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The Mecca pact and the limits of a ‘Muslim NATO’
Divergent threats, US ties, and economic interests leave the collective-defense pact’s real purpose open to dispute.
By F.M. Shakil | The Cradle | August 13, 2026
The oil-rich Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, nuclear-armed Pakistan, and Turkiye, which commands NATO’s second-largest army, signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement on Friday, 7 August. The accord arrived as fighting again intensified in Yemen. Days later, the Ansarallah-aligned Yemeni armed forces (YAF) launched ballistic missiles at Marib and the Red Sea port of Mokha, the latest escalation against Saudi-backed forces.
Iran noted the turn toward regional security arrangements, saying it showed a growing recognition that security cannot be guaranteed by foreign powers. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said the accord reflected a rapidly changing understanding of security across the region.
Pakistan welcomed the accord and said the Mecca agreement stipulates that an attack on any member will be treated as an attack on all. Islamabad described it as a major step toward stronger strategic relations, regional security, and cooperation in mutual defense.
Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar called the accord a defensive document that does not target any one country. Posting on X on 9 August, Dar said it remained open to any regional state willing to commit to its founding principles.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan went further, insisting that neither Iran nor any other country was the pact’s designated target. In an online discussion, he also expressed hope that Egypt would eventually join.
Veteran Pakistani diplomat Riffat Masood offered a narrower reading. In a discussion with Saudi-American researcher Dr Hamza al-Kanani, Pakistan’s former ambassador to Iran and Norway said the phrase “an attack on one is an attack on all” applies specifically to external threats.
“It does not have any regional implications, which means that this clause would apply whenever any country signing this agreement came under attack from Israel, the US, or any external force,” she claimed.
Masood added that the article does not cover intra-regional rivalries involving Iran or the YAF.
Egypt was conspicuous by its absence from the Mecca signing ceremony, despite taking part in months of foreign minister-level consultations with the grouping.
Cairo’s apparent disenchantment rests on the belief that the military agreement is driven more by political alignment than deployable defense capability. Egypt retains positive bilateral relations with the three signatories, but is wary of joining a Saudi-led bloc that could narrow its room for maneuver across the region.
“I expect more countries will join this alliance in the future. The alliance may expand beyond the military sphere to encompass economic and strategic dimensions in the future,” Sajjad Azhar, an Islamabad-based analyst, tells The Cradle.
Riyadh looks beyond Washington
Saudi Arabia’s security partnership with Washington dates to the closing years of World War II, when oil and strategic access became bound up with US protection. But Washington’s shift toward competition with China, coupled with its uneven responses to attacks on Persian Gulf partners, has pushed Riyadh to look for additional options.
The September 2019 attack on Abqaiq and Khurais, claimed by the YAF, temporarily knocked out around half of Saudi oil production. Washington did not retaliate militarily, despite US and Saudi accusations that Iran was responsible. For Riyadh, the episode exposed the limits of the US security umbrella.
The Hamas-led Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October 2023, and the regional war that followed added to Saudi concerns. Those concerns deepened after Israel’s September 2025 attack on Doha, which targeted Hamas negotiators in the capital of a US-allied Gulf state. Eight days later, Riyadh signed a bilateral defense pact with Pakistan.
The US-Israeli war on Iran launched on 28 February 2026 further exposed Arab states to retaliation without providing them with any clear say over Washington’s war aims. According to Azhar, the conflict reinforced the sense that reliance on a single external guarantor had become increasingly dangerous:
“The attacks launched by Tehran and its allies, including the Houthis [YAF] and Iraqi Shia armed organizations [PMU], against Saudi Arabia changed the situation. In this perspective, an end to recurring Iranian threats seems to have been the main strategic purpose behind the new alliance.”
Collective defense, undefined obligations
At the signing ceremony, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, and Pakistan displayed copies of the Mecca agreement, but its full provisions have not been made public. Beyond the collective-defense formula contained in the joint statement, analysts still lack details on command structures, activation procedures, force commitments, and the geographical reach of the pact.
Dr Muqtedar Khan, a US-based analyst and professor at the University of Delaware, tells The Cradle that the pact rests on two pillars: a collective-defense commitment and joint deterrence and defense cooperation. The first treats an armed attack against one of the three states as an attack against all three.
“This sets up a mutual-defense duty that is similar to NATO’s Article 5, but the details about how quickly and strongly they will respond are mostly unclear,” he says. The second pillar, he adds, resembles the bilateral Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement signed by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan last year.
Khan says the Mecca accord marks an important step in the region’s security evolution, showing how middle powers are seeking greater autonomy and a wider range of partnerships instead of relying almost entirely on the US:
“While it is premature to label it a fully fledged ‘Muslim NATO,’ the pact creates a new framework for collective deterrence and defense cooperation among three of the most consequential Sunni-majority states.”
Its durability and effectiveness, he says, will ultimately depend on how the parties define an “attack,” what each is prepared to do when the commitment is tested, and whether other countries join.
“For now, it functions as both a political signal of reduced dependence on external patrons and a practical platform for deeper military collaboration,” Khan says.
