By Max Blumenthal & Anya Parampil, The Grayzone, 6/21/25

An official in the administration of President Donald Trump has told The Grayzone that CIA Director John Ratcliffe and US CENTCOM Commander Gen. Michael Kurilla have become vehicles for Israel’s Mossad and military as they seek to manipulate the US into attacking Iran. The official referred to Ratcliffe as “Mossad’s stenographer.”

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According to the official, Ratcliffe and Kurilla have pressured Trump to join Israel’s war more directly by regurgitating overblown briefings they received from the Israeli military and Mossad director David Barnea – but without informing the president they the intelligence derived from a foreign third party.

During the Trump administration’s meetings with Israeli intelligence officials including Barnea, the official said the Israelis have demonstrated a single-minded focus on regime change, clamoring for authorization to assassinate Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The official have emphasized that the moment to take out Khamenei is now.

The issue of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity is of secondary concern in the Israelis’ presentations, which the official characterized as tactless, hyper-aggressive exercises in fear-mongering. At one point, the Trump official recalled, an Israeli intelligence briefer declared that Iran could transfer a nuclear weapon to Yemen’s Houthi militia in less than a week.

According to the official, Trump’s lead negotiator with Iran, Steve Witkoff, has been pushing the president to preserve the diplomatic track. However, an Israeli assassination of Khamanei would almost certainly be the nail in the coffin of nuclear negotiations – which is precisely why the Israelis seem so determined to do it.

If the US enters the war by attacking Iran, the official fears that Iran will activate IRGC-backed Popular Mobilization Units to attack US troops and bases in Iraq and Syria, leading to American casualties and triggering escalation well beyond the initial scope of Iran’s nuclear program.

Having launched a damaging war of attrition with Iran, Tel Aviv is deploying every mechanism at its disposal to compel the US to lurch headlong into the conflict it initiated, but which it can not finish on its own.

Inside the Trump administration, the source told The Grayzone that top officials who have questioned the logic of attacking Iran such as Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and her deputy, former CIA officer and director for the National Counter-Terrorism Center Joe Kent, have been excluded from meetings by White House Chief of Staff Suzie Wiles.

Taking the lead in briefing the president is a highly suggestible CIA director whom Israel has groomed since he first entered Congress.

AIPAC director boasts of influence over Ratcliffe

This April, The Grayzone released exclusive audio of remarks by AIPAC CEO Elliot Brandt to an off-the-record Israel lobby session in Washington DC. Boasting of his organization’s success in recruiting members of Congress, he described CIA Director John Ratcliffe as a “lifeline” inside the administration.

“You know that one of the first candidates I ever met with as an AIPAC professional in my job when he was a candidate for Congress was a guy named John Ratcliffe,” Brandt recalled. “He was challenging a long time member of Congress in Dallas. I said, this guy looks like he could win the race, and, we go talk to him. He had a good understanding of issues, and a couple of weeks ago, he took the oath as the CIA director, for crying out loud. This is a guy that we had a chance to speak to, so there are, there are a lot – I wouldn’t call them lifelines, but there are lifelines in there.”

Besides Ratcliffe, AIPAC CEO Elliott Brandt also named Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, two former Republican congressmen cultivated by AIPAC in advance of their appointment to key national security positions in the Trump administration.

“They all have relationships with key AIPAC leaders from their communities,” said the AIPAC CEO. “So the lines of communication are good should there be something questionable or curious, and we need access on the conversation.”

This May, Waltz was outed by colleagues for secretly coordinating with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to orchestrate a US attack on Iran, costing him his job as National Security Council director. Secretary of State Rubio assumed the role of acting National Security Director, granting him control over more cabinet level positions than any US official since Henry Kissinger. Meanwhile, Ratcliffe quickly emerged as the key channel of Israeli influence in the administration.

The CIA director has come a long way since entering politics as the mayor of a backwater Texas town with a population of 7000.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad Director David Barnea in Jerusalem, April 2025

A small town Texas mayor becomes big time Israeli asset

With no experience in the US military or intelligence, Ratcliffe spent the early part of his political career as mayor of Heath, a small town outside of Dallas, which was broken by a year-long stint as a US Attorney between 2007-08. He entered Congress in 2014, and emerged two years later as one of Trump’s fiercest attack dogs on the Judiciary Committee. The backbencher also served on the House Intelligence Committee.

Trump rewarded Ratcliffe’s loyalty by nominating him as Director of National Intelligence in 2019, but quickly withdrew the nomination after Ratcliffe was exposed for lying about his role in several federal terrorism cases.

His most absurd embellishment was on the prosecution of the directors of the Dallas-based Holy Land Foundation, in which he boasted that “he convicted individuals who were funneling money to Hamas behind the front of a charitable organization.” In fact, Ratcliffe played no discernible role in the case at all, prompting several Republican senators to withdraw support for his nomination when the lie came to light.

It is notable nonetheless that Ratcliffe sought credit for taking down the Holy Land Foundation, as the case was one of the most politicized and legally dubious prosecutions of the Bush-era “war on terror,” leading to life sentences for Palestinian American defendants whose only crime was sending charitable donations to organizations in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip which were not on any government watchlist, and which also received support from the International Committee of the Red Cross and USAID. What’s more, the case was heavily influenced by Israeli intelligence.

Following a mistrial that proved embarrassing for the US government, Israel’s Mossad dispatched an agent to Texas to testify against the Holy Land directors. The judge allowed the agent to testify in secret, with the courtroom cleared, and under an assumed identity as “Avi.” The agent proceeded to brandish a series of questionable documents that supposedly proved the Holy Land Foundation was set up as the nexus of a vast terrorist financing network that had enabled several suicide bombings by Hamas.

While Ratcliffe’s fantastical claims about his role in the case tanked his nomination in 2019, Trump successfully installed him as DNI the following year, paving the way for his nomination as CIA director upon Trump’s re-election.

In 2024, the Jewish Daily Forward listed Ratcliffe among “Trump’s Jewish advisors and pro-Israel cabinet.”

Gen. Michael Kurilla with then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, March 2023

Chief of Staff Suzie Wiles isolates Trump with “Israel’s favorite general”

The Trump official told The Grayzone that White House Chief of Staff Suzie Wiles has ensured that the president remains surrounded by Ratcliffe and Gen. Michael Kurilla in briefings related to Iran.

Ratcliffe is said to take dictation from the Mossad and read the documents they’ve prepared to the president without any sense of critical detachment, or disclose that the assessments came from a foreign liaison rather than US intelligence.

Then there is Gen. Kurilla, who appears singularly focused in meetings with Trump on making the case for a US attack on Iran. In 2024, the pro-Netanyahu Israeli outlet Israel Hayon described Kurilla as “a vital asset to Israel.” The UK’s Telegraph referred to Kurilla this June as “Israel’s favorite general.”

Former Pentagon officials have even speculated that Israel’s decision to launch an unprovoked surprise attack on Iran this June 13 was partially influenced by Kurilla’s looming retirement in July, as Tel Aviv did not want to go to war without him present at CENTCOM.

The Trump official told The Grayzone that Wiles has excluded Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, from crucial meetings where US intervention in Iran was discussed. That included a June 8 meeting at Camp David where Ratcliffe used a clumsy sports metaphor to insist that Iran was just days away from producing a nuclear weapon: “It’s like saying a football team marched 99 yards down the field, got to the one yard line and, oh, they don’t have the intention to score,” he argued to Trump.

Two days later, Gabbard released a social media video invoking the American military’s destruction of the Japanese city of Hiroshima with a nuclear bomb in 1945, and warned that a similar horror could soon unfold because “political elite warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers.”

Trump was reportedly infuriated by her comments. Asked by a reporter about Gabbard’s testimony this March that Iran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program, Trump grumbled, “I don’t care what she said,” then echoed Ratcliffe’s view – and by extension, that of the Israelis: “I think they were very close to having [a nuclear weapon].”

This may explain why Gabbard released a June 20 statement on Twitter/X insisting that her views on Iran’s nuclear enrichment were faithfully aligned with Trump’s, and had been distorted by a “dishonest media” seeking to “manufacture division.” Though the statement reaffirmed her commitment to President Trump, her assessment of Iran’s nuclear program did not differ from the evaluation she delivered in March, which determined Iran was not currently pursuing a nuclear bomb,

“America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months,” Gabbard claimed on Twitter/X, “if they decide to finalize the assembly.”

