Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, March 15, 2026

"Al Aqsa Is In Danger" - at least 125 year of antisemitic incitement

It turns out the Mufti of Jerusalem was not the first one to incite Arabs against Jews by claiming they intended to destroy the Dome of the Rock or Al Aqsa in the 1920s.

While there is some indication of general warnings about Jews buying property in the area of the Mount in the 1880s and 1890s, the earliest specific mention of Arabs accusing Jews of having designs on the Temple Mount comes from around 1903, mentioned in The Arabs and Zionism before World War I by Neville J. Mandel (1976) where he recounts an anecdote published in Alliance Israelite Universelle saying "a young (and, it was noted, not very extreme) Muslim told a Jew in Jerusalem: 'We shall pour out everything to the last drop of blood rather than see the Dome of the Rock fall into the hands of non-Muslims.' ”

Since this came from an ordinary Arab in Jerusalem that means that the idea had already been pushed by Arab and Ottoman leaders for at least some years beforehand. (I'm still looking for earlier primary sources; an 1891 telegram from Jerusalem Arab notables to Ottoman leaders may have mentioned Jewish religious ambitions along with economic warnings about Jewish immigration.)

It has been one of the most effective antisemitic propaganda methods for over 125 years, and now with the Iran war we are seeing it being exploited daily.

Yesterday, the head of the Supreme Islamic Council in Jerusalem and preacher of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, warned of a "dangerous plan" targeting the mosque.

French Arabic site Aqlame has a columnist saying:

The fall of Iran, or its suffering a severe strategic defeat, would undoubtedly mean—from our perspective today—the removal of one of the biggest geopolitical obstacles to this [Third Temple] project. For years, Iran has been seen as the most vocal regional power in defending the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and it has adopted a political and religious discourse that links Jerusalem to the conflict with Israel on the level of identity and civilization.

The Greater Israel project cannot be realized without the construction of the Third Temple; this is a clear geostrategic fact. For Benjamin Netanyahu, the Temple is what will achieve symbolic balance among the major religious and cultural centers, alongside Mecca and the Vatican. Ignoring this point in Islamic political discussions, if not out of ignorance, is either negligence or fear.

Palestinian site Madar News took a joke post by Jewish right wing activist Baruch Marzel seriously as a method to get Iran or Israel to attack the Dome of the Rock.

It reports that the Palestinian "Jerusalem Governorate"

stated on Saturday that the extremist rabbi Baruch Marzel published an AI-generated image showing an aircraft base under the Al-Aqsa Mosque, accompanied by a sarcastic comment claiming the existence of a “secret air force base in Jerusalem,” in a move considered a dangerous incitement that paves the way for justifying targeting the Al-Aqsa Mosque .

It is amazing that Israel has held off on demolishing Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock for so many years but now the only thing stopping it is Iran. Usually the excuse is Palestinian steadfastness.

The "Al Aqsa is in Danger" meme is one of the most durable slanders, used cynically by Muslim leaders for over a century to incite antisemitism. And it works, even today.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Antisemitism Is the New Edginess

Alvin Rosenfeld's recent Commentary essay, "The Pornography of Anti-Semitism," identifies something real. Today's Jew-hatred has a performative, exhibitionistic quality - loud, profane, addictive, and publicly enacted for an audience. The pornography analogy captures the texture of it well. But his analogy isn't explanation, and Rosenfeld stops just short of the mechanism that would make his insight actionable.

Antisemitism isn't like regular pornography, because pornography has become trite. There is no thrill in it anymore. If there is an analogy, it is more like incest porn, a genre whose entire appeal is the violation of a specific and powerful social taboo. The content itself is almost irrelevant. What matters is the frisson of crossing a line that society has marked as especially forbidden. Many of the "anti-Zionists" nowadays embrace the label "antisemite" as a kind of badge of honor, proving their supposed bravery at crossing lines and "truth telling."

And crucially, for both the producer and consumer, there is no real risk. No one is getting arrested for writing incest stories and no one is getting jailed for calling Jews "Nazis." You can indulge the transgression from complete safety.

It's not hate - it's "edgy."

That combination - maximum taboo violation, minimum personal cost - is precisely what makes antisemitism so attractive to a particular type of performer. Amplifying content that contextualizes synagogue attacks as understandable grief responses carries enormous symbolic weight as a transgression. And yet Jews are a small, geographically dispersed, non-violent minority with no credible capacity for retaliation. They write letters to the editor. The transgression feels enormous. The actual risk is negligible. It's the perfect trade.

Rosenfeld focuses, understandably, on the most extreme manifestations: the campus mobs, the Park East synagogue harassment, the murderers who traveled across state lines to kill Jews for Palestine. These are real and frightening. But they represent the far end of a continuum that begins somewhere much more banal - with podcasters and former cable news anchors who have discovered that a little performative hostility toward Israel is excellent for business.

Consider Megyn Kelly, who reposted content from a Hamas-sympathizing outlet framing a synagogue truck attack as an understandable act of grief, and responded to substantive, factual pushback with "this shit doesn't work on me anymore." The dismissal is the performance. She is announcing her liberation from the constraints that being factual once imposed on her. The facts themselves are irrelevant; what matters is the gesture of imperviousness to them. "Look how edgy I am," she is telling her fans.

And her fans are flocking to this performance. While she whines that Ben Shapiro is trying to "censor" her, her audience has increased dramatically in concert with her deciding that mainstreaming antisemitism is good business. Her YouTube channel subscribers increased from by 1.7 million between 2023 and 2025. and 176 percent year-over-year, accumulating over four million YouTube subscribers and vaulting to the third-largest conservative podcast in America. She is, by any measure, one of the great success stories of independent media.

If that is censorship, most influencers would love to have that problem. And indeed, many are following in the same pattern - attacking the Jewish people, claiming bravery, and simultaneously claiming victimhood while their transgressive content makes them money.

This is the business model for both the left-wing and right-wing "anti-Zionists." The victimhood claim and the massive audience are not in tension; they are mutually reinforcing. The persecution narrative is itself a transgression amplifier, allowing them to simultaneously claim to be brave truth-tellers and the scrappy underdogs, persecuted by a supposedly powerful Jewish lobby that in reality cannot touch them. Every Jewish voice that pushes back confirms the narrative. Progressives say facts are weapons of white supremacy; far-right influencers are saying facts are the weapons of Jewish supremacy.

This is why the standard response toolkit fails so completely. Pointing out the truth doesn't dissuade people whose primary motivation is the performance of transgression. Moral counter-argument doesn't touch them. Factual correction actively helps them. Being called antisemitic, which once carried genuine social cost, is now a trophy in many circles - proof that the taboo was successfully violated, that the performance landed.

The problem with relying on perceived transgression for clicks and revenue is that it normalizes the transgression - meaning that new taboos must be found. What starts off as accusing Israel of apartheid ends up justifying attacking Jews in synagogues, or "asking questions" about the Holocaust. Only a year or so ago the self-proclaimed anti-Zionists were still at least pretending not to cross the line into antisemitism, now we are seeing people proudly claim that synagogues are fair game for attacks because they virtually all support Israel. Attacking Jewish institutions is now a daily event.

Which means the honest conclusion of this analysis is uncomfortable: there is no rhetorical counter-strategy that solves what is fundamentally an economic and legal problem. As long as antisemitic transgression is profitable and cost-free, the market will supply it in increasing quantities. The response that actually matters is not a better argument - it is making the transgression costly again. That means advertiser pressure, platform consequences, and where applicable, prosecution. Not because those tools are pleasant or easy, but because they are the only ones that operate on the reward structure rather than the content.

Rosenfeld is right that unless it is effectively curtailed, we will see an ongoing stream of moral horror. He is right about the urgency. What he doesn't quite say is that curtailment requires targeting the business model, not the argument - because for most of these performers, there is no argument. There is only a performance, and performances stop when the audience stops paying.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

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.

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.

03/13 Links Pt1: Regime Change Without Nation Building; The Strange Coalition Defending Tehran; US strikes Kharg Island in Iran, Islamic Regime 'Crown Jewel

From Ian:

Jonathan Schanzer: Regime Change Without Nation Building

Here is where it is useful to remember that the people of Iran are arguably the country’s greatest resource. They are educated. A less radical, more pragmatic regime existed in Tehran in the memories of everyone older than 55, and the experience of living under theocratic tyranny has been the only experience young Iranians know.

Is Iran ripe for regime change? In 2009, Iranians overwhelmingly voted for liberalization, only to have the mullahs fix the result—leading to an uprising that had to be crushed, though not nearly as brutally as the killing spree in January 2026 that showed the regime’s truly murderous colors in the mass slaughter of tens of thousands. Indeed, Iranians have in recent memory sought to carve a different path and, just two months ago, were in open revolt. This is not a quiescent population whose will has been shattered.

Unfortunately, little is known about the opposition on the ground right now. But Iranian unity will be crucial to any effort to reach a stable end state in this war. We’ll soon see if the Persian-speaking majority can join forces with the complex patchwork of Iranian minorities.

Self-defined experts on these matters look at the prospect of Iranian common cause with deep skepticism. But we Americans are hardly the best judges of the ways to achieve common ground. Our divisive politics have in recent decades rendered American foreign policy schizophrenic, with key principles shifting violently every four or eight years. The debates over military intervention, regime change, and even America’s place in the world have yielded chaos and confusion, both at home and abroad.

While Americans have been exceptionally vociferous in expressing their varying political views in recent years, the Iran war has finally brought a major fault line to the surface. This heated battle on both the left and the right is between neo-isolationists and interventionists. For those who believe no good can come of war and that America fails when it fights, no argument exists that will penetrate their hard shell of determinist defeatism. But foreign policy theorists in the neo-isolationist camp—those who do not want to appear to be isolationist but rather realist—warn that whatever America does is merely a distraction from the real issue of the 21st century. That issue is our “great power competition” with China. Any cent we spend for any purpose other than countering China is a penny wasted. Of course, since China is allied with Iran and sees Iran as an extension of its sphere of interest, an American defeat of Iran would serve the purpose of putting China on notice that we will not look kindly on another totalitarian regime’s effort to spread its shadow across the globe. Nor will we sit idly by.

The task before Donald Trump is finding a middle ground that appeals to the isolationists and interventionists, on the left and the right, all of whom fervently believe that they are putting “America First.” To secure his place in American history, and to end this war on his terms, he must find a way to validate both camps while engineering a decisive victory in Iran that heralds a new Middle East, sets back rivals like China and Russia, and does not empty out the U.S. Treasury.

None of this is simple or intuitive. But history is replete with American regime-change experiments that did not bankrupt America and did not thrust it into a forever war. Should Trump find a way of repeating that history, and not the failures of the early 21st century, while vanquishing the greatest threat to American interests in the Middle East, “America First” won’t just be a political slogan. It will be a blueprint for other important battles amid the litany of geopolitical challenges that lie ahead.

Brendan O'Neill: War on Iran was not ‘unprovoked’

I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrase ‘unprovoked war’. It’s been rolling off leftist tongues since the explosion of hostilities in Iran. This week, Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana and scores of hoary peaceniks wrote a letter to the Guardian insisting Britain should have nothing to do with America and Israel’s ‘unprovoked war’ in Iran.

Here’s my question: is the rape and murder of Jews not a provocation? Was the worst anti-Jewish atrocity since the Holocaust – 7 October – not a provocation? The tyrants of Tehran were the paymasters of the jihadist brutes who carried out that slaughter. They lavished guns and training on that army of anti-Semites that invaded Israel by air, sea and land not even three years ago. That wasn’t a provoking act?

Is it not a provocation to rain thousands of missiles onto a neighbouring country? Is it not a provocation to subject a nation to a ballistic swarm that causes the displacement of tens of thousands of civilians and the deaths of scores of innocents, including 12 Druze kids playing football? That’s what Hezbollah has done these past three years. Hezbollah received hundreds of millions of dollars from the Islamic Republic to pursue precisely such violent badgering of the Jewish state. That isn’t a provocation?

You can say many things about America and Israel’s war in Iran. Some say it’s valiant, others that it’s reckless. But one thing you can’t say, not if you want to be taken seriously, is that it is ‘unprovoked’. Unless, of course, you think the mass murder of Jews should have no repercussions. That, just like in the 1930s, or the 1490s, mobs of anti-Semites should be free to kill Jews with impunity. If I were you, I’d keep that view to myself.

Traditionally it was the pursuers of war who engaged in linguistic trickery to justify their actions or disguise their true motives. Tariq Ali calls it the ‘grammar of deceit’. Today, such semantic duplicity is more readily found among war’s opponents.

Indeed, President Trump, in contrast with his predecessors who dolled up their warmaking as ‘peacekeeping’, has spoken with uncommon frankness about the nature of war. He has told of the ‘death, fire and fury’ that will be visited upon the Iranian regime. Ugly, but honest. It’s the other side, Trump’s noisy doubters and Israel’s legion haters, who are using language as a weapon not of clarification but of concealment.

‘Unprovoked war’ – that isn’t only factually wrong, it’s intentionally dissembling. It draws a thick veil over the events of the past three years. It absolves the Islamic Republic of its sins of violent anti-Semitism. It memory-holes the war crimes funded by that regime and conditions us to think of Iran as an innocent party under ‘imperial’ assault by the Jewish State and its American lackeys. It is a lie masquerading as a critique.

John Spencer: War Reveals the Truth: Russian and Chinese Weapons Are Outmatched

Modern warfare is no longer defined by individual weapons platforms alone. It is defined by networks. Western militaries have spent decades investing in systems that integrate satellites, aircraft, drones, sensors, cyber capabilities, and precision munitions into a unified battlefield architecture. This allows forces to detect targets faster, share information instantly, and strike with extraordinary precision.

Russia and China have attempted to replicate elements of this model, but the battlefield evidence suggests their systems remain less integrated and more vulnerable to disruption. Battlefield performance carries geopolitical consequences.

In 1982, during the Lebanon War, Israeli fighters destroyed more than 60 Syrian aircraft supplied by the Soviet Union without losing a single plane. Soviet air defenses that had been widely exported suddenly appeared far less formidable. Moscow’s reputation as an arms supplier suffered.

Something similar is happening again today, and the battlefield evidence is mounting.

When Russian air defenses fail to protect Russian forces in Ukraine, defense planners around the world take notice. When Chinese-supplied air defense systems fail to prevent precision strikes in South Asia, potential buyers pay attention. And when Iranian defenses built with Russian and Chinese technology fail to prevent repeated penetrations by U.S. and Israeli forces, the message becomes unmistakable.

The battlefield is the ultimate arms exhibition.

Countries that spend billions of dollars on military equipment are not buying hardware for parades. They are buying systems that must function in the most demanding conditions imaginable. Every destroyed radar, every neutralized air defense battery, and every successful penetration of an air defense network sends a signal to the global defense market.

That signal is increasingly clear.

Western military technology, particularly that developed by the United States and Israel, continues to demonstrate a decisive advantage in real combat conditions. From stealth aircraft and precision-guided weapons to advanced electronic warfare and integrated intelligence networks, these systems are proving their effectiveness across multiple wars.

Russia and China will continue to export weapons. Many countries will still buy them because they are cheaper or politically easier to obtain. But the evidence from modern battlefields is mounting.

Russian and Chinese systems have not saved Iran. They have not protected Russian forces in Ukraine. And they did not prevent India from striking precisely where and when it chose during Operation Sindoor.

War is the harshest evaluator of military technology.

Right now, the verdict from the battlefield is unmistakable.

US military supremacy shines as China fails big in Iran, Venezuela

China has become the laughingstock of the international community.

For years, its leaders showcased their powerful HQ-9B missiles as the best air defense system. But they were lying. In less than a year, their system has failed catastrophically in Pakistan, in Venezuela and now in Iran.

The U.S. remains by far the most modern and feared military power in the world, and President Trump has proven it. In one day, U.S. and Israeli forces wiped out Iran’s military leadership, along with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In one day, U.S. forces entered Venezuela and extracted Nicolás Maduro without a single U.S. fatality.

Recall that it took President George H.W. Bush several days to capture General Manuel Noriega in Panama; the tracking and elimination of Osama Bin Laden took almost 10 years. Here is a historical fact for which no is crediting the current administration: Operations Absolute Resolve and Epic Fury have set a new standard.

Returning to China, the HQ-9B missiles and JY-27A radars were always impressive at military parades, but they have performed poorly in actual combat. They are blind, deaf, and mute.

The HQ-9B, also known as Red Flag 9, is a cheap copy of the powerful U.S. Patriot missiles and the Russian S-300. In theory, they have built-in radar systems to track and engage multiple targets simultaneously. In practice, they have demonstrated the opposite.

Since May of last year, serious concerns have been raised about the HQ-9B’s inadequacy. In India’s Operation Sindoor against Pakistan, the Chinese missiles were soundly defeated for four consecutive days. They were unable to defend, destroy or track anything.

China’s JY-27 radar is a system capable of identifying and scanning targets between 280 and 390 kilometers away. It specializes in the early detection of fast, supersonic F-22 and F-35 fighter jets. But in real combat, when Maduro was captured in Venezuela, the Chinese radars became a point of national humiliation and shame, failing to detect even one of the 150 aircraft that penetrated Venezuelan airspace.

Operation Absolute Resolve also humiliated Russia. Venezuela had invested more than $2 billion in S-300 missiles. Despite their power, they were rendered immobile by powerful American fighters, bombers and electronic warfare aircraft.

If Jewish "progressives" had their way, scores of children would have been murdered at Temple Israel yesterday

From all reports of the horrific terror attack at Temple Israel in Michigan yesterday, a bloodbath was averted because of the professional, armed security that the synagogue had in place.

In all likelihood this was partially funded, directly or indirectly through Jewish Federations, by the Department of Homeland Security.

But "progressive Jews" don't like synagogues to be protected by armed guards.

An April 2024 open letter to Congress signed by pseudo-Jewish organizations like the Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, Bend the Arc, Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, Synagogues Rising and others insisted that the best way to protect synagogues - which, they claim, are only threated by white supremacy - is through "Community Based, Non-Carceral Approaches."

Their "plan" is to partner with other groups and somehow that would stop Hezbollah-aligned actors or Islamist terrorists from targeting Jews.

They call it "safety through solidarity."

Really.

Oh, by the way, they hate the word "terrorist" altogether, saying

We refuse to see our family members and friends (or anyone) labeled as “terrorists” or on the “path to radicalization.” We demand community-based, non-carceral safety approaches that leave no one in our communities behind, and actively challenge our society’s reliance on criminalization and surveillance.

See? No one is a terrorist, they are just misunderstood well-meaning people. Including someone driving a car with bombs and guns into a synagogue and preschool.

If only the guards gave Ayman Mohamad Ghazali flowers and an invitation to an iftar meal after he crashed into the building, all would have ended up well. How dare they use guns, treating him like a criminal!

So when you see empty statements of sadness from JVP or Bend the Arc, remember - if Temple Israel had listened to them, there would have been carnage.

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Europe Should Thank Israel for the Fall of Assad

For years, Israel conducted a sustained campaign against Iranian military infrastructure in Syria. The stated purpose was narrow: prevent the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah. That mission was largely accomplished. But the cumulative effect was broader — a systematic degradation of the military value of the real estate Iran was trying to occupy. Israel made it difficult for the IRGC to act with impunity in Syria. And Israel's rout of Hezbollah helped bring about Assad's fall.

Europe, which had little to say about any of this, was among the primary beneficiaries. And it should be thanking Israel.

In 2015, Iran announced a self-imposed 2,000 km ceiling on its ballistic missile range. Iranian officials presented this as a measured, responsible posture — 2,000 km was sufficient to cover Israel, American bases in the Gulf, and every Arab capital. There was no need, they said, for longer-range systems.

Western analysts accepted this framing with varying degrees of skepticism. European governments, in particular, found it useful. At 2,000 km from Iran, Paris is safe. Berlin is safe. Rome is safe. The limit meant that whatever Iran was doing with its missile program, it was a Middle Eastern problem, not a European one.

The problem is that the limit was fiction from the start — a diplomatic construct rather than a technical reality.

Iran already operates two systems that exceed it. The Soumar cruise missile — a reverse-engineered descendant of twelve Soviet Kh-55 missiles illegally sold to Iran by Ukraine in 2001 — has an assessed range of approximately 2,500 km. (Iran initially claimed 3,000 km for the system at its 2015 unveiling before walking that back under scrutiny.) Multiple Western assessments, including the CSIS Missile Threat Project, place the Soumar's real capability at 2,000–2,500 km, with some intelligence assessments extending that to 3,000 km depending on configuration.

The Khorramshahr ballistic missile is officially rated at 2,000 km — but only when carrying its full 1,500 kg warhead. Analysts at IISS and CSIS have long noted that reducing the payload to approximately 750 kg would extend the Khorramshahr's range to roughly 3,000 km. Iran chose the heavy warhead configuration to stay within its declared limit. The propulsion capability to exceed it was always there.

The "2,000 km limit" was not a constraint on what Iran could build. It was a constraint on what Iran chose to declare — calibrated precisely to keep Western Europe feeling safe.

Now consider what changes when you move the launch point from central Iran to Syria's northwestern Mediterranean coast — the Latakia region, heart of Assad's Alawite base. The distance from central Iran to Latakia is approximately 1,500 km. That shift, applied to Iran's real capabilities rather than its declared ones, produces a threat map that covers nearly the entire European continent.

This shows the range from northwestern Syria to Europe at 2,500 and 3,000 km, as well as the range from northwestern Iran to Europe at 2,500 km.

Iran has announced, but not publicly tested, the Soumar cruise missile family which is said to have a 2,500 km range largely invisible to radar as it hugs the ground. At 2,500 km from the Syrian coast, the threat envelope covers Athens, Sofia, Bucharest, Belgrade, Budapest, Vienna, Prague, Warsaw, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, and Rome. This is most of the European Union, including much of Germany — the continent's largest economy and the political anchor of NATO's eastern flank.

The Soumar and its variants use mobile transporter-erector-launchers — trucks that can be dispersed, hidden, and relocated between firing positions. Northwestern Syria, with its mountainous coastal range behind Latakia, is precisely the terrain suited to this kind of dispersal. This would make them harder to eliminate.

The Khorramshahr ballistic missile can reach 3,000 km with a reduced payload. At 3,000 km from the Syrian coast, the threat envelope expands to include Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Bern, and Oslo — effectively the entirety of the European Union.

A ballistic missile traveling from Syria to Paris in under fifteen minutes, even with a "smaller" 750 kg warhead, is a serious threat in its own right.

Israel spent a decade ensuring that if Assad ever fell, Iran could not simply move into the resulting vacuum with a ready-to-use forward platform on the Mediterranean coast. That outcome served Israel's immediate security interests directly. It also quietly served the security interests of every European capital within the rings on this map.

European governments, across left and right, spent much of the 2013–2024 period expressing concern about Israeli military operations in Syria. These operations, they argued, risked escalation, violated sovereignty, and destabilized the region. European diplomats made statements at the UN. Human rights organizations issued reports. By 2023, some European governments were beginning to advocate for a degree of Syrian rehabilitation — a return of Assad to regional standing, a normalization of the regime's relationships with Western-aligned Arab states.

Imagine what that would have meant today. Iran is already shooting missiles in Turkish airspace. US bases in Germany and elsewhere in Europe would have been easily within range if Assad was still in power.

European governments are not going to issue statements thanking Israel for military operations they officially criticized. The diplomatic architecture does not permit it, and the domestic politics of most European countries make any such statement impossible.

But the arithmetic does not require a diplomatic statement. The map does not need a press release. It simply requires that the question be asked: where would those missiles be today, if Assad were still in power — and if Israel had not spent a decade making sure they were never safely emplaced?

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Before the US and Israeli airstrikes, opponents of military action against Iran made a vivid and consistent case for restraint. Attack Iran, they warned, and it will close the Strait of Hormuz, unleash its proxies across the region, strike American bases, target civilian infrastructure in allied countries, and drag the entire Middle East into chaos. The retaliation would be massive, indiscriminate, and impossible to control.

They were right.

Since Operation Epic Fury began, Iran has attacked civilian infrastructure in Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan, Turkey, and Cyprus. It struck a British military base. It hit airports and embassies and hotels across the region. It continued firing after its own president publicly declared it would stop. Nearly every catastrophic prediction the anti-war camp made has come to pass.

But follow the logic.

Even the doves knew — and their warnings made clear they believed — that Iran is not a rational actor responsive to logic and incentives. It cannot be reliably deterred, cannot be trusted to honor agreements, and will use any available instrument of coercion to cause maximum harm. Some of them will acknowledge privately what the regime states publicly: that Iran's leadership genuinely believes it is hastening a divine apocalypse, that chaos serves a theological purpose, that the Mahdi arrives when the world burns. This is an eschatological project with ballistic missiles.

If that picture is accurate — and the last two weeks have done nothing to contradict it — then it is an argument for early confrontation, not endless patience. Because every year of patience was a year Iran added to its arsenal. As I showed here, Iran was producing over 100 ballistic missiles per month against the six or seven interceptors the US could manufacture in the same period. That gap compounds. An irrational actor that is also becoming militarily untouchable is not a problem that diplomacy resolves; it is a crisis that diplomacy defers until the moment of maximum danger.

The anti-war logic, followed to its own conclusion, is a pro-war logic. It establishes that Iran is dangerous, unpredictable, possibly theologically motivated, and immune to the kind of rational calculation that makes deterrence work. Having established all of that, it then argues for giving such an actor more time, more missiles, more infrastructure, and eventually the conventional umbrella behind which it completes a nuclear program.

The conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. It contradicts them. If Iran is irrational, and it is getting more powerful, then the only rational choice is to stop it earlier rather than later.

Even without the theological argument, Iran's actions appear designed to cause enough economic pain and regional disruption that pressure mounts on Western governments to stop the war. Iran is threatening to crash the global economy if it doesn't get what it wants.

But think about what that means going forward. If Iran is willing to use the threat of closing the Strait of Hormuz today, it can use that same threat tomorrow. And the day after. A nuclear-armed Iran with a vastly larger missile arsenal could hold that sword over the world's head indefinitely — not as a wartime desperation measure, but as a permanent feature of the geopolitical landscape. Every Western government, every moderate Arab state, every global shipping route would live permanently under the veto of a regime that both the hawks and doves describe as irrational, apocalyptic, and unappeasable.

Why would anyone give an irrational actor the keys to a sports car he has already promised to crash if he doesn't get what he demands?

The anti-war camp warned us exactly what Iran would do. The lesson they should have drawn — and that events are now teaching — is that you don't wait for such an actor to become more powerful. You act while the cost is still bearable.

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

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03/12 Links Pt2: The Horseshoe Effect and Anti-Jewish Incitement; Gunman shot dead after ramming vehicle into Michigan synagogue

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The ethnostate illusion

Jews have benefited hugely from the civilized society that allowed them to prosper in America and Britain. So they have a duty to lend their voices to the defense of the West against Islamization and cultural takeover.

Unfortunately, virtually the only Jewish voices to be heard are those demonizing this as “white supremacy,” racism and “Islamophobia.” In Britain, Jewish leaders have supported government proposals to introduce protection for Muslims that will have a chilling effect on necessary debate about Islamic extremism.

This is very wrong in itself. But it’s also guaranteed to make resentment of the Jews even worse by appearing to prove the charge that the Jews “don’t care about the rest of us.”

“So what?” many Jews would say in response; “antisemitism lies beyond reason and it’s eternal, so there’s no point even trying to fight it.”

This is simply wrong. As I say in my new book, published this week, Fighting the Hate: A Handbook for Jews Under Siege, there’s plenty that can and should be done to combat it.

True, antisemitism can never be defeated, but Jewish passivity makes it worse. Failing to produce arguments and evidence to show that claims of Jewish power over U.S. policy are groundless reinforces the belief that they are true.

Jews have to stand up for themselves in the right way. The Jewish world has consistently been doing so in the wrong way, and then wonders why it hasn’t gotten anywhere.

In my book, I set out a strategy for both individuals and community leaders that turns many of these flawed assumptions upside down. Community leaders should start speaking truths that Jews shy away from, such as the prevalence of Muslim antisemitism or Israel’s legally watertight claim to the land. Individuals should use difficult encounters about Israel as an opportunity to surprise their foes and so open their minds by at least a crack.

Even in today’s poisonous climate, this can have a remarkable effect. In any event, Jews—who have an obligation to stand up for truth against lies—should take on those foaming right now about “war-mongering for Israel” simply because it’s the right thing to do.

Seth Mandel: The Horseshoe Effect and Anti-Jewish Incitement

Those Epstein files are public largely because of the efforts of folks like Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from California, and Tom Massie, a Republican from Kentucky. Khanna and Massie have coined the phrase “the Epstein class” to refer to a wide variety of people who don’t include Ro Khanna and Tom Massie and their friends, though it has mostly just poured fuel on the fire of Epstein-related anti-Semitic conspiracy theories not too dissimilar from Owens’s idiotic “Baal-worshiping” stuff.

Khanna’s cynicism is the subject of an excellent column by James Kirchick in the Washington Post today. Khanna responded to Kirchick’s reporting by accusing Kirchick of protecting “the Epstein class” and being a shill for Israel’s government. Then he defended Pat Buchanan.

Ah, Pat Buchanan, trailblazing anti-Semitic populist. The old Republican hand and former presidential candidate is having a moment. A new generation of young right-wingers are discovering him and hoping to carve his face into Mount Rushmore. A couple of Republicans in the Senate want him to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

As should be clear from Khanna, Buchanan’s bipartisan appeal isn’t policy-based. Rather, it’s the insinuations that American Jews are disloyal citizens acting on behalf of the Israeli government. Platner sounds a bit like him but so does someone who once called out Buchanan’s anti-Semitism: Tucker Carlson. The influential conservative podcaster and former Fox News host has morphed into a Pat Buchanan cover band.

In addition to accusing Israel of controlling Washington, Carlson now also recites the classic pogrom-incitement propaganda of accusing the Jews of planning to conquer Al Aqsa, the old mosque at the Temple Mount complex. It’s an idea Tucker shares with his left-wing buddies in the Squad like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who goes back to the well of Al Aqsa incitement more than some Palestinian leaders do.

This is what is termed the horseshoe effect, where right and left go far enough to meet on the other side. When it comes to Israel and the Jews, the political horseshoe is more like a closed circle, dizzying and without exit.

And by the way, another possible motive for attacks on Jews these days all over the world is the activating of Iranian agents who are retaliating for Israel’s refusal to let the mullahs have a nuclear bomb. Iran’s terror regime has defenders on both sides of the aisle too, for what it’s worth.

The point is that in the past, knowing an anti-Semitic terrorist’s specific motivation was useful information, a knowledge trail that one could follow to see how to prepare for the next attack. But right now it feels like that trail would just send you around in a circle. America’s domestic radicalization problem is the new melting pot, where all the ingredients get mushed together into a one-bowl meal. If, somehow, you still have an appetite.

Seth Mandel: Canada’s Colossal Failure on Anti-Semitism Since October 7

Just after a Purim celebration on March 2, a synagogue in Toronto was hit with gunfire. Four days later, shooters fired into a different Toronto synagogue while people were still inside. A half-hour after that, shots were fired at a third Toronto synagogue.

It’s fair to say this is cause for alarm. Especially when you consider the recent history of such incidents. In the summer of 2024, a Jewish girls school in Toronto was hit with gunfire. A few months later, the same school was shot at again. Two months after that, it was shot a third time.

Also in 2024, in the span of a month, yet another Toronto synagogue had its windows and doors smashed up twice. By November 2025, that synagogue—Kehillat Shaarei Torah—was vandalized 10 times. Then there was the Jewish schoolbus that was torched, and the popular bookstore that was vandalized because it is owned by a Jew… welcome to Toronto.

This doesn’t include all the incidents of nonviolent anti-Semitism, which were numerous and saw a steep increase each year after October 7.

The pattern is easy to figure out: Anti-Semitic activists go around targeting Jewish institutions, and the more dangerous the attack, the more likely it is to be repeated.

Yet the mayor of Toronto, Olivia Chow, has decided the way to address rising anti-Semitism is to pour fuel on the fire. In November, she went before a national Muslim group and added her voice to the “genocide” blood libel against the Jewish state.

03/12 Links Pt1: The UN Can Condemn Attacks on Civilians. Just Not Israeli Ones; 60 wounded after Iranian missile strike in northern Israel; Israel targets Iran’s Basij members

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: Trump’s decision to fight Iran is historic — but he needs to finish the job

For years excitable figures have warned that any attack on Iran would start World War III. The fact that the regime in Iran has spent decades trying to develop a nuclear weapon was always a problem for these people. After all, if a terrorist regime is developing a nuclear weapon and says it is going to use that weapon, what exactly is the world meant to do? Sit back and let it happen?

That’s what much of the world seemed happy to do. Or rather, they hoped that someone would take the problem off the world’s hands for them.

And so it fell to the governments of Israel and the United States of America to step up. To do what the German chancellor recently called the world’s “dirty work” for the rest of the planet.

But there are reasons why World War III has not remotely kicked off.

The first is that for the past three years the Israelis have taken out each of the Iranian Revolutionary Government’s terrorist armies one by one.

They smashed Hamas in Gaza, killing all their senior leadership and thousands of their terrorists.

They destroyed the infrastructure and leadership of Iran’s terrorist army in Lebanon — Hezbollah. They did that from the land, the skies and through history-making operations like the pager attack which killed or disabled thousands of Hezbollah’s terrorists.

They did it by taking out the leadership and weapons stores of Iran´s terrorist army in Yemen — the Houthis.

And now for the past two weeks, with America leading the way, they have taken the battle to the head of the snake.

People should be under no illusions. The success of this American-led campaign has been extraordinary.

The world’s biggest sponsor of terror has been hit in every single place where it hurts.

Khamenei Cemented the U.S.-Israel Alliance

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should be credited with elevating the Israel-U.S. military alliance to an unprecedented peak. Demonizing the "twin devils" of America and Israel was central to Khamenei's ideology and his regime. His followers murdered Americans, Israelis and Jews worldwide. The network of terror and nuclear ambition that this malevolent matchmaker built ultimately forced the U.S. and Israel to integrate their militaries in ways that would have been almost unimaginable a few years ago.

The moment that symbolized this transformation came with Khamenei's death. Central Intelligence Agency information from a human source pinpointed the location of the supreme leader. The intelligence was passed on to Israel, which sent 100 aircraft into Tehran to attack Khamenei's compound, killing him alongside other top officials.

Today, the operations are completely merged. American and Israeli F-15s and F-35s are flying almost side-by-side simultaneous strike packages, guided by shared intelligence. Hundreds of Israeli sorties have already been refueled by U.S. Air Force tankers. For the first time, the Israeli and American militaries are fighting the same war, in the same battle space, at the same time. Khamenei created the conditions for the most powerful military alliance the region has ever seen.

America Is Fighting a War that Iran Chose

Critics of the latest U.S. military attacks against Iran argue that the Iranian threat was insufficiently imminent to justify self-defense. However, this campaign continues an ongoing and long-term armed conflict with Iran. Iran's assaults against U.S. personnel, bases, ships and Israel over the years triggered the right to act in self-defense in response to an actual or imminent unlawful armed attack under Article 51 of the UN Charter. That U.S. right of self-defense continues until Iran's willingness or capacity to continue such aggression ends.

International law does not require a distinct self-defense justification for every attack conducted once the right of self-defense is triggered. Once that right is initiated, military action is justified to achieve the overall self-defense objective, in this case terminating Iran's capacity to strike the U.S. and its allies.

There are strong arguments that the conflict has been ongoing for the 47 years since the Iranian Revolution. Iran has been held responsible for the deaths of 603 U.S. troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, 241 service members in the 1983 U.S. Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, three soldiers in Jordan in January 2024, and dozens of U.S. civilians. That the U.S. has historically chosen to tolerate acts of Iranian aggression or respond in limited ways in no way negates the reality of this conflict.

It is logical and legally valid for the U.S. to target enemy military sites when and where such strikes are most likely to accomplish objectives and produce maximum advantage. This approach is inherent in the numerous times U.S. presidents and military officials have stated the U.S. will respond to Iranian aggression "at a time and place of our choosing."

International law does not require the U.S. and its allies to endlessly endure and absorb Iranian aggression. The U.S. military is engaged in decisive action to permanently stop Iranian attacks. America is fighting a war that Iran chose.

Regime Supporters: Iran Has Weapons So Secret, Their Effects Are Undetectable (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook and Substack pages.

Tehran, March 12 - As the US-Israel alliance continues its methodical dismantling of Iran's military infrastructure in Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion, a peculiar strain of denial has gripped certain corners of the internet. Observers report that what was once mere anti-Israel rhetoric has mutated into fervent belief in "super-secret" Iranian superweapons – armaments so stealthy, so advanced, that their deployment results in precisely zero detectable casualties, explosions, or even mild inconveniences for the intended targets.

Proponents of these phantom arsenals argue that the lack of evidence is, in fact, the smoking gun. "Iran's got these invisible hypersonic missiles that phase through defenses like ghosts," proclaimed one forum poster, citing "deep sources" that suspiciously resemble fanfiction from a 2020s sci-fi subreddit. "You don't see casualties because they're so secret they erase themselves from reality after impact. That's why Israel and the US keep pretending nothing happened – they're covering up the total devastation!" This logic conveniently overlooks the barrage of very visible, very conventional Iranian missiles that have been intercepted or fallen short since the conflict escalated in June 2025, post-Khamenei's elimination.

It does, however, dovetail with inline claims that Tel Aviv has become an uninhabitable hellhole of smoke and ruin, invisible behind the real-time video feeds showing no such thing.

When pressed on why Iran's proxies like Hezbollah have suffered verifiable losses, the response pivots to "decoy operations" meant to lure the West into false security. "That's the magic working – everyone's too bewitched to notice they're defeated," explained a self-styled analyst on a podcast that boasts more ads for survival gear than listeners.

Experts attribute this epidemic to cognitive whiplash from Iran's rapid setbacks. "When your regime's vaunted missile factories go boom under precision strikes, you invent weapons that don't need to exist to win," noted Dr. Ima Skeptic of the Institute for Rational Thought. "It's desperation dialed to eleven, where invisibility equals invincibility."

"Of course you can't be too careful," she cautioned. "Disbelieving the claims would also be Islamophobic."

The same activists and self-styled journalists make similar claims about Israeli "false flag" attacks that somehow hoodwink Turkish, Azerbaijni, Qatari, Emirati, Saudi, Bahraini, and Omani radar operators into thinking Iran has launched missiles and drones at those countries, while in fact, according to the claim, Israel has blown up the buildings and installations in those countries without anyone noticing all the preparation necessary for operations on such a scale - echoing "Israel did 9/11" tropes popular among the same crowd.

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On the night of March 11, Israeli drones descended on security checkpoints across Tehran, killing scores of Basij militiamen within minutes. Iran's state-affiliated Fars news agency confirmed the attack, acknowledging at least ten security personnel dead — other sources put the toll far higher. The message was unmistakable: Israel can now reach inside Iran's capital, pick its targets at will, and strike at the very apparatus the regime uses to repress its own people.

This is something qualitatively different from the thunderous opening of Operation Roaring Lion. These weren't F-35s screaming in from the west. These were drones — patient, cheap, and expendable — doing the work that once required a pilot to strap in and fly a thousand miles.

Israeli officials have signaled explicitly that this escalation is deliberate and will intensify. On March 5, Israeli officials announced a shift to the "next stage" of the campaign, moving beyond the initial goals of air superiority and missile degradation toward targeting what they described as the "foundations" of the Iranian regime — its internal security apparatus, its command structures, the instruments of domestic repression. The Basij checkpoints fit that template precisely.

This new stage of the war, with heavy reliance of drones, can be seen as part of the larger strategy.

The opening days of Operation Roaring Lion were a feat of almost superhuman intensity. Israeli fighter pilots flew to Iran and back three times a day — a sortie tempo that stunned military observers worldwide, triple the usual rate. The trick, as pilots eventually disclosed, was pharmaceutical: modafinil, a wakefulness-promoting drug already authorized by the U.S. Air Force for long-duration operations, allowed crews to sustain the punishing schedule. Besides overwhelming Iran's launch capabilities before it could adapt, the initial attacks were meant to make the skies of Iran safe for slower but more numerous drones.

Stimulants can only push the human body so far, but drones can stay in the air for many hours. The math shows that drones are a far more effective platform once air defenses are defeated. Israel's active drone inventory stands at roughly 1,015 platforms — nearly four times its fleet of approximately 284 manned combat aircraft. During last June's Operation Rising Lion, 70% of all IAF flight hours were already being flown by UAVs rather than manned aircraft.

The flagship platform is the Hermes 900 "Kochav" (Star), built by Elbit Systems: over 30 hours of endurance, operational ceiling of 30,000 feet, payload capacity of around 300 kg, operational range exceeding 1,000 km. At roughly $6.8 million per unit — a fraction of an F-35's cost — losing one is an accounting entry, not a national tragedy. In the current campaign, Hermes 900s have been flying around the clock over Iran, with AI-driven algorithms fusing data from electro-optical, infrared, synthetic aperture radar, and hyperspectral sensors to locate missile launchers, radar systems, and mobile air-defense batteries. Wreckage recovered in Iran has confirmed they are also carrying combat payloads — twin or quad pods of air-dropped munitions. They are not merely watching.

Most of a drone's mission time is transit; any single platform may loiter over Iran for only six hours or so before heading home. But with over a thousand drones and a centralized AI-targeting architecture, Israel can sustain continuous coverage over Iranian territory through coordinated rotation — launching platforms in waves so that each drone arriving on station relieves one departing. What looks like a constraint on individual platforms becomes, at fleet scale, something close to a permanent presence. Crucially, because the targeting data is shared and continuously updated across the network, each incoming drone doesn't start blind. It inherits an accumulated intelligence file from its predecessor: known positions, movement patterns, the behavioral signatures of specific units. The individual drones may only be watching for several hours, but the network never sleeps.

For strike missions that don't require recovery, Israel also fields loitering munitions — kamikaze drones that solve the range problem by simply not returning. The Harop, with operational figures suggesting up to 1,000 km range in some configurations, can be air-launched from a fighter that carries it most of the distance and releases it well clear of dangerous airspace. The pilot turns around; the drone completes the mission autonomously.

This is all assuming Israeli drones are being launched exclusively from Israel. This may or may not be true. What we already know about US-Israeli cooperation during this operation is striking enough on its own. American F-22s were deployed at Israeli Air Force bases; American refueling aircraft operated from Israeli airfields serving both nations' planes; Israeli pilots shared real-time targeting data with US command at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, integrated into a single AI-driven kill chain in which the nearest available asset — US or Israeli — received automatic engagement authorization. The two forces were not merely coordinating. They were merged.

US aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman sit far closer to Iran than Israeli airfields do, cutting transit time dramatically. Gulf states, whatever their public statements about not hosting offensive operations, have powerful reasons to see the Iranian regime destabilized and have been operating in deep intelligence partnership with both Israel and the United States. Azerbaijan — which has long-standing defense ties with Israel and was itself struck by Iranian drones during the conflict, likely as punishment for suspected cooperation — remains an intriguing possibility for forward drone staging, though that remains unconfirmed. The operational incentive to use closer launch points is obvious; the diplomatic incentive to deny it publicly is equally obvious. So while it is operationally possible that Israel's drone fleet is operating exclusively from Israeli soil, it very possibly has a considerably shorter route.

If anyone believed that Israel's opening surge represented its maximum sustainable effort — that once the pilots came down from their modafinil-fueled sprint the campaign would necessarily slow — they were wrong. The initial phase was designed to create the conditions for the phase we are now entering, one that requires no stimulants, no heroic sortie rates, and no pilots at risk. A drone fleet of over a thousand platforms, rotating continuously, inheriting an ever-richer intelligence picture, striking when and where it chooses against a degraded and demoralized adversary — this is not a lesser form of air campaign than what came before. It may be a more effective one.

When Israeli officials say the attacks will accelerate, it is not hyperbole. It was always part of the plan.

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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)