Time to Strike Iran’s Nuclear Sites?

By Kenneth R. Timmerman, AM THINKER

Three events took place recently that have changed my view of an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

For years now, I have answered with caution the warmongers and headline-grabbers who have gleefully touted impending Israeli airstrikes on Iran. I have stated, with reason and facts in support, that Israel has demonstrated repeatedly that it has many ways of slowing down Iran’s nuclear weapons programs short of a kinetic military strike.

Why take the risk of airstrikes, which all the world will see, when you can slow down the program by other means that in addition are difficult to pin on Israel?

For example: for many years, under Mossad director Meir Dagan, Israel carried out targeted assassinations of Iranian nuclear weapon scientists, acts that presumably had a deterrent effect on younger scientists joining the programs.

Israel collaborated with the United States in inserting computer viruses inside Iran’s uranium-enrichment plants, causing high-speed centrifuges to crash and probably explode, leading to clean-up operations and repairs that set back the program by months and possibly years.

Israel also carried out the most audacious human intelligence operation in the history of modern espionage by locating Iran’s top secret nuclear archive in a nondescript suburb of Tehran, penetrating the building, breaking multiple bank vaults inside, and spiriting away hundreds of boxes of documents that detailed Iran’s lies to UN nuclear inspectors about its intentions. For well over a year, the Iranians had no clue that they had been penetrated — until Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed the documents to the world at the UN General Assembly in New York.

But good — even great — intelligence operations have their limits. Great intelligence could never have stopped Hitler’s blitzkrieg into Poland. Once he had the tanks and the troops and had trained them in operations, Hitler could only be met with force.

Last week, we learned from Director General Raphael Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran now has enough 60% enriched uranium to manufacture three or four bombs, should it choose to put that material into the final (and very short) enrichment phase to reach weapons capacity.

For months, unofficial experts, such as former IAEA inspector David Albright, have been warning that Iran was reaching such a threshold. But it’s one thing for a think tank to speculate on official information, with all its gaps. It’s quite another for the source of that information — in this case, the IAEA director — to make such a statement in his official capacity.

In the thirty-five years I have been tracking Iran’s nuclear weapons programs, which I write about in my latest book And the Rest is History: Tales of Hostages, Arms Dealers, Dirty Tricks, and Spies — this is the first time I have heard the IAEA make such a bold statement about Iran. Normally it’s all weasel words and schoomarm warnings to proliferators to mend their ways.

Grossi’s statement did not fall on deaf ears in Israel. Former Israeli Navy chief Vice Admiral (ret.) Eliezer “Chiney” Marom told an Israeli television network on Jan. 26 that this latest information showed that Iran had become a “threshold” nuclear weapons state.

Iran has turned off IAEA surveillance cameras and Israel has limited insight into its nuclear weaponry group, he said. “And when those two will be close one to the other, the moment to jump from threshold to holding nuclear weapons will be very, very short… and therefore I think the time to attack… means in the coming year.”

Marom made sure his statement was crystal clear. “We have to stop this program and sooner is better than later,” he said.

Also last week, the U.S. and Israel conducted their first-ever joint military exercise to test the interoperability of their air-land-sea-and intelligence capabilities, Juniper Oak 2023. While they did not explicitly demonstrate an attack on Iran, watching Israeli and U.S. fighter jets line up in delta formation behind B-52s sent a clear message to the mullahs in Tehran.

(The U.S. and Israeli militaries have held Juniper Oak exercises for the past twenty years, but never on this scale and never to test interoperability).

I have long been worried what the response of the Biden administration would be to an Israeli strike on Iran. The fact that the two countries carried out military exercises clearly crafted to send a message to Tehran eases those concerns, despite the ongoing love-affair of Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan with the mullahs of Tehran.

Does anyone remember the policy debate following President Trump’s decision to take out Iranian terror-master Qassem Suleymani, the diabolical and charismatic head of the Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force?

The pundits were wringing their hands, and Cassandras of all sexes were bewailing the impact of Iranian regime counterstrikes.

