Archiv: foreign policy establishment


15.07.2026 - 12:41 [ Antiwar.com ]

Senate Democrats Block Advancement of $1.1 Trillion NDAA Over Iran War

Senate Democrats on Tuesday blocked the advancement of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, citing President Trump’s war with Iran, which continues to rage following the collapse of the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding.

The NDAA would provide the Pentagon with over $1.1 trillion in funding as part of the White House’s plan for a $1.5 trillion military budget for 2027, a nearly 50% increase from this year. The bill also includes an amendment, Section 1217, to further merge the US and Israeli militaries under a plan being pushed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

A procedural vote of 50-46 fell well short of the 60 votes that it needed to advance the NDAA. Every Democrat, except two who weren’t present for the vote — Senators Jon Fetterman (PA) and Alex Padilla (CA) — voted against advancing the sprawling military spending bill.

15.07.2026 - 12:29 [ Common Dreams ]

How Section 219, the US-Israel Military Merger, Would Thwart American Democracy

(July 13, 2026)

The House provision, which has a Senate version known as Section 1217, would also forbid the president of the United States from limiting intelligence collaboration with Israel over its human rights abuses. If the President ever wants to limit such collaboration, he or she must tell Congress and can only cite American national security as a basis.

In other words, these bills would connect the US and Israeli militaries in unprecedented ways and make it exceedingly difficult for any future president to unwind this partnership with a foreign government.

15.07.2026 - 12:14 [ Human RIghts Watch ]

Congressional Proposal Could Deepen US Complicity

(June 16, 2026)

Buried in the US$1.15 trillion National Defense Authorization Act is a provision that would deepen US military cooperation with Israel while walling that cooperation off from further congressional oversight.

Section 219 (formerly section 224) creates the role of an “executive agent” focused on folding Israeli technology into US weapons programs, and vice versa, including in missile and air defense technologies as well as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cyberwarfare, and autonomous systems. Once implemented, the provision would speed efforts to embed Israeli technologies into US weapons systems in ways almost never codified into law, even for allies. As the protracted experience with unwinding Turkish participation in the F-35 program shows, practically, integration binds the United States to rely on producers in ways that become next to impossible to walk back later, even if lawmakers want to.

(…)

Section 219 also calls for “data fusion.” In defense doctrine, data fusion means combining feeds from many sensors and intelligence sources into a single targeting picture. The United States would be absorbing Israeli data, which may have been collected under problematic mass surveillance programs. Moreover, section 219 would be reinforced by section 622 of the intelligence appropriations bill, which mandates intelligence sharing and would further promote combining US intelligence streams with Israeli ones that could then be used by the Israeli military for targeting.

01.07.2026 - 12:49 [ Alex Krainer / Trendcompass.substack.com ]

Who is behind the West‘s Iran policy?

Over the past few years, I came to the conclusion that Great Britain was world’s chief arsonist of peace and suggested that if, the City of London, with its supporting structures in British government, banking, intelligence, secret diplomacy, along with a vast network of think tanks, media organizations, NGOs, charitable organizations and gambling casinos around the world could somehow be quarantined, probably 95% of all the world’s wars and other problems would vanish overnight.

01.07.2026 - 12:42 [ Alex Krainer / TKP.at ]

Wer steckt hinter der Iran-Politik des Westens?

In den letzten Jahren bin ich zu dem Schluss gekommen, dass Großbritannien der weltweit größte Friedensstörer ist. Wenn es gelänge, die Londoner City mit ihren Stützpfeilern in der britischen Regierung, im Bankwesen, im Geheimdienst, in der geheimen Diplomatie sowie mit einem riesigen Netzwerk aus Thinktanks, Medienorganisationen, NGOs, Wohltätigkeitsorganisationen und Spielkasinos auf der ganzen Welt irgendwie unter Quarantäne zu stellen, wahrscheinlich 95 % aller Kriege und anderen Probleme der Welt über Nacht verschwinden würden.

30.06.2026 - 09:50 [ Ynetnews.com ]

Netanyahu in 1993: Iran will have bomb by 1999

(March 4, 2015)

The prime minister has been warning for over 20 years that Tehran is close to achieving its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

08.06.2026 - 17:25 [ Umair Malik / Twitter ]

this is the biggest blunder in American history. Mark my words

(December 9, 2023)

30.05.2026 - 17:50 [ American Prospect ]

The Miller Doctrine

(May 27, 2026)

Yet proposals that skirt the edges of international law didn’t come out of nowhere. The U.S. under George W. Bush created legal mechanisms following the September 11th attacks to torture hundreds of people in CIA black sites and then at Guantanamo Bay. The Obama administration’s targeted drone strikes were assassinations by another name. The Biden administration further eroded international norms and subverted its own policies by financing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, in violation of the Leahy Law, which prohibits foreign military assistance to nations that violate human rights.

“Seems like Miller is sort of taking what he was already willing to do during the first term and then combining that with what Israel has been doing in the way it has just been completely ignoring any kind of international law, Geneva Conventions, any of it in its conduct in Gaza and Lebanon, to then influence U.S. foreign policy,” Annelle Sheline, a research fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said in an interview.

In other words, Miller and the Trump administration have been able to steamroll what was left of international law; they just had to figure out how to do it.

30.05.2026 - 17:17 [ New York Times ]

The Agony Around the Democrats’ Mysterious, Ridiculous Autopsy

(May 22, 2026)

Rarely has a document been at once as mysterious and anticlimactic as the Democratic National Committee’s autopsy of what went wrong in the 2024 election, which, after much drama and angst, was finally published on Thursday.

The committee’s chair, Ken Martin, promised a full audit of party operations when he was running for his seat, and again when he won it. Last July, officials said it would be out in the fall. Fall came and went, and in December, Martin said it wouldn’t be released at all. By hiding it, Martin made the report an object of suspicion and fascination.

22.05.2026 - 00:51 [ Times of Israel ]

Gaza war and Israel go unmentioned in Democrats’ 2024 election autopsy report

Axios reported in February that the top Democrats who worked on the report concluded that Harris “lost significant support because of the Biden administration’s approach to the war in Gaza.”

If that’s the case, it’s not reflected in the document that CNN published on Thursday morning.

22.05.2026 - 00:43 [ CNN ]

Read the DNC’s 2024 autopsy obtained by CNN

CNN is publishing a copy of a report into why Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election conducted at the request of Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin.

This version of the report – better known as the 2024 autopsy – was written by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera. The DNC withheld the report until presented with CNN’s reporting about much of its contents. The copy published by CNN includes annotations in red that the DNC added to its version of Rivera’s report. CNN has not modified the report and does not vouch for the accuracy of any statements within the report or the DNC’s annotations.

13.05.2026 - 14:30 [ Asia Times ]

Trump-Xi meet as petroyuan rises on Iran war’s tide

As US credibility crumbles across the Gulf, China’s petroyuan fast emerging as the currency of Asia’s post-war energy order

28.04.2026 - 05:48 [ New York Times ]

Israel Found the Hamas Money Machine Years Ago. Nobody Turned It Off.

(December 16, 2023)

Israeli leaders believed that Hamas was more interested in governing than fighting. By the time the agents discovered the ledgers in 2018, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was encouraging the government of Qatar to deliver millions of dollars to the Gaza Strip. He gambled that the money would buy stability and peace.

Mr. Levy recalled briefing Mr. Netanyahu personally in 2015 about the Hamas portfolio.

25.04.2026 - 17:57 [ New York Times ]

The Race for Congress: Latest 2026 Polls

Recent polling on the congressional generic ballot shows Democrats with a modest advantage. The party out of power typically gains ground in midterm elections, and these early surveys suggest this may be taking shape ahead of 2026. Democrats lead in the vast majority of recent polls, though by single-digit margins. However, with redistricting efforts underway in several states, the national vote share that Democrats need to retake the House will depend on the extent of these changes.

04.04.2026 - 07:36 [ Spencer Ackerman / Forever-Wars.com ]

So You Lost A War To Iran

(March 31, 2026)

Iran, despite the decapitation of its leadership, has dealt the United States a strategic defeat in the classical sense. It will end the war in a stronger position than when it came under attack. The United States will end the war in a weaker position than before it launched its war. The rest is details.

(…)

Welcome to strategic defeat—or, I should say, welcome back, considering the whole War on Terror and all, and the Vietnam War. Only this time the consequences of defeat for the Americans are set to be far more severe.

31.03.2026 - 18:36 [ Tucker Carlson ]

Former Interim President of Israel Avraham Burg Speaks Out on Netanyahu’s Killing Spree

(March 24, 2026)

Avraham Burg, former speaker of the Knesset and interim president of Israel, on why Netanyahu can never settle, only kill.

27.03.2026 - 12:05 [ Deutsche Bank Research Institute ]

What Iran means for the dollar: a perfect storm for the petrodollar

(March 24, 2026)

The world saves in dollars in large part because it pays in dollars. The dollar‘s dominance in cross-border trade is arguably built on the petrodollar: globally traded oil is priced and invoiced in USD. This arrangement can be traced to a deal struck in 1974 where Saudi Arabia agreed to price oil in USD and invest surpluses in USD assets, in exchange for US security guarantees. Because oil is a core input to global manufacturing and transport, there is a natural incentive for global value chains to dollarize, and global surpluses to accumulate in USD.

The foundations of the petrodollar regime have been under pressure even before this conflict. Most Middle East oil is now sold to Asia not the US; sanctioned oil from Russia and Iran has already been trading off dollar rails; Saudi Arabia has been localizing defence, and experimenting with forms of non-dollar payment infrastructure such as Project mBridge.

The current conflict may expose further fault lines, by challenging the US security umbrella for Gulf infrastructure and the maritime security for global trade in oil. Damage to Gulf economies could encourage an unwind in their foreign asset savings held largely in dollars. In this context, reports that the passage for ships through the Strait of Hormuz may be granted in exchange for oil payments in yuan should be closely followed. The conflict could be remembered as a key catalyst for erosion in petrodollar dominance, and the beginnings of the petroyuan.

27.03.2026 - 11:54 [ Middle East Eye ]

War on Iran could be ‚catalyst‘ for erosion of US petrodollar, Deutsche Bank says

The petrodollar helps keep borrowing costs down for US consumers and Washington, giving them big advantages over peers

19.03.2026 - 16:14 [ 8pmNews.com ]

“Stop Us From Getting Into A War”: Joe Kent Reveals Charlie Kirk’s Final Warning In Bombshell Tucker Carlson Interview

The most striking moment of the interview came when Kent recounted his final meeting with Charlie Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder who was instrumental in the current administration’s rise and the selection of JD Vance as Vice President.

“The last time I saw Charlie Kirk on this Earth was in June, in the West Wing,” Kent told Carlson. “He looked me in the eye and he said… ‘Joe, stop us from getting into a war with Iran.’”

According to Kent, Kirk—who was assassinated on September 10, 2025—was one of the few top-tier advisors vocally urging the President to avoid a Middle Eastern conflagration and to “rethink” the unconditional nature of the U.S.-Israeli partnership.

19.03.2026 - 16:05 [ Independent.co.uk ]

Former counterterrorism chief says he was blocked from investigating Charlie Kirk’s killing

Joe Kent publicly announced his resignation as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center on March 17, stating that he “cannot in good conscience” support the U.S.’s war with Iran.

Kirk was shot dead during a public appearance in Utah on September 10, 2025. A day after his resignation, Kent appeared on The Tucker Carlson Show, where he claimed that his investigation into the killing was blocked.

19.03.2026 - 13:58 [ Tucker Carlson / Youtube ]

Joe Kent Reveals All in First Interview Since Resigning as Trump’s Counterterrorism Director

Joe Kent is a former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center and the President’s principal counterterrorism advisor, who served 20 years in the U.S. Army with 11 combat deployments fighting terrorist networks with the 75th Ranger Regiment, Army Special Forces, and U.S. Army Special Operations Command, earning six Bronze Stars. Joe is also a Gold Star husband whose first wife, Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, also served and was killed while fighting ISIS in Syria in 2019.

19.03.2026 - 13:51 [ Semafor.com ]

Exclusive: FBI investigates intelligence aide who resigned over war

Trump aides and allies denounced Kent as a leaker immediately after his resignation became public.

Kent wrote in his resignation letter that Iran poses “no imminent threat to our nation” and accused Trump of initiating the war “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

The FBI and the White House declined to comment.

19.03.2026 - 13:38 [ The Young Turks / Youtube ]

Joe Kent: Trump Is LYING To You

Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, talks to Tucker Carlson about Iran and his resignation letter. Ana Kasparian discusses on The Young Turks.

19.03.2026 - 13:30 [ CNN ]

Takeaways from former Trump administration counterterrorism chief Joe Kent’s extensive interview

“There was no intelligence that said, hey, on whatever day it was, March 1st, the Iranians are going to launch this big sneak attack, they’re going to do some kind of a 9/11, Pearl Harbor, etc. They’re going to attack one of our bases. There was none of that intelligence,” Kent said.

Trump and the the White House have repeatedly cited an imminent threat posed by Iran as an impetus for launching strikes against the country.

Kent further argued that the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who died last month in joint US and Israeli strikes, had been moderating the country’s nuclear program.