Speaking of WWII …
Recently: A dictators’ parade as personal betrayal for the U.S. president. Open corruption topples a strongman. &c. | The member’s despatch, Week XXXVI.
Today: U.S. federal agents flood Chicago. Russian drones strike Kyiv harder than ever. The Murdoch family resolves succession planning for its media empire through 2050. The Epstein estate submits a “nonexistent” Trump drawing to the U.S. Congress. & American stealth fighters head to Venezuela’s doorstep.
+ How’s Iran’s standoff with Israel and the West affecting everyday Iranians’ feelings about the regime? Trita Parsi on why nationalism is surging while Islamic Republic’s popularity continues to tank.
& Music from Chuck Johnson ...
Washington moves on Chicago
The U.S. administration launched “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago on Monday, deploying more than 230 federal agents from Naval Station Great Lakes to conduct immigration enforcement.
Oddly, the operation’s name refers to the 1942 U.S. naval victory that effectively ended Japan’s expansion in the Pacific, a turning point in World War II. Even more oddly—for a WWII reference—it invokes the term “Blitz,” most famously associated with Nazi Germany’s bombing campaign against British cities.
The deployment, in all events, tests the same legal boundaries that U.S. federal courts have already ruled “willfully” violated federal law in Los Angeles, where a judge found that National Guard deployments for immigration enforcement broke the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the U.S. military from civilian policing.
- Read “Every boundary,” from this week’s member’s despatch.
Moscow speaks louder than words
Russia launched its largest aerial attack of the war yet on Sunday, deploying 810 drones and 13 missiles that struck Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers building in Kyiv for the first time, killing at least four people—and marking an escalation in targeting, given that Moscow has previously avoided government buildings in the city center.
The massive assault continues a pattern of intensifying attacks since August’s Alaska summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, with Russia launching over 500 drones and missiles just days earlier.
All of which suggests—for anyone who might have thought otherwise—that the Kremlin has no real interest in peace apart from on its own terms, and its diplomatic rhetoric about negotiations just masks, if barely, its real strategy of relentlessly escalating military pressure.
Chosen son
The Murdoch family—which controls Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and a global media empire—resolved a protracted succession dispute on Monday with a $3.3 billion settlement that ensures Lachlan Murdoch will secure his leadership of the family’s media empire after his 94-year-old father’s eventual death.
The deal buys out three siblings—James, Elisabeth, and Prudence—who’d opposed Lachlan’s leadership and could have used their equal voting shares to challenge the conservative direction of Fox News—with James, in particular,“deeply troubled” by the network’s right-wing programming.
Lachlan’s now-guaranteed control through 2050 suggests the world’s most influential conservative media conglomerate will stay on its current political trajectory for decades.
Seems there’s a drawing after all
Jeffrey Epstein’s estate turned over to the U.S. Congress on Monday a “birthday book” containing what appears to be a drawing and note signed by Trump, featuring the outline of a naked woman with text inside concluding, “May every day be another wonderful secret.”
Trump has categorically denied creating the 2003 birthday message, calling it “fake” and filing a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against, of all outlets, The Wall Street Journal for reporting its existence—while House Democrats immediately released the image, accusing the president of a “cover-up.”
The emergence of this physical document—which Trump repeatedly insisted didn’t exist—suggests his legal strategy of blanket denial may face complications as congressional investigators and his own supporters continue pressing for full release of all Epstein files.
Stealth fighters to the Caribbean
Trump meanwhile ordered 10 F-35 stealth fighters deployed to Puerto Rico on Friday as part of escalating military pressure on Venezuela, following last week’s strike on an alleged drug boat and reports that the administration is weighing attacks on cartel targets inside Venezuelan territory.
The deployment marks a significant escalation in the confrontation with Nicolás Maduro’s government, with the advanced fighter jets joining seven American warships already positioned in the southern Caribbean as part of what U.S. officials describe as counter-narcotics operations.
Conspicuously, the military buildup raises questions about how deploying stealth fighters for potential strikes against Venezuela squares with Trump’s campaign promises to end American military interventions abroad and focus on domestic priorities rather than foreign entanglements.
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The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy
In the early morning of June 13, Israel struck a number of buildings in Iran’s capital, Tehran. It was initially unclear what would happen next, but after establishing aerial supremacy, Israel then launched a comprehensive bombing campaign, hitting targets throughout the country. Iran responded by firing hundreds of missiles back toward Israel, killing some 28 people. Tehran claims Israel’s strikes killed at least 1,060 people in Iran. A week later, after the smoke had cleared, the United States then sent its B-2 stealth bombers with the intent to inflict, in U.S. President Donald Trump’s words, “monumental damage” on Iranian nuclear facilities.
Inside Iran, the regime was humiliated: Its top nuclear scientists had been killed along with many key military officers, as had many ordinary Iranians. A regime that had invested a lot of its prestige in the idea of leading an “Axis of Resistance” now seemed incapable of putting up much resistance when it really mattered. Still, the Israeli and American strikes appear to have triggered a rally-‘round-the-flag effect, with Iranians still overwhelmingly critical of the regime but supportive of Iran in its regional conflict.
As an illustration, former Deputy Interior Minister Mostafa Tajzadeh, now an enemy of the state, relayed a message from prison, stating, “To support a foreign military attack ordered by someone indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court [Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] is politically and morally indefensible. Even if this war were to bring down the failing religious regime, it would leave Iran in ruins, most likely descending into anarchy and chaos.”
What’s happening in Iran?
Trita Parsi is the executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. Parsi says the Iranian regime has lost the support of the Iranian people comprehensively. Only a very small segment of the population now backs the Islamic Republic. And yet the recent strikes have mitigated the conflict, if not bridged the gap, between the Iranian government and the Iranian people—to the point, Parsi says, that the same Iranians who’ve come to hate their rulers are starting to become receptive to their narrative that “resistance” to the West is necessary, because the West fundamentally can’t be trusted. Still, Parsi says, even though Iranians seem to have become more sympathetic to the regime’s view of the West, there’s no evidence that they’ve become sympathetic to the regime itself.
Possibly to the contrary: Because the regime is so thoroughly unpopular, even Iranians who’ve accepted its negative assessment of the West are, en masse, criticizing the regime for leaving Iran vulnerable to attack by it. The “Axis of Resistance” melted quickly in the fire of Israeli bombardment, they say—what a terrible investment. How could Tehran spend so much money propping up a a “resistance” that would prove so weak? The regime seems to appreciate the point, so it’s now frantically trying to rally public support behind the one thing that’s actually worked in this whole mess: their missile program …
Meanwhile
Read John Jamesen Gould on what’s ahead at The Signal …
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‘Sylvanshine’
