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Qatar condemns ‘dangerous’ Israeli attack on gas field

RT – March 18, 2026

The Qatari Foreign Ministry has condemned Israel’s attack on Iran’s South Pars gas field, which is jointly operated by Iran and Qatar. The ministry said that strikes on Pars constitute “a threat to global energy security.”

Gas processing facilities on the Iranian side of the field were damaged in strikes on Wednesday. While Israel has not taken responsibility for the strikes, Axios reported that they were carried out by Israeli forces in coordination with the US.

In a post on X, Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari blamed the destruction on Israel.

“The Israeli targeting of facilities linked to Iran’s South Pars field, an extension of Qatar’s North Field, is a dangerous and irresponsible step amid the current military escalation in the region,” he wrote. “Targeting energy infrastructure constitutes a threat to global energy security, as well as to the peoples of the region and its environment.”

Al-Ansari called on all parties involved in the conflict to “exercise restraint” and avoid “the targeting of vital facilities.”

South Pars/North Field is the world’s largest natural gas field. Holding an estimated 1,800 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, its recoverable reserves are believed to be almost as large those of every other gas field on earth combined. Qatar depends on oil and gas for 80% of its revenues, with almost all of its gas extracted from this field.

Iran has threatened to retaliate to the attack in kind. “As previously warned, if the fuel, energy, gas, and economic infrastructures of our country is attacked by the American-Zionist enemy, in addition to a powerful counterattack against the enemy, we will severely strike the origin of that aggression as well,” the country’s military said in a statement to Iranian media.

“We consider targeting the fuel, energy, and gas infrastructures of the countries of origin legitimate and will retaliate strongly at the earliest opportunity,” the statement continued.

In the hours after the attack on South Pars, loud explosions were heard in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, while QatarEnergy announced that missiles had hit the Ras Laffan LNG hub, causing “significant damage.” Qatar’s civil defense agency blamed the attack on Iran.

March 18, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Qatar condemns ‘dangerous’ Israeli attack on gas field

Iran made ‘unexpectedly substantial’ offer during Geneva talks, US envoys ‘dragged’ Trump into war: Report

The Cradle | March 18, 2026

UK National Security Advisor Jonathan Powell attended the final US–Iran talks in Geneva last month and concluded that a deal was in reach, The Guardian reported on 17 March, citing sources as saying that Washington’s leading envoys were acting as “Israeli assets” who “dragged” the US into war.

According to the report, Powell thought what Iran was proposing was “surprising.”

“The UK team were surprised by what the Iranians put on the table. It was not a complete deal, but it was progress and was unlikely to be the Iranians’ final offer. The British team expected the next round of negotiations to go ahead on the basis of the progress in Geneva,” the sources explained.

“Jonathan thought there was a deal to be done, but Iran were not quite there yet, especially on the issue of UN inspections of its nuclear sites.”

The report went on to say that US President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law and unofficial advisor Jared Kushner invited Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to the talks.

A former official told The Guardian that “Witkoff and Kushner did not bring a US technical team with them.”

“They used Grossi as their technical expert, but that is not his job. So, Jonathan Powell took his own team,” the former official added.

“Witkoff’s pronouncements on the Iran nuclear program were riddled with basic errors,” despite the envoys claiming they had “a pretty deep understanding of the issues that matter in this.”

The next round of talks was planned for 2 March. On 28 February, the US and Israel launched the attack.

“The UK saw no compelling evidence of an imminent threat of an Iranian missile attack on Europe, or of Iran securing a nuclear weapon …  The UK regarded the attack as unlawful and premature since Powell believed the path remained open to a negotiated solution to the long-running issue of how Iran could reassure the US that it was not seeking a nuclear weapon,” the report said.

A diplomat with knowledge of the negotiations said, “We regarded Witkoff and Kushner as Israeli assets that dragged a president into a war he wants to get out of.”

Before the war, Trump claimed not only that Iran was seeking a nuclear bomb, but also that it wanted to build missiles capable of reaching the US. Intelligence assessments have refuted this.

According to a report by Responsible Statecraft, Kushner and Witkoff “offered misleading advice that helped push the US toward conflict.”

People present at the US–Iran talks told MS Now earlier this month that Witkoff falsely claimed that the Iranians had “bragged” that they had enough enriched uranium for 11 nuclear bombs.

The report by The Guardian comes as the brutal US-Israeli war on Iran has entered its third week.

Tehran has launched a massive and unprecedented campaign of retaliatory strikes on Israel as well as US military bases and energy infrastructure across the region. The global price of oil has now shot up past $100 and is expected to continue rising.

Joe Kent, head of the US ​National Counterterrorism ​Center, officially resigned over his opposition to the war on 17 March.

March 18, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Iran made ‘unexpectedly substantial’ offer during Geneva talks, US envoys ‘dragged’ Trump into war: Report

Russia condemns Israel’s attack near Bushehr plant, files complaint

Press TV – March 18, 2026

Russia has officially filed a complaint against Israel for attacking areas near Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant and endangering the lives of its Russian personnel.

Hebrew news outlet reported on Wednesday that Russia has voiced strong condemnation against Israel for attacking the Bushehr airport and other areas in the southern Iranian province, which are close to the nuclear power plant.

The attacks endanger the lives of Russian personnel working in and around the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, Russia said.

The Russian embassy in the Israeli-occupied territories gave the country’s complaint and official demands to Israeli authorities.

According to reports, Israeli attacks against Bushehr targeted the living quarters of one of Russia’s nuclear experts in the region.

March 18, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Comments Off on Russia condemns Israel’s attack near Bushehr plant, files complaint

Israeli Journalist Demands Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens Be Placed in WWII-Style Internment Camps

The Talmudic mask comes off

José Niño Unfiltered | March 17, 2026

The landscape of American free speech has entered treacherous new terrain. On February 27, 2026, an Israeli historian and journalist named Yair Kleinbaum published an editorial in JFeed demanding that the United States government arrest and detain Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Cenk Uygur, Jackson Hinkle, and other prominent commentators who have opposed American military action against Iran. The model he proposed for their imprisonment was the World War II internment of Japanese Americans.

“It’s time to put Fuentes, Owens, Carlson and Uygur inside a WWII-Style internment camp,” Kleinbaum wrote. “We have reached a point where there is no choice but to take decisive action and arrest them.”