A pact made with Washington’s blessing?
Washington’s public response to the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement has been notably restrained.
For some observers, the pact signals that US partners want to diversify their security arrangements after a succession of regional crises exposed the limits of depending on one external guarantor.
Others argue that, if the agreement produces stronger missile defense, maritime patrols, and a wider sharing of regional security burdens, it could advance Washington’s stated goals rather than threaten them.
The pact may therefore loosen exclusive dependence on the US without displacing the vast American military architecture already embedded in the region.
Retired Pakistani diplomat Abdul Basit, who served as high commissioner to India and as Foreign Office spokesperson, argued in a television interview that the trilateral agreement had Washington’s backing.
“Without US consent, these three regional actors could not succeed in creating a trilateral defense mechanism that challenges the US’s hegemonic security apparatus in the region,” he argued.
Other analysts likewise see an implicit US role in the creation of a large regional force whose likely purpose is not confrontation with Israel but containment of Iranian influence.
Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), tells The Cradle that Washington’s lack of opposition suggests the coalition was formed with at least tacit US approval and a clear assurance that it would not be directed against Israel:
“This alliance doesn’t significantly deter Iran from attacking US bases in Saudi Arabia. Iran is not attacking these countries but only hitting the US bases wherever they exist. As long as these bases remain there, Iran will continue targeting them in one way or another.”
Three states, three threat maps
The pact is also burdened by conflicting threat perceptions. Pakistan and Turkiye are unlikely to enter a direct clash with Israel while maintaining close strategic ties with Washington. This has fed suspicions that the bloc was established with US backing precisely because it does not challenge the regional red lines enforced by Washington.
Gul says the alliance is no uncomplicated marriage. Its central ambiguity remains unresolved: is it primarily a political declaration, or does it impose binding military obligations on its members?
“The three countries have different threat assessments and priorities. Pakistan’s focus is mostly on India and Afghanistan, but Turkiye or Saudi Arabia will not build deterrence for Israel or India due to their strategic and commercial interests. For Saudi Arabia, the emphasis is on maintaining stability in the Gulf area and promoting economic diversification. Turkiye is seeking to sell its military hardware, even though it has obligations as a NATO member.”
Pakistan and Turkiye also stand to gain financially from the pact as both manage strained economies. Turkiye has found a lucrative regional market for drones and aircraft, while Pakistan secures badly needed Saudi financing.
In August 2023, Saudi Arabia signed a record $3 billion deal with the Turkish defense firm Baykar to procure Bayraktar Akinci unmanned combat aerial vehicles (drones).
Saudi Arabia also committed a fresh $3 billion support package to Pakistan. The funding came in addition to $5 billion in Saudi deposits previously placed with Pakistan and extended through 2028. The new support helped Islamabad repay roughly $3.5 billion owed to the UAE later that month.
“The public relations advantages for Pakistan are evident, but only time will reveal whether the alliance will yield any financial benefits that trickle down to the poor masses,” Gul remarks.
For now, the Mecca pact’s signatories have announced collective defense without revealing who would command it, which threats would activate it, or what each capital would actually risk for the others.
Until those questions are answered, the Mecca pact remains more a declaration of intent than a functioning military alliance.
The Caspian Sea: America’s New Eurasian Containment Arena
By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – August 13, 2026
The Caspian Sea — for thirty years a backwater of great-power politics — has quietly become a battlespace, and most of the world is still treating it as a footnote.
In late July, Iranian officials confirmed that a US strike had damaged the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Seyyed al-Shuhada naval facility in Zibakenar, in Iran’s Caspian province of Gilan — the first time in the current war that Washington has reached into Iran’s Caspian coastline. Days earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Kyiv’s drones had struck several vessels in the Caspian more than 1,000 kilometers from Ukrainian-held territory, including a ship reportedly ferrying military cargo from Iran toward Russia. Iran, however, said one of the vessels hit was carrying iron ore from Astrakhan to the Iranian port of Anzali and summoned Ukraine’s chargé d’affaires in protest.
Neither strike, on its own, would rewrite anyone’s map. Together, they are a signal. For the first time, the US and US-backed Ukraine have demonstrated that they have the will and the reach to hit targets on a sea that geography, more than strategy, had long kept insulated from direct confrontation. The Caspian’s basin states — Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan — built an entire diplomatic architecture, including a 2018 legal convention on the sea’s status, around the premise that outside militaries would stay out. That premise no longer holds.
What is emerging is not a contest for territory in the traditional sense. It is a contest over connectivity: over the ports, rail lines, pipelines, and shipping lanes that allow Russia, Iran, and, at one remove, China to function as an integrated economic and strategic space rather than three isolated, sanctioned, or otherwise constrained powers. Call it America’s New Eurasian Containment: a strategy that treats infrastructure, not territory, as the terrain worth contesting.
Severing the Connective Tissue
The clearest evidence of this shift sits not on the Caspian’s water but on its shores, in two projects Washington has spent the past year reshaping.
The first is the International North-South Transport Corridor, a roughly 7,200-kilometer multimodal freight route agreed upon by Russia, Iran, and India in 2000 that links the Indian Ocean, through Iran, across the Caspian, to Russian rail networks and on to Europe. Long stalled by under-investment, the corridor has become a priority for Moscow since 2022, precisely because it offers a way around Western sanctions. Its central artery is the Caspian crossing between the Iranian port of Bandar-e Anzali and the Russian port of Astrakhan. More importantly, it is the same stretch of water where Ukrainian drones struck in July and where Israeli forces had already hit Iranian naval and port assets at Anzali back in March, according to regional shipping trackers. A degraded, contested Caspian corridor is a direct blow to the one overland route that lets Moscow and Tehran trade around US and European sanctions. These attacks are, therefore, not about the US war on Iran; they are about reshaping the very geography of trade passing through the Eurasian landscape.
The second is the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or TRIPP — the transit corridor Washington brokered in August 2025 between Armenia and Azerbaijan, granting a US-led consortium a 99-year lease to build and manage rail, energy, and fiber-optic links through Armenia’s Syunik province. The deal ended a decades-old territorial dispute, but its geopolitical function is narrower and sharper. It places Iran’s only land border with Armenia under American-supervised transit control, cutting off Tehran’s most direct overland access into the South Caucasus and, by extension, into a region Russia has treated as its own backyard since the Soviet collapse. Whatever the deal’s stated humanitarian purpose, it functions as a wedge driven into Eurasian connective tissue.
Neither project was designed with the other in mind. But together with the Caspian strikes, they describe a single logic: deny Russia and Iran the infrastructure that lets their January 2025 Comprehensive Strategic Partnership — a 20-year treaty covering defense, energy, finance, and counterterrorism cooperation — translate into real economic integration rather than a document signed in Moscow. China, meanwhile, watches from the margins. Beijing has no naval presence on the Caspian and is not a party to any of these strikes or corridors, but its own westward trade ambitions run through the same chokepoints, i.e., the Middle Corridor via the South Caucasus, and Iranian ports as a Belt and Road terminus. A Washington-controlled TRIPP and a contested Caspian complicate China’s overland options as a side effect, even if Beijing was never the intended target.
A Frontier Without a Front Line
The danger in this strategy is precisely that it has no clean edges. Containment during the Cold War had defined lines — the Fulda Gap, the Elbe, the 38th parallel — and a doctrine that most parties understood. Infrastructure containment has none of that. A drone strike on a cargo ship, an airstrike on a naval depot, and a 99-year land lease branded with a president’s name: each is individually deniable, incremental, and justifiable in its own narrow terms, even as the cumulative effect reshapes the strategic map of an entire region. That ambiguity is a feature for Washington, which can advance the strategy without ever declaring it. But it is also a source of volatility because affected countries are left to infer intent from actions rather than respond to a stated policy. And, inferences, in a region this armed and this aggrieved, tend toward worst-case assumptions.
The more durable question is what happens once the corridors themselves become targets, not just prizes. Pipelines, rail lines, and undersea cables may now be legitimate objects of great-power coercion. If so, the Caspian will not be the last “peripheral” space pulled into contested geography. The Arctic shipping lanes, the Malacca chokepoint, and the fibre-optic seabed of the Indian Ocean are all candidates for the same treatment. In this environment, the states that thrive will not be the ones with the largest militaries. They will be the ones that make their infrastructure redundant, diversified, and defensible: multiple routes, multiple partners, no single artery whose loss is fatal. Iran and Russia have bet heavily on a small number of chokepoints. Their partnership may keep deepening going forward. But the deeper it goes, the more attacks it will face and endure.
Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs
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US Spent $533 Million on Shell Factory That Produced Zero Usable Shells — Reports
Sputnik – 13.08.2026
A US Army-funded artillery plant near Dallas, built to produce 155mm shells for Ukraine, never produced a single usable shell, ProPublica reported.
Workers described robots catching fire, machines smashing into equipment, steel cracking beyond repair and giant presses needing to be beaten with a sledgehammer just to function.
“It was just a bunch of guys taking turns going at the machine with a sledgehammer every night,” one former employee said.
The Army halted work on two of the plant’s three production lines in 2025 after General Dynamics missed multiple deadlines.
The company was still awarded billions in new contracts.
The US keeps pouring money into its proxy war machine — and sometimes the machine cannot even make the shells.
Russia has repeatedly warned that such weapons deliveries only prolong the conflict.
Israel Fabricated Iranian Assassination Threat Against Trump In Attempt To Ramp Up Iran War
The CIA Has Accused Israel Of Fabricating Iranian Assassination Threat
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | August 13, 2026
Last month, “intelligence” was relayed by Israel that Iran was supposedly planning on assassinating Trump, which resulted in him “secretly flying out of Turkey in an alternate military aircraft”.
But the claims of an Iranian assassination attempt against Trump relayed by Israel were deemed to be bogus even by U.S. intelligence.
The Washington Post reported that “The assassination threat was relayed by the Israeli government to the CIA, where analysts did not view the intelligence as compelling and conveyed that skepticism to Trump administration officials”.
The article added, “Another official called the reports of threats against Trump’s life ‘Israeli-derived, not U.S.-generated, and viewed as low confidence.’”
The article added, “Some U.S. intelligence officials saw Israel’s sharing of the warning about threats to Trump’s life as designed less to inform than to influence the president’s decision-making and U.S. policy in the region, a current and a former U.S. official said” with the report quoting one official saying it “fit a broader pattern of Israeli intelligence reporting that some officials see as designed as much to shape presidential decision-making as to inform it”.
Indeed, fabricated claims of Iran planning to assassinate Donald Trump seem to have been Israel’s most successful deception deployed to get Trump to carry out its preferred policy on Iran.
Journalists Max Blumenthal and Ken Silva have documented how the FBI recruited Pakistani national Asif Merchant to take part in a sting operation supposedly surrounding an Iranian plot to assassinate Donald Trump, in what Ken Silvia called “at the very least… a highly controlled FBI sting operation that never posed a threat to Trump” if not “a case totally fabricated by the undercover agents”.
Since then, Benjamin Netanyahu has repeated baseless claims of Iran trying to assassinate Trump in an attempt to get him to go to war with Iran.
In June of 2025, Benjamin Netanyahu baselessly claimed that Iran was behind the assassination attempts against Trump by Thomas Crooks in Butler, Pennsylvania, and by Ryan Routh at Mar-a-Lago, claiming that Iran “tried to assassinate President Trump twice”.
This deception seems to have influenced Trump’s decision to bomb Iran for Israel in June of last year, with the White House tweeting “I was the hunted- now I’m the hunter” in reference to the bombing.
Fabricated claims of Iran trying to assassinate Trump were also a large part of Israel’s campaign to get Trump to enter a full-scale war on Iran this year.
According to Reuters, before the bombing, “Netanyahu, determined to move forward with an operation he had urged for decades, argued that there might never be a better chance to kill Khamenei and to avenge previous Iranian efforts to assassinate Trump”.
It was also a key talking point of the late Neo-con Zionist senator Lindsay Graham, who joined Benjamin Netanyahu is lobbying Trump for the war.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Graham likened Iran’s leader to Adolf Hitler and told Trump that Iran was in a historically weak position. They talked about the regime’s efforts to assassinate Trump in 2024. ‘If you think Trump forgets stuff, you’d be mistaken,’ Graham said.”
Yet again, Israel has fabricated claims of Iran trying to assassinate Trump in an attempt to get him to ramp up the Iran war.
Misleading intelligence is worse than fake news: Araghchi warns US
Al Mayadeen | August 13, 2026
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has warned US officials that misleading intelligence can be more dangerous than false news, pointing to Washington’s record of strategic miscalculations.
In an English-language post, Araghchi called on US officials to “beware,” arguing that intelligence failures have repeatedly contributed to major US miscalculations.
He said the United States has “long made miscalculations due to shortcomings in intelligence,” citing the war on Iran as a prominent example.
Araghchi also identified the Strait of Hormuz as “an even bigger miscalculation”; he argued that Washington was making a major mistake in thinking that it can control the key waterway.
Araghchi warns Washington over intelligence failures
Araghchi’s warning comes amid continued scrutiny of intelligence assessments surrounding the US-Israeli war on Iran.
The Iranian foreign minister’s argument centers on the consequences of intelligence failures when they become the basis for military and foreign-policy decisions.
An inaccurate assessment can extend beyond the intelligence community, shaping decisions over military operations, diplomatic pressure, sanctions, and escalation.
The warning also comes as questions have emerged in Washington over intelligence supplied by “Israel”.
Israeli intelligence raises questions in Washington
According to a report by The Washington Post, cited in the source material, the Israeli government informed the CIA about an alleged threat to assassinate US President Donald Trump in Turkey.
The newspaper reported that US analysts did not find the information convincing. American intelligence officials were also reportedly skeptical of Israeli information concerning an alleged Iranian threat.
A US official cited by the newspaper reportedly said that reports concerning threats to Trump’s life originated with “Israel” rather than US intelligence and described them as “low credibility.”
US intelligence officials reportedly told The Washington Post that “the Israeli warning was aimed at influencing US policy in the region,” raising questions over whether the warning was primarily intended to protect Trump or influence Washington’s regional calculations.
Hormuz becomes a central point of confrontation
Araghchi’s warning also directly addressed the Strait of Hormuz, as Tehran’s ability to leverage its geographic control of the vital waterway continues to undermine trust in Washington’s war plans.
Iran has emphasized its authority over the strategic waterway and maintains that its reopening depends on the United States fulfilling Iranian conditions.
The strait’s importance extends far beyond the immediate confrontation. It is a critical maritime passage for global energy supplies, making developments surrounding it consequential for regional security and international markets.
For Iran, control over the waterway represents a significant strategic lever as US military pressure continues. For Washington, efforts to compel its reopening carry broader geopolitical and economic implications.
US Says “It’s the Middle of the Game” in Iran /Lt Col Daniel Davis & Brian McGlinchey
Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – August 12, 2026
Iran says US ‘unprecedented violations’ of Geneva Conventions cannot be ignored
Press TV – August 12, 2026
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has condemned US threats and airstrikes against Iran’s civilian infrastructure as clear war crimes, warning that normalizing such “unprecedented violations” of the Geneva Conventions would erode the international legal order.
In a post on X on Wednesday marking the 77th anniversary of the adoption of the four Geneva Conventions, Baghaei said the architects of the treaties could scarcely have imagined that decades later, the United States, as host of the United Nations and a permanent member of the Security Council, “would repeatedly threaten to attack the infrastructure, bridges, and power plants of another country, and would in fact commit such crimes.”
He said the conventions established fundamental rules governing armed conflict, including “humanity,” “distinction,” “military necessity,” and “proportionality,” as well as the prohibition of “unnecessary suffering,” with the aim of “civilizing humanity and humanizing war.”
Adopted in 1949, the four Geneva Conventions establish international rules for the protection of civilians, wounded and sick combatants, and prisoners of war during armed conflicts.
The Iranian diplomat urged the international community, the states party to the Geneva Conventions and Switzerland, as their depositary, not to “remain indifferent to such unprecedented violations, which constitute clear war crimes.”
Baghaei also invoked Common Article 1 of the conventions, stressing that it requires states not only to respect the treaties but also to ensure they are respected.
“Silence in the face of explicit threats against civilian objects is not mere political passivity,” he said, warning that such silence erodes one of the fundamental legal achievements of the post-World War II era.
Baghaei warned that airstrikes or threats targeting civilian infrastructure pose a broader threat to the security of all states, stressing that if the destruction of bridges, power plants, hospitals, electricity grids and water facilities becomes normalized, no country can be certain that its vital infrastructure will remain protected from external aggression.
“Wherever the law falls silent before power, what collapses is not merely a bridge or a power plant, but humanity’s confidence in the possibility of the rule of law in international relations.”
He also warned that the consequences of such threats would extend far beyond Iran, saying they represent “a regression of the entire legal order that humanity has built in its pursuit of civilization and the restraint of violence.”
Baghaei further stressed that Iranians remain resolute in the face of such threats, reiterating that “no number of trials can break those who stand firm on the path of resolve.”
In remarks to the press on Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said the Islamic Republic is standing up not only to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity against US aggression, but also to uphold the humanitarian values and principles that humanity has developed throughout history.
Pentagon accused of ‘whitewashing’ civilian casualties
RT | August 12, 2026
The Pentagon was accused of whitewashing US Army crimes after publishing its annual estimate of civilian casualties in 2025.
The report, submitted to Congress late Monday and obtained by US news outlets, contains numbers that are far lower than estimates by independent outlets.
The Pentagon concluded that US military operations killed 153 civilians and injured 243 last year. All of the cited casualties in 2025 stemmed from Washington’s bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen, while another 15 remain under review.
However, independent monitors have reported figures significantly higher. The Airwars group has estimated that at least 258 civilians may have been killed during the Yemen campaign, while the Yemen Data Project has put the toll at 238 dead and 467 injured. The Pentagon recorded no civilian casualties from US military operations in the Western Hemisphere, despite dozens of strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific beginning in September of 2025 – a point of particular criticism.
Two US government officials cited anonymously by The Intercept rejected the Pentagon’s assessment, with one describing the report as a “total whitewash” and another calling it “a f***ing joke.”
More than 200 people have been killed since Washington launched its campaign against suspected drug-smuggling vessels. Around 120 died in 2025 alone, but none were classified as civilians in the Pentagon report.
The Trump administration has described those targeted as “narco-terrorists” linked to cartels it considers terrorist organizations.
Washington has generally not released public evidence establishing that those killed aboard individual vessels were cartel members or that the boats were carrying narcotics. UN experts, legal specialists, and several Latin American governments have questioned the legal basis for the boat strikes, with critics describing them as extrajudicial killings.
The Pentagon’s latest casualty estimates mark a sharp increase from the two civilian deaths acknowledged in 2024. The figures are expected to be even higher for 2026 due to the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran.
Iran’s authorities have already reported more than 3,300 deaths since the conflict began in February, nearly half of them civilians. Among them are 200 children, including more than 120 schoolgirls killed in a US strike on an elementary school in Minab on the first day of the war.
New Book Reveals How The Israel Lobby Destroyed U.S. Diplomacy With Iran
Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick Reveal How The Israel Lobby Paved The Way For A U.S. War On Iran
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | August 11, 2026
Investigative journalist Eli Clifton and political scientist Ian Lustick have released a detailed history of the Israel lobby’s influence on U.S. foreign policy titled “Israel’s Lobby: America in the Grip of a Foreign Power”.
The book contains a detailed history of the Israel lobby’s influence over various U.S. administrations going back to its creation.
Among the book’s most interesting revelations is how the Israel Lobby pushed anti-Iran propaganda in the United States in order to destroy U.S. diplomacy with Iran.
This campaign- the book noted- began when the Obama administration was negotiating the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, aka the JCPOA.
The authors note that Israel Lobby groups attempted to end the deal with Iran, writing “The Republican Jewish Coalition, whose board included Sheldon Adelson and Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus, immediately attacked Obama as ‘misguided’ and ‘giving cheer to Tehran’s rogue regime and causing alarm among our friends in the region, including Israel, Saudi Arabia and most other Gulf States.’”
The Republican Jewish Coalition, the book noted, was joined by other Zionist lobby groups, such as The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) in trying to prevent U.S. diplomacy with Iran.
The authors wrote, “The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a heavy promoter of the Iraq War and the Global War on Terror before that, followed suit the next day, opposing the proposed deal as ‘a gamble on Western optimism.’ It was joined by a shadowy pressure group, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI). ‘Tonight’s events are a disappointment for those of us who have worked to pressure Iran’s economy and impose the toughest sanctions in history on Iran—the same sanctions that brought the regime to the negotiating table,’ its statement said. ‘Those touting this agreement do not appear to understand the fragility of sanctions, or the dangers of rolling them back and easing the economic pressure on Iran.’”
These groups, the book noted, were “funded by a small, overlapping set of donors with deep ties to Israel”.
United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) it noted, “according to a 2013 document, received $500,000 from the Adelsons that year alone. Another $843,000 was contributed by a series of trusts controlled by billionaire precious metals speculator Thomas Kaplan, a citizen of the United States, France, the Republic of the Seychelles, and the United Arab Emirates, and his wife, Daphne Recanati, the daughter of Israeli financier Leon Recanati.”
The book noted that Thomas Kaplan told former Israeli Prime Minister and Jeffery Epstein’s Israeli handler Ehud Barak that “A nuclear Iran ‘represents a psychological threat that will have untold consequences on the Israeli economy and population flows’” in a leaked email.
As for the FDD, the book noted that it was “formed originally in 2001 as Emet (‘Truth’ in Hebrew) with a mission that included ‘provid[ing] education to enhance Israel’s image in North America.’ That name and mission, while submitted to the IRS in its founding documents, was nowhere to be found on its website. By the time the JCPOA debate was occurring, the group had also removed evidence of its advocacy for the Iraq War. Articles with statements including ‘that Saddam still has weapons of mass destruction cannot be seriously doubted’ and language claiming ‘we know Saddam Hussein is making weapons of mass destruction’ were long removed, focusing attention on the alleged threat posed by Iran instead. Al Jazeera hidden cameras captured Sima Vaknin-Gil, the director general of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, speaking in blunt terms about Israel’s relationship with the FDD. ‘We have FDD. We have others working on’ projects including ‘data gathering, working on activist organizations, money trail,’ said Vaknin-Gil to an audience of American pro-Israel advocates in 2016. ‘This is something that only a country, with its resources, can do the best’”.
The Israel Lobby cutout, the book noted, “wasn’t just a producer of research papers and op-eds advocating against the JCPOA and for more sanctions and military threats against Iran. It also served as an important element of an echo chamber informing the public and Congress about Middle East policy,” noting that, “In an eighteen-month period preceding and immediately following the signing of the JCPOA in 2015, FDD staff and fellows provided congressional testimony opposing the deal seventeen times.”
The FDD was also primarily funded by Israel’s first billionaire donors, the book noted, writing “a misfiled document revealed that Bernie Marcus contributed $10.7 million, Paul Singer contributed $3.6 million, and Sheldon Adelson contributed $1.5 million in a five-year period ending in 2011. The three men were the three largest donors to the FDD in that time frame, the only period in which the group’s top donors have been disclosed.”
Meanwhile, the book documented how AIPAC’s messaging became more explicitly anti-Iran.
In 2010, the book noted, “AIPAC-contracted telemarketers were directed to say: ‘Iran is rejecting international calls to end its nuclear pursuit.’”
It added, “By 2014, the emphasis had shifted to warning about Iranian president Rouhani’s diplomatic engagement with US and European diplomats. The script read: ‘Regional dangers continue to grow for Israel. In Iran, President Rouhani’s rhetoric continues to charm world leaders, while the regime has not slowed its nuclear pursuits.’”
This was ramped up further in the following years.
The book noted that, “the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon continued to appear in AIPAC’s fundraising scripts even as the group worked against the JCPOA—a joint agreement with the US and other world leaders that sought to limit Iran’s uranium enrichment with verifiable safeguards and put in place provisions to extend Iran’s breakout time to produce enough highly enriched uranium or plutonium for a nuclear weapon from two to three months to one year or more” with the 2015 AIPAC script reading, “Iran continues to pose a grave threat of attaining a nuclear weapons capability”.
The book added that, “After the signing of the JCPOA in 2015, the fundraising scripts became even more vivid in the violence and existential threats described and either ignored or stood in direct opposition to the foreign policy agenda undertaken by the Obama administration. The 2016 script read: ‘… and Iran continues to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the U.S.’”
The authors added that, “Iran had not in fact developed such a missile”.
While the Zionist lobby did not initially get its way on the Iran deal, the book documents how the lobby made inroads with the Trump 2016 campaign, eventually getting him to rip up the deal.
The book meticulously documented how Trump in 2016 changed his platform after massive funding from pro-Israel donors.
“ (Sheldon) Adelson told reporters that Trump ‘will be good for Israel.’ Trump’s support for Israel was not mentioned in Adelson’s endorsement of Trump later that month in a Washington Post op-ed. But he once again acknowledged the centrality of US policy in the Middle East as a driving motivation for his political engagement, characterizing himself as ‘hawkish on Israel’ and having ‘waged battles’ over the Iran nuclear deal, ‘an issue of paramount importance to me personally and to many others around the world.’ In an email sent to fellow Republican Jewish leaders, Adelson urged them to support the presumptive nominee, saying he was convinced Trump would be a ‘tremendous president when it comes to the safety and security of Israel.’”, the book noted.
The book noted how Trump changed his 2016 platform after major donations from the Israel Lobby, writing, “The Adelsons and Marcus quickly came around, donating $25 million and $7 million, respectively, to support Trump’s general election candidacy. That flow of support from the pro-Israel billionaires came alongside a flurry of movement from the campaign to bring Trump’s platform in line with that of his new biggest donors. Just before the July GOP convention and Trump’s formal nomination, the Republican Platform Committee unanimously omitted any reference to a two-state solution from the party’s Israel planks. Trump met with Netanyahu in September and promised that, if elected president, he would ‘recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel.’ The campaign reported that Trump agreed with Netanyahu that peace between Israelis and Palestinians required ‘the Palestinians [to] renounce hatred and violence and accept Israel as a Jewish State.’ Six days before the election, Trump’s ‘Israel Advisory Committee’ published a position paper proposing a break from the Israel policy of previous Republican and Democratic administrations, celebrating ‘the unbreakable bond between the United States and Israel’ based on ‘shared values of democracy, freedom of speech, respect for minorities, cherishing life, and the opportunity for all citizens to pursue their dreams.’”
The book added, “As for ‘never Trump’ pro-Israel donors who held out on endorsing Trump, even Paul Singer, who had warned that Trump’s policies would lead to a ‘widespread global depression,’ ultimately made amends with the new president-elect. Singer donated $1 million to the president-elect’s inaugural committee.”
Trump, during his first term, enacted every policy these pro Israel donors demanded, including by ripping up the Iran deal, the book noted, writing, “Trump, in his first term, enacted a series of wish-list items for Israel, including a unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and, at the repeated urging of the Adelsons, the promised move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.” (Emphasis: Mine)
The destruction of U.S. diplomacy with Iran, bought by Zionist donors like Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, Bernie Marcus and Paul Singer, eventually led to the U.S. war on Iran for Israel.
By Normalizing Ties With Israel, Delcy Rodriguez Betrays The Bolivarian Revolution
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | August 11, 2026
Delcy Rodriguez, the “interim president” of Venezuela installed by the United States after kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro, is destroying and spitting in the face of the political revolution started by Hugo Chavez’s election in 1999, dubbed the Bolivarian Revolution after Simon Bolivar.
Anti-imperialism was always at the forefront of Hugo Chavez’s and Nicolas Maduro’s agenda, first and foremost, solidarity with the Palestinians suffering under Israeli occupation.
In 2009, after Israel’s bombardment in Gaza dubbed Operation Cast Lead, which killed 1,400 Palestinians – including 300 children, and which a UN inquiry called “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population”, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez severed “ties with Israel in protest against its war in the Gaza Strip”, with Chavez saying, “Venezuela … has decided to break off diplomatic relations with the state of Israel given the inhumane persecution of the Palestinian people”.
Throughout his presidency, Chavez continued to end all diplomatic relations with Israel and stood by the besieged Palestinians, saying in 2009, “It is not that the Israelis want to exterminate the Palestinians. They are doing it openly. Remember the last Israeli aggression against Gaza. What is it if not genocide? I think that’s hard to believe. It was a savage attack against an innocent people. The Israelis were seeking an excuse to exterminate the Palestinians. I think we must condemn this aggression and impose sanctions against Israel”.
This solidarity was continued by his successor, Nicolas Maduro, who, as the Miriam Adelson-funded Israel Hayom newspaper complained, “continued the anti-Israeli line with even more intensity.”
Palestine was such an important cause for Maduro that he shouted “long live free Palestine!” as he cast his vote in the 2024 election.
Even as Trump was ramping up his campaign to kidnap Nicolas Maduro, he reiterated his support for the Palestinian cause in November of 2025, saying, “We will not abandon this sacred cause until the ultimate goal is achieved: Palestine will rise, free and independent. We will only reach real peace when justice is served for the crimes and genocide committed. Only then can we begin to recover from the rubble and devastation”.
For this reason, Israel – increasingly trying to spread its influence in South America – supported the U.S. regime change campaign in Venezuela.
Middle East Eye noted in 2019 that “Israel wants to see Maduro overthrown in Venezuela,” noting that “Solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination was at its height during the Chavez years up until today, with the leadership making outspoken criticism of Israel’s flagrant violations of international law. Venezuela severed diplomatic ties with Israel in 2009 over its military campaign in Gaza”.
As Israel Hayom complained, “Venezuela, which previously maintained warm relations with Israel and even purchased security technologies from it, became a center of hostile propaganda toward Zionism and the Jewish state”.
Israel made connections with the CIA asset in the Venezuelan opposition, Maria Corina Machado, because, as Israel Hayom boasted, she “promises to change her country’s attitude toward Israel from one extreme to another, and doesn’t hide her sympathy toward us. In recent years, she spoke about her intention to establish Venezuela’s embassy location in Jerusalem and stood with the Jewish state after the October 7 massacre, while Maduro supported Hamas”.
Israel, however, seemed to have made the same deal with interim president Delcy Rodriguez.
Israel used the devastating earthquake in Venezuela as a opportunity to get the country to abandon it’s long held solidarity with the Palestinians, sending IDF militants to the country under the guise of helping rebuild from the devastation caused by the earthquake, who were welcomed and even praised by Delcy Rodriguez.
Benjamin Netanyahu praised the delegation for carrying out a “rare strategic objective by assisting an estranged government” with the goal of “restoring relationships”.
The Israeli newspaper Ynet boasted that “The dispatch of the Israeli delegation has already created a kind of diplomatic breakthrough, including the first phone call in years between a senior Venezuelan official and a senior Israeli representative. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil spoke with the head of the Israeli aid mission, Yoed Magen, Israel’s designated ambassador to Mexico, who also handles the Venezuela portfolio at the Foreign Ministry”.
Venezuela’s chief Rabbi, Yitzhak Cohen, who played a large role in bringing the Israeli delegation to Venezuela, hoped that this would lead to normalization of ties between Israel and Venezuela, saying, “We offered the president of Venezuela the possibility of having the Israeli delegation come to assist in the disaster. She gladly accepted our assistance and gave all the necessary approvals for the delegation’s arrival. This was the first step. Although there are no diplomatic relations between the two countries, Israel took a wonderful step by providing humanitarian aid to Venezuela …We hope, and are almost certain, that this will move another step forward. There is no doubt that this was a moving gesture”.
Venezuelan political scientist Carlos Eduardo Pina argued that these moves were done to appease Israel and its lobby in the U.S., writing, “Maria Corina Machado, the leading opposition figure and Rodriguez’s main rival, has built a strong alliance with Israel over the years, especially with Prime Minister Netanyahu. If Rodriguez can win Netanyahu over at Machado’s expense, Machado could lose one of her most important sources of support, both internationally and in Washington, where pro-Israel lobbying networks hold significant influence. To this end, Rodriguez has adopted increasingly Israel-friendly positions while courting sectors of Venezuela’s Jewish community with strong ties to Israel”.
Israel’s goals seem to have succeeded in Venezuela, with the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela releasing a statement saying:
The Governments of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the State of Israel announce that, following the visit of the Israeli humanitarian delegation to Venezuela in response to the double earthquake that occurred on June 24, and in follow-up to discussions held between high-ranking officials of both countries, the two nations have agreed to allow the continuation of bilateral technical cooperation stemming from the emergency and recovery efforts following the double earthquake. Furthermore, the two nations agree to establish a coordination mechanism to facilitate the provision of consular services to their respective citizens residing in the other country, as needed. Both governments recognize the importance of the bond between the State of Israel and the Jewish community residing in Venezuela, which constitutes a significant historical bridge of friendship between the two countries.
Venezuelanalysis reported that this statement came after a meeting between Venezuelan foreign minister Félix Plasencia and Yitzhak Cohen, where Cohen “requested that Venezuela reestablish diplomatic ties with Israel.”
While Chavez cut off diplomatic relations with Israel over its 2009 slaughter in Gaza, Delcy Rodriguez had taken the first steps to normalize relations with Israel, and it continues its genocide in Gaza, expansion in the West Bank, and ethnic cleansing of Lebanon.
Israel seems to have gotten exactly what it wanted by supporting regime change in Venezuela.
Given Chávez and Maduro’s long-standing solidarity with Palestine, it is hard to see these moves as anything but a betrayal of the Bolivarian revolution.
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Book Review
Why the War on Conspiracy Theories Is Bad Public Policy
By Kevin Barrett • Unz Review • February 1, 2019
A Review of Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas by Cass Sunstein (based on an earlier paper co-authored with Adrian Vermeule); In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business by Charlan Nemeth; and Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them, edited by Joseph E. Uscinski
On January 25 2018 YouTube unleashed the latest salvo in the war on conspiracy theories, saying “we’ll begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways—such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.”
At first glance that sounds reasonable. Nobody wants YouTube or anyone else to recommend bad information. And almost everyone agrees that phony miracle cures, flat earthism, and blatantly false claims about 9/11 and other historical events are undesirable.
But if we stop and seriously consider those words, we notice a couple of problems. First, the word “recommend” is not just misleading but mendacious. YouTube obviously doesn’t really recommend anything. When it says it does, it is lying. … continue
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