Glenn Diesen: NATO’s War of Choice – The Sabotage of the Istanbul Negotiations
Glenn Diesen | February 24, 2026
Professor Glenn Diesen outlines the evidence for how the US and UK sabotaged the peace negotiations in Istanbul to use Ukraine as a proxy to weaken Russia. After NATO built a large Ukrainian proxy army to weaken a strategic rival, it was absurd to assume that Ukraine would be allowed to restore its neutrality and make peace with Russia.
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Project Artichoke: 70 Years Ago, CIA Discussed Hiding Mind-Control Drugs in Vaccines
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 24, 2026
In the 1950s, the CIA brainstormed ways to secretly perform mind control on humans — including concealing drugs in vaccines and widely consumed food products, a newly unearthed CIA document revealed. The Daily Mail first reported the story on Monday.
The seven-page document, “Special Research for Artichoke,” is dated April 23, 1952. It describes a series of ideas for how to develop chemicals designed to alter human behavior and thought.
The proposals contained in the document were part of the CIA’s top-secret Project Artichoke, which ran from 1951 to 1956, according to the Daily Mail.
The document, declassified in 1983, recently circulated on social media. However, it was not published in the CIA’s online reading room until last year.
“Some of the suggestions are controversial,” the document states. The proposals included administering drugs in secret as part of a “long-range approach to subjects.”
According to the document:
“This study should include chemicals or drugs that can effectively be concealed in common items such as food, water, coca cola, beer, liquor, cigarettes, etc.
“This type of drug should also be capable of use in standard medical treatments such as vaccinations, shots, etc.”
CIA experimented on humans as part of Project Artichoke
The document also included a special field of research for “bacteria, plant cultures, fungi, poisons of various types, etc.,” that are “capable of producing illnesses which in turn would produce high fevers, delirium, etc.”
This included “species of the mushroom” that “produce a certain type of intoxication and mental derangement.”
Also among the proposals was a suggestion to research “diet” or “dietary deficiencies” on prisoners and on people undergoing interrogation, including using “specially canned foods having elements removed.”
The document included proposals for both short-term and long-term use on humans. Drugs deemed most suitable for long-term use would be designed to produce an “agitating effect (producing anxiety, nervousness, tension, etc.) or a depressing effect (creating a feeling of despondency, hopelessness, lethargy, etc.).”
According to The Daily Mail, the CIA experimented on humans as part of Project Artichoke. The experiments often involved “vulnerable subjects, including prisoners, military personnel and psychiatric patients.” The experiments were usually performed “without informed consent.”
According to Ben Tapper, a Nebraska chiropractor who was included in the “Disinformation Dozen” list in 2021 for questioning vaccine safety, the document exposes “a disturbing reality that government agencies have historically explored ways to manipulate human behavior through chemical and biological means, including concepts involving food and medical interventions.”
“This is not speculation or conspiracy, and it should deeply concern every American who values bodily autonomy and informed consent,” Tapper said.
Precursor to the CIA’s MK-Ultra mind control experiments?
The Daily Mail cited CIA documents suggesting that U.S. intelligence agencies were concerned that enemy nations had developed their own mind and behavioral control techniques. This led the agency to prioritize the development of its own methods.
Project Artichoke “served as a precursor” to the MK-Ultra program, which the CIA launched in 1953. That program “broadened mind-altering experiments on a larger scale,” the Daily Mail reported.
Many of the documents related to this type of experimentation were destroyed in 1973, “leaving the full extent of the research and how far it progressed unknown.”
Naomi Wolf, Ph.D., CEO of Daily Clout and author of “The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity,” told The Defender that the documents further confirm a long history of intelligence agency research targeting human thought and behavior.
“Sadly, it’s long been established that our intelligence agencies, and those of our enemies, have sought to alter human consciousness and behavior, often without the subjects’ consent. The existence of MK-Ultra, the clandestine project into which Project Artichoke evolved, is well documented,” Wolf said.
John Leake, vice president of the McCullough Foundation and author of the forthcoming book, “Mind Viruses: America’s Irrational Obsessions,” said, “Researchers have long suspected that the Church Committee’s revelation of the CIA’s notorious MK-Ultra mind control experiments, mostly using LSD, had the effect of obscuring the agency’s much larger Project Artichoke.”
Leake cited evidence suggesting that a 1951 mass poisoning in Pont-Saint-Esprit, France, in which 250 residents experienced severe hallucinations and seven people died, was a Project Artichoke experiment. The outbreak was officially attributed to contaminated bread from a local bakery.
Leake said the 1952 document is “consistent with the suspicion that the CIA was seeking to discover mind control methods for even large populations.”
In 2024, a Reuters investigation revealed that the CIA operated a secret propaganda campaign involving vaccines in the Philippines. The campaign attacked what the agency perceived as China’s “growing influence” in the country by targeting the Chinese-made Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine through the use of phony online accounts spreading “anti-vax” messaging.
Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., author of “The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unraveling the Global Agenda,” said the Project Artichoke revelations “make it clear that the CIA has posed an enormous threat to U.S. citizens, in addition to the horrors it unleashes on non-U.S. target governments and populations.”
Project Artichoke wanted to enlist help from Army’s Chemical Warfare Service
The 1952 Project Artichoke document also included a recommendation to involve the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Service in the project’s efforts, citing its experience with “exhaustive studies along these lines.”
This proposal bears a resemblance to recent suggestions that COVID-19 — and the response to the pandemic — were coordinated at high levels of government, military and intelligence agencies.
Last year, former pharmaceutical research and development executive Sasha Latypova and retired science writer Debbie Lerman released the “Covid Dossier,” presenting evidence of the “military/intelligence coordination of the Covid biodefense response in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy.”
According to Latypova and Lerman, “Covid was not a public health event” but “a global operation, coordinated through public-private intelligence and military alliances and invoking laws designed for CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear) weapons attacks.”
Leake said “it is far from clear” that the Church Committee hearings of 1975 “put a complete end to CIA covert programs.” He cited the possible laboratory development of the SARS-CoV-2 virus as an example.
“The laboratory creation of SARS-CoV-2 with gain-of-function techniques developed at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and the U.S. military’s involvement in developing and distributing of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, should … be regarded as possible outgrowths or even continuations of Project Artichoke,” Leake said.
Experts question similarities between Project Artichoke, COVID vaccines
In a Substack post today, epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher drew a potential connection between Project Artichoke and the development of COVID-19 vaccines. Hulscher cited recent peer-reviewed studies that identified the vaccines’ adverse impact on neurological health and “surging rates of cognitive decline.”
Hulscher wrote:
“Disturbingly, since 2021, over 70% of humanity received a neurotoxic agent masquerading as a ‘vaccine.’ The same goals outlined in the CIA document (vaccines/drugs capable of covertly inducing anxiety, depression, and lethargy) are now being observed in COVID-19 vaccinated populations. …
“… If the CIA was secretly discussing covert methods to alter human behavior in the 1950s, it would be no surprise if similar classified projects emerged in the decades that followed.”
A 2024 paper published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry investigated psychiatric adverse events among over 2 million people in South Korea. The study found that “COVID-19 vaccination increased the risks of depression, anxiety, dissociative, stress-related, and somatoform disorders, and sleep disorders while reducing the risk of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.”
A 2025 study published in the International Journal of Innovative Research in Medical Science found “alarming safety signals regarding neuropsychiatric conditions following COVID-19 vaccination, compared to the influenza vaccinations and to all other vaccinations combined.”
This included increases in schizophrenia, depression, cognitive decline, delusions, violent behavior, suicidal thoughts and homicidal ideation.
“The fact that mRNA vaccines were designed to cross the blood-brain barrier and inflame the brain — or at least, they were known to do so, during their manufacture and distribution — should give us pause in light of this news,” Wolf said.
Wolf said the latest revelations, “while shocking, provide all the more reason for us to be critical of opaque, coercive or untested vaccination programs, additives in food and water, and toxic or opaque geoengineering programs.”
Tapper said the revelations reinforce “the urgent need to protect individual liberty, medical freedom, and ethical boundaries in science and public health.”
