Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Iran Blockade Complications /Lt Col Daniel Davis & Nima Alkhorshid

Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – May 1, 2026

May 1, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Video, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on Iran Blockade Complications /Lt Col Daniel Davis & Nima Alkhorshid

Pirates of Mediterranean: Israel does as it pleases in the Sea of Three Continents

By Lorenzo Maria Pacini | Strategic Culture Foundation | May 1, 2026

How control of the Mediterranean works

On the night of April 29–30, the Zionist entity Israel attacked the 22 ships of the Global Sumud Flotilla 600 kilometers off the Italian coast, from where the group had set sail. All of this took place unhindered, constituting yet another act of bullying, piracy, and barbarism. But how does the Mediterranean work?

The Mediterranean, often referred to as “Mare Nostrum” in European political culture, is one of the most complex maritime theaters in the world: a crossroads of trade routes, a setting for migration crises, regional conflicts, and the strategic interests of major powers. The management of international waters, military control of shipping lanes, and initiatives by civilian vessels such as the Global Sumud Flotilla constitute three facets of the same dynamic: the attempt to regulate and control the use of the sea in the name of state interests, security, and humanitarian solidarity.

The basic legal framework for the management of international waters is the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), adopted in 1982 and in force since 1994, which regulates the mapping, use, and responsibilities of states regarding various maritime zones. In the Mediterranean, which is a nearly enclosed sea, this convention applies in a particular way, because the distance between the coasts is often less than 400 nautical miles—that is, the sum of the maximum EEZs of two opposing states.

The main zones recognized by UNCLOS are: the territorial sea (up to 12 miles from the baseline), where the coastal state has full sovereignty but is obligated to guarantee “innocent passage” to foreign vessels; the contiguous zone (up to 24 miles), with limited control for customs, tax, health, and immigration laws; The exclusive economic zone (up to 200 miles), for the rights to exploit biological and mineral resources, balanced by the freedom of navigation and overflight for other nations. Finally, the so-called High Seas (beyond the EEZs), a space open to all states, governed by the principle of freedom of navigation, fishing, scientific research, and the laying of cables and pipelines, provided this is done peacefully and with respect for environmental protection. In the Mediterranean, the scarcity of “true” high seas makes the delimitation of exclusive economic zones between coastal states—such as Italy–Greece, Greece–Turkey, or Cyprus–Turkey—a delicate matter, often linked to gas and oil resources and political-military disputes.

The management of international waters therefore takes place through: bilateral and multilateral delimitation agreements; regional cooperation measures (for example, under the Barcelona Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment and the Protocol on Integrated Coastal Zone Management); and institutions such as the UNCLOS Authority for resources beyond EEZs, which also regulate the use of the seabed “beyond national jurisdiction.” Alongside the law of the sea, the Mediterranean is subject to intense military surveillance that reflects the overlapping interests of major global and regional powers.

The “management” of international waters is therefore not merely a matter of rules, but also of operational capabilities, intelligence infrastructure, and military alliances.

Furthermore, there are various key actors and spheres of influence. First and foremost, NATO and the U.S.: the U.S. Sixth Fleet has its main base in Gaeta (Italy) and projects power throughout the Mediterranean, with particular attention to the routes connecting the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea to European economies. The United States uses the Mediterranean as a hub to control energy supply routes and to project power toward the Middle East and North Africa. Then there is Russia, though numerically less present, which has a task force in the Mediterranean, with logistical bases in Syria and a strategic focus on the passages between the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Obviously, the EU and individual member states, such as Italy, France, Greece, and Spain, maintain a strong naval presence, serving both national interests and EU and NATO operations. Then there are Israel and Turkey, which have advanced navies and conduct patrols and maritime traffic control around their coasts—Israel primarily regarding the Gaza Strip, and Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean in relation to energy resources.

These actors effectively define several areas of influence:

  • The Western Mediterranean (Gibraltar–Tunisia): a strong EU–NATO presence, with control over migration routes and maritime traffic toward the port of Gibraltar, the sole strategic access point to the Mediterranean.
  • The Central Mediterranean (Sicily–Libya): a frontline zone for Italian surveillance, rescue, and migration control operations, with Operation Safe Mediterranean expanding Italy’s naval presence to over 2 million km².
  • The Eastern Mediterranean (Greece–Turkey–Cyprus–Israel): a theater of conflict over EEZs and energy sovereignty, with the deployment of military ships and specialized units monitoring natural gas fields.

The operational management of maritime control relies on coastal radar networks, which monitor naval and air traffic hundreds of miles from the coast, command and control systems (such as the MCCIS, Maritime Command and Control Information System) that link radars, ships, and aircraft into a single real-time “maritime picture,” and, of course, international cooperation coordinates maritime surveillance among the navies of some twenty European countries, as well as the information-sharing network with NATO and the southern Mediterranean.

This “situational awareness” apparatus allows for the monitoring not only of commercial traffic but also of migration flows, illicit activities (drug trafficking, arms trafficking, illegal fishing), intelligence operations on undersea cable communications, and, in general, any attempt to cross the Mediterranean without coming to the attention of the states concerned.

The Global Sumud Flotilla challenges the Mediterranean blockade

What happened with the Global Sumud Flotilla is yet another act demonstrating that there is an aggressor and a victim. A civilian flotilla organized by activists, humanitarian organizations, NGOs, and citizens from dozens of countries, with the stated goal of breaking the maritime blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip and delivering humanitarian aid to the Palestinian population, is attacked and seized—all while the other states operating in the Mediterranean stand by, subjugated to Israel’s authority.

The Sumud Flotilla is not a single vessel, but an international coordination of dozens of ships that set sail from various Mediterranean ports to converge in international waters and head toward the Palestinian coast. Thousands of activists and volunteers board the ships, often under conditions of high risk, yet fully aware of the great symbolic value of their action for the Palestinian people, while the elites continue to profit from their suffering.

The ships of the Sumud Flotilla primarily carry essential humanitarian aid, such as food, medicines, medical supplies, equipment for rebuilding destroyed infrastructure, and medical support—all items that Israel has banned for years, demonstrating the most atrocious barbarity that recent human history has ever witnessed. The presence of a dedicated medical fleet, with more than 1,000 healthcare professionals, has been explicitly linked to the effort to alleviate the crisis in Gaza’s healthcare system, devastated by years of war and blockade.

It is an act of symbolic and perfectly legal nonviolent resistance, where the use of dozens of boats, multiple flags, and symbols of peace, the LGBTQ+ community, anti-fascist movements, and international solidarity aims to create a “visible presence” that makes it more difficult for Israeli naval forces to use force, as coercion against unarmed civilians generates significant media and political backlash. One may or may not agree with the methods and nature of this initiative, but the fact remains that the social impact is extremely high and that, above all, Israel has committed an act of piracy involving numerous countries.

The Israeli Navy maintains a reinforced naval blockade, with naval patrols, frigates, and underwater vessels operating near Israeli and Gaza territorial waters. In previous missions, the flotilla was intercepted in international waters and the ships were escorted or stopped, on charges of violating security measures imposed by Tel Aviv. The events of the past few hours, unfortunately, are part of an operational practice that the terrorist state of Israel continues to employ.

Certainly, while the Sumud Flotilla relies on the law of the sea (freedom of navigation and the duty to assist human life at sea), it must nonetheless factor in the risk of interception, violence, arrests, or accidents. At the same time, the media and political dimensions of the mission compel states to balance security rigor with concerns over excessive force that could generate further international pressure on Israel.

The story of the Sumud Flotilla also highlights how the management of international waters in the Mediterranean is a realm of unstable conflict. And, above all, how there is no balance: there is a sovereign, Israel, which is free to do as it pleases, and a series of subordinate states that obey in silence, bound by a code of silence. Israel’s action against the Flotilla demands that we take a stand and take decisive action against those who have transformed the Mediterranean—a sea that should symbolize peace among three continents—into a space of raids and unjustifiable violence.

May 1, 2026 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Comments Off on Pirates of Mediterranean: Israel does as it pleases in the Sea of Three Continents

Minab children massacre not ‘unfortunate situation’ but ‘heinous war crime’: Tehran

Press TV – May 1, 2026

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman has condemned the US war secretary’s attempt to portray the massacre of children in Minab as an “unfortunate incident,” reiterating that the missile strike was “a heinous war crime.”

During hours of tense testimony before Congress on Wednesday, Pete Hegseth described the deadly strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Iran’s southern city of Minab as an “unfortunate incident,” which according to him remains under investigation.

On the first day of the US-Israeli aggression against Iran on February 28, US Tomahawk missiles struck the school, killing 168 people, most of them children.

In a post on X on Friday, Esmaeil Baghaei said that the attack “was not an ‘unfortunate situation.’ It was a premeditated, heinous war crime.”

Baghaei shared a video of Representative Ro Khanna questioning Hegseth about the cost to American taxpayers “in terms of the strike on the Iranian school where kids were killed, in terms of the missiles we used.”

“To put it plainly,” Baghaei said, “how much did it cost American taxpayers for their secretary of defense to direct the deliberate killing of innocent schoolchildren and their teachers?”

The spokesman added that those responsible for the crime “must be held fully accountable and brought to justice.”

In an address to the UN Human Rights Council in late March, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the incident as “the tip of the iceberg” of systematic violations committed with impunity by the United States and Israel.

The two enemies launched a large-scale, unprovoked war against Iran, assassinating the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and a host of senior commanders while indirect negotiations were underway between Tehran and Washington regarding Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.

Subsequent terrorist strikes on civilian targets have so far killed more than 3,300 people, including children.

May 1, 2026 Posted by | War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on Minab children massacre not ‘unfortunate situation’ but ‘heinous war crime’: Tehran

OPCW Forced To Pay Damages To Whistleblower Who Found Evidence Of False Flag In Syria

The Dissident | April 30, 2026

After years of a continued cover-up, the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) has been forced by the International Labour Organization to pay damages to Dr. Brendan Whelan, an OPCW scientist who found evidence that the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, that took place in 2018, was a false flag.

Evidence Of A False Flag Uncovered

For context, in April of 2018, the U.S., UK, and France bombed the Syrian government in response to allegations that the former Assad regime used chemical weapons on civilians in the town of Douma.

The bombing took place before inspectors from the OPCW were able to visit the scene in Douma, and the evidence for the chemical attack was based on videos and photos put out by rebel groups, which showed dead civilians foaming at the mouth and two cylinders “found” on a roof of an apartment and on a bed.

However, once the OPCW team was able to inspect Douma, they found a significant body of evidence suggesting the attack was a false flag used to trigger Western intervention.

Ian Henderson, one of the inspectors at the scene, found that the two chlorine cylinders found at the scene were “manually placed rather than being delivered by aircraft”.

Going into further detail on this assessment, Henderson explained in his book released last year that , the damage of the cylinder found at location two did not match up with the damage to the roof at the location, signalling that the cylinder was placed in an already existing crater.

Above: What the cylinder looks like at the location (picture one) vs. what it should have looked like compared to the damage to the roof (picture 2)

“The smooth unsullied nose of the Location 2 cylinder remains the contrary smoking gun” Henderson notes in his book.

