Melanie Phillips on Antisemitism, 5-15-26

Rabid Jew-hatred is getting worse and more delusional by the day. The riots at the Brooklyn synagogues were despicable -- I was waiting to see if the haters would try to emulate Kristallnacht and break windows.

The Gen Z-ers either get their rabid antisemitism from their parents or else they actually think hating Jews and Israel somehow makes them more popular. Whatever the reason, it's not about to stop soon. 

The New York Times publishing that sick Nicholas Kristof column must be emulating Joseph Goebbels and his anti-Jewish propaganda. I'd like to at least see Jewish NYT readers cancel their subscriptions in response.

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The anti-Jewish fever dream of The New York Times
We’re living through a throwback to murderous beliefs from before the age of reason

Melanie Phillips, May 15, 2026

"It’s now clear that we are living through a civilisational emergency. Just as the Palestinian Arabs tried to bring about the destruction of Israel in the attacks on October 7, 2023, so the Islamic world has deployed the cultural apparatus of the West to destroy the Jews.

"The spurious distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is no longer even being deployed as a fig-leaf. Attacks on Jews are out of control in both Britain and America.

"In London, such attacks are now taking place almost daily. In New York last week, a mob of Islamists and leftists besieged Park East synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side; this week, another such mob set upon Jews outside a synagogue in Brooklyn.

"Anti-Zionism, with its incendiary lies about Israel’s haviour designed to paint it as a unique menace and turn it into the pariah of the world, has been further weaponised to unleash something even darker.

"We are witnessing a reversion to primitive, pre-modern forms of Jew-hatred.

"The New York Times this week published a 4,000-word article by Nicholas Kristof headlined “The silence that meets the rape of Palestinians,” in which Kristof accused Israel of training dogs to rape Palestinian Arab prisoners.

"This grotesque assertion was held to exemplify Kristof’s claim of systematic sexual violence “against men, women and even children by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards”.

"The allegation that dogs were used to rape prisoners, said by experts to be anatomically impossible, is as ridiculous as it is obscene.

"Tellingly, it combines certain hallmarks of the Palestinian Arab mindset — the belief that dogs are filthy, that Jews are also filthy, and the habitual and false projection onto the Israelis of crimes that the Palestinian Arabs themselves commit against them.

"Indeed, Kristof has drawn upon precisely this poisonous Palestinian thinking.

"The “dog rape” claim has been pushed since 2024 by the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. Kristof treats this source as credible. It’s anything but.

"It’s previously claimed that the Israel Defence Forces harvested the organs of Palestinian corpses, another disgusting fantasy drawn from the depths of the deranged Palestinian mind.

"The Israelis have listed the group’s founder, Ramy Abdu, as a Hamas operative. The day after the October 7 slaughter and kidnapping of 1,200 Israeli innocents, Abdu posted on X that the perpetrators were “knightly heroes who forged for us a pure glory untainted by the mud”.

"Kristof produced not one shred of evidence for his claims. His sources were either anonymous or belonged to the echo chamber advocating the mass murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel.

"He quoted terrorism supporters whose own claims of abuse had changed over time. Honest Reporting noted that Sami al Sai, introduced by Kristof as a “freelance journalist,” has a long record of celebrating terrorists on social media and was jailed twice for incitement. The claims he made to Kristof about his alleged abuse differed in key details from the story he fed the Israeli “human rights” group B’Tselem last year.

"More seriously still, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has accused Kristof of misrepresenting his words so that he was made to appear falsely as validating these allegations.

"In short, the article was a nauseating travesty. But this wasn’t merely recycled Hamas propaganda demonising Israel. The “dog rape” allegation was a psychotic fever dream straight out of medieval, Nazi and Soviet anti-Jewish demonology.

"Kristof wrote that some may wonder whether Palestinian witnesses might fabricate accusations to smear Israel, but this struck him as “far-fetched”.

"Just think about that. To Kristof, it wasn’t “far-fetched” that a dog could be trained to rape a man. What was instead “far-fetched” to him was the suggestion that the Palestinians might be lying to harm Israel.

"But that’s exactly what they do all the time. Kristof, his editors and other Israel-haters believe Palestinian lies — however absurd and impossible —because they want to believe them.

"They regard the Palestinians as the wretched and oppressed victims of the Israelis. That’s why it’s considered as “far-fetched” to believe that the Palestinians could do anything monstrous to the Israelis as to believe that the Israelis could be the Palestinians’ victims.

"That’s also why so many of the Israel-haters have denied the sexual violence done to the Israelis on October 7.

"The day after Kristof’s travesty, the results were published of a two-year Israeli commission of inquiry into the gender-based atrocities committed during the October 7 massacre and subsequent captivity of some 251 people, even young children, dragged that day into the Gaza Strip.

"The commission, founded by legal scholar Cochav Elkayam-Levy, drew upon more than 10,000 photographs and video segments; more than 1,800 hours of visual material; and more than 430 testimonies and interviews with survivors, witnesses, released hostages, experts and family members.

"Its findings are very hard to read. The victims were tortured, mutilated and decapitated; a breast was cut off and tossed around; women were shot in the course of being raped and raped after they were murdered.

"They were shot in the face to annihilate their beauty and their humanity; nails and other objects were found in their intimate areas; relatives were forced to perform sexual acts on each other. And it was all filmed by Palestinian savages who proudly carried out these depraved acts with delirious glee.

"This report constitutes meticulously sourced, authoritative research that throws an even more shocking light on Kristof’s warped and malevolently sourced message.

"The New York Times has been accused of running the Kristof article the day before in order to diminish the Israeli report. Whether or not this was so, Kristof himself suggested that his aim was to diminish, relativise and downgrade what happened on October 7.

"His article, he said, showed that “the horrific abuse inflicted on Israeli women on October 7 now happens to Palestinians day after day”.

"No other country is treated like this. Only Israelis are to be denied the unique reality of their suffering. Abuse happens in all prisons, and Israel is surely no different. But only Israel is subjected to psychotic lies about it.

"That’s because Israel is the world’s only Jewish country, and the way Israel is being abused is the way Jews alone have always been abused.

"The claim that dogs are trained to rape Palestinian Arab men is merely a modern version of ancient blood libels — that the Jews were poisoning the wells, or murdering Christian children to bake their blood into Passover matzah.

"Today’s starvation libel, the genocide libel, the baby-killers libel, the harvested organs libel — and now the “rape dogs” libel — all transmit the same message as the murderous blood libels of old: that the Jews are evil, demonic, inhuman. They are therefore to be excluded from the field of human empathy. They are to be branded as monsters and their suffering is to be denied.

