Regime Change In Iran Is The Final Phase Of The ‘Clean Break’ Strategy
The Dissident | January 21, 2026
Lindsey Graham, the Neo-con Republican Senator, at the Zionist Tzedek conference, gave the real reason for America’s policy of regime change in Iran, namely to isolate the Palestinians in the Middle East and pave the way for Israeli domination.
Graham, referring to regime change in Iran said, “If we can pull this off, it would be the biggest change in the Middle East in a thousand years: Hamas, Hezbollah gone, the Houthis gone, the Iranian people an ally not an enemy, the Arab world moving towards Israel without fear, Saudi-Israel normalize, no more October the 7th”.
In other words, Lindsey Graham and the U.S. believe that regime change in Iran would lead to the collapse of Palestinian resistance and allied groups Hezbollah and Ansar Allah and lead Middle Eastern powers to normalize with Israel without any concessions to Palestinians, thus paving the way for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank, and further expansion into Syria and Lebanon in service of the Greater Israel project.
This motive is not only driving the desire for regime change in Iran, but has been the main motive for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East since 9/11, not fighting a “war on terror”.
In 1996, key figures who ended up in high level positions in the Bush administration, such as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, who were at the time advising the newly elected Benjamin Netanyahu, sent him a letter titled, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”, which called on him to make a “clean break” from peace talks with Palestinians and instead focus on isolating them in the region, first a for-most by, “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right”.
Netanyahu kept to his word and made his “Clean Break” from the Oslo Accords during his first term as Prime Minister, later boasting:
how he forced former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher to agree to let Israel alone determine which parts of the West Bank were to be defined as military zones. ‘They didn’t want to give me that letter,’ Netanyahu said, ‘so I didn’t give them the Hebron agreement [the agreement giving Hebron back to the Palestinians]. I cut the cabinet meeting short and said, ‘I’m not signing.’ Only when the letter came, during that meeting, to me and to Arafat, did I ratify the Hebron agreement. Why is this important? Because from that moment on, I de facto put an end to the Oslo accords.”
Soon after, the authors of the clean break document became key advisors on the Middle East in the George W. Bush administration.
After 9/11, they used the attack to carry out the “important Israeli strategic objective” of “removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq”, who was seen as too sympathetic to Palestinians.
As David Wurmser, one of the authors of the clean break document and the Middle East Adviser to former US Vice President Dick Cheney, later admitted , “In terms of Israel, we wanted Yasser Arafat not to have the cavalry over the horizon in terms of Saddam”.
George W. Bush aide, Philip Zelikow said , “the real threat (from Iraq) (is) the threat against Israel”, “this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat”, “the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell”.
But for Israel and the Bush administration, the war in Iraq was just the first phase of the “clean break strategy”, to take out all of Israel’s enemies in the Middle East.
As the U.S. General Wesley Clark revealed the clean break went from a plan to take out Saddam Hussein in Iraq to a plan to “take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and, finishing off, Iran”. (Emphasis added)
As Clark later explained on the Piers Morgan show, the list came from a study which was “paid for by the Israelis” and said, “if you want to protect Israel, and you want Israel to succeed… you’ve got to get rid of the states that are surrounding”.
With every other country on the hit list either weakened (Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan) or taken out (Iraq, Libya, Syria) from the ensuing years of U.S. and Israeli intervention, Neo-cons and Zionists see Iran as the last bulwark in the way of carrying out the Clean Break plan.
Is a New Saudi-Led Axis Forming against the UAE & Israel?
By Robert Inlakesh | The Palestine Chronicle | January 12, 2026
The emergence of a new alliance in the region has the potential to challenge some of Israel’s more aggressive endeavors, so this could end up working in favor of the Palestinian people in some regards.
Prior to October 7, 2023, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia appeared poised to join the so-called “Abraham Accords” alliance and normalize ties with Israel. Now it appears to be forming new alliances and even undermining Israeli interests, pursuing a different regional cooperation agenda. Where this leads will be key to the future of the region.
In September of 2023, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, had informed Fox News that normalization with the Israelis was growing closer. This development came as then-US President Joe Biden had been seeking to broker such an agreement, which appeared to be his administration’s planned crowning achievement in the foreign policy realm.
The Hamas-led Al-Aqsa Flood operation changed the regional equation entirely. Riyadh, instead of normalizing ties with the Israelis and seeking concessions from the United States in order to enter into a regional alliance against Iran, began considering a different option entirely.
Israel’s weakness in the face of the Hamas-led attack was one message to the entire region, which was that if it could not even take care of its own security issues against a guerrilla army equipped with light weapons, then how could an agreement with Tel Aviv ensure the security of its allies? Another element to the developments in Gaza was that Israel decided to commit a genocide in order to restore its image in the region and in a gambit to “solve the Gaza question”.
This behavior, combined with attacks on nations across the region, evidently served to set normalization talks back and pushed Saudi Arabia to reaffirm its commitment to the Arab Peace Initiative of the 2000s—in other words, no normalization without a viable Palestinian State.
Then came the Israeli bombing of neighboring Qatar, a message to all Gulf nations that Israel is ready to act against any of their territories. It was even reported that Israel’s missiles flew over Saudi airspace in order to reach their target.
Since then, Saudi Arabia has been busy attempting to secure its interests and has signed a security pact with Pakistan as part of this effort. It is very likely that a large driving element behind this deal was to ensure that a future Iran-Israel war would not impact them directly. The Saudis are also currently working to strengthen their ties with Iran.
Yet Riyadh didn’t stop with Pakistan; it is now reportedly in high-level talks with Turkey in an attempt to bring them into the fold of their security agreement, in what is being labeled a Middle East NATO project. While it is perhaps too soon to predict the outcome of these talks and where such an agreement would lead, it suffices to say that there is certainly a realignment going on in West Asia.
The ongoing feud between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia was sent into overdrive when the Emiratis decided to order their proxies in Yemen to seize key regions of the nation’s east, home to 80% of the country’s oil reserves. These Southern Transitional Council (STC) separatists, backed by the UAE, took over the Mahra and Hadramaut provinces, posing a major security risk to the Saudis and Omanis.
In reaction to the UAE’s meddling, Riyadh decided to take the gloves off in Yemen and crushed the STC entirely. But the backlash against Abu Dhabi was not limited to the end of their proxy militia’s role in Yemen; instead, there was a media war in the UAE that aimed to expose its crimes across West Asia and in Africa, as well as a prepared economic blow.
As a result, there was a diplomatic fallout between the UAE and Algeria, over Abu Dhabi allegedly backing separatist movements there, and later the government of Somalia even rescinded its agreements with the Emiratis, following UAE-Israeli meddling in their affairs, in regard to the recognition of Somaliland as a State.
If Riyadh and Ankara do end up forming some kind of security alliance, it will likely also include Qatar. It would then prove interesting to see how they all coordinate on issues like Libya and Sudan. The Emiratis not only back the Rapid Support Forces militants in Sudan, who stand accused of committing genocide and mass rape, but long threw their weight behind warlord Khalifa Haftar in Libya.
This would also mean that the UAE’s role in Syria could be undermined or completely terminated, as it could also be forced from other areas of influence, like Iraq, too. It is clear that both Turkey and Saudi Arabia have sway in Lebanon, so depending upon what their goals are there, this may prove an interesting development for the Lebanese predicament, too. The same goes for Egypt and beyond.
One thing to keep in mind is that such an alliance would not equate to an Axis of Resistance-style opposition to the Israelis. Although Riyadh may see it fit to teach its Emirati neighbors a lesson, the likelihood of any serious conflict with the Israelis is thin.
It is true that the Israelis, aided by their UAE lapdogs, are pursuing an ultra-aggressive policy in the region, especially against Ankara. Yet this competition is not one between warring nations seeking to defeat each other decisively; it is viewed, at least for now, as a competition instead. Turkey maintains its relations with Israel; the Saudis, on the other hand, have not formally recognized Tel Aviv, but have long been in communication with their Israeli counterparts.
An alliance of this nature does not serve as a new support system for any resistance front in the region; instead, it seeks to achieve security and to escape the grip of the emerging “Greater Israel” project. At this stage, it has become abundantly clear that there are no promises of a prosperous future through aligning fully with the Israelis; instead, Tel Aviv will aggressively pursue its interests against every nation in the region and doesn’t respect any agreements it signs. The recent Emirati-Israeli actions demonstrate this perfectly.
Ultimately, the emergence of a new alliance in the region has the potential to challenge some of Israel’s more aggressive endeavors, so this could end up working in favor of the Palestinian people in some regards.
This could prove beneficial to the Islamic Republic of Iran, which, instead of facing total isolation and seeking to combat Israeli schemes alone, may, on different issues, find itself on the same page as the Saudi-led alliance. Some analysts have posited that Tehran may eventually join such a security pact, although it is way too early to say if such a development is even on the cards.
Overall, we should not expect Riyadh to do a total one-hundred-and-eighty-degree foreign policy shift, nor should that be expected of Ankara; after all, they are US allies and maintain close relations with Washington. The real question is whether the United States is willing to push back against such an alliance for the sake of Israel, which is when things will really begin to get interesting.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.
Israel and the politics of fragmentation: The hidden hand behind secessionist projects in Yemen, Somalia, and Libya
By Ahmed Asmar | MEMO | January 3, 2026
Israel’s malicious, meddling role in the Arab countries has long extended beyond direct military confrontation, as seen in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. For long, Tel Aviv has pursued a quieter yet dangerous strategy of encouraging fragmentation, weakening central states, and cultivating ties with separatist actors in fragile and war-torn countries. Today, this pattern is increasingly clear and visible in Yemen, Somalia, and Libya; three countries that suffer from prolonged conflicts, administrative collapse, and foreign interference. In each case, Israel’s footprint is not accidental; it serves a broader strategic doctrine aimed at dividing Arab countries, controlling critical waterways, and reshaping the regional balance of power to its advantage and dominance.
Yemen: secession as a gateway to normalisation
In Yemen, Israel’s indirect involvement surfaces through its alignment with the so-called Southern Transitional Council (STC), a secessionist entity seeking to reestablish an independent state in southern Yemen. While the Yemeni conflict is often framed as a regional proxy war, the STC’s leader, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, has openly, and on several occasions, signaled willingness to normalize relations with Israel. He publicly declared that recognizing Israel is not an obstacle if southern Yemen’s independence is achieved; an extraordinary statement that was slammed by many Yemeni public figures and politicians.
This declaration is not merely rhetorical. Yemen’s southern geography grants access to some of the most sensitive maritime corridors in the world, particularly near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. For Israel, influence over forces operating near this chokepoint aligns with its long-standing objective of securing Red Sea navigation and countering its perceived regional adversaries. Supporting or encouraging secessionist forces in southern Yemen offers Israel a strategic foothold without formal military deployment, turning internal Yemeni fragmentation into a geopolitical asset, and posing a direct threat against the Arab countries, especially the littoral countries of the Red Sea – Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Somalia: Somaliland and the militarisation of recognition
Somalia presents an even clearer case of Israel exploiting separatism for strategic gain. The self-declared Republic of Somaliland, unrecognised by the international community, has actively sought foreign backing to legitimise its secession. Israel’s contacts and recognition of Somaliland’s de-facto authorities mark a dangerous precedent in international relations, and against the international law and the UN charter.
The strategic motivation is transparent. Somaliland’s coastline also overlooks the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden, one of the world’s most critical maritime corridors. Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud warned of the Israeli malicious plan behind such recognition, where he said that Israel seeks from recognising Somaliland to resettle Palestinians from Gaza, who experienced a two-year genocide, and most importantly, to host an Israeli military or intelligence base. These plans are added to the dangers of undermining Somalia’s territorial integrity and encouraging further fragmentations across the Horn of Africa.
Israel’s move to recognize a secessionist entity reflects how Israel exploits weak entities and divided states to move ahead with its expansionist and dominance strategies at the expense of the region and its people.
Libya: Haftar and the normalisation through the back door
Not far from the examples in Yemen and Somalia, in Libya, Israel’s role is more discreet but visible too. General Khalifa Haftar, who controls eastern Libya and has long sought international legitimacy, reportedly maintained contacts with Israeli officials as part of efforts to secure external backing. These interactions fit within a wider pattern of covert normalization between Israel and authoritarian or factional actors seeking foreign support in exchange for political concessions.
Libya’s fragmentation has turned it into fertile ground for foreign manipulation. Israel’s engagement with Haftar is surely not about peace or stability, but about influence, leverage, and having a close foot near its surrounding Arab countries.
Fragmentation as a strategic doctrine
Altogether, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya illustrate a consistent Israeli strategy: exploiting internal conflicts to advance a regional agenda based on fragmentation. This approach intersects with Israel’s ongoing territorial expansion and military aggression, from its occupation of Palestinian land to its violations of sovereignty in Syria and Lebanon. Fragmented Arab states are less capable of resisting Israeli policies and more exposed to normalization under opportunistic conditions.
Israel’s encouragement of secessionist movements is not about supporting self-determination; it is about redrawing the region into weaker, smaller entities incapable of collective action. This strategy directly threatens Arab national security as a whole, adding a new dimension to Israel’s expansionism.
At a time when the Arab world faces unprecedented challenges, recognising and confronting this hidden hand of fragmentation is essential. While ignoring Israel’s role in these secessionist projects risks allowing instability to become permanent, solely in favor of Israel in the region and beyond.
The UAE’s reverse trajectory: From riches to rags
By Dr Zakir Hussain | MEMO | December 18, 2025
One of the most enduring and widely quoted dialogues in Indian cinema is: “Do not throw stones at others’ houses when your own house is made of glass.” Unfortunately, this wisdom appears to be lost on the United Arab Emirates. Instead of exercising restraint and responsibility, the UAE has increasingly been accused of conspiring with, financing, and backing a wide range of actors and armed groups that have contributed to chaos, instability, and even genocidal violence in several countries.
Over the years, the UAE has steadily expanded the scope of its controversial activities—from Libya and Sudan in North Africa to other mineral-rich Muslim-majority African countries, and further eastward to Afghanistan and Yemen. Its involvement in the Palestinian context also raises serious concerns, as there appears to be no clear moral or political limit to its actions. These interventions have not promoted peace or stability; rather, they have intensified conflicts, deepened humanitarian crises, and prolonged wars.
What makes this approach particularly perplexing is that the UAE itself lacks a credible and robust defensive shield to protect its own territory. It does not possess the capability to fully defend its iconic skyscrapers and critical infrastructure even against relatively unsophisticated, low-cost drones. A coordinated volley of such drone strikes would be sufficient to cause panic among the millionaires and billionaires who have invested heavily in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Capital, after all, is highly sensitive to risk, and fear alone can trigger massive capital flight.
Against this backdrop, it is difficult to comprehend why Mohammed bin Zayed has chosen to indulge in a strategy of regional destabilisation and proxy warfare. History clearly demonstrates that mercenaries neither win wars nor sustain long, decisive military campaigns. They fight only as long as their financial incentives are met, avoid heavy casualties, and withdraw the moment the cost-benefit equation turns unfavourable.
The UAE has already experienced the consequences of such adventurism in Yemen, where its involvement against the Houthis proved costly and ultimately unproductive. The episode exposed the limits of Emirati military power and underscored its lack of preparedness for prolonged, brutal conflicts. The Emiratis have shown remarkable efficiency in event management, diplomacy branding, and global image-building, but they are ill-suited for sustained warfare or managing the complex realities of civil wars and insurgencies.
Despite these lessons, the UAE continues to deploy mercenaries, supply arms, and push destabilising agendas that risk mass civilian suffering. Such actions not only tarnish its international standing but also make the future of the UAE increasingly uncertain. More importantly, they significantly raise the vulnerability of those who have invested billions and billions of dollars in the country—particularly in real estate and financial assets that depend heavily on perceptions of safety and stability. The UAE has attracted the largest number of high net worth people since the Ukraine war started.
According to one estimate, in 2025 alone, approximately 9,800 high-net-worth individuals moved to the UAE. In 2024, the total number of millionaires who moved to the UAE from Russia, Africa, and the UK is around 130,000, thus fuelling its status as a premier global wealth hub. The reasons are zero tax, stability, and safety, lifestyle.
