Tag: israel

Trump Rolls Over for a New War

It is generally believed that American voters elected Donald Trump president at least in part due to their embracing his lies that he was a peacemaker who would not involve the United States in the pointless wars that have proliferated since 9/11. Trump’s predecessor the hapless Genocide Joe Biden had entangled the US deep in a conflict involving nuclear armed Russia and had also armed, funded and politically protected war criminal Israel in its openly declared objective to eliminate the Palestinians. Neither conflict could be justified based on actual American interests. So Trump looked like a better bet than a witless giggler like Kamala Harris, though voters would have benefited from looking at the Trump record during his first term in office where he was little more than Israel’s mouthpiece after being heavily bribed during his campaign by Nevada casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. Trump and his ambassador in Israel David Friedman endorsed the oppression of the Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza and also illegally approved moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem. Trump also allowed Israel to annex part of the Syrian Golan Heights and ordered the assassination of Qassim Soleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and regarded as a major enemy by Israel, killing the man when he was in Baghdad Iraq for peace talks. Trump, like his successor Joe Biden, never said “no” to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Be that as it may, the past five months have demonstrated that searching for an honest man (or woman) in Washington would require Diogenes and his lamp, with little hope of coming up with someone who was not alternately a bad joke, an incompetent, or a screaming psychopath. The last several weeks illustrate just how bad things are, though the real fear must be that they can actually get worse if Trump joins Israel when it ignores the current ceasefire and attacks Iran once again. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump will no doubt have to construct a new big lie to explain their belligerency as it is now clear that Iran had no nuclear weapons program.

Even given the horrors being perpetrated by the United States as a bosom buddy ally of Israel, one is nevertheless particularly taken by the malapropisms and the verbal slurs and even threats of physical abuse increasingly being hurled about by the buffoon who pretends to be the president of the United States. Trump, pretending to negotiate with Iran, also saw fit to threaten to “eliminate” the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, if Iran did not submit to unconditional surrender. He claimed to know the “secret location” where Ali Khamenei was hiding but “won’t kill him for now.” Trump also called out Representative Thomas Massie, one of the most principled men in Congress, on social media, calling him a “LOSER” after Massie posted a social media post criticizing the president for unconstitutionally bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities on Saturday night without a declaration of war. Worse still, Trump also engaged in screaming fits focused on two women journalists who questioned his claim that he had “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, demanding that CNN’s White House correspondent “Natasha Bertrand should be FIRED from CNN! I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out like a dog.”

Keep reading

Iran Damaged 33,000 Structures in Israel

The damage assessment in Israel from Iran’s counterattack against Tel Aviv’s unprovoked aggression against Iran last month is coming in.

Despite strenuous efforts by Israeli authorities to suppress news from bomb sites — including arresting news crews — the extent of the destruction suffered by Israel is now being revealed.

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Monday that the vaunted Israeli air defense system, headlined by the so-called Iron Dome, failed to prevent a significant inundation of Iranian ordnance.

Some single ballistic missiles landing on Israeli streets damaged a wide area of surrounding buildings purely from the vibrations of the impact, the newspaper reported.

“Throughout Israel, between the shock waves and the direct impact of the heavy Iranian missiles, the destruction spread out over hundreds of meters,” Haaretz said. “Thousands of houses and buildings have been damaged, some severely, with exterior and interior walls collapsing.” 

“The common denominator is the person uprooted from his or her home, who will feel the shock for years,” the paper said.  It further reported: 

“In Tel Aviv, 480 buildings have been damaged, many of them badly, at five separate sites. In Ramat Gan, it’s 237 buildings at three sites, about 10 badly. In another Tel Aviv suburb, Bat Yam, 78 buildings were damaged by one hit; 22 will have to be razed.

The Israel Tax Authority has received applications for financial assistance for nearly 33,000 damaged structures. Another 4,450 files have been opened for the loss of belongings and equipment, and another 4,119 for damaged vehicles”.

