Iran demands accountability after US admits role in June strikes
The Cradle | November 27, 2025
Iran’s UN ambassador on November 27 urged the Security Council to act after Washington publicly confirmed its direct role in June’s joint US-Israeli strikes on Iranian territory, calling the operation an unlawful act of aggression that demands full accountability and reparations.
In a letter addressed to the UN secretary-general and Security Council president, Iranian Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani said the latest US Air Force admission – acknowledging that US F-35s penetrated Iranian airspace and escorted B-2 bombers to strike Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan – confirms “once again” that the US directly participated with Israel in attacks on Iran’s safeguarded nuclear facilities.
He cited the 24 November US Air Force statement announcing that “In June, the 34th was called upon to escort a strike package, including B-2 Spirit bombers, to strike underground nuclear sites at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan during Operation Midnight Hammer,” and that “On 22 June, a formation of F-35s … was the first aircraft to penetrate Iranian airspace.”
Iravani noted that these disclosures align with US President Donald Trump’s earlier remarks openly asserting Washington’s leading role.
The ambassador described the 12-day campaign as an act that targeted Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, adding that the operation included deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian sites.
He wrote that the US is obligated under established international law to provide full reparation, including restitution and compensation for all material and moral damage.
According to Iravani, Washington’s admission also establishes the individual criminal responsibility of US officials involved in the operation.
He reiterated Tehran’s “full and unequivocal” right to pursue all legal avenues to secure accountability and recover losses resulting from what he called an internationally wrongful act.
Iravani urged the Security Council and the wider UN system not to remain silent, saying they must take measures consistent with their responsibilities to uphold international peace and security, ensure accountability of both the US and Israel, and bring those responsible to justice. He requested that the letter be circulated as an official UN Security Council document.
Sex offender Epstein engaged in 2006 smear campaigns against US scholars: Report

Press TV – November 26, 2025
An investigative report has revealed that US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was involved in 2006 smear campaigns against two influential political scientists criticizing the Israeli regime’s interference in the American political system and foreign policies.
The report published by Drop Site news outlet on Tuesday said Epstein’s smear campaigns were launched after the Harvard Kennedy School released in March 2006 a working paper, “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy,” by political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.
The paper, which ran in the London Review of Books and became the basis for a book published the following year, was an analysis of the impact of pro-Israel advocacy and lobbying groups on the US political system, and the role of organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in shaping US foreign policy towards the West Asia region.
“Mearsheimer and Walt described a loose coalition of philanthropists, think tanks, advocacy groups, and Christian Zionist organizations that routinely pulled US policy toward the Middle East away from America’s national interest, as the US was being drawn into a military quagmire in Iraq,” Drop Site wrote.
The independent news outlet quoted the two scientists as saying in their paper, “Other special interest groups have managed to skew US foreign policy in directions they favored, but no lobby has managed to divert US foreign policy as far from what the American national interest would otherwise suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US and Israeli interests are essentially identical.”
According to Drop Site, even before the Kennedy School posted the paper online, the project had already spooked editors at The Atlantic, who originally commissioned the essay in the early 2000s.
In an interview with Tucker Carlson earlier this year, Mearsheimer revealed that the editor of The Atlantic offered them a “$10,000 kill fee” if the publication didn’t print the article. Mearsheimer said, “That’s the fastest $10,000 we ever made.”
The news outlet said a wave of news articles labelled the two authors as anti-Semites after the paper was released, while the Anti-Defamation League weighed in to denounce what they called an “anti-Jewish screed.” The pressure became so intense that the Kennedy School removed its logo from the paper and added a disclaimer distancing the institution from its arguments.
“Unknown at the time, Jeffrey Epstein gave feedback on talking points to discredit Mearsheimer and Walt, and used his extensive social network to circulate allegations of anti-semitism against the two scholars,” Drop Site wrote.
During the first week of April 2006, as the news outlet said, Epstein received multiple early drafts of an attack piece by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz titled “Debunking the Newest – and Oldest – Jewish Conspiracy.”
Dershowitz, who also served as Epstein’s defense attorney in his criminal matters, accused Mearsheimer and Walt of recycling “discredited trash” from neo-Nazi and Islamist websites.
At one point, Epstein received a message from Dershowitz’s email address, with an assistant asking Epstein to help circulate copies of the attack piece, writing, “Jeffrey, were you going to distribute this for Alan?? If I should forward this to someone in your office, pls let me know.” Epstein replied in the affirmative, “Yes I’ve started.”
The news outlet said the consequences of a coordinated smear campaign by elite members of media and academia were dire for Mearsheimer and Walt.
“The Chicago Council on Global Affairs canceled a scheduled talk by the pair in 2007, after pressure from pro-Israel supporters. Other institutions that previously welcomed them to speak now insisted that any appearance be “balanced” by an opposing speaker who was sympathetic to Israel,” Drop Site wrote.
“The backlash narrowed their platform in mainstream media, academia, and think tanks for years while making public appearances more difficult.”
Epstein played an unofficial yet influential role at Harvard University, leveraging over $9 million in donations to gain access and influence despite his 2008 conviction for sex offenses.
He helped establish the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics with a $6.5 million gift in 2003, had his own office and university card access, and visited Harvard more than 40 times after his conviction. His close ties to faculty allowed him to maintain a significant presence on campus until 2018. Harvard’s review criticized the institution’s handling of Epstein’s involvement and called for stricter policies on accepting donations from controversial figures.
Epstein had been arrested in July 2019 on federal charges of sex trafficking minors. He reportedly hanged himself in his cell at the Manhattan Correctional Center in August of that year.
The circumstances surrounding his death have fueled years of speculation about his high-profile associates and possible efforts to conceal his crimes.
10 injured as Israeli occupation escalates raids across West Bank

Al Mayadeen | November 26, 2025
Ten Palestinians were injured on Wednesday after Israeli occupation forces violently beat them during a large-scale military raid in the governorate of Tubas, marking a new escalation in ongoing operations throughout the occupied West Bank.
According to Kamel Bani Odeh, Director of the Prisoners Club in Tubas, the occupation forces detained 34 Palestinians during raids in Tubas, the towns of Aqaba and Tammun, and the village of Tayaseer. Several homes were turned into military posts used for field interrogations and searches, he added.
Meanwhile, in al-Khalil, Israeli settlers assaulted three Palestinians in the town of Yatta, under the protection of occupation soldiers. The attack is another example of the growing settler violence targeting Palestinian residents and their property.
Further north, the Israeli occupation forces’ bulldozers and heavy machinery advanced toward the Nur Shams refugee camp, east of Tulkarem. The camp has been under a strict siege for 291 days, with most of its residents still prevented from returning to their homes after being forcibly displaced.
In addition, occupation forces continued uprooting olive trees and bulldozing agricultural land in Turmusayya, north of Ramallah, as part of a wider expansionist policy aimed at seizing more Palestinian land.
Large-scale aggression hits West Bank
The Israeli occupation army, in cooperation with the Shin Bet security service, initiated a large-scale “military operation” in the northern occupied West Bank around midnight on Tuesday-Wednesday.
Palestinian locals reported that some of their homes had been turned into military positions.
The governor of Tubas, southeast of Jenin, said that the occupation army had erected earthen barriers around the area, explaining that these barriers had paralyzed traffic in the city. He estimated that the operation would last several days.
According to the Israeli Public Broadcasting Authority, three brigades are participating in the operation, working in parallel with support from the police aerial unit and the air force.
The campaign involves search operations and detentions, as well as the seizure of weapons and the monitoring of weapons-manufacturing workshops, in an attempt to thwart the formation of Resistance cells and gather intelligence, according to Israeli media.
UNSC 2803: The US-Israeli scheme to partition Gaza and break Palestinian will
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | November 26, 2025
United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 is destined to fail. That failure will come at a price: more Palestinian deaths, extensive destruction, and the expansion of Israeli violence to the West Bank and elsewhere in the Middle East.
The resolution, passed on 14 November 2025, was a consolation prize to Israel after failing to achieve its ultimate objective from the two-year Gaza genocide: the ethnic cleansing of the population and the complete takeover of the Gaza Strip.
Gaza shattered a core Israeli doctrine: the absolute certainty of its military supremacy to subdue the Palestinian people using far superior US and Western-supplied technology. Though the occupation was never expected to be easy – as Israel’s history of violence in the Strip attests – the complete takeover was, in the mind of the Israeli leadership, a certainty. In August, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated with total confidence that Israel aimed to “take control of all of Gaza.” That proved to be wishful thinking.
How Israel has failed to subdue an impoverished and besieged population of 2 million people, subjected to a blockade, a famine, and one of the world’s most horrific genocides, is a question for future historians. The immediate consequence, however, is political: Israel and its Western backers, especially the US, understand that an utter Israeli failure in Gaza would be interpreted by Israel’s victims as a pivotal sign of the times.
In fact, the notion of Israel’s implosion and the end of the Zionist project has moved from the margins of intellectual conversation into the center. These ideas are bolstered by the Israelis themselves and are a recurring topic in Israeli media. Such a headline in Haaretz on 15 November is hardly shocking: “At a Secret Harvard Site, a Massive Archive of Israeliana Is Preserved – in Case Israel Ceases to Exist”.
Thus, US President Donald Trump’s so-called “Comprehensive Stabilization Plan for Gaza,” signed in Sharm el-Sheikh on 30 October 2025, was the official start of the American scheme to save Israel from its own blunders. That supposed ‘ceasefire’ was meant to give Israel the chance to maneuver. Instead of occupying all of Gaza and pushing Palestinians out, Israel would now use social and political engineering to achieve the same goal.
The first phase of the plan, which placed most of Gaza under Israeli military control in anticipation of a gradual withdrawal, is already proving to be a sham. As of the time of writing this article, Israel, according to the Gaza government media office, has violated the agreement nearly 400 times, killing over 300 Palestinians. Israel continues to systematically demolish Palestinian areas and has increasingly begun operating west of the Yellow Line, which separates Gaza into two regions.
Worse still, according to Gaza authorities, Israel has been expanding its share of Gaza, estimated at approximately 58 per cent, westward. The ‘ceasefire’ has effectively enforced a new mechanism that allows Israel to carry out a one-sided war – with further territorial expansion, destruction, assassination, and occasional massacres – while Palestinians expect nothing but the mere slowing down of the Israeli death machine. This is not sustainable, especially since Israel has also violated the most basic principle of the imaginary ceasefire: allowing vital aid to enter Gaza.
UNSC 2803 endorses the “Comprehensive Stabilization Plan for Gaza” without placing any legally binding expectations on Israel. It establishes a Transitional Administration and Oversight Council (TAOC), which entirely excludes Palestinians, including the Western-supported Palestinian Authority.
The executive branch of this TAOC would be the International Stabilization Force (ISF), whose sole job is to “stabilize the security environment in Gaza” on behalf of Israel, notably by disarming Palestinian groups. The ISF, according to the resolution, operates “in close consultation and cooperation,” meaning the force is tasked with achieving Israel’s military objectives, thereby allowing Israel to determine the timing and nature of its supposed gradual withdrawal.
Since Palestinians refuse to disarm – as unconditional disarmament without meaningful international guarantees would surely lead to the full return of the Israeli genocide – Israel will certainly refuse to leave Gaza. Netanyahu made that clear on 16 November, when he stated that “Israel would not withdraw” without disarming Hamas, “either the easy way or the hard way”.
The partition of Gaza is a US-led attempt to change the nature of the challenge for Tel Aviv, but ultimately aims at achieving the same original objectives. The resolution has served Israel’s interests fully, hence Netanyahu’s enthusiasm, yet Israel is still refusing to respect it, making it clear there will be no phase two of Trump’s original plan.
The entire political scheme, however, is doomed to fail. Though Palestinian suffering will certainly worsen in the coming months, the US-Israeli gambit is fundamentally flawed: it is built on trickery and coercion, resting on the false assumption that Palestinians, fearing genocide, will accept any plan imposed on them. This premise ignores history. Palestinians have consistently defeated such sophisticated mechanisms designed to break them, meaning this new arrangement is equally unsustainable.
Ultimately, the failure of UNSC Resolution 2803 confirms one enduring truth: the Israeli war on Gaza has not stopped. It has simply changed form. It is crucial that people around the world understand this next phase for what it is: a diplomatic maneuver designed to facilitate the ongoing Israeli plan to control the Gaza Strip and ethnically cleanse its population.
Europe’s financial sector ‘directly funding’ firms complicit in Gaza genocide: Report

Press TV – November 26, 2025
A new report published by a coalition of 24 European and Palestinian organizations and trade unions has exposed financial relationships between top European institutions and 104 companies complicit in Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip.
Under the title of “The Private Actors behind the Economy of Occupation and Genocide,” the report by the Don’t Buy Into Occupation Coalition (DBIO) lists 104 global companies that are active in one or more of the identified complicity categories in the Gaza war.
The list includes companies involved in the military-security sector, technology, resource extraction, construction and demolition, financial services, and other enterprises that sustain Israel’s unlawful presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East al-Quds.
Among them, the report includes priority BDS divestment targets such as major weapons manufacturers and tech companies that played a crucial role in providing Israel with key military components and technology to carry out its ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
Among these 104 companies are numerous BDS campaign targets, including but not limited to Airbnb, Amazon, AXA, Booking.com, CAF, Carrefour, Chevron, Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, Caterpillar, CISCO, Coca-Cola, DELL, Expedia, Google, HPE, Intel, Microsoft, and RE/MAX.
The report showed that 1,115 European financial institutions (including banks, asset managers, insurance companies, pension funds, and the European Investment Bank) have massive financial relationships with such complicit businesses.
Among the top creditor banks financing the Israeli genocide are BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and Barclays.
According to the report, European financial institutions provided over $310 billion in the form of loans and underwritings to these companies between January 2023 and August 2025. European investors also held over $1.5 trillion in shares and bonds in these businesses as of August 31, 2025.
“This report leaves no doubt, European financial institutions and investors have been funding dozens of corporations that are directly enabling Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide against Indigenous Palestinians,” DBIO said.
“Without this, Israel wouldn’t be able to sustain its regime of oppression. These European institutions are in breach of both their international human rights responsibilities and their legal obligation to respect international law.”
Palestinian resistance movement Hamas and Israel agreed last month to a US-brokered Gaza ceasefire, aimed at ending the latter’s two-year-long genocidal war against Palestinians in the besieged territory.
The truce took effect on October 10, but Israel has continued to violate it by carrying out airstrikes, incursions, shootings, and arrests.
The deal marks the first phase of US President Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza ceasefire plan, with further stages to be negotiated at a later date.
Israel has killed at least 69,000 Palestinians since it waged the US-backed genocide in Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Palestinian children have borne the brunt of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. UNICEF estimated last month that at least 64,000 children have been killed or injured in Israeli attacks since October 2023.
Israel fortifying outposts in southern Lebanon in violation of ceasefire
Press TV – November 26, 2025
Satellite imagery shows Israel continues to occupy and fortify military positions in southern Lebanon in violation of Lebanese sovereignty, one year after signing a ceasefire with Hezbollah.
According to Planet Labs PBC, the Israeli military occupies five strategic positions along the Blue Line, the de facto border between Lebanon and the occupied territories. These positions are surrounded by earthen fortifications and connected by widened access roads.
The outposts, covering one to two hectares each, include sections for temporary buildings and military vehicles, according to an analysis by AFP, which says the access roads to these positions have also been significantly expanded to facilitate vehicle movement.
The westernmost base in the Labbouneh area lies only 150 meters from a UN peacekeeping station, while the easternmost on Hamames hill is about 1.5 kilometers inside Lebanese territory.
The analysis also shows near-total destruction of buildings in villages near the outposts due to Israel’s systematic demolition of infrastructure.
By maintaining control over southern Lebanese villages, Israel continues to violate the ceasefire it signed on November 27, 2024, which required a full withdrawal of its forces within 60 days.
Israel says it keeps these positions to ensure Hezbollah does not carry out military activities in the area.
However, analysts state that these fortified positions and demolitions mirror the war tactics employed by Israel in the Gaza Strip.
According to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), the regime’s forces have committed over 7,500 air violations and nearly 2,500 ground violations in the past year, totaling almost 10,000 breaches of the ceasefire.
In a latest violation, Israel assassinated top Hezbollah commander Haitham Tabatabai in a strike on a residential area near Beirut on Sunday.
Hezbollah warned that Israel has committed a grave mistake, saying the resistance group is considering its response to the killing.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun also condemned the attack, calling it a clear demonstration of Tel Aviv’s disregard for repeated international appeals. Aoun urged the global community to act to prevent further aggression against the Lebanese people.
Israeli universities face growing academic isolation despite Gaza ceasefire, report says
Press TV – November 25, 2025
The academic boycott of Israeli universities in Europe has roughly doubled even after the Gaza ceasefire aimed at ending the occupying regime’s genocidal war against the besieged Gaza Strip, a move that further isolates Tel Aviv in global higher education, a new report says.
The Academic Boycott of Israel Monitoring Team, created by the Committee of University Presidents in Tel Aviv, said in a report on Monday that academic boycotts targeting the regime have surged, with around 1,000 cases reported in Europe by November.
It stressed that Israel’s negative image, which has persisted even after the ceasefire over the genocidal war against Gaza, is “so deeply entrenched that political moves alone are not enough to shift public perception.”
Contrary to expectations that the boycott would ease following the ceasefire, the report notes that “the opposite occurred,” with institutions and individual academics more frequently filing boycott cases.
The monitoring team, whose report was published by The Marker, the economic version of the Hebrew newspaper Haaretz, also warned that this expanding boycott could isolate Israeli higher education significantly and pose a long-term strategic threat to its international standing.
The report further identified concrete consequences for the move, including a drop in EU Horizon Europe research grants for Israeli scholars, exclusion from international cooperation projects, and a breakdown in collaborative programs.
According to the report, 57 percent of cases involve individual researchers (mainly being excluded from research groups), 22 percent are institutional severances, seven percent are from professional associations, and 14 percent relate to halted student exchanges or postdoctoral partnerships.
It also said that this crippling boycott trend is unlikely to reverse soon without “major regional and geopolitical changes,” warning that sustained isolation of Israeli academia may continue.
The boycott movement “will accompany Israeli academia for a long time and will not ease without major regional and geopolitical changes,” the report noted.
Israel has killed nearly 70,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured over 170,900 others in Gaza since October 7, 2023, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, when it launched a brutal war against the Palestinian territory.
Despite a ceasefire announced in October, Israel continues to target Gaza in violation of the agreement.
Hamas has urged the guarantors of the ceasefire, namely Qatar, Turkey, Egypt, and the United States, to press Israel to abide by the deal and stop its attacks on Gaza.
‘Israel’ has no coherent plan for Gaza, Trump’s plan proves It
By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | November 25, 2025
Gaza’s hastily assembled ceasefire agreement was designed less to bring genuine relief than to test new strategies aimed at dismantling the Palestinian Resistance while granting the Israeli military a much-needed pause. The vagueness of the plan put forward by US President Donald Trump only underscores this reality, and yet the so-called international community is, shamefully, choosing to go along with it.
The UNSC’s recent resolution 2803 is nothing short of a green light for a US-led international regime change operation, which seeks to implicate a multi-national military force in the Gaza genocide as a desperate attempt to finish off the Palestinian Resistance for the Israelis. The only reason such a solution is being attempted is that the Zionist entity failed.
From the outset, following the Hamas-led operation on October 7, 2023, the Israelis made it clear that their intention was genocide. Their reputation and pillars on which the regime was built have been shaken. It suddenly appeared as if a military solution to the occupying entity was within reach. So, desperately, they accelerated their goals and reached the natural conclusion of what such a settler-colonial project seeks to achieve: the total annihilation of the indigenous population.
The ethno-supremacist mindset of the Zionist regime came out in its most extreme form because the project itself appeared to be under threat. Their solution was annihilation, a Gaza Final Solution. In their thinking, the mass slaughter of civilians and total destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure would eliminate not only the Palestinian cause but also dismantle the entire regional notion of resistance.
In short, they failed. What instead happened is that the people of Gaza never gave up, and neither did their willingness to resist at all costs. Suddenly, the Israelis found themself entangled in a Vietnam War scenario.
The Palestinian Resistance is a force that, according to its own estimates, consisted of no more than around 50,000 fighters, armed with domestically made weapons, most of which were crafted out of the explosives the Israelis themselves dropped on the besieged territory. Gaza is a territory of the displaced, the downtrodden, the starved, the dreamers who strived to break free.
When the genocide began, this guerrilla fighting force stood no chance of fighting a conventional war and so depended on ambushes. The side they were at war with consisted of hundreds of thousands of Israeli soldiers, equipped with the most high-tech killing machines on earth and backed by the entire Western world’s governments, including the planet’s top military superpower, the United States.
Yet, with all their equipment, technology, intelligence agencies, and superiority on the battlefield, they were incapable of defeating the Resistance that fought from tunnels and amongst the rubble of their destroyed neighbourhoods. Instead of targeting the fighters and going after them directly, the Zionist regime targeted the civilian population, believing that if the people were defeated, then the Resistance would follow.
The world watched this live-streamed genocide and naturally identified with the underdogs, many seeing a reflection of their own humanity in the people of Gaza. Although it took years for this to fully unfold, even the population of the most powerful superpower on earth was captivated by this small group of people, so much so that the domestic politics of the average American was fundamentally altered by it.
While their governments continued to back the Israelis and bend to the commands of lobbyists and billionaires, the populations of these nations began to identify with the cause of the Palestinians, the Palestinian cause, the cause of the people of Gaza…
Over time, the Israeli regime attempted to implement countless strategies to finish off the Palestinians of Gaza. They pushed them from north to south, then to the center of the besieged coastal enclave. They flattened everything in sight, took out prominent leaders, assassinated the truth-telling journalists, and destroyed the hospitals and shelters. They starved Gaza; they employed collaborators both inside and outside of the strip.
The Zionists peddled lie after lie; they took thousands of captives, mocked dead Palestinian women by parading around in their underwear. They committed mass rape, sexual humiliation, and created torture centers. All of the so-called Muslim leaders, with the exception of very few, betrayed them and aided the Israelis in committing their genocide.
The Israelis attempted to implement the “General’s Plan” in late 2024, but they failed. They tried “Operation Gideon’s Chariots” and then “Operation Gideon’s Chariots 2”, or the plan to occupy Gaza City. They failed.
Meanwhile, their own society decayed from within and was driven to even greater extremist ideology, their economy sank, and major investments were cleared up. The northern settlements were partially destroyed, and the domestic tourism industry in the north and south collapsed. Amid this chaos and failure, the Israeli leadership has turned to fighting on front after front.
Despite managing to pull off tactical victories against Hezbollah in Lebanon and even Iran, through intelligence operations and assassinations, they were unable to secure any strategic victory. Their attempt to degrade Iran failed, and they were forced into a ceasefire, sent back to study how to advance their agenda through a new round of attacks.
Out of total desperation, the Israelis launched a new propaganda campaign targeting conservatives in the United States and across the Western World, but are incapable of stopping the rapid loss of support for them. They are now trying to stir tensions between right-wing Westerners and Muslims, fearmongering about so-called “Islamic terrorism” using the “War on Terror” playbook, all to divert attention from their crimes in Gaza and the fact that their lobby groups are working toward imposing mass censorship.
All of this considered, the Europeans and Arab regimes began searching for an answer to save the Israelis from themselves, to reward them for their genocide. Then came the United States, which offered its even more pro-Israeli slant on the Saudi-French “New York Declaration” that was voted on unanimously at the United Nations General Assembly.
The leaderships of the world were exposed, and the Gaza genocide was transformed into a major strategic debacle. These unrepresentative rulers were not willing to end their support and relationships with the genocidal entity, so they devised a plot to help it eliminate what had become their own enemy. Regular people around the world identify with the Palestinians, while their leaders are enablers and supporters of genocide, even if they don’t say it out loud and even if they offer weak statements condemning their Israeli allies.
This is where UNSC 2803 comes in. It allows these nations to help the Israelis finish their genocidal project and eliminate the Palestinian cause once and for all. Yet, they face a major problem: there are only three options for ending this struggle: Either the Israelis totally destroy the Palestinian people along with the regional Resistance, sentencing the survivors to permanent occupation and exile; they agree to a so-called “two-state solution”; or they are themselves defeated.
Almost all of the Israeli regime’s allies seek the “two-state solution”, an option that the Zionist entity will not accept. Therefore, all of these vague schemes as to how to conduct a successful multi-national regime change operation in the Gaza Strip are bound to fail, which is why Phase 2 of the ceasefire is nearly impossible to implement fully. It will be a total disaster and only create further issues for those nations involved in the so-called “International Stabilization Force,” or what should be accurately dubbed the International Invasion Force.
Failing the implementation of Donald Trump’s regime change plan, the Israelis will eventually return to the only thing they know how to do: conducting genocide from a distance. This period is being used to experiment with different plans, while giving the Israeli military time to recover. It is very likely that this will enormously backfire.
A Gaza Plan that Sidelines the Palestinian State
By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – November 25, 2025
The UN may have blessed Washington’s new Gaza plan, but it reads less like a peace blueprint and more like a manual for managing occupation. Behind the diplomatic fanfare lies a resolution so riddled with contradictions that it could bury — not revive — the prospect of Palestinian statehood.
The “Peace” Plan
The US-backed “peace” plan may bring a halt to active fighting, but it does not — and cannot — deliver peace for Palestinians. At best, it promises a managed quiet under continued Israeli domination. The Trump administration has framed the initiative as a “pathway” to a political resolution, yet the plan carefully avoids the one political reality that matters: Israel’s entrenched refusal to permit Palestinian statehood in any meaningful sense. Within Israel, the backlash to any hint of Palestinian sovereignty has been immediate and ferocious. Last week, far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich publicly demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repudiate all references to statehood, with Ben-Gvir threatening to collapse the governing coalition if Netanyahu failed to comply. Netanyahu has since reassured them — and Washington — that no Palestinian state will be created under his watch. That political reality is already shaping Israel’s conduct on the ground: despite the nominal ceasefire embedded in the plan, Israel continues to bomb Gaza, implying that “security operations” are exempt. Yet the UN Security Council resolution endorsing the US plan offers no enforcement mechanism, no timetable, and no conditions to bind Israel to any political endgame. In practice, it hands Israel full discretion to shape the conflict’s trajectory and its eventual outcome in real time.
The plan’s proposed International Stabilisation Force (ISF) is presented as the key instrument for “restoring order” in Gaza, but the details reveal a deeply asymmetric security architecture. The force will operate under Israel’s operational umbrella — not under an independent UN peacekeeping mandate, and certainly not as a neutral guarantor of civilian protection. Israel has already narrowed the mission to a single objective: disarming Hamas, a demand Hamas has categorically rejected. For states such as Pakistan, which have signalled support for the ISF, the mission is framed in broader terms — the demilitarization of Gaza as a whole. Yet demilitarization, under this plan, is a one-way street. Israel retains full military freedom: ground deployments, aerial strikes, and intelligence operations can continue without restriction. Palestinians, by contrast, are expected to surrender not only armed resistance but any organised capacity to resist Israel’s occupation, settlement expansion, or annexation — even peacefully. This is not a roadmap to stability; it is a security regime designed to institutionalise Palestinian political paralysis. By stripping Palestinians of all coercive or collective leverage while preserving Israel’s overwhelming military advantage, the plan guarantees an imbalance so severe that no political process can emerge from it. Supporters of the ISF may hope the force will facilitate reconstruction or governance, but the structure of the mandate ensures the opposite: it entrenches Israeli control while outsourcing its enforcement to international actors. Far from opening the door to statehood, the plan cements the very conditions that have made such a state impossible. Under these terms, the prospects that the plan will deliver anything of value to Palestinians — let alone genuine sovereignty — are virtually nil.
The Plan and the Arab world
The plan’s swift acceptance across much of the Arab world is not a reflection of regional confidence in its substance. Rather, it reflects geopolitical fatigue and shifting priorities. After a year of devastating images from Gaza, Arab governments face intense domestic pressure to do something, yet lack either the leverage or the appetite to meaningfully confront the US or Israel. Endorsing the plan allows them to claim diplomatic engagement without assuming responsibility for achieving what the plan itself refuses to deliver. For many Arab capitals, particularly those already normalizing ties with Israel or dependent on US security guarantees, the plan functions less as a political blueprint than as a diplomatic escape hatch.
Nowhere is this contradiction clearer than in Saudi Arabia’s position. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) travelled to the United States this month for high-level meetings, including with President Trump. Publicly, MBS restated Riyadh’s long-held line: Saudi Arabia is willing to join the Abraham Accords, but only if there is a clear and irreversible roadmap to a Palestinian state. Yet Riyadh has conspicuously refrained from criticizing a plan that contains no such roadmap. This silence is not accidental; it is strategic. Saudi Arabia’s overriding objective is to secure a sweeping defence pact with Washington, one that would formally guarantee US protection and enable the kingdom to acquire advanced weapons systems. During his visit, a sweeping defense package was signed, which elevated Saudi Arabia to the status of a “major non-NATO ally,” a move that opens the gates to easier arms transfers and logistical cooperation. On the same trip, Trump confirmed a sale of F-35 jets to Riyadh, marking the first time such fifth-generation fighters would be sold to an Arab country.
That deal, however, is politically impossible for Washington unless Saudi Arabia’s relations with Israel are moving toward normalisation. The Trump administration, unlike the Biden administration before it, sees Saudi–Israeli normalisation as the centrepiece of its regional architecture. Trump called both Israel and Saudi Arabia great allies. MBS understands this and is carefully calibrating his moves, signalling rhetorical support for Palestinian statehood to maintain credibility within the Arab and Muslim worlds while avoiding any criticism that could jeopardize US willingness to finalize the defence agreement. Riyadh’s acceptance of a plan that objectively undermines Palestinian aspirations is therefore not a policy contradiction; it is a diplomatic performance. The kingdom is balancing between two audiences — one domestic, sentimental, and politically sensitive; the other strategic, transactional, and sitting in Washington.
For the Palestinian cause, however, this choreography is devastating. It signals that the Arab world’s most powerful state is willing to sidestep Palestine’s central demand — an enforceable path to sovereignty — in exchange for advanced fighter jets and more. In this sense, the plan is not only shaped by US and Israeli priorities; it is enabled by Arab governments that have recalibrated their regional ambitions away from Palestinian self-determination and toward their own national security bargains.
Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs
Ambassador Mike Huckabee Secretly Meets Top Israeli Spy Jonathan Pollard
Let’s remove both Huckabee and Israel from American foreign policy

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • November 25, 2025
Given the high visibility of the Israeli genocide being carried out in Gaza, for the first time many among the American general public are beginning to ask why a rich country like Israel should be getting billions of dollars from the United States taxpayer to pay for waging its war when many Americans are struggling. Inevitably, of course, the press coverage of the questions being asked about the cash flow and what is playing out in Gaza have failed to discuss the real magnitude of the “aid,” which goes far beyond the $3.8 billion a year that President Barack Obama committed to America’s “best friend and closest ally.” In fact, over the past two years, Washington has given Israel more than $21 billion in weapons and cash and just last week the 1,000th US transport plane filled with weapons landed in Israel. On top of all that, there are trade concessions, co-production “defense partnership” projects and dicey charitable contributions from Zionist billionaires that our federal and many state governments shower on the Jewish state, easily exceeding $10 billion in a “normal” year without Israel claiming having “greater need” as it goes about violating ceasefires and killing Gazans, Lebanese and Iranians.
The fact that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have enabled Israel’s slaughter without so much as the slightest hesitation should in itself be damnable, but the average American is fed a steady diet of propaganda favoring Israel through the devastatingly effective Jewish media control that prevails nationwide. Interestingly, however, as the American public is beginning to tire of the Israeli lies, the Israel Lobby in the US is following the orders of Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu, who has declared that his country will be fighting eight wars – seven against all of its neighbors and one to control the United States’ increasingly negative opinion of what Israel represents. As a result, laws like the Antisemitism Awareness Act are being passed to silence “freedom of speech” critics of the Jewish state and criminalize what they are saying.
During his 2016 campaign Donald Trump swore that he would be the best friend that Israel has ever had in the White House, a pledge that some viewed skeptically as Trump was also committed to bringing the troops home from “useless wars” in Asia, most of whom were in the Middle East supporting Israeli interests. More recently Trump admitted that America was in the Middle East to “protect Israel” and he has indeed proven to be the great benefactor he promised to be in responding fully to Netanyahu’s wish list. In his first term in office, Trump increased tension dramatically with Iran, moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan Heights, and basically gave Israel the green light to do whatever it wants on the Palestinian West Bank, including getting rid of the Palestinians.
And currently as all that has already played out the Israelis have attacked and killed thousands of civilians in Gaza, Syria and the West Bank with impunity, protected by the US veto in the UN Security Council against any consequences for their actions while a subservient Congress gives Netanyahu fifty-six standing ovations and bleats that “Israel has a right to defend itself.” Trump has made the United States completely complicit in Israeli war crimes and has added a few unique touches of its own to include the widely condemned assassination of the senior Iranian official Qassem Soleimani while on a peace mission in Baghdad in January 2020.
Israel more-or-less openly admits that it controls the actions of the United States in its region, Netanyahu having boasted how the US federal government is “easily moved” when it comes up against the Israeli Lobby. Nor is there any real secret to how the Lobby uses money to buy access and then exploits that access to obtain real power, which is then used to employ all the resources of the US government in support of the Jewish state. The top donor to the Democratic Party, Israeli-American Haim Saban has stated that he is a one issue guy and that issue is Israel. This single-minded focus to promote Israel’s interests at the expense of those of the United States makes the Israel Lobby the most formidable foreign policy lobby in Washington.
One of the tools used by Trump to facilitate the virtual slavery under the Israeli yoke is the appointment of passionately Zionist US Ambassadors to Israel, where they often behave as if they are there to represent Jewish interests rather that those of the United States. Trump’s first term appointment David Friedman was a personal lawyer with no diplomatic or international experience, so he inevitably endorsed with some enthusiasm every extreme proposal coming from Netanyahu, which he then went on to sell to Trump. Friedman, now retired, has a home in Jerusalem and has reportedly opted to spend much of his time in Israel.
Friedman was, however, somewhat of a gem compared to the current ambassador Mike Huckabee, an Israel-Firster Baptist preacher from Arkansas, who repeatedly expresses his love for the Jewish state and white-washes whatever it does. For what it’s worth, on October 13th, 2025, Friedman and Huckabee performed a rendition of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s hit song Sweet Home Alabama in Jerusalem but with altered lyrics that promoted Zionism and the city of Jerusalem itself. Friedman played guitar while Huckabee played bass. Trump, of course, is similar in his overweening embrace of Israel, whether it be because he is being blackmailed, or honestly believes in what he is saying, or even because he has converted to Judaism in 2017, as some believe. In any event, the theatrical duet performance by the two Israel-loving ambassadors failed to provide any benefit to the United States of America.
The complete contempt that the Israelis and Israeli supporters in the US – to include the Ambassador Huckabee – have for other Americans and their interests has been on full display recently and it involves the most significant espionage operation that Israel has ever “run” inside the United States. Jonathan Pollard, the most damaging spy in American history, stole for Israel the keys to accessing US communications and information gathering systems, which gave the Jewish state access to all US intelligence as it was being collected. He was Jewish and a US citizen, his father a professor at Notre Dame University. As a student at Stanford, where he completed a degree in 1976, Pollard’s penchant for dissimulation was already noted by other students. He is remembered for having boasted that he was a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, claiming to have worked for Mossad, to having attained the rank of Colonel in the Israel Defense Forces (even sending himself a telegram addressed to “Colonel Pollard”), and to having killed an Arab while on guard duty at a kibbutz. All the claims were lies.
Physically Pollard was also unappealing, overweight and balding, seemingly an unlikely candidate to become a US Navy intelligence analyst which he accomplished after having failed a polygraph test when trying to join CIA. One review board determined that he had been hired in the first place under pressure from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). According to an intelligence agency after-the fact-damage assessment “Pollard’s operation has few parallels among known US espionage cases… his first and possibly largest delivery occurred on 23 January [1984] and consisted of five suitcases-full of classified material.”
Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger wrote a forty-six page review of the Pollard case that remains largely classified and redacted to this day, detailing what incredible damage Pollard had done. Part of the document states: “In this case, the defendant has admitted passing to his Israeli contacts an incredibly large quantity of classified information. At the outset I must state that the defendant’s disclosures far exceed the limits of any official exchange of intelligence information with Israel. That being the case, the damage to national security was complete the moment the classified information was given over. Ideally, I would detail… all the information passed by the defendant to his Israeli contacts: unfortunately, the volume of data we know to have been passed is too great to permit that. Moreover, the defendant admits to having passed to his Israeli handlers a quantity of documents great enough to occupy a space six feet by ten feet… The defendant has substantially harmed the United States, and in my view, his crimes demand severe punishment… My foregoing comments will, I hope, dispel any presumption that disclosures to an ally are insignificant; to the contrary, substantial and irrevocable damage has been done to this nation. Punishment, of course, must be appropriate to the crime, and in my opinion, no crime is more deserving of severe punishment than conducting espionage activities against one’s own country.”
Pollard was detected and arrested in 1985, convicted in 1987, and imprisoned. The case sent shockwaves through both Washington and Tel Aviv at the time of the conviction. Pollard pled guilty, confessing to selling the thousands of pages of secret documents to the Israelis for cash, vacations to Europe, and promised future payments to be wired to a Swiss bank account. A federal judge correctly dismissed pleas for clemency.
In 2015 Pollard was released from prison under parole which required him to remain in the United States. But in January 2021 Pollard was released from the parole conditions and was allowed to fly “home,” meeting Netanyahu as he disembarked from a private plane that had departed from Newark New Jersey before being given a hero’s welcome. The Pollard trip to his “home” occurred because Donald Trump had obligingly lifted the travel restrictions on him the week before, one more favor to Israel. At the airport, Pollard and his wife knelt to kiss the Israeli soil before Netanyahu handed him an Israeli citizen ID and welcomed him. The 737 luxury-fitted executive jet Pollard and his wife flew on belonged to Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, then the chief donor to the Republicans and to Donald Trump. Adelson was married to an Israeli, Miriam Adelson, who now survives him and continues the donations to the Republicans. Sheldon famously once said that he regretted having worn a US Army uniform when he was drafted in World War 2, much preferring instead that he might have done military service in the Israel Defense Forces.
But the Pollard story does not end there. In July Jonathan Pollard was a guest at the US Embassy in Jerusalem, where he met with Ambassador Mike Huckabee. The meeting was his first with US officials since his release and immigration to Israel. It was a break with precedent and the move by Huckabee, even all these years after the crime, still alarmed American intelligence officials even though, as it was Israel, media coverage in the US was minimal. John Kiriakou, a former CIA counter-terrorism officer, has argued that Pollard should have been detained by the Marine guards at the American Embassy in Jerusalem and should not have been allowed to meet with the ambassador. “[Pollard] has called for Jewish Americans who have security clearances… to begin spying for Israel, just like he did… So for him to be welcomed into the American Embassy is a bridge too far. If anything, he should have been snatched when he entered the American embassy.”
The Trump administration was apparently not consulted regarding the planned get-together. “The White House was not aware of that meeting,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt claimed. It was reportedly left off the public schedule of the ambassador, suggesting at a minimum that it was a terrible decision by Huckabee acting on his own which he made some attempt to conceal. And yet, when the story broke the Trump administration still condoned the actions of the ambassador, who reportedly had a friendly chat with the spy who had done the most grave damage ever to the United States. “The president stands by our ambassador, Mike Huckabee,” Leavitt added, “and all that he’s doing for the United States and Israel.” She did not elaborate on what he has been doing for the United States.
After the story broke, Pollard accused “anti-Israel and isolationist elements within the US government of leaking that he met off-the-books with US Ambassador Huckabee in a bid to discredit and oust the pro-Israel envoy.” He claimed that “the New York Times story was part, or is part, of an effort to discredit the ambassador and have him removed. I think the people behind this are anti-Israel elements within the Trump administration, the neo-isolationists… and others, perhaps pro-Saudi, pro-Qatari elements within the administration that would like to see a person like Ambassador Huckabee sent home.” Pollard later gave an interview in which he named Steven Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as likely culprits “representing Saudi and Qatari rather than US interests” in brokering the Gaza ceasefire, and he added that he “despises them” for daring to “carry on with terrorists.” Pollard added his view that the 20-point ceasefire plan, leaving the door open to the possibility for Palestinian statehood, threatens Israel’s security and “undermines our independence,” and the October 9th truce-hostage deal that is based on that plan would have been worthwhile only had Israel “unleashed… hell on Hamas” following the October 13th release of the last 20 living hostages from Gaza.
Pollard described his meeting with Huckabee as “personal” and “friendly” and confirmed that it was his first meeting with a US government official after his release by Trump from travel restrictions. He concluded that “A lot of people seem to think that I harbor an anger toward the United States, which I don’t. There were specific people that lied about me, that lied about Israel, that tried to use me as a weapon to undermine the US-Israel special relationship, and those are the people I have problems with but certainly people like Ambassador Huckabee, and others, I have absolutely no problem talking to. If I could guess, I would say it’s that community, particularly the CIA station in the embassy, that probably was the one that initiated this whole effort to discredit the ambassador.”
Pollard clearly is promoting a false narrative that makes himself look like some kind of honorable and valiant defender of Israel when in reality he did what he did for the most base of reasons, i.e. for money. Money is indeed how the Israeli boosters in the United States have been able to flat out corrupt America’s political process to attain the dominance that has enabled them to promote the Israeli agenda. They have bought or intimidated every politician that matters to include presidents, congressmen and even those in state and local governments. Anyone who criticizes Israel or Jewish collective behavior in support of the Israeli state is subject to character assassination and blacklisting a la Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tom Massie. Those who persist are denounced as anti-Semites, a label that is used liberally by Zionist groups. Now Pollard is portraying himself as some kind of Israeli hero. The end result is that when Israel kills civilians in violation of a ceasefire in Gaza and is allowing rampaging armed settlers to destroy Palestinian livelihoods the United States government chooses to look the other way and instead showers the rogue state with money so it can continue to do its dirty work. Providing that political cover for Israel is in part the real dark side of Huckabee’s job as he sees it, not to engage over real American interests.
And then there are the hot buttons a-la the lies about Israel being advanced by Pollard and his ilk which, if the US actually had a functional government that is responsive to the people, should have been pushed long ago. “Best friend” Israel is ranked by the FBI as the number one “friendly” country in terms of its spying against the United States. Pollard is an exception who was actually punished since his crime was so dramatic and damaging, but Israeli spies are routinely slapped on the wrist when caught and never face prosecution for that crime, as one might note in the current “investigation” of Jeffrey Epstein, which was undoubtedly a major MOSSAD intelligence operation.
And there are also the MOSSAD agents who were the “Dancing Shlomos,” celebrating while the twin towers went down on 9/11, who were allowed to go home and various assassinations including JFK and even Charlie Kirk that have an Israeli back story. And Israel has never truly paid any price for the horrific bombing and torpedoing of the USS Liberty fifty-eight years ago, which killed 34 Americans and injured over one hundred and seventy more. The completely unprovoked attack took place in international waters and was later covered-up by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Congress. May they burn in hell. The few remaining surviving crew members are still waiting for justice.
Good riddance to scum like Jonathan Pollard and the Israel-Firsters who enable him. It is reported in Israel that Pollard is now preparing to run for the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, which explains his demeanor and phony narrative. It also all means that it is past time to get rid of folks like Ambassador Mike Huckabee who prefer to advance Israeli interests rather than those of his own country because, he believes, God is telling him to do so. More generally speaking, it is well past time to get rid of the special relationship with Israel, sanctified in the halls of Congress and by a Jewish dominated media, which does nothing good for the United States and for the American people. Israel’s constant interference in the US political system and economy comes at a huge cost, both in dollars and in terms of actual American interests.
So, let’s all resolve for 2026 to do whatever we can to pull the plug on Israel. Let Israel, which is now seeking a 20 year commitment of even more cash annually from the US taxpayer, pay its own bills and take care of its own defense. American citizens who prefer the Jewish ethno-religious state to our constitutional republic should feel free to emigrate. In fact, they should be encouraged to leave. Lacking Washington’s backing, Israel will also be free to commit atrocities and war crimes against all of its neighbors but without the US United Nations veto it will have to begin facing the consequences for its actions. But most of all, as Americans, we will no longer have to continue to carry the burden of a country that manipulates and uses us and also has a certain contempt for us while doing so, witness how Trump’s kid-glove handling of Jonathan Pollard has played out. And maybe just maybe freeing the United States from Israel could lead to an end to all the wars in the Middle East that Washington has been waging in spite of the fact that we Americans are threatened by no one in the region and have no real interest whatsoever in prolonging the agony of staying engaged there.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
Betrayed by western snapback: Iran dumps IAEA deal
Tehran’s attempt at diplomatic detente was met with an escalation by the US and the E3
By Fereshteh Sadeghi | The Cradle | November 25, 2025
Just hours before his visit to France to discuss Iran’s nuclear file, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned:
“International relations face unprecedented crises due to militant unilateralism. Repeated violations of international law – including ongoing conflicts in West Asia – reflect the backing of the United States and the tolerance of certain European states.”
This underscores Tehran’s defiant stance as it moves in its nuclear diplomacy. Just three months after Israeli-US airstrikes targeted Iranian nuclear sites, Tehran signed a significant security agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It did not last long.
The so-called Cairo Agreement, signed in September and brokered by Egypt, was meant to defuse tensions. Yet that same month, the western-backed IAEA was warned against “any hostile action against Iran – including the reinstatement of cancelled UN Security Council resolutions” in which case the deal would become “null and void.”
Of note, Iran–IAEA relations had been deteriorating since June during the 12-day US-Israeli war on Iran. The IAEA and its director general, Rafael Grossi, refused to condemn the attacks on Iranian civilians and nuclear facilities, and the targeted assassinations of nuclear scientists and senior military officers.
The IAEA’s refusal to condemn the US-Israeli violations made Iranians furious. They accused Grossi of paving the ground for the strikes and being Israel’s footman. The Islamic Republic formally lodged a protest with the UN Secretary General and the Security Council against Grossi, arguing he breached the IAEA’s neutrality.
Resistance to western coercion
The Iranian parliament – or Majlis – raised the bar by ratifying legislation that suspended cooperation between Tehran and the international nuclear watchdog. The law was passed immediately after the war ended on 25 June.
It declared Grossi and his inspectors “persona non grata” and forbade them from travelling to Iran or visiting Iranian nuclear facilities. The law stipulated that the suspension will continue so long as the security and safety of Iranian nuclear installations and scientists have not been guaranteed.
Nevertheless, the Egyptian-mediated Cairo Agreement appeared to thaw the standoff, if temporarily. It was signed in the presence of Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi and Grossi, and ambiguously framed as a deal on “implementing the Safeguards Agreement.”
Few details were made public then; while the IAEA called it a deal on “practical modalities and implementation of the Safeguards Agreement”, the Iranian side insisted it was “a new regime of cooperation.”
State news agency, IRNA, elaborated, “the agency will not engage in monitoring activities provided Iran has not carried out environmental and nuclear safety measures at its bombed facilities.” IRNA referred to the Supreme National Security Council as the sole body that “could greenlight the IAEA monitoring missions inside Iran, case by case.”
Iran’s diplomatic maneuvering, including the deal with the IAEA, was obviously part of the broader strategy to prevent the UK, France, and Germany from activating the snapback mechanism, in the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany.
The European Troika (E3), who were clearly dissatisfied with the Cairo Agreement, reiterated “Tehran needs to allow inspections of sensitive sites and address its stockpile of highly enriched uranium.”
Snapback triggers collapse
A threat to terminate the Cairo Agreement actually came three days after it was clinched, when Iran’s Foreign Ministry warned that “launching the snapback mechanism would put the ongoing cooperation between Iran and the IAEA at risk.” Nevertheless, the UK, France, and Germany moved ahead with the snapback activation.
Araghchi’s first reaction noted that “in regards to the E3’s move, the Cairo agreement has lost its functionality.” Iranians had also vowed to halt cooperation with the IAEA. However, they did not fulfill that threat and collaborated in silence.
The IAEA inspectors visited some Iranian nuclear sites in early November. However, they were not given access to the US-bombed Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan facilities.
Even this tactical compliance failed to shield Tehran from a new IAEA censure. On 20 November, the agency’s Board of Governors passed a US-E3-backed resolution ignoring Iran’s cooperation and demanding immediate access to all affected sites and data.
It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Iran condemned the move as “illegal, unjustifiable, irresponsible, and a stain on the image of its sponsors.”
Araghchi on his X account posted, “like the diplomacy which was assaulted by Israel and the US in June, the Cairo Agreement has been killed by the US and the E3.”
For the second time, Iran’s top diplomat announced the termination of the Cairo Agreement, “given that the E3 and the US seek escalation, they know full well that the official termination of the Cairo Agreement is the direct outcome of their provocations.”
Iran’s representative to the IAEA, Reza Nadjafi, told reporters that “If the US claims success in destroying Iran’s Natanz and Fordow facilities, then what is left for inspections?” and further warned, “any decision (by the IAEA) has its own consequences.”
Back to confrontation
By applying pressure through the IAEA, the E3 and the US seek to coerce Iran into opening the doors of its bombed nuclear sites to the IAEA inspectors, to hand over the 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, which the US believes is still intact, and “to eliminate Iran’s ability to convert that fuel into a nuclear weapon.”
The collapse of the Cairo Agreement marks a return to the kind of standoff that defined US–Iran relations from 2005 to 2013, when Iran’s nuclear file was sent to the UN Security Council, and sanctions were imposed under Chapter VII.
Some skeptics believe US President Donald Trump’s administration would not only take Iran to the Security Council but would also cite the chapter in question, which sanctions the use of military force against any country deemed a threat to global peace.
While Iran signed the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in hopes of avoiding that scenario, the US’s unilateral withdrawal under Donald Trump’s first term in 2018 and the E3’s failure to meet their obligations rendered the agreement toothless.
June’s US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iranian nuclear infrastructure confirmed for Tehran that western powers have no intention of engaging in diplomacy in good faith.
Toward a new strategy
According to IRNA, which echoes the official line of the Iranian government, “Iran feels that the goodwill gestures it has shown towards the IAEA and the United States, have drawn further hostility. Therefore, maybe now it is the time to change course and revise its strategy and the rule of engagement with international bodies, including the IAEA.”
Some observers believe Iran’s first step to map out a new strategy is pursuing the policy of “nuclear ambiguity, remaining silent regarding the whereabouts of the stockpile of the highly-enriched uranium and quietly halting the implementation of the [Nuclear] Non-Proliferation Treaty, without officially admitting it.”
In the latest development, the chairman of the Parliament’s National Security Committee has vowed that “Iran will sturdily pursue its nuclear achievements.” Ibrahim Azizi has cautioned the US and Europe that “Iran has changed its behavior post June attacks and they’d better not try Iran’s patience.”
That posture is hardening. In September, over 70 Iranian lawmakers urged the Supreme National Security Council to reconsider Iran’s defense doctrine – including its long-standing religious prohibition on nuclear weapons.
They argue that the regional and international order has changed irreversibly since Israel and the US jointly bombed the Iranian nuclear facilities. While citing Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s 2010 fatwa banning nuclear weapons, they assert that in Shia jurisprudence, such rulings may evolve when conditions change – especially when the survival of the Islamic Republic is at stake.
Iran is also working to immunize itself against any escalation at the UN Security Council. Here, it banks on the veto power of Russia and China to neutralize any western effort to reimpose sanctions.
The collapse of the Cairo Agreement marks a turning point in Tehran’s nuclear diplomacy. It is a conclusion drawn from years of unmet commitments and military escalation that western multilateralism has exhausted its credibility.
Iranian FM Urges Global Pressure on Israel to Join Chemical Weapons Pact
Sputnik – 25.11.2025
Israel remains the sole obstacle to establishing a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and must be forced to join the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), Abbas Araghchi, Iranian foreign minister and head of the Iranian delegation to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said on Tuesday.
The 30th session of the OPCW Conference of States Parties is underway in The Hague from November 24 to 28.
“The Israeli regime must be compelled to accede to the convention and to submit to full-scope inspections as a priority for the OPCW,” Araghchi said during the session.
Israel has not joined any disarmament treaties, including the CWC, and remains the “only obstacle” to creating a WMD-free zone in the region, the Iranian foreign minister said.
While WMDs are inherently dangerous and inhumane, their possession by “wanted criminals” responsible for “massacre and genocide over the past two years” poses a grave existential threat to humanity and the planet, he said.
Araghchi said that the CWC is the most successful disarmament treaty to date but warned that its effectiveness depends on full compliance by all states without exception.
