“Politically motivated” UK intelligence report maligns Iran
Press TV – July 10, 2025
Iran has categorically rejected a report by the United Kingdom’s parliament’s intelligence watchdog as “unfounded and politically-motivated,” warning that such a “hostile” move reveals a broader attempt of distortion aimed at maligning the Islamic Republic’s legitimate regional and national interests.
On Thursday, Britain’s Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC) alleged that Iran has “significantly increased” its threats within the UK, claiming that Iranian spies have been behind at least 15 attempts to kill or kidnap British-based individuals since 2022.
The accusations drew a swift response from the Iranian Embassy in London, which issued a “categorical rejection of the unfounded, politically motivated and hostile allegations” leveled by the ISC against Tehran.
“The Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran firmly denies all allegations made in these sections and considers them to be baseless, irresponsible, and reflective of a broader pattern of distortion intended to malign Iran’s legitimate regional and national interests. These claims not only lack substantive evidence but also contradict the Islamic Republic of Iran’s principled commitment to international law, sovereign equality, and peaceful coexistence,” the statement stressed.
The embassy also emphasized that not only is the report not grounded in reality and unhelpful in resolving misunderstandings, but it also presents false information to the public and policy-makers, thereby distorting the understanding of the issue and leading to miscalculations.
“The suggestion that Iran engages in or supports acts of physical violence, espionage, or cyber aggression on British soil or against British interests abroad, is wholly rejected. Such accusations are not only defamatory but also dangerous, fueling unnecessary tensions and undermining diplomatic norms,” it further emphasized.
Iran’s Embassy in London also advised the authors of the report to focus on the real roots of the region’s challenges—namely, the grave crimes and illegal aggressions committed by the Israeli regime with the support of its Western allies—instead of making baseless accusations against Iran.
“When western countries turn a blind eye to all the war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, and aggression which are certainly violations of international law by the Israeli regime, they inevitably have to open their eyes to genuine reactions against the aggressors,” it added.
The statement also denounced the continued weaponization of baseless intelligence assessments in an attempt to justify hostile policies, urging the UK to “refrain from further disseminating false information that damages bilateral relations and regional stability.”
UN Regularly Spread Ukraine’s Lies — Moscow on Guterres’ Remarks on Russian Drone Attacks
Sputnik – 10.07.2025
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and his subordinates regularly spread the lies fabricated by Kiev and Western countries, the Russian Foreign ministry said on Thursday, commenting on the UN chief’s remark about the allegedly largest series of attacks by Russian UAVs and missiles.
On July 5, Guterres strongly condemned “what is believed to be the largest series of attacks by Russia in the last three years using UAVs and missiles” that allegedly disrupted the power supply to the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant (ZNPP), and expressed concern about “the dangerous escalation and the growing number of civilian casualties,” the ministry said in a statement.
“[Antonio] Guterres and his subordinates regularly pick up and replicate the lies fabricated by the Kiev regime and Western capitals and aimed at discrediting Russia. They consistently keep silent about Kiev’s flagrant violations of international humanitarian law or, at best, limit themselves to calls for restraint on both sides. With such double standards, the Secretariat’s leadership grossly violates Article 100 of the UN Charter, which requires it to adhere to the principles of impartiality and equidistance,” the ministry said.
It is absurd to assume that Russia has grounds to create difficulties for the safe operation of the ZNPP, as it is Moscow that is responsible for ensuring the safety of the plant, the statement read, adding that the Russian armed forces only strike Ukraine’s military targets, while Kiev constantly attacks civilian targets.
“Russia insists that UN officials abandon their biased course, demands that they stop acting as mouthpieces for Western propaganda and disseminators of disinformation and fakes, take a neutral and responsible position befitting their status, and rely only on verified sources of information,” the statement said.
Hamas rejects US allegations of Gaza aid centre attack
MEMO | July 7, 2025
The Government Media Office in Gaza has officially rejected claims by the US State Department alleging that the Palestinian resistance carried out a “bomb attack” targeting American personnel at aid distribution centres operated by the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – GHF”.
In a statement issued on Sunday, the office said the accusations were entirely baseless and part of a clear attempt to justify the continued killing and starvation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. It added that the claims reflect full alignment with the Israeli military narrative, which aims to legitimise war crimes by using fabricated security pretexts to justify excessive force against civilians.
The statement described GHF not as a humanitarian organisation, but as a security and intelligence front supported by both Israel and the United States.
The media office held the foundation responsible for the deaths of 751 civilians, injuries to 4,931 others, and the disappearance of 39 people. These casualties, it said, resulted from the chaos and danger surrounding the aid distribution centres established by the foundation in exposed and unsafe areas.
The statement stressed that the US State Department’s narrative seeks to whitewash the image of an organisation involved in war crimes. It also pointed out that over 130 international humanitarian organisations refuse to cooperate with GHF, viewing it as a cover for Israeli military objectives.
The IAEA and OPCW – How International Organisations Became Tools of War
21st Century Wire | July 2, 2025
Dr. Piers Robinson is a political scientist, a former professor at the University of Sheffield, as well a research director at the International Center for 9/11 Justice, whose recent article on Substack is titled, “The IAEA and OPCW: Watchdogs for Peace or Propagandists for War?” looks at the IAEA’s questionable operations in Iran, and the similarities to the abused OPCW in Syria, and in general the role of “lying through institutions”, and plying war-propaganda through third-party institutions.
Recent events in Iran have all but exposed how these supposed ‘watchdog’ institutions have been coopted and used by US and British intelligence in order to fabricate another case for war.
