Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov shared some insight into his country’s thinking the future of strategic arms control in an interview with TASS in early June. He began by clarifying that Ukraine’s strategic drone strikes in early June didn’t destroy any planes, it only damaged them, and they’ll all be restored.

He then revealed that the Americans were asked “why do you allow yourself to provide the criminals with the relevant data, without which nothing like this could have happened”?

Rybakov didn’t share the answer that they gave his side, but he soon thereafter claimed that “Brussels ‘strategists’ are not giving up their attempts to convince US President Donald Trump to return to the policy pursued by his predecessor.

And that policy implied unconditional support for Ukraine and further escalation.” This suggests Russian suspicion that the Trump Administration might be partially influenced by their pressure campaign, and that could account for why it gave Ukraine the data for those attacks.

Strategic Culture Foundation Editorial
Strategic Culture Foundation

The losers in all this unseemly business are the European public. They are being screwed by U.S.-led militarism and European elites who are pimping their civilian economies.

Mark Rutte, the civilian figurehead chief of the NATO alliance, sparked viral headlines and memes this week after he referred to U.S. President Donald Trump as “daddy”.

Even Western news media were taken aback. Reporters questioned whether the former Dutch prime minister was going too far in his obsequiousness and demeaning himself. Without any shame, Rutte doubled down, ladling more compliments on Trump, and praising him for achieving what no other U.S. president has done – forcing European states to ramp up military spending.

The NATO secretary-general’s weird choice of words was not merely abject sycophancy. It was a Freudian slip revealing the sinister and abusive relationship that the United States has with its so-called allies.

At one point, the American president joked that if Rutte doesn’t like him sufficiently, he would sort him out: 💬 "He likes me, I think he likes me. If he doesn't, I'll let you know. I'll come back, and I'll hit him hard, OK? He did it very affectionately...'daddy, you're my daddy.'"

Elena Panina (Елена Панина)
Елена Панина/Telegram

The final declaration of the Hague Summit of NATO countries:

Despite the disagreements of individual countries, the alliance remained faithful to its "original" task - war with Russia. No other country, in terms of threats, is mentioned in the declaration. Thus, all talk about NATO "shifting its focus" to other regions of the world is essentially disingenous.

■ 5% of military expenditures of NATO members will be distributed as follows: 3.5% directly for military expenditures, and 1.5% for critical infrastructure protection, networks, innovation, and strengthening of the military-industrial complex. How can we not recall here the revelations of the U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO Matthew Whitaker:

Strategic Culture Foundation Editorial
Strategic Culture Foundation

Western media silence and distortion are not merely disgraceful false propaganda. It is complicity in war crimes by giving cover and license for more.

Western news media have given up the pretense of being independent and impartial sources of information. American and European mainstream outlets are nothing but propaganda services for the NATO proxy war against Russia.

That observation is hardly new. Since the NATO-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, the Western media have systematically and relentlessly whitewashed the NeoNazi regime and its strategic purpose as a cat’s paw to embroil Russia in conflict. Russia’s inevitable military response to the decade-long proxy war has been distorted as “unprovoked aggression” against “democratic” Ukraine.

The Western “news media” have now outed themselves for the propaganda functionaries that they are. The veil is shredded.

Last weekend, the NATO-backed Kiev regime deliberately attacked a civilian passenger train in Russia’s Bryansk region. Seven people were killed and over 100 were injured after a bridge was blown up, crashing down on a train passing underneath. The death toll could have been much higher, given the hundreds on board.

Within hours of that heinous act, a second train was derailed when a bridge it was traveling over in Kursk was blown up. Mercifully, there were no deaths in the second attack despite several injuries.

Soheila Zarfam
Tehran Times

How did Israel's aggression unite Iranians more than ever?

Several funerals were being held there. There were young, old, male, and female bodies wrapped in the white fabrics Muslims use to bury the dead. The atmosphere was eerie. There were many people crying and weeping, but there were also some who looked firm despite the grief showing on their faces.

I spoke to one of the mourners, a woman who was burying her brother. She was wearing a black Iranian chador. Next to her were people who looked nothing like her in attire; they wore loose-fitting clothes and hijabs. "I lost my brother during an Israeli attack. He was a soldier completing his military service," the woman explained. Zahra, as she named herself, said she comes from a family that has sacrificed many of its members for the country. "Two of my uncles were martyred during the Iran-Iraq war. My dad was also a soldier during that war. We were used to hearing and talking about martyrs, but we never thought we would be speaking about my 23-year-old brother in the same manner."

English Outsider
Moon of Alabama

The outcome of the war with Iran is still unknown. That of the war in Ukraine is set in stone and always has been.

There's nothing funny here, though it's true that the Western military and political establishments are now pure farce. Nothing funny because the farce has had lethal consequences. The unrestrained carnage in Gaza will be a reproach to the West for ever.

As for Ukraine, "b" summed up, must be two years ago now, what we are putting our proxies in Ukraine through. A "crime", he stated. So it is. Has been since 2014. Worse now, after a million and more deaths and economic and societal ruin for Ukraine to match.

As for the military reality Putin, in the video embedded in the Simplicius article above, sums up the military reality that has been clear to us Europeans since February 2022. NATO, the US and all, is a paper tiger. Even with the substantial manpower of the original Ukrainian armed forces NATO has neither the troops nor the equipment for a ground war on Russia’s doorstep and never has had. All we do have is the nuclear threat and neither Biden, nor, now, Trump, will risk Chicago frying for Vilnius. Nor for Berlin. Nor for London. That accepted, the only puzzle lies in working out what the European politicians hope to gain from prolonging a war long since lost.

Alexander Neukropny
Reporter / en.topcor.ru

Analyzing in minute detail the events and possible prospects of the armed conflict that has now flared up in the Middle East, the absolute majority of experts, concentrating on particulars, bypass the most global aspects of this confrontation. So to speak, “they can’t see the forest for the trees.” But today we are talking not only about possible political и economic upheavals in states already involved in the war and theoretically capable of entering it, but about much larger-scale threats that could affect the entire world.

In this case, we are not talking about the theoretical possibility of using nuclear weapons (which, we would like to believe, no one would dare to do), but something completely different. The defeat of Tehran or its capitulation on the terms imposed by the US and Israel would mean revenge for the neoconservative trend in the foreign policy of Washington and the entire collective West. This, without a doubt, represents a huge danger for many countries and peoples. For Russia – first and foremost.

Gerry Nolan
Pravda EN

The eagle’s midnight theatrics over Iranian skies promised a shock-and-awe spectacle, “obliteration” of nuclear facilities that would, we were assured, defang Tehran forever. But the dust settled differently. Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s ferocious geopolitical surgeon, calmly delivered the autopsy:

💬 “Critical infrastructure remains intact. Enrichment will continue. And now, a number of countries stand ready to hand Iran their own nuclear warheads.”

Read between Medvedev’s carefully chosen lines and you see not just a warning, but a multipolar declaration of independence, one that reduces America’s unilateral antics to mere tantrums on a shrinking stage.

America’s B-2 bomber pageant, billed as decisive, was merely performative PR, a muscular mirage designed to placate Israeli anxieties and assuage neoconservative egos. Iran shrugged off the attack, dusting itself off with ease and signaling that its nuclear trajectory remains unaltered. Indeed, the Empire’s strike was nothing more than an act of desperation.

Foad Izadi
english.khamenei.ir

In this interview, Foad Izadi, Associate Professor of American Studies at Tehran university, explains how a direct US military involvement against Iran could lead to devastating troop losses, economic turmoil, and legal crises, while exposing Israel’s true goal: Fragmenting Iran. Yet instead of weakening the country, the aggression has only fueled unprecedented national unity against foreign threats.

According to American sources themselves, the US has over 50,000 troops stationed across ten bases in the region, many of which are located very close to Iran’s borders. Some are situated along the Persian Gulf, while others are slightly farther away — yet still significantly closer than the Zionist regime. Given this proximity, Iran’s various ballistic missiles can easily reach these bases, and the short distance makes intercepting these missiles extremely difficult. An Iranian missile can strike these bases within just 3 to 5 minutes.

Even in the occupied territories (Israel), where a multi-layered missile defense system has been developed over years, a significant number of Iranian missiles would still penetrate. How, then, could US bases — which lack such defensive systems — possibly withstand such attacks?

As a result, 50,000 American soldiers are within range of Iran’s highly advanced ballistic missiles. This number — 50,000 — matches the total casualties the US suffered over 12 years in the Vietnam War. In this region, however, thousands of American troops could be killed within just a few days. This would be an unbearable cost for the US. One of the key reasons Washington has avoided direct military engagement so far is precisely this fear of massive troop losses in the region.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Benjamin Netanyahu, other members of the Israeli government, and anti-Iranian hawks within Trump’s own convinced him that a window of opportunity has opened up to knock Iran out of the geopolitical game for good.

Trump’s decision to bomb several nuclear sites in Iran is the due to him letting Israel shape the conflict’s military-strategic dynamics in ways that made this scenario too tempting for him not to pursue. [cf. trump chabad -Ed.] Observers should remember that he was aware of Israel’s plans to bomb Iran, and though he might have pressured them into delaying it till after his 60-day deadline for another nuclear deal had passed, he fully supported them afterwards. That made the US’ direct involvement in the conflict inevitable in hindsight.

Israel significantly degraded Iran’s military capabilities since the start of its ongoing US-supported bombing campaign but then began to claim that it can’t finish the job without American bunker busters. Influential MAGA thought leader Steve Bannon considered this to be a betrayal of their countries’ special relationship since Israel shouldn’t have started a war that it couldn’t win on its own. Many members of Trump’s movement agree with this assessment and that’s why his base is deeply divided over this issue.

For his part, Trump either doesn’t care what they think, is convinced that most of them will come around to supporting him, or expects them to hold their nose and still vote for the candidates that he endorses (including whoever his envisaged successor might be), so he bombed Iran in spite of this. He did that even though there’s a real risk of Iran targeting regional US bases and/or blockading the Strait of Hormuz, which Trump sought to deter by threatening it with unprecedented fire and fury in that event.

The Dissident
The Dissident (Substack)

Iran does not have nuclear weapons, but Israel does and is willing to use them if they believe they are about to lose.

Recently, the genocidal IDF tweeted out a propaganda video showcasing the effect of a Nuclear launch.

“The world is facing one of its biggest nuclear threats in decades,” the announcer of the video said.

The video ends by claiming that “the biggest terrorist army in the world was about to have (a nuclear weapon) in their hands,” referring to Iran.

But Israel's claim - that Iran was about to obtain a Nuclear weapon- was completely fabricated.

Former CIA head William Burns, current DNI head Tulsi Gabbard, and even the U.S. intelligence community’s annual threat assessment report, put out in March, all acknowledge that there was no intention on the part of Iran to build a nuclear bomb.

This propaganda video was not intended to scare people about the non-existent Iranian nuclear threat, but was put out as a veiled threat of what Israel may do if it feels they are losing the war with Iran.

Israel, unlike Iran, does have a massive Nuclear arsenal, and a doctrine -dubbed the Samson Option- where they call to use it if they feel they will lose a war.

After a long investigation, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh revealed all of this in his 1991 book, “The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy”.

In this article, I will review the history of Israel obtaining the bomb and its continued threat to use it, including as a threat of blackmail to influence U.S. foreign policy.

Bruna Frascolla
Strategic Culture Foundation

The most surprising thing about this whole story is that the cover of Hobbes’ magnum opus already gave it all away.

This week, I came across a news story titled “Satanic Temple Opens Abortion Clinic in Maine, Tells Women to Do Evil Chants Celebrating Killing Babies”. The story has a goat with a pentagram as an illustration, and is from a pro-life website called Life News. In the past, I would read such a headline and think it was an fabrication by that kind of evangelical who claims that there are satanic chants in a lot of pop songs when listened to backwards. But this is 2025, the year in which it is unscientific and criminal to say that women do not have penises.

The story on the thematic website uses as its source a story from a local news website in Maine. There, we get to the bureaucracy of the matter: there is a Satanist temple in Salem, Massachusetts, which in 2019 managed to register with the IRS as an exempt religious entity. In fact, if all religions are equal before the liberal state, discriminating against Satanists would be an injustice. The name of this distinguished entity is The Satanic Temple, abbreviated as TST.

Just as churches have philanthropic hospitals, TST has TST Health, which “provides free religious telehealth medication abortion care”. Unfortunately, I know what the tele-abortion part is.

The Dissident
The Dissident (Substack)

Israel's War With Iran Is The Final Phase To The Greater Israel Project

Benjamin Netanyahu has finally gone forward with his long-term goal of going to war with Iran.

[On June 13th], Netanyahu offensively ordered strikes on Iran, which included “Senior Iranian regime officials. Nuclear scientists. The uranium enrichment facility in Natanz and surface-to-air missile systems in Tehran.”

In response, Iran has struck Israeli military targets in Tel Aviv. This war of aggression from Israel has been launched with support from the Trump administration. Axios reported that

💬 “Israel killed much of Iran's military leadership, targeted its top nuclear scientists for assassination, and is actively bombing the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities and ballistic missile sites.”

According to the Axios report, Trump pretended to oppose an Israeli strike on Iran in public to give them a strategic advantage. The report wrote, “Since last night, Israeli officials have been spreading the word that Trump was completely on board, and only publicly opposed the attack as a ‘smokescreen’ to increase the odds of success”.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Two false flag scenarios are being cooked up in the Baltic Sea to this end according to Russian spies.

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Agency (SVR) warned that the Brits and Ukrainians are preparing two false flag scenarios in the Baltic Sea. The first one would see Ukrainian-transferred Soviet/Russian torpedoes explode near a US ship there and a supposedly malfunctioning one will then be found to implicate Russia in the alleged attack The second, meanwhile, will involve Ukrainian-transferred Soviet/Russian mines fished out of the Baltic Sea and presented as proof of a Kremlin plot to sabotage international shipping.

These perfidious provocations are being employed to manipulate Trump into escalating against Russia after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced in mid-February that the US won’t extend Article 5 mutual defense guarantees to NATO countries’ troops that might deploy to Ukraine. That scenario was the initial one that was planned for getting him to pull out of talks with Putin and then double down on support for Ukraine, but his team preemptively scuttled it through Hegseth’s announcement.

That’s why efforts are now underway to organize a false flag attack against a US ship in the Baltic and/or frame Russia as a threat to international shipping through the fishing out of its mines there. The Baltic has already been a so-called “NATO lake” since even before Finland and Sweden’s joined NATO given their prior shadow membership in the bloc, however, so it’s unrealistic that Russia could really carry out either of these two operations undetected even if it wanted to.

Jeffrey D. Sachs & Sybil Fares
Common Dreams

We could soon see several nuclear powers pitted against each other and dragging the world closer to nuclear annihilation

For nearly 30 years, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has driven the Middle East into war and destruction. The man is a powder keg of violence. Throughout all the wars that he has championed, Netanyahu has always dreamed of the big one: to defeat and overthrow the Iranian Government. His long-sought war, just launched, might just get us all killed in a nuclear Armageddon, unless Netanyahu is stopped.

Netanyahu’s fixation on war goes back to his extremist mentors, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Yitzhak Shamir, and Menachem Begin. The older generation believed that Zionists should use whatever violence–wars, assassinations, terror–is needed to achieve their aims of eliminating any Palestinian claim to a homeland.

The founders of Netanyahu’s political movement, the Likud, called for exclusive Zionist control over all of what had been British Mandatory Palestine. At the start of the British Mandate in the early 1920s, the Muslim and Christian Arabs constituted roughly 87% of the population and owned ten times more land than the Jewish population. As of 1948, the Arabs still outnumbered the Jews roughly two to one. Nonetheless, the founding charter of Likud (1977) declared that “between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” The now infamous chant, “from the River to the Sea,” which is characterized as anti-Semitic, turns out to be the anti-Palestinian rallying call of the Likud.

Donald Jeffries
donaldjeffries.substack.com

"Hate" in a free society | It has become obvious over the past few years that more and more Americans are questioning not only the wisdom behind our unwavering support of Israel, but Jewish power and influence itself. The artist formerly known as Kanye West played a large role here, as did other prominent Blacks like Jason Whitlock and Candace Owens.

White conservatives, which in the past were more likely to criticize Israel, have been completely coopted by the Rapture bunch, the ones who enable the Jews’ elitist notion that they are God’s “chosen people.” Every politician who hopes to hold elected office visits the Wailing Wall in Israel, and dons a yarmulke. I’d call it just another humiliation ritual, but I’m sure that would be labeled “anti-Semitic.” Consider how Nancy Pelosi proclaimed that “if the Capitol crumbles to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to Israel…that’s fundamental.” One member of our Congress has worn his IDF uniform to work. Lindsay Graham isn’t the only U.S. “representative” that has stated Israel should nuke Iran. Whether or not he really did have some kind of verbal altercation with Bibi Netanyahu, Donald Trump’s support of Israel is such that they have streets named after him there.

Because Black people are generally untouchable in terms of public criticism, their anti-Zionist or blunt anti-Jewish comments were ignored at first. Ignored by a state controlled media which consists of a wildly disproportionate number of Jews in prominent positions. But something happened when Ben Shapiro- who fits every historical stereotype of an obnoxious, parasitic figure who profits from a society he considers himself outside of- fired Candace Owens from the Daily Wire. Prior to that, Owens was a pretty innocuous Black conservative- the kind the Stupid Party salivates over. However, Owens was triggered enough by her dismissal to apparently start researching some forbidden topics. Pretty much anything to do with Jews collectively, the religion or the race, is “forbidden.” Ask the Anti-Defamation League, which serves as an unregistered agent for the foreign state of Israel.

Pascal Lottaz
Pascal’s Substack

Despite the mass-dying in the world's largest death-camp, western cameras still turn away from the blood and toward the same old Zionist script to justify genocide.

How many times over the past decades have we been told that journalism is meant to “speak truth to power”? Oh, sweet, sweet lies and lullabies. Narrative opium for the masses. In fact, today, as always, mainstream journalism obviously protects power from truth. As Gaza is turned into rubble and its people starved in front of all our eyes on social media, the mainstream—especially in the West’s settler colonies like New Zealand, Australia, and the U.S.—acts as an accomplice to genocide.

A few days ago, I hosted a panel of New Zealand-based journalists—Eugene Doyle, Jeremy Rose, and Ramon Das—to discuss just that. The three explained in detail how state media like Radio New Zealand (RNZ) washes the sins of its complicity away by absolving itself from all guilt. How do they do it? Well, RNZ just wrote a report about its own coverage and declared that all is well! It’s really that simple for these media outlets that constantly shower each other (and in this case themselves) with praise.

So, in addition to the lies like the “40 beheaded babies” and other BS that they report on when spoon-fed by western officialdom, they add to this strategic silence, soft language, and selective storytelling to whitewash the currently ongoing crime of crimes. Of course ,this is not just a New Zealand problem but the story of how the West launders genocide through the language of journalism.

Strategic Culture Foundation Editorial
Strategic Culture Foundation

All NATO leaders should be prosecuted for war crimes and inciting crimes against peace.

Israel’s years-long covert aggression against Iran has now escalated into open war following a massive wave of air strikes overnight in which several Iranian cities, including the capital, Tehran, were targeted with hundreds of missiles and drones.

Several of Iran’s top military commanders have been killed, as well as dozens of civilians, according to Iranian media.

Tel Aviv is warning that the attacks will continue for weeks. U.S. President Donald Trump has gloated about “excellent” strikes and warned of more to come, although he also claimed that he advised Israel against taking military action.

The U.S. claims it did not participate but did give “exquisite” intelligence for the attack. Meanwhile, NATO is believed to have provided military support to thwart Iranian retaliatory strikes while the organization’s civilian leader, Mark Rutte, deceptively appealed for a “de-escalation”.

The Iranian leadership is vowing a painful retaliation in the coming days for Israel’s “declaration of war”. The situation is spiraling into an all-out war in the Middle East, the dimensions of which are potentially devastating for the region and indeed the entire world.

Pascal Lottaz
Pascal’s Substack

In an unprecedented and unprovoked military attack, Israel kills several top leaders of the Iranian military, targets the country's nuclear facilities and commits yet another blatant crime.

Overnight, the terrorist regime in Tel Aviv added another crime of aggression to its nearly endless list of the worst of all international crimes. This time, by attacking Iran in a massive bombing campaign, which Netanyahu says will continue until he judges that what he calls a “threat” from Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons has subsided.

This is, of course, utter rubbish and reminiscent of the United States’ excuse in 2003 to commit the same crime against Iraq under the pretext of Saddam’s WMDs posing an “imminent threat” to the USA and the whole world. Netanyahu is conjuring up exactly the same phantom—even using the terminology of this being a “preemptive” strike—but with even less reason. Not only is it a verified and accepted truth, even by Israel and the USA, that the Iranians currently have no nuclear weapons, but the Americans were in active negotiations with them and scheduled to hold another meeting on Sunday, when Israel decided to commit this blatant act of war.

Shahrokh Saei
Tehran Times

Israel’s airstrikes against Iran in the early hours of Friday are not just a military provocation — they are a sign of strategic desperation

The strikes, launched amid escalating tensions in the region, reflect Tel Aviv’s struggle to maintain dominance in a West Asia that is rapidly shifting in favor of resistance forces. Iran, having already demonstrated its missile and drone capabilities in past confrontations, is now positioned to deliver a powerful and measured response that could redefine the balance of power.

The initial reports of the attacks came from Tehran, soon followed by a cascade of explosions across multiple provinces. Social media footage shows widespread damage to civilian neighborhoods, underscoring the indiscriminate nature of the aggression. Israel later claimed responsibility, targeting sites in Natanz, Khorramabad, Khondab, and other areas. The Israeli military called the strike Operation ‘Rising Lion’.

This act of unprovoked aggression comes amid increasingly hostile rhetoric from Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose warmongering policies continue to destabilize the region. While U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio attempted to distance Washington from the strikes, calling them a “unilateral action,” observers across the region believe such a major operation could not have happened without at least tacit U.S. support — especially amid indirect negotiations between Tehran and Washington.

In addition to structural damage, Israel’s attack reportedly killed several Iranian military personnel. Iran has pledged a strong response, making clear that such provocations will not go unanswered.