You would think, with the new budget of over a trillion they can spare some change of that for death benefits, guess not.

The historical reality is that Iran had a secular, democratic government, led by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh between 1951 and 1953 — but Mossadegh was removed from power in a coup organized and funded by the CIA and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6.

With a handful of exceptions, most mainstream U.S. politicians have little to say about any of this sordid history. In Washington, D.C., Iranian hostility toward the U.S. has long been treated as inexplicable and irrational, while the CIA’s role in the 1953 coup — which set off a chain of events that resulted in the rise of Iran’s ayatollahs and the Islamic Revolution of 1979 — has vanished into a memory hole.

Hosted by Mehdi Hasan (  / mehdirhasan  , "Iran, the Ayatollahs, and the CIA" is the third episode of a six-part Blowback series for The Intercept. Mehdi Hasan will examine key examples of blowback in greater detail and explore how foreign policy decisions by the U.S. and its allies often produce blowback and so-called unintended consequences.

The Intercept is an investigative nonprofit news organization dedicated to producing fearless, adversarial journalism. We believe journalism should bring transparency and accountability to powerful governmental and corporate institutions.

Did you also know that Hamas — which is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement” — would probably not exist today were it not for the Jewish state? That the Israelis helped turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most notorious militant groups? That Hamas is blowback?

Former Israeli official Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat. Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009 that Hamas is “Israel’s creation.” Hamas was the result of this, as Mehdi Hasan explains. First, the Israelis helped build up a militant strain of Palestinian political Islam, in the form of Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood precursors; then, the Israelis switched tack and tried to bomb, besiege, and blockade it out of existence.

Hosted by Mehdi Hasan (  / mehdirhasan  , “How Israel Helped Create Hamas” is the fifth episode of a six-part Blowback series for The Intercept. Throughout this series, Mehdi Hasan examines key examples of blowback in greater detail and explores how foreign policy decisions by the U.S. and its allies often produce blowback and so-called unintended consequences.

The Intercept is an investigative nonprofit news organization dedicated to producing fearless, adversarial journalism. We believe journalism should bring transparency and accountability to powerful governmental and corporate institutions.

I left Oleksandr Turchynov out of the meme. Because he only served as interim president for a few months in 2014 after Yanukovych fled. He didn't spend his brief time in office cutting ribbons for Nazi monuments, as he had his hands entirely full managing crisis in Crimea and the civil war in Donbas. But he certainly wasn't standing in the way of the Nazi trajectory. As soon as he handed power over to Poroshenko, he went straight to work building the Nazi political machinery, like the People's Front party and the sweeping "de-communization" (yes but in it's place came re-nazification) push, that locked that entire Neo-Banderite national historical narrative firmly into place.

While the US has lofty plans to eventually outproduce Russia in terms of the many munitions and launch systems previously prohibited by the INF treaty, it remains to be seen whether or not the US has the ability to put these plans into action and whether or not Russia can continue to meet or exceed US military industrial production in the process. So far, it would appear that the US decision to unilaterally withdraw from its arms control treaties with Russia has backfired.

References:

NEO - How the US Destruction of the INF Treaty Backfired (Aug. 29, 2026):
https://journal-neo.su/2026/08/29/how...
Business Insider - Ukraine says Russia used its upgraded, longer-range 'Iskander-1000' missile in a bombardment of Kyiv (Aug. 27, 2026):
https://archive.ph/Yxruj#selection-15...
NYT - Bush Pulls Out of ABM Treaty; Putin Calls Move a Mistake (2001):
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/in...
USNI - Aegis Ashore Site in Romania Declared Operational (2016):
https://news.usni.org/2016/05/12/aegi...
NATO Allied Air Command - NATO Assumes Command of Aegis Ashore Site in Poland (2024):
https://ac.nato.int/archive/2024/nato...
TWZ - Diagram of Aegis Ashore system:
https://www.twz.com/wp-content/upload...
White House - President Donald J. Trump to Withdraw the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (2019):
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/...
TWZ - U.S. Long-Range Missiles Headed To Germany As Arms Race Escalates (2024):
https://www.twz.com/news-features/u-s...

IBM Plex Mono font for the huge international law win. Yes wall of text of legal and ethical facts of life. Flipping phone to landscape mode recommended.

The web link from 2006 in this post is very important. A plan by the Ukrainian government and local government in Lviv and Kharkov (the twin cities of Banderite Nazism and Neo-Banderite Nazism), under the guise of "human rights" and "victims of communism" to bring back from all over the world the remains of 500 OUN/OUN-B/UPA leaders and officers and officials, to be reburied with full state honors in the most prestigious military graveyard in Kiev. Recently the was altered to rebury them first, then dig the top Nazis up again a second time, and place their coffins for public adoration, in the new National Pantheon megaproject outside Kiev when it is built and opened to the public.

[So, was Trump wrong or right?]

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright rejected allegations that Washington is attempting to confiscate or unlawfully seize Venezuelan crude following a series of long-term energy agreements signed in Caracas.

Addressing journalists at Caracas airport before departing, Wright directly confronted critics accusing the United States of engaging in economic coercion or resource exploitation:
"I've seen those headlines: 'We're stealing Venezuelan oil.' Of course, that's not true at all."

"The oil in Venezuela is indeed owned by the people of Venezuela."

"Private companies are bringing the money to produce the oil, but the benefits, the royalties, and the taxes all go to the government of Venezuela and the people of Venezuela."

"All we're doing is taking an idle, underground asset that isn't doing anything for Venezuelan people and bringing the money, the technology to develop it."

The statements follow formal signing ceremonies led by Wright and acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez. The framework grants American and international energy firms operational access to develop approximately 65 billion barrels of heavy crude—representing nearly 20% of Venezuela's total proven reserves—while Caracas projects up to $209 billion in revenue over 25 years.
Wright emphasized that stabilizing the nation's energy infrastructure requires rehabilitating its electrical grid alongside oil fields.
- Grid Priorities: Wright outlined a five-year plan targeting chronic, nationwide blackout cycles, noting that industrial oil extraction depends entirely on reliable power generation.

- Elections Timeline: Addressing questions regarding political transition, Wright described democratic elections as a structural process requiring electoral and judicial court overhauls.

- Economic Stabilization: U.S. officials maintain that economic stability must precede a national popular vote.

Caracas officials confirmed the energy agreements will supply much-needed capital to restore public utilities and state infrastructure. Critics, however, continue to raise concerns over the governance model and long-term control of the nation's primary economic asset.