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Wednesday, March 18, 2026

linkdump 2nd half

 


Ali Larijani’s elimination signals a potential turning point in Iran
The elimination of Ali Larijani, the de facto ruler of Iran, alongside that of Gholamreza Soleimani, head of the Basij militia, is not merely another tactical success. It is a strategic turning point—and perhaps something more: an invitation to the Iranian people.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made this explicit in announcing the operation: Israel acted to destabilize the regime to give the Iranian people the opportunity to remove it. “It is your turn,” he told them.

He added a wish to the Iranian people for a new year of freedom. “Our aircraft are hitting the terror operatives on the ground, in the crossroads, in the city squares. This is meant to enable the brave people of Iran to celebrate the Festival of Fire,” Netanyahu said. “So celebrate and Happy Nowruz. We’re watching from above.”

For decades, the Iranian regime has appeared immovable, sustained by repression, fear and a vast machinery of violence. But history teaches us that such systems can collapse suddenly when pressure from above meets courage from below. That moment may now be approaching.

The timing is not incidental. The traditional Zoroastrian fire festival of Chaharshanbe—banned by the regime—offers a symbolic opportunity. Reza Pahlavi has already called on Iranians to go into the streets and light the fires. A gesture that is both cultural and political. A spark that, under the right conditions, can become something larger.

With the removal of Larijani, Israel has struck at one of the regime’s central pillars. After the weakening of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s authority, this represents a second decapitation—one aimed not only at military capability, but at the regime’s political core.


The ‘moderate’ who ran death squads: how BBC and Sky sanitise the Iranian regime
Afew days ago I watched Sky News with amazement as they showed Iranian propaganda images of Ali Larijani walking down the street in Iran on Al Quds Day. They kept commenting how it showed Iranian strength that he was able to walk so freely without fear of assassination, among his people.

I have long been concerned about Sky News' coverage of the Middle East but even I was a bit shocked they appeared to be regurgitating such transparent Islamic Republic propaganda without any hint of intelligent cynicism. So today, when it was announced he was killed by an Israeli strike, my heart went out to Sky News. Perhaps they’ll join the British Foreign Office and ministers at a wake in South Kensington, or at that Islamic Centre opposite my favourite Persian restaurant in London, where they mourned the deaths of Ali Khameini and Qasem Soleimani.

The BBC were no better.

Our national broadcaster’s response managed to go further still, into a kind of analytical absurdity that would be comic if it were not so dangerous. The newsreader, in a tone of concerned moderation, warned of “the slight problem here” that Israel had eliminated figures “considered moderates,” suggesting this might empower “more hardline, less experienced people” and make regime change “more complicated.”

Jeremy Bowen followed: Larijani, he ummed and ahhed, was “seen as a pragmatic figure… a man of flexibility… somebody you can do business with.” Sure, he said “some very tough things, war-like things, in recent weeks,” but who among us hasn’t?

This peculiar BBC effort to rehabilitate an Iranian regime monster is more than a little weird. It takes a man embedded for decades at the core of a coercive theocratic system and recasts him as a regrettable casualty of strategic impatience, a lost interlocutor in some imagined future negotiation. A man who once talked about an "overreaction" to the Holocaust, adding that he was "neither for, nor against" the idea that the Holocaust had really occurred, saying it was an "open question." When did Jeremy Bowen last “do business” with him? Who exactly was doing business with him? Was the BBC? Or did they mean Israel should negotiate how much annihilation it could talk them down to? How many Jews to wipe from the face of the earth? Maybe the Iranian people could negotiate access to water, the Internet, or their relatives if thy just did business with him.


Iranian attack kills man and woman in Ramat Gan, Magen David Adom says
A man and woman were killed by “severe shrapnel injuries” after an Iranian missile hit a residential neighborhood in Ramat Gan in central Israel, Magen David Adom said early on Wednesday morning in Israel.

The emergency service also said that a man in his 20s was being treated for “mild” shrapnel injuries to his hand and being evacuated to the hospital.

Magen David Adom also said that one of its vehicles was “seriously damaged” and an emergency medical technician was “mildly injured.”

United Hatzalah said that it “provided emergency medical treatment following a direct hit on a building in Central Israel.”

“A man and woman in their 70s were pronounced dead at the scene,” it said. “Over 15 others were treated for minor injuries and emotional shock across several locations.”

The Iranian strike caused “severe structural damage to an apartment building and surrounding infrastructure,” according to United Hatzalah.

“Upon arrival, we encountered a scene of extensive devastation,” United Hatzalah medics, who responded to the incident, said. “Tragically, two individuals were found without signs of life within the building. In addition, we provided medical treatment to several other individuals, who sustained light injuries.”


IDF eliminates seven terrorists planning to attack troops in Gaza
The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday struck a Hamas terrorist cell that had been planning an attack on its soldiers, killing seven operatives, including two who infiltrated into Israeli territory during the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.

Rami Ibrahim Harb and Mutaeb Ziyad Darah, members of Hamas’s Nukhba Force, “infiltrated into Israeli territory during the brutal October 7th massacre,” the military said in its statement on Monday evening.

Other members of the eliminated cell were identified as Abd Muhammad Amtsi—a member of the Popular Resistance Committees that coordinates with Hamas—and Tawfiq Khaldi, a Hamas terrorist.

“Alongside the terrorists, three additional terrorists were eliminated,” it said, adding that troops remain deployed in accordance with the truce deal “and will continue to operate to remove any immediate threat.”

The current Gaza ceasefire went into effect on Oct. 10, 2025, ending the two-year war that started when Hamas, other Palestinian terror groups and Gazan “civilians” invaded the western Negev on Oct. 7, 2023, and slaughtered approximately 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 others.

Representatives of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, that oversees the truce, met with Hamas in Cairo in an attempt to preserve the ceasefire amid the war on Iran, sources told Reuters on Monday.

The three anonymous sources said the Hamas representatives warned the board that the ⁠terror group could renege on past commitments if Israel maintains restrictions on Gaza imposed during the Iran war.


Call me Back Podcast: America’s War Objectives, and Israel’s - with Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal
What happens if the U.S. and Israel win the war militarily, but Iran’s regime survives?

Dan Senor is joined by Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal to assess where the war stands as it enters its third week. While U.S. and Israeli forces continue grinding down Iranian military infrastructure, the bigger questions are now economic and strategic, especially after Iran effectively weaponized the Strait of Hormuz and global energy markets.

They debate whether Washington and Jerusalem share the same endgame, what success would actually look like, and whether removing Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile could become the decisive turning point.

In this episode:
09:12 — The Current Phase of the War: Grinding Through Iranian Targets
09:42 — Iran’s Energy Gambit and the Strait of Hormuz Crisis
11:03 — Oil Markets, Global Pressure, and Trump’s Political Timeline
25:18 — The Strategic Debate Inside Washington and Jerusalem
28:00 — Israel’s Ultimate Goal: Regime Change in Tehran
30:48 — Could the U.S. End the War Before Israel Is Finished?
35:18 — The Enriched Uranium Question and the “Strategic Surprise” Scenario
37:00 — If the Regime Survives: Did the War Actually Change the Region?


Commentary Podcast: Failure to Launch
FDD's Jonathan Schanzer joins us on this St. Patrick's Day to discuss Israel degrading Iran's missile capabilities, as well as the developing Lebanese front. We also discuss the killing of Ali Larijani, the reports that Iran's new supreme leader is gay, and the open questions of whether Iranian proxies in Iraq and Yemen might join the fray.
Joe Kent resigns from top counterterrorism post, citing conspiracies over Israel’s role in Iran war
Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned from his role on Tuesday over opposition to the war in Iran, baselessly alleging that Israel had coerced the United States into what he characterized as a misguided military conflict.

In a letter to President Donald Trump shared on social media, Kent, a former Green Beret who had reported to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, wrote that he “cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” claiming that the Islamic Republic “posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Kent, a hard-right former congressional candidate in Washington State who has pushed an isolationist foreign policy vision, has previously drawn scrutiny for promoting conspiracy theories, echoing pro-Russia messaging and associating with white supremacists and neo-Nazis, among other controversies.

During a failed House bid in 2022, Kent also said that accepting donations from pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC puts Israel’s “interests ahead of ours” — invoking an antisemitic trope about foreign influence over American politics that is increasingly common on the far right.

Kent’s wife, Heather Kaiser, is a military veteran who has written for The Grayzone, an extremist outlet, authoring articles with its founder Max Blumenthal, a prominent conspiracy theorist who has published sympathetic coverage of Iran and spread misinformation about the Hamas terror attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.

In his letter, Kent claimed that Trump had been tricked into striking Iran by “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” who “deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined” the president’s “America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage war with Iran.”
Seth Mandel: Joe Kent Was a Problem of Trump’s Own Making
His resignation letter is a remarkable document, perfect for the right-wing’s podcast-bro laziness and Jews-on-the-brain paranoia.

“Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran,” Kent writes. “This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to swift victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.”

It’s as if somebody wrote a resignation letter twenty years ago and then put it on ice for just the right moment.

Obviously Trump is untroubled by losing someone with Kent’s sparkling personality and airtight judgment. “I always thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security, very weak,” Trump told reporters, according to the Hill. “When I read his statement I realized it’s a good thing that he’s out, because he said Iran is not a threat. … Every country realized what a threat Iran was.”

This is, of course, not about whether Iran is a threat. Kent is applying for membership in the microphone muftis, the conservative podcasters obsessed with Israel.

But it is worth pointing out that while Trump is obviously on the right side of this argument with Kent, the whole affair is still a consequence of Trump’s own antics—his atrocious behavior on January 6, 2021; his rewarding of those who backed the Capitol riot, thereby incentivizing the GOP to run and nominate loons like Kent; and his decision to staff various national-security offices with loyalists whose suspicion of establishment agencies outweighed their analytical rigor.

