with Gulf countries. Therefore, Europe might seize the opportunity created by its ally to expand its trade relations.

Nonetheless, Europe is not in a position to cooperate with the US and Israel and is acting opportunistically. They are observing Washington weaken politically in the Middle East, probably aiming to occupy spaces in neighboring countries after this war, because there will be new business opportunities.

In this context, Europe’s struggle to achieve political unity at the continental level is due to differing interests among its governments within the EU, as well as to managing its internal issues. Meanwhile, the bloc’s powers tend to exploit the situation to uphold their rhetoric aligned with Western values, while concealing their military weaknesses.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

March 6, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Europe not in position to cooperate with US and Israel against Iran

Iran Has ‘Broken the Myth’ of Israeli Military Power: Former Pakistani Envoy

Sputnik | March 6, 2026

Iran has effectively “broken the myth” of Israeli military supremacy, Asif Durrani, a former Pakistani ambassador to Iran and the UAE, told in an interview with Sputnik.

Despite decades of investment by the United States and Israel in advanced military technology, Iran successfully penetrated the much-vaunted Iron Dome defense system and struck Israeli installations, Durrani noted.

Durrani also condemned the assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, describing it as a highly dangerous escalation. He stressed that such a direct attack on the leader of a sovereign state sets a perilous precedent, one that has not been seen in previous global conflicts.

“Regime change should be in the hands of the Iranian people. No other country has the right to exercise that right. In fact, such attempts are likely to lead to further bloodshed and destruction in Iran,” he affirmed.

Durrani pointed out that despite 47 years of US efforts to topple the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution, those attempts have consistently failed. He added that there is currently no sign of a viable internal alternative to the existing government.

Commenting on Pakistan’s reminder to Iran of its alliance commitments to Saudi Arabia following Iranian strikes on Saudi territory, Durrani noted that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia share a historically close relationship. They have signed a strategic partnership agreement under which an attack on one is considered an attack on both. Nevertheless, he emphasized that Pakistan maintains a longstanding policy of promoting cooperation among Muslim nations and expects disputes to be resolved peacefully, particularly with regard to the Sunni world.

The former envoy expressed confidence that Iran will provide an explanation for its decision to strike American bases in Saudi Arabia. He noted that it is understood that if a country hosts military bases, those facilities may become legitimate targets in times of war.

“I hope there will be explanations coming from Iran as well as Saudi Arabia,” the diplomat concluded.

March 6, 2026 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Comments Off on Iran Has ‘Broken the Myth’ of Israeli Military Power: Former Pakistani Envoy

How, and why, US data centers in the Gulf became targets of war

Al Mayadeen | March 6, 2026

The drone strikes that knocked Amazon Web Services facilities offline in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain this week were not random acts of escalation. They were, according to analysts and industry insiders, a calculated strike on infrastructure that the United States has quietly woven into its military architecture across West Asia.

Amazon and Google hold a $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government to provide cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to entities, including the Israeli occupation forces.

That contract, largely absent from Western coverage of the strikes, may explain why AWS facilities, and not the dozens of data centers operated by local Gulf companies on behalf of US tech giants, were the ones that were hit.

“It would be easier to target AWS,” Ed Galvin, founder of data center research firm DC Byte, told Bloomberg, noting that other US tech services are typically housed within locally operated facilities, making them harder to identify and strike.

Of approximately 230 data centers built or under development across Gulf Arab states, only a handful are wholly owned and operated by a US company, according to DC Byte. All three struck this week belong to Amazon.

What was hit

The strikes took down two of AWS’s three availability zones in the UAE, one site located near Al Maktoum International Airport in Dubai, according to DC Byte, and damaged a facility in Bahrain situated close to a local military base and the King Fahd Causeway connecting the island to Saudi Arabia.

Consumer services, including online banking, were disrupted across the region. In a statement to clients, AWS said it was working to restore services while urging customers to migrate workloads to data centers outside West Asia, acknowledging that “the broader operating environment in the Middle East remains unpredictable.”

What Western media outlets fail to mention is that the exchange has not been one-sided. “Israel” and the United States have struck at least two data centers in Tehran, according to Holistic Resilience, a nonprofit organisation that maps airstrike activity.

A new front in an old logic

Data centers have entered the battlefield as legitimate targets because they power surveillance systems, drone navigation, real-time analysis of satellite footage, and the digital backbone of modern military operations.

Attacking such facilities can “paralyze banks, paralyze government offices,” Daniel Efrati, chief executive of NED Data Centers, told Bloomberg. “If you have one minute of downtime, it can cost any organization millions.”

Soft targets with hard consequences

The physical vulnerability of these facilities has been laid bare by this week’s strikes. Data centers are sprawling, visible, and dependent on exposed infrastructure, e.g., cooling units, diesel generators, gas turbines, that can be disabled without a direct hit on the building itself.

“If you knock out some of the chillers you can take them fully offline,” Sam Winter-Levy, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the Financial Times. Conventional data center security is designed to repel cyberattacks and physical intruders; it was not designed for drones.

Gulf AI ambitions under fire

The strikes land at a particularly fraught moment for Gulf states whose economic diversification strategies rest heavily on positioning themselves as global AI hubs. Saudi Arabia’s Humain and the UAE’s G42, both state-backed, have committed to vast data center clusters and signed major deals with Nvidia, Amazon, and Microsoft.

The UAE is constructing one of OpenAI’s “Stargate” facilities in Abu Dhabi. Microsoft announced last month it would open a new Azure facility in Saudi Arabia before the end of the year. Those ambitions now carry a new risk premium.

“The Gulf sold itself as a safe alternative to other markets,” Jessica Brandt, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Financial Times. “That argument just got harder to make.”

The new table stakes

Harder, but not necessarily fatal. Several analysts caution that the political and economic momentum behind Gulf AI investment is unlikely to be reversed by the strikes alone.

What has changed is the calculus around protection. “You can’t hide data centers,” Noah Sylvia, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, told Bloomberg. “But you can put air defence systems on them.”

One industry veteran based in the Gulf compared the situation to Intel’s chip manufacturing plants in “Israel,” ringed by military air defences, telling the Financial Times that for a project of Stargate’s scale, that kind of protection is now “table stakes.”

A global precedent

The broader implication reaches beyond the Gulf. “This is a harbinger of what’s to come,” Winter-Levy told the Financial Times, “and these types of attacks are not going to be limited to the Middle East.”

For the first time in history, the data centers that underpin the global digital economy have become a theater of war. The infrastructure the US built to project technological power across a volatile region has become a target precisely because of what it enables.

March 6, 2026 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism | , , , , | Comments Off on How, and why, US data centers in the Gulf became targets of war

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »