U.S. officials are scrambling to determine how two leaked, highly U.S. classified documents conveying potential Israeli plans to attack Iran got on the Telegram app. According to the New York Times, the documents were prepared “in recent days” by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes information and images collected by U.S. spy satellites.
There are several theories regarding these leaked reports.
The first theory reads that the Iranians hacked the U.S. intelligence services and leaked the document as part of their psy-ops against Israel. Given previous Iranian hacks, it is not outside the realm of possibilities that they have the capacity to hack the United States.
Iranians also have a clear motivation, though it also suggests that they may not have the capacity to defend against the planned Israeli attack — even with the forewarning that the hack provides — and instead opted to leak it to forestall Israel’s plans.
Two, an actor within the U.S. government may have leaked it, but the investigation of the U.S. government itself appears to have concluded otherwise. They have moved on to investigating outside actors.
Three, the Biden administration may have orchestrated the leak itself in order to delay the Israeli attack. Biden clearly lacks the courage to say no to Israel, so instead, he sneaks out intelligence with the aim of delaying Israel’s plans at least until after the U.S. elections, at which point he may find the semblance of a spine.
Four, the Israelis may have leaked this themselves with the aim of diverting Iran’s attention by getting them to look for an attack in all the wrong places.
Five, finally, since the U.S. investigation is looking at outside actors, the question is if a close American ally — a Five Eyes state (FVEY) or a NATO ally with access to FVEY intelligence — leaked it. If so, it would suggest that close U.S. allies are so frustrated with Biden’s refusal to stop Netanyahu from starting the largest war in the Middle East since World War II that they are taking matters into their own hands to sabotage Netanyahu’s escalation plan.
A Western diplomat recently told me that the only way to stop the war is to have the players who forced President Biden off the Democratic ticket in July repeat their feat by forcing Biden to stop Netanyahu.
All of this while Washington continues to nurture the mythology that its “leadership” is what holds the world together.
U.S. Army Strykers from 1st Battalion, 41st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, assigned to Joint Task Force - Southern Border (JTF-SB) in May 2025. (Army Spc. Michael Graf)
The Trump administration has transferred thousands of acres of federal land along the U.S.-Mexico border to be controlled by the Department of Defense (DoD). The transfer is part of an ongoing expansion of the military’s presence along the border which the administration claims is necessary to “control” illegal immigration.
Critics of the land transfer, including some who live near the affected areas, have raised concerns about the environmental impact of military operations on these large swathes of land. Additionally, much of the land now under the jurisdiction of the military encompasses national parks and other federal lands which the public is losing access to.
The land that has been transferred to the DoD, called the Roosevelt Reservation, is a 60-foot-wide strip spanning roughly 170 square miles along the border. Already the Pentagon has used its newly acquired access to this land to establish National Defense Areas (NDAs) in New Mexico and Texas. These NDAs will function as expansions of Fort Huachuca and Fort Bliss, Army installations in Arizona and Texas respectively.
Since taking office, the administration has deployed thousands of forces to the southern border, including an initial wave of 1,600 soldiers and Marines in January, and the deployment of “a Stryker brigade combat team and a general support aviation battalion” in March. More than 2,000 reservists were already deployed at the border prior to President Trump’s return to office. Currently, much of the military activity consists of troops setting up fencing and razor wire, patrolling the border, and conducting surveillance to provide to Customs and Border Protection.
Melissa del Bosque, a co-founder of The Border Chronicle — a media outlet that provides on-the-ground reporting about border issues from communities in the borderlands — described what the military presence looks like on the ground.
“You see soldiers in full gear with rifles, military rifles,” del Bosque told Responsible Statecraft. “If you go to the Mexican side of the wall you’ll see murals and benches and people go running. Then on the U.S. side you see razor wire, military vehicles, soldiers.”
