Israel-Firsters Won’t Let Trump Get an Iran Deal

The president keeps following the men who led him into a quagmire.

Andrew Day

May 8, 2026

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/israel-firsters-wont-let-trump-get-an-iran-deal/

Here’s a lesson President Donald Trump should have learned a long time ago: Israel and its American lobby cannot be satisfied. No matter how much you give them, they always want more. Right now, they want Trump to restart the war with Iran, Israel’s chief adversary in the Middle East.

Will Trump give them what they want? I fear he will.

In early February, weeks before Trump launched the war, I argued in The American Conservative that Iran was his “Israeli influence test.” War with Iran would advance Israeli interests, not American ones, so it seemed a good test case for whether U.S. foreign policy served a foreign nation. I predicted Trump would fail the test, and I was right. So much for America First.

After the war went much worse than Trump expected, he wisely secured a two-week ceasefire in early April, and mere hours before the truce was set to end, he wisely extended it. The U.S. and Iran have used the opportunity to engage in diplomacy, mediated by Pakistan, but negotiations haven’t seemed promising—until this week.

Axios reported Wednesday that the Trump administration “believes it’s getting close to an agreement with Iran on a one-page memorandum of understanding to end the war and set a framework for more detailed nuclear negotiations.” The reporter, Barak Ravid, has been derided as a White House stenographer who publishes stories that seem designed to calm the markets rather than uncover the truth. But this time, other journalists have corroborated Ravid’s reporting.

Here’s an important development and cause for hope: Iran seems willing to accept a moratorium on uranium enrichment, a key stage in the process of making nuclear fuel. “I do think there are signs that parts of the Iranian establishment are more open to creative arrangements around enrichment levels or temporary limits, especially given the economic pressure Iran has been under,” Sina Toossi, an Iran expert at the Center for International Policy, told The American Conservative.

Elements of the Islamic Republic have at times denied that Iran was mulling a moratorium. But the journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News, which has sources in the Iranian government, told TAC that Tehran seems willing to pause enrichment in exchange for U.S. concessions like sanctions relief. “They have said as much,” Grim insisted.

That would be a big concession on a major sticking point. If the Islamic Republic agreed to a yearslong moratorium, followed by caps on enrichment far below the amount needed to build nuclear weapons, then Trump could claim to have struck a deal with Tehran better than Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear accord, which he exited in 2018.

Sounds great, right?

Not if you’re one of “the Marks,” a troika of Israel-first American conservatives who exert influence over the president. Mark Levin of Fox News, Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), and Marc Thiessen of the Washington Post are getting nervous that Trump might give peace a chance.

Levin wrote Wednesday on X, “If the Axios report is close to accurate, the Iranian regime will survive, the Iranian people will face even more extensive brutality, and the Israeli government could fall in the October election. A disastrous result.”

Thiessen complained that Trump on Tuesday paused “Project Freedom” barely a day after it began. That was the U.S. mission to guide vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial chokepoint for global trade which Iran has effectively closed. After Iran launched attacks in the Hormuz, Trump said he was suspending the operation to create space for diplomacy.

Thiessen wasn’t pleased. “They take that as weakness,” he wrote in a tweet reposted by Dubowitz. “They don’t think Trump is willing to bomb them again. They think they have leverage. He needs to prove them wrong.”

That the Marks are freaking out is a good thing, and it wasn’t the only sign this week that the reported diplomatic progress is real.

“One credible signal that peace talks are actually proceeding is this massive airstrike that Israel carried out on Beirut just now,” Grim said on Wednesday. “Whenever you’re getting closer to an agreement, you usually tend to see the Israeli military ramp up its violence.”

Iran has always maintained that the ceasefire covers the entire regional war, including Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon. That’s why Israel massively escalated violence in Lebanon after the ceasefire was announced—to sabotage the truce—and in Grim’s view, it’s why Israel attacked Beirut on Wednesday amid new reports of progress in negotiations.

If Israel is ramping up its sabotage campaign, then Trump just might be on the right track. Still, I think it’s more likely that he’s careering toward another calamity. After all, Israel and its supporters usually get most of what they want from Trump, and despite this week’s burst of optimism, I haven’t been in a glass-half-full kind of mood.

Iran may have dropped its resistance to a moratorium on uranium enrichment, but Trump has developed a new fixation: getting Iran to ship its 900 pounds of highly-enriched uranium to the United States. “We’re going to get it,” he told a White House reporter on Wednesday. In a phone interview the same day with PBS, Trump was adamant. “It goes to the United States,” he said.

Where might Trump have gotten the idea that Iran must give its enriched uranium to America? Take a wild guess.

Al Jazeera reports: “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump’s ally, said on Wednesday the two leaders agreed that all enriched uranium must be removed from Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear bomb.” The Marks, as always, are doing their part. Dubowitz said Iran’s handing over all its enriched uranium, not just the highly-enriched material, was a “good red line.”

If Trump hasn’t figured this out yet, he probably never will: The Israel lobby shapes his diplomacy not to help him get the best deal possible, but to insert poison pills into the negotiations. That’s why they pushed last year for Trump to demand zero enrichment—as the former Trump official Joe Kent explained to TAC in March—and it’s why they’re now pushing him to demand that Iran ship out all its uranium.

Iran experts doubt Tehran would make this concession. “The demand that Iran hand over all of its enriched uranium to the United States is extremely unlikely to be accepted and comes very close to a red line for the Iranian system,” Toossi said.

Like a moth to the flame, Trump gravitates toward the very men who convinced him to attack Iran. He’s been promoting Levin’s lunatic rants and Thiessen’s hawkish op-eds, the White House recently added an FDD staffer to its team of Iran negotiators, and Netanyahu continues to have the president’s ear.

Considering how disastrous the Iran war has been for America’s geopolitical position and Trump’s poll numbers, might the president finally be ready to put America first, rather than let Israel dictate his Mideast policy? Sadly, I don’t see much reason to suppose he’ll pass the test this time either.

Trump: Iran’s Response to US Proposal Is ‘Totally Unacceptable’

The US president spoke with Netanyahu about Iran's response

by Dave DeCamp | May 10, 2026 

https://news.antiwar.com/2026/05/10/trump-irans-response-to-us-proposal-is-totally-unacceptable/

President Trump said on Sunday that Iran’s response to the latest US proposal to reach a deal was “totally unacceptable,” signaling that the two sides are still not close to reaching a deal.

“I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called ‘Representatives.’ I don’t like it — TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

Trump made similar comments to Axios reporter Barak Ravid, saying, “I don’t like their letter. It’s inappropriate. I don’t like their response… They have been tapping along many nations for 47 years.”

The president said that he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday about Iran’s response. According to Israeli media, Israeli officials are trying to convince their US counterparts to launch major airstrikes aimed at destroying Iran’s energy infrastructure.

An Iranian source told Iran’s Tasnim news agency that Trump’s rejection of Tehran’s response was “of no importance” because no one “writes proposals to please Trump.” The source added that the “negotiating team should draft proposals only for the rights of the Iranian people, and when Trump is dissatisfied with them, naturally that is better.”

Iranian media has reported that the Iranian response, which came after the US provided its response to a 14-point Iranian proposal, is focused on bringing a permanent end to the conflict and other hostilities in the region, including in Lebanon, where the Israeli military killed dozens of people over the weekend.

Iranian sources said Iran is also asking for an immediate end to the US blockade, the lifting of US sanctions, the release of frozen assets overseas, and the ability to freely sell its oil. The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran had offered to move some of its enriched uranium to a third country, but that hasn’t been confirmed by Iranian sources, which suggest the idea is to end the hostilities before negotiating on the nuclear issue.

The war on Iran will likely end in American retreat

The American empire cannot win the war against Iran at acceptable financial, military, and political costs.

9 May 2026
By Jeffrey Sachs and Sybil Fares

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/5/9/the-war-on-iran-will-likely-end-in-american-retreat

The war against Iran that the United States and Israel launched on February 28, 2026, will likely end in an American retreat. The United States cannot continue the war without producing disastrous consequences. A renewed escalation would likely lead to the destruction of the region’s oil, gas, and desalination infrastructure, causing a prolonged global catastrophe. Iran can credibly impose costs that the United States cannot bear and that the world should not suffer.

The US – Israel war plan was a decapitation strike, sold to President Donald Trump by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and David Barnea, the director of the Mossad. The premise was that an aggressive joint US–Israeli bombing campaign would so degrade the Iranian regime’s command structure, nuclear programme, and IRGC senior leadership that the regime would fracture. The United States and Israel would then impose a pliable government in Tehran.

Trump seems to have been convinced that Iran would follow the same course as had occurred in Venezuela. The US operation in Venezuela in January 2026 removed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in what appears to have been a coordinated operation between the CIA and elements inside the Venezuelan state. The US won a more pliant regime, while most of the Venezuelan power structure remained in place. Trump seems to have believed naively that the same outcome would occur in Iran.

The Iran operation, however, failed to produce a pliant regime in Tehran. Iran is not Venezuela, historically, technologically, culturally, geographically, militarily, demographically, or geopolitically. Whatever happened in Caracas had little relation to what would take place in Tehran.

The Iranian government did not fracture. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), far from being decapitated, emerged with a tightened internal command and an expanded role in the national-security architecture. The supreme leader’s office held; the religious establishment closed ranks behind it; and the population rallied against external attack.

Two months on, Trump and Netanyahu have no Iranian successor government under their control, no Iranian surrender to close the war, and no military pathway whatsoever to victory. The only path, and the one the US seems to be taking, is a retreat, with Iran in charge of the Strait of Hormuz and with none of the other issues between the US and Iran settled.

Several reasons explain America’s disastrous miscalculations and Iran’s successes.

First, American leaders fundamentally misjudged Iran. Iran is a great civilisation with 5,000 years of history, deep culture, national resilience, and pride. The Iranian government was not going to succumb to US bullying and bombing, especially reflecting on the fact that Iranians remember how the US destroyed Iranian democracy in 1953 by overthrowing a democratically elected government and installing a police state that lasted 27 years.

Second, American leaders dramatically underestimated Iran’s technological sophistication. Iran has world-class engineering and mathematics. It has built an indigenous defence industrial base, with advanced ballistic missiles, a homegrown drone industry, and indigenous orbital launch capability. Iran’s record of technological development, built up despite 40 years of escalating sanctions, is a stunning national achievement.

Third, military technology has shifted in a way that favours Iran. Iran’s ballistic missiles cost a small fraction of the US interceptors deployed against them. Iranian drones cost $20,000; US air-defence interceptor missiles cost $4m. Iran’s antiship missiles, with costs in the low six figures, threaten US destroyers that cost $2-3bn. Iran’s anti-access and area-denial network around the Gulf, layered air defence, drone and missile saturation capacity, and sea-denial capability in the strait have made the operational cost of imposing American will on Iran far higher than the United States can sustain, especially taking into account the retaliatory destruction that Iran can impose on the neighbouring countries.

Fourth, the US policy process has become irrational. The Iran war was decided by a small circle of presidential loyalists at Mar-a-Lago, with no formal interagency process and a National Security Council that had been hollowed out across the preceding year. Trump’s director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, resigned on March 17 with a public letter describing “an echo chamber” used to deceive the president. The war was the output of a decision-making system in which the deliberative apparatus had been turned off.

This was neither a war of necessity, nor a war of choice. It was a war of whim. The underlying premise was hegemony. The United States was attempting to preserve a global dominance that it no longer possesses, and Israel was trying to establish a regional dominance that it will never have.

The likely endgame, given all this, is that the war will likely end with a return to something close to the status quo ante, except for three new facts on the ground. First, Iran will have operational control over the Strait of Hormuz. Second, Iran’s deterrent posture will be significantly raised. Third, the US long-term military presence in the Gulf will be significantly reduced. The other issues that supposedly prompted the US to attack Iran — Iran’s nuclear programme, regional proxies, the missile arsenal — will most likely be left where they were at the start of the war.

Even as the US retreats, Iran will not press its advantage against its neighbours. Three reasons explain why. First, Iran has a long-term strategic interest in cooperation with its Gulf neighbours, not an ongoing war. Second, Iran will have no interest in restarting a war it has just successfully ended. Third, Iran will be restrained, if any restraint is needed, by its great-power patrons, Russia and China, who both desire a stable and prosperous region. The Iranian leadership understands this clearly and will stop the fighting.

Trump will no doubt try to depict the coming retreat as some great military and strategic victory. No such claims will be true. The truth is that Iran is far more sophisticated than the United States understood; the decision to go to war was irrational; and the underlying technology of war has shifted against the US. The American empire cannot win the war against Iran at an acceptable financial, military, and political cost. What America can regain, however, is some measure of rationality. It’s time for the US to end its regime-change operations and return to international law and diplomacy.

Pakistan-Iran corridor punches through the Hormuz blockade

By opening six overland routes for Tehran-bound cargo, Islamabad is turning transit trade into strategic leverage as US pressure reshapes the Persian Gulf’s commercial arteries

F.M. Shakil

MAY 8, 2026

https://thecradle.co/articles/pakistan-iran-corridor-punches-through-the-hormuz-blockade

When more than 3,000 Iran-bound containers began piling up at Karachi’s ports, the Strait of Hormuz crisis had already moved beyond the sea. It was now pressing on Pakistan’s docks, customs authorities, and border crossings. Soon after, Islamabad announced an overland transit mechanism for third-country cargo moving through Pakistan and into Iran.

This shift occurs as Washington’s influence over Persian Gulf and West Asian nations continues to decline, leading to new geostrategic adjustments throughout the region, affecting ports, pipelines, and defense diplomacy.

Energy security, military cooperation, and trade routes are being reassessed, while China and Russia quietly push alternatives that reduce US influence and open new regional linkages.

Analysts say the emerging pattern is visible in calls for a combined Muslim force, efforts by Gulf and Arab states to dilute dependence on Washington, and the growing push to replace the dollar in energy transactions. Each trend points to a region testing how far it can move beyond the old US-led order.

For Pakistan, the calculation is also domestic.

Transit trade promises customs revenue, port activity, and leverage at a time when Islamabad is squeezed by debt, energy costs, and security pressures along its western frontier. A corridor serving Iran can also support Pakistan’s ambition to become a connector between the Arabian Sea, Central Asia, and western China.

A land bridge for Iran

In line with these regional developments, Pakistan made a surprising and daring move last month by allowing Iran to carry its commercial shipments across six overland routes, ending at the Taftan border crossing with Iran.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Commerce issued the “Transit of Goods through Territory of Pakistan Order 2026” on 25 April, and three major seaports—Karachi Port, Port Qasim, and Gwadar Deep-Sea Port—were designated to receive and dispatch cargo to Iran and onward to Central Asian states.

Media reports framed the decision as a way for Iran to bypass the US blockade linked to the Strait of Hormuz, although Islamabad has avoided presenting it in openly confrontational terms.

Earlier last month, Pakistan sent a shipment of frozen beef to Uzbekistan via Iran, opening a new overland route through the Gabd-Rimdan border crossing between Iran and Pakistan. It was a test shipment, and officials said that the Iran corridor will facilitate trade between Iran and Central Asia via Pakistan's ports of Karachi and Gwadar.

Global media have suggested that the new arrangement could thwart US efforts to halt Iranian cargo shipments, a ploy primarily aimed at limiting Iranian oil exports, especially to China, and at tightening pressure on Tehran’s economy.

Speaking to The Cradle, Mushahid Hussain Syed, a former information minister and head of Pakistan's Senate Defense Committee, says:

“The unfair blockade has left thousands of Iranian containers stuck at Karachi ports, which has made it harder for people in Iran to get consumer goods. However, I disagree with the media reports suggesting that the overland corridors with Iran render the US blockade of Hormuz technically ineffective. The media intentionally or unintentionally made this facility seem like a way to help Iran get around the US blockade, even though it has a pure business consideration and has nothing to do with making things worse between the US and Tehran.”

Syed says that establishing six overland transit lines to Iran will have major political, economic, and diplomatic consequences. The corridor, he adds, has gained importance amid the US Navy’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz since 13 April.

The immediate result of Pakistan’s new regulations is the potential clearance of about 3,000 Iranian containers stranded in Karachi, after restrictions on ships traveling to and from Iran left essential food and consumer goods stuck in the Pakistani port city.

Washington’s silent consent?

Did the US allow Pakistan to provide Iran with land routes around the Strait of Hormuz blockade? Has the blockade become less effective now that Iranian cargo can move through Pakistan?

These questions have circulated on social media since The Economic Times of India published the headline, “Asim Munir’s double game: Pakistan punches a legal hole in the US naval blockade of Hormuz,” on 27 April.

Some observers see the development as evidence that backchannel peace talks are producing results. In that reading, Washington has accepted a partial easing of pressure while expecting Iran to reopen the Strait, thereby lowering the likelihood of a wider escalation.

