Former Israeli commander warns against war of attrition with Iran
Al Mayadeen | June 18, 2025
Israeli Reserve Major General Israel Ziv, former head of the Israeli occupation military’s Operations Division, warned on Wednesday that “Israel” has nearly exhausted its capacity to carry out direct strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities without US involvement.
He stressed that dismantling Iran’s nuclear program completely would require deeper, more effective measures that go beyond current military capabilities.
Writing for the Israeli Channel 12 website, Ziv cautioned that “Israel’s” current efforts, even if they achieve 60%, fall short of Iran’s determination to obtain a nuclear weapon at any cost. He added that if the situation remains unchanged, Tehran could produce a nuclear bomb in under a year.
Ziv outlined two strategic options available to both “Israel” and the United States. The first involves US diplomatic intervention to forge a stricter nuclear agreement, one that not only halts Iran’s nuclear ambitions but also addresses what he described as Tehran’s network of regional “arms.”
The second option, he warned, is a slow descent into a war of attrition that would carry severe consequences. “This descent cannot be compared to the limited threats posed by Yemeni forces,” he said, pointing to Iran’s more advanced and accurate capabilities.
According to Ziv, such a scenario could inflict long-term economic harm on “Israel” and compromise its internal security.
Ziv emphasized that Iran’s growing precision and boldness in recent operations pose a significantly elevated threat compared to traditional military adversaries. Prolonged attrition, he warned, would expose the Israeli occupation to sustained economic and strategic damage far beyond the scope of previous regional conflicts.
Israeli missile defense at risk of collapse in coming days: WaPo
On a related note, The Washington Post wrote that a long war of attrition between “Israel” and Iran may not be sustainable for Tel Aviv, highlighting mounting costs and dwindling interceptor supplies as critical vulnerabilities in “Israel’s” air defense network.
The report, published Monday, cites assessments from US and Israeli intelligence officials indicating that without urgent resupply or direct US military intervention, “Israel” may only be able to sustain its current level of missile defense for another 10 to 12 days.
“They will need to select what they want to intercept,” one source briefed on the matter said. “The system is already overwhelmed.”
The Post’s analysis aligns with recent warnings by military-focused open-source intelligence (OSINT) account @METT_Project, which projected that Iran’s sustained ballistic missile salvos could begin heavily breaching “Israel’s” multi-layered missile shield around Day 18 of the war. That projection, based on interceptor usage rates and known inventories, suggested that daily missile penetrations would increase significantly as the Israeli grid begins to ration munitions and prioritize critical zones.
Poll: Americans Support Talks With Iran, Oppose Involvement in Israel’s War
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | June 17, 2025
A new poll shows that a majority of Americans want President Donald Trump to engage in negotiations with Iran and do not want Washington to support Tel Aviv’s offensive war against the Islamic Republic.
The survey, conducted by YouGov following the unprovoked Israeli attack on Iran, found 60% of Americans do not want Trump to enter the newest conflict in the Middle East, compared to just 16% of voters who want Washington to aid Tel Aviv’s military operation.
Even among Americans who voted for Trump in 2024, only 19% support entering the conflict. A majority of Republicans said they want Washington to stay out of the war.
While the US has not conducted direct strikes on Iran yet, Washington has provided substantial support to Tel Aviv’s war machine. The US has given Israel the arms and intelligence Tel Aviv needed to launch its bombing campaign.
Additionally, Israeli officials say Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked together privately to convince Tehran that a deal was possible and no attack was imminent.
The YouGov poll also found that three in five Americans believe Trump should engage the Iranians in talks to end the war. Only 18% of voters are opposed to negotiations with the Islamic Republic.
However, talks between Washington and Tehran appear increasingly unlikely. On Tuesday, Trump posted on Truth Social that Iran must agree to an “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” to end the war.
Overall, Americans disapproved of Trump’s handling of the Middle East by a slight margin. Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they approve of Trump’s Iran policy, against 44% who disapprove.
The rise of Abu Shabab: Mapping the Gaza militia armed by Israel
By Muhammad Shehada | The New Arab | June 10, 2025
A political earthquake hit Israel last week when former Defence Minister Avigdor Liberman revealed that “the Israeli government is giving weapons to a group of criminals and felons, identified with Islamic State [in Gaza], at the direction of the prime minister”.
Netanyahu has since admitted that Israel had been “running” proxy militias in Gaza, but tried to put a positive spin on it, claiming that such a move aims to challenge Hamas’s rule.
But branding these gangs as potential rivals to Hamas masks the very goal of why Israel created them in the first place. Around 300 untrained thieves, drug dealers, criminals, and convicted murderers cannot overpower Hamas’s estimated 30,000 militants.
Their actual role has more to do with advancing Israel’s genocide, starvation, and ethnic cleansing in Gaza while creating plausible deniability.
Furthermore, recent evidence indicates that Israel may have been collaborating with some of these Islamic State-linked elements even before 7 October.
Abu Shabab: A front for an Israeli proxy?
The most prominent gang leader in Gaza is Yasser Abu Shabab. His name first appeared in August 2024 on Hamas-linked social media groups as the figure responsible for looting the vast majority of humanitarian aid and reselling it on the black market for astronomical prices.
A senior security source told The New Arab that Abu Shabab’s gang had been active for months before then.
Local authorities knew Abu Shabab well. He was serving a long sentence in prison for the possession of large quantities of drugs, according to three knowledgeable sources. He was one of many inmates who escaped under the cover of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023.
Some other inmates were released on parole when Israel began bombing government facilities. Israeli newspapers like Maariv and Yediot Ahronot confirmed Abu Shabab’s criminal history through people close to him, and even added that he had links to the Islamic State (IS) through smuggling drugs from Sinai into Gaza.
Police in Gaza were perplexed when he emerged as a top gang leader. The security source told The New Arab that Abu Shabab is 35 years old, thin, weak, short (around 150cm in height), uncharismatic, illiterate, has strabismus in one eye, and has never received military training.
To them, he didn’t seem like someone with the leadership skills necessary to form a group of 300 armed militants, steal truckloads of aid, and store it under the radar.
Local authorities quickly decided that Abu Shabab was merely a front for an Israeli astroturfing campaign to maintain its policy of starvation in Gaza after the international community pressured Netanyahu to ease his total siege and allow a trickle of aid into the enclave.
What made this clear, according to them, is how Israeli drones bombed emergency committee volunteers or police officers every time they came close to thwarting a looting attempt by that gang in particular.
By late September 2024, Abu Shabab was talked about in Gaza as an Israeli-backed collaborator, not just a gang leader. That is when Hamas militants attempted to ambush him, firing around 90 bullets at a vehicle they thought belonged to Abu Shabab.
The vehicle, however, was identical to the one used by Islam Hijazi, the program officer of a US charity called Heal Palestine. She was tragically killed in the incident.
Two months later, Abu Shabab received widespread media attention after he burned a fuel truck and completely shut down the route used by aid convoys to retaliate against another Hamas ambush that killed his brother Fathi and 21 other members of his gang.
Soon after, the Washington Post revealed that the UN had named Abu Shabab in an internal memo as the main figure behind aid looting under “passive or active IDF protection”. This left little room for doubt that Abu Shabab’s gang was a tool for Israel to maintain starvation while externalising blame.
Mapping gang leaders: IS, ex-PA intel officers, and murderers
Abu Shabab’s deputy is thought to be Ghassan al-Dahini, 38, reportedly a former lieutenant in the Palestinian Authority (PA). Dahini is the one running the gang’s operations on the ground and actively trying to recruit new members, along with Saddam Abu Zakkar, per local authorities. His Facebook profile displays Israeli hostage emojis.
Another senior Palestinian security source told The New Arab that Dahini was a member of the “Army of Islam”, the extremist group responsible for kidnapping journalist Alan Johnston in 2007.
The group pledged allegiance to IS in 2015. Ghassan’s brother, Mohammed, died in prison after he was detained on drug-related offences, and Ghassan himself was imprisoned twice in March 2020 and November 2022, per the source. He added that “the Army of Islam relied on Dahini for the Sinai smuggling routes”.
On Sunday, Dahini posted a video of himself in military gear in Eastern Rafah close to Israel’s perimeter fence. He was standing next to a white pickup truck with a UAE license plate from Sharjah and firing a brand-new Serbian Zastava rifle.
Another prominent gang leader in Rafah is Shadi Soufi, a convicted murderer who was awaiting a death sentence before 7 October for killing a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) leader. Like Yasser, he also escaped prison during the war and was named by humanitarian organisations as responsible for looting aid under Israeli protection in Rafah.
Soufi, al-Dahini, and Abu Shabab are from the same Bedouin Tarabin clan that stretches across Rafah, Israel’s Negev desert, Egypt’s Sinai, and Jordan. Abu Shabab’s family recently disowned him for collaborating with Israel and said they will go after him to hold him accountable.
Another prominent leader of the Abu Shabab gang is Essam Soliman Nabahin, 35, a convicted murderer and IS member. He was implicated in a series of bombings against Hamas in 2015 by extremist Salafist groups and escaped to Sinai to formally join IS’s ranks. He caught the attention of Egyptian media in 2017 after taking part in attacks against the Egyptian army.
Nabahin’s name resurfaced in June 2023 when the police raided a house in central Gaza where he was hiding. He killed a police officer and was convicted in a military court before his escape in the early days of the war.
Israel says Nabahin was previously “recorded launching rockets into Israel without coordination with Hamas”.
Local authorities in Gaza have long suspected that IS-linked individuals like Nabahin were being pushed by Israel’s Shin Bet to fire one or two primitive projectiles sporadically to give Israel a pretext to strike Gaza and bomb specific targets. Hence, the police detained those militants repeatedly.
A senior Palestinian security source told The New Arab that authorities in Gaza caught a collaborator in 2018 who directed such occasional rocket attacks to give Israel cover for military action in Gaza.
Other members of the gang include multiple known drug dealers and convicted murderers.
How is Israel helping them?
Israel’s government has admitted it provided weapons to these gangs, mostly rifles and other light weaponry, in addition to money and equipment. Footage posted by Abu Shabab’s gang showed them driving in white pickup trucks with machineguns on top that looked virtually identical to those of Hamas.
In addition, Israel provides these gangs with safe refuge in areas fully depopulated by the Israeli military, like Rafah, and declared “extermination zones”, where any Palestinian entering would be killed on the spot. They are also provided with logistical support, protection, and even access to Israeli territory.
A Palestinian journalist documented one case of a gang member crossing into Israel, which could explain how those gangs disappeared completely during the ceasefire last January.
On the ground, the Abu Shabab gang has established warehouses operated with forklifts where they store looted aid. They have also established a military complex, according to the UN, which said the Israeli army would force aid convoys to drive through the areas where the gangs had positioned their militants and put up checkpoints to loot trucks.
And where the Israeli military goes, so do the gangs. After Israel issued forcible expulsion orders for Khan Younis and raided the European hospital and its surrounding area, Abu Shabab moved into the ‘Jarghoun’ villa in that very same area, per security sources.
On Tuesday, Israeli news channel i24 reported that Israel had launched airstrikes to protect the gang after it was attacked by Hamas militants in southern Gaza. The strikes killed four Hamas members.
