Is Nixing Aid to Israel a Poison Chalice?
Ending the existing arrangement could result in even more extensive forms of involvement
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos | The American Conservative | February 9, 2026
There is a lot of talk about getting rid of the massive agreement that guarantees Israel billions of dollars in military aid each year. And it’s not just critics of Israel: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Senator Lindsey Graham have even said they want to “taper off” the money because Israel is ready to stand on its own two feet.
But while a debate over the annual package would be a most welcome one given the enormous sums of American taxpayer money that has flowed to Israel’s wars in recent years, it is important to keep an eye on what might be a bait and switch: trading one guarantee for a set of others that might be less transparent and more expensive than what’s on the books today.
When President Bill Clinton announced the first Memorandum of Agreement, a 10-year, $26.7 billion military and economic aid package to Israel, he expressed hope that it would complement the advancement of the Oslo Accords, the peace process he had shepherded between the Israelis and Palestinians earlier in his term.
The peace process tied to Oslo pretty much fell apart after expected Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank as outlined in the Wye River Agreement in 1998 never happened; today Israeli settlements considered illegal under international law have exploded, with more than 700,000 settlers living there today and Israelis controlling security in most of the territory. But the 10-year MOU lived on.
Not only has it been renewed through the Bush and Obama administrations; the total outlays have increased. The current one, signed in 2016, pledged $38 billion over the decade, just under $4 billion a year and now all of it military aid. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Israel is by far the biggest recipient of U.S. aid in history, some $300 billion since its founding, with the greatest proportion coming from those MOUs.
Supporters of the aid say it comes with military and strategic partnerships that are supposed to help keep the neighborhood safe for the U.S., Israel, and its “allies” (there are no treaty allies in the region), but the last 40 years have been pockmarked with wars and waves of human displacement and misery. Beyond financially and militarily supporting Israel’s wars, the U.S. has been bombing, regime-changing, occupying, and fending off terrorist insurgencies created by its own policies in Central Asia, the Horn of Africa, and the Middle East since 1999. Today, with Israel’s encouragement, President Donald Trump is poised to bomb Iran for the second time in his current term in office.
On February 3 the Congress passed the latest installment of the current MOU—$3.3 billion. It was a bipartisan affair, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer assuring a group of Jewish leaders the previous weekend, that “I have many jobs as leader … and one is to fight for aid to Israel, all the aid that Israel needs.”
But not everyone is on board with the open spigot. And a spigot it is. According to CFR, the U.S. gave $16.3 billion (which included its annual $3.8 billion outlays) to Israel after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. Israel’s retaliation for those attacks, which killed 1,200 Israelis, has resulted in more than 71,000 recorded Palestinian deaths in Gaza so far, a blockade that has left the 2 million population there largely homeless, starving, sick, and unsafe. Americans have reacted by rejecting the prospects of further aid, with a plurality now—42 percent—saying they want to decrease if not stop aid altogether. That is up from the mid-20 percent range in October 2023.
Beyond Americans’ aversion to funding the slaughter of civilians in Gaza, a conservative fissure over continued, unconditional support for Israel has opened wide over the last year, exposing another rationale for discontinuing the aid: It is not “America First.” It not only siphons off aid from much needed renewal at home, but forces Washington to aid and abet another country’s foreign policy, which is increasingly counterproductive and contrary to our own politics and values.
The region is not safer, and moreover, it has not allowed for the United States to reduce its military footprint as guarantor of security there.
One then-congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), was vocal in her opposition to this aid. Israel, she pointed out, has nuclear weapons and is “quite capable of defending itself.” She has pointed out Israel’s universal health care and subsidized college tuition for its citizens, “yet here in America we’re 37 trillion dollars in debt.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY.) posted on X that he voted against the spending bill on February 3 in part to deny Israel the $3.3 billion in aid. He has said the aid takes money out of Americans’ pockets and proliferates human suffering in our name. “Nothing can justify the number of civilian casualties (tens of thousands of women and children) inflicted by Israel in Gaza in the last two years. We should end all U.S. military aid to Israel now,” he said in May of last year.
In an interview with The American Conservative last week, he said he is speaking for his Kentucky district and despite a retaliatory 2026 primary challenge driven largely by Trump and donors linked to the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), he will continue to raise the issue in Congress. He said he has asked his GOP constituents every year whether to maintain, increase, or cut Israel annual aid since 2012.
“I’ve polled that every election cycle in my congressional district among likely Republican voters, and this was the first year that a majority of people answered nothing [no aid] at all, or less,” said Massie. “It’s not a third rail back home. It’s a third rail inside of the Beltway.”
According to reports last month, Israel is “preparing for talks” with the Trump administration to renew the MOU for another 10 years. One might be flummoxed to hear, however, that Netanyahu is giving interviews in which he says he wants to “taper off” American aid in that decade “to zero.” Israel has “come of age” and “we’ve developed incredible capacities,” he said in January.
Immediately after, Graham, who seems to spend more time in Israel than Washington these days, said he heartily agreed and hoped to end the aid sooner. “I’m going to work on expediting the wind down of the aid and recommend we plow the money back into our own military,” he said. “As an American, you’re always appreciating allies that can be more self-sufficient.”
The idea of self-sufficiency and furthermore the concept of Israel releasing itself from any “ties” that might come from the aid is not a new one among supporters here and especially the hardline right in Israel. “Cut the US aid, and Israel becomes fully sovereign,” Laura Loomer charged on X in November. In March of last year, the Heritage Foundation called for gradually reducing the direct grants in the next MOUs starting in 2029 and transitioning gradually to more military cooperation and then finally arms transfers through the Foreign Military Sales by 2047.
Israel, the report concludes, should be “elevated to strategic partner for the benefit of Israel, the United States, and the Middle East. Transforming the U.S.–Israel relationship requires changing the regional paradigm, specifically advancing new security and commercial architectures.” The plan also leans heavily on future Abraham Accords ensuring trade and military pacts with Arab countries in the neighborhood.
Therein lies the fix, say critics. The reason these staunch advocates of Israel including Netanyahu, the most demanding of its leaders over the last 30 years by far, is willing to forgo MOU aid, is that they envision it will come from somewhere else, less politically charged.
“The emerging plan is to substitute formal military funding—known as Foreign Military Financing—with greater U.S. taxpayer-funded co-development and co-production of weapons with Israel,” says the Institute for Middle East Understanding, which adds that instead of extricating from Israel’s messes, the U.S. will be further “enmeshed” in them.
The think tank points out that the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), the most unreconstructed pro-Israel organ in the United States, came out with its own report on the aid, and surprise, also advocated phasing out the MOU. In addition to a commitment by Israel to spend more of its GDP on defense and other co-investments with the U.S. on research and development, the U.S. would “provide Israel $5 billion each year through what would be known as a Partnership Investment Incentive—or PII. This PII would provide funding via existing foreign military financing (FMF) mechanisms that Israel would use to procure American military hardware.” The difference would be that it would have to be spent entirely in U.S. industry and on cooperative partnerships in the region, all while maintaining Israel’s “Qualitative Military Edge.”
Geoff Aronson, longtime Middle East analyst and occasional TAC contributor, said the aid has been “an important if not vital component in ensuring American and Israeli hegemony in the region” and is linked intrinsically to balancing U.S. strategic relations and normative Israeli peace with Egypt and Jordan, which gets billions in military aid (not as much) from the U.S. too. None of this is going to go away, he surmised to TAC.
“The question that is being posed is how can we continue to support Israel’s ability to work its will in the region without committing ourself to X, Y, Z or committing to a new partnership, a new agreement,” he said. “Watch what you wish for, because it might come true.”
Anchorage was the Receipt: Europe is Paying the Price… and Knows it
By Gerry Nolan | Ron Paul Institute | February 10, 2026
Sergey Lavrov didn’t hedge. He didn’t soften. He lit the match and let it burn.
“In Anchorage, we accepted the United States’ proposal.”
And now, he says, Washington is no longer prepared to implement what it itself put on the table — not on Ukraine, not on expanded cooperation, not even on the implied promise that a different phase of US–Russia relations was possible.
That line matters because it shatters the performance. The offer was real enough for headlines — but not real enough to survive contact with the sanctions machine.
And then he let the contradiction sit there in plain sight — because while Washington was talking about cooperation, its navy and enforcement arms were busy doing something else entirely: tracking, boarding, and seizing oil tankers across oceans.
This is no metaphor — it is literal. In the months following Anchorage, US forces pursued and boarded vessels — most recently the Aquila II, across thousands of miles of open water, part of a widening campaign of maritime interdictions tied to sanctions enforcement. Tankers were chased, boarded, seized, or forced to turn back. At least seven were taken outright. Others fled. This is what “expanded cooperation” looked like in practice.
Lavrov didn’t need to raise his voice. The steel already had.
There is zero confusion. It was by design. The apparatus that actually enforces US foreign policy — sanctions, enforcement, energy leverage, financial choke points, and now routine interdiction at sea — does not pivot once engaged.
Even under the illusion of an “America First” presidency, what started as policy under Biden, (sanctions enforcement) now hardens. It builds constituencies, legal inertia, and moral alibis that make reversal look like surrender. Washington can change its language. But the machine keeps moving.
And Europe does more than follow, it leads the public Russophobic hysteria show. Every time.
Europe’s Energy Boomerang
The sanctions regime was never a clean moral stand. It was a war-speed demolition and rebuild of Europe’s energy system, carried out with ideological fervor and no concern for predictable consequences.
Eurostat calls household electricity prices “stable,” which is a neat way of avoiding the obvious: they remain well above pre-2022 levels. The shock didn’t pass. It set. Brussels celebrates “diversification,” but its own numbers quietly confess the damage: Russian gas cut from roughly 45 percent of EU supply in 2021 to about 13 percent by 2025; oil from 27 percent to under 3 percent; coal erased entirely.
That’s anything but adjustment. It’s amputation.
Germany — the supposed industrial spine of Europe — now treats energy prices like a security threat. Manufacturing closed out 2025 in deeper contraction, output slipping again as demand thinned. Berlin’s response has been nakedly revealing: subsidize the very costs its own policy detonated. Industrial electricity price supports were set to begin in early January (2026). Even projected grid-fee reductions are sold not as success, but as relief — relief from some of the highest power costs on the continent, dependent on state life support.
Europe mistook moral theater for strategy — and now pays the energy bill for the applause. This is the sanctions boomerang: punishment abroad, triage at home. While Russia ascends as an economic powerhouse, all on the backs of Eurocrat arrogance.
Dependency was not Ended — It was Merely Reassigned
Lavrov’s broader charge goes beyond Ukraine. He’s describing a system: the grand delusion of global economic dominance enforced through tariffs, sanctions, prohibitions, and control of energy and financial arteries — now enforced not just with spreadsheets, but with illegal maritime interdictions.
