Anatomy of a Gamble - Jonathan Spyer

 

by Jonathan Spyer

Tehran Has Emerged from This Last Chapter Strengthened on the Strategic Level

 

The last phase of the war, now concluded, ran from February 2026 until June 2026 and was initiated by Israel and the United States with the clear intention of finishing the job and leaving the Iranian regime either destroyed or severely strategically weakened. These aims have not been achieved. Photo: At the White House, April 7, 2025.Shutterstock

The Memorandum of Understanding signed by US and Iranian representatives in Switzerland on Friday almost certainly brings to an end the Middle East war that commenced with the Hamas attacks on Israeli communities of October 7, 2023. The trajectory of the war may already be traced. Its longest phase, from October 2023 to October 2025, follows an easily understandable pattern in which an initial act of aggression by one component of a regional alliance, Hamas, was then followed by the piecemeal mobilization of the various elements of the (Iran led) alliance of which it is a part. Lebanese Hezballah entered the fray first, on October 8, then the Yemeni Houthis in November of that year, and then Iran itself in April of 2024. The subsequent process, from mid 2024 until late 2025, was one in which Israel, accompanied in part by the United States, systematically degraded the capacities of Iran and its various clients and proxies across the region, leaving them bruised and bloodied by the years’ end.

This final phase of the war was a strange affair, based on a series of Israeli and American misjudgements, which together have combined to produce a damaging and negative conclusion.

The last phase of the war, now concluded, ran from February 2026 until June 2026 and has followed a rather different path. It was initiated by Israel and the United States with the clear intention of finishing the job, and leaving the Iranian regime either destroyed or severely strategically weakened. These aims have not been achieved. Rather, Tehran has emerged from this last chapter strengthened on the strategic level. This final phase of the war was a strange affair, based on a series of Israeli and American misjudgements, which together have combined to produce a damaging and negative conclusion. Taken together, these amount to a significant mis-step, which has allowed a powerful anti-western regional bloc based on a shared commitment to political Islam to demonstrate its own strengths and turn these into achievement. Let’s take a look at this series of misjudgements and how they were able to produce this outcome.

Israel’s misjudgement of Iran

Why was the war re-launched on February 28^th? There was no clear and immediate danger. To be sure, Iran retained possession of 440 kg of heavily enriched uranium, and a much larger amount of uranium enriched to lower levels. But Tehran’s nuclear facilities had suffered massive damage in the US’s Operation Midnight Hammer and Israel’s Operation Rising Lion in June, 2025. The key installations at Isfahan, Fordow and Natanz were all targeted and all suffered severe structural blows. Iranian efforts at excavation and construction of new facilities were under way. But there is no evidence that these had reached a critical point making renewed intervention urgent. Certainly, no proof has been offered to indicate that an Iranian decision to attempt an immediate breakout to nuclear weapons capacity had been made.

With regard to Iran’s missile array, similarly, while Tehran was attempting to accelerate its repair of missile facilities from the massive damage suffered in mid-2025 (60% of ballistic missile launchers destroyed at that time, according to one estimate), it had not yet come close to return to the capacities possessed on the eve of that war. In April and October of 2024, Israel and its allies proved that in the field of air defense, they were able to successfully divert the best efforts of Tehran’s missile and drones to strike at Israeli civilian and military targets. The degraded capabilities of early 2026 presented no clear and imminent threat.

Rather, it’s clear that Israel’s leadership surveyed their considerable military achievements, observed the massive Iranian popular demonstrations against the regime in December, 2025 and January, 2026, and considered that the regime was ripe for the coup de grace.

An argument was made by videolink at that meeting by Mossad espionage agency head David Barnea for the possibility of regime change, utilising a combination of aerial bombing and covert action on the ground.

This appears to be the case that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented to President Donald Trump on February 12 at the White House. According to reporting in the New York Times and the Jerusalem Post, an argument was made by videolink at that meeting by Mossad espionage agency head David Barnea for the possibility of regime change, utilising a combination of aerial bombing and covert action on the ground.

Details of the Israeli plan have since become publicly available. The American scepticism appears well founded. The plan seems to have been wildly ambitious. An example: in its initial stages, it was meant to involve the entry of Iranian Kurdish militias from Iraqi Kurdistan across the border into the Iranian province of Kordestan. The militias in question (the PDKI, Komala, PAK, Khabat and PJAK) are small political military groups, with a combined strength of about 8000 fighters. I have visited the bases of three of these groups and interviewed the leaderships of four of them, over the years. The most formidable of them is PJAK, which is the Iranian Kurdish franchise of the PKK organization. PJAK, however, declined to participate in the operation.

So the plan included provision for a tiny and lightly armed force of probably not more than 5000 fighters to launch an armed incursion into a province characterized by a very heavy presence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Success would have been predicated on Israeli air support but more crucially on the very rapid rallying of tens of thousands of young Iranian Kurds around the banner of revolt. This has the manner of a wild gamble assuming the extreme fragility of the regime, which as it turned out was an illusion. The Israeli alliance with the Iranian Kurds was rapidly cobbled together in the months preceding the renewal of hostilities. It is almost certainly to the benefit of the Iranian Kurds that the incursion did not take place.

Why did Israel misjudge the vulnerability of the Iranian regime? In the same way that Iran overestimated its conventional capacities in 2024, and foolishly chose to take on Israel in that arena, so Israel in 2026 failed to factor in the Tehran regime’s own areas of strength – namely its capacity for internal repression, but also the durability and strength of its core nucleus of support in Iran, and of its proxy militias in the Arab world.

It is difficult from all this not to draw the conclusion that the US Administration entered the war on February 28 without a proper analysis of what the Iranian regime was, and of its strengths and weaknesses.

The American misjudgement of Iran

Israel may have made an over optimistic presentation of the situation to the US. But the administration did not concur with the Israeli estimate or plan in its entirety. The Mossad’s presentation received mixed reviews from the US listeners present. Trump chose to go with the more limited option suggested by Secretary of State Marco Rubio: a massive bombing campaign that would inflict huge damage but avoid committing the U.S. to a prolonged effort to reshape Iran’s internal governance. Interestingly, however, once the air campaign began on February 28^th, the administration’s public messaging seemed to adopt the maximum goal anyway.

“The hour of your freedom is at hand,” the US president signalled to the Iranian people as the bombing started. “"There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” he declared on March 6.

Once the regime didn’t fall, it appears that there was no Plan B. Worse, the Administration doesn’t seem to have reckoned with the possibility that the Iranian regime might seize the Strait of Hormuz. Once that seizure took place, and the US determined that the cost in blood and treasure of reopening Hormuz by force wasn’t worth paying, it was only a matter of time before something resembling the current MOU was bound to arrive.

It is difficult from all this not to draw the conclusion that the US Administration entered the war on February 28 without a proper analysis of what the Iranian regime was, and of its strengths and weaknesses. The president was correct, as he often noted, that Iran has little left by way of a navy. “Their navy is totally gone - 100 per cent” he told Fox News recently. “The air force is totally gone - 100 per cent.”

The problem with this is that the particular strengths possessed by the Iranian regime are not located in the field of conventional air or sea power. The regime in Tehran is an Islamist, ideological gathering, engaged in a ‘forever war’ of its own, of society against society, rather than army against army. Its practical successes both in retaining power in Iran and in building influence and strength from the Gulf of Aden to the Mediterranean derive from its ability to mobilise (mainly but not only) Shia Muslim loyalties and commitments, and to use these as the engine for political and paramilitary mobilization.

It is likely that nothing like this really exists in Trump’s world. One imagines him and those around him dismissing such issues as unreal or unimportant, assuming that in the end, everyone’s motives are similar, everything is for sale and a deal can always be reached. His remarks this week following exchanges of fire between Israel and Iran that “each of them had their fun” but that now it was time to “get back to the table and make a deal” appear redolent of such a view.

Trump, caricatured before his presidency as a warmonger, is nothing of the kind. The place, very clearly, where he feels comfortable is where deals are made. And in particular, where deals reflecting the greater physical strength of his side are concluded, with the other side coming to understand the benefits of accepting the power differential and understanding how it can gain from it.

The problem is that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not an entity interested in playing this role. The US could have forced it back. But the political support for the inevitably costly means required to do this wasn’t there. The US urgently needed Gulf oil to start flowing again to international markets. Hence the current MOU, granting Iran an effective restoration of the status quo antebellum, with some added benefits.

Israel’s misjudgement of the US

The government of Israel appears to have believed that the US administration adhered to a similar analysis of the Middle East to its own. The present administration’s participation in the war alongside Israel in June, 2025, and its many previous actions in support of the Israeli position may understandably have inclined Jerusalem towards this conclusion. Trump’s moving the embassy to Jerusalem in his first term, his killing of IRGC Qods Force leader Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, his recognition of Israel’s ownership of the Golan Heights and his brokering of the historic Abraham Accords further reinforced this impression. But this sense failed to take into account a number of countervailing elements. These include: the president and his supporters’ determination not to be drawn into new major commitments in the Middle East, a region which they consider to be of secondary importance to the American strategic interest. This wouldn’t have mattered if victory had been swift, of course. The Israeli underestimation of Iran mentioned earlier seems to have inclined Netanyahu to think it would be so. It wasn’t.

The Iranian regime is damaged but intact, now under the control of a new, militant and ideological leadership centered on figures coming from the upper reaches of the IRGC.

Jerusalem also underestimated Trump’s capriciousness and short attention span, and his capacity for abruptly and rapidly reversing his position. Israel also failed to take into account the growing importance of Turkish and Qatari perspectives and messaging at the top levels of the administration, via the influential positions of Middle East Envoy Ambassador Tom Barrack, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. Both Ankara and Doha hold to a cardinally different analysis of the Middle East which is in most ways antithetical to the Israeli interest. The growing influence of this rival analysis was evidently not accounted for.

Lastly, Israel may have underestimated the genuinely deleterious effects on the US and on the administration’s standing of surging gasoline prices and inflation as a result of the continued blockading of the Strait of Hormuz.

All this has produced a conclusion very far from what Jerusalem or Washington may have hoped for. The Iranian regime is damaged but intact, now under the control of a new, militant and ideological leadership centered on figures coming from the upper reaches of the IRGC.

Clause 1 of the MOU includes a call for ‘an immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon,’ linking Israel’s actions against Hezballah in that country with the broader settlement with Iran. Israel had striven to keep the two arenas separated so as to preserve its freedom of action in defense of its northern border communities. Trump’s latest statements suggesting that Syria should engage against Hezballah in Lebanon in place of Israel once more confirm the influence of the Turkish and Qatari perspectives on this White House, via Ambassador Barrack.

The MOU also agrees to the ‘ending, on a schedule to be agreed upon as part of the final agreement, all types of sanctions currently facing the Islamic Republic of Iran, including resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and all unilateral U.S. sanctions, both primary and secondary.’

The result is that Israel is now set to face the continued onslaught of the Iran led regional axis, which remains committed to its destruction. It is set to do so, for the next period, without the clear backing of its superpower ally.

So the gamble didn’t pay off, predicated as it turns out to have been on a series of misreadings, on the part of both Israel and the US administration. The final question is why – that is, why did Netanyahu, not usually a politician known for recklessness, choose to bet on what ought to have looked at best like an uncertain outcome. Here one enters the realm of intangibles, of course, and one can only speculate. My own view, for what it’s worth, is as follows:

The Israeli Prime Minister wanted to present the people of Israel and the world with the Iranian regime’s head on a plate. I think he wanted to do that because 1. he thinks Iran is the chief danger to Israel’s security and 2. because he understood that unless he could conclude the two years of war with the destruction of the Iranian regime or something on that level of magnitude, he would be remembered, despite subsequent achievements, as the prime minister of October 7. that is, only a victory on that level of magnitude would change that historical perception, in the same way that no-one remembers FDR as the president of Pearl Harbor, because of the subsequent total defeat of the enemy who carried that out. This is only my idle thought, not based on sourcing. In any case, whatever the motivation behind the gamble, it hasn’t worked. The result is that Israel is now set to face the continued onslaught of the Iran led regional axis, which remains committed to its destruction. It is set to do so, for the next period, without the clear backing of its superpower ally.

Published originally under the title “Failure of Judgment: How U.S., Israel Overplayed Hand on Iran.” 

Jonathan Spyer

Source: https://www.meforum.org/mef-online/anatomy-of-a-gamble

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Don’t Forget the Broader Context of the Iranian Memorandum - Victor Davis Hanson

 

by Victor Davis Hanson

Trump’s Iran memorandum is not a surrender or a new beginning—it is the next phase of a strategy built on pressure, deterrence, and avoiding another costly Middle East war.

 

 

The tentative “memorandum of understanding” with Iran has caused glee on the Left and furor among many on the Right. The Left might welcome “peace,” but surely not as much as it enjoys infighting on the Right over the details.

If last week Democrats were calling Trump a fascist warmonger, now they deride his peace efforts as those of a Neville Chamberlain patsy. Within 24 hours, the Left’s talking points shifted from a mad bomber-style Curtis LeMay in the White House to an impotent appeaser.

A week ago, some Republicans were arguing that not one of the prior seven presidents had dared to use force to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Now some of them are deriding him as an Iranian enabler.

What We Are Missing

There are legitimate concerns about the tentative memorandum, including the idea of third-party cash infusions to the regime and claims that violence in Lebanon is somehow Israel’s fault. In truth, history shows that Hezbollah, with Iranian financial support, consistently instigates the killing and then whines when Israel—or the U.S. in past conflicts—responds disproportionately.

That said, much of the current hysteria assumes a radical change in Trump’s strategy rather than a continuity that has brought us to the current denouement. It also does not consider the wider strategic context of the memorandum, the critical role of domestic public opinion in shaping how wars are conducted, or the broader strategy of isolating and weakening the regime.

A closer look at the current position of the U.S. suggests it has done an enormous amount of fiscal, economic, and military damage to Iran—the full extent of which will not be known until foreigners are allowed into the country.

So why did Trump agree to a memorandum that does not treat Iran as a strategically defeated opponent without options?

Do We Really Want to Micro-Manage Iran?

Iran has been militarily devastated, but it does not yet consider itself strategically inert. The regime has little concern for the welfare of its own people and assumes Trump will not retaliate against dual-use targets in the manner of most past presidents who ordered bombing campaigns.

Remember, Trump could have gotten a much better deal had we dealt with the Iranians as we did with the once-defeated Iraqis and Taliban, whose governments were forcibly replaced by ones more agreeable to U.S. demands.

But, with a population of 93 million, Iran is neither Iraq nor Afghanistan, which together required decades of U.S. ground troops, $2 trillion in treasure, 7,000 American deaths, and 53,000 wounded. And in the end, those efforts still did not result in lasting Western-style governments aligned with U.S. interests.

Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq was as large or as formidable as Iran. To fully dictate terms to Iran as if it were an inert protectorate, the U.S. would either have to bomb it to smithereens or send in thousands of ground troops, both politically unpalatable to the American people. Trump must deal with the realities that Americans have been sick of dealing with the Middle East for years. By now, they believe that any costly, enforced regime change on the ground—or any years-long no-fly zone—is not worth the life of a single American soldier.

The War that Is and Is Not Over

Yet Iran remains militarily defeated if not devastated. Its ability to cause havoc should not be confused with the U.S. ability to inflict even greater damage on Iran’s economy without significant concern about suffering losses in a “forever” war.

If Iran chooses to hit Kuwait with another dozen missiles this week, Trump can adopt the 1999 Bill Clinton-style approach to Serbia—something he has again so far avoided.

When that bombing stalemated in its fifth week, and Slobodan Milosevic remained defiant, Clinton ordered the bridges on the Danube taken out. And when there were still no concessions, NATO planes began dropping graphite bombs to disable 70 percent of the Belgrade grid, which, along with other dual-use targeting, finally forced Serbia to leave Kosovo.

So far Trump has avoided the Clinton–Obama-style bombing of such targets in Serbia and Libya (e.g., Libyan TV/radio stations, industrial works, docks, ports, private homes and compounds, etc.). But should Iran begin to ignore its promises and renege on its agreements (and it will), the regime would have no ability to keep its utilities, roads, and transportation viable if the U.S. were even only to spend 48 hours to knock them all out.

In short, the U.S., by disproportionally hitting an entire array of dual-use targets, can force Iran to adhere to its agreements at any time.

Trump’s Political Viability?

Why, then, did Trump agree to the memorandum instead of a few days of dual-use targeting?

He likely did so thinking he could manage the next four months until the midterms without an energy- and media-driven recession in the U.S. or abroad, which would likely ensure that the Republicans lose the House and perhaps also the Senate. And a Democratic Socialist-driven Congress would paralyze the MAGA agenda, guarantee two years of frenzied House subpoenas, and prompt a nonstop impeachment circus.

However, while 38 of the last 41 midterm elections have seen the in-party lose congressional seats, a Republican loss is not preordained this November.

Republicans will likely win the redistricting wars, both in red state legislatures and through the Supreme Court outlawing racial gerrymandering. They might then pick up between five and ten new seats.

The Democrat Party has gone full socialist. And it has de facto embraced a number of unpopular 30/70 issues including property confiscations, open borders, transgender chauvinism, restoration of DEI, the New Green Deal, and 10,000 illegal border entries a day.

Opening the strait will soon crash the price of oil to prewar levels. And the U.S. economy, despite all the hysterical doom and gloom, ploughs ahead with record stock prices, strong employment figures, record foreign investment, more fossil fuel development, and massive deregulation and tax cuts in progress.

By November, we might even see inflation cooling with far lower gasoline prices and the memory of an active war abroad dissipating.

The Memorandum Is Not the End but the Beginning

The cessation of American bombing and economic strangulation of Iran, if both should follow, would not mark the end but the beginning of a new phase of problems for Iran. Once “peace” arrives, so will the internet of some sort in Iran, and, with that, a horde of Western reporters. And then the world will begin to witness hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of damage done to the Iranian military-industrial complex.

The already restless people will feel even more contempt for the Revolutionary Guard and theocracy, who talked a grand game, but whose imbecility and weakness caused the wreckage of their country. They will especially resent the regime’s effort to rebuild a half-century, multi-billion military infrastructure while subsidizing nihilist Arab terrorists—all at their expense. Arming the resistance is another tool when Iran breaks its word.

Critics of the preliminary memorandum of understanding, not without merit, argue that the Gulf states will effectively underwrite the rebuilding of Iran’s civilian and military infrastructure. Regrettably, perhaps.

But not so fast. What the Gulf states say now, and what they actually do, are, as we know from the past, two different things. It will not be popular in the Gulf to aid the reconstruction of an Iran that had preemptively bombed Gulf nation airports, hotels, tourist centers, and oil refineries and caused them billions of dollars in damage.

Time Is Not On Iran’s Side

Iran thinks time is on its side, as Trump—at least for now—faces high gas prices and the midterms. In truth, time and dragging out negotiations are not in Iran’s interest, given the midterms are not a sure Democratic bet, and the price of gas is already falling in the U.S.

Even if it behaves for the next four months as the memorandum of understanding morphs into armistice negotiations, sooner or later the Iranian regime will revert to its innately terrorist nature and begin violating its agreements. And then Trump can hit Iran hard but not to the point of crashing oil prices or restarting the war.

And once the midterms are over, and oil prices return to—or fall below—prewar levels, Trump will be unbound to force Iran to comply with new demands or let it wail and gnash its teeth among the rubble of its own ruin.

The World of Oil is Changing

Even more worrisome to Iran is the current mad scramble of the Gulf states to build new or to expand existing pipelines to the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Arabian Sea—thereby neutering the strategic importance of the Strait of Hormuz altogether.

Indeed, in a year or two, Iran may find its enemies can far better bottle up Iran’s imports and exports by closing the strait than Iran can do anything to interrupt the oil exports of the Gulf producers.

If Iran increases oil production, alongside Russia and expanded output in the United States and Venezuela, prices would likely drop—perhaps precipitously—and that would hit the economies of illiberal regimes in Moscow and Tehran far more than that of the United States.

Geo-Strategy Does Not Favor Iran or Its Former Allies

Despite recent U.S. verbal, performance-art remonstrations against Israel, the Gulf and Israel will both see their interests increasingly aligned; for all the demonization of Israel, it poses no threat to the Gulf or moderate Arab nations. After all, in the past it has taken out two nuclear reactors in an unstable Iraq and Syria, demolished Hamas, intimidated the Houthis, and done more damage to Hezbollah than any other Western nation—all, ironically, to the profit and interest of the Gulf nations and the United States.

Europe may despise Trump. But his antics have prompted it to spend more money on defense, more rapidly, than at any time in NATO’s history. And within a year, a bleeding Russia will have limited ability to threaten European NATO nations. Most are turning rightward and, despite denials, are trending toward the Trump model of increasing fossil fuel production, rearmament, tighter borders, deportations of criminal aliens, and a crackdown on crime.

Meanwhile, Russia is losing or stalemated in Ukraine. China can no longer buy cheap sanctioned oil. For all the talk of its rise, Beijing now imports over 10 million barrels of oil per day and 30 percent of its food.

China’s technological position depends on espionage and on sending the West half a million Chinese students each year—at a time when illegal and legal immigration, along with student visas and green cards, are all under scrutiny in Europe and the U.S.

Lies About the Past

Two other unhinged left-wing talking points claim that Iran is better off now than it was when it was never bombed during the 2015 Obama “Iran Deal” and that only Trump ensured the closure of the strait, which was open before his war.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has been repeating both absurdities.

Warren should ask the late supreme leader and some 80 of his theocratic terrorist cronies whether they would have preferred the ascendant Obama years a decade ago to their current domain in a fiery inferno.

Are we to believe the lunacy that the Iranian air force, air defenses, navy, and missile arsenal were actually in bad shape during the Obama and Biden years because of American sophistry and rhetoric, and that now, after 40 days of bombing, they are in their greatest form ever?

The strait was closed for a few weeks because Iran lost most of its military and had its nuclear program buried under a flurry of bombs. It remained mostly open under prior presidents, who repeatedly warned Iran to stop work on a bomb and then failed to back up their threats.

This year, beleaguered Iran was desperate to shut down the strait as Tehran saw its military and economy in shatters and its nuclear ambitions buried under rubble. Prewar Iran was content to keep the strait open while the regime spread terror and fear throughout the Middle East and beyond without fear of consequences.

In sum, the memorandum and what follows are not the end of the story but merely the beginning. What will follow—years of costly Iranian reconstruction, the absence of a nuclear deterrent, the ability of the U.S. to strike at will, an increasingly sidelined Strait of Hormuz, the Israeli diminishment of its proxies, new anti-Iranian alliances, the loss of nuclear patrons, and an even angrier and more restive populace—will not require an Iraq- or Afghanistan-like intervention.

As the Iranians digest all this, they will stop bragging about the memorandum and increasingly try to lie, finagle, and escape their doom loop—efforts that will only ensure further fragmentation and destruction of the regime. 

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004, and is the 2023 Giles O'Malley Distinguished Visiting Professor at the School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush, and the Bradley Prize in 2008. Hanson is also a farmer (growing almonds on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author of the just released New York Times best seller, The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, published by Basic Books on May 7, 2024, as well as the recent  The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump, and The Dying Citizen.

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/06/23/dont-forget-the-broader-context-of-the-iranian-memorandum/

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JD Vance Is Wrong: Israel Is Not Just Another Ally - Ahmed Charai

 

by Ahmed Charai

This is not how a great power reassures its friends. This is not how America preserves deterrence. And this is not how the Vice President of the United States should speak when the security of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait is at stake.

 

• [US Vice President JD Vance] is wrong to treat the fears of America's most reliable Middle Eastern partner as a political inconvenience. And he is wrong if he believes that America First requires public impatience with Israel and the Gulf while granting diplomatic patience to Iran.

• This is not how a great power reassures its friends. This is not how America preserves deterrence. And this is not how the Vice President of the United States should speak when the security of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait is at stake.

• America First cannot mean allies last.

• America must lead without losing the trust of its allies.

• Israel, for generations, has stood as a democratic ally in a region where democracy is rare, danger is permanent, and the cost of miscalculation can be existential. To speak of Israel as merely "an ally like any other" may please a certain political audience, but it does not reflect the depth of history, sacrifice, intelligence cooperation, shared values, and strategic interdependence that define this relationship.

• Nor is Israel alone in facing the consequences of Iranian power.... Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait do not experience Iran as an abstraction. They experience it through missiles, drones, proxy networks, air-defense alerts, threats to shipping lanes, and the permanent pressure of a regime that has made destabilization a method of statecraft.

• These countries have the right to be heard. They have the right to ask questions. They have the right to demand clarity before being asked to live with the consequences of an agreement negotiated above their heads.

• The Abraham Accords were....were an act of strategic courage. Countries chose peace, modernization, coexistence, and openness because they believed that American leadership could help build a new regional order. They trusted President Trump's vision and the promise that peace would bring security and prosperity, not uncertainty and abandonment.

• If the United States wants regional partners to choose moderation over extremism, normalization over rejection, and modernization over ideological darkness, then Washington must show that such choices are rewarded with respect, consultation, and protection. No country will take risks for peace if it believes that, when danger arrives, America will speak more harshly to its friends than to its enemies.

Mr. Vice President: Distrust Iran, Not Israel

• Why should a democratic ally that has fought alongside America's interests be treated with public suspicion, while an autocracy that arms proxies, exports missiles, threatens Gulf security, and calls for Israel's destruction is granted time, process, ambiguity, and diplomatic patience?

• You cannot tell Israel to calm down when Israel lives under an existential threat. You cannot tell the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait to remain silent when they know that Iranian power is not only negotiated in diplomatic rooms, but projected through drones, militias, missiles, sabotage, and intimidation. And you cannot reduce the security of allied peoples to the emotional management of an electoral minority in the United States.

• Israel's security strengthens American deterrence. Gulf stability protects global energy markets and American strategic reach...

• . Weakening confidence in that path does not make America stronger. It makes Iran bolder, allies more anxious, and the region more dangerous.

• [D]o not humiliate allies in public. Do not treat Israel's fears as political inconvenience. Do not reduce the Abraham Accords to yesterday's achievement. Do not speak to front-line countries as if they were spectators....

US Vice President JD Vance is wrong to treat the fears of America's most reliable Middle Eastern partner as a political inconvenience. And he is wrong if he believes that America First requires public impatience with Israel and the Gulf while granting diplomatic patience to Iran. Pictured: Vance speaks at a press briefing in the White House, on June 18, 2026. (Photo by Ken Cedeno/AFP via Getty Images)

Vice President JD Vance is wrong about Israel.

He is wrong to suggest that Israel is an ally like any other. He is wrong to treat the fears of America's most reliable Middle Eastern partner as a political inconvenience. And he is wrong if he believes that America First requires public impatience with Israel and the Gulf while granting diplomatic patience to Iran.

This is not how a great power reassures its friends. This is not how America preserves deterrence. And this is not how the Vice President of the United States should speak when the security of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait is at stake.

The Vice President's Words Carry Tremendous Weight

I say this as a friend of America, a friend of Israel, and a believer in peace. The United States has every right to reject endless wars. The American people have every right to demand restraint, prudence, and discipline from their leaders. But restraint is not indifference. Prudence is not public scolding of allies. And America First cannot mean allies last.

Mr. Vice President, you are not a podcaster competing for applause. You are not a commentator engaged in one-upmanship before microphones and cameras. You are the Vice President of the United States. Your words do not disappear into the noise of a media cycle. They travel through embassies, war rooms, intelligence services, royal courts, parliaments, markets, and military headquarters. They reassure allies, or they alarm them. They deter enemies, or they encourage them.

When the Vice President of the United States speaks about Israel, Iran, and the future of the Middle East, he is not speaking only to a domestic political audience. He is speaking to peoples whose security is threatened, to countries that have taken risks for peace, and to allies who placed their trust in American leadership.

In a dangerous region, words from Washington are not simply opinions. They become strategic signals.

In a recent article in The Jerusalem Post, I wrote that Israel must defend itself without losing America. I meant every word. Israel has the right, and the duty, to defend its people. But Israel must also protect the American political, moral, strategic, and emotional support that has long been central to its national security. The bond with the United States is not a technical alliance. It is living capital. It must be respected, preserved, and strengthened.

America and Israel Are Inseparable Allies

Today, I say the other half of that truth: America must lead without losing the trust of its allies.

Israel is not a temporary partner, a tactical convenience, or a file on a bureaucratic desk. The relationship between America and Israel is strategic, democratic, cultural, moral, scientific, military, and historical. It is woven into the American story, just as America is woven into Israel's story.

The American Jewish community is part of America's cultural and civic greatness. Israel, for generations, has stood as a democratic ally in a region where democracy is rare, danger is permanent, and the cost of miscalculation can be existential. To speak of Israel as merely "an ally like any other" may please a certain political audience, but it does not reflect the depth of history, sacrifice, intelligence cooperation, shared values, and strategic interdependence that define this relationship.

Nor is Israel alone in facing the consequences of Iranian power. The countries on the front line with Iran are not an audience for Washington's domestic political theater. Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait do not experience Iran as an abstraction. They experience it through missiles, drones, proxy networks, air-defense alerts, threats to shipping lanes, and the permanent pressure of a regime that has made destabilization a method of statecraft.

These countries have the right to be heard. They have the right to ask questions. They have the right to demand clarity before being asked to live with the consequences of an agreement negotiated above their heads.

The Abraham Accords were not a public relations event. They were an act of strategic courage. Countries chose peace, modernization, coexistence, and openness because they believed that American leadership could help build a new regional order. They trusted President Trump's vision and the promise that peace would bring security and prosperity, not uncertainty and abandonment.

That peace architecture cannot survive on ceremonies alone. If the United States wants regional partners to choose moderation over extremism, normalization over rejection, and modernization over ideological darkness, then Washington must show that such choices are rewarded with respect, consultation, and protection. No country will take risks for peace if it believes that, when danger arrives, America will speak more harshly to its friends than to its enemies.

Mr. Vice President: Distrust Iran, Not Israel

Mr. Vice President, there is a contradiction here that cannot be ignored.

You say you do not trust anyone. Very well. Caution in diplomacy is not weakness. But why does your skepticism appear sharper toward Israel, America's most reliable ally in the Middle East, than toward the Iranian regime? Why should a democratic ally that has fought alongside America's interests be treated with public suspicion, while an autocracy that arms proxies, exports missiles, threatens Gulf security, and calls for Israel's destruction is granted time, process, ambiguity, and diplomatic patience?

You cannot ask front-line allies to trust a process if you first tell them that their judgment does not matter.

You cannot tell Israel to calm down when Israel lives under an existential threat. You cannot tell the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait to remain silent when they know that Iranian power is not only negotiated in diplomatic rooms, but projected through drones, militias, missiles, sabotage, and intimidation. And you cannot reduce the security of allied peoples to the emotional management of an electoral minority in the United States.

The American people have every right to be tired of war. They have every right to demand that American leaders defend American interests first. But serious Americans must also understand this: America's alliances are not charity. They are instruments of American power.

Israel's security strengthens American deterrence. Gulf stability protects global energy markets and American strategic reach. The peace opened by the Abraham Accords remains one of the most promising paths toward modernization and coexistence in the Middle East. Weakening confidence in that path does not make America stronger. It makes Iran bolder, allies more anxious, and the region more dangerous.

Mr. Vice President, you may disagree with Israeli leaders. You may defend the President's diplomatic choices. You may insist that America will not be dragged into another Middle Eastern war. All of that is legitimate.

But do not humiliate allies in public. Do not treat Israel's fears as political inconvenience. Do not reduce the Abraham Accords to yesterday's achievement. Do not speak to front-line countries as if they were spectators in Washington's domestic debate.

The United States is greatest when it leads with confidence, not resentment; with clarity, not performance; with loyalty to its friends and firmness toward its adversaries.

America's allies are not an audience, and the Vice Presidency of the United States is not a podcast.

This article was originally published inthe National Interest. 

 

Ahmed Charai is the publisher of The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune and serves on the boards of directors of the Atlantic Council, the International Crisis Group, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the Center for the National Interest.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22640/jd-vance-wrong-israel

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Iran, Like Hamas, Has No Intention of Fulfilling Trump's Peace Demands - Con Coughlin

 

by Con Coughlin

[I]t is now clear that senior members of the Trump administration have raised serious concerns about whether Iran has any genuine interest in negotiating a final peace deal.

 

• Iran's "more rational" and "far less radicalized " chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who signed the MOU electronically, afterwards appeared on television where he vowed to avenge the supreme leader's death with the "liberation of Jerusalem."

• While the continued fighting between Israel and Hezbollah terrorists in southern Lebanon was given as one explanation for the cancellation, it is now clear that senior members of the Trump administration have raised serious concerns about whether Iran has any genuine interest in negotiating a final peace deal.

• Concerns that the Iranian regime, in particular, is not serious about negotiating an end to its nuclear activities intensified following reports that CIA Director John Ratcliffe told Trump and other senior officials, prior to the signing of the memorandum, that evidence gathered by US intelligence agencies raised serious doubts about Iran's willingness to make the nuclear concessions the White House is seeking in any final deal.

• As with Iran's approach to peace negotiations with the Trump administration on its nuclear programme, Hamas is trying to give the impression in public that it is being cooperative while behind the scenes it is making no effort to comply with the disarmament demands.

• Who is supposed to stop them after Trump is no longer president? The Gulf Arab states have become used to importing labor for jobs they prefer not to do; being shot at might be added to that list.

• Whether the Trump administration can achieve what Trump would like remains to be seen...

Iran's "more rational" and "far less radicalized " chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who signed the MOU electronically, afterwards appeared on television where he vowed to avenge the supreme leader's death with the "liberation of Jerusalem." Pictured: Ghalibaf arrives for talks in Obburgen, Switzerland on June 21, 2026. (Photo by Urs Flueeler/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Hardly has the ink on the 14-point Memorandum of Understanding that US President Donald J. Trump signed with Tehran had a chance to dry than it has become abundantly clear that Iran has no serious intention of abiding by the agreement's demands -- namely abandoning its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and re-establishing freedom of navigation through the Strait of Hormuz.

At a press briefing on June 16 at the G7 summit in Evian, France, Trump gave an upbeat assessment of the current Iranian regime's willingness to negotiate, saying they "are very rational people," in contrast with Iran's rulers before the outbreak of the war, saying they were "totally irrational people and those people are now gone," following February's assassinations of many key regime figures, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Ali Khamenei has subsequently been replaced by his son Mojtaba Khamenei, who was evidently wounded injured in the attack that killed his father, and has not been seen in public since replacing his father. Even so, Trump said on June 17 that he believed Iran's newly-appointed Supreme Leader was "younger. I think more rational," while praising the new regime, declaring:

"I think they're very smart, I think they're far less radicalized, I think they're very good."

Iran's "more rational" and "far less radicalized " chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who signed the MOU electronically, afterwards appeared on television where he vowed to avenge the supreme leader's death with the "liberation of Jerusalem":

"[J]ustice for our Imam lies in the liberation of Jerusalem. A hundred Netanyahus are not worth the shoelace of our leader. We must stand with this sense of honor, this perspective, and this ideal, and carry out this mission."

Despite these positive remarks about Iran's interlocutors, Trump also accepted that there were no guarantees that the Iranians would act in good faith during the negotiations that are due to take place while the new 60-day ceasefire is in place, when key issues such as the future of Iran's nuclear programme and the future status of the Strait of Hormuz are supposed to be finalised.

The president insists that any backsliding on the part of Iran during the negotiations could result in the US resuming its military offensive against the mullahs.

"It's a memorandum of understanding," Trump said. "If it doesn't get done in 60 days, that's all right, we go back to bombing."

He promised that if Iran misbehaved he would "go back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head".

The prospects of the Trump administration completing a lasting agreement with Iran within the 60-day framework certainly do not bode well after the first round of talks between US and Iranian officials that were due to take place in Switzerland on Friday were cancelled.

While the continued fighting between Israel and Hezbollah terrorists in southern Lebanon was given as one explanation for the cancellation, it is now clear that senior members of the Trump administration have raised serious concerns about whether Iran has any genuine interest in negotiating a final peace deal.

Concerns that the Iranian regime, in particular, is not serious about negotiating an end to its nuclear activities intensified following reports that CIA Director John Ratcliffe told Trump and other senior officials, prior to the signing of the memorandum, that evidence gathered by US intelligence agencies raised serious doubts about Iran's willingness to make the nuclear concessions the White House is seeking in any final deal.

According to the Axios news website, the warnings were issued during a series of meetings held between Trump and senior advisers when they discussed intelligence gathered by several intelligence agencies that revealed internal discussions taking place within the Iranian regime about a potential peace deal were inconsistent with their public declarations on the issue.

Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were both said to have expressed reservations that Tehran could be persuaded to take the necessary steps required by the White House to end hostilities, especially on the nuclear issue.

A senior source with knowledge of the discussions told Axios, "The intelligence reflects that the Iranian intentions are not in line with their commitments under the deal," a source said.

The report is entirely consistent with Iran's previous approach to nuclear negotiations during the past two decades when, at the same time as regime negotiators have indicated a willingness to make concessions on key nuclear issues such as uranium enrichment, hardliners within the regime have maintained their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.

Trump's experience of making peace in Gaza should also serve as a warning about Iran's willingness to comply with his peace demands. One of the central requirements of Trump's plan to end the Gaza conflict was that Hamas terrorists completely disarm and hand over administration of the territory to an international peacekeeping force.

Despite progress being made on a number of other issues, such as having secured the release of the remaining Israeli hostages, Hamas, which receives military support from Iran, has refused to comply with demands to disarm.

During the latest negotiations in Cairo on the issue, Hamas's latest response to mediators was interpreted as "an effective rejection" of the demand.

As with Iran's approach to peace negotiations with the Trump administration on its nuclear programme, Hamas is trying to give the impression in public that it is being cooperative while behind the scenes it is making no effort to comply with the disarmament demands.

A source familiar with the Cairo talks told the Times of Israel that Hamas is attempting through media reports to present its response as more cooperative, while "in practice it looks much closer to a no." The source added that the response cannot yet be categorized as "a formal rejection because the final proposal is not public... Hamas is still trying to avoid the core requirement, which is clear disarmament."

Despite mounting concerns about Trump's peace initiatives for both Gaza and Iran and the failure to achieve their objectives, the White House said that the American president remained committed to standing firm on his ultimate red line for Iran, namely that the mullahs would never be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.

White House officials insisted the memorandum met all the red lines that Trump set out at the start of the Iran war, such as "ensuring that Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon, they cannot keep their highly enriched uranium, and they cannot hold the world's energy supply hostage."

Who is supposed to stop them after Trump is no longer president? The Gulf Arab states have become used to importing labor for jobs they prefer not to do; being shot at might be added to that list.

Whether the Trump administration can achieve what Trump would like remains to be seen, not least because, as has happened on countless occasions in the past, the leaders of the Islamic Republic simply cannot be trusted to keep their word.

Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22647/iran-not-fulfilling-trump-peace-demands

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The hard-hat diplomat: How Trump’s construction roots may benefit the messy peace process - Amanda Head

 

by Amanda Head

For Trump, who spent decades managing the usual controlled chaos on major construction sites, the current “messy path” is not a surprise. It comes with the job.

 

President Donald Trump’s efforts to secure peace with Iran, described by many in the media as following a “messy path,” mirror the starts and stops, stalled deals and unexpected roadblocks that define typical major construction sites, where Trump has spent decades navigating. 

"We set the foundation. We haven't built the house, but we've laid a successful foundation to get to a good place for the American people. I think it's important for all of us to appreciate how much was done," Vice President J.D. Vance told the press Monday morning in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.

Trump’s efforts to broker a deal with Iran have followed a path familiar to anyone who has ever stood on a construction site: Messy, stop-and-go, filled with bureaucratic gridlock, surprise obstacles, and moments when it looked like the whole project might collapse. Yet for Trump, who spent decades mastering exactly this kind of controlled chaos, the current “messy path” is not a bug. It’s the job.

High-level U.S.-Iran talks mediated by Qatar and Pakistan took place Sunday in Bürgenstock, aiming to build on the recent memorandum of understanding (MOU) to turn a fragile ceasefire into a lasting peace deal. 

The discussions, which stretched into early Monday and included Vance and top Iranian officials, produced what mediators called encouraging progress, including agreement on a roadmap for a final deal within 60 days, with technical talks set to continue. 

Construction site chaos

Developers, architects and engineers all agree that the typical flow of a construction site is a symphony of controlled chaos marked by relentless stop-and-go rhythms rather than steady progress. It begins with weeks or months of stasis while architects finalize plans and municipalities grind through permitting processes—inspections, zoning reviews, environmental approvals—often stalling the entire project before a single shovel breaks ground. 

Once cleared, site preparation and foundation work commence, only to halt again while waiting for specialized subcontractors: framers finish their phase, then electricians, plumbers, welders, HVAC crews, and roofers align their schedules around the prime contractor’s timeline, each bound by separate contracts that include lead times for materials, crew availability, and union rules. 

That's not to mention the interference often thrown up by outside groups starting litigation to block a project. By way of example, the construction of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago was delayed for years because of litigation. 

A single delay like a missed inspection or a back-ordered steel beam can cascade into idle equipment and crews standing by, turning what could be a smooth sequence into a frustrating series of starts, stops, accelerations and bottlenecks that define the industry’s infamous “hurry up and wait” reality.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Skyscrapers to ceasefires: Establishing peace can be messy

Efforts to secure a new U.S.-Iran agreement broke ground in April 2025, but stalled after a 60-day deadline passed without a deal, contributing to escalated regional conflict that included Israeli strikes on Iran. 

Talks resumed in multiple rounds through early 2026 amid ongoing tensions, producing starts and stops driven by disputes over Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions relief and proxy conflicts before a fragile memorandum of understanding was signed in mid-June in Islamabad to halt fighting and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. 

The mid-June MOU signed in Islamabad served as the foundation pour: imperfect, but solid enough to stop workers from leaving the site, and creating a stable base. Implementation talks in Switzerland faced their own last-minute hiccups: a Friday postponement after U.S. pressure and Iranian complaints about Lebanon's compliance, followed by temporary walkouts once discussions resumed. 

Yet by Monday morning, the crews were back on site. Mediators reported movement on a 60-day final blueprint, exactly the kind of phased milestone Trump has used to keep projects moving forward even when perfection remained months away.

Amanda Head is White House Correspondent for Just The News. You can follow her here. 

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/hard-hat-diplomat-how-trumps-construction-roots-benefit-messy-peace-process

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Rand Paul subpoenas Fauci for testimony in COVID origin probe - Misty Severi

 

by Misty Severi

Paul is expected to question Fauci on whether he lied to Congress during the pandemic about whether his office had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

 

Senate Homeland Security Chairman Rand Paul issued a subpoena Monday to force former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci to testify in front of his panel after the Biden administration official declined to do so voluntarily. 

The senator claimed Fauci previously agreed to testify in front of the panel, but former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on her last day in office last week declassified a several-hundred-page agency report on Fauci related to when he was NIAID director, the COVID-19 pandemic and the continuing, unresolved issue of the origin of the deadly virus. 

Paul said the new hearing will take place in a public forum next month.

"Last week, Anthony Fauci notified us he will NOT voluntarily testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, even though he had previously agreed to do so," Paul said on X. "Therefore, today I have issued a subpoena requiring him to testify before the Committee, in public, next month."

Paul is expected to question Fauci on whether he lied to Congress during the pandemic about whether his office had funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

Despite the evidence of a potential lab leak sickening workers at the Wuhan lab, Fauci has continued to double down on his claim that the COVID-19 virus had emerged naturally from a wet-market in the same areas as the lab, not a leak from the lab itself.

No date for the new hearing has been released.

Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage. 

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/congress/rand-paul-subpoenas-fauci-testimony-covid-origin-probe

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'Fast and Furious 2.0?’ Biden DEA let 1M fentanyl pills flow to streets, whistleblower lawyer says - Katherine Pugh

 

by Katherine Pugh

The scandal, mirroring that of the 2009-2011 Operation Fast and Furious, was used to gain intel for cases against major drug traffickers in an effort to eventually save more lives.

 

A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent has evidence that his agency and federal prosecutors let more than 1 million fentanyl pills flow onto the streets of New Mexico during the Biden era and then tried to silence him from testifying after he blew the whistle, the agent's lawyer tells Just the News.

"DEA has a campaign that says one pill can kill, and so the DEA allowing this to happen was really significant. It was driven also by the US Attorney's Office in New Mexico," Attorney Tristan Leavitt, president of the Empower Oversight, whistleblower center, said in an interview Monday night.

Leavitt's group represents DEA Special Agent David Howell, a 14-year veteran of the agency whose whistleblower complaint was chronicled by The Associated Press in a bombshell article Monday.

Leavitt compared his client's allegations to the Obama-era Fast and Furious scandal in which the federal government allowed semiautomatic weapons to flow across the border to the drug cartels, putting American lives in danger.

"After Fast and Furious, the Justice Department headquarters adopted a protocol that said if you have a wiretap and you know that firearms are going to be trafficked, you have to try and stop them," he said in an interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show. "Well, in 2019 they adopted a similar protocol for fentanyl. 

"So the Justice Department's guidance was really ignored in Albuquerque, because the U.S. attorney decided to cowboy and do his own thing in hopes of making a bigger case," he added.

Howell first filed a whistleblower complaint in late 2023 with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel disclosing that the DEA and U.S. Attorney's Office in New Mexico deliberately did not seize large shipments of fentanyl, including deliveries of 150,000 and 50,000 pills.

The Office of Special Counsel then asked the Justice Department to investigate after finding “a substantial likelihood of wrongdoing.”

Leavitt told Just the News on Monday this case proves the Biden-run Justice Department didn’t properly weigh public safety risks against its hopes of “catching the big fish” and “taking down an entire organization," and that the DOJ didn't learn its lesson after the the Fast and Furious scandal.

The public safety challenge concerning the fentanyl operation, according to Leavitt, is that the drug is so deadly that even a tiny amount could kill someone, which is where it differs from drugs like cocaine and marijuana.

President Donald Trump even established fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction in a December 2025 executive order, and his administration oversaw the largest seizure of fentanyl pills in DEA history in Albuquerque when he took office for the second time.

Leavitt noted it’s a bit harder to track how many people were affected in this case compared to Operation Fast and Furious because, unlike the guns, there are no serial numbers on the pills.

Leavitt said more than a million pills "walked" in the operation, suggesting that a large portion of New Mexico’s fentanyl deaths could be related to the operation. He noted the state even saw higher fentanyl overdoses than any other state in the country during the two-year span.

“We poisoned our community to make cases,” Howell said. “Through our own willful blindness, we get to say, ‘We don’t really know what happened to the drugs.’ But we 100% got people killed.”

Howell got in trouble with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for blowing the whistle, and was even told after his first pill seizure that he was no longer allowed to testify in any cases, essentially sidelining him.

“Howell’s view was, if you have fentanyl in front of you, you need to interdict it,” Leavitt said. “That’s how we save lives.”

Leavitt said he hopes to see parallel congressional and DOJ Inspector General investigations to get to the bottom of how many people the operation harmed, how exactly it happened and how to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Katherine Pugh is a reporter for Just the News. Follow her on X for more coverage.

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/cover-dea-whistleblowers-lawyer-says-client-silenced-more-1m-pills

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'Fast and Furious 2.0?’ Biden DEA let 1M fentanyl pills flow to streets, whistleblower lawyer says - Katherine Pugh

 

by Katherine Pugh

The scandal, mirroring that of the 2009-2011 Operation Fast and Furious, was used to gain intel for cases against major drug traffickers in an effort to eventually save more lives.

 

A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent has evidence that his agency and federal prosecutors let more than 1 million fentanyl pills flow onto the streets of New Mexico during the Biden era and then tried to silence him from testifying after he blew the whistle, the agent's lawyer tells Just the News.

"DEA has a campaign that says one pill can kill, and so the DEA allowing this to happen was really significant. It was driven also by the US Attorney's Office in New Mexico," Attorney Tristan Leavitt, president of the Empower Oversight, whistleblower center, said in an interview Monday night.

Leavitt's group represents DEA Special Agent David Howell, a 14-year veteran of the agency whose whistleblower complaint was chronicled by The Associated Press in a bombshell article Monday.

Leavitt compared his client's allegations to the Obama-era Fast and Furious scandal in which the federal government allowed semiautomatic weapons to flow across the border to the drug cartels, putting American lives in danger.

"After Fast and Furious, the Justice Department headquarters adopted a protocol that said if you have a wiretap and you know that firearms are going to be trafficked, you have to try and stop them," he said in an interview on the Just the News, No Noise television show. "Well, in 2019 they adopted a similar protocol for fentanyl. 

"So the Justice Department's guidance was really ignored in Albuquerque, because the U.S. attorney decided to cowboy and do his own thing in hopes of making a bigger case," he added.

Howell first filed a whistleblower complaint in late 2023 with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel disclosing that the DEA and U.S. Attorney's Office in New Mexico deliberately did not seize large shipments of fentanyl, including deliveries of 150,000 and 50,000 pills.

The Office of Special Counsel then asked the Justice Department to investigate after finding “a substantial likelihood of wrongdoing.”

Leavitt told Just the News on Monday this case proves the Biden-run Justice Department didn’t properly weigh public safety risks against its hopes of “catching the big fish” and “taking down an entire organization," and that the DOJ didn't learn its lesson after the the Fast and Furious scandal.

The public safety challenge concerning the fentanyl operation, according to Leavitt, is that the drug is so deadly that even a tiny amount could kill someone, which is where it differs from drugs like cocaine and marijuana.

President Donald Trump even established fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction in a December 2025 executive order, and his administration oversaw the largest seizure of fentanyl pills in DEA history in Albuquerque when he took office for the second time.

Leavitt noted it’s a bit harder to track how many people were affected in this case compared to Operation Fast and Furious because, unlike the guns, there are no serial numbers on the pills.

Leavitt said more than a million pills "walked" in the operation, suggesting that a large portion of New Mexico’s fentanyl deaths could be related to the operation. He noted the state even saw higher fentanyl overdoses than any other state in the country during the two-year span.

“We poisoned our community to make cases,” Howell said. “Through our own willful blindness, we get to say, ‘We don’t really know what happened to the drugs.’ But we 100% got people killed.”

Howell got in trouble with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for blowing the whistle, and was even told after his first pill seizure that he was no longer allowed to testify in any cases, essentially sidelining him.

“Howell’s view was, if you have fentanyl in front of you, you need to interdict it,” Leavitt said. “That’s how we save lives.”

Leavitt said he hopes to see parallel congressional and DOJ Inspector General investigations to get to the bottom of how many people the operation harmed, how exactly it happened and how to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Katherine Pugh is a reporter for Just the News. Follow her on X for more coverage.

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/cover-dea-whistleblowers-lawyer-says-client-silenced-more-1m-pills

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Pakistan gains favor with Trump as Iran mediator, history raises concerns about its reliability - Steven Richards

 

by Steven Richards

The role of Islamabad’s chief nuclear scientist in the beginnings of Iran’s nuclear program as well as its support for the Taliban, against U.S. interests, raise questions about whether the U.S. can rely on Pakistan as a mediator with Tehran.

 

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan has emerged as a key mediator between Iran and the United States as the two countries attempt to negotiate an end to the war that President Donald Trump launched earlier this year. 

"Very good, we love Pakistan," Vice President JD Vance told a reporter who asked about Pakistan’s role in mediating the high-level talks between the U.S. and Iran on the shores of Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, over the weekend. 

Vance specifically praised the role of Field Marshal Asim Munir, chief of Pakistan’s armed forces. 

“I have joked that I have two very, very important people in my life – an Indian and a Pakistani,” Vance said this weekend during the talks. “The Indian is my wife, and the Pakistani is Field Marshal Munir.” 

The summit, held at the Bürgenstock luxury hotel, brought together representatives of Iran and the United States as well as mediators from Pakistan and Qatar. Though the talks started on rocky ground, the first round concluded Monday with Vance claiming Washington and Tehran had made “great progress.”

In a joint statement, the Pakistan and Qatar mediators announced that the U.S. and Iran had agreed to a new “High Level Committee” to oversee the negotiations and the creation of a “de-confliction cell” to ensure a ceasefire in Lebanon. In a separate statement, the American vice president announced that Iran had agreed to permit International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors back into the country. 

But Islamabad's history of playing a “double game” with the United States, its role in the beginning of Iran’s nuclear program, and recent exaggerations of agreements between the U.S. and Iran that later fell apart, raise questions about the country’s reliability as a go-between as negotiations continue. 

“Like Qatar, the United States should never trust Pakistan to act in the United States’ best interest,” Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Just the News. 

The Embassy of Pakistan to the United States did not respond to a request for comment. 

President Trump has expressed satisfaction with Pakistani mediation efforts several times since the conflict began in late February.

"Munir. He’s great. And you have the prime minister. And they just get along great. I figured, well, maybe the military guy would be – he totally respects the prime minister. It's a beautiful thing to see," Trump told Axios this weekend. "But they really helped us with this deal."

The newfound friendship between the Trump administration and Pakistan stands in stark contrast with how the country was perceived, at least initially, during the president’s first term. 

On New Year’s Day in 2018, Trump issued a harsh criticism of Pakistan in an early morning post to X, which was then called Twitter, accusing the country of deceiving the United States even as the country took billions in U.S. military aid. 

“The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools,” Trump wrote. “They give safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!” 

Days later, then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley added to the criticism, accusing Islamabad of playing a “double game” with the United States and harboring “terrorists” in the country. 

“They work with us at times, and they also harbor the terrorists that attack our troops in Afghanistan,” Haley told reporters at the United Nations headquarters in New York. “That game is not acceptable to this administration.” Within days, the administration suspended millions in funding to Pakistan. 

For years, Pakistan has positioned itself as a U.S. security partner while aiding actors that work against U.S. interests, according to testimony from U.S. officials and researchers. 

Pakistan, specifically its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, is known to support the Afghan Taliban as well as the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, a group of militants that works closely with the Taliban. The support continued even as the United States battled against a Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan in opposition to the U.S.-backed government. 

Despite the public spat a few years earlier, the Trump administration relied on Islamabad’s ties with the Taliban to negotiate an agreement with the group that would allow the United States to withdraw forces from Afghanistan, where they had been present since Oct. 7, 2001. The United States invaded that year to pursue the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden. 

The United States and the Taliban reached an agreement in February 2020 that set the conditions for a final U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in exchange for a Taliban commitment not to harbor or support terrorists in its territory and to enter into negotiations with the U.S.-backed government. 

While the Taliban largely upheld its commitment not to attack U.S. forces, its fighters ramped up assaults on Afghan government forces. In fact, 2020 was the “most violent year ever recorded by the United Nations in Afghanistan,” the United Nations Security Council concluded in a June 2021 report. 

Additionally, the Security Council raised concerns that the Taliban’s ties with the terrorist group Al-Qaeda had grown even closer since 2001, despite its promises under the agreement. The UN estimated that as many as 10,000 fighters belonging to various militant groups remained in the country.  

“The Trump administration should’ve learned its lesson when it worked with the Taliban through Pakistani mediation,” FDD’s Roggio told Just the News. “The U.S. used Pakistan as an intermediary with the Taliban, and that agreement was not worth the paper it was written on. The Taliban never lived up to those agreements.”

In August 2021, when the U.S.-backed government in the country finally collapsed and the Taliban swept back to power, Pakistani leaders celebrated even as U.S. forces withdrew from the country.

“What is happening in Afghanistan now, they have broken the shackles of slavery,” then-Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said a day after the Taliban took the Afghan capital of Kabul. 

Pakistan also played a murky role in the beginnings of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. 

Trump cited the threat of that nuclear program when he decided to launch a war against the Iranian regime earlier this year and has demanded that any deal with Tehran must include the end of that program.

The transfer of Pakistani nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya is among the best-documented proliferation cases in the public record. The conduit was the network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, head of Pakistan’s uranium-enrichment program at Khan Research Laboratories.

Khan, who was known as the “father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb,” publicly confessed on Pakistani television on February 4, 2004, to transferring nuclear technology to all three states. 

Iran is widely assessed to have been Khan’s first customer. In 2005, the IAEA uncovered records of a 1987 meeting between Khan and Iranian officials. The meeting resulted in a written offer by Khan to sell nuclear technology, including the possible building blocks of a nuclear weapons program. 

At the time, Iran told IAEA investigators that it declined to purchase some of the more sensitive technology used in the core of a nuclear bomb.

However, the chief financier of Khan’s network later told Malaysian police that the nuclear scientist asked him to send two containers of used centrifuge parts from Pakistan to Iran in 1994 or 1995, years after the meeting, according to NBC News.  

After Iran’s nuclear program was exposed publicly, Pakistan eventually admitted in 2003 that it may have been the ultimate source for some of the sensitive nuclear equipment and knowledge required to start the program. 

Islamabad denied that the government had any role in the nuclear proliferation, but admitted that some of its scientists may have acted out of "ambition or greed" to supply the technology and expertise to Tehran. 

Khan, who had been removed from his position at the country’s main nuclear laboratory a few years earlier under U.S. pressure, was questioned by Pakistani authorities. Publicly, Khan insisted that he acted alone. 

However, by February 2004, the Pakistani government pardoned him. Khan later said that he "saved the country for the first time when I made Pakistan a nuclear nation and saved it again when I confessed and took the whole blame on myself.” 

By the time he died in 2021, Khan’s image had been largely restored by Pakistan, and the state awarded him the honor of a state funeral. Prime Minister Imran Khan called the nuclear scientist “a national icon.” 

“Deeply saddened by the passing of Dr A Q Khan. He was loved by our nation bec of his critical contribution in making us a nuclear weapon state. This has provided us security against an aggressive much larger nuclear neighbour,” the prime minister said in a post to social media. 

Khan’s support for Iran’s nuclear program, FDD’s Roggio told Just the News, is “yet another reason not to trust the Pakistanis.” He added, “it was pretty much brushed under the rug.”  

Steven Richards

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/diplomacy/pakistan-gains-favor-trump-iran-mediator-history-raises-concerns-about-its

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