The Four Jokers of the Apocalypse:

The Four Jokers of the Apocalypse: Carney, Starmer, Macron, and Merz

J.B. Shurk

The so-called “leaders” of Canada, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany are the four jokers of the apocalypse — each doing his damndest to drag what’s left of those nations into Hell.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has given several speeches recently in which he reaffirms his commitment to fighting “climate change” by severely limiting Canadians’ meat and dairy consumption, clothing allowance, private ownership of vehicles, air travel, and other basic lifestyle choices.

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer — who did nothing while Islamic rape gangs hunted young British girls — has rolled out a totalitarian system for online speech controls, mandatory digital identifications, and device-level scanning under the pretense that Big Brother must “protect the children” from “harmful” content.

French President Emmanuel Macron pretends that Christians are not under attack while churches and other sacred sites burn to the ground.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has decided that the only way to save the German economy from the self-inflicted and “severe strategic mistake” of shutting down its nuclear reactors is to juice Germany’s defense industry by investing in prolonged war with the Russian Federation.

Net-zero communism, online censorship, Christian persecution, and endless war — these are all pillars of the globalist, “progressive,” anti-Western apocalypse that Carney, Starmer, Macron, and Merz continue to unleash. 

The “Build Back Better”-“Green New Deal”-“Net-Zero”-“Great Reset”-“Climate Change” program will make it impossible for people to own anything. 

 “Protect the children” controls over the Internet will make it impossible for people to exchange information freely and anonymously.  

Continued attacks on Christians’ religious beliefs and their houses of worship will make it impossible for people to exercise their freedom of conscience without punishment.  

Using war to distract citizens from “green energy”-induced inflation, central bank currency destruction, and the totalitarian architecture of the West’s national security surveillance State will make it impossible for people to marry, have children, prosper, and live in peace.

Notice how the four jokers of the apocalypse govern by emergency.  When Carney talks about energy controls and economic regulation, he emphatically declares that man-made “climate change” is causing imminent destruction of the planet.  The “science” is not only “settled”; we’re all about to die!  A member of the British government said of Starmer’s social media spying: “Keir has been clear we need a game-changer to keep our children — and future generations — safe online.”  You hear that?  We must give up online privacy in order to keep the children safe!  

In Macron’s France, even circumspect suggestions that millions of unvetted Islamic migrants might have something to do with the inexplicable spate of church fires across the country are met with government “hate crime” charges and public denunciations of right-wing nationalists and racists!  

Poor Merz is so desperate to distract Germans suffering under the continent’s economically suicidal “green energy” policies that he’s substantially increased defense spending and taken steps toward mass conscription while warning that the Russians could invade Berlin at any time!

In other words, if “climate change” doesn’t kill us, “right-wing nationalists” will!  And if those “racist fascists” don’t get us, the Russians will!  And if we somehow manage to survive those villains, too, well, a free, open, and uncensored Internet will certainly murder our children in their sleep!  All very scary things.  No time to use our brains to consider whether the four jokers of the apocalypse might have ulterior motives for their globalist policies. 

Globalism is an evil ideology that generates endless “emergencies” in order to frighten and intimidate people into surrendering their rights and freedoms.  Carney, Starmer, Macron, and Merz sell fear in exchange for power.  They’re good at what they do.  Peddling the apocalypse ad nauseam isn’t easy.  Fear merchants must constantly be ready to produce a new “emergency” just as soon as the current “emergency” grows stale.  That’s how “global cooling” turned into “global warming” before becoming “climate change” which morphed into threats from “extreme weather.”  Every time the temperature changes — heck, every time there’s a little extra sun, snow, wind, or rain — Mark Carney and his fellow “climate change” conmen are ready to sell the apocalypse!

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The “New World Order’s Party Planning Committee” Just Got Hacked

The “New World Order’s Party Planning Committee” Just Got Hacked — And What Leaked Out of Ireland Has Some People Convinced the Future Is Already Being Written

Madge Waggy

Most conspiracy theories die the moment they encounter reality. They survive for years in obscure corners of the internet, feeding on blurry screenshots, anonymous posts, and half-finished stories before eventually collapsing under the weight of evidence that never arrives. Every now and then, however, something happens that briefly reverses the process. Instead of speculation trying to imitate reality, reality begins to resemble the speculation.

That is what made the events surrounding a private gathering outside Dublin so fascinating. Not because anyone discovered proof of a hidden government. Not because somebody uncovered a master plan for world domination. Stories like that belong in paperback thrillers and late-night radio shows. What made this particular leak different was how ordinary it appeared at first glance. A registration page. A collection of names. Internal schedules. Session descriptions. Logistics. The kind of administrative debris that exists behind every conference, summit, and corporate retreat on Earth. The shocking part was not the documents themselves. It was who appeared inside them and the strange picture that emerged when those names were viewed together.

For nearly two decades, a little-known invitation-only gathering known as Dialog had existed largely beneath the radar of public attention. Unlike the annual meetings in Davos or the increasingly famous Bilderberg conferences, Dialog never seemed interested in publicity. It had no appetite for media coverage, public branding, livestreamed discussions, or carefully managed press conferences. The event operated more like a private salon for the powerful, bringing together investors, technology executives, military strategists, policy advisors, intelligence veterans, academics, and political figures for several days of off-the-record discussions. Very little was supposed to leave the room. That secrecy was part of the attraction.

According to the version of events that quickly spread online, the leak did not originate from an insider with a conscience or a disgruntled employee carrying files out of a server room. The information reportedly surfaced through a chain of digital mistakes so mundane that it almost felt absurd. The kind of oversight that would be embarrassing for a small local business became considerably more alarming when attached to an organization attended by some of the most connected individuals in the world. Within days, fragments of attendee information, scheduling material, and internal documentation began circulating across forums, independent news sites, and social media platforms.

The reaction followed a predictable pattern. Most people ignored it. Some dismissed it outright. Others became obsessed.

The obsession was understandable. Human beings are naturally drawn toward mysteries involving power, especially when power attempts to hide itself. Throughout history, secret councils, private clubs, exclusive societies, and closed-door meetings have occupied a strange place in the public imagination. They become blank canvases onto which people project their fears. Sometimes those fears are ridiculous. Sometimes they reveal genuine concerns about accountability. In the case of Dialog, the leak arrived during a period when public trust in institutions was already eroding.

What truly fueled speculation, however, was the language allegedly found within portions of the leaked agenda. Discussions concerning geopolitical instability, emerging military technologies, artificial intelligence governance, social influence systems, and long-term civilizational planning immediately captured attention.

On their own, none of these subjects are remarkable. Think tanks discuss them constantly. Universities publish papers about them every year. Governments spend billions studying them. Yet context changes perception. The exact same conversation sounds very different when it occurs inside a public auditorium than when it occurs inside a heavily restricted conference attended by people whose decisions can reshape industries.

Some imagined the gathering as a modern version of the old elite councils described in conspiracy literature. Others viewed it as a harmless networking event exaggerated by online commentators desperate for clicks. Between those extremes sat a more interesting possibility. What if the real significance of the meeting had nothing to do with hidden conspiracies and everything to do with the concentration of influence itself? What if the unsettling aspect was not that powerful people were plotting something extraordinary, but that the same relatively small circles of people increasingly appear at the center of every major conversation about the future?

The deeper researchers dug into the names associated with the gathering, the more interconnected everything seemed.

Technology investors appeared alongside former intelligence officials. Military advisors appeared alongside artificial intelligence entrepreneurs. Political figures appeared alongside executives responsible for platforms used by hundreds of millions of people. None of this necessarily suggested coordination. Yet it highlighted something that modern society often struggles to acknowledge openly: power rarely exists in isolation. Financial influence, technological influence, political influence, and informational influence increasingly overlap. The individuals occupying those intersections may not agree on everything, but they inhabit the same ecosystems, attend the same events, know many of the same people, and often share remarkably similar assumptions about the future.

