JD Vance: Israel is plotting to prolong Iran war

Astonishing admissions from the US Vice President

Apologies for the lack of posts: I’ve been finishing my new book The Fall of the West. After a break, both my video channel and Substack will go up a notch…

Israel is conspiring to keep the US at war with Iran indefinitely. That’s according to Vice President JD Vance in a new interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, who believes he is being specifically targeted.

Outlining a US strategy that he claims is both negotiation and military, he says:

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there have been people within the Israeli government who are trying to like actually shift us away from that policy because they want to continue the military campaign.

He goes on:

I mean, you know, the ambassador of Israel to the United States I think is actually a really good guy. Obviously, he cares about Israel first. I care about America first.

But there are some people within their system we know beyond a shadow of a doubt who are manipulating and trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going on indefinitely. Again, not towards any objective, but just indefinitely.

He goes even further:

People are always going to try to influence the United States of America, whether they’re allies of ours or whether they’re enemies of ours.

But again, when I open up the pages of Time magazine and I see that there’s a literal foreign influence campaign being funded to tank the very deal that I was pursuing, and oh, by the way, many of the people who were receiving that money were actually attacking me in completely dishonest ways, you know, my response to that is, well, go to hell.

I’m going to do what I have to do for the American people. I represent Americans first.

He’s referring here to an article in Time magazine headlined ‘Trump’s Ex-Campaign Manager Is Running An Israeli Influence Operation Targeting the MAGA Base’.

It details how online MAGA influencers turned on Trump’s Iran deal, noting “Many of the posts appeared almost simultaneously, with similarities in language and tone.” A senior US official concluded that these influencers were being paid by Israel in an operation led by former Trump presidential campaign manager Brad Parscale.

As well as seeking to prevent young conservatives from turning on Israel, the operation aims to use them to promote Israel’s interests in US politics. These influencers receive “coordinated messaging through private group chats, synchronized the timing of their posts, and were compensated based on the reach they generated.”

There’s a lot of money to be made for conservative influencers willing to push Israeli propaganda:

It remains unclear how much Parscale’s outfits paid creators as part of the Israel campaign. Another recent Influenceable campaign offered influencers a base payment of $2,250, plus $1 for every 1,000 views, up to 2 million views—allowing influencers to earn as much as $4,250 per post, according to internal text messages reviewed by TIME.

Amusingly, an Israeli official claims to be “pissed” at Pascale, adding: “He was supposed to make things better. We have paid him lots of money. But what did he do with it? Things have only gotten worse.”

What they mean is that US public opinion has dramatically shifted against Israel despite their efforts. It turns out that no amount of propaganda can stop people being repulsed at the genocidal slaughter of civilians.

In this context, when asked by Rogan how he was being attacked, JD Vance explained:

Oh, it’s social media posts. It’s, you know, they’re leaking to reporters. They’re attacking me obsessively, saying that we should not be negotiating with Iran. We should just keep the military campaign going indefinitely.

And that is their explicit position. And coming after me saying that, you know, people have come after me and say that I’m influenced by Qatar, that I’m influenced by foreign governments, that, you know, I take my marching orders from Tucker Carlson.

In other words, Israel has concluded that JD Vance is a weak link in the US administration because he is insufficiently subservient to their interests.

None of this is to sow any illusions in Vance, who is a leading figure in a far-right authoritarian government. He just hails from the more authentically right-wing isolationist tradition.

What it helps us understand is how Israel organises to manipulate US public opinion and put pressure on the US government. There is a lack of understanding of this, partly because weaponised false claims of antisemitism shut down scrutiny.

There was another fascinating detail, too. When Rogan suggests most people thought Epstein was a Mossad agent, JD Vance says:

Yeah, Mossad or CIA or some other deep state, whether in America or Israel or another country, or both. You know, look, was he— he clearly had connections to the upper, the highest levels of American intelligence. He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence.

Meanwhile, it is reported that Trump plans to expand the military assault against Iran, including “enhanced airstrikes, sending ground forces to seize Iranian islands near the Strait, and bombing Pickaxe mountain.”

Trump is trapped between two disastrous outcomes. One is that he accepts that the US has suffered a shattering military defeat - on a scale much greater than Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and indeed Vietnam.

The other is that he seeks to avoid that outcome by dragging out the war, suffering ever-mounting economic costs, inflicting severe damage on Gulf states, and depleting US munitions.