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Washington’s ‘Waiver On, Waiver Off’ Game at Chabahar

By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – December 9, 2025

In recent months, Washington has swung from revoking to restoring India’s sanctions waiver for operating Iran’s Chabahar port. The ‘waiver on, waiver off’ routine, however, comes with a clear strategic intent.

The move is not just leverage over New Delhi as trade talks loom; it’s also a signal to Central Asian states that their economic futures — including access to Chabahar — depend on aligning their foreign policies with US preferences.

In September 2025, the United States pulled the rug out from under one of India’s most carefully nurtured strategic ventures: the Chabahar Port in Iran. Long viewed by New Delhi as a critical gateway to Afghanistan and Central Asia, Chabahar suddenly became a high-stakes chess piece in Washington’s policy game. On September 16, the US Department of State announced it would revoke the special exemption granted in 2018 under the Iran Freedom and Counter-Proliferation Act (IFCA), with the revocation taking effect September 29. Overnight, Indian companies, shippers, insurers, and banks involved in the port’s operations were cast into uncertainty: their assets could be frozen, their access to the US financial system curtailed, and their commercial contracts imperilled.

This move did not occur in isolation. At the same time, New Delhi was itself involved in a high-stakes game with the US over bilateral trade. Specifically, it is resisting US pressure to halt oil imports from Russia. By targeting Chabahar, Washington signaled that it was willing to leverage unrelated strategic projects to enforce compliance elsewhere, effectively turning Indian economic and geopolitical interests into bargaining chips. Yet the situation shifted quickly: reports emerged on October 28 that Indian firms had halted Russian oil imports, and the very next day, the US issued a fresh six-month waiver, allowing Chabahar operations to continue without immediate penalty.

The rapid “waiver on, waiver off” cycle exposes the transactional and unpredictable logic of US sanction policy. A project that represents over $120 million in Indian investment, long-term regional connectivity, and painstaking diplomacy is reduced to a geopolitical pawn, its fate dictated less by commercial or developmental imperatives and more by Washington’s strategic calculus. This particular calculus, however, is not meant for India only. The politics of granting and restricting waivers is also tied very closely to Washington’s relationship with Central Asia.

The Central Asian gamble

Chabahar port is important not only for India but also for the landlocked states of Central Asia, offering a rare direct link to the Indian Ocean and a potential route to India that bypasses Pakistan. Several Central Asian states have expressed interest in using Chabahar Port for this purpose. Tajikistan has emerged as the most active player, signing a formal cooperation agreement with Iran in early 2025 and committing to developing a logistics hub with terminals and storage facilities. Uzbekistan has held discussions about utilising the port for trade and storage. While a lot of this is still far from being fully operational, there is little denying that a major roadblock has been the US sanctions.

In the same vein, the waiver also signals to Afghanistan, where India has recently become very active. The Taliban regime is currently involved in a border standoff with Pakistan. Kabul has suspended its trade with Pakistan, and the reopening of this route remains highly uncertain. At the same time, Washington has been pressuring the Taliban to come to terms with handing over the Bagram airbase to the US military for its potential operations against China. In this context, if Afghanistan wants to continue—and even expand—its trade with Central Asia and other countries beyond the region, i.e., with India itself, as an alternative to Pakistan, its best route goes through the Chabahar Port.

Beyond this, the US decision to grant the waiver—and unless it restricts it again in the future—also puts it in a position where it can influence several other regional trade and connectivity projects, including the Trans‑Caspian and broader International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) projects. By granting or revoking waivers, the US is signalling that it can create opportunities and or introduce uncertainty for companies and governments contemplating investment or trade through corridors that touch Iran.

For example, Central Asian states considering cargo flows via Chabahar—or via the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan and beyond—must now weigh the risk that US sanctions could suddenly be applied, making insurance, financing, or banking services problematic and/or unavailable. Even if the Trans‑Caspian route itself does not pass through Iran, the interconnected nature of regional logistics networks means that a disruption at Chabahar could ripple across supply chains, raising costs or forcing alternative routing through Russia, Turkey, or China.

In essence, the waiver policy acts as a geopolitical lever. Its application is meant to put pressure on countries and companies so that they align their foreign and trade policies with US preferences, discouraging full exploitation of alternatives like the Trans‑Caspian corridor that could reduce American influence. The US has, for some time, been trying to expand its geopolitical footprint in Central Asia. Its ability to strangulate or allow Chabahar helps it signal its continued relevance. On the whole, the uncertainty imposed by such sanctions creates a risk premium, slows governmental and private investment, and subtly nudges regional actors toward pathways that the US finds strategically acceptable, even if they are less efficient or commercially less viable.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs

December 9, 2025 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Deep State Targets Thomas Massie

By Matt Wolfson | The Libertarian Institute | December 9, 2025

With the retirement next month of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in the face of vociferous attacks from President Donald Trump, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) is the only member of any of the three branches of our government who consistently and on principle opposes American empire—and who also opposes the taxes, debt, and interventions that come with it. In a little over a year, he may not be.

For the first time in his seven-term congressional career, Massie is being challenged by a formidable primary opponent. That opponent is Ed Gallrein, a former Navy Seal who during his thirty years of meritorious service earned four Bronze Stars and whose extended family of small business owners is a multi-generational staple of Kentucky’s 4th District. As the last line in Gallrein’s X bio has it, he is “Trump-endorsed to defeat Thomas Massie and Deliver America First for Kentucky”—and, given the popularity Trump still enjoys among Republican voters as well as Gallrein’s sterling military reputation, and despite Massie’s strong endurability, Gallrein may succeed in realizing his goal.

Whether Gallrein’s election would actually mean delivering America first is a very different question. Putting America first presumably means putting the soldiers sworn to protect Americans, those individuals with whom Gallrein so valorously served, first as well. But a closer examination of the agenda Gallrein is running on makes clear that, unlike Massie’s prudent America first constitutionalism, it does not accomplish that goal. Instead it is the latest iteration, this time under Donald Trump, of a long-running play where small networks of ideologues ensconced in Washington’s military-corporate complex use America’s armed forces to run imperial plays for profit and power. The people running this version—connected Zionists tied to Trump’s re-election bid and now to his White House—are using Gallrein’s military service, which one might think would end up aiding our men and women in uniform, as an excuse to do the opposite. They are funding a decorated veteran to act as a front for imperial plays that mis-serve our armed forces and the Americans they’re sworn to protect.

Understanding the conditions that allowed this operation to happen and their consequences means going back to the creation of the current armed forces at the hands of the military-corporate complex after 1945—and tracing its abuses and misuses at the hands of a small number of players whose inheritors are now backing Trump and targeting Massie.

Americans’ rightful and deep respect for the men and women of our armed forces obscures an essential fact about the organization they serve: in its current form, it was never intended to exist. From Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to Dwight Eisenhower, people concerned for our liberties saw a large and expanding standing army and its support systems as inherent threats to our constitutional republic. These men were not unrealistic about the need for an armed forces—Jefferson founded West Point, and Eisenhower commanded D-Day—but they knew that an essentially defensive army equipped for a republic was very different than an aggressive army serving empire. In their view, this latter type of army would become a version of the British Army which Jefferson’s revolutionaries had fought against: an aggressive tool of imperial operators to use for power and profit.

With the start of the Cold War and the beginning of an arms race with the Soviet Union, Jefferson’s and Madison’s and Eisenhower’s fears came true, giving an enormous opportunity to a network that did not share them. Namely, old Northeastern WASPs and their allies who by 1945 had spent 150 years eschewing America’s constitutional politics in favor of building institutions and corporations in and around Washington DC. The Henry Cabot Lodges and the Brothers Harriman, the Rockefellers and the DuPonts and the Bushes, John Foster and Allen Dulles and John Jesus Angleton—these were the financial and corporate and military players who used the Cold War as an opportunity to make themselves into runners of American empire, for their own power and profit.   

At their hands, the American Army became the British Army of a later age, with its own public-debt-fueled corporate outgrowths which purport to be serving our soldiers. In reality, as Dwight Eisenhower said publicly in his presidential farewell address of 1961, the new weapons-for-profit system made its minders into what Eisenhower called in his notes for the speech “merchants of death”: “flag and general officers retiring at an early age take positions in war based industrial complex shaping its decisions and guiding the direction of its tremendous thrust.” And these civilians running the weapons contractors were rotating not just through Pentagon and CIA consultancies and administrative agencies but through America’s new civilian intelligence service, the CIA. There, the profit motive—combined with a high level of ideological zeal—also distorted policy.

By 1961, Allen Dulles, John Jesus Angleton, and the lineup of other old-line WASPs running the CIA outside of meaningful oversight had put America into the Congo, Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, and the beginnings of Vietnam. After these came interventions in El Salvador, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Kuwait, Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, Venezuela, Palestine, and (again, this year) Iran. These were plays executed with input from McKinsey and Raytheon to Langley and the Pentagon via the Situation Room. They were increasingly run by new networks: once disproportionally WASP, these new networks were disproportionally made up of Jewish Zionists bent on using American empire to protect Israel. Among these were early operators like Henry Morgenthau and Theodore Kollek; and their later inheritors like Martin Peretz and William Kristol, Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz, Michael Ledeen and Thomas Pritzker, people who in many ways shaped the policies of the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden administrations. At their hands, accelerated military corporate cronyism has been the order of the day starting in 1993, when the Clinton administration, which assumed power thanks in part to Zionist backing, pressured the fifty major weapons contractors active during the Cold War to consolidate in the nominal name of cutting costs. The ensuing distortion of our military has occurred via multiple forms, which I reported on for the Libertarian Institute in July.

One distortion has been cost overruns on weapons systems, which contractors feel free to allow or even encourage since no competition exists for their product. This has also allowed errors in construction which diminishes the equipment that’s supposed to serve our troops. Then, as I have reported elsewhere, in response to the overruns came budget cuts and the “fix” of “sequestration,” which reduced these cost overruns by cutting expenditures on the troops, further under-equipping and overstretching personnel. Exacerbating the problem, as I have also reported, were Pentagon-and-contractor funded think tanks, which covered the problem with “social initiatives” via mental health, climate, and DEI, further distracting the Pentagon from the imperatives of readiness and training. All the while, interventions urged by the same financial-military-intelligence networks attenuating the capacity of our armed forces also overstretched them: in Somalia and Bosnia and Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya, and (in an “advisory” capacity) Syria and Israel and Ukraine.

The result has not just been surging deficit spending that mortgages the future of Americans; nor backlash from affected populations to our imperial arrangements abroad. It has also, even more dramatically, been a spate of military embarrassments since 2018, most notably crashes of planes at the hands of overcommitted and demoralized troops and their commanders. These have racked up losses to the tune of nearly $500 million per crash and cost the lives of servicepeople. As I reported in January of this year, in an investigation of these crashes and their causes:

“For the Army, [the shrinking of budgets and personnel since the 2010s] meant “cut[ting] 40,000 active-duty soldiers, shrinking [the Armed Forces] to 450,000 by 2017.” For the Air Force, this meant a reduction of active-duty airmen from 333,370 to 310,000.”

“An Air Force report to Congress in 2018 said that, thanks to sequestration, the Air Force was ‘the smallest… it has ever been.’ Active-duty aircrew flying hours had been slashed from 17.7 to 13.2 hours per month. 31 squadrons, including 13 coded for combat, had stood down because of funding pressures. Plans had been announced to eliminate 500 planes, and, according to a Military.com report cited by The American Legion, the Air Force was ‘making do with ‘half-size squadrons.’’ The common refrain today is that hours in the air are even shorter—4.1 hours a month, by one estimate—and that efforts to replace real flying with “on-the-ground simulators” are dismal failures.”

“These shortages of manpower and training had immediate effects that took time to tally… 2018, the year after the sequester was complete, saw a spate of plane crashes. In late 2020, Congress found that, in just six years since the sequester began, ‘‘mishaps’ in training flights or routine missions killed 198 service members and civilians, destroyed 157 aircraft, and cost taxpayers $9.41 billion.’ Two weeks alone in 2022 saw three crashes on routine training missions in Alabama and California, costing at least five lives and two injuries. The last few months of 2023 saw four crashes. On December 22, 2024, a navy jet was shot down by friendly fire, and another narrowly avoided being shot down by the same barrage, in the Mediterranean.”

A year ago, given the stakes Donald Trump himself articulated for his re-election (a run against the “deep state”), it seemed unthinkable that Trump would adopt military corporatist priorities wholesale almost immediately on assuming office. But, influenced in part by Zionist operators who swung to support his re-election campaign in the summer of 2024 after pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, he has done exactly that. As I reported for the Libertarian Institute in July, Trump has forgone actually reforming aspects of the military corporate complex to aid our soldiers. Instead he has committed to a “Big Beautiful Bill” that inflates ICE’s budget but does not direct military funding away from corporate cronyism; a surface-level crusade against “wokeness” and “DEI”; a military parade; superficial demonstrations of force in Yemen and Iran and Venezuela; the militarization of law enforcement via ICE recruiting; and the placement of American troops in American cities. He claims to be standing above all for our troops—but in reality he is standing for the military corporate complex that mis-serves them, to the demonstrable detriment of our men and women in uniform.

The most recent example of Trump’s demonstrably detrimental effect on our troops comes from The Washington Post, in a story published December 4, 2025. The subject was a deployment to the Middle East for the benefit of Israel and its Saudi and Emirati allies against Yemen; a campaign prosecuted in the Biden administration and before with the encouragement of Zionists but decisively and unprecedentedly accelerated by Trump in his second term:

“The U.S. Navy on Thursday released its findings from four investigations scrutinizing the significant challenges encountered by one of its aircraft carrier groups over nine months in the Middle East, where several major accidents occurred as the ships battled Yemeni militants.”

“The Truman carrier group departed its home port in Norfolk in September 2024 — and by the time it returned in May, the carrier itself had collided with a merchant vessel; its cruiser had shot down one of its fighter jets, another warplane was lost when it slid overboard as the carrier performed an evasive maneuver to dodge an incoming missile; and a third jet was lost when an arresting cable failed as the pilot attempted to land.”

“In three of the four incidents, investigators determined, either poor training, improper procedures or crew fatigue played significant roles. And while no service members died, those incidents could have led to multiple fatalities, the Navy found.”

All of which raises with some immediacy the question of Ed Gallrein, who was selected to run against Massie after the congressman repeatedly voted, along Jeffersonian constitutionalist lines, against using taxpayer money and deficit spending to benefit Israel. Gallrein’s selector was Chris LaCivita, Trump’s co-campaign manager in 2024 and Trump’s pick to spearhead the anti-Massie campaign, who is working with at least $2 million from an anti-Massie PAC funded by the Jewish Zionist billionaires Paul Singer, John Paulson, and Miriam Adelson. These three operators owe their easy entrée into Washington in part to the military-intelligence Zionist operators linked to the money and power at the origins of the CIA and of the host systems for the merchants of death 80 years ago—just as the decisive momentum was building for the creation of Israel.

And the $2 million they have committed so far on behalf of Israel’s interests has had its effect. At a recent gathering of campaign donors, Massie informed the group that before this primary campaign his approval/disapproval rating in polls was 62-12 (adding together very approved, somewhat approved, etc.) But, he went on to say, after $2 million in negative ads spent in his district, it’s now 51-37. He said hthat he personally expects $20 million to be spent against him, but will feel comfortable in his odds if he raises $5 million.

Gallrein was endorsed preemptively by Trump, which is to say before he entered the race, and he is by any measure a shrewd choice for Trump and Trump’s Zionist allies to back. He is not just a decorated veteran with thirty years of valorous service, he is also a fifth generation farmer and the scion of a Kentucky family with deep roots in the 4th District. The Gallrein Family Farm, founded in 1929, became the largest dairy producer in the state; expanded aggressively into tobacco and vegetables and grain along with a subset of trucking; and has now expanded into “agritourism” with weddings and a farmers market, along with a store and lunch counter which sells the farm’s “produce and product lines.” According to his LinkedIn CV, Gallrein worked at the farm from 1962, when he was four, to 1982, when he was 24, rising to vice president; then in 1984 he joined the U.S. Army, where “he served for 30 years and became a Navy SEAL officer… rose to the rank of captain and served in Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq.” Since retiring in 2014, Gallrein has experimented with careers: opening a farm and stables as well as two “leadership” and “startup” consultancy businesses, and running in the Republican primary for the District 7 state senate seat, going on to lose the race by 118 votes. He speaks, repeatedly, of his intention to bring the skills he learned during his military service to serve the 4th District.

Gallrein, having never served in office, has no voting record, and his policy platform amounts to loyalty to President Trump’s agenda, which now includes supporting interventions or operations abroad in Yemen, Palestine, Venezuela, Iran, and possibly Nigeria. In public statements this year, Gallrein has doubled down on interventionism, specifically defended our engagements in the Middle East, especially against Iran, as “leveraging” our “power” there and (echoing a favorite line from Trump-supporting media) “playing chess” against our enemies. He uses the authority of his service to help make the case—even to the extent of arguing that what may seem to be the Trump administration’s irresponsible ventures abroad and at home with authoritarian surveillance regimes like the Saudis and Emiratis via the ministrations of Israel are in fact necessary complements to our national security. (“Economic is the centerpiece of national power. [That concept is] called ‘Dime’ as we studied it in the War College.”)

What Gallrein doesn’t emphasize in his interviews is as telling as what he does. What he under-emphasizes is not just questions of taxes and debt and cost of living, which is not a surprise considering that he has said publicly that he “believes it’s his stance on foreign policy that put him on Trump’s radar.” What he under-emphasizes also relates to crucial questions when it comes to his nominal area of expertise, our military. He does not speak about meaningfully reforming our weapons contracting systems or their think tank outgrowths; or about the influence of money on the interventions we make in other sovereign nations. In other words, he does not speak about any actual structural problem in the military corporate complex that hurts the men and women with whom he once valorously served—or about any actual structural reform that would help them. And why would he? His financial and political backers are tied, directly, to those very structures—the military corporate systems and their financial supporters and their think tanks and advocacy groups and the state, Israel, that is their main priority and beneficiary and the beneficiary of our endless interventions.

Not just our sovereignty, but the safety of the people pledged to protect us, are under clear threat when they’re presided over by politicos like Gallrein run by networks, and operators, like these.

December 9, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Florida blacklists CAIR, Muslim Brotherhood as ‘foreign terrorist organizations’

The Cradle | December 9, 2025

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued an order on 9 December naming the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as “foreign terrorist organizations,” following in the steps of Texas.

Florida’s designation makes it the second Republican-led state in as many months to target the two groups.

DeSantis said the move was “EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY” and instructed state agencies to deny employment, contracts, funding, or any state-provided resources to the organizations and to individuals providing them with “material support.”

His executive order repeats claims that the Muslim Brotherhood supports “political entities and front organizations that engage in terrorism and funnel money to finance terrorist activities.”

It also alleges that CAIR “was founded by persons connected to the Muslim Brotherhood” and ties both groups to Hamas.

The order further directs agencies to take “all lawful measures to prevent unlawful activities” by the two groups. DeSantis framed the action as part of broader legislative efforts, saying lawmakers were “crafting legislation to stop the creep of sharia law.”

He added that he hopes legislators “codify these protections for Floridians against CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood.”

CAIR, founded in 1994 and a leading US Muslim civil rights group, rejected the designation as “defamatory and unconstitutional.”

The group said it will sue the state, as it is already doing in Texas over a similar proclamation issued by Governor Greg Abbott.

In joint statements from its national office and Florida chapter, CAIR accused DeSantis of prioritizing “the Israeli government over the people of Florida” and targeting the organization because of “decades advancing free speech, religious freedom and justice for all, including for the Palestinian people.”

“We look forward to defeating Gov. DeSantis’s latest Israel First stunt in a court of law, where facts matter and conspiracy theories have no weight,” the statement added.

Neither the Muslim Brotherhood nor CAIR is designated as a terrorist organization by the US government, and so their restrictions remain at the state level.

The designations come as Trump reviews whether any US-based chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood should be blacklisted.

Federal agencies under Trump have also taken actions against individuals and organizations critical of Israel, including student visa cancellations, university fines, and the detention of British commentator Sami Hamdi during a CAIR speaking tour.

December 9, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘No evidence’: UNIFIL chief refutes Israeli claims about Hezbollah rearming in south Lebanon

Press TV – December 9, 2025

The commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) says the multinational peacekeeping mission has not found any evidence of Hezbollah rebuilding its military capabilities, contradicting Israeli claims used as the pretext to strike southern Lebanon.

Speaking in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 television channel on Monday, Diodato Abagnara said he had seen “no evidence” that the Lebanese resistance movement was rearming south of the Litani River.

Abagnara, who took over as head of UNIFIL in June, also condemned continued Israeli airstrikes on Lebanon, which have killed hundreds of people, as “blatantly violating the ceasefire agreement.”

He warned that the slightest mistake could lead to a major escalation, describing the security situation as “really fragile.”

Abagnara also noted that the presence of Israeli troops in five points along the Blue Line demarcating the border between Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied territories constitutes a “flagrant” violation of UN Resolution 1701.

The resolution, which brokered a ceasefire in the 33-day-long war Israel launched against Lebanon in 2006, calls on the occupying Tel Aviv regime to respect Lebanese sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Israel and the Hezbollah resistance movement reached a ceasefire agreement that took effect on November 27, 2024. Under the deal, Tel Aviv was required to withdraw fully from the Lebanese territory, but has kept forces stationed at five sites, in clear violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and the terms of last November’s agreement.

Since the implementation of the ceasefire, Israel has violated the agreement multiple times through repeated assaults on the Lebanese territory.

Lebanese authorities have warned that the Israeli regime’s violations of the ceasefire threaten national stability.

December 9, 2025 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Tony Blair ‘dropped’ from Gaza ‘Board of Peace’ shortlist; Hamas welcomes move as ‘step in right direction’

MEMO | December 9, 2025

A senior figure in the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, Taher al-Nunu, said on Monday that reports about removing former UK prime minister Tony Blair from the “Gaza Peace Council” is “a step in the right direction”.

He said the movement had repeatedly urged mediators to exclude Blair because of what he described as his clear bias towards Israel.

In comments reported by Al Jazeera, al-Nunu confirmed that Hamas is ready to agree to a long-term truce, provided that Israel fully commits to a complete ceasefire.

He explained that the resistance’s weapons would form part of the defence system of a future Palestinian state, stressing that the movement firmly rejects any proposal for an international force to seize these weapons by force. “This proposal is rejected and has never been discussed,” he said.

Al-Nunu added that the movement has not yet received any clear plan regarding the structure of the proposed international force for Gaza, its duties, or the areas where it would be deployed.

He expressed his belief that “no state will agree to join a force tasked with forcibly disarming Gaza”.

He also said that “Benjamin Netanyahu’s ambitions go beyond the borders of Palestine and pose a threat to all countries in the region”.

In a separate remark, al-Nunu announced that Hamas is ready to hand over the administration of the Gaza Strip immediately to an independent national committee of technocrats, noting that this idea was proposed by Egypt after the Palestinian Authority refused to take on the role.

December 9, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Europe needs to heed the invitation in the U.S. National Security Strategy and return power to its nation states

By Ian Proud | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 9, 2025

The publication of America’s new National Security Strategy has sent many European commentators into a collective rage. It is perhaps not surprising that those who are most enraged are the same people in favour of maintaining the war in Ukraine. The cold truth is that European citizens want their nations to focus on their national interests. The European Commission would sooner drag them into a war.

Despite the uproar on X and other social media, the U.S. National Security Strategy says relatively little about Europe, precisely because it focuses on U.S. core national interests. And, indeed, that is the core point made about Europe; that in trying to create a unified geopolitical role, it has neglected the core interests of its Member States.

The Strategy expresses a desire to see Europe regain its self-confidence and reestablish strategic stability with Russia. That aspiration appears driven by a desire to maintain Europe as an open market for U.S. goods and investment, and also to avoid it continuing to be a chaotic continent that diverts U.S. resources from its main peer competitor, which is China. There is also an underlying though unstated sense of Europe and Russia maintaining a healthier relationship in part to resist Chinese domination of both.

Europe’s supposed decline is framed in the context of its reduction in economic stature from 25% of global GDP to 14% now. European economic growth has never fully recovered from the shock of the Global Financial Crisis. With the economic centre of gravity shifting to Asia, the continent is being left behind.

Pundits have taken most offence to the notion that Europe faces civilisational erasure, driven by: ‘European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty.., censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.’

Right at the heart of this critique is the idea that the current ‘trajectory of Europe’ which the U.S. wants to ‘cultivate resistance to’, is eroding national sovereignty and the value of the nations within Europe. The Strategy is shot through with bemusement that culturally rich and diverse Europeans nations, which are the well spring of America’s citizenry, are abandoning their interests in favour of an inchoate supranational identity that is simultaneously unattainable self-harming.

In the aftermath of World War II and centuries of conflict, the European project emerged as a way to allow for the peaceful coexistence of very different nations, linguistically, politically and historically. The adrenalin running through the veins of unprecedented levels of peace and stability until 2014 was the dismantling of economic social and cultural barrier nations, that did not erode their unique sense of self of any nation.

It may well be true that a U.S. security shield avoided the domination of Europe by a hostile Soviet Union until 1991, and for that we should be thankful. But the reason why European states learned to live in peace with each other after that period was largely because politics and security were largely left out of the conversation.

The reason European nations spent less on defence after the Soviet Union collapsed was not because their security was underwritten by American troops in Europe, but because they faced no external threat of invasion either in military terms of through unchecked migration.

The irony, of course, is that the factors that precipitated Europe’s contemporary decline, the ever greater weight and importance given to undemocratic transnational groupings such as NATO – were U.S. led. Impetus from the U.S. to keep expanding NATO gradually reintroduced very real risk to Europe as Russia felt increasingly left out in the cold and threatened. Needing to justify a role for itself, the European Institutions have grabbed ever more competence from Member States to resist so-called Russian aggression.

Once and for all, at least it is hoped, the Strategy attempts to kill ‘the perception… of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance’. That is being interpreted by the usual pro-war commentators as a sop to Russia. In fact, it is an invitation to European nations to refocus on their national interests, for the benefit of the European continent as a whole.

Without digging over again the history of NATO expansion, the key point is that neither NATO nor the institutions of Europe are states. They have no core interests beyond the bureaucratic need to exist, grow and accrete ever greater powers. You will never see the European Commission or NATO advancing recommendations on how they might reduce in size or hand power back to their members.

At this time of unprecedented threat of a reemergence of continent-wide conflict in Europe, the Americans are simply suggesting that nation states start to wrest back control. Both NATO and the European Commission, in my opinion, have both undermined the national and inflamed the international, while contributing to the stagnation of Europe as an idea of community, rather than a confederation.

A core principle of the U.S. Strategy is to ‘seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories’.

How Trump seeks to coexist with other nations of the world is exactly how European states sought to coexist peacefully with each other after World War II. The European Economic Community, as it was called for a while, didn‘t seek to erode the primacy of the nation state, focussing instead on the economic, social and cultural features to create the idea of common purpose, without the shackles of common identity.

Yet, the European Commission’s concept of expansion – which in any case Europe cannot afford – is rooted in a desire to homogenise states under a fictious notion of common European values, and to prioritise conformity over identity.

Any existing European Member that seeks to raise a hand is called out by the collective as a back-slider, a quisling and a Putin stooge, taking Hungary, as a prime example.

Yet, European nations that focussed first and foremost on their economic wellbeing and the maintenance and protection of their industrial bases would buy Russian gas because it made good economic sense to do so.

A Europe that focussed on the protection of its citizens would seek a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine as soon as possible, instead of rejecting every possibility of dialogue, and raising the spectre of a future war that would kill and displace millions of their citizens.

A Europe that focussed on good neighbourly relations would seek a way to live on good terms with Russia and for Russia and Ukraine to live on good terms with each other, however long it may take to recreate that balance.

And in my experience of engaging with the Russians, they reciprocate with friendship as vigorously as they do with hostility, so the possibility of peace is far less of a mirage than people would have you believe.

Of course, war with Ukraine is used as a reason for why this is neither possible nor desirable. But then, unfortunately, the arguments in favour of perpetual conflict with Russia become self-reinforcing, with both Europe and Russia arguing to their quite separate allies about who is to blame, and no one seeking reconciliation, through the cutting off of contact.

So the European Commission has increasingly sought to dominate continent-wide diplomacy and marshalled the tools of its willing legions of media talking heads who insist that nothing must change, that talking to Russia is tantamount to treason. The bellicose response to the U.S. National Security Strategy is proof of that. Moscow’s signalling of their alignment with its principles offered as further evidence that Trump is selling us out.

Yet, restoring strategic balance between Europe and Russia, which the U.S. strategy claims to want, requires restoring the primacy of the individual Member States of Europe over its institutions, and handing back control to capitals in how to govern their relations with Russia and other countries.

The European institutions have succeeded in defining Europe as something distinct from Russia, when in fact, Russia is a part of Europe. Calls by Defence Commissioner Kubilius to develop a common European geopolitical strategy, is merely another effort to grasp more competence from the nation states of Europe. These should be roundly rejected. The common foreign and security policy has been an abject failure and should be dismantled.

It is the institutions of Europe who are blocking the door of efforts to restore some normality in relations with Russia, most notably in the form of rabid Russophobes such as Kaja Kallas. She would happily take Europe to war from the comfort of a safe distance. I’d invite more European citizens to heed the invitation of the Americans to seek a way out with the implication that she, and other unelected war-mongers, are stripped of their powers.

December 9, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

NATO corruption scandal triggers Israeli arms contracts cuts – media

RT | December 9, 2025

Multiple NATO-Israel arms contracts have been suspended over a massive bribery scandal in the heart of the US-led military bloc’s buying section that has already triggered multiple arrests across Europe, several investigative media outlets have reported.

The scandal has exposed a shadowy network of private operators exploiting a revolving-door system that allows former NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA) staff to become consultants in the defense industry, where they flourish in “the new geopolitical situation” as a result of “the explosion in European defense budgets,” according to La Lettre.

The NSPA has been forced to suspend multiple contracts with Israel’s largest weapons producer, Elbit Systems, over mounting evidence that the Israeli company used a former NSPA staff member to bribe ex-colleagues to secure deals for the company.

A 60-year-old Italian national, Eliau Eluasvili, has been on the run since late September, when a Belgian court issued an international arrest warrant for him.

The decision was made over the summer in response to a multi-nation investigation into brivery allegations, with new details revealed on Monday by La Lettre, Le Soir, Knack, and Follow the Money.

An internal NSPA email dated July 31 lists 15 suspended contracts, 13 of them involving Elbit Systems or its subsidiary Orion Advanced Systems, according to investigative reporters. The deals under scrutiny include deals for fuzes, aircraft flares, 155mm artillery shells, and upgrades for Portuguese naval patrol ships, according to the outlets.

Documents also indicate that the Israeli manufacturer has been barred from bidding on new contracts until the inquiry concludes.

The sharp rise in defense spending among EU members has been driven by efforts to arm Ukraine against Russia and by Brussels’ claims that member states must prepare for a possible direct confrontation with Moscow.

Russian officials have long argued that corrupt interests within Europe are influencing the West’s increasingly confrontational policies.

December 9, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Russia’s Return to Syria Changes Everything

TMJ News Network | December 8, 2025

A year after the fall of Bashar al-Assad and Abu Mohammad al-Jolani’s rise to power, Syria remains a politically volatile state. West Asian geopolitical analyst and Cradle columnist Sharmine Narwani joins TMJ News to reveal the power plays unfolding behind the scenes: Russia’s sudden return near the Golan, Israel expanding its reach in the south, Gulf and Turkish maneuvering, U.S. calculations, and the IMF positioning itself for influence. What does the future of Syria look like as foreign powers get involved?

December 8, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Plans to Spend $740 Million on Propaganda in 2026

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | December 8, 2025

A proposal calls for nearly quintupling Israel’s public diplomacy – or hasbara – budget.

The plan calls for increasing the propaganda budget to $729 million in 2026, up from $150 million this year. The significant boost to the public diplomacy fund comes as Israel’s image is plummeting in the US.

Over the past years, polls have found that a decreasing number of Americans support Israel and approve of Tel Aviv’s onslaught in Gaza. A New York Times survey in September found more Americans sympathize with Palestinians than Israelis. Additionally, 40% of Americans believe Israel is intentionally killing Palestinians in Gaza.

Earlier this year, public filings showed that the Israeli Foreign Ministry is spending $4.1 million to target American Evangelical Christians. The campaign will involve creating a mobile “October 7 experience” that will visit Christian colleges, churches, and events.

Another FARA filing revealed that Tel Aviv is paying some influencers up to $7,000 per post that promotes Israeli narratives. Israel is also planning to spend $145 million to influence popular AI chatbots.

Tel Aviv’s public relations push also involves bringing Americans to Israel. Earlier this year, the Israeli Foreign Minister gathered 250 state-level American lawmakers for a conference on passing laws that target the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in the US.

December 8, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli police swap UN flag for Israeli flag during raid on UNRWA compound in East Jerusalem

MEMO | December 8, 2025

Israeli police removed the United Nations flag from the compound of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in occupied East Jerusalem and raised the Israeli flag in its place, the agency’s commissioner-general said Monday, Anadolu reports.

“Today in the early morning, Israeli police accompanied by municipal officials forcibly entered the UNRWA compound in East Jerusalem,” Philippe Lazzarini said on US social media company X.

“Police motorcycles, as well as trucks & forklifts, were brought in & all communications were cut. Furniture, IT equipment & other property was seized,” he added.

Lazzarini continued that the UN flag “was pulled down & replaced with an Israeli flag.”

The agency’s headquarters, located in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, had been vacated earlier this year following an Israeli decision.

The UNRWA chief described the Israeli action as “a blatant disregard of Israel’s obligation as a United Nations Member State to protect & respect the inviolability of UN premises.”

Lazzarini noted that the UNRWA personnel were forced to vacate the compound “following months of harassment that included arson attacks in 2024, hateful demonstrations & intimidation, supported by a large-scale disinformation campaign, as well as anti-UNRWA legislation passed by the Israeli parliament in breach of its international obligations.”

“Whatever action taken domestically, the compound retains its status as a UN premises, immune from any form of interference,” he stressed.

Israel “is party to the Convention on the Privileges & Immunities of the UN. The Convention makes UN premises inviolable – in other words, immune from search and/or seizure – and makes UN property and assets immune from legal process.”

“There can be no exceptions. To allow this represents a new challenge to international law, one that creates a dangerous precedent anywhere else the UN is present across the world,” Lazzarini warned.

UNRWA was established by the UN General Assembly more than 70 years ago to assist Palestinians who were forcibly displaced from their land.

The UN agency has been facing severe financial difficulties since Israel launched a defamation campaign against UNRWA, claiming that staff members were involved in the Oct. 7 attacks.

Despite UNRWA’s requests that the Israeli government provide information and evidence to back up the allegations, the agency has received no response. Following Israel’s accusations, several key donor nations, including the US, suspended or paused funding.

December 8, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine jails priest for supporting Russia

RT | December 8, 2025

The government in Kiev has sentenced an Orthodox priest to prison over alleged pro-Russia remarks, as it continues a widening campaign against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).

Archpriest Ivan Pavlichenko, a cleric at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Odessa, was handed a five-year jail term after the local Court of Appeal overturned his earlier suspended sentence, according to the Center for Public Investigations and reported by regional media over the weekend.

Investigators said Pavlichenko was convicted of “justifying Russia’s armed aggression” and “inciting religious and national hatred.” The trial court found him guilty but handed down a suspended term, which prosecutors appealed as being too light.

The case was built on recordings of the priest’s private phone conversations collected by security services inside his car. Investigators say he criticized Ukraine’s leadership, discussed the conflict, quoted Russian politicians, and questioned Kiev’s official position.

Prosecutors also pointed to comments about Russian strikes on Odessa. Pavlichenko allegedly said the attacks were aimed at drone-production sites and blamed Ukraine for placing military equipment in residential areas.

The appeals court also ordered the confiscation of his property and barred him from holding positions in state institutions for three years.

Local outlets claimed Pavlichenko attended pro-Russian events before 2014 and visited Crimea with his family in 2016. Supporters in Odessa called the verdict politically motivated persecution for his views and past civic activity.

The ruling comes as Kiev intensifies its pressure on the UOC, which officials accuse of maintaining ties to Russia despite the church’s declaration of independence from the Moscow Patriarchate in May 2022. The campaign has included raids on parishes and arrests of clergy, as well as a search of the Kiev-Pechersk monastery.

Last year, Vladimir Zelensky signed legislation allowing the state to ban religious organizations affiliated with governments that Kiev deems “aggressors,” effectively targeting the UOC. Kiev has openly supported the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which the UOC and Russian Orthodox Church view as schismatic.

Moscow has said it will not abandon Orthodox believers in Ukraine and vowed to ensure that “their lawful rights are respected.”

December 8, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Israel conducts ‘widespread surveillance’ of US troops in Gaza coordination base: Report

The Cradle | December 8, 2025

Israeli intelligence is conducting widespread surveillance of US forces and allies stationed at a new US base in southern Israel tasked with overseeing aid distribution to Gaza, The Guardian reported on 8 December, citing sources briefed on the matter.

According to the sources, Israel has been recording meetings between US military officials and humanitarian aid groups at the Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), located in the industrial zone of Kiryat Gat, 12 kilometers from the border with Gaza.

The spying prompted the US commander of the base, Lieutenant General Patrick Frank, to summon his Israeli counterpart and demand that “recording has to stop here.”

“Staff and visitors from other countries have also raised concerns about Israel recording inside the CMCC,” The Guardian wrote. “Some have been told to avoid sharing sensitive information because of the risk it could be collected and exploited.”

In response, the Israeli military claimed the allegations were “absurd.”

The CMCC was set up in October to monitor the 20-point ceasefire plan for Gaza proposed by US President Donald Trump.

Staffed by US and Israeli military officials, the CMCC was tasked to coordinate aid deliveries to the strip, which Israel had largely halted in previous months, causing famine to take hold in parts of the strip.

However, Israel has continued to regularly restrict or prevent shipments of food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods into Gaza despite the CMCC’s establishment.

US military logistics experts were assigned to the CMCC to ensure aid would flow. However, they soon discovered that “Israeli controls on goods entering Gaza were a bigger obstacle than engineering challenges. Within weeks, several dozen had left,” The Guardian reported.

Israel has banned the entry of essential items on the grounds that they are “dual-use” and could be utilized by Hamas for military purposes. They include basics such as tent poles and chemicals needed for water purification, as well as pencils and paper required to restart schools.

While the CMCC brings together military planners from the US, Israel, and other allied countries, including the UK and the UAE, Palestinians are comprehensively excluded.

“There are no representatives of Palestinian civilian or humanitarian organisations, or the Palestinian Authority, stationed there invited to join discussions,” The Guardian noted.

The British newspaper added that Israeli officials cut off video calls with Palestinians when US military officials sought to include them in discussions, while CMCC planning documents omit the words Palestine or Palestinian, instead referring to the residents of the territory as “Gazans.”

Israel launched its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in 2023 after Hamas’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood – in which Israeli settlements and military bases were stormed and attacked by the resistance – helping enforce a blockade on the strip.

Israeli officials have said they wish to wipe out Palestinians’ existence in Gaza, comparing them to the Biblical people known as Amalek, who were exterminated by the ancient Israelites.

Israeli officials have also expressed their desire to replace Palestinians in Gaza with Jewish settlers once the strip is rebuilt as a high-tech smart city, which Trump has dubbed the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

December 8, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

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