Ongoing tales of Syrian chemical weapons
OPCW Inspector Ian Henderson responds regarding alleged newly-found, un-declared chemical weapons.
By Ian HENDERSON | Consortium News | October 11, 2026
If Douma, one of the highest-profile “proven” chemical attacks attributed to Syria’s former Bashar Assad government, has been shown to be fake, what does it say about new, undeclared Syrian chemical weapons that have supposedly been found?
It says we should be extremely skeptical about news of such discoveries.
I spent years compiling an insider’s analysis of the evolving Western narrative of Syrian chemical attacks while I was at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) as well as afterwards.
My conclusion was it is nigh impossible to prove a negative in this situation; to say there had never been a chemical attack by the Syrian government forces.
However, when it came to high-profile allegations of such attacks in the Syrian towns of East Ghouta, Khan Sheykhoun, Ltamenah, Saraqib and Douma, there were fatal flaws in the official narratives.
There were unmistakable signs, clear to us on the inside, of fabrication.
The Douma attack eight years ago appeared to be the last of a series of chemical allegations against the regime.
Yet the saga continues. The OPCW sent a new mission to Syria this May to try to find alleged, undeclared chemical weapons from the government of Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted in 2024.
Before examining the intentions and results of this mission, it is useful to review how the Western-backed OPCW handled its investigation into the 2018 chemical weapons attack in Douma, a suburb of Damascus.
I was an OPCW inspector on that mission and this is why I blew the whistle.
The Establishment Narrative
Just how much of the establishment narrative that blamed Assad for using chemical weapons be believed ?
Devised during the early part of the Western and Gulf-backed jihadist war to overthrow Assad a decade and a half ago – and built upon steadily by Western belligerents throughout the crisis – the story that Assad had “gassed his own people” was widely believed with mainstream media fully on board.
Doubters were glibly dismissed, including “official” dissenters such as some senior inspectors at the OPCW. I was among them.
The chemical allegations followed a well-oiled procedure. Armed opposition groups – who were seeking direct Western military intervention to support their effort to overthrow Assad – would raise the alarm online by posting slick images and videos of an alleged chemical attack.
These opposition groups, sometimes assisted by Western NGOs, would then bring supposed witnesses of these alleged attacks to Gaziantep in Turkey, where the OPCW would send fact-finding missions to interview them.
The OPCW would generally believe the opposition groups and their witnesses and accept items of supposed “evidence” handed over to them, sometimes months after the alleged attack. Until the Douma allegation in 2018, the fact-finding mission never got to the scene of any Syrian chemical attack after an initial attempt in 2014 went awry.
The fact-finding report would be secretly drafted under the direct control of OPCW top management, bypassing any procedural or technical oversight, and would conclude that it was “reasonable to believe” that a chemical attack had indeed taken place.
The follow-up investigations by the heavily politicized Joint Investigative Mechanism (J.I.M.), or by the later Investigation and Identification Team (I.I.T.), would suggest that “a reasonable person would believe” that the Syrian Armed Forces were responsible for the attack.
OPCW inspectors are not fools. Many of us saw what was going on, seeing the tight political control that the U.S. and to a lesser degree the U.K. exerted over anything to do with the Syrian file. But the draconian confidentiality regime in the OPCW kept everyone subdued.
The breakthrough came after the April 2018 Douma allegation.
For the first time, an OPCW team actually got to the scene of an alleged chemical attack, at the town of Douma, in southwestern Syria, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) northeast of Damascus.
We did our job thoroughly, and in doing so we identified serious flaws in the allegation.
OPCW Extreme Measures
The OPCW resorted to ever-escalating measures to bring things back on track. After trying to secretly modify the interim report by withdrawing it from publication and sneaking in the preordained conclusions that were required by influential delegations, senior OPCW officials went to extremes.
They removed all the team members who had gone to Douma and produced a flawed Fact Finding Mission report written by persons unknown, none of whom had much knowledge of what the Douma team had done.
The fact-finding report predictably found that “it was reasonable to believe” there had been an attack with chlorine in Douma. This was followed much later by the OPCW’s inevitable I.I.T. report that blamed the Syrian regime for the attack.
In reaching its conclusions, the drafters claimed, as usual, to have been informed by anonymous experts. The context in the reports was usually along the lines of the fact-finding mission (F.F.M.) “asked an expert about this and the expert said it was possible.” Many qualified experts and commentators, including me, consider this laughable.
The OPCW were going too far, and ultimately this led to the ongoing dispute where the two most senior and experienced inspectors in the F.F.M. team objected.
The drafter of the team’s interim report, Dr. Brendan Whelan (“Inspector B”), was one. I was the other. In my case I had also led the politically-mandated inspections at two facilities of the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Centre (S.S.R.C.) suspected of harbouring illicit chemical weapons activities.
Here again, we did our work thoroughly and in drafting the S.S.R.C. inspection reports I made clear that there was nothing amiss in either of the facilities.
This didn’t stop the U.S., U.K. and France from conducting punitive missile strikes on Barzah S.S.R.C., on the basis of social media postings on the Douma allegation, even before the OPCW team had arrived at the incident scene.
Rather than another detailed analysis of the Douma scandal, suffice it to say, the official Douma narrative has been clearly and scientifically picked apart by many credible observers, including by Dr. Whelan and myself.
This has been widely reported, although predictably not much in the mainstream media.
The OPCW and Western delegations have been in crisis management mode ever since the first leak, that of an internal engineering summary that cast doubt on the allegation that chlorine cylinders had been dropped from aircraft, raising the possibility that militants had placed the cylinders to stage the scene of a chemical attack.
I was the author of that report.
Nose of chlorine cylinder alleged to have smashed through a steel-reinforced concrete roof, April. 21, 2018. (OPCW, courtesy former Syrian government)
Worse still for the prevailing Douma narrative, Dr. Whelan recently won a legal case against the OPCW for their charges against him of confidentiality breaches.
In their submissions, the OPCW inadvertently admitted to suppressing the key toxicology assessment (incidentally by NATO specialists) that dismissed chlorine as the likely cause of death of deceased victims shown in images posted from the scene.
[See: OPCW Inadvertently Admitted Burying Critical Evidence on Syria Chemical Weapons Investigation]
The OPCW has refused to engage in any discussion on the facts and scientific substance of the case, ever since concerns were first raised by Dr. Whelan and myself.