What role do the gangs play on Israel’s behalf?
The Israeli-backed gangs in Gaza have become an unofficial arm of the Israeli military. For instance, whenever Israel gets pressured to allow food into Gaza, it immediately unleashes the gangs to maintain their use of starvation as a weapon of war, while blaming it on Hamas.
Experts believe Israel is using starvation as a tool for genocide by imposing conditions on a group “calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. Prolonged starvation inflicts permanent mental and physical damage, particularly on children.
Israel has also been using these gangs to orchestrate chaos and engineer societal collapse through attacks on markets, shops, private businesses, homes, warehouses, soup kitchens, and other places vital to maintaining the population’s survival.
For instance, in early May 2025, a gang attacked a communal kitchen in Gaza. As soon as volunteers arrived to stop the looting, Israel bombed it and killed six volunteers, which implies it was a coordinated attack.
The Israeli army also sends the gangs on reconnaissance and surveillance missions in dangerous areas. Last month, Hamas released footage of an ambush it carried out against armed men in Rafah whom it thought were undercover Israeli troops. They turned out to be Abu Shabab militants.
Israel also uses the gangs to infiltrate Palestinian society and gather intelligence, as well as to kidnap and interrogate Palestinians by luring them with the promise of food, as documented by Palestinian journalist Younis Tirawi.
Israel is using proxy gangs for the final phase of the war
The most concerning use of these gangs, however, is Israel’s recently announced plan to push Gazans into camps in Rafah on Egypt’s borders to depopulate and destroy “everything that remains” of the rest of the enclave. This is a precursor to Israel’s declared goal of the mass expulsion of Palestinians into Egypt and other countries.
The Abu Shabab gang recently announced establishing an encampment area in eastern Rafah near the Egyptian borders and is using the very aid they have been systematically looting to lure starved Gazans into moving there.
This announcement was preceded by a clear rebranding psyop, where the same gang responsible for looting aid suddenly and shamelessly declared itself as a new “security force” that aims to “protect aid from looting”. They have since emerged in brand-new military and police uniforms in the Israeli-designated buffer zone in Rafah, where no Palestinians are allowed to enter.
Remarkably, Israel has allowed these gang members to wear Palestinian flags and insignia on their uniforms, while at the same time refusing to let the Palestinian Authority’s staff at the Rafah border crossing wear any such symbols.
In other words, Israel is using these gangs as a front. The Israeli army knows that if it orders Gazans to come to camps in eastern Rafah, people will immediately know it’s a trap for mass expulsion. But if a uniformed Palestinian force with good PR on social media makes such a demand, some people might fall for the trap.
Israel has used this same proxy tactic in Lebanon against Palestinians in 1982, where the Israeli military bolstered the South Lebanon Army (SLA) and used it and other militias to commit the Sabra and Shatila massacre, which saw 3,500 Palestinians killed.
Those collaborators collapsed after the Israeli army’s withdrawal from Southern Lebanon, as their leaders surrendered or fled to Israel. The same fate awaits these new Israeli-backed gangs once the Gaza genocide comes to an end.
Muhammad Shehada is a Palestinian writer and analyst from Gaza and the EU Affairs Manager at Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
Follow him on Twitter: @muhammadshehad2
Officials admit: US assets were used to intercept Iranian missiles
Al Mayadeen | June 17, 2025
US naval ships and ground-based air-defense systems have indeed intercepted Iranian missiles aimed at “Israel”, two US officials confirmed to NBC News.
They claimed, however, that the total number of these interceptions remains relatively low.
According to the Associated Press, American air defense systems and a Navy destroyer actively helped “shoot down incoming ballistic missiles” from Iran during a barrage aimed at “Israel” last Friday.
American defense assets, including Patriot and THAAD batteries, drove off several projectile waves, according to multiple US sources.
Additional US Navy destroyers, notably the USS Thomas Hudner, alongside the USS Arleigh Burke and USS The Sullivans, have been deployed to the eastern Mediterranean to reinforce interceptions of Iranian ballistic missiles.
Iranian strike on Weizmann wipes out years of Israeli war research
Al Mayadeen | June 17, 2025
A recent Iranian missile strike has inflicted extensive damage on the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, central occupied Palestine, a facility long considered a cornerstone of the Israeli occupation’s scientific and military-industrial infrastructure.
According to The Marker, a daily business newspaper published by the Haaretz Group in “Israel”, several buildings within the institute sustained direct hits, with one key laboratory complex entirely destroyed by fire.
The targeted site housed advanced research in life sciences, artificial intelligence, and molecular biology, areas that have directly supported the Israeli entity’s development of surveillance, targeting, and weapons systems used in attacks across the region.
Described by Israeli media as the “scientific and military brain” of “Israel”, the Weizmann Institute has played a pivotal role in the research and development of technologies underpinning airstrike coordination systems, drone warfare capabilities, and battlefield medical technology, all of which have been deployed in repeated assaults on civilian populations in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, and most recently, Iran.
One of the laboratories destroyed was run by Israeli Professor Eldad Tzahor, a veteran in the Department of Molecular Cell Biology. Israeli Professor Eran Segal, whose AI lab was also directly hit, noted that millions of dollars’ worth of equipment was damaged beyond recovery due to water and structural damage. Segal’s lab had reportedly contributed to algorithmic systems used in battlefield decision-making and real-time surveillance, tools that have aided the Israeli entity’s strikes in Gaza and elsewhere.
Photos released by Israeli media showed scorched interiors, collapsed lab floors, destroyed electrical systems, and structural devastation, the result of what sources described as a precision strike.
Not a random target: A symbol of militarized science
While Israeli officials have downplayed the implications, The Marker acknowledged the strike was “not random,” but a calculated attack on a facility used for military power through scientific research.
Media reports also framed the operation as direct payback for the assassination of Iran’s nuclear scientists.
Experts say the institute’s deep ties to the Israeli security apparatus have made it a legitimate military target in Iran’s eyes, particularly given its support for advanced weapons technologies used to target civilians.
Israeli Professor Sharel Fleishman, whose lab was not impacted, admitted the losses are irreplaceable. “Life sciences labs rely on materials that are gathered and preserved over many years. When a lab is destroyed, and with it all those materials, it’s irreplaceable,” he said.
Another Israeli researcher, Professor Oren Schuldiner, told The Marker: “It’s as if the lab evaporated into thin air.” Schuldiner noted that rebuilding the affected laboratories and their capabilities will take at least two years.
The destruction of the Weizmann Institute sends a clear message from Tehran, analysts say: the Israeli occupation’s institutions cannot continue to serve dual roles as research centers and military enablers with impunity.
MAGA’s Civil War: Who dares to take on the Israel lobby?
By Tarik Cyril Amar | RT | June 17, 2025
Steve Bannon – the smart, stubborn, and irrepressible right/far-right public intellectual and once ally as well as chief strategist and bestie of US President Donald Trump – is back in the news. And in a way that speaks to much more than the ups and downs, and ins and outs, of US elite careers.
The hill he has chosen to fight on this time is resistance to the US waging another war in the Middle East in the service of Israel and its powerful lobby in America.
Bannon, make no mistake, is not taking a de facto stand against Israel because of its apartheid, genocide, and wars of aggression. He ought to, obviously, especially as a man flaunting his Christian belief. (From one sort-of-Roman-Catholic to another, Steve: Our Lord Jesus Christ really didn’t like the child killers, and I am pretty sure he would have found the lingerie-camouflage cross-dressers with machine guns rather off-putting, too.)
But then, if Bannon had principled moral objections here, he would not be Steve Bannon, a very conservative American, who will probably never shake off deeply ingrained mental habits of violence and racism.
But from Trump’s perspective – and that of the Israeli influence agents surrounding him – Bannon’s line of attack is actually more dangerous than a genuinely moral stance. Because Bannon is positioning American national interest against following Israel’s lead. By declaring that Israel pursues an ‘Israel First’ policy about as egotistically as Berlin’s ‘Germany First’ trip between 1933 and 1945, Bannon has dared to state the obvious: Israel’s interests are not identical with those of the US, and therefore, a genuine ‘America First’ policy must not obey Israel. Hence, stay out of the war against Iran. Or to be precise, get out of it.
And there Bannon is of course right and has the facts and logic on his side, which makes his challenge all the more threatening.
The background to Bannon’s sally, which as the Financial Times points out, signals a split among Trump’s domestically indispensable MAGA base, is the perfect mess Trump and his team have made over the attack on Iran. Despite their clumsy mixed messaging – really, contradictory lying and boasting – Israel’s unprovoked war of aggression against Iran can obviously only be waged because of massive American support.
In reality this is already a combined US-Israeli attack, and it makes no difference to this fact that Israel always wants even more, including – as Axios, a network with remarkably easy access to Israeli sources, has reported – open US help in attacking the key Iranian nuclear installations at Fordow.
Never mind, by the way, that deliberately striking a nuclear facility is as criminal as it gets. It constitutes a clear breach of the Geneva Conventions, as the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei has recently had to publicly school German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul about. The latter is clearly just as ignorant of his job’s basics as his legendarily inept predecessor Annalena Baerbock used to be.
Yet, as Bannon’s intervention shows, the key role the US plays in the assault on Iran has caused noteworthy ripple effects inside America and in particular inside the movement now known as MAGA. Originally the abbreviation was an extremely successful 2016 Trump campaign slogan – inspired by a forerunner used by Ronald Reagan in 1980 – meaning ‘Make America Great Again’.
But as a movement, MAGA has a much longer history. Its influences and ancestors include, for instance, nativism, isolationism, the original America First, and the more recent Tea Party. That’s why it is important to understand that MAGA overlaps with but is not identical with Trumpism, as often assumed. In reality, MAGA is part of an older, powerful tradition that Trump has tapped into with great success. But he is not guaranteed to always be in control of it, as the term ‘Trumpism’ may misleadingly imply.
Take for instance the perhaps greatest cleavage running through contemporary Trumpism 2.0: that between a right-wing populist orientation still aiming at, for want of better terms, ordinary Americans, and a techno-elitist wing busy with fantasies of openly establishing an AI-based rule of the richest. Things clearly remain volatile. For wasn’t it only yesterday that the would-be tech lords, represented by former “first buddy” Elon Musk, seemed to have defeated the populist tribunes of the Steve Bannon type? And yet, now Musk, the “man-child” is out (if not necessarily forever) and Bannon, the old battle axe, is making headlines again.
Warning of the “fog of war” – read that as code either for just ordinary information unreliability or for deliberate Israeli and Western disinformation – and “unintended consequences,” Bannon has been explicit: The US must not be “sucked into another major war on the Eurasian land mass, particularly the Middle East.” And yet, he added, America is already an “active combatant” by providing air defense to Israel.
For Bannon, at least in his current iteration, none of this is new. As he has also recently charged, the fundamental reason why American troops are in Iraq and thus in harm’s way is that the US government and its media, including both Republicans and Democrats, have “lied to us,” i.e., the American people, for decades. It has not been, as Bannon stressed, simply incompetence or mistakes, but the “bald-faced lies” and “spin of the neocons.”
That is of course a reference to the fact that the US and its Western accomplices started their 2003 unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq with a massive, Gleiwitz-level deception by deliberately trying to deceive the world about non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. And that, according to Bannon, was along with the financial crisis of 2008 the original sin that triggered “this movement,” clearly here meaning what we now know as MAGA.
Bannon’s history may be a little off as far as facts are concerned. The roots of contemporary American right-wing populism include a tradition of isolationism, but they are certainly not identical with a revolt against the Iraq War, insane and criminal as the latter was.
But veracity and accuracy aren’t the point here. Instead what matters is how precisely Bannon is trying to rewrite history, namely by claiming opposition to neocon “forever wars,” specifically in the Middle East (transparent code for on behalf of Israel) as not only a core value of MAGA, but as a key element of its origin story.
As for Israel’s assault on Iran, Bannon was scathing. Rhetorically exploiting the silly pretense that Israel was “going it alone” when starting the attack – which Bannon is certainly intelligent and realistic enough to know is nonsense – he called on Israel to stick to doing just that. Yet instead, he scoffed, the “going-it-alone lasted six hours” and Israel is doing everything it can to drag Americans ever deeper into another massive war.
Importantly, Bannon is not alone. As he pointed out, conservative media heavyweight Tucker Carlson has made the same point. In fact, Carlson has been even more explicit. Using his X account with over 16 million followers to claim that the key divide of US politics is between “those who casually encourage violence, and those who seek to prevent it – between warmongers and peacemakers,” Carlson started naming “the warmongers,” including “anyone who’s calling Donald Trump today to demand air strikes and other direct US military involvement in a war with Iran,” such as “Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Rupert Murdoch, Ike Perlmutter and Miriam Adelson.”
Carlson added that “at some point they will all have to answer for this, but you should know their names now.” And what names they are: Of the five, three, i.e., 60 percent – Levin, Perlmutter, and Adelson – are as most Americans would know or guess, Jewish. Murdoch and Hannity, in the minority, are not.
But all of the five are staunch Zionists, Hannity having been acknowledged by the Jerusalem Post as one of “10 Pro-Israeli Christians,” i.e. a Christian Zionist. And that was in October 2024, a full year into Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinians. Mark Levin, an influential and extremely rightwing media personality, got his “Friends of Zion Museum ‘Defender Award’ for his steadfast support of the State of Israel and the Jewish people” in 2018.
Murdoch, the Western publishing oligarch with massive political influence, used a rambling – but who’s going to edit him, right? – 2009 Jerusalem Post article to admit he feels very flattered by frequently being misidentified as Jewish and to explain that the “free world” – old-timers’ speak for “rules-based value West” – must support Israel to the hilt.
According to Wikipedia, Ike Perlmutter is “an Israeli-American billionaire businessman and financier” – although ironically enough born in Mandate Palestine – who “through a variety of sometimes unorthodox business deals” has been “an influential investor in a number of corporations.” He also used to run Marvel Entertainment. Yes, that Marvel, the superhero story company now absorbed by Disney and perhaps the single most effective vehicle of contemporary US propaganda.
And multi-billionaire Miriam Adelson is of course not only the widow of Sheldon Adelson, the “casino mogul” and arch Zionist, but also a fanatical Zionist in her own right. Both Adelsons have been among Donald Trump’s most generous supporters. During his 2016 presidential campaign they were already among his “top donors.” In 2020 – when he lost – they made the single biggest individual contribution, a whopping $75 million. In 2024, Miriam Adelson dialed it up to eleven with $106 million. Only Elon Musk ($276 million) and rich heir extraordinaire Timothy Mellon ($150 million) gave even more.
And then there is the influential MAGA icon and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. In a long post on X, she fired a broadside against any further US involvement in wars abroad: “We are $36+ TRILLION in debt and have mountains of our own problems. We have giant planks sticking out of our own eyes while we complain about splinters in other’s eyes. Every country involved and all over the world can be happy, successful, and rich if we all work together and seek peace and prosperity.”
MTG, as she is often called, has also preemptively and rightly rejected any accusation of “antisemitism” and even of isolationism: “Taking this position is NOT antisemitic. It’s rational, sane, and loving toward all people. Taking this position of peace and prosperity for all is not isolationism, it leads to GREAT trade deals and GREAT economies that help ALL PEOPLE.”
Worst of all, from Trump’s and Israel’s perspective, she has in effect reminded her 4.8 million followers, as well as many others who will read about her post in the traditional media, of Trump’s own campaign promise to end and not start wars, because no more wars is “what many Americans voted for in 2024.”
Clearly, there are influential representatives of MAGA who are not only willing to openly challenge the perversely self-damaging hold that Washington allows Israel to have over its foreign policy, but are also beginning to be explicit about the fact that Israel’s lobby in the US – whether Jewish or not – is putting another country first, at enormous cost to Americans.
Unfortunately, there are reasons to fear that this right-wing criticism of ‘Israel First’ will not prevail. Trump may very well be so beholden to and afraid of the Israel lobby that he will make the single worst mistake of his life and get even deeper into the war against Iran.
But then the question is: What will happen next? There is a brave left-wing opposition to Israel in America – full disclosure: my sort of people – and there also is clear polling evidence that Israel’s grip on American society as a whole is finally slipping, especially among the young. Now add a right-wing, MAGA-based opposition and another great US fiasco in the Middle East backfiring on America’s home front. Israel may get its wish once again, but in the not-so-long run it should be very careful what it wishes for. And that, as grim as the news is, is a tiny speck of hope on a very dark horizon.
Tarik Cyril Amar is a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory
Ritter’s Rant Ep. 5: Grossi’s got to go
The IAEA’s incestuous relationship with Israel has destroyed its credibility
Scott Ritter | June 16, 2025
Report: Israel threatens “Dahiya-style” assault on Tehran in bid to destabilise Iran
MEMO | June 16, 2025
Israel is preparing a “Dahiya-style” military operation targeting the Iranian capital, Tehran. The plan, disclosed by Israeli broadcaster Channel 14, reportedly seeks to destabilise Iran’s government through systematic bombing of strategic sites while coercing mass evacuation from densely populated areas.
The operation, is said to have been greenlit by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz, draws directly from Israel’s controversial military doctrine first employed during its 2006 war on Lebanon.
That assault saw the wholesale destruction of the Dahiya district in southern Beirut—a stronghold of Hezbollah—marking the beginning of what military officials would later describe as a deliberate strategy of “disproportionate force” and the targeting of civilian infrastructure to achieve political objectives.
In a message addressed to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Katz issued a stark warning: “Tehran will be treated like Beirut.” Israeli military sources confirmed that the occupation army have begun issuing Farsi-language warnings to residents near so-called dual-use or military sites, a tactic previously deployed in Gaza and Lebanon to pre-emptively displace civilian populations ahead of attacks.
Israeli airstrikes early Monday targeted the Iranian Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Ministry, and a civilian home adjacent to the Ministry of Communications. The assault marks a significant escalation and comes amid a wider regional campaign that has already seen Israel strike targets in Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen and Gaza where the Zionist state has been accused of committing genocide.
The Dahiya Doctrine represents a formal Israeli military strategy of deliberate and complete destruction. The doctrine openly advocates for the obliteration of entire civilian neighbourhoods, regardless of the proportionality or legality of such action. Human rights groups and legal experts have long condemned it as a doctrine of annihilation—tantamount to collective punishment—intended to erase communities under the guise of military necessity
Under international law, such tactics, particularly those that fail to distinguish between civilian and combatant populations, are explicitly prohibited. Yet Israeli officials have repeatedly reaffirmed their commitment to the doctrine.
Diplomacy as deception: The West’s war on Iran was pre-planned
By Hamid Bahrami | MEMO | June 16, 2025
As bombs rain down on Iranian cities and missiles arc across the skies of the Middle East, we must speak plainly: this is not merely a war between Israel and Iran. It is a war against sovereignty, waged by an Israeli-Western coalition that has long sought to dismantle any state in the Global South that dares to chart an independent course.
Iran is not the aggressor in this conflict. It is defending itself, legally, historically, and strategically from a premeditated assault. The airstrikes Israel launched on 13 June were not acts of deterrence; they were the execution phase of a long-orchestrated operation aimed at crippling Iran’s infrastructure, destabilising its political system, and ultimately returning it to the kind of failed state once imposed on Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Each of those nations was de-developed under the guise of humanitarian intervention or nuclear containment. Iran is now in the crosshairs of the same playbook.
The deception runs deep. In the lead-up to the strikes, Western officials and Israeli intelligence deliberately projected calm signalling to Tehran and financial markets alike that diplomacy would continue as scheduled. Negotiations in Oman were a trap. While diplomats discussed terms, war rooms in Tel Aviv and Washington finalised strike packages. It was a bait-and-strike strategy, the diplomatic equivalent of ambush warfare.
Israel’s justification for the attacks, its supposed fear of Iranian nuclear capability, collapses under scrutiny. Nuclear talks had resumed. Iran remained a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. And yet, Israel, a nuclear state that refuses to join the NPT, launched strikes that violated international law and killed dozens of civilians, including scientists and infrastructure workers.
Even more cynically, Tel Aviv has recycled a familiar accusation to justify civilian casualties: that Iran uses “human shields.” This baseless claim was used repeatedly in Gaza, where hospitals and apartment buildings were levelled on the pretence of targeting militants. Independent investigations have exposed the hollowness of these claims. Israel’s propaganda is less about evidence than about immunizing itself from consequence.
Despite years of Israeli terrorism, including the 13 June decapitation strikes that killed top Iranian commanders such as IRGC Chief Hossein Salami, Chief of General Staff Mohammad Bagheri, and missile-program leader Amir Ali Hajizadeh—Tehran has responded with calculated and disciplined force. Iran’s retaliatory strikes have been tightly focused on military bases, infrastructure, and command centers, avoiding civilian neighbourhoods and essential public services. In contrast, Israel has repeatedly struck residential buildings. Iran’s measured and purposeful response is not a weakness; it is a strategic posture rooted in moral strength and operational precision.
Some analysts have suggested that Israel expected internal dissent within Iran to paralyze the state’s response. This was a fatal miscalculation. While Iran is home to deep ideological divisions, foreign attack unites Iranians across the political spectrum. Even critics of the Islamic Republic now rally to its defence, because the threat is existential. In the face of foreign aggression, factionalism yields to nationalism.
The bigger threat now lies ahead. While headlines speak of “Israeli requests” for American support, the truth is that the United States has been involved from the outset. B-2 bombers were repositioned to Diego Garcia months ago. Joint U.S.–Israeli strike planning began under the pretext of nuclear containment. The deployment of bunker-busting bombs, diplomatic cover at the UN, intelligence sharing, and regional base access—all point to a war co-authored by Washington. They are simply waiting for Iran’s retaliatory capacity to be sufficiently degraded before launching a broader campaign.
Make no mistake: this is not a regional conflict. It is a US–Israel war, aided by Arab authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Jordan. The West have lent support, whether through intelligence, logistics and approval. Iran is being isolated and encircled not because it poses a nuclear threat, but because it has refused to submit.
But Iran has deterrents of its own. The global economy cannot ignore the energy risks that come with escalating war in the Persian Gulf. Already, oil prices are surging. Tehran knows that its geopolitical power isn’t limited to missiles. Economic leverage, especially when energy prices are high, can shift political calculus in Washington, Brussels, and Riyadh.
There is also a deeper hypocrisy at play. Israel continues to possess a clandestine nuclear arsenal while Iran, still technically within the NPT framework, is sanctioned and threatened for the potential of one. This double standard is untenable. There are only two realistic futures in the region: either Israel is disarmed, or Iran becomes nuclear-armed. The era of unilateral vulnerability is over.
Iran now reassesses its participation in the NPT and reevaluates the assumption that international law provides any meaningful protection when facing nuclear apartheid. If the international community is serious about peace, it must begin not with limiting Iran’s defences, but with dismantling Israel’s offensive capabilities.
Finally, this war must be recognized for what it is: a strategic campaign to eliminate resistance in the Global South. From Baghdad to Tripoli, from Damascus to Tehran, the message has always been the same, those who seek autonomy must be brought to heel. Iran’s independence goal is not just political; it is existential. And every sovereign nation, every citizen with a memory of colonialism or foreign subjugation, should see themselves in its struggle.
What’s happening today is not merely a war on Iran. It is a war on independence, dignity, and the right of nations to choose their own futures.
Zenith of Western asymmetric warfare in Iran and Ukraine
By Drago Bosnic | June 16, 2025
Achieving strategic advantage over your opponents has been at the center of every conflict in human history. In modern times, this is accomplished with long-range strike systems and weapons of mass destruction. However, countries that are at a disadvantage in that regard can opt for asymmetric methods to achieve similar or sometimes even more efficient results. Ever since the advent of nuclear weapons, direct conflicts between global powers have been avoided, as all sides understand there would be no winners in such a war (or at least they did until recently).
Thus, the importance of intelligence services and other forms of non-kinetic warfare grew exponentially. The ability to infiltrate your opponent’s state apparatus is of the utmost importance, while maintaining plausible deniability adds to the strategic depth of defense, as the attacker can simply deny the involvement of its special services.
The political West has been at the forefront of such operations for years, targeting all of its opponents through asymmetric means, particularly through proxies. This is especially true for Russia, which still has major issues with the Kiev regime agents infiltrating the country and conducting operations of strategic importance. The latest attacks on Russian strategic aviation are a testament to that. It should be noted that Moscow’s services have been quite successful in detecting Western agents as they have decades of experience in doing so.
However, Ukrainian operatives are a different story. Namely, the vast majority of Ukrainians speak fluent Russian and can easily blend in virtually anywhere in the country. They can also obtain Russian citizenship, meaning they could be largely under the radar for years. It’s exceedingly difficult to uncover such plots, particularly if they’re being conducted over the course of several years.
This also holds true for other countries of the multipolar world, including Iran, which has been heavily infiltrated by foreign agents, as evidenced by the sheer number of assassinations and so-called decapitation strikes on top Iranian commanders. It’s still unclear how exactly Israel managed to create such a large network of its agents within Iran, but their operations have had a strategic impact on the ongoing conflict.
The Mossad had very close ties with the SAVAK, former Iranian secret police and intelligence service during the Shah era, so it’s quite possible that the Israelis maintained contacts with their Iranian associates even after 1979. They could’ve easily played the role of sleeper agents who were activated by Israel at the moment of the strike. In addition, new operatives could’ve infiltrated Iran from neighboring countries, particularly Azerbaijan which maintains a close partnership with Israel.
Apart from being a major client for the Israeli Military Industrial Complex (MIC), which was instrumental in Baku’s takeover of native Armenian lands in Artsakh (better known as Nagorno-Karabakh), Azerbaijan also has irredentist ambitions toward northwestern Iran, where a homonymous area has more ethnic Azeris than the South Caucasus country itself. The regime in Baku certainly sees the ongoing events as a perfect opportunity to achieve its goals, which could be a major factor in Israeli operations.
Numerous observers have also pointed out the many similarities between the actions of the Kiev regime and Israel, as both have been conducting these asymmetric hybrid attacks deep within Russia and Iran, respectively. The drones that were used in attacks on Moscow’s long-range aviation and Iranian air defenses operate in a virtually identical manner, targeting strategic assets from within.
There are two possibilities in this case. Either the Mossad is involved in training the SBU and/or GUR, or they’re all connected into a much larger network run from Washington DC and London. The latter is much likelier, as both SBU and GUR have strong ties with the CIA and MI6, respectively. In other words, the US-led political West is conducting these operations in an attempt to secure a strategic advantage over its rivals.
This is also done through so-called “international” organizations such as the UN, OSCE, IAEA, etc. For instance, after the start of the special military operation (SMO), Russian military intelligence uncovered that OSCE, which is supposed to be a neutral organization monitoring the ceasefire, was actually helping the Kiev regime target Russian forces by giving the former access to its cameras along the frontline. Moscow promptly ordered OSCE personnel to leave after this.
Some sources are reporting that the IAEA also did something similar in Iran, by giving Israel information on the identity of Iranian nuclear scientists. If true, this could explain how the Mossad was so effective in eliminating them virtually on the first day of the attack. In addition to scientists, a large number of high-ranking Iranian military officers were eliminated within the country. This is perfectly in line with the political West’s doctrine of so-called “decapitation” attacks that aim to paralyze the chain of command in a targeted country.
Many of the most prominent warmongers in Washington DC have been calling for such strikes, even against opponents like Russia. And indeed, in the last several years, there have been a number of assassination attempts against top-ranking Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin himself. Once again, this was done through proxies such as the Neo-Nazi junta.
In some cases, this could’ve also worked, as evidenced by disturbing revelations regarding the mysterious death of the late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. The aftermath of Raisi’s death has been disastrous for Iran and its Axis of Resistance. By the end of last year, Syria fell to NATO’s terrorist proxies, while Hezbollah’s long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated, followed by a number of high-ranking Iranian and pro-Iranian figures at around a similar time.
The strategic consequences of these events cannot be overstated, meaning that the idea they were purely accidental is extremely unlikely, to put it mildly. By the time Israel attacked Iran, the geopolitical situation in the Middle East shifted dramatically in Israel’s favor. This made launching strategic attacks much easier, as it didn’t have to worry about Syrian air defenses.
Mossad operatives on the ground used not only drones, but also missiles (such as the “Spike NLOS”). Worse yet, it seems they didn’t even have to stay in the country to launch these strikes, as both drones and missiles were controlled remotely, which is yet another indicator of the same modus operandi used by the Kiev regime. Military sources indicate that Israel also used portable electronic warfare (EW) systems to disrupt Iranian air defenses, making it far easier for its missiles to reach targets within Iran.
As previously mentioned, this sort of deep infiltration also enabled Israel to assassinate top-ranking personnel. Reportedly, this includes General Mohammad Bagheri, the Chief of the Iranian General Staff; Hossein Salami, Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and David Sheikhian, commanding officer of the IRGC’s air defenses. Many other senior military leaders were also killed.
Although Israeli strikes were far more efficient than those launched by the Kiev regime, it’s impossible not to draw parallels with high-profile assassinations of numerous Russian public and military figures, including Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the late commander of Russian NBC Protection Troops, who was killed in a terrorist attack back in mid-December. It should be noted that he was investigating US involvement in biological warfare in NATO-occupied Ukraine and was in no way connected to military operations against the Neo-Nazi junta forces.
Thus, the only logical conclusion is that his assassination was certainly not conducted by the SBU of their own volition. Namely, such operations require significant resources that would be reserved for important operations to undermine the Russian military. The only thing that was undermined is the investigation into the Pentagon’s massive biowarfare program.
The Kiev regime conducted many similar attacks on Russian scientists, including Daniil Mikheev, a coordinator of new unmanned systems for the Ministry of Defense; Konstantin Ogarkov, an employee of a defense research institute in Voronezh; Igor Kolesnikov, an engineer at a design bureau in the Tula oblast (region); Sergei Potapov, a cybersecurity defense specialist from Nizhny Novgorod; Valery Smirnov, one of the leading experts in programs for radio-electronic protection of strategic facilities.
In January 2024, a car with officers from the electronic intelligence headquarters in the Bryansk oblast was blown up, while on the night of April 17-18, Evgeny Rytnikov, the head of the design bureau of the Bryansk Electromechanical Plant, the developer of the now legendary “Krasukha” EW systems, was also killed. Such assassinations are a testament to the terrorist nature of the Neo-Nazi junta, as all these people were non-combatants.
Among the prominent Iranian scientists killed by Mossad were Dr. Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, Dr. Ahmad Reza Zolfaghari, Dr. Abdolhamid Minuchehr, Dr. Amir Hosein Fekhi and Dr. Fereydoun Abbasi. Once again, it’s impossible not to draw parallels, despite the fact that Israeli strikes were far more strategically consequential.
Still, the main conclusion is that the political West continues to use its proxies to wage war on several countries simultaneously, while also maintaining plausible deniability.
The only way to counter such attacks is for the targeted countries to enforce tighter control over communications, as well as enlarge their intelligence apparatus. While these measures could be seen as “totalitarian” (and will no doubt be presented as such by the mainstream propaganda machine), there’s simply no other way to blunt the blade of the political West’s modern asymmetric hybrid warfare.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Israel strikes Iranian state broadcaster’s office
RT | June 16, 2025
The Israeli military has targeted the headquarters of Iran’s state broadcaster (IRINN) as part of its bombing campaign against the Islamic Republic. The office has continued operating despite sustaining damage, according to Iranian media.
The strike came as IRINN was broadcasting live on air. Videos shared by both Israeli and Iranian media show a female anchor being forced to interrupt her work as the room she is in is affected by the attack. Dust and small pieces of debris can be seen flying in the air before the lights in the room go off after the sound of an explosion.
At least four bombs hit IRINN’s Political Affairs Office, which is operated by the Iranian Broadcasting Agency (IRIB), the state news media outlet said. Photos and videos from the scene show the building on fire, with plumes of thick black smoke rising above it.
The IRIB maintains that broadcast resumed just minutes after the strike. It is unclear how many people were affected by the attack. The female anchor identified as Sahar Emami was reportedly unharmed and returned to work. She condemned the attack in a talk with IRIB and questioned the international community’s inaction “in the face of silencing journalists.”
The Israel Defense Force (IDF) confirmed that it had struck the broadcaster’s office, claiming the facility had been singled out because its “infrastructure and assets” were allegedly being used by the Iranian Army under the guise of civilian activity.
According to Israeli Defense Ministry Israel Katz, the broadcaster was specifically targeted in the strike. “Iranian propaganda and incitement mouthpiece is on its way to disappearing,” he stated just before the attack, as reported by the Jerusalem Post.
Offices in Tehran shared by RT and Ruptly also had to be evacuated on Monday due to intensifying Israeli strikes against the city. The bureau chief of RT’s Tehran Office, Hami Hamedi, said that staff members had to promptly flee their office, as they received a warning from Iranian authorities about an impeding Israeli strike targeting their building.
On Friday, Israel launched a series of air raids against Iran, including one that targeted a uranium enrichment center in Natanz and another which assassinated several senior military commanders and scientists. Iran retaliated by firing dozens of ballistic missiles into Israel. The sides have been exchanging attacks ever since.
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