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Thursday, June 25, 2026
[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.
Friday, June 19, 2026
[Salon] Fatalities from Israel’s Vast Gaza Genocide Deliberately Undercounted - Guest Post by Ralph Nader
In the Public Interest
Fatalities from Israel’s Vast Gaza Genocide Deliberately Undercounted
By Ralph Nader
June 19, 2026
The mainstream media has no problem guesstimating the deaths (500,000) from the Assad Dictatorship’s Civil War in Syria, nor the estimated deaths in the wars in Ukraine, Sudan, or Iran.
Somehow, media editors do not let their investigative reporters assess the extent of Israel’s mass murder of civilians in Gaza—an exposed, defenseless population of 2.3 million people in an enclave the geographic size of Pennsylvania. The Associated Press notes that U.S. military historian Robert Pape believes, “Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history” and that, “It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”
Why? One reason is that the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health certifies deaths in Gaza based on reports from hospitals and morgues that were mostly blown up well over a year ago. (They report presently around 73,000 fatalities.) But Hamas has admitted that there are tens of thousands of bodies under the rubble, thousands more blown into bits or incinerated and unidentifiable. They also say their figures do not include the collateral deaths (e.g., spreading fires) from the Israeli military F-16 bombings and relentless shelling of the people of Gaza or the deaths caused by the Israeli government-imposed blocking of food, medicine, healthcare, water, fuel, electricity and shelter. From other conflict zones around the world, the ratio of collateral deaths is anywhere from 3 to 13 times the deaths by violent weaponry.
The Israeli regime is fine with the Hamas undercount because they and the U.S. State Department know the real death toll (along with the injury count) is much, much higher. Hamas knows that on October 7, 2023, the multi-layered Israeli border security apparatus was shaky. They then launched what turned out to be a suicide-homicide assault over the border, resulting in some 1400 deaths as compared with the nearly 1200 people—about 400 of them soldiers and police—shot by the Hamas raiders. To this day, with most Israelis skeptical, Netanyahu has blocked an independent official investigation of the mysterious collapse of the multi-tiered Israeli border security complex.
Netanyahu attributes it to negligence. There were, however, too many separate warnings, including 24-hour Israeli spotters from the Israeli side, plus Israel having the Hamas plans a year earlier, to accept that improbable pretext.
Hamas, on the other hand, doesn’t mind the world media repeating again and again their minimal, identifiable death count. They certainly do not want the realistic estimate death count to further outrage their subjects because Hamas did not protect the civilian population, and did not have any air-raid shelters. Hamas certainly knew what was coming from the ultra-modern, savage Israeli military backed by co-belligerent Joe Biden’s U.S. ultra-modern and lethal military industrial complex.
There is another media reluctance operating. The reports by eyewitnesses, and scholarly and military weaponry specialists, who arrive at minimum and maximum ranges of deaths (most of whom are children and women) bring repulsive denunciations and charges of anti-Semitism.
Moreover, apologists for endless Israeli slaughter, like Bret Stephens, the mouthpiece of Netanyahu on the New York Timesopinion page, have used the low Hamas figures to counter charges of Israeli genocide. If it was genocide, they inaccurately claim, the death toll would be much higher. In 2025, two major Israeli human‑rights organizations – B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel – each issued reports concluding that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza (see reporting from Amnesty International).
Well, the death toll is much higher, over 600,000 lives destroyed or over 25% of Gaza’s original population. This leaves an improbable nearly 75% still alive, though most are sick, injured, or dying. Reporting reality would intensify the political, diplomatic, and civic determination to stop the killing, let in adequate humanitarian aid, and move toward resolving this conflict.
Analysts reported by The Lancet, international relief organizations, universities, and UN agencies all estimate hundreds of thousands of dead Palestinians from violent bombs, artillery, snipers, and the resultant, related secondary effects noted above.
For example, Professor Emeritus Paul Rogers of the University of Bradford in the UK, back in April 2025 estimated the tonnage of explosives dropped on Gaza was the equivalent of six Hiroshima bombs, but more lethal because these daily projectiles are more targeted. Tarek Loubani, a Canadian physician who has served tours of duty at crumbling Gaza hospitals, puts the estimate at “hundreds of thousands of dead.”
In a detailed, footnoted series of reports (“The Truth About Gaza’s Dead”), Feroze Sidhwa, an American trauma surgeon who worked in Gaza’s killing fields, has published much probative evidence by dozens of other health workers who experienced the ghastly horrors. These included the deliberate targeting by Israeli terrorist snipers of little children receiving bullets in their brains and hearts. (See Foreign doctors say Israel systematically targeting Gaza’s children: Report – Al Jazeera, September 14, 2025).
The recent report by Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, referred to a consensus of 680,000 deaths.
The respected chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, Professor Devi Sridhar, long ago was offering estimates far higher than those of Hamas.
The Hill reported that in November 2023, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf testified to a House committee that the actual number of Palestinians killed in Gaza was likely higher than the figures then being reported by Gaza health authorities at that time. She was immediately silenced and never again spoke about Israel’s genocidal casualties. The State Department has been blocking a Freedom of Information demand for two years.
The huge Israeli bloc in Congress, of course, has allowed no hearings on the toll made possible by deadly U.S. weapons (including shipping over white phosphorus artillery shells)— costing billions of dollars paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have reported that Israel used white phosphorus munitions in military operations in Gaza and along the Israel–Lebanon border shortly after the October 7 Hamas attacks.
Reporters could have gotten informed assessments and estimates about the Israeli-inflicted carnage in Gaza from Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, the World Central Kitchen, and other aid groups. Scores of infants and children in Gaza are dying every day from disease, malnutrition, and untreated injuries. There are no healthcare facilities for them. The shameful U.S. newspapers, magazines, television, and radio disrespect the Palestinians in both life and death, something they would never dare to do if the shoe were on the other foot!
Why aren’t brave reporters like Ryan Grim, Jeremy Scahill, Amy Goodman, and Sy Hersh looking deeply into the ghastly indifference to the undercount in Gaza? Truth and the mournful survivors need you!
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