This intransigence to re-open the file is likely dictated by the needs of the three belligerent governments that subjected Syria to punitive missile strikes in retaliation for the supposed Syrian chemical attack even before the Douma F.F.M. had started work.
Any updated or corrected findings on Douma would be inconvenient.
The New OPCW Mission
Still apparently seeking to prove its case, the OPCW formed a new Syria mission in May aimed at “finding” alleged missing, un-declared chemical weapons.
At the end of May the mission reported finding 42 empty chemical weapons munitions; a launcher; bomb-mixing units; precursor-type containers; a facility whose contents were not revealed and thousands of pages of documents that are still being reviewed.
The mission also found 650 kg of “a chemical compound known to have been used by the former government for the production of nerve agents,” which the report does not name. It says an unknown quantity of hexamine, a legal chemical with wide industrial use, was found but it is not clear if this is the same compound as in the 650 kg.
In September, the Syrian government, now under the leadership of a former al-Qaeda and ISIS leader, began destroying the empty bombs, but not any of the chemicals that were found, presumably meaning none were banned.
Despite all the fanfare of these results being presented at a U.N. Security Council meeting last month, it appears that the new OPCW mission came up as empty as those bombs.
None of these discoveries does anything to prove that Assad ever used a chemical weapon, in other words, nothing to prove that I, along with other OPCW officials and countless observers and commentators who challenged the Assad chemical weapons narrative were wrong.
Presumably after all the effort in creating that narrative, Western governments and mainstream media that promoted the Iraq war and then the Syrian conflict to achieve regime change in that country, require a tidier ending than the mess they made of the Iraqi WMD story.
An early press release from the OPCW is telling. It shows what they were attempting to prove with this May mission, in particular two rather flimsy suggestions.
They report the discovery of some of the empty munitions,
“including the same type of aerial bombs that were used in chemical attacks in Ltamenah in March 2017 and Khan Shaykhun in April 2017.”
This refers to empty M4000 aerial bombs, declared by the Syrians as part of their stockpile.
Aside from the questionable Douma-like irregularities surrounding “evidence” used by the OPCW to conclude that sarin-filled M4000 bombs were used in those attacks, it’s important to mention something else.
The Syrians had clearly explained to us that 2,000 of these bombs, never filled, had been set aside to be “repurposed,” in other words to be filled with high explosive to turn them into conventional munitions. These could turn up anywhere.
A second questionable statement in the press release is,
“Rockets were also found, of the same type as those that were used in the Ghouta chemical weapons attack in August 2013.”
This relates to artillery rockets crudely modified with a large cylindrical payload container added at the front.
For a start, the U.N./OPCW report of Ghouta did not attempt to identify the perpetrators of that sarin attack, since it was not part of their mandate. The accusations against the regime have always been political, something the mainstream media happily took up.
The Most Credible Analysis So Far
The Ghouta sarin attack took place on Aug. 21, 2013 and according to Western sources killed more than 1,000 people in the Damascus suburb.
The most serious investigation of the Ghouta incident to date points to the attack being launched from opposition-occupied positions, and remains the most credible analysis of the attack.
The opposition forces allegedly responsible were from the al-Nusra Front, which conducted joint operations in 2013 in the Damascus area with the Liwa Al Islam opposition group. Al-Nusra were known to be in possession of sarin, according to reporting by Seymour Hersh, who wrote:
“In the months before the [Aug. 21, 2013] attack [in Ghouta], the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity. When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.”
Indeed the U.N./OPCW team was in Damascus at the time of the attack in Ghouta because it was responding to an earlier request from the Syrian government to investigate chemical attacks against their forces.
The OPCW release also mentions a typical catch-all referring to “quantities of separately stored chemicals and related equipment, the nature of which is currently under technical analysis.”
There will always be suggestions of vague bits and pieces, rusty remnants that “may have been a part of” alleged undeclared elements of a chemical weapons program.
And, keep in mind, it’s been 22 months since the Assad government was ousted and their enemies in the opposition group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have been running the country.
So far as I can see, the OPCW hasn’t found anything remotely close to the desired smoking gun. Anything real, I should say.
Partners in the Anti-Assad Chemical Narrative
Syrian President Ahmaad Al Shaara, former Al Nusra/HTS fighter, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio in New York City, September 2025. (State Department Photo, Wikimedia)
We need to keep in mind how this is working. There are three partners in this latest endeavour on the anti-Assad chemical narrative.
First, we have the Western governments, belligerents in the Syrian conflict, which worked hard on building the chemical narrative to delegitimise the regime.
The U.K. government offered specialists to check out suspected sites in Syria to prepare them for the May mission in order to “assist” the current government in finding evidence of hidden chemical weapons.
That leads us to the second group, the government in Syria, reportedly eager to please their Western sponsors in return for economic favours. They are the Al-Nusra/HTS extremists who, in the case of Douma, fabricated the scene to raise a chemical false flag allegation against the Assad.
The third partner is the OPCW.
That means the various groups who have been on this mission are a) those who staged scenes of chemical attacks; b) those who directed them to do so (including Western intelligence agents who allegedly coached and assisted them); and c) the organisation that went along with the narrative and dutifully produced reports damning the Assad regime.
It may appear to the reader that I’m suggesting that the OPCW reports on Syrian chemical weapons will continue to be little more than propaganda, the usual sexed-up nonsense. Perhaps so. In disputing this, these assertions will be dismissed as conspiracy theories.
However, this argument is weakened because the source of the alternative narrative is the scientists and senior inspectors (many “Western”) from within the OPCW teams, including the Douma fact-finding mission and Scientific Studies and Research Centre inspections.
This is why Douma remains a key element in the debate. If they did it once (and doggedly stuck to their guns), they probably did it before.
Many serious and eminent observers are imploring the OPCW to conduct a review of the Douma case, including by the OPCW’s own Scientific Advisory Board.
I see this being done by credible, independent and neutral experts in the fields of chemistry, toxicology, metallurgy and engineering, overseen by the relevant professional institutes.
These experts would report their findings transparently, putting their names and reputations behind their analysis. This will clear up the Douma controversy, either demonstrating that it could have actually happened as alleged, or demonstrating the flaws in the OPCW reports.
Exposing a clear and deliberate fraud would seriously weaken the Western narrative on alleged Syrian chemical attacks. Therefore, in my view, it is not going to happen under the purview of the OPCW.
Ever.
I don’t mean to suggest that those calling for a review are unrealistically hopeful. But the risks of such a review are perhaps too high for it ever to be envisaged by the Western group that was aligned with the efforts on regime change in Syria — chiefly the U.S., the U.K. and France.
This does not mean it can’t happen. There is more than enough open-source material, as well as now-unclassified facts, images, analysis results and information available from the OPCW itself, from former OPCW officials and inspectors, and held by Member States, that would support a credible in-depth review.
The basis for expert analysis would be the material used in the fact-finding mission and I.I.T. reports themselves.
By now we know there isn’t any “smoking gun” evidence. If there had been, it would have been cited in the mission and I.I.T. reports.
Trust me, this study will bear clear results. My hope is that someone sufficiently curious and responsible will commission and fund it.
Ian Henderson served as an OPCW inspector from the establishment of the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, and was appointed as one of the first Inspection Team Leaders. An experienced chemical engineer with military experience, he led many of the more complex missions to more than 55 countries. After returning to a career in the chemical industry for 10 years he rejoined the OPCW in 2016 as part of the “rehire” scheme aimed at bringing back experienced inspectors. It was during this time that he became involved in the Syrian chemical weapons operations and, along with others, objected to the apparent influences of political control in the organization. He was suspended from the OPCW in May 2019 after the leak (by unknown others) of his dissenting engineering report on the Douma cylinders.
Wrong, Euronews: Climate Change Has Not Created a Food, Energy, and Economic “Meta-Crisis”
By Anthony Watts | ClimateRealism | September 25, 2026
Euronews claims climate change has evolved into a “meta-crisis” threatening food security, energy supplies, economies, water resources, and international security. This is misleading because the article largely substitutes predictions and assertions for measurements of what is actually happening. The data show global crop production and yields reaching record levels, deaths from extreme weather collapsing over the long term, and many of today’s energy and economic problems arising from political choices and geopolitical conflicts rather than changes in climate.
Euronews builds its case primarily around an interview with Emmanuella Doussis, UNESCO Chair on Climate Diplomacy at the University of Athens. Doussis declares climate change an economic, social, political, and geopolitical problem, linking it to competition for resources, migration, water shortages, food insecurity, and the energy transition.
Those are sweeping claims. Curiously, Euronews provides remarkably little observational evidence demonstrating that climate change is actually causing the worldwide “meta-crisis” its headline announces.
Perhaps the most obvious contradiction concerns food.
Doussis predicts, “We will face a very large, serious problem with food security.” But predictions about what might happen cannot erase what is happening.
Climate at a Glance: Crop Production summarizes data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization showing that global crop production and yields have risen dramatically during the period of modern warming. Its latest summary reports that the 2023 and 2024 global crop years produced the two highest global crop yields per acre on record.
Climate Realism has documented the same trend repeatedly. Global production of staple crops has increased substantially, and yields have repeatedly set records during recent decades. Even where individual crops suffer poor regional seasons because of drought, floods, pests, or other causes, that is not evidence of a deteriorating global food supply.
There are good reasons for this improvement. Agricultural technology, irrigation, fertilizers, improved crop varieties, mechanization, and better pest control have transformed farming. Modest warming can also lengthen growing seasons and reduce damaging frost events in some regions, while additional atmospheric carbon dioxide generally stimulates plant growth and improves water-use efficiency.
None of this means weather cannot damage crops. It always has. It means that portraying climate change as presently creating a global food-security crisis conflicts with the direction of observed agricultural production.
The article’s treatment of energy is equally peculiar.
Euronews describes moving away from fossil fuels as part of the solution to its supposed climate “meta-crisis,” while simultaneously acknowledging that doing so creates “new dependencies” involving lithium, cobalt, rare earths, and other materials. It concedes that fossil-fuel-producing nations could be economically weakened and that entirely new geopolitical dependencies would emerge.
That sounds less like a crisis caused by climate change than economic disruption caused by policies adopted in response to climate change.
Europe provides an obvious example. Energy prices do not rise because a thermometer records a slightly higher average temperature. Prices respond to fuel availability, generating capacity, taxes, regulations, subsidies, transmission costs, geopolitical disruptions, and government decisions about which power plants may operate.
Climate Realism has repeatedly documented how wind and solar cost comparisons can omit the expense of backup generation, transmission, storage, subsidies, and other system costs necessary to accommodate intermittent generation.
There is an important distinction here that Euronews blurs: costs created by climate policy are not costs created by climate change.
The same problem occurs when the article moves from energy to economics. Weather can certainly cause economic losses. Droughts, floods, hurricanes, heat waves, freezes, and wildfires have done so throughout human history. But declaring climate change responsible for a generalized economic crisis requires evidence that those hazards are worsening in ways attributable to climate change.
Climate at a Glance: Extreme Weather summarizes observational records for floods, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, and other events. The picture is considerably more complicated than the simple worsening-disaster narrative presented by much of the media.
More importantly, human vulnerability to weather has declined spectacularly.
Climate at a Glance: Deaths from Extreme Weather reports that global deaths from weather-related disasters have fallen by more than 99 percent during the past century, using international disaster data.
That is a remarkable accomplishment. Wealth, infrastructure, fossil-fueled transportation, modern agriculture, heating, air conditioning, weather forecasting, communications, engineering, and emergency management have made human beings vastly more resilient to nature.
Ironically, Doussis herself provides perhaps the most sensible sentence in the entire Euronews article: “Climate change is not always to blame.”
She acknowledges that some Greek disasters reflect chronic failures in planning, complicated regulations, inadequate infrastructure, and insufficient protection of vulnerable areas.
Exactly. That caveat deserves far more attention than Euronews gives it.
A flood becomes catastrophic when people build in floodplains, drainage systems are inadequate, warning systems fail, or infrastructure is poorly maintained. Drought becomes a water crisis when reservoirs, irrigation systems, groundwater resources, and water policy are poorly managed. A heat wave becomes more dangerous when electricity is expensive or unreliable and vulnerable people cannot afford air conditioning.
Labeling all these interconnected problems a climate “meta-crisis” does not explain them. It can actually obscure their real causes.
The Euronews article commits an increasingly common journalistic error. It begins with climate change, attaches virtually every economic, geopolitical, agricultural, and social problem to it, and then presents the resulting web of associations as evidence that climate change caused the problems in the first place.
That is not how causation works.
Climate changes. Weather varies. Individual regions will experience damaging droughts, floods, fires, freezes, and heat waves, just as they always have. Sensible governments should prepare for them.
But the real-world record does not resemble the spiraling “meta-crisis” Euronews describes. Farmers are producing more food. Crop yields continue reaching records. Humanity has become dramatically less vulnerable to extreme weather. And some of Europe’s most painful energy problems have resulted from decisions about energy production rather than changes in the weather.
Euronews could have investigated those inconvenient facts. Instead, it took a collection of predictions about food, water, migration, geopolitics, and energy, wrapped them together under the fashionable label “meta-crisis,” and called it climate journalism.
That’s not evidence. It’s a narrative looking for a crisis.
Italy and France debunk reports CIA issued ‘Russian drone threat’ warning
RT | September 25, 2026
Senior officials in Italy and France have denied claims that their governments were warned about possible Russian drone attacks launched from containers carried by merchant ships in the Mediterranean Sea.
The disinformation was published on Thursday by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, which cited an anonymous source close to the Lithuanian Defense Ministry. The article emphasized a recent trip to Russia by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and previous Western media reports claiming he personally cautioned Russian officials against targeting NATO nations. Moscow has denied having such intentions.
Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said on X there was no evidence confirming that Russia was preparing an operation of the kind described by the Lithuanian source, adding that in difficult times “no one needs more fuel on the fire.”
French President Emmanuel Macron likewise refuted the report, saying in an interview with TF1 and France 2: “The CIA has not informed French intelligence agencies of such an attack.”
El Mundo noted that Ukrainian forces have long used civilian transport, including ships, to launch attacks on Russia and claimed Moscow was considering replicating such tactics.
Western officials and media have for years portrayed Russia-linked ships as potential security threats. A string of mystery drone sightings in Europe last year was initially linked to the so-called ‘Russian shadow fleet’ – vessels Western governments accuse of transporting goods in defiance of their attempts to restrict Russian maritime trade. None of the incidents was publicly proven to have been linked to Moscow.
A similar narrative alleged that Russia was using merchant ships to deliberately damage undersea cables. Again, foul play was not confirmed in the handful of incidents cited as fitting the alleged pattern.
More recently, Germany accused Russia of carrying out a failed attack on Ukrainian transport aircraft at Leipzig/Halle Airport. Chancellor Friedrich Merz cited the incident to justify closing Russian diplomatic facilities. Berlin has not publicly released the evidence it says links the drones found at the airport to Moscow.
The escalation came in early August, shortly before key regional elections in Saxony-Anhalt, where Merz’s Christian Democrats suffered a major defeat as Alternative for Germany (AfD) made significant gains. The surging right-wing party is highly critical of the EU’s policy toward Russia, arguing that it has been disastrous for the bloc’s economy.
2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | September 20, 2026
A study by Gebrechorkos et al. (published in Nature in 2025) claiming climate change is worsening global drought severity has been retracted, reports ScienceFiles.
Gross errors throughout…
The ScienceFiles article reports that the study was heavily flawed, citing errors in calculations, miscoded data, misaligned comparison periods, and flawed weightings.
The now retracted paper claimed that drought severity had increased significantly since 1981, that “atmospheric evaporative demand” (PET/AED) had worsened droughts by 40% from 2018–2022 compared to previous decades, and that 30% of global land area had suffered moderate-to-extreme drought since 2022. It now appears all these findings were incorrect and based on shoddy methodology.
Reality: no detectable global drought acceleration
The ScienceFiles article highlights a follow-up study by Xu et al. (2026, published in Communications Earth & Environment ), which challenged the original study. The main issue revolves around how Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) was calculated: In the retracted paper, soil dryness was overstated by assuming uniform moisture dynamics based on air dryness. When re-calculated by Xu et al., the drought severity ended up being less than one sixth of that reported in the retracted paper, and found no detectable recent acceleration in global drought.
The ScienceFiles author accuses major mainstream media outlets (such as Die Zeit and The New York Times ) of uncritically spreading alarmist “climate apocalypse” headlines based on flawed science without issuing corrections after retractions.
ScienceFiles criticizes the journal Nature and peer reviewers for allowing low-quality science to be published in the first place.
Moldova debunks drone threat to Zelensky’s plane
RT | September 10, 2026
Moldova has dismissed a claim by Norway’s prime minister that Vladimir Zelensky’s plane was nearly struck by a UAV while leaving Chisinau, saying the aircraft was never in any direct danger.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store told broadcaster NRK on Wednesday that Zelensky’s plane “was almost hit by a drone” as the Ukrainian leader traveled from Moldova to Oslo for the funeral of King Harald V.
Before any evidence was produced, Store’s claims were widely picked up by Western media outlets, who tried to frame the incident as evidence of a supposed Russian drone threat to Europe.
On Thursday, however, Moldova flatly rejected that account, with government spokesman Dumitru Ciorici saying Zelensky’s flight had been delayed because the country temporarily closed its airspace following a drone alert.
He stressed that there had been “no direct threat” to the aircraft, which remained on the ground throughout the airspace closure. The drone that had allegedly entered Moldova’s airspace ended up crashing and exploding near a village around 160km from Chisinau airport, causing no casualties, Moldovan authorities said.
Meanwhile, former Moldovan President Igor Dodon has accused the authorities of concealing from the public a separate incident involving a Ukrainian national allegedly caught at the border with a drone and explosives.
“We see more and more attempts and provocations to involve the Republic of Moldova in everything that is happening in Ukraine,” Dodon said, urging Chisinau to stay away from Kiev’s “war strategy.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also dismissed the alleged threat to Zelensky’s plane as “ephemeral,” saying it “did not exist” and noting that even Ukrainian sources have acknowledged there was no direct danger.
Moldova, whose pro-EU government under President Maia Sandu has moved closer to Brussels and NATO while severely downgrading relations with Moscow, has repeatedly joined other pro-Ukraine governments in blaming Russia for drone incidents before producing evidence.
Similar accusations across Europe have frequently collapsed under scrutiny, with investigators in several cases finding no proof that Russian drones were involved and some incidents later traced to Ukrainian UAVs or even misidentified aircraft.
Moscow has accused Kiev of repeatedly staging drone provocations in an effort to draw its Western backers deeper into the conflict.
The Latest Wildfire Panic is Refuted by Data
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | July 28, 2026
Wildfires are in the news. With a hot, dry summer it was bound to happen. And, naturally, this is bringing with it talk of climate change.
The Independent is screaming and rending its garments:
Europe is on fire – will the continent’s climate change deniers finally wake up?
The Guardian has an opinion piece calling for prosecutions for climate crimes. Twitter experts are calling for changes to the way we live our lives.
Prince William is saying stuff:
Wildfires ‘stark reminder’ of extreme climate challenge, says William
I suppose we should make the usual point, that wildfires are a natural phenomenon that are an important part of the life cycle of many ecosystems. And that some years are bound to be worse than others.
But there’s just one issue, wildfire activity is actually down.
A new study from the University of East Anglia, published in May, found that 2025 was 16% below the average in terms of burnt area, and that’s despite policies known to increase both the chance of wildfires starting and the area they will burn.
But that was last year, this year must be different given the coverage, right?
Wrong.
Data from the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service shows that, to the end of June, this year had substantially lower wildfire activity – across every continent – than any year since they began collecting data in 2003.
Of course, this data does not yet include the fires from the past couple of weeks, and there is a chance that 2026 will not remain a record-breaking low in fire terms, but this is largely due to the known effect of El Nino years.
The authors note in the conclusion [emphasis added]:
The record low total biomass burning emissions for the first half of 2026 continues the overall downward trend related to changes in savanna fires in tropical Africa and Asia. However, the observed onset of many large-scale wildfires across Eurasia and North America in the last couple of weeks of June, could increase the global total emissions through the rest of the summer. Looking further ahead, the predicted El Niño conditions have the potential to increase global fire emissions, as we observed during the previous El Niño years of 2015 and 2019 when persistent biomass burning in Indonesia caused widespread regional haze and severely degraded air quality.
In fact, the yearly global area burnt by wildfires has been steadily decreasing for over a century (we recommend following Bjorn Lomborg on X, a great source of data):
So, why the panic?
The caveat here – according to the University of East Anglia paper – is that while the number of fires, and total area burnt is down, “severity” is up.
In short, less overall wildfire activity seems to be somehow translating to greater human cost, both in lives and money. Evacuations are allegedly up, insurance costs are allegedly up, and fatalities are allegedly up:
A new analysis of global wildfire activity in 2025 reveals the world experienced some of the most destructive and deadly fire events in recent history, despite the second lowest area burned since 2002. It highlights a continued trend toward fires becoming increasingly extreme, costly, and disastrous—both economically and in lives lost.
Now, first instinct would be this is either linguistic or statistical manipulation designed to camouflage research that failed to correctly serve the climate change agenda.
A case of cope to cover misbehaving data: “Fine, wildfires are down, but the ones we’ve had are SO much more DESTRUCTIVE!”.
That’s entirely possible. But supposing the stated data is accurate, what does this mean?
Well, there are several potential explanations
It could be the predictable result expanding human habitation and growing population.
It could be that the areas of fire activity shifting to more populated areas by some as yet not understood natural process.
It could be that fires being deliberately started close to inhabited areas in order to create fear.
It could be that these statistics are manipulated or fabricated.
…Or it could be any or all or a mixture of several.
We don’t know, but we can’t rule anything out at this stage.
The data is clear though, there’s no need to panic. No matter what the press says.
Claims of Iran agreeing to reopen Hormuz Strait are false: Report
Press TV – August 2, 2026
Media reports claiming that the Islamic Republic of Iran has agreed to a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz are false, and no change has been made to the country’s policy regarding the strategic waterway, according to a report.
Foreign media outlets, citing Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, have claimed earlier that Iran had accepted a proposal under which ships would enter the Persian Gulf through Iranian territorial waters and leave through Omani territorial waters.
Fars News Agency, citing a source close to Iran’s nuclear negotiating team, rejected those claims, with the source saying, “The Islamic Republic of Iran has reached no agreement on reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and the reports published in this regard are false.”
According to Fars, a military source also dismissed the claims, saying they were entirely unfounded.
“As long as the hostile actions and acts of malice by the United States continue, the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed,” the military source was quoted as saying.
“Passage will only be possible through the designated route, in coordination with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Navy and after obtaining permission to transit the Strait of Hormuz. Otherwise, other routes are unsafe, and vessels attempting to use them will certainly encounter incidents.”
The source further emphasized that reports claiming that Iran had agreed to any plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz were “baseless” and that no decision or policy change had been made regarding the strategic waterway.
It came after US President Donald Trump said he had canceled declared attacks on Iran, following warnings from Tehran that any new US or Israeli aggression would face strong retaliation.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, Trump claimed that the US was “locked and loaded” and prepared to launch a military assault against Iran, describing the potential aggression as involving levels of military power “not seen since World War II.”
The latest round of war against Iran began on February 28, when US and Israeli forces launched large-scale strikes on Iranian territory.
Iran responded with daily waves of missiles and drones targeting US and Israeli assets across the region, while closing the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran and the US later signed the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on June 17 in an effort to end the war across all fronts.
However, renewed US military aggression against Iran in recent weeks has prompted Tehran to resume missile and drone strikes against US assets in the region and close the Strait of Hormuz once again.
Is Peter Mandelson a Russian or a Zionist asset?
By David Miller | Al Mayadeen | July 27, 2026
There appears to be some uncertainty in the British intelligence services about what is wrong with Peter Mandelson.
On the one hand, a former MI6 officer with undisclosed, but possibly continuing connections to the agency, claims that Peter Mandelson may actually have been a long-term Russian agent or asset.
On the other hand, the secret briefing materials produced by MI6 as part of the process of vetting Mandelson for the job of British Ambassador to the US, the most significant red flags were his connections to Israel or Zionist assets.
Is MI6 uncertain, or internally split? Or is there a distinction between the materials they produce secretly to advise government, and materials which are “leaked” by former officers to the Daily Telegraph for propaganda purposes? You can see where I am going with this. So, let’s jump right in.
The recent apparent leak to the Daily Telegraph is said to have come from Christopher Steele, who is reportedly a former MI6 officer from deep inside the River House, as MI6’s Thames-side HQ is so quaintly called in humanising TV dramas. Steele worked on the Russia Desk at a time when Russia was declining in the degree of attention that was devoted to it by the British intelligence services.
Steele joined MI6 in 1987 and was immediately posted to the Russia Desk. He retired in 2009, having been three years as head of the Desk. For all of his career in MI6, the proportion of attention given by MI6 (and British intelligence more broadly) to Foreign State Threats of which Russia was the pre-eminent example had reportedly markedly declined, according to the Intelligence and Security Committee. No wonder he thinks we are not paying enough attention. It was only after the “reunification” of Crimea with the Russian Federation in 2014 that the British intelligence services started to focus much more attention on Russia, foremost among all State Threats.
After MI6, Steele went off to Orbis Business Intelligence. His most famous role there was as the author of the dossier on the alleged relations between Trump and Russia. These were comprehensively debunked in the so called RussiaGate affair, most notably in a four part investigation by Jeff Gerth and in the relentless deconstruction of the Mueller report and the technical flaws of the initial crowdsourced claims by Aaron Maté. It is frankly amazing that even the Telegraph would have anything to do with Steele after that debacle. But here we are. According to Steele, Mandelson was considered a “privileged contact” of Russian intelligence.
Of course, it’s not insignificant that the “journalist” who wrote the story, Camilla Turner, has parents who literally run UK Lawyers for “Israel”, as the Canary has previously pointed out. Turner has been at the Telegraph for years, but it’s also important to point out that it has recently been taken over by hardline Zionists who are on record as saying staff who are not pro-“Israel” should look for other jobs.
Mandelson’s official vetting reportedly threw up five separate links of concern. These were to China’s minister of finance, Lan Fo’an, the sanctions-hit Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and a former Israeli military intelligence general, Tamir Hayma. Another concern identified was a £1m loan Mandelson received to invest in an Israeli startup. United Kingdom Security Vetting also noted Mandelson had a “very close” relationship with another individual, who is British, that could be compromising.
But Mandelson was not the only British official to have relations with the Chinese Finance minister. Both Rachel Reeves (the Chancellor) and Keir Starmer as PM did so too.
On the Russian connection, as the Zionist press like Times of Israel and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency never tire of pointing out, Deripaska is one of Russia’s prominent Jewish oligarchs. And he is no stranger to elite Zionist networks. After all, when Mandelson met Deripaska in famously controversial circumstances in 2008, it was aboard the oligarch’s yacht as a guest of Nat Rothschild, who also reportedly played a key role in financing Deripaska’s business activities. It was aboard Rothschild’s own yacht that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump later “discovered” the Albanian island paradise that has become so controversial in recent weeks. Nat Rothschild also famously allowed Mandelson to “rent” a “modest” farmhouse on his Wiltshire estate in England, which was one of the two addresses raided by the police when Mandelson was arrested.
But that is not all. Mandelson is perhaps best known for his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the same financier/Zionist asset who revealed in a once secret email to Peter Thiel of Palantir that “I represent the Rothschilds”. The circles of influence and corruption are closed by the final connection. In 2018, Deripaska was allegedly involved in trafficking young women for prostitution. He was accused of raping at least one 15-year-old. Though his alleged associates were prosecuted, charges were in the end – in 2025 – not preferred against Deripaska. So the “Russian” connection to Mandelson in the vetting report, in the end, is actually a connection to Zionist influence networks, with a striking Epsteinian flavour.
Of the two specific “Israeli” connections raised by MI6, one was with the former head of the Zionist regime military intelligence agency Aman. Tamir Hayma was chief of Aman between 2018 and 2021 following a decades-long career in the occupation forces. He then transitioned to the Institute for National Security Studies, a regime-connected think tank, and reportedly spoke bi-monthly to Mandelson.
The other connection was that Mandelson, though he had declared a £1million holding in an Israeli gaming tech start-up, called Moon Active, which was behind Coin Master, had not disclosed that he had been loaned the money to buy the stake. The British resident behind the loan has not so far been identified. It would be surprising if they were not connected to the same Zionist networks in which Mandelson is embedded.
The final red flag reported by the vetting process was to another British individual. There has been very little reporting on who that individual might be. Speculating who it is is difficult because there are so many instances of Mandelsonian corruption that it is hard to tell which would have triggered warning bells in MI6. It could, of course, be Nat Rothschild, who has been central to so much of this, but equally it could be the former “Prince” now known as Andrew Mountbatten. A 2019 internal JPMorgan report flagged that Jeffrey Epstein maintained an intertwined, “particularly close relationship” with both Andrew and Lord Mandelson, creating overlapping reputational risks. Then there is Ghislaine Maxwell. In 2014, Mandelson signed on as a “founding citizen” for Terramar, an ocean conservation charity founded by the British socialite and funded by Epstein, which was later scrutinized during sex-trafficking investigations.
As can be seen from this list and from all that we know about Mandelson’s career, almost all of his multifarious connections are deeply inserted in the Epstein web or connected to Zionist influence networks. It was after Christopher Steele retired from MI6 that the agency massively increased its focus on Russia as a result of the “reunification” of Crimea with the Russian Federation. The HMG Russia Unit was created inside the Foreign Office for this purpose, and it co-operated very closely with the Russia Desk in MI6, which Steele had headed. The unit was given civilian cover and announced publicly, but as was later disclosed by the Intelligence and Security Select Committee, it was staffed by spooks from all seven then-existing British intelligence agencies. It was from there that the whole Skripal “poisoning” operation was run, as well as several other covert ops including the “Integrity Initiative” exposed in mass leaks in 2018 and indeed many covert ops in Ukraine after 2022. Given the reported connection between Steele and Skripal’s handler Pablo Miller, both of whom worked at Orbis Business Intelligence, it is reasonable to assume that Steele may have played a role in the Skripal op, at a time when he had been out of the service for nine years. So, it is not entirely clear that this latest intervention from Steele is entirely separate from the machinations emanating from spooks who currently inhabit the River House.
It is perfectly plain that the major link that Mandelson has is with Zionist intelligence-linked networks. If anyone in MI6 (or formerly in MI6) tells you differently, you will know they are ignoring the actual data held in their files and trying to treat you as a propaganda patsy. Don’t fall for it. Mandelson is a Zionist asset.
Italian newspaper forced to pay for smearing ‘Putinists’
Corriere della Sera claimed the Italian government was investigating a Russian propaganda ring
RT | July 22, 2026
Italy’s Corriere della Sera was ordered to pay compensation to a sociology professor that it defamed as a “Putinist” after a court determined that the pro-Russia influence network he supposedly belonged to never existed.
In a Tuesday ruling, a court in Milan found that the newspaper had defamed Professor Alessandro Orsini by referring to him as a member of “Putin’s Network in Italy.” Corriere della Sera, a mainstream broadsheet paper, was ordered to pay €27,500 in compensation to Orsini.
