Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

The Rebirth of ISIS, Israel and the Continuation of Syria’s Civil War

By Robert Inlakesh | Palestine Chronicle | December 25, 2025

The chaotic predicament in which Syria now finds itself was, in many ways, predictable, yet this makes it nonetheless tragic. Despite the recent removal of the US’s crushing Caesar Act sanctions, the challenges ahead are so numerous as to render this a minor victory for the country.

In order to begin to understand what is happening inside Syria, we first have to begin to comprehend what happened following the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Although the moment that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) entered Damascus, and Ahmed al-Shara’a declared himself leader, was dubbed a liberation of the country, thus interpreted as the end to the nation’s civil war, what had really happened was the birth of a new chapter in the Syrian war.

On December 8, 2024, the Israeli air force saw its opportunity and hatched a long-planned strategy to destroy Syria’s strategic arsenal and occupy key portions of territory in the south of the nation. That day, however, much of the Arabic language world’s media completely ignored the historic event and refused to cover its ramifications.

Another key point was that, beyond Israel’s land grab, the country’s territory still remained divided, as the US-backed Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) maintained its control over the northeast of the country. This movement believes that the territory it controls, with Washington’s backing, is called Rojava and is part of the land of Kurdistan.

Türkiye, to the north, views the Kurdish movement as a strategic threat and treats the SDF as an extension of other Kurdish organizations it deems terrorist groups. The majority of the people living inside SDF-controlled territory are Arabs, an issue that can also not be overlooked.

HTS Ascendant and the Collapse of the State

Then we have the HTS government that took over Damascus, which originally pledged to rule for all Syrians and not just the Sunni majority. However, HTS is a rebranding of Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s Syrian offshoot. Understanding this fact is key, because HTS was the de facto government in the territory called Idlib, in northwestern Syria; although a secular leadership was on paper, supposed to be the ruling authority.

In 2018, when Bashar al-Assad’s forces halted their offensive and sent all the armed groups opposing them on “Green Buses” to the Idlib enclave, Ahmed al-Shara’a, who called himself Abu Mohammed al-Jolani at the time, had started to consolidate power. This led to HTS establishing its own prisons and undergoing a process whereby it managed to control various al-Qaeda-affiliated Salafist armed groups inside the territory.

When HTS took Damascus, it did so with a ragtag army composed of militants from dozens of armed groups from inside Idlib, including many former ISIS fighters and others from different groups that were given the options to join forces with HTS, lay down their weapons, or face fierce crackdowns.

The way these crackdowns on dissidents were carried out, along with corruption in the governance of Idlib, even led to protests inside the province against HTS. Many hardline militants had also accused al-Shara’a of providing the US with details on the whereabouts of former ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Keep in mind now that when HTS took over Damascus, they did so without a fight and the former regime simply collapsed in on itself. So here was HTS, now tasked with managing the majority of Syria and had to do so without any army, because the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) had been disbanded.

Many elements of the former government, intelligence, and military under Bashar al-Assad were told they had been granted amnesty, yet forces aligned with HTS, and in some cases those within it, decided to take the law into their own hands through brutal field executions.

This eventually led to a group of former SAA fighters in the coastal region taking up arms against the new HTS security forces, triggering a response from a broad range of sectarian groups and others who were seeking “revenge” in blood feuds. The result was the mass murder of Alawite civilians across the coast.

Israel, the Druze File, and Syria’s External Fronts

Earlier this year, Israel also took advantage of tensions between Syria’s Druze community and sectarian militants aligned with Damascus, backing Druze separatist militias. This had been a strategy that Tel Aviv attempted to implement all the way back in 2013, when Israel began backing some dozen opposition groups, including al-Qaeda- and ISIS-linked militants that were committing massacres against the Druze.

The Syrian Druze population is primarily situated in the Sweida province in southern Syria. Israel long sought to create a Druze rump state there, which would serve as a land bridge to the Euphrates and allow for the total Israeli domination of the south. The Israelis are also allied with the SDF, although not as overtly as the Americans are, meaning that if their strategy works, then they have secured their domination all the way through to the Iraqi border.

This Monday, tensions again flared up between the Syrian forces aligned with Damascus and HTS in eastern Aleppo, with both sides blaming each other for the violence. Periodically, tensions continue to escalate in Sweida, yet come short of the large-scale sectarian battles we saw earlier this year.

Meanwhile, US forces have now expanded their footprint throughout Syria and have taken over more military air bases, even working alongside Damascus as a partner in the “fight against ISIS,” or “Operation Inherent Resolve.”

On December 13, an attack that killed three US servicemembers was blamed on a lone-wolf ISIS fighter. In response, the US then declared it was launching a retaliatory bombing campaign across the country.

The narratives of both Washington and Damascus make little sense, regarding this being a lone-wolf ISIS attack. Instead, the evidence suggests that the attack was carried out by a member of the HTS security forces, but this is perhaps a story for another day.

Now we hear report after report about the rise of ISIS. And while it is certainly true that ISIS is on its way back, even if in a weaker state, the context is never mentioned.

Internal Fractures, ISIS, and an Unstable Future

Not only has the current Syrian administration managed to play right into Israel’s hands with the management of the situation in Sweida, set up a shadow governance model that is even more corrupt than the previous regime, while isolating all of Syria’s minority communities in one way or another, but it has also effectively turned many of its own allies against it.

There is no actual “Syrian Army” to be spoken of right now, at least there isn’t one that is professionally trained or big enough to handle any major war. Instead, the Syrian state will rely on its allies, like major tribes and a range of militant groups. However, as time goes on, more and more of HTS’s allies and even many who now fill the ranks of its own security forces are growing tired of the government’s antics.

A large component of their anger comes from issues concerning tight Syrian relations with the US, leading to the hunting down of Sunni militants across the country, but particularly in and around Idlib. As mentioned above, HTS had integrated many ISIS fighters and those belonging to other hardline Salafist Takfiri fighting groups, but many of these militants have never been willing to sacrifice their core beliefs for a secular state.

For years, the man they knew as Jolani had preached against the United States and Israel, yet, after taking power, he began cozying up with them and targeting Sunni militants alongside the US military. In addition to this, the large number of foreign fighters inside the country have not been granted citizenship and feel as if their futures are threatened.

In other words, the conditions are ripe for some kind of revolt, and Ahmed al-Shara’a is surrounded by countless threats. If ISIS were to begin gaining traction, there is a good chance many of these fighters, currently allying themselves with the Damascus government, will switch sides. In fact, this is something that has already been happening, although in small numbers and isolated cases.

What we see is a recipe for disaster, one which could explode in any direction, triggering a much larger chain of events in its wake. So far, it appears as if there are four primary threats to the stability of the HTS government. These are the Sweida front, the Israel front, the SDF front, and the potential for an internal insurgency.

Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, recently gave an interview during which he commented that Ahmed al-Shara’a “does know that any pathway for stability in Syria, his pathway for survival, is that he has to be able to have peace with Israel.”

It is important to understand that the two most powerful influences on Damascus are Washington and Ankara, yet it is clear that the US has the edge and could quickly overthrow the HTS regime at any time of its choosing.