However, the overindulgence of MBZ and misuse of the sovereign wealth fund is likely to negate all the toil and troubles endured by the forefathers of the Emirates since 1972.
As an Indian, my concern is both professional and moral. A large number of Indians have invested substantial sums in the UAE, especially in real estate. It is therefore necessary to issue a timely warning and provide a realistic assessment of emerging risks, so that Indian interests can be protected before irreversible damage occurs.
I remain open to offering constructive suggestions and responsible assessments, with the sole objective of safeguarding long-term stability and protecting the legitimate interests of investors and the expatriate community.
For Israel, The Terrorist Attack At Bondi Is An Opportunity To Push For War With Iran
The Dissident | December 14, 2025
Today, a horrific terrorist attack was committed against Jewish Australians who were celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach, killing 16 people and sending 40 to the hospital.
But for Israel, the terrorist attack is an opportunity to manufacture consent for a war with Iran.
There is no evidence that Iran has anything to do with the terrorist attack at Bondi Beach, and all evidence so far that has emerged shows that it almost certainly was not.
The Iranian foreign ministry condemned the attack, saying, “We condemn the violent attack in Sydney, Australia. Terror and killing of human beings, wherever committed, is rejected and condemned”, and evidence released so far suggests the attacker identified so far, Naveed Akram, was a follower of Wahhabi Salafist ideology, which is openly hostile to Shia Islam and Iran.
Despite the lack of evidence and evidence showing it was not Iran behind the attack, Israel is using the horrific terrorist attack to manufacture consent for war with Iran.
Israel Hayom, the mouthpiece of Israel lobbyist and pro-Iran war hawk Miriam Adelson, published an article quoting an anonymous “Israeli security official” who claimed -without evidence- that “there is no doubt that the direction and infrastructure for the attack originated in Tehran”.
The Israeli newspaper Times of Israel, reported that Australia is “investigating if Sydney attack was part of larger Iranian plot” at the behest of the Israeli Mossad.
Previously, Israel pressured Australia to repeat baseless claims from the Mossad that Iran was behind anti-Semitic attacks in Australia.
As veteran journalist Joe Lauria reported, in August “Australian intelligence said the Iranian government was behind the firebombing of a Jewish temple in Melbourne last year as well as other ‘anti-semitic’ attacks in the country”, “days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly humiliated Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a post on X for being ‘a weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews’ after Albanese said Australia would follow several European nations and recognize the state of Palestine.”
As Lauria noted, “The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) did not provide any evidence to prove Iran’s involvement last December in the Adass synagogue attack, which caused millions of dollars of damage but injured no one. It simply said it was their assessment based on secret evidence that Iran was involved”.
Australia’s ABC News reported that, “The Israeli government is claiming credit for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and intelligence agencies publicising Iranian involvement in antisemitic attacks on Australian soil,” adding that “in a press briefing overnight, Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer effectively accused Australia of being shamed into acting”.
Mencer boasted that “Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu has made a very forthright intervention when it comes to Australia, a country in which we have a long history of friendly relations”, implying that Israel pressured the Australian government to repeat their baseless claim about Iran being behind the attacks.
ABC reported that the move came days after, “Netanyahu labelled Mr Albanese a ‘weak’ leader who had ‘betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews’” and “Israel announced it would tear up the visas of Australian diplomats working in the West Bank in protest against the Albanese government’s moves to recognise a Palestinian state”.
Israel’s evidence-free claims are already being used by the Trump administration to manufacture consent for war with Iran.
The Jerusalem Post reported that, “A senior US official told Fox News that if the Islamic Republic ordered the attack, then the US would fully recognize Israel’s right to strike Iran in response.”
Israel’s weaponisation of the terrorist attack in Bondi is reminiscent of how Benjamin Netanyahu weaponised the 9/11 attacks to draw America into Middle Eastern wars for Israel.
After the 9/11 attacks, Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that they were “very good” for Israel, because they would “strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror”.
This, in effect, meant using 9/11 to draw the U.S. into endless regime change wars in the Middle East against countries that had no ties to Al Qaeda but were in the way of Israel’s geopolitical goals.
The top U.S. general, Wesley Clark, said that after 9/11, the U.S. came up with a plan to “take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran”.
Years later, on Piers Morgan’s show, Wesley Clark said that the hit list of countries came from a study that was “paid for by the Israelis”, which “said that if you want to protect Israel, and you want Israel to succeed… you’ve got to get rid of the states that are surrounding” adding that, “this led to all that followed” (i.e. regime change wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria etc.)
Yet again, Israel is weaponising a terrorist attack to manufacture consent for the final regime change war on their hit list.
Hillary Clinton Says Pro-Palestine Protestors Don’t Know History, While She Distorts The Actual History.
The Dissident | December 3, 2025
Former Secretary of State and failed 2016 presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, recently emerged from the shadows to give a condescending lecture to pro-Palestine protestors at the “Israel Hayom” conference.
At the Zionist conference, Clinton said, “Students, smart, well-educated young people from our own country, where were they getting their information? they were getting their information from social media, particularly TikTok,” adding, “That is where they were learning about what happened on October 7, what happened in the days, weeks, and months to follow. That’s a serious problem. It’s a serious problem for democracy, whether it’s Israel or the United States, and it’s a serious problem for our young people”.
She claimed that pro-Palestine protestors “did not know history, had very little context, and what they were being told on social media was not just one-sided, it was pure propaganda”.
She added, “It’s not just the usual suspects. It’s a lot of young Jewish Americans who don’t know the history and don’t understand.”
Previously, when Hillary Clinton made similar statements, she elaborated on the “history” she claims pro-Palestine protestors don’t understand, namely the claim that her husband, Bill Clinton, when president, gave Palestinians a chance to “have a state of their own” and Palestinians rejected it- a blatant distortion of the actual history.
The Actual History.
In reality, Bill Clinton began negotiating his Oslo agreement between Israel and Palestine in 1993, but as Palestinian analyst Muhammad Shehada noted:
In 1993, Israel was compelled to accept the Oslo Accords by its failure to violently crush the First Intifada and its inability to cope with international isolation, pressure, and the economic, diplomatic, and political damage resulting from its “breaking the bones”strategy against unarmed civilian protesters and children.
The world hailed Oslo as a new era of peace, but Israel put enough loopholes in the agreement to avoid allowing an end to the occupation. Prime Minister (Yitzhak) Rabin, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for Oslo, made it abundantly clear that it was merely about separation, not Palestinian statehood.
“We do not accept the Palestinian goal of an independent Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan. We believe there is a separate Palestinian entity short of a state,” he said.
Apartheid means ‘separateness’, and this is what transpired on the ground. Israeli settlements grew exponentially, and more settlers moved into the occupied territory during the “peace process” than before Oslo. Palestinians, meanwhile, were forced to police Israel’s occupation and thwart armed resistance, making apartheid cost-free for Tel Aviv.
Furthermore, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was Israeli Prime Minister from 1996-1999, is on video boasting that while Prime Minister, he sabotaged the Oslo agreements and manipulated Bill Clinton into doing so.
In the leaked video, Benjamin Netanyahu boasts that “They (Clinton administration) asked me before the election if I’d honor [the Oslo accords] I said I would, but … I’m going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the ‘67 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones; as far as I’m concerned, the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go argue” adding, “from that moment on, I de facto put an end to the Oslo accords”.
Netanyahu went on to say, “I know what America is, America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way”.
Israeli journalist Gideon Levy noted at the time the video came out, “No more claims that the Palestinians are to blame for the failure of the Oslo Accords. Netanyahu exposed the naked truth to his hosts at Ofra: he destroyed the Oslo accords with his own hands and deeds, and he’s even proud of it. After years in which we were told that the Palestinians are to blame, the truth has emerged from the horse’s mouth.”
The following year, in 2000, when Netanyahu was out of office, Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat and the newly elected Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak met with Bill Clinton at Camp David in an attempt to resurrect the peace process that Benjamin Netanyahu had sabotaged. Hillary Clinton claims that Israel conceded every Palestinian demand for a Palestinian state, but Arafat rejected it.