That future was precisely what seemed to dominate the discussions scheduled for Ireland. Artificial intelligence appeared repeatedly. So did automation, geopolitical instability, information warfare, and the possibility of large-scale systemic disruption. To critics, those topics sounded ominous. To supporters, they sounded responsible. Either way, they reflected an undeniable reality. A growing number of influential people genuinely believe that the next twenty years will transform civilization more dramatically than the previous hundred.

Whether they are right remains to be seen.

What matters is that many of them appear convinced. And when people with extraordinary resources become convinced of something, they often begin preparing for it long before the rest of the world realizes what is happening.

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How Allegory Reduces The Bible To Nothing More Than A Work Of Fiction

How Allegory Reduces The Bible To Nothing More Than A Work Of Fiction

Robert Gottselig

I remember the day well, when a confused man approached my Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry literature table at a prophecy conference we were invited to, and point blank asked me, “How can you believe any of this?”

He then began pointing to all the different book tables set up by the different ministries and proceeded to tell me what he was struggling with. You see, even though he had not read the books represented, he assumed we all had major differences of opinion regarding the end times (eschatology). In his mind, how could anyone believe any of it?

The Problem of Misinterpretation

After several minutes of discussion, I realized that he had for years been studying different authors who were not dispensationalists. Instead, he had fallen for the teachings of those whose hermeneutic (method of interpreting the Bible) was not to interpret the Bible in a literal, grammatical, historical way. But rather their approach was to look at the Bible in an allegorical and spiritual way. No wonder this man was so confused, as that method of interpretation leads to nothing more than confusion, especially in regard to eschatology.

Charles Ryrie in his book Basic Theology says it well: “If used consistently, allegorical hermeneutics would reduce the Bible to near-fiction, for the normal meaning of words would be irrelevant and would be replaced by whatever meaning the interpreter gives to the symbols. However, for the most part, allegorical hermeneutics is not practiced consistently or thoroughly. Evangelicals who use this system do so usually in the area of prophecy, while using normal or literal hermeneutics in other areas of biblical Interpretation.“

It is amazing that so many Christians who interpret God’s Word literally concerning Jesus’ First Coming now shift gears in the way they read their Bibles concerning events linked to His Second Coming. Such was the case with a former pastor who would expositionally preach a good sermon until he came to Bible prophecy. Because for him, modern-day Israel meant nothing. There was no Rapture, no literal Tribulation Period, Jesus was not coming back literally with two feet planted on the Mount of Olives, and thus no literal 1,000-year Kingdom. Where does it end? How do you decide what to take literally and what not to? 

Why Interpretation Matters

If I had taken God’s Word that way before I was saved, I would have never come to know Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior, because the Bible always could have meant something other than what it really said. Yet God tells us in His Word: 

“Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things I declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them” (Isaiah 42:9).

“Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure‘” (Isaiah 46:9–10).

“For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (Revelation 19:10).

You see, it is God alone who predicts the future. Prophecy is one of God’s signatures that tells us that we can trust in Him and His Word. It is what separates the Bible from all other religious writings in the world. But if we consistently use allegorical hermeneutics, as Charles Ryrie points out, then in effect what we have just done is reduce the Bible to nothing more than a work of fiction. How tragic!

With hermeneutics like that, it is no wonder so many people want nothing to do with Bible prophecy. It is no wonder pastors refuse to preach and teach events concerning the future, and it is no wonder it can be so hard to understand.

Instead, our approach when reading God’s Word should be: When the plain sense is common sense, seek no other sense. In other words, read God’s Word and believe what He has written without looking for some hidden meaning. Also, get some help from authors whose hermeneutic is to read and interpret God’s Word in a literal, grammatical, historical way. 

In closing, be encouraged, friends, because you too can understand the end times. God isn’t hiding these things from us—He has revealed them in Scripture. As we faithfully study His Word, we’ll begin to understand the end times in ways we never thought we could.

Trump Says Strait of Hormuz is Open With No Tolls After Iran Claims Closure

Trump Says Strait of Hormuz is Open With No Tolls After Iran Claims Closure, Suggests US Will Charge Tolls “For Services Rendered as the Guardian Angel to the Middle East”

Jordan Conradson

US officials, including President Trump, are denying Iran’s claim that the Strait of Hormuz will be closed after accusing the US and Israel of violating the memorandum of understanding. 

“There will be NO TOLLS in the Hormuz Strait for 60 days during the Cease Fire Period, and there will be NO TOLLS after the 60 day period has expired,” Trump said in a statement on Saturday afternoon.

As the Gateway Pundit reported earlier, Iran claimed it was closing the Strait again after continued fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon on Friday and Saturday. Iran says Israel’s refusal to withdraw troops from Lebanon violates the memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran.

However, US Central Command said in a statment this morning that “Commercial ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz increased June 20 as U.S. forces continued operating in the general area to support freedom of navigation.” The statement continued, “Safe passage through the international waterway remained intact today as 55 merchant ships transited, moving large amounts of cargo and more than 17 million barrels of oil to global markets.”

Vice President JD Vance also responded on Saturday morning. In an update on the talks with Iran, Vance said, "We got 16 million barrels out of the Strait of Hormuz in the last 24 hours. That is basically to where it was before the war even started, and so that suggests that the straits really are open."

"We're not seeing any evidence that the Iranians are still closing down the Strait of Hormuz," he added.

CENTCOM spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins also said in a statement, "Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz. Traffic continues to flow, and U.S. forces are monitoring the situation to ensure this remains the case."

Trump, who is currently on a rare visit to Camp David, declared that the Strait is open and that no tolls will be charged for shipping. He further suggested that the only tolls that will ever be charged in the Strait will be American tolls, "should the deal not be completed, for services rendered as the Guardian Angel to the countries of the Middle East for purposes of both past, present, and future reimbursement of costs."

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Reports: US VP Vance flying to Switzerland today ahead of Iran talks; Witkoff, Kushner, Qatari PM already there

Reports: US VP Vance flying to Switzerland today ahead of Iran talks; Witkoff, Kushner, Qatari PM already there

TOI STAFF and AGENCIES

US Vice President JD Vance is expected to fly to Switzerland later Saturday to participate in tomorrow’s negotiations with Iran at the Burgenstock alpine resort, Axios reports.

US President Donald Trump’s special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have already arrived at the resort, according to reporter Barak Ravid, as have top officials from mediating countries, including Qatar’s prime minister.

Iranian state media reports that Tehran’s negotiating team includes parliamentary Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and central bank and oil officials, among others, some of whom have also already arrived at the resort ahead of the talks, which mediator Pakistan described as “technical.”

AI-Powered Cameras Are Destroying Our Privacy

AI-Powered Cameras that are Destroying Our Privacy

Matt Agorist

As corporate profiteers rake in billions under the guise of public safety, their vast network of automated license plate readers is quietly transforming the basic right to peaceful travel into an inescapable, taxpayer-funded surveillance dragnet.

Every time you pull out of your driveway, you probably still harbor the illusion that you are a free individual going about your business. The reality is far more grim: your vehicle is bleeding data into a massive, unregulated dragnet the moment you pass the neighborhood entrance. Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) and Flock cameras have infested our communities, quietly transforming the American landscape into an open-air panopticon.

You are no longer just a traveler; you are a heavily tracked data point in a system designed to treat every peaceful citizen as a suspect. The apologists for the police state are always quick to play the devil’s advocate when these surveillance grids face public scrutiny. They will breathlessly point out that ALPRs do sometimes help law enforcement track the plates of a stolen car or a violent suspect.

Police departments and the corporate salesmen hawking this gear parade these isolated victories in front of gullible city councils to justify millions in taxpayer funding. We are constantly told that solving a fraction of property crimes requires us to surrender our basic human dignity and privacy. But this statist narrative entirely ignores the tyrannical caveat that makes the whole operation illegitimate.

