"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?
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.
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).
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.)
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?
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.
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 ...
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.)
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.
> 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 than 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.
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!
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
>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.
> 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...
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.
> 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.
I know people don't like AI but here's a Gemini Pro summary (all these have references not copy-pasted here, you can find them just as easily as I can)
The 2018 "Atomic Archive" Revelation
For the first two years of the JCPOA, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was unaware of several locations. That changed in early 2018 when Israeli intelligence agents raided a warehouse in Tehran and stole a massive archive of documents, CDs, and blueprints. This "Atomic Archive" detailed the "Amad Plan"—Iran’s structured nuclear weapons program that was officially halted in 2003. More importantly, the documents provided the IAEA with a roadmap to previously undeclared sites where Iran had worked on uranium conversion, high-explosives testing, and centrifuge development in the early 2000s.
IAEA Investigations and Uranium Traces
Acting on the archive data, the IAEA demanded access to several suspect locations in 2019 and 2020, most notably sites at Turquzabad, Varamin, and Marivan. What they found fundamentally shifted the compliance narrative: Uranium Traces: Environmental sampling at these sites revealed particles of anthropogenic (man-made, processed) uranium. The Cover-Up: Satellite imagery and IAEA inspections showed that Iran had spent months actively bulldozing, scraping, and sanitizing these sites to destroy evidence before allowing inspectors in.
Retained Material: The IAEA concluded that Iran had retained undeclared nuclear material or contaminated equipment at the Turquzabad warehouse as recently as 2018—squarely in the middle of the JCPOA implementation period. Did hiding these sites violate the JCPOA?Technically, the distinction comes down to the difference between active enrichment and material declaration.
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.
NPT Safeguards Violation: However, by retaining undeclared nuclear material and lying about the past existence of these sites, Iran violated its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The JCPOA Implication: The premise of the JCPOA was that Iran had to come completely clean about the "Possible Military Dimensions" (PMD) of its past program to establish a baseline for inspectors. By keeping an archive of its weapons program and hiding contaminated sites, Iran proved it had deceived the IAEA during the foundational negotiations of the deal.
So, while Iran was adhering to the strict mathematical limits on its active centrifuge count and uranium stockpile between 2016 and 2019, the discovery of the undeclared sites proved they were simultaneously running a concealment operation.
> 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.
I am not wrong. In 2018 the IAEA said Iran was complying but in fact it was not. We only learnt about their non-compliance after fact.
Your reference to the 2018 report does not prove your point.
Yes the article states the facts that Iran was not declaring their materials but somehow tries to spin it towards the agreement is still working. The fact is "didn't declare". The spin is an opinion.
Iran hid their nuclear sites. They were not inspected or monitored as part of the agreement. When they were found out they prevented access while they erased the evidence. I'm not sure in what universe we can conclude the agreement is working given this evidence.
Even under the most ideal conditions the JCPOA would have already expired and Iran would be back to making weapons.
"The IAEA has concluded that "these three locations, and other possible related locations, were part of an undeclared structured nuclear programme carried out by Iran until the early 2000s and that some activities used undeclared nuclear material", the report said.
Nuclear material and/or heavily contaminated equipment from that programme was stored at the fourth site, Turquzabad, between 2009 and 2018, it said." -> this is smack in the middle of the JCPOA period.
And yes, this is from 2025, but it's about non-compliance during the period where the JCPOA was active. (and that they were not declared is already a violation of the JCPOA).
EDIT2: Technically the commitment of Iran to divulge information about their activities was part of "Roadmap for the Clarification of Past and Present Outstanding Issues" which was a side agreement to the JCPOA. Without meeting the requirements for this the JCPOA should not have gone into effect. So by not divulging all the information the Iran has violated the terms for the JCPOA to even come into effect. Anyways, any reasonable person would look at the later evidence and Iran's refusal of access to the "new" secret sites and observable effort to hide further evidence and say there is no way that Iran was sincere or truthful in their engagement on this issue. If you read some of the debates on the topic those that say the JCPOA was in effect are saying something like Iran complied with the procedural requirement of handing papers over and that they didn't disclose their entire program is not in violation with the letter of the agreement. It's certainly a violation of the spirit of the agreement and proof of their intentions. This is why this is a bad agreement either way.
> 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.
I did research this in more detail in the past to form my opinion. I don't think I am biased but I am commenting in real time here.
The article says again:
"The IAEA has concluded that "these three locations, and other possible related locations, were part of an undeclared structured nuclear programme carried out by Iran until the early 2000s and that some activities used undeclared nuclear material", the report said.
Nuclear material and/or heavily contaminated equipment from that programme was stored at the fourth site, Turquzabad, between 2009 and 2018, it said.
"The Agency concludes that Iran did not declare nuclear material and nuclear-related activities at three undeclared locations in Iran, specifically, Lavisan-Shian, Varamin, and Turquzabad," the report said."
Between 2009 and 2018. The JCPOA was active between 2015 and 2018. Do the non-declaration of the three secret locations, and possible related locations, and the undeclared nuclear materials, overlap with the JCPOA period. Do we agree with that fact?
I don't know if you're arguing with the facts or with the intent? If those sites are secret, undeclared and unmonitored, how do we know what was happening there during the JCPOA? How do we know there aren't more sites given Iran has hid those sites? How do we explain Iran's cover up operations?
What is your charitable explanation that shows us Iran is indeed operating in good faith? I can't think of any.
Am I biased. Sure. [EDIT: In the sense that I think Iran is acting in bad faith. But the facts are the facts and they demonstrate Iran's violations] You're also biased. I get it that you don't want to engage with the facts because they make your angle look bad.
EDIT:
> You are going against the IAEA and US intel community which are both in agreement that Iran was compliant during that period.
I don't think I am. Do you have a recent resource that includes the details of the non-compliance and still says Iran was in compliance? Perhaps there just isn't an official position on this topic because it's no longer relevant? But if you give me a recent official position from the US or the IAEA that says despite the hiding of the sites and the materials they still consider that Iran was in compliance then I'll reconsider my position. I agree with you that before the additional information came to light the statements were that Iran was in compliance.
EDIT2:
> It would be the first time in almost 20 years Iran has formally been found in non-compliance.
We can read this as many times as we want. You are talking about formal processes, and that today the IAEA isn't ruling that in 2016 lessay Iran was indeed not in compliance (because who cares any more or because maybe there even no process for that in the framework at all). And I am talking about the reality which is that Iran hid sites and activities from the IAEA and was not operating in good faith. You can win the "lawyer for Iran" award and the "technically was not found in violation of the agreement" award. Both are irrelevant to how you need to look at this.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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?
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
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.
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...
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?
>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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Among USA evangelicals, support for Israel (and specifically the country’s belligerence) has notably little to do with Judaism itself or the Jewish people.
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.
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.
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.
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...
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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%".
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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).
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.
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]
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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
According to the left/islamists, Trump administration is totally under Netanyahu control. Why would you spy on it if you own it? Is it possible that the "source" in Pentagon is actually Netanyahu administration leaking false information for parallel construction?
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)
Who are the left/islamists? How does that have anything to do with Israel and spying on the US government? It's the MAGA people feeling betrayed that have been the most outspoken against Trump for his blind following of Zionists calls.
What kind of weak hasbara is this? You guys fell off your game bad.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
"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?
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.
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).
I don't see how that's a win for him since the outcome was a stronger Iran.
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.)
Stronger how? The central command is gone.
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?
>Both Netanyahu and Trump have a vested interest in promoting the idea of...
you said what Netanyahu gained from this but what about trump?
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?
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.
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.
> 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 ...
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-...
> 1500 years
I’m curious what the Lindy Effect would mean in this case
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.
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.
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.
> 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.)
> 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.
Nah. There are always face-saving offramps... And examples like Saddam doing just fine after his failed invasion of Iran.
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.
> 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 than 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.
Israel obviously influenced American politicians through many avenues, not the least of which is the Epstein blackmail ring.
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!
Oh come on. Israel and US have been allies for 80 years. Not everything is about Jeffrey Epstein.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Iran was entitled to have radio active materia. Pretty much everyone involved says they followed the contract.
>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.
> 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...
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.
> 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.
It absolutely did not comply. That only came to light after the Mossad stole their nuclear archive and found about the secret sites.
https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/survival-online/2019/07...
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/iaea-report-says-iran-ha...
I know people don't like AI but here's a Gemini Pro summary (all these have references not copy-pasted here, you can find them just as easily as I can)
The 2018 "Atomic Archive" Revelation
For the first two years of the JCPOA, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was unaware of several locations. That changed in early 2018 when Israeli intelligence agents raided a warehouse in Tehran and stole a massive archive of documents, CDs, and blueprints. This "Atomic Archive" detailed the "Amad Plan"—Iran’s structured nuclear weapons program that was officially halted in 2003. More importantly, the documents provided the IAEA with a roadmap to previously undeclared sites where Iran had worked on uranium conversion, high-explosives testing, and centrifuge development in the early 2000s.
IAEA Investigations and Uranium Traces
Acting on the archive data, the IAEA demanded access to several suspect locations in 2019 and 2020, most notably sites at Turquzabad, Varamin, and Marivan. What they found fundamentally shifted the compliance narrative: Uranium Traces: Environmental sampling at these sites revealed particles of anthropogenic (man-made, processed) uranium. The Cover-Up: Satellite imagery and IAEA inspections showed that Iran had spent months actively bulldozing, scraping, and sanitizing these sites to destroy evidence before allowing inspectors in.
Retained Material: The IAEA concluded that Iran had retained undeclared nuclear material or contaminated equipment at the Turquzabad warehouse as recently as 2018—squarely in the middle of the JCPOA implementation period. Did hiding these sites violate the JCPOA?Technically, the distinction comes down to the difference between active enrichment and material declaration.
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.
NPT Safeguards Violation: However, by retaining undeclared nuclear material and lying about the past existence of these sites, Iran violated its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The JCPOA Implication: The premise of the JCPOA was that Iran had to come completely clean about the "Possible Military Dimensions" (PMD) of its past program to establish a baseline for inspectors. By keeping an archive of its weapons program and hiding contaminated sites, Iran proved it had deceived the IAEA during the foundational negotiations of the deal.
So, while Iran was adhering to the strict mathematical limits on its active centrifuge count and uranium stockpile between 2016 and 2019, the discovery of the undeclared sites proved they were simultaneously running a concealment operation.
> 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...
I am not wrong. In 2018 the IAEA said Iran was complying but in fact it was not. We only learnt about their non-compliance after fact.
Your reference to the 2018 report does not prove your point.
Yes the article states the facts that Iran was not declaring their materials but somehow tries to spin it towards the agreement is still working. The fact is "didn't declare". The spin is an opinion.
Iran hid their nuclear sites. They were not inspected or monitored as part of the agreement. When they were found out they prevented access while they erased the evidence. I'm not sure in what universe we can conclude the agreement is working given this evidence.
Even under the most ideal conditions the JCPOA would have already expired and Iran would be back to making weapons.
EDIT: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/iaea-report-says-iran-ha... again...
"The IAEA has concluded that "these three locations, and other possible related locations, were part of an undeclared structured nuclear programme carried out by Iran until the early 2000s and that some activities used undeclared nuclear material", the report said. Nuclear material and/or heavily contaminated equipment from that programme was stored at the fourth site, Turquzabad, between 2009 and 2018, it said." -> this is smack in the middle of the JCPOA period.
And yes, this is from 2025, but it's about non-compliance during the period where the JCPOA was active. (and that they were not declared is already a violation of the JCPOA).
EDIT2: Technically the commitment of Iran to divulge information about their activities was part of "Roadmap for the Clarification of Past and Present Outstanding Issues" which was a side agreement to the JCPOA. Without meeting the requirements for this the JCPOA should not have gone into effect. So by not divulging all the information the Iran has violated the terms for the JCPOA to even come into effect. Anyways, any reasonable person would look at the later evidence and Iran's refusal of access to the "new" secret sites and observable effort to hide further evidence and say there is no way that Iran was sincere or truthful in their engagement on this issue. If you read some of the debates on the topic those that say the JCPOA was in effect are saying something like Iran complied with the procedural requirement of handing papers over and that they didn't disclose their entire program is not in violation with the letter of the agreement. It's certainly a violation of the spirit of the agreement and proof of their intentions. This is why this is a bad agreement either way.
