Thread by @ClimateAudit

The most definitive White House statement purporting to justify the Israel-US war on Iran was its March 2, 2026 statement entitled "The Iranian Regime's Decades of Terrorism against American Citizens".
whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/…

After a brief editorial opening, the article lists 44 incidents with a total of 992 US deaths. The source of the data wasn't given. Where did it come from?

Unlike the Iraq war or the Russia collusion allegation, the reporting didn't come from an intelligence assessment, flawed or otherwise.

It turns out that the list was plagiarized by the White House from a June 19, 2025 list (fdd.org/analysis/2025/…) prepared by a former AIPAC employee (Tzvi Kahn) for a think tank (FDD) founded "to provide education to enhance Israel's image in North America". The think tank's original identity was "EMET (Hebrew for 'truth')". The June 19, 2025 publication was literally on the eve of the first US bombing of Iran on June 21, 2025.

In this thread, I'll compare each and every item in the White House statement to the corresponding item in the original list by the former AIPAC employee. The list is virtually identical. Any slight changes are always in the change of ratcheting up the underlying allegation.

2/ Here's the first set of comparisons between the two documents. There are going to be about 7 pages of this. Note the more or less exact match of 5 incidents. Only the two grey outlined boxes don't match. The slight changes in the plagiarized White House version are occasionally in the direction of embellishment.

3/ the next six incidents match in both FDD and White House lists. The White House version adds "Iran-backed" in all six lists and made a firm attribution where FDD had noted "claimed responsibility".

4/ the next five incidents similarly match up to slight editorial.

Note the ratcheting up of attribution of Khobar Towers incident in Saudi Arabia in 1996. FDD said that Hezbollah al-Hejaz was "deemed responsible", while White House asserted as a fact. Clinton's Defense Secretary William Perry subsequently wondered (along with many others) whether Khobar Towers should have been attributed to Al Qaeda - see upi.com/Defense-News/2…

The attribution of Khobar Towers had a strange connection to Russia collusion hoax. Clinton administration had wrestled for years on attribution. The Saudi government had obtained confessions from Shia prisoners, but the then DC Attorney was skeptical and refused to charge. In the very early days of incoming Bush administration in 2001, while the incoming administration was disorganized, the then Acting Deputy Attorney General (Robert Mueller) transferred the case to EDVA where an ambitious AUSA (James Comey) took over the case and promptly (summer 2001) indicted Saudi Hezbollah operatives.

From time to time, I've wondered whether subsequent history might have unfolded differently if Mueller and Comey had spent as much time on Al Qaeda in their 2001 investigations as on the insubstantial Saudi Hezbollah.

I've also wondered whether Comey's experience with the powers displayed by an Acting Deputy Attorney General in February 2001 influenced his manipulations in February 2017 to recuse Sessions and put an Acting Deputy Attorney General (Dana Boente) in charge of the Russia collusion investigation in March 2017 in Comey's successful operation to institutionalize the investigation by announcing it to the public, thus precipitating the demand for a special counsel.

5/ the next five in the White House list correspond to FDD entries. The FDD author (formerly AIPAC) purported to attribute responsibility to Iran for a supposed role in 9/11. The White House didn't follow this.
The attribution of 603 military deaths in Iraq to "Iran-backed militias" is the largest single item (by far) in the entire list, accounting for 60% of the total attributed deaths. This attribution is not made in the State Department annual reports on Global Terrorism/ The attribution is also vigorously disputed by Matthew Hoh and Scott Horton, both of whom have subject matter expertise.

6/ picking up this thread, from yesterday, here are the next 8 entries ranging in date from 2003 to 2020, once again an exact match between FDD and the White House. Once again, the plagiarism is more or less total, up to minor changes in grammar and/or occasional further embellishment.

in regard to the August 2006 incident, the White House changed the term "Hezbollah fighters" to "Hezbollah terrorists". The incident pertained to the death of an IDF soldier during an IDF operation in southern Lebanon. Under State Department definitions of "terrorism", this death would be an act of war, not "terrorism". Nor can this death be attributed to an attack on an //American// as an American. It was a death of a soldier fighting for the IDF in Lebanon.
It is also the ONLY death in this list attributed to Hezbollah since the 1980s.

There is a change in the date attributed to the Robert Levinson death: the White House uses the 2007 date of his disappearance vs FDD date of 2020 when the family announced his death. Levinson is the ONLY death in the entire FDD/White House compendium in which the death is attributed to //Iran// rather than ostensible proxies (Hezbollah, Hamas, Iraqi militias). Levinson was arrested in Iran while carrying out espionage as an agent for the CIA. There doesn't seem to be any doubt about this. So the classification of this incident as "terrorism" is very questionable. A larger question is why US negotiators failed to obtain Levinson's release. There is also a strange backstory about efforts by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska on behalf of the FBI to obtain Levinson's release. Deripaska apparently spent millions of dollars on this effort. Deripaska was later interviewed by Mueller investigation and sanctioned by US government during Trump administration in April 2018. In his efforts to get the sanctions revoked, Deripaska unwisely hired Charles McGonigal, a retired (crooked) FBI agent who, as an FBI agent, had received cash bribes by Albanian mobsters.

