03/19 Links Pt2: USAID investigating U.N. staff for Hamas ties; The Many Faces of Tucker Carlson; Rama's Politically Correct Nazism; Despite War, Israel Ranks 8th in Global Happiness Survey

From Ian:

Ersatz Israel

Antisemitism isn’t antipathy toward individual Jews. Rather, it is and has always been a structure of discourse pitched against Israel as a whole. It isn’t a question of hatred, or self-hatred, but an abortive attempt to restore moral coherence in a situation of mental and political breakdown.

Israel is designated as a conspiratorial agency driving this crisis and the individual failures extending from it. But the formula inverts reality. Despite persistent misconceptions on this point, Israel designates the conservative pole in the Western synthesis. Christianity, and the “lost sheep of Israel” (such as myself), represents the revolutionary, universal pole. Drawing from that well, John Lennon’s utopian anthem “Imagine” dreams of abolishing religion and nations to establish a borderless brotherhood of perpetual peace. In the decades since Lennon was shot, the West has pursued this fantasy to the point of auto-destruction. Meanwhile, Israel has moved in the opposite direction, reaffirming its sovereignty in the teeth of existential hostility.

Israel’s defiance of both Leninism and Lennonism has made it the major enemy of the left, which, under Soviet tutelage, expanded the concept of Zionism into a globalized metaphysical entity. A few months ago, I asked a curator at an art space in New York what he considers to be the principal challenges facing contemporary culture. His answer was “capitalism, fascism, and Zionism.” What these have in common is a refusal to recognize universal leftist moral authority—extending from the initial Jewish refusal to accept Christianity—translated into secular terms.

Meanwhile, the New Right looks at Israel with a mixture of suspicion and envy, caught between a desire for the United States to be more like Israel and the unhappy hypothesis that Israel itself (sometimes expressed as “the Jews” or “powerful Jews” or “Jewish power”) prevents this from happening. The New Right’s ostensible dream is a return to a “realist” foreign policy governed by America’s national interest, which is often somewhat bizarrely framed as a withdrawal from global power arrangements that directly and significantly benefit the United States.

Defining America’s interests means defining what America is and its place in the world. This procedure cuts both ways: A nation committed to nothing but the cynical maximization of power will not survive long. Here again, the left is more consistent than the New Right—a political formation still struggling for identity—since the left accepts that the question has existential dimensions, and correctly identifies Israel with the West it rejects.

But the strength of its passion also indicates a desire and a demand. The critical theme, across the political spectrum, conceives Israel as “the force that oppresses us” from a perspective in which America is seen to be lacking in political agency, and citizens feel they lack agency over their own lives. Israel is said to have entrapped America, when the speaker is themselves trapped by an obsession with Israel.

This syndrome reveals a special irony in the light of the early modern mobilization of Israel as a model for national sovereignty. Machiavelli characterized Moses as a model political strategist. Judith and Holofernes became a favorite theme for Flemish painters in the war of secession of the Dutch Republic from Spain.

The Mayflower Pilgrims went even further and identified themselves as a living version of the people of Israel, who had undertaken a new exodus to the new Zion of America. It was this identification that inspired America’s “manifest destiny” and still holds it together, just as philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, when looking for a way to define the Romantic idea of a “people” or a “nation,” used the biblical Israel to hold his concept together. Evangelical pastor Doug Wilson’s argument that “Deuteronomy is about America” makes total sense within this religio-historical context: What the book presents is a script for maintaining national political structures against internal dissension and external threats, through a system of rituals that serve critical social functions—above all, the generational transmission of values through the formation of families.

The political story of the Tanakh as a whole is the cyclical loss of observance, resulting in periodic calamity, followed by miraculous recovery. The West is now somewhere between these phases. Today, post-national European states are fanatically anti-Israel, their fertility is beneath replacement, and their destruction is accelerating through mass migration. The same trends are intensifying in America. These phenomena are not separate; they are linked.

What the West has rejected is Israel as the template for national politics. What has replaced Israel is “Palestine”: a corrupt, post-political NGO zone seething with violence and sliding inexorably toward Islam.

For all these reasons, the question of Israel goes well beyond geopolitics or questions of national interest, whether American or Israeli: It concerns the identity and the destiny of the West. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put it, “The State of Israel shows the world what a fighting people look like, and what a fighting nation looks like.” What is at stake in the war with Iran is not just security but also the possibility of a new synthesis between the West’s universalist and nationalist poles. It is no longer a question of universalist nation building, but a refusal to continue to tolerate an Islamist terror state that has waged war against the West for almost 50 years. If that effort fails, the stakes will only get higher.

Seth Mandel: America’s Political-Violence Problem and Its Anti-Semitism Crisis Are Colliding

The recent uptick in political assassination attempts does not discriminate by party nor has it been limited to Jewish figures. There was the nearly successful attempt on President Trump’s life at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, the attempt to burn down Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home with his family inside it, the execution of Minnesota statehouse speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

Still, coming amid an explosion in anti-Semitic violence with part of a political movement calling for a “global Intifada,” and given Moskowitz’s Jewishness and outspokenness on anti-Semitism, there are a couple points to make.

The first is that it isn’t censorship to criticize the hate preachers becoming increasingly popular in the modern political landscape. The Tucker Carlsons and Hasan Pikers of America have done much to normalize and popularize dangerous rhetoric, and the politicians who embrace them are insulating them from the norms that might otherwise cause society to shun them, as any healthy society would.

As it happens, in today’s Wall Street Journal, Third Way officials Jonathan Cowan and Lily Cohen have an excellent piece hammering Democrats for their embrace of Piker and their unwillingness, more broadly, to do what Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton did recently: publicly excoriate their own party and political movement for its tolerance of anti-Semitism.

The seeds for Cowan and Cohen’s column were sown last week when Cohen posted a tweet with a similar message. Cohen named Piker, Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani as prominent leftward figures staining the Democratic Party with anti-Semitism. In response, Ro Khanna, a popular progressive member of Congress and likely 2028 presidential candidate, dismissed Cohen on X: “I am proud to stand with @grahamformaine @ZohranKMamdani & join @hasanthehun feed,” he posted.

Khanna is a big part of the problem facing our politics today, and he is clearly just getting started. It is a mark of our current political crisis that Khanna is so proud of his role boosting anti-Semites as violence continues to rise.

And the second point is closely related: Moskowitz puts himself in danger for calling out anti-Semitism. Where are all the other Democrats? Shouldn’t they have his back? Anti-Semites and so-called anti-Zionists have been trying to assassinate the party’s prominent Jews. Major Democratic officeholders ought to be scrambling to make a public address about the violent Jew-hatred in their party and the politicians supporting it. It does not let Republicans off the hook just because of what Cruz and Cotton have done, but it does highlight just how isolated Democrats have let folks like Moskowitz become. That needs to end now.

Khaled Abu Toameh: US Direct Talks with Hamas: Legitimizing and Empowering Terrorists

Engagement clearly signals to terrorists that violence is an effective path to power, land, and international recognition. Hamas is a group that is explicitly and fundamentally committed, in both ideology and practice, to "armed resistance" (terrorism).

Hamas is not some misunderstood political faction waiting to be coaxed into moderation. It advocates jihad (holy war) as an "individual duty [of all Muslims] for the liberation of Palestine."

Article 13 of the Hamas charter says: "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

[T]here is no evidence that the terror group intends to fundamentally alter its long-term goals.

Talking to Hamas now, without its first adhering to Trump's preconditions, marks a sharp and potentially confusing policy reversal that weakens US credibility globally.

Across the region, the Iranian regime and its terror proxies are watching closely. The lesson for them will unmistakably be: hold out, escalate, and eventually the world's most powerful democracy will come to deliver victory to you.

Engaging Hamas as if it were a normal governing authority will only demonstrate to other terrorist groups that terrorism works.

Launching direct talks with Hamas or other Islamist terror groups absent any fundamental change in their positions is not diplomacy. It is capitulation and surrender dressed up as "realism."

Above all, direct engagement of Hamas is a concession to the jihadis, who believe Muslims are in an eternal confrontation with the enemies of Islam and must overthrow secular regimes to restore a "pure" Islamic state.

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03/19 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: Wimps and warriors; Understanding Iran's Imminent Threat to America; Don't Expect Iran to Surrender: Suffering Is the Ultimate Virtue to Shias

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Wimps and warriors

The war against Iran is having a most clarifying effect. It’s shining a light on those who are prepared to stand with civilization against barbarism and flushing out those who are not.

The usual suspects—those who hate Israel, despise America and stick pins into effigies of U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—are willing Iran to win, or more to the point, willing Trump and Netanyahu to lose.

Those who get news of the war only from mainstream media outlets in America and Britain have little idea of what’s actually happening.

Many have no idea that throughout the years, hundreds of American soldiers were killed by Iranian proxies in Iraq and in repeated terrorist attacks on U.S. bases. They are ignorant of the thousands of missiles amassed by Hezbollah, which is currently firing hundreds of them at Israeli citizens from Lebanon every day.

All they know from media outlets like The New York Times or the BBC is that the war was always going to be a disaster, it’s becoming a quagmire, it’s going to destroy the world’s economy, Trump is incompetent, he hasn’t got a strategy, and Iran is winning.

In an article on Unherd, Sohrab Ahmari has complained that Trump betrayed his promise as a “war-weary populist” to become “a chaos agent,” failing to display a proper “aversion to wanton bloodshed and destruction.”

To characterize this war as “wanton bloodshed and destruction” is not only wantonly to dismiss Iran’s bloody record and the mortal threat it has increasingly posed to America, Israel and the West. It also grossly misrepresents as “chaos” the astoundingly precise, targeted, steady destruction of Iran’s entire military machine and apparatus of internal repression.

By the start of this week, Iranian ballistic-missile and drone launches had fallen by more than 90% and 75%, respectively.

Much of Iran’s regular navy is lying at the bottom of the sea, while its fast-attack craft, midget submarines and mine-laying capabilities are being liquidated. Its air defenses have been largely obliterated so that America’s non-stealth B-1 bombers are generally flying unimpeded over Iranian airspace.

Yes, Iran’s extortion racket in the Straits of Hormuz is causing a major problem. But that can be addressed by eliminating Iran’s ability to hit shipping.

And if the regime is totally defanged in accordance with the aims of this war, the oil weapon at this infamous maritime choke-point won’t be used ever again—a hitherto unthinkable boon that would be very much worth the short-term pain.

John Spencer: Day 19: The United States and Israel Are Still Winning in Iran

What are the political goals of the war with Iran? For the U.S., the objectives have been clear. Deny Iran a nuclear weapon. Destroy its missile and drone programs. Neutralize its ability to threaten maritime commerce. Reduce its capacity to project power externally.

This is not a war of regime change. It is a war for regime behavior change. The U.S. is not seeking to replace the Iranian system of governance. It is seeking to force that system to abandon the behaviors that threaten core U.S. national interests.

Iran's goals are equally clear. The regime seeks to survive. It seeks to retain its nuclear potential, preserve its missile and drone arsenals, and maintain its ability to use the Strait of Hormuz as a tool of global economic coercion. It seeks to continue projecting power while maintaining internal control through repression.

The question then becomes: who is achieving their goals? On Day 19 of Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. and Israel are still winning. The scale of what has been accomplished is measurable. American forces have flown 6,500 combat flights and struck 7,000 targets across Iran. The Israeli military reports dropping 10,000 munitions in 7,600 strikes against 2,200 regime targets, conducted across 5,000 sorties. These numbers reflect sustained, large-scale combat operations designed to dismantle the regime's military architecture.

The most senior figures across Iran's political, military, and internal security echelons have been eliminated, along with multiple brigadier generals, intelligence chiefs, and nuclear program leaders. This is the systematic removal of entire echelons of leadership across political, military, intelligence, and internal repression structures. It is not accurate to assume that replacements will simply step in and think, act, and perform exactly like those who were removed.

What is happening in Iran is without modern precedent. Entire layers of leadership, networks, institutional knowledge, and personal authority have been eliminated simultaneously. When those are removed in waves, what follows is not seamless continuity. It is disruption, fragmentation, competition, and uncertainty. The cumulative effects strike at regime cohesion, morale, and will. As of Day 19, the U.S. and Israel are achieving their strategic aims. Iran is not.

U.S. Intelligence Official: Iranian Regime "Largely Degraded" but Intact

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday: "The Intelligence Community (IC) assesses that Operation Epic Fury is advancing fundamental change in the region...resulting in weakening Iran and its proxies."

"The regime in Iran appears to be intact but largely degraded due to attacks on its leadership and military capabilities. Its conventional military power-projection capabilities have largely been destroyed, leaving limited options. Iran's strategic position has been significantly degraded."

"Even if the regime remains intact, the IC assesses that internal tensions are likely to increase as Iran's economy worsens....If a hostile regime survives, it will likely seek to begin a years-long effort to rebuild its military missiles and UAV forces....Iran has long viewed the U.S. as an adversary and is engaged in active conflict with the U.S."

"The United States continues to face a complex and evolving threat landscape with a geographically diverse set of Islamist terrorist actors seeking to propagate their ideology globally and harm Americans....The spread of Islamist ideology, in some cases led by individuals and organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, poses a fundamental threat to freedom and the foundational principles that underpin Western civilization."

"Islamist groups and individuals use this ideology for recruiting and financial support for terrorist groups and individuals around the world and to advance their political objectives of establishing an Islamist caliphate which governs based on Sharia."

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03/18 Links Pt2: Amid Anti-Semitism Wave, Europe Calls in the Military; The ‘Anti-Palestinian Racism’ Canard; October 7 report will remind ‘useful fools’ that Hamas started Gaza war

From Ian:

The Israel Lobby: A Historical Primer

The United States became the second country to accord official recognition to Israel upon its establishment (the Soviet Union was the first), but in the new state’s early years, when it had the greatest need of outside support, America provided very little. In Israel’s War of Independence against the five Arab armies that invaded it in 1948, the American government did not supply it with weapons. (The Israeli army did obtain some American arms through nongovernmental channels.) In the Anglo–French–Israeli 1956 war with Egypt, Washington forced Israel to withdraw from positions it had gained in the fighting. In its sweeping victory over three Arab countries in June 1967, Israel relied on French, not American, arms.

Not only did Israel not receive American help when it was most needed, as the events after the 1956 war demonstrate, American Middle Eastern policy did not always favor Israel, the efforts of the pro-Israel lobby notwithstanding. In 1981, the lobby and the Israeli government strongly opposed the sale of a sophisticated Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, fearing that it would be employed in ways that would undermine Israel’s security. The sale went ahead anyway. In 2014, the lobby and Israeli government (and a majority of the American public) opposed the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA). That deal also went forward.

American foreign policy worked to Israel’s advantage when and because the two countries’ domestic political values, and more important, their strategic outlooks, were aligned. More often than not, they were. During the Cold War, Israel acted as a bulwark against pro-Soviet countries and movements in the Middle East; and in that region, Israel stood out as the lone democracy.

In the post–Cold War period, it has retained both distinctions, becoming the major regional opponent—and by far the most effective one—of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has, since its inception in 1979, threatened America’s allies and interests in the Middle East. Indeed, Israel qualifies as the most valuable ally of the United States in the sense that, unlike America’s many other allies, it has actually fought and won wars against the adversaries of the United States and has done so while not asking or expecting American troops to fight alongside Israelis for this purpose. The joint attack on Iran launched on February 28 demonstrated anew Israel’s high strategic value to the United States.

The American public and, for the most part, the American government have understood and appreciated this, which accounts for the generally pro-Israel tilt of American foreign policy. Both what Israel is and what it has done, and not the supposed machinations of the groups lobbying on its behalf, have inclined Americans to be favorably disposed to the Jewish state. Because of this positive disposition, policies favorable to Israel followed. That is how democracy works.

Still, the critics of the pro-Israel lobby who assert that it differs from other interest groups are correct in one way—although not in the way that they believe. The other such groups have consisted mainly of people with ethnic ties to the country whose interests they were attempting to promote. Similarly, one of the principal pro-Israel organizations, the American–Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), is composed mainly of Jews. By far the largest pro-Israel group in the United States, however, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), has a largely non-Jewish, Christian membership. CUFI has supported the Jewish state for reasons related to their Christian faith. A reported 6 million people belong to AIPAC. The comparable number for CUFI is 10 million. In this one respect, the pro-Israel lobby in the United States, which in every other way is similar to every other ethnic group seeking to influence American foreign policy, and like them a pure product of American democracy, is unique.

The ‘Anti-Palestinian Racism’ Canard

Contrast this to Palestinian Arab identity, which crystallized only in the 1960s. The first formal claim of Palestinian national identity came in 1964, with the formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization—after Israel’s founding in 1948 but before its territorial expansion in 1967.

The timing raises eyebrows and further questions, some uncomfortable. What makes a person in or around the historic territory of Palestine a Palestinian? Jews, Jordanians, and Israeli Arabs are not Palestinians. The term does not refer to persons descended from people who lived in British Mandate Palestine; if it did, the necessary conclusion would be that there already is a Palestinian state—called Israel. It is not defined as a lack of Israeli citizenship; otherwise Jordanian Arabs would be Palestinians, too. Nor does it mean an Arab living in the territory once called Palestine; Israeli Arabs don’t count. Nor can it have anything to do with living in the territories Israel conquered from Jordan, Syria, and Egypt in 1967, since the term was invented before then and is used to demand a “right of return” for Arabs displaced in 1948-49 from present-day Israel.

What is it to be Palestinian, then? It is, as its early popularizers were happy to explain, an Arab whose identity is defined by wanting to destroy Israel. It is the ethno-political fusion of non-Jewish Levantine ancestry with anti-Zionism.

The Egyptian-American analyst Hussein Aboubakr Mansour has been one of few scholars willing to state this conclusion plainly. That it takes an Arab to articulate what is clear to see is unsurprising. Polite Westerners and Jews consider the notion of discussing constitutive elements of foreign national identities daunting and rarely worth the payoff. Doing so to legitimize Jewish civil rights while eschewing the universalist mentality of protection for all, further, is quite distasteful. It appears to be a violation of profound liberal commitments, including the equal treatment of all people before law. But it appears that way, as Mansour deftly explains, only because the concept of “identity” obscures crucial differences between the Jewish connection to Zion and the Palestinian connection to Palestine. “The most central problem of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” he writes, is that “the absolute and final negation of Zionism, by any means necessary, [i]s the central ideological content of the Palestinian identity and its symbols.”

There is a stark asymmetry between Zionism and anti-Zionism. Zionism holds that a Jewish state should exist in the Levant, though not to the exclusion of a non-Jewish state—clearly. It is minimalist and rooted in shlilat ha–golah, negating the exile, by granting Jews self-determination within their ancestral lands. Anti-Zionism, by contrast, is definitionally opposed to the existence of a Jewish state. It is maximalist and rooted in reversing the Nakba, the failed Arab attempt to destroy Israel in 1948. This is why Jewish Israelis continue to offer two-state solutions and peace plans, and why Palestinians cannot accept them. And it is precisely that honest assessment that APR seeks to prohibit.

Yet it is neither compassionate nor intellectually honest to give APR an inch. Rather, as Mansour argues, “perhaps the most merciful and responsible course is for the Palestinian identity—as a state-bound ambition—to be gently laid to rest.… The cost of perpetuating a vision that repeatedly descends into cruelty is too high.” It does so not out of boiling frustration or the inequities of uneven Western civil rights regimes, but because it is an identity “written in blood,” as the old PFLP slogan goes. Those who “genuinely care about the lives of Palestinians, Israelis, and their neighbors,” writes Mansour, should let Palestinians be Arabs again: “Walk away from the fantasy of ‘Palestine’ and offer every real opportunity for inclusion and a dignified future elsewhere.”

The inapt comparison between IHRA and APR reveals an even greater irony: While Zionism is called a political movement and Palestinianism an ethnic heritage, the opposite is closer to the case. The Jewish relation to the Holy Land is essential and ethno-religious; the ethnic story of the Jews makes no sense without the land. Palestinians’ relationship to the land is essentially political; what makes them Palestinian is that they need all the land. Perhaps that is why APR advocates describe what they seek to prohibit as anything that “defames…Palestinians or their narratives” or even their “allies.” They are trying to erect a force field around a political view—the very accusation they level against Zionists—that just so happens to have ethnic bigotry at its core.

We may wish there were a rough parallelism rooted in “nobody’s perfect” that leaves room for moderation and outward signs of empathy. But the truth is that, in this conflict, there are not two equivalent sides. There are two people with claims to the land; one has control, right of first possession, and has been willing to compromise nonetheless. The other has neither the right of might nor the might of right, yet defines itself by its very identity as eliminationist.

The charade of false equivalence helps no one and nothing except the Western liberal conscience, the terrorists waging a long war against the Jewish state, and sham NGOs that exploit the former to support the latter. And the growing specter of APR, the evil approaching stealthily from the north, makes explicating the charade an urgent and unavoidable task.

Irina Velitskaya: One day, everyone will have this book at the back of their closet

Novelist Omar El Akkad’s new nonfiction book about the Gaza conflict, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” which recently won the 2025 US National Book Award, encapsulates everything that is wrong with the state of political discourse, intellectual culture, and Western elites who favor feeling good about themselves over civilizational survival.

The book was first published one year ago this month. Why write about it now? Because it is still, to this day, the #1 best-selling book on Amazon in the category “Middle Eastern Politics,” and #3 in the category of “Democracy.”

So what’s wrong with El Akkad’s heartfelt memoir? Let’s begin with the title itself. It is a naked appeal to peer pressure: If you are not part of the “pro”-Palestine movement now, you inevitably will be some day, and if that glorious day of dawning, God forbid, never comes — if, in other words, you continue to hold out stubbornly for the right of one tiny Jewish state to exist in a world of 56 Muslim-majority states, many of them actual “settler colonial ethnostates” — then you are on “the wrong side of history,” as the balaclava-clad mobs tirelessly proclaim. “Shame on you,” they bellow at their antisemitic demonstrations, those who themselves in their naked hatred feel no shame at all, nor any self-awareness that their actions, which they proclaim with proud self-absorption place them on “the right side of history” are in actuality indistinguishable from that of the average Berliner or Viennese Durchschnittsmensch in 1938.

(Incidentally, the prefix “pro” is in quotes because the recent ceasefire agreement, conspicuously uncelebrated by the demonstrators, and the subsequent murders of Palestinian dissidents by Hamas, also ignored, proved that the protesters were never “pro” Palestine at all.)

The title is, in other words, a form of shaming. It also is incredibly presumptuous, a classic example of the logical fallacy of “begging the question,” or assuming the truth of a conclusion in the premise of an argument. The conclusion, of course, is that “this” — which is to say Israel’s defensive and preventative war against Hamas and jihadist terror — is something that one must be ashamed of before, or perhaps instead of, even considering the arguments that support this assertion.

To be clear, the pivotal “this” in the title is not the barbaric October 7 massacre, nor the attempts by naive or hateful Westerners to justify it or deny it, nor the 18 years of rocket fire from Gaza into Israeli communities that preceded it, nor the stabbings and car rammings and bus bombings of the First and Second Intifadas, nor the massacres of Persians, Christians, Hindus, Druze, Yazidi, Alawites, Jews, African animists, and other minorities by radical Islamist groups currently taking place worldwide.

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03/18 Links Pt1: ‘Get Him Before God Does’; Iran Strikes Qatar's refinery, Prompting Doha to Expel Iranian Diplomats; Iranian missile struck WB town, killing 3 Palestinian women

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Stopping Tehran's Apocalyptic Goals Is Important

Two weeks after the start of the U.S.-Israeli offensive against Iran, naysayers about the wisdom of the operation remain pervasive and loud. Yet, Iran was steadily rebuilding its nuclear program with an imminent option to race to a bomb, expanding missile production, and continuing to orchestrate an "axis of resistance" dedicated to fomenting chaos and war.

That's more than enough to justify the risks that are an inevitable part of all wars. Even now it's obvious that continuing a policy of kicking the can down the road that Trump's predecessors chose would have been as colossal a mistake as even the costliest military blunder.

The first purpose of the campaign is the eradication of Iran's nuclear and ballistic-missile programs, in addition to its support and active participation in international terrorism. Washington and Jerusalem have also stated that they favor regime change in Iran. That's something Israel believes is absolutely necessary to achieve. The Trump administration would like it to happen, but could live without it, as long as the ayatollahs were stripped of their nukes and missiles, and had their terrorist option foreclosed.

While the success of the U.S.-Israeli offensive won't be able to be fully evaluated until after the conflict is over, it's clear that both militaries have systematically eliminated Iran's military capabilities, hunted down its missile-launchers, and done more damage to its nuclear program.

The fact that a country as large as Iran is not completely defeated in two weeks is not a reason to believe the war has so far been a failure. If the armed forces of the two allies are allowed to continue their military efforts, the already devastating results for Iran will likely become even more impressive. There is no reason to believe that the war is already a "quagmire."

The arguments that say the U.S. would have been better off delaying action or even appeasing Iran ring false. The policy of enriching and empowering Tehran that was the consequence of the 2015 nuclear deal led to a stronger and more aggressive Islamist regime. Letting Iran get a nuclear weapon became an increasingly likely scenario in the last year and would have done far more damage to U.S. interests than even a permanent hike in gas prices.

Letting a tyrannical regime ruled by religious fanatics bent on imposing their version of fanatical Islam on the Middle East and the rest of the world get a nuclear weapon would be a nightmare. And that would have been the inevitable result if the U.S. hadn't prepared to act at some point in the near future.

Seth Mandel: ‘Get Him Before God Does’

There is a line in an Israeli spy movie, Walk on Water, that sums up this idea quite nicely. As the Mossad director gives his employee an important assassination assignment, he says to the younger man: “Get him before God does.”

The assignment is to eliminate an old Nazi war criminal. But the aging German will die of old age sooner than later, so why go through all the trouble now? The answer is that Nazi war criminals should stop feeling hunted only when they shuffle off this mortal coil. Eliminating the Nazi official means delivering justice to his victims and to those who will never be his victims now. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.

Israel does so much that benefits the rest of the world that sometimes people seem to forget that it is its own country with its own interests. Hence the increasing absurdity of the discourse around Israel’s objectively-successful military campaigns. Will killing Ali Larijani solve global warming? Will taking out Hassan Nasrallah end world poverty? Will any one action by the IDF end all wars forever? If not, the media doesn’t see a reason to do it.

But Israel is defending its citizens and dispensing justice, and that is reason enough. “Someone else will just replace Larijani” entirely misses the point. Because by this logic, putting a mob boss in prison will only cause someone else to take over the family, continuing a cycle of crime and retribution without eliminating the existence of organized crime itself.

As a matter of course, we punish criminals for the crimes they commit. Only when it comes to Israel do we suddenly agonize over the point of it all.

But Israel doesn’t agonize over the point of it all. Israel was reconstituted as a modern state during an era when Jews were being killed in the most horrible ways imaginable with no recourse. Those days are over.

Truth is, that section of the Times story about the history of Israel’s retaliatory missions is a fair guide to the near future as well. A lot of bad people and groups were involved in starting this war. The fact that Israel’s retaliatory campaign is so protracted should not be a criticism of Israel but a reminder of just how destructive and shattering October 7 was, and how widely the culpability for it is spread. The victims of that terrible day are no less deserving of justice just because there are so many of them.

Israel Is Hunting Down Iranian Regime Members in Their Hideouts

Ali Larijani, Iran's top security official, strolled confidently Friday through a rally of regime loyalists in central Tehran. Early Tuesday, Israel's intelligence services found Larijani with other officials at a hideout on the outskirts of Tehran and killed him with a missile strike.

The same night, Israel got a tip from ordinary Iranians that the leader of the Basij militia, Gholamreza Soleimani, was holed up with his deputies in a tent in a wooded area in Tehran. He, too, was struck and killed. The killings were made possible by a growing harvest of intelligence about possible targets.

With thousands of regime members killed, Iranians are reporting that a sense of disorder is starting to take hold. Security forces are under stress and on the run. Israel is chasing security forces from their headquarters to muster points, then on to hide-outs under bridges. The advanced technology deployed by Israel and the penetration of Iranian society by its agents are creating the greatest threat yet to the regime.

Israeli intelligence learned that Iran had a fallback plan for its internal security forces in the event their facilities were destroyed - mustering at local sports complexes. Israel watched the sites fill up and then hit them, killing hundreds of members of the security services and military, the vast majority at Azadi Stadium, a large venue for soccer games.

Israeli intelligence officials began placing calls to individual commanders, threatening them and their families by name if they didn't stand aside in the event of an uprising. In one call between a senior Iranian police commander and an agent of the Mossad, Israel's foreign-intelligence service, the agent said in Farsi, "I called to warn you in advance that you should stand with your people's side, and if you will not do that, your destiny will be as your leader." The commander responded, "Brother, I swear on the Quran, I'm not your enemy. I'm a dead man already. Just please come help us."

Israel's air force began operating fleets of loitering drones above Tehran and other areas. Their attacks were in many cases guided by tips sent by ordinary Iranians, Israeli security officials said. On Sunday night, Israeli forces conducted a targeted hunt for Basij checkpoints, hitting 11. Residents said many security officers are hiding in residential buildings. When they move in, the neighbors evacuate, fearing a strike.

Israel's security establishment believes Iran's crumbling economy and popular anger have put the regime on an irreversible path to collapse, whether it happens during the war or down the road.

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03/17 Links Pt2: How to fight the lunatic haters: don’t get scared — get smart; What Jurgen Habermas Knew; Mamdani accuses Israel of genocide on St. Patrick’s Day stage

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: How to fight the lunatic haters: don’t get scared — get smart

Today, Jews are at the sharp end of this onslaught — but all those seeking to defend Israel and America must also begin to make themselves heard.

The security of all Americans is in peril if we refuse to grasp the threats of Islamism at home and of Iran abroad.

My home country of Britain should stand as a warning.

The United Kingdom’s traditional freedoms and liberties have been all but lost amid its leaders’ supine appeasement of a politically powerful Muslim community.

That community has made steady progress toward its goal of Islamizing the country — just as Mayor Zohran Mamdani appears to be attempting in New York.

The Islamists are only able to make such inroads because of their all-too-willing accomplices on the left.

They are bound together by their shared goal of bringing down Western society — despite diametrically opposed views of what should replace it — and their mutual hatred of Jews and Israel.

We aren’t merely witnessing a rise in antisemitism, but a global madness that threatens the West as a whole.

Not just the Jews, but all who are desperate to defend civilization against barbarism need to fight back.

Seth Mandel: What Jurgen Habermas Knew

For the past 96 years, cynicism had few greater enemies than the super-famous philosopher Jurgen Habermas, the former leader of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, who died on Saturday. Among the numerous ways Habermas stood out from his peers in modern social theory was that this former Hitler Youth went to his grave defending Israel’s right of self-defense.

This meant breaking with the post-October 7 manufactured consensus in academia that the Jewish state was guilty of the same category of crimes committed against the Jewish people by Nazi Germany. Yet Habermas’s philosophy made his objection to this calumny inevitable: He believed in the power of engagement—his most famous idea arguably remains his belief that societal problems can and should be solved in the public square—and by the time of his death, that made him an outsider among intellectuals.

Indeed, his peers’ turn against Israel was inseparable from their turn against Enlightenment ideals. Official and unofficial speech codes in academia cast the Jewish state out of the public square: BDS became not just a boycott-focused tactic against Israel but a way of life. You simply did not talk to those who held insufficiently hostile opinions about the Jews.

Habermas understood precisely where that attitude can lead. But his critics on the left misunderstand the way his Germanness informed his fairmindedness on Israel. The last great intellectual controversy of his life is instructive.

In November 2023, Habermas and three co-authors published the following:
“The Hamas massacre with the declared intention of eliminating Jewish life in general has prompted Israel to strike back. How this retaliation, which is justified in principle, is carried out is the subject of controversial debate; principles of proportionality, the prevention of civilian casualties and the waging of a war with the prospect of future peace must be the guiding principles. Despite all the concern for the fate of the Palestinian population, however, the standards of judgement slip completely when genocidal intentions are attributed to Israel’s actions.”

In retrospect, of course, Habermas was well-served by his reluctance to join the mob. As we now know, the “genocide” accusation against Israel has no basis and has been revealed as a bad-faith libel constructed by supporters of a “global intifada.” That Habermas wasn’t fooled by it remains unforgivable to his progressive critics.

Ivan Jablonka, historian: 'The use of last names is a particular trait of antisemitism'

A history professor at Université Sorbonne-Paris Nord and a member of the Institut universitaire de France, a French academic honorary institution, Ivan Jablonka has published several works on the history and memory of the Holocaust. He is the founder of the Traverse series and co-director of the La République des Idées ("The Republic of Ideas") series at the Seuil publishing house. He is also the author of A History of the Grandparents I Never Had (2016).

The leader of La France Insoumise (LFI, radical left), Jean-Luc Mélenchon, made a sarcastic remark during a meeting in support of his movement's candidates for the municipal elections in Lyon on February 26, about the name of the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He suggested that the American pronunciation of Epstein's last name [Epsteen] was intended to hide his Jewish identity by making him seem Russian. The Socialist leader, Olivier Faure, condemned what he called a drift into "the dark waters of antisemitism." How do you interpret the remarks made by the LFI leader?

Jean-Luc Mélenchon recently joked about the pronunciation of two Jewish names, Jeffrey Epstein and [on March 1] Raphaël Glucksmann [a French member of the European Parliament]. These remarks are part of a consistent series of statements dating back to 2020. According to him, Jesus was crucified "by his own compatriots." Eric Zemmour [far-right figure] is said to reproduce the "cultural scenarios" of Judaism that are hostile to creolization and Yaël Braun-Pivet [president of the Assemblée Nationale] allegedly "went camping in Tel Aviv to encourage the massacre" in Gaza. La France Insoumise also boycotted the march against antisemitism [in November 2023] and published a poster of Cyril Hanouna [a French TV personality] using Nazi iconography from the 1930s [in March 2025].

This way of referring to Jews reminds me of [late far-right leader] Jean-Marie Le Pen. The daughter [Marine Le Pen] has made people forget the father's misdeeds, but he was a specialist in antisemitic mockery about last names. In 1985, he listed the names of four Jewish journalists – Jean-François Kahn, Jean Daniel, Ivan Levaï and Jean-Pierre Elkabbach – before referring to "all the liars of the press." A few years later, he made the grim pun "Durafour crématoire" [a play on the name of then minister Michel Durafour, alluding to cematorium].

That is where Jean-Luc Mélenchon now stands. He does not advocate an anti-Jewish agenda, as some politicians did between the late 19th century and the Vichy regime, but he offers an interpretive framework typical of antisemitic thinking: Jews are pulling the strings and leading the world into war.

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03/17 Links Pt1: Pres. Herzog: Europe Should Back Effort to Eradicate Hizbullah; Ali Larijani’s elimination signals a turning point in Iran; Iranian attack kills man and woman in Ramat Gan; Joe Kent Was a Problem of Trump’s Own Making

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03/16 Links Pt2: Profiles in Terror; Bob Vylan and the rise of ayatollah chic; Drop Site News Called Michigan Synagogue Attack Self-Defense

From Ian:

Profiles in Terror

For those who need reminding, the late 1970s were a truly awful stretch for the United States of America: from stagflation at home to the Soviet Union and friends on the march in Afghanistan, Africa, and Central America, to the Khomeini revolution in Iran. David Frum's account of the period, How We Got Here, should be required reading for anyone under 40 now complaining that Ronald Reagan's conservatism didn't amount to a hill of beans in staving off national disaster. We were, as they say, thisclose.

Now comes Jason Burke, a veteran journalist for the United Kingdom's Guardian, with a timely reminder that the early 1970s also stank. The Revolutionists is an extensively reported chronicle of the leading figures of the time in violent pursuit of radical change, whether communist revolutions in Europe and elsewhere or the eradication of the state of Israel. Burke makes a plausible but understated case that the terrorism problem that seized the world by the lapels on September 11, 2001, has to be understood in the context of its origins and evolution over the previous 30 years.

Burke's subtitle is "The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s." The operative word is "hijacked," not in a metaphorical sense but literally, as in smuggling guns and bombs aboard commercial airplanes, commandeering them shortly after takeoff, forcing pilots to fly to hijacker-friendly Middle East destinations, and demanding of governments the release of previously captured and incarcerated extremists plus millions in ransom. Mostly, the hostages survived, but only after being thoroughly terrorized by the hijackers' threat to blow up the airplane and its passengers, sometimes seat-belted for days in their own excrement on a blisteringly hot tarmac with little food or water, sometimes subjected as well to deranged lectures on the justice of the Palestinian cause or the class conflict leading inevitably to proletarian revolution. It is astonishing now to read of the seeming ease with which armed extremists passed themselves off as ordinary passengers through minimal security.

There were literally hundreds of such attempted hijackings, the vast majority of them successful, in the period from 1968 to 1980—that is, in the wake of the stunning Israeli victory over massed Arab armies in the 1967 Six-Day War, which landed Israel control of the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, and Jerusalem. In Burke's telling, Palestinians who cheered the onset of the war wept at its conclusion—feeling "grief equivalent to a bereavement," as he writes. One was Leila Khaled, who would go on to join George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, where she won fame as an early female perpetrator of hijackings and other terror attacks in Europe. The "armed struggle" was on.

Without making a polemic of it, Burke destroys any lingering doubt about the interconnectedness of the violent extremists of the time. Most terrorists in the Palestinian cause were homegrown, but their training camps and havens in the Middle East hosted communist radicals from West Germany, Central America, and Japan. Fusako Shigenobu, leader of the communist Japanese Red Army, became so concerned about security in her homeland she moved her base of operations to Beirut under the PFLP umbrella. The notorious "Carlos the Jackal" was born Ilich Ramírez Sánchez from Caracas, Venezuela. In the Arab world, he was known as Saleem Mohammed. His surge to global notoriety began in London in 1973 with his assassination attempt on Joseph Edward Sieff, the Jewish president of the retail chain Marks & Spencer.

Andrew Pessin: Tobias Gisle, We Need to Talk About the Most Influential Academic Fraud of the 20th Century

The Middle East is not the only part of the world that endlessly complains about being hard done by the West, and nurses and nurtures a culture of revanchism and militarism against the mean West from inside dictatorships. This is an apt description of Russia. This is exactly Putin’s ideology. All poor Russia needs is a little more space. A little more Lebensraum for the biggest country in the world. Therefore, justice demands that it should be free to invade its neighbours at will. Most people in the West alternate between disbelief and fear at this ludicrous suggestion. Yet this is exactly what the Arab-led activism championed by Said suggests. The reasoning is equally absurd. The reason that the Arabs and Muslims have such rubbish lives is that Arab lands used to be colonized long ago and that there is that terrible humiliation of there being a tiny Jewish state covering 0.17% of “Arab lands.” Instead of laughing in disbelief, we give Said and all his acolytes the best professorships in the lands of the West. Incidentally, when Said tried to claim victimhood for the Arabs, he missed something fundamental about Israel and Zionism. Israel may have been established by desperate refugees fleeing persecution, but the secret of Israel’s success is precisely that it is not revanchist. If I would go around complaining all day that the Nasser regime stole my children’s grandfather’s house in Alexandria, all Israelis would tell me to get a life and move on. Of course, we remember the Holocaust and the persecution, but this is not the focus. We are looking to the future, not looking for revenge.

Orientalism theory is black and white thinking with the goal of fermenting victimhood and revanchism among Arabs and Muslims. This is reflected in Said’s political legacy, where he bravely stood against the chance at statehood for Palestinians in the 1990s so that we could have a few more decades of good ol’ war instead.

It’s high time we rid ourselves of this theory. Said and Foucault both explain nothing and do nothing for the Middle East. The entire field needs a new paradigm. The real Middle East needs theories that challenge each and every phenomenon that hurts the people who live here. Authoritarianism, oppression of women, reliance on oil, sectarianism, and of course political Islam and the other debunked, useless ideologies of the Middle East. We don’t need any more theories that blame Israel and the West for all the problems of the region. We certainly don’t need “orientalism.”

The idea is the theoretical equivalent to people insisting they are “anti-racist” while at the pro-Palestine demonstration with Hamas flags fluttering and “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud” filling the Autumn breeze.

Enough with the indulgence of this poison.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas Crimes No One Talks About

As international attention is focused on the Iran war, Hamas has stepped up its crackdown on the Palestinian people as part of its effort to reassert control in Gaza. Hamas has murdered, arrested, assaulted, or summoned for interrogation dozens of Palestinians for allegedly speaking out against the terror group.

Gaza-born political activist Hamza Howidy wrote last week: "Since the war with Iran began, Hamas's thugs have intensified their brutal, savage, barbaric campaign against Gaza's own residents. The people in this photo are just some of many who have been executed, shot, kidnapped, or brutally tortured in recent weeks. The list of atrocities grows by the day, and the sheer sadism on display goes beyond anything comprehensible.... The 'crime' those people committed? Saying their own opinions."

"What makes this even worse than the suffering of those victims itself is the silence of the people who built entire careers screaming about Palestinian suffering. The same commentators, the same 'human rights advocates,' the same influencers, and the same media outlets that spent months positioning themselves as the moral conscience of the world, packaging Palestinian pain into clout, followers, and book deals, have gone completely dark....The Palestinians left to die under Hamas's boots are apparently the wrong kind of Palestinians."

Another Gaza-born political activist, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, wrote on March 12: "Hamas terrorists conducted a parade in their trucks inside the al-Mawasi tent zone for the displaced. These gunmen are the same ones who are killing, kidnapping, torturing, and shooting Gazans every single day; they're making their presence known to say "shut up & pay us taxes"! They hide in tent areas and use civilians as shields to lessen the chance of being struck by Israeli drones and air strikes."

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03/16 Links Pt1: Glimpsing Victory in Iran; The ‘War on Terror’ Returns; Iran war shows how ‘human rights’ groups now just play vile politics

From Ian:

Mark Dubowitz and Richard Goldberg: Glimpsing Victory in Iran

As military pressure intensifies, the political dimension becomes increasingly important. Washington is targeting its messaging to IRGC personnel, military officers, and senior officials: Surrender brings amnesty; continued loyalty risks ruin. That logic may already be visible in what appears to be Phase 2. Roughly 3,000 members of an elite protest-suppression unit reportedly received warning messages that they were being targeted. Within a day, their headquarters near Tehran’s Azadi Stadium lay in ruins.

Phase 1 degrades military power and holds hostage the regime’s economic lifelines. Phase 2 raises the cost of repression inside Iran. Drones operating over Tehran have reportedly struck and killed IRGC and Basij personnel manning checkpoint units. For the first time, repression forces may fear for their own survival just as protesters have for years.

Phase 3 could present itself in more ways than sudden collapse—perhaps looking more like sustained erosion: a weakened regime, tightening economic pressure, diplomatic isolation, and eventually internal upheaval. The announced selection of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leader may accelerate that erosion rather than stabilize it. A polished cleric in the mold of Hassan Rouhani could again provide the IRGC political cover and revive illusions of moderation abroad. Mojtaba offers no such illusion. His elevation signals a harsher, weaker, more corrupt order—and therefore a more fragile one.

Phase 3, however, belongs to the Iranian people. Without sustained American pressure, Mojtaba and the IRGC will declare victory. That cannot be allowed. The regime has always feared domestic unrest more than external attack, which is why it repeatedly shuts down internet access during protests. Restoring connectivity would give Iranians a tool that the regime understands all too well.

Protesters also need the means of self-defense. January’s massacre of more than 30,000 Iranians by regime security forces remains a brutal reminder of what peaceful demonstrators face when confronting a coercive state. The United States should declare its commitment to Iran’s territorial integrity while arming the opposition—not only among Kurdish, Baluchi, and Arab minorities in the periphery, where local resistance could tie down security forces, but also among Persians in major cities.

With continued dominance in the air and deep penetration on the ground, Israel should continue striking the repression apparatus while America supports the political conditions for internal fracture.

The Islamic Republic has survived for 47 years because it has proved adaptive, ruthless, and willing to absorb immense pain. But it has never faced simultaneous leadership decapitation, military degradation, economic strangulation, regional isolation, and internal legitimacy collapse on this scale. That does not guarantee the regime’s end. It does mean that something once improbable is now imaginable: The long arc of the Islamic Republic may finally be bending toward an end. If that happens, military force will have created the opening.

Operation Epic Fury is only two weeks old. The campaign has already delivered major wins for American national security, and more are likely to emerge in coming days. But something much bigger and more historic is starting to come into view—something that can be unlocked with a little more patience from the American public as the United States degrades Tehran’s ability to wage war outside its borders and Israel degrades the regime’s ability to wage war against its own people.

Victory can be defined in many ways when a campaign delivers multiple layers of success in destroying capabilities that threaten the United States. But the ultimate goal should be enabling the Iranian people to rid the world of this radical, terror-sponsoring regime. And achieving that goal—total victory—seems ever more possible.

Josh Hammer: What is Victory in Operation Epic Fury?

At this point in the campaign, it is uncontested that wholesale regime change is the most desirable outcome. The pursuit of regime change as a goal unto itself is often now disparaged, coming in the aftermath of the failed neoconservative boondoggles earlier this century. But it ought to be axiomatic that there are some foreign regimes that behave in a manner that redounds to the American national interest, and there are some foreign regimes that behave in a manner that is contrary to the American national interest. It is natural and logical that we would wish for the latter types of regime to be heavily reformed or outright replaced — especially with the local populace leading the way.

Perhaps even more to the point: One does not take out a 37-year-ruling despot like Ali Khamenei, as the American and Israeli militaries did in the opening hours of the present operation, and not hope for full-scale regime change. Indeed, all people of goodwill should be hoping for that outcome — for the Iranian people to rise up like lions and throw the yoke of tyranny off their necks once and for all, delivering a long-sought victory for the American national interest in the process.

But it’s entirely possible that full-scale regime change won’t happen. The people of Iran just witnessed tens of thousands of their countrymen brutally gunned down during the anti-regime uprisings of late December and early January. They are an unarmed populace facing Nazi-esque regime jackboots, in the form of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij paramilitary.

All of that, then, raises one final question: Is it possible for there to be victory in Operation Epic Fury, and for the Iranian regime to be neutralized as a threat to the United States and our interests, if there isn’t full-scale regime change in Tehran?

In theory, the answer is yes. Venezuela provides a model. But in practice, the answer is murkier.

Delcy Rodriguez, the current leader, is a hardened Marxist-Leninist in the mold of her two immediate predecessors, Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. But Rodriguez has been fully cooperative with the United States since the astonishing January operation to extract Maduro for the simple reason that she has no real choice in the matter: She remains in power, yes, but only on the condition of an “offer” presented by Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio that, to borrow from Vito Corleone in “The Godfather,” she “can’t refuse.” Accordingly, Rodriguez has thus far been fully cooperative in areas such as American oil extraction and the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the United States.

In theory, a similar arrangement is possible with a decimated, chastened regime in Tehran. And some experts predict that such an arrangement will characterize the regime in Iran a year or two from now. In practice, however, there is the ever-thorny problem that has frustrated and perplexed Westerners for decades when they attempt to reason with zealous Islamists: Radical, 72-virgins-in-heaven-aspiring Muslims do not fear death. A socialist like Rodriguez can, ultimately, be reasoned with; an Islamist like Mojtaba Khamenei (or his successor), probably not.

The cleanest solution to the Iran quagmire at this particular juncture — and the one that most clearly fulfills Trump’s “unconditional surrender” victory criterion — is indeed full-scale regime change. That is certainly the outcome that would be best for the neutralization of the Iranian threat and the corresponding advancement of the American national interest. I’m far from certain it will happen. But every alternative scenario only raises additional questions. So, like many others, I pray that the Iranian people seize this unique moment in history and take their destiny into their own hands.

Mojtaba Khamenei escaped death by seconds in same strike that killed his father

Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, survived the February 28 US-Israeli strike on Tehran’s leadership compound because he had stepped outside shortly before missiles hit his residence, according to leaked audio obtained by The Telegraph. The recording, attributed to a senior official in the office of the late Ali Khamenei, provides one of the fullest accounts yet of the strike that killed Iran’s former supreme leader and other senior regime figures.

According to the report, the compound was hit at 9:32 a.m. local time in what appeared to be a coordinated attempt to kill members of the Khamenei family and senior Iranian leadership at the same time. The Telegraph said the audio was independently verified and came from remarks delivered by Mazaher Hosseini, identified as head of protocol in Ali Khamenei’s office, during a March 12 meeting in Tehran.

Hosseini said Mojtaba Khamenei had gone into the yard moments before the strike and was heading back upstairs when the building was hit. According to the report, he suffered a leg injury, while his wife, Zahra Haddad-Adel, and their son were killed instantly.

The leaked recording also described the deaths of other people inside the compound, including Mojtaba Khamenei’s brother-in-law, Misbah al-Huda Bagheri Kani, and Mohammad Shirazi, the chief of Ali Khamenei’s military bureau. Hosseini said the strikes hit multiple parts of the office complex simultaneously, including residences associated with several members of the Khamenei family.

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03/15 Links: Eli Lake: One American-Israeli Battle After Another; Carlson claims CIA is ‘framing’ him as an Iranian agent; Israel rejects South Africa’s ‘blood libel’ genocide case

From Ian:

Eli Lake: One American-Israeli Battle After Another

The greatest irony of recent Israeli history is that, for all of its brilliance in penetrating and sabotaging Iran, Israeli intelligence failed to pick up the signs before October 7 that the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust was in the offing. But that failure quickly led to profound changes in the scope of the mission against Iran. The senior Israeli war planner to whom I spoke put it like this: “We began rethinking the war plan in early 2023, but after October 7 we focused on a broader war against Iran, not just its nuclear program or missiles.” This represented at least a partial vindication of Dagan’s ideas a decade earlier.

And that is where things stand today. As Israel and America take out Iran’s missiles, nuclear facilities, defense industries, and its political and military leadership from the air, the hope is that after the dust settles, the remaining regime leadership will either surrender or agree to end the Islamic Republic’s war on the Great and Little Satan. As I write at the beginning of March, that may seem like a long shot, and one that invites intolerable risks. After all, without boots on the ground, neither the U.S. nor Israel will have the ability to shape the inevitable chaos that will result after the bombing stops. On the other hand, Israel has proven over the past eight months that it has eyes and ears everywhere in Iran. I wouldn’t be shocked if the Mossad has a plan for what comes next.

Here at home, what is going to come next for those who decided to blame this just American war on the little Jewish state they seem to hate so much? The populists seething about Trump’s war to Make Iran Great Again have shown that they misunderstand recent history and that their audiences are fools to listen to them. Over the past 30 years, Israel has built a capability that is on the precipice of removing a blood enemy of America. It has located and eliminated the clerics and generals responsible for 47 years of terror against our country and her allies.

Trump has not launched a war for Israel. Rather he has joined a war with Israel—a war Israel may have won even before the bombs started dropping.

Victor Davis Hanson: Trump challenged 50 years of Iran fears — and revealed the rotten, decaying truth

So here we are in 2026, watching the systematic destruction of the entire five-decade façade of a supposedly invincible Iranian military, the elimination of its theocratic leaders, and the dismantling of the Iranian military and Revolutionary Guard terrorists.

The regime has no military ability to ensure its survival.

All it has is a rope-a-dope strategy that assumes a White House attuned to domestic criticism, the looming midterms, the price of gas, and pressure from allies to end the war before the global economy sinks into recession.

We are left somewhat confused.

Why did prior presidents not hold Iran accountable for its killing, thus nourishing the myth of Iranian invincibility?

Why did Israel not respond earlier to Iran itself, rather than just its terrorist clients?

And what now are the remaining theocrats thinking? What is their strategy of survival?

They intend to ride out the bombings and, at some point in extremis, expect an armistice via “negotiations.”

They plan to wait out the tenures of both Trump and Netanyahu and hope for a sympathetic president like Obama, or a non compos mentis Biden, or someone ideologically akin to Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

With Trump and Netanyahu out of office, they dream of using their oil to re-arm and resume their role as Chinese and Russian proxies, eventually getting the bomb — and this time perhaps using it.

Theocratic Iran, in its fantasies, still believes that if it ever destroyed Israel, the world, especially given the recrudescence of Western antisemitism, would be appalled — for a day or two.

Then it would resume business as usual.

And with a dozen or so deterrent nuclear-tipped missiles at their backs, the Iranian ritual boilerplate of crazed pronouncements would follow.

Thus, we would go full circle back again to a “crazy” Iran, its murderous clients and its unhinged — but effective — threats.

John Podhoretz: They Should Have Listened to My Dad

Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu saw how an Iranian proxy in Gaza had set into motion a plan on October 7, 2023, with the purpose of bringing about an apocalyptic multifront assault on Israel’s existence—the very thing Ahmadinejad had said he had been seeking 18 years earlier. Iran hit Israel with ballistic missiles in 2024. Trump and Israel struck back with unprecedented force in 2025. And when they were done with the 12-day war, Trump said in no uncertain terms that he would go back to the skies if there were indications Iran was working to re-nuclearize. The Iranians had every chance during this time, and every rational reason, to stand down. They could have sued for peace after the 12-day war destroyed the Fordow nuclear facility and Iran’s air-defense system. They could have made a deal after Trump sent a gigantic armada to the waters near Iran and sent his negotiators to Geneva to talk to the Iranians. After all, they had seen Trump do what no other president would do, even though the four presidents who preceded him in office after the Soviet Union’s fall had all said Iran could not be allowed to go nuclear. The Iranians saw him go into Venezuela and extract its dictator, maybe their closest ally, like a dentist extracting a rotted tooth. But the Iranians did not stand down. Instead, they bragged to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner that they possessed enough nuclear materiel for 11 bombs. Trump had watched the Iranian people rise up and had seen the Iranian leaders shoot them down. He tried to talk and in response they boasted of their capabilities to do evil. The Israelis had told him they knew the ayatollah and his team were going to be meeting on a Saturday morning all together in one place. Trump said go. Israel went. And then America struck.

In 2007, the Iranian nuclear program was nascent and notional. But we already knew where they had located it and what they were trying to get going. Had we bombed those sites then, as Israel had bombed Iraq’s reactor in 1981, a precedent would have been established. A simple precedent. Stop. Do it again, and we will hit you again. So don’t do it.

But we didn’t. And Barack Obama tried to buy them off. Donald Trump, in his first term, tried to put the Iranians in a cage with maximum pressure. And Joe Biden, well, who knows what Joe Biden did—but he certainly didn’t scare the Iranians. Donald Trump did hit them. And they didn’t stop.

Now they will. But we needn’t have gotten to this point. One strong strike in 2007 and the world would have looked very different. Bush should have listened to my dad.

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03/14 Links: The despicable disgrace of the ‘call off the war’ crowd; Michigan: a case study in the new Jew hatred; Ashab Al Yamin? New Shi’ite terror group claims synagogue attacks across Europe

From Ian:

NYPost Editorial: The despicable disgrace of the ‘call off the war’ crowd

We’d like to believe that the negative coverage of the Iran war so rampant in the media is simply more Trump Derangement Syndrome, but it’s plainly also about how the president’s firm actions expose how pathetically the same elites applauded President Barack Obama’s misbegotten Middle East policies, and not just his sad nuclear deal with Tehran.

To simplify things, consider The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, the dean of elite liberal political analysis, who’s actively sneering at the joint US-Israeli effort to defang an entity that for five decades has called them “The Great Satan” and “The Little Satan.”

“Both Washington and Jerusalem are making claims about ‘imminent’ threats that require ‘preemptive’ strikes,” he huffs, “but we should dispense with such statements: Iran is not presenting immediate danger to the United States or Israel.”

No, because the two nations took out Tehran’s nuclear program last year, as it was weeks from producing usable weapons, and they’ve acted before it could rebuild its defenses and offensive conventional forces to shield it as it recovered that capability.

The imminent threat was to become too tough to take out.

And Iran’s lunatic bombing of almost every country now within its range proves that it was and is a threat to the entire civilized world: Just imagine it with the long-range missiles and nukes that it never stopped developing.

But of course Jeff Goldberg was one of Obama’s chief media sycophants

He asked Obama how he could possibly understand the Iranian regime as both thoroughly antisemitic and “practical,” “responsive to incentive” and “rational” — and accepted without question Obama’s blithe reply that “the fact that the supreme leader is antisemitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.”

What poppycock: Those “other considerations” centered on a determined drive at regional domination and a certainty that going nuclear was the only sure way to ensure the regime’s survival.

Obama & Co. simply fantasized that a mature Islamic Republic would happily become a normal power if bribed sufficiently — and fanboys like Goldberg swooned.

Jake Wallis Simons: How Israel could spark regime change from the air

In a video speech last week, Benjamin Netanyahu disclosed that the IDF had “many surprises” in store for the regime. According to insiders, these have been delayed by Israeli infighting over which agency will take the credit. But they are on their way.

These surprises, thought to number about four or five, are unlikely to feature anything on the scale of the pager operation that castrated Hezbollah in September 2024. Instead, we are likely to see a sequence of creative subversions of the foundations of the Islamic Republic.

“With one hand, we grip the regime’s throat with force,” a security official said, referring to the conventional air campaign. “With the other hand, we shake it unexpectedly, again and again and again, until its neck snaps.” The objectives are clear. If all goes well, Israeli surprises will both demoralise the regime’s troops, tempting them to desert, and embolden the Iranian people to overthrow them.

But what about boots on the ground? Never before, etc. Well, keep your eyes on the Artesh, Iran’s regular armed forces which, unlike the fanatical Revolutionary Guards, descend from the time of the Shah. These troops tend to be of a nationalistic temperament, not an Islamist one, and they have largely held back from the fighting.

If the humiliation of the regime reaches a tipping point, the Artesh may revolt. This would resemble a traditional coup, empowered by homo digitalis and the Mossad. Another first. As if by magic, the Iranian people would find themselves with a great many boots on the ground.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. None of this is guaranteed and, as Netanyahu pointed out this week, “you can lead someone to water, but you cannot make him drink”. Donald Trump echoed these sentiments, telling Fox News on Friday that an uprising was “a big hurdle to climb for people that don’t have weapons”. He added: “It’ll happen, but it probably will be maybe not immediately.” Post-2003 Iraq always lurks around the corner.

But what was the alternative? Diplomacy had failed. Sanctions had failed. Covert action had slowed Tehran’s progress towards a bomb, but was powerless to stop it. Even after the hammering it received in June, the regime immediately began building back its missile stockpiles and proxies, like zombies knowing only death, and went on to butcher more than 30,000 people in two days, not to mention the atrocities it plots on our shores.

Seen from our rainy isles of appeasement, Mossad and homo digitalis stand like greyhounds in the slips. With or without our support, the game’s afoot. They will follow their spirit, and upon the charge, cry: “God for America, Israel and Iran!”

Brendan O'Neill: Michigan: a case study in the new Jew hatred

Dearborn is like a microcosm of the supine culture that has reigned in the post-7 October West. In the US, the UK and Europe, we’ve witnessed an explosion of the twin forces of Islamism and Islamo-censorship. We’ve seen mobs cheer anti-Semitic terrorism and wallow in the violent dream of Israel’s fiery demise. And yet you’re called ‘Islamophobic’ if you fret about it. Islamism is treated as a reasonable reaction to the behaviour of ‘the Zionist entity’ while concern about Islamism is damned as bigotry. These are Kafkaesque levels of moral deceit, where those of us worried about the rebirth of an ancient hatred are ourselves called ‘hateful’.

It remains to be seen what Ghazali thought he would achieve with his butchery at Temple Israel. Whether he fantasised that he was avenging Lebanon or whether his anti-Jewish animus flowed from the Islamist pox in Dearborn. Yet it is reasonable to ask if Dearborn’s virulent Israelophobia pushed this man deeper into the cesspit of anti-Jewish hate. A striking feature of our time is that leftists and liberals will always go looking for the ‘architecture of hatred’ that inspires racist attacks on blacks, Muslims or Latinos – but they never do that when there are attacks on Jews. In fact, they warn against it. Don’t ‘weaponise’ this attack by raising concerns about the broader public culture, they say. It’s only ever Jews who are accused of ‘weaponisation’ for wondering if their persecution might spring from social trends.

Does the cultural elite really expect us to believe there’s no link between its own frothing hysteria over the Jewish State and the march of hostility against Jewish people? It’s a childish delusion, and a dangerous one, to think you can spend your every waking hour lamenting the supposedly unique cruelty of the world’s only Jewish nation and that there will be no consequences for Jews. The ceaseless libels against the Jewish homeland, the cries for more ‘intifada’ – these have consequences. You would think an activist class that says it’s vile bigotry to call ‘transwomen’ men would understand that the bourgeois clamour for the violent dismantling of the Jewish homeland is likely to entail blowback for Jewish people.

This is why it’s sickening to hear the likes of New York mayor Zohran Mamdani mourn the events in Michigan. This is a man who refused to condemn the cry ‘Globalise the intifada’. This is a man whose wife liked Instagram posts celebrating an orgy of anti-Jewish violence far worse than Michigan’s – 7 October. Then there’s Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, wringing his hands over the ‘horrific news’ from Michigan. Mate, your deputy leader is a man who celebrated the pogrom of 7 October. A party that cheers the murder of Jews in Israel has no business lamenting the attempted murder of Jews in Michigan.

Things are getting serious. Over the past week there have been violent incidents at synagogues in Liege in Belgium, in Toronto, and now Michigan. Violent Jew hate is spreading. And the first step to tackling it is to dismantle every snivelling effort to censor public concern. The Orwellian forces who call us bigots for speaking about bigotry need to be put back in their box. The stakes are too high for such slippery, tyrannical games.

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03/13 Links Pt2: Normalizing the grotesque; The Concept of Jewish Collective Guilt Goes Mainstream; US defends Israel at ICJ against South Africa’s allegation of genocide

From Ian:

Normalizing the grotesque

Provoking outrage was the point. Mamdani wanted to take the photo of his love-in with his anti-American friend and shove it into the public’s face, implying, “Suck it up, America, because you can’t do anything about it. We have the power now, and we’re getting stronger.”

Mamdani’s goal was to normalize the grotesque. The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a very different kind of New York Democrat, called this “defining deviancy down” 33 years ago in an essay about American culture and society being pulled apart. That’s what Mamdani, Duwaji, and Khalil are doing — trying to pull our culture, society, moral framework, and self-assurance apart.

Like the Islamist forces they support, their deepest desire is to change — that is, destroy — who we are, what we believe, and how we conduct ourselves. That’s why Duwaji posted in joyous celebration of Hamas’s tortures, rapes, and massacres in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The point of Mamdani’s dinner and photo, of Khalil’s activism, of Duwaji’s delight in slaughter is to repudiate the norms that have always guided public speech and conduct in America.

Hamas terrorists did the same on Oct. 7, normalizing the grotesque. They didn’t just slaughter Jews, but captured their enormities on video — they hacked off the head of one victim with an agricultural hoe — and published the evidence on social media around the world. They calculated, rightly to the shock and horror of many of us, that this would attract rather than repel support.

TRUMP GETS THE LAST LAUGH
Horrors, the perpetration of which would once have revolted and alienated every sane person in the West, instead sparked mass support. Hamas terrorists, like their supporters in Gracie Mansion, defy norms to normalize what used to be utterly unacceptable. They seek to wreck the moral parameters of Western civilization. The more that extremists, especially public figures on the Left, reject the traditions of a coherent society, the more they sow doubt in the minds of the population.

It should be disqualifying for the New York mayor to sup with a terrorist sympathizer, but Mamdani wanted to jam his crowbar deeper into a fissure splitting our society. He expected this to encourage his leftist base and demoralize his foes. It probably has. It is a measure of the fantastic success the Left-Islamist alliance has had in its campaign to undermine this couvntry.

Maryland Dems propose bill targeting nonprofits tied to Judea and Samaria

Maryland Democrats introduced a bill that would prohibit certain nonprofit organizations registered to solicit charitable donations from supporting “Israeli settlement activity” in Judea and Samaria and allow lawsuits against groups that violate the measure.

Titled the “Not on Our Dime Act,” HB 1184 was introduced on Feb. 11 by Gabriel Acevero, Ashanti Martinez and Caylin Young, Democratic members of the Maryland House of Delegates. At a March 11 hearing in front of the House Judiciary Committee, representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations debated with Lauren Arikan, a Republican delegate, on whether the legislation should also include charitable organizations that support Iranian-linked causes.

“We’re going to have to have these difficult conversations,” Sean Stinnett, a Democratic delegate, said at the hearing, asking supporters of the bill why Jewish advocacy groups felt it was “singling out Israel.”

“There is no other country that is currently building illegal settlements that is condemned by the United Nations, by the ICJ, by the U.S. Department of State under the Obama and Biden administration,” a CAIR representative responded, claiming that Washington is funding this activity with “billions” of dollars.

The bill says a nonprofit registered with the state “may not knowingly engage in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity.”

It describes “unauthorized support” as aiding or abetting actions by the Israeli government or Israeli citizens in what it defines as “the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

Under the proposal, Maryland’s attorney general could file civil lawsuits against nonprofit leaders accused of violating the law and seek “not less than $1,000,000 in damages.” Private individuals could also bring lawsuits seeking injunctions and damages.

Nonprofits found liable would be removed from the state’s registry of charitable solicitations. The state would be required to ensure that organizations that are no longer registered stop soliciting in Maryland, according to a policy note attached to the bill.

Turning Terror Into Context by Abe Greenwald

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What about the part that the New York Times isn’t telling you—or at least not in bold type? Where’s the headline reading “More Than 100 Children in Temple Israel Pre-K at Time of Attack”? Or how about this for a story on the terrorist’s family back in Lebanon? “Synagogue Attacker’s Brothers Suspected of Being in Hezbollah”?

Not at the paper of record. The important thing for the Times, and many other outlets, is to bring everything back around to supposed Israeli crimes.

Even if we were to pretend that Israel is guilty of every invented charge hurled at it, what does that have to do with 100 Jewish American children sitting in classrooms in West Bloomfield, Michigan, on a Thursday afternoon? The only moral statement one need make about yesterday’s attack is that it’s right and just that the perpetrator is dead.

From October 7, 2023, to this day, every last bit of the psy-op against Israel and the Jews has relied on inverting both morality and truth. Hamas attempted a genocide, so Israel is accused of genocide. Zionism is, among other things, a means of preventing genocide, so Zionism itself is framed as a genocidal ideology. Hamas targeted innocents, slaughtered babies, and raped women, so Israel is accused of all three. Hamas kept food from Gazans, so Israel is accused of a starvation plot. Jews are indigenous to Israel, so Israel is accused of colonizing a native population. Jews are attacked across campuses and elsewhere in America, so we’re lectured on Islamophobia. The Iranian regime has been waging a half-century-long war to destroy Israel, so Israel is accused of starting a war with Iran.

Here's another regularly inverted truth: Children die in Israeli airstrikes for the simple reason that genocidal Jew-haters keep trying to rid the world of Jews. This is what liberals might call the “root cause.” If the family of the terrorist who carried out yesterday’s attack was killed in Lebanon, that’s entirely the fault of Hezbollah. That his brothers are suspected of being in Hezbollah perfectly encapsulates the larger pathological loop: In their effort to extinguish the Jews, Jew-haters kill their own—at which point they must go out and try to kill more Jews.

Whether they succeed or fail, the media will be sure to get their message out.

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