Kleinbaum’s argument rested on the claim that these commentators had crossed from protected speech into criminal incitement by allegedly encouraging soldiers to defy orders and discouraging enlistment. He explicitly compared them to Japanese Americans during World War II, though he distinguished the cases by asserting that unlike those who were “unjustly profiled,” the targeted influencers had “proven that their loyalty is with anti-American forces.”

“Just as the Japanese-American population was suspected of loyalty to a murderous Japanese regime that had declared war on America during World War II, these figures, including Jackson Hinkle and others, have, unlike most those Japanese who were unjustly profiled, proven that their loyalty is with anti-American forces,” Kleinbaum wrote. “Hence their call for mutiny.”

Kleinbaum himself is a graduate student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Department of History of the Jewish People and Contemporary Jewry. He also served as a research assistant in the Jewish Peoplehood department at The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, now Reichman University. His academic work focuses on the history of the Israeli political left between 1967 and 1973.

For perspective, JFeed is an English language news platform founded in 2023 and led by CEO Yarit Elbaz and Editor in Chief Eli Gotthelf, who previously worked at Kikar HaShabbat, an Israeli Haredi news outlet. The platform describes itself as “proudly unfiltered, proudly Jewish, and proudly committed to conservative values,” with the stated mission of becoming “the leading English-language news source for global Jewry.” Kleinbaum serves as one of the platform’s most prolific writers, covering breaking news on the Iran conflict, antisemitism analysis, and U.S. Israel relations.

Kleinbaum’s call for internment is not a fringe view among the American Jewish community. Multiple surveys reveal a community deeply divided on these questions. A CHIP50 survey in 2024 found that 39 percent of American Jews supported restrictions “prohibiting speech that opposes Israel’s existence as a Jewish state” on college campuses, compared to only 21 percent of non-Jews.

A Forward-CHIP50 poll in 2024 found 31 percent of Jews supported “prohibiting certain political speech” on campus, while 47 percent were opposed. Separately, 44 percent supported banning statements of support for Hamas, and 58 percent supported using law enforcement to police campus demonstrations.

The Japanese American internment that Kleinbaum cited as his model represents one of the most egregious violations of civil liberties in American history. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced removal of approximately 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. The majority were American citizens. They were imprisoned in remote camps surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, losing their homes, businesses, and livelihoods.

Decades later, the United States government formally apologized for this injustice. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which acknowledged that the internment was based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” The government paid reparations to surviving internees.

An even more insidious aspect of the Japanese internment that is often overlooked by court historians is how Jewish individuals benefited from the Roosevelt administration’s internment policy. Gus Russo’s 2006 book Supermob: How Sidney Korshak and His Criminal Associates Became America’s Hidden Power Brokers contains a chapter that directly addresses the seizure and sale of Japanese American properties during WWII.

Russo’s book details how the Office of Alien Property Custodian (OAP), headed by David L. Bazelon—a well-connected Chicago attorney and son of Russian-Jewish immigrants—oversaw the liquidation of seized Japanese American (and German-owned) properties after the war. According to Russo, Bazelon sold many of these properties to associates linked to Chicago mob lawyer Sidney Korshak—also of Jewish extraction—and members of the Pritzker family for pennies on the dollar. Russo identifies David Bazelon as running the OAP and controlling the disposition of properties collectively worth an estimated $400 million in 1942 dollars (billions today), including half a million acres of California farmland and some 1,265 small Japanese-owned hotels.

Jay Pritzker — patriarch of the Hyatt hotel fortune — was hired as an assistant attorney at the OAP under Bazelon and allegedly profited from the fire-sale liquidations. The broader network Russo calls the “Supermob” — a cadre of mostly Chicago-connected figures with ties to organized crime — acquired California land, hotels, and urban parcels through these OAP sales.

Back to Kleinbaum, his demand for the state detention of Israel’s vocal critics reflects a deepening panic within the Jewish community following the October 7 conflict. The graphic, public nature of those events triggered a global realization, driving millions to critically examine the extent and nature of Jewish influence in their own nations. This shift signifies that the traditional methods of social control—specifically the use of guilt-based Holocaust tropes to silence dissent—have lost their efficacy. As Jewry’s reliance on soft power through propaganda falters, they are increasingly turning to the hard power of state-sanctioned speech suppression.

What appears as the reactionary outburst of a single, traumatized Jewish intellectual may signal a shift toward a broader, more aggressive strategy intended to crush the burgeoning opposition to Jewish hegemony across the West. These efforts to institutionalize censorship are a testament to the fragility of a crumbling Judeo-American order. The truth is no longer a hidden secret, and the attempt to force it back into the shadows is a battle that world Jewry is poised to lose once gentiles wake up from their slumber.

March 18, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Comments Off on Israeli Journalist Demands Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens Be Placed in WWII-Style Internment Camps

No time for losers: Why the war meant to save Israel may destroy it

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | March 16, 2026

When Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu launched their military aggression against Iran on 28th February, they appeared convinced that the war would be swift. Netanyahu reportedly assured Washington that the campaign would deliver a decisive strategic victory—one capable of reordering the Middle East and restoring Israel’s battered deterrence.

Whether Netanyahu himself believed that promise is another matter.

For decades, influential circles within Israel’s strategic establishment have not necessarily sought stability, but rather “creative destruction.” The logic is simple: dismantle hostile regional powers and allow fragmented political landscapes to replace them.

This idea did not emerge overnight. It was articulated most clearly in a 1996 policy paper titled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, prepared for then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a group of US neoconservative strategists, including Richard Perle.

The document argued that Israel should abandon land-for-peace diplomacy and instead pursue a strategy that would weaken or remove hostile regimes in the region, particularly Iraq and Syria. The goal was not merely military victory but a geopolitical restructuring of the Middle East in Israel’s favor.

The logic is simple: dismantle hostile regional powers and allow fragmented political landscapes to replace them.

In many ways, the subsequent decades seemed to validate that theory—at least from Tel Aviv’s perspective.

The Middle East Reordered

The 2003 US invasion of Iraq was widely considered a catastrophe for Washington. Hundreds of thousands died, trillions of dollars were spent, and the United States became entangled in one of the most destabilising occupations in modern history.

