TV News LIES

Could it be that Israel’s 30-year narrative about Iran - one that persuaded US President Donald Trump to wage a criminal and disastrous war of aggression - was always a fiction, an invention cooked up in Tel Aviv? 

Far from Tehran posing an existential danger to Israel, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed for decades, might Israel’s real fear be that a stronger Iran would undermine its unique leverage over Washington, threatening its status as the region’s sole - and unmonitored - nuclear power? 

Might large parts of the globe be facing economic meltdown simply so that Israel can remain the Middle East’s top dog - an unaccountable apartheid state committing genocide against the Palestinian people and ethnically cleansing southern Lebanon?

We got a definitive answer last week, care of the New York Times. It is an uncompromising yes to all of these questions. 

The newspaper reported that Netanyahu not only mis-sold Trump on the idea of quick regime change in Iran following a short “shock and awe” bombing campaign. He also identified to the White House who was going to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader.

Extraordinarily, according to the Times, Netanyahu named the man for the job as former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The aim at the start of the air campaign was for Israel to kill Khamenei, then liberate Ahmadinejad from house arrest by striking the guards who were confining him. 

Presumably, Ahmadinejad was then supposed to storm the citadel and seize the keys to the palace. But only Khamenei’s assassination went according to plan.

Ahmadinejad, who had reportedly been consulted on the scheme beforehand, is believed to have been injured in the Israeli strike near his home. He got cold feet, possibly suspecting he was being set up for assassination too, and went into hiding. His current whereabouts and medical condition are unknown.

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Israeli forces have captured a medieval castle in southern Lebanon which dates back to the Crusader era and raised their flag on the strategic mountaintop, part of Israel's deepest military push into Lebanon in 26 years.

Video showed the Israeli flag fluttering from atop the 900-year-old Beaufort Castle while black smoke billowed from the nearby town of Arnoun. The rapidly expanding Israeli operation, including a swathe of destroyed villages, suggests Israeli forces are planning an extended presence in the region.

Israel previously held the castle during an 18-year-old long military occupation that ended in 2000. A quarter-century later the Israelis are still fighting Hezbollah, the militant group backed by Iran.

In recent days, Israel has rushed in ground troops and intensified air strikes — while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to "crush" Hezbollah — despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire that is officially still in place.

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The Israeli military issued new evacuation warnings for residents of several villages in southern Lebanon, ordering them to move north of the Zahrani River.

Israeli air strikes and shelling were reported across Nabatieh, Bint Jbeil and Marjeyoun districts, including attacks on Mefdoun, Shoukin, Ansar, Haris, Yater, Kfar Tebnit and other towns.

According to Al Jazeera, Israeli forces also carried out multiple demolitions of homes in Dbayn in the Marjeyoun district.

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Iran launched a short-range ballistic missile targeting the US Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait over the past 24 hours, directly threatening a pending peace agreement. Kuwaiti air defense systems intercepted the Iranian Fateh-110 missile, but falling debris wounded approximately five US service members and civilian contractors, while completely destroying one MQ-9 Reaper drone and severely damaging another.

According to intelligence and military sources, Iran deployed a Fateh-110 short-range ballistic missile targeting the Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. The Fateh-110 is a solid-fuel missile capable of carrying a high-explosive warhead weighing approximately 500 kilograms.

Kuwaiti air defense batteries successfully engaged and intercepted the incoming projectile before it could impact its primary target. However, the mid-air detonation caused heavy, mangled fragments of the missile to rain directly down onto the perimeter of the military facility.

The falling debris wounded approximately five people, including both active-duty US military personnel and private civilian contractors working for the US armed forces. All victims reportedly sustained minor injuries and are receiving medical treatment.

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When the Israeli military repeated its displacement order for the entire city of Tyre (Sour) in southern Lebanon at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Ali Sleiman decided to head to the shore with his fishing poles to pass the time. Neither he nor his relatives and neighbors believed that their small corner of the city would be targeted by the Israeli military. A stretch of low-rise residential buildings that butt up against the Palestinian refugee camp of El-Buss, the area is primarily made up of working class residents, both Lebanese and Palestinian, along with displaced families from surrounding areas.

The airstrike came an hour later, shaking the earth and sending a thunderous boom throughout the city. Sleiman saw the cloud of smoke rise above his neighborhood and immediately left his supplies by the shore and sped home on his motorcycle. It was a direct hit on his family building. The strike had left a crater in the earth so deep that groundwater had begun to fill it. He screamed and dug through the rubble until he found his 82-year-old mother writhing in pain, her leg badly mangled. His brother’s lifeless body lay close by.

“I went crazy. I started shouting at the first responders, asking them where they were taking him,” Sleiman told Drop Site, his voice hoarse from breathing in the acrid smoke and fumes the day before. The airstrike killed three people, including his brother, Fadel, and injured at least 17 others. The entire residential block was destroyed.

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Despite Washington’s long-standing recognition of Jordan as the custodian of Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, including Al-Aqsa Mosque, Middle East Eye has reported that the US and Israel are “actively working” to dismantle this arrangement.

The failure of the war on Iran to achieve its goals, the upcoming US midterms this fall, and the Israeli legislative elections slated for October - which could take place even earlier if the coalition government falls - might be driving American and Israeli leaders to look for other “achievements”.

US President Donald Trump recently dangled another red herring, threatening not to sign a deal with Iran if Saudi Arabia and other countries do not join the Abraham Accords. 

Trump knows this is a no-go; it ignores the elephant in the room, addressed by the 2002 Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative, which conditioned normalisation with Israel on a credible path to Palestinian statehood. Saudi Arabia has confirmed this position time and again.

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