"The combined effect of Kristof, The New York Times and all the other media outlets and red-carpet celebrities and university professors and social media influencers who present the Jews as devils incarnate is that they set the mob on them.

“You rape men, you rape children,” screamed the mob outside Park East synagogue. “You f**king sociopath, I see it in your eyes.”

"Jews are being hunted down on the streets of Western cities just as they were once hunted down in medieval Christian towns. Rampaging mobs were then driven by bloodlust, inflamed by the Catholic Church which told them that the Jews were the devil.

"Astoundingly, Jews are now facing the same kind of religious mania — this time driven by Islam and left-wing ideology.

"What we’re looking at is a throwback to a primitive set of murderous beliefs about Jews from before the Enlightenment, before modernity and before the age of reason.

"We are realising to our horror that the skin of civilisation is extremely thin, and that it’s now been torn off altogether. We’re living through a spiritual plague. Barbarism is in the ascendant, and its super-spreader is The New York Times."

Jewish News Syndicate

Your Local Epidemiologist, 5-15-26

A very important column by Dr Katelyn Jetelina:

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Something deeper than hantavirus
Katelyn Jetelina, May 15, 2026 

"Two weeks ago, my phone started lighting up before I’d had my coffee. Journalists, researchers, and neighborhood moms asking the same thing: Should we be worried about this hantavirus thing?

"First, I thought this would be an interesting, unique outbreak to “translate” to the public. But over time, public curiosity metastasized into a massive ball of anxiety in the headlines, online, and in some person-to-person conversations.

"Right now, the outbreak remains contained, and 41 people are being actively monitored in the U.S. Risk remains low for a number of reasons previously covered. We will continue to follow it.

"But when we pause from the numbers, transmission questions, and quarantine, and look up, the response to this outbreak is revealing a lot. Yes, how scary this virus is (it belongs in a thriller novel), and yes, the limits of our scientific knowledge. But also something far deeper.

"What we are seeing is the collision of five factors that highlight not only how far we’ve come, but also how deep this country’s wounds still run, and how much work lies ahead.

1. Absent leadership.

"Leadership at the federal level is nowhere to be found. Communication has been abysmal, much like it was at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. After a week of silence, an alert was finally sent to physicians and a press conference was held.

"But checking these boxes isn’t enough and has led to far too much deflection. For example, there are no numbers on the website, so no one actually knows who is being monitored, where, and how. This leaves massive information voids for falsehoods and rumors to fill.

"But also, people don’t just need data or facts; they need steady navigators, grounded in empathy and knowledge, to wade through the oversaturated information landscape.

"In crisis communication, a well-known formula is: outrage x hazard. So even if the hazard is low, if concern is great, you’d better be speaking with clarity, acknowledging uncertainty, listening to the questions, concerns, and confusion, and bringing people along for the ride.

"What could this look like? Look no further than the WHO. The WHO director-general traveled to Tenerife in person to speak with residents who were terrified that a boat carrying a highly contagious disease was docking. He led with emotion, grounded in the understanding that 2020 was resurfacing for people, and focused on compassion and solidarity, elevating what one of the passengers said: “We’re not headlines, we are human beings.” In the meantime, they’ve hosted almost numerous live briefings on top of their daily updates on social media accounts and humanized the process with pictures. They aren’t just telling; they are showing.

2. The positive and negative aspects of Covid-19.

"The hantavirus response is evidence that the learnings of Covid-19 stuck.

"The pandemic became an involuntary crash course in epidemiology for the entire country. Epi 101, taught in real time to everyone at once:

• What transmission means.

• What incubation periods and case fatality rates actually tell us.

• The difference between droplet and airborne spread.

• What an R0 is.

• What it means when scientists say they’re still learning.

• And what, as individuals, we can actually do to feel in control.

"During this time, public health was no longer invisible, which is beautiful because, after all, public health belongs to the public.

"People now bring a depth of curiosity and literacy that simply wasn’t widespread even in 2018. If Covid-19 was Epi 101, this is Epi 201: taking what we learned from one pandemic and applying it to an entirely different disease.

"The challenge with this is that we are changing lanes and, as Adam Grant said, “You don’t have to stay in your lane. You do need to check your blind spots before changing lanes.” After you’ve learned about one outbreak, you’ve learned about one outbreak. There are lessons the public can take, but it’s also easy to fall into blind spots of overconfidence. This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

3. The trauma of Covid-19 has not healed. Not even close.

"It’s been six years since 2020, and life has returned to a version of normal. I think many had hoped, prayed, and assumed that the wounds of the Covid-19 pandemic had healed.

"But when trauma is swept under the rug, it will eventually show its teeth.

"A new outbreak entered the news cycle with a lot of the same themes: cruise ships, quarantine, WHO speaking up, scientists speaking up, headlines, uncertainty, and hard reminders of people saying “it’s fine, don’t panic.” So, internal threat systems went into overdrive. This is what our bodies are designed to do: respond to a new threat based on prior experience. It’s literally our survival mechanism.

"As my friend Dr. Celine Gounder said: “The intensity of the reaction [also] tells you everything about the depth of the wound.”

4. Mistrust is pervasive.

"This outbreak is showing that few people trust authorities and few trust their fellow Americans to do the right thing, like quarantine responsibly.

"We entered the pandemic with a slow erosion of trust in institutions, such as government and the mass media. And it was deserved. Many institutions were built for a different time, and when institutions fail to adapt, people are left behind, and trust erodes.

"The pandemic accelerated mistrust on one side. For them, the experience felt like an overreach. A government that moved to control behavior, restrict movement, and mandate compliance, often without consistent logic or transparency.

"But then, after the pandemic, the pendulum swung violently in the other direction. What felt like a restoration of sanity to some felt like an abandonment of truth and decency to others.

"The tribalism has become so strong that it’s not only eroded trust in the systems that are supposed to keep us safe, but also in each other.

"This is not only deeply heartbreaking for society, but also leaves us incredibly vulnerable to threats within and outside of our country.

5. Social media and the hurting media economy are fueling the embers.

"An accelerant is the information landscape. Information is spreading like wildfire on social media, adding extraordinary complexity for people earning to understand what to believe, from whom, and when.

"Social media algorithms and news headlines are built to play on emotion and engineered to surface rage and fear because rage and fear make us scroll, click and sells ads. This creates a seriously challenging echo chamber all of us can get stuck in, where we think every conversation is like the one we are in."

"At YLE, we saw this in real time. Not only do we do social listening on the backend, but we also have a weekly survey to understand things not in the media environment. Usually what we hear from these sources matches; after all, 1 in 2 Americans get their health-related information online. But this week was different: on social media, there was spiraling. In the survey? Only 20% were concerned; 60% were just curious about what was going on.

So where does this lead us?

"If you felt something or saw this beneath the surface these past two weeks, you’re not alone. What we are experiencing is a deep collision of massive forces, with all of us stuck in the middle.

"As a society, we have serious work to do. We need to reckon honestly with the trauma we never processed. And our leaders and institutions need to stop talking about rebuilding trust and actually do it.

"For individuals, I think this means:

• Keep learning Epi 201. Lead with curiosity and humility, as many people are taking the course.

• Triple-check your sources and be sure to share trusted information. Here are nine ways to spot falsehoods that I wrote about a few years ago.

• Give yourself grace—and give it to those trying to communicate in real time, in an arena where the answers aren’t always clear yet.

• Put down social media. Have conversations with people outside your bubble. Get involved in your community. This country is deeply wounded, and change and sanity start locally.

Bottom line

"Hantavirus may be contained. But the conditions that made these two weeks so destabilizing are not. The real outbreak is one of fractured trust, unhealed trauma, and absent leadership. No one is coming to fix it but us. We all have a role to play.

"Love, YLE"

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Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is founded by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, wife, and mom of two little girls. YLE comprises a team of experts, ranging from physicians to immunologists to epidemiologists to nutritionists, working together with one goal: to “Translate” ever-evolving public health science so that people are well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. YLE reaches over 425,000 people across more than 132 countries

Ignoring 'Influencer" Hantavirus & COVID Advice is Better For Your Health

So-called "influencers" have never managed to influence me, which is another reason why I have never had COVID.  I'm not listening to these hantavirus quacks, either.

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The Hantavirus Outbreak Is Resurrecting Covid-Era Misinformation Tactics.
Experts say A.I. tools have made it even easier for influencers and others to spread false messages online.

By Teddy Rosenbluth and Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, 5-12-26

"Influencers and others on social media have seized on the hantavirus outbreak to revive disinformation that sowed distrust during the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Some users on X have called the outbreak, which began on a Dutch cruise ship and was first reported to the World Health Organization earlier this month, a hoax designed to influence a new round of elections in the United States, or have falsely claimed that hantavirus is a side effect of the Covid vaccine. Others have warned about the possibility of lockdowns and vaccines, despite the fact that there has been no discussion of such measures and there’s no widely available shot on the market. The claims have been viewed millions of times on X, TikTok and other platforms, according to researchers who track content online.

“The conspiracy theories from Covid-19 never really died,” said Yotam Ophir, who studies misinformation and conspiracy theories at the University at Buffalo. “They lay dormant for a few years.”

"Public health experts say the outbreak of hantavirus, which spreads rarely from person to person, poses far less of a threat than Covid, which killed more than 7 million people worldwide after it emerged in China in late 2019. But the rush to embrace a new round of conspiracy theories has them concerned.

"Even if the hantavirus outbreak is quickly brought under control, they fear this is a warning sign that officials will face significant pushback should they need the nation’s cooperation in controlling the next major health threat.

“The next time when we need to face a big challenge as a society, we’re just not in a good place to cope with it,” Dr. Ophir said.

"Part of the problem, he said, is that much of the misinformation and distrust generated during the Covid pandemic was never meaningfully addressed.

"One 2024 survey found more than a quarter of respondents still mistakenly believed Covid vaccines caused thousands of deaths, years after Americans first started getting the shots. Another 2023 survey found that more than a third of Americans believed the virus responsible for Covid was released on purpose, a theory unsupported by any credible evidence.

"Some of the people responsible for spreading Covid misinformation and sowing distrust in the nation’s public health institutions now lead them. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has previously faced backlash for suggesting that the coronavirus targeted and spared certain ethnic groups, for example.

"Another issue, experts said, is that the Covid pandemic left an infrastructure of influencers who have built their platforms around health misinformation, making it easier than ever for conspiracies to catch on. They have pushed similar content in response to other public health threats, including measles and bird flu, experts said.

“It really follows the same playbook,” said John Gregory, who leads the health misinformation team at NewsGuard, a company that tracks false narratives online. “It’s basically conspiracy theory Mad Libs; they just take out the nouns and then they replace them with whatever the new outbreak is about.”

"The accounts gaining the most traction are familiar to those who monitored misinformation during the pandemic.

"Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, a Texas physician who promoted ivermectin to treat Covid, wrote in an X post last week that the drug “should work” against hantavirus as well. (There is no strong evidence that it is effective at treating either virus.) That post generated 3.5 million views in one day, according to NewsGuard.

"In response to a request for comment, Dr. Bowden said the best way to understand her approach to treating viral infections is to read her upcoming book.

"Former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was banned from Twitter during the pandemic for violating its Covid misinformation rules, reposted Dr. Bowden’s comments and racked up millions more views.

"Social media platforms are primed to spread disinformation, with algorithms and revenue-sharing policies that reward sensationalized content. Advances in artificial intelligence tools have made it easier to produce photographs and short videos that can be hard to distinguish from real information.

"One TikTok video identified by Alethea, a digital risk analysis company, featured an A.I.-generated map of hantavirus cases, with dozens of red clusters all over the globe. In reality, less than a dozen cases have been confirmed.

"Another A.I.-generated photograph posted on X on May 6 purported to show an ashen man being escorted off a boat that was not the MV Hondius, the ship involved in the outbreak. The caption misstated the number of Americans onboard and falsely claimed they had already disembarked the ship. It had been viewed 2.5 million times as of Tuesday, according to X.

"The wide availability of A.I. tools has made fighting disinformation in health crises an even greater challenge than it was during the pandemic.

“With Covid, you still needed to have, you know, ground truths to have at least a little bit of an inkling of a truth,” said Manny Ahmed, the founder and chief executive of Open Origins, a company in London that detects fabricated images, including the photo that appeared on X.

“Now you can just generate entire new scenes,” he added. “And that is just a capability that misinformation actors didn’t have before.”

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Teddy Rosenbluth is a Times reporter covering health news, with a special focus on medical misinformation.

Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation and disinformation from San Francisco. Since joining The Times in 1989, he has reported from around the world, including Moscow, Baghdad, Beijing and Seoul.

The Lies Against Jews and Israel Never Stop

Here's more proof that taking non-Jews to Auschwitz, having Holocaust survivors give talks, having October 7 survivors describe the rapes, torture, hostage treatment, and murder - that none of this education works, because antisemites won't believe anything unless they are blatant lies against Israel.

Israel was the victim on 10/7. We shouldn't have to keep proving it to counter the lies of unrepentent Jew-and-Israel-haters. What Kristof accuses Israelis of doing to "Palestinians" is actually what Nazis did to European Jews and what Hamas did to Israelis. Jews are merely the scapegoats.

The New York Times should be forced to print a retraction and an apology for printing Nicholas Kristof's outrageous blood libel.

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Israel: NYT printed ‘one of the worst blood libels ever’
Israel will fight these lies with the truth—and the truth will prevail,” tweeted Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
May. 12, 2026, JNS Staff 

"Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Monday accused The New York Times of publishing “one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press.”

“In an unfathomable inversion of reality, and through an endless stream of baseless lies, propagandist Nicholas Kristof turns the victim into the accused,” the MFA tweeted, referencing the Pulitzer Prize-winning NYT columnist who wrote “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.”

"The opinion peace alleged that, despite an absence of evidence, the Jewish state utilizes sexual violence against Palestinians as part of its “security apparatus,” citing the conspiracy theory that Israeli guards coach dogs to sexually assault terrorist prisoners.

"The piece prompted sharp criticism from analysts, academics and former officials, who accused Kristof of relying on unsubstantiated claims and inflammatory rhetoric.

"In his column, the author acknowledged that “there is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes” and that he relied on conversations with 14 individuals who “said they had been sexually assaulted by Israeli settlers or members of the security forces.”

"According to the Foreign Ministry, Kristof’s publication was “part of a false and well-orchestrated anti-Israel campaign” aimed at placing Jerusalem on the U.N. secretary-general’s blacklist of parties responsible for sexual violence in conflict.

“Israel—whose citizens were the victims of the most horrific sexual crimes committed by Hamas on October 7, and whose hostages were later subjected to further sexual abuse—is portrayed as the guilty party,” tweeted the ministry.

“Israel will fight these lies with the truth—and the truth will prevail,” it added.

"In the roughly two-and-a-half years since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Israel has presented extensive evidence of terrorists subjecting women and girls to sexual violence both during the massacre and subsequently in captivity in the Gaza Strip.

"According to an April 2026 report by Boundless, a U.S.-based think tank focused on Israel and antisemitism, only 49% of the U.S. population agreed that Hamas committed acts of sexual violence on Oct. 7 and that there is video and photographic evidence."

Democrats Need Their Heads Examined Re: Trump Assassination Attempts

They need their heads examined for a variety of purposes, but this is beyond belief.  Foreman Corey Comperatore was killed by Crooks in the Butler assassination attempt, two other men were badly wounded, and Trump would have been killed if he hadn't turned his head and gotten hit in the ear. Is this murder and these woundings "staged" and faked as well?

I don't remember ever hearing anyone say that the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan was staged, That bullet hit his limo and then hit Reagan in the armpit, piercing a lung. Was that faked too, and was James Brady's near-fatal head wound also staged?

The difference is that Democrats were normal back in the 80s, and Democrats and Republicans were able to get along. 

Today's Democrats are hateful, threatening inciters who wish Trump were dead.  You can't reason with such people.

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A Democratic fantasy world

By Byron York, Published May 12, 2026 10:19am ET

"A DEMOCRATIC FANTASY WORLD. A new poll suggests that a sizable number of Democrats — more than 40% in some cases — believe the attempts on President Donald Trump’s life were fake.

"The poll, which surveyed 1,000 Americans over the age of 18, was conducted by NewsGuard and YouGov. It asked people to respond to three statements:

“The assassination attempt against Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner in April 2026 was staged.”

“The assassination attempt against Donald Trump at a Trump presidential campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania in July 2024 was staged.”

“The assassination attempt against Donald Trump at Trump International Golf Club in September 2024 was staged.”

"The pollsters found that 34% of Democrats said the correspondents’ dinner attempt was staged; 42% of Democrats said the Butler shooting was staged; and 26% said the Trump golf club incident was staged.

"By way of contrast, 13% of Republicans said the correspondents’ dinner attempt was staged; 7% of Republicans said the Butler shooting was staged; and 7% said the Trump golf club incident was staged.

"The Republican numbers are bad enough, reflecting an information system and troubled culture in which fewer and fewer people believe what they read and watch. But the Democratic numbers are off the scale, reflecting something far beyond that — a political atmosphere in which some people will believe anything about their hated opponent, that he is a fascist, a dictator, and a man who would stage elaborate phony assassination attempts for political gain.

"One striking aspect of the poll’s findings was that the assassination attempt that seemed most undeniably real — the Butler incident — was the event that the largest number of Democrats characterized as fake. On that day, Trump was shot and was visibly bleeding, while one man was killed and two others were seriously wounded, all of it captured on video and still pictures by several press photographers. And now many people, most of them Democrats, cannot accept that it happened.

"The NewsGuard analysis notes that, “Minutes after Secret Service escorted a bleeding Trump off the stage, social media lit up with claims that the shooting was staged, arguing, for example, that Trump faked the shooting with a ‘blood pill’ and that photojournalists at the scene had been tipped off. Nearly two years later, that narrative continues to gain traction, with claims by some social media users that an actual Russian plot to stage an assassination in Hungary that never came to fruition is proof that the Pennsylvania rally shooting was also staged.”

"The poll questions gave respondents the option of saying they were “not sure” whether each of the assassination attempts was staged or not. When you combine the number of people who said that a particular event was definitely staged with those who said they were not sure whether it was staged, you get a majority of Americans who question the reality of the Trump assassination attempts. For the Butler shooting, a combined 53% said it was staged or they were not sure; for the correspondents’ dinner, 56% said it was staged or they were not sure; and for the Palm Beach golf course incident, 52% said it was staged or they were not sure. Again, these figures were dominated by Democratic respondents

"These are huge numbers of people who believe the assassination attempts are massive lies or might be lies. The numbers are so striking that NewsGuard included an editorial note: “After we received these results from YouGov, we were so surprised by the survey findings that we asked YouGov to go back and recheck the data. They did so and confirmed their findings.”

"For Democrats, the results are reminiscent of earlier polls that measured credulity about the most sensational allegations in the Trump-Russia controversy of the president’s first term. In late 2018, the Economist and YouGov asked respondents about this statement concerning the 2016 election: “Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump elected president.” Was it true or false?

"First of all, the statement was clearly false; there has never been any evidence that Russia tampered with vote tallies in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But 31% of Democrats told pollsters the statement was “definitely” true, and another 36% of Democrats said it was “probably” true. That was a total of 67% of Democrats — two-thirds of the party — who believed Russia definitely or probably tampered with 2016 vote tallies.

