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Mark Sachs
@mark_sachs
Jack of many trades and master of none. Proud American and Zionist.
Joined May 2021
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240 Followers
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Vice President JD Vance is hailing the Geneva talks as “historic,” pointing to the unprecedented level of face-to-face engagement between U.S. and Iranian leaders. Historic indeed—rarely have the two sides been close enough for Iran to spit directly in Washington’s face.
After eighteen hours of “intensive” talks, the second major round of U.S.–Iran negotiations in Geneva this year concluded with Tehran projecting absolute confidence and Washington walking away with little of substance to show for it.
The results of negotiations explained and more in today’s edition of It’s Noon in Israel.
https://t.co/8PTbsa3fW9
@AaronRegunberg F’ing sophist BS. How many of the 4,000 were Hezbollah? The vast majority.
The scorpion promises the alligator it won’t sting it if the alligator would transport it to safety. On the edge of safety the scorpion bites the alligator. Why? Bc that’s what scorpions do.
I can write 100,000 words and give 1,000 interviews trying to explain this and then @TheBabylonBee nails it with 11 words.
The relationship between the U.S. and Israel is not transactional, it is a long and vital partnership, but the next time you hear the tired question of "What does the U.S. get for $3.8 Billion to Israel," answer simply - RETURNS.
R – Research, Innovation, and the Combat Laboratory
Access to one of the world's most active laboratories for military innovation, where new technologies, concepts, and operational methods are developed, tested, and refined under real combat conditions. Combined with one of the world's leading defense technology and startup ecosystems, this environment generates technological advancements, operational insights, and innovation that would be difficult, expensive, and in many cases impossible to replicate through peacetime experimentation, exercises, simulations, or war games.
E – Economic Benefits
American jobs and manufacturing supported through purchases of U.S.-made military equipment, while strengthening the U.S. defense industrial base through joint production, co-development, and missile defense cooperation for the benefit of the U.S. military and American national security.
T – Technology
Access to military technologies refined in combat, from active protection systems and missile defense to counter-drone capabilities, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies.
U – Unique Understanding of Modern Warfare
Battlefield lessons drawn from one of the world's most active conflict environments, providing insights into urban warfare, tunnel warfare, missile defense, drones, battlefield medicine, artificial intelligence, and modern combat. These lessons help the United States adapt and prepare without having to learn them first through American casualties, American mistakes, or American wars.
R – Regional Stability Through Alliance
A capable ally helping deter common adversaries and maintain stability in one of the world's most strategically important regions while remaining willing and able to fight alongside the United States when necessary.
N – National Security Intelligence
Intelligence that helps prevent attacks against Americans, American forces, and American interests while improving U.S. understanding of shared threats, adversaries, and emerging security challenges.
S – Strategic Freedom to Focus on China
Greater freedom for the United States to concentrate military, diplomatic, and economic resources on long-term competition with China in the Indo-Pacific while helping preserve a favorable balance of power in the Middle East.
@ericweinstein That’s a long blame-the-victim diatribe. This has nothing to do with what Israel did or did not do. It’s a monstrous cultural phenomenon that we across the West are failing to deal with and Israel/Jews have become the ideal cudgel to destroy the West.
@GBNT1952 says it like it is. No BS. Love it.
People often ask why I bother pushing back against the anti-Israel propaganda...
I have no ties to Israel in any way. I don't even think I know any Jewish people outside of the online platforms I am active on. I would like to visit some day because of the historical significance of the Levant and because I enjoy visiting foreign places with rich history that genuinely like and get along with Americans.
I am not interested in Israeli politics. I am not concerned with the ongoings of their country beyond how they are a strategic ally to my country.
I'm a Christian from Texas, after all.
My kids will grow up in the United States, not Israel.
So, again, people may wonder why I would subject myself to the hate and push back from so many that would vilify Israel, and my answer is simple.
I do so because I care about the truth.
I also do so because I was trained to see beyond the narratives, beyond the face of propaganda and psyops, and all of the way to the truth of how messaging can be manipulated, amplified, and repeated until it becomes accepted as truth.
I watched the information environment change after October 7, 2023.
I watched the shift happen in real time as our enemies used a horrific attack that they knew would generate a massive, destruction filled response to try and convince people that the initial terrorist aggressors were right and that Israel, acting in defense of their nation... in defense of those thousand plus innocent people that were murdered in their homes, in the streets, and at a concert... was wrong.
Imagine if that had happened to Americans. How would we have reacted?
How much destruction would we have wrought in retribution to such an act?
I think we all know the answer...
So, I watched as people picked up propaganda that has been debunked for over a hundred years and share it as if it confirmed their every belief.
I watched as our enemies realized that the key to finally defeating the American right was simply to convince them of the oldest and dumbest propaganda the world has ever seen.
It was propaganda made for illiterate peasants, but it worked like a charm because most Americans know absolutely nothing about history and even less about geopolitics or the realities of our strategic alliances.
All it took was getting a few big names to push it.
All they needed was to grind it into the old grievances that already existed on the right due to mistrust in our institutions and the war fatigue GWOT created for so, so many.
From a propaganda standpoint... the effort was absolutely impressive. If I wanted to destabalize a first world nation, my information operations would have looked similar.
And that is what should trouble you all.
Our enemies know exactly what they are doing. Democrats know exactly what they are doing as well.
Democrats are not only involved, but fully behind such propaganda because it distracts us from what we should really be talking about: how progressive leftists are trying to fundamentally change our great country.
And the truly worrisome part is not just that it is dividing our side and distracting us from the real domestic enemy, but that it is convincing Americans, especially young Americans, that all of their problems are the result of a small faction of people ruling the world...
It has already likely damaged multiple generations of Americans to an extent that I am not sure if we can recover from it, and now the VP is mimicking some of the same talking points as we head into midterms that may be the most important midterms in generations...
We must push back, lest we lose everything that makes us great.
Without involving Congress. Where is Congress now, particularly those Rs who sought to limit Obama’s authority? I hear no demands that they be given the right to weigh in.
In 2015 the Congress passed INARA (Iranian Nuclear Agreement Review Act) giving Congress a role to play. While many later decided to abdicate their role, the point was that a President can’t authorize a treaty-like agreement or pursue one
@iranidaturan Ida you make some strong arguments. But they are based on a lot of “If”s. Right now I’m on the skeptical side (as is @mdubowitz) of those “If”s. Keep up the analyses though. I like hearing your perspectives.
Yes, @ConceptualJames offers a well thought through guess for what Trump may be doing. But if Gaza is an indication of big ideas/deals that go no where, then call me skeptical that Trump can deliver.
Please, if you’re worried or confused about this deal, or about Trump’s overall strategy toward the Iranian regime, take a few minutes to read this excellent piece.
It gives a really strong and clarifying perspective.
Most serious Iranian analysts have believed for years that this is exactly Trump’s strategy, and everything so far has confirmed it:
- One of our greatest advantages is our alliances and specifically with Israel. And the IRGC wants to drive a wedge between us.
- Restraining Israel should not be part of a deal with Iran. Hezbollah is already required to disarm accoring to multiple UNSCRs and Lebanon is required to disarm it.
- Israel cannot afford not to defend itself and we should expect it to continue to do so.
@KatiePavlich is 💯 right. Trump’s linking of Lebanon to Iran as a precondition of a ceasefire was a huge mistake. The Lebanese people (the Christians, Druze, and Sunnis) want Hezbollah out and the only country that can help is Israel.
I've been waiting to comment or offer analysis on an MOU between the U.S. and Iran that I haven't seen, but we've heard a lot about Lebanon so let's address it.
If “Lebanon” now being included in the deal with Iran means *Iran* is forced to withdraw Iranian Hezbollah from Lebanon, from which they attack Israel and harbor terrorists, then great. But that’s not what’s being said or proposed at the moment.
The only reason Israel is responding in Lebanon is because Iranian Hezbollah keeps killing their soldiers with drones and sending bombs into northern Israel civilian communities. If Iran pulled Iranian Hezbollah out of Lebanon the fighting would stop. Further, if the UN had enforced UN Security Council Resolution 1701, held the line and kept Iranian Hezbollah north of the Litani River, Israel wouldn't be operating in southern Lebanon to push them back. If the Iranian regime hadn't colonized Lebanon with its terror proxy Hezbollah in the first place, there would be no issue at all.
A reminder: Prior to 9/11 Iranian Hezbollah was responsible for more American murders than any other terrorist organization on the planet. They currently operate in South America - our hemisphere - and partner with drug cartels. SOUTHCOM calls it "Jihad in the Jungle."
Just over the weekend in southern Lebanon, Israel took out Ali Musa Daqduq - an Iranian Hezbollah terrorist who killed U.S. troops execution style. The strike was extremely targeted, as the majority of them are. He's one of many Iranian Hezbollah terrorists. to whom the IDF has delivered justice - including Iranian Hezbollah leaders behind the Beirut bombings of the U.S. Embassy and Marine Corps barracks, killing hundreds.
Lebanon wasn't in the initial ceasefire deal - for good reason. It makes no sense that it is now, other than to give Iran what they want - which is another life line for their strongest and most organized terror proxy. This is an Iranian demand and objective. Counter to the "forever wars" narrative, this actually ensures there will be more war in the future. As the White House has repeatedly said about the goals of Epic Fury, "We’re ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund, and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.” Lebanon is far outside Iran's borders and Hezbollah is operating there.
As the President of Lebanon said last week about Iran and Hezbollah, "It's not your country, it's our country...they are using Lebanon as a bargaining chip in their negotiation with the United States. It's unacceptable."
As for who the U.S. is negotiating with in Iran and claims of more moderate leaders than the previous regime being at the table (which I don't believe), you can thank the Israelis for taking out the top three levels of regime leadership so we have "normal" people to negotiate with.
Let the Israelis do what they need to do. Iran is still and always has been the hinderance to peace. That hasn't changed and giving Iranian Hezbollah immunity in Lebanon is appeasement that will prolong the conflict.
I acquired a copy of the White House talking points on the Iran MoU and it reads like an accidental confession memo written by a fifth grader.
It took the White House four or five days to produce this — and they still have not released the actual MoU.
They are trying to claim total victory while admitting there is no final deal.
Now look at their top five points.
1) “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.”
That is not a term. That is an aspiration.
It is also only one of the objectives the administration laid out at the start. The stated goal was not merely “no nuclear weapon.” It was to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity, ballistic missile production, and terror proxy network.
So where are the missile provisions?
Where are the proxy provisions?
Where is the enforcement mechanism?
2) “President Trump ended the fighting on every front, including Lebanon.”
Are we supposed to be this dumb?
If Hezbollah is still attacking Israel as they are tonight, the fighting is not “over.”
What this really means is that the White House is tying Israel’s freedom of action against Hezbollah to Trump’s Iran deal.
That puts the U.S. right back in the Obama role: restraining our ally to preserve a deal with our enemy.
It also throws Lebanon under the bus — at least the part of Lebanon not controlled by Hezbollah.
3) “The Strait of Hormuz is open again, free of charge.”
This could be the most absurd talking point in the whole memo but there are just so many contenders.
Iran threatened the world’s oil artery, then gets relief for reopening what it had no right to close.
That is not “performance.”
That is hostage-taking with a tariff schedule.
And if the Strait needed to be opened, the United States had the military power to open it. Instead, Trump is treating Iranian blackmail as a deliverable.
4) “Iran’s rewards come from its own unfrozen money, not American taxpayers.”
Spare us.
Sanctions are leverage.
Unfreezing Iranian funds gives the regime resources it otherwise would not have. Money is fungible. Whether it comes from U.S. taxpayers or frozen accounts, the strategic effect is the same: Iran gets cash and we know how they'll use it. I'm just waiting for Vance to literally repeat John Kerry verbatim.
If Iran’s nuclear program is “in ruins,” its military is “gutted,” its economy is “collapsing,” and the regime had “no other choice left,” why are we rewarding it, rebuilding it, and negotiating with it at all?
5) “Obama never even got a signed document. President Trump did.”
Really? That is point five? I had to re-read that several times.
Who cares if the document is signed? Is Trump planning to sue them in court? Is that a deliverable?
Obama at least released the awful JCPOA text in 2015, while hiding several annexes. Trump’s team is bragging about signing an MoU they will not show us yet, for a deal they haven't delivered.
On Hannity, JD Vance was asked why they will not release it. His answer was that it would come Friday because of protocol nonsense reasons reasons reasons.
Seriously?
We have a president who claims he can declassify anything, anytime he wants — but somehow the Iran MoU is trapped in paperwork?
The reality is that the administration’s own talking points give away the game.
They are asking us to trust slogans because they do not want us reading terms. The terms that Vance and Trump discuss publicly should be unacceptable to anyone who cares about national security.
Right now, what we have is a hidden MoU, a bunch of chest-thumping, and the JCPOA playbook with less transparency.
The White House says Trump negotiated from strength <-- they keep repeating that word like we're imbeciles.
Fine.
Then show us why he squandered it.
I think the compromise consensus position for pretty much everybody of good faith should be that the full text of the agreement be released. There’s no reason to take Trump’s word or Iran’s or random leakers’ word for it. Release the text, period.
Trump sold this war as a demonstration of American strength. It ended with Washington scrambling for a deal before an oil shock crashed the global economy.
Netanyahu got his war with Iran but no regime change, no Arab-Israeli coalition, no strategic victory, and now a ceasefire he reportedly opposed.
Iran is battered but still standing. The Gulf is moving closer to Tehran, not Jerusalem. China is the quiet winner.
I think historians will look back on this as one of the greatest strategic miscalculations of the 21st century.
My latest: https://t.co/qvFtkOofq8
ANATOMY OF A DEBACLE 👇
This remains one of the most unhinged things ever admitted on the record by a candidate for public office. To the NYT no less.
“I admit that I am trafficking in a deeply problematic lie. I know I am doing it, it makes me really uncomfortable, but I must do it to win. And so I will.” — Brad Lander
@DissentFu Your circumstances, which I can sympathize and empathize a bit, has NOTHING to do with someone else’s success. He just created a hundred millionaires, many of whom were hourly wage earners.
More evidence that much of the world is willing to sacrifice the lives and livelihoods of Palestinians to their hate of Israel. @afalkhatib is a powerful Palestinian voice of reason and even he can’t reason these people out of their pathology.
Will Europe Save Hamas in Gaza? I recently met with a high-ranking European official from a country deeply involved in the Israel and Palestine file to discuss Gaza’s future and immediate options for relieving civilians trapped under Hamas’s grip. I presented a simple proposal: create safe zones across the "Yellow Line" into the Israel‑controlled green zone and support new, organized, secure, Hamas‑free communities where Gazans could finally begin rebuilding their lives. Whether the issue is humane living conditions, deradicalization, education, healthcare, or shielding civilians from both Hamas or Israeli strikes, the green zone is the only place where meaningful action is possible. Instead of engaging, the official launched into a long monologue about their country’s contributions to the Palestinian Authority, UNRWA, and other institutions, all while insisting on their own “humility” as a faraway European nation.
Then came the truly alarming part: a casual normalization of Hamas. The official proudly described how easy it had been to work with Hamas before October 7, praising the group for providing “excellent security” and being “easier to work with than others.” What they called pragmatism was, in reality, a twenty‑year pattern of enabling a violent terrorist organization responsible for immense civilian suffering.