The result is that you end up with an administration staffed by people like Joe Kent, who are wholly unqualified for national-security jobs and who may be undermining their policy shop during wartime. It’s to everyone’s benefit that Trump can clear the tinfoil hat brigade out of government when he wants to. Now he just needs to pick up that pace—and stop hiring such folks to begin with.
‘It’s a Good Thing He’s Out’: Top Counterterrorism Official Resigns Following Four Terror Attacks on Homeland, Blaming Israel
Kent's resignation letter echoed statements from fringe figures who have sought to argue that Israel dragged the United States into war with Iran. Tucker Carlson, an isolationist podcaster, has said he has a close relationship with Kent and views him as one of the few non-interventionists who has "some ability to change the country's orientation on foreign policy."

Neo-Nazi Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes said Kent, who mounted two failed congressional campaigns in 2022 and 2024, reached out privately seeking Fuentes's support during his House race.

"I'm on the phone with Joe, and I said, 'Look, we support you, and we want to do everything we can to help you. We want to have my followers knock on doors for you. We want to boost your social media. Anything that you need, we want to help you,'" Fuentes recounted to Tucker Carlson in an interview last year.

"I said, and we don't even want to be publicly associated, I said, because we know that that might hurt you," Fuentes added. "The only thing that we ask in return is you can't disavow me if the media asks, and you can say whatever you need to say, but you can't disavow."

Kent acknowledged in 2022 that he had a phone meeting with Fuentes about the campaign. However, he said the two never entered into an agreement and said he wasn't aware of Fuentes's anti-Semitic and racist views.

The media highlighted Kent's fondness for conspiracy theories and ties to extremists when he was nominated. Those views were downplayed when he broke with Trump on Tuesday. A New York Times article on Kent's confirmation battle in July described him in the opening paragraph as a "contentious choice to be the nation's top counterterrorism official" who "has embraced conspiracy theories and had links to extremist groups." A report on his resignation casts him as a credible advocate for "a more restrained foreign policy inside the administration," making a brief mention of his "penchant for conspiracy theories" in the 10th paragraph.

Kent says in his letter that his late wife Shannon, a Navy cryptologist who died in Syria in 2019, perished "in a war manufactured by Israel." She was one of four Americans killed by a suicide bomber at a popular American restaurant in Aleppo. ISIS took credit for the attack.

While Kent claimed the Syrian civil war was "manufactured by Israel," the United States, under President Barack Obama, intervened in the conflict years before Israel became involved. The conflict broke out in 2011 after mass public uprisings against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad spiraled into a civil war that eventually involved ISIS. Israel maintained a policy of strict neutrality in Syria until 2017, three years after the United States was embroiled in the conflict.

Kent's current wife, Heather Kaiser, has written for the Grayzone, an anti-war publication that has a pro-Assad and pro-Russia editorial line. The website's managing editor reportedly received payments from the Iranian state-run news network PressTV, according to the Washington Post.

In 2023, she wrote an article based on her own "independent audit" of U.S. aid to Kyiv during the Russia-Ukraine war. The report questioned a "series of wasteful, highly unusual expenditures."


Extremist Yesterday, Authority Today: Media Whitewashes Joe Kent
Within hours of publishing his resignation letter on X, Joe Kent, the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, had reached millions.

The media, predictably, was enthralled.

“‘Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation’: Trump-appointed intelligence official resigns over Iran war,” CNN blared.

Axios followed suit, presenting Kent’s claims with little skepticism: “‘No imminent threat’: U.S. Counterterrorism Center head resigns over Iran war.”

The Hill amplified another conspiratorial voice, headlining Tucker Carlson’s warning that “neocons” would now try to destroy Kent.

The New York Times published multiple pieces within hours, including one that packaged his resignation letter as a standalone piece.

Readers were invited to see Kent’s words as a serious, insider indictment of both the war against Iran and President Donald Trump’s administration itself.


Onetime Democratic critics elevate Joe Kent’s conspiratorial resignation letter
Some congressional Democrats who previously criticized Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, for his extremist history are now elevating his conspiratorial resignation statement in which he blamed Israel for bringing the U.S. into the war with Iran, as well as a series of other Middle East conflicts.

Meanwhile, Republicans who supported Kent during his nomination process are now criticizing the former administration official.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said during Kent’s confirmation process that Kent had a “consistent pattern of questionable judgment and false statements” and willful ignorance to evidence that conflicted with his preexisting political biases and that he had “aligned himself with political violence, promoted falsehoods that undermine our democracy and tried to twist intelligence to serve a political agenda.”

On Tuesday, however, Warner echoed Kent’s comments in his resignation letter, where he wrote that Iran “posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

“On this point, he is right: there was no credible evidence of an imminent threat from Iran that would justify rushing the United States into another war of choice in the Middle East,” Warner said. “Ignoring the facts to pursue a predetermined war puts American lives at risk and undermines our national security. The United States cannot be led into conflict on the basis of politics, impulse, or a president’s desire for confrontation. We have seen where this road leads before.”

At the same time, Warner also maintained that Kent’s record is “deeply troubling” and that he should not have been confirmed.

Every Senate Democrat opposed Kent’s confirmation last year.


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