Monsters of war. The men who put the world at risk

The war in Iran has entered its second month. A war waged by a convicted criminal, a convicted criminal, and a blackmail network that reveals everything Western leaders won’t say. Andrew Brown with the second in a series.

There are two men primarily responsible for the Iran war. And there are those, like our Prime Minister, who willingly submit to their bloody whims.

Men. Not press releases. Not carefully managed public personas. It’s not the language that communications teams stress test for maximum flavor.

The men themselves. Their records. Legal dangers. And the extraordinary, historically unprecedented fact that two key architects of a war that has cost ordinary Australians their livelihoods rule the world while both, in their own ways, evading responsibility.

Benjamin Netanyahu

Netanyahu is not just a controversial leader waging a controversial war. He is a criminal defendant. A man accused. A person who could be expelled for bias according to the laws of his own country, not the laws of his enemies, not the laws of international courts, is accused of fraud, breach of trust and bribery.

His case has been pending in Israeli courts since 2020. It hasn’t concluded yet. And critics, serious critics, within Israel’s own legal and political establishment have argued, with mounting evidence, that prolonging this war serves at least Israel’s security interests as well as Netanyahu’s personal legal interests.

Consider what this means.

A man facing prison. A man whose political survival depends on staying in power. For him, a ceasefire would mean a negotiated peace and a return to normality, the resumption of court proceedings conveniently disrupted by the wartime emergency. He is a man whose far-right coalition partners have made it clear that they will bring down the government as soon as the guns fall silent.

This man, this particular man, in this particular legal and political impasse, was given a carte blanche by Washington. Unlimited weapons. Diplomatic cover.

Every time the international community tries to intervene, the United States vetoes it in the Security Council.

And Anthony Albanese says the aims of his war are appropriate.

Iran war and the price of Albanese’s complicity

ICC Arrest warrant

The International Criminal Court found these inappropriate. He issued an arrest warrant.

This arrest warrant remains unchallenged and unimplemented as Western governments, including our own, conduct business as usual with a man for whom the court found reasonable grounds to prosecute him for war crimes. This is not a technicality. This is not a diplomatic disturbance. This is the most basic possible test of whether the rules-based international order to which Australia has consistently invoked as a guiding principle makes any sense.

And it’s not every day that Australia quietly passes this test.

with a smile and a press release about shared values.

This spy belli We are never allowed to examine it. It’s not for security reasons. Not stated military objectives. The real person in whose name and for whose benefit this disaster is being judged. And what that person is running away from.

Donald Trump

Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 carrying more legal and personal baggage than any president in American history.

A convicted criminal. Hundreds of millions of civil court judgments. And something else, something that the mainstream press, especially in America and Australia, has treated with such extraordinary attention that it amounts to institutional cowardice, the Epstein files.

Jeffrey Epstein was not a lone predator. It was the center of a network. An almost certainly intelligence-related buy and blackmail operation that has been carried out at the highest levels of American, British and Israeli power for decades.

The files that have emerged in trickles, argued over in courts, partially suppressed and heavily redacted, point to a system of repression that has endangered some of the most powerful men in the world.

Australia and the “Epstein Coalition”. The invasion of Iran is a disaster

Trump’s name appears thousands of times in those files. Her relationship with Epstein was long-term, documented and, by her own admission, enthusiastic. In a 2002 interview, she described Epstein as a terrifically entertaining person and noted approvingly that he was attracted to beautiful women, many of whom were young. This statement was made public. He did not retreat.

He is caught up in the general din of a political culture that has lost the capacity for appropriate disgust.

But the Epstein connection isn’t just a personal scandal. This is a geopolitical situation.

Epstein’s operation did not exist in a vacuum. His convicted and imprisoned accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, was the daughter of media baron Robert Maxwell, who posthumously confirmed that he was an asset of the Mossad.

The intelligence dimensions of the Epstein network have been reported on many continents by journalists of unquestionable seriousness. It is not serious to claim that a blackmail operation of this scale, which has been carried out for decades among the power centers of American political and financial life, has no connection with intelligence services that specialize in precisely this kind of influence.

This is willful blindness.

Mossad connection

Mossad is Israel’s foreign intelligence service and one of the most operationally aggressive intelligence agencies on the planet. He assassinated scientists in foreign countries. He organized sabotage operations in the Middle East. It has been operating networks of influence, surveillance and covert pressure in Western capitals for decades. This is not a conspiracy. This is its known, partially accepted, historically documented record.

What the Epstein network, the Mossad connection, the Maxwell lineage, and the suppressed files collectively describe, if you pursue the matter honestly and unashamedly, is a Western political order in which respect for Israeli policy is not wholly or even primarily explained by shared democratic values ​​and strategic alignment.

Some of it is explained by fear.

Some of it is explained by leverage.

Some of this is explained in a way that is never voiced in the quiet, unspoken and polite corporate reality in which powerful men in Washington, London and Canberra make themselves vulnerable. To kompromat networks, to relationships they cannot fully reveal, to the special kind of coercive power that intelligence operations specializing in the exploitation of human weakness have wielded for as long as intelligence operations have existed.

This is why accusations of antisemitism are so quickly leveled against anyone who raises these questions.

It’s not because the questions are antisemitic.

Clearly they are not questions about the behavior of particular governments, particular intelligence agencies, and particular individuals, or about the Jewish people as a whole.

But because charging works. It makes you quiet. It ends careers. It directs the conversation. And the people who have the most to lose from honest answers have every incentive to ensure that the conversation never leads to those answers.

The International Court issued its order. The Epstein files become public. The Maxwell Mossad connection has been confirmed as historical record.

The repression that may explain a generation of Western politicians who dare not utter even a single meaningful criticism of the behavior of the state of Israel is no longer the subject of conspiracy forums. The subject of serious investigative journalism on three continents.

Australia’s answer, it seems, is to look away.

Anthony Albanese won’t be the one looking directly at any of this. He’s already told us where he stands. He endorsed the war on national television. He described it as constructive. He presented America’s justification to Australian audiences as if it were Australia’s own sovereign decision.

It wasn’t. This was obedience disguised as policy. And the men who benefit most from this obedience, a defendant in Tel Aviv and a criminal in Washington, laugh until the next airstrike while journalists are prosecuted while ordinary Australians foot the bill.

More to come about how the Murdoch press covered up the war and directed your anger at exactly the wrong man.

Mary Kostakidis. Forced to defend against Israel’s war in Australian court