Similarly, Brendan Whelan found further evidence that the attack was a false flag.

No evidence of Sarin was found at the scene, but trace amounts of Chlorine were found, leading the official narrative to be that there was a chlorine gas attack at the scene.

However, Whelan spoke to NATO state based experts who ruled out the possibility that chlorine was used at the scene based on the videos and images put out.

The minutes from the meeting with toxicology experts reads that “the experts were conclusive in their statement that there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure. In particular, they stated that the onset of excessive frothing, as a result of pulmonary edema, observed in the photos and reported by witnesses would not occur in the short time period between the reported occurrence of the alleged incident and the time the videos were recorded (approximately 3-4 hours)”.

“The key ‘take away message’ from the meeting was that the symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine”, the minutes from the meeting added.

Brendan Whelan wrote a final interim report on the Douma case, which incorporated these findings.

The report written by Whelan writes that “Some of the signs and symptoms described by witnesses and noted in photos and video recordings taken by witnesses, of the alleged chemical victims, are not consistent with exposure to choking agents such as chlorine or phosgene” and adds that, “The FFM team is unable to provide satisfactory explanations for the relatively moderate damage to the cylinders allegedly dropped from an unknown height, compared to the destruction caused to the rebar-reinforced concrete roofs”.

A Cover-Up Of The Evidence

The officially released OPCW interim report, however, made no mention of the above evidence and instead implied that a chlorine attack took place in Douma by the Assad regime.

Instead of addressing the concerns of Henderson and Whelan, or providing a scientific answer to the evidence they uncovered, the OPCW resorted to smears in an attempt to discredit them- a campaign that ramped up after the initial work of the OPCW investigation was leaked and released on WikiLeaks.

Ian Henderson has previously given his account of the cover-up in his aforementioned book, which I previously detailed in a summary .

But now, after a long legal battle, the OPCW has been forced to pay damages to Brendan Whelan and to reverse it decision to bar him from ever working at the OPCW again by the UN court, the International Labour Organisation.

The court ruled, in reference to disciplinary measures brought by the OPCW against Brendan Whelan, that, “There was a requirement to observe due process at the disciplinary state prior to the imposition of any sanction upon to the complainant. According to the OPCW staff regulations and interim staff rules, no disciplinary proceeding may be instituted against a staff members unless he or she had been notified of the allegations against him or her, as well as of the right to seek assistance in his or her defence and be given a responsible opportunity to respond to those allegations. These steps were not taken before the director general issues disciplinary measures against the complaint to the extent that the complainant was not provided with the charges. He was also not provided with a copy of the full investigation report. The complaint right to due process before those measures were imposed upon him was violated.”

The court ruled that “The OPCW should pay the complainant 20,000 euros in moral damages” and that “the OPCW shall also pay the complainant 2000 euros in other costs”.

Now- after this vindication- Whelan has written an article at the Substack of journalist Aaron Mate, detailing what he went through at the OPCW.

Whelan revealed that the OPCW accused him of being behind the leak of the above engineering assessment “despite having left the Organisation some eight months before the leak”.

He added that, “I asked, repeatedly, to be told the precise allegations against me; a right not only enshrined in law but in the Organisation’s protocols. They refused to elaborate or specify any charges. At that point, I ended any collaboration with an investigation that was contemptuous of the requirements for due process. The investigation proceeded regardless.”

Despite the fact that “The official investigation report, for lack of evidence, had formally exonerated Inspectors A and B [Whelan and Henderson] (as my colleague and I were referred to respectively) from leaking the sensitive document” the OPCW basely claimed the two had “deliberately and in premeditated’ fashion enabled the leak by failing to comply with the ‘specified procedures for the handling of confidential information so as to create a clear risk of unauthorised disclosure.’”

He noted that this attack was done by the OPCW in order to get out of responding to the above engineering and toxicology assessments, writing:

It was no coincidence that I and my colleague—the only individuals investigated for the leak—had protested against bias and malpractice in the conduct of the OPCW’s Douma investigation, and, in my case, had been sidelined from the investigation for doing so. The OPCW had refused to address our concerns, which had since become a public controversy. The aim of the leak inquiry, therefore, was to attack our credibility without having to refute our scientific arguments.

For this, Whelan was “issued with a letter of censure and a lifetime ban from future employment with the Organisation I had served diligently for seventeen years.”

He added that, “As the legacy media had been heavily invested in maintaining the Western line that Syrian forces had used chemical weapons in Douma, the OPCW’s ad hominem attacks on the two dissenting inspectors were treated as a vindication of the official narrative.”

This included articles in the Guardian, Reuters, and the Western government sponsored Bellingcat, which repeated the false line that Whelan and Henderson were somehow responsible for the leak.

Then, after Whelan took the issue to the International Labour Organisation, the OPCW changed it’s story, now claiming that Whelan made a “serious breach of confidentiality” because he sent a letter to the OPCW chief of cabinet expressing concern over “the suppression of the team’s Douma report and a secretive attempt to publish a doctored version”.

The new allegation from the OPCW against Whelan was now a claim that “The Appellant forwarded an email exchange between himself and the former Chief of Cabinet to Director-OSP which contained specific and detailed information about evidence gathered by the FFM [Fact-Finding mission] investigators in Douma”.

“The ‘specific and detailed information’ they were referring to was a statement in my email to the Chief of Cabinet protesting the fact that the doctored report made the unsupported claim that ‘the team had sufficient evidence to determine that chlorine was released from two cylinders.’ This statement, despite being without basis, was ‘highly protected’, they said, and shouldn’t have been shared with the senior director” Whelan added.

