Iran’s latest move in the GCC countries was a stroke of genius
By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 9, 2026
After just a week into Donald Trump’s war, there is very little to report which should or could please the U.S. president. Much of America’s infrastructure in the Middle East has been destroyed with U.S. soldiers now housed by hotels in GCC countries as there is nothing left of their bases. The stocks that these countries have as part of their air defence systems is almost depleted as military chiefs argue about how quickly they can be replaced (some THAAD and Patriot systems are being shipped from Japan and South Korea) and Iran is hitting Israel harder and harder each day.
Of course, due to the new draconian rules which Israel has imposed — that no military strikes that Iran succeeds in carrying out can be ‘reported’ on by journalists or even citizens who wish to post it on social media — as well as the comically corrupt, partisan way U.S. news outlets are covering the war, very little bad news gets seen by the public, if any.
Under this set up, it is hardly surprising that Trump went to war, given that he must have factored in a great deal of support from U.S. media, whom he claims to despise. In this regard, we can conclude that media itself is complicit in war crimes, given that it has played a huge role in the decision to go to war and also the day to day reporting of events on the ground.
A good example of the few points of the war which are reported, but done in such a distorted way, is the news that Iran has stopped its bombing of GCC Gulf states. This has been presented as a victory by the U.S. and a climb down by Iran. The truth though is that it is a considerable victory for Tehran as what is not being reported or even examined is the deal that Iran has struck with those countries. None of those countries will allow any kind of military activity now by U.S. forces there, which means the thousands of U.S. soldiers in hotels in these GCC countries might as well head back home as their role there is redundant. Of course it’s unlikely that Trump will move them out as such an event will be captured by many on social media and will look like a great defeat. But some analysts are going further and speculating that there is more bad news for Israel and the U.S. with this latest move. Not only has Iran insisted on no activity at all in these countries by U.S. forces but they have also said that when the war is over, all the bases must be completely shut down.
Sadly, the gesture didn’t hold for long as it is rumoured that Iran’s elite guard was angered by Trump’s response and so the missile attack on the GCC countries continued.
Against a backdrop of rumours spreading throughout the middle east that Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar were considering jointly to completely pull out their investment in the U.S., this move, even as a gesture, couldn’t have come at a worse time for Trump.
His media machine is working overtime in spewing out so many fake news reports, like the recent one that the U.S. has total air superiority over Iran, that it will be interesting to see how this is spun in the coming days. But there is nothing but lies from the Trump camp and as a complicit western media scrum is happy to pump out these lies, people are obviously turning to social media or international news channels in the global south, like CGTN and Russia Today. For many Americans, they are simply too dumb to know how to even question the narrative. Where is the video footage to support these preposterous claims that American has air superiority over Iran? Within 24 hours of Trumps B2 bombers hitting nuclear sites in Iran last year in June, media were given video clips of the satellite imagery. So far, the claims by Trump’s people about air superiority, have not been matched with any evidence. None the less U.S. media reports it more or less like it is fact.
It’s a similar story with the claims about the U.S. navy sinking 20 Iranian vessels. Where’s the evidence? If we are to take into account completely defenceless ships like the unarmed frigate that was sunk in international waters after it returned from a joint exercise with India, it would seem that America is on the losing side. Not even Japanese naval strikes in the WWII would blow up enemies’ ships and not then pick up survivors. The Americans left 80 sailors to drown, the same seamen who posed with photos days earlier with Prime Minister Modi, who, it should be pointed out often claims that India is the “guardian of the Indian ocean”, a patently absurd claim. Many believe Modi sold the Iranians out and disclosed its position to the Americans, leaving many to question just how much he can be trusted with his present allies. Will Russia still sell its oil to India after such a betrayal?
It’s clear that the Iran war is already WWIII in many respects. Certainly each side has its partners and media have made much of Russia’s intelligence support to Iran pointing out American positions, while China has given Iran considerable military support both in state of the art radar systems and ground to air missile systems. The sinking of the Iranian ship shows us all the depth of the desperation of America, that it needs to go as far as hunting for Iranian ships thousands of miles away and sinking them, even if they are unarmed as this ship was. Does that look like the act of a confident aggressor on a victory role? Hardly.
It isn’t just that America can barely hold the high moral ground for even a brief, ephemeral media moment, but more that the number of shocking tactical errors by Trump are piling up and having an impact. The failure to see that killing the supreme leader, who has been replaced by a hard liner who has always wanted Iran to have a nuclear deterrent, was a major act of stupidity. Nearly all U.S. wars follow the same pattern of America underestimating its enemy and overestimating its own capabilities and this one is no exception. The move to bring GCC states closer to Iran and turn them against the U.S. is smart and what we could expect from Iran who has had years to prepare for this attack and has been given so many free lessons by America’s blunders — the best one being the June attack which resulted in Iran upping its game and identifying all the weak spots which needed work. The biggest miscalculation probably of all is going to war in the first place believing that regime change would be inevitable in days and therefore no longer-term plans, in terms of military stocks, need to be addressed. America is about to run out of ammo. For the GCC countries, it’s quite possible that the deal might be reinstated in the coming days as a new truth emerges from the war. While Donald Trump tells reporters on Air Force one that Iran was responsible for bombing its own school, GCC leaders will have to wake up to a new reality which is summed up by Henry Kissinger. “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
How An Atrocity Propaganda Campaign Led To The U.S. And Israel Committing Real Atrocities In Iran
The Dissident | March 8, 2026
In their war on Iran, the U.S. and Israel have already committed an endless slew of atrocities against Iranian civilians.
The Iranian Red Crescent has documented that the U.S. and Israel have targeted “9,669 civilian structures, including 7,943 residential homes and 1,617 commercial buildings” along with “several medical and educational facilities”.
Along with this, the U.S. and Israel have so far killed at least 1,332 Iranian civilians.
The U.S. and Israel have not hidden the fact that they are slaughtering civilians in Iran.
Benjamin Netanyahu, at the site of an Iranian missile attack, said , “Remember what Amalek did to you. We remember, and we act” in reference to the Hebrew bible verse, “go and destroy Amalek. Destroy all they have, and do not let them live. Kill both man and woman, child and baby.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “the only ones that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re gonna live” and boasted about unleashing “Death and destruction from the sky all day long”, on Iran.
This war of “Death and destruction” on Iranian civilians and civilian infrastructure, with the goal of destroying Iran as a nation, was only made possible thanks to an atrocity propaganda campaign, designed to portray this criminal war as an act of protecting Iranians from atrocities.
This first began with the U.S. and Israel engineering riots in the country in an attempt to instigate violence that could be used to justify the war.
When protests in Iran broke out before the war due to economic concerns, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was not shy about the fact that the protests were the intended result of U.S. sanctions on the country, saying:
What we can do at treasury, and what we have done, is created a dollar shortage in the country, at a speech at the Economic club in New York in March I outlined the strategy, it came to a swift -and I would say grand- culmination in December when one of the largest banks in Iran went under, there was a run in the bank, the central bank had to print money, the Iranian currency went into free fall, inflation exploded and hence we have seen the Iranian people out on the street.
If you look at a speech I gave at the economic club of New York last March, I said that I believe the Iranian currency was on the verge of collapse, that if I were an Iranain citizen, I would take my money out.
President Trump ordered treasury and our OFAC division, (Office of Foreign Asset Control) to put maximum pressure on Iran, and it’s worked because in December, their economy collapsed, we saw a major bank go under, the central bank has started to print money, there is a dollar shortage, they are not able to get imports and this is why the people took to the streets.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Israel were pushing propaganda in Iran in an attempt to spur on protests.
The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab uncovered an Israeli bot network in Persian on social media which pushed “content related to the country’s ongoing water and energy crisis” and “energy shortage” in a “likely attempt to continue to escalate tensions between Iranian citizens and their government”.
Damon Wilson, the head of the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy, boasted that the U.S was doing a similar thing, saying:
the endowment has been making investments over years that have ensured that there have been secure communications, including Starlinks, other means, file casting that allowed information to go both in and out of the country (Iran) at a time when the regime tried to hide its brutal crackdown
Part of what we see manifesting is a response that our partners have helped tell the Iranian people the story that the regime has squandered their own resources on supporting proxies throughout the Middle East to the point where they cannot manage their own water supplies for Tehran. And these stories have not just emerged, they are ones that have been covered, documented, and shared with the Iranian people consistently through our work.
We’ve been investing in communication tools over the years that allow for information to be sent into Iran even when internet connectivity is blocked. We specifically began supporting the deployment, the operation of about 200 Starlinks early on
After this, Israeli intelligence infiltrated the protests, which at the beginning were peaceful, in an attempt to turn them violent.
When the protests began, the Persian-language account of the Israeli Mossad wrote, “Let’s all come out to the streets. The time has come. We are with you. Not just from afar and verbally. We are also with you in the field.”
Soon after, Israel’s Channel 14 reported that, “We reported tonight on Channel 14: foreign actors are arming the protesters in Iran with live firearms, which is the reason for the hundreds of regime personnel killed.”
After the U.S. and Israel (by their own admission) helped engineer protests and infiltrated them to instigate violence, the mainstream media ran an atrocity propaganda campaign, massively over-inflating the death toll and fabricating a narrative of the Iranian government killing tens of thousands of peaceful protesters.