According to the Trump official, Chief of Staff Wiles has also excluded Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth from meetings on Iran, relying instead on Kurilla to represent the US military.

Vice President JD Vance has held a parallel series of meetings on Iran, the official said. In contrast to those controlled by Wiles, Vance has encouraged robust debate and included diverse perspectives. In public, however, Vance is constrained by the obligation to demonstrate loyalty to Trump.

For his part, Trump’s views are said to be shaped by constant exposure to Fox News, which has transformed in the past two weeks into a 24/7 commercial for war on Iran. Fox News’ coverage has become so transparently influenced by Israel’s propaganda mechanism that Steve Bannon, the former White House chief of staff and intellectual architect of the America First movement, called for a Foreign Agents Registration Act investigation of the network.

As Trump heads back to Washington on June 21, Bannon lamented that “the party is on,” suggesting the president had decided to go to war on Israel’s behalf.

By Katya Schwenk & Luke Goldstein, The Lever, 6/11/25

Florida is poised to eliminate long-standing guardrails limiting local investment in increasingly risky Israel bonds that help finance the country’s war efforts.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is set to quietly ban any financial-risk standards when local governments use public money to invest in bonds funding Israel’s government – just months after a major credit rating agency warned the bonds were at risk of default and a potential “junk” rating. 

By creating the special carveout and allowing unrestricted investments into a foreign country on the brink of regional war, Florida politicians now threaten to funnel an even greater share of local governments’ savings to the Netanyahu regime’s war efforts. 

The legislation also introduces a new financial model enabling local governments around the country to invest virtually limitless sums in the Israeli war effort, despite the mounting financial risk of doing so.

The Florida bill was brought to the legislature by one of the state’s wealthiest counties and home base of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort: Palm Beach, which is facing a lawsuit from its own residents for sinking 15 percent of its savings portfolio in debt-issued Israeli bonds, making the county the world’s largest investor in Israel bonds. The only foreign bonds that localities in Florida can invest in by law are from Israel.

Outside of direct military assistance to Israel from the federal government, bond purchases have become a key node for U.S. states and localities to provide billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel, particularly during the Israel-Hamas war following the Oct. 7 attacks.

The main broker for Israel bonds, which operates on behalf of the Israeli government, lobbied for the first-of-its-kind legislation, according to records reviewed by The Lever. 

The introduction of the bill came just months after the preeminent Wall Street credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded Israel’s bonds from an “A” to a “Baa” rating amid its mounting geopolitical turmoil, indicating a significantly higher risk that Israel fails to pay back its investors. 

The assessment also noted that the impact of the war on the country’s long-term financial prospects created “much higher [risk] than is typical” even at the lower investment rating. That means another potential downgrade could be on the horizon, which would put the country’s debt security into the lower “junk” bond tier, making it an even riskier asset to hold. 

Two other major U.S. credit rating agencies slightly downgraded Israel last year.

Because of the downgrades, Palm Beach and other counties invested in Israel, including Miami-Dade, would be in violation of their local investment policies for any future Israel bond purchases, which mandate an “A” rating for Israel bond purchases. Those restrictions would be wiped away by the new bill, which passed unanimously through the Florida legislature in April and now awaits signing by DeSantis before the end of the legislative session this month. 

“The bill is specifically designed to create an exemption [for Israel] just like the U.S. government has in lots of other areas where Israel would otherwise run afoul of U.S. law,” said Michael Omer-Man, the director of research at Democracy For The Arab World, an advocacy group that’s tracked the activity of Israel bonds. 

Another example Omer-Man cited is a federal law that prohibits U.S. aid to security forces committing human rights abuses, which human rights organizations have documented at the hands of the Israeli military.

The Florida legislation could also have widespread financial implications, according to municipal finance experts. 

“This is definitely a first,” said University of Chicago professor Justin Marlowe, who runs the school’s Center for Municipal Finance. “I’ve not seen any attempt to do some sort of a legislative carveout of the sort that we’re talking about here.” 

He said the policy is “paving the way for a big shift in behavior on the part of states and localities.”

Palm Beach County did not reply to The Lever’s request for comment on the bill.

