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Israeli firms transform cars into intelligence devices: Reports

Al Mayadeen |   February 17, 2026

Modern vehicles have evolved into internet-connected digital ecosystems, a transformation that is reshaping the global intelligence market, with “Israel” paying special attention to this rising domain, according to a new investigation by Haaretz.

In intelligence circles, information harvested from vehicles is known as “CARINT,” short for car intelligence. Today’s vehicles function as “computers on wheels,” equipped with built-in SIM cards, GPS systems, Bluetooth connectivity, and multimedia platforms that continuously transmit data.

The report reveals that at least three Israeli companies are operating in this expanding sector, developing tools that enable government clients to track vehicle movements in real time, cross-reference vast databases, and identify specific targets among thousands of cars on the road.

Industry sources cited in the investigation described the use of AI-powered “data fusion” systems that combine vehicle telemetry, roadside camera feeds, advertising data, and cellular metadata to construct comprehensive intelligence profiles. Rather than directly hacking a device, agencies are increasingly assembling what sources describe as a surveillance mosaic from legally or commercially available data streams.

The case of Toka

Among the companies identified is Toka, co-founded by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former Israeli military cyber chief Yaron Rosen.

According to documents and industry sources cited by Haaretz, Toka developed a product capable of infiltrating a vehicle’s multimedia system, pinpointing its location, and remotely activating microphones or dashboard cameras. The system was reportedly approved by “Israel’s” Security Ministry for presentation and eventual export.

The company said that as part of its 2026 product roadmap, it no longer sells the hacking tool.

Experts noted that exploiting vehicle vulnerabilities remains technically complex, as each manufacturer employs distinct digital architectures. However, the possibility of remote access to in-car microphones and cameras has raised acute privacy and security concerns.

Another Israeli firm, Rayzone, has reportedly begun selling vehicle-tracking tools through its subsidiary TA9. Unlike offensive hacking products, Rayzone’s system focuses on aggregating and cross-referencing data, including SIM-card tracking, Bluetooth signals, and license-plate recognition feeds.

The investigation suggests that the intelligence industry is gradually shifting away from high-profile phone-hacking technologies associated with firms such as NSO Group and toward large-scale, AI-enabled data analytics platforms.

In the United States, companies such as Palantir Technologies analyze license plate databases and vehicle registries, integrating them into broader intelligence systems. Israeli firm Cellebrite also works extensively with US law enforcement agencies in extracting and processing digital evidence, including vehicle-related data.

Vehicle intelligence expanded post Oct. 7

The Haaretz investigation further highlights that in the aftermath of Operation al-Aqsa Flood, Israeli authorities, with support from the private sector, developed advanced capabilities to locate vehicles stolen from army bases and border communities. According to the report, these tools were later integrated into military systems.

The article also points to China’s longstanding regulatory framework requiring domestic car manufacturers to transmit vehicle data to state authorities. It further notes that the Israeli Occupation Forces imposed restrictions on certain Chinese electric vehicles entering military facilities, citing security concerns.

Security analysts warn that the accelerating digitization of vehicles not only expands surveillance capabilities but also increases cybersecurity risks. Ethical hackers have previously demonstrated, in controlled environments, the ability to manipulate steering systems or disable engines remotely. Industry sources cited in the investigation indicate that some government clients are increasingly expressing interest in remote vehicle-disabling technologies.

At global intelligence exhibitions such as ISS World, often referred to as the “Wiretapper’s Ball”, artificial intelligence and real-time data fusion dominate discussions. AI systems now enable the rapid processing of millions of disparate data points, including vehicle telemetry, audio streams, and video feeds, transforming them into actionable intelligence with unprecedented speed.

Industry insiders argue that as vehicles become more connected, they will inevitably play a more central role in intelligence gathering. Privacy advocates, however, caution that the same connectivity that enhances consumer convenience may also underpin a powerful and potentially intrusive surveillance infrastructure.

The Haaretz investigation concludes that while directly hacking individual vehicles remains technically complex, AI-driven aggregation of vehicle-generated data could make such intrusions increasingly unnecessary, raising significant questions about privacy, regulation, and the future of digital mobility.

Palantir, Dataminr help build Gaza AI-Driven digital prison system

A +972 Magazine investigation reveals that US firms Palantir and Dataminr are embedded in the US-Israeli post-war plan for Gaza through the Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), a US-run hub coordinating Trump’s 20-point plan. A Palantir “Maven Field Service Representative” tied to Project Maven has been assigned to the center, integrating battlefield AI into Gaza’s future control structure.

Project Maven fuses satellite imagery, drone feeds, intercepted communications, and metadata into an AI platform described as “optimizing the kill chain.” Rights groups argue these AI-enabled systems have accelerated the genocide in Gaza, scaling up killings with minimal human oversight. UN figures show nearly 70% of verified fatalities are women and children, with entire families wiped out in strikes allegedly guided by AI systems.

Palantir has expanded cooperation with Israeli occupation forces since 2024, doubling its Tel Aviv presence and supporting war-related missions. Amnesty International lists the company among firms whose services helped facilitate genocide and starvation in Gaza. Dataminr, specializing in real-time social media surveillance, has also been integrated into the framework, feeding AI-driven threat intelligence into the evolving security architecture.

Under the so-called “Alternative Safe Communities” model, Palestinians would be forcibly relocated into fenced, heavily monitored compounds under US-Israeli control. Within these zones, AI systems would track phones, movements, and online activity, flagging individuals as “security risks,” effectively turning Gaza into an AI-driven digital prison and kill-list system.

This architecture has been compared to Nazi concentration camps in its logic of isolating, surveilling, and managing an entire population as a security threat, reducing civilians to data points under total algorithmic control.

February 17, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Comments Off on Israeli firms transform cars into intelligence devices: Reports

Zionist-controlled companies to surveil British citizens

Press TV – February 17, 2026

The implications of the British state using technology produced by Zionist-controlled companies to surveil British citizens are beyond belief.

The cornerstone of a sovereign nation is the absolute control over its own justice, its own data, and its own watchmen. Yet today, the very machinery of British law enforcement is being quietly and systemically outsourced.

The British government has allowed the digital and physical infrastructure of the state to become a high tech extension of a foreign power, driven by the pernicious influence of Zionism, an ideology that prioritizes the expansion of a foreign entity over the rights of people in the UK.

This is not merely a matter of procurement. It is a surrender of independence.

By embedding Zionist-linked firms into the heartbeat of British society, the government is importing a surveillance philosophy rooted in the subjugation of one people and applying it to their own subjects.

These are combat-proven technologies forged in the fires of the Gaza genocide, and they are now the primary eyes and ears of the metropolitan police.

The police use Israeli intelligence firm Cellebrite to unlock the phones and private lives of their own citizens. They also use BriefCam to track people’s movements through video synopsis.

BriefCam is a company co-founded by Gideon Ben-Zvi, a veteran of the IOF elite unit 8200 Intelligence Corps, who openly admits to using unit 8200 criteria to lead his ventures.

The reach of foreign intelligence into the streets is even more direct through Corsight AI, which provides facial recognition throughout the country.

Born as a subsidiary of Cortica, it was founded by Igal Raichelgauz, another alumnus of the Zionist military intelligence apparatus.

When our faces are scanned by software overseen by the architects of the occupation of Palestine, can we truly say that the British public is being policed by British consent?

But the intrusion goes deeper than software. It reaches the very hands of our officers on the front lines.

ISPRA, an Israeli specialist in riot control, has historically supplied the crowd management munitions used to police the streets.

When the tools used to suppress dissent in the UK are manufactured by a firm specializing in the containment of occupied territories, the line between domestic policing and foreign military occupation begins to blur.

Furthermore, Motorola Solutions, a company listed by the United Nations for its links to illegal settlements, is now deep inside our research projects.

Through initiatives like CREST and Connections, they’re building predictive policing tools designed to monitor the social media content and online lives of the British public.

When a company that facilitates surveillance in the West Bank is the same one mapping the future crimes of Londoners, we have fundamentally compromised our domestic integrity.

Links between Zionist movement and Lionel Idan

Lionel Idan is a key British prosecutor serving as the Chief Crown Prosecutor for the CPS and also the National Hate Crime Lead Prosecutor.

He’s currently being heavily lobbied by a network of powerful Zionist groups.

We’re not just talking about casual meetings.

Idan has held repeated engagements with the Israeli embassy and Zionist lobby groups, the board of Deputies of British Jews and the Community Security Trust, CSD, an organization headed by convicted fraudster Gerald Ronson.

The objective is clear, to ensure the Crown Prosecution Service, CPS, fully adapts the IHRA definition of anti-semitism, a definition weaponized against anti-Zionists, as we saw during the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party.

Lionel Idan has not hidden these alliances. In an op-ed for the Jewish News, he boasted that the CPS sits on the anti-semitism Working Group alongside the CSD and the Jewish leadership council.

He confirmed that lobby groups, the CSD and the Antisemitism Policy Trust, are now core members of the CPS External Consultative Group on Hate Crime.

Perhaps most concerning is that the national prosecution guidance is being shaped by these very groups. Idan has admitted that their involvement helps the CPS define the line where anti-Zionism becomes a criminal offense.

When the person overseeing London’s prosecutions attends Israel lobby annual dinners to celebrate new security task forces, where is the independence of the UK legal system?

It should be demanded that the CPS remain an impartial body free from the influence of political lobbyists and foreign interests.

February 17, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Comments Off on Zionist-controlled companies to surveil British citizens

Trump stalls over Iran strike plan, Iran holds all the aces

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 17, 2026

Trump has the option of going to war with Iran and receiving much-needed campaign funds from Israel for the midterms – or opting to defy Bibi and facing certain defeat by losing both houses and facing certain impeachment. Can the Iranians save him?

Is Trump serious about going to war with Iran? To understand this, it’s important to examine his relationship with Netanyahu and to see who has the advantage when it comes to dragging the U.S. into a war, and whether Israel can actually be a greater threat to the U.S. than Tehran can ever be.

The trap that Trump is falling into is one where he has little or no wiggle room at all to control the Iran crisis, whereby Israel can threaten him with isolation while it goes ahead with its strike.

There are two dynamics at play here which are struggling to find a compromise. Trump wants a deal with Iran which takes away their nuclear capability, while Israel wants a war which overthrows the Iranian regime and installs a Mossad/CIA puppet. The problem, though, is that Israel is not an honest broker and keeps shifting the goalposts. The latest demand now is that removing Iran’s ballistic missiles should be at the heart of any deal that Trump pulls off.

Trump is ensnared and is aware of how Bibi is manipulating him. He may, on occasion, swear at journalists and pretend he is his own boss and his own president and that Israel is a client state of Washington which has to toe the line, but in reality, it is clear that Israel is calling the shots.

In recent days, we have heard that the one aircraft carrier the U.S. had in the region, the USS Abraham Lincoln, is to be joined by a second called the USS Gerald Ford. U.S. media report that the Lincoln is in the “Arabian Sea,” which is a comical way of saying that it’s keeping its distance from Iran’s shores and Houthi missiles off the coast of Yemen. But other reports are suggesting that the reason why Trump claims he has sent a second carrier – to beef up the “flotilla” in case of a war breaking out with Iran – is untrue. Some insiders are briefing journalists that the Lincoln has technical problems which will render it useless in a combat situation and so needs to be replaced with the more advanced Ford.

However, even this might be a false narrative offered by Pentagon insiders who are not supporters of Trump. A second explanation about the carriers is that it buys Trump time. He has even told reporters that it will take about a month for the Ford to get there, which he believes should be ample time for a deal to be struck with Iran, or at least will give him four more weeks to work out a way of dealing with the threat – that’s the threat from Israel, not Iran.

Israel threatened Trump before when he went ahead with his bunker buster bombs in June of last year by saying simply, “If you don’t do it, we’ll nuke Iran.” It worked. This time around, the threat is, “If you don’t join us, then we’ll strike Iran alone and you will have to deal with the consequences of being the first U.S. president to have to explain to the Jewish lobby why Iran is wiping Israel off the face of the map.” This second threat is multi-layered and also might work with Trump, given that the midterm elections, which are approaching, will cost twice what the elections cost which got him into office. It will be Jewish money which bankrolls him this time around, with the intention of saving him from losing both houses and facing inevitable impeachment.

And so, in many ways, Trump is closer to and more dependent on the regime in Tehran to help him out. A deal which limits the enrichment of uranium and can guarantee no nuclear bomb can be made might be something he can present to the American people as a great victory. The irony is that the deal might be more or less a carbon copy of Obama’s, which he, Trump, rejected while in his first term in office, a rejection which has created the present crisis.

The trouble with any deal now about enrichment is that it is unlikely to satisfy the Israelis, who have become more aware in recent weeks about the capability of Iran’s latest generation of ballistic missiles both in terms of defence and attack. Moreover, the U.S. attack on Iran last year for 12 days has now raised the stakes to a fever pitch, making the Iranians clearer and more focused about any kind of attack happening against them: all-out war.

According to some credible reports, Trump was recently asking Pentagon chiefs if the U.S. could carry out a single in-and-out strike operation which could be used to warn Iran while satisfying Israel at the same time about the U.S. threat, and he was told no such options are feasible. This is due to Iran being much more prepared now for such attacks, both militarily and intelligence-wise, while the Mossad operation of creating civil strife on the ground failed spectacularly. The U.S. is in a very tight corner right now, as its forces and its allies in the region are in the crosshairs of Iran the moment the first bomb is dropped, and so Trump’s options to go to war are very limited. It would be suicidal for Trump to strike Iran, as the losses to U.S. forces and the disruption to oil distribution via the Straits of Hormuz would be too great, not to mention the destruction of infrastructure in Israel itself.

But there is also another factor which is putting all the pressure on Trump to get a deal with Iran. Since last June’s attack and more recently Trump’s betrayal of cordial relations with Putin conjured up at Alaska, along with the Venezuela coup, both Russia and China have upped their support for Iran. This is a critical factor now preventing Trump from hitting Iran with anything. China recently gave Iran its latest state-of-the-art new radar system which can identify U.S. stealth bombers at a range of 700km. Game changer. If you consider Iran, Israel, and the U.S. as three poker players at the table, it is clear that Iran now has the best hand with the most options. It can maximize its role now and exploit Trump’s vulnerability by going for a deal which involves sanctions being relieved, or it could hold out and play a long game way beyond Trump’s one-month breathing space and really turn up the heat on him leading up to the midterms in November. Iran always plays for time and is good at this strategy. And given that even the kindest analysis of America’s strike capability in Iran is two weeks before depletion of all missile stocks is reached, any hawks close to Trump who are pushing for a strike must have the destruction of the U.S. in their strategy as well, as Iran cannot be pounded into a state of submission in such a short space of time. Surely that can’t be the aim of Bibi. Surely not!

February 17, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump stalls over Iran strike plan, Iran holds all the aces

Macron, Merz, and von der Leyen Defend Expanded Speech Controls

The Munich Security Conference just became a defense session for Europe’s most ambitious censorship regime

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | February 16, 2026

Emmanuel Macron stood before the Munich Security Conference last week and offered a blueprint for what European governments should be allowed to delete from the internet. The French president wants mandatory identity verification for social media users, one account per person, algorithm transparency on the government’s terms, and the legal authority to block platforms that refuse to comply.

“We have to be sure there is one single person with one account,” Macron said. “If this is an AI system, if this is bot or organized by big organization, it should be just forbidden.”

The statement describes a system where every social media user would have their identity verified by platforms and tied to a single permitted account. Anonymous speech, pseudonymous commentary, and the ability to maintain separate personal and professional presences online would effectively end for anyone using platforms that serve the European market.

Macron suggested this as a way to protect democracy. The mechanism would give governments a powerful tool to identify, track, and silence any user whose speech they find objectionable.

France is moving to ban social media access for anyone under 15, a policy that requires verifying every user. Macron defended this by characterizing free expression online as a form of brainwashing.

“Free speech would mean I will give the mind, brand the heart of my teenagers to algorithm of big guys,” he said. “I’m not totally sure I share the values, or Chinese algorithm without any control. We are crazy.”

The argument runs as follows: letting young people encounter ideas online without government permission is insanity. The solution requires every user to prove their age to access platforms where public discussion happens.

Macron suggested that speech illegal in newspapers should remain illegal when moved online. “How is that the craziest and most harmful narratives can go unchecked in our digital space, where they will fall under the law if published in print?”

The question assumes “harmful narratives” is a category the government should define. It also assumes the government should have the power to prevent people from encountering ideas it has labeled crazy.

Macron invoked the Digital Services Act as the foundation for expanded censorship across Europe. “This is a very important regulation because for the first time we created the framework to regulate this platform.”

The DSA gives EU regulators the authority to demand content removal from platforms. Macron called for going further: using the law to “excuse those who clearly decide not to respect our rules and our regulation” and to “block all those [who allow] interferences in our systems.”

He offered a familiar list of speech categories he wants suppressed: “racist speech, hateful speech, anti-Semitic speech.” These terms have no fixed legal definition that applies uniformly across EU member states. Who is racist, what constitutes hatred, which criticism of which policies counts as anti-Semitism: these determinations would be made by regulators and platforms operating under government pressure.

Macron described limits on speech as somehow inherent to democracy itself: “When you have free speech, you have respect, you have rules, and the limit of my freedom is the beginning of your freedom.”

This formulation treats speech as equivalent to physical coercion. Your words are framed as a boundary violation against others simply by existing. The speech that most requires protection is speech that offends, that challenges consensus, that the powerful would prefer to suppress. Macron’s framework offers no protection for any of it.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who opened the conference, echoed the European position that speech protections should end where government-defined values begin.

“A divide has opened up between Europe and the United States,” Merz said. “And Vice President JD Vance said this very openly here at the Munich Security Conference a year ago, and he was right. The battle of cultures of MAGA in the US is not ours. Freedom of speech here ends where the words spoken are directed against human dignity and our basic law.”

“Human dignity” is the phrase German law uses to justify prosecuting speech. The Constitutional Court has interpreted it to cover insults, Holocaust denial, and an expanding category of expression that authorities determine undermines respect for persons or groups. It is the legal mechanism under which German police have raided homes over social media posts and prosecuted people for memes.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen joined the censorship chorus with a declaration of territorial authority over online expression.

“I want to be very clear: our digital sovereignty is our digital sovereignty,” she said, adding the EU “will not flinch where this is concerned.”

Von der Leyen described European speech regulation as under attack from the United States, “which has wielded the threats of tariffs on partners to secure preferential access and has decried the EU’s digital rules as an assault on free speech.”

The EU’s digital rules are an assault on free speech. The DSA empowers bureaucrats to demand platforms remove content, under threat of massive fines.

The EU has opened formal proceedings against X for its policies. European regulators have forced platforms to suppress content that would be legally protected in the United States.

Von der Leyen framed resistance to this regime as a threat to Europe’s “democratic foundation.” She claimed Europe has “a long tradition in freedom of speech” while defending a legal structure designed to ensure certain speech never reaches European audiences.

“The European way of life – our democratic foundation and the trust of our citizens – is being challenged in new ways,” she said. “On everything from territories to tariffs or tech regulations.”

The phrasing groups speech regulation with tariffs and territorial disputes. All three are matters where Europe will defend its sovereignty. What Europeans are permitted to say, read, and share online is treated as equivalent to where national borders fall.

The leaders who gathered in Munich spoke of protecting democracy while proposing tools that would let governments identify and punish dissent. They invoked free speech while demanding the power to decide which speech is free. They claimed to defend Europe while stripping Europeans of the ability to speak freely online.

February 16, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Keir Starmer-tied think tank paid PR firm to target The Grayzone

By Kit Klarenberg | The Grayzone | February 16, 2026

Leaked files have revealed that Labour Together, the shadowy think tank run by disgraced former top Keir Starmer aide Morgan McSweeney, paid the Washington DC-based corporate intelligence firm APCO Worldwide to spy on journalists who reported on their corrupt handling of campaign finances.

The reporters named appear to have been targeted for their efforts to investigate how the UK’s Labour Party elites spent 730,000 pounds in undeclared donations to install Starmer as their leader.

The files show APCO used those funds to oversee the fabrication of a dodgy, evidence-free dossier claiming that Russia was behind damaging disclosures about Labour Together, which it submitted to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) of Britain’s GCHQ — London’s equivalent to the US National Security Agency.

The “significant persons of interest” listed in APCO’s McCarthyite casebook included The Grayzone and myself.

According to my APCO dossier, “While a self described ‘investigative journalist,’ he is an author for the Gray Zone. The site has been described as a ‘conspiracy blog’ and ‘Wagner propaganda channel.’ In 2023,” the dossier reads, I “was arrested by counter-terror police after [I] arrived in the UK.”

APCO bills itself as “a trusted and strategic advisor… that drive[s] our clients’ missions and objectives forward.” Despite its massive contract with Labour Together, the files show the PR firm struggled to identify its targets, and proved unable to establish the most basic facts about them.

When APCO branded The Grayzone as “Wagner propaganda,” it seemed to have confused us with “Grey Zone,” an entirely unrelated and now-defunct Telegram channel affiliated with the Russian military contractor. APCO also claimed I was “arrested by counter-terrorism police” in May 2023 upon returning to Britain. In fact, I had been detained, not arrested.

APCO also targeted journalists Matt Taibbi and Paul Holden, who led investigations into Labour Together’s potentially criminal activities, based on leaks and Freedom of Information requests. The PR firm had sought to secure “leverage” over Holden in order to sabotage his work.

The spying scandal began in November 2023, when Britain’s Sunday Times revealed that Keir Starmer’s campaign manager, Morgan McSweeney, had failed to declare £730,000 in campaign donations which he diverted to advance Starmer’s rise to Labour leadership. One month later, APCO prepared a memo for Labour Together outlining a strategy to blame the damaging disclosure on Russian hackers and attack the journalists who dared to publish details of the offending documents.

The story was given new life in February 2026, when British journalist Peter Geoghehan exposed a secret contract showing Labour Together paid APCO £30,000 to investigate the journalists it blamed for exposing its legally questionable activities.

It has now gone mainstream, with the Sunday Times publishing a lengthy report branding the Labour operation as a “dirty smear” based on a “lie” about Russian hacking.

However, the Times article omitted any mention of this reporter or The Grayzone, even though we were prominently targeted by Labour Together. In the following investigation, we explain why The Grayzone was targeted, tracing the origins of the slimy spying operation to a network of Labourite operatives who have sought to destroy us since well before Starmer came to power.

“Familiar with masters of the same drivers”

Labour Together was founded in 2015 by McSweeney, Starmer’s longtime svengali. After several failed campaigns for establishment candidates, McSweeney managed to transform his organization into a propaganda juggernaut, soliciting large donations from the UK Israel lobby’s most significant moneyman, Trevor Chinn.

While presenting his campaigning outfit as a plucky little think tank, he wielded it against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the movement behind him. To neutralize the ecosystem of alternative media outlets supporting Corbyn as Labour leader, Labour Together contracted a political operative named Imran Ahmed to spin out a censorship front called “Stop Funding Fake News.”

After weaponizing dubious charges of antisemitism to defund one of the most influential pro-Corbyn outlets, Canary UK, the organization folded, then resurfaced as the much bolder Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). Based inside the office of Labour Together, CCDH relied on the funding from Chinn and, as The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal revealed, secretly coordinated with the Israeli embassy in Washington.

McSweeney entered Downing Street as Starmer’s Chief of Staff just one month before Trump’s re-election. Among his most important tasks was repairing relations with the US President. At the time, Trump’s aides were bristling over reports that McSweeney met with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris during the Democratic National Convention to plot strategy. One of Trump’s top donors, the transhumanist mega-billionaire Elon Musk, also had his knives out for McSweeney after journalists Matt Taibbi and Paul Thacker revealed that CCDH’s top priority for 2024 was to “kill Elon Musk’s Twitter.”

McSweeney’s solution was to dispatch one of Labour’s most seasoned – and scandal-stained – fixers to Washington. He was Lord Peter Mandelson, the architect of the neoliberal New Labour wave whose notoriously transactional tendencies seemed to make him the perfect match for Trump. Mandelson made himself a fixture at Butterworth’s, a favorite Capitol Hill haunt of MAGA operatives, and insinuated himself into Trumpist social circles.

In June 2025, the restaurant erected a plaque honoring Mandelson during a ceremony overseen by Raheem Kassam, a close associate of former Trump chief of staff Steve Bannon. There, a mirthful Mandelson raised a toast and proclaimed a special kinship with the MAGA elite: “Although we don’t have identical politics, we are familiar with masters of the same drivers that brought our respective figures to power — President Trump in your case and Keir Starmer in mine.”

But Mandelson was also dogged by the same sex trafficking figure who constantly inhabited the personal lives of both Trump and Bannon: Jeffrey Epstein. Both McSweeney and Starmer had been keenly aware of the ambassador’s friendship with Epstein, but they dismissed the concerns, even ignoring a warning from UK security services.

However, when a series of emails confirming Mandelson’s friendship with Epstein poured forth as part of a release by the US Department of Justice, the ambassador’s position became untenable. Following his firing in September 2025, a new tranche of emails published this January provided an even more damning portrait of their friendship. They showed, for instance, that Epstein channeled money to Mandelson’s husband, Reinaldo Avila da Silva, for a specious initiative which was never completed. Even worse, the communications exposed Mandelson providing Epstein with advance notice of the impending collapse of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government in 2010, as well as sensitive information about the UK’s “saleable assets.”

McSweeney’s scheming had finally caught up with him. Though Starmer initially praised and defended his longtime campaign guru in parliament, he caved soon after, forcing McSweeney to resign his post on February 8.

In the days since, Starmer has been unable to fill the vacancy. Meanwhile, another senior Labour official is reportedly considering leaving his role as well. Amid the chaos, British media has begun to speculate that the Prime Minister will be next to go.

Will the revelation of Labour Together’s media enemies list, and its secret contract with APCO, be the weight that finally sinks Starmer?

Labour Together’s misdirection ploy: blame Russia

McSweeney was aware that Labour Together had secretly contracted APCO to spy on journalists; however, he didn’t carry out the dirty work himself. That job appears to have been commissioned by his successor at the think tank, Josh Simons, who’s now a senior minister in Starmer’s government.

Simons has dismissed reports that the PR firm was tasked with spying on reporters as “nonsense,” insisting that APCO was merely “asked to look into a suspected illegal hack.” Simons’ disingenuous claims are undermined by newly-leaked documents related to the probe, however.

Perhaps most damning is a December 2023 memo prepared by APCO for Labour Together which shows investigators fretting about “recent articles and blog posts” which threatened to draw attention to the political group’s questionable funding schemes. Information published by these meddling journalists, particularly Paul Holden, “[raised] concern about the source of his information and what more he may choose to publish in the future,” the memo continued.

It was therefore deemed “important to identify the source of the information and to ascertain what additional information could be published.” Labour Together tasked APCO with probing several journalists, dubbed “significant persons of interest.”

The memo speculated that Holden and others may have received leaks from inside Labour Together, Labour party headquarters, parliament, or “illegally-gathered information collected” from a purported “hack” of Britain’s Electoral Commission in 2023. APCO concluded it was “essential” for Labour Together to concoct a strategy to counter the critical reporting.

Its response was to blame the organization’s woes on a Russian hack. But rather than hiring a cyber-security firm to investigate the supposed data breach, it contracted a corporate intelligence firm to attack the messengers.

In February 2024, The Guardian contacted Holden to alert him that the paper was preparing a hit piece alleging he was under investigation by the NCSC for receiving illegally obtained information from Russia. The Guardian had clearly been influenced by briefings from Labour Together, as well as by APCO’s report. Yet the outlet backed off when Holden promised to sue them for defamation.

APCO is now under formal investigation for potential standards breaches by Britain’s Public Relations and Communication Association.

How did The Grayzone wind up on Labour Together’s enemies list?

It is unclear how and why I became a “significant person of interest” in APCO and Labour Together’s secret smear campaign. However, their operation dovetailed with another surreptitious attempt by intelligence-tied actors to smear The Grayzone as Russian agents.

I have never spoken to Paul Holden or other journalists named as the firm’s targets, or conducted any journalistic investigations into Labour Together’s corrupt financial dealings. When APCO initiated its probe, I had mentioned Labour Together in a single article months prior that focused on the organization’s censorship-obsessed spinoff, the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

Such sloppiness and paranoia is the hallmark of Amil Khan, a veteran British government psyops warrior turned “disinformation expert” involved with Labour Together and Starmer’s Labour.

Khan cut his teeth running covert British-funded psychological warfare operations during the Syrian dirty war, supporting violent extremist groups armed and financed by the CIA and MI6. He subsequently founded Valent Projects, which “specializes in addressing online manipulation.” Khan’s outfit produced a paper on social media ratfucking strategies for Labour Together entitled, “Power and Persuasion: Understanding the Right’s Playbook.”

In December 2021, The Grayzone exposed how Valent Projects covertly produced Covid vaccine propaganda funded by the British monarchy’s Royal Institute, using then-popular “BreadTube” personality Abigail Thorn as the front person for its campaign. The investigation apparently placed this outlet in the crosshairs of Khan and his information warfare network.

Less than a year later, The Grayzone exposed Khan again – this time, for his role in a covert conspiracy to destroy us. Enlisted by celebrity former leftist journalist Paul Mason, Khan helped coordinate a harebrained scheme to demonetize and deplatform The Grayzone. The pair discussed going “full nuclear legal to squeeze [The Grayzone] financially,” and proposed publishing intelligence agency-sourced smears to delegitimize this outlet.

As their revenge plot approached its paranoid apogee, Mason and Khan fantasized about hosting an anti-Grayzone summit with some of the most rabid, intelligence-tied opponents of our reporting. Among those they pitched for the gathering was Imran Ahmed, director of the censorship-obsessed Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which was founded by Morgan McSweeney and shared an office with his Labour Together.

While it is unknown if the anti-Grayzone summit ever took place, we have since learned that Mason enlisted a team of high-priced London lawyers to sue this outlet just days after our article exposing his secret smear campaign appeared. In May 2023, I was detained at the UK’s Luton International Airport and interrogated about The Grayzone’s activities by counter-terror police. Six months later, APCO initiated its covert investigation of me, The Grayzone, and others whose reporting had wound them up on the Labour Together enemies list.

APCO has so far remained silent about the scandal. The Grayzone has submitted a request for comment to Tom Short, the PR firm’s London chief. We received an automated response revealing he conveniently slipped away to the US. Upon Short’s return to Britain, APCO will no longer be able to hide behind bogus allegations of Russian hacking.

February 16, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Israel’ threatens to genocide Gaza if Hamas refuses disarmament

Al Mayadeen | February 16, 2026

Senior Israeli officials have threatened to renew the genocide in Gaza if Hamas does not disarm within a proposed 60-day period, although the Israeli occupation continues its attacks on the Strip daily, never adhering to the ceasefire agreement.

Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that the occupation government intends to give Hamas two months to relinquish its arms. If it does not comply, the Israeli military would “complete the mission” in Gaza, he threatened.

The warnings came against the backdrop of the US-led “Board of Peace”, under which Washington dictated the 60-day deadline.

According to Fuchs, Hamas would be required to surrender all weapons, including small arms such as AK-47 rifles. He emphasized that the Israeli regime would evaluate the outcome at the end of the period.

Netanyahu also reiterated that disarmament must include small arms, claiming that such weapons were used during the October 7 operation. Israeli officials allege that tens of thousands of rifles remain in Gaza.

Reports in The New York Times suggested that a draft proposal discussed by US mediators could initially allow Hamas to retain some small arms while surrendering weapons deemed capable of striking “Israel”. The document is reportedly expected to be shared with the Palestinian Resistance in the coming weeks.

Devastation and aggression despite ceasefire

Despite the ceasefire agreement, officially effective as of October 11, 2025, the Israeli regime has maintained its occupation of vast areas across the Gaza Strip, and continues to attack the Palestinian territory’s infrastructure and civilians.

Since then, over 591 Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed, and more than 1,598 others have been injured.

Since October 7, 2023, more than 72,051 Palestinians have been killed, and over 171,706 have been injured, making the war on Gaza one of the most brutal in modern history.  Many victims are still in dire need of treatment. However, hospitals across Gaza have been systematically targeted over the past three years, forcing operations to minimal function, sometimes to a halt.

February 16, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Apple Just Bought A Sinister ‘Pre-Speech’ Tech Company Implicated In Genocide

By Nate Bear – ¡Do Not Panic! – February 15, 2026

Tech giant Apple has quietly paid nearly $2 billion for a ‘pre-speech’ tech company whose employees helped Israel commit genocide in Gaza.

And Apple has paid this money, the second-biggest deal in its history, for a company that doesn’t have a product, doesn’t have any revenues and whose website is a single page containing 15 words.

The company, Q.ai, is developing sensors which map the imperceptible movements of a human face to determine the words someone is thinking before they’re spoken.

They call it silent speech.

Or pre-speech.

And it’s exactly as sinister as you think it is.

Q.ai was founded by Aviad Maizels, Avi Barliya and Yonatan Wexler, all of whom honed their skills by testing technologies of apartheid on Palestinians. Maizels is a former commander of Unit 81, the IDF division which builds Israel’s offensive cyber weapons. Barliya, according to his LinkedIn, was an intelligence officer in the Israeli air force, while Wexler is a former Unit 8200 agent.

Apple’s genocide intake

In a blog post announcing the deal, Tom Hulme, an executive at Google Ventures, one of the company’s early investors, revealed that 30% of Q.ai’s more than 100 staff were called up to participate in the genocide of Gaza.

This admission means dozens of people implicated in genocidal acts who served under the political command of Yoav Gallant, an ICC indicted war criminal, are now Apple employees.

It should be a huge scandal. The biggest company in the US, one of the world’s most recognisable names, has folded into its staff dozens of people who served in a military during the period it committed genocide, according to all of the world’s most acclaimed rights experts.

But every single mainstream article which covered news of the deal, from Reuters to the FT, ignored this fact.

Mainstream coverage also ignored a number of other extremely cogent elements to the story, including the nature of the deal and the technology itself.

Apple has paid two billion dollars for something that barely appears to exist.

Q.ai’s website consists of just 15 words.

To find out exactly what the company does you have to look beyond the press releases to the patents Q.ai and its founders have filed.

And these patents read like plot lines from the bleakest dystopian futures.

Sensing silent speech

One filing details technology capable of “determining an emotional state of an individual based on facial skin micromovements.” The same filing says the technology could be used “to identify a user based on heart-rate and breathing-rate.” Another filing says Q.ai’s software “synthesises speech in response to words articulated silently by the test subject.”

Q.ai’s technology centres around silent speech.

This is the idea that before we vocalise words and move our mouths to emit sounds, our brain has already sent signals to muscles in our throat and face determining what we’re going to say. Q.ai claims to have invented infrared sensors that can pick up these pre-speech micro-movements.

One filing talks about a “sensing device configured to fit an ear of a user, with an optical sensing head which senses light reflected from the face and outputs a signal in response. Processing circuitry processes the signal to generate a speech output.”

Tech bloggers have suggested Apple has bought the company to enable non-verbal control of an iPhone and other devices via its airpod earphones or smart glasses. An annotated diagram included with the patent shows a person wearing glasses and an earpiece integrated with the technology.

Indeed Apple is no stranger to adopting the technologies of Israeli apartheid, and in fact the company is extremely familiar with Maizels himself.

In 2013, Apple bought Maizels’s first company, PrimeSense, a developer of 3D sensing technology. PrimeSense technology went on to become the foundation for Apple’s Face ID system on its newer iPhone and iPad models.

Nonetheless, two billion dollars for a non-existent technology and a three-year old company, is unprecedented. What isn’t unprecedented, however, is a US tech giant overpaying for an Israeli company.

Overpriced Israeli tech

Last year, Google bought Israeli cybersecurity Wiz for $32 billion, which, at 64 times Wiz’s annual sales, was widely seen as an inflated price and far in excess of the sales-to-valuation ratio for similar companies.

At this price, however, Israel received a huge $5 billion tax windfall. At the time Zionists crowed it would help the country buy more warplanes and missiles to commit genocide.

The deal for Q.ai, while a lot smaller, will still generate significant tax income for Israel’s struggling economy.

And Israel is critical to Apple.

The company has a large R&D campus in the country, its second-biggest outside the US, into which large numbers of Unit 8200 and Unit 81 graduates are funnelled. Apple CEO Tim Cook is a devoted Zionist, has visited Israel on numerous occasions, and in 2018 received an award from Zionist lobby group the ADL for his efforts to censor anti-Israel speech. Apple has made good on that promise over the last two years, sacking staff for expressing pro-Palestine, anti-genocide views. Cook has never spoken about Gaza.

The price for a ghost company with a few patents, then, looks as much about politics as it does about technology.

That’s not to say Q.ai’s technology won’t be commercialised for consumer applications. It probably will be. And if the tech is realised, the implications for privacy and data collection are frightening.

As are the security state and military applications.

A pre-crime future

A few days after the Q.ai deal, the head of neurotechnology at Israel’s directorate of defense research and development, the country’s equivalent to the US’s DARPA programme, gave her first-ever interview to Israeli media. In the interview she referenced Q.ai and said the Israeli military is working on similar technology. The US has a DARPA project known as Silent Talk which is also working to develop pre-speech sensing and non-verbal control technologies.

Once the technology is developed, and pre-speech established as a legitimate biological human function, how far behind will pre-crime be?

Given the frenzied efforts we’ve seen to shut down and criminalise criticism of Israel under the guise of antisemitism, one can easily imagine a future of pre-speech sensing technology being rolled out to identify would-be critics of Israel. Or the US. Or Europe. Or imperialism in general.

You can imagine it now. “Based on our silent speech detector we have determined you were going to say something hateful or antisemitic or un-American and are therefore under arrest.”

The most dystopian technologies continue to flow out of Israel. And they continue to flow because Israel is empowered by the US and Europe to maintain a system of apartheid built upon invasive and authoritarian technologies of control.

It is therefore no surprise that the creators of Q.ai are veterans of Israel’s genocidal military security state, or that the largest company in the US sees these technologies as essential to its AI future.

And while this story may be no surprise, we should never get used to, and must resist, technologies of apartheid and genocide, and their creators, becoming embedded in our devices, our economies and our lives.

February 16, 2026 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s new West Bank registration process declares Palestinian land ‘state property’

The Cradle | February 16, 2026

The Israeli government has approved a land registration process, which will allow Israel to claim territory in the occupied West Bank as “state property” if Palestinians cannot prove ownership, a move that has been described as “de facto annexation.”

Israel’s Broadcasting Corporation (KAN) reported that the proposal was submitted by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, and Defense Minister Israel Katz.

“We are continuing the revolution of settlement and strengthening our hold across all parts of our land,” Smotrich said.

Katz called the move a vital security measure and an “appropriate response to illegal land registration processes promoted by the Palestinian Authority.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the registration process will allow for “transparency” and will help resolve land disputes.

The bar for proving Palestinian land ownership is extremely high due to Israel’s restrictive legal system.

Palestinian claims of ownership are rarely granted. Many families rely on decades-old Ottoman documents, or have never had their land properly registered.

Similarly, Israel rarely grants building permits to Palestinians, allowing troops to demolish homes across the occupied West Bank. According to Israel’s Channel 14, Smotrich has established a paramilitary unit whose job is the destruction of Palestinian property.

The registration measures approved on Sunday were frozen in 1968.

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas called the approval of the land registration process “de facto annexation.”

“The decision to classify West Bank land as state land under Israeli authority constitutes a direct threat to security and stability. The measure amounts to de facto annexation of occupied Palestinian territory and signals the beginning of the implementation of annexation plans aimed at entrenching the occupation through illegal settlement expansion,” the PA presidency said in a statement on Sunday.

Since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government came to power, it has been rapidly advancing plans to illegally annex the West Bank – occupied by Israel in 1967.

Israel’s security cabinet approved new measures on 8 February aimed at drastically overhauling the occupied West Bank’s legal and civil framework, allowing Tel Aviv to further expand illegal settlements and strengthen its grip on the territory.

Last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed off on reviving the controversial E1 settlement project. The project aims to link Maale Adumim to occupied East Jerusalem, which is viewed as integral to a future Palestinian state.

Israel’s cabinet also voted in 2025 to take full responsibility for land registration in Area C of the occupied West Bank – an area comprising around 60 percent of the territory and home to the vast majority of Israeli settlements. That move was also described as a de facto annexation.

February 16, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Two children killed in Palestinian Authority ambush in West Bank; Hamas slams attack as ‘black mark’

Press TV – February 16, 2026

Two children have been killed after Palestinian Authority (PA) forces opened fire on a vehicle carrying their father, a resistance fighter, in the town of Tamoun in the northeastern part of the occupied West Bank.

The three-year-old daughter of Samer Samara succumbed to her wounds on Sunday after being shot by the forces, Palestinian media outlets reported.

Her 16-year-old brother, Ali, was killed after being shot in the head. Their father was wounded and later abducted by PA forces.

According to the reports, the forces shot Samara in the legs before abducting him.

Local reports said units from the PA’s so-called Preventive Security Service and a special unit set up the ambush and fired heavy gunfire at the car during an operation to abduct Samara, who is wanted by Israeli occupation forces.

Following the killings, the youths of the town of Tamoun launched a demonstration and a general strike. Reports said the PA sent reinforcements to suppress the demonstration.

The Gaza Strip’s Hamas resistance movement condemned the atrocities, holding the Authority fully responsible for the consequences of targeting resistance fighters and killing children.

In a statement, the group described what happened as a “serious crime” and a “black mark in the record of the security services that continue to overpower our people instead of protecting them.”

The movement warned that the policy could damage Palestinian internal cohesion and demanded accountability.

It called for “holding all those involved accountable, stopping the pursuit of wanted Palestinians, and releasing political detainees.”

The Committee of Families of Political Prisoners also condemned the shooting, describing it as the result of a “systematic policy targeting resistance fighters.”

It said the incident represented a “dangerous deviation” that placed security services in confrontation with the population rather than protecting them.

Human rights organizations say such incidents risk deepening internal tensions at a time when Palestinians in the West Bank also face ongoing Israeli military raids and settler violence, contributing to what observers describe as a climate of compounded insecurity for civilians.

February 16, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Needs Time Before Another Iran War—Here’s Why

By José Niño | The Libertarian Institute | February 16, 2026

The United States finds itself in an unfamiliar position. After spending approximately one hundred and fifty THAAD interceptors and eighty SM-3 missiles to help defend Israel during the Twelve-Day War in June 2025, the Pentagon faces a stark reality. Its stockpiles are depleted, its production lines cannot keep pace, and another major conflict with Iran would require an air defense umbrella America can no longer fully provide.

The question is not whether the United States wants to strike Iran again. The question is whether it can afford to.

For now, the answer appears to be no. But history suggests this pause may be temporary, with negotiations serving not as a genuine path to peace but as a strategic timeout while Israel restocks its depleted munitions and air defenses. After all, the Twelve-Day War itself kicked off in the middle of active negotiations that critics across the political spectrum described as either a deliberate ruse or a diplomatic process Israel cynically sabotaged.

Throughout the clash with Israel, the Israeli government worked hard to control the narrative about what Iran’s missiles actually hit. Military censorship laws prevented journalists from reporting strike locations near sensitive facilities. But satellite data told a different story.

A report by The Daily Telegraph using radar analysis from Oregon State University revealed that Iranian missiles struck at least five Israeli military facilities with remarkable accuracy. These included Tel Nof Airbase, Camp Glilot housing Unit 8200, Israel’s premier signals intelligence unit, and Zipporit weapons manufacturing facility.

None of these strikes were reported from within Israel. Professor Jerome Bourdon of Tel Aviv University explained, “We probably will never know the full extent of the damage.”

Haifa’s BAZAN oil refinery was shut down for two weeks with an estimated $250 million loss. Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba took a direct hit from Iran’s missile barrage. Most critically, by June 18, a U.S. official disclosed that Israel was running low on Arrow interceptors. The Washington Post reported assessments that Israel could only maintain missile defense for ten to twelve more days. The war’s duration was constrained by the physical limits of both sides’ arsenals.

The United States used approximately 25% of its entire global THAAD stockpile during the Twelve-Day War, firing roughly one hundred and fifty interceptors. It also expended eighty SM-3 interceptors and thirty Patriot PAC-3 interceptors. The problem is that production cannot remotely keep pace with consumption.

THAAD interceptors are manufactured at a rate of only eleven to twelve per year. That means replacing the one hundred and fifty interceptors fired during the Twelve-Day War would take more than twelve years at current production rates. CSIS analysts warned in late 2025 that no new THAAD interceptors would be delivered until 2027, creating a dangerous gap.

Even after the Pentagon reprogrammed $700 million into THAAD procurement, that only covers about forty-five missiles at $15 million each. As JINSA’s Ari Cicurel warned, “Both Israel and the US used an immense amount of their interceptor stockpiles. We are still very far behind in replenishing to get back to what we had before.”

By January 2026, defense experts were sounding the alarms that depleted interceptor stocks were constraining the Trump administration’s options regarding Iran, since another war would require the same defense umbrella the United States can no longer fully provide.

The interceptor shortage is just one symptom of a deeper structural problem. A Foundation for Defense of Democracies report published in April 2025 audited twenty-five weapons systems committed or potentially committed to Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel. The finding was stark. Only seven of twenty-five had a strong defense industrial base, while the remaining eighteen were either weak or required significant attention.

Consider 155mm artillery shells. The Army targeted 100,000 rounds per month by October 2025. As of June 2025, production stood at just 40,000 per month. Even that figure is misleading. Only 18,000 complete rounds with propellant were being produced monthly because the United States depends on a single plant in Canada for artillery propellant and has no domestic production.

Against this backdrop, the United States and Iran resumed negotiations on February 6, 2026, in Muscat, Oman. After eight months of silence following the Twelve-Day War, talks restarted with delegations led by Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

The timing invites skepticism. The Twelve-Day War was launched on June 13, 2025, exactly three days before the sixth round of nuclear negotiations was scheduled. Israel struck while Iran was in what War on the Rocks described as “diplomatic preoccupation with Washington” and “military unpreparedness.”

Araghchi called the strikes a “betrayal of diplomacy,” stating, “We were supposed to meet with the Americans on 15 June to craft a very promising agreement…It was a betrayal of diplomacy and unprecedented blow to the foundations of international law.”

The Wall Street Journal reported “U.S. Diplomacy Served as Cover for Israeli Surprise Attack.” Trump told the New York Post after the strikes, “I always knew the date. Because I know everything.”

Doug Bandow noted that the Cato Institute reported that Israeli officials stated “Israel and the U.S. carried out a multi-faceted misinformation campaign” to convince Iran a strike was not imminent and that Trump “was an active participant in the ruse and knew about the military operation since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to move forward with the strike.”

Whether current negotiations represent genuine diplomacy or another strategic pause remains open. Araghchi stated that “existing mistrust poses a significant hurdle” to progress.

From a military industrial perspective, the current negotiations serve a clear purpose regardless of diplomatic intent. They buy time. Israel’s defense ministry purchased weapons worth 220 billion shekels, approximately $61.5 billion, in 2024, four times previous years, reflecting the desperate need to restock. Israel is now accelerating development and production of Arrow 3, Arrow 4, Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and ground based laser systems in anticipation of a potential second round.

The United States faces the same imperative. The Trump administration has pledged a record $1 trillion defense budget and the 2026 NDAA authorized multiyear procurement for key munitions. But experts warn these measures are necessary but insufficient given the scale of the gap between production capacity and real-world consumption rates.

The fundamental question is how long it takes to rebuild stockpiles sufficiently to contemplate another major conflict. With THAAD production at eleven to twelve interceptors per year and no new deliveries until 2027, the answer is measured in years, not months.

One thing has become clear. Military industrial issues are coming back to the fore. And the United States, despite its constant bragging about being exceptional, faces the same resource constraints that all mortal imperial polities have previously faced.

Wargames by the Center for New American Security found the United States would run out of long range munitions in less than a week in a fight with China over Taiwan. The Twelve-Day War revealed the United States cannot sustain high intensity conflict support for even one ally without severely depleting its stockpiles.

The current negotiations with Iran may represent genuine diplomacy. Or they may represent a tactical pause to allow Israel time to rebuild its defenses before the next round. Either way, the resource constraints are real. The production gaps are real. And the physical limits of America’s military industrial base now constrain its foreign policy options in ways Washington has not experienced in decades.

The quicker the United States recognizes these limits and pursues a more restrained foreign policy, the better off it will be. The alternative is to continue pretending that stockpiles replenish themselves, that production lines can magically accelerate, and that America can wage unlimited war in unlimited theaters without consequence.

The Twelve-Day War proved otherwise. The question is whether Washington has learned the lesson.

February 16, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

The Hidden Map: US and Israel May Use Unexpected Neighbors to Attack Iran

By Robert Inlakesh | The Palestine Chronicle | February 15, 2026

Amidst heightened tensions between the US-Israeli alliance and Iran, an enormous amount of focus has been placed in the media on Iran’s missile program and how this will impact any upcoming war. What is often ignored are the origins of the regional threats to Tehran and its stability.

While covering each and every threat to the Islamic Republic of Iran would be beyond the scope of such an article, there are a number of hostile nations surrounding the country that can be used to destabilize the nation. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and, to a lesser extent, Azerbaijan, are often cited as pro-Israeli, but there is another nation that flies under the corporate media’s radar.

Iran shares its second-largest land border with the nation of Turkmenistan, a country that is rarely mentioned as a regional player. What many don’t know is that the nation, long characterized as a neutral player, has strong ties with both the US and Israel.

Turkmenistan: Neutral State or Strategic Corridor?

Unlike many Muslim-majority nations, Turkmenistan has long recognized and maintained ties with the Israelis, their relationship beginning in 1993. Then, in April of 2023, these ties were further cemented with the inauguration of a permanent Israeli embassy in Ashgabat for the first time.

It should therefore be no surprise that Tel Aviv and Ashbagat’s relationship is closest in the intelligence sharing and security cooperation spheres. Afterall, the Israeli embassy – opened back in 2023 – was strategically placed only 17 kilometers away from Iran’s border, marking a major symbolic achievement for Israel, especially as it operates through what are suspected to be thousands of Mossad recruited agents inside the Islamic Republic.

Although Israel has no official military bases inside Turkmenistan, there have been a number of reports indicating that it has set up attack drone bases inside the country. This would make sense, considering that Ashbagat has been purchasing Israeli drone technology since the 2010s, more recently acquiring the SkyStriker tactical loiter munition (suicide drone), developed by Elbit Systems.

Ashgabat has long been in alignment with the West. In May of 1994, it became the first country to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) program. However, the following year, the UN approved granting Turkmenistan the status of a neutral country, meaning it would not join military blocs.

In 2001, following the September 11 attacks, this neutral stance suddenly began to change. While other Central Asian nations – Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – all immediately offered their military bases to the United States, due in large part to their concerns over the advancements of the Taliban, Turkmenistan only publicly admitted to allowing the US to use its airspace for military cargo aircraft to travel in transit.

In reality, the US airforce were operating a team on the ground in Ashgabat in order to coordinate refueling operations. In 2004, the Russian State protested the growing US-Turkmenistan military relationship, after reports emerged stating that American forces had “gained access to use almost all the military airfields of Turkmenistan, including the airport in Nebit-Dag near the Iranian border.”

Reports, which are not possible to independently verify but nonetheless have appeared consistent throughout the years, indicate that the US military has even established remote desert bases throughout different locations inside Turkmenistan.

Clinging to its neutral status on the public stage, Ashgabat rejects any mention of cooperation of this kind, including the denial of a 2015 statement by then US Central Command chief Lloyd Austin that the Turkmens had expressed their interest in acquiring US military equipment.

Signals of Military Activity

Perhaps the most concerning developments are the more recent revelations, revealed through OSINIT channels and Turkmen media, citing flight trackers to monitor the movement of US aircraft in the region. These reports indicate the confirmation that US Air Force transport aircraft C-17A Globemaster III and MC-130 Super Hercules have landed at undisclosed locations in Turkmenistan.

The significance of this, opposed to the rest of the military buildup that has been occurring in potential preparation for an attack on Iran, is that of the MC-130 Super Hercules, which is used specifically for transporting special forces teams, running night operations, as well as performing unconventional takeoffs and landings.

Paired with a recent report issued by the New York Times, indicating that the US’ options not only include an air campaign against Iranian nuclear and missile sites, but ground raids using special forces, it could be concluded that Turkmenistan is the location from which the US may seek to inject special forces units into Iran.

The Wider Ring around Iran

The Turkmenistan factor clearly cannot be ignored here, despite it often being dismissed as a neutral power that maintains friendly relations with both Russia and China. In fact, because of these relationships, with Moscow in particular, Tehran has refrained from attempting to expand its reach into the Central Asian country.

To Iran’s benefit is that Chinese and, to a lesser extent, Russian influence can reduce the extent to which the US and Israel can use Iran’s neighbors to threaten it. In Pakistan, for example, it is clear that both Islamabad’s joint security concerns – largely over Balochi militant groups – along its border, in addition to Beijing’s influence, make it highly unlikely that Pakistan would remain neutral and is instead inclined to help support Iran; within its limits, it should be added.

Azerbaijan is another potential threat to the stability of the Islamic Republic, due in large part to the large Azeri population in Iran’s own Azerbaijan Province. However, the vast majority of Azeri citizens are in fact loyal to the State and no major separatist movement exists at this time. The Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Ayatollah Khamenei himself are both ethnically part Azeri.

Meanwhile, many supporters of the Israeli puppet Reza Pahlavi openly express their intention to crack down on the Azeri ethnic minority inside Iran. During the reign of the CIA-MI6-installed Shah of Iran, minority groups suffered immensely, due to a clear tradition of ethno-nationalism that exists amongst the current supporters of the deposed monarchy.

Baku, for its part, is the top gas supplier to Israel, maintaining close military, diplomatic and intelligence ties with them. Azerbaijan even made Hebrew media headlines for its use of Israeli suicide drones and other military equipment during its war with Armenia.

On the other hand, Iran is militarily superior to Azerbaijan and has a considerable base of support amongst the nation’s population, of which the majority belong to the Shia branch of the Islamic faith. Therefore, Tehran has major leverage and could not only paralyze its oil and gas infrastructure, but perhaps has the potential of organic movements forming within Azerbaijan that will owe allegiance to Iran.

There is also the threat that the Israelis, in particular, will attempt to use Kurdish militant groups in Iraqi Kurdistan in order to carry out attacks on the Islamic Republic. Israel does not publicly acknowledge its presence in northern Iraq, yet Iran has directly struck its bases housing Mossad operatives in the past, while Kurdish separatist groups have been utilized countless times in attempts to destabilize the country. During the June 12-day-war last year, Israel also weaponized these proxies.

For those also concerned about Afghanistan’s role in threatening Iranian security, this has always historically been a precarious situation, yet Tehran has not only been improving its ties with Kabul, it officially recognized the Islamic Emirate during the past week. Again, this does not mean there is no potential threat there, but an alliance that holds with the Taliban government may prove important.

Gulf States, Jordan and the Regional Balance

Then there are the more obvious players, the UAE and Bahrain, which are not only partners of the Israelis as part of the so-called “Abraham Accords” but are overtly aligned with Tel Aviv’s regional agenda.

The Emiratis are speculated to hold some cards regarding trade, but their leverage is negligible. Both the Bahraini and Emirati leaderships are clearly anxious, because Iran’s responses to the use of their territory to attack the Islamic Republic could quickly collapse their regimes.

Jordan, meanwhile, is where the US appears to be focusing much of its military buildup, even withdrawing forces previously stationed in Syria’s al-Tanf region into the Hashemite Kingdom’s territory.

The Jordanian leadership is evidently permitting its territory to become a key battleground, which will likely be subjected to attacks if the US chooses to use it to aid the Israeli-US offensive, but it is simply powerless in such a scenario.

Jordan has become a Western-Israeli intelligence and military hub in the region, meaning that if King Abdullah II objects to the demands of its allies, he understands well that his rule could be ended in a matter of hours. Therefore, he must risk his country being caught in the crossfire and just hope that an internal uprising doesn’t take shape, which is one of the reasons why he has been so hostile to the Muslim Brotherhood, fearing they could end up leading any revolt as the organization did in Egypt.

Turkiye, on the other hand, which is also a major regional player, is likely to play both sides behind the scenes, attempting to stay out of such a fight. If it takes either side, it will suffer the repercussions. Perhaps the most important role it could play is to prevent its bases or airspace from being used by the US.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar both maintain cordial relations with Iran, clearly favoring a scenario where no war occurs at all, because they are home to US bases. As we saw last June, the US used its CENTCOM headquarters in Doha to direct its attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, and as a result, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) struck US facilities there.

Riyadh and Doha do not want to get dragged into such a scenario. It is also of note that they have a vested interest in neither side winning the war conclusively, because it is in their interests for there to be a multi-polar West Asia, not an Israeli-dominated region that will inevitably consume them.

A Conflict with Wider Consequences

Some have also speculated about Syria’s role in any war. Damascus is clearly in the US-Israeli sphere of influence, but it will have a negligible impact in its current form. If Syria’s military forces assault Lebanon or Iraq, they will suffer enormous blows and fail tremendously. The only wildcard with Syria is whether armed groups there will choose to use the opportunity to attack Israel, although as a military power, the Syrians are a relative non-factor at the current time.

For now, the US-Israeli plot to stir civil war inside Iran and to follow through with an air campaign that aids their proxies has failed. Given the readiness of Iran’s allies in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and even Palestine, perhaps beyond, the US would be entering a point of no return scenario if it were to attempt a regime change operation.

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

February 15, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump, Netanyahu Agree to Target Iranian Oil Exports to China

What will it cost the US economy?

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | February 15, 2026

President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to increase economic pressure on Iran by attempting to cut oil exports to China.

A US official speaking with Axios said during the meeting between Trump and Netanyahu last week, the leaders “agreed that we will go full force with maximum pressure against Iran, for example, regarding Iranian oil sales to China.”

Kpler estimates that 80% of Iranian oil sales are to China. The Trump administration has attempted to cause intense economic suffering in Iran, hoping the result will be the overthrow of the government in Tehran.

Trump recently signed an executive order authorizing the White House to impose 25% tariffs on countries that buy Iranian oil. It’s unclear if the President will be willing to upend the delicate Trump relationship with China to damage the Iranian economy.

The US is ramping up the economic war as talks with Iran are ongoing. US and Iranian negotiators are scheduled to meet in Geneva on Tuesday. The US and Israel are demanding that Iran agree to limits on its nuclear and missile programs. Tehran says it is refusing to place any restrictions on its missile program.

According to officials speaking with Axios, Netanyahu and Trump disagreed during the meeting about negotiations with Iran. The President believes a deal is possible, while Netanyahu told Trump that Iran will not sign an agreement and that, if it did, Tehran would not comply with it.

CBS News reports speaking with two sources who said during a December meeting, Trump told Netanyahu that Israel could strike Iran if Iran does not agree to a deal with the US.

February 15, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

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