The FBI manufactured plots to convince Trump that Iran sought to kill him, while Israel and its administration allies exploited the president’s deepest fears to keep him on the war path.
“I got him before he got me,” an ebullient President Donald Trump remarked to a reporter when asked about his motives for authorizing the killing of Iran’s Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on February 28, 2026.
With his off-the-cuff remark, Trump revealed that anxiety about his own assassination at the hands of Iranian agents influenced his decision to initiate a US-Israeli regime change war that has already resulted in American casualties, the bombings of schools and hospitals inside Iran, devastating Iranian retaliatory strikes on US military bases and embassies, and a spiraling global economic crisis.
Trump’s generalized fears of assassination were well-founded. He was nearly killed in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024 by a 20-year-old engineering student named Thomas Crooks who managed to fire eight rounds at the former president from a rooftop, slicing his ear and missing his head by a hair’s breadth. Two months later, a drifter named Ryan Routh was arrested after hiding for hours in the shrubbery outside the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida. Routh had been spotted after pointing an assault rifle toward a Secret Service agent as Trump played golf 400 yards away.
Officials have yet to produce any evidence that Iran played a role in either of these attempts on Trump’s life. Yet since those fateful events, Israel-aligned Trump advisors, Israeli intelligence, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself have gone to extreme lengths in order to tie Tehran to the plots. More shocking still is the fact that the FBI has manufactured a series of assassination plots, successfully convincing Trump that Iran was hunting him on US soil with highly sophisticated teams of hit men.
The man accused of leading the most significant of these operations, Asif Merchant, is currently on trial in a Brooklyn, NY federal court. After the US granted him a visa despite his presence on a terror watchlist, Merchant was in the constant company of an FBI confidential informant who ultimately steered the contrived plot to its conclusion. He never stood a chance of realizing his plans, and did not appear serious about doing so.
Independent journalist Ken Silva puts it succinctly in his forthcoming investigative book, “The Trump Assassination Plots”: “A closer look at the Merchant case reveals that at the very least…it was a highly controlled FBI sting operation that never posed a threat to Trump. More nefariously, records and whistleblower disclosures indicate that Merchant may have been the patsy in a case totally fabricated by the undercover agents.”
Authorities arrested Merchant on July 12, 2024 – just one day before Crooks attempted to kill Trump in Butler. Hours after the failed Butler assassination, FBI agents interrogated Merchant about whether it was in fact Iran that had Crooks under its control.
At that point, Trump was still campaigning to be a “President of Peace. On the campaign stump, he warned that his opponent, Kamala Harris, “would get us into World War III guaranteed.” Trump vowed to resolve the war between Ukraine and Russia in one day, and distanced himself from pro-war Republicans who sought regime change in Iran.
Pro-war elements in Trump’s coterie exercised multiple points of leverage to reverse the president’s anti-interventionist instincts. Ultra-Zionist billionaires supplied vital and well-documented influence over Trump’s policies by keeping his campaign war chest flush. But Trump remained an erratic personality whose petty grievances kept his aides in a perpetual state of uncertainty.
It was only by exploiting Trump’s deepest psychological vulnerability – his fear of an assassin’s bullet – that Israel and its cutouts in his administration were able to secure their influence over the president, keeping him on the warpath against Iran.
The assassination escalation trap
On June 3, 2020, as the commander of Iran’s IRGC Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, deboarded an airplane at Baghdad International Airport, on his way to peace talks with Saudi officials, a US drone killed him with a Hellfire missile. The strike had been ordered by Trump following a sustained campaign of military escalation against Iranian allies orchestrated by his National Security Council Director John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
As journalist Gareth Porter reported for The Grayzone, by the time Trump authorized Soleimani’s assassination, Netanyahu was planning unilateral strikes on Iran aimed at drawing the US into direct conflict. Trump issued orders to kill the general under sustained pressure by Pompeo and Bolton, two pro-Israel hardliners. Both former Trump officials have lobbied for the Israeli and Saudi-funded Mojahedin El-Khalk (MEK), a cult-like exiled militia that has carried out numerous assassinations of Iranian officials at the behest of Israel’s intelligence services.
By killing Soleimani, Trump set the US on a collision course for all-out war with Iran – just as Netanyahu had hoped. What’s more, the president invited the prospect of violent retaliation against himself and his national security advisors.
So long as Trump feared the specter of IRGC agents lurking behind every corner, it stood to reason that he was more likely to authorize a regime change war on Iran. And so the FBI went to work, concocting a series of plots that helped forge Trump’s belligerent attitude toward Tehran.
Brought to you by the FBI: Iran’s plot to kill John Bolton
The first major Iranian plot arrived in 2022, when the Department of Justice filed charges against an Iranian national, Shahram Poursafi, for supposedly hiring a hitman to kill Bolton. However, the hitman turned out to be an FBI informant, and the plot was largely contrived by the Bureau. Poursafi, for his part, could not be arrested because he lived in Iran.
As journalist Ken Silva reported, the FBI officer who oversaw the manufactured plot to kill Bolton, Steven D’Antuono, was the same official who ran the Detroit field office that relied on paid informants to concoct the 2020 plot by right-wing militia members to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. In a 2025 federal appeal court ruling, the judge acknowledged that defendants in that case “are correct that the government encouraged them to settle on a plan” to kidnap Whitmer. The FBI’s D’Antuono also oversaw the probe into the suspicious planting of pipe bombs at Republican and Democratic Party headquarters in Washington on January 6, 2021. In the course of his failed investigation, he misled Congress about having received “corrupted” evidence.
Though Bolton was never in danger from Iran, the FBI-contrived plot began to fuel paranoia among Trump administration veterans. Pompeo now believed that he too was being targeted by Iranian assassination teams. In his 2023 campaign memoir, “Never Give an Inch,” the former CIA director claimed Poursafi had also paid $1 million to a hitman to kill him.
However, Pompeo provided no additional details on the plot, which was never mentioned in DOJ documents charging Poursafi for attempting to kill Bolton. According to those affidavits, Poursafi sent just $100 to the FBI’s confidential human source before the DOJ concluded its investigation.
Asif Merchant, accused ringleader of an FBI-managed Iranian plot to assassinate Trump
Iran’s hapless hitman granted special visa, introduced to FBI informant
In April 2024, as Trump launched his comeback presidential campaign, an itinerant salesman named Asif Merchant arrived from Pakistan to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas. He was quickly flagged as a “Qualified Person of Interest” who’d been placed on a Department of Homeland Security watchlist. Agents from an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) team then discovered through a search of Merchant’s devices that he had visited Iran, where his wife and adopted son lived. Whether they’d received a tip from Israel, which furnishes reams of intelligence to the FBI on foreign Muslim visitors to the US, remains an open question.
According to JTTF documents obtained by pro-Trump reporter John Solomon, Merchant was “released without incident” and designated as “free to travel to desired destination.” In fact, the FBI had granted him a “Special Public Benefit Parole,” which, as Solomon explained, “would allow agents to try to flip Merchant as a cooperator or try to determine why he was coming to the United States and who he might be working with.”
The FBI whistleblower who provided Solomon with the documents on Merchant’s airport interview compared the “Special Public Benefit Parole” to the scandalous “Fast and Furious” program, in which President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice facilitated the delivery of automatic weapons from US gun dealers to Mexican cartels in order to supposedly surveil the gangs’ criminal activities.
Almost as soon as Merchant entered the US, the FBI introduced him to a confidential informant posing as a potential business partner and operating under the alias, Nadeem Ali. The informant had served as translator for the US military during its occupation of Afghanistan.
Though Merchant did not propose any crimes, the FBI wiretapped a meeting between him and the informant, Ali, in a hotel room on June 3, 2024. There, Merchant was taped making a supposed “finger gun” motion while mentioning an unspecified “opportunity.” This grainy minute-long hidden camera recording is presented as the linchpin of the DOJ’s indictment of Merchant.
According to the FBI, Merchant had outlined a highly complex plot which required the hiring of two hitmen, “twenty five people who could perform a protest after the distraction occurred, and a woman to do ‘reconnaissance.”
For the elaborate flash mob-style assassination extravaganza, Merchant was asked by the informant to fork over a mere $5000. The Pakistani visitor had no means of scrounging up the fee, however, raising further questions about the seriousness of the plot. “I did not think I was going to be successful,” Merchant would later state in court.
Virtually penniless, Merchant was forced to gather the cash from an anonymous “associate,” according to the DOJ indictment. Next, the FBI informant took him on a winding journey from Boston to New York City, where he allegedly handed the money to two other FBI informants posing as hit men. The DOJ claims Merchant made plans to fly to Pakistan on June 12, but was arrested in his residence that day.
Merchant interrogated about Butler, kept incommunicado
The following day, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks arrived at a fairground in Butler, Pennsylvania where former president Trump was scheduled to speak. He flew a drone in the air for 15 minutes, surveying the area as he finalized plans to assassinate the candidate. In an odd coincidence, the Secret Service’s anti-drone system was offline all morning and into the afternoon — until roughly 15 minutes after Crooks flew his drone. When Trump took the stage, Crooks climbed atop a slanted rooftop 130 yards away and fired eight shots at the president, missing his head by an inch, until a local police officer fired back. He was killed by a Secret Service sniper who had inexplicably hesitated to fire for a full 15 seconds.
Thirty hours later, FBI agents flew to Houston to interrogate Merchant in his jail cell about a possible Iranian connection to the assassination attempt in Butler. An FBI source told the Washington Post the Bureau “took the extraordinary step of interviewing him without his lawyer to determine whether he knew Crooks.”
The grilling continued even after Merchant was transferred to the maximum security Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn – the same prison where Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of United Healthcare’s CEO, is currently being held. There, he was held under harsh conditions in solitary confinement, unable to interact with anyone but the guards who brought him food and his lawyers because, as then-Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco argued, he might use code words to initiate further assassination plots. “It appeared they thought I was some kind of super spy,” Merchant later reflected.
Not only was Merchant prevented from calling his family in Pakistan, he was blocked from reviewing recordings of conversations he held with undercover FBI informants, as the DOJ had marked them “Sensitive.” In March 2025, his lawyer protested that US Marshals repeatedly refused to allow him to meet with this counsel and review discovery at the courthouse. This, too, was justified on the basis of specious national security grounds.
However, as the journalist Ken Silva discovered, an internal memo by the Bureau Of Prisons Director Colette Peters confirmed that Merchant had no contact with any Iranian intelligence assets in the US. “Law enforcement has not identified any IRGC associates of Merchant operating in the United States who could continue to orchestrate violent acts,” Peters wrote.
Indeed, the only Iranian assassins with whom Merchant appeared to have interacted inside the US were undercover informants working for the FBI.
Merchant “had never been close to realizing” Trump assassination
During his trial this March 4, Merchant’s lawyer, Avraham Moskowitz, took the highly unusual step of allowing his client to take the stand. Merchant proceeded to present a version of events that contrasted sharply with the account he provided in his initial FBI proffer. For example, the defendant claimed he had been coerced into the plot by an IRGC agent, and went forward with a plan “to maybe have someone murdered” only because he feared for his wife and adopted son back in Iran.
After his arrest by the FBI, Merchant said he engaged in discussions with federal authorities about becoming an informant himself, but they ultimately broke down for unknown reasons.
“I was not wanting to do this so willingly,” he insisted in Urdu, adding, “I did not think I was going to be successful.”
In its coverage of the trial, the New York Times concluded Merchant “had never been close to realizing the vision of his Iranian handler.”
But back in 2024, as word spread of Merchant’s arrest, Israel-adjacent figures in Trump’s inner circle exploited the case to exacerbate the candidate’s anxiety about the Ayatollah’s wrath.
Israel-aligned forces blur Butler with Iran
Just three days after Trump’s campaign was nearly ended by a lone American assassin’s bullet in Butler, officials burrowed within the architecture of the national security state took measures to shift the focus to Iran.
“The Biden administration obtained intelligence in recent weeks about an Iranian assassination plot against former President Donald Trump, and the information led the Secret Service to ramp up security around the former president, according to three U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter,” reported NBC’s Ken Dilanian on July 16, 2024. (Dilanian had been fired from his previous gig at the LA Times after he was exposed for allowing the CIA to review his reports before publication).
The unnamed officials were clearly referring to the plot which the FBI manufactured for Merchant. The revelation not only seemed like a cynical attempt to obscure the reality of the near-assassination in Butler, which was conducted by a friendless American man who had never left the country. It also suggested the FBI had been so focused on concocting Iranian plots on American soil that it ignored the years-long trail of YouTube comments left by the would-be assassin bluntly declaring his intention to kill US politicians and police officers, and his hopes to instigate a civil war.
Though FBI leadership misled the public about the nature of the Butler plot, falsely claiming, for instance, that Crooks was not communicating with others online, they were never able to connect it to Iran. This clearly frustrated Rep. Mike Waltz, a close Trump ally seated on the House committee to investigate the Butler plot.
“These plots from Iran are ongoing. And when Biden says nothing, Harris says nothing, the DOJ tries to bury it, what message does Iran get? They get that we can keep trying to take Trump out and have no consequences,” Waltz fulminated on Fox News in August 2024.
Referencing the FBI-manufactured Merchant operation, Waltz thundered, “You have multiple assassination plots from the Iranians. This Pakistani national was recruiting females as spotters. He had recruited hit men and had made a down payment. He was even recruiting protesters as a distraction.”
By this point, Waltz was on his way to a short stint as Trump’s National Security Council Director, where he would help direct a failed war on Iran’s allies among the Ansurallah movement in Yemen. (Waltz was demoted to US ambassador to the UN after he accidentally included the Atlantic Magazine editor-in-chief and former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg in a private administration Signal chat where classified information about US attack plans on Yemen was shared).
Throughout his career, the Israel lobby and Netanyahu’s allies had quietly propelled his rise. As AIPAC CEO Elliot Brandt remarked in private comments exclusively revealed byThe Grayzone, Waltz was one of Israel’s “lifelines” inside the Trump administration, as he had been groomed by the Israel lobby since he first ran for Congress.
For Waltz and other Israel-aligned figures close to Trump, connecting the Butler incident to Iran appeared to offer a direct path to conflict with Iran. As an unnamed high-level US official told the Washington Post, if Tehran had been found responsible for Crooks’ attempt to kill Trump, “it would mean war.”
Certain foreign actors were also working to steer the US toward blaming Iran for Butler. In the late summer of 2024, the Justice Department received an urgent alert from abroad which connected Crooks directly to IRGC plots to kill Trump. According to the Washington Post, the tip arrived through a “confidential human source overseas” – almost certainly Israeli intelligence.
After a thorough investigation, DOJ officials decided the tip was not credible. “Nothing credibly connected him to Iranian plots,” one official told the Post.
But in the wake of the shooting in Butler, the constant chatter about looming Iranian threats had indelibly altered Trump’s outlook. Reporters who followed Trump on the campaign trail described a palpable sense of panic from the candidate and his inner circle about IRGC-directed hitmen stalking them at every stop.
“Ghost flights” for Trump triggered by imaginary Iran missile threats
With the Trump campaign already consumed with anxiety, the FBI delivered an alert that sent them spiraling into the depths of paranoia.
According to the Bureau, Iran had placed operatives inside the country with access to surface-to-air missiles. This dubious warning prompted Trump’s already militarized security team to take an extraordinary step. Fearing that Iran would down the famous “Trump Force One” airliner at any moment, Trump was placed on a “ghost flight” owned by his golf buddy, real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff, while the rest of his campaign traveled on the main jet.
Joining Trump on the secret decoy plane was his campaign manager, Suzie Wiles, who would go on to become White House chief of staff, controlling access and the flow of information to the president. Unbeknownst to the public, Wiles had served as a paid advisor to Israel’s Netanyahu during his 2020 re-election campaign, consolidating her role as a key point of contact between Tel Aviv and Trump.
Journalist Ken Silva has revealed that the FBI alert which prompted Trump’s use of a “ghost plane” was based on a cynical deception. As Silva explains in his forthcoming book on the assassination plots surrounding Trump, federal investigators had discovered that Routh, the would-be assassin at Mar-a Lago, had attempted to purchase a rocket launcher, and may have been in contact with Iranian nationals during his time in Ukraine. The Bureau likely massaged that information into the bogus report it provided the Trump campaign, conjuring up imaginary Manpad-toting IRGC operatives to exacerbate the candidate’s fears.
Once he entered the Oval Office, Trump was encircled by Israel-aligned advisors and staunchly committed to the belief that Iran had attempted to eliminate him on the campaign trail. As commander-in-chief of the US military, he was hellbent on revenge.
Netanyahu nudges Trump with Butler plot
On June 15, 2025, days after launching an unprovoked war on Iran, Netanyahu took to Fox News to manipulate Trump into joining the assault. The Israeli leader appeared to know exactly which psychological vulnerabilities to exploit.
“These people who chant death to America, tried to assassinate President Trump twice,” Netanyahu declared, asserting without a shred of evidence that Iran was behind both the Butler assassination attempt and the one at Mar a-Lago.
“Do you have intel that the assassination attempts on President Trump were directly from Iran?” a visibly startled Fox News host Bret Baier asked.
“Through proxies, yes. Through their intel, yes. They want to kill him,” stated Netanyahu with a cocksure gaze.
One week later, Trump authorized a series of US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in support of Israel’s military assault. Though Trump arranged a ceasefire soon after the attack, Israel’s influence over his administration – and over his psyche – guaranteed that another, much more violent round of conflict was just over the horizon.
In a graphic promoted by the White House’s official Twitter/X account on July 21, 2025, Trump implied that he had begun to turn the tables on his would-be Iranian assassins: “I was the hunted, and now I’m the hunter,” he declared.
Israel claims to eliminate would-be Trump assassin in Iran
By March 2026, Trump was back to war with Iran. Within four days, the US-Israeli joint assault had predictably expanded into an open-ended regional war following the failure of an opening series of decapitation strikes to induce regime change.
On the afternoon of March 4, the glowering US “Secretary of War” and former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth appeared before a lectern at the Pentagon and vowed to unleash “death and destruction from the sky all day long” over the people of Iran.
As his cartoonishly violent screed built to a crescendo, Hegseth issued a dramatic announcement: “The leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed. Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh.”
Though Hegseth did not name the figure, an Israeli journalist who functions as one of Netanyahu’s favorite stenographers, Amit Segal, revealed that Israel had assassinated an IRGC official named Rahman Mokadam who was supposedly responsible for directing a plot to kill Trump. But once again, the details of the plot revealed layers of FBI chicanery, confidential informants masked as “co-conspirators,” and a compromised witness.
In fact, the supposed assassination plan which Mokadam was accused of directing did not initially focus on Trump. Instead, the target was said to be Masih Alinejad, an Iranian expat and regime change activist on the US government payroll. The only evidence that Trump was a possible target at all came from the claims of a convicted drug dealer and con man named Farhad Shakeri, who had also been a defendant. Shakeri spoke to the FBI by telephone from Iran, providing dubious information in exchange for a reduced prison sentence for an unnamed associate in the US.
It was during these remote interviews that Shakeri seemingly claimed he had an IRGC handler who had directed him to kill Trump. But according to the FBI’s criminal complaint against him, that handler’s name was “Majid Soleimani,” not Mokadam.
The FBI agent who interviewed Shakeri clearly recognized his penchant for fabulism, writing that “certain of Shakeri’s statements appear to be true and others appear to be false.” Shakeri had indeed lied throughout his interviews, yet the agent still concluded that “it appears” he was planning to kill Trump. He did not explain why he considered the confession credible, and the allegation about a plot to kill Trump was notably absent from the grand jury indictment filed a month later.
After killing Mokadam on March 4, the Israelis went straight to the president to boast of their supposed achievement – and reignite his anxiety about Iranian assassins.
As Amit Segal noted, “Trump was informed of this in the past few hours by Israel.” In doing so, the Israelis reinforced Trump’s sense that he had been hunted by Iran – and that by fighting their war, he was saving his own skin.
As it had in the past, the White House posted a video on its official Twitter/X account proclaiming Trump’s triumph over Iranian assassins: “I WAS THE HUNTED, AND NOW I’M THE HUNTER.”
Thomas Crooks may have narrowly missed Trump’s cranium in Butler, Pennsylvania, but Israel had found a way into the president’s head.
Iran’s armed forces denied on Thursday that they launched drones toward Azerbaijan after Baku accused Tehran of carrying out UAV attacks in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.
The statement was issued by the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces and carried by the Iranian state broadcaster IRIB.
Azerbaijan reports drone attack
Earlier in the day, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry claimed drones launched from Iranian territory struck targets in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, leaving two people injured.
Tehran rejected the claim and emphasized that Iran respects the sovereignty of neighboring countries, particularly regional Muslim states.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran, respecting the sovereignty of all neighboring states, especially brotherly Muslim countries, denies the launch of UAVs by the Iranian Armed Forces toward Azerbaijan,” the General Staff said in the statement.
Tehran blames Israeli involvement
The Iranian military suggested that “Israel” may have launched a drone toward Azerbaijani territory in an attempt to blame Iran and escalate tensions between the neighboring countries.
The accusation comes as regional tensions have intensified following the US and Israeli attacks on Iran and Tehran’s retaliatory operations.
Claims of covert Israeli activity in the region
The allegations also emerge amid claims of covert Israeli operations in several Gulf countries.
Speaking on The Tucker Carlson Show, American journalist Tucker Carlson said authorities in Qatar and Saudi Arabia had arrested Mossad agents accused of planning bombings in those countries. Carlson described the development as unusual and questioned the logic behind such operations.
He suggested the alleged plots could be part of broader efforts to destabilize multiple countries in the region while escalating pressure on Iran.
Iran’s Armed Forces say they did not fire any missiles into Turkey, stressing Tehran’s respect for the neighboring country’s territorial integrity.
“The Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran dismiss firing any missile into Turkey,” the Chief Staff of the Armed Forces said in a statement on Thursday.
It added that the Iranian Armed Forces respect the sovereignty of the neighboring and friendly country of Turkey.
The statement came after Turkey’s Ministry of National Defense claimed that NATO air defense systems had destroyed a ballistic missile fired from Iran and heading into Turkish airspace.
The ministry announced on Wednesday that the missile was shot down after passing over Syria and Iraq. The target of the missile has not been determined.
Incirlik Air Base, located in Turkey, is under the control of the country’s air force and operates as a joint Turkish-US airbase.
It is used by foreign military forces, mainly the US and other NATO allies.
Incirlik was a key logistics and air support site for US-led operations in Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and later as a cargo hub for Iraq and Afghanistan operations.
Iran is defending itself against an uprovoked US-Israeli aggression that started last Saturday. Iranian armed forces have launched multiple drone and missile operations against US military assets across the region since the start of the war.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Iran has denied any involvement in military strikes against the territory or ports of the Sultanate of Oman, following reports of drone attacks at the Duqm and Salalah ports.
In a statement released via its Communications Center, the General Staff categorically rejected claims of aggression against its “friend and neighbor,” Oman. The denial comes as regional energy infrastructure reportedly faces a wave of unexplained aerial strikes.
According to the Oman News Agency, a fuel tank at the Duqm commercial port was struck by several unmanned aircraft on Tuesday.
While authorities confirmed the damage was contained with no casualties, it marked the second such incident at the port this week; two drones targeted the facility on Sunday, leaving one worker injured.
Further north, the Omani government reported that two additional drones were intercepted over the Dhofar Governorate on Tuesday, while a third crashed near the port of Salalah.
Tehran points to ‘Zionist plot’
The Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, Iran’s primary joint military command, issued a response, characterizing the attacks on Muslim nations as a “desperate act” by the US and Israel to tarnish Iran’s image.
“The aggressor Zionists and Americans … are seeking to attack diplomatic centers and the interests of Muslim countries in the region with the aim of blaming the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the Headquarters stated.
It said Iran’s military operations are strictly disciplined. “We explicitly declare that the offensive of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran is exclusively directed against the Zionist regime and the locations of the criminal US aggressor army and their military and security infrastructure and interests.”
The Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters said the strikes on neutral neighbors were designed to help the US and Israel escape their current impasse.
On Monday, Qatar halted production of liquefied natural gas (LNG), representing roughly 20% of global supply, while Saudi Arabia said it suspended operations at its largest domestic refinery.
In the United Arab Emirates, the Abu Dhabi government confirmed a fire at the Musaffah fuel tank terminal following a drone strike on Monday, though operations were reportedly not impacted.
Iran maintains that it holds no hostility toward neighboring Muslim countries and remains committed to the security of the region. It says the retaliatory attacks are only directed against US and Israeli assets in the region.
A report from the Serbian website Vaseljenska has published two leaked documents, purportedly from the Security Service of Ukraine (SZBU), detailing a high-stakes plan to manipulate the upcoming Hungarian elections in favor of the Tisza Party.
According to the report, the Zelensky government established a “Special Working Group for Hungarian parliamentary elections” as early as September 2025 to ensure a victory for the opposition at any cost.
Notably, Hungarians living abroad can vote in Hungary’s national elections, and among those voters are ethnic Hungarians who live in Western Ukraine. This group may play a key role in the upcoming national elections.
The leaked strategy, which cannot be confirmed in regard to its authenticity, allegedly involves aggressive measures against Transcarpathian Hungarians, ranging from alleged electoral fraud to even a “false flag” operation.
The documents suggest that Kyiv views a shift in Hungarian leadership as vital for Ukraine’s strategic interests. Certainly, this is a reality for the Zelensky government.
For one, Hungary currently refuses to ship weapons to Ukraine. Second, Budapest has been instrumental in holding up weapons packages from the EU, while also criticizing the amount of taxpayer money being sent to Kyiv, which has often ended up being used for corrupt purposes. Third, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has also blocked Ukraine’s EU membership accession process.
While countries often have a strategic interest in the election outcomes in other countries, Ukraine’s current state of war means the country may pursue its interests more aggressively than a country at peace. In short, even if these leaked documents cannot be authenticated or even if they are outright fabricated, it is clear that Zelensky has a vested interest in seeing Orbán out of power.
One document, reportedly sent to Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko, notes that the Tisza Party “supports Ukraine’s accession to the EU and NATO.” The Ukrainians allegedly believe that “if the [Hungarian] opposition gains 3-4 more seats in the new parliament, it could be a decisive factor and ensure that the forces supporting Ukraine come to power in Hungary.”
To achieve this, the SZBU reportedly recommended conducting three key actions.
The first is voter surveillance, which means identifying Ukrainian citizens of Hungarian descent who cast mail-in ballots in 2022 to “define and control” them.
The second alleged method would involve postal fraud, which means intercepting the mail sent to the Hungarian Central Election Commission, with the intent “to destroy 40% of the letters containing the ballots cast in favour of Fidesz.”
The third method would involve targeted mobilization efforts, which would place political pressure on ethnic Hungarians.
It is also worth noting that support for Orbán has been extremely high in past elections from this population.
Intimidation and “false flag” terror plans
The alleged report further details a campaign of intimidation targeting Transcarpathian Hungarians, whose support for Viktor Orbán was assessed by Ukrainian intelligence as “alarmingly high.” Proposed measures for activists in cities like Beregsász and Ungvár include wiretapping, surveillance, and “further mobilization measures” — often interpreted as a euphemism for sending political opponents to the front lines.
The most shocking revelation involves a potential terrorist act intended to intimidate the population and disrupt the election.
The alleged attack would utilize drones assembled from captured Russian parts to ensure they are identified “as aircraft of the aggressor state.”
The goal would be a strike on a civilian facility near the border to provide a pretext for a stricter state of war in Transcarpathia. This would allow for the closing of borders and the suspension of postal services, effectively blocking the electoral process.
The Serbian report frames these leaks against a backdrop of increasing tension between Kyiv and Budapest. It notes that the Ukrainian security forces have shifted their focus toward ethnic Hungarians because “Kyiv has long distrusted this community because of its proximity to Budapest,” following Viktor Orbán’s refusal to support Ukrainian war efforts at the expense of Hungarian citizens.
Again, this document cannot be verified. However, given that the country is at war and given their willingness to conduct assassinations and other covert operations, Hungarian authorities may be worried about the electoral integrity of the election in Transcarpathia.
Regardless of any potential Ukrainian actions, the role of this ethnic Hungarian population may be significantly diminished in the upcoming election. Before the war, the population numbered approximately 150,000. However, since the war broke out, some estimates indicate the population may have been cut in half, with some dying at the front but many fleeing to other countries, including neighboring Hungary.
Trump is currently escalating a regime change war with Venezuela to overthrow its president, Nicolas Maduro. He has sent what Julian Assange described as “the largest U.S. pre-invasion buildup since the Iraq war” to the Caribbean and and has killed 95 people in strikes on boats in the Caribbean, under the false pretext of fighting drug traffickers, but with the real intention- as Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, admitted– of “blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle”.
The Trump administration has also authorized covert CIA action to overthrow Maduro and announced a “complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going in and out of Venezuela”, which amounts to siege warfare on the people of Venezuela, given the fact, as Economists Jeffery Sachs and Mark Weisbrot have noted, that “nearly all of the foreign exchange that is needed to import medicine, food, medical equipment, spare parts and equipment needed for electricity generation, water systems, or transportation, is received by the Venezuelan economy through the government’s revenue from the export of oil”.
While this has been widely reported, what has been mostly ignored is the fact that Trump’s policy is nothing new and is only an escalation of a bipartisan regime change policy in Venezuela that has been ongoing since 1999.
In this article, I will document the longstanding regime change campaign from the U.S. foreign policy establishment that led to Trump’s current escalation.
The Bush Administration’s Regime Change Campaign Against Hugo Chavez.
The regime change campaign in Venezuela did not start with the current Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, but with his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, who was elected president of the country in 1999, and whom the Bush administration repeatedly tried to overthrow.
According to leaked documents, the U.S. gave $15 million to USAID and instructions to carry out a program to undermine Hugo Chavez when he first got elected, which included “penetrating Chavez’s Political Base”, “dividing Chavismo”, and “isolating Chavez internationally”.
This ramped up in 2002, when the International Republican Institute (IRI), a subsidiary of the CIA cutout NED, was given $300,000 from the Bush administration to train opposition politicians to carry out a coup against Chavez.
As Mother Jones reported, “In April 2002, a group of military officers launched a coup against Chavez, and leaders of several parties trained by IRI joined the junta. When news of the coup emerged, democracy-promotion groups in Venezuela were holding a meeting to discuss ways of working together to avoid political violence; IRI representatives didn’t attend, saying that they were drafting a statement on Chavez’s overthrow. On April 12, the institute’s Venezuela office released a statement praising the ‘bravery’ of the junta and +commending the patriotism of the Venezuelan military.”
The coup was briefly carried out against Chávez after members of the U.S.-backed Junta began firing snipers on pro-Chávez protestors and then manipulated the footage to make it look like Chávez’s forces were firing on opposition protestors.
On April 11th, 2002, the Venezuelan opposition activated snipers who fired on a largely pro-Chávez crowd that had gathered near Miraflores Palace to defend the president from the threat of an approaching and aggressive opposition march. Film footage from the ensuing gun battle was inserted into a pre-fabricated media strategy which sought to convince the Venezuelan population that government supporters were responsible for the deaths, and that they had acted directly on the orders of Chávez himself
That the opposition planned to slaughter innocents is clear from the fact that the public statement by members of the high military command, which cited a specific number of casualties and urged Chávez to resign, had been filmed long before the deaths had even taken place. That the role of the media was paramount is clear from the revelation that this pre-filmed statement was recorded at the house of opposition journalist and host of 24 Hours, Napoleón Bravo.
According to CNN journalist Otto Neustadtl, the opposition planned the false flag massacre before carrying it out, saying, “On the night of the 10th (of April 2002, one day before the coup), they phoned me and told me Otto, a video of Chavez is coming tomorrow, the 11th, the demonstrators will be diverted to Miraflores (presidential house) there will be some dead, and there will be a statement from a group of 20 military high command, asking the president to resign. In the morning of the 11th (of April 2002), they told me everything goes as planned, a video is coming, some dead are coming, and the military will speak out. I was there with the military that was giving the statement against President Chavez. I was there at least two hours before the first death occurred. In that rehearsal, they talked about the dead when the first death had not occurred”.
Strangely, as journalist William Van Wagenen has documented, false flag sniper massacres were again carried out during several future U.S. regime change operations.
The coup against Chavez was soon reversed when his supporters took to the streets and demanded he be reinstated as president.
After the coup was reversed, the Guardian reported that the Bush administration knew of and supported the coup in advance, noting that the Bush administration official Elliot Abrams, “gave a nod to the attempted Venezuelan coup” and added that, “officials at the Organisation of American States and other diplomatic sources, … assert that the US administration was not only aware the coup was about to take place, but had sanctioned it, presuming it to be destined for success.”
The Guardian reported that the Bush administration “immediately endorsed the new government under businessman Pedro Carmona”, adding “visits by Venezuelans plotting a coup, including Carmona himself, began, say sources, ‘several months ago’, and continued until weeks before the putsch last weekend. The visitors were received at the White House by the man President George Bush tasked to be his key policy-maker for Latin America, Otto Reich”.
After the 2002 coup, the Bush administration tried to force a referendum against Hugo Chavez in 2004 through its paid assets on the ground.
The referendum was pushed for by the U.S. asset María Corina Machado, and her NGO, Sumate, which was, “financed by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), all three of which are known across Latin America for their attempts to destabilize progressive governments under the guise of ‘democracy promotion’.”
In a recent profile on Machado, CNN noted, she “gained widespread attention in 2004 after participating in a failed effort to recall Venezuela’s then-President Hugo Chávez”.
The regime change attempt again failed, with Hugo Chavez winning by 59 percent, but the U.S.-funded opposition apparently faked exit polls to make it look like Chavez lost the referendum.
The U.S. Carter Centre, which monitored the referendum, noted at the time that, “the opposition cited the exit poll contradicting the official results and expressed their deep skepticism” and “the opposition rejected the results, primarily because opposition’s exit polls carried out throughout voting day suggested the Yes vote (to remove Chavez) would prevail” but noted that, “the machines were extremely accurate. Only one-tenth of 1 percent variation between the paper receipts and the electronic results was found, and this could be explained by voters taking the paper receipts or putting them in the wrong ballot box,” and concluding that, “the Carter Center has found no evidence of fraud”.
Obama Administration Continues Regime Change Against Maduro
After Hugo Chavez died in 2013, his successor, Nicolas Maduro, was elected, and the Obama administration continued the regime change attempt through a paid propaganda campaign to swing the Venezuelan national assembly to the opposition, funding violent riots and putting crushing sanctions on the country.
Leaked documents reported on by Jacobin magazine show that the Obama administration gave $300,000 to the National Democratic Institute, the democratic wing of the CIA cutout NED, in order to, “mobilize a voter database that identified and targeted swing voters through social media” in the run-up to the 2015 national assembly elections.
Jacobin noted that, “indeed, in December 2015, the opposition won a majority in the Venezuelan National Assembly for the first time since Chávez came to power in 1999” and noted, “the NDI claims credit for the opposition’s success, writing that this strategy ‘ultimately played an important role in their resounding victory in the 2015 election’ and that a ‘determining factor in the success of the coalition in the parliamentary elections of 2015 was a two-year effort prior to the elections”.
Under the Obama administration, the U.S. asset María Corina Machado and her U.S.-funded Sumate helped stir up riots in the country that lasted for years.
As journalist Michelle Ellner reported, “Machado was also one of the political architects of La Salida, the 2014 opposition campaign that called for escalated protests, including guarimba tactics. Those weren’t ‘peaceful protests’ as the foreign press claimed; they were organized barricades meant to paralyze the country and force the government’s fall. Streets were blocked with burning trash and barbed wire, buses carrying workers were torched, and people suspected of being Chavista were beaten or killed. Even ambulances and doctors were attacked. Some Cuban medical brigades were nearly burned alive. Public buildings, food trucks, and schools were destroyed. Entire neighborhoods were held hostage by fear while opposition leaders like Machado cheered from the sidelines and called it ‘resistance.’
In 2015, Obama absurdly labeled Venezuela a “threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” and placed crushing sanctions on Venezuela, which eventually killed at least tens of thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands.
Trump’s First Term Sanctions and Coup Attempts.
The sanctions on Venezuela increased under the Trump administration, killing at least tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Venezuelans.
Economist Mark Weisbrot noted in the LA Times that:
In Venezuela, the first year of sanctions under the first Trump administration took tens of thousands of lives. Then things got even worse, as the U.S. cut off the country from the international financial system and oil exports, froze billions of dollars of assets and imposed “secondary sanctions” on countries that tried to do business with Venezuela.
Venezuela experienced the worst depression, without a war, in world history. This was from 2012 to 2020, with the economy contracting by 71% — more than three times the severity of the Great Depression in the U.S. in the 1930s. Most of this was found to be the result of the sanctions.
Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs revealed that the sanctions killed 40,000 people from 2017 to 2019, and in 2020, the UN expert Alfred de Zayas found that the sanctions had killed 100,000 people since 2015.