Türkiye now has enormous influence inside Syria, where it is competing with the Israelis and attempting to set red lines, yet has failed to impose any equations as of yet. Perhaps the only way that the Turkish state could deter the Israelis is through backing a resistance front in the south of the country, yet it is clear that the US will not allow such a scenario to develop.

Even if a rather weak resistance group, or collection of groups, were to be formed and pose little strategic threat to Israel, this could also end up presenting a challenge to the rule of HTS in the long run. This is because such a resistance organization would enjoy enormous popular support and likely encourage other armed actors inside the country to join forces, creating a Lebanon-style system, whereby the forces of the state are incapable of confronting the occupier, and instead a resistance group would handle security.

The United States and Israel would never permit something like this to evolve, likely moving to commit regime change before such a plot is even conceived.

This leaves Ahmed al-Shara’a in an impossible position. He has no confidence in him as a ruler from the country’s minorities, growing anguish amongst the majority Sunni population, and no real army to be spoken of. Instead of resisting the Israelis, as his men and population at large seek, he sends his officials to sit around the table with them, while Syria’s official social media pages publish images of Syria without including the occupied Golan Heights.

Since 1967, most of the Syrian Druze living in the occupied Golan Heights had refused to take Israeli citizenship. After the sectarian bloodshed that occurred earlier this year, these Syrian Druze began applying for Israeli citizenship en masse. This is the impact that the rulers in Damascus have had on their own people; they have pushed Syrians who resisted Israeli citizenship for decades to switch sides, playing right into Tel Aviv’s hands.

Meanwhile, little is being done to reassure the disillusioned militants who had fought alongside HTS and believed they were fighting for a liberation cause and/or Islamic Caliphate, only to realize that they fought for a regime that negotiates with Israel and bows to the White House. Therefore, it is no wonder that when a group like ISIS appeals to them through its propaganda, it manages to convince them to join the organization’s fight.

What’s more is that this outcome was barely difficult to predict; only days after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, militants from Idlib were posting photos on Facebook of themselves holding up pictures of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in the Umayyad Mosque, the most important mosque to Sunni Muslims in Syria.

Not only this, while ISIS networks on social media were, in the past, blocked almost instantly, they began popping up in the open on places like Facebook again. This begs the question as to why such obvious ISIS glorification and supporters were permitted to begin operating so openly online during this period.

When it comes to Takfiri Salafist doctrine, whether someone is affiliated with ISIS or al-Qaeda offshoots, they do not simply abandon this ideology overnight because of changing political circumstances.

Now, Takfiri militants idolize a man named Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, which is why these Salafi groups are often referred to as Wahhabis. Historically speaking, this ideology was the bedrock on which the Saudi family launched their offensives to conquer Arabia, declaring the Ottomans kafir (disbelievers) and justifying their alliance with Britain, against other Muslims, on this basis. Therefore, some may justify the actions of al-Shara’a on the basis of their doctrine, but only to a certain extent.

When HTS began killing fellow Sunni Muslims, alongside the United States and cozying up to individuals responsible for the mass murder of their co-religionists, this started to become a major problem. It could no longer be branded an “alliance with the people of the book,” especially when fellow Salafists were kidnapped and killed by HTS government forces.

Some attention has recently been placed on the comments of the US envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, who remarked that Syria should not be a democracy and instead a monarchy, even explicitly stating that this plan could include merging Syria with Lebanon. Such a system would certainly please many allies of al-Shara’a, and comments like these could be made in the interest of restoring faith in the leader.

Nonetheless, the current system is still operating on a knife-edge and is far from achieving a monarchy that rules the northern Sham region. In the distance, the Israelis are watching on and simply waiting for the next opportunity to achieve even more of their goals.

This is all because the war in Syria never truly ended; the only thing that changed is that Bashar al-Assad’s government fell, and perhaps if that had occurred during the first years of the war, there wouldn’t have been so many issues.

As is normally the case with human psychology, we seek to frame things in a favorable way to our worldview, meaning that we simply ignore evidence to the contrary. Yet, the case of Syria is really not all that dissimilar from the post-US-backed regime change realities currently existing in Libya, although there are key differences, of course.

So long as Syria remains without an effective resistance front against the Israelis, it will never recover and remain trapped. In Lebanon, it took years before such a resistance force truly took off in the south, and even then, it took decades to expel and then deter the Israelis. Syria is a much more complex picture, which makes predicting outcomes even more difficult.

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine.

December 25, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Europe’s Panic Economy: Frozen Assets, Empty Arsenals, and the Quiet Admission of Defeat

By Gerry Nolan | Ron Paul Institute | December 24, 2025

When a prime minister tells her own staff to rest because next year will be much worse, it is not gallows humor. It is not exhaustion speaking. It is a slip of the mask, the kind of remark leaders make only when the internal forecasts no longer align with the public script.

Giorgia Meloni was not addressing voters. She was addressing the state itself — the bureaucratic core tasked with executing decisions whose consequences can no longer be disguised. Her words were not about a mundane increased workload. They were about constraint. About limits. About a Europe that has crossed from crisis management into managed decline, and knows that 2026 is when the accumulated costs finally collide.

What Meloni let slip is what Europe’s elites already understand: the Western project in Ukraine has run head-first into material reality. Not Russian propaganda. Not disinformation. Not populism. Steel, munitions, energy, labor, and time. And once material reality asserts itself, legitimacy begins to drain.

The War Europe Cannot Supply

Europe can posture for war. It cannot produce for war.

Four years into a high-intensity war of attrition, the United States and Europe are confronting a truth they spent decades unlearning: you do not sustain this kind of conflict with theatrical speeches, sanctions, or abandoning diplomacy. You sustain it with shells, missiles, trained crews, repair cycles, and production rates that exceed losses — month after month, without interruption.

By 2025, the gap is no longer theoretical.

Russia is now producing artillery ammunition at a scale that Western officials themselves concede outpaces the combined output of NATO. Russian industry has shifted to continuous near-wartime production (without even being fully mobilized), with centralized procurement, simplified supply chains, and state-directed throughput. Estimates place annual Russian artillery production at several million rounds — production already flowing, not promised.

Europe, by contrast, has spent 2025 celebrating targets it cannot ever materially meet. The European Union’s flagship pledge remains two million shells per year — a goal dependent on new facilities, new contracts, and new labor that will not fully materialize within the decisive window of the war, if ever. Even the dreamed target if reached, would not put it at parity with Russian output. The United States, after emergency expansion, is projecting roughly one million shells annually once and a big if, full ramp-up is achieved. Even combined on paper, Western production struggles to match Russian output already delivered. Talk about paper tiger.

This is not a gap. It is a major tempo mismatch. Russia is producing at scale now. Europe is dreaming of rebuilding the ability to produce at scale later.

And time is the one variable that cannot be sanctioned.

Nor can the United States simply compensate for Europe’s hollowed-out capacity. Washington faces its own industrial choke points. Production of Patriot air-defense interceptors runs in the low hundreds per year while demand now spans Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and US stockpile replenishment simultaneously — a mismatch senior Pentagon officials have acknowledged cannot be resolved quickly, if ever. US naval shipbuilding tells the same story: submarine and surface-combatant programs are years behind schedule, constrained by labor shortages, aging yards, and cost overruns that push meaningful expansion into the 2030s. The assumption that America can industrially backstop Europe no longer matches reality. This is not a European problem alone; it is a Western one.

War Footing Without Factories

European leaders speak of “war footing” as if it were a political posture. In reality, it is an industrial condition and Europe does not meet it.

New artillery production lines require years to reach stable throughput. Air-defense interceptor manufacturing runs in long cycles measured in batches, not surges. Even basic inputs such as explosives remain bottlenecks, with facilities shuttered decades ago only now being reopened, some not expected to reach capacity until the late 2020s.

That date alone is an admission.

Russia, meanwhile, is already operating inside wartime tempo. Its defense sector has delivered thousands of armored vehicles, hundreds of aircraft and helicopters, and vast quantities of drones annually.

Europe’s problem is not conceptual; it is institutional. Germany’s much-vaunted Zeitenwende exposed this brutally. Tens of billions were authorized, but procurement bottlenecks, fragmented contracting, and an atrophied supplier base meant delivery lagged years behind rhetoric. France, often cited as Europe’s most capable arms producer, can manufacture more sophisticated systems — but only in boutique quantities, measured in dozens where attritional war demands thousands. Even the EU’s own ammunition acceleration initiatives expanded capacity on paper while the front consumed shells in weeks. These are not ideological failures. They are administrative and industrial ones and they compound under pressure.

The difference is structural. Western industry was optimized for shareholder efficiency and peacetime margins. Russia’s has been reorganized for endurance under pressure. NATO announces packages. Russia counts deliveries.

The €210 Billion Fantasy

This industrial reality explains why the frozen-assets saga mattered so much, and why it failed.

Europe’s leadership did not pursue the seizure of Russian sovereign assets out of legal creativity or moral clarity. It pursued it because it needed time. Time to avoid admitting that the war could not be sustained on Western industrial terms. Time to substitute finance for production.

When the attempt to seize roughly €210 billion in Russian assets collapsed on December 20th, blocked by legal risk, market consequences, and resistance led by Belgium, with Italy, Malta, Slovakia and Hungary, aligned against outright confiscation, Europe settled for a degraded substitute: a €90 billion loan to Ukraine for 2026–27, serviced by 3B in annual interest, further mortgaging Europe’s future. This was not strategy. It was triage, and further divided, an already weakened Union.

Outright confiscation would have detonated Europe’s credibility as a financial custodian. Permanent immobilization avoids the blast — but creates a slow bleed. The assets remain frozen indefinitely, a standing act of economic warfare that signals to the world that reserves held in Europe are conditional and not worth the risk. Europe chose reputational erosion over legal rupture. That choice reveals fear, not strength.

Ukraine as a Balance-Sheet War

The deeper truth is that Ukraine is no longer primarily a battlefield problem. It is a solvency problem. Washington understands this. The United States can absorb embarrassment. It cannot absorb open-ended liabilities indefinitely. An offramp is being sought — quietly, unevenly, and with rhetorical cover.

Europe cannot admit it needs one. Europe framed the war as existential, civilizational, moral. It declared compromise appeasement and negotiation surrender. In doing so, it erased its own exit ramps.

Now the costs land where no narrative can deflect them: on European budgets, European energy bills, European industry, and European political cohesion. The €90 billion loan is not solidarity. It is securitization of decline — rolling obligations forward while the productive base required to justify them continues to erode.

Meloni knows this. That is why her tone was not defiant, but weary.

Censorship as Panic Management

As material limits harden, narrative control tightens. The aggressive enforcement of the EU’s Digital Services Act is not about safety. It is about containment, in its most Orwellian form — constructing an information perimeter around an elite consensus that can no longer withstand open accounting. When citizens begin asking calmly, and then not calmly, relentlessly, what was this for?, the illusion of legitimacy collapses quickly.

This is why regulatory pressure now reaches beyond Europe’s borders, provoking transatlantic friction over jurisdiction and speech. Confident systems do not fear conversation. Fragile ones do. Censorship here is not ideology. It is insurance.

Deindustrialization: The Unspoken Betrayal

Europe did not merely sanction Russia. It sanctioned its own industrial model.

By 2025, European industry continues to pay energy costs far above those of competitors in the United States or Russia. Germany, the engine, has seen sustained contraction in energy-intensive manufacturing. Chemical, steel, fertilizer, and glass production have either shut down or relocated. Small and medium enterprises across Italy and Central Europe are failing quietly, without headlines.

This is why Europe cannot scale ammunition the way it needs to. This is why rearmament remains a promise rather than a condition. Cheap energy was not a luxury. It was the foundation. Remove it via self-sabotage (Nordstream et. al), and the structure hollows out.

China, watching all of this, holds the other half of Europe’s nightmare. It commands the deepest manufacturing base on earth without having entered wartime footing. Russia does not need China’s breadth, only its strategic depth behind it in reserve. Europe has neither.

What Meloni Actually Fears

Not hard work. Not busy schedules. She fears a 2026 in which Europe’s elites lose control of three things at once.

Money — as Ukraine’s funding becomes an EU balance-sheet problem, replacing the fantasy that “Russia will pay.”

Narrative — as censorship tightens and still fails to suppress the question echoing across the continent: what was this all for?

Alliance discipline — as Washington maneuvers for exit while Europe absorbs the cost, the risk, and the humiliation.

That is the panic. Not losing the war overnight, but losing legitimacy slowly, as reality leaks out through energy bills, shuttered factories, empty arsenals, and mortgaged futures.

Humanity at the Abyss

This is not just Europe’s crisis. It is civilizational. A system that cannot produce, cannot replenish, cannot tell the truth, and cannot retreat without collapsing credibility has reached its limits. When leaders begin preparing their own institutions for worse years ahead, they are not forecasting inconvenience. They are conceding structure.

Meloni’s remark mattered because it pierced the performance. Empires announce triumph loudly. Systems in decline lower expectations quietly, or loudly in Meloni’s case.

Europe’s leadership is lowering expectations now because it knows what the warehouses contain, what the factories cannot yet deliver, what the debt curves look like — and what the public has already begun to understand.

For most Europeans, this reckoning will not arrive as an abstract debate about strategy or supply chains. It will arrive as a far simpler realization: this was never a war they consented to. It was not fought to defend their homes, their prosperity, or their future. It was fought for greed for Empire, and paid for with their living standards, their industry, and their children’s future.

They were told it was existential. They were told there was no alternative. They were told sacrifice was virtue.

Yet what Europeans want is not endless mobilization or permanent austerity. They want peace. They want stability. They want the quiet dignity of prosperity — affordable energy, functioning industry, and a future that is not mortgaged to conflicts they did not consent to.

And when that truth settles, when the fear recedes and the spell breaks, the question Europeans will ask will not be technical, ideological, or rhetorical.

It will be human. Why were we forced to sacrifice everything for a war we never agreed to and told there was no peace worth pursuing? And this is what keeps Meloni up at night.

Gerry Nolan is a political analyst, writer, and strategist focused on geopolitics, security affairs, and the structural dynamics of global power. He is the founder and editor of The Islander, an independent media platform examining war, diplomacy, economic statecraft, and the accelerating shift toward a multipolar world.

December 25, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s diamond industry is going extinct. That’s a billion-dollar problem for the IDF.

Inside China Business | December 24, 2025
The Israeli diamond industry is collapsing, as high tariffs and strong competition in the US market are crippling demand for natural stones from Israeli firms. The US – Israel diamond trade is crucial to Israel’s economy, and the industry even directly supports the Israeli Defense Forces with over $1 billion a year. Moreover, the diamond trade in Africa is financed with illicit weapons sales and training by IDF commanders.
India replaced Israel as the top exporter of natural diamonds ten years ago, and Chinese-made artificial diamonds are increasingly preferred by younger buyers. The market situation in the United States and the war in Gaza led to a collapse in Israeli lending and investment in the sector, which is now at historic lows. Wholesale diamond buyers are reluctant to visit Israel, and its annual diamond show was recently canceled.
Resources and links:
Bloody Diamonds: How Your Engagement Ring Helps Fund a Genocide in Gaza https://www.unz.com/article/bloody-di…
U.S.-Israel Trade Is Dominated By Diamonds https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrober…
Israel’s diamond industry faces its worst crisis in decades https://www.ynetnews.com/business/art…
Millennial and Gen Z women want cheaper engagement rings https://www.axios.com/2019/06/10/enga…
Rings get bigger as lab-grown diamonds catch up to naturals https://www.axios.com/2024/10/12/lab-…
The 2024 Diamond Crisis: An Industry at Its Breaking Point https://rapaport.com/magazine-article…
Israel’s Diamond Financing Sinks to $0.5 Bln https://www.edahngolan.com/israels-di… 
Israel: Diamond exports, USD per carat https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Isra…
Israel’s Top 10 Exports https://www.worldstopexports.com/isra…
Consumers Widely Accept Lab-Grown Diamonds, Even If Fewer Prefer Them https://www.jckonline.com/editorial-a…
Eleven of the top fourteen diamond-producing countries are in Africa https://intelpoint.co/insights/eleven…
Diamond Industry And Israeli Arms Trade Face Global Outcry https://evrimagaci.org/gpt/diamond-in…

December 24, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Iran says no basis for inspection of bombed nuclear sites

Press TV – December 24, 2025

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) says that political and psychological pressure over inspection of damaged nuclear facilities will have no effect, calling for clear procedures to be established for such occasions.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Mohammad Eslami said there is currently no codified instruction for inspecting nuclear facilities that have been damaged by military attacks.

“Until this issue is clarified, political and psychological pressure and irrelevant follow-ups aimed at re-inspecting bombed facilities and completing the enemy’s operations are unacceptable and will not be responded to,” he said.

Back in June, during the US-Israeli aggression against Iran, the US bombed three Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, in a clear violation of international law and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Eslami noted that Article 68 of the Safeguards Agreement refers only to natural accidents and damage, not military attacks or war.

“If the IAEA considers military attacks on safeguarded nuclear facilities acceptable, it must explicitly approve and declare that,” he said. “But if such attacks are illegal, they must be condemned, and the post-war procedures must be clearly defined.”

He added that until such conditions are formally defined by the agency, Iran will not accept demands for renewed inspections of damaged sites.

On Iran’s cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Eslami said no country in history has cooperated with the agency to the extent Iran has.

“The most extensive and intensive inspections ever conducted have been imposed on Iran’s nuclear industry, and there is not a single report indicating non-compliance or diversion from safeguards,” he said.

He characterized current pressure as politically motivated and aimed at harming and weakening the Iranian people, stressing that Iran’s nuclear activities remain entirely peaceful.

Referring to the UN Security Council meeting held on Tuesday, Eslami said the discussions no longer merely warranted regret but instead exposed the reality of long-standing US pressure on Iran’s nuclear industry.

He noted that Washington has openly stated in its national security strategy that it does not pursue its interests through international organizations and, instead, relies on “the law of the jungle and the use of force.”

Eslami described the report, statements, and references made during the Security Council session as “completely unprofessional and non-legal.”

He emphasized that UN Security Council Resolution 2231 has expired, and even if it were to be cited, its procedural requirements were not followed.

Claims that Iran’s alleged non-compliance with the JCPOA justifies the reinstatement of previous UN sanctions, he said, are “entirely rejected and unacceptable.”

He added that China and Russia, both permanent members of the Security Council with veto power, have explicitly rejected these claims, stating that the push by the three European countries and the United States—backed by Israeli lobbying—has no legal standing and is not enforceable.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Eslami announced the launch of a nationwide multimedia festival titled “Nuclear Technology for Life,” organized jointly with Iran’s national broadcaster.

He said the initiative aims to counter misinformation and distorted narratives about Iran’s nuclear program by presenting multi-layered accounts through public and media participation.

December 24, 2025 Posted by | War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Department of State Discloses Names of 5 Europeans Sanctioned for Censorship Against US

Sputnik – 24.12.2025

US Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers has disclosed the list of five Europeans who have been sanctioned by Washington for the extraterritorial censorship of Americans.

The list includes Thierry Breton, who is described as a mastermind of the Digital Services Act (DSA); Imran Ahmed, who headed the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) that called for deplatforming US anti-vaxxers, including now Secretary of Health Robert Kennedy; Clare Melford, who leads the Global Disinformation Index (GDI); Anna-Lena von Hodenberg, the founder of German organization HateAid that was allegedly created to “counter conservative groups” and is an official censor under the DSA; and Josephine Ballon, the co-leader of HateAid.

“These sanctions are visa-related. We aren’t invoking severe Magnitsky-style financial measures, but our message is clear: if you spend your career fomenting censorship of American speech, you’re unwelcome on American soil,” Rogers wrote on X.

The introduction of sanctions against five Europeans was announced by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The secretary said that “these radical activists and weaponized NGOs” had aided censorship crackdowns by foreign states, targeting American speakers and American companies.

December 24, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

The Epstein Saga: Chapter 1, Mr. Clinton

By Lorenzo Maria Pacini | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 24, 2025

A necessary introduction

I don’t usually write about these topics, but this time the matter is becoming interesting. The Epstein case is a Pandora’s box that reveals many power intrigues and the workings of certain geopolitical mechanisms currently in operation. For this reason, I will devote a series of articles – the Epstein Saga – to exploring some relevant aspects of this complicated affair.

First of all, it should be noted that the sources have been flawed, at least in part, from the outset. The files officially released by the US Department of Justice are mostly insignificant photographs, a large amount of .pdf files of what was found in Epstein’s residence; most of the files are obscured, with black stripes or squares concealing the identities and significant details of the material. This makes it very difficult to interpret the available material correctly and comprehensively.

The intent, however, is not to provide an exhaustive report on the entire affair—a task we gladly leave to investigative journalists—but rather to provoke reflection on the short- and long-term strategy behind this case.

The release of these files is part of a plan whose importance we still do not understand. It is a transformation taking place throughout the West, a transition from an old world of politics to a new one, through the fall of many masks.

The biggest problem, however, remains what will come next.

The context: what is happening these days

The most recent documents published on the Epstein case, in December 2025, include thousands of new records, photos, and investigative files from the Department of Justice and the House Oversight Committee. These documents contain images of prominent figures linked to Epstein, details of his travels and properties, grand jury transcripts, and investigative reports, including a 1996 FBI complaint about alleged child pornography and harassment. Many of the files have been heavily redacted to protect victims, but some pages have been completely blacked out, drawing criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for the lack of transparency.

Among the new revelations are photos of Epstein’s Little St. James Island, emails from his estate referring to high-profile figures, and a previously missing minute of video from his cell block before his death. The release also includes a transcript and audio recording of an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as additional court documents and flight logs. The Department of Justice has stated that several hundred thousand documents will be released in batches, with more expected in the coming weeks.

Some documents, including a photo associated with President Trump, were reportedly removed from the initial release, sparking further controversy and calls for full transparency. The latest batch of documents continues to fuel public and political debate about the responsibility and scope of Epstein’s network.

Hey, Bill!

The first person worth mentioning is former US President Bill Clinton.

In one photograph, he is sitting on a private jet, smiling relaxed and his face slightly flushed, while a young blonde woman is reclining on the armrest of his chair. In another shot, he appears reclining, shirtless, in a hot tub, his hands clasped behind his head; the face of the person next to him is covered by a black box. In other images, he is seen smiling next to Mick Jagger, wearing a shirt and elegant jacket. In yet another, he is swimming in a luxurious marble-lined indoor pool with Ghislaine Maxwell, a key figure in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking organization. And then, smiling again, he is wearing a decorated silk shirt and standing side by side with Epstein himself.

The powerful American Democratic leader is undoubtedly one of the most mentioned VIPs in the Epstein documents. In the quarter-century since leaving office, Clinton has worked carefully to put the personal scandals that marked his presidency behind him. Today, at 79, he leads the typical life of a former statesman: traveling the world for conferences and commemorations, writing memoirs and political novels, and continuing the work of his philanthropic foundation. But that is not enough to escape the serious allegations that Epstein’s files quietly reveal, namely less institutional aspects of Clinton’s personality, such as his penchant for extramarital affairs, rash decisions, and a certain impulsiveness.

Already in 2017, Clinton had been at the center of numerous allegations, from sexual harassment to non-consensual exhibitionism to rape, allegations that Clinton has always denied. But what about now, with the files of the Epstein case?

In his memoir published in 2024, Clinton wrote that he had only two “brief encounters” with Epstein: one in his Harlem office and one at the financier’s New York residence. Between 2002 and 2003, Clinton admitted to flying several times on Epstein’s jet with his staff and Secret Service escort to support his foundation’s activities. In exchange for the flight, he explained, he devoted “an hour or two” to conversations about politics and economics.

“That was the content of our conversations,” he wrote. “Although those trips allowed me to visit foundation projects, getting on Epstein’s plane was not worth the years of questions that followed.”

The section closes with a sentence that is perhaps more revealing than the images themselves:

“I wish I had never met him.”

The Department of Justice has announced that additional documents will be made public in the coming weeks. The political aims of the first tranche of disclosures, however, appear clear: to shift attention away from Trump’s possible involvement in the scandal and focus the spotlight on Clinton instead.

The release of the images is unlikely to end Clinton’s political difficulties related to her relationship with Epstein. For months, the Clintons have tried to avoid appearing directly before the House Oversight Committee as part of the Epstein investigation. Such a hearing would be exceptional: no former president has testified before Congress since 1983, when Gerald Ford did so during the bicentennial celebrations of the Constitution.

The publication of the photos could increase public pressure for the couple to participate openly in the investigation and reignite questions about Clinton’s version of events, according to which he was unaware of Epstein’s crimes and severed all ties after the first reports of the investigation emerged in 2005.

On several occasions, not only the allegations but also the accusers themselves have been brought to the forefront of the political scene: in 2016, less than two hours before the second presidential debate, Trump and his campaign manager, Stephen K. Bannon, organized an impromptu press conference with three women who claimed to have been discredited or ignored by the Clintons after reporting sexual harassment. In 2019, a few hours after Epstein’s death in his cell, Trump relaunched an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory on social media linking Clinton to the financier’s death. Since then, Trump has continued to claim that Clinton spent a lot of time on Epstein’s private island, an accusation that the former president has always denied and that has also been refuted by Susie Wiles, White House chief of staff, and Ghislaine Maxwell herself.

Bill Clinton’s presidency was marked by several high-profile scandals, the most notable of which was the Monica Lewinsky affair. In the late 1990s, Clinton, then president of the United States, was accused of having an inappropriate relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. After months of denials, Clinton finally admitted to having had “inappropriate intimate contact” with Lewinsky, calling it a personal failure and an error in judgment. His initial denials under oath led to accusations of perjury and obstruction of justice, culminating in his impeachment by the House of Representatives in 1998. Clinton was acquitted by the Senate but remained deeply compromised by the scandal.

In addition to the Lewinsky affair, Clinton faced other controversies. The Whitewater scandal involved allegations of financial impropriety related to a failed real estate venture in Arkansas in which Clinton and his wife Hillary were investors. Although the investigation did not lead to criminal charges against the Clintons, it consumed much of Clinton’s second term and contributed to a climate of suspicion surrounding his administration.

Among Clinton’s accusers was Paula Jones, who filed a lawsuit against him in 1994 for sexual harassment. The former president settled the case out of court for $850,000 without admitting guilt. Other women, such as Kathleen Willey, have made similar allegations, although Clinton has always denied any wrongdoing.

However, it is not only Republicans who consider the allegations of sexual assault and harassment to be a political burden for Clinton. Even within the Democratic Party, although there has been no dramatic distancing, there has been a gradual attempt to relegate the former president to the background. His presence in election campaigns has been reduced compared to the past, with some candidates preferring to avoid him altogether. At the 2020 Democratic convention, Clinton appeared for less than five minutes in a pre-recorded speech broadcast before prime time. Four years later, he returned to the stage, speaking for 27 minutes, far exceeding the allotted time.

With the recent publication of the photographs, Clinton’s critics seem to have found a new foothold to reopen a chapter that the former president has long tried to close. And this is only the beginning of the uncovering of the rot present in the American Democratic world… as well as in the Republican one.

December 24, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Bill Clinton is in the frame again, but this time it’s Trump who put him there

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 24, 2025

“The photos depict a web of unsavoury relationships and associations that complicate both Democratic efforts to keep the focus on Trump and the incumbent president’s desire to move on from the issue entirely,” reported the AP when the first major tranche of photos from the so-called Epstein files was released in mid-December.

Bill Clinton’s prominent appearance in the photos at least sheds some light on why Democrats, when in power, refused to lift the lid on the stinking Epstein affair—doing so would have been akin to shooting themselves in the foot, and Joe Biden obviously didn’t want to drop the Clintons in it.

Many might argue we shouldn’t be shocked to see Bill feature in this tawdry affair, given his reputation for an inability to control his carnal needs. The list of women he has been accused of assaulting is extensive, as are the lengths to which Hillary has gone to protect him.

Two things emerge from this latest batch of photos, which show Bill Clinton in close proximity to very young girls while spending time with Epstein. First, the Trump administration has decided that if the scandal is going to erupt, they might as well land the first political blow—and so they have reached for the lowest-hanging fruit: Bill. Second, the Clintons themselves will likely make a mockery of the entire corrupt U.S. political system by bypassing its legal institutions. They have already started this by ignoring congressional committee requests to appear and testify.

But in any case, the gloves are off. This is now outright war between Republicans and Democrats—and the latter will do everything in its power, using its deep contacts within institutions like the FBI, to get its hands on the Trump photos, which have, of course, been removed from the official release.

However, it is fair to say Clinton appears to have been even closer to Epstein than Trump was.

When Clinton was president, records show Epstein visited the White House multiple times. Later, after Clinton left office, Epstein assisted with some of the former president’s philanthropic efforts. Clinton flew multiple times on Epstein’s private jet, nicknamed the “Lolita Express,” including on a humanitarian trip to Africa in 2002 with disgraced actor Kevin Spacey and comedian Chris Tucker.

Even Democratic-leaning journalists in the U.S. note that Clinton’s personal weaknesses have always clashed with his public moralizing—and his association with Epstein serves as a stark reminder of that. This goes far beyond receiving oral sex from an intern in the Oval Office. It stretches back decades.

His 1992 campaign was rocked by rumours of an affair with Gennifer Flowers, which he denied at the time. His presidency was hit even harder when he was impeached in 1998 for lying under oath and obstructing justice after denying any sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He ultimately acknowledged an “inappropriate” affair with her.

Currently, it seems the pressure from Democrats to release the files—whether genuine or not—has backfired, as the trove of photos reveals numerous images of Clinton and Epstein together. In fact, these pictures of the two hanging out as old friends are arguably more damaging than the ones in which a young girl’s face has been pixelated—supposedly a DOJ initiative to “protect minors or victims.” That framing alone is a clean shot designed to hit its target, and for now, it is Clinton in the frame, facing media wrath even from traditionally Democratic-leaning outlets like CNN. Recently, conservative CNN commentator Scott Jennings suggested the files should be renamed the “Clinton Files.”

Of course, simply being photographed next to Epstein is not a crime and could, in certain cases, reflect innocent proximity. A number of famous faces appear in the first batch of files—alongside Clinton and Prince Andrew, there are also shots of musicians Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson.

What’s important to note is that Bill Clinton is known to share the same sexual compulsions as Prince Andrew, whom a royal biographer recently remarked on a podcast “needed to have sex three times a day.” Epstein reportedly referred to Andrew as the only person as depraved as he was when it came to young women. Clinton, like Andrew, has a history that can’t be airbrushed away—and the photos of him with young girls are a genie that cannot be put back into the bottle. It stinks.

Naturally, that won’t stop Democrats from calling this stunt what it is: a well-timed smear ahead of the midterms, where Trump is expected to likely lose both houses of Congress. Failing quick-fix policies on the economy and foreign policy—which are having a doubly damaging effect—will hit Trump hard at the ballot box, potentially rendering him impotent in the second half of his term. How long he can maintain the farce that the Epstein story is empirically linked to the Democrats is uncertain, though it is worrying that a war in the Middle East against Iran looks increasingly likely to be used as a tool to deflect blame from his lacklustre performance as a populist leader—one struggling to help blue-collar Americans and restore the country’s former global hegemony.

December 24, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

US Navy effectively becomes a tool of modern piracy

By Drago Bosnic | December 24, 2025 

The political West has been conducting an unprovoked aggression against the entire world for at least half a millennium at this point. Whether through direct attacks and occupation or various forms of colonialism (that lasts to this day), the world’s most aggressive power pole has been a threat to every other country on this unfortunate planet. Although certainly not the only one, the primary tool of Western power projection have been navies, which is hardly surprising given the political West’s thalassocratic nature. Through naval supremacy, Western (primarily Anglo) powers have spread their colonial empires to virtually every corner of the world, exterminating the native populations along the way and settling in their lands.

Entire continents (such as North America and Australia) were secured through brutal genocide of the locals who now live in small, scattered communities (so-called “reservations/reserves”). The genocidal campaign continued throughout the Atlantic and Pacific, where numerous islands and maritime trade routes remain in Western hands to this very day. Controlling these areas is key to maintaining its stranglehold over global trade, as seen during the latest US attacks on inbound and outbound Venezuelan shipping. However, the Pentagon seems to be expanding this aggression to other countries trading with Caracas, including China, which is a major importer of Venezuelan commodities (particularly crude oil).

Namely, the US Navy and Coast Guard hijacked the “Centuries”, an oil tanker carrying up to two million barrels of Venezuelan crude to China. According to military sources, American forces, operating MH-60T helicopters and reportedly including a Maritime Security Response Team, led the raid. The oil belongs to the Chinese Satau Tijana Oil Trading company. In December alone, this is the third such incident where US naval assets effectively engaged in piracy, as these civilian ships were hijacked in international waters. The Chinese Foreign Ministry condemned the illegal raid, slamming it as a “serious violation of international maritime law and an illegal interference in legitimate global trade”.

This is an attempt to continue the policy of economic strangulation of Venezuela after the sanctions failed to produce the desired result (a color revolution that would bring a pro-American puppet regime to power). It comes less than a week after US President Donald Trump formally ordered the “total and complete blockade” of Venezuela, claiming that its government is now designated as a “foreign terrorist organization” (FTO). In his signature manner of communicating through the unchecked use of superlatives, Trump also bragged that the US Navy “completely surrounded” Venezuela with “the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America”. Considering Caracas’ already difficult position, this is effectively a declaration of war.

Namely, Venezuela has a highly complex geographical and geopolitical position that makes lands routes largely unusable. Its coastline is the main lifeline that enables trade with the rest of the world, so Washington DC’s decision to engage in piracy against Caracas is a clear indicator that it doesn’t want to allow any sovereign nations to exist in the Western Hemisphere (especially now that the new US National Security Strategy and the restructuring of the Pentagon’s commands is putting an emphasis on the resurgent Monroe Doctrine). Venezuela is probably the most fiercely independent Latin American country, making it the No. 1 target for warmongers and war criminals in the monstrous American oligarchy.

What’s more, considering the fact that these pirates, thugs and goons in suits are terrified of China and its unprecedented development, they wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to hurt Beijing’s interests. The Chinese economy, the world’s largest and most powerful since 2014, needs a constant supply of critical resources (particularly natural gas and oil). The US is unable to prevent Russia and other multipolar powers from trading with China, so it’s focused on disrupting this with other, more vulnerable countries, such as Venezuela. This is precisely why Beijing perceives the US, its vassals and satellite states as the primary threat to Chinese shipping and maritime trade (and naval security interests in general).

Obviously, the most glaring example of this is China’s breakaway island province of Taiwan, where a US puppet government is escalating tensions and jeopardizing Beijing’s basic national security interests. However, the Asian giant certainly understands that this is only one segment of the Western so-called “China containment” strategy that seeks to limit its ability to conduct unimpeded trade with the world. This is why China keeps building an ever stronger navy that can respond to such challenges. Namely, the US-led political West will undoubtedly continue to conduct its unprovoked aggression against the entire world unless prevented through the use of the only language it understands – force and violence.

It should be noted that this isn’t some spontaneous reaction to Beijing’s growth. And it’s certainly not limited only to the Trump administration. Namely, starting in the early 2010s, Barack Obama launched the so-called “Pivot to Asia” initiative to build up US/NATO presence in the Asia-Pacific. This continued during Trump’s first term, as well as the troubled Biden administration. In practice, this means that the warmongering American oligarchy pulls the strings regardless of who’s president. The Pentagon has increasingly stressed the need to launch “distant blockade operations”, the strategic goal of which is to cut off Chinese trade. This would give the US-led political West significant leverage over Beijing.

The same goes for Russia, whose shipping has been under attack for years, particularly when the Neo-Nazi junta is not doing so great on the battlefield in NATO-occupied Ukraine. Although the political West is attributing these attacks to the Kiev regime, it’s difficult to imagine the latter could conduct such operations thousands of kilometers away without ample Western support (if not direct orders and participation). This form of piracy gives the US, its vassals and satellite states perfect “plausible deniability”, meaning they can disrupt Moscow’s and Beijing’s economic interests without the need to engage Russian and Chinese militaries directly. This is precisely how piracy was used geopolitically until the early 18th century.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

December 24, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Failed Diplomacy & Collapse of Ukraine

Glenn Diesen | December 22, 2025

Larry Johnson is a former intelligence analyst at the CIA who also worked at the US State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism. Johnson outlines why the negotiations are failing and what the pending collapse of Ukraine will entail.

Follow Prof. Glenn Diesen:

Substack: https://glenndiesen.substack.com/
X/Twitter: https://x.com/Glenn_Diesen
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/glenndiesen

Support the research by Prof. Glenn Diesen:

PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/glenndiesen
Buy me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/gdieseng
Go Fund Me: https://gofund.me/09ea012f

Books by Prof. Glenn Diesen

December 23, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Video | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Who is the Pro-Israel Clique behind TikTok’s US Takeover?

By Romana Rubeo – The Palestine Chronicle – December 20, 2025

The short-form video social media platform TikTok, which has more than 170 million users in the United States and has become a central space for political discourse, journalism, and youth activism, finalized an agreement on Thursday to transfer control of its US operations to a newly created joint venture dominated by American and allied investors.

The deal, reported by multiple US media outlets including CNBC, Reuters, and the Associated Press, follows years of bipartisan efforts to force ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to divest from the app or face an outright ban under US national security legislation. The agreement is expected to close in January 2026.

Under the terms of the deal, TikTok’s US business will be placed under a new entity, commonly referred to as TikTok USDS, with majority ownership held by a consortium led by Oracle Corporation and the private equity firm Silver Lake, alongside MGX, an investment vehicle based in Abu Dhabi. ByteDance will retain a minority stake of just under 20 percent, the maximum allowed under US law, while existing ByteDance-linked investors will collectively hold a further share of the company.

Oracle will play a central role not only as an investor but also as TikTok’s so-called “trusted technology partner.” US officials have stated that Oracle will be responsible for hosting American user data and overseeing key aspects of the platform’s algorithm, an arrangement presented by the administration as a safeguard against foreign influence.

Is Israel Involved?

While no Israeli company or state-linked entity is formally involved in the ownership structure of the new TikTok US venture, the deal has sparked debate over the political affiliations and ideological positions of some of the corporate figures associated with the transaction.

Oracle, one of the principal investors, has long-standing ties to Israel through its leadership. The company’s chief executive, Safra Catz, is Israeli-American and has previously made public statements expressing strong support for Israel.

According to TRT, an email sent by former Oracle CEO Safra Catz to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was disclosed following a hack of Barak’s email account.

“We have all been horrified by the growth of the BDS movement in college campuses and have concluded that we have to fight this battle before the kids even get to college. We believe that we have to embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture. That means getting the message to the American people in a way they can consume it,” Catz reportedly wrote in February 2015.

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has also been widely reported to have close political and personal relationships with Israeli leaders and to have donated to pro-Israel causes over many years.

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ellison is among the largest private donors to the Israeli army. Reporting on a Beverly Hills gala organized by The Friends of the Israel Defense Forces in 2017, the JTA wrote: “Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle and its executive chairman, gave $16.6 million — the largest single gift in FIDF history.”

Ellison has also publicly described Israel as his own state.

According to Responsible Statecraft, the online magazine of the Quincy Institute, Ellison holds extensive interests across major news, television, and Hollywood media companies, largely through the recent takeover of Paramount by Skydance Media, a group now led by his son, David Ellison. The report also noted that David Ellison is considering appointing openly pro-Israel journalist Bari Weiss to a senior executive role at the newly acquired CBS network.

The report also mentioned that David Ellison is considering appointing openly pro-Israel journalist Bari Weiss to a senior executive role at the newly acquired CBS network.

Limitations on Freedom of Expression

Civil liberties groups and pro-Palestinian advocates have repeatedly warned that the restructuring of TikTok’s ownership could have consequences for freedom of expression, particularly regarding content related to Palestine and Israel.

These concerns come against the backdrop of repeated complaints from activists and journalists about the suppression or downranking of pro-Palestinian content across major social media platforms since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Pro-Israel Organizations Welcome the Deal

At the same time, pro-Israel organizations in the US have publicly welcomed the sale, framing it as an opportunity to address what they describe as antisemitism and hostile narratives on TikTok.

For example, leaders of the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), one of the largest umbrella groups representing Jewish communities in the US, issued a public statement framing the proposed TikTok deal as an opportunity to tackle what they described as the “antisemitism” on the platform.

Israeli officials and commentators have also emphasized the strategic importance of social media platforms in shaping public opinion, particularly among younger audiences.

Even former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has recently claimed that young Americans, including young Jewish Americans, hold increasingly critical views of Israel because they are being misled by “pure propaganda” and “totally made up” videos on TikTok and other social media platforms.

Speaking at a summit in New York hosted by Israel Hayom on December 2, Clinton repeatedly suggested that widely documented information circulating online about Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza is fabricated, and expressed concern that students “don’t know the history and don’t understand.”

Clinton described it as “a serious problem” that young people rely heavily on social media for their information, despite the fact that the videos, documentation, and reporting she dismissed have been independently verified by journalists, human rights organizations, UN bodies, and legal experts investigating Israeli war crimes and genocide.

Romana Rubeo is an Italian writer and the managing editor of The Palestine Chronicle. Her articles appeared in many online newspapers and academic journals.

December 23, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli military superiority undermines US interests: Report

Al Mayadeen | December 23, 2025

When US President Donald Trump announced in November 2025 that he would approve selling advanced F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately sought assurances from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The US was quick to affirm an unwavering commitment to preserving “Israel’s qualitative military edge” over all countries in West Asia.

And this commitment is not merely political; it’s the law. According to an analysis by Josh Paul, a former State Department director who spent over 11 years in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs before resigning over Gaza policy in 2023, this legal requirement is producing outcomes that directly contradict US strategic interests in the region.

Writing in Responsible Statecraft, Paul draws on his insider experience to argue that what was intended as a tool for maintaining regional order aligned with American interests may now be fueling instability.

Cold war era policy

The concept of “Israel’s” “qualitative military edge” (QME) emerged in the 1970s as a mechanism to ensure a regional balance of power favorable to US interests by guaranteeing Israeli military superiority. Paul traces how this informal policy became codified in 2008 legislation that defines QME as “Israel’s” ability to “counter and defeat any credible conventional military threat from any individual state or possible coalition of states or from non-state actors, while sustaining minimal damages and casualties.”

The law requires the State Department to assess every major US arms transfer to West Asian and North African countries, from Morocco to Iran, to ensure it doesn’t threaten “Israel’s” military dominance. In practice, since Iran has not purchased US weapons since 1979, this applies exclusively to Arab states, effectively institutionalizing a regional hierarchy with “Israel” at its apex.

Paul describes a classified process involving multiple agencies and Israeli input: “At the annual Department of Defense Joint Political Military Group meeting, the Israelis typically make a presentation that includes a list of systems they deem threatening to their QME.”

Three options, three problems

When Arab countries seek advanced US weapons, Paul explains, the US government is faced with three choices, each with significant drawbacks.

The first is compensating “Israel” with superior technology. When the Obama administration proposed selling F-16s to the UAE in 2013, it had to simultaneously offer “Israel” advanced radars to detect those very aircraft. But this approach, Paul argues, directly fuels regional arms races, potentially violating other US laws that explicitly aim to “discourage arms races.”

The second option involves limiting sales through quantity restrictions, geographical constraints, or technological downgrades. But these limitations, Paul notes, can strain relationships with Arab partners who face genuine security threats.

The third option, denying sales outright to preserve “Israel’s” edge, may produce what Paul calls “perverse incentives.” Arab governments denied US weapons often turn to China, Russia, or France instead, reducing US influence over their defense capabilities and potentially introducing systems Washington cannot monitor or constrain.

This shift threatens the very regional order the QME policy was designed to maintain, as it allows competing powers to establish military footholds in West Asia.

The diplomatic cost of military dominance

Beyond arms sales logistics, Paul identifies a more fundamental problem: guaranteed military superiority may discourage Israeli affairs. “Because Israel remains assured that the United States will help it retain military superiority over the entire region, Tel Aviv may feel able to rely on such superiority rather than engaging in diplomacy,” he writes.

He argues that “Israel’s” recurring reliance on military force “arguably contributes to instability across the Middle East as a whole,” creating a paradox where the policy designed to enhance Israeli security and maintain a “stable” regional order may actually generate the very threats it aims to prevent.

An outdated framework?

Paul questions whether the QME framework still makes sense given recent diplomatic developments. Israeli officials themselves argued during the 2020 F-35 sale to the UAE that the country had become “an ally in confronting Iran” and the sale wouldn’t violate US commitments. Yet Paul notes from his government experience that pro-“Israel” advocacy groups like AIPAC continued opposing such sales “behind closed doors,” regardless of intensifying normalization efforts between Arab states and the entity.

More fundamentally, Paul argues that military technology is evolving in ways that may make the QME unsustainable. Military analysts increasingly suggest the world faces a revolution characterized by “low-cost weapons systems capable of overcoming high-tech capabilities,” a shift that could render “Israel’s” technological edge less decisive and the entire framework obsolete.

Paul concludes that US and Israeli policymakers should explore alternatives to what he calls “Israeli military hegemony and the inherent fragility that it brings to the region.” He argues that “diplomacy and compromise, including the need for real progress on Palestinian self-determination, promises the only real exit from the isolation that the QME has allowed Israel to impose on itself.”

For Paul, who left his State Department career over these very contradictions, the message is clear: a policy conceived to ensure a regional order favorable to US interests through military dominance may now be achieving the opposite, undermining both regional peace and American strategic influence in the process.

December 23, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Pentagon’s claim of China’s ICBM a pretext for US to upgrade nuclear power: FM

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian. Photo: China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs
By Liu Xuanzun and Liu Caiyu | Global Times | December 23, 2025

A draft Pentagon report claimed China has likely loaded more than 100 ICBMs in silo fields, Reuters reported on Monday. Chinese military observers noted that the Pentagon’s reports are full of speculation and aim to hype up the so-called China threat rhetoric.

Citing the draft Pentagon report, Reuters claimed that China has loaded more than 100 intercontinental ballistic missiles into three newly constructed silo fields near its border with Mongolia and showed little interest in arms control talks.

In response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian stated on Tuesday that “I’m not familiar with what you cited as a US draft report, but we’ve been hearing the same story told and retold by the US to create pretext for speeding up the upgrade of US nuclear power and disrupting global strategic stability. The international community needs to be soberly aware of that.”

“The US, as a nuclear superpower sitting on the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal, must fulfill its special and primary responsibility for nuclear disarmament, further make drastic and substantive cut to its nuclear arsenal, and create conditions for other nuclear-weapon states to join the nuclear disarmament process. This should be a high priority for the US,” Lin said.

Lin noted that just last month, the Chinese government released a white paper entitled China’s Arms Control, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation in the New Era with a full overview of China’s nuclear policy and position on nuclear disarmament. China remains firmly committed to the policy of no first use of nuclear weapons and a nuclear strategy that focuses on self-defense.

China keeps its nuclear strength at the minimum level required by national security and does not engage in any nuclear arms race with any country, Lin said, noting that China takes an active part in the review process of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and meetings of the P5 (five nuclear-weapon states) mechanism, and maintains dialogue with various parties on nuclear disarmament.

Song Zhongping, a Chinese military affairs expert, told the Global Times on Tuesday that this report is fundamentally based on subjective speculation by the US and that its assessment is pure hype.

The US, possessing the largest nuclear arsenal, must take the lead in disarmament talks – a step that the country has yet to fulfill. Given that China’s nuclear arsenal is only a fraction of the size of America’s, there is no justification for China to join such negotiations at this stage, Song added.

Chinese military affairs expert Zhang Junshe told the Global Times that China’s nuclear capabilities are maintained at the minimum level necessary for defense, primarily intended for nuclear counterstrikes and retaliatory strikes in response to nuclear attacks. China has continuously and publicly stated its position clearly, which is that it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons.

The significant disparity in scale between China’s nuclear capabilities and those of the US and Russia makes it both unfair and unreasonable to demand China’s participation in nuclear arms control negotiations at this stage, Zhang said.

“So, by hyping this issue, the US is attempting to pressure China, with the ultimate goal of hindering the normal development of China’s national defense capabilities,” Zhang said.

Drawing China into arms control negotiations serves as a strategic pretext for the US to assert a balance of power, analysts said.

The US government in October cited Russia’s missile tests and China’s growing nuclear capabilities as a justification for a decision to resume nuclear weapons testing “immediately,” according to a Fox News report.

Last year, a Pentagon report also alleged that China is rapidly growing its nuclear arsenal and likely to have 1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030. It hyped that China has added at least 100 nuclear warheads to its stockpile over the past year and now has more than 600 in its inventory, according to Politico report.

In response, China’s Defense Ministry spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang said that the report had misinterpreted China’s defense policies, speculated about China’s military capacity development, flagrantly interfered in China’s domestic affairs, desperately slandered the Chinese military and exaggerated the so-called military threat posed by China.

On China’s development of nuclear weapons, Zhang stressed that the intention is to safeguard the country’s strategic security.

But the US, which has the largest and most advanced nuclear arsenal in the world, sticks stubbornly to a policy of first use of nuclear weapons, undermining international and regional peace and stability. He called on the US to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in its national and collective security policy to respond responsibly to the international community, the spokesperson said.

December 23, 2025 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »