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Thursday, June 25, 2026
The Kucinich Report The NDAA Proposed Merger of the U.S. and Israeli Military is Strategically Unwise and Inherently Unconstitutional Guest Post
https://kucinichreport.substack.com/p/the-ndaa-proposed-merger-of-the-us?publication_id=1441588&post_id=203546633&isFreemail=true&r=1y80w&triedRedirect=true
The NDAA Proposed Merger of the U.S. and Israeli Military is Strategically Unwise and Inherently Unconstitutional
Section 219 creates a framework for permanent military integration that weakens American sovereignty, blurs constitutional accountability, and places the nation's independent decision making at risk.
This article is Part 2 in a three part series on the proposed merger of U.S and Israeli intelligence, military and biotechnology. Read Part 1 here
Prior to the American Revolution being fought on battlefields, it was fought as an argument about sovereignty.
Who decides the fate of a nation? Who commands its armies? Who determines when its citizens go to war and when they remain at peace?
The Founders answered those questions with remarkable clarity. In a republic, sovereignty belongs to the people and is exercised through constitutional institutions accountable to them. Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2027 threatens to undermine the foundational principles of our republic and our constitutional democracy.
Advocates for Section 219 describe it as a strategic partnership, a modernization of military cooperation between the United States and Israel. Yet the language of the provision reaches far beyond cooperation. It calls for the integration of military planning, intelligence sharing, technological development, procurement systems, research capabilities, and strategic operations in ways that blur the distinction between two sovereign nations.
This is not merely a policy question, it is a constitutional one.
America has alliances with many nations. We cooperate with allies. We conduct joint exercises. We share intelligence. However, there is a profound difference between cooperation and integration.
Cooperation preserves independent decision making.
Integration creates pressure toward shared decision making and shared consequences.
The Constitution was deliberately designed to prevent precisely this type of entanglement.
The President serves as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. Congress possesses the authority to declare war. Together these provisions were meant to ensure that decisions involving American lives, American treasure, and American military power remain accountable to the American people.
Section 219 moves the nation in the opposite direction. It creates permanent structures through which military, intelligence, technological, and strategic functions become increasingly intertwined with those of another government. Even if no formal transfer of command occurs, the practical effect is to make American decision making dependent upon relationships and commitments that exist far beyond the reach of American voters.
There are at least nine reasons why Congress should reject Section 219 of the NDAA:.
IT VIOLATES THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF CLAUSE
Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution designates the President as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States.
Congress cannot constitutionally dilute, share, or transfer command responsibilities through ordinary legislation. The armed forces of the United States must remain exclusively accountable to constitutional authority established by the American people.
IT BYPASSES THE TREATY PROCESS
The Constitution provides a mechanism for creating major international commitments: treaties ratified by two thirds of the Senate.
If Congress believes permanent military integration with any foreign nation is necessary, it should present that proposal openly and subject it to the scrutiny required by the Constitution.
Congress cannot use a spending bill to accomplish what the Constitution requires to be debated and approved through the treaty process.
IT CREATES PROBLEMS OF AUTHORITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Foreign officials do not swear an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States.
Yet military integration creates circumstances in which foreign officers, planners, intelligence officials, and strategic personnel may influence decisions affecting American troops, intelligence assets, military technologies, operational planning and decisions to use military force.
The Framers established safeguards to ensure that authority over American military power remained accountable to American institutions and American voters.
Section 219 weakens those safeguards.
IT VIOLATES THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY
Congress cannot delegate core sovereign responsibilities to another government.
The defense of the nation, decisions involving military force, intelligence operations, and national security policy are among the most important powers entrusted to the federal government.
A nation that cannot independently determine matters of war and peace cannot truly be considered sovereign.
IT INCREASES THE RISK OF FUTURE WARS
The Founders understood the danger.
In his Farewell Address, George Washington warned against permanent foreign attachments that could pull the United States into conflicts not of its own choosing. His concern was not isolationism. It was independence.
Our first president understood that foreign entanglements have a way of creating obligations that gradually supersede national interests.
That warning has particular relevance today.
The recent escalation with Iran demonstrates how rapidly regional conflicts can draw the United States toward broader military commitments. Every new layer of institutional integration increases the likelihood that future conflicts involving Israel become, in practical terms, American conflicts as well.
IT RISKS SUBORDINATING AMERICAN INTERESTS TO FOREIGN PRIORITIES
The issue is not whether one supports Israel.
The issue is whether any foreign nation should be granted a permanent place within executive, military, intelligence, technological, and strategic structures that are constitutionally intended to serve the United States alone.
The first responsibility of the United States government is to protect the security and wellbeing of the American people. Foreign policy should be guided by American interests, American laws, and American constitutional principles.
IT THREATENS DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY
When sovereignty is diluted, accountability disappears.
Citizens can no longer identify who is responsible for decisions. Power becomes dispersed through networks, agreements, and institutions beyond public control.
Democracy weakens because the connection between the voter and the decision maker is broken.
The Constitution deliberately places decisions involving war and national defense within institutions accountable to the American people. Section 219 weakens that connection.
IT IMPOSES ENORMOUS FINANCIAL COSTS
The United States has spent decades engaged in costly military interventions throughout the Middle East.
Trillions of dollars have been spent. Thousands of American lives have been lost. Countless civilians have perished. Yet the pressure for deeper involvement continues.
This is especially troubling at a moment when the national debt exceeds forty trillion dollars. Every additional military commitment carries a financial cost. Every escalation requires resources that must ultimately be borrowed, taxed, or diverted from domestic priorities.
Americans struggling with inflation, housing costs, healthcare expenses, and declining infrastructure deserve a government focused first on their security and prosperity.
IT BETRAYS THE SPIRIT OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
The timing could not be more ironic.
As America marks the 250th anniversary of its independence, Congress is considering legislation that undermines our independence.
The Revolution was fought to secure self government. The Constitution was written to preserve it.
Sovereignty is not an outdated concept. It is the foundation of democratic accountability.
The question before us is larger than Israel. Larger than any single administration. Larger than any current conflict.
It is whether the United States will remain a nation whose military power is directed exclusively by constitutional institutions accountable to the American people, or whether we will gradually surrender that independence through permanent foreign integration that the Constitution neither contemplated nor authorizes.
A nation that cannot control its own military decisions cannot claim to be sovereign - and that is a core reason why Section 219 should be rejected.
TAKE ACTION
The merger is timed to be voted on the week of June 29, just before the Fourth of July.
Find your member of Congress: House Senate
It is urgent that you call your congressional representative today at 202-224-3121 and tell them to Strip Section 219 (House) or Section 1217 (Senate) from the 2027 NDAA.
Congressmen Tom Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) will offer an amendment in the House to remove Section 219. Please tell your U.S. Representative: Support the Massie-Khanna Amendment to the NDAA.
Supreme Court rules asylum seekers may be turned around, siding with Trump
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5939967-asylum-seekers-supreme-court-trump-immigration-policy/?email=70abbf98d5ff7d5a551e17c2d697f32a93c4fb97&emaila=e6a9a97f971519b8818ba7420a6d576d&emailb=18cf6875565f00576100498c28021ee146009b5a81700516d0187e66ea405602
Supreme Court allows Trump to terminate deportation protections for Haitians, Syrians
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5940351-supreme-court-temporary-protected-status-trump-immigration/?email=70abbf98d5ff7d5a551e17c2d697f32a93c4fb97&emaila=e6a9a97f971519b8818ba7420a6d576d&emailb=18cf6875565f00576100498c28021ee146009b5a81700516d0187e66ea405602
[Salon] The Forever War in West Asia and its Implications - Guest Post
https://chasfreeman662157.substack.com/p/the-forever-war-in-west-asia-and
The Forever War in West Asia and its Implications
A Scene Setter for an Energy Intelligence Colloquium
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr.
By Video, June 26, 2026
Peace is more than the absence of combat between warring parties. Cicero defined it as “liberty in tranquility,” a condition in which states and peoples do not use violence against each other in pursuit of their inherently incompatible goals. There has been no such peace in West Asia since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in World War I.
The Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 divided that Empire’s Arab provinces into British and French spheres of influence. In 1917 Britain – a colonial power – declared its support for the establishment of “a national home for the [European] Jewish people” in Palestine, while fatuously denying that this would affect the civil and religious rights of Palestine’s existing Muslim and Christian communities. In 1919, denied the self-determination promised to other peoples in President Wilson’s “Fourteen Points,” the Kurds revolted against British rule in Mesopotamia. They continue to rebel against the Arabs. Persians, and Turks who dominate the states they inhabit.
The unintended consequence of these actions has been more than a century of low intensity conflict in West Asia, punctuated by bloody wars, genocidal massacres, and terrorist incidents. The Israeli-American war with Iran is the latest expression of this endemic violence. The latest ‘ceasefire with Israeli characteristics’ does not promise an end to it.
Israel’s insistence on absolute security for itself has meant absolute insecurity for everyone else in West Asia. With U.S. backing, it has felt free to bomb, strafe, and murder its potential adversaries throughout West Asia. Israeli and American attacks on Iran have, however, now evoked effective counterattacks. Israel retains its “qualitative edge” over its neighbors, but it has lost its immunity from devastating reprisal.
Almost all wars conclude through negotiations. To succeed, these must recognize what interactions on the battlefield have produced. Otherwise, the negotiations fail. The chances of success are improved if the negotiators representing the parties are experienced professionals with no conflicts of interest and who have built mutual trust with their opposing counterparts. That has not been the case in U.S. negotiations with Iran, which have been and will remain complicated by Israel’s determination to ensure that they fail.
The Iran War will not be followed by peace in West Asia, but it may mark the end of direct great-power involvement in armed conflict between its warring parties. Memoranda of understanding may be “deals” in the sense of a coordinated statement of intent, but they are the equivalent of a handshake before the parties sit down at the negotiating table. They are neither peace nor a peace agreement.
The immediate results of the Iran War are clear. The war after the war has begun. Its longer-term consequences are only now coming into view. Some of them are strategically systemic.
This war has resulted in:
· Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz,
· Iran’s adoption of an Israeli-style standard of disproportionate retaliation for attacks on it or Israel’s neighbors or Arab movements resisting Israeli expansionism,
· a US-Iranian de-escalation agreement misdescribed as a “ceasefire’ and, so far, not accepted by Israel, which continues to seek to annihilate Iran and dominate West Asia through the use of force,
· a growing U.S. rupture with Israel,
· escalating energy prices and inflation,
· the probable tipping of the global economy into recession or worse,
· impending food and other supply shortages,
· the creation of a greatly expanded market for Chinese renewable energy technology and products,
· the erosion of the dollar’s global monopoly on trade settlement through the slow birth of a Chinese “petroyuan,”
· a convincing demonstration of the limits of U.S. military power,
· the depletion of the U.S. weapons and defense systems needed for other contingencies or contracted for delivery by allies and partners,
· the flaking apart of NATO and the basing and overflight rights its members have granted to the U.S.,
· the probable eviction of the U.S. armed forces from the bases the Gulf Arabs have heretofore loaned them,
· the murder of the Iranian leadership echelon most opposed to building a nuclear weapon with the consequence that Iran will do so after the sixty day ‘truce’ in the absence of the return of its frozen assets, the removal of sanctions, and credible security guarantees,
· the severe devaluation of the U.S. word by performative rather than substantive diplomacy and erratic oscillation in negotiating positions, as well as
· definitive proof that selecting personnel for their political subservience and sycophancy rather than their experience, expertise, and willingness to speak truth to power can render a government incompetent and ‘agreement incapable.’
Meanwhile, gross violations of international law and human decency by Israel continue to escalate antipathy to it in ever younger echelons of the U.S. population, including American Jews. Israel’s charges that criticism of its polices amount to antisemitism have largely lost their sting. Israel is now an international pariah. It is becoming the skunk at the garden party in American politics. A similar evolution is underway in Europe.
The influence in American politics that the so-called “Abraham Accords” gained for the UAE and Bahrain through the U.S. Zionist Lobby is therefore a wasting asset. The accords themselves are on life support. They are unlikely to survive the logic of Gulf Arab national interests. Israeli genocide, ethnic cleansing, and expansionism plus the need to make peace with an Iran determined to counter Israel have combined to make overt cooperation with Israel a domestic threat to Arab governments. The Israeli police-state and defense technology the Gulf Arab rulers have acquired from Israel is formidable but not irreplaceable.
Yemen and Iran have now both successfully conducted land-based blockades of their adjacent seas. This calls into question the traditional Anglo-American view of the sea as a strategic domain from which to dominate the land.[1] The three-mile range of canon in the 18th century established a three-mile limit for territorial seas. Now drones and terminally-guided missiles can strike ships up to 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles) or more away from coastal batteries. Sea control is no longer the uncontested province of navies.
Meanwhile, international law no longer inhibits acts of piracy – seaborne murder and robbery. Ships are now subject to unprovoked attacks or outright seizure by the former champions of freedom of navigation. Insurance rates are rising. The seas are no longer open to all nations for secure navigation and trade.
War always creates new realities and adjusts relations between states and peoples. That is its purpose. But armed conflicts seldom work out the way those who start them imagine they will. And they are not always succeeded by peace. The prospect that a peace will emerge from whatever negotiating process follows the US-Iran memorandum of understanding announced on June 15, 2026, is poor. In West Asia, warfare is far more likely to persist at varying levels of intensity.
The Iran War has just reminded the world that wars test endurance and resolve more than weapon systems, and that they do not end until the loser accepts defeat—something the United States apparently finds it impossible to do. Wars do not end because one side blows up more buildings or kills more civilians than the other. (Ask the Vietnamese, Afghans, Ukrainians, Palestinians, or Lebanese about this.) Military prowess can impose outcomes, but it does not always prevail. The balance of fervor—the degree to which each side sees the conflict as vital to its national identity and interests, dignity, and survival—can enable a militarily weaker side to carry the day. When the fundamental causes of war do not disappear, the parties will remain determined to keep fighting as best they can. Iran and Israel have made no effort to set aside their differences. The June 15 “ceasefire” between Iran and the United States does not oblige them to bury the hatchet or offer a process to facilitate them doing so.
The prospects for peace are also ill-served by the changes in the information environment that recent wars have catalyzed. The new transparency of battlefields to observation by satellites and drones has made deception difficult, if not impossible, so states now rely on information warfare to accomplish it. Censorship, lying narratives, fake news, and false flag operations are central to the strategies of contemporary combatants. The press is no longer an effective check on Orwellian storylines. This leaves governments free to consume their own propaganda and to formulate policies based on it rather than on unpalatable underlying realities. This feeds hallucinations that suffocate diplomacy and help prolong ‘forever wars.’
The Gulf Arabs have just learned the hard way that the United States prioritizes Israel’s defense over theirs and that Iran can and will punish them for any alignment with Israel or the United States. Cooperation by them with either Israel or the United States will continue to invite Iranian attack. So, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members now face a choice between wary cooperation with Iran or continuing threats to their oil and gas facilities or, even worse, their desalination plants – without which they cannot exist as modern societies. This is no choice at all. The Gulf Arabs have a powerful incentive to accommodate Iran’s demand that they remove American bases from their territory.
The states of the region do not want to replace the United States with another external actor like China or Russia. A new four-party coalition of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Türkiye, and Egypt has formed to create a revised West Asian security architecture that can provide deterrent weight against either Israeli or Iranian regional hegemony, while reducing reliance on external great powers and building strategic autonomy. The members of this coalition, which is likely to expand, hope to build an indigenous military industrial base that will reduce their overall dependence on both foreign protection and arms imports. They will seek assurances of respect for their strategic autonomy from external great powers.
Iran now controls and will continue to regulate passage through the Strait of Hormuz in partnership with Oman and (possibly) other littoral states but not with any external great naval power. This sets a precedent that overturns centuries of international law and risks being applied to other straits. The list of waterways that might be reduced to a nationally regulated transit status like the manmade canals of Panama and Suez is long. It includes Malacca, Sunda, Lombok, the Bab-al-Mandeb, Taiwan, Gibraltar, and the Bosphorus. The international community – including countries dependent on maritime trade like China, Japan, and India – should share an interest with the West in ensuring that whatever management system is put in place in the Strait of Hormuz does not inspire comparable limits to freedom navigation elsewhere.
The economic stress and the uncertainties that the Iran War has introduced are a great stimulus to national efforts to consolidate supply chains, lessen reliance on maritime transport of fossil fuels, invest in renewable energy technology and products, and otherwise pursue self-sufficiency. The result will be slower economic growth pretty much everywhere as self-reliance replaces ‘comparative advantage.’ But the transition to renewable energy and electrification of the world’s economies will accelerate.
So, in sum, we are likely entering an era in which:
· shipping is more expensive and less secure,
· economies worldwide strive to lessen their dependence on hydrocarbons as their primary sources of energy,
· the need to restore lost hydrocarbon production burdens Persian Gulf economies in ways that demand reformulation of their policies and development plans,
· the pressure on Gulf economies to wean themselves from their economic dependence on hydrocarbon exports increases even as revenues from such exports decline and development projects are trimmed back,
· Iran answers intermittent acts of aggression by Israel against it and Israels’ Arab neighbors with retaliatory strikes on Israel,
· the resistance movements Israel has battered are tempted to revive 1960s-style attacks on Israelis and their foreign supporters,
· foreign investment and economic activity in the UAE and other GCC members are hampered by a perceived rise in political risk,
· geopolitics in West Asia are dominated by détente between the Gulf Arabs and Iran and a search for regional strategic autonomy by a coalition whose core is a partnership between Ankara, Cairo, Islamabad, and Riyadh,
· Iran, Lebanon, and Syria are obsessed with repairing war damage and reconstructing their economies, providing opportunities for foreign construction companies (e.g., from China and Turkey),
· Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Russian, and Turkish influence in West Asia grows, while U.S. influence diminishes, and
· Iran joins Israel as a de facto nuclear power, sparking the development of nuclear weapons by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and others.
These unfortunate potential results of the American debacle in the Persian Gulf cannot be separated from broader geopolitical and geoeconomic trends.
The five-century-long era of Western dominance of global affairs is over. A disunited Europe is no longer an effective participant in global geopolitics or economics, despite its obvious potential to be both. China has no interest in assuming the decaying role of the United States as the global hegemon. India is far from ready to do so. Africa and Latin America remain self-absorbed. International institutions are increasingly ineffective. The world order is no longer regulated by international law. Disorder, for now, prevails. We are all less secure than we were.
We are again at a moment like the one Gramsci described at the outset of the 1930s: "The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of morbid symptoms." He did not, as supposed, refer to the advent of “monsters” but that is no consolation. The monsters are already here and show no signs of going away.
توكلنا على الله
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
Tuesday, June 23, 2026
260622_Cure_US_China_FactSheet_unembargoed.pdf
260622_Cure_US_China_FactSheet_unembargoed.pdf
Session: Racing to Cures: the U.S.-China Biomedical Competitiveness Scorecard
BIO International Convention · San Diego · June 22, 2026 · Room 30DE · 4:15–5:15 PM PDT
The tale of two cities: the U.S. scientific edge
and the China development engine
Monday, June 22, 2026
Are we feeding conflicts or people? Aleteia Guest Post by Camille Dalmas
Are we feeding conflicts or people? - micheletkearney@gmail.com - Gmail
An exclusive service for Aleteia readers
At World Food Programme, Pope Leo XIV warns against bureaucratizing solidarity
During his visit to the World Food Programme headquarters in Rome, the Holy Father urged the international community to put people before bureaucracy.
by Camille Dalmas
“Conflicts are ‘fed’ more readily than people are nourished,” Pope Leo XIV noted at the headquarters of the World Food Programme in Rome on Monday, June 22, 2026. Denouncing the “progressive bureaucratization of solidarity,” he pleaded for reinforced multilateral action against hunger. The Pope stressed that it isn't only a matter of coming to the aid of people in need, but also of avoiding an “irreversible collapse.”
Cindy McCain, the American director of the WFP, welcomed the Holy Father to the headquarters. The Pope then spent a brief time in silence before an installation commemorating the Nobel Peace Prize, which the UN organization received in 2020. Financed solely by voluntary donations, the WFP collected $6.5 billion in 2025. That same year, it aided 121 million people by distributing 15.8 billion daily rations. The Rome-based agency operates in 120 countries.
An urgent task
Speaking to the WFP’s executive board, Pope Leo XIV highlighted how the institution’s commitment “resonates profoundly with the Catholic Church’s mission to uphold human dignity and to foster fraternity.” He affirmed that fighting hunger is an “urgent task” requiring leaders to tackle its “underlying structural causes.” He urged them to determine “why the system constantly produces the very problems it is then forced to correct.”
“The international order has become increasingly fragmented, arising in part from the crisis of the multilateral system,” Pope Leo XIV observed. Relying on his recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, he explained that this crisis comes from the “absence of a shared ethical horizon capable of sustaining genuine cooperation.” This gap pushes nations to increasingly allocate “their resources towards national security, economic growth, and domestic stability, disregarding the close link between these issues and multilateral cooperation.”
The Holy Father pointed out a paradox in the modern world, noting that “unprecedented global productive capacity exists alongside expanding zones of extreme vulnerability.” He added that the same factors "that drive economic growth often exacerbate exclusion and marginalization.” In this context, he warned that “humanitarian concerns increasingly risk being relegated to a secondary place.” He described this trend as the “progressive bureaucratization of solidarity alongside the quiet commodification of human life.”
Pope Leo XIV lamented that humanitarian action is “increasingly burdened by bureaucratic procedures that can delay assistance to those in need.” He also noted that access to essential goods, including food, is “too often influenced by economic or strategic considerations.” As a result, “conflicts are ‘fed’ more readily than people are nourished.”
Hunger erodes social cohesion
Denouncing a “fundamental imbalance in political and moral priorities,” the Pope said that the consequences of this crisis “extend well beyond those immediately affected.” He described a vicious cycle where hunger and wars feed each other reciprocally. “Hunger erodes social cohesion, heightens the risk of conflict and fuels forced migration,” he said. He also sees this dynamic as an obstacle to sustainable economic development for many nations.
Pope Leo XIV called for a “principle of shared responsibility” in the international community to support humanitarian action. “In this sense, the World Food Programme is more than a political, economic or technical actor; it is a concrete expression of international solidarity,” he stated. He explained that its presence “helps to prevent humanitarian crises from deteriorating into irreversible collapse.”
Pleading for a “renewed commitment to multilateral cooperation,” the Holy Father noted that “in an increasingly fragmented and multipolar world, no single State can address global challenges alone.” He appealed to governments, as well as the Catholic Church, to reinforce this commitment.
This means increasing the resources dedicated to fighting hunger and its root causes, while also removing the “obstacles that prevent aid from reaching those in need.” He proposed utilizing the Catholic Church — one of the largest humanitarian actors globally — as a local partner in “areas inaccessible to international actors,” working through Caritas, dioceses, and parishes.
A sign of hope
At the end of his speech, the Pope spoke by videoconference with several WFP employees, exchanging words with workers on mission in Venezuela, South Sudan, and Lebanon. “I know that many of you literally risk your lives,” he told them, paying homage to those who have died in the field.
He then went outdoors to the organization's grounds, where several hundred employees awaited him. He underlined the importance of their mission in helping build community in a polarized world. “You represent, in a very real way, hope to the world,” he told them.
In the footsteps of Pope Francis
In 2016, Pope Francis also visited the WFP headquarters, where he similarly urged the international community to “debureaucratize” hunger. He denounced the institutional heaviness that sometimes slows down emergency aid to populations affected by food insecurity or famine, as is currently the case in certain regions of Sudan.
The WFP shouldn't be confused with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Also based in Rome, the FAO has a different and more technical mandate. It focuses on the development of agricultural policies, food security, and rural development. Successive pontiffs have visited the FAO on several occasions, from Pope Paul VI in 1970 to Pope Leo XIV, who visited on October 16, 2025.
Pope Leo XIV will visit the headquarters of UNESCO during his trip to Paris this coming September.
Sunday, June 21, 2026
US-Iran Deal leaves Lebanon in Limbo, Israel as Spoiler Guest Post
US-Iran Deal leaves Lebanon in Limbo, Israel as Spoiler
The Conversation 06/21/2026
By Mireille Rebeiz, Dickinson College
(The Conversation) – The United States and Iran inked a long-awaited provisional ceasefire deal on June 17, 2026. After months of uncertainty, the people of the Gulf region can, potentially, breathe a sigh of relief, and global markets look set to be boosted by the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
What about those who have endured the war’s spillover in Lebanon? After all, the memorandum of understanding signed is not just a peace agreement between the U.S. and Iran alone. Rather, on Tehran’s insistence, the deal is intended to provide a cessation of hostilities on all fronts – including in Lebanon.
President Donald Trump is framing the deal as a win for the U.S. and the closing of the latest chapter in Washington’s Middle East entanglement. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country was reportedly shut out of the diplomatic process, may have other plans that would challenge Trump’s authority in the region.
After news of the emerging deal broke on June 14, Netanyahu almost immediately announced that Israel will occupy Lebanon “indefinitely.” Israel then followed up with a fresh wave of airstrikes that killed four people in Lebanon.
A clearly displeased Trump publicly criticized those actions and even suggested that Syria could go in and dismantle Hezbollah, the Tehran-backed Lebanese group that has for nearly five decades fought Israel in southern Lebanon.
With Israel continuing to bomb Lebanon and remove Lebanese citizens from their lands – in defiance of Washington’s wishes – the fate of the U.S.-Iran deal in Lebanon remains obscure.
As a scholar of Middle East studies, I fear the agreement leaves more questions about the delicate situation in Lebanon than it solves. Moreover, any split in Israel-U.S. policy aims over Lebanon may have grave implications for Trump’s de-escalation attempts with Iran and also hamper hopes for a peace deal between Lebanon and Israel days before representatives of both countries plan to meet in Washington.
A defiant Israel
History shows that any U.S. failure to rein in Israeli military action north of its border can have disastrous consequences.
A similar scenario happened back in 1982 after Israel launched “Operation Peace for Galilee,” invading Lebanon and imposing a brutal siege on Beirut that killed over 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians and fighters.
In an angry phone call in August 1982, U.S President Ronald Reagan asked Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to stop the heavy bombardments of Beirut. “Menachem, this is a holocaust,” Reagan recalled saying.
But Israel ignored the U.S. demands for a ceasefire. As a result, Reagan sent a an international peacekeeping force into Lebanon. Composed of French, Italian and American troops, this multinational force in Lebanon was tasked to act as a buffer zone between feuding parties and provide port security to Palestinian fighters leaving Lebanon.
Not only did Israel ignore Reagan’s attempts at de-escalation, it also defied the multinational force, harassed its troops and endangered their lives, according to U.S. military leaders.
Ironically, when Israel invaded Beirut in 1982 and threatened the American troops, it did so using weapons supplied by Washington as part of the two countries’ long-standing defense arrangement.
History repeats itself
A similar scenario is unfolding today.
Just like Reagan and Begin’s clash in 1982, Trump and Netanyahu are engaged in what looks like a deadlock. In a recent phone call about Lebanon, Trump was reportedly overheard yelling at Netanyahu, “You’re f–king crazy. You’d be in prison if not for me,” while pressing the Israeli government to scale back its operation in Lebanon.
Today, as in 1982, Israel continues to benefit from U.S. support and arms sales. Congress has even moved to integrate U.S. and Israeli militaries.
Also, just like 1982, the American president is considering sending foreign troops into Lebanon.
But despite the American military and political support, Israel continues to brush aside any U.S policy that aims to place limits on its regional power, effectively showing a glaring limitation of U.S. dominance over the region.
Lebanon as an afterthought
When the U.S. and Iran initially agreed to a two-week ceasefire in April 2026, there was confusion over whether Lebanon was included in that deal. While Iran asserted Lebanon’s inclusion, Israel denied it and continued to bomb the country.
Lebanon became part of the equation because of Hezbollah’s actions after the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran in late February 2026. Similar to how the Tehran-backed group vowed solidarity with Hamas after Israel bombed Gaza in response to Palestinian militants’ attack on Israeli soil on Oct.7, 2023, Hezbollah struck Israel when Iran was hit.
It reignited the simmering Hezbollah-Israeli war. Today, Israel occupies south Lebanon and is threatening to annex it.
The U.S.-released text of the latest Iran peace plan explicitly includes Lebanon.
While that will introduce serious points of friction with Israeli designs on the country, the people in Lebanon, too, will have many questions and concerns.
I believe the deal will be seen as a welcome step but also a potential blow to Lebanon’s sovereignty. While the text aims to protect Lebanon’s “territorial integrity,” it does not reference Israel’s actual withdrawal from these lands, and it is unclear whether this issue will be discussed in future negotiations between Israel and Lebanon or between the U.S and Iran.
Furthermore, the new deal ignores Lebanon’s efforts to free itself from Iran’s influence in the country through its Hezbollah ally.
In an unprecedented move in May, Lebanon filed a formal complaint against Iran at the United Nations Security Council, directly accusing Tehran of violating the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations for interfering in its sovereign decisions and dragging the country into war.
In spite of Hezbollah’s open threats against the Lebanese government, Lebanese representatives held the first of several planned direct negotiations with Israeli counterparts in Washington.
Lebanon, Syria and a rocky path forward
Indeed, the new U.S.-Iran deal can be interpreted as a step back for the strength of an already weak Lebanese state. Indirectly, the deal cements Iran’s control on the country’s politics and, by extension, Hezbollah.
Furthermore, and just like in 1982, the U.S. is proposing a foreign force to enter Lebanon and help end the violence. In fact, Trump has now twice mentioned the possibility of Syria playing a role in Lebanon to enter and execute “a surgical attack on Hezbollah.”
It is unclear whether the U.S. president is using these comments just as a way to pressure Israel over Lebanon or whether there is an actual plan that includes a Syrian role in the country’s future. But just the mention of Syrian intervention evokes that country’s longtime occupation of Lebanon.
In fact, at the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1991, Syria established what amounted to absolute political, military and economic hegemony over Lebanon, during which thousands of Lebanese disappeared.
The assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005 and the Cedar Revolution that followed forced the Syrian troops out of Lebanon.
Photo by AHMAD BADER on Unsplash
The fact that the new leadership in Syria is Sunni adds another complication due to Lebanon’s delicate sect-based balance of power. If Damascus interferes in Lebanon, sectarian violence could follow, as the Syrian military presence would likely be interpreted as direct opposition to Hezbollah’s Shiite fighters.
This is particularly true since Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government was accused of violence against religious minorities in Syria, including the Alawites – a religious sect close to Shia Islam – and the Druze.
Whether Syria plays a decisive role in Lebanon going forward, there is little doubt that the future of the U.S.-Iran deal depends on both Iran and Israel’s actions. So far, Israel seems uninterested in following Trump’s leadership in the region and is gearing up to play a spoiler role.
For now, and absent new breakthroughs, Lebanon, with its sovereignty almost entirely eroded, seems destined to remain at the mercy of its larger neighbors in Iran, Israel and Syria – and the erratic involvement of the U.S. abroad.The Conversation
Mireille Rebeiz, Director of Dickinson Program in New Zealand & Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Otago, Dickinson College
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Saturday, June 20, 2026
[Salon] Fwd: "Russia vindicated as top U.S. intel confirms lethal Pentagon-funded biolabs in Ukraine." (Strategic Culture, 6/19/26) - Guest Post
[Salon] Fwd: "Russia vindicated as top U.S. intel confirms lethal Pentagon-funded biolabs in Ukraine." (Strategic Culture, 6/19/26) - micheletkearney@gmail.com - Gmail
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/06/19/russia-vindicated-as-top-us-intel-confirms-lethal-pentagon-funded-biolabs-ukraine/
Russia vindicated as top U.S. intel confirms lethal Pentagon-funded biolabs in Ukraine
6/19/26
The highest American intelligence official, Tulsi Gabbard, revealed that the Pentagon and other federal agencies have been supporting more than 40 laboratories in Ukraine involved in producing dangerous pathogens and diseases.
This is exactly what Russia uncovered more than four years ago when it launched its special military operation in Ukraine to confront the NATO-backed regime. However, back then, the U.S. government and Western media dismissed Russia’s claims as propaganda to “justify its invasion” of Ukraine.
Russian military investigators led by the late Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov compiled evidence showing that the Pentagon had spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars building up a network of biolabs in Ukraine. The pathogens and diseases that were identified implicated the laboratories in the development of biological weapons.
Kirillov was assassinated in December 2024 in a bomb attack at a residence in Moscow. Ukrainian military intelligence claimed responsibility for his murder. Weeks before his assassination, the British government labelled Kirillov as a war criminal, accusing him of overseeing the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine.
In reporting his death, the British state-owned BBC callously referred to Kirillov as a “Kremlin mouthpiece.”
The BBC report commented: “Kirillov earned his notoriety from the start of the war with a series of claims directed towards both Ukraine and the West, none of which was based on fact. Among his most outrageous claims was one that the U.S. had been building biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine. It was used in an attempt to justify the full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour in 2022.”
Now, the smear by the BBC and its intelligence handlers looks particularly odious in light of the revelations made by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
Tulsi Gabbard, who is stepping down as DNI due to her husband’s cancer illness, dropped a bombshell last week by releasing declassified documents showing extensive involvement of the U.S. government in running biolabs around the world. She said her findings were the product of months of research into files held by intelligence agencies. Gabbard said the information showed that the U.S. government had funded over 120 biolabs in 30 countries. One of those countries was Ukraine, where more than 40 laboratories were conducting biological research financed by the Pentagon and other federal agencies.
Gabbard warned that the biolabs in Ukraine were engaged in research on highly contagious pathogens. She did not describe the facilities as biological warfare, but that is the grave implication, as Russia’s military investigations have concluded.
DNI Gabbard stated: “Until now, evidence regarding the full existence and funding of these laboratories had been knowingly withheld from the American people. The information surrounding the existence, history, locations, and funding of these U.S.-funded biolabs has been intentionally covered up by powerful people falsely claiming that they do not exist and accusing anyone who says otherwise of being foreign assets and traitors to America.”
She added: “Many of these U.S. government-funded biolabs are currently or have previously engaged in research using hazardous and highly contagious pathogens, in some cases to include dangerous Gain-of-Function [more lethal] research, with very little visibility or oversight.”
Gabbard did not pull punches. She accused the Biden administration (2022-25) of lying about the biolabs. “Despite the obvious potential for catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have, politicians, so-called health professionals like Dr [Anthony] Fauci [former chief of Center for Disease Control and Prevention], and entities within the Biden administration’s national security team lied to the American people about the existence of U.S.-funded and supported biolabs, and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth.”
This is an astounding admission by the top U.S. intelligence official. It vindicates the well-founded claims made by Russian intelligence about the existence of lethal biolabs in Ukraine. It validates Russian concerns that the U.S. was running biological warfare programs targeting Russia.
It was not just Russia that held these concerns. Professor Francis Boyle, an internationally renowned American expert on biological warfare, highlighted the very same concerns as far back as March 2022, when evidence was being uncovered of Pentagon programs in Ukraine. See this interview with Regis Tremblay in which Prof Boyle detailed the history of U.S. violations of the 1975 Biological Warfare Convention, systematically pursuing the clandestine and illegal development of bioweapons. He believed that Ukraine was playing a vital role in the U.S. global network of secret biolabs.
The revelations also expose the sinister role of the U.S. and Western media in covering up the scandal. People like Prof Boyle, who died in January 2025, have been vilified as “Russian propagandists” for daring to ask questions and expose the truth. Regis Tremblay’s podcast was deplatformed from YouTube for broadcasting Boyle’s insights.
Even after the top intelligence report was released last week, the Western establishment media have kept silent, or have sought to discredit Gabbard as a “conspiracy theorist.”
To its credit, the U.S. publication, Military Daily News, reported with fair editorial comment: “Gabbard Releases Biolab Records Years After Disinformation Accusations”. Its reportconcluded: “The debate is no longer whether U.S.-supported laboratories exist overseas, as the newly declassified documents establish that they did. The larger question raised by Gabbard’s release is whether Congress, policymakers, and the public had a complete understanding of how many facilities existed, what research they conducted, and what pathogens they contained.”
What needs to be done urgently now is the commission of an independent and international investigation into the U.S. biolabs in Ukraine and dozens of other countries. These labs are not only potentially a criminal violation of international laws and treaties that Washington signed up to, but also constitute an extreme danger to global public health. Have recent outbreaks of Ebola, avian flu, tularemia, TB, SARS, MERS, COVID, and others been the result of clandestine biowarfare programs funded by the U.S.?
We have already seen the disgraceful role of the BBC in distorting the Russian claims as “disinformation” and smearing the Russian commander who led the ground-breaking biolab investigations in Ukraine as a Kremlin mouthpiece.
In that regard, the comments by Fauzan al-Rasyid, an Indonesian journalist and researcher with the Global Fact-Checking Network, were powerfully apt. Speaking to Russian news outlet TASS, he said: “The facts are finally out. They reveal a terrifying reality where the true disinformation didn’t come from the East. It was engineered in Washington, broadcast from London, and amplified by anti-Russian embassies across the globe – including in Jakarta – to persuade millions that Russia was lying, that reports of biolabs were nothing more than propaganda, and that Moscow’s warnings were delusions. The evidence now suggests otherwise.”
The journalist added: “This revelation does not just expose the Pentagon; it fundamentally destroys the credibility of the BBC, which acted as an unquestioning public relations megaphone for Western intelligence.”
The Western cover-up of the biolabs in Ukraine is part of the wider cover-up of the entire U.S. and NATO-led war in Ukraine, a war that threatens to spiral out of control into a world conflagration, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned again this week. The “Ukraine Project” is an integral part of a decades-long operation to wage war on Russia for geopolitical domination. The revelations by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence – the top intelligence official – are the ultimate vindication of what Russia has been consistently saying about the conflict, its root causes, the proxy NeoNazi regime in Kiev, and why Russia needed to take action to defeat the existential threat to its nation.
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