“Publishing and allowing the publication of an article that attributes to Orsini the status of a member of an organized network of pro-Putin supporters aimed at propaganda and counter-information… constitutes conduct damaging to his personal and professional image and reputation,” the judge noted in the ruling.
Published in 2022, the defamatory article listed Orsini – then a professor at Luiss University in Rome – as a member of a “complex and diverse” network aimed at “attacking pro-Kiev politicians” and “undermining government decisions” it deemed favorable to Kiev. According to the newspaper, the group was under investigation by the Italian parliament’s intelligence committee (COPASIR), which allegedly determined it was “activated at key moments” to spread pro-Russia propaganda during the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
However, COPASIR’s president admitted at the time that the committee had “never conducted its own investigations into alleged influencers.” Italy’s undersecretary for intelligence services, Franco Gabrielli, added that “the names given by the newspaper do not appear in any type of investigation.”
During the trial, Corriere della Sera claimed it had received “other and different information” from confidential sources to back its story but was unable to prove this in court.
The judge noted that, not only had the newspaper failed to prove that Orsini participated in an organized propaganda network, but it was unable to prove that the network even existed in the first place.
As a result of the Corriere della Sera article, Orsini lost his position at Luiss University and was dropped as a contributor by Italian broadcaster RAI.
Orsini has been a persistent critic of Italy’s support for Ukraine. In early 2022, he accused Prime Minister Mario Draghi of “total subordination to America,” while blasting the West for “doing nothing for peace.”
“We must be open to recognizing the independence of Donbass and lifting sanctions,” he said in an appearance on RAI. “Draghi must say he’s no longer sending weapons to Zelensky.”
No, New York Times, Climate Change Isn’t Causing Modern Heat Waves
By Anthony Watts | ClimateRealism | July 9, 2026
The New York Times (NYT) claims in “Without Climate Change, U.S. Heat Wave Called ‘Virtually Impossible’” that the recent Northeastern U.S. heat wave could not have occurred without human-caused climate change. This is false. The NYT bases its entire story on a model-driven analysis from a group whose sole purpose is to connect weather events to climate change, while ignoring the long observational record showing that severe heat waves have repeatedly struck the United States, including New York, for centuries.
“Heat and humidity as severe, prolonged and far-reaching as this week’s would have been ‘virtually impossible’ in the Northeast and eastern Canada before humans began warming the planet, a team of scientists said on Friday,” writes Raymond Zhong, a reporter for the NYT. “Emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from the burning of oil, gas and coal have trapped more of the sun’s heat at Earth’s surface, raising temperatures worldwide for more than a century.
“Summer hot spells are nothing new, but because of the excess heat around the planet caused by global warming, they can produce higher temperatures today than they once did,” Zhong continued.
Unlike a good journalist, Zhong never questioned the premise, never examined the historical record, never interviewed anyone outside the climate attribution community, and never asked whether the group they cite, World Weather Attribution (WWA), has conclusions that might be influenced by the organization’s very reason for existing. Instead, Zhong presented readers with exactly one narrative: climate change is causing the present heat wave.
WWA exists for one purpose, to determine how much climate change has influenced weather events. That is its mission. Asking WWA whether climate change caused a heat wave is like asking the National Football League whether football is important or Greenpeace whether they think oil spills are harmful. What exactly did the NYT expect them to conclude? That climate change had nothing to do with it?
Of course not. This is not journalism, rather it’s a reporter using a narrative autopen.
The article reports that WWA concluded the heat wave would have been “virtually impossible” before industrialization and cites a probability analysis based on wet bulb globe temperature calculations combined with weather observations, forecasts, and climate model simulations. Yet there is one enormous problem with this approach: climate models are not observations.
WWA begins with climate models, creates a hypothetical version of Earth without modern greenhouse gas emissions, and then compares that imaginary world to today’s modeled climate. The result is not a measurement. It is an estimate built upon assumptions about carbon dioxide driving climate changes, already embedded within the models themselves. The NYT never explains this distinction. Instead, it presents speculative model output as though it were an observed fact. Even more troubling is the fact that the NYT story ignored heat wave history entirely.
America’s climate did not begin in 1970. Long before anyone blamed carbon dioxide for extreme weather, the United States experienced devastating heat waves that rivaled or exceeded many recent temperatures. Climate at a Glance documents that the most severe period for U.S. heat waves remains the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, when NOAA observations show far more frequent extreme heat than today.
The historical record extends even farther back. The catastrophic Eastern U.S. heat wave of 1901 killed an estimated 9,500 people. The historic 1911 heat wave brought temperatures above 100°F across much of New England and still holds Boston’s all-time record of 104°F. The Dust Bowl heat waves of 1934 and 1936 produced temperatures that remain unmatched across large portions of the central United States. The devastating heat wave of 1980 in the United States killed thousands and caused billions of dollars in damage. None of these events receives a single mention in the NYT article.
Instead, readers are asked to believe that today’s weather is fundamentally different from any weather experienced in the past, just because one attribution group says so.
The article also ignores the basic reality that reliable nationwide temperature observations span roughly 150 years, while humans have lived in North America for more than 15,000 years. Claiming that a weather event is “virtually impossible” based on such a tiny slice of climate history requires extraordinary confidence, or hubris. A commonly cited scientific saying “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is often attributed to astronomer Carl Sagan. Yet the NYT provides no extraordinary evidence for the claim that the ongoing heat wave is exceptional or would be “virtually impossible” sans climate change. Indeed, it presents no hard evidence at all, just WWA’s computer model spin. The NYT applies none of the skepticism that journalists normally reserve for extraordinary claims.
The NYT also overlooks another important factor. Much of the observed warming in cities occurs at night, when asphalt, concrete, and buildings slowly release the heat absorbed during the day. This Urban Heat Island effect raises overnight minimum temperatures, precisely when heat-related mortality is greatest. Urbanization can substantially influence long-term temperature records, a known factor ignored by the NYT.
Finally, Zhong quotes a WWA scientist declaring that “the climate the country has today is fundamentally different to the one it had when the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence.” That line makes for dramatic copy, but it is historically false. The Founding Fathers experienced brutal heat waves. The most famous heat wave during the American Revolution occurred during the Battle of Monmouth in central New Jersey on June 28, 1778. Temperatures soared to nearly 100°F (37.8°C) with high humidity, pushing the heat index well over 110°F. Fighting in heavy woolen uniforms under the blazing summer sun, soldiers on both sides suffered severe dehydration and heatstroke. Almost as many American soldiers died of heat exhaustion as died from battle wounds.
Extreme heat in the United States is not a new phenomenon.
Despite this, modern media treat every string of hot days as evidence of a looming “climate catastrophe” while ignoring centuries of evidence that debunks this claim.
The most disappointing aspect of this story is not WWA’s predictable conclusion. Organizations are free to pursue the missions for which they were created. The failure belongs squarely with the NYT simply parroting, without critical examination, a climate advocacy organization’s unverified claims.
Readers deserve good journalism. What they got was sloppy climate advocacy masquerading as news. In this case, The New York Times erred because WWA’s claims are not news and certainly not “fit to print.”
The assassination of Iran’s supreme leader: America’s strategic miscalculation under the shadow of Israeli narratives
By Timothy Hopper | MEMO | July 2, 2026
As Iran prepares for the funeral ceremonies of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the former Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, the scale of anticipated public participation indicates that they are set to become one of the most significant mass gatherings in contemporary Iranian history. Reports indicate that vast crowds are expected to arrive from across the country, alongside official delegations from numerous states. This moment offers a clear opportunity to assess the U.S. and Israeli decision to assassinate him in February 2026. The operation rested on a flawed assessment of Khamenei’s real role and standing within Iran’s social and political structure. In this regard, the United States was shaped largely by Israeli media narratives and intelligence assessments—accounts that substantially underestimated Ayatollah Khamenei’s popularity, institutional influence, and capacity for social mobilization. The preparations already underway and the expected scale of the turnout make this analytical failure harder to ignore. They show how far American policymakers relied on an incomplete and one-sided picture of Iranian reality.
To understand this miscalculation, it is necessary to return to the framework that had cast a long shadow over analyses of Iran before the attack. For years, Israeli media outlets and a number of research institutions close to Israel’s political and security establishment portrayed Khamenei as a leader with limited social backing, governing a society marked by deep divisions, economic discontent, and generational distance. These narratives repeatedly suggested that removing him could trigger serious instability, or even a fundamental transformation of Iran’s political system. Such an image aligned with the stated purpose of the joint U.S.-Israeli operation: weakening and destabilizing Iran’s political order. Yet this analysis ignored the more complex realities of Iranian society and politics. In assessing Khamenei’s structural position and the attachment of significant parts of society to ideas such as independence, security, and resistance to external pressure, Washington effectively accepted a narrative that minimized decisive factors. The result was an expectation that his removal would rapidly expose internal fractures. Developments since then—including a relatively orderly leadership transition and the continued functioning of core institutions—have pointed in the opposite direction.
Khamenei’s position in Iran went far beyond that of a conventional head of government. For more than three decades, he stressed national self-reliance, scientific and technological development despite external constraints, and sustained resistance in foreign policy against outside pressure.
These priorities helped produce a measure of institutional resilience and measurable progress in certain sectors. Iran has, of course, faced genuine social discontent, economic pressure, and political divisions. But that did not mean Khamenei’s role had been reduced to personal isolation, nor that his removal would necessarily paralyze the country’s political machinery. Israeli media coverage generally emphasized critical currents and visible signs of dissatisfaction while downplaying evidence of broader attachment to ideas such as independence, national sovereignty, and security. This selective emphasis produced an image of fragility and isolation that did not correspond to the durability of Iranian structures after his assassination. America’s acceptance of that image represented a serious intelligence and analytical failure in understanding the depth of Khamenei’s place within Iran’s political structure.
The February attack was accompanied by public statements from American and Israeli officials describing it as a decisive blow. The initial expectation appears to have rested on the assumption that the vacuum created by eliminating the leader would intensify internal divisions or create opportunities for greater outside leverage.
In practice, Iran preserved the functional continuity of its core institutions and its broad policy direction. This outcome showed that Khamenei’s influence was not merely personal. It had taken root in institutions, political networks, security structures, and the political culture of the Islamic Republic.
Washington’s error was to imagine that the base of support around him was narrower and more brittle than events ultimately showed it to be. The upcoming funeral ceremonies, scheduled to unfold over several days and across major cities, are set to draw exceptionally large crowds and will provide further tangible evidence against those earlier assumptions. The anticipated presence of mourners and foreign delegations will demonstrate a degree of recognition, respect, and social connection that earlier reporting and assessments had treated as marginal.
From a broader policy perspective, this episode reveals the dangers of excessive reliance on particular intelligence and media sources. In Iran’s case, cultural, religious, and historical forces shape political loyalties and behavior in ways that demand a more precise understanding of the country’s internal realities—not broad, externally produced narratives. Analyses that overlook these factors are vulnerable to strategic error. What was supposed to weaken Iran’s political structure instead reinforced commitment to established principles, heightened sensitivity to foreign intervention, and underscored the perceived necessity of institutional continuity. The forthcoming ceremonies, with their extensive organization, will serve as a visible corrective to assessments shaped by one-sided reporting.
By relying on Israeli media narratives and intelligence assessments of Khamenei’s position and the level of support surrounding him, American decision-makers arrived at a conclusion that developments since the assassination have not borne out.
In conclusion, the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei and the domestic and international response to it expose the limits of policymaking built on incomplete information and politically shaped interpretations. The forthcoming funeral ceremonies and the anticipated exceptional public turnout will offer a vivid illustration of social cohesion in Iran—one that stands in clear contrast to earlier predictions of rapid collapse or internal rupture. This expected turnout suggests that America’s assessment of Iran’s Supreme Leader and the degree of public support he commanded was significantly influenced by Israeli media and intelligence narratives, and ultimately proved mistaken. Rather than producing the disruption that had been anticipated, the process has highlighted Iran’s institutional continuity and social resilience.
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From the Archive
Zionism’s Violent Legacy
By Donald Neff | Washington Report On Middle East Affairs | January 1996
On January 4, 1948, Jewish terrorists drove a truck loaded with explosives into the center of the all Arab city of Jaffa and detonated it, killing 26 and wounding around 100 Palestinian men, women and children.[1] The attack was the work of the Irgun Zvai Leumi – the “National Military Organization,” also known by the Hebrew letters Etzel – the largest Jewish terrorist group in Palestine. The Irgun was headed by Revisionist Zionist Menachem Begin and had been killing and maiming Arabs, Britons and even Jews for the previous ten years in its efforts to establish a Jewish state.
This terror campaign meant that at the core of Revisionist Zionism there existed a philosophical embrace of violence. … continue
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