Law, Power, and Justice

LAW, POWER AND JUSTICE

11 JUNE 2026

PODCAST: IRAN, ISRAEL AND THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION. The Young Turks, 6/10/26 “Israel’s Iran War Push

· Ana Kasparian: We are going to talk about a provision in a bill that would “merge elements of the Israeli government with our own. In this case, we’re talking about intelligence.” The intelligence would not simply be shared, it “would go far beyond that.”

· Our guest is Trita Parsi, co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and head of Breaking Points. He is also on sub-stack.

· Ana Kasperin: “Not only is Congress attempting to merge the Israeli Defense forces with our own military, in Section 224 of the National Defense Authorization Act…Congress is also pushing to fuse our intelligence agencies together as part of an intelligence authorization bill (Note: This is covered in Responsible Statecraft, Senate Wants to Force US to Share Sensitive Intel with Israel,” by Paul Pilar.)

· The bill was put forward by Tom Cotton. a man who has been historically favorable to Israel. “…Pilar writes that Section 622 would prohibit any suspension, reduction or limitation of such intelligence sharing except on the basis of a specific and identifiable national security concern determined by the President.” The President, therefore, is the only check on this intelligence sharing. Another check would, as Pilar reports, that any such exception would “require a report to Congress within 15 days detailing the reason for the change…and also the categories of information involved.”

· “This same report would require an assessment of the anticipated impact on regional security and various other matters.” So, the report would be dumped on Capitol Hill where the Israeli lobby has long corrupted the politicians even to the point of convincing them to take actions that were not beneficial to the U.S.

· This is a way for us to “carry water” for Israel despite the fact that most Americans do not support Israel and want to halt military support to Israel.

· Trita Parsi (Note: Responsible Statecraft – one of the largest foreign policy sites in the US.)

· This move is not being covered. But Paul Pilar “is a legend.” He is one of the people who pushed back against Dick Cheney when “he was trying to cook the intelligence on the Iraq War.”

· What Pilar sees is at the same time the Israelis are plummeting among the American public, “they are desperately moving forward some extremely aggressive measures to try to essentially take what in the past was in the pubic domain and had some checks and balances, reinforce it, but put it somewhere else with the interaction between the two countries so that it is out of the public domain.”

· It’s not going to be scrutinized by the public or the Congress. It is, however similar to what will happen with 224 if it passes. “It essentially embeds Israel in some of the US’s production of weapons, etc. And now we’re doing the same thing on the intelligence front.”

· It is ironic that Congress has essentially given up its right to responsibility for war and peace but wants to come back here and micromanage “how intelligence is being shared with Israel, with the normal state being that everything essentially has to be shared.”

· Obviously, this is going to cause a lot of problems with our allies (Note: if we have any by then). We have “full time staff that is managing to make sure that intelligence is not shared in a manner that could be detrimental to other allies…” And, this arrangement is being undertake with “a country that has an extensive history of taking US intelligence, spying on the US, or having spies inside the system that has been selling that information to hostile states, whether that is to the Soviet Union which is what Jonathan Pollock did, or whether it is to the Chinese.” This comes at the same time we have a NYT story that revealed that the Israeli espionage level of surveilling individuals within the United States government right now is now at an all-time high.

· “…We have a state that in the intelligence setting…is actually an adversary rather than an ally. And now Congress is going to mandate the exchange or the release of that information to the Israelis.”

· PART 2 CONSERVATIVE ISRAEL VIEW