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Why the Israeli assassination strategy is leading them to defeat

By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | May 10, 2026

The Zionist Entity cannot fight real wars, instead it uses assassinations and terror bombing campaigns to avoid having to actually engage its opponents. Since October of 2023, it has been proven that this strategy is a liability, especially when it is attempting to expand its occupation.

On March 3, 2026, Lebanese Hezbollah debunked the Israeli illusion that it was nearing “total victory” in a 7-front war. Now the reality is setting in for everyone. The Israelis have carried out their most successful assassination strikes, Mossad operations, and implemented the most destructive air attacks that the world has ever witnessed against a defenseless civilian population in Gaza.

All of this, and they haven’t defeated a single opponent. So why then did almost everyone believe that the Israelis had managed to overcome the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance? The answer is quite simple: propaganda.

Hezbollah, Hamas, Ansar Allah, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and Iran’s IRGC are all still in existence today. In fact, the Israelis failed through committing a genocide in Gaza to fully defeat even one of the some dozen Palestinian Resistance factions that exist there. This is not to say that nothing has been achieved and no blows were suffered, evidently that would be delusional, but the fact of the matter is that the Zionist Entity has thrown everything they have at securing “total victory”.

Some would then come along and argue that Hezbollah did suffer significant blows, with the assassination of their senior leadership, the terrorist pager attacks, that Hamas and the other Palestinian factions have also lost much of their senior leadership, as has the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC). All of this is true, but that isn’t what wins a war.

This is especially the case when it comes to the Israelis, who possess the most advanced military technology and are on paper supposed to be a complete mismatch when facing up against Hezbollah or Hamas.

Their biggest issue lies in their military doctrine, the overreliance on technology, and beyond this the ideological weakness that runs through their society. In the year 2000, former Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah issued perhaps his most well-known address, which would later be referred to as the “Spider’s Web Speech”.

26 years later, and the Israeli political and military leadership, along with their media, are still obsessed with the speech. The reason why is because it cuts deep into the Israeli psyche and their self-perception. Israeli society is a military society, one that is obsessed with its citizen army. “The IDF is the most moral army” is the settler mantra, a concept so ridiculous to the rest of the world, yet a concept that the settlers themselves cling to with every ounce of their being. This is because the entire occupying regime is centred around the armed forces and militarism.

A soldier’s death is infinitely more difficult for the Israelis to accept than that of a non-combatant, which is why they do their utmost to cover up soldier casualties. If their soldiers are being killed in enormous numbers, then this begins to rock the entire society to its core and impact their belief in themselves to uphold their settler colonial project. Hence Nasrallah’s Spider’s Web theory. The idea of the Zionist entity being a spider’s web, is that its society is weak, not its technology, not its ability to drop bombs and carry out complex intelligence operations.

The concept of fighting short wars is enshrined in Israeli military thinking; it is a concept that dates back to its first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. This is to say, fighting short and intense wars is safe, because the Israelis are militarily superior to their opponents, yet fighting long, drawn out conflicts of attrition is a danger due to the sheer size of their enemies.

The most successful Israeli war of aggression, the “6-Day War,” reinforced this view. Over the years, since the US has fully thrown its weight behind the occupying ethno-supremacist regime, the United States military has itself shifted to become risk adverse and implement a counter-insurgency doctrine.

In the Second Intifada, the Israelis then leaned into the use of “targeted assassinations”, special forces raids and counter-insurgency strategies, in a way that they hadn’t previously implemented at such a scale. Palestinian Resistance groups in the West Bank were indeed defeated as a result of it, but in Gaza, they managed to adapt and develop in strength.

After originally withdrawing from Lebanon, the Israelis realised that the threat of Hezbollah had grown to a level where it now posed a significant threat, but when they tried to defeat it in 2006, they failed. Therefore, they developed the Dahiyeh Doctrine, the concept of inflicting massive death and destruction against civilian populations.

The belief was that this achieved “deterrence”; in reality, it was Hezbollah that had deterred the Israelis, because Hezbollah was not the aggressor or attempting to implement a belligerent occupation. In order to deal with their defeat in Lebanon, the Israelis then implemented the Dahiyeh Doctrine in the Gaza Strip, where they were dealing with a weaker Resistance group under siege.

Over the years, the Dahiyeh Doctrine was repeatedly used against the Gaza Strip, alongside assassination campaigns, aimed at “mowing the lawn”, a twisted way of saying subduing the threat and achieving “deterrence”. Yet, this also backfired in Gaza, because eventually the Resistance would become so strong that they pulled off the largest military defeat of the Israelis that had ever been inflicted.

As a reaction to October 7, 2023, the Israelis went bad; they initiated a genocide in the Gaza Strip, before going on the offensive across the region. They relied on those same tactics that had failed them time and again, which led them to the Hamas-led surprise attack.

Assassination after assassination, terrorist tactics against civilian populations in order to try and force them into submission, economic warfare, using proxy groups, doing everything possible without having to actually make the sacrifices necessary to attain victory. The reason why they couldn’t simply fight on the ground and go after the Palestinian Resistance in Gaza, nor wage costly and bloody battles against Hezbollah, is because the Spider’s Web theory is true.

If the Israelis were to actually do what is necessary to truly defeat their opponents, they would have to accept losing tens of thousands of soldiers. This is a price that their citizens’ army is simply not willing to pay. The Palestinians, Lebanese, Yemeni and Iranians are willing to make that level of sacrifice, but the Israelis aren’t.

The Zionist regime seeks to achieve “Greater Israel”, but doesn’t want to make any real sacrifice in order to attain that project; they want to do it the easy way, but an easy way doesn’t exist. People are not simply going to bow down and accept enslavement, to live under the rule of an ethno-supremacist regime that treats them as animals, nor will they stop resisting because you slaughter their families.

Sneaky assassinations, surprise attacks and killing babies do not win wars against populations who are fighting for their ability to live freely in their lands. The Zionist entity had the opportunity to actually secure its existence, which was through accepting the so-called “Two-State solution”, but that would have defeated their entire purpose, despite it being the only route to securing their place in the region.

The “Two-State solution” was the Zionist solution that could have given them the ability to remain, but they chose to go down the path of no return. They couldn’t accept living as equals, because the Zionist project is one of ethno-supremacy, so now they are stuck. The illusion of victory over Lebanon is crumbling, as they fail to produce any solutions other than mass murder against civilian populations and ethnic cleansing across the region.

Especially when the Israelis are a weak society, they can’t succeed. This is why there is an obsession with achieving regime change in Iran and using the US to do it for them, because they are desperately betting on the idea that if they do succeed, the resistance against them will end.

May 10, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why the Israeli assassination strategy is leading them to defeat

How The US Blockaded Itself In The Strait Of Hormuz

By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | May 10, 2026

Far from a stroke of genius, the US Trump administration’s decision to impose its own blockade on the Strait of Hormuz was a reactionary act of desperation, not a real strategy. The reason behind this quickly became clear and led to immediate doubt, even from the US domestic corporate media.

On April 7, when US President Donald Trump declared a two-week temporary cessation of hostilities between his armed forces and Iran, he almost instantly faced an Israeli refusal to acknowledge that any such agreement had been struck. Not only did the Israelis violate the ceasefire agreement by launching a 10-minute terror bombing campaign on Beirut, which killed around 300 Lebanese, but they also began pressuring Washington to ensure that they could have their say on the course of Iran-US negotiations.

While the Iranians declared that the US had accepted their 10-point plan of demands, within 24 hours, the United States had signaled that it would respect none of them. This could have reasonably justified Iran continuing its campaign of self-defense, especially as US military assets continued to be transported into West Asia.

Instead, Tehran chose to ignore the fact that the very basis of the temporary ceasefire had been torn up in front of them, and the US was demanding precisely what it sought prior to its attack on Iran. The one thing that the Islamic Republic chose to do was to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed and impose its sovereignty over it, causing a real crisis for the Trump administration.

The Iranians just managed to fend off the world’s top military superpower, dealing blows to all of its allies and collaborators throughout the region while it was at it. At least 16 US military bases were smashed beyond recognition, many rendered inoperable, with the multi-million/billion dollar equipment losses numbering into the hundreds of units across the region.

Iran may have been fighting the US military, but the problem it faces and continues to face is that the commander-in-chief does not sit in Washington, but instead in Tel Aviv. Israel simply was not degraded to the extent that it saw a reason for the war to end, but the US, which was doing its bidding, had all but run out of options to achieve regime change.

This led to the ceasefire predicament. Because the next stop on the escalation ladder was a large-scale coordinated campaign of attacks against civilian infrastructure across Iran, which would inevitably trigger a retaliation in kind from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Although the escalation was evidently welcomed by the Israelis, if it still failed to achieve their goals, the repercussions regionally would have international implications.

Then came the temporary truce that Pakistan managed to mediate, likely by leading both sides on a bit too much, but it was nonetheless accepted by Washington and Tehran alike. As noted above, while the Iranians did manage to achieve a historic defensive victory of sorts, exceeding all expectations of it, neither side emerged as the decisive victor, and no one secured a long-term strategic victory.

Therefore, the opposing sides went back to the drawing board, re-arming themselves and preparing for the inevitable escalation ahead, while leaving the door open for negotiations. In a bid to keep the Iranians from escalating against the Israelis, the US decided to step in and execute a temporary strategy in Lebanon instead.

Tel Aviv had hoped to secure a “ceasefire” in Lebanon that enabled it to return to the 15-month ceasefire status quo that had existed prior to the regional war, bombing Lebanon at will as Hezbollah held its fire. That never materialized, which ended up leading the Israelis into a strategic military trap in southern Lebanon, one that Washington is attempting to undo by using their puppets in Beirut to undergo a process that will lead to another Lebanese civil war.

Meanwhile, Tehran, which was refusing to lift its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz until a full ceasefire in Lebanon, temporarily began allowing selected ships to transit the key chokepoint after paying a fee. This was quickly interrupted by not only the Israeli decision that they would not implement the ceasefire, but also the US aggression.

Trump’s uno-reverse-card strategy was then implemented, as the leadership in DC declared that they were going to blockade the blockade. Although this evidently has an impact on Iran’s economy, it was a failing strategy from the get-go, one designed to keep the President’s fragile ego stable, more than anything else.

The reason why it was so ridiculous to begin with is that it only further strained the international economy and sent oil prices surging further. When the Israel Lobby ordered Trump to unilaterally withdraw from the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2018, the US’s ‘Maximum Pressure’ sanctions managed to dramatically impact Iran’s oil export rates. For around 33 months, Iran’s daily exports plummeted to around 350,000 barrels before later recovering to roughly 2.5 million barrels per day.

It will take at least three months for the Iranian economy to start truly suffering from the US’s blockade strategy, but such a long term economic pressure plan was always going to impact the US and its allies way more. The Islamic Republic has been under sanctions and suffered constant economic hurdles for 47 years, all at the hands of the US and its Western allies, which has led to a certain kind of sanctions immunity.

No routine exports for Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, and the UAE for three more months will spell catastrophe for all of them. This will also have additional ramifications that are going to impact the entire planet. This means that the Iranians are simply being given time to re-arm, dig out their missile bases, rebuild sites struck by US-Israeli airstrikes, devise new military plans, all as their blockade squeezes the US and its allies.

In a way, it’s actually the perfect predicament for the Iranians to be in. Yes, they will suffer economically, but it isn’t like they haven’t been here before; their opposition has never had to go through such hardships. Hezbollah is also inflicting dozens of Israeli soldier casualties every day, while the Israeli population loses more and more confidence in their ability to achieve anything resembling victory in Lebanon.

All without having to endure round-the-clock airstrikes on their major cities like Tehran and Isfahan, all without losing assets or civilian life. Playing the game of who can outlast the other with the Iranians is a losing strategy, one that was born out of desperation.

These reasons, amongst others, were always going to force the US’s hand into yet another escalation. Israel won’t allow their puppet in the White House to retreat and bow down to Iran’s demands, while there is no way to achieve what Washington and Tel Aviv couldn’t through their war efforts.

In the future, the US has two major military options: Ground incursions into Iranian territory and a massive campaign of strikes against Iran’s civilian infrastructure, as was threatened prior to the temporary ceasefire. Neither will achieve regime change, but will inflict blows. The only thing standing in the way of a deal is Israel; until Israel is faced with strategic defeat, the war cannot fully end.

Even if there was some kind of diplomatic off-ramp that could hypothetically be found here, then the Israelis would simply go back to the drawing board and seek to escalate once again in the future. This is also why the Iranians had been so adamant on ending the war on all fronts, because the Israelis have to be subdued in order for Tehran to ensure that such an attack against it cannot happen again. The US may be seeking to kick the can down the road after failing to achieve its goals, but Iran seeks to prevent this.

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.

May 10, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on How The US Blockaded Itself In The Strait Of Hormuz

Iran submits response to latest US proposal for ending aggression

Press TV – May 10, 2026

Iran has submitted its official reply to the latest US proposal for reaching a deal that allows a permanent end to the US-Israeli war of aggression against the country.

Iran’s official IRNA news agency said in a Sunday report that the country had submitted its reply to the US proposal to Pakistan, which has mediated efforts aimed at ending the war of aggression.

IRNA said the reply insists that current negotiations between Iran and the US should solely focus on efforts to end the war, and other issues, including disputes surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, should be discussed at later stages of the talks.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry announced earlier this week that the country would submit its final response to the US proposal after carrying out deliberations and thorough examinations.

The US proposal had come in response to a 14-article plan submitted by Iran to allow a complete halt to the US-Israeli war of aggression.

The latest Iranian reply is focused on efforts to end the aggression on all fronts, including Israeli attacks on Lebanon, and to guarantee the security of shipping in the Persian Gulf.

Iran and the US held an intensive day of negotiations on April 11–12 in Islamabad, four days after Pakistan mediated a ceasefire to halt the US-Israeli aggression on Iran that had started in late February.

The talks collapsed over US maximalist demands, Iranian officials said.

A key sticking point in the current negotiations between Iran and the US is the restoration of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway in the Persian Gulf, which has come under Iranian control since the early days of the aggression.

Iran has indicated it is ready to reopen the Strait if the aggression ends permanently and the US lifts its illegal sanctions and blockade on the country.

Authorities in Tehran have said that a first phase of efforts to reach a deal must concentrate on shipping and sanctions, while signaling they are ready to discuss the country’s nuclear program in later stages of the talks with the US.

May 10, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Iran submits response to latest US proposal for ending aggression

When Mandates and Shaming Are Ethical

At least if you’re an NYU bioethicist…

By Aaron Siri | Injecting Freedom | May 6, 2026

Through an ICAN FOIA request, my firm recently acquired a 2019 presentation given to HHS’s National Vaccine Advisory Committee (NVAC) from an NYU “bioethicist” named Dr. Arthur Caplan.

Caplan indicates that parents who decline vaccines for their kids have “bogus values” and suggests methods such as guilting “hesitators and resistors” and calling them “selfish, bad neighbors, indifferent to the vulnerable.” He also recommends that all states follow the sterling example of California and remove all non-medical vaccine exemptions.

His presentation is an excellent example of how vaccine zealotry has infiltrated every level of academia. You can feel the outrage in his presentation as you read it. Caplan seemingly can’t imagine why any reasonable person would decline this manna from pharmaceutical heaven—so much so that he feels it is ethical to enforce vaccine mandates and shame people into taking a medical product they don’t want! All in the name of “bioethics.”

At one point, Caplan even implies that parents should be held liable for any harms that come to their children as a result of not vaccinating. And who is liable if they do choose to vaccinate and the vaccine harms their children? Of course, in that case, the answer is basically no one—not the manufacturer, not the government, certainly not the pediatrician who shamed the parent into vaccinating, nor the school that mandated the product for attendance.

This kind of autocratic illiberal thinking—where evidence-free, righteous, indignant “greater good” arguments are pushed to crush individual and civil rights—is one reason I felt compelled to write Vaccines, Amen. What makes this example so egregious is that these ideas and tactics are being pushed under the guise of “bioethics.” Sadly, Caplan himself and his kin, as reflected by his presentation, lack the objectivity, emotional stability, or ethics to opine on this topic.

I offered Caplan the opportunity to come on my podcast to defend his views. He declined. That offer remains open and if he had the courage of his convictions, and truly believed in them, I would imagine he would welcome the opportunity to defend them in an open forum. But alas…

May 10, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Comments Off on When Mandates and Shaming Are Ethical

In Her Attack On Marjorie Taylor Greene, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s Hypocrisy Is On Full Display

The Dissident | May 9, 2026

Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently came out against the idea of a non-partisan Anti-War and Anti-Zionist coalition between the populist left and right, through an attack on the former Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene.

“I personally do not trust someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, a proven bigot and antisemite, on the issues of what is good for Gazans and Israelis,” AOC said, adding, “I don’t think that it benefits our movement, in that instance, to align the left with white nationalists, I don’t think it serves us”.

AOC faced major backlash for these comments, including from her own base of support, such as political commentator Cenk Uygur, who previously launched the Justice Democrats organization that helped AOC get elected, who said, “This is just terrible. She sounds just like the establishment. She’s attacking an opponent of Israel as an antisemite. This is exactly what Israeli supporters want – split the anti-war movement and the critics of Israel’s genocide. Deeply counterproductive. And selfish”, in response to AOC’s attack.

Through this attack on Marjorie Taylor Greene, AOC showcased her hypocrisy and what an unserious fraud she really is.

MTG Took On The Republicans Over Zionism, AOC Covered For The Democrats

Looking at AOC and MTG’s record on Zionism, and who was able to stand up to their own party over it, MTG’s record stands up to AOC’s.

As journalist Ryan Grim noted , “MTG sacrificed her political career to stand against genocide, against Trump, against the Epstein Class, and to defend the survivors of Epstein’s trafficking. If that doesn’t earn credibility, I don’t know what possibly could.”

When it came to Donald Trump backing the Israeli genocide in Gaza, Marjorie Taylor Greene bucked her own party and stood up to Donald Trump’s funding and arming of the genocide.

“It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza,” Greene said in July of 2025 , while Trump was in power, arming and funding the genocide.

The next month, she called on Trump to stop sending arms to fuel the genocide in Gaza, saying , “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to pay for genocide in a foreign country against a foreign people for a foreign war that I had nothing to do with, and I will not be silent about it.”

MTG also introduced legislation to “cancel $500 million in funding for Israel’s missile defense system” in July of last year, saying, “My amendment would strike $500 million in funding for nuclear-armed Israel’s missile defense system, and it’s important to emphasize it that way. Israel is a nuclear-armed nation, which is very capable of defending themselves … I also want to point out that Israel bombed a Catholic church in Gaza, and that an entire population is being wiped out as they continue their aggressive war in Gaza”.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, in November of 2025, was pushed to resign from Congress after attacks and a primary campaign from the Trump administration because of her standing up to her own party over Zionism, as well as other issues such as the release of the Epstein Files.

“I have too much self-respect and dignity, love my family way too much, and do not want my sweet district to have to endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the President we all fought for, only to fight and win my election, while Republicans will likely lose the midterms. And in turn, be expected to defend the President against impeachment after he hatefully dumped tens of millions of dollars against me and tried to destroy me” MTG wrote in her resignation letter.

She added, “If I am cast aside by MAGA Inc and replaced by Neocons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Military Industrial War Complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class that can’t even relate to real Americans, then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well” adding, “When the common American people finally realize and understand that the Political Industrial Complex of both parties is ripping this country apart, that not one elected leader like me is able to stop Washington’s machine from gradually destroying our country, and instead the reality is that they, common Americans, The People, possess the real power over Washington, then I’ll be here by their side to rebuild it.”

No matter what one thinks about MTG, the truth is she stood up to her own party for selling out to the Zionist lobby and military industrial complex, and fought against its backing of the Genocide in Gaza, and lost her political career as a result.

The same cannot be said about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

When AOC similarly had the chance to stand up to the Biden administration over backing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, she blatantly lied to cover for Biden’s backing of the genocide.

Then Vice President and Democratic Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris, along with the Biden administration, AOC falsely said , was “working tirelessly to secure a cease-fire in Gaza and bringing the hostages home”.

In reality, Israeli officials and Biden administration officials have admitted to fully backing Israel’s genocide in Gaza and never once putting pressure on Israel to end it.

“At the most significant political peril of Joe Biden’s political career, the easiest thing for Joe Biden would have been, if he was worried about the votes in Michigan, is to basically be a little soft; he refused to do it. There was enormous pressure within the White House on him to change his position. When I hear comments about ‘he wasn’t good enough, or he didn’t have Israel’s back,’ am I disgusted by it? One hundred percent. Is it true? 100 percent no,” admitted the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, on Israeli TV .

In the same TV special, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Herzog, admitted, “God did the State of Israel a favor that Biden was the president during this period, because it could have been much worse. We fought for over a year, and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did. And that’s not to be taken for granted.”

“After more than $20 Billion military support, largest in Israel history, 2 aircraft carriers rushed to the region, deterring a massive regional war, defeating Iran missile/drone attack x2, defending israel at most vulnerable moments, after SAVING countless lives of Israelis – only acceptable response to POTUS Biden and American people is THANK YOU”, the Biden administration advisor Amos Hochstein later admitted in response to claims from Benjamin Netanyahu that the Biden administration was not deferential enough to Israel and it’s genocide in Gaza.

Soon after, Philip H. Gordon, the Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to the Vice President of the United States under the Biden administration, admitted that , “Biden resisted enormous pressure to condition aid, as required by U.S. law, even as Israel rebuffed calls to facilitate more humanitarian assistance and reduce civilian casualties”.

Furthermore, when it comes to a weapons embargo on Israel, Marjorie Taylor Greene goes further than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

AOC voted against MTG’s aforementioned amendment to cut off U.S. funding to Israel, stating that she favoured funding “defensive” weapons for Israel while it was in the middle of committing a modern-day Holocaust in Gaza.

AOC wrote on Twitter:

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s amendment does nothing to cut off offensive aid to Israel nor end the flow of US munitions being used in Gaza. Of course I voted against it.

What it does do is cut off defensive Iron Dome capacities while allowing the actual bombs killing Palestinians to continue.

I have long stated that I do not believe that adding to the death count of innocent victims to this war is constructive to its end. That is a simple and clear difference of opinion that has long been established.

I remain focused on cutting the flow of US munitions that are being used to perpetuate the genocide in Gaza.

In reality, as Dylan Saba noted in Jewish Currents, “By almost entirely negating the ability of militant groups in Gaza to respond to Israel’s incursions, the purportedly defensive Iron Dome allows Israel to strike without fear of repercussion”.

He wrote, “because the cost is so low when measured in Israeli casualties, Israel can wage perpetual war without suffering domestic political consequences, and is under negligible pressure to pursue diplomacy with the Palestinians” adding, “while the Iron Dome may prevent the deaths of Israeli non-combatants, it has made it easier for Israel to engage in deadly operations that take Palestinian lives”.

AOC’s Hypocrisy On Working With ‘White Nationalists’

AOC’s main argument for not working with conservatives like Marjorie Taylor Greene on anti-war issues was over her labeling of Marjorie Taylor Greene as a “white nationalist”.

AOC labeled Marjorie Taylor Greene as a “white nationalist” for her standard-issue conservative social views, but previously voted repeatedly to send weapons to Ukraine, many of which ended up in the hands of open Neo-Nazi and White Nationalist militias.

It has been well documented that after the U.S.-backed 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine, Neo-Nazis and White Nationalists were mainstreamed in the Ukrainian government and military.

“The driver of this violence was largely the Ukrainian far right, which, while a minority of the protesters, served as a kind of revolutionary vanguard. Looking outside Kyiv, a systematic analysis of more than 3,000 Maidan protests found that members of the far-right Svoboda party — whose leader once complained Ukraine was run by a ‘Muscovite-Jewish mafia’ and which includes a politician who admires Joseph Goebbels — were the most active agents in the protests. They were also more likely to take part in violent actions than any group but one: Right Sector, a collection of far-right activists that traces its lineage to genocidal Nazi collaborators,” journalist Branko Marcetic reported in reference to the U.S.-backed militants that led the coup effort.

“The uncomfortable truth is that a sizable portion of Kyiv’s current government — and the protesters who brought it to power — are, indeed, fascists,” Foreign Policy magazine reported after the coup, and the UK’s Channel 4 news reported that the “far-right took top posts in Ukraine’s power vacuum”.

Flash forward to the proxy war in Ukraine, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez voted for every U.S. arms and funding package to the Ukrainian government and military that continued to be infested with these open white nationalist elements.

AOC continued to support the arms flow to Ukraine even after the Biden administration lifted the ban on weapons sales to the Azov Battalion, an openly Neo-Nazi battalion, in 2024.

U.S. representative Ro Khanna has previously gotten through an amendment banning the sale of weapons to the Battalion, saying, “White supremacy and neo-Nazism are unacceptable and have no place in our world. I am very pleased that the recently passed omnibus prevents the U.S. from providing arms and training assistance to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion fighting in Ukraine”, which was reversed by the Biden administration in 2024.

In 2019, AOC met with supporters of the U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia, which helped temporarily install a fascist government led by Jeanine Áñez who had openly racist views towards the country’s indigenous population, including by calling them “satanic”.

In 2019, Counterpunch reported:

On November 16, four days after the military coup that destroyed Bolivian democracy, Ocasio-Cortez met with a group of pro-Áñez (Jeanine Áñez, the U.S.-backed leader installed after the coup), pro-Camacho activists led by one Ana Carola Traverso.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez symbolically embraced the coup by posing for a photo with this group as they brandished the tricolor Bolivian flag, which during that period had become a signal of support for the golpistas (as opposed to the Wiphala flag, which symbolized popular resistance to the takeover). She told them that she supports their ‘democratic grassroots movement’ and offered them ‘direct lines of communication’

Furthermore, as journalist Max Blumenthal noted, AOC previously worked alongside Republicans such as Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz – who have the same right-wing social views as Marjorie Taylor Greene – to place sanctions on China.

In all of these cases, a pattern emerges: AOC has no problem working with the far-right if the agenda is in support of the U.S. empire, but refuses to work with anti-war conservatives opposed to it.

AOC’s attack on Marjorie Taylor Greene shows yet again what AOC really is: a career politician who will not take on the establishment Democratic Party, U.S. Empire, or Israel if it means risking her political ambitions.

May 10, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , | Comments Off on In Her Attack On Marjorie Taylor Greene, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s Hypocrisy Is On Full Display

Seyed M. Marandi: Iran Rejects U.S. Deal – War Is Likely Imminent

Glenn Diesen | May 9, 2026

Iran’s SURVIVAL INSTINCT MORE INTENSE THAN EVER /Lt Col Daniel Davis

Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – May 9, 2026

Larry Johnson: Iran War Creates a New Middle East

Glenn Diesen | May 9, 2026

Larry Johnson is a former CIA intelligence analyst who also worked at the U.S. State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism. Johnson discusses how the Iran War is putting an end to the former security architecture of the Middle East.

Read Larry Johnson’s Sonar21: https://sonar21.com/

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Books by Prof. Glenn Diesen

May 9, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on Seyed M. Marandi: Iran Rejects U.S. Deal – War Is Likely Imminent

46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims

Cracks in the facade of global climate science get wider as a significant group of experts chooses to break rank

By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | May 5, 2026

According to a recent report by the German online TKP, a movement is gaining momentum within the scientific community that threatens to dismantle the official IPCC narrative from the inside out. This rebellion is led by 46 scientists, many of whom have direct experience working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who are now publicly challenging the foundational claims that have dictated global policy for decades.

The heart of their argument lies in the fundamental failure of current climate models.

These prestigious researchers – among them Dr. Robert Balling, Dr. Lucka Bogataj, Dr. John Christy and Dr. Judith Curry – contend that the IPCC has relied on simulations that are heavily biased toward human-induced CO2 while systematically ignoring or downplaying natural variables. By prioritizing political consensus over raw data, these models have consistently overestimated global warming, creating a gap between alarmist predictions and the actual temperature trends observed over the last several years.

The scientists suggest that the “climate emergency” is less a scientific reality and more an ideological construct designed to drive the Net Zero agenda.

Power natural factors ignorerd by IPCC

Furthermore, this group highlights the critical role of natural drivers that are often missing from the mainstream conversation. They point to solar activity, atmospheric water vapor, and complex cloud cycles as the true drivers of Earth’s climate. By looking back at historical periods like the Medieval Warm Period, they argue that the planet’s current warming is well within the bounds of natural variability and is not the unprecedented catastrophe it is often portrayed to be.

Culture of scientific suppression

Perhaps most concerning is the article’s depiction of a scientific community under pressure. The rebelling scientists describe a culture of suppression where dissenting opinions are sidelined through the loss of funding, career gatekeeping, and media blackouts. This internal collapse suggests that the “science is settled” mantra is no longer sustainable.

Dogmna coming to an end

As these 46 voices come forward, they signal a shift toward a more skeptical, data-driven approach that prioritizes objective reality over the prevailing political narrative, suggesting that the era of unquestioned climate dogma may be coming to an end.

May 9, 2026 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Comments Off on 46 IPCC Scientists Break Rank, Publicly Challenge Long-Standing Dogmatic Climate Claims

Coming Off Seroquel Alone

An Essay on the Practitioner Vacuum That Waits for Everyone Who Tries to Leave Psychiatry

Lies are Unbekoming | April 19, 2026

A reader wrote to me this week. Her question, in essence:

She knows someone trying to come off Seroquel safely. Does anyone know the deficiencies it might have caused? Are there books or functional doctors who work on that?

She is looking for a functional doctor. Someone to walk her person through the Seroquel taper the way a functional cardiologist walks a patient off statins, or a functional endocrinologist walks a patient off long-term steroids. She wants someone who understands what the drug has done to the body, can identify the depletions, can order the right tests, and can hold the patient’s hand through the worst of it.

That person does not exist. Not as a profession. Not as a network. Not in any country I have looked at.

The Assumption Hidden in the Question

Every other branch of medicine has a parallel network for patients who decide that what they have been prescribed is making them worse. Someone leaving conventional cardiology finds functional cardiologists, integrative GPs, nutritionists, lifestyle medicine doctors, chiropractors, osteopaths, and bodyworkers. The person leaving an oncologist finds clinics in Mexico and Germany, a literature on metabolic therapies, and dozens of practitioners whose practices are built around helping the patient leave the mainstream pathway.

These parallel networks are not perfect. They vary in quality. Some are captured by their own commercial pressures. But they exist. A patient can find them. A patient can book an appointment.

Now try the same exercise for someone on Seroquel. Or for someone six years into a benzodiazepine. Or two decades into an SSRI.

What they find is a peer forum, a free PDF from Denmark, and a book by a British psychiatrist whose own profession ignored the problem until he forced them to look at it. They find a small number of dissident practitioners, most of them retired or semi-retired, with waiting lists measured in months. They find a great many websites. They find almost no doctors.

My reader did not ask a strange question. She asked the normal question. The strangeness is that there is no normal answer.

What the Evidence Says About the Vacuum

The emptiness is documented in plain language by the clinicians who actually do this work.

Peter Breggin, who has been doing psychiatric drug withdrawal work for more than forty years, states it directly. It has become very easy for individuals to find clinicians who will prescribe psychiatric drugs, but it remains very difficult for patients to find help in reducing or withdrawing from them. He attributes this to a lack of peer support and training, which leaves most clinicians uncomfortable even responding to a patient’s request for reduction or withdrawal.¹

Peter Gøtzsche puts it more bluntly. Very few doctors know anything about withdrawal, and many make horrible mistakes. If they taper at all, they do it far too quickly, because the prevailing wisdom treats withdrawal as a problem only with benzodiazepines, and because the few guidelines that exist recommend tapering schedules that are dangerously fast.²

The largest survey of long-term users who tried to discontinue — Ostrow and colleagues, published in Psychiatric Services in 2017 — quantifies the vacuum. Of 250 adults with serious mental illness diagnoses who wanted to stop psychiatric drugs, 71% had been taking them for over nine years. Only 54% met their goal of completely discontinuing. Among those who attempted it, only 45% rated doctors as helpful during withdrawal. Sixteen percent began the process against their doctor’s advice. Twenty-seven percent did not tell their doctor, stopped seeing the doctor, or changed doctors. Self-education and contact with peers who had withdrawn were the most frequently cited sources of help.³

More than a quarter of the people who tried to come off went around their doctor or away from their doctor entirely. They were not helped by the profession that put them on the drug. In many cases they were actively avoided by it.

Gøtzsche documents something worse in Denmark. Researchers there tried to run a withdrawal trial involving patients on antipsychotics. The trial collapsed — not because the drugs failed to come off, but because patients were too frightened to participate. They had been told for so long that they would relapse without their medication that the prospect of stopping was, in itself, destabilising.² The profession had successfully convinced them that leaving was more dangerous than staying.

The Horowitz Exception

Mark Horowitz is a training psychiatrist at the NHS with a PhD in the pharmacology of antidepressants from King’s College London. He was prescribed an antidepressant in medical school. Fifteen years later, he tried to come off it following the standard guidelines his own profession had produced. He was blindsided by withdrawal symptoms so severe they forced him back onto the drug.⁴

Unable to find clinical support, he turned to an online peer community founded by Adele Framer — SurvivingAntidepressants.org — and discovered that the people there had worked out, through years of collective trial and error, what the psychiatric literature did not contain. The dose-response curve for these drugs is hyperbolic, not linear. Halving the dose at each taper step, as the official guidelines recommended, guaranteed a withdrawal crash at the bottom of the curve. The patients had figured it out. The profession had not.⁵

In 2019, Horowitz published this finding with David Taylor in The Lancet Psychiatry.⁵ In 2021, with Joanna Moncrieff, he set up England’s first psychiatric drug deprescribing clinic.⁴ In 2024, he and Taylor published The Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines — the first clinical textbook on how to come off these drugs written within the British medical establishment.⁶

One clinician. One clinic. One book. For a problem that affects tens of millions of patients across every Western country.

Horowitz’s findings were accommodated only after the peer communities had been telling people the same thing for a decade, and after the evidence became too large to ignore. Joanna Moncrieff, Peter Gøtzsche, Peter Breggin, David Healy, and a small handful of others have done comparable work. They remain isolated. They have no referral network underneath them. They are not training a generation of younger clinicians to replace them.

The vacuum is not the temporary feature of a field that hasn’t yet matured. It is the product of active resistance from within the profession.

Why the Vacuum Is Structural

The parallel practitioner network that exists in cardiology, endocrinology, and oncology exists because those branches of medicine concede, even at their most conventional, that the body can heal. A functional cardiologist can hang a shingle because conventional cardiology admits that diet, exercise, stress, and sleep can reverse heart disease. The door is cracked open. The functional practitioner walks through.

Psychiatry does not open that door. Its official framework holds that the conditions it diagnoses are chronic, lifelong, and biologically driven. The Royal College of Psychiatrists, the American Psychiatric Association, and every major national equivalent tell patients that their “illness” requires long-term management, often lifelong, and that stopping medication invites relapse. The DSM categories are described as diseases. The drugs are described as treatments that correct an underlying dysfunction.

In this framework, no role exists for a practitioner who helps people leave. A practitioner who helps people leave is, by definition, someone who believes the drugs were not necessary in the first place, or are no longer necessary, or are causing more harm than the original distress. That practitioner is a heretic within the profession. Not a specialist filling a niche. A threat to the diagnostic framework itself.

The vacuum is not a gap in a functioning system. It is the absence that the system requires in order to continue functioning.

If the profession built a deprescribing subspecialty — trained practitioners, published guidelines, referral pathways, insurance codes — it would be admitting that a significant fraction of its patients never needed the drugs, were harmed by them, and can and should come off them. That admission would collapse the commercial and intellectual scaffolding of the field. The admission is not made. The subspecialty is not built. The patients are left to find their own way.

Gøtzsche puts it in one sentence. It seems, he writes, as if lifelong medication is tacitly assumed to be a good thing.² That is the explanation for the vacuum.

What the Reader Is Actually Asking For

When I translate my reader’s question into what it would take to answer it, the practitioner she is looking for would need to

  • understand what Seroquel has done to the body,
  • design a hyperbolic taper matched to this patient’s half-life and receptor profile,
  • order compounded doses or guide the making of them,
  • address the depletions that accumulate during years of antipsychotic exposure,
  • manage the return of sleep disruption, anxiety, and emotional intensity that follows removal of the drug,
  • and walk alongside for the twelve to thirty-six months this typically takes.

This is a real job. It is a needed job. It is nobody’s job.

No medical school trains for it. No residency offers it. No insurance code reimburses it. No malpractice carrier covers a psychiatrist who specialises in getting people off psychiatric drugs. No prescriber can build a practice around it without accepting the isolation and reduced income that come with practising outside the standard framework. No primary care doctor has the time, the knowledge, or the institutional cover to do it either.

The work exists. The workers do not.

The Reframe: This Was Never a Psychiatric Problem

The practitioner my reader is looking for does not exist because psychiatric drug recovery is not a psychiatric problem. The body’s task, once the drug is tapered off, is not a psychiatric task. It is a terrain task.

The drug was a toxic exposure — a sustained, daily, years-long exposure acting on a nervous system that was probably already carrying some combination of nutritional deficiency, accumulated toxic burden, disrupted sleep, chronic stress, and environmental insult before the prescription was ever written. Years of Seroquel add to that burden. They deplete the body in predictable ways: oxidative stress that consumes glutathione and antioxidant enzymes,⁷ mitochondrial damage, metabolic disruption producing weight gain, blood sugar dysregulation, and elevated lipids,⁸ and a cascade of effects on movement, cognition, and sleep architecture.

What the body needs, once the drug is being reduced, is not correction by a psychiatric specialist. It is removal of the toxic input and restoration of the conditions that allow repair — clean water, nutrient-dense food, mineral repletion, sunlight, sleep, movement, reduction of other ongoing toxic and stress inputs, and time.

The practitioners who support that work do exist. They are simply not labelled as psychiatric practitioners, because the work is not psychiatric. They are the terrain-oriented doctors, the New Biology practitioners, the functional medicine clinicians who understand mitochondrial recovery and mineral repletion, the nutritionists who work with detoxification, the bodyworkers who address the fascia and the lymph.

My reader asked whether there were functional doctors “on that topic.” The honest answer is that the topic, correctly named, is not psychiatric drug withdrawal. The topic is terrain restoration after a prolonged toxic exposure. That has practitioners. Those are the practitioners she needs.

The psychiatric part of the work — writing the taper prescription, adjusting compounded doses — is the smallest part, and it requires the least expertise. Any honest prescriber willing to listen to the patient and read the Horowitz guidelines can do it. The rest of the work, the terrain work, is what actually determines whether recovery happens.

A Practical Map

For my reader, and for anyone in her position, here is what the road actually looks like.

For the taper itself. Horowitz and Taylor’s Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines is the single most important book.⁶ Breggin’s Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal covers the clinical management in detail, including a case involving Seroquel.¹ Gøtzsche’s Mental Health Survival Kit and Withdrawal from Psychiatric Drugs is plain-language and principles-based.² Sørensen, Rüdinger, Gøtzsche and Toft’s A Practical Guide to Slow Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal is free as a PDF from deadly-medicines.dk.⁹ These four texts contain most of what is known.

For the prescriber. You are probably looking for any doctor — primary care, psychiatrist, or integrative — willing to write the taper according to the schedule you bring them. You are not looking for the prescriber to design it. You are looking for them not to obstruct it. This is a much smaller ask, and much more achievable, than finding a specialist. Compounding pharmacies produce the small custom doses that manufactured pills cannot.

For the peer community. SurvivingAntidepressants.org is the largest and most rigorous. Benzo Buddies covers the benzodiazepine side. Mad in America (madinamerica.com) hosts an enormous archive of first-person accounts, research summaries, and practitioner interviews. The International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal (iipdw.org) and the Inner Compass Initiative (theinnercompass.org) are both worth knowing. Ostrow’s survey found that peer contact and self-education were the two most frequently cited sources of help during withdrawal, rated more useful than doctors.³

For the terrain work. The New Biology Clinic (newbiologyclinic.com), built around the framework of Tom Cowan, Andy Kaufman, and colleagues, addresses the underlying causes that mainstream medicine will not examine. Kelly Brogan’s A Mind of Your Own is written by a psychiatrist who now works from a broadly terrain-compatible orientation and addresses coming off psychiatric drugs directly.¹⁰ Competent functional medicine practitioners who understand mitochondrial recovery, mineral repletion, and the role of ongoing toxic exposures can carry much of the load, though their familiarity with psychiatric drugs specifically will vary.

For the depletions. Long-term antipsychotic exposure is associated with oxidative stress consuming glutathione and related antioxidant systems.⁷ The commonly reported associated depletions, drawing from the broader clinical literature, include coenzyme Q10, magnesium, B vitamins (particularly B12 and folate), vitamin D, zinc, and omega-3 fatty acids. These are worth testing and repleting. They are not a substitute for the terrain work. They are part of it.

None of this replaces the specialist network that does not exist. It is what is actually available, and it is what actually works when people succeed — which many do.

For a Six-Year-Old

Your body knows how to get better. It has always known.

When something is hurting it, the body’s job is to repair. It does this on its own, every day, all the time. It does not need a special doctor to do it.

What it needs is good food, clean water, sleep, sunshine, and time. It needs whatever was hurting it to slowly, carefully, stop being there.

The slowly and carefully part matters. You cannot rip a plaster off a wound that has grown into the skin. You have to loosen it a little at a time, and let the skin heal as you go.

That is the whole of it.

Closing

My reader asked for leads to help someone detox from Seroquel safely, and for functional doctors who work on that topic. I have given her the leads I have. I have also told her that the functional doctors she is looking for, in the form she imagines them, do not exist — and will not exist, because the framework that would need to produce them has structural reasons not to.

The absence of a specialist network is not the absence of a path. The path exists. It is slower and harder than it should be. It requires self-education, peer support, a cooperative prescriber, a terrain-oriented practitioner, and time. Many people walk it. Many get to the other side. Ostrow’s survey of those who succeeded found that 82% were satisfied with their decision.³ Few psychiatric interventions can claim that.

What psychiatry will not provide, the body provides — once the exposure stops and the conditions for repair are restored. The doctor she is looking for does not exist. The recovery she is looking for does.

Nothing in this essay is medical advice. It is research and analysis. Anyone reducing or stopping a psychiatric drug should do so with qualified support and adequate time, informed by the texts and communities referenced above.

References

  1. Breggin, Peter R. Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: A Guide for Prescribers, Therapists, Patients and Their Families. New York: Springer, 2012.
  2. Gøtzsche, Peter C. Mental Health Survival Kit and Withdrawal from Psychiatric Drugs. Ann Arbor: L H Press, 2022.
  3. Ostrow, L., Jessell, L., Hurd, M., Darrow, S. M., & Cohen, D. “Discontinuing psychiatric medications: a survey of long-term users.” Psychiatric Services 68 (2017): 1232–8.
  4. Horowitz, Mark A. Personal and professional biography. See markhorowitz.org and Simons, P., “Peer-support groups were right, guidelines were wrong: Dr. Mark Horowitz on tapering off antidepressants,” Mad in America, March 20, 2019.
  5. Horowitz, Mark A., and David Taylor. “Tapering of SSRI treatment to mitigate withdrawal symptoms.” Lancet Psychiatry 6 (2019): 538–46.
  6. Horowitz, Mark, and David M. Taylor. The Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines: Antidepressants, Benzodiazepines, Gabapentinoids and Z-drugs. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2024.
  7. Salim, Samina. “Oxidative Stress and Psychological Disorders.” Current Neuropharmacology 12, no. 2 (2014): 140–147.
  8. Lieberman, J. A., et al. “Effectiveness of antipsychotic drugs in patients with chronic schizophrenia” (CATIE study). New England Journal of Medicine 353 (2005): 1209–1223.
  9. Sørensen, A., Rüdinger, B., Gøtzsche, P. C., and Toft, B. S. A Practical Guide to Slow Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal. Copenhagen, 2020. Available at deadly-medicines.dk.
  10. Brogan, Kelly. A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives. New York: HarperCollins, 2016.
  11. Gøtzsche, Peter C. Is Psychiatry a Crime Against Humanity? Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom, 2024.
  12. Whitaker, Robert. Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, 2nd ed. New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2015.
  13. Davies, J., and J. Read. “A systematic review into the incidence, severity and duration of antidepressant withdrawal effects: Are guidelines evidence-based?” Addictive Behaviors 97 (2019): 111–121.

May 9, 2026 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Comments Off on Coming Off Seroquel Alone

Iran’s ‘threat’ to Western hegemony is not nuclear weapons

By Samuel Geddes | Al Mayadeen | May 9, 2026

US Secretary of State Rubio on Wednesday declared “Operation Epic Fury” concluded, the clearest indication so far that the US is writhing in the economic trap it sprung on itself. Being in a state of institutional paralysis, unable to accept the costs of ending the war while unable to tolerate its continuation, the Trump administration is attempting to find an equilibrium that allows hostilities to cease, while keeping as much as possible of its “maximum pressure” on Iran’s economy.

In precisely this vein, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in recent days has been unable to conceal his glee at the economic privation imposed on the Iranian people by his policies, attributing both the Riyal’s late 2025 collapse and the impending effects of the naval blockade on its oil production to “[Operation] Economic Fury.”

Since the inception of the Islamic Republic 47 years ago, the United States has weaponized its dominance in the global economy to impose one of the most comprehensive sanctions regimes ever implemented.

With each successive layer of economic siege deployed against the Iranians, US administrations and their surrogate regimes across the collective west, along with their propagandists in the media, painted this undeclared war as solely targeting “the regime.” The Iranian people themselves, they would have us believe, were never the intended targets.

This was, of course, only ever a rhetorical sleight of hand. The sanctions were “targeted” at the “regime” only in the sense that they were intended to make everyday life so unbearable that the Iranian public would blame their own leadership and overthrow it. The exact reason why they would primarily blame their own government, rather than Washington, London, Berlin and so-on, has never been rationalized. It is simply the economic strangulation of Gaza and Cuba that has been scaled up to the macro-level. Collective punishment of the entire population is the point, either to induce domestic rebellion, or to discipline them for not carrying out Western policy goals.

With the restarting of active war from February 28, Washington has reverted to implementing this strategy by its most direct means. Instead of choking off medicines to the health system, it simply bombed the health system itself, from critical national hospitals to the Pasteur Institute that produced domestic vaccines against the Covid pandemic. Instead of blacklisting Iranian students from foreign institutions, it bombs the Iranian universities that have been the engines of the nation’s indigenous industries, civilian, industrial and military since the siege began in 1980. Beyond merely sanctioning Iran’s industrial output, it is now robbing it of its revenues by attacking the steel plants of Isfahan and Ahvaz and the Asalouyeh petrochemical complexes.

The logical framing of these targets is that they are aimed at degrading Iran’s capacity to manufacture missiles, drones and its still non-existent nuclear weapons. By this reasoning, literally every economic sector, every potential source of revenue for the Iranian state is a target. It lays bare the true motivation not only behind the current war, but also behind the entire campaign of economic, political, and diplomatic coercion that the West has thrown at the country since its Revolution. It is not simply that Iranian nuclear program is unacceptable to Washington, London, Berlin, Paris and Tel Aviv, it is mainly the existence of an Iranian steel industry, pharmaceutical sector, ship-building capacity and space program. The very existence of an entrenched, self-sufficient and technologically progressing economy outside of the Western-dominated world system constitutes, by its nature, a systemic threat that cannot be tolerated. It must either be economically absorbed and dismantled from within or militarily destroyed.

It is a fear of the vastly enhanced economic and technological weight of an Iran unburdened by secondary sanctions, reaping tens of billions of dollars in taxes on traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, and fundamentally restructuring the security and economic architecture of the Gulf, that explains the Trump administration’s unwillingness to end the state of war, even as it pushes the global economy deeper into existential crisis every day.

Tehran’s incentive, and its ability to demand, maximal concessions to accept an end to war however will not decline over time, it will increase inversely to the US tolerance for economic pain. Thus, Washington is at some point going to make at least one existentially humiliating concession to extricate itself from the crisis it created. It might agree to suspend all secondary sanctions against the Islamic Republic, or accept Tehran’s demonstrated capacity to tax traffic through Hormuz or permanently evacuate its bases in the region. It might even do all of these.

The blockade might plausibly remain as a face-saving fiction- the US navy clearly dares not intercept Iranian shipments heading to China. Over time, alternate land and sea corridors will compensate for the disruption to Iranian shipping.

When Washington eventually does cave it will have achieved the exact opposite of its intentions in launching its aggression: a vastly more economically empowered Islamic Republic with the throat of the world economy in its hand.

Trump’s choices are limited to accepting a far more economically powerful Iran now or accepting it later after a catastrophic resumption of hostilities. Maybe then, he will have learned precisely why none of his predecessors acted as he has.

May 9, 2026 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Comments Off on Iran’s ‘threat’ to Western hegemony is not nuclear weapons

Iran warns UAE, Bahrain over alignment with US, Israeli interests

Al Mayadeen | May 9, 2026

Senior Iranian lawmakers issued sharp warnings to Gulf states on Friday, cautioning against supporting the US-backed resolution against Tehran and threatening consequences for countries aligning themselves with Washington and “Israel” amid escalating regional tensions.

Ebrahim Azizi, head of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, warned that governments supporting the resolution will face perpetual closure of the Strait.

In a post on X, Azizi stated, “We warn governments, including microstates like Bahrain, that siding with the US-backed resolution will bring severe consequences.”

“The Strait of Hormuz is a vital lifeline; do not risk closing it on yourselves forever,” he warned.

UAE insignificant in the broader war: Ruhollah Azad

Separately, Iranian parliament presidium member Rouhollah Motefakker Azad said the United States and “Israel” were facing inevitable defeat in their war with the Iranian people and resistance fighters.

“The defeat of the Americans and Zionists in the battle against the Iranian people and their fighters is inevitable, and signs of this defeat have begun to emerge on all fronts,” he said.

Motefakker Azad also warned the United Arab Emirates against becoming involved in the conflict, arguing that Abu Dhabi should avoid acting in support of Israeli and American interests. “If the UAE possesses strategic rationality, it will never place itself in a predicament greater than its size and capabilities for the sake of the interests of the Zionists and America, who have failed in this arena,” he said.

He added that Iran had demonstrated its ability to contain the actions of both the United States and Israel, dismissing the UAE as insignificant in the war.

“The Emiratis are advised to understand the rules of this war and refrain from entering an arena beyond their capacity and scale,” he said.

Military, public, diplomacy; main pillars of Iran’s strategy

Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said on Friday that Tehran will continue its diplomatic efforts “based on logic and ethics,” while stressing that the country remains “very firm in defending its rights,” according to remarks made during a meeting with managers of the Mobarakeh Steel Company.

Aref said Iran’s strategy is built on three main pillars: the “military arena, the street, and diplomacy,” calling for national planning that reflects Iran’s status as a “major global power.”

He also urged faster progress on reconstruction, renewal, and upgrading of damaged industries, emphasizing the need to accelerate recovery efforts.

May 9, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Iran warns UAE, Bahrain over alignment with US, Israeli interests

‘Little Sparta’: Why The UAE Attacked Iran for Israel’s Sake

By Robert Inlakesh | The Palestine Chronicle | May 9, 2026

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been accused of launching direct strikes targeting Iranian civilian infrastructure, while escalating its anti-Tehran rhetoric and having lobbied the US to return to all-out regional war. Although on the surface of things, it would appear nonsensical for such a small and fragile country to commit itself to reckless actions of these kinds, the UAE is no ordinary Gulf State.

While presenting itself as an innovative nation, one that is dissimilar to its neighbors in that its focus is the creation of wealth, “unity” and “peace”, the UAE fosters an image of a wise and inviting leadership that caters to outsiders. Utilizing their immense oil wealth, Abu Dhabi’s rulers have managed to construct an image of themselves that is almost as artificial as Dubai’s Skyline.

Behind the “tallest building” and “deepest pool” in the world are not talented Emirati architects, hard labor, and meticulous planners; instead, there are foreign experts and modern-day slaves. Although the Emirati rulers may be the ones who own everything and their people the ones who reap the benefits, even their prized oil industry would be nothing without all the foreigners who did everything for them.

Interestingly, both their foreign intelligence operations and oil industry have been heavily influenced by Palestinians, specifically from the Gaza Strip, and other non-Emirati Arabs, who helped make their nation run. Many of their police patrol officers are not their own nationals either, while 80% of their armed forces are foreigners.

The “peace” and “unity” that they promote are simply a Zionist project to attack the resistance to Israel’s expansionist endeavors. Not only were the ‘Abraham Accords’ lobbied for by the UAE, with it using its influence in Sudan and Morocco to bring even more States on board, but their entire national project has also been centered around assassinating pan-Arab and pan-Islamic unity.

Not only does the UAE use “inter-faith” projects to normalize Zionism and Zionists amongst Muslims, it actively controls a host of Islamic influencers, sheiks, Quran reciters, and scholars, whose role is to target impressionable Muslims. These individuals are used to push sectarianism, especially against Twelver Shias, but even against fellow Sunni Muslims who refuse to comply with their views.

Across the region, the UAE, known amongst its war hawk allies as ‘Little Sparta’, pursues a bloodthirsty approach, especially across the Horn of Africa. In Sudan, it is the primary backer of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of warlord Muhammad Dagalo (Hemedti), a militant group accused of committing genocide. In Gaza, they are also accused of backing the Israeli-controlled ISIS-linked death squads, used to fight against the Palestinian resistance.

In Libya, they provided support to warlord Khalifa Haftar’s men, while propping up the Southern Transitional Council (STC) separatists in Yemen. They claim to oppose “Islamists” and “Islamic extremism”, while they actively promote Wahhabi Islam, with the political goal of encouraging the most malignant forms of sectarianism. Their only true opposition to ‘Islamists’ is a stance against the Muslim Brotherhood and all groups who dare to challenge Israel, and/or the United States in any way.

To demonstrate the depths of their hypocrisy, consider that the toughest fighters belonging to their STC proxy forces in Yemen were former Al-Qaeda and ISIS militants. In the name of combating the so-called “Islamist threat” of the Ansarallah government in Sana’a, the UAE decided to throw its weight behind hardline Salafist militants.

When it comes to the Iran conflict, the UAE optical illusion is also in effect. It played victim, feigned neutrality, while simultaneously pushing claims that it managed to intercept more Iranian missiles and drones than the Israelis did. In this way, it becomes both the hero and victim, but in an even less believable way than the Zionists, who clearly have more believable propaganda.

In reality, the UAE not only provided a launching pad for the illegal US-Israeli attack on Iran, but had even fully integrated its air defense systems with Israel following their normalisation agreement. They were providing the Israelis with information used to help them combat Iranian retaliatory strikes on their territory, while the Emirati-owned Wing Loong II UAVs were used to monitor Iranian airspace in support of the US-Israeli aggression.

While the US certainly used other Persian Gulf Arab States to attack the Islamic Republic, none were so enthusiastic as Abu Dhabi’s leadership. Oman is the only country in the region that did not allow for its territory to be used for offensive action against Iran, while Qatar began developing a more neutral tone, especially as the war progressed, the UAE went the opposite direction. Eventually, the Emirati anti-Iran rhetoric escalated to the degree that the Emirati rulers began labeling Tehran as terrorists.

Understanding why is crucial to comprehending the nature of the UAE as an entity in the Persian Gulf. Contrary to its propaganda, Abu Dhabi is the means through which Israeli and Western imperial power is harnessed.

The British, who helped form the “Trucial States” that would later band together under the leadership of Abu Dhabi and become the United Arab Emirates in 1971, referred to them as “pirates”. This legacy of being a disrespected puppet of the empire is something that holds true until this day, where the ultra-rich Emirati leadership enthusiastically does the bidding of their superiors.

In only 54 years, the regime along the Persian Gulf has managed to present to the world a model of what unfettered materialism leads to. A regime that operates off of oil money, which wouldn’t exist without foreign know-how and intelligence. It looks down on other Arabs, despite it needing them to function or to have become what it is.

It claims to represent a moderate and peaceful version of Islam, promoting Madkhali Wahhabi voices who promote it as a model of socially conservative religion and claim it represents a leadership that follows the virtues of Tawheed (monotheism) above all others. Simultaneously, Dubai is a representation of everything that Islam opposes socially, while the same pro-UAE preachers who want to excommunicate ordinary Muslims from their religion over the slightest disagreements will sit back as Hindu Temples are openly constructed.

It has been involved in aiding two genocides, perhaps a third if you consider the 400,000 deaths in Yemen to constitute a genocide also. Even today in Somalia, only it and Israel recognize and back the Somaliland separatist movement, which could contribute to major future bloodshed.

All of this is relevant to keep in mind as the UAE is as artificial and malignant to the region as the Israelis are. Both have utter contempt for the people surrounding them, refuse to acknowledge the limits of their power, and have major narcissism complexes. In the UAE, they have to monitor every square inch of their territory, censor everyone’s thoughts, killing, deporting or imprisoning anyone who refuses to go along with stroking their fragile egos.

Ultimately, the UAE is just as complicit in regional atrocities as are the Israelis, which is why it is no surprise that they decided to directly join the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran. Their mission is to conquer, dominate and destroy the surrounding region, in order to come out on top, working hand in hand with the Zionists to do so. Now that their tourism industry has been devastated and they have taken significant blows, that only reinforces the idea of aiding the Israelis in pursuing their expansionist endeavors.

Recent history alone has demonstrated that the UAE is willing to clash with neighboring Saudi Arabia, however irrational that idea may have been, and how quickly Riyadh managed to quash their separatist proxy project in Yemen. They also demonstrated in 2017 that they were willing to push Qatar to the breaking point, in order to demand on Israel’s behalf that they stop providing financial support to Hamas, as well as using Al-Jazeera to air coverage favorable of Palestinians.

The UAE is not a normal country; it doesn’t have thousands of years of history like neighboring Oman, it is an aggressive asset that cares only for expanding the power of its monarchy. Therefore, it is to be assumed that it will participate in continued attacks on its neighbors, while wearing the cloak of plausible deniability.

However, the Emiratis are likely to find out against Iran, what they quickly learned when they recently clashed with Saudi Arabia, they are not Israel and can’t behave as such without consequences.

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.

May 9, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on ‘Little Sparta’: Why The UAE Attacked Iran for Israel’s Sake

Iran Blames European Tanker for Oil Slick Near Kharg

Al-Manar | May 9, 2026

Iran dismissed on Saturday allegations it deliberately discharged crude into the Gulf and instead blamed a foreign tanker for the pollution near the Kharg Island.

Jafar Pourkabgani, a member of Iran’s parliament representing Bushehr, said claims that Iran dumped excess oil due to full storage tanks are “completely unfounded” and part of “psychological warfare.”

In a post on X, he attributed the slicks detected by satellite imagery to oil and ballast water released by a European tanker, describing the incident as a source of significant environmental damage.

Satellite analysis cited by The New York Times indicates the spill has spread over more than 20 square miles (52 square kilometers), making it one of the largest observed in the Gulf in recent months. UK-based monitoring firm Orbital EOS said the scale of the slick is notable amid heightened regional tensions following the Israeli-American aggression on Iran on February 28.

For its part, the Conflict and Environment Observatory noted that the origin of the spill is still unclear, warning that it is drifting southward and may not be effectively contained.

The incident has drawn attention due to its proximity to Kharg Island, the backbone of Iran’s oil industry, through which roughly 90 percent of the country’s crude exports pass. Located north of the Strait of Hormuz, the island is a critical artery for global energy supplies, amplifying concerns over both environmental risks and potential disruptions to oil markets.

May 9, 2026 Posted by | Environmentalism | | Comments Off on Iran Blames European Tanker for Oil Slick Near Kharg

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