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If Thomas Massie Was President…

By Alan Mosley | The Libertarian Institute | May 20, 2026

If Thomas Massie were president, there would be no American involvement in the war in Iran. Rep. Massie (R-KY) introduced a bipartisan resolution barring “unauthorized hostilities” against Iran and said flatly that, “The ongoing war between Israel and Iran is not our war.” Massie respects the Constitution: Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 grants Congress the exclusive power to declare war. A Massie presidency would not begin hostilities at the behest of a foreign nation and then pretend the War Powers Resolution clock never started when Iran didn’t turn out like Venezuela (which he also wouldn’t have started).

If Thomas Massie were president, Americans wouldn’t be funding Ukrainian oligarchs to the tune of billions of dollars. He said, “We shouldn’t send another penny to Ukraine,” and demanded an audit before another dollar moved. Congress, meanwhile, appropriated more than $174 billion for Ukraine-related purposes through FY 2024, passed another $60.84 billion package in April 2024, and oversight bodies documented serious tracking failures for sensitive equipment. A government that cannot account for what it sends abroad has not earned the moral right to demand more from taxpayers at home.

If Thomas Massie were president, there would be no more regime change wars, period. Years before Iran returned to the front page, Massie was already trying to block unauthorized aid to Syrian rebels, restrain intervention in Yemen, require congressional authorization for any action in Venezuela, and later withdraw the United States from NATO. The antiwar right is perfectly encapsulated by the non-interventionist foreign policy supported first by Dr. Ron Paul, and now by Massie. America First means supporting the troops, and supporting the troops means not sending them to police the world.

If Thomas Massie were president, a foreign government (Israel) wouldn’t control America. Massie voted against Israel’s 2024 supplemental, proposed forcing politically active organizations that principally advance foreign interests to register under FARA, and argued that federal officeholders should disclose dual citizenship and abstain from votes uniquely benefiting those countries. It was when Massie told Tucker Carlson about his colleagues in Washington having an “AIPAC Guy,” a handler to make sure they were always putting Israel’s interests first, that the Rubicon had been crossed. Israeli billionaires would then make the Republican primary in Kentucky’s 4th district the most expensive such race in America. To be Israel First is to be America Last.

If Thomas Massie were president, Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirators would be in jail. He forced the U.S. House to vote on releasing the full Epstein files, gathered the signatures to bring the measure to the floor, and said Americans deserve to know “who’s implicated, and how deep this corruption goes.” Massie said we would know the movement to release the Epstein Files was a success when “rich men… powerful men are being perp-walked to the jail.” Such men have faced consequences abroad, but not in America. The Epstein class is politically active in the States.

If Thomas Massie were president, there would be no FISA Section 702, no warrantless spying on Americans. He has spent a decade attacking the “backdoor” searches that let intelligence agencies rummage through Americans’ communications without a warrant, and he warned in 2025 that, “The intelligence agencies will use these loopholes to spy on Americans.” His Republican colleagues were urged to unite behind extending Section 702, and Congress promptly bought more time for the program. A President Massie would be among the first since the days of Jefferson to repeal and restrict executive power, even when (or especially when) that executive is himself.

If Thomas Massie were president, there would be no automobile kill switch mandates. Massie authored a 2026 amendment to block federal funding for the impaired-driving technology mandate born in the 2021 infrastructure law, and he argued that a car should not become “your judge, your jury, and your executioner.” Regulators may prefer cleaner language, but the civil-liberties dispute is obvious enough: should Washington require vehicles to monitor drivers and intervene? Massie’s answer is no, and instead of being celebrated for voting to defund the Biden-era legislation, it became yet another grievance of those who prefer safety over liberty.

If Thomas Massie were president, there would have been no federal COVID mandates. He sued to end the CDC’s air-travel mask order, introduced legislation to terminate the vaccine mandate for international travelers, and condemned the “faceless bureaucrats” behind edicts Congress never enacted. The courts later blocked OSHA’s vaccine-or-test rule for large employers, and CMS eventually withdrew its healthcare-worker vaccine mandate. Massie was right earlier than most, and louder than nearly everyone who later pretended the whole episode had simply been an understandable excess.

If Thomas Massie were president, there wouldn’t have been record federal gun control prosecutions. His legislative instinct runs in the opposite direction: national constitutional carry, repeal of the Gun-Free School Zones Act, and fewer federal crimes piled onto conduct that the Second Amendment was written to protect. That outlook is irreconcilable with a Justice Department mentality that boasts it will “pursue every firearms case referred.” A Massie administration would treat gun ownership as a liberty to be secured, not as a pretext for one more bureaucratic dragnet.

If Thomas Massie were president, the national debt wouldn’t be $39 trillion and rising by trillions each year. Massie has spent years voting against omnibus bills and continuing resolutions, and he now calls the continuing resolutions ritual a “fake fight,” because both parties preserve the machinery that drives borrowing higher. The Biden-era spending levels were not only cut, but refusing to rubber-stamp said spending created yet more friction between him and the supposed party of “fiscal conservatism.” The 2025 tax-and-spending package was projected to add roughly $3.8 trillion more over a decade. In Washington, insolvency is bipartisan, but a President Massie would veto such bills, challenging Congress to keep trying until it could either balance the budget, or embrace shutdown.

If Thomas Massie were president, gas prices would be cheaper. His politics point toward more supply, fewer regulatory affectations, and less willingness to destabilize oil-producing regions in the name of grand strategy. In Congress he backed cross-border energy infrastructure, while current inflation data show energy prices surging and gasoline costs jumping as the Iran war drove up oil. A government that constrains energy at home and jeopardizes it abroad should not affect surprise when the reckoning arrives at the pump.

If Thomas Massie were president, grocery store prices would be cheaper. He has long argued that Washington makes food needlessly dear by burdening local production and intrastate processing, backing the PRIME Act, interstate raw-milk legislation, and country-of-origin transparency. USDA still shows food-at-home prices above year-earlier levels, and Federal Reserve research has noted that modern food inflation is driven heavily by supply-chain and processing costs, not merely by raw commodities. Massie attacks the most important problem facing everyday Americans, cost of living, from multiple angles, be it tackling inflation or clearing the path between producers and consumers.

If Thomas Massie were president, the swamp wouldn’t be bigger than ever. He calls out the political theater of Washington, attacks taxpayer-funded censorship programs, presses for foreign-agent transparency, and treats debt monetization as a racket and a ponzi scheme. In his view, the swamp is manned from all corners of DC: lobbyists, bureaucracies, intelligence agencies, subsidy-seekers, and legislators. A Massie presidency would work to dismantle the managerial state which is full to bursting with progressive lifers who somehow manage to retain their positions with each passing administration, both Democrat and Republican alike.

But with Donald Trump as president, the opposite is true. Under Trump, America enjoys new wars along with its decades-long police actions. It features extensions for spying apparati, even those used against Trump. It stares at $40 trillion in debt, not only without tapping the brakes, but with calls for even more spending. It navigates an evolving narrative on Epstein from releasing the files, to calling them a hoax, to then attacking those who demand justice. Above all else, America under President Trump puts the needs of Israel before the needs of its own citizens. And should a single Congressman from rural Kentucky both say America First and mean it, then he is Public Enemy #1.

If only Thomas Massie were president and not exiting Congress.

