John Mearheimer: Every country in the world, including the USA, is desperate to avoid war with Iran except Israel and the UAE, but Israel may well be powerful enough to make it happen

The interview on Judging Freedom 4 hours ago is here.

“Even if Trump works out a deal that is satisfactory to him…it’s not going to satisfy to the Israelis. The Israelis have made it very clear that they will attack Iran alone if that is necessary. Of course if they attack Iran, there’s no way we don’t get involved because we will then have to help defend Israel when the Iranians then start launching ballistic missiles at Israel.”

"The Chinese import 1.4 million barrels of oil from Iran a day. Are they just going to sit back and allow the Iranian leadership to be toppled if Netanyahu and Trump attack?

"No, they're going to go to great lengths to help Iran. And as I said to you before, with the passage of time the Chinese especially, but also the Russians, are going to help the Iranians more and more. And that's why I said to you a year from now when we'll when we're talking about this issue, right? It will be clear that the China Russia dimension will be more important then than it is now. But it's already
important now. 

"I want to make one other quick point to you just to put this whole crisis in perspective. 

"I believe that virtually every country in the Middle East except maybe the UAE, which is pretty closely allied with Israel, but virtually every other country in the Middle East, plus the Chinese, plus the Russians, want this war to not happen. The only country that really wants it to happen is Israel. As we've talked about, the Americans really don't want this war. Trump doesn't want to fight a war against Iran. He's being pushed down this road by the Israelis.

"So, you see the remarkable power of Israel simply because it has such a hold over American policy makers. 

"Just think about it. Every country in the Middle East except maybe the UAE is desperate to avoid this war. The Chinese and the Russians don't want this war. Trump really doesn't want this war. Who wants this war? Benjamin Netanyahu.

"Well, will he get the war that he wants? Boy, it's very hard to say. I go back and forth on this one. 

"On the one hand I say this war can't happen because we can't achieve our goals by striking Iran. And furthermore you have to take into account what Iran can do in retaliation. You were just talking about the Straits of Hormuz and what the consequences would be if that one heated up. And of course, the Iranians are going to launch ballistic missiles at
Israel as well. So, it's hard to see why it makes sense to start this war from a purely strategic point of view. 

"But then, it looks like Trump has boxed himself in. And furthermore, the Israelis appear to be putting enormous pressure on him to go to war against
Iran. And you know, can he disobey his masters? I don't think so. 

"So that pushes me in the other direction. So I feel one day war is inevitable because of pressure from the Israelis and the next day I think it's not going to happen because I can't tell a story as to how a war leads to some sort of happy ending for all the parties. Don't the Israelis with their intel and military superiority or at least accomplished excellence from their perspective understand how devastating to Israel this war would be?"

No countries in the world except Israel and UAE want war but the serried host of female journalists in London, Sarah Vine, Alison Pearson, Ruth Dudley Edwards and the rest are baying for blood like tricoteuses and seem honestly to think a US attack brought about by Israel and shamefully supported by the UK will make Iran a happier place. Astonishingly they have the idea that the December protests were spontaneous and directed against the regime itself rather than hardship caused a vertiginous fall of the rial which Scott Besant has admitted the US deliberately brought about. 

They are experienced journalists.

Don't take very seriously again any journalist who wants war with Iran - they are either propagandists or bloody fools or both - and never ever again for a moment trust ones who say Epstein worked for Russia. 

Who was Epstein and what was he doing? Spying for Russia? Eating children and worshipping Baal?

As Mark Twain said, "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't.”

I explained here how the Epstein case became a big scandal in 2019 despite the mainstream media. 

In 2019 it was obvious (except to the media) that he had been conducting a blackmail operation and Israel seemed likely to be behind it. But there was no proof of that and so I kept an open mind. 

The media still display an absolute lack of curiosity about an Israeli connection today, instead suggesting that he worked for Russia.

The media are about mind control. 

At some point a couple of years ago I could suspend disbelief no longer and accepted Epstein was working for Israel. 

Talking to the TPUSA rally in July 2025 Tucker Carlson mentioned the elephant in the drawing room.

He said everyone in DC was sure that Epstein had been running a sexual blackmail ring on behalf of Israel’s Mossad and the audience of young Republicans loudly cheered him. 

Almost everybody outside DC by now thinks Epstein worked for Israel.

Strangely this does not seem to change the views of the many people who support what Israel is doing to Gaza or to provoke a US war against Iran.

Who was Epstein?

He is shrouded in mystery but he clearly did not make his billions. That is impossible. There would be an evidence trail if he had done so. 

So he was given his vast wealth. Why?

The only explanation possible is that it was to let him infiltrate the superrich by being one of them. Nice work if you can get it.

Israel or some unknown organisation working in Israeli interests got some billionaire Zionists like Wexner to give Epstein many hundreds of millions of dollars and set him up with the biggest houses in Manhattan and Washington DC, a fleet of planes, a private island. 

This enabled Epstein to have a lot of opportunities to gather information and a lot of opportunities for blackmail. 

He may have been above the Mossad or alongside it, a secret service in himself. 

Yet Whitney Webb says there are a hundred Epsteins out there.

But I have a question.

Very rich men can find young women without doing so where they must have known they were being recorded. 

Only the then Prince Andrew would be so stupid as to cavort with women in Epstein's premises without thinking he might be blackmailed.

The only explanation I can think of is that the men blackmailed mostly wanted to be blackmailable so that they could be trusted by the organisation behind Epstein. 

That happens in organised crime and in Romanian politics (but I repeat myself). 

But I wonder why very rich men would bother. 

I suspect it was the ones who were influential but not rich like - never mind - who thought it a useful thing to do. 

Who knows?

Please concentrate on things in the emails not what people said to the FBI. Allegations of cannibalism, murders, torture etc must be investigated (and whom do we trust to do it?) but urban myths are inevitable. Worshipping Baal?

'Baal' may be a fevered misreading of 'bank'.

Don't lose sight of the main story which is about geopolitics, money laundering, financial engineering, deal making and influence peddling. 

Don't lose sight of what the emails tell us about Epstein's connections with Israel and Zionists. 

Epstein joked in one email that all roads lead not to Rome but Tel Aviv.

The battle now is for freedom of information and Musk is the hero - but how long will he withstand pressure from the EU and Israel?

“Free speech is hanging by a thread globally, and that thread is Elon Musk … What's happening on X right now is a change of consciousness and … the establishment is desperate to either shut it down or censor it … It is a central priority for the left.” Professor Michael D. Shellenberger. 

Not just the left. Ursula v d Leyen said 'misinformation' is her first priority, before climate change or Ukraine. Netanyahu says US social and other media are the most important military front.

Poland's Foreign Minister and husband of Ann Applebaum Radosław Sikorski said at the Munich Security Conference that the U.S. should not impose its free speech values on Europeans: "In the U.S., it's almost absolute... whereas in Europe, for good historical reasons... we believe in freedom of speech with responsibility." 

I'd have hoped someone who grew up under Communism would not say that but he is a liberal and therefore is frightened of the people just like Western European politicians except the populists.

Mike Benz

@MikeBenzCyber

·

5h

Across Europe the pattern is clear: pro-EU parties are using mass immigration to steal elections to stop right-wing populist parties from winning, then using mass censorship of immigration policies to criminalize any attempt to stop their op.

Whitney Webb on the CIA using under-age girls for blackmail

The article in Mint Press News, July 18th, 2019  is here.

"Claims of Epstein’s links and his involvement in a sophisticated, well-funded sexual blackmail operation have, surprisingly, spurred few media outlets to examine the history of intelligence agencies both in the U.S. and abroad conducting similar sexual blackmail operations, many of which also involved underage prostitutes.

"In the U.S. alone, the CIA operated numerous sexual blackmail operations throughout the country, employing prostitutes to target foreign diplomats in what the Washington Post once nicknamed the CIA’s “love traps.” If one goes even farther back into the U.S. historical record it becomes apparent that these tactics and their use against powerful political and influential figures significantly predate the CIA and even its precursor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). In fact, they were pioneered years earlier by none other than the American Mafia."

CIA-MI6-Mossad is the international deep state - Epstein, Mandelson and McSweeney were closely involved - Jeremy Corbyn was 'regime changed'

CIA-MI6 and Mossad are now fighting on many fronts,.especially the Mossad. 

For Netanyahu, rightly, the most important front is in the USA and is to a large extent fought on social and other media. 

X and TikTok were dangers but TikTok in the USA has now been captured by the ardent Zionist Larry Ellison acting in league with Netanyahu.

We have seen the recent CIA-Mossad-MI6 attempt to 'regime change' Iran and the way the mainstream media carefully hides the truth - it involved Mossad assets murdering innocent people. Impossible then not to accept in full the theory that the Ukrainian revolution of 2014 was another such operation.

The UK is important to the USA and to Israel and suppressing pro-Palestinian opinions happened very effectively there. 

It is clear that Mandelson, a Zionist whose salary was paid by Ghislaine Maxwell in his first job, and his mentee the equally Zionist McSweeney achieved a regime change in the Labour Party with the help of Israel, the CIA and MI6. Labour MPs who were hostile were slimed by McSweeney and Starmer as anti-Semites and expelled. It enabled them to get rid of their enemies and it served the interests of Israel and the CIA MI6 deep state which is closely allied to Israel.

The CIA, of course, attempted to undermine and regime change Donald Trump in his first administration.

The US organisation that does much of this work is NED. It was closely involved in the Ukrainian revolution in 2004 as well as the 2014 one and tried hard to overthrow Lukashenko in Belarus.

It's a pity that the CIA was not wound up as some Republicans proposed after the Cold War. A pity that Nato was not dissolved, for that matter.

The video is here. 

He goes on to explain how Soros's and Blackstone's US Government links have enabled them to make billions by inside knowledge of US regime change and other operations.

Mike Benz is very impressive. I shall start listening to his podcasts as I do those of Jeffrey Sachs, John Mearsheimer, Max Blumenthal, Katey Halper, former US ambassador Chas Freeman, Larry Wilkerson, former intelligence officers such as Alastair Crooke, Ray McGovern, Larry Johnson, et al.

I quote from Mr Benz.

'This goes back to essentially the intelligence structure that grew out of World War II. In World War II, you had the United States support for Europe against obviously Hitler and Mussolini. And in the course of that, the predecessor to the CIA, the OSS had to make allies with various organs of civil society during the war made alliances with church institutions and the Vatican, which was being persecuted by Mussolini. had to make allies with trade, labor, and union groups which ran logistics in Europe and therefore supplies for weapons and cash and all manner of aid. And when World War II ended and the OSS, our wartime spy agency, became the CIA, the peacetime spy agency, we essentially kept those practices of partnership with civil society instead for a hot war for a cold war. And so the utility for example of of relationships with media organizations which was run before a peacetime spy agency. It was run by our war department in the 1941-42. The office of war information essentially centralized the US military's relationship with media institutions. Those proved to be even more essential in democracy than they were in kinetic war because a democratic outcome depends on the hearts and minds of the people which depends on the media inputs they have. And so as the Cold War raged across Europe, across Africa, across Latin and South America, across Southeast Asia, these civil society partnerships in media, in labor and unions, in universities, in the legal field through rule of law programs, basically every institution in arts and culture obviously it became seen as a national security imperative to co-opt all parts of civil society in places that were of geostrategic interest to the United States.' 

'Today the the CIA, the Pentagon, USAD, the State Department are have been funding NOS's and civil society fronts to pick sides in the civil war between
the Republican party predominantly because of the MAGA populist side of the Republican party that is for prioritizing domestic affairs and limiting the international affairs budget. the warmongering, the USAID expenditures and the like. And that obviously runs straight against the interests of the US foreign policy establishment. And so what we saw today against the Republican party has been a
national security apparatus that appears to be anti-Republican, although it's really not. It's just picking sides in the Civil War. They would not be anti-Republican, for example, if Nikki Haley were the front runner or Mitt Romney or John McCain. They're simply picking sides in the Republican civil war the same way they would back a tribal guerrilla movement in Sudan over over a rival. And this is what was being done to the Democrat party in the 1960s and 70s.'

More on Israeli influence in British politics here.

The UK is guilty of war crimes

 

The British press (Guardian included) does not print stories like this. Why not?

This story was in Ha'aretz, the Israeli left-of-centre newspaper, yesterday.

Quotations

Cenk Uygu: "Whole country is waking up from a nightmare, one by one. We're all realizing that our government has been lying to us the whole time. And our media was built to prop up those lies and ostracize anyone who questioned the powerful. But the Matrix continues, as if nothing happened."

Raf Behr in an email to Guardian readers:

The MI6 run media shamelessly deceive

I first noticed with coverage of the "moderate rebels" in the Syrian war.

The Times and The Sunday Times Files expose his links to the Kremlin through ambassadors, oligarchs and intelligence officers — plus his attempts to meet Putin

Epstein tried to meet Putin to help Ehud Barak, by the way.

The Daily Telegraph stopped being a serious paper twenty years ago

In 2025 Declassified UK discovered that very senior Israeli officials, including the former chief of the IDF, held private meetings with powerful figures in the British media, including the BBC, Guardian, FT and Sky News to influence coverage of Gaza. 

The Daily Telegraph was not invited because its editorial line was already so pro-Israeli that there wasn't any point. 

How Epstein became a scandal. The media displayed a sublime lack of curiosity and still intend to suppress the most important things

There is no historical period as obscure as the recent past.

Prosecutors forged a deal with the obscure hedge fund manager Epstein in 2008 after clear evidence was found in his house of his interfering with minors. 

Alexander Acosta, the then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who handled the 2008 plea deal, reportedly said that he had been instructed to "back off" the Epstein case because Epstein "belonged to intelligence". 

He denies saying this.

Epstein avoided federal charges, which could have seen him face life in prison - and received a light sentence with "work release". 

He was released on probation after 13 months.

A scoop by Sharon Churcher of the Mail on Sunday in 2011 came next. She persuaded Virginia Giuffre, who accused Epstein and Maxwell of having trafficked her to Prince Andrew, to give her the famous photograph taken by Epstein of her and Prince Andrew. 

This picture excited the British and Australian press and lit a very slow fuse.

Nothing much happened though until 2015 when a journalist who liked conspiracy theories called Ben Swann used the Giuffre story as part of accusations about a paedophile ring of powerful men. 

It sounded absurd to clever people but he had stumbled onto a true story.

This story became popular in corners of the internet but it centred on Bill Clinton. Epstein’s name was pretty unknown.

In 2016 American conservative conspiracy theorists were busy examining the revelation that Hillary Clinton, expected to be President, kept confidential emails on her private server. 

Huge numbers of mails had been leaked. The media pointed fingers at Russia. 

Hillary's egregious opponent Donald Trump said the Russians had done everyone a favour.

On 4chan (a place where anyone can publish anything anonymously) paedophiles and Hillary's emails were conflated and the Pizzagate theory was born and ran wild. 

Democrat paedophiles were using pizza as a code word for under-age girls, according to the theory.

Was Hillary a Satanist child trafficker? Would she be be arrested? 

At every point what was becoming the Epstein story was kept alive and transmitted by right-wingers, conspiracy theorists and the Russians, not the newspapers. 

That is until alt-light figure Mike Cernovich on Twitter made such a noise demanding the papers in the Epstein grand jury trial in Florida in 2006 be released that the Miami Herald finally started reporting it. 

This was the breakthrough. 

As a result Floridan law was eventually amended so that the grand jury papers could be released. It was at last a public scandal. 

In 2019 Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in New York and put in gaol. He died in prison supposedly by suicide but undoubtedly he was murdered. 

By whom and why? 

Cui bono?

Much of the story is told very well here. It explains a lot about where we are, in a crisis of epistemology. 

In simpler words, nobody believes any official story about anything any more. Do listen, gentle reader.

Never trust the papers

This is what Francesca Albanese actually said  and which was lyingly misreported in the media.

I am told that the files released so far are only 2% of whatever is coming.

The media struggles to maintain the status quo ante Trump and Epstein. I expected them to bury the Epstein story and they would have done so had it not been for Andrew Lownie and more importantly Congressman Thomas Massie.

The Epstein story wasn't broken by journalists but an anonymous person on 4chan and circulated on dodgy sites until it became the Pizzagate theory which everyone dismissed and finally we are where we are.

I hope trust in traditional media, who today tell us Epstein worked for Russia, is destroyed and faith in BigTech, self-made billionaires and modernity too. 

Epstein implicates the greedy leaders of our brave new world.

If only the hereditary peers still sat in Parliament Britain at least would be able to turn to an older elite rooted in the land: somewhere people not anywhere people.

The Catholic Church, badly led though it is, is the institution that resisted Epstein and which he failed to subvert.

Norman Finkelstein also needs to be commended. He said Epstein and Dershowitz deserved to be throttled.

Former MI6 man and geopolitical analyst Alastair Crooke:

After Epstein, nothing can continue as before: Neither the post war ‘never again’ values – reflecting sentiment at the end of bloody wars – and the widespread yearning for a ‘fairer’ society; nor the bipolar economics of extreme disparities in wealth; nor trust – after the exposed venality, rotted institutions and perversions that the Epstein files have shown to be endemic amongst certain of the western élites.
How to speak of ‘values’ against this background?
At Davos, Mark Carney made clear that the ‘rules order’ was but a tawdry Potemkin façade that was thoroughly known as false, yet the façade was maintained. Why? Simply because the deceit was useful. The ‘exigency’ was the need to hide the system’s collapse into radical, anti-values nihilism. To hide the reality that the élite circles – around Epstein – operated beyond moral, legal or human limitations, to decide between peace and war, on the basis of their base appetites.

Paul Anleitner

@PaulAnleitner

Here’s an uncomfortable truth about the Epstein accusations: We only find them morally reprehensible because of Christianity. Before the spread of Christianity, “civilized” Greek and Roman elites openly flaunted underage s*x slaves. This was normal. Emperor Hadrian built an entire city in honor of his favorite boy. We’ve heard for decades that Christianity is a barrier to moral progress, but if you undercut the moral foundations of Christianity from the West, culture reverts back to pagan norms.