The division within the European Union is intensifying over a new initiative to establish a reparations loan for Ukraine backed by Russian holdings. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has urged Brussels to abandon excessive bureaucracy, while French President Emmanuel Macron and Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever warn of breaches of international law. Yet, only days earlier, France and Germany, within the framework of the Weimar Triangle, had voiced support for the idea of employing Russian assets. Attempts to seize Russian property will trigger a painful mirror response, the Russian Foreign Ministry told Izvestia.
“Whichever option Brussels ultimately chooses, manipulating frozen sovereign assets without Russia’s consent constitutes a gross violation not only of international law, but also of contractual law. Russia has not authorized any such operations. Actions that involve altering the legal status of Russian assets will no longer mean a freeze, but rather the unauthorized management of foreign property – in other words, essentially theft,” the Russian Foreign Ministry told Izvestia.
“The overwhelming majority of experts argue that the risks of outright confiscation for the dollar and euro systems are far greater than the potential benefits from employing these funds – primarily because of the precedent it would set and the erosion of trust in the financial jurisdiction of Western countries,” Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for International Studies of MGIMO, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Egor Sergeyev told Izvestia.
“In the short term, no consensus on this matter can be reached, if only because none exists even within the European Union. And in the United States, even under the Biden administration, it has been concluded that from a legal standpoint, this scheme is extremely precarious,” a leading expert at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies Pavel Zakharov told the newspaper.
According to Vladimir Vasiliev, Chief Research Fellow at the Institute for the US and Canadian Studies, Washington is unlikely to risk its reputation over $5 bln, but may well push Europe in that direction – in which case European capital will begin to flow into the United States.
“The initiators and participants of expropriation measures are guaranteed to face consequences. Moreover, in accordance with the principle of reciprocity, attempts to seize Russian property will provoke a painful retaliatory response. Russia has at its disposal a sufficient arsenal of countermeasures and the ability to deliver an appropriate political and economic answer,” the Russian Foreign Ministry told Izvestia.
First, the measures could be legal in nature, since what is at stake is a violation of international law. Second, the response could be purely economic. Moscow has already developed a system of specific steps, such as temporary management of the property of companies from unfriendly states, or the transfer of such assets to state ownership or to the Central Bank as compensation for any seizures, the newspaper writes.
***
Russia Drafts Plan to Seize Assets If EU Acts on Funds (Excerpt)
Russia may nationalize and swiftly sell off foreign-owned assets under a new privatization mechanism in retaliation for any European moves to seize Russian holdings abroad, according to a person close to the government.
President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed an order allowing for fast-track sales of state-owned assets under a special procedure.
The decree is intended to speed up the sale of various companies, both Russian and foreign, the person familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified because the information isn’t public. Should the European Union begin seizing Russian assets, Moscow may respond with symmetrical measures, the person said.
Hundreds of western companies working in sectors from banking to consumer goods still operate in Russia, including UniCredit SpA, Raiffeisen Bank International AG, PepsiCo Inc, and Mondelez International Inc.
Putin acted as EU leaders meeting in Denmark build momentum for a plan to provide Ukraine with €140 billion ($164 billion) in loans from immobilized Russian central bank assets, ahead of a formal summit at the end of this month….
***
Belgium Pours Cold Water on EU Plan to Use Russian Frozen Assets (Excerpt)
The European Union’s bid to unlock funding for Ukraine from frozen Russian central bank assets faced resistance as Belgium raised legal questions about the plan to raise financing from up to €185 billion ($217 billion) held on its territory.
Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever called the EU proposal to tap interest from the Russian assets a “big gamble” that required ironclad risk-sharing among EU member states. He signaled that the process would be time consuming, suggesting the bloc seek alternative financing for Kyiv.
“Every country will have to guarantee proportionally in the case that this goes wrong,” De Wever told reporters Thursday on the margins of a European Political Community summit in Copenhagen. The EU asset plan entails “huge amounts of money,” requiring guarantees for “a very long time,” he said.
EU leaders who gathered for a meeting Wednesday in the Danish capital offered a more upbeat assessment, saying that the bid to raise billions for war-battered Ukraine is gathering momentum and concerns would be allayed. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen assured that the risks tied to the plan would land on “broader shoulders.”…
As some of you who know me through social media might be aware, I have spent the past 3 1/2 years of the Ukraine war as someone who is extremely against the idea that America (or anyone, for that matter) support Ukraine in the current conflict with Russia. It’s a bit of a story, but I rarely get asked why I feel this way. Rather, most simply prefer to jump to the conclusion I’m MAGA or a Russian agent. I am neither. I’m an American, a Southerner, of Scots/Irish ancestry. I’m politically unaligned, as I value some ideas both traditionally held by the “left” AND the “right”. Heck, prior to 2022, the only Russians I spoke to were a nice married couple I used to work with and a fellow artist I met on Instagram. Definitely not on the Kremlin payroll.
No, I’m just – for this purpose, at least – your average American Joe.
And yet, I find myself coming to a point where I have the names of Azov commanders memorized. Stephan Bandera quotes. Specific amounts of aid provided and the dates the bills were passed by Congress. It’s a bit much. Until the other day, I really had been plunging back into history trying to remember HOW I became so invested in the subject in the first place. And then it hit me.
RT America. Russian news.
Now, before you jump the gun and use this as a “Gotcha, Putin puppet!”, do allow me to explain.
You see, I have always been someone who has deeply cared about our First Amendment rights. In 2013, if you’ll remember, there was a little bit of drama with a guy named Edward Snowden, who released information that I found deeply disturbing to say the least. Not necessarily surprising, but that didn’t matter. The basic premise was out. Your government watches you, sometimes for no specific reason.
It was at this point in my life I think I truly began to appreciate the information sphere that we live in as Americans, honestly. As far as the only two cable television news stations I had access to at the time, only Al-Jazeera and RT News were the ones reporting up-to-date information about his currently known location. They were the only ones actually highlighting the information Snowden had helped bring to light. It really taught me that, when looking for information critical of what your own government is doing, you have to look outside that bubble.
I continued to watch RT then, probably for the next year regularly. So when the Maidan began, initially, I got the Russian perspective. Did that color my initial impression of the Ukrainian state? Not really. Just as I understood that American media isn’t exactly putting out 100% of the story, I assumed the same with Russia and Ukraine. Cynic that I am. But by that time I had already developed a crush on Abby Martin so I kept RT going in the background while i did other things and it was by no means my exclusive venue for news. I have no complaints about it at all as a news organization, personally, but want to emphasize simply that it was one source of many I used to form an opinion.
At that time, too, I was lucky enough to be in a career where – as long as you could multitask on dual monitors and keep off NSFW sites – you could entertain yourself however you pleased. I was a trained researcher in my field. Learning about politics, propaganda, and general skullduggery by “the man” has always been a hobby. Put the two together, I began really looking into the country and the rhetoric coming out of the Obama administration in the aftermath. The “Red Line”, as it were. Why were we so involved and what purpose did it serve America to get involved in, what up until that point, I had considered a civil war in Ukraine?
At that point, I’d already seen the Obama administration doing horrific things abroad and at home. I had been in the brokerage industry during the bailouts and saw the American middle class gutted. And, as I said, was aghast at the privacy and free speech concerns raised by the Snowden leaks. Crimea came and went, thankfully, without escalating to a full blown war between nuclear superpowers. But still, what was driving this?
So, whenever I would come across some news item from Ukraine (wasn’t exactly as if I gave it that much attention) I’d look into it. I wanted to know whose story was more true – the Russian or the American version. And those, I would say, are my formative years becoming the would-be armchair advocate for not supporting this state.
You see, when Biden first admitted that he was withholding a billion dollar grant to Ukraine unless they fired a certain prosecutor, I found that curious as well. Why would our government be dictating who they’d appoint to a specific job like that? Why are we even giving them a billion dollars? It wasn’t hard at the time to verify that Ukraine had, since it left the USSR, been a notoriously underdeveloped and corrupt country. By this time as well, it wasn’t hard to find plenty of Western-sourced articles which would confirm this, among other nasty facts about the country. Azov, ethnic nationalism, and the glorification of WW2 German collaborators. A history of human trafficking. Cheap sex tourism. And for some reason the Vice President, whose unqualified son is working on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, is just handing over that kind of cash, with caveats.
Just seemed all a bit….odd….
There was probably a lull, I’d say, after Trump had his issues with Ukraine, that I really stopped paying attention. Whether Russia had invaded with “little green men” as they’re accused of, or not – it was just the Ukraine. Not exactly a big deal at that point. Sure, we’d thrown them a few weapons – but ultimately it was up to Ukraine and Russia to be sorted out. There were no overt signals from the American government that it would escalate this war further than it need be, and that was enough for me.
Well, that didn’t last long, did it? Biden was elected and, within a year, Russia’s “Special Military Operation” began. If you think America providing Ukraine a billion dollars of our taxpayer’s money in 2016 (when Americans were obviously already struggling and our social safety net was virtually nonexistent) then imagine my utter disgust when the first $13b was passed in Congress, or the $40.1b package passed a couple months later. Couldn’t this money, suddenly found for Ukraine, be used for a better purpose at home?
That’s a question that bothers me, and if you’re any kind of an American, should bother you. We live in a nation with an estimated one million homeless (which I believe is still a lowball number). and have spent over $200 billion combined between federal funding packages and loans financed through the IMF and World Bank (minimum, as no one seems to really know the exact figure). Simple math tells you that COULD have been $200 [billion] put toward housing and mental care, resources for our entire homeless population – every man, woman and child. Why is Ukraine worth that, but the needs of the American people – the least of us – are ignored?
And I think, what has this really gotten us, as a country? Certainly not like every move made should be dependent upon our profiting from a situation, necessarily, but since the war began. it’s done nothing but antagonize other world powers, cost us money, and uprooted any sense of American hegemony left. You look at anything in America today versus 2021, a year prior to the war. Rent costs more. Food costs more. Gas. Electricity. Why should we be consumed with what’s happening in a distant Eastern European former Soviet country that has no substantial cultural ties with us, we have no long-lived allegiance with, nor any major strategic interest in?
I think some things are fairly obvious. Given that the Nordstream pipeline, the pipeline from Russia that fed Slovakia and Poland has been destroyed, and the fact the news was released today that Trump will only increase sanctions on Russia if Europe foregoes all Russian oil and only purchases from America or our approved list of partner states, that this has been a war specifically to increase our gas exports and maintain leverage over Europe. Right now, Trump is making overtures to Russia that our relations could be normalized, potentially playing both sides to his advantage. Either way, our sales to Europe have drastically increased since 2022 and most European nations have spent the past 3 1/2 years doing nothing but threatening and sanctioning Russia. They aren’t likely to return to their supply quickly if the war were to end tomorrow, would they?
But, this is Trump. Whichever way he thinks the wind is blowing at any particular moment – whatever his Mar-a-Lago guests are telling him – it’s a question up in the air. It continues to vex the EU, NATO, Ukraine, everyone involved, because it could go one way or another.
Also, it almost goes without saying, this was used as an upwards transfer of wealth to the weapons manufacturers. Some will use the tired old line of “but it benefits American industry” which no, no it really doesn’t. Not as a whole. Just that one facet of it, and largely the people that receive the most benefit are the already-wealthy shareholders. I argue, wouldn’t it have been more beneficial to Americans and our economy to pay John Deere or an American farm equipment company to provide tractors and the like to struggling American farmers instead of buying tanks and sending them to Ukraine. So much we could’ve done. But, unfortunately, ever since – well – forever – the beast of American defense contractors must be fed. It’s been that way all my life, really, especially since 9/11. They pay our politicians of both parties through lobbyists and campaign contributions, and they expect their back scratched in return.
So that’s my story. That’s how I came to hold the position that I do. Roughly. I could regale you with so many tales of corruption, theft, moral depravity, and the absence of ethics when it comes to this subject, but I am going to [stop] here. I just want to leave you with the understanding of why I am against further aid as a solution to this conflict. Why I feel allowing Russia and Ukraine to sort their own problems out is the most beneficial thing we could do, as Americans and indeed as human beings.
Thanks for reading. If for some crazy reason you enjoy what I write, I do appreciate any tips that you might drop my way. Please do check out my art in the gallery here as well, and feel free to follow or reach out to me on Twitter at @therevjoeblank.
WASHINGTON, Oct 2 (Reuters) – The Trump Administration’s desire to send long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine may not be viable because current inventories are committed to the U.S. Navy and other uses, a U.S. official and three sources said.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance said on Sunday that Washington was considering a Ukrainian request to obtain long-range Tomahawks that could create havoc deep into Russia, including Moscow. On Wednesday, Reuters reported, the U.S. will provide Ukraine with intelligence on long-range energy infrastructure targets in Russia.
But a U.S. official and sources familiar with Tomahawk missile training and supplies questioned the feasibility of providing the cruise missiles, which have a range of 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles).
The U.S. official stressed there was no shortage of the workhorse weapon, which is often used by the military for land attack missions, suggesting other shorter-distance options could be supplied to Kyiv.
The official said the U.S. may look into allowing European allies to buy other long-range weapons and supply them to Ukraine, but Tomahawks were unlikely.
SHIFT IN STANCE BY TRUMP
In recent weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump has sharply shifted how he talks about the war in Ukraine, suggesting Kyiv could retake all the land Russia has seized and calling the Russian military a “paper tiger.” The U.S. decision to help Ukraine target Russian energy infrastructure appears to be one tangible outcome of the new stance.
A new financial mechanism, the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), has been developed by the U.S. and allies to supply Ukraine with new weapons and those from U.S. stocks using funds from NATO countries.
Supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine could significantly expand its strike capabilities, enabling it to hit targets deep inside Russian territory, including military bases, logistics hubs, airfields and command centers that are currently beyond reach.
The Kremlin said on Thursday that if the U.S. provides Tomahawks to Ukraine, it would trigger a new round of dangerous escalation between Russia and the West.
According to Pentagon budget documents, the U.S. Navy, the primary user of the Tomahawk, has thus far purchased 8,959 at an average price of $1.3 million each.
The Tomahawk missile has been in production since the mid-1980s. In recent years, production has ranged from 55 to 90 per year. According to Pentagon budget data, the U.S. plans to buy 57 missiles in 2026.
Russia said on Monday that its military was analyzing whether or not the United States would supply Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine for strikes deep into its territory.
'Can American 'Tomahawks' cause us damage? They can. But we will shoot them down. Will this damage our relations with the USA? Of course. Using 'Tomahawks' without the direct involvement of American servicemen is impossible. This will be a completely new stage of escalation' –… pic.twitter.com/2hcrG6nrOl
Introduction: A Short History of Western Colonialism, including in the Middle East
The discovery of the Americas in 1492 ignited what has been called “The Age of Discovery” and the creation of colonial empires across the world. Almost every European country established colonies in the Americas, Africa, and East Asia. These colonies were used to supply resources, raw materials and markets for home-based production. This resulted in the extraction of enormous wealth which flowed back to Europe. Many books have been written about this blood-soaked period of human history.
The most significant colonial empire was the British Empire. Britian used its navy to “rule the waves” for 275 years while small groups of British nationals controlled enormous populations in East Asia and elsewhere. The East Asia Company, at its peak, controlled 50% of global trade and was said to be worth $7 trillion in today’s dollars. How did the Brits manage this empire? By using both violence and strategies that kept the subject population too divided to organize effective opposition. What we call “the west” still depends on extracting wealth from the rest of the world. This means colonial thinking and the technique of divide and conquer continues to drive foreign policy.
How does this apply to today’s Middle East? Again, a short history is required. The Ottoman Empire existed from 1300 to 1923. It was centered on the Anatolia plateau, what is now Turkey, and included parts of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. At its peak, the empire was noted for its advancement of artistic expression, literary works, and architectural milestones. It oversaw flourishing trade routes until it encountered rivalry from the East and Europe which gave rise to factions within the empire. One important aspect of the empire was its religious tolerance, which was not in the best interests of the western colonial empires that wanted to break up the Ottoman Empire.
The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after WW1 resulting in the creation of several countries that exist today: Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, several countries in the Balkans in southeastern Europe, Turkey, Cypris, Saudia Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Mandate, and later, Israel.
The partition of the Ottoman Empire set the stage for today’s controversies in the Middle East. The agreements establishing the partition include The Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), the Balfor Declaration (November 1917) and the Treaty of Sevres (1920), eventually replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Under these, sometimes secret agreements, the Ottoman Empire was partitioned and the British, and the French, gained control over Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine. The Balfour Declaration was incorporated into the British Mandate for Palestine, and the Brits helped to facilitate Jewish immigration into the area–ultimately resulting in the emergence of Israel in 1948.
At the time, the Brits were aware that Iran had oil but did not appreciate how much oil was in Iraq, or that there were enormous deposits of oil in what became Saudi Arabia in 1932. Oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia by expat, Max Steineke, Chief geologist at Casoc and Aramco in 1936.
The big issue, from the very beginning, was how to deal with and control, Arab nationalism. The British worked against the more moderate forms of Arab nationalism by forming alliances with Wahhabi elements represented by the House of Saud and providing them with military and financial support during their conflicts with the Ottoman Empire. Wahhabism emerged on the Arabian Peninsula in the 18th century founded by Mohammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. The aim of Wahhabism was to reform Islam by denouncing practices seen as idolatrous. The British, seeking to weaken the Ottoman empire, aligned with Wahhabism going all the way back to 1744 because it was seen as a tool to advance British interests. In 1806 the Arabian tribal leader ʿAbd al-ʿAziz ibn Saʿūd seized Mecca. In 1932 of the state ofSaudi Arabia was founded as a modern Islamic state.
The point to be made is that the colonial powers, especially the British and the French but ultimately including the United States, played a major role in the rise of reactionary Arab regimes, which depended on the continued support of colonial and imperialist powers for their survival. The rise of reactionary Arab regimes split Islam by empowering the most radical form of Sunni Islamist fundamentalism, and by disempowering the more moderate forms of Islam, including Sunni Islam. This tactic successfully fractured Arab unity and, to this day, has prevented the consolidation of the Arab population into a world power.
Saudi Arabia, alone, has spent billions supporting the spread of Wahhabism through the construction of mosques around the world and by training and funding Wahhabi Iman to run them. This has resulted in the radicalization of an entire generation of Arabs, unbelievable carnage in the Middle East, and the creation of the image of Islam as a backward violent religion. This represents another successful use of the strategy of “divide and conquer” to control resources, and to protect both Israel and the reactionary Arab regimes.
The empowerment of Wahhabism ultimately led to al Qaeda, ISIS, Au Nusra and dozens of other Sunni Islamist gangs, all of whom have been supported by the Brits, the US, and an alliance of reactionary Arab regimes. The ultimate beneficiary has been western colonialism and Israel. The atrocities committed by these Sunni Islamists led to the “War on Terror”, the Patriot Act, the fall of secular governments in the Middle East, the rise of the Likud party and settler radicalism in Israel, along with our current panopticon of 24-hour total surveillance. The “War on Terror” and the label of “terrorist” or “terrorism” enabled the violation of civil rights at home, US wars for the security of Israel, and atrocities across the Middle East. Once a group or individual is labeled a “terrorist” all human rights are lost, and they can be killed. The labeling of Palestinian organizations, including Hamas as a terrorist group, has been used as an excuse to for the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. More recently to flatten Gaza, make Gaza unlivable, and murder thousands of Palestinian civilians. An alternative interpretation under international law would be that Hamas is exercising Palestine’s legitimate right to resist the illegal Israeli occupation and theft of Palestinian land. The terrorist designation is by design, and it reinforces decades of propaganda focusing on “Israel’s right to defend herself” and “Israel’s right to exist”, while ignoring the fact that under international law, Palestine also has a right to exist, and Palestinians also have the right to defend themselves.
This centuries old pattern in the Middle East seems to be changing. This essay will discuss how and why.
The Yinon Plan, Clean Break, A New Pearl Harbor, and the dream of Greater Israel
In 1982 an article was published in a Hebrew journal by Oded Yinon, a former advisor to Areil Sharon and a journalist for the Jerusalem Post entitled “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980’s”. This article advocated accelerating the strategy of sectarian division of Islam discussed above. It called for the breakup and fragmentation of the Arab states into small, weak, ethnically and religiously defined states to enhance the security of Israel.
The “Yinon plan’ is claimed to have influenced the drafting of “Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” issued on 1996. The plan called for Israel to renew itself economically by leaving behind it’s socialist foundations and focusing on neoliberalism. It also called for Israel to adopt “preemption” as a military strategy, and to “broaden Israel’s base of support in the US Congress”.
In 2000 a group of neoconservatives surrounding George W. Bush described the need for a “new Pearl Harbor”. Soon after 911 occurred and the wars of the administration of George W. Bush began to take out 7 Middle Eastern countries in 5 years. The countries named were Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off with Iran. The result has been what Richard Perle described as the beginning of waging “total war”. Over the last 24 years, Zionists and neoconservatives have overthrown several of the countries mentioned, destabilizing the Middle East, but failed to destroy Iran and had to, at least partially, withdraw from Iraq. Presently, Lebanon and Syria are under assault, and Israel is engaged in ethnically cleansing the West Bank and making Gaza unlivable. The UN has now characterized the Israeli attack on Gaza as a genocide.
Support for Zionism and for Israel is falling in the United States. US global military and economic hegemony is in decline. This implies the time frame for Israel to achieve her objectives in the Middle East, including creating a Greater Israel, is narrowing.
As you can see, Greater Israel includes the following:
–Egypt–the Sinai and everything up to the Nile including substantial resources along the Red Sea. Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel and is the recipient of a large amount of US aid. Egypt has yet to respond.
—All of Jordon. Jordon has been silent.
—All of Syria. Syria has been systematically destabilized. Jolani, the Jihadist who had a $10 million bounty on his head, has allowed Israel free rein to bomb and occupy Syrian territory.
—All of Lebanon including the water resources of the Litani River, the gas resources off the coast, Beirut, the mountains–everything.
—A good part of Saudi Arabia including much of the oil and other resources.
—Northern Iraq including the oil and other resources.
—All of Kuwait including the oil and other resources.
—Part of Turkey.
—Although not shown on the map, there are indications that the Zionists also want Cypris.
Putting aside for a moment whether a Greater Israel is realistic, we must assume that the conquest of Greater Isreal would resemble the conquest of Palestine. If so, terror techniques would be used to expel most of the population in each country, and the property and resources would be confiscated without any compensation. After all, Zionists owned only 7% of Palestine–the rest was seized without compensation. Israel is now attempting to depopulate and confiscate 109 square miles of Gaza, constituting prime Mediterranean property, and off-shore gas resources, again with US support and without compensation.
Obviously, Israel cannot achieve Greater Israel without US help. The US would have to pay for the wars, do the fighting, and the shed the blood and treasure to conquer the targeted countries. Can Israel manipulate the US into creating Greater Israel, as for the wars after 911? Does the US have the financial and military capacity to fight even one more war for Israel or have US militarism and Zionism finally gone too far?
The Israeli strike on the Hamas negotiating team in Doha marks the end of an era
Israel has been conducting “decapitation strikes” with impunity for decades. Here are just a few recent strikes:
—On October 17th and 18th, 2024 thousands of handheld pagers and hundreds of Walkie-talkies, assumed to be used by Hezbollah, suddenly exploded. This represented the use of ordinary commerce to achieve a targeted decapitation. At least 12 people were killed and over 3,000 were injured. Leon Panetta condemned the pager strike as “an act of terrorism.” Which is clearly true.
—On September 27, 2024, Israel killed Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Hezbollah, along with many others, as they were meeting under a residential building. The operation involved dropping more than 80 bombs on a residential neighborhood of Beirut, Lebanon. Nasrallah was killed for tying the Hezbollah cause to the Gaza war and seeking to include Gaza in a cease fire. Nasrallah is credited with ending the 18-year Israeli occupation of Lebanon in 2000.
—In the predawn hours of June 13, 2025, even as President Trump was advocating continued dialogue with Iran to resolve the nuclear issue, and another negotiation session had been scheduled, Israel launched a preemptive decapitation strike designed to take out Iranian civilian and military leadership. The strike included a massive attack of perhaps 200 fighter jets dropping 330 precision munitions on over 100 targets. The decapitation strike failed. The result was the 12-day war.
—On August 28, 2025 Israel conducted a decapitation strike that took out the entire Houthi civilian cabinet including the prime minister and 10 senior ministers.
—On September 9, 2025, as a Hamas team was gathering to discuss “the Witkoff Gaza proposal” in Doha, Qatar, Israel attempted a decapitation strike to take out the entire Hamas team. The team survived but again, like with Iran, the Hamas team was meeting in response to a peace proposal being pushed by President Donald Trump. Six people were killed including a Qatar security official. Qatar was not pleased.
Crooke points out that for decades Qatar had supported An-Nusra jihadists in Syria, against Iran (divide and conquer), while selling gas and maintaining US military bases and a strategic partnership with Washington. Doha was a mediator with a relationship with the jihadists while acting as a facilitator for Mossad. Now the idea that anywhere in the Middle East is a safe zone from Israeli strikes, or that the US would be a reliable defender, is over.
Israeli channel 11 reported that President Trump approved the attack and applauded any killing of Hamas members. This was yet another US/Israeli sneak attack–one that finally got through to the Arab countries that there are no forbidden territories; no rules of law; no Vienna Convention, and that the US and Israel would act as they pleased in the Middle East.
The unconditional US support “…for Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing; the failure to make any serious effort to prepare a political path for a settlement on Ukraine; the reliance instead on making war, whilst proclaiming peace – all these represent the essence of the Trump approach: An exercise of escalatory dominance, both at home and abroad.”
The impact of a US “Israel first” policy is fracturing Trump’s MAGA base as the reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk clearly shows. Worse, US policy has negatively impacted US soft power and diplomatic trustworthiness across the world, yet, for some reason, the Trump Administration cannot break free from Zionist domination. Meanwhile, Israel is increasingly out of control, carrying out a second Nakba (ethnic cleaning and genocide) in Gaza and the West Bank. At the same timees, Jewish society itself in Israel is trapped in repression and denial –as it was in 1948 when the reality of the founding of Israel was denied. Israeli filmmaker Neta Shoshani’s controversial documentary about the 1948 war has been banned in Israel because it tried to tell the truth about this history.
“I suddenly realized that in the past two horrible years the whole matter of the Israeli ethos has been totally shattered”:
“I grasped that an ethos has a great deal of power, that it contains society within certain boundaries. And even if those boundaries are breached – and they were certainly breached as early as 1948 – there was still something in society’s moral codes that at least caused it to feel ashamed. So, for decades that ethos safeguarded [Israeli] society and the army, compelling them to preserve certain limits”.
“And when that ethos falls apart, it’s really scary. From this perspective, the film was difficult to watch from the get-go, but after the last two years it’s become unbearable” …
“If 1948 Was a War of Independence, the current war could be the one that ends Israel”.
What does all this mean for the Middle East?
Several of the nations in the Middle East have been aligned with the US; Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Bahran, and Kuwait. These nations believed that the purchase of US weapons, even with back doors giving the US control, and hosting US military bases would ensure their national security. The Doha attack blew that assumption to smithereens. The US consented to the attack, and the realization finally hit these countries that all the years of cooperating with US/UK/Israel, even as they worked to divide Islam and weaken the Arab world, had been for naught. Plus, the back doors embedded in US weapons meant they could not be used against either the US or Israel. These countries were defenseless, and vulnerable.
The reaction was instantaneous. Qatar organized an Arab-Islamic summit after the Doha attack seeking a collective response to Israel. This follows decades of the systematic destruction of Iraq, Libya, the destabilization of Syria, the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the destruction and genocide of the population of Gaza, the destabilization of Lebanon including the US demand that Lebanon disarm Hezbollah.
Leaders from the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the 22-member Arab League attended along with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. On September 13th, Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani issued what he called a “warning to Islamic governments” and said they must “form a ‘joint operations room’ against the madness” of Israel instead of resorting to mere statements. The result is unclear, but these nations are talking and the US and Israel are not part of the discussion.
The reaction did not end there. On September 18th Turkey revealed that Israel had sold Greece an air defense system that could further destabilize the Island. It was also reported that Israel thought it was time for Turkey to be forced to leave Cyprus. These events are happening while Israeli’s are buying land and building communities in Cyprus. Turkey is a member of NATO, but this fact could be meaningless in a conflict with Israel.
There are now two nuclear power blocs in the Middle East–the US/Israeli block and the Pakistani/Saudi Arabia block. More importantly, Pakistan has vowed to nuke Israel should Israel use nuclear weapons.
For Pakistan it addresses a critical flaw, access to energy. From Thomas Kieth: “Pakistan now enjoys an unprecedented warfighting depth: Chinese arms and ammunition on one side, Saudi oil and money on the other. It is an industrial-scale supply chain that neutralizes the constraints India has historically counted on. For Saudi Arabia, the pact is equally revealing. Riyadh has watched the limitations of U.S. security guarantees with growing unease. The recent incident in which Israeli missiles crossed Saudi airspace to strike Qatar without interception exposed the cracks in U.S. air defense systems stationed in the region.”
India has yet to respond and tensions with China and Pakistan still needs to be addressed. Still the pact has created a new strategic corridor where China supplies the arms, Saudi Arabia supplies the energy, and Pakistan provides the pivot.
The US was not informed of this pact until it was announced. For Saudi Arabia, the pact provides a defense against a decapitation strike and the takeover of Saudi assets by Israel as part of creating Greater Israel. By providing a nuclear umbrella over at least part of the Middle East, Pakistan has also defanged Israel’s nuclear threat.
The Saudi/Pakistani pact could result in other client states exploring options leading to the collapse of the US global alliance system. The implications for the petrodollar and US global economic and military dominance should also not be ignored.
The question now is what will happen to Iran. The “snap back” sanctions provisions were adopted by the EU, but their legality has been questioned by Russia, China, and the global south. Apparently, they did not intend to obey the sanctions. Reports say that Israel will initiate another war with Iran before the end of the year.
Conclusion
For the US, the realization may be dawning that it is too late to arrest China’s dominance of the eastern Pacific–or to breakup and loot Russia–that the US should instead pivot to securing the homeland including the entire western hemisphere. The result of this shift is still to be determined. The US now has a flotilla of battle ships threating Venezuela and blowing up small boats. Does this mean the US intends try and seize Venezuelan oil reserves? This would imply the US is trading one series of absurd wars for another. What is needed instead is diplomacy and working to create peaceful exchanges and commerce.
The kind of thrashing around we have witnessed for the last 35 years is not the way a superpower should behave. The dissolution of the Soviet Union should have ended US militarism but instead resulted in the quest for global hegemony and a frantic search for another enemy. Years of domination by militarism, neoliberalism, and the corruption of money has created a catastrophe.
The “brilliant minds” behind US foreign and domestic policy have made an enormous mess both domestically and with foreign policy. Our present circumstance represents a bi-partisan failure of the entire political class over at least 2 generations. A reckoning is coming. This contour of this mess has been discussed in previous Substack’s. The fix has also been discussed; it involves the American people coming together in a new populist movement to reform the system, focused on economic fairness. As for the reckoning–what, how and when is unknown, but it is coming.
