Fantasies of Fragmenting Iran Only Serve Israeli Interests
By José Niño | The Libertarian Institute | February 2, 2026
A troubling convergence has emerged among Western think tanks, Israeli politicians, and exiled opposition figures advocating for the partition of Iran along ethnic and sectarian lines. This strategy represents a dangerous escalation from traditional regime change toward what can only be described as regime destruction, a policy shift that would benefit Israeli regional ambitions while catastrophically destabilizing the Middle East and creating humanitarian disasters that would dwarf the Syrian refugee crisis.
Iran’s demographic reality forms the pretext for these proposals. Persians constitute between 51 and 61% of the population, while Azerbaijanis comprise 16 to 24%, Kurds represent 7 to 10%, with smaller populations of Arabs, Baloch, Lurs, and Turkmen rounding out the nation’s ethnic composition. Rather than viewing this diversity as a national strength, Balkanization advocates frame it as a strategic vulnerability ripe for exploitation.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a rabid neoconservative organization, has positioned itself at the forefront of this campaign. Analyst Brenda Shaffer has explicitly promoted Iran’s fragmentation comparable to Yugoslavia’s violent collapse, while maintaining undisclosed financial ties to Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR. Her advocacy centers on promoting secession of Iranian Azerbaijan, revealing fundamental misunderstanding of Iranian internal dynamics. Both Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Massoud Pezeshkian are Azerbaijani, thoroughly undermining narratives of Persian ethnic hegemony driving separatist sentiment.
Media outlets have amplified these calls with alarming explicitness. In June 2025, The Jerusalem Post editorial board urged formation of a “Middle East coalition for Iran’s partition,” proposing “security guarantees to Sunni, Kurdish and Balochi minority regions willing to break away.” The editorial advocated federalization or complete partition, explicitly comparing Iran’s potential dismemberment to Yugoslavia’s breakup. The Wall Street Journal similarly published arguments that a fractured Iran could frustrate Russian and Chinese interests while reducing threats to Israel, downplaying catastrophic risks.
Israeli political circles have demonstrated institutional support for partition. In 2023, thirty-two members of Parliament signed a declaration calling for Iran’s disintegration into six parts, advocating territorial separation from Tehran to Iranian Azerbaijan, merger of Iranian Kurdistan with Iraqi Kurdish regions, independence for Ahwaz, and alignment of Baluchistan with Pakistan. Though most lawmakers later rescinded signatures following backlash, the episode exposed significant appetite for fragmentation strategies within Israeli political establishment.
The ideological foundation for these proposals traces directly to the 1982 Yinon Plan, a strategic memorandum by Israeli journalist Oded Yinon advocating division of Middle Eastern states along ethnic and sectarian lines. The plan explicitly stated Israel must effect “the division of the whole area into small states by the dissolution of all existing Arab states,” operating on the premise that smaller states are weaker states and therefore easier to dominate. While the original document focused primarily on Arab states, contemporary partition advocacy has extrapolated these principles to Iran, effectively creating a Yinon Plan for the Iranosphere.
This represents the logical culmination of a strategy that has already produced catastrophic results across the region. Iraq’s 2003 invasion and subsequent sectarian fragmentation created hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, millions of refugees, and the rise of ISIS rather than the democratic transformation promised. Syria’s fragmentation generated over half a million deaths and displaced half the pre-war population. Libya’s post-intervention collapse created ungoverned spaces exploited by terrorist networks and human traffickers. The pattern is consistent: balkanization produces chaos, humanitarian catastrophe, and conditions favoring extremist groups rather than stability or democracy.
For Iran specifically, partition would serve exclusively Israeli strategic interests while harming American national security. Israel seeks to leave Iran fragmented and dotted by warring statelets incapable of posing coherent challenge to greater Israeli regional ambitions. A broken Iran cannot develop nuclear capabilities, cannot support resistance movements, cannot project power beyond its borders. The United States has no corresponding interest in such outcomes. Iranian fragmentation would create massive refugee flows destabilizing neighboring states and requiring international humanitarian intervention. It would generate ungoverned territories exploited by terrorist organizations.
Turkey will never tolerate Western support for Kurdish separatism in Iran given its decades-long struggle with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Pakistan, already facing a Baloch insurgency movement, would view Western meddling in Iranian Balochistan as direct threat to its territorial integrity. Russia and China, both managing ethnic minority regions, would interpret Iran partition as validating their darkest suspicions about Western intentions, accelerating formation of anti-Western coalitions and hardening domestic crackdowns.
American efforts against Iran have already demonstrated the futility of maximum pressure approaches. Decades of sanctions have not produced regime change but rather entrenched hardliners and strengthened nationalist resistance. Covert operations including assassinations of nuclear scientists, Stuxnet cyberattacks, and support for exile groups have failed to alter Iranian strategic calculations. Direct military strikes destroyed facilities temporarily rebuilt within years. The historical record shows Iranian society rallies around the flag when facing external aggression rather than fragmenting along ethnic lines.
Iranian nationalism represents a powerful unifying force transcending ethnic divisions. Iran claims status as one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations, with national identity predating modern ethnic categories. Unlike Iraq or Syria where borders reflected colonial cartography, Iran constitutes a historically integrated entity where internal diversity has coexisted with strong national consciousness for millennia.
The alternative to destructive partition fantasies requires sober policy recognizing previous failures. The United States needs fundamental strategic reorientation away from Middle Eastern interventions toward addressing genuine national security priorities. Border security in the Western Hemisphere, managing peaceful co-existence China, and rebuilding domestic infrastructure represent core American interests unrelated to fragmenting Iran.
Non-interventionism and restraint acknowledge that Iranian political evolution must emerge from internal dynamics rather than external manipulation. The lessons from Iraq, Syria, and Libya are unambiguous. Military intervention and support for fragmentation produce humanitarian catastrophes, empower extremist factions, and create conditions requiring prolonged American involvement rather than enabling withdrawal. The Middle East does not need another failed state generating refugee crises and terrorist safe havens. The American people deserve foreign policy serving national interests rather than outsourcing strategic decision-making to regional allies [?] pursuing incompatible objectives.
Iran’s partition would not take the country off the geopolitical chessboard as advocates claim. It would set that board on fire, creating unpredictable cascades of violence, displacement, and great power competition in one of the world’s most volatile regions. The humanitarian costs would be staggering, the strategic consequences counterproductive, and the benefits accruing exclusively to Israel rather than the United States or the Iranian people themselves.
A responsible approach recognizes Iran’s ninety million citizens deserve to determine their own political future, but such transformation cannot be imposed through external fragmentation. The path forward requires restraint, non-interventionism, and acknowledgment that decades of sanctions, covert operations, and military threats have consistently failed while strengthening the very regime they aimed to weaken.
Iranian FM reveals ‘fruitful’ indirect talks with US in push for de-escalation
The Cradle | February 2, 2026
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in an interview on 1 February that a nuclear agreement with the US was still possible, while warning that a war would engulf the entire region.
Speaking to CNN, Araghchi said indirect communications through regional intermediaries have been “fruitful,” stressing that negotiations must focus strictly on Iran’s nuclear program rather than missiles or regional allies. “Unfortunately, we have lost our trust (in) the US as a negotiating partner.”
In June last year, Iran was attacked by Israel in the middle of nuclear negotiations. US President Donald Trump pretended to favor diplomacy while secretly plotting war with the Israeli leadership.
When asked about halting support for resistance groups in West Asia and a cap on the ballistic missile program, which Washington is demanding, Araghchi told CNN, “Let’s not talk about impossible things.”
“And not lose the opportunity to achieve a fair and equitable deal to ensure no nuclear weapons. That, as I said, is achievable even in a short period of time,” he added. “Of course, in return, we expect sanction lifting.”
Araghchi went on to say that “war would be a disaster for everybody,” given that US military bases were scattered “all over the region.”
He added that Iran has learned lessons from the 12-day war in June and is ready to defend itself from any attack.
“And I think we are now very well prepared. But again, being prepared doesn’t mean that we want war. We want to prevent a war.”
The foreign minister also condemned the foreign-backed “terrorist” riots in Iran last month, and denied Trump’s claims that the execution of protesters was canceled, prompting the US president to halt his planned attack.
“There was no plan for the execution or hanging. I can affirm that the right to each and every person who is arrested and detained would be observed and guaranteed,” he stressed.
“We consider these three days as the continuation of those 12 days of war that was an operation led by Mossad from outside, and of course, we crushed that operation.”
Washington’s aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, has arrived in West Asia with several accompanying warships. Washington has also deployed additional fighter jet squadrons to the region.
Last week, Trump said that a “beautiful armada” is headed toward Iran, calling on the Islamic Republic to capitulate to US terms and come to the negotiating table.
The Iranian military and several other officials say both Israel and the regional countries hosting US bases will be targeted if Washington attacks.
Araghchi’s comments to CNN came after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned that a “regional war” would erupt if the US decides to launch an attack against the Islamic Republic.
“The US should know that if they start a war this time, it would be a regional war. Of course, we are not the initiators of war. We do not seek to oppress anyone. We do not seek to attack any country. However, anyone who seeks to attack or cause harm will face a decisive blow,” the leader said.
Resistance groups in West Asia, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, have warned that an attack on Iran would ignite the region.
Over the weekend, Ali Larijani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said, “Contrary to the atmosphere being created by artificial media warfare, the formation of a structure for negotiations is underway.”
On Friday, Araghchi held de-escalation talks in Ankara with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan, who said that Turkiye opposes military action against Iran.
American Zionists are using Trump’s Republican Party to create a multicultural supremacist elite
By Matt Wolfson | Al Mayadeen | February 2, 2026
On January 13, 2025, seven days before Donald Trump’s second inauguration as president, The Free Press, the online magazine created by the Zionist operator Bari Weiss who has powerful connections to the Trump Administration, ran a profile which may say more about the ultimate causes of America’s current policies, and where those policies will likely lead, than any other public document.
The profile was of Amy Chua, famously the author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a mostly well-received cri de Coeur for what Chua sees as rigorous Chinese parenting; and less famously the John M. Duff, Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. The profile, drawing explicitly on Chua’s most publicly recognizable achievement, was titled “The Tiger Mother Roars Back,” and its subtitle reinforced its approach, an ardent rave: “Yale tried to run Amy Chua out. Now her former students, J.D. Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy, are headed to Washington. So is she.”
For people who follow the politics of America and so of America’s empire, the forwardness of this profile raises questions. Construed as a gesture of support for two politicians, Vance and Ramaswamy, who are attempting to woo the public on populist credentials, it seems misthought. There is nothing populist about Chua—and her lacks are tells about the lacks of her mentees. Indeed, it was under Chua’s mentorship that Vance wrote a bestselling book with the encouragement of another Chua mentee, Vance’s future wife Usha, blaming the failures of his lower-income Appalachian upbringing on the “cultural” deficiencies of the community which raised him. This is a view that, since entering politics with the aim of appealing to precisely that community, he has quickly disavowed. Ramaswamy, for his part, has fallen deeply and predictably afoul of populist Americans precisely by making that case in public.
So why would Weiss, who if nothing else is a strategic operator, run a piece on Chua connecting her to Vance and Ramaswamy as well as broadcasting Chua’s views, which are anathema to the people from whom Vance and Ramaswamy want support?
The answer is that, though Weiss is an ideologue focused on advancing “Israel’s” immediate interests, there is a “positive,” longer-term Zionist play in the works among her and her allies. I have reported in miniature on this play last year, in a September investigation of the philanthropic education donations of Bill Ackman, the Zionist financier: to seed a new ruling elite based on technological and management skills. But the project goes deeper. It amounts to the legitimation of a new ruling class in America centered on a narrow cadre of elites of three groups— Zionists, Hindutvas (Hindu supremacists), and, discernably but least specifically definably, East and Southeast Asian supremacists often with connections to countries where Buddhism has exercised significant influence.
These elites use their present success in America’s military corporate complex to make claims to group superiority. They then use those claims to justify special treatment for their groups and nations that allow them to solidify their power, and to solidify the hold of American empire, which they see as the rightful disseminator of “merit.” Their accelerating project will likely realize itself through the Republican Party, via Chua’s mentees, the Vances and Ramaswamy, among others, and it may ally itself with other right-wing influences as seemingly dissimilar but actually imitative as the white supremacy of Nicholas J. Fuentes. It is only now taking recognizable shape, and understanding its origins and spread is crucial to understanding the havoc it is already beginning to wreak in America and abroad.
That understanding begins with examining the arguments which influenced Vance and Ramaswamy; arguments made by Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld, her husband, a Yale Law professor and Jewish Zionist who writes for The Free Press. These arguments are noteworthy in that they look for “warps” in cultures to explain problems which other scholars have put down to military corporate power and its brute effects (outsourcing, conglomeration, the Wars on Crime and Drugs, unauthorized and some kinds of authorized immigration) on American life.
Indeed, the most straightforward reason why Vance’s Appalachian Americans as well as Black and Latino Americans have notably struggled is American imperial policy that has started at the top: labor outsourcing and urban mis-development, misthought immigration policies, and military corporate buildup. These policies have accrued for 60 years, and academics and writers have made the case against them for almost 50.
This book of Chua and Rubenfeld’s, where they lay out their view (The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America) does not emphasize these structural, practical explanations. Instead, Chua and Rubenfeld put “winners’” success in America over the last sixty years down to three group traits: specifically, “a superiority complex,” “insecurity,” and “impulse control.” According to The Triple Package, “a superiority complex” means “a deeply internalized belief in your group’s specialness, exceptionality, or superiority” flowing from religion, civilization, or social traits. “Insecurity” means “a sense of being looked down on, a perception of peril, feelings of inadequacy, and a fear of losing what one has.” And “impulse control” means “the ability to resist… the temptation to give up in the face of hardship or quit.”
But the paradox of Chua’s and Rubenfeld’s explanation, which they don’t appear to realize, is that, taken logically on its face, it supports the structural, practical explanations they apparently ignore. Political theory and history show that groups in the grip of triple package holders’ emotional Cartesianism (possessing an a priori thesis, superiority, in the face of insecurity, and so willing to do anything to prove the thesis right) are reliable tools of arbitrary imperial power. Indeed, empires moving aspirant, insecure, determined groups into their own managerial elite is a defining feature of the Roman Empire; the British Empire in the American colonies and India; the German Empire; and the United Arab Emirates. In America’s empire, these co-opted groups have most prominently been the three which Chua and Rubenfeld write about most often and with whom they and their family most identify: Jewish Americans, Indian Americans, and East and Southeast Asian Americans.
All three of these groups experienced marginalization and persecution at the hands of various empires (the Russian and German; the British; the American) before 1950. Their members have attendantly experienced heightened levels of insecurity; and elite cadres of two of the three groups have adopted what most scholars consider to be clearly definable supremacist ideologies: Zionism, which was founded in 1897 and Hindutva ideology, which was founded in 1925. The third type of supremacy, East and Southeast Asian supremacy, is more diffuse but clearly discernable.
Unlike Zionism, which is linked to “Israel”, and Hindutva ideology which is linked to India, there are multiple countries at play and multiple labels under which claims of East and Southeast Asian supremacy are raised. Also, the way these claims are raised often surfaces less as outright supremacy and more as “cultural essentialism”—that there’s something in this group’s cultural “essence” that makes members more “successful.” Finally, research into outright supremacist manifestations from groups associated with them is more recent, usually under the headings of Buddhist or East Asian supremacy. Nonetheless, taking these distinctions into account, East and Southeast Asian success in America’s imperial complex and corresponding claims like Chua’s to superiority are recognizable trends: some of them embraced by supremacists who praise thinkers like Chua for what critics call their cultural supremacy.
I have reported at some length about how the process of these groups claiming power in American empire played out, beginning with Jewish Zionist elites in the 1960s. I examined these Zionist elites’ acceptance into the American military corporate complex by WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants). I also pointed out that Zionists’ overall success accessing this complex came from their pursuit of narrow applied skills valued by the WASPs: economics, management theory, administrative law, engineering, finance, and technological proficiencies; a model the WASPs took quite consciously from European Empires. Zionists, in their own description, were easy marks for this kind of invitation to power that ultimately deracinates the culture of the people who accept it.
Theodor Herzl, the founder of the movement who embodies the terms of its successes and failures, was a marquee possessor of Chua’s and Rubenfeld’s triple package. He had grown up a secular Jew with little connection to his religion but a strong sense of his own superiority, and only embraced Zionist Judaism with a manic intensity when the Dreyfus Affair made him decide that he could never realize his ambitions without identifying as Jewish.
An instructive echo of Herzl’s mentality comes in the memoir of Martin Peretz, one of the early entrants into America’s corporate complex in the 1960s. Peretz, who taught at Harvard, owned The New Republic, the most influential Zionist magazine in the country, and played a prominent connective role in and near Wall Street, is in many senses a later-day Herzl. He is a high-status secular Jew with an admitted sense of insecurity who is also a fervid Zionist, and he writes in his memoir about himself and his friends who “made it” that
We were… from a strong culture that was an outsider culture, in the first generation when that culture could assert itself in American institutions. We weren’t constrained by old obligations because we were coming into a world that didn’t want us anyway. We had each other’s backs because we knew the kind of resentment arrivistes, and Jewish arrivistes, unleashed… We were the first ethnicity to break through into the ruling class institutions following the wane of Protestant influence, and we saw those institutions as the key to our flourishing.
Peretz’s Harvard mentee, Bill Ackman, the Zionist financier, is a good example of how younger Zionists operating in Herzl’s and Peretz’s tradition have swallowed this model whole. Ackman’s view of Harvard, where he is also a donor, falls along just these lines of imperial functionality:
As one of the oldest and perhaps the most notable of this country’s academic institutions, Harvard represents the gateway to elite status and to ‘making it’ in modern day American society. One need only look at the disproportionate numbers of Presidents, Nobel Laureates, and chairmen of Fortune 500 companies who have graduated from Harvard to understand the power of the Harvard degree. As a result, admission to Harvard has become the target of groups seeking upward mobility.
What goes unacknowledged here is that “elite status,” “upward mobility” and the skills that create them have only been an aspiration for most Americans since 1945, when the Cold War allowed WASPs to expand their institutions and use them to try to mold the country in their image. Before this point, most Americans understood their country as being predicated on towns and cities and states; and on a high degree of associational thickness, communal coherency, and decentralized government which allowed individuals a say in the terms of their lives. But Zionists were never open to an argument like this. Their strategy, like Herzl’s, was to enter empire and use it to rise, and it is not a coincidence that, almost immediately on accessing America’s military corporate complex, they opened America’s doors to Hindu and East and Southeast Asian operators who approached the matter of institutions and power on their terms.
The Zionists’ tool was the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which was sponsored by staunch Jewish Zionist Congressman Emmanuel Celler. The Act opened America’s elite universities to “high-skilled,” often upper-middle class arrivals from undemocratic or less democratic countries like India and China: people not particularly versed in constitutionalism but extremely well-versed in applied technical proficiencies valued by empire.
The most obvious beneficiaries were Hindu Americans. It was the 1965 legislation and its 1990 expansion by George H.W. Bush, the penultimate WASP president, which brought into this country the parents of Usha Vance; Vivek and Apoorva Ramaswamy; the pro-Zionist Republican operative and current Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon; and the U.S. Representatives Ro Khanna, Raja Krishnamoorthi, and Suhas Subramanyam. More decisively, as I reported in December, it has brought into the defense-tech mecca of Silicon Valley aggressive Hindu financial operators who have deep political sway. Much as, in the telling of anti-Zionist Jews like Norman Finkelstein, the converging success of Israelis and American Zionists off the largesse of America’s imperial complex hardened these players’ Zionistic belief in their Jewish supremacy, so a similar trend appears to have taken place with American Hindus who adopt some version of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindutva ideology. Their influence, as outlined by Andrew Cockburn in a groundbreaking article in Harpers, reaches deep and wide, in part through their connections to Zionists.
Somewhat more subtle than the Hindutva assumption of influence in America, but equally noteworthy has been the East and Southeast Asian, especially Chinese, accrual of influence here. WASPs had used their educational and financial influence to foster relationships with China going back to the 1870s. Later, Zionists took up that task: bringing Chinese elites into philanthropy and finance, aided by the 1965 legislation, which led to a sharp increase in high-skilled East and Southeast Asian immigration to America. Arguably the clearest window onto this process is the Committee of 100: a group with connections to Amy Chua founded in the late 1980s by influential Chinese Americans at the urging of Peretz ally and “Israel” defender Henry Kissinger, and with the aid of Peretz’s friend Yo-Yo Ma. As I traced in my report last year on the Committee’s growth, the Committee and some of its members have assiduously inserted themselves at crucial educational and philanthropic junctures. As I reported about their propaganda last April:
The obvious part of their message is that… America is a colorblind nation where, minus prejudice, anyone can succeed. In this schema, anyone questioning the loyalties or actions of those who have succeeded, like [members of the Committee] and their allies, are acting off of lower motives, and are anti-merit.
What is also instructive is that, despite vocal pushback to Chua’s ideas by regular readers, prominent East and Southeast Asian Americans and East Asian American organizations, including but not limited to the Committee of 100, have embraced Chua since she gained fame with her ideas and given her a public platform. Allies of Chua’s echo her arguments in a gentler way, among them the Chinese-American writer Sherryl WuDunn, a connection of Chua’s via other East Asian American organizations, whose husband Nicholas Kristof made a less constrictive, “essentialist” version of Chua’s cultural supremacist arguments in The New York Times. And cultural, ethnic, and even racial supremacists like the neoconservative Charles Murray have embraced Chua’s claims.
Jewish Zionists have been forging alliances with Hindu and East and Southeast Asian American arrivals at an accelerating rate for nearly 40 years. They have used these groups’ shared success to argue that any opposition to those groups with an outsized place in America’s military corporate complex comes from resentment and envy among people who don’t measure up.
In 1988, only 23 years after the Immigration and Nationality Act was signed, two years before the inception of the Committee of 100, and eight years before the Silicon Valley boom began, Bill Ackman, on the advice of his Harvard mentor Peretz, wrote an honors thesis entitled “Scaling the Ivy Wall: The Jewish and Asian Experience in College Admissions.” In the thesis, Ackman “draws parallels between the experience of Jews trying to gain admission to Harvard in the 1920s with the experience of applicants from Asia during the 1980s.” In 2024, gearing up for his crusade against anti-Zionism in universities, Ackman began making the rounds of newspapers, magazines, and online interviews, armed with his undergraduate thesis, arguing that the groups he wrote about in the 1980s (Jews and Asians) are technical achievers being discriminated against by opponents of merit.
That same year, Ackman’s ideological ally Bret Stephens featured in his Zionist magazine Sapir a piece quoting Ackman’s 1988 thesis by an ardent backer of Ackman’s ardent ally Vivek Ramaswamy: Rajiv Malhotra, arguably the most prominent Hindutva operating outside of India. Malhotra began this essay, an argument for “A Hindu Jewish Partnership”, by arguing that, like Asian Americans and Jews, Hindu Americans are “‘model minorities’ who have made much of the American dream” and must come together “to safeguard the world from the regressive movement against merit.” This notion that any resentment against those groups which seem to be steering American Empire flows from jealousy or resentment is shared by Amy Chua, who said, in a recent interview, that
There is tremendous resentment, fear, and insecurity about Asian-Americans because of college admissions… And then you’ve got China, a whole different source of insecurity.… Now on campus, I noticed that this anti-Chinese resentment slash fear is coming from both the Left and the Right, which is very unusual.
Tellingly, none of these arguments about “safeguarding merit” define merit as anything other than technical skills fit for empire, and this is not a bug but a feature of supremacist argument. Jewish, Hindu, and East and Southeast Asian supremacists justify their traditions based on their ability to impart skills that help empires claim power. Examples of this pattern range from Hindutvas who boast that “ancient Indians were proficient in stem cell technology and built aircrafts” in “an imagined Hindu golden age of scientific progress,” to equally remote Zionist narratives claiming that consumer innovations of all kinds originated with “Israel” to Amy Chua’s “conceptually loose” and factually dubious appropriation of her “meretricious” heritage for raising “successful” children. None of these arguments address the arguments of dissenters from within their traditions who think that, by attaching their traditions to a project of empire based on technical skills, supremacists have distorted the moral, intellectual, and cultural essences that made these traditions worth having. The most accurate description of the supremacists may in fact be “ethnopreneurs”: players who use their groups’ access to empire to show a public they assume is aspirant how to be like them, gaining recognition or profit by doing so.
The supremacists also have imitators, sometimes in the most seemingly unlikely of places. It was Nicholas J. Fuentes, nominally on the other side of the new Republican coalition from Ramaswamy and Chua and Rubenfeld and Weiss, who recently told Piers Morgan that “In Israel, they have my politics. If they had their way, it would only be Jewish people.” In fact, in “Israel”, it’s not Jewish people who are welcome; it’s only Jews openly committed to Jewishness as an imperial supremacist project, much as Fuentes is openly committed to an imperial supremacist project around white male Americans whom he says are victimized based on the superiority of their race.
Chua’s mentee J.D. Vance appears to be working to stabilize the Republican coalition in ways that may function, whatever his intent, to unite the supremacists. Even as Vance speaks implicitly in favor of including Nick Fuentes in the Republican Party and Vance’s ally Tucker Carlson gives Fuentes a platform, Vance’s most prominent ally, Erika Kirk, who is publicly committed to his 2028 presidential bid, is appearing in interviews with Zionists like Bari Weiss and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Vance only recently helped ink the deal that put Zionists, including Jared Kushner and the Ellisons, in control of TikTok; and in 2025 both Vance’s wife Usha and his mentor Chua gave rare, exclusive interviews to Weiss’s Free Press, which the Ellisons now own.
This year, Vance is scheduled to appear on CBS’s new Town Hall series, where he will be interviewed by Weiss. This looks like the rudiments of a new coalition of elites with nominally different heritages united by a shared conviction of supremacy. And policy is following suit to privilege these elites—not so much shrinking the “deep state” as Trump promised during his reelection campaign but redirecting it in ways that serve their interests:
“Israel”, with American support, is “modernizing” and “improving” Latin America and the Middle East using its technical prowess, compromising the sovereignty of nations and regions. Hindutva ideologists are coming to Silicon Valley, where Zionists arbitrate power. East and Southeast Asians are entering the Ivy League in record numbers with the aid of lawsuits from Zionist operatives, even as the Trump Administration has made no effort to shrink these universities’ power as the “gateway” to political influence.
The Muslim world, arguably Zionists’ and Hindutvas’ and Buddhist East Asians’ greatest enemy, has become our enemy. American Zionist operatives are using artificial intelligence to track anti-Zionist opinions online in conjunction with imperial outgrowths like Harvard in ways that sound quite similar to the Hindutva ideologue Rajiv Malhotra’s proposal in the Zionist magazine Sapir for an “Intellectual Iron Dome” in imitation of Israel’s defense system the Iron Dome. (This is a project seemingly imitative of Philip K. Dick’s dystopian novella The Minority Report: “to harness the powers of AI… to monitor and examine trends in antisemitism and Hinduphobia online and predict problems before they manifest.”) And, thanks to the Zionist Stephen Miller, the Trump Administration is deporting migrants of color while deracinating their “sh**hole” countries of oil in the name of serving the people for whom Fuentes claims to speak. Namely, a mostly white American population now “freed” from “third world” “leeches, killers, and entitlement junkies” but indentured in the same servitude to the military corporate elite.
In the face of unrelenting infiltration by these colonial supremacists of all sorts in pursuit of their own global Raj flowing from America, anti-imperial resistance at home and abroad, using law and popular politics, is the only sensible path.
From Iraq war crimes to Gaza’s ‘board of peace’: Why Tony Blair belongs in The Hague
By David Miller | Press TV | February 1, 2026
In the grotesque circus of international power plays, few performers rival Tony Blair for sheer audacity. The former British Prime Minister (1997-2007), once celebrated for his “Cool Britannia” sheen and Third Way politics, is now indelibly stained by the Iraq War debacle, a war built on deception that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and shattered the region.
Yet in January 2026, Donald Trump appointed him to the Board of Peace, a White House-created entity chaired indefinitely by Trump himself to oversee Gaza’s “reconstruction” under a controversial 20-point plan.
The board’s founding executive includes heavyweights like Marco Rubio, Jared Kushner, Steve Witkoff, Marc Rowan, Ajay Banga, and Robert Gabriel—figures tied to Trumpworld and Zionist interests, with no Palestinian representation.
Blair’s role is lending “statesmanlike” cover to what is seen as a colonial oversight mechanism that could facilitate displacement and control in Gaza. This isn’t redemption; it’s impunity on steroids.
Blair belongs in The Hague facing charges for aggression and complicity in atrocities—not jet-setting as a “peace” architect. This article lays bare his record, his Zionist alliances, his profit-driven institute, his billionaire backer, and why his latest gig risks making him complicit in Gaza’s ongoing nightmare.
Blair’s war crimes: Lies, invasion, and bloodshed
Blair’s gravest sin remains the 2003 Iraq invasion, sold on bogus claims of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and Saddam Hussein’s imminent threat.
The Chilcot Inquiry (2016), an exhaustive British investigation, demolished his case: “We have concluded that the UK chose to join the invasion of Iraq before the peaceful options for disarmament had been exhausted. Military action at that time was not a last resort.”
It highlighted “flawed intelligence” that went “unchallenged” and Blair’s overestimation of his influence on George W. Bush. The infamous “dodgy dossier” asserted Iraq could deploy WMDs in 45 minutes—a claim later exposed as hyped and unreliable.
Under the Rome Statute, Blair could face ICC charges for:
- Crime of aggression: Planning and executing an illegal war without UN Security Council approval, violating the UN Charter.
- War crimes: Complicity in detainee abuses, including British forces’ role in cases like the death of Baha Mousa in custody.
- Crimes against humanity: Contribution to systematic civilian harm via indiscriminate tactics, with excess Iraqi deaths estimated in the hundreds of thousands. For example, studies estimated over 650,000 by 2006, as reported by The Guardian, citing a study in The Lancet medical journal. Later estimates put the toll at over a million.
What has been Blair’s response? “I did not mislead this country, I made a decision in good faith,” as he stated post-Chilcot. Prosecutors have tried—private attempts failed due to political barriers, as reported by the BBC on the High Court’s rejection of a 2017 bid by an Iraqi general—but the evidence mounts: the war was unnecessary, illegal, and devastating.
Blair’s Zionist ties: PM to quartet envoy, always ‘Israel First’
Blair’s pro-Israel stance is longstanding and blatant. As the British PM, he cultivated ties with Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and accepted funding from Zionist-linked donors. He defended Israel’s actions during the Second Intifada, prioritising “security” while downplaying occupation and settlements.
Blair’s inner circle was riddled with pro-Israel influencers. Take Lord Michael Levy, a former record producer, dubbed “Lord Cashpoint” for his fundraising prowess: Introduced to Blair in 1994, Levy raised millions for New Labour, including from pro-Israel sources, and became Blair’s Middle East envoy post-2007.
Levy praised Blair’s “solid and committed support of the State of Israel,” as reported by Mishpacha Magazine. Another key figure was Sir Trevor Chinn, a major donor to Blair’s campaigns and LFI, who also funded Conservative Friends of Israel—showing cross-party Zionist commitment.
Chinn donated six-figure sums to keep Blair in power, as Lobster Magazine detailed. Then there’s Peter Mandelson, Blair’s spin master and a self-proclaimed pro-Israel advocate with family ties to the Jewish Chronicle—his father was the paper’s advertising manager as the Chronicle itself reported.
Mandelson revealed in his memoirs his “pro-Israel sentiments”, and close alliance with Levy in shaping Blair’s foreign policy. Most recently, in September 2025, Mandelson was sacked as British Ambassador to the US by Prime Minister Keir Starmer because of the disclosure of new information on his closeness to paedophile financier and Zionist intel asset Jeffrey Epstein.
The Genocide Alliance: Chinn, Mark Regev, Jacob Rothschild, Blair and Isaac Herzog (2018)
This network fuelled scandals, like the 2006-2007 cash-for-honours affair, where Levy was arrested (though not charged) over allegations of selling peerages for donations, many from pro-Israel businessmen. The probe destabilised Blair, exposing how Zionist money influenced Labour.
Enter Lord Jon Mendelsohn: As Labour’s chief fundraiser in 2007, Mendelsohn was embroiled in a donations row involving illegal third-party contributions from property developer David Abrahams, who funnelled funds through proxies.
Mendelsohn admitted knowing about the scheme but claimed ignorance of its illegality, according to The Guardian. Fast-forward: Mendelsohn now directs Abraham Accords (UK) and co-chairs the APPG for the Abraham Accords.
Both promote normalisation between the Zionist colony and Arab states—essentially “Zionising” West Asia by embedding Zionist influence in economies and politics.
In a 2023 House of Lords speech, Mendelsohn hailed the Accords as a “historic opportunity,” ignoring Palestinian erasure. This evolution from Blair-era lobby scandals to regional normalisation underscores how Zionist networks persist, repackaging occupation as “peace.”
Blair’s fingerprints are all over the Abraham Accords, the sham “peace” deal normalising Israel’s apartheid with some regional countries while burying Palestinian rights.
In 2015, Blair brokered the first secret meetings between Benjamin Netanyahu and UAE officials in London, planting the seeds for the 2020 agreements. He attended the White House signing ceremony, gushing in a statement: “This is a momentous day… a new pathway is opening up for the Middle East.” Netanyahu later credited him with the Accords’ success, per reports from 2025.
As Quartet Envoy, Blair’s “economic peace” mantra—focusing on the occupied West Bank development while sidelining Gaza and sovereignty—paved the way for these deals, which critics slam as economic bribes to Arab states to ignore Israel’s horrendous war crimes.
Blair’s involvement wasn’t altruistic; it burnished his “peacemaker” image while entrenching Zionist hegemony, bypassing UN resolutions and Palestinian self-determination. His denial of Palestine, as Le Monde put it, is complete—treating the occupied as economic pawns in a Zionist game.
As Quartet Envoy (2007–2015), tasked with advancing the peace process, Blair faced repeated accusations of bias. Palestinian officials called him an “Israeli diplomat” in all but name; he focused on Palestinian “reform” while rarely challenging Israeli policies like Gaza’s blockade or settlement expansion.
The Guardian reported in 2011: Palestinian critics attacked him for favouring Israeli “security” needs over Palestinian rights. During Israel’s 2008-2009 Gaza offensive (1,400+ Palestinian killings), Blair echoed Israeli narratives blaming the Hamas resistance movement without addressing root causes.
A Source News analysis labelled him a “complete failure” for perceived one-sidedness. He resigned in 2015 amid conflicts of interest, but his record shows transactional Zionism—aligning with power to maintain influence.
Tony Blair Institute: Policy peddler with a dark side
The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), launched in 2016, poses as a nonprofit promoting “good governance” and tech-driven reform. Before Larry Ellison’s funding in 2021, TBI had about 267 staff in 2020, per its annual accounts.
Post-Ellison, it ballooned to over 800 by 2023, nearing 1,000 in 45+ countries by 2025, with plans for 1,000+ by end-2026, as Ellison’s $375M+ pledges fuelled explosive growth, per POLITICO. Turnover jumped from $81M in 2021 to $121M in 2022, then over $150M, enabling global ops.
Beyond AI and digital IDs, TBI advises on climate policy, net-zero transitions, and governance—often to countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, drawing fire for whitewashing abuses.
It pushes “tech for good” like surveillance systems and economic reforms, but critics see neocolonialism. In Africa and the Global South, TBI embeds in governments, promoting privatisation and AI integration that favours Western tech giants.
Controversies pile up: TBI has consulted for many governments while raking in fees – including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain. Most damningly, reports linked TBI discussions to Gaza “reconstruction” plans condemned as ethnic cleansing blueprints, including ideas of “paying Palestinians to leave” or redeveloping Gaza as a “Riviera.”
Middle East Eye revealed TBI’s involvement in talks evolving into proposals critics slam as displacement schemes. The Guardian noted staff participation in such calls.
TBI pushes surveillance tech and net-zero policies, often funded by questionable sources, turning “global change” into elite profit. A 2024 Consultancy.uk critique ridiculed its AI studies as overhyped, while UnHerd questioned its opacity—meaning a lack of transparency in operations and funding that raises concerns over accountability and potential conflicts of interest.
Blair and Larry Ellison: Cash for influence, Zionism, and security risks
Oracle founder Larry Ellison, a staunch Zionist lobbyist and one of the world’s richest men, has poured at least £257 million ($375M+) into TBI since 2021 via his foundation.
Lighthouse Reports exposed how this cash transformed TBI into an Oracle sales and lobbying arm—pushing cloud tech, AI, and government contracts (for example, UK NHS data deals). Ellison gets policy access and favourable regs; Blair gets funding to sustain his empire and personal brand.
Larry Ellison and Blair
Ellison’s Zionism runs deep: He’s donated over $26M to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF), including a record $16.6M in 2017—the largest single gift ever—and $10M in 2014.
At a 2017 gala, he declared: “Since Israel’s founding, we’ve called on the brave men and women of the IDF to defend our home,” as reported by The Times of Israel.
In videos and speeches, Ellison emphasised: “For two thousand years, we were stateless. Now we have our own country, defended by the brave men and women of the IDF,” as shared on Instagram. Oracle execs echo: CEO Safra Catz once told staff to “love Israel or maybe this isn’t the job for you”.
Ellison reportedly vetted Marco Rubio for Israel loyalty as revealed in leaked emails, and Oracle built a massive underground data center in Israel amid Gaza ops.
Oracle’s ties to the Israeli military are insidious and extensive, embedding the company as a pillar of Israel’s military machine. Since 2006, Oracle has held multi-year contracts with the Israeli military affairs ministry, supplying databases, Fusion middleware, and cloud services integral to its operations.
Oracle’s complicity in occupation and genocide includes training Israeli military personnel and providing tech that bolsters military logistics and intelligence.
Post-October 7, 2023, Oracle declared “We stand with Israel,” donating $1M to Magen David Adom, sending supplies to Israeli soldiers, and inscribing “Oracle Stands with Israel” on company premises at Catz’s demand.
Oracle’s ERP systems, databases, and IT infrastructure fuel the Israeli military’s genocidal campaigns. Oracle “married the IDF,” with employees embedded in military training and cloud services enabling real-time warfare.
Palantir’s role
This rot extends to Palantir, another Zionist tech behemoth that Blair’s orbit intersects via shared pro-Israel ecosystems. Palantir, co-founded by Peter Thiel ( who “defers to Israel” on AI ethics), signed a strategic partnership with the Israeli regime in 2024 for battle tech, meeting with military officials to deploy AI platforms.
Palantir provides militarized AI to Israeli intelligence, including Unit 8200’s Data Science and AI Center, enabling automated targeting in Gaza—essentially AI-generated kill lists amid genocide.
Palantir— fueled by Jeffrey Epstein funds and Thiel’s backing—has treated Gaza as a testing ground for surveillance tech that spies globally. The tech company, alongside Google and Amazon, arms Israel’s genocidal atrocities, with AI systems predicting and facilitating mass killings.
Blair’s TBI, Oracle-infused, echoes this by designing “data-driven” Gaza plans that could integrate such tech, turning “reconstruction” into perpetual occupation.
Infiltrating British intelligence cloud services
This alliance raises alarms: Oracle holds UK national security contracts. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) signed a 2026 cloud deal for AI and legacy migration. The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) uses Oracle Fusion for HR and finance. The Home Office inked a £54M ($72M) cloud pact in 2025.
These departments house most of the British intelligence community, like MI6 and GCHQ (FCDO), MI5 and the Homeland Security Group (Home Office), and Defence Intelligence and the Intelligence Corps (MoD). In 2021, the Cabinet Office terminated a specific procurement plan to migrate its own on-premises Oracle ERP system, so it is the only department housing British intelligence groups (including the Joint Intelligence Organisation, National Security Secretariat, National Security Council and Joint Intelligence Committee) that is not supplied by Oracle.
With Ellison’s Israeli military ties and Oracle’s Israel operations (potentially involving Unit 8200 cyber spies), backdoors pose risks—data leaks to Israeli intel could compromise UK security.
In the real world, such back doors are known to exist in the products of Israeli/Zionist firms like NSO Group with Pegasus spyware, exploited by intelligence to hack phones worldwide, as reported by The Guardian, and Cellebrite, whose tools unlock devices for surveillance as detailed by The New York Times.
Critics speculate Ellison wants Blair’s clout to secure more contracts, while Blair eyes Ellison’s billions for global sway.
Their shared obsession with digital IDs amplifies the menace, forging an Orwellian nightmare where surveillance becomes the new chains of empire.
In a World Government Summit discussion, Ellison told Blair: “The first thing a country needs to do is to unify all of their data so it can be consumed and used by the AI model,” advocating biometric IDs to replace passwords for total, inescapable control. Blair’s TBI relentlessly pushes digital IDs as “essential for modern governance,” per a September 2025 report, estimating UK implementation at £1.4 billion—but this is sinister code for dystopian tracking.
This convergence isn’t benign; it’s a blueprint for genocidal domination. In Gaza and the Levant, digital IDs could entrench Israel’s ethnic cleansing by enabling granular, AI-fuelled surveillance of Palestinians, restricting movement like digital cattle brands, and feeding into Oracle and Palantir’s targeting systems that have already slaughtered thousands.
Byline Times reported Blair’s institute designed Gaza recovery plans on “data-driven lines echoing Oracle-Palantir war systems,” potentially turning bombed-out ruins into a panopticon of apartheid, where every breath is monitored to crush resistance.
For pacification, these IDs would “identify” survivors in “humanitarian zones,” as in Blair’s Gaza International Transitional Authority proposal, which includes “digital government services and identity systems” for civil registry and permits—euphemisms for logging dissenters, enforcing starvation sieges, and facilitating forced expulsions under the veneer of “peace.”
Oracle’s Lebanon deal risks similar exposure, with data vulnerabilities amid Israel’s invasions, turning the Levant into a testing lab for Zionist tech tyranny. Blair and Ellison’s digital dystopia isn’t progress; it’s a genocidal wet dream, pacifying Gaza through algorithmic oppression while they rake in blood-soaked billions from the rubble.
It is difficult to imagine this techno-dystopia will not be enforced everywhere else the Zionists want, if they can get away with it, as they push forward with their so-called “Greater Israel” and “Pax Judaica” hews into view.
“Board of Peace”: Colonial control, potential complicity
Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace,” formalised in January 2026, vests sweeping authority in Trump (no term limit, veto power) to implement Gaza’s “humanitarian zones,” stabilisation force, and reconstruction—excluding Hamas and NGOs with “ties.”
Blair, credited with shaping elements, joins a roster heavy on Trump allies and pro-Israel figures. Al Jazeera critiqued it as putting “rights abusers in charge.”
Kushner’s vision for Gaza
The Executive Board of the Board of Peace
Key members of the board
- Jared Kushner: As an Orthodox Jew, mega donor to the genocidal ultra-Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch cult and architect of the Abraham Accords, Kushner has described Gaza as “valuable waterfront” property, suggesting redevelopment that critics argue implies ethnic cleansing. His role on the board aligns with his history of prioritising Israeli interests, having facilitated normalisation deals that sidelined Palestinian rights, as detailed by CNBC. Kushner’s Affinity Partners firm has ties to Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, raising concerns over conflicts of interest in Gaza’s reconstruction, as noted by the European Council on Foreign Relations.
- Steve Witkoff: This Jewish real estate mogul and mega Trump donor is a staunch pro-Israel advocate, serving as US Special Envoy to the Middle East (West Asia), where he has emphasised close US-Israel partnership on Gaza as reported byThe Times of Israel. Witkoff, described as having a “warm Zionist Jewish heart,” has been instrumental in delivering messages to Netanyahu and advancing Trump’s Gaza plan, as highlighted by OnePath Network. His background in property development fuels speculation that he views Gaza’s rebuilding as a business opportunity, aligning with pro-Israel policies that prioritise security over Palestinian sovereignty.
- Marc Rowan: The Jewish CEO of Apollo Global Management is a major AIPAC donor and led donor revolts against universities over perceived antisemitism, including boycotting the University of Pennsylvania for hosting a Palestinian literary festival, as reported byThe New York Times. Rowan’s anti-Palestine activism includes calling for the resignation of university leaders amid pro-Palestinian protests, as detailed byThe American Prospect. On the board, his financial expertise is poised to oversee investment in Gaza’s reconstruction, but critics argue his pro-Israel stance will entrench Zionist control, as noted by the BBC.
- Martin Edelman: This Jewish lawyer with pro-Israel ties specialises in international real estate transactions and has shaped US-UAE relations, facilitating deals that align with Zionist interests as reported by Watan. Edelman’s involvement in West Asia diplomacy includes roles that support normalisation efforts, bypassing Palestinian rights as highlighted by JNS.org. His position on the board likely focuses on legal frameworks for Gaza’s redevelopment, raising concerns over favouring Israeli interests as discussed by the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs.
- Benjamin Netanyahu: As Israel’s Prime Minister and the chief architect of the Gaza genocide, Netanyahu embodies ideological Zionism, adhering to the “Iron Wall” doctrine of military dominance over Palestinians as explained byThe Conversation. His unwavering expansionism has led to policies even the New York Times calls apartheid. On the Board, Netanyahu’s inclusion ensures Israeli veto power, despite fuming at the presence of Turkish and Qatari officials, as reported by CNN.
- Tony Blair: As detailed throughout this article, Blair’s transactional Zionism and history of enabling Israeli policies make him a fitting but hypocritical addition to the board.
- Marco Rubio: This evangelical Christian is a fervent pro-Israel advocate, viewing support for Israel as biblically mandated as stated in his 2015 speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition. Rubio has pushed sanctions against Hezbollah and legislation to move the US embassy to occupied al-Quds, as reported by Liberty University. His role on the board aligns with Trump’s hardline stance, emphasising US-Israel alliances as critiqued by Sojourners.
- Susie Wiles: Wiles is reportedly an Episcopalian, but is not clearly a Christian Zionist. This is despite being aligned with Mike Huckabee through Florida politics and Trump’s circle, as noted by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. She consulted for Likud in 2020, as detailed by The Washington Post. Despite her role on the BOARD, she has been described as a stabilising force who reportedly looked “alarmed” or shot “daggers” at Trump during press conferences where he proposed the genocidal mass relocation of Gaza’s inhabitants, as reported byThe Daily Beast.
- Ajay Banga: This Indian-American Sikh has not publicly taken a position on BDS or Zionism; however, Mastercard and Citigroup under his leadership opposed BDS and reportedly maintained operations in the occupied Palestinian territories. Banga described his board role as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to rebuild Gaza. Typically, he tried to ‘both-sides’ the genocide by condemning “unbelievable loss of life” on both sides as “unconscionable,” but critics like Ghada Karmi argue his participation aligns with a pro-Western, Zionist-adjacent framework, sidelining Palestinian self-determination.
- Robert Gabriel: As Deputy National Security Advisor since May 2025, Gabriel has served in Trump’s administration with a focus on policy, having worked as a special assistant to Stephen Miller, as reported by Wikipedia. His consulting firm, Gabriel Strategies, and closeness to Miller and Susie Wiles underscore his role in advancing hardline pro-Israel policies as detailed by LegiStorm. Gabriel’s background in Trump’s campaign positions him as a key enforcer of Zionist-aligned security measures in Gaza, as noted by the Brookings Institution.
Gaza’s death toll is in excess of 70,000 since 2023, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which even the Zionist military accepts. Academic studies suggest around 400,000 deaths or disappearances. With the ongoing crippling blockade, the board risks enabling further atrocities—restricted access, forced compliance, displacement under “redevelopment.”
Blair’s involvement lends false legitimacy, potentially making him an accessory to crimes if the plan entrenches occupation or ethnic cleansing. As the BBC reports, no Palestinians are on the board, though some Arab/Muslim leaders have joined, such as Bahrain’s Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa, Morocco’s Nasser Bourita, Jordan’s Ayman Al Safadi, UAE’s Reem Al Hashimy, Egypt’s Hassan Rashad, Qatar’s Ali al-Thawadi, and Turkey’s Hakan Fidan, as listed by CNBC.
Despite optimism from some quarters and claims that Netanyahu was not fully informed, as CNN reported, these figures are Zionist collaborators, with Turkey as a NATO member and most notably the UAE facilitating normalisation that sidelines Palestinian rights.
Does Trump see himself as “King of the World”? Chairing for life with vetoes, the Board positions him as a global arbiter. We might ask who, upon his death, would inherit the crown? Kushner, his Zionist son-in-law, is an obvious suspect, reinforcing Zionist control over Palestine’s fate.
Arrest Blair: End the impunity
Message from London: Off to the Hague
As human rights advocates argue, Blair should face The Hague for his role in the invasion of Iraq and the war crimes there (based on the Chilcot report and the legal consensus) and his pattern of enabling power abuses—from Zionist bias to Gaza-linked schemes.
Public outrage persists: X users echo this, with posts declaring “Tony Blair should be in prison for war crimes” and calls like “Tony Blair should be heading to The Hague, not to Gaza.”
Strip his honours, prosecute under universal jurisdiction. Anything less mocks justice, say human rights campaigners worldwide as well as social media users.
Blair’s role on Trump’s board is seen widely as an ultimate insult—a war criminal overseeing “peace” in a land ravaged by over two years of genocide that his country facilitated.
Epstein email reveals plan to pursue frozen Libyan assets with help from former MI6, Mossad figures
MEMO | January 31, 2026
Newly released documents tied to Jeffrey Epstein show the convicted sex offender and an associate discussed plans to pursue access to Libya’s frozen state assets, including potential support from former British and Israeli intelligence officials, according to an email included in the files, Anadolu reports.
The correspondence surfaced after the US Justice Department released an additional batch of documents Friday related to the Epstein investigation.
The newly highlighted material includes a July 2011 email sent to Epstein that outlines what the sender described as financial and legal opportunities linked to political and economic uncertainty in Libya at the time.
According to the email, about $80 billion in Libyan funds were believed to be frozen internationally, including roughly $32.4 billion in the US. The sender described “stolen and misappropriated” Libyan assets as potentially worth three to four times that amount.
The correspondence argued that identifying and recovering even a small portion of such funds could generate “billions of dollars” in gains.
It also referenced expectations that Libya would need to spend at least $100 billion in the future on reconstruction and economic recovery, describing the situation as a broader opportunity.
The email characterized Libya as a country with significant energy reserves and strong literacy rates, factors it said could be advantageous for financial and legal initiatives.
It also stated that discussions had been held with some international law firms about working on a contingency-fee basis.
The message said certain former members of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6 and Israel’s external intelligence agency, Mossad, had expressed a willingness to assist in efforts to identify and recover assets described in the email as “stolen.”
The email emphasized that early involvement in such a process could represent a “significant opportunity.”
Rafah crossing reopens under strict Israeli restrictions
The Cradle | February 1, 2026
Southern Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt was reopened on 1 February from both sides for the first time in over a year and a half, under strict restrictions imposed by Tel Aviv.
The exit and entry of Palestinians via the crossing will begin on 2 February, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) announced on Sunday.
It said the crossing has been opened for tests and an assessment of operation.
“The movement of residents in both directions, entry and exit to and from Gaza, is expected to begin tomorrow,” COGAT explained.
Hours earlier, Tel Aviv said the crossing would be opened for an “initial pilot phase.”
“As part of the pilot for the initial operation of the crossing, all involved parties are carrying out a series of preliminary preparations aimed at increasing readiness for full operation of the crossing,” COGAT said.
Around 80,000 Palestinians who were forcibly displaced from Gaza during the genocide are seeking to return.
There are also over 20,000 wounded and ill Palestinians who are in need of leaving the strip for urgent medical care.
“We are closely monitoring what is happening at the Rafah crossing, and several parties will be overseeing traffic at the crossing,” said Ismail al-Thawabta, director of the Gaza Government Media Office.
A Palestinian Authority-linked (PA) group of 40 security officers has arrived at the Egyptian side of the crossing, in line with Cairo’s previously announced initiative to train Palestinian officers for post-war Gaza.
The US-endorsed technocrats, who were previously barred from entering, are expected to be allowed in within the coming days.
Around 150 Palestinians will be allowed to leave daily. This includes 50 medical patients, each allowed two companions. Another 50 will be permitted entry into Gaza per day.
The Palestinians entering will be subject to strict restrictions. Individuals must register their names, which Egypt will then send to Israel’s Shin Bet security service for screening and approval.
All travelers will be subject to a checkpoint run by the PA and EU representatives, as well as an Israeli checkpoint, including body searches, X-ray screening, and biometric verification. Those leaving must also register and go through PA, EU, and Israeli-run checkpoints.
They will be required to undergo facial recognition screening.
According to a recent Reuters report, Israel is working to make sure that those exiting via the Rafah crossing are greater in number than those entering, in an effort to facilitate the outflow of Palestinians from Gaza and ethnically cleanse the strip.
The crossing’s reopening comes as Israel has escalated its daily violations of the ceasefire agreement. A massive wave of Israeli strikes targeting shelters, tents, and residential buildings killed at least 31 civilians across Gaza on Saturday.
Since the ceasefire was reached in early October, Israel has killed over 490 Palestinians, destroyed thousands of buildings, and expanded its presence inside Gaza in violation of the agreement.
Hamas rejects Israeli accusations as “lies meant to justify its massacres in Gaza”
Palestinian Information Center – January 31, 2026
GAZA – The Hamas Movement has condemned Israeli claims that it violated the ceasefire agreement as “lies” and “intended to justify the massacres committed against civilians in the Gaza Strip.”
In a statement on Saturday, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasem dismissed the Israeli accusations against his Movement as “baseless and unfounded,” saying they reflect Israel’s disregard for ceasefire mediators, sponsoring countries, and all the parties involved in the so‑called “Board of Peace.”
The spokesman called on the international community, the UN, and human rights organizations to “clearly condemn Israel’s massacres in Gaza, take practical steps to stop them, hold Israeli leaders accountable for their crimes, and end the policy of impunity, which encourages further killing and destruction.”
Interior ministry: Israeli strike on police building in Gaza shows disregard for mediators
Palestinian Information Center – January 31, 2026
GAZA – Gaza’s interior ministry said that the Israeli targeting of the Sheikh Radwan police headquarters in Gaza City on Saturday morning was part of repeated ceasefire violations and reflected disregard for mediators and the international community.
In a statement, the ministry explained that the Israeli airstrike resulted in the martyrdom and injury of a number of police officers and personnel, along with several citizens inside and outside the headquarters.
The ministry described the attack as a “heinous crime” against a civilian institution that provides vital services to the population.
“This strike has joined a series of ongoing Israeli attacks that, in recent weeks, have targeted civilian and service facilities despite the ceasefire, amid growing warnings that the fragile understandings could unravel,” the ministry said.
The ministry affirmed that Israel’s ongoing attacks on civilians and humanitarian staff prove an intent to thwart international efforts to end the war and enforce a strategy of attrition and pressure on Gaza’s population.
The ministry urged regional and international mediators to shoulder their responsibilities, put real pressure on the Israeli regime to halt its violations, and provide protection for civilians and civilian facilities in Gaza.
West’s hypocrisy over Iran and Gaza proves a regime-change operation in Tehran
Strategic Culture Foundation | January 30, 2026
The United States and the European Union are vehemently condemning Iran over alleged repression, while the West says nothing about the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The contradiction, of course, exposes the West’s rank hypocrisy. It also confirms that Iran is the target of a Western regime-change operation.
U.S. President Donald Trump this week repeated his threat to launch a blitzkrieg on Iran, bragging that an armada led by the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier was in place to strike. “Don’t make me do it,” warned Trump with thug-like menace.
Meanwhile, the European Union declared Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps a “foreign terrorist” organization. Given that the IRGC is a central component of Iran’s national security forces, the EU’s blacklisting is effectively designating the Iranian state as a terrorist entity. The EU’s provocation is paving the way for American aggression and all-out war, which will have devastating consequences, not least of all for Europe.
Washington and Europe are ostensibly basing their hostility towards Tehran on dubious claims that the Iranian authorities have committed systematic atrocities in repressing peaceful protesters in Iran demanding political change.
Trump has urged Iranians to keep protesting and vowed that “help is on the way.”
The European Union’s foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas, hailed the blacklisting of the IRGC, saying: “Repression cannot go unanswered… clear atrocities mean there must be a clear response from Europe.”
France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot asserted: “We cannot have any impunity for the [alleged] crimes that have been committed.”
The Dutch top diplomat, David van Weel, added: “I think it’s important that we send the signal that the bloodshed that we’ve seen, the bestiality that has been used against protesters, cannot be tolerated.”
This all sounds noble and chivalrous of Western governments. But it is a contemptuous charade, belying disingenuousness and duplicity.
For more than two years, the Israeli regime has waged a blatant genocide in Gaza. The death toll is estimated at over 71,000, with most of the victims being civilians, women, and children. The real death toll is probably well over 100,000 from bodies buried under rubble from Israeli bombardment that are not accounted for.
Far from expressing any condemnation against the Israeli regime, the United States and the European Union (with minor exceptions) have maintained an odious silence that has afforded political cover for the genocide. The Western states are complicit as a result of their shameful silence. More damning, however, is that the United States and European states, including France, Germany, and Britain, have supplied warplanes, missiles, drones, electronics, and other weaponry to fuel the slaughter.
Trump boasts about his so-called Board of Peace for Gaza and a supposed ceasefire that was claimed to have started in October. Over 500 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military since the ceasefire travesty. Thousands of Palestinians are starving or freezing to death in windswept and flooded tents still deprived of humanitarian aid. The genocide continues under the grotesque guise of “peace”.
Trump is an “Israel First” U.S. president more than any of his predecessors, who all consistently gave the Zionist regime a license to kill and occupy. Trump’s complicity is remarkable and suggests his late pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein furnished Israeli intelligence with lots of blackmail material on the 47th president. So, his silence over genocide is explicable.
What about the Europeans, though? Maybe there is blackmail going on, too, to buy their complicity. Nevertheless, the hypocrisy is astounding.
Why aren’t Kallas, Barrot, and the other EU foreign ministers denouncing impunity and repression by the Israeli regime? They selectively apply their morals and faux humanitarian concerns to Iran.
The two scenarios are, in any case, incomparable. One is genocide, the other is civil unrest, which the evidence shows involves foreign orchestration.
Protests began in Tehran on December 28, sparked by legitimate economic grievances. The country of over 90 million has been strangled for decades by illegal Western economic sanctions. Tellingly, the relatively small demonstrations in Tehran’s bazaars at the end of December were rapidly escalated into full-blown violent attacks in several cities. The disturbances appear to have subsided, and there have been huge counter-demonstrations involving millions of people taking to the streets to denounce the violence of what seems to be almost certainly Western-orchestrated gangs.
The Iranian authorities claim that the total deaths after four weeks of violence are about 3,100. Western media reports and governments have cited much larger figures of 6,000 and up to 17,000 deaths. The Western figures are supplied by U.S. or European-based groups, such as the Iranian Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRAI). These groups are funded by the CIA’s cut-out organization, the National Endowment for Democracy.
Israeli news media have even admitted in reports that the street violence was being directed by foreign agencies. Former CIA chief Mike Pompeo also let it slip that Mossad operatives were behind the disturbances.
The methodical type of violence and damage sustained also indicates a coup attempt. Hundreds of mosques, schools, buses, government buildings, banks, and medical facilities were attacked and destroyed by gun-wielding gangs and arsonists.
Many of the casualties were inflicted on security forces and civilian bystanders in an orgy of violence that indicates a trained cadre of agitators and terrorists. Victims were beheaded and mutilated.
The Western media have conspicuously conflated the deaths and injuries as all attributed to the Iranian security forces, who allegedly used “lethal force to repress peaceful protesters.”
This is the standard operating procedure of Western regime change: to escalate deadly civil strife to destabilize the targeted state. The Western media then reliably row in with a massive propaganda assault to valorize the orchestrated violence and to demonize the authorities.
As Iranian Professor Mohammad Marandi points out, the West’s modus operandi is to demonize foreign countries to justify regime change, and if needs be, to justify all-out military aggression.
In 1953, the same method was used by the Americans and British to overthrow the elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Mossadegh’s “crime” was that he nationalized the oil industry, depriving Britain of its leech-like control over Iranian natural wealth, which saw most of the population living in poverty and squalor, as vast Persian oil profits flowed into London. For the coup to succeed, millions of dollars were funneled by the CIA into Iran to whip up street gangs, and the Western media on both sides of the Atlantic dutifully painted Mossadegh as illegitimate. He was overthrown, and the Western puppet, the Shah, was installed, presiding over a brutal CIA and MI6-backed regime for 26 years until the Islamic Revolution kicked him out in 1979. Amazingly, from the point of view of chutzpah consistency, more than seven decades later, the Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, living in pampered exile in the U.S., is being advocated by the West to take over if the Islamic Republic collapses. Plus ca change!
The same regime-change formula has been repeated over and over in as many as 100 other countries since the Americans and British launched their post-Second World War debut covert operation in Iran in 1953, as Finian Cunningham’s new book Killing Democracy surveys. Crucially, the Western news media play an absolutely vital role in assisting this systematic criminality, as they are doing currently in Iran, and before that in Venezuela.
Only four weeks ago, Washington’s military aggression against Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president, Nicolás Maduro, by U.S. commandos was preceded by a full-court media campaign of demonization, absurdly labelling him a narcoterrorist.
Trump’s aggression towards Venezuela and now Iran is an outrageous violation of the UN Charter and international law. It marks a return to predatory imperialism. And the servile European states kowtow to this all-out predatory criminality with bogus concern about human rights.
We know their concerns are a complete sham and morally bankrupt because if there were any genuine principles, then they would not be so abject in their silence over the Israeli regime’s genocide in Gaza.
This is why Trump has been so emboldened to treat the Europeans with contempt over Greenland and other issues. If you act like a doormat, then expect to be walked on.
Trump’s war posturing against Iran traces back to Bush’s infamous 2002 ‘axis of evil’ speech
By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | January 31, 2026
On January 29, 2002, US President George W. Bush’s State of the Union Address infamously branded Iran as part of an “axis of evil,” marking a rhetorical escalation that hardened a decades-long policy of confrontation and laid the groundwork for the persistent crises that continue to threaten regional stability today.
The twenty-fourth anniversary of Bush’s “axis of evil” speech came this week amid a starkly familiar backdrop: US naval “armada” massing in the Persian Gulf and renewed threats of military action from Bush’s successor, Donald Trump.
This moment is not an aberration but the continuation of a sustained, multi-decade strategy aimed at isolating and pressuring the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The policy did not originate with Bush but in the sanctions regimes of the 1990s, significantly shaped by pro-Israeli lobbying efforts within the United States.
It hardened with the rise of neoconservative thinkers who favored regime change over containment – a doctrine vividly applied to Iraq.
Throughout a campaign of disinformation and propaganda regarding weapons of mass destruction, the leveraging of exiled terrorist groups, and a consistent narrative of Iranian threat have been employed to maintain the so-called “maximum pressure.”
As history echoes in January 2026, with a Republican administration again aligning with an Israeli Likud regime to confront Iran, the patterns of the past illuminate the perilous present.
Defining Speech: January 29, 2002
Bush’s State of the Union address fundamentally reshaped the US posture toward Iran in ways that his predecessors had deliberately avoided.
In that speech, Iran was labeled a nation that “aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom.”
By grouping Iran with Iraq and North Korea as part of an “axis of evil,” the infamous and widely condemned declaration decisively rejected any tentative diplomatic outreach that had briefly flickered after the September 11 attacks.
During that period, symbolic gestures, such as candlelight vigils in Tehran, and behind-the-scenes communication channels suggested Iran’s conditional cooperation in Afghanistan.
However, the “axis of evil” label extinguished these nascent contacts. It signaled that the hostile administration in Washington would view Iran not as a potential partner, even tactically, but as a permanent adversary and a primary target in the global “war on terror.”
Crafted within a circle of advisors known for their overt pro-Israeli leanings, the phrase was immediately and enthusiastically embraced by the Israeli regime, which saw it as a long-sought alignment of US rhetoric with its own strategic goals.
The speech institutionalized a framework of hostility that would dictate policy for years, replacing the previous administration’s fluctuating approach with one of unambiguous confrontation.
Dual containment and the sanctions regime
Long before the “axis of evil” rhetoric, the framework for isolating Iran was carefully constructed during the Bill Clinton administration under the policy of “dual containment,” which targeted both Iran and Iraq.
From its inception, this policy was heavily influenced by pro-Israeli lobby groups in Washington. Even as Clinton’s foreign policy team was forming, concerns arose about appointees from the Carter administration who were deemed insufficiently sympathetic to these interests.
Warren Christopher, who was appointed Secretary of State, was initially viewed with caution but ultimately became a key architect of a hardened stance toward Iran.
Christopher, who had served as chief negotiator of the Algiers Accords and was criticized by some Iranian officials, developed a personal animosity toward Iran.
He publicly labeled Iran an “outlaw nation,” a “dangerous country,” and one of the “principal sources of support for terrorist groups worldwide.”
This rhetoric provided a public rationale for an escalating series of economic sanctions designed, in his words, to “squeeze Iran’s economy.”
A powerful proponent of this policy was Martin Indyk, former research director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)-affiliated Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who served on the National Security Council and later as Ambassador to Israel.
Under his guidance, the threefold accusations of sponsoring terrorism, opposing regional peace efforts, and pursuing weapons of mass destruction became the unwavering justification for punitive measures against the Islamic Republic.
A fierce competition emerged in Congress to demonstrate increasing hostility toward Iran, with figures like Senator Alfonse D’Amato pushing for ever-tighter sanctions – often propelled by direct lobbying from AIPAC, which acted as the “locomotive” behind the legislation.
This culminated in the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) of 1996, which aimed to penalize foreign companies investing in Iran’s energy sector. Later reports revealed that the explicit goal of the act was regime change in Iran.
Neoconservatives and the preference for military solutions
The arrival of the Bush administration marked a significant shift in the philosophy underlying US foreign policy – though not in its ultimate objective.
By the late 1990s, while the corporate world and some pragmatic diplomats began questioning the efficacy of unilateral sanctions, a new faction with immense influence pushed for a more radical and hard-nosed approach.
This neoconservative wing, closely aligned with Likudist ideology in the occupied Palestinian territories, viewed sanctions and containment as too slow and unreliable.
They regarded military force as a faster, more effective means of dealing with hostile states.
Key figures such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith – all with longstanding ties to pro-Israeli think tanks and advocacy groups – assumed senior roles within the Pentagon and advisory boards.
Their worldview was crystallized in the 1996 policy paper A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, prepared for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which advocated attacking Iraq to reshape the regional landscape.
For these strategists, patient pressure through sanctions was secondary to the transformative potential of direct military action and regime rollback.
While initially focused on Iraq, Iran remained a firm subsequent target.
They argued that only the forceful removal of threatening regimes could guarantee American and Israeli security, a belief that came to define the administration’s response after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Iraqi precedent: Destruction as a model
The neoconservative doctrine found its first full-scale application in Iraq. The 2003 invasion, premised on bogus claims of weapons of mass destruction that were later proven false, fulfilled a long-held goal to eliminate the Saddam Hussein-led Ba’athist regime.
The architects of the invasion were not satisfied with only regime change but aimed for the comprehensive degradation of Iraqi power.
After two major wars and over a decade of crippling sanctions, Iraq’s state apparatus and military-industrial base were utterly destroyed.
Some proponents openly described the objective as returning Iraq “to the pre-industrial era,” a stark admission that the goal extended beyond disarmament to eliminating Iraq’s capacity to function as a modern, sovereign regional counterweight.
The devastating consequences – civil strife, the rise of takfirism, and immense human suffering – were regarded as collateral damage within a broader strategic vision.
For those advocating confrontation with Iran, the Iraqi campaign served as both a template and a warning. It demonstrated the overwhelming military power the US could deploy to dismantle a state, while also exposing the catastrophic instability that could follow.
Nevertheless, the ability to reduce a perceived enemy to a state of permanent weakness was noted, informing the maximalist pressure later applied to Tehran.
Propaganda arsenal: Lies and manipulations
Building and sustaining public and international support for relentless pressure on Iran required a sustained campaign of allegations and propaganda.
The core accusations remained consistent: pursuit of nuclear weapons, support for terrorism, and an implacable hostility to peace in the region.
These charges were amplified through a symbiotic network of government officials, pro-Israeli lobbying organizations, sympathetic media outlets, and designated “experts.”
Sensational – and fabricated – stories were regularly fed to the press. In the early 1990s, reports frequently citing unnamed intelligence sources or anti-Iran groups aboad claimed that Iran had purchased nuclear warheads from Kazakhstan or was on the verge of developing a bomb, claims repeatedly debunked by international inspectors and the countries involved.
Media outlets with particular editorial stances published alarming estimates, suggesting Iran was only years or even months away from nuclear capability – deadlines that continually receded as each passed without incident.
The language used was deliberately inflammatory, with senior officials referring to Iran’s “evil hand” in the region and describing it as a “rogue state.”
This ecosystem ensured that any Iranian attempt at diplomatic outreach or confidence-building was overwhelmed by a pre-existing narrative of deceit and malign intent, making substantive dialogue politically untenable in Washington.
Useful tool: MKO role in anti-Iranian propaganda
A particularly revealing aspect of the propaganda and pressure campaign has been the relationship with the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), a terror cult with offices scattered across Europe and the US.
Designated by the US State Department as a terrorist organization due to its history of violent attacks, including against Americans in the 1970s, Iranian officials and civilians in the 1980s, and its alliance with Saddam Hussein during the Imposed War, the terror group nonetheless found influential supporters and was eventually de-listed by Hillary Clinton.
Despite its cult-like structure and lack of popular support inside Iran, the MKO managed to gain an active lobbying and public relations operation in the United States and Europe.
Senior members of the US Congress, especially those with strong pro-Israeli records, championed the group, inviting its representatives to testify and attending its rallies, arguing it represented a “democratic alternative” to the Islamic Republic.
The MKO’s utility was cynically acknowledged; one Congressman stated, “I don’t give a s*** if they are undemocratic… They are fighting Iran, which is… a terrorist state. I say let’s help them fight each other.”
This usefulness peaked in August 2002, when an MKO front held a press conference in Washington to “reveal” the existence of two secret nuclear facilities in Iran at Natanz and Arak.
While these facilities were not in violation of Iran’s safeguards agreement at the time, the revelation – intelligence reports suggest originating with Israeli intelligence and channeled through the exiles – provided the perfect pretext to demand intrusive new inspections and escalate international pressure.
Thus, the MKO served as a deniable cut-out for disinformation and a persistent amplifier of the baseless and sham accusations against the Iranian government.
Unbroken chain: Policy sustained to the present day
The strategic imperative to confront Iran has proven remarkably durable, transcending individual US administrations and enduring significant geopolitical shifts.
This hostile and bellicose policy remains intact today. In January 2026, the situation closely mirrors earlier cycles of tension between Tehran and Washington, dating back to decades of US hostility and a failed “regime change” project.
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leading a Likud-dominated coalition, are once again employing military threats against Iran after failing miserably in June last year to dismantle the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The US military has reportedly amassed naval and air forces around Iran’s perimeter, announced by Trump himself, a show of force reminiscent of previous escalations.
This military posture is accompanied by an intensification of a long-standing economic stranglehold, as the Trump administration enforces so-called “ultimate pressure” sanctions with renewed vigor, targeting critical sectors and aiming to sever Iran’s access to the global financial system entirely.
The foundational grievances remain unchanged: allegations of building a “nuclear weapon,” despite Iran’s continued adherence to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) framework after its earlier collapse, and support for regional allies.
Last month, Trump and Netanyahu backed deadly riots and terrorism in Iran, and then threatened to attack Iran if “lethal force” was used against the rioters, arsonists and terrorists. After the riots ended, the focus shifted back to the non-existent “nuclear weapon.”
The tools have expanded beyond diplomatic isolation and covert pressure. Recent reports from within Iran detail how externally backed groups, employing tactics and rhetoric similar to the MKO terrorist cult, sought to exploit domestic unrest by spreading incendiary propaganda and inciting violence, apparently aiming to destabilize the country.
The alignment between the Trump administration and the Likud regime in Tel Aviv remains as close as ever, with both viewing the other as a vital partner in a long-term struggle.
Just as in 2002, diplomatic overtures from Tehran aimed at easing tensions are dismissed or met with increased demands.
The legacy of the “axis of evil” speech has created a foreign policy paradigm that has locked the US and Iran into a perpetual cycle of confrontation, where the mechanisms of pressure – economic warfare, military threat, and the use of terrorist groups – have proven easier to sustain than to dismantle, continually pushing the region toward the brink of war.
What Trump is doing today is simply a continuation of Bush’s policy, which was also carried forward by Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. The policy remains unchanged.
Israeli Merkava tank invades outskirts of Yaroun in southern Lebanon
Al Mayadeen | January 30, 2026
An Israeli Merkava tank, accompanied by two military vehicles, invaded the outskirts of the southern Lebanese town of Yaroun on Thursday, according to Al Mayadeen’s correspondent.
The correspondent said the Israeli force positioned itself near a residential home on the edge of the town. The house was inhabited prior to the arrival of the Israeli armored unit, raising concerns over civilian safety amid the incursion.
The Lebanese citizens inhabiting the house fled at the sight of the approaching occupation force.
This violation marks a further escalation along Lebanon’s southern border in recent months, where Israeli ground incursions have repeatedly violated Lebanese territory and sovereignty, as well as the ceasefire agreement, under the pretext of security operations.
Fresh attacks target southern Lebanon
Last week, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) carried out fresh attacks across southern Lebanon, targeting multiple towns including Kfar Chouba, Blida, Kfar Kila, and Odeisah, in continued violation of Lebanese sovereignty and international resolutions.
Al Mayadeen’s correspondent in southern Lebanon reported that artillery shelling targeted the outskirts of Kfar Chouba, located in the Hasbaya district. Meanwhile, occupation forces stationed at the Bayad Blida border post opened machine gun fire toward the eastern edges of the town.
Further reports confirmed that Israeli forces bombed the town of Kfarkela and carried out two additional strikes on Odeisah, located in the Nabatieh Governorate.
Continued violations of UN resolution 1701
An Israeli drone strike on the town of al-Mansouri in the Tyre district on Friday morning resulted in one martyr and one injured, according to Al Mayadeen’s correspondent in southern Lebanon.
This comes after an Israeli drone strike on Thursday targeted a vehicle traveling on the road between the towns of Zawtar and Mayfadoun in the Nabatieh district, resulting in the death of a citizen. In a separate escalation, Israeli warplanes carried out air raids on multiple locations in the Bekaa region of eastern Lebanon on Thursday.
It’s worth stressing that the repeated airstrikes and drone attacks come as part of a wider Israeli campaign targeting areas in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and the southern suburbs of Beirut. These actions are clear violations of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for a cessation of hostilities and respect for Lebanese sovereignty.
In 2007, Michael Parenti Called Out The Greater Israel Project
The Dissident | January 28, 2026
In my last article, I covered the left-wing scholar Michael Parenti- who passed away at the age of 92 this week- and his prophetic writings on the Ukraine proxy war in 2014.
Parenti’s writings on the Israel lobby and the greater Israel project were equally prophetic.
In his 2007 book “Contrary Notions” Parenti called out “Israel First” Neo-cons and Israel’s role in the Iraq war, and predicted to a tee the future Israeli/American wars in the Middle East in service of Greater Israel and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
In a section of the book aptly titled “Israel First”, Parenti wrote:
The neoconservative officials in the Bush Jr. administration — Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Elliot Abrams, Robert Kagan, Lewis Libby, Abram Shulsky, and others — were strong proponents of a militaristic and expansionist strain of Zionism linked closely to the right-wing Likud Party of Israel. With impressive cohesion these “neocons” played a determinant role in shaping U.S. Middle East policy. In the early 1980s Wolfowitz and Feith were charged with passing classified documents to Israel. Instead of being charged with espionage, Feith temporarily lost his security clearance and Wolfowitz was untouched. The two continued to enjoy ascendant careers, becoming second and third in command at the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld.
For these right-wing Zionists, the war against Iraq was part of a larger campaign to serve the greater good of Israel. Saddam Hussein was Israel’s most consistent adversary in the Middle East, providing much political support to the Palestinian resistance. The neocons had been pushing for war with Iraq well before 9/11, assisted by the wellfinanced and powerful Israeli lobby, as well as by prominent members of Congress from both parties who obligingly treated U.S. and Israeli interests in the Middle East as inseparable. The Zionist neocons provided alarming reports about the threat to the United States posed by Saddam because of his weapons of mass destruction.
Indeed in 1996, Neo-cons who later ended up in the Bush administration named by Parenti, including Douglas Feith, wrote a latter to Benjamin Netanyahu who was the newly elected Prime Minister of Israel which urged him to “focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right”.
This plan eventually turned into an Israeli-backed plot to “take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and, finishing off, Iran”, in order to isolate Palestinians and make Israel the dominant power in the Middle East.
As U.S. General Wesley Clark later revealed , the idea behind these wars was, “if you want to protect Israel, and you want Israel to succeed… you’ve got to get rid of the states that are surrounding”.
This too was predicted by Michael Parenti to a tee, who wrote, “The neocon goal has been Israeli expansion into all Palestinian territories and the emergence of Israel as the unchallengeable, perfectly secure, supreme power in the region”, “This could best be accomplished by undoing the economies of pro-Palestinian states, including Syria, Iran, Libya, Lebanon… “A most important step in that direction was the destruction of Iraq as a nation, including its military, civil service, police, universities, hospitals, utilities, professional class, and entire infrastructure, an Iraq torn with sectarian strife and left in shambles.”
Indeed, as Parenti correctly predicted, the clean break policy went through with the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the 2011 NATO regime change war in Libya, 2011 dirty war in Syria, and the ongoing hybrid war on Iran.
As Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs has noted :
In 1996, Netanyahu and his American advisors devised a “Clean Break” strategy. They advocated that Israel would not withdraw from the Palestinian lands captured in the 1967 war in exchange for regional peace. Instead, Israel would reshape the Middle East to its liking. Crucially, the strategy envisioned the US as the main force to achieve these aims—waging wars in the region to dismantle governments opposed to Israel’s dominance over Palestine. The US was called upon to fight wars on Israel’s behalf.
The Clean Break strategy was effectively carried out by the US and Israel after 9/11. As NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark revealed, soon after 9/11, the US planned to “attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years—starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.”
The first of the wars, in early 2003, was to topple the Iraqi government. Plans for further wars were delayed as the US became mired in Iraq. Still, the US supported Sudan’s split in 2005, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006, and Ethiopia’s incursion into Somalia that same year. In 2011, the Obama administration launched CIA operation Timber Sycamore against Syria and, with the UK and France, overthrew Libya’s government through a 2011 bombing campaign. Today, these countries lie in ruins, and many are now embroiled in civil wars.
Netanyahu was a cheerleader of these wars of choice–either in public or behind the scenes–together with his neocon allies in the U.S. Government including Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Victoria Nuland, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, and others.
These wars- as Parenti predicted- helped Israel towards it’s final goal of being “the unchallengeable, perfectly secure, supreme power in the region” and “Israeli expansion into all Palestinian territories” brought forward by the Gaza genocide and expanded settlements in the West Bank with the end goal-as Israel’s Minister of Science and Technology Gila Gamliel admitted -to “make Gaza unlivable for humans until the population leaves and then … do the same for the West Bank”.
As Jeffrey Sachs noted:
In September 2023, Netanyahu presented at UN General Assembly a map of the “New Middle East” completely erasing a Palestinian state. In September 2024, he elaborated on this plan by showing two maps: one part of the Middle East a “blessing,” and the other–including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran–a curse, as he advocated regime change in the latter countries.
Israel’s war on Iran is the final move in a decades-old strategy. We are witnessing the culmination of decades of extremist Zionist manipulation of US foreign policy.
Just like he did in Ukraine, Michael Parenti exactly predicted the goal of Israel first Neo-cons in the Middle East and the final goal of a greater Israel and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
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How Ukraine Tortured and Slaughtered Donbass
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | July 11, 2024
Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody emerged.
On July 6th, the New York Times published an astonishing investigation: In Ukraine, Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit. The article documents in grim detail how Chosen Company, an international volunteer battalion for Kiev, routinely executes Russian prisoners of war. It is the very first mainstream admission that this practice – a brazen breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a grave war crime – is widespread among Ukraine’s fighters, both foreign and homegrown. … continue
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