He added, “In other words, by informing the Director of the Office of Special Projects of a phoney claim that had been fraudulently inserted into the team’s Douma report, I was committing a ‘serious breach of confidentiality.’ It is worth noting that, because it was challenged, this unfounded assertion was omitted from the final Douma report.”

The OPCW, referring to a letter sent by Whelan to the director general of the OPCW, also claimed that it, “contained specific and detailed information gathered by FFM investigators from toxicology experts. In creating and disseminating this letter, he failed to comply with the specified procedures for the handling, protection, release, and dissemination of confidential information so as to create a clear risk of unauthorised disclosure”.

“What was also significant about this new allegation was that it was the first time management has officially acknowledged this meeting with the German toxicologists. Even mention of it was excluded from the inspection timelines in official reports. By extension, it was the first tacit admission that this crucial piece of evidence was censored from the Douma investigation,” Whelan added.

The OPCW also claimed that Whelan has “sowed discord within the Organisation”, “By sharing information ‘within the Secretariat [emphasis added] [I]caused a staff member to call into question the integrity of the Organisation’s findings in Douma.’”

In other words, the complaint from the OPCW against Whelan was that he raised his concerns that the OPCW investigation was compromised and by providing solid evidence that the toxicology report was censored, a senior OPCW director began to (correctly) believe that the investigation had been compromised.

Now that the International Labour Organization has ruled that the OPCW acted unlawfully against Whelan, it again shows that the OPCW refused to engage with Brendan Whelan and Ian Henderson’s scientific findings and instead engaged in a cover-up to forward the Western narrative about Syria.

May 1, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Comments Off on OPCW Forced To Pay Damages To Whistleblower Who Found Evidence Of False Flag In Syria

Iran can thrive under blockade, the US and its allies cannot

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | May 1, 2026

While officials of the US Trump administration have repeatedly claimed that their blockade on Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is a winning strategy, on the contrary, Tehran thrives. Instead of taking the temporary ceasefire as an opportunity to find a viable offramp, Washington has used mental gymnastics to sell the public on a non-existent get out of jail free card.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has claimed that Iran’s oil industry is creaking under the pressure of the blockade imposed upon its exports, even making rather outlandish comments about the inevitability of oil infrastructure blowing up as a result. While the US seizure of Iran-linked tankers and vessels does evidently have an impact, it is being enormously overblown by an American administration that is out of viable options.

The way US President Donald Trump and his senior officials are speaking, it would lead you to believe that the “uno reverse card,” as it has been mockingly referred to, was going to lead to the freefall of Tehran’s economy. Yet, the US is still adding more sanctions to Iran, attempting to seize and/or freeze more of its assets, while issuing round-the-clock threats. If the US-imposed blockade, which is failing to block all shipping to and from Iran, were so effective, then these other much lesser measures wouldn’t make sense.

Even the pro-war Zionist think tanks, like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), have been agitating for more aggressive tactics and to escalate. For example, the Washington-based FDD recently published a Policy Brief article entitled ‘Trump Strikes at China’s Iranian Oil Trade, but It’s Not Enough’. In other words, nobody is convinced by Trump’s strategies, not even the biggest fans of the Iran war.

In the realm of reality, the Islamic Republic of Iran has survived under US sanctions for some 47 years now. Although the sanctions have had varying impacts at different phases of the ongoing conflict with the US, Iran has managed to adapt to its predicament. It survived through 8 years of brutal war with its neighbours, after former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein attacked it for the sake of the United States, and has endured the most brutal sanctions campaigns known to man.

What the US has done over the years is make Iran de facto sanctions-immune. This does not mean that they don’t work at all; clearly, the Iranian economy has taken enormous hits, and the civilian population has borne the brunt of the consequences. But the takeaway here is that the Islamic Republic is not going to buckle in a matter of weeks or months, just because the US is interdicting the passage of some Iranian vessels.

As a matter of record, back in 2018, when President Trump first imposed his maximum pressure campaign – following the decision to unilaterally pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal – the daily Iranian oil exports rapidly declined to 350,000 barrels per day. It remained this way for some 33 months, until Tehran managed to recover. The recovery led Iran back to exporting around 2.5 million barrels per day. Amidst the height of the first round of the current war, Iran even managed to break records for oil revenues generated, not seen since the triumph of the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

In addition to this, the Iranians have established a status quo under which they will not allow the Strait of Hormuz to be transited unless a toll is paid to them first; a move that has not only placed the key global chokepoint under their control, but will inevitably drive enormous profits in the long run.

Iran did not buckle under years of maximum pressure sanctions and the steep decline in their oil exports. Its Gulf neighbours will not fare so well. The damage done to US allies, like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has already surpassed what is necessary to cause permanent damage. Emirati officials may have even doubled down on their support for the Zionist project and to see Iran destroyed, withdrawing from OPEC, and claiming they will use alternative export routes, but everyone knows those options simply do not exist.

In the end, it was always going to boil down to the US buckling under the weight of an economic fallout, due to the total closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a pressure that only grew worse following Trump’s goofy decision to impose his own blockade.

Therefore, the embarrassing failure of the Trump administration was only ever going to lead to one of two outcomes: a full US backdown or the resumption of war.

May 1, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Economics, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on Iran can thrive under blockade, the US and its allies cannot

Iran slams US leadership, debunking fabrications, false war costs

Al Mayadeen | May 1, 2026

Iranian officials criticized the United States over its leadership and its justification for the US-Israeli war on Iran, debunking Washington’s fabrications and scrutinizing its political coherence and legal rationale.