When I explained that any Hamas‑free zones would require vetting at the Yellow Line to prevent weapons or operatives from entering, the official reacted with shock. “This vetting would violate international law,” they repeated, insisting that their country could not fund projects with any checks on who enters. I noted the absurdity: I had undergone extensive vetting just to enter their country, and even this building, yet they believed Hamas fighters should be able to walk into new civilian safe zones unimpeded. Their only response was vague appeals to “international law,” which, in their interpretation, seems to require allowing terrorists to hide among civilians.
The meeting ended on an even more surreal note. When the official asked what would happen to Hamas fighters left in the red zone, I said I didn’t care; they could fight the Israeli military on their own all they wanted once they no longer held two million civilians hostage. The official lamented that “this isn’t the old American West” and expressed concern for what would happen to Hamas without human shields. Disgust doesn’t begin to describe my feelings and reactions.
I left convinced of something long suspected: Hamas’s twenty‑year rule was sustained not only by its own brutality but by an ecosystem of NGOs, donor nations, Western European governments, journalists, academics, activists, lawyers, and even self‑styled human‑rights defenders who normalized Hamas, treated it as a legitimate authority, or tolerated its abuses because their hostility toward Israel outweighed their concern for Gazans.
Perhaps the way to power is now through championing grievance not grace, victimhood not empowerment, self-dependence not self-reliance, blame not responsibility.
One interesting and underappreciated development: as AIPAC has become a bogeyman in Democratic politics, wealthy tech workers of Muslim origin are powering American Priorities, the anti-AIPAC effort backing DSA candidates in NYC and elsewhere.
This is a social world I know a bit by virtue of my background, and its rising political clout has brought to mind something I touch on in my essay for @SapirJournal:
"Together, the integration paradox and religious attrition explain something that might otherwise seem puzzling: why the most committed and articulate voices of Muslim anti-Americanism in the United States are not marginalized, dispossessed, under-assimilated newcomers. Rather, they are privileged, cosmopolitan, first- and second-generation insiders who lead largely secular lives."
Why is Third Worldism proving so seductive to the most upwardly mobile, influential, high-status members of America's fastest-growing religious minority? This is not a story about failed assimilation. Rather, it is about the changing character of assimilation.
More below: https://t.co/jiEwPpFlCn
I remember when UPS went public. Drivers became millionaires. Capitalism at its best. Only in a capitalist society can this happen.
A welder took a $28 an hour job in 2015 at a company he had never heard of.
On Friday, Juan Hernandez became a millionaire.
He spent ten years building the structures that lifted rockets onto the launch pad. SpaceX paid him partly in stock, the way it paid its cooks, machinists, technicians and cafeteria staff, equity instead of bigger salaries. His $10,000 grant grew into $880,000 at the IPO price. The first day pop carried it past a million. He is 42, an immigrant from Mexico, married, three kids. He says he is keeping the job.
He is not the outlier. He is the pattern.
4,400 current and former SpaceX employees became millionaires on Friday. One in five people who ever badged into the company. About 400 of them are walking away with $100 million or more. One employee took every cash bonus in stock instead of money. He is sitting on 50,000 shares, worth more than $8 million at Friday's prices.
And then there is the other side of the cafeteria.
Some employees sold their shares years ago, certain the company would never go public because Musk said he hated public markets. A few traded their stock for restaurant gift cards. The New York Times says they are consumed by regret. Same grant, same building, same years. One group held the claim. The other ate it.
None of the winners can touch the money yet. The first selling window opens after the August earnings report, and the rest unlocks in waves through December.
Underneath all of it sits the only lesson the market ever teaches. The welder and the gift card came from the same place. The difference was never the work. It was the ownership. Salary pays for the month. Equity pays for the era.
A cook in Brownsville just answered the question every buyer of SPCX is asking at $170: what is a claim on this company actually worth?
The piece prices that exact question at $2.2 trillion.
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