Yet the war removed Saddam Hussein’s government, dismantled the Baath Party, and destroyed what had once been the strongest Arab army in the region. For Israel, the strategic consequences were significant.

Iraq, historically one of the few Arab states capable of confronting Israel militarily, ceased to exist as a coherent regional power. Years of instability followed, leaving Baghdad with a fragile political system struggling to maintain national cohesion.

Syria, another central concern in Israeli strategic thinking, would later descend into its own devastating war beginning in 2011. Libya collapsed earlier after NATO’s intervention in 2011 as well. Across the region, once-formidable Arab nationalist states fractured into weakened or internally divided systems.

From Israel’s vantage point, the theory of regional fragmentation appeared to be paying dividends.

Without strong Arab states capable of projecting military power, several Gulf governments began reconsidering their long-standing refusal to normalise relations with Israel.

The result was the Abraham Accords, signed in September 2020 under the Trump administration, which formalised normalisation between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, later followed by Morocco and Sudan. For a moment, it seemed that the geopolitical transformation envisioned decades earlier had been realised.

Gaza changed the equation

But history rarely moves in straight lines. Israel’s genocide in Gaza did not produce the strategic victory Israeli leaders had anticipated. Instead, the war exposed deep vulnerabilities in Israel’s military and political standing.

More importantly, Palestinian resistance demonstrated that overwhelming military force could not translate into decisive political control.

The consequences reverberated far beyond Gaza.

The war galvanized resistance movements across the region, deepened divisions within Arab and Muslim societies between governments aligned with Washington and those opposed to Israeli policies, and ignited an unprecedented wave of global solidarity with Palestinians. Israel’s international image suffered dramatically.

For decades, Western political discourse framed Israel as a democratic outpost surrounded by hostile forces. That narrative has steadily eroded. Increasingly, Israel is described—even by major international organizations—as a state engaged in systematic oppression and, in Gaza’s case, genocidal violence.

The strategic cost of that reputational collapse cannot be overstated. Military power relies not only on weapons but also on legitimacy. And legitimacy, once lost, is difficult to recover.

Netanyahu’s final gamble

Against this backdrop, the war on Iran emerged as Netanyahu’s most consequential gamble.

If successful, it could restore Israel’s regional dominance and reassert its deterrence. Defeating Iran—or even severely weakening it—would reshape the balance of power across the Middle East. But failure carries equally profound consequences.

Netanyahu, now facing an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in 2024 over war crimes in Gaza, has tied his political survival to the promise of strategic victory.

In multiple interviews over the past year, he has framed the confrontation with Iran in almost biblical terms. In one televised address in 2025, Netanyahu declared that Israel was engaged in a “historic mission” to secure the future of the Jewish state for generations. Such rhetoric reveals not confidence but desperation.

What was supposed to be a rapid campaign increasingly resembles a prolonged conflict. Israel cannot wage such a war alone. It never could. Thus, Netanyahu worked tirelessly to draw the United States directly into the conflict—a familiar pattern in modern Middle Eastern wars.

The paradox of Trump’s war

For Americans, the question remains: why did Donald Trump—who repeatedly campaigned against “endless wars”—allow the US to enter yet another Middle Eastern conflict?

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump famously declared: “We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilised the Middle East.”

Yet nearly a decade later, his administration has plunged Washington into a confrontation whose potential consequences dwarf those of the earlier wars.

The precise motivations matter less to those living under the bombs.

Across the region, the scenes are painfully familiar: devastated cities, mass graves, grieving families, and societies once again forced to endure the violence of foreign intervention.

But this war is unfolding in a fundamentally different geopolitical environment.

The US no longer commands the unchallenged dominance it once enjoyed. China has emerged as a major economic and strategic actor. Russia continues to project influence. Regional powers have gained confidence in resisting Washington’s dictates.

The Middle East itself has changed.

A war already going wrong

Early signs suggest that the war is not unfolding according to the expectations of Washington or Tel Aviv.

Reports from US and Israeli media indicate that missile-defense systems in Israel and several Gulf states are facing a serious strain under sustained attacks. Meanwhile, Iran and its regional allies have demonstrated missile capabilities far more extensive than many analysts had anticipated.

Energy markets provide another indication of shifting dynamics. Rather than securing greater control over global energy flows, the war has disrupted supplies and strengthened Iran’s leverage over key maritime routes.

Strategic assumptions built on decades of uncontested American military power are colliding with a far more complex reality.

Even the political rhetoric emanating from Washington has become noticeably defensive and increasingly angry—often a sign that events are not unfolding as planned.

Within the Trump administration itself, the intellectual poverty of the moment is difficult to miss. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose public persona is built on television bravado rather than strategic literacy, has often framed the conflict in language that sounds less like military doctrine and more like locker-room theatrics.

Hegseth’s style is symptomatic of a broader intellectual collapse within Washington’s war-making circles—where historical knowledge is replaced by slogans, and strategic planning by theatrical displays of toughness.

In speeches and interviews, he has repeatedly reduced complex geopolitical realities into crude narratives of strength, masculinity, and domination. Such rhetoric may excite partisan audiences, but it reveals a deeper problem: the people directing the most dangerous war in decades appear to understand very little about the forces they have unleashed.

In such an environment, wars are not analyzed; they are performed.

The end of an era?

Netanyahu sought to dominate the Middle East. Washington sought to reaffirm its position as the world’s unrivaled superpower. Neither objective appears within reach.

Instead, the war may accelerate the very transformations it was meant to prevent: a declining US strategic role, a weakened Israeli deterrent posture, and a Middle East increasingly shaped by regional actors rather than external powers.

Trump, despite the lofty and belligerent language, is in reality a weak president. Rage is rarely the language of strength; it is often the mask of insecurity. His administration has overestimated America’s military omnipotence, undermined allies and antagonized adversaries alike, and entered a war whose historical, political, and strategic dimensions it scarcely understands.

How can a leadership so consumed by narcissism and spectacle fully grasp the magnitude of the catastrophe it has helped unleash?

One would expect wisdom in moments of global crisis. What we have instead is a chorus of slogans, threats, and self-congratulation emanating from Washington—an administration seemingly incapable of distinguishing between what power can achieve and what it cannot.

They do not understand how profoundly the world has changed. They do not understand how the Middle East now perceives American military adventurism. And they certainly do not understand that Israel itself has become, politically and morally, a declining brand.

Of course, Trump and his equally arrogant administration will continue searching for any fragment of ‘victory’ to sell to their constituency as the greatest triumph in history. There will always be zealots ready to believe such myths.

But most Americans—and the overwhelming majority of people around the world—no longer do. Partly because this war on Iran is immoral. And partly because history has very little patience for losers.

March 17, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on No time for losers: Why the war meant to save Israel may destroy it

Top US Counterterrorism Official Resigns in Protest of Operation Against Iran

Sputnik – 17.03.2026

WASHINGTON – Joseph Kent on Tuesday announced his decision to step down as director of the US National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) because of his disapproval of the US military operation against Iran.

“After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today. I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent wrote in his letter to US President Donald Trump published on X.

He said that until June of 2025, Trump understood that wars in the Middle East were a “trap” that robbed the country of lives and depleted the nation’s wealth and prosperity.
However, during Trump’s second term, high-ranking Israeli officials and US media deployed a misinformation campaign that dragged the US into a war with Iran by making the president believe in a lie that aggression could lead to a swift victory – a tactic used by Israel to start the war in Iraq, Kent said.

“I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for. The time for bold action is now. You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos. You hold the cards,” he concluded.

On February 28, the United States and Israel launched strikes on targets in Iran, including in Tehran, causing damage and civilian casualties. Iran responded by striking Israeli territory and US military facilities in the Middle East.

March 17, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Top US Counterterrorism Official Resigns in Protest of Operation Against Iran

IRGC orders ‘defeated’ US to evacuate industrial facilities in region

Al Mayadeen | March 16, 2026

The Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) has issued a warning to the “defeated US regime,” demanding the evacuation of all American industrial facilities in the region.

The IRGC also called on residents living near US-linked factories to leave the area for their safety, emphasizing that these industrial sites are expected to come under attack in the coming hours.

IRGC’s 56th wave targets strategic Israeli stockpiles, Al-Udeid base

Earlier today, the IRGC announced the launch of the 56th wave of its Operation True Promise 4, targeting key Israeli military infrastructure and a US military installation in the region.

In a statement issued by its Public Relations office, the IRGC said the latest wave of operations was dedicated to martyr Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force, who was assassinated in a US drone strike in January 2020, as well as fighters martyred during battles in defense of the nation’s sanctities.

Stockpiles, airbase hit with precision

According to the statement, the operation targeted several strategic locations in the Israeli-occupied territories, including the Southern Region Support Command and a strategic missile storage facility belonging to Rafael Advanced Defense Systems in the northern occupied territories.

The IRGC said the strikes were carried out using heavy and precision-guided ballistic missiles, including Khorramshahr-4, Emad, and Ghadr missiles, stressing that the designated targets were hit with precision.

The statement also said the attacks extended to the US military presence in the region, noting that the US-operated al-Udeid Airbase was struck during the operation.

March 16, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on IRGC orders ‘defeated’ US to evacuate industrial facilities in region

Iran War Exposes Limits of US Military Power – Journalist

Sputnik – 16.03.2026

The United States does have great firepower, but it is still far from the strongest country in the world, veteran war correspondent Elijah J. Magnier tells Sputnik.

Despite Iran being forced to endure “47 years of maximum pressure and sanctions,” Magnier points out, the US still cannot best it and is forced to ask other countries to help open the Strait of Hormuz.

“We see the strongest country in the world and the strongest army in the Middle East – that is Israel- fighting Iran and not managing to achieve their objectives and calling for help and support from the Europeans and from NATO,” he observes.

The United States’ military presence in the Middle East has also been put into question as the US can neither protect its military bases in the region nor defend the countries that host these facilities.

“I think the image of the United States has received severe damage much more than the damage inflicted on Iran,” Magnier adds.

To add insult to injury, the US and Israel found themselves unable to achieve any of their stated objectives – be it the destruction of Iran’s missile program or the dismantling of the Iranian nuclear program.

Meanwhile, Trump’s claims that the US wiped out Iran’s entire missile capability don’t hold water either, as Iran regularly provides ample evidence to the contrary in the form of multiple missile launches.

March 16, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Iran War Exposes Limits of US Military Power – Journalist

Even The Neo-Cons Admit The Iran War Is Failing

The Dissident – March 16, 2026

The current U.S./Israeli war on Iran is, in many ways, a product of the policies long advocated by U.S. neoconservatives, most importantly the clean break strategy drafted by the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which advocated taking out “Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and, finishing off, Iran” on behalf of Israel.

But many of the original Neo-cons who first drafted this plan, including John Bolton and even Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, the founders of the Project for a New American Century, are now jumping ship and admitting that the U.S./Israeli war on Iran is failing.

In an interview with NPR, longtime Neo-con John Bolton, despite saying he has “been a supporter of efforts at regime change in Iran for a long time” was forced to admit that the regime change plan has failed and that the U.S. underestimated Iran’s response.

Bolton was forced to admit that Trump underestimated Iran’s ability to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz and disrupt oil shipping in response to the U.S/Israeli bombing, saying:

… it was questionable whether he was cooperating effectively with and assisting the opposition inside Iran. That’s what I said, I think, in our last conversation. Since then, I’m very worried that there are now signs that they haven’t thought about a lot of other things. For example, there’s reporting that the White House was surprised at how quickly oil prices went up.

And all I can say to that is I’m surprised that they’re surprised. If they weren’t planning for that both economically, politically and militarily, then that’s a huge hole in the planning. I am worried that they apparently didn’t take as seriously as they should have the potential to mine the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said several days ago that the Iranian navy had been completely destroyed. And despite years of listening to that kind of thing, I should have known better. I actually sort of believed in for a while. But now we learned that it was only yesterday that we got around to destroying 16 mine-laying vessels. Of course, they’ve got the capability to mine via drones going over the strait and dropping mines in it.

Even more shocking than Bolton’s admission was a podcast released by the founders of PNAC, Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol, where they essentially admitted that the U.S. war on Iran was destroying the U.S. empire.

Robert Kagan, in the podcast, admitted that the Iran war was debilitating America’s ability to wage a new Cold War on Russia and China, and isolating the U.S. empire globally.

The “undoubted effect of the Iran war has been to drive a deeper wedge between the United States and pretty much all of its allies or at least all of its traditional allies, both in Europe and in Asia, and I would say potentially even in the Middle East” Kagan Said.

Kagan lamented that the Iran war was crippling the U.S.’s ability to continue the proxy war in Ukraine saying, “the skyrocketing oil prices … are even before Trump took the action of lifting sanctions against Russia was going to increase Russian income” and “American forces are … burning through major stocks of weaponry and particularly Patriot and other forms of interceptors on which Ukraine depends heavily because those are the interceptors that defend their major cities from constant Russian attacks.”

Kagan also lamented that the war was taking away the U.S. empire’s ability to wage a new Cold War on China, saying, “very few countries in the world are more dependent on Middle East oil, including the oil that comes directly through the Strait of Hormuz, than Japan. Japan I think, depends on something like 95% of its oil supplies come from the Middle East and 70% of that runs through the Strait of Hormuz. So once again the Japanese were not consulted”, adding, that the prime minister of Japan is “very upset” and “ talked about how this crisis has severely impacted Japanese interests”.

He also added “the Japanese will notice that the United States has sent significant forces that are dedicated both to the defense of Japan and are sort of critical to any response to a Chinese attack on Taiwan. Those forces are now being sent or some of them are already there, and some are being sent to the Middle East.”

Kagan also admitted that the war in Iran is isolating the Gulf States from the U.S. and potentially moving them towards China.

He said, “I just wonder whether the Gulf States in particular are wondering whether they’ve joined the right team here because they have, by the way, been very on background, very vocal in saying that they were against the war. … They did not favor it. They thought they had a pretty good deal going with the Iranians, that kind of an agreement that they would get to, they would leave each other alone for the most part,” adding, “it turns out the United States can’t really protect them. I mean they have suffered the worst in some respects because it’s not only that they’ve been targets and that they’re shipping you know they’ve lost money on oil, but you know they with the tremendous cooperation of the Trump and I would say in this case the Trump family and social circle have been very deeply involved in the United States making investments in AI and other things but particularly AI they’re hosting data centers for all kinds of companies and in general, they’ve been trying to make themselves an attractive place for investment and also tourism.”

Citing the example of Dubai, Kagan said, “You watch the UAE is basically arresting people for taking pictures of damage that may have been done by Iranian drone strikes and other things on things in Dubai. For instance, I think they’ve arrested foreigners who took pictures of these things. Why? Because they don’t want people to see that it’s risky to be in Dubai, because then people won’t invest and they won’t come, and so it’s kind of a disaster for them,” adding, “the bottom line for the Gulf States is that the United States undertook this war and then was not able actually to protect them”.

He added, “I don’t think it’s hard to persuade certain Gulf states like the UAE and others that maybe China is also a pretty good partner or at least as much of a reliable partner as the United States has turned out to be.”

In other words, Kagan and his host Bill Kristol are essentially admitting that the Iran war is destroying and isolating U.S. empire and destroying the U.S.’s ability to project power in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East through proxy states.

This is why Kagan- as journalist Max Blumenthal described it – essentially “describes Israel as a strategic liability leading the US into a quagmire” saying, “I find it a little bit it’s kind of a syllogism when people talk about what a great ally Israel is. It it is a great ally in defense of Israel” adding, “at the end of the day, Iran is a much greater threat to Israel than it is to the United States.”

Kagan also admitted that Iran, “were deliberately not closing the straits for all these years precisely because we did not confront them with the prospect of complete annihilation” adding, “it was only when both the Israelis and the United States made it clear that their goal was the annihilation of regime, assassinated the entire leadership with a bombing strike that they then did this. So we are now solving a problem that we clearly provoked.”

Make no mistake about it, John Bolton, Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, and their fellow Neo-cons set the stage for this war with Iran, but the fact that even they are now jumping ship shows that war is not at all going as planned for the U.S.

March 16, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Even The Neo-Cons Admit The Iran War Is Failing

Inside the Caucasus Drone Corridor Fueling Tensions With Iran

By Freddie Ponton – 21st Century Wire – March 16, 2026

On March 14, 2026, New Eastern Outlook published a report by journalist Jeffrey Silverman titled “Friendly Skies of Georgia: Are Israeli-Linked Drones Launching False Flags from Georgian Territory?”

“Reports about the possible use of Georgian territory for drone operations…”

In his report, Silverman suggested that the March 5 drone strike on Nakhchivan airport, which was swiftly blamed on Iran before any public forensic record was produced, may have originated from a covert base in Georgia. Even if that specific allegation remains unproven, it points to a darker and more consequential reality in which Israel is deeply embedded in a regional drone and air-defense architecture spanning Georgia and Azerbaijan, one that could be used to manufacture confusion, direct blame toward Tehran, and draw another exposed frontier into Washington and Tel Aviv’s widening war against Iran.

Friendly Skies, Dark Architecture

Silverman did not prove that the drone, which struck Nakhchivan airport on March 5, took off from Kobuleti or a restricted airstrip near Lagodekhi in Georgia, and he did not publish the kind of forensic record that would settle that allegation beyond dispute. What matters more is the architecture his report exposes. By the time Azerbaijan blamed Iran for the strike, Georgia and Azerbaijan had already formalised direct unmanned/uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) cooperation, while Israel was deeply entrenched in the air-defense, radar, and command systems that shape how both states see the sky, classify threats, and assign responsibility.

That is why this story matters. It is not really about one secret runway or one speculative launch site. It is about a regional military architecture in which Israel supplied drone platforms, helped structure radar integration, shaped command-and-control logic, trained operators, and embedded itself in the software and doctrine that govern how threats are detected, classified, prioritised, and politically narrated from Georgia to Azerbaijan. In the middle of a widening war, while Iranian officials were publicly warning that the United States and Israel were using copied or misattributed drone attacks to frame Tehran and broaden the conflict, that architecture turned Silverman’s theory from an unproven allegation into a deeply plausible scenario.

The March 5 public record only sharpens that concern. In a March 5 statement, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said the attack occurred around midday, that one drone struck the terminal of Nakhchivan International Airport, that another fell near a school in Shakarabad, and that two civilians were injured. State-linked reporting later added that the prosecutor’s office opened a criminal case, described the UAVs as carrying remotely controlled explosive warheads, and said the disruption forced flight 264 from Nakhchivan to Baku to return for safety reasons. Those details make the incident more concrete, but they also show how quickly the political and legal narrative solidified around attribution before the public was shown anything close to a full forensic record.

Israel’s code in Georgian airspace

Georgia’s military drone sector was built in close cooperation with Israel, a fact that should be treated as foundational rather than incidental. Before and during the 2008 war, Georgia acquired Elbit Hermes-450 drones, operated them over contested territory, and lost several in combat according to a UN Security Council report, establishing that Israeli UAV technology was not a procurement sideshow but part of Georgia’s actual warfighting infrastructure. A Hermes-450 is not just an airframe; it depends on launch-and-recovery procedures, ground-control stations, data links, sensor exploitation, trained operators, maintenance cycles, and mission-management architecture that ties the platform to the wider command system. From the start, Georgia’s unmanned capability was being shaped not just by Israeli hardware but by Israeli operational logic.

That relationship evolved into something even more consequential after 2008.

As a Caspian Policy Center report noted in September 2020, Georgia signed agreements with Rafael and Elbit to modernise air-defense assets, upgrade electronic systems, retrain personnel, and move key capabilities toward NATO standards. Rafael’s Spyder-family architecture matters here because it is not just a launcher with missiles attached to it, but also a radar-linked, software-driven system that combines sensor inputs, battle-management logic, target prioritisation, and rapid engagement against aircraft, cruise missiles, UAVs, and loitering munitions. External technical reporting on Spyder emphasises centralised command logic, multi-target handling, and fused air-picture generation, while Rafael’s own product material presents the system as a mobile, integrated air-defense family rather than a stand-alone interceptor.

That technical detail is not window dressing. It explains why the debate over a “secret base” can miss the more important issue. Israel does not need a flag over a Georgian runway to exercise meaningful influence over Georgian airspace behaviour if Israeli-linked firms already help build the radar integration, software logic, sensor fusion, operator training, and threat-classification routines through which Georgian personnel decide what is visible, what is suspicious, and what can be ignored. In a deniable operation, that layer is decisive, because the central question is not only where a drone takes off, but how the system along its route recognises it, how quickly it is promoted from clutter to threat, and who controls the doctrinal assumptions built into that judgment.

This architecture did not emerge overnight. As early as 2012, Rick Rozoff warned in Voltaire Network that under Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia was being refashioned into a U.S.-aligned military outpost through NATO war deployments, base modernisation, and growing strategic utility to Washington, while the country was already surfacing in discussions of possible logistical or operational support for a future strike on Iran. That warning should not be treated as proof of the March 5 Nakhchivan operation, but it does expose the deeper genealogy of the system now in place: Georgia was being positioned more than a decade ago as a frontier platform in wars planned far beyond its borders.

Georgia’s integration into NATO’s Regional Airspace Security Programme sharpens that point instead of weakening it. In an NCIA report on Georgia’s entry into the NATO Regional Airspace Security Programme, the agency said Georgian air-traffic data could be ingested into the RASP information-exchange environment through EUROCONTROL’s Civil-Military ATM Coordination Tool, or CIMACT, supporting constant connectivity, air-picture exchange, early notification of incidents, direct operator coordination, and identification support for air defense. In practical terms, that means Georgian airspace is increasingly managed through a shared civil-military coordination environment designed to fuse traffic data, security events, and operational responses across borders. But systems like CIMACT do not abolish the physics of drone detection. Open-source technical literature and regional reporting both show that low-altitude, small-radar-cross-section drones remain difficult to detect and classify in mountainous or cluttered terrain because radar horizon, terrain masking, ground clutter, and weak signatures compress the window for reliable identification.

That is precisely what creates a false-flag-friendly environment. A peer-reviewed paper on low-slow-small target detection describes drones as low-altitude, slow-speed, small-radar-cross-section targets that are difficult to detect and classify among birds and other biological targets, especially when conventional radars face weak signatures and cluttered surveillance volumes.

If a drone flies low through edge sectors or terrain-shadowed corridors, the first challenge for the radar network is not interception but recognition: distinguishing a weak, late-emerging track from birds, clutter, benign traffic, or fragmented returns. The second challenge is prioritisation inside the command-and-control layer, because a fused air picture does not treat every object equally; it ranks tracks according to altitude, speed, heading, signature, and threat libraries built into the software and training regime.

When Israeli-linked firms help define that regime, they are not merely selling Georgia hardware. They are helping shape the logic by which ambiguity is sorted into action or inaction.

Azerbaijan’s Israeli-built battlespace

If Georgia provides one side of the corridor, Azerbaijan provides the other, and here the Israeli footprint is even deeper. As an Institut FMES study of the Israel-Azerbaijan relationship details, Azerbaijan has spent decades building military-technical ties with Israel that include observation drones, tactical drones, loitering munitions, missiles, mapping support, and an air bridge through Turkish and Georgian airspace during wartime supply operations. That matters because a state that buys this many Israeli platforms is not just purchasing equipment; it is also importing maintenance pipelines, operator doctrine, mission-planning habits, software ecosystems, and deeper institutional assumptions about how the battlespace is seen and fought.

Two Israeli systems are central to the Nakhchivan story. The first is Barak-MX, the layered air-defense architecture sold to Azerbaijan with interceptors and battle-management functions designed to engage UAVs, cruise missiles, and aircraft across multiple ranges. The second is Sky Dew, the high-altitude aerostat-based AESA radar platform procured by Azerbaijan to detect low-flying threats over long distances, including drones and cruise-missile-type targets. Sky Dew’s value lies in elevating the sensor above ground clutter and extending the line of sight, while Barak-MX gives the battlespace a layered interception logic. Together, they form more than a shield. They form an Israeli-coded interpretation system for airspace.

And yet even this system is not all-seeing. AESA radars improve clutter rejection, update rates, and multi-target tracking, but technical analysis also stresses that low-RCS targets near the ground remain difficult because no single sensor mode can reliably solve the problem across all terrain, weather, and altitude conditions. Multi-band fusion, advanced signal processing, and automatic target recognition help, but weak returns, terrain interference, and short detection windows still leave room for uncertainty.