In reference to the reported cost of the US-Israeli war on Iran, estimated at 25 billion dollars by the US Department of War, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi maintained that “the Pentagon is lying.”

In a post on X, Araghchi asserted that “Netanyahu’s gamble cost America $100b so far, four times what is claimed.”

He further noted that “indirect costs for U.S. taxpayers are FAR higher. Monthly bill for each American household is $500 and rising fast.”

“Israel First always means America Last,” he assertively concluded.

Trump’s contradictions reveal US decision-making made elsewhere

Mohsen Rezaei, a member of Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council, said, also took a swing at the “America first” slogan, asserting that “the contradictory statements of Trump show that real decisions in US are being made somewhere else.”

In a post on X, he argued that key decisions in Washington were being shaped by “behind-the-scenes power networks” that do not align with the “America First” slogan associated with Trump and MAGA.

Rezaei added that this demonstrates “the kind of deadlock America is facing,” emphasizing that Americans “are the ones paying the price.”

‘Self-defense’ against what?: Baghaei

Separately, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei rejected US claims that the US-Israeli war on Iran was launched in “self-defense”.

In a post on X responding to a US claim that the war was launched “at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally,” he questioned the legal basis for such claims, asking, “Was there any ‘armed attack’ by Iran to justify ‘self defense’?”

Baghaei rejected the claim by Washington, emphasizing that the war was “an act of AGGRESSION against the nation of Iran.”

May 1, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Iran slams US leadership, debunking fabrications, false war costs

Here’s why Iran is sovereign and Germany is not

By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | May 1, 2026

Sovereignty, as defined in international law, is both crucial and complex. In the real shark-pool world of geopolitics, it is not hard to spot: if you have the ability to rule at home and resist attack from outside (any outside), then you are sovereign. Otherwise not. No exceptions.

That’s why Iran has sovereignty, but Germany does not. Iran has withstood two months of a devious and brutal war of aggression waged by the US and Israel, which in turn is “merely” the culmination of decades of assaults levied via economic warfare, assassination campaigns, and subversion.

However, Iran has not only successfully foiled the current Israeli-American blitzkrieg-and-regime-change scenario, but also put the attackers on the backfoot. Tehran’s achievement is already historic. It has changed and will change the course of history.

Germany, by contrast, cannot even defend its own vital infrastructure, as the Nord Stream sabotage and its aftermath have demonstrated. What is even worse, its governments have had no will to do so. On the contrary, they have been rewarding the Ukrainian attackers with untold billions to feed Kiev’s ultra-corruption. Their backers – certainly including the US and Poland, and most likely Great Britain, too – need not worry about any trouble from Berlin either.

Case closed: Iran is sovereign, Germany is not. If you are German and find this uncomfortable, complain to Berlin.

Against this backdrop, it is oddly fitting that it is Iran which is now exerting a powerful influence on German politics despite not having any deliberate designs to do so, whereas German calls on Tehran (or, for that matter, Moscow or Beijing) to do this and leave that – as articulated by Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul with an almost comical lack of self-awareness – come across as embarrassing: sad spectacles of an impotence that doesn’t even know itself.

Iran, on the other hand, has now had a palpable impact on what unfortunately remains Germany’s single most important foreign-policy relationship. Indeed, as the current, post-1990 “unification” (really, expansion, and that’s still a polite term) Germany is really the old Cold War West Germany writ large (and going to seeds, too), the relationship with the US is more than just important. Historically, it was literally foundational.

And here we are: It is due to Iran’s resistance that this relationship has entered a deep crisis. Of course, other factors have played (or should have played) a role as well: for instance, Washington’s ferocious, bipartisan economic warfare against its old key client (polite term) in Europe, including at least complicity in destroying vital energy infrastructure and supply options (Biden, Democrats) via massive incentives for German industry to relocate to the US (Biden, Democrats) to devastation by tariffs (Trump, Republicans).

But it is over Iran that things have now come to a head: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has openly criticized Washington’s conduct of the war, and US President Donald Trump has launched one of his social media rampages, going after Merz and Germany with, as Secretary of War (Crimes) Pete Hegseth would put it, “no quarter” given.

Trump has even threatened, in effect, to withdraw the almost 40,000 US troops from Germany. It would be stupid and self-damaging for the US to do so, but then, this is the Trump administration. Full disclosure: As a German, I hope they go ahead.

Trump has also told Merz off for wanting Iran to have a nuclear weapon (false on two counts: Iran isn’t building one, and Merz is a compliant client leader who would never dare dissent from the US and Israel) and for being bad at running Germany, which must rankle, because most Germans agree. Merz has just earned himself the worst poll ratings of any German chancellor ever.

He has made things even worse – yes, Merz can do that – by releasing an exceedingly masochistically timed interview to complain that, in essence, no one likes him. True, but saying so has only triggered a national tsunami of mockery: now he is not only vastly unpopular but derided as a wimp, who loves to dish out harsh admonishments and mean austerity but can’t take the response.

A short video clip deep-faking Merz performing a satire of MC Hammer’s classic “You can’t touch this” by singing “No one likes me” is going viral. At a town hall-style meeting, the chancellor was openly laughed at. Major mainstream media are beginning to talk about a crisis deep enough to end the current government and, even worse for Merz, about rebellious murmurs inside his own CDU party.

All of this because Merz was making remarks about the Iran War. But make no mistake: Friedrich Merz, still infamous for applauding Israeli “dirty work” (“Drecksarbeit”) in Iran last summer, has not discovered a conscience. Listen attentively to his recent statements, made before a group of high school kids, and you realize, the chancellor’s real beef with America is that Washington hasn’t done its current “dirty work” quickly and, above all, successfully. No one loves a loser, not even, it turns out, Friedrich Merz, whose prior obsequiousness toward Trump had raised eyebrows even in Germany.

Yet whatever Merz’s sordid motives, take a step back and look at this picture from the point of view of history-in-the-making: Here is the German chancellor, who claims to be ready to make his country lead Europe (yes, not a great idea, but let that pass for now), whose government is presiding over the greatest German debt-and-armament splurge since World War Two (and that against a background of profound economic crisis), and he is stumbling over Iran. So much for the rise of multipolarity and the decline of Europe.

Not because that was Tehran’s aim. As a matter of fact, the Iranian leadership probably has very little time to think about Berlin – except noting for the future that, in practical terms, it is serving as a loyal accomplice in the American-Israeli war of aggression. No, the reason Iran now impacts and shakes the American-German relationship is that Tehran has been defeating the US, and so the client state Germany is registering the public “humiliation” of America (Merz’s term) by showing immediate signs of faltering compliance.

Who in this picture is reshaping things? And who is being shaped? Here’s another way to define sovereignty. And Germany still loses.

Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.

May 1, 2026 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Comments Off on Here’s why Iran is sovereign and Germany is not

Israel pours $730m into global propaganda machine as reputation collapses

The Cradle | May 1, 2026

Israeli lawmakers last month approved a sharp increase in the 2026 public diplomacy budget, allocating roughly $730 million to the global messaging apparatus, also known as “Hasbara,” according to a report by the Jerusalem Post on 29 April.

Surveys point to a deepening collapse in international support, as Israel’s genocide in Gaza and continued aggression toward its neighboring countries have sent the Tel Aviv’s reputation into freefall on the global stage.

The funding accounts for more than four times the previous year’s allocation, and forms part of a broader push led by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, who characterized the effort as a strategic imperative, saying it should be treated “like investing in jets, bombs, and missile interceptors” and calling it “an existential issue.”

The campaign spans large-scale digital outreach and political engagement aimed at bending perceptions and  influencing  narratives around Israel.

Around $50 million is being funneled into social media advertising, and roughly $40 million is going toward flying in foreign delegations such as politicians, clergy, and influencers as part of the outreach effort.

Officials insist the strategy improves perceptions abroad, with Israel’s consul general in Los Angeles, Israel Bachar, claiming that “Everyone who returns from the country understands better and is more supportive. But you have to fly out a lot of people.”

However, polling data cited in the reports shows a sharp collapse in public opinion towards Israel, particularly in the US.

A Pew Research Center survey found that 60 percent of US respondents now view Israel unfavorably, with declines cutting across political, religious, and demographic groups.

Analysts and researchers dismiss the spending outright, arguing it cannot offset the impact of Israel’s actions on the ground.

Communication scholar Nicholas Cull said, “Our conclusion was, it’s the policy, stupid,” referring to Israel’s policy of genocide and apartheid, and its broader military conduct as a central pillar of its expansionist agenda.

“Yes, you can do a lot with public diplomacy, and there are strategies that could help on the margins. But they’re only going to affect a small percentage, because the bulk of the impressions on issues that people care about are shaped by the actual policies, not how well you sell those policies.”

“The problem is that people don’t believe the state anymore,” said Ilan Manor, another expert cited in the report, warning that increased funding may expand reach but will not restore trust.

That push is reinforced by what Israeli officials describe as a parallel “Eighth Front” – a so-called “Digital Iron Dome” that combines mass reporting campaigns, AI-driven targeting, and coordinated influencer networks to suppress dissenting content and flood platforms with state-approved narratives in real time.

Israel had invested millions in coordinated digital influence campaigns, including a $6-million contract to shape AI outputs, targeted Gen Z messaging, and large-scale ad buys, in an effort to control online narratives and counter declining public support in the US.

The country’s propaganda arm had previously deployed a large network of at least hundreds of fake social media accounts and fabricated news sites to spread unverified claims linking UNRWA to Hamas’s 7 October Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in order to undermine its humanitarian mission in Palestine.

May 1, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Comments Off on Israel pours $730m into global propaganda machine as reputation collapses

Leaked audios reveal pro-Israel groups ‘paid’ for US pardon of convicted drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernandez

The Cradle | April 30, 2026

WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram audio messages published by Canal RED and Hondurasgate on 29 April reveal pro-Israel groups “paid” for the release of former Honduran president and convicted drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH) from US federal prison last year.

“The pardon money … came from a board of rabbis and people who supported Israel, and they had previously supported Yani Rosenthal,” JOH is heard saying in the leaked audios.

Yani Rosenthal is the former president of the right-wing Liberal Party of Honduras. He was convicted in December 2017 of laundering drug proceeds for a prominent Honduran drug cartel.

In 2024, JOH was convicted in a US federal court of three counts of drug trafficking and weapons conspiracy and received a 45-year prison sentence. He was also found guilty of receiving money from the former leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquin Archivaldo “El Chapo” Guzman, to finance electoral fraud.

JOH was pardoned late last year by US President Donald Trump, who called the DEA investigation into Hernández a “Biden administration set up.” Trump announced the pardon hours before Honduras’s presidential elections.

In that same social media post, Trump endorsed the current President Nasry “Tito” Asfura and threatened to cut aid to Honduras if he was not elected.

“The Prime Minister of Israel is going to give us his support. They had everything to do with my departure and negotiations,” JOH says in one of the audios released on Wednesday.

According to Canal RED, the leaked audios show that Trump’s pardon for JOH “was secured through intense lobbying led by Roger Stone and the Republican caucus … with the support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

The audios also suggest that Hernandez’s return to Honduras and his upcoming presidential run are being financed by Israel.

“Mr. President, I’m here asking about my case, if there’s any resolution, if you have anything to share with me to see if there’s been any progress with the Supreme Court. I want to believe that you won’t sideline me because, thanks to me, you’re sitting in that chair … And I hope for your support. Because that’s what we discussed with President Trump,” JOH tells President Asfura in one of the leaked audios.

According to the report, Trump and Netanyahu are “seeking millions in compensation” in exchange for securing Asfura’s election and JOH’s possible reelection.

“The negotiations at the Florida residence included the expansion of Zones for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDEs), the construction of a new military base, a free trade agreement, and a law to incentivize investment in AI, whose contracts would be awarded directly to private American companies such as General Electric,” Canal RED reports.

ZEDEs, or “private states”/’model cities,” permit autonomous courts and foreign legal systems in Honduras, which civil groups say surrender sovereignty.

Additionally, a second set of leaked audios released on Thursday involving JOH, Asfura, and Honduran Vice President Maria Antonieta Mejia indicates the formation of a news outlet funded with more than half a million dollars in Honduran public funds, along with contributions from Javier Milei’s government in Argentina, aimed at ‘attacking’ the left-wing governments of Gustavo Petro in Colombia and Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico.

May 1, 2026 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , | Comments Off on Leaked audios reveal pro-Israel groups ‘paid’ for US pardon of convicted drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernandez

Congress Extends Section 702 Spy Program 45 Days

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | April 30, 2026

The surveillance program that scoops up Americans’ communications without warrants got another 45 days of life on Thursday, after Congress reauthorized a clean version of FISA Section 702 hours before it was set to expire.

The House voted 261-111 to push the program’s expiration to June 21, sending the legislation to President Trump’s desk before the midnight deadline.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, “This will allow additional time to do that,” referring to ongoing work on a longer-term reauthorization that the upper chamber has been drafting separately.

What the procedural language obscures is what Section 702 actually does. The statute lets the NSA harvest communications from foreign targets without warrants, then stores those communications in a database that intelligence agencies can later search for information about Americans.

The agency calls this incidental collection but it functions as a workaround for the Fourth Amendment, allowing the government to access Americans’ messages, calls, and emails by claiming the foreigner on the other end of the conversation was the real target.

The renewal arrived only after a messy week of legislative whiplash. The House had originally passed a three-year extension on April 29, attaching an unrelated provision to ban the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency.

Senate leadership killed that version on arrival, then jammed the lower chamber with a stripped-down 45-day extension that contained no privacy reforms, no warrant requirement, and no concession to the lawmakers who have spent years documenting how the program gets misused.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion at the heart of Thursday’s fight is the closest thing to a smoking gun the public has seen on Section 702 in years.

The ruling addresses searches of Americans’ communications inside the NSA’s foreign intelligence database, the same backdoor query practice that has been flagged repeatedly by oversight bodies.

The court found problems with how the government has been running these searches.

What problems, specifically, remain classified.

That is the document Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who has spent over a decade trying to force daylight onto NSA programs, wanted Americans to read before Congress voted on a multi-year extension.

Wyden initially refused consent for the 45-day deal, holding out until Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton and ranking Democrat Mark Warner agreed to send a letter asking the executive branch to declassify the opinion within 15 days.

On the floor, Wyden made the case for why the secrecy is the problem. “That ruling found serious violations of Americans’ constitutional rights and how the Trump administration has used Section 702,” he said. “Congress should not vote — should not vote — to renew Section 702 when Americans are left in the dark about these troubling abuses,” Wyden said.

Cotton, an unwavering supporter of the program, took the framing personally. “I am ducking nothing. I am pointing out the senator from Oregon’s long-standing practice of distorting highly classified material in public,” Cotton said. “One of these days there are going to be some consequences, and it may be while I’m the chairman of this committee.”

Cotton runs the committee that controls intelligence community oversight, and the speech or debate clause of the Constitution is the only thing protecting senators from prosecution for what they say on the floor.

Stripped of theatrics, the message from the chairman of the body that supposedly checks the surveillance state was that pointing out documented abuses is itself a punishable act.

The result of all this is also that a surveillance program with documented constitutional problems gets six additional weeks of operation while the ruling describing those problems stays buried.

Current law already requires the FISC opinion to be released to the public eventually. Wyden wants that timeline accelerated to before Congress votes on a multi-year reauthorization, on the reasonable theory that lawmakers should know what they are voting to renew.

“Congress must use a short-term extension to openly debate the critical issues in front of the American people. I am disappointed that, instead, it sure feels like the other side of the aisle is covering the abuses up,” Wyden said.

What happens next depends on whether the executive branch honors the declassification request, and whether the Senate’s three-year reauthorization includes anything resembling meaningful reform.

The version that has been moving through committee does not require warrants for searches of Americans’ communications. It does not narrow the categories of foreign intelligence that can justify surveillance or impose meaningful limits on how long the NSA can retain the communications it collects.

The program scheduled for renewal on June 21 is not the program Congress originally approved.

May 1, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Comments Off on Congress Extends Section 702 Spy Program 45 Days

Zionists Are Gunning for Your Freedom of Speech

By Jack Hunter | The Libertarian Institute | May 1, 2026

The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the United States guarantees the right to free speech. This right has long differentiated the United States from other Western nations like the United Kingdom and Canada where laws against so-called “hate speech” laws exist and are enforced.

Thankfully, America is different. In our country, even alleged hate speech is protected speech to ensure democratic principles and debate.

In a 1929 dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the Constitution secured “freedom for the thought that we hate.” In 2011, Chief Justice John Roberts said in a ruling that the First Amendment serves “to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

This constitutional protection has been increasingly threatened recently, particularly by pro-Israeli forces that have tried to frame any criticism of that government as “anti-Semitism” and thus hate speech punishable by law. This has included everything from arrests, to squashing campus debate to buying TikTok to an attempt to cover up human rights absuses in Gaza. President Donald Trump has even issued executive orders that use vague definitions of what constitutes “anti-Semitism” that comes with criminal penalties.

Mark Levin is an American-born Zionist radio host who is an outspoken advocate for Israel’s government, regularly calling anyone who criticizes the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and conflict in Gaza “Nazis.”

Toward this agenda, Levin recently appeared to not agree with his own country’s free speech rights. On his latest Sunday Fox News program, unironically called Life, Liberty and Levin, the neoconservative pundit explained why free speech liberties in the U.S. have gone too far.

Seemingly worried that certain speech is protected in the United States, Levin said in the wake of the Secret Service taking down a shooter at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Friday, “First time things like this have happened, but it really is problematic because so much of it is protected.”

“And you hear people say, don’t you believe in the First Amendment?” Levin said. “They don’t even know what the First Amendment believes.”

Certain “speech” is “problematic” because “so much of it is protected.” You could see where this was headed.

Levin then explained what he believes “the First Amendment believes.” “Do you want to de-platform people?” he ranted. “You know, the libs do that. I don’t have any problem with de-platforming Nazis or jihadis.”

“Nazis,” Levin says. Levin uses this term loosely, all the time, and that’s putting it mildly.

Prominent libertarian personality Josie Glabach, known most popularly as “The Libertarian Redhead,” made a telling list of the many people and groups Levin has called Nazis since 2024:

  • The Democrats
  • The Democrat media
  • An Australian bakery
  • The Pakistani defense minister
  • Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton
  • The entire Libertarian Party
  • College students
  • MMA fighter Jake Shields
  • Nick Fuentes
  • Putin’s buddies
  • Influencer Dan Bilzarian
  • The Houthis
  • Comedian and libertarian personality Dave Smith
  • Anyone who associates with Dave Smith
  • Tucker Carlson
  • Beirut
  • Hezbollah
  • A veteran who asked Mark to be more tolerant
  • Influencer Myron Gaines
  • The city of London
  • Hamas
  • The New York Times
  • New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman
  • A New York Times correspondent
  • Terrorists;
  • The “woke reich”
  • Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner
  • The United Nations
  • Harvard University
  • The city of Amsterdam
  • Columbia University students
  • Iterations of the “Iranian Nazi regime,” the “Islamic Nazi regime,” the “Islamo Nazi regime,” the “Islamist Nazi regime,” and “All of Iran (the new Nazis)”
  • The Ayatollah (presumably of Iran)
  • Former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi
  • A protestor on a subway
  • Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
  • President Joe Biden’s entire State Department
  • Turkish Preisdent Recep Erdoğan
  • College basketball analyst Bruce Pearl
  • Certain Arab, liberals and journalists
  • Reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro
  • ISIS
  • Seventeen random Twitter users

This eclectic group of entities great and small, many of whom are regular critics of Israel’s government, are “Nazis” in Levin’s view. As Libertarian Institute Senior Fellow Tom Woods succinctly put it, “Nazis’ includes everyone who mocks Levin.”

Levin continued his Sunday rant against “Nazis”:

“I don’t have any problem with de-platforming them. What does that mean, de-platforming them? A government law? No. It means that X or Twitter or Facebook or Amazon with Twitch and someone says you know what? You’re a low life we’re not paying, you know, get off our platform. What’s wrong with that?”

The neocon pundit appeared to say that private platforms should police speech according to the political views of Mark Levin. He is right that this is no violation of the First Amendment. Private companies can allow or restrict speech as they please. “It’s called private enterprise,” he said. “I got no problem with that.”

Then Levin basically said such speech was no different than pornography, which is not protected under the First Amendment. Levin continued, “I mean, what if they have this horrific pornography on? Is that okay? No, it’s not okay.”

“Because our kids have access to it,” he said. “People who are impressionable have access to it. “What if they had people screaming at the top of the lungs saying, assassinate this guy and assassinate that guy? Well, they shouldn’t do that.”

“Why? What’s the standard?” Levin went on. “You need to have a standard. What should the law be? What does the Constitution say?”

The Constitution says that all speech is protected, but “true threats” and obscenity are not.

But political opinions about Israel that go against Levin’s views are protected, whether he likes it or not.

That’s when Levin basically outright said that speech that criticizes Israel should be forbidden just like pornography. “I just think we’ve taken this too far because we’re not even talking about political speech, which is the most protected of all speech,” Levin said.

“We do limit speech,” he insisted. “We limit speech, pornography. We limit speech.”

What Levin, like so many other Zionists, truly want is for the First Amendment to be amended itself. They believe, whether they say it forthright or not (and Levin appears to be doing just that), that this legal provision designed by the Founders precisely to protect political speech should no longer protect speech that is critical of Israel’s government.

Americans have historically valued their free speech. American Zionists like Levin now want a carve out.

But the free speech guarantee enshrined in the United States’s governing charter is so integral to the American experience, to gut it for any reason would be to drastically alter the DNA of the soon to be 250-year-old country.

As an American, Mark Levin doesn’t seem to have a problem with doing just that—all in the service of a foreign country.

It might be better for Americans to instead wish other nations well, yet solely concentrate on our own affairs at home, and perhaps just as important, to stop listening to American pundits whose primary allegiance seems to be countries other than their own.

May 1, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Zionists Are Gunning for Your Freedom of Speech