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  • The Reckoning - Monica Witt - A Traitor's Love Poem to Iran and More

    The Reckoning - Monica Witt - A Traitor's Love Poem to Iran and More
    2026/06/02
    Hello from Jihad and the World – a podcast that explores the intersection of Western and Islamic cultures. The author is Mark Silinsky of Kensington Security Consulting, and today’s episode will examine the strange case of Monica Witt – from all-American girl to a traitor for Iran. Here is an update to a podcast I made a few months ago. . So, an all-American girl joins the Air Force, becomes an intelligence analyst, learns Persian, and defects to Iran. It doesn’t happen often. Generally, defections go the other way, from autocracy to freedom. There are, of course, exceptions. Kim Philby and the other Cambridge spies skedaddled to Moscow when their cover was blown. A few Americans hightailed it to Cuba. But this was rare. Rarer still was defecting to Iran. Some Iranians who lived in the West for a while returned to Iran. Maybe they have very aged parents, saw business opportunities, or were seized by religious conviction. But they were not defectors. However one was, and her name is Monica Elfriede Witt. Witt was born in Texas, raised in Florida, served competently in the Air Force, earned an advanced degree at a top university, and then she defected. She claimed to use her intelligence background, knowledge of tradecraft, and personnel to support a higher purpose—serving the Islamic Republic of Iran. She was indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to deliver national defense information to the Iranian government; prosecutors say Witt provided highly classified secrets to Iranian intelligence and helped them target operations after she defected to Tehran. She remains at large, with a $200,000 bounty from the U.S. Department of Justice. So, What Happened? Well, she didn’t like it in the Air Force. Years after her service and speaking on Iran's Press TV, Witt criticized a "boy's club atmosphere" and widespread sexual harassment that she claimed was systemic in the U.S. military. In June 2008, she left the Air Force and earned a degree from the University of Maryland. With her security clearance and bachelor’s degree, she was well-positioned to work for national security contractors, a role she held for several years. From November 2008 to August 2010, she worked as a Middle East Desk Officer in Virginia. She later worked for a nonprofit organization that connected Middle Eastern students with Fulbright scholarships. She enrolled at George Washington University and partially paid her tuition through an Iraq Fulbright scholarship. You think she would be happy, but she wasn’t. In choppy English, she published an article in the university’s International Affairs Review that was very critical of the United States. . She, like many other university students, was openly critical of the United States, and at first her anti-American rhetoric was indistinguishable from that of other graduate students. Many Middle East studies departments have been highly hostile to the policies of successive administrations. They are also well-financed by Middle Eastern states. But the key here is that she began to show signs of disloyalty to the United States, and these signs were noted but not reported. Something similar happened with an Army psychiatrist, Major Nidal Hasan. He began to turn away from his country and embrace radical Islam. He unleashed his fury on his fellow American soldiers as they were preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. On a rampage, he shot at anything that moved, killing 14 and wounding and crippling others. It is vital to note that both Hasan and Witt were ostentatiously disdainful of America, and their fellow students were concerned. But they were also worried about being tarred as a bigot or Islamophobic. Referring to Monica Witt, a fellow student at George Washington, later recalled, 'There weren't warning signs in terms of 'go to authorities' warning signs.' One student recalled that “everyone just kind of sat and watched” as Witt expressed strong opposition to American foreign policy in class. No one, it seems, pushed back with even a limited defense of America. According to some accounts, Witt was haunted by what she claimed were American war crimes in the Middle East. A classmate recalled that she said she had difficulty sleeping and reconciling her participation in the war effort. Witt would mention drone strikes, extrajudicial killings, and atrocities against children, all of which she claimed her colleagues in the military would brag about. She appeared distressed by what she called ‘gross incompetence’ by her superiors. Well, they were certainly not competent enough to catch on to her. And I am very dubious about her alleged war crimes. The Hollywood Conferences 2012 and 2013 Her journey toward becoming an agent for the Iranian government took a significant step in 2012, when she ...
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    23 分
  • The Reckoning - Iran, America, Israel and War - Crossroad of Hate - Episode Five

    The Reckoning - Iran, America, Israel and War - Crossroad of Hate - Episode Five
    2026/06/01
    Hello and welcome to The Reckoning – Iran, Israel, America, and War. This podcast explores the relationships among these countries and the events that led to war in 2026. Crossroads of Hate is a five-part series examining Western influences on Iranian anti-Semitic propaganda. This has been part of Iran’s information warfare against both Israel and the United States. The author is Mark Silinsky. This is the fifth and final episode. Beyond Holocaust Denial - Anti-Semitic Themes Holocaust deniers in Iran claim that Jews manipulate international relations so subtly and successfully that very few people are aware of their betrayal. M’bala M’bala, in one of his frequent Iranian television appearances, stated that most slave traders were Jews. Further, "They have organized all the wars and organized all the disorders on this planet." Robert Faurisson attributed many of the world's difficulties to Jewish control. "Whatever is said, there would be no Syrian war without Zionism, no 'war on terror,' no Suez crisis, no Chechnian bombings in Russia. We can go further; there would be no Tea Party of warmongers and extremists in the U.S. without the Zionist money behind them." Though David Irving is not as openly antisemitic as others, he implicitly put the onus on Jews for their misfortune. "They (Jews) should ask themselves the question, 'Why have they been so hated for 3,000 years that there has been pogrom after pogrom in country after country?' and it's the one question they seem to be very shy of?" Irving said. Keven Barrett promotes a wide range of all-encompassing Jewish conspiracy theories. In May 2020, he explained on Press T.V. that Germany designated Hizbullah a terrorist organization because Germany is under "Israeli occupation." According to Barrett, so is Washington. He claimed that Israeli operatives filmed President Trump and other senior Americans having sex with children. He also castigated Arab leaders as corrupt elites who "steal the money and the resources of their countries and hand them over to their Zionist banker-masters who rule the West and grovel before the feet of their colonialist overlords." Other Europeans receive accolades from Iranian leaders. Iranian cartoonists have borrowed grotesque cartoon imagery from earlier epochs and distant continents. Descheemaeker is one of many cartoonists critical of Jews and Israel, and there are many entrants around the world competing in Iran’s cartoons contests. Antisemitic cartoons proliferate in many other countries around the world, including the United States. In April 2019, the New York Times published a caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu serving as a guide dog wearing a Star of David and leading President Donald Trump, who is wearing a skullcap. Responses Some European leaders, such as Jeremy Corbyn, have been equivocal about Iran’s Holocaust denial. Others, such as German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, have loudly condemned Iranian Holocaust Denial. In 2009, he said of then-president Ahmadinejad, “With his intolerable tirades, he is a disgrace to his country.” Prominent Western intellectuals have also been outspokenly critical of Iranian antisemitism and of Europeans who are passive to it. Many have tread carefully after Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for mocking Mohammed. But some have been vocal. Plucky and glamorous Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci interviewed Khomeini in the first year of the revolution. When Khomeini suggested, "If you do not like Islamic dress, you’re not obliged to wear it . . ." she responded by saying, "I’m going to take off this stupid, medieval rag right now” and bolted the interview. Wracked by cancer at the end of her life, she declared her disgust “with the antisemitism of many Italians, of many Europeans” and “ashamed of this shame that dishonors my country and Europe.” Like Fallaci, Christopher Hitchens made an intellectual journey away from the left-wing politics of his early adulthood. An atheist born to a non-practicing Jewish mother, he became a strident critic of political Islam. He was not a friend of Israel, but he spoke loudly against Iran’s regime and its hatred of his coreligionists. Douglas Murray, a gay British conservative gadfly, mocked Iran’s antisemitic notions, particularly the claim that Zionists try to control the world by spreading homosexuality. Murray cackled, “How can you dominate the world through gays?’ Summary Western anti-Semitic tropes flourish in Iran's state-owned media and among the academic, religious, and cultural elite. On Iranian television, in radio broadcasts and newspapers, and in college classrooms, screeds against Jews and Israel pour forth. These lurid canards include the belief that Jews destroy ...
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    7 分
  • The Reckoning - Iran, America, Israel and War - Crossroads of Hate - Episode Four

    The Reckoning - Iran, America, Israel and War - Crossroads of Hate - Episode Four
    2026/05/24
    Hello and welcome to The Reckoning – Iran, Israel, America, and War. This podcast explores the relationships among these countries and the events that led to war in 2026. Crossroads of Hate is a five-part series examining Western influences on Iranian anti-Semitic propaganda. This has been part of Iran’s information warfare against both Israel and the United States. The author is Mark Silinsky. This is the fourth of five podcasts on this subject. In this podcast, we look at some prized anti-Semites who are friends of Iran. Robert Faurisson Born in 1929 in Surrey, England, to a Scottish mother and a French father, Robert Faurisson became a literature professor and a prominent Holocaust denier. Le Monde published his article, The Problem of the Gas Chambers, or the Rumor of Auschwitz, in 1978, though the newspaper later expressed regret for doing so. Linguist Noam Chomsky promoted one of his books, which boosted his prestige and shielded him from charges of antisemitism. Chomsky called Faurisson "a voice of conscience against injustice." He served as a professor of literature at the University of Lyon but was dismissed in 1990 when the French parliament voted to criminalize Holocaust denial. He sued to have his tenure restored, but he lost that case, as well as a 40-year legal battle with the French newspaper Le Monde. In that case, a Paris Court of Appeal called Faurisson a "professional liar," a "falsifier," and a "fabricator of history." Holocaust survivors also delivered broadsides against him. When Faurisson emphasized the scant number of photographs of Nazi gas chambers, an Auschwitz survivor snickered at him, saying she was sorry she had forgotten to bring her camera to the camp. In 1980, he told a French radio station that the "lie" of the Holocaust "opened the way to a gigantic political and financial fraud of which the principal beneficiaries are the State of Israel and International Zionism, and the principal victims the German and the entire Palestinian people." In 2012, Iran's then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad awarded Faurisson a prize for his "courage, resistance, and fighting spirit" in contesting the Holocaust. Until his death, Faurisson repeated the refrain that Nazis and Jews conspired to create Israel. "The Nazis never said that the Jews should be annihilated. Such a thing never happened. Hitler never gave an order to massacre the Jews merely because they were Jews." David Irving David Irving is one of the most prominent Holocaust deniers in the world. Many other deniers have offered little original, well-written commentary based on extensive research. But Irving has long been a public speaker and was initially praised by mainstream historians for obtaining primary sources unavailable to other historians. In 1977, he published Hitler's War, which earned some positive reviews from esteemed historians. However, in that book and subsequent manuscripts, he argued that there is no evidence linking Hitler to the gas chambers. He later moved to outright Holocaust denial, dismissing claims that gas chambers existed at Auschwitz. As his reputation collapsed outside Holocaust-denier circles, his bitterness toward his critics grew, and most of his historical commentary lost its remaining credibility. University students shouted him down at public speaking venues, and Jewish advocacy groups campaigned against his speaking tours. He was imprisoned in Austria for Holocaust denial and could not attend Holocaust conferences in Iran that had invited him to speak. In his stead, he sent a London-based associate. In 2016, the unsuccessful 1996 libel trial of historian Deborah Lipstadt was adapted into a film. In the film, the presiding judge admonished, "Irving was motivated by a desire to present events in a manner consistent with his own ideological beliefs, even if that involved distortion and manipulation of historical evidence." David Irving lost the case. In response, the Iranian paper Tehran Times portrayed Irving as a victim and hero who gallantly lost his battle for freedom and truth. The Times opined, "One of the biggest frauds of the outgoing century which has dragged into the new millennium is the story of the Holocaust made up by the Zionists to blackmail the West." Kevin Barrett Keven Barrett is an American who frequently appears on Iran's Press TV. Barrett taught at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he earned a doctorate. Barrett has repeatedly questioned the Nazi German murder of six million Jews. He brazenly proclaims on his website, "Today is as good a day as any to admit; I am holocaust (sic) denier . . . And I deny that the German murders of Gypsies, Slavs, handicapped people, communists, Jews, and others during World War II constitute a holocaust...
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    8 分
  • The Reckoning - Iran, America, Israel and War - Crossroads of Hate - Episode Three

    The Reckoning - Iran, America, Israel and War - Crossroads of Hate - Episode Three
    2026/05/20
    Hello and welcome to The Reckoning – Iran, Israel, America, and War. This podcast explores the relationships among these countries and the events that led to war in 2026. Crossroads of Hate is a five-part series examining Western influences on Iranian anti-Semitic propaganda. This has been part of Iran’s information warfare against both Israel and the United States. The author is Mark Silinsky. This is the third of five podcasts on this subject. In this podcast, we begin with the pervasive theme of Holocaust denial. Holocaust Denial For years, the Iranian regime has used Holocaust denial to undermine the legitimacy of Israel’s existence. Ahmadinejad said that questioning the Holocaust’s truth is “taboo," which he offered as evidence that Jews conspire to conceal the truth. This is often echoed by the supreme leader. For decades, Khamenei has argued that the Holocaust was a lie crafted to validate the state of Israel. Many Iranians and some European academics argue that Jews partnered with Germans to justify the usurpation of Palestine. Iran condemns international memorial observances of the Holocaust and the respect accorded to distinguished survivors. Iranian diplomats formally protested the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Eli Wiesel, a distinguished man of letters. He became a Nobel laureate in 1986 for “being a messenger to mankind: his message is one of peace, atonement and dignity." The Holocaust is a sensitive issue in Europe, and several states have criminalized Holocaust denial for fear that it resuscitates National Socialism and cleanses Germany of the crimes of the Third Reich. Nonetheless, it thrives in certain circles. There is a broad-based, right-wing European Holocaust denial that denies the uniqueness of the genocide against Jews. Some Holocaust denial legal cases have been sensational, such as the libel suit between historian David Irving, a Holocaust denier, and his critic Deborah Lipstadt. Irving’s books are periodically displayed in glass cabinets at exhibits in Iran, and his blog and books are cited by Iranian public intellectuals. The authenticity and legacy of Anne Frank are frequent targets of Iranian-endorsed Holocaust deniers, such as Robert Faurisson, who attacked her diary as a forgery. Iranian media regularly promote Holocaust denial and interview the world's most renowned deniers. Ahmadinejad repeatedly asserted that the carnage of the concentration camps has been exaggerated to the point of being a myth. Leading Iranian journalists make the same claim. As with other Holocaust deniers, some Iranian intellectuals argue that Jewish bloodshed was no greater than that suffered by Germans and Japanese. One Iranian observer claimed, "We have Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and the city of Larson (sic) in Germany.” Some American professors deny the Holocaust, but not many. One who has publicly sided with the Iranian regime is Arthur Butz, an engineering professor at Northwestern University, who has been interviewed by Tehran Times and Mehr. About President Ahmadinejad, he wrote, "I congratulate him on becoming the first head of state to speak out clearly on these issues and regret only that it was not a Western head of state.” A leading outlet for Iranian Holocaust denial is Tehran’s Kayhan newspaper and its elderly helmsman. Appointed directly by the supreme leader, he also directs the Kayhan Institute. Hossein Sariatmadari promotes European Holocaust deniers and Iranians such as Hassan Karbalaei, a university professor who writes for Fars and Tasnim news agencies. Shariatmadari draws on Koranic themes to support Holocaust denial and partners with the Young Journalists Club to promote this theme among young Iranians. Iranian Holocaust denial surged after the revolution and was advanced further by Ahmadinejad. He organized several international conferences and invited eminent Holocaust deniers to become regular guests on English-language Iranian television stations, notably Press TV. Israel as a Satanic State Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei repeatedly denounces Israel’s existence. On Quds Day in 2020, he called the creation of Israel the greatest crime in recent history. He said that the "heretical doctrine" of Zionism had been invented by England and by the "Jewish masters of gold." His associates said similar things. A narrator on Iranian television claimed that Israel prevented children from playing while bombing hospitals and killing children. Israel created COVID. Khamenei endorsed the Nazi term for eliminating European Jewry – the Final Solution – and tweets often about the physical destruction of Israel. In popular culture, the anti-Israel movie Saturday Hunter teems with ominous motifs. In the film, a boy is brainwashed by his rabbi grandfather into becoming a psychopathic killer of Palestinian children. ...
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    12 分
  • The Reckoning - Iran, America, Israel and War - Crossroads of Hate - Episode Two

    The Reckoning - Iran, America, Israel and War - Crossroads of Hate - Episode Two
    2026/05/12
    Hello and welcome to The Reckoning – Iran, Israel, America, and War. This podcast explores the relationships among these countries and the events that led to war in 2026. Crossroads of Hate is a five-part series that examines Western influences on Iranian anti-Semitic propaganda. This has been part of Iran’s information warfare against both Israel and the United States. The author is Mark Silinsky. This is the second episode in the series. It begins by examining the most notorious and enduring hoax in the history of anti-Semitism and the most targeted Jewish family. From there, it turns to blood libel and jinns. Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Rothschilds The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is among the most notorious and enduring hoaxes in history. In turn-of-the-century Russia, the Tsar’s intelligence service published an account of an alleged global Jewish conspiracy. According to The Protocols, Jews convened an extraordinary congress in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897 to plan for global domination. Its first print run appeared in Paris in the early twentieth century, and it became a sensation. The Protocols were republished after World War I and again during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Henry Ford published parts of it as The International Jew in a newspaper he controlled in Michigan. The Nazi Party's philosopher, Alfred Rosenberg, quoted passages from The Protocols in his writings. In 1934, Hitler made The Protocols required reading in German schools. The Protocols' enduring power was evident in 1993, when the Russian antisemitic newspaper Pamyat was embroiled in a libel suit over the text's validity. Though much of the Protocols reads like a penny-dreadful Victorian-era novel, it perpetuated anti-Semitic stereotypes of the era. It has been translated into all major European languages, several Asian languages, Arabic, and Persian. Ayatollah Khomeini, Hitler, Sayyid Qutb, and Yassir Arafat quoted liberally from the Protocols. Iranian leaders, professors, and cultural critics still do. Iranian film critic Majed Shah Huseini argued that the Protocols help explain plots in Jewish-made Hollywood movies. The Persian edition of the Protocols includes an introduction tailored to the Iranian reader. Iran continues to promote the Protocols abroad. It markets the Protocols at international book fairs, such as the Zagreb International Book Exhibition, and also distributes the book in South America. The Jewish obsession with money is an ancient Western trope, particularly the saga of the Rothschild family. They were the most reviled and lampooned Jewish family on any continent. Conservative antisemites saw them as undermining Christian values and authentic royalty, while leftists condemned them for exploiting the working class. The Nazis made a movie, The Rothschilds, which was a commercial success. Although the Rothschilds are no longer the world's wealthiest family, they remain targets of derision in the Middle East and Europe. Iranian international affairs expert Alireza Mehrabi explained on Iranian television that the "headmasters of Wall Street are a few Zionist Jews who are descendants of the Rothschild family." Iranian university lecturer Ali-Reza Karimi claims the Rothschilds plunder the world’s wealth to give their family and Jews power. Some Iranians argue that the Rothschilds and other Jews organized the communist takeover of Russia for their own financial gain. Finally, many Iranians claim that the Rothschilds’ ill-gotten fortunes planted the seeds of a Jewish state in Palestine. Blood Libel Another hoary theme shared by European and Iranian antisemites is blood libel. In 1144, an unknown assailant murdered a twelve-year-old boy named William in Norwich. Without evidence, William's uncle accused the Jews of the killing. Ten years later, this "blood libel" led to the expulsion of Jewish communities across much of Europe. The charge was revived in Nazi Germany. The antisemitic publication Der Stürmer published an illustration of a German boy lying on a table, surrounded by Jews with long beards and earlocks, who were sucking his blood through long tubes. In 2020, Berlin-based journalist Ahmad Al-Hawas, the editor-in-chief of resalapost.com, claimed that Jews rejoice when they slaughter babies and dine on matzos soaked in their blood. Although blood libel is no longer a widespread theme in Europe, it remains pervasive in Iran. In 2012, Fars published an article titled "The Pilgrimage in Judaism." The article claims that Jews murder children to mix non-Jewish blood into matzah. This claim also appears on television. Jews also use Gentiles' body parts for other ritual purposes. Some Iranian-produced commentaries specify the different uses of body parts. The prominent Iranian website Alef published an article titled "Who Are Human History's Most ...
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    11 分
  • The Reckoning Iran, America, Israel, and War - Crossroad of Hate - Episode One

    The Reckoning Iran, America, Israel, and War - Crossroad of Hate - Episode One
    2026/05/05
    Hello and welcome to The Reckoning – Iran, Israel, America, and War. This podcast explores the relationships among these countries and the events that led to war in 2026. Crossroads of Hate is a five-part series that examines Western influences on Iranian anti-Semitic propaganda. This has been part of Iran’s information warfare against both Israel and the United States. The author is Mark Silinsky. This is the first episode, and it gives the background of Iranian information operations against Israel and Jews. Recurring antisemitic tropes from around the world flow into Iran today. Long-suppressed European antisemitism has resurfaced, though not to its former homicidal levels. Over the centuries, global antisemitism has fluctuated wildly. In the Christian and Islamic worlds, there were periods of general indifference toward Jews. However, eras of openness were punctuated by spasms of mass murder, most notoriously during the Crusades, the Black Death, and the Holocaust. In Europe and the Greater Middle East, kings could expel Jewish communities from their homes with little warning. Some would flee with few possessions, hoping to rebuild their lives in their new homes. Expulsions recurred in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s and again in Iran in the 1980s. Antisemitism is malleable and tapers to indigenous cultures. After the revolution, Iran's leaders promoted antisemitic themes that would have been considered vulgar by educated Iranians earlier in the twentieth century. Iranian leaders blended elements of Western and Koranic antisemitism. Logical inconsistency often does not impede marketing mutually contradictory antisemitic concepts. Jews could be simultaneously radical and reactionary, communist and capitalist, cosmopolitan and clannish. Jean-Paul Sartre argued that the antisemite does not feel compelled to act logically consistent in painting the Jew. A familiar, centuries-old image in Europe and the Middle East is that of the wandering Jew, portrayed as a stateless, parasitic vagabond. In this view, the Jew belonged to no nation and recognized no law. In European fiction, two dominant Jewish characters were Fagin, who ran a criminal syndicate of child pickpockets, and Shylock, a notorious usurer. Mutations of this typecast are often echoed in Iran today by the ayatollahs’ penmen. Other stereotypes cast Jews as murderers. In Europe and the greater Middle East, villagers used the idea of Jewish criminality to explain mysteries or catastrophes, such as children disappearing or the sudden onset of pandemic diseases. With Iran's purge of liberalism in the 1980s came a renaissance of earlier Nazi-crafted antisemitism. These early purveyors were Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, an intimate of Khomeini, and Ahmad Fardid. After the revolution, Fardid, sometimes called the Iranian Heidegger, taught university courses on Nazi theory and racial hygiene and promoted Holocaust denial. Mohammad-Ali Ramin, an adviser to Ahmadinejad, was an ardent antisemite associated with neo-Nazis while living in Germany. He drove Nazi antisemitic iconography and passionate Holocaust denial in the Islamic Republic. Several antisemitic themes in Iran intersect with Western antisemitism. These beliefs maintain that Jews destroy civilizations, grasp for control of the world's political decision-making, manipulate international financial flows, exist as less-than-human animals, murder non-Jews to use their blood for ritualistic purposes, fabricate claims of the Holocaust to enrich themselves and Israel, pollute indigenous culture, and start wars for their pleasure and benefit. Many of these themes overlap and embellish each other. For example, an Iranian broadcast might claim the Rothchilds pay Israeli soldiers to remove Palestinian children's eyes to sell them on the international market. This example draws a spin on blood libel, national destruction, ill-gotten financial profit, and inhumanity. Bernard Lewis referred to this trend of recycling of European stories as "Islamization of antisemitism." Jews are Destroyers of Nations and Controllers of the World Some Iranian and European theologians and public intellectuals accuse Jews of destroying nations. In Europe, this view crystallized during the age of nationalism in the nineteenth century. European antisemites argued that Jews undermine social hierarchy, order, authority, and tradition. Richard Wagner, in Judaism in Music, argued that Jews polluted German art. Iranian media sometimes depict Jews as clever cultural polluters. This was a common theme in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, fueled by European nationalism. British philosopher Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Heinrich von Treitschke, composer Richard Wagner, and many public intellectuals decried the inclusion of Jews in their countries' national arts scene. In the early Third Reich, Minister of ...
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    10 分
  • The Reckoning - Iran, America, Israel, and War - A Tale of Two Persians

    The Reckoning - Iran, America, Israel, and War - A Tale of Two Persians
    2026/04/20
    Hello and welcome to The Reckoning - Iran, America, Israel, and War. Its author is Mark Silinsky, president of Kensington Security Consulting. This episode is titled "A Tale of Two Persians." It drills into the story of a very fashionable, if emotionally unstable, Iranian woman who is being defenestrated by U.S. immigration officials. She and her daughter have clearly worn out their welcome in the United States. It also examines the confusing case of a cancer researcher linked by blood to the Laranjani clan in Iran. Both women hail from Iranian revolutionary royalty. Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, 47, and her 25-year-old daughter, Sarinasadat Hosseiny, have been in the news a lot lately. This scantily dressed pair is quite the fashion plates in Los Angeles. The two were issued deportation notices and are currently detained by ICE. So, what gives? In particular, who is Mom - Hamideh Soleimani Afshar? Why is she being deported? This is the answer offered by Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “Until recently, Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter were green card holders living lavishly in the United States. Afshar is the niece of the deceased Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani. She is also an outspoken supporter of the Iranian regime who celebrated attacks on Americans and referred to our country as the "Great Satan." This week, I terminated both Afshar and her daughter's legal status, and they are now in ICE custody, pending removal from the United States. The Trump Administration will not allow our country to become a home for foreign nationals who support anti-American terrorist regimes.” How did all this happen? Afshar entered the U.S. on a tourist visa in June 2015, was granted asylum in 2019, and obtained her green card in 2021. On the surface, she appeared to be a credible candidate. But when the surface was scratched, many problems emerged. In a 2025 naturalization application, Afshar disclosed that she had visited Iran four times since receiving her green card. “Her trips to Iran illustrate that her asylum claims were fraudulent,” a DHS official said. She also has an Iranian revolutionary pedigree. She is the niece of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's expeditionary force. Soleimani, known as “supermani,” was killed in a deadly 2020 U.S. airstrike. This was not necessarily disqualifying. But her shrill anti-American rhetoric seems to echo that of her uncle and the regime he fought for. According to the State Department, Soleimani Afshar, a prolific social media user, referred to the US as the “Great Satan” and celebrated attacks on US soldiers in the Middle East. The New York Post reported that Soleimani Afshar published messages of support for the Iranian regime, including since the ongoing war that started in February, and welcomed the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader to take over from his father, who was killed on the first day of the US-Israel campaign. Then there is her temper. She is also hot-headed and prone to emotional outbursts. After she was incarcerated in a federal deportation center, she reached out to an old beau, who refused to take her call. He claimed she abused and kicked him. In his words, “I don’t want anything to do with her. She scares me. I was so afraid of her. She knows how to make herself seem like an angel, and you feel like the devil. I wanted someone to take her away – now it’s happened.” Perhaps her impulsivity stems from unresolved issues with her father, as this old boyfriend speculated. “She takes advantage of every man she knows. She was saying ‘I love you,’ but I was so afraid. She said I reminded her of her dad. All these years, I was suffering. I wanted to have my life back.” And be careful with her hair. Her LA hairdresser obtained a five-year restraining order against her, claiming she became unhinged and stalked him at his home. “Thank God,” he said, exasperated, upon hearing of her ice arrest. “That’s good. She’s a stalker.” Others who do not know her personally resent her perceived hypocrisy. She gives full-throated support to the Revolutionary regime, which would have little time for her shopping sprees on Rodeo Drive. Others, particularly Iranians who have built new homes in the United States, are part of Los Angeles’s thriving Iranian-American community, most of which views the Revolutionary regime as a toxic force. They cannot understand her cheerleading for a regime that might toss acid in her face if she wore the pink poodle dress she displays on her TikTok account. A neighbor said, “She also drove a black Tesla, which on Saturday was stuffed with luxury goods, including a Miss Dior bag, some Hermes cushions, a Sephora makeup bag, and another gray leather handbag in the front seat.” What do others think about the deportation? The Persian princess did not receive much support online. One Internet observer cautions, “Enter kooky, leftist ...
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    8 分
  • The Reckoning - Iran, America, Israel, and War

    The Reckoning - Iran, America, Israel, and War
    2026/04/20
    Hello from The Reckoning - Hamas, Israel, and America. The author is Mark Silinsky of Kensington Security Consulting, which provides education on national security. Today’s episode is called “Hizballah - When the Beepers Went Boom!” On September 17 2024, explosions rocked Lebanon and Syria. These were not rockets launched from aircraft or shells from naval ships or ground-based artillery. Instead, they seemed to come from hand-held pagers, but witnesses and observers were not sure. Most of the explosions took place in Beirut, a stronghold for Hizbollah. Soon, the connection between the pager and Hizbollah was clear. But what on earth was happening? Why did the beeps go bang? For many younger listeners, pagers are largely artifacts of the past. They belong to yesterday’s technology. Maybe their parents used them early in their careers. They appear in old TV shows from the 1980s and 1990s, when women had poofy hair, and men wore suspenders at the office. But today’s generation is the cell phone generation. So, what exactly are pagers? Pagers are handheld communication devices that display short text messages relayed over telephone lines by a central operator. They operate on radio waves rather than the Internet. This makes them harder to monitor, which, in turn, makes them popular with terrorist groups, including Hizbollah. Hizbollah turned to pagers after its leadership determined that cellphones were being monitored by Israeli intelligence. Israeli intelligence got wind of this intended switch in communications and saw it as an opportunity. It crafted an intelligence operation like no other and one likely to make a mark in the history of intelligence operations, because it is one hell of a story! And here it is. When Israelis heard about the planned bulk purchase of pagers, intelligence got to work. Technicians designed pagers with a battery that concealed a small but potent charge of plastic explosive and a one-of-a-kind, largely undetectable detonator. The Israeli pseudo-pager was significantly larger than other pagers to accommodate the mini-bomb. They crafted a marketing campaign to incite would-be Hizballah purchasers. Sure, the pager was bulkier, but that was because it was combat-tough – a real war pager. They dressed up the ads with military paraphernalia. But who would sell these pagers? Hizballah would not buy an Israeli pager or one connected to Israel. So Israel invented a company and the pager it claimed to sell. This company was BAC Consulting, ostensibly a Hungary-registered firm that partnered with a Taiwanese company, Gold Apollo. In fact, these were shell companies created by Israeli intelligence. But, BAC Consulting would have to appear credible. Why didn’t it have significant sales? Why haven’t more people heard of it? What is this company, anyway? It is not well-known because it has very few clients. After all, it was military-grade. BAC needed only one client – Hizballah. Hizballah took the bait and bought hundreds. Hizballah bought and distributed the pagers in the summer of 2022. The group’s technicians found nothing suspicious about the new product. Now, Israel would wait and wait for an opportune moment to kill and maim. The moment came when Israel claimed it had thwarted a Hizballah attempt to kill senior Israeli leaders in September 2024. When the Israeli attack struck, it did so like lightning. Hundreds of pagers exploded nearly simultaneously, killing dozens and maiming and disfiguring scores of others. While the largest number of casualties was in Beirut, many people were also wounded in the country's north and south. But, what were the mechanics of the attacks? Israeli intelligence sent a ring to each pager. The recipient then picked up the pager and, usually, saw the message “error.” This was followed by the message “Press OK,” which many did. This detonated the explosive inside the pager, usually killing or seriously injuring the victim. Many lost fingers, which were blown off. Many suffered severe facial scars and blindness because they held the pager close to their face to read the message. The facial scars will remain clearly visible. There was also psychological trauma. Mohammed Awada, 52, and his son were driving when the boy saw a pager explode. Awada said, “My son went crazy and started to scream when he saw the man’s hand flying away from him.” Elsewhere, a young girl, Fatima, had just come from school when she answered her father’s pager. The explosion killed the 9-year-old girl. How reliable are the stories reported by journalists? Some are certainly fabricated or exaggerated. However, local hospitals treated people of all ages. Lebanese government officials and Hezbollah were quick to blame Israel. "After examining all the facts, available data, and information regarding the heinous attack this afternoon, we hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression.” The following day, hundreds of ...
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