Ryan J. Smith

The most definitive White House statement purporting to justify the Israel-US war on Iran was its March 2, 2026 statement entitled "The Iranian Regime's Decades of Terrorism against American Citizens". whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/… After a brief editorial opening, the article lists 44 incidents with a total of 992 US deaths. The source of the data wasn't given. Where did it come from? Unlike the Iraq war or the Russia collusion allegation, the reporting didn't come from an intelligence assessment, flawed or otherwise. It turns out that the list was plagiarized by the White House from a June 19, 2025 list (fdd.org/analysis/2025/…) prepared by a former AIPAC employee (Tzvi Kahn) for a think tank (FDD) founded "to provide education to enhance Israel's image in North America". The think tank's original identity was "EMET (Hebrew for 'truth')". The June 19, 2025 publication was literally on the eve of the first US bombing of Iran on June 21, 2025. In this thread, I'll compare each and every item in the White House statement to the corresponding item in the original list by the former AIPAC employee. The list is virtually identical. Any slight changes are always in the change of ratcheting up the underlying allegation.