dinsdag 20 januari 2026

In Iran, the US-Israeli addiction to hybrid warfare is on full display

 



OPINION,
Opinion|Conflict

In Iran, the US-Israeli addiction to hybrid warfare is on full display

Hybrid war tactics help explain why Trump’s strategy oscillates between threats of war and false offers of peace.

ByJeffrey SachsandSybil Fares

Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. Advisor on the Middle East and Africa for UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

Published On 19 Jan 2026

Damage caused by an Israeli strike on a building in Tehran is seen on June 26, 2025 [Majid Asgaripour/WANA via Reuters]

In the nuclear age, the United States has to refrain from all-out war since it can easily lead to nuclear escalation. Instead, it wages hybrid wars.

In recent weeks, we have witnessed two such conflicts: in Venezuela and Iran. Both have been waged through a combination of crushing economic sanctions, targeted military strikes, cyberwarfare, stoking unrest and unrelenting misinformation campaigns. Both are long-term CIA projects that have recently escalated. Both will lead to further chaos.end of list

The US has long had two goals vis-a-vis Venezuela: to gain control over its vast oil reserves in the Orinoco Belt and to overthrow its leftist government, which has been in power since 1999. America’s hybrid war against Venezuela dates to 2002 when the CIA helped to support a coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez. When that failed, the US ramped up other hybrid measures, including economic sanctions, the confiscation of Venezuela’s dollar reserves and measures to cripple Venezuela’s oil production, which eventually collapsed. Despite the chaos sown by the US, the hybrid war did not bring down the government.

US President Donald Trump has now escalated to bombing Caracas, kidnapping President Nicolas Maduro, stealing Venezuelan oil shipments and imposing a naval blockade, which, of course, is an act of war. It also seems likely that Trump is thereby enriching powerful pro-Zionist campaign funders who have their eyes on seizing Venezuelan oil assets.

Zionist interests also have their eye on toppling the Venezuelan government since it has long supported the Palestinian cause and maintained close relations with Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cheered on the US attack on Venezuela, calling it the “perfect operation”.

The United States along with Israel is also simultaneously escalating its ongoing hybrid war against Iran. We can expect US and Israeli subversion, air strikes and targeted assassinations. The difference with Venezuela is that the hybrid war on Iran can easily escalate into a devastating regional war, even a global one. US allies in the region, especially the Gulf countries, have been engaged in intensive diplomatic efforts to persuade Trump to back down and avoid military action.

The war on Iran has a history even longer than the war on Venezuela. The first US intervention in the country dates back to 1953 when democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalised Iran’s oil in defiance of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (today’s BP).

The CIA and MI6 orchestrated Operation Ajax to depose Mossadegh through a mix of propaganda, street violence and political interference. They reinstated Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, who had fled the country, fearing Mossadegh, and helped the shah solidify his grip on power. The CIA also supported the shah by helping create his notorious secret police, SAVAK, which crushed dissent through surveillance, censorship, imprisonment and torture.

Eventually this repression led to a revolution that swept Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to power in 1979. During the revolution, students seized US hostages in Tehran after the US admitted the shah for medical treatment, leading to fear that the US would try to reinstall him in power. The hostage crisis further poisoned the relations between Iran and the US.

From then onwards, the US has plotted to torment Iran and overthrow its government. Among the countless hybrid actions the US has undertaken was funding Iraq in the 1980s to wage war on Iran, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths but failing to topple the government.

The US-Israeli objective vis-a-vis Iran is the opposite of a negotiated settlement that would normalise its position in the international system while constraining its nuclear programme. The real objective is to keep Iran economically broken, diplomatically cornered and internally pressured. Trump has repeatedly undercut negotiations that could have led to peace, starting with his withdrawal from the 2016 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement that had seen Iran’s nuclear energy activities monitored and economic sanctions removed.

Understanding the hybrid war tactics helps to explain why Trump’s rhetoric oscillates so abruptly between threats of war and false offers of peace. Hybrid warfare thrives on contradictions, ambiguities and outright deceit.

Last summer, the US was supposed to have negotiations with Iran on June 15 but supported Israel’s bombing of the country two days earlier. For this reason, signs of de-escalation in recent days should not be taken at face value. They can all too readily be followed by a direct military attack.

The examples of Venezuela and Iran demonstrate just how addicted the US and Israel are to hybrid warfare. Acting together, the CIA, Mossad, allied military contractors and security agencies have fomented turmoil across Latin America and the Middle East for decades.

They have upended the lives of hundreds of millions of people, blocked economic development, created terror and generated mass refugee waves. They have nothing to show for spending billions on covert and overt operations beyond the chaos itself.

There is no security, no peace, no stable pro-US or pro-Israel alliance, only suffering. In the process, the US is also going out of its way to undermine the United Nations Charter, which it brought to life in the aftermath of World War II. The UN Charter makes clear that hybrid warfare violates the very basis of international law, which calls on countries to refrain from the use of force against other countries.

There is one beneficiary of hybrid war, and that is the military-tech industrial complex in the US and Israel. US President Dwight Eisenhower warned us in his 1961 farewell address of the profound danger of the military-industrial complex to society. His warning has come to pass even more than he imagined as it is now powered by artificial intelligence, mass propaganda and a reckless US foreign policy.

The world’s best hope is that the other 191 countries of the UN besides the US and Israel finally say no to their addiction to hybrid war: no to regime-change operations, no to unilateral sanctions, no to the weaponisation of the dollar and no to the repudiation of the UN Charter.

The American people do not support the lawlessness of their own government, but they have a very hard time making their opposition heard. They and almost all the rest of the world want the US deep state brutality to end before it’s too late.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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Rightwing influencer with White House ties turns focus to Minnesota

 



Rightwing influencer with White House ties turns focus to Minnesota

Critics draw ‘direct line’ between content by Nick Sortor and similar figures and violent actions of federal agents
A rightwing influencer, who appeared to admit that he recently drove his truck at protesters in Minneapolis, has for years cooperated with the Trump administration even while he has been repeatedly accused of escalating conflict for video content he pumps out to 1.2 million followers on X.
Nick Sortor has received full-throated support of the Trump administration after an October arrest in Portland, and attended an October 2025 White House influencer roundtable on “antifa”.
Sortor’s close relationship with the administration exists despite his previous DUIs and a misdemeanor conviction for criminal mischief and his having absconded from probation in his native Kentucky, where he was reportedly subject to arrest as of last November.
Sortor, 27 of Washington DC, is just one of a new crop of Maga influencers who monetize red meat content for audiences on X and other platforms, and whose depictions of protesters and immigrants as violent criminals appears to be feeding directly into the forceful escalation of Trump administration enforcement actions in Minnesota and around the country.
The Guardian twice emailed a detailed request for comment on this reporting to Nick Sortor on the address listed on his X account as his primary contact point. He did not respond by deadline.
Critics have drawn a “direct line” between the content produced by the likes of Sortor and other video influencers like Nick Shirley and the violent, and occasionally lethal actions of federal immigration agents in Minnesota and beyond.
Jeff Tischauser, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said that for content creators like Sortor, “It doesn’t matter what your political affiliation is. If they deem you to be un-American or insufficiently loyal to their goals they will drag your name, they will call you domestic terrorists, they’ll call you a criminal, they’ll call you a violent thug.”
He said the goal of such content creators was to engender “loyalty to Trump administration’s goals above all else. The script is to go out and create content that will falsely label their perceived enemies as domestic terrorists so that they can drum up support within Trump’s base”

A violent incident

Sortor recently posted a video on X which he claimed showed “anti-ICE rioters SURROUNDING my vehicle, smashing my windows, and attempting to kiII” him and fellow rightwing influencer Cam Higby.
He also added an apparent admission that he had driven at the protesters: “I was forced to drive away to save our lives, repeatedly warning those standing in front to GET OUT OF THE WAY. They didn’t listen, so I had no choice but to go anyway.”
Sortor’s version of events was amplified by fellow rightwingers on X, YouTube, and other social media sites. It was also uncritically echoed in many local news reports, and on Fox News.
Mercado Media founder Andrew Mercado offered a different perspective on the exchange of blows between the pair ahead of Sortor’s post.
In successive posts with videos embedded, Mercado first claimed that “NICK SORTOR HITS A FEMALE – she was seen blocking him from filming her friend with a plastic shield, Sortor then knocks it to the ground, blocks her from retrieving it and things escalate and flashbangs, pepper balls are deployed”, adding: “[Sortor] and Higby] have escalated every situation they have entered into. Whether it be Portland, Chicago, D.C. and now Minneapolis.”
Mercado then posted a different view of Sortor’s escape from protesters, writing: “Protesters called police after Sortor hit a female protester. They tried to block him from leaving until police arrived, but Sortor drove through them.” In Mercado’s footage, there are no protesters behind Sortor’s car, and Sortor is seen accelerating rapidly towards protesters in front of the car.
The Guardian emailed Mercado to clarify his understanding of events.

Sortor in Minneapolis

Nick Sortor’s social media feeds indicate he traveled to Minneapolis from Washington DC between 24 December, when he last posted a watermarked video in DC and 29 December, when he posted videos in which he followed DHS officers on door to door visits of “potential fraud sites”.
His visit came in the wake of fellow influencer Nick Shirley’s claimed exposes of day care center fraud by Somali immigrants, which saw influencers flock to the city along with more border agents.
Once there Sortor stood outside Tim Walz’s house with a plush pickle, published video of a Minnesota Hilton hotel that was refusing to book DHS agents, leading Hilton to withdraw the hotel’s franchise. He appeared on Laura Ingraham’s show.
He was also in the city when Renee Good was shot dead by ICE officer Jonathan Ross. In one of many posts responding to the situation, he wrote: “Liberal white women have been radicalized to TERRORIZE ICE.” In the wake of the shooting, Fox News treated Sortor in multiple broadcasts as an authoritative on the ground reporter.
He also had a post on the shooting, which blamed Walz, boosted by Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff who is widely seen as a crucial architect of the deportation crackdown.

‘Keep pushing, ICE! Patriots have your backs’

Sortor bills himself as a fearless journalist. His X bio styles him as “On-scene covering stories MSM won’t”; on Linktree he is “An independent journalist taking deep dives into stories via on-scene reporting”; on TikTok he is simply a “journo”.
In Minneapolis, however, as in his previous excursions to Portland and Chicago, Sortor’s output has comprised little more than partisan cheerleading and celebrations of violence.
In recent days, Sortor has cheered on ICE brutality against protesters in a series of posts on X and Telegram, often reposting videos from a broader network of rightwing influencers, or from independent journalists who monitor protests.
In a Monday post, Sortor wrote in a post to Telegram and X: “LMAO! More and more leftists are getting SPRAYED in the face for harassing ICE agents in Minneapolis.” He added: “ICE agents have HAD ENOUGH, and they’re getting NO HELP from local police” and: “KEEP PUSHING, ICE! PATRIOTS HAVE YOUR BACKS.”
The video shows a plain clothes ICE officer pepper-spraying two people through the open window of his car. In the footage, the officer says “Get back” before spraying and “Get the fuck back, bitch!” after first spraying the people. This is followed by close-up footage of an elderly woman in visible distress.
His X post references a video posted two minutes earlier by fellow rightwing news influencer Eric Daugherty, who writes for pro-Trump website Florida Voice News and spinoff site Rightline News.
The same day, in another Telegram post, Sortor wrote: “ LMAO! A leftist agitator is in TEARS after being sprayed in the FACE by a DHS agent in Minneapolis”. He added: “I could watch this on loop. STOP IMPEDING, and you won’t get sprayed! It’s really pretty simple.”
In the video, an ICE officer pepper sprays a man at close range, incapacitating him.
His video references the original video posted by independent journalist Amanda Moore, who is well known for in-person coverage of protests and other events.
In another post, Sortor reposted a video from Fox News reporter Matt Finn adding: “BREAKING – FAFO IN MINNEAPOLIS: A woman HIT a Border Patrol vehicle with agents inside, while another spit on it, and BOTH of them felt the wrath of Border Patrol’s Tactical Unit”
The video only showed the violent apprehension of the protester, not the incident he claimed had caused it. Nevertheless he added: “This is SO satisfying to watch. NO MERCY!”
Apart from celebrating DHS’s use of force, Sortor has called relentlessly over the last year for Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would permit the deployment of the US military to American cities.
On 12 December, he posted: “DHS agents are being forced to throw TEARGAS into INTERSECTIONS in Minneapolis to stop vioIent leftists from blocking them with their cars
He added: “This situation is CONTINUING to devolve. Agents are sitting ducks right now. We need TROOPS here!”
Arne Holverscheid, a PhD candidate in Political Science at Northwestern University, who has published research on the relationship between fringe political actors and mainstream politicians in the US, said that the relationship between rightwing “citizen journalists” and the Trump administration was “symbiotic”.
“There’s a symbiotic relationship between much more extreme figures who exist primarily online and more established figures who are elected from the Republican party.
He added, “It’s mutually beneficial in that the fringe are not directly affiliated so there’s a plausible deniability for the politicians, but it does help them to sort of move the Overton window”

‘Thank you for being a social media warrior’

Sortor’s rise from obscurity in Kentucky to the upper echelon of pro-Trump influencers coincides with Elon Musk’s ownership of X, which critics say tilted the algorithm in favor of rightwing accounts, and incentivized the production of low quality material.
Tischauser, the SPLC researcher, said: “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Sortor becomes popular or decides to take this route in 2023 after musk purchases X and monetizes X and shifts the algorithm to favor voices like Sortor”.
His earliest successes in attracting widespread attention on X included his coverage of the East Palestine train derailment in February 2023, and traveling to Hawaii in August 2023 to report on the Maui wildfires, both of which he portrayed as a failure of the Biden administration. During his visit, during a live cross for Steve Bannon’s War Room, Sortor was confronted by residents over his coverage of the tragedy.
But his partisan coverage was appreciated by candidate Trump, and eventually by his new administration.
Just a month before the 2024 election, Sortor posted a picture of a personally addressed letter from Trump which began “Thank you for being a social media warrior in the fight to save our country from the Radical Left!” and added: “Comrade Kamala has the Fake News, Big Tech, the Deep State swamp creatures, but I have YOU!”
Since Trump was re-elected, Sortor has traveled to flashpoints elevated by rightwing discourse and administration policy, often appearing to escalate tensions on the scene.
This travel has included cities singled out by the Trump administration for increased immigration enforcement and National Guard occupation.
Last October, he spent several days in the Portland, Oregon, during which time, as The Guardian reported, he had “been involved in multiple physical altercations with protesters in Portland this month, some of which he clearly initiated”.
On 3 October, Sortor was briefly arrested on suspicion of disorderly conduct on an evening in which he grabbed a burning American flag from an elderly protester he described as an “Antifa thug”, and later exchanged blows with other protesters.
Multnomah County prosecutors declined to press charges.
In the hours following his release on 3 October, Sortor reportedly received a message from Trump via a White House aide: “Great job. We’re behind you 100%. Let us know if there’s anything we can do. … President DJT.”
The same day, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, defended him from her podium, and criticized Portland police bureau, claiming: “Instead of arresting these violent mob members night after night … the police arrested a journalist who was there trying to document the chaos.”
Then, Trump’s Department of Justice issued threats to city authorities in support of Sortor.
Sortor posted on 3 December: “Attorney General Pam Bondi has ORDERED a full investigation, led by Asst. AG Harmeet Dhillon, of the Portland Police Bureau, following my wrongful arrest last night, Bondi confirmed to me.”
Harmeet Dhillon immediately confirmed this in a repost, writing: “Portland: it’s FO time. Buckle up.” The next day, Dhillon posted: “Portland police arresting journalists such Nick Sortor while giving Antifa goons a free pass is unjust, and will NOT stand in this @TheJusticeDept”.
Before her appointment to the Trump administration, Dhillon previously represented rightwing social media personality Andy Ngo in a largely unsuccessful lawsuit against people who were alleged to have been involved in various alleged attacks on Ngo.
Sortor subsequently filed a tort claim against the city of Portland in December, saying that he planned to sue the city for $10m.
Days after his arrest, Sortor flourished the flag he had obtained in Portland at a Trump-convened roundtable on Antifa at the White House.

Sortor’s Kentucky roots

Apparently the administration is unaware of, or unfazed by Sortor’s own criminal history.
According to November reporting in the Lexington News Observer, Sortor “has been charged twice and convicted once for driving under the influence in Kentucky, was arrested for menacing a police officer in downtown Lexington and was put on probation after pleading guilty to criminal mischief for an incident with a woman who accused him of being violent”.
Journalist Jacqueline Sweet reported on the details of the arrest and court records covering the 2020 incident that led to Sortor’s conviction and probation.
Sortor was charged with 2nd degree burglary, per Sweet, which was reduced to criminal mischief on a plea deal. He was sentenced to two years probation in January 2022, and by June 2023 he had absconded. On 23 June 2023, a judge issued a warrant for his arrest.
Kentucky’s state department of corrections still lists Sortor as an absconded offender online. The Guardian contacted the department of corrections to confirm that the online notice was still current and did not get a response.

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