SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
united states
Unrest in Iran, Plausible Deniability, and the Ghosts of 1953
In a world where information warfare blurs fact and narrative, we must resist the temptation to treat capability as conspiracy. But we must also resist the delusion that the absence of evidence today means an absence of action.
Dec 31, 2025
Speculation about covert operations tends to rise with geopolitical heat, and few places are as historically charged as Iran when it comes to foreign interference. The memory of the 1953 CIA-backed coup remains vivid in Tehran’s political consciousness, shaping both internal paranoia and external discourse. In today’s climate of US-Iran hostility—marked by sanctions, nuclear disputes, and regional proxy conflicts—whispers of destabilization efforts inevitably resurface. But plausibility should not be mistaken for proof.
Yet there are ghosts worth heeding…
In 1953, the CIA executed Operation TPAJAX—a covert operation that overthrew Iran’s democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, reinstating the autocratic Shah. This operation was denied, downplayed, and hidden for decades. It wasn’t until 2017—64 years later—that the US government officially declassified key documents from the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series detailing the planning and implementation of the coup. The materials that confirmed America’s role in the 1953 coup were not fully acknowledged through official channels until generations had passed, long after their geopolitical consequences had reshaped the Middle East.
Given that historical precedent, it’s not unreasonable to wonder: If something like that were happening today, would we know?
If the CIA is involved in orchestrating unrest in Iran today, we may not know until 2089.
Currently, Iran is again roiled by protests. Slogans like “Death to the Dictator” echo in the streets. Western headlines frame this as grassroots unrest, and it may well be. But for a country with a long and painful history of foreign interference cloaked in democracy rhetoric, the line between internal dissent and external orchestration is never clean.
From a strategic standpoint, the United States clearly possesses the capacity to conduct covert influence operations. Legal mechanisms for such actions exist under US law, with covert operations authorized by the president and subject to congressional oversight. The intelligence community, with decades of institutional experience, is equipped with modern tools ranging from cyber operations to narrative influence and financial pressure. These capabilities are real. But capacity alone tells us nothing about intent.
Public policy statements from the US government consistently emphasize deterrence and nonproliferation, not regime change. While tensions are undeniable, open endorsement of covert destabilization would carry significant political and legal costs. Congress, the media, and public opinion create substantial friction for any administration considering escalation by clandestine means. Adversarial relationships can foster suspicion, but they do not constitute motive.
Environmental conditions further complicate the picture. Iran, despite internal pressures and unrest, retains a strong security apparatus and hardened counter-intelligence services. Regional dynamics—involving militias, proxies, and overlapping crises—do not create the same permissive environment that existed in the early Cold War. On the contrary, they elevate the risks of blowback and exposure. Modern operations would need to be diffuse, multi domain, and plausibly deniable—relying on soft pressure through economic levers, information warfare, and alliances rather than the heavy-handed political interventions of the past.
And yet, these more nuanced forms of influence are precisely what make attribution difficult. In a world of cyber shadows, targeted sanctions, and disinformation, it’s easy to see ghosts. But serious allegations require serious evidence. Credible investigative reporting, declassified documents, congressional disputes, or allied intelligence consensus are necessary to move the needle from theoretical possibility to actionable suspicion—let alone attribution.
That’s where Dan Kovalik’s The Plot to Attack Iran enters the conversation. Kovalik draws clear lines from historical US interventions—including the CIA's own admission of past regime change—to present-day provocations and misinformation. He details a long history of fabricated threats, from nonexistent Iraqi WMDs to exaggerated fears about Iran’s nuclear program. He argues that current rhetoric and actions—sanctions, assassinations, drone incursions, proxy pressures—form a consistent pattern of provocation meant to destabilize Iran under the guise of security policy.
Kovalik also reminds us that accusations of terrorism, often leveled at Iran, are selectively applied. While Iran is listed as a state sponsor of terrorism, US allies like Saudi Arabia—implicated in exporting Wahhabi extremism—are exempt from such labels. Groups like Hezbollah, which Iran supports, are framed by the US as terroristic, while Kovalik argues they act in regional resistance to Israeli occupation. This asymmetry of language is not just semantic—it builds the ideological scaffolding for war.
Legal oversight, international norms, and the specter of asymmetric retaliation all serve as meaningful deterrents. A misstep in this space could trigger regional escalation, damage US credibility, or backfire diplomatically. These are not trivial constraints. They are built-in brakes against rash or covert adventurism. And yet, none of them prevented the 1953 coup. Nor did they stop covert operations in Iraq, Libya, or Syria. History shows us that legal deterrents and political norms often collapse under the weight of perceived strategic necessity.
Bottom line: While it is analytically sound to say the United States could conduct covert operations against Iran under the right conditions, there is no defensible basis to assert that such actions are underway without evidence. Plausibility is not a claim—it is a lens for understanding risk, not a substitute for proof.