"Of course, at that time, experiencing fantasies about Trump and Russia was an everyday experience for many Democrats and their allies in the press. Indeed, watching some news coverage from the time, who wouldn’t believe the wildest stories about Trump? Now, the phenomenon has been updated with new material — the assassination attempts — but the willingness to believe anything is the same"

Your Local Epidemiologist: The Dose, 5-12-26

Here's Dr Katelyn Jetelina with some very helpful information regarding hantavirus and other current medical issues:

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4 hantavirus updates and other things that can impact your health right now
The Dose (May 12) 

This week, the hantavirus outbreak continues in a climate of distrust toward each other and authorities. We also answer a reader question: Are cruise ships really floating petri dishes?

There’s also all the normal stuff going around: Peak tick and allergy season, norovirus surges on another cruise ship, and scientific wins worth celebrating.

Here’s The Dose: what’s going on in the world of health and what it means for you.

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Spotlight: 4 updates on the hantavirus outbreak

The risk to the general public remains exceptionally low, but the situation continues to march forward for the high-risk cruise passengers.

Note: If you missed it, this post builds on last Friday’s. You can catch up here. And big thanks to the entire YLE team, from virologists to physicians to epidemiologists, helping keep track of this rapidly moving situation.

1. Touchdown in Nebraska

Yesterday, 18 Americans landed safely in Nebraska by private transport after disembarking from the cruise ship in Spain.

Why Nebraska? In 2019, your federal tax dollars paid to build the only national quarantine facility in the U.S. specifically designed to safely monitor individuals exposed to high-consequence disease. This facility has a college-dorm feel, complete with TVs and exercise machines (see picture below), but people are completely separated. They don’t share air and don’t mingle. This facility was built for situations just like this.

Jake Rosmarin, who is currently in one of the rooms at the National Quarantine Unit in Nebraska. Source: Jake Rosmarin Instagram

Down the street, there is also a biocontainment unit, similar to a hospital room but with many more precautions to safely treat someone who becomes ill. Importantly, Nebraska isn’t the only biocontainment unit. The U.S. has a network to help distribute people in situations like this. All of these systems are activated.

So, out of the 18 people:

• Fifteen are in the Nebraska quarantine center: They are resting, being screened, and participating in detailed interviews to establish underlying health, exposure timelines (quarantine clocks start at the last exposure, so the interview matters), and their home situations to determine whether they can safely quarantine at home (distance from a hospital, home situations, etc.). None have symptoms.

• One person is in the Nebraska biocontainment unit. They tested positive for hantavirus without symptoms. Hantavirus can turn positive on PCR testing before symptoms arise and before it becomes contagious.

• Two passengers went to the Atlanta biocontainment unit. This is a couple: one person has mild symptoms, and the other has no symptoms. Importantly, symptoms of a cold or stomach bug at this stage may warrant a visit to this unit. (Remember, there was a flight attendant who was presumed to have hanta, based on her symptoms, and she ended up testing negative and recovered.)

In addition, there are seven Americans in quarantine at home across five states who were on the ship after the initial case died, but before public health authorities knew this was an outbreak. There are also ~11 people exposed to these cruise passengers while flying. None have symptoms, and all are in close contact with local public health departments.

Figure by Your Local Epidemiologist team

2. The debate on whether to send passengers home intensified

After the home assessment, if they remain symptom-free, CDC will give those in the Nebraska quarantine facility a choice: stay or return home on a charter flight (not commercial) and stay in close, daily contact with local health departments. Either way, a full 42-day quarantine is expected.

A lot of people disagree with this move. After all, requiring people to stay in Nebraska reduces the risk to everyone else to zero. And, we are living in a very low-trust environment. Offering this option is asking communities to trust that those people will remain in quarantine and cooperate.

But, as with any public health decision, there are real trade-offs to consider. This is both a public health and humanitarian response:

• Public health goal: Reduce risk to the passenger and the community. To do this, the most important thing is not necessarily where they are, but that they are monitored daily, remain quarantined (meaning they do not mix with other people), and have access to an appropriate hospital if they get sick.

• Humanitarian goal: Allow passengers to quarantine where they prefer, such as at home. They were in international waters and living in a nightmare for more than a month. There’s a real psychological toll to that.

It doesn’t seem any individual has made a decision yet. And there is a possibility that pressure is enough to prompt the administration to change course. But I think the best option is the least restrictive approach that still keeps communities safe.

3. Transmission: How close is a close contact?

I know people are worried about this one, so let’s talk about what we do and don’t know.

We do know that there are two primary ways Andes hantavirus spreads: through contact with infected rodents and through “close contact” with people who are both infected and symptomatic.

We also know that the first passengers to be infected with the Andes virus were exposed in the most typical way: through contact with infected rodents off the boat. The next two cases also contracted the virus in a typical way: through close contact with infected people. (Close contact is defined by CDC as 6 feet for more than 15 minutes.) Cruise ships are notorious for putting people into close contact.

But, during a 2018 Argentina outbreak, a symptomatic patient infected 5 people while sitting close at a birthday party. One case may have involved only a brief, passing interaction. That said, 94 other partygoers didn’t contract the virus, and 82 healthcare workers who cared for the resulting patients remained healthy, many without PPE. (See a deeper dive from Ed Nirenberg here.)

Getting the transmission pathways matters a lot for contact tracing to ensure everyone who needs to be monitored is monitored (like on a flight). It also matters that scientists collect the right specimens on the ship so we can learn more.

In general, though, the overall risk of a pandemic remains very, very small, especially when added to a few other things we know:

1. We’ve successfully stopped Andes outbreaks in the past through standard contact and droplet precautions.

2. This does not appear to be a highly contagious virus between people.

3. Variants don't appear to be a concern here. Scientists confirmed this week that passenger samples were almost identical to one another and to samples from 1997 and 2018. This virus is behaving as scientists expect.

I will start worrying if we start seeing new infections among people who were not on this ship and had no contact with a positive case. (We haven’t seen this yet.)

4. HHS communications finally woke up

Over the weekend, physicians received a HAN (a routine alert about what to watch for), and the CDC website was finally updated, followed by a press briefing yesterday morning. Better late than never, but the drip of information has made all of this genuinely difficult to track. WHO remains stellar in communications.

What this means for you

The risk to you remains extremely low, and, thankfully, we have systems in place to address this rare disease. There is no need to cancel trips and this is not another Covid-19. The most important thing you can do is help spread accurate information. Triple-check sources, don’t spread unverified rumors, but DO share reputable and verified information. This includes information from the WHO, local health departments, and reputable public health leaders.

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Disease weather report

While this small but deadly hantavirus outbreak plays out, there are four other pathogens that are more likely to affect your health right now.

Ticks: Are they slowing down?

Tick bites are certainly earlier this year than in previous years, but it’s not clear whether this will translate to a more severe season. After some exponential growth, the rate has come to a slow crawl. Regardless, we are in peak tick season.

Source: CDC. Annotated by Your Local Epidemiologist.

What this means for you: Prevention goes a long way. Most pathogens can only be transmitted after a tick feeds for some time, so call your physician if one has been attached for 36 hours. Use tweezers for removal (the only recommended method). And remember: nymphs are the size of a poppy seed.

Feeling crummy? It’s likely the common cold and/or allergies

Common colds are approaching their spring peak while other respiratory viruses become dormant. If you’re feeling crummy right now, it’s probably a cold.

Percent of positive tests for respiratory viruses. Source: NREVSS; Annotated by Your Local Epidemiologist

Or it may not be a virus at all. This week is going to be another bad one for people with allergies, particularly in the North and Midwest.

Allergy season is getting longer and more intense. Plants are releasing pollen about 40 days earlier than they used to and stopping about two weeks later, thanks to rising temperatures. Higher CO2 levels mean more pollen per plant.

Source: Pollen.com

What this means for you: Check the pollen forecast, rinse your nose with saline (use distilled water), and shower before bed to wash pollen off. For medication, go with second-generation antihistamines like Zyrtec over Benadryl. (Benadryl has been around since the 1940s but carries more side effects.) Always check with your doctor. Also, here is a great room-by-room guide you may find useful.

Another cruise, another outbreak: Norovirus

Another cruise ship made headlines last week due to a major norovirus outbreak with more than 115 cases. Norovirus—think nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea—is also midseason but on its way down.

Norovirus is very infectious. On average, one infected person will infect two to seven other people, and the virus can live on surfaces for weeks.

And while cruise ship outbreaks usually make the news (like this one), they only account for 1% of outbreaks. Three out of four norovirus outbreaks occur in nursing homes. Restaurants and schools are the next most common settings.

What this means for you: Norovirus is extremely contagious. If you have the stomach bug (assuming you’re not reading from the cruise ship), use a separate bathroom in your house. Hand sanitizer doesn’t kill this bugger, either. Soap and water are your best bet after touching hotel door knobs or elevator buttons, for example. If you’re second guessing your cruise plans, read on for our take.

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Good news

• Wastewater is here to help with measles. A new study found that wastewater monitoring enabled officials to detect a measles outbreak in New Mexico five days earlier than clinical testing. Given this is such a contagious virus, this could really help get on top of outbreaks before they get out of control.

• Suppressing HIV could become more successful and more manageable. HIV requires lifelong treatment, which currently means daily medication for most patients. Scientists found that one infusion of immune cells that recognize HIV reduced the virus to undetectable levels. Only a couple of patients have received this treatment so far, but its success—for one patient, HIV remained undetectable for two years after that one infusion —is a milestone for treatment options.

---

Question grab bag

These outbreaks have me reconsidering my cruise plans. Are cruise ships really floating petri dishes compared to other settings?

Cruise ships have a reputation as floating petri dishes.

Some of this is a monitoring artifact. The CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program requires cruise ships to report outbreaks and maintains a public database of all reported cases, which doesn’t exist for hotels, resorts, college dormitories, or restaurants, where the same viruses spread just as readily but without mandatory public reporting. So public health is looking for outbreaks, like norovirus.

That said, the environment does matter. Dr. Adam Kucharski shared his interesting research on social mixing, which found that cruise passengers have nearly twice as many close contacts per day as people on land (20 versus 10). This means more opportunity to catch something.

In 2020, the Diamond Princess became one of the most studied natural experiments in infectious disease history. One study found that Covid-19 airborne transmission likely accounted for more than half of disease spread on the ship, a finding that reshaped thinking about ventilation in enclosed spaces well beyond cruising.

If you do cruise, the single best thing you can do is wash your hands before and after every meal, every time. And stay behind if you’re sick.

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Bottom line

Public health is never dull, but beneath the alarming headlines, there are systems, scientists, and dedicated people quietly doing their jobs to keep you safe and largely succeeding.

Love, YLE

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Your Local Epidemiologist (YLE) is founded by Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, MPH PhD—an epidemiologist, wife, and mom of two little girls. YLE comprises a team of experts, ranging from physicians to immunologists to epidemiologists to nutritionists, working together with one goal: to “Translate” ever-evolving public health science so that people are well-equipped to make evidence-based decisions. YLE reaches over 425,000 people across more than 132 countries.

More Proof That Wokeness, Liberalism, and Suicidal Empathy Kill

Here's more proof that liberalism and political correctness contribute to make crime even worse worse. This sounds like Dr. Gad Saad's new book, "Suicidal Empathy".

It's a shame that woke fools like this woman can't be charged somehow for enabling this maniac to push Ross Falzone to his death. There also ought to be additional punishment for criminals who target senior citizens.

------------------------------------------

Woman’s Toxic Empathy Blamed for NYC Retiree’s Murder in Vicious Subway Attack
“Maybe a part of me was just like, I don’t want to put another black man in jail, but, you know, at some point, if you are a criminal, you’re a criminal, and he was scary, he was a scary guy.”

Posted at Legal Insurrection by Stacey Matthews Sunday, May 10, 2026 

"What makes stories about violent attacks that leave victims seriously injured or dead especially infuriating is finding out after the fact that if someone had spoken out sooner about the suspects, then maybe it wouldn’t have happened.

"Last Thursday, a 76-year-old man was trying to take the subway in New York City when he was pushed down a flight of stairs, allegedly by a 32-year-old repeat offender who is well known to the NYPD. The retired teacher later died from injuries sustained in the attack:

Moments before the deadly attack, [suspect Rhamell] Burke trailed about 30 yards behind [victim Ross] Falzone as he walked north on Seventh Avenue, authorities said.

As the men approached the train station at that intersection, the suspect allegedly sped up and violently shoved the innocent senior down the steps into the station before fleeing the scene, according to police.

Falzone landed on his head about halfway down the stairs and suffered a traumatic brain injury, right rib fracture and spinal fracture, cops said.

"According to authorities, Burke “mysteriously walked free from Bellevue Hospital about an hour after cops cuffed him and checked him in as an ’emotionally disturbed person’ around 3:30 p.m. Thursday.” A few hours after Burke’s release, Falzone was murdered.

A 76-year-old man was fatally assaulted in Chelsea.

The incident happened Thursday, with officers responding to a 911 call about an assault at W. 18th St. and 7th Ave.

At the scene, officers found Ross Falzone, unconscious, with injuries to his head.

Medics rushed hiim to… pic.twitter.com/nF59kP3QGc

— Crime In NYC (@Crime_In_NYC) May 8, 2026

Ross Falzone, 76 Years Old, was shoved to his death just trying to go home on the NYC subway. pic.twitter.com/rlPK0MuYVI

— 0HOUR1 (@0hour1) May 9, 2026

Horrific: 76-year-old retired NY teacher Ross Falzone was kiIIed after being shoved down subway stairs by a career criminal who was released from a psych ward just HOURS earlier — the suspect also had 4 arrests in the last 4 months alone

We shouldn’t have to live like this! pic.twitter.com/Zr23UxIeSd

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 10, 2026

"We have been reliably informed that soft-on-crime Mayor Zohran “Defund the Police” Mamdani, who proclaimed that he was “horrified by the killing of Ross Falzone and the circumstances that led to it,” is going to get to the bottom of why the psych ward released Burke:

Mamdani orders probe of Bellevue over its quick release of suspect in Chelsea killing https://t.co/Ow0hDuFV5M

— Gothamist (@Gothamist) May 8, 2026

"The New York Post interviewed another alleged victim of Burke’s on Friday, and discovered that she opted not to cooperate with prosecutors in part because she didn’t “want to put another black man in jail”:

The horrified [23-year-old] victim told The Post she and a friend were on a subway in Manhattan on April 2 when Rhamell Burke approached them and began a conversation they quickly shut down before frantically trying to switch cars to get away from him.

She said the crazed suspect stalked them closely and allegedly yanked her by the back of her head in an attempt to slam her to the ground and booted her friend in the back.

[…]

She said the attack left her and her friend “in shock,” but they ultimately chose not to cooperate with prosecutors …

[…]

“I regret it 100% and I actually feel really bad that a man lost his life,” the woman said.

[…]

“Maybe a part of me was just like, I don’t want to put another black man in jail, but, you know, at some point, if you are a criminal, you’re a criminal, and he was scary, he was a scary guy.”

Burke was hit with an assault charge for the April attack and granted supervised release at arraignment.

Liberal woman who refused to cooperate with prosecutors after maniac attacked her on subway weeks before he pushed retired NYC teacher to death has regrets: "Maybe a part of me was just like, I don’t want to put another black man in jail." https://t.co/QihuYD552f

— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) May 9, 2026

"This is classic toxic or suicidal empathy, as others observed:

She did not want to "put another black man in jail," and he went on to murder an elderly man.

White, liberal women have suicidal empathy. https://t.co/wYZK8iA1hF

— Carmine Sabia (@CarmineSabia) May 9, 2026

"Substacker Teri Smith went off:

Next time someone asks you for an example of “Suicidal Empathy” or “Toxic Empathy,” remember this leftist woman who didn’t press charges against her attacker for fear of being “racist” and regretted it when he went on to murder someone.

Suicidal Empathy makes criminals out of victims and victims out of criminals. It’s upside down empathy, where those who are victimized are ignored in favor of pouring out “empathy” for offenders. It harms. It doesn’t help.

Next time someone asks you for an example of “Suicidal Empathy” or “Toxic Empathy,” remember this leftist woman who didn’t press charges against her attacker for fear of being “racist” and regretted it when he went on to murder someone.

Suicidal Empathy makes criminals out of… https://t.co/6TGN9BZzjh

— Keri Smith Deprogrammed (@RealKeriSmith) May 9, 2026

Suicidal Empathy ain’t just a river in Egypt, as @3YearLetterman might say. @GadSaad is right.

— Roxanne Hoge (@RoxanneHoge) May 9, 2026

Race communist brainwashing kills innocent people every day, just like this completely avoidable, savage murder  https://t.co/uIqBkbMnSf

— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) May 9, 2026

Toxic

Empathy

Kills https://t.co/bsdXsLqc27

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) May 10, 2026

If only part of you was like, “I don’t want to put another innocent life in danger.” https://t.co/HQvmOR0Q1C

— Rafael A. Mangual (@Rafa_Mangual) May 9, 2026

"If only."

Managing Hantavirus Anxiety

What COVID Taught Us About Managing Hantavirus Anxiety. Lessons from COVID can inform the psychology of a new public health issue.

Phil Lane MSW, LCSW - Psychology Today, May 10, 2026

Key points

• Public health threats can have a long-lasting effect but can be managed in an emotionally healthy way.
• Individuals may experience a spike in anxiety and unpleasant memories of the previous pandemic.
• Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic can help us navigate Hantavirus while maintaining our mental health.

"You likely remember where you were in March 2020 when lockdowns began and the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic set in. Since then, although we have returned to a state of relative normalcy, you may have unpleasant memories or even traumatic memories which can be triggered by specific stimuli such as disturbing images of the pandemic or news related to new or potential viruses. Recently, news has come out about Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, a virus that, though different from COVID-19, poses a similarly serious risk to those infected. Psychologically, this news can bring on traumatic memories and spike anxiety. Understanding the psychology of disaster-related anxiety and trauma is vital as we face a new public health threat. We need to clarify that, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Hantavirus infections are uncommon and are linked to specific environmental exposures whereas COVID-19 quickly became a global pandemic because of its fast spread from person to person. So, while these two viruses are different and the Hantavirus is unlikely to be as catastrophic as COVID-19, the traumatic memories and the anxiety they trigger do not differentiate.

"In my book, Understanding and Coping with Illness Anxiety, I discuss the idea of “societal anxiety,” which can affect entire regions or countries—or in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, large parts of the world. This type of widespread anxiety can overtake large swaths of the population in the face of large-scale disastrous events such as viruses or, as a historical precedent, the threat of nuclear annihilation as was experienced during the Cold War. These events can leave a long-lasting effect on global mental health. The scholarly literature on how anxiety and PTSD have increased during and following the COVID-19 pandemic is so robust, I could not possibly adequately summarize it here, but just for context: 76 million new cases of anxiety disorders were reported during the first year of the pandemic (Delpino and others, 2022), there was higher PTSD prevalence throughout the pandemic (Abdalla and others, 2024), and 2025 research concludes that a return to pre-pandemic mental health levels is unlikely (Al-Otaibi and others, 2025). The acute and emergent phase of the pandemic may have passed, but the traumatic memories and the resultant anxiety remain.

"So, when a new threat—in this case, Hantavirus—presents itself and takes over the now ever-present and difficult to silence news cycle, it stands to reason that many individuals may experience a spike in anxiety and the triggering of unpleasant memories of the previous pandemic. This is understandable, and it can cause significant disturbances to daily life, exacerbate anxiety and panic, and cause us to live in a state of stress and worry. While we cannot completely avoid or eradicate these feelings, there are measures we can take to keep them from becoming debilitating or paralyzing.

