Ambassador Tom Barrack and President Recep Erdogan. Image via AI
U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack raised eyebrows last weekend at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum when he stated, “Turkey is not a country to be messed with,” — a remark intended to blame Israel for heightened tensions between Ankara and Jerusalem. Blood pressures rose further after Barrack equated Hezbollah and Israel, remarking that both were “equally untrustworthy.”
Peloni: Meir Weinstein, Director of Israel Now, discusses the US-Israel relationship in detail with Ambassador Yoram Ettinger.
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Peloni: Bibi, may the Master of the Universe grant you a complete and enduring refuah shleimah, strengthening you in both body and spirit. May you also be blessed with continued health, long life, and the strength to carry on with your many responsibilities on behalf of Am Yisrael, as you go from strength to strength, and from victory to victory in good health and peace.
As you continue to lead the Jewish nation in its battles against Islamic terror and jihadism amid the context of the rising tide Jew Hatred among the nations, may you never know illness, never encounter defeat, and never fail to act while guided by the wisdom, courage, and decisiveness which will keep the nation strong, prosperous and united, as you have done in simultaneously facing your recent medical scare while raising war against the modern Amelekites holding dominion in Tehran. As the longest serving premiere in Israel’s history, you have led the nation thru many significant trials, with the current wars being the height of the struggles which you have faced thus far. As the making of war turns towards the making of peace, may you also follow a singular chord of victory which will secure the fate of the nation as one, undivided, united and secure to deliver into the hands of the emerging generation. Am Israel Chai.
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PM Netanyahu:
Peloni: Khaled Hassan, an Egyptian-British national security & foreign policy researcher and Council Member of President Herzog’s Voice of the People, begins an exploration of how Egyptian policy makers view the world and why Egypt’s true north among these policy makers maintains a hostile focus towards and for Israel and the Israeli people.
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by Gerald A. Honigman
Hasan Piker. Screengrab via Youtube
I’ve been following your increasing popularity among the vast majority of generally ignorant know-nothings regarding the actual history and politics related to the Arab-Israeli conflict who either retain an almost genetically passed on animus towards Jews, and therefore their sole, resurrected, minuscule, 9-15 mile wide nation, due to two millennia of Church inspired and inculcated antisemitism as seen here…
Peloni: Meetings between Israel and Lebanon, while historic, only serve to evade the reality which maintains such meetings as NOTHING more than political theatrics. Trump can not be unaware of this fact, nor can his entire cabinet. It does buy time for Trump to push Iran to give word of mouth to controlling Lebanon via its Hezbollah proxy, but this is not something which Iran will part with except by use of arms. In other words, the war will either continue, or peace with Lebanon will not be possible any more than it has been in the past.
President Trump @realDonaldTrump vowed to end Lebanon's anti-Israel law after learning it criminalizes contact with Israelis.
"I've never heard of that… we're going to put an end to it," Trump declared when questioned by a reporter during a press conference. pic.twitter.com/iXW8ZdRRfb
— C14 News Israel | EN (@c14israel) April 24, 2026
Peloni: The Two State Solution is NOT dead in the mind of the West. The manner in which they intend to revive the latest effort to revive this never ending attempt to make rip a second Palestinian Muslim State from the Jewish Nation is thru UN Security Council Resolution 2803. More on this in to come.
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Peloni: Iraq remains an important aspect of Iranian power in the region. The choice of the next prime minister remains a critical depiction of the path on which Iraq’s future might be paved. The unresolved contest between the US and Iran is why this seat continues to remain empty six months after elections were held in Iraq.
The US-Iran talks are now tied to wider regional issues. For instance, Iran wanted a ceasefire in Lebanon. The US wants to see Iranian support for proxies ended.
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN | APRIL 22, 2026
Iraqi Security Forces. Screengrab via Youtube
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by Rafael Medoff
2025 FIFA Club World Cup. Screengrab via Youtube
US officials say they are planning to bar antisemitic agitators from attending the World Cup soccer matches that will take place in the United States, Canada, and Mexico this summer.
Martin Sherman
“How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing!” Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister, BBC Broadcast September 27, 1938
” You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.”
— Attributed to Winston Churchill, Speech in the House of Commons, 5 October 1938
Policymakers have been searching for the elusive “moderates” in the Iranian regime for decades. They’re like unicorns: much discussed but never discovered. We need to be clear-eyed about what this regime is all about: the destruction of everything we, as Americans, hold dear. Mike Pompeo, Former Director of CIA & Secretary of State, on X, April 17, 2026.
Peloni: While the US blockade on ships going to and coming from Iran is being maintained, it seems inexplicable that the US has failed to enforce a lockdown on the Iranian use of speed boats to harry the shipping lanes and thereby continue to enforce their own dominance over non-Iranian shipping. Trump stated previously that he has given instructions for the speed boats to be attacked, so why is it that no such actions were taken yesterday while Iran continued to utilize this modality to continue their piratical activities which are keeping shipping insurance high and providing Iran with illicit taxation revenue for shipping in the Gulf.
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by Con Coughlin • Gatestone Institute • April 21, 2026
The enduring barbarity of the clerical regime’s attempts to subjugate the Iranian people to its will demonstrates why the Trump administration’s decision to launch fresh military action was justified. Picutured: Public hanging in Iran. Photo by Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0, Wikipedia
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s indictment.
by
Fourteen years ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center named me a hate group of one. The honor wasn’t mine alone, I shared it with a sign outside a bar and a brand of gun oil.
What was behind the SPLC’s sloppy hate group designation of one man, a bar sign and other random items was its obsession with manufacturing a constant rise in ‘hate groups.’
Trump invites President Aoun and PM Netanyahu to meet in Washington
| Published: April 24, 2026
Screengrab via Youtube
The ceasefire in Lebanon has been extended by three weeks, U.S. President Donald Trump declared after hosting the second round of direct Israel-Lebanon talks in the White House in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.
Peloni
Donald Trump speaking at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. Photo by Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America – Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikipedia
Marc Thiessen, fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush, penned an important article for the Wall Street Journal in which he explains that the current U.S.–Iran standoff is at a critical breaking point. Instead of ceding further concessions to Iran, Thiessen explains that Trump should instead adopt an escalation strategy if Iran refuses to agree to U.S. terms.
Mojtaba Khamenei. By Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0, Wikipedia
Far too much attention has been given to President Donald Trump’s strategy in the current conflict, and far too little to that of the Islamic Republic.
Peloni:
This is an important article. As the US-Israeli campaign against Iran has exposed its terrorist regime as a paper tiger, Iran’s handlers in China were exposed as having limited control over the radicals within its regional proxy. The result of this limited control came in the form of China’s inability to protect the regional Sunni nations from Iranian attacks, even though these Arab nations had previously moved closer to China as a hedge against their relationship with the US. This failure has come to expose China as something of a paper superpower unable to even control its dominance over its Iranian ally. Consequently, China’s failure in this moment has seen significant diplomatic shifts towards the real superpower in the world, the United States, with very recently significant agreements from Indonesia and the Philippines with the US, moving them into America’s camp in the Great Game being played between China and the US. Recall the import of Indonesia vis a vis the Straits of Malacca which control the transit of maritime traffic approaching China, and the clarity of a US security coup becomes quite clear. These geopolitical shifts will act as the wind at Trump’s back as he is soon to meet Pres. Xi in just a couple of weeks as Xi’s remaining Middle East ally of Iran is facing economic and potentially regime collapse.
Zineb Riboua | Apr 21, 2026
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Xi Jinping addresses Chinese and foreign journalists at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Oct 23, 2022. Photo by Chinese News Agency, CC BY 3.0, Wikipedia
On Monday, China’s Xi Jinping let the mask slip.
After weeks remaining largely absent from the diplomatic picture as the US conducted Operation Epic Fury against Iran, Xi called Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman to publicly urge a peaceful reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