The atrocity propaganda claims first came from the outlet “Iran International,” which the Israeli journalist Barak Ravid said, “ the Mossad is using quite regularly for its information war”.
The atrocity propaganda was eventually amplified by Time Magazine, which wrote an article claiming that “As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone”.
As I previously uncovered, the only named source for the atrocity propaganda claim was Amir Parasta, a German-Iranian eye surgeon and lobbyist for the son of the former U.S. backed Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, who was clamouring for a U.S. war on Iran to restore the monarchy.
The evidence-free claim was soon amplified by Deepa Parent, a writer at the Guardian, who boasted that the claims were influencing politicians towards war with Iran, saying, “We don’t need to convince anyone about the massacre the IR has carried out on innocent civilians in Iran. I have trolls in my DMs and replies. Ignore them and don’t give any attention. Decision makers don’t see trolls’ tweets, they see verified accounts and reports.”
Parent soon after published an article in the Guardian amplifying the claim that Iran killed 30,000 protestors in two days- this time citing entirely unnamed sources and not providing a shred of verifiable evidence.
Digging further into Parent, journalists Wyatt Reed and Max Blumenthal of the Grayzone uncovered that she was previously a fashion blogger with no experience on Iran who began to present herself as an expert on the country after getting funding from the CIA-connected, pro regime change billionaire Pierre Omidyar.
They documented:
Before adopting the surname Parent around 2019, The Guardian’s go-to Iran reporter wrote under the name Deepa Kalukuri. Her journalistic output was largely limited to fashion reviews in Indian media. A typical piece published in India’s Just For Women magazine in 2016 was headlined: “Samantha Is Setting Some Serious Fashion Goals! Check Them Out!”
“What’s better than a Little Black Dress for a weekend party? Samantha pairs her LBD with these killer stilettos! We are loving it!!! Have a fashionable weekend!!!!”
Elsewhere, in an article informing Indian housewives that “understanding stocks is not [as] difficult as the news shows” suggested, she explained that investing was actually quite simple: “like a playing a video game but only your favorite batman is replaced with that stock broker who gives you the right advice to invest at the end of the bell.
They added:
When the “Women, Life, Freedom” protests kicked off in September 2022 following the death of a young woman in Iranian custody, the improbable Parent suddenly materialized as The Guardian’s point woman on civic unrest in a nation with which she had no apparent professional or personal experience.
Much of Parent’s work at The Guardian’s so-called “Rights and Freedom” section has been funded by an NGO called Humanity United, which was founded by tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam.
As the Grayzone noted, “Omidyar has partnered with US intelligence cutouts like USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy to promote regime change from Ukraine to the Philippines, while advancing various ‘counter-disinformation’ efforts aimed at suppressing anti-establishment viewpoints”.
This propaganda campaign – as should now be clear – was a coordinated effort to spread atrocity propaganda about the Iranian government, in order to give the impression that a war with Iran is “liberating” the people of Iran, paving the way to the mass bombing of Iranian civilians and civilian infrastructure currently unfolding.
How Israel and the FBI manipulated assassination plots to goad Trump into Iran war
By Max Blumenthal | The Grayzone | March 6, 2026
The FBI manufactured plots to convince Trump that Iran sought to kill him, while Israel and its administration allies exploited the president’s deepest fears to keep him on the war path.
“I got him before he got me,” an ebullient President Donald Trump remarked to a reporter when asked about his motives for authorizing the killing of Iran’s Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on February 28, 2026.
With his off-the-cuff remark, Trump revealed that anxiety about his own assassination at the hands of Iranian agents influenced his decision to initiate a US-Israeli regime change war that has already resulted in American casualties, the bombings of schools and hospitals inside Iran, devastating Iranian retaliatory strikes on US military bases and embassies, and a spiraling global economic crisis.
Trump’s generalized fears of assassination were well-founded. He was nearly killed in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024 by a 20-year-old engineering student named Thomas Crooks who managed to fire eight rounds at the former president from a rooftop, slicing his ear and missing his head by a hair’s breadth. Two months later, a drifter named Ryan Routh was arrested after hiding for hours in the shrubbery outside the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in West Palm Beach, Florida. Routh had been spotted after pointing an assault rifle toward a Secret Service agent as Trump played golf 400 yards away.
Officials have yet to produce any evidence that Iran played a role in either of these attempts on Trump’s life. Yet since those fateful events, Israel-aligned Trump advisors, Israeli intelligence, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself have gone to extreme lengths in order to tie Tehran to the plots. More shocking still is the fact that the FBI has manufactured a series of assassination plots, successfully convincing Trump that Iran was hunting him on US soil with highly sophisticated teams of hit men.
The man accused of leading the most significant of these operations, Asif Merchant, is currently on trial in a Brooklyn, NY federal court. After the US granted him a visa despite his presence on a terror watchlist, Merchant was in the constant company of an FBI confidential informant who ultimately steered the contrived plot to its conclusion. He never stood a chance of realizing his plans, and did not appear serious about doing so.
Independent journalist Ken Silva puts it succinctly in his forthcoming investigative book, “The Trump Assassination Plots”: “A closer look at the Merchant case reveals that at the very least…it was a highly controlled FBI sting operation that never posed a threat to Trump. More nefariously, records and whistleblower disclosures indicate that Merchant may have been the patsy in a case totally fabricated by the undercover agents.”
Authorities arrested Merchant on July 12, 2024 – just one day before Crooks attempted to kill Trump in Butler. Hours after the failed Butler assassination, FBI agents interrogated Merchant about whether it was in fact Iran that had Crooks under its control.
At that point, Trump was still campaigning to be a “President of Peace. On the campaign stump, he warned that his opponent, Kamala Harris, “would get us into World War III guaranteed.” Trump vowed to resolve the war between Ukraine and Russia in one day, and distanced himself from pro-war Republicans who sought regime change in Iran.
Pro-war elements in Trump’s coterie exercised multiple points of leverage to reverse the president’s anti-interventionist instincts. Ultra-Zionist billionaires supplied vital and well-documented influence over Trump’s policies by keeping his campaign war chest flush. But Trump remained an erratic personality whose petty grievances kept his aides in a perpetual state of uncertainty.
It was only by exploiting Trump’s deepest psychological vulnerability – his fear of an assassin’s bullet – that Israel and its cutouts in his administration were able to secure their influence over the president, keeping him on the warpath against Iran.
The assassination escalation trap
On June 3, 2020, as the commander of Iran’s IRGC Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, deboarded an airplane at Baghdad International Airport, on his way to peace talks with Saudi officials, a US drone killed him with a Hellfire missile. The strike had been ordered by Trump following a sustained campaign of military escalation against Iranian allies orchestrated by his National Security Council Director John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
As journalist Gareth Porter reported for The Grayzone, by the time Trump authorized Soleimani’s assassination, Netanyahu was planning unilateral strikes on Iran aimed at drawing the US into direct conflict. Trump issued orders to kill the general under sustained pressure by Pompeo and Bolton, two pro-Israel hardliners. Both former Trump officials have lobbied for the Israeli and Saudi-funded Mojahedin El-Khalk (MEK), a cult-like exiled militia that has carried out numerous assassinations of Iranian officials at the behest of Israel’s intelligence services.
By killing Soleimani, Trump set the US on a collision course for all-out war with Iran – just as Netanyahu had hoped. What’s more, the president invited the prospect of violent retaliation against himself and his national security advisors.
So long as Trump feared the specter of IRGC agents lurking behind every corner, it stood to reason that he was more likely to authorize a regime change war on Iran. And so the FBI went to work, concocting a series of plots that helped forge Trump’s belligerent attitude toward Tehran.
Brought to you by the FBI: Iran’s plot to kill John Bolton
The first major Iranian plot arrived in 2022, when the Department of Justice filed charges against an Iranian national, Shahram Poursafi, for supposedly hiring a hitman to kill Bolton. However, the hitman turned out to be an FBI informant, and the plot was largely contrived by the Bureau. Poursafi, for his part, could not be arrested because he lived in Iran.
As journalist Ken Silva reported, the FBI officer who oversaw the manufactured plot to kill Bolton, Steven D’Antuono, was the same official who ran the Detroit field office that relied on paid informants to concoct the 2020 plot by right-wing militia members to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. In a 2025 federal appeal court ruling, the judge acknowledged that defendants in that case “are correct that the government encouraged them to settle on a plan” to kidnap Whitmer. The FBI’s D’Antuono also oversaw the probe into the suspicious planting of pipe bombs at Republican and Democratic Party headquarters in Washington on January 6, 2021. In the course of his failed investigation, he misled Congress about having received “corrupted” evidence.
Though Bolton was never in danger from Iran, the FBI-contrived plot began to fuel paranoia among Trump administration veterans. Pompeo now believed that he too was being targeted by Iranian assassination teams. In his 2023 campaign memoir, “Never Give an Inch,” the former CIA director claimed Poursafi had also paid $1 million to a hitman to kill him.
However, Pompeo provided no additional details on the plot, which was never mentioned in DOJ documents charging Poursafi for attempting to kill Bolton. According to those affidavits, Poursafi sent just $100 to the FBI’s confidential human source before the DOJ concluded its investigation.
Asif Merchant, accused ringleader of an FBI-managed Iranian plot to assassinate Trump
Iran’s hapless hitman granted special visa, introduced to FBI informant
In April 2024, as Trump launched his comeback presidential campaign, an itinerant salesman named Asif Merchant arrived from Pakistan to George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas. He was quickly flagged as a “Qualified Person of Interest” who’d been placed on a Department of Homeland Security watchlist. Agents from an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) team then discovered through a search of Merchant’s devices that he had visited Iran, where his wife and adopted son lived. Whether they’d received a tip from Israel, which furnishes reams of intelligence to the FBI on foreign Muslim visitors to the US, remains an open question.
According to JTTF documents obtained by pro-Trump reporter John Solomon, Merchant was “released without incident” and designated as “free to travel to desired destination.” In fact, the FBI had granted him a “Special Public Benefit Parole,” which, as Solomon explained, “would allow agents to try to flip Merchant as a cooperator or try to determine why he was coming to the United States and who he might be working with.”
The FBI whistleblower who provided Solomon with the documents on Merchant’s airport interview compared the “Special Public Benefit Parole” to the scandalous “Fast and Furious” program, in which President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice facilitated the delivery of automatic weapons from US gun dealers to Mexican cartels in order to supposedly surveil the gangs’ criminal activities.
Almost as soon as Merchant entered the US, the FBI introduced him to a confidential informant posing as a potential business partner and operating under the alias, Nadeem Ali. The informant had served as translator for the US military during its occupation of Afghanistan.
Though Merchant did not propose any crimes, the FBI wiretapped a meeting between him and the informant, Ali, in a hotel room on June 3, 2024. There, Merchant was taped making a supposed “finger gun” motion while mentioning an unspecified “opportunity.” This grainy minute-long hidden camera recording is presented as the linchpin of the DOJ’s indictment of Merchant.
According to the FBI, Merchant had outlined a highly complex plot which required the hiring of two hitmen, “twenty five people who could perform a protest after the distraction occurred, and a woman to do ‘reconnaissance.”
For the elaborate flash mob-style assassination extravaganza, Merchant was asked by the informant to fork over a mere $5000. The Pakistani visitor had no means of scrounging up the fee, however, raising further questions about the seriousness of the plot. “I did not think I was going to be successful,” Merchant would later state in court.
Virtually penniless, Merchant was forced to gather the cash from an anonymous “associate,” according to the DOJ indictment. Next, the FBI informant took him on a winding journey from Boston to New York City, where he allegedly handed the money to two other FBI informants posing as hit men. The DOJ claims Merchant made plans to fly to Pakistan on June 12, but was arrested in his residence that day.
Merchant interrogated about Butler, kept incommunicado
The following day, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks arrived at a fairground in Butler, Pennsylvania where former president Trump was scheduled to speak. He flew a drone in the air for 15 minutes, surveying the area as he finalized plans to assassinate the candidate. In an odd coincidence, the Secret Service’s anti-drone system was offline all morning and into the afternoon — until roughly 15 minutes after Crooks flew his drone. When Trump took the stage, Crooks climbed atop a slanted rooftop 130 yards away and fired eight shots at the president, missing his head by an inch, until a local police officer fired back. He was killed by a Secret Service sniper who had inexplicably hesitated to fire for a full 15 seconds.
Thirty hours later, FBI agents flew to Houston to interrogate Merchant in his jail cell about a possible Iranian connection to the assassination attempt in Butler. An FBI source told the Washington Post the Bureau “took the extraordinary step of interviewing him without his lawyer to determine whether he knew Crooks.”
The grilling continued even after Merchant was transferred to the maximum security Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn – the same prison where Luigi Mangione, the accused killer of United Healthcare’s CEO, is currently being held. There, he was held under harsh conditions in solitary confinement, unable to interact with anyone but the guards who brought him food and his lawyers because, as then-Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco argued, he might use code words to initiate further assassination plots. “It appeared they thought I was some kind of super spy,” Merchant later reflected.
Not only was Merchant prevented from calling his family in Pakistan, he was blocked from reviewing recordings of conversations he held with undercover FBI informants, as the DOJ had marked them “Sensitive.” In March 2025, his lawyer protested that US Marshals repeatedly refused to allow him to meet with this counsel and review discovery at the courthouse. This, too, was justified on the basis of specious national security grounds.
However, as the journalist Ken Silva discovered, an internal memo by the Bureau Of Prisons Director Colette Peters confirmed that Merchant had no contact with any Iranian intelligence assets in the US. “Law enforcement has not identified any IRGC associates of Merchant operating in the United States who could continue to orchestrate violent acts,” Peters wrote.
Indeed, the only Iranian assassins with whom Merchant appeared to have interacted inside the US were undercover informants working for the FBI.
Merchant “had never been close to realizing” Trump assassination
During his trial this March 4, Merchant’s lawyer, Avraham Moskowitz, took the highly unusual step of allowing his client to take the stand. Merchant proceeded to present a version of events that contrasted sharply with the account he provided in his initial FBI proffer. For example, the defendant claimed he had been coerced into the plot by an IRGC agent, and went forward with a plan “to maybe have someone murdered” only because he feared for his wife and adopted son back in Iran.
After his arrest by the FBI, Merchant said he engaged in discussions with federal authorities about becoming an informant himself, but they ultimately broke down for unknown reasons.
“I was not wanting to do this so willingly,” he insisted in Urdu, adding, “I did not think I was going to be successful.”
In its coverage of the trial, the New York Times concluded Merchant “had never been close to realizing the vision of his Iranian handler.”
But back in 2024, as word spread of Merchant’s arrest, Israel-adjacent figures in Trump’s inner circle exploited the case to exacerbate the candidate’s anxiety about the Ayatollah’s wrath.
Israel-aligned forces blur Butler with Iran
Just three days after Trump’s campaign was nearly ended by a lone American assassin’s bullet in Butler, officials burrowed within the architecture of the national security state took measures to shift the focus to Iran.
“The Biden administration obtained intelligence in recent weeks about an Iranian assassination plot against former President Donald Trump, and the information led the Secret Service to ramp up security around the former president, according to three U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter,” reported NBC’s Ken Dilanian on July 16, 2024. (Dilanian had been fired from his previous gig at the LA Times after he was exposed for allowing the CIA to review his reports before publication).
The unnamed officials were clearly referring to the plot which the FBI manufactured for Merchant. The revelation not only seemed like a cynical attempt to obscure the reality of the near-assassination in Butler, which was conducted by a friendless American man who had never left the country. It also suggested the FBI had been so focused on concocting Iranian plots on American soil that it ignored the years-long trail of YouTube comments left by the would-be assassin bluntly declaring his intention to kill US politicians and police officers, and his hopes to instigate a civil war.
Though FBI leadership misled the public about the nature of the Butler plot, falsely claiming, for instance, that Crooks was not communicating with others online, they were never able to connect it to Iran. This clearly frustrated Rep. Mike Waltz, a close Trump ally seated on the House committee to investigate the Butler plot.
“These plots from Iran are ongoing. And when Biden says nothing, Harris says nothing, the DOJ tries to bury it, what message does Iran get? They get that we can keep trying to take Trump out and have no consequences,” Waltz fulminated on Fox News in August 2024.
Referencing the FBI-manufactured Merchant operation, Waltz thundered, “You have multiple assassination plots from the Iranians. This Pakistani national was recruiting females as spotters. He had recruited hit men and had made a down payment. He was even recruiting protesters as a distraction.”
By this point, Waltz was on his way to a short stint as Trump’s National Security Council Director, where he would help direct a failed war on Iran’s allies among the Ansurallah movement in Yemen. (Waltz was demoted to US ambassador to the UN after he accidentally included the Atlantic Magazine editor-in-chief and former Israeli prison guard Jeffrey Goldberg in a private administration Signal chat where classified information about US attack plans on Yemen was shared).
Throughout his career, the Israel lobby and Netanyahu’s allies had quietly propelled his rise. As AIPAC CEO Elliot Brandt remarked in private comments exclusively revealed by The Grayzone, Waltz was one of Israel’s “lifelines” inside the Trump administration, as he had been groomed by the Israel lobby since he first ran for Congress.
For Waltz and other Israel-aligned figures close to Trump, connecting the Butler incident to Iran appeared to offer a direct path to conflict with Iran. As an unnamed high-level US official told the Washington Post, if Tehran had been found responsible for Crooks’ attempt to kill Trump, “it would mean war.”
Certain foreign actors were also working to steer the US toward blaming Iran for Butler. In the late summer of 2024, the Justice Department received an urgent alert from abroad which connected Crooks directly to IRGC plots to kill Trump. According to the Washington Post, the tip arrived through a “confidential human source overseas” – almost certainly Israeli intelligence.
After a thorough investigation, DOJ officials decided the tip was not credible. “Nothing credibly connected him to Iranian plots,” one official told the Post.
But in the wake of the shooting in Butler, the constant chatter about looming Iranian threats had indelibly altered Trump’s outlook. Reporters who followed Trump on the campaign trail described a palpable sense of panic from the candidate and his inner circle about IRGC-directed hitmen stalking them at every stop.
“Ghost flights” for Trump triggered by imaginary Iran missile threats
With the Trump campaign already consumed with anxiety, the FBI delivered an alert that sent them spiraling into the depths of paranoia.
According to the Bureau, Iran had placed operatives inside the country with access to surface-to-air missiles. This dubious warning prompted Trump’s already militarized security team to take an extraordinary step. Fearing that Iran would down the famous “Trump Force One” airliner at any moment, Trump was placed on a “ghost flight” owned by his golf buddy, real estate tycoon Steve Witkoff, while the rest of his campaign traveled on the main jet.
Joining Trump on the secret decoy plane was his campaign manager, Suzie Wiles, who would go on to become White House chief of staff, controlling access and the flow of information to the president. Unbeknownst to the public, Wiles had served as a paid advisor to Israel’s Netanyahu during his 2020 re-election campaign, consolidating her role as a key point of contact between Tel Aviv and Trump.
Journalist Ken Silva has revealed that the FBI alert which prompted Trump’s use of a “ghost plane” was based on a cynical deception. As Silva explains in his forthcoming book on the assassination plots surrounding Trump, federal investigators had discovered that Routh, the would-be assassin at Mar-a Lago, had attempted to purchase a rocket launcher, and may have been in contact with Iranian nationals during his time in Ukraine. The Bureau likely massaged that information into the bogus report it provided the Trump campaign, conjuring up imaginary Manpad-toting IRGC operatives to exacerbate the candidate’s fears.
Once he entered the Oval Office, Trump was encircled by Israel-aligned advisors and staunchly committed to the belief that Iran had attempted to eliminate him on the campaign trail. As commander-in-chief of the US military, he was hellbent on revenge.
Netanyahu nudges Trump with Butler plot
On June 15, 2025, days after launching an unprovoked war on Iran, Netanyahu took to Fox News to manipulate Trump into joining the assault. The Israeli leader appeared to know exactly which psychological vulnerabilities to exploit.
“These people who chant death to America, tried to assassinate President Trump twice,” Netanyahu declared, asserting without a shred of evidence that Iran was behind both the Butler assassination attempt and the one at Mar a-Lago.
“Do you have intel that the assassination attempts on President Trump were directly from Iran?” a visibly startled Fox News host Bret Baier asked.
“Through proxies, yes. Through their intel, yes. They want to kill him,” stated Netanyahu with a cocksure gaze.
One week later, Trump authorized a series of US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in support of Israel’s military assault. Though Trump arranged a ceasefire soon after the attack, Israel’s influence over his administration – and over his psyche – guaranteed that another, much more violent round of conflict was just over the horizon.
In a graphic promoted by the White House’s official Twitter/X account on July 21, 2025, Trump implied that he had begun to turn the tables on his would-be Iranian assassins: “I was the hunted, and now I’m the hunter,” he declared.
Israel claims to eliminate would-be Trump assassin in Iran
By March 2026, Trump was back to war with Iran. Within four days, the US-Israeli joint assault had predictably expanded into an open-ended regional war following the failure of an opening series of decapitation strikes to induce regime change.
On the afternoon of March 4, the glowering US “Secretary of War” and former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth appeared before a lectern at the Pentagon and vowed to unleash “death and destruction from the sky all day long” over the people of Iran.
As his cartoonishly violent screed built to a crescendo, Hegseth issued a dramatic announcement: “The leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed. Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh.”
Though Hegseth did not name the figure, an Israeli journalist who functions as one of Netanyahu’s favorite stenographers, Amit Segal, revealed that Israel had assassinated an IRGC official named Rahman Mokadam who was supposedly responsible for directing a plot to kill Trump. But once again, the details of the plot revealed layers of FBI chicanery, confidential informants masked as “co-conspirators,” and a compromised witness.
In fact, the supposed assassination plan which Mokadam was accused of directing did not initially focus on Trump. Instead, the target was said to be Masih Alinejad, an Iranian expat and regime change activist on the US government payroll. The only evidence that Trump was a possible target at all came from the claims of a convicted drug dealer and con man named Farhad Shakeri, who had also been a defendant. Shakeri spoke to the FBI by telephone from Iran, providing dubious information in exchange for a reduced prison sentence for an unnamed associate in the US.
It was during these remote interviews that Shakeri seemingly claimed he had an IRGC handler who had directed him to kill Trump. But according to the FBI’s criminal complaint against him, that handler’s name was “Majid Soleimani,” not Mokadam.
The FBI agent who interviewed Shakeri clearly recognized his penchant for fabulism, writing that “certain of Shakeri’s statements appear to be true and others appear to be false.” Shakeri had indeed lied throughout his interviews, yet the agent still concluded that “it appears” he was planning to kill Trump. He did not explain why he considered the confession credible, and the allegation about a plot to kill Trump was notably absent from the grand jury indictment filed a month later.
After killing Mokadam on March 4, the Israelis went straight to the president to boast of their supposed achievement – and reignite his anxiety about Iranian assassins.
As Amit Segal noted, “Trump was informed of this in the past few hours by Israel.” In doing so, the Israelis reinforced Trump’s sense that he had been hunted by Iran – and that by fighting their war, he was saving his own skin.
As it had in the past, the White House posted a video on its official Twitter/X account proclaiming Trump’s triumph over Iranian assassins: “I WAS THE HUNTED, AND NOW I’M THE HUNTER.”
Thomas Crooks may have narrowly missed Trump’s cranium in Butler, Pennsylvania, but Israel had found a way into the president’s head.
New American copium: Ghost of Kuwait
By Drago Bosnic | March 5, 2026
As the unprovoked US aggression on Iran isn’t going as planned (mildly speaking), the mainstream propaganda machine desperately keeps trying to cope with the incompetence of the American military, particularly the failures of the USAF, which is often presented as “invincible”. This is especially true when it comes to the humiliating loss of three F-15E multirole strike fighters. The mainstream propaganda machine first reported that they “crashed due to a malfunction“, then that it was a “Patriot” SAM (surface-to-air missile) system and now it’s supposedly a Kuwaiti F/A-18 fighter jet. The only excuse that hasn’t been used yet is a bird strike (although such propaganda is not unheard of).
Namely, the Wall Street Journal claims that “a catastrophic ‘friendly fire’ incident” involving the Kuwaiti jet fighter resulted in “an accidental shootdown” of three American F-15s. To quote “anonymous US officials and those familiar with initial reports”, a Kuwaiti F/A-18 pilot launched three missiles at the American aircraft, resulting in the loss of all three jets. The incident was supposedly triggered by “an environment of extreme tension” and “a breakdown in battlefield identification”. The report says that shortly before the shootdown, an Iranian drone successfully penetrated Kuwaiti air defenses and struck “a tactical operations center at a commercial port, killing six US troops”.
In the immediate aftermath, Kuwaiti military forces were “on high alert and on edge”, so when their radar systems detected the three American F-15s entering the sector, “the operators, fearing a follow-up Iranian attack, engaged the targets”. And yet, the mainstream propaganda machine still fails to explain how exactly this “catastrophic friendly fire incident” unfolded. A spokesperson for US Central Command (CENTCOM) also declined to provide a detailed account, noting that the incident is currently under investigation. So far, it’s only been confirmed that the Kuwaiti F/A-18 is the primary focus, although officials still haven’t ruled out ground-based air defenses as potential culprits.
“It’s a busy, busy air environment, and in times of stress, tension, crisis, and, certainly in this case, conflict, even more so,” Mark Gunzinger, a retired USAF colonel who flew B-52 strategic bombers, said, adding: “It’s all the more complicated when you have different air defense systems operating on different frequencies that aren’t integrated, and some of those systems are actively trying to counter threats such as drones.”
Interestingly, the WSJ report acknowledges that “the official cause of the crash remains subject to change as investigators piece together the sequence of events”. In other words, the Pentagon is yet to think of the best propaganda narrative to avoid admitting that Russian-made Iranian SAM systems destroyed the three “invincible” American F-15s in mere minutes. Worse yet (for the US), it’s highly likely these air defenses were operated by Russian crews, which adds yet another layer of humiliation. Still, the copium continues, as these “unnamed military officials” point to “this tragedy as a stark illustration of the challenges inherent in modern, multinational air wars”.
They insist that “the airspace is currently a historically murky combination of manned aircraft, cruise missiles and drones” and that “American pilots have been flying continuous sorties alongside an array of 19 different types of aircraft — including tankers, reconnaissance planes, and bombers — all moving at different speeds and altitudes”. While it’s true that there’s aerial congestion and that it’s exacerbated by long-range missile exchanges (the US military is launching cruise missiles and other standoff munitions, while Iran responds with waves of ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones), it still doesn’t justify all the pretexts about “friendly fire”. On the contrary, it makes all this even more embarrassing.
Retired Lieutenant General Dan Karbler, who formerly led the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command, said that “today’s airspace is significantly more complex than during the Iraq wars of the 1990s and 2000s”, insisting that “fratricide incidents typically result from multiple failures in communication or equipment”. The report says that “investigators are now scrutinizing whether the F-15s’ Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) transponders were functioning, whether the Kuwaitis were briefed on the American flight paths and whether electronic jamming interfered with voice communications”. However, while all this could’ve certainly malfunctioned on one jet, the chances of it happening to all three simultaneously are virtually zero.
It’s expected to see the Pentagon so desperate to wiggle its way out of the PR hit caused by such a defeat. However, it should be noted that the entire narrative about the F-15’s alleged “invincibility” was based on unadulterated lies and attempts to suppress all reports about combat losses. Namely, there’s a 2018 video of a Saudi F-15SA hit by a Houthi R-27T modified into a SAM. Several more aircraft were hit, with at least one more F-15SA destroyed. There were reports that multiple aircraft were scrapped due to severe damage, although the mainstream propaganda machine keeps hiding facts to maintain the F-15’s “invincible streak” narrative alive for as long as possible.
However, the F-15’s performance in previous conflicts makes this virtually impossible. Namely, during the Samurra Air Battle on January 30, 1991, two Iraqi Air Force Russian-made MiG-25PDS shot down two F-15Cs without losses. The Americans never admitted these losses, but they made sure that no wreckage was ever found. Almost a decade before that, a Syrian MiG-21 shot down an Israeli F-15, with the US and Israel once again doing their best to conceal the loss. However, it was recorded by Syrian and Russian sources. The financial aspect of the latest losses is also not negligible. Namely, an older F-15E cost over $30 million in the late 1990s, while the newest F-15EX variants have a price tag of nearly $100 million each.
Worse yet, old F-15Es cannot be replaced, because their production ended in 2001. Thus, the damage caused by this defeat goes far beyond just three airframes. Another question is, will the mainstream propaganda machine now publish “breaking news” about the “Ghost of Kuwait”? It would certainly make more sense than what they tried doing in NATO-occupied Ukraine with the mythical “Ghost of Kiev”. In the meantime, we already see that the Trump administration is engaging in full-blown copium, going from claims that it would defeat Iran in 24 hours to days and weeks. Soon, it could be months, while heavy losses and damage to US occupation forces in the Middle East keep piling up.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Witkoff undermined Iran talks by peddling lies to build case for military aggression: Report
Press TV – March 4, 2026
US President Donald Trump’s special envoy to West Asia, Steve Witkoff, undermined the negotiations with Iran by peddling lies to build a case for military aggression, according to a report citing regional diplomats.
“In that first meeting, both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly, […], that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60%,” Witkoff said Monday in a Fox interview, referring to the uranium’s level of enrichment.
“And they’re aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs, and that was the beginning of their negotiating stance,” he claimed.
“They were proud of it,” Witkoff further claimed. “They were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.”
However, a Persian Gulf diplomat with direct knowledge of the talks told MS NOW that Witkoff’s description of the conversation was false.
The Iranians told Witkoff that Iran was willing to give up the enriched uranium as part of a new agreement with Trump, according to the unnamed Persian Gulf diplomat.
The Iranians also told Witkoff that Iran enriched the uranium after Trump pulled out of a 2015 nuclear agreement brokered by the Obama administration.
“I can categorically state that this is inaccurate,” said the diplomat, referring to Witkoff’s account. “He was explaining that all of this material can all go away should we have a deal and Iran can be relieved from sanctions.”
A second person with knowledge of the talks confirmed that Iranian officials declined to discuss their country’s ballistic missiles and the resistance groups with Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and said those issues could be discussed in regional talks.
While Iran was engaged in the negotiations, on Saturday, the US and Israel, similar to previous times, started their unprovoked military assault, launching attacks on multiple cities across the country.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei Khamenei was assassinated in the terrorist US-Israeli attacks.
Iran began to swiftly retaliate against the criminal aggression by launching barrages of missile and drone attacks on the Israeli-occupied territories as well as on the US bases in regional countries.
The murder of Iranian schoolchildren cannot be whitewashed
By Eva Bartlett | RT | March 4, 2026
In Iran, under ongoing US-Israeli attacks, a mass funeral took place today for 168 Iranian schoolgirls aged 7-12, killed by an Israeli airstrike on February 28.
The strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ primary school in Minab, southern Iran, in broad daylight, when the children were at school. Fourteen teachers were also killed in the bombing. The bombing occurred as part of US-Israeli attacks sadistically dubbed ‘Operation Epic Fury’, attacks which have to date targeted schools, hospitals, residential areas and other civilian infrastructure.
It was a scene all too familiar to Palestinians: grief-stricken parents collapsing sobbing at the site of their daughters’ murders, clutching bloodstained backpacks, pulling out schoolbooks and personal items of their slain daughters. Children’s desks covered in debris from the bombing. A child’s shoe in the rubble. Death where life had flourished.
None of this is being conveyed by Western legacy media – only ghoulish gloating over the US-Israeli bombardment of Iran and the murder of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and his young granddaughter and children.
On March 2, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted a photo of the graves being dug on X, noting, “These are graves being dug for more than 160 innocent young girls who were killed in the US-Israeli bombing of a primary school. Their bodies were torn to shreds. This is how “rescue” promised by Mr. Trump looks in reality. From Gaza to Minab, innocents murdered in cold blood.”
At the time of this writing, 69 of the murdered girls remain unidentified.
International reaction: Silence
If the bombed school had been in Israel or Ukraine, news of it would have been plastered on front pages of Western media for days, with widespread demands for retaliation, or at least for justice and accountability. Back in 2016, Western media alleged Syria or Russian planes had injured Aleppo boy Omran Daqneesh. His photo went viral, for weeks, even years. A CNN news anchor fake-sobbed for the boy. In 2017, in his home, his father told me their home was not hit in an airstrike, but rather terrorists shelled it and used the boy in a cynical, and effective, photo op.
Footage shared on Telegram and on X clearly show horrific scenes of some of the young girls torn apart in the US-Israeli bombing of their school. But just like the untold thousands of Palestinian children killed by Israel, as well as the half a million Iraqi children killed by US sanctions, these Iranian children’s lives don’t merit Western media outrage. Instead, they produce cynical reports that not only lack any semblance of empathy, but suggest that Iran is either lying about or is to blame for the murders.
Take the BBC’s report, which describes the massacre as a “reported” strike on a school, which “Iran has blamed the US and Israel” for. Casting doubt is standard for legacy media whitewashing the US and Israel’s crimes. The US is “looking into reports.” Israel is “not aware.” Just one of those mysterious unknown strikes.
The BBC then overtly blamed the Iranian government as untrustworthy, writing, “Deep mistrust of the Iranian regime, however, makes official reports difficult for many to accept, and some Iranians directly blamed the regime for the attack.”
The BBC did similarly dishonest and deceptive journalism in 2014 in Damascus after terrorists in eastern Ghouta had shelled an elementary school, killing one child and injuring over 60. The BBC later reported: “the government is also accused of launching [mortar strikes] into neighborhoods under its control.” The BBC could have easily learned about the trajectory of mortars and from where the strike in question could only have come: the terrorist “moderates” east of Damascus.
The New York Times also got the memo, likewise omitting Israel from the headline and implying Iran is lying. But when it comes to blaming Iran for its retaliation, the NYT has no problem stating whose missile strike it was. And there is no “Israel says.”
CNN ran the headline “A girls’ elementary school was hit in Iran. Here’s what we know.” Its video report not only doesn’t mention the US or Israel, but insinuates Iranian blame: In an Israel-like tactic (recall Israel’s claiming Gaza’s Shifa hospital was a “Hamas base”, and staging weapons as “proof”), CNN claims the children’s school could be connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) base. But The Cradle noted that the school had operated independently as a civilian institution for over a decade, with separate entrances, playgrounds, and classrooms.
CNN’s report did, at least, debunk online claims that the school was hit by a failed missile launch by Iran, noting the photo shared online as “proof” of the claim was actually taken 800 miles from Minab. But, hello? If it wasn’t a failed Iranian missile there is clearly one remaining explanation: the schoolgirls were killed by US-Israeli bombing.
Most Western media cite The US military’s Central Command (Centcom) as saying it was “looking into reports of the incident,” and the Israeli army as saying it was “not aware of any IDF operations in the area.” Ah yes, the guilty shall investigate themselves. Right.
Even if you set aside the actual culprit of the school bombing, legacy media reports are devoid of any concern for the slaughtered children: no details, no empathy, no mention that they were murdered in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The tone would be radically different were the children Israeli, Ukrainian or American. We would see names, ages, stories about them. They would be humanized – if only they were not Iranian (or Palestinian, or Lebanese, or Syrian).
Since the February 28 Minab school massacre, US-Israeli strikes have attacked still more civilian infrastructure, killing and injuring more Iranian civilians.
One man recounted to RT how after the bombing of central Tehran’s Enghelab Square he’d seen a decapitated person in front of his café. Walking around showing the destruction, RT’s Tehran bureau chief Hami Hamedi pointed out residential buildings, cars, shops, damaged and destroyed in recent bombings where a police station was among those targeted.
This was the same tactic which Israel used on December 27, 2008, when it unleashed over 100 bombs nearly simultaneously on Gaza, targeting police stations, police academies, universities and more, destroying and damaging shops and residential buildings around them.
I was in Gaza at the time and saw the immediate aftermath of the initial bombings, the chaos and destruction in every direction. Shifa hospital, Gaza’s main hospital, was an endless circuit of cars and ambulances bringing the dead and injured.
That was 17 years ago, and Israel has repeated this brutal tactic over and over again in Gaza, Lebanon and now Iran. We’ve seen this US-Israeli strategy of terrorizing the people by widely attacking civilian infrastructure repeatedly in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, to list only some of the targeted regions – as well as being replicated by the Kiev regime in the Donbass. The intent is always destabilization and instigation of fear in hopes of causing the people to turn against their government. It never works, but it invariably kills countless innocent civilians and flattens infrastructure.
To add further insult, days after the girls’ school massacre, Melania Trump presided over a UN Security Council meeting on children in conflict. You can’t make this insanity up. The wife of a US president who is co-waging a war on children in Iran feigns concern over children in conflict.
The US and its bought media have so little regard for Iranian lives that they don’t even bother to try to explain, much less apologize for, the murders of the 168 schoolgirls. Outrageously, it is as if they simply never existed to Western media.
But it is true that every war crime, every murdered child, fuels support not only to their government but to resistance in general. And Iran is resisting and retaliating in ways that will make the US wish it hadn’t co-started this war on the people of Iran.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
Iran security chief says ‘no negotiations with US,’ confirms readiness for ‘long war’
The Cradle | March 2, 2026
The Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, declared on 2 March that the Islamic Republic “will not negotiate with the United States” as the regional war rages on for a third straight day.
“Trump’s wishful thinking has dragged the whole region into an unnecessary war and now he is rightly worried about more American casualties. It is indeed very sad that he is sacrificing American treasure and blood to advance Netanyahu’s illegitimate expansionist ambitions,” Larijani said in a social media post.
The declaration came as a refutation to a Wall Street Journal report claiming that, hours after US-Israeli strikes halted negotiations, Larijani had pushed to resume nuclear talks with Washington through Omani mediators.
In a separate post, Larijani said Iran is prepared for a prolonged war, unlike the US.
Following the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli strikes on 28 February, Larijani emerged as a central figure in Iran’s security and military leadership.
While Larijani has been managing Iran’s retaliation to the attack, he is not part of the three-person interim council established to lead the country until a successor is elected.
The council met for the first time on 1 March, shortly after the killing of Khamenei, to ensure government continuity as the country declared a 40-day mourning period.
The supreme leader was killed alongside a number of Iran’s top military and security leaders, including IRGC Commander-in-Chief Mohammad Pakpour, Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh, and Armed Forces Chief of Staff Abdolrahim Mousavi, as well as several of Khamenei’s family members – his daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, and grandchild.
The unprovoked US-Israeli attacks that began on 28 February have so far resulted in the killing of at least 555 people across Iran.
That number includes at least 180 killed in a single Israeli strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, with the vast majority being students aged 7-12.
UNESCO condemned the massacre as a grave violation of international humanitarian law, stressing the protections granted to civilians, especially children.
The joint US-Israeli aggression – dubbed ‘Operation Epic Fury’ by the US, and ‘Operation Roaring Lion’ by Israel – has carried out roughly 2,000 strikes across 131 locations in Iran, targeting key political, military, economic, and civilian infrastructure.
Following Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announcement of Operation True Promise 4 – targeting US bases in the Persian Gulf region – Gulf states condemned Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes on US bases within their territory, calling them violations of sovereignty, with all Gulf states reporting the interception of Iranian missiles.
Oman warned the US-Israeli assault had undermined diplomacy just as a nuclear deal was “within our reach,” urging Washington not to escalate further, as Russia denounced the US-Israeli attack as “unprovoked.”
Britain is once again poisoning peace diplomacy with Russia and fueling war in Europe
Strategic Culture Foundation | February 20, 2026
For discerning observers, there was an obvious attempt this week by Britain to poison a delicate stage in peace negotiations for ending the conflict in Ukraine.
The sabotage effort was as vivid as, well, how should we put it?, as vivid as a brightly colored dart frog from the South American rainforests.
Five European governments signed a joint statement this week that dramatically claimed that Russian opposition figure Sergey Navalny was murdered two years ago in a Siberian prison by poisoning.
The scripted drama and media orchestration always betray a psychological operation intended for public consumption, which warrants the rapid prescription of healthy scepticism as an antidote.
The intergovernmental report claimed that the lethal toxin allegedly used on Navalny was “epibatidine,” which is naturally produced in the skin of the dart frog. Without any evidence, Britain and four other European governments – France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden – asserted that Navalny was murdered by the Russian authorities. Oh, those evil, dastardly Russians… cue the theme music from a James Bond movie!
Moscow rejected the latest claim as “feeblemindedness of fabulists” and condemned the European governments and media for engaging in “necro-propaganda”. Russia claims that Navalny (47) died of natural causes while serving a 19-year prison sentence for extremism and corruption. He was thought to be suffering from congenital ill health and on various medications before he began his penal sentence.
The joint European government statement on Navalny’s alleged poisoning is suspect for several reasons. For a start, it provides no verifiable data on the supposed toxicological analysis or how biomedical samples were obtained two years after Navalny’s death. The timing is also suspicious, coinciding with the Munich Security Conference last weekend and the second anniversary of Navalny’s demise on February 16, 2022, suggesting that the announcement was timed to maximize media attention.
Moreover, this week saw another round of trilateral negotiations between the United States, Ukraine, and Russia on finding a political settlement to the four-year conflict in Ukraine. The talks are at a tricky stage with little traction or trust between Kiev and Moscow.
The exotic frog story seems conveniently loaded to poison the atmosphere in the negotiations.
Tellingly, it is the British government that is the main protagonist in instigating the “necro-propaganda”.
This is true to form. It was the British who confabulated the Novichok poison story about double agent Sergey Skripal in 2018, and the polonium radioactive poisoning of another former Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, in a hotel in London in 2006. The Sun tabloid has today dredged up the latter story on the back of the Navalny case. This all speaks of British intel-media orchestration.
In an interview for the BBC state broadcaster, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper claimed that the alleged poisoning of Navalny showed that the Cold War is not over and that “we need to be ready for Russian aggression continuing towards Europe.”
She said that Europe must impose more sanctions on Russia and supply more weapons to Ukraine. Hardly conducive to negotiations.
It is remarkable, too, how Britain is not a member of the European Union, yet London appears entitled to define foreign relations with Russia for the 27-member bloc.
It is also significant that the Americans did not seem to be involved in creating the latest twist in the Navalny narrative. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to be blindsided by the development, saying, “We don’t have reason to question it,” but he disclosed that the U.S. had not been involved. “These countries came to that conclusion. They coordinated that… it wasn’t our endeavor. Sometimes countries go out and do their thing based on the intelligence [sic] they gathered.”
This has all the hallmarks of Britain’s endeavor, and to be more accurate, it wasn’t based on factual intelligence. It was based on a concocted black propaganda to demonize Russia and derail the peace diplomacy.
Another significant development was that during the trilateral talks in Geneva, Britain’s National Security Advisor, Jonathan Powell, showed up unexpectedly at the venue in the Intercontinental Hotel, where he held unofficial sideline talks with the Americans and Ukrainians. Powell’s visit was unannounced by the British government. He wasn’t formally invited to attend. Why was a senior British intelligence figure hanging around a venue for private trilateral discussions?
Britain has a malicious record of sabotaging peace diplomacy in Ukraine. In April 2022, just when the Ukrainian and Russian sides had worked out an early end to the conflict that erupted in February, the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suddenly intervened to persuade the Kiev regime to fight on, with promises of more NATO weapons. The baleful result has been a four-year war, a slaughterhouse, with over one million Ukrainian soldiers dead and a large number of Russians.
The Trump administration wants to extricate itself from the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. Washington seems to recognize that the gambit for “strategic defeat” of Russia is a dead-end.
Not so the Europeans, who, for various reasons, are still fixated on prosecuting the proxy war. The European political class seems to be more infected by Russophobia and is incapable of rational thinking or diplomatic engagement with Moscow.
The has-been empire that is Britain is taking a lead role in galvanizing the hostility in Europe towards Russia. It is to that end that London is the main protagonist in the so-called coalition of the willing, along with that other has-been empire, France. The proposal to deploy British and French troops to Ukraine as a “security guarantee” in the event of a peace deal is intended to act as a deal-breaker since Moscow has repeatedly stated that deployment of any NATO troops in Ukraine is unacceptable and non-negotiable.
Britain appears to be taking an increasing role in the covert mentoring of the Ukrainian regime. This week, the British Foreign Office announced the opening of a new embassy office in Lvov, in western Ukraine, which is a stronghold for anti-Russian nationalists and NATO weapons supplies. London said the new office in Lvov was to “expand the UK’s diplomatic [sic] presence in Ukraine as the two countries deepen their relationship.”
Ukraine’s former top military commander, Valery Zalushny, was appointed the ambassador to London in 2024. The “Iron General” is an admirer of Nazi figure Stepan Bandera, and is considered to be a strong contender to replace Vladimir Zelensky, no doubt under British tutelage.
Continuing the war in Europe gives the British state a political purpose and standing among the Europeans. For petty self-aggrandizement, London is exploiting Russophobia.
Concocting propaganda is part of Britain’s toxic agenda. The history of London’s incitement of wars in Europe – not least its sinister role in precipitating World Wars I and II – is consistent with the latest maneuvers to keep fueling the conflict in Ukraine.
Peeling Back the US Information Operation in Iran
By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | February 18, 2026
As part of the US campaign to engineer a regime change in Iran, the US military and intelligence community are using Operational Preparation of the Environmnet aka OPE. OPE is defined in joint publications (e.g., JP 3-05 Special Operations) as non-intelligence activities conducted prior to or in preparation for potential military operations to set conditions for success. It encompasses shaping the operational environment through intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, information operations, civil affairs, psychological operations, and other preparatory actions—often in denied or politically sensitive areas.
I believe that one of the major OPE efforts is to convince the US public that the overwhelming majority of Iranians despise the Islamic Republic and want it overthrown. In my opinion, a major player in this OPE is a polling outfit known as GAMAAN. GAMAAN (Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran) collaborates with Psiphon VPN, which is widely used across Iran. GAMAAN findings have been consistent in painting a picture of massive opposition to the Iranian regime:
According to GAMAAN polls taken prior to 2025, a significant majority of Iranians — around 70% — oppose the continuation of the Islamic Republic. The highest level of opposition, 81%, occurred during the “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising in late 2022. Support for “the principles of the Islamic revolution and the Supreme Leader” has decreased from 18% in 2022 to 11% in 2024. Opposition to the Islamic Republic is higher among the youth, urban residents, and the highly educated. An overwhelming majority of Iranians (89%) support democracy.
Only about 20% of Iranians support the continuation of the Islamic Republic. When asked about preferred alternatives, about 26% favor a secular republic and around 21% support a monarchy. For 11%, the specific form of the alternative system doesn’t matter. About 22% report lacking sufficient information to choose an alternative system.
But what are the funding sources for GAMAAN and Psiphon VPN? Let’s start with GAMAAN. GAMAAN describes itself as an independent, non-profit research foundation registered in the Netherlands. It emphasizes its academic credentials (e.g., founded by scholars at Dutch universities like Tilburg and Utrecht) and innovative online methods (e.g., anonymity sampling via VPNs like Psiphon) to overcome self-censorship in authoritarian contexts.
GAMAAN operates under the supervision of a board including Dr. Ammar Maleki (founder and director), assistant professor of comparative politics at Tilburg University, and Dr. Pooyan Tamimi Arab, associate professor of secular and religious studies at Utrecht University. Maleki is an assistant professor of Comparative Politics and a self-described activist for democracy in his native Iran. Tilburg University Critically, he does not hide his political stance — his Tilburg University profile explicitly states that he is “a pro-democracy activist and political analyst of Iranian politics” and that he tries “to have an impact on political debates around democratization of Iran.”
This is where the picture becomes more contested. GAMAAN has relied on US government-funded VPN provider Psiphon to disseminate its surveys; collaborated with the USAID-funded Tony Blair Institute; and collaborated with and received funding from historian Ladan Boroumand, co-founder of the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, which is in turn supported by the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Psiphon is owned and operated by Psiphon Inc., a Canadian corporation based in Ontario. Psiphon was originally developed by the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, with version 1.0 launching on December 1, 2006, as open-source software. In early 2007, Psiphon, Inc. was established as a Canadian corporation independent of the Citizen Lab and the University of Toronto.
It has a notable funding history. In 2008, Psiphon, Inc. was awarded sub-grants from the US State Department Internet Freedom program, administered by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. In 2010, Psiphon began providing services to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (US), the US Department of State, and the BBC. More recently, in April 2024, the Open Technology Fund (OTF) announced increased long-term funding for Psiphon, with subsequent OTF awards totaling US$18.54 million for 2024 and US$5.87 million for 2025.
The Open Technology Fund (OTF) is administered by the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), an independent federal agency of the US government. USAGM provides OTF with its primary funding through annual grants, which originate from Congressional appropriations under the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs budget. OTF operates as an independent nonprofit corporation (since 2019) but remains a grantee under USAGM’s oversight and governance, as authorized by Congress (e.g., via the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act).
So while Psiphon Inc. is technically an independent Canadian company, it has historically been substantially funded by the US government and other Western institutions — a fact worth noting given its role as the methodology partner for the GAMAAN polling inside Iran. In other words, it is a cut out that, in my opinion and based on my experience, is supporting a CIA information operation to portray Iran as a country on the precipice of overthrowing the Islamic Republic.
There is an alternative polling database that paints a radically different picture of the mood in Iran with respect to the Islamic Republic… The Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland has conducted a separate series of surveys using phone-based methods, which show more moderate results. Their findings from 2023 and 2024 found that about 75% of respondents expect Iran’s constitution and political system to be about the same in ten years, and only 17% agreed with protesters’ calls for the Islamic Republic to be replaced. However, three in five now think the government should not be strict in enforcing Islamic laws, distinctly up from 2018, and support for demands that the government fight corruption has been consistently near-unanimous since 2018.
On the protests themselves, asked in 2024 to think about waves of demonstrations over the past ten years, two thirds say their main objective was to demand that officials pay greater attention to people’s problems, while only one in five think their main objective was to demand greater freedoms or bring about change in Iran’s system of government.
President Pezeshkian, based on the polls from 2024, was viewed favorably by 66% of those polled at the start of his term… and 70% expressed confidence that he would be an honest and trustworthy president, though only a quarter were very confident. Majorities expressed some confidence that he can improve relations with neighboring countries and protect citizens’ freedoms, notably women’s rights, but majorities are not confident that he can lower inflation or improve relations with the West.
There have been no new polls in the wake of Israel’s surprise attack on June 13, 2025. Based on my conversations with both Nima Alkhorshid and Professor Marandi, the reaction in Iran has been similar to what happened in the United States in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks… National unity increased.
The failed color revolution launched on December 28, 2025 by the United States and Israel has reinforced support for the Islamic Republic. President Pezeshkian has openly admitted his government’s failures on the economic front and he has taken some steps to institute reforms. A more important development was the signing of the Trilateral Security Agreement with Russia and China at the end of January. Those two countries are now providing more resources and support to stabilize the Iranian government and improve the economic lives of the Iranian people.
Donald Trump’s threats to attack Iran are backfiring among the majority of the population in Iran. Yes, there are some Iranians who still want to bring an end to the Islamic Republic, but they are dramatically outnumbered. Remember the boost in popularity that George W Bush enjoyed in the aftermath of 9-11? He even picked up support from Democrats who had previously despised him. That same phenomena has happened in Iran. Prior to the June 13, 2025 attack, Iranians under the age of 50 had no vivid memory of Iran/Iraq war — where Iran was attacked with the encouragement and support of the United States. The June 2025 attack, coupled with the foreign instigated late December 2025 protests and violence, have awakened a new sense of nationalism among the Iranian public that has strengthened support for the Islamic Republic.
The belief in the West that Iran is more vulnerable now than at anytime in the last 46 years is the creation of a US funded propaganda campaign that relied on an ideologically biased pollster to produce results that have been used to convince most Americans that Iran is yearning to breath free… All we have to do is kill off the leadership in Iran.
Kaja Kallas: an uncomfortable figure useful to the EU’s Russophobic purposes
By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 18, 2026
In recent days, videos of Europe’s chief diplomat, Kaja Kallas, have gone viral on social media, showing her making statements marked by disconnected reasoning, weak associations, and conclusions that do not logically follow from the premises presented. At the same time, she delivered yet another of her “unusual” speeches, declaring that Europe would demand a reduction in the size of the Russian Army – an assertion made without any reference to legal, logistical, or strategic foundations to support such a measure, making the inconsistency of her position evident.
This statement highlights not only the European diplomacy’s disconnect from geopolitical reality, but also the symbolic function of certain figures who maintain positions of international visibility. Kallas, whose political trajectory was consolidated in Estonia with a strongly anti-Russian discourse, has become a piece of ideological rhetoric: she plays the role of a “watchdog” of European Russophobia and does not seem to mind being seen as “foolish” for her irrational public statements.
Beyond this aspect, there is also a practical function in this dynamic. Domestically, Kallas faced considerable political wear in Estonia: her family circle maintained commercial ties with Russia, and nationalist sectors criticized her for economic policies that allegedly weakened the country’s economic stability. In this sense, her promotion to the head of European diplomacy served as a convenient solution – removing a worn-out figure from the domestic scene while at the same time making use of her “angry” stance toward Moscow to sustain the anti-Russian narrative at the continental level.
Kallas’s performance, however, does not represent strategic autonomy. The European Union’s foreign policy is centralized in the presidency of the European Commission, under the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen. In this context, Kallas essentially fulfills the role of spokesperson and executor of guidelines defined by the bloc’s hard core, which coordinates sanctions, defense policies, and alignment with NATO and the United States. The contrast between her performative statements and her real decision-making capacity reflects a strategy that prioritizes confrontational rhetoric over political pragmatism.
From a geopolitical perspective, the idea of unilaterally reducing Russian military personnel is unrealistic. Moscow interprets the current conflict as part of a structural dispute over NATO expansion and the strategic containment promoted by the West. Symbolic pressure or European public declarations, devoid of negotiation mechanisms or concrete coercive instruments, produce no practical effect and, on the contrary, tend to reinforce Russian defensive positions, consolidating the perception of permanent hostility.
Moreover, the recent tensions between Kallas and von der Leyen are telling. Kallas reportedly calls her a “dictator” for centralizing power in the Commission – as if the entire EU bureaucratic structure were not designed precisely to maintain that kind of centralization. It appears that von der Leyen represents the transnational elites that control Europe, while Kallas is merely a disposable piece on this chessboard – without any real right to opinion or participation in the bloc’s decision-making process.
Ultimately, Kallas remains, in the racist European view that she herself evokes, a “peripheral” figure of Soviet origins, with a Finno-Ugric native language – hardly “European” in the strict sense, no matter how much she tries to “Europeanize” herself by hating Russia. For Europeans, she is an uncomfortable figure who nonetheless serves a useful purpose: escalating tensions with Russia, which greatly benefits von der Leyen’s “anonymous bosses.”