Europe’s experience since 2022 makes that system impossible to ignore. What’s sold as diversification increasingly looks like a dependency transfer. Stable, long-term pipeline supply gave way to exposure to a volatile global LNG bidding war — structurally more expensive, strategically weaker, and permanently uncertain. Long-term contracts are now pursued not from strength, but compulsion. A Greek joint venture seeking a 20-year LNG deal for up to 15 bcm per year isn’t sovereignty. It’s necessity, courtesy of Washington’s protection racket, started under the Biden admin but continued by Trump 2.0. But Europe had a choice, it could have chosen survival and sovereignty.
Europe didn’t escape leverage, which was more manageable with cheap and reliable Russian energy. It changed landlords.
And once sanctions start being enforced kinetically — once ships are chased, boarded, seized — the fiction that this is just “economic pressure” collapses. It becomes what it always was: control of supply.
When the Bible of Atlanticism Blinks
Here’s the tell — the kind that only surfaces when denial has finally failed.
Foreign Policy, the house journal of trans-Atlantic orthodoxy — the catechism, the Bible, the place where acceptable thought is laundered into seriousness — recently ran a headline that would have been unprintable not long ago: “Europe Is Getting Ready to Pivot to Putin.”
That matters precisely because of where it appeared.
Foreign Policy does not freelance heresy from the imperial court. It records shifts after they’ve already occurred by the trans-Atlanticist high priests. When it acknowledges a turn in this case, it’s conceding. The article wasn’t sympathetic to Moscow and wasn’t meant to be. It was brutally pragmatic: Europe is discovering that being sidelined by Washington in negotiations that determine Europe’s own future has consequences.
France and Italy — not spoilers, not outliers — are signaling the need for direct engagement with Moscow. Channels once frozen are reopening, carefully, almost grudgingly. Advisers are traveling. Messages are moving. This isn’t ideology evolving. It’s cold arithmetic reasserting itself.
Publicly, the tone remains Russophobic — absolutist, moralized, often shrill. Privately, the conclusion has already landed. European leaders now understand something they can’t scrub away: Russia did not collapse, did not fold, and did not exit history. Quite the opposite in fact.
They don’t have to like that fact. It no longer asks permission.
Russia Hardens — And Reads the Board
Russia’s response to Western pressure was not panic. It was recalibration. Economic diversification. Alternative settlement rails. Deeper Eurasian integration. An energy sector that rerouted flows instead of begging for mercy — even as its ships were hunted across oceans under the banner of “rules.”
Moscow also understands the American calendar. It knows Washington wants a fast off-ramp before the midterms — a way to reduce exposure without saying the quiet part out loud. It also knows the sanctions machine can’t reverse quickly without political bloodshed inside the US system itself.
That asymmetry is decisive.
Russia sees that Trump, whatever his instincts, holds fewer cards than advertised. He cannot simply switch off enforcement — maritime or financial — without confronting the architecture Washington spent years entrenching. Moscow therefore has no incentive to hurry, no reason to concede early, and every reason to sit tight, keep establishing cold battlefield reality on the ground and let the US political calendar amp up the pressure.
This isn’t stubbornness. It’s leverage, earned the hard way.
What a European Pivot Really Means
A real European pivot toward Russia would not be reconciliation or repentance. It would be an acceptance of geopolitical and civilizational reality at a moment when denial has become suicidal. Europe cannot build a durable security order in permanent opposition to Russia without crippling itself economically, industrially, and politically. The post-2022 experiment proved the limit: Europe hollowed out its own productive base much faster than it superficially constrained Russia’s strategic depth.
Energy interdependence, even when restructured, remains central to Europe’s survival as an industrial civilization. That reality cannot be legislated away or drowned in slogans. Pipelines, grids, shipping lanes, and supply chains answer to geography and physics, not values statements. A pivot means admitting that stability comes from managed interdependence, not performative severance — and that Russia, whether welcomed or resented, remains structurally vital in Europe’s continental system.
Most of all, it forces Europe to confront the truth it spent years skirting: the Atlantic order it tied itself to is in late-stage imperial implosion. Policy volatility, sanctions excess, enforcement maximalism, and election-cycle geopolitics aren’t glitches. They’re symptoms. Europe can no longer assume that alignment with Washington guarantees coherence, protection, or prosperity. Adaptation is no longer optional. Europe must re-enter history as a civilizational actor with agency — not as a dependency clinging to an order that can no longer carry its weight.
The Realignment is No Longer Merely Theoretical
The verdict from Anchorage wasn’t a misunderstanding. It was a reveal.
Washington made an offer it could not politically afford to honor, then defaulted back to sanctions, interdictions, and enforcement — the only language its system still speaks fluently. Europe crippled by the cost. Russia absorbed the pressure. Somewhere in between, the old Atlantic script quietly stopped working.
What’s changed now isn’t Europe’s rhetoric, but its private recognition. Even the most Russophobic Eurocrats understand what cannot be unsaid: Russia is not returning to the Western order, and Europe cannot afford endless confrontation.
Europe is not pivoting toward Russia out of goodwill. Russia is not waiting for Europe out of nostalgia. And Washington is no longer the indispensable broker it pretends to be.
The realignment is already happening — not because anyone chose it, but because the old order ran out of force before it ran out of slogans.
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.
Türkiye-NATO: Strategic Security Or Strategic Revision?
By Alexandr Svaranc – New Eastern Outlook – February 9, 2026
Currently, Turkish interests and NATO logic are diverging increasingly. Turkish society and expert circles are actively discussing both the prospects of maintaining NATO membership and the possibility of leaving the bloc.
Historical roots of the Turkish dilemma
Türkiye’s complex relations with Western powers have deep historical roots. During World War II, demonstrating inconsistency in choosing a strategic partner, Türkiye effectively supported Hitler’s Germany. Hoping for German military success against Russia – as in World War I – Ankara was forced to hastily join Great Britain and the USA in February 1944 to avoid direct military conflict with the USSR. Joseph Stalin characterized Türkiye’s policy during that period as “hostile neutrality,” denounced the Soviet-Turkish treaty, and put forward territorial claims, including control over the Black Sea Straits and Western Armenia.
Thanks to flexible diplomacy, Türkiye managed to restore its strategic alliance with Great Britain and the USA. However, this required accepting Washington’s political conditions: transitioning from a one-party to a multi-party system of governance, becoming NATO’s “southern anchor,” and entering into a diplomatic alliance with the West against the USSR. As a result, Türkiye was able to curb the Soviet threat, obtain security guarantees under the US nuclear umbrella, and become a full member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in February 1952.
Ankara’s geopolitical ambitions and the price of NATO membership
The alliance with the West, however, significantly limited Türkiye’s economic and political sovereignty, drawing it into a tenacious dependence on US diktats. Ankara, like many European capitals, lost the ability to independently determine its allies and adversaries – these decisions were made in London and Washington. The West dictated the parameters of Türkiye’s strategic security, determined the pace of its economic development, and controlled its domestic politics. All military coups that occurred in Türkiye in the second half of the 20th century (in 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997) were the result of US interference through the Turkish General Staff in the country’s internal political affairs under the pretext of protecting the secular regime.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the “Soviet military threat,” Türkiye’s strategic significance for NATO began to decline. The NATO accession of Black Sea countries such as Bulgaria and Romania, as well as Georgia and Ukraine looking to integrate with the West, is shifting the focus in the Black Sea basin. In the Middle East, the main ally of the USA and NATO besides Türkiye is Israel. Furthermore, the US gained operational room for maneuver in Iraq, Syria was destroyed by years of civil conflict, Iran was weakened under American-Israeli pressure, the Palestinian issue shifted towards the reconstruction of Gaza, and the resource-rich Arab countries of the Persian Gulf remain in financial and military dependence on the West.
Ankara’s geopolitical ambitions are not widely supported by the US and Europe: none of these powers are interested in the emergence of a strong and independent Türkiye as a new geopolitical center. Türkiye’s plans to revive the Turkish golden age by controlling parts of North Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia (the doctrines of Neo-Ottomanism and Neo-Pan-Turkism), are viewed by the West, led by the USA, merely as a tool for penetrating these regions, especially the post-Soviet space, via Turkish hands.
Intra-bloc contradictions and searching for a policy orientations
Intra-bloc contradictions are a common phenomenon for NATO. A striking example is Turkish-Greek disagreements and the occupation of the northern part of Cyprus in 1974. It is worth noting that this event did not occur without the consent of the US, which sought to punish Greek nationalists and Archbishop Makarios III for their pro-Soviet orientation.
Relations between the two NATO allies, Greece and Türkiye, are still far from ideal today. The difficult relations between these two NATO members are also reflected in Greek Minister of National Defense Nikos Dendias’ speech before the Greek parliament, who believes that Türkiye represents a geostrategic risk for Greece. During a discussion of the 2026 budget at the end of December, the minister stated that Türkiye is the main and fundamental threat to Greece. To support his thesis, Dendias cited statistical data: Türkiye spends 28.7 billion euros annually on its defense industry, while Greece has a military budget of 5-7 billion euros. Reminding Athens of its participation in European military plans, Dendias stated that the European defense structure is inadequate. The US has moved away from its historical role as a security guarantor in the region and insists on a compromise end to hostilities in Ukraine, including territorial concessions by Kiev. Meanwhile, Europe continues to militarize without the protection of a reliable guarantor.
Türkiye at a crossroads between the multipolar world and NATO
During the years of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rule, Türkiye, by developing mutually beneficial partnerships with key Eurasian powers such as Russia and China, has significantly strengthened its economic and political sovereignty.
The idea of a multipolar world where Türkiye will be one of the key geopolitical centers, possibly leading a “Turkic pole,” is actively discussed in Ankara. Calls for the creation of a new military alliance, a “Turan Army” led by Ankara, are increasingly common within Turkish expert and political circles. Some politicians, such as the leader of the opposition Vatan Party, Dogu Perincek, and the head of the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party, Devlet Bahceli, openly call for Türkiye’s withdrawal from NATO.
NATO from the view of the Turkish military and Ankara’s ambitions
Retired Rear Admiral Cem Gurdeniz, who held important positions in the Navy from 1987 to 1991 and is considered the ideologist of the Blue Homeland concept, argued that the US and NATO have repeatedly dragged Türkiye into local conflicts against its interests, for example, in Libya in 2011. According to the admiral, the unipolar world led by the US has ceased to exist, and NATO, as a relic of the Cold War, should become a thing of the past. Gurdeniz is convinced that the world is moving towards a multipolar system, where Türkiye is destined to become an important geopolitical center. In an interview with the Tele-1 TV channel, he emphasized the need to revise Türkiye’s security strategy and withdraw from the crisis-ridden NATO.
Another retired lieutenant general, former head of the General Staff Intelligence Department, Ismail Hakki Pekin, in an interview with a Russian publication, also criticized NATO, accusing the alliance of insufficiently helping Türkiye in the fight against international terrorism, implying Kurdish armed groups in Syria.
Türkiye sees obvious contradictions between the US and the EU related to the creation of a European NATO Bureau. In this context, Ankara does not exclude the possibility of creating an Asian NATO Bureau with Türkiye’s simultaneous participation in the European strategic security system. However, despite public discussion of this idea, the Turkish elite so far presents it as a way to expand NATO eastward and strengthen the alliance through an Asian (Turkic) bureau.
Despite all its revanchist ideas, the Turkish elite maintains a realistic view of things. It understands that it cannot alone create and lead a combat-ready and self-sufficient military alliance, as it lacks modern military technologies and production capacities comparable to the West and Israel. To this day, Türkiye cannot launch production of the 5th-generation KAAN fighter jet due to the lack of its own engines and the US refusal to supply them. The Turks still hope for a military deal on modernized F-16s and F-35s or the purchase of Eurofighters. Finally, Türkiye realizes that a premature exit from NATO could entail serious geopolitical costs for the country’s territorial integrity in the event of intervention by the US and Europe.
Thus, Türkiye is in a difficult geopolitical situation, balancing between wanting to strengthen its influence in a multipolar world and the need to maintain pragmatic relations with existing alliances. Ambitions to create its own military bloc clash with objective technological and production limitations, as well as potential risks to national security in the event of a sharp break with NATO. The idea of an Asian NATO Bureau can be seen as Ankara’s attempt to find a compromise solution that would allow it to strengthen its regional influence without leaving the Western military-political bloc.
Alexander Svarants – PhD in Political Sciences, Professor, Expert in Turkish Studies and Middle Eastern Countries
What I Learned From the Epstein Files
Corbett | February 10, 2026
Just over a week ago, the U.S. Department of Justice released three and a half million of the six million pages of documents in the Epstein files. So, what do the Epstein files really reveal? Let’s find out.
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TRANSCRIPT
JAMES CORBETT: Just over a week ago, the U.S. Department of Justice released three and a half million of the six million pages of documents in the so-called “Epstein files.”
And by now, we’ve all heard the accusation that, for example, Bill Gates caught an STD from “Russian girls” and then tearfully pleaded with Jeffrey Epstein to please provide him with antibiotics so he could surrepetitiously drug Melinda. Brock, cut in the CNN Gates clip here. And we’ve all seen Elon Musk pleading with Epstein to pretty please allow him to attend. Let’s try that again. Kind of gives a whole new meaning to Microsoft. Get it? And we’ve all seen Elon Musk pleading with Jeffrey Epstein to please allow him to attend the wildest parties on his pedophile island. Cut in the Stewart clip here.
CNN ANCHOR: Epstein claimed he helped quote get drugs in order to deal with the consequences of sex with Russian girls and set up illicit trysts with married women. […] One draft email alleges that Gates tearfully asked Epstein to delete messages referencing an STD, writing, “Your request that I provide you antibiotics that you surreptitiously give to Melinda.” It also, uh, says Gates asked him to delete, uh, explicit personal details about his penis.
SOURCE: Epstein files: Drafts expose Bill Gates, Jeffrey Epstein relationship details
CORBETT: Kind of gives a whole new meaning to Microsoft. Get it? And we’ve all seen Elon Musk pleading with Jeffrey Epstein to please allow him to attend “the wildest parties” on his pedophile island.
REPORTER: Elon says, “Do you have any parties planned? I really want to hit the party scene in St. Barts or elsewhere and let loose.”
JON STEWART: I’m sorry. I hate to do this. Can we zoom in on the email on that, please? … Christmas Day?!
SOURCE: DOJ Protects Trump From Epstein Accountability as MAGA Attacks “Sanctuary Cities” | The Daily Show
And we’ve all seen Fake News Story of the Year recipient Donald J. Trump repeating his “nothing to see here” meme routine.
DONALD TRUMP: I think it’s really time for the country to get on to something else really, you know.
SOURCE: Trump says time to turn the page on Epstein scandal | AFP
CORBETT: …But he would say that, wouldn’t he?
No, the Epstein files are not a nothing burger. In fact, they provide one of the most valuable insights into the operations of the kakistocracy yet revealed.
But you won’t see any real reporting on the depths of this rabbit hole in the dinosaur media.
So, what do the Epstein files really reveal? Let’s find out.
CORBETT REPORT THEME
JEFFREY EPSTEIN: …What do I mean? He formed something called the Trilateral Commission.
The Trilateral Commission is some spooky stuff. People said it was some—people, the Illuminati…there’s some mystery about it. People that ran the world.
It was politicians. But David [Rockefeller] said [in] most countries, the politicians get elected for four years or eight years—separate from the royal families in England or in the Middle East. Someone’s there for four years and then they’re not there anymore. The most important people to have stability and consistency would be businessmen.
So, he formed this Trilateral Commission of businessmen and politicians from three major continents. So, it was the North Americans, the Europeans and the Asians.
So, he said to me, “Would you like to be on the trilateral commission?”
Now, I was 30 years old, 32 years old. I said, “Great.”
And he said, ‘Well, you have to fill out this application.”
So, they have your bio. And I looked at the list of people. And it was Bill Clinton, former president of the United States, Paul Volcker, every great leader in America. The Asians, the Japanese. And with a a very long description of their history. And they asked me to fill in what I would like to have written. And I wrote “Jeffrey Epstein, just a good kid,” which I thought was funny. Nobody else did.
SOURCE: JEFFREY EPSTEIN LAST INTERVIEW FROM HIS HOME (from the Epstein files)
CORBETT: Welcome back, friends, to The Corbett Report. I’m your host, James Corbett of corbettreport.com, coming to you in February of 2026 with Episode 491 of The Corbett Report podcast: “What I Learned from the Epstein Files.”
And that, as you probably garnered, was none other than pedo-king himself, Jeffrey Epstein, being recorded in a sit-down interview that took place shortly before his arrest in 2019 and [that] was conducted by none other than MAGA kingpin, Steve Bannon.
So, why did Steve Bannon participate in not just one, but a series of interviews that, we are told, comprise 15 hours of interview footage shortly before Epstein’s arrest there in 2019?
Good question. And I guess the answer to that question, as usual, depends on who you ask.
If you ask Bannon himself, he’ll tell you it was for the creation of a tell-all exposé documentary about the inner workings of the deep state and how these pedophiles operate. But that’s not what everyone says.
So, this is something that we’ve known about for a couple of years now. Back in 2024, it was being reported, “Steve Bannon filmed Jeffrey Epstein for 15 hours. His ‘documentary’ has never surfaced.” And even back then in 2024, a short clip was released by Bannon and his production company, Victory Films, to tease such a documentary that was “coming soon.” But it’s been “coming soon” for the past couple of years now.
And his (Bannon’s) explanation about this documentary—that it’s just, it’s for this tell-all exposé and it’s an anti-Epstein sort of thing…Well, according to this article, anyway, “Bannon’s explanation that he was producing a documentary about Epstein was nonsense, according to people who spent time with both men around the time they were in each other’s lives. In reality, the two acted like friends around each other, and Bannon, these people said, was trying to help Epstein, a notorious sex offender, with his public relations problems.”
And yes, if you want more on the Bannon slash Epstein relationship, Politico was reporting this recently:
The two dined together frequently and Epstein offered Bannon the use of a Paris apartment, Palm Beach house and other accommodations, as well as his plane on multiple occasions. When Epstein helped coordinate other travel for Bannon, the two joked that Epstein was working as Bannon’s assistant and the “most highly paid travel agent in history.” In one instance, Epstein added: “Massages. Not included.”
Yes. Interesting. Well, interesting-er and interesting-er, because why have we not seen this 15 hours of interview footage yet? And why are we now just getting two hours of that footage in this latest Epstein files dump?
Well, part of the reason may or may not have to do with an obscure legal tactic that was apparently at least discussed in which Steve Bannon, a non-lawyer, would be able to use—I believe it’s called the Kovel clause, or something along those lines—to declare himself part of Epstein’s legal team and thus shield his work through attorney-client privilege. Just really bizarre relationship there.
But it’s just one tiny sliver of a window into the much larger story and one that, for example, connects, as we’ve seen, Bannon with Chomsky, palling around. What’s the common connection there? Oh, that’s right. Epstein. They’re both pals of Epstein who palled around with him, flew on his jet and were both weirdly interested in protecting Epstein’s reputation. Yeah.
Make of all of that what you will, at any rate.
Well, yes, now I’m here to tell you there are two hours of the 15 hours of interview footage that Bannon took with Epstein now publicly available. I will link it in the show notes for today’s episode at corbettreport.com/epsteinfiles/ so that you can go and check it out for yourself.
And it includes clips like that one, which includes an interesting piece of information that I confess I should have known, but I did not until I sat down and watched this interview that, namely: Epstein was personally invited by David Rockefeller to join the Trilateral Commission.
And the timeline on that is all screwy and wonky because he’s talking about being 30 to 32 years old at the time, putting this in the 80s. But then they go on to talk about the first Trilateral Commission meeting in Tokyo, which took place in 1973. So is that the one they’re talking about? Presumably not. Does he mean his first Trilateral Commission meeting, etc., etc.? Well, there’s a lot of questions surrounding this, but there it is and take it for what it is.
But you would know about all of that if you had read my latest editorial. It’s called 10 Things I Learned from the Epstein Files. It’s up right now at corbettreport.com and, of course, on my Substack. And if you go through that, you’ll learn various things that we’ve already managed to uncover from these Epstein files.
For example, [#1] Epstein was an agent and he was working for… Which country? Fill in the blank. What do you think
Well, if you talk to the mainstream repeaters at The Daily Mail and other such crack journalistic outfits, you’ll find he was working for Russia! Yes, as the Daily Mail reports, Epstein’s sex empire was a “KGB honeytrap.” Yes, he was recruiting people and blackmailing people for Russia for…reasons. Apparently.
Or, or maybe, and just maybe, hear me out here, maybe Epstein was a Mossad agent. And I go through some of the many, many reasons that we would have to suspect that, the many, many ties between Epstein and Israel and Israeli intelligence, like:
- the Israeli military intelligence officer and personal aid to Ehud Barak, who spent weeks at a time at Epstein’s Manhattan apartment;
- Epstein personally involved in helping Israel sell a surveillance state to Cote d’Ivoire. Personally involved in helping Israel sell logistics infrastructure and cybersecurity to the United Arab Emirates. Epstein personally involved in helping sell the Rothschilds on Israeli cyberweapons;
- there’s, of course, the Epstein/Dershowitz link and both of them working to smear John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who at the time were working to expose the Israel lobby;
- and dozens of other stories reported, for example, by Drop Site news in their ongoing and extensive Israel-Epstein archive or The Cradle talking about Epstein’s Israel ties.
So, you know, just maybe, maybe the Epstein story has to do with Israeli intelligence.
We could also get that from a Confidential Human Source [CHS] in one of these documents, reporting to the FBI that:
Epstein was close to the former Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak (Barak) and trained as a spy under him. Barak believed Netanyahu was a criminal. Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are allied against Qatar, Turkey, Iran and Syria. One of CHS’ [REDACTED] (who presumably worked [REDACTED]) asked CHS a lot of questions about Epstein. CHS became convinced that Epstein was a co-opted Mossad Agent (see previous reporting).
So again, make of all of that what you will. There’s much more to go into.
