American Zionists are using Trump’s Republican Party to create a multicultural supremacist elite
By Matt Wolfson | Al Mayadeen | February 2, 2026
On January 13, 2025, seven days before Donald Trump’s second inauguration as president, The Free Press, the online magazine created by the Zionist operator Bari Weiss who has powerful connections to the Trump Administration, ran a profile which may say more about the ultimate causes of America’s current policies, and where those policies will likely lead, than any other public document.
The profile was of Amy Chua, famously the author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a mostly well-received cri de Coeur for what Chua sees as rigorous Chinese parenting; and less famously the John M. Duff, Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. The profile, drawing explicitly on Chua’s most publicly recognizable achievement, was titled “The Tiger Mother Roars Back,” and its subtitle reinforced its approach, an ardent rave: “Yale tried to run Amy Chua out. Now her former students, J.D. Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy, are headed to Washington. So is she.”
For people who follow the politics of America and so of America’s empire, the forwardness of this profile raises questions. Construed as a gesture of support for two politicians, Vance and Ramaswamy, who are attempting to woo the public on populist credentials, it seems misthought. There is nothing populist about Chua—and her lacks are tells about the lacks of her mentees. Indeed, it was under Chua’s mentorship that Vance wrote a bestselling book with the encouragement of another Chua mentee, Vance’s future wife Usha, blaming the failures of his lower-income Appalachian upbringing on the “cultural” deficiencies of the community which raised him. This is a view that, since entering politics with the aim of appealing to precisely that community, he has quickly disavowed. Ramaswamy, for his part, has fallen deeply and predictably afoul of populist Americans precisely by making that case in public.
So why would Weiss, who if nothing else is a strategic operator, run a piece on Chua connecting her to Vance and Ramaswamy as well as broadcasting Chua’s views, which are anathema to the people from whom Vance and Ramaswamy want support?
The answer is that, though Weiss is an ideologue focused on advancing “Israel’s” immediate interests, there is a “positive,” longer-term Zionist play in the works among her and her allies. I have reported in miniature on this play last year, in a September investigation of the philanthropic education donations of Bill Ackman, the Zionist financier: to seed a new ruling elite based on technological and management skills. But the project goes deeper. It amounts to the legitimation of a new ruling class in America centered on a narrow cadre of elites of three groups— Zionists, Hindutvas (Hindu supremacists), and, discernably but least specifically definably, East and Southeast Asian supremacists often with connections to countries where Buddhism has exercised significant influence.
These elites use their present success in America’s military corporate complex to make claims to group superiority. They then use those claims to justify special treatment for their groups and nations that allow them to solidify their power, and to solidify the hold of American empire, which they see as the rightful disseminator of “merit.” Their accelerating project will likely realize itself through the Republican Party, via Chua’s mentees, the Vances and Ramaswamy, among others, and it may ally itself with other right-wing influences as seemingly dissimilar but actually imitative as the white supremacy of Nicholas J. Fuentes. It is only now taking recognizable shape, and understanding its origins and spread is crucial to understanding the havoc it is already beginning to wreak in America and abroad.
That understanding begins with examining the arguments which influenced Vance and Ramaswamy; arguments made by Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld, her husband, a Yale Law professor and Jewish Zionist who writes for The Free Press. These arguments are noteworthy in that they look for “warps” in cultures to explain problems which other scholars have put down to military corporate power and its brute effects (outsourcing, conglomeration, the Wars on Crime and Drugs, unauthorized and some kinds of authorized immigration) on American life.
Indeed, the most straightforward reason why Vance’s Appalachian Americans as well as Black and Latino Americans have notably struggled is American imperial policy that has started at the top: labor outsourcing and urban mis-development, misthought immigration policies, and military corporate buildup. These policies have accrued for 60 years, and academics and writers have made the case against them for almost 50.
This book of Chua and Rubenfeld’s, where they lay out their view (The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America) does not emphasize these structural, practical explanations. Instead, Chua and Rubenfeld put “winners’” success in America over the last sixty years down to three group traits: specifically, “a superiority complex,” “insecurity,” and “impulse control.” According to The Triple Package, “a superiority complex” means “a deeply internalized belief in your group’s specialness, exceptionality, or superiority” flowing from religion, civilization, or social traits. “Insecurity” means “a sense of being looked down on, a perception of peril, feelings of inadequacy, and a fear of losing what one has.” And “impulse control” means “the ability to resist… the temptation to give up in the face of hardship or quit.”
But the paradox of Chua’s and Rubenfeld’s explanation, which they don’t appear to realize, is that, taken logically on its face, it supports the structural, practical explanations they apparently ignore. Political theory and history show that groups in the grip of triple package holders’ emotional Cartesianism (possessing an a priori thesis, superiority, in the face of insecurity, and so willing to do anything to prove the thesis right) are reliable tools of arbitrary imperial power. Indeed, empires moving aspirant, insecure, determined groups into their own managerial elite is a defining feature of the Roman Empire; the British Empire in the American colonies and India; the German Empire; and the United Arab Emirates. In America’s empire, these co-opted groups have most prominently been the three which Chua and Rubenfeld write about most often and with whom they and their family most identify: Jewish Americans, Indian Americans, and East and Southeast Asian Americans.
All three of these groups experienced marginalization and persecution at the hands of various empires (the Russian and German; the British; the American) before 1950. Their members have attendantly experienced heightened levels of insecurity; and elite cadres of two of the three groups have adopted what most scholars consider to be clearly definable supremacist ideologies: Zionism, which was founded in 1897 and Hindutva ideology, which was founded in 1925. The third type of supremacy, East and Southeast Asian supremacy, is more diffuse but clearly discernable.
Unlike Zionism, which is linked to “Israel”, and Hindutva ideology which is linked to India, there are multiple countries at play and multiple labels under which claims of East and Southeast Asian supremacy are raised. Also, the way these claims are raised often surfaces less as outright supremacy and more as “cultural essentialism”—that there’s something in this group’s cultural “essence” that makes members more “successful.” Finally, research into outright supremacist manifestations from groups associated with them is more recent, usually under the headings of Buddhist or East Asian supremacy. Nonetheless, taking these distinctions into account, East and Southeast Asian success in America’s imperial complex and corresponding claims like Chua’s to superiority are recognizable trends: some of them embraced by supremacists who praise thinkers like Chua for what critics call their cultural supremacy.
I have reported at some length about how the process of these groups claiming power in American empire played out, beginning with Jewish Zionist elites in the 1960s. I examined these Zionist elites’ acceptance into the American military corporate complex by WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). I also pointed out that Zionists’ overall success accessing this complex came from their pursuit of narrow applied skills valued by the WASPs: economics, management theory, administrative law, engineering, finance, and technological proficiencies; a model the WASPs took quite consciously from European Empires. Zionists, in their own description, were easy marks for this kind of invitation to power that ultimately deracinates the culture of the people who accept it.
Theodor Herzl, the founder of the movement who embodies the terms of its successes and failures, was a marquee possessor of Chua’s and Rubenfeld’s triple package. He had grown up a secular Jew with little connection to his religion but a strong sense of his own superiority, and only embraced Zionist Judaism with a manic intensity when the Dreyfus Affair made him decide that he could never realize his ambitions without identifying as Jewish.
An instructive echo of Herzl’s mentality comes in the memoir of Martin Peretz, one of the early entrants into America’s corporate complex in the 1960s. Peretz, who taught at Harvard, owned The New Republic, the most influential Zionist magazine in the country, and played a prominent connective role in and near Wall Street, is in many senses a later-day Herzl. He is a high-status secular Jew with an admitted sense of insecurity who is also a fervid Zionist, and he writes in his memoir about himself and his friends who “made it” that
We were… from a strong culture that was an outsider culture, in the first generation when that culture could assert itself in American institutions. We weren’t constrained by old obligations because we were coming into a world that didn’t want us anyway. We had each other’s backs because we knew the kind of resentment arrivistes, and Jewish arrivistes, unleashed… We were the first ethnicity to break through into the ruling class institutions following the wane of Protestant influence, and we saw those institutions as the key to our flourishing.
Peretz’s Harvard mentee, Bill Ackman, the Zionist financier, is a good example of how younger Zionists operating in Herzl’s and Peretz’s tradition have swallowed this model whole. Ackman’s view of Harvard, where he is also a donor, falls along just these lines of imperial functionality:
As one of the oldest and perhaps the most notable of this country’s academic institutions, Harvard represents the gateway to elite status and to ‘making it’ in modern day American society. One need only look at the disproportionate numbers of Presidents, Nobel Laureates, and chairmen of Fortune 500 companies who have graduated from Harvard to understand the power of the Harvard degree. As a result, admission to Harvard has become the target of groups seeking upward mobility.
What goes unacknowledged here is that “elite status,” “upward mobility” and the skills that create them have only been an aspiration for most Americans since 1945, when the Cold War allowed WASPs to expand their institutions and use them to try to mold the country in their image. Before this point, most Americans understood their country as being predicated on towns and cities and states; and on a high degree of associational thickness, communal coherency, and decentralized government which allowed individuals a say in the terms of their lives. But Zionists were never open to an argument like this. Their strategy, like Herzl’s, was to enter empire and use it to rise, and it is not a coincidence that, almost immediately on accessing America’s military corporate complex, they opened America’s doors to Hindu and East and Southeast Asian operators who approached the matter of institutions and power on their terms.
The Zionists’ tool was the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which was sponsored by staunch Jewish Zionist Congressman Emmanuel Celler. The Act opened America’s elite universities to “high-skilled,” often upper-middle class arrivals from undemocratic or less democratic countries like India and China: people not particularly versed in constitutionalism but extremely well-versed in applied technical proficiencies valued by empire.
The most obvious beneficiaries were Hindu Americans. It was the 1965 legislation and its 1990 expansion by George H.W. Bush, the penultimate WASP president, which brought into this country the parents of Usha Vance; Vivek and Apoorva Ramaswamy; the pro-Zionist Republican operative and current Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon; and the U.S. Representatives Ro Khanna, Raja Krishnamoorthi, and Suhas Subramanyam. More decisively, as I reported in December, it has brought into the defense-tech mecca of Silicon Valley aggressive Hindu financial operators who have deep political sway. Much as, in the telling of anti-Zionist Jews like Norman Finkelstein, the converging success of Israelis and American Zionists off the largesse of America’s imperial complex hardened these players’ Zionistic belief in their Jewish supremacy, so a similar trend appears to have taken place with American Hindus who adopt some version of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindutva ideology. Their influence, as outlined by Andrew Cockburn in a groundbreaking article in Harpers, reaches deep and wide, in part through their connections to Zionists.
Somewhat more subtle than the Hindutva assumption of influence in America, but equally noteworthy has been the East and Southeast Asian, especially Chinese, accrual of influence here. WASPs had used their educational and financial influence to foster relationships with China going back to the 1870s. Later, Zionists took up that task: bringing Chinese elites into philanthropy and finance, aided by the 1965 legislation, which led to a sharp increase in high-skilled East and Southeast Asian immigration to America. Arguably the clearest window onto this process is the Committee of 100: a group with connections to Amy Chua founded in the late 1980s by influential Chinese Americans at the urging of Peretz ally and “Israel” defender Henry Kissinger, and with the aid of Peretz’s friend Yo-Yo Ma. As I traced in my report last year on the Committee’s growth, the Committee and some of its members have assiduously inserted themselves at crucial educational and philanthropic junctures. As I reported about their propaganda last April:
The obvious part of their message is that… America is a colorblind nation where, minus prejudice, anyone can succeed. In this schema, anyone questioning the loyalties or actions of those who have succeeded, like [members of the Committee] and their allies, are acting off of lower motives, and are anti-merit.
What is also instructive is that, despite vocal pushback to Chua’s ideas by regular readers, prominent East and Southeast Asian Americans and East Asian American organizations, including but not limited to the Committee of 100, have embraced Chua since she gained fame with her ideas and given her a public platform. Allies of Chua’s echo her arguments in a gentler way, among them the Chinese-American writer Sherryl WuDunn, a connection of Chua’s via other East Asian American organizations, whose husband Nicholas Kristof made a less constrictive, “essentialist” version of Chua’s cultural supremacist arguments in The New York Times. And cultural, ethnic, and even racial supremacists like the neoconservative Charles Murray have embraced Chua’s claims.
Jewish Zionists have been forging alliances with Hindu and East and Southeast Asian American arrivals at an accelerating rate for nearly 40 years. They have used these groups’ shared success to argue that any opposition to those groups with an outsized place in America’s military corporate complex comes from resentment and envy among people who don’t measure up.
In 1988, only 23 years after the Immigration and Nationality Act was signed, two years before the inception of the Committee of 100, and eight years before the Silicon Valley boom began, Bill Ackman, on the advice of his Harvard mentor Peretz, wrote an honors thesis entitled “Scaling the Ivy Wall: The Jewish and Asian Experience in College Admissions.” In the thesis, Ackman “draws parallels between the experience of Jews trying to gain admission to Harvard in the 1920s with the experience of applicants from Asia during the 1980s.” In 2024, gearing up for his crusade against anti-Zionism in universities, Ackman began making the rounds of newspapers, magazines, and online interviews, armed with his undergraduate thesis, arguing that the groups he wrote about in the 1980s (Jews and Asians) are technical achievers being discriminated against by opponents of merit.
That same year, Ackman’s ideological ally Bret Stephens featured in his Zionist magazine Sapir a piece quoting Ackman’s 1988 thesis by an ardent backer of Ackman’s ardent ally Vivek Ramaswamy: Rajiv Malhotra, arguably the most prominent Hindutva operating outside of India. Malhotra began this essay, an argument for “A Hindu Jewish Partnership”, by arguing that, like Asian Americans and Jews, Hindu Americans are “‘model minorities’ who have made much of the American dream” and must come together “to safeguard the world from the regressive movement against merit.” This notion that any resentment against those groups which seem to be steering American Empire flows from jealousy or resentment is shared by Amy Chua, who said, in a recent interview, that
There is tremendous resentment, fear, and insecurity about Asian-Americans because of college admissions… And then you’ve got China, a whole different source of insecurity.… Now on campus, I noticed that this anti-Chinese resentment slash fear is coming from both the Left and the Right, which is very unusual.
Tellingly, none of these arguments about “safeguarding merit” define merit as anything other than technical skills fit for empire, and this is not a bug but a feature of supremacist argument. Jewish, Hindu, and East and Southeast Asian supremacists justify their traditions based on their ability to impart skills that help empires claim power. Examples of this pattern range from Hindutvas who boast that “ancient Indians were proficient in stem cell technology and built aircrafts” in “an imagined Hindu golden age of scientific progress,” to equally remote Zionist narratives claiming that consumer innovations of all kinds originated with “Israel” to Amy Chua’s “conceptually loose” and factually dubious appropriation of her “meretricious” heritage for raising “successful” children. None of these arguments address the arguments of dissenters from within their traditions who think that, by attaching their traditions to a project of empire based on technical skills, supremacists have distorted the moral, intellectual, and cultural essences that made these traditions worth having. The most accurate description of the supremacists may in fact be “ethnopreneurs”: players who use their groups’ access to empire to show a public they assume is aspirant how to be like them, gaining recognition or profit by doing so.
The supremacists also have imitators, sometimes in the most seemingly unlikely of places. It was Nicholas J. Fuentes, nominally on the other side of the new Republican coalition from Ramaswamy and Chua and Rubenfeld and Weiss, who recently told Piers Morgan that “In Israel, they have my politics. If they had their way, it would only be Jewish people.” In fact, in “Israel”, it’s not Jewish people who are welcome; it’s only Jews openly committed to Jewishness as an imperial supremacist project, much as Fuentes is openly committed to an imperial supremacist project around white male Americans whom he says are victimized based on the superiority of their race.
Chua’s mentee J.D. Vance appears to be working to stabilize the Republican coalition in ways that may function, whatever his intent, to unite the supremacists. Even as Vance speaks implicitly in favor of including Nick Fuentes in the Republican Party and Vance’s ally Tucker Carlson gives Fuentes a platform, Vance’s most prominent ally, Erika Kirk, who is publicly committed to his 2028 presidential bid, is appearing in interviews with Zionists like Bari Weiss and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Vance only recently helped ink the deal that put Zionists, including Jared Kushner and the Ellisons, in control of TikTok; and in 2025 both Vance’s wife Usha and his mentor Chua gave rare, exclusive interviews to Weiss’s Free Press, which the Ellisons now own.
This year, Vance is scheduled to appear on CBS’s new Town Hall series, where he will be interviewed by Weiss. This looks like the rudiments of a new coalition of elites with nominally different heritages united by a shared conviction of supremacy. And policy is following suit to privilege these elites—not so much shrinking the “deep state” as Trump promised during his reelection campaign but redirecting it in ways that serve their interests:
“Israel”, with American support, is “modernizing” and “improving” Latin America and the Middle East using its technical prowess, compromising the sovereignty of nations and regions. Hindutva ideologists are coming to Silicon Valley, where Zionists arbitrate power. East and Southeast Asians are entering the Ivy League in record numbers with the aid of lawsuits from Zionist operatives, even as the Trump Administration has made no effort to shrink these universities’ power as the “gateway” to political influence.
The Muslim world, arguably Zionists’ and Hindutvas’ and Buddhist East Asians’ greatest enemy, has become our enemy. American Zionist operatives are using artificial intelligence to track anti-Zionist opinions online in conjunction with imperial outgrowths like Harvard in ways that sound quite similar to the Hindutva ideologue Rajiv Malhotra’s proposal in the Zionist magazine Sapir for an “Intellectual Iron Dome” in imitation of Israel’s defense system the Iron Dome. (This is a project seemingly imitative of Philip K. Dick’s dystopian novella The Minority Report: “to harness the powers of AI… to monitor and examine trends in antisemitism and Hinduphobia online and predict problems before they manifest.”) And, thanks to the Zionist Stephen Miller, the Trump Administration is deporting migrants of color while deracinating their “sh**hole” countries of oil in the name of serving the people for whom Fuentes claims to speak. Namely, a mostly white American population now “freed” from “third world” “leeches, killers, and entitlement junkies” but indentured in the same servitude to the military corporate elite.
In the face of unrelenting infiltration by these colonial supremacists of all sorts in pursuit of their own global Raj flowing from America, anti-imperial resistance at home and abroad, using law and popular politics, is the only sensible path.
Trump tells India to stop purchasing Iran oil, buy Venezuelan instead
Press TV – February 1, 2026
US President Donald Trump has told India to stop purchasing oil from Iran and instead supply its energy demands by buying crude from Venezuela.
“India is coming in, and they’re going to be buying Venezuelan oil as opposed to buying it from Iran. So, we’ve already made that deal, the concept of the deal,” Trump told reporters on board Air Force One on Saturday.
Earlier, Trump had threatened to slap fresh tariffs on India if New Delhi did not halt its purchase of oil from US adversaries.
However, New Delhi had resisted the threat, reminding the US president that Washington had no authority to determine the trading relations of other nations.
Trump is openly saying that he has taken full control of Venezuela’s oil industry following the US forces’ kidnapping of the South American country’s president, Nicolas Maduro.
Under the pretext of leading a cartel of drug and gun traffickers, Maduro was abducted from the presidential palace in Caracas last month and transferred to a prison facility in New York pending trial.
In the meantime, Trump has announced that the United States is controlling the proceeds of Venezuela’s oil sales. The Latin American country is among the top oil producers with the biggest proven reserves in the world.
“This Oil will be sold at its market price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social earlier last month.
Legal experts say Trump’s claim to Venezuela’s oil reserves is unlawful. There is expert consensus that Venezuela’s oil proceeds belong solely to its people.
How Trump’s Iran Gambit Could Blow Up the Entire Persian Gulf
By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – February 1, 2026
Washington’s aggressive preparations under Donald Trump’s leadership will not bring victory but are guaranteed to result in a humanitarian and economic catastrophe for every single country in the region. This would turn the Gulf’s vital waters into the epicenter of an uncontrollable fire.
The Persian Gulf region is once again teetering on the brink of an abyss. Under the pretext of “promoting regional security,” the United States, led by its unpredictable administration, is engaging in blatantly provocative military escalation. The arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group and large-scale Air Force exercises are not steps toward stability but classic intimidation tactics. In the current climate of extreme tension, such moves risk a catastrophic blowback.
Tehran has made it clear: this time, any attack, even a “surgical” one, will be considered a declaration of full-scale war. The consequences of this decision, born of desperation and confidence after repelling aggression in June 2025, will fall not on Washington but on Iran’s neighbors across the Gulf. The US, acting as an irresponsible arbiter, is ready to set fire to a house where others live.
Iran as the Cornered Victim: Why Deterrence No Longer Works
The Trump administration seems stuck in the past decade, believing the language of ultimatums and muscle-flexing can still force Tehran to capitulate. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei shattered that illusion in his sharp statement on January 26. Iran, he said, is “fully prepared to deliver a large-scale and regrettable response.” A key doctrinal change was articulated by a senior Iranian official to Reuters: “This time, we will consider any attack—limited, surgical, or kinetic—as a full-scale war.”
What does this mean in practice? It means Trump’s calculation of a precise strike with no serious consequences is a dangerous fantasy. Iran will no longer tie its hands by responding proportionally to a local incident. A strike on a nuclear facility? The retaliation will target American bases in Qatar, the UAE, and Bahrain, housing thousands of US troops and costly infrastructure. An attempt to eliminate a senior leader? As Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi stated, it would mean Iran “sets their world on fire and deprives them of any peace”—referring to asymmetric warfare by all means. Thus, the US is creating a situation where any spark, any miscalculation, will inevitably escalate into a high-intensity regional conflict.
Immeasurable Disaster for Gulf States: Economic Collapse and Humanitarian Crisis
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries must clearly understand: in case of war, they will not be bystanders or “quiet beneficiaries” but the front-line and primary victims.
– Blocking the Strait of Hormuz. This is not a threat but an inevitability in a full-scale conflict. Iran has repeatedly demonstrated the capabilities of its navy and coastal defense missile systems. Shutting down this narrow chokepoint, through which about 30% of the world’s seaborne oil trade passes, would send global prices into chaotic turmoil. However, the first budgets to collapse would be those of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, and Kuwait, whose existence depends on hydrocarbon exports. Global economies would withstand the shock, but the Gulf economies would plunge into a deep crisis.
– Strikes on Critical Infrastructure. Oil refineries and petrochemical complexes in Al-Jubail (Saudi Arabia) or Ras Laffan (Qatar), desalination plants, ports, airports —a ll these facilities are within range of Iranian missiles and drones. The result would be not only economic disaster but a humanitarian one: lack of fresh water, halted logistics, collapsed life-support systems in cities.
– Escalation Across All Fronts. The war would not be limited to exchanges between the US and Iran. It would immediately fuel conflicts in Yemen (where the Houthis would strike Saudi Arabia and the UAE with renewed force), Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. The US, with an ocean ensuring its security, can wage a “projection war.” The Gulf states have nowhere to retreat—the fire will rage at their doorstep and then spread inside.
Trump’s Irresponsibility and “Big Lie” Tactics
Donald Trump, whose foreign policy has always balanced between populism and rash aggression, is displaying glaring irresponsibility in this situation. His administration, instead of seeking diplomatic solutions, is deliberately ratcheting up tension, believing in its own impunity. However, as Baghaei rightly noted, “instability in the region is contagious,” and “any miscalculation by Washington will inevitably lead to the destabilization of the entire Middle East.”
The information warfare tactics employed deserve particular condemnation. As the Iranian Foreign Ministry pointed out, “the Zionist regime is the main source of fake news.” This refers to a targeted campaign of lies and disinformation, compared by Tehran to hysterical propaganda. False reports about secret diplomatic guarantees or mass executions in Tehran aim to create an image of Iran as an irrational and bloody regime in the eyes of the American public and the international community, justifying a “preemptive” strike. Trump, known for his fondness for loud but unverified statements, becomes the perfect conduit for this “big lie,” drowning out voices of reason.
The new strategy described by Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, appears even more cynical. He stated explicitly that the US has moved to provoking social crises within Iran to create a pretext for military intervention under the guise of “protecting human rights.” Funding and supporting “semi-terrorist urban groups” and attacks on national symbols — all are part of a hybrid war aimed at destroying internal solidarity.
What does this mean for the Gulf monarchies? It is a direct warning. If the US uses such methods against Iran today, tomorrow they could be applied to pressure any country in the region whose policy ceases to suit Washington. Supporting the American gamble today is buying a ticket into tomorrow’s turbulence, where internal stability becomes a bargaining chip in a grand geopolitical game.
Diplomacy: The Only Path to Saving the Region
Against this grim backdrop, the position of the United Arab Emirates provided a hopeful signal. They clearly stated that their territory, airspace, and waters would not be used for hostile actions against Iran. This step reflects a growing, though not always openly expressed, understanding in GCC capitals: the path to their own security lies not through war with Iran but through complex yet essential dialogue and mutual respect for sovereignty.
On this matter, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov issued a sharp warning, stating that any military strike on the Islamic Republic would lead to “serious destabilization” in the Middle East. Addressing journalists, Peskov called the prospect of an attack “another step towards serious destabilization of the situation in the region,” emphasizing that Moscow expects all international parties to show restraint and resolve differences exclusively through “peaceful negotiations.”
History has repeatedly shown that US military interventions in the Middle East brought only chaos, increased terrorism, and instability (Iraq, Libya, Syria). A new Trump adventure, if realized, would surpass all previous ones in its destructive consequences. It would not “bring order” but would blow up an already fragile region, burying the economic prosperity of the Persian Gulf states under the rubble and setting back their development for decades. Responsibility will lie not only with the reckless US leadership but also with those regional players who, blinded by short-term enmity, failed to prevent the catastrophe. There is still time for sober calculation and urgent diplomacy, but the clock is ticking down by the day.
Murdering Khamenei Will Kill Trump’s Presidency
By Ian Proud | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 1, 2026
Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei was assassinated in what is being described in western media as a joint airstrike operation. Even though the Israeli air-force carried out airstrikes in and around Tehran, it is clear that these were supported by the U.S. military. As such, the U.S. is complicit in the murder of the Head of State of a sovereign nation.
And this unilateral military action once again proved both that the United Nations Charter has lost its value and that the UN Security Council is now broken.
In his opening remarks to the Security Council, Secretary General António Guterres condemned the military strikes by the U.S. and Israel, which also condemning the Iranian response, citing Article 2 of the UN Charter.
“All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
The enormous and ongoing military strikes against Iran were clearly in breach of that Article.
In its response to the Security Council, Iran’s Representative cited Article 51 of the UN Charter, which states that “nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individuals or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” Article 51 is one of only two exceptions to the general prohibition on the use of force by UN members set out in Article 2.
The strikes were all the more cynical for taking place part way through talks moderated by the government of Oman. Indeed, Guterres hinted at this in his remarks, saying:
“The U.S. and Israeli attacks occurred following the third round of indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran mediated by Oman.
Preparations had been made for technical talks in Vienna next week followed by a new round of political talks.
I deeply regret that this opportunity of diplomacy has been squandered.”
Pakistan’s representative at the Council was more blunt, saying that “diplomacy has once again been derailed as these attacks have happened right in the middle of negotiations.”
Indeed, the strikes confirmed that the UN Security council has become completely unable to take measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.
On the 80th anniversary of the founding of the UN Secretary General Guterres warned that “fragile” legitimacy of the Security Council could endanger global peace if it remains gridlocked and fails to fulfil its primary purpose.
All of the the western nations around the UN Security Council table last night showed themselves to be weak and silent, in the face of American’s military might.
As one, they criticised Iran’s unprovoked attacks on Gulf states, as Iranian ballistic missiles targeted U.S. military sites in Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait, while also targeting Israel. Self evidently, Iran was targeting U.S. military installations in all of those countries and. Indeed, the U.S.’ fifth fleet Headquarters in Bahrain was struck by at least one ballistic missile. Yet civilian sites also got hit, including in the UAE and in Bahrain.
However, there was no mention at all of the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in the statements of western nations at the Security Council, as if they feared U.S. reprisals if they spoke out. Not a single word from the French, the Latvians, the Danes, the Greeks, even the Bahrainis, only that Iran murdered its citizens and should not be allowed to acquire a nuclear bomb.
In the end the acting UK Permanent Representative, James Kariuki, who I can tell you from personal experience is the most arrogant and puffed up British diplomat that I ever met, said that:
“Iran must refrain from further strikes, and its appalling behaviour, to allow a path back to diplomacy.”
The sitting President of the UN Security Council, the United Kingdom (the U.S. takes over the Presidency today) did not utter a single word about the USA or Israel. No attempt, as the country convening the meeting, to seek common ground and some agreement on the way forward.
Britain’ approach was merely to blame Iran in what the Russian Federation representative described in his intervention as ‘victim blaming’. I already knew that Britain had given up diplomacy in 2014, but this appeared yet another nail in a coffin which the UK refuses to bury as it pretends to be a nation of diplomacy. It is not. Britain is now a nation of warmongers without the troops to fight.
While final confirmation of the fact had yet to be provided at that time, the Prime Minister of Israel and President Trump were already celebrating the possible killing of Khamanei. ‘The dictator is gone,’ Netanyahu crowed.
In his social media statement, President Trump called on Iranian people to rise up and take over their country.
Yet within hours, sources within the CIA were already leaking reports that Khamenei may simply be replaced by IRGC hardliners.
As I have pointed out before, rather than fomenting revolution, unilateral military action against Iran may have the opposite effect and mobilise Iranian resistance.
This idea was stated with great clarity by Professor Robert Pape of Chicago University who said:
“With each passing day of regime-targeting airstrikes, we lose control over the political dynamics they unleash.
It becomes less about individual leaders and more about national survival. Less about dissent and more about resistance.
Imagine if a foreign power struck Washington and called on Americans to overthrow their government. Would citizens rally against their leaders — or against the foreign attacker?”
Iran is a country of 92 million people with an army of over 610,000. It is a tightly controlled state and as we saw in January is more than capable and ready to stifle internal dissent, including through violent means. It also does not have an oven-ready opposition lined up in the wings that can walk in unopposed and miraculously take over the country. To suggest that it does takes us into Bay of Pigs territory.
Having already kidnapped the Head of State of one sovereign nation already this year, the United States of America has now murdered another, Ayatollah Khamenei. This will unleash asymmetric threats against the U.S. and all of its allies that Donald Trump will not be able to control. If this military action drags out inconclusively, and I predict it will, then the mid-terms may prove catastrophic for Trump. I predict that the Iranian regime will outlast his.
The Attack on Pearl Harbor Was No Surprise (Part V)
Tales of the American Empire | January 29, 2026
Tales of the American Empire produced several tales about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. They detail evidence that American President Franklin Roosevelt knew a Japanese carrier force was sailing east to attack Hawaii in late 1941, and he allowed it to happen by not alerting commanders in Hawaii. Few Americans know about this shocking fact because their government controls informational sources. Tales of the American Empire has a playlist of ten videos about this event that is linked in the description. I have stumbled upon even more proof of this crime.
_______________________________________________
Related Tales: “The Attack on Pearl Harbor”; 
• The Attack on Pearl Harbor
“A Century of U.S. Naval Intelligence”; Captain Wyman H. Packard, USN (Retired); Office of Naval Intelligence and the Naval Historical Center; Department of the Navy; 1996; Pearl Harbor starts on Page 19; https://ncisahistory.org/wp-content/u…
“The Big Secret of Pearl Harbor”; Admiral Robert Theobald; Devin-Adair; March 1954; https://thehiddenmystery.com/wp-conte…
West’s hypocrisy over Iran and Gaza proves a regime-change operation in Tehran
Strategic Culture Foundation | January 30, 2026
The United States and the European Union are vehemently condemning Iran over alleged repression, while the West says nothing about the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The contradiction, of course, exposes the West’s rank hypocrisy. It also confirms that Iran is the target of a Western regime-change operation.
U.S. President Donald Trump this week repeated his threat to launch a blitzkrieg on Iran, bragging that an armada led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier was in place to strike. “Don’t make me do it,” warned Trump with thug-like menace.
Meanwhile, the European Union declared Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps a “foreign terrorist” organization. Given that the IRGC is a central component of Iran’s national security forces, the EU’s blacklisting is effectively designating the Iranian state as a terrorist entity. The EU’s provocation is paving the way for American aggression and all-out war, which will have devastating consequences, not least of all for Europe.
Washington and Europe are ostensibly basing their hostility towards Tehran on dubious claims that the Iranian authorities have committed systematic atrocities in repressing peaceful protesters in Iran demanding political change.
Trump has urged Iranians to keep protesting and vowed that “help is on the way.”
The European Union’s foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas, hailed the blacklisting of the IRGC, saying: “Repression cannot go unanswered… clear atrocities mean there must be a clear response from Europe.”
France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot asserted: “We cannot have any impunity for the [alleged] crimes that have been committed.”
The Dutch top diplomat, David van Weel, added: “I think it’s important that we send the signal that the bloodshed that we’ve seen, the bestiality that has been used against protesters, cannot be tolerated.”
This all sounds noble and chivalrous of Western governments. But it is a contemptuous charade, belying disingenuousness and duplicity.
For more than two years, the Israeli regime has waged a blatant genocide in Gaza. The death toll is estimated at over 71,000, with most of the victims being civilians, women, and children. The real death toll is probably well over 100,000 from bodies buried under rubble from Israeli bombardment that are not accounted for.
Far from expressing any condemnation against the Israeli regime, the United States and the European Union (with minor exceptions) have maintained an odious silence that has afforded political cover for the genocide. The Western states are complicit as a result of their shameful silence. More damning, however, is that the United States and European states, including France, Germany, and Britain, have supplied warplanes, missiles, drones, electronics, and other weaponry to fuel the slaughter.
Trump boasts about his so-called Board of Peace for Gaza and a supposed ceasefire that was claimed to have started in October. Over 500 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military since the ceasefire travesty. Thousands of Palestinians are starving or freezing to death in windswept and flooded tents still deprived of humanitarian aid. The genocide continues under the grotesque guise of “peace”.
Trump is an “Israel First” U.S. president more than any of his predecessors, who all consistently gave the Zionist regime a license to kill and occupy. Trump’s complicity is remarkable and suggests his late pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein furnished Israeli intelligence with lots of blackmail material on the 47th president. So, his silence over genocide is explicable.
What about the Europeans, though? Maybe there is blackmail going on, too, to buy their complicity. Nevertheless, the hypocrisy is astounding.
Why aren’t Kallas, Barrot, and the other EU foreign ministers denouncing impunity and repression by the Israeli regime? They selectively apply their morals and faux humanitarian concerns to Iran.
The two scenarios are, in any case, incomparable. One is genocide, the other is civil unrest, which the evidence shows involves foreign orchestration.
Protests began in Tehran on December 28, sparked by legitimate economic grievances. The country of over 90 million has been strangled for decades by illegal Western economic sanctions. Tellingly, the relatively small demonstrations in Tehran’s bazaars at the end of December were rapidly escalated into full-blown violent attacks in several cities. The disturbances appear to have subsided, and there have been huge counter-demonstrations involving millions of people taking to the streets to denounce the violence of what seems to be almost certainly Western-orchestrated gangs.
The Iranian authorities claim that the total deaths after four weeks of violence are about 3,100. Western media reports and governments have cited much larger figures of 6,000 and up to 17,000 deaths. The Western figures are supplied by U.S. or European-based groups, such as the Iranian Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI). These groups are funded by the CIA’s cut-out organization, the National Endowment for Democracy.
Israeli news media have even admitted in reports that the street violence was being directed by foreign agencies. Former CIA chief Mike Pompeo also let it slip that Mossad operatives were behind the disturbances.
The methodical type of violence and damage sustained also indicates a coup attempt. Hundreds of mosques, schools, buses, government buildings, banks, and medical facilities were attacked and destroyed by gun-wielding gangs and arsonists.
Many of the casualties were inflicted on security forces and civilian bystanders in an orgy of violence that indicates a trained cadre of agitators and terrorists. Victims were beheaded and mutilated.
The Western media have conspicuously conflated the deaths and injuries as all attributed to the Iranian security forces, who allegedly used “lethal force to repress peaceful protesters.”
This is the standard operating procedure of Western regime change: to escalate deadly civil strife to destabilize the targeted state. The Western media then reliably row in with a massive propaganda assault to valorize the orchestrated violence and to demonize the authorities.
As Iranian Professor Mohammad Marandi points out, the West’s modus operandi is to demonize foreign countries to justify regime change, and if needs be, to justify all-out military aggression.
In 1953, the same method was used by the Americans and British to overthrow the elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Mossadegh’s “crime” was that he nationalized the oil industry, depriving Britain of its leech-like control over Iranian natural wealth, which saw most of the population living in poverty and squalor, as vast Persian oil profits flowed into London. For the coup to succeed, millions of dollars were funneled by the CIA into Iran to whip up street gangs, and the Western media on both sides of the Atlantic dutifully painted Mossadegh as illegitimate. He was overthrown, and the Western puppet, the Shah, was installed, presiding over a brutal CIA and MI6-backed regime for 26 years until the Islamic Revolution kicked him out in 1979. Amazingly, from the point of view of chutzpah consistency, more than seven decades later, the Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, living in pampered exile in the U.S., is being advocated by the West to take over if the Islamic Republic collapses. Plus ca change!
The same regime-change formula has been repeated over and over in as many as 100 other countries since the Americans and British launched their post-Second World War debut covert operation in Iran in 1953, as Finian Cunningham’s new book Killing Democracy surveys. Crucially, the Western news media play an absolutely vital role in assisting this systematic criminality, as they are doing currently in Iran, and before that in Venezuela.
Only four weeks ago, Washington’s military aggression against Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro, by U.S. commandos was preceded by a full-court media campaign of demonization, absurdly labelling him a narcoterrorist.
Trump’s aggression towards Venezuela and now Iran is an outrageous violation of the UN Charter and international law. It marks a return to predatory imperialism. And the servile European states kowtow to this all-out predatory criminality with bogus concern about human rights.
We know their concerns are a complete sham and morally bankrupt because if there were any genuine principles, then they would not be so abject in their silence over the Israeli regime’s genocide in Gaza.
This is why Trump has been so emboldened to treat the Europeans with contempt over Greenland and other issues. If you act like a doormat, then expect to be walked on.
Trump’s war posturing against Iran traces back to Bush’s infamous 2002 ‘axis of evil’ speech
By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | January 31, 2026
On January 29, 2002, US President George W. Bush’s State of the Union Address infamously branded Iran as part of an “axis of evil,” marking a rhetorical escalation that hardened a decades-long policy of confrontation and laid the groundwork for the persistent crises that continue to threaten regional stability today.
The twenty-fourth anniversary of Bush’s “axis of evil” speech came this week amid a starkly familiar backdrop: US naval “armada” massing in the Persian Gulf and renewed threats of military action from Bush’s successor, Donald Trump.
This moment is not an aberration but the continuation of a sustained, multi-decade strategy aimed at isolating and pressuring the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The policy did not originate with Bush but in the sanctions regimes of the 1990s, significantly shaped by pro-Israeli lobbying efforts within the United States.
It hardened with the rise of neoconservative thinkers who favored regime change over containment – a doctrine vividly applied to Iraq.
Throughout a campaign of disinformation and propaganda regarding weapons of mass destruction, the leveraging of exiled terrorist groups, and a consistent narrative of Iranian threat have been employed to maintain the so-called “maximum pressure.”
As history echoes in January 2026, with a Republican administration again aligning with an Israeli Likud regime to confront Iran, the patterns of the past illuminate the perilous present.
Defining Speech: January 29, 2002
Bush’s State of the Union address fundamentally reshaped the US posture toward Iran in ways that his predecessors had deliberately avoided.
In that speech, Iran was labeled a nation that “aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom.”
By grouping Iran with Iraq and North Korea as part of an “axis of evil,” the infamous and widely condemned declaration decisively rejected any tentative diplomatic outreach that had briefly flickered after the September 11 attacks.
During that period, symbolic gestures, such as candlelight vigils in Tehran, and behind-the-scenes communication channels suggested Iran’s conditional cooperation in Afghanistan.
However, the “axis of evil” label extinguished these nascent contacts. It signaled that the hostile administration in Washington would view Iran not as a potential partner, even tactically, but as a permanent adversary and a primary target in the global “war on terror.”
Crafted within a circle of advisors known for their overt pro-Israeli leanings, the phrase was immediately and enthusiastically embraced by the Israeli regime, which saw it as a long-sought alignment of US rhetoric with its own strategic goals.
The speech institutionalized a framework of hostility that would dictate policy for years, replacing the previous administration’s fluctuating approach with one of unambiguous confrontation.
Dual containment and the sanctions regime
Long before the “axis of evil” rhetoric, the framework for isolating Iran was carefully constructed during the Bill Clinton administration under the policy of “dual containment,” which targeted both Iran and Iraq.
From its inception, this policy was heavily influenced by pro-Israeli lobby groups in Washington. Even as Clinton’s foreign policy team was forming, concerns arose about appointees from the Carter administration who were deemed insufficiently sympathetic to these interests.
Warren Christopher, who was appointed Secretary of State, was initially viewed with caution but ultimately became a key architect of a hardened stance toward Iran.
Christopher, who had served as chief negotiator of the Algiers Accords and was criticized by some Iranian officials, developed a personal animosity toward Iran.
He publicly labeled Iran an “outlaw nation,” a “dangerous country,” and one of the “principal sources of support for terrorist groups worldwide.”
This rhetoric provided a public rationale for an escalating series of economic sanctions designed, in his words, to “squeeze Iran’s economy.”
A powerful proponent of this policy was Martin Indyk, former research director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)-affiliated Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who served on the National Security Council and later as Ambassador to Israel.
Under his guidance, the threefold accusations of sponsoring terrorism, opposing regional peace efforts, and pursuing weapons of mass destruction became the unwavering justification for punitive measures against the Islamic Republic.
A fierce competition emerged in Congress to demonstrate increasing hostility toward Iran, with figures like Senator Alfonse D’Amato pushing for ever-tighter sanctions – often propelled by direct lobbying from AIPAC, which acted as the “locomotive” behind the legislation.
This culminated in the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) of 1996, which aimed to penalize foreign companies investing in Iran’s energy sector. Later reports revealed that the explicit goal of the act was regime change in Iran.
Neoconservatives and the preference for military solutions
The arrival of the Bush administration marked a significant shift in the philosophy underlying US foreign policy – though not in its ultimate objective.
By the late 1990s, while the corporate world and some pragmatic diplomats began questioning the efficacy of unilateral sanctions, a new faction with immense influence pushed for a more radical and hard-nosed approach.
This neoconservative wing, closely aligned with Likudist ideology in the occupied Palestinian territories, viewed sanctions and containment as too slow and unreliable.
They regarded military force as a faster, more effective means of dealing with hostile states.
Key figures such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith – all with longstanding ties to pro-Israeli think tanks and advocacy groups – assumed senior roles within the Pentagon and advisory boards.
Their worldview was crystallized in the 1996 policy paper A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, prepared for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which advocated attacking Iraq to reshape the regional landscape.
For these strategists, patient pressure through sanctions was secondary to the transformative potential of direct military action and regime rollback.
While initially focused on Iraq, Iran remained a firm subsequent target.
They argued that only the forceful removal of threatening regimes could guarantee American and Israeli security, a belief that came to define the administration’s response after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Iraqi precedent: Destruction as a model
The neoconservative doctrine found its first full-scale application in Iraq. The 2003 invasion, premised on bogus claims of weapons of mass destruction that were later proven false, fulfilled a long-held goal to eliminate the Saddam Hussein-led Ba’athist regime.
The architects of the invasion were not satisfied with only regime change but aimed for the comprehensive degradation of Iraqi power.
After two major wars and over a decade of crippling sanctions, Iraq’s state apparatus and military-industrial base were utterly destroyed.
Some proponents openly described the objective as returning Iraq “to the pre-industrial era,” a stark admission that the goal extended beyond disarmament to eliminating Iraq’s capacity to function as a modern, sovereign regional counterweight.
The devastating consequences – civil strife, the rise of takfirism, and immense human suffering – were regarded as collateral damage within a broader strategic vision.
For those advocating confrontation with Iran, the Iraqi campaign served as both a template and a warning. It demonstrated the overwhelming military power the US could deploy to dismantle a state, while also exposing the catastrophic instability that could follow.
Nevertheless, the ability to reduce a perceived enemy to a state of permanent weakness was noted, informing the maximalist pressure later applied to Tehran.
Propaganda arsenal: Lies and manipulations
Building and sustaining public and international support for relentless pressure on Iran required a sustained campaign of allegations and propaganda.
The core accusations remained consistent: pursuit of nuclear weapons, support for terrorism, and an implacable hostility to peace in the region.
These charges were amplified through a symbiotic network of government officials, pro-Israeli lobbying organizations, sympathetic media outlets, and designated “experts.”
Sensational – and fabricated – stories were regularly fed to the press. In the early 1990s, reports frequently citing unnamed intelligence sources or anti-Iran groups aboad claimed that Iran had purchased nuclear warheads from Kazakhstan or was on the verge of developing a bomb, claims repeatedly debunked by international inspectors and the countries involved.
Media outlets with particular editorial stances published alarming estimates, suggesting Iran was only years or even months away from nuclear capability – deadlines that continually receded as each passed without incident.
The language used was deliberately inflammatory, with senior officials referring to Iran’s “evil hand” in the region and describing it as a “rogue state.”
This ecosystem ensured that any Iranian attempt at diplomatic outreach or confidence-building was overwhelmed by a pre-existing narrative of deceit and malign intent, making substantive dialogue politically untenable in Washington.
Useful tool: MKO role in anti-Iranian propaganda
A particularly revealing aspect of the propaganda and pressure campaign has been the relationship with the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), a terror cult with offices scattered across Europe and the US.
Designated by the US State Department as a terrorist organization due to its history of violent attacks, including against Americans in the 1970s, Iranian officials and civilians in the 1980s, and its alliance with Saddam Hussein during the Imposed War, the terror group nonetheless found influential supporters and was eventually de-listed by Hillary Clinton.
Despite its cult-like structure and lack of popular support inside Iran, the MKO managed to gain an active lobbying and public relations operation in the United States and Europe.
Senior members of the US Congress, especially those with strong pro-Israeli records, championed the group, inviting its representatives to testify and attending its rallies, arguing it represented a “democratic alternative” to the Islamic Republic.
The MKO’s utility was cynically acknowledged; one Congressman stated, “I don’t give a s*** if they are undemocratic… They are fighting Iran, which is… a terrorist state. I say let’s help them fight each other.”
This usefulness peaked in August 2002, when an MKO front held a press conference in Washington to “reveal” the existence of two secret nuclear facilities in Iran at Natanz and Arak.
While these facilities were not in violation of Iran’s safeguards agreement at the time, the revelation – intelligence reports suggest originating with Israeli intelligence and channeled through the exiles – provided the perfect pretext to demand intrusive new inspections and escalate international pressure.
Thus, the MKO served as a deniable cut-out for disinformation and a persistent amplifier of the baseless and sham accusations against the Iranian government.
Unbroken chain: Policy sustained to the present day
The strategic imperative to confront Iran has proven remarkably durable, transcending individual US administrations and enduring significant geopolitical shifts.
This hostile and bellicose policy remains intact today. In January 2026, the situation closely mirrors earlier cycles of tension between Tehran and Washington, dating back to decades of US hostility and a failed “regime change” project.
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leading a Likud-dominated coalition, are once again employing military threats against Iran after failing miserably in June last year to dismantle the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The US military has reportedly amassed naval and air forces around Iran’s perimeter, announced by Trump himself, a show of force reminiscent of previous escalations.
This military posture is accompanied by an intensification of a long-standing economic stranglehold, as the Trump administration enforces so-called “ultimate pressure” sanctions with renewed vigor, targeting critical sectors and aiming to sever Iran’s access to the global financial system entirely.
The foundational grievances remain unchanged: allegations of building a “nuclear weapon,” despite Iran’s continued adherence to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) framework after its earlier collapse, and support for regional allies.
Last month, Trump and Netanyahu backed deadly riots and terrorism in Iran, and then threatened to attack Iran if “lethal force” was used against the rioters, arsonists and terrorists. After the riots ended, the focus shifted back to the non-existent “nuclear weapon.”
The tools have expanded beyond diplomatic isolation and covert pressure. Recent reports from within Iran detail how externally backed groups, employing tactics and rhetoric similar to the MKO terrorist cult, sought to exploit domestic unrest by spreading incendiary propaganda and inciting violence, apparently aiming to destabilize the country.
The alignment between the Trump administration and the Likud regime in Tel Aviv remains as close as ever, with both viewing the other as a vital partner in a long-term struggle.
Just as in 2002, diplomatic overtures from Tehran aimed at easing tensions are dismissed or met with increased demands.
The legacy of the “axis of evil” speech has created a foreign policy paradigm that has locked the US and Iran into a perpetual cycle of confrontation, where the mechanisms of pressure – economic warfare, military threat, and the use of terrorist groups – have proven easier to sustain than to dismantle, continually pushing the region toward the brink of war.
What Trump is doing today is simply a continuation of Bush’s policy, which was also carried forward by Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. The policy remains unchanged.
NO MANDATES, NO PROFITS: MODERNA CEO TELLS THE TRUTH
The HighWire with Del Bigtree | January 29, 2026
As the U.S. withdraws from the World Health Organization, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel admits the company cannot move new vaccines into Phase 3 trials due to insufficient U.S. market demand which has historically been driven by mandates. Bancel suggests that with RFK Jr. at the helm of HHS, new vaccines are unlikely to deliver acceptable returns on investment—an admission that highlights how profit incentives, not public health needs, have long driven vaccine development. Meanwhile, a broader reckoning is underway over mandates, industry influence, and ethical lapses in vaccine testing at home and abroad, as calls grow for stricter safety standards and meaningful accountability.
Russia Vows to Protect Its Oil Tankers
teleSUR | January 30, 2026
On Friday, Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova announced that her country will take all necessary measures to protect its oil tankers, several of which have been seized in international waters.
“If the norms of international law are violated in relation to vessels flying our flag, Russia will take all measures at its disposal to defend them. Attacks on freedom of navigation are inadmissible,” she said.
Referring to Western sanctions used to justify the seizure of tankers belonging to the so-called “shadow fleet,” Zakharova said they run counter to international law and, in any case, cannot serve as a basis for exercising jurisdiction on the high seas and seizing vessels.
“Allusions to European Union sanctions, which French leaders arbitrarily describe as international, as grounds for adopting coercive measures against any vessel are absolutely untenable,” she insisted.
Russia adopted a very restrained stance in the case of vessels seized by the U.S. Coast Guard, as occurred earlier this year with the tanker Marinera.
Moscow’s position became much firmer in the case of the vessel Grinch, seized more than a week ago by French authorities between Morocco and Spain.
Western authorities have decided in recent months to intensify their pursuit of the fleet Moscow uses to circumvent sanctions on its oil exports, which have declined significantly since the end of last year.
In 2007, Michael Parenti Called Out The Greater Israel Project
The Dissident | January 28, 2026
In my last article, I covered the left-wing scholar Michael Parenti- who passed away at the age of 92 this week- and his prophetic writings on the Ukraine proxy war in 2014.
Parenti’s writings on the Israel lobby and the greater Israel project were equally prophetic.
In his 2007 book “Contrary Notions” Parenti called out “Israel First” Neo-cons and Israel’s role in the Iraq war, and predicted to a tee the future Israeli/American wars in the Middle East in service of Greater Israel and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
In a section of the book aptly titled “Israel First”, Parenti wrote:
The neoconservative officials in the Bush Jr. administration — Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Elliot Abrams, Robert Kagan, Lewis Libby, Abram Shulsky, and others — were strong proponents of a militaristic and expansionist strain of Zionism linked closely to the right-wing Likud Party of Israel. With impressive cohesion these “neocons” played a determinant role in shaping U.S. Middle East policy. In the early 1980s Wolfowitz and Feith were charged with passing classified documents to Israel. Instead of being charged with espionage, Feith temporarily lost his security clearance and Wolfowitz was untouched. The two continued to enjoy ascendant careers, becoming second and third in command at the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld.
For these right-wing Zionists, the war against Iraq was part of a larger campaign to serve the greater good of Israel. Saddam Hussein was Israel’s most consistent adversary in the Middle East, providing much political support to the Palestinian resistance. The neocons had been pushing for war with Iraq well before 9/11, assisted by the wellfinanced and powerful Israeli lobby, as well as by prominent members of Congress from both parties who obligingly treated U.S. and Israeli interests in the Middle East as inseparable. The Zionist neocons provided alarming reports about the threat to the United States posed by Saddam because of his weapons of mass destruction.
Indeed in 1996, Neo-cons who later ended up in the Bush administration named by Parenti, including Douglas Feith, wrote a latter to Benjamin Netanyahu who was the newly elected Prime Minister of Israel which urged him to “focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right”.
This plan eventually turned into an Israeli-backed plot to “take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and, finishing off, Iran”, in order to isolate Palestinians and make Israel the dominant power in the Middle East.
As U.S. General Wesley Clark later revealed , the idea behind these wars was, “if you want to protect Israel, and you want Israel to succeed… you’ve got to get rid of the states that are surrounding”.
This too was predicted by Michael Parenti to a tee, who wrote, “The neocon goal has been Israeli expansion into all Palestinian territories and the emergence of Israel as the unchallengeable, perfectly secure, supreme power in the region”, “This could best be accomplished by undoing the economies of pro-Palestinian states, including Syria, Iran, Libya, Lebanon… “A most important step in that direction was the destruction of Iraq as a nation, including its military, civil service, police, universities, hospitals, utilities, professional class, and entire infrastructure, an Iraq torn with sectarian strife and left in shambles.”
Indeed, as Parenti correctly predicted, the clean break policy went through with the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the 2011 NATO regime change war in Libya, 2011 dirty war in Syria, and the ongoing hybrid war on Iran.
As Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs has noted :
In 1996, Netanyahu and his American advisors devised a “Clean Break” strategy. They advocated that Israel would not withdraw from the Palestinian lands captured in the 1967 war in exchange for regional peace. Instead, Israel would reshape the Middle East to its liking. Crucially, the strategy envisioned the US as the main force to achieve these aims—waging wars in the region to dismantle governments opposed to Israel’s dominance over Palestine. The US was called upon to fight wars on Israel’s behalf.
The Clean Break strategy was effectively carried out by the US and Israel after 9/11. As NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark revealed, soon after 9/11, the US planned to “attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years—starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.”
The first of the wars, in early 2003, was to topple the Iraqi government. Plans for further wars were delayed as the US became mired in Iraq. Still, the US supported Sudan’s split in 2005, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006, and Ethiopia’s incursion into Somalia that same year. In 2011, the Obama administration launched CIA operation Timber Sycamore against Syria and, with the UK and France, overthrew Libya’s government through a 2011 bombing campaign. Today, these countries lie in ruins, and many are now embroiled in civil wars.
Netanyahu was a cheerleader of these wars of choice–either in public or behind the scenes–together with his neocon allies in the U.S. Government including Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Victoria Nuland, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, and others.
These wars- as Parenti predicted- helped Israel towards it’s final goal of being “the unchallengeable, perfectly secure, supreme power in the region” and “Israeli expansion into all Palestinian territories” brought forward by the Gaza genocide and expanded settlements in the West Bank with the end goal-as Israel’s Minister of Science and Technology Gila Gamliel admitted -to “make Gaza unlivable for humans until the population leaves and then … do the same for the West Bank”.
As Jeffrey Sachs noted:
In September 2023, Netanyahu presented at UN General Assembly a map of the “New Middle East” completely erasing a Palestinian state. In September 2024, he elaborated on this plan by showing two maps: one part of the Middle East a “blessing,” and the other–including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran–a curse, as he advocated regime change in the latter countries.
Israel’s war on Iran is the final move in a decades-old strategy. We are witnessing the culmination of decades of extremist Zionist manipulation of US foreign policy.
Just like he did in Ukraine, Michael Parenti exactly predicted the goal of Israel first Neo-cons in the Middle East and the final goal of a greater Israel and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
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Sam Husseini: The entire US establishment helped lie their way into the Iraq war
By Slava Zilber | American Herald Tribune | October 14, 2019
Sam Husseini is a senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, independent journalist and contributor to The Nation and FAIR.
Slava Zilber: Sam, three years ago, you appeared on Talk Nation Radio with David Swanson and spoke about the case of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. You pointed out that the people involved in the spying on the UN and the people authorizing the Iraq War were not held accountable:
“Virtually everybody who went along with the war, whether it is Kerry or Clinton, of course, the Bush administration themselves has falsified their own records in terms of why, what they did, when they did, why they did it, to the extent that they’ve been scrutinised at all.”
You also address it in a recent article. And recently, Joe Biden has been lying about his position on the Iraq War. How can such an important issue escape meaningful scrutiny? … continue
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Aletho News- Russia Helping Build a New Middle East /Trita Parsi
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- China slams US policy on Iran as Russia rejects legality of nuclear meeting at UN
- The Mecca Pact Courts Iran: Containment Comes Full Circle
- Oman FM: Persian Gulf states, Iran, Iraq should form security pact excluding US
- Trump peddles fresh falsehoods, claims Iran ‘started the war’ as US aggression drags on
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- If Americans Knew
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- DAILY UPDATE: Latest essential news on Palestine, Israel, & region
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- The Israeli elections have become a fight over October 7, but only Zionist opinions are allowed
- No Tricks Zone
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- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
