Under Pressure: Israel – US Subversiveness against Iran

31 January 2026

“Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders.”

Rock Center with Brian Williams, “Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran's nuclear scientists, U.S. officials tell NBC News”, NBC News, 9 February 2012.

"סדרת חיסול מדעני הגרעין, 4 בשנה האחרונה, כולל דריוש רזאי אוחובולה ביום שבת - מעידה כי מי שאחראי לה נחוש לעשות כל מאמץ כדי לפגוע במדענים הקשורים לתוכנית הגרעין של איראן."

יוסי מלמן, "בצל החיסולים: איראן מאיצה את תוכנית הגרעין", הארץ, 24 ביולי 2011.

"יש בזה מטען לא קטן איך שאתה רואה את עצמך ואיך שאתה רואה את מקומך בחיים."

אפרים הלוי, ראיון בטלוויזיה חינוכית, 10 באוקטובר 2012.

"הנושא של הפרשה בעיניי איננו רק עניין להיסטוריה ולחקר ההיסטוריה. אלא זה נושא שיש בו לקחים רבים, משמעויות רבות. מעורבות היו בעניינים האלה זרועות שונות של קהילת המודיעין...ממשלת ישראל היתה מעורבת בזה. היו גם חישובים והיבטים אחרים שנצורים במעצמות."

אפרים הלוי, רטרוספקטיבה – עסק הביש: יובל לשחרור נדוני קהיר, המרכז למורשת המודיעין ואחרים,  14 במרץ 2018.

"אליהו יוסיאן: מה צבע הטלפון שלי?

צבי יחזקאלי: שחור.

אליהו יוסיאן: לא, הכיסוי שלו שחור."

אליהו יוסיאן בראיון עם צבי יחזקאלי, המדריך לאיראן, מרץ 2025.

“Mr. Bolton is a longtime Iran hawk who has supported the Mujahedeen Khalq, known as M.E.K. It is a fringe dissident group that calls for regime change in Iran. Mr. Bolton has said he has backed the controversial group for over a decade.”

Nilo Tabrizy, “M.E.K.: The Group John Bolton Wants to Rule Iran”, New York Times, 7 May 2018.

“Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has decided to remove the group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, or People’s Mujahedeen, from the State Department’s list of designated terrorist organizations.”

Scott Shane, “Iranian Dissidents Convince U.S. to Drop Terror Label”, New York Times, 21 September 2012.

“The Central Intelligence Agency has asked Congress for $19 million next year to continue covert operations to destabilize Iraq and to curb what the Administration calls Iran's expansionist ambitions, Administration officials say.”

Elaine Scilino, “C.I.A. Asks Congress for Money to Rein In Iraq and Iran”, New York Times, 12 April 1995.

Official American foreign policy rhetoric about democracy and human rights has rarely gained genuine credibility during and after the Cold War. Its lame quasi-official philanthropic proxies fail to galvanize the imagination as well, given their tedious credentials and the grave fallacies that are attached to the political system that they purport to export, structurally and violently.

Nowhere is this fact clearer than in the imperially strategic area of the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the Persian Gulf, where oil-rich countries are located, notably Saudi Arabia and its neighboring monarchies. Military dominance of this area is essential to guarantee American interests in a sufficient supply of oil and influence its prices.[1]

The formation of and subsequent support to Israel by colonial powers Britain and France was used to secure fragmentation in countries with predominantly anti-colonial populations. American imperial hegemony, combined with total dedication to Israel, pushed by variations of the Israel lobby in the United States, enhanced this phenomenon.  

Israel is well aware of its stature as a colonial and apartheid state in the Middle East because of its illegitimate right to sovereignty in Palestine and as a result of its constant violations of Palestinians’ rights, recently committing a genocide in Gaza. The fact that it has reached covert pacts with certain forces or established diplomatic relations with some countries should be understood as incidental to an American diplomatic measure or a success of arms trade diplomacy in a civil war-torn country.

Israel’s assassinations of Iranian scientists is a grave violation of Iran’s sovereignty and international law. It is an extension of its untenable behavior of carrying out political assassinations and sabotage on a large geographic scale for decades. A conduct that constitutes part of the country’s DNA, stemming partly from its awareness regarding the justified popular regional rejection. Israel’s assassination policy against Iranian scientists is also an aggression that validates a military response. Banal reviews of Ronen Bergman’s book about this subject in the New York Times and The Guardian grant it the mystique of sophistication and even ethical morality coinciding with Israel’s standing as a legitimate state rather than a pariah one in the two countries that advocated the most for its gratuitous and burdening establishment.

American strained relations with Iran followed a familiar path. Rather than peaceful diplomatic communications, the aim was to overtake the Iranian government by any means necessary. The objectives have not changed. Bullying global supremacy and realizing a sphere of influence in an imperially critical area. American ravaging, joined by Israel, has been reported as a natural course of foreign policy.[2]

It is difficult to say that America’s comportment regarding Iran and the wider Middle East has captured the hearts and minds, except perhaps in provincial and illegally minded Israel and on Gulf-funded media. The CIA’s coup against the elected Iranian leader Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, joined by the ever embarrassingly sidelined British MI6, was among the first imperial plots in the oil peninsula.[3] The 1979 revolution in Iran overthrew the Shah and was explicitly directed against the United States’ overreach in that country and beyond. Nevertheless, the Shah at the time was being abominated by the ‘noble’ forces of the United States and Britain, mainly for taking part in the oil price increase of 1974 and due to his growing ambitions.[4] During the Iran – Iraq war (1980 – 1988), the United States supported Iraq,[5] and subsequently did not shy from destabilizing both.[6]  

After the 2003 illegal invasion of Iraq justified by two ludicrous assertions, the possession of weapons of mass destruction and involvement in the ‘September 11 attacks’, advanced also by Israel’s vocal campaigning at Congress, in think tanks, and through the security establishment, America turned its central focus to Iran. Here, too, America’s geopolitical interests were quickly aligned with Israel’s by wealthy and politically engaged American Jews who pushed for the most hawkish policies, dwarfing some Iranian American groups and even overtaking their quest for regime change and military attack against Iran.

Sheldon Adelson at the Republican party[7] and Haim Saban at the Democratic party[8] sealed the fate of any genuine discussion of America’s role regarding Iran, Palestine, and the rest of their geopolitical space. While the democratic party has been developing healthy logical thought about the problematic American – Israeli connection, the Republican Party’s resentment of these ties has been sidelined by the presence of figures such as Larry Elison who supplements Adelson’s imperious role.[9]Adelson has in the past proposed to bomb Iran with a nuclear bomb.[10]

Trump’s first term as president witnessed the fulfillment of all of Israel’s wishes. He sidelined and sanctioned the Palestinians and bullied Middle Eastern countries to make peace with Israel through the ludicrous “Abraham Accords”, except for the ‘strategic thinking’ little monarchy of the United Arab Emirates, which did so voluntarily. With respect to Iran, Trump canceled the deal reached with six international powers and ordered the killing of an Iranian general[11] that almost started a total war between the two countries.[12]

The Biden administration maintained most of Trump’s policies regarding Palestine, particularly the vehement pursuit of the expansion of the “Abraham Accords”. They did not attempt to reinstate the international deal with Iran. Contrary to Israel, Iran is a member state of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), ratifying it in 1970, and has the right to engage in the development of nuclear energy and weapons. Israel already possesses nuclear weapons,[13] is not a member of the NPT, and enjoys a total lack of monitoring of its arsenal.

During its genocide in Gaza with the active military and diplomatic complicity of the United States, Israel launched an aggression against Iran by its air force on 12 June 2025. Iran retaliated with precise hits that shook Israel to the core for 12 days, bringing it to the verge of military and social collapse adding to its atrocities and military failures in Gaza. Iran’s retaliation managed to surpass, at least in part, the heavy protective defense system formed by CENTCOM and some of its local allies. CENTCOM’s head Micheal Kurilla was a vehement supporter of Israel’s attack[14] that left the country in total psychological blunder, having been surprised by Iran’s accurate response and the failure to circumvent it, needing urgent American salvation. The assistance came in the form of an illegal attack by the American air force against Iran, which is no less illegal than Israel’s original aggression.

The current tension that might culminate in another illegal aggression by the United States against Iran is a continuation of hostile policies advanced by American politicians who are marionettes of Israel’s promoters. They are joined by hawkish military personnel who possess the political vision of a snail’s progress and the intelligence of a determined football running back. There can be no more noble cause than standing up to a pervasive empire pushed by the devious forces of Israel’s advocates in the United States.

  John Bolton and Donald Trump. Source: CNN, 22 June 2025.

Hilary Clinton, Surrogate of the Israel Lobby. Source: New York Times, 13 August 2015.

Mossad’s Efraim Halevy. Source: Hebrew University.

New York Times’s Ronen Bergman.                                       Haaretz’s Yosi Melman.

Reza Pahlavi. Source: Times of Israel, 8 May 2023. 

[1] Bernard Gwertzman, “Kissinger Sees Oil Crisis Periling Western Society”, New York Times, 27 September 1974.

[2] Ronen Bergman et al, “Blackout Hits Iran Nuclear Site in What Appears to Be Israeli Sabotage”, New York Times, 11 April 2021; Ben Hubbard et al, “Iran Rattled as Israel Repeatedly Strikes Key Targets”, New York Times, 20 April 2021; Ronen Bergman et al, “Israel Launched Drone Attack on Iranian Facility, Officials Say”, New York Times, 29 January 2023; Farnaz Fassihi et al, “Iranian Officials Suspect Sabotage in String of Mysterious Fires”, New York Times, 23 July 2025.

[3] Vanessa Thorpe, “MI6, the coup in Iran that changed the Middle East, and the cover – up”, The Guardian, 2 August 2020; Julian Borger, “’Written out of the history books’: the British spy who planned Iranian coup”, The Guardian, 15 August 2023; Julian Borger, “UK should finally acknowledge role in 1953 Iran coup, says David Owen”, The Guardian, 15 August 2023; AFP, “C.I.A. Orchestrated 1953 Coup in Iran, Document Confirm”, New York Times, 9 August 2013; The National Security Archive, CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup, George Washington University, 19 August 2013; James Risen, “The C.I.A. in Iran: How a Plot Convulsed Iran in `53 (and `79)”, New York Times, 16 April 2000; Tim Weiner, “C.I.A. Destroyed Files on 1953 Iran Coup”, New York Times, 29 May 1997.

[4] R. W. Apple Jr., “Iran: Heart of the Matter”, New York Times, 11 March 1979.

[5] Seymore Hersh, “U.S. Secretly Gave Aid to Iraq Early in Its War Against Iran”, New York Times, 26 January 1992; Patrick Tyler, “Officials Say U.S. Aided Iraq in War Despite Use of Gas”, New York Times, 18 August 2002.

[6] Elaine Sciolino, “U.S. Presses Drive on Iran and Iraq”, New York Times, 5 April 1995; Steven Erlanger, “U.S. Effort to Isolate Both Iran and Iraq is Fraying Badly”, New York Times, 11 November 1997; Elaine Sciolino, “C.I.A. Asks Congress for Money to Rein in Iraq and Iran”, New York Times, 12 April 1995.

[7] Connie Bruck, “The Brass Ring”, New Yorker, 23 June 2008; Mike Allen, “Sheldon Adelson: Inside the mind of the mega-donor”, Politico, 23 September 2012; Jeremy Peters, “Sheldon Adelson Sees a Lot to Like in Trump’s Washington”, New York Times, 22 September 2018; Chris McGreal, “Sheldon Adelson: the casino mogul driving Trump’s Middle East policy”, The Guardian, 8 June 2018; Eli Clifton, “Sheldon Adelson’s legacy of underwriting American militarism”, Responsible Statecraft, 12 January 2021.

[8] Andrew Ross Sorkin, “Schlepping to Moguldom”, New York Times, 5 September 2004; John O’Neil, “Hillary Clinton Says White House Has Mishandled Iran”, New York Times, 19 January 2006; Philip Rucker et al, “Billionaires Adelson and Saban, at odds in campaigns, unite on Israel and hit Obama”, Washington Post, 9 November 2014; David Sanger et al, “Hillary Clinton Backs Iran Nuclear Deal, With Caveats”, New York Times, 9 September 2015; Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Top Hillary Clinton Donor Clarifies Stance on Iran Nuclear Deal”, New York Times, 13 August 2015.

[9] Ryan Grim & Murtaza Hussein, “Larry Ellison Vetted Marco Rubio for Fealty to Israel, Hacked Emails Reveal”, Drop Site, 2 October 2025; Derek Seidman, “From AI to TikTok to TV, This Pro-Israel Billionaire is Expanding Power in US”, Truthout, 11 October 2025.

[10] Maya Shwayder, “Adelson: US should drop atomic bomb on Iran”, Jerusalem Post, 24 October 2013.

[11] Mark Landler, “Trump Abandons Iran Nuclear Deal He Long Scorned”, New York Times, 8 May 2018.

[12] Peter Baker et al, “Seven Days in January: How Trump Pushed U.S. and Iran to the Brink of War”, New York Times, 11 January 2020.

[13] Marion Boggs, Memorandum of Discussion at the 470th Meeting of the National Security Council, 8 December 1960, Eisenhower Library, Whitman File, NSC Records. Top Secret. Drafted by Boggs, available at Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State; Thomas Friedman, “Israel and the Bomb: Megatons of Ambiguity”, 9 November 1986.

[14] Jerusalem Post Staff, “CENTCOM warned Iran was 'mere steps' from nuclear weapons before IDF strikes began”, Jerusalem Post, 17 June 2025; Amichai Stein, “Trump briefed on military options against Iran by CENTCOM chief, source tells 'Post'”, Jerusalem Post, 18 June 2025; Kelly Beaucar Vlahos, “Is Israel's favorite US general helping to push us into war?”, Responsible Statecraft, 17 June 2025. See also A.J. Manuzzi, “Why new CENTCOM chief Brad Cooper is as wrong as the old one”, Responsible Statecraft, 15 July 2025.