On 1 May, US President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter whether he knew Pakistan had opened land routes with Iran. He replied that he was aware of it, while expressing respect for Field Marshal Asim Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Majyd Aziz, President of the Employers Federation of Pakistan, tells The Cradle:

"Conventional wisdom and market intelligence suggest that China and Russia did play a role in this policy’s formulation. However, common sense indicates that the facility would not have been offered without tacit approval from Washington. The beneficial element is that despite UN economic sanctions, a constant smuggling system, and a 900-kilometer border, bilateral trade has the potential to become a normal conduit advantageous to both countries.”

Aziz explains that, in the case of China, the agreement would most likely enable China-Iran trade via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) rather than through Central Asian countries. Russia, always seeking access to warm-water ports, would also view Pakistan’s geography as an opportunity to bypass US and European sanctions.

He argues:

“The juxtaposition of China, Russia, Iran, and Pakistan is ideal for streamlined transportation via land routes. Therefore, China could have played a facilitative role in convincing Pakistan that it would provide all diplomatic support, given its critical mass to withstand any negative reactions from the US or even Europe.”

Aziz adds that a key bottleneck to implementation remains the hesitation of Pakistani commercial banks to support transit trade with Iran due to US sanctions. Without letters of credit, insurance coverage, and banking channels, the corridor could remain a narrow emergency route rather than the broader trade artery its supporters envision.

From Jebel Ali to Gwadar

Iran has been uprooting its logistics infrastructure from the Persian Gulf to shift its maritime trade—mostly handled by the UAE—to Pakistan’s overland corridor.

The movement of a large amount of Iranian-linked cargo, worth tens of billions of dollars, from busy hubs in the UAE—particularly Dubai’s Jebel Ali Port—to ports like Gwadar, Karachi, and Port Qasim indicates a clear shift in the regional trade scene, driven by increasing geopolitical tensions.

Iran has depended on the UAE's re-export systems for a long time, managing about US$22 billion in imports in the year 2025. Total bilateral trade has increased to roughly US$27 billion.

However, due to significant security concerns, including the need to avoid potential sanctions and disruptions to sea routes, as well as the increasing instability in the region that could affect trade, this setup is gradually being shifted to overland routes.

In a series of posts on X, The Tehran Times, Iran’s leading international daily, said the country has replaced the UAE’s Jebel Ali port with Pakistani seaports.

The newspaper argued that replacing the UAE route with the Pakistani overland corridor could accelerate cargo movement, reduce costs, and bring Iran closer to the $60 billion CPEC network and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), positioning Pakistan as a bridge between South Asia and Eurasia amid a period of contested sea power.

“Setting up six overland routes, such as Gwadar and Taftan, is a smart move that will help both Iran and Pakistan. The main goal of this corridor is to resolve the problem of Iranian cargo that is stuck and to make it easier for goods from other countries to enter Iran through Pakistan,” Syed opines.

Temporary fix or permanent corridor?

How long will the Hormuz crisis persist? Could it still escalate into shortages of oil, gas, and other commodities, deepening global instability? In Pakistani trade circles, the question now is what happens to the land-route mechanism with Iran if the Strait reopens for regular shipping. Aziz reveals:

“The argument over these variables continues, as the Strait became a tinderbox, exacerbating the front-loading shipping costs. A suspension of hostilities, the opening of the Strait, and the resumption of oil, gas, and commodity cargo would eventually release pressure on the global economy. However, the six land-route facilities to Iran will remain intact and eventually become permanent, even if the war ends. This will not only generate considerable revenue, but hopefully, the much-delayed Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline will start functioning.”

He adds that the underlying issue remains Tel Aviv's confrontational approach, rooted in Israel's substantial and unwavering influence over Washington.

“Netanyahu would be uncomfortable with the US backing down and Iran consenting to a sensible compromise; therefore, the battle will continue in a blow-hot, blow-cold phase,” Aziz remarks.

US Bombs Iran’s Qeshm Port and Bandar Abbas

Iran's military has said that the US violated the ceasefire by attacking ships and launching airstrikes on Iranian ports

by Dave DeCamp | May 7, 2026 

https://news.antiwar.com/2026/05/07/us-bombs-irans-qeshm-port-and-bandar-abbas/

The US bombed Iranian ports on Thursday, an attack that will likely plunge the region back into full-scale war.

Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin first reported that the US was behind strikes on a port in Iran’s Qeshm island in the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas, and a naval target in Minab, where the US bombed an elementary school on February 28, an attack that killed 120 children.

Iran’s military then released a statement saying that the US violated the ceasefire by attacking two commercial ships and bombing Iranian ports.

“The aggressive, terrorist, and bandit American army violated the ceasefire by targeting an Iranian oil tanker ship moving from Iranian coastal waters in the Jask region towards the Strait of Hormuz, as well as another ship entering the Strait of Hormuz, opposite the port of Fujairah in the UAE,” said a spokesman for the Iranian military’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters.

“At the same time, they carried out aerial attacks on civilian areas in cooperation with some regional countries on the coasts of Bandar Khamir, Sirik, and Qeshm Island,” the statement added.

Iran said that its forces responded to the US attacks in the region by targeting US warships, and US Central Command released a statement that said three US Navy destroyers came under attack while transiting the Strait of Hormuz. CENTCOM said that in response, it hit “Iranian military facilities responsible for attacking US forces, including missile and drone launch sites; command and control locations; and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance nodes.”

CENTCOM framed the strikes as launched in “self-defense,” and the US official speaking to Griffin said that the US bombing Iran doesn’t mean the ceasefire is over. The Trump administration has attempted to frame its recent military operations, which include a blockade of Iranian ports, as “defensive” even though it’s all part of the war of aggression that the US and Israel launched against Iran on February 28.

The Iranian military said that its attacks on the US warships caused “significant damage,” but President Trump insisted in a post on Truth Social that the destroyers did not get hit.

“Three World Class American Destroyers just transited, very successfully, out of the Strait of Hormuz, under fire. There was no damage done to the three Destroyers, but great damage done to the Iranian attackers. They were completely destroyed along with numerous small boats, which are being used to take the place of their fully decapitated Navy,” the president wrote.

“These boats went to the bottom of the Sea, quickly and efficiently. Missiles were shot at our Destroyers, and were easily knocked down. Likewise, drones came, and were incinerated while in the air. They dropped ever so beautifully down to the Ocean, very much like a butterfly dropping to its grave!” he added.

The president called the Iranians “lunatics” and threatened Iran with heavier attacks if it doesn’t agree to US demands for a deal. “[W]e’ll knock them out a lot harder, and a lot more violently, in the future, if they don’t get their Deal signed, FAST!” he said.

Trump also told ABC reporter Rachel Scott that the US bombing of Iranian ports was a “love tap” and that the “ceasefire is going. It’s in effect.”

 

 Zionists Are Gunning for Your Freedom of Speech

by Jack Hunter | May 1, 2026

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/zionists-are-gunning-for-your-freedom-of-speech/

The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution of the United States guarantees the right to free speech. This right has long differentiated the United States from other Western nations like the United Kingdom and Canada where laws against so-called “hate speech” laws exist and are enforced.

Thankfully, America is different. In our country, even alleged hate speech is protected speech to ensure democratic principles and debate.

In a 1929 dissenting opinion, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said that the Constitution secured “freedom for the thought that we hate.” In 2011, Chief Justice John Roberts said in a ruling that the First Amendment serves “to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

This constitutional protection has been increasingly threatened recently, particularly by pro-Israeli forces that have tried to frame any criticism of that government as “anti-Semitism” and thus hate speech punishable by law. This has included everything from arrests, to squashing campus debate to buying TikTok to an attempt to cover up human rights absuses in Gaza. President Donald Trump has even issued executive orders that use vague definitions of what constitutes “anti-Semitism” that comes with criminal penalties.

Mark Levin is an American-born Zionist radio host who is an outspoken advocate for Israel’s government, regularly calling anyone who criticizes the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and conflict in Gaza “Nazis.”

Toward this agenda, Levin recently appeared to not agree with his own country’s free speech rights. On his latest Sunday Fox News program, unironically called Life, Liberty and Levin, the neoconservative pundit explained why free speech liberties in the U.S. have gone too far.

Seemingly worried that certain speech is protected in the United States, Levin said in the wake of the Secret Service taking down a shooter at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Friday, “First time things like this have happened, but it really is problematic because so much of it is protected.”

“And you hear people say, don’t you believe in the First Amendment?” Levin said. “They don’t even know what the First Amendment believes.”

Certain “speech” is “problematic” because “so much of it is protected.” You could see where this was headed.

Levin then explained what he believes “the First Amendment believes.” “Do you want to de-platform people?” he ranted. “You know, the libs do that. I don’t have any problem with de-platforming Nazis or jihadis.”

“Nazis,” Levin says. Levin uses this term loosely, all the time, and that’s putting it mildly.

Prominent libertarian personality Josie Glabach, known most popularly as “The Libertarian Redhead,” made a telling list of the many people and groups Levin has called Nazis since 2024:

• The Democrats
• The Democrat media
• An Australian bakery
• The Pakistani defense minister
• Libertarian Institute Director Scott Horton
• The entire Libertarian Party
• College students
• MMA fighter Jake Shields
• Nick Fuentes
• Putin’s buddies
• Influencer Dan Bilzarian
• The Houthis
• Comedian and libertarian personality Dave Smith
• Anyone who associates with Dave Smith
• Tucker Carlson
• Beirut
• Hezbollah
• A veteran who asked Mark to be more tolerant
• Influencer Myron Gaines
• The city of London
• Hamas
• The New York Times
• New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman
• A New York Times correspondent
• Terrorists;
• The “woke reich”
• Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner
• The United Nations
• Harvard University
• The city of Amsterdam
• Columbia University students
• Iterations of the “Iranian Nazi regime,” the “Islamic Nazi regime,” the “Islamo Nazi regime,” the “Islamist Nazi regime,” and “All of Iran (the new Nazis)”
• The Ayatollah (presumably of Iran)
• Former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi
• A protestor on a subway
• Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
• President Joe Biden’s entire State Department
• Turkish Preisdent Recep Erdoğan
• College basketball analyst Bruce Pearl
• Certain Arab, liberals and journalists
• Reporter Lulu Garcia-Navarro
• ISIS
• Seventeen random Twitter users

This eclectic group of entities great and small, many of whom are regular critics of Israel’s government, are “Nazis” in Levin’s view. As Libertarian Institute Senior Fellow Tom Woods succinctly put it, “Nazis’ includes everyone who mocks Levin.”

Levin continued his Sunday rant against “Nazis”:

“I don’t have any problem with de-platforming them. What does that mean, de-platforming them? A government law? No. It means that X or Twitter or Facebook or Amazon with Twitch and someone says you know what? You’re a low life we’re not paying, you know, get off our platform. What’s wrong with that?”

The neocon pundit appeared to say that private platforms should police speech according to the political views of Mark Levin. He is right that this is no violation of the First Amendment. Private companies can allow or restrict speech as they please. “It’s called private enterprise,” he said. “I got no problem with that.”

Then Levin basically said such speech was no different than pornography, which is not protected under the First Amendment. Levin continued, “I mean, what if they have this horrific pornography on? Is that okay? No, it’s not okay.”

“Because our kids have access to it,” he said. “People who are impressionable have access to it. “What if they had people screaming at the top of the lungs saying, assassinate this guy and assassinate that guy? Well, they shouldn’t do that.”

“Why? What’s the standard?” Levin went on. “You need to have a standard. What should the law be? What does the Constitution say?”

The Constitution says that all speech is protected, but “true threats” and obscenity are not.

But political opinions about Israel that go against Levin’s views are protected, whether he likes it or not.

That’s when Levin basically outright said that speech that criticizes Israel should be forbidden just like pornography. “I just think we’ve taken this too far because we’re not even talking about political speech, which is the most protected of all speech,” Levin said.

“We do limit speech,” he insisted. “We limit speech, pornography. We limit speech.”

What Levin, like so many other Zionists, truly want is for the First Amendment to be amended itself. They believe, whether they say it forthright or not (and Levin appears to be doing just that), that this legal provision designed by the Founders precisely to protect political speech should no longer protect speech that is critical of Israel’s government.

Americans have historically valued their free speech. American Zionists like Levin now want a carve out.

But the free speech guarantee enshrined in the United States’s governing charter is so integral to the American experience, to gut it for any reason would be to drastically alter the DNA of the soon to be 250-year-old country.

As an American, Mark Levin doesn’t seem to have a problem with doing just that—all in the service of a foreign country.

It might be better for Americans to instead wish other nations well, yet solely concentrate on our own affairs at home, and perhaps just as important, to stop listening to American pundits whose primary allegiance seems to be countries other than their own.