Also in 2020, the UN documented that, “the economic blockade of Venezuela and the freezing of Central Bank assets have exacerbated pre-existing economic and humanitarian situation by preventing the earning of revenues and the use of resources to develop and maintain infrastructure and for social support programs, which has a devastating effect on the whole population of Venezuela, especially those in extreme poverty, women, children, medical workers, people with disabilities or life-threatening or chronic diseases, and the indigenous population”.
Along with Trump’s continuation of Obama’s starvation sanctions on Venezuela, he also attempted multiple coup attempts in the country.
The Trump administration recognized Juan Guaido- an unelected U.S. asset in Venezuela- as the official president of the country and sent him $52 million through USAID to set up a fake “interim government” intended to force Maduro from power.
Trump also appointed the aforementioned Elliott Abrams- one of the architects of the 2002 coup- as the Special Representative for Venezuela, and Abrams attempted to funnel weapons to the opposition in Venezuela disguised as humanitarian aid, a repeat of a strategy he enacted in Nicaragua under the Reagan administration.
In 2020, the Trump administration ran another failed coup against Maduro, this time by training defectors from the Venezuelan military in Colombia for a coup attempt.
Describing the Trump administration’s regime change policy during his first term, U.S. Senator Cris Murphy admitted, “First, we thought that getting Guaidó to declare himself president would be enough to topple the regime. Then we thought putting aid on the border would be enough. Then we tried to sort of construct a kind of coup in April of last year, and it blew up in our face when all the generals that were supposed to break with Maduro decided to stick with him in the end”.
Biden’s Attempt To Kidnap Maduro.
A recent AP investigation found that in 2024, a U.S. DHS agent named Edwin Lopez, with “permission from his superiors” in the Biden administration, attempted to bribe Maduro’s pilot, Bitner Villegas, to kidnap Maduro and bring him to the U.S.
Reportedly, Lopez told Villegas that, “in exchange for secretly ferrying Maduro into America’s hands, the pilot would become very rich”.
Lopez apparently offered Villegas a “$50 million reward” to kidnap Maduro and bring him into U.S. custody.
When Villegas responded to the proposal, saying, “We Venezuelans are cut from a different cloth, the last thing we are is traitors,” Lopez made thinly veiled threats against his children, with the AP reporting that, “Lopez tried one last time, mentioning Villegas’ three children by name and a better future he said awaited them in the U.S.” saying that Villegas added, “The window for a decision is closing, soon it will be too late”.
While Trump is carrying out a serious escalation of the regime change policy, it is worth remembering that it is an escalation of a longstanding regime change policy that has continued through the Bush, Obama, first Trump, and Biden administrations.
Today, a horrific terrorist attack was committed against Jewish Australians who were celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach, killing 16 people and sending 40 to the hospital.
But for Israel, the terrorist attack is an opportunity to manufacture consent for a war with Iran.
There is no evidence that Iran has anything to do with the terrorist attack at Bondi Beach, and all evidence so far that has emerged shows that it almost certainly was not.
The Iranian foreign ministry condemned the attack, saying, “We condemn the violent attack in Sydney, Australia. Terror and killing of human beings, wherever committed, is rejected and condemned”, and evidence released so far suggests the attacker identified so far, Naveed Akram, was a follower of Wahhabi Salafist ideology, which is openly hostile to Shia Islam and Iran.
Despite the lack of evidence and evidence showing it was not Iran behind the attack, Israel is using the horrific terrorist attack to manufacture consent for war with Iran.
Israel Hayom, the mouthpiece of Israel lobbyist and pro-Iran war hawk Miriam Adelson, published an article quoting an anonymous “Israeli security official” who claimed -without evidence- that “there is no doubt that the direction and infrastructure for the attack originated in Tehran”.
The Israeli newspaper Times of Israel, reported that Australia is “investigating if Sydney attack was part of larger Iranian plot” at the behest of the Israeli Mossad.
Previously, Israel pressured Australia to repeat baseless claims from the Mossad that Iran was behind anti-Semitic attacks in Australia.
As veteran journalist Joe Lauria reported, in August “Australian intelligence said the Iranian government was behind the firebombing of a Jewish temple in Melbourne last year as well as other ‘anti-semitic’ attacks in the country”, “days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly humiliated Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a post on X for being ‘a weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews’ after Albanese said Australia would follow several European nations and recognize the state of Palestine.”
As Lauria noted, “The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) did not provide any evidence to prove Iran’s involvement last December in the Adass synagogue attack, which caused millions of dollars of damage but injured no one. It simply said it was their assessment based on secret evidence that Iran was involved”.
Australia’s ABC News reported that, “The Israeli government is claiming credit for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and intelligence agencies publicising Iranian involvement in antisemitic attacks on Australian soil,” adding that “in a press briefing overnight, Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer effectively accused Australia of being shamed into acting”.
Mencer boasted that “Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu has made a very forthright intervention when it comes to Australia, a country in which we have a long history of friendly relations”, implying that Israel pressured the Australian government to repeat their baseless claim about Iran being behind the attacks.
ABC reported that the move came days after, “Netanyahu labelled Mr Albanese a ‘weak’ leader who had ‘betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews’” and “Israel announced it would tear up the visas of Australian diplomats working in the West Bank in protest against the Albanese government’s moves to recognise a Palestinian state”.
Israel’s evidence-free claims are already being used by the Trump administration to manufacture consent for war with Iran.
The Jerusalem Postreported that, “A senior US official told Fox News that if the Islamic Republic ordered the attack, then the US would fully recognize Israel’s right to strike Iran in response.”
Israel’s weaponisation of the terrorist attack in Bondi is reminiscent of how Benjamin Netanyahu weaponised the 9/11 attacks to draw America into Middle Eastern wars for Israel.
After the 9/11 attacks, Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that they were “very good” for Israel, because they would “strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror”.
This, in effect, meant using 9/11 to draw the U.S. into endless regime change wars in the Middle East against countries that had no ties to Al Qaeda but were in the way of Israel’s geopolitical goals.
The top U.S. general, Wesley Clark, said that after 9/11, the U.S. came up with a plan to “take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran”.
Years later, on Piers Morgan’s show, Wesley Clark said that the hit list of countries came from a study that was “paid for by the Israelis”, which “said that if you want to protect Israel, and you want Israel to succeed… you’ve got to get rid of the states that are surrounding” adding that, “this led to all that followed” (i.e. regime change wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria etc.)
Yet again, Israel is weaponising a terrorist attack to manufacture consent for the final regime change war on their hit list.
November 15, 2025, 21:00. An explosive charge detonated on the railway tracks between Miki and Gołąb. The blast was so powerful that windowpanes shook for kilometres, and residents felt the tremor in their walls. The flash left a metre-long gash in the rail, shattered sleepers, and destroyed the overhead power lines. The very next day, the two Ukrainian citizens responsible for the detonation legally crossed the border at Terespol and departed for Belarus.
Border Guard cameras recorded their departure – nothing raised suspicion at the time. They escaped before investigators could link the fingerprints and phone left at the scene.
Within hours of the explosion, Polish media and politicians almost unanimously pointed to “Russian sabotage.” Meanwhile, those familiar with Ukrainian sabotage operations immediately noticed something else: a plastic charge attached at three points to the rail, nighttime detonation on a key supply line, no civilian casualties – the exact modus operandi Ukraine’s SBU security service had used repeatedly in Crimea.
The difference was only one: this time, the target lay on Polish territory.
Thus, contrary to the public narrative, the blast near Lublin became a piece of a larger puzzle – a quiet campaign Ukraine had been conducting on Polish soil for years, with one overriding objective: to drag Poland, and thereby NATO, into an open confrontation with Russia. This mechanism had a beginning and a defined logic. Its algorithm was activated much earlier.
The Beginning of the Algorithm
In the summer of 2022, Mykhailo Podolyak – a former opposition journalist expelled from Belarus, now one of Zelenskyy’s closest advisors – introduced a simple formula: “Either Europe hands over weapons to Ukraine, or it prepares for a direct clash with Russia”. It was not a request. It was the seed of a mechanism that later grew into Kyiv’s entire communications strategy: framing every Western decision as a choice between supporting Ukraine or facing its own catastrophe.
November 15, 2022, Przewodów. A missile struck, killing two Poles. Before any official investigation could clarify the matter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly declared it a “Russian missile” and an attack on NATO.
His words instantly shaped a media narrative about the potential triggering of Article 5.
Chaos reigned for crucial hours. Only later did the USA and NATO confirm it was a Ukrainian S-300 air defence missile.
This, however, was revealed only after the version of a Russian attack had circled the globe and fulfilled its political purpose.
The incident did not change the course of the war, but it changed the rules of the game: from then on, any similar event could serve as a pretext for immediately blaming Russia and forcing a Western response.
There were no apologies. Silence fell – though, as time later showed, it was only temporary.
The game had moved to new tracks – both figuratively and literally.
Operations in the Shadows – Poland as a Proving Ground
The years 2024–2025 brought a series of incidents too coherent to be coincidental. Warehouses, logistics centres, and storage halls burned – facilities with a profile strikingly similar to the infrastructure Ukrainian services had previously attacked in Russian-controlled areas. The same kind of locations, the same target logic, the same failed attempts at explanation – the pattern repeated itself like clockwork.
Warsaw, May 2024. Marywilska 44, the largest commercial and warehouse centre in Masovia, a key hub of regional logistics, goes up in flames. Weeks later, the prosecutor’s office announces: the perpetrators are Ukrainian citizens, allegedly acting on orders from Russian intelligence. Half a year on, the picture is telling: in Poland, “small fry” are convicted for belonging to a criminal group, but the verdicts contain not a word about a Russian directive. The sentences are low, simplified, with no appeal, covering mainly arson and obstruction of the investigation. The group’s leaders remain at large outside Poland – Interpol red notices, European Arrest Warrants – no extradition. The investigation stalls, with materials classified.
July 2024, Warsaw. Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) intercepts a courier parcel containing a ready-to-use explosive device – nitroglycerin, detonators, and a shaped charge. The sender is a Ukrainian citizen, Kristina S.
The blueprint was identical. Immediate reports appeared about an alleged Russian sponsor, based on “supposed contacts” of some detainees with citizens of the Russian Federation. The indictment reached court in 2025, yet the case – like the one concerning Marywilska – ground to a halt.
It is worth noting the recurring motif. The nature of the targets, timing, and type of devices used strongly resemble operations Ukrainian services conducted in Russian-controlled territories – in Melitopol or Tokmak. There, too, logistic infrastructure burned; there, too, improvised devices and the element of surprise were used, often at night. Juxtaposing the facts, the pattern of actions in Poland appears remarkably similar.
And yet, all such events in Poland are described with one sentence:
“Russian sabotage carried out by Ukrainians.”
Network and Backdrop: Unique Operational Capability
Poland hosts a network to which no other actor has comparable access: hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens with legal rights of residence, work, and free movement. These are not just migrants – they constitute a ready-made, perfectly embedded operational environment. Its representatives appeared in the case files of every major sabotage incident.
In February 2025, activist Natalia Panczenko, commenting on Polish proposals to cut social benefits for Ukrainians, uttered a sentence that, in the context of these case files, sounded different from a mere warning: “There could be fights, arson of shops, houses.”
When a few months later Karol Nawrocki won the elections, combining these social benefit proposals with a ban on OUN-UPA symbolism, Kyiv responded on two tracks. On the street, a wave of arson broke out, matching the earlier pattern of sabotage. In diplomacy, the Ukrainian embassy issued an official note threatening retaliation over the draft law.
This synchronisation – violence in the shadows and a threat in the spotlight – shattered the narrative of “Russian sabotage by Ukrainians.” It revealed something more dangerous: that behind the attacks could be an actor possessing not only the unique capability but also the political will to use them openly as a tool of pressure.
Key Testimony
September 1, 2025. Outgoing President Andrzej Duda gives an interview to Bogdan Rymanowski. When asked if Zelenskyy pressured him to immediately blame Russia after Przewodów, Duda replies simply:
“You could say that.”
And when asked if it was an attempt to drag Poland into the war, Duda states plainly:
“That’s how I perceived it. They have been trying from the very beginning to drag everyone into the war. Preferably a NATO country.”
These words were not an accusation. They were an unveiling of the hidden logic of events. In one laconic answer, Andrzej Duda – the politician who for years embodied the course of “unconditional support for Ukraine” – cast a new, grim light on all prior incidents. Suddenly, all incidents – Przewodów, the arsons, the rail explosions – fell into one coherent, terrifying context: Ukraine is playing a game with Poland where the goal is escalation, not security.
Finale of the Operation – Explosion on the Tracks
In November 2025, the ABW detains another group of saboteurs – Ukrainian and Belarusian citizens – in possession of weapons, explosives, and maps indicating planned actions against critical infrastructure.
This was no ordinary “criminal group.” It was an operational cell.
A few days earlier, an explosion ripped through railway tracks near Lublin.
The operation mirrored the earlier incidents with precision: the perpetrators were the same, the method characteristic of Ukrainian special services, and the target – critical infrastructure. The media narrative immediately pointed to Russia as the culprit, while the real objective was more subtle and political: to force Warsaw’s hand. As if someone was replaying the same blueprint step by step.
“But What If It Is Russia?” – Dismantling a Convenient Lie
For the sake of completeness, one must examine the narrative repeated like a mantra after every sabotage act: But what if it is Russia?
At first glance, it makes sense. For years, Poland built its image as Ukraine’s most ardent ally and the loudest critic of the Kremlin. Donald Tusk spoke of “our war”. Szymon Hołownia promised, “we will grind Putin into the ground.”
Karol Nawrocki called the Russian president a “war criminal”, and Russia a “post-imperialist and neo-communist country” – and these are just statements from the highest level.
This was not ordinary rhetoric – it was doctrine. A state that programmes its public opinion in this manner should expect the risk of a reaction. The scenario of a Russian “warning shot” – a precise strike meant to remind Warsaw of the limits of patience – would be strategically rational.
This scenario, however, collapses the moment it is laid over the sequence of facts from 2022–2025. It is demolished by the very pattern of all events.
Who, after the Przewodów blast, immediately, without evidence, pressured for blaming Russia?
Who regularly communicated to Poland that “war will come to your home if you stop supporting us”?
Who possessed a unique, massive logistical and operational network within Poland?
Who had a direct interest in escalating tension and forcing specific decisions on Warsaw?
And finally: who – as President Duda admitted – had been trying from the start to “drag a NATO country into the war”?
The answer to each of these questions is the same. And it does not lead to Moscow.
The Russian lead is a convenient lie. Convenient for Warsaw, which does not want to admit it became a target of its ally. Convenient for the media, which prefers a simple story. And most convenient for Ukraine, whose leaders knew perfectly well that every plume of smoke in Poland would be automatically attributed to Russia.
Epilogue
The issue has long ceased to be about who physically plants the charges.
The issue is about who builds their position on the roar of those explosions.
In this calculus, Russia plays only one role: the omnipresent villain of the narrative, upon whom blame can always be laid. Poland is merely the operational terrain.
The main beneficiary turns out to be the party for whom destabilisation in Poland is a strategic tool: Ukraine – a state on the brink of military catastrophe, which for years has consistently transferred the burden and risk of its war onto the territories of its allies.
Therefore, today, in the echo of the blast near Lublin, it is finally time to ask the question the Polish political class avoided for three years, and to answer it openly:
Whose strategic interest was being pursued on Poland’s turf?
The answer leads directly to Kyiv.
Adrian Korczyński, Independent Analyst & Observer on Central Europe and global policy research
Police in Poland have detained three Ukrainian nationals allegedly found in possession of spying and hacking equipment.
The suspects were apprehended during a routine traffic stop in Warsaw, police said in a statement on Monday. The three men claimed they had been “traveling Europe” and had arrived in Poland just a few hours previously, and were next set to drive to Lithuania. Officers saw that the men were agitated and opted to search the vehicle, the statement noted.
“Suspicious items that could even be used to interfere with the country’s strategic information systems” were discovered, police said, adding that the men were in possession of a large number of SIM cards, antennas, laptops, routers, cameras, advanced hacking equipment, and a “spy device detector.”
The suspects were reportedly unable to explain the nature of the hardware and refused to cooperate with the police. “They claimed to be computer scientists, and when asked more precise questions, they forgot English and pretended not to understand what was being said to them,” the force stated.
The group were taken into pre-trial detention on suspicion of “fraud, computer fraud, and the acquisition of devices and computer programs adapted to commit crimes.” Investigators are currently trying to establish why exactly the suspects had traveled to Poland.
The incident comes less than a month after the Polish authorities accused two Ukrainian nationals of sabotaging a railway line between Warsaw and Lublin, detonating an explosive device on tracks and installing a derailment clamp in two separate incidents. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk claimed the suspects had been working “with the Russian intelligence for a long time” and had fled to Belarus after the incidents.
Moscow has rejected the accusations, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stating that “it would be really strange if Russia wasn’t the first one to be blamed” for the sabotage.
“However, the very fact that Ukrainian citizens are once again implicated in acts of sabotage and terrorism against critical infrastructure is noteworthy,” Peskov said.
The protective shelter over the reactor at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant can no longer guarantee radiation containment, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said. The agency added that urgent major repairs are now required.
The warning follows an inspection prompted by a drone strike in February, which marked the first major attack on the shelter. Moscow said the strike was a provocation orchestrated by Kiev, while the Ukrainian government blamed Russia.
The strike had pierced the outer shell of the massive steel arch known as the New Safe Confinement (NSC) and triggered a fire. While the initial damage did not cause a radiation leak, the new assessment shows the structural breach has degraded the shelter’s ability to contain nuclear material.
The IAEA confirmed on Friday that the NSC, a 36,000-tonne steel structure built over the destroyed Unit 4 reactor at Chernobyl, “had lost its primary safety functions, including the confinement capability.”
Completed in 2019 at a cost of around €1.5billion (about $1.6 billion), the NSC was designed to contain radioactive material and seal the original concrete “sarcophagus” installed after the 1986 disaster.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said that although the shelter’s loadbearing framework and monitoring systems remain intact, “limited temporary repairs have been carried out … comprehensive restoration is urgently required.” IAEA inspectors have now dispatched additional nuclear safety experts to the site to assess the full extent of the damage.
Russia has accused Ukraine of repeatedly targeting the Zaporozhye (ZNPP) and Kursk nuclear power plants, describing the attacks as acts of “nuclear terrorism.”
A Ukrainian drone struck an auxiliary building at the Kursk NPP in late September, during a visit to Moscow by IAEA chief Rafael Grossi.
Just days earlier, power lines supplying the ZNPP were reportedly damaged by Ukrainian artillery, forcing the plant to switch to backup generators. Russia took control of the ZNPP in March 2022, and the region later held a referendum to join the country. Kiev denies involvement in the Kursk incident and has accused Moscow of attacking the ZNPP.
Speaking in October, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Ukraine was “playing a dangerous game” by attacking nuclear sites.
The final audit from Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) paints a stark portrait of how tens of billions of dollars ostensibly earmarked for nation‑building were diverted, misused or wasted.
According to SIGAR’s report, from 2002 to 2021 the United States appropriated about $148.21 billion purportedly for Afghan reconstruction. Of that sum, roughly $88.8 billion went to security‑sector projects, while other enterprises disguised as development, humanitarian assistance, governance and institution‑building consumed the rest.
But the watchdog estimates that between $26 billion and $29.2 billion of those funds were lost to waste, fraud and abuse—red flags that preceded the Afghan government’s collapse and the rapid Taliban takeover in 2021.
The report logged 1,327 separate cases of misuse, mismanagement, or corruption tied directly to US‑funded programs.
Among the failures major investments in the Afghan security forces were undermined by inflated troop rolls, ghost‑salary schemes, and an inability to maintain complex gear.
As SIGAR’s acting inspector general put it, “the government we helped build… was essentially a white collar criminal enterprise.”
SIGAR’s acting inspector general, Gene Aloise, told reporters that the project was undermined by “early and ongoing US decisions to ally with corrupt, human-rights-abusing power brokers.”
This strategy, he continued, strengthened insurgent networks and eroded hopes for stable governance in Afghanistan.
Large‑scale hardware and infrastructure also went to waste. The United States funded planes, bases, and military assets, many never used or deteriorating rapidly post‑contract.
One instance involved transport aircraft bought for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that were later scrapped or abandoned when maintenance systems collapsed.
Despite almost $90 billion spent on training and equipping army and police forces, Afghan troops disintegrated quickly when US support ended, added the report.
Moreover, even broader cost estimates for the war paint an even more sobering picture.
Estimates put the total US cost — including military operations, veteran care, interest on borrowed funds and other long-term liabilities — at more than $2.3 trillion over the two decades, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University.
Based on the SIGAR’s final judgement, the much-hyped mission to purportedly build a stable, democratic Afghanistan delivered neither stability nor democracy.
In September, President Donald Trump sparked a fresh geopolitical firestorm with his calls to reclaim Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base, signaling a willingness to re-establish a US military presence in a country that has warned against any return of foreign troops.
Trump said the United States was “trying to get [Bagram] back” and described it as “one of the biggest air bases in the world,” highlighting its strategic runway and location to contain China.
Two days later, he posted on social media that if Afghanistan does not return the base, “BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN.”
US military officials warn that retaking Bagram would require “tens of thousands” of troops along with massive logistical and air-defense support to hold the facility, a scenario that could mirror the pitfalls of the long Afghan war.
The United States had invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 in response to the September 11 attacks, even though not a single Afghan national was among the hijackers.
Over the course of the 20-year US occupation of the Asian nation, hundreds of thousands of Afghans lost their lives.
When Washington and its allies deployed troops in 2001, they claimed their mission was to dismantle al-Qaeda under what became known as the US “war on terror.” Yet two decades later, in August 2021, the Taliban quickly retook multiple provincial capitals and then entered Kabul with virtually no resistance.
The rapid collapse of the US-backed government forced Washington into a rushed and chaotic evacuation of diplomats, citizens, and Afghan partners — a scene that drew intense criticism for the US government’s mismanagement of its own exit.
I try not to write about anyone who has died because if it was my family member I would not want to read any speculations about their death. However, in this case I feel that justice has not been given a chance and therefore it needs highlighting. ... continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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