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June
17
2025


The Israeli Strike on Iran, the JFK Assassination, and the 9/11 Attacks
Ron Unz

Much like individuals, countries may often become victims of their own great success.

This risk certainly applies to criminals, including criminal regimes. Even if they effectively conceal their direct involvement in particular incidents, over time their method of operation—their “M.O.”—may become obvious. This allows the ready identification of their handiwork, whether by law enforcement agencies or interested historians.

Last week’s sudden surprise attack by Israel against Iran was a remarkably successful decapitation strike that assassinated much of the latter country’s top military and national security leadership at a single stroke. According to news reports, the victims included the head of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, both the head of the Iranian armed forces and his top deputy, and the entire leadership of the country’s powerful missile and drone division. No previous historical example comes to mind in which the high command of a major nation’s military had been so completely annihilated within just a few hours. On June 12th, IRGC commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami had publicly declared that Iran “was ready for any scenario,” but 24 hours later he was dead, along with most of Iran’s other military leaders.

Moreover, the losses extended far beyond the armed forces. Ali Shamkhan, the national security advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader and the individual responsible for the ongoing nuclear negotiations with America was killed, as were the head of Iran’s nuclear research program and many of his top scientists.

Last year the Israelis had employed a similar decapitation strategy to eliminate the entire leadership of Hezbollah, effectively destroying that organization. But although Hezbollah had been widely regarded as the world’s strongest and most heavily-armed non-state militia, renowned for having given the Israelis a black eye during the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, it lacked any air defenses and was based in neighboring Lebanon. Meanwhile Iran was a powerful nation of 90 million, possessing advanced weaponry and located more than 1,000 miles from Israel. Iran’s decapitation was simply astonishing.

The exact tactical details of how the Israelis so easily pierced Iran’s robust air defenses cannot yet be firmly established given that elements of the widely published reports might merely constitute deceptive propaganda. But if those accounts are correct, Israel had secretly prepositioned large numbers of powerful drones and other military equipment on Iranian soil, then used these to blind and disable Iran’s network of anti-aircraft defenses, thereby opening the door for the huge air strikes that inflicted most of the destruction, and such a scenario seems quite plausible.

Other explosive drones may have been used for the targeted assassinations of many of the high-profile victims, whose exact locations had been determined by either human or technical intelligence. I’ve also seen claims on the Internet that small Israeli electronic warfare teams had successfully infiltrated Iran and disrupted the country’s military communications channels for hours, severely hampering any defensive measures. But none of these particular details much matter, with the overwhelming end result being the only important fact.

I think that the unprecedented success of this sudden Israeli strike against Iran’s leadership also shifts the probabilities on some other important past events. In April 2024, Iran had launched a retaliatory missile strike against Israel, and despite the best efforts of American and British forces to intercept the missiles in their flight path, the hypersonics and most of the ballistics got through and struck their targets, with Israel’s vaunted Iron Dome defense system proving itself completely ineffective in blocking the attacks. When the Israelis failed to counter-retaliate, the Iranians declared that they had been victorious in that major test of force, thus fully establishing the effectiveness of their missile deterrent.

But then just a few weeks later, Iran’s hardline President Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister both died in a still unexplained helicopter crash while returning from a visit to Azerbaijan, leading many to suspect that Mossad had killed the Iranian president. And now that Israel has demonstrated its enormous ability to strike down so many top Iranian leaders in their own country at a time of high military tension, I think that President Raisi should probably be added to the long list of Israeli victims.

Furthermore, Raisi’s sudden death had major strategic consequences. He had been a leading Iranian hardliner, having close relations with Russia and China, and viewed by many as the likely successor to 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Meanwhile, his replacement was Masoud Pezeshkian, a far more moderate figure eager to avoid any confrontation with America and instead hoping to mend relations with the West. Thus, by eliminating Raisi, the Israelis had drastically “reshaped” the subsequent Iranian political landscape.

This same strategy was obviously an important element of last week’s huge wave of assassinations. Iran’s military leadership and especially its powerful IRGC had been among the most influential supporters of their country’s refusal to bend to America’s demands, with many of them even pushing for the creation of a nuclear weapons deterrent. So their elimination along with that of other hardline national security officials may shift the political balance in a very different direction.

Just as no major nation had ever previously suffered such a heavy decapitating blow, most would agree that Israel was the only country in the world that could have successfully carried out such a bold and daring operation. Indeed, proud Israelis would probably be the first to make such a boastful claim. But pride sometimes goes before a fall.