> 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.
I did research this in more detail in the past to form my opinion. I don't think I am biased but I am commenting in real time here.
The article says again: "The IAEA has concluded that "these three locations, and other possible related locations, were part of an undeclared structured nuclear programme carried out by Iran until the early 2000s and that some activities used undeclared nuclear material", the report said. Nuclear material and/or heavily contaminated equipment from that programme was stored at the fourth site, Turquzabad, between 2009 and 2018, it said. "The Agency concludes that Iran did not declare nuclear material and nuclear-related activities at three undeclared locations in Iran, specifically, Lavisan-Shian, Varamin, and Turquzabad," the report said."
Between 2009 and 2018. The JCPOA was active between 2015 and 2018. Do the non-declaration of the three secret locations, and possible related locations, and the undeclared nuclear materials, overlap with the JCPOA period. Do we agree with that fact?
I don't know if you're arguing with the facts or with the intent? If those sites are secret, undeclared and unmonitored, how do we know what was happening there during the JCPOA? How do we know there aren't more sites given Iran has hid those sites? How do we explain Iran's cover up operations?
What is your charitable explanation that shows us Iran is indeed operating in good faith? I can't think of any.
Am I biased. Sure. [EDIT: In the sense that I think Iran is acting in bad faith. But the facts are the facts and they demonstrate Iran's violations] You're also biased. I get it that you don't want to engage with the facts because they make your angle look bad.
EDIT: > You are going against the IAEA and US intel community which are both in agreement that Iran was compliant during that period.
I don't think I am. Do you have a recent resource that includes the details of the non-compliance and still says Iran was in compliance? Perhaps there just isn't an official position on this topic because it's no longer relevant? But if you give me a recent official position from the US or the IAEA that says despite the hiding of the sites and the materials they still consider that Iran was in compliance then I'll reconsider my position. I agree with you that before the additional information came to light the statements were that Iran was in compliance.
EDIT2: > It would be the first time in almost 20 years Iran has formally been found in non-compliance.
We can read this as many times as we want. You are talking about formal processes, and that today the IAEA isn't ruling that in 2016 lessay Iran was indeed not in compliance (because who cares any more or because maybe there even no process for that in the framework at all). And I am talking about the reality which is that Iran hid sites and activities from the IAEA and was not operating in good faith. You can win the "lawyer for Iran" award and the "technically was not found in violation of the agreement" award. Both are irrelevant to how you need to look at this.
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...
No one’s putting a public traffic cam in the regime’s secret detention sites.
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.
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)
> 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?
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...
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.
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...
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?
>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.
"GOP lawmaker wears Israeli military uniform to Capitol Hill" - https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4254384-brian-mast-israel...
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.
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)
USA almost certainly spies on Israel (and everyone else) far deeper than anyone spies on them.
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.
> They sure do
Do you have an example?
Given that US spies on other countries, including allies (countless examples), I wouldn't rule out them spying on Israel either.
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.
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.
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
Kiriakou also stated several times that the Mossad was known to casually try to recruit CIA agents:
https://youtu.be/R7OWqAgGzwA?t=163
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
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.
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.
There's written legislation saying the CIA/NSA/etc. can't spy on Americans.
Guess what happens anyways?
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.
> unwritten agreement
Ah I forgot writing has magic powers. Especially between nation states. /s
In this case the writing part is not important.
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
Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi
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.
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.
Probably because Trump had a heated conversation with Netanyahu and this is some sort of “consequence”.
maybe someone in China, put 2 million and 2 million together and hired themselves a zionist genocider baby killer on the make!
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Among USA evangelicals, support for Israel (and specifically the country’s belligerence) has notably little to do with Judaism itself or the Jewish people.
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.
Evangelicals themselves recently brought us into this “post Roe world!” Their influence appears to be at its highest level ever.
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...
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.
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.
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...
The parasite completes its lifecycle, consuming the host.
> 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.
The top U.S. officials do the same when traveling to any country. Everyone does this to everyone else.
Murdering children and burning churches seems to be their main goal these days.
The lesson Israel has learned from the Holocaust is “we can do better”, and they’re being empowered to see that through.
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.
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.
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.
Legitimate question, what would Israel need that we don’t already openly provide?
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.
Dirt on anyone proposing that we stop openly providing such assistance?
"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.
Don't we all.
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%".
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...
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.
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.
The vessel state now fully controls its host, but I think public sentiment is reversing it just a little.
Trump doesn't let Bibi bomb Lebanon and doesn't fight to the last American in Iran
> Trump doesn't let Bibi bomb Lebanon
Sure he does. They did it today!
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0g8jymg92o
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.
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.
New blackmail material in case Trump starts to turn on them?
> 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?
They want to spy on the enemy, but they need to spy on everyone to know who is the enemy, obviously
Where did it say they consider the US an ally?
I don’t think it said anything about countries
Strange, I thought this was well known. See the leadership of most prominent tech companies.
if your boss suddenly asks you to carry a pager, do not accept it.
Trump already accepted a gold pager from his boss (Bibi).
I wish I was joking.
Removing all US financial support for Israel and supporting sanctions and ICJ actions is the only way forward.
We are all fooling ourselves if we don't consider that Israel is interfering in our elections too.
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...
AIPAC is an American organization.
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.
There's a name for that: Fifth column.
You could at least use accounts created more than 5 minutes ago, sloppy job mossad
Nah. I like not to ruin my future by criticizing Israel online.
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...
To get back to my original comment: you do realize what "fifth column" is, right?
2 shekels have been credited to your account, keep up the good work green account created solely for the purpose of posting this comment!
Acting on behalf of a foreign government.
The Thomas Massie situation is extremely suspicious.
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).
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.
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-...
I’m confused isn’t there a bill to merge Israel and US intelligence/military together in various ways?
I’m more confused by your username. Wow.
I remember when orange people would flag your comments whenever you mentioned Mossad spying on people
Mazel Tov!
President Trump has written a strongly worded check to Netanyahu in response (according to The Onion)
It's the most reliable source of news these days.
Seems legit.
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?
or more likely, like we the public do not have the full context of whats going on behind the scenes.
Based on what we _do_ know, I have serious doubts that this admin could keep a secret if they wanted to.
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.
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.
This was (I thought) very obvious sarcasm, the man is an easily manipulated buffoon.
I did initially, then decided it wasn't.
I'll go recalibrate my detector!
Where is the proof that Iran was going to attack the US? I mean real proof and not just saber rattling.
They literally merging US military with Israel lol
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.
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.
How many of those countries openly lobby politicians in USA though?
Every single one.
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.
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.
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.
According to the left/islamists, Trump administration is totally under Netanyahu control. Why would you spy on it if you own it? Is it possible that the "source" in Pentagon is actually Netanyahu administration leaking false information for parallel construction?
People who can't read the world any other way than through the left/right prism should be sent to mars as soon as musk can build bases there
At least you didn't wish to put us in concentration camps, unlike your fellow democrats.
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)
Who are the left/islamists? How does that have anything to do with Israel and spying on the US government? It's the MAGA people feeling betrayed that have been the most outspoken against Trump for his blind following of Zionists calls.
What kind of weak hasbara is this? You guys fell off your game bad.
Islamists are people who's mental capacity allowed them to learn one word - Hasbarah.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oh, does it apply when the US spies on Europe too? Or only when it's against the US?
Dude, the Epstein scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. It goes way deeper than that
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
The US has consistently spied on allies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_espionage_in_Aus...
Israel doesn't really need to spy on the US. They can just ask Kushner.
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.
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.
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.
"I hate when I was wrong and other people I sneered at and looked down upon were right".
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.
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.
Thinking that Israel potentially spies on the US government is not what anyone reasonable would call a conspiracy theory.
ask AI with internet access disabled aka: the aggregate of the entire internet. every single ai, chinese included will call it antisemitism.
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.
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.
I hate that people will take “political blackmail is real” and jump to “the moon landing wasn’t real”
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 :)
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.
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.
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...