I was asked my opinion of the Iranian regime’s reaction to a (then) hypothetical U.S. strike against Suleymani, and I told my government interlocutors: hit them hard, as hard as you can, and they will do nothing.

That was the lesson of Operation Praying Mantis, when in 1988 President Ronald Reagan sank one-third of the Iranian navy and attacked vital Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf in response to Iranian aggression against international shipping.

A nuclear-armed Iran is a far greater threat than the terrorist wasp that attacked us in the 1988. The time to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities is now. The U.S. needs to lead the charge and ensure that it is effective. With the benefit of first-rate Israeli intelligence and deep-penetration U.S. weapons, together we can knock out Iran’s nuclear weapons programs, possibly for good.

Kenneth Timmerman was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize by former Swedish deputy premier Per Ahlmark in 2006 for his work on Iran. His latest book, And the Rest is History: Tales of Hostages, Arms Dealers, Dirty Tricks, and Spies, was published by Post Hill Press.

February 3, 2023 | 41 Comments »

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41 Comments / 41 Comments

  1. @ketzel They were coalitions. The organizers were all Marxists of different streams and they publicized their own wares at these events often at tables. And people networked. Hardly anybody listened to the speeches. 😀

  2. @Sebastien

    Fair enough, we both have street cred, mine was more genteel and suburban. However, I probably attended some of the demonstrations you organized. It was always about the issue of the moment, there was very little ideology on open display. If anyone had discussed the nuances of Soviet history, that would have cleared the streets pretty quickly.

  3. @ketzel I was a hardcore commie in the east village and west harlem for over 20 years. Don’t teach your gramma to suck eggs. I was a lead organizer for some of those big demonstrations on every leftwing issue including the pals and apartheid.

  4. A cultural example: remember American rock n roll from the early 60s and late 50s. Then the Beatles and Stones and other Brits came here. Instant Renaissance. Our music was great, but then we got something even greater. Everything changed. Now 60 years later, no one should ever claim we did that ourselves. We adopted it, but it came from somewhere else. Politics is like that. Leftism is more organic in Europe than in America. That is changing as our country is destroying itself, but who could really argue in good faith that American and Euro political culture is the same? It isn’t. No matter how perfectly someone speaks English, they can’t fake being American for 5 minutes, even on the internet.

    It’s a different world over there. It has a lot to do with prosperity and living conditions. When I studied in Paris in 1974, I was shocked when one of my teachers wore the same dress every day, pour faire l’economie. Educated French people were poor! They had metered lights in the stairwells. In America I never saw that, even in the worst part of the East Village! I guess I’m still enough of a commie to see how culture flows from economic conditions. Europeans suffered more for longer after the war than we did. That’s why their political culture is so different. I watch youtube videos and read blogs from people in Scotland, smart and educated, but they’re from another planet, it’s kind of 3d world in Scotland. We are not the same kind of people, America has been spared a lot until now.

    Remember the jokes about Brits having bad teeth? It’s not true any more, but it used to be. When I went to France in the 70s, people were so short. Now they’re taller. When people don’t get enough protein, they are more interested in Trotsky. How about Rod Stewart and Johnny Rotten? Wonderful musicians, but clearly showing the effects of poor nutrition. Offhand, I can’t think of American popular musicians who had malformed spines because they starved as children.

  5. @Sebastien

    My parents were fashionable commies until they outgrew it. I know the difference between organic /homegrown and imported. The postwar generation like my parents’ was quite involved with Soviet matters, then it faded and went underground, as cheap housing and prosperity corrupted the comrades. This didn’t happen in Europe. This is why there is such a disconnect between Europe and America. You can see supposed right wing nationalists like Orban and Marine Le Pen being good buddies with Russia. This is normal, they represent their culture.

    I was part of every fad from the 60s and after. I was a Green Party activist until 9/11. I can tell you, in my local Green Party chapter in the SF Bay Area, no one ever, ever, ever said Trotsky. They wanted to recruit the Mexicans in the next town, the Mexicans never showed up. Most likely, the heads of the Green Party had secret beer busts where they put up a statue of Trotsky and sacrificed tofu to him, but they didn’t do it even at private weekly meetings I attended. I was trusted enough to be sent to lobby the mayor and city council on behalf of the Green Party. I am not ignorant of leftie politics, I was one, and a fairly active and high profile one in my community. We did not talk about Trotsky. This in contrast to what I assume goes on in similar communities in Britain. Enough already, you are telling a cow about milk.

  6. @ketzel Hitchens was big here in the 80s. Workers world Party/All People’s Congress organized or co-organized most of the big demonstrations.

    Socialist Workers Party.

    Spartacist League which Vanessa Redgrave belonged to. She pressured her friend Jane Fonda to switch support from Israel to Pals.

    It’s always been coalition politics here.
    .
    Vanessa Redgrave could never have gotten elected to anything. Neither could Obama as an open leftist.

    He paved the way for the open socialists.

    Hitchens have begun as a Trotskyist but he never mentioned it. He came across as an independent iconoclast who talked common sense like Jordan Peterson.

  7. @ketzel Hitchens was big here in the 80s. Workers world Party/All People’s Congress organized or co-organized most of the big demonstrations.

    Socialist Workers Party.

    Spartacist League which Vanessa Redgrave belonged to. She pressured her friend Jane Fonda to switch support from Israel to Pals.

    It’s always been coalition politics here.
    .
    Vanessa Redgrave could never have gotten elected to anything. Neither could Obama as an open leftist.

    He paved the way for the open socialists.

    Hitchens have begun as a Trotskyist but he never mentioned it. He came across as a libertarian.

  8. @Sebastien

    Of course there has always been a whatever movement, but it doesn’t have the same cultural meaning here. Thought experiment: if, when Obama was running for president, he had gone on tv and earnestly explained to the American public why Trotsky was better than Stalin, would he have been as popular?

    I actually went to the same commie school Obama pretended to have attended, at the same time he didn’t. No doubt there was a Trotsky fan club, but are you really claiming that we had the same environment as the Oxbridge Trots? Public figures like Hitchens and Vanessa Redgrave? Name one American public figure who was like that. Communism is a thing here, and a very destructive force, but it is absolutely not as rock n roll as it is in Britain.

  9. @Felix

    “Sebastien you are so confused it is a muster how you even manage to do anything.

    Confusion reigns. Perpetual nihilism keeps you going.”

    The feeling is mutual but thank you for supporting Israel. I never heard of a Zionist Trotskyist before. All the others are on the other side. By the way, if you said, I forgot, are you Jewish? Means more if you’re not, actually.

  10. @Ketzel There has always been a Trotskyist movement in America. The oldest party is the Socialist Workers Party

    https://themilitant.com/

    Then There are smaller parties like the Sparticist League

    https://www.icl-fi.org/

    Workers World was originally Trotskyist but became a kind of militant CPUSA

    https://www.workers.org/

    But they are all anti-Zionist. Felix and Reader? are unique as far as I can tell.

    You are right about Obama. In fact, his father’s family in Kenya are Muslim Communists and he has campaigned for him. An ex-room-mate in Occidental College? before he went to columbiiasaid he was a hard-core Marxist-Leninist.

    I was at the Socialist Conference he attended in the early 80s, at NYU, though I never went inside.

    I was an Anarchist and I just handed out fliers for some demonstration or teach-in or other. Theory wasn’t my thing back then anyway.

  11. Felix, you have to know your audience. I was only telling you the truth about the deep cultural divide between America and the old country. I first became aware of this a few years ago, when I saw an old Youtube clip of Christopher Hitchens addressing the audience as “Comrades” without smirking. He meant it! In the US, even an actual communist revolutionary like Obama pretended to be a capitalist, because Communism isn’t a mainstream interest in America. There are no Trotsky fan clubs in America, except in basements. It’s not that anyone has to hide, we just don’t care.

    I have my own hobby horses from a hundred years ago or more. I understand why no one is as obsessed as I am, I don’t call them ignorant, I just accept that they have their own interests. This blog is about Zionism, not Trotskyism.

  12. Sebastien

    “How was the Soviet Union not imperialist? And don’t give me the hoo ha about the highest stage of capitalism. That’s circular reasoning”

    Study conflict Lenin v Trotsky re invasion on Warsaw 1920

    Is truth there

  13. Sebastien you are so confused it is a muster how you even manage to do anything.

    Confusion reigns. Perpetual nihilism keeps you going.

  14. Updated: Feb 04, 2023, 10:41 PM IST

    …According to a confidential report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) obtained by the news agency on Wednesday, Iran significantly altered an interconnection between two centrifuge clusters at the Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP), without prior notice, that can enrich uranium to up to 60%.

    …Mohamad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, has hit back …He was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA that the organization gave a letter to IAEA that an “inspector… made a mistake and gave an incorrect report.”

    https://www.wionews.com/world/iran-hits-back-at-iaea-chief-rafael-grossi-over-report-on-fordo-nuclear-plant-558863

    The clock is ticking… (Sorry — this post is redundant)

  15. @Felix wrote

    You have zero knowledge of history so why not take up gardening or knitting

    But Comrade, I thought gardening and knitting were honest labor. A real communist would never use gardening and knitting to shame a political opponent. You have revealed yourself as a counterrevolutionary. I shall denounce you to the authorities. Pack your toothbrush.

  16. @Felix In 1938, the West betrayed Czechoslovakia in the hopes that Hitler would set his sights eastward. In 1939, the Soviet Union betrayed Poland in the hopes that Hitler would set his sights westward. But Hitler attacked both at once.

    How was the Soviet Union not imperialist? And don’t give me the hoo ha about the highest stage of capitalism. That’s circular reasoning.

    Lenin was quoting a book written in 1900 when it was empires all the way down. So dated as to be useless. Except on college campuses.

    Imperialist refers to predatory expanding empire.

    Like Iran and China, today.

  17. @Felix

    “They fought the Nazis only because there was an imperial interest”

    Japan declared war on the US in response to the US oil embargo on Japan in solidarity with China and Vietnam and then Germany followed suit because of a mutual defence pact with Japan. The US also also supported Ho Chi Minh. In the 30s, the US unofficially supported the Flying Tigers a volunteer American air force in China.

    Great Britain had a mutual defence pact with Poland and France. The German invasion of first Poland then France triggered that. The Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact with Germany but was invaded by Germany, anyway. Stalin had actually “repatriated” German Communists back to Germany.

    The war with Germany was an unintentional afterthought.

  18. @Felix I am somehow reminded of this excerpt from a pro-Arab anti-Zionist letter published by Ghandi 2 weeks after Kristallnacht.

    “My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Some of them became life-long companions…” {i.e.,some of his best friends are Jews, got it.}

    “…Can the Jews resist this organised and shameless persecution? Is there a way to preserve their self-respect, and not to feel helpless, neglected and forlorn? I submit there is. No person who has faith in a living God need feel helpless or forlorn. Jehovah of the Jews is a God more personal than the God of the Christians, the Mussalmans or the Hindus, though as a matter of fact in essence, He is common to all and one without a second and beyond description. But as the Jews attribute personality to God and believe that He rules every action of theirs, they ought not to feel helpless. If I were a Jew and were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest are bound to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France and America were to declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the godfearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep…”

    https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/lsquo-the-jews-rsquo-by-gandhi

  19. @Felix Do you believe being thwarted and martyred constitutes some kind of role model?

    “Rudolf Alois Klement (November 4, 1908, in Hamburg – 13 July 1938, in Paris) was a German member of the Trotskyist Left Opposition and Fourth International. Fluent in five languages, he joined Trotsky as his secretary in Prinkipo, Turkey, in 1933, where he learned a sixth language, Russian. Klement accompanied Trotsky to France, where he remained after Trotsky was expelled and ultimately found a home in Mexico. Klement came to lead Trotsky’s International Secretariat from France. He was assassinated by the Stalinist NKVD in Paris in 1938, while preparing a political report that included an investigation of NKVD agent Mark Zborowski, who had infiltrated the Trotskyist movement in France…”

    Wikipedia

  20. @Felix

    “There was a complete contrast between Stalinism and Whole being of Lenin and Trotsky. Lenin was poisoned. Trotsky murdered. There is a long story here.”

    No, it’s a short one.

    Stalin won. They lost. Early on. The End.

    What they would have done is a matter for conjecture. The actual Soviet Union was Stalin’s empire. And that’s what you’ve been defending.

  21. @Felix As I said, I am sympathetic to Russia in this war but it has nothing to do with the Soviet Union or WWII. I also support the inclusion of Russia in the Allied coalition against the Axis powers during WWII and lend-lease. But without supporting its murderous ideology and system.

    Antisemitism is and has been fueled by every ism and anti-ism, including anti-capitalism and anti-Communism. Except maybe antipasto. 😀

    “Who do you think killed the Czar? I think it was the Jews.”
    “I think it was the chimney sweeps.”
    “Why the chimney sweeps?”
    “Why the Jews?”

    – Fiddler?

  22. Who was Rudolf Klement?

    Example of a deliberate concealment of our history

    But rather than truthful study these facts and data are weaponised

  23. There was a complete contrast between Stalinism and Whole being of Lenin and Trotsky. Lenin was poisoned. Trotsky murdered. There is a long story here.

  24. There are many forces ranged against Russia, waging their war. Their aim is to kill Russians.

    The excuse is Ukrainian resistance to Russia.

    But it is the same thing as Resistance to Jewish mythical influence which was also the Nazi Holocaust

    Being well hidden in this is that the hatred for Jews in the Nazi Holocaust is also the hatred for Russia by the Ukraine of today.

    The real Fascism is those fighting Russia in this war.

    That is also an act of war – standing in the Irish Dail to clap Zelensky

    And there are acts of war on this very site too.

  25. and so were Mensheviks. The Boksheviks and Mensheviks were in one party, the RSDLP. The Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. So many long acronyms to keep track of. Whatever you do, don’t confuse it with the NSAPD. Kraut-talk for German National Socialist Labor Party, i.e. Nazi scum.

  26. @Felix

    “Those who want to support the Jews have to have a total hatred for capitalism”

    There has never been a Trotskyist state. But there was a Stalinist one. Just found this Russian review “Why and How Stalin Hated The Jews” by Karen Dukess. Moscow Times. Feb. 1, 1995, of a book by Arkafy Vaksberg , “Stalin Against the Jews”, by Arkady Vaksberg. Translated by Antonina W. Bouis. Knopf. 295 pages. $24.

    on the topic.

    Wouldn’t let me copy link.

    “Spotting the Jews among the Bolshevik revolutionaries is an ugly game. And usually it is monarchists and reactionaries who play it as they try to prove that the overthrow of the great Russian empire was an international Jewish conspiracy. In “Stalin Against the Jews,” Arkady Vaksberg, an investigative journalist and lawyer, enters the arena. But he has a different purpose in mind. Vaksberg pinpoints the positioning of Jews in the ranks of the Soviet elite under Stalin not in order to show how much power rested in Jewish hands. He is trying to prove that Stalin consciously promoted and praised Jews in order to hide his own calculated, virulent and deadly anti-Semitism.

    Drawing on exhaustive research into previously inaccessible KGB archives, on interviews with scores of perpetrators and victims of the anti-Semitic purges, as well as on his own experiences as a Soviet Jew in the 1950s, Vaksberg documents the evolution of Stalin’s personal animosity toward Jews. He maintains it was a vendetta that took root not in the 1940s, as was previously believed, but in the years after the 1917 Revolution, when every one of Stalin’s competitors for power was Jewish, and many of them better educated than he.

    In great detail — perhaps too much for the reader not already well-versed in the complicated history of Soviet Jewry — Vaksberg chronicles the fate of Soviet Jews of the Stalin era. He moves from the rise and bloody demise of the Jewish Antifascist Committee, which was dedicated to raising money in the West for the Soviet war effort and was later persecuted as a hotbed of traitorous Zionists, to the orchestrated murder in a “car crash” of the great director, actor and Jewish leader Solomon Mikhoels. He recounts Stalin’s covert plan to deport the entire Soviet Jewish population to Siberia, and the overtly anti-Semitic “Doctors’ Plot” of the 1950s. Throughout, it becomes clear that Stalin’s methods of persecution were far more subtle and devious than the historical precedent of whipping Cossacks into the frenzy of a pogrom.

    Vaksberg shows how Stalin was a master of duplicity. Every time the leader unleashed a new wave of anti-Jewish persecution, he would simultaneously award a prominent Jew the prestigious Order of Lenin. While nameless thousands of innocent Jews were being arrested and shot, the faithful Jews among Stalin’s lackeys were being promoted to positions such as gulag camp commandant. A genius at mixing up the cards, Stalin would let it be known that the firing and demoting of Jews was not only acceptable but expected, while also making grand public statements denying the existence of anti-Semitism, which he called “the lowest form of cannibalism,” in the international workers’ state.

    A typical example of Stalin’s double-edged maneuverings concerned “Freilekhs,” a play directed by Solomon Mikhoels at the end of World War II at Moscow’s Jewish Theater. The play, a vivid and moving work devoid of the usual ideological drivel, was the hit of the season and was nominated for the Stalin Prize in 1946. But the Committee on the Arts, well aware of the prevailing mood, tried to scupper the play’s chances by arranging for the publications of anonymous critical letters and negative reviews. This damaging material was given to Stalin, who, of course, had the final say on the prizewinners.

    “But Comrade Stalin was much more cunning, and smarter, than his toadying lackeys,” Vaksberg writes. “He knew how to blow smoke into people’s eyes. Stalin supported the play, which he had not even seen … No one doubted that the prize was totally deserved. But it had nothing to do with art. Its aim was to serve as ammunition against any spoken or unspoken accusations of anti-Semitism.”

    And the prize could not save Mikhoels. He was killed two years later.

    “Stalin Against the Jews” is rendered more potent since Vaksberg does not hesitate to name the many Jews who were faithful to Stalin. He holds them accountable for their crimes against both Russians and Jews. The book leaves little doubt that, despite the contentions of many devout Stalinists, the anti-Semitism that flourished in the Soviet Union was not only sanctioned but fueled from above.

    Turning to the current situation, Vaksberg describes today’s “neo-anti-Semites” — those who think the October Revolution was the dirty work of Jews, yet dream of the reanimation of the Soviet Union — to be the heirs and successors of Stalin. As they see it, it was Jews and Lenin, one of whose ancestors was a Jew, who destroyed the great Russian empire, while Stalin recreated it, both geographically and spiritually.

    Yet ultimately, Vaksberg finds hope in the low intellectual level of today’s Russian anti-Semites. Quoting a letter he received stating that “all Russian Jews work for the Zionists and imperialists,” Vaksberg writes that “this sort of ignorant babble of the neo-Stalinist anti-Semitic wave will not find great responsiveness among the Russian masses, who have learned to think for themselves.”

    To hear this from a man who has taken such pains to document the details of the absurd and evil campaign against Jews in the Soviet Union is reassurance indeed.”

    Stalin Against the Jews, by Arkady Vaksberg. Translated by Antonina W. Bouis. Knopf. 295 pages. $24.

    Though, I think it’s much earlier. Stalin joked about the need for a pogrom in the party in an essay around the same time as the pogroms of 1905-6 because so mmany jews were in light industry

  27. @Michael

    “boosting Trotskyist Communism.”

    Actually he hasn’t done that in a while as he, along with Reader, I can’t remember whether Reader is also a Trotskist as it’s been a long time but I guess Ketzel provoked Felix, but the really funny thing – I mean, haha funny – is that both have been expending huge amounts of energy defending WWII Soviet policies, and since Stalin was its dictator that means defending Stalin. ‘

    On the other hand, that might be considered reasonable and consistent, in a way, as Trotsky viewed The Soviet Union as a “deformed worker’s state.”

    And, Stalin, who did come from a semi-proletarian background; his father was a poor peasant who farmed a tiny plot of land and supplemented his income working on the assembly line at a shoe factory, I seem to recall.

    And, I think I read somehere that Stalin had a club foot (not a hunchback like the fictitious Richard that we all know.)

    And it was Stalin’s state ergo…

  28. Those who want to support the Jews have to have a total hatred for capitalism and especially British and American capitalism

    This has been the great enemy of the Jews

    They fought the Nazis only because there was an imperial interest

    They tried everything to negate the most brilliant Jews Lenin and Trotsky pouring hate at every point..I class Lenin also as Jewish…his grandfather was Jewish.

    Until you have a hatred for Imperialism there is a basic problem.

    If you wish I can show this in detail starting how they negated Lord Balfour.

    One of the most common tricks of capitalist argument is to blame Stalinism and it’s crimes on Lenin and Trotsky and there are many variables on this theme.

    So totally untrue.

    In response to all like Michael these ARE the issues to clarify

  29. Michael and Ketzel

    Who has screwed over the Jews it has been the Imperialisms of Britain then America.

    That in a nutshell is.my point and why I so detest whoever imperialists are on this site and I give no quarter

  30. The Trotsky thing seems to be a coming of age rite in British universities. There is no equivalent in American culture. For an American to try to understand this perspective would take too much digging, almost like researching the muscle car culture. I mean no disrespect to Trotsky, but I’m just trying to explain to Brits that no one in America cares about him except for graduate students who specialize in Soviet matters.

  31. As usual, Felix, and as Sebastien has already noted, your MO on every post is to lead with ad hominem insults, then follow through with boosting Trotskyist Communism.

    You began your most recent babble, by saying I don’t seem to notice that the West is waging a war against Russia. I think everyone on Israpundit, including you and especially including me, has pointed out this fact. What not everyone seems to realize here, ESPECIALLY you, is that Russia is also waging war against the West! It’s hard to move forward on this matter, until at least a majority of us can get on the same page on this matter.

    How long do you want to drag on with this nonesense?

  32. It is strange that there is a major war being conducted by the West against Russia and you seem not to notice it. What operators! Nothing could be more crooked than Supercilious lecturer Michael.

    And a liar too. Here he lies because in reality Russia has a working arrangement with Israel in Syria against Antisemitism but he distorts just about everything

  33. Cassandra or Kassandra (/k??sændr?/;[2] Ancient Greek: ?????????, pronounced [kas:ándra], also ????????, and sometimes referred to as Alexandra)[3] in Greek mythology was a Trojan priestess dedicated to the god Apollo and fated by him to utter true prophecies but never to be believed. In modern usage her name is employed as a rhetorical device to indicate a person whose accurate prophecies, generally of impending disaster, are not believed.
    — Wikipedia

    I think Timmerman misapplied the term “Cassandra”. I thought I’d like to put that out, before many of us die in a nuclear exchange. (It’s not good, to have bad syntax hanging over one’s grave). According to Wiki,

    “In The Fall of Troy, told by Quintus Smyrnaeus, Cassandra attempted to warn the Trojan people that Greek warriors were hiding in the Trojan Horse while they were celebrating their victory over the Greeks with feasting. Disbelieving Cassandra, the Trojans resorted to calling her names and hurling insults at her. Attempting to prove herself right, Cassandra took an axe in one hand and a burning torch in the other, and ran towards the Trojan Horse, intent on destroying the Greeks herself, but the Trojans stopped her. The Greeks hiding inside the Horse were relieved, but alarmed by how clearly she had divined their plan.[”

    It’s interesting, that Russia and Iran are allies. Israel and the West are playing “chicken” with both of them.

    https://imgs.search.brave.com/_b7kplI2ozdNbw16D-BglSyYYzbBgdC62maSfgV7G64/rs:fit:759:225:1/g:ce/aHR0cHM6Ly90c2Uy/Lm1tLmJpbmcubmV0/L3RoP2lkPU9JUC5Q/Q0g0QVdhOTU5cVdm/eThDYWZzVUVnSGFF/byZwaWQ9QXBp

    Interesting…

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