For every single actual criminal apprehended, the daily movements of tens of thousands of peaceful, innocent individuals are meticulously logged, tracked, and stored in massive databases. You have committed no crime, yet the State knows exactly when you dropped your kids off at school, which doctor you visited, and what political rally you attended. It is a preemptive strike by a paranoid ruling class against the very people they claim to serve.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, these automated systems do much more than just read numbers on a bumper. They capture the time, date, and precise coordinates of every passing vehicle, storing this highly sensitive location data for months or even years. This allows law enforcement to retroactively hit “rewind” on anyone’s life without ever setting foot inside a courtroom to obtain a warrant.

The ACLU has thoroughly documented how this dragnet operates, revealing that the overwhelming majority of people swept up in these databases are completely innocent of any wrongdoing. Despite this glaring fact, the data is pooled and shared across thousands of jurisdictions, essentially creating a national tracking system operated by private entities

Taxpayers are literally being extorted to fund the infrastructure of their own surveillance. Nefarious corporate groups like Flock Safety are getting extraordinarily wealthy off this unconstitutional model. They sell fear to local politicians and walk away with lucrative contracts, deepening their network of unlawful data collection as we have consistently covered here at The Free Thought Project. The public is forced at gunpoint to foot the bill for a corporate-state partnership that actively violates their inherent rights.

This panopticon is being built piecemeal through thousands of localized contracts quietly approved by city councils, police departments, and even private homeowner associations. Flock Safety alone has embedded itself in over 6,000 municipalities, operating a staggering network of more than 80,000 cameras nationwide to indiscriminately log the movements of peaceful individuals.

The financial windfall generated by this unconstitutional dragnet is nothing short of extortionary. Weaponizing the public’s fear of crime, Flock Safety has ballooned into an $8.4 billion empire, siphoning massive amounts of wealth directly from the taxpayers they are constantly monitoring. With local governments shelling out up to $3,500 per camera annually, this corporate-state partnership raked in over $300 million in recurring revenue by early 2025. The public is literally being forced under the threat of state violence to finance their own digital incarceration, enriching corporate entities while fundamental rights are casually discarded.

To grasp the true, dystopian scale of this operation, consider that these private systems are performing over 20 billion scans of vehicles across the country every single month. 

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New World Order Takeover Blurring the Boundaries

New World Order Takeover Blurring the Boundaries

Paul A. Phillips

Not so long ago, to coincide with a presentation, Pope Leo XIV published a declaration, his first encyclical, consisting of some 42,000 plus words “Magnifica Humanatas.” 

What made this presentation unique was the fact that it’s the first in papal history dedicated to AI (Artificial intelligence).

In this declaration, in front of leading religious figures and Christopher Olah, representing left-wing biased OpenAI researchers, Anthropic, Pope Leo XIV addresses serious issues/concerns: 

“The fight against new forms of slavery is a decisive test for the ethical discernment of AI and digital transformation.”

He went on to say that: “If technology promises emancipation, yet produces new forms of global subordination, it stands in contradiction to the fundamental principle of human dignity…”

For more on this, have a look at the Vatican’s website on “Safeguarding the human person in the time of human intelligence.” 

In other words, like Pope Leo XIV, many of us are gravely concerned that governments have not put in enough regulation, allowing profit-driven private corporations unchecked advances in AI 

Consequences include: Ongoing threats to many humans losing their jobs to AI takeover, fake AI-generated content, online cyber-attacks, indiscriminate warfare…  

As with other controlling agendas for their New World Order (NWO) advancement, the global cult use the tactic of blurring the boundaries. 

They have deliberately distorted, blurred the boundaries between that which separates AI from human: 

Blurring the boundaries that separate inhumanity from the humanity, robot from human, fake from real representations, AI from human intelligence as humans are being dumbed-down, freedom from enslavement…

There are other ways whereby the global cult agenda uses the tactic of blurring the boundaries for advancing their NWO takeover: 

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The AI Cold War: How the U.S.-China Race Could Impact Energy, Water, and Consumers

How the U.S.-China Race Could Impact Energy, Water, and Consumers

Fernando sanchez

As the United States and China deepen their competition for global leadership in artificial intelligence, a less visible battle is beginning to raise concerns among regulators, state governments, and local communities: the enormous energy and environmental costs required to power the data centers that support the next generation of AI systems.

The recent decision by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), backed by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and the administration of President Donald Trump, seeks to accelerate the connection of large data centers to the national power grid. The objective is clear: to prevent the United States from losing ground to China in what has become known as the “Artificial Intelligence Cold War.”

Behind this technological race are giants such as OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Oracle, and xAI, companies that require ever-increasing amounts of electricity to train and operate increasingly sophisticated AI models. According to estimates from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), data centers already consume approximately 5 percent of all electricity generated in the United States, and that demand could triple by 2035.

However, the nation’s energy infrastructure is not expanding at the same pace. Industry experts warn that the electrical grid faces significant limitations in absorbing the thousands of additional megawatts required by the AI industry. In states such as Virginia, home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers, these facilities already account for more than a quarter of total statewide electricity demand.

FERC Chair Laura Swett has acknowledged concerns about the impact these new connections could have on consumers’ electricity bills. Although the commission has ruled that data center operators must bear the costs of the infrastructure upgrades required for their grid connections, questions remain about who will ultimately pay for the additional investments needed to strengthen transmission networks, build new power lines, and develop power generation facilities capable of meeting such demand.

Major U.S. utilities and grid operators, including PJM Interconnection, Dominion Energy, Duke Energy, Southern Company, and other regional providers, are facing growing pressure to ensure adequate electricity supplies without passing excessive costs on to households and businesses.

Yet the challenge extends beyond energy alone. Data centers also require massive cooling systems to prevent servers from overheating. These facilities consume millions of gallons of water each year, particularly in regions where evaporative cooling technologies are used. Environmental organizations warn that the large-scale expansion of these complexes could place additional strain on aquifers and water reserves, especially in areas already experiencing recurring drought conditions.

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Earthquake of magnitude 5.8 rattles Greece southwest of Crete

Earthquake of magnitude 5.8 rattles Greece southwest of Crete; no reports of damage

Reuters

An earthquake of magnitude 5.8 strikes Greece, but there are no immediate reports of damage.

The quake occurred at a depth of 13 km (8 miles) and was located 69 km south-southwest of the city of Rethymno on the island of Crete, the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre says.

Uncleared Mines Complicate Shipping Rebound in Strait of Hormuz

Uncleared Mines Complicate Shipping Rebound in Strait of Hormuz

Newsmax Wires

Normal commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is not expected to fully resume until Iranian-laid naval mines are cleared from key shipping lanes, according to the Guardian, The New York Times, NPR, and others.

Despite the mines, President Donald Trump said that the chokepoint has been reopened under a U.S.–Iran ceasefire framework.

The Guardian reported that roughly 80 naval mines remain in or near primary transit routes.

Naval and maritime authorities describe clearance as a slow, high-risk process requiring specialized mine-countermeasure vessels and step-by-step sweeping operations before commercial shipping can safely return to normal levels.

“The main route … through the middle of the Strait of Hormuz, that’s closed, that’s dangerous,” said Phil Belcher, marine director at Intertanko, the tanker owners' association, according to the Guardian.

It also said that almost 600 vessels are believed to still be in the Gulf, where they have been anchored since February, creating a significant backlog that will take time to clear even after conditions improve in spite of upbeat projections.

Richard Meade, editor-in-chief at maritime data provider Lloyd’s List, said, “We are in uncharted territory. I don’t think [shipping in the strait] is getting back to normal this year,” according to the Guardian report.

Newsmax reported that Iranian messaging on Hormuz has remained inconsistent even in the aftermath of the ceasefire announcement.

The Foreign Ministry has insisted that the strait is not closed and that maritime traffic is continuing normally.

Yet at the same time, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued more hardline statements suggesting conditional control and tighter enforcement over transit.

According to the New York Post, an IRGC statement read over maritime radio channels prior to the Foreign Ministry one warned vessels about entering the strait.

“Since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, the complete lifting of the naval blockade, and the withdrawal of American terrorist forces from the Persian Gulf and the region are among the main conditions of the agreement between Iran and the United States, the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until these conditions are met,” that Revolutionary Guards statement said, as reported by the Post. “All ships are requested, for the sake of their security and safety, not to approach the Strait of Hormuz.

"Any vessel that defies this directive will be targeted.”

That operational reality stands in contrast with the Trump administration’s framing of the situation.

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Iran Declares Victory Over America After MOU Signed

‘We Are a Superpower’: Iran Declares Victory Over America After MOU Signed

Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz

At the Palace of Versailles on June 17, as French President Emmanuel Macron looked on, President Donald Trump signed his name to a 14-point memorandum of understanding with the Islamic Republic of Iran—a regime whose state-controlled media, within hours, was broadcasting banners declaring that “the US was forced to sign an agreement to end the war.” In Tehran, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian held up his signed copy for cameras, completing what Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei called proof that his country had “defeated two nuclear powers… We truly are a superpower.” 

The proof that Iran’s celebration is not merely rhetorical lies on the ground: Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful proxy, is firing missiles and drones daily into Israel even as a supposed ceasefire is in effect, and Hamas’s latest response to mediators in Cairo amounts to an effective rejection of key components of Trump’s Gaza peace plan, including the demand for disarmament.

The MOU, mediated by Pakistan and Qatar and signed two days earlier than originally planned, grants Iran large-scale economic relief and commits Tehran only in principle to a subsequent dilution of its enriched uranium—while pushing off discussion of Iran’s nuclear program and other core issues to a 60-day negotiation period. Despite Trump’s combative pre-war rhetoric, Iran’s theocratic government remains in place, its stockpile of highly enriched uranium has not been surrendered, its ballistic missile capabilities have not been destroyed, and it has not ended its support for terror proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi wasted no time in framing the outcome. He stated flatly that Iran “defeated the US in the military battlefield” and warned that “Iran’s armed forces will always have their hand on the trigger to confront the conspiracies of the enemies.” He added that the MOU itself was written not in a spirit of partnership but of calculated suspicion: “This memorandum does not mean trusting the enemy; it has been written with active distrust. We will monitor the implementation of U.S. commitments.”

Iran’s military operational headquarters, Khatam al-Anbiya, went further in its Sunday night statement, declaring that “the humiliated enemies have no option but to accept defeat and surrender before a people inspired by God and the soldiers of the Almighty.” The statement continued: “By imposing their divine and iron will upon their adversaries, they proved that there is no alternative for the enemy other than acknowledging defeat.”

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi matched the triumphalist tone from the diplomatic lane. Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported that Araghchi declared the nation’s military performance had yielded not only tactical but strategic gains: “The Iranian nation achieved not only tactical victories during the 12-day imposed war in June last year and the recent war, but also important strategic accomplishments whose impact can be observed in both regional and global equations.” Araghchi added that “the true image of Iran’s power on the global stage stems not only from its military capabilities but also from national cohesion, resilience, and the active involvement of its people.”

On the Strait of Hormuz, Baghaei outlined Tehran’s intentions with precision: “Iran will charge fees for services in the Strait of Hormuz. The mechanisms for managing the Strait of Hormuz have largely been agreed upon with Oman,” preserving, he said, “the sovereignty and dominion of the Islamic Republic of Iran” over the waterway. Trump had announced the strait would open toll-free to all shipping and that the US naval blockade on Iran’s ports would be lifted immediately. Iran’s version of what was agreed and Washington’s version were already diverging before the ink had dried.

Baghaei delivered his most sweeping verdict directly to Iranian state television: “Our enemies have inflicted harm on us. But a wounded lion remains a lion. The war they imposed not only did not bring us to our knees, but made us stronger.”

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Ukraine, Russia, and the Danger of Nuclear Attack on Europe

Ukraine, Russia, and the Danger of Nuclear Attack on Europe

Benjamin Abelow

I’m writing to recommend a remarkable discussion between John Mearsheimer (an endowed professor of political science at the University of Chicago) and the influential, religiously conservative, hawkish Russian nuclear strategist, Sergey Karaganov. The discussion was hosted and moderated by Professor Glenn Diesen (University of South-Eastern Norway).

You’ll need a bit of patience to understand some of Karaganov’s comments. His English is halting, and he sometimes mumbles — especially during the opening segment of the discussion. But it is well worth hanging in and attending closely. And all becomes perfectly clear as the discussion progresses. Mearsheimer does a good job of re-articulating and clarifying any points that Karaganov does not himself make sufficiently clear.

The discussion is fascinating. It provides deep insights into nuclear strategy and makes clear the great danger of the present moment for Europe — and all of us. Europe, if it continues on its current path, and Karaganov’s program is implemented, will be struck by a conventional missile attack from Russia, which then — after a conventional retaliation by Europe and/or the U.S. — likely will lead to a nuclear attack on Europe

Mearsheimer does an impressive job of maintaining collegial, and even, at moments, warm interactions with Karaganov — an indirect form of personal diplomacy. I believe that this is extremely important, as human interactions can have a decisive influence, even in contexts such as this one, in international affairs. Humiliations that are inflicted at the level of individual interactions can lead to global disasters. Conversely, respectful interactions, even in exceptionally trying circumstances, can help both sides draw back from dangerously destructive conflicts, even at late stages. I found the human level of the interactions the most heartening part of the discussion.

As Karaganov describes it — and I believe he is being forthright — this attack would be carried out not as an expansionist or intentionally aggressive strategy. In fact, for reasons described below, it could not function in this way. Rather, it would be an attempt to (as Karaganov describes it) “sober-up” European leaders. These leaders seem to have lost any fear of direct conflict with Russia, and they are increasingly seeking to confront Russia militarily, not just through the proxy of Ukraine. In other words, this very hawkish plan would be a Russian attempt to “reestablish deterrence.” Karaganov genuinely seems to believe that this approach is the best way to avoid a large-scale nuclear war with uncontrolled escalation.

You may not like Karaganov’s viewpoint or his strategy. But, I would assert, you must understand it — because it if European leaders persist on their current path, it will become increasingly posssible, perhaps even probable, that Karaganov’s plan will be implemented and that Europe will be on the receiving end of a nuclear attack.

Let me summarize my understanding of what Karaganov is proposing:

Step 1: Russia launches a limited conventional (non-nuclear) missile attack on selected targets in Europe.

Step 2: Europe (and/or the U.S.) respond in kind with a conventional missile attack on selected targets in Europe.

Step 3: Russia launches a nuclear attack on selected targets in Europe.

Step 4: In this scenario there is no Step 4. The conflict ends without further immediate exchanges, escalation, or military conflict of any sort. Europe does not respond with it’s own limited nuclear arsenal (in France and the UK) for fear of being utterly wiped out with a Russian nuclear response. The U.S. does not respond with its own nuclear attack on Russia because it knows that this would immediately trigger a strategic nuclear war, destroying the U.S. (and Russia, of course). So, the exchange ends with Russia’s limited attack on Europe. Deterrence is reestablished on Russia’s terms. Russia is not, however, incentivised to use its new position to expand or significantly coerce the West in other ways, because it knows that doing so is more likely to trigger a nuclear retaliation, and this heightens the risk for Russia. But we must be clear: Even a very “limited” nuclear attack on selected European military and industrial targets probably would kill millions, and quite possibly tens of millions, of Europeans.

This scenario is becoming increasingly likely, I believe, as European leaders seem almost willfully to misunderstand what is happening, why it is happening, and what Russia’s actual goals and concerns are. It has been clear from the start of this conflict — actually, from long before the start of the war — that Russia has not been acting as an expansionary power but rather has been responding to a decades long attempt by the West, especially by the U.S. and NATO, to weaponize Ukraine against Russia, and to do so right on Russia’s border. In a similar but reverse situation, the U.S. would long ago have gone to war to remove the threat.

But these European leaders appear to be entirely blind to this — or, since they are substantially responsible for the course of events, they are psychologically and politically motivated to actively deny the reality. Instead of acknowledging this reality — including the reality of their own terrible and ongoing failures — these leaders are doubling down. They appear to be incapable of changing course.

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