Thinker
330 posts


Two former senior Pakistani officials tell me that Islamabad is ready to use its "good offices" to host Iran-US talks as soon as this week. But the US side is "more keen for us to play a role and broker an off-ramp" than the Iranians are, one official said.



You're a fake cleric, Dan. You can't pretend to be a devout Muslim cleric concerned about the suffering of Muslims when you're just a tool in their hands. Your father worked for the company that supplies Israel with the weapons they use to kill Palestinians. Focus on finding Donna, advise your atheist sister Lisa, and urge your father to return to Islam after his conversion to Christianity—but to the Salafi Sunni sect, not the Shia sect he previously followed.

The crows have circled and then left Tel Aviv. ⌛️✡️

وزارة الدفاع تنعى أحد المتعاقدين المدنيين في القوات المسلحة الإماراتية من الجنسية المغربية، والذي استشهد خلال مهمة روتينية في مملكة البحرين الشقيقة إثر اعتداء صاروخ إيراني استهدف مملكة البحرين الشقيقة، وأسفر عن إصابة 5 من منتسبي وزارة الدفاع الإماراتية. #برق_الإمارات

Iranian leadership: Let's build nuclear centrifuges and enrich uranium. Saudi leadership: Let's build another luxury hotel, but with a clock on top of it, like Big Ben. Iranian leadership: Drones are the weapon of the future. Let's build the cheapest, most effective kind. Saudi leadership: Let's build a random city in the desert, but make it a line and give it a cool name like Neom. Iranian leadership: Ballistic missiles will establish deterrence. Let's become a global leader in hypersonics. Saudi leadership: Let's build the biggest cube-shaped shopping mall in the world.




U.S. missiles that hit Iran likely were fired from Gulf countries that have taken the brunt of Iranian drone and missile attacks—although none acknowledges allowing use of their land or airspace on.wsj.com/4rLLyvx



The tone of al-Jazeera's coverage this war is fundamentally different from the 12 Day War. During that war, the Qatari-run network glorified & hyped up Iran's achievements in the war, and downplayed its losses. For example, their reporter in Tehran, Nour a-Deen Dgheir, claimed that the US was able to carry out operation Midnight Hammer without any aircraft lost because the US sent drones to keep Iranian air defenses busy... Now that Qatar is getting attacked, the tone is different. In response to Iranian threats to occupy lands of Arab Gulf countries if the US occupies the Kharg Island, AJ's top commentator Dr. Liqaa' Makki, simply points out Iran doesn't have the ability to do so. youtube.com/watch?v=24ECj4… In the current war, as can be seen in the clip attached, the coverage is critical of Iranian attacks on the Gulf, presenting them as serving Israel's interests in getting Gulf countries involved in the war against Iran. AJ, which for decades reported, without question, the claims of the entire Iranian Axis that it does not target civilians, now calls out Iranian lies, saying civilian infrastructure and civilians are being harmed in the Gulf. Since its establishment, AJ served as an amplifier for the propaganda pushed by Islamist groups and regimes, whether Sunni groups like AQ and Hamas or regimes like the new Syrian one or Turkey, or Shia militias backed by Iran and the Iranian regime itself. AJ staffed its roster of commentators with supporters of the Iranian Axis, like Palestinian Saeed Ziad and Jordanian Fatema a-Sumadi. These two commentators and others have disappeared from the screen and social media, and at least Ziad has been arrested by Qatari intelligence, likely ahead of deportation back to Turkey. More on Ziad, who aroused fury among Gazans for saying they have no choice but to keep resisting with the "flesh of their children" x.com/LizHurra/statu… More on a-Sumadi x.com/DrSASAIRAQ/sta… AJ's shift is a reflection of Qatar's repositioning after it became the target of Iranian attacks, but this change in tone matters in the wider Middle East. AJ is the most widely watched news channel in the Middle East. AJ is particularly watched by supporters of "resistance," and over the past 2 years, served as a source of comfort and wishful analysis for supporters of this Axis, as it suffered a blow after blow.