But perhaps the more sobering truth is this: If the CIA is involved in orchestrating unrest in Iran today, we may not know until 2089. Sixty-four years is a long time to wait for the truth. In that gap, entire wars can be fought, nations broken, and histories rewritten. The ghosts of TPAJAX aren’t just historical—they’re prophetic. And Iran, perhaps more than any other nation, knows that ghosts have long memories.
In a world where information warfare blurs fact and narrative, we must resist the temptation to treat capability as conspiracy. But we must also resist the delusion that the absence of evidence today means an absence of action. The stakes—diplomatic, strategic, and human—are far too high for anything less than disciplined analysis and historical awareness.
The past may not repeat, but it whispers—and in Iran, it is whispering loudly.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'The Humanity Cohort': Med School Graduates Offer Hope in Gaza
Israel has waged a systematic campaign to destroy Gaza’s healthcare delivery and to kill or imprison healthcare professionals, but these 168 students persisted.
Dec 29, 2025
On Thursday, December 25, 2025, during Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians, 168 students graduated from medical school, in Gaza. Wearing their white coats, they stood in front of the ruined façade of what was formerly Gaza’s largest hospital, the al-Shifa Medical Complex. As a backdrop, the destroyed building realistically conveys perils the graduates faced while earning their medical degrees. Throughout the last two years of their studies, they risked assassination, injury, arrest, imprisonment, and torture, as well as attacks on their own family members.
Israel has waged a systematic campaign to destroy Gaza’s healthcare delivery and to kill or imprison healthcare professionals. From October of 2023 to October of 2025, The World Health Organization documented 687 Israeli attacks on Gazan healthcare facilities and 211 attacks on ambulances. These attacks killed 985 people. In the same time period, Israel detained over 306 healthcare workers.
Health Care Workers Watch—Palestine, a nongovernmental organization, reports that 95 Palestinian healthcare workers are still in prison, 80 of whom are from Gaza. Prisoners who have been released from detention report that doctors are singled out for particularly brutal treatment.
Among the 80 Gazan healthcare workers who are still detained is the former director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. On December 27, 2025, Dr. Abu Safiya began his second year of imprisonment.
In a better world, in a better future, we can hope that Palestinians graduating from medical school could assemble for an address delivered by Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.
For over a year, prior to his incarceration, the Israeli military had subjected the Kamal Adwan hospital to repeated sieges and attacks. Dr. Abu Safiya and his staff, refusing to desert their patients, managed to increase the number of available beds in the hospital as theirs became one of the few hospitals still operating in northern Gaza.
On October 25, 2024, Israel raided the hospital, bombing its buildings, detaining many patients, and arresting all hospital staff, including Dr. Abu Safiya who was interrogated and released. On that same day, an Israeli drone attacked one of the hospital buildings and killed Dr. Abu Safiya’s 20-year-old son, Ibrahim. Dr. Abu Safiya buried his son on the hospital grounds and still refused to abandon the patients.
“The Israeli army does not know what it wants,” Dr. Abu Safiya told a reporter with the Electronic Intifada. “They detained me for a few hours and interrogated me about whether there were fighters inside the hospital, and demanded that I evacuate the hospital completely, but I refused and assured them that there were only patients inside the hospital. But 57 of the hospital’s medical staff were arrested... So we are suffering from a severe shortage of doctors, especially surgeons. Right now, we only have pediatricians—it is a huge challenge to work under these circumstances. I refused to leave the hospital and sacrifice my patients, so the army punished me by killing my son. I saw him die at the entrance gate—it was a great shock. I found a grave for him near one of the hospital’s walls, so that he could stay close to me.”
On December 27, 2024, when Israeli forces threatened to level the whole facility, Dr. Abu Safiya agreed to leave the hospital which was, by then, largely inoperable. An iconic video shows him, clad in his white coat, walking through the rubble toward two Israeli tanks.
He was held incommunicado, and then taken to the Sde Teiman prison, in the Negev desert, where he was interrogated and beaten before being transferred to the Ofer prison. There, he is held in solitary confinement. Only his lawyer has been allowed to visit him. She expresses rising alarm over his weight loss, inadequate healthcare, and frequent beatings.
Amnesty International says he has been forcibly disappeared and arbitrarily held without charge. Even though no charges have been brought against him, an Israeli court has extended his detention multiple times. On October 16, 2025, Israel’s Be'er Sheva District Court added an additional six months to his detention.
Who are the criminals? Israel and its partner, the United States, egregiously flaunt international law, committing numerous war crimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Dr. Abu Safiya endures daily punishments in return for his courageous dedication to serving victims of war.
In a better world, in a better future, we can hope that Palestinians graduating from medical school could assemble for an address delivered by Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya. Together, they could uphold “the Humanity Cohort,” as the Gazan doctors who graduated in December 2025 call themselves, and safely commemorate the courageous healthcare workers who risked and lost their lives to care for patients during an Israeli genocide that is still ongoing. Confident that healthcare is never a crime, they could cite their fallen colleagues' historic and extraordinary adherence to the United Nation’s core mission, "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Whose Narrative Will Shape the Future of Palestine?
As long as the pro-Palestine narrative lacks the tools to enforce its principles, Israel and its Western backers will see no reason to alter course.
Dec 24, 2025
Three dominant narratives contend for the future of Gaza and occupied Palestine, yet only one is being translated into consequential action: the Israeli narrative of domination and genocide. This singular, violent vision is the only one backed by the brute force of policy and fact.
The first narrative belongs to the Trump administration, largely embraced by the US Western allies. It rests on the self-serving claim that US President Donald Trump personally solved the Middle East crisis, ushering in a peace that has supposedly eluded the region for thousands of years. Figures like Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and US-Israel Ambassador Mike Huckabee are presented as architects of a new regional order.
This narrative is exclusive, domineering, and US-centric. It was exemplified by Trump himself when he declared the Gaza conflict "over" and presented a "peace plan" that strategically avoided any clear commitment to Palestinian statehood. The entire vision is built on transactional diplomacy and a dismissal of international legal consensus, positioning US approval as the sole measure of legitimacy.
The second narrative is that of the Palestinians, supported by Arab nations and much of the Global South. Here, the goal is Palestinian freedom and rights grounded in international law and humanitarian principles.
A lasting peace can only be built on the foundation of justice, not on the military reality established by an aggressor that does not hesitate to employ genocide in the service of its political designs.
This discourse is frequently shaped by statements from top Arab officials. Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, for example, asserted last April that the two-state solution is “the only way to achieve security and stability in this region,” adding a warning: “If we disregard international law... this will open the way for the law of the jungle to prevail.” This narrative continues to insist on international law as central to true regional peace.
The third narrative is Israel’s—and it is the only one backed by concrete, aggressive policy. This vision is written through sustained, systematic violence against civilians, aggressive land seizures, deliberate home demolitions, and explicit government declarations that a Palestinian state will never be permitted. Its actors operate with chilling impunity, rapidly creating irreversible facts on the ground. Crucially, the failure to enforce accountability for this pervasive violence is the primary reason Israel has been able to sustain its devastating genocide in Gaza for two full years.
This narrative is not theoretical; it is articulated through the chilling acts and legislative pushes of the highest-ranking government officials.
On December 8, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir appeared in a Knesset session wearing a noose-shaped pin while pushing for a death penalty bill targeting Palestinian prisoners. The minister stated openly that the noose was "just one of the options" through which they would implement the death penalty, listing “the option of hanging, the electric chair, and... lethal injection.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, meanwhile, announced an allocation of $843 million to expand illegal settlements over the next five years, a massive step toward formal annexation. This unprecedented funding is specifically earmarked to relocate military bases, establish absorption clusters of mobile homes, and create a dedicated land registry to formalize Israeli governmental control over the occupied Palestinian territory.
This policy of territorial expansion is cemented by the ideological head of government, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself made it clear that “there will not be a Palestinian state. It’s very simple: it will not be established,” calling its potential creation “an existential threat to Israel.” This unequivocal rejection confirms that the official Israeli government strategy is outright territorial expansion and the permanent denial of Palestinian self-determination.
None of these Israeli officials shows the slightest interest in Trump’s “peace plan” or in the Palestinian vision of statehood. Netanyahu’s core objective is ensuring that international law is never implemented, that no semblance of Palestinian sovereignty is established, and that Israel can contravene the law at a time and manner of its choosing.
The fact is, these narratives cannot continue to coexist. Only real accountability—through political, legal, and economic pressure—can halt Israel’s advance toward continuing its genocidal campaign, destruction, and punitive legislation. This must include the swift imposition of sanctions on Israel and its top officials, comprehensive arms embargoes against Tel Aviv to end ongoing wars, and fullaccountability at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ).
As long as the pro-Palestine narrative lacks the tools to enforce its principles, Israel and its Western backers will see no reason to alter course. States must replace symbolic gestures and prioritize aggressive, proactive accountability measures. This means moving beyond simple verbal condemnation and applying concrete legal and economic pressure.
Israel is now more isolated than ever, with public opinion rapidly collapsing globally. This isolation must be leveraged by pro-Palestine forces through coordinated, decisive diplomatic action, pushing for a unified global front that demands the enforcement of international law and holding Israel and its many war criminals accountable for their ongoing crimes.
A lasting peace can only be built on the foundation of justice, not on the military reality established by an aggressor that does not hesitate to employ genocide in the service of its political designs. This is the undeniable moral frontier: confronting and dismantling the impunity that allows a state to pursue extermination as a political tool.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular