I recently came across a pretty interesting investigation regarding the source of the documents used by the White House to justify this Middle East war.

Here's what happened. The Trump administration released a list of attacks by Iran against Americans, claiming it was a necessary measure to "eliminate threats once and for all." But independent journalist Stephen McIntyre dug deeper and found that this White House document was almost directly plagiarized from a report published last June by an Israeli think tank. Coincidentally, that Israeli report was released just before the U.S. bombed Iran.

How outrageous is the comparison? The White House list details 44 incidents resulting in 992 American deaths but provides no source references. When someone compared it point-by-point with the list published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), they found the two documents were nearly identical, with only minor adjustments—likely to "upgrade" the alleged threats.

What was the most obvious change? The White House version often inserted phrases like "Iran-backed" when mentioning attacks by Hamas or Hezbollah, emphasizing Iran's direct involvement. But the problem is, most of these attacks were carried out by proxies, not directly by Iran.

The most absurd part concerns Iraq. The White House list added an entry blaming approximately 603 Iraqi military deaths on "Iran-supported militia groups"—which accounts for 60% of the total deaths listed. This attribution has never been reported by the State Department and has been strongly questioned by experts. In contrast, the FDD version only included one item attempting to link 9/11 hijackers to Iran, which the White House actually removed.

Even more baffling, only one death in the entire list is directly attributed to Iran itself; all others are linked to proxies. Moreover, some of the listed deaths have never been officially attributed to any attacker.

So, ultimately, the White House tried to use this document to provide concrete evidence for the war, but in reality, it wasn't based on any intelligence assessment. Instead, it was directly sourced from an Israeli asset. That’s why explanations for Israel’s reasons for going to war with Iran often seem