The Ultimate Deception: How Trump and Bibi Outfoxed Iran In a world of diplomatic doublespeak, hypocrisy, and strategic ambiguity, Trump and Netanyahu simply said what they meant. By Michael Doran

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-ultimate-deception-how-trump?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

They died in their own beds. Hossein Salami and Ali Shamkhani—Iran’s most senior military officers and the stewards of Iran’s nuclear weapons program—had spent years threatening Israel with destruction. They issued taunts, organized terrorist attacks, and orchestrated, since October 7, the encirclement of the Jewish state in a ring of fire of their terror proxies. And they knew—without the slightest illusion—that Israel had the capability and resolve to kill them.

This cohort saw the Israeli air force bury Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah in his bunker, hundreds of meters beneath the streets of Beirut. They saw Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh vaporized in a presidential guesthouse—in Tehran, no less. Yet on Thursday night, they came home as usual and went to sleep—unguarded, unworried, carefree. Like insurance salesmen and bank tellers following their daily routines, it never occurred to them that they might not wake in the morning.

But they didn’t.

In 1967, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser made a similar mistake. He moved forces to Israel’s border, declared war in all but name, and left his MiG fighter jets parked in neat rows. Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol hesitated publicly—then struck with speed, ferocity, and total surprise. By the time Nasser understood what had happened, his air force was already in ruins.

History just repeated itself. But why did these seasoned Iranian officers—veteran warriors, intelligence chiefs, regime survivors—lower their guard so completely? How did Israel achieve strategic surprise?

The simple answer: Benjamin Netanyahu read Donald Trump better than the Iranians.

Beginning around April 12, Trump gave Iran a 60-day deadline, which ended near June 11. The Israeli strike that killed Shamkhani came on June 13—just after the deadline expired. In that interval, Trump repeatedly warned Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons infrastructure or face violent consequences. In an early May interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, the American president offered Iran’s leaders two stark options for dealing with their nuclear facilities: “blow them up nicely”—meaning under international supervision—or “blow them up viciously.”

A New Chapter for Geert Wilders The Dutch hero brings down the government – and waxes eloquent on Israel. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-new-chapter-for-geert-wilders/

On the morning of June 3, Geert Wilders, member of the Dutch House of Representatives and head of the Party for Freedom (PVV), tweeted that the PVV would be leaving the Dutch ruling coalition. This move at once brought down the Dutch government and began a new chapter in an extraordinary personal – and national – saga. It was a generation ago, in 2002, on the verge of an election that would likely have made him prime minister, that Pim Fortuyn, an outspoken gay sociologist, was gunned down in a parking lot in Hilversum as punishment for his outspoken recognition of the existential nature of the Islamic threat. Two years later, Theo van Gogh, an iconoclastic columnist and raconteur, was murdered on an Amsterdam street in retribution for his own forthright criticism of Islam. For a brief period, the Somali-born Dutch legislator Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was the country’s leading critic of the religion under which she’d grown up, but she was soon forced to leave for America. That left Wilders to take to the pulpit – or, if you will, to put on the boxing gloves.

And what a remarkable job he’s done – and in the face of impossible pressure. Not only have death threats from the adherents of the Religion of Peace obliged him to live under police protection since 2004; as punishment for telling the truth about that execrable ideology, he’s been denounced by corporate leaders, by academics, by clergy, by his fellow politicians, and, not least, by his country’s (and, often, the world’s) legacy media. He’s been called in on the carpet more than once by security and justice officials, and in 2007 no less august a personage than Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, who is now king, rebuked Wilders (although without mentioning his name) with the remark, “Not for nothing do we have the saying, ‘Speech is silver, silence is golden.’” (Obey your own advice, dude.) In 2008, a who’s-who of the Dutch cultural elite signed a statement, published on the front page of the newspaper Trouw, that condemned Wilders’s “intolerance” and urged “a new balance between the values of then and those of now” – in short, rank and cowering appeasement of Islam. In 2009 he was denied entry into the U.K. on the grounds that he might introduce unseemly ideas into a country awash in jihad-happy imams; in 2010, he was put on trial for insulting Islam. As Wilders explained to me that year in an interview in The Hague, “The political elite today is not very successful in beating my party in a political way, so  they are looking for a different way…..The more popular I get with the people, the more people want to shut me up.” Sound familiar?

Israel Strikes Back The Jewish state begins to take out the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear facilities. by Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/israel-strikes-back/

On Thursday evening, the long-anticipated Israel strikes began, targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear sites and other key military facilities. The objective of Operation Strength of a Lion is to end the Iranian nuclear threat once and for all, as well as to destroy, as much as possible, the Islamic Republic’s ability to continue to wage war against the Jewish state via its proxies, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Houthis. The entire state of Israel was on emergency alert; the Israeli Home Front Command issued instructions to all Israeli citizens to comply with guidelines that would be issued as part of “preparations for a significant threat.”

Suddenly, Journalists Don’t Want To ‘Follow The Money’

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/06/13/suddenly-journalists-dont-want-to-follow-the-money/

“Just … follow the money.” – Deep Throat, All the President’s Men

That use to be the watchword for investigative journalists. If you want to uncover corruption, find out where the money is coming from and where it is going. At least it use to be.

Today? Not so much. At least not when doing so could implicate Democrats or upset the left’s agenda.

Case in point is the Los Angeles riots. There’s plenty of reason to believe that the riots are being organized and financed by unsavory characters whose mission is to foment division and violence in the United States.

Some of the money is likely coming out of taxpayer pockets.

Marxist Party for Socialism and Liberation, which has ties to the Chinese Communist Party, is said to be behind some of the protests, according to the New York Post. The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles staged a rally last Thursday to protest ICE arrests (but claims it has had nothing to do with the riots). That group got more than $46 million in federal grants in 2022 and 2023, as well as millions from California taxpayers.

“Another group involved in organizing the LA riots is the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a radical leftist American union with extensive overseas ties,” says Heritage senior fellow Mike Gonzalez. “Then there are the ‘charities’ helping the rioters, such as Mutual Aid Los Angeles Network, Operation Healthy Hearts, LA Poverty Department, and Mutual Aid/Social Therapy.”

One scene captured by Fox News showed rioters unloading a truckload of Bionic Shield face masks that go for about $60 each. The FBI later arrested the guy driving the pickup truck, who faces charges of conspiracy to commit civil disorder.

But who paid for those masks? Who is buying “commercial grade fireworks … with shrapnel being put in,” that Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell says are fired at officers?

The FBI is investigating the financial ties behind the riots. The mainstream press could care less.

Israel Bombs Iran in Preemptive Strike [UPDATED] Catherine Salgado

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2025/06/12/breaking-israel-bombs-iran-in-preemptive-strike-n4940748?utm_source=breakingemail&utm_medium=email
The Israel Defense Forces [IDF] confirmed that it has bombed Iran’s nuclear assets in a preemptive strike against the Islamic regime that has vowed to wipe Israel off the map.

The Israeli Air Force launched its attack, dubbed “Operation Rising Lion,” late Thursday on Iran’s nuclear program. According to The Times of Israel. “Home Front Command spokesman says Israel could experience ‘heavy missile attack’ in coming hours, but no fire from Iran as yet and no need to go to bomb shelter.” 

Israel has declared a state of emergency, according to the Jerusalem Post, and has closed its airspace. 

It appears that an all-out war could be beginning between Iran and Israel rather than the unending wars by proxy in which Iran has been engaging. 

The Post reported, “Iran developed a plan with Hezbollah and Hamas and other proxies to destroy the State of Israel, potentially including attempts to attack via all borders, including Egypt and Jordan. This was the point of no return, according to the IDF.”

The Times of Israel stated:

The IDF confirms it has launched an aerial campaign against Iran’s nuclear program.

Dozens of targets across Iran related to the nuclear program and other military facilities are being struck by the Israeli Air Force, it says.

In a statement, the IDF said, “A short while ago, following the directive of the political echelon, the IDF launched a preemptive, precise, combined offensive based on high-quality intelligence to strike Iran’s nuclear program, and in response to the Iranian regime’s ongoing aggression against Israel.”

Dark Clouds Over South Africa by Nils A. Haug

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21682/dark-clouds-over-south-africa

The ANC’s National Democratic Revolution strategy compels dominating the Judiciary; it reads: “judicial independence to be undermined, in part by vesting most appointments to the bench in an ANC-dominated Judicial Service Commission.” It was therefore not unexpected that the Constitutional Court might rule in support of the slogan, “Kill the Boer”.

Sadly, what Ramaphosa actually intends, despite his grand terminology, is that there will be a redistribution of wealth and asset ownership in the form of either expropriation without compensation and/or a mandatory transfer of equity in businesses held by minorities to the black majority. NDR policies allow for this, and in fact the ANC Constitution mandates such actions….

A partial solution might be, as suggested by the commentator Rob Hersov, is that the US and other Western nations should bypass the ANC and instead support the Democratic Alliance (DA) — the official opposition at one stage (now part of the coalition) and the 2nd largest political party.

The DA is a centralist-conservative entity which runs the Western Cape Province – a state thriving in every way. Perhaps when it becomes known how successful the Western Cape under the DA has become, particularly with US and other outside investment, then demand for structural changes elsewhere might arise. In the interim, ominous dark clouds hang over the future of beautiful South Africa and its vibrant and amazing people.

There was a moment with a glimmer of hope for beleaguered South Africa. That moment appeared on May 21, 2025, with a meeting at the White House between US President Donald J. Trump and his South African counterpart, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. The purpose of the meeting was to ‘reset’ the relationship between them after violently racist and anti-Western policies adopted by the largest political party in South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC), which heads a coalition government, were criticised by President Trump.

While Ramaphosa focused on trade at the meeting –- probably believing he could get away with neo-Marxist policies by tempting Trump with trade opportunities, such as availability of critical minerals — Trump instead brooded on the deep injustice against the country’s white minorities. Many onlookers believe they deserving what they are getting as a result of sometimes hundreds of years of discrimination against the Blacks, or “Coloureds,” by South Africa’s White European settlers.

Tal Fortgang Nothing About the L.A. “Protest” Is Organic How did the rioters know to show up covering their faces with the same symbolic gear?

https://www.city-journal.org/article/los-angeles-immigration-protests-riots-civil-terrorism

The new dominant form of organized crime has shown its face in Los Angeles in recent days. Though it comes under the banner of “protest” and is whitewashed in the media as “mostly peaceful” and presumed spontaneous, a close observer can see that it is none of these things. It is in fact the result of a calculated civil terrorism movement taking advantage of Americans’ reluctance to treat criminals as criminals.

Images and videos from the riots give the game away. Why are there keffiyehs everywhere? What does Palestinianism have to do with preventing the federal government from enforcing immigration law, and how did the rioters know to show up covering their faces with the same symbolic gear? Who brought gas masks by the truckload? Who managed to convince hundreds of people to take up rock-throwing, Molotov cocktail-dropping, and arson at seemingly arbitrary places and times? Who laid the groundwork for street violence by training people in the tactics that prevent law enforcement from ending it promptly? As domestic-extremism expert Kyle Shideler puts it, this violence is “not black magic, it’s just hard work.”

But just as it is not black magic—not orchestrated down to fine details by mob bosses—neither is it grassroots. Nothing about this “protest” is organic. It is organized, activated, and AstroTurfed—and it has a hard time sticking to script. When Students for Justice in Palestine chimes in to say that “from the barrios of LA to the refugee camps of Bethlehem, we will globalize the intifada,” it makes the unrest look less like an expression of outrage against immigration policy than a lashing out against the rule of law itself.

It will still cloak itself in the language of law and democracy. It gets significant help from credulous media reporting, like CNN’s claim that “protests in and around Los Angeles erupted on Friday after federal immigration agents arrested at least 44 people.” A protest is when people peaceably assemble for a redress of grievances. What has transpired in Los Angeles is wanton property destruction, assaults on cops, and exuberant lawlessness.

None of this stands any chance of showing the American people that the government’s actions are wrong and the “protesters” are right. All it can do is show that the rioters are loose cannons, and that Americans ought to be afraid of what they might do. It is the opposite of democratic.

Did The Palestinian Authority President Really Condemn the Hamas Attack of October 7, 2023? by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21683/abbas-condemn-hamas

In all his speeches in Arabic since October 7, 2023, Abbas has very carefully avoided condemning the attack and the murder of a large number of Israelis and foreign nationals.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa, which regularly reports on Abbas’s meetings, statements, and diplomatic events, also did not report about the letter, including Abbas’s alleged condemnation of the October 7 massacres against Israel.

If Abbas actually did condemn October 7 in his letter, he did so only to appease France and encourage it to recognize a Palestinian state. The Palestinian public knows absolutely nothing about the letter or Abbas’s supposed “condemnation.”

If France really wanted a condemnation of the October 7 atrocities, they should have asked Abbas to issue a statement in Arabic to his own people, and not send a letter (in French) to French President Emmanuel Macron. Such a statement should have been issued by Abbas’s office in Ramallah, not the Élysée Palace in Paris.

Macron and his government are…. are apparently trying to show the world that Abbas deserves a Palestinian state because he has purportedly “condemned” the Hamas-led massacres. Unfortunately, however, this is the same Abbas, however, who still pays salaries to families of convicted terrorists who murder Jews, and who consistently glorifies terrorists by calling them heroes and martyrs.

France and the European Union are actually planning to reward the Islamist jihadists who slaughtered hundreds of Jews by giving them a terrorist state funded and armed by Iran’s mullahs.

This conference, to recognize a genocidal terrorist state, is evidently Macron’s way of appeasing the Muslim jihadists who are now rioting on the streets of French cities. The same holds true for other European leaders: they are willing to sacrifice Jews to placate their Muslim communities.

France claimed this month that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas had condemned the invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023 by Hamas, the Iran-backed terrorist group. During the attack, Hamas terrorists and other Palestinians murdered 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, wounded thousands. They kidnapped another 251 people to the Gaza Strip, where 52 – dead and alive – remain in captivity.

Paris said in a statement that the purported condemnation was included in a letter Abbas sent to France on the eve of a United Nations conference in New York, scheduled for this month, to push for recognizing the establishment of a Palestinian state. The conference is to be co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia.

Why privileged Israelophobes can’t handle Azealia Banks The rapper has defied the ‘progressive’ consensus and come out in support of the Jewish State. Jenny Holland

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/11/why-privileged-israelophobes-cant-handle-azealia-banks/

We live in an age of grotesque double standards and cloying fakery from celebs. The overwhelming majority seem to think that their job is not to entertain us, but to strike fashionable poses and shove hypocrisies down our throats.

And then there’s Azealia Banks. She is, as the kids say, a real one.

The 34-year-old rapper from Harlem has been controversial for quite some time, sounding off on social media on a variety of topics. But last week she outdid herself by bluntly standing up for Israel at a time when pretty much all of the luvvie class has gone the other way.

‘I’m a Zionist’, she posted last Wednesday. Unsurprisingly, this unleashed a torrent of largely hostile commentary. Many young, privileged Westerners now unthinkingly loathe Israel. For them, a black rapper’s refusal to toe the ‘progressive’ line just doesn’t make sense.

It’s been particularly difficult for woke, finger-snapping white girls. They’re normally only too eager to shout ‘yaaas queen!’ when a black woman speaks. But on this occasion, they’re struggling, as Banks has not stuck to the script.

It should be said that, at points, Banks’s Israel commentary has veered off into dodgier, identitarian territory. ‘BITCH DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY FUCKING BLACK CHILDREN HAVE BEEN MURDERED AT THE HANDS OF ARABS?’, she tweeted last week. Then there was this: ‘I do not support the expansion of genocide of any more peoples of the world at the hands of Arab Muslims.’ Banks, it seems, was referring to the the centuries-long Arab slave trade, which involved the enslavement of millions of Africans right up until the 20th century.

No wonder Banks got progressives’ knickers in a twist. We know that blaming anyone other than the bad white / Jewish man for slavery and genocide is enough to trigger a mass-casualty event at Columbia University.

We live in an age where female celebrity takes mainly two forms: Meghan Markle’s grandiose self-delusion and manufactured virtue, or hectoring harpies with pronouns in their bios. But here comes Banks to shred her opponents openly, and with the most inventive use of swear words I have ever heard. And I grew up in Brooklyn!

Recalling a “Clear Case of Genocide” As Hamas supporters hurl bogus charges against Israel. by Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/recalling-a-clear-case-of-genocide/

Last month, Megha Vemuri, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology class of 2025, denounced the “genocidal Israeli military” and contended that the MIT community “would never tolerate a genocide.” Such proclamations, widely repeated on Ivy League campuses, invite a look at the actual genocide going on 50 years ago.

In April, 1975, troops of the communist Khmer Rouge occupied Cambodia’s capital of Phom Penh. One of the last correspondents to leave was David Aikman of Time magazine, author of  “Cambodia: An Experiment in Genocide.” As Aikman recalled:

After a few hours, the black-uniformed troops began firing into the air. It was a signal for Phnom Penh’s entire population, swollen by refugees to some three million, to abandon the city. Young and old, the well and the sick, businessmen and beggars, were all ordered at gunpoint onto the streets and highways leading into the countryside.

Among the first pitiful sights on the road, witnessed by several Westerners, were patients from Pnomh Penh’s grossly overcrowded hospitals, perhaps 20,000 people all told. Even the dying, the maimed and the pregnant were herded out stumbling into the streets. Several pathetic cases were pushed along the road in their beds by relatives, the intravenous bottles still attached to the bedframes In some hospitals, foreign doctors were ordered to abandon their patients in mid-operation. It took two days before the Bruegel-like multitude was fully under way, shuffling, limping and crawling to a designated appointment with revolution.

With almost no preparations for so enormous an exodus —how could there have been with a war on?—thousands died along the route, the wounded from loss of blood, the weak from exhaustion, and others by execution, usually because they had not been quick enough to obey a Khmer Rouge order. Phnom Penh was not alone: the entire urban population of Cambodia, some four million people, set out on a similar grotesque pilgrimage. It was one of the greatest transfers of human beings in modern history.

The slaughter was soon to follow. The Khmer Rouge executed victims by blows to the head with hoes, clubs and other blunt instruments. The Communist soldiers killed infants and children by smashing their heads against trees. They cut victims’ throats with knives, bayonets and scythes. Some were poisoned or suffocated with plastic bags.

The Khmer Rouge also maintained 189 interrogation centers, including S-21 in a former school now called Tuol Sleng. The Communists tortured prisoners with electric shocks and beat them into forced confessions. Of the 14,000-17,000 prisoners held there, only 12 survived.