President Donald Trump reaffirmed his commitment to addressing Iran’s nuclear program during remarks made to the press aboard Air Force One as he headed back to Washington, DC, following an early departure from the G7 Summit in Canada.

Trump emphasized his desire for a decisive resolution to the nuclear standoff, stating, “I want a real end,” and clarified that he was not seeking a temporary ceasefire. “I didn’t say I was looking for a ceasefire,” he told reporters. “I want a real end, with Iran giving up entirely on nuclear weapons.”

The president also expressed confidence in Israel’s ongoing actions against Iran. “The Israelis aren’t slowing up their barrage on Iran,” he said. “You’re going to find out over the next two days. Nobody’s slowed up so far.”

On the topic of civilian safety, Trump noted that while he understood the gravity of the situation, his primary concern remained ensuring “people are safe.” He added that he needed to be in Washington, where he could be better informed, rather than relying on phone updates while in Canada. “I need to be present at the White House, not Canada, to be well-versed on the situation,” he explained.

While Trump did not confirm whether he would send US officials like Witkoff or Vice President Vance to engage with Iran, he left the door open. “I may,” he said, “but it depends what happens when I get back.”

Regarding any potential threats to US interests, the president stressed a clear warning to Iran. “Iran knows not to touch our troops,” he declared, adding that if they did, the US would respond decisively. “We’d come down so hard if they do anything to our people.”

Trump remained tight-lipped about US military planning in the event of an Iranian attack on American bases in the region, refusing to divulge details on whether military leaders have provided him with options. “I can’t tell you that,” he said.

When asked whether members of the US Senate’s Gang of Eight had been briefed, Trump responded that it wasn’t strictly necessary. “We’ll be talking to them,” he stated, “but it’s not necessary.”

As for the long-term goal, Trump expressed hope that Iran’s nuclear program would be dismantled before it ever became a target for US military intervention. “We hope their program is wiped out long before that,” he concluded.

President Trump later rejected claims that he is pushing for peace talks with Iran, writing on social media: “I have not reached out to Iran for ‘Peace Talks’ in any way, shape, or form. This is just more HIGHLY FABRICATED, FAKE NEWS! If they want to talk, they know how to reach me. They should have taken the deal that was on the table – Would have saved a lot of lives!!!”

Israeli National News

Mass immigration from Mexico, legal and illegal, transformed California and created a fractured, riotous, and unstable polity.

The sad news that Brian Wilson, the musical genius behind the Beach Boys, died last week at 82 carried with it a strange and foreboding symbolism. His death came as Los Angeles was reeling from a series of riots — and poised to plunge into a period of sustained civic unrest.

The immediate cause of the unrest is violent opposition to the legitimate enforcement of federal immigration law, especially among Mexican nationals and Mexican-American residents of Los Angeles. In recent days we’ve all heard impassioned declarations from anti-ICE protesters, rioters, and many in the corporate press along the lines that “Los Angeles belongs to Mexico,” or that California was “stolen” from Mexico.

At the heart of these protests and riots we have seen, in short, the assertion of a specifically ethnic and Mexican national identity over and against an American national identity — immortalized in the striking images of masked rioters waving the Mexican flag amid burning vehicles, rubble, and beleaguered police.

That all this was happening in California, and that Wilson passed away in the middle of it all, underscores just how much California has been demographically and culturally transformed by mass immigration from Mexico since the 1960s. Put bluntly, the California that Wilson sang about died long before he did. Through the mass immigration regime established by the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, what was once a stable bastion of American life and culture — that for many people epitomized the American dream — was replaced by an inherently volatile and fractured polity built on the unstable foundation of multiculturalism and competing ethnic identities.

When the Beach Boys released their first album Surfin’ Safari in 1962, and in quick succession released follow-ups Surfin’ USA, Surfer Girl, and Little Deuce Coupe in 1963, California was about 90 percent white and its Hispanic population was rather small, about 7 percent (today those shares are 34 and 40 percent, respectively). The culture, industry, and infrastructure of California were the creation of non-Hispanic whites who settled there from the late-19thto early-20th century. Neither Los Angeles nor California at large in any sense “belonged to Mexico” or was even Mexican in a cultural sense.

California in the 1960s was more racially and ethnically diverse than many other states, owing partly to its geographical size and unique history, but it was nevertheless overwhelmingly white and Christian — like the rest of America at the time. In contrast to the fractured identities and split loyalties of our time, mid-century Americans had a shared identity and culture — and shared loyalties and loves.

No wonder, then, that the country was adept at assimilating a relatively small number of immigrants through the maintenance of norms around citizenship, social cohesion, and national interests. We had not yet severed a tradition of patriotic assimilation stretching back 200 years that allowed us to incorporate newcomers into a robust and confident American polity. George Washington’s hopes had been vindicated, that immigrants, “by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, and laws: in a word, soon become one people.”

