Yves here. As readers know, facts about what happened and is happening in the US-Israel v. Iran conflict are still up in the air. For instance, the Wall Street Journal ran a long account of the forces the US claimed it used to attack the Fordow nuclear site, and in particular the mother of all US bunker-busters, of which only 20 were made. Experts have looked at the satellite images of the site and said the craters are not consistent with the use of bunker busters but of standoff weapons. So facts are likely to continue to be in dispute for a while, with a high probability of disagreement between MSM and independent media views.
By Rob Urie, author of Zen Economics, artist, and musician who publishes The Journal of Belligerent Pontification on Substack
Following a choreographed response by Iran to the US – Israeli attacks on what are alleged to have been Iranian nuclear facilities, the Trump administration announced a cease fire between Iran and Israel. That the US is the lead belligerent in the attacks on Iran recalls similar posturing by it as a helpful neighbor in Russia – Ukraine talks. Israel bombed Iran after accusing it of breaking the cease-fire.
Yesterday’s attack by Iran on Al Udeid airbase in Qatar was a pre-announced volley of six missiles, three of which were reportedly intercepted by Qatar, that appeared intended to harm no one. Under international law, Iran was entitled to a retaliatory strike as response to the illegal and unprovoked attack by the US on Iran. With this dance completed, Mr. Trump announced the cease-fire.
Regarding the cease fire, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov offered that “This is what Russia has been calling for from the very beginning of this conflict. So yes, this can and should be welcomed,” Russia will presumably be looking for evidence that the US is moving its large gathering of ships, planes, missiles and personnel assembled for the attack on Iran out of West Asia. The best guess here is that the US will not be removing the offending items anytime soon.
What makes this roundabout particularly insane is that Iran had already agreed to US terms before the hostilities were undertaken. The theory from American commenters that the only reason that Iran (legally) possessed 60% enhanced uranium was to gain bargaining leverage with the Americans is plausible. It was Donald Trump himself who tore up the agreement that Iran had signed saying that it couldn’t.
With the Iranian show of deference through its restrained and politically necessary response in Qatar to the US – Israeli attacks on it, claims in the present by the Israelis that it was Iran that breached the cease fire seem unlikely to be true. But with scant details, this is a logical claim, not an empirical one. Given that it is Iran that appears to be behaving itself—as seen through Western eyes, Iran is currently still under attack from the same coalition that it agreed to peace with.
From Donald Trump’s perspective, possibly he feels that he has fulfilled his obligation to Miriam Adelson with respect to her $100 million purchase of his services, and can now restart work on his Nobel Peace Prize. But with Iran having agreed to US terms before the hostilities began, things aren’t adding up here. The fog of war is one possible explanation, hidden motives and plans by the US are another.
Channeling retired CIA, and national treasure, Ray McGovern, the following scenario unfolds: Donald Trump responded to the initial Israeli assault on Iran by stepping in with US resolve and fire power to solve the proximate problem of Iran’s alleged nuclear program. Now that that has been accomplished, the US can depart and Mr. Trump can contact the Nobel committee.
One problem with this version of events is that as of yesterday afternoon, the US and Israel were still bombing the Fordow site under the highly probable theory that the facility had not been destroyed. The premise of Western pundits that the US and Israel knew that the charges of an Iranian nuclear weapons program were bogus, and that the attacks were therefore political theater, are challenged by the ongoing bombing campaign against the Fordow facility.
Further, the deployment of ships, planes, and missiles to West Asia began quite a bit before Israel launched its illegal and unprovoked attack on Iran two weeks ago. What the US has assembled in West Asia doesn’t look to be impromptu, as a rapid response to an unfortunate incident. Moreover, the initial Israeli attack specifically targeted senior Iranian military and political leadership. The point: the attack was highly planned, not an impromptu affair.
Commenters in the US are again claiming that ‘all roads lead to (Joe) Biden,’ that this attack against Iran was planned eighteen months ago by the Biden administration. With a similar claim made regarding MI-6’s recent attack on Russian nuclear assets, the Biden administration is apparently still in charge of US foreign policy. But Mr. Biden was never in charge of US foreign policy. So, who’s running this show?
Further, the last two US calls for peace with Iran were pretexts for unprovoked assaults by the US and Israel on it. Mr. Trump imagines that his emperor’s boot on Iran’s neck can force an unjust peace and that the payment of tribute will once again flow upwards. On a longer trajectory, that is not how this will unfold. No predictive power is claimed here. The premise is that repressive power is costly to maintain, and the West is running low on resources.
That the US and Israel were still bombing the Fordow facility on Monday afternoon suggests that the Americans and the Israelis really do believe their own b.s. regarding an Iranian nuclear weapons program— a point that I made that wasn’t very well received last week. Anyone listening to official pronouncements from Washington regarding foreign affairs will have noted a departure of what is said from the determinable facts.
On Saturday night, the 21st of June, the US launched an attack on three Iranian sites alleged to contain the remnants of Iran’s nuclear program. Initial reports from the Trump administration claimed that all three sites were ‘completely destroyed.’ Commenters on military affairs contend that this is unlikely. The bunkers, particularly Fordow, are buried deeper than conventional US missiles are likely able to penetrate.
The assault was carried out using multiple 30.000 lb. bunker buster bombs. These are conventional weapons, notnuclear weapons. Here is retired MIT professor Ted Postol explaining to Dan Davis why the bunker busters are unlikely to destroy well-buried facilities. As illustrated in the video, there are physical barriers that can be used to deflect bunker buster missiles. This means that most don’t burrow as deeply as is needed to destroy deeply buried bunkers.
Iran had previously stated that it had removed whatever fissile material may have been in the facilities in anticipation of US strikes. This suggests that the strikes were performative— to demonstrate resolve, rather than strategic in nature. However, that the US and Israelis are re-bombing the Fordow facility suggests otherwise. Implied is that they 1) believe that what is in the Iranian bunkers represents a problem that is worth addressing militarily and 2) the weapons used to date have failed to end this problem.
Report: Pentagon Agency Believes US Needs To Drop A Nuke To Destroy Iran’s Fordow Nuclear Plant, June 19, 2025, antiwar.com.
Reports last week had it that Iran no longer trusted the CIA assets alleged to be working for the IAEA, (International Atomic Energy Agency), and therefore wouldn’t allow IAEA inspectors back into the sites until the CIA is removed from the process. For present purposes, there are many steps to be taken before the ‘nuclear problem’ will be resolved in the eyes of the West.
Prior to Saturday night’s attack, Russia had reportedly offered Iran military assistance, including an air defense system, which Iran initially refused for fear of provoking the US. With the attack now in the rear-view mirror, this logic no longer applies. The Russians are claimed to have delivered conventional missiles to Iran last week, with a more general and substantial promise of support implied.
In a call from V. Putin to Donald Trump following the initial attack, Mr. Putin is reported to have told Mr. Trump that Iran is a strategic partner of Russia, and to tread carefully. Mr. Trump’s subsequent decision to go ‘Jeffrey Dahmer’ on Iran, inviting it back to his place for some nuclear negotiations and then trying to club it to death in a surprise attack, could not have made the Russians happy.
What was made abundantly clear with Saturday night’s attack is that the effort to destroy Iran is an American affair. Early press accounts had the Israelis being informed of the attacks as they were happening. While the news itself is a big yawn, the royal ‘we’ that Donald Trump uses to describe the relationship places the US on top every time.
Flying under the radar is that, with the West now otherwise occupied in Iran, the Russians are rolling through Ukraine. For current purposes, the quantum of Western resources now redeployed to West Asia from Ukraine suggests that the US is planning to stay there (West Asia) for a while. If the US wants peace, why does it have the military resources in place for war?
This last point isn’t intended as a logical gotcha. Donald Trump’s slogan is peace through strength, and over-arming could represent the strength part. But the current American effort took a lot of planning. And it is therefore unlikely to end quickly. Unless the purpose was a few seconds of Trumpian chest-thumping, nothing was resolved. Iran had already agreed to US terms before the hostilities were launched. And the Fordow facility is still standing.
On the misplaced priorities front, the alleged reason for launching the strikes on a Saturday night, rather than a Monday morning, was to ‘save the stock market.’ Donald Trump, who has been acting to manage oil prices since he entered office, likely to offset the volatility caused by his policies, is now targeting stock prices as well. Why would he do this? Because much of his own wealth, as well as that of his fellow oligarchs, is tied to stock market gains.
The Western press is again lying about Iran’s remaining military capacity following last Saturday’s attack. In Western press reports, it was three alleged nuclear facilities that were attacked, and not missiles and missile batteries. As the Iranians regain their footing, they retain the same capacity to inflict damage on Israel as they did before the attacks.
As the quote from Dmitry Peskov (above) put it regarding the cease fire, ‘this can and should be welcomed.’ Whether the result will be peace is another matter. With little accomplished other than retail-level death, destruction, and dismemberment, the question of the Western goal with the attacks remains open. Iran’s Supreme Ayatollah remains in power. And Iran had already agreed to give up its 60% enhanced uranium before Israel attacked it two weeks ago.
The idea that Mr. Trump launched an unprovoked war on the basis of a solved political problem— Iran had agreed to US terms and the Western intelligence agencies supported its assertion that it had no nuclear weapons program, leaves far more questions than answers. Conversely, why isn’t Mr. Trump at risk of going to prison for this? What was the point? Great death and destruction have taken place. Why was this assault undertaken?
To the Western dispute over who is controlling this situation, the argument remains open as to whether the US is acting of its own volition, or at the behest of Israel? Question: who is funding the current venture in Iran? The US is. Who is providing the military resources for Israel’s actions? The US is. Who is providing Israel with political cover across West Asia? The US is. In fact, the US has the power to withdraw this support. Ergo, the US is controlling the situation.
For those who missed it, Miriam Adelson, the Zionist who gave Donald Trump $100 million in campaign contributions in 2024, is what is called an ‘oligarch.’ Readers may recall that oligarchs are a regular feature of discussions of economic class in the West. Some people, including yours truly, have argued for the last decade-and-one-half that oligarchs control the economies, and with them, the politics, of the West.
So, the argument has two elements, Zionism and economic class. What is revealed through the power of AIPAC is that the controlling economic interests of the West are Zionists. If they were poor Zionists, this point would be easier to communicate because few would ever have heard of Zionism. America has been controlled by oligarchs for most of its history. The types of wealth generated in recent decades have benefitted some groups and not others.
Supporting this contention is that Israel was viewed as a minor US asset in West Asia until the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Readers will recall that the US and the Brits overthrew the government of Iran in 1953 and replaced it with Reza Pahlavi, the fake Shah that the West inflicted until the Iranians booted him out in 1979. Since then, the US has declared non-stop war against Iran. Death and its best friend, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld— who sold Iran its first nuclear reactor under Eisenhower’s ‘atoms for peace’ initiative, set the US military establishment after Iran, and have been punishing it for its impudence ever since.
So, the question arises of when Zionism took control of US foreign policy, and more importantly, why? I personally observed during the time that Israel was making its long right-wing turn that the move was coincident with the US MIC (military-industrial-complex) integrating with the Israeli military. I’ve met and had long conversations with very senior Israeli military contractors who worked for the Pentagon. They had higher security clearances than made any sense as representatives of a foreign government.
It was the US that chose to integrate Israel into US plans for West Asia. As best I could determine over the years, Israel didn’t control the relationship. And the longer the association with the US lasted, the harder-right-wing Israel turned. Younger readers may never have heard of the Israeli Socialists of the 1970s. Israel was sold as a progressive outpost with Socialist tendencies. This is the same Israel today that has spent its recent years committing an ethno-nationalist genocide that would have made the Nazis squirm.
As I’ve argued multiple times since John Mearsheimer’s book was written, my problem with the ‘Israel Lobby’ thesis is the conflation of cause with effect. Mearsheimer is a hero for his public antiwar stances in my eyes. And the differences here go to economic premises, not an interest in winning an internet squabble. The dominant feature of Western political economy since the 1970s has been the concentration of incomes and wealth at the very top.
I didn’t realize that this was either unknown or still controversial amongst the economists on the other side of this debate. As I’ve demonstrated with graphs and evidence since 2011, this concentration of wealth didn’t come from God bestowing money on some people, but not others. The industries that have done well in recent decades all did so with significant and ongoing public funding.
Academics Gilens and Page, as well as Thomas Ferguson, have written books and papers making the point that money, meaning the rich, controls American politics. The pharmaceutical industry was a large contributor to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, and the US now has private insurance system that doesn’t pay claims. But industry profits are way up. This kind of self-dealing by corporations and the rich is the way that America works in 2025.
The last I looked, neither Russia nor China has bought American politicians because they are precluded from doing so. Recall the reaction to the fantasy that Russia was interfering in Western elections around 2016. Were they allowed to simply purchase politicians, as the Israel lobby is alleged to do, the Russians could have saved billions, possibly trillions, by purchasing Joe Biden rather than going to war in Ukraine. However, the war in Ukraine was already underway when Biden entered office.
So, who decides which nations get to purchase US foreign policy and which don’t? Question: why don’t the Russians and the Chinese simply outbid Israel to control of US foreign policy? Doing so would certainly be less costly than going to war. The answer: because it isn’t for sale. The monopoly that Israel holds on US foreign policy comes before the Israel Lobby, not after it.
To the question of why Donald Trump is answering to Benjamin Netanyahu, I’ll go way out on a limb here and suggest that possibly the $100 million that Miriam Adelson paid him for doing so has something to do with it. This is in no way to discount Ray McGovern’s thesis that Donald Trump ultimately wants peace. But he took $100 million from Miriam Adelson to do the opposite.
Last: the US / Israeli genocide in Gaza has entered its mass extermination phase. This is amongst the more grotesque episodes in human history. Americans are paying for it, supplying the weapons, planes and providing political support for Israel while it carries out the genocide. For those who haven’t studied the Holocaust, this is it. This is a Holocaust being carried out by Israel with full US backing.
According to Noam Chomsky, the U.S. started to pay attention to Israel as a geopolitical asset after the ’67 war. That’s when the money flow from the U.S. to Israel started.
I recall that being cited as the pivot point in my political science class back 20 years ago.
Israel smashed the emerging pan-arabism of Nasser and got itself a reputation as a reliable butt-kicker in the region after that war. Obviously, the US found that appealing.
The real commitment came with the Yom Kippur War in ’73, which resulted in the OPEC oil boycott that kicked off the long decline of the US (for ordinary US working people, that is, not for the oligarchs and plutocrats). We can thank Kissinger and Nixon for that. Between ’67 and ’73 we also saw the publishing industry start feeding us an ever increasing diet of Holocaust p0rn to build support for all things Zionist. Prior to that I think Israel got some support from a few leftists as a supposed model socialist state, but most other Americans barely gave it a thought. It was another of a long list of imperial projects (Congo, Laos, Cuba, Iran, etc.) that made the front page of the newspapers occasionally but made little difference to the average American.
It was during the 1973 war that Israel threatened to strike Moscow with a nuclear warhead if the Soviet Union directly entered the war. Israel has used this approach many times since.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/israel-nearly-went-nuclear-win-1973-yom-kippur-war-172087
https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/206909/israel-nuclear-weapons-and-the-1973-yom-kippur-war/
One can sure that if Iran continued to pummel Israel with conventional weapons Israel would once again threaten to use nuclear weapons. Back channel messaging of this sort has probably been relayed to Tehran, Moscow, and Washington D.C.
It has long been an essential theme of the Euro-American narrative that The West liberated the Jews from Eastern Totalitarianism. Here, for example, is Eisenhower ‘liberating’ Ohrdruf on April 12, 1945, (coincidentally, the day on which FDR died ‘of natural causes’).
This historic photo-op, ‘discovering’ Nazi atrocities in the already-abandoned Ohrdruf, occurred thee months after the Soviets had already liberated Auschwitz. After the celebrated heroics of D-day, the West sat on its collective hands watching Jews die, while it recruited senior Nazi leaders to resume ‘Hitlers’ war on ‘big, bad communism’ through operations like Sunrise, Paperclip, and Gladio.
Admittedly, the US, unlike Britain still flush with domestic oil, did not fully value Israel until the OPEC embargoes and the Nixon Shock, but the propaganda of its rescue of the Jews from sozialist totalitarianism long antedates those events.
Propagada likely came because they knew about the death camps and did nothing, even turning ships away with Jews, and with this liberation PR they tried to squash any thought that they were overlooking a monumental crime. Like it is happening now in Gaza…
Recall the context, the integration of Israel into the US MIC. I used the date that I did because it represented the start of permanent US hostilities against Iran.
In 1978 the US had one large outpost (Iran) and one small outpost (Israel) in West Asia. In 1979, following the revolution, the US had one small outpost in West Asia.
Given the planned role of oil geopolitics in US foreign policy, the loss of Iran as a client state was devastating, and shifted the balance to Israel.
I don’t disagree with the other dates. Chomsky knows this issue better than most. But there is logic to the date I gave.
Re: “…this concentration of wealth didn’t come from God bestowing money on some people.”
The Messiah was an utterly good and loving young man. He never harmed anybody, but loved everybody, even those that hated him. He was an innocent child in his approach to this World.
Yet he was wrongly punished. He died the most agonizing horrific public death (crucifiction was considered to be too awful for any Roman citizen to bare, so they were always executed in other ways.)
The Messiah was also humiliated publicly,… hanging half naked on a pole, as a spectacale. He was rejected by most of his community. He did all of this willingly, in order to take upon himself the sins (evil deeds) of the rest of us. (the sacrificial lamb)
The antithesis (opposite) of Christ is one (or an entity) that commits horrific, ongoing crimes against the innocents (children, women and men), but never suffers any punishment/retribution for their crimes.
For instance; the Great European Banks that have fomented (funded) the slavery trade, the drug trade, the World Wars, colonialism, The Russian Revolution, the Wars in the middle East, the Opium Wars………… homelessness….. for hundreds of years.
In fact, rather than be punished, the antithesis of Christ are rewarded with fame, awards, vast wealth, aclaim…
I just realized this
Jesus died the death of a Judean insurrectionist — literally: he was crucified in place of the insurrectionist Barabbas.
A question that intrigues me is what was Jesus’ own conception of what his crucifixion would accomplish — he seems to have envisioned this outcome in advance, and reckoned that it would function as “a ransom for many.”
Perhaps he foresaw the coming catastrophic war with Rome and engineered a pre-emptive defeat for Judea, by being acclaimed as King but then arrested and executed before a rebellion could be properly launched. Demoralize the militants and save the nation, for a while.
If that was the plan, it evidently worked — the war didn’t begin until a generation later.
—
Israel had better leaders in those days.
He was killed because wanted to bring the Jubilee, and a lot of people in Jerusalem, including the priesthood, would not want to hear about the cancellation of debts, and to hell with the rabinical law, the chief priest got a decission that it not applies, or that the circumstances, or whatever, basicaly rules based order.
David Lay Williams, in his recent book “The Greatest of All Plagues” provides an entire chapter, in great detail, far more than Prof Michael Hudson has ever posted, on Jesus, and the circumstances and machinations leading to his death. Compelling, I tell you.
I checked out the book. Very compelling reading. Thanks for the recommendation. My library doesn’t have it. $35 for the hardcover edition.
It is very questionable whether the story of Barabbas is a historical fact.
Yeah, the western colonialist civilization is the one that turns every vice into virtue and every virtue into vice.
Late Pope John Paul the Second used to call it the Civilization of Death but he only meant it because of the legal abortion typically for conservatives not caring about already born too much.
The Russian revolution? That came out of the blue…
The Jacob Schiff Telegram
“The chairman of the Central Executive Committee, Yakov Sverdlov, sent a message to Yakov Yurovsky where he relayed that after he had told Jacob Schiff in New York about the approach of the White army, he had received orders from Schiff to liquidate the Tsar and his entire family at once. This order was delivered to Sverdlov by the American Representation, which then lay in the town of Vologda.
Sverdlov ordered Yurovsky to carry out this order. But on the following day, Yurovsky wanted to check whether the order really applied to the whole family or just to the head of the family, the Tsar. Sverdlov then told him that the entire family was to be eliminated. Yurovsky was responsible for the order being carried out.”
https://archive.org/details/theschifftelegram
Jacob Schiff was the head of Kuhn, Loeb & Company
To the question of why Donald Trump is answering to Benjamin Netanyahu, I’ll go way out on a limb here and suggest that possibly the $100 million that Miriam Adelson paid him for doing so has something to do with it.
That, and a few videos from Little St. James Island.
Carrots and sticks.
This is the real question, right here, and I don’t think we’ve got a good understanding of the answer.
“So, who decides which nations get to purchase US foreign policy and which don’t? Question: why don’t the Russians and the Chinese simply outbid Israel to control of US foreign policy? Doing so would certainly be less costly than going to war. The answer: because it isn’t for sale. The monopoly that Israel holds on US foreign policy comes before the Israel Lobby, not after it.”
Right up until around 2015, Russia and China seemed to be integrating themselves comfortably into US and EU politics, business, and society. Lots of Russian oligarchs stashed their cash in London, and bought soccer clubs. Lukoil briefly had a presence in retail gas stations like Citgo in the US. China did even more to integrate itself into western business. They bought oligarchs like Elon Musk, and most manufacturers still have major operations in China.
What led the deep state to push these two countries onto the enemies list?
While only my personal opinion… if we stick with the oligarch concept… by about 2015 (or likely earlier, but not yet outwardly apparent) it would have become obvious to the western/US oligarchs that neither Russia nor China were going to just readily hand over their resources, industries and markets. If they can’t get what they want then they use their wealth to buy the powers of the US to change the playing field or so they hope.
Yes. Attempts were made to “peacefully” integrate them through economic penetration and “democracy” promotion – meaning the type of government in which a comprador class can throw open a nation to exploitation by global capital. Russia was well on its way until Putin came along. But by the first decade of the 21st century it was clear that neither country was going to capitulate. I think the writing was on the wall earlier than 2015. Certainly Putin’s speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference was a point of no return. And by that time I think it was apparent that China was not going to “open up” its political (or financial) system to Western control. Time for a new strategy.
As for the oligarch concept, MSM coverage of Russia was generally favorable in the early to mid-2000s when Russia was effectively ruled by the mid-1990s oligarchs, but after Putin had effectively neutered most of those oligarchs and forced them to surrender most of the assets purchased in the dubious privatizations via lawfare, MSM slowly turned into white-hot anti-Russian rage. Some point to Putin’s 2007 Munich speech, and while that may have been a factor, I find it hard to believe that a speech that few are even aware of could trigger such a reaction.
It is worth noting that Putin also changed the ownership of certain key media outlets.
Yes indeed. Mr.Putin had the temerity to act in the interest of Russia and continues to do so.
I concede that the US was in charge of the relationship at the start and still is in that it has the theoretical power to turn off the money tap, but the infiltration or is it integration of Israel first persons in government, Thinktankstan, media etc. makes a determination of who and how the strings are pulled ever more difficult to determine. At the moment, Trump appears to favor the Zionist cause, but one ought never forget his transactional nature.
Yeah, somebody made a back of the envelope calculation that about 20 trillion worth of wealth were siphoned from Russia in 10 years of Yieltsin. Cutting that tsunami of easy money was the painful part for the vampires’ ball, not Putin’s speech.
But it was nice to see the Europeans grovelling at trump’s feet this week-end in their willingness to pay protection money (5% of GDP each). And when Spain declined (since nobody is really threatening Spain and the Spaniards know that, since WWI & WWII and cold war passed over them), Trump threatened to double the tariff to Spanish imports in the US…
The spectacle is beyond belief. There is no propriety left, nothing. It is all in the open, and we, the sheeple are being redied for slaughter because of gangster like, psychopatic US elites.
Sometimes I feel that the Yellowstone caldera explosion is really overdue…
Because China and Russia are Great Powers and competitors (in their eyes) and adversaries (in the eyes of the US), partly because they are nuclear powers controlling a large land mass, but mostly because they have clear, consistent, intelligent leadership with highly effective bureaucracies one of the functions of which is to prepare potential successors some of whom will fit the moment.
The monopoly that the settler colony holds on US policy arose because of Truman’s stupidity in going against his State Department by secretly instructing the US UN representative to vote to recognise the settler colony as a state, which soon found that strong mutual benefits could arise if it worked closely with another Truman folly, the CIA.
The monopoly on US foreign policy began to kick in under Johnson after Kennedy’s assassination. Nixon questioned this as an unnecessary burden and he was ousted after the US-China rapprochement as a result of the Watergate scandal in which the CIA somehow managed to become deeply involved in every aspect. Carter refused to art decisively when he had the opportunity. James Jesus Angleton, a CIA agent who was a committed Zionist with a deep emotional and professional connection to the settler colony and high level mob contacts appears to have had a central role in both JFK’s murder and Nixon’s fall, may also have been a significant figure in the MLK an RFK assassinations.
In his first term, Reagan stopped some of settler colony’s more stupid escapades but the rot really set in under the first Bush, a CIA man to the bone, and the settler state tail wagging the US dog became settled US policy during the Clinton years.
I don’t buy the argument that (Israeli) strikes on Fordow after the B2 strikes imply that the former were not performative. The Prime Minister of Israel was presumably also doing performative things in order to lay the groundwork for the (laughable) claim that the war objectives had been fulfilled.
My read of the situation is that both US and Israeli heads of government wanted to declare “mission accomplished” and get out of a dangerous situation.
Gilbert Doctorow thinks that Israel was getting such a beating that Netanjahu was about to use nukes to destroy Fordow, which is why Trump decided to take it our for Israel with conventional weapons.
I find that both plausible from a certain point of view and quite implausible from many others. If Israel has nuclear weapons, they’re not designed to destroy underground facilities but cities. And Israel doesn’t have a foolproof method of delivering them with the required accuracy.
Unfortunately, delivery of said munitions with “reasonable” accuracy will suffice for the nuclear bombing of an adversary’s capitol city; Tehran for example. I would not put this past a desperate and deranged Israeli leadership. Then all bets are off. Someone will counter-strike with atomics against Israel.
Stay safe.
The premise that Trump administration insiders know truth from fiction regarding internal deliberations around matters of war is dubious.
I have no idea whether or not the follow up bombings were performative.
But I heartily disagree with simply assuming that they were.
The question remains. Who is controlling those deliberations. To say “oligarchs” does not provide a real answer. If I remember correctly, Yves said, in the discussion of the Spiderweb attack on Russia, that even Gina Haspel could not control all the actions of CIA/MI6.
The CIA / MI6 are ruling class institutions that act as state actors. They hire from the Ivies, and whatever the Brits call the British equivalent. And they support their own class interests and those of their class-mates.
As I understand it, rogue elements were built into the CIA from its inception in 1948. Certain groups within the CIA were exempted from public reporting requirements.
If the two tendencies are combined, we have state power and resources being applied to perpetuating the interests of the Western ruling class.
‘Oligarchs’ is shorthand for this.
I believe the Brits say “Oxbridge”.
As for the rogue elements, yep, that would be the “Office of Special Projects” described in NSC 10/2 in June, 1948. Though insiders such as Charles Willoughby working in Japan may have been involved in such activities prior to that.
So OSP was undermined by British? With a few CIA knowing I assume? How far did this spread?
OSP was originally the OSS .
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services
IMO (and cf Wikipedia, above) since 1942 it has primarily served as an auxiliary of MI6.
Adding: I know there are a number of books on this subject (i.e., OSP, the origins of covert action policy, and any clandestine activities carried out before the policy was settled)), but I haven’t done a literature review. If anybody in the commentariat has investigated this and could recommend a couple of good titles, that would be greatly appreciated.
Oxbridge is specifically Oxford and Cambridge university. Some might say the only universities worth going to. There is a certain class of people for whom the question “which university did you go to?’ the expected answer is one of those two.
Or at least that was true . I don’t rub shoulders with that class anymore
For the rest of us the top universities in UK they are referred to as the Russell group. Including places like Bristol, Durham, that sort of place. Full of Oxbridge rejects :D
It might be the case that these attacks (the re-bombing) had already been programmed in advance and they went on with the plan only because one has to follow the plan once it has been started and too many preparations already done. I really believe it can be that simple. Let’s call them inertial attacks.
What few people here seem to want to acknowledge is that Israel has been defeated, and maybe, just maybe, that was the intention of the whole episode.
Certainly, the image of Israel as some sort of invincible force has been shattered. Seeing missiles rain down on Tel-Aviv, Haifa, and Beersheeba showed the world that the myth of the “Iron Dome” was just that, a myth.
Watching Israelis cower in bomb shelters like Ukrainians in Kiev was instructive.
They’re now seen as vulnerable, like anyone else. I would credit that as Iran’s biggest victory.
We also don’t know (due to military censorship) how much damage Iran did to their military. There may have been senior IDF or Mossad leaders killed in one of the strikes. They’ll never fess up.
If we look purely through the lens of stated objectives not being met, this was a resounding defeat for Israel. Let’s go through each in turn:
1. Destroy Iran’s nuclear program: Epic fail, not only did they fail to destroy nuclear facilities and the enriched uranium, they lost a key espionage asset by pushing Iran to suspend cooperation with the IAEA.
2. Regime Change: The Iranian nation is more united than ever before so Israel not only did Israel fail to achieve that objective, they created conditions for the opposite to happen.
In addition to failing to achieve stated objectives, their network of spies and collaborators within Iran is compromised. Some reports say 700 have been arrested so far and 10k weaponized drones have been unearthed. I expect that the Iranians will dedicate enormous resources to cleaning house in this regard. The biggest blow however is the shattering of the myth of Israeli invincibility and invulnerability, which for decades was perhaps the most important part of Israel’s strategic deterrence and force projection capabilities.
So yes, Israel was defeated but we know the Zionists are already cooking up their next misadventure so Iran must remain vigilant and maintain a war footing for a while still.
I consider myself 99% pacifist, and if that is dissonant or a contradiction, I can live with it. As Brain Bertelic has reported and continues to repeat, all that’s going on with Iran was laid out in think tank papers years ago. Trump has agency -well, his personality disorder has a flippant, disorganized agency- but his actions will remain inside the paradigm of US imperialism, especially following the behavior of an empire in decline. Also, I do not want to tell Iran what to do, but I lament that Iran did not do more damage to Israel, and then demanded actual and lasting relief for the Palestinians, Lebanese, and Yemenis. I think Israel and Trump were desperate to end hostilities now. Finally, Israel and the USA will be back for more because the long term plan is to take down Iran. Obviously, this is a pause not a stable ending.
This pause can be of benefit to Iran as well as Israel, perhaps more so to Iran’s benefit than Israels. Russia has already demonstrated a superior capacity to design, test, and produce munitions of all types in their response to the Ukraine War (SMO.) Iran can be, and now probably will be, resupplied and gain the benefit of systems upgrades much more quickly than will Israel. The Russians have shown superiority in the field of attritional warfare. The longer this Middle East fracas goes on, the more and more it assumes the character of a war of attrition. Iran, with the help of it’s backers in Eurasia, will outlast Israel.
The wild card is the Israeli atomics.
It is cautionary to observe that in Gaza, Israel is carrying out a genocide through conventional means. Using atomics on Iran would be doing the same by unconventional means. To the Zionists, doing so would be seen as “right and proper” to carry out their supposed “special relationship” with their Thunder God.
Most ‘pundits’ opine upon the assumption that the leadership of both sides are sane and rational people. Add in the magical thinking that pervades religiously motivated people and you must throw that “sane and rational” assumption out of the window. This calls for analysis of the leaders of the Zionist movement, both Jewish and Anglo-American Fundamentalist by clinical psychiatrists.
We live in interesting times.
Stay safe.
Observing how Israel fights provides a difcerent set of insights to Risdia and China from that of Ukraine. They will want to know how Western air forces operate, with their most advanced toys, eg F35 and F22. Iran provides an opportunity Ukraine has not.
Israel was not defeated.
After all, it did not have to acquiesce to Iran’s demands and is still hell-bent on breaking Iran (low-objective: destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities; mid-range objective: regime change; high objective: turn Iran into a permanently chaotic and hapless country like Libya or Syria).
Just like in 2006, when Israel attacked Hezbollah and could not achieve any of its stated or implicit goals, this short conflict proved to be a fiasco for Israel:
fiasco: a complete failure, especially one that is humiliating or embarrassing.
No concessions having been made on either side, I am certain the Israeli government (possibly a completely new one) will rekindle the conflict in a not so distant future.
You have been Making Shit Up a lot on this topic. You need to stop. I am not approving further comments that make obvious misrepresentations.
Iran had no demands except that Israel stop shooting at them. They said they would stop when Israel stopped.
It was the US that had demands, which were no doubt Israel’s demands, that Iran give up all enrichment and its ballistic missiles too.
I think that still is just an excuse, the tactical goal being to keep Iran sanctioned and not able to develop to its full potantial and create pressures and deprivations on the population , making it easier for a regime change.
There was a posting on X by Simplicius or alike with recordings of an Israeli agent calling an Iranian IRGC commander after June 13 and threatening with bombig house and killing family if it doesn’t cooperate… I guess the guy didn’t use a compromised pager.
I think the point is that it is not what Iran wants, but what the US/Israel want. But here that also doesn’t matter, if Iran can be succesful in oposing them…
Israel’s big schtick was that it was a country that was safe for Jews. Well this war demolished that idea and so many people were leaving the country that they had to slam the gates shut. Didn’t stop Israelis as French-Israelis became French and American-Israelis became American, etc. all of whom demanded to be evacuated by their ‘home’ country. I’m willing to bet that Israel’s demographics have undergone a major change.
Trump sought to bail them out for his own reason but soon saw that short-term, it was a fool’s errand and so quit. He really thought that he could use the US military to overawe the Iranians and get a cheap, quick victory but got into a panicked, foul mood when he saw that it could not be done and that if this war went on, it would play hell with the economy at home meaning that it would effect him personally. Now he has to deal with the fallout. Lots of changes ahead.
There is a stone wall at Gettysburg where the remnants of Pickett’s charge slammed into the wall of the Union forces and were defeated. In later years this wall came to be know as the high tide mark of the Confederacy, even though there was years of war ahead. I think that this war will prove to be the high tide mark of the Zionist state. You read it here first.
Heartily agree that it is a defeat — Israeli presumption of impunity is gone. And it is conceivable that as Iran grows stronger, it may be able to expand its tit-for-tat retaliatory deterrent over Lebanon and Gaza. This is the end of an era.
I very much doubt that this outcome was the intent of any actor in US government. It’s a defeat for US, too. Maybe there are super-smart public spirited people hidden in the bowels of the Deep State manipulating things in such a direction, but it seems highly unlikely. Could this have been DJT’s intended outcome? That seems inconceivable.
Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner–married to his favorite daughter Ivanka–is conservative Jewish and a family friend to Netanhahu. The lawyers who bailed him out of his various bankruptcies were Jewish. Trump was once a protege of the notorious Roy Cohn of McCarthy HUAC fame. It’s quite possible he didn’t need any bribes to explain his loyalty to the Zionist state. Also he undoubtedly sees Israeli dominance in the region as key to various lucrative future real estate deals.
Of course when it comes to the mysterious mind and motives of DJT all of the above may mean nothing but it is worth noting.
I think it is correct to question peoples beliefs that the Israeli Lobby has control over any part of US foreign policy or politicians. I think the correct way to look at it is from the Oligarch perspective… from this view Trump (any recent US President), the DoD, Congress, and the Israeli Lobby (etc…) are just pieces on a chess board. The perspective of who is controlling or manipulating who is more correctly viewed as what chess piece is being leverage for a move being push by the actual chess players, the Oligarchs.
Various items of possible interest re: weapons issues in Dmitry Stefanovich´s Nitter (of course this is one way or the other all “empire”)
https://nitter.poast.org/KomissarWhipla
e.g.:
MOP guidance speculation thread 1/n
“For a long time I’ve struggled to believe that the GBU-57 ‘MOP’ was just GPS guided. I had said it was a very accurate bomb before the strikes, afterwards my belief was only reinforced. Due to repeated accurate tests and now in the battlefield”
https://nitter.poast.org/Wheneggsdrop/status/1937024523498373614#m
e.g.:
“Iran needs to consider leaving the NPT even if it has no intent of building a bomb:
1. It will put a lid on the demands being made for providing access to its nuclear facilities, which are actually intended to carry out battle damage assessment.
2. As a non-NPT party, it will increase bargaining space for Iran to negotiate a more favourable outcome
3. Iran can later rejoin the NPT to assure the world that it is not interested in building a bomb (if true)”
https://nitter.poast.org/adilsultan
And with that Jeffrey Lewis (who I however would always read with a grain of salt and who has become a nemesis to Ted Postol – or has that changed?)
https://nitter.poast.org/ArmsControlWonk
He argues most of the 400kg Uranium were in tunnels at Isfahan.
“Neither the US nor Israel struck those tunnels. They aren’t “buried” although Iran did backfill the tunnel entrances with dirt before the strike. No one knows where the HEU is now.”
Maybe true from Jeffrey Lewis’ point of view, but there are 3000 researchers in Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center alone not to speak of the size of the whole Iranian nuclear research program, so I’d venture a guess plenty of somebodies do know where at least some of it is.
They just won’t tell the likes of Lewis anymore, and it’s really hard to blame them for it.
Especially your last point is so damnening because true.
Scientists have turned into ideologues.
(Although I guess that was never so different from now…)
How does Polar Socialist’s comment lead to your comment that “scientists have turned into ideologues” when their deciding to not talk “to the likes of Lewis” means that most likely they’re trying to keep their names and locations off of an assassination list? How does this make them ‘ideologues’?
I meant our scientists, meaning in the West. So for instance most scientists to be found in the TWITTER threads like above. But not just science but humanities also. So actually Western academia and scholarship at large has turned into a factory of ideology.
Those who oppose – like Ted Postol – are kicked out. He used to be important FAS author, as he used to be Bulletin´s favourite author. No more.
Look at CERN. They sent home their Russian colleagues.
They sent home Russian PhDs who couldn´t finish their studies in Europe, Sorbonne, ETH, etc.
Those professors who decided to at least accompany the research of their PhD candidates I was told had to justiy their decision. And those who openly side with “the enemy” meaning oppose the ideology are at danger of losing tenure under pretext of demeaning lies depending where they find a choke point.
I think currently there is a study on almost 40 professors who lost tenure due to this New Cold War and it´s many more. Ulrike Guerot mentioned it. And this research study is expanding and discovering more and more names.
It’s possible to over-complicate these things. US animosity towards Iran dates from 1979 and the overthrow of the Shah, America’s strong man in the region, and the humiliation of the Embassy hostages. Much of what we have seen since is essentially a rationalisation of this animosity. Israel is a relatively recent part of the equation.
In all likelihood, the US is trying to avoid, first a general war in which Israel is effectively destroyed, thus removing America’s main ally in the region with completely unpredictable consequences, and second an nuclear attack by a desperate Israel with etc. The best way to do this is to pronounce the problem effectively solved. This includes continued US attacks on Iran, until Israel finally shuts up, or cannot absorb any more attacks itself.
I keep seeing people saying trump is a peace president. I just don’t understand.
He could stop the war crimes in Gaza, he isn’t doing anything.
He could have stopped the flow of weapons and all financial help etc to Ukraine, stopped the sanctions with Russia etc, forced Europe etc but he hasn’t.
He could have stopped the attack on Iran, he didn’t
And he did actually bomb Iran, which he didn’t have to.
He could have started a JCPOA2, didn’t
He has threatened war with China
None of this sounds like someone who’s on a mission to accomplishing anything via a peaceful process.
I don’t really care what he says or any president or politician for that matter, it’s what they do or don’t do especially if they have the actual power to make something happen or not.
Where am I wrong?
Gaza is IMO the test case — DJT could have strongly differentiated himself from Biden by compelling Israel to stop. Still could, and that would be better for US soft power than waiting until Iran is strong enough to do it.
He talks like he thinks of himself as an agent of peace. Brian Berletic thinks that this rhetoric, especially toward the Ukraine conflict, is simply in service of “Division of Labor” (fob Ukraine off on Europe) and “Strategic Sequencing” (deal with the geostrategic rivals one at a time, with China being the more urgent threat; in his view the Iran conflict was [and still is] in service of this). But underlying it all is what he calls “Continuity of Agenda.”
DJT only acts to make himself look good to himself. His field of view only encompasses those he interacts with, the other rich and powerful people in his circle. Everyone else is a Hollywood extra. We don’t exist. Even his supporters don’t exist as individuals, they only exist as a aggregated mass, an audience.
So ‘peace’ becomes peace for the main characters in his narrative – ie his buddy Bibbi, all his Zionist funders, the gulf monarchs who have more bling than he does… The Palestinians aren’t people, they’re an obstacle. The Iranians aren’t people, they’re the antagonist in the script.
All this rationalizing about rhetoric, or dissecting his social media is a fools quest. It’s trying to shoehorn his world into ours. The two overlap by just the tiniest of slivers.
shoehorn fun reference:
the question of replacement footwear orthopedic inserts a subjective decision?…begs the question:
does overstepping one’s reach qualify?
I personally avert this rhetorical question by selecting shoes to fit the distinct seasons.
Donald Trump is a a real estate developer from Queens who doesn’t pay his workers or suppliers.
He likes golf and loves money. The presidency is a lucrative post in the USA.
A part of the thesis that the ‘Biden’ administration would have done the same thing has sort of been proved by a preening Op-Ed from malignant former SecState Blinken in yesterday’s NY Times – “it was a mistake but I hope it worked”.
https://archive.ph/Wb7mt
Malignant indeed. What stopped Blinken and Biden from resigning the JCPOA? Funny, Tony doesn’t bring up that topic.
They never lifted a finger to even try (the itchy trigger ones are notoriously difficult to raise) so clearly wanted Iran in US/Israeli crosshairs.
Imagine for a moment, New York City when a freighter ties up and detonates with nuclear force. Who do we blame for the thousands upon thousands who die immediately, the thousands, possibly millions who will die later, and after the deaths, the destruction of our 1st city? Were the Iranians intent on a weapon? I don’t know but if not, then why the centrifuges and steps toward weapons grade uranium purity?
And no matter your like or dislike for the President, surely we can agree job #1 is protecting our nation, right? Like I’m as much a pacifist as the next guy. Exceptions? Wasps building a nest near my home’s entryways, so because those buggers will sting with little provocation I destroy these nests the instant I realize they’re making one.
Speaking of provocation, the Iranians have been provoked, sorely, by the west (USA most recently, the British immediately before us). Of this there’s no question. So they have good reason to want to sting us . . . or this is, I presume, their intent when they chant, Death to America, and speak of the Great Satan, right?
So we circle back to the opening sentence, imagine if the freighter ties up to NYC’s docks . . . what then? Whom amongst is so much a pacifist they are willing to sit back and let wasps build a huge nest beside their front door? Anyway, if you’re unaware of our history with that nation, Smithsonian Magazine recently published a good article about the death of a man in the service of our nation a century ago, and what led to his death and how this brought us to where we are today.
Please drop the paranoia. Iran has not attacked another country, save in defense, for over 300 years.
You have been conned by a widely propagated misconstrual. It means “Down with America.” Please see here: https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/6/24/whats-with-irans-death-to-america-chant#flips-6374816403112:0
Similarly, Israel propagandists mistranslated past president Ahmadinejad, when he used a conditional tense and said that it would have been better if Israel had never existed. The Israelis falsely depicted that as saying that Israel should be wiped off the map.
Maybe start with any dancing Israelis ?
https://archive.is/ccDog (NYT, depaywalled)
John Beech, please read George Saunders’ short story “Adams” – you can easily find it online – it illustrates your thinking here, and what it leads to (I mean to emphasize: what it leads to).
Why the centrifuges?
Iran has significant natural uranium reserves. Nobody – nobody – has a right to tell another nation whether or not they are allowed to dig up and use their own natural resources.
Iran has had a world-class nuclear research and energy development program since Eisenhower, thanks to enthusiastic encouragement and support from the US under the Shah. It is a point of national pride across the political spectrum, an indicator of Iran’s stature as a modern nation. Nobody – nobody – has a right to tell another nation whether or not they are allowed to process and use their own natural resources. Centrifuges are how you process uranium. That’s why Iran has centrifuges.
The problem is that there is zero difference between civilian and military uranium enrichment hardware. The only thing that matters is how many times you run the stuff through the centrifuge.
I happen to believe that despite enormous external and internal pressure, the Iranian government has been sincere in its intention to scrupulously comply with the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty that it signed in 1968, a commitment they re-affirmed after the Shah was overthrown. But the brutal reality is that it doesn’t really matter what I think: there’s simply no way to ever truly know how many times somebody decides to run stuff through the centrifuge, and no rational reason for Iran to ever agree to never dig up and enrich their own uranium.
By the way, Israel bought their uranium from apartheid South Africa, secretly enriched it to weapons-grade material, was actively producing nuclear weapons by the time Iran signed the Nonproliferation Treaty in 1968 – an agreement that Israel never signed – and has been threatening Iran with those nuclear weapons for forty-five years.
Correction: I didn’t check my sources closely enough for my last aside, especially with regards to South Africa’s nuclear partnership. Israel (like North Korea) went the plutonium breeder/reprocessing route, instead of the natural uranium route, for its weapons-grade materials.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2021.2014239#d1e349
The siege of Iran has nothing to do with its nuclear program.
It has been under non kinetic siege for years (sanctions)
It is being executed to facilitate a coup d’etat.
How far will Israel’s expansion go? Still remains to be seen.
Will it be like the expansion of the USA in North America? That came in fits and starts over a hundred years. Players from different parts of the world had interests in the project over those years.
When the genocide starts breaking out, hard for that not to cross my mind as a possibility.
“starts breaking out”? Umm, Gaza?
The population of those identifying as jews is way too small for any geographical expansion; and recent events would not seem to encourage the diaspora to contribute to this project.
Yes, that was what I was referring to but trying to emphasize it’s the start not an end.
And, while acknowledging this is a different technological era, groups started off small in the Americas, too.
Groups of all kinds can make their contribution to the project over time.
Expansion can take centuries, with fits and starts and all kinds of changes in the world. The main thing that remains constant is that sense of superiority.
You mean like the line from the song; “From river to shining sea?”
This argument of the article is carelessly put together:
“The last I looked, neither Russia nor China has bought American politicians because they are precluded from doing so. Recall the reaction to the fantasy that Russia was interfering in Western elections around 2016. Were they allowed to simply purchase politicians, as the Israel lobby is alleged to do, the Russians could have saved billions, possibly trillions, by purchasing Joe Biden rather than going to war in Ukraine. However, the war in Ukraine was already underway when Biden entered office.”
But the Ukraine had bought Biden first! Have we memory-holed Burisma? The firing of the corruption prosecutor? The $80k pcm job for Dear Hunter, as the consolation prize for not being Beau?
And China was having a good go. Have we memory-holed the consulting gig for Rose[mount?], proprietors Hunter and friends? WIth 10% for the Big Man?
There is a qualitative difference between being a domestic oligarch, able to mobilise a great force of lackeys and would-be-lackeys, of employees and real resources and to do this as part of a network of like-minded oligarchs, together controlling the commanding heights of the economy, and being a foreign power trying to buy your way in and having to hope the politician stay bought? It’s like being a regular at the Savy Grill restaurant and a high-spending tourist.
It would be very interesting to have a break-down of the US oligarchy by their dual citizenships. I would not be surprised if Israel came top.
“Ukraine” did not buy Biden. Particular oligarchs did.
And the power dynamic went the other way. Licenses were doled out. I forget the exact details, but a key person with Burisma was being prosecuted, which I believe threatened the license. Biden as VP got the prosecutor fired and the case was dropped. So the influence operation was US to Ukraine, not the reverse.
Yes, Biden got the prosecutor fired but Burisma was paying Hunter the cash. Isn’t that the definition of buying protection?
But I take your point that it was a faction of oligarchs funding Hunter rather than the Ukrainian state. However, the oligarch in question at Burisma is supposedly Zhelovzky but he is alleged to be a front for the real owner Kolomoisky, who was Zelensky’s patron….
https://thepostmillennial.com/burisma-connected-oligarch-who-funded-zelenskys-campaign-acting-career-raided-by-ukrainian-security-forces
The same analysis of oligarch factions applies to Russia. London hosted Lebedev and Berezovsky, sponsoring the Russian opposition, for decades. And Abramovich, a more ambiguous character.
The US had been in Ukraine for six years (2014 – 2020) before Joe Biden was elected in 2020. The CIA had been building out the Ukrainian military to attack Russia with for four (2016 – 2020). How, precisely, did Ukraine buy US foreign policy in this affair?
Further, why would Ukraine want to purchase the US foreign policy that has been delivered to it? One million people slaughtered and Russia is in the process of taking Kiev, then on to Odessa. What worse outcome could there be? So why would Ukraine pay for the privilege?
Because the oligarchs believed their own hype? That Russia would crumble and they would rule a Greater Ukraine?
Or they simply believed that the outcome would be a peace treaty on advantageous terms to the Ukraine and the West, with a bigger vig for the Ukraine in the transit gas trade and admission to the EU, locking in place the spoils for those in power at the time.
Or because if the other group of oligarchs supporting Yanukovich and Russia were to be in the ascendant, assets would be stripped from the losers, the Ukraine would move closer to Russia and West-aligned, Azov-cultivating oligarchs would be (fatally) unwelcome?
Who knows why? But your question doesn’t change the fact that the dominant faction in the Ukraine paid money to Hunter Biden from 2014, while Joe was VP and then in opposition. And it needs to be considered alongside, why did Kolomoisky fund Zelrnsky’s assent?
You are seriously out of your depth here. I suggest you stand down
Did you miss that Zelensky ran and won on a platform of normalizing relations with Russia and won 73% of the vote? That Kolimoisky’s man came from Krivoy Roh, a Russian-leaning part of Ukraine, and his Ukrainian is piss poor, as in he is much more fluent in Russian? And what appears to have gotten him to do a 180 was threats of violence against his person by Banderites? One other pol had been killed and others very severely beaten.
I’m not arguing in bad faith. My understanding is that Kolomoisky funded Dnipro battalion, Azov, Aidar and possibly others. He also funded Zelensky.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/kyiv-court-orders-detention-of-israeli-ukrainian-oligarch-on-corruption-charges/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihor_Kolomoyskyi
I don’t pretended to understand how it unfolded (Kremlin political intrigues are comparable to a bulldog fight under a rug. An outsider only hears the growling, and when he sees the bones fly out from beneath it is obvious who won. Winston Churchill) but judging by the results, Kolomoisky both funded the Neo-Nazis and bought them a tame President of Ukraine. That’s an example of oligarchs buying politicians and other political actors.
Now, maybe he intended to fund a strong President who would have a loyal bodyguard of Nazis? Or he just pursued two incompatible plans of peace with Russia and war with Orcs? It’s the same thing, an oligarch buying influence, with more or less wisdom.
I did not charge you with arguing in bad faith but of being badly informed.
Kolimoisky HIRED Azov mainly to be muscle (as if you need thugs, hire the best) and not to back their political views (he like Zelensky is Jewish). Even though payment for services does amount to funding them, it is not “funding” them in the political sense as used in the West.
Kolimoisky cannnot be depicted as working with the US:
Poroshenko is a US ally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihor_Kolomoyskyi
As I said, you need to stand down.
I was sloppy in saying that the Ukraine (rather than a Ukrainian oligarch) was buying influence and I also apologise because, on reflection, you are quite right and I stand corrected that in the case of Burisma the only visible benefits of the US influence were over events back in the Ukraine rather than in the USA itself.
Nevertheless, I still think it supports my original point that Russia may have decided not to compete in such a free market for US power-brokers because Ukrainian factions had got there first (and not just because the best agents do it for love/hate, not money, and politicians don’t stay bought…).
I also think the Burisma-Kolomoisky-Zelensky-Azov story admits of a more coherent explanation than at first sight.
(1) Burisma hiring Hunter is an example of a Ukrainian oligarch buying US influence during the period 2014-2019 (which influence was used to get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired).
(2) Kolomoisky, thought to be Burisma’s real beneficial owner, was already in trouble throughout this period over the PrivatBank fraud allegations but he managed to stay out of gaol somehow until 2019, I.e..all the time Hunter is at Burisma. US influence cannot have hurt….
https://www.occrp.org/en/investigation/oligarchs-weaponized-cyprus-branch-of-ukraines-largest-bank-to-send-55-billion-abroad
(3) Kolomoisky also funded Zelensky in this period, presumably hoping to continue to stay out of gaol if Zelensky was elected. And when Zelensky comes to power in 2019, the Hunter Biden / Burisma deal ceases.
(4) Kolomoisky also paid Azov, Dnipro etc. throughout. Let’s say it was business not politics if you like but it was still important to Azov, Dnipro et al….
(5) We don’t know why but Zelensky does a volte-face after 2019 and goes after his former business partner (Z’s own description of K).
https://english.nv.ua/nation/oligarch-kolomoisky-faces-new-fraud-charges-in-privatbank-case-50353702.html
Z also abandoned peace with Russia after 2029, we presume because of neo-Nazi threats. Are these events even linked? The detention of Kolomoisky could be merely Z’s own double-cross.
Or, is Z in fact holding the man who might be Azov’s banker / patron hostage, in an effort to protect himself…?
US politicians are for sale, no worries. And probably there is a secret memo with the list of countries that a politician is allowed to take bribes from.
I don’t know what Senator Mendez did wrong though…
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-us-senator-robert-menendez-sentenced-11-years-prison-bribery-foreign-agent-and
“Oligarchs control the economies and with them the politics of the West.”
Rob, how are we to read your conceptualization?
Would you also agree that it hardly is ever the case that only one conceptualization can capture the content of any one thing we seek to describe in the world–in this case, your argument that the politics of the West are determined by the oligarchic entity that controls the economies.
Do you believe that what you take to be true about the “politics of the West” is anchored in certainty?
Is there a role for contingency and arbitrariness in your own thinking?
I would argue that, in the absence of certainty or arguments justifying a particular conclusion, majority rule is the most cogent, pragmatically defensible decision-making principle. I would also argue that, if your qualitative factors (the oligarchic entity centered in the economies of the West), cannot be objectively assessed and apportioned, we must let quantitative factors–the counting of noses or votes–decide.
Then, rationality is displaced in favor of majority rule–numbers rule over your apparent rational certainty about oligarchic power.
We follow our reason or we follow majority rule.
Parties and politicians are ultimately bureaucracies that function in an environment where one relies in the ability to convince voters to follow and convince donors to donate as well as help spred a message…
And, regardless of what politicians promise to the public, they are not actually, contractually, bound by that electoral promise.
So, please, explain to me, in this relity based simplified model, who has the upper hand and how the incentives work…
Rational arguments, like politics is ultimately bureaucracy or that the rule of the West is determined by oligarchy, do not appear to exist on a higher ontological plain than the counting of votes (sheer numbers). The reason for this may be the fragility of our initial premises and the fact that we are not able to make an incontrovertible case as to what is objectively true.
One persuasive conceptualization for the victory of Donald Trump in 2016 is majority rule as defined by our constitution.
Nonsense. Voters for the opposition stay home. Nobody wanted Hillary. Nobody wanted Kamala.
That’s why Trump won twice.
Oligarchs hedge their bets and donate to both candidates. That’s where the money comes from.
They win either way.
You can’t buff a turd
I remember that president Carter in retirement said, “The United States is an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.”
Since was on the inside, he might have good inside information.
But the sources of the bribes matters, otherwise foreign nations would bribe USA’s politicians to avoid USA actions that are visited on them.
Russia has an estimated defense budget of $149 billion, which may easily tolerate a few billion allocated to bribes of US politicians.
But despite the Russia, Russia, Russia hysterics of a few years ago, there is little evidence Russia attempts to influence US politics.
Other groups influence USA politics for a lot less, sometimes a few hundred thousand in a house primary.
The Russians may view their USD money as wasted in influencing the USA politics, while spending money on defense is important to Russia’s survival.
The “bribe” of a USA politician must have the approved provenance.
I think Russia is at the point: why bother.
America is not agreement capable.
Let them implode on their own