Author: Grant Smith

In 1953 the United States and United Kingdom overthrew the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. The catalyst was the Iranian government’s decision to exert more sovereign control over the extraction, export and revenues from its domestic energy industry, which British Petroleum and the UK opposed.

The dictatorial rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi featured massive embezzlement, graft, corruption and repression. Brutal SAVAK crackdowns on popular dissent were aided and abetted by Israeli intelligence operatives that flooded into the regime. Yaakov Nimrodi, a longtime intelligence and military operative and arms merchant, was posted to Tehran in 1955 for 13 years. According to Nimrodi, “When one day we shall be permitted to talk about all that we have done in Iran, you will be horrified…It is beyond your imagination.”

Continue reading “Israel and Its US Lobby Finally Achieve a Long-Term Objective: Direct US-Iranian Military Conflict”

Israel lobby graft and corruption inside Virginia’s state government is rampant. Could it happen to your state?

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The Israel Lobby Enters State Government chronicles the formation, rise and secret activities of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB). While other books have focused on the Israel lobby’s influence over the federal government and U.S. foreign policy, there has been little research on Israel lobbying at the state level. Using sensitive documents acquired under Virginia’s sunshine law, this book argues that in Virginia the Israel lobby is no longer on the outside, but has now entered state government. The Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB) is presently the only state government entity in the U.S. focused entirely on bringing corporations in from a single foreign country. The book explores how millions in taxpayer and other state funds are quietly being diverted from multiple sources to establish profitable Israeli companies in Virginia. The corporations are involved in military contracting, food and beverage manufacturing, energy generation, waste management and aquaculture. The author analyzes how VIAB projects displace workers and put home-grown market leaders out of business. By unmasking Israeli businesses launching operations that VIAB protects under code-names and opaque shell companies to secretly transact business in Virginia, the book exposes the reason behind some of the secrecy – their extensive business dealings in territory illegally occupied by Israel.

Continue reading “Free E-Book: The Israel Lobby Enters State Government”

On June 25-26, Jared Kushner orchestrated the “Peace to Prosperity” economic workshop in Bahrain. Kushner is President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and his senior adviser on ­negotiating a Middle East peace. The White House plan closely follows a strategy proposed by the late Israeli President Shimon Peres. Peres assumed integration of the Middle East through widescale economic development would induce all parties to successfully tackle more difficult final status ­issues of borders, territory and refugees at a later time.

Palestinian government officials have broken off contact with the Trump administration since its December 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They did not attend the conference, but some Palestinian businesspeople did.

While the “Peace to Prosperity” plan mentions the West Bank and Gaza, it makes no reference to Jerusalem. The ­financing for “Peace to Prosperity” is extremely speculative with no firm guarantees that any funding would materialize even if the Palestinians accepted.

Continue reading “Poll: Sixty-Eight Percent of Americans Would Reject Trump’s Mideast ‘Deal of the Century’”

Archived video of The Israel Lobby and American Policy Conference held March 22, 2019. Co-sponsored by the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

On January 17, the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep) filed a 59-page brief (PDF HTML) in a lawsuit demanding release of a series of secret presidential letters promising not to force Israel to sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) or publicly discuss Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

The brief contextualizes a formerly top-secret 1969 cross-agency study about what U.S. policy toward Israel’s nuclear weapons should be. Unanimous consensus between the Departments of Defense, State and intelligence community was that Israel should be compelled to sign the NPT in order to be allowed to purchase conventional U.S. military weapons. Government agencies correctly believed that if Israel was allowed to possess nuclear weapons there would never be peace in the Middle East. National security adviser Henry Kissinger also grudgingly revealed intelligence in the summary that Israelis had stolen U.S. government nuclear material to build their arsenal atomic weapons. (1969 NSC papers on the Israeli nuclear weapons program filed as Exhibit A PDF)

Continue reading “IRmep Lawsuit: US Nuclear ‘Policy Substitution’ for Israel Undermines NPT, AECA and Bilks US Taxpayers”

The Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, IRmep announces a lawsuit has been filed against the National Archives and Records Administration demanding immediate release of presidential letters held by the George W. Bush and William J. Clinton presidential libraries.

The New Yorker in June reported Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all issued letters at the beginning of their terms promising never to pressure the Israeli government into signing the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) or publicly discuss Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

IRmep believes the government of Israel sought the guarantees in order to preempt Arms Export Control Act AECA limitations on U.S. aid to foreign countries with clandestine nuclear weapons programs.

Continue reading “IRmep Sues NARA for Secret Clinton and Bush Nuclear Pledges to Israel”