Press Freedom US-Israeli Partnership Threatens US Press Freedom

[00:00:00]Welcome back. Max Blumenthal joins us today, the editor in chief at The Grayzone to discuss a recent trip of his to Iran. So, thank you for coming back on. We Yeah, I see that coming home from this trip to Iran to report on the funeral of Ayatollah Khamenei.

[00:00:20]Um I Well, initially I want to ask you about some of your takeaways, which I will, but first I thought it was interesting that the US government seized your electronic devices upon returning, which is a important issue in terms of press freedom.

[00:00:36]I was wondering what exactly happened here?

[00:00:41]>> Well, it it relates to the whole story. I mean, I'm being We're We're facing a new, more intense framework of repression in the United States, which is being administered by a kind of class of white-collar criminals who are under the influence of Zionism and the state of Israel. And so, in some ways it wasn't entirely shocking, but it is completely illegal what they did to me.

[00:01:11]I went on this It should be under the Constitution. I went on this reporting trip on July 4th, reported from the largest gathering in human history.

[00:01:22]Um gotten insights I would have never gained from the ground there.

[00:01:26]Interviewed officials, academics, uh influential people, including negotiators, participated in a public press event.

[00:01:36]All I did there was reporting, and no one denies that I'm a journalist. I mean, I've been doing journalism for 25 years. I am not I I don't pretend to be impartial.

[00:01:46]I'm not objective. Objectivity is a fake concept, uh which is defined according to the parameters of the militant Zionist ruling elite that control the corporate media that upholds the mantle of objectivity.

[00:02:02]And regardless, I am entitled to certain constitutional protections under the First Amendment, which protects the freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and the Fourth Amendment, which forbids illegal search and seizure.

[00:02:14]Uh the United States government is increasingly using border the border and airports as a kind of uh zone of exception where the Constitution does not apply. And the Department of Homeland Security has declared they do not need even suspicion of criminal activity to seize your phone.

[00:02:35]And this needs to be challenged at the highest level.

[00:02:38]But when I returned, as you said, my phones were seized on that basis after I refused to open them.

[00:02:46]And there was never any basis to suspect criminal activity on my part. However, if there had been a basis for that, the government could have gone before a judge and gotten a warrant. But this was a warrantless seizure. It's something they would not have been able to validate in any other space outside of that secondary screening area in the airport, which is why they're using it so promiscuously. Now, what triggered that?

[00:03:12]I'd been to Iran. We were there together on the So at the So International Media Festival. It was a public festival. I did reporting from there. I produced a documentary on uh Jewish Iranians and their community.

[00:03:26]I you know, interviewed negotiators back then in May 2025.

[00:03:31]Went around the country freely. Uh it was, you know, not as insecure of a situation as it it is today. And when I returned, I was not subjected to any harassment. Uh so what what what what changed? What was different? First, obviously, there's a US-Israeli war imposed on Iran.

[00:03:49]But also, Israeli interests put me in the crosshairs this time.

[00:03:54]Uh Laura Loomer who is the creation of Zionist billionaires in many ways and is probably the client of them if not the Israeli government through its various influencer channels uh declared that I should be um arrested, hauled off the flight by US Marshals when I return.

[00:04:14]Then I'm the leading voice of communism in the United States, which would come as a surprise to uh many of the um leaders of the tiny communist organizations that still exist in the US and that I'm an Islamist and basically I'm a terrorist and I every other ist she could think of in order to trigger some kind of harassment. She dared Mark Wayne Mullen, the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, to have me arrested. Uh she called for my house to be raided at 5:00 a.m. She called for Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, to withdraw my passport. She was uh declaring that Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, should investigate my finances.

[00:04:58]And it was clear that, you know, some interests had put her up to this. Not that she doesn't believe in what she's saying, but you know, there was a script and the script was echoed by Canary Mission, which is an organization founded in 2015 to destroy the lives of college students who participate in Palestine solidarity activity.

[00:05:18]As like what an anonymous organization, it's based out of Jerusalem. It's an Israeli intelligence cutout.

[00:05:26]And they, you know, put crosshairs on me declaring that I'm like an extremist who's there to honor Khamenei and not do journalism.

[00:05:34]And uh it everything flowed from there.

[00:05:40]It became very clear who wanted me to face harassment and repression when I came home.

[00:05:46]And it looks to me like I was targeted because of my viewpoint, because of my journalism, and because these um elements which effectively control the Trump administration and its policy towards Iran, which emanate from Israel, uh needed to be satisfied that I was subjected to questioning which kind of tracked with a lot of the attacks on me, as well as the seizure of my devices.

[00:06:15]Uh two other points I want I I just wanted to make up front. One, they didn't seize all my devices.

[00:06:22]So, if they were if you're really looking for criminal activity, why wouldn't you take my laptop?

[00:06:27]Uh I also had a digital camera. They just weren't interested in it at all.

[00:06:32]And two, no other journalist I was in Iran on a press visa. I was like around all these other journalists.

[00:06:41]Um none of them were subjected to this level of harassment. And they were in many of the same places as I was.

[00:06:49]So, what explains that disparity in treatment? Again, it's viewpoint discrimination.

[00:06:56]And so, that is the basis of the lawsuit filed by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee on my behalf, uh led by its president, Janine Younis, who is just doing an incredible job rep- representing so many uh targets of the Israel lobby and its uh censorship frenzy.

[00:07:20]And soon after that lawsuit was filed, the Customs and Border Patrol called me up and said, "We have your phones. Come get them."

[00:07:29]They didn't seem In my opinion, they didn't want this to go before a judge.

[00:07:34]Uh and the media pressure was beginning to get to them.

[00:07:39]>> Well, in Europe as well, if they want to crack down a bit on press freedom, freedom of speech, they usually use that magical word propaganda. Uh yeah, once someone throws this out, they don't have to define what it means. It's well, opposing the government narratives. They can throw out the word propaganda and suddenly all of those freedoms which one thought was you know, carved into stone, suddenly means nothing it seems. Um >> Exactly. I mean, it's all buzzwords.

[00:08:10]That's why the word communism was used because the Trump administration really under the influence of Marco Rubio who's the king of the gusano industrial complex of South Florida has launched this new initiative against communism. They're relates to Cuba.

[00:08:27]They're now targeting American left-wing activists. It's a way they're going to try to neutralize and criminalize the left.

[00:08:34]Um and so the word communism was used on me to try to paint me as some kind of threat who needed to be investigated without a warrant in an extrajudicial unconstitutional and fundamentally illegal fashion and I'm not you know, knocking communists or you know, I'm not making I'm not issuing a critique of communism but I've just never represented myself uh as a communist or participated in organizing along those lines. So it really just shows how desperate they are.

[00:09:15]>> Well, what was it about your reporting possibly though? Or it could have been Again, this is just just personal attacks against you but what is it that you uncovered or reported on from Iran cuz I've seen some um well, you were there at the funeral.

[00:09:33]Uh I've seen um Yeah, I saw you have discussion with the uh the creator of this uh the LEGO movies, which are excellent, by the way.

[00:09:44]But uh what what what what what what is it that you discovered from from your trip in Iran? What was the mood among the people? Cuz uh the the assumption in the media when the bombing began appeared to have been well, a consensus that the people would uh you know, topple the government or sorry, topple the regime as a uh and the citizens would welcome a little bit like a the the argument with Iraq would welcome the US and Israel as liberators.

[00:10:13]>> Yeah, uh >> [sighs] >> it's it's funny. I was just on Piers Morgan, and he was asking me like, "Why didn't you investigate all the thousands of people who are slaughtered in the riots?" And you know, I I I did.

[00:10:27]>> [laughter] >> They just didn't like the way that I investigated that because you know, I I went and looked for um police officers to talk to about having their police stations surrounded by MEK members with automatic weapons and shotguns who were attempting to kill them, burn them, and behead them.

[00:10:46]Uh it was it all started with police stations being attacked because it was a regime change attempt, which was being instrumentalized by foreign intelligence from Israel and the West.

[00:10:57]Um so, you know, I'm doing the kind of critical reporting that exposes the criminal machinations of Western countries that have wanted regime change in Iran, and I'm showing a different side of Iranian culture. For example, talking to women who are supporters of the Islamic Republic, who are out there participating in these kind of patriotic rallies, and asking them like, "Do you need to be liberated?" And having them tell me, "I'm a university professor, and it was our leader, Ali Khamenei, who, you know, gave me the space to be able to move to that place of leadership in our society that there are more women in universities than there are men now in Iran that we you know, and and we don't want to be commodified and have our bodies objectified like women in the West are.

[00:11:45]So, you know, you're not supposed to show that. I'm not so I went to the scene of US war crimes. I think I was the first American reporter to report on uh an entire eastern Tehran neighborhood just being bombarded with eight missiles. 40 at least 40 people were killed. You know, an entire family was killed in one strike except for two members who were out of town.

[00:12:10]I went to some other sites that others had previously visited and like my colleague Wyatt Reed, um but also just to highlight the criminality of the bombing of the Gandhi Hospital which happened to be next door to the IRIB media complex which was the target.

[00:12:24]Like 500 staff of the hospital are out of work. The IVF clinic was destroyed.

[00:12:29]The ICU clinic was destroyed.

[00:12:32]Uh it was pretty upsetting uh to see that.

[00:12:35]The I went to the Raffi Nia Synagogue which was totally destroyed in an Israeli strike. You would think this would be a huge story in US media. If Iran had firebombed a synagogue in London, it would be front page. But Israel bombed a 50-year-old congregation in Tehran and it was it barely registered.

[00:12:53]So, you know, I went I went to expose that, the bombing of the Azadi's uh stadiums volleyball and wrestling complex where international competitions were held.

[00:13:08]Uh I think I was one of the first reporters to visit that.

[00:13:11]And that's just a really titanic crime considering how important wrestling is to Iran's uh athletic infrastructure.

[00:13:21]And I guess you could even say it's soft power uh because they win so many competitions on the world stage.

[00:13:27]And it was of a part with the attack by, you know, FIFA and the US government on Iran's World Cup soccer team, which they sought to [ __ ] and was, you know, strip visas from their training staff, prevent them from crossing in and and from from staying in the United States.

[00:13:44]Uh it was pure oppression and I would say rigging.

[00:13:47]So, being able to do that before a very large audience, we have a big platform at The Gray Zone.

[00:13:54]Uh we're consistently one of the top 20 Substack sites in world politics. I think was a threat, but it's also the a you know, my entire uh my entire portfolio of reporting that I've been doing since 2009 when I started focusing on the region uh has put me in their crosshairs and they're looking for an opportunity to harass me and get me persecuted by the government and to them this is the perfect opportunity, as well as to cast a pall of suspicion over me like I'm some sort of Iranian agent who's, you know, collecting some paycheck to be there. And you know, when I came back Customs and Border Patrol asked me, you know, was I paid to conduct interviews?

[00:14:39]Which echoed the kind of sleazy smear attacks that I was getting.

[00:14:44]Like why would I need to go all the way over there uh traveling like 20 hours to collect some money when I can just sit right here uh and monetize all of our content uh which people, average Americans and people across the West support because they want to see me do this kind of independent and critical journalism uh unlike a corporate press that has been discredited. So, uh that's really why I was targeted. I was targeted because I was exposing the criminals, not because I was committing any crime. And you know, others who have been targeted as well in Iran, uh, you know, could say the same thing about them and that's why the gray zone has consistently been targeted by these Five Eyes or harassed by these kind of Five Eyes elements. It's not because we're criminals, it's because we're against the criminals who are like setting the world on fire right now, not just in Iran, but also with Ukraine, uh, but through the Ukraine proxy war really provoking Russia to retaliate against a NATO state. So, we're in a very dangerous time and it's a dangerous time for independent journalism.

[00:16:00]We're on the front lines of that at The Grayzone and we are being targeted, uh, for that reason.

[00:16:09]>> Well, obviously, yes, you say self, you're quite critical of, uh, Israel's, uh, influence over American politics and society. And indeed, uh, the the the the people who harass you personal personally as well as The Grayzone, uh, they also have their ties with the Israeli state. But, how do you see this development going now? Uh, because on one hand, one gets an impression that more people are, well, essentially joining, well, sharing your sentiment that is there's a big split now, uh, from Israel or at least much more criticism. But, at the same time, we're also seeing now Israel, uh, integrating further with the United States. For example, the fusing of the two militaries.

[00:16:53]This is quite interesting cuz, uh, it seems to be heading two directions at once.

[00:17:00]>> There's a new Washington Post Ipsos poll out today that, uh, it's not being reported right. Uh, the way that the corporate press is reporting it is they're focusing on how like just 23% of Americans think Trump will be able to get a a better Iran deal than Obama did with the JCPOA and like 11% of independents have confidence in Trump.

[00:17:25]But if you look deeper into the poll, it shows that almost no no almost no one outside the Republican Party in the United States supports this war.

[00:17:37]There's just like like not just a like a majority but a whopping majority see no value in the US war on Iran. Then if you go back to June last month or sorry two months ago to a Quinnipiac poll, almost no one outside the Republican Party supports the war or aid to Israel.

[00:18:02]A whopping majority opposes aid to Israel and thinks the current level of US support for Israel is too much.

[00:18:08]So I'm pretty much in many ways in line with the majority of the American public and that's another reason why there's this crackdown. There's nothing left.

[00:18:19]And we you know the last time we interviewed Glenn, you asked me how far can Israel go?

[00:18:25]And when you say Israel, what are we talking about? We're talking about a borderless country that has a concept of based that's based its political system along ethno-supremacist lines that has no internationally recognized borders that it respects in a permanent state of war with set with eight countries, the eighth being the United States and it's a cognitive war as Netanyahu defines it.

[00:18:52]So we know where the occupation starts but we don't know where it ends. So when we talk about Israel then we're talking about the Trump administration. We're talking about the Department of Justice.

[00:19:01]We're talking about in many in many senses the leadership of the FBI and other major government institutions as well as state governments across the US, which especially in red states, how far will they go?

[00:19:18]That was the question, and I said, you know, my fear is that as they lose support and the public starts to turn against them and begin to actually organize against them and elect officials who like the New York mayor are considering arresting Netanyahu when he comes to New York according to the ICC warrant or want to suspend aid to Israel, that they're going to take the same kind of actions that we've seen them use in the region in southern Lebanon and in Gaza.

[00:19:45]We're talking about assassination.

[00:19:47]Um you know, kinetic action, terrorism, sabotage, uh worse than the kind of, you know, character assassination that we're being subjected to every day here already.

[00:20:02]And, you know, as I was away, a letter sat at my address uh addressed to me by your dead meat, y o o r d e d m e e t, you know, trying to be funny.

[00:20:22]Uh and it read, "Hey, [ __ ] capo, you are going you're moving up on the list.

[00:20:28]You are [ __ ] Signed, the committee."

[00:20:31]Uh and the return address was the field office of Representative Rashida Tlaib, who's the only Palestinian member of Congress, which means it's uh effectively a threat to her as well.

[00:20:43]I publicized this letter, and I've started to hear from people across the country who got these same death threats from your dead meat, postmarked in Buffalo.

[00:20:55]They're always postmarked at 2:00 a.m., which is interesting.

[00:20:59]And these are people who have been previously targeted by major Zionist institutions like Zionist media organizations or uh campus Zionist organizations and then they receive these letters.

[00:21:15]Uh one person I spoke to who received this letter has actually received 20 threatening letters. The letters they showed me were shocking compared to what I received.

[00:21:25]And one contained powder which was rat poison and another contained a rusty nail.

[00:21:32]We have a real problem on our hands here in the United States. We have a element which is primed for terrorism, which is entitled, which is accustomed to have having to to to 4 billion dollars of aid a year sent to the apartheid colony that forms the central pillar of their identity.

[00:21:50]And the American public is moving away from them and it moving against them politically and wants to push towards an end to this disastrous special relationship which has been so costly to Americans as we see through the economic cost of the Iran war and now the death toll of US service members. And as that contradiction grows, I think we're going to see an increasing threat of Jewish extremist violence in the United States and we have to worry. Has the FBI been so thoroughly penetrated that they cannot crack down on it? I reported that letter to the postal inspector and have heard nothing back.

[00:22:32]Fortunately, Representative Tlaib has reported the letter to the US Capitol Police. I wonder what they're going to do. But is there like a manhunt a manhunt for the person sending this letter?

[00:22:43]Are they are they under is there an investigation? As far as I know, the only person has been investigated in the last week or two weeks around this whole scenario is me for doing journalism.

[00:22:57]>> Yeah, this is a problem when the country start war. It's very hard to maintain basic civil liberties and uh yeah, freedom of speech and well, not be intimidated or threatened in this way.

[00:23:10]Um, anyways, yeah, we can leave it there. It's yeah, I just always think that if the US isn't able to stand up for basic press freedoms and freedom of speech, it doesn't look good good in Europe.

[00:23:27]Anyways, do you have any final thoughts before we wrap up?

[00:23:30]>> Yeah, I do. I mean, democracy is is not our system is not fundamentally democratic. Democracy is simply defined by the rights that we force our system and our government to provide to us through mobilization and through action.

[00:23:49]And it's only thanks to the Arab anti the Arab American anti-discrimination Committee and its president Janine Younis and their team that I've had any legal recourse against this legal action. And these so these are the true democratic fighters in our country against a uh, system that is shredding the Constitution right before our eyes. So, I just wanted to highlight the important work they're doing for me and for so many other people who are facing the consequences of this massive censorship frenzy, which is guided by a foreign apartheid state.

[00:24:30]>> Well, Max, thank you so much for your time.

[00:24:32]>> Thanks a lot, Glenn.