The July 14, 2014 incident involved two Americans serving in the IDF. The underlying newspaper reporting said that the two Americans were members of the "elite Golani brigade" and "were among 13 Israeli soldiers and 65 Palestinians who died during the first major ground battle in two weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas." This isn't "terrorism" under State Department (or any legal) definition.

The JCPOA was signed in July 2015. The only listed incident between the signing of the JCPOA and its termination by first Trump administration was the murder in the West Bank of an Israeli, a former member of the IDF Golani Brigade, and his wife. The Israeli (born in Jerusalem) was the son of US immigrants. His death does not appear to have been an attack on him as an //American// but as an Israeli who was also a settler in the West Bank.

The next incident (December 2019) cited a contemporary Reuters article reuters.com/article/world/… as authority for the assertion that "Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah terrorists killed an American civilian contractor and wounded several U.S. service members in a rocket attack at K1 Air Base in Kirkuk, Iraq." However, the source article stated that "No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Islamic State militants operating in the area have turned to insurgency-style tactics aimed at bringing down the government in Baghdad ever since it retook all territory and declared victory against them in December 2017. However, a senior U.S. military official said this month that attacks by Iranian-backed groups on bases hosting U.S. forces in Iraq were gathering pace and becoming more sophisticated, pushing all sides closer to an uncontrollable escalation."

This questionably attributed incident was escalated by first Trump administration into the assassination of Qassem Soleimani a few weeks later.

Two days later (Dec 29, 2019), U.S. launched "defensive" airstrikes on five weapons depots and command sites in western Iraq and Syria operated by Kata'ib Hezbollah, serving as units within the Iraqi military in the western Iraqi desert against ISIS (notwithstanding the derogatory FDD and White House description as "Iran-backed"). The attack by US on a supposed ally killed at least 25 militiamen and wounded ~55 more. Previous attacks on Iraqi (or Syrian) military serving in western Iraq and Syria against ISIS had been carried out by Israel, not US.

Needless to say, the surprise US attack on Iraqi troops prompted an enraged reaction from the Iraqi public, who besieged the US embassy in Baghdad within hours of the news. When Qassem Soleimani traveled to Iraq to try to resolve the situation, he was assassinated by US while he was meeting with Iraqi general al-Muhandis.

The notion that US had not sufficiently retaliated for the death of a contractor in Kirkuk is obviously untrue.

In response to the assassination of Soleimani, Iran retaliated with a telegraphed missile attack on the US Ain el-Assad military base, in which no one was killed. Trump immediately announced "I'm pleased to inform you: The American people should be extremely grateful and happy no Americans were harmed in last night's attack by the Iranian regime." "No Americans were harmed in last night's attack." "Iran appears to be standing down, which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world." Complaints about percussive injuries accumulated over the next month.

The Iranian attack on the Ain el-Assad base (in which no one was killed) is the only direct action by Iranian military in the entire FDD-White House list. It was a direct, limited and apparently choreographed response to the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani, following which the then US president (Trump) pronounced that the matter was settled. The present FDD-White House claim that these were unresolved grievances that warranted a war of revenge is unfounded.

7/ the next nine incidents, dating between Sept 2020 and Jan 2024, are plagiarized almost word for word.

Seven of these nine incidents involve incidents attributed to Iraqi factions (described as "Iran-backed "militias") subsequent to the US air attack on Iraqi military (fighting ISIS) in western Iraq in December 2019 and the assassination of Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi general al-Muhandis in January 2020.

The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack is one of the incidents. At the time, then Secretary of State Tony Blinken stated that there was "no 'direct evidence' that Iran was involved in the Hamas attack on Israel".

Not mentioned in the White House statement was the evidence that the largest financial supporter of Hamas was Qatar, under arrangements made by the Netanyahu government as early as 2018.

Qatar made monthly transfers to Hamas of up to $360 million annually, with cumulative aid since 2012 estimated to exceed $1.8 billion. It was a larger contributor to Hamas than Iran, but, for some reason, has never been listed by State Department as a "state sponsor" of terror. (Qatar and other Gulf monarchies are also believed to have been major sponsors of the jihadis involved in the Syrian civil war for so many years). : CNN Report: "Qatar sent millions to Gaza for years – with Israel's backing" (December 2023); New York Times: "'Buying Quiet': Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas" (December 2023); Reuters: "Who funds Hamas? A global network of crypto, cash and charities" (October 2023),

8/ here is the final slide in which two recent incidents recorded by FDD were excluded by White House.
One exclusion was the trial and execution in Iraon of Jamshid Sharmahd (who wasn't a US citizen). Iran had accused him of masterminding or directing terrorist attacks, most notably the 2008 bombing of a Hosseinieh mosque in Shiraz that killed 14 people and injured over 200. Iranian authorities claimed he worked under direction from Western intelligence agencies, the U.S., and Israel. Even the Trump White House wasn't prepared to include his trial and execution as "terrorism".

The November 2024 charges were against Iranian Farhar Shakeri and two New Yorkers. justice.gov/archives/opa/p…

Shakeri (while in Iran) was subsequently interviewed by FBI by telephone. A Grayzone article on March 6, 2026 thegrayzone.com/2026/03/06/isr… describes the resulting gong show (which I will not attempt to summarize here.)