I, for example, go into [#2] Jeff Epstein was a Fed truther who “represented” the Rothschilds. Yes, also from this Bannon interview footage, we see Epstein expounding on fractional reserve banking, which, again, anyone in the conspiracy reality movement will have known about for decades. Presumably, they’ve read things like J. Edward Griffin’s The Creature from Jekyll Island, or they’ve seen my documentary on Century of Enslavement: The History of the Federal Reserve. But here it is from the banksters own mouths—or at least one of their representatives, Epstein—talking about fractional reserve banking and what a scam it is and why there would be runs on the bank if people knew how the system actually worked. Hmm, where have we heard that line before?
Again, much more information on that.
Also, the intriguing 2016 email that Epstein penned to Peter Thiel—yes, that Peter Thiel—in which he casually asserts, “as you probably know[,] I represent the Rothschilds,” which is just…well, interesting. And is he talking about his weird relationship with Arianne to Rothschild and their interesting correspondence? Or is he talking about the wider-reaching relationship that he had with the Rothschild banking dynasty? For example, the aforementioned ties into the selling the Israeli cyber weapons to the Rothschilds?
I go through other little bits and pieces that are interesting.
[#3] “Someone changed Epstein’s Apple ID password after he was dead,” and you can actually see that for yourself in the files.
[#4] The MCC—the “Metropolitan Correction Center”—officer who wrote an after-action report that was recorded in which he confessed to using boxes and sheets to construct a fake Epstein body that was then used to distract the media when they were removing the “body” from the MCC, or at least from the hospital, on the night of the supposed suicide.
I go through [#5] Epstein’s links to the Trilateral Commission and I link up, for example, a very extensive and interesting article on that: “From Rockefeller to Starmer: Mapping the Trilateral Network in the Epstein Files.”
I talk about [#6] Pizzagate and the many, many, many bizarre pizza references in here, like the pizza monster email thread—”You mean radiating a soft glow with th= look of bliss and excitement? Yeah, that’s the pizza.”—or “butt pizza” and other pizza references. “But Pizzagate was all a debunked conspiracy theory!” So said Reddit a few years ago. Well, now, of course, Reddit is the ones that are going, “hey, maybe there’s something to this Pizzagate!”
[#7] Epstein and 4chan. Yes, Christopher Poole, the founder of 4chan, met personally with Epstein. Epstein said he was very impressed by him. They wanted to meet again. Maybe they did meet again. When did they meet? Oh, on October 23rd, 2011 or thereabouts. And oh, by the way, that’s the exact date of the relaunch of the Politically Incorrect [/pol/] board. on 4chan. Hmm. Interesting stuff there.
[#8] Epstein co-opted Bitcoin and made Call of Duty a microtransaction hellscape. The latter point perhaps not so important, but the co-optation of Bitcoin is an incredibly important story. It’s been well reported in an article I’m linking here by Aaron Day at the Brownstone Institute called The Hijacking of Bitcoin. And he goes through, step by step, the exact ways that Epstein was linked up with the small blockers to create, to divert Bitcoin into the government-compliant regulatory non-crypto that it is today. And there’s specific talk about, for example, [a] $525,000 grant to MIT’s Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative and [a] $500,000 investment in Blockstream, etc. Again, so much reporting and very important stuff in there, so I will highly recommend that people check out that Aaron Day article.
I talk about [#9] Ghislaine being invited to the 9-11 Shadow Commission by an Edward J. Epstein (no relation). What that was all about? I link up, for example, the Wayback Archive of the page that was being linked to there and what that may or may not be.
And [#9] Epstein didn’t kill himself. Well, we’ll get to that later.
So, there’s ten points, and there’s dozens and dozens and dozens of links in here. So, I would highly suggest if you haven’t seen this article yet, please check it out.
But in the purpose of expanding on this research for today’s episode, I’m going to go through five more things I learned from the Epstein files. So, if you are buckled in and ready and have your pen and paper at hand, let’s start going through them.
#1: Epstein’s black market in babies. And we get weird hints of that from redacted emails from who knows who to who knows who: “[Subject:] [EXTERNAL EMAIL] Woman who accused John of God, cult leader of rape, mysteriously kills herself at Spanish home,” which apparently seems to be just a link to this Sun article, but “[REDACTED] spoke of this going on at Zorro Ranch. She has said on record that Epstein offered her money to do this. Birth babies for black market use.”
And if you want to start delving down that rabbit hole, you can start going to things like this, which is one of the documents that was released. [It] is a journal of sorts of someone who was undergoing therapy, an Epstein victim. And it’s truly disturbing. But at any rate, you can see, for example, something that appears to be blood or blood-like stained pages. And then you get this page of this bizarre code that you realize you have to read in two lines. “So sorry Jeffrey these things happen when your,” etc., etc. So you can go and really literally read everything for yourself, or, thankfully, the DOJ has apparently actually interpreted this code and here it is:
So sorry Jeffrey these things happen when your body has never been given time to properly heal!
So it came out in the toilet and I didn’t know what to do so I just flushed the tiny little fetus.
You have made me numb and I hate you for this!
I hope I never have to see you again!
I am not your personal incubator!
where is the baby?
where is Ghislaine?
And you can actually, again, go and read all of this for yourself in this creepy journal of trauma that this person left. That’s part of this document release.
There are other journals by the same person or a different person talking about more such creepy stuff. There’s, for example, this page, which, again, has some sort of redacted picture in here and then more text. Again, there is an accompanying document that tells us what this is. For example, “[Next to sonogram photo.” So, that is apparently what is being redacted here, a sonogram photo.
I heard the heart beat even when she put her hands over my ears.
Aren’t pictures enough for them?
Torture!
Should I …..
deeply miss them?
Have these all been …. [MURDERS]?
Does this make me a [KILLER]?
Flights and yachts of fancy? No, horror. And talking about what happened on those flights, et cetera, et cetera. So, yes, there is more to this story, obviously.
And there is an excellent post up on LifeSite News about “Ignored in the release of Epstein files are victim references to traumatic abortions, lost babies,” which I will commend to your attention. It has a lot of this information and compiles a lot of the documents and emails, etc. So that is a handy way of putting your head around this incredibly dark subject.
But that is just one of the things that we are learning from these files. #2—or should this be #12, I suppose, if we’re counting the first 10?— genetic editing of babies and animals. Again, a creepy subject, which you can start exploring by looking, for example, at the Brian Bishop communications with Epstein. There’s many, many things that they had about “genetic engineering,” “designer babies,” “new genetic editing desk,” “references for embryo editing,” etc., etc. They had an extensive correspondence about this, and you can find out more about that from some of the reporting that’s happened about this: “Epstein linked to ‘designer baby’ empire in latest files that reveal bid to engineer superhumans and clones, talking about this correspondence with Brian Bishop, a Bitcoin developer who “in 2018 was seeking financial backing for a venture aimed at genetically enhancing offspring and ultimately replicating humans.” So there was some weird baby cloning, whatever was going on.
Who knows exactly what was happening there, but I’ll just put this in there. Go to Jmail and search for “hoofs,” that word, and you’ll find an email from Jeffrey Epstein to a Kathy Ruemmler saying, “we talked about designing a pig with different non-cloven hoofs in order to make kosher bacon,” etc.
Again, all sorts of really, really bizarre and potentially occultic stuff going on in these emails. That’s just one more window on that.
So, let’s move on to #13. So, pandemics as a business model.
So, in my 10 Things I Learned from the Epstein Files, I did call on members of The Corbett Report community to chip in with your—what do you find? What are interesting pieces of this puzzle that you find? And at least one of The Corbett Report members, beware-the-ides-of-march, answered the call:
“Dear James, you said we could contribute here if we thought there was an angle on Epstein worth looking at? This four-part investigation looks well-researched and properly referenced. Here’s part four for your perusal.”
And then, beware the Ides of March, links to Sayer Ji’s article, BREAKING: The Epstein Files Illuminate a 20-Year Architecture Behind Pandemics as a Business Model—With Bill Gates at the Center of the Network, which notes:
The latest DOJ batch of Epstein files reveal that by the time the world encountered COVID-19, the financial, philanthropic, and institutional machinery to manage—and profit from—a pandemic was already firmly in place.
While the Epstein files have reignited scrutiny around specific relationships, their deeper significance lies in how they intersect with a much longer and largely unexamined timeline. Public records, institutional initiatives, and financial instruments indicate that the conceptual foundations of pandemic preparedness as a managed financial and security category began to take shape in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as philanthropic capital, global health governance, and risk finance increasingly converged. Following the 2008 financial crisis, this framework rapidly accelerated—expanding through reinsurance markets, parametric triggers, donor-advised funding structures, and global simulations—years before COVID-19 made the architecture visible to the public.
And I will not go through this entire article for you right here, but Sayer Ji has done an incredible job of putting this together, starting with this “20-year pandemic preparedness architecture” timeline, which exactly corresponds to all of the research that I have done on this.
Late 1990s to early 2000s: the foundations were being laid through philanthropy and global health governance. And that’s exactly right from my research on this matter. For example, of course, the Dark Winter/anthrax attacks of 2001, leading into the Model State Emergency Health Powers Acts that were being passed all around the United States in subsequent years that laid the framework, the institutional and legislative framework, for state governors to start locking down their populations and force inoculating them at the event in the event of a declared pandemic. And the 2006 International Health Regulations at the World Health Organization that created the Public Health Emergency of International Concern, the “PHEIC” emergency—P-H-E-I-C—designation that was then used in the swine flu and Ebola and other such ginned up non-crises before getting to the scandemic.
Post-2008, you had the acceleration in terms of financialization and reinsurance and catastrophe logic of the pandemic preparedness agenda.
And then in the 2010s, you have the operationalization of that agenda through simulations, DAFs and preparedness infrastructure. What’s a DAF, a donor advised fund? Well, Sayer Ji again goes through all of that in this incredibly detailed article.
And the best part about the article is he doesn’t just talk about the documents. He’ll actually show the documents. And absolutely most best of all is at the very bottom of this incredibly lengthy and well-researched article. You have the actual notes with the actual references that you would use as a researcher to go and put these puzzle pieces together for yourself.
So, once again, this is highly recommended. Thank you to beware-the-ides-of-march for bringing this to my attention. Thank you to Sarah Ji for putting this work together. It’s incredibly important and shows more of the inner workings of that pandemic preparedness agenda, how it came about and how Epstein was apparently one of the locuses of this agenda, connecting JP Morgan with Gates, etc., and other donors and other such things together in this network that created the foundations of the scamdemic. And there are all sorts of ancillary documents, J.P. Morgan documents and Gates Foundation documents, etc., that are, again, part of this document release that show even more, as Sayer Ji highlights in this article.
But let’s move on to #4 or #14, depending on which numeral reference we’re using here: The DOJ had a draft of Epstein’s death announcement the day before he died.
That’s right. You will, of course, know that, of course, Epstein killed himself on August 10th, 2019, right? Well, according to the U.S. Attorney General’s office in the Southern District of New York, there was an August 9th press release talking about how “Earlier this morning, the Manhattan Correctional Center confirmed that Jeffrey Epstein, who faced charges brought by this Office of engaging in the sex trafficking of minors, had been found unresponsive in his cell and pronounced dead shortly thereafter.”
But that’s not what happened. Oh, no, it happened on August 10th. And that document has also been released. Of course, this is the press release where it was almost word for word exactly the same: “Earlier this morning, the Manhattan Correctional Center confirmed that Jeffrey Epstein, who faced charges brought by this Office of engaging in the sex trafficking of minors, had been found unresponsive in his cell…” and then it says, “and was pronounced dead shortly thereafter of an apparent suicide.”
So, literally on August 9th, the day before any of this happened, they had a press release about his death, announcing his death. And then when it supposedly actually happened on the 10th, they had a press release, almost word for word the same, but adding that he [died of an] “apparent suicide.”
Right. Okay. I’m not the only one who finds this a little bit odd. Oh, maybe, maybe some intern screwed up and put the wrong date on the wrong one or something. and they corrected it. Well, mainstream outlets too, picking up on this. “Epstein files reveal prosecutor’s announcement dated before his death.” Yes, which does seem to be kind of a bit of a strange phenomenon and one that at least deserves some explanation, doesn’t it? Along with many other things that we could point out.
For example: “Epstein Cellmate Claims Trump Administration Wanted Pervert Powerbroker ‘Dead’,” talking about “Jeffrey Epstein’s prison cellmate claims to have evidence that the Trump administration wanted the disgraced financier dead and left him unprotected ‘on purpose.’” Of course, who is the cellmate? “Nicholas Tartaglioni, a quadruple murderer and former police officer” who “had a reputation for extreme violence and a self-confessed hatred of child sex offenders, who “claims ‘it is no coincidence’ that he was ‘deliberately’ moved into the same jail as Epstein and ‘placed in the same cell’ as the convicted child sex offender,” but then removed the night before whatever happened, happened.
Which leads us to #5 of the five more things I learned, #15 of the overall list of what we learned from the Epstein files: Epstein didn’t kill himself!
Okay, no, we don’t really learn the truth about what happened or didn’t happen on the night of August 10th in these files, but we shouldn’t expect that that would be in these files. There are things that have been released, like new photos of people working on his body at the scene, et cetera, etc. But, as we know, they were using tactics like boxes and sheets stuffed into bags to trick reporters about his body. So what we know is, of course, more and more and more of the weirdness that certainly does not prove anything. What—Kash Patel and Dan Bongino just looked you straight in the eye and lied to your face. “He killed himself. I’ve seen suicides before. I’ve looked at the files and they show that he killed himself.” No, they do not. No, they do not.
And I guess we could put the bookends on this entire story by taking a look at a couple of AP news articles. The first one, “Justice Department releases largest batch yet of Epstein documents, says it totals 3 million pages.” So, that was that was how it started. And this is how it ended: “FBI concluded Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t running a sex trafficking ring for powerful men, files show,” talking about some of the documents within this release, which show that, oh, he wasn’t doing anything. He wasn’t. Whatever. Who cares, guys? Look somewhere else.
At least, that’s what the internal documents which have been released now show. The internal FBI and DOJ investigation showed that there was no list. There was no nothing. It’s all fine. Don’t think about it.
Well, as you can tell, there’s a lot in here and much, much more that I could go through. Everything I have talked about, everything I’m referencing will be in the show notes for today’s episode at corbettreport.com/epsteinfiles/. So please go there for the more information on this. But, having said that, if you want some more of the strangeness in these files, you could turn to Nick Bryant, who, you will know, is a previous Corbett Report guest for his work with EpsteinJustice.com, which, you will know, is an organization that is organizing and rallying in support of the Epstein victims and achieving justice for the crimes of Epstein and his kakistocracy crew.
Well, Nick Bryant has an interesting post up: “The Epstein Emails: From the Very Strange to the Very, Very Evil,” in which he talks about some of these things.
And just right off the top, he talks about one of the released emails. Here is a group email from REDACTED to a group list, subject: “journalist calling around” from 2011. “Just a heads up, there is a journalist calling around again. His name is Nick Bryant. This is what he looks like so you are all aware.”
So, literally an APB–an all points bulletin–being put out by the Epstein crew to be on the lookout for Nick Bryant back in 2011, because, as my listeners will know, Nick Bryant was one of the OG researchers on this way before the Miami Journal or whatever, or any of those reporters had even heard of this case. Bryant was on it. He was the one who released the black book and the flight logs in the first place, etc., etc. So, he’s been doing yeoman’s work on this subject and the Franklin scandal before it and other work along these lines for decades now.
So, I recently contacted Nick Bryant to ask him about some of the very interesting emails that he’s uncovered and which he has itemized here in this Epstein emails post.
NICK BRYANT: Well, the first category is “horrors.” I mean, there are a lot of horrors in these emails. I mean, evil of an almost incomprehensible kind—evil that I have come across before. With the Franklin scandal, there was extreme abuse, and there was also accounts of children being murdered, and we’re seeing that with Epstein.
And then I’ve got muffins, steaks, pizza, etc.,
And then there’s power brokers and celebrities. And it turned out that Epstein was trying—Thiel and Musk and Zuckerberg, our favorite humans on the planet, were getting together. And Epstein was wondering—it’s an email—and Epstein was wondering if he could make it with those swell guys.
Deepak Chopra shows up occasionally. This one’s kind of interesting: “God is a construct. Cute girls are real.” So, underneath all that high-powered metaphysical spirituality, Deepak Chopra has some major lower chakra predilections.
And then there’s kind of an interesting one. David Boies is a super lawyer who represented all the Epstein victims. He was invited to Epstein’s Yom Kippur breakfast in 2010. And there’s another attorney that represented a number of those victims named Stan Pottinger, who’s very, very dirty.
And the next category is transhumanism, biohacking, mind control, etc. And that certainly has some interesting emails.
And then the next category is FBI, CIA, Mossad.
And then there were a couple of emails that didn’t quite fit into any other category. So, I just said “additional strange emails.”
CORBETT: Absolutely, incredibly interesting list. And this is, of course, only scratching the surface of the three million pages of documents that have been released, including many, many emails, too many for any one human to handle. But let’s go through a few of the more interesting ones right here.
So, for example, Jeffrey Epstein emailed an unknown individual stating he “loved a torture video” shared between the two. And you can see, obviously, that you can see the actual emails in the email list. But here’s here’s some images of it. And Peter Mandelson, this is just speculation, right? We don’t know that that is the name under there, but it just happens to fit.
BRYANT: It does indeed. And he had formerly been the UK ambassador to the United States of America, which is a very prestigious post. And apparently he likes torture.
CORBETT: I loved the torture video. Yeah. Well, no. Yeah. Well, okay. Jeffrey loved the torture video. We don’t know. We don’t know what the person who sent it thought of it, at any rate.
BRYANT: So, with this, Mandelson is taking a lot of heat in the UK and he’s had to step down from all his prestigious posts. So actually, there’s a minor amount of accountability here.
CORBETT: Something has occurred. Yes.
OK, how about this one? “If true, this Jeffrey Epstein oriented email beggars belief. The abuse was off the scale.” And we’re looking at something from Eddie Aragon: “Fwd: CONFIDENTIAL: Jeffrey Epstein. This is sensitive. So it will be the first and last email, depending on your description discretion. You can choose to take it or trash it but this comes from a person that has been there and seen it as a former staff at the Zorro.”
And this person is talking about: “What is damning about Jeffrey Epstein is yet to be written. Did you know somewhere in the hills outside the Zorro, two foreign girls were buried on orders of Jeffrey and Madam G.? [Ghislaine, presumably.] Both died by strangulation during rough fetish sex.” And here are the video footage of Jeffrey Epstein, including “sex video with minor,” “Matthew Mellon video,” etc. “Suicide attempt confession,” etc., etc.
And apparently somebody who claims to have been as former Zorro staffer was attempting to get one Bitcoin for in return for this information. What do we make of this?
BRYANT: Well, there’s other very, very dark emails that allude to homicides. So did this happen? I mean, that’s the question. If you look at the totality of emails and just the amount of blood that’s just dripping off of them, an email like this doesn’t really seem that far-fetched in that context.
CORBETT: Yeah. No, it certainly doesn’t. It’s par for the course, unfortunately.
All right, let’s look at this one. From “Forward to J.E.E. [Epstein] re: Richard Johnson.” This is from Mark Tramo. And what are we looking at here? “Thanks for sending Richard Johnson my way. I trust the kind words I shared with him are acceptable,” et cetera, et cetera. “Was just reading today that newborns will suck on a pacifier more vigorously if it triggers playback of a recording of her slash his mother’s voice than another woman’s voice. Have you read David Brooks’ Social Animal?” What are we looking at here?
BRYANT: Well, if it’s talking about ways to get babies to suck harder in a very malevolent kind of way, I mean, this is rarefied evil.
CORBETT: “They blacked out the name of the person who sent Epstein an image labeled age 11 Why protect the predator?” And yes, this is an email from the archives sent from somebody, we don’t know, just labeled “Age 11.” “fullsizerender.jpg,” so this is an image file. The image file itself, obviously not released?
BRYANT: And here’s the thing. The media and the government have said that Epstein’s youngest victim was 14 years old, but I’ve heard accounts of victims that are much younger. There’s an Australian newspaper called The Age. I think it’s out of Sydney. It’s a daily. They spent a lot of time in the Virgin Islands, and they said that the youngest victims there were 11 or 12.
Virginia Giuffre submitted an affidavit that talked about various perpetrators, and she said that she’d attended orgies where the youngest girl was 12 and most of them couldn’t speak English. But I know a couple of therapists, and one’s a pretty eminent psychologist, and both have counseled Epstein victims who were trafficked when they were under the age of 10. So.
I know that somebody is going to try to clean this up, because it’s very strange. People think that 14-year-olds and 15-year-olds have agency. I mean, that’s how they’ve kind of justified it in their mind with regards to Jeffrey Epstein. And I don’t feel that way, but when you get into 11-year-olds or 10-year-olds or 9-year-olds, I mean, how can they possibly have agency? So that’s, I think, one of the things that really needs to be broken open here is that these guys were psychopaths.
And we saw it in the Franklin scandal, too. The two primary pimps were into pubescent boys. But if you wanted a seven or eight year old, they didn’t have a problem getting you a seven or eight year old.
So, I mean, they’re psychopaths. It’s not like they’ve got a conscience to to deal with. So, when, with this–and that’s another thing where the mainstream media has really short changed Americans. They’ve made Epstein and Maxwell seem kind of glamorous living on the Upper East Side, traveling all over. But human traffickers are vicious people, whether they’re living in a mansion on the Upper East Side or they’re living in a trailer court in the Midwest. Human traffickers are vicious, vicious people.
CORBETT: Uh, as we talked about Deepak Chopra to Epstein: “God is a construct. Cute girls are real.” And this person notes they’re all in on it. The entire world is a stage. So yes, sorry to any Deepak Chopra fans out in the crowd who might’ve held out hope.
One more. Again, there’s dozens of links in this document that we’re linking up here, but let’s take a look at one more: “Evidence of the presence of American laboratories for the development of biological weapons in Ukraine has been found in the ‘Epstein files,’ as previously reported by the Russian Defense Ministry on numerous occasions,” but of course derided as crazy Russian conspiracy theory. And here are the emails themselves. Yeah, a lot of biological and, you know, scientific papers and documents and emails and things in these records that we’re finding, aren’t there?
BRYANT: So there’s gene editing. There’s doing very strange things to babies. There’s cloning. And cloning is a reality. People in New York City clone their French bulldogs for $65,000. And I think you can clone a human for about $1.5 million. When Dolly the sheep was cloned in the mid-’90s, I actually had written some articles for Genetic Engineering News, which was one of the papers that broke that. And it’s very easy to clone. You just have to get an ovum and take the DNA out of the ovum and stick the DNA that you want cloned in the ovum and then give it an electrical charge. Sometimes the charge will start mitosis and the cells will start splitting, and sometimes they won’t. But it’s very easy to clone.
And back then, even before I got into the Franklin scandal and all this dark, malevolent stuff, I thought to myself: “there’s got to be megalomaniac millionaires out there cloning themselves.” So, that was when I saw his thing that was about cloning and transhumanism, I kind of figured that that would be a natural outcome.
CORBETT: Yeah, of course. If you can imagine it and we have indications of it, then it is probably already happening. And here are some more indications of that. And as I say, these are just a few of the emails of the ones that you have highlighted from the literally thousands and tens of thousands that we’ve just been flooded with. So there’s much, much more to go through.
But let’s talk about, obviously, I know that you work, obviously, your work at EpsteinJustice.com, working for and with the survivors and victims of these crimes. What are the people in your network saying about this latest file release and what is or is not happening as a result of it?
BRYANT: Well, it’s daunting. All these emails with so much evil, I mean, it’s daunting. And people that have been victims of sexual abuse that have been traumatized, I mean, this is very hard stuff for them to read. And there’s 3 million documents that have yet to be released. I mean, these are bad, but you can only imagine how bad those are.
CORBETT: So what is the next step for Epstein Justice then? How do we continue putting pressure to get those documents?
BRYANT: It’s waking people up. I mean, Epstein Justice is growing.
When we first started talking about Epstein Justice, we had just started. And I’d been a writer my entire life. I’d never been a director of 501c3. I’d never even worked for a 501c3. And the people that wanted to do this with me, none of us had any kind of experience working with a 501c3. But we just felt like this is something we had to do. So, now we have a plan.
Well, we’ve always had a plan for the Independent Congressional Commission. And that does not require a presidential signature. It just requires a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate. And independent congressional commissions generally hire non-government personnel to help them with investigations. And that’s what we’re going to need. If this thing ends up in a subcommittee, it’s going to die for sure. The only chance that we have for truth with this is an independent congressional commission that is completely devoid of any executive signature. It’s going to take a lot.
Together, Epstein Justice, we’re putting together Facebook groups by state, and we’re having those respective groups put pressure on their legislators. Now, they cannot feel our pressure yet. But as these groups grow and grow–and they are growing–as they continue to grow, these legislators will start feeling the heat from an inundation of emails and phone calls. And that’s the only way that you can get a politician to act is if they feel fear.
And I realize that a lot of these politicians are compromised. And the ones that are extremely recalcitrant, we’re just going to have to put extreme pressure on them and show how recalcitrant they are.
So, we have a plan and we’re executing it. But this isn’t going to be an easy slog. I mean, I’ve been at this for 22, 23 years when I started researching about the Franklin scandal. But, you know, I got to tell you, James, just the fact that it’s gotten this far is like a dream come true to me. Because I went through some very dark years thinking that none of this was going to be exposed.
CORBETT: Once again, that is Nick Bryant of EpsteinJustice.com. And for anyone interested in Epstein Justice, I suggest you go to their website. You can find out more about the regular webinars that they do on an ongoing basis to train people in activism and how they can raise awareness about this issue. And they have various campaigns that they are involved in on an ongoing basis, again, trying to achieve justice for these crimes. So people who are interested, please check that out at EpsteinJustice.com.
But as you can see, this is just scraping the surface of the three and a half million documents, pages of documents, of the six million in the overall files, with almost half of the files having not yet been released.
So, obviously, this is too much of a research task for any one individual to be able to handle. So, I need your support. I need your help. And I would hope that if there are any interested people in the audience who are interested in delving into these files and finding out more, that you will lend a hand to this open source investigation.
And if you are interested in that, of course, you could go to the Epstein Library at the U.S. Department of Justice website. Again, the link will be in the show notes if you are interested. and you can try going through this.
And I don’t know. For example, we looked for hoofs earlier. Is it going to find it here? Okay, it can be functional and you can find these emails that way.
Or you can start browsing through them. And if you do so, you’ll find the Epstein files, Transparency Act release. And, I don’t know, go into Dataset 10. And just like the JFK files that we looked at last year, these files are, again, totally, utterly useless, just random numbers. And who knows what you’re going to find when you click into something? Is it going to be an email? Is it going to be a document? Is it going to show something? Is it going to be a picture? I don’t know! How could you possibly know? [sarcasm]Oh, yes, of course, this document.[/sarcasm]
Again, how useful is this? Not very, and perhaps that is part of the point, confuse and distract.
So, if you want a more robust way of searching through these files, you can go to jmail.world. For those who don’t know, this is a handy service that has been put together that takes all of these emails and documents and photos, etc., and puts it as if you are logged into a Gmail type interface as Jeffrey Epstein. It is not just Gmail. It’s also Yahoo. It’s the documents, it’s the photos, etc. But here it is.
And so, as for example, before we were able to search, for example, you search the word “hoofs” and you’ll find that Kathy Ruemmler email.
Or, well, here guys, let’s find out. Ooh, is Corbett in the–oh no, Corbett is not in the Epstein files, etc., etc.
So, you can search that way.
You can search–there is also a list of people that you can search through. So, you can see all of the Elon Musk emails, etc., things along those lines there. Again, there’s a lot of different features here.
I saw somebody in the comments earlier asking about the photos and “how do you find the photos that are apparently being published here and I can’t find them,” etc., etc.. Well, here they are. And you can go to “view original.” That’s a handy link to go to the actual justice.gov version that is contained in the files and it’ll have the URL there, etc. So you can copy that in.
And again, there’s literally thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of photos and documents here. And you can see them all and download them all, etc. And this even has a function, at least on the email part of Jmail where, You can see the last one that’s at least recorded here in 2019 is from Cody Rudland: “You are dead. lol, good riddance.” Okay, wonderful.
But there is a function for leaving notes as well on the sidebar. I’m in the mobile version of this, so you can’t see it. But there is a function for leaving notes, and people are collectively leaving notes on these various emails, etc.
Again, there’s a lot to explore. just explore. You can see what Epstein was ordering on Amazon, etc.
So again, all of this information in a much, much more easily findable form.
However, having said that, some of these emails are not showing up in the Jmail search. Like, for example, we looked earlier at Nick Bryant showing up in one of these. But Nick Bryant–that email about the “APB” of Nick Bryant is not searchable this way. You can find Juliette Bryant, whoever that is, but not Nick, etc. So, there are certain things that just are not showing up here. So… Again, has all of the data been imported and has it been done in the proper way? And are things being disappeared from the files, etc.? All very good questions that people need to start looking at and answering.
Having said that, here’s another interesting website. This one is a hat tip to my video editor extraordinaire, Broc West, who brought this one to my attention. I hadn’t seen it. It’s called EpsteinSecrets.com. And there you can see visually the Epstein network, for example, mapped out all of the various people and who they’re connected to. And you can sort how this this this map is shown, for example, looking at edges and people. And you can zoom in on various people and how they’re connected and the documents that are connected to them.
You can do searches. For example, remember that Kathy Ruemmler that Epstein was talking about genetically engineering pigs to have non-cloven hooves so they could be kosher. Well, who who on earth is that Kathy Ruemmler person? There is a way to search this and I know I have done it without logging in, but anyway.
Well, anyway, I’m not going to get it now, but trust me, there is a way to search this and Broc will show it on screen where you can find out [about] Kathy Ruemmler. Oh, that’s right! She happens to be with the department of–or, she was in the Obama administration and then went into private practice in the 20 teens, at which point she was contacting Jeffrey Epstein on a regular basis.
So, again, it’s a handy search function for that sort of thing.
There are tools like this that exist. And if you know of any other research tools for going through this massive, massive amount of files. Please bring them to our attention. I’m sure we would be interested to hear about them
Having said that, I do know that there are those who will simply fold their arms and–interestingly, in an exact parallel to Donald J. Trump–say: “Let’s move on. There’s nothing to see here. Whatever. Who cares?” Essentially. Remember when Chomsky said who cares about 9/11 or JFK, etc.? Well, it’s: “Who cares? Whatever. There’s nothing of importance here. It’s all fake! It’s all a psyop and or it’s all been scrubbed!”
Well, be that as it may, I don’t believe that. These are real emails that really took place between thousands and thousands of people, real documents that have been verified and that no, not a single person has said that isn’t an email that’s fake, let alone the thousands of people who are implicated in these emails. None of them have stepped forward to say that’s fake.
No, these are real emails that really took place that really contain information. Does this contain the video of the whatever blood drinking child sacrifice? No, of course not. That is not in here.
But there is a lot to garner from here. As you’ve seen, for example, Sayer Ji and others mining these documents, Aaron Day with the Bitcoin documents, et cetera. There’s a lot of information to go through.
So, I will say–counter to those who will tell you “It’s a nothing burger! It’s a psyop! Don’t look at it!”–I will say you can choose whatever you want to look at or not look at. If you don’t want to research this, that’s fine. But if you do, I would very much appreciate your help because I am going to continue looking at these documents and what they do reveal about the kakistocracy that, yes, many people in my audience, thankfully, after decades and decades of people like Nick Bryant and others reporting on this subject and staying on it for decades in which they’ve been dismissed as crazy conspiracy theorists and wild loonies finally being vindicated. And then there are those who will just say, “Just stop looking!” I do not believe that. I think we should be looking at these and taking them for what it’s worth.
Obviously, this is not the bottom of the rabbit hole, but it is some way down and further than we have been before. So there is important information. Get it before it gets scrubbed, because you know they are working on scrubbing various pieces of this puzzle as they are being reported.
Having said that, I am interested in what you find. So if you are a Corbett Report member, please go to corbettreport.com, log in, leave links, data, information, tools, etc.
Whatever you find in the comments section at corbettreport.com/epsteinfiles. I am looking forward to what you find and I will, of course, be reporting more on this subject in the future, but that’s going to do it for today’s exploration. I am James Corbett of corbettreport.com. Thank you for joining me for today’s episode.
STEVE BANNON: …[If] we walked into that clinic where they’re giving that money out to these people that are the most dire straits of poverty and sickness and told them that the money was coming from a–what are you, Class 3 sexual predator?
EPSTEIN: Tier 1.
BANNON: Tier 1 is the highest and worst.
EPSTEIN: No, the lowest. I’m the lowest. You’re the lowest.
BANNON: Okay, Tier one, you’re the lowest. But a criminal.
EPSTEIN: Yes.
BANNON: That the money came from what? What percentage of people do you estimate? I understand you don’t like probabilities. Do you estimate would say, “I don’t care. I want the money for my children”?
EPSTEIN: I would say, everyone said, “I want the money for my children.”
BANNON: Did they know where the money came from?
EPSTEIN: I think if you told them, the devil.
BANNON: The devil himself.
EPSTEIN: The devil himself said, “I going to exchange some dollars for your child’s life”?
BANNON: Do you think you’re the devil himself?
EPSTEIN: No. But I do have a good mirror.
SOURCE: JEFFREY EPSTEIN LAST INTERVIEW FROM HIS HOME (from the Epstein files)
Why didn’t China protect Venezuela from the US?
Beijing is regrouping to adapt to the new hemispheric world order, but not retreating from Latin America
By Ladislav Zemánek | RT | February 9, 2026
The US military intervention in Venezuela in January 2026 – known as Operation Absolute Resolve – sent shockwaves far beyond Caracas. By striking targets in the Venezuelan capital and capturing President Nicolás Maduro, Washington signaled a decisive return to hard power in the Western hemisphere. The operation was not merely a tactical move against a hostile regime; it was a strategic message about influence, hierarchy, and control in the Americas. For China, which had invested heavily in Venezuela’s political and economic survival, the intervention raised immediate questions about the limits of its global reach and the evolving rules of great-power competition in an increasingly multipolar world.
China’s response to Operation Absolute Resolve was swift in tone but cautious in substance. Official statements from Beijing condemned the US action as a violation of international law and national sovereignty, framing it as destabilizing and emblematic of unilateral hegemony. Chinese foreign ministry officials repeatedly urged Washington to respect the UN Charter and cease interference in Venezuela’s internal affairs, positioning China as a defender of state sovereignty and multilateral norms.
Yet the rhetoric was not matched by escalation. Beijing avoided threats of retaliation or offers of direct military assistance to Caracas. Instead, it confined its response to diplomatic channels, reaffirmed opposition to unilateral sanctions, and issued travel advisories warning Chinese citizens to avoid Venezuela amid heightened instability. Chinese analysts emphasized that the priority was damage control: protecting long-standing economic and strategic interests without provoking a direct confrontation with US military power in the Western Hemisphere.
This measured reaction highlights a defining feature of China’s approach to Latin America. Beijing has pursued deep economic engagement and vocal support for sovereignty, but it has consistently avoided military competition with the US in a region where American power remains overwhelming. Operation Absolute Resolve exposed both the strengths and the limits of that strategy.
China’s relationship with the Maduro government was neither symbolic nor superficial. Over the past two decades, Venezuela emerged as one of Beijing’s most important partners in the Americas. In 2023, the two countries elevated ties to an “all-weather strategic partnership,” China’s highest level of bilateral designation. This status reflected ambitions for durable cooperation across energy, finance, infrastructure, and political coordination, and placed Venezuela among a small circle of states Beijing regarded as strategically significant.
Chinese policy banks extended large-scale financing to Caracas, much of it structured as oil-backed loans that allowed Venezuela to maintain access to global markets despite US sanctions. Chinese companies became involved in energy projects, particularly in the Orinoco Belt, while bilateral trade expanded substantially. Venezuelan heavy crude, though difficult and expensive to refine, accounted for a meaningful share of China’s oil imports, contributing to Beijing’s broader strategy of supply diversification.
Security cooperation also developed, albeit cautiously. Venezuela became one of the largest buyers of Chinese military equipment in Latin America, and Chinese technicians gained access to satellite tracking facilities on Venezuelan territory. At the same time, Beijing drew clear red lines. It avoided formal defense commitments, permanent troop deployments, or the establishment of military bases – signals that China did not seek to challenge US strategic primacy in the hemisphere.
Beijing’s interests in Venezuela extended well beyond oil and arms sales. The country served as a key node in China’s wider Latin American strategy, which emphasized infrastructure development, trade expansion, financial integration, political coordination, and cultural exchange within multilateral frameworks. This model sought to build influence through connectivity and economic interdependence rather than coercion or force, reinforcing China’s image as a development partner rather than a security patron.
The post-intervention reality, however, has significantly altered this equation. With Maduro removed from power, the US assumed effective control over Venezuela’s oil exports, redirecting revenues and setting the terms under which crude reaches global markets. While Washington has allowed China to continue purchasing Venezuelan oil, sales are now conducted strictly at market prices and under conditions that erode the preferential arrangements Beijing previously enjoyed. This shift directly affects China’s energy security calculations and weakens the leverage embedded in its oil-backed lending.
US control over oil flows also grants Washington influence over debt restructuring and creditor negotiations, potentially complicating China’s efforts to recover outstanding loans. The result is a sharp reduction in Beijing’s bargaining power in Caracas and a reassessment of the long-term viability of its investments. For China, the dilemma is acute: how to defend economic interests without crossing a strategic threshold that would invite confrontation with the US.
These developments align closely with the broader direction of US policy articulated in the 2025 National Security Strategy. The document places renewed emphasis on the Western Hemisphere as a core strategic priority and reflects a clear revival of Monroe Doctrine logic. It signals Washington’s determination to assert influence in the region and to limit the military, technological, and commercial presence of external powers – particularly China.
For Beijing, this creates a structural asymmetry. Decades of investment, trade, and diplomatic engagement cannot offset the reality of US military dominance in the Americas. China’s preferred toolkit – economic statecraft, infrastructure finance, and non-interference – faces inherent constraints when confronted with decisive uses of hard power. At the same time, Beijing’s emphasis on sovereignty and multilateralism continues to resonate with segments of Latin American political opinion that are wary of external intervention and eager to preserve strategic autonomy.
A comparison between US and Chinese strategies reveals different worldviews. The US approach, as outlined in the 2025 strategy, treats the hemisphere as a strategic space to be secured against external challengers through security partnerships, economic inducements, and military readiness. China’s approach prioritizes integration, development cooperation, and respect for national choice, relying on gradual influence rather than explicit enforcement.
Viewed through the lens of ‘Donroe Doctrine’ and the transition to multipolarity, the Venezuelan episode marks a critical inflection point. The US has reasserted hemispheric dominance in unmistakable terms, while China has been forced to acknowledge the limits of its reach far from home.
China may well lose ground in Venezuela, but this does not necessarily signal retreat from the region. Instead, it suggests adaptation. Diversified partnerships with countries such as Brazil and Mexico, along with continued engagement through trade and investment, offer alternative pathways forward. More broadly, the emergence of implicit spheres of influence may align with China’s interests elsewhere, particularly in Asia, where Beijing seeks greater recognition of its own strategic space.
In an international system increasingly defined by negotiated boundaries rather than universal dominance, both Washington and Beijing are testing how far their power extends – and where restraint becomes strategic. The outcome will shape not only Venezuela’s future, but also the evolving architecture of global order in a multipolar age.
Ladislav Zemánek is a non-resident research fellow at China-CEE Institute and expert of the Valdai Discussion Club.
Decades of broken promises, aggression, Israeli pressure leave Iran no reason to trust US: Analyst
By Press TV | February 9, 2026
Decades of broken promises, military aggression, and Israeli pressure have left Tehran with no reason to trust Washington, says a US-based analyst.
In an interview with the Press TV website, E. Michael Jones, author and editor of Culture Wars Magazine, said it would be “foolish” to put “trust in a regime which violates its own word repeatedly,” referring to the Donald Trump administration.
“Iranians have learned their lesson and will not put themselves in jeopardy again. The US cannot be trusted,” he noted.
Mistrust is not a tactical posture but the logical outcome of experience, Jones said, adding that the United States, particularly under Trump, has demonstrated “again and again” that it does not feel bound by its own international commitments.
That mistrust is sharpened by Trump’s record on international obligations, he remarked.
The US-based journalist and commentator pointed to the unilateral withdrawal of the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in May 2018.
“Trump has already torn up the JCPOA. He would not feel bound by any agreement,” he said, adding that this piece of history alone makes any future deal “inherently fragile.”
Jones also dismissed Israeli-backed demands to restrict Iran’s missile range, calling them knowingly unrealistic.
“A 300 km limitation on Iranian missiles is an impossible demand,” he stated, adding that Israel is fully aware Iran would never accept such terms.
According to the analyst, these conditions are not designed to advance negotiations but to manufacture justification for war.
“They are making the demand because it provides a pretext for war,” he told the Press TV website, as indirect Iran-US talks have recently resumed in Muscat under Omani mediation.
The discussions, facilitated by Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi, allowed the two sides to exchange views indirectly almost eight months after the previous round of talks was suspended due to Israeli-American military aggression against Iran.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the latest round of talks as a “good start,” saying Iran’s positions and concerns were clearly conveyed.
More than a week into the June war, the United States bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities. Between June 13 and 27, 2025, at least 1,064 people were killed in Iran, including military commanders, nuclear scientists, and ordinary civilians.
Against this backdrop, claims that talks could once again serve as cover for military action resonate strongly. Jones believes Iranians “learned their lesson” there.
This distrust is further reinforced by Washington’s expanding military footprint and repeated threats. Despite Trump’s campaign rhetoric about ending US wars, his administration has bombed several countries and repeatedly edged toward confrontation with Iran.
In his assessment, Trump’s preferred military option remains limited and performative. “Trump’s preferred option at this point is a symbolic strike at targets pre-arranged with the Iranian government,” Jones says, claiming that this approach was already used in June.
Such strikes, he explained, are designed to create the illusion of victory. Trump can declare success, “satisfying the Israelis, who ordered him to attack Iran, and the Iranians, who lose nothing in the attack.”
But the analyst argued that this balancing act is collapsing. “Unfortunately, neither Iran nor Israel is willing to accept Trump’s solution,” he noted.
Israeli pressure, Jones added, is now the central driver of escalation. With Trump set to meet Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, the analyst expects an ultimatum by the latter: “if you don’t attack Iran, we will.”
“If Trump is smart, he will let Israel attack Iran on its own, hoping that the Iranian response will obliterate Israel once and for all, releasing him from Netanyahu’s constant pressure,” Jones remarked.
Still, he believes Netanyahu’s threats mask a deeper constraint. “Netanyahu is bluffing. He knows he can’t attack Iran by itself,” he said, adding that “many here speculate that Netanyahu is blackmailing Trump with the Epstein files.”
Despite the rhetoric, the analyst insists the US is fully aware of the risks of war with Iran.
Iranian officials have warned that any attack would be met with an immediate response, and Iran’s missile capabilities have already demonstrated their ability to penetrate layered defenses. According to the author, this reality is well understood within the US military.
“The American military has always claimed that the US cannot win a war with Iran,” he noted.
Yet, he hastened to add, such assessments rarely determine policy. “Their verdict invariably gets overturned by Israeli pressure,” Jones stressed, explaining why Trump continues to favor prearranged and symbolic strikes rather than full-scale war.
“American forces are now operating according to Israeli rules,” he stated, noting that the US power in the region no longer operates according to international norms.
He cited the assassination of top anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani, carried out while he was on a peace mission in Iraq, as a defining moment.
For Jones, it marked Washington’s abandonment of its own claims to a “rules-based order,” as well as its disregard for institutions such as the United Nations.
He recalled Trump’s own words when questioned by the New York Times. Asked whether he followed international law, Trump said no. Asked what he did follow, Trump replied, “My morality, my mind.”
The analyst described this as a direct reference to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, when Satan said, “The mind is its own place.”
The symbolism, he noted, is unmistakable, adding that it confirms that Imam Khomeini—the founder of the Islamic Revolution—was right when he referred to America as the “Great Satan.”
Iran Willing to Dilute Enriched Uranium If US Lifts All Sanctions
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | February 9, 2026
A top Iranian official said that Tehran would be willing to dilute its stockpile of highly enriched uranium if Washington agrees to remove sanctions completely.
Iran’s atomic energy chief, Mohammad Eslami, proposed that Tehran would dilute its 60% enriched uranium to a lower level if “all sanctions would be lifted in return.” Iran is estimated to have 400-600 kg of highly enriched uranium. Eslami explained that Tehran was unwilling to sell or transfer the nuclear material to a third country.
American and Iranian officials met for talks in Oman last week. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran is “very serious in negotiations” and is eager to “achieve results”. However, he said, “There is a wall of mistrust towards the United States, which stems from America’s own behaviour.”
Tehran says it is willing to agree to a deal with Washington that imposes restrictions and inspections on its civilian nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief and the US abandoning its aggressive policy towards Iran.
Washington and Tel Aviv are seeking a far more expansive agreement that includes restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs, as well as Iran cutting ties with its allies in the region. The White House has demanded that Tehran eliminate its nuclear enrichment program and limit the range of its ballistic missiles.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to meet with President Donald Trump on Wednesday to ensure Washington does not sign a deal with Tehran that violates Tel Aviv’s redlines. Israeli officials have told the White House that Tel Aviv could launch a strike on Iran if the US agrees to a deal that does not include restricting Tehran’s missile program.
Iran has ruled out signing an agreement on the terms proposed by the US and Israel. President Donald Trump has threatened to attack Iran if Tehran does not sign a new deal with the US.
No Grounds for Talks About New Negotiations With US on New START – Russian Deputy Foreign Minister
Sputnik – 09.02.2026
There are no grounds for talking about launching new negotiations with the United States on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Monday.
“There is currently no basis for discussing the launch of such a negotiation process. We have repeatedly spoken about the need to see deeper, far-reaching changes for the better in the US approach to the issues we are discussing,” Ryabkov said on the sidelines of the BRICS Sherpa meeting in New Delhi, adding that when US policy towards Russia changes for the better, then the preconditions for launching a corresponding dialogue will arise.
Russia regrets that the US administration perceives the New START Treaty as something that requires replacement with something else, the deputy foreign minister added.
“In any such hypothetical process, nothing would come of it without the involvement of the United Kingdom and the French Republic, as the United States’ closest allies, both possessing nuclear weapons and, in the current, highly tense international situation, pursuing a highly aggressive course toward our country. Therefore, ignoring their nuclear arsenals would be irresponsible. They must be at the negotiating table, I repeat, if and when something like this becomes relevant,” Ryabkov also said.
UK proposes North Sea drone fleet to target tankers – Sunday Times
RT | February 9, 2026
Britain is planning to launch a seaborne drone fleet to seize oil tankers it claims are linked to what it calls a Russian “shadow fleet,” the Sunday Times has reported.
London banned the import of Russian crude and oil products in 2022, along with related maritime transportation, insurance, and financing, imposing sanctions on over 500 vessels.
Despite those measures, Moscow has shipped 550 million tonnes of oil legally through the English Channel with an estimated value of $326 billion, according to the outlet, which said the sanctions are “failing to bite.” At the same time, Politico reported an estimated 40% of diesel-grade petroleum products the UK imported from India and Türkiye over four years originated from Russian oil.
The Royal Navy has drafted proposals for a command center for a remotely piloted flotilla of unmanned boats to police the North Sea. The drones are intended to gather evidence of “illicit activities” by tankers heading to and from Russian ports, which would form the basis for outright seizure of the vessels in the English Channel.
Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which guarantees freedom of navigation, Western powers lack a clear legal basis to enforce sanctions against cargo on the high seas.
Despite this, two tankers have been seized so far this year: the Marinera by the US with UK support in the North Atlantic, and the Grinch by France in the Mediterranean. British Defense Secretary John Healey confirmed afterwards that the two allies were coordinating to detain more vessels.
The Sunday Times noted, however, that the plan faces a significant financial hurdle, as holding seized tankers incurs high costs. To help offset this, London is reportedly considering selling the oil from impounded vessels.
Russian officials have consistently slammed tanker seizures a “blatant violation” of international maritime law. President Vladimir Putin last October called France’s detention of a vessel in neutral waters “piracy.” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova previously characterized piracy as “one of the English traditions,” adding that historically pirates were forbidden to attack English ships but were allowed to plunder rival vessels.
South American countries’ pragmatic reassessment of ties with China amid US hegemonism, protectionism
Global Times | February 8, 2026
A quiet but profound shift is reshaping the geopolitical map of South America, as revealed by an exclusive Reuters report, “Brazil signals new openness to Mercosur-China talks as Beijing seeks deeper ties”: For the first time, senior Brazilian officials are considering a push for a “partial” trade agreement between the Mercosur bloc and China.
This represents a major shift for Latin America’s largest economy. While Washington is busy raising tariffs and fortifying protectionist walls, countries in the Western hemisphere are recalculating their survival strategies. The result? A pragmatic reassessment of ties with Beijing.
We are already seeing the ripple effects of US pressure on neighbors like Mexico and Panama, but the shifting mood in the wider region is far more significant. The degree to which Latin American nations are pivoting is directly correlated to the economic squeeze they feel from the North.
Mercosur is the customs union comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and newcomers Bolivia and Venezuela (currently a suspended member).
For decades, Brazil acted as the bloc’s protectionist “gatekeeper” against Chinese influence. Fearing that its domestic manufacturing sector would be hollowed out by Asian imports, Brasília consistently vetoed formal negotiations with Beijing. However, what Reuters describes as a “new global scenario” is forcing a change. This is a diplomatic euphemism for a stark reality: the rise of US protectionism coupled with the undeniable allure of Chinese opportunity. Facing the headwinds of American unilateralism, Brazil has done the math. Traditional allies offer no alternative market access, only higher tariff barriers.
Meanwhile, however, China is not only offering a market but also bringing tangible industrial investment, from BYD to Great Wall Motor. When Washington offers only sticks without carrots, Brazil has little choice but to turn toward a pragmatic East. Uruguay’s president, who recently visited China with a large business delegation to demand faster trade talks, is a clear testament to this regional impatience.
Historically, a Mercosur-China deal was viewed as “mission impossible” due to the bloc’s Common External Tariff rules, which forbid members from negotiating individual trade deals. Politics also posed a formidable barrier. Paraguay, a member of Mercosur, maintains “diplomatic ties” with China’s Taiwan region, creating a legal deadlock to any comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Beijing under the one-China principle.
Furthermore, Argentina’s political pendulum – swinging from protectionist Peronism to Javier Milei’s pro-US stance – has made a unified strategy difficult.
This is why the proposed “partial agreement” is a masterstroke of political pragmatism. It serves as a strategic bypass around these obstacles.
Unlike a full FTA targeting zero tariffs, a partial deal sidesteps the sensitive issue of tariff reduction that terrifies Brazilian manufacturers. It also navigates around Paraguay’s diplomatic dilemma. Instead, it would focus on non-tariff barriers, such as harmonizing sanitary regulations, streamlining customs procedures and setting import quotas.
By shifting the focus from tariffs to regulatory cooperation, Brazil is doing more than just clearing the path for soy and iron ore. It is paving the way for deeper integration of Chinese capital.
The China-Brazil relationship has already evolved from simple trade to manufacturing. With Chinese EV makers taking over shuttered Ford factories in Bahia, the two economies are moving toward supply chain symbiosis. This partial agreement could provide the institutional framework needed to secure those investments.
From a macro perspective, this is a snapshot of the Global South’s increasing autonomy. If these talks proceed, they will mark the opening of a new path – one where pragmatism supersedes ideology.
This serves as a stark reminder to policymakers in Washington: trying to block economic gravity with pressure tactics often accelerates the search for new partners. The shifting winds in South America are not merely a passive reaction to fading hegemony; they represent an active and powerful response from nations determined to define their own economic destiny.
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The great ADHD swindle
By Daniel Ken | TCW Defending Freedom | May 20, 2023
Over more than two decades in the classroom I’ve taught thousands of children and teenagers: some were lovely and lots were hard-working. On the other hand, quite a number were disruptive and argumentative, and a number were violently opposed to learning. But I don’t think I’ve taught more than a handful of kids who could be properly described as having the symptoms of ADHD. And that handful could just as easily have had something else wrong with them. Because here’s the thing: despite the fact that the best part of a million children are medicated for the condition, ADHD doesn’t exist.
There’s no definitive medical test for it, experts can’t agree on what it actually means, and most of the symptoms disappear if the child in question has lots of exercise, good diet and, crucially, a set of clear behavioural boundaries, preferably set early in childhood and, for the boys at least, enforced by a stable adult male living at home. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- IRAN WAR “ON PAUSE” – w/ Prof. Glenn Diesen
- Zelensky threatens to attack Belarus
- UK to send Ukraine 150,000 drones
- ‘Biased censorship’: Iran deputy FM slams X for stripping him of blue tick
- Hezbollah lawmaker says Israel has 60 days to withdraw from Lebanon
- Iran rules out IAEA inspections of war-damaged nuclear sites
- Israeli regime’s only interest is ‘permanent war,’ Iran’s FM Araghchi says
- Syria, Lebanon, and the limits of power
- How Multipolarity Forced Trump to Capitulate… For Now
- Switzerland confirms US-Iran talks planned for Friday are cancelled
- If Americans Knew
- 15 articles a day: The extent of the Israeli army’s media interference
- Greek Orthodox Patriarchate denounces Israeli seizure of church land in Jerusalem
- How Hillel International uses antisemitism training and ‘campus climate’ concerns to attack Palestine solidarity
- Old Iraq war architects rise up against Trump’s Iran deal
- Unmasking Axios, its Israeli ties and agenda
- Israel Is Bleeding Support in the U.S. – and Pouring Tens of Millions Into Trying to Change That
- Israeli army included on UN blacklist for 3rd year over ‘grave violations’ against children
- Trita Parsi on the Iran deal, Israel, and how Iran has been a ‘cash cow’ for AIPAC
- JD Vance speaks truth to Israel: “You can’t just kill your way out of every problem” – Daily Update
- What Ceasefire? Israel Has Now Killed Over 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza Since October
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Chile’s Relative Sea Level Was 3.2 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
- Germany’s Ecological Holocaust… Once Fairy Tale Forests Getting Cleared For Wind Turbines
- A Grand Solar Minimum Has Arrived…Global Cooling Of At Least 1°C Is Expected By The 2030s, 2040s
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