Pascal Lottaz, host of Neutrality Studies, talks with the co-director for the Organisation for Propaganda Studies, Dr Piers Robinson, about this, as well as the broader geopolitical implications at play here. Watch:
How Israeli propaganda mills recycled fabricated claims of intercepting Iranian missiles
By Ivan Kesic | Press TV – July 5, 2025
For the third time, the Israeli regime has declared an implausible success rate in intercepting Iranian ballistic missiles, this time touting a fanciful figure of 86 percent, a claim parroted with little scrutiny by much of the Western mainstream media.
This week, Israeli media outlets relayed statements from the regime’s war ministry claiming that 86 percent of Iranian missiles and 99 percent of drones were intercepted during the June 2025 Israeli war against Iran.
The figures, they said, were drawn from 12 days of the war, during which Iran launched 532 ballistic missiles in approximately 42 barrages targeting the occupied Palestinian territories. According to the same sources, about 300 missiles landed in “open areas,” while 200 were allegedly intercepted by Israeli and American air defense systems.
The interception systems credited include Israel’s David’s Sling, Arrow 2 and 3, along with the US-supplied THAAD and Aegis systems, altogether costing around 5 billion shekels, or nearly $1.5 billion.
In a triumphant assessment, the Israeli war ministry claimed their interception prevented over $15 billion in potential property damage and “saved countless lives.”
Some Zionist officials went even further, asserting that only 25 to 31 Iranian ballistic missiles actually struck targets within the occupied territories.
Despite the glaring inconsistencies in these numbers, and their defiance of both available evidence and basic mathematics, Western media repeated the claims almost reverently, offering little in the way of critical examination.
A pattern of fabricated success
This is not a one-off occurrence. It marks the third time the Israeli regime has released clearly falsified data on interception success rates, only to see these narratives absorbed uncritically into Western discourse.
After Iran’s Operation True Promise 1 and 2 in April and October last year, Israeli regime officials boasted a now-familiar “99 percent” interception rate. In the second operation alone, they claimed 200 Iranian ballistic missiles were launched, implying that only two managed to bypass Israeli defenses.
Yet satellite imagery tells a vastly different story. At Nevatim Airbase, one of the three key Iranian targets (alongside Tel Nof Airbase and Mossad headquarters), 33 Iranian missiles made direct contact, 26 of which caused severe structural damage, including to five hangars.
These figures alone debunk Israel’s exaggerated claims, as does independent footage from civilian sources, which recorded dozens of strikes, far more than the “three” the regime was willing to admit.
Tel Nof Airbase saw direct hits that triggered secondary explosions among stored munitions. At least two missiles impacted areas near Mossad’s headquarters. In total, over 40 Iranian missiles successfully penetrated much-hyped Israeli defenses during Operation True Promise 2, twenty times more than Israeli officials conceded.
Their missile launch count was also exaggerated. Visual evidence confirms that 53 missiles were launched in three waves: 25 from Kermanshah, 18 from Tabriz, and 10 from Shiraz. This suggests that over 75 percent of Iranian missiles struck their intended targets, an accuracy rate far closer to Iranian estimates of 90 percent than the Israeli claim of 1 percent success.
The same distortions appeared after Operation True Promise 1, with Israel again insisting it intercepted “99 percent of 300 missiles and drones”—a figure clearly contradicted by publicly available footage capturing numerous impacts.
Latest round of deception
As with the previous two retaliatory operations, the latest Israeli claims, of an 86 percent interception rate, 300 harmless impacts in open areas, and only 30 successful Iranian strikes, lack any verifiable evidence.
Most Iranian retaliatory strikes and Israeli interception attempts occurred at night and were recorded in numerous public videos. These show luminous streaks of incoming missiles, and often, impact explosions, across the occupied territories.
All Israeli systems engaged, David’s Sling, Arrow 2/3, and THAAD use hit-to-kill technology, designed to intercept missiles at long ranges and high altitudes. When successful, these intercepts generate massive hypersonic collisions that produce blinding explosions visible across the region.
If Israel had indeed intercepted 200 ballistic missiles, as claimed, there would be a flood of corroborating footage from personal and security cameras, all time- and date-stamped.
But such evidence is conspicuously absent. Even the Israeli military, known for showcasing its “successes,” has failed to release convincing proof.
Nor is there any physical evidence of widespread missile debris in Iraq or Jordan, which should exist if large numbers of missiles had been intercepted in those areas.
Conversely, hundreds of videos document Iranian missiles piercing Israeli defenses and detonating across the occupied territories. If most Iranian missiles were truly falling into uninhabited open zones, as claimed, the regime would be eager to release images proving it. Instead, photo and video censorship has been rigorously enforced.
In fact, the scale of destruction suggests widespread strikes on Israeli military infrastructure, not craters in farmland. Israeli media themselves have pegged total damage at $12 billion, with projections reaching $20 billion when indirect costs are counted.
These staggering figures are inconsistent with the claim that only 25–31 missiles hit, unless one believes each missile inflicted $500, 800 million in damage, an implausible notion.
The official 86 percent success rate also contradicts a statement by a senior Israeli intelligence officer to American media, who admitted that by the seventh day of fighting, only 65 percent of Iranian missiles were being intercepted.
He attributed this drop in effectiveness to Iran’s deployment of faster, more maneuverable, and more sophisticated missiles.
Initially, Iran had used older liquid-fueled ballistic missiles, such as Shahab-3, known for their slow speed and predictable trajectories, making them easier to intercept. However, these outdated models were paired with decoys, confusing air defense systems and draining interceptor stockpiles.
Despite the extensive documentation of missile attacks, no comprehensive analysis has yet detailed how many Iranian missiles and Israeli interceptors were deployed, or what the true interception rate was.
Open-source analysts have attempted estimates using nighttime footage from Jordanian photographer Zaid M. al-Abbadi, but his recordings cover only a fraction of the conflict, nighttime only, with limited geographical and vertical scope.
Nonetheless, they point to a clear trend: Iranian missiles breached Israeli air defenses far more often than official figures admit, and did so with a frequency higher than the number of interceptors deployed.
Diversions and disinformation
In addition to exaggerating interception figures, the Israeli regime employs a range of propaganda tactics to conceal its failures and downplay Iranian achievements.
During Operation True Promise 1, iconic images of glowing Iranian missiles above Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in occupied Jerusalem al-Quds stunned the world, symbolizing Iran’s reach and resolve.
In response, Israeli regime officials, most notably UN ambassador Gilad Erdan, offered the bizarre narrative that Israel was “protecting Al-Aqsa from Iranian missiles,” attempting to sow discord between Iran and the wider Muslim world.
In truth, those missiles were aimed at Nevatim Airbase, located 65 kilometers south of occupied Jerusalem al-Quds.
Similarly, during Operation True Promise 3, Israeli propagandists claimed Iran had deliberately struck the Al-Jarina Mosque in Haifa. In reality, a missile hit the Sail Tower regime building complex 50 meters southeast, with the mosque sustaining only minor facade damage from shockwaves.
Israel also falsely alleged Iranian attacks on schools and homes. But released images show damage consistent not with Iranian warheads, but with malfunctioning Israeli interceptors.
Perhaps the most egregious example was the claim that Iran targeted Soroka Hospital. In fact, the damage was from a strike on a nearby C4I military intelligence HQ. The regime routinely positions military infrastructure adjacent to civilian areas, then manipulates resulting collateral damage as evidence of Iranian wrongdoing.
Facilities like the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv and the military-linked Weizmann Institute are presented as “civilian” in official narratives. Moreover, videos of Iranian missile strikes on these sites are heavily censored, and sharing such footage risks severe legal punishment.
Finally, Israeli propaganda claims that missile victims are mostly “non-Israelis”—while failing to mention that non-Jewish residents are often banned from entering bomb shelters.
During the recent war, Palestinians, Chinese workers, and Turkish journalists all testified to being denied shelter access, highlighting both systemic discrimination and the hypocrisy of Israeli victimhood narratives.
Can international institutions be reformed?
By Raphael Machado | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 30, 2025
It appears that Israel and Iran have postponed World War III and, for now, seem to adhere to the ceasefire negotiated by Donald Trump (likely with the help of other countries). But even if the “12-Day War” has stopped and missiles are no longer flying back and forth, doubts remain about the fate of Iran’s nuclear program.
The U.S. government insists that Iran’s nuclear program no longer exists, while Iran maintains that its nuclear program is still operational. All signs indicate that the Iranians are correct and that the U.S. is once again constructing a purely simulated parallel reality for the sake of narrative power projection.
But the main issue is not this—it is, in fact, something few have mentioned, as recently noted by Sergey Lavrov: the role of Rafael Grossi and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The IAEA was founded in 1957 as an “autonomous” agency—though linked to the UN—with the goal of monitoring nations’ use of nuclear energy to promote peaceful applications and prevent the construction of nuclear weapons. In this capacity, IAEA teams visit nuclear power plants, research centers, and other facilities related to national nuclear programs to conduct safety checks and oversee enrichment levels.
However, it is important to note that despite its claims of “autonomy,” the IAEA was established at the insistence of the U.S., shortly after the abandonment of the post-WWII “utopian” idea of keeping nuclear weapons under the exclusive control of the UN. The institution has always been closer to the interests of the Western Bloc than to those of the Eastern Bloc or the Non-Aligned Movement.
That said, in the past, the IAEA did challenge U.S. claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, under the leadership of Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei.
But even during ElBaradei’s tenure, there were signs of a shift toward Western alignment. In writings from that period, ElBaradei advocated for a revival of the utopian, globalist vision of nuclear energy monopolized by a “multinational” agency—much like the various Western agencies controlled or influenced by the U.S. ElBaradei himself became a collaborator with the U.S. after his term ended, participating in the color revolution orchestrated in Egypt against Hosni Mubarak.
It was only during Yukiya Amano’s leadership that the IAEA’s collaboration with the U.S. became evident, thanks to WikiLeaks revelations. According to documents obtained by Julian Assange, in a meeting between Amano and U.S. diplomats, Amano explicitly stated that he was aligned with the U.S. regarding staffing decisions and the stance to be taken on Iran’s nuclear program. This, of course, meant that Amano filled the IAEA with U.S. collaborators. He was later accused by IAEA staff themselves of having a pro-Western bias.
This context helps explain the behavior of Rafael Grossi, Amano’s successor.
Fast-forward to June: Grossi prepared a report accusing Iran of failing to meet its obligations to the IAEA and scheduled a board meeting for the same day Trump’s 60-day ultimatum on negotiations with Iran expired. According to CNN, the U.S. contacted several board members to persuade them to vote in favor of Grossi’s resolution. The purpose was to lend an institutional veneer of legitimacy to Israel’s attacks against Iran.
Grossi’s report was entirely based on information provided by Mossad, which alleged the existence of previously unknown nuclear facilities containing traces of enriched uranium.
All evidence suggests that Grossi was aware of the imminent attack and collaborated in creating a pretext to justify Israel’s actions. This is further corroborated by the fact that Grossi has never once turned his attention to Israel’s nuclear program, which remains entirely opaque, free from any international inspections.