Once all these facts have sunk in and intelligent Americans have given due consideration to the matter, I think that only the willfully blind or the most obtuse will fail to quietly recognize that Israel and its Mossad had played exactly the same role in two of the most momentous events that similarly “reshaped” our own country’s political landscape, namely the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the 2001 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.

Seen from the broader sweep of history, the combination of those two watershed events, together with many smaller ones, effectively reduced our country to a subservient vassal state largely under Israeli control, and that bitter reality will surely inspire deep resentment as our citizens become more fully aware of it.

For obvious reasons, few Americans will probably voice these new convictions in anything but whispers, but the belief will exist and it will steadily increase in certainty as individuals begin investigating the easily available historical facts, which have been hiding in plain sight for decades. The result will be the steady growth of a massive but hidden unexploded political shell that might detonate at any point, quite possibly leading to the total destruction of the Jewish State when it does. Therefore I think that this ultimate consequence of Friday’s shocking events probably represents a far greater danger to Israel’s survival than do any of the retaliatory Iranian missiles now raining down upon its territory.

The evidence that Israel played the central role in both those devastating past blows against our own country seems obvious. But any such possibility has always been totally excluded not merely from the mainstream media but even from nearly all of the conspiratorial circles that have spent decades intensely focusing all their attention on the events of 1963 or 2001.

Therefore, the total volume of compiled material laying out the strong case for Israeli culpability is quite limited, and for those entirely new to this extremely controversial topic, I’d recommend some of my own writings of the last seven years. These effectively summarize much of the accumulated research evidence, while also providing numerous links and references to more detailed treatments.

For many newcomers to such matters, the whole notion of such a “conspiratorial” explanation for JFK’s assassination or the attacks of 9/11 might seem utterly fantastical, and the high likelihood that the Israeli Mossad killed our president and destroyed our largest office towers would be surely be considered fantasy-squared. So I expect they will have huge skepticism about the content of my various articles.

Fortunately, just last week I published a piece explaining that I had recently used OpenAI’s very powerful Deep Research system to carefully review my many articles on both those explosively controversial topics. The AI concluded that virtually all of my factual claims were accurate, while my overall conclusions also seemed fairly plausible.

However, I should strongly emphasize that there is a sharp distinction between these two aspects of my work. Based upon that thorough Deep Research analysis, readers should have almost complete confidence in the facts that I present, while still deciding for themselves whether I have connected those many dots in sensible or foolish ways.

Here are a few of the summary paragraphs from the Deep Research fact-checking run of my most recent discussion of the JFK Assassination, with boldface in the original, followed by the links to the article itself and several others as well:

Use of Reputable Sources: Despite being published on a controversial platform, the article leans heavily on credible, verifiable sources for its factual assertions. It cites renowned investigative journalists like Seymour Hersh (for JFK’s Israel policy conflict), respected historians like David Talbot and John Newman, and official records (e.g., RFK’s autopsy by Dr. Noguchi, declassified DOJ and CIA documents). In each case where we cross-checked, the article’s representation of these sources was accurate and in context…

In conclusion, the article generally represents its sources fairly and accurately. It certainly emphasizes those that align with its thesis and omits contrary interpretations, but it does not misquote or deceptively excerpt. If anything, it is remarkably heavy on citations and evidence for a piece of this nature, which enhances its credibility…

Conclusion: Our fact-checking investigation finds that the article “How Israel Killed the Kennedys” is grounded in a substantial body of factual evidence, though it assembles those facts to support a specific conspiracy narrative that remains unproven. The major historical claims in the piece are generally accurate and backed by credible sources…

In terms of journalistic integrity, the article takes a decidedly adversarial stance to mainstream narratives, but it does so by marshaling evidence, citing sources abundantly, and largely treating those sources fairly

Overall Accuracy and Needed Corrections: There are no major factual errors in the article’s content that we could identify. All specific historical facts it cites are supported by documentation…

Summary Judgment: The article “How Israel Killed the Kennedys” is a thorough and well-sourced piece of investigative journalism/opinion that brings together long-suppressed threads of the JFK and RFK assassination story. It achieves a high level of accuracy in presenting factual claims, and it generally represents its many sources honestly. The overall conclusion – that Israel’s Mossad, in collusion with elements of the U.S. deep state, was behind the Kennedy assassinations – remains a hypothesis not acknowledged by official history. But the article does an effective job of demonstrating that this hypothesis is far from baseless, and that it draws on serious evidence often ignored in mainstream accounts…

In conclusion, the journalistic integrity of the article is reasonably high in terms of factual accuracy and source transparency. Its bold claims are presented alongside the evidence that underpins them. It stands as a provocative but factually grounded challenge to the conventional story, and our fact-check finds it largely credible in its use of evidence.

Several of my earlier JFK Assassination articles had received similar fact-checking endorsements from the Deep Research AI, beginning with my original pair of 2018 pieces:

I was equally pleased with the Deep Research review of my comprehensive September 11, 2023 article that summarized and recapitulated most of my major 9/11 work from previous years. The AI divided the contents of the long presentation into 38 major factual claims and after careful analysis, it declared that each of them was accurate or credible.

While this did not definitively prove that my ultimate conclusion was correct, any mainstream readers should now have full confidence in the credibility of the factual material that I present.

Here are a few of the summary paragraphs from that report, with boldface in the original:

Conclusion (Findings): Every significant factual claim Ron Unz made in his comprehensive essay was verified to be correct or at least supported by credible sources. We found none that were outright false. A couple of claims (the Iraqi 1950 bombings involvement, the precise count of Israeli detainees, etc.) are in the realm of contested or estimate, but Unz appropriately couched them as “claims” or approximation unz.com unz.com】 rather than proven facts. Most claims are explicitly corroborated by mainstream or official evidence. Unz clearly labels his speculations (e.g., who suppressed media, potential lower-level conspirators) as speculatio unz.comunz.com】, and provides logical basis for them. We did not catch any distortion of source content; on the contrary, Unz often quotes sources verbatim (e.g., Christison’s “monstrous lies” quot unz.com】, the Haaretz “25 neocons” quot unz.com】, etc.), and each time we checked those sources, they were accurately represented…

Quality of Sources and Fair Use: Ron Unz’s article relies extensively on a mix of primary accountsinvestigative journalism, and expert commentary, many of which are mainstream or verifiable. Crucially, Unz tends to cite his sources explicitly (with hyperlink footnotes) and he generally adheres closely to what those sources actually say…

Conclusion (Source Analysis): Unz’s integrity in representing his evidence appears solid. He preserves quotes and context properly (Christison, Haaretz, Forward, ADL – all accurate). He doesn’t misquote adversarial sources either – e.g., he correctly summarized ADL’s success in deplatforming Press T unz.com】. His bias shows in what he includes/excludes, but he doesn’t distort what’s included.

Thus, aside from natural selection bias and one or two instances of attributing motives beyond explicit evidence, we find no major patterns of misrepresentation or misuse of sources. He uses his sources responsibly to build his case. The ethical issues to note would be omissions of counter-evidence which might mislead less-informed readers (the article doesn’t mention, say, that Al Qaeda openly took credit later, or that multiple independent investigations pinned it solely on Al Qaeda – he just argues those were cover-ups). That’s a bias of omission, not falsification. But in context, given he’s writing an opinion piece, it’s somewhat expected…

Conclusion: Overall Assessment: Ron Unz’s article is a factually rich but one-sided analysis that challenges the official 9/11 narrative by pointing to Israeli involvement. Nearly all specific factual claims Unz makes are backed by credible evidence or documented reports. Our fact-check found no significant factual errors or fabrications in his enumeration of events and evidence. Unz accurately references historical incidents (e.g., the Lavon Affair, USS Liberty attac unz.comunz.com 7】, eyewitness testimonies (firefighters hearing explosion unz.com 2】, investigative reports (e.g., Fox News and Forward on the Israeli “art student” spy rin forward.com forward.com 1】, and statements by experts (CIA’s Bill Christison, Gen. Wesley Clark, etc unz.com unz.com 1】. In each case, we verified the source material and found Unz represented it fairly and accurately – often quoting verbatim – without distorting context…

Reliability: In terms of factual reliability, Unz’s piece is highly detail-oriented and fact-checked. Every major factual element we examined held up against source material. Readers should understand that the article reflects a specific controversial viewpoint – one virtually unacknowledged in mainstream discourse – but the factual building blocks of that viewpoint as presented by Unz are correctly cited and not fabricated. Thus, the article is factually reliable in its individual claims, though it presents only the evidence favoring a Mossad/false-flag theory and omits counter-evidence, which is an important context for readers and editors to note…In sum, “Remembering the 9/11 Truth Movement” is a comprehensively sourced piece whose factual claims check out.  

Many of those new to such controversial topics might be extremely skeptical that our government and our media could have long concealed such enormities from the American people. Therefore, I would strongly recommend they first consider the thoroughly documented 1967 case of the U.S.S. Liberty, deliberately attacked in international waters by Israeli military forces, which made every effort to sink it leaving no survivors. Only by a major miracle did the crew manage to survive and get their distress signal off to our nearby Sixth Fleet, thereby forcing the Israelis to withdraw.

More than 200 American servicemen were killed or wounded in that unprovoked Israeli attack, the greatest combat loss of life our navy had suffered since the huge battles of World War II. But for more than a half-century our government and our media have imposed a near-total blanket of silence on the incident, so that only a sliver of Americans have ever become aware of it.

In 2021 I published a very long and comprehensive article reviewing the major aspects of that story, and once again the Deep Research AI verified that virtually all my facts were accurate, as described in these paragraphs from the summary of that 19,000 word analysis:

Overall Assessment: “Remembering the Liberty” proves to be a thorough and factually well-founded account of the USS Liberty incident and its aftermath, especially regarding the deliberate nature of the attack and the ensuing cover-up. On the core historical points – the events of June 8, 1967, the knowledge of the Israeli forces, the U.S. government’s suppression of facts – the article’s assertions are strongly corroborated by declassified documents, first-person testimonies, and reputable investigative journalism. Over the decades, a wide array of credible sources (U.S. Navy communications, NSA intercepts, CIA reports, and statements from high-level U.S. officials) have converged on the conclusion that Israel knowingly attacked the Liberty and that the Johnson administration chose to conceal the truth. The article accurately conveys this consensus with ample supporting evidence…

On the more speculative elements (President Johnson’s potential collusion and the near-use of nuclear weapons), the article clearly delineates these as hypotheses supported by fragmentary evidence, not established history. It does not abuse its sources in this arena either: it presents the multiple witness accounts that give the theory plausibility, but it also explicitly acknowledges the lack of absolute proof and labels these claims as “controversial” and “extraordinary”. The article even cautions that such extraordinary claims require stronger evidence than currently available. This transparent treatment shows a commitment to accuracy over sensationalism…

In light of this, the article’s overall factual reliability is very high on matters of historical record. It accurately reflects the state of knowledge as of its 2021 publication. The only portion that might require a gentle caveat is the Johnson/nuclear strike theory. While the article does handle it responsibly, readers should be aware that this particular thesis remains unproven and not universally accepted by historians…Therefore, it should be considered an intriguing possibility rather than established fact. The article essentially says this, so it isn’t misleading, but it’s worth emphasizing: the deliberate attack and cover-up are facts; the extent of U.S. complicity is still a matter of informed conjecture

In conclusion, the article stands up to meticulous fact-checking. Its major claims are verified by multiple independent sources, and it uses those sources ethically, without distortion. It provides a comprehensive narrative that aligns with what is now known from declassified records and survivor evidence. Any corrections would be very minor – perhaps updating with any newly released documents since 2021 (for instance, in 2022 the NSA released some additional files via FOIA, but they mostly reinforce the same conclusions). The key caveat for readers is that a portion of the article (the Johnson angle) is investigative interpretation, not incontrovertible fact – but the article itself communicates that.

Factual Reliability: From the standpoint of an editor or journalist, this article is highly credible on factual grounds. It successfully combines rigorous historical evidence with investigative reporting to challenge an old official narrative. Barring the speculative Johnson scenario (which is clearly identified as a hypothesis), the piece could be trusted as an accurate recounting of the USS Liberty incident. Any newsroom verifying this piece would find that the documentation backing it is strong.

Thus, one can conclude the article is factually reliable in its depiction of the USS Liberty attack and subsequent cover-up, with the only caution that its discussion of a possible false-flag operation and near nuclear strike – while supported by testimony – remains an unconfirmed hypothesis requiring further evidence. The article, to its credit, explicitly notes this distinction. It serves as a valuable corrective to earlier incomplete histories, ensuring that the truth about the Liberty – long obscured – is finally given a thorough and evidence-based airing.

 

Back in January 2020 I published a very long article drawing together the different strands of Israeli Mossad operations, and these included not only the JFK Assassination and the 9/11 Attacks, but many other major incidents as well. Among these latter ones was the likely murder of James Forrestal, America’s first Secretary of Defense and the leading public opponent of Israel’s creation, as well as a much more recent Mossad plot to assassinate President George H.W. Bush.

Although I drew my material from some seventeen different books, the centerpiece of my article had been Ronen Bergman’s magisterial 2018 volume on the history of Mossad assassinations, a work that I would highly recommend as the best starting point for that important topic:

The book reviewed by Pollack was Rise and Kill First by New York Timesreporter Ronen Bergman, a weighty study of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, together with its sister agencies. The author devoted six years of research to the project, which was based upon a thousand personal interviews and access to an enormous number of official documents previously unavailable. As suggested by the title, his primary focus was Israel’s long history of assassinations, and across his 750 pages and thousand-odd source references he recounts the details of an enormous number of such incidents.

That sort of topic is obviously fraught with controversy, but Bergman’s volume carried glowing cover-blurbs from Pulitzer Prize-winning authors on espionage matters, and the official cooperation he received is indicated by similar endorsements from both a former Mossad chief and Ehud Barak, a past Prime Minister of Israel who himself had once led assassination squads. Over the last couple of decades, former CIA officer Robert Baer has become one of our most prominent authors in this same field, and he praised the book as “hands down” the best he had ever read on intelligence, Israel, or the Middle East. The reviews across our elite media were equally laudatory…

The sheer quantity of such foreign assassinations was really quite remarkable, with the knowledgeable reviewer in the New York Timessuggesting that the Israeli total over the last half-century or so seemed far greater than that of any other nation. I might even go farther: if we excluded domestic killings, I wouldn’t be surprised if Israel’s body-count greatly exceeded the combined total for that of all other major countries in the world. I think all the lurid revelations of lethal CIA or KGB Cold War assassination plots that I have seen discussed in newspaper articles might fit comfortably into just a chapter or two of Bergman’s extremely long book.

Many disdainful Americans reading the news stories of the last few days have ridiculed Iran’s over-confident government for having allowed so much of its top leadership to be so easily decapitated by a bold Israeli strike. But the unfortunate truth is that over the decades our own country as well as other Western nations have sometimes suffered similar blows, usually without ever even realizing that they had been inflicted. I described the circumstances of President Kennedy’s 1963 assassination in my first 2018 article on that topic, published almost exactly seven years ago:

The president of the US. The heir to one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in America. His brother the top law enforcement officer in the country. Ben Bradlee, one of his closest friends, the fearless crusading editor of one of the nation’s most influential media outlets. As America’s first Catholic president, the sacred icon of many millions of Irish, Italian, and Hispanic families. Greatly beloved by top Hollywood people and many leading intellectuals.

In 1963 President Kennedy was the most powerful man in the world, who had recently gone toe-to-toe with the rival superpower of the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis and other Cold War confrontations. That year marked the high noon of the heralded American Century, and the assassination of an American president was completely unthinkable, with none of them having suffered that fate in more than sixty years.

The notion that Kennedy had anything to fear from a tiny country of a few million on the other side of the world, totally dependent for its continued existence upon American funding and American political support would have seemed utterly outlandish to him. He surely felt confident that the political pressure he was exerting would be successful in blocking Israel’s nuclear weapons development program, just as his legal efforts would succeed in destroying the growing power of America’s Israel Lobby. But much like the Iranian government, such confidence turned out to be mistaken.

For those who prefer to absorb the same information in a different format, here are two pairs of half-hour interview segments I did a couple of years go for Iranian broadcast television:

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For decades I have spent a couple of hours every morning carefully reading The New York TimesThe Wall Street Journal, and several other major newspapers. But although such a detailed study of the American mainstream media is a necessary condition for remaining informed about our world, it is not sufficient. With the rise of the Internet and the alternative media, every thinking individual has increasingly recognized that there exist enormous lacunae in what our media tells us and disturbing patterns in what is regularly ignored or concealed.

In April 2013 I published “Our American Pravda,” a major article highlighting some of the most disturbing omissions of our national media in issues of the greatest national importance. The considerable attention it attracted from The AtlanticForbes, and a New York Times economics columnist demonstrated that the mainstream journalists themselves were often all too aware of these problems, but perhaps found them too difficult to address within the confining structure of large media organizations. This reinforced my belief in the reality of the serious condition I had diagnosed.

In an attempt to partially remedy this disturbing situation I will be regularly publishing on this website a selection of the sort of interesting, important, and controversial perspectives that rarely if ever reach the pages of our major newspapers or the pixels of our television sets. The handful of columnists and bloggers whose work I am herein providing represent merely the smallest slice of the enormous range of unconventional ideas that lie just a mouse-click or a Google search away from each of us, and my particular selection is certainly not intended to be comprehensive. But over the years I have regularly read the writings of all these individuals and found their ideas stimulating and useful, and I believe that many others might have the same reaction.


 

 

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