The Iranian attacks killed 29 Israeli civilians and, according to a Haaretz map, 96 buildings were severely damaged. 

By contrast, in the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq fired 42 Scud missiles at Tel Aviv and Haifa, killing two Israelis and damaging 4,100 buildings, destroying 28. 

The Haaretz report deals only with civilian buildings. Iran also hit a number of Israeli military bases, including  Kirya and Camp Moshe Dayan in Tel Aviv; as well as the  BAZAN oil refinery in Haifa, causing significant damage; and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, destroying two buildings. 

Keep reading

Mike Huckabee Suggests US B-2 Bombers Should ‘Visit Yemen’ After Houthis Fire Missile at Israel

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee suggested on Tuesday that US B-2 bombers should “visit Yemen” after Yemen’s Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, fired a missile at Israel, as the group has vowed to keep up attacks until Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza comes to an end.

“We thought we were done with missiles coming to Israel, but Houthis just lit one up over us in Israel,” Huckabee wrote on X. “Fortunately, Israel’s incredible interception system means we go to the shelter & wait until all clear. Maybe those B-2 bombers need to visit Yemen!”

The US conducted a heavy bombing campaign in Yemen from March 15 to May 6, which involved over 1,000 missile strikes and killed 258 civilians, and B-2 bombers were reportedly used in some of the strikes. Despite the US attacks, the Houthis were able to fire on US warships and launch missiles at Israel.

President Trump eventually agreed to a ceasefire with the Houthis, which he framed as a victory, but the US essentially gave up on trying to stop Yemeni attacks on Israel. President Biden also failed to deter the Houthis during a years-long bombing campaign from January 2024 to January 2025, which he launched in defense of Israeli shipping.

The Houthis also joined in on Iranian missile strikes during the 12-day US-Israeli war on Iran, saying it coordinated with Tehran in some of its attacks on Israel during that time. In response to Tuesday’s missile attack, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened that Israel would treat Yemen like Tehran, referring to Israel’s airstrikes on the Iranian capital city.

Keep reading

‘New Middle East’: This is Netanyahu’s Real Goal in the Region

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu persistently declares his ambition to “change the face of the Middle East”. Yet, his repeated assertions seem to clash with the unfolding reality on the ground.

Netanyahu’s opportunistic relationship with language is now proving detrimental to his country. The Israeli leader undoubtedly grasps fundamental marketing principles, particularly the power of strong branding and consistent messaging. However, for any product to succeed over time, clever branding alone is insufficient; the product itself must live up to at least a minimum degree of expectation.

Netanyahu’s “product,” however, has proven utterly defective, yet the 75-year-old Israeli Prime Minister stubbornly refuses to abandon his outdated marketing techniques.

But what exactly is Netanyahu selling?

Long before assuming Israel’s leadership, Netanyahu mastered the art of repetition – a technique often employed by politicians to inundate public discourse with specific slogans. Over time, these slogans are intended to become “common sense”.

As a member of the Knesset in 1992, Netanyahu delivered what appeared to be a bombshell: Iran was “within three to five years” from obtaining a nuclear bomb. In 1996, he urged the US Congress to act, declaring that “time is running out.”

While the US pivoted its attention toward Iraq, following the September 2001 attacks, Netanyahu evidently hoped to eliminate two regional foes in one stroke. Following the fall of the Iraqi government in 2003, Netanyahu channeled all his energy into a new discourse: Iran as an existential threat.

Between then and now, Iran has remained his primary focus, even as regional alliances began to form around a discourse of stabilization and renewed diplomatic ties.

However, the Obama administration, especially during its second term, was clearly uninterested in another regional war. As soon as Obama left office, Netanyahu reverted to his old marketing strategy.

It was during Trump’s first term that Netanyahu brought all his marketing techniques to the forefront. He utilized what is known as comparative advertising, where his enemies’ “product” is denigrated with basic terms like ‘barbarism’, ‘dark age’, and so forth, while his own is promoted as representing ‘civilization’, ‘enlightenment’, and ‘progress’.

He also invested heavily in the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) marketing technique. This entailed spreading negative or misleading information about others while promoting his own as a far superior alternative.

This brings us to “solution framing.” For instance, the so-called “existential threats” faced by Israel can supposedly be resolved through the establishment of a “New Middle East.” For this new reality to materialize, the US, he argues, would have to take action, not only to save Israel but also the “civilized world” as well.

It must be noted that Netanyahu’s “New Middle East” is not his original framing. This notion can be traced to a paper published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in March 2004. It followed the US war and invasion of Iraq and was part of the intellectual euphoria among US and other Western intellectuals seeking to reshape the Middle East in a way that suited US geopolitical needs.

The Carnegie article sought to expand the definition of the Middle East beyond the traditional Middle East and North Africa, reaching as far as the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Keep reading

First it was regime change, now they want to break Iran apart

Washington’s foreign policy establishment has a dangerous tendency to dismantle nations it deems adversarial. Now, neoconservative think tanks like the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and their fellow travelers in the European Parliament are openly promoting the balkanization of Iran — a reckless strategy that would further destabilize the Middle East, trigger catastrophic humanitarian crises, and provoke fierce resistance from both Iranians and U.S. partners.

As Israel and Iran exchanged blows in mid-June, FDD’s Brenda Shaffer argued that Iran’s multi-ethnic makeup was a vulnerability to be exploited. Shaffer has been a vocal advocate for Azerbaijan in mainstream U.S. media, even as she has consistently failed to disclose her ties to Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR. For years, she has pushed for Iran’s fragmentation along ethnic lines, akin to the former Yugoslavia’s collapse. She has focused much of that effort on promoting the secession of Iranian Azerbaijan, where Azeris form Iran’s largest non-Persian group.

Shaffer’s views align with a recent Jerusalem Post editorial which, amid the euphoria of Israel’s initial strikes in this month’s war against Iran, called on President Trump to openly embrace Iran’s dismemberment. Specifically, it urged a “Middle East coalition for Iran’s partition” and “security guarantees to Sunni, Kurdish and Balochi minority regions willing to break away.” The same outlet is on the record calling for Israel and the U.S. to support the secession from Iran of what it calls “‘South Azerbaijan,” (meaning the Azeri-majority regions in northwestern Iran).

Meanwhile, the foreign affairs spokeswoman for a centrist liberal group in the European Parliament convened a meeting on the “future of Iran,” ostensibly to discuss the prospects for a “successful” revolt against the Islamic Republic. The fact that the only two Iranian speakers were ethnic separatists from Iran’s Azerbaijan and Ahwaz regions made clear her agenda. Since the European Parliament unilaterally cut all relations with Iran’s official bodies in 2022, it has become a playground for assorted radical exiled opposition groups, such as monarchists, the cultish MEK (Mojaheddeen-e Khalk), and ethnic separatists.

Yet Iran is not some fragile patchwork state on the verge of collapse. It is a 90-million-strong nation with a deep sense of historical and cultural identity. While proponents of balkanization love to fixate on Iran’s ethnic diversity — Azeris, Kurds, Baloch, Arabs — they consistently underestimate the unifying force of Iranian nationalism. As the scholar Shervin Malekzadeh noted recently in the Los Angeles Times, “There is a robust consensus among scholars that politics in Iran begins with the idea of Iran as a people with a continuous and unbroken history, a nation that ‘looms out of an immemorial past.’ Nationalism provides the broad political arena in which different groups and ideologies in Iran compete for power and authority, whether monarchist, Islamist or leftist.”

Decades of foreign pressure, from sanctions to covert operations to war, have only reinforced this cohesion. The idea that stirring separatist sentiment will fracture Iran is a dangerous fantasy — one that deliberately overlooks how schemes hatched, in major part, by pro-Israel neoconservatives, have backfired in Iraq and Syria leaving chaos in their wake.

Such a strategy also exposes its proponents’ deep ignorance of the realities on the ground. Shaffer, the champion of Azerbaijani irredentism, has gone so far as to cheer Israeli airstrikes on Tabriz, the cultural and economic heart of Iranian Azerbaijan.

Keep reading

US Revokes Visas for British Punk-Rap Duo Over Anti-Israel Chant

The State Department revoked the U.S. visas of the British punk-rap band Bob Vylan, following the group’s anti-Israel comments at a world-famous English music festival. 

Lead singer Bobby Vylan led attendees at his June 28 concert at the Glastonbury Festival in chants of “Death, death to the IDF!” referring to the Israel Defense Forces.

The concert came just days after the United States and Israel engaged in an offensive against Iranian nuclear sites, and almost two years after Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, prompting Israeli military actions in Gaza aimed at eliminating the Palestinian terrorist group and freeing the hostages taken by it. The ongoing Israel–Hamas conflict also triggered protests by pro-Palestinian activists against Israel’s military responses.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau announced in a June 30 X post that “The [State Department] has revoked the U.S. visas for the members of the Bob Vylan band in light of their hateful tirade at Glastonbury, including leading the crowd in death chants. Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country.”

The band was scheduled later this year to make appearances in cities across the nation, including Washington, Utah, Colorado, Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and other states.

During the weekend show, Vylan chanted against the IDF while performing in front of 200,000 people at the festival, held in Somerset, England, which is one of the world’s largest music events.

Keep reading

Trump Says He Gave Iran Permission to Bomb U.S. Base in Qatar and…Well, Mostly Crickets?

When political scientist Seth Masket shared this story on Bluesky yesterday, I couldn’t believe it was real. The right-wing Washington Times reported that at a press conference at the NATO Summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday, Trump revealed that he had given Iran permission to bomb the U.S.’s Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar in retaliation for the American bombing of their nuclear sites. 

“They said, ‘We’re going to shoot them. Is one o’clock OK?’ I said it’s fine,” Trump said. “And everybody was emptied off the base so they couldn’t get hurt, except for the gunners.”

I poked around for other major coverage of this extraordinary admission, and landed only on a transcript of the press conference. And yes, amid a characteristically meandering monologue, Trump actually said that he let a foreign adversary bomb an American military installation. But this story has pretty much come and gone with virtually no attention and certainly none of the outrage commensurate with what Trump said.

Let’s consider what Trump’s verbal diarrhea here could mean. Suppose he is (for once) telling the truth. Wouldn’t that represent the most shocking dereliction of duty one could imagine for the commander-in-chief? (A high crime or misdemeanor, perhaps?) Is he saying he let Iran get its retaliation out of its system with what he called “a very weak response” to bring an end to hostilities? Perhaps Trump simply was rambling incoherently as he basked in his new “daddy” glow at NATO.

Keep reading

Prophecy, not politics, may also shape America’s clash with Iran

When most people contemplate the future of America’s conflict with Iran, they hunt for clues in grainy satellite photos, statements from military analysts and President Trump’s social media posts.

But when scholar Diana Butler Bass considers what could happen next, her thoughts turn toward another group she says is now thinking more about prophecy than politics.

She recalls warnings from her childhood about the rise of an Antichrist, stories about weeping mothers clutching their empty blankets after their babies were suddenly “Raptured” to heaven and paintings of an angry Jesus leading armies of angels to an Armageddon-like, final battle in modern-day Israel.

Those stories terrified and thrilled Bass when she heard them growing up in a White evangelical church in the 1970s. It was a time when the end always seemed near, and books like the bestseller “The Late Great Planet Earth” warned Christians to gird their loins for a period of Great Tribulation and prepare for Jesus’ triumphant return to Jerusalem.