A Possible “Foreign Agent”

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Israel has received a record-setting influx of $5 billion in financing from public and private U.S. investors to help address its mounting piles of debt. State and local governments make up $1.7 billion of that overall investment. 

Bonds are fixed-income securities bought by investors to loan the government money and are paid back over a long period of time, anywhere from two to 15 years, at a set interest rate.

Proceeds from these bonds return to Israel as a surplus budgetary fund for government projects, including to offset the costs of its military campaigns.

Some 90 states and localities already had millions of dollars of investments in Israel bonds on the books well before the Israel-Hamas war, but such efforts increased dramatically in the past year and a half. 

All of this U.S. investment is facilitated by the main underwriter and promoter of these government-backed instruments: the Development Corporation for Israel, also known as Israel Bonds. The operation has sales offices across the country, offering bonds to retail investors as well as public pensions, treasury funds, and institutional investors on Wall Street.

“Oct. 7 changed everything,” said Dani Naveh, the current president of the Development Corporation for Israel and former member of both the Israeli Knesset and a cabinet minister, earlier this month, announcing record U.S. sales of Israeli debt. “What followed has been nothing short of extraordinary. This $5 billion isn’t just capital, it is a global vote of confidence in the Israeli economy.”

Israel Bonds, whose head is selected by Israel’s finance minister, dates back to the early years of the country and played a crucial role in corralling U.S. financing for the Six-Day War in 1967 and later the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

The broker doesn’t just facilitate bond sales. Israel Bonds has transformed into an all-encompassing financial and political operation that lobbies for legislation to boost bond sales and hosts lavish private junkets to wine and dine politicians, according to an investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists last year. 

These influence-peddling activities have raised legal questions about whether or not Israel Bonds is operating in the U.S. as an unregistered foreign agent. According to a letter sent to the Justice Department last year from Democracy for the Arab World Now calling for an investigation, Israel Bonds acts “at the direction and control of the Israeli government, acts as a publicity agent for Israel; promotes the public and political interests of Israel.”

Israel Bonds did not return a request for comment from The Lever.

Israel Bonds has successfully convinced numerous state governments, including Louisiana, Indiana, New Jersey, and New Mexico, to undo long-standing rules banning them from purchasing foreign government bonds. Israel Bonds has also gotten county governments to ease remaining local investment restrictions on foreign-issued debt. 

It’s not just Florida that’s poured out its coffers to show support for the U.S. ally. Under Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Arkansas’ public pension plan authorized a $50 million investment in Israel bonds this spring. Ohio, meanwhile, has invested more than $50 million since October 2023, bringing the state treasury’s holdings up to $260 million. New York State has committed a total $267 million from its state employees’ pension fund into Israel bonds.

Yet these investments pale in comparison to those of Palm Beach County, which under its Democratic local comptroller Joseph Abruzzo has become the world’s largest investor in Israel bonds. When Abruzzo took office in 2021, Israel bonds were capped at 5 percent of the county’s portfolio. In his first year, Abruzzo doubled the cap to 10 percent. Last year, the county voted again to raise the cap to 15 percent.

Abruzzo has since increased the county’s Israel bonds holdings to $700 million, up from just $40 million in 2022. According to county finance documents, Israel bonds now make up 16 percent of Palm Beach’s holdings.

Like other public investors in Israel bonds, Abruzzo has explicitly described his investment calculus as politically motivated, in direct support of Israel’s military operations. 

“There could be no greater advocacy that we could do in our office right now than support the state of Israel,” Abruzzo, a former reality TV star with a net worth of $16 million, said in the days after Oct. 7, announcing an initial $25 million round of bond purchases. More recently, he has denied that the motivations are anything other than strictly financial. Florida state law bars any investments of public savings for ideological reasons. 

In turn, as state and local treasuries ramp up their investments in Israel bonds, they have faced mounting public opposition. Protesters across the country have demanded public divestment from Israel bonds, citing their role in funding the carnage in Gaza.

