04/16 Links Pt1: What Victory Looks Like When Your Foe Won’t Surrender; Israel, Lebanon agree to 10-day truce; Outlawing Israeli Self-Defense; The Return of the Echo Chamber

From Ian:

Jonathan Schanzer: What Victory Looks Like When Your Foe Won’t Surrender

Trump’s problems in fighting Iran are tangible: a naval blockade, drone swarms, and missile attacks on allies. But the struggle can be distilled to one word: ideology. The wars at the beginning of this century were waged to defeat that ideology. We called it the “War on Terror.” And it was a war worthy of waging, even though the word “terror” was a politically correct euphemism for the true enemy, Islamic radicalism. But we gave up for lack of progress. From 2001 to 2021, the United States spent more than $8 trillion. We had the edge against our enemies in terms of firepower. However, we could not credibly declare victory no matter how many battles we won. And we could not win because the other side refused to lose.

Adherents to jihadism (who make up fewer than 20 percent of the world’s Muslim population) believe that their faith commands them to fight and that victory is inevitable, even if it takes decades. Indeed, they believe they are destined to win, or die trying. As the late, great Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis wrote back in 2006, “For people with this mindset, [Mutually Assured Destruction] is not a constraint; it is an inducement.”

This is the worldview of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. It is the worldview of Iran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, not to mention the Houthis in Yemen. Adherents to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1979 Islamic Revolution view the world this way, too.

When your enemy is the infidel, and your victory is ordained by Allah, your obligation is to keep fighting, even in defeat. Surrender is not an option. The Islamic Republic not only embraces this mindset; it portrays every challenge as a test of will that it must endure. Military losses or economic pain are spun as proof of martyrdom and sacrifice, to be answered with even greater confidence in the revolution.

But just because someone refuses to admit defeat doesn’t mean he is immune to it. The relentless Israeli–American assault on the assets of the regime is undeniably taking its toll. There is still a chance that the regime will collapse amid the demise of its top leaders, the destruction of its key military assets, and the voiding of its cash-generating businesses. If the regime survives all of that, it will still be contending with a population that is not soon to forget the slaughter of more than 30,000 patriots who were murdered for the crime of protesting against their oppressive regime. The Iranian rank and file will likely be aided by the Mossad, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies from countries that sustained attacks by the Islamic Republic over the course of this war. These countries have deep pockets and a grudge. The combined ability of these parties to provide weapons, cash, secure communications, and intelligence to the Iranian people could ultimately tip the scales and topple the regime.

The problem for Donald Trump is that such things take time. And, as we’ve seen, he fears that time will sink him deeper into this war, just as it has sunk America into almost every war it has fought since World War II.

One possible missed opportunity for Trump was to take a page out of the George H.W. Bush handbook. When the United States expelled Iraq from Kuwait in 1991, Saddam Hussein’s regime was defeated militarily in just six weeks. However, the Iraqi government remained in place, and it was not forced to surrender unconditionally. The liberation of Kuwait was the aim, so Operation Desert Storm was deemed a success. What followed was a long-standing effort to isolate the Iraqi regime through a combination of diplomatic and economic pressure, along with UN measures to ensure disarmament and the enforcement of no-fly zones to protect the Iraqi population.

Such a scenario might have been thinkable at the outset of Operation Epic Fury. But the window for that closed when the regime began to wage its asymmetric war in the Persian Gulf. There was no way to leave and save face.

An unequivocal victory is still feasible, but that may be possible only by waging total war. Which is what Trump implied when he warned the regime that a failure to reach an equitable deal through diplomacy would result in Iran getting bombed “back to the stone age.” His words immediately elicited howls of disapproval from the international community, not to mention Trump’s political opponents, who declared such rhetoric out of bounds. But threats such as “a whole civilization will die” violate not a single law of war. Angry rhetoric does not constitute a crime. And in any event, due to the unlikely diplomatic intervention of Pakistan, a window for dialogue was opened.

The cease-fire that followed only 12 hours later was dramatic, but mostly because it was bound to fail. The Iranian regime sent emissaries to Islamabad to deliver one message: It will not capitulate. After 21 hours of fruitless talks, Trump and his chief negotiator, Vice President JD Vance, sensibly took no for an answer.

The next phase of Operation Epic Fury will be a hybrid campaign. The conventional strikes will continue as necessary when targets present themselves—although we have already been told that we may have reached a point of diminishing returns in this regard.

Concurrently, the U.S. will likely continue to wage the economic campaign during which the United States Navy is blocking Iranian tankers and those paying Iran bribes for its tankers to transit the Strait of Hormuz. The Air Force may knock out additional economic assets to deprive the regime of the ability to pay its loyalists. The handbook for sanctions and other financial tools honed since the George W. Bush administration is likely to be deployed, too. This will be a reprise of Trump’s “Maximum Pressure” campaign on steroids.

For Trump, this is now all about legacy and history. If waged wisely, Operation Epic Fury could bring down America’s most determined Middle Eastern foe. It can also help redefine military victory in the modern era. There will be no white flags, no papers signed on a battleship, no suicides in a bunker. We will have to content ourselves with knowing we set the world on a new course—even as, in the wake of a victory, there will almost certainly be an entire class of experts and political opponents who will continue to insist that the whole thing was a dead loss.

Why Iran's Rulers Are Not "Rational Actors"

If Iran's rulers were "rational actors," they wouldn't have wanted to repeat the experience of the 12-day war in June 2025.

Yet they're not. They are not peace-loving. They don't prefer compromise over conflict. Iran's rulers believe - literally - that they are on a mission from God.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's title was "Supreme Leader," implying that he was the divinely ordained guardian of Iran.

For nearly half a century, every American president pledged that Iran's theocrats would be prevented from acquiring the nuclear capabilities that could lead to the fulfillment of their grand ambition: "Death to America!" Yet no serious actions were ever taken.

If Mr. Trump had not struck when he did, then Tehran might have acquired nukes while continuing to build up an enormous arsenal of drones and missiles, leading to a war that future presidents could not win, or could win only at an exorbitant cost in blood and treasure.

This conflict was about degrading an American enemy's capabilities, not its intentions.

Their hatred of America, Israel and the West has not abated. They continue to believe it is their duty to wage jihad.

Saudi Arabia, the Abraham Accords, and Operation Roaring Lion

Saudi policy toward Israel will depend largely on how the war with Iran ends. Four main scenarios stand out, each affecting in different ways the likelihood that Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords.

In a prolonged war with no clear outcome but continued regional erosion, Saudi Arabia is likely to remain cautious. Quiet coordination with the United States and Israel would still carry strategic value, but the public and regional costs of open normalization would stay high. Riyadh would likely deepen its hedging—expanding quiet security cooperation, investing more in regional alternatives, and holding back from a formal agreement.

In a stable ceasefire without a decisive outcome, the chances of gradual warming are likely highest. Riyadh could present the outcome as inconclusive while arguing that it opens a window to reshape the regional order. If this is coupled with some form of arrangement in Gaza and on the Palestinian track, phased normalization could again become a realistic option. This scenario comes closest to more optimistic assessments, which hold that the prospect of an agreement has not disappeared but now depends on effective mediation and the management of a new regional order. (Rothem, 2025; Ross, 2025).

If the conflict settles into a pattern of recurring rounds of fighting, Saudi policy is likely to remain deeply ambivalent. Strategically, the case for a regional alignment would continue to strengthen; politically, however, each new round would heighten public and Arab sensitivities and push back any move from quiet cooperation to open normalization. In this scenario, there would be growing strategic need for an alliance alongside limited political room to act.

In a scenario in which the Iranian regime is replaced, or at least significantly weakened, the picture would be more complex. On one hand, the immediate Iranian threat would recede, potentially easing the sense of urgency that has driven part of the logic for normalization. On the other, such a shift could open a window for a new regional order in which Saudi Arabia would seek to consolidate its gains, reinforce its position, and anchor itself in a U.S.-backed regional architecture. Thus, in this scenario, normalization would not necessarily accelerate immediately, but if a less threatening regional order takes shape, it could become politically easier for Riyadh, even if less strategically urgent.

The war therefore will not shape the Saudi approach to normalization in a single direction. Some scenarios increase the strategic case for normalization, others reduce its urgency, and still others widen the gap between strategic interest and political feasibility.

Conclusion
Before the war, the prospects for Saudi–Israeli normalization were improving even as the path toward it grew longer, however the war has changed the way the Saudis view the issue. Riyadh no longer sees normalization as a bilateral deal with Israel, but as part of a broader question: what regional order will emerge after the war, what will Saudi Arabia’s place be within the new order, and what alternative regional options will it have. As long as the outcome of the war remains uncertain, Saudi policy will stay gradual, cautious, and hedged. If, however, conditions begin to take shape for some form of regional settlement with a Palestinian track, and there is a clearer picture of the Iranian threat, the overall likelihood of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords may not only hold but increase. The prospects have improved; the path has lengthened; and the meaning of normalization has changed.Top of Form

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My new book on America at 250 being serialized

As the US gears up to celebrate our 250th anniversary, I thought it would be appropriate to look at what makes America successful and what the looming dangers are.

While I don’t emphasize it, I am using my Derechology framework for this analysis, because it turns out that America has been using some of its concepts from the beginning. It is a very useful prism to understand the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I am publishing it serialized on my Substack twice a week. Paid subscribers to Substack will be able to read the full chapters; free subscribers will have access to only part of each chapter.

I can give gift accounts on to my Substack to those who have monthly subscriptions on this Blogger page (or on  Ko-Fi or Patreon). For those who pay $2 or $3 a month I can gift two months to the Substack, if you currently pay $5 a month I will give 6 months of access to the Substack, more than $8 a month and you will get a year gift subscription to access this and other books I plan to write. 

But you have to ask me for them; as I am not allowed to subscribe people without getting specific permission. So email me at elder@elderofziyon.com if you are already subscribing to me and want full access to my Substack. 

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This is the preface and part of Part 1 to the series that will become a book for the occasion. I plan to publish a chapter twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays. 

I think that this provides a unique and valuable perspective on what America means and what we need to do to keep it as magnificent as it has been. I hope you agree.

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Everyone knows anti-Zionism is antisemitism, but they are too afraid to say it plainly

Haaretz (Hebrew) describes how attendance at Jewish museums in Europe and the US has declined sharply since October 7. 

Anti-Zionists insist, loudly, that they are not antisemitic. 

If that is true, what is the link between the two? Why should people stop visiting museums?

Al Quds al Arabi refers to the Haaretz article and says more explicitly - the reason for the decline is because of Israel's "war crimes." But that means that this Arab outlet is explicitly linking Jewish institutions with Israeli actions, even though these institutions have nothing to do with Israel. 

And that is the point. 

Everyone knows that the dramatic rise in antisemitism is linked to the anti-Israel activities since October 7. The proof it that even if they are not willing to say it, they act that way.

London park officials covered over a Holocaust memorial in Hyde Park with blue tarp ahead of a planned "pro-Palestinian" protest. Why? Because they know that it is a target from the very people who insist that they are not antisemitic and who claim that they honor the memory of the Holocaust.

Haaretz says "managers of many venues speak of an atmosphere of fear [and] harassment." They know they are targets of harassment, vandalism and other attacks. And they know who is attacking them.

Recently, at the Free Press, a reporter went undercover as a "pro-Palestinian activist." In February her group confronted dozens of families eating at an outdoor McDonalds restaurant and screamed at the terrified children, "You eat the flesh of Palestinian children!" If families at a McDonalds are being harassed for their imaginary links to Israel, what is happening at museums and synagogues?

We know the answer. We know  Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were shot to death outside the Capital Jewish Museum last May. We know that protesters have blocked entrances to synagogues. We know that Jewish schools in Canada have been subjected to repeated gunshots. We know that synagogues in Australia have been targeted with vandalism. We know that happened at Temple Israel in Michigan last month. 

We know. Everyone knows. Even Arab media knows. The correlation between "anti-Zionism" and antisemitic attacks is undeniable. Actions speak louder than words and people are avoiding areas that are more likely to endanger their families 

Despite the denials, despite the media constantly assuring us that this is only about Gaza and not Jews, everyone knows that the attackers of Jewish institutions overwhelmingly call themselves "pro-Palestinian." 

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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04/15 Links Pt2: Abbas honors ‘pay-for-slay’ official on Yom Hashoah; Carlson’s antisemitic rhetoric: A dangerous echo of Father Coughlin; Attempted arson attack on Finchley synagogue

From Ian:

My grandfather, the Nazi: A German historian helps families unravel forebears’ crimes

When his grandfather died in 2006, Johannes Spohr began to delve into his wartime past.

The historian’s discoveries were grim. Rudolf Spohr was a member of the Nazi party, applied to join the SS, and, as a Wehrmacht officer, was aware of the gassing of Jews.

But the grandson’s revelations led him on a path to helping others research their families’ roles in the darkest chapter of German history.

Germany’s Erinnerungskultur — or “culture of remembrance” — is well-known. Over the past two decades, the country has sought to collectively confront its past with memorials and monuments, exhibitions, public commemorations, and, perhaps most visibly, the “stolpersteine” embedded in streets to mark the lives of individuals murdered and persecuted by the Third Reich.

Nonetheless, for many Germans, discovering how members of their own families may have been involved in the Holocaust is an altogether more unwelcome prospect and one to be avoided.

An increasing number of Germans, however, take a different view, wanting to know just what their uncles, grandfathers and other ancestors did during the war. Spohr’s “Present Past” workshops help those wanting to research their Nazi-era family history learn how to dig into records held by the country’s archives and institutions, as well as how to interpret their findings. The Berlin-based historian also undertakes bespoke research projects for individual clients.

Spohr, 43, admits that, when it came to his own grandfather, “the suspicion was always there.” A copy of “Mein Kampf” sat on the bookcase at his grandparents’ home, while a Wehrmacht uniform hung in the closet. National Socialism, he tells The Times of Israel, was “somehow present in my childhood,” but he also knew that, by and large, it was not a topic to be openly discussed.

“My grandmother would only say the war was a ‘very cruel time,’” says Spohr, “but she didn’t say for whom it was cruel or what she meant by it.”

Two or three stories about the war — one involving his grandfather accidentally meeting his brother in Italy and enjoying a day together on the beach — were frequently recycled. He later discovered that this use of a small number of oft-repeated anecdotes to fend off further discussion was common among many other families.

When Spohr occasionally pressed the subject, Rudolf would usually portray himself as an opponent of Hitler who had opposed the war and had reluctantly been forced into the Wehrmacht. He told others that his reaction to the unsuccessful attempt on Hitler’s life in July 1944 was to ask: “Did they get the pig?”

After his grandfather’s death, Spohr — spurred by the discovery of documents, photos and Nazi-era artifacts in Rudolf’s home — began his research. He was helped by an internship at a concentration camp memorial, where he learned how to make archival requests and interpret pictures.

Spohr’s investigations turned up his grandfather’s Nazi party membership — Rudolf and his father joined up on the same day soon after Hitler came to power — and an ultimately aborted attempt to join the SS in 1933.

Was Rudolf a true believer? Spohr says it is impossible to tell, but he suspects that he was more of a conservative nationalist who was neither an opponent of the regime nor a fanatical supporter. Instead, he believes, he was “an opportunist” who knew how to get on in society whatever the prevailing political winds.

Abbas honors ‘pay-for-slay’ official on Yom Hashoah

Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas on Monday evening awarded a medal posthumously to the late overseer of the P.A.'s so-called “pay-for-slay” program, through which Ramallah provides stipends to terrorists imprisoned in Israel and to the families of dead terrorists.

Abbas awarded the “Star of Merit of the Order of the State of Palestine” to relatives of the late Qadri Abu Bakr, according to WAFA, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency.

Abu Bakr, who died in a car accident in Samaria in 2023, had been the director of the P.A.-funded PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, which was part of the system that the Palestinian Authority has used to pay out to terrorists and their families, according to the Israel Defense And Security Forum think tank.

Under international pressure, the Palestinian Authority has instituted several changes to the pay-for-slay system in an attempt to claim it has ended. Ramallah announced a change last year, claiming it meant that Palestinian prisoners would not receive money for their actions but solely based on their socioeconomic status.

Critics of the Palestinian Authority, including the Palestinian Media Watch organization, have presented evidence that the latest change was merely an attempt to mislead Western donors while continuing to funnel many millions of dollars to terrorists and or their families.

As it announced changes it said would end the remuneration of terrorists and their families, the Palestinian Authority has also sought to reassure those families and hardliners that the Palestinian Authority’s support for imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead ones was unwavering.

Holocaust Historian Rafael Medoff, the director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, noted in an op-ed published on Tuesday that the ceremony took place just as Israel began observing Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day. Yom Hashoah is commemorated on 27 of the Hebrew calendar month of Nissan, which this year began at sunset on April 13 and ended 24 hours later.

“Is it just a coincidence that Abbas chose to honor Abu Bakr on Holocaust Remembrance Day? Probably not, given Abbas’s own deep interest in the Holocaust,” wrote Medoff, referring to Abbas’s 1983 Ph.D. dissertation-turned-book, titled “The Other Side: The Secret Relations Between Nazism and the Leadership of the Zionist Movement.”

In it, Abbas asserted that David Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders “collaborated with Hitler” and wanted the Nazis to kill Jews, because “having more victims meant greater rights and stronger privilege to join the negotiating table for dividing the spoils of war once it was over.”

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04/15 Links Pt1: America’s Arab Allies Are Making History; Nearly all Senate Democrats vote to block Israel arms sales; GOP Senators Push To Prohibit US Funding for UNRWA

From Ian:

For Iran, Hormuz Is More a Weakness Than a Weapon

On Monday, six weeks into its war with Iran, the United States imposed a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. According to conventional wisdom, the war has made Tehran realize that its control of the strait constitutes powerful leverage. In this story line, the strait turned out to be Iran’s real nuclear weapon, its potent deterrent. Because Tehran could use this chokepoint to threaten global shipping, it was able to resist pressure from the world’s most powerful air force, reject Washington’s peace demands, and ultimately gain leverage over its nemesis. Iranian leaders have repeatedly touted that leverage, while analyses in Reuters, Time, and other outlets have declared the strait a formidable tool in Iran’s arsenal.

But this narrative is wrong. More than any other country on earth, Iran cannot survive a sustained closure of the strait. Before the outbreak of war in late February, 20 percent of the world’s commercial shipping may have transited the Strait of Hormuz, but over 90 percent of Iran’s seaborne trade traversed this 21-mile-wide chokepoint. Even before the U.S. naval blockade, Iran was struggling severely to move shipments vital to its own economy through the passage. A blockade will inhibit Iranian exports of all kinds—oil being the most important, but also petrochemicals—as well as imports of much of the country’s grain.

Within weeks of a blockade, the country could run out of food, as well as space to store unshipped oil, requiring it to decrease or stop production at major oil wells—an act that can damage such infrastructure permanently. By closing the strait, Iran has not established a new, meaningful source of long-term clout. Instead, it has indicated how militaries can decimate the Iranian economy and thus really exert power over the Islamic Republic.

SELF RESTRAINT Framing the Strait of Hormuz as Iran’s trump card—a chokepoint with which Tehran can menace the world economy—gets it backward. The regime’s March closure of the strait had already severed both sides of its economic lifeline. In 2024, according to Central Bank of Iran data and U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates, hydrocarbons represented 65 to 75 percent of Iran’s total export revenue. Virtually all of these exports (approximately 92 percent to 96 percent) must pass through the Strait of Hormuz, loaded almost entirely from a single terminal at Kharg Island.

Unlike Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which possess substantial pipeline bypass capacity, Iran has no meaningful alternative export corridor. In 2021, Iran officially unveiled the Goreh–Jask pipeline, a route from a key inland pumping station to a terminal on the Gulf of Oman with a nominal capacity of 300,000 barrels per day. In practice, however, the route was sharply constrained by unfinished infrastructure. During the summer of 2024, it loaded fewer than 70,000 barrels per day, and starting in October 2024, the terminal went dormant for roughly 17 months. Only one of three planned offshore mooring buoys is installed, and fewer than half of the 20 planned storage tanks are complete. Iran cannot reroute its way out of a Hormuz closure.

Imports are equally exposed. Iran is the largest importer of bulk grain and oilseed in the Middle East. Approximately 14 million of the 30 million tons of grain imported into Gulf markets annually are destined for Iran—all of it seaborne and all of it dependent on passage through the Strait of Hormuz. When the strait shut, grain deliveries to Iran’s primary port, Bandar Imam Khomeini, all but stopped. Iran scrambled to reroute through Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman, but that port can handle less than a fifth of Bandar Imam Khomeini’s throughput. Pharmaceutical and medical supply chains faced similar disruptions.

Iran’s economy could collapse within three months under naval blockade, experts warn

According to Nadimi, the Islamic Republic is attempting to raise the global economic cost of the blockade for the United States, while Washington seeks to achieve its objectives as quickly as possible.

However, he stressed that a naval blockade takes time to be effective. He warned that the rising tensions carry the risk of escalating into a full-scale war in the region, as the regime is likely to exert every effort to ensure that the blockade fails.

Given the foreseeable escalation of tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, and as the Islamic regime claims control over the passage and even the authority to impose tolls on vessels, Israel appears to be preparing for a possible resumption of military strikes against Iranian targets.

In such a scenario, the IRGC - which has effectively taken full control of the government - may fight to preserve what remains of its power, or, as some analysts suggest, attempt to expand a “scorched-earth doctrine” not only within Iran but across the region.

Over the course of 40 days of military operations, the United States and Israel have significantly degraded the Islamic Republic’s military capabilities, eliminating key leaders, commanders, and officials.

However, the IRGC - now dominating the political landscape following the removal of Ali Khamenei and the designation of Mojtaba Khamenei as the nominal leader - continues to maintain control within the country, sidelining clerical and conventional state structures.

It has intensified its crackdown on protesters, detaining hundreds in recent weeks and carrying out executions of several dissidents, while continuing to assert its ability to wage war, launch missiles and drones, and control the Strait of Hormuz.

Pierre Rehov: Is Washington About to Replace One Iranian Tyranny with Another?

The issue is no longer whether the regime in Tehran is under strain — it clearly is — but whether Washington is preparing, consciously or not, to replace a brutal clerical dictatorship with a brutal military one.

The idea that a military structure could serve as a "moderate" transitional governing authority in Iran seems to rest on the fragile assumption that professionalism leads to moderation. Regional history says otherwise. From Egypt to Pakistan, militaries that stepped in to "restore order" entrenched their own authoritarian rule. Iran offers no reason to believe it would be different.

What makes the current moment so dangerous is that, if no credible alternative to the mullahs takes power -- one that is rooted in popular legitimacy -- the vacuum will not remain empty. It will be filled by the most organized, armed actors available — the IRGC and security apparatus -- the same forces that slaughtered more than 30,000 of their own citizens on the streets in just two days.

The faces change, but the repression, torture and hangings stay the same.

The former Shah's army, the Artesh, relegated to patrolling Iran's borders, may lack the theological zeal of the IRGC, but it has shown no commitment to dismantling the structures of repression.

Any kind of real, long-term peace requires the total end of Iran's regime, not its adaptation. The Islamic Republic unfortunately cannot be reformed, any more than could the Afghan Taliban. The regime's legitimacy is rooted in a doctrine built on confrontation — both with the West and with its own population. Preserving any part of this ruling structure, whether through the IRGC or segments of the military, risks perpetuating the same destabilizing brutality.

Preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, while essential, addresses only one dimension of the threat. A non-nuclear authoritarian Iran remains capable of repression at home and destabilization abroad. Removing the threat of nuclear bombs does not create peace; it merely limits the scale of the potential catastrophe.

For Trump to declare victory based on a ceasefire, partial concessions, or the emergence of supposedly "pragmatic" actors would be catastrophically naïve.

Whatever happened to Trump's "Help is on its way"?

To say that economic collapse will make it easier for the Iranians to change their government if they wish might sound good, but it is fantasyland. They have no weapons.

The Iranian people are not asking for a redistribution of brutality. They are asking for a new system entirely.

Will Washington recognize this distinction, or will Trump's legacy, instead of peace, be -- in Syria as well -- that he simply exchanged one tyranny for another?

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Because There’s a War (Judean Rose)

It was early evening, almost time for Havdala, when my 6-year-old granddaughter asked my daughter-in-law, “Can we go to school tomorrow?”

She’s a bubbly little thing, eager to get back to her friends at school.

“I don’t know yet,” my daughter-in-law said.
“Why don’t you know?”
“Because there’s a war.”

The way she said it caught my attention. As if it were a simple statement of fact—when nothing about it was simple.

A mother shouldn’t have to tell her child she might not have school because of war. And yet, there it was: the plain, unvarnished truth.

To a six-year-old like my granddaughter, war doesn’t mean headlines or geopolitics. It means no school. No friends.

She looked down for a moment. Then she accepted it.

When she looked up and saw me watching, she called, “Come!”

She was already running down the hall, her bare feet pattering ahead of me—the sweetest sound I know. She turned to look at me, exactly once—confident I’d follow.
She was right.

She led me to the small sofa at the end of the hall.

“My Eema and Abba were supposed to go to Rome for his birthday,” she said. “But there was a war, and Abba had to go away. So Eema went with Sabba and Savta. Then Abba came home, and they went together.”

Watching my face to make sure I understood, she reached for the photo albums on the shelf beside us and pulled one down. Rome. Then another—Rome again.

After a moment, she reached for a different album.

The pages turned carefully under her hands until she stopped and pointed.

“I was a baby,” she said.

And then she turned the page.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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"Pro-Palestinian" Is a Cover Story for Supporting Terror. Ask the Arabs.

When Western activists defend Iran against Israeli and American military pressure, they are not aligning with the Arab world's consensus on Palestinian welfare — they are opposing it. 

The Arab states have actually funded Palestinian hospitals, wired money for Palestinian government salaries, and sent hundreds of humanitarian convoys to Gaza. Yet they have spent this war coordinating with U.S. Central Command, opening airspace to American operations, and actively routing oil flows around the Strait of Hormuz to strip Tehran of its leverage. A former Iraqi parliamentarian captured the broader Arab sentiment with unusual directness: "I am Arab. I see humiliation from the Iranians. I do not see any humiliation from any Israeli." The governments that write the checks for Palestinian welfare wanted Iran hit.

The Western activists marching under Palestinian flags chose the other side — Iran's side.  Tehran sends roughly $100 million annually to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, directed overwhelmingly to tunnel construction, rocket factories, and attack infrastructure. Official Iranian development aid to Palestinian territories has registered at under $250,000 in recent OECD-tracked years. There are no Iranian-built hospitals in Gaza, no reconstruction programs, no civilian investment of any kind. 

The Palestinian flag these activists carry is decoration on a pro-Iran, anti-Israel position. They aren't pro-Palestinian by any definition - they simply hate the West and Israel. The Palestinians are pawns. 

Hezbollah in Lebanon makes the underlying logic visible. For decades, Hezbollah sold the Lebanese a lie: tolerate an armed state within the state, answering to Tehran rather than Beirut, and Lebanon would be defended and the Palestinian cause advanced. When Israel dismantled Hezbollah's leadership and much of its arsenal, the Lebanese said publicly what they had been saying privately for years — that Hezbollah had held their country hostage in service of Iranian ambition, dragging Lebanon into wars it never chose. 

Iran ran the same playbook across the region: capturing Iraqi politics through IRGC-linked militias that consumed billions from the national treasury, transforming Syria into what one Iranian official called "Iran's 35th province," driving Yemen into famine through Houthi commanders answering directly to Tehran. The pattern is regional conquest narrated as resistance, and always claiming they are doing it for "Palestine."

Western activists have never organized against the mistreatment of Palestinians by Lebanon, where refugees are legally barred from dozens of professions, or by Syria, where Palestinians in Yarmouk were starved and shelled by Assad with Iranian backing. Palestinian suffering matters to this movement only when Israel can be blamed. The through-line is anti-Israel sentiment, and Iran — as the primary state sponsor of armed groups committed to Israel's destruction — gets a pass on everything else: the gender apartheid, the executed protesters, the proxy wars that have turned Arab populations into instruments of Iranian ambition, the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.

The media should stop calling these terror supporters "pro-Palestinian." The Arabs who have spent decades actually supporting Palestinians, with money and medicine rather than rockets and rhetoric, know the difference. Palestinians are Iran's most valuable propaganda asset, and Western activists have made themselves willing extensions of that propaganda — demanding that the world protect the axis that has used Palestinians as cannon fodder for forty years while delivering them almost nothing.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Remember Linda Sarsour? She's still lying!

We haven't looked at Linda Sarsour for a few years. People still retweet my discovery that she admitted that she used to be "white" but her hijab magically changed her to  "person of color."

Before putting on her hijab, Linda Sarsour admits she was white. Now she claims to be a "person of color." Neat trick! @lsarsour pic.twitter.com/4km7rs0sjj

— Elder of Ziyon 🇮🇱 (@elderofziyon) September 4, 2017

I still get emails from her MPower Action organization sent under her name, and in the latest one she wrote:

Israel has killed thousands and injured many more in Lebanon and Iran over the last six weeks. Israel is destroying villages in southern Lebanon and bombing civilian areas in Beirut,3,4 — experts worry that Israel is executing another genocide in Lebanon, modeled after Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.5

This is the first I have heard of this, so I looked at the footnotes, both #5 and the others in case there was a mistake.

“Israeli strikes kill more than 300 people in one day in Lebanon, saying Iran truce doesn't apply,” PBS, April 9, 2026.
“‘Everything is gone’: Israel destroys entire villages in Lebanon,” The Guardian, April 12, 2026. 
“Netanyahu says Israel will widen invasion of southern Lebanon,” NBC News, March 29, 2026.

None of those articles quote any "experts" who make any such claim. 

The closest was The Guardian (footnote 4) where it said that Israel's destruction of entire neighborhoods  is called by some "domicide," a term the UN first used against - surprise! - Israel. 

When terrorists are shooting at an army from within houses, armies destroy the houses. when houses are booby-trapped with bombs to kill anyone entering, armies destroy them instead. That is normal military activity, not a war crime. 

But no "expert" has accused Israel of "genocide" in Lebanon (yet.) Only Linda's Muslim grassroots group does.

How many people actually check the footnotes?

MPower Action and Linda Sarsour think of truth as a weapon that can be manufactured.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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04/14 Links Pt2: Who Is Holocaust Education For?; Czech FM: As the West Morally Rots, We Stand with Israel; What the Guardian should have asked Francesca Albanese

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Who Is Holocaust Education For?

Today is Yom Hashoah, which means speeches and conversations and debates about the lessons of the Holocaust. Yet we often pay much more attention to the content of those lessons than to whom the lessons are addressed. Who is listening, and who, specifically, cares? These, too, are questions that should be asked more often.

A couple of recent news stories shows us why these questions are so important in this day and age.

The Times of Israel interviews the leading publisher of Holocaust memoirs in Europe, revealing a disturbing irony of October 7: That day was the deadliest for Jews since the Holocaust, with the attacks themselves closely mimicked Holocaust-era Nazi violence, and yet the anti-Semitism unleashed in their wake has made the world less willing to talk about the Holocaust at all.

It does make a twisted kind of sense. Supporters of October 7 surely see the attacks, at least to some degree, as an extension of the campaign to extinguish world Jewry. In 1948, the failure to achieve that was termed the “nakba.” Now pro-Palestinians have appropriated the word “Holocaust” itself. Why would they recognize its unique connection to Jewry when they are clearly practicing a form of supersessionism that seeks to erase Jews from history?

As the profile of Liesbeth Heenk, the non-Jewish head of Amsterdam Publishing, notes: “Since then, the entire narrative has changed…. Sales are down since the war. Bookshops and cultural venues that once welcomed Holocaust memoir authors are increasingly saying no. Readers, Heenk suspects, are increasingly reluctant to engage with Holocaust material openly under the growing threat of antisemitic backlash.”

Heenk tracks sales and readership numbers well beyond her own company, so she is an authoritative voice on Holocaust-book statistics. Heenk also faces harassment and is under police protection just because she publishes books on the Holocaust. “It’s insane that I’m trying to help people learn from the lessons of history, and now, I’m being told, as a publisher, that I’m on the wrong side of history.”

That’s because, in the modern West, learning the right lessons from history is itself what puts one on the supposed “wrong side of history.” History, to the enemies of the Jews, is incomplete, even a failure. They want a manual, not a memoir.

And so, “People riding public transport or walking the streets do not want to be seen reading a book about the Holocaust. There’s a stigma related to everything about being Jewish, and the Holocaust, as a term, is being abused in a major way.”

So who’s still reading the books that tell us what actually happened, and which has no modern parallel? Jews, obviously, but also Germans: “I publish a lot of books in German, because they read these stories more than in the English-speaking world.”

Now, you might think that if the descendants of the victims and the perpetrators of the same crime are reading the same books about it, they probably know what they’re doing. And that’s true. Which raises the uncomfortable point of fact that Holocaust literature is for people who want to prevent another Holocaust, and such people are a dwindling portion of the marketplace in the enlightened West.

Seth Mandel: The As-A-Jew Writers Guild

The complaint is that the Jewish Book Council is too Jewy.

The whole thing is odd, because these writers are fairly successful. So I’m not sure why they would fear having to compete with Jewish writers who actually like Jews. They’re doing just fine! What these anti-Zionist Jews want is DEI for Israel-haters. They would like their disdain for their fellow Jews to earn them protected-class status. They want to be rewarded materially not for their talent but for their viewpoint, and they want those who share their opinions but lack their talent to be rewarded materially, too.

In one fell swoop, this open letter entirely debunks the notion that one must possess empathy if one is to be a successful novelist. The line about featuring Jewish Israeli writers being insulting to non-Jews in Gaza and Judea and Samaria is exceptionally daft: The organization is called the Jewish Book Council. How much anti-Judaism do you expect them to spotlight?

Complaining that the Jewish Book Council engages with too many Israelis is not the kind of thing that is meant to open a good-faith dialogue about Jewish diversity. Which is why I think at least part of this temper tantrum is geared toward de-Judaizing the culture more broadly.

The Jewish Book Council is a rare lighthouse in the storm for Diaspora Jewish creatives in the post-October 7 world. Israelis are being full-on blacklisted and Jews are being sidelined throughout the arts world, unless they are confessional as-a-Jews who use their voices to denounce their coreligionists. The writers of this open letter want that same discrimination applied to Jews by the Jewish Book Council. I would say you have to at least admire their chutzpah, but I don’t want to offend them by using Jewish terminology.

As the West Morally Rots, We Stand with Israel

Petr Macinka is deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.
I am in Jerusalem because the Czech Republic still remembers what it means to be surrounded by those who want you erased from the map. When Israel was fighting the war for independence and the rest of the world looked away, we sent weapons. The situation remains the same today. When other countries speak of punishing Israel for defending itself against brutal terrorism, we stand to defend the attacked nation. When other countries stop military shipments to Israel, Czech arms exports to Israel grow.

In a world that is rapidly becoming more dangerous, a true ally is defined by what he delivers. This means we will treat Jerusalem with the dignity it deserves as the beating heart of Israel. We are two nations that refuse to be lectured by those who have never faced a real threat. We do not care about the opinions of those who have lost the ability to distinguish between an aggressor and its target. The Czech Republic stands with Israel because it is the only rational choice for a civilized nation.

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04/14 Links Pt1: Seven Myths About the Iran War; Western European Leaders Betray the West; What If Trump Hadn't Attacked Iran?; Israel, Lebanon agree to negotiations in first direct talks since 1993

From Ian:

Michael Doran: Seven Myths About the Iran War

The media elite refuse to credit President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu with a win. They portray the operation in Iran as aimless adventurism. In doing so, they advance the very arguments that serve America's enemies, undermining the credibility of a successful deterrent action.

Opponents of the Trump administration have repeatedly called this "a war of choice," a conflict the president launched without cause or coherent purpose. The administration has, in fact, made a clear and compelling case. As the president has stated repeatedly for years, "Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. It's very simple."

Moreover, at the outset of the war, Secretary of State Marco Rubio described another factor that drove America to act. "They are producing, by some estimates, over 100 ballistic missiles a month. Compare that to the six or seven interceptors that can be built a month." Iran would soon have enough missiles and drones to overwhelm the defenses of Israel and every American base in the region. America could let Israel attack alone, in which case Iran would attack American forces and cause significant casualties; or work together with Israel to eliminate an intolerable threat to both countries.

During the Biden administration, between Jan. 2021 and Jan. 2025, Iranian-backed forces launched hundreds of attacks on American personnel and assets across the Middle East, including over 170 strikes on U.S. bases in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, plus dozens of attempts against U.S. Navy vessels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In any previous era, a sustained campaign of this magnitude against American bases and naval vessels would have been called open war.

The American-Israeli campaign achieved its core strategic objectives: halting Iran's advance toward nuclear weapons capability and significantly degrading its ballistic missile program, which together had posed a growing existential threat to Israel and the region. Prior to the operation, Iran was rapidly advancing both programs, with much of its critical infrastructure on the verge of being buried too deeply underground for effective strikes. The result was a decisive disruption of Iran's most dangerous capabilities, while leaving Iran economically crippled.

In the end, Israel and the U.S. entered the conflict facing a severe and imminent threat and emerged with that threat meaningfully and verifiably reduced. That is the fundamental measure of victory in war. The window for effective action was closing. Trump acted before it slammed shut.

What If Trump Hadn't Attacked Iran?

By mid-2025 Iran was assessed to have had nearly a thousand pounds of 60%-enriched uranium. This is so close to weapons grade that American intelligence said the Iranians could have fuel for a bomb in under a week. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) thought it could make enough for nine weapons. They were likely days, not years, from the bomb.

Now, picture what would have happened if they had actually crossed that line. A nuclear Iran doesn't just get a weapon. It gets a shield. The IRGC and the Houthis could control the Strait of Hormuz (as well as the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait connecting the Red Sea from the Gulf of Aden) and forever dictate terms to ships with infinitely more certainty than their threats today are armed with.

In addition, Hizbullah operates with nuclear cover. The Gulf states face a simple choice: bow or build their own bombs; Saudi Arabia has already said it would. A nuclear cascade across the most volatile region on Earth would follow. Worst of all, the conflict we have just seen to defang the regime suddenly becomes impossible. This is exactly why the ayatollahs wanted nuclear weapons in the first place.

Tehran executed a brilliant strategy, with extraordinary patience, over two decades. The regime's genius was to make confrontation always seem premature. There was always another round of talks, another sunset clause, another International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspection to wait for. A so-called hardliner would be replaced by a so-called moderate.

Each delay bought another year of nuclear enrichment, another generation of drones (used to such devastating effect by Russia in Ukraine), another $1 billion flowing to proxies.

So when we assess the conflict, we must consider the counterfactual of inaction. What would be the effect on our energy security, our trade and investments - and above all the safety of our people - if this intervention had not happened?

Western European Leaders Betray the West

Iran's regime -- not to be confused with its tormented people, many of whom have sacrificing their lives since 1999 trying to oust it -- has, since its installation in 1979, threatened "Death to America" ("the Great Satan") and "Death to Israel" ("the Little Satan").

For 39 years running, Iran has boasted the prestigious label, conferred on it by the US State Department, of the "world's leading state sponsor of terrorism." Iran, along with Qatar, is reportedly a principal financier of international Islamic terrorism as well as a leading agent of global destabilization.

Israel and the United States seem to have concluded, as US President Franklin Roosevelt had regarding the Third Reich in 1941, that, "When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him."

The Iranian regime's "a week to 10 days" must have sounded sufficiently like an "imminent threat" and a "clear and present danger" to have the Trump Administration decide that it would be preferable to neutralize the regime before the regime neutralized the United States.

[The] "sunset clauses" in Obama's 2015 JCPOA "nuclear deal"... would have enabled Iran legitimately to have as many nuclear weapons as it liked by October 2025. When Trump cancelled the JCPOA in 2018, that was the bullet he skillfully dodged.

Other American politicians have wrongly accused the Trump administration of violating the arguably unconstitutional 1973 War Powers Act.

There was no point in allowing Iran to become another North Korea. "You want to see the stock market go down?" Trump asked on Fox News. "Let a couple of nuclear bombs be dropped on us."

Most of these politicians in Europe never condemned decades of atrocities committed by Iran's regime. On January 9, 2026 — at the very moment Iran's regime was slaughtering more than 30,000 of its unarmed people on the streets — Starmer, Macron and Merz published a joint statement heroically expressing "deep concern." That was it.

The immigration to Western Europe of increasingly large Muslim populations, who never assimilated and seem quite devoted to a hatred for Israel and Jews -- as well as for Christians -- has contributed to a resurgence in antagonism toward Jews among political leaders seeking votes throughout Western Europe.

"Western Europe is profoundly afflicted by a political and sociological death wish," wrote Conrad Black last month. "The United States will not save them from that; only they can."

Israel — which most West European leaders in power seem to hold in contempt — is clearly the most reliable ally of the United States; it is these West European leaders who deserve to be held in contempt. Under their dismal and unprincipled leadership, and their wanton surrender to demanding newcomers, Western Europe as we know it may well be heading toward collapse.

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Amnesty International is Encouraging Thousands of Civilians to Break International Law and Endanger Themselves

Amnesty International is promoting the Global Sumud Flotilla which it says is "attempting to break Israel's unlawful blockade on the occupied Gaza Strip." 

Amnesty is an organization that grounds almost all of its reports and advocacy in careful legal argument, employing lawyers to parse the Fourth Geneva Convention, ICJ decisions, international conventions and other customary international law. It is not a street protest group making instinctive moral appeals. It is an institution that built its credibility on the claim that the law is on its side.

And in 2011, Amnesty admitted that Israel's naval blockade of Gaza was legal.

Following Israel's interception of the Mavi Marmara, the UN Secretary-General's Panel of Inquiry — chaired by former New Zealand Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer — found that Israel's naval blockade of Gaza was a legitimate security measure under international law. Amnesty's response published the same day was explicit: "The Palmer report's finding that the naval blockade is lawful should not be interpreted to mean that the entire closure regime imposed on Gaza is legal." Amnesty accepted the legality of the naval blockade finding and aimed its fire at the broader land and air closure regime instead. Israel and many others disagree about the legality of Israel's general policies in Gaza, but Amnesty didn't dispute the Palmer Report's naval finding.

Under the San Remo Manual, the leading restatement of customary law on naval warfare, a properly declared blockade may be enforced against any vessel attempting to breach it, including in international waters. Vessels can be captured; proportionate force may be used if they resist after warning. The cargo's humanitarian character and the passengers' "peaceful intent" are not exemptions. 

Yet Amnesty now calls the naval blockade "illegal," demands states ensure "safe passage" for the flotilla, and frames any Israeli interception as itself a violation of international law. As far as I can tell, it has never advanced a legal argument disputing the Palmer Report.

This means that Amnesty, an organization that prides itself on supporting international law, is enthusiastically supporting breaking international law. 

Which means that a human rights organization is encouraging thousands of civilians to enter a military zone and to risk their lives to do something illegal. 

That doesn't sound like human rights, does it?

A human rights organization's core function is to protect human beings from foreseeable harm. Encouraging unarmed civilians to challenge a military blockade, while omitting any acknowledgment that interception is the predictable and legally permitted outcome, inverts that function entirely. 

But it is even worse than that.

Amnesty has repeatedly accused Israel of genocide in Gaza. It claims Israel targets reporters, doctors, and rights workers.  Amnesty says "Israel persists in its genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza" even after the ceasefire.  If they genuinely believe that — if Israel is an army currently engaged in deliberate mass extermination — then encouraging unarmed civilians to sail directly into its path isn't solidarity. It's supporting mass suicide.  This is a curious position for a human rights organization to take. 

Or it reveals that Amnesty doesn't actually believe its own most extreme accusations — that the genocide rhetoric is agitprop, not analysis

Either way, Amnesty is not protecting human rights here. It is gambling with human lives.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Some German cartoons making fun of antisemitism

A couple of years ago, a book (and art exhibit) was released in Germany called "Antisemitism for Beginners." it is a satirical take on antisemitism. I translated some of the cartoons here.

The cover image:

Others:

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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04/13 Links Pt2: Holocaust Memorial Day has been universalised. Yom HaShoah cannot be; Sayyid Qutb: the godfather of Islamism; The Paranoid Prophet of Loserdom; The Arab Case for Israel

From Ian:

Sayyid Qutb: the godfather of Islamism

Throughout the early 1950s, the deepening of Qutb’s Islamism, the intensification of his cultural opposition to what he called the ‘Western disease’, meshed with his increasingly vocalised anti-Semitism. This was writ large in Our Struggle Against the Jews, a work that conjured up Jewish people as the eternal, cosmic enemy of Muslims everywhere. For Qutb, Israel was the face not just of the Western ‘crusaders’, but of evil.

As Qutb’s Islamist embrace deepened, Egyptian nationalist forces were in the process of putting an end to British occupation and toppling the monarchy. In the initial aftermath of the Free Officers coup d’état in July 1952, Egypt’s new leader, Colonel Gamal Abdel al Nasser, was seemingly keen to keep the Muslim Brotherhood onside. Qutb himself, his status as an Islamic intellectual rising, was also promoted by the new regime. He spoke at Free Officers events and was given a chance to deliver public radio lectures on the importance of Islamic values.

Yet the secular aspirations of Nasserite nationalists – ‘Religion is for God and the nation for all’, as Nasser put it – always sat uneasily alongside the Islamist dreams of the Muslim Brotherhood and now Qutb. In February 1953, Qutb finally joined the Muslim Brotherhood. He proclaimed: ‘No other movement can stand up to the Zionist and the colonialist crusaders.’

In the months that followed, tensions between the Muslim Brotherhood and Egyptians’ nationalist rulers mounted, culminating in the disbanding of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1954 and the arrest and eventual imprisonment of hundreds of members, including Qutb. It was in prison that Qutb – ill, embittered and hardened against Nasser and secular nationalism – produced Milestones, arguably the defining document of Islamism. From the start, Milestones is shot through with revolutionary intent. Cosplaying as a What Is to Be Done? – Lenin’s 1901 political cri de coeur – for Islamists, it begins by offering a diagnosis of the spiritual crisis in which mankind finds itself. This amounts to a recapitulation of Qutb’s long-standing cultural critique of the West, of the way in which the elevation of human reason has disenchanted the world, depriving people of ‘any healthy values for the guidance of mankind’. Only Islam has the answer, he writes. Only Islam has the capacity to re-enchant the world, to suffuse it with the breath of the divine.

The problem, Qutb argues, is that the world is steeped in Jahilyyah (‘age of ignorance’). Previously, this was a term scholars used to refer to the supposed moral turpitude of the pre-Muslim world. But Qutb turns it into something more abstract – a reference to any society under the sway of an authority other than that of Allah. Any society, that is, that elevates human reason to a position of authority, or that places a value on freedom or material progress. That goes for all social forms and political ideologies of Western origin, from the liberal to the Communist to the nationalist. All societies are ‘jahili’, Qutb writes, that have ‘delegated the law-making capacity of God to others’ – that have, in short, usurped the ‘sovereignty’ of Allah. There is, he writes, ‘no authority except God’s, no law except from God, and no authority of one man over another, as the authority in all respects belongs to God’.

‘Sovereignty’ is the key concept in Milestones. Adapted from the work of Indian Islamist, Abdul Maududi (1903-1979), with whom Qutb had been corresponding in prison, ‘sovereignty’ in Qutb’s world ought to belong solely to Allah – an assertion he draws from the Muslim declaration of faith, ‘There is no deity except Allah’ (La ilaha illallah). This sovereignty is not limited to spiritual affairs. There is no room for secularism in the Islamist worldview. Allah’s writ applies to every aspect of human reality. As he put it in In the Shade of the Koran, ‘it is not natural for religion to be separated from [the affairs] of the world’. Qutb’s stated ambition in Milestones is to replace every man-made law, custom and tradition ‘with a new concept of human life, to create a new world on the foundation of submission to the creator’. This, he says, is Islam’s ‘revolutionary message’.

At points, Qutb frames this message in terms of freedom and even ‘autonomy’, stating that Islam ‘is really a universal declaration of the freedom of man’. He argues that jahili societies enslave men to laws made by other men, and – in a pointed allusion to what he perceives as Western freedom – enslave them to their own animal-like desires. Islam, by contrast, will liberate men both from secular authorities and from their own impulses. Not by encouraging them to exercise their own reason, as the actual self-governing promise of ‘autonomy’ has it, but through their submission to their only right and true ruler: Allah. This is Qutb’s vision of freedom, ‘the total submission to God alone’.

It is a singular, brutal vision. It not only recognises no other authority, but also, as Qutb makes clear, no other ties, bonds or commitments. It floats free of family, friends and, importantly, nation. It’s a vision that, in its sheer, inhuman abstraction, transcends all boundaries – a vision global in scope, and horrifying in ambition.

And how is this Islamic society to be realised? Through what Qutb calls a ‘vanguard’ of true believers. Those who, in every aspect of their existence, have freed themselves from jahili society and submitted themselves entirely to Allah. Those who live only according to the laws of God, not man. That is who Milestones is aimed at – the revolutionary cell.

The Paranoid Prophet of Loserdom

With his long beard, resonant voice, outgoing personality, and bellicose, mystical rhetoric, Dugin is regarded by his global fan base and by his enemies alike as a kind of geopolitical genius, the most prominent representative of contemporary Russian political thought, and, most of all, the inspiration behind Russia’s foreign policy—Putin’s personal Rasputin. Like most things in the 21st century, the reality is far more childish, more ridiculous, and, because of that, more frightening.

The puerile grandiosity of his book titles, with their aura of esotericism and science fiction—The Fourth Political Theory, Eurasian Mission: An Introduction to Neo-Eurasianism, Last War of the World-Island—is in line with their content, which is a jumble of nihilistic fantasies, fascist dreams, totalitarian plans, and ridiculous predictions. In a piece written in the aftermath of Oct. 7, Dugin announced that Pakistan, Turkey, and Indonesia were about to rally to the side of the Palestinians, who will launch an uprising in East Jerusalem that will lead to the sealing-off of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and to World War III, during which Russia will “at last” side with the Muslims against the Israelis, the West, and the forces of LGBTQ.

At their even less incoherent, the so-called neo-Eurasian or fourth-political theories that he presents as original are, in fact, largely copied and pasted from more coherent anti-modern, anti-Enlightenment Western theorists and philosophers. The result is a vision of history that can only be called gnostic and that can be summarized in a simple paragraph:

The present geopolitical situation is the latest episode of an ancestral cosmic war. Two types of societies clash: The evil ones, which he calls “thalassocratic,” are essentially treacherous because they’re governed by the mischievous, untrustworthy “Atlanticists” and are engineered by commerce, exchanges, individualism, and egalitarianism. The good ones, the “tellurocratic” societies, are rooted in soil, knighthood, religion, and vertical hierarchy. The thalassocratists (the United States, Western Europe, protestants, atheists, Israel, and the Jews) are liberal children of darkness. The tellurocratists (the Russians, the Orthodox and the Catholics, and Muslims, especially Shiites) are children of light. At stake is the human soul. Should the Russians (or the Iranians) lose, there is no reason that the world should continue: In a recent interview, Dugin declared that Moscow would provide nuclear weapons to anyone dedicated to fighting “the West.”

The Phantom Base

In an Information State, the struggle centers on who can generate and assume control over these bubbles of attention. The aim is to become expert at producing them so that when one bursts, another can take its place. This has become the work of a strange alliance: nominally pro-Trump figures like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon joining forces with liberal media outlets. Once shunned for their ties to Trump, Carlson and Bannon are now treated as credible and brave sources by publications eager to amplify stories that cast him in a damaging light.

The result: the enduring trope of a “MAGA base in revolt,” which entered the news cycle even as Trump was winning by a historic margin in 2024 and has never left. Notably, in light of factional skirmishing among right-wing elites, coverage of this supposed civil war relies less on field reporting than on breathless accounts built around overt partisan messaging and leaked quotes from anonymous administration officials.

On a single day in mid-June 2025, for instance, Politico ran one story touting “the MAGA split over Israel,” citing Tucker Carlson’s claim that Israel was dragging the United States into war with Iran, and another headlined: “MAGA Warned Trump on Iran. Now He’s in an Impossible Position.” In a lengthy post on X, Carlson warned that “the first week of a war with Iran could easily kill thousands of Americans.” He called a strike a “profound betrayal” that would end Trump’s presidency and predicted that the United States would lose to Iran’s supposedly superior military. Bannon said that military action would “tear the country apart.” His protégé Jack Posobiec asked followers what a new Middle East conflict would do to summer gas prices—after Carlson had already forecast $30-a-gallon fuel and a “collapse” of the U.S. economy.

To point out that these predictions were inaccurate is too generous. They functioned as threats, issued by the Carlson-Bannon faction and echoed by sympathizers within the administration, aimed at asserting a veto over the president’s policy. When Trump nevertheless ordered strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, his base overwhelmingly backed him. According to a CBS News /YouGov poll, 85 percent of Republicans supported the action, including 94 percent of self-identified “MAGA Republicans.”

Trump’s base faced its ultimate stress test this March, when the U.S. and Israel jointly launched a war against Iran. This time, Carlson, Bannon, and others moved past dire predictions into an open conflict with the president and his party. With the war underway, they were joined by former National Counterterrorism Center director Joe Kent, a decorated combat veteran, failed congressional candidate, and member of the Carlson media circle. Kent resigned from his post with a flamboyant open letter in which he blamed Israel for dragging America into the current war; for the death of his first wife, killed in Syria in 2019 by an Islamic State suicide bomber while deployed as a U.S. Naval officer; and for the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Within hours of resigning, Kent embarked on a press junket that had clearly been coordinated beforehand. First stop: an interview with Carlson.

If the premonitions of civil war were valid, this was the moment when the simmering discontent on the Right should have erupted into a full-scale rejection of Trumpism. After all, Trump had betrayed his promise to end “stupid wars” in the Middle East. Yet even as a majority of Americans expressed disapproval of the war, the military action received overwhelming support from Republican voters and proved exceptionally popular with self-identified members of the MAGA base. One poll conducted by CBS News and YouGov between March 17 and March 20 found that 92 percent of MAGA Republicans supported the military action against Iran. Of course, pollsters are often wrong—but so are podcasters. If MAGA sentiments shift, a possibility that becomes more likely if ground forces are deployed in a protracted struggle, that would only confirm the truism that unsuccessful wars are unpopular.

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