That we were in fact one people with a common culture could be heard in the popular music we produced. The iconic sound cultivated by Wilson and the Beach Boys during their most popular and influential period, from their debut album in 1962 to Pet Sounds in 1966, was sometimes called the California Sunshine Sound, and it evoked an innocence, optimism, and playfulness appropriate to a society with every reason to be confident and hopeful about its place and the world. California, as Michael Anton writes in his book The Stakes, “was the greatest middle-class paradise in the history of mankind. Yet, in barely one generation, that California was swept away and transformed into a left-liberal one-party state.”

How did that happen? It began with the passage of Hart-Celler in 1965, which transformed the basis of immigration and ushered in a period of rapid demographic change in America. The new immigration regime created by Hart-Celler abandoned the quota-based immigration system that had prioritized immigration from European countries that shared closer cultural, religious, and ethnic ties to the United States. Instead, immigration under Hart-Celler would be based on family reunification, the need for workers, and the protection of refugees.

At the time, Democrats like President Lyndon B. Johnson and Sen. Ted Kennedy assured voters that Hart-Celler would not, in Kennedy’s infamous declaration, “disrupt the ethnic composition of our society.” They were wrong. 

Indeed, the long-term effects of Har-Celler cannot be overstated. In short, it worked a radical demographic transformation of America in a matter of decades. Prior to 1965, about 84 percent of all immigrants to the U.S. came from Europe, with only about 10 percent from Mexico and Latin America. Today, nearly half of all immigrants hail from Mexico and Latin America, with around 30 percent coming from South and East Asia, while immigrants from Europe and Canada make up only about 12 percent.

Hart-Celler was of course not the only factor in the massive cultural upheavals of the 1960s, which included urban race riots, the sexual revolution, and the anti-war protests connected to the Vietnam War. But Hart-Celler worked its changes over decades, such that by the 1990s, California in particular had gone through a massive demographic shift, with huge numbers of Hispanic immigrants — many of whom attained legal status thanks to President Ronald Regan’s 1986 amnesty to nearly three million illegal immigrants.

These sweeping demographic changes heralded profound political changes. Reagan, a popular former governor of California, swept the state in consecutive presidential elections in the 1980s. But by the early 1990s Democrats had come to dominate California politics, and they have since cemented their control over the state.

When Democrats were taking control of California, however, they were not the champions of open borders and mass immigration they are today. Voters in both parties recognized the deluge of immigration unleashed by Hart-Celler was a destabilizing force in civic life, and they wanted to do something about it. In 1994, California residents overwhelmingly passed Proposition 187, which denied state benefits to illegal immigrants.

Opponents of the measure, including the president of Mexico and the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Gray Davis, who succeeded Republican Pete Wilson, claimed it was xenophobic and racist. Mass protests ensued that explicitly appealed to ethnic identities and divided national loyalties, with student demonstrations and walk-outs featuring marchers waving the Mexican flag — a controversial move at the time that many establishment Democrats and opponents of prop 187 denounced, arguing that protesters should be waving American flags. The measure was eventually struck down by a federal judge, sealing California’s demographic fate. 

The subsequent success of California Democrats has come in part from pandering to the state’s large Hispanic immigrant minority, promoting a concept of citizenship that rejects assimilation and patriotism in favor of what Mike Gonzales has called the “transnational multicultural movement,” which champions “the novel idea that immigrants should reject assimilation, retain loyalty to their country of birth, and become active participants in the American political process.”

The result of this reckless and indeed revolutionary idea is what we now see playing out on the streets of Los Angeles: Mexican flags flown in defiance of U.S. law enforcement amid rioting and looting, fractured political identities among an immigrant population that maintains loyalties to foreign nations, and a social order without cohesion or stability.

A nation cannot survive under these conditions. It will eventually come apart. Sixty years after setting the policy conditions in place, California — and by extension, all of America — is doing just that.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

Over the years I have returned repeatedly to the subject of the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA. Begun with great optimism prior to World War II, NYCHA expanded rapidly in the 1960s and 70s, until it housed around 500,000 people. The economic model was always pure unmodified socialism — the government owns everything, rents are tied to income (“to each according to his needs”), and any shortfalls in paying costs fall on the taxpayers. But after all, we will save oodles of money because there will be no profits for the evil developers. For a few of my prior posts, see here, here and here

The socialist economic model always lacked any mechanism to renew the capital investment in the buildings as they aged. After 2000, buildings were turning 30, 40 and even 50 years old. Beginning in the 2010s, NYCHA started regularly announcing large sums of money that it claimed it needed urgently for major repairs to these buildings. These numbers started at $17 billion in 2015, but escalated rapidly, first to $25 billion, and then to $32 billion in 2021. In 2023 there was a new “audit,” and suddenly the number became $78 billion. In the New York Post article at that last link, Mayor Adams is quotes as saying “[O]nly the federal government can provide the level of funding needed to overcome decades of disinvestmnt in the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who call public housing home.”

I don’t think that will happen in the Trump administration.

So at this point there is only one remotely feasible way forward for NYCHA, which is privatization in some form or another. I have repeatedly proposed the most obvious and workable route: give the buildings to the residents. No charge. I’d even be OK with a relatively slow real estate tax phase-in. Once they own the buildings, the residents can, if they wish, use their equity to borrow to make the needed improvements. But honestly, in most cases, the buildings are in such bad shape that the residents/new owners will be smarter to sell, take the money, and move somewhere else. In the case of many buildings which now find themselves in desirable neighborhoods, the residents will become millionaires. Meanwhile, the buyers in all likelihood would knock the buildings down and build something much better.

Adopting this proposal would be a huge win for both the residents and the taxpayers. Essentially, it manufactures and unlocks large amounts of wealth currently suppressed in the socialist ownership model. As long as the buildings are owned by the City, the apartments cannot be bought or sold, and have zero value. As soon as they can be traded, the apartments — or the buildings as a whole — will have values comparable to other buildings in their neighborhoods. In most Manhattan neighborhoods, that will mean values in the range of $1 – 2 million per apartment, and even substantially more in some cases.

Needless to say, this proposal is complete anathema to everyone involved, at least to the politicians, the bureaucrats, and the residents. To all of those, the starting point for any possible reform is that the existing tenants get to keep their existing economic arrangements for life without any change. That means that they don’t get to be owners. Somehow, it seems, the tenants are ready to go along with that. Maybe once you have been lulled into government dependency, any small level of economic risk in life becomes unbearable, even if you stand to become a millionaire.

And thus we get a proposal for restructuring some housing authority properties that could only have come from the mind of Rube Goldberg.

The first two NYCHA projects up for the proposed restructuring model are known as the Fulton Houses and the Chelsea-Elliott Houses. Here is an aerial view of Chelsea-Elliott:

Fulton and Chelsea-Elliott are located in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. When they were built (mostly in the 1960s), the Chelsea neighborhood, and particularly the western part of it where these projects are found, was a backwater of mostly underused warehouses that had been built to serve the port that since had moved away. But in the intervening years, Chelsea has become chic and valuable. There is lots of value here to be unlocked.

The restructuring program for Fulton and Chelsea-Elliott has been in the works for several years, and is only now getting ready to start implementation. As of this time, there has been no actual construction on any of the buildings that I am aware of. The proposal for how to proceed is laid out in this NYCHA Board Presentation document from last October. To greatly simplify, they will start by gradually moving all the residents of one building into apartments in other buildings in the complexes as they become vacant. Eventually, this first building will be completely vacant, at which point it will be demolished and replaced with a much larger building. Then residents of a couple of other buildings will get moved into this new building, and those other buildings will then be demolished and replaced with much larger buildings. The process will continue until there are new apartments for all the existing residents, plus lots of new apartments for new residents, mostly paying market rates. That last piece is where a developer gets to make some money. The whole thing is projected to take about 15 years, which sounds optimistic to me.

Oh, and according to this New York Post article from June 1, the NIMBYs in the Chelsea neighborhood are now organizing to keep the scheme from moving forward. They don’t want 15 years of construction across the street from their multi-million dollar homes. I can’t say I blame them.

Because there is no such thing here as a simple sale to the highest bidder, the “privatization” consists of bringing in a couple of well-connected developers to run the process for years on end. Those have been named via a non-competitive process called an RFP (request for proposals). The named entities are Related Companies and Essence Development. Lord knows what levels of graft were involved in their selection.

There is talk of doing something comparable at several other NYCHA locations. But because the economic model here is so complicated, and leaves a lot of locked-up value still locked-up, the potential for replicating this approach at all NYCHA projects is limited. Without real privatization or a massive bailout (that is completely unrealistic from any source), NYCHA will likely continue gradually deteriorating for the rest of my lifetime.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian

It’s strange how I keep being told by the regime media and Democrat political flunkies, to the limited extent that those are different things, about how I didn’t vote for what Donald Trump is doing to illegal aliens. I keep hearing about how I don’t want ICE raiding Home Depots, factories, and non-Beatles strawberry fields or sending away 30-year illegal aliens or illegal alien honor students. I’m told that Donald Trump only promised to deport criminal aliens – in the sense that they committed other crimes besides the crime they committed by being illegal aliens – and that Trump can’t actually send criminal aliens away either.

I find that odd because I voted to send every single one of them back.

And by “every single one of them,” I mean every single one of them. No exceptions. No quarter. No carveouts for farm or hospitality workers – the people trying to convince Trump to let up on that simply want to keep their serfs. Send them all back.

We tried tolerance, and 20 million uninvited Third World peasants settled here. It wasn’t just without our permission. It was against our express will, as manifested by our elected representatives passing laws and our elected president signing them. The Democrats babble endlessly about Our Democracy, but it’s weird that when we vote on something, they think they can tell us, “No, you can’t have what you voted for. You’re going to get what you expressly voted against.”

It gets even worse. We’re also somehow morally obligated to bear the burdens of the policy we expressly rejected by paying for these bums’ hotel rooms, food, medical care, and cell phones. We’re also obligated to endure their looting, raping, and murdering of decent American citizens. And, if we try to enforce the laws we passed – remember, this is supposed to be a democracy, but you don’t really have a democracy if you pass laws and they don’t get enforced – the Democrats will turn their catspaws loose and unleash the military wing of their garbage party to start rioting.

No. I did not vote for that. I voted not to submit. Everybody out. Get-o on-o el bus-o, you’re going back to that equatorial hellhole whose flag you proudly wave as you loot the local Apple store.

But “Illegal aliens are wonderful, hard-working people just here to make a better life.” I wouldn’t care even if that were true. There’s always a story with these regime media martyrs. They’re always shining paragons of goodness and light when the regime media highlights them to show the cold-heartedness of Donald Trump enforcing our democratically enacted laws. We all remember Maryland Man and how he went from humble, aspiring American to Tren de Agua human trafficker who beat the crap out of his wife – if you believe her sworn testimony given under oath multiple times – and who participated in the murder of another gangbangers’ mother while dabbling in the kind of perversions you might find in a Lincoln Project founder’s browser history.

They always turn out to be scumbags. The regime media always fails to mention that drug conviction, assault conviction, or lewd conduct with a minor conviction – there’s a whole lot of those. An extraordinary number of illegal aliens seem to be perverts of some stripe. Well, they can go be perverts back in their homeland where, hopefully, their countrymen handle perverts with extreme prejudice (assuming said perversion is not a key component of their culture, but enough about Middle East consanguinity and little boy fetishes).

Let’s just assume most illegal aliens are wonderful people whose only crime was to dream of a better life or something, though all of them are actual criminals just by being here illegally. Fine. Deport them all.

What about the hard-working family man who’s been here without documents for 30 years? Yeah, get the hell out.. It doesn’t make it better that you’ve successfully defied our laws – again, laws democratically passed by the people of the United States – for three decades. That makes it much, much worse. There’s no such thing as a legal alien tenure. Adios!

How about the guys hanging outside of the Home Depot? What about the ones who pick our fruits, blow leaves off our sidewalks and pluck our chickens? Who’s going to do the jobs Americans won’t do? Well, adequately paid Americans, especially once we stop giving free money to native citizens for sitting on their mom’s couches playing video games and smoking dope. Yes, we wholeheartedly support the mass deportation of the latest Democratic slave class. We totally voted for that – and I do not believe Donald Trump will break his word to us with a mini-amnesty. Promises made, promises kept – deport them all.

But who’s going to raise the children of liberal SSRI goblins? Don’t they need discount Guatemalan nannies to watch young Kayden and Ashleigh while they go to their jobs in marketing, HR, and optimizing synergy? You can’t expect them to put down the Chardonnay and pick up their kids. Sure, I can. Say “Adios” to Lupe and raise your own children. You might even find some of the fulfillment that eludes you and be able to stop trying to feed the emptiness inside your soul with drugs and the woke pagan gospel preached on “The View.”

What about the dreamer who is now an honor student? Well, we have a dream, too. We dream of a day when people like us – American citizens – can govern ourselves and have our will carried out instead of being ignored by our garbage ruling class. We dream of living in a democracy, not a sham. And as for those alleged honor students, I can’t think of any place that needs their amazing talents and the cure for cancer that they’re all just right on the edge of finding more than the crap-pile countries they were born in. We can’t be so selfish as to hoard these achievers for ourselves. We must facilitate their return so they can share their amazing potential with their own people.

To disagree with me means you hate foreigners and want them to die. I think that’s the only conclusion we can reasonably take from this.

The Democrats and the regime media are trying to run the scam that Donald Trump promised not to send anybody like that back, that he was going to focus only on criminals who had committed more crimes than just illegally coming to this country. But he didn’t promise that, and that’s not what we want anyway. We want them all gone, from child molester to two-year-old child. He can prioritize the pervs, rapists, multiple drunk drivers, gang members, and murderers, but that doesn’t mean that ICE should not also be tossing out every other illegal alien they can disappear. It should deport every single one of them.

We’re constantly told that we have some sort of moral obligation not to do the things that we put into law. I keep asking, but I never get an answer about where this moral obligation arises from. It’s not in the Bible – no, Jesus was not a divine anchor baby. Mary and Joseph were literally on the road to be counted in a census of legal residents. I do recall the whole thing about rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s, though, which in this case would be a green card.

This alleged obligation doesn’t come from a statute. As we’ve discussed, the statutes are clear – get out and don’t come back. So, where does this moral obligation come from?

I think it comes from where the sun doesn’t shine. I think they just made it up. They just got together and decided that they think never deporting anybody would be a good idea, so now everybody is suddenly morally obligated to comply. Never mind if they never got our buy-in. Never mind if there wasn’t a vote on it. Never mind if the people literally voted for the opposite. No, the Democrats simply decided that ignoring immigration law is a moral imperative – please also ignore the fact that this would increase Democrat power by inflating population numbers for the purposes of apportionment and by changing America’s demographics from an uppity American citizenry that naively expects to participate in their own governance into a mass of Third World peasants who obey in return for a few scraps from the leftists’ table.

We decline to accept the Democrats’ unilateral moral declaration. That’s why we voted for Donald Trump to throw every single illegal alien out of our country.

I’m a linear guy, and I always felt that every illegal alien needs to pack up and hop on a southbound ICE party bus for a one-way trip to Tijuana. But some folks on our side are more soft-hearted than me and used to respond to these sob stories with the kind of Bushie compassion that helped get us into this mess. I’m happy to say that lame mindset is dying out. Our patience is gone. We’ve been burned too badly. We’ve been disrespected, dishonored, and deceived for too long. We’ve seen too many of our people die. The moderate position is now kicking them all out.

So yeah, we voted to deport all of them. Trump has sealed the border, so we’ve stopped digging the hole. It’s time to fill it in. We focus first on throwing out the criminal pluses – because every illegal alien is a criminal, it’s just some commit additional crimes – but that doesn’t mean the others get a free pass. No, all they get, should they refuse to self-deport, is a free trip out of the United States forever.

I totally voted for that.

Kurt Schlichter, Townhall

As missiles close in, the Supreme Leader hides underground with his close aides, security and family. But this game if “survival” won’t save the Islamic Republic—only delay its collapse.

Two well-placed sources inside Iran told Iran International that shortly after Israel launched airstrikes on Tehran early Friday morning, Ali Khamenei was moved to an underground bunker located in Lavizan, in northeastern Tehran.

According to the report, all members of the Supreme Leader’s family—including his influential son Mojtaba—are currently sheltering with him.

Sources added that this is not the first time the Khamenei family has taken refuge underground. During both phases of Israel’s earlier True Promise operations, the family was also relocated to secure locations. At that time, Mojtaba stayed close to his father, but Khamenei’s two other sons, Masoud and Mostafa, were notably absent.

The Israeli strikes have continued into Sunday, expanding beyond Tehran to multiple Iranian cities. For the first time, Israel targeted the city of Mashhad—located 2,300 kilometers from Israel’s borders.

A diplomatic source in the Middle East told Iran International that the strike on Mashhad was intended as a personal warning to Khamenei: there is no safe place left in Iran.

The same source revealed that Israel had the opportunity to eliminate Khamenei on the first night of the operation but intentionally refrained. Instead, Israeli leadership decided to keep him alive to give the regime one final chance to dismantle its uranium enrichment program voluntarily.

This moment mirrors a similar ultimatum once issued by then–U.S. President Donald Trump, who gave Khamenei a two-month window to agree to end Iran’s nuclear program as part of negotiations with Washington. Khamenei ignored that offer—just as he dismissed repeated Israeli warnings.

With Israel’s current air campaign now underway, the offer has resurfaced. Khamenei is once again being given a final opportunity—this time under fire—to confront the reality of Israel’s military capabilities and order the full dismantling of Tehran’s nuclear enrichment efforts.

On June 14 (Khordad 25), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the ultimate outcome of this war could be regime change in Iran.

He said bluntly:

“The Iranian regime is extremely weak. It only has two things left: its nuclear bomb program and its ballistic missiles.

They certainly don’t have the people. Eighty percent of Iranians are ready to bring down these religious thugs… For 46 years, they’ve been killing and suppressing the people—shooting women over hijabs, gunning down students. The people of Iran are hungry for freedom.” —Benjamin Netanyahu

Khamenei’s Exit Plan Could Burn a Nation

The IRGC may try to hijack this moment with a “reformist” rebranding, offering false promises of civilian leadership to pacify the masses and hold onto power. But no regime born of blood and built on lies can be redeemed.

This is a turning point—but don’t underestimate the enemy’s instinct for survival.

And as for Khamenei—getting him out of Iran may become the most difficult extraction in modern history. The longer Israel keeps pressure on Tehran, the fewer escape routes remain.

There’s one more possibility we must not ignore:

We should remember: in the mid-2000s, Khamenei told senior IRGC commanders in closed sessions:

“If foreign forces ever enter Iran, we will burn this country to the ground. The people are our shield and our hostages.” —Ali Khamenei (reported statement, c. 2005–2007)

If cornered, the regime may escalate, not retreat. A desperate theocracy armed with missiles and martyrdom doesn’t go down quietly.

But no matter how it ends, the myth of their invincibility is shattered—and the Iranian people, once silenced, may finally rise to finish what history has started.

Aynaz Anni Cyrus, Front Page Magazine

TEHRAN — Any qualified individuals or eager recent college graduates looking for work in the field of nuclear engineering will be happy to know that there are exciting opportunities that have just recently opened up in Iran.

Suddenly and without warning, multiple exciting positions in the field of nuclear energy research became available, creating opportunities for experienced engineers to step in and start working immediately.

“These vacancies just exploded onto the scene,” said one job listing. “All experienced nuclear engineers are encouraged to apply.”

Some of the job openings posted in the last 48 hours included:

Enriched Uranium Inspector: A fun, hands-on occupation with room for growth, 30,000,000 IRR monthly (to be paid from pallets of U.S. currency). Knowledge of goat-herding required.

Mostly Peaceful Nuclear Applications Project Lead: A versatile position that offers oportunities in both civilian and military uses — create and destroy! Retail management experience is a plus.

Project Disinformation Coordinator: A creative job that will allow individuals to conceal, deceive, deny, and develop cover stories to keep all project information secret. Minimum five years of experience at a mainstream American media outlet preferred.

Depending on outside circumstances, these positions — and the entire department — may not last long, so interested applicants are encouraged to get in touch as soon as possible.

As with other positions, hatred for Israel and the United States is required. Submit those applications today and start work as early as tomorrow!

Babylon Bee

The Israel-Iran conflict is pushing the world “very close” to a third world war, particularly after four years of former President Joe Biden’s weak leadership, Rep. Pat Harrigan said on Newsmax, Sunday. 

“The world burned because America did not lead,” the North Carolina Republican said on Newsmax’s “Sunday Agenda,” adding that even though President Donald Trump is now in charge, “you don’t just get to have peace because you say you want to have peace.”

Trump, he added, has done a “great job” in achieving the strategic interests of the United States without getting Americans directly involved in conflict. 

“But the American people have to understand how tall of an order it is to pull this off,” said Harrigan. “President Trump has been able to do it up to this point, given all of the complexities and the desires of our adversaries to bring us into these conflicts. The fact that we aren’t in it yet and still look like we don’t have to be is remarkable.”

Meanwhile, when conflict breaks out around the world, the United States should provide the force to bring the temperature down, he said, but at the same time, Israel has a right to self-defense. 

“The intelligence changed in the days leading up to these strikes,” he added about Israel’s hits that took out several members of the Iranian military’s leadership as well as nuclear scientists and facilities. 

“I think everybody understands Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Harrigan said. “A nuclear-armed Iran is a world that we do not want to live in. Unfortunately, you got to make some very tough decisions under those circumstances.”

Trump, though, is “doing everything he can to keep America directly out of this war, but yet stand behind our greatest ally in the Middle East, which is Israel, as they provide for their own defense,” he continued.

The strikes, meanwhile, did not hit Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, but that’s only because Israel did not want them to, said Harrigan. 

“They just want to change his thought paradigm,” he said. “They want him to change his decision-making process to actually choose peace. The best way to do that, when you’re not paying attention, you don’t listen, and you keep going after a nuclear bomb, is to simply show that you are too strong to deal with any other way.”

Sandy Fitzgerald ✉

Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics. 

From: Mohammed Khatami, President
To: Ali Khamenei, Supreme Religious Leader

Subject: Changed Circumstances

The collapse of the Taliban in Afghanistan has changed the geopolitical equation drastically, and it is time for Iran to reevaluate its options. Please note that I warned you about this after the World Trade Center incident. To use an American expression, “There is a new sheriff in town, and he is urinated off.” [Difficult translation from the Farsi.]

Osama bin Laden is Not Our Friend

Osama Bin Laden has taken great pains to parallel the life of the Prophet, and it is apparent he has positioned himself to be the Mahdi. This is a direct challenge to Shiism and Iran. Sunni prophecy states that the Mahdi will be Sunni, and the False Madhi will be Shia. Our Shia prophecy states that the Mahdi will be Shia, and the False Madhi will be Sunni. In both prophecies, the Mahdi will defeat the False Madhi, march on the holy cities and convert the world. There is no getting around this: It’s one or the other.

Had bin Laden succeeded in defying the Americans and sending an army to march on Mecca and Jerusalem, the Islamic world would have seen that the Sunni prophecies were correct. In such a situation, Shiism would be seen as a heresy, and all of us would be condemned as heretics. Eventually you, myself, and all other Shia mullahs would shortened by the length of a head.

I argued vehemently in the past, my learned colleague, that your sporadic secret support of the Taliban and bin Laden was a high-risk tactic and a dangerous mistake. Fortunately this is a mistake from which we can recover.

It is imperative that Osama bin Laden be eliminated. The best solution to this problem would be to capture him, take him to Qom, try him under the Sharia and behead him on international television. (We could make a fortune selling broadcast rights.)

I do not know the mind of Allah, and I would hope He is willing to wait a few centuries before bringing the Mahdi and False Mahdi into the world for their great contest. But if it is His will that this be the time, who can prove bin Laden the False Mahdi?

The Situation at Home

Had this crisis come upon us during the lifetime of our late, exalted leader, Rudollah Khomenei, all of Iran would have risen as one to fight. But our leader told our men and women to bear many children, not understanding what would happen when the entire nation went through puberty at the same time.

Today, were any mullah to attempt a jihad against the False Mahdi, the people would refuse to fight. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran is a weak reed to lean upon when 70% of our people want to replace it with the Constitution of the United States. The female 35% yearns for the day when they can wear miniskirts, fishnet stockings and stiletto heels. The male 35% yearns for the day when the first “Hooters” opens in downtown Teheran. (I never understood the Americans obsession with owls.)

My learned colleague, since I came to power four years ago, we have fought in the press and in the courts. When you sent your soldiers to enforce your unpopular laws, I told the people to remain peaceful so as to avoid a bloody confrontation. Your insistence on enforcing the law against satellite dishes was sheerest folly. The single worst time to risk a popular uprising is when foreign soldiers occupy the house next door.

Afghanistan

That camel dropping of a nation was once a part of our traditional sphere of influence. When the Soviets began playing the Great Game and helped overthrow King Zahir in 1973, we let Afghanistan slip away. Then the Americans and the Pakistanis removed the Soviets and handed everything to the Taliban, a group of Sunni heretics, for the sake of stability. The Americans came to regret that decision quickly enough.

With the Taliban gone, Afghanistan threatens to dissolve into civil war. It is apparent that the Americans will keep the territorial boundaries of Afghanistan intact, but will divide the country into spheres of influence controlled by the armies of the various Muslim occupiers. I do not see the Iran on that list. To use an American expression related to their national game of poker, “You need to sit at the table to play.”

Consequences

Mr. Bush and his people have been kicking donkeys and taking appellations. [Again, questionable translation from the Farsi.] You have seen what they did to Afghanistan. It may take them a year to build a coalition and organize their military forces, but once they have done so, the Americans and their allies will obliterate Saddam Hussein. This time Iraq will be dismembered with the Turks, Kuwaitis and other victors taking much of the country. What remains may well be merged with Jordan under young King Abdullah of the House of Hashem, a man who is almost an American. Again, my honored colleague, I do not see Iran on that list of victors.

But I see us on another list. Once Iraq is dismembered, the eyes of America will turn to Iran. And they will not like what they see.

The Saudi Gambit

You have spent the past three years working on a relationship with Crown Price Abdullah of the House of Saud. Because of his desire to bring the Americans to their knees, he was willing to take the risk of friendship with a Shia mullah and use our assets to terrorize the American infidels out of his country. But he was no fool! He knew very well the identity of the “pilgrims” who seized the Grand Mosque in 1979, and he knew very well that our eyes stared straight through him to Mecca and Medina. Your strategy succeeded in splitting the Saudi royal family, but now that strategy has backfired.

The Crown Prince was willing to play both sides and back bin Laden, as did you. You can be sure the Americans are interviewing the 5000 heirs of the royal family to find a suitable replacement for Abdullah.

My Trip to America

The Americans have worked hard to pin Lockerbie on the Libyans so as to facilitate the normalization of relations with Iran. But don’t be fooled, my learned colleague, they know who really did it, how, and why. That was why I decided to take the risk of a trip to America.

After Afghanistan the Americans were holding a royal flush, and we were holding a busted flush. (Come to my office some time, and I will explain the difference.) I decided to draw some new cards at the United Nations when I issued that unconditional condemnation of Islamic terrorism. Please note that I did not use the “weasel words” so common to politics. (The Americans have such quaint expressions about animals: donkeys, owls and now weasels.)

I spoke plainly, without your approval, and I got results: A discreet inquiry from the American State Department. I want to thank you for your prompt response to my request. The Americans appreciated your removing our 700 soldiers from Yugoslavia and sending them to Afghanistan. Our soldiers and their special forces have worked well together, and they appreciate the intelligence we are discreetly providing them. That working relationship is critical for our future.

Conclusion

It is time for us to bury the outmoded rhetoric about the “Great Satan”. First, our people no longer buy it; they want to be Americanized. Second, we are witnessing the re-colonization of the oil-bearing lands. In this new order, we can be colonizers or colonized. (In the English language, the words “colony” and “colon” differ by only one letter. Come to my office and I’ll explain.)

Do we owe anything to the Sunni heretics? Do we owe anything to the Arabs? They are neither of our faith nor our blood.

To use an expression common in the American financial community, “we are being offered a ground floor opportunity in a major growth industry.” The Yankee traders are proud of their business acumen and negotiating skills. Let’s see how they compare to us Persians.

Publius

(Zero Hedge)—U.S. Congressional Republicans, led by Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), launched a formal investigation on Friday into the dark money networks and political affiliations of billionaire Neville Roy Singham, a U.S. national reportedly residing in Communist China.

Singham is suspected of funding far-left color revolutions in the U.S. with alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The inquiry focuses on Singham’s possible role as a proxy in CCP propaganda operations and his potential legal exposure under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

In a letter to the billionaire, House Republicans requested documents and information about his dark money network supporting leftist NGOs such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which reportedly played a part in the Los Angeles chaos.

Additionally, in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, the lawmakers requested a briefing on investigations into Singham under FARA and other federal laws.

“It has been reported that Mr. Singham is ‘the main backer behind’ the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), which has organized nationwide protests, including the Los Angeles riots. According to the New York Times, Mr. Singham, who resides in the People’s Republic of China, has a long track record of assisting far-left entities, such as Code Pink, that oppose U.S. interests and support U.S. adversaries,” House Republicans wrote in the letter.

The letter continued to note that the leftist billionaire “created an elaborate dark money network which allows him to send funds to a series of non-profits, such as the ‘United Community Fund’ and ‘Justice Education Fund,’ that have almost no real footprints.”

The pivot has begun—toward exposing the organizational and logistical support these NGOs may be receiving from America’s foreign adversaries, all with the goal of “sowing discord” nationwide. This is not organic unrest; it’s likely a manufactured crisis, backed by the Democrat Party and its globalist friends. The madness ends only when the American people recognize the deception for what it is.

Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge

Michael Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, told Newsmax on Friday that in taking on Iran, the neighborhood bully to the Middle East and Western civilization, Israel is doing a job no one else wants and from which everyone benefits, including moderate Islamic countries.

“Today, in the capitals of Saudi Arabia, the UAE [United Arab Emirates], Bahrain, they’re applauding our activity,” Leiter told “The Record With Greta Van Susteren.”

“They’re applauding our actions. They won’t say so publicly, but no one is benefiting more than the moderates within the Islamic world because this is a radical death cult of a regime that’s interested not only in doing away with Israel, not only annihilating Israel, but moderates within Islam, as well.

So, we’re doing the Middle East a big favor tonight, and not only the Middle East, beyond the Middle East as well, because this is a very, very bad actor connected to the axis of evil against the United States, Russia, China. This is an ally of, of China and Russia and all the anti-Americanism out there.”

Israel had long threatened such a strike, but the Trump administration had been trying to negotiate a deal with Iran over its nuclear program. But the talks apparently snagged, one of three reasons Leiter said Israel had to strike.

“First, today is 61 days since [President Donald Trump] sent a letter to the supreme leader of Iran, giving him 60 days to come up with a solution to dismantling his nuclear weapons program,” Leiter said.

“That’s No. 1. The time is up. No. 2, the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Association, published a damning document yesterday, basically an indictment proving everything that Israel has been saying, everything our prime minister has been saying now for many years about the Iranian nuclear project. So, they were lying, and the international community proved that they were lying.

“But third, and most importantly, our intelligence showed that they [were] racing over the next few days to achieve a pairing of weaponization and Iranian enrichment, which would mean a nuclear bomb. We have no time.”

Leiter said that Israel targeted Iranian nuclear and military sites, leading to the deaths of leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and nuclear scientists, while Iran has responded by lobbing missiles and drones at civilian targets in Israel.

“When we attacked last night in Tehran, we were focused on commanders of their terrorist organizations at the head of their army and air force,” Leiter said.

That’s the difference. We target the bad actors. They target civilians. This is an evil, evil regime … that cannot be permitted to have a pathway to a nuclear weapon.”

Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.