This, too, is a complete distortion of history. As Muhammad Shehada noted:
In 2000, Israel made clear at Camp David that the maximum it would offer Palestinians was not a sovereign independent state, but rather three discontiguous Bantustans separated by Israeli settlements and military checkpoints without any right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Israel would retain control over Palestine’s airspace, radio, cellphone coverage, and borders with Jordan, and maintain its military bases in 13.3% of the West Bank while annexing 9% and even keeping three settlement blocks in Gaza that cut the enclave into separate pieces.
Robert Malley, Bill Clinton’s special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs, who led the negotiations at Camp David, calls the claim that Yasser Arafat rejected a good deal a “myth,” adding that “the deal nevertheless didn’t meet the minimum requirements of any Palestinian leader”.
Robert Malley in the New York Times wrote that it is a myth that “Israel’s offer met most if not all of the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations,” adding that under the offer at Camp David, “Israel was to annex 9 percent of the West Bank”, “While it (Palestine) would enjoy custody over the Haram al Sharif, the location of the third-holiest Muslim shrine, Israel would exercise overall sovereignty over this area” and “As for the future of refugees — for many Palestinians, the heart of the matter — the ideas put forward at Camp David spoke vaguely of a ‘satisfactory solution,’ leading Mr. Arafat to fear that he would be asked to swallow an unacceptable last-minute proposal.”
As Journalist Seth Ackerman reported under the Camp David agreement,
-(Israel) would annex strategically important and highly valuable sections of the West Bank—while retaining “security control” over other parts—that would have made it impossible for the Palestinians to travel or trade freely within their own state without the permission of the Israeli government
-The annexations and security arrangements would divide the West Bank into three disconnected cantons. In exchange for taking fertile West Bank lands that happen to contain most of the region’s scarce water aquifers, Israel offered to give up a piece of its own territory in the Negev Desert—about one-tenth the size of the land it would annex—including a former toxic waste dump.
-Because of the geographic placement of Israel’s proposed West Bank annexations, Palestinians living in their new ‘independent state’ would be forced to cross Israeli territory every time they traveled or shipped goods from one section of the West Bank to another, and Israel could close those routes at will. Israel would also retain a network of so-called “bypass roads” that would crisscross the Palestinian state while remaining sovereign Israeli territory, further dividing the West Bank.
-Israel was also to have kept ‘security control’ for an indefinite period of time over the Jordan Valley, the strip of territory that forms the border between the West Bank and neighboring Jordan. Palestine would not have free access to its own international borders with Jordan and Egypt—putting Palestinian trade, and therefore its economy, at the mercy of the Israeli military.
-Had Arafat agreed to these arrangements, the Palestinians would have permanently locked in place many of the worst aspects of the very occupation they were trying to bring to an end. For at Camp David, Israel also demanded that Arafat sign an ‘end-of-conflict’ agreement stating that the decades-old war between Israel and the Palestinians was over, and waiving all further claims against Israel.
Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami, who was a key part of the Camp David negotiations, admitted “Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian, I would have rejected Camp David, as well”.
Following the meeting at Camp David, as journalist Jon Schwarz noted, “Clinton had promised Arafat that he would not blame him if the talks failed. He then reneged after the summit ended. Nonetheless, the Israelis and Palestinians continued to negotiate through the fall and narrowed their differences.”
As Schwarz noted, “Clinton came up with what he called parameters for a two-state solution in December 2000,” and “the Israelis and the Palestinians kept talking in late January 2001 in Taba, Egypt,” but “it was not the Palestinians but (Ehud) Barak who terminated the discussions on January 27, a few weeks before Israeli elections.”
Following the election, as Schwarz notes, “Barak was defeated by Ariel Sharon, who did not want a Palestinian state and did not restart the talks. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that the Clinton parameters ‘are not binding on the new government to be formed in Israel.’”
Pro- Palestinian Protestors Do Understand History, Including The History of Hillary Clinton’s War Crimes.
In reality, Hillary Clinton- being the narcissist that she is-has an issue with pro-Palestinian protestors, not because they don’t understand history, but because they understand the history of her war crimes she had committed.
At Columbia University, where Clinton teaches a class on international relations, she has been called out directly by pro-Palestine protestors for her war crimes in the Middle East.
When Hillary Clinton hosted an event at the University with Sheryl Sandberg, laundering the claims from Sandberg’s atrocity propaganda film “Screams Before Silence”, which used misinformation to launder the false claim that Hamas committed mass rape on Ocotber 7th, one student protestor correctly pointed out she was pushing atrocity propaganda, and that she had used the same propaganda to justify the 2011 regime change war in Libya, saying, “You’ve done this before…You exploited sexual violence in Libya so you could justify US militarization. If you were enraged about sexual violence, you’d be talking about the sexual violence in Palestine and the sexual violence that they endure daily”.
Indeed, in 2011, Hillary Clinton pushed debunked claims that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi ordered mass rape against civilians, which was used to justify the U.S.-led NATO regime change bombing in the country, which turned it into a failed state rife with ISIS bases and open slave markets.
While the once-prosperous country was turned into a failed state, Netanyahu cheered the regime change bombing, hoping it would lead to similar regime change in Iran.
Similarly, Sheryl Sandberg’s film that Hillary Clinton laundered has been completely discredited.
The film used supposed confessions from Palestinians as evidence that mass rape happened, but the UN later documented that the “confession” videos were extracted using torture and put out for propaganda purposes, noting, “The Commission reviewed several videos where detainees were interrogated by members of the ISF, while placed in an extremely vulnerable position, completely subjugated, when confessing to witnessing or committing rape and other serious crimes. The names and faces of the detainees were also exposed. The Commission considers the distribution of such videos, purely for propaganda purposes, to be a violation of due process and fair trial guarantees. In view of the apparent coercive circumstances of the confessions appearing in the videos, the Commission does not accept such confessions as proof of the crimes confessed.”
Furthermore, the film’s central “witness”, Rami Davidian, has been discredited even by Israeli media.
Israeli investigative journalist Raviv Drucker uncovered that Rami Davidian- who is featured heavily in the propaganda film claiming to have witnessed “mass rape”- was telling, “stories made up from beginning to end. Hair-raising stories that never, ever occurred”.
In other words, student protestors were correct that Hillary Clinton previously used false stories of mass rape to justify war in Libya and was continuing to use false stories of mass rape to justify genocide- and real mass rape by IDF soldiers- in Gaza.
As the United Nations documented, the fabricated stories of Palestinians committing mass rape on Ocotber 7th were used to justify the continuation of the genocide in Gaza, and “the sharp increase in sexual violence against Palestinian women and men … seemingly fueled by similar desire to retaliate.”
Furthermore, at another Colombia University event, a pro-Palestine protestor called out Hillary Clinton’s support for America’s criminal wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen and for continuing to cheer on war crimes and genocide in Gaza, saying, “Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, you are a war criminal, the people of Libya, the people of Iraq, the people of Syria, the people of Yemen, the people of Palestine as well as the people of America will never forgive you”.
In reality, Hillary Clinton knows that pro-Palestine protestors are well aware of her past war crimes in the Middle East, well aware of her and her husband’s distortion and lies about the Oslo Accords and Camp David, and well aware of the fact that she is manufacturing consent for genocide- and so in turn smears them.
On the ‘Legitimate Authority to Kill’
By Laurie Calhoun | The Libertarian Institute | November 18, 2025
“I don’t think we’re gonna necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. Okay? We’re gonna kill them. You know? They’re gonna be like dead. Okay.”- President Donald Trump, October 23, 2025
As of today, the Trump administration has launched missile strikes on at least nineteen boats in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, terminating the lives of more than seventy unnamed persons identified at the time of their deaths only as “narcoterrorists.” The administration has claimed that the homicides are legal because they are battling a DTO or “Designated Terrorist Organization” in a “non-international armed conflict,” labels which appear to have been applied for the sole purpose of rationalizing the use of deadly force beyond any declared war zone.
An increasing number of critics have expressed concern over what President Trump’s effective assertion of the right to kill anyone anywhere whom analysts in the twenty-first-century techno-death industry deem worthy of death. Truth be told, as unsavory as it may be, Trump is following a precedent set and solidified by his recent predecessors, one which has consistently been met with both popular and congressional assent.
The idea that leaders may summarily execute anyone anywhere whom they have been told by their advisers poses a threat to the state over which they govern was consciously and overtly embraced by Americans in the immediate aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Unfortunately, all presidents since then have assumed and expanded upon what has come to be the executive’s de facto license to kill with impunity. Neither the populace nor the congress has put up much resistance to the transformation of the “Commander in Chief” to “Executioner in Chief.” Fear and anger were factors in what transpired, but the politicians during this period were also opportunists concerned to retain their elected offices.
Recall that President George W. Bush referred to himself as “The Decider,” able to wield deadly force against the people of Iraq, and the Middle East more generally, “at a time of his choosing.” This came about, regrettably, because the congress had relinquished its right and responsibility to assess the need for war and rein in the reigning executive. That body politic declined to have a say in what Bush would do, most plausibly under the assumption that they would be able to take credit for the victory, if the mission went well, and shirk responsibility, if it did not.
Following the precedent set by President Bush, President Barack Obama acted on his alleged right to kill anyone anywhere deemed by his targeted-killing czar, John Brennan, to be a danger to the United States. The Obama administration commenced from the premise that the Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMFs) granted to Bush made Obama, too, through executive inheritance, “The Decider.” Obama authorized the killing of thousands of human beings through the use of missiles launched by remote control from drones in several different countries. To the dismay of a few staunch defenders of the United States Constitution, some among the targeted victims were even U.S. citizens, denied the most fundamental of rights articulated in that document, above all, the right to stand trial and be convicted of a capital offense in a court of law, by a jury of their peers, before being executed by the state.
As though that were not bad enough, in 2011, Obama authorized a systematic bombing campaign against Libya, which removed Moammar Gaddaffi from power in a regime change as striking as Bush’s removal from power of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Rather than rest the president’s case for war on the clearly irrelevant Bush-era AUMFs, Obama’s legal team creatively argued that executive authority sufficed in the case of Libya no less, because the mission was not really a “war,” since no ground troops were being deployed. Obama’s attack on Libya, which killed many people and left the country in shambles, had no more of a congressional authorization than does Trump’s series of assaults on the people of Latin America today.
It is refreshing to see, at long last, a few more people (beyond the usual antiwar critics) awakening to the absurdity of supposing that because a political leader was elected by a group of human beings to govern their land, he thereby possesses a divine right to kill anyone anywhere whom he labels as dangerous, by any criterion asserted by himself to suffice. President Trump maintains that Venezuela is worthy of attack because of the drug overdose epidemic in the United States, a connection every bit as flimsy as the Bush administration’s ersatz linkage of Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda. Operating in a fact-free zone akin to that of Bush, Trump persists in insisting that the drugs allegedly being transported by the small boats being blown up near Venezuela are somehow causally responsible for the crisis in the United States, even though the government itself has never before identified Venezuela as a source of fentanyl. In truth, Trump has followed a longstanding tradition among U.S. presidents to devise a plausible or persuasive pretext to get the bombing underway, and then modify it as needed, once war has been waged.
In the 1960s, the U.S. government claimed that North Vietnam would have to be toppled in order for Americans to remain free. The conflict escalated as a result of false interpretations of the 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident, which came to be parroted by the press and repeated by officials even after the pretext for war had been debunked. The U.S. intervention in Vietnam ended unceremoniously with the military’s retreat, and no one was made less free by the outcome, save the millions of human beings destroyed over a decade of intensive bombing under a false “domino theory” of how communist control of Vietnam would lead to the end of capitalism and the enslavement of humanity.
Beginning in 1989, the country of Colombia became the focus of a new “War on Drugs,” the result of which was, for a variety of reasons too complicated (and frankly preposterous) to go into here, an increase in the use of cocaine by Americans. In the early twenty-first century, Americans were told that the Taliban in Afghanistan had to be removed from power in order to protect the U.S. homeland and to secure the freedom of the people of Afghanistan. The military left that land in 2021, with the Taliban (rebranded as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan) once again the governing political authority. Many thousands of people’s lives were destroyed during the more than two decades of the “War on Terror,” but there is no sense in which anyone in Afghanistan was made more free by the infusion of trillions of U.S. dollars into the region.
Let these examples suffice to show (though others could be cited) that no matter how many times U.S. leaders insist that war has become necessary, a good portion of the populace, apparently oblivious to all of the previous incantations of false but seductive war propaganda, comes to support the latest mission of state-inflicted mass homicide. Among contemporary world leaders, U.S. officials have been the most flagrantly bellicose in this century, and they certainly have killed, whether directly or indirectly, many more human beings than any other government in recent history. This trend coincides with a marked rise in war profiteering, as a result of the LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Program) scheme of the late secretary of Defense and Vice President Dick Cheney, whose policies made him arguably the world’s foremost war entrepreneur.
The general acceptance by the populace of the idea that conflicts of interest no longer matter in decisions of where, when, and against whom to wage war, has resulted in an increased propensity of government officials to favor bombing over negotiation, and war as a first, not a last, resort. Because of the sophistication of the new tools of the techno-death industry, and the establishment of a plethora of private military companies (PMCs) whose primary source of income derives from government contracts, there are correspondingly more war profiteers than there were in the past. Many apparently sincere war supporters among the populace are not profiteers but instead evince a confused amalgam of patriotism and pride, and are often laboring under the most effective galvanizer of all: fear.
The increasing influence on U.S. foreign policy of the military-industrial complex notwithstanding, it would be a mistake to suppose that the folly of war has anything specifically to do with the United States. The assumption of a legitimate authority to kill on the part of political leaders has a long history and has been embraced by people for many centuries, beginning with monarchic societies wherein the “received wisdom” was that rulers were effectively appointed to rule by God Almighty and therefore acting under divine authority. The fathers of just war theory, including St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, lived and wrote in the Middle Ages, when people tended to believe precisely that.
As a result of the remarkable technological advances made over the past few decades, the gravest danger to humanity today does not inhere, as the government would have us believe, in the possibility of havoc wreaked by small groups of violent dissidents. Instead, the assertion of the right to commit mass homicide by political leaders inextricably mired in an obsolete worldview of what legitimate authority implies has led to the deaths of orders of magnitude more human beings than the actions said by war architects to justify recourse to deadly force.
Today’s political leaders conduct themselves as though they are permitted to kill not only anyone whom they have been persuaded to believe is dangerous, but also anyone who happens to be located within the radius of a bomb’s lethal effects. This abuse of power and insouciance toward human life has been seen most glaringly since October 7, 2023, in the comportment of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under whose authority the military has ruthlessly attacked and terrorized the residents of not only Gaza, but also Lebanon, Syria, Qatar, Iran, and Iraq, on the grounds that militant Hamas members were allegedly hiding out in the structures being bombed.
Even as piles of corpses have amassed, and millions of innocent persons have been repeatedly terrorized by the capricious bombing campaigns, Zionists and their supporters reflexively bristle and retort to critics that Netanyahu’s intentions were always to save the hostages. It was certainly not his fault if Hamas persisted in using innocent people as human shields! As a result of this sophism, the IDF was able to kill on, wholly undeterred, massacring many thousands of people who posed no threat whatsoever. Throughout this savage military campaign, the IDF has ironically been shielded by the human shield maneuvers of Hamas.
The “good intentions” trope has served leaders frighteningly well and, like the so-called legitimate authority to kill, is a vestige of the just war paradigm, which continues rhetorically to inform leaders’ proclamations about military conflict, despite being based on an antiquated worldview the first premises of which were long ago abandoned by modern democratic societies. With rare exceptions, people do not believe (pace some of the pro-Trump zealots) that their leaders were chosen by God to do what God determines that they should do. Instead, modern people are generally well aware that their elected officials arrive at their positions of power by cajoling voters into believing that their interests will be advanced by their favored candidates, while fending off, by hook or by crook, would-be contenders who, too, claim that they will best further the people’s interests. Despite debacles such as the U.S. interventions in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Libya, the just war theory’s “Doctrine of Double Effect,” according to which what matter are one’s leaders’ intentions, not the consequences of their actions, continues to be wielded by war propagandists, undeterred by the sort of ordinary, utilitarian calculus which might otherwise constrain human behavior on such a grand scale.
The slaughter of hundreds of thousands and the harm done to millions more persons in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. government was said to be justified by the architects of the War on Terror by the killing of approximately 3,000 human beings on September 11, 2001. Similarly, the Israeli government’s slaughter of many times more people than the number of hostages serving as the pretext for mass bombing was a horrible confusion, an affront to both basic mathematics and common sense. Nonetheless, it was said to be supported by the false and sophomoric, albeit widespread, notion that “our” leaders (the ones whom we support) have good intentions, while “the evil enemy” has evil intentions. That notion is, at best, delusional, for it entails that one’s own tribe has intrinsically good intentions and anyone who disagrees is an enemy sympathizer, the absurdity of which is clear to anyone who has ever traveled from one country to another. Stated simply: geographical location has no bearing whatsoever on the moral status of human beings, what should be obvious from the incontestable fact that no one ever chooses his place of birth.
Beyond its sheer puerility, the “We are good, and they are evil!” assumption gives rise to a very dangerous worldview on the part of leaders in possession of the capacity to commit mass homicide with impunity, as leaders such as Netanyahu and Trump, along with many others, currently do. Note that the same assumption was made by Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Stalin, and every other political mass murderer throughout history. Most recently, when supporters of Israel began to characterize anyone who voiced concern over what was being done to the Palestinians as “Hamas sympathizers,” they embraced the very same framework which came to dominate the U.S. military’s efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan as people who opposed the invasions were lumped together indiscriminately with the perpetrators of the attacks of September 11, 2001, and denounced as terrorists.
It is obvious to anyone rational why dissidents become increasingly angry as they directly witness the toll of innocent victims multiply. The very same type of ire was experienced by Americans when their homeland was attacked. Yet in Afghanistan and Iraq, the idea that human beings have a right to defend their homeland was seemingly forgotten by the invaders, and little if any heed was paid by the killers to the perspective of the invaded people themselves, who inveighed against the slaughter and mistreatment of their family members and neighbors, even as it became more and more difficult to deny that the U.S. government was in fact creating more terrorists than it eliminated.
Returning to 2025, President Donald Trump continues to authorize the obliteration of a series of small vessels off the shore of Venezuela and in the Pacific Ocean. It is unclear who is behind this arbitrary designation of some—not all—boats alleged to be loaded with drugs to be sunk rather than intercepted by the Coast Guard, which until now has been the standard operating procedure—and with good reason. According to Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), more than 25% of the vessels stopped and searched by the Coast Guard on suspicion of drug trafficking are found not to contain any contraband whatsoever. Senator Paul has also made an effort to disabuse citizens of the most egregious of the falsehoods being perpetrated by the Trump administration, to wit: The country of Venezuela is not now and has never been a producer of fentanyl, the primary cause of the overdose epidemic in the United States.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, a denizen of the fact-challenged Trump world, appears to delight in posting short snuff films of the Department of War missile strikes, most of which have left no survivors nor evidence of drug trafficking behind. In two of the strikes, there were some survivors, who were briefly detained by the U.S. government before being repatriated to their country of origin. The incoherence of the administration’s treatment of these persons—alleged wartime combatants, according to every press release regarding all of these missile strikes—has caught the attention of an increasing number of critical thinkers.
Senator Rand Paul has admirably attempted, on multiple occasions, to wrest control of the war powers from the executive and return it to the congress. Most recently, he drew up legislation to prevent Trump from bombing Venezuela, well beyond the scope of the AUMFs granted to George W. Bush at the beginning of the century, but the motion failed. Democratic Senator Fetterman, who voted against the bill along with most of the Republican senators, has evidently fallen under the spell of the techno-death industry propaganda according to which the president may kill anyone anywhere whom he deems even potentially dangerous to the people of the United States. Since the legislation was voted down, Trump and his team no doubt view this as a green light. The president may not have a new AUMF, but the senate, by rejecting Rand Paul’s legislation, effectively signaled that he does not need one. Fire away!
What all of this underscores is what became progressively more obvious throughout the Global War on Terror: most elected officials and their delegated advisers are not critical thinkers but base their support of even obviously anti-Constitutional practices, such as the summary execution of suspects, as perfectly permissible, provided only that the populace has been persuaded to believe that it is in their best interests. In the twenty-first century, heads of state are being advised by persons who are themselves working with analysis companies such as Palantir, which devise the algorithms being used to select targets to kill, and have financial incentives for doing so.
What began as a revenge war against the perpetrators of 9/11 somehow transmogrified into the serial assassination of persons whose outward behavior matches computer-generated profiles of supposedly legitimate targets. The industry-captured Department of War’s inexorable and unabashed quest to maximize lethality has played an undeniable role in this marked expansion of state-perpetrated mass homicide based on an antiquated view of divinely inspired legitimate authority.
As the Trump administration prepares the populace for its obviously coveted and apparently imminent war on Venezuela, mainstream media outlets have reported a surprisingly high level of support among Americans for the recent missile strikes. According to one recent poll, 70% of the persons queried approve of the blowing up of boats involved in drug trafficking. If true, this may only demonstrate how effective the Smith-Mundt Modernization act has been since 2013, permitting the government to propagandize citizens to believe whatever the powers that be wish for them to believe. Given the government’s legalization of its own use of propaganda against citizens, we will probably never know how many of the social media users apparently expressing their exuberant support for the targeting of small boats on the assumption that they contain drugs headed for U.S. shores are in fact bots rather than persons. None of this bodes well for the future of freedom.
Agent of Chaos: Soros Deploys His Regime-Change Tactics in the US
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 29.08.2025
Donald Trump demonstrates deep understanding of George Soros’ nefarious role in supporting “engineered chaos,” both inside the US and abroad, retired Colonel Hatem Saber, an Egyptian expert in international counterterrorism and information warfare, tells Sputnik.
“Democrats use Soros and his organizations as tools for regime change,” Saber says.
Saber highlighted the evolution of Soros’ role by decades:
- 1970s–1990s: Supporting opposition movements in Eastern Europe against the USSR
- 2000s–2010s: Key role in color revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia
- 2011: Funding media networks and NGOs in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Syria to fuel the Arab Spring movements
- 2020–2024: Backing US anti-Trump protesters like Black Lives Matter, and campaigns defending illegal immigrants
Soros has extensive experience with color revolutions abroad, and Democrats capitalize on his ‘best practice’.
“Democrats could use the same tools against Trump within the US, mobilizing street protests through human rights and media campaigns funded by Soros’ foundations,” Saber said. “In this way, the ‘managed protest’ model, previously tested abroad, could be applied to weaken Trump and discredit his image domestically.”
The Egyptian expert warned that Soros currently targets several regions:
- Hungary and Poland – due to conflicts with the EU
- Africa – Nigeria, Sudan and Ethiopia – focusing on democracy and minorities
- Middle East – Egypt, Saudi Arabia and UAE – where his “open society” agenda is opposed
- Central Asia – to weaken Russian and Chinese influence and BRICS cooperation
Trump has threatened George Soros and his son Alex with federal charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
Israel dangles aid for South Sudan amid reports of Gaza expulsion talks
The Cradle | August 18, 2025
Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced on 18 August that it plans to provide “urgent” humanitarian assistance to South Sudan, following recent reports that Tel Aviv was engaged in efforts to expel Palestinians from Gaza to the east African nation.
Israel’s Agency for International Development Coordination “will provide urgent humanitarian assistance to vulnerable populations in the country” due to “the severe humanitarian crisis in South Sudan,” the Foreign Ministry said.
The aid will include medical supplies, water purification supplies, gloves and face masks, special hygiene kits, and food packages.
This comes as a cholera outbreak is plaguing the country, which “suffers from a severe shortage of resources,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry added.
IsraAID, an Israeli NGO operating in South Sudan, will also assist in the aid plan, the Foreign Ministry went on to say.
The visit comes as Israel is preparing to occupy Gaza City and forcibly displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is committed to implementing an expulsion plan announced by US President Donald Trump at the start of the year, framed as a humanitarian initiative to “relocate” Palestinians to a safer place.
Trump said he would make Gaza the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Israel and the US have reportedly been in contact with several countries as part of the effort to expel Gaza’s population.
Last week, several sources cited by AP said Israel is in talks with South Sudan about the potential relocation of Palestinians from Gaza to the East African country.
The sources said it is unclear how far the negotiations have advanced.
Following the report, South Sudan’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement on 13 August denying that it is engaged in negotiations with Israel to take Palestinians from Gaza, rejecting such claims as unfounded and not representative of the government’s position.
In February, Hebrew news outlet Channel 12 reported that Morocco, the Puntland State of Somalia, and the Republic of Somaliland are being considered as places to relocate Palestinians as part of Trump’s controversial plan.
Somalia and Somaliland denied these reports earlier this year – saying they received no such proposals.
According to a Wall Street Journal report, Israel has identified six countries to negotiate with regarding relocating Gaza residents, including Syria, Libya, Somaliland, and South Sudan. The report says the efforts are not going well, and that previous talks on the matter “didn’t make much progress.”
Syria and Libya have not responded to requests for comment.
Sources who spoke with NBC News earlier this year had said Trump is working on a plan to “permanently relocate” as many as one million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya.
“Smart War” and State Terrorism
By Laurie Calhoun | The Libertarian Institute | July 1, 2025
On June 16, 2025, President Donald Trump threatened the 10 million inhabitants of Tehran, Iran, with death, for their government’s alleged nuclear aspirations.
The message was posted to the president’s Truth Social account, shared on X/Twitter, and then picked up by all major mass media outlets, making it common knowledge to everyone on the planet that Trump was preparing to join Israel’s war on Iran.
On June 17, 2025, President Trump directly threatened Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei with assassination.
Sometimes crazy people issue vague threats which they have no power to follow through on. Such persons are best avoided and ignored. In order to be effective, death threats must be credible, otherwise there is no fear generated in the persons being addressed, for they recognize that they are dealing with no more and no less than a feckless buffoon. Whatever one may think of President Trump, his menacing social media posts are credible threats, given his official role as commander-in-chief with the power to unleash formidable military might on the people of the world. In case anyone did not already know this, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reminded the press corps on June 20, 2025, that “Iran and the entire world should know that the United States military is the strongest and most lethal fighting force in the world, and we have capabilities that no other country on this planet possesses.”
Trump’s warning to the entire population of Tehran that they should all evacuate the city was a fortiori a credible threat, given the U.S. government’s wide-ranging “War on Terror,” during which both Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded and occupied. Several other countries were subjected to thousands of missile strikes “outside areas of active hostilities,” that is, where there were no U.S. troops present and thus no force-protection pretext for the use of state-inflicted homicide.
Verbal threats of the use of deadly force by a president often culminate in military action because the commander may be easily persuaded by his advisors to believe that he (and the nation) will lose credibility if he fails to follow through on his words, which, he is told, would be a sign of weakness. Predictably enough, then, on June 22, 2025, President Trump delivered on his threat to bomb Iran, although he claimed to have struck only three specific sites: Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz. It was at these sites where nuclear enrichment and the development of nuclear arms were allegedly underway. The Trump administration’s Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reported to members of congress in March 2025: “The [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”
On June 17, 2025, when a journalist reminded Trump of Director Gabbard’s assessment, the president bluntly blurted out, “I don’t care what she said.” It has become increasingly obvious that Trump’s foreign policy in the Middle East is primarily informed not by his own cabinet but by the intelligence services of Israel, above all, Mossad.
For anyone unfamiliar with the modus operandi and general demeanor of Mossad, I recommend the films Munich (2005), The Gatekeepers (2012), and The Operative (2020).
That Trump has been decisively influenced by the government of Israel was further evidenced by his direct threat against Supreme Leader Khamenei and the fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been calling for regime change in Iran for decades.
On June 20, 2025, two days before Trump’s missile strikes on Iran, Director Gabbard did an about-face, insisting that her earlier testimony before congress had been misrepresented and ignored her finding that Iran had been enriching uranium:
Gabbard’s retraction, or creative reinterpretation, of her former testimony bears similarities to the case of Bush administration Secretary of State Colin Powell, who initially opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq and then for reasons which remain unclear suddenly became one of the mission’s most ardent supporters. In Powell’s case, he went even so far as to present the case for war to a less-than-enthusiastic United Nations Security Council. After a colorful Powerpoint presentation featuring an array of ersatz evidence—ranging from speculation about Iraq’s aluminum test tubes, to a receipt for “yellow cake” purchase, to photos of what were claimed to be mobile chemical labs—Powell recognized that he did not have the votes needed to secure U.N. approval and so abruptly withdrew the war resolution. The United States then proceeded to invade Iraq unimpeded, claiming, among other things, that the 2003 military intervention was legal because of previous U.N. resolutions violated by President Saddam Hussein. In other words, after having sought U.N. approval, the U.S. government suddenly denied that it needed such approval before invading Iraq anyway.
Unlike George W. Bush, when Donald Trump bombed Iran “at a time of his choosing,” as they say, he did not have the support of the U.S. congress. Presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Trump all depended on the Bush-era AUMFs as they continued to lob missiles on several countries beyond Afghanistan and Iraq, including Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, et al. But the carte blanche AUMFs granted to Bush in 2001 and 2002 had nothing whatsoever to do with the conflict between Israel and Iran. Neocons naturally devise all manner of interpretive epicyclic curlicues to arrive at the conclusion that Iran is in fact “fair game” for bombing. As stated and ratified, however, the AUMFs granted by congress to George W. Bush were intended to facilitate the U.S. president’s quest to bring justice to the perpetrators of the September 11, 2001 crimes.
Lest anyone forget, President Trump was not unique among twenty-first century presidents in bombing countries whose residents had nothing to do with the shocking demolition of the World Trade Center. President Obama effected a regime change in Libya without securing the support of congress because, he claimed, it was not really a war, since he was not deploying any ground troops. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did her part to persuade Obama that “Gaddafi must go!” She later characterized the Libya intervention as a shining example of “smart power at its best,” even though a few U.S. State Department officials, including the ambassador to Libya, Christopher Steele, were killed in the post-bombing mêlée. Today, Libya is essentially a failed state. Obama himself has confessed that the biggest regret and worst mistake of his presidency (reported in The Guardian) was not having a plan for the aftermath of his supposedly “humanitarian” intervention, which he enlisted NATO to carry out.
In the immediate aftermath of the June 22, 2025 missile strikes, Trump officials followed the Obama administration’s Libya playbook in insisting that his attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was not the beginning of a long, protracted engagement in Iran. This was meant to draw contrast with the unpopular multi-decade wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ignoring Trump’s threat to the residents of Tehran, Vice President J.D. Vance and others recited the Obama administration refrain that the mission was “not a war” with Iran. As Vance explained, the limited missile strikes were carried out only in order to dismantle Iran’s nuclear facilities. According to the government of Iran, a total of 610 people were killed and thousands more injured by the bombs of the U.S. and Israeli governments. However, none of the persons who perished were Americans.
Availing himself of the Obama-era “smart war” trope, Vice President Vance also observed that Trump’s preemptive military strikes differed from those of his predecessors because, unlike Trump, the previous presidents were “dumb”. Oliver Stone produced a film, W (2008), which persuasively portrays Bush as a half-wit, but no one ever suggested that Vice President Dick Cheney or the cadre of other war profiteers and neocons who coaxed Bush into preemptively attacking Iraq were stupid.
In any case, by now, the U.S. government has directly massacred so many thousands of people (and millions indirectly) in so many different countries, often located outside areas of active hostility (war zones or lands under occupation), that the citizenry has become largely inured to it all. Tragically, over the course of the twenty-first century, we have witnessed an apparently permanent paradigm shift to the profligate state use of homicide to terrorize and kill anyone anywhere deemed dangerous or even suspicious by U.S. officials or their contracted analysts. This radical paradigm shift was made possible by a new technology: the weaponized drone, which began to be used by the Bush administration first under a pretext of force protection in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Bush team effectively initiated the Drone Age by firing a missile on a group of terrorist suspects driving down a road in Yemen on November 3, 2002.
As the Global War on Terror stretched on and angry jihadists began to proliferate and spread throughout the region, President Obama assumed the drone warrior mantel with alacrity, opting to kill rather than capture thousands of suspected terrorists outside areas of active hostilities. In his enthusiasm for drone killing, Obama went even so far as to intentionally and premeditatedly hunt down and kill U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki (located in Yemen at the time, in 2011), without indicting him, much less allowing him to stand trial, for his alleged crimes.
Following the Obama precedent, in 2015, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron opted to execute British nationals Ruhul Amin and Reyaad Khan, who were suspected of complicity in terrorism, after they had fled from the U.K. to Syria, and despite the fact that the parliament had rejected Cameron’s call for war on Syria. Cameron’s missile strikes against British citizens located abroad was all the more surprising because capital punishment is illegal in the U.K. as well as the European Union, of which Britain was a member at that time.
One state-perpetrated assassination leads to another, and on January 3, 2020, President Trump authorized the targeted killing via drone strike of a top Iranian commander, Qassem Soleimani, who was in Baghdad on a diplomatic mission at the time. Trump openly proclaimed, and indeed bragged, that the homicide, which he authorized, was intentional and premeditated. According to the president, Soleimani was responsible for past and future attacks against both Israel and the United States. The summary execution of a specific, named individual would have been considered an illegal act of assassination in centuries past but today is accepted by many as an “act of war” for the sophomoric reason that it is carried out by a military strike rather than undercover spies armed with poisons or garrottes.
In view of Trump’s unabashed, vaunted, assassination of Soleimani, and his full-throated support of Netanyahu, the threat to liquidate Supreme Leader Khamenei was just as credible as the “evacuation order” to the entire population of Tehran. Leaders today exult over their use of cutting-edge technology to eliminate specific, named individuals, as though summarily executing the victims were obviously permissible, given that targeted killing is now regarded by governments the world over as one of the military’s standard operating procedures. Such unlawful actions were fully normalized as a tool of “smart war” during the eight-year Obama presidency.
Shortly after Trump officials went out on the media circuit to insist that the bombing of Iran’s alleged nuclear production facilities was not the initiation of a U.S.-Iran war, Trump took to social media again, this time to suggest that his administration’s ultimate goal might really be regime change:
Less than one day later, the new official narrative became that Trump had masterfully brought the “twelve-day war” to a miraculous close, thanks to his superlative deal-making capabilities.
All of this would be risible, if not for the fact that many millions of persons in Iran continue to live under a persistent threat of death, given the wildly unpredictable comportment of President Trump, seemingly exacerbated by his longstanding commitment to stand by Israel, regardless of how outrageously Netanyahu behaves. The more and more daring acts of assassination perpetrated by the government of Israel clearly illustrate where state-perpetrated homicide and its attendant terrorist effects under a specious guise of “smart war” eventually lead.
Targeting named terrorist suspects allegedly responsible for previous crimes swiftly expanded to include signature strikes against groups of unarmed persons designated potentially dangerous and located anywhere in the world—in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, or anywhere else they please. The Israeli government has even deployed exploding cellphones and car bombs, the latter of which was once a tactic primarily deployed by dissident anti-government groups and crime syndicates. The repeated use by the Israeli government of car bombs to kill research scientists illuminates the slippery slope from missile strikes outside areas of active hostilities to what are empirically indistinguishable from Mafia hits. Car bombs have long been used by the Mafia and other nongovernmental organized crime groups, but the Israeli government openly perpetrates the very same acts under cover of “national self defense”.
Washington’s normalization of assassinations has emboldened leaders such as Netanyahu, who today conducts himself according to the principle “everything is permitted” in the name of the sacrosanct State. Witness what has been going on in Gaza since October 7, 2023: terrorism, torture, starvation, and summary execution. All of this is being condoned by every leader in the world who continues to voice support for, or even aids and abets, Netanyahu’s mass slaughter. This support for mass slaughter is provided ostensibly under the assumption that the perpetrators are doing no more and no less than defending the State of Israel.
Following the examples of U.S. Presidents Trump and Obama, and UK Prime Minister Cameron, all of whom publicly vaunted their assassination prowess, Prime Minister Netanyahu, having apparently recognized that the implement of homicide is in fact morally irrelevant, openly and brazenly executes persons determined by Mossad to be dangerous, with no concern for the thousands of innocent persons’ lives ruined along the way. In Operation Red Wedding, the Israeli government claimed to have dispatched, in a matter of minutes, thirty senior officials associated with the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) including military chiefs and top commanders located throughout Iran at the opening of the June 2025 “Twelve-Day War.” The operation was praised by the pro-Israel media as featuring “bespoke” acts of targeted killing made possible by “pattern of life” intelligence.
Drone assassination, successfully marketed by the Obama team as “smart war,” smoothed the way to the uncritical acceptance by many citizens of the reprobate expansion of state killing to include acts historically committed by members of nongovernmental organized crime. Looking back, the rebranding by U.S. officials of political assassination as an act of war, provided only that the implement of death is a missile, was a slick and largely successful way of persuading U.S. citizens to believe that extrajudicial, state-inflicted homicide abroad is an acceptable means to conflict resolution. Even though it bypasses all of the republican procedures forged over millennia, including judicial means, for reconciling the rival claims of adversaries.
In the maelstrom of the twenty-first-century wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, assassination was labeled targeted killing and successfully sold to politicians as “smart war,” a surgically precise way to defeat the enemy without sacrificing combatant troops. Whichever label is used, assassination or targeted killing, acts of summary execution by governments involve the intentional, premeditated elimination of persons suspected to be possibly dangerous, a criterion so vague as to permit the targeting of virtually any able-bodied person who happens to be located in a place where terrorists are thought to reside.
There are three differences between “targeted killing” carried out by drone warriors and assassination. First, the weapon being used is a missile. Second, drone operators wear uniforms, while undercover assassins and hitmen do not. Third, far from being “surgically precise,” drone warfare increases the slaughter of innocent bystanders in their own civil societies, which is facilely dismissed as the “collateral damage” of war. In this way, the advent of lethal drones and their use outside areas of active hostility has served to terrorize entire populations forced to endure the hovering above their heads of machines which may—or may not—emit missiles at any given time on any given day.
Credible death threats to heads of state and evacuation orders issued to millions of people not only terrorize the persons being addressed, but also undermine the security of the citizens of the United States. The populace will bear the brunt of the blowback caused by such reckless behavior on the part of officials who operate with effective impunity and are ignorant of or oblivious to the nation’s republican origins. By launching preemptive missile strikes, the Pentagon does not protect but sabotages the interests and well-being of not only U.S. citizens but also the citizens of the world.
Nonetheless, many U.S. politicians and members of the populace, along with heads of state such as Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, et al., having been thoroughly seduced by the “smart war” marketing line, appear to have no problem whatsoever with the tyrannical and arguably deranged death threats of the U.S. president. They have become altogether habituated to the assassination of persons now regarded as a standard operating procedure of war. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen effectively condoned Trump’s behavior by issuing this statement in the aftermath of the June 22, 2025 U.S. missile strikes against Iran: “Iran must never acquire the bomb.”
If terrorism is the arbitrary killing of or threat of death against innocent persons, then there can be no further doubt that the largest state sponsor and perpetrator of terrorism in the twenty-first century is in fact the U.S. government. President Trump inherited from President Obama and his mentor, drone-killing czar John Brennan (appointed by Obama as CIA director in 2013), the capacity to terrorize entire civilian populations and execute individuals at his caprice. No less than every drone strike launched in the vicinity of civilian populations beyond war zones, Trump’s completely unhinged threat to a group of people with nowhere to seek refuge, and no way of knowing whether the U.S. president is issuing a serious warning or simply bluffing, attempting some sort of perverse ploy to bring Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei back to the negotiation table (where he was, before Israel began bombing Iran), was an act of terrorism.
It is not “smart” to terrorize millions of human beings in the name of preventing terrorism. It is a contradiction, pure and simple.
Laurie Calhoun is a Senior Fellow for The Libertarian Institute. She is the author of Questioning the COVID Company Line: Critical Thinking in Hysterical Times,We Kill Because We Can: From Soldiering to Assassination in the Drone Age, War and Delusion: A Critical Examination, Theodicy: A Metaphilosophical Investigation, You Can Leave, Laminated Souls, and Philosophy Unmasked: A Skeptic’s Critique. In 2015, she began traveling around the world while writing. In 2020, she returned to the United States, where she remained until 2023 as a result of the COVID-19 travel restrictions imposed by governments nearly everywhere.