Transferring control of federal lands to the Department of Defense enables the administration to use the military for domestic law enforcement, an activity which would otherwise be unlawful under the Posse Comitatus Act, according to severallegal scholars who focus on national security. Servicemembers operating within the NMNDA will have enhanced authorities, including authorization to “temporarily detain trespassers on the NMNDA until an appropriate law enforcement entity can assume custody,” “conduct cursory searches of trespassers on the NMNDA to ensure the safety of U.S. service members and Department of Defense (DoD) property,” and “conduct crowd control measures as necessary to ensure the safety of U.S. service members and DoD property.”
Border communities and conservationists raise concerns
By designating wide stretches of land as National Defense Areas, the administration is avoiding environmental reviews and public comment periods which have stalled or partially blocked other
recent attempts by the military to acquire more land.
Southwest Conservation Advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), Laiken Jordahl explained the scope of the land in New Mexico that is now within the jurisdiction of the Army.
“This is an area the size of many national parks,” Jordahl told RS. “A lot of this land abuts wilderness study areas and even a national monument. Most of that land is productive desert ecosystem teeming with biodiversity.”
A
press release by the Sierra Club notes that the land transferred to the DoD includes parts of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, Coronado National Memorial, and Organ Pipe National Monument. The release argues that “militarizing America’s parks is not the answer to any problem; doing so only prevents families and communities from freely and safely accessing our public lands,” adding that “communities and ecosystems will suffer irreversible harm if our borderlands become battlefields as the administration attempts to advance a false narrative that militarizing our parks is somehow necessary for national security.”
Research by The Nature Conservancy
shows that all four states bordering Mexico are the four highest in species diversity, as well as some of the states with the most amount of species at risk of extinction. While the military presence at the border does not encompass all ecosystems in these states that are facing environmental risks, some of the areas within the United States where biodiversity is most at-risk can be found within the area of the Roosevelt Reservation.
Del Bosque worries that researchers will lose access to areas under the jurisdiction of the military.
“Biologists who have cameras down there, monitoring animals as they migrate, won’t be able to access those areas.” del Bosque told RS. “They’re going to be fenced off with ‘no trespassing’ signs, and if you're caught on that property, it’s a federal offense.”
Asked what access researchers, scientists, and conservationists will have to monitor the impact of military operations, an Army media relations officer told RS
via email that, “Access requests will be adjudicated on a case-by-case basis.” The officer added, “sensitive environmental resource locations will be identified as ‘restricted areas’ where military operations should be avoided if practicable, and the Army will provide training on sensitive environmental resources and restricted areas.”
A
statement from the Department of the Interior announcing the transfer of land to the DoD acknowledges, “these lands serve as habitat for 23 federally endangered species and are the home of cultural sites that range from small artifact scatters to large multi-room pueblos.” The statement goes on to say, “transfer of the management of this land to the Army will facilitate military engagement to prevent unauthorized human activity in ecologically sensitive areas along the southern border, which can be harmed by repeated foot traffic, unregulated vehicle use, and the creation of informal trails or camps.”
Jordahl argued that regular military activity in these areas poses a bigger environmental disruption.
“It’s doublespeak,” Jordahl said. “I spend a good amount of time out in a lot of these areas in New Mexico. They’re not high traffic areas, for one. And two, there’s no roads there. So, if they’re going to do increased patrols and increased militarization, we can only assume that’ll come with more structures, more vehicles, more roads, more lighting. Every aspect of the militarization has environmental impacts.”
Pictures from the DoD
highlighting operations at the southern border show troops walking along a grassy, mountainous area in San Diego and a Stryker combat vehicle driving along roadless terrain in New Mexico.
credit: US Army
Jordahl added that he’s seen ranchers and hunters in the region — communities he said typically support strict border enforcement — express concern that they could lose access to land they rely on for their livelihoods and subsistence.
“The border’s a real place,” Jordahl said. “It’s an actual, physical place that has real species, real communities, real people living in it. Nothing about what’s happening on the border reflects or includes that at all.”
The Army responded to several questions about potential environmental consequences and disruption to communities that rely on access to these lands. The same media relations officer said that the Army is coordinating with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
The Army will “execute a memorandum of understanding with BLM for the conduct of land management operations,” the Army spokesperson said. “The Army will also coordinate with BLM to obtain geospatial data identifying the locations of sensitive environmental resources within the NMNDA.” The spokesperson added, “the Army is establishing a memorandum of understanding with BLM to enable BLM to continue to manage existing outgrants for third-party uses within the NMNDA, including existing agreements with ranchers and other public land users.”
The Trump administration has indicated that the Army’s jurisdiction over the National Defense Areas will last for three years at least.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to more accurately reflect the contents of the Sierra Club press release.
keep readingShow less
Top photo credit: (official trailer for Warfare/A24)
'Warfare': Rare Iraq film that doesn't preach but packs truth
Unlike Alex Garland’s Civil War, his Warfare, co-directed with war vet Ray Mendoza, is not just another attempt at a realistic portrayal of war, in all its blood and gore. Warfare, based on a true story, is really a parable about the overweening ambition and crushing failure of empire, a microcosm of America’s disastrous adventure in Iraq.
A Navy Seal mission reconnoiters a neighborhood in Ramadi. “I like this house,” says the team commander, reflecting the overconfidence of the empire at its unipolar moment. But it soon becomes clear that the mission has underestimated the enemy, that the whole neighborhood has, in fact, been tracking the Seals’ movements. Surprised and scared, the mission requests to be extricated. But extrication becomes a bloody, hellish experience despite the Seals’ technological edge in weapons, IT, and logistics, and it barely succeeds.
For most of the film, the resistance is visible only through the Seal sniper’s lens, but as they emerge from all the neighboring houses after the invaders have been driven out, these faceless folks convey a simple but clear message: Leave, you’re not wanted here. What is notable is how that message is delivered. There is no moralizing or pained explorations of conscience by the combatants. The message is deftly smuggled into a simple story of a platoon that is inserted into an alien environment, entrapped, extricated, and forced into ignominious retreat.
The only film I can compare with a similar indirect, non-didactic approach in delivering an anti-war message—and reaping the rewards in the box office, to boot—was Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, which was also about a mission gone badly awry during the U.S. intervention in Somalia in the early 1990s. Not surprisingly, there’s already a debate about which is the better film.
The larger picture framing Warfare was President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 to take out Saddam Hussein and remake Iraqi society into an American-style liberal democracy with a neoliberal economy. Although initially welcomed by some sectors, almost all of Iraqi society had turned against the United States by 2007. But the social arrangements in place during Saddam’s rule also crumbled, turning the battle into a four-cornered pitched battle between the United States, Sunnis, Shiites, and the Kurds. The levels of violence against U.S. troops reached unprecedented levels, with only the so-called Green Zone in Baghdad under secure U.S. control.
Top U.S. officials, both military and civilian, recommended disengagement from Iraq. A strategy called “the Surge,” was adopted under Gen. David Petraeus, the key elements of which were temporarily raising the number of U.S. troops, shifting the focus from military tactics to political efforts to reconcile warring Iraqi groups, and setting a firm date for withdrawal. This was meant to buy something like the “peace with honor” the United States negotiated with North Vietnam that went into effect in 1973 to allow an “honorable” withdrawal of American forces. By December 2011, most U.S. troops had left Iraq, forced out by the realities of resistance that are sketched in microcosm in Warfare, having accomplished nothing but to leave a society in ruins, hundreds of thousands dead, and a government solidly aligned with U.S. adversary Iran.
There have been a number of films about the Iraq War, the most notable of which were Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker and Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper. Both are gripping stories, and both do a good job depicting the stresses veterans face in adjusting back to civilian life. But both largely evade the bigger picture, meaning what the Americans were doing in Iraq in the first place. (Moreover, Eastwood’s reputation as a director was nearly ruined by that scene that most remember from American Sniper: Brad Cooper manipulating the hand of the doll that Eastwood inexplicably substituted for a real baby.)
As for films about the war in Afghanistan, America’s longest war, there are hardly any worth watching, except perhaps documentaries like HBO’s Escape from Kabul and BBC’s Leaving Afghanistan.
It is perhaps coincidental that Warfare was released in April 2025, 50 years after the devastating defeat of the United States in Vietnam, symbolized by the frantic clawing by U.S. collaborators onto a helicopter on the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Looking back, the debacle in Vietnam was the decisive defeat of American arms from which the United States never really recovered. The empire did seem to have a second wind with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, respectively, but that illusion was shattered by the panicked withdrawal from Kabul in 2021, which was visually almost a replay of the retreat from Saigon decades earlier.
The disastrous adventures in Vietnam and the Middle East have been instrumental in creating a significant isolationist sector in the so-called MAGA movement that Donald Trump appealed to successfully in his three quests for the presidency. Despite his aggressive rhetoric and his penchant for trade war, Trump is gun-shy, knowing that nothing could better undermine his presidency than his unleashing the dogs of war. Still, given the well-known short memory of the American public, it is by no means certain that the era of Western imperial interventionism is over. Let’s hope that Warfare will contribute to underlining the foolishness and recklessness of the bipartisan elite that has dominated U.S. foreign policy over the last eight decades.
Top photo credit: Washington, DC, May 24, 2024: A visitor reads the names of the fallen soldiers at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at the National Mall ahead of Memorial Day. (A_Kiphayet/Shutterstock)
This Memorial Day comes a month after the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon, which was largely used to recall the collapse of the entire American project in Vietnam. In short, the failure of the war is now viewed as both a rebuke of the American Exceptionalism myth and the rigid Cold War mentality that had Washington in a vice grip for much of the 20th Century.
“The leaders who mismanaged this debacle were never held accountable and remained leading players in the establishment for the rest of their lives,” noted author and professor Stephen Walt in a RS symposium on the war. “The country learned little from this bitter experience, and repeated these same errors in Iraq, Afghanistan, and several other places.”
Today, after 20 years of those post-9/11 wars, the American people — including many of the veterans who fought there — have seemingly got the message. In poll after poll, they reject the use of force as the first tool in the toolbox. They eschew the idea of prospective war with Iran, and China over Taiwan.
But do our leaders “get it”?
Donald Trump swept into office in 2016 on the idea that he would end “endless” conflict and shared the national disdain for being lied to in order to invade Iraq, and for spreading American troops too thin to fight Washington’s wars of choice overseas. Now in his second term he has made similar exhortations — recently he rebuked the “neocons” who “spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul, Baghdad, and so many other cities” in his recent Middle East trip.
His Vice President JD Vance is a veteran who has admonished the interventionist impulses of the past. Delivering the commencement speech to U.S Naval Academy class of 2025 on Friday, he said his boss wants only to send men and women into conflict with clear goals rather than “undefined missions” and “open-ended conflicts” of the past.
The new administration incorporates other veterans, however, like his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is still giving off mixed signals when it comes to the use of force purely in the national security interest (see his threats against Iran, his responses in the Yemen airstrike Signalgate chats).
So if Memorial Day is for remembering, what do we want the Trump administration to “remember” about our past wars and the policies that led to them. How do we want Trump and his top people in the Pentagon, the National Security Council and State Department — three institutions that play a critical role in our foreign policy, to remember?
RS asked a number of recent veterans — including those who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan – what they would say to Trump, today, about the importance of Memorial Day.
“My one wish for this administration is that they understand veterans and the sacrifice of the military, and the cost of war. Not just focus on the so-called ‘wins’ he wants to honor,” said James R. Webb, who served in Iraq as a Marine Corps rifleman, referring to Trump’s desire to designate victory days for the two world wars.
“In short, the cost of war is high, and although there are times when it must be paid, we should never be eager to settle up that account,” said Robert Givens, a retired Air Force officer who served in both Persian Gulf I and II wars.
“I would hope this administration avoids the mistakes of its predecessors, including the first Trump administration, which for decades have unhesitatingly sent Americans to die in overseas conflicts that did not make us safer or more prosperous,” said Harrison Mann, a former U.S. Army major who resigned a post at the Defense Intelligence Agency last year in protest of his office’s support for Israel's war in Gaza.
“The President should honor our war dead by learning from (past) mistakes and resisting appeals to send more Americans to die for nothing in Iran, Mexico, and elsewhere.”
Others want Trump to take his pledge to “America First” seriously in that he realign military policy toward defending the country and away from using (and abusing) the Armed Forces to pursue political goals, nation building, democracy promotion or fight on behalf of partners or even allies when the mission or risk is not clearly defined.
Dan Davis, who served in the first Persian Gulf War as well as Afghanistan, said he would like the President to “remember that we all signed up to defend our country. We did not sign up to guard Syrian oil. We did not sign up to ‘put pressure’ on Russia in Eastern Europe. We did not sign up to take out violent actors who threaten African regimes. We did not sign up to die on the Taiwanese islands or shores.”
None of that, he said “used to be controversial. Today my views are considered heresy, by some,” he added. “How dare I suggest that I or my sons wouldn't volunteer to fight and die for some other country and their interests, even when our security is not materially threatened.”
John Byrnes, who served in the Army in Iraq shortly after the invasion in 2003, had a similar message.
“To President Trump and his national security team: Please continue with a national security strategy focused on keeping America safe without unnecessarily risking our troops. To the civilian and military leadership at the Department of Defense, please honor the White House's public commitments to avoiding and ending unnecessary wars — you above all others know the value of the young lives you lead.”
“And to the troops: Thank you for stepping up and into the shoes of the men and women we honor this Memorial Day.”
For the last several years, the U.S. military has been dealing with a recruiting problem of which there is not one single cause. Even this issue has been politicized, but the bottom line is, despite the Hegseth DoD heralding a boom in new recruitment, the forces have scaled back their recruitment targets and the fundamental issues remain. Costly interventions overseas — which continue today in Syria and Iraq and the proxy war in Ukraine — unresolved problems affecting health and well being of soldiers and their families on military bases here in the U.S., and the specter of war, do not help.
Adam Weinstein, who served in Afghanistan with the Marines and is now a Quincy Institute fellow, said “military leaders often remind us that Memorial Day is about more than barbecues and long weekends and they’re right to do so. But the weight of our collective loss must not only be honored in remembrance; it should shape our choices.”
For sure, the parades and wreath laying ceremonies at military cemeteries are one way to remember, symbolizing both national regard and grief for those who had been lost. Too often, however, there is a disconnect between the official rituals, somber but devoid of true reflection, and what Americans believe to be the core lessons learned. The end result is, well, nothing durable in the way of shifting behavior or policy in any meaningful way.
“The memory of the fallen should not be tucked away, brought out only once a year,” Weinstein added. “It must remain present, especially when the call to war returns. Memorial Day should be a solemn warning as much as a tribute — a reminder that war is not abstract, and its cost is paid in lives.”
Seth Harp, a U.S. Army veteran who served a tour in Iraq, wants the administration to recall the existential impact of our interventions on the rest of the world.
“I would like the Trump administration to remember not just the soldiers who died, but also the millions of innocents who were killed, the trillions of dollars squandered, and the cataclysmic decline of America's standing in the world as a result of the last quarter century of endless wars.”
As Vietnam Veteran and Quincy Institute co-founder Andy Bacevich said in that aforementioned Vietnam War symposium, “American foreign policy elites have spent the last 50 years engaged in a concerted effort to evade their responsibility for that disaster…Yesterday's mistakes become the basis for tomorrow's actions.” Breaking the cycle might be the best thing Trump can do for our veterans, for all of America, today.
Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.