Prior experience is not predictive

"The nature of anxiety is such that we tend to incorrectly connect events to draw a single conclusion. For example, I might hear about this new virus and automatically conclude that it is going to be just like COVID-19. If I see it this way, I am bound to experience significant anxiety, stress, and worry as I will assume similar outcomes to what occurred before. Anxiety, as powerful as it can feel, does not have any predictive ability. So, though two events might feel emotionally similar, they are not necessarily the same. We already know that there are significant differences between Hantavirus and COVID-19, and it can help our anxiety to keep these in mind, rather than to assume both will play out the same way.

Hypervigilance can increase anxiety

"When faced with a public health threat, vigilance and awareness are positive and healthy ways to stay safe and protected. But, when driven by anxiety or catastrophic thinking, vigilance can shift to hypervigilance—an unhealthy fixation that actually increases emotional discomfort and makes us more worried. So, while being aware of the latest information on a new public health issue is important, being fixated on it can increase discomfort and worsen anxiety.

Sources are important

"None of us is safe from the incessant rush of information, as social media platforms have become news and information sources, for better or worse. As you navigate the deluge of information about the Hantavirus, consider your sources, pay attention to who is saying what (is the Instagram reel you are watching from an epidemiologist or an unqualified influencer?), and think critically as you consume information.

"As devastating and catastrophic as the COVID-19 pandemic was, we learned some important psychological lessons from it that can help us navigate a new public-health issue in an emotionally healthy way. Remembering that what has occurred in the past does not predict what will happen next, being vigilant but not allowing ourselves to become fixated, and being cautious with our sources of information can help keep societal anxiety at bay and reduce disturbance to our daily lives."

Important Column: "Never Trust The Iranian Regime"

You would think that Americans who remember the 1979 Iran hostage crisis would already know that Iran is a terrorist state that cannot ever be trusted, and that murderous terrorists like Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by Iran. I'd like to see them completely destroyed, not negotiated with.

------------------------------------------------------ 

Never Trust the Iranian Regime – And NO to a 'Moratorium'

by Majid Rafizadeh, May 9, 2026 

* Any agreement that would allow Iran a multi-year "moratorium" towards enriching uranium again would erase everything that President Donald J. Trump has so brilliantly and historically accomplished. Any "moratorium" is essentially no different from the catastrophic "sunset clauses" in President Barack H. Obama's 2015 JCPOA "nuclear deal" – a short delay that will correctly be taken as a green light inviting Iran to resume enriching uranium for nuclear weapons.

#  Politically, such a policy would be devastating for Trump. He would immediately be seen as the negotiating partner who desperately wanted a deal -- any deal -- just to declare victory and announce that he had "won." If there is a "moratorium" even for 100 years, it is Iran that will have won.

*  Inside Iran, there are still reports of repression, restrictions on internet access, and crackdowns on dissent complete with torture, forced confessions and executions. Why would a government that brutalizes its own citizens treat anyone else any better?

"The Iranian regime's core is still rooted in anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and systematically controlling and destabilizing the region. None of its defining pillars have changed. Any deal with such a system will not transform it — just offer it enough relief to allow it to rearm before returning with renewed strength.

"Although U.S. and Israeli strikes in June 2025 significantly degraded Iran's military capabilities, the nature of Iran's regime itself -- deeply hostile toward its neighbors, Western civilization, the United States, Israel, other Muslims and even its own population — continues to guide its actions. As the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) executes more people and consolidates even greater power in the aftermath of its setbacks, it has become even more ruthless.

"The regime – what is left of it -- is not seeking peace. It is seeking continued rule, breathing room and money. Economically strained and increasingly concerned about internal unrest, Iran's leadership views negotiations merely as a tactical pause.

"Any agreement that would allow Iran a multi-year "moratorium" towards enriching uranium again would erase everything that President Donald J. Trump has so brilliantly and historically accomplished. Any "moratorium" is essentially no different from the catastrophic "sunset clauses" in President Barack H. Obama's 2015 JCPOA "nuclear deal" – a short delay that will correctly be taken as a green light inviting Iran to resume enriching uranium for nuclear weapons.

"Politically, such a policy would be devastating for Trump. He would immediately be seen as the negotiating partner who desperately wanted a deal -- any deal -- just to declare victory and announce that he had "won." If there is a "moratorium" even for 100 years, it is Iran that will have won.

"Equally, any agreement that would lift sanctions or allow oil revenues to flow again would provide the regime with precisely what it needs: time to recover, rebuild militarily, and resume brutalizing its citizens, its neighbors, the region and the United States

"As long as Iran's foundational policies — rooted in anti-Americanism and hostility toward the West — remain intact, no deal has proven capable of transforming its conduct. On the contrary, previous deals have enabled the regime to strengthen its position, channel more funding and weapons to its proxy networks, and deepen its regional influence rather than moderate it.

"The regime, in addition, understands political cycles in the United States. It can agree to terms temporarily — two or three years, if necessary — while quietly waiting for a shift in leadership in Washington. Once that shift occurs, it has usually felt free to abandon commitments and resume its previous trajectory. Agreements are treated as tools of convenience, not binding obligations.

"At the same time, the regime's support for militant proxies remains intact, and its posture toward neighboring countries is aggressive and interventionist.

"Inside Iran, there are still reports of repression, restrictions on internet access, and crackdowns on dissent complete with torture, forced confessions and executions (here, here and here). Why would a government that brutalizes its own citizens treat anyone else any better?

"The regime also has been successfully deploying "good cop-bad cop" tactics to buy time and keep the US at bay. The so-called moderates signal conciliation, while hardliners resist. In reality, these factions operate within the same system and share the same ultimate objective: the survival of the regime. The differences are tactical, not ideological. Falling for this dynamic risks misreading the entire structure of power in Tehran.

"Meanwhile, the Iranian regime's core ideology — anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and hostility toward own people as well as most others — remains unchanged. Its military capabilities may have been weakened, but its identity and intentions are intact. The regime is therefore likely to pursue agreements not as steps toward peace, but as temporary, stopgap measures to regain strength, continue enriching uranium, and outlast political pressures from the current US leadership. In any deal, under these conditions, that risks repeating a familiar cycle, trust is misplaced, and the regime's most valuable weapon is time."

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a political scientist, Harvard-educated analyst, and board member of Harvard International Review. He has authored several books on the US foreign policy. He can be reached at dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu