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Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

John is out this morning, but will be co-hosting for the new Q&A-only show starting today at 12 noon Eastern time, and, from now on, Mondays and Wednesdays at 12 noon ET.

Today we discuss:

• Regime change is a forced transformation of government or leadership that results in structural alterations in policies, politics and governance. In Iran, the theocratic leadership remains in place. Yet the White House—looking for a way out of the war it began—claims regime change has occurred. “This new regime, because regime change has occurred, should be wiser than the last,” says Hegseth. “We’ve had regime change, if you look, already because the one regime was decimated, destroyed,” says Trump.

• Trump is considering a military mission to seize Iranian uranium that has been enriched to 60%. It could be “one of the most risky and difficult operations the US military has undertaken since the Second World War.”

• Trump says said the United States could stop attacking Iran within two to three weeks, with or without reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

• The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatens to target American tech and defense companies operating in the Middle East, including Cisco, HP, Intel, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, IBM, Dell, Palantir, Nvidia, Tesla and Boeing, among others.

• Palestinians in the occupied West Bank worry that their jailed relatives could be hanged without due process under a ​new law making the death penalty the default sentence for Palestinians convicted of lethal attacks. The U.N. said the legislation violates international humanitarian law. The law mandates execution specifically by hanging within 90 days of sentencing, with no right to clemency, a provision included ​over concerns Israeli doctors would refuse to conduct lethal injections. It would generally require execution. Military courts in the West Bank, where only cases involving Palestinians are heard, have a 96% conviction rate ⁠and a history of extracting confessions under duress or torture.

• The Trump administration may demand that the University of Pennsylvania turn over information about Jews on campus as part of a federal investigation into discrimination at the school, a federal judge rules.

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