Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say

Posted by MilnerRoute 3 days ago

Comments

Comment by throwaway27448 3 days ago

I don't think I've ever seen in all of my wide understanding of history, such a tiny state successfully make an empire its vassal. Truly an astounding feat. It would be highly entertaining if it didn't bode poorly for humanity.

Comment by slg 3 days ago

I don't like how Americans dismiss their own agency in this all. This is not being forced on us by Israel. A huge and underdiscussed reason why the US and Israel have the relationship they do is because of the roughly 100m American Evangelicals that want it that way. That's also why the GOP is seen as the party more favorable to Israel (not that the Democrats are necessarily adversarial, but they clearly aren't as agreeable as a whole).

Comment by frollogaston 2 days ago

All of it was done by Americans. It's just that most of them weren't really loyal to America. All those pro Israel lobby groups are over here, not there.

Comment by vmchale 3 days ago

It's not American evangelicals. It's been a long campaign and the evangelicals are still being targeted by Israel because no one else is left, but there aren't enough American evangelicals to swing things.

Not to mention, it often comes down to primary voters, to say nothing of Hollywood/media blacklists

> the Democrats are necessarily adversarial, but they clearly aren't as agreeable as a whole).

Democrats only changed recently. For some decades before that, the Israel lobby had significant sway over them (including allowing dems to publicly admit certain things).

Comment by dopesoap 2 days ago

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Comment by 4er_transform 2 days ago

It’s reminiscent of Dune: - Small devoted religious sect seeds messiah myths in the distant land for generations, so that in their time of need, they can tap of this devotion from “the people in the south” to fight on their behalf

Comment by Meekro 2 days ago

If the Jews invented the idea of Jesus so that they could benefit from an evangelical army 2000 years later, I'd say they've earned it.

Comment by Georgelemental 3 days ago

OP didn't say it was being forced! American politicians are 100% to blame, Israel just acting in its own interest as it should

Comment by roenxi 3 days ago

Israel is likely to get shredded if it keeps acting "in its own interest". The US doesn't look like it can sustain this global network of military bases and Israel will probably be left high and dry. This Iran war is threatening the entire global economy. That is a lot of potential enemies if the diplomats and analysts come to believe it is because Israel doesn't like peace and negotiation. At this rate Israel could keep winning of battles in the US Congress and in the Middle East right up to the point where it loses the war and gets wiped out.

The risks they are taking are stunning, and the payoffs highly questionable. I don't think this can be said to be in their own interests. Nuclear deterrents go a long way, but at some point they're not enough to defend a group as crazy as the Israeli government if they keep stirring up trouble.

Comment by throwaway9917 3 days ago

The diplomats in question are Witkoff and Kushner. Whatever they believe about Israel’s motivations, Israel will always have their full support.

Comment by dragonwriter 2 days ago

Witkoff and Kushner may always give their full support to Israel, but Witkoff and Kushner are unlikely to always represent the United States (and even moreso unlikely to always have the ability to exercise unlimited influence over US policy), and even—especially—were that not the case, the US is unlikely to always have the international power it has recently.

Comment by oort-cloud9 2 days ago

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Comment by giancarlostoro 3 days ago

Only roughly half of evangelicals in the US actually support the state of Israel. I've never even heard of any of my local reps mentioning Israel when running, course maybe I either wasn't looking for it, or the target audience?

I have friends from all walks of life, and trust me when I tell you, the GOP isn't all in on Israel. Which is weirder to me, because I'll hear about how antisemitic the right is, and then in the same breath hear people blame them for Israel's support? When you factor in that roughly half of evangelicals (which can be Democrats too mind you) support Israel, I guess that kind of pans out with why you hear both angles? It's just bizarre to me either way.

I know we benefit militarily from Israel when you factor in all the technology we've designed for them, that we can use for ourselves (Iron dome comes to mind), there's also special ops we otherwise might have never heard of like Stuxnet, which is the coolest thing I ever heard about (I mean really, it was impressive). I'm never blindly a supporter of any nation, because all nations can mess up, but I don't like blindly hating people or nations either. Not everyone is so black and white as everyone seems to believe nowadays, often it feels like the truth is somewhere in between.

Comment by jmyeet 3 days ago

> Only roughly half of evangelicals in the US actually support the state of Israel.

I'm not sure where you're getting the info on evangelicals but from what I can find, support is closer to 82% [1]. Zionism in the US isn't actually a Jewish issue. It's a Christian issue. For every Jewish Zionist there are ~30 Christian Zionists. Why? It's theological. I'm referring to dispensational premillenialism [2]. To summarize, in this theology Israel is the key to bringing on the End Times and the return of Jesus Christ.

> I've never even heard of any of my local reps mentioning Israel when running

So this is intentional. Israel realizes how unpopular Israel is or just that people don't care so there extensive spending is hidden behind PACs that none of the messaging is ever about Israel. $35 million was spent to oust Thomas Massie in his recent primary. How much of it was about Israel? None. You only find out after the election who AIPAC funded when the intermediary PACs have to reveal their financing.

> have friends from all walks of life, and trust me when I tell you, the GOP isn't all in on Israel.

It's pretty close [3][4]. More importantly, anti-Israel Republican politicians are few and far between. It just isn't a popular stance to take in Republican primaries.

[1]: https://globalaffairs.org/commentary/blogs/american-evangeli...

[2]: https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/dispe...

[3]: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/04/07/negative-...

[4]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/702440/israelis-no-longer-ahead...

Comment by senderista 3 days ago

I have heard casual antisemitism from strongly pro-Israel evangelicals. There is no reason to think these attitudes are mutually exclusive.

Comment by MengerSponge 3 days ago

Theologically their support for Israel is rooted in antisemitism. They need Israel to trigger the end times so Jews and other nonbelievers will be punished and ultimately destroyed.

If you pry and ask the right questions, they'll admit that they don't want this to happen, because they really want all those Jews and nonbelievers to convert and be saved. This is also antisemitism, but it's wrapped up in a millenia-old death cult.

Comment by dragonwriter 2 days ago

> This is also antisemitism, but it's wrapped up in a millenia-old death cult.

Dispensationalism isn’t a “millennia old”; its a 19th Century doctrine. (Younger than the United States, older than Christian Fundamentalism.)

Comment by expedition32 2 days ago

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Comment by dragonwriter 2 days ago

> Which is weirder to me, because I'll hear about how antisemitic the right is, and then in the same breath hear people blame them for Israel's support?

Despite the Right trying to redefine antisemitism in terms of opposition to the State of Israel, anti-semitism and anti-Zionism are somewhwere between uncorrelated and anti-correlated. Certainly, dispensationalist, eschatologically-motivated Christian Zionism (the main reason for the tie between evangelicalism and support for Israel) is not at all associated with pro-Judaism.

> When you factor in that roughly half of evangelicals (which can be Democrats too mind you)

Evangelicals “can be” Democrats, but again the Israel-Evangelicalism tie is mainly specifically through dispensationalism, which is almost exclusive to White evangelicalism, and White evangelicals split about 85/15 Republican (or Republican-leaning independent) vs Democrat (+Dem leaners).

> I know we benefit militarily from Israel when you factor in all the technology we've designed for them, that we can use for ourselves (Iron dome comes to mind)

Funny that would be the example that comes to mind, because Iron Dome was developed by Israel (by Israeli state-owned defense firms), not by the US for Israel.

You may be confusing it with the similarly named American (proposed) “Golden Dome” system, whose name Iron Dome inspired, but we didn't develop.that for Israel either (in fact, it hasn’t actually been developed), the only connection to Israel is the inspiration for the name.

Comment by throwaway27448 2 days ago

> Despite the Right trying to redefine antisemitism in terms of opposition to the State of Israel

I don't think it splits along traditional right/left lines. The ADL is not typically considered right-wing, and they're what everyone cites to conflate the two concepts. Furthermore you're seeing this adopted at the university level to effects chilling to campus free speech in ways I've never seen before—again, not typically a right wing bastion. Then you have right-wing figures like Candice Owens, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly who have all spoken out against Israel. Now those may be fringe figures but they're on the right fringe. It seems like it's the center, the broad center, that is scared to rock the boat.

Comment by ipnon 3 days ago

I think this is correct. There has been bipartisan support of Israel for decades. Netanyahu even mentions in his autobiography that Israeli politicians usually underestimate the strength and durability of the relationship with America.

Comment by woodruffw 3 days ago

> Which is weirder to me, because I'll hear about how antisemitic the right is, and then in the same breath hear people blame them for Israel's support?

The proto-typical versions of this are (1) supersessionism in more traditional Christian thought, and (2) more modern "dual-covenant" thought. The latter is not always explicitly antisemitic, but can be implicitly so if it sees Jews as primarily fulfilling a Christian eschatological purpose (undergoing mass conversion as part of the rapture).

Comment by gunsle 2 days ago

There is no where near 100m American evangelicals. There’s less than 60m almost certainly. It doesn’t account for everything.

Comment by AnimalMuppet 2 days ago

I've seen estimates that 6% of America is evangelical. (Source: my memory.) Note that the estimate comes from an evangelical, who is drawing the lines at what an evangelical considers evangelical; that may not correspond with where others think the lines should be drawn.

But accepting that number, 6% x 340 million people = 20.4 million evangelicals.

Comment by throwaway27448 2 days ago

Voters—democrats especially—are voting against politicians that don't speak out against Israel. But that's a very recent phenomenon. Democratic leadership strongly supports Israel to this day, including both Schumer and Jeffries. Cory Bush and Jamaal Bowman, both outspoken in criticism of Israel, were each primaried by democrats with support from leadership, and Bell (who ousted Bush) promptly lost in the general. That is—they willingly gave up a house seat just to ensure a pro-Israel party line.

As I said, things are changing, but it's still largely verboten to speak baldly against Israel as a democrat. In the senate, there are people who oppose arms sales to Israel, largely because of the Leahy law prohibiting arms sales to countries who commit war crimes, but few speak strongly against the clear slaughter (let alone describe it as a genocide as the rest of the world seems comfortable doing), or ascribe it solely to Netanyahu. This, when democratic voters mostly do not have a favorable view of Israel, seems to be a fundamental failure of representation.

On the republican side, Massie and previously MTG were opposed. Only about 43% of republican voters strongly support Israel. I don't believe any senator opposes arms sales to Israel. Again, this seems like a failure of representation.

To characterize this as a symptom of evangelicalism is historically understandable, but young evangelicals do not follow this trend, and even historically it's only a small part of the story.

But, americans rarely vote based on foreign policy (something like 3-5% of americans depending on the election). That we well and truly are culpable for.

Comment by frollogaston 2 days ago

The part about not voting based on foreign policy is surprising because the presidential campaigns and debates often end up making that a focus.

Comment by puskavi 2 days ago

People will believe what is told to them, such as "greatest ally" story.

Comment by expedition32 2 days ago

Ah but this is were the Temple will fall a second time!

Because the interests of Jews and Christians do not and never will align. Already there are reports of orthodox Jews harassing Christians...

Comment by g8oz 2 days ago

"Christians in Jerusalem fear rising violence"

https://p.dw.com/p/5ELHW

Comment by pandaman 3 days ago

Yeah, I've seen that show too. It's not real. You could tell by the fact they've never mentioned AIPAC in the entire run of the show.

Comment by lobocinza 2 days ago

Let's not forget the asymmetry. If someone calls that modern Israel isn't the biblical Israel and that in biblical terms it's closer to the "synagogue of Satan" (Revelation 2:9) it risks being persecuted, ostracized, fired, prosecuted, jailed, murdered.

You shouldn't dismiss Israel power in cultural warfare, financial and political ties. Epstein was probably the tip of the iceberg.

And that can be recognized without diminishing the intrinsic dignity of every human being that live in Israel and outside of it independently of race, nationality, religion, etc.

Comment by zuzululu 3 days ago

I think there's parallel valid points on all sides. GOP is also split over Israel. Young Republicans/conservatives do not care at all to continue the relationship. There's those evangelicals that also do not represent Americans who increasingly question and neutral/negative towards US-Israel relationship.

I do wonder how long this can continue. American people should have the final say on which relationships are beneficial to them not special interest groups. The fatigue is very real and palpable and its growing to be an ugly force that is also being exploited by extremists.

This trend change in how American youth view Israel is also a big reason why so many social media platforms are exchanging hands, ex. TikTok by blaming some other scary foe like Russia or China. These are mere attempts to buy time at the inevitable in that America is going their own way and it will be ultimately the American people that will decide.

Look at what's happening in South Korea right now. Election fraud has triggered both the left and the right. The usual opportunists and politicians tried to exploit the situation and they were rejected. The fatigue from the people and the current arrangement is turning into visible anger in countries which face serious structural problems due to the huge wealth gap parity and falling birth rates.

One need not look far at places like Quebec or Paris or Belgium to see exactly where this is headed for people who have nothing to do with Israel but are associated by guilt.

Comment by _DeadFred_ 2 days ago

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Comment by zuzululu 2 days ago

accusing ppl of racism because one observed anti-semitism is on the rise is delulu

why dont you let us know what you really think of the Jewish community and stop trying to pretend its limited to just Israel ? We are not gullible as you assume

Comment by _DeadFred_ 2 days ago

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Comment by zuzululu 2 days ago

I'm specifically pointing to people such as yourselves hiding behind "oh I just hate israel" we know thats not hte full story here.

You keep trying to redirect and inject Islam and minimize cases of anti-semitism in those regions.

Comment by trumpdong 2 days ago

I always thought it was because of Jeffrey Epstein that politicians don't want their dirty laundry aired.

Comment by pheaded_while9 2 days ago

Exactly. It is clear as crystal that Epstein was (is) a Mossad honeypot.

Comment by gosub100 2 days ago

> This is not being forced on us by Israel.

somehow the narrative has been able to conflate Israel with jews. so the first person who says something about halting aid to Israel or stopping the genocide is called "anti semite". The fear from this alone is enough to keep almost everyone quiet, especially journalists. It's a perfect byproduct of cancel culture.

Comment by afpx 3 days ago

That's really interesting. I am an Evangelical, and no one that I know supports Israel. Could it be something else?

Comment by jmatthews 3 days ago

It's always weird hearing yourself described and recognizing approximately nothing, right?

The hubris to think a group of people could precipitate the rapture is just awe inspiring and the hubris to reduce someone's relationship with the creator to some Wikipedia excerpts is a bit less awe inspiring.

Comment by iamjs 2 days ago

That's interesting. Every evangelical with whom I've spoken seems to be willing to give Israel carte blanche

Comment by afpx 2 days ago

Anyone can call themselves a Christian. One can only tell a true Christian by their fruits. (e.g. love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and many others)

Comment by yieldcrv 2 days ago

Your movement knows and cares nothing about Jewish culture and uses the resurrection of the state of Israel in that geographic location as a pawn to both rationalize progress towards your doomsday prophecy and the validity of your belief system at all

All so you get an accelerated chance to ride with Zombie Jesus on a cloud to heaven while the rest of us experience supernatural calamity, and most illuminating is the fact that the Jews don’t. get. to. come.

Its all so contrived and opportunistic

Instead of stating that, Israel is masqueraded as our democratic partner in the Middle East where we can store bases as if we don’t have bases in every surrounding country there.

It’s just your sect perpetuating this nonsense. We built this nation devoid of a divine monarchies, the only freaking one with the opportunity and resources for it to matter at the time, and now have to deal with you guys and your anti-intellectual doomsday cult.

The US has no reason to be involved at all. But even beyond that, look at what the US did to Ethiopia and Eritrea under the mere allegation of famine inducing actions:

EO 14046 just a couple years ago put the entire ruling party on the OFAC economic sanctions list, and the military and businesses formed by personnel in either and by their spouses. You know that would be essentially every person in Israel if we held them to the same standard? Should be fine, only antisemitic people believe there’s a disproportionately large consolidation of economic interests amirite, FAFO but just the find out stage

Takes only the stroke of a pen, Congress not needing to be involved at all, and can even apply to our dual allegiance citizens in the US

Comment by afpx 2 days ago

You seem pretty upset. But, rest assured that I'm not your problem. And, the Gospel has nothing to do with any of that. True followers of Jesus Christ are just here to love Jesus and love those around them.

Anyone can call themselves a Christian. In fact, the bible repeatedly warns about this, and instructs us to test everything. It says one can only discern a true follower of Jesus by their fruits and the company they keep.

Actually, when you talk to a lot of "Christians", you'll find that most don't know the bible, and many worship something else that they picked up from tv, usually Judaism (i.e. do they mention the 10 commandments?).

Comment by yieldcrv 2 days ago

The conditional paths to salvation is a core aspect of Christianity whether your personal journey and house of worship focuses on that or not

Evangelicalism is an accelerationist sect to get your savior to come back and bring the most devout to heaven at the expense of everyone else, before allowing the world to get destroyed

These are inseparable concepts. You may have simply began identifying as Evangelic just by birth or proximity or to grift your way into a relationship, but again, you are in a death cult that is trying to use Jewish people as pawns ever since their Zionism ideology coincidentally matched your prophecy. And then they are condemned to burn with the rest of us in a supernatural nightmare as our world gets destroyed by your creator’s more powerful creations while you are insulated if you did everything right. That’s what the rapture is.

Your choice and practice of peace and love has nothing to do with Evangelicalism as a distinct Christian sect. Anyone can read inspirational and feel good messages from the book of Psalms from any variant of the text. You don’t even need that Abrahamic religion for that, you dont even need religion for that.

I’m not even writing this for you, you’re cooked and gain more benefits socially and mentally from rationalizing this, I’m writing this for passerby’s, people already noticing cracks in the belief system they associate with.

People that can help get our country out of involvement in this while you guys pretend there is a persecution complex around holidays. Everyone just wants to ignore you.

Comment by afpx 2 days ago

That’s quite a response! And, the confidence! I appreciate you, man.

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Comment by watwut 3 days ago

Are you denying radical evangelical conservativism exists?

Comment by hyperhello 2 days ago

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Comment by kevin_thibedeau 3 days ago

It's the only nation on earth that can't be criticized without the victim card being played every time. Utter a discouraging word about the secular leadership? You're labeled a bigot.

Comment by jmyeet 3 days ago

This is a hotly debated topic.

The John Mearsheimer view is that "The Lobby" [1] has effective control over US foreign policy. There's a lot of evidence for this such as AIPAC indirectly unseating anti-Israel candidates. The Thomas Massie primary was the most expensive in history. $35 million. For a primary.

Noam Chomsky on the other hand rejects the notion of "the lobby" [2], instead arguing that Israel is an tool of American imperialism. Then-US Secretary of STate of Alexander Haig is widely believed to have described Israel as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" [3] in a resource-rich region even though that term originated in the Pacific in WW2. The US has had an interest in disrupting Pan-Arab Nationalism [4], preferring a divided Middle East to guarantee access to oil.

The truth lies somewhere in between. There are clearly material interests and the US could shut down Israel in a day if it so chose. But the US has taken actions that clearly aren't in its national interest and the perfect example is the current Iran war.

Under no circumstances was this ever going to end well. The military knew it. General Caine tried to stop it when Trump didn't heed his warnings [5]. The US intelligence community was against it. also saying Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon [6]. Trump instead listened to Miriam Adelson, Benjamin Netanyahu and Mossad, who collectively (allegedly) convinced him it would be a Venezuela-like regime change operation.

This move will (IMHO) go down as the largest strategic blunder in US history and it will reshape geopolitics in the Gulf, Europe and Asia for decades. Even other wars that were lost (eg Vietnam, Korea) didn't have this kind of impact. The US could essentially walk away from those at little cost.

My point is that you can't take the Chomsky view as this being purely materialist. It just doesn't fit the evidence.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Fore...

[2]: https://mondoweiss.net/2011/02/chomsky-materialism-and-the-i...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsinkable_aircraft_carrier

[4]: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v12...

[5]: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/25/politics/caine-iran-hegse...

[6]: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-intel-community-agreed-b...

Comment by throwaway27448 2 days ago

I agree that Chomsky's assessment hasn't made sense for a while. Maybe it did until, I don't know, the camp david accords, but at some point the Lobby became too integral to even clearly acknowledge. Perhaps Citizens United helped metastasize the problem. It's also simply a dogmatic, cultural reflex at this point: to not support Israel is politically unthinkable on the hill. It was political suicide for so long the older politicians especially are incapable of even milquetoast critique.

It's also worth noting that the public is so aware of AIPAC that it's become a bit of a too-visible stink. More and more pro-israel money is being funneled through other mechanisms: Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI), NORPAC, United Democracy Project (UDP), Pro-Israel America. There are also regional pacs, like To Protect Our Heritage PAC in Illinois, SunPAC in Florida, etc.

Comment by marcosdumay 3 days ago

Hum... I don't think Chomsky's opinion on the matter has any relevance at all.

He's there right at the Lobby. We have no way at all of knowing he's saying it doesn't matter because he saw it doesn't matter, or because it dictates what he says.

Comment by ab5tract 3 days ago

What? Noam Chomsky has been labeled a self hating anti-Semite by AIPAC. For decades.

Comment by lobocinza 2 days ago

The same Noam Chomsky which was a friend of Epstein which had ties to Israel high schelon.

Comment by watwut 3 days ago

John Mearsheimer fully discredited himself around the start of Ukrainian war.

Comment by throwaway27448 2 days ago

How do you figure?

Comment by hackandthink 2 days ago

Mearsheimer was right: Putin wrecks Ukraine.

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t...

Comment by ruggeri 3 days ago

I don’t agree with the assessment, but in terms of a great power being very interested in the interests of a small country, consider Serbia and Russia before WWI.

Comment by throwaway27448 3 days ago

I agree vassal is the wrong term... but we are currently committing global economic suicide on behalf of Israel's interests. I'm not sure what word is appropriate. Perhaps we need a new one.

I'll look at Serbia, thank you.

Comment by bruce511 3 days ago

While too big a subject to cover well here, the Serbia / Russia thing is different to US / Israel.

Primarily a Russia friendly Serbia was important for Russian trade routes (Black Sea to Mediterranean via the Dardanelles.) In other words geography made Serbia important.

In a twist on that theme, the strait of Hormuz is important to, well everyone, and we now see how geography can magnify a countries strategic value.

There were other factors which came into play with Russia. Ethnically Serbia was aligned with Russia - similar to the US / Israel relationship today.

It also didn't hurt that Russia at the time was experiencing internal discontent and this was a convenient way to thin the population, and get rid of malcontents. (Ironically would end up having the opposite effect of organizing, arming and training an army that ultimately would be instrumental in the revolution. )

The history leading up to ww1 is fascinating- so many players, all with really "big picture" goals, mostly with weak leadership.. Ultimately conflict was inevitable- if it hadn't been the arch-duke it would have been something else.

Comment by fintechjock 3 days ago

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Comment by thin_carapace 3 days ago

suzerain

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Comment by solenoid0937 3 days ago

In part it's because they have the best intelligence apparatus in the world. I'm very impressed at how far above their weight they're punching.

Comment by Chu4eeno 3 days ago

If you can see enough of what an intelligence apparatus is doing to be impressed I'd say they're not doing a very good job.

What they seem to be most unique in is the impunity of their operations, like when they assassinated a completely innocent guy in Norway, of all places: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair

Comment by ALLTaken 3 days ago

wow, that's shocking to read. Didn't hear about this in any European news.

Comment by throwaway27448 2 days ago

Assassination is sort of the mossad's thing. I highly recommend the book "Rise and Kill First" (by an Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman) who describes this approach to international relations as something approaching an addiction. He alleges they've assassinated more people than any country on earth since their founding in 1948 and lays out a very convincing picture (to the extent he can—there are moments when you can tell he would like to state things more baldly).

Comment by m-ee 3 days ago

The best intelligence apparatus in the world missed the Oct 7 planning which Egyptian intelligence noticed, told the Israelis about directly, and still went ignored?

Comment by kaikai 3 days ago

Hence the theory that they did know, but chose to let it happen in order to justify the following escalation

Comment by code_biologist 3 days ago

They're also obviously fine with breaking eggs to make an omelette. Given their history, they seem to regard breaking eggs as the goal, and making an omelette as an afterthought.

Comment by zjaffee 2 days ago

Regardless of anything else, absolutely no one is calling shin bet the best in the world at what they do. The FBI is much more effective. It's the israeli agencies that focus on transnational threats human and signals intellegence (mossad and 8200 respectively, along with other groups in the laters perview under military intellegence).

Comment by petre 3 days ago

I believe they let the oct 7 attacks go through to serve as a pretext for Netanyahu to level Gaza. No evidence whatsoever.

Comment by HotGarbage 3 days ago

Perfect excuse for the ongoing genocide.

Comment by fakedang 3 days ago

This is what I ask everyone who thinks October 7 was an attack launched by Hamas of its own volition.

Anyone who's been to and seen the Gaza border knows how impossible it is to cross - unless of course there was some inside permittance.

Comment by alex_be 3 days ago

I've been and I've seen. It is a fence. A very long fence. You can't cross it with bare hands, and if you try, you will be shot. This is not the case when dozens of bulldozers simultaneously cross the fence and many thousands of trained terrorists coming out of tunnels and cross the fence through the openings. If you don't have prior intelligence, you can't stop it.

Comment by SilverElfin 3 days ago

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Comment by atmavatar 3 days ago

> Gaza residents voted Hamas into power, despite Hamas’s vile charter pledging erasure of Israel and Jews and so on.

Reminder:

* The last parlimentary election held in Palestine was 2006 [1].

* The median age in Palestine as of 2023 was 19.8 [2].

* The voting age in Palestine is 21 [1].

In other words, the majority of the population today were born after the last major election, and they aren't voting age now, let alone at the time of the last election. When you account for people who were voting age in the last elections, the number of people still around today is a rather small minority. It shrinks even further when you consider that Hamas only got 44% of the votes for Parliament (alas, due to how district votes are handled, that gave Hamas 74 of 132 seats).

Given that, I'm a little less sure about holding the current population of Palestine responsible for Hamas. You could argue they should be doing more to displace Hamas, but perhaps that can wait until after they're done worrying about starving to death or being shot by IDF snipers while accepting food from aid workers.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Palestine

2. https://ourworldindata.org/profile/population-demography/pal...

Comment by petre 3 days ago

From what I know about rebels and paramilitary orgs (like FARC), they're always supported by the local population in return for "protection", policing. Same goes for Hamas. I wouldn't say they voted for Hamas but I'm quite sure they support and offer shelter and food to Hamas fighters.

My other experiences with Palestinians revealed that they're very empathetic people and they integrate quite well into other cultures when they're not bombed or shot at.

Comment by snayan 3 days ago

It is well documented that Israel had heard rumblings that something was coming.

A year prior, they had documentation of a plan like what unfolded on October 7th, but dismissed it for reasons I won't speculate on. Google 'Jericho Wall'.

Approximately 3 weeks prior to October 7th, Unit 8200 produced a document based on months of research, that showed Hamas seemed to be doing a lot of training and coordinating for something.

In the days prior, Egypt warned Israel that something big was happening imminently, but again, it was ignored for reasons I won't speculate on.

The night before, the IDF identified a number of anomalies in Hama's behavior but did nothing with this information.

A number of members of the intelligence and military leadership have stepped down since, acknowledging the failures.

Anyhow, for whatever reason, your belief that this was completely in character for Hamas, seems to be at odds with the beliefs of Israel's intelligence and military community in the months and days prior to the attack on October 7th. Which is, odd, to say the very least.

Comment by pillefitz 3 days ago

This is not the point OP wanted to make, and you seem smart enough to understand that.

Comment by petre 3 days ago

Hamas are fanatics and were dumb enough to try it. They also had the tunnels, missiles from Iran. But I"m quite inclined to believe the Israeli leadership let it happen as a pretext to crush them afterwards, level Gaza, maybe even go against Hezbollah and Iran, but that's a bit too far fetrched.

Comment by fakedang 3 days ago

That's precisely what I meant. Hamas always had these plans on how to launch an attack. Israel gave them the opening. And why is everyone forgetting the fact that Yahya Shinwar was basically a Mossad puppet by the time he was released? They released him precisely because they thought that he was milder compared to his contemporaries in Doha.

People who've been to that border in normal times know how fiercely that border is protected.

Comment by petre 3 days ago

It escapes me how a Palestinian born in a refugee camp and involved into lifetime strife against Israel can also be a Mossad puppet, but who knows.

Hamas are crazy fundamentalists that Iran is using along with Hezbollah to perpetrate attacks against Israel. Just what Netanyahu needs to start another war.

Comment by throwaway27448 2 days ago

> Hamas are crazy fundamentalists

They're normal people—dentists, engineers, bakers, whatever—born into an environment with no sovereignty and the constant threat of death or worse. That's enough to put a gun in anyone's hand. We must stop with this wholly inaccurate and shallow characterization. They are not Boko Haram or ISIS or Al-Qaeda. In fact, they worked with the IDF when ISIS was messing with them about 8 years ago. Are they predominantly muslim? Yes. But their struggle is for sovereignty, not fanatic fundamentalism.

Comment by petre 2 days ago

That's the image they have created for themselves after kidnapping, raping, abusing and killing innocent civillians and concert goers. Compared to Fatah and the other PLO members who established themselves as political parties, they are just a terrorist organization and recently designated as such in most of the civilized world. Israel has probably discretely supported them in the past order to prevent a two state solution.

Comment by throwaway27448 2 days ago

Raping and abusing? Do you have a link to what you're referring to or are you confusing them with how the IDF treats their prisoners? Because that rape and abuse is extremely well documented.

> they are just a terrorist organization and recently designated as such in most of the civilized world

I would not call the west "civilized". We're just rich. We call a lot of people terrorists and overlook our own terrorism, like basically everything the CIA & the IDF & the mossad do. convenient eh?

PLEASE read anything but western news, I'm begging you. You don't realize how insane you sound to most of the civilized world.

Comment by petre 2 days ago

Both sides commited rape and abuse of prisoners and civillians. That's why Hamas is a terrorist org and Netanyahu and friends are war criminals.

Comment by fakedang 2 days ago

Every Gazan is not a Hamas supporter. Do you know the kind of shit Hamas pulls against its own people?

There wasn't any chance of Hamas being overthrown by the Palestinians either. With clandestine support from both Israel and Qatar, Hamas ensured that they were the only ones with guns on the Strip.

Yahya Sinwar was captured and imprisoned in a Mossad cell for years. Even if he weren't an active Israeli puppet, Mossad would've easily known the ways they could manipulate him into a specific action, and egged him to carry that out. It's already been established that the Hamas leadership in Qatar were in the dark with respect to the October 7 attacks when they first happened too. I don't condone Hamas either, but it's also very likely Israel is heavily complicit.

Comment by trumpdong 2 days ago

Funny, I always thought it was about the schools and hospitals getting bombed nonstop for decades.

Comment by ed_balls 2 days ago

it's not, they have a good PR. Best intelligence is quiet.

>Any man who must say, 'I am the king,' is no true king

Comment by kumarski 3 days ago

Where was that apparatus on october 7th?

Comment by s5300 3 days ago

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Comment by ALLTaken 3 days ago

France has the best intelligence apparatus. Recommend checking it, that's also why they are way under the radar. If achieving intelligence by any means was the goal, yeah then Mossad.

Let's compare facts: There's only 10M people there. I think PR skews reality massively

Population metrics deskew this distorted reality: France has 69M, China has 1.4B, Russia 143, Germany 83M people. Mathematically and from a technological sophistication standpoint, these governments must have higher advancements and frequency of successful Intel vs Israel. Mathematical probability speaks against Israel.

Comment by bsaul 2 days ago

if this was the case, there would be no state sponsoring palestinian terrorism for a long time.

Look at what happened after 9/11, it's pretty clear there's a wide difference between how US consider its own security matter vs israel's one.

Comment by IAmGraydon 3 days ago

Can you list the measures by which you believe that Israel has made the US its vassal?

Comment by solarhoma 3 days ago

American companies must sign a document signifying they will not boycott Israel if the company wants to get government contracts, it was illegal to burn the Israeli flag in the US before it was illegal to burn the US flag, 99% of congress votes in favor of Israel (as evidenced by Thomas Massie’s recent primary Israel will spend $$$ to buy a US politicians seat if they do not support Israel).

Comment by giardini 2 days ago

solarhoma sez "it was illegal to burn the Israeli flag in the US before it was illegal to burn the US flag,"

It is legal to burn the USA flag in the USA.

Comment by solarhoma 2 days ago

Ok. Then my point stands even more firmly that you are able to burn the flag of the country you reside in yet cannot burn the flag of a foreign nation.

Comment by giardini 2 days ago

Nope. For the most part in the USA you can burn any flag provided you aren't violating some property law or safety statute by doing so.

Comment by jraby3 3 days ago

Massie going against Trump is why he lost. Plenty of republican politicians are against Israel.

Comment by solarhoma 2 days ago

The money to oust Massie came almost exclusively from pro-Israel groups. Who then celebrated their ability to control US elections.

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Comment by SilverElfin 3 days ago

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Comment by StanislavPetrov 3 days ago

>But let’s not be under any illusion as to what the Iran regime was and still is - an authoritarian theocracy that backs numerous proxy terrorist groups across Asia.

And let’s not be under any illusion as to what the Isaeli regime was and still is - an authoritarian theocracy that has slaughtered more women and children in the last year than all of the terrorist groups in the world combined.

Comment by halflife 3 days ago

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Comment by SilverElfin 3 days ago

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Comment by mahkeiro 3 days ago

Just watching how emergency workers in Lebanon get double tapped (among hundreds of hundreds of other awful things), how Hospital are getting bombed killing doctors and medical personnel to Red Cross and WHO total indignation is enough to tell you that Israel is a war crime machine.

Comment by zthrowaway 2 days ago

Also realize that a lot of these people that are being slaughtered are Christians.

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Comment by pillefitz 3 days ago

You are a disgrace calling this genocide "self-defense". Seriously. Denying civilians access to fresh water, ambushing ambulances and now blaming the victims? This is utterly disgusting.

Comment by WarmWash 3 days ago

Really it comes down to religion, and Israel being the bastion of anti-islam in the Middle East. Doesn't hurt that they are also liberal democracy and have advanced economy as well.

Comment by Terr_ 3 days ago

> liberal democracy

With a big honking caveat-asterisk that it only applies if you're on the right side of the apartheid.

Comment by jfengel 3 days ago

Well, on the right side of the border. Everybody within the actual borders can vote, regardless of race, religion, etc. In a lot of ways it's a more democratic system than the US has, with multiple functioning parties.

The "apartheid" part is the people in the West Bank and Gaza, who are not Israeli but also not their own country.

Comment by StanislavPetrov 3 days ago

>Well, on the right side of the border.

Which border? The Israelis don't recognize a border, which is why they have illegally annexed the Golan Heights in Syria, are currently attempting to colonize Southern Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza.

Comment by nerfbatplz 3 days ago

Israel has never published their official borders. Even Somaliland has declared their borders but the "only democracy in the middle east" has never done so in it's entire history.

Comment by halflife 3 days ago

Israel has clearly defined borders. If youre are talking about the West Bank there’s area a, b and c which are controlled by Israel, both, and PA respectively. I’d call that borders.

Comment by nerfbatplz 2 days ago

Israel has never defined its own borders. This is easily googleable. There are borders that are well understood by the international community but it is a fact that the state of Israel itself has never defined it's own borders.

Comment by throwaway27448 2 days ago

Sure and they exercise sovereignty far beyond those borders in a blatantly illegal manner. They do not acknowledge their de facto borders because it would be admitting to acts the world would be required to condemn to maintain the pretense of law and order.

Comment by halflife 2 days ago

If you need to protect your border inside, than you already failed. Borders are protected outside the country.

Comment by throw310822 3 days ago

> Everybody within the actual borders can vote

Unless you're a Palestinian in illegally annexed Jerusalem... Then you don't have citizenship and have to keep proving that you live and work in Jerusalem to avoid losing the residency rights.

Comment by SilverElfin 3 days ago

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Comment by Terr_ 3 days ago

> lived in that region first

The whole premise/approach of "here first" is deeply flawed, and I think this blackly humorous cartoon [0] is a relevant critique of it.

Tying things back to earlier discussion, here's the thing: One can either say a place is a "liberal democracy" or it can disenfranchise people due to events thousands of years ago, but you cannot do both.

Democratically speaking, people whose lives are principally controlled by a government today deserve (for their hardship) a say in its operation today. What happened even a single generation ago is irrelevant to that relationship of duty and obligation.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evIyrrjTTY

Comment by defrost 3 days ago

Hmm, you may or may not chuckle a little at the tale of a Jew and a Palestinian visiting sperm banks on either side of the wall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuvvfnjgZlM

Comment by bruce511 3 days ago

>> Jewish people lived in that region first.

I'm going to skip over the obvious assertion that they weren't- Cainanites were in the promised land when they arrived - but instead focus on the "here first" doctrine.

Because if "here first" is the primary source of political legitimacy then that argument extends to lots of places. It would require that Texas should be part of Mexico, that current govts in Australia, New Zealand and Canada are illegitimate, that all whites in South Africa should be disenfranchised, that most of Europe needs to redraw borders.

In other words, appealing to the political boundaries of a period thousands of years ago is not quite the killer argument it might appear to be.

(It does however support Greenlanders in their fight against US rhetoric. )

Comment by throw310822 3 days ago

It's also fun that the people who advocate the right for Jews to "return" to Palestine because they were there 2000 years ago, are the same that deny the right of return of Palestinians to the land because "dude you lost it 80 years ago, you need to accept and give up".

Comment by Buttons840 3 days ago

Probably every single person in the region is a descendant of the Jewish people who "lived in that region first".

And if we go back further: If Abraham existed, then like 99.9% of all living humans are descendants of Abraham. Do they all have claim to Israel's land then?

It doesn't make sense to look back that far.

Comment by trumpdong 2 days ago

Also a very large percentage of the current Jewish people in the region are descendants of European colonizers. The original Jews converted to Islam over thousands of years, then Jews from Europe came over just after WW2 (this was the Allied counter-proposal to the Holocaust) and said it's ours now.

Comment by throwaway27448 2 days ago

I mean if voting for a parliamentary representative is your barometer, would you consider Russia a liberal democracy? Or Iran? Both have formal democracies, and Iran even seems to have pretty contentious ones replete with unexpected reformist upsets. If voting at all is your barometer, we could toss in Cuba, China, and North Korea. Apartheid is not characterized by voting rights but by a qualitative difference in access to justice when pursuing basic rights. Think: Jim Crow south. Formally, black people had access to all the same public things white people did. In practice, it took nearly a hundred years to work its way through the courts to be afforded true protection by the state.

Plus, you need only to look at marriage & inheritance laws and access to citizenship to see that the state is dedicated to jewish people—arguably, a jewish supremacist state with a non-jewish underclass.

Comment by lokar 3 days ago

What’s wrong with Islam?

Comment by Nexxxeh 3 days ago

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Comment by rramadass 3 days ago

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Comment by SilverElfin 3 days ago

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Comment by CMay 3 days ago

The US is neither a vassal of Israel nor simply doing its bidding. That is poor propaganda.

If you operate with a lens that forces you to ask "how is this Israel's fault?" without ever asking any other question, you're going to end up mostly with answers that are only for entertainment value the same way you would if you asked any LLM a leading question that already assumed a desired answer.

Comment by whyage 3 days ago

> The US is neither a vassal of Israel nor simply doing its bidding.

This is propaganda as well, only more agreeable to you.

Comment by CMay 3 days ago

What questions did you ask to arrive at that conclusion?

Comment by Georgelemental 3 days ago

It's not Israel's "fault" that American leaders are slavishly loyal to them. Israel is just putting their country first, as is their duty. It's 100% on American politicians for failing in their duty to put America first

Comment by komali2 3 days ago

> Israel is just putting their country first

Is walking down the street, slugging everyone that gets in your way, "putting yourself first?" Is moving your fence into your neighbor's lawn and then pulling a gun on them when they come to talk about it "putting yourself first?"

At some point Israel needs to reckon with the fact that its behavior is beyond selfish, it's suicidal.

Comment by CMay 3 days ago

We are putting America first. Usually when we get involved in anything, it's a result of many reasons intersecting. We tend to wait until enough reasons pile up that acting is worth it. If the only reason you can think of is Israel, who trained your brain to default to that? Who does it benefit for them to be invested in making you think that way?

You are bombarded with so many things that tell you everything is bad and going wrong in the world, it's easy to get pulled into the gravity of it without ever asking what is going right? So much so, people deny anything is going right, emotionally.

There is a large gap between what the general populace understands about the world and how it works, versus the actual logic that causes the world events. When the gap is large like that it takes more effort to understand and so fewer people in the world will. The harder it is to understand, the easier it is for people to spread lies about. Does consensus alone make something true? No.

Comment by 9x39 3 days ago

Don't miss the attempt of the removal of Section 224 of the US NDAA at the same time, a polarizing development in discussions on Israel, to put it mildly.

https://www.aipac.org/memos/america-israel-defense-ndaa-224

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2026/06...

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-israel-military-congres...

Comment by mentalgear 3 days ago

> Top U.S. officials often take extra care when traveling to Israel, sometimes using burner phones and computers and taking extreme caution when speaking in hotel rooms during official trips, the current and former U.S. officials and experts said.

> Israel has “a hyper-aggressive intelligence service,” said Emily Harding, vice president of the Defense and Security Department and director of the intelligence, national security and technology program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. “They are exceedingly interested in what we are up to,” Harding said of the Israelis.

And these are considered their closest allies.

What do they do with others.

Comment by like_any_other 3 days ago

That's a big reason why they're "allies" - if Israel can identify which US politicians are pro/against Israel, they can promote or impede their rise to power accordingly.

Comment by bushbaba 3 days ago

The top U.S. officials do the same when traveling to any country. Everyone does this to everyone else.

Comment by morby 2 days ago

Not true. Israel has a reputation for being exceedingly intrusive and aggresssive with US personnel. Just go watch intel community interviews online.

Comment by balex 2 days ago

As is the US. Go watch same interviews.

Comment by AlecSchueler 2 days ago

So? The claim was "Everyone does this to everyone else"

Comment by balex 1 day ago

Agreed. The whole intensity discussion is pointless.

Comment by dhfhfjg 3 days ago

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Comment by Sam6late 3 days ago

This could be 'curiosity' about negotiation with Iran, as there is what could be considered an AI merger between the 2 countries ; the FY2027 NDAA (H.R. 8800) bill text was officially released by Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA) on May 26, 2026. - House Armed Services Committee markup was set for June 4, 2026. https://www.uschamber.com/security/letter-to-house-armed-ser... Section 224 of the FY2027 NDAA, titled “United States–Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative,” is a draft provision sponsored by Chairman Mike Rogers and Ranking Member Adam Smith. It aims to deeply integrate U.S. and Israeli defense industries and militaries through joint R&D, testing, manufacturing, technology sharing, training, information-sharing, network integration, and data fusion. AI is one of several technologies included, not a standalone “AI merger.” The provision is still a House committee draft, not final law, and may be amended before passage.https://www.uschamber.com/security/letter-to-house-armed-ser...

Comment by catigula 3 days ago

The parasite completes its lifecycle, consuming the host.

Comment by balex 2 days ago

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Comment by throwaway23984 2 days ago

Posting from a throwaway account just because this is such a sensitive issue, but posting my genuine thoughts.

I assume I am very out of touch with antisemitism since I have always lived in countries where I assume there aren't very many Jewish people, and I never hear much about them.

I understand that there was a lot of really terrible antisemitism for a very long period of history, and I read and hear that there is some amount of trying to pretend that never happened, which must make it even harder to deal with.

However, I think a lot of the criticism of Israel's policy and actions is probably unrelated to the fact that the people are Jewish. A lot of criticism of the most actions by Israel in Palestine is from the US and Europe, and there is also a history of animosity towards Islam in these places.

Also, there's a chance that a lot of people are clueless about classic antisemitic metaphors. I certainly am. I might have heard parasite used in that context, but I'm not certain I would have thought of it if I was trying to make a similar point to the GP's (about a small nation's relationship to a larger one).

Anyway, not sure whether this post will help anything, but just opening up my thoughts in case they help.

Comment by balex 1 day ago

I wasn't talking about Israel. I pointed out the antisemitic metaphor. Like it or not, that's the same language. I find the sarcasm of the parent taking sides and crossing into that territory telling. It's further strengthened by their response after being called out.

There, now you know. Hope you feel safe behind the throwaway account. Karma's tough, right?

Comment by bigyabai 1 day ago

I don't think they used it in an antisemitic manner. Empire politics have been called parasitic even before WWII, and Israel's reliance on foreign aid does epitomize the cost of enabling this type of occupation. Americans are bled out of their wallets for this, and many no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel supporting Israel. To many Americans, it is a parasitic relationship with zero ostensible upsides to America.

Comment by catigula 2 days ago

Just an FYI that word doesn't have power anymore as it has been comically drug through the mud by murderous/genocidal freaks (freaks in the literal appearance sense too).

Comment by balex 2 days ago

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Comment by CrzyLngPwd 3 days ago

I was reading about Israel interfering with US elections and spying on the US decades ago.

Why is this news now?

Us gives Israel money, Israel uses that money to buy people in power in the US, those bought people then ensure US taxpayewr money flows to israel to...and so the cycle continues.

Nothing explains the US being subservient to Israel than this.

Comment by throwaway27448 3 days ago

The reason it's news today is because intelligence services, which are venerated by american journalism, brought the issue forward.

...but in general, the conflation of Israel with Jewishness, and the conflation of anti-zionism with anti-semitism, has allowed the entrenchment of Israel's interests in broad daylight against our best interests.

Comment by 2 days ago

Comment by jraby3 3 days ago

US gives Israel weapons not money.

Comment by throwaway27448 2 days ago

We give both. We currently have an MOU to provide Israel with $3.8B a year, including $500 allocated for missile defense, through 2028. This is distinct from direct military aid. In total we have furnished nearly $100B since Israel's founding.

Comment by morby 2 days ago

People always mention the direct foreign aid but fail to mention all the other money flows. They receive many times more money each year in private investment and open trade agreements. I believe the figure is close to 90-100 billion USD each year going to Israel from the US. This doesn’t include the free movement of Americans to Israel for tourism, owning a second home, etc.

Comment by frollogaston 2 days ago

Is Israel allowed to use the non-military aid to donate to AIPAC, and can AIPAC receive that without being reclassified as foreign agent?

Comment by bigyabai 3 days ago

US taxpayers buy the weapons.

Comment by jameslk 3 days ago

> A spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., said in a statement that it is “completely false” that Israel spies on the U.S. “Israel does not gather intelligence on American entities, let alone US government officials,” the spokesperson said. “Israel intelligence collection efforts are aimed at its enemies, not its allies. Any claims to the contrary are either misinformed or politically motivated.”

Not even a teeny weeny bit of spying on your allies?

Comment by baq 3 days ago

They want to spy on the enemy, but they need to spy on everyone to know who is the enemy, obviously

Comment by stephbook 3 days ago

Where did it say they consider the US an ally?

Comment by baq 3 days ago

I don’t think it said anything about countries

Comment by nerfbatplz 3 days ago

The rumor is that this hornet's nest got kicked because Netanyahu called Trump to complain about a classified cabinet meeting that the Israelis had not been briefed on.

Comment by Aboutplants 3 days ago

Legitimate question, what would Israel need that we don’t already openly provide?

Comment by jarym 3 days ago

Protection from the risk that the tide might turn on them despite their extensive political lobbying? Just taking a guess here but probably not far off.

Comment by gosub100 3 days ago

One of the YouTube "CIA former spies" explained it very well (paraphrasing): "we shared the F-35 with them, but we kept about 10% of the technology to ourselves and sold them a variant. That wasn't enough for them, they ran an espionage operation to get the remaining 10%".

Comment by slipperybeluga 3 days ago

[dead]

Comment by ceejayoz 3 days ago

Dirt on anyone proposing that we stop openly providing such assistance?

Comment by Animats 3 days ago

"The designation stems from concerns within the Pentagon that Israel is making a particular effort to surveil top U.S. officials to get information on the Trump administration’s internal deliberations and decision-making on the conflicts in the Middle East, the officials said."

So Israel wants to know what Trump is going to do next.

Comment by YZF 3 days ago

Don't we all.

Comment by sanderjd 3 days ago

Seems like he's the only one that doesn't feel any need to think about this question.

Comment by classified 3 days ago

Which, of course, is deliberate. He has weaponized uncertainty to perfection.

Comment by Animats 3 days ago

If that was true, he wouldn't keep losing negotiations.

Comment by sanderjd 2 days ago

Weaponized against us, the American people, not against any of our geopolitical rivals.

Comment by Terr_ 3 days ago

Anything that the chief-executives of either government can exploit to keep themselves out of jail.

Comment by CommanderData 3 days ago

The vessel state now fully controls its host, but I think public sentiment is reversing it just a little.

Comment by bawolff 3 days ago

I mean, they did just start a war with iran as a joint venture with trump.

I could understand why anyone who starts a joint venture with trump would be nervous about trump selling them out. It is trump after all. Probably is a logical thing to be concerned about.

Comment by make3 3 days ago

there's currently disagreements with Israel on their approach to Lebanon being way more aggressively and murderous than "necessary", whatever that means. https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5904899-trump-ne...

Comment by anonu 3 days ago

The well publicized disagreements are just diplomatic cover. The USA can look tough. Israel might back off for a little bit. Everyone looks good for a moment. Reason has prevailed. Then it'll all go back to Israel's criminal "gaza policy" in South Lebanon, continuing the wanton murder of 1000s of civilians under the guise of "they use children as shields". Well yeah, it's endless guerilla warfare and now hezb has drones. Diplomacy is the only way.

Comment by lyu07282 3 days ago

You can't really negotiate when one party is a religious fanatical death cult and the other one is Hezbollah.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by basisword 3 days ago

New blackmail material in case Trump starts to turn on them?

Comment by Arodex 3 days ago

Trump doesn't let Bibi bomb Lebanon and doesn't fight to the last American in Iran

Comment by ceejayoz 3 days ago

> Trump doesn't let Bibi bomb Lebanon

Sure he does. They did it today!

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0g8jymg92o

Comment by jasonlotito 3 days ago

Trump doesn't let?

Trump is sitting in a chair in the corner of the room of any negotiation he's in. He's weak at best.

Comment by fakedang 3 days ago

> sitting in a chair

More like sleeping in the chair

Comment by jasonlotito 2 days ago

It's in the corner, and it's porcelain. But you get it. And people worship that.

Comment by rolph 3 days ago

combat is a dynamic situation, if you have no idea what its participants can/cant/will/wont do, you cant formulate prevailing tactics.

situational awareness is best when first hand, as someone may be lying to you, or may not even know what they are doing in the first place.

Comment by s5300 3 days ago

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Comment by basilgohar 3 days ago

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Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by MilnerRoute 3 days ago

UPDATED COMMENT: Wikipedia says the 1967 attack on the U.S.S. Liberty was "a mistake due to Israeli confusion about the ship's identity," according to both U.S. and Israeli governments. (Though they also note people who question that conclusion...)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident

Comment by yde_java 3 days ago

Might be an attempt to correct history after the bad fact. There are huge budgets nowadays set up to correct public opinion, e.g. https://www.timesofisrael.com/foreign-ministry-to-receive-ma...

Edit: a more recent article mentions a budget of $730M:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-just-quintupled-its-pr-...

Comment by jfiejfkdjs 3 days ago

But everyone has such budgets, so you could easily argue there's an attempt to revise history in both directions. And I can assure you the sum of the Chinese, Russian, Iranian and gulf budgets far surpass that of Israel's.

Comment by yde_java 3 days ago

Sorry, the linked article shared above is from 2024. Here's a more recent one with a much larger budget for their state propaganda:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-just-quintupled-its-pr-...

Not sure if Russia, China and the others you mention spend more (totalled) than $730M?

Comment by karp773 3 days ago

Despite the budget, that is clearly one thing where Israel has fallen behind its adversaries.

Comment by bawolff 3 days ago

Conspiracies are always possible, but also keep in mind that parking a ship in the middle of a war zone is always a bad idea. In modern conflicts, significant casualities come from friendly fire incidents. If armies cant even consistently not accidentally target their own troops, it seems entirely plausible they accidentally hit a neutral ship hanging out in the middle of a war zone.

I think the biggest issue with this conspiracy theory is why Israel would want to take out the liberty? It seems like the events would be strongly detrimental to Israeli interests. Nobody has really come up with a compelling motive, which suggests to me the most likely scenario is accident/miscommunication.

Comment by Bender 3 days ago

Public wiki's may be subject to alternate reality. [1]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/au7GlkiF2O4

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by basilgohar 3 days ago

Uh-huh. The official story two very trustworthy sources on the matter. The coverup and silencing of the survivors and threats to their persons and families if they attempted to tell their stories are probably just coincidences.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by Forgeties79 3 days ago

Don’t feed the troll^

Comment by BirAdam 3 days ago

If this is such a threat, why are there Israeli offices in the Pentagon via the ODC? I mean… it isnt as if the USA has been fighting wars on behalf of Israel for nearly 30 years or anything…

Comment by basilgohar 3 days ago

"Government suddenly and confusingly starts acting accordingly to what everyone's already know for a long time." This is really quite scary when you think about it. Why now all of a sudden?

Comment by delecti 3 days ago

Maybe this is a bit glib, but it's because attacking Iran (which everyone knew was a bad idea but which presumably seemed useful as a distraction) turned out to be a bad idea. So the administration is taking it out on Israel, who wanted us to do it.

Comment by elictronic 3 days ago

Israel keeps actively going against US goals. The beginning of the conflict generally had both sides in general agreement. The moment Israel killed the US’s intended replacement, and now continues promoting conflict while the US admin is pushing hard for a peace deal is showing the cracks

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> The moment Israel killed the US’s intended replacement

The plan was fucked from conception. Not having a strategy for safeguarding the Strait made virtually any strategy that required persisting after decapitation half baked.

Comment by dmix 3 days ago

The issue wasn't a lack of planning by the military it was a lack of commitment on the goals by the administration. If it was just a desert storm style campaign (hit them very hard over a month then leave without finishing off Saddam) then they should have left already when Iran offered to open the strait, and it could have been sold as a success.

If they want Iran to truely bend the knee over nukes then they have to commit harder militarily than they are now, which neither the president nor the public seems to have an appetite for and Iran knows that. So now it's mostly deadlocked on both the US demanding Iran lose face by giving up Uranium immediately, while Israel wants to keep up an air campaign to further neuter Irans combat capabilities to free up their own strategic goals against Hezbollah and Hamas. But neither options are properly aligned, especially with fanatics in IRGC taking over.

It's either a short air campaign or a war, but they can't seem to decide so we are left with an blockade.

Comment by defrost 3 days ago

> If they want Iran to truely bend the knee over nukes

then they never should have torn up the agreement that saw multiple third party inspectors having feet on the ground and leaving in place tamper resistant / tamper revealing air filters and spectrometer instrumentation.

Instead a path has been taken that has upped the HEU game and hardened the core guard and fanatics.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> when Iran offered to open the strait

When did Iran offer this? (One problem with a decapitation strike is you no longer have a single party to negotiate with.)

> If they want Iran to truely bend the knee over nukes then they have to commit harder militarily than they are now

It's genuinely unclear if America has the military power to project into Iran to the degree a ground invasion would require. (Like, short of carpet bombing the country's infrastructure and industry out of existence.)

Missiles, drones and space-based surveillance have tilted the balance in favour of defenders, at least on the ground. American firepower can constrain Iran to within its airspace and maritime borders. But even if it made sense to, it's questionable whether we can influence much within them.

Comment by dmix 3 days ago

> When did Iran offer this?

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/world/middleeast/iran-tru...

Trump complicated things by demanding the uranium immediately and Israel much more complicated things by overreacting to Lebanon striking Israel when the blockade started (Iran likely told Hezbollah to hit Israel as a negotiation gambit). This means to sign a deal Iran now had to both embarrass themselves by giving up uranium and also show that IRGC abandons their partners (Hezbollah, Hamas) which will ruin their whole militia proxy war ambitions they’ve been spending millions on since the Lebanon civil war.

I personally believe Iran was willing to compromise on the uranium in exchange for the US totally dropping sanctions. It is Israel being hyper aggressive that is ruining things by trying to retake southern Lebanon (which they controlled until 2000) and pushing US to resume the air campaign… while now also spying on US negotiators.

Comment by nixon_why69 3 days ago

Iran opened the strait as a gesture after the Lebanon ceasefire was announced. Trump then immediately announced "blockade stays" in some truth social rant, so they reclosed it within a day.

Comment by fakedang 3 days ago

Don't forget the part where the Lebanon ceasefire was announced, Israel decided to continue its bombing and occupation campaign and broke the ceasefire, then Trump immediately announced the blockade stays in that TS rant.

Comment by dmix 3 days ago

Technically Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel first on March 2nd and Israel responded… then Israel repeatedly bullshitted some ceasefires to keep the US placated while they simultaneously ramping up both a ground invasion and air campaign. Hezbollah equally is no doubt being pushed hard to keep fighting by Iran.

Israel is definitely showing they are a bad partner to the US and should be the more responsible one (nobody expects much from Hezbollah which Iran just selfishly exploits). But Netanyahu seems to want to burn everything to the ground while he still can since he knows his career is already over.

Comment by nixon_why69 3 days ago

Pretty much all of shi'a Lebanon has been occupied and Israel has publicly stated their plan is to turn it into Gaza. Dunno if Hezbollah needs encouragement from anyone else at this point.

Comment by fakedang 3 days ago

Israel broke the ceasefire first by continuing to occupy the Bekaa valley and Lebanese land all the way up to the Litani river. When they showed no signs of leaving, Iran said that Israel's breaking the ceasefire and that's when mango Mussolini announced the blockade.

Iran can't even tell Hezbollah to stand down because the group was already extremely weakened after the October 7 war and the death of Haniyeh.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by thisislife2 3 days ago

Both Netanyahu and Trump have a vested interest in promoting the idea of how much influence Israel has over US foreign policy. For Netanyahu, the propaganda that he manipulated Trump into waging a war against Iran boosts his political image with some Israelis. (And it is near election season in Israel).

Comment by TurdF3rguson 3 days ago

I don't see how that's a win for him since the outcome was a stronger Iran.

Comment by woodruffw 3 days ago

It's simpler than this: Israel benefits from Iran needing to spend large amounts of money on its own infrastructure and civilian needs, rather than on military development. Getting a larger country (the US) to create those money sinks (in the form of a broadly unserious conflict) achieves that outcome.

(The irony being that this is Iran's strategy w/r/t Hormuz as well.)

Comment by mikewarot 3 days ago

> Israel benefits from Iran needing to spend large amounts of money on its own infrastructure and civilian needs, rather than on military development.

Yeah, but the rest of the world is now going to pay for that, and more, with the $2million toll on oil through the Straight of Hormuz.

Comment by woodruffw 3 days ago

Yes, to be clear that wasn't a normative (as in "this is good") appraisal.

Comment by t-3 3 days ago

Netanyahu avoids domestic issues and stays in power through the continuation of the conflict. Israel continues to receive US money and weapons, and can continue to run a wartime economy, which has been lucrative for many.

Comment by Spooky23 3 days ago

It’s not a win for Israel. It’s a win for him. The stronger Iran is, the more you need him.

Netanyahu is Trump like - his core constituency is whack job Americans and the Israelis whom they firehose money at.

The commentators and idiots running the government miss the forest for the trees. Iran is radically stronger than they were, even with the destruction rained down. The entire American military supremacy story is toast. The strategy of them and North Korea with respect to ballistic missiles and drones works.

It’s Vietnam with missiles and drone. The US slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, “never lost a battle”, yet got whooped.

Comment by anukin 3 days ago

Stronger how? The central command is gone.

Comment by swat535 3 days ago

I'm Iranian, now living in the west. Allow me to chime in..

So Iran doesn't have a central command, they've developed a mosaic system where the 30+ chains operate autonomously. It is also multi-layered (IRGC, Artesh, Basij, etc).

The multi-layered design was developed after the revolution, when they realized that the regime should be protected in case of internal mutiny.

IRGC specifically was put in place to protect the regime and it only responds to the Supreme Leader. Neither the president or the parliament control it.

The mosaic system was started few years back after the assassination of Qasem Soleimani (though it possibly dates further, I can't confirm this).

The biggest mistake US & Israel did was underestimating Iran, specifically their defensive capabilities. They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it. You had Abbas Araghchi on TV literally inviting American army into Iran for a ground invasion.

What the West doesn't understand is that you can't really dismantle an ideology by dropping bombs on civilians. It didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in IRAQ and it's not working with IRAN.

The Shia martyrdom culture is misunderstood. I was not being hyperbolic when I said they have been praying for this war. Their motto is "Every day in Ashura, every land is Karbala".

Anyway, I'll land it here for now.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashura - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karbala

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it

Is there an apocalyptic religious movement in Iran? Similar to American Evangelists hoping for Armageddon?

Comment by fakedang 3 days ago

The entire Shia sect is basically an apocalyptic religious movement. Has been since the start when Ali, the first Imam and fourth Caliph for the Sunnis, was assassinated, his sons following him, only for the assassination mastermind to usurp his Caliphate. Combine that with the millenarianism of the Safavids in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> entire Shia sect is basically an apocalyptic religious movement

This seems incredible? Like, apocalypitc evangelists have practically never built a proper civilisation. Shia Islam has golden-age Islam to its credit.

Comment by fakedang 3 days ago

Not really. It is to be noted that Shiism for the most part was a very fringe sect for most of history. Even in Iran and Iraq, their traditional strongholds today, Shiism didn't have a strong enough presence until the reign of Shah Ismail Safavid, the first Safavid emperor who also hailed from a distinguished religious order called the Safawiyyah. In fact, the Safawiyyah were originally a Sunni military order based out of Azerbaijan, before converting to Shiism, and under his reign began a mass conversion campaign across his Iranian empire to force convert Sunnis to Shiism.

When Shiism took root in Iran, they enjoyed favor with Persian culture, which has always been a strongly defensive culture which has had to fight against multiple threats throughout its history. Persian culture has always had this "us vs the others" mentality, in which Shiism fit perfectly as a fringe movement.

Even then, most Shiites didn't take Shia practices or even Islamic practices seriously - many just continued their previous traditions as is. Even today, there are Shias who visit Zoroastrian fire temples and pray there, or depict imagery of Muhammad with fires around his head - something that would be blasphemous in Sunni Islam.

Had Ismail Safavid's conversion campaign not have happened, Shiism would have been just another fringe sect like Ibadism, the predominant sect in Oman which comprises less than 0.5% of the global Islamic population (3 million members).

Comment by evanjrowley 3 days ago

There is a potential for bias among Iranian converts to Christianity, but for those whose stories I've listened to, the common answer is yes, there is an apocalyptic religious movement in Iran.

Comment by jameshilliard 3 days ago

> Is there an apocalyptic religious movement in Iran?

It's more of a Jihad/Martyrdom ideology that's driving them.

> Similar to American Evangelists hoping for Armageddon?

That's a rather different issue, and luckily one that at least causes a lot less problems in practice. Sam Harris has some decent material on why this is(a lot of it comes down to important differences in doctrine).

Comment by yubblegum 3 days ago

Why do people buy this bs is beyond me. Let's review actual warfare and its requirements.

Logistics. You can mosaic your heart out but you need to provide arms, food, water, electricity, medicines, parts, fuels ... for each of these high level cells. None of that is "distributed" or "independent" or quite frankly given the kleptocracy that is IRI is even given. All that the so called mosaic has achieved is that when the leadership cadre was killed this did not affect a loss of operational readiness as each high level cell had independent command authority. Read that again: operational readiness.

US military could trivially end this shit show. The question is why is this strange war being dragged on like this. For example, we are told "they have dug out the entrances to the missile cities". Now besides the fact that most of those videos of the missile cities scream CGI, even assuming they do exists, this nation is supposed to have a fucking "space force" and was reading license plates back during cold war from outer space. Are we to believe Centcom is incapable of burying those entraces yet again?

The "who would have thunk it!" b.s. about the Strait of Hormuz. Of course, everybody and their mommy knew this was a strong possibility. Equally, most knew if US used its bases in the area the host nations would be targeted. I am convinced part of this shit show is to make Arabs sweat. US "provokes" IRGC and some parts of Arab infrastructure is smoked. "They need to all agree to be on board with Abraham Accords" said the Orange front man, the other day.

The "we now toll Strait of Hormuz". Aha. Let's see: we live in a planet where great powers started and fought world wars to decide exactly this sort of matter: who controls what parts. Are we to assume that the funky IRI regime and the IRGC have now achieved what world powers achieved after sacrificing tens of millions of casualties with just some stupid surface to surface missile batteries in northern shores of the Persian Gulf? Bullocks, as they say in the isle of perfidy.

From where I sit, US removed all obstacles for the succession of Khamenei's "gay" son. The other day one of these cheeky IRI embassy twitter accounts (who have a pretty good propaganda chops these days) were self congratulating since the Orange frontman who used to m.c. "pro wrestling matches" said "I'd be honored to meet him!". Will he bring a cake in the shape of a 'Pink' Dildo? One wonders.

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/11/us/mcfarlane-took-cake-an...

If the United States permits IRI to actually have a control over the well being of the entire global economy, then folks, you must realize this is all a plan that we are not privy to. There is no way, none whatsoever, in any reasonable reality, where a middle tier nearly bankrupt, socialy unstable, and isolated theocracy can have the lever to dictate terms to Superpowers armed with atomic weapons.

IRI dictating terms to whoever needs the spice to flow from the Persian Gulf -- and that includes China, India, Japan, S. Korea, EU ... -- without the great powers saying 'no you dont' simply does not compute in any rational universe.

As to Karbala and Ashura. Well, 2023 came by and then "ready to die" martyrs of the fabled "Shia" weren't exactly lining up to fight Israel. Also, I can not think of any slogan that does more to cheapen the martyrdom of Hussein son of 'Ali than to claim that anywhere, anytime and anyone is equivalent to where, when, and who of the actual Karbala.

p.s. US was already worried in 70s about the Shah of Iran controlling the Persian Gulf. One of the reasons they got rid of him, as a matter of fact.

Read this short story that was published in 1976 in New York magazine. This was the psyops back then ! that was used to scare the Gulf Arabs to accept US bases. It's a fun read. The Shah takes over the Persian Gulf and controls the Strait of Hormuz. Atom bombs are involved ...

https://iranian.com/History/2002/October/Crash/index.html

Comment by jameshilliard 3 days ago

> The biggest mistake US & Israel did was underestimating Iran, specifically their defensive capabilities. They've prepared for this war for 47 years, _literally_ praying for it. You had Abbas Araghchi on TV literally inviting American army into Iran for a ground invasion.

Iran would be highly unlikely to be able to prevent a ground invasion from the US since Iran's convention military capabilities are not particularly strong(hence why Iran often fights through proxies or other non-convention means). They can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force.

> What the West doesn't understand is that you can't really dismantle an ideology by dropping bombs on civilians. It didn't work in Afghanistan, it didn't work in IRAQ and it's not working with IRAN.

The problem is more that those with the ideology have all the weapons in Iran, so even though the regime and their ideology may be extremely unpopular it's still quite difficult to change things when the fanatics are the ones in power.

> The Shia martyrdom culture is misunderstood. I was not being hyperbolic when I said they have been praying for this war.

Yeah, unfortunately this likely is going to end up resulting in a ground invasion being inevitable at some point as Iran seems to be unwilling to abandon their goal of destroying Israel and nuclear weapons program.

Comment by iugtmkbdfil834 3 days ago

Ngl, anyone arguing for a ground invasion of Iran will have a hard time convincing US population. I get that president's war powers are pretty expansive, but everything has limits.

Comment by jameshilliard 2 days ago

> Ngl, anyone arguing for a ground invasion of Iran will have a hard time convincing US population.

I agree under current conditions it would obviously be quite difficult to convince the US population, and if it ends up happening obviously the US would want as much support as possible from other countries, my point was just that it's probably going to be inevitable at some point due to the Regime's ultimate ideological goals.

Comment by macintux 3 days ago

> They can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force.

That is far from obvious. A command structure scattered around a huge country should be able to outlast U.S. willingness to throw bodies into a shredder.

Comment by onemoresoop 3 days ago

It’s easy to look at Ukraine for example. Since drones came into the picture it’s way harder to do a successful ground invasion. Russia has unimaginable losses and they still haven’t reached their strategic goal.

Comment by jameshilliard 2 days ago

> Since drones came into the picture it’s way harder to do a successful ground invasion.

Harder, sure, but it's unlikely Iran could stop a US invasion since a ground invasion would almost certainly only happen with the US having complete air supremacy.

> Russia has unimaginable losses and they still haven’t reached their strategic goal.

Russia does not have control of the airspace in Ukraine, the US was flying even non-stealth aircraft over Iran for most of the war with negligible losses for those aircraft.

Comment by macintux 2 days ago

I’m reminded of the cold war joke: two Russian generals meet up in Paris in the closing days of WWIII. One asks the other: “So who won the air war?”

Comment by jameshilliard 2 days ago

> two Russian generals meet up in Paris in the closing days of WWIII. One asks the other: “So who won the air war?”

The US with combined arms warfare capabilities and air supremacy is very difficult to defend against for a country like Iran in the event of a ground invasion.

Comment by awesome_dude 3 days ago

The Vietnamese proved that it's not the bombs you can throw at the country - it's whether you have hearts and minds on your side.

The Americans learnt from that and went to Iraq claiming to have hearts and minds on their side - but quickly discovered that, in fact, they did not (and still do not).

The Americans need to take stock of their own actions in this conflict - they put Trump in the white house, they allowed him to be influenced by other governments, they gave him the power to get involved in the conflict.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> they can obviously cause a lot of damage but they would obviously lose that war if the US decided they had to remove the regime by force

I'm genuinely sceptical of this. If America literally invaded Iran, there is a good chance Chinese production comes to back them up. At that point we're fighting with a long logistics chain on someone else's territory (giving them advantages of knowing the land, having local sympathies and having a greater reason to fight) while getting pelted by asymmetric-warfare tactics we can't meaningfully reciprocate.

> unfortunately this likely is going to end up resulting in a ground invasion being inevitable at some point

Why? Just remove their ability to destroy Israel. Keep taking out their nuclear programme from time to time and have the Congress ratify the JCPOA in case they come back to the table.

Comment by jameshilliard 2 days ago

> If America literally invaded Iran, there is a good chance Chinese production comes to back them up.

It could happen, but even if it did I'm not so sure how big a difference it would make, would highly depend on what weapons systems were provided. So far it doesn't seem like China is all that interested in getting all that involved in any conflict with Iran and the US.

> At that point we're fighting with a long logistics chain on someone else's territory (giving them advantages of knowing the land, having local sympathies and having a greater reason to fight) while getting pelted by asymmetric-warfare tactics we can't meaningfully reciprocate.

There's also many Iranians that hate the regime so it's hard to say how things would play out.

> Why? Just remove their ability to destroy Israel.

That's easier said than done, obviously one can keep bombing nuclear/missile facilities but I'm not sure how sustainable a strategy that is long term.

> Keep taking out their nuclear programme from time to time and have the Congress ratify the JCPOA in case they come back to the table.

JCPOA was just a delay tactic on the part of the Iranians. The main Iranian threats to the region are proxies, Missiles and Nukes. The JCPOA only addressed the Nukes issue over a limited time frame.

Comment by nemomarx 3 days ago

They seem to be heading towards control of the strait, and the tolls from that could be a pretty good pickup for whatever new government forms?

Comment by gizajob 3 days ago

Not sure how the gulf states on the other side of the strait are going to feel about that.

Comment by no-name-here 3 days ago

Apparently not enough for them to intervene (militarily?) even now while they have both the US and Israel actively on their side there?

Comment by nerfbatplz 3 days ago

Oman doesn't seem to care, Qatar capitulated quickly, the UAE is a walking corpse, Kuwait is as well until they kick the 5th fleet out, Iraq is already majority Shia, Saudi Arabia doesn't seem to care much.

Comment by avidphantasm 3 days ago

They have proven to the world they have a deterrent akin to a nuclear weapon, but they can actually use it.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> they have a deterrent akin to a nuclear weapon

Far from akin to. It's a good deterrent. Tehran still isn't Pyongyang.

Comment by etiam 3 days ago

Not denying they're getting great leverage from that. I still don't quite understand why the shortcut is supposedly so irreplaceable.

Comment by Exoristos 3 days ago

Perhaps because modern economies are allergic to long-term planning.

Comment by etiam 2 days ago

Perhaps. And seemingly also a bit even to short-term reactive adaptation?

Comment by thisislife2 2 days ago

It is not irreplaceable - you can avoid it as a shipping route and take a longer route. It's just more costly because it is a long route. Which means higher oil prices, which is universally unpopular everywhere with the citizens. (In oil-importing economies, oil prices have a rippling effect as any increase in oil prices increases the transportation cost of goods there by resulting in price increases of all such goods).

Comment by etiam 2 days ago

That's pretty much what I've been thinking. Maybe I'm underestimating how much more expensive, but it seems for most of those ships if they'd got going on an alternative route instead of crowding around the peninsula they'd be arriving soon. For all I know the goods they're carrying may already have been sold at a rate assuming the cheap freight of course...

Comment by QQ00 3 days ago

more like weaker iran than ever, now that the central command are gone, no leader at the top and no high level generals, the power at the hand of mid level thugs of the IRGC.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> no leader at the top and no high level generals, the power at the hand of mid level thugs of the IRGC

One could argue a junta makes for a stronger Iran than the previous gerontocratic autocracy. Of course, we don't know. And I think it's silly to say Iran is stronger today than it was at the start of the war. But relative to America? At least in the region, I'd say one could argue that sensibly.

Comment by t-3 3 days ago

It is stronger. The weapons capabilities only matter if people are willing to man them. The obvious interference in otherwise organic protests and the threats and the multiple bombings during negotiations united the people against outside threats. Without an enemy, they will fight each other as long as sanctions pressure is continued and internal conflicts are amplified.

Comment by varjag 3 days ago

Certain figures are gone but political and military organization appears mostly intact. Iran also emerged as potent enough to deliver stalemate to combined force of CENTCOM and Israel. Its standing certainly had improved next to the lows after decimation of its proxies and the fall of client regime in Syria.

Comment by iugtmkbdfil834 3 days ago

The argument is interesting, because it happens to repeat administration's assertions. It also is interesting, because the argument itself attempts make peace with the idea that wiping out central command & leadership did not put US in a more favorable position in general.

I guess I will just point out that 'weaker than ever' is doing a lot of work here without being specific on what strength means here. I don't want to put words in your mouth.

It is quite ridiculous to watch though. There are ( well, were ) reasons as to why IC was very vocal about not doing what Trump admin's decided to do. And now they are looking to find a reason, any reason that can deflect the blame..

Why? No one likes a loser politician.. not even Trump's electorate. And it is hard to spin lost war AND higher gas prices AND higher inflation.

Comment by QQ00 3 days ago

it's actually weaker than before, and these who left are the kind that power hungry with no class or protocols of the leadership(that died), bunch of power hungry, blood thirsty mid level leaders who understand that they cannot allow the regime to change, at all cost, they even forced the son of the previous leader to take the reign (which in reality just a public face). they are actually more brutal and the chances of change from within through the people of iran is even smaller than before by multiple orders of magnitude.

now, why the regime didn't collapse? 2 things, 1. mesh network so they don't need to have a central command 2. they know they will be executed if they lose the grip on power.

it's actually weaker but more brutal now than ever, against their own people and against the outsider threats. like a cornered rats with no escape so they decided a fight to death.

Comment by iugtmkbdfil834 3 days ago

<< 1. mesh network so they don't need to have a central command 2. they know they will be executed if they lose the grip on power. << more brutal now than ever,

So... they now have distributed command and are more willing to employ force. Note that all of that was known before the attack so the attack on Iran was a spectacular gamble, which failed. Worse, it undermined strategic interests of US.

Does that actually strike as weaker? It does not sound that way to me.

edit: Oh, somehow I forgot: Iran did not actually carry out some of their bigger threats ( internet cables and so on ). So, yeah, Iran may be weaker in terms of -- hmm, whats the proper phrase here -- conventional war units, but it now has outsized leverage compared to what it had before the attack AND, which it makes it worse even from pure propaganda perspective, a moral claim for self-defense.

Yeah, so much weaker.

Comment by QQ00 3 days ago

>Both Netanyahu and Trump have a vested interest in promoting the idea of...

you mentioned what Netanyahu gained from this but what about trump?

Comment by AnimalMuppet 3 days ago

Maybe that it's not his fault?

But that's at the price of not being in control. I don't know if he thinks that's a win...

Comment by QQ00 3 days ago

considering Trump's personality, i don't think this is a win, his followers certainly wouldn't like that as well. I'm pretty sure this idea isn't even part of their stream of thoughts that trump is a puppet of bibi and this whole war was conducted following the command from Netanyahu.

Comment by watwut 3 days ago

Isreal wanted it. Strong and influential amrrican political actors wanted it too. Hegseth wanted it too.

Now that it is shitshow, the same people want to put blame on Israel only.

Comment by karim79 3 days ago

Because now the manifestation of all this crap has reached a nuclear stage of undeniability.

It has literally been simmering for a long time and now it finally comes out. Taking it out on Israel is not wrong and that's not to say that they (the Israeli government) hold the sole responsibility for this. The US had a say in this as well. But now the US is questioning the benefits of this complete and total asshattery and rightly so. Better late than never I suppose.

Comment by EA-3167 3 days ago

Along these lines, but with a bit more:

Israel definitely wanted us to do this, but they've been trying to sell US presidents on this for decades without success. MBS and the Saudis also want this, but you rarely read about that in the news; likewise with the UAE and quite a few others who have even been running their own direct strikes on Iran.

The thing is, and I realize this is a rough climate to say this into: Jews have been the official scapegoats for the Middle East and Europe for what... 1500 years now? That doesn't just go away, and the political expediency of Trump covering his ass and the ass of his Saudi/UAE sources of billions (through Jared, Ivanka, Eric, etc) can't be thrown under the bus to do it.

Meanwhile Israel is being run by a universally loathed man who can't shut up, so it's just easier to pretend that's it all their fault.

Comment by thisislife2 3 days ago

> MBS and the Saudis also want this

While it is true that the Saudis are hostile to Iran and do want Iran's power to be curtailed, they were never in favour of the current war because they knew the plan was ill-thought and suicidal for it, as they knew how Iran would respond (and how ill-prepared they and the American military was to defend them). Iran's foreign policy with its Arab neighbours is based on the blunt but simple principle - "Peace for all. Prosperity for all." Implied in it is that if any of the Arab neighbours upset the public peace in Iran and / or attacked its economy, it would retaliate to ensure they too wouldn't have any peace or prosperity. And that's exactly how it played out ...

Comment by EA-3167 3 days ago

They literally bombed Iran themselves in the midst of a ceasefire, they also are on record pushing to finish Iran off. It just doesn’t get as much coverage as anything with Israel in the headline.

I.E. https://apnews.com/article/trump-iran-saudi-arabia-mbs-gulf-...

Comment by thisislife2 3 days ago

The Saudis have only done "tit for tat" bombing, and are especially cautious to ensure that there is no escalation. Yes, they would prefer if this war could curtail Iran's power but they don't want it at the cost of their economy. Saudi Arabia Built a Private De-Escalation Track With Iran. - https://houseofsaud.com/saudi-helsinki-bilateral-iran-de-esc... (The whole of the https://houseofsaud.com/ provides an interesting Saudi perspective on the war and their relationships with the US).

Comment by Hikikomori 3 days ago

Seems like MSB has pushed for it together with kushner and netanyahu. As we know, kushner received billions of Saudi money for a fund, netanyahu literally stayed at in his house when visiting the US and slept in his bed, yet he somehow is the negotiator the US sends to negotiate with Iran?

Comment by EA-3167 3 days ago

Yes I appreciate their... stated aims. I'm a bit of cynic though, so I prefer revealed preferences to declared ones when I'm judging people.

Comment by awesome_dude 3 days ago

It's Israel's immediate history (as in the last year or so) that's made it an easier scapegoat.

That and the Saud's, despite an appalling human rights record, are politically difficult to blame for anything (including Bin Laden), because of their (brilliant) petro politics - playing the Eastern bloc off against the West incredibly well.

Comment by renlo 3 days ago

> 1500 years

I’m curious what the Lindy Effect would mean in this case

Comment by EA-3167 3 days ago

Fighting over that patch is one of the older continuous activities of the species, and while anything is possible, I would never bet in favor of MENA peace.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by rf15 3 days ago

Forcing the existence of a new jewish state has created, as expected, a permanent political fissure in the area. This is just dumb ideas piling up upon one another.

Comment by vkou 3 days ago

> Forcing the existence of a new jewish state has created, as expected, a permanent political fissure in the area.

No, forcing the existence of a new aggressively expansionist jewish state did that.

Comment by marcosdumay 3 days ago

There is no other kind of state an external power can force into existing.

Comment by flyinglizard 3 days ago

Mind you Israel was the one that supported the partition plan in 1948. The expansion came from the other side who wanted it all

Comment by Hikikomori 3 days ago

Remind me, what was in Ben gurions private coorespendece?

Comment by g8oz 3 days ago

Plans for ethnic cleansing Palestinians were being drawn up in the 1930s. No idea what you are talking about

Comment by vkou 3 days ago

Or, because different factions in the regime are at odds with eachother - there's MAGA, who are a sock puppet for whatever Netanyahu wants, and who spearheaded the idiotic war with Iran, and there's the entire military, which thinks that this war is by far the dumbest thing they've been asked to do... This year.

Did this announcement come from the military side of things, or the MAGA side of things?

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> there's MAGA, who are a sock puppet for whatever Netanyahu wants

This vastly oversimplifies even that field.

Comment by yonaguska 3 days ago

MAGA has split hard. it's now MIGA vs AF. With MIGA being mostly boomer evangelicals and AF being younger, either outright fuentes antisemites or just anti Zionists that lean right. There is a huge astroturfing campaign to make it seem like MAGA is unanimously pro netanyahu, but it's simply fake.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> MAGA has split hard

It's premature to say it has split. MAGA always had multiple factions, and Trump has historically been excellent at keeping them in line. (See: Arab Americans in Michigan voting for Trump.)

To the extent we're seeing any meanginful splits, it's in independents splitting from the GOP. Not MAGA splitting in any meangingful way. (Trump's recent primary wins show this.)

Comment by nixon_why69 3 days ago

Look at what happened to Massie. Pro-peace MAGA was always a mirage.

Comment by vkou 3 days ago

Indeed. MAGA is only pro-peace when it needs a nice-sounding lie during elections.

Comment by fwip 3 days ago

What is AF in this context?

Comment by fny 3 days ago

America first

Comment by yonaguska 3 days ago

"America First"

Comment by shevy-java 3 days ago

> So the administration is taking it out on Israel, who wanted us to do it.

Well, it is clear to see that this is Netanyahu's ploy, but the thing is that Trump constantly lies about this. "There are negotiations", but then the US bombs again. To me it seems as if Trump operates in a way that makes it impossible to have anything else but drop bombs onto Iran. In this way he resembles Putin, who tries to occupy more and more land belonging to Ukraine. Putin has no alternative to this either, similar to Trump. (Yes, Putin could in theory stop his war, but he tied his identity to it. I don't see how he can stop it, without having achieved officially stated goals of his genocidal invasion.)

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by Tade0 3 days ago

> Yes, Putin could in theory stop his war, but he tied his identity to it

More like his life. He will not survive the end of this war.

Comment by vkou 3 days ago

Nah. There are always face-saving offramps... And examples like Saddam doing just fine after his failed invasion of Iran.

If the war ended tomorrow, and Russia withdrew from Ukraine, Putin would still be enjoying ~50% organic support among Russians.

Just like Trump has a ~35% approval floor of complete idiots standing behind him as he sends inflation and gas prices and cost of living through the roof...

Putin enjoys fairly wide actual support for generally developing the country over his tenure. Whether someone else would have done better is not the hypothetical people are engaging with.

Comment by Tade0 3 days ago

The Russo-Japanese war ultimately didn't end well for the Romanovs.

A lot of people died in suspicious circumstances.

I mean, someone has to be held accountable for that, don't they?

Comment by vkou 3 days ago

The Romanovs got through the Russo-Japanese war just fine. It was WWI and the complete collapse of the country, and the revolution that ousted them (And then the provisional government refused to end the war, got couped by the Bolsheviks, who only then executed the Romanovs.)

I can't see any meaningful parallels between the current war and WWI. For one thing, people in Russia (as of today) aren't literally running out of bread.

Comment by ycombinary 3 days ago

[dead]

Comment by sieabahlpark 3 days ago

[dead]

Comment by screye 3 days ago

How can a vassal state with 1/60th your GDP 'influence' your nation into a war ? It's a rhetorical question. It can't.

Makes the MAGA military look incompetent. The US has a history of botched wars around the globe, most of which have little to do with Israel. If I'm drawing from data, then the Iran conflict is consistent with the post-war military movements of the US.

Now that the communists are no more, Israel is the next best scapegoat. The way I see it, Israel's current leaders are happy to be scapegoats because the war benefits Ben Gvir and a radicalized Likud. It allows them to consolidate domestic power and pursue aggressive foreign objectives under shadow of the Iran conflict.

I hope Netanyahu has thought this through. He has burned through 100 years of western guilt in the span of 3 years. To break even, Israel's military excursions must secure outsized outcomes, to the tune of decades of security. Because, I believe we are entering a couple of decades of bipartisan & unprecedented* anti-semitism.

* Figuratively speaking. Historically ofc, anti-semitism is pretty precedented.

Comment by bigfatkitten 3 days ago

> How can a vassal state with 1/60th your GDP 'influence' your nation into a war ? It's a rhetorical question. It can't.

You don’t need to influence a nation, you only need to get one guy on board.

When you have ready access to the ego-driven and cognitively limited man in charge, either directly or through his sycophants, and that man has enormous executive authority to do mostly whatever he wants, this becomes very straightforward.

Israel has been looking for a sucker in the White House for 40 years, and they finally found one.

Comment by karim79 3 days ago

+1 I totally agree with this take.

Comment by noworriesnate 3 days ago

Israel obviously influenced American politicians through many avenues, not the least of which is the Epstein blackmail ring.

Comment by screye 2 days ago

Ah yes, the nation's most influential sex-trafficker/pimp was a Mossad asset and the $100b budget CIA knew anything about it. They set up the world's most advanced domestic spying system, and the NSA did not flag anything.

You do realize that such conspiracy theories require all 3 of these things to be true ?

1. American elites are totally clueless

2. The CIA is hopelessly incompetent

3. Mossad has compromised every layer of the American military and elite civilian life

Israel obviously has a ton of influence on American elites and politicians. Just the AIPAC donations and the strong representation of Jews in American elite life is proof enough. You don't have to look much further.

It's the unsubstantiated conspiracy theories (often peddled as fact) that me think there is a certain hysteria going on. It's not anti-semitism per se. More so that otherwise respectable people lose all discernment towards unsubstantiated claims when those claims support their biases about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Comment by noworriesnate 1 day ago

Epstein represented the Rothschilds: https://jmail.world/thread/EFTA02470755?email=EFTA02470755-1

The Rothschilds have supported Israel for over 140 years; the most recent example is Lord Jacob Rothschild, who appears in the Epstein files.

Those are the facts. I don’t think it necessarily follows that the CIA didn’t realize what was going on or that the American elite were clueless. Those are left as an exercise to the reader.

Comment by TurdF3rguson 3 days ago

Oh come on. Israel and US have been allies for 80 years. Not everything is about Jeffrey Epstein.

Comment by karp773 3 days ago

Right. That"s why Epstein wired millions of dollars to Russia, had a Russian bodyguard, gave away his estate to some Belorussian woman, and so on. Obviously, Mossad at work here!

Comment by FireBeyond 3 days ago

Epstein was irate that he suffered consequences others didn't (I'm not saying he didn't do more than others). He was thoroughly red-pilling and making comments more about how he believed what he did should be okay.

And being so irate about such things, it's not unreasonable to think "Fuck my handlers (whoever they are, if they exist, Mossad or otherwise), they didn't protect me, so screw it".

Occam's razor and such, but it's also entirely possible that he could have been being blackmailed by the Russians while "working for" Israel - or for that matter, vice versa.

Comment by roenxi 3 days ago

The US is currently waging a proxy war against Russia where they've managed to engineer something like 1,000,000 Russian casualties according to credible estimates [0]. Although obviously they're doing that for moral reasons since Russia launched an unprovoked war to maintain a sphere of influence around their borders which serious people in the US establishment have explained no country should be allowed to do.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, the US has launched an unprovoked war on Iran because the Iranians were threatening the Israeli (and US for that matter) sphere of influence over the region, which obviously they are entitled to because god said so. The US is being entirely reasonable here and all serious people in the US establishment support or at most disagree with whether the mad scheme is a good idea.

Just saying, if the Russians are the ones who are running the influence operations in Washington they really should consider ... I dunno, sending younger girls, or whatever. Their money is doing unusually poorly for lobbying efforts.

And I want to add I don't even mind the hypocrisy or the evil all that much, I just wish I could find someone with a serious argument for how provoking the Russians makes long-term strategic sense. These policies are stupid, liable to get someone nuked sooner or later and just setting China up to have an easy time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain...

Comment by fakedang 3 days ago

Please don't give credit for current Ukrainian advances to the Trumpenreich. The US intelligence apparatus was apparently even sharing NATO intelligence and information with Russia on Ukrainian positions. Once the EU excluded the US completely from this, Ukraine has made much more progress recently.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by petcat 3 days ago

> everyone knew was a bad idea

It was a good idea if it was also timed during the popular uprisings. But the 20,000+ die-hard citizens that would have effected regime change were slaughtered months ago. So now it's just a scared populace hunkering in place while USA warships and jets dominate their country.

And the Iranians fire off the occasional drone swarm on UAE.

Comment by tyre 3 days ago

It was also a bad idea then. They could never have effected regime change. That’s a fantasy that Israel included in its pressure on the US, but which US intelligence deemed highly implausible.

There was never a world where this was a good idea. We had a diplomatic agreement that worked, nuked it for no gain, and now there isn’t a viable way to influence Iran.

Diplomacy can’t function again because they don’t trust the US (fair, correct.)

The IRGC cannot be replaced without a ground invasion, which the US won’t do (fair, correct.)

The US can’t unilaterally remove one ton of buried nuclear material from the middle of a hostile state.

This was always stupid.

Comment by petcat 3 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by logicchains 3 days ago

>It was also a bad idea then. They could never have effected regime change

They could have if they'd done what Israel wanted and destroyed all the oil infrastructure. The IRGC is heavily dependent on oil revenue for funding its oppressive apparatus; without it hundreds of thousands of militia would go without pay and eventually desert. For whatever reason Trump didn't want to do this; likely not for humanitarian reasons given his nature, but for some reason he seemed to really care what Turkey and Pakistan think, both of whom don't want to be flooded with refugees.

Comment by thisislife2 3 days ago

> if they'd done what Israel wanted and destroyed all the oil infrastructure.

That would have worked. But it is still a stupid idea if you don't cripple and destroy Iran's military capability first as Iran would have also retaliated and destroyed all its Arab neighbour's oil infrastructure too, plunging the world into an economic depression because of the energy crisis it would cause - The Iran War Is Destroying Something More Valuable Than Oil - https://houseofsaud.com/iran-war-refinery-crisis-saudi-aramc...

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> Iran would have also retaliated and destroyed all its Arab neighbour's oil infrastructure too

Iran probably couldn't have, not without being intercepted and having its launchers neutralised every time it fired. But Tehran would have kept on credibly threatening to, which would have meant America essentially taking on air defence responsibility for the entire Gulf.

Comment by parineum 3 days ago

> We had a diplomatic agreement that worked, nuked it for no gain, and now there isn’t a viable way to influence Iran.

I see this repeateded a lot but it doesn't follow to me that the facility that was bombed in midnight hammer was created and begun operating after that agreement was cancelled. It seems clear to me that Iran never stopped using that facility.

It seems to me that Iran's goal is to develop a nuclear weapon and there isn't a piece of paper that will stop them. I don't really fault them, it's a very sane thing to do to secure your border a la North Korea.

I'm not sure there is a non-military way to influence Iran to not develop a nuclear weapon.

Comment by watwut 3 days ago

Iran was entitled to have radio active materia. Pretty much everyone involved says they followed the contract.

Comment by parineum 2 days ago

Who is "everyone involved"? Iran and the Obama administration?

What was bombed in that secret mountain base? Why keep it a secret?

Comment by manyaoman 2 days ago

The audacity of Iran building a bunker and not keeping us in the loop about what's going on inside.

Comment by orwin 3 days ago

That facility was a nuclear research facility for civilian, military and medical use. Note that military doesn't mean weapons. Iran getting nuclear submarine would increase their threat level. In any case, Iran have a fatwa against developing nuclear bombs (a fatwa is a law edicted by a religious leader, and not respecting it would make you sinful and rebellious, and in a theocratic regime, often end in prison). The fatwa isn't reversed yet afaik, but the US killed the mufti who declared it, so I don't know how it applies.

But anybody saying Iran was working on a bomb is probably misinformed or lying imho.

Comment by stale2002 3 days ago

There isn't a non-military, non bomb use for the amount of Uranium that Iran was enriching up to the levels that they were doing so.

All the things that you talked about do not require doing what Iran was doing. Meaning that... the only motivation left would be the 1 single thing that does require that much enrichment to those levels.

Hitting this from another angle, it doesn't make any strategic sense as for why Iran would sacrifice all that it is throwing away, just to get some medical research benefits. That would be a poor deal, and Iran isn't stupid.

Comment by YZF 3 days ago

You might be right on the regime change being fantasy but those things are not predictable and we don't know the details.

Where you're definitely wrong is on the "diplomatic agreement that worked". Iran continued to enrich violating the agreement, the agreement was time bound and not indefinite (and would have already expired anyways), and it enabled them to sell oil and raise a lot of money to fuel their wars, missile programs, nuclear programs and other ambitions.

Comment by throwaway534634 3 days ago

> Where you're definitely wrong is on the "diplomatic agreement that worked". Iran continued to enrich violating the agreement...

No, actually it is you who is wrong. Iran absolutely complied with the JCPOA. It is after US withdrew from the agreement that they pursued enrichment further.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> Iran absolutely complied with the JCPOA

Yup. "The U.S. certified in April 2017 and in July 2017 that Iran was complying with the deal. On 13 October 2017, President Trump announced that he would not make the certification required under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, accusing Iran of violating the spirit of the deal..." [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal#Trump_admini...

Comment by YZF 2 days ago

Wrong. That is not the question. It came to light later that Iran hid sites, activities and materials. The 2017 certification is not relevant. They were still violating it either in letter or in spirit, they had no intent of stopping the pursuit of nuclear weapons, and at the most charitable interpretation (and no way the Iranian regime deserves that) the agreement was time bound and would have expired already.

Why was Iran under sanctions in the first place? Sponsor of terrorism. Oppression of its own people. Messing with Yemen, Syria, Lebanon (and the list goes on). Only in Syria they helped Assad murder 100's of thousands of Syrians. The Yemen civil war. The murder and abuse of their own citizens.

Iran had an easy way of not getting sanctioned. We didn't need the JCPOA. What we needed is Iran to cease the activities for which it was getting sanctioned.

We had a "diplomatic solution for Iran" is total nonsense. Obama messed this up just like he totally messed up the entire middle east. Iran trained and supplied Hamas which led to Oct 7th. Iran trained and supplied Hezbollah. Iran developed and built their ballistic missile program to attack all their neighbors. With what money/resources? With the money Obama gave them in for cheating on this agreement. If you have western interests in mind than the Iranians are laughing at you for being a fool.

Comment by YZF 3 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by throwaway534631 3 days ago

> No Active Bomb-Making (2016–2019): Neither the U.S. intelligence community nor the IAEA found evidence that Iran was spinning secret centrifuges or actively manufacturing a weapon at these sites while the JCPOA was in effect. The traces found were leftover from the pre-2003 weapons program.

Thanks. You proved my point. Did you even read the first article you posted?

> "...the material in question is probably from a clandestine project that was first discovered in 2005 and reported by the IAEA the next year. ... If the material was from that time period, it would be a safeguards violation but not a violation of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which regulates nuclear activity from 2016. The green salt project was halted in 2004, and while all the documentation was carefully preserved ... there has been no indication of it having been resumed"

Your second article is from 2025 and it probably refers to last couple of years.. The US withdrew in 2018... Of course they continued enrichment after that withdrawal.

Let me add a bit more:

"The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released its quarterly report on Iran’s nuclear program June 6 [2018], and, unsurprisingly, the report found that Iran is complying with its commitments under the multilateral deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)." [1]

Again. You are wrong on this one! Iran adhered to JCPOA. US pulled out. Iran continued enrichment beyond limits defined by JCPOA as the agreement was dead by then.

[1] https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2018-06-08/iaea-report-conf...

Comment by YZF 3 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by throwaway534631 3 days ago

> between 2009 and 2018, it said." -> this is smack in the middle of the JCPOA period.

The US withdrew in the 2018, so it is actually not "smack in the middle".

> And yes, this is from 2025, but it's about non-compliance during the period where the JCPOA was active.

It is actually not. You are not reading the material you are providing.

> The findings in the "comprehensive" ... pave the way for a push by the United States, Britain, France and Germany for the board to declare Iran in violation of its non-proliferation obligations.

> It would be the first time in almost 20 years Iran has formally been found in non-compliance.

Please read that last quote one more time.

> It would be the first time in almost 20 years Iran has formally been found in non-compliance.

But also this is about "violation of its non-proliferation obligations" not JCPOA.

You are going against the IAEA and US intel community which are both in agreement that Iran was compliant during that period. I think you have biases for which you are misinterpreting the facts. Either that or you are purposely spreading misinformation. In any case I will not purse this thread anymore.

Comment by Hikikomori 3 days ago

It's not worth your time to argue with this guy, he's one of the worst Zionists you'll find here.

Comment by YZF 3 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by YZF 3 days ago

And here's another article from a supporter of the JCPOA: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/an-unsatisfying-outcome-o...

"The finale of the PMD controversy has been a long time coming. In November 2011, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano issued a detailed report — based on “overall credible” information from a “wide variety of independent sources” and the Agency’s own investigations — which concluded that, at least until 2003 and possibly beyond, “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.”

In the years following the report, the IAEA actively sought to gain a better understanding of those activities, but its efforts were stymied by Iranian stonewalling and obfuscation. Tehran repeatedly claimed that the evidence on which the IAEA was relying was fabricated and based on forgeries. It denied that Iran was ever interested in nuclear weapons or that it had engaged in nuclear weapons-related research and experimentation."

...

"This may come as an unpleasant surprise to American observers, many of whom probably assumed that sanctions relief would depend on Iran credibly disclosing its past activities, not simply fulfilling the undemanding, largely procedural requirements of the “roadmap.” Critics can be expected to attack the JCPOA anew for permitting sanctions to be relieved despite the December IAEA report having concluded that Iran has not made a full accounting of its past nuclear work"

So terrible agreement and Iran not acting in good faith. And we can debate technicalities and I'll even acknowledge that "technically" you're right but it's irrelevant.

Comment by YZF 3 days ago

So interrogating Gemini further to clarify the ground truth about the 2016-2019 period gets me to:

The Final Verdict

So, was Iran in compliance? Under the strict text of the JCPOA (2016–2019): Yes. They met the mathematical limits on active enrichment, which is why the UN, the IAEA, and the US State Department repeatedly certified their compliance during that period.

Under the spirit of the deal and international law: No. The premise of the JCPOA was that Iran had to come clean so the IAEA had a baseline to measure against. By hiding the Atomic Archive and keeping secret contaminated sites on standby, Iran proved they negotiated the deal in bad faith and violated their foundational NPT Safeguards.

I can live with that. So if you want to be "technical" sure. Either the agreement was bad and was upheld or it was good and was violated. Either way, Iran has acted in bad faith is the bottom line.

I will add that we don't have evidence that Iran was enriching Uranium in those secret sites during this period (one could even say we have some evidence they weren't). But that still doesn't change that they acted in bad faith and/or the agreement was bad.

Comment by YZF 3 days ago

Since my other reply was flagged, and I'm past the edit window, and I learnt a little more about the nuance:

- Technically Iran was considered to be meeting the requirements of the JCPOA during the 2016-2018 period in reports issued at the time.

- Iran failed to declare all its sites and programs before entering the JCPOA. This is known now, after the fact.

- Technically some argue that because Iran participated in meetings and filed papers they met the PMD requirements which were the preliminary requirement for the JCPOA to take effect. The nuance here is whether they technically fulfilled the requirements despite lying and hiding and then "only" violated the NPT or whether they violated the PMD.

- That Iran hid sites, material and equipment came into light after the Mossad stole Iran's nuclear archive. This is fact and was confirmed by IAEA inspections despite Iran's attempts to prevent that.

- When the IAEA asked to inspect those sites Iran engaged in a cover up operation and delayed access. After the sites were inspected there was evidence of nuclear material made by human activities.

- That material discovered by IAEA was not farther enriched which the supporters of the agreement claim is evidence that Iran didn't enrich more material. In reality Iran lied and hid facilities and so despite the samples taken by the IAEA not finding evidence of more enrichment the basic fact is that Iran acted in bad faith and so we just don't know. Maybe they only hid sites, equipment, and nuclear material but did not pursue further enrichment during this period. Maybe they did in other sites.

- Officially Iran was never found to be in violation of the JCPOA.

- The JCPOA was set to expire in October 18, 2025 after which there would have been no restriction on Iran anyways. That's another part of the argument that this was a bad agreement.

Comment by tyre 3 days ago

I appreciate that you dug further into it.

While it’s difficult to say to what extent they were going beyond there agreement, it’s clear that they were. I’m not aware of any evidence that it was to the level of, “they’re continuing to make quick progress towards a bomb.” Which is what happened when the US decided to reneg.

There were another seven years to negotiate what’s next and real progress made from both sides trusting each other. That’s the type of momentum needed for further diplomacy (e.g. counteracting more bellicose members of the IRGC.) Instead, we got the opposite. And for what?

Comment by Cyph0n 3 days ago

I would love to see an agreement on the supposed number of (unarmed) civilians killed. Over the course of the past few months, I have heard claims of thousands up to 50k.

You would think the traffic and surveillance cams hacked by the Israelis would’ve shown the extent of this bloodbath.

https://apnews.com/article/iran-war-security-cameras-surveil...

Comment by ceejayoz 3 days ago

No one’s putting a public traffic cam in the regime’s secret detention sites.

Comment by Cyph0n 3 days ago

Ah, so now none of the protesters were gunned down in the streets? How convenient.

> As many as 30,000 people could have been killed in the streets of Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 alone, two senior officials of the country’s Ministry of Health told TIME—indicating a dramatic surge in the death toll.

https://time.com/7357635/more-than-30000-killed-in-iran-say-...

Imagine infiltrating the Iranian surveillance camera network and being unable to produce footage of 30k people massacred across two days.

I do not like Iran because of its actions in Syria and Yemen, but even with my bias, I could hear the bullshit Western elitist consent manufacturing engine starting up from miles away.

Comment by orwin 3 days ago

Yeah, the 30k number is hogwash, but HR NGOs and OSINT volunteers worked up 7k dead in protest over 50 days, including 200 police/military forces, and a maximum of 18k death if you count the fights against separatist/freedom fighter/terrorists (depending on who you are aligned with, choose the description you like more)

Comment by Cyph0n 3 days ago

Hogwash? More like state-backed propaganda disseminated by so-called objective and professional media organizations in order to justify an offensive war against Iran; a war that has achieved virtually none of its stated aims.

I personally trust OSINT sources more than NGOs these days. I would wager that the security forces numbers are higher. I would also wager that the majority of the deaths were CIA and Mossad backed insurgents operating in the context of a wider, legitimate, civilian-led protest movement.

Comment by jameshilliard 3 days ago

> I would also wager that the majority of the deaths were CIA and Mossad backed insurgents operating in the context of a wider, legitimate, civilian-led protest movement.

This seems far less likely than the most plausible scenarios, which is that most deaths were the result of IRGC terrorists opening fire into crowds of protesters for the purposes of ensuring they remain in power.

Comment by jameshilliard 3 days ago

> the 30k number is hogwash

30k is one estimate of actual deaths, it's expected to be higher than any verified number of deaths.

Most estimates fall into the range of 20k to 40k from my understanding so 30k is certainly plausible.

Comment by orwin 3 days ago

The absolute maximum number of deaths imputable to the IRGC during the winter revolt is 18k. Of that, only 7k have been verified, and of that, only 6k have been from protesters. The reason the 11k have been harder to verify is that most of them were in the fringe of the country, far from hospital, in rural area, and the fighting there was intense. A good part of the unverified 11k might have been civilians caught in the crossfire (an element of propaganda from the IRGC in Baluchistan is that separatists are terrorists targeting civilians, which is 'funny' (very relatively) because it looks a lot like western usual propaganda)

Comment by jameshilliard 2 days ago

> The absolute maximum number of deaths imputable to the IRGC during the winter revolt is 18k.

Source? I'm curious how you could even verify an absolute maximum given the IRGC/Regime has heavily suppressed information relating to deaths.

Comment by orwin 1 day ago

HRANA and other watchdogs who actually have people in Iran.

[Edit] https://www.en-hrana.org/the-crimson-winter-a-50-day-record-...

It's even better documentation that i thought, they added the methodology now.

If I remember correctly, the methodology from the NYT and other western MSM was 'the last time, IRGC said 80 death and HRANA said 800, so now since the IRGC recognise 3k death, it should be 30k!' which was then amplified to 40, 50 and even 60k from an Israeli outlet, in 3 days, when the protests and insurgency lasted over 50 days. Honestly I don't trust any numbers if it's published in an American outlet anymore. I now trust 'house of Saoud' more than WaPo or NYT.

Comment by _DeadFred_ 2 days ago

Some of the people the theocratic Islamic Regime murdered for wanting a little bit of freedom.

https://www.bbc.com/persian/resources/idt-c005edd8-7204-4c74...

Comment by throw310822 3 days ago

> the popular uprisings

isn't it obvious that the "popular uprisings" were part of a scheme to overthrow the government to install some US-friendly puppet (or better: Israel-friendly, since that's the only thing that counts), and that the supposedly slaughtered protesters are exactly the reason that is normally put forward to justify an attack on an enemy country?

Comment by ZeroGravitas 3 days ago

Israeli newspaper quoting NYT article with sources within Israel intelligence confirms this:

> The Times reported that Barnea’s predecessor, Yossi Cohen, viewed regime change in Iran as unlikely and deemphasized the Mossad’s work on that project, instead working on ways to weaken the regime through sanctions and targeted assassinations of nuclear scientists.

> But Barnea has adopted the opposite approach, directing the agency’s energies toward regime change over the past year

https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-said-frustrated-that...

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by basilgohar 3 days ago

It was not and never was a good idea. The US and Europe need to stay out of the Middle East, including Israel and Palestine, and let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years until each and every single time Europeans and Americans entered militarily causing chaos and havoc.

Was it 100% peaceful prior to the Crusades? Of course not. But not anymore so than anywhere else in the world. Did it become a mess once they arrived? Yes, and they slaughtered everyone, including Christians, when they came, let alone Jews and Muslims and everyone else that wasn't them.

So, we need to stop pretending like the US and European colonizing entities do any kind of good wherever they go. It's just about enriching the elites through military contracts while subverting any peoples' attempts to have autonomy for themselves.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years

What. Like actually, what? Bronze Age geopolitics weren't peaceful. The Romans and Parthians made going after each other, including through proxy wars, a sport. We even get a Jewish client state to the Romans in Judea [1].

The Levant is a fertile stretch with maritime access directly to the west of where human civilisation was born; one could argue it's one of the first pieces of land that's been constantly fought over over the entirety of human history.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodian_kingdom

Comment by YZF 3 days ago

You must be joking re: peaceful before US and Europe. The first crusade was in 1099 for those who don't know the details. We had the Byzantine-Arab wars, Fatimid civil wars, Turkish invasions... Ofcourse we had the whole spread of Islam "by sword". Don't forget it was the Roman invasion of the region in 63 BCE that resulted in the mass murder and expulsion of Jewish people from Israel after the Bar Kokhba Revolt...

Are you talking about the Ottoman Empire? Pretty violent.

Anyways, I can't cover the history of the region in an HN comment...

Comment by oa335 3 days ago

compare list of conflicts in europe to those in middle east over past from 1000 AD - 1900AD:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe

in particular state formation in late medieval and early modern europe saw immense bloodshed and turmoil.

middle east was comparatively peaceful in contrast, especially post mongol conquest.

e.g. compare 1700s and 1800s europe to middle east

Comment by YZF 3 days ago

So you're arguing the crusaders brought peace to the middle east?

This history is so vast I can't even begin to think about how to compare. But one thing that feels odd to me is how people think of the middle east as somehow separate/far from Europe when in fact it's basically the same neighborhood. The Greek and the Romans were there. Under the Ottoman Empire, Muslims from present day Bosnia moved to present day Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushnak

Don't forget that Christianity came from the middle east and ofcourse Islam.

The Ottoman Empire ruled vast swaths of present day Europe. Spain was under Muslim rule until 1492.

It's all one big mesh. Just yesterday I learnt that many present day Yemeni trace their roots to the Levant. Very different than farther regions like Afria, China, India and ofcourse the Americas, Australia etc.

Comment by peyton 3 days ago

Why would we go halfway around the world to create conflict when we could just make money somewhere where there is already conflict? Seems like a lot of extra work, no?

Comment by logicchains 3 days ago

>let the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other indigenous peoples of the area live there peacefully like that had for over a thousand years

That's an extremely historically ignorant take. Turkey alone genocided 2-3 million Christians in the 20th century (Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks), well before Israel existed.

Comment by tcp_handshaker 3 days ago

"GOP lawmaker wears Israeli military uniform to Capitol Hill" - https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4254384-brian-mast-israel...

Comment by urams 3 days ago

It boggles the mind just how egregious this was.

I would not classify myself as anti-Israeli, fwiw. I just think wearing the military uniform of a foreign nation to your job governing our nation is despicable and borderline treasonous.

Comment by thisislife2 3 days ago

"You're fucking crazy": Trump fumes at Netanyahu in call on Lebanon - https://www.axios.com/2026/06/01/trump-netanyahu-israel-leba...

Elections. The Trump administration joined the war hoping that any positive outcome in the Iran war would boost its mid-term prospects. Netanyahu attacked Iran and Lebanon because he faces elections in a few months and he wants to prolong all his wars till the election is over - apparently Israeli electorate don't tend to vote out a PM during a war. Trump has now realised the Iran war has been a political disaster and is looking to extricate out of it, through temporary ceasefires (which means he can resume the war later - which is standard US policy with a weaker foe). That doesn't work for Netanyahu because if he loses this election, he could also find himself behind bars due to some corruption conviction. Thus, he is working to sabotage Trump's ceasefire deals as he needs the wars to go on till October, when the elections will presumably be held ...

Comment by doom2 2 days ago

It's amazing how many people have died just to keep Netanyahu out of jail.

Comment by marcosdumay 3 days ago

I think supporting Israel has crossed the threshold from "a heavy political dead-weight" into "political suicide" for any politician on the US.

Comment by lazide 3 days ago

The base is complaining, and they need a scapegoat.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the talking points start being ‘Israel caused high gas prices!’ soon.

Comment by godelski 3 days ago

  > Why now all of a sudden?

The government already considered them a threat. Just like everyone else, including themselves (the gov isn't a single entity).

What changed is geopolitics. Official and publicly calling them a threat.

What this also changes is how gov works with companies. How these companies can subcontract and to who. Which, let's be honest, most companies don't give a rats ass if they are hacked. Sure, they lose money, but it's almost always a slap on the wrist and since every company works this way there's no market signal to express that you care even if you do. (I'd still encourage people to install apps like Signal, degoogle, and all that. Your individual choices still do matter, even if it's only us nerds)

Comment by ted_bunny 2 days ago

Israel is going to be a marvelous scapegoat. If dispensationalists are really in charge, the US will turn its back on them for 3.5 years, the first half of the tribulation.

Comment by hammock 3 days ago

Same reason that FISA Amendments Act (2008) was passed less than two years after Mark Klein revealed Room 641A.

Same reason that CISA (2015) was passed less than two years after the Snowden revelations.

Once the secrets are open, the feds can codify them into law. They were never going to change their behavior.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by petcat 3 days ago

USA almost certainly spies on Israel (and everyone else) far deeper than anyone spies on them.

Comment by parthdesai 3 days ago

They sure do, but looking at recent events, you can make an educated guess on which country has more influence over the other. Part of it can be attributed to spying and knowing dark? secrets.

Comment by hammock 3 days ago

> They sure do

Do you have an example?

Comment by melenaboija 3 days ago

As much as they don’t, that’s why it’s spying. But given the budget for spying agencies the guess is they might be doing something and it wouldn’t be intelligent not to spy on Israel, something I don’t believe to be true even for this administration.

Comment by parthdesai 3 days ago

Given that US spies on other countries, including allies (countless examples), I wouldn't rule out them spying on Israel either.

Comment by hammock 3 days ago

You seem to have forgotten to answer the question of an example.

Or when you said “they sure do” did you mean “they possibly do,” since no example is available but you can’t rule it out?

Comment by yyyk 3 days ago

Trump publicly prohibited various Israeli operations (at end of 2025 op and 2026 Iran war), publicly badmouthed Nethanyahu repeatedly (via Barak Ravid), and had various diplomatic initiatives Nethanyahu didn't like. It's pretty obvious who has more influence here.

Comment by screye 3 days ago

It's hilarious listening to CIA insiders talk about spying.

John Kiriakou [1] will spend 3 hours talking about the CIA's torture program (illegal) and NSA spying on Americans (illegal). In the same conversation, he will insist that the US would never spy on Israel because it is illegal.

Who is this fooling ?

[1] Senior ex-CIA official, whistleblower & internet meme phenomenon.

Comment by Bender 3 days ago

Who knows who's telling the truth these days. [1] I just assume it's always spy-vs-spy every which way from Sunday.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vukPEDWaBHg

Comment by hammock 3 days ago

Since the 1951 Angleton-Harel Secret Pact, there has been an unwritten agreement that CIA and Mossad will not spy on each others countries. Kiriakou (who is a wonk) confirmed as much in recent remarks.

But no one without at least a TS really knows

Comment by ma2kx 3 days ago

Kiriakou also stated several times that the Mossad was known to casually try to recruit CIA agents:

https://youtu.be/R7OWqAgGzwA?t=163

Comment by hammock 3 days ago

That speaks to my comment (which was not sufficiently specified I guess) but it does not speak to “the USA spies on Israel” which is what I was replying to

Comment by ma2kx 3 days ago

Okay, but I don't think Kiriakou would explicitly admit if the US spied specifically on Israel.

I think at most we get a indirect "confession" like Andrew Bustamante gave in some podcasts like here, where he answers to the question if the US spies on the Mossad that everybody spies on everybody and than distract to the case were the US was caught spying on (it's ally) Germany: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZklvHVsaT4

PS: I guess at the end you didn't spy until you were caught spying.

Comment by hammock 3 days ago

By all reports, the USA only has agreements not to spy on Five Eyes (plus secretly, Israel). Germany is not in that group. Ally has nothing to do with it.

And it sounds like you are setting up an untestable claim. Can’t help you there. Believe what you want.

Comment by ceejayoz 3 days ago

There's written legislation saying the CIA/NSA/etc. can't spy on Americans.

Guess what happens anyways?

Comment by throwaway902984 3 days ago

He has CIA experience but his word shouldn't just be taken at face value. The man has unsettling views on buying pardons and excuses some other things away as well. Kiriakou shouldn't be trusted, IMO.

That said, he probably isn't wrong at all about this particular thing.

Comment by opsnooperfax 3 days ago

I think he said in that interview that the CIA does not spy on Israel. It does not apply the other way around. Based on policy decisions, this seems very believable to me.

Comment by petcat 3 days ago

> unwritten agreement

Comment by hammock 3 days ago

Ah I forgot writing has magic powers. Especially between nation states. /s

In this case the writing part is not important.

Comment by croes 3 days ago

Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi

Comment by windexh8er 3 days ago

Between Israel and Russia is anyone surprised that all of the memes about a certain party being infiltrated by the Russians and then also all of them being bootlickers of Israel have merit to them?

I've worked for a couple Israeli startups and what I will say is: never again. I've experienced all of the stereotypes and more, firsthand.

Comment by dyauspitr 3 days ago

Probably because Trump had a heated conversation with Netanyahu and this is some sort of “consequence”.

Comment by tcp_handshaker 3 days ago

[dead]

Comment by rag_wlk 3 days ago

One reason is that blaming Israel for the Iran FUBAR situation is very convenient, especially for keeping MAGA on board.

The right wing pundits are already working overtime on X and elsewhere to blame Israel and concoct all sorts of explanations why Trump authorized the strike (the most amusing is that he "was possessed by demons").

Blaming Israel may have been coordinated with Netanyahu, who has nothing to lose and is probably perfectly fine with the blame as long as he gets his war and parts of Lebanon.

Blaming Israel has many historic precedents from Clinton to Trump, often through planted leaks or deliberate hot mics.

Comment by krona 3 days ago

> One reason is that blaming Israel for the Iran FUBAR situation is very convenient, especially for keeping MAGA on board.

Polling shows support for Israel is far greater among Trump loyalist voters than non-loyalist Republicans, so this is surely false.

Perhaps you're confusing "MAGA" with actual American nationalists, who are statistically irrelevant.

Comment by 1209457 3 days ago

Support for Israel is present in the entire establishment, Democrat or Republican. Whenever Israel goes too far, a president suddenly leaks Netanyahu criticism like Biden on the hot mic where he said that he'd tell Netanyahu to have a "come to Jesus" moment or Trump leaking that he shouted at Netanyahu during a phone call.

This admin is special in that it blames proxies for wars that it started or provoked. Biden owned the Ukraine war, Trump blames the EU for wanting to continue the Ukraine war while Anduril and Eric Schmidt (https://www.techradar.com/pro/ex-google-ceo-is-key-to-ukrain...) are selling and testing their new drone tech.

In the case of Israel, you can say that there is direct influence from Kushner, Witkoff and Mark Levin. We'll see if Congress and Senate will get a 2/3rd majority to stop the war agaist a potential Trump veto. I don't think so. Until they do, I consider all resolutions with a simple majority to be theater for the midterm elections.

Comment by ceejayoz 3 days ago

The reason for the support matters.

A lot of them think support for Israel leads to the apocalypse and Jesus’s return. It doesn’t end well for the Jews in that story.

Comment by ryandrake 3 days ago

Among USA evangelicals, support for Israel (and specifically the country’s belligerence) has notably little to do with Judaism itself or the Jewish people.

Comment by parineum 3 days ago

Now you're confusing maga with evangelicals which are very different parts of the party. Evangelicals have largely lost influence in a post Roe world.

Trump had to cater to them in his first term but, since he's taken over the party, they're in the backseat.

Comment by ryandrake 3 days ago

Evangelicals themselves recently brought us into this “post Roe world!” Their influence appears to be at its highest level ever.

Comment by parineum 2 days ago

Trump got evangelicals to vote for him because he promised to appoint supreme court justices who would overturn roe.

Evangelicals, as a group, no longer have a cohesive political goal. They don't have influence because the collective isn't asking for anything.

Their influence was all based on being a large group of single issue voters you could get on your side with little effort.

Comment by metalman 3 days ago

maybe someone in China, put 2 million and 2 million together and hired themselves a zionist genocider baby killer on the make!

Comment by ada1981 3 days ago

Removing all US financial support for Israel and supporting sanctions and ICJ actions is the only way forward.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> Removing all US financial support for Israel and supporting sanctions and ICJ actions is the only way forward

Or at least starting with ceasing financial aid to Israel. If they want our weapons, they should have to pay for them. This has broad, bipartisan support in a way sanctioning Israel doesn't yet.

Comment by fuckinpuppers 3 days ago

I’m confused isn’t there a bill to merge Israel and US intelligence/military together in various ways?

Comment by opsnooperfax 3 days ago

I’m more confused by your username. Wow.

Comment by generj 3 days ago

I believe it’s in reference to the humor TV show Letterkenny which has a beer brand called Puppers. Characters on the show often ask for another fucking puppers.

Comment by sokka_h2otribe 3 days ago

"dang! Those fuckin puppers ate the shoe again"

I would assume simple

Comment by pbiggar 3 days ago

Every Big Tech company employs hundreds of "former" Israeli spies - Google just brought on another 900 via their acquisition of Wiz (to add to their existing 6000).

Comment by basilgohar 3 days ago

This is well known and documented. It should not be downvoted. Zionism in Big Tech is a huge issue. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese documented this extensively in her report that got her sanctioned by the US. [0]

TurboTax had IDF soldiers in uniform in their offices. [1]

[0] https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/country-reports/ahrc5923-... [1] https://thegrayzone.com/2026/04/28/tech-giant-employees-idf-...

Comment by FunnyUsername 3 days ago

Presumably he's a reservist who was drafted after his country was invaded, and tried to attend a few work calls (although he should have been on paid leave) while drafted. What's the issue?

Also one reservist is not "soldiers", and a video call is not "in their offices".

Comment by bigyabai 1 day ago

> What's the issue?

You are literally commenting under an article titled "Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying" - it should be easy to determine the conflict of interest here.

The Inslaw affair still gets discussed pretty often in security circles, as does Pegasus and FORCEDENTRY. Israel's spyware poses a threat only eclipsed by China, to most Americans.

Comment by stale2002 3 days ago

The vast majority of people in the USA do not want to destroy the state of Israel so I am not sure why you are making some conspiracy about (((zionists))) controlling big tech companies.

Basically everyone in the US is a zionist. Especially once you point out that Israel has 200+ nuclear weapons and it would be a horrible idea to try and destroy them.

Comment by beernet 2 days ago

> Basically everyone in the US is a zionist.

What? What kind of world view is that? Surely not a factual one.

I have no view here other than what I hear from people and news. What stokes me is that people like you are really shocked and surprised when confronted with the truth.

Comment by stale2002 2 days ago

Of course it's true.

Israel has 200+ nuclear weapons. Most people aren't stupid enough to think that trying to destroy a country with 200+ nuclear weapons is a good idea.

If they understand this simply idea, that makes them a zionist, almost by definition.

Comment by beernet 2 days ago

This is total nonsense and you sound like a bot. A bad one at that. This is pathetic.

Fear is not equivalent to zionism. In addition to that, Russia has many more nuclear weapons and is getting destroyed at this very moment.

Comment by stale2002 1 day ago

> Fear is not equivalent to zionism.

Saying that it's a bad idea to destroy Israel absolutely is Zionist.

It's accepting that Israel will exist and attempts to destroy it should not be enacted. In this case, because of the nuclear war.

> and is getting destroyed at this very moment.

No they aren't. Russia isn't going to collapse as a country. Thats ridiculous. The worst case scenario for them is continued economic damage and a full withdrawal from Ukraine.

But Moscow going under was never on the table, and yeah if it was actually truly threaten by an invading army, I'd absolutely expect nuclear weapons to be in the table.

To apply the same thing to Israel, sure in some wild world that isn't the current universe, I could see them being pushed out of, like their current Lebanon areas and for the fighting to stop in Gaza, ect. And nuclear weapons aren't going to be used.

But that's not the same as Jerusalem being threatened. Yes, if an invade army was taking over half the country, with boots on the ground, yes the nukes would fly.

It arguably almost happened in fact, in one of the previous Arab wars. Nothing even close to that will happen any time soon though (because Israel isn't losing).

Comment by _DeadFred_ 2 days ago

I have met only a handful of Americans that thinks Israel should not exist. They have all been for a two state solution. Yes, basically everyone in the US is a zionist.

Comment by za3faran 2 days ago

The movement is growing slowly but surely. More and more people want nothing to do with them, and to want to cease sending tax dollars that enable them to continue their atrocities.

Comment by stale2002 2 days ago

Having opinions on where tax dollars go has little do to with someone advocating for destroying an entire nuclearly armed country.

Basically nobody in the USA wants it do that.

Comment by za3faran 2 days ago

The implication of stopping tax dollars from going there is that they will not be able to sustain themselves. This is obvious to many people at this point in time, and this latest war against Iran has awakened even more (let alone the ongoing genocide). There are many people in the USA who wish to see the end of colonization of occupied Palestine.

Comment by stale2002 1 day ago

> they will not be able to sustain themselves

A nuclear armed country wouldn't go down without a fight.

I'm also not sure who is even left to do anything about Israel. The entirety of Gaza is rubble and southern Lebanon is soon to follow. And Iran can't destroy Israel with its dwindling missile stocks, they'd need a ground army for that.

But if it actually came down to it, they would kill every last one of their enemies if their existence was actually threatened.

Given that fact, anyone who's wants it to be destroyed must have a seething deep hatred for the Palestinians and all the rest of the arabs that would die in the process.

I don't think most people out there hate the Palestinians so much that they would want to see them all die in nuclear hellfire, no.

But hey, maybe you know more people than I do that wouldn't care about the millions of Arabs that would die in the inevitable nuclear war.

Comment by za3faran 1 day ago

Yes we know about what they call the "Samson option". The west supported and allowed an extremely brutal, unhinged colonizer do whatever it wanted right after WW2 and now everyone has to pay the price. If they use it, the entire world will suffer, not just the neighboring region. This is yet another reason why they must be quickly stopped.

We of course care about human life (unlike the occupation). I don't know what will happen. The Assad regime fell in a 10 day period after a decade+ worth of war and conflict. Things may not need to escalate to a full blown ground war, we already hear about of a lot of internal rift among the occupation. They lost 100k+ individuals who left and never came back since 2020 or so. Unlike what the occupation likes to make up, the Palestinians (and Muslims in general) do not have an issue with cohabitating with jews[1]. Many of isarelis are atheist/secular anyway, so their so called claim to the land based on that argument is non-existent, and they would probably be the first to migrate out as we see happening slowly.

[1] https://x.com/incontextmedia/status/1720877046664986750

Comment by stale2002 1 day ago

> This is yet another reason why they must be quickly stopped.

Nuclear weapons are meant to stop countries from being destroyed, for every country that has thems.

Thats why countries get those nuclear weapons in the first place. To use in a last resort in case they are destroyed. They even have fancy words for it, like "mutually assured destruction".

I doubt you have invented a nuke shield. Meaning that, for all countries that have nuclear weapons, destroying them is a very bad idea.

> We of course care about human life

If you are talking so cavalierly about destroying a country that has nuclear weapons, it would not seem like you care much about the arab lives that live there. It seems like you would rather the arabs throw there lives away, for nothing, for decades to come. All for some silly obsession with destroying a nuclear armed country, no matter how many women and children have to die along to way to fail to do much of anything against them.

Just look around you dude. Gaza is entirely rubble. Most of Israel's enemies are in shambles, and former enemies of Israel from decades past have strong alliances with Israel now.

The axis of resistance failed. And coping about it will just get more arabs killed for nothing. Most people don't want to throw their lives away for nothing. They want to move on and have peace. And it is rich to see foreigners so giddy about the idea of more dead arabs sacrificing themselves for the cause.

But hey, its not like it really matters much anymore. I expect that Israel's enemies and Gaza's fate is sealed at this point, and when immigration opens up in a couple years 1/3rd to half of the population there will resettle outside of palestine. Its sad, but hey, most people there don't want to live in tents forever.

> The Assad regime fell

They didn't have nuclear weapons. And if they did, most people who aren't stupid would be hesitant about trying to destroy them.

> the Palestinians (and Muslims in general) do not have an issue with cohabitating with jews

Then the solution is simple. Give up on the idea of trying to destroy a nuclear armed country. Easy right? Just accept peace instead of risking the lives of all the arabs in the region for a doomed goal that only will kill many many many more arabs if it ever came anyone close to being enacted.

Comment by za3faran 1 day ago

Politics shift extremely quickly, and it's very well known that only a handful of people in power support the zionist entity. There are no real alliances with israel from Muslim nations if that's what you are alluding to. Maybe one or two rulers are attempting to form some sort of deal, but this does not sit well with the population at all. Remember that you have ~2 billion Muslims, and the Palestinian issue is one of the most important, if not the most important issue for all of them.

WW2 left a lot of destruction, yet things got rebuilt and the world moved on. The mongols left a trail of destruction and atrocities, but the victims recovered. What's happening today is no different. This is not to make light of the suffering of the victims of the zionists, but it means that they will not give up.

This is not an Arab issue, it's a Muslim issue. The zionists are trying to make it a racial issue (as a form of projection), but it's far from it.

> They didn't have nuclear weapons.

They had chemical weapons that they used on civilians.

What these latest conflicts have shown is how weak and frail the occupation is, it has always been the case. The internal rift going on there may very well expand to a civil war. There are many ways out of this instead of brute military force that eliminates everyone.

Iran is still standing, and the war that now the whole world knows israel is behind, has made so many people stand up against them. We are seeing people convert to Islam from all different racial and religious backgrounds. Injustice will not last forever. There are even American politicians making it clear they do not receive funding from AIPAC when they run. Give it a generation or two, their public perception is down the drain, and they know this all too well, and they're panicking.

> Then the solution is simple. Give up on the idea of trying to destroy a nuclear armed country. Just accept peace instead

We have no issues with peace. Give back the land to its native people, and they will decide who stays and who leaves. The western nations that enabled this genocide and colonialist project can take in those who leave.

Comment by stale2002 1 day ago

> The western nations that enabled this genocide and colonialist project can take in those who leave.

The much much more likely situation is that a third of gazans leave based on plans that western governments have made for gaza that are already public.

Thats the outcome that those groups are currently on a clear trajectory towards, that might not even be stoppable at this point, TBH.

Then what? More yelling online about "zionists" doesn't rebuild the mass rubble that gaza has already been turned into.

But hey, feel free to check up on gaza in a year and see if things have gotten any better, or if it has instead just been more people sacrificing their lives for nothing with no progress towards a better future.

Comment by bigyabai 1 day ago

> Then what?

Decades of unjustifiable regional conflict used to manufacture consent for Israel to invade and indefinitely occupy portions of Syria, Jordan and Egypt?

Because that's the precedent that Israel has set for themselves. It's not a very popular plan outside of the Knesset, as this war has proven.

Comment by stale2002 1 day ago

There are not large 40 thousand plus armed terrorists groups that have been being armed for decades and have been shooting rockets at Israel for years in either Jordan or Egypt. And Syria has significantly improved their relations with Israel recently.

Nobody in those countries are seriously suggesting that there is going to be some war with Israel anytime soon, and relations are as good as they have ever been.

Comment by za3faran 12 hours ago

Those "terrorists" only arose after the zionist occupation. To everyone else other than the zionist occupiers, they are freedom fighters.

Comment by stale2002 11 hours ago

They are actually designated as a terrorist organization by a very large number of countries. Almost every country in that region does, and around the world.

Also, they do all sorts of things. The big one was contributing to the deaths many people in syria. I think thats more than enough for countries to call them a terrorist organization as they do now.

Its pretty horrible. You can look it up here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah_involvement_in_the_S...

Comment by bigyabai 14 hours ago

Nobody in those countries believes that Israel is fighting a defensive war. They refuse to assist Israel until the US steps in, and even then they draw pretty hard lines in the sand. Jordan doesn't trust Israeli administration of the West Bank; Syria wants the Golan Heights to stop expanding into Al-Quneitra, and resents the Druze separatism that Likud supports.

Every politician in these countries are preparing for a long-term campaign of Israeli interference, subterfuge and misinformation. Even the US is preparing for Israel's forever war.

Comment by za3faran 1 day ago

The yelling is not only happening online, we're starting to see a shift in policy. As I mentioned, the sentiment for the zionist entity in the USA is in the dirt among the younger generation. This isn't just about Gaza, it's about the entire world now. The entity has no issues literally dragging the world in to WW3. People are waking up.

Comment by opsnooperfax 3 days ago

Well, I for one can’t imagine someone more qualified to work in content moderation at Meta than someone who spent his or her formative years murdering unarmed children in the Gaza Strip. These companies need morally grounded, paragons of decency to set the example for us all.

Comment by paulsutter 3 days ago

The Snowden disclosures revealed that the US was regularly spying on Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, the EU, and the UN. Also of course the CIA was spying on Congress.

One can only imagine that many of these countries were also spying on us in various capacities, albeit with fewer resources. Israel is a bigger concern because they're extremely good at it, but I'm sure it's nothing new.

Comment by wefarrell 3 days ago

From the article:

>While it is commonplace for allies and adversaries across the globe to spy on each other, the current and former U.S. officials said Israel’s recent efforts have gone well beyond what is typical and expected espionage.

Comment by impossiblefork 3 days ago

It should also be noted, that the EU countries which this espionage targeted were not happy about it at all, and did not find it one bit normal.

Comment by derektank 3 days ago

Yes, espionage is not an act of war and is a regular occurrence, even between allied nations. You can see this clearly during WW2 now that much of the information has been declassified. Great Britain ran an extensive intelligence operation in New York prior to US entry into the war.

Comment by parthdesai 3 days ago

How many of those countries openly lobby politicians in USA though?

Comment by StriverGuy 3 days ago

Every single one.

Comment by parthdesai 3 days ago

Do you’ve proof for that? On the other hand, AIPAC is out there for anyone to see

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> Do you’ve proof for that?

Yes, it's why we require foreign agents to register [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...

Comment by tbugrara 3 days ago

Yet AIPAC does not need to register.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> Yet AIPAC does not need to register

Why would it? We have lots of friends of X groups that don’t need to.

The strongest own goal Israel’s political opponents in America play against themselves is in pretending this is entirely a conspiracy. It’s not. Until recently, Israel was popular. Against the background of few voters caring about foreign policy at all, that meant small margins were foreign-policywise meaningful while continuing to be electorally irrelevant.

Comment by basilgohar 3 days ago

Ah, the whole, "Everyone does it, why are you picking only us?"

They used to for their warcrimes, genocide, apartheid, and literally every other thing they are guilty of.

Comment by basilgohar 3 days ago

It's important to not frame this as a US vs Israel thing. Israel is, at best, the last of the Western world's settler colonies, and as such, is serving a purpose, a so-called landed aircraft carrier. [0]

The fact that there is tensions in the government regarding Israel means that the entities that found value in Israel are losing out to those that don't. So-called America-first powers no longer see 1st-tier support of Israel as in the interests of the US.

This will not go well with Zionists, who are still supported by massive backing and financial interests. They will spend a LOT of money to keep Israel the US's "top ally" despite it being no such thing in any meaningful way. Israel is a tool of the Western imperial forces.

The fact that this story is breaking means that Zionism is getting more-and-more toxic to people in power.

[0] https://michael-hudson.com/2023/11/israel-as-a-landed-aircra...

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by hedayet 3 days ago

Putting politics aside, are any tech companies actually taking preventive steps in response to this new risk?

Comment by Georgelemental 3 days ago

My understanding is that the DIA is generally the least corrupt of America's many intelligence agencies

Comment by andrewinardeer 3 days ago

Like him or not, Kiriakou has been saying for years that Israel is the biggest threat for spying.

Comment by nullpoint420 2 days ago

I wanted to like him, but then after watching a few podcast appearances I realized he loves to play every side. He usually just reflects the hosts beliefs back to them.

It also doesn’t help that he’s trying to line up a pardon from Trump, as well.

Comment by WhereIsTheTruth 3 days ago

I remember when orange people would flag your comments whenever you mentioned Mossad spying on people

Mazel Tov!

Comment by RgrTheShrubbr 3 days ago

I remember back in 2004 when the pentagon found an Israeli spy in the Pentagon. This has been going on for decades and I'm sure it will go on for decades more at this point.

Comment by gmerc 3 days ago

Why spy when you can just command to hand over … or else release the files you got on everyone ?

Comment by AbuAssar 3 days ago

The department of homeland security’s twitter account is based in Irsael

Comment by JohnTHaller 3 days ago

President Trump has written a strongly worded check to Netanyahu in response (according to The Onion)

Comment by trumpdong 3 days ago

It's the most reliable source of news these days.

Comment by lostlogin 3 days ago

Is even dumber than that.

Funds for Israel flow. Trump was yelling expletives down the phone at Netanyahu this week. Trump has been leading an Israeli war.

It’s dizzying, and it’s almost as though there is a lack of sound minds involved.

Has the US ever been easier to manipulate or spy on?

Comment by pandaman 2 days ago

>Has the US ever been easier to manipulate or spy on?

Yes, at least nowadays Israel does not try to sink American warships, killing dozens of sailors in the process and then having the US government to cover it up.

Comment by FunnyUsername 2 days ago

It's pretty absurd to think that Israel would intentionally attack a neutral superpower in the middle of a war for its survival, knowing that at best it would have to apologize and pay reparations, and at worst it would be destroyed by a vastly stronger military.

Friendly fire happens all the time; not everything needs to be a conspiracy.

Comment by pandaman 2 days ago

Can you give an example of a friendly fire on a warship consisting of continuous air and naval attack over the course of two hours? Just one? Friendly fire will suffice, I am not even asking about some other country doing the same to the US.

As for Israel motivation it's pretty obvious why they did it - they wanted to blame the attack on Egypt and involve the US in the war. Though it does not really matter, even you are unable to deny that Israel attacked the US ship, it's an empirical fact.

Comment by FunnyUsername 1 day ago

Screwups happen, and it wasn't only on Israel's side. USS Liberty was way closer to the coast/warzone than it should have been due to missing an order, and once attacked, wasn't able to even communicate with its fleet for quite a while, let alone with Israel.

> they wanted to blame the attack on Egypt

There was no attempt to blame Egypt, and the idea is completely implausible - a US investigation could very easily distinguish an Israeli vs an Egyptian attack when a variety of boats (coming from Israeli ports) and many other assets are involved.

Comment by pandaman 1 day ago

So I figure you could not find an example of friendly fire like that despite your assertion they happen all the time? Color me unsurprised.

>There was no attempt to blame Egypt

Are you an LLM? Of course there was not - the ship survived and there were too many witnesses of Israel doing this, it would be the uber chutzpa to still try to say it was Egypt.

Comment by FunnyUsername 1 day ago

Your demand for a highly specific friendly-fire incident seems a bit silly. Can you cite an example of the opposite - a tiny country intentionally attacking a ship of a superpower, then pretending it was accidental, giving a apology and millions of dollars of reparations?

And of course I'll demand the same arbitrary specificity - it needs to be a two-hour-long multi-domain assault. Also it needs to be a VC2-S-AP3 type ship whose name ends with "Liberty". If you don't have such examples, I suppose we can stop entertaining your conspiracy theory?

> there were too many witnesses of Israel doing this

Even if there were no eventual survivors, there would still be people throughout the fleet talking on the radio. They would have noticed and communicated about the movements of large ships from Israeli ports, among other very obvious signs of an Israeli operation. There would have been absolutely zero chance of the US not knowing who was behind it.

Comment by pandaman 1 day ago

I demand an example of friendly fire incidents where attacker closely observes (they were able to aim at antennas for example) the friendly target for hours yet keeps attacking. All friendly fire incidents are opposite of this - people shooting at something they don't see or see for a brief time before the attack, there are no known cases of such an attack declared "friendly fire" other than the USS Liberty, so this is why I was very skeptical of your claim this happens all the time.

Comment by lazystar 3 days ago

or more likely, like we the public do not have the full context of whats going on behind the scenes.

Comment by infinitezest 3 days ago

Based on what we _do_ know, I have serious doubts that this admin could keep a secret if they wanted to.

Comment by WaxProlix 3 days ago

Yeah, I have to imagine Donald Trump has better intel and is making wise, measured, well-informed decisions beyond the abilities of your average HNer.

Comment by lostlogin 3 days ago

If we assume everything you say here is true, why is the US in such a bind with reopening the straits? The risk of Iran behaving exactly like this has been understood for decades. The attack was not a a wise, measured move.

Comment by WaxProlix 3 days ago

This was (I thought) very obvious sarcasm, the man is an easily manipulated buffoon.

Comment by lostlogin 3 days ago

I did initially, then decided it wasn't.

I'll go recalibrate my detector!

Comment by cactusplant7374 3 days ago

Where is the proof that Iran was going to attack the US? I mean real proof and not just saber rattling.

Comment by pvaldes 2 days ago

> Trump was yelling expletives

We can assume that the conversation didn't went the way that Trump wants us to think.

When somebody annoys Trump, even slightly, he assures to appear on video broadcasted to the whole planet calling infantile expletives to that "ugly" and "incompetent" person. It does not matter if he called "beautiful" and "expert" that same person on the previous hour. As a good narcissist, he will force himself in the middle of the picture every-single-time (and push off the road anybody that would dare to speak for him). Trump is 120% predictable in that sense. Is known to have one of the thinnest skins in the planet and to be easily triggered.

But with Netanyahu curiously we enter in a totally different game, a plausible deniability game of: he-said-that-she-said-that-somebody-has-seen-trump-yelling-on-phone.

Trump must be approved the message but is afraid to emit it personally. Otherwise we should accept the nonsense that such freak of control, the most videotaped man in the planet, became so out-of character that is now allowing leaks, forgiving the whistleblowers, and hiding a video that he personally would absolutely love, LOVE, to show to his fans. A video of him showing dominion assertion over Bibi. The only logical explanation for this save facing move, is that this dominion does not exist and that Israel do what they want.

Comment by pvaldes 2 days ago

s/must be approved/must have approved/

Comment by shrubby 3 days ago

Seems legit.

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by laweijfmvo 3 days ago

if your boss suddenly asks you to carry a pager, do not accept it.

Comment by mthoms 3 days ago

Trump already accepted a gold pager from his boss (Bibi).

I wish I was joking.

Comment by lobocinza 2 days ago

Who need enemies with allies like that.

Comment by karim79 3 days ago

These threads are always fun.

The mental gymnastics of the Israeli "splainers" will never fail to amaze me. Israelsplainers perhaps.

I want to say that it's just Netanyahu who needs to go away but it's actually much, much more than just him. The tide is shifting methinks and rightly so (and finally).

Comment by bigyabai 3 days ago

> Israelsplainers perhaps

The Israeli wumao: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasbara

  Hasbara has no direct English translation, but roughly means "explaining". It is a communicative strategy that "seeks to explain actions, whether or not they are justified".

  [...]

  In its 2025 budget, Israel planned to spend $150 million on hasbara, a 20-fold increase.

  In the 2026 budget, NIS 2.35 billion (about $730 million) has been allocated to hasbara.

Comment by karim79 3 days ago

I appreciate the comment and I'm well aware and fully clued up on the history of Hasbara and the rest. I actually thought the word "Hasbara" was closer to "explanation". Close enough lexically I guess.

I just find this really depressing and I hope that there will be an end in sight. The happenings of right now is the stuff of horror novels.

But still, it is fucking disturbing shit which somehow has a place in the world.

Comment by gib444 3 days ago

How convenient using a term that can't/won't be translated to "propa ganda" . How meta lol.

That page is probably the most perfect demonstration of any concept which exists on Wikipedia

Comment by sph 1 day ago

If one wants to see them in blatant action, just head to Reddit's /r/worldnews

Comment by karim79 3 days ago

I mean 730 million isn't a lot, right? It's all good all safe. 730 million dollars. Which could solve hunger in parts of Africa. But let's just use it to protect our image.

Comment by shevy-java 3 days ago

Didn't Trump recently ban Sean Strickland for critisizing Israel?

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/sean-strickland-says-hes-b...

Trump is like the ultimate tool of corruption - whether it is Russia or Israel or whoever, you name it. Dude flops to the highest bidder. No wonder US oligarchs are currently controlling the USA.

Comment by groan 3 days ago

Strange, I thought this was well known. See the leadership of most prominent tech companies.

Comment by derektank 3 days ago

What are you referring to? The only major tech company I’m aware of that had (until recently) an Israeli leading the company was Oracle, but Safra Catz stepped down as CEO last year.

Comment by np_tedious 3 days ago

It's pretty clear that he doesn't just mean Israelis

Comment by mooktakim 3 days ago

They literally merging US military with Israel lol

Comment by throw310822 3 days ago

Israel doesn't really need to spy on the US. They can just ask Kushner.

Comment by diogenescynic 3 days ago

It's crazy how the media just intentionally ignores Israel's ethnic cleansing in Gaza but cares about a billion other fake issues. Rachel Maddow gaslighted half the country into thinking Russia was controlling the White House... meanwhile ignoring that we're starting wars at Netanyahu's request/demand. Or how Israel tried to blackmail Clinton over Monica Lewinsky. We can never actually assess our relationship with Israel--anything but slavish devotion is immediately called anti-Semitism.

Comment by himata4113 3 days ago

I really dislike when a tiny fraction of the conspiracy theories become true since it validates people who believe in them. But I have to admit I do have one of my own, pegasus and related spyware can gain a lot of power over politicians i.e. blackmail which makes me think about how much of our politics are based solely on the fact that politicians often find themselves exploiting their powers and then possibly getting caught by spyware turning them into somewhat of a tool.

Comment by an0malous 3 days ago

Why did you not believe this particular theory before? It never seemed like an outlandish idea to me at all that some US politicians could be blackmailed by foreign interests.

I don’t get this blanket rejection of “conspiracy theories”, it’s like the moment you describe something as a conspiracy theory a large group of self identified intellectuals just dismiss it offhand. It doesn’t make sense as a category, of course people conspire.

If I could propose a lesson to be learned, maybe stop categorizing things as “conspiracy theories” and take each theory on the merit of its evidence and how it fits the facts.

Comment by himata4113 2 days ago

It was too "popular" of a conspiracy theory to be true, it was the cognative conclusion that was attributed to israel without any real backing behind it. I think it's telling that it took this long and this much pressure to ever consider it a "threat".

Comment by vintermann 3 days ago

I don't believe blackmail is the most effective thing. The problem with blackmail is that even if you do as the blackmailer says, they still have the threat hanging over you forever. That increases the risk that they do something desperate.

What is effective, isn't blackmail, but complicity. Doing bad things together. Then you get a shared interest. The people Epstein had blackmail on, knew that he wouldn't use it casually, because after all there would be no way to use it without implicating himself. But if he were desperate, he might. So the victims had an interest in keeping Epstein not desperate.

So it's the bad things they do together which is dangerous. Even things they do in full view of the public can work, because the threat isn't necessarily that the public finds out, it's that if one is held accountable, then all are at risk.

Comment by himata4113 2 days ago

I think it's closer to dragging them into a conversation. Something along the lines of: "Hey I know you did X, let's talk about Y and maybe to Z since you're already in deep shit."

Comment by gosub100 3 days ago

I think what made Epstein effective was balancing the blackmail with favors for complying. If all you do is get dirt on people, eventually it will fail. But if you give them something too, they are less resentful.

Comment by colordrops 3 days ago

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Comment by dang 3 days ago

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

Also, please don't use quotes to make it look like you're quoting someone when you aren't. That's an internet snark trope, and thus breaks the "Don't be snarky" guideline too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Comment by himata4113 3 days ago

It's mostly about X conspiracy theory turned out to be true, so the Y conspiracy must be true! The fact that it even has to be a conspiracy theory that later gets validated is what annoys me, asking questions is okay, claiming conspiracy as fact is not.

Comment by make3 3 days ago

Thinking that Israel potentially spies on the US government is not what anyone reasonable would call a conspiracy theory.

Comment by himata4113 3 days ago

ask AI with internet access disabled aka: the aggregate of the entire internet. every single ai, chinese included will call it antisemitism.

Comment by make3 3 days ago

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Comment by EchoVoicy 3 days ago

What is and isn't considered a conspiracy theory changes very rapidly. There are a lot of things that today are considered common sense that 10 years ago would be considered a fringe conspiracy theory.

Comment by colordrops 3 days ago

People were smeared regularly for suggesting this less than a decade ago. You are being tripped up by recency bias since mainstream media started reporting on it.

Comment by lazyasciiart 3 days ago

I hate that people will take “political blackmail is real” and jump to “the moon landing wasn’t real”

Comment by gosub100 3 days ago

I've heard very few if any "conspiracy theorists" talk about sexual blackmail because it's boring. The appeal of a conspiracy is that it grabs people's attention. And there are certain types of attention whores who will spout theories about flat earth, or fake moon landing, because it gets them instant attention and engagement. This is what I think the GP meant, that s/he hates that these people were "right" about politicians being compromised.

Comment by colordrops 3 days ago

Why must all conspiracy theories be bucketed together as if it's a single entity and culture. Conspiracies are real and as old as time, and treating any analysis or discussion about them as part of a greater crackpot culture just acts as cover for real ones. In fact there is evidence that the CIA is behind some of the crackpot theories to muddy the water.

Comment by Cyph0n 3 days ago

Do you blame them? If a global ring of elite pedophiles turned out to be true in spite of all the gaslighting and denial, then why couldn’t the moon landing also be a conspiracy?

Keep in mind that the elite class couldn’t give two shits what the peasant class thinks. In fact, having us believe in false conspiracies helps distract the masses from the true conspiracies :)

Comment by Cyph0n 3 days ago

Astounding to watch the mental gymnastics at play.

It’s like how Israeli lobbying orgs state that “claiming Zionist orgs control the media is antisemitism”, and then the solution is literally “we should use our contacts & supporters in the media to stop this kind of rhetoric”. Beautiful.

Comment by jasonlotito 3 days ago

This is pathetic. Raising this? This is the level of "intelligence" you get when you pretend to remove all DEI/wokeness and just leave the ones that cater to you. Pathetic.

Comment by kumarski 3 days ago

I had a few GS15s sit down with me in 2019 and explain to me directionally the vibe on Israel. Changed my viewpoint forever.

For ~50 years America has subcontracted to Israel a portion of its intelligence operations and sometimes largely for plausible deniability, other times because we cannot spy on our own citizens - the last part wasn't said explicitly - but what I could grok.

IMHO, the Israeli apparatus has gone far off the reservation in their operations and have lost favor in the past 5 years, especially in DC.

Israel's intelligence apparatus has historically participated in cleaning dirty narco cash via affiliates to finance intelligence operations back home (mostly thorugh hapoalim, safra, leumi, and signature bank), sold hacking tools to narcos, running guns, cleaning blood diamonds, and running kompromat where they deemed it is needed.

Rwandan and Guatemalan genocides probably wouldn't have happened to the stunning degree if the Israelis weren't illegally selling munitions into both. Also hard to get clarity if they were doing this as our subcontractors or going off the reservation.

Signature Bank's collapse was a sign that your local Israeli-intelligence agency linkedin money laundering apparatus was going to have volatility that there would be volatiliy in the middle east.

There was a time in the 90's onwards where one could wlak into signature, hapoalim, leumi, or safra with 10M in narco cash and get it cleaned, or so I'm told. https://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/19/finally-the-us-is-busting-is...

2023: 500k Israelis protesting against Netanyahu, blood diamonds going down in value b/c of lab grown diamonds, and the implosion of their money laundering apparatus cornerstone (Signature bank) probably was a positive signal for disruption in the Israeli way of life in mid 2023.

The large question at play amongst the GS15s that I've heard murmured in DC is if America should subcontract security operations to a non-AUKUS passport holders, and Israel is the vendor in question.

A lot of CIA seems bifurcated on their viewpoint of Israel. No idea when that happened.

Our relationship with Israel costs us $10-$20/barrel in increased fees and 50B-100B/yr to have our military in the region.

One thing that is fascinating - the Israelis are getting blamed for Iran right now - but the Hormuz volatility greatly increases their cost of living - and we are the greatest beneficiary.

We are the largest producer of nat gas, helium, methanol, LNG, and Oil.

I think the "hormuz volatility" has a terminating condition - APAC buying these US products in larger sizes. As it was explained to me, the reason the prices aren't 150 is because while maritime stuff is problematic - the surrounding 5 countries to Iran have ways to get the energy via pipeline and power line.

World is a complex place, they're our subcontractor for now....no clue if they will be in the future but the trend is no.

Comment by ai_fry_ur_brain 3 days ago

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Comment by zuzululu 3 days ago

That sounds unhinged and delusional but what steps have you taken besides just writing comments about your anti-semitic fantasies online ?

Comment by ai_fry_ur_brain 3 days ago

What did I say that was anti-semetic? Being anti-zionist != anti-semantic... My dearest friends are jewish and have no qualms with my opinions and completely agree with me that Israel needs to be stopped by any means necessary. Now that I think about it, literally all the closest people in my life are Jewish. Ive never been called anti-semitic by anyone who isn't a blood thirsty Zionist using Judiasm as a shield.

Comment by zuzululu 3 days ago

You are not convincing anyone here.

Comment by ai_fry_ur_brain 2 days ago

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Comment by iluvcommunism 3 days ago

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Comment by oort-cloud9 2 days ago

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Comment by _DeadFred_ 2 days ago

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Comment by throw101010qwe 3 days ago

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Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> but it was around the same time and was a pretty wide spread attack conducted by presumably Israel

Wat.

Comment by throw101010qwe 3 days ago

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/mar/06/internatio...

“ American authorities today revealed they have arrested and deported dozens of young Israelis they suspect were part of a giant spy ring.

Up to 120 Israelis have been arrested since early last year after claiming they were art students and trying to gain access to sensitive government buildings.”

Not sure if that citation helps your “wat” but Israel for decades has been a pretty aggressive partner at the world stage. Every country does it but Israel has a special touch.

Comment by wahnfrieden 3 days ago

They aren't saying Israel did 9/11, they are calling the Israeli "art students" activity an attack. It's fair to characterize it as an attack: apparent spies attempted to infiltrate federal buildings and the private residences of federal employees.

Comment by throw101010qwe 3 days ago

Thanks for clarifying. I should not have mentioned 9/11, I just always remember it because it was right around that time.

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Comment by jmyeet 3 days ago

Former Arcadia mayor, Eileen Wang, plead guilty to being an illegal foreign agent [1]. She faces up to 10 years in prison. What did she do? She allegedly promoted Chinese propaganda and communicated with the CCP.

If Israel was treated to the same standard, two-third of Congress would be tried for treason and most of the Beltway would now be in Federal prison. Senator Lindsey Graham said in his own words he goes to Israel "every two weeks". Jake Auchincloss, Democratic congressperson, said regarding the presumptive Democratic nominee for senate in Maine, Graham Platner, "I'd vote for someone else" [3]. Put another way, he'd rather a Republican win than an anti-Israel Democrat.

When then president George HW Bush threatened to pause a $10 billion loan to Israell over illegal settlements, he famously complained "there are 1,000 lobbyists up on the Hill today lobbying Congress for loan guarantees for Israel and I’m one lonely little guy down here asking Congress to delay its consideration of loan guarantees for 120 days." [4]

The level of influence is unreal.

[1]: https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/arcadia-mayor-federally...

[2]: https://www.rev.com/transcripts/graham-press-conference-in-i...

[3]: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5895682-graham-platner...

[4]: https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-lonely-little-george-h-w-b...

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> What did she do? She allegedly promoted Chinese propaganda and communicated with the CCP

Wang "secretly served the interests of the Chinese government." Doing it covertly is the core of the problem for an elected.

> If Israel was treated to the same standard, two-third of Congress would be tried for treason

Eileen Wang wasn't charged with treason. Our electeds are allowed to have foreign sympathies because voters are allowed to have foreign sympathies. If it's out in the open, it's fine, even if one may disagree with it.

And for what it's worth, Israel has become toxic in the Democratic party, something it wasn't before, as well as on the isolationist (and let's be honest, anti-Semitic) wing of the GOP. So you're starting to see those expressions shift.

Comment by jmyeet 3 days ago

> Doing it covertly is the core of the problem for an elected.

Oh I'm sorry, are all these politicians registered under FARA as registered foreign agents for Israel?

> And for what it's worth, Israel has become toxic in the Democratic party

It's become toxic in the Democratic voter base, not the Democratic Party establishment. The establishment still actively runs spoiler candidates against anti-Israel candidates (eg Andrew Cuomo, Haley Stevens Mallory McMorrow, Janet Mills, George Latimer, Wesley Bell, Bhavini Patel).

Comment by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago

> are all these politicians registered under FARA as registered foreign agents for Israel?

It would be ridiculous to require them to be for simply advocating for a sympathetic position. Doing so would mean the President unilaterally gets to decide all foreign policy, since if a member of Congress takes a position, they're a foreign agent.

> It's become toxic in the Democratic voter base, not the Democratic Party establishment

It's still unclear the degree to which the voters who view it as toxic are politically organized and valuable. The establishment will always lag the ground truth; it would be premature to take a defeatist bent already. All that said, it’s still a foreign policy issue. A small minority will care deeply about it; most people just don’t care relative to pocketbook issues.

Comment by 23david 3 days ago

[flagged]

Comment by tokai 3 days ago

Then flag it and move along.

Comment by myth_drannon 3 days ago

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Comment by engcoach 3 days ago

This development isn’t necessarily incompatible with the idea of the US being a vassal state (e.g. the takeover is a partial compromise as open admission of capture would lead to a mass uprising against the Federal government possibly via a national guard division or the like)

Comment by toasty228 3 days ago

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Comment by myth_drannon 3 days ago

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Comment by basilgohar 3 days ago

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Comment by myth_drannon 3 days ago

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Comment by ai_fry_ur_brain 3 days ago

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Comment by zuzululu 3 days ago

What country do you live where $30,000 USD will make you leave your current high paying job ?

Comment by ai_fry_ur_brain 3 days ago

Im clearly speaking from the perspective of an American..

Comment by Asooka 3 days ago

So this is the USA under Trump. Anti-semitism as official government policy. Didn't take long for him to show his true colours as dictator.

Comment by beernet 2 days ago

Bots in full effect now?

This guy literally helped killing thousands of Israel's "enemies", out of which a majority are innocent civilians. Above everything, you are showing your true color.

Comment by outside1234 3 days ago

We are all fooling ourselves if we don't consider that Israel is interfering in our elections too.

Comment by nico 3 days ago

AIPAC publicly brags about this.

https://abcnews4.com/news/nation-world/aipac-says-it-was-pro...

https://www.reddit.com/r/illinois/comments/1ry8tha/aipac_ope...

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Comment by jfiejfkdjs 3 days ago

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Comment by basilgohar 3 days ago

This is a non-sequitur. It's an "American" organization whose sole purpose is to lobby the US government on behalf of the interests of a foreign government. It should register as a foreign agent as should all its employees because that's exactly how they behave and why they exist.

Comment by woodruffw 3 days ago

I agree that AIPAC may qualify as a foreign agent. But in that case, there are ~hundreds of domestic foreign lobby nonprofits in the US that are effectively unregistered foreign agents; just about every ethnic group in the US has one.

(More generally, I think the idea of a "foreign agent" that isn't actively and clearly sabotaging a country is a jingoistic boogeyman. But we should avoid the appearance of special pleading if we're going to call AIPAC one.)

Comment by throwaway534634 3 days ago

There's a name for that: Fifth column.

Comment by toasty228 3 days ago

You could at least use accounts created more than 5 minutes ago, sloppy job mossad

Comment by throwaway534634 3 days ago

Nah. I like not to ruin my future by criticizing Israel online.

Comment by toasty228 3 days ago

I mean, you could just like not go though the trouble of creating a throwaway account to praise them you know...

I wonder who would benefit from spending such time and effort for so little...

Comment by throwaway534634 3 days ago

To get back to my original comment: you do realize what "fifth column" is, right?

Comment by joxdosba 3 days ago

Acting on behalf of a foreign government.

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Comment by toasty228 3 days ago

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Comment by gosub100 3 days ago

The Thomas Massie situation is extremely suspicious.

Comment by mupuff1234 3 days ago

Israel would be deeply impacted by the results of the negotiations, so is this surprising or unexpected? Any nation including the US would most likely do the same in a similar scenario over what is considered to be almost existential negotiations.

Comment by sndgndgndgndy 3 days ago

It would be a massive scandal if any of our other allies were conducting this level of spying on our country's senior leadership, for the sole purpose of manipulating their decision processes to the foreign ally's benefit. Israel needs to learn to play by the rules.

Comment by basilgohar 3 days ago

From its start Israel's existence has been about not playing by the rules. The days are numbered for Israel because it's not and never has been a sustainable enterprise and its exploitation of the American people and US taxpayer money is catching-up to it faster than it can damage control it away or come-up with more and more creative ways to pay people to call label criticism of Israel a hate crime.

Comment by logicchains 3 days ago

It's sustainable as long as it's neighbours keep being so corrupt and oppressive that their GDP (total, not just per capita) can't even keep up with a country 10x smaller than them. Israel literally has a larger GDP than Egypt and Iran combined, and not because Israel is doing anything special (GDP per capita there is less than e.g. Australia or the US), but because Egypt and Iran's military dictatorships are incredibly economically destructive.

Comment by stale2002 3 days ago

Israel has a modern military and 200+ nuclear weapons that they would absolutely use in a last resort scenario (like all countries would). They are not going away anytime soon, nor are their days numbered.

Like geez, we can't even get rid of North Korea, how are people expecting to successfully destroy a nuclear armed power without getting everyone else in that area killed? Its delusional.

Comment by generj 3 days ago

Unlike North Korea, Israel is highly globally economically integrated. I’ve only ever seen anti-Zionists propose defeating the state the same way the last apartheid state (and Israel’s nuclear weapon development partner) was: a mix of extreme economic and diplomatic pressure.

Comment by stale2002 3 days ago

> a mix of extreme economic and diplomatic pressure.

None of which matters if the demand that you are making on them would amount to (in their opinion, not yours) their own destruction. There is no threats that you can enact on them that would ever cause them to voluntarily do what they believe would destroy their own country and the people/military living their would rather go out fighting. Of which they are capable of doing so, with that modern military and 200+ nuclear weapons.

Thats the thing about those strategies. If the other party just refuses to budge, it doesn't really matter how much diplomatic or economic pressure that you put on the nuclear armed power. They can just refuse the demands and you are out of luck.

Comment by toasty228 3 days ago

Oh, does it apply when the US spies on Europe too? Or only when it's against the US?

Comment by make3 3 days ago

I don't think we can assume that easily that it's perfectly normal to spy on allies, especially when one ally is the biggest military power in history, & their direct sole protector

Comment by lazyasciiart 3 days ago

The US has consistently spied on allies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_espionage_in_Aus...

Comment by onemoresoop 3 days ago

Dude, the Epstein scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. It goes way deeper than that

Comment by warumdarum 3 days ago

They are surrounded by a murderous imperialist religion that is currently purging the remains of all other minorities. The only "ally" they have halfway around the world is split in half, one half abadoning the values the alliance builds on, the other in full blown denial of all reality not fitting into some utopian messianic vision. Man, i would send spies to the ISS to, if i was on a spacewalk and some maniacs in the airlock started a fight on how to cut my lifeline..