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A Turning Point: What the Iran MoU Reveals About the Limits of US Power

June 19, 2026, By Iqbal Jassat, https://www.palestinechronicle.com/a-turning-point-what-the-iran-mou-reveals-about-the-limits-of-us-power/

The lessons from Iran, if incorporated in the study of international relations, will be that the era in which Washington could dictate terms without consequence is steadily eroding.

Events at the G7 Summit in Evian were overshadowed by news of the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). This was hardly surprising since the story broke about America’s dramatic turnaround and widespread speculation about the details of the MoU, as well as the reasons for it.

It would be fair to say, thus, that the most significant outcome of the G7 Summit in Évian was not the signing of the MoU. It was the public collapse of the illusion that military superiority automatically translates into political victory.

For months, Washington and Tel Aviv insisted that Iran would eventually be forced to surrender. The language was harsh, pointed and uncompromising. Iran’s missile program would be destroyed. Its nuclear capabilities would be dismantled. Its regional alliances would be broken. Its leadership would face collapse under the combined weight of military pressure, sanctions and international isolation.

None of those objectives were achieved.

The contradiction became impossible to conceal when President Donald Trump stood before the world at the G7 and defended Iran’s right to retain conventional ballistic missiles.

The same missiles that had been presented as an existential threat suddenly became acceptable. The same missile program that justified war was transformed into a reality that Washington was prepared to live with.

Contrary to the wishful thinking of some political pundits, this was not a minor adjustment in policy. It was a public admission that the original objectives could not be achieved.

Absent from much Western reporting is the extent of this reversal. The final agreement contains no dismantling of Iran’s missile deterrent. It contains no regime change. It contains no surrender of Iran’s political system. It contains no disarmament of Iran’s regional allies. Even the nuclear issue was largely deferred into future negotiations rather than resolved through force.

The shock registered on the gaping mouths of G7 leaders as well as Israel’s war criminals was obvious, for the outcome exposed the enormous gap between public rhetoric and strategic reality.

For years, American foreign policy has been built around the assumption that economic pressure, military dominance and international isolation can force adversaries to comply with Washington’s demands. Iraq was supposed to demonstrate that reality. Libya was supposed to reinforce it. The sanctions architecture imposed on Iran was designed around the same logic.

The MoU signed by Trump at the G7, demonstrates the limits of that model.

Iran’s leadership calculated that surrender would be more dangerous than resistance. Despite suffering enormous military and economic damage, Tehran retained enough leverage to make continued escalation prohibitively expensive for its adversaries.

The critical factor was not military strength alone.

The Strait of Hormuz exposed a vulnerability that military planners could not bomb away. As energy markets reacted and global supply chains faced disruption, the economic consequences of a prolonged conflict became increasingly unacceptable. Oil prices surged. Shipping costs escalated. Insurance markets were shaken. European governments demanded an end to the crisis. Gulf states that had quietly supported pressure on Iran suddenly became advocates for de-escalation.

The beneficiaries of the original confrontation were clear. Arms manufacturers secured contracts. Security establishments expanded their authority. Lobbying organizations intensified demands for escalation. Media institutions repeated assumptions about inevitable Iranian defeat. A vast ecosystem of political and economic interests promoted the belief that only one outcome was possible.

Though the MoU demolished that narrative, the reaction from Israel was even more revealing. The Israeli political establishment expected the conflict to fundamentally alter the regional balance of power in its favor.

Instead, Netanyahu and his criminal gang of genocidaires found themselves confronting an agreement negotiated largely without their input and one that preserved many of Iran’s capabilities Israel had spent years attempting to eliminate.

The frustration expressed by them and echoed across the regime’s media was not simply about the agreement itself.

It reflected the recognition that military escalation had failed to produce the strategic transformation that had been promised.

This is why the agreement carries implications far beyond Iran, particularly for governments across the Global South who are expected to study the outcome closely.

Indeed, so will Russia and China. The lesson they will draw is not that America lacks power. The lesson is that American power now operates within constraints that did not exist during the unipolar era.

The lessons from Iran, if incorporated in the study of international relations, will be that the era in which Washington could dictate terms without consequence is steadily eroding.

The MoU therefore marks something larger than the end of a conflict. It marks another stage in the transition from a unipolar order to a multipolar one. The significance of the MoU lies not in what was announced. It lies in what was conceded.

The campaign to impose American terms concluded with Washington accepting realities it once declared unacceptable.

June 22, 2026 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Who Would Take Iran’s Uranium?

Oil Price, By RFE/RL staff – Jun 18, 2026,

  • Kazakhstan has indicated it is willing to help store Iran’s enriched uranium if a broader international agreement is reached.
  • Iran remains reluctant to surrender its uranium stockpile because it views the material as leverage in negotiations with Washington.
  • Any transfer would face significant technical, political, and domestic challenges, including security concerns and public opposition in Kazakhstan.

As negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program continue, the fate of Tehran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium remains one of the most difficult issues to resolve.

Before US and Israeli air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimated that Iran possessed 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent. While not weapons-grade, the material is significantly close to the 90 percent enrichment level generally associated with the production of nuclear weapons.

The question now confronting negotiators is what should happen to that stockpile as part of a broader agreement between Tehran and Washington. In recent weeks, Kazakhstan has been mentioned as a possible third-party custodian………………………………. https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/Middle-East/Who-Would-Take-Irans-Uranium.html

June 22, 2026 Posted by | Iran, Kazakhstan, Uranium | Leave a comment

Israelis Invaded Lebanon And Then Cried Victim When Their Soldiers Got Killed, And Other Notes

From all this melodramatic garment-rending and victim-LARPing you’d assume the four Israelis were killed in their beds in Tel Aviv, not traveling by tank through a foreign country they’d invaded.

Caitlin Johnstone, Jun 20, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israelis-invaded-lebanon-and-then?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=202732431&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

In a move that surprised precisely zero people, Israel once again bombed the shit out of Lebanon while Netanyahu continued to insist that the IDF will continue its extensive occupation of Lebanese territory. Israel’s actions resulted in Tehran calling off scheduled peace talks with Washington, but now we’re seeing reports that Israel and Hezbollah have agreed to another ceasefire.

Israel pretty much never abides by its ceasefire agreements in Lebanon, but we’ll see what happens I guess.

One major factor in this new development may have been Iran’s threat to bomb Israel without warning if Trump doesn’t pressure Netanyahu to end the war in Lebanon, which we learned about from a recent report by Drop Site News.

President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have been creating viral content with tough talk about Israel’s need to make peace and stop killing people in Lebanon, but all that matters in this instance is action. Either they’re willing to exert the leverage they have over Israel to make sure this peace deal happens or they’re not. If Israel keeps sabotaging the agreement without suffering severe consequences from Washington, we may safely conclude that the Trump administration was all talk.

And in case anyone’s unclear, Trump will never deserve any “credit” for making peace with Iran, even if he does end up pushing Israel to comply with the deal. You don’t get praise for starting an unprovoked war of aggression and then losing. That’s not a thing.

Zionists are screaming bloody murder about Hezbollah killing a tank crew of four Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon, with war propagandist Mark Levin taking to Twitter to say that “Israel will hit back very hard” and that “No MOU or final agreement will change who these terrorists are,” while Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir proclaims “For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn!”

From all this melodramatic garment-rending and victim-LARPing you’d assume the four Israelis were killed in their beds in Tel Aviv, not traveling by tank through a foreign country they’d invaded. As Ryan Grim put it, “I have never heard of a country invading a neighbor and then calling it unfair that their soldiers died in that invasion. I don’t think any other country ever even thought to make that complaint.”

Meanwhile instead of attacking Trump for failing to do enough to make peace, Democrats are calling him a weak little bitch for not continuing the war, and for agreeing to ensure $300 billion in reconstruction financing instead.

“Iran took Trump to the cleaners with this so-called understanding,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor on Thursday, adding, “Are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle prepared to send Iran $300 billion when economic needs are so severe here at home? That’s what Trump wants them to do.”

“With $300 billion, we could end homelessness, fund cancer research for 40 years, and give every child free pre-K for over 7 years. Instead, Trump is sending it to Iran,” tweeted Senator Amy Klobuchar.

“Here’s what this deal basically is: Iran makes zero concessions, and the United States lets Iran trade oil for free and commits to give them $300 billion in reparations,” said Senator Chris Murphy.

“Trump is touting a ‘deal’ that promises to lift all sanctions, allow Iran to export oil and potentially charge tolls, and hand over more than 300 billion dollars to that country,” said Senator Adam Schiff, adding that the deal “looks more like a surrender.”

These prominent Democrats make it sound like Trump is just taking $300 billion from the American taxpayer, when according to Reuters the financing for the deal “will be comprised entirely of private-sector funds.” Democrats are essentially running the same bogus “Obama gave Iran pallets of cash” attack that Republicans used to use when slamming the 2015 JCPOA.

More importantly, how revealing is it that these warmongering freaks are suddenly pretending care about how much $300 billion could do to help ordinary Americans? Whenever anyone tries to nudge the party an inch to the left on universal healthcare or whatever you see Democratic Party officials wagging their fingers at them telling them there’s no money for such pie-in-the-sky fantasies, but as soon as they get an opportunity to push for more war they’re out there saying they could use all that peace money to end homelessness. All of which will of course be right out the window when it comes time to vote for the next $1.5 trillion military budget.

Democrats are such obnoxious liars. Their sleaziness is exceeded only by Trump supporters claiming their president deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for losing a war he started.

Anyway, things are a mess. We’ll see how this all plays out.

June 22, 2026 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US Finally Capitulates with ‘Memorandum’ of Surrender

Simplicius, Jun 17, 2026

The US has finally capitulated in its disastrously failed war against Iran, reportedly drafting a memorandum of understanding which is highly favorable to the Islamic Republic, and gains as concession nothing more than the promise that “Iran will not obtain nuclear weapons”—a position Iran had already long held.

The most explosive detail is the alleged $300 billion “reconstruction fund” that Iran will be entitled to once the deal is sealed.

Trump has downplayed or denied this point, with everyone seemingly perplexed as to what this massive sum entails, exactly. In the above article, Reuters writes the following:

The new fund is a private investment vehicle, not a reconstruction or reparations program and will not include any ⁠government money or grants, the source said, adding that companies based in the U.S., the Gulf Arab states, Asia, South America and Africa have agreed to commit financing.

Investments ​pledged span energy, logistics, manufacturing and transport, the source said.

They claim it’s not a reparations program, yet the official name of the fund is the ‘Reconstruction and Development Fund’. It appears to revolve around regional entities—both corporate and governmental—providing credit lines, direct financing, etc., to Iran. As can be seen above, over half of the fund is claimed to be already committed.

Some American propaganda pundits had claimed that this fund is being pulled from Iran’s frozen assets abroad, but Reuters begs to differ, citing that as an entirely separate negotiating track:

The investment fund is entirely separate from a parallel negotiating track over the lifting of U.S. sanctions and the release of Iranian sovereign assets frozen abroad, the source said, describing the two as distinct financial mechanisms with different purposes and timelines.………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/us-finally-capitulates-with-memorandum?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1351274&post_id=201961444&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=c9zhh&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

June 21, 2026 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Iran warns ‘no point’ in deal with US if Israel remains unrestrained

Another top Iranian official said Washington’s ‘rabid dog’ must be ‘controlled’ following Israel’s latest strike on Beirut

The Cradle,, JUN 14, 2026

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned in a statement on 14 June that there is “no point” in continuing efforts to reach a deal with Washington if Tel Aviv remains unrestrained, a few hours after a new Israeli attack on Lebanon’s capital.  

“The Zionists’ aggression against the southern suburb [of Beirut] once again demonstrated that the US either lacks the will to uphold its commitments or lacks the ability to do so,” Ghalibaf said.

“You cannot gain concessions by giving the [Israeli] regime a green light. The ‘good cop, bad cop’ game has grown old. If you lack the will and the ability to fulfill your commitments, then there is no point in speaking about continuing down this path,” the parliament speaker added. 

Meanwhile, Brigadier General Mohammad Jafar Asadi, deputy commander and deputy inspector of the Iranian military’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, said Israel’s attack on Beirut’s southern suburb will not go unanswered. 

Israelnews updates

“If you seek an agreement or understanding, you must discipline the Zionist regime. If this rabid dog is not controlled, it will bite your leg before the ink is dry on the agreement,” said Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesperson for the Iranian parliament’s Foreign Policy and National Security Committee.

The latest Israeli airstrike on the Lebanese capital took place earlier on Sunday afternoon. The attack hit a building in the southern suburb’s Ghobeiry area. …………………………………………………………………………….. https://thecradle.co/articles/iran-warns-no-point-in-deal-with-us-if-israel-remains-unrestrained

June 19, 2026 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

Netanyahu faces a new threat: The collapse of Western support

the Foreign Office announced plans for the UK to bring “together Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand and Norway to deliver coordinated sanctions against networks financing and enabling settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, and firmly advises British businesses against activity in illegal Israeli settlements.”

As Iran and Israel exchange fire once again, it seems that the Israeli PM’s greatest loss may be US public opinion

By Paul Rogers, June 15, 2026, https://www.opendemocracy.net/netanyahu-new-threat-collapse-support-united-states-israel-iran-gaza/

In a further fracturing of the very shaky ceasefire between Iran and the United States, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) this week shot down a US Army Apache attack helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz.

At any other time, the US would have seen this as an unacceptable act of war requiring a very strong reaction. But where Donald Trump’s unpredictable social media output would usually have breathed hellfire and damnation, this time it talked a proportionate response.

It seemed a welcome sign that Trump’s advisers, and maybe even the president himself, are having to accept that this war will not be won by bombs, missiles and drones, and will have to end in compromise.   

As domestic support for the war is ebbing away in the US, the mood in Washington is changing. Opposition to the war is growing, while support for Israel and its prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is dwindling. 

A week ago, this was all reasonably obvious, but the past few days have given a sharp indication of how difficult it will be to move to negotiated settlements in the double conflicts involving Israel and Lebanon, and the US and Iran.

The recent sequence of events started with a warning from the IRGC leadership in Tehran: Israel’s continued bombing of Lebanese towns and cities, including the widespread targeting of health facilities, violated the temporary ceasefire and must stop. Instead, Netanyahu ordered more attacks, including on the Lebanese port city of Tyre, which has been subject to around 30 direct air raids by the IDF in the past three months.  

As well as healthcare facilities, the IDF attacks have also been aimed at critical urban infrastructure, such as power and communications lines, water treatment plants and sewage treatment systems. The New York Times even reports the probable use by the Israelis of white phosphorus, an incendiary substance that spontaneously ignites on contact with air and is exceptionally difficult to extinguish.

The IDF is also continuing its practice of ordering mass evacuations of both urban populations and rural communities.

Yet despite the extent of the force it is using, the IDF has failed to destroy Hezbollah. There is little sign of that changing; consider that the IDF is still unable to control Hamas in Gaza despite having destroyed so many urban areas. 

Meanwhile, Netanyahu has made it abundantly clear that Israel is stepping up its plans to annex the great majority of Gaza. Over 50% of the land, including most of the area previously used for intensive horticulture, has been taken over by Israel. That is now increasing to 70% of Gaza, with yet more Palestinians being forced into overcrowded camps.

Taken alongside the increasing number of illegal settlements as well as Jewish settler violence in the Occupied West Bank, and the move to control substantial parts of southern Lebanon, the immediate prospects for a peaceful outcome are minimal.  

A remarkable indicator of this is that, as settler violence against Palestinians continues, Amnesty International reports on a “Great Israeli Real Estate Event” scheduled to take place in London this weekend, in which land in illegal settlements will be marketed to the Israeli diaspora in the UK.  

Two substantial issues remain. The first has been glaringly obvious for over 30 months: Israel is radicalising many thousands of young Palestinians to resist the IDF, even to the extent of sacrificing their lives. That alone means Netanyahu and his government are engaged in an unwinnable war. 

Then there is the second issue: overseas opposition to Israel is growing in some unexpected quarters. Germany is historically reluctant to criticise Israel in public, yet a pro-Palestinian wave of support has been seen in universities across the country. 

In Britain, Labour MP Melanie Ward has brought attention to UK charities that she says have given at least £28m illegal Jewish settlements across the occupied West Bank. Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper has responded by announcing that the Charity Commission will investigate the organisations’ links to the settlements and whether they can retain their charity status.

This comes in the week that the Foreign Office announced plans for the UK to bring “together Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand and Norway to deliver coordinated sanctions against networks financing and enabling settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, and firmly advises British businesses against activity in illegal Israeli settlements.”

Despite the Labour government’s antagonism to pro-Palestinian activists, The Guardian reports that some activists believe there is a “sea-change” underway in government circles, aided by the strongly pro-Palestinian stance of leading Green Party politicians, including leader Zac Polanski. 

Successive Israeli governments have spent decades cultivating support through well-funded lobbies in these two key European states. That support is fraying, but what is far more significant is the shift in attitudes in the US. A trenchant piece in the influential Wall Street Journal, entitled ‘Netanyahu has lost Middle America’, concludes that whatever happens in the Gaza conflict, the loss of public US support “has been catastrophic and won’t be reversed quickly.”  

That conclusion, in that journal, may turn out to be the most significant development in a singularly chaotic week.

June 19, 2026 Posted by | Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

Can Trump Restrain Israel?

Middle East Monitor06/13/2026, by Norliza binti Saleh, https://www.juancole.com/2026/06/trump-restrain-israel.html

The latest exchange between Iran and Israel raises a fundamental question: Who is really driving events in the Middle East – Washington or Jerusalem? 

Following Israeli strikes on targets in Beirut, Lebanon, Iran responded with strikes against northern Israel and military facilities around Haifa. Israel then immediately retaliated by attacking Tehran, Tabriz, Karaj and Isfahan. While the ceasefire between the United States and Iran is technically in place, the broader regional conflict continues to intensify. Throughout the crisis, President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed support for de-escalation and urged all parties to avoid a wider war. 

Yet events on the ground suggest that Washington’s desire for stability may not necessarily translate into restraint by its closest ally. The current crisis is becoming a test not only of regional security but also of American influence itself. 

The Trump administration appears reluctant to become involved in another prolonged West Asian conflict. Unlike previous periods of direct American military engagement in the region, Washington’s priorities today are largely domestic and economic. 

A wider regional war would almost certainly increase energy prices, disrupt global trade routes, and create uncertainty in international markets. Such instability would undermine economic recovery efforts and place additional pressure on American households.

For Trump, who has consistently portrayed himself as a leader focused on domestic prosperity rather than foreign military adventures, another regional war offers few political benefits. 

This explains why Washington continues to advocate restraint and emphasize the importance of maintaining the ceasefire framework currently in place. 

Israel, however, views the situation through a different lens. 

From the Israeli perspective, Hezbollah and Iran remain immediate security threats that cannot be ignored. Israeli leaders claim that military pressure is necessary to weaken these adversaries, regardless of American concerns about regional escalation. 

Yet security alone does not fully explain Israel’s actions.

“The conflict is also intertwined with political and ideological ambitions. The influential factions within the Israeli regime continue to be influenced by a broader vision of expanding Israel’s strategic footprint in the region, often associated with the concept of “Greater Israel”.

In this reading, Lebanon is not merely a battlefield but part of a wider Israeli expansionist project. 

This creates an important divergence between American strategic interests and Israeli security calculations. The result is an increasingly visible gap between what the United States wants and what Israel is prepared to do. 

Recent developments have also highlighted Iran’s growing strategic importance. Iran occupies a critical geographical position overlooking the Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant portion of the world’s oil and gas supplies passes. Any disruption to this maritime chokepoint would immediately affect global energy markets and international trade. 

More importantly, external pressure has strengthened domestic unity within Iran. The groups that previously disagreed with the government have increasingly

rallied around the state in response to external threats. Regionally, Iran has demonstrated both military capability and strategic reach, reinforcing its position as a major regional power whose actions can no longer be ignored. Recent events have witnessed that Iran possesses significant leverage over regional security and global energy stability. 

The central issue, therefore, is not whether Trump supports a ceasefire. He clearly does. 

The real question is whether Washington possesses sufficient leverage to translate its preference into Israeli behaviour.

“If Israeli military operations continue despite American calls for restraint, observers will inevitably question the extent of US influence over its closest ally. “

This matters because American credibility remains a key pillar of regional stability. If Washington is unable to shape the actions of partners that depend heavily on American diplomatic, financial and military support, its broader influence across West Asia may also come under scrutiny. 

Failure to contain the current escalation carries risks far beyond West Asia. A wider Iran-Israel confrontation could threaten critical energy routes, including the Strait of Hormuz and other regional maritime chokepoints. Rising energy prices would affect economies worldwide, including countries geographically distant from the conflict such as Malaysia. 

At the same time, continued instability risks expanding the conflict across multiple fronts involving Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Red Sea region. The longer the crisis continues, the greater the likelihood of miscalculation by one or more actors. 

For this reason, calls for a genuine ceasefire must be matched by meaningful diplomatic efforts and credible pressure on all parties involved. 

“The current crisis has become a test of two things: regional stability and American influence. “

President Trump may genuinely prefer de-escalation, but preference alone is insufficient. The true measure of leadership lies in the ability to shape outcomes, not merely express intentions If Washington cannot persuade its closest ally to support a sustainable ceasefire, the risk of a wider regional conflict will continue to grow. 

“The key question is therefore not whether Trump wants peace. The key question is whether he still possesses the leverage necessary to make it happen”

June 19, 2026 Posted by | Israel, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

New Billionaire Jared Kushner Is Mired in Conflicts of Interest as “Peace Envoy”

Kushner’s current fundraising efforts with Gulf state regimes, through which he aims to personally profit, raise serious concerns over conflicts between his business interests with regional states and his diplomatic role as a top Trump administration negotiator.

Jared Kushner, like the rest of the Trump family, uses the White House for personal enrichment.

By Derek Seidman , Truthout, June 12, 2026, https://truthout.org/articles/from-peace-envoy-to-billionaire-kushner-makes-a-killing-in-white-house-admin/?utm_source=Truthout&utm_campaign=8d7f421301-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_06_12_06_45_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bbb541a1db-16ee3bf6a0-650192793

Kushner is now a billionaire,” proclaimed Forbes in September 2025 of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. While just over half of Kushner’s wealth — $560 million — comes from his family’s real estate empire, what’s catapulted Kushner into billionaire status is the growth of his private equity firm, Affinity Partners, formed in 2021.

“[T]hese days,” said Forbes, Kushner is “laser-focused on Affinity.”

Kushner is not an experienced investment manager. His key clients are Gulf state sovereign wealth funds — hugely wealthy state-owned coffers that invest revenue generated by fossil fuel sales — overseen by the same regimes with whom Kushner is now involved diplomatically as a U.S. “special envoy for peace.”

That Kushner personally profits from, and is currently trying to raise billions from, the same actors he’s negotiating with, raises code red-level alarms over potential conflicts of interest. Moreover, two of Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, have been tied to a slew of business deals connected to companies that are benefitting handsomely from federal government contracts.

“The degree of shamelessness is unprecedented,” Jeff Hauser, founder and executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a watchdog group monitoring the U.S. executive branch, told Truthout. “The degree of unity among elected Republicans to not speak about the Trump progeny, and their corruption, is the worst conspiracy of silence in American political history.”

Affinity Partners

Jared Kushner founded Affinity Partners in 2021, and he is the firm’s sole owner. Forbes estimates Affinity was worth $215 million as of September 2025, up from $170 million in October 2024. Through Affinity, Kushner recruits wealthy clients and invests their money through funds that acquire stakes in different companies.

Affinity currently has $6.2 billion in assets under management. According to the Israeli financial paper Globes, Kushner earns “a commission of 1.25 percent on investors’ capital.” Forbes says that Affinity’s investors “pay about $60 million per year in fees.”

The New York Times also reports that Affinity has earned an estimated 25 percent rate of return on its investments since 2021. Private equity investment firms often get a double-digit percentage cut on client returns.

Affinity’s biggest clients are Gulf state sovereign wealth funds. According to The New York Times, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which invests the kingdom’s oil profits and is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is “already the largest and earliest investor in Affinity,” having invested $2 billion with the firm after Trump’s first term ended. As part of that investment deal, Saudi Arabia was also given “the first chance to invest during any subsequent attempts by Affinity to raise funds,” said The New York Times.

The sovereign wealth funds of both the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar were also early investors in Affinity Partners, with the UAE investing over $200 million in Kushner’s firm.

“Most of Affinity’s investors came through connections Kushner made while serving in the White House,” wrote Forbes.

Kushner is currently trying to raise $5 billion or more in new funds for Affinity. As part of this effort, The New York Times reported in March 2026 that Affinity representatives had met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and that the United Arab Emirates and Qatar “are also expected to be asked for more” as the fundraising efforts should “stretch on for the better part of this year,”

“Staggering Conflicts of Interest”

Kushner’s current fundraising efforts with Gulf state regimes, through which he aims to personally profit, raise serious concerns over conflicts between his business interests with regional states and his diplomatic role as a top Trump administration negotiator.

“There’s an enormous conflict of interest when you have somebody who had never been a money manager like this before, and who is all of a sudden building massive funds based off a handful of foreign investors with an interest in buttering up the Trump administration,” said Hauser.

Hauser said it’s “not unprecedented” for well-connected family members or friends of presidents to influence U.S. diplomacy. But, he adds, “it is very susceptible to abuse, and I think it’s being abused here,” and government reforms are needed in the wake of Kushner’s current “diplomatic exploits.”

The potential conflicts of interest have been highlighted by some members of congress. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) has opened an investigation into what he labels Kushner’s “foreign entanglements and staggering conflicts of interest.”

“From the standpoint of the American people, your decision to act in these two roles — one public for the government and one private for personal profit — creates a glaring and incurable conflict of interest,” Raskin wrote in a letter to Kushner.

Kushner’s diplomatic efforts have included helping to design and advance the Abraham Accords, which aims to normalize relations between Israel and key Gulf States; carrying out negotiations with Iran, whose retaliatory strikes have been aimed at nations like Saudi Arabia and the UAE; and working on Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” which several Gulf states, including top Affinity clients, have joined.

Kushner’s Portfolio Companies

Read more: New Billionaire Jared Kushner Is Mired in Conflicts of Interest as “Peace Envoy”

Affinity Partners’ most significant deal has been its $55 billion acquisition in 2025, in partnership with Saudi Arabia and other investors, of the video game giant Electronic Arts, maker of popular franchises like Madden and Sims. The transaction, which has garnered protests from gamers and developers, would be the largest-ever private buyout of a publicly-traded company. It’s currently in its final stages of approval.

Under the deal’s terms, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund — which already had a 10 percent stake in Electronic Arts — will own 93.4 of EA, while Affinity Partners will own 1.1 percent. For Saudi Arabia, the deal advances two separate but intertwined aims: diversifying its economy away from overreliance on oil revenue, and partnering with a member of the Trump family as the deal seeks regulatory approval from the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment, chaired by Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

Affinity Partners also invests in smaller AI and financial companies, including U.K. digital bank OakNorth, AI infrastructure firm Universal AGI, and the fintech start-up company Revolut. Forbes reports that Kushner recently launched a new San Francisco-based AI start-up with the prominent Israeli-born venture capitalist Elad Gil. The firm, Brain Co., also raised funds from Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong and LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman.

Raising more potential for conflicts with his diplomatic role, Kushner also has stakes in several Israeli companies, including $1.68 billion in Phoenix Financial, one of Israel’s leading insurance and financial companies. Affinity is Phoenix’s top shareholder and has seen a five-times return on its investment.

Affinity is also invested in the Israeli Shlomo Group, one of Israel’s largest holding groups with big investments in the auto sector.

Kushner, TikTok, and the Trump Web

Jared Kushner is also embedded in a wide web of business figures advancing the Trump agenda — which could be seen in the January 2026 deal that created a U.S. spinoff of TikTok.

Kushner’s Electronic Arts deal is co-led by Silver Lake, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm. As Truthout previously reported, Silver Lake is also a 15 percent stakeholder in the new U.S. TikTok. The firm’s co-CEO Egon Durban sits on the seven-member board of U.S. TikTok.

In 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported that acquiring Electronic Arts was Durban’s “dream deal,” but that “the pieces began to fall into place” for the acquisition only after Durban “began spending time with Jared Kushner.”

Silver Lake also owns Endeavor, whose portfolio includes TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the mixed martial arts corporation that is chummy with Donald Trump.

Durban and Silver Lake are close business partners with Michael Dell, the megabillionaire chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies who is also part of the U.S. TikTok ownership group with Durban. Dell has cast himself as a Trump ally by donating $6.25 billion toward the president’s so-called “Trump Accounts” program, which creates investment accounts for U.S. children.

Billionaire Yuri Milner, another U.S. TikTok investor, previously invested $850,000 in a real estate company started by Kushner in 2015. Jon Winkelried, the billionaire CEO of TPG Global, a private equity firm represented on U.S. TikTok’s board, also previously served as a strategic adviser and partner for Thrive Capital, an investment firm overseen by Jared Kushner’s brother, Josh Kushner.

The Trump Sons

If Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, may be personally benefiting from his closeness to the president, so too might be two of the president’s own children.

Donald Trump Jr. is a partner with an investment firm called 1789 Capital, which he says is dedicated to “patriotic capitalism,” and which has seen its assets under management boom from $200 million to $3.5 billion over the past year.

1789 Capital has made investments in companies that have gone on to benefit from federal contracts. For example, the Trump administration helped secure a $620 million loan for Vulcan Elements, a rare earths firm, months after 1789 Capital acquired a stake. Other 1789 Capital portfolio companies that benefit from federal contracts include rocket propulsion start-up Firehawk Aerospace, quantum computing company PsiQuantum, and AI group Cerebras Systems, as well as SpaceX and Anduril. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have also been linked to other drone makers, including Unusual Machines and Powerus, that have secured federal contracts.

Trump Jr. told the Financial Times that he is “very involved in the strategic decisions regarding where to invest” the resources of 1789 Capital.

The Financial Times also reported that Eric Trump accompanied his father on his recent state visit to China at the same “a company linked to him and the US president’s family” — Alt5 Sigma, a Las Vegas-based financial technology company — “explores a deal” with Chinese chipmaker Nano Labs that U.S. lawmakers says is tied to the Chinese Community Party. Eric Trump is an “observer” on the board of Alt5 Sigma, while Zach Witkoff, the son of top Trump aide Steve Witkoff, chairs Alt5’s board.

The Financial Times also reports that a shell company backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump is set to merge with a critical minerals group that last year secured up to $1.6 billion in U.S. government backing to mine tungsten in Kazakhstan. Now, that group is asking for $400 million more from the government.

Holding Politicians to Account

While Donald Trump may be struggling in the polls, his family, financially, is doing just fine.

Hauser told Truthout that much of Donald Trump’s “economic interest” is tied to “increasing the wealth of his kids,” including his son-in-law Kushner. “When they are engaged in these types of overseas actions, they are carrying Trump’s interests with them inherently,” said Hauser.

But, Hauser adds, the law treats adult children of presidents as wholly independent from their parents, allowing “relative impunity” for their intermixing of business transactions with diplomatic roles or close familial relations.

“The law is just not written to address this type of situation,” said Hauser.

But Hauser sees hope in past U.S. history, which he says has always experienced vicissitudes of political corruption and revulsion against corruption that propels reform through both legal avenues as well as social ostracization of bad actors.

“Political corruption cycles tend to be cyclical,” he said. “Hopefully this is [the] nadir, and we can all be angry enough and hold our politicians to account such that they start to clean this up, and we can switch from a vicious cycle of ever-increasing corruption to a virtuous cycle of greater integrity.”

June 18, 2026 Posted by | business and costs, MIDDLE EAST, USA | Leave a comment

Most Israelis oppose Netanyahu’s re-election as Trump says PM ‘may quit politics’

Trump continues to call the premier a ‘wartime prime minister’ as Netanyahu faces ongoing internal opposition and a long-delayed corruption trial

News Desk, JUN 10, 2026, https://thecradle.co/articles/most-israelis-oppose-netanyahus-re-election-as-trump-says-pm-may-quit-politics

A poll published by an Israeli research center on 9 June has revealed that most Israelis do not want Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to run in the upcoming election. 

The poll was released by the Viterbi Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute, based in occupied Jerusalem.

It was conducted between 31 May and 5 June. 

According to the results, 61 percent of Israelis believe Netanyahu should not run in the elections. Thirty-five percent were in favor of the premier running. 

The number of Israeli Jews who are opposed to his running stood at 57 percent, while 39.5 percent of Jewish Israelis believe he should run. 

Among the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship living in the territories ethnically cleansed during the 1948 Nakba, 83 percent are against Netanyahu running in the election, according to the poll. 

Eleven percent of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship support his candidacy, the poll added. A recent poll revealed a significant deterioration in the global reputation of Netanyahu and Israel.

The survey was published amid growing uncertainty over Netanyahu’s political future following comments by US President Donald Trump, who claimed the premier may want to step back from politics.

Trump told ABC News on Tuesday that he was unsure “if Bibi even wants to continue.”

“I don’t know, he’s had an amazing career. Does he want to continue? Because, you know, he’s a wartime prime minister. We will very shortly win the war one way or the other, and you know he’s a wartime prime minister,” Trump added.

Likud has since responded, saying that Netanyahu will run in the upcoming election.

Netanyahu is mired in a years-long criminal trial over corruption and other scandals. The trial has seen near-constant delays.

The prime minister has also failed to resolve the Haredi draft crisis plaguing Israel, with ultra-Orthodox Jews (Haredim) still avoiding conscription and opposition parties criticizing the ruling coalition for placing secular reservists at the forefront of the conflict. 

Israeli army leadership has warned of a collapse in the reserve forces, and troops are taking heavy losses in battles against Hezbollah in south Lebanon.

Since Netanyahu’s government came to power in late 2022, illegal West Bank settlements and annexation plans have expanded dramatically, and a genocide in Gaza has taken place. 

Tel Aviv has also continued to wage brutal wars on multiple fronts, including Lebanon and Iran. 

The draft crisis and other long-standing issues between Netanyahu and the opposition have prompted former premiers Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid to merge parties in a bid to challenge the prime minister politically. 

June 18, 2026 Posted by | Israel, public opinion | Leave a comment

Trump news at a glance: president claims Iran ‘no longer want a nuclear weapon’ amid peace deal hopes

Washington and Tehran express increasing optimism that weeks of halting negotiations may be drawing to a close – key US politics stories from Saturday 13 June at a glance

Guardian staff, 14 June 26, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/14/trump-news-at-a-glance-president-claims-iran-no-longer-want-a-nuclear-weapon-amid-peace-deal-hopes

Donald Trump says a deal with Iran to end the war would be signed on Sunday, and that the strait of Hormuz would be “open to all” immediately after.

Iran had offered a different timeline earlier in the day, but nonetheless signalled an agreement was in the offing, as both the warring parties and their mediators expressed increasing optimism that weeks of halting negotiations were drawing to a close.

“The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. Since an 8 April truce paused the worst of the fighting, Trump has repeatedly insisted a deal was near only for the wrangling to drag on.

The Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmaeil Baqaei, had said earlier on Saturday that the date of the signing was yet to be determined, but “it will not be tomorrow”. However, he added: “The possibility of this happening in the coming days cannot be ruled out.”

June 17, 2026 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Western Media Normalize Ethnic Cleansing of Lebanon by Viewing It Through Israel’s Eyes

Belén Fernández, FAIR, 11 June 26

In October 2024, one year into Israel’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and attendant assault on Lebanon, the Israeli army did a thing. It invited journalists from major Western corporate media outlets on an incursion into Lebanon’s ravaged south, accompanied by Israeli military personnel who would interpret the wreckage in Israel’s favor—not that the Western media have ever required much assistance in this regard.

Reporters from the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, Fox News and a handful of other special guests signed up for the cross-border sortie. It was, as Habib Battah and Christina Cavalcanti note in an investigation for the Public Source (8/27/25), an “awkward hybrid between a traditional embed and the kind of all-expense-paid publicity trip that journalists refer to as junkets, freebies and dog-and-pony shows.”

Never mind that it is entirely illegal for journalists or anyone else to enter Lebanon from Israel—what’s one more illegal invasion from a country that has been invading Lebanon pretty much since its founding? As Battah and Cavalcanti emphasize, these media professionals were also embedding themselves “within a national project of extraordinary transnational violence,” hosted by an “extrajudicial occupying military power—a critical point that all of them would fail to mention in their coverage.”

The Israelis certainly hit the jackpot with the coverage, as reporters excitedly discovered boots and helmets allegedly belonging to Hezbollah—clear proof that the group had been plotting a nefarious attack on Israel. New York Times Jerusalem correspondent Isabel Kershner, an old pro at conducting preemptive journalistic strikes on Lebanon, did not disappoint with her dispatch (10/13/24), “Just Over the Border From Israel, a Hezbollah Cache of Explosives and Mines.”

And in report after embedded report, Israel’s chosen journalists faithfully transmitted the tiresome and counter-logical notion that Hezbollah was somehow the aggressor in the arrangement—as opposed to the army that was busily slaughtering thousands of people in Lebanon while implementing a scorched-earth strategy.

‘Urgent evacuation warnings’

While the October 2024 embed was one of the more preposterous embodiments of Western corporate media’s special relationship with Israel, outlets continue to do a fine job of sanitizing Israeli brutality even when their reporters are not physically viewing the region from inside an Israeli armored vehicle. Since March of this year, Israel has killed at least 3,613 people in Lebanon and displaced 1.2 million, obliterating entire villages and otherwise expanding the ecocidal policy honed in the Gaza Strip.

There has been no remotely comparable destruction on the Israeli side, and a recent Reuters article (5/31/26) that had attempted to suggest some symmetry now comes with the preface: “This May 31 story has been corrected to remove a reference to tens of thousands of Israelis being displaced by Hezbollah fire, in paragraph 3.”

Like in Gaza, where genocide proceeds apace in spite of a declared ceasefire (FAIR.org, 10/21/25), the media tend to report “ceasefires” in Lebanon without caring to highlight the fact that it’s not a ceasefire when Israel is still pummeling the country and massacring people, all the while setting the stage for a massive land grab with its creeping so-called “evacuation orders.” These “evacuations” have been focused on the Shiite demographic, with Israel warning Christian and Druze communities not to allow Shiite neighbors to take refuge in their towns (New York Times, 4/1/26).

Lebanese journalist Habib Battah, co-author of the aforementioned Public Source investigation, suggested to me that such orders might be more accurately termed “ethnic cleansing directives.” But that, of course, would be way too much for corporate media outlets to handle—and so it is that we learn about Israel’s “urgent evacuation warnings” and “large-scale evacuation orders,” as though it’s some sort of public service announcement, fire drill or other fundamentally legitimate Israeli undertaking, rather than entirely illegal in addition to downright psychopathic. From a legal and moral perspective, after all, you can’t just go around ordering people in other countries out of their homes, oftentimes only to bomb them when they comply.


Then there’s the matter of the “Yellow Line” or “security zone”—more terminology borrowed from Gaza (FAIR.org, 5/19/26)—which denotes the portion of south Lebanon that Israel is currently illegally occupying. But Israel has never been very good at staying within the lines, and its latest “evacuation orders” spanned no less than one-fifth of the entire country, far beyond its own unilaterally appointed Yellow Line.

As Battah remarked to me, the media’s acceptance and deployment of such arbitrary vocabulary creates “artificial structures” and a sense of orderliness, when in reality “there’s no yellow lines, there’s no yellow, there’s no colors—these are just illegal invasions.” And because media are committed to sanitizing Israel’s behavior rather than questioning it, “colonization becomes normalized.”

‘A warning to residents’

The eagerness of journalists to do Israel’s bidding is all the more confounding given that Israel is currently the No. 1 killer of journalists in the world. A recent Associated Press article (5/29/26), for example, reduced the pulverization of Lebanon to simply “ongoing fighting in southern Lebanon between Israeli troops and Hezbollah fighters.”

A June 4 Reuters writeup blamed Hezbollah for having “rejected” the latest US-mediated “ceasefire” plan—which, mind you, would basically have given Israel the green light to seize south Lebanon outright. Reuters refrained from referencing the thousands of Lebanese casualties since March, but did allow Israel the usual space to defend its depredations: “The Israeli military, in a warning to residents of the south, said it was continuing to target Hezbollah facilities.”

This is not to say that corporate media do not report on the destruction, displacement and killing in Lebanon; they do—and sometimes even sympathetically. But the refusal to paint a consistent and properly contextualized picture of what is actually going on in the country means that they mostly just end up legitimizing Israel’s war crimes…………………………………………………………………………………….. https://fair.org/home/western-media-normalize-ethnic-cleansing-of-lebanon-by-viewing-it-through-israels-eyes/

June 16, 2026 Posted by | Israel, media | Leave a comment

US Begins Another Round of Attacks on Iran

Trump had said earlier that he would launch more strikes on the country

by Dave DeCamp | June 10, 2026 , https://news.antiwar.com/2026/06/10/trump-threatens-more-attacks-on-iran-after-exchange-of-heavy-strikes/

On Wednesday night, US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced it was launching a round of attacks on Iran for the second night in a row as Iranian media began reporting blasts across the southern part of the country.

In response to the US attacks, Iran’s military said that it would fully close the Strait of Hormuz. “From this moment, due to insecurity in the region, the Strait of Hormuz is declared closed to the passage of all vessels, including oil tankers and commercial ships, and any traffic will be targeted,” Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters said in a statement.

CENTCOM then claimed that the Iranian statement was false and that ships were still transiting the strait, but the denial came just a short while after Iran’s announcement. President Trump had earlier claimed that over the past month, the US military was conducting a “secret mission” to allow tankers to exit the Strait of Hormuz. He claimed the US helped bring 100 million barrels out of the strait, which, if true, is still a fraction of the oil that was transiting through the waterway before he launched the war.

After the start of the US strikes, Iranian media reported blasts across Iran’s southern Hormozgan province and said that at least two residents of the city of Kargan were wounded by shrapnel. Iran appears to be striking back as air raid sirens were sounded in Bahrain and the IRGC said it was targeting 18 US military installations across the region.

The fresh US attacks came after President Trump threatened more bombings, and US War Secretary Pete Hegseth also said that the US would be attacking the Islamic Republic.

“CENTCOM will be busy tonight because President Trump said we will be hitting Iran hard, and we will be,” Hegseth told reporters outside CENTCOM headquarters in Florida not long before the strikes started.

On Wednesday morning, the president said on Truth Social that Iran has “taken too long to negotiate a deal that would have been great for them, now they will have to pay the price.” He also claimed in the post that Iran had been “completely defeated” despite its ability to launch missile and drone attacks across the Middle East.

In comments to reporters in the Oval Office later in the day, Trump was more explicit in his threat. “We hit them hard yesterday, and we’re going to hit them again hard today,” he said.

Trump also told Fox News reporter Trey Yingst that he may “keep going” with his attacks on Iran and that he is “getting closer to the targeting of Iranian power plants and bridges.”

During the US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran, Trump repeatedly threatened to launch massive attacks on Iranian energy infrastructure and bridges, part of his threats to turn the country into “hell” and end a “whole civilization.”

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Wednesday that its forces targeted the US military in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Jordan, and vowed it would launch stronger strikes if the US attacked again.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said that Iran’s military dealt a heavy blow to the US following its “savage attacks” on Iran that were launched under the pretext of Iran allegedly downing a US Apache helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz as it was enforcing a blockade on Iranian ports. “With these aggressive actions, the US ruling administration once again demonstrated its criminal and warmongering nature,” the ministry said.

US officials said the US strikes on Iran targeted air defense and radar systems, while Iranian media also reported that strikes hit two water reservoirs, cutting off drinking water to thousands of Iranians.

June 16, 2026 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

War crime -US ‘precision strikes’ cut water access to 20,000 people in southern Iran

The ‘self-defense’ strikes that Washington said it carried out destroyed part of a key water facility in Hormozgan province

News Desk, JUN 11, 2026, https://thecradle.co/articles/us-precision-strikes-cut-water-access-to-20000-people-in-southern-iran

The US military’s recent airstrikes on a drinking water facility in southern Iran “could constitute a war crime,” a 10 June New York Times (NYT) investigation said after an attac

After the strike, US Central Command (CENTCOM) described its attacks as “self-defense” that was carried out with “precision” munitions.

In response to NYT, a CENTCOM spokesman said he was “aware” of the reports about destroyed water infrastructure, but declined to provide any further information. 

The US strikes hit Iran early on Wednesday. 

The CEO of Hormozgan province’s water and wastewater company announced before NYT released its investigation that the US struck a 500-cubic-meter tank and a 2,000-cubic-meter tank that both played a key role in supplying drinking water to Sirik.

Authorities said the strikes cut off water to 20,000 people living in nearby areas. 

“Mobile water tankers brought in water to supply residents while crews built a new service line that bypassed the damaged tanks,” Abdolhamid Hamzehpour, the head of the provincial water authority, told NYT, adding that the task was completed within 12 hours. k by Washington cut off water to tens of thousands of people.

ranian forces targeted US bases in the region on Wednesday in response to the attacks that destroyed the facility.

Since then, more US strikes have targeted the Islamic Republic. 

Iran carried out retaliatory missile operations targeting key US sites in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Jordan on Thursday. 

US President Donald Trump has threatened more strikes on Iran since Tehran’s latest retaliation. 

June 16, 2026 Posted by | Iran, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

How Israel Planned The Gaza Genocide Decades Ago

In October 2023, Israel found an excuse to breathe new life into an old story of slaughter and expulsion. The chief differences this time have been of scale and duration

Jonathan Cook Substack,  SCHEERPOSTJune 11, 2026

The truth slowly comes to light: Israel‘s genocide in Gaza was planned decades ago.

Listen to the testimonies of four Israeli soldiers who served in Gaza.

Soldier 1: “Human lives didn’t matter. You could kill, there was no law. No one would say a word to you. But it’s not a good feeling. It mainly kills your humanity.”

Soldier 2: “At first I wasn’t willing to execute Arabs who weren’t resisting [that is, civilians]. Then we came to the conclusion that we had to kill. We went through the process of ceasing to see them as human beings.”

Soldier 3: “We caught guys, lined them up and eliminated them. In retrospect, it looks like murder.”

Soldier 4: “We would roam through refugee camps in Gaza and carry out purges… Every soldier who was there created a ‘concentration camp’, and they didn’t hesitate to kill people who caused a slight disturbance.”

No, these testimonies are not new. The whistleblowers did not serve in Gaza during the current, ongoing genocide there. These accounts are nearly 60 years old, published last week by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz under the headline “We were ordered to kill”.

Israeli soldiers interviewed shortly after the 1967 war – often referred to as the Six-Day War – not only confessed that they and others routinely committed war crimes but they pointed out that they did so under orders from their commanders.

The accounts were compiled into a book, The Seventh Day: Soldiers Talk About the Six-Day War, by Avraham Shapira, though many testimonies were not included because they were too shocking.

None of this should be simply of historical interest. These accounts are a vivid reminder that what Israel has been doing during its current, near three-year destruction of Gaza – levelling all homes, hospitals, schools, universities, bakeries and government offices; murdering tens of thousands, more likely hundreds of thousands, of Palestinian civilians; and blocking aid and starving the population – is part of a decades-old pattern of Israeli military conduct.

Nothing “started” on 7 October 2023, when Hamas broke out for a single day of the Gaza “concentration camp” – the plight of Gaza’s Palestinians noted 59 years ago by Soldier 4.

Rather, Israel found an excuse that day to breathe new life into an old story, one in which it has been slaughtering and expelling Palestinians for decades. The chief difference this time is simply one of scale and duration.

Washington and other western capitals have given Israel the time and space to finish in Gaza what, earlier, it had only been able to achieve in part. Israel’s much greater firepower today, provided by modern munitions supplied by the United States, has allowed Israel to realise what before it could only dream of doing: wiping Gaza off the map.

Starvation policy

The whistleblowing soldiers of 1967 admitted their job was not to “fight the enemy” – or “eradicate the terrorists”, as Israeli leaders now term it. It was to kill and terrorise Palestinian civilians under cover of war.

Few soldiers were shy of saying why they were committing atrocities. Their task was to create a reign of terror, integral to Israel’s efforts to expel as many Palestinians as possible from the last remaining parts of the Palestinian homeland, the territories captured by the Israeli military in 1967 and then illegally occupied.

This was seen as a new opportunity to complete the ethnic cleansing campaign begun by Zionist militias in earnest in 1947 and 1948 as the British Mandate authorities withdrew from Palestine. By the end of that campaign, some 80 percent of Palestinians had been expelled from their homes inside the borders of the newly declared Jewish state…………………………………………………………………………..


Targeting innocents

The crimes of 1967 were understood long ago by Palestinian historians, who were, of course, not listened to. Israeli historians took much longer to start piecing together the story as they gained access to parts of Israel’s military archives.

Haaretz’s new investigation, based on research by the Akevot Institute, provides details of the ruthlessness of the mass expulsions of Palestinians beginning in 1967.

As the paper reports: “The historical inquiry shows that Israel expelled and drove out some 300,000 Arabs from the West Bank, Gaza and the [Syrian] Golan Heights. And as in 1948, the expulsion included killing civilians, sowing terror in Arab communities, looting and ultimately, destruction.”

Having managed in 1967 to again expel large numbers of Palestinians, the next task – as in 1948 – was to prevent their return…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Squeezed out

Israel’s 1967 campaign of expulsions in Gaza and the West Bank was not improvised, nor was it done on the spur of the moment. According to Haaretz, the policy had been carefully planned many years in advance.

Unlike their predecessors in the 1960s, today’s western leaders and their media chose to buy Israel the diplomatic time and space it needed – as well as providing the weapons and intelligence – to destroy Gaza. The genocide would have been impossible without their assistance.

Buoyed by this impunity, Israel has tried to spread the destruction further afield, with limited success in Iran and much greater success in south Lebanon.

As western politicians and media happily forget Gaza, Israel keeps up the relentless pressure and misery there. A so-called “Yellow Line”, demarcating Israeli military control over the destroyed enclave, an area off-limits to Palestinians, has gradually expanded from half the land to 70 percent.

The people of Gaza are quite literally being squeezed out of the ruins of their homeland, as Israel scrambles to find a third country – Egypt, or perhaps Somaliland – willing to take them in.

Erasing context

As the US cosmologist Carl Sagan famously observed: “You have to know the past to understand the present.”

Which is precisely why western politicians and media have been so careful to strip out the past, excising the context and background, such as Israel’s violent ethnic cleansing campaigns of 1948 and 1967, that explain Israel’s behaviour in the present – in Gaza, the West Bank and south Lebanon.

Western audiences, deprived of the region’s history, have been more easily manipulated into believing that Israeli atrocities are a response – and a supposedly “proportionate” one, at that – to Hamas’ one-day attack on Israel in late 2023.

An obvious truth has been obscured: that for at least eight decades, Israel has been exploiting any opportunity it could find to expel the Palestinians from their homeland.

The October 2023 Hamas attack was not a turning-point or a rupture, as it is so often presented in the West.

In 1967 – that is, 56 years before the Hamas attack – Eshkol advised that unforeseen events might accelerate Israel’s stealthy programme of ethnic cleansing. A moment might arrive in the future – what he called an “unexpected luxury solution” – when Israel could rapidly realise its dream of a Palestinian-free Palestine…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Prisons of complicity

Gaza is not an aberration. It is fully in accord with an eight-decade-long Israeli military strategy. Westerners aren’t aware of that only because their political and media class have worked strenuously to stop them from learning about it………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/11/how-israel-planned-the-gaza-genocide-decades-ago/

June 15, 2026 Posted by | history, Israel | Leave a comment

More Palestinians killed by Israeli military and settlers across occupied West Bank in last 3 years since Gaza hostilities than previous 17 combined – Oxfam

11 June 2026 AIMN Editorial, https://theaimn.net/more-palestinians-killed-by-israeli-military-and-settlers-across-occupied-west-bank-in-last-3-years-since-gaza-hostilities-than-previous-17-combined-oxfam/

More than one in five killed over last 20 years were children.

More Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military and settlers across the occupied West Bank in the last three years than in the previous 17 years combined, analysis from Oxfam has found. The number of children killed over the last three years was also higher.

An analysis of United Nations data found that 1,036 Palestinians – including 225 children – had been killed by Israeli forces or settlers between 2006 and the end of 2022. However, in the last three years, from 2023 to the end of last year by comparison, 1,244 Palestinians – including 268 children – have been killed.

Over the 20 years, 22 per cent – more than one in five of those killed – have been children.

For the same periods analysed, in the 17 years between 2006 until the end of 2022, 86 Israeli settlers, including 12 children, were killed by Palestinians. In the last three years – from 2023 to the end of 2025 – 43 Israeli settlers have been killed, including ten children.

The West Bank continues to be subjected to Israeli policies and practices of fast-tracked annexation, amid record mass forced displacement, movement restrictions, killings by army and settler militias, and ongoing military operations. Checkpoints and closures are fragmenting the territory and limiting access to essential services and livelihoods, while repeated state-backed settler violence is driving mass displacement.

Bushra Khalidi, Oxfam International Humanitarian Policy Lead said: “The mounting killing of civilians in the West Bank is tragic and horrifying. While the eyes of the world have been on Gaza, attacks in the West Bank have been accelerating. Since the atrocities committed by Hamas and other armed groups in 2023, Israel has committed genocide in Gaza while also enabling an unprecedented surge of violence across the West Bank.

“Oxfam works with Palestinian families whose lives have been destroyed. It is devastating that scores of children are being killed. This is the human cost of impunity, Israeli violence and cruelty in full view, while world leaders look the other way”.

A record number of Palestinians in the West Bank – nearly 46,000 – have been forcibly displaced over the last three years, compared to just over 13,000 for the previous 14 years combined by Israeli military operations, settler violence, demolitions and access restrictions. Many families are having to live in unstable and insecure conditions, often with host communities or in informal shelter arrangements, with limited access to essential services.

Saed* is 50 years old and was forced out of his home in the Ein Samya community. He said: “We used to deal with settlers all the time, but over the past three years, settler violence has increased massively. Eventually we had to leave and now a settler is staying in my home. I saw him. He took over the community too. It breaks my heart to talk about the past.

“We went to another community in Jericho, but it did not stop there. Settlers closed the roads, carried weapons, harassed and terrified our children on their way to school, and grazed their livestock inside our community, next to our houses. In the worst cases they would steal our livestock under the protection of the army and police.”

Communities across the West Bank have experienced repeated demolitions and destruction not just of their homes but water pipelines, animal shelters and trees. Last year, the World Health Organisation documented over 230 attacks on healthcare facilities, including obstructed access, the vandalization of ambulances and harassment of medical staff.

There is now a record 925 obstacles that permanently or intermittently restrict the movement of over 3 million Palestinians across the West Bank including East Jerusalem. This is 43 per cent more than the annual average of 647 movement obstacles in the preceding 20 years.

In the first three months of this year alone there have been more than 540 settler attacks, 33 Palestinian people killed and more than 2,200 people displaced. More than 60 water and sanitation structures have been vandalized, including pipelines, irrigation systems and water tanks, which have undermined access to water in 32 Palestinian communities.

Despite Israel’s ongoing process of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, Oxfam and its partners continue to support vulnerable communities across the West Bank with humanitarian assistance, including clean water, food, the rehabilitation of agricultural water cisterns and livestock shelters.

Oxfam is calling for an end to Israel’s unlawful occupation and further annexation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and to the foreign complicity in the illegal occupation and settlement enterprise. A just and sustainable peace must be anchored in international law and the right to self-determination.

June 14, 2026 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel | Leave a comment

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