They operate in the shadows. We’ll never learn their names or hear about their individual accolades and accomplishments. But we see the results of their work daily in the geostrategic quagmire the US and Israel have been dragged into after making the mistake of attacking Iran.

This is the story of how Iran’s intelligence services, once tied at the hip to the CIA and Mossad, became one of the Epstein Coalition’s most effective and terrifying adversaries.

Iran’s intelligence community is a complex web of interlinked agencies with overlapping responsibilities.

Coordinated via the Council for Intelligence Coordination, chaired by the Ministry of Intelligence & Security (MOIS), agencies wield considerable operational autonomy, and are largely subordinated only to the Supreme Leader, who approves senior MOIS appointments, and is commander-in-chief of the armed forces and its intelligence structures.

MOIS handles both domestic and foreign intel ops, rooting out spies, dismantling informant and collaborator networks, foiling domestic terror, sabotage and separatist plots, and spying on and monitoring enemies abroad.

The military has three major intel subdivisions: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Intelligence Organization (IRGC-IO), the Artesh (military) Directorate for Intelligence (J2), and Law Enforcement Command (FARAJA).

IRGC-IO operates a parallel domestic and foreign intelligence service, and works with the IRGC’s Quds Force running clandestine military operations and coordinating with allies abroad. J2 does traditional military intel work (border defense, electronic warfare, monitoring of foreign militaries, counterintelligence). FARAJA controls the national police and is responsible for public order, fighting organized crime and smuggling, and street-level intel gathering.

The Judiciary and Ministry of Defense have their own specialized counterintelligence organizations, tasked with internal vetting, rooting out corruption and preventing foreign espionage inside Iran’s legal and military-industrial institutions, from guarding state secrets to protecting defense supply chains.

Iran’s intelligence apparatus essentially had to rebuild from scratch after the 1979 Revolution, with the Shah-era SAVAK heavily compromised, having been founded with direct operational support, funding and training of the CIA and Mossad in the 1950s.

Purging top-level officials, some of whom managed to flee abroad, revolutionary tribunals tried at least 83 lower-level officers (mainly those involved in the torture, sexual abuse and murder of tens of thousands during the shah’s reign).

Technical, counterespionage and analytical personnel were allowed to stay on, helping the fledgling revolutionary government immensely in crushing Iraq-backed opposition and separatist groups, and establishing deep humint networks inside Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s invasion.

A foreign network of intel-linked intermediaries allowed Iran to evade arms embargoes, and even make clandestine weapons and parts purchases from Israel and the US (Iran-Contra).

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Shock of the 12-Day War with Israel

After the Iran-Iraq War, the MOIS and IRGC-IO worked systematically to root out and destroy domestic armed opposition and separatist forces, and target their leaders abroad, and build regional alliances, from Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen, Assad’s Syria and Shia militias in Iraq.

Evolving into a mature, bureaucratized network of parallel, competing agencies, the intel services boasted an equal share of successes and failures during this period, but the warning signs were there that something was amiss.

In 2021, former intelligence minister Ali Younesi warned that “the Mossad has penetrated the country to such an extent that the authorities should fear for their lives.” Former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad echoed the warning in 2024, saying Mossad had infiltrated the Iranian intel unit responsible for rooting out Israeli spies.

These concerns proved prescient. On June 13, 2025, a surprise Israeli attack caused arguably the most catastrophic strategic and counterintelligence failure in in modern Iran’s history.

Within hours, Israel assassinated IRGC chief Hossein Salami, Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri, Gholam Ali Rashid – head of the joint command center coordinating Army and IRGC operations, IRGC Aerospace Force commander Amir Ali Hajizadeh, and more than a dozen other top military leaders and nuclear researchers.

Worse yet, Iran’s territory was compromised by Israeli commandoes and Mossad agents directly on the ground, who systematically targeted Iranian SAM and radar sites and facilitated Israeli warplanes’ attacks on missile launchers, nuclear sites, and the aforementioned senior leaders.

The June 2025 war was by no means a total intel failure, with the IRGC launching devastating counterstrikes targeting sensitive Israeli assets, from military bases and the Mossad HQ to MIC-linked enterprises and research institutes like Rafael, the Weizmann Institute, and the Negev Nuclear Center, plus critical energy and port infrastructure in Haifa. In less than two weeks, Israel was forced to sue for a ceasefire, its interceptor stocks critically depleted.

These strikes would not have been possible without precision IRGC-IO mapping of Israeli targets, and invaluable live-fire intel on Israeli defenses gathered during the April and October 2024 Operations True Promise I & II, which allowed Iran to map out radar frequencies, reaction times, and interceptor geography to saturate enemy defenses.

Nevertheless, broader damage was done. Iranian intelligence dropped the ball on Israel’s surprise aggression, and needed urgent reforms.

The 2026 War: Rebuilt, Reinforced, Reinvented

Triggering an overhaul of national security and military command structures, expanding cooperation between the MOIS and IRGC-IO, and hardening communications security, the 2025 war also pushed Iran to dust off its Mosaic Defense strategy – created by the IRGC two decades earlier precisely to enable the country to survive enemy decapitation attacks.

In January 2026, on the eve of a new round of aggression, the revamped intelligence apparatus faced a major test: foreign-sponsored civil unrest threatening to escalate into civil war.

Facing protests since late December triggered by US Treasury machinations to collapse Iran’s currency, exiled ‘crown prince’ and CIA cutout Reza Pahlavi announced the destabilization campaign’s active phase on January 8-9, calling for coordinated, synchronized demonstrations and mass civil disobedience.

Within 48 hours, 3,117 people were dead, among them 2,427 civilians and members of the security services, with police and armed insurgents engaging in firefights in the streets, and thugs burning down over 400 government buildings, plus mosques, churches, police stations, private homes and other infrastructure.

Israeli and US sources later claimed “over 30,000” casualties, both to justify looming aggression, and to compare the violence to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza.

But the Iranian intelligence services’ lightning reaction – including large-scale mobilization of its own assets and civilian networks, activation of the National Information Network (emergency intranet), and a speedy crackdown on Starlink after realizing unrest was being coordinated using the satellite internet service, quickly helped stop violence from spreading into a counterrevolution.

On February 28, the US and Israel attacked Iran, once again in the middle of negotiations, and with a ferocity greater than ever, with the explicitly stated aim of regime change. Within the first hours, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the heads of the Armed Forces, the Ministry of Defense and other top leaders were killed.

On the war’s eve, Khamenei warned would-be aggressors that Iran would “not be intimidated” into submission, and wouldn’t start a war, but deal a “decisive blow” on the enemy if it dared attack. He also warned explicitly that any new conflict “would be a regional war.”

Just before the attack, Khamenei’s security team urged him to evacuate his home to a fortified compound, but he refused, saying he would meet the aggression together with Iran’s people, who were not afforded such luxuries. Dying a martyr’s death (a powerful concept in Shia political theology dating back to Husayn ibn Ali and the 680 Battle of Karbala), Khamenei’s martyrdom consolidated Iranian society and its regional alliances, and rallied many otherwise neutral Iranians in support of the government.

MOIS and IRGC-IO reorganization and preparation efforts had paid off. Decentralized continuity of government and military command was achieved, and Iran’s response was swift:

1. IRGC and Army forces launched, massive, coordinated missile and drone strikes targeting US assets across the Gulf focusing on radars, quickly blinding Patriot and THAAD batteries and easing further attacks (at least 20 bases were targeted in quick succession).

The scale and ferocity of these attacks, made possible thanks to painstaking intel gathering, was something CENTCOM never fully recovered from, forcing it to keep the majority of its forces out of the Gulf, and naval assets out of reach of Iranian counterstrikes.

2. Targeting proved so precise that Iranian drones started targeting luxury hotels in Dubai and Manama secretly hosting US servicemembers cowering there after being evacuated from their bases.

It was later revealed that this was made possible in part by monitoring US troops’ phones using commercially available ad location tracking data, photos and videos posted to social media and even fitness trackers that broadcasted their whereabouts.

3. Iran also activated human intelligence assets inside Israel, with Israeli media later reporting that authorities had arrested and jailed at least 70 people accused of spying for Iran, from Air Force technicians to Iron Dome-affiliated personnel, an IDF vet working for a “secret unit” and even civilians filming local infrastructure and sending the info to Iranian agents.

4. Iranian intelligence also proved able to predict and preempt US policy responses once the war bogged down – hence Iran’s lack of fear in the face of Trump’s escalating threats, and its maximalist positions in negotiations.

From open-source media and think tank reports on exhausted US weapon stockpiles, to state-to-state intel sharing, logistics tracking and battlefield monitoring (calculating the number of interceptors the US was using against cheap drones and older missiles), Iran was able to quickly figure out just how critically low US offensive and defensive weaponry had plummeted, perhaps even before Trump did.

5. Singling out and repeatedly striking Amazon Web Services infrastructure in the UAE and Bahrain signaled that Iranian military intelligence was aware of the extent of AWS’s use in the Pentagon’s Palantir-run automated AI war planning and kill chain systems (which ultimately proved unable to predict or counteract their human opponents’ behavior anyway).

6. Military intelligence also worked with technical experts to analyzed downed enemy hardware in real time, studying it to refine Iran’s electronic warfare countermeasures.

7. MOIS-linked cyber actors, including the Handala hacktivist collective, launched a string of successful and highly embarrassing hack attacks targeting US and Israeli officials, breaching FBI chief Kash Patel’s Google accounts, wiping data and doxxing employees of US MIC-linked corporations, including Lockheed Martin, and compromising nearly 200 IDF and senior Israeli officials.

The success of these operations in influencing the outcome of the conflict so far speaks for itself, with Washington now trapped in a quagmire, with no obvious way out except to accept all of Tehran’s demands, and Israel’s government quitting the war and launching a major reshuffle at the Mossad – whose incoming director has sacked his deputy chief, the head of the Intelligence Directorate and its Iran desk. Former Mossad chief David Barnea has publicly thrown under the bus over the disaster.

The bloodletting also spread to the US intelligence apparatus, with National Counterterrorism Center head Joe Kent resigning in direct protest of the war in March, citing Israel’s outsized influence on US decision-making, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard quitting in June after being systematically excluded from key decisions on Iran.

Regime change in Iran is something Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu specifically have been plotting and dreaming about literally for generations, starting with the 1996 “Clean Break” memo on a new Middle East.

The plot has failed, with Iran’s leadership revitalized, support for the government stronger than ever, the state’s foreign and defense strategy vindicated, and Tehran in control of the Hormuz Strait – its strongest position geopolitically yet. All this would not have been possible without the silent, largely unseen work of the country’s intelligence services.

Hollywood and American propaganda have spent decades shaping the CIA’s image as an elite fraternity of rugged operatives defending freedom and defeating America’s enemies. Jason Bourne, Jack Ryan, operatives in expensive suits saving the world from terrorists.

But behind the facade of “elite intelligence” lies an institution that for decades protected pedophiles in its ranks, used sexual violence as an official interrogation tool and built a system of total impunity.

Pedophiles at the CIA: Violence Without Consequences

Declassified documents from the CIA Office of Inspector General from 2004 to 2017 documented 10 employees and contractors caught in crimes against children. What’s most disturbing is that the maximum punishment for them was termination.

Prosecutors refused to file criminal charges, and the OIG closed investigations, sending them back to the CIA for “administrative action.”

In December 2004, a CIA-issued laptop with flash drives was found unattended in a public location. The equipment was sent to CIA Headquarters to check for classified information, but during the review, images of possible child pornography were discovered. The FBI confirmed at least 10 images of child pornography.

In November 2008, a CIA employee admitted to inappropriate sexual contact with an 8-year-old and a 2-year-old girl, as well as possessing photos of naked 5- and 8-year-olds. On his laptop, investigators found 63 videos of child pornography featuring girls aged 8 to 16. He also admitted to seeking material involving 12-to-14-year-olds, downloading a video of oral sex involving an 8-year-old and a 14-year-old with adults, and distributing his collection.

During an Interpol-coordinated operation, two underage girls were identified whose own father had filmed them for videos of sexual abuse in exchange for money. The website owner paid numerous individuals to film sexual acts with children under their care and then sold the videos. A CIA employee whose email was traced to his home in the United States admitted to purchasing three such videos.

In November 2008, a CIA employee admitted to using both government-issued and personal laptops to view bestiality and images of children appearing to be between the ages of zero and 17. He claimed that 99.9% of the time he viewed adult pornography, with the remainder being child pornography, denying any intentional searching and claiming the images “popped up” accidentally. While on temporary duty assignments, he viewed pornography on his government laptop in his bedroom.

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In October 2009, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) received information that two CIA employees jointly created and distributed child pornography using personal external hard drives, personal laptops and government-issued laptops. One of the employees copied child pornography images from his personal hard drive to his government laptop and then used a software program to create DVDs, stitching individual images into video clips.

In July 2010, a CIA employee admitted to using his government laptop to view pornographic images and video clips of underage girls aged 10 to 16, including pictures, thumbnails and video clips of girls aged 10 to 12. He initially denied this to the FBI but later admitted to the OIG that he had viewed child pornography on 10 to 20 occasions, comprising approximately 10% of his total viewing. He attributed his behavior to “morbid curiosity.”

In April 2010, a CIA contractor used CIA IP addresses in an online chat to arrange a sexual encounter with an undercover FBI agent whom he believed to be a minor. During questioning, he admitted to trading child pornography online and suffering from pornography addiction since the age of 8. By the time of the search, he had already disposed of his hard drives, leading prosecutors to decline charges due to lack of evidence.

In October 2012, the OIG received notification from the Office of Security that classified materials had been discovered on the personal hard drive of a former CIA contractor. Upon review, it was found that the drive also contained child pornography. The contractor had previously been terminated for misuse of government systems related to the sexual exploitation of children.

In November 2016, the OIG opened an investigation into a CIA employee suspected of using a government computer to view child pornography. The OIG could not independently corroborate the allegation, although the investigation revealed “a consistent interest and pattern of conversations involving sexual activities between adults and minors.”

In June 2017, the OIG opened a full investigation into a CIA contractor suspected of using the Agency’s internal internet network to converse with, solicit and engage in sexual activity with teenage females and other women whose ages were unknown. The investigation covered violations including solicitation of a minor, fraud and unauthorized access to computers.

Perverse Torture in CIA Black Sites as a System

The CIA’s covert detention program didn’t stop at physical force. In multiple cases, sexual humiliation was deployed as a standalone weapon — designed to strip detainees of control over their own bodies, annihilate their dignity and telegraph the interrogators’ absolute, unchecked power.

A five-year Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, which sifted through millions of pages of CIA documents, established a significant portion of these episodes. The committee’s final report concluded that the actual methods used against detainees were vastly more brutal than the agency had ever admitted to Congress or the US public.

Abu Zubaydah

Abu Zubaydah – a Palestinian captured by US forces in Pakistan in March 2002. The US considered him an important al-Qaida facilitator, but Washington later significantly backed away from initial claims about his role in the organization. He was one of the first detainees subjected by the CIA to a program of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.

Senate materials confirm that Zubaydah was subjected to a combination of torture methods: beatings, walling, stress positions, confinement in small boxes, sleep deprivation, nudity and waterboarding. A central feature of his case is his lengthy confinement in boxes – during the 20-day “aggressive phase” of questioning, he spent 266 hours (11 days and 2 hours) in a large box the size of a coffin and another 29 hours in a small one.

According to daily CIA cables, officials reported that Zubaydah cried, begged and groaned, but continued to insist he had no information about current threats to the US or operatives in America. By Aug. 9, 2002, the sixth day of the aggressive phase, the interrogation team had conveyed its preliminary assessment to CIA headquarters: it was unlikely Zubaydah possessed any new, operationally significant information.

At an official hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Zubaydah directly stated that he had given false testimony under torture to stop the interrogation. When the chairman of the Combatant Status Review Tribunal asked if he understood that part of what he said then was untrue, Zubaydah answered affirmatively.

Zubaydah also produced drawings depicting his imprisonment and abuse; eight drawings created while he was in CIA custody were later released by the agency under FOIA. Taken together, the images convey an overwhelming sense of fear, isolation, bodily helplessness and psychological devastation.

As of August 2026, Abu Zubaydah, now 55, remains at Guantanamo Bay. Throughout this entire period, he has not been charged with a crime or tried. In July 2026, he was still listed among the 15 remaining detainees at Guantanamo.

Majid Khan

Majid Khan, a Pakistani national who had lived in the United States, was captured in Pakistan in 2003 and held in the CIA’s secret prison system. In 2012, he pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges, but Khan and his lawyers have repeatedly maintained that his confession was coerced through torture. Seven of the eight jurors who sentenced him later filed a petition for clemency, calling the torture he endured “a disgrace to America.”

He was held in the CIA’s covert detention system from 2003 onward. In 2004-2005, he repeatedly declared hunger strikes and made attempts to harm himself.

In response, medical personnel initially used standard methods of nutrient delivery, nasogastric tubes and intravenous fluids. However, after approximately three weeks, the CIA transitioned to a more aggressive procedure.

According to the Senate investigation, Khan was subjected to forced rectal feeding and rectal hydration. In one instance, he was rectally infused with two bottles of Ensure. That same day, his lunch, hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins, was pureed and also administered rectally.

Furthermore, internal CIA documents show that rectal rehydration was viewed by program officers not merely as a medical procedure but also as a means of “behavior control.” The Senate report notes that some of these procedures were conducted without documented medical necessity.

Nor was Khan spared from waterboarding. Though he wasn’t among detainees for whom it was officially authorized, interrogators used it on him repeatedly. Guards held his head under ice water, hung his naked body from a pole and blasted him with fans and ice water on multiple occasions, according to the Amnesty International.

In 2023, after serving part of his sentence, Khan was transferred from Guantanamo Bay to Belize, a small Central American nation on the Caribbean coast. Formerly known as British Honduras, Belize gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1981.

Khaled el-Masri

The story of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent born in Kuwait, has been documented as a case of mistaken identity in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. US authorities confused him with another individual and subjected him to torture, despite the absence of evidence linking him to terrorism.

Macedonian authorities detained el-Masri on Dec. 31, 2003, and kept him in isolation for more than three weeks. On Jan. 23, 2004, he was handcuffed, blindfolded and taken to Skopje airport. There, they beat him, stripped him and subjected him to anal rape with a solid object, then fitted him with a diaper, hooded him and delivered him to a crew that placed him onto an aircraft.

Afterward, el-Masri was delivered to a secret prison in Afghanistan, where he spent more than four months. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) held Macedonia responsible for violations of his rights and characterized the treatment at Skopje airport as torture.

Materials reviewed by the ECHR also contain information that el-Masri’s capture occurred as a result of an error. The ruling cites testimony from Macedonia’s former interior minister, according to whom the situation arose from a mistake, as well as information that American representatives subsequently informed German authorities about el-Masri’s erroneous detention.

In the United States, el-Masri sought legal recourse, only to be shut down. His civil suit against former CIA Director George Tenet and others hit a wall when the US government stepped in to invoke the state secrets privilege. Both the district court and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, dismissing his case without a hearing.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is a Saudi national whom Washington accuses of orchestrating the bombing of the USS Cole. Yemen sentenced him to death in absentia, but he has never been convicted by a US court or military commission.

At the CIA’s Salt Pit prison in Afghanistan, al-Nashiri was subjected to physical violence and sexual abuse. The Senate investigation documented actions by agency personnel that even the CIA’s internal records described as unauthorized. He was shuttled between black sites in Afghanistan, Thailand, Poland and Romania until his transfer to Guantanamo in 2006.

When facility personnel concluded al-Nashiri was cooperating, CIA headquarters disagreed. In late December 2002, the agency dispatched an officer identified in the Senate report as CIA Officer 2, who had neither training nor qualifications as an interrogator. Within the CIA, concerns already existed: his supervisor objected to the deployment, and colleagues described him as volatile, overconfident and a security risk.

Despite his lack of training, CIA Officer 2 began using harsh methods on al-Nashiri. It later emerged that, with the approval of the facility chief, also untrained, he employed a series of unauthorized techniques. Al-Nashiri was held in a stress position with his arms secured above his head for roughly two and a half days. On another occasion, he was blindfolded, a gun was held to his head and a drill was switched on near his body.

The CIA’s inspector general investigation uncovered additional evidence of unauthorized treatment. Al-Nashiri was struck on the back of the head, had cigar smoke blown in his face, was forced to shower with a stiff brush and was threatened with the rape of his mother in his presence. Stress positions were also used, leaving cuts and bruises so severe that a medic intervened, fearing his shoulders would be dislocated if the abuse continued.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri remains imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, and his trial has yet to begin. His case has been mired in legal uncertainty for more than a decade. As of August 2026, al-Nashiri remains at Guantanamo. After years of pretrial litigation, his military commission has scheduled trial proceedings to begin on Oct. 19, 2026, although the timetable has repeatedly shifted before.

The Architecture of Impunity: Covering Up Rapists and Pedophiles

Over decades of CIA covert detention operations, a systemic culture took root within the agency in which officers who employed torture and committed other crimes almost never faced accountability. Even when evidence of crimes became public, internal investigations rarely led to real consequences for the perpetrators.

The most striking example of this system is the case of CIA officer Brian Jeffrey Raymond. For 14 years, he committed serial rapes across the globe, using his official position and government housing to gain access to victims.

At least 28 confirmed victims have been documented, though the actual number is likely far higher. His criminal activity remained unpunished throughout that period precisely because the institutional culture at the CIA did not allow for intervention in the affairs of its own officers.

Ultimately, Raymond was sentenced to 30 years in prison. However, this punishment did not result from an internal CIA investigation; even here, the agency took no independent action. It was outside entities, not the CIA itself, that ensured the perpetrator was brought to justice.

Behind the CIA’s carefully crafted image as the US premier defender, another system was at work for just as long — a shadow system. Employees caught in acts of pedophilia were quietly let go, and torture and sexual violence were not side effects of interrogation but tools embedded within the CIA’s secret prison system.

It took only a few Yemeni missiles on Saudi refineries to wake up “leadership” vectors of the Ummah; not over 100,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza by the death cult.

The Mecca Sunni NATO pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan remains a puzzle. Or dodgy sub-standard theatre – complete with photo ops and sparse intel sharing. The full text has not been released. Everything is quite vague, only stressing “collective deterrence”.

Against whom, it’s in the eyes of the beholder. All options – Eretz Israel, US-Israel, India (in case of attacking Pakistan) – might apply. The operative concept is “might”. Add to it Turkiye’s myriad NATO constraints: a viper’s nest in itself.

Significantly, Turkiye informed Iran before signing the Mecca deal. Extra layers of spin even promote Iran joining the deal in a later stage, as Riyadh in theory rejects military strikes on Tehran, and Iran might be covered by Pakistan’s nuclear umbrella.

Geography, once again, will dictate matters. Turkiye will remain in NATO – because Turkish elites are essentially Atlanticist. Saudi Arabia would have to perform miracles to extricate itself from the US security umbrella - and Indian labour. Pakistan’s priority is China and the New Silk Roads, plus the IP gas pipeline from Iran. Mecca is essentially Deterrence Theater.

A different, more intriguing scenario would point to the instrumentalization of Greater Turan – a key Turkiye objective – to the benefit of the US/Zionist combo. That would point to a neo-Ottoman remix, now reconfigured as the leadership of comprador Arab affairs. As in Ankara recreating the Ottoman hierarchy with itself at the center – as a matter of “saving” Zionists and Salafis from themselves.

It seems that the Mecca spark came from MbS himself (no one really knows, as things in Riyadh are so opaque). As Riyadh is being deprived of exporting oil via the Red Sea by Yemen – and might even lose their oil wells if things get rough – why not bet on benign neo-Ottomanism?

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Why the US can never lift sanctions on Iran

Meanwhile in Iran, under a revamped – by Leader Mojtaba Khamenei – Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), the solidified consensus is that Tehran will never compromise, especially under the current “no war, no peace” status.

Washington would have to meet a set of very harsh conditions before the Strait of Hormuz reopens, including:

1. The end to US threats and “insults”;

2. Permanent end to US wars against Iran and its allies in Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq;

3. Lifting of the American naval blockade and withdrawal of all US forces;

4. No less than $300 billion in compensation for war damages;

5. Lifting of all sanctions;

6. Unconditional release of all frozen assets;

7. Iran’s right to charge up to 7% on cargo transit;

8. A ban on US and Israeli vessels;

9. A 20% violation toll on ships if conditions are breached.

Call it an intimation for a US surrender: a capitulation on every front – from “follow the money” to military expulsion, end of sanctions and total Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz.

Even grains of sand across the Old and New Silk Roads are aware that humongous US debt is avid for new mechanisms to be fed with control over natural resources – from oil and gold to rare earth minerals. And these natural resources must be priced in US dollars and the petrodollar.

Iran – the key crossroads of Eurasia – has absolutely everything the US needs. Yet it’s sovereign, independent and intimately aligned with the Russia-China strategic partnership.

So this has all the makings of a Forever War. Washington will never lift sanctions on Iran. That’s politically – and geoeconomically – impossible. And Washington, whoever is in power, will never accept Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, administrative fees included, because that seals, in practice, the imperial failure to use economic sanctions as its “diplomatic” tool of choice.

The result is that some of the serious consequences of the war unleashed on February 28 are already quite clear. Those include the possible financial destruction of the GCC, complete with the collapse of their ruling regimes; Yemen’s nearly inevitable geographical expansion; virtually complete international isolation of the death cult; a massive global economic crisis in tandem with a US financial crisis; and Iran’s accession to the status of prominent West Asia power, prominent Eurasia power, and prominent Global South power.

All that implies a massive geoeconomic game-changer facilitating a much faster rise for BRICS – and BRICS+ - complete with the solidification of Shanghai as the ideal solution for Global South capital to secure their savings.

Watch out for the “Eurasian Axis”!

The Empire of Chaos, Lies, Plunder and Piracy will not take any of that lying down. So the chessboard will continue to be destabilized even in nodes that in theory are controlled by the Sovereign Independents.

Enter the Caspian Sea – a key node of the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), one of the premier connectivity corridors of 21st century pan-Eurasia trade, linking BRICS members Russia, Iran and India to Central Asia while bypassing Western sanctions and NATO-controlled maritime chokepoints.

Hybrid War in the Caspian perfectly fits the imperial scenario of provoking negative systemic fallout expanding beyond Russia and Iran all the way to China and Europe. After all China regards the Caspian as a key connectivity channel between Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects and Central Asia and Europe.

So the Caspian could become the apex of a geopolitical divide near the center of Eurasia, contraposing Washington/Tel Aviv/Kiev to the BRICS/SCO Sovereign Independent civilization-states.

Enter, once again, Turkiye – now as the possible missing link in the Zionist axis drive to connect both wars (NATO on Ukraine, US/Israel on Iran): after all they are the one and same war from the beginning.

Still it will be a hard sell to seduce Sultan Erdogan to go after Russian and Iranian strategic assets in the Caspian, even indirectly via Azerbaijan. An even more complex replacement would be Kazakhstan, which for all of its “multi-vector” policies is a full SCO member, a full Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) member and a BRICS+ partner.

Turkiye’s actions should be ultimately measured by the official drive to strengthen the Organization of Turkic States (OTS; Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are both members) and what they might come up with to try to choke Iran’s geopolitical maneuvering.

Once again: it’s all about how they will play the Greater Turan card across the Caucasus and especially Central Asia, with their vast reserves of oil, uranium, lithium and critical minerals.

Moscow is carefully observing it all, with extreme discretion. Incidentally, last November Kazakhstan became the first Central Asian “stan” to join the Abraham Accords, in connection with a massive US-Kazakhstan minerals deal.

History Repeating is always quirky: we’re back to the original, late 19th century Russia-Britain Great Game. MI6 after all fully supports Greater Turan – as a premier counterpunch to the Three Sovereigns, Russia, Iran and China. Or what Trump has recently defined, for the first time ever (Elbridge Colby whispering in his ear?) as the “Eurasian Axis”.

At the National Museum in Astana, Kazakhstan, there’s a flashy panel representing all Turkic peoples, over 40 ethnic groups. Uygurs are in the mix, as well as Kazakhs and Azeris. But to translate that into Turkiye moving as a great player across Eurasia - complete with support from fake mythological narratives - is a whole new ball game.

The whole drive is not more sophisticated than creating a market for outright Turkic nationalism, with the Central Asian “stans” incorporated at best as junior partners.

Mecca as a Hail Mary pass

As the imperial pressure over The Three Sovereigns won’t relent, interlocked signature moves make all the difference. For instance: China investing in the Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan as an extra road to reach Iran.

It’s The Great Game all over again: the Wakhan Corridor came out of nowhere at the end of the 19th century to “protect” British India from Russia’s advances in Turkestan. It connects with China’s Xinjiang for only 70 km or so, as I saw during my Pamir Highway travels before Covid.

This is one of the most high-altitude strategic borders on the planet. Only 5 months ago, Beijing came up with a new county in Xinjiang, Cenling, overlooking the border. Everything in this mountain wilderness is run from Kashgar, where the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) begins.

Translation: on top of the China-Iran railway – previously bombed during the war on Iran by the Americans – this is an extra overland path from China to Iran bypassing the maritime routes, susceptible to Trump’s blockades.

China, in trademark win-win mode, will go all the way betting on both options simultaneously: CPEC, via Pakistan, and the Wakhan, via Afghanistan.

To round up our travels across selected spots of the New Great Game: in the end everything will be decided in West Asia. And that brings us back to the Mecca Sunni NATO pact.

This sharp analysis points to Mecca as a Hail Mary pass linked to the current sore lack of petrodollar recycling by the petro-monarchies – the mechanism propping up that monster, unpayable US debt; the pyramid of derivatives; and Wall Street’s solitary AI mega-bubble.

And this is what’s really driving the imperial desperation to settle something, anything with the Persians.

Because Iran has defined the prime geoeconomic battleground for the RICs (Russia, Iran, China, the new Primakov triangle), much more efficiently than endless BRICS discussions: the collapse of the GCC petrodollar racket.

Without this racket, a financialized neo-colonial empire run by remote control is absolutely impossible.

Before Donald Trump and Israel attacked Iran, Jeffrey Epstein was the biggest story in the world. It’s not hard to see why.

Epstein captured the public’s imagination not just because his case exposed the extent of elite depravity and lack of accountability, but also because the world’s most notorious pedophile was almost certainly an Israeli intelligence asset. That fact adds a whole new geopolitical dimension to the already twisted and complicated Epstein saga.

But Epstein is not an aberration. For decades, Israel has served as a sanctuary for sexual predators while the US government looked the other way. Israel’s allies on the American Christian Right have always remained conspicuously silent on the issue.

Fugitives, Fixers, and Years of Delay

The Law That Made Israel a Safe Haven for Criminals

In 1978, Israel banned the extradition of its own citizens. The law, pushed through under Prime Minister Menachem Begin, was intended to protect Jews from hostile courts, but it later created a loophole that allowed Israeli citizens accused of crimes abroad to avoid extradition.

In September 1997, Samuel Sheinbein killed 19-year-old Alfredo Enrique Tello Jr. in Maryland and fled to Israel, where he claimed Israeli citizenship through his Israeli-born father and became protected from extradition to the US. His father, Sol, an attorney with dual citizenship, brought him a passport and a ticket to Tel Aviv, and that case became a major precedent in Israel’s extradition law.

Israel’s Supreme Court blocked Sheinbein’s extradition in a 3–2 decision, despite demands from Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and congressional threats to suspend aid. Chief Justice Aharon Barak, who wrote the dissenting opinion, argued that Sheinbein should be extradited and warned that the ruling could turn Israel into a haven for criminals. Sheinbein received 24 years in an Israeli prison, far short of the sentence he could have faced in the US.

Israel amended the law after the scandal, allowing the extradition of Israeli citizens under specified conditions. The Sheinbein case exposed a conflict between Israel’s domestic extradition law and its extradition obligations to the US, and prompted a broader overhaul of the country’s extradition framework. During the debate over the reform, Hanan Porat, head of the Knesset’s Law Committee, warned against allowing Israel to become a “safe house for criminals abroad.”

By 2020, Jewish Community Watch had identified more than 60 accused child-sex offenders who had moved from the US to Israel since 2014, and believed the true number was higher. Activists blamed both Israel for failing to address the problem and the US for not pursuing extradition aggressively, according to CBS News.

Mordechai Yomtov

In December 2001, Mordechai Yomtov, a teacher at the Cheder Menachem Jewish school in Los Angeles, was arrested on 10 counts of committing lewd acts against three students aged 8 to 10. According to case files, he kept boys in the classroom during recess and committed lewd acts against them.

In February 2002, Yomtov pleaded guilty to two counts of continuous sexual abuse of a minor and one count of lewd acts. He was sentenced to one year in prison and five years of probation. He was ordered to undergo psychiatric treatment and required to register as a sex offender for life.

After his release, he violated his probation, fled through Mexico with a forged passport, and lived in Jerusalem for nearly 23 years, hiding in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Tel Arza. Jewish Community Watch tracked him down and filmed him with a hidden camera. In the recording, he admitted to violating his probation and fleeing the US, but denied the specific charges.

One of the victims, Mendy Hauck, only came forward in 2016 and began a campaign for Yomtov’s extradition. However, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office never filed an extradition request, according to CBS News.

The fugitive was finally arrested in November 2025, 23 years after his escape, after Israeli authorities located and detained him as a person wanted for extradition to the US. He was detained during a Jerusalem police operation at his hideout in the Tel Arza neighborhood. If extradited to the US, he will face further proceedings there.

Malka Leifer

Malka Leifer, the former principal of the Adass Israel ultra-Orthodox school in Melbourne, fled to Israel in March 2008 after the community leadership learned of allegations of sexual abuse against students. Evidence presented in court showed that the wife of a school board member booked tickets for Leifer and four children that night, and the Supreme Court of Victoria found that those who organized her departure were determined to get her out of the country within hours.

Australia filed a formal extradition request in 2014. More than 70 court hearings followed, along with nearly 13 years of legal battles. Leifer and her lawyers repeatedly argued that she was mentally unfit to stand trial, contributing to the long delay in the extradition process.

Israel’s Minister of Health Yaakov Litzman used his official position to obstruct Leifer’s extradition. Prosecutors alleged that he pressured ministry staff and offered career benefits to psychiatrists in connection with opinions declaring Leifer mentally unfit to stand trial. In 2022, Litzman pleaded guilty to breach of trust and received an eight-month suspended sentence and a fine of 3,000 shekels.

In Australia, Leifer was found guilty on 18 counts of sexual assault, including the rape of a 17-year-old student, and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Taking into account time already served, Leifer will become eligible for parole in June 2029.

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Epstein: The Intelligence Question That Won’t Go Away

Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier and convicted sex offender, pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting prostitution from a minor and was sentenced to 18 months in prison but served less than 13 months. After his death in 2019, thousands of documents revealed details of his extensive network of powerful contacts, including ties to Israeli political figures and allegations of links to Israeli intelligence.

These connections began surfacing long before his death, with a key episode unfolding in 2008. The secret non-prosecution agreement (NPA) was signed on September 24, 2007. In the months that followed, Epstein’s legal team tried to renegotiate or overturn the deal.

In April 2008, as federal charges once again loomed, Epstein flew to Israel — officially to meet with scientists and tour military sites. Rumors swirled that he was transferring himself and his assets there to avoid prosecution. Epstein later confirmed the trip but insisted he had returned to New York. He formally pleaded guilty to state charges on June 30, 2008.

A 2020 FBI memo recorded a confidential source claiming that Epstein had been “trained as a spy” under Ehud Barak’s direction and was a “co-opted Mossad agent.” The document records the source’s allegation; it does not establish that the claim was verified. That source was later identified as Charles Johnson.

Former Israeli PM Ehud Barak, a longtime Epstein associate, stayed at Epstein’s Manhattan apartment and later called their relationship a “mistake,” though he denied knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. Released documents indicate that Israeli government-linked personnel installed and maintained security systems at the apartment and that Barak requested security assistance.

Barak and his wife stayed there dozens of times, and his aide Yoni Koren, a former Israeli military intelligence officer, lived in Epstein’s apartment for weeks, with Epstein covering his cancer treatment. Epstein referred to it as “Ehud’s apartment” in correspondence with his staff, according to the released files.

Epstein also invested in the Israeli startup Carbyne, linked to Barak, which was later acquired by US company Axon in a deal valuing Carbyne at $625 million. Through his foundation, he donated $25,000 to Friends of the IDF and $15,000 to the Jewish National Fund, which supports settlement activity in the West Bank.

Arrested in America, Home in Israel

US law enforcement arrested a high-ranking Israeli official in Las Vegas for attempting to solicit a minor, but he was released after posting $10,000 bail without travel restrictions, the Israeli government publicly misrepresented the arrest as a questioning, and within 48 hours the official was back home.