“The lesson here is simple: vigilance is necessary when governments claim authority over the human body and mind,” Tapper said.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
U.S. General Caine Warns: STRIKING IRAN is a HUGE RISK /Glenn Diesen & Lt Col Daniel Davis
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – February 23, 2026
The Pentagon is raising concerns to Trump about an extended military campaign against Iran, advising that war plans being considered carry risks including U.S. and allied casualties, depleted air defenses and an overtaxed force.
The warnings voiced by Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, within the Defense Department and during meetings of the National Security Council, current and former officials said, but other Pentagon leaders also have noted similar worries.
Such discussions are always part of the contingency-planning process before military operations, some officials said, noting that military leaders—especially the Joint Chiefs chair—provide prudent estimates of possible casualties and other potential costs of military operations.
Israel, not America, first: Carlson’s Huckabee interview lays bare US foreign policy priorities
By Maryam Qarehgozlou | Press TV | February 23, 2026
In a recent interview with the US ambassador to the Israeli-occupied territories, Mike Huckabee, prominent US journalist and commentator Tucker Carlson confronted an Israeli-led system of intimidation, censorship, and foreign influence shaping American policy.
In a blistering monologue before his sit-down with the controversial American diplomat, Carlson framed his trip to Israeli-occupied territories not as a routine diplomatic media engagement, but as a revealing encounter with an entrenched apparatus exerting sway over American power.
The interview, conducted at the high-security Ben Gurion Airport, 20 kilometers to the south of Tel Aviv, itself began with a public challenge on Twitter from Huckabee, who suggested that if Carlson was addressing Christians in West Asia, he should speak to him as well.
Carlson initially hesitated. Having known Huckabee for decades, he admitted that interviewing him would require “a lot of self-control,” noting that the hawkish former Baptist minister’s genial, grandfatherly persona makes it difficult to press hard without appearing hostile.
Still, Carlson concluded that the moment demanded it. The stakes, he said, were enormous.
The United States, he noted, is moving toward a war with Iran – and Israel is “driving that.”
The US, he stated bluntly, is acting “at the behest, at the demand of” the Israeli regime’s premier Benjamin Netanyahu, who has presided over the modern-day holocaust in Gaza.
Embassy obstruction and security refusals
From the very outset, Carlson described encountering bizarre and hostile treatment from the US Embassy personnel in Israeli-occupied territories.
He said he requested basic measures – private security or an embassy representative to accompany his team from the airport. He was flatly refused.
At the time, he noted, Israeli regime officials, including Netanyahu, had publicly denounced him, suggesting Carlson was effectively aligned with Nazis and branding him a “member of the Woke Reichstag.”
Given such rhetoric, Carlson believed modest security precautions were reasonable.
Instead, the embassy declined assistance and referred him to Israel’s foreign ministry, specifically to deputy foreign minister Sharon Haskell, who had released a video labeling him an anti-Semite and “enemy of Israel.”
Carlson was stunned.
“I’m an American citizen responding to an invitation from the American ambassador,” he recounted telling embassy officials.
Why, he asked, was he being handed over to foreign officials who had publicly smeared him? Why was the US Embassy unwilling to provide even minimal official accompaniment?
The explanation that “legal reasons” prevented it struck him as evasive. He described the behavior as “very strange” and later, more ominously, as “menacing.”
Flight data and a troubling refusal
Tensions escalated when Carlson’s team chartered a plane for a quick in-and-out trip.
He asked the embassy to pass along his flight details to Israeli military authorities, citing airspace protocols and regional volatility. Israel, he pointed out, is engaged in a “seven-front war” and has a history of aggressive military action.
The embassy initially refused. The refusal unnerved him. Only after pressing aggressively did they agree.
For Carlson, the episode underscored what he sees as a deeper dysfunction: American officials appearing either unwilling or afraid to act independently of Israeli authorities, even in matters concerning American citizens.
The Netanyahu rift
Parallel to arranging the Huckabee interview, Carlson had been trying for months to secure even a brief meeting with Netanyahu. Not for an interview, he says, but partially because of the attempts by the Israeli regime to target members of his family.
He references Netanyahu’s invocation of “Amalek,” a biblical concept for collective punishment, and says the rhetoric felt threatening to him and his family members.
Despite reaching out through multiple intermediaries, Carlson was rebuffed. He was told meeting him would not be “in [Netanyahu’s] political interest.”
To Carlson, this signaled not merely disagreement but fanaticism. “You’re dealing with people who are unreasonable, who are inflexible, who are, in fact, fanatical,” he later said.
The interview
When Carlson finally arrived at Ben Gurion Airport’s diplomatic terminal, he describes the setting as grim and shabby, a metaphor, perhaps, for the larger dysfunction he was witnessing.
Huckabee, he said, was friendly but constrained.
During the two-and-a-half-hour marathon interview, Carlson said Huckabee seemed less like an American representative and more like a spokesperson for the Israeli regime.
“You’re the US ambassador,” Carlson reflected. “You’re our representative to a foreign country. Why is your red line criticism of that country?”
He arrived at the conclusion that his country’s ambassador was “obviously representing the Israelis.”
Interrogation and intimidation
After the interview concluded, as Carlson’s team prepared to depart, Israeli military personnel detained and interrogated him and his team, including two of his producers.
The questions, Carlson said, had nothing to do with security and everything to do with intelligence gathering: What did you ask the ambassador? Was the interview hostile? Who works at your company? Where is your office? Show us your text exchanges.
“They’re doing an intel op and humiliation exercise,” Carlson said. “This isn’t security.”
Carlson slammed the Israeli regime as a “police state” and “surveillance state,” as constant monitoring and digital intrusion are routine.
The interrogation, he said, confirmed that criticism of Israel, even by an American journalist, triggers aggressive retaliation.
The aftermath
Carlson said he never received a follow-up from Huckabee or the US Embassy asking about the interrogation. Instead, Huckabee publicly dismissed Carlson’s account as false.
For Carlson, that response crystallized the deeper issue: “Who exactly is Huckabee working for?”
He pointed out that the incident revealed a harsh reality: “If you’re an American in [Israeli-occupied territories], you can be certain that your government will take the side of the Israeli [regime] and not your side.”
Worse, he said, the same dynamic operates within the United States itself. “Your government exists for you, not for a foreign [regime],” he declared. “But that’s not how we live in this country.”
In his telling, the episode was not just about one interview or one ambassador. It was about what he sees as an inversion of sovereignty — an American government reflexively defending a foreign power while marginalizing its own citizens.
The interview with Huckabee, Carlson implied, did more than expose diplomatic friction. It revealed a structure of influence and intimidation that, in his view, is “not sustainable,” “too humiliating,” and dangerously corrosive to American self-government.
Here are some highlights from the interview.
Jonathan Pollard, the spy
At the beginning of his sit-down with Huckabee, Carlson pressed him on a meeting that has long disturbed critics of US-Israeli relations: His encounter at the US Embassy with convicted spy Jonathan Pollard.
Pollard is no ordinary offender. He was convicted of passing highly classified US military secrets to Israel during the Cold War, material that, according to US intelligence officials at the time, ultimately reached the Soviet Union.
Carlson slammed Huckabee as the sitting US ambassador to the occupied territories for receiving him at the American Embassy at all, especially given Pollard’s unrepentant posture.
Huckabee described the meeting as a courtesy. He had previously met Pollard briefly at a hotel in occupied al-Quds years earlier.
After Pollard’s wife died, Huckabee sent a condolence note. Pollard then requested to visit the embassy to thank him.
He dismissed media reports describing the encounter as secretive.
Carlson, however, was unmoved. He reminded Huckabee that Pollard, after his release, gave interviews to Israeli media, urging Jewish Americans with US security clearances to spy for Mossad.
Pollard said at the time that “all Jews should have dual loyalty.” Carlson called this “not repentance… that’s someone who’s encouraging American Jews to betray their country.”
“That’s pretty heavy, don’t you think?” Carlson pressed. “Oh, I do, and I disagree with that wholeheartedly,” Huckabee replied.
Yet he did not distance himself from the decision to host Pollard at the embassy.
When Carlson emphasized the symbolism — “Once you become US Ambassador… and then you invite not only the most damaging betrayer in our lifetimes, but also a guy who continues to advocate for betrayal” — Huckabee minimized the significance.
“You make it sound like I’m hosting a meeting,” he objected. “I simply met with him. I meet with people all the time.”
Carlson interjected: “You can just walk in without a… No, they have to have an appointment,” Huckabee admitted.
“Oh, so it is hosting him then, I think,” Carlson replied.
Huckabee ultimately stood firm: “He was certainly able to come to the US Embassy to have a meeting at his request. And frankly, I don’t regret it.”
The exchange exposed more than a dispute over terminology. It revealed a deeper tension about allegiance and optics. The US Embassy in the occupied territories is sovereign American territory.
For its chief diplomat to welcome a man convicted of spying against the United States, who has since defended dual loyalty and encouraged further espionage, struck Carlson as shocking.
Huckabee, however, treated it as routine diplomacy.
Israel sheltering child molesters
In another charged segment of his interview with Huckabee, Carlson confronted a disturbing pattern: American fugitives accused of child sex crimes finding refuge in the occupied territories.
“There are dozens and dozens,” Carlson said, citing a recent case involving an Israeli cybersecurity official arrested in Nevada in a sting targeting individuals soliciting minors.
The suspect was charged with attempted child molestation, then fled to Israeli-occupied territories.
“Have you advocated for the Israeli [regime] to return him?” Carlson asked. Huckabee feigned ignorance.
“It has not come to us at the embassy,” he said, though he added, “I would have no problem with him being extradited back to the US.”
Carlson pressed the moral point. “Does it seem strange to you that people accused of child molestation… are allowed to have refuge within the borders of our closest ally?”
He then slammed the Israeli regime for allowing — even “shielding” — fugitives. Huckabee rejected that characterization.
“I am not aware that the Israeli [regime] is shielding people,” he said, emphasizing due process and noting extradition would be a Justice Department matter.
In the exchange, Carlson described the occupied territories as a haven where American fugitives can find protection, shielded by diplomatic inertia and political sensitivities.
Huckabee framed the matter as procedural, dependent on formal requests and judicial channels.
At its core, the exchange underscored a troubling question: if individuals charged with crimes against American children can flee to the occupied territories and remain there without swift resolution, what does that say about accountability — and about the priorities of an alliance rarely subjected to scrutiny.
The Epstein files and Israel
Elsewhere during the interview, Carlson asked about the murky case of Jeffrey Epstein and the millions of documents the United States Department of Justice continues to withhold.
Carlson’s question was blunt: Why are they still classified? Huckabee’s answer was even blunter in its indifference.
“I have no idea. I haven’t kept up with that,” he said, adding that he is “6,000 miles away from DC.”
But geography was not the real distance on display.
Carlson pressed further, pointing to disclosures suggesting that Isaac Herzog — Israeli president— was listed as a visitor to Epstein’s island.
Huckabee claimed total ignorance: “Had never heard that. Never heard it even in the Israeli press.”
The denial was categorical. Yet the exchange illuminated a deeper pattern: when allegations brush up against powerful Israeli figures, the reflex is not inquiry but dismissal.
Carlson was later forced to issue a public apology on X after receiving a forceful letter from Herzog’s office denying any contact with Epstein.
He said the claim stemmed from a 2014 email released by the Justice Department in which Epstein mentioned Herzog and former prime minister Ehud Barak as potential guests.
But even setting Herzog aside, the broader web of connections remains unsettling.
Barak’s relationship with Epstein is well documented, and evidence has proven that Epstein maintained contact with figures tied to both the Israeli spy agency Mossad and the CIA.
“I’m not saying he worked for Mossad,” Carlson said. “But there’s no question that he had extensive contact with the CIA.”
Huckabee bristled at the implication. “You think he does. From where do you get that?” he demanded, as though the mere suggestion of Israeli spy agency proximity crossed an invisible line.
That line — the boundary beyond which criticism of the Israeli regime becomes taboo — hovered over the entire exchange.
Carlson noted the asymmetry himself: “Everyone’s very sensitive about the Israel connection, but not at all sensitive about the US connection. We should care about what our government does first.”
Huckabee’s defense was evasive. As an ambassador based in occupied al-Quds, he said the matter was not “in my portfolio.”
He repeated that the Justice Department handles such issues. When Carlson urged him to call for full transparency, Huckabee shrugged: “Well, fine — call for it. Let’s have it all open.”
Yet the casual tone belied the gravity of the subject: a convicted sex offender with global elite ties, intelligence-adjacent associations, and high-level contacts in the occupied territories.
Millions of pages remain hidden under the banner of “national security.” Whose security, precisely, remains the unspoken question.
Epstein was a wealthy financier who cultivated relationships with presidents, billionaires, academics and intelligence-linked figures while operating a vast sex trafficking ring involving underage girls.
He socialized with members of the American elite, moved easily in circles connected to the CIA and Mossad, and maintained ties to prominent Israeli political figures.
Arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges after a prior lenient plea deal in Florida, Epstein was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell before trial, in what authorities ruled a suicide — a conclusion that convinced few.
‘Right to the land’
In one of the lengthiest parts of the conversation, Huckabee was pressed about the geographical borders of Israeli-occupied territories, which he claimed are rooted in the Bible.
However, Huckabee, a vocal supporter of the Israeli regime and its expansionism, repeatedly struggled to answer simple questions.
Carlson’s probing made clear the absurdity of his worldview: that an entire region of West Asia belongs to a religious and ethnic group because of a biblical promise.
The conversation began with definitions. “What is a Christian Zionist?” Huckabee asked, then provided his own answer: a believer in the Old and New Testaments who accepts the idea that Jews have a divine right to their homeland.
Carlson pressed him: Does this “right” extend beyond Israel? Huckabee stumbled.
He cited Genesis and the promise to Abraham, claiming a divine grant of land stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates — essentially all of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and parts of Saudi Arabia.
When Carlson asked if it would be “fine” for Israel to take all of it, Huckabee hesitated. His answer was telling: “It would be fine if they took it all, but I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here today.”
Carlson, who appeared taken aback by the statement, asked Huckabee if indeed he would approve of Israel expanding over the entire region.
“They don’t want to take it over. They’re not asking to take it over,” the ambassador replied.
The US envoy, an avowed Christian Zionist and staunch defender of Israeli apartheid, later appeared to walk back his assertion, saying that it “was somewhat of a hyperbolic statement.”
Still, he left the door open for Israeli expansionism based on his religious interpretation.
“If they end up getting attacked by all these places, and they win that war, and they take that land, OK, that’s a whole other discussion,” Huckabee said.
Huckabee also claimed that Jews have a moral and legal right to occupied Palestine due to both ancient ties and modern international recognition.
Yet he struggled to define who qualifies as Jewish or how legitimacy is measured.
Carlson repeatedly noted that modern Israel is largely populated by descendants of European Jews, many of them secular or atheist, with no direct genealogical connection to the biblical land.
Huckabee offered vague appeals to language, religion, and tradition, but avoided any concrete answer. Huckabee’s invocation of international law was equally shaky.
He cited the Balfour Declaration, League of Nations mandates, and UN resolutions as proof of Israel’s legitimacy. Carlson pointed out the absurdity: “The Balfour Declaration is not exactly international law… it was a colonial power saying, ‘Okay.’”
Huckabee responded with a rhetorical dodge, praising Israel’s military assaults as if survival in war creates moral entitlement. Carlson also asked, “If Israel were out of compliance with international law, whatever that is, would it be less legitimate?”
Huckabee’s answer was revealing: “Depends on if the law and the way it’s applied are legitimate. Some applications of so-called international law are not legitimate. Look at the ICC or the ICJ.”
Here, the first cracks in the narrative appear. The justification for Israel’s so-called modern statehood leans on selective legal interpretations rather than consistent international standards.
Israel faces significant legal challenges and escalating pressure from both the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) related to its genocidal war in Gaza and the West Bank.
In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant for using starvation as a method of warfare and intentionally directing attacks against civilians in Gaza.
The Israeli regime, in response, has “personally threatened” ICC officials, including former prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and current prosecutor Karim Khan.
Supporting Israel, the US government (under both the Biden and Trump administrations) has imposed or threatened sanctions against ICC judges and staff, branding the court’s actions as “illegitimate judicial overreach.”
The debate over Jewish identity further exposes the tension. Huckabee insisted that modern Jews are descendants of Abraham, maintaining “an unbroken line of Jewish people… they were hunted down… they came back.”
Carlson countered with historical facts inconvenient to the narrative: the founders of the Israeli regime, largely secular or atheists from Europe, had no direct connection to the land for millennia.
“The current prime minister’s ancestors weren’t from here within recorded history… Bibi Netanyahu… his family from Poland… how do we know that he has a connection to the people whom God promised the land to?” he asked.
The answer was vague, relying on cultural markers rather than genealogical certainty: “If they speak the same language, if they worship the same God, if they follow the same Bible… does that not give you a clue?”
This logic conveniently ignores the existing Palestinian population, who have inhabited the land continuously for centuries.
The claim to occupied Palestine as a homeland for Jews from around the world effectively erases local Arab communities.
Carlson pointedly noted that in 1948, Jews “kicked out a lot of people… it was a war… a lot of Christians wound up fleeing, they lost their homes, and they’ve never been allowed back.”
Yet Huckabee dismissed these losses, asserting that Christianity is now growing in Israeli-occupied territories and claiming, “There are 184,000 Christians here today,” a figure Carlson immediately challenged as misleading.
“There are many more Christians in Qatar than there are in Israel. Fact.”
Carlson’s questioning exposed the selective narrative: Israeli-occupied territories are portrayed as a safe haven, yet the regime’s policies have displaced indigenous populations.
The repeated invocation of a “right to exist” ignores the rights of those already living there.
When asked, “Does every nation have the same right to its own homeland that you say Israel does?” Huckabee evaded a universal principle, insisting that Israel’s claim is unique:
“I think it applies specifically to Israel… Israel… does bring up international law… connection to the history… connection to the Jewish people.”
On the Gaza death toll
When asked how many civilians have been killed by the Israeli military in Gaza, the exchange was brief. The questions were simple. The answers were not. Huckabee did not offer a number.
“We don’t know,” he said. “You know why? We don’t know.”
It was a striking admission: after months of war, after at least 72,000 reported dead, after global headlines, satellite images, hospital counts, and intelligence briefings.
Still, he insisted: “We don’t know.” Across from him, Tucker Carlson pressed further. “What’s your guess?” Huckabee hesitated. Then he shifted the ground.
“Well, the only numbers we have come from this dubious entity called the Gaza Health Ministry. You know who that is?”
The implication was clear. The figures cannot be trusted. Therefore, the scale cannot be known. Therefore, the moral weight remains suspended.
“How many kids were killed?” Carlson asked. Again:
“We don’t know.”
“What’s your guess?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure it was thousands,” Huckabee conceded. Then came the justification. “And some of the kids who were killed had been recruited to be in the military — kids as young as 14 years old.”
There it was. Thousands of children are dead, followed immediately by a caveat.
Carlson responded sharply: “Terrible. Did you hear yourself?”
Huckabee doubled down. “I just said that there were kids as young as 14 that were recruited to be Hamas soldiers and given arms.”
The moral frame narrowed. The dead children became potential soldiers. The category of innocence shrank. “How do you feel about the kids being killed?” Carlson asked.
“I think it’s horrible,” Huckabee replied. But the answer did not rest there. “You know what I also think is horrible? I think it’s horrible that 1,200 people were slaughtered by people across the border, and 252 people were taken hostage.”
The reference was to the October 7 resistance operation by Hamas. The numbers have become fixed in Western political discourse. 1,200 killed, 252 taken captive, forty-eight Americans among them.
“When are all lives equal?” Huckabee asked. “When Hamas could have ended this on October 8th and given all the hostages up, they didn’t — leaving no choice.”
“Leaving no choice.” It is a phrase that has defined much of the defense of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. No choice. No alternative.
No other path. The responsibility, in this framing, lies entirely with Hamas. The consequences, however vast, are portrayed as inevitable.
What stood out in the exchange was not simply Huckabee’s refusal to cite figures from Gaza’s health authorities. It was the asymmetry. The October 7 toll was precise, the captive count exact. The number of Americans specified. But when it came to Palestinian killings, especially children, the language dissolved into uncertainty.
Huckabee defended Israel’s aggression on Gaza, claiming the military warns civilians before attacks.
“They send page messages and texts to every cell phone in Gaza… They drop leaflets, and they announce where they’re going to hit,” he said, framing it as an effort “to prevent civilian casualties.”
Huckabee blamed Hamas for killings, claiming they “gather up the children and put them in the targets… by gunpoint, they push people into those various places,” then accuse Israel of “slaughtering these people.”
He went further, claiming that even if Hamas’ casualty figures were accurate, “you still have a lower number of civilians killed than in any urban warfare environment in modern history.”
Oxfam reported that the average daily death rate in Gaza (estimated at 250 people per day in early 2024) exceeded that of any other major conflict in the 21st century, including Syria (96.5), Sudan (51.6), and Iraq (50.8).
More than 3 percent of Gaza’s pre-conflict population has been killed. This rate of mortality relative to the total population in such a short period is considered unprecedented by some researchers.
Netanyahu’s ‘Amalek’ reference
During the interview, Huckabee also came to the defense of Netanyahu, who referred to Palestinians in Gaza as “Amalek,” a biblical reference associated with total annihilation.
Carlson pressed the issue, noting the chilling implications: “If you say ‘our enemy is Amalek’… you are calling for genocide. Tell me how I’m missing something.”
Huckabee sidestepped, offering only vague justifications.
“I don’t know what he meant. I don’t know if it was an illustrative metaphor,” he said.
He attempted to minimize the concern by saying, “If Israel wanted to commit genocide, they could have done it in two and a half hours,” framing the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, including children, as a controlled operation rather than a moral crisis.
Israel’s grip on US foreign policy
In a revealing exchange, Huckabee defended Israel’s repeated lobbying of the US, including seven White House visits in a single year under Netanyahu, pushing for “regime change” in Iran.
Huckabee framed Israel as “not just a friend or an ally — it is a real partner,” insisting that close coordination justifies the influence.
Carlson pressed the moral and strategic implications: “Why do you think a foreign leader was in the White House seven times in one year? Are you okay with that?”
Huckabee offered no real critique, sidestepping questions about US sovereignty and the extent to which American foreign policy is being shaped by outsiders.
Huckabee also justified US aid to Israel, claiming that the $3.8 billion sent annually “goes right back to the US to purchase weapon systems,” supporting American jobs in places like Arkansas.
He claimed that the investment yields “many more times back in the return on investment.”
Carlson countered with the domestic perspective: “Our country is not thriving, and we’re spending tens and tens of billions of dollars over time defending Israel… Why are we sending money to a country that has a higher standard of living than ours?”
Iran war What if today’s Iran is resigned to a long, hellish war with the US?
By Sajjad Safaei | Responsible Statecraft | February 23, 2026
Trump’s decision in June 2025 to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities in the final days of Israel’s war on Iran removed any lingering doubts about his administration’s willingness to cross the longstanding U.S. red line of directly attacking Iran’s nuclear program.
As a result, every subsequent American military threat, against Iran as well as the rest of the world, was imbued with a credibility that only the precedent of naked aggression can impose. The U.S. military’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January only reinforced that credibility.
But the U.S. strike on Iran, or Operation Midnight Hammer, has also set in motion two consequences that run directly counter to his vision of coercing Iran into submission.
First, the brief U.S.-Iran dustup following Operation Midnight Hammer communicated to Iran that while Washington was now more likely to pull the trigger, it was by no means eager to enter a costly and open-ended firefight. Indeed, it did not escape the attention of the Iranians that while the Trump administration warned Tehran that any Iranian response to Operation Midnight Hammer would trigger a devastating U.S. response, Iran’s ballistic missile retaliation against U.S. bases in Qatar elicited not Trump’s wrath but his framing of the episode as an opportunity to move toward “peace and harmony.” This was then promptly followed by his brokering of a ceasefire between Iran and Israel.
Second, the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in June liberated Iran from its own fear of total war. In the months and years leading up to the 12-Day War, Tehran’s intoxicating belief that war could and should be avoided — at every turn and at any cost — had infused the Iranian decision-making apparatus with a paralyzing caution that, on the one hand, deterred Iran from retaliating decisively against Israeli attacks while at the same time emboldened Israel to repeatedly push the limits of escalation with impunity.
But that edifice of fear would collapse under the weight of Israel’s war on Iran in June 2025, and the United States’ direct participation in that war. In its place emerged a sober recognition that Iran was no longer standing on the brink of a war it could prevent but was already fully immersed in a recurring cycle of limited Israeli and American wars inside Iranian territory.
Iran’s generals understood that the only reliable way to conclusively break that cycle was to drive the confrontation beyond Washington’s comfortable terrain of swift, manageable military interventions and into a realm where the costs of continued escalation would become unbearable for the United States and Israel alike. In the recent warning of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, “If they start a war this time,” he cautioned, “it will be a regional war.”
For Washington, this shift in Iranian consciousness could not have occurred at a worse moment in time. Iran has been thrust into a state of full-mobilization for a regional war at the very moment when it has become unmistakably clear that Washington’s appetite for military adventures does not extend beyond spectacular, swift, and high-impact demonstrations of military dominance.
The suggestion here is by no means that the Iranian armed forces are somehow on par with, let alone superior to, those of the U.S. military. Rather, an acute asymmetry has emerged in the two sides’ resolve and pain tolerance, an asymmetry in which, paradoxically, the militarily weaker party is structurally less constrained in its willingness to both endure and impose costs, resulting in a strategic posture far less favorable to the U.S. than the raw balance of military power would suggest.
More paradoxical, still, is that this sharp imbalance in resolve has crystallized at precisely the moment when Iran’s overall regional position is far more precarious than at any point in recent decades, a precarity made possible by the collapse of Assad’s rule in Syria and the significant weakening of Hezbollah’s operational depth in Southern Lebanon.
This asymmetry in resolve has found political expression in the recent resumption of talks between Iran and the United States over the nuclear program, assuming, of course, that the current negotiations reflect a sincere U.S. effort to reach an agreement and not, as was the case during last year’s negotiations, an attempt merely to lull the Iranians into complacency ahead of war.
The talks are not, as is often claimed, evidence of U.S. success in coercing Iran to come to the negotiating table. Instead, the talks reflect a growing realization within the Trump administration that Washington’s options are limited: either climb to the next and final rung of the escalation ladder, which is a full-scale war with Iran, whose duration and intensity would likely escape U.S. control, or return to a negotiated settlement of the nuclear dispute.
Should current talks result in a resolution of the nuclear file, they will stand as yet another outward expression of the realization in Washington that a total war with Iran is a monstrous black box the United States has no desire to open. For if Trump truly believed the U.S. could win militarily against Iran in the time-frame, shape, and intensity of his choosing, he would already have started this war, just as he did in the operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
What has prevented him from doing so, more than anything else, is Iran’s very real and sizable capacity to drag the United States and the entire region into a grinding, drawn-out war of attrition that would further accelerate the decline of U.S. global hegemony in ways previously thought unimaginable.
To be sure, the current impasse offers precious little by way of novelty. On the contrary, almost all of its defining features were either knowable or predictable before Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA. Indeed, President Obama’s pursuit of nuclear diplomacy was driven chiefly by the same military realities that have until today prompted Trump to pursue diplomacy with Iran.
Nine years after Trump first set out to overwrite the legacy of Obama’s deal, the paths available to Washington are clearer than at any point since the 1979 Islamic Revolution: a total regional war whose limits would not be set by Washington, or a nuclear settlement that, while not perfect from Trump’s standpoint, would pull the United States back from the brink of an open-ended and intractable regional war with an Iran.
If Washington’s participation in Israel’s June 2025 war with Iran elevated U.S. military force to a perfectly viable instrument of the United States’ Iran policy, the success of current talks would signal the formal undoing of that logic. But should the failure of talks pave the way for another full-scale war, the United States and Israel will be fighting an Iran vastly different from June. For the Iran of today appears to have made its peace with the grim conclusion that while a decisive slog with Israel and the United States is sure to be agonizing, it is preferable to the recurring attrition of repeated wars and a chronic strategic vulnerability that only emboldens adversaries to target Iran and its regional allies.
This cold calculus is captured with unsettling clarity in an oft-quoted Iranian proverb: marg yek bar, shivan yek bar—“death once, wail once.”
Sajjad Safaei, PhD, is a multidisciplinary researcher, lecturer, and analyst based in Germany. Previously a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, he has also taught at the Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Zurich. His writings on Middle Eastern geopolitics, Iranian domestic and foreign policy, nuclear diplomacy, regional security dynamics, and arms control have appeared in outlets such as Foreign Policy, Responsible Statecraft, Aljazeera, DAWN, and The National Interest.
Iran in the face of the armed diplomacy of imperialism
By Sayid Marcos Tenorio | MEMO | February 23, 2026
The ongoing negotiations between the United States and Iran, mediated by Oman and recently held in Geneva, have been presented by Western diplomacy as a technical effort to contain nuclear risks. This version is a carefully constructed farce.
What is at stake is not the so-called “non-proliferation”, but a direct dispute between national sovereignty and imperial domination, conducted in order to preserve the regional hegemony of “Israel” and to keep the Middle East under the strategic tutelage of the US–Zionist axis.
The United States does not negotiate in the name of peace or international security. It negotiates as the diplomatic and military arm of the Zionist regime, tasked with neutralising any regional power that escapes the colonial control imposed after the Second World War.
Iran is today the principal target of this machinery because it dares to assert political, scientific, and strategic autonomy in a region that Washington and Tel Aviv treat as a protectorate.
The real nature of these “negotiations” becomes evident in the adopted method. While speaking of dialogue, the US reinforces its military presence in the Gulf, deploys aircraft carriers, issues public threats, and makes it clear that the alternative to an agreement is violence.
This is the old gunboat diplomacy, in which the empire demands concessions under blackmail. This is not negotiation between sovereign states; it is political extortion disguised as a diplomatic process.
Washington’s central argument, wrapped in an alleged Iranian nuclear risk, does not withstand any honest analysis. Iran does not possess nuclear weapons, has not announced any intention to produce them, and accepts international verification mechanisms. The real problem is not nuclear; it is geopolitical.
What troubles the US and “Israel” is the existence of a state that refuses to integrate into the West’s colonial security architecture, that maintains its own deterrent capability, and that politically and morally supports the peoples of the region against occupation and aggression.
This is why the demand for “zero enrichment” reappears as a mantra of the Zionist consortium. It is an illegal, discriminatory, and politically obscene imposition. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons explicitly recognises the right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Even so, this right applies only to allies of the empire. “Israel”, a clandestine nuclear power outside the NPT, with an atomic arsenal that has never been inspected, remains untouched. Iran, by contrast, is required to submit completely. That is the double standard that sustains the current international system.
Sanctions play a central role in this hybrid war. They are not legal instruments, but weapons of collective punishment, used to strangle the Iranian economy, generate social suffering, and attempt to produce internal fractures.
Washington uses civilian suffering as a bargaining tool, hoping to force political concessions that it would never obtain under normal circumstances. It is a form of economic warfare that openly violates the most elementary principles of international law.
When the US attempts to expand the agenda of the negotiations to include Iran’s missile programme and defensive capability, it reveals its intentions even more clearly. Asking a country to negotiate its own defence is equivalent to demanding prior surrender.
No sovereign power would accept such an imposition. Iran has firmly rejected this manoeuvre, making it clear that its defensive capability is not under negotiation and never will be.
Iranian distrust does not arise from ideological paranoia, but from concrete historical experience. The United States unilaterally withdrew from the previous nuclear agreement, dismantled multilateral commitments, and, in 2025, went so far as to bomb peaceful Iranian nuclear facilities during ongoing negotiations.
This record renders any demand for “trust” on the part of Washington laughable. Imperialism does not inspire trust. It inspires caution and preparation.
Even so, Iran negotiates. And this point is central. It negotiates because it is a responsible state, aware of the gravity of the regional scenario, and willing to seek structured solutions. It accepts verification, accepts technical commitments, accepts dialogue. But it resists, and will continue to resist, because it is sovereign. To negotiate does not mean to kneel.
As repeatedly stated by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatullah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, Iran does not build its foreign policy under threat, nor does it accept agreements imposed in the shadow of aircraft carriers.
Iranian diplomacy walks side by side with deterrence because recent history has shown, brutally, that unilateral concessions to imperialism do not produce peace, only new aggressions.
What is unfolding in Geneva, therefore, is not a technical debate about centrifuges or enrichment percentages. It is a chapter in the structural crisis of American imperial power, which can no longer impose its will without resorting to brute force and blackmail.
It is also a desperate attempt to preserve the regional supremacy of “Israel”, now shaken by the resistance of the peoples, and by the military and political failure of the Zionist project.
Ultimately, this is a historical choice: sovereignty or submission. The United States acts as the diplomatic arm of the Zionist regime, attempting to impose on Iran what it never demands of “Israel”: limits, inspections and obedience. Iran negotiates because it is responsible. But it resists because it is sovereign.
The US build-up around Iran constitutes strategic war option, not ‘deterrence’
By Amro Allan | Al Mayadeen | February 23, 2026
The confrontation forming around Iran is increasingly defined not by diplomacy or de-escalatory statecraft, but by infrastructure: aircraft, tankers, ships, interceptors, forward bases, and the logistics that bind them into a usable strike system. What is being assembled around Iran is coercion by force posture—a regional arrangement designed to make the use of violence not only possible, but administratively routine.
The danger is not simply that the United States is “sending a message.” It is those messages, once backed by operational capability and sustained logistics, that develop their own momentum—especially in a region where a single incident, whether staged, misattributed, or opportunistically interpreted, can push escalation beyond the point where political actors can plausibly reverse it. That is how wars become “inevitable”: not because they must happen, but because the architecture is built until restraint begins to look like an admission of weakness.
What is underway is best understood as a transition from episodic pressure to a posture designed to make sustained operations feasible. Deterrence theatre is reversible: it can be intensified, paused, or theatrically concluded. War-enabling posture is different. It organizes the region for a campaign that could last weeks, not hours—requiring refuelling depth, airborne command, electronic warfare, forward munitions, missile defense, and a permissive regional geography. In other words, it is not the language of crisis management; it is the language of readiness for force.
The Israeli role
Any realistic scenario involving major strikes on Iran necessarily includes Israeli capabilities, even if formal command structures remain ambiguous. The Israeli Air Force is not simply a parallel instrument. It is a forward-deployed capacity that can be synchronized with US regional power while allowing Washington to stage-manage deniability until the moment of activation.
“Israel” maintains a large combat fleet with a long-range strike capacity built around multiple platforms: approximately 66 F-15 aircraft (including F-15I variants configured for longer-range strike), roughly 173 F-16 fighters, and about 48 F-35I stealth aircraft in service, with additional units expected over time. The operational implication is a structure suited to repeated waves rather than a single, demonstrative raid: stealth assets prioritized for penetration and suppression, with conventional fighters sustaining the bulk of strike and support roles once corridors are opened.
Defense planning in “Israel” also signals expectation of retaliation on a scale that exceeds symbolic exchange. The layered interception network—Arrow, Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and THAAD—is designed to deal with different classes of incoming fire, from rockets and drones to ballistic threats, and it functions as a prerequisite for any prolonged confrontation in which Israeli and US regional assets become primary targets.
This is where the political and military lines converge. Israeli leadership has long framed Iran as the central strategic adversary, and war planning has repeatedly been presented as a means of reshaping regional balances. Whatever language is used—“pre-emption”, “self-defense”, “containment”—the practical effect is to normalize the idea that Iran’s sovereignty can be overridden by an external security narrative. In that framework, escalation is not an accident; it is a policy option that is repeatedly rehearsed as common sense.
What the United States has built
The most revealing element in the US posture is not any single platform, but the way assets are being layered into an integrated strike system.
Open sources indicate that, on the air side, the forward package includes at least 30 F-35A fighters deployed in theatre, 24 F-15E aircraft, and an additional 36 F-16s moving toward the region. Electronic attack support includes 6 EA-18G Growlers, alongside 8–12 A-10 aircraft. Around a dozen additional F-16s are operating from Prince Sultan and possibly Al Dhafra, supported by 3 E-11A communications aircraft. In addition, a deployment of 12 F-22 stealth fighters is underway, with part of the force already forward-positioned and the remainder expected to continue toward regional bases.
The intelligence and command layer expands this into something far beyond a “show of force”: the movement or deployment of U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, an RC-135 signals-intelligence platform, a WC-135 nuclear-detection aircraft, and additional E-3 AWACS aircraft preparing for redeployment to forward bases—strengthening airborne battle management and command capability.
Operational persistence depends on fuel and lift. The posture is underpinned by up to 22 tanker aircraft operating from regional hubs, and sustained transport activity by C-17, C-5M, and C-130 aircraft delivering troops, equipment, and air-defence systems to forward locations.
At sea, the naval component includes the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group moving toward the region while the USS Abraham Lincoln group operates in the Arabian Sea, alongside multiple Arleigh Burke destroyers positioned across key waterways (the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean). The posture is reinforced by the USS Georgia, an Ohio-class guided-missile submarine capable of launching a large volume of cruise missiles.
Individually, each of these deployments can be framed as “routine”. Collectively, they form something more consequential: an operational environment in which launching a campaign becomes logistically straightforward. That is the essence of coercion-by-infrastructure. It does not announce war. It makes war easier to begin.
The aircraft carrier story
Washington foregrounds naval deployments because they are legible, dramatic, and politically manageable. Ships can be repositioned without forcing host governments into public commitments. Carrier strike groups allow Washington to appear decisive while keeping escalation thresholds ambiguous. This is useful domestically and diplomatically: it reassures partners, pressures adversaries, and sustains a narrative of control.
Yet the obsession with carriers often obscures the real center of gravity: land-based access, refuelling depth, persistent surveillance, and the defensive systems that keep regional bases operational. A serious campaign aimed at degrading Iran’s missile forces, air defenses, energy infrastructure, or nuclear-related facilities requires sortie generation and basing access that naval aviation alone cannot supply. The decisive question is not what is sailing; it is what is already positioned on land and in the air.
Iran reads this not as theatre, but as preparation. That reading is rational. When an adversary constructs a system designed for sustained strikes, it is the targeted state—not the deploying one—that is forced to plan for worst-case scenarios.
The geography of war
The enabling infrastructure of any sustained campaign sits in fixed locations. The operational map spans the Gulf and the Levant.
From Al Udeid in Qatar—often described as the operational heart of US Central Command—Washington can coordinate high-tempo operations supported by ISR and refuelling. Al Dhafra in the UAE extends its reach with advanced platforms and command integration. Prince Sultan in Saudi Arabia, if politically activated, shortens flight times and increases sortie density. The Harir airbase in Erbil provides forward access for strike and surveillance missions, while Jordanian airfields open western approach corridors. US positions in eastern Syria facilitate drone and reconnaissance activity along Iran’s western flank.
Beyond the Arab theatre, “Israel’s” bases operate in close alignment with US operational planning, forming an integrated environment even if formal command lines remain blurred. To the north, Azerbaijan offers potential basing or surveillance access along Iran’s sensitive frontier. Strategically, long-range bombers operating from the continental United States or Diego Garcia can be integrated through aerial refuelling and forward command nodes—adding strike capacity not captured by carrier-focused narratives.
This geography also clarifies what Washington rarely foregrounds: regional states become the battlefield’s enabling terrain. The bases, depots, radars, command centres, and runways that make sustained operations possible also sit within Iran’s retaliatory envelope. Iran does not need to neutralize a carrier to impose strategic and political costs. It can target the infrastructure that keeps the campaign running: runways, fuel depots, hangars, radar nodes, and the host-nation systems that sustain them.
If escalation occurs, the political question for host governments will not be abstract. It will be immediate: whether they are willing to absorb retaliation for choices made in Washington and Tel Aviv. That is precisely why the build-up is destabilizing. It expands the list of actors exposed to consequences while narrowing the space for de-escalation.
This is where the moral and legal questions sharpen. If host states provide launchpads, they are not passive bystanders; they become parties to the escalation. Yet these governments are rarely treated, in Western coverage, as societies that will absorb the consequences. They are treated as facilities—terrain, not people. Iran, by contrast, is treated as a problem to be managed.
Missile defense
If the escalation logic runs through bases, the defensive requirement runs through interceptors. Missile defense in this doctrine is a central operational requirement rather than a supporting function.
Patriot and THAAD batteries protect major airbases and logistics nodes across the Gulf and the Levant, integrated with early-warning radars, airborne surveillance, and regional command networks. Following the US withdrawal from Ain al-Assad in western Iraq, defensive emphasis shifted toward fewer but more politically sustainable bases: Al Udeid and Al Dhafra remain heavily protected, while positions in Jordan and eastern Syria rely on combinations of Patriot systems, shorter-range counter-drone defenses, and persistent surveillance.
“Israel” constitutes a distinct but integrated pillar in this interception architecture. Its layered air-defense network—Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Patriot, and Arrow—is linked to US early-warning and interception planning, forming a shared defensive envelope rather than a purely national shield.
Notably, the defensive geography is widening. Cyprus has deployed Israeli-made air-defense systems, and Greece is moving toward integrating Israeli interception technology into its own architecture—developments that point to the gradual emergence of an Eastern Mediterranean interception depth, built around interoperable sensors and strategic alignment rather than formal collective defence commitments.
At sea, US Aegis-equipped destroyers add a mobile interception layer capable of engaging aircraft, cruise missiles, and limited ballistic threats—again supplementing, not replacing, land-based interception.
This matters because missile defense introduces a vulnerability that carrier narratives often conceal: interceptor stocks are finite, and a sustained high-volume exchange strains them. In a scenario of large-scale missile and drone retaliation, the question becomes not simply “can you intercept?” but “for how long?”—and at what political cost to host governments whose territory becomes the absorbing surface for escalation.
Tehran’s strategic logic
Iran’s deterrence logic has been recalibrated by lived confrontation, namely the “12-day war”. The central conclusion drawn in Tehran is that survivability precedes deterrence. Missiles, air-defense systems, command-and-control, missile production, and retaliatory capabilities must be structured to endure the opening shock of war, not to dominate it.
In the opening phase of that confrontation, Iran’s air defenses suffered rapid degradation: fixed or semi-mobile systems were destroyed early, their locations effectively pre-mapped, and their network dependence exploited through precision strikes, electronic warfare, and intelligence integration. Mobile missile systems—long assumed to be the backbone of survivable retaliation—also proved vulnerable once movement became detectable under persistent surveillance and integrated strike networks. The conclusion Tehran extracts is structural: in a conflict dominated by satellite tracking and real-time targeting, anything that must move, emit, or communicate openly at the onset of war is at elevated risk of rapid attrition.
That assessment drives the turn toward underground infrastructure. Iran’s missile force is being reconfigured around hardened tunnels, concealed storage, underground silos, and pre-positioned launch infrastructure designed to reduce exposure time and reliance on vulnerable command links. In this model, air defense still matters, but its role is framed as damage limitation rather than denial: complicating targeting, absorbing strikes, and preserving enough capability to ensure retaliation after the opening exchange.
Disruptions cascade into command delays and coordination bottlenecks, so Tehran’s preparations increasingly prioritise hardened domestic infrastructure, reduced external dependencies, and decentralized command authority to ensure retaliation does not hinge on uninterrupted connectivity. Parallel to this is the elevation of the domestic front—civil defense, continuity, internal stability—as a core component of deterrence rather than an auxiliary concern.
This is not the posture of a state seeking war. It is the posture of a state that has learnt—through repeated threat and episodic attack—that its adversaries prefer to treat its security as negotiable. Tehran’s strategic lesson is bleak but coherent: if the US and “Israel” reserve an expansive right to strike, then Iran must reserve the ability to respond even after absorbing the first blow. This is not radical; it is the minimal condition of sovereignty.
The escalation problem
A central risk is that escalation is unlikely to remain geographically contained. Even if Washington frames an initial operation as “limited”, allied forces and partner theatres are not mechanically separable. Under conditions of sustained strikes on Iran, groups and allied actors across Yemen, Lebanon, and Iraq face their own strategic pressures, with intervention becoming a function of credibility and survival rather than preference.
Meanwhile, regional governments that host US assets occupy an exposed position. They may privately prefer de-escalation, but their bases and airspace can become operational requirements once Washington activates the posture it has assembled. Washington has 35,000–40,000 personnel deployed around Iran, expected to carry out the main attack in the event of war—an estimate that underscores how deeply the region is already militarily interlocked with any potential campaign.
This is where political constraint becomes as dangerous as military capability. When leaders publicly elevate threats, they increase the domestic cost of restraint; when adversaries interpret restraint as weakness, they increase the cost of compromise. In such conditions, accidental escalation—triggered by a strike, a misattributed attack, or a rapid chain of retaliation—can become more plausible than deliberate strategic design. And in an environment saturated with narrative warfare, the line between “accident” and “pretext” is rarely as clear as officials insist.
The build-up manufactures the conditions for war
The build-up is not reducible to theatre. It is a layered strike-and-defense system: forward stealth fighters and conventional strike aircraft; electronic warfare; airborne command and ISR; tanker depth and heavy lift; carrier groups and missile-capable submarines; a regional lattice of bases; and an expanding interception architecture stretching across the Gulf, the Levant, and into the Eastern Mediterranean. The combined effect is to make sustained operations technically feasible, while widening the geography of vulnerability and entanglement.
The strategic irony is that the more “prepared” this posture becomes, the less space remains for political off-ramps. Host governments become exposed. Interceptor sustainability becomes a decisive variable. Tehran’s retaliatory doctrine evolves toward survivability and endurance rather than symbolic signalling. In such an environment, the question is no longer whether war is “intended”. It is whether the operational infrastructure of war is now sufficiently in place that a single trigger—miscalculation, provocation, or opportunism—can transform a posture into a campaign faster than political channels can arrest it.
Iran’s reading of this is neither paranoia nor ideology. It is a basic inference. When a superpower constructs the machinery for a sustained strike and embeds it across neighbouring territories, the targeted state will plan accordingly. The real moral burden, then, lies not on Iran’s preparations for survival, but on the political decision—repeatedly rehearsed in Washington and Tel Aviv—that a regional order can be engineered through coercion and air power, while everyone else is expected to absorb the consequences.
If the international community is serious about preventing war, it should stop treating Iran’s defensive doctrine as the primary problem while granting the US-Israeli posture the presumption of legitimacy. The liability of proof lies with those constructing a regional strike system and calling it “stability”. There is nothing stabilizing about embedding a war option across neighbouring territories, then demanding that the targeted state behave as though this is normal. The region has seen this script before: coercion presented as protection, escalation presented as necessity, and catastrophe presented—after the fact—as an unfortunate surprise.
Iran to US: Sanctions and war failed; try diplomacy and respect
Press TV – February 23, 2026
A top Iranian diplomat says the time is ripe for the United States to abandon its “fruitless” sanctions and failed policy of war against Iran, urging genuine respect for diplomacy as the only viable path forward.
“Iran’s enemies may start a war, but they will not be able to determine the end,” Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Kazem Gharibabadi said in an address to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday.
“You have tried sanctions and war in relation to Iran and got nowhere. Now it is time to experience diplomacy and respect,” he said.
He said Iranians do not seek aggression against other countries but will firmly stand against any military or political conspiracy against the Islamic Republic and will defend their homeland.
Gharibabadi said the consequences of war will not be limited only to the parties to the conflict, “but will engulf the region.”
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened military action against Iran since early January, following his public support for foreign-linked riots.
Trump has since ordered a significant military buildup in regional waters near Iran and warned of strikes if Tehran does not accept a deal on US terms.
Iranian officials have reiterated their readiness for a fair agreement on the country’s nuclear program but warned that even a limited attack would trigger a decisive response.
Elsewhere in his address, Gharibabadi said the so-called advocates of human rights supported the United States and the Israeli regime during the 12-day war against Iran in June 2025, which killed more than 1,060 Iranians and injured some 6,000 others.
“They did not even allow the UN Security Council and the Human Rights Council to condemn the aggression.”
Gharibabadi said Iran’s enemies, who suffered a severe defeat in the June war, attempted to set the stage for another military offensive by inciting unrest in the country and turning peaceful economic protests into deadly riots.
The Iranian official condemned the terrorists for committing Daesh-style crimes that resulted in the martyrdom of 2,427 civilians.
Gharibabadi said those who place the least value on human dignity are exploiting human rights as a tool to serve their own interests.
The Iranian deputy foreign minister said the main instigators of the January unrest, notably the United States and Israel, must be held accountable for crimes against humanity.
China supplies Iran with radar, surveillance tech to track US stealth aircraft: Report
The Cradle | February 23, 2026
China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) has provided Iran with new technology in an effort to prevent infiltration by US and Israeli intelligence, and to help Tehran defend itself from advanced US and Israeli warplanes in the case of a renewed war, according to a 10 February report by Modern Diplomacy.
The report states that Beijing is urging its ally, Tehran, to abandon US and Israeli-made software and replace it with closed, encrypted Chinese systems that are difficult to penetrate.
This includes supplying Iran with advanced Chinese sensor systems and radars, such as the YLC-8B, capable of tracking stealth aircraft and conducting electronic surveillance.
Defense Security Asia stated that according to one analyst, the “YLC-8B is one of the few radars of its type in the world which can continuously detect and track a Western fifth-generation (stealth) aircraft at long range.”
The YLC-8B was developed by China’s Nanjing Research Institute of Electronics Technology. It uses UHF-band low-frequency surveillance to undermine the effectiveness of radar-absorbent shaping used by advanced US aircraft such as the F-35 warplane and B-2 bomber. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) reportedly has 48 F-35 stealth fighter jets in its fleet.
Beijing is also encouraging Iran to transition to the Chinese BeiDou satellite navigation system as an alternative to the US-created GPS system to avoid manipulation and prevent US intelligence from using it to track Iranian targets within the country, Modern Diplomacy reported.
The report comes as the US has amassed a significant amount of its naval and air power in the West Asia region, threatening a major attack on Iran.
China is seeking to assist Tehran to protect its massive investments in Iran, made as part of a 25-year strategic agreement signed under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Beijing also fears the loss of access to Iranian oil if Washington launches an attack, leading Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran is China’s largest supplier of oil, while some 20 to 30 percent of the world’s crude passes through the strategic straits on Iran’s southern coast.
Despite seeking to assist Iran with new technology, Beijing has made it clear it will not intervene militarily to assist Iran in the case of a war, Modern Diplomacy noted.
China has extensive economic relations with both the US and Israel.
Instead, China is expected to limit its support to the diplomatic sphere and condemn any unprovoked US or Israeli attack as a serious violation of international law and the UN Charter.
“Beijing remains wary of sliding into a full-blown conflict that could threaten the flow of oil from the Gulf. This is what prompts it to consistently call for restraint and a return to diplomatic solutions to avoid ‘catastrophic consequences’ for the global economy,” Modern Diplomacy added.
Putin: Developing Russia’s nuclear forces ‘absolute priority’
Press TV – February 23, 2026
President Vladimir Putin says developing Russia’s nuclear forces is now an “absolute priority” following the expiry of its last remaining nuclear treaty with the US.
“The development of the nuclear triad, which guarantees Russia’s security and ensures effective strategic deterrence and a balance of forces in the world, remains an absolute priority,” Putin said in a video speech on Sunday to mark Russia’s “Defender of the Fatherland Day.”
Putin pledged to further reinforce the army and navy, and draw on military experience gained during the nearly four-year conflict in Ukraine.
Moscow and Washington, the world’s two largest nuclear powers, are no longer bound by any arms control agreement following the expiration of the “New START” agreement earlier this month.
Russia and the US possess more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.
As of January 2025, Russia had more than 4300, and the US had approximately 3700 nuclear warheads.
Analysts say both the US and Russia are modernizing their nuclear forces, effectively fueling an arms race already underway.
With nuclear weapons gaining renewed prominence and no breakthrough from talks such as Trump and Putin’s Alaska meeting last year, New START’s end signals a more volatile and dangerous phase in global security.
Your Enslavement Begins in Gaza: The ‘Board of Peace’
Propaganda & Co. | February 22, 2026
Jared Kushner presents the dystopian future being built for us all with his Board of Peace Master Plan for Gaza.
Follow us on X: https://x.com/propandco
Pax Judaica Explained | Prof. David Miller
Podcast & Co. and Propaganda & Co. | February 18, 2026
Professor David Miller joins us to discuss Pax Judaica.
You can learn more about David Miller and his work on his substack: https://substack.com/@trackingpower
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Alon Mizrahi: ‘Israel Must Be Dismantled’
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From the Archives
Allies Don’t Need Lobbies
By Jay Knott | Dissident Voice | September 24, 2013
In a recent article on Counterpunch, Rob Urie defended the traditional Marxist analysis of US policy in the Middle East. He argues that support for Israel is driven primarily by economic interest, not the Jewish lobby.
He starts by paying tribute to the idea that Western societies are uniquely racist. He says that the “Western narrative” claims there is an “Arab character”, and that this is “antique racist blather”. He gives no definition of these terms. Further, he establishes his credentials as part of the dominant current in the American left by claiming that “over a million people in Iraq died so ‘we’ in the West can drive SUVs.”1
When he tries to criticize bourgeois economics, he makes it clear he doesn’t understand the developments it has made since Marx’s day, using the mathematical discipline known as “game theory”. He dismisses the basic abstraction of economic theory, the idea of the rational individual, on the grounds that it is “devoid of history, culture and political context”. But abstractions are always devoid of something.
He defends a more concrete economic theory, mostly Marxist, with some input from another theorist of capitalist crisis, Hyman Minsky. This concrete theory leads him to the view that US activity in the Middle East is primarily driven by rational capitalist motives, the need to secure a supply of oil.
“Taking the totality of circumstance — former oil company executives launching war on an oil rich nation on a pretext they publicly proclaimed they didn’t believe shortly before taking office — and that upon launching their war proved to be non-existent, requires a willingness to overlook the obvious — that the war on Iraq was for oil, that is difficult to support.”1
Perhaps I’ve misunderstood him, but based on what he says in the rest of the article, this convoluted sentence seems to argue that, because president Bush and vice-president Cheney attacked Iraq on false premises, and they also said it was all about oil, and they are former oil executives, and Iraq has a lot of oil, it’s difficult to deny US attacks on Iraq are all about oil.
In fact, it’s not hard at all. As Urie points out, at times Bush and co. said that attacking Iraq was “protecting the world’s supply of oil.”1 But, as he also points out, they are congenital liars. Why should we believe them when they say they are trying to “protect” the oil supply? Protect it against what? When politicians “admit” attacks on Middle Eastern countries are wars for oil, they are parroting the neo-con party line, feeding the public, both left and right, with a plausible-sounding pretext. For right-wingers, “it’s a war for oil” is a reason to support war, and for leftists, it’s a way to feel better by complaining impotently about corporate greed. Both approaches help the war drive. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Pakistan ramps up food exports to Persian Gulf nations as war deepens food insecurity
- Iran submits response to US plan, sets terms for war’s end: Tasnim
- US vs Iran: Kharg Island Talk — Bluff or Escalation? Ex-Military Officer Weighs In
- Zelensky unnecessarily involves Ukraine in the Middle East crisis
- Turkish tanker blacklisted by Ukraine hit in drone attack – media
- Canada, the U.S., and NATO: the inescapable trap
- Villains of Judea: Leonid Radvinsky
- Alon Mizrahi: ‘Israel Must Be Dismantled’
- Former Head Of MI6 Admits That The U.S. And Israel Are Losing The Iran War
- Scattered Thoughts on War and Peace
- If Americans Knew
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- In the West Bank, life is a constant battle – 3 articles
- Jacob Reses, one of the most powerful pro-Israel operatives in Trump’s Washington
- Israeli-US assaults kill or injure 87 children a day – Not a ceasefire Day 166
- ‘Forever live by the sword’: Understanding Israelis’ massive support for Iran war
- UN’s special rapporteur on human rights says Israel is systematically torturing Palestinians
- Trump White House plagiarized Iran war manifesto from Israel-aligned think tank
- Gaza says 6–10 patients die daily waiting for treatment abroad as Israel blocks medical evacuations
- ‘Substantial evidence’ of double-tap strike in killing of Gaza’s Hind Rajab
- ‘Do Not Want To Die For Israel’: Doubts About Trump’s Iran Strategy Spread Among Troops
- No Tricks Zone
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- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
- Energy Expert: Germany’s Nuclear Phaseout Was A “500 Billion Euro Mistake”
- New Research: South Australia’s Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures Were 4°C Warmer Than Today
- Storing Green Energy To Last Germany 10 Days Would Require A 60-Million Tonne Battery
- New Studies: UK Sea Levels Were 4 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Destructive Green New Deal: German Energy And Metal Group Warns Of Drastic Crisis
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- Wake-up Call: Survey Shows Majority Of Germans Now Favor Postponing Climate Targets!
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