Tag: perpetual war

Marco Rubio Helps Israel Pursue Goal of Civil War in Lebanon

After President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance committed the United States to a deconfliction cell with Iran in Switzerland – a mechanism enforcing a ceasefire in Lebanon as well as Iran – Israel and its powerful lobby moved instantly to sabotage it. And in a preview of the sorts of foreign policy fissures that will likely define the 2028 GOP primary, the lobby has deployed Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the man to pursue Israel’s interests and pave the way for Israel’s further occupation of Lebanon.

The first article of the 60-day interim agreement signed by the U.S. and Iran conditions an end to the conflict on the “immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon” and on “ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon.” That second clause, more than any other, appears to be the one Israel is most reluctant to accept.

Despite Israeli withdrawal now required to end a war that now threatens to destabilize the entire global economy, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said that Israel would occupy southern Lebanon indefinitely, stating that “we dominate southern Lebanon, from the summit of the Beaufort, and we will remain as long as required,” adding that “we do not intend to withdraw from it.” Defense Minister Israel Katz meanwhile said there was “no American demand for Israel to withdraw from Lebanon,” and that Israel would not withdraw even if there were one, later telling reporters that southern Lebanon was Israel’s “playground.”

That Iran has set out to secure the complete “territorial integrity” of Lebanon is unacceptable to Israel, which seeks to ethnically cleanse southern Lebanon and possibly further north, with the goal of seizing the land for the Greater Israel Project.

In order to sabotage a deconfliction track outlined in Switzerland and continue their endless project to secure more lebensraum, the Israelis have turned to the U.S. State Department and the Israel Lobby’s man in charge, Marco Rubio, whose spearheaded deconfliction framework was signed by the governments of Israel and Lebanon in Washington on Friday.

Intended to supplant the one announced by Vance – which the Times of Israel reported “infuriated Israel” – Rubio’s agreement strips out the guarantee of Lebanese territorial integrity that Iran insists is necessary to end the war and replaces it with an Israeli wishlist that includes permissions for continued Israeli occupation of a “security zone” and a plan to deputize Lebanese forces to accomplish the likely-impossible objective of “disarming” Hezbollah.

Such an agreement is unacceptable to Hezbollah, which has vowed to keep fighting until Israeli forces leave Lebanon. That is why Israel and Marco Rubio deliberately excluded the group from the deal, producing a “peace deal” between two warring parties to which only one of them agreed.

Indeed, although the deal was pitched by Marco Rubio as “a framework for lasting peace and security,” statements made by Israelis and Hezbollah in recent days reveal that narrative to be nothing more than propaganda designed exclusively for Western audiences. On Israel’s Channel 13 after the signing of the Rubio deal, an Israeli analyst remarked how “it seems we’re leading the state of Lebanon into civil war,” adding “maybe it’s not so bad for us, let the Lebanese government fight Hezbollah.” That was “the goal from the start,” replied his co-host. Lebanese lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah, who is close to Hezbollah, agreed with the Israeli assessment, telling Al-Mayadeen on Friday that Lebanese ​authorities would not be able to enforce the agreement signed ‌in ‌Washington ​on ‌Friday ⁠unless, with ​U.S. backing, “they go ⁠to civil war.”

As John Mearsheimer foresaw in April, “what I think Netanyahu wants to do is to foment civil war in Lebanon, a war with the government on one side and Hezbollah on the other,” describing the strategy as a way of weakening them both. “The Israelis can’t disarm Hezbollah, so they want the Lebanese government to do it.”

In response to questions about the apparent divergence between the Lebanon frameworks pursued by JD Vance and Marco Rubio, the White House has denied that any divisions exist at all. Israel Katz has essentially said the same, admitting that even after Trump linked the Iran and Lebanon tracks and demanded that Israel stop “bringing down buildings in Beirut,” the IDF expanded ground operations north of the Litani River and enlarged its occupation of southern Lebanon, all of it, Katz said, “carried out with U.S. approval.”

Whether the intra-administration split is real or kayfabe, the status quo in Lebanon and its spoiling effect for a peace deal remain the same.

Harrison Berger is a correspondent at The American Conservative. He has contributed to Drop Site News, The Nation, and Responsible Statecraft. Previously, he was a researcher and producer for System Update with Glenn Greenwald. His work focuses on civil liberties and U.S. foreign policy. He studied Political Science and Russian Studies at Union College (NY).

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Israeli authorities arrest 20-year-old American citizen in Jerusalem on suspicion of conducting espionage missions for Iranian intelligence

In a major joint counterintelligence operation, the Israel Police and the Shin Bet security agency announced the arrest of a 20-year-old American citizen residing in the Jerusalem area on suspicion of conducting espionage missions for Iranian intelligence.

The suspect, whose identity remains withheld under court-authorized restrictions, was taken into custody following critical intelligence provided by a number of undisclosed security agencies.

A prosecutor’s statement was formally filed in court, a mandatory legal precursor signaling that a formal indictment and a request to hold the individual without bail until the conclusion of legal proceedings will be submitted.

According to security officials, the investigation revealed that the suspect had been actively maintaining contact with operatives acting on behalf of Iranian intelligence agencies over the course of several months.

During this period, the American reportedly accepted and executed numerous assignments that primarily involved documenting and photographing sensitive strategic sites across Israel. In exchange for the surveillance data and media, the suspect allegedly received financial compensation “ranging from dozens to hundreds of U.S. dollars per completed task.”

The arrest comes amid a sharp spike in Iranian-directed espionage operations inside Israel, which have increasingly relied on recruiting local residents and foreign nationals through digital platforms.

Chief Inspector Amichai Panta, an investigations officer with the Jerusalem District’s Major Crimes Unit, emphasized the gravity of the case, noting that multiple espionage operations have been dismantled recently, with some suspects operating directly during active wartime to aid hostile foreign plots.

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Europe to Assist Zelensky’s Conscription Effort

Europe welcomed millions of Ukrainians with open arms. Governments competed with one another to prove who could be the most compassionate. Nobody wanted to ask the uncomfortable question. What happens when the war drags on for years? Eventually, someone has to fight it.

Now the European Commission is proposing that newly arriving Ukrainian men of military age who are not authorized to leave Ukraine should no longer qualify for temporary protection. Existing refugees would remain protected, but the message is changing. According to the Commission, the proposal came at Ukraine’s request because Kyiv needs to preserve its ability to defend itself. Sweden’s Migration Minister Johan Forssell said the quiet part out loud: “It is essential for us to provide Ukrainians with protection, but at the same time the war needs to be fought and won. For that to happen, it is essential that more men stay in Ukraine and fight.”

Europe is beginning to acknowledge something politicians have carefully avoided saying for years. Wars consume people. Ammunition can be manufactured, but young men cannot. Zelensky has banned military-aged men from leaving the nation.

Zelensky is forcing a generation to perish in this endless war with Russia and NATO. Recent reports indicate that 200,000 soldiers have gone AWOL (absent without leave), and for perspective, that is more soldiers than the entire UK military. Ukraine’s new Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov warned that the government is hunting down two million Ukrainians who are wanted for evading mobilization.

“Today, we cannot fight with new technologies, with an old organizational structure,” Fedorov said in a televised warning. “Our goal is to change the system, carry out army reforms, improve the infrastructure on the front, to eradicate lies and corruption, to instill leadership, and a new culture of trust.”

The age of conscription was lowered from 27 to 25 back in April 2024. Zelensky has demanded that men from 25 up to 60 years of age join mobilization efforts. Ukraine has a population of 40 million, and 2 million evaders represent a significant portion of men, but only six months ago, reports indicated that 6 million men were wanted for evading the draft. The EU is now considering preventing men aged 24 to 60 from entering the bloc as the war requires ample cannon fodder. Europe is not fighting in this battle for the good or Ukraine or its people.

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Empire At 250: Can The Principles Of 1776 Survive The American Police State?

“The people are the only legitimate fountain of power.”

– James Madison

This is a year of strange anniversaries.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, a band of revolutionaries declared their independence from a king.

America’s founders rejected concentrated power. They denounced standing armies. They distrusted government secrecy. They risked their lives to escape a ruler who could tax without consent, wage war without accountability, and govern without meaningful restraint.

Twenty-five years ago, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, America embarked on a very different journey.

The federal government claimed extraordinary emergency powers. Surveillance expanded. Wars multiplied. Executive authority grew. Constitutional safeguards were weakened in the name of security.

One anniversary marked a revolt against empire. The other marked the normalization of it.

Now, as America prepares to celebrate 250 years of independence, we are confronted with a bitter irony: the republic born in rebellion against empire has become an empire in everything but name.

Worse, the U.S. government is violating the very principles that justified the American Revolution.

Graft, grift and corruption. Endless wars. Profiteering. Trillions squandered abroad while the nation sinks deeper into debt at home.

A government that governs increasingly by executive order and emergency decree. A government that wastes taxpayer money with impunity, rewards political loyalty over constitutional fidelity, installs loyalists in positions meant to serve the public, dismantles safeguards against corruption, shields insiders from scrutiny, and treats accountability as an inconvenience.

National states of emergency that never seem to end. Efforts to nullify constitutional guarantees such as birthright citizenship. Expanded death penalty powers. A growing willingness to bypass Congress, sidestep constitutional restraints and rule by fiat.

Surveillance programs that track where we go, what we buy, who we know, what we say and what we believe. Fusion centers, facial recognition, license plate readers, AI-assisted monitoring, financial tracking, intelligence-sharing agreements and a sprawling security apparatus that treats privacy as a loophole and dissent as a threat.

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Americans Want Peace, Israel Wants War

America wants peace. Israel wants war. The great majority of Americans want an end to the war against Iran. The great majority in Congress just want more contributions from the Israel Lobby and its supporters.

Now, most members of Congress are really squirming. They know that most of their constituents are fed up with foreign wars and want this stupid war in Iran over, the sooner the better.

But they are afraid to criticize Israel’s war for fear of the Israel Lobby steering big campaign contributions against them. Their silence is deafening.

Most members are trying to keep quiet. Almost no one other than Mark Levin, Ben Shapiro, and the Israel First crowd are enthusiastic about this war.

The only ones speaking out strongly in favor of it are members who have received and/or who hope to receive millions in campaign contributions from the Lobby like Senators Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, Tom Cotton and others.

They didn’t even criticize Israel when it was starving and killing more than 20,000 children in Gaza. Congress would have rushed to pass a resolution of condemnation if it had been done in any other country than Israel.

But the killing goes on, even during so-called ceasefires. Thousands have been killed over this past year by Israeli forces in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.

We don’t hear and see as much about all this killing because Israel was losing the public relations battle, and pro-Israel billionaires bought up significant parts of the national media that they did not already own.  Lesser-known conservative “influencers” and podcasters were given money, and 1,000 ministers were given free trips to Israel. Even TikTok was bought because its coverage was supposedly causing too many teenagers to have anti-Israel opinions.

However, all the pro-Israel propaganda has not worked so far. Even President Trump has apparently gotten angry at times with Netanyahu, telling him at one point that he shouldn’t blow up an entire apartment building to get at one person.

And Vice President Vance told the world in a press conference that Israel’s cabinet should realize that President Trump was the only world leader still supporting  Netanyahu and that two-thirds of all the military equipment and ammunition used by the IDF in these latest wars had been paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

The very few members of Congress and commentators who are criticizing President Trump for giving into Iran in the Memorandum he signed need to be asked what their alternative is.

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Israel-Lebanon Deal On Life Support: Israel Won’t Withdraw, And Lebanon’s Christians Are Split On Whether It’s A Lifeline Or A Trap

The US-brokered “Trilateral Framework” signed in Washington on June 26 — sold as a “first step toward peace” — is fraying within days. The 14-point deal ties any Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon to the “verified disarmament of non-state armed groups,” a plain reference to Hezbollah. A now-public security annex states: further IDF pullbacks are conditioned on “results, not time” — on “successful completion of agreed upon and verifiable disarmament,” with no withdrawal timeline at all. Israel can therefore stay indefinitely and call it legal.

Netanyahu, visiting troops in the self-declared “security zone” alongside Defense Minister Israel Katz, said Israel “will not leave southern Lebanon until the threat has disappeared”; Katz added they “will not withdraw a millimeter” until Hezbollah is disarmed. Since disarmament is the precondition for a withdrawal Israel refuses to start, the sequencing seems circular by design. Israeli strikes have continued across the south, the Bekaa, and Beirut’s southern suburbs. Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem branded the deal “null and void,” a “humiliation,” and vowed to keep fighting until Israel leaves — a rejection driven by the Iran-backed militia’s determination to keep its weapons and its war, not by any concern for the Lebanese state.

The Christian angle is where Western coverage flattens a real divide — and it’s worth getting right, because Israel has a documented history of cultivating Lebanese politicians.

On one side, Samir Geagea’s Lebanese Forces cheered the pact as “the most significant political step taken by the Lebanese state in half a century.” But Geagea is the most Israel-friendly voice in Lebanese politics — so his enthusiasm should be weighed accordingly, not taken as the Christian consensus.

The Free Patriotic Movement, Lebanon’s second largest Christian party, founded by former President Michel Aoun and led by Gebran Bassil, did not celebrate but seems open to finding a way forward. Bassil’s verdict: the agreement “is beneficial if we regain all our rights, and dangerous if it is a recipe for strife,” demanding “responsible engagement.” The party said it backs “a comprehensive and lasting peace” but that peace “cannot be achieved through surrendering to Israeli demands or sacrificing Lebanese rights,” warning the framework “lacks guarantees for Israeli withdrawal” and that its use of “redeployment” instead of withdrawal leaves “the door open for the continuation of the occupation.”

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Chilling Report Finds Israel Deliberately Targeting Children As Genocide In Gaza Continues

Tension over Israel continues to grow within US political discourse. From both sides of the aisle, people’s attitudes towards the Zionist settler-colonial project are souring. Israel is the most disliked it has ever been, with a recent survey from the Pew Research Center finding that the majority of people across 36 countries hold unfavorable views of Israel and Netanyahu, with the number as high as 60% among Americans.

Support for Israeli war crimes continues to drive a rift between both parties. Just this week, opposition to Israel played a key role in the outcomes of New York’s congressional primaries, with anti-Zionist candidates receiving sweeping victories over candidates backed by establishment Democrats. Meanwhile, on the right, conservative firebrand Tucker Carlson officially announced he was leaving the Republican Party specifically due to its continued support for Israel.

These sentiments will likely only continue to grow in light of a new report recently released by the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. From the very beginning, the report is unambiguous in its findings with the headline reading “the essence of childhood has been destroyed.” In it, the inquiry found conclusive evidence that Israeli forces have consistently and deliberately targeted children in Gaza, as well as the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and including within protected refugee camps, resulting in the death of at least 20,179 and injury of 44,143 since October 7th, 2023.

According to the report, among those killed, 5,031 were under the age of five, while more than 1,000 were under one year of age. Most disheartning, the inquiry found that approximately 420 of those killed were newborn babies.

The commission noted the actual number of child casualties is “certainly higher”, due to the amount of unaccounted child victims who are missing or buried under rubble, estimated to be roughly an additional 5,160.

The commission interviewed 17 medical professionals who had worked at hospitals across Gaza. Among them, one doctor attested that many of the injuries they documented were akin to “a game of target practice”, with Israeli snipers targeting different body parts of teenage boys on different days. With other doctors documenting similar acts of deliberate depravity.

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US strikes Iran again, as Trump threatens the country “will no longer exist”

US warplanes bombed Iranian coastal radar and air defense sites on Friday and again on Saturday, striking 10 targets near the Strait of Hormuz in the second wave.

The US attacks are the latest in a series of military escalations since the announcement of a “ceasefire” on June 17, when US President Donald Trump signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran at Versailles.

After ordering Saturday’s strikes, Trump threatened to annihilate the country. The United States, he wrote, “will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

As he has done repeatedly, Trump is using genocidal language, threatening to annihilate a country and exterminate large portions of its population. As with his earlier outbursts, the vow to make Iran “no longer exist” carries an implicit threat to use nuclear weapons.

The attacks and threats come amid a deepening political crisis within the American ruling class over the ceasefire Trump announced on June 17. In the 11 days since, the deal has come under sustained attack from dominant sections of both the Republican and Democratic parties, which have denounced it as a surrender to Tehran.

Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said it “negotiates away the victories” of the war. The Democrats condemned the agreement as having failed to secure the interests of US imperialism. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said that under the deal,“Iran is stronger and America is less safe.”

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The Chancellor, the Asset Manager, and the Missiles

There is a particular kind of arrangement that no law forbids and no scandal quite captures, because nothing in it is hidden. It sits in plain view, in regulatory filings and procurement requests, and it works precisely because everyone involved can say, truthfully, that they broke no rule. Friedrich Merz’s Germany is building one of these in real time.

Start with the weapons. In July 2025, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told Washington that Germany wanted to buy the American Typhon launch system and Tomahawk cruise missiles — the system’s first foreign sale, the decision left entirely to the United States. Trade outlets, citing Politico, put the order at three launchers and some 400 Tomahawk Block Vb missiles, north of €1 billion. Nearly a year later, Washington has not answered. The request stalled after Merz criticized the American war on Iran and Trump pulled 5,000 troops out of Germany and canceled a planned long-range-fires deployment. Europe’s would-be military leader, it turns out, cannot get deep-strike capability without American factories and a president’s goodwill. So much for sovereignty.

Now follow the money, because that is where the story actually lives. The Tomahawk is built by RTX, formerly Raytheon, where BlackRock sits among the largest institutional holders. The Typhon launcher is Lockheed Martin’s, where BlackRock has disclosed beneficial ownership above 5 percent in a Schedule 13G filed with the SEC. And BlackRock is where Merz spent four years before climbing back into politics: from 2016 to 2020 he chaired the supervisory board of its German arm. The man asking Washington to sell Germany missiles was, until lately, the public face of a firm that profits when the missiles are sold.

His time there was not quiet. In November 2018, while Merz chaired its supervisory board, prosecutors raided the Munich offices of BlackRock Asset Management Deutschland over cum-ex trades — the dividend-stripping fraud that drained the German treasury of tens of billions of euros. The conduct under investigation predated his arrival, prosecutors named him no suspect, and he called the practice “completely immoral” and ordered the firm to cooperate. Note the pattern all the same: this is a man who has spent his career adjacent to the machinery, never holding the smoking gun, always in the room.

Then came the policy. The fiscal lock came off before Merz was even sworn in. As leader of the election-winning CDU and chancellor-in-waiting, he drove through the outgoing Bundestag — on March 18, 2025, weeks before he took office, and deliberately before the newly elected parliament could convene — the amendment exempting defense spending above 1 percent of GDP from the constitutional “debt brake.” The borrowing limit Germans had treated as sacred since 2009 was gone, replaced by an open tap. German military spending rose 24 percent in 2025 to $114 billion, the largest in NATO Europe. Merz has pledged more than €750 billion for the armed forces.

And BlackRock holds the contractors cashing in. It disclosed a 6.91 percent stake in Rheinmetall, the tank-maker whose shares have soared since 2022, with the ownership chain running through the very German subsidiary Merz once chaired. It crossed the 5 percent threshold in the sensor firm Hensoldt. These are not idle positions. They are the firm collecting on a rearmament its former chairman set loose.

Merz, naturally, denies the whole framing. “I never accepted a lobbying mandate,” he told Die Zeit. The transparency group LobbyControl notes that BlackRock’s own description of his job included cultivating contacts with governments and regulators — which is what lobbying is, whatever euphemism rides on the business card.

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The Islamabad Memorandum and the Decline of the Paradigm of Absolute Victory

Almost every war produces the same immediate question: who won? Yet the more consequential question is whether either side can convert battlefield pressure into a political order it can sustain. The Islamabad Memorandum, signed by the United States and Iran on June 17, brings that distinction into sharp relief. It is a 60-day framework linking an end to military operations and navigation through the Strait of Hormuz to negotiations over sanctions, Iran’s nuclear program, and a broader political settlement. Its importance lies less in the document’s promises than in the reality that produced it: neither Washington nor Tehran could credibly claim that continuing the war would deliver the political outcome each sought.

This does not mean military power has ceased to matter. In conflicts where both sides can impose serious costs and frustrate the other’s objectives, the ability to damage an adversary is not the same as the ability to compel it. The Islamabad Memorandum is evidence of power’s limits when it cannot be translated into a durable political order.

The framework reflects those limits. It envisages commercial navigation through Hormuz, an end to the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports, temporary sanctions relief, and talks on Iran’s enriched-uranium stockpile under international supervision. Each element acknowledges that neither side achieved its preferred end state through force. The United States did not secure a stable regional order by military pressure alone; Iran did not compel Washington to abandon every demand merely by raising the costs of escalation. Security, nuclear questions, economic restrictions, and maritime access must instead be negotiated together.

For Washington, this is the central strategic lesson. The United States has never lacked the capacity to strike Iranian targets or impose material costs. The question was whether that superiority could produce a political arrangement that reduced risk without drawing America into an open-ended regional war. Iraq and Afghanistan offered a familiar warning: tactical success can destroy infrastructure and degrade capabilities, but it cannot settle rival security claims or force an adversary to accept a political future it regards as intolerable. In the Iranian case, additional strikes could have increased pressure, but they also risked higher energy costs, disruption to shipping, wider instability, and a conflict with no clear endpoint.

Diplomacy, then, should not be described simply as American retreat. It is an admission that an objective becomes less attainable as the cost of pursuing it rises. A strategy that can keep escalating but cannot define a credible political end state is not a strategy of victory. The memorandum gave Washington a way to pursue verification and regional stability without assuming that force could resolve every issue on American terms.

Iran reached a parallel conclusion from a different position. Tehran demonstrated that it could not be excluded cheaply from the regional security equation. Its capacity to impose costs on shipping, energy markets, and U.S. interests made a purely coercive settlement difficult. But resilience is not identical to the ability to impose one’s full political will. Iran could raise the price of war; it could not assume that prolonged confrontation would automatically produce sanctions relief, economic recovery, or a stable security environment. Negotiation therefore offered Tehran not capitulation, but a route to protect core interests while reducing pressures that military endurance alone could not remove.

This convergence of limitations gives the Islamabad Memorandum its historical significance. The document does not resolve decades of disputes, and it would be premature to treat it as the beginning of a settled regional order. Its provisions remain vulnerable to disagreement over sequencing, verification, sanctions implementation, and the future of nuclear talks. The recent suspension of Iranian participation in technical discussions and the subsequent agreement to halt mutual strikes show how fragile the arrangement remains. A fragile agreement is not yet a strategic transformation.

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