In light of these revelations, it is alarming that, as Grossi told the Financial Times earlier this year, he intends to run for UN Secretary-General. Given his track record, it is plausible that he will have U.S. backing, which would greatly aid his candidacy.
Cases like this are not isolated. We have seen how the International Criminal Court (ICC) moved to accuse Vladimir Putin and Russia of “kidnapping” Ukrainian children. The World Health Organization (WHO), meanwhile, attempted to override national sovereignty during the pandemic. The IMF is routinely used to deindustrialize Third World countries.
The list could go on.
The key issue, however, is this: Given the current state of international institutions, can they be reformed?
Or will we need to abandon them—as Iran did with the IAEA—and build new ones from scratch?
Zarif accuses IAEA’s Grossi of aiding war crimes, calls for removal
Al Mayadeen | June 27, 2025
Former Iranian Foreign Minister and ex-Vice President for Strategic Affairs, Mohammad Javad Zarif, issued a scathing condemnation of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Secretary-General Rafael Grossi on Friday, accusing him of facilitating war crimes through politically charged actions and rhetoric.
In a statement posted on his official X account, Zarif said Grossi had “abetted the slaughter of innocents” by issuing what he described as a fictitious IAEA report, and warned that the director-general is now laying the groundwork for further crimes against Iran.
Grossi accused of promoting false narratives
Zarif sharply criticized Grossi’s recent suggestion that Iran might be concealing uranium at World Heritage Sites in Isfahan, calling the claim “reckless musing” and part of a broader campaign to provoke further military escalation. “@rafaelmgrossi is now conspiring to abet more war crimes,” Zarif wrote.
The former top diplomat added that the IAEA should remove Grossi from his post, calling him a “disgrace” to the agency and launching the hashtag “#Fire_Grossi” to amplify the demand.
Mounting criticism over IAEA’s politicization
The remarks add to a growing number of Iranians accusing the IAEA of losing its impartiality and enabling acts of aggression by the Israeli occupation and the United States.
This also comes after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced Friday that the Iranian Parliament had voted to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) until the safety and security of the country’s nuclear infrastructure can be guaranteed.
The decision follows days of mounting tension over the US and the Israeli regime’s attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, which Tehran says were politically facilitated by the IAEA’s leadership. Araghchi directly blamed IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi for contributing to what he called “a sordid state of affairs.”
In a statement published on X, Araghchi accused Grossi of playing a “regrettable role in obfuscating” the fact that the IAEA had closed all past issues with Iran’s nuclear program a decade ago. Instead of upholding that record, Grossi, according to Araghchi, enabled the IAEA Board of Governors to adopt a “politically-motivated resolution” against Iran.
That resolution, Araghchi said, directly set the stage for recent bombings of Iranian nuclear sites by the US and the Israeli occupation.
Iran to defend its sovereignty
Araghchi condemned Grossi’s silence in the face of these attacks, calling it a “betrayal” of his statutory responsibilities. “In an astounding betrayal of his duties, Grossi has failed to explicitly condemn such blatant violations of IAEA safeguards and its Statute,” Araghchi said.
He further criticized Grossi’s insistence on visiting bombed sites under the pretext of inspections, calling such efforts “meaningless” and “possibly even malign in intent.”
Iran, Araghchi emphasized, reserves the right to take any measures necessary to defend its sovereignty, people, and national interests. He reiterated that cooperation with the IAEA would not resume until credible guarantees are in place to protect Iran’s nuclear facilities from further attacks.
“The IAEA and its Director-General bear full responsibility for what has transpired,” Araghchi stated, underscoring Iran’s growing distrust of the agency’s impartiality amid a broader climate of Western pressure and aggression.
Vaccine Makers Signal Fear Over Removal of Neurotoxic Injected Aluminum Ingredient
By Jefferey Jaxen | June 27, 2025
Former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb made his ceremonial appearance on CNBC to titrate the public well with Big Pharma talking points in the wake of this week’s ACIP meeting.
After speaking for less than one minute and forty seconds, Gottlieb used the tired, inaccurate slur ‘anti-vaxxer’ four times in a failed attempt to frame an us verse them narrative like it was 2015 again.
With the newly appointed ACIP committee vote to remove the mercury-based preservative thimerosal from the few remaining flu shots, Gottlieb wasted no time circling the wagons to protect the widespread, problematic aluminum adjuvant in several vaccines on the CDC’s childhood schedule.
His concern was that would be ACIP’s next target. And he’s probably right.
“This is a very safe ingredient” stated Gottlieb regarding the regular injection of aluminum nanoparticles into infants, children and adolescents at scale.
Zero pushback or questions from the interviewer to challenge him per usual.
How settled is the safety science of injecting aluminum in children?
The Informed Consent Action Network sent a legal letter to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2019 demanding any human or animal studies relied upon by these agencies to establish the safety of injected aluminum.
The agencies produced no documents nor could they located a single study showing the safety of aluminum in childhood vaccines.
Meanwhile, a 2021 study published in the Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology found that six childhood vaccines contain a statistically significant greater quantity of aluminum adjuvant than is provided for on these products’ labeling. This study promped ICAN to demand the FDA assure that vaccine manufacturers are disclosing accurate information regarding the amount of aluminum adjuvant in their childhood vaccines. The agency has since stonewalled the request.
Here’s the embarrassing, anti-scientific part Gottlieb forgets to mention.
The rationale for injecting aluminum adjuvant nanoparticles into newborns was allowed and justified by a single 2011 study, by a single FDA scientist named Dr. Robert Mitkus.
Author J.B. Handley in his book How to End the Autism Epidemic writes the following about Mitkus’ study:
What would be lost on the average layperson is that the only biological science Dr. Mitkus considered in making his safety assessment was a single study that infused (rather than injected) aluminum citrate (rather than aluminum hydroxide) into adults (rather than babies). It’s hard to put this seemingly minor detail in proper context. In no other drug on the planet (except for vaccines) would safety standards ever be determined without using the actual product (aluminum hydroxide) administered in the proper way (intramuscular injection), into the proper patient population (infants).
World-renowned researchers called out this fact in their 2018 study by stating:
“To date, aluminum adjuvants per se have, perhaps surprisingly, not been the subject of any official experimental investigation, and this being in spite of the well-established neurotoxicity of aluminum.”
Will aluminum adjuvants be ACIP’s next target? Are studies being commissioned by Jay Bhattacharya’s NIH to look at these ingredients and their well-established role in creating chronic disease in American Children? All open questions at the time of this writing.
As for Scott and his industry pals, shots across the bow appear to be signaling that it’s no longer business as usual.
Gottlieb left his position as FDA commissioner only to accept a position on the board of Pfizer in less than three months.
Gottlieb is Big Pharma’s jack-in-the-box who seems to pop up and make noise at key moments when public pressure is applied which threatens bottom line profit margins of their liability-free injectable product lines.
His corporate media residency at CNBC allows for rapid response industry talkings points to roll from his mouth at a moment’s notice whenever his handlers decide to make him dance.
Prior to the pandemic, as questions swirled about a connection between vaccines and autism, Gottleib was there. When asked by the CNBC reporter why parents claim that their children developed autism or “something on the spectrum” right around the time they received their shots, Gottlieb blamed coincidence by saying:
“Children who are gonna display symptoms of autism and other developmental disorders, those start to manifest and become self-evident right around the time kids are getting vaccinated.”
Magic. Like Fauci, Gottleib is his own version of The Science™. What he says is ordained, never questioned during interviews. A continuous appeal to authority. Why? Because Pfizer man said so.
With a little luck, revolving door riders like Gottlieb will be artifacts of a shameful past era. Where U.S. regulatory agencies continually launched their leaders into the waiting arms of the industries they regulated.
Moscow, beware: Germany just discovered the joys of illegal war
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | June 24, 2025
Forget the fog of war. Even in war, and sometimes especially in war, some things are exceedingly clear. Regarding the so-called ‘Hamas-Israel War’, for instance, it is obvious that in reality it is not a war at all but a genocide, namely the Gaza Genocide, carried out by Israel against the Palestinians whose unbroken resistance will be the stuff of legends, and of history too.
Likewise, in the case of Israel’s current assault on Iran – really, of course, a combined US-Israeli attack from the get-go – there is no room for doubt that it is criminal and a “blatant act of aggression,” as multiple experts in international law agree. That’s because in essence, Israel is not acting with a UN mandate – which it would not have received – or in self-defense.
The legal basis for this compelling assessment is not complex and there is no room for good-faith debate: Israel’s attack violates Article 2 (4) of the foundational UN Charter, which is recognized universally as jus cogens, that is, a binding norm: no pick and choose.
The few generally accepted, narrowly defined potential exceptions to this article’s comprehensive prohibition on the use of force, such as an erroneous incursion, certain operations at sea, or a rescue of nationals, clearly do not apply. The Israeli onslaught also does not have the blessing of the UN Security Council, and it cannot possibly count as lawful self-defense under Article 51.
So far, so simple. If anyone tries to make this look complicated by flagrantly misapplying and abusing the notion of a ‘preemptive strike’, you are dealing with Israeli or Israel-Lobby disinformation and propaganda. That too is anything but surprising.
Yet what is more puzzling than the above is the response of the governments, and often the mainstream media of the West, to this clearly criminal Israeli attack. After years of invoking international law to go after Russia, it turns out that the same leaders and talking heads will tie themselves into 5-D pretzels to let Israel get away with whatever Israel feels like doing on any given day.
This is not really news either, of course: Western ‘elites’, with Washington always in the lead, have behaved no better when serving as accomplices in Israel’s Gaza Genocide. But there is something peculiar and noteworthy about how exactly some important Western politicians and their media and ‘think tank’ experts spin the attack on Iran.
Take, for instance, Germany. Its chancellor Friedrich Merz has gone out of his way to loudly endorse the assault on Iran. He has even exposed himself to ridicule and some – if far too little – criticism by employing revoltingly indecent language. Calling Israel’s actions “dirty work” (it sounds even worse in the original German: “Drecksarbeit”) that must be done and for which we all should be grateful, Merz has revealed his double racism: As a German and a historian, I can only say that a German leader praising Jews for doing “our” dirty work is, to put it very mildly, extremely boorish. Defining the criminal killing of Iranians as that “dirty work” adds a very nasty “colonial” flavor reminiscent of say, Kaiser Wilhelm II gloating over massacring Chinese during the so-called Boxer Rebellion.
While Merz has been clumsy enough to couch his obnoxious ideas in equally obnoxious language, he has by no means been alone. All too many prestigious German publications, such as the staid Frankfurter Zeitung or the also important Merkur newspaper, have hurried to either simply agree with Merz or at least to excuse and relativize his vile statement. In addition, rather overworked all-purpose ‘experts’, such as the reliably conformist and rarara-russophobic Christian Mölling, have used their perma-perk in Germany’s streamlined talk shows to cynically diminish international law and help dress up Israel’s newest crime as so necessary that it trumps all law anyhow.
Mölling was self-unaware enough to openly argue that some countries (read: Israel) can’t afford the “luxury” of accepting “normative limits” and that international law, anyhow, might be “protecting the wrong ones” (read: Iran). It’s breathtakingly brazen and intellectually primitive, and also historically speaking, very German in the worst sense: If we or our friends (read: Israel) feel constrained by international law, then that’s a problem not for us or our friends but for international law.
And now, let’s take a step back and think for a moment like a German who was not a conformist intellectual mediocrity: Enlightenment giant Immanuel Kant. For those with ears to hear and brains to process, Kant has taught us that reason and ethics demand that the justifications for our actions ought to be generalizable in good conscience. In short, when we act, we should be able to show that we are acting according to a fair and reasonable rule.
Let’s generalize into such a rule, then, what German leader Friedrich Merz has just said and what all too many German mainstream representatives agree with: A country (here: Israel) that feels sufficiently afraid (as judged by that country) of another country (here: Iran) has a right (that trumps international law) to attack that other country without provocation and even during ongoing negotiations.
Interesting. Consider that German elites have been fanning war hysteria relentlessly. Not a day seems to go by without some German general, spy, or politician warning their fellow Germans that Russia is at least likely, really almost certain, to attack within the next five years or so. Evidence: zero.
Indeed? So, if we are all supposed to be so afraid of Russia in Germany, does that now mean that according to Merzian logic we may as well one day launch a preemptive strike on Moscow? After all, we could then say we felt threatened and our military and the intelligence services were telling us that the Russians were coming. And moreover, we’d probably claim that we, the Germans, were proudly doing the ‘Drecksarbeit’ for all of NATO (minus, most likely, the US). And isn’t doing the ‘Drecksarbeit’ now officially a good thing in Germany, again?
Absurd, you say? Yes, absolutely. Exactly as absurd as Israel’s pretexts for attacking Iran. And yet those have been officially endorsed by a German chancellor, including self-revealing dirty language. Let’s hope that Moscow does not take seriously what Merz says. Because if Moscow did take it seriously, then by Merzian logic, it should feel very threatened indeed by Berlin – and again by Merzian logic, who knows where that might lead.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
Trump aides pushed war on Iran with Mossad-fed intel, ignoring dissent
Al Mayadeen | June 22, 2025
The CIA and US Central Command are being used as tools by “Israel’s” Mossad to push the United States toward a full-scale war with Iran, a senior official in US President Donald Trump’s administration told The Grayzone.
According to the official, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and CENTCOM Commander Gen. Michael Kurilla regurgitated Israeli briefings, without disclosing their origin, to influence Trump directly.
The official described Ratcliffe as “Mossad’s stenographer”, arguing that Israeli intelligence shaped White House perceptions through intermediaries who bypass standard US intelligence vetting.
This manipulation completely sidelined dissenting voices, including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and her deputy, Joe Kent, who have raised concerns about the consequences of escalation.
This April, The Grayzone published audio of AIPAC CEO Elliott Brandt boasting about his long-standing influence over Ratcliffe, calling him a “lifeline” inside the Trump administration. The recording detailed how AIPAC cultivated not only Ratcliffe but also Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, both later appointed to key national security posts.
Waltz, according to The Grayzone, was forced out of his NSC role in May after being exposed for secretly coordinating an Iran strike plan with Israeli occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Grayzone also revealed that Rubio, now serving as acting National Security Director, holds more influence over cabinet-level operations than any official since Henry Kissinger.
Push for regime change, assassination
The Trump official also emphasized that Mossad and Israeli military briefers are singularly focused on regime change, not nuclear diplomacy. During meetings, they reportedly lobbied for the assassination of Iran’s leader, Sayyed Ali Khamenei.
The official added that Israeli briefings often emphasized apocalyptic scenarios, including unverified claims that Iran could hand off a nuclear weapon to Ansar Allah in under a week.
While Trump’s Iran envoy, Steve Witkoff, reportedly urged the president to maintain diplomatic channels, Israeli escalation strategies appeared calculated to collapse the negotiation process entirely, said The Grayzone.
Gabbard and Kent, both critical of unilateral military action, have reportedly been frozen out of meetings by Chief of Staff Suzie Wiles. Ratcliffe and Kurilla now dominate the president’s briefings. The CIA director has been accused of parroting Israeli memos, while Kurilla, dubbed “Israel’s” “favorite general”, has relentlessly made the case for direct US engagement in Iran.
As of June 13, Tel Aviv launched unilateral strikes on Iran, reportedly rushing to act before Kurilla’s retirement in July. Some former Pentagon officials suggested Kurilla’s presence was a deciding factor for Israeli timing.
Hiroshima-like horrors if US joins war
As reported by The Grayzone, at a June 8 Camp David meeting, Ratcliffe reportedly used a clumsy football metaphor to argue Iran was just “one yard away” from developing a nuclear bomb. Two days later, Gabbard released a video warning of Hiroshima-like horrors if warmongers pushed the US into conflict with an allegedly nuclear-capable state. Trump was said to be enraged.
By June 20, Gabbard publicly reaffirmed loyalty to Trump, though her assessment of Iran’s nuclear capability remained unchanged, claiming that while Iran could assemble a bomb in weeks or months, it had not yet done so.
Vice President JD Vance has reportedly held parallel Iran briefings, but Trump’s exposure remains largely confined to Fox News and advisors aligned with Israeli policy, according to The Grayzone.
According to former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, Fox has effectively become “a 24/7 commercial for war on Iran,” prompting him to call for a Foreign Agent Registration Act investigation.
As Trump returns to Washington, the former official told The Grayzone, “The party is on,” suggesting the president had already decided to act on Tel Aviv’s behalf, which, in fact, materialized early June 22, with the US conducting airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Public Ridicule Hyped Summer Heat Headlines… Meteorologists Losing Credibility
Sensationalist weathermen in Germany losing credibility, get mocked and ridiculed.
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | June 18, 2025
Meteorologists are discovering that if they want to get attention from the media and more clicks and and likes (short term), then all they have to do is announce fictional heatwaves that weather models routinely hallucinate 10-14 days out. “Temperatures could soar to 40°C!”
German online Weltwoche reports on this phenomenon with a recent article titled: “The “heatwave” to be followed by the “red hot wave”: the climate alarmists are taking themselves to the point of absurdity and losing all credibility.”
Why BBC editors must one day stand trial for colluding in Israel’s genocide
Journalist Peter Oborne sets out six ways the state broadcaster has wilfully misled audiences on Israel’s destruction of Gaza
By Jonathan Cook | June 20, 2025
Veteran journalist Peter Oborne eviscerated the BBC this week over its shameful reporting of Gaza – and unusually, he managed to do so face-to-face with the BBC’s executive news editor, Richard Burgess, during a parliamentary meeting.
Oborne’s remarks relate to a new and damning report by the Centre for Media Monitoring, which analysed in detail the BBC’s Gaza coverage in the year following Hamas’ one-day attack on 7 October 2023. The report found a “pattern of bias, double standards and silencing of Palestinian voices.” These aren’t editorial slip-ups. They reveal a systematic, long-term skewing of editorial coverage in Israel’s favour.
Oborne was one of several journalists to confront Burgess.
Oborne makes a series of important points that illustrate why the BBC’s slanted, Israel-friendly news agenda amounts to genocide denial, and means executives like Burgess are directly complicit in Israeli war crimes:
1. The BBC has never mentioned the Hannibal directive, invoked by Israel on 7 October 2023, that green-lit the murder of Israeli soldiers and civilians, often by Apache helicopter fire, to prevent them being taken captive by Hamas. The Israeli media has extensively reported on the role of the Hannibal directive in the Israeli military’s response on 7 October, but that coverage has been completely ignored by the BBC and most UK media outlets.
Israel’s invocation of the Hannibal directive – essential context for understanding what happened on 7 October – explains much of the destruction that day in Israel usually attributed to Hamas “barbarism”, such as the graveyard of burnt-out, crumpled cars and the charred, crumbling remains of houses in communities near Gaza.
Hamas, with its light weapons, did not have the ability to inflict this kind of damage on Israel, and we know from Israeli witnesses, video footage and admissions from Israeli military officers that Israel was responsible for at least a share of the carnage that day. How much we will apparently never know because Israel is not willing to investigate itself, and media like the BBC are not doing any investigations themselves, or putting any pressure on Israel to do so.
2. The BBC has never mentioned Israel’s Dahiya doctrine, the basis of its “mowing the lawn” approach to Gaza over the past two decades, in which the Israeli military has intermittently destroyed large swaths of the tiny enclave. The official aim has been to push the population, in the words of Israeli generals, back to the “Stone Age”. The assumption is that, forced into survival mode, Palestinians will not have the energy or will to resist their brutal and illegal subjugation by Israel and that it will be easier for Israel to ethnically cleanse them from their homeland.
Because Israel has been implementing this military doctrine – a form of collective punishment and therefore indisputably a war crime – for at least 20 years, it is critically important in any analysis of the events that led up to 7 October, or of the genocidal campaign of destruction Israel launched subsequently.
The BBC’s refusal even to acknowledge the doctrine’s existence leaves audiences gravely misinformed about Israel’s historical abuses of Gaza, and deprived of context to interpret the campaign of destruction by Israel over the past 20 months.
3. The BBC has utterly failed to report the many dozens of genocidal statements from Israeli officials since 7 October – again vital context for audiences to understand Israel’s goals in Gaza.
Perhaps most egregiously, the BBC has not reported Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s biblically-inspired comparison of the Palestinians to “Amalek” – a people the Jews were instructed by God to wipe from the face of the earth. Netanyahu knew this clearly genocidal statement would have especial resonance with what now amounts to a majority of the combat soldiers in Gaza who belong to extreme religious communities that view the Bible as the literal truth.
The hardest thing to prove in genocide is intent. And yet the reason Israel’s violence in Gaza is so clearly genocidal is that every senior official from the prime minister down has repeatedly told us that genocide is their intent. The decision not to inform audiences of these public statements is not journalism. It is pro-Israel disinformation and genocide denial.
4. By contrast, as Oborne notes, on more than 100 occasions when guests have tried to refer to what is happening in Gaza as a genocide, BBC staff have immediately shut them down on air. As other investigations have shown, the BBC has strictly enforced a policy not only of banning the use of the term “genocide” by its own journalists in reference to Gaza but of depriving others – from Palestinians to western medical volunteers and international law experts – of the right to use the term as well. Again, this is pure genocide denial.
5. Oborne also points to the fact that the BBC has largely ignored Israel’s campaign of murdering Palestinian journalists in Gaza. A greater number have been killed by Israel in its war on the tiny enclave than the total number of journalists killed in all other major conflicts of the past 160 years combined.
The BBC has reported just 6 per cent of the more than 225 journalists killed by Israel in Gaza, compared to 62 per cent of the far smaller number of journalists killed in Ukraine. This is once again vital context for understanding that Israel’s goals are genocidal. It hopes to exterminate the main witnesses to its crimes.
6. Oborne adds a point of his own. He notes that the distinguished Israeli historian Avi Shlaim lives in the UK and teaches at Oxford University. Unlike the Israeli spokespeople familiar to BBC audiences, who are paid to muddy the waters and deny Israel’s genocide, Shlaim is both knowledgeable about the history of Israeli colonisation of Palestine and truly independent. He is in a position to dispassionately provide the context BBC audiences need to make judgments about what is going on and who is responsible for it.