In this scenario, Kallas embodies a structural tension: her peripheral origins and aggressive posture make her useful as a representative of a confrontational narrative, while also exposing the superficiality of certain European political decisions. The bloc maintains tough rhetoric and ideological mobilization but lacks a realistic strategy capable of dealing with the balance of power in Eurasia – where Europe is a weak and declining pole, not a “superpower,” as Kallas often claims.
If the EU truly intends to preserve its strategic autonomy and contribute to continental stability, it will need to abandon performative declarations and understand that any rearrangement of European security depends on direct negotiations with Moscow, recognition of military and geopolitical realities, and the formulation of measures that combine firmness with pragmatism. Unilateral demands – such as reducing Russian military personnel – are nothing more than symbolic rhetoric, incapable of altering the real dynamics of the conflict.
This dynamic also reveals the hidden side of European politics: the use of peripheral figures, often marginalized or viewed with prejudice, to materialize maximalist discourses that consolidate a narrative of confrontation, while decision-making remains concentrated in a small core of power, far removed from the media statements that go viral and capture public attention.
Europe creates a ‘Russian government-in-exile’, consisting of a bunch of losers
By Sonja van den Ende | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 14, 2026
The Bureau of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), part of the Council of Europe (not the European Union), established in October 2025 a platform for Russians in exile called the Russian Democratic Forces, which is intended to represent a new Russian government-in-exile in Europe.
With little media attention, Europe is attempting to elevate the status of the Russian opposition, while openly admitting that the new, so-called opposition lacks the structure and power to make a significant difference. Above all, they admit that the selection of members for this so-called government-in-exile was fundamentally undemocratic.
Following the formation of a so-called representative delegation of Belarusian democratic forces, the Assembly recently decided to appoint a Russian delegation as well – again, without democratic consultation.
Regarding the Russian Democratic Forces, some individuals were invited to participate in hearings organized by Assembly committees. During these hearings, the discussions focused solely on how these figures could help end what they call “Russia’s war of aggression” and on ways to strengthen sanctions against Russia.
The most absurd claim is their desire to guarantee Russians access to free and independent media in order to counter Russian disinformation. This is reminiscent of the sanctions Europe has imposed on Russian media outlets such as RT, Sputnik, Channel One Russia, etc., and, of course, this geopolitical website, the Strategic Culture Foundation, where this article is published. The new media outlets they propose to establish are, naturally, funded by Europe itself – a platform for the so-called Russian government-in-exile.
They will rely exclusively on European disinformation articles opposing the current Russian government. The Russians in exile, out of fear, will write articles filled with anti-Russian propaganda and criticism, afraid of losing their European residence permits or visas should they write anything positive about Russia.
The absurdity of it all, of course, is that Europe itself has been censoring its own media and journalists since new legislation, such as the Digital Services Act (DSA), was approved. Since February 2025, the EU has officially implemented the 2022 law to combat disinformation, particularly what they call “fake news” originating from Russia.
Or take the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA): This law came into effect in May 2024 and supposedly protects media pluralism and ensures that journalists can work without state interference or abuse of legal process. An example of this absurdity – and the exact opposite of what the EMFA advocates – is the case of German journalist Hüseyin Dogru, who has been completely cut off from funding due to European Union sanctions and can no longer provide for his family’s basic needs while living in Germany. He is accused of spreading disinformation about Russia and Israel.
Another initiative is the so-called European Democracy Shield, presented in November 2025. This initiative aims to protect the EU’s democratic information space from foreign interference and information manipulation. Yet this initiative is now being violated by Europe itself. As they state: “The European Democracy Shield initiative aims to strengthen information integrity in Europe by addressing issues such as disinformation and election interference.” But this is exactly the opposite of what the EU is doing by establishing – by Europeans – a so-called Russian government-in-exile, which, by their own admission, may not have been entirely democratic in its establishment or candidate selection.
After all, it is the European Union itself, through the European Commission, that has established an undemocratic Russian government-in-exile, as they themselves admit. The president of the so-called committee that approves the candidates and the structure of the platform is German, and other committee members come from Spain and Cyprus. Not a single Russian sits on the Assembly’s board.
They even prepared a list of so-called “democratic” candidates promoting the new Russian government-in-exile – a list of “Participants of the Russian Democratic Forces” for the platform. This list is approved exclusively by the Bureau of the Assembly – the European Union, or in this case, the European Commission – based on a proposal from the President of the Assembly, who, as mentioned, is a European citizen of German nationality. The list of potential candidates is submitted to the President of the Assembly in consultation with organizations of the Russian Democratic Forces whose members meet the criteria, and is approved by them.
This is, of course, utterly absurd. Imagine the reverse situation: Russia establishes a committee for, say, Dutch or German citizens in exile, appoints them as the opposition government for the Netherlands and/or Germany, and recognizes them as a government-in-exile in Russia. Perhaps Russia should do this as counter-propaganda – to show Europe and make it clear that their behavior is absurd, undemocratic, and, above all, insane. I can just imagine the headlines in European media and the outrage from European politicians and journalists – full of words like “undemocratic and criminal” – if Russia were to do this!
Among the members of the so-called Russian government-in-exile are names such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oligarch once convicted in Russia for fraud and theft, who has already served time in a Russian prison, and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, who has a far stronger connection to modern-day Azerbaijan or Armenia, having been born and spent his entire childhood in Baku, present-day Azerbaijan.
Another well-known opponent is Vladimir Kara-Murza, who claims to have been poisoned by Putin – similar to the Skripal and Litvinenko cases, or more recently, the allegation that Navalny was poisoned in a Russian prison. He is described as a Russian-British political activist, journalist, author, filmmaker, and a former political prisoner. He is the vice-chairman of Open Russia, an NGO founded by the convicted former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which promotes civil society and democracy in Russia. In essence, they promote the interests of the US and Europe and advocate for Russia’s subordination to them, running as puppet presidents and governments for the West.
Also part of the new Russian government-in-exile are the deranged members of the provocative punk rock group Pussy Riot, such as Nadya Tolokonnikova. These individuals, eager to attract attention with provocative actions against the Russian Orthodox Church – actions bordering on Satanism (in Europe they are called feminists) – have been condemned in Russia for their behavior. Wikipedia (a Western propaganda tool) even acknowledges that public opinion in Russia is not sympathetic to the band members. They have been labeled an extremist organization in Russia. These are just a few candidates; the rest of those chosen are even less significant or unknown to the Russian people.
Europe is also using ethnic minorities in Russia – such as the Bashkirs, Chuvash, Tatars, Chechens, and many others – to sow division and thus break up Russia, following the example of the Balkanization of the former Yugoslavia. A good example of the propaganda machine targeting ethnic minorities in Russia is the German Center for East European and International Studies, called ZOiS, located in Berlin, Germany.
For instance, a certain PD Dr. Sabine von Löwis has written an article there on “Conflict Dynamics and Border Regions,” which discusses: “The disintegration of the Soviet Union led to the creation of not only the fifteen successor states but also a series of de facto states and peoples.” The goal is likely to drive a wedge between the various groups living in the Russian Federation.
The Russian government-in-exile, as the EU calls it, was established following the example of the Americans, who have appointed puppet presidents and governments worldwide to destabilize the countries they effectively occupy and thus plunder their resources. Russia itself is rich in resources such as gas, oil, and minerals. Some members of Russia’s indigenous peoples, as mentioned above, are also on the list of the so-called Russian government-in-exile. This is a blatant provocation by the EU to drive a wedge between Russians – or at least that is the intent. In recent years, entire sessions have appeared on YouTube proposing to divide Russia along ethnic lines, just as was done with the former Yugoslavia, which is now under the control of Europe and the US.
Recent examples of US regime change, with European assistance, include Syria, Venezuela, the blockade against Cuba, the ongoing destabilization of Greenland, and, of course, the conflict in Ukraine. Russia’s neighbors, such as Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, have also fallen victim to provocations involving regime change and destabilization. This task is now largely reserved for the Europeans – particularly in Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia – with US assistance behind the scenes.
But do not think for a moment that Ukraine will be completely abandoned to Europe. The Americans, together with the Europeans, are eyeing the riches, natural resources, and rare earth metals found primarily in the Donbas, which are now largely in Russian hands. Leaving Ukraine to the Europeans is merely a pretext for so-called peace talks.
Times are growing dangerous these days, with an American administration that talks about peace while simultaneously attacking countries, kidnapping presidents, and throwing them in jail. It supports terrorist leaders in Syria and transfers thousands of ISIS terrorists from the Kurdish-controlled al-Hawl camp to Iraq. What will they do with them? Release them for a potential coming war against Iran – an ally of Russia? Hopefully not, but these days, we cannot be sure. The West is in free fall, without rules or morals.
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From the Archives
The US-Iran Scenario That Most Scares Israel
By Ali Haydar | Al-Akhbar | October 9, 2013
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a series of threats toward Iran and its interlocutors in the West, including the US, as serious negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program seem more plausible.
As a possible rapprochement looms between the US and Iran, Netanyahu has attempted to impose impossible Israeli conditions on the negotiators, such as the full dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program, not to mention threatening military force.
Whatever the deal that could materialize between Iran and the West, Israel is going to find itself before an open-ended path. One can foresee three possible scenarios… continue
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- Most Israelis oppose Iran ceasefire, reject talks: Poll
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- History of flotilla campaigns to end Israel’s siege of Gaza
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- Israeli army shoots, kills 9-year-old girl in her Gaza classroom
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- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
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- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
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