London’s role in Iran’s financial networks — and why it matters now

With the US and Israel now at war with Iran, attention is turning to how the country’s ruling elite has been able to move and park its wealth in the West, including here in the UK. 

Transparency International UK has been collecting information on the UK’s exposure to illicit wealth linked to Iran’s elites and associated money laundering networks. Consistently appearing as one of the world’s most corrupt countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, what we have found connected to Iran is troubling. Investigations by journalists, combined with recent sanctions by the UK and US governments, paint a picture of Iranian regime figures and their proxies using London property, UK-registered companies, and regulated financial institutions to launder wealth and maintain access to the global financial system. 

Over £200 million in London property 

In total, we have identified over £200 million worth of UK property bought by figures linked to the regime in Iran. The owners include sanctioned individuals and those accused of running money laundering operations on the regime’s behalf. 

The most striking example is that of Iran’s newly-announced Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. In January 2026, Bloomberg reported that Khamenei had built a global property empire worth hundreds of millions of pounds, with London at its centre. He is alleged to have amassed around £150 million in London property by investing through a proxy, the Iranian banker Ali Ansari, such that Khamenei’s name appears on none of the relevant documents. Ansari denies any financial relationship with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or with Motjaba Khamenei. 

A property on The Bishops Avenue in London, listed as being owned by a company called Birch Ventures. Photo: Google Maps

The portfolio includes a £73 million collection of derelict mansions on Bishops Avenue, purchased through an Isle of Man company called Birch Ventures Limited, a £33 million mansion on the same street bought in Ansari’s own name, and two apartments overlooking the Israeli embassy purchased in 2014 and 2016 for £16.7 million and £19 million respectively. 

Ansari assembled this property portfolio with the help of a UK-regulated, Iranian-born lawyer. The scale and nature of these acquisitions raise serious questions about how the UK’s anti-money laundering framework allowed this to happen over a period of many years. 

Crypto exchanges with a fictional CEO 

London property is only part of the story. A recent investigation by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) found that two UK-registered crypto exchanges, Zedcex and Zedxion, allegedly formed a key channel for laundering billions in digital assets on behalf of Iranian interests linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). 

The supposed CEO of these exchanges, “Elizabeth Newman,” presented as a Dominican businesswoman in her 40s, appears not to exist. Marketing materials used a stock-footage model from Shutterstock, and images of other “staff” were also stock clips. Despite being declared dormant in UK Companies House filings, US authorities allege one of the platforms handled around $94 billion in total transactions, with approximately $1 billion linked to the IRGC. 

The network is tied to Iranian financier Babak Morteza Zanjani, previously sentenced to death in Iran for embezzling oil revenues, whose sentence was later commuted, and who has since been sanctioned by both the US and UK for generating funds and support for the IRGC. 

The UK’s corporate framework provided a veneer of legitimacy which allowed these exchanges to operate in plain sight. 

A hedge fund in Knightsbridge 

Another Bloomberg investigation uncovered how Hossein Shamkhani, son of the late Ali Shamkhani, a former top advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader, had established a money laundering network using London-based finance firms as a key node. Shamkhani has previously denied involvement in the commodity industry, but has since been sanctioned by the UK, US and EU. 

At the centre of this was Ocean Leonid Investments, a hedge fund operating from 180 Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, close to Harrods. Bloomberg described the fund as a central cog in the Shamkhani network, which handles Iranian and Russian crude flows and related trades. London, in other words, was functioning as part of this network’s command-and-control infrastructure. 

Offshore secrecy 

Iranian money laundering and sanctions evasion networks have also made use of opaque corporate structures in Britain’s Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has designated British Virgin Islands (BVI) companies as part of Iran’s illicit oil trade networks. Our own research has found that figures close to the regime have used BVI companies to invest in UK property. The Ansari properties, as noted above, made use of an Isle of Man company. 

Transparency InternationaI UK has long campaigned for greater corporate transparency in the UK’s offshore network. These cases show exactly why it matters. 

What needs to happen 

The cases outlined here are not historical curiosities. They represent live vulnerabilities in the UK’s defences against illicit finance. Iranian regime figures and their proxies have been able to use UK property, companies, and financial institutions with apparent ease. 

At a time when the geopolitical stakes around Iran could not be higher, the UK government needs to act. The global summit on Illicit Finance to be hosted here in June provides an ideal opportunity for the UK to show leadership in galvanising worldwide measures to tackle money laundering. This should include strong commitments to crack down on professional enablers who assist corrupt regimes in laundering funds through financial systems and property markets, as well as action to be taken on opening up company ownership information in opaque jurisdictions like the British Virgin Islands and the Isle of Man. 

Four years ago, as Russian tanks rolled towards Kyiv, time was finally called on London serving as a safe haven for the dirty money of corrupt regimes. Yet even now, we still have a lot of cleaning up to do. 

Transparency International UK

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has taken the ax to over $22 billion in environmental-justice and DEI grants and contracts in order to help reprioritize the agency’s commitment to protecting human health and the environment, rather than allowing it and its mission to be co-opted by progressives who use them to further its own socialist agenda.

While former President Joe Biden was in office, his administration handed out billions of taxpayer dollars to a number of activist organizations that placed their ideological agenda ahead of taking action to legitimately provide solutions for environmental issues impacting communities across the United States. One of the most famous examples of this is failed Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.

Abrams was handed $2 billion by the Biden administration’s EPA to buy green energy appliances for Americans. “Stacey Abrams linked Power Forward Communities received $2 billion in tax dollars in 2024 after reporting just $100 in revenue the year before. They were so unqualified that the grant agreement required the NGO to complete ‘How to Develop a Budget’ training within 90 days,” Zeldin said in an interview with Fox News.

“$2 billion in hard earned tax dollars should not have been doled out to this organization for many reasons, especially if they don’t even know how to put together a budget. The Biden EPA ‘gold bars’ scheme is riddled with self-dealing and conflicts of interest, unnecessary middlemen, unqualified recipients, and massively reduced government oversight. The funds are currently frozen, and the DOJ and FBI are investigating,” he explained, according to the report.

“One Biden EPA staffer described the agency’s frantic multibillion-dollar spending spree at the end of the administration’s term as ‘tossing gold bars off the Titanic,’” Zeldin said in a piece he penned for The New York Post. “Those ‘gold bars’ were awarded to just eight pass-through nongovernmental organizations — including one tied to Georgia activist Stacey Abrams.”

Zeldin noted that this amount was, staggeringly, 20 million times more than Abrams’ group’s 2023 reported income, which was only $100. Later in the piece, Zeldin detailed his approach to the EPA and its mission, saying, “Instead of handing off the responsibility of environmental stewardship to unqualified NGOs, or prescribing every last solution from behind a desk in Washington, DC, I am visiting communities across our country, working with our state and local partners on the ground and meeting with Americans to understand the issues they face.”

He then wrote, “Nationwide, we need federal funding to advance that core mission: for new water infrastructure to ensure safe waterways and drinking water, air monitoring to ensure clean air, Superfund and brownfield remediation to protect community health and emergency responses to help rebuild in the face of unthinkable disaster.”

Concluding his piece, he spoke about President Trump and his promise of bringing the country into a new golden age, explaining that such a goal isn’t just for the elite, but for everyone. “When President Trump speaks about a golden age for America, it is for everyone. Under this administration, EPA is serving all Americans with equal dignity and respect — and providing real environmental solutions, not false.

American Tribune

 Sapping the will of Americans to remain dominant in world affairs will inevitably lead to a torpor at home, breeding depression and mass failure. 

William R. Hawkins | June 1, 2026

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf stated on May 29, “We gain concessions not through dialogue, but with missiles…. The winner of any agreement is whoever is better prepared for war the day after it.” This is not a new insight but a cold historical truth about the conduct of diplomacy between adversaries. As Prussia’s Frederick the Great put it some three centuries ago, “Diplomacy without arms is like a concert without instruments.” On the surface, this implies that outcomes reflect the balance of power. But the key element in Ghalibaf’s concept of “better prepared” is the willingness to go to war, as Iran is not better prepared in terms of military capability after having been pounded by U.S. and Israeli airpower. Yet, Tehran presents an iron will to fight on, counting on domestic politics to derail America’s vastly superior war effort. There are alarming signs that the Iranian Shiite theocrats may be correct.

Consider the media’s attempt to highlight every Iranian action as a victory, making the U.S. effort appear to be a lost cause. Headlines matter in a society with short attention spans and a weakness for sensationalism. On May 20, The Mirror proclaimed, “Report finds that Iran downed 42 U.S. fighter jets as war costs top $29 billion.” When one reads “fighter jets,” what comes to mind are the highly capable fighter-bombers of the U.S. Air Force and Navy. But when one reads the actual Congressional Research Service report cited, over half of these losses (25) are merely drones. Only five of the aircraft lost were manned fighter-bombers actually shot down, and three of these were ‘friendly fire” from Kuwaiti air defenses that mistook our aircraft for Iranian weapons. Iran “downed” only two USAF aircraft, an F-15 on April 5 and an A-10 on April 6 with all aircrew rescued. Given that we conducted at that point over 15,000 air attacks on Iranian targets, that is an amazing testimony as to the capability of American forces to overcome what was an extensive Iranian air defense network; one based on Russian and Chinese systems, which did not prove at all effective.

Two MC-130 transport planes were self-destructed when they became stuck and could not take off during the rescue operations of an F-15 crewman. One KC-135 refueling tanker was lost in a midair accident during which another KC-135 was damaged. Five more KC-135s were damaged, along with an E-3 warning and control aircraft on the ground at the Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, during an Iranian missile and drone attack. An F-35 was also damaged by Iranian ground fire but returned to base. So the details make the headline an outright lie, and the motive is obvious. As for the $29 billion price tag for the war — compare it to the $124.7 billion New York City budget for 2027 that Socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani released on May 12 ($16 billion of which is a line item for “fringe benefits”).

Mamdani’s antisemitism is well known and reflects his Democratic Socialists of America party. On Oct 7, 2023, the day Iran-backed Hamas terrorists slaughtered over 2,000 Israeli civilians and took hundreds more captive (most of whom died), the DSA claimed the terror attack was “not unprovoked” and “As socialists, we must act” to prevent Israeli from retaliating. When the air campaign to disarm the Tehran regime was launched, Ahmed Husain, a Shiite immigrant from Bahrain who sits on the DSA National Political Committee, conducted a video call to 1,000 activists demanding “hands off Iran” and “ending the U.S. empire.”  

The Democratic Party has been veering in the direction of the DSA for years. With the single exception of Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Senate Democrats have voted in lockstep to enact Husain’s agenda to end the war so the Tehran regime can survive with its nuclear ambitions intact. Digging deeper, the Orwellian-named “progressive” wing of the party has since Oct. 7 taken a more hostile stand toward both American influence in the Middle East and the very existence of Israel. Jacobin magazine, an avowed Marxist publication that has taken its name from the pre-Marxian Terror of the French Revolution (thus embracing domestic political violence), has made the nonsense claim that the Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election because they did not make the accusation of Israeli “genocide” in Gaza a more central part of their campaign!

There is nothing like those proclaiming to be the last champions of democracy turning on Israel, the only democracy in the region, when it is under existential attack by the minions of a dictatorship as brutal as the Tehran regime. But the Left is never really about democracy, as the system it wants to impose is based on force and oppression. The hostility against Israel is because it is part of the Judeo-Christian civilization of the West, led now by the United States. A civilization whose success in creating the modern world cannot be doubted, but can be discredited and overthrown by propaganda and mob violence. It is not at all surprising to see among the rioters demanding the release of criminal aliens from an I.C.E. detention center in New Jersey people dressed in Palestinian garb. Crime in the streets is a revolutionary tactic as it breaks down order and spreads fear.

The Left has always preyed on children, whose innocence is seen as ignorance, and whose “open minds” can be filled with what Rush Limbaugh politely called “mush” when a nastier term originating from where the sun don’t shine is more accurate. Control of the schools has thus long been their central strategy. Children are the future, a phrase well known to our enemies. Consider DSA member Deb Cesualdo, the newly elected vice president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association — an affiliate of the National Education Association teachers union. She has called for an uprising against the “fascist” United States and has accused Israel of “genocide” while trying to exclude material about the Nazi Holocaust from classrooms. She has denounced national borders as a “construct of colonizers.” A fine message for the 250th anniversary of when our colonizing forefathers declared independence so they would have more freedom to expand and build America into history’s greatest example of true progress and human achievement, the envy of the world. No wonder feelings of patriotism among the young decline while in public schools. Fortunately, it recovers with maturity and experience in the real world.

Yet, we are still at a disadvantage when our enemies run loose amongst us. We have given various generations letters like X and Z, but in China they have Generation N, for Nationalism. Chinese youth have the same anxieties as American kids. Growing up is difficult, but the work ethic is crucial to getting it done. Few would doubt there is a gap in this regard across the Pacific. Beijing drums patriotism into its students, but in this case, state propaganda is based on truth. Chinese students know that they are not likely to succeed if the country they live in fails. Growth and the power to shape the future create opportunity. One can debate (and should) what policies produce the best results, but the principle cannot be disputed.

Interestingly, as historian Victor David Hanson has noted, “increasingly popular on the left and among the hate-Trump crowd on the right — is that the communist colossus will be forever ascendant… In this pessimistic view, China will soon replace America as the world’s predominant power.” But on the Left, is this a pessimistic view or an optimistic one since the decline of America is their goal? Sapping the will of Americans to remain dominant in world affairs will inevitably lead to a torpor at home, breeding depression and mass failure. The collapse of great nations starts from within before they succumb to external threats. We are in a testing time for America’s resolution and self-confidence.

William R. Hawkins is a former economics professor who has worked for several Washington think tanks and on the staff of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has written widely on international economics and national security issues for both professional and popular publications including for the Army War College, the U.S. Naval Institute, and the National Defense University, among others. 

Catherine Salgado

Over a thousand faculty and staff for the University of California have signed an open letter, begging the university to reinstate standardized testing requirements for incoming science and mathematics majors.

The letter reveals that up to a third of first semester calculus students in the California university system bombed their math diagnostic tests, as just one example of the disturbing numbers the letter highlighted to make the case for reinstating SAT and ACT requirements. UC eliminated its requirement for standardized test scores for applicants back in 2020, during the educationally disastrous COVID-19 lockdowns, and it has been all downhill since then. The SAT and ACT are hardly the gold standards of academic rigor nowadays, but they are at least a bare minimum threshold, which numerous UC students simply cannot meet.

UC STEM professors and staff are dealing with a motley assortment of students with wildly differing competency levels. “Basic mathematical fluency is analogous to literacy,” and success at a university in STEM classes is “structurally unattainable for students” who don’t have it, the UC letter — last updated May 30 — explains. “We now observe preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields.” 

Nor is the huge range of skill levels fair to students who are prepared. Meanwhile, UC professors predict yet longer times to achieve degrees and fewer people completing STEM majors. UC students need to spend less time protesting for “Palestine” and more time with the multiplication table.

Read Also: The Palestinian Principal Named Hitler and Jihadis’ Love of Nazism

The letter provides some data:

The UC San Diego Senate-Administration Workgroup on Admissions report documents this crisis in stark terms: in the last five years, the number of students whose mathematics skills fall below high school level increased nearly thirtyfold; moreover, 70% of those students fall below middle school levels, reaching roughly one in twelve members of the entering cohort. These findings are corroborated by data across our campuses. For example, for three consecutive years, 20-30% of UC Berkeley first-semester calculus students who participated in mathematical diagnostic testing displayed severe preparation deficits.

While complimenting UC on helping what they called underresourced students pick up the slack in math, they also emphasize that there are only so many students who can receive university resources this way. And as my personal note, if you can’t meet the basic qualifications for entering college, which are lower now than almost any other time in history, you shouldn’t be in college. Part of the problem with our modern system is that loads of jobs require college degrees that don’t really need them. And huge numbers of American youth attend university for little more reason than to get an extremely expensive job qualification or because it gives them four more years to put off adulthood.

I think the unfortunate conclusion of all this is that leftist Commies set out to turn our education system into little more than a political and sexual indoctrination system, teaching little if anything useful and academic, and they were all too successful.

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The digital euro ranks among the most ambitious projects within the political architecture of the European Union. 

Thomas Kolbe | June 1, 2026

Cyber dollars represent a major innovation within blockchain technology. In particular, they enable real-time transfers, operate without banking holidays, and provide access outside the traditional SWIFT system for anyone with an internet connection.

Users essentially need nothing more than a smartphone and an installed wallet app — no traditional bank account required. Another advantage lies in potentially lower fees and, in some cases, higher yields, since providers avoid the bloated administrative structures of traditional banks. Stablecoins undoubtedly represent a major increase in individual sovereignty — at least until issuers, possibly under government pressure, decide to freeze access to users’ holdings.

The fact that the eurozone has so far neither agreed on a digital CBDC control standard nor trapped citizens inside such a digital financial prison stems from several factors. One is technological. The threat posed by quantum computing dramatically intensifies the risks involved. A centralized digital financial system such as the euro-CBDC would face massive hacking attempts and manipulation from the moment of its launch. This is the classic weakness of centralized systems: they provide attackers with one clearly defined point of attack. Moreover, the European Union and the Eurosystem together form an overbureaucratized and fully centralized power structure that inevitably lags behind current technological standards.

For precisely this reason, decentralized financial ecosystems such as the Bitcoin network are technologically superior. Bitcoin is secured by a decentralized network of independent miners and node operators. Every participant defends the structure out of direct self-interest. With well over 100 million Bitcoin holders worldwide and tens of thousands of miners, an almost impenetrable protective wall emerges. Contrary to Nagel’s remarks in the interview, the commercial banking sector is obviously also resisting the centralization of the financial system in the hands of the ECB. The reason is simple: a full rollout of the digital euro would make the traditional banking business model — accounts, savings products, and transfer services — largely obsolete.

But the real reason there has so far been relative calm on the CBDC front inside the Eurosystem becomes obvious once one observes the speed at which global capital flees crisis zones. The introduction of a CBDC would signal that the ECB intends to build in a mechanism for capital controls, possibly in anticipation of a full-scale financial or sovereign debt crisis in the euro area. A dramatic surge in interest rates triggered by a selloff in European bonds would once again force the ECB to intervene as lender of last resort, on a scale potentially far greater than anything seen during the financial and sovereign debt crises of the past decade and a half. Such intervention would inevitably raise fundamental questions about the long-term stability of the euro itself.

That the eurozone will eventually face another debt crisis is hardly in doubt. The only uncertainty is timing — namely, when bond markets, confronted with Europe’s relentless debt binge, in which even Germany is now enthusiastically participating, will finally give the thumbs down.

American Thinker

HISTORY LESSON ON YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY CARD: Just in case some of you young whippersnappers (& some older ones) didn’t know this. It’s easy to check out, if you don’t believe it. Be sure and show it to your family and friends. They need a little history lesson on what’s what and it doesn’t matter whether you are Democrat or Republican. Facts are FACTS.

Up until the 1980’s, Social Security cards expressly stated the number and card were not to be used for identification purposes. Since nearly everyone in the United States now has a number, it became convenient to use it anyway and the “NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION” message was removed.

Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program. His promises are in black, with updates in brackets.

1.) That participation in the Program would be completely voluntary [No longer voluntary],

2.) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual Incomes into the Program [Now 7.65% on the first $90,000, and 15% on the first $90,000 if you’re self-employed],

3.) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year [No longer tax deductible]

4.) That the money the participants put into the independent ‘Trust Fund’ rather than into the general operating fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program [Under Johnson the money was moved to the General Fund and spent]

5.) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income [Under Clinton & Gore up to 85% of your Social Security can be taxed].

Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month — and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to ‘put away’ — you may be interested in the following.

Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the independent ‘Trust Fund’ and put it into the general fund so that Congress could spend it?

A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the democratically controlled House and Senate.

Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?

A: The Democratic Party.

Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?

A: The Democratic Party, with Al Gore casting the ‘tie-breaking’ deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the US

AND MY FAVORITE:

Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?

A: That’s right! Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party. Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments!

The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!

Now, after violating the original contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!

And the worst part about it is uninformed citizens believe it!

If enough people receive this, maybe a seed of awareness will be planted and maybe changes will evolve. Maybe not, though.

Some Democrats are awfully sure of what isn’t so but it’s worth a try.

How many people can YOU send this to?

X

The party that spent a decade casting itself as democracy’s last line of defense has a candidate problem in Maine, and its solution is to make sure the candidate its own voters chose never reaches the November ballot.

When the chips are down, these civilized people… they’ll eat each other.

Pulling a Biden on Platner… pic.twitter.com/0eWc0TT29d— JD Rucker (@JDRucker) May 31, 2026

Graham Platner, the oyster farmer and Marine veteran who buried the establishment’s preferred choice by nearly thirty points, is suddenly the target of a coordinated effort to shame him out of a race he is about to win. The mechanism is narrow, the timing is suspicious, and the goal is unmistakable.

Maine Democrats want to do to Platner exactly what national Democrats did to Joe Biden in 2024, swap out the inconvenient nominee for one the people in charge prefer, and call the result a rescue.

The backdrop is genuinely ugly, and no honest account pretends otherwise. Platner’s record of online posts, the death’s head tattoo that resembles an SS insignia, and now reporting from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times that his wife flagged sexually explicit messages he exchanged with a string of women on an anonymous app notorious enough to earn the nickname “Predator’s Paradise.”

His wife, Amy Gertner, discovered the texts in the spring of 2025, less than a year into their marriage, and raised them with a campaign aide that summer. A current campaign official, rather than denying the conduct, quibbled that the number of women was closer to six than a dozen. Platner has admitted the account was his and offered the explanation that he simply forgot to close it.

That is the man Maine Democrats elevated over Gov. Janet Mills, a two-term governor with statewide name recognition and a record of winning. They were warned, repeatedly, and they shrugged each time. The voters wanted a fighter, and a fighter is what they got. The question now is not whether Platner is a flawed candidate. He plainly is. The question is who gets to decide what happens next, the voters of Maine or the party machinery that has already lost to them once.

The Tell Is in the Timing

Consider the sequence. Gertner raised the texts internally in the summer of 2025. The story did not break until the final days of May 2026, with the primary on June 9. The reporting was sourced heavily to Genevieve McDonald, Platner’s former political director, who left the campaign back in October when the tattoo and the Reddit posts first surfaced. The information has been sitting in Democratic hands for the better part of a year. It emerged at the precise moment when Platner can no longer be stopped in the primary, yet can still be removed afterward under a quirk of Maine law.

That is not the cadence of journalism stumbling onto a scoop. It is the cadence of a controlled release. Washington Examiner senior writer David Harsanyi read it plainly, calling it a Democratic operation to push Platner out before more damaging material lands in the general election. Conservative analysts watching the statute have reached the same conclusion, noting that the influential voices demanding accountability arrived conspicuously late, only once the calendar made a clean swap possible. Nothing is hidden that shall not be revealed, and the people releasing this material know exactly which day they chose to reveal it.

Platner’s conduct was always going to surface. But so is the motive of those who sat on it for nine months and then deployed it like a scheduled munition. Both the deed and the maneuver are now coming abroad, and the maneuver is the more revealing of the two.

A Window Measured in Days

Maine law gives the party a path, but a tight one. A candidate nominated at a primary may withdraw by 5 p.m. on the second Monday in July, which this year falls on July 13. The state party committee then has until 5 p.m. on the fourth Monday in July to name a replacement on the general election ballot.

The entire scheme depends on a single fact that no statute can supply. Platner has to quit on his own. There is no provision to strike a healthy nominee against his will. The party cannot fire him. It can only persuade, pressure, and shame him into walking away after he has already won.

This is why the strategy is not force but humiliation. Win the primary, the establishment hopes, then absorb enough public battering that stepping aside looks like the honorable exit. The model is not subtle, and Democrats are naming it themselves.

Neera Tanden invoked the 2020 North Carolina race, where Cal Cunningham’s sexting scandal handed Thom Tillis a seat and, with it, arguably the Senate majority. Others reached straight for the 2002 New Jersey playbook, when Robert Torricelli, sinking under an ethics cloud, dropped out and the party slotted in Frank Lautenberg despite a state deadline that had already passed. New Jersey’s Supreme Court waved the substitution through anyway, reasoning that the public interest required giving voters a competitive Democrat. Lautenberg won by ten.

The Torricelli precedent carries a detail the strategists would rather forget. On his way out, Torricelli asked, “When did we become such an unforgiving people?” It was a remarkable thing for a man admonished by the Senate ethics committee to say, and it captured the essence of the move. The party was not asking voters to forgive Torricelli. It was telling them their judgment did not matter, because a friendlier name would be substituted regardless. That is the same message now being prepared for Maine.

The Replacement Problem They Cannot Solve

Here the plan runs into a wall of its own making. If the point of removing Platner is to field someone stronger, who exactly is that someone? The name floated most often is Mills, and the irony writes itself. Mills did not lose narrowly. She was crushed, trailing Platner by close to thirty points before she suspended her campaign in April, citing a lack of money and momentum. She is 77 and would be the oldest freshman senator in American history, the very generational liability that sank her the first time. She has already moved on, endorsing a candidate in the governor’s race. Reinstalling her would mean handing the nomination, by committee vote, to the woman Maine voters had just sent home.

That is not a rescue. It is a restoration of the establishment’s first choice over the heads of the people who rejected it. The Lautenberg swap at least produced a fresh face with no baggage in that cycle. The Maine version, if it lands on Mills, produces the opposite, a recycled candidate whose defeat was the entire reason Platner exists. The thin Democratic bench in Maine offers no obvious upgrade, which means the window is narrow in a second sense. Even if the party shames Platner into leaving, it has nobody clearly better to put in his place.

The Most Likely Outcome Is the Most Humiliating One

For the plan to work, three things must happen in sequence. Platner must win on June 9, which he will. Platner must then voluntarily quit by July 13. And the party must coronate a replacement who improves their odds against Collins. The first is certain. The second and third are fantasies, because Platner has already told a town hall crowd that his party is “trying to destroy my life,” and that he has “no right to quit.” A man who frames his persecution as a reason to fight is not a man preparing a graceful exit.

So the most probable result is the one the establishment least wants. Platner wins the nomination, refuses to leave, and Democrats spend the fall yoked to a candidate they spent the spring trying to knife, while Collins watches her opponents wage war on each other. They will have proven, again, that the modern Democratic Party would rather control its own ranks than win a general election, and that its devotion to “democracy” lasts exactly until the voters choose someone the donors and the leadership dislike.

The people of Maine made their pick. The only real question left is whether the party that lectures the country about respecting elections can bring itself to respect this one.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian sent a letter to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s office submitting his resignation, London-based anti-regime outlet Iran International reported on Sunday.

An anonymous official told Iran International that the letter had called out the fact that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had effectively taken over large portions of the government, and that the president and other high-ranking officials had been cut out of vital decision-making.

Pezeshkian, the letter emphasized, was unable to run the government or fulfill his responsibilities under the circumstances, and as such, requested to resign.

Anonymous sources told Iran International that the primary source of the differences between Pezeshkian and the head of the IRGC, who is believed to currently hold the lion’s share of power in the regime, was “the way the war was managed and its destructive consequences on the people’s livelihoods and the country’s economy.”

Khamenei hidden in secret location

Last week, US officials revealed to CBS that Khamenei is hidden in a secret location with little access to the outside world, only reachable through a “labyrinth” of couriers.

Even the highest officials in the Iranian government are unaware of his location and are not able to directly contact him, the officials said.

Jerusalem Post

If the standoff in the Strait of Hormuz is a game of chicken, it sounds as though the Iranians will either swerve first – or accelerate. One way or the other, though, the blockade appears to have succeeded in bringing the regime to its crisis point. As discussions around a potential deal (really a pre-deal) continue, the IRGC has begun to demand an end to the US Navy’s complete siege on Iranian ports.

That message has come from the top of the food chain today, including the Nepo Babytollah’s supposed attaché: [X links at source article]

The “direct action” threat comes with a promise of “utter ruin” as a result:

Iranian officials have used the negotiations to project confidence that they retain significant military options should diplomacy fail. The Revolutionary Guards said any renewed conflict would spread “far beyond the region,” threatening “crushing blows” and “utter ruin” in places opponents “cannot even imagine.”

The warnings come after a war that saw Iran target US bases, Israeli cities and critical infrastructure in Gulf Arab states, while effectively shutting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and triggering a global energy shock.

Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned that any future retaliation would “feature many more surprises,” while Iran’s military threatened to open “new fronts” using “new tools.” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s top negotiator, said the armed forces had used the ceasefire period to rebuild their capabilities “at the highest level.”

Experts say much of the rhetoric is intended to deter further attacks. But they also warn that Tehran retains significant escalation options should diplomacy collapse.

“Experts say” a lot of things, but this is probably correct. The Iranian regime has not exhibited any restraint in its missile and drone attacks in this conflict or in others. They have aimed at practically every Gulf state, including relatively friendly countries such as Qatar and Oman, targeting their energy production infrastructure. The IRGC has sent volleys of ballistic missiles at Tel Aviv and other places in Israel. At the same time, however, the US and Israel destroyed their military-industrial infrastructure on multiple levels. If the Iranians had more gas in the tank for deterrent strategies and tactics, the IRGC would have used them already.

That’s not to say that the Iranian regime can’t inflict damage. They still have drones and missiles in their inventories, but they lack the industrial capacity to replace them now. Their blue-water navy is gone, and the US is taking out their littoral navy when the IRGC sends those boats into the Strait of Hormuz to harass shipping. This threat isn’t exacty empty, but it’s entirely insufficient to deter hostilities if the IRGC won’t make a deal. To extend the “chicken” analogy,” they’re pitting a Peugeot against a Peterbilt. In that kind of matchup, it doesn’t matter whether Iran accelerates or not – they’re going to lose if they push it to a collision.

Vahidi wants to use these threats to force the US into more concessions. It’s the Tehran Two-Step, related closely to the Hamas Hokey Pokey, both of which are based on the concept of the hudna. The dance goes like this: Take one step toward your negotiating partner, and when he takes a step toward you, take two steps back and wait for him to come to you. It only works, though, when your partner wants to dance with you and thinks the dance is good enough. That has been the case with the West when it comes to the Iranian regime for the past 47 years.

Is it good enough for Donald Trump, though? That has been the question since the ceasefire, and both his critics and supporters wonder about it. Trump warned in a Truth Social statement this morning that he won’t sign a deal without verifiable compliance by Iran on both the Strait and ending nuclear weapons development. His decision will come soon, Trump declared, but he’s not going to let Iran off the hook:

Iran must agree that they will never have a Nuclear Weapon or Bomb. The Hormuz Strait must be immediately open, no tolls, for unrestricted shipping traffic, in both directions. All water mines (bombs), if any, will be terminated (we have removed, through detonation, numerous such mines with our great underwater mine sweepers. Iran will complete the immediate removal and/or detonation of any mines that are left, which will not be many!). Ships caught in the Strait due to our amazing and unprecedented Naval Blockade, which will now be lifted, may start the process of “heading home!” Say HELLO to your wives, husbands, parents, and families from me, your favorite President! The enriched material, sometimes referred to as “Nuclear Dust,” which is buried deep underground with virtually collapsed mountains, caused by our powerful B2 Bomber attack 11 months ago, sitting on top of it, will be unearthed by the United States (which, it is agreed, is the only Country, along with China, with the mechanical capability of doing so!), in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and DESTROYED. No money will be exchanged, until further notice. Other items, of far less importance, have been agreed to. I will be meeting now, in the Situation Room, to make a final determination. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

The part about no money being exchanged is significant, Axios’ Barak Ravid notes:

The MOU states that Iran will agree to negotiate on its nuclear program, but does not include specific concessions. …

– U.S. officials say they have verbal commitments from the Iranians on the nuclear material, but that what matters is what is agreed when the sides get in the room for the formal negotiations.

– Trump claimed “no money will be exchanged, until further notice,” referring to Iran’s frozen funds in accounts around the world.

Even if Trump accepts this MOU, it may not end the game of chicken. The IRGC violated the current ceasefire within 48 hours by threatening traffic through the Strait, which prompted the full blockade by the US Navy that remains in place today. The Iranians are still demanding control of the Strait, which both the ceasefire and the MOU rejected. The Iranians will do what Hamas and Hezbollah have done for decades – sign the agreement, claim it meant something else, then refuse to comply when it comes time to disarm or withdraw. That’s exactly what is happening in Gaza and Lebanon at this very moment.

Maybe Trump will sign the MOU and let Iran violate the terms first as a justification for what comes next. Or perhaps he might just stick with the blockade and let the economic collapse take place over the next several weeks, either forcing the IRGC to surrender on Trump’s terms or restart the war and give him the political opening at home and in the Gulf for full-scale strikes on what remains of Iran’s energy and transportation infrastructure. The blockade is clearly working to force the arrival of a decision point, and maybe Trump will be inclined to let it ride.

Six million dead. Ten million enslaved. Twenty-five million displaced. The raging genocide hiding in plain sight — and why you’ve never heard of it.

They say the winners write the history books.

What if the Nazis had won?

The Holocaust would be a vague conspiracy theory — denied, spun, suppressed, purged from the media. Anyone who raised it would be marginalized, branded a fringe lunatic. Israel wouldn’t exist. The Middle East would be under total Islamic domination. And eventually, America would be fighting Nazis on the homefront.

We don’t have to guess what that world looks like. There’s a real example today — chillingly parallel, hiding in plain sight.

Nigeria. An ongoing genocide possibly more bloody than the Holocaust.

Before I go further — the point of that comparison is not to rank the dead. Six million souls is six million souls. The difference is that in Europe, the right side won and wrote the history books — so the world was forced to reckon with what happened. In Nigeria, the wrong side won. And the world is being told there’s nothing to reckon with.

Unlike the Holocaust, Nigerian Christians could in theory spare their lives by converting to Islam and joining the jihad. Hitler gave the Jews no such exit. But no human being should be forcibly converted under torture and death threats. What is happening in Nigeria has its own name, its own horror, and its own demand for the world’s attention. It is jihad. We must respond.

To understand what’s happening today, you first need to know about a place called Biafra. There’s a reason you’ve probably never heard of it. But you should.

Today’s Nigerian genocide did not emerge from chaos. It has a genesis — and from it a consistent ideology, tactics, bloodline, and throne that have never changed. Only adapted.

In 1804, a scholar named Usman dan Fodio led the Fulani — a nomadic Muslim tribe perhaps originally from the Sahara — in a declaration of holy war across West Africa. He built Africa’s largest pre-colonial empire on conquest, mass displacement, and enslavement. He called it the Sokoto Caliphate. Its spiritual authority over Nigeria’s Muslim north has never been broken — not by colonialism, not by independence, not by a constitution. The 20th Sultan sits on that throne today. Same institution. Same ideology. Same bloodline. Same ambitions, tactics, and tribe. Two hundred and twenty-two years and counting.

In 1914, Britain stitched together two incompatible worlds — the Christian south and the Caliphate north — into one colonial territory and named it Nigeria. Administrative convenience. When they granted independence in 1960, they handed the keys to the north and left.

What followed in the southeast — Biafra — was electric. Its people, the Igbo, are among the most remarkable on earth. Renowned for their entrepreneurism, hustle, and integrity. They carry an ancient tradition of descent from the lost tribes of Israel — working synagogues still serve their communities today. They are overwhelmingly Christian.

And they happened to be sitting on one of the world’s largest untapped oil reserves.

In the summer and fall of 1966, organized Islamic mobs killed thirty thousand Igbo across northern Nigeria in coordinated pogroms. On September 29th, the killing erupted simultaneously in at least a dozen cities — a coordination that required planning, not passion. Nearly half the dead were children.

The Igbo drew the only logical conclusion: this forced marriage to a bloodthirsty Caliphate simply wasn’t going to work. On May 30, 1967, after futilely trying to negotiate a structure for peaceful co-existence, Lieutenant Colonel Ojukwu declared the Republic of Biafra.

The Caliphate came with full jihad fury. When military assault couldn’t break them, it imposed a total blockade. They shot down Red Cross planes bringing food for starving children. A federal spokesman stated policy on the record: “Starvation is a legitimate weapon of war and we have every intention of using it.”

By 1969, more than a thousand children were dying every day. Time, Der Spiegel, the New York Times all ran the photographs. But the West was consumed — Vietnam, Woodstock — and a genocide of Black Africans simply didn’t break through. Britain kept arming the side doing the starving. Why? Igbo oil. Washington called it an internal affair. The UN stood down.

As many as three million dead. Mostly children. Mostly Christian. The world built museums for Hiroshima. It forgot Biafra existed.

On May 29, 1969, a 20-year-old Jewish American student named Bruce Mayrock — a graduate of Flatbush Yeshivah — set himself on fire on the lawn of the United Nations. His sign read: “You must stop the genocide — please save 9 million Biafrans.” He died the next day. No one listened.

Biafra surrendered in January 1970. Every Igbo bank account seized. Each survivor handed twenty pounds. Start over.

Now you know about Biafra. That chapter ended in 1970. The conquest didn’t.

For a brief moment beginning in 2010 — the year of my first of sixteen trips to Nigeria — an accidental Christian president named Goodluck Jonathan started pushing back. For the first time in living memory, the Caliphate’s machine was losing ground. The Obama administration, David Axelrod’s political firm, and the full machinery of Western diplomatic pressure colluded to remove him and install Muhammadu Buhari — former military dictator, open Sharia advocate, the man Boko Haram chose as their preferred government mediator.

Since 2009: 125,000 documented Christian deaths. 60,000 peaceful Muslims killed. Nearly 19,000 churches destroyed. Ten to twelve million displaced. I stood in Bokkos months after the 2023 Christmas Massacre and saw mountains of fresh dirt where illegal strip-mining operations had moved in behind the killing. The people erased. The machinery arrived.

The International Crisis Group calls it farmer-herder conflict. This narrative was crafted by a career Sharia propagandist funded by George Soros, promoted by Washington lobbyists, and adopted by every major Western outlet until it became the official story. Meanwhile, Salisu Shehu — the world’s leading boko haram scholar (literally, Western education is forbidden) — runs the federal agency controlling what fifty million Nigerian children are taught. The winners are literally writing the history books. Right now.

Jewish human rights scholar Charles Jacobs puts it simply: “What is happening to the Nigerian Christians is exactly what happened to the Jews living near Gaza — jihadists storming the innocent, murder, torture, people burned alive, kidnapped as slaves and sex slaves, all to the screams of ‘Allahu Akbar.’ Jihad is jihad, worldwide.”

A genocide is raging in Nigeria right now. Today. While you read this. And the world is being told it’s a weather problem.

Now you know better.

Tell someone.

The history books got it wrong. Let’s make it right.

Jihad Watch