And yet extraordinarily, Shlaim has never been invited on by the BBC. He is only too ready to do interviews. He has done them for Al Jazeera, for example. But he isn’t invited on because, it seems, he is “the wrong sort of Jew”. His research has led him to a series of highly critical conclusions about Israel’s historical and current treatment of the Palestinians. He calls what Israel is doing in Gaza a genocide. He is one of the prominent Israelis we are never allowed to hear from, because they are likely to make more credible and mainstream a narrative the BBC wishes to present as fringe, loopy and antisemitic. Again, what the BBC is doing – paid for by British taxpayers – isn’t journalism. It is propaganda for a foreign state.
Burgess’ answer is a long-winded shrugging of the shoulders, a BBC executive’s way of acting clueless – an equivalent of Manuel, the dim-witted Spanish waiter in the classic comedy show Fawlty Towers, saying: “I know nothing.”
Other lowlights from Burgess include his responding to a pointed question from Declassified journalist Hamza Yusuf on why the BBC has not given attention to British spy planes operating over Gaza from RAF base Akrotiri on Cyprus. “I don’t think we should overplay the UK’s contribution to what’s happening in Israel,” Burgess answers.
So the British state broadcaster has decided that its duty is not to investigate the nature of British state assistance to Israel in Gaza, even though most experts agree what Israel is doing there amounts to genocide. Burgess thinks scrutiny of British state complicity would be “overplaying” British collusion, even though the BBC has not actually investigated the extent or nature of that collusion to have reached a conclusion. This is the very antithesis of what journalism is there to do: monitor the centres of power, not exonerate such power-centres before they have even been scrutinised.
Labour MP Andy McDonald responded to Burgess: “To underplay the role of the UK is an error.”
It is more than that. It is journalistic complicity in British and Israeli state war crimes.
Here are a few key statistical findings from the Centre for Media Monitoring’s report on BBC coverage of Gaza over the year following 7 October 2023:
- The BBC ran more than 30 times more victim profiles of Israelis than Palestinians.
- The BBC interviewed more than twice as many Israelis as Palestinians.
- The BBC asked 38 of its guests to condemn Hamas. It asked no one to condemn Israel’s mass killing of civilians, or its attacks on hospitals and schools.
- Only 0.5% of BBC articles mentioned Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.The BBC mentioned “occupation” – the essential context for understanding the relationship between Israel and Palestinians – only 14 times in news articles when providing context to the events of 7 October 2023. That amounted to 0.3% of articles. Additional context – decades of Israeli apartheid rule and Israel’s 17-year blockade of Gaza — were entirely missing from the coverage.
- The BBC described Israeli captives as “hostages”, while Palestinian detainees, including children held without charge, were called “prisoners”. During one major hostage exchange in which 90 Palestinians were swapped for three Israelis, 70% of BBC articles focused on those three Israelis.
- The BBC covered Ukraine with twice as many articles as Gaza in the time period, even though the Gaza story was newer and Israeli crimes even graver than Russia ones. The corporation was twice as likely to use sympathetic language for Ukrainian victims than it was for Palestinian victims.
- In coverage, Palestinians were usually described as having “died” or been “killed” in air strikes, without mention of who launched those strikes. Israeli victims, on the other hand, were “massacred”, “slaughtered” and “butchered” – and the author of the violence was named, even though, as we have seen, the Hannibal directive clouded the picture in at least some of those cases.
As is only too evident watching Burgess respond, he is not there to learn from the state broadcaster’s glaring mistakes – because systematic BBC pro-Israel bias isn’t a mistake. It’s precisely what the BBC is there to do.
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Book Review
On Herd Mentality
By Jeb Smith | April 14, 2026
I no longer trust “we the people,” because of the powers influencing them. Media and government schooling form their general ideas on reality and governance. Therefore, it’s not a case of the voter choosing the politicians. Instead, the system is conditioning and conforming the voter to the authorities’ desires.
In democracies, the people are kept occupied working and paying taxes, too busy to acquire information outside the approved sources. You will find they know and care far more about the next iPhone than political philosophy. Of those who hold some interest, 95% just toe the party line, holding the same opinion as the primary media source they listen to. They lack both the desire and time to expand their horizons.
Media’s purpose is to conform people’s thought to a preferred goal, which is why Republican and Democratic voters both firmly hold their parties’ general stances, reciting the same talking points. The people do not originate ideas; their thoughts are fed to them by the media so they can consume, digest, and parrot back whatever they are served. When it comes to politics, we rarely think for ourselves. We are told what to think.
Watch PBS, MSNBC and read your local newspaper for six months, and you will receive a particular view and understanding of the world. Then listen to The Mike Church Show, The Blaze, and The Daily Wire, and you will get not just another perspective but a whole different world of facts and events. The world people believe they live in can be entirely different depending on their news sources.
We enjoy seeing the enemy humiliated, which describes why those engulfed in politics love their preferred media sources; they keep returning for more like a drug addict. Networks ensure their “experts” align with the worldview they and their audience desire. The people who watch PBS, BBC, and so forth expect a specific perspective to be presented. Fox News watchers demand the same. In doing this, we both encourage and assure we are misled.
In their book Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government, professors Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels argue, based on substantial research, that voters do not decide the party platform and agenda. Instead, the parties control the “ideologies” of the voters. When the party the voter identifies with changes its position, the individuals also change theirs. They discovered the individual would quickly adopt the views of their group; they will ignore or change their own opinions over time to fit in with the collective they identify with. Achen and Bartels wrote “group memberships largely drove policy views, not vice versa.” … continue
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