Press TV Staff Writer
PressTV

Thirty-eight days into the US-Israeli war on Iran, which began on February 28 with the assassination of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and top-ranking commanders, the US and Israel continue to target civilian, academic, and industrial infrastructure across the country.

On day 38, Tehran's Sharif University of Technology was hit by US-Israeli airstrikes. Civilian sites in Tehran, Shiraz, and Qom were also attacked, and dozens of civilians, including six children, were martyred during overnight aggression by America and the Israeli regime.

Iran's health, oil, and pharmaceutical sectors also reported extensive damage, while the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) stated that the Strait of Hormuz "will never return to its previous state" for the United States and Israel.

US President Donald Trump publicly threatened that the entire nation of Iran "can be taken out in one night," a declaration widely condemned as a clear war crime and a moral atrocity.

American lawmakers, experts, and media described his rhetoric as "deranged," "dangerous," and proof of a reckless push toward unprovoked conflict.

Amid proposals for a temporary ceasefire, Iran firmly rejected any pause that would allow adversaries to regroup, warning that such moves would only prolong and intensify the war.

Global markets and aviation continued to feel the fallout, with rising oil prices, disrupted trade, and mounting international concern over the human and economic costs of a military aggression launched by the US and Israel against Iran. Key developments from Day 38 of the imposed war:

WaySide
Truth In Plain Sight

[This article was originally published here on 10/21/13. In light of recent revelations about USAID as a part of the CIA's media empire, we thought it might be useful to revisit it. – Ed.]

Since the end of World War Two the Central Intelligence Agency has been a major force in US and foreign news media, exerting considerable influence over what the public sees, hears and reads on a regular basis. CIA publicists and journalists alike will assert they have few, if any, relationships, yet the seldom acknowledged history of their intimate collaboration indicates a far different story–indeed, one that media historians are reluctant to examine…

When seriously practiced, the journalistic profession involves gathering information concerning individuals, locales, events, and issues. In theory such information informs people about their world, thereby strengthening “democracy.” This is exactly the reason why news organizations and individual journalists are tapped as assets by intelligence agencies and, as the experiences of German journalist Udo Ulfkotte (entry 47 below) suggest, this practice is at least as widespread today as it was at the height of the Cold War.

Consider the coverups of election fraud in 2000 and 2004, the events of September 11, 2001, the invasions Afghanistan and Iraq, the destabilization of Syria, and the creation of “ISIS.” These are among the most significant events in recent world history, and yet they are also those much of the American public is wholly ignorant of. In an era where information and communication technologies are ubiquitous, prompting many to harbor the illusion of being well-informed, one must ask why this condition persists.

Press TV Staff Writer
PressTV

A major European rights body recounts in harrowing detail the atrocities that have been carried out for the past 43 days by the Israeli regime against Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip.

Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor provided the information in a report on Monday.

The report showed how the Israeli military has been subjecting the Gazans to direct killings, extrajudicial executions, mass starvation, and ethnic cleansing “with no justification whatsoever” as part of its now-13-month-old genocidal war on the coastal sliver.

Israeli forces, the report noted, have been committing the crimes by bombing homes with residents inside, committing mass killings against displaced civilians in shelters, and targeting gatherings and vehicles.

‘Largest campaign of forced displacement in modern history’—The forces have also embarked on bringing about “the largest cases of forced displacement in modern history” against the targeted civilians, it said.

The period in question, throughout which the Israeli military has markedly intensified its deadly aggression against northern Gaza, has seen it “conducting its third incursion and military offensive” against the targeted areas and “committing heinous atrocities,” the body stated.

The combined killing and displacement routine was being carried out with the aim of “terrorizing civilians” among other things, it said.

‘They executed them in front of me’—The body cited Tamam Abdel Maqadmeh, one of the civilians, as describing some of the atrocities that the forces committed in the city of Beit Lahia.

Press TV Staff Writer
PressTV

Marco Rubio, a Republican foreign policy hawk tapped by Donald Trump to lead the US Department of State in his new administration, is known for his confrontational stance toward Iran and close ties with anti-Iran groups.

A staunch ally of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Rubio has even advocated for a direct attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities by the Israeli regime, saying such an attack "would have been successful."

In a 2015 interview, he asserted that the Tel Aviv regime "has a right to act in its self-defense, which it did in the past when it struck facilities in Syria and other places."

The Florida senator is an ardent and self-proclaimed Zionist who supports the Tel Aviv regime’s settler-colonialism project and land grabs in the occupied West Bank, as well as ongoing genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.

Like Trump and Biden, Rubio is fiercely opposed to the truce and blames all civilian casualties on the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, for which he even employs dehumanizing vocabulary. He was heard recently referring to Palestinian resistance fighters as "vicious animals."

Trump's pick for Secretary of State is among the Israeli lobby's biggest recipients of donation, receiving at least $1,013,563 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the top Zionist lobby group in the US that exerts considerable influence in US power corridors.

"Hadi bin Hurr"

Why would ISIS choose to carry out such a large-scale terrorist attack on Russian soil at this very moment when we know that nothing similar was attempted even in the midst of the war in Syria?

I

If it weren’t infinitely disgusting and totally inappropriate to the tragic moment, someone might find it funny how much Washington and their satellites are trying these days to prove that Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with the horrible terrorist attack in Crocus City Hall that killed 144 completely innocent Russian civilians, while 360 of them were injured and 95 are still considered missing. If these professional Western liars had a little more brain than a parrot needs to endlessly repeat the same nonsense that no one on this planet believes anymore, they would realize that Moscow, by labeling the Kiev Nazi regime as the culprit of the second largest terrorist operation in Russia since 1991, in fact, in front of the whole world, more than directly calls out Washington and their other subordinate power centers. After all, simple logic and the abundance of direct and indirect evidence that is already available to the public lead each of us to come to the same conclusion ourselves.

American attempts to shift the blame for the massacre in Moscow solely to the “Islamic State” are more than naive and foolish. Worse than those pathetic attempts was only the American conviction that this false flag operation could pass and that the Kremlin could be successfully misled. Moscow does not believe in American crocodile tears! In addition, a large part of the world public has never allowed itself to become a victim of brainwashing by the Western mainstream media, so it does not fall for the American claims about the non-involvement of Kiev in the massacre in Moscow, which also applies to an increasing part of the Western public, which has become resistant to the lies of Zionist-controlled Washington. The world public has long been aware of the fact that Daesh is nothing more than a proxy weapon of global terror under the control of the infamous Zionist triad of special services consisting of the CIA, MI6, and the Mossad. Reinventing ISIS as the duty culprit for all the crimes planned in Washington, London, and Tel-Aviv is no longer possible.

Press TV Staff Writer
PressTV

Benjamin Netanyahu's regime in Tel Aviv has found support from not-so-strange quarters for its genocidal war against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including Iran’s unpopular former monarchists.

In the past five months, the son of the deposed former Iranian monarchist and his loyalists have been aggressively lobbying for the child-murdering regime and justifying its war crimes.

Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last Pahlavi dynasty ruler Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, has been unapologetic about his ties with Netanyahu and other Israeli regime officials, even visiting the occupied territories to express his support for the regime’s settler-colonial project.

In statements to British and Israeli media after the events of October 7, the self-proclaimed “crown prince” endorsed the Israeli regime’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza, while vilifying Hamas and Iran.

In November, his wife Yasmine was seen at a pro-Israel rally in Washington, waving the long-discredited Pahlavi and Israeli flags, with Pahlavi bots circulating them on social media pages.

The alliance between Iran’s former monarchists and the Israeli regime, who share common goals, got impetus after Pahlavi and his spouse visited the Israeli-occupied territories in April of last year, hosted by the Israeli premier himself.

It marked the formalization of their long-standing informal evil-evil relationship.

Christopher Black

International law has essentially collapsed with the US backed Israeli siege of the Palestinian people of Gaza, in response to the Hamas attack on Israeli occupation forces on October 7. The Palestinians have no expectation of mercy from the Israelis, when they have suffered decades of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinian lands and their replacement by Israeli settlers, all in violation of international law and several UN resolutions, including of course, Resolution 242 which required Israel to withdraw from all the lands they seized in the 1967 War; a war which they now admit was started on a pretext in order to seize those lands and push out the Palestinians who lived there.

Israel has been granted impunity for its aggression and occupation of Palestinian lands for decades by the nations that helped to create it and support it after World War I and World War II; the USA, Britain and their allies, who granted it impunity to act as it wishes because Israel serves their objectives in the Middle East, acting as the local agent of the nation that seeks to be the world hegemon, the United States.

Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court says nothing about the crimes being committed by the Israelis against the Palestinians in the occupied lands and Gaza, even though it has had a file open on Palestine-Israel since 2019. Its lack of action is in stark contrast to the quick issuance of a warrant of arrest against President Putin some months ago based on no real investigation whatsoever.

WaySide
Truth In Plain Sight

Since the end of World War Two the Central Intelligence Agency has been a major force in US and foreign news media, exerting considerable influence over what the public sees, hears and reads on a regular basis. CIA publicists and journalists alike will assert they have few, if any, relationships, yet the seldom acknowledged history of their intimate collaboration indicates a far different story–indeed, one that media historians are reluctant to examine…

When seriously practiced, the journalistic profession involves gathering information concerning individuals, locales, events, and issues. In theory such information informs people about their world, thereby strengthening “democracy.” This is exactly the reason why news organizations and individual journalists are tapped as assets by intelligence agencies and, as the experiences of German journalist Udo Ulfkotte (entry 47 below) suggest, this practice is at least as widespread today as it was at the height of the Cold War.

Consider the coverups of election fraud in 2000 and 2004, the events of September 11, 2001, the invasions Afghanistan and Iraq, the destabilization of Syria, and the creation of “ISIS.” These are among the most significant events in recent world history, and yet they are also those much of the American public is wholly ignorant of. In an era where information and communication technologies are ubiquitous, prompting many to harbor the illusion of being well-informed, one must ask why this condition persists.

Neil Clark

The continuing attacks on Vladimir Putin and Russia by members of the western political, military and journalistic elite tell us one thing – the Russian President is doing a good job both for the people of his country and in the international arena.

For it is a rule which invariably holds true – if the Western elites praise the leader of a foreign country it means he is doing something which is good for those elites and bad for his country. If he’s demonized, as Putin is, it’s the other way round.

The latest attack has come from Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The US Army general said that Russia was “pushing on the limits of international order.” Dempsey talked of the need to “deter Russian aggression against our NATO allies” – and said that Russia had “kind of lit a fire of nationalism.” “Once you light that fire, it's not controllable,” the General said. “I am worried about Europe.”

It’s worth reflecting on Dempsey’s words as they provide a classic example of what psychologists call ‘projection’. The US General was accusing Russia of what his own country has been guilty of.

James Petras

Obama at the UN General Assembly: Five Years a Zionist Lackey

Introduction: Obama’s rhetorical exercise in ‘peace talk’ at the United Nations General Assembly impressed few delegations and even fewer Americans: Far more eloquent are his five years of wars, military interventions, cyber-spying, drone murders, military coups and the merciless prosecution of patriotic truth tellers.

If his ‘peace message’ fell flat, the explicit affirmations of imperial prerogatives, threats of military interventions and over two dozen (25) references to Israel as a ‘strategic ally’, confirmed the suspicions and fears that Obama was preparing for even more deadly wars.

Playing the ‘War Card’ in the Face of Massive Opposition

Obama’s UN speech took place at a time when his war policies have hit rock bottom both at home and abroad. After suffering at least two major diplomatic defeats and a string of negative polls, which revealed that a strong majority of Americans rejected his entire approach to foreign policy, Obama made an overture to Iran. Up to that point few delegates or citizens were impressed or entertained by his ‘new vision for US diplomacy’. According to many experts, it was vintage Obama, the con-man: talking peace while preparing new wars.

Nothing in the past six years warranted any hope that Obama would respond to new overtures for peace emanating from Iran, Syria or Palestine; his habitual obedience to Israel would push for new wars on behalf of the Jewish State. At no point did Obama even acknowledge the sharp and outraged criticism by leading heads of state regarding his policy of cyber colonialism (massive spying) and his pursuit of imperial wars.