Last May, several anonymous residents of Palm Beach County brought a lawsuit against Abruzzo over the mammoth investment in Israel bonds, arguing that the county’s $700 million purchase was “unprecedented,” “a great concentration of risk,” and violated its fiduciary duty to taxpayers, given the clear signs the bonds would be downgraded as Israel’s economy struggled. Florida statute, the plaintiffs noted, directs that local governments cannot invest to benefit “any social, political, or ideological interests.”

The plaintiffs in the case are Palestinian Americans, all of whom have lost friends and family members in Gaza, where tens of thousands of civilians have been killed since Oct. 7. 

“I feel such horror at my local taxes being used to fund such violence and destruction towards Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza,” one plaintiff said in a declaration last year.

The suit highlighted Palm Beach County’s ongoing financial troubles, including a $730 million funding gap for capital projects — all worsened by security costs for Mar-a-Lago, which the county must foot. “If the State of Israel were to default on these bonds, then Palm Beach County would have to find a way to pay its bills without money that it had counted on being available,” one expert is quoted as saying in the lawsuit.

In a November 2024 legal filing, attorneys for Palm Beach called the lawsuit against the county “entirely devoid of legal support.”

The lawsuit was voluntarily dropped in January due to a procedural issue, but a lawyer working on the case, Lydia Ghuman, confirmed to The Lever that the team intends to refile the suit in the fall. 

In the meantime, the ongoing legal battle — alongside national attention to Palm Beach County’s investments — may be an impetus behind the county’s efforts to get a carve-out for Israel bonds passed at the state level.

Ghuman emphasized, though, that the legislation wouldn’t put an end to her team’s case. “It doesn’t change the fact that… we have a bunch of other statutes regulating investments that we’re suing [Abruzzo] under,” she said. “If anything, it shows how he is not listening to the voice of his constituents and is manipulating different processes to allow him to make unchecked investments.”

A “Striking” Shift

After Moody’s downgraded Israel bonds, Palm Beach County faced a conundrum: Palm Beach’s local investment policy, like those in other counties, prohibits investment in bonds rated lower than an A credit rating. Not only did the policy threaten future county investments in Israel, it also exposed county officials to legal scrutiny over their current investment portfolio. 

In February, Florida lawmakers unveiled a bill that aimed to solve Palm Beach County’s problems. The legislation would amend state law to bar any local government from setting a minimum credit rating exclusively for Israel bonds. The legislature’s own bill analysis specifically cites the Moody’s downgrade and Palm Beach County’s investment policy as part of the rationale for why the legislation is necessary.

Abruzzo, the Palm Beach County treasurer, brought the bill to the legislature, and he testified in support of the legislation at a March public hearing. 

“I cannot thank the committee enough for taking up this bill to ensure we keep supporting what I consider our greatest ally Israel and investing in Israel bonds,” he told lawmakers.

Behind the scenes, the Development Corporation for Israel used its lobbying muscle to push for the bill’s passage. The group hired the well-connected Florida lobbying shop Capital City Consulting, which includes numerous former DeSantis aides and staffers. 

Meanwhile, Palm Beach County advocated for the legislation through the lobbying titan Ballard Partners, whose Florida alumni include Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi. 

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Both chambers of the Florida legislature subsequently passed the bill unanimously. A DeSantis spokesperson confirmed to The Lever that the bill “has not reached his desk.” There are a number of bills still awaiting a signature from the governor in the remaining weeks of the Florida legislative session.

Should DeSantis sign the bill, it could set a precedent for other states and localities to take on more financial risk to finance Israel’s war effort. Abruzzo, Ghuman noted, holds a position with an Israel Bonds’ leadership group, composed of treasurers across the country. “He’s already in a position of power where he can spread his ideas to other states,” she said.

Daniel Garrett, a professor of finance at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Lever that while he didn’t think that the guidance would have much impact on local investment decisions, he wasn’t aware of any comparable legislation. 

“I can’t think of any other kind of encouragement to invest in risky securities,” he said, although he added that most states set various “restrictions on how investment policies can be written.”

Marlowe at the University of Chicago emphasized that the bill was part of a “striking” government investment shift allowing a “serious concentration of risk in these portfolios in a way that we had never seen before.” 

He added, “It’s one thing for a county to buy up these bonds in the first place, it’s another to explicitly de-diversify the portfolio, which flies in the face of the philosophy of how to invest public money.”

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By Brian McDonald, Substack, 6/1/25

Brian McDonald is Irish and a long time Russia-based journalist. Writing about politics, sports and culture.

In the current Western discourse about Eastern European transformation, one hears Poland invoked like a hymn. It is, undeniably, a triumph. From the grey fatigue of post-communist inertia, Poland has emerged into something striking: a country that is modern, stable, and punching above its demographic weight. In nominal GDP terms alone, it has multiplied its national output fivefold since 2000, lifted living standards, integrated into the EU, rebuilt its infrastructure and created global firms. It is a remarkable success story.

But there is a strange silence—one that is becoming harder to ignore. Because if Poland’s economic rise is described as “nothing short of a miracle (Michael A. Arouet on X),” then what language is left to describe Russia’s trajectory over the same period? From a nominal GDP of $259 billion in 2000 to over $2.2 trillion in 2024, Russia’s nominal economic expansion dwarfs Poland’s in both absolute and relative terms. And in purchasing power parity (PPP), the gap is even starker: Russia has risen from $1.1 trillion in 2000 to over $5.2 trillion today, while Poland’s economy grew from around $420 billion to $1.6 trillion.

And even those numbers may understate the case. World Economics, using alternative methodologies that adjust for the informal economy and outdated GDP base year calculations, estimates Russia’s true PPP GDP in 2024 at over $7.5 trillion — roughly 26% higher than the World Bank’s official figure. Their model factors in a shadow economy that accounts for at least 26% of all economic activity, and potentially much more. Other studies, such as the Shadow Economy Index by Sauka and Putnins, estimated the informal sector at nearly 45% of GDP as recently as 2018.

This suggests that much of Russia’s economic life — from envelope wages to unregistered businesses — operates off the books. It’s messy, opaque, and far from ideal. But it also means the country’s real productive activity is significantly higher than what’s recorded. In nominal terms, Russia may look like a mid-size economy. In practice, it behaves more like a large one hiding behind a bureaucratic veil.

None of this is to diminish Poland’s achievement. Quite the opposite. Its progress is the product of hard work, strategic policy choices, and—crucially—European integration. Massive inflows of EU funds, combined with a committed and mobile population, created conditions for a genuine leap forward. But when commentators cite Poland as living proof of the virtues of EU membership, free markets, and entrepreneurial spirit, they often imply—or outright assert—that it is Poland’s embrace of Brussels that made the difference.

And here is where the silence creeps in. Because Russia, by any reasonable measure, has posted greater economic growth than Poland over the past two decades—despite facing every headwind Poland was spared. No EU funds. No single market access. No structural aid. And, since 2014, the most sustained regime of Western sanctions applied to any major economy in modern times.

Yes, Russia has immense natural resources. So do many nations. The trick is not having oil and gas—it is utilizing them while building a functioning economy beneath. Few expected Russia to make it work. Many predicted collapse (just Google the subject). But in a country often dismissed as a gas station with nukes, there has been something far more complicated, and inconvenient for some, happening: genuine, sustained growth.

This is not a paean to Russia, nor a denial of its flaws. Corruption, capital flight, inequality—all real and enduring. But what grates is the refusal to even acknowledge its economic performance in the same breath as Poland’s. It’s as if certain analysts fear that recognising this would somehow weaken their preferred narrative: that Brussels brings prosperity, and turning from it brings ruin.

But the numbers are not guided by political preferences. They are arithmetic. Poland’s growth deserves praise. But Russia’s deserves recognition too—especially when it has come through geopolitical frostbite, financial exclusion, and institutional hostility. That doesn’t make Russia a model. It makes it an inconvenient outlier.

There is no need for rivalry here. Poland’s rise is not Russia’s loss. Nor should Russia’s survival under duress be read as proof of sainthood. But the lopsidedness in how their stories are told—and what is omitted—reveals more about the storytellers than the countries themselves.

Eastern Europe is not a morality tale for outsiders to exploit. It is a region of hundreds of millions of real people, of histories and choices. And while Poland’s road to prosperity may have gone through Brussels, it doesn’t follow that every path must.

To acknowledge this is not to diminish Poland. It is to finally speak about the region with the honesty it deserves.

YouTube link here.

YouTube link to Rachel Blevins’ interview with military analyst Mark Sleboda on Iran-Israel.

By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 6/19/25

Oliver Boyd-Barrett is a scholar and critic of media and communication, propaganda, and international news media and film.

There have been a number of important developments over the past 24 hours. Let me summarize these, first of all, and, in the time I have today (under time pressure as always), flesh them out as best I can. In “fleshing them out” I shall likely not proceed in the same order as my summary points are presented below. I will note that amongst the most prominent of physcial actions that have occurred in the past few hours is an Israeli attack on the inactive Iranian nuclear reactor at Arak, justified on the grounds that this will stop Iran from re-activating it; and an Iranian call for the evacuation of Israel’s Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert, in advance of a forthcoming Iranian assault. Iran claims to have fired 100 drones into Israel during the last day.

Perhaps most importantly, in the light of my most recent previous post, there are signs of a stronger, more proactive move of support for Iran from China, especially, and from Russia. Secondly, there are some growing doubts as to the accuracy of Israeli and US claims that Israel controls the skies over Tehran. Thirdly, the situation with respect to Iranian missile launchers is perhaps not so dire as might have seemed to be the case yesterday while, fourthly, there are persistent indications that Israel will soon run out of missiles.

Fifthly, while the US and Israel have repeatedly talked about their interest in assassinating the Supreme Leader (a foolish quest, totally illegal of course and typically gangsterish, as this in itself most assuredly would NOT bring about regime change in Iran), President Trump, who has said that he has signed off on relevant attack plans, is now saying he will hold off from “direct” US participation for up to two more weeks because, apparently, he has more hope for that negotiations (which are due to continue in Geneva on Friday beteween the E3 and Iran) can be successful, while there is plenty of evidence in the US that public opinion does not support this measure (greater US involvement in the war) and that Trump’s MAGA basis is split, with prominent foundational members of the MAGA movement such as Tucker Carlson and Steven Bannon coming out in strong opposition to another US-instigated “forever war.”

On the topic of assassinations I hold it highly likely that the President Peseshkian’s predecessor, Raisi, was assassinated – probably by Mossad, perhaps by the CIA or MI6.

What would be the nature of more direct US involvement in the war? There are many senior-level voices that express doubt as to the likely success of MOABS for the purpose of taking out deeply buried Iranian nuclear facilities. One of these is that of MIT/Stanford professor emeritus Ted Postol (a cousin of mine through marriage, I am pleased to say) who is highly skeptical that MOABs can achieve the necessary depth. An additional measure, involving the dropping of one MOAB after another at exactly the same target would be particularly challenging to achieve.

In short, the MOAB route could end up further embarrassing the US (which has in effect just lost a war to Yemen, having a little while back lost a war to Afghanistan, in a long line of losses going back to Vietnam and Korea – none of these being counted as amongst the most technologically sophisticated civilizations).

Besides, how is MOAB going to help given that the real purpose of this war has nothing whatsover to do with nuclear enrichment but with regime change. Would a successful MOAB attack bring about regime change of itself? No, it wouldn’t.

Would an attempt on the life of the Supreme Leader bring about a regime change? No, because the political system of Iran is far too complex. We can think of it as being a vibrant democracy in a system that is capped by the privileged influence of the mullahs [ayatollahs], perhaps comparable to – but actually more benign in my view – the US system of democracy that seems in many respects to be totally overridden by an out-of-control military-industrial complex, a lobby complex and plutocrats, a far more sinister crowd than humble Shi’a clerics.

So, last night I was bemoaning the evidence of a strong, unambiguously supportive stance by Russia and China that would convey to the world their resolve that they would not allow this war crime to pass and that they would extend to Iran, their partner in the BRICS, every help it needs in order to survive and prosper, and I was also casting doubt on the efficacy of the BRICS, which is unable or unwilling to express a view on events that are tearing the world apart and whose leaders seem fearfully over-cautious about being bold.

So I am glad to say that I have to take some of this back. First of all, I should note that there was a telephone call yesterday between President Putin and Chairman Xi Jinping. This lasted about an hour and the leaders spent most of their time talking about Iran. They have issued a statement to the effect that both countries are united behind the view that the way to resolve the conflict between Iran and Israel is through diplomatic means.

Now, I am concerned that the wording of the statement seems to me to fall into the trap of legitimizing the lie that this is just about Israel versus Iran, which of course it is not – it is about the US war against the rest of the world for the maintenance of US hegemony through the use, in this instance, of Israel-as-proxy, (which does not mean that the proxy, the “tail,” is not also wagging the dog). And it seems to give legitimacy to the lie that the real issue is about nuclear enrichment and to the lie that Iran remotely constitutes a nuclear “threat” to the region when it is the humungus, inhuman bully, Israel, that is the threat and when the real issue, as I have just said, is about US global supremacy through regional Israeli supremacy.

But we should also note that the Russian-Chinese statement does not preclude hard support for Iran.

At this point I should throw in the obvious observation that Iran is important in this context not because it may become a nuclear weapons power – on that we shall just have to wait and see, but no evidence of it so far – but because Iran sits on one of the world’s most important, perhaps THE most important global concentration of oil and gas wealth. By controlling Iran, installing a Western-friendly puppet regime, the US (which does not itself need much oil from Iran) may think it can control China, which is a major user of Iranian energy. And China, as Trump and the neocons have been parrotting for decades, is the real adversary that the US has to stop and overcome.

Now, the Moscow-Beijing statement is proactive in the sense that both countries agree to mobilize their respective departments of state to resolve the problem. A call between Putin and Erdogan of Turkey the day before came to a similar conclusion.

There are reports today from Dima of the Military Summary Channel, citing CIG/Telegram/Counter Int, that China has two electronic surveillance ships (855 and 815A) in the Gulf, their purpose being to gather intelligence of Israeli drone and missile launches and to give this to Iran.

AFP reports that China has had conversations with Oman, seeking to pressure Oman into closing its air-space to the US and Western nations, as well as China talking with Pakistan so that Pakistan can help close off its south western maritime border to Israeli, US and Western planes and ships, in this way forcing as much western traffic as possible into the Gulf, where it will be highly vulnerable either to direct hits or to Iranian measures designed to close the Strait of Hormuz (the US has already evacuated its navy and personnel from Qatar and Bahrein).

Professor Marandi, speaking to Glenn Diesen from the PressTV studios in Tehran this morning believes that such hits, coupled with Iranian missile strikes on US bases in the region, as well as strikes on neighboring oil and gas fields, could be a crippling blow to international trade, even pushing much of the world back into a pre-oil era.

China has also been talking to General al-Sisi of Egypt, trying to apply pressure on Egypt to control the passage of certain (Western war)ships through the Suez canal – a measure that would contravene a treaty of 1888 except in circumstances in which the security of the canal itself was at stake.

In the meantime there is growing consensus among analysts that Israel is lacking missiles and may soon run out. The Iranian waves of drone and missile attacks are depleting Israeli interceptors. Iran has far many more missiles than Israel, to all accounts. Israel claims to have destroyed one half of Iranian missile launchers which, in the light of some assessments, would represent quite good news about its remaining capability. But it is entirely possible that there has been a great deal of exaggeration about Israel’s successes in hitting or in other ways disabling Iranian launchers, anyway.

There are continuing reports of the arrival of Chinese cargo ships to Iran that are delivering weapons, including air defense systems.

As for Russian tardiness in responding to the crisis, Putin himself explains that in making progress towards the recent and now agreed strategic partnership between the two countries (Iran and Russia) he found the Iranians were difficult to negotiate with, that it was Iran that said it did not want a mutual defense clause, and that Iran was resistant to a program of joint Russian-Iranian weapons production on Iranian soil, and, finally, that Russia has not received a request from Iran for help with more weapons. I can see that Iran has many historical reasons for suspicion of Russia (essentially, Russia vied with Britain for control of Iran for over one hundred years), but I am not entirely satisfied with this account by Putin.

(I shall return later to extend and to update)

***

“According to Seymour Hersch, the war will start in the next few days. Ever aware of the potential impact on the stock and bond market, the start of could wait until the markets close for the weekend. According to Hersh’s sources, it will consist of a bombing campaign, mostly directed at the Revolutionary Guards, followed by B-2’s dropping bunker busters on Furdow to destroy Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.” – This summary provided by Sylvia Demarest.