“Israel in Panic Mode? Max Blumenthal Says Iran War Backfired”
In a wide-ranging conversation with Glenn Diesen, journalist Max Blumenthal argues that the failed U.S.-Israel war against Iran has exposed new political fractures in Washington, accelerated public opposition to unconditional support for Israel, and raised questions about what comes next for a region still on the brink.
Joshua Scheer, June 24, 2026, https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/24/israel-in-panic-mode-max-blumenthal-says-iran-war-backfired/
Washington Went to War to Show Strength. The World Saw Weakness.
In a new interview with Glenn Diesen, investigative journalist and The Grayzone editor-in-chief Max Blumenthal argues that the recent U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran has produced consequences far different from those envisioned by its architects. Rather than restoring deterrence, Blumenthal contends, the war exposed military limitations, deepened political divisions inside the United States, intensified scrutiny of Israel’s role in American politics, and left Washington searching for a way out of a costly confrontation.
The discussion explores the emerging Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, growing tensions between pro-Israel factions and the America First wing of the Republican Party, shifting public opinion toward Israel, and the possibility that Lebanon may become the next flashpoint in efforts to unravel the fragile agreement. Whether one agrees with Blumenthal’s analysis or not, the interview captures a moment of profound uncertainty—one in which old assumptions about U.S. power, Israeli influence, and the future of the Middle East are increasingly being challenged.
As Washington attempts to navigate the aftermath of a conflict that rattled global markets and reshaped regional calculations, the political and strategic fallout may continue long after the shooting stops. The debate now is not only about Iran, but about the future direction of U.S. foreign policy itself
Israel’s Biggest Fear Isn’t Iran—It’s Losing America
Max Blumenthal argues that the greatest consequence of the recent Iran conflict may not be military at all. The real shock, he contends, is the accelerating erosion of unconditional American support for Israel.
According to Blumenthal, the war exposed deep fractures within the U.S. political establishment. While traditional pro-Israel voices continue to dominate Washington, growing opposition is emerging from across the political spectrum. On the right, figures associated with the America First movement are increasingly questioning why U.S. resources and political capital are tied so closely to Israeli objectives. On the left, criticism of military aid and lobbying influence has become more mainstream than at any point in recent memory.
Blumenthal argues that public opinion has shifted dramatically. Polls showing rising skepticism toward military support for Israel, combined with growing frustration over foreign entanglements, suggest that a decades-old political consensus is weakening. What once seemed untouchable in American politics is now being openly debated.
The interview also explores how Israeli leaders may respond to this changing landscape. Blumenthal warns that efforts to maintain the status quo could intensify regional tensions, particularly in Lebanon, where clashes continue despite diplomatic efforts to stabilize the region. At the same time, he suggests that Israel’s political establishment is struggling to adapt to a reality in which criticism is no longer confined to the margins.
The discussion highlights a growing debate over the future of U.S.-Israel relations. The question is no longer simply how Washington will respond to Iran, but whether the political foundations of America’s long-standing alliance with Israel are beginning to shift beneath everyone’s feet.
Congress Is Preparing to Surrender American Sovereignty on the Eve of America’s 250th Anniversary
June 24, 2026, Dennis Kucinich and Elizabeth Kucinich, https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/24/congress-is-preparing-to-surrender-american-sovereignty-on-the-eve-of-americas-250th-anniversary/
Take Action to Defeat a Dangerous Expansion of the National Security State, Military Power Over Civilian Government, Foreign Policy Entrenchment, and the Erosion of Constitutional Self-Government Dennis Kucinich and Elizabeth Kucinich June 22, 2026
The United States Congress, on the very eve of the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, is preparing to formally diminish American independence and sovereignty through a proposed merger and long-term integration of executive functions throughout the government, coordinated by the Department of Defense.
Treacherous provisions in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) mandate that the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Commerce Department, and the heads of other relevant federal departments and agencies cooperate with their Israeli counterparts for the purpose of consolidating U.S. and Israeli military activities in order to align efforts and avoid duplication.
The greatest threat to American sovereignty rarely arrives wearing the uniform of a foreign army. It often arrives through the complacency, expediency, or poor judgment of elected officials who fail to recognize the long-term consequences of the powers they surrender.
Whether motivated by political convenience, misplaced loyalty, or simple inattention, such actions can erode constitutional self-government just as surely as deliberate acts of betrayal.
No foreign nation, regardless of whether it is Israel, Britain, Canada, France, or Japan, should be integrated into permanent executive, military, technological, intelligence, and research structures in a manner that diminishes American sovereignty and democratic accountability.
The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) recently identified Israel as a counterintelligence threat.
Under ordinary circumstances, such a finding would prompt heightened scrutiny, caution, and congressional oversight. Instead, Congress has continued advancing provisions in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would deepen military, technological, and strategic integration between the United States and Israel.
The legislation specifies Israel–U.S. coordination with America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Missile Defense Agency, including the Iron Dome initiative, the United States Space Command, directed energy programs, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and other critical technologies that will shape the future distribution of power.
Of all the areas mentioned, artificial intelligence and biotechnology may have the greatest long-term implications. These technologies will shape privacy, surveillance, predictive policing, digital identity systems, biosecurity, human enhancement technologies, and information control.
The Founders could never have imagined artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, or biotechnology directed by algorithms. Yet they understood a timeless truth: power must remain accountable to the people. The danger of our age is not merely that authority may concentrate in governments, corporations, or military institutions. It is that decisions of profound consequence may increasingly be delegated to technological systems that operate beyond the understanding and oversight of those whom the Constitution entrusts with governing.
The highly structured Israel–U.S. merger is included in the $1.5 trillion NDAA, in Section 219 (formerly Section 224) in the House version and Section 1217 in the Senate version. It puts in place policies that will bind future administrations.
Democracy depends on elected officials being able to alter policy. Permanent structures can make that increasingly difficult. Democracies function because citizens can change policy through elections. When military, intelligence, and technological institutions become permanently integrated across governments and bureaucracies, decision-making can drift beyond the reach of voters.
The issue is not cooperation with perceived allies. The issue is whether future Americans retain the practical ability to change course through democratic means. The democratic question, regardless of the technology involved, is simple: Who governs these technologies, and for what purpose?
Will decisions remain accountable to elected representatives and the American people, or will authority increasingly reside within security agencies, military institutions, and specialized technical bureaucracies beyond meaningful democratic oversight?
The U.S.–Israel military–executive merger provisions in the NDAA advance military influence across civilian government and create precisely the conditions the Constitution was designed to prevent.
Our Declaration of Independence condemned King George III for having rendered the military independent of and superior to the civil power and for having combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged by our laws.
The concern is not just military and executive integration with any foreign nation. It is the gradual expansion of military institutions into civilian domains including technology, biotechnology, commerce, communications, and artificial intelligence — and the effect on our Republic and our freedom.
As national security priorities become embedded throughout government, civilian decision-making becomes subordinate to military logic. Policies that should be determined through democratic debate become the province of security institutions, technical experts, and permanent bureaucracies.
The Founders repeatedly warned against permanent alliances because they understood the motivations of leaders of other countries may be inconsistent with American ideals or interests. The Founders structured the government of the United States so that future administrations would not be locked into foreign alliances that became vexatious.
If cooperation evolves into integration, future administrations will have less freedom to pursue independent diplomatic, military, technological, and economic policies. Decisions made in the name of efficiency today may limit the choices available to Americans tomorrow.
Congress is constitutionally responsible for oversight of the executive branch.
A key question is whether the military and executive merger provisions in the 2027 NDAA create new arrangements that are sufficiently transparent and reviewable by Congress. If significant military, intelligence, technological, or strategic decisions become embedded within joint frameworks, legislators may find themselves attempting to oversee systems that have acquired their own institutional momentum.
Ironclad collaborative provisions uniting Israel and the United States in the 2027 NDAA are being advanced on the basis of current political relationships and short-term strategic considerations rather than a careful assessment of their long-term institutional consequences. Congress has devoted remarkably little attention to how such an arrangement could affect American sovereignty, constitutional accountability, civilian control of the government of the United States, and the ability of future generations to alter policy through democratic means.
The question before Congress is not whether Israel is a friend today. The question is whether the permanent integration of military, technological, intelligence, research, and governmental functions with any foreign nation serves the long-term interests of the United States.
The Declaration of Independence and our constitutional system have been entrusted to our care. Alliances between nations may change. Governments change. Political leaders come and go, friendships change. Yet the structures established by law can endure for generations.
The Constitution was designed to preserve the sovereignty of the American Republic through democratic accountability, separation of powers, and civilian control of government. Any arrangement that permanently embeds foreign influence within executive, military, intelligence, technological, or research institutions will not stand once it receives the highest degree of constitutional scrutiny.
Congress has already struggled to reclaim its constitutionally based war powers. The military establishment has steadily accumulated influence across multiple domains of public policy. These provisions move further in that direction by embedding foreign military and security priorities throughout the machinery of government.
Members of Congress swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath is a sacred trust and does not abide treachery. Any measure that diminishes American sovereignty, weakens constitutional self-government, or places the powers of this Republic in alignment with a foreign authority violates both the spirit of that oath and the duty owed to every American citizen.
As America approaches its 250th year, Congress is poised to bind future generations through strategic commitments made to a foreign power today. These provisions reflect a profound failure of constitutional judgment. They elevate short-term political and military considerations above the enduring duty to preserve the sovereignty, independence, and freedom of action of the United States.
The Founders warned repeatedly against arrangements that would entangle future generations in obligations they neither chose nor approved. Yet Congress now stands on the threshold of embracing precisely such an arrangement, limiting the freedom of future American leaders to chart an independent course in diplomacy, technology, security, and national defense.
Whether driven by political expediency, misplaced loyalties, institutional inertia, or a failure to grasp the long-term consequences of their actions, the result is the same: a diminished capacity for self-government and a dangerous departure from the constitutional principles that have safeguarded American independence for two and a half centuries.
On the eve of America’s 250th year, every citizen must decide whether independence is merely a memory to celebrate or a responsibility to defend.
TAKE ACTION
The merger is timed to be voted on the week of June 29, just before the Fourth of July.
Let us truly celebrate our independence by staying independent. Please help spread the word and forward this article.
Find your member of Congress: House | Senate
It is urgent that you call your congressional representative today at 202‑224‑3121 and tell them to strip Section 219 (House) or Section 1217 (Senate) from the 2027 NDAA.
Congressmen Tom Massie (R‑KY) and Ro Khanna (D‑CA) will offer an amendment in the House to remove Section 219. Please tell your U.S. Representative: Support the Massie–Khanna Amendment to the NDAA.
Optional telephone script for the House of Representatives:
My name is ______ and I am a constituent. I am calling to urge Representative ______ to support the Massie–Khanna Amendment and to remove Section 219 from the NDAA. Congress should defend American sovereignty, uphold the Constitution, and reject any measure that integrates the executive and military functions of the United States with those of a foreign government. Please pass my message to the Representative. Thank you.
Please now circulate this article to your friends and network and ask them to take urgent action.
Vance: Israeli Officials Need To Realize Trump Is the Only Head of State Still ‘Sympathetic’ to Israel
The US vice president also called out Smotrich and Ben Gvir, saying they can’t ‘kill their way’ out of every problem
by Dave DeCamp | June 18, 2026 , https://news.antiwar.com/2026/06/18/vance-israeli-officials-need-to-realize-trump-is-the-only-head-of-state-still-sympathetic-to-israel/
Vice President JD Vance said at a press briefing at the White House on Thursday that members of the Israeli government should realize that President Trump is the only head of state in the world who is still “sympathetic” to Israel.
The vice president made the comments when discussing Israeli officials who have been harshly critical of the Memorandum of Understanding President Trump signed with Iran on Wednesday.
“I guess my message to them would be twofold. Number one, Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time, and he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world,” Vance said.
Vance also pointed to the fact that Israel is extremely reliant on US military support. “The other thing that I would say is that over the last three months, two-thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars,” he said.
In an interview with The New York Times, published on Thursday, Vance specifically called out Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, both of whom have rejected the US-Iran MoU.
“And I guess my response to them would be: What is your exact proposal? You’re a country of nine million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have,” Vance said.
The US vice president added that the Israeli ministers should “give a little bit of credit to the United States of America, which I think has been an incredible partner for the Israeli government for a long time.”
While Vance had some harsh words for Israeli officials, there’s still no sign that the Trump administration is willing to leverage military aid to Israel or threaten to cut it off to get Israel to end its war in southern Lebanon, which has continued, though at a lower intensity, since the announcement of the US-Iran MoU, which calls for a complete halt to the conflict.
Iranian officials have said that the MoU hinges on ending the Lebanon was and an Israeli withdrawal from the country. “The end of the war includes the end of occupation. Without the withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories they occupied during this war, the war will have not been fully brought to an end,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said earlier this week.
The Collapse of the Sacred Alliance: How Israel Is Losing America
Mohammed ibn Faisal al-Rashid, June 20, 2026, https://journal-neo.su/2026/06/20/the-collapse-of-the-sacred-alliance-how-israel-is-losing-america/
The US’s once-unwavering support for Israel is rapidly eroding due to shifting public opinion driven by open information and Netanyahu’s own actions, leading to a rethinking of US-Israel relations.
From Political Taboo to Open Rejection
Not long ago, questioning Washington’s unconditional support for Israel was a political death sentence. American lawmakers, presidential candidates, and even human rights advocates steered clear of the topic as if it were a cursed circle. Today, that circle has been broken. Since October 2023, public opinion in the United States has undergone a tectonic shift. What was built over decades with billions of dollars in lobbying efforts is collapsing before our very eyes. And the numbers are relentless.
Numbers You Can’t Ignore
American approval of Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip has fallen to a catastrophic 32 percent. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Among Americans under 35, that figure is a paltry 9 percent. Nine. Percent.
The Chicago Council on International Relations, which has tracked U.S.-Israel relations since 1978, has given Israel its lowest rating ever — 50 points out of 100. The worst score in nearly half a century.
This isn’t a statistical blip. This is a historic failure.
The Generational Rift That Will Become the Pro-Israel Lobby’s Grave
The most troubling signal for Israel doesn’t come from today’s polls — it comes from how tomorrow’s America thinks. Only one in ten young Americans approves of Israel’s actions in Gaza. Among people over 55, that number is one in two.
On Iran, the picture is the same: 15 percent of young people supported Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, compared with 55 percent of older Americans.
And mind you, this is among Democrats. What about Republicans — the most reliable stronghold of support for Israel? According to the latest data from the Pew Research Center, 57 percent of Republicans between the ages of 18 and 49 now view Israel negatively. A year ago, that number was 50 percent. The trend is accelerating.
Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky told Politico: “My constituents no longer understand why their tax dollars are being used to bomb hospitals in Gaza. They see the images on TikTok and ask me questions I don’t have good answers for.”
The Gulf Between Official Rhetoric and Reality
So what happened? Why did something built over decades collapse in just a few months?
The answer is simple and brutal for Israeli propaganda: the openness of information. Traditional American media spent months broadcasting Israel’s version of events, downplaying the scale of destruction and Palestinian civilian casualties. But social media told a different story.
Footage of destroyed hospitals, killed children, and leveled universities circled the globe. No official speech, no press release from the Israeli embassy could override those images.
Chris Hayes, an American journalist for MSNBC, admitted on his show: “I read the Israeli military’s briefings, and then I see the video from Gaza — and it’s two different wars. Trust erodes when the gap becomes too obvious.” (MSNBC, April 2, 2025)
AIPAC Is Losing Its Stranglehold
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was long considered the most powerful foreign policy lobby in Washington. Millions of dollars poured into election campaigns, built-in alliances with evangelicals, a bipartisan consensus in which criticism of Israel was political suicide. Today, that machine is sputtering.
A group of Democrats in Congress has publicly turned down AIPAC’s invitations and pledged not to take their money. Among them: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, and Senator Bernie Sanders.
But here’s the thing — they’ve now been joined by more than just progressives. Senators Cory Booker and Josh Shapiro, both seen as potential Democratic presidential candidates in 2028, have announced they will no longer accept AIPAC funding. California Governor Gavin Newsom has made a similar pledge.
A year ago, that would have been unthinkable. Today, it’s becoming the norm.
Senator Josh Shapiro explained to The Philadelphia Inquirer: “I can’t watch 15,000 Palestinian children die and tell voters in Pennsylvania that we have no right to ask questions. That’s not antisemitism. That’s humanism.” (The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 28, 2025)
Strange Bedfellows: The Left and the Right Against Israel
Something unprecedented is happening in modern American politics. Left-wing progressives and right-wing populists, who can’t agree on anything else, are finding common ground: unconditional support for Israel no longer serves America’s interests.
Former Trump allies — Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene — have openly accused the president of letting Israel drag the U.S. into a conflict with Iran.
Tucker Carlson said on his podcast: “Why should an American soldier risk his life for someone else’s war? Israel is a sovereign nation. Let them figure it out. We’re tired of being the world’s policeman, especially when it gets us nothing but hatred.”
Even Robert Kagan, the neoconservative intellectual and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, warned in Foreign Affairs (March 2025): “This conflict could end very badly for Israel. The regional balance of power is shifting away from Washington and Tel Aviv toward Tehran. Netanyahu’s stubbornness will come at a high price.”
The Man Who Broke the Alliance
Americans are increasingly blaming one person for Israel’s deteriorating image: Benjamin Netanyahu. According to a CNN poll, 59 percent of Americans don’t trust him. Last year, that number was 42 percent.
But here’s the most telling part — the distrust cuts across party lines. 81 percent of older Democrats don’t trust Netanyahu. And 58 percent of young Republicans don’t either.
Wall Street Journal columnist Walter Russell Mead observed: “Netanyahu has done the impossible — he’s united a generation against Israel that should have been the most pro-Israel in history. Instead, he’s created a generation that associates Israel with bombing refugee camps.”
What Future for U.S.-Israel Relations?
Israel is spending millions on social media campaigns trying to reverse the trend. It’s useless. The shift is structural, not rhetorical. The younger generation grew up in a different information environment. The Democratic Party is moving decisively left on foreign policy. Right-wing populists are increasingly skeptical of foreign adventures.
For decades, Israel took America’s unconditional support for granted. Like air. Like water. Like something inalienable.
Perhaps those years were the exception, not the rule. And now Israel is about to find out what it’s like to be on the other side. Isolated. Under a microscope. Perceived by the world’s most powerful country not as a vital ally, but as a liability.
University of Chicago political science professor John Mearsheimer
Reality bites – by Walt Zlotow
22 June 2026 AIMN Editorial, By Walt Zlotow, https://theaimn.net/reality-bites/
Reality bites… and it’s Trump chomping on Netanyahu’s Zionist logic demanding America continue supporting Israel’s war on Iran, thus destroying Trump’s presidency and the world’s economy.
President Trump appears done with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s near total control of US Middle East foreign policy.
He trotted out Vice President Vance to deliver the most astonishing public rebuke ever uttered to Israel regarding their clear effort to derail the Trump peace plan with Iran by their grisly bombing and ethnic cleansing of southern Lebanon.
“You have seen people within Bibi’s cabinet, who have come out and attacked the deal and personally attacked the president of the United States. Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world. Over two thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars. Anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.”
Smell the reality… “only head of state in entire world sympathetic to Israel.” It does not get much more biting than that. And it’s about time. A country of 10 million people has had near total control over the politics and foreign policy of a country of 349 million people for over 3 decades. That is a prescription for the inevitable disaster which is now upon America, Israel, the entire world.
Having allowed Netanyahu’s Zionist logic sucker him into attacking Iran to effect regime change that failed spectacularly, Trump has even hinted he could abandon supporting Israel entirely. Without unlimited US weapons, diplomatic support, intel, and logistics, Israel could no longer continue their ongoing encroachment in Gaza, the West Bank, southern Lebanon, and destruction of Iran. Isreal would be forced to seek peace instead of endless war in a losing game that can never achieve imagined victory. That reality wouldn’t bite. It would be welcomed indeed.
Climate change matters
by beyondnuclearinternational, https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2026/06/21/climate-change-matters/
Environmental laws should be adhered to not abolished, says Diane Curran
For 45 years, I have represented environmental organizations and state and local governments in US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing and enforcement proceedings, as well as in federal court. Today, more than ever, we need to talk about climate change.
I currently represent Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club in a case challenging the NRC’s refusal to consider how climate change may affect the safety and environmental integrity of nuclear reactors in initial licensing and license-renewal proceedings. The case has been briefed and argued in the D.C. Circuit, and we are awaiting a decision.
Climate change must be accounted for in reactor licensing because it challenges the NRC’s ability to ensure safe operation over the decades of a reactor’s operating license term. Weather-related hazards—including floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, derechos, wildfires, drought, and extreme heat and cold—are becoming more severe and more frequent. Assessing how those risks are likely to evolve over the operating life of a reactor is difficult, but it is essential to protecting public safety and environmental integrity. It is also essential to ensure reliability of the electricity supply.
Unfortunately, even before the Trump administration took office, the NRC has consistently declined to take a systematic approach to how climate change could affect the future safety of new and existing reactors undergoing licensing review. Instead, the agency has generally looked backward—preparing for the worst weather events in the historical record rather than assessing how climate-related risks may change over time. With respect to those prospectively changing risks, the NRC simply says that its safety oversight includes “large margins of error” and “defense-in-depth.”
We need look no farther than Hurricane Helene to see how quickly the lessons of the past and generalizations about safety margins can evaporate in the face of the unique and severe challenges posed by extreme weather events. No hurricane with such record-breaking rainfall had passed through the Appalachian Mountains before Helene. Flooding and landslides resulted in 250 deaths and between $80 and $250 billion in damages. Two years later, the region is still recovering.
Consider how much worse the effects of Hurricane Helene might have been had it passed about 25 miles west over of the three-reactor Oconee nuclear plant in the mountains of South Carolina. Oconee is a pump-storage plant, built into the side of an earthen dam beneath two lakes totaling about 2 million acre-feet of water. At the time the plant was built, dam failure was not viewed as a credible event warranting design features to protect safety equipment from inundation and failure. What if the effects of Hurricane Helene had included a radiological accident caused by failure of the dams above the Oconee nuclear plant? The devastation to human health and the environment would be almost unimaginable. But the NRC recently re-licensed Oconee to operate for a second license renewal term, refusing demands to consider climate change in its decision.
What can be done to close this dangerous and expensive gap in the NRC’s regulatory process? If the Atomic Energy Act were the NRC’s only governing statute, the public would have little chance of challenging the NRC’s refusal to consider climate-related risks on the ground that it posed an unacceptable risk to public health and safety. Because the NRC is the principal agency charged with carrying out the Act’s requirements, courts generally afford it broad discretion in how and when it does so.
But the NRC is also governed by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Although NEPA and its implementing regulations have been narrowed in recent years by Congress and the NRC, its core requirement remains intact: when an NRC licensing decision could significantly affect the human environment, the NRC must evaluate the risk and consider alternatives to avoid or mitigate it. NEPA does not dictate a particular outcome, but it does require the NRC to disclose and assess relevant information. And while courts still give the NRC some discretion in identifying and evaluating significant impacts, that discretion is more constrained than under the Atomic Energy Act.
We are hopeful that the D.C. Circuit will compel the NRC to address the safety and environmental implications of climate change in reactor licensing and license-renewal proceedings. But given the Trump administration’s public position on climate change and its policy of minimizing costs to the nuclear industry, we should not assume the NRC will produce a strong environmental analysis if we prevail.
Even so, a court victory would be significant in three important respects:
- It would establish the principle that climate change is real and must be addressed in reactor licensing. Members of the public could then invoke that principle with legislators, state regulators, and potential investors on specific nuclear projects.
- A favorable ruling would push future NRC leadership to incorporate climate change into licensing decisions.
- Even if the NRC’s analysis of climate-related accident risk were weak or flawed, state and local governments would be able to independently evaluate the NRC’s claims and decide for themselves whether to support a new reactor or a license-renewal project.
The Trump administration’s tenure is a discouraging time for anyone concerned about nuclear reactor safety and climate change. But Mother Nature does not read executive orders, and she will have the last word. In the meantime, NEPA remains a meaningful tool for forcing the NRC to reckon with the reality of climate change before great harm occurs.
Diane Curran is an attorney who litigates against the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This article is drawn from a presentation Curran made duriong a June 2nd briefing on Capitol Hill.
The Persistence of Israel First
SCHEERPOST, June 23, 2026, Timothy Hopper for Foreign Policy in Focus
If there is one conclusion to be drawn from the latest confrontation involving Iran, the United States, and Israel, it is the remarkably short life of Donald Trump’s “America First” doctrine. Trump returned to power promising to break with Washington’s foreign-policy establishment, avoid costly overseas commitments, and place the interests of American citizens above the demands of allies and foreign governments. For a brief moment, recent tensions involving Iran appeared to support that narrative. Reports of disagreements between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, combined with signals that the White House remained open to diplomacy with Tehran, created the impression that the administration might finally be pursuing a genuinely independent Middle East policy.
That impression did not last. The sudden hardening of the White House’s tone toward Tehran, followed by the decision to authorize military action against Iran, exposed the limits of Trump’s supposed break with the old order. The strike was more than a military operation; it was a test of whether “America First” could survive a direct collision with Israel’s security priorities.
The outcome suggested that it could not. More importantly, the episode highlighted a broader pattern that extends far beyond the current crisis. The Iran strike was not an isolated departure from “America First.” It was the latest example of a recurring reality: whenever American and Israeli priorities diverge in the Middle East, Trump’s record consistently shows a preference for the latter.
The evidence stretches across both Trump administrations. One of the clearest examples was his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement in 2018. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was far from perfect, but it imposed significant restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program while avoiding military confrontation. European allies overwhelmingly supported preserving the agreement because they viewed it as a mechanism for regional stability. American intelligence agencies repeatedly indicated that Iran was complying with its core obligations at the time of withdrawal.
Yet one government had long viewed the agreement as unacceptable regardless of compliance: Israel. Netanyahu devoted years to opposing the deal and publicly pressured Washington to abandon it. Trump ultimately did exactly that. The result was not greater American security but the collapse of diplomatic constraints, heightened regional tensions, and a path that eventually led toward direct military confrontation.
The same pattern appeared in Trump’s 2017 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocate the U.S. embassy. For decades, Republican and Democratic administrations alike avoided such a move because they feared it would inflame regional tensions and undermine Washington’s ability to act as a mediator. The decision delivered a major symbolic and political victory to Israel while generating little measurable strategic benefit for the United States. It weakened America’s diplomatic position across much of the Arab and Muslim world without producing progress toward regional peace.
Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2019 followed a similar logic. No urgent American national-security interest required the move. The decision did not reduce threats to the U.S. homeland, strengthen the American economy, or improve the lives of American citizens. It did, however, fulfill a longstanding Israeli objective and further aligned U.S. policy with Israeli territorial preferences. Once again, Washington absorbed diplomatic costs while Israel obtained a strategic gain…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. the Iran episode carries significance beyond the immediate military confrontation. It forces a reconsideration of the meaning of “America First” itself. If the doctrine can be suspended whenever Israeli security concerns become central to a crisis, then its practical limitations are far greater than its supporters acknowledged. The issue is not whether Trump supports Israel. Many American presidents have done so. The issue is whether support for Israel has become so deeply embedded within Washington’s political structure that even presidents elected on promises of strategic independence find themselves unable—or unwilling—to depart from it.
The most important question raised by the recent confrontation is therefore not about Iran. It is about the nature of American power and decision-making. Can American foreign policy in the Middle East be defined independently of Israeli preferences when significant disagreements emerge? Or has support for Israel become such a foundational principle that it overrides alternative conceptions of national interest regardless of who occupies the White House?
Trump’s record provides a revealing answer. From the nuclear deal to Jerusalem, from the Golan Heights to the recent strike on Iran, the pattern is difficult to ignore. The slogan “America First” may have transformed American political rhetoric, but when confronted with the most consequential Middle Eastern decisions, Washington repeatedly returned to a familiar reality. The durability of “Israel First” has proven far greater than the lifespan of the doctrine that promised to replace it. https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/23/the-persistence-of-israel-first/
Congress Quietly Moves to Merge U.S. and Israeli Militaries
In the end, the fight over Section 224 is about far more than a single provision in a single defense bill. It is a test of whether the United States will continue drifting toward a model of permanent, opaque military integration with a foreign power — one that bypasses public debate, weakens congressional authority, and embeds private industry interests deep inside national security decision‑making.
June 23, 2026, Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/23/congress-quietly-moves-to-merge-u-s-and-israeli-militaries/
As public support for Israel continues to erode amid the wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, a little-noticed provision buried inside the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act could fundamentally reshape the relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv. Critics warn that Section 224—the “United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative”—would move beyond annual military aid and toward full military-industrial integration, creating a permanent infrastructure that binds the two countries’ defense sectors together while reducing transparency, congressional oversight, and public accountability.
On this week’s Clearing the FOG, Margaret Flowers speaks with Quincy Institute foreign policy expert Ben Freeman about what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly calls “my plan”—a proposal that would establish a Pentagon official dedicated to integrating U.S. and Israeli military systems, supply chains, intelligence networks, artificial intelligence programs, cybersecurity operations, and weapons production. Freeman argues that the measure would make future efforts to limit U.S. support for Israel far more difficult, while opening the door to potentially unlimited taxpayer-funded contracts for Israeli defense firms.
Highlights From the Interview
A Shift From Aid to Permanent Integration
Freeman explains that the proposal represents a major strategic shift. Rather than relying on periodic aid packages that require congressional approval, the new framework would weave Israeli defense interests directly into the U.S. military-industrial complex. Once Israeli firms become embedded in American supply chains, he argues, disentangling the relationship becomes politically and economically difficult.Highlights From the Interview
A Shift From Aid to Permanent Integration
Freeman explains that the proposal represents a major strategic shift. Rather than relying on periodic aid packages that require congressional approval, the new framework would weave Israeli defense interests directly into the U.S. military-industrial complex. Once Israeli firms become embedded in American supply chains, he argues, disentangling the relationship becomes politically and economically difficult.
An Executive Agent With Little Oversight
At the center of the proposal is a new Pentagon “executive agent” tasked with expanding military cooperation across a broad range of technologies, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, drones, quantum computing, data sharing, and network integration. According to Freeman, this position would report to the Secretary of Defense rather than Congress, significantly reducing legislative oversight of U.S.-Israel military cooperation.
Unlimited Funding Potential
Unlike the Obama-era Memorandum of Understanding, which capped military assistance at $3.8 billion annually, Freeman warns that the new arrangement contains no meaningful financial ceiling. Israeli defense firms could potentially gain access to massive Pentagon programs—including missile defense initiatives such as the proposed “Golden Dome”—creating a new stream of taxpayer-funded contracts that could exceed current aid levels.
Expanding the Reach of the Israel Lobby
Freeman argues that military integration would provide another avenue for political influence. By placing Israeli-linked defense projects and jobs in congressional districts across the country, lawmakers could face increasing pressure to support Israeli interests regardless of public opinion. He describes the proposal as potentially putting “the Israel lobby on steroids” by adding Pentagon-linked economic leverage to existing lobbying and campaign-finance networks.
Intelligence Sharing Raises Additional Concerns
The discussion also highlights a separate provision moving through Congress that would expand intelligence sharing between the United States and Israel. Critics argue the measure could compel U.S. agencies to provide intelligence with minimal restrictions while limiting oversight over how that information is ultimately used or distributed.
What Can Be Done?
Despite the bill’s progress, Freeman says public pressure is already having an impact. Congressional offices have reportedly received significant constituent feedback opposing the measure, and some lawmakers are reconsidering their positions. He urges listeners to contact their representatives and senators and demand that Section 224 be removed before the NDAA reaches final passage.
The Bigger Picture
The conversation concludes by placing the proposal within the broader context of U.S. foreign policy and military spending. Freeman argues that Washington increasingly relies on military solutions while neglecting diplomacy and development. With annual U.S. military and national security expenditures approaching unprecedented levels, he contends that deeper military integration with Israel would further entrench a foreign policy driven by militarism rather than democratic accountability.
Listen to the full interview with Ben Freeman and Margaret Flowers to learn how Section 224 could transform the U.S.-Israel relationship—and why critics believe the measure deserves far more public scrutiny before becoming law.
In the end, the fight over Section 224 is about far more than a single provision in a single defense bill. It is a test of whether the United States will continue drifting toward a model of permanent, opaque military integration with a foreign power — one that bypasses public debate, weakens congressional authority, and embeds private industry interests deep inside national security decision‑making. As Ben Freeman warns, once these pipelines of technology, intelligence, and weapons production are fused, they will be extraordinarily difficult to unwind, no matter how sharply public opinion turns or how grave the humanitarian consequences become.
At a moment when Americans are increasingly questioning endless war, rising military budgets, and the political influence of defense contractors, Section 224 would lock in precisely the opposite trajectory. It would expand the reach of the military‑industrial complex, supercharge the political leverage of the Israel lobby, and commit U.S. taxpayers to an open‑ended stream of contracts and joint programs with little transparency and even less accountability.
Whether this provision survives the final NDAA will depend on how much pressure lawmakers feel from the people they represent. If the public remains silent, the Pentagon and its partners will move forward with an unprecedented integration project that reshapes U.S. foreign policy for a generation. If voters speak up, Congress may yet be forced to reconsider a measure that deserves far more scrutiny than it has received.
The stakes are simple: a democratic decision about whether the United States deepens its entanglement in a widening regional war, or whether it reasserts civilian oversight and a foreign policy grounded in accountability rather than automatic militarism.
Republican, Democratic criticism of Trump’s Iran peace initiative promotes renewed war not peace
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL 20 June 26
Not one of America’s 535 Congresspersons is sensible enough to applaud Trump’s surrender on Iran’s sensible terms in his lost war on Iran.
The Memorandum of Understanding signed June 19 is hanging by a thread due to Israel’s continued grisly bombing of Lebanon. This violates an Iranian red line that cancelled the first day of negotiations in the new 60 day ceasefire to resolve remaining issues to officially end hostilities. The peace process appears stillborn.
But congressional critics totally ignore Israeli perfidy in Lebanon blowing up the peace process. They’re laser focused on lambasting Trump’s refusing to complete his Iran war aims of regime change, ending Iranian nuclear enrichment, destroying Iranian offensive missile stocks and maintaining life suffocating economic sanctions.
Their hair is on fire Trump is going to release stolen Iranian billions and pay billions in reparations for the damage his thousands of bombs inflicted. They’re astonished, indeed horrified he’s pledged to respect the Iranian regime going forward.
To hear these congresspersons masquerading as sensible public servants, Trump has certified America’s war loss, something they view infinitely worse than ending a war America had no chance of winning against a peaceful country, with no nuclear weapons program, posing no threat to America whatsoever.
Republicans and Democrats both demand Iran requires regime change and subservience to US dominance. They differ only on strategy and tactics. Democrats prefer endless economic sanctions warfare, retaining Iran’s stolen billions, choking off their oil sales thru banking restrictions combined with political intimidation and isolation.
Republicans prefer outright war. They were all in for Trump’s aerial assault to decapitate and collapse the Iranian leadership to achieve his multiple war objectives. Now they are apoplectic Trump has surrendered to avert the worldwide economic collapse his blunder will inevitably cause. Without stating explicitly, their withering criticism implies Tramp should complete his promise to totally destroy Iran.
Not one of these 535 congressional fools will be honest enough to admit Trump is doing the right thing surrendering to bring peace to the region and economic survival to the world. Not one of them will admit the obvious truth that Israel conned Trump to commit political and military suicide in attacking a thoroughly prepared Iran. Not one will confess that Israel is blowing up the peace process which will prevent reopening the Strait of Hormuz risking further worldwide economic catastrophe. Not one will demand Trump cut off all military aid to Israel till Israel pulls out of Lebanon, pulls out of Gaza, stops slaughtering Palestinians in the West Bank and honestly negotiates a Palestinian state.
All they see is an imaginary, nuclear ready Iran they demonize while ignoring a massively nuclear armed, endlessly waring Israel they idolize.
In the Middle East Trump appears to have learned a hard lesson. Congress has not.
This Is Why Trump Was Necessary
it is entirely conceivable that Israel, just like South Africa, will be globally ostracised and abandoned.
Trump was necessary. Necessary to strip away the niceties and reveal the true face of empire, to reveal its naked impunity, to showcase the war crimes in all their immoral bloodlust.
Nate Bear, Jun 19, 2026, https://www.donotpanic.news/p/this-is-why-trump-was-necessary
Iran has forced the US into one of the biggest strategic defeats in its short, violent and bloody history.
The memorandum of understanding with Iran, signed (symbolically or not), at Versailles yesterday, signalled, as I wrote earlier this week, that we’re witnessing the collapse of American hard power.
After it was signed, Trump made some extraordinary comments that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the handbook of anti-imperial critique, including that it’s not fair to tell Iran it can’t have missiles if all it’s neighbours have them and that it’s “common sense” that the country should be able to enrich uranium for energy. Trump also admitted oil reserves were running out and the world was approaching a depression, which slays the idea (an idea I never bought), that the US attack was a genius move to control the world’s oil and gas.
Iran has suffered some serious damage to its infrastructure as well as burying over 3,000 civilians, but it has checkmated the US strategically. And Trump has had to accept that. Iran’s ability to hit key regional infrastructure from deeply-buried missile cities, along with its ability to control the Strait, won the day. The US also appears to be reluctantly accepting some other realities. A few hours after the MoU was signed, after it was put to him that Israel wasn’t happy with the tentative deal, JD Vance said that Israel “is a country of nine million people that can’t just kill its way out of every national security problem.”
They read the polls, they see the way the wind is blowing, and they’re moving with it.
Israel of course is still a vital strategic outpost for empire, and it will not be abandoned yet. But there is absolutely a future in which the value of Israel to empire becomes less useful than the economic value empire can gain from a wider peace in the region, even if that peace runs counter to Israeli interests. And if Israel, not Iran or the resistance, comes to be seen as the main obstacle to this future, a position Trump and Vance appear to be moving towards, it is entirely conceivable that Israel, just like South Africa, will be globally ostracised and abandoned.
If this were to happen, the range of outcomes is extremely broad. Tensions between orthodox and secular Jews are already high in Israel, and you could reasonably argue that under conditions of global abandonment, civil war would break out. Before or after such a war, you might get a government run by Ben-Gvir and Jewish end-times fanatics who decide to fight the world and trigger a nuclear holocaust. Or the fanatics might lose, and you get a government which enters into international negotiations towards one state with equal rights for all. A former prime minister of Israel has, after all, just labelled Israeli actions in the West Bank ethnic cleansing.
I think we’re a long way from Israel ever giving up its colonial privileges. Civil war is a lot more likely than the negotiated end of the state, but we’re certainly a big step closer than we’ve ever been to whatever comes next for the genocidal colonial outpost.
Maybe this all seems too optimistic to you. And I hate to blow my own trumpet. But I was among the minority who predicted the start of the war before it started, who said Iran wouldn’t lose, that there’d be no regime change and no US victory via an air war was possible. When the ceasefire was announced I was among even fewer who said it would hold because the US was out of real options, while the consensus anti-imperial opinion said it was a ruse to buy time for a land invasion or other escalation.
And now, despite the calling off of talks in Geneva over the next stage of the process, my prediction, for what it’s worth, is that this won’t mean a return to war, and that in fact it will further the process of US-Israel estrangement, with Trump and Vance likely to see it as further confirmation that Israel, not Iran, is the impediment to peace.
Which is all to say, Trump was a necessary evil.
Of course we’ll never know if a Democrat as president would have launched an attack on Iran, but it would have come eventually. And given that an attack on Iran was inevitable, it was the best case scenario that it happened under Trump, an ideologically drifting narcissist without any real loyalties or attachments. A man motivated to protect his own personal financial interests above anything else (a number of which sit within the range of Iranian missiles). A man who was always going to be outmanoeuvred by a country led, literally, by men and women with PhDs, by philosophers, mystics and engineers. There were reports that in the process of negotiations, Iran drafted in the country’s top psychologists to craft messages to appeal to Trump’s ego and vainglorious personality. It appears to have worked.
From only ever acting retaliatorily, from closing the Strait of Hormuz to striking American bases and the oil and gas infrastructure of US proxies, to employing psychologists to sweet talk a narcissist, Iran bossed the process from day one.
And Israel knows it.
Its attacks on Lebanon are a final attempt to derail the process and regain some leverage over the negotiations. I don’t think it’ll work. We’re too far down the track. The Strait opens, the oil and gas starts flowing, or, with oil reserves at critical levels, we’re looking at a global depression. And Trump now appears motivated to avoid that, not least to protect his own wealth, above and beyond the objections of Israel. I don’t believe, as many still do, that the MoU, Trump’s comments and Vance’s criticisms of Israel, are all part of some drawn out psy-op before another attack on Iran.
This isn’t to give Trump any credit. It’s just to say empire isn’t omnipotent or strategically untouchable. You can, with the right war strategy, alongside favourable geography and propitious timing, force it to make concessions it doesn’t want to make.
Trump was necessary. Necessary to strip away the niceties and reveal the true face of empire, to reveal its naked impunity, to showcase the war crimes in all their immoral bloodlust. Yes, from Vietnam to Iraq to the so-called War on Terror, what Trump has shown us is nothing new, but through careful stage-management and competent administration, the myth of benign American empire has managed to endure. I’m not sure that myth will survive Trump. He’s also been necessary to reveal the limits of empire, to show it can be beaten, to expose its vulnerabilities, to detail its weaknesses.
Iran should have tied Gaza more closely to the MoU, as it has with Lebanon, but it has delivered a valuable blueprint in how to fight empire.
Trump has also been necessary to expose the plastic progressives, the liberal anti-Trump imperialists who, in their opposition to Trump’s deal with Iran, can only look like warmongering imperial psychopaths. From all those sharing memes on social media about surrender, from the Democrats and CNN talking heads decrying the deal, to Jimmy Fallon dragging Trump for giving Iran back the money the US stole, there is no articulation of an alternative to endlessly bombing Iran. There’s no anger from liberals over dead Iranians, or at the imperial state, at Zionism or the embedded death machinery that made this violence possible. No, they’re just embarrassed for empire. And they don’t want to recognise the limits of that empire.
With Israel still bombing Lebanon and oil reserves at critical thresholds, however, this is all far from over.
Iran has sketched out two futures for the US and it now has a decision to make: stand behind the deal which Trump has loudly proclaimed as necessary to save the world, and force Israel to stand down, or let Israel dictate the process, return to war and drag the world into an economic depression. Anything is still possible, of course, but I judge the latter extremely unlikely.
And Trump, in his egotism, venality and conceited self-interest, might just be the man for the moment.
What I do know is that those Iranian psychologists have some more work to do.
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.
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.
The Nuclear Reactors Coming to a Small Town Near You
As a disruptive new nuclear power project embeds itself in Parsons, Kansas, residents are divided on whether it’s worth the potential risk.
The New Republic Finn Hartnett, June 16, 2026
Parsons, Kansas …… With a population of about
9,600 ………
……………………………………The Parsons Sun had it first: a deal struck between industrial park board members and the nuclear company Deep Fission. A first-of-its-kind nuclear reactor was coming to the park. “I saw it on Facebook, and I thought it was a joke,” Marjorie Reynolds, a home nurse who lives in the area, said. The public was not informed before the deal was completed: Even county commissioners were only told “a week or two” prior, according to Commissioner Terry Weidert. “They just announced it in the newspaper December 4, like it was a done deal,” anti-nuclear activist Ann Suellentrop said. “So arrogant and so dismissive of the public.”
Park officials said they could not inform the public because they were under nondisclosure agreements with Deep Fission and the Department of Energy. “You’ve got intellectual property that … they like to keep under wraps,” Reams said. “If you’re the DOE, it’s a national security risk. It’s an energy project that has national implications.” Zaleski concurred, arguing that the agreement with Deep Fission was a standard one. “That’s just how the cookie crumbles in this industry,” he said.
Holger Meyer, a particle physics professor at Wichita State University with a background in nuclear energy, said the public should have been informed regardless. “There sometimes are good reasons for the desire for nondisclosure agreements,” he said. “But this isn’t something that just impacts the land it is on. It impacts the entire county—the entire region.… There is obvious public interest.”
It didn’t matter. Five days later, park officials, executives of Deep Fission, a smattering of locals, and roughly 40 TV stations gathered in the park for a groundbreaking. Parsons may not have liked it, but it was going nuclear.
Founded three years ago, the California-based start-up Deep Fission was thrust into prominence last August, when its reactor project became one of 11 selected as part of Donald Trump’s “Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program.” The pilot program, created by executive order, fast-tracks the companies’ ability to receive commercial operating licenses. The stated goal at the time was for three reactors to achieve criticality by July 4, 2026; one already has, and the DOE claims two more are on track. Deep Fission is not among them.
This rapid schedule is possible in part because Trump has overhauled the Nuclear Regulatory Commission since the start of his second term, relaxing regulations and inspections to meet demand from data centers.
In May 2025, the president ordered the theoretically independent NRC to submit to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, and cut the annual hours spent on nuclear inspections by an estimated 38 percent. Hundreds of staff members have since departed the agency, and the two remaining Democrats on its board have expressed fear they could be fired after Democratic Chair Christopher Hanson was canned last year. Suellentrop warned that the NRC will be “gutted” if Trump continues to get his way. “The DOE will rubber-stamp whatever he wants, and to hell with people’s safety, their health, the environment,” she said.
………………….For advocates of Deep Fission, the government’s promotion of the project is evidence of its safety.
But others warned against such implicit trust. Meyer said “industry interest” was behind the Trump administration’s embrace of nuclear power. “Environmental regulations are being dismantled in all areas,” he said. “It’s clear that nuclear safety isn’t prioritized by the Trump administration.” Kent Rowe, a retired professor of aeronautics and anti-nuclear activist from near Parsons, stated that the Deep Fission project was “a scheme to bury [reactors] haphazardly and worry about consequences later.”
A March letter signed by 11 state attorneys general condemned the DOE for creating an exemption allowing certain nuclear projects to skip previously mandated environmental reviews. Paul Gunter, director of the group Beyond Nuclear, said he was concerned the exemption would allow Deep Fission to bypass proper safety measures.
“There should be no question about whether or not a novel nuclear technology without a designed reactor containment system can avoid an environmental review for potential severe accidents and the long-term consequences,” he said. When asked whether Deep Fission would indeed be exempt from the review, a DOE spokesperson said, “No determination has been reached.”
While the other nuclear companies in Trump’s pilot program are working on more or less traditional reactors, Deep Fission is getting weird with it, forecasting a reactor it has described as both “discreet” and “bespoke.” A laudatory Forbes profile on company founders Richard and Liz Muller outlines the plan: “Drill a 30-inch-diameter borehole a mile into the earth, fill it with water, then insert a teeny-tiny nuclear reactor that will boil the water at the bottom and send it up a separate pipe to run a steam turbine. Each hole will generate 15 megawatts, enough to power 12,000 homes.” (The profile fails to note some less savory details from Richard’s past: He was a vocal global warming skeptic until 2012, and has been criticized for taking research funding from the oil and gas tycoon Charles Koch.)
A small, scalable reactor is Deep Fission’s Theranos-esque goal, perfect for supporting Silicon Valley’s new obsession: AI data centers. Seventy in-house reactors can power one data center, according to Forbes. Deep Fission has been open about a desire to “meet the explosive demand for power from artificial intelligence” with a system “designed to scale modularly.” They have already seduced the likes of Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, who owns an 8 percent stake in the company.
Speed is one of the company’s core tenets, which is concerning to some critics. Deep Fission’s website proudly states its reactors take an “estimated six months” to build, and the company told Parsons in December it aimed to have a test reactor running by July. “We have to build fast enough to meet data center demand before they decide to go with something else,” Liz Muller told Forbes.
It turns out, though, that building a nuclear reactor is quite difficult. The company now will not say when its test reactor will be ready, and is unsure on whether it will be able to open a commercial reactor at all. Deep Fission recently completed a test well in Parsons 6,000 feet deep and eight inches in diameter. That may sound impressive, but it’s far smaller than the mile-deep, 30 to 50 inch–wide borehole that will be needed for the real thing.
While a white paper sent to the NRC gives insight into the proposed reactor blueprint, Deep Fission’s design is not final yet. The company has not submitted a preliminary safety analysis to the DOE, nor applied for the NRC license it will need to sell energy, according to federal officials. Deep Fission declined to speak with The New Republic for this piece, with vice president of communications Chloe Frader citing the “active registration process.”
Reams said Deep Fission was never going to hit the deadline it set for itself. “I think even if it had gone perfectly, they probably wouldn’t have hit July 4,” he said. As to why the company may not be selling its energy anymore? “They weren’t sure [of] all the P’s and Q’s that they had to make sure were covered,” Reams said. “It’s been a learning process for them.”
…..some have been vocal in their opposition to Deep Fission, particularly Reynolds, who founded a local group called Prairie Dog Alliance for the express purpose of fighting the development. In a matter of months, Reynolds has assembled a hodgepodge of community members, among them farmers, business owners, activists, and professors. (Suellentrop, Meyer, Rowe, and Gunter have all been in contact with the group.) Prairie Dog Alliance now boasts over 500 Facebook followers and about 15 members who attend regular meetings.
Some locals say Prairie Dog represents the majority opinion. Librarian Heather Fouts estimated that “at most 25 percent” of residents support the nuclear project. “I would say most of Parsons is against the reactor,” echoed Beachner, who recently joined the group. “But I also feel … nobody believes they can do anything.” In contrast, Zaleski and Parsons Sun editor Hannah Emberton cast Prairie Dog as a vocal minority.
The group forced a public meeting with Deep Fission in March after rejecting private talks. There have been a handful of meetings since, but Prairie Dog still wants more transparency. Member Jill Blankinship said the March meeting was “turned into a meet-and-greet”; at a later May in-person meeting where company officials took questions, participants were made to write them down ahead of time. Deep Fission also promotes a “community advisory group” in Parsons, which has no public facing presence at the moment, though Deep Fission says has met twice.*
Deep Fission is also drilling its boreholes at the edge of the Roubidoux aquifer, an underground water source that’s part of the larger Ozark system. While Parsonites get their drinking water from nearby Lake Parsons, the Ozark system is used for commerce, farming, and rural water districts all over the shop. “If something did happen, there’s potential that it could contaminate groundwater, which then contaminates the Neosho River, which goes … all the way down to Oklahoma,” Blankinship said. “Thirty-six towns, all kinds of people.”…………..
There’s also the issue of nuclear waste. Deep Fission’s founders said in April they wanted to just abandon their spent fuel rods underground after each reactor’s six-year lifespan. “Instead of pulling them out of the hole, they’ll pour in a mix of cement and rock to seal it all in place,” the Forbes profile states happily. Activists called the idea dangerous.
A month after the Forbes piece, Deep Fission seemingly changed its tune. Chief Operating Officer Mike Brasel said in a May public meeting that the company will only leave spent fuel underground temporarily and that “we do not plan on disposing fuel down in that hole.” While the federal government is “contractually required to take the fuel,” Brasel said, Deep Fission aims to have a recycling or disposal facility in place before its boreholes begin to collapse in “40 to 50” years.
By then, things could already be going very wrong. Reynolds’s doomsday scenario is that radiation poisoning of the city’s soil and water will turn Parsons into something akin to Picher, Oklahoma, a small town 35 miles away. Once a bastion of lead and zinc mining, the town underwent dangerous corporate practices that caused irreconcilable environmental damage to the land; Picher was soon declared uninhabitable, and the municipality was officially dissolved in 2013.
In the event of a disaster, Deep Fission is seeking liability insurance under the Price-Anderson Act, which indemnifies the company in the event of a nuclear accident, providing costs fall above a certain threshold. “They’re going to … look for being indemnified from an accident that they’re saying will never happen,” Gunter said. “That’s a clear no-confidence vote.”…………………………………………………………..https://newrepublic.com/article/211643/nuclear-reactor-parsons-kansas-safety
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
Georgia nuclear power plant cleared for 80-year operating life
The two boiling water reactor units at Georgia Power’s Edwin I Hatch plant
have been cleared by the regulator to operate until the mid-2050s. Hatch
unit 1 began commercial operation in December 1975, with Hatch 2 following
in September 1979. The units were originally licensed to operate for 40
years, with the NRC approving a previous 20-year licence extension in 2002.
The plant is operated by Southern Company subsidiary Southern Nuclear on
behalf of its co-owners Georgia Power, Oglethorpe Power Corporation, the
Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and Dalton Utilities.
World Nuclear News 16th June 2026, https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/georgia-nuclear-power-plant-cleared-for-80-year-operating-life
1 This Month
of the week- – THE ONENESS of HUMANITY
We the Nuclear Free North
1st July – Webinar Waste of Space: The Environmental Harm of Military and Civil Space Activity st July, 7 pm
Report Launch Online: We are seeing an increasing exploitation of space for military and commercial purposes. This must change.
Protect Sazan Island from the Trump family! https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/protect_sazan_island_from_the_trump_family_loc/?bqFCVab&v=174511&cl=22707147157&_checksum=5e9dde668860e8231c33699735e16a1fbf22ab2cb01da50c999fe8732b9775ef&utm_source=email&utm_medium=blast_email&utm_campaign=174511
Cuba Is Not a Failed State – It Is a Besieged State
PETITION: “Global Appeal to Endorse Palestinian Right of Return of Refugees”
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
-
Archives
- June 2026 (258)
- May 2026 (306)
- April 2026 (356)
- March 2026 (251)
- February 2026 (268)
- January 2026 (308)
- December 2025 (358)
- November 2025 (359)
- October 2025 (376)
- September 2025 (257)
- August 2025 (319)
- July 2025 (230)
-
Categories
- 1
- 1 NUCLEAR ISSUES
- business and costs
- climate change
- culture and arts
- ENERGY
- environment
- health
- history
- indigenous issues
- Legal
- marketing of nuclear
- media
- opposition to nuclear
- PERSONAL STORIES
- politics
- politics international
- Religion and ethics
- safety
- secrets,lies and civil liberties
- spinbuster
- technology
- Uranium
- wastes
- weapons and war
- Women
- 2 WORLD
- ACTION
- AFRICA
- Atrocities
- AUSTRALIA
- Christina's notes
- Christina's themes
- culture and arts
- Events
- Fuk 2022
- Fuk 2023
- Fukushima 2017
- Fukushima 2018
- fukushima 2019
- Fukushima 2020
- Fukushima 2021
- general
- global warming
- Humour (God we need it)
- Nuclear
- RARE EARTHS
- Reference
- resources – print
- Resources -audiovicual
- Weekly Newsletter
- World
- World Nuclear
- YouTube
-
RSS
Entries RSS
Comments RSS
nuclear-news 