Bass, a prominent, progressive religious author who hosts a popular Substack newsletter called “The Cottage,” no longer believes those stories. Yet when she considers why the US struck three nuclear facilities in Iran this month and what could happen next, she now offers a prophecy of her own: Bombing Iran will reinforce Trump’s status as God’s “Chosen One” and Israel as His chosen nation among many of the President’s White evangelical supporters.

Many of these supporters dismiss the dangers of a larger war, she tells CNN, because such a clash would mean the world is approaching the “end times” — a series of cataclysmic events ushering in the Second Coming of Christ and the rise of Israel as the fulfillment of biblical prophecies.

“There’s almost a kind of spiritual eagerness for a war in the Middle East,” says Bass, describing attitudes among some White evangelicals. “They believe a war is going to set off a series of events that will result in Jesus returning.”

Trump’s decision to bomb Iran has so far been examined almost exclusively through the lens of politics or military strategy. Yet there is a religious dimension to his decision – and what could happen next – that’s been underexplored.

Keep reading

US Approves $510 Million Arms Deal for Israel

The Trump administration has approved a new arms deal for Israel that will provide the country with $510 million worth of Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMS), kits that turn bombs into precision-guided weapons, as the US continues to provide military aid to support the genocidal war in Gaza.

According to the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), the State Department notified Congress of the sale of 3,845 JDAMS for 2,000-pound BLU-109 bombs and 3,280 JDAMS for 500-pound MK 82 bombs. The deal also includes US “government and contractor engineering, logistics, and technical support services; and other related elements of logistics and program support.”

The DSCA said Boeing is the principal contractor for the deal. The notification of the potential deal begins a time period when US lawmakers could potentially block the sale, but there’s little opposition to US military support for Israel within Congress, despite the many war crimes the US is implicated in by providing Israel with weapons.

Fragments of bombs with US-provided JDAM kits have been found at the scene of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza that have massacred many civilians. In 2023, Human Rights Watch said it identified JDAM fragments that were found in two airstrikes on homes in central Gaza that killed 43 civilians, including 19 children, and 14 women.

Keep reading

Israel Called Its Initial Attack on Iran ‘Red Wedding,’ Referring to a Fictional Massacre that Relied on Deception

According to The Wall Street Journal, Israel codenamed its initial attack on Iran that killed senior military leaders “Red Wedding,” referring to a gruesome massacre from the book series “Game of Thrones,” which was adapted into a TV series on HBO.

In the Red Wedding scene, one family murders the members of the other, including a pregnant woman, during a wedding feast, a surprise attack that relies on betrayal and deception. Israel’s attack also relied on deception as it used the cover of nuclear talks between the US and Iran to catch Tehran off guard.

The Israeli attack was launched on Friday, June 13, two days before the US and Iran were set to hold another round of nuclear negotiations. According to the Journal report, part of the ruse involved Israeli officials leaking stories to the media about a split between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the possibility of Israel attacking Iran.

Trump and Netanyahu held a phone call on Monday, June 9, the day the Journal report said Israel had decided to launch the attack on June 13. Axios reporter Barak Ravid, a former IDF intelligence officer, reported the day after the call that an Israeli official and a US official told him that Trump expressed to Netanyahu that he believed he could reach a nuclear deal with Iran and opposed military action at that time.

According to the Journal, on the day of the attacks Trump told reporters that the US and Iran were “fairly close to an agreement” and that he didn’t want the Israelis “going in,” and Israeli officials told reporters they would wait to see the results of the next round of US-Iran nuclear talks before attacking.

The Journal report said: “The key to the deception, said a security official familiar with the planning of the operation, was the idea implanted in the minds of the Iranians that Israel wouldn’t strike without US authorization and participation. As long as the US wasn’t mobilizing its forces and was engaged in negotiations, Israel could threaten to attack and even mobilize its troops in plain sight of Iran without giving away the element of surprise.”

Hours before Israel’s bombing campaign started, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was still committed to a diplomatic solution with Iran. The Journal report said Israeli warplanes were already getting in the air when he made the post.

Keep reading