Trump claimed Iran’s nuclear sites were ‘obliterated’. Now another is in his sights
Buried under 600m of granite, the site is assessed as beyond the reach of even the US’ most powerful bunker-buster bombs.
In brief
- Donald Trump has threatened to destroy Pickaxe Mountain, a deeply buried Iranian nuclear site — unreachable by US weapons.
- It comes a year after he declared the country’s nuclear program had been “obliterated”.
A year after US President Donald Trump declared Iran’s nuclear sites had been “obliterated”, his latest target is drawing attention to a facility that survived both phases of the war untouched — and raising questions about why it’s now in his sights.
On Monday, Trump threatened to destroy Pickaxe Mountain, a buried nuclear site near Natanz in north-central Iran where Western intelligence suspects Iran is building an undeclared enrichment facility.
“We’re going to take out Pickaxe Mountain. Tell the Iranians to be ready,” he said on Monday.
“We’re watching (Pickaxe Mountain) closely. We see no activity there. They’re not doing well with their nuclear situation. Every time we hear about it, we blow it up. So they don’t like talking about it.”
The threat comes as just last week, Trump said Iran “will never have a nuclear weapon” and that its stockpile of enriched uranium was now “so far under a mountain” that it was unreachable by anyone except the US.
That follows comments last June, where Trump declared “all” nuclear sites in Iran had been “obliterated”, raising a key question: If Iran’s nuclear sites were obliterated last year, why is a previously untouched one now a key target?
What is Pickaxe Mountain?
Pickaxe Mountain is a heavily fortified site near Iran’s already-damaged Natanz facility, housing two deeply buried tunnel complexes suspected of containing uranium enrichment capabilities and stockpiles.
Experts have assessed its depth at about 600m below granite, meaning it’s beyond the reach of even the most powerful ‘bunker-buster’ bombs in the US arsenal.
The site was not among the three sites — Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan — targeted by US airstrikes last June, which were believed to house Iranian nuclear facilities.
Construction at Pickaxe Mountain began in 2020 and has sped up since June last year — with the Iranian government describing the site as a centrifuge assembly plant.
As of June 2025, the facility was not assessed as operational — something the Institute of Science and International Security says could have been a “key reason why the site was not attacked by airstrikes in the June war”.
The institute said satellite analysis and monitoring have raised questions about the “the nuclear activities Iran has planned for the site, specifically whether it includes plans for an enrichment plant”.
What survived the ‘obliteration’?”Monumental damage was done to all nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images,” Trump said on 25 June 2025. “Obliteration is an accurate term!”
Pickaxe Mountain isn’t the only thing to have survived the alleged “obliteration”.
Deakin University professor of global Islamic politics Greg Barton said that, despite Trump’s claim, it’s believed 440kg of enriched uranium remains buried underground and is “relatively accessible”.
In June 2025, US B-2 bombers dropped GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs, or ‘bunker-buster’ bombs, on two Iranian nuclear facilities — Fordow and Natanz — while Isfahan was hit only with Tomahawk missiles.
Barton said intelligence reporting and satellite imagery suggests the U-235 (an isotope of uranium that fuels most nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons) was moved from Fordow to Isfahan days before the strikes — meaning it likely survived.
“There were no bunker bombs dropped at Isfahan, so if it was taken there, as widely speculated, it’s still there and relatively accessible,” Barton said.
Furthermore, enriched uranium and equipment at other facilities may not be totally destroyed.
“Each of these three sites had underground bunkers, underground tunnel complexes. Fordow was thought to be 90 metres deep. The bunker-buster bombs only go down 60 metres,” he said.
“If some of the U-235 was left at Fordow, it would likely be buried but not destroyed because it’s below the level of 90 metres.”
While the 440kg of 60 per cent enriched uranium was “just below weapons grade”, Barton said further enrichment could be possible.
While centrifuges at facilities like Fordow may have been damaged by vibrations, Iran’s ability to refine uranium to nuclear weapons grade would be “set back” but not eliminated.
Could the US reach what lies beneath Pickaxe Mountain?
The challenges that limited last year’s strikes are, if anything, more acute at Pickaxe Mountain……………………………………………………………………………………….https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/trump-iran-pickaxe-mountain-nuclear-site/qihp4srwx
2009 quake may have prompted data rigging by central Japan nuclear operator
July 10, 2026 (Mainichi Japan),
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260710/p2g/00m/0bu/008000c
NAGOYA (Kyodo) — Chubu Electric Power Co. may have begun manipulating earthquake resistance data for its nuclear power plant in central Japan after a 2009 earthquake subjected one of its reactors to shaking beyond its design limits, a source familiar with the matter said Thursday.
The latest revelation came after the utility admitted earlier this year that it had, by no later than 2012, begun cherry-picking favorable data to set earthquake-resistance standards for the Nos. 3 and 4 reactors at its Hamaoka nuclear power plant, which it has been seeking to restart.
The data rigging was initially believed to have begun under tougher safety requirements imposed after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster, which was triggered by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. But the source said the practice may have begun even before the disaster, as part of efforts to restart the No. 5 reactor after it was shut down following the 2009 earthquake.
In the magnitude-6.5 earthquake that struck Omaezaki, Shizuoka Prefecture, in August 2009, the No. 5 reactor experienced seismic shaking several times stronger than that recorded at the Nos. 1 to 4 reactors, partially exceeding its design limits.
Chubu Electric found that unusual ground conditions had amplified the seismic waves. After the No. 5 reactor automatically shut down in the quake, the company allegedly began generating seismic data and selecting favorable results to avoid being ordered by the government to implement additional earthquake-resistance measures, according to the source.
The company switched to a different contractor around the same time, allowing it to generate seismic wave data more quickly and “creating the perfect circumstances and motive,” the source said.
The nuclear regulator at the time approved the safety of the No. 5 reactor in late 2010, paving the way for its restart in February 2011.
The fresh allegation could mean Chubu Electric engaged in data manipulation involving the Hamaoka plant’s three operable reactors, further undermining confidence in the country’s nuclear safety screening process.
“Details of what happened will be determined through a third-party investigation. We will cooperate sincerely with the inquiry,” Chubu Electric said in a statement.
Located on the Pacific coast in central Japan, the Hamaoka complex sits near the expected epicenter of a potential massive earthquake in the Nankai Trough. It was shut down in May 2011 at the request of then Prime Minister Naoto Kan over safety concerns.
Chubu Electric applied for state safety screenings between 2014 and 2015 to restart the Nos. 3 and 4 reactors, but the review process has been halted amid the scandal.
According to a report compiled by Chubu Electric in March this year on its data misconduct involving the Nos. 3 and 4 reactors, the utility told regulators it had generated 20 sets of seismic motion data under different conditions and selected the one closest to the average — known as the “representative wave” — to establish a benchmark for earthquake-resistant design.
In reality, however, the company had been generating numerous combinations of seismic motion data and representative waves before selecting a set from among them. In 2018, it began deliberately selecting the representative wave and ensuring the other data were consistent with it.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority also recently revealed it had learned from an external source that Chubu Electric continued manipulating data even after the investigation began in May 2025.
Revealed: landmark Scottish AI project has no prospect of meeting renewables promise
“the AI growth zone designation is based more on optimistic and flashy promotional material than anything technically viable,”
The question of whether AI is a boom or bubble now largely rests on huge infrastructure projects such as Lanarkshire.
a series of high-profile projects announced over the past years were “phantom investments”, with the government failing to examine claims of job creation or audit multibillion-pound sums.
“Instead of governing for their communities, they choose the AI narrative.”
Government and developers privately acknowledged Lanarkshire datacentre site had power provision ‘issue’
- ‘It’s smoke and mirrors’: hope turns to fear in Scottish village chosen for AI datacentre
- What are Britain’s AI growth zones and are the plans feasible or ‘complete bunk’?
Aisha Down, Guardian, 6 July 2026
A landmark AI development billed as delivering jobs and prosperity has misrepresented its plans to channel a nuclear reactor’s worth of power to a site in rural Scotland, a Guardian investigation has found.
When it was announced in January, the government promised that an £8.2bn AI datacentre complex in Lanarkshire – built by the US firm CoreWeave and the Scottish company DataVita – would be powered entirely from on-site renewables and built by 2030.
The AI datacentre complex represented a large part of Britain’s ambitions to keep up in the global AI race by building the infrastructure that underpins artificial intelligence. A central plank of the project’s viability was its ability to power itself.
But documents obtained through freedom of information (FoI) requests and analysis of public records suggest the datacentre has no prospect of meeting that goal.
The Guardian obtained internal correspondence showing that the government and the site’s developers, even as they publicly promised that the Lanarkshire site would have up to 1GW of “new energy infrastructure”, were privately acknowledging that the site had an “issue” with “power provision” and that this would not happen.
In response to questions from the Guardian, the government said the Lanarkshire complex would connect to the grid. This means it will either join a years-long queue or be expedited ahead of hundreds of other projects also vying for a connection. A government spokesperson said the site’s needs would still be met “overwhelmingly” with renewables.
The findings raise critical doubts over the UK’s ability to confront the key question now facing the world’s massive AI buildout: how to provide the extraordinary energy required to make it plausible.
At best indicative, at worst complete bunk’
AI datacentres are, essentially, buildings full of very specialised silicon chips. The chips do the calculations that underpin artificial intelligence models. The world’s biggest tech companies are now ploughing hundreds of billions of dollars into the buildout of AI datacentres. Behind all this spending is the belief that AI will fundamentally transform the global economy, and that once it does, the AI datacentres will pay for themselves.
The question of whether AI is a boom or bubble now largely rests on huge infrastructure projects such as Lanarkshire.
The new details are not the first signal of problems in the UK’s burgeoning datacentre industry. In March, the Guardian reported that a series of high-profile projects announced over the past years were “phantom investments”, with the government failing to examine claims of job creation or audit multibillion-pound sums.
Power is a particularly fraught issue in the UK, where it is more expensive than anywhere else in Europe. There is an eight- to 10-year queue for new developments to connect to the grid, a delay that hangs over houses and hospitals as well as datacentres.
Britain is not the only place where political ambitions appear blind to the cost and difficulty of massive datacentre projects. Cecilia Rikap, an associate professor at University College London, said: “Governments around the world, including in the UK, are making political promises that ignore the realities of building infrastructure.
“Instead of governing for their communities, they choose the AI narrative.”
An analyst for a UK engineering consultancy who has advised several AI growth zone projects said: “There doesn’t seem to be appropriate scrutiny, public or otherwise, on these nationally significant projects. The figures and designs behind many schemes are at best indicative, and at worst complete bunk.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………The energy consultant who reviewed the figures said: “To go from ‘nothing public’ to ‘country’s largest operational onshore windfarm’ in four years is pretty ambitious.” Given that DataVita has no plans on file for such a development, he concluded that the 2030 deadline was unlikely to be met.
HfD Group, DataVita’s parent company, recently posted plans for an “energy park” in Lanarkshire. These plans do not appear to have entered the planning process yet, but envision “up to 19” wind turbines being built in Lanarkshire. This would still only provide about 5% of what DataVita claims it will generate.
DataVita said the delivery of its energy commitments was “subject to final commercial agreements, planning, grid and consenting processes”.
Kat Jones, the director of APRS, said: “There is a wave of applications for hyperscale AI datacentres coming to Scotland and they all say they’re going to use renewable energy. We have examined DataVita’s plans to build renewables to power their 500MW datacentre and found them wanting.
“Even if they could build the amount of energy infrastructure they say they will, it would cover 100 kilometres squared, but only provide for half their energy requirements on average.”
‘Power provision remains a key issue’
This shortfall is not only DataVita’s problem. As a “growth zone”, Lanarkshire is a centrepiece of the UK’s AI ambitions – one of five sites designated to receive broad government support in building out vast datacentre parks.
On paper at least, AI growth zones need to meet a strict set of requirements, the most important being that they should have a realistic path to powering themselves. These requirements were set out in an application last summer that invited sites across the UK to apply to be AI growth zones.
The government asked applicants to show they had an already allotted grid connection or an alternative “behind-the-meter” solution – that is, a way to generate energy independently without a grid connection.
The Guardian established that the Lanarkshire site did not have the necessary grid connection, through an FoI inquiry to the UK’s National Energy System Operator (Neso). DataVita’s stated plans to generate its own electricity, meanwhile, do not appear to hold water.
Documents obtained by the Guardian through an FoI suggest both the government and DataVita are aware of these issues but that the government chose to designate Lanarkshire as an AI growth zone anyway.
In February, Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, addressed a letter to the managing director of DataVita, Danny Quinn, about Lanarkshire’s designation as an AI growth zone. He said: “I recognise that power provision remains a key issue and we will continue to engage with the UK government and relevant partners to secure timely grid connections that enable and support the development to proceed at pace.”
In a meeting in March, DataVita and officials from NatureScot appeared to bank on an expedited grid connection for the project: “DV4 will be driven by Scottish Power connections timescales which we expect to be brought forward to 2027.”
Meanwhile, other internal communications show that shortly before the Lanarkshire project was announced, UK and Scottish officials appeared to entertain the idea that DataVita’s site would simply burn gas to power itself. (DataVita said gas or any other fossil-fuel generation would not be used to power its datacentres.)
The consultant said DataVita’s own publications, and the fact they contain no indication of how it could realistically generate the energy it claims, called into question the seriousness of the government’s policymaking around a central component of its growth plans.
“It indicates that the AI growth zone designation is based more on optimistic and flashy promotional material than anything technically viable,” he said.
As for the government’s apparent willingness to later help DataVita get a grid connection, he said: “It now appears that the government is willing to loosen their own criteria to meet the arbitrary political timescales they set themselves.”
In response to a query from the Guardian, DataVita said the Lanarkshire development’s “energy strategy is based on new renewable generation, private-wire infrastructure, and intelligent connection to Scotland’s electricity system, with delivery subject to final commercial agreements, planning, grid and consenting processes”.
A government spokesperson said: “The Lanarkshire AI growth zone is on track to be the biggest datacentre development in Scottish history. AI is critical to the UK’s future prosperity and security – and to unlock its benefits, we need the infrastructure that underpins it.
“The whole government is determined to create the right conditions for investment in the UK’s AI and datacentre infrastructure – with Lanarkshire set to be the first AI growth zone in the country to see hardware rolled out.” https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/06/lanarkshire-scotland-ai-datacentre-project-renewable-energy
Labour minister dodges question on SNP Government and UK nuclear plans.
A LABOUR energy minister has refused to say if his Scottish counterparts were
consulted before the UK Government published a report on building new
nuclear power stations north of the Border.
Last week, the nuclear wing of
GB Energy – set up by Labour after the 2024 General Election –
published a scoping study into building nuclear power plants in Scotland
despite the SNP-led Scottish Government’s opposition to new nuclear.
In the Commons on Tuesday, SNP MP Graham Leadbitter asked whether the UK
Government had held discussions with the Scottish Government or any local
authorities prior to announcing the list of potential nuclear energy sites.
Michael Shanks, a UK energy minister and Scottish Labour MP, avoided the
question, saying only that the Westminster Government was “open to
discussions with the Scottish Government on opportunities for new nuclear
in Scotland”.
Leadbitter then said: “Two years ago, Labour promised to
cut bills for every household by £300. “Not only are households now
paying hundreds of pounds more instead of less, Labour’s nuclear tax on
household energy bills will cost Scots a further £300 million over the
next decade.
The National 7th July 2026, https://www.thenational.scot/news/26259570.labour-minister-dodges-question-snp-government-uk-nuclear-plans/
Cleaning up: Ukrainian Woman suspected of Monaco bombing found shot dead near Kyiv
The affair could prove politically costly for Kyiv. Any evidence linking members of Ukraine’s intelligence services to a bombing on European soil would be deeply damaging, coming as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived at a Nato summit on Tuesday seeking to shore up western support while Russia continues its deadly bombardment of Ukrainian cities.
Last week, German prosecutors accused Ukrainian “state authorities” of ordering the 2022 explosives attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia with Europe.
Pjotr Sauer, The Guardian, Tue, 07 Jul 2026, https://www.sott.net/article/507300-Cleaning-up-Ukrainian-woman-suspected-of-Monaco-bombing-found-shot-dead-near-Kyiv
Anastasiia Berezovska was being sought by police over attack that seriously injured a Ukraine-born businessman
A woman suspected of carrying out last week’s bomb attack in Monaco that seriously injured a Ukraine-born business tycoon has been found shot dead near Kyiv, in the latest twist in a case that has shaken the wealthy Mediterranean principality.
Ukrainian prosecutors said on Tuesday the woman had been found with a gunshot wound to the head and that two men had been arrested in connection with the case, including an officer with Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) and a former law enforcement officer.
On Friday, Interpol issued a red notice for 39-year-old Anastasiia Berezovska, a Ukrainian national who speaks German. The notice – a request to law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a suspect pending extradition – said Berezovska was wanted by Monaco on charges of attempted murder, placing an explosive device in a public place with criminal intent, and criminal conspiracy.
Prosecutors said in a statement that Berezovska received cryptocurrency payments from the two men who were later arrested, leading investigators to treat them as “individuals potentially involved in the attempted murder in Monaco”. They added that the serving HUR officer was “acting on his own initiative” and did not inform his superiors about his contacts with Berezovska.
Prosecutors also released footage showing a blood-stained “torture chamber”, containing hammers and other equipment, which they said was discovered during searches of the men’s properties.
The Guardian could not independently verify the prosecutors’ account.
The affair could prove politically costly for Kyiv. Any evidence linking members of Ukraine’s intelligence services to a bombing on European soil would be deeply damaging, coming as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived at a Nato summit on Tuesday seeking to shore up western support while Russia continues its deadly bombardment of Ukrainian cities.
Prince Albert II of Monaco previously condemned the bombing as “an odious act” and said all the principality’s security services had been mobilised.
The victims have not been officially identified, but police and judicial sources told French media they were Vadym Iermolaiev, 58, a businessman originally from Ukraine who now holds Cypriot citizenship, his girlfriend and their son. Iermolaiev and his partner were taken to hospital with serious injuries, while the child sustained minor injuries.
French prosecutors allege Berezovska, who had been living in Germany, disguised herself as a man before placing an explosive device in the entrance hall of the family’s apartment building in Monaco.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Iermolaiev had been living in Monaco as part of a group of wealthy Ukrainian businessmen and politicians that independent Ukrainian media labelled the “Monaco battalion”.
Ukraine imposed sanctions on Iermolaiev in 2023, alleging he had maintained business links with Russian entities operating in Ukrainian territories occupied by Moscow, including Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
Comment: The Guardian hews to the narrative . . . .
Monaco’s deputy prosecutor said last week that the suspected attacker fled the principality on foot into neighbouring France before travelling by car to Germany via several European countries, including Italy.
Ukraine has carried out numerous lethal operations involving explosive devices against senior Russian military officers and Kremlin-backed Ukrainian officials inside Russia, but there is no established precedent for such attacks on European territory.
Last week, German prosecutors accused Ukrainian “state authorities” of ordering the 2022 explosives attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia with Europe.
Comment: Among other criminal activities, Vadym Iermolaiev apparently ran a number of call center scamming operations. From the Daily Mail:
Now, Ukrainian police sources have claimed that the violent attack is directly linked to a network of fraudulent call centres in Dnipro, Ukraine, allegedly used to carry out large-scale financial scams across Europe.
The Yermolaiev family is alleged to have played a significant role in the scheme, with the oligarch’s name reportedly at the centre of a sprawling pan-European investigation into clandestine call centres operating out of Ukraine.
According to sources, the so-called ‘boiler room’ operations defrauded thousands of investors in Germany, Estonia and Ukraine of more than €100million (£86million) between 2019 and 2022, through fake cryptocurrency investment schemes.
The network also allegedly sold fraudulent divorce advice to unsuspecting victims.
Ukrainian law enforcement sources say that French investigators believe the murder attempt may have been orchestrated by members of a criminal network in retaliation.
Ukrainian outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported that the attempted assassination stemmed from a failed agreement to divide territory and unpaid debts allegedly owed to organised crime bosses in Dnipro.
While Vadym, who is currently subject to sanctions in Ukraine, handled the financial side of the operation, it was his son, Artur, who reportedly ran the network.
According to local reports, Artur was arrested by Interpol in Cyprus at the end of 2025 following an Estonian arrest warrant.
Although it isn’t mentioned, Zelensky is known to demand a cut of criminal profits made in Ukraine in exchange for looking the other way. The professionalism of the operation certainly points to a state operation.
From ZeroHedge:
Per Euronews:
After the explosion, she is believed to have walked to the nearby French town of Beausoleil, where she retrieved her rental car and drove through Italy to Germany, her last known country of residence, Morgan Raymond, Monaco’s deputy public prosecutor, told reporters.
“The relative sophistication of the explosive device and the modus operandi appear to indicate that the person who planted the device did not act alone,“ the prosecutor said, confirming that the individual was “a woman posing as a man.”
Given that Ukrainian businessman Iermolaiev had long ago been declared an enemy of the Ukrainian state, and has been under sanctions for years for his extensive business dealings in Crimea, Ukrainian intelligence has come under the spotlight for possible involvement in the Monaco bomb attack – a first of its kind in the small, wealthy principality.
Le Figaroreported that the investigation focuses on Zelensky’s secret police (SBU) in the Monaco bomb attack: “According to several concurring sources at Le Figaro, investigators are focusing on the possibility that the attack was orchestrated by the SBU, the Ukrainian intelligence service.”
So already the Zelensky government is desperately trying to distance itself from the ordeal, claiming that Ukraine’s own intelligence officer was merely “acting on his own”. More details are as follows:
Ukrainian authorities said they detained two men on suspicion of murdering Berezovska “by prior conspiracy.”
Police said that one of the men – a current employee of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate – confessed to the murder of Berezovska and claimed that the second suspect, who is a former law enforcement officer, was an accomplice.
We’re being asked to save two buckets of water a day. Meanwhile data centres drink a town’s worth
England is heading for a 5bn-litre daily water shortfall by 2055 – so why is the government fast-tracking one of the most water-hungry industries there is, and letting it keep its consumption private, asks campaigner Adele Walton
Adele Walton, Jul 8, 2026, https://www.thenerve.news/p/adele-walton-heatwave-data-centres-water-shortage?utm_source=www.thenerve.news&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=farage-under-fire-tuesday-edition&_bhlid=8b1d393304f745e4dafb1328c154dd5ec4a3e882
Lying on my bedroom floor in front of a fan with a wet flannel on my head, desperately trying to cool down in the middle of the UK’s historic heatwave last month, I couldn’t stop thinking about one thing. Data centres.
Every time I had a cold shower for a temporary relief, I was haunted by the knowledge that AI data centres are already gobbling up millions of litres of water that they require for cooling, and I became fearful of a day where I might turn on the tap and not be able to get a drop. I would go to my local park to seek shade and a cool breeze to no avail and have pressing visions of superscale data centres that endlessly whir and hum and churn out emissions. This is dystopian, but it’s not unrealistic. Lying on my bedroom floor in front of a fan with a wet flannel on my head, desperately trying to cool down in the middle of the UK’s historic heatwave last month, I couldn’t stop thinking about one thing. Data centres.
Every time I had a cold shower for a temporary relief, I was haunted by the knowledge that AI data centres are already gobbling up millions of litres of water that they require for cooling, and I became fearful of a day where I might turn on the tap and not be able to get a drop. I would go to my local park to seek shade and a cool breeze to no avail and have pressing visions of superscale data centres that endlessly whir and hum and churn out emissions. This is dystopian, but it’s not unrealistic.
England is predicted to reach water shortages of 5bn litres a day by 2055. Data centres are increasingly becoming one of the most water-intensive forms of infrastructure and the AI hype is rapidly exacerbating the speed at which our natural resources get stolen by Big Tech. Research by the campaign group Global Action Plan reveals that 84% of projected data centre developments in the UK are expected in areas already water-stressed or projected to be water-stressed by 2040.
What makes this even more scandalous is the fact that the UK government classified data centres as critical infrastructure in September 2024, ranking them as important as essential services such as water, energy and even emergency services systems. Far from proceeding with caution, the government is bending over backwards to appease AI companies and attract their investment, at the expense of our planet.
Andy Burnham’s recent appointment of James Purnell – the former chief executive of corporate lobbying firm Flint Global, whose clients included Apple, Google, Amazon and other tech giants – as his chief of staff highlights the revolving-door relationship between lobbyists and government. The EU, which had previously seemed to be taking a stronger stance on regulating the AI industry, is caving in to pressure, and is already preparing to water down plans to rate data centres on energy and water use, after pressure from tech lobby groups.
It’s vital that the next prime minister prioritises public need over private greed if we are to avoid heading straight into a climate crisis sponsored by Silicon Valley
How can we trust that our government will act in our interests when they consistently prioritise Silicon Valley’s financial motives? Eager to position itself as a global leader in the space race unfolding across the AI industry, the UK government is fast-tracking £14bn of private investment into data centres and AI growth zones.
Quite frankly, it’s insulting that the government has launched their biggest ever campaign to encourage the British public to reduce water usage in a heatwave, while charging full steam ahead with data centre expansion. The government campaign urges Brits to cut their daily use by 28 litres; meanwhile, hyperscale data centres consume the equivalent of 10,000 people’s daily needs in a single day. Time and time again, the onus is put on individuals to make lifestyle changes that will barely make a dent, while tech corporations are given a get-out-of-jail-free card by our governments.
As it stands, data centres are not required to disclose their water usage, and tech companies that do consistently underestimate their environmental impact. In May, Google’s developers were found to have understated by a factor of five the carbon emissions of two proposed AI data centres in Essex, again highlighting the lack of transparency within the industry. This is why climate charities and local communities are calling for a moratorium on all new data centre developments until necessary environmental regulations are in place. Our politicians ought to be managing data centre development, making decisions that protect our communities from the extractive nature of the AI boom.
Just a few weeks ago, I helped organise a protest at London’s historic Truman Brewery venue on Brick Lane with Pull The Plug and Global Action Plan, because while the AI hype was being championed locally at the SXSW festival, lots of people weren’t aware of the current plans to turn part of this popular social and creative hub into a data centre. AI data centre development is being rushed through, right under our noses, while we get no say in where they’re built, what resources they access and how they’ll affect our lives. But now, the difficulty of just existing in a heatwave makes the need to push back against AI data centre development in the UK more urgent.
It’s vital that the next prime minister prioritises public need over private greed if we are to avoid heading straight into a climate crisis sponsored by Silicon Valley. Unquestioned AI expansion is directly in conflict with the planet’s limits, and the burden of political shortsightedness will fall on us if our government presses on – manifesting in unbearable temperatures, water and energy scarcity, and loss of life. Across the political spectrum the general public want stronger regulation of AI; politicians ought to see taking a bold stance on AI governance as a political opportunity, not a problem.
Adele Walton is a journalist and online safety campaigner. She is the author of Logging Off: the Human Cost of our Digital World and co-founder of Logging Off Club
Australia’s Royal Commission on cohesion hears only half the story
the same evening news that reports rising antisemitism in Australia – correctly, and without my objection – routinely fails to report the parallel rise in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian abuse, the vandalised mosques, the women afraid to wear hijab in public, the children told by implication that their faith makes them suspect
By Wayne Hawkins | 2 July 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/royal-commission-on-cohesion-hears-only-half-the-story,21247
Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion risks undermining its own purpose by excluding evidence of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, writes Wayne Hawkins.
AUSTRALIA’S Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion is now in its third Sydney hearing block, running until 10 July.
It was established in January, in the aftermath of the Bondi Beach attack that killed 15 people on a night meant for celebration. Nobody disputes that the Commission has real work to do. The rise in antisemitic incidents recorded since October 2023 is documented, severe and deserving of the most rigorous scrutiny our institutions can offer.
But an inquiry into hatred reveals something about itself in who it decides not to hear from. And on that count, this Commission has already answered the question.
In May, the Loud Jewish Collective applied for leave to appear before the first hearing block, wanting to give evidence about their own members’ experiences of antisemitism. They were refused — the Commissioner was, in the words used to reject them, “not satisfied” that they had a direct and substantial interest in the matter.
The Australian Palestine Advocacy Network met the same fate. Two organisations, both with members who have lived antisemitism or anti-Palestinian racism directly, both judged to be outside the scope of an inquiry into hatred and social cohesion in Australia.
I find it hard to read that as anything other than a decision about which Australians get to define what cohesion means.
I wrote a parliamentary submission earlier this year arguing that Islamophobia is racism — not by analogy, not as a lesser cousin of antisemitism, but structurally, mechanistically, the same thing happening to a different group. Collective blame. The demand that an entire community continuously prove its loyalty to the actions of people who share only its faith. The recasting of legitimate political grievance – in this case, mass civilian death in Gaza – as evidence of an inherent, civilisational danger.
These are not two separate phenomena needing two separate inquiries that never speak to each other. They are the same mechanism, pointed in two directions at once, often by the same actors in the same news cycle.
The Commission’s own proceedings have illustrated the problem it was never asked to examine. Commissioner Virginia Bell described the 7 October attack, in passing, as a “Hamas invasion”, a characterisation that quietly recasts a population under decades of occupation as the invading force on their own land.
Witnesses in an SBS News report on the second hearing block have testified to being “tired” of seeing Palestinian flags at cultural events, of overhearing artists call for a free Palestine, of having to scroll past footage of starvation in Gaza on their phones.
These are real discomforts and I don’t dismiss them. But an Inquiry that treats a 45-second elevator ride past distressing news as a harm worth recording, while refusing entry to the people living the underlying catastrophe, has told us where its sympathies sit before a single recommendation is written.
This is not a call to relitigate the Commission’s right to exist, or to diminish what Jewish Australians have endured since the Bondi attack and well before it. It is a call to notice the asymmetry, because the asymmetry is the story.
No one has asked Christian Australians to account for Christian nationalist violence as the price of being heard on social cohesion. No one demands that Buddhist or Hindu Australians distance themselves from documented nationalist violence against Muslim minorities in Myanmar and India before their testimony is taken seriously. Only one direction of scrutiny in this country currently requires an entire community to prove, in advance and as a condition of entry, that it is not secretly the threat.
I don’t say this to score a point against the Commission. I say it because the same evening news that reports rising antisemitism in Australia – correctly, and without my objection – routinely fails to report the parallel rise in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian abuse, the vandalised mosques, the women afraid to wear hijab in public, the children told by implication that their faith makes them suspect.
A Royal Commission with “social cohesion” in its title, that structurally cannot hear from the second-largest group experiencing religious and racial hostility in this country, is not examining social cohesion. It is examining one half of a single problem and calling the result whole.
The fix here isn’t complicated and it doesn’t require abandoning the Commission’s core purpose. It requires the Commissioner to recognise that anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia sit inside the same terms of reference as antisemitism, not outside them — because they are produced by the same mechanism of collective blame, and because a finding on “social cohesion” that only canvasses the cohesion of part of the country isn’t a finding at all.
Bell still has time, before her final report in December, to widen the door rather than defend its current width.
Naming a mechanism early is not alarmism — it’s the only thing that has ever interrupted one before it finishes running its course. Every Australian who has had a synagogue vandalised, a mosque firebombed, or a hijab grabbed in the street deserves the same seriousness from the institutions meant to protect them.
An Inquiry that only extends that seriousness in one direction isn’t building cohesion. It’s choosing sides while insisting it isn’t.
Wayne Hawkins is an independent commentator based in Tasmania and an independent candidate for the federal seat of Clark.
Revealed: Illegal West Bank settlements advertised at Israeli event in London
Despite denials from organisers, evidence gathered inside the event shows occupied Palestinian land was being marketed
DANIA AKKAD, 15 June 2026, https://www.declassifieduk.org/revealed-illegal-west-bank-settlements-advertised-at-israeli-event-in-london/
Properties from seven illegal settlements were advertised at the Great Israeli Real Estate Event on Sunday in London, days after more than 100 MPs and groups urged the UK government to ban it.
Organisers had told journalists last week that all exhibitors at the event “without exception” would only provide information about properties for sale within the Green Line – the internationally recognised border between Israel and Palestine.
But brochures circulated at the event which Jewish Anti-Zionist Action (JAZA) shared with Declassified and others posted online show companies touting properties for sale in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In one pamphlet, Harry Zahev Developers advertises apartments and private homes in Kfar Eldad and Teneh Omarim, illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank near Palestinian towns and communities.
“Bringing gardens and spaces where nature is your closest neighbour,” the pamphlet reads.
In another brochure, the Jerusalem Real Estate company offers the city’s “most sought-after Anglo neighborhoods” including French Hill and Ramat Eshkol, two settlement neighbourhoods in occupied east Jerusalem.
Neither company responded immediately to requests for comment on Monday. Declassified attempted to reach the event organisers, but could not find any contact details.
Other illegal Israel settlements featured in the promotional materials which JAZA collected include the West Bank settlements of Ma’ale Adumim and Givat Ze’ev, and Givat Hamatos, a settlement currently under construction in East Jerusalem.
“Through these pamphlets and information we collected on the inside, we can prove that this event was selling properties in the occupied West Bank,” said Guy Zilberman, a JAZA activist who gained entry to the exhibition.
‘Crazy times’
Zilberman described his experience at the real estate show. “After passing through security, I was given a free tote bag and a booklet advertising the different real estate companies present at the fair that day,” he said.
At the stall for one developer, he said he was told the company had “properties they were selling in ‘Judea and Samaria’ that he thought would be perfect for me”.
The company representative “had all the booklets and papers for it but couldn’t get them out because the police had said in order for the event to go ahead they couldn’t advertise properties illegal under international law,” Zilberman said.
The man then told him these were “crazy times we live in” and asked for Zilberman’s contact details so he could follow up after the event.
He visited another stall and said he was given a leaflet advertising properties in Ma’ale Adumim, which is an illegal West Bank settlement.
After about an hour inside, Zilberman disrupted the event, calling for “sanctions now” and saying “don’t steal” in Hebrew.
“After disrupting the event, I was pulled out by my neck by security,” Zilberman said.
He noted that the Board of Deputies had said that the event was “an excuse to harass and intimidate members of the Jewish community”.
“I would invite the Board of Deputies to look at the documents here that clearly depict in writing that these properties in illegally occupied territories…have been advertised at this event,” he said.
The Board of Deputies did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
We’re Expected To Remember October 7 But Never Ask Questions About It
The Israeli press are reporting that police documents on the security for the October 7 2023 Nova music festival were mysteriously deleted at some point in early January 2024. The Jerusalem Post reports that “it is unknown who removed them and whether copies still exist.”
A new article from the Israeli outlet YNet reports that the IDF had planned to kill an Israeli soldier who was captured by Hamas in 2006, with one document stating “Hannibal in effect.” The Hannibal Directive is an Israeli military protocol ensuring that extreme measures be taken to prevent Israelis from capture by Palestinian resistance groups, even if it means killing the Israelis.
Israel’s Channel 12 has shown footage of Israeli officers demanding that the Hannibal Directive be implemented on October 7 to prevent hostages from being taken by Hamas, with a senior officer saying “(Strike) Gaza. Break it all apart. Along with the soldiers who got abducted.”
Many Israeli soldiers and civilians are on record saying that Israeli forces fired upon their own people on October 7.
How many of the 1,195 people killed in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood were actually killed by Israeli forces? We don’t know, and we’re not allowed to know. Electronic Intifada’s Asa Winstanley has argued that the number was in the hundreds.
Did Israel deliberately leave its people undefended from an impending Hamas attack in order to advance pre-existing agendas? We don’t know, and we’re not allowed to know, but there are mountains of evidence indicating that they did.
Ask why there’s been so much violence in the middle east these last three years and you’ll be told it’s because of October 7.
Ask why October 7 happened and you’ll be called an antisemite.
Ask what specifically transpired on that day and you’ll be called a conspiracy theorist.
It’s just so crazy how often apologists for Israel and the western empire will cite October 7 as the spark that set off all these wars of far-reaching consequence, but it’s taboo to talk about exactly what happened on that day, and it’s taboo to talk about how Israel’s abuses provoked the attack.
The official mainstream position on October 7 is that Hamas killed 1,195 Israelis for no reason other than because they are evil and wanted to kill Jews, and that anyone who suggests it may have happened for actual material reasons is an antisemitic monster. Whenever anyone spouts the official mainstream position on October 7 at me I just want to make “goo goo ga ga” baby noises at them until they shut up and go away, because such people are not thinking like adults.
Everyone who’s been watching Israel’s behavior since October 7 now understands why Palestinian resistance fighters carried out October 7 in the first place. We’re expected to avert our eyes from the glaring plot holes in the official narrative and never suggest that Israel’s horrific abuses of the Palestinians may have played some role in giving rise to the attack, but after watching a live-streamed genocide month after month after horrifying month, we all know October 7 was just Israel reaping what it sowed.
And we know there is no evil these freaks are not capable of.
Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say.
Peter Thiel through Palantir is doing the same thing to US citizens that the IDF has been doing to Palestinians for over 50 years. That is, being gifted massive US government defense contracts to surveil, oppress and kill innocent civilians.
The counterintelligence threat level was raised by the Defense Intelligence Agency in recent weeks after growing concerns that Israeli espionage had become more aggressive than usual, sources say.
In the case of Israel, under the guise of combating “terrorism,” the IDF is allowed to test with impunity all their latest, most sophisticated weapons technologies on Palestinian civilian bodies, for their own benefit, but also for the benefit of those US Zionist interests that control our foreign policy and provide a majority of the funding and weapons – no matter the war crimes or death toll.
In the case of Palantir, under the guise of “domestic terrorism,” it is contracting to provide high tech surveillance technology for ICE’s use on unwitting American citizens, so Palantir (who it is believed acquired all our personal records from Elon Musk’s DOGE theft at the White House), may continue to perfect and expand his hegemony into a gigantic global monopoly on behalf of Israel.
NBC News, By Gordon Lubold, Courtney Kube and Dan De Luce, 6 June 26
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is increasingly concerned about Israel ramping up its spying on the U.S., recently raising the counterintelligence threat level from America’s top ally in the Middle East to the highest level, according to two U.S. officials and one former U.S. official.
The DIA assessment includes a seven-page document and features a chart, according to one of the current U.S. officials. The document says the assessment of Israel is that its ability to conduct human espionage and technical collection is at a “critical level,” according to the official.
It also identifies a series of specific incidents that heightened U.S. concerns, the official said………………………………
While it is commonplace for allies and adversaries across the globe to spy on each other, the current and former U.S. officials said Israel’s recent efforts have gone well beyond what is typical and expected espionage. The officials did not know if a specific incident triggered the DIA’s decision to raise the counterintelligence threat level.
The heightened alert comes as President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have clashed over the war with Iran and Israel’s military operations in Lebanon, including in a tense phone call this past week, NBC News reported. Trump acknowledged afterward to reporters that he called Netanyahu “crazy” during the call as questions mount about whether the two countries’ objectives in the Middle East are beginning to significantly diverge.
Since a ceasefire deal was reached in early April, Trump has been pursuing a diplomatic deal with Iran to end the war Israel and the U.S. launched on Feb. 28. Israel has publicly expressed skepticism that Iran would abide by any negotiated deal. Netanyahu has pushed for a resumption of bombing raids against Iran and disagreed with Trump, who has pressed him to scale back attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to Western officials.
Israel is keenly interested in whether Trump decides to resume major combat operations against Iran or to end the conflict, the current and former U.S. officials and outside experts said. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/pentagon-raised-threat-israeli-spying-us-highest-level-sources-say-rcna348565
Underestimating the potential impacts of attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities
| Tilman Ruff, Jun 24, 2026 |
I worked with Kristina Kukolja, a journalist who obtained (heavily redacted) FOI files about the Australian government’s assessment and responses to Israel/US attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2025 and 2026. Its clear the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency underestimated the possible resultant radiological releases. Australia was one of the first countries to support those attacks both in 2025 and 2026 on the basis that any measures to avoid Iran acquiring nuclear weapons were a good thing, despite criticising Russia’s attacks on nuclear facilities in Ukraine.
Close monitoring of developments and modelling of possible scenarios including worst-case scenarios from attacks on nuclear facilities is something one would expect any responsible government to undertake and to use as the basis for informing and protecting their staff and the public, particularly the substantial number of Australian citizens in the Middle East (at least 115,000).
An additional reason for Australia to thoroughly assess attacks by allies on nuclear power plants is that during 2025-6 Australia chairs the IAEA board of governors. In relation to both Ukraine and the Middle East, the IAEA Director General has been consistently calling out the severe radiological risks of military attacks on nuclear facilities and calling for such attacks, in violation of international law, to end. Australia’s position here was clearly divergent from the IAEA’s.
One wonders whether underestimating the potential risks and keeping the assessments secret might be connected with an incentive to downplay the risks for political reasons. See article in the last Saturday Paper (below)_ o you don’t get stuck behind a paywall.
A year ago the government began receiving modelling on radiation risks from the war in the
Middle East, which experts say understated the danger and should be made public.
Exclusive: DFAT’s secret nuclear briefings
By Kristina Kukolja, Jun 24, 2026
Documents obtained under freedom of information show that a year ago the
Australian government began secretly receiving detailed modelling of radiation risks
from the war in the Middle East and the protective action Australian citizens may
need to take, but did not share this with Australians in the region.
American and Israeli strikes on sites in Iran and Iran’s retaliation against US targets
prompted the Australian government agency responsible for nuclear safety to
produce numerous reports to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) –
at times, on a daily basis – detailing “credible worst-case scenarios” for possible
nuclear incidents in Iran, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
The reports outline protective measures such as evacuation, sheltering and
restrictions of food and drinking water. Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear
Safety Agency (ARPANSA) experts also briefed the Inter-Departmental Emergency
Task Force (IDETF), convened to manage Australia’s response to the war, chaired by DFAT and attended by top government agencies including the Australian Defence
Force.
The Saturday Paper asked DFAT whether it had informed citizens about the
government’s monitoring and modelling for nuclear worst-case scenarios; whether
diplomatic staff were told to prepare food and water supplies; whether other
Australians, including military personnel, received the same advice; and whether
Australian embassies had secured supplies of potassium iodide tablets for
distribution.
DFAT declined to respond to these questions. A spokesperson said the department
“maintains internal contingency action plans at all Australian embassies and
consulates, intended to respond to crises and support Australians overseas.
Requests for technical advice, such as modelling, are part of prudent, scenario-
based planning and help inform our understanding of how an incident could affect
Australians in different locations.”
As the strikes escalated around nuclear facilities this year, an email to ARPANSA
staff from the emergency management project leader on March 9 said: “DFAT is
facing a major consular crisis, with many Australians unable to return home.
“It’s important to be supportive and respectful of their situation … We should also not
overwhelm DFAT or crowd their decision space unnecessarily.”
At the time of that update, there were about 115,000 Australians in the Middle East,
says DFAT – 24,000 in the UAE.
The results of ARPANSA’s modelling should be made “widely and promptly publicly
available … to inform Australians in making travel or evacuation decisions and be
better equipped to take timely protective measures”, says Dr Tilman Ruff, co-founder
of the Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
(ICAN), based in Australia.
The radiation assessment reports and electronic correspondence released under
freedom of information are heavily redacted, including on the grounds that disclosing
certain information could damage the Commonwealth’s defence or international
relations.
In a statement, ARPANSA says the reports were prepared “for a specific operational
purpose but shared more broadly across government, including through the IDETF”
and “informed public-facing messaging, including through Smartraveller”.
The Smartraveller website provides general advice on nuclear incidents. Despite the
Middle East war, Ukraine is still the only country where Australians have been
specifically warned about a nuclear risk, stating that Russian actions “pose a threat
to Ukraine’s nuclear power plants”.
ARPANSA’s reports to DFAT began in June 2025 after Israel attacked Iranian
nuclear sites and scientists, followed by US strikes the Trump administration
declared had obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese
said Australia, which had just taken over chairing the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors, supported the attacks, on the grounds they were
designed to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.
The assessments contain plume modelling – how far radiation could spread – and
exposure estimates for 48 hours after a possible incident at facilities such as the
targeted Natanz and Fordow fuel enrichment plants and Isfahan nuclear technology
centre. Projected plumes from Israel’s Dimona nuclear research facility and Iran’s
Bushehr nuclear power station – potentially causing the “greatest radiological
hazard” – reached neighbouring countries, including Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia,
Qatar and the UAE.
“A military attack, even unintentional, could cause a catastrophic
nuclear accident such as Chernobyl or Fukushima.”
One simulation on June 20 last year showed radiation from a potential Bushehr
incident extending hundreds of kilometres into the Persian Gulf to Abu Dhabi and
Dubai, where Australian civilians and diplomatic staff are based, and the Al Minhad
Air Base, where Australian troops are stationed. While the report noted low
radiological risks for Australian “embassy locations in Kuwait City, Doha, Riyadh and
Bahrain”, the unredacted section did not address cities that would be affected by the
plume.
At the same time, IAEA director-general Rafael Grossi told the United Nations
Security Council an operating nuclear power plant hosts thousands of kilograms of
nuclear material, and a direct hit, or hits to electricity supply, could cause its reactor
core to melt, potentially causing “a very high release of radioactivity to the
environment”.
In the worst case, Grossi said, protective actions would be required: “evacuations and sheltering of the population or the need to take stable iodine, with the reach
extending to distances from a few to several hundred kilometres. Radiation
monitoring would need to cover distances of several hundred kilometres and food
restrictions may need to be implemented.”
“Are we getting this wrong?” asked ARPANSA’s emergency project leader in an
email to a redacted recipient on June 21 referencing DFAT concerns that Grossi’s
comments differed from earlier assessments.
ARPANSA’s subsequent report assured there was no conflict, citing findings of
“similar distances for urgent protective action”. Declassified text messages between
agency staff acknowledge that environmental damage “would be a big issue
following the event”.
The agency’s worst-case scenario for Bushehr involved a “station blackout due to
loss of power after damage to plant infrastructure and backup power supply”.
“Although it is not an ideal state for a nuclear reactor, the backup systems mean that
a core meltdown would not be an immediate concern,” the report stated.
Tilman Ruff says this assessment “unduly downplays the real risks, particularly when
the cause of loss of external power is a major aerial bombardment, which risks
widespread and uncontrolled damage to plant systems.”
Ruff says the reports show the “greatest radiological risks in Iran and Israel arise
from damage to the Bushehr power plant, with 3000 megawatts of thermal capacity,
much larger than the next largest facility between the two countries, the Dimona
nuclear site, with a reactor estimated at 150MWt. Yet in none of the scenarios is the
possibility of damage to reactor containment included for Bushehr, as it is for smaller
reactors at Soreq, Tehran and Dimona.”
He says the reports also fail to specify scenarios involving a core meltdown, reactor
explosion or fire, “or consideration of spent fuel pools, which often contain larger and
longer-lived amounts of radioactive materials than are present in reactor cores”.
Professor Tatsujiro Suzuki, former vice-chairman of Japan’s Atomic Energy
Commission, agrees spent fuel pools are “the most vulnerable part of the nuclear
power project”.
“A military attack, even unintentional, could cause a catastrophic nuclear accident
such as Chernobyl or Fukushima.”
Over time “the radiation consequences could reach India or Pakistan, potentially the
Mediterranean area or even northern Europe”.
When the US and Israel launched new attacks on Iran in February, ARPANSA’s
Radiation Emergency Coordination Centre (RECC) in Melbourne was placed “on
heightened readiness”.
New reports from the RECC warned a large release of radioactive material from
Bushehr or the UAE’s Barakah nuclear power plant could see “radioactive
contamination deposited on land used for food production and in water bodies” in the
region. In worst-case events, they say, embassy staff may need to take protective
actions including sheltering in place with doors and windows sealed and awaiting
further advice.
“Use of potassium iodide tablets may be directed. As a precautionary measure, and
if feasible, having a short-term stockpile of food and water (seven days) at the
Kuwait and Doha embassies may be prudent to avoid ingesting potentially
contaminated food and water … And to provide additional reassurance to embassy
staff as they are within several hundred kilometres of the reactor site.”
Throughout March and into April, the period covered by the 2026 documents, Iran
reported strikes on multiple nuclear sites to the IAEA, including the Bushehr power
plant. Missiles were also reported near Israel’s Dimona facility. No off-site radiation
was recorded, but Rafael Grossi repeatedly warned attacks on Bushehr threaten a
“major radiological accident affecting a large area in Iran and beyond”.
In late March, DFAT requested radiation projections for possible nuclear incidents in
Pakistan, Türkiye, Syria, Armenia and Iraq. The 2026 modelling generally indicated more severe off-site releases than the 2025 assessments, says Tilman Ruff.
“The maps also depict higher levels of radioactive fallout, with potential exposure
near multiple facilities, including the relatively small research reactors at Soreq and
Tehran reaching over 50 mSv [millisieverts]. The estimated exposures are
significantly greater for Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow enrichment sites.”
Kristina Kukolja is a Walkley Award-winning journalist and broadcaster.
America’s Hidden Casualties: The Pentagon’s Iran War Numbers Still Don’t Add Up
June 17, 2026. Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/17/americas-hidden-casualties-the-pentagons-iran-war-numbers-still-dont-add-up/
As the Trump administration moves toward a second ceasefire agreement with Iran and officials in Washington attempt to declare the conflict a success, new reporting suggests the human cost of the war remains far higher than the Pentagon is willing to admit.
According to investigative journalist Nick Turse, the official U.S. military casualty count from the war with Iran has quietly climbed again. Yet even the latest figures appear to exclude hundreds of known casualties, raising serious questions about transparency, accountability, and whether the American public is being told the truth about the real cost of the conflict.
The Pentagon’s official Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) now lists 426 dead and wounded U.S. personnel connected to the war—an increase from earlier tallies. But Turse reports that the true figure likely exceeds 625, with numerous injuries and even some deaths seemingly absent from the official record.
The discrepancies are not minor bookkeeping errors. Earlier this year, fifteen wounded troops reportedly vanished from Pentagon casualty statistics without explanation. Despite repeated inquiries from journalists, military officials have failed to provide a coherent account of why those casualties disappeared from public records. One defense official quoted by The Intercept suggested the situation raises an uncomfortable possibility: either Pentagon analysts are extraordinarily incompetent or someone higher up ordered the numbers altered.
Among the missing cases are two soldiers injured when an Iranian drone reportedly downed a U.S. Army Apache helicopter earlier this month. Central Command publicly acknowledged the wounded crew members were receiving medical treatment, yet they do not appear in the official casualty database.
The questions extend beyond battlefield injuries. Turse notes that the Pentagon’s death count also appears incomplete. Major Sorffly Davius of the New York Army National Guard was publicly mourned by elected officials and military leaders after dying while deployed in Kuwait. Yet his death reportedly remains absent from official casualty totals.
Even more striking is the exclusion of more than 200 sailors treated after a major fire aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford. Because those injuries were categorized outside traditional combat wounds, they are effectively invisible in the official accounting despite occurring during an active wartime deployment.
The story highlights a pattern that has followed many American wars: casualty figures become political numbers rather than simple facts. Governments eager to sustain public support often emphasize military successes while minimizing costs. The result is a widening gap between the realities experienced by service members and the version of events presented to the public.
This matters because casualty counts are not merely statistics. They shape congressional oversight, influence public opinion, determine veterans’ benefits, and form the historical record by which future generations judge a war. If those numbers are manipulated—or selectively reported—the public loses one of the few objective measures available for evaluating the true consequences of military action.
The Iran war has already produced catastrophic consequences across the region, including thousands of reported Iranian civilian deaths. Now, according to Turse’s reporting, Americans may also be learning that the costs borne by U.S. troops have been systematically understated.
For an administration that repeatedly promised transparency and accountability, the unanswered questions surrounding the Pentagon’s casualty reporting are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Before Washington writes the final chapter on this conflict, the public deserves a full accounting—not only of what was achieved, but of what was lost.
FIFA, Eurovision expelled Russia but Israel has Impunity
June 8, 2026 Mohammed Samaana Informed Comment, https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/08/fifa-eurovision-expelled-russia-but-israel-has-impunity/
Hypocrisy and double standard are the words that come to mind in relation to how the west in general deals with the plight of the Palestinian people.
This is well manifested in culture and sports. Two major events this year have demonstrated just that. The first is the popular annual European singing contest Eurovision which was no different this year to any other year with Israel allowed to participate despite the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people in their own homeland.
Though five European countries – Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, Iceland and The Netherlands – took the higher moral ground and applied pressure by boycotting the contest in protest against Israel participation, this year’s edition of Eurovision went ahead without the participation of five European countries to ensure that Israel is present. To add insult to injury, the annual event took place at the usual time of every year when the Palestinian people mark the Nakba anniversary of their 1948 expulsion from their ancestral homeland by the Israelis. Because of its invasion and occupation of Ukraine, Russia hasn’t been allowed to participate in the Eurovision contest since 2022.
The second event is the World Cup. This year’s men football World Cup is another arena where the West is showing its hypocrisy. Russia was banned from all FIFA and UEFA soccer / football competitions in 2022 because of its illegal invasion of Ukraine and attempt to annex its territory, and the ban has become indefinite. All Russian national representative teams and club teams are prohibited from participation in global football events. Yet Israel’s deliberate assault on civilians and key infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon is much worse than anything Russia has done, bad as it is.
We all also remember the calls to boycott the last World Cup in Qatar over allegations of human rights abuses, including LGBTQ and migrant workers rights and the environment. Given the current and previous US administration’s record on human rights home and abroad, it is only common sense to ask the logical question, where are those who called to boycott the last World Cup four years ago?
If they were concerned about human rights then why they are not concerned about Joe Biden and Donald Trump administrations’ support for the Israel genocide in Gaza where well over 72,000 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians, are confirmed dead so far as a direct result of Israeli fire without taking into consideration the missing and the ones who died indirectly as a result of the Israeli assault? This is besides Israel aggression towards other countries in the region including its destruction of Lebanon and the destitution of its civilian population after Israel grabbed land in the south of the country. This is besides Israel expansion into Syria and and its war on Iran which is more likely to have impacted every human on this planet at least financially.
Additionally, during Qatar World Cup in 2022, the German players famously took a photo covering their mouths in protest against the FIFA denying them freedom of expression. No sign of Germany’s team this year protesting against the American security oppressing protests against the genocide in Gaza on college campuses and elsewhere or for that matter their own German security forces brutality against similar protests in Germany or the German government support for the genocide.
Moreover, where is the concern about individual sexual rights in the light of the reports about sexual violence against Palestinian detainees and international peace activists who were at the Sumud (Steadfastness) flotilla after being kidnapped by Israeli soldiers at international waters. It is no wonder why the UN added Israel to the blacklist of states that uses sexual violence in conflict.
In terms of the environment, a study showed that the carbon footprint during the first 15 months of Israel ecocide war on Gaza mainly provided by the US is greater than the planet-warming emissions of a hundred countries.
Furthermore, how could any one be concerned about immigrants’ rights and overlook the brutality of the America Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers? In 2025 alone 32 died in ICE custody. Not to forget the treatment of Palestinian human rights activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil and the ongoing effort to deport him
For the qualifying games to the World Cup, Israel has always played in the European groups with no concern over human rights violations whatsoever except for protests by solidarity groups and other peace activists. At club level, Israeli clubs take part in the European competitions. This applies to all sports and not only soccer / football.
It is important to point out that Israel is located in west Asia, not in Europe. This means that Europe is under no obligation to allow Israel to take part in any European sport or cultural events. But by allowing Israel participation especially when it is committing a genocide, Europe indicates it support for Israel and everything that it does which makes Europe complicit.
Any times these issues were raised, the world was told to keep politics out of sports. The same, however, didn’t apply when Russia was thrown out of every sport and cultural event over its invasion of Ukraine. Even if we were to accept their double standards by keeping politics out of sport when it comes to Israel, it is impossible to argue for keeping ethics or human rights out of sports. Those who insist on applying exceptionalism when it come to Israel know very well that they are enablers of its atrocities by allowing it to sportswash its reputation.
Mohammed Samaana , a freelance journalist published in the Belfast Telegraph, is originally from Palestine and lives in Belfast.
Natasha Walter: Labour’s workaday repression of protest doesn’t alarm us. But it should
If a far-right government detained activists for months without trial and declared them terrorists, there would be outrage. But Palestine and climate campaigners are being treated like this in a social democracy, writes the author and columnist
But as a result of these complicated, bureaucratic moves we are seeing more and more people locked up for longer and longer periods, and more and more people dissuaded from protesting at all. And if our next government is a far-right one, with the groundwork for greater authoritarianism already dug, with so many precedents already set, many more dissenters will be locked up.
Natasha Walter, Jun 10, 2026, https://www.thenerve.news/p/natasha-walter-column-protest-palestine-action-sentencing-terrorist-connection-elbit?utm_source=www.thenerve.news&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=tuesday-edition-natasha-walter-on-protest-sangita-myska-on-farage-hotlist&_bhlid=ea754b28990feab0acf9d70ebf48f5b17a368a9a
I hate lazy parallels with the 1930s, but one echo does keep running through my mind just now. In 1933, my grandfather was imprisoned for three years for “high treason”, for being a member of a proscribed organisation. The first nine months of his imprisonment was pre-trial – on remand, as we would call it now. The organisation that had been outlawed in that year was the Communist party, and he was living in Germany.
This is not the start of the Third Reich in Britain, for sure: not even close. But when I look at the young people who are being held for long periods – up to 20 months – on remand right now, and when I see that this Friday four protesters face being sentenced as if there had been a “terrorism connection” to their crimes during a break-in at the Elbit Systems weapons factory in Bristol, I realise a little more clearly how it is that even when the right to dissent is being directly threatened, most people can shrug it off, and so the slide to further repression is eased.
For those who are not turning away, this case has particular weight. The four individuals have been convicted of criminal damage and grievous bodily harm, which can potentially carry long sentences. But the prosecution has submitted that the offences have a “terrorist connection”, which means that the defendants would have no chance of early release and face the possibility of long-term surveillance. The jury in the trial was not asked to deliberate on this terrorist connection, so it is something that – for the first time in British legal history – the judge will decide alone. And the judge in question, Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson, has already lost the trust of many observers.
In the trials of those individuals and others, Johnson has ruled that the defendants could not give evidence on their motivations, including their reasons for joining Palestine Action, their beliefs about Elbit’s supply of weapons to Israel for use in the war in Gaza, or their views about the actions of Israel in Gaza and its legality. He even referred one of the defendants’ lawyers, Rajiv Menon, for contempt of court because Menon had reminded the jury that they could acquit the defendants based on their own consciences.
As usual, a number of people will turn up outside the court who have become thorns in the police’s side. We’ve seen them before, those often elderly people with their handwritten signs and fold-out chairs, their unbowed determination to turn up in all weathers and despite all threats of arrest.
Right now, I think we should all be saluting their determination. Indeed, the question keeps nagging away at me: why aren’t more people alarmed by this extreme erosion of the right to protest and what it means for our country?
It’s telling that so often this government doesn’t actively own these repressive developments, but portrays itself as simply compelled to carry them out
A few weeks previously I had been talking with an eminent lawyer who has been involved in many cases involving protesters. “What’s going on here right now is shocking,” he said. “It is making the UK an outlier in Europe. Other countries are looking at us and wondering how on earth this is happening when we don’t even have a far-right government.”
“When we don’t even have a far-right government.” I think that this is key to why more people aren’t protesting about these developments, and why so many people who are otherwise politically engaged are shrugging off this assault on people’s liberties. If a far-right government with a Trumpian narrative of a grand assault on dissent was putting in place the kind of measures we have recently seen, there would be an outcry from all sides. But because our government is not shouting about it, and is not even putting it into an ideological frame, the shift has simply become part of the political weather for most people.
Indeed, it’s telling that so often this government doesn’t actively own these repressive developments, but portrays itself as simply compelled to carry them out. When Labour took power, many who voted for them expected them to repeal the anti-protest legislation that had been put in place by the Conservatives, but instead they kept it and built on it. When questioned, David Lammy, the deputy prime minister, said it would take up “so much parliamentary time” to undo it. It was notable that when Yvette Cooper, as home secretary, banned Palestine Action, she referred darkly to things she couldn’t disclose about the group, about shadowy “advice and intelligence” and “assessments”.
And many other developments to silence protesters have taken place in an even more shadowy way, with no scrutiny by members of parliament or the public. Mr Justice Johnson’s refusal to allow Palestine Action defendants to bring evidence on the context and motivation for their actions has been preceded by other judges in climate protest trials who refused to allow defendants to discuss the climate emergency and its effects, or even about fuel poverty and home insulation.
The recent revealing report by the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice at Queen Mary, University of London (I am an honorary professor at the centre, though had nothing to do with this report), showed that this direction of travel by judges means that many protesters are therefore locked up not because of their original protest, but because of behaviour that is deemed in contempt of court, including refusing to keep quiet in the courtroom. Many others have been imprisoned for breaching injunctions granted to private companies stopping protests around oil terminals or other buildings. This kind of repression carried out by courts is often too complicated and bureaucratic to campaign on. It’s hard to explain quickly on an Instagram reel; it’s hard to get excited about.
But as a result of these complicated, bureaucratic moves we are seeing more and more people locked up for longer and longer periods, and more and more people dissuaded from protesting at all. And if our next government is a far-right one, with the groundwork for greater authoritarianism already dug, with so many precedents already set, many more dissenters will be locked up.
When my grandfather was imprisoned in Germany for attending Communist party meetings, most people shrugged off that first wave of repression – it was just the Communists and the oddballs who were getting locked up. To repeat, I don’t think this is our 1933, but the road we are walking down now is ever more shadowed. As Trudi Warner – who has been arrested several times already for protesting in the service of the right to dissent, and who will be outside the court on Friday – said to me this week: “I get that a lot of people don’t actually care about the climate or Palestine, so they aren’t getting upset right now. But when you are trying to speak up for something you care more about, and find you can’t, you will wish you had stood with us.”
Natasha Walter is an author and the founder of Women for Refugee Women. Her new book, Feminism for a World on Fire (Virago) was published in May
Jared Kushner’s Controversial Island Resort Reveals Scheme To Expand Israel’s Sphere Of Influence
Revelations over the Kushner-backed plan to develop a luxury resort on Sazan Island sparked outrage across Albania.
“This would be a new city with around 10,000 rooms, and it will completely destroy that wild region.”
The corruption investigation launched by SPAK against the development project on Sazan Island is not the first of its kind to target Kushner-backed investments.
In discussing the investment strategy of Affinity Partners, Kushner minced no words, making it clear how nations that aligned themselves with Israel would receive the benefits of investments from his firm. Kushner expounded on how that dynamic could be used to expand the sphere of Zionist influence,
The proposed Sazan Island Resort highlights how Affinity Partners uses private investment to push the Trump administration’s foreign policy.
blueapples, Jun 05, 2026, https://ddgeopolitics.substack.com/p/jared-kushners-controversial-island?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1769298&post_id=200576181&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Transforming the Gaza Strip into oceanside luxury properties built atop a mass grave isn’t the only real estate development project proposed by Jared Kushner that has embroiled him in controversy. Across the Mediterranean Sea, Albanian authorities have opened an anti-corruption investigation into a company led by Kushner that hopes to transform an island off of the country’s coast into a luxury resort. While Kushner contends that his vision for the island is rooted in transforming it into a paradisaical resort, that picturesque image hides how the project serves as a vehicle for him to advance his ulterior political motives. The probe into his latest development project is the second major anti-corruption investigation in as many years that has exposed a strategy executed by Kushner to use the massive amount of private investment capital at his disposal to advance the interests of the State of Israel and expand the Zionist World Order he continues to fight in the vanguard of.
The Kushner-backed development project came under intense public scrutiny following an interview given by his wife, First Daughter Ivanka Trump. During the interview, Trump painted a romanticized picture of how she and her husband came to find an uninhabited island “in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea” in 2021 as if such a hidden jewel remained undiscovered within the cradle of western civilization for millennia. “We were on a friend’s boat, and we stopped for a swim. Effectively, that’s how we found it,” she said. “We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated.” In reality, the island that Kushner has earmarked for his latest real estate development project is nowhere near the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Instead, Sazan Island lies just off of the coast of the Balkan nation of Albania in the Adriatic Sea.
Like its location, the picture painted by Kushner and his wife of the mysterious paradise they stumbled upon could not be further from the truth either. Sazan is the largest island in Albania and serves as the westernmost point of the country. The island also serves as a point of demarcation between the Adriatic and Ionian seas. That location made Sazan a crucial military post during the Second World War when it was controlled by the Kingdom of Italy before being ceded back to Albania in 1947. Following the war, Albania came under despotic communist rule by the iron fist of Prime Minister Enver Hoxha, who ruled the country from 1944 until his death in 1985. After Sazan was returned to Albania in 1947, the Hoxha regime declared Sazan a military exclusion zone to construct a strategic naval base on the island free of any civilian presence. Although Sazan saw little development under the yoke of communism, the Albanian government managed to build approximately 3,600 nuclear bunkers on the island during the Cold War in the years following its split from the Soviet sphere of influence in 1960, infrastructure that Affinity Partners would stand to inherit under the Kushner-backed investment strategy into developing the island into a luxury resort.
Although Albania officially abandoned communism in March 1992 shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, access to Sazan continued to be restricted from the public until July 2015. Decades of isolation from the public largely preserved the island’s unique ecology, which led to the Albanian government designating the island as part of the country’s first and largest national marine park in 2010. The Karaburun-Sazan Marine Park spans across Sazan Island and onto the Karaburun Peninsula on Albania’s Adriatic coast, harboring marine habitats that are home to several endangered species, including Mediterranean monk seals, one of the world’s most endangered marine mammals. Bottlenose dolphins, loggerhead sea turtles, and flamingos are other examples of the fauna within the Karaburun-Sazan Marine Park that the Albanian government has sought to preserve by extending environmental protections to the island.
The island’s emergence as a tourist destination since first being opened to the public in 2015 has made its unique environment politically contentious. Those tensions became considerably amplified in 2024 when Atlantic Incubation Partners LLC was awarded strategic investor status by the Albanian Strategic Investment Committee chaired by Prime Minister Edi Rama in order to develop the Sazan Island Resort. Atlantic Incubation Partners LLC is an extension of Affinity Partners, the American investment firm based out of Miami, Florida, created by Jared Kushner in 2021. Kushner’s firm promised to commit €1.4 billion to the development of the island, which planned to include a marina, hotels, private villas, restaurants, recreation facilities, and the crown jewel of a luxury resort managed by Swiss hospitality company Aman Resorts. In addition to the development of tourist destinations, Kushner’s firm has also committed funds to the restoration of Cold War-era military structures including the thousands of nuclear bunkers across the island.
According to Kushner, he had been encouraged to look to Albania for investment opportunities at the behest of Richard Grenell, who has served in the role of Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions since the position was established by the Trump administration in January 2025. During the first Trump administration, Grenell made headlines as he was named the first openly gay cabinet-level official in U.S. history after being appointed as the acting Director of National Intelligence in 2020. Grenell also served as the Special Presidential Envoy for Serbia and Kosovo Peace Negotiations from October 2019 until the end of the first Trump administration, through which he cultivated his connections to Albanian government officials involved in the diplomatic process to normalize relations between the two countries. Grenell’s encouragement to seek investment opportunities in Albania led to Kushner meeting with Prime Minister Edi Rama aboard the same yacht his wife stated he first discovered the island aboard in 2021. That yacht was owned by Nat Rothschild, the 5th Baron Rothschild of the infamous banking dynasty, who arranged the meeting between Kushner and the prime minister, which led to Atlantic Incubation Partners LLC being awarded strategic investor status by the Albanian government to begin developing the Sazan Island Resort in late 2024.
Revelations over the Kushner-backed plan to develop a luxury resort on Sazan Island sparked outrage across Albania. In late May, protests began to erupt at the proposed site of the development in the southern Albanian city of Zvernec on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, where protesters took to the large barbed-wire fences erected around the project. Those protesters were met by a private security detail assigned to the site of the development, an exchange that quickly turned violent as security guards began dragging protesters away from the area. Following the protests, Albanian officials revoked the licenses of two of the private security companies. Additionally, 15 protesters were charged in connection with the demonstration.
Demonstrations against the Kushner-backed development project continued as thousands of Albanians took to the streets of the nation’s capital, Tirana, voicing their fervent opposition to endangering the protected flora and fauna within the island. Joni Vorpsi, an ecologist with the PPNEA-BirdLife Albania organization, warned of the dangers the project presented to the region, stating, “This would be a new city with around 10,000 rooms, and it will completely destroy that wild region.” Vorspi also succinctly summarized the goal of the protests when he declared, “We want all construction to halt and heavy machines out of the protected area.” Environmental protesters have announced a demonstration in Vlora, the third-most populous city in the country, which encompasses the Karaburun Peninsula and Sazan Island, planned for Saturday, June 6th, 2026
Although protesters have largely taken to the streets across Albania in defense of protecting the ecology of Sazan Island, consideration over the dangers the development of the luxury resort poses to the wildlife of the region isn’t the most serious issue raised about the project concerning Kushner. In the wake of those protests, Albanian anti-corruption officials announced a probe into the project negotiated between Kushner and Prime Minister Rama. On June 1st, 2026, the Special Structure Against Corruption and Organized Crime (”SPAK”) of Albania confirmed that it had opened a formal investigation into the project. The decision by the country’s anti-corruption organization followed the publication of a report by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network based out of Tirana, which revealed that Albanians involved in Kushner’s project to develop a luxury resort on Sazan Island include a businessman with links to the Italian mafia, a disgraced former judge, the daughter of an attorney accused of committing forgery, a company whose owner was mysteriously murdered, and one of the country’s largest oligarchs.
The corruption investigation launched by SPAK against the development project on Sazan Island is not the first of its kind to target Kushner-backed investments. In December 2025, just weeks before Atlantic Incubation Partners LLC was awarded strategic investor status by the Albanian government, Affinity Partners announced that it had withdrawn itself from a $500 million construction project it planned in Serbia. Affinity Partners had planned to build a Trump Tower complex encompassing a hotel and luxury apartments in central Belgrade on the site of a former Yugoslavian Army headquarters that was destroyed during a NATO bombing raid in 1999 during the Kosovo War. Affinity Partners agreed to a 99-year lease on the site of the proposed Trump Tower complex with the Serbian government before withdrawing from the plan for its construction. The project was derailed following the indictment of Serbian Culture Minister Nikola Selakovic and three other officials on charges of abuse of office and falsification of documents filed by the country’s Public Prosecution Office for Organized Crime (”TOK”). In the indictment, the TOK alleged that Selakovic illegally removed the building’s cultural heritage status in order to greenlight the Affinity Partners project to build the Trump Tower complex in Belgrade. Selakovic’s trial on the charges filed by the TOK began in February 2026. While the charges brought against Selakovic gave his trial the ignominious distinction of being the first to be held against a sitting minister of the Serbian government since the overthrow of the regime of former president Slobodan Milošević, current Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic threatened to pardon him and his co-defendants in the event that they are convicted
In discussing his plans for the Sazan Island Resort during an interview with the FII Institute, Kushner ostensibly gave insight into the political calculus behind his corruption-laden projects in Albania and Serbia. According to Kushner, the motives driving the development projects led by him through Affinity Partners are not just driven by the aim of expanding his own real estate empire inextricably tied to that of his father-in-law, President Donald J. Trump. Those motives are also inextricably tied to Trump’s political empire.
During the interview, Kushner remarked on how investment into countries like Serbia and Albania through Affinity Partners was part of a comprehensive strategy to expand the sphere of influence of the State of Israel. In discussing the investment strategy of Affinity Partners, Kushner minced no words, making it clear how nations that aligned themselves with Israel would receive the benefits of investments from his firm. Kushner expounded on how that dynamic could be used to expand the sphere of Zionist influence, remarking, “We’re looking at opportunities to invest in countries who have joined the Abraham Accords, but we’re also looking at opportunities to invest in countries that might join the Abraham Accords and to create economic packages to incentivize them.” Kushner elaborated how partners of his had also suggested exploring the opportunities of investing in countries including Morocco and Syria in an effort to persuade their governments to join the Abraham Accords as the next stage of his strategy to leverage investment capital to expand the Israeli sphere of influence.
Neither Albania nor Serbia is currently signatory to the Abraham Accords. The potential of joining those agreements does not simply offer the prospect of the investment of financial capital into the countries but political capital as well. Albania has long sought admission into the European Union (”EU”). The country formally applied for membership in the EU in 2009. It was given official candidate status in 2014 and has rapidly accelerated its pace for accession since. EU officials and Prime Minister Edi Rama have set their sights on concluding negotiations for Albania to join the EU by the end of 2027, with an ambitious target date for becoming its newest member-state set for 2030. Serbia similarly filed its formal application to join the EU in 2009 and began membership negotiations in 2014. However, unlike Albania, negotiations between Serbia and the EU have reached impasses over proposed political, judicial, and foreign policy reforms. In the case of each country, the possibility of entering into the Abraham Accords provides them with political capital that can be leveraged to advance their respective accessions to the EU. That dynamic highlights how Jared Kushner’s development projects through Affinity Partners not only serve as a gateway for foreign investment to advance his political ambition to expand the Zionist sphere of influence; they also further the political ambitions of the nations he brings into the fold, a reciprocally beneficial arrangement in which Israel is the ultimate beneficiary.
Following the collapse of Affinity Partners’ plan to build a sprawling Trump Tower complex in Belgrade, the project of developing the Sazan Island Resort in Albania stands as the centerpiece of Kushner’s strategy to use private investment capital to surreptitiously advance Zionist foreign policy ambitions outside of the public sphere. Just as concerns over dangers to the island’s ecosystem veil the malignant corruption behind the project from becoming the focus of the discourse over it, Kushner’s declared motive of investing in nations in the hopes of accelerating their development hides behind a similar facade that shields the political ambitions driving his strategy.
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