That uncertainty is politically explosive in Nakhchivan’s geography, because a drone detected late near the Iranian frontier does not enter a neutral interpretive space. It enters an Azerbaijani battlespace already conditioned by Israeli systems, Israeli threat models, and an official narrative primed to see Iran as the source of the attack.

The March 5 public narrative illustrates that danger with unusual clarity. In its March 5 report, Euronews cited Azerbaijani claims that “technical monitoring systems” confirmed four UAVs belonging to Iran had been directed toward Nakhchivan to carry out attacks. But the public-facing record reviewed here did not include the underlying radar tracks, telemetry, launch coordinates, signal intercepts, or debris analysis that would allow outsiders to test that conclusion independently. Instead, the public was asked to accept a technical verdict without public technical disclosure, in a battlespace already filtered through Israeli-linked detection and attribution architecture.

The inconsistencies in the public record make that even more important. Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry described two drones and two injured civilians, while a U.S. Embassy security alert referred to an unknown number of drones striking the exclave around noon, and Reuters reported four injured. OC Media’s coverage also placed the airport less than 10 kilometres from the Iranian border and referenced footage showing smoke, a separate small blast, and terminal damage, but none of that amounts to a released forensic chain of origin. The issue, then, is not whether every radar return was fabricated. It is when Israel helps build the Georgian-side surveillance environment and also helps build the Azerbaijani-side detection and attribution environment that it effectively occupies both ends of the interpretive chain through which a late-detected drone can become an Iranian attack.

The October 2025 drone bridge

The strongest institutional clue in this investigation is not Kobuleti, and it is not Lagodekhi. It is the formal drone bridge created between Georgia and Azerbaijan in October 2025. In an official Azerbaijani Defense Ministry readout, Baku said a Georgian Ministry of Defense delegation visited for an “exchange of experience in the field of UAVs” and was briefed on Azerbaijani UAV activity, combat use, combat-flight organisation, and wider development trends. Those are not vague diplomatic pleasantries. They are the language of direct operational transfer. “Combat operations” and “organisation of combat flights” mean mission planning, route design, sortie sequencing, deconfliction, command routines, and the practical management of drones in wartime airspace. Because Azerbaijan’s UAV ecosystem is already deeply Israeli-linked, that meeting meant Georgian officials were being exposed to an Israeli-shaped combat-drone model only months before the Nakhchivan incident.

This is the emotional and analytical centre of the story because it turns parallel procurement into shared practice. Once that bridge existed, the regional picture changed. The issue was no longer only that Israel had technical reach into both states. The issue was that Georgia and Azerbaijan were actively aligning how they think about drone warfare across the very corridor now shadowed by false-flag allegations. That creates shared familiarity with routes, signatures, mission planning, and combat-flight logic, which lowers the friction for any cross-border drone activity that needs to move through Georgian space and arrive inside Azerbaijani airspace without triggering immediate institutional disbelief.

Corridor politics and verdict

Turkey completes the corridor. The Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) has described Georgian airspace as a conduit for traffic supporting Azerbaijan, including flows tied to Turkish and Israeli strategic interests, while the South Caucasus route became even more important as the Middle East conflict rerouted more traffic across Türkiye, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Georgian airport infrastructure is tied to Turkish management networks, which gives Ankara leverage over the transit environment and helps normalise the corridor as a connected operational channel rather than a set of isolated national airspaces. In wartime, normalisation is half the game. What moves routinely moves invisibly.

The wider war context makes that normalisation more dangerous. Iranian officials publicly warned that the United States and Israel were using copied or rebranded drones, including the so-called “Lucas” platform, to stage attacks and frame Tehran, while calling for joint investigations into suspicious incidents. Whether one accepts those allegations in full is not the point. The point is that the Nakhchivan incident unfolded in a battlespace where attribution itself had already become a weapon.

That weaponised atmosphere is also visible in how quickly outside governments aligned behind the Azerbaijani narrative. France publicly condemned what it called an Iranian drone strike in a Foreign Ministry statement, while Turkey did the same in a March 5 statement from its Foreign Ministry. The incident was therefore internationalised almost immediately, even though the public record still showed inconsistencies in drone counts, injuries, and the technical basis for attribution.

Jeffrey K. Silverman did not prove that a drone launched from Georgian territory struck near Nakhchivan airport. His most specific launch-site claims remain unproven. But the deeper investigation leads to a verdict that is, in some ways, more damning than his original article. Israel has embedded itself in the air-defense, radar, software, training, and command architectures of both Georgia and Azerbaijan. Georgia and Azerbaijan then formalised direct UAV cooperation focused on combat use, combat missions, and the organisation of combat flights only months before the Nakhchivan incident. Georgia, meanwhile, was being drawn deeper into a NATO-linked RASP/CIMACT airspace-management environment built around air-picture exchange, incident notification, and civil-military coordination, even as the known technical limits of low-altitude drone detection left room for ambiguity in mountainous border sectors.

That does not close the criminal case. It closes the plausibility argument. Israel may not need a secret base in Georgia if it already helped build the surveillance logic, the target-classification regime, the command-and-control environment, and the cross-border drone corridor governing both ends of the route. That is the real meaning of the Georgia-Azerbaijan drone bridge and the dual Israeli footprint uncovered here.

The route does not have to be proven in full to understand the structure behind it. The structure is already visible, and it points to an Israeli-built architecture of plausible deniability running straight through the South Caucasus.

March 16, 2026 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on Inside the Caucasus Drone Corridor Fueling Tensions With Iran

‘Not our war’: Trump’s naval coalition to reopen Strait of Hormuz dead in the water

The Cradle | March 16, 2026

Several countries have either rejected or expressed serious concerns about US President Donald Trump’s plan to form a coalition aimed at escorting vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, which Tehran has closed to Washington and its allies in retaliation for the brutal US-Israeli strikes on the Islamic Republic.

Germany’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Johann Wadephul, said on 15 March that he was “skeptical” of Trump’s plan.

“Will we soon be an active part of this conflict? No,” he went on to say.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said, “What does Trump expect a handful of European frigates to do that the powerful US Navy cannot?” adding, “This is not our war, and we did not start it.”

Meanwhile, France officially rejected the US request to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz.

The French Foreign Ministry rejected reports that it was gearing up to send vessels, saying, “No. The carrier strike group remains in the Eastern Mediterranean. France’s position remains unchanged: defensive and protective.”

Australia has also denied the request, as have Japan, China, Norway, and Spain. The UK and South Korea said they were reviewing options.

The US president had demanded that NATO states join his proposed coalition, threatening that they would face a “very bad future” if they did not.

Trump had also expressed hope that “China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a nation that has been totally decapitated.”

Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz to Washington and its allies in response to the US-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic. Several vessels trying to cross in violation of Iranian warnings have been targeted.

A number of countries have reached out to Tehran for access to the Strait, through which 20 to 30 percent of the world’s energy passed prior to the war.

India has confirmed that two of its ships passed after talks with Iran. Tehran also allowed a Turkish vessel to pass through the strait.

“The Strait of Hormuz has not been militarily blocked and is merely under control,” said Alireza Tangsiri, naval commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated, “The Strait of Hormuz is open. It is only closed to the tankers and ships belonging to our enemies, to those who are attacking us and their allies. Others are free to pass.”

After Yemen began its pro-Palestine blockade in the Red Sea following the start of the Gaza genocide in 2023, Washington launched a naval operation under the name Prosperity Guardian – aimed at deterring Sanaa’s forces and facilitating the transit of vessels.

The US failed to secure enough partners, and the mission ultimately failed.

The Ansarallah-led Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) has recently vowed that it is ready to intervene alongside Iran’s other allies – meaning the potential closure of another vital energy route, the Bab al-Mandab strait.

March 16, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on ‘Not our war’: Trump’s naval coalition to reopen Strait of Hormuz dead in the water

Where in the World Is Benjamin Netanyahu? On the Move or Out of Sight?

By Jonas E. Alexis • Unz Review • March 16, 2026

No, this is not another conspiracy theory. Several hypotheses have emerged suggesting that Netanyahu may be dead, missing, or facing some other serious circumstance. The reality, however, is that his current whereabouts remain unknown. Nevertheless, there are several points that can still be articulated.

Do you recall the period during which Israeli forces were heavily bombarding the population of Gaza? During that time, Netanyahu frequently appeared on the political stage, presenting a series of perfidious claims intended to justify why the largely defenseless population in Gaza purportedly deserved such devastating treatment. Over the past decade, Netanyahu has adopted a similar posture with respect to Syria, Libya, and other regions that Israel has sought to undermine or destabilize.

The narrative has shifted considerably. Netanyahu is obviously absent from public appearances; he is neither addressing the nation from podiums nor proclaiming victory. He may be sheltering in a secure location, receiving heightened protection, strategically awaiting a particular moment to emerge, or perhaps entirely removed from public view. What is evident, however, is that he is not asserting triumph—a clear indication that Israel may not be achieving its objectives, or that the Israeli regime almost certainly miscalculated the Iranian defenses. Furthermore, Iran has not appealed to the United States or Israel to terminate hostilities or request a ceasefire. In other words, the current conflict differs markedly from prior engagements and does not appear to favor Zionist Israel or the United States.

Moreover, it is evident from recent developments that Donald Trump has publicly emphasized the importance of bringing the conflict to an end and has actively called on various allied and partner nations to assist in maintaining the security of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime point for global energy supplies. However, these appeals have not yet resulted in significant commitments from other states, and Iran has so far resisted overtures to negotiate a cessation of hostilities. These dynamics just indicate that the current war differs substantively from previous Israeli debacles in the Middle East.

In other words, regardless of interpretation, Iran has already delivered a powerful strategic pushback against U.S. and Israeli actions, which can be viewed as a critical counterbalance to the policies and interventions of these powers. Obviously, a conflict of this magnitude exacts a heavy toll on both sides in terms of human and material costs. Nevertheless, Iran appears to have shifted the dynamics of the confrontation, signaling two central messages: first, that it will no longer tolerate continued aggression without any serious confrontation, and second, that the Israelis and the Zionist regime can bleed–politically, strategically, ideologically, and economically.

It is interesting that Iran is undertaking actions that many Western policymakers have failed to address effectively for decades. Iran’s assertiveness highlights the contrast with politicians across the ideological spectrum in the West—both self-identified right and left, or conservative and liberal—who have often expressed concern over migration from Muslim and Arab countries, yet have largely remained silent regarding the repeated interventions by the United States and Israel in the Middle East, which have resulted in the destabilization and destruction of multiple countries like Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan.

This clearly shows a contradiction. Some people keep saying that Muslims and migrants are destroying Europe, but they stay silent about, or support, endless wars in the Middle East and Africa. This is simply lunacy. You cannot destroy countries like Syria and Iraq for the sake of Israel and then expect “peaceful harmony” in Europe and America. You cannot keep supporting one empire after another around the world and expect your own region to stay safe. You also cannot support leaders like Trump invading countries such as Venezuela and then suddenly start talking about “white identity” in Europe. If these people cannot see this basic contradiction and abandon it, there is nothing we can do to help them.

Michael Jones has argued that Trump may, inadvertently, be signaling the end of the American Empire, and this perspective warrants consideration. Certainly, neither Trump nor the Israeli government set out with such an outcome in mind. However, given their sustained engagement in diabolical policies across the Middle East, their objectives are being viewed increasingly as unattainable. Trump’s tenure, in this respect, illustrates a critical lesson: the pursuit of an “America First” agenda is fundamentally incompatible with unwavering support for the Israeli regime and the Zionist ideology. These positions represent inherently contradictory political ideologies; for an “America First” policy to maintain coherence and credibility, the United States and much of the West would need to reconsider the uncritical alignment with Israeli interests.

There is no way around this principle. Even during Trump’s first term, he was saying things like “America First” and “enough is enough with endless wars in the Middle East.” At the same time, he was becoming closer to the Israeli government and powerful elites in the United States who support those wars. Because of this, it seemed clear to me that Trump was misleading the American people.

Now that Netanyahu is no longer boasting about winning a war against Iran, Trump has to ask the Iranians to stop the conflict. Otherwise, the American economy could suffer serious damage. As writer Ilana Mercer has argued, the Iranians should make Israel pay a price for its actions. Only then will Israel learn some basic lessons.

March 16, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Comments Off on Where in the World Is Benjamin Netanyahu? On the Move or Out of Sight?

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