May 20, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on If Thomas Massie Was President…

Operation Geschäftsfreund: How West Germany Paid for Israel’s Nuclear Bomb

By Freddie Ponton | 21st Century Wire | May 19, 2026

In March 2026, an investigation in Haaretz argued that West Germany may have “secretly financed” much of Israel’s Dimona nuclear project through off‑the‑books loans worth roughly 2 billion Deutschmarks, funneled under the cover of “Negev development.” Historical clues indicate that Germany secretly funded Israel’s nuclear program and raise the questions about how much Dimona cost, who really paid for it, and what that says about Germany’s postwar “moral responsibility”.

This article picks up where that story stops. It goes back to Bundestag files, development‑bank records and declassified intelligence histories to show, in considerably sharper detail, how Bonn built a secret credit machine for Israel, who ran it, and how it locked Germany into a nuclear order it still refuses to name.

Germany did not just look away while Israel built the bomb. It helped pay for it, hid the money off the books, and then spent decades pretending that nothing of the sort had ever happened. Today, the same state that secretly bankrolled Dimona presents itself as a guardian of non‑proliferation and lectures Iran on the dangers of nuclear ambiguity.

Germany’s secret billions that built Israel’s bomb

Germany never tires of preaching its “historical responsibility” to Israel. Reparations. Moral duty, and postwar atonement, even though the archives expose a different reality. What actually happened was a cold-blooded, decade-long secret cash pipeline, codenamed Operation Geschäftsfreund  (Business Friend)— that funnelled nearly two billion Deutsche Marks into Israel under the cover of “development” projects while Bonn kept parliament, the public and much of its own bureaucracy in the dark.

The key paper trail runs through the Bundestag’s own 2012 reply, Drucksache 17/10482. There the government finally acknowledged that Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion struck a confidential understanding at the Waldorf Astoria in New York on 14 March 1960: a special 2 billion DM credit line, paid out over roughly a decade and shielded from public scrutiny for “foreign-policy reasons.” The arrangement was implemented through the state development bank KfW and booked as bilateral capital aid for Israel’s economy, formally “development assistance,” in practice something far more sensitive.

DOCUMENT: Response to the parliamentary question submitted by Members of Parliament Ulla Jelpke, Jan van Aken, Eva Bulling-Schröter, other Members of Parliament, and the Left Party parliamentary group.– Printed Matter 17/10277 – Granting of loans to Israel and the “business associate” case in the 1960s – Translated from German to English using online translation tools (Source: Bundestag)

Publicly, Bonn clung to the safer script of reparations and “strategic partnership.” Even the 2012 parliamentary answer still tried to dress the arrangement up as generic infrastructure support. The numbers, the secrecy and the timing tell a different story. These were unusually soft loans, with long maturities, low interest, repeated reschedulings, and pushed through a development bank that, as later reporting and archival work show, never seriously monitored how Israel used the funds. The most explicit published account of that opacity remains Dirk Pohlmann’s reconstruction, together with reporting on KfW’s refusal to release historical files. They rolled out at precisely the moment Israel was pouring resources into Israel’s nuclear site known as Dimona, and surrounding it with an elaborate desert-development cover narrative.

The official reparations frame had been erected earlier with the 1952 Luxembourg Agreement. It gave West Germany the politically useful language of Wiedergutmachung (making good again), a soothing concept that never matched the scale or nature of the crimes. By the late 1950s, that façade was being quietly supplemented by military aid, intelligence cooperation and a far more dangerous credit line that crossed the line from restitution into nuclear partnership. The same state that lectured its own population and the world with “never again” rhetoric was now using the moral credit of Holocaust memory as diplomatic armour for a secret policy that helped move Israel into the nuclear club under U.S. tutelage. Public atonement and private collusion ran in parallel, and the latter depended on the credibility of the former.

The decisive political moment came at the Waldorf Astoria meeting of 14 March 1960. Adenauer and Ben-Gurion, the same Ben-Gurion who was driving Israel’s nuclear crash programme, sealed the understanding that became Operation Geschäftsfreund. Investigative work by Gaby Weber and Dirk Pohlmann has put that encounter at the heart of the covert financing, showing how the “Negev development” language agreed in New York later appears in German and Israeli files as the umbrella label for the loan scheme and its supposed civilian projects.

The Bundestag reply speaks vaguely of “support for the Israeli economy” and a “special project” for infrastructure. Other records echo the classic civilian fig leaves, including a nuclear-powered desalination plant in the Negev, textile factories, and industrial zones. In plain language, this is the veil that was wrapped around Dimona, the heavy-water reactor and reprocessing complex that anchored Israel’s plutonium production. On the Israeli side, security officials used the same talking points (hasbara) when foreign visitors asked about the huge earthworks in the desert, describing the site as a textile plant, and a water projects for arid regions, “Negev development.” On the German side, KfW approved transfers against project descriptions so vague, and so weakly checked, that nothing resembling normal development finance was ever set up.

Pohlmann’s documentary work ties the 2 billion DM commitment tightly to the nuclear programme’s time frame and to Negev projects that never materialised. Weber’s reconstruction is even more damning on the political climate in early 1960, with the Eichmann kidnapping, Cold War spy bargaining, Adenauer’s domestic fragility and Ben-Gurion’s nuclear ambitions all colliding in a narrow window of back-channel deals and mutual leverage. Link to Gaby Weber’s work Pdf Only: Eichmann wurde noch gebraucht

Weber also names the men who kept the mechanism running. Hans Globke, Adenauer’s iron-fisted chief of the Federal Chancellery and overseer of Germany’s foreign intelligence services or BND, was the gatekeeper, and a former commentator on the Nuremberg Laws who sat at the junction of Nazi-era continuities and anti-communist statecraft. Reinhard Gehlen, ex-Wehrmacht intelligence chief on the Eastern Front and founder of the BND, supplied the other half, providing an intelligence service built on recycled Third Reich networks, heavily penetrated by former SS and Gestapo cadres, and from the outset bound into American strategic planning. For the CIA, the key handler in this phase was James H. Critchfield, the former U.S. occupation officer who became Washington’s liaison to Gehlen between 1950 and 1955 and helped turn the “Org” into the official Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service). Globke and Gehlen met almost daily. Together they formed the real power centre that turned West Germany’s public atonement script into a covert security architecture, including the secret nuclear alliance with Israel.

This German node did not act alone. France supplied the Dimona reactor, the initial uranium and the reprocessing know-how. Britain quietly moved heavy water and other sensitive materials. The United States, after a brief phase of resistance, chose to accommodate the emerging Israeli deterrent. Only one Western leader seriously tried to stop the project: John F. Kennedy. Throughout 1963, JFK pressed Ben-Gurion and then Levi Eshkol for regular American inspections at Dimona and warned that continued U.S. support would be at risk if Israel insisted on an opaque weapons programme. For the documentary trail, one of the cleanest public gateway remains the JFK Library’s correspondence holdings and the declassified material discussed in Avner Cohen’s work on Kennedy and Dimona. Six months after Kennedy was shot in Dallas, that pressure evaporated under Lyndon Johnson.

By that point, the ex-Nazi-staffed BND that had helped Adenauer and Globke manage Operation Geschäftsfreund was fully integrated into the U.S. intelligence ecosystem. Gehlen’s service maintained a close operational relationship with James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s counter-intelligence chief and one of Israel’s most committed protectors inside the American apparatus. The overlaps are hard to ignore. The same Western networks that quietly underwrote Dimona, namely German, French, British, American and Israeli, sat close to the levers of power in 1963, and they shared a clear strategic interest in making sure Israel’s nuclear project would not be strangled by an American non-proliferation crusade. For decades, a serious current of JFK research has pointed to this configuration of interests as one of the hidden backdrops to the president’s murder, even if decisive archival proof has never been declassified. The article does not claim to solve the assassination, but insists on something more basic—that any honest account of Kennedy’s fate has to reckon with the fact that he was the lone Western head of state pushing against a secret nuclear order that his own allies were busy constructing and protecting.

What remains is a German policy that cannot be prettified as remorse. Moral theatre, strategic secrecy, financial statecraft and raw power calculation all moved in lockstep. Bonn preached “historical responsibility” while helping to create and entrench a nuclear order it could never have defended openly before its own citizens, and then spent the next sixty years behaving as if none of it had ever happened. The vocabulary of atonement became the shield for a second-order crime, and not the original genocide, but the decision to turn its memory into political capital for clandestine nuclear collusion.

May 19, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Comments Off on Operation Geschäftsfreund: How West Germany Paid for Israel’s Nuclear Bomb

Italian port authorities halt Israel-bound shipments of ‘military-grade steel’ from India

The Cradle | May 19, 2026

Italian authorities are holding three shipments suspected of carrying military-grade steel from India to Israel after activists from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and No Harbour for Genocide (NHB) exposed their contents, Middle East Eye (MEE) reported on 18 May.

According to the activists, the shipments amount to roughly 806 tonnes of military-grade steel and could be used to manufacture up to 17,458 artillery shells for the Israeli army.

They said the cargo originated from R L Steels & Energy Limited in Aurangabad and was destined for IMI Systems, now known as Elbit Systems Land, in Ramat Hasharon.

Three consignments transported by the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) are being held in Gioia Tauro and Cagliari, while another three were reportedly rerouted toward Sri Lanka after activists began tracking the vessels.

“We are seeing now a flood of military supplies from India to Israel,” Ilham Yaseen, military embargo coordinator with BDS, told MEE.

She called for pressure “to stop these supplies from reaching Israel and to hold the far-right Indian government and any complicit Indian company accountable for their complicity in Israel’s atrocity crimes.”

A spokesperson for NHB said the steel was heading to “the Ramat Hasharon ammunition plant, which has no civilian output. It’s all military production. We know this 100 percent.”

Activists say the deliveries underline India’s growing role in supplying Israel during its wars in Gaza and Lebanon, particularly as demand for 155mm artillery shells has surged.

The activists also accused shipping firms of obscuring routes and destinations to avoid scrutiny, after Spain reportedly blocked one vessel from docking, Greek dockworkers refused to unload cargo, and Italian authorities later detained three shipments for possible inspection.

On 6 February, dockworkers from more than 20 ports across Italy, Greece, the Basque Country, Morocco, and Turkiye carried out coordinated action under the banner “Dockworkers Don’t Work for War,” aiming to disrupt arms shipments and oppose the use of civilian ports for war logistics.

Italy’s Unione Sindacale di Base said the action sought to “ensure that European and Mediterranean ports are places of peace, free from any involvement in war.”

Francesco Staccioli of USB warned, “If we don’t take this step, all our other demands will be crushed under war.”

Across Europe, since the genocide in Gaza was launched in October 2023, court rulings, national bans, dockworker actions, and rail blockades have worked to obstruct Israeli military shipments.

Despite this, many European states continue to facilitate arms transfers to Israel, with Germany approving $7.8 million in arms exports during the first weeks of the US-Israeli war on Iran, despite lawyers pursuing German officials for aiding Israel’s genocide in Gaza through weapons deliveries.

Most recently, Israeli media reported that dozens of cargo planes transported ammunition through US military bases in Germany, as Washington and Tel Aviv intensified preparations for possible renewed attacks on Iran.

May 19, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Italian port authorities halt Israel-bound shipments of ‘military-grade steel’ from India

Kata’ib Hezbollah warns Jordan over allowing US-Israeli reconnaissance missions against Iraq

Press TV – May 19, 2026

The Kata’ib Hezbollah resistance movement has warned the Amman government against ongoing reconnaissance missions launched by the United States and Israel from Jordanian soil against Iraqi resistance fighters, particularly the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU).

“In the wake of unfolding developments across the region and US-Israeli actions against Iraq’s security and stability, the enemies are aggressively seeking to escalate tensions against the (Iraqi) resistance front and the PMU,” Abu Mujahid al-Assaf, the security chief of the group, said in a statement on Monday evening.

He warned that the patience of heroic resistance fighters in the face of blatant Israeli violations of ceasefire agreements and recurrent acts of aggression against Iraq’s national sovereignty is about to run out.

Assaf noted that the bulk of US and Israeli surveillance missions are being launched from Jordan, warning that this serves as a prelude for attacks against Iraq.

The Jordanian government, therefore, is strongly advised to take lessons from missile and drone operations conducted in retaliation for the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran, as “patience is starting to run out,” the senior Kata’ib Hezbollah official emphasized.

He further said that the US and Israel, based on received information, are preparing for a fresh round of strikes against commanders of Iraqi resistance groups and the PMU, commonly known by its Arabic name Hashd al-Sha’abi.

Assaf warned Washington and Tel Aviv against any strikes on Iraq, stressing that the response to such a folly would be comprehensive, and the United States would have to shoulder responsibility for all serious repercussions in such a case.

The remarks come as US military aircraft have been scrambling over the past few days to transfer personnel and munitions from one military installation to another across Iraq.

May 19, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Kata’ib Hezbollah warns Jordan over allowing US-Israeli reconnaissance missions against Iraq

US-Israeli war on Iran unlikely to resume due to global opposition: Pakistani defense minister

Press TV – May 19, 2026

Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif says that a resumption of the US‑Israeli war on Iran is unlikely given the widespread global opposition and lack of public support in the United States for another war in West Asia.

In an interview with Geo News’ “Capital Talk” program on Monday, Asif said Israel strongly desires the war to restart and be fought by America on its side, but “my hunch says that this war will not happen again.”

“Wars are fought when the public stands behind them. When the public does not support them, wars are not fought,” he added.

The defense minister noted that even Iran’s neighbors across the Persian Gulf are not in favor of aggression against the Islamic Republic.

He highlighted Pakistan’s ancient linguistic and neighborly ties with Iran and expressed gratitude for Tehran’s trust in Islamabad’s mediation efforts.

Israel ‘left alone’ as world rejects war

Asif argued that Israel has been left alone in its push for a prolonged conflict.

“Israel or maybe two or three countries want the war to be prolonged and for America to fight on their behalf,” he said, stressing that the overwhelming international mood is against it.

He said the positions of China and Russia are very clear in that they, along with other nations, are not supporters of war against Iran.

The defense minister also praised Iran’s strong spirit during the imposed war, which began on February 28 when the United States and Israel launched joint assaults that assassinated Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and targeted civilian infrastructure.

Trump still threatens military action

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened that military action remains possible if diplomacy fails.

On Monday, Trump said he had paused plans for a major assault at the request of Persian Gulf Arab allies, but threatened to launch a “full, large‑scale assault” if no agreement is reached.

Despite the recurring threats, Iran has consistently rejected US proposals that undermine its sovereignty.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei confirmed on Monday that exchanges with Washington continue through Pakistani mediation, with Tehran having conveyed its concerns.

May 19, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on US-Israeli war on Iran unlikely to resume due to global opposition: Pakistani defense minister

General strike across Italy in solidarity with Gaza and in protest against the attack on Sumud Flotilla

Palestinian Information Center – May 18, 2026

ROME – Italy witnessed a nationwide general strike on Monday, affecting transportation, education, and logistics sectors, following calls by labor unions protesting military rearmament programs, rejecting Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and expressing solidarity with the “Global Sumud Flotilla” attempting to break the blockade on the Gaza Strip.

The strike coincided with demonstrations in several Italian cities under the slogan “Stop Everything,” organized by labor unions and civil society groups to protest rising living costs, military policies, and increased spending on weapons at the expense of healthcare and education, while also demanding an end to what protesters described as the genocide against Palestinians and supporting the flotilla heading to Gaza.

In the capital, Rome, protesters gathered in one of the city’s main squares, carrying banners urging the Italian government not to continue what they called “complicity in crimes” alongside Israel.

Demonstrators also waved Palestinian flags and chanted slogans, including “Free Palestine,” expressing outrage over the Israeli attack on the Global Sumud Flotilla.

The strikes disrupted several metro lines, including Rome’s Line C and Naples’ Line 1, while some suburban train services in Milan were suspended. Port workers in the city of Livorno also staged similar protests.

Among the participants in Rome was Spanish-Palestinian activist Saif Abu Kishk, one of the activists detained by Israel during the April 29 attack on the flotilla in international waters near the island of Crete.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Abu Kishk said some of the boats had been seized during the latest attack, but participants remain determined to continue toward Gaza while solidarity movements for the flotilla continue across European cities.

He described the Israeli attack as another violation of international law and maritime law, saying it forms part of a broader pattern of ongoing abuses against Gaza.

Abu Kishk also argued that the continuation of such operations is tied to the complicity of Western governments, including the Italian government, which continues to allow arms trade through ports and airports. He called for sustained public pressure to end that complicity and stop the war on Gaza.

He added that participants were fully aware of the risks before setting sail but said morale remains high, noting that many people responded to the call to support Palestine through the flotilla.

Italian protester Andrea Ziccaro said he joined the strike to express support for the Global Sumud Flotilla and opposition to militarization policies.

He added that the latest Israeli attack on the flotilla represents a dangerous escalation, criticizing governments for prioritizing military spending over healthcare and education in what he described as a “war economy.”

Meanwhile, protester Natalia Mancini said the attack on the flotilla was “another humiliation,” arguing that repeated incidents of this kind expose contradictions within Western democratic discourse.

Earlier Monday, Israeli naval forces began seizing boats from the “Global Sumud Flotilla” in international waters in the Mediterranean Sea and detaining activists onboard.

With the participation of 54 boats, the flotilla had sailed Thursday from the Turkish city of Marmaris in a renewed attempt to break the Israeli blockade imposed on Gaza since 2007.

On April 29, Israeli forces attacked flotilla boats in international waters near Crete. The flotilla included 345 participants from 39 countries, including Turkish citizens.

Israeli authorities then seized 21 boats carrying around 175 activists, while the remaining boats continued toward Greek territorial waters.

May 18, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Comments Off on General strike across Italy in solidarity with Gaza and in protest against the attack on Sumud Flotilla

Iran says any agreement with US must end war on all fronts, lift blockade and sanctions

Press TV – May 18, 2026

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi has said that any possible agreement with the US must ensure an end to the war on all fronts and lift the naval blockade and sanctions imposed against the country.

Gharibabadi laid out Iran’s conditions for an agreement with the United States to end the war as he briefed members of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission on Monday, according to Ebrahim Rezae, the committee’s spokesman.

Rezaei said the deputy foreign minister updated lawmakers on the ongoing indirect negotiations between Iran and the US and the proposals exchanged between the two sides through Pakistan.

“Gharibabadi emphasizes that in any possible agreement, [it must be stipulated that] the war must end on all fronts, including Lebanon, US forces must withdraw from the region surrounding Iran, the naval blockade must be lifted, sanctions must be cancelled, and Iranian assets must be released,” the spokesman said.

He quoted Gharibabadi as saying that the Islamic Republic has sent its latest proposal to the American side, and is yet to receive an official response.

The deputy foreign minister also stressed that it was the US that requested a ceasefire and negotiations, and that the Islamic Republic never sought negotiations with Washington during this war.

“It was also emphasized that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the definitive winner of the 40-day war, and that the United States and the Zionist regime were defeated,” Rezaei said.

According to Rezaei’s remarks, the commission’s members presented their suggestions during the session and stressed that Iran’s negotiating team should not back down from the Iranian nation’s legitimate demands and should negotiate “from a victorious position”.

They warned of the US history of breaking promises, including its withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), calling for the continuation of Iran’s management of the Strait of Hormuz and the official recognition of this role.

Meanwhile, the commission’s members also rejected the UAE’s hostile actions and called for a “serious” response to the UAE.

They also emphasized the need to pursue justice for the assassination of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei, in international forums and courts, stating that “diplomacy should be used to stabilize the capacities resulting from the war.”

The US and Israel started a fresh round of aerial aggression on Iran on February 28, some eight months after they carried out unprovoked attacks on the country.

Iran began to swiftly retaliate against the strikes by launching barrages of missiles and drone attacks on the Israeli-occupied territories as well as on US bases and interests in regional countries.

On April 8, a Pakistan-brokered temporary ceasefire between Iran and the US took effect. However, subsequent peace negotiations in Islamabad ultimately stalled amid Washington’s maximalist demands and insistence on unreasonable positions.

May 18, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Iran says any agreement with US must end war on all fronts, lift blockade and sanctions

Thomas Massie Introduces Bill To Finally Force AIPAC To Register As A Foreign Agent Under FARA

blueapples on X | May 18, 2026

Ahead of a monumental primary on Tuesday, May 19th, which will determine whether or not the dying embers of America’s democratic process will be completely extinguished by the pro-Israel lobby, Kentucky representative Thomas Massie has introduced a bill into Congress that could deter future politicians actually willing to put America before Israel from suffering his same fate. On May 14th, Massie introduced the Americans Insist on Political Agent Clarity Act (”AIPAC Act”) in an effort to finally force the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (”AIPAC”) to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (”FARA”). The proposed legislation is the apotheosis of a crusade fought by Massie that has opened the eyes of the American people to see how the pro-Israel lobby has taken control over the country’s electoral process. Yet, despite widespread public support to force AIPAC to register as a foreign agent under FARA, the pro-Israel lobby’s stranglehold over Congress stands as a seemingly insurmountable obstacle keeping Massie’s proposed legislation from turning that into a reality.

The express aim of the AIPAC Act is to “amend the Foreign Registration Act of 1938… to clarify the definition of ‘foreign principal’ and ensure transparency in lobbying on behalf of foreign interests.” Under FARA, a foreign principal is defined as:

(1) a government of a foreign country and a foreign political party;

(2) a person outside of the United States, unless it is established that such person is an individual and a citizen of and domiciled within the United States, or that such person is not an individual and is organized under or created by the laws of the United States or of any State or other place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and has its principal place of business within the United States; and

(3) a partnership, association, corporation, organization, or other combination of persons organized under the laws of or having its principal place of business in a foreign country.

Since its inception in 1954, AIPAC has circumvented the registration requirements under FARA by virtue of being established as a domestic lobbying organization legally distinct from the parameters that the act uses to designate a foreign principal. AIPAC was created by Isaiah L. Kenen, a lobbyist for the Israeli government that previously served under the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who worked as the information director of the American Zionist Council (”AZC”). After raising $65 million and $73 million in U.S. aid for Israel in 1951 and 1952, respectively, Kenen grew weary that he would be investigated by the U.S. State Department for not registering as a foreign agent under FARA. Kenen created the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs (”AZCPA”) to navigate around the registration requirements under FARA in response to that concern. The AZPCA was renamed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 1959 and became the preeminent political vehicle for the pro-Israel lobby in the decades that followed its creation.

The AIPAC Act would amend FARA by adding a fourth paragraph that would additionally define a foreign principal as “any organization, association, corporation, or other entity….whose lobbying activities or stated mission is, either wholly or in part, to influence United States public policy or government action in furtherance of the political or economic interests of a foreign country or recognized state-affiliated political entity.” That language included in Massie’s proposed legislation would broaden the definition of a foreign principal to encompass domestic lobbying firms in the U.S. like AIPAC. The proposed legislation would also establish indicators for determining the foreign political alignment of lobbying firms and allow American citizens to file complaints with the U.S. Department of Justice to request investigations into potential FARA violations.

Massie explained the calculus behind the proposed legislation designed to require AIPAC to register as a foreign agent shortly after introducing it into Congress on May 14th in an interview with Redacted News. “For some reason, they’re immune right now, and I think not just the money that’s spent in politics but the lobbying that happens on Capitol Hill should be reported if it’s a foreign country. Whether it’s Great Britain, Australia, Turkey, Qatar, or Israel, it needs to be reported,” he stated, clarifying the amendment to FARA would apply to foreign principals lobbying on behalf of any nation.

Although the expanded definition of a foreign principal under FARA in the AIPAC Act would apply to lobbyists working on behalf of any nation, the material reality is that the legislation is designed to address the unrestrained power and influence of the pro-Israel lobby. In 2021, AIPAC changed its lobbying strategy by moving away from funding political candidates indirectly by working with unaffiliated political action committees (PACs) and instead created its own PAC to raise and contribute funds directly. In the 2024 election cycle alone, AIPAC backed candidates using its own PAC and super PAC, the United Democracy Project, in 389 congressional races through either official endorsements and/or campaign contributions. AIPAC-backed candidates won 318 of those 389 congressional races, expanding the roster of pro-Israel politicians in Congress even further. Presently, 80 members of Congress, or 15%, list AIPAC as their all-time top contributor.

Nowhere is the unyielding influence of the pro-Israel lobby on American elections more apparent than in Massie’s current bid for re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives. Massie, who has held the seat for the 4th Congressional District of Kentucky since first being elected to Congress in 2012, has seen the broader pro-Israel lobby spend tens of millions of dollars in an effort to depose him. Ed Gallrein, Massie’s opponent in the May 19th primary for the seat representing the 4th Congressional District of Kentucky, has received over $15.5 million in campaign contributions from pro-Israel PACs, including donations from the MAGA Kentucky PAC, created by Jewish billionaires Paul Singer, John Paulsen, and Donald Trump’s biggest political donor, casino magnate and fervent Zionist Miriam Adelson, expressly for the purpose of defeating Massie.

The race between Massie and Gallrein has eclipsed more than $30 million in spending, making it the most expensive congressional campaign in U.S. history. The majority of that spending has been made in an effort to unseat Massie, as the pro-Israel lobby’s expenditures against him have surpassed the $14.5 million dollars AIPAC spent to successfully replace former representative of New York’s 16th Congressional District, Democrat Jamaal Bowman, with pro-Israel candidate George Latimer in 2024. AIPAC also succeeded that year in unseating Democratic representative from Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, Cori Bush, with pro-Israel candidate Wesley Ball, thanks to $9 million of spending against her.

The defeats of Bowman and Bush were engineered by AIPAC to remove two of the most outspoken critics of Israel from Congress. However, neither Bowman nor Bush was as outspoken against the political malfeasance of the pro-Israel lobby as Massie has been. In recent years, Massie has shifted the Overton Window by exposing the inner machinations of the pro-Israel political machine toward a perspective that has accelerated the decline in public support for Israel from American citizens. In doing so, he has also amplified the efforts of AIPAC and the broader pro-Israel lobby inextricably tied to the Trump administration to replace him in Congress with a Zionist puppet, who has taken the form of Ed Gallrein.

While Massie had coasted to re-election in each of his previous campaigns, the spending against him by the pro-Israel lobby has created the realistic possibility that he could be ousted from Congress. If Massie fails at defeating Gallrein in the primary for his congressional seat, then it would render the AIPAC Act he has introduced to Congress as his last stand against a Zionist Occupied Government that has shown it will spend every resource at its disposal to subvert the American democratic process. That stranglehold that the pro-Israel lobby has over the American political system is clear as the AIPAC Act currently only has a 2% chance of being passed following its referral to the House Committee on the Judiciary. The dynamic cultivated by Massie that has led to the boundless spending against him by the pro-Israel lobby shows that even if he is defeated, then it may be little more than a Pyrrhic victory for AIPAC, as Massie’s demise would only prove how justified the crusade he fought against them was to begin with.

May 18, 2026 Posted by | Corruption, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Thomas Massie Introduces Bill To Finally Force AIPAC To Register As A Foreign Agent Under FARA

Thomas Massie Gives the ‘America First’ Leadership Trump Promised

By Jack Hunter | The Libertarian Institute | May 18, 2026

When Donald Trump ran for president in 2024, he promised, among other things, no more U.S. regime change wars, no more of America sending its citizens’ dollars to fund foreign nations, and that he and Elon Musk would drastically cut federal departments and overall spending, finally taking a hatchet to the country’s mounting debt.

In other words, the opposite of the last Republican president, George W. Bush.

It is 2026, the United States is stuck in a seemingly endless regime change war in Iran, America continues to funnel money to nations around the world (particularly Ukraine and Israel), Musk is long gone and any promises of spending cuts through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are but a distant memory.

At this juncture, President Trump’s goal seems to be to become more George W. than George W.

Then there’s Thomas Massie, the libertarian-leaning Republican U.S. congressman from Kentucky’s 4th district, who was an avid supporter of Ron Paul’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012.

Long before Trump officially entered the political fray, Massie supported Dr. Paul, in part, because he promised no more endless wars, an end to foreign aid, and because he was a serious fiscal conservative.

When Trump also promised these things, Massie lent his support at various intervals and gave his full endorsement in 2024. Massie also still votes according to these principles in Congress. If those votes run against any part of Trump’s agenda, and they have—part of Trump’s early ire against Massie was his opposition to the president’s big spending “Big Beautiful Bill” last year—Massie still votes against war and foreign aid and for fiscal responsibility.

Massie has refused to change throughout. This has made Trump and people who blindly support him mad.

President Trump and his allies apparently now expect Massie to support U.S. regime change wars, to support foreign aid, and to put up with financial recklessness from Republicans. They are so angry that he won’t go along with their complete betrayal of what Trump originally campaigned on that the president, leftwing Zionist billionaires and Israeli lobbying group AIPAC have poured a historic amount of money into Massie’s primary opponent ahead of tomorrow’s election.

Team Trump insists that Massie needs to betray his principles just like they have. They are absolutely outraged that he won’t do it.

If you think this sounds completely insane, you would be correct. Only someone with their head so far up Trump’s backend could not be able to see the complete lunacy of how Team Trump now views Massie and his primary race.

There’s a lot of those, unfortunately.

What is fortunate, however, is there are also powerful conservative voices who can still discern reality.

Tucker Carlson is chief among them. Before interviewing Massie on his popular podcast earlier this month, Carlson said in his opening monologue, “Thomas Massie is, in his district, and probably nationally, but certainly we know for a fact in his district, the most popular person.”

He continued:

“Thomas Massie has made good on the promises that Donald Trump made to the nation. Thomas Massie is a better standard bearer for Trumpism, for the ‘America First’ ideology that Donald Trump ran on three times, than Donald Trump is.”

Carlson went even further about Massie’s overall character. “He is, in short, the American they told us we should aspire to be. He is the man you want your son to be.”

That’s high praise.

Another Massie fan is Dr. Ron Paul, who was exiting Congress when the Kentucky Republican was elected in 2012. Paul has said of Massie:

“I met Thomas before he came to Congress and was sworn in before his class was actually sworn in. But I was leaving Congress a few weeks later. So we actually crossed paths so we could say we served in Congress together.”

Paul would add, “I knew he was very dedicated to the cause of liberty. I was anxious to help him. And I think he has proved his case for being a defender of liberty and the Constitution.”

The same Thomas Massie who supported Ron Paul’s presidential runs and who now votes according to those libertarian principles is the same in his beliefs now as he has been throughout his entire political journey. For a time, Trump claimed to believe in these things too, but now clearly doesn’t. As Carlson notes, in the three times he ran for president, Trump promised an “America First” agenda and now, today, prioritizes the state of Israel and other foreign interests over those of the country he was elected to lead.

Which indeed makes Massie “a better standard bearer for Trumpism,” or at least what Trump advertised himself as originally, than Trump himself.

This is barely even debatable. It is almost perfectly clear to anyone not completely blinded by mind-numbingly dumb partisanship.

Again, what Donald Trump and his supporters now truly need from Thomas Massie is for him to betray those principles too. To join them in putting America second or third or worse.

But he won’t. And thank God for that.

May 18, 2026 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Thomas Massie Gives the ‘America First’ Leadership Trump Promised

More Wars and Rumors of Wars

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • May 16, 2026

President Donald Trump is back from his business trip to China which had a lot of ambiguity over issues like Taiwan without having done either much discernible damage or benefit to American interests. The trip ended with the American participants dropping all the gifts that they had received from the Chinese into a large garbage bin on the tarmac before they boarded their plane. And while the president was gone Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to everyone’s surprised announced that he was canceling plans to deploy an additional 4,000 Texas-based US soldiers to Poland for a long-planned nine month rotation that includes training with NATO allies. The assignment was also originally intended to serve as a possible resource should the situation with Russia-Ukraine happen to spill over into adjacent NATO countries. The troops were already moving to establish themselves and their equipment in their new Polish bases when the surprise cancelation order was issued, possibly as a follow-up to Trump’s threats against NATO for failure to support the US war against Iran. As the situation in Eastern Europe stands, Russia has warned that an increasing level of NATO involvement in the conflict through its provision of weapons, intelligence and even some boots on the ground is already crossing several red lines which might quite plausibly be regarded as acts of war.

It might be possible to regard the decision not to add American soldiers to a region already awash with bellicosity as positive, but it could possibly be premature to regard it as so. The Trump Administration has been admittedly nearly always inclined to go for the most aggressive option whether it be in what adversaries regard as foreign policy “negotiations” or in terms of supporting even more violence prone allies like Israel. Indeed, two other foreign policy issues that are currently on the news front pages are renewed drives to send more soldiers to Greenland, presumably as another step forward to annexation, and the apparent desire to invade Cuba before too long and remove its Communist government.

Cuba is currently being blockaded by the US and has completely run out of fuel, leading to unrest which is being cynically exploited just as the White House manipulated the situation in Iran where riots among the public due to shortages were cited as sign that the government would easily fall. And the Trump administration is about to pull another rabbit out of its hat concerning Cuba, preparing to indict former Cuban President Raúl Castro on charges in connection with shooting down planes 30 years ago, a move similar to the indictment of now deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro before his recent kidnapping by US Delta Force commandos.

Negotiations with Cuba were in fact launched after Trump suggested a “friendly takeover” of what he called a “failed nation,” while Secretary of State Marco Rubio, himself a Cuban refugee, said the country would need to change not just its economic policies but move away from the current regime, which he has called both “incompetent,” which admittedly sounds like the Trump Cabinet, as well as being Communist.

And as if that were not enough, there is even talk in Washington about making Venezuela the fifty-first state, though it should be observed that the Venezuelans, already on the receiving end of Yankee largesse when Maduro was kidnapped, have not been consulted on that possible development.

But the biggest issue confronting the returning Trump is what to do about the Iran War monster that has been confronting him since before he departed for Beijing, leading many observers to believe that he may have been looking for a way out of the situation with the help of China, which in the event only advised him to “end the war.” That the conflict was entered into by choice with considerable prodding and lying coming from his “best friends” the Israelis is, of course, the background to what developed. Trump returned to the confusion generated by negotiations that go nowhere wrapped around a ceasefire that is generally being regarded as only a pause in the action.

Trump may have gone to China with expectations that the Chinese government would suggest to him some face saving way to extricate the US from the Iran quagmire, but if that was so he was mistaken and China did not offer an acceptable off ramp for Trump to extricate himself. China, for its part, and like Russia, is undoubtedly delighted that the United States is finally knocked down from its pedestal as the world’s preeminent superpower. President Xi Jinping, to cite only one example of how China clearly regards itself as a major power equal to the US, made clear to Trump that Beijing will tolerate no US interference with Taiwan, which the Chinese consider an integral part of their country. Trump could not push back on that assertion.

There has been considerable news concerning Iran while Trump was gone, most notably in the United States due to the release of several articles in the mainstream media suggesting that the politically powerful neoconservatives, who normally delight both in global dominance by Washington as well as in any conflict directed against Israel’s enemies, are now calling the Iran war an unmitigated disaster, a “checkmate” by Iran and a “humiliation.” They are even arguing that there is no way to move forward with it. And there is more than that with the Saudi Arabians also chiming in on what a disaster the war has been to themselves and also to the other Gulf States. The Arabs now believe that the assumption that they were protected by a US security umbrella proved to be absolutely worthless. Beyond that, they also have observed that they were without any consultation dragged into an unnecessary and unwanted war against Iran by the US and Israel.

American neoconservatives have been a major force in support of US military dominance policies since the nineteen nineties, when they launched the international side of their movement with the A Clean Break: A New Strategy For Securing the Realm document in 1996, a policy statement that was prepared by a study group led by prominent Jewish neocon Richard Perle for then-as-now Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The report argued that Israeli security would be served best by regime change in surrounding countries brought about with the aid and assistance of the US. The “clean break” was a rejection of the Oslo Accords that actually sought to develop a modus vivendi between Israel and the Palestinians. This was followed by the Project For The New American Century (PNAC) in 1997, which had as its stated goal “to promote American global leadership.” The organization stated that “American leadership is good both for America and for the world” which it described as “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity. ” Both Clean Break and PNAC fit together nicely to promote a policy of political and military dominance for the United States. And, as most of the neocons were Jewish, one of the principal arguments made by them was that a confident and aggressive United States would be better able to support and protect Israel as it moved to establish dominance over the Middle East.

One of the founders of Neoconism (and of the PNAC) was Robert Kagan, who has now written a lengthy May 10th piece in the Atlantic Magazine entitled Checkmate in Iran: Washington can’t reverse or control the consequences for losing this war. He begins with: “It’s hard to think of a time when the United States suffered a total defeat in a conflict, a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored. The calamitous losses suffered at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and throughout the Western Pacific in the first months of World War II were eventually reversed. The defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly but did not do lasting damage to America’s overall position in the world, because they were far from the main theaters of global competition. The initial failure in Iraq was mitigated by a shift in strategy that ultimately left Iraq relatively stable and unthreatening to its neighbors and kept the United States dominant in the region… Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character. It can neither be repaired nor ignored. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done… Far from demonstrating American prowess, as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed an America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started. That is going to set off a chain reaction around the world as friends and foes adjust to America’s failure.”

Another neocon godfather Max Boot set the stage by preceding Kagan in an April 8th Washington Post opinion piece entitled The Iran ceasefire was a TACO Tuesday, and thank goodness: Trump gets to act like his bloodcurdling threats worked, but he’s giving up far more than Tehran did. Both Kagan and Boot are well known and respected in the neocon movement. Kagan is the husband of the deplorable Victoria Nuland who, as a US Diplomat, did so much to create the political crisis in Eastern Europe that has led to the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Kagan and Boot are not particularly regarded as fans of Donald Trump, but they are reliable supporters of Israel and all its works, which should be considered when examining their writings and speeches on Iran, which they would be quite pleased to see destroyed.

The Kagans in particular are enamored of stirring up conflict when other options are available. Robert’s brother Frederick is a resident scholar at the neocon American Enterprise Institute. His wife Kimberly is founder and head of the aptly named Institute for the Study of War. And, to be sure, the Kagan hearts belong only to Israel…

One might reasonably consider what Kagan might be trying to accomplish by dissing Trump’s war. In my opinion he is of course deliberately depicting and over-emotionalizing the consequences of a “worst case” outcome to come into play if Trump panics and actually ignores Israel’s demands and decides to pull the plug on the war. By taking an adversarial position he is instead playing the Trump personality card by focusing on the president’s clear vulnerability when it comes to rationally considering policy options. In this case Kagan as well as Boot are seeking to humiliate Trump by emphasizing how the status quo is a disastrous defeat because the real objective is to take advantage of an insane T’s limited mental capability and non-existent moral code to shame him into changing the narrative on his personal failure by pursuing the “worst course” of action in the viewpoint of many observers, i.e. total war against Iran using all available weapons including nuclear to utterly destroy it!

Other neocons are also recognizing that the Iran war is going disastrously bad but are less ambivalent about the options they see, namely being openly and clearly focused on doubling down for victory. Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute sees success coming from a change in personnel in and around the White House coupled with a stiffening of Trump’s will to win. The-Iran focused neocon Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) also wants more war no matter what it takes to destroy the Persians.

Overall, I think that some neocons like Kagan and Boot are calling for not going back to a mismanaged and pointless war because they believe an embarrassed and ego driven Trump will seek to repair and reverse course on his damaged reputation and do precisely that. That is exactly what they want him to do! And bear in mind that Trump is being heavily pressured by the Israel Lobby and its billionaire donors like Miriam Adelson to continue war. And then there are the near daily phone calls from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has the same objective, i.e. to keep America in the fight to eliminate Iran. So one might assume that if indeed Trump would like to escape from the Iran quagmire there are a lot of reasons why he will not opt to do so. In fact, Trump has already declared that he does not care about the sinking US economy and upcoming midterm elections. He told reporters “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation — I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.” And he has also declared that the “clock is ticking” and has vowed that there will be “nothing left of Iran if it does not come to terms.” Those threats, unfortunately, open the door to what comes next. Dare one mention that madmen like Trump and Netanyahu might well consider that if they can get away with an endless war that is damaging the whole world’s economy they can go one step further with their nukes to finish the job!

May 18, 2026 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on More Wars and Rumors of Wars

Is Trump poised to restart the Iran war?

By Trita Parsi | May 17, 2026

The Middle East is once again teetering on the brink as Trump appears poised to reignite war with Iran. Press reports indicate he will convene military advisers on Tuesday, though my understanding is that both the meeting and the decision are likely to come sooner. Over the past several hours, Trump has flooded Truth Social with a barrage of incendiary threats. While some of this may be theatrical brinkmanship designed to force Tehran into submission, sources in the Iranian capital tell me they expect the United States to resume hostilities within the next 48 hours.

We should first recognize that restarting the war amounts to an admission that Trump’s previous escalatory gambit — the blockade of the blockade — has failed. That, in turn, was itself an admission that the war had failed. Which was an admission that the threats of war in January had failed. As I have argued before on my Substack, this relentless search for an escalatory silver bullet capable of bringing Iran to its knees is not unique to Trump; it has become a defining pathology of American Iran policy for decades.

Although negotiators have made meaningful progress on several fronts, talks have thus far failed to produce an agreement, largely because of irreconcilable differences over Tehran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile. And as Washington has come to realize that the blockade is backfiring, a new and dangerous dynamic has emerged: both sides now believe another round of fighting will strengthen their hand in the negotiations that follow.

As I argued in numerous interviews in January, Trump dramatically underestimated Iran’s strength, while hard-liners in Tehran believed war would strengthen Iran’s leverage by exposing the illusion of Iranian weakness. In their view, the outcome of the conflict vindicated that assessment, leaving them increasingly confident — even emboldened — about what a second round of war could yield. I am told the new Supreme Leader belongs to this camp.

Moreover, just as Tehran believes Trump intends to prosecute the next war with far greater ferocity, Iranian planners are preparing a far more expansive and punishing retaliatory campaign, complete with new strategic objectives and targets.

First, Iranian officials increasingly describe the next war as an opportunity to inflict maximum strategic damage on the United Arab Emirates, citing Abu Dhabi’s active role in the previous conflict, its deepening and increasingly overt partnership with Israel, and its role in urging Trump to resume hostilities.

Tehran is likely to target American data centers in the UAE, a move that serves multiple purposes. Iranian officials argue that these American technology firms have already become participants in the conflict through their support for the Pentagon. At the same time, Tehran sees an opportunity to cripple the UAE’s ambitions to become a global artificial intelligence hub — and, in doing so, potentially undermine Washington’s AI competition with China.

This points to a second defining feature of Iran’s strategy in a future war. Tehran believes Trump and his family hold financial stakes in many of these same technology ventures. Targeting Trump’s personal business interests is a lever Iran conspicuously avoided pulling during the first conflict but now appears increasingly willing to use. The logic is straightforward: Trump may tolerate damage to American strategic interests, but he is acutely sensitive to threats against his own financial empire. Raise the personal cost to Trump himself, the reasoning goes, and he may prove more willing to adopt a realistic negotiating position.

Third, Tehran is likely to show far less restraint if evidence emerges that other Gulf Cooperation Council states permit the United States or Israel to use their territory or airspace in a renewed conflict. The result would be broader and far more perilous horizontal escalation, with potentially catastrophic consequences for the global economy should critical energy infrastructure come under attack.

Fourth, the Red Sea is now in play. That would dramatically widen the geographic scope of the conflict while placing even greater upward pressure on already volatile oil prices.

Finally, Tehran is increasingly examining the possibility of severing the major submarine fiber-optic cable networks running beneath the Persian Gulf — arteries through which most GCC internet traffic flows, including billions of dollars in financial transactions. Iranian officials increasingly view this as a potential second Strait of Hormuz: a powerful new point of leverage capable of disrupting the global economy at enormous scale.

Renewed war is not inevitable. But when both sides convince themselves that another round of fighting will strengthen their negotiating position, the gravitational pull toward conflict becomes dangerously strong — however irrational the logic may ultimately be.

May 17, 2026 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Comments Off on Is Trump poised to restart the Iran war?

UAE fuelling African conflicts while evading accountability, SWP finds

Al Mayadeen | May 17, 2026

A newly published report by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) has delivered a critical assessment of the United Arab Emirates’ role in African conflicts, describing Abu Dhabi as a systematic spoiler that arms proxy forces, manipulates diplomatic processes, and bears significant responsibility for some of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, all while facing virtually no political consequences from its Western partners.

The report, authored by researchers at one of Europe’s most influential foreign and security policy think tanks, which directly advises the German government and Bundestag, calls on Berlin and its European partners to fundamentally reassess their relationship with the UAE.

Sudan: The clearest case

The report presents Sudan as the most devastating example of Emirati interference. The UAE is identified as the most important military, logistical, and financial backer of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group whose war against the Sudanese Armed Forces has produced what the UN reports as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with 33.7 million people dependent on aid, over 15 million displaced, and widespread extreme hunger.

The RSF’s conduct has been particularly brutal. The report details targeted violence against non-Arab minorities, including sexual violence, mass killings, attacks on medical facilities, and hostage-taking, primarily directed at groups such as the Masalit and Zaghawa.

When the RSF captured El-Fasher in North Darfur in October 2025, a UN fact-finding mission described its actions against the civilian population as bearing the hallmarks of genocide.

Emirati support for the RSF continued even after Iranian strikes on the UAE, with numerous cargo flights departing from Emirates airports to Ethiopia, apparently to ferry supplies across the border to RSF positions.

A UN panel of experts documented 458 flights involving heavy transport aircraft from Emirati military airports or the transhipment hub of Bosaso to eastern Libya between October 2024 and the end of 2025, 239 of them bound for Kufra, a key hub for RSF resupply, in likely violation of UN arms embargoes on both Libya and Darfur.

A proxy model built on plausible deniability

The UAE rarely deploys its own forces. Instead, it operates through a carefully constructed network of local proxies, private military contractors, and logistical intermediaries. Beyond the RSF in Sudan, its partners include Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan Arab Armed Forces, the Puntland Maritime Police Force in Somalia, and, in a departure from the pattern, the Ethiopian government during its war against the Tigray people.

The report details how the UAE recruited and deployed hundreds of Colombian mercenaries to Sudan via an Emirati security firm, with the US government noting in 2025 that these fighters had served as infantry, artillery personnel, drone pilots, and even trained children for combat.

Supplies to the RSF have been routed through LAAF-controlled Libya, Chad, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda, with Abu Dhabi deploying financial leverage to secure cooperation, including a 1.5 billion dollar loan to Chadian President Idriss Déby in 2023.

The UAE also profits from gold smuggling networks in conflict zones, with members of the ruling family reported to have personal ties to both Haftar and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

Why the UAE intervenes

SWP identifies several overlapping motives. Economic interests are central, as state-owned logistics giants DP World and AD Ports Group have port and infrastructure projects across the continent, and military interventions serve to protect access to trade routes and strategic resources.

But economics alone do not explain the pattern. The report points to the UAE’s drive to outcompete Saudi Arabia for regional influence, a rivalry that has only sharpened since Riyadh forced Abu Dhabi out of southern Yemen.

Ideological opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood also shapes policy, with the UAE consistently backing actors who suppress Islamist movements. Personal enrichment through resource networks and ruling family ties to conflict actors adds a further layer.

Diplomatic manipulation

The report scrutinises the UAE’s use of diplomatic engagement as cover, whereby Abu Dhabi participates in international peace processes while simultaneously intensifying support for belligerents.

In September 2025, the UAE joined the Sudan Quad format alongside Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, signing joint commitments to end external support for conflict parties. According to US intelligence reporting, however, the UAE was actively intensifying support for the RSF at the same time.

The UAE also pledged 200 million dollars at a February 2025 humanitarian conference and a further 500 million dollars at a US conference in 2026, while contributing only around 33 million dollars to the UN-coordinated humanitarian plan.

In November 2025, Emirati Minister of State Lana Nusseibeh spent four days meeting with Members of the European Parliament in Brussels. Nusseibeh’s endeavor was successful, as a Parliament resolution on Sudan adopted at the same time made no mention of the UAE’s support for the RSF, following opposition from the European People’s Party to amendments tabled by left-wing parliamentary groups.

The same pattern played out during the Berlin Libya Process in 2019-20, when the UAE pledged to halt arms transfers to Libyan conflict parties but continued them regardless. Transport aircraft flew from the Emirates to eastern Libya on the very day of the Berlin conference in January 2020.

European silence, eroded accountability

The report stresses that Western governments, including Germany, have consistently refused to name the UAE publicly in international forums, despite substantial documented evidence of its role in fuelling conflicts. No UN Security Council member has explicitly raised Emirati support for the RSF in formal meetings, either.

This reluctance, SWP argues, is not incidental but reflects a broader calculation in which trade ties, security cooperation, the UAE’s close relationship with “Israel,” and the strategic goal of preventing Abu Dhabi from drifting further toward China or Russia have consistently outweighed accountability concerns.

The UAE’s open disregard for the UN embargo on Libya from 2014 onward, the report notes, likely encouraged other states to adopt a similar approach, with the same dynamic now being repeated in Sudan.

Five recommendations

SWP outlines five concrete steps for Germany and its European partners:

  • First, Abu Dhabi should be named explicitly in international forums rather than referenced in vague language about “external actors.”
  • Second, EU financial sanctions should be expanded and applied more consistently where Emirati actors have documented embargo violations.
  • Third, German arms export policy toward the UAE requires a fundamental review, given the documented transfer of German-chassis military equipment to conflict zones.
  • Fourth, anti-money-laundering enforcement should be tightened, with greater focus on Emirati financial centres as hubs for conflict economies and sanctions evasion.
  • Fifth, the strategic partnership Germany has maintained with the UAE since 2004 should, at a minimum, be suspended unless Abu Dhabi demonstrably reorients its policy toward de-escalation.

The report concludes that the war on Iran, mounting tensions with Saudi Arabia, and growing reputational vulnerabilities have made the UAE more susceptible to European pressure than at any previous point, and that this window should not go unused.

May 17, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on UAE fuelling African conflicts while evading accountability, SWP finds

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