This story, which unfolded in August 2025 and involved Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, a senior official in Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, is just one of many episodes illustrating how Israel has become a safe haven for sex offenders while the US looks the other way.

Tom Artiom Alexandrovich, the head of the Technological Defense Division at Israel’s National Cyber Directorate — an agency directly subordinate to the Prime Minister’s Office, was arrested in Las Vegas.

The accused had traveled to Las Vegas for the Black Hat USA 2025 cybersecurity conference, but instead became one of the targets of a two-week joint operation by the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, and Nevada’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

According to police documents, he had been exchanging messages on apps, including Pure, with an undercover agent posing as a 15-year-old girl. The plan they discussed included “sexual contact with a condom” and a visit to the Cirque du Soleil. Alexandrovich was arrested when he arrived at the meeting in a rideshare vehicle.

The day after his arrest, Alexandrovich posted $10,000 bail. His passport was not confiscated, no travel restrictions were imposed, and he had returned to Israel within 48 hours. Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson called the procedure routine, Netanyahu’s office initially claimed the official had only been “questioned,” and the US State Department denied any interference.

In October 2025, a Clark County grand jury indicted Alexandrovich on a felony charge of luring a child with technology for sexual conduct. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. Despite returning to Israel, the judge has allowed him to participate in court proceedings remotely via Zoom.

The American Pipeline

The pattern extends beyond individual cases. Jewish Community Watch has documented how some American religious communities respond to allegations with collective denial and active support for the accused. Suspects are moved to other communities, where new victims emerge, and institutions may have a financial incentive to prevent court proceedings due to civil liability concerns.

The problem, according to JCW founder Meyer Seewald, mirrors the Catholic Church’s cover-ups. “The same thing that is going on in the Catholic Church right now around the world, the exact same thing is happening in our community. The cover-ups are the same, the stigma, the shame,” he told CBS News.

JCW’s chief operating officer Shana Aaronson placed responsibility on both sides. She blamed Jewish communities in America and the US government for not aggressively seeking extraditions, while also criticizing Israeli law enforcement for failing to prioritize the hunt for suspects.

What Happens Inside the Sanctuary

Entering Israel protects the accused not just with an extradition barrier, but with the very structure of the system itself — a place where crimes go massively unrecorded, cases are quickly closed, and authorities refuse transparency. According to Matzof, an organization monitoring pedophilia in Israel, tens of thousands of child-sex offenders operate in the country each year, committing crimes against approximately 100,000 victims.

Matzof’s director Eliram Malki stated that offenders “are not deterred by police” and certainly not by “contemptuous court rulings,” citing a case where a court released a defendant despite thousands of child pornography files on his computer, arguing that imprisonment would “harm his career.”

The Data the State Would Not Release

The most damning evidence against this system comes from data the state tried to conceal. In 2024, the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel (ARCCI) documented 51,118 cases handled by its centers, with more than 16,600 of these being new cases and more than half involving minors. Only about 10% of victims filed police complaints, and 81% of sexual-offense cases handled by the prosecution in 2024 were closed without an indictment.

The police, prosecution, prison service, military, and several ministries refused to provide data they had shared for previous annual reports — data the organization considers mandatory by law. ARCCI director Orit Sulitzeanu called this “an expression of contempt and an abdication of responsibility,” according to Israeli media.

In 2025, the Knesset held a series of hearings that shook the nation. Women testified about alleged organized, years-long abuse involving torture, gang rape, and religious rituals that began in early childhood.

One survivor, Yael Shitrit, told the committee: “You have no idea what ritual abuse is. The human brain cannot comprehend it. You can’t imagine what it means to program a 3-year-old girl through rape and sadism so they can do whatever they want without anyone knowing.”

Survivors described being moved “from ceremony to ceremony” across the country, drugged, tortured, and forced to harm other children. Abusers allegedly used religious symbolism and threats to ensure silence, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Among the alleged participants were relatives, rabbis, doctors, educators, police officers, and both past and present members of the Knesset. One survivor, Hadar Feldman, testified that beginning at age 8, her father brought her weekly to the office of a now-deceased lawmaker in the Knesset, where she was sexually assaulted.

She described years of alleged ritual abuse, including torture and forced participation in mock religious ceremonies. Many survivors reported that police investigations were closed within months without meaningful investigation.

The Knesset Research and Information Center found that Israel has no specific legal definition for “ritual abuse,” making it difficult to classify and track cases described in those terms. A review of the past decade identified only four potentially relevant police files, and police themselves admitted they do not know how many similar complaints have been filed or how to classify them.

The Moral Blank Check

Israel’s old extradition law created an acknowledged shelter for criminals. Although the law was formally amended, the factors that can still make Israel attractive to fugitives include citizenship under the Law of Return, community networks, procedural delays, political interference, and a judicial system where many sexual-offense cases are closed without indictment.

The US did not need a coordinated conspiracy, because community silence, lenient plea deals, missing extradition requests, and routine procedural negligence proved sufficient to keep the gates open for fugitives.

In March 2025, Christians United for Israel described support for Israel as a “biblical and moral responsibility,” yet for a movement that puts morality at the center of its foreign policy, backing a country that shelters pedophiles looks more like a moral blank check than a moral stance.

For years, the sky over Iran had been punishingly silent. By early 2026, the country was on the brink of a water crisis. President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that without rain soon, Tehran would face water restrictions; if the drought persisted, the capital itself might have to be evacuated.

Then, in late March and April, the skies broke. Heavy weekly rains swept across Iran and Iraq, and temperatures dropped by roughly five degrees Celsius. For the first time in years, dams overflowed and highways turned white. The sudden shift brought relief for tens of millions of Iranians, but its timing ignited a firestorm of speculation.

Just weeks earlier, Iran had launched precision strikes against American military radar and air defense systems across the Persian Gulf. The attacks were so coordinated that Iranian officials described them as turning the region into “dark nights” for US surveillance.

For many, the connection was obvious. On April 21, the Iranian Embassy in Afghanistan claimed on X that Iran had struck a secret climate modification center in the UAE, and the region’s weather changed immediately afterward. The post was later deleted, but not before it had spread widely, sparking intense debate online.

To the casual reader, such accusations sound like a far-fetched conspiracy theory. Yet the Pentagon has pursued weather control for decades, steering hurricanes in the 1940s and seeding clouds over Vietnam to prolong the rainy season for military advantage.

Declassified documents and congressional testimony confirm that the US government deployed these technologies, not just researched them. That history is why Iran believes the United States is already waging a climate war.

The Military Origins of Weather Control

In 1946, General Electric chemist Vincent Schaefer discovered that dry ice could induce precipitation in supercooled clouds. His colleague, Nobel laureate Irving Langmuir, immediately recognized the military potential.

By 1947, Project Cirrus was underway: US military forces attempted to weaken a hurricane off the coast of Florida by seeding it with dry ice from a B-17 bomber. The cyclone unexpectedly altered course, intensified, and made landfall near Savannah. Langmuir was convinced this was no coincidence, but he could never prove a causal link. The ensuing scandal and threats of litigation set back weather modification research for a decade.

In 1962, the Weather Bureau and the US Navy launched Project STORMFURY to weaken hurricanes via silver iodide seeding, though later analysis showed that the observed wind reductions could have been natural. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) admits the effect of human intervention was never proven, and the program was shelved in 1983 as a failure.

Two decades of US-funded weather tinkering had produced nothing but failure. Yet rather than abandon the fantasy of controlling the weather, Washington simply pivoted to something far more sinister: turning the sky itself into a weapon.

‘Make Mud, Not War’: Rainmakers Who Served the Pentagon

In September 1966, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara sent President Johnson a classified memo on Project Popeye. The plan called for increasing rainfall over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, a network of roads and paths through which North Vietnam supplied its forces in South Vietnam. The objective was to wash out dirt roads, trigger landslides, and impede the movement of trucks and troops.

From 1967 to 1972, US WC-130s and RF-4Cs flew missions from bases in Thailand and South Vietnam, seeding clouds with silver iodide. Over five years, more than 2,600 combat sorties were conducted. The rainy season over eastern Laos was extended by an average of 30 to 45 days per year, from the usual 100–120 days to 150 days or more. Neither the Laotian government nor the US Congress was informed.

In May 1967, US Ambassador to Laos Sullivan reported on Operation Commando Lava: American C-130s were dropping tens of thousands of paper bags filled with chemicals developed by Dow Chemical onto Routes 96 and 110, key supply arteries for North Vietnam. Upon contact with the moist tropical soil, the mixture turned the ground into an oily, grease-like mud in which trucks and military tractors sank up to their axles. Sullivan declared the operation a success and called for its expansion, ending his cable with the phrase: “Make mud, not war!”

When information about Popeye began surfacing in press reports in 1971, it became clear that the US had been waging a covert climate war for five years. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird denied before Congress that any weather modification program existed as a tactical weapon, a lie under oath. “Legally,” the operation did not constitute a violation, since no relevant prohibition existed at the time.

In October 1974, the USSR introduced a proposal at the UN for a treaty banning environmental warfare, beating the back-channel US-Soviet negotiations that the Ford administration had been conducting with the Kremlin since July 1974. American diplomats pushed for exceptions and carve-outs that would protect US interests. Behind closed doors, the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed any restrictions. A Kissinger memo to Nixon from August 1974 noted that the Joint Chiefs of Staff preferred “no limitations.”

The ENMOD Convention, adopted in 1976, prohibits hostile environmental modification only when it has “widespread, long-lasting or severe” effects, a threshold that effectively excludes most climate manipulations. Cloud seeding, extending rainy seasons, or softening terrain fall well below that bar. “Peaceful” weather modification remained free of international oversight.

From Words to Action: Institutionalization and Private Launches

In 2016, CIA Director John Brennan publicly stated that stratospheric aerosol injection had drawn his “personal attention.” He estimated the cost of a global cooling program at roughly $10 billion per year and openly acknowledged that the technology could shift weather patterns to benefit some regions at the expense of others.

Since 2020, NOAA has been receiving funding for solar geoengineering research. In 2022, Congress mandated the development of a five-year federal research plan, and in 2023, the White House published a research plan for stratospheric aerosols and marine cloud brightening. US intelligence agencies have warned that unilateral testing could create a new source of international conflict.

Yet the most troubling threshold is the shift from government reports and models to private-sector experimentation. By April 2025, the company Make Sunsets claimed more than 124 balloon launches releasing sulfur dioxide, and by May, approximately 0.1 tons of SO₂ had been discharged.

While private companies like Make Sunsets test geoengineering in the open, a quieter but more immediate infrastructure has been taking shape closer to Iran’s borders.

Sky Wars: The US Climate Ring Around Iran

Beginning in December 1967, the Weather Engineering Corporation of America, together with its Canadian affiliate, conducted cloud seeding operations over three watersheds in the Elburz Mountains under contract with the Shah’s government. An analysis of the first season (December 1967–April 1968) showed precipitation increases ranging from 111% to 177%, depending on the calculation method, with statistical significance above 99%.

The two companies later filed a $95 million lawsuit against the US government, alleging that the Pentagon had used its patented cloud-seeding method, Weathercord, in Vietnam without authorization. In 1980, the US Court of Claims invalidated the patent, ruling that the technology would have been “obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art” at the time of its invention.

Since 2001, the UAE has worked with the US-based National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and NASA on cloud-seeding. In 2023, Textron Aviation secured an order for five Beechcraft King Air aircraft for Saudi Arabia’s cloud-seeding program, with three US companies, AvMet, Weather Modification International, and Fargo Jet Center, handling the outfitting.

For Iran, which has suffered from acute water scarcity for decades, US control over its neighbors’ climate technologies turns the sky into a battlefield. Local media have repeatedly written about regional “cloud wars,” and Iranian officials have long suspected their neighbors of depleting their water resources during droughts.

A 2024 NASA-supported study in PLOS Water identifies Iran as “downwind” of the UAE’s cloud-seeding programs. Its authors, Amin Dezfuli and Benjamin Zaitchik, argue that atmospheric moisture is a transboundary resource and warn that weather modification is already exacerbating regional tensions, though the scientific community dismisses rain theft claims.

The US-Israeli Plan to Sell the Climate

While American companies expand cloud-seeding operations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States are jointly developing a technology that takes climate warfare to the level of stratospheric geoengineering, embodied by the controversial startup Stardust Solutions.

Founded in 2023, the company is run by individuals with direct ties to Israel’s nuclear program. CEO Yanai Yedvab previously served as deputy chief scientist of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, while Chief Technology Officer Amiad Spector was a nuclear physicist at Israel’s Negev Nuclear Research Center.

Stardust has developed its own particles made of calcium carbonate and silicon dioxide, materials found in eggshells and limestone. Unlike sulfur dioxide, they do not deplete the ozone layer. According to the company’s calculations, cooling the planet by 1.5 degrees Celsius would require 10 million tons of particles, at an estimated project cost of roughly $10 billion.

By the end of 2025, Stardust had raised $75 million in investment, the largest funding round in the history of solar geoengineering. The first round of $15 million was led by AWZ Ventures, whose advisory board includes former Mossad director Tamir Pardo. The second round of $60 million was led by Lowercarbon Capital, the climate fund co-founded by billionaire investor and former Google executive Chris Sacca.

Other investors include the Agnelli family’s holding company Exor, which controls Stellantis and Ferrari, as well as former Facebook executive Matt Cohler. In total, dozens of firms from the US, the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands have backed the project. The company plans to conduct stratospheric tests in 2026, with a large-scale technology demonstration scheduled for 2030.

The most dangerous aspect of Stardust is its business model: selling the technology to a future state client as a private contractor. Yedvab insists that even tests would require government authorization. However, Cornell University professor Douglas MacMartin, who studies solar geoengineering, expressed doubts that investors would be willing to wait, according to MIT Technology Review.

MacMartin stated that the company ignored all recommendations and is attempting to profit in a field where profit-seeking is inappropriate, a move that could ultimately harm the entire sector. More than 600 academics have backed a call for an international non-use agreement on solar geoengineering, yet private capital from the US and Israel has already poured tens of millions of dollars into a technology designed for sale without international oversight.

Elon Musk promises unlimited abundance, Mark Zuckerberg envisions personal superintelligence guiding self-improvement, and Bill Gates calls AI ‘the most important thing going on.’

Their rhetoric is uplifting, aspirational, almost spiritual for those who still believe in corporate salvation. In reality, however, the men delivering those promises are quietly preparing for collapse.

In a 2022 interview with The New Yorker, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman estimated that more than 50% of Silicon Valley billionaires have acquired some form of “apocalypse insurance.”

“Saying you’re ‘buying a house in New Zealand’ is kind of a wink, wink,” Hoffman said. “Once you’ve done the Masonic handshake, they’ll be, like, ‘Oh, you know, I have a broker who sells old ICBM silos, and they’re nuclear-hardened, and they kind of look like they would be interesting to live in.”’

The profiles that follow reveal how five of the most powerful figures in technology are preparing for the end of the world. Not the end of their world, of course. They have exit strategies for that.

Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel built his career on seeing what others missed, and what he saw when he looked at Orwell’s 1984 was not a dystopian horror story but a business plan.

As co-founder of PayPal, first outside investor in Facebook, and founder of Palantir Technologies, he turned that business plan into an empire. Palantir transformed big data into a surveillance weapon. Today, the company holds hundreds of contracts with the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, and law enforcement.

Thiel has also been the most methodical in his personal escape planning. His preparations span hemispheres and passports.

In 2011, Thiel purchased a 477-acre ranch in New Zealand. He obtained citizenship after spending just 12 days there, a remarkable exception to the standard 1,350-day residency requirement. His Queenstown house, purchased for $4.8 million, includes a panic room converted from a walk-in wardrobe. He bought more land for a bunker in 2015, but local authorities blocked the project.

In 2022, Thiel applied for Maltese citizenship through the “golden passport” program. Former Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has described it as an “insurance policy” for the wealthy against times of “great volatility.” For Thiel, who already held citizenship in the United States, Germany, and New Zealand, a Maltese passport would have been his fourth.

A fifth one may soon be on the horizon. In 2026, Thiel relocated to Argentina, purchasing a $12 million mansion in Buenos Aires. The move was apparently motivated by fear of nuclear war, AI apocalypse, and a proposed 5% billionaire tax in California. It also helped that Argentina’s President Javier Milei shares the tech billionaire’s ultra-libertarian worldview.

Beyond Argentina, Thiel has also purchased land in neighboring Uruguay, where he plans to build a residence with enhanced security and self-sufficiency.

To understand Thiel’s relentless pursuit of escape, one need only look at the book he has spent years promoting: The Sovereign Individual. Written in 1997, the book has become a foundational text for Silicon Valley doomsday planners, and Thiel has called it a “guide to the future.”

The Sovereign Individual argues that the nation-state is becoming obsolete. As digital technology and cryptocurrency enable individuals to operate beyond government control, centralized authority will collapse. In this new world disorder, only a small “cognitive elite” will survive.

This is the future Thiel is preparing for. After decades harvesting humanity’s data and becoming fabulously wealthy in the process, he plans to abandon it at the first sign of trouble.

Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg’s approach to survival is less nomadic than Thiel’s. He is building his fortress in one place, and he is building it at scale.

The Meta CEO is developing Koolau Ranch, a sprawling compound in Hawaii. The project began in 2014 with the purchase of 700 acres for $100 million. By 2026, the footprint had expanded to more than 2,300 acres. The total cost of all acquisitions and construction is estimated at over $300 million, according to Fortune.

The compound features two mansions, 11 disc-shaped tree houses connected by rope bridges, guest houses, and a spa area with a gym, sauna, jacuzzi, pools, and a tennis court. At the center sits a 5,000-square-foot underground shelter with autonomous power, food, and water supplies. The bunker includes a blast-resistant door, a concealed emergency hatch, and panic rooms. The two mansions connect to it via an underground tunnel.

Zuckerberg has publicly denied that the compound is a “doomsday bunker,” calling it instead a “hurricane shelter” and claiming that the whole thing had been “blown out of proportion.”

However, the security measures suggest otherwise. All construction workers, including carpenters and electricians, were made to sign strict non-disclosure agreements prohibiting them from discussing the project. Workers from different sections were not allowed to communicate with each other. According to Wired, employees are so intimidated that one of them compared the project to Fight Club: “It’s fight club. We don’t talk about fight club.”

Zuckerberg plans to meet the looming apocalypse in comfort. He has been breeding Wagyu and Angus cattle, feeding them his own beer and macadamia nuts to produce what he calls “the highest-quality beef in the world.”

There is no better metaphor for 2026 than a tech oligarch devouring elite steak in a sealed bunker while the world around him burns.

Bill Gates

Bill Gates has spent decades warning about existential threats. In a 2015 TED talk, he predicted that ‘if anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war.’ Five years later, COVID-19 swept across the planet. The Big Pharma vaccines he championed were rushed to market with unprecedented speed—and an equally unprecedented lack of long-term safety data.

In a 2025 interview, Gates expanded his list of fears: nuclear war, bioterrorism, uncontrolled AI, and societal polarization. The younger generation, he said, should be ‘very afraid’ of all four.

Gates, it seems, takes his own advice seriously. Ron Hubbard, CEO of Atlas Survival Shelters, has claimed that Gates has 11 bunkers and that his representatives met with his security team. Gates has also invested in a different kind of doomsday preparation: the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, an Arctic repository designed to preserve the world’s crops in the event of global catastrophe. His foundation has contributed nearly $30 million to the project.

Gates has framed Svalbard as a philanthropic endeavor, but the software tycoon has a long history of cloaking his Machiavellian pursuits in humanitarian language. He built Microsoft into a monopoly by crushing competitors through tactics that would later be deemed illegal in multiple jurisdictions. He turned his foundation into a shadow state with more influence over health, education, and agriculture than most governments.

If the past is any guide, Gates will use the next crisis not to save us, but to expand his influence. That’s exactly what he did during the pandemic.

Sam Altman & Ilya Sutskever

The OpenAI story contains perhaps the most dramatic evidence that AI’s creators fear what they are building.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, does not hide his preparations. In a 2016 interview with The New Yorker, he openly listed his survival arsenal: “guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.” He also confirmed that he and Peter Thiel have an arrangement to flee to New Zealand in the event of a global catastrophe.

Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s co-founder and former chief scientist, has been even more explicit. In 2023, he called a meeting of key researchers and said: “We’re definitely going to build a bunker before we release AGI.” He explained that this was necessary to protect key scientists from the geopolitical chaos that could follow the creation of superintelligence.

According to colleagues interviewed by The Atlantic magazine, he regularly returned to this topic. One researcher revealed: “There is a group of people—and Ilya is one of them—who believe that building AGI will bring about a rapture. Literally, a rapture.”

The irony is that Altman has dismissed AI skeptics as “trolls” and “mediocre deep learning skeptics.” In reality, Altman and his team at OpenAI perfectly understand that they are putting humanity at risk. They simply don’t care.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk is the exception among his peers. His survival plan does not involve hiding underground or buying foreign citizenship. Instead, he is building a way off the planet entirely.

SpaceX is developing Starship for a Mars colony. Musk argues that the six-month journey creates a natural quarantine against pandemics, while the 4-to-20-minute communication delay makes it nearly impossible for a hostile AI to infect Martian infrastructure. In his words, this ‘greatly reduces the risk of consciousness being extinguished.’”

Musk has projected that the first self-sustaining cities on Mars will emerge between 2045 and 2055. By then, if the other men in this story are right, there may not be a functioning civilization on Earth to support them. Musk appears to have recognized this problem. In February, he pivoted SpaceX’s focus to the Moon, claiming a ‘self-growing city’ there could be built in under 10 years.

Musk is the wealthiest man in the world and the first trillionaire in human history, a title underwritten by massive US government subsidies. He frames his space colony ambitions as ‘collective life insurance’ for humanity, but humanity would not need that insurance if it were not for Musk and his billionaire friends. They pillaged the planet, profited from chaos, and built machines that could one day replace us. To add insult to injury, now they are leaving us with the bill.