Former Biden Advisor, Amos Hochstein, Admits The Biden Administration Is Responsible For the Gaza Genocide
The Dissident | January 28, 2026
In response to claims from Israel that the Biden administration was not supportive enough of its genocide in Gaza, Amos Hochstein, one of Joe Biden’s top advisors, admitted that the Biden administration fully backed Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and that Israel could not have carried out the genocide without its support, a de facto admission of war crimes.
Israeli journalist Guy Elster wrote , “In a rare press conference, Israeli PM Netanyahu claims that soldiers were killed during the war in Gaza from a lack of ammunition due to a partial embargo that was imposed by Biden administration”.
In response to this claim, Axios journalist Barak Ravid wrote , “President Biden’s adviser Amos Hochstein told me in response: ‘Netanyahu is both not telling the truth and ungrateful to a president that literally saved Israel at its most vulnerable moment’”.
Adding to his war crimes confession, Amos Hochstein added, “Let me be clear to ‘journalists’ commenting. After more than $20 Billion military support, largest in Israel history, 2 aircraft carriers rushed to the region, deterring a massive regional war, defeating Iran missile/drone attack x2, defending israel at most vulnerable moments, after SAVING countless lives of Israelis – only acceptable response to POTUS Biden and American people is THANK YOU.”
As journalist Max Blumenthal noted in response to Hochstien, “Netanyahu got you to confirm Biden’s guilt and your own in the Holocaust of our time, which you helped commit on behalf of Israel, your apartheid state of origin”.
Indeed, Amos Hochstein is admitting that through “more than $20 Billion military support,” the Biden administration “saved Israel at its most vulnerable moment”, i.e. allowed it to commit genocide against the civilian population of Gaza.
By Amos Hochstien’s own admission, without support from the Biden administration, Israel would not have been able to slaughter hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, at least 83 percent of whom were civilians.
Without support from the Biden administration, Israel would not have been able to carry out its system attack on Gaza’s hospitals, which, as the UN documented , consisted of:
(a) airstrikes or shelling on the hospitals and/or in the hospital’s vicinity, often resulting in serious damage to the hospitals’ premises and equipment;
(b) besieging the hospitals with ground troops, preventing Palestinians from accessing the hospital and blocking medical supplies;
(c) raiding the hospital with the assistance of heavy machinery, including tanks and bulldozers;
(d) detaining medical staff, patients and their companions, as well as the IDPs sheltering inside the hospital;
(e) forcing remaining patients, IDPs and others to leave the hospital; and finally;
(f) withdrawing troops from the hospital, leaving in their wake severe damage to the structures, buildings and equipment inside, effectively rendering the hospital non-functional.
Without the Biden administration, Israel would not have been able to target and kill hundreds of Palestinian journalists and their family members as retribution for their reporting on the Genocide in Gaza.
The Biden administration enabled Israel to cause “damage to more than 70 percent of the school buildings in Gaza and create conditions where education for children has been made impossible,” as the UN documented .
The Biden administration enabled Israel to routinely shoot children in the head and chest, as Dr. Feroze Sidhwa and other doctors working on the ground in Gaza revealed.
The Biden administration allowed Israel to repeatedly bomb refugee camps , setting them on fire and burning the displaced Palestinian residents alive.
The Biden administration backed Israel in carrying out a systemic policy of mass torture and rape against Palestinian detainees in Israeli torture dungeons such as Sde Teiman.
All of these genocidal war crimes, by Amos Hochstein’s admission, were only committed because the Biden administration “literally saved Israel at its most vulnerable moment”.
This makes the Biden administration equally as culpable as Israel for the slaughter in Gaza and Amos Hochstein’s admission – meant to placate the Israel lobby- in reality is an admission of culpability for Genocide.
Not a Trump anomaly: The Board of Peace and America’s crisis-driven power plays
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | January 28, 2026
The history of American power is, in many ways, the history of reinventing rules—or designing new ones—to fit US strategic interests.
This may sound harsh, but it is a necessary realization, particularly in light of US President Donald Trump’s latest political invention: the so-called Board of Peace.
Some have hastily concluded that Trump’s newest political gambit—recently unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos—is a uniquely Trumpian endeavor, detached from earlier US foreign policy doctrines. They are mistaken, misled largely by Trump’s self-centered political style and his constant, though unfounded, claims that he has ended wars, resolved global conflicts, and made the world a safer place.
At the Davos launch, Trump reinforced this carefully crafted illusion, boasting of America’s supposed historic leadership in bringing peace, praising alleged unprecedented diplomatic breakthroughs, and presenting the Board of Peace as a neutral, benevolent mechanism capable of stabilising the world’s most volatile regions.
Yet a less prejudiced reading of history allows us to see Trump’s political design—whether in Gaza or beyond—not as an aberration, but as part of a familiar pattern. US foreign policymakers repeatedly seek to reclaim ownership over global affairs, sideline international consensus, and impose political frameworks that they alone define, manage, and ultimately control.
The Board of Peace—a by-invitation-only political club controlled entirely by Trump himself—is increasingly taking shape as a new geopolitical reality in which the United States imposes itself as the self-appointed caretaker of global affairs, beginning with genocide-devastated Gaza, and explicitly positioning itself as an alternative to the United Nations. While Trump has not stated this outright, his open contempt for international law and his relentless drive to redesign the post-World War II world order are clear indicators of his true intentions.
The irony is staggering. A body ostensibly meant to guide Gaza through reconstruction after Israel’s devastating genocide does not include Palestinians—let alone Gazans themselves. Even more damning is the fact that the genocide it claims to address was politically backed, militarily financed, and diplomatically shielded by successive US administrations, first under Joe Biden and later under Trump.
It requires no particular insight to conclude that Trump’s Board of Peace is not concerned with peace, nor genuinely with Gaza. So what, then, is this initiative really about?
This initiative is not about reconstruction or justice, but about exploiting Gaza’s suffering to impose a new US-led world order, first in the Middle East and eventually beyond.
Gaza—a besieged territory of just 365 square kilometers—does not require a new political structure populated by dozens of world leaders, each reportedly paying a billion-dollar membership fee. Gaza needs reconstruction, its people must be granted their basic rights, and Israel’s crimes must be met with accountability. The mechanisms to achieve this already exist: the United Nations, international law, longstanding humanitarian institutions, and above all the Palestinians themselves, whose agency, resilience, and determination to survive Israel’s onslaught have become legendary.
The Board of Peace discards all of this in favor of a hollow, improvised structure tailored to satisfy Trump’s volatile ego and advance US-Israeli political and geopolitical interests. In effect, it drags Palestine back a century, to an era when Western powers unilaterally determined its fate—guided by racist assumptions about Palestinians and the Middle East, assumptions that laid the groundwork for the region’s enduring catastrophes.
Yet the central question remains: is this truly a uniquely Trumpian initiative?
No, it is not. While it is ingeniously tailored to feed Trump’s inflated sense of grandeur, it remains a familiar American tactic, particularly during moments of profound crisis. This strategy is persuasively outlined in Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, which argues that political and economic elites exploit collective trauma—wars, natural disasters, and social breakdown—to impose radical policies that would otherwise face public resistance.
Trump’s Board of Peace fits squarely within this framework, using the devastation of Gaza not as a call for justice or accountability, but as an opportunity to reshape political realities in ways that entrench US dominance and sideline international norms.
This is hardly unprecedented. The pattern can be traced back to the US-envisioned United Nations, established in 1945 as a replacement for the League of Nations. Its principal architect, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was determined that the new institution would secure the structural dominance of the United States, most notably through the Security Council and the veto system, ensuring Washington’s decisive influence over global affairs.
When the UN later failed to fully acquiesce to US interests—most notably when it refused to grant the George W. Bush administration legal authorisation to invade Iraq—the organisation was labeled “irrelevant”. Bush, then, led his own so-called “coalition of the willing,” a war of aggression that devastated Iraq and destabilised the entire region, consequences that persist to this day.
A similar maneuver unfolded in Palestine with the invention of the so-called Quartet on the Middle East in 2002, a US-dominated framework. From its inception, the Quartet systematically sidelined Palestinian agency, insulated Israel from accountability, and relegated international law to a secondary—and often expendable—consideration.
The method remains consistent: when existing international mechanisms fail to serve US political objectives, new structures are invented, old ones are bypassed, and power is reasserted under the guise of peace, reform, or stability.
Judging by this historical record, it is reasonable to conclude that the Board of Peace will eventually become yet another defunct body. Before reaching that predictable end, however, it risks further derailing the already fragile prospects for a just peace in Palestine and obstructing any meaningful effort to hold Israeli war criminals accountable.
What is truly extraordinary is that even in its phase of decline, the United States continues to be permitted to experiment with the futures of entire peoples and regions. Yet it is never too late for those committed to restoring the centrality of international law—not only in Palestine, but globally—to challenge such reckless and self-serving political engineering.
Palestine, the Middle East, and the world deserve better.
Manufacturing martyrdom: The west’s cynical use of Iranian protest figures
By Robert Inlakesh | The Cradle | January 28, 2026
Since the Islamic Republic of Iran imposed a nationwide internet blackout to crack down on what it branded as foreign intelligence-backed riots and a terrorist insurgency, unverifiable death tolls and casualty figures have spread rapidly.
These claims – none of which provide any credible evidence – continue to circulate in a coordinated fashion, amplified by Iranian opposition media and the mainstream western press alike.
Amid the wave of western coverage on Iranian protests, a Toronto-based NGO issued an outrageous claim that Iran had killed 43,000 protesters and wounded another 350,000. The group behind the figure, the International Center for Human Rights (ICHR), offered no footage, no forensic data, and no independently verifiable proof. Yet this statistic – dropped in a flimsy 900-word blog post – was catapulted into public discourse by British-Iranian comedian and opposition supporter, Omid Djalili, who pinned it to the top of his X profile.
As intended, the claim went viral. So did similar or even more extreme death tolls. They were echoed across social media by monarchist influencers, recycled by opposition outlets like Iran International, and eventually laundered into western corporate media coverage. The figures varied wildly – from 5,848 to 80,000 dead – and lacked even the pretense of substantiation. But they all served a clear political purpose: to build a case for regime change in the Islamic Republic.
The CIA fronts posing as human rights groups
The lowest estimate of Iran protest deaths – 5,848 people – came from the US-based group, Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI), which admits it is still “investigating” 17,000 additional cases. HRAI is no independent arbiter. It was partnered in 2021 with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US soft-power tool established under former US president Ronald Reagan to continue the CIA’s work under NGO cover.
Another frequent source for Iran’s death tolls is the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, which is also funded by NED. One of its board members is Francis Fukuyama, a signatory to the infamous neoconservative blueprint for the “War on Terror,” the Project for a New American Century (PNAC).
Then there is United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which claimed 12,000 Iranians were killed in the latest protests. This lobbying outfit, which successfully pressured the World Economic Forum (WEF) to disinvite Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, counts among its ranks former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, current US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Dennis Ross of the Israel Lobby’s think-tank WINEP.
These entities feed a revolving door of narratives, all designed to delegitimize the Islamic Republic, decontextualize internal unrest, and greenlight foreign meddling.
Israel-backed outrage machines and war agitators
The ICHR – the group behind the 43,000 deaths claim – is based in Canada and almost solely focused on Iran. It openly celebrates Israeli assassinations of resistance leaders like the late Hezbollah secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, and praises the “growing friendship” between Israel and the Iranian opposition. Its executive director, Ardeshir Zarezadeh, has published photos of himself posing with Israeli and monarchist flags while toasting with wine.
The organization also employs extremely politically biased language, like labeling the Iranian government “the criminal regime occupying Iran” in official press releases.
Despite the bombast, the ICHR’s report offers no evidence. It relies on unverifiable “comparative investigative analysis” and anonymous sources, and falsely claims that 95 percent of killings occurred over just two days. There is no footage of anything approaching the numbers it alleges.
Meanwhile, the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC), another US State Department-funded outfit, once promoted a bizarre claim that a protester faked his death and hid in a body bag for three days. Even the IHRDC admitted it could not verify the story – but opposition outlet Iran International broadcast it anyway, while omitting that it was fiction.
Far-right activists in the west, like Tommy Robinson, and monarchist influencers have pushed even more outlandish stories, including the allegation that Iran’s security forces suffocate protesters by zipping them alive into body bags. No evidence required. Just one anonymous voice note.
The IHRDC has also been consulted by the US government to guide its sanctions policy, including the creation of a blacklist targeting Iranian individuals. Its executive director, Shahin Milani, recently posted on X that US President Donald Trump’s overtures to Iranian protesters, if “not backed up by overwhelming American support to cripple the regime’s armed forces,” would “constitute the greatest betrayal of Iranians by the West.”
This is part of a broader US strategy whereby Washington has poured funding into dozens of NGOs focused solely on Iran, from women’s rights outfits to ethnic minority advocacy groups, all tasked with feeding the narrative architecture of regime change.
Manufacturing atrocity, laundering lies
The propaganda pipeline runs from online influencers to western media. Take online activist Sana Ebrahimi, who claimed 80,000 protesters had been killed, citing only a friend “in contact with sources inside the government.” Her post garnered over 370,000 views.
Soon after, British radio station LBC News quoted an “Iranian human rights activist” named Paul Smith, who upped the death toll to 45,000–80,000. Smith, it turns out, is a regime change agitator on social media who endorses US military intervention in Iran.
In October 2025, the Israeli daily Haaretz exposed how Tel Aviv funds Farsi-speaking bot farms to promote Reza Pahlavi – the exiled son of Iran’s former monarch – and spread anti-government propaganda. These same bots helped inflate Iran protest narratives back in 2022. It is a digital war campaign masked as grassroots outrage.
Time Magazine claimed 30,000 Iranians had been killed, citing two anonymous Health Ministry officials. Iran International topped that, citing its own unverifiable sources to allege over 36,000 deaths.
Only Amnesty International, despite its hostile posture toward Tehran, refrained from a specific number, saying only that “thousands” had died. That estimate roughly aligns with Tehran’s own figures: Iran’s Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs reports 3,117 deaths, including 2,427 civilians and security personnel.
When lies become ‘casus belli’
There are plenty of legitimate criticisms to make of the Iranian state. But what we are seeing now is a coordinated misinformation offensive driven by Washington‑backed networks, Tel Aviv’s propaganda arms, monarchists and other oppositionists in exile, and compliant corporate press.
The grotesque death tolls and phantom atrocity stories being circulated follow a familiar imperial playbook: the bogus incubator babies in Kuwait in 1990, the forged WMD claims in Iraq in 2003, the invented Libyan “genocide” in 2011, and the endless chemical weapons fabrications in Syria. Each time, the purpose was the same: to build a ‘casus belli.’
The people who died in Iran’s protests have become props in another foreign-backed narrative war, laying the groundwork for selective intervention disguised as humanitarian concern.
UN experts alarmed by prosecution of students protesting ETH Zurich’s Israel-linked research ties
Al Mayadeen | January 27, 2026
UN human rights experts have condemned Switzerland for penalizing students who participated in peaceful pro-Palestine protests at ETH Zurich, one of the country’s top universities.
The experts said the convictions threaten students’ rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, particularly in the context of ever-growing global concern over the Israeli war on Gaza.
In a statement issued Tuesday, UN experts confirmed they had sent a formal communication to the Swiss government expressing concern after several ETH Zurich students were convicted of trespassing for holding a sit-in demonstration in May 2024.
The students were protesting ETH Zurich’s reported academic partnerships with Israeli institutions during the height of the war on Gaza. The peaceful protest was dispersed by police shortly after it began.
“Peaceful student activism, on and off campus, is part of students’ rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and must not be criminalised,” the UN experts said.
Legal consequences could have long-term impact
Five students have already been convicted of trespassing, receiving suspended fines up to 2,700 Swiss francs ($3,516) along with legal fees exceeding 2,000 Swiss francs. The convictions will remain on their criminal records, potentially discouraging future employers, the UN experts added.
Ten additional students who appealed their sentences are awaiting judgment, while two students were acquitted.
A spokesperson for the Swiss Foreign Ministry confirmed it had received the UN’s message and would respond in due course. ETH Zurich has yet to issue a statement on the matter.
The incident comes amid a wave of student activism related to the Israeli war on Gaza, with similar protests taking place on campuses across Europe and the United States. UN officials warned that penalizing students for non-violent activism undermines the democratic values of academic institutions.
Exposed – How the UAE Became Central to Gaza’s Concentration Camp Plot
By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | January 27, 2026
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a key player in the current Gaza Ceasefire and, as Israel’s primary Gulf partner, is proposing major investments in the besieged coastal territory. While the Emiratis portray their role as purely humanitarian, it being the top aid donor since the beginning of the genocide, a much more insidious plot is in fact afoot.
Emirati influence in the Gaza Strip did not begin following October 7, 2023, and has not been limited to humanitarian aid missions. As the leading Arab member nation of the US’s “Abraham Accords”, the UAE exercises considerable power on the political, intelligence, economic, and military levels.
Often, the UAE-Gaza relationship is portrayed as purely humanitarian; the evidence used to suggest this is the $1.8 billion in aid spent on the territory in just over two years. While all the donated humanitarian supplies have certainly been crucial to the population’s survival, a famine was still declared, and the most vulnerable segments of society began to both fall ill and die as a result of the lack of assistance. This was due to Israel’s total blockade for three months, during which flights—both commercial and reportedly military—continued between the UAE and Israel.
While the lack of aid cannot be blamed directly on the UAE, it is largely underreported that, by proxy, Abu Dhabi does share guilt in the suffering of the civilian population in Gaza and seeks to further involve itself in plots designed to torment the Palestinian people.
In May of 2024, after the Israeli military invaded Rafah, closing off the crossing between Egypt and Gaza, the occupying military began forming a group of ISIS-linked gangsters and hardline Salafists, working with them to loot aid entering the Gaza Strip. The first of the groups, led by the now deceased Yasser Abu Shabab, was for months used by Israel to steal humanitarian aid and drip-feed it onto the black market, making it so that the population began to starve.
Later that same year, the Yasser Abu Shabab aid-looting gangs, who worked under Israeli protection and the watch of the occupying military, underwent a facelift and were disingenuously portrayed in the Western corporate media as a grassroots anti-Hamas force. Following the ceasefire that began in January of 2025 and was later violated by Israel in March, these ISIS-linked aid-looting militants returned to the scene in Israeli-supplied tactical gear and began calling themselves the “Popular Forces”.
Then came what was called the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF) privatized aid scheme, which is where the UAE comes into the picture. The GHF transformed into a catastrophe, as Private Military Contractors (PMCs) lured starving Palestinians to aid sites to be gunned down en masse. Well over 2,000 civilians were killed by what they would label a “death trap”.
What many are unaware of is that part of the GHF conspiracy was to use this aid mechanism as a means of mass displacing at least 600,000 Palestinians into a gated concentration camp facility built on the ruins of Rafah. Not only would the GHF’s trigger-happy PMCs be used to support this project, but the ISIS-linked “Popular Forces” death squad, now transformed into an Israeli proxy against Hamas, would police this concentration camp.
Before the GHF’s emergence on the scene, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had reportedly instructed his military to begin the construction of the proposed concentration camp, designed to transfer around 600,000 civilians then living in the Mawasi area.
The United Arab Emirates, under the guise of its “Operation Gallant Knight 3” (al-Faris al-Shahm), which is sold as a purely humanitarian mission, just so happened to coincidentally have been building water desalination facilities in Egypt’s al-Arish, right along the Gaza border.
Emirati state-owned media reported as early as January 2024 that the UAE had built six such water facilities on the Egyptian border, capable of supplying around 600,000 people in Gaza. A real coincidence, considering that the Emiratis just so happened to have prepared the infrastructure for such a concentration camp well before Israel had even publicly proposed it.
When Israel began openly proposing the new concentration camp in Rafah in 2025, before the ceasefire, the UAE openly pledged to help provide water to the new planned “community” in southern Gaza.
This project quickly began to collapse; then came the ceasefire and the dissolution of the infamous GHF. However, the Israelis didn’t give up on their ISIS-linked proxies and instead began creating even more groups, now reaching a total of five separate anti-Hamas militias. It wasn’t long before information started leaking regarding a UAE role in aiding these ISIS-linked groups, which now exist behind Gaza’s so-called “Yellow Line” in the territory that the Israeli military currently controls.
On January 21 of this year, Drop Site News revealed that leaked documents it had seen detailed a plot to construct a new “Planned Community” in Rafah, presented as what the article labeled an “Israeli Panopticon”. On January 23, The Guardian then released a new bombshell piece of information on this “planned community”—set to be built in Israeli-occupied territory as part of the alleged “reconstruction” component of the Gaza ceasefire—the United Arab Emirates is planning to bankroll it.
The likelihood of such a concentration camp facility successfully being constructed on the ruins of Rafah, capable of housing 600,000 people, is still in question—especially given the fact that the attempt to construct a similar model failed before the latest ceasefire. Yet, the mere fact that the Israelis and Emiratis can demonstrably be shown to have been preparing to supply such a community with water, only months into the genocide, is striking.
In addition to its role in backing ISIS-linked death squads in Gaza and supporting the construction of a concentration camp “community” in Rafah, the UAE also provided an economic and logistical lifeline to Israel during its genocide.
Abu Dhabi’s trade ties with Tel Aviv during the genocide escalated, despite occasional Emirati statements of condemnation against Israeli war crimes. A 21% surge in trade occurred in 2025, for example, an increase on the record $3.2 billion in bilateral trade of 2024, during which the Israelis inflicted a man-made famine in Gaza.
Amid mass international airline cancellations and carriers refusing to fly to Israel, the Emiratis continued flights regardless and played a key role as a transit route for Israelis. Dubai even became the top holiday destination for Israelis last year, including for countless Israeli soldiers who were deployed in Gaza.
The key regional diplomatic lifeline for Israel throughout the genocide has been the UAE. In addition to this, the trade corridor created by the Emiratis to aid the Israelis enabled them to survive and partially circumvent the damage caused by the siege imposed on the Red Sea by Yemen’s Ansarallah.
Abu Dhabi also collaborates with the Israelis on their broader foreign policy objectives, including in the construction of an airbase in Somaliland, in Yemen’s Socotra Island, and beyond. The UAE-Israeli alliance is present in the Horn of Africa, across West Asia and North Africa, interfering in the internal affairs of countless nations. They also collaborate on projects to isolate and attack the Muslim Brotherhood, in addition to funding joint anti-Islam propaganda projects.
Then there is the UAE’s role in using the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s former Preventive Security Force head, Mohammed Dahlan, to not only command various initiatives across multiple continents but to push specific agendas in the Gaza Strip, and even the West Bank to a lesser degree.
The High Representative for Gaza in Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” (BoP) is none other than Nickolay Mladenov, who resides in the UAE and in 2021 became the director-general of the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy in Abu Dhabi. Mladenov is also a Segal Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP)—often described as the think tank arm of the Israel Lobby in the US.
Hiding behind the cover of being Gaza’s “top humanitarian aid donor,” the UAE has managed to work hand in hand with Israel in its projects to destroy the Palestinian people and their cause for statehood.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.
How South Korea’s gas ambitions sustain the occupation of Gaza
By Hwanbin Jeong | MEMO | January 27, 2026
“Eni participated in a legally announced international tender for offshore exploration licences in waters located within Israel’s Exclusive Economic Zone bordering Egypt … Eni does not foresee being involved in activities in the area in the future.”
This is how Eni, a major Italian energy company, responded to a question from Italy’s national public broadcaster Radiotelevisione italiana (RAI) regarding its alleged involvement in “disputed waters off the coast of Gaza.”
In December 2022, Israel launched its fourth offshore gas exploration licencing round. The Israeli Ministry of Energy described the tender areas as “part of the Exclusive Economic Zone of the State of Israel”, while also acknowledging them as “not yet fully delimited”; some portions overlap with Gaza’s maritime boundaries.
ENI participated in the tender as the operator of a consortium, which won the bid for Zone G on 29 October, 2023. According to Adalah, an Israeli legal centre for Arab minority rights, 62.2 per cent of Zone G lies within maritime areas claimed by Palestine as part of its Exclusive Economic Zone, covering 1,063.3 square kilometres.
Since then, civil society groups have mounted sustained pressure on ENI to withdraw from cooperation with an illegal occupation. After more than two years of campaigning, ENI informed RAI on 2 December, 2025 that it would disengage from the area. Yet the struggle did not end there. The consortium includes two other companies: Israel’s Ratio Petroleum and Dana Petroleum, which was acquired through a hostile takeover in 2010 by the Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC), a South Korean state-owned enterprise.
Recently, South Korean civil society groups have pressed KNOC to clarify its position and withdraw from the project. On 18 December, 2025, KNOC replied that, “after the end of the Israel–Palestine war, and following monitoring of the international situation, the company will review whether to proceed with exploration together with consortium partners such as ENI.” This reveals an intention to carry the project forward once international scrutiny fades, thereby reducing legal and political risk.
How pillage sustains occupation
Pillaging natural resources is a common problem many Global South states still struggle with, but Palestine’s case is uniquely profound for its political consequences. When RAI presented the issue alongside ENI’s position on 14 December, it highlighted Italy’s refusal to recognise Palestinian statehood and underscored a structural reality: “management of these resources risks consolidating the occupation rather than bringing it to an end.”
KNOC’s involvement raises a qualitatively different level of concern. KNOC’s role as a state-owned public enterprise places the issue squarely within the realm of state responsibility under international law. Thus, South Korea has a much stronger incentive to favour the continued occupation of Gaza.
South Korea presents its position on Israel–Palestine as politically neutral. In practice, however, it refers to Palestine only as “self-government”, while pursuing close cooperation with Israel in economic and defence sectors, including arms sales; it became the first Asian country to conclude a bilateral free trade agreement with Israel in 2022. South Korea has also refrained from criticising Israel’s violations of international law. In fact, it has been more muted than many Western countries and even Japan.
Consider what South Korea’s position could mean at this critical juncture in Gaza. The two years of Israeli genocide and devastating destruction have utterly deprived Gazans of any political capability. On 14 January, the USA announced moving to phase two of the Gaza ceasefire, under which Palestinian self-determination is practically nullified, with no defined timeline. Only technocratic participation is allowed, subject to the supervision of an international administering body referred to as a “Board of Peace”, chaired by US President Donald Trump.
Under this arrangement, the Board would make decisions over Gaza’s offshore gas resources, rather than the Palestinian government in the West Bank. South Korea would support this marginalisation of Palestinian self-determination for the sake of safer gas exploitation.
Decolonisation as leverage
The urgency of preventing South Korea from participating in the pillaging of Palestinian resources is clear. The problem is how. Advocacy for Palestinians within South Korea remains weak in both numbers and political influence. Public sympathy is also limited. According to a survey conducted by Korea Research in September 2025, only 39 per cent of respondents reported feeling a great deal of pity for Palestinians, compared with 19 per cent for Israelis. A plurality of respondents (41 per cent) held both sides equally responsible for the war.
It is therefore significant that the United Nations General Assembly has recently revitalised and institutionalised the concept of “colonialism in all its forms and manifestations”. This expanded framework aims to address various aspects of oppression including the illicit appropriation of natural resources. On 14 December, 2025, the UN marked the first International Day against Colonialism in All Its Forms and Manifestations. Four days later, at a high-level plenary meeting commemorating the occasion, UN Secretary-General António Guterres declared:
“Eighty years ago, the United Nations was created to save succeeding generations from war, to uphold human rights and to advance progress in larger freedom. Today, on this first International Day against Colonialism, let us renew that promise – not only by ending colonialism in its traditional forms, but by dismantling its remnants wherever they endure.”
This new phase of decolonisation did not become relevant to Palestine by coincidence. In 2024, Palestine was among the sponsoring states of General Assembly resolution A/RES/79/115, which introduced “the eradication of colonialism in all its forms and manifestations” as a formal agenda item for the 80th session of the General Assembly. Building on this, in 2025, resolution A/RES/80/106 designated 14 December as the International Day against Colonialism and placed the eradication of colonialism in all its forms and manifestations on the General Assembly’s agenda on an annual basis. With 116 votes in favour, the resolution marked the institutionalisation of an expanded decolonisation framework.
Palestine’s engagement with this framework is not primarily driven by the protection of gas resources. At stake is whether its supposedly temporary condition of occupation is recognised as a matter of decolonisation. This position has found broad resonance across the Global South. At the 18 December plenary meeting, 12 of the 33 states that took the floor explicitly referenced Palestine while advocating an expanded understanding of decolonisation. A further 10 states endorsed such positions through statements delivered by their group representatives—Venezuela for the Group of Friends in Defence of the Charter of the United Nations and Uganda for the Non-Aligned Movement. Palestine, in other words, lay at the centre of the debate.
Nearly five months have passed since the opening of the General Assembly’s 80th session with its new agenda item on the eradication of colonialism in all its forms and manifestations. Aside from resolution A/RES/80/106, however, no substantive resolutions have yet been adopted or debated under this item. Palestine is unlikely to advance the issue of gas exploitation on its own, given the risk of jeopardising relations with the South Korean government. Any meaningful challenge will therefore require a broader coalition of states with similar interests. The question is who has the courage to initiate it.
“Leaked document” exposes US blueprint for total control over Gaza
Al Mayadeen | January 27, 2026
A leaked resolution obtained by Drop Site News on Monday exposes the operational blueprint behind US President Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace,” revealing plans for a US-led administration that would assume sweeping control over Gaza through political domination and security mechanisms designed to engineer a compliant Palestinian population.
The unsigned resolution, dated January 22, 2026, grants the Board “all transitional legislative and executive authority, emergency powers, and the administration of justice” over Gaza. The document formalizes a hierarchical structure with Trump as Chairman holding ultimate authority, an Executive Board with power to rewrite Gaza’s laws, and Palestinians relegated to “technocratic” implementation roles with no decision-making power.
The resolution is part of Trump’s phased ceasefire plan, with the document providing the legal framework for what the administration calls reconstruction, but effectively amounts to permanent subjugation of Gaza under US and Israeli control.
A hierarchy of US power
The “Board of Peace” resolution establishes a three-tier governance structure with Trump as Chairman holding ultimate authority over all decisions affecting Gaza. At the apex, Trump alone can sign resolutions into force, approve military commanders for the so-called International Stabilization Force, and designate individuals to key positions throughout the apparatus.
Beneath Trump sits an Executive Board with “the same authority, powers, and ability to make all delegations necessary and appropriate to carry out the Comprehensive Plan as the Board of Peace.” This Executive Board can “enact new law, or modify or repeal prior” civil and criminal laws in Gaza, effectively rewriting the legal framework governing Palestinian life.
The resolution names nine Executive Board members: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, businessman Mark Rowan, World Bank President Ajay Banga, Deputy National Security Advisor Robert Gabriel, Trump’s chief of staff Susan Wiles, and Martin Edelman, a real estate attorney who serves as special advisor to the UAE government. The inclusion of Wiles and Edelman had not been previously announced.
At the bottom of this pyramid sits the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), essentially a vetted, technocratic, and apolitical committee of Palestinians operating under the supervision of a High Representative. The resolution names former Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov as High Representative, with former Palestinian Authority official Ali Shaath leading the NCAG.
“It’s sadly the case that neither the Board of Peace nor its subordinate structures are representative or accountable,” former UN Under-Secretary-General Martin Griffiths told Drop Site News. Palestinians are “deprived and excluded” from decision-making, appearing only “at the very bottom of this pyramid of power.”
The control mechanisms
The resolution’s language reveals multiple mechanisms through which the Board would exercise total control over Gaza. Section 8.2 establishes that “only those persons who support and act consistently” with creating a “deradicalized terror-free Gaza that poses no threat to its neighbors” will be eligible to “participate in governance, reconstruction, economic development, or humanitarian assistance activities.”
The document bars from participation any individuals or organizations deemed to “have supported or have a demonstrated history of collaboration, infiltration or influence with or by Hamas or other terror groups.” Both the Executive Board and the High Representative will create “eligibility standards for participation in the development of New Gaza” and apply those on a case-by-case basis, subject to Trump’s approval.
Financial, legal control
The resolution grants the Board control over Gaza’s financial infrastructure, including “opening bank accounts and establishing appropriate financial controls” and “engaging donors, approving budgets, and administering financial mechanisms.” All resolutions must also be “issued in English and posted on the Board’s website.”
The Board can “enter into such other agreements, arrangements, or contracts as may be required to implement the Comprehensive Plan,” effectively conducting foreign policy on behalf of Gaza, while Palestinians have no voice. The Executive Board and High Representative possess the authority to “enact new law, or modify or repeal” Gaza’s civil and criminal legal framework as deemed necessary.
Additionally, every resolution requires Trump’s signature to enter force, creating a system where the American president serves as colonial viceroy with absolute veto power over Gaza’s governance.
Stripping Palestinian resistance identity
This vetting mechanism effectively gives the Board power to exclude any Palestinian civil society organization, political faction, or individual deemed insufficiently compliant with US and Israeli objectives. The term “deradicalization,” repeated throughout the document, becomes an all-encompassing tool for political exclusion that goes far beyond security concerns.
In the Palestinian context, “deradicalization” functions as a euphemism for dismantling resistance ideology itself, a fundamental component of Palestinian identity under occupation. Resistance can be understood not merely as armed struggle but as the collective refusal to normalize occupation, the preservation of political consciousness, and the assertion of the right to self-determination. Under occupation, a person’s dignity and worth can only be measured by their steadfastness, their refusal to submit to the erasure of their political rights and national identity.
By making eligibility for housing, employment, reconstruction funds, and basic services conditional on demonstrating “deradicalization,” the Board’s framework seeks to engineer a population willing to accept permanent subjugation in exchange for survival.
Palestinians who maintain resistance consciousness, whether through political organizing, advocacy for refugees’ right of return, or simply refusing to accept normalization with their occupiers, would be systematically excluded from participating in Gaza’s reconstruction.
Questions of legitimacy
The “Board of Peace” resolution obtained by Drop Site News remains unsigned. The Board’s legitimacy rests on UN Security Council Resolution 2803, passed in November 2025, which endorsed Trump’s Comprehensive Plan. However, the structure appears designed to circumvent meaningful UN oversight.
Moreover, it remains unclear whether the resolution obtained has been officially adopted or whether the version received reflects a final text. The resolution explicitly states that its provisions would be “enacted immediately upon signature,” implementing a governance structure over Gaza without the consent of its population.
The architecture described in the document envisions a Gaza divided into controlled zones where Palestinians vetted for political acceptability can access housing, services, and economic opportunities, all while under biometric monitoring, financial surveillance, and educational programming designed to normalize relations with “Israel.”
Those who fail to meet eligibility standards or refuse to participate in the system would presumably remain in the “red zones,” areas that continue to face military strikes and humanitarian deprivation.
Trump wanted to play peacemaker, Netanyahu made sure he failed
By William Van Wagenen | The Cradle | January 27, 2026
“My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be: a peacemaker and a unifier.” — US President Donald Trump’s second inaugural address in January 2025.
Within a year, Trump had ordered unprovoked strikes on Iran and Venezuela, and his signature peace deals in Gaza and Syria lay in ruins. In both cases, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posed as a supporter of Trump’s efforts – only to systematically sabotage them from within.
Gaslighting Gaza
During the transition into his second term, Trump’s team played a central role in finalizing a 15 January 2025 ceasefire in Gaza that halted major fighting and secured the phased return of Israeli captives held by Hamas since 7 October 2023. Trump then publicly embraced that outcome during his inauguration, stating: “I’m pleased to say that as of yesterday, one day before I assumed office, the hostages in the Middle East are coming back home to their families.”
The first phase of the deal halted Israeli bombing, saw 33 captives freed, 2,000 Palestinian prisoners released, and allowed humanitarian aid to flood Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians began returning to northern areas. The next phase, which aimed to end the war entirely and release the remaining captives, never materialized.
However, Netanyahu immediately undermined Trump by refusing to authorize his team to negotiate the core elements of phase two of the ceasefire in talks that were supposed to begin on 3 February 2025.
“While Israel signed on to the deal,” the Times of Israel wrote, Netanyahu “refused to even hold talks regarding the terms of phase two.” Instead, he suddenly “insisted that Israel will not end the war until Hamas’s governing and military capabilities have been destroyed.”
As the end of phase one approached, Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, tried to salvage the deal by submitting a bridge proposal that would have seen the first phase of the ceasefire extended by several weeks, in exchange for the release of five Israeli captives.
Though Hamas spokesman Abdel Latif al-Qanoua publicly stated the resistance movement “looked at the proposal positively,” Netanyahu rejected this proposal as well, sabotaging Trump’s ceasefire once again.
Instead, on 2 March, one day after the phase two should have begun, Netanyahu finally agreed to extend the first phase for another 42 days, until the end of the Passover holiday.
He sabotaged talks by blockading Gaza, cutting off essentials, and pushing two million Palestinians toward famine. The Trump White House publicly backed Israel’s siege, saying it would “support” the blockade, effectively endorsing the collapse of its own peace initiative.
Netanyahu then put the nail in the coffin of Trump’s plan by unilaterally ending the ceasefire. On 18 March, Israel unleashed a “shock aerial offensive,” killing more than 400 Palestinians, including five senior Hamas officials and many women and children, in just one day.
“We never expected the war to return,” said Ibrahim Deeb, after 35 members of his family were killed in a strike on their home in a neighborhood in Gaza City.
Netanyahu’s actions not only nullified the ceasefire but also openly defied the White House. PBS later confirmed that Israel’s shock offensive in March was the “culmination” of Netanyahu’s “efforts to get out of the ceasefire with Hamas that he agreed to in January,” the agreement Trump had championed.
Netanyahu derails Trump’s 20-point plan
Undeterred, Trump pushed forward a new ceasefire alongside a 20-point peace plan, which took effect on 10 October, and was later passed at the UN Security Council in November 2025. Hamas complied, releasing all captives, alive and dead. Tel Aviv responded by violating nearly every term of the plan.
The ceasefire stated that “all military operations, including aerial and artillery bombardment, will be suspended, and battle lines will remain frozen.”
However, Israeli bombing continued, killing at least 442 Palestinians over the next four months, including through air strikes, shelling, and gunfire across Gaza. According to The Lancet, the ceasefire barely improved the “horrific” situation in Gaza.
Despite pledging to freeze battle lines, Israel kept bombing Gaza, killing hundreds more. It refused to withdraw from the agreed areas, expanded its military presence west of the so-called “Yellow Line,” and shot Palestinians attempting to return to their homes.
Future phases called for staged withdrawals of Israeli troops to around 40 percent and 15 percent of Gaza’s territory, with the final stage allowing Israel to maintain a security perimeter around the enclave until it is “secure” from any “resurgent terror threat.”
However, over the next four months, Israeli forces refused to withdraw eastward from their positions along the Yellow Line. Instead, they pushed further west, conquering more territory and continuing the systematic demolition of Palestinian neighborhoods, BBC reported, based on satellite images.
Israeli forces also shot and killed Palestinians entering newly seized areas west of the line. In one case, Israeli troops shot and killed 17-year-old Zaher Nasser Shamiya even though he was on the west side of the Yellow Line.
“The tank turned his body into pieces … it came into the safe area [west of the Yellow Line] and ran over him,” his father told the BBC.
Facilitating humanitarian aid?
Trump’s plan also stipulated 600 aid trucks per day. Israel allowed just 171. Washington’s own Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) was ignored by Israeli authorities, who blocked critical items like scalpels and tent poles. As Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council warned, “The credibility of the United States is at stake here.”
On 30 December, Israel undermined Trump’s plan further, barring 37 international NGOs, including Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Oxfam, and Mercy Corps, from operating in Gaza.
A “Board of Peace” and international force meant to administer Gaza never materialized, as Netanyahu stonewalled amnesty offers for Hamas fighters. Trump hoped to start disarming the resistance with a pilot program, offering fighters safe passage abroad. Netanyahu responded by ordering their assassination.
The destruction of this pilot scheme sealed the fate of Trump’s Gaza project. Without Hamas being disarmed and a civilian authority in place, Trump’s vision of Gaza as a neoliberal “Riviera in the Middle East” collapsed.
Undermining peace in Syria
Netanyahu did not stop at Gaza. In Syria, he again undercut Trump’s attempts at diplomacy.
Both Washington and Tel Aviv supported self-appointed Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s rise to power in Damascus as part of the CIA’s Operation Timber Sycamore. However, Trump and Netanyahu have pursued different policies toward Syria since Sharaa, the ex-Al-Qaeda leader who went by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani, toppled former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.
After Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) takeover of the Syrian capital, the Trump administration immediately sought to bolster Sharaa’s legitimacy.
On 20 December, Trump sent Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf to Damascus to meet Sharaa and pave the way for removing his and HTS’s terrorist designations.
While Netanyahu celebrated Sharaa’s entry into Damascus, even taking credit for it, Israel nevertheless began implementing a policy of keeping its northern neighbor “weak and fragmented.”
Israeli forces swiftly launched 480 airstrikes to destroy Syrian military assets and invaded southwest Syria, seizing 155 square miles of territory, including positions atop Mount Hermon, a strategic peak straddling the Syria–Lebanon border.
Despite covertly providing weapons, medical assistance, cash, and even air support to HTS during the 14-year war against Assad, Israeli officials continued to refer to Sharaa as a terrorist in the media after he finally reached power.
Israel also lobbied to keep brutal US sanctions in place, in part through the influence of US Congressman Brian Mast, a dual US-Israeli citizen and former soldier in the Israeli army.
In contrast, Trump promoted Sharaa, granting him a personal meeting in Riyadh on 14 May after calling for the removal of the sanctions the day before.
After the meeting, Trump praised Sharaa, who spent years dispatching suicide bombers to kill civilians in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, describing him as a “young, attractive guy” with a very “strong past.”
Trump soon dispatched his special envoy, Tom Barack, to facilitate a peace agreement between Syria and Israel.
“It starts with a dialogue,” Barrack stated during a visit to Damascus in which he raised the American flag over the US ambassador’s residence. “I’d say we need to start with just a nonaggression agreement, talk about boundaries and borders.”
Trump continued to promote Sharaa in the following months, despite massacring thousands of Alawite civilians on Syria’s coast in March and hundreds of Druze civilians in the country’s southern Suwayda Governorate.
In contrast, Israeli officials continued to undermine Sharaa, calling him a “jihadist terrorist of the Al-Qaeda school” in the press and pledging to defend Syria’s Druze from his Sunni extremist-dominated army, despite Israel’s covert role in “green-lighting” Sharaa’s massacres of both the Alawites and Druze.
However, Trump’s love affair with Sharaa continued in the following months, as Washington continued to lobby Tel Aviv to sign a security agreement with Damascus.
On 17 September, Sharaa said that Syria was seeking “something like” the 1974 Israel–Syria Disengagement Agreement concluded after the Yom Kippur War.
Four days later, a senior Trump administration official told Israeli media that such a security agreement was “99 percent” complete. “It’s really a question of timing and also the Syrians communicating it to their people,” the official said.
A five-hour meeting in London between Syrian and Israeli officials “fueled anticipation” that an agreement could be announced later that week, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Tel Aviv kills the deal
While Trump sought a Syria–Israel nonaggression pact, Tel Aviv piled on new demands, including a walled humanitarian corridor for Druze populations and permanent Israeli control of Mount Hermon. Even after Sharaa conceded to key Israeli demands, a planned security agreement collapsed at the last minute.
But Trump continued to support Sharaa, removing him from the Treasury Department’s “specially designated global terrorist list” and welcoming him to the White House on 10 November.
Trump fumed but did not retaliate. When Netanyahu bombed the Beit Jinn in late November, killing 13, Trump urged Tel Aviv to maintain a “strong and true dialogue” with Syria. Netanyahu responded by demanding a demilitarized buffer zone all the way to Damascus – a maximalist condition that ensured no agreement could be signed.
Eventually, a US-mediated mechanism was established for limited security coordination. In return, Washington gave Sharaa a green light to attack Kurdish forces in Aleppo and northeast Syria. Even then, Netanyahu’s sabotage succeeded as the broader Syria–Israel agreement never materialized.
Who’s the superpower?
Asked recently if there were any limits on his power, Trump replied: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
But recent history suggests otherwise. Trump’s ego-driven quest to play peacemaker in West Asia was thwarted not by external enemies but by a supposed ally in Tel Aviv. Netanyahu, by relentlessly undermining two major US-led peace initiatives, exposed a blunt truth about power in Washington.
As former US president Bill Clinton once said after a fraught first meeting with Netanyahu three decades ago: “Who the fuck does he think he is? Who’s the fucking superpower here?”
Idea of limited, fast strike on Iran misjudges our capabilities: IRGC
Al Mayadeen | January 27, 2026
The notion of carrying out a “limited, rapid, and clean” operation against Iran stems from flawed assumptions and a poor judgment of Tehran’s defensive and offensive capabilities, a senior military official at Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters of the Iranian Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) stated in response to threats levelled by the United States and “Israel”.
The official emphasized that the Iranian armed forces “do not monitor enemy movements only during the execution phase; they carefully track early indicators of any threat to the nation’s security.”
“Operational decisions will be made based on field assessments at the appropriate time,” he asserted.
He cautioned that any scenario “designed around surprise or control over the scope of conflict will spiral out of control from the very first stages,” noting that “the presence of US aircraft carriers and military equipment in the region has been exaggerated.”
Highlighting Iran’s strategic advantage in its waters, he said, “The maritime environment surrounding Iran is familiar and fully monitored by the Iranian armed forces. The concentration of forces and equipment from outside the region in such an environment will not serve as a deterrent; rather, it increases their vulnerability and makes them accessible targets.”
The official further asserted that, over recent years, “Iran has relied on its local naval capabilities, its asymmetric defense doctrine, and unique geopolitical strengths, shaping military equations in the Gulf and the Sea of Oman in a way that prevents any aggressor from assuming the security of its forces and bases is guaranteed.”
No attempt to undermine Iran will succeed
Referring to past attempts to influence Iran’s internal affairs or undermine its political structure, he noted that “whether through political and economic pressure, military threats, or psychological warfare, such efforts have always failed, and this flawed approach will not succeed in the future either.”
“Iran will not be the initiator of any war, but it will not allow any threat to its national security to progress to the execution stage, even at its earliest phases,” he stressed.
The official placed full responsibility for any unintended consequences “directly on parties that jeopardize the stability of the entire region, whether through provocative and interventionist presence or through direct and indirect support.”
This closely follows remarks by the head of the Iranian Journalists’ Association and member of the Government Media Council, Masha’Allah Shams al-Wa’izin, who told Al Mayadeen that Washington has conveyed, through a third party, that Iranian facilities could be targeted by attacks, while expecting Tehran to absorb any such strikes “without a severe response.”
Shams al-Wa’izin stressed, however, that from Iran’s perspective, any so-called limited strike would be treated as a full-scale war, dramatically increasing the cost for any potential aggressor. He further claimed that the United States and “Israel” had orchestrated recent events involving armed riots inside the country following what he described as the failure of a 12-day war on Iran.
He also dismissed what he called “conflated and false” reports circulated by opposition groups regarding alleged developments in Iran, saying they originated from “armed opposition based in Tel Aviv and Paris.”
“The United States wants Iran to surrender,” Shams al-Wa’izin said, adding that no self-respecting nation could accept such threats. He described the recent US military buildup in the region as political signaling by President Donald Trump toward Iran’s leadership, while underscoring that Tehran possesses multiple leverage points and capabilities to respond to any form of pressure.
US Military Buildup on Land, Air, and Sea Raises Fears of Imminent Attack on Iran – Expert
Sputnik – 27.01.2026
The US and Israel “have outlined a plan for the next phase in resolving the Iranian issue… The level of military readiness at all levels in Iran is high and has reached a red line,” Lebanese expert Brigadier General Malik Ayub tells Sputnik.
However, Israel is unlikely to participate in a war against the country, Ayub notes. Its involvement would be a “serious mistake,” given its inability to withstand the previous confrontation with Iran.
The expert suggests that if war breaks out, Iran will strike Israel to use it as leverage against the US, and if Israel joins the conflict, the war will be devastating and with unpredictable outcomes.
As for the American military bases in the region, Iran will consider them US territory, not Arab land, Ayub believes.
He also mentions that Hezbollah could use a war as a “golden opportunity” to liberate five positions in southern Lebanon, shifting the balance of power both domestically and internationally.
Speaking about Iran’s allies in the region, Ayub notes that the conflict would threaten the Gulf states’ interests, particularly Saudi Arabia, by jeopardizing the Strait of Hormuz and disrupting access to significant oil supplies and global maritime trade.
The Board For Peace – Whitewashing Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide
DOC MALIK | January 26, 2026
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Last week in Davos at the WEF meeting, Trump announced the Board of Peace and the technocratic takeover of Gaza. I break down what this actually means.
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Craig Murray, Reporting from Venezuela
By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | January 26, 2026
Last year, British journalist and former diplomat Craig Murray provided valuable reports from Lebanon, documenting — among other things — death and destruction brought by Israel’s military. Now, Murray is on the ground in Venezuela, doing what he did in Lebanon last year — providing access to information that tends to be filtered out or distorted in much reporting.
Indeed, in his first report from Venezuela that he posted at his website on Monday, Murray provided, based on his crisscrossing of the nation’s capital, an account that the situation there is very different from what is commonly reported. “I have now been in Caracas for 48 hours and the contrast between what I have seen, and what I had read in the mainstream media, could not be more stark,” stated Murray to begin his report. Expanding on this observation, Murray wrote later in his report:
Pretty well everything that I have read by Western journalists which can be immediately checked – checkpoints, armed political gangs, climate of fear, shortages of food and goods – turns out to be an absolute lie. I did not know this before I came. Possibly neither did you. We both do now.
As in Lebanon last year, Murray is set to provide a view into matters much of the media is not interested in sharing with people around the world. Murray explained in his report:
When I was in Lebanon a year ago, the mainstream media were entirely absent as Israel devastated Dahiya, the Bekaa Valley, and Southern Lebanon, because it was a narrative they did not want to report.
Disgracefully, the only time the BBC entered Southern Lebanon was from the Israeli side, embedded with the IDF.
The BBC, Guardian or New York Times simply will not send a correspondent to Caracas because the reality is so starkly different from the official narrative.
To be more informed about what is happening in Venezuela, it would be a good practice to check periodically Murray’s website where he is planning to post more written and video reports in the coming weeks.
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From the Archives
How a War with Iran Would Diminish American Power
By Greg Scoblete | The Compass | August 13, 2010
Jennifer Rubin wants a war with Iran:
But the emphasis on the existential threat to Israel ignores a more basic issue for Americans to ponder: a nuclear-armed Iran represents a dagger at the heart of America and an existential threat to our status as a superpower and guarantor of the West’s security. As to the former, Iran is pressing ahead with its long-range ballistic missile program. First the Middle East and Eastern Europe, then all of Europe and, within a matter of years, the U.S. will be within range of Iranian missiles. If those are nuclear and not conventional, what then? We’re not talking about whether Iran is going to be “merely” a destabilizing factor in the Middle East or whether it will set off an arms race with its neighbors or imperil Israel’s existence. We’re talking about whether America will then be at risk (and lacking sufficient missile-defense capabilities if we continue to hack away at our defense budget). The argument about whether mutual assured destruction can really work against Islamic fundamentalists who have an apocalyptic vision becomes not about Israel’s ability to deter an attack but about ours. Those who oppose American military action have an obligation to explain why America should place itself in that predicament.
I would argue that any obligation to present an explanation lies with those whose disastrous policy prescriptions with respect to Iraq lead America into the worst strategic blunder in the country’s recent history. That aside, note the blind faith in the power of the military to actually achieve its ends. … continue
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