Much like individuals, countries may often become victims of their own great success.
This risk certainly applies to criminals, including criminal regimes. Even if they effectively conceal their direct involvement in particular incidents, over time their method of operation—their “M.O.”—may become obvious. This allows the ready identification of their handiwork, whether by law enforcement agencies or interested historians.
Last week’s sudden surprise attack by Israel against Iran was a remarkably successful decapitation strike that assassinated much of the latter country’s top military and national security leadership at a single stroke. According to news reports, the victims included the head of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, both the head of the Iranian armed forces and his top deputy, and the entire leadership of the country’s powerful missile and drone division. No previous historical example comes to mind in which the high command of a major nation’s military had been so completely annihilated within just a few hours. On June 12th, IRGC commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami had publicly declared that Iran “was ready for any scenario,” but 24 hours later he was dead, along with most of Iran’s other military leaders.
Moreover, the losses extended far beyond the armed forces. Ali Shamkhan, the national security advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader and the individual responsible for the ongoing nuclear negotiations with America was killed, as were the head of Iran’s nuclear research program and many of his top scientists.
Last year the Israelis had employed a similar decapitation strategy to eliminate the entire leadership of Hezbollah, effectively destroying that organization. But although Hezbollah had been widely regarded as the world’s strongest and most heavily-armed non-state militia, renowned for having given the Israelis a black eye during the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, it lacked any air defenses and was based in neighboring Lebanon. Meanwhile Iran was a powerful nation of 90 million, possessing advanced weaponry and located more than 1,000 miles from Israel. Iran’s decapitation was simply astonishing.
The exact tactical details of how the Israelis so easily pierced Iran’s robust air defenses cannot yet be firmly established given that elements of the widely published reports might merely constitute deceptive propaganda. But if those accounts are correct, Israel had secretly prepositioned large numbers of powerful drones and other military equipment on Iranian soil, then used these to blind and disable Iran’s network of anti-aircraft defenses, thereby opening the door for the huge air strikes that inflicted most of the destruction, and such a scenario seems quite plausible.
Other explosive drones may have been used for the targeted assassinations of many of the high-profile victims, whose exact locations had been determined by either human or technical intelligence. I’ve also seen claims on the Internet that small Israeli electronic warfare teams had successfully infiltrated Iran and disrupted the country’s military communications channels for hours, severely hampering any defensive measures. But none of these particular details much matter, with the overwhelming end result being the only important fact.
I think that the unprecedented success of this sudden Israeli strike against Iran’s leadership also shifts the probabilities on some other important past events. In April 2024, Iran had launched a retaliatory missile strike against Israel, and despite the best efforts of American and British forces to intercept the missiles in their flight path, the hypersonics and most of the ballistics got through and struck their targets, with Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome defense system proving itself completely ineffective in blocking the attacks. When the Israelis failed to counter-retaliate, the Iranians declared that they had been victorious in that major test of force, thus fully establishing the effectiveness of their missile deterrent.
But then just a few weeks later, Iran’s hardline President Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister both died in a still unexplained helicopter crash while returning from a visit to Azerbaijan, leading many to suspect that Mossad had killed the Iranian president. And now that Israel has demonstrated its enormous ability to strike down so many top Iranian leaders in their own country at a time of high military tension, I think that President Raisi should probably be added to the long list of Israeli victims.
Furthermore, Raisi’s sudden death had major strategic consequences. He had been a leading Iranian hardliner, having close relations with Russia and China, and viewed by many as the likely successor to 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Meanwhile, his replacement was Masoud Pezeshkian, a far more moderate figure eager to avoid any confrontation with America and instead hoping to mend relations with the West. Thus, by eliminating Raisi, the Israelis had drastically “reshaped” the subsequent Iranian political landscape.
This same strategy was obviously an important element of last week’s huge wave of assassinations. Iran’s military leadership and especially its powerful IRGC had been among the most influential supporters of their country’s refusal to bend to America’s demands, with many of them even pushing for the creation of a nuclear weapons deterrent. So their elimination along with that of other hardline national security officials may shift the political balance in a very different direction.
Just as no major nation had ever previously suffered such a heavy decapitating blow, most would agree that Israel was the only country in the world that could have successfully carried out such a bold and daring operation. Indeed, proud Israelis would probably be the first to make such a boastful claim. But pride sometimes goes before a fall.
Once all these facts have sunk in and intelligent Americans have given due consideration to the matter, I think that only the willfully blind or the most obtuse will fail to quietly recognize that Israel and its Mossad had played exactly the same role in two of the most momentous events that similarly “reshaped” our own country’s political landscape, namely the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the 2001 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.
Seen from the broader sweep of history, the combination of those two watershed events, together with many smaller ones, effectively reduced our country to a subservient vassal state largely under Israeli control, and that bitter reality will surely inspire deep resentment as our citizens become more fully aware of it.
For obvious reasons, few Americans will probably voice these new convictions in anything but whispers, but the belief will exist and it will steadily increase in certainty as individuals begin investigating the easily available historical facts, which have been hiding in plain sight for decades. The result will be the steady growth of a massive but hidden unexploded political shell that might detonate at any point, quite possibly leading to the total destruction of the Jewish State when it does. Therefore I think that this ultimate consequence of Friday’s shocking events probably represents a far greater danger to Israel’s survival than do any of the retaliatory Iranian missiles now raining down upon its territory.
The evidence that Israel played the central role in both those devastating past blows against our own country seems obvious. But any such possibility has always been totally excluded not merely from the mainstream media but even from nearly all of the conspiratorial circles that have spent decades intensely focusing all their attention on the events of 1963 or 2001.
Therefore, the total volume of compiled material laying out the strong case for Israeli culpability is quite limited, and for those entirely new to this extremely controversial topic, I’d recommend some of my own writings of the last seven years. These effectively summarize much of the accumulated research evidence, while also providing numerous links and references to more detailed treatments.
For many newcomers to such matters, the whole notion of such a “conspiratorial” explanation for JFK’s assassination or the attacks of 9/11 might seem utterly fantastical, and the high likelihood that the Israeli Mossad killed our president and destroyed our largest office towers would be surely be considered fantasy-squared. So I expect they will have huge skepticism about the content of my various articles.
Fortunately, just last week I published a piece explaining that I had recently used OpenAI’s very powerful Deep Research system to carefully review my many articles on both those explosively controversial topics. The AI concluded that virtually all of my factual claims were accurate, while my overall conclusions also seemed fairly plausible.
However, I should strongly emphasize that there is a sharp distinction between these two aspects of my work. Based upon that thorough Deep Research analysis, readers should have almost complete confidence in the facts that I present, while still deciding for themselves whether I have connected those many dots in sensible or foolish ways.
Here are a few of the summary paragraphs from the Deep Research fact-checking run of my most recent discussion of the JFK Assassination, with boldface in the original, followed by the links to the article itself and several others as well:
Use of Reputable Sources: Despite being published on a controversial platform, the article leans heavily on credible, verifiable sources for its factual assertions. It cites renowned investigative journalists like Seymour Hersh (for JFK’s Israel policy conflict), respected historians like David Talbot and John Newman, and official records (e.g., RFK’s autopsy by Dr. Noguchi, declassified DOJ and CIA documents). In each case where we cross-checked, the article’s representation of these sources was accurate and in context…
In conclusion, the article generally represents its sources fairly and accurately. It certainly emphasizes those that align with its thesis and omits contrary interpretations, but it does not misquote or deceptively excerpt. If anything, it is remarkably heavy on citations and evidence for a piece of this nature, which enhances its credibility…
Conclusion: Our fact-checking investigation finds that the article “How Israel Killed the Kennedys” is grounded in a substantial body of factual evidence, though it assembles those facts to support a specific conspiracy narrative that remains unproven. The major historical claims in the piece are generally accurate and backed by credible sources…
In terms of journalistic integrity, the article takes a decidedly adversarial stance to mainstream narratives, but it does so by marshaling evidence, citing sources abundantly, and largely treating those sources fairly…
Overall Accuracy and Needed Corrections: There are no major factual errors in the article’s content that we could identify. All specific historical facts it cites are supported by documentation…
Summary Judgment: The article “How Israel Killed the Kennedys” is a thorough and well-sourced piece of investigative journalism/opinion that brings together long-suppressed threads of the JFK and RFK assassination story. It achieves a high level of accuracy in presenting factual claims, and it generally represents its many sources honestly. The overall conclusion – that Israel’s Mossad, in collusion with elements of the U.S. deep state, was behind the Kennedy assassinations – remains a hypothesis not acknowledged by official history. But the article does an effective job of demonstrating that this hypothesis is far from baseless, and that it draws on serious evidence often ignored in mainstream accounts…
In conclusion, the journalistic integrity of the article is reasonably high in terms of factual accuracy and source transparency. Its bold claims are presented alongside the evidence that underpins them. It stands as a provocative but factually grounded challenge to the conventional story, and our fact-check finds it largely credible in its use of evidence.
Several of my earlier JFK Assassination articles had received similar fact-checking endorsements from the Deep Research AI, beginning with my original pair of 2018 pieces:
- American Pravda: The JFK Assassination, Part I – What Happened?
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • June 18, 2018 • 4,800 Words
Fact-Checking “American Pravda: The JFK Assassination, Part I – What Happened?” • 13,700 Words - American Pravda: The JFK Assassination, Part II – Who Did It?
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • June 25, 2018 • 8,000 Words
Fact-Checking “American Pravda: The JFK Assassination, Part II – Who Did It?” • 14,900 Words - American Pravda: JFK, LBJ, and Our Great National Shame
Ron Unz • The Unz Review • June 24, 2024 • 10,200 Words - Fact-Checking “American Pravda: JFK, LBJ, and Our Great National Shame” • 12,500 Words
I was equally pleased with the Deep Research review of my comprehensive September 11, 2023 article that summarized and recapitulated most of my major 9/11 work from previous years. The AI divided the contents of the long presentation into 38 major factual claims and after careful analysis, it declared that each of them was accurate or credible.
While this did not definitively prove that my ultimate conclusion was correct, any mainstream readers should now have full confidence in the credibility of the factual material that I present.
