Tag: iran

The US is on the brink of a major new war that Trump has not even bothered explaining

President Trump has spent two months ordering a rapidly expanding and now-massive military buildup near Iran, with a focus on the Persian Gulf and nearby permanent U.S. military bases in close proximity to Iran (Iran, of course, has no military bases anywhere near the U.S.). The deployment includes aircraft carriers and other assets that would enable, at a minimum, an extremely destructive air campaign against the whole country.

The U.S. under both parties has been insisting for two decades that it must abandon its heavy military involvement in the Middle East and instead “pivot to Asia” in light of a rapidly rising China. Yet in the midst of those vows, Trump has now assembled the largest military presence in the Middle East since 2003, when the U.S. was preparing to invade Iraq with overwhelming military force.

One of the most striking and alarming aspects of all of this is that Trump — outside of a few off-the-cuff banalities — has barely attempted to offer a case to the American public as to why such a major new war is necessary. This unilateral march to war resembles what we saw in the lead-up to the bombing of Venezuelan boats, culminating in the U.S. invading force that abducted (“arrested”) the country’s President, Nicolas Maduro, and took him and his wife to a prison in New York.

In the weeks preceding the Venezuela operation, we heard a carousel of rationales. It was all necessary to stop the flow of dangerous drugs into the U.S. We needed to free the repressed Venezuelan peoples from their dictator. Trump’s embrace and expansion of the Monroe Doctrine — now dubbed the Donroe Doctrine — meant that we cannot tolerate communist regimes in “our region.”

But as soon as Maduro was removed, all of those claims disappeared. Contrary to the expectations of many, the U.S. left in place Maduro’s entire regime rather than replacing it with the pro-US opposition (a wise move of restraint in my view, but one that negates the “liberation” rhetoric). Discussions of the drug trade from Venezuela (a source of drugs for the U.S. that was always minor if not trivial, and did not include fentanyl) have completely disappeared. The only real outcome seems to be that the U.S. has more control over that nation’s oil supply, and barrels of it are now being shipped to Israel for the first time in many years.

In sum, we were given a low-effort smorgasbord to enable supporters of Trump’s actions toward Venezuela to mount arguments in favor of the operation, but there was no systematic attempt to convince the country at large. There was not even a live television address to the nation beforehand to explain it. And the role that Congress played was close to non-existent. All of that is similar to what we are seeing now concerning a far riskier, more dangerous, and complex war with Iran.

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UK Denies American Use Of Diego Garcia And RAF Fairford For Iran Attacks

The United Kingdom has reportedly refused U.S. requests to utilize key military facilities—RAF Fairford in England and the joint U.S.-U.K. base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean—for any potential strikes against Iran. This decision, driven by concerns over possible breaches of international law, has sparked tensions between Washington and London.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has withheld permission for American forces to operate from these bases in support of preemptive or offensive actions against Iran. Government sources indicate that London views participation in such strikes—particularly without clear legal justification—as risking violations of international norms, which do not distinguish between direct aggressors and those providing knowing support.

The refusal comes amid heightened U.S.-Iran tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program and ballistic missile capabilities. President Donald Trump highlighted the strategic importance of these sites in a Wednesday post on Truth Social, stating: “Should Iran decide not to make a deal, it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia and the airfield located in Fairford, in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous regime.” He further warned that such an attack could target not only the U.S. but also allies like the United Kingdom, according to reports from The Times and other outlets.

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Senators Talk Digital Freedom for Iran While Expanding Surveillance at Home

Three US senators want federal funding to help Iranians bypass censorship and access VPNs. The same three senators have spent years supporting the surveillance systems that track Americans online.

We obtained a copy of their letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio for you here.

Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), James Lankford (R-OK), and Jacky Rosen (D-NV) are backing funding for anti-censorship technology and virtual private networks abroad.

Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), whose privacy record is largely clean, is also supporting the effort. The bipartisan coalition wants to help people circumvent government internet controls. Just not the American government’s internet controls.

Graham’s voting record reads like a blueprint for the surveillance state he claims to oppose overseas. He voted for the Patriot Act in 2001 and has supported every major expansion since. When Section 702 of FISA came up for reauthorization, Graham backed it. When Congress considered making Section 702 permanent in 2017 with no sunset clauses and no congressional review, Graham backed that too.

His encryption stance is just as consistent. Graham co-sponsored the EARN IT Act in 2020, which would pressure platforms to weaken encryption to avoid liability.

He also backed the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data (LAED) Act, a bill that would require companies to build backdoors into their security systems. VPNs work because of encryption. Graham has spent years trying to break it.

He’s also pushed to repeal Section 230 protections and supported requiring government licenses for companies offering AI tools. When surveillance mechanisms he championed caught his own communications, Graham complained. Privacy for senators. Mass surveillance for everyone else.

Lankford introduced the Free Speech Fairness Act, which removed restrictions on political speech by religious and nonprofit organizations. That same senator has backed the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which will likely require platforms to implement age verification and give regulators the power to pressure companies into removing content.

He called for Section 230 to be “ripped up” and backed a national strategy against antisemitism that includes government coordination on speech. When Edward Snowden revealed the scope of NSA surveillance, Lankford branded him a traitor for telling the public what their government was doing.

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Iran Secures Powerful Vice-Chair Role on Globalist U.N. Social Development Commission — Tehran Now Poised to Influence Global Policy on Poverty, Inequality, Jobs, and Welfare for 2027 Session

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been elected Vice-Chair of the United Nations Commission for Social Development for its 2027 session, a key leadership role on a body that helps set global policy on poverty reduction, employment, inequality, social protection, and welfare.

While the mullahs in Tehran are busy crushing the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement and acting as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, the U.N. thinks they are the perfect candidates to help lead global efforts on poverty, inequality, and social welfare.

On Tuesday, the Commission concluded its 64th session in New York by electing its new “Bureau” for 2027. Amid the usual bureaucratic back-patting, it was announced that Abbas Tajik, representing the Iranian regime, would serve as Vice-Chair.

According to the UN:

The Commission then concluded its sixty-fourth session and opened its sixty-fifth to elect its new office-bearers, in accordance with the principle of equitable geographical rotation among the five regional groups.  Stefano Guerra (Portugal) was elected as Chair, while Abbas Tajik (Iran) and Shahriyar Hajiyev (Azerbaijan) were elected as Vice-Chairs.  The Commission postponed the elections of the remaining members of the Bureau — from the Group of African States and the Group of Latin America and Caribbean States — to a later date.

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Leading Papers Call for Destroying Iran to Save It

The United States has no right to wage war on Iran, or to have a say who governs the country. The opinion pages of the New York Times and Washington Post, however, are offering facile humanitarian arguments for the US to escalate its attacks on Iran. These are based on the nonsensical assumption that the US wants to help brighten Iranians’ futures.

In two editorials addressing the possibility of the US undertaking a bombing and shooting war on Iran, the Washington Post expressed no opposition to such policies and endorsed economic warfare as well.

Crediting Trump with “the wisdom of distinguishing between an authoritarian regime and the people who suffer under its rule,” the first Post editorial (1/2/26) approvingly quoted Trump’s Truth Social promise (1/2/26) to Iranian protesters that the US “will come to their rescue…. We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”

For the Post, the problem was not that Trump was threatening to bomb a sovereign state, but that “airstrikes are, at best, a temporary solution”:

If the administration wants this time to be different, it will need to oversee a patient, sustained campaign of maximum pressure against the government…. The optimal strategy is to economically squeeze the regime as hard as possible at this moment of maximum vulnerability. More stringent enforcement of existing oil sanctions would go a long way…. Western financial controls are actually working quite well.

Thus, the paper offers advice on how to integrate bombing Iran into a broader effort to overthrow the country’s government in a hybrid war. Central to that project are the sanctions with which the Post is so thoroughly impressed. Such measures have “squeeze[d] the regime” by, for example, decimating “the government’s primary source of revenue, oil exports, limiting the state’s ability to provide for millions of impoverished Iranians through social safety nets” (CNN, 10/19/25).

That the US continues to apply the sanctions, knowing that they have these effects, demonstrates that it has no interest in, as the Post put it, “free[ing]” Iranians “from bondage.”

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Netanyahu Visits Trump for the Seventh Time Amid More Threats of a U.S. Attack on Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has by far spent more time with President Trump than with any other world leader. Netanyahu, on Wednesday, will make his seventh visit to the U.S. since Trump’s second term began a little over a year ago, on top of the visit to Israel made by Trump in October. No other leader has visited the White House during Trump’s second term more than twice. The duo will once again meet at the White House.

The Israeli leader is traveling to Washington this time in order to impose as onerous conditions as possible on Trump’s desire to sign a deal with Iran that would avert a second U.S. attack on that country in the last eight months. “I will present to the President our positions regarding the principles of the negotiations,” Netanyahu said before boarding his presidential plane this morning.

In June, Trump ordered the U.S. military to bomb several of Iran’s underground enrichment facilities in the midst of Israel’s 12-day bombing campaign. After those strikes, Trump pronounced Iran’s nuclear facilities “completely and totally obliterated.”

Yet over the past two months, Trump has ordered the deployment of what he called a “massive armada,” led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, headed to Iran. On Truth Social, Trump emphasized that the deployment of military assets to Iran is larger than what he sent to Venezuela prior to the removal of that country’s president by the U.S. military. Trump added: “Like with Venezuela, [the U.S. armada] is ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary.”

Indeed, Trump has explicitly and repeatedly threatened Tehran with “violence” and “very steep” consequences in the event that the two countries fail to reach a long-term agreement governing Iran’s nuclear program — the same one that Trump insisted had been “obliterated” last June.

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Iran Protesters Include Mossad and MEK

Donald Trump has promoted the idea – amplified by much of the international media – that protesters inside Iran are calling for U.S. military intervention and the overthrow of their government.

At the same time, Trump is threatening Iran with major military action, demanding not only changes in how protesters are treated, but that Iran abandon what he claims is a pursuit of nuclear weapons and relinquish its long-range missile capabilities and other defensive systems.

It’s true that many Iranians are protesting in response to severe economic hardship, which has reached unprecedented levels. But a major driver of Iran’s inflation and currency collapse has been the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, which have sharply constrained Iran’s economy and access to global markets.

What is largely absent from Trump’s rhetoric – and from much of the dominant media narrative – is that these protests are not purely organic. External actors are also involved, including Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, and the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an exiled Iranian group that has committed acts of terror for decades.

Mossad involvement has been openly acknowledged

On social media, Mossad posted a message directed at Iranians stating: “Go out together into the streets. The time has come. We are with you – not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”

Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu reinforced this openly, stating: “When we attacked in Iran during ‘Rising Lion,’ we were on its soil and knew how to lay the groundwork for a strike. I can assure you that we have some of our people operating there right now.”

Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo compounded this message of encouragement by tweeting: “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.”

And last year, Mossad Director David Barnea confirmed Israel’s ongoing activities in Iran, declaring: “We will continue to be there, as we have been.”

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No Way To Win in Iran

On 29 January 2026, I was on the “Deep Dive” with Lt. Col. (ret.) Danny Davis. We had an excellent discussion on what President Trump’s options are in a war against Iran. We both agreed that he has no good military option at this point or for the foreseeable future, which is not to say Trump will not attack. But all the evidence indicates that he would be foolish to do so. Indeed, it is quite clear that the Israelis, who asked him not to attack on January 14th, when he appeared ready to do so, still have reservations about the wisdom of an attack.

It is worth noting that the Israelis launched major attacks by themselves against Iran on 19 April 2024 and 26 October 2024. They then launched major attacks with the United States against Iran during the 12-day war in June 2025. Today, Israel is apparently planning to sit on the sidelines while the US attacks Iran by itself.

What is going on? Netanyahu tried hard to drag the Biden administration into attacking Iran with Israel in 2024, but failed. Biden and his lieutenants understood that a war with Iran was not in the American national interest. Netanyahu succeeded, however, in getting Trump to join forces with Israel and attack Iran in June 2025. Now he has helped maneuver Trump into contemplating a US-only war against Iran, although it appears that the Israelis are getting cold feet. Someone is being played for a sucker.

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Western spies say Iran not making nukes – NYT

Western intelligence agencies see no indication that Iran is enriching uranium for “bomb-grade material,” the New York Times has reported, citing sources. While activity has been detected at nuclear sites, including those damaged by last year’s strikes, no high-level enrichment is underway, the report claims.

Last summer, the US and Israel carried out coordinated strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, justifying the campaign as preventing Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons – an ambition Iran denies. The attacks targeted the Fordow and Natanz enrichment plants and the Isfahan research center.

In its report published on Thursday, the NYT claimed uranium buried at the struck sites – material closest to weapons-grade levels – remains in place. Work at the sites appears limited to excavation aimed at creating more secure facilities. No new nuclear sites have been detected, though limited activity has been observed at two incomplete sites near Natanz and Isfahan, according to the paper.

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Israel’s ‘worst-case scenario’ on Iran and a warning to Washington: ‘Without a strike, you’ll look weak’

As tensions with Iran reach a critical point, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir conducted a secret visit to Washington over the weekend, following earlier visits by Military Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder and, two weeks ago, Mossad Director David Barnea.

Zamir’s meeting with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine was described as top-level strategic coordination, amid growing concern that Iran could retaliate against Israel in response to a potential U.S. strike.

The Israeli visits coincide with senior U.S. military travel to Israel, including CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper. Over the weekend, the guided-missile destroyer USS Delbert D. Black docked at the port of Eilat before departing to continue operations in the Red Sea. The move is part of what U.S. President Donald Trump has called a “big armada” sent to the region, including the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and eight guided-missile destroyers.

Security cooperation between Israel and the United States has reached unprecedented levels across all tiers: the IDF, the CIA and the political leadership. Israel has shared its most sensitive intelligence, including detailed information on the brutal suppression of last month’s protests in Iran, the scale of killings and the systematic massacre of demonstrators.

Much of the dialogue has focused on preparations for both offense and defense. In Israel, planners are preparing for the possibility of a unilateral U.S. strike on Iran. Washington may ask Israel to join the operation, citing the experience Israel gained during last June’s Operation Rising Lion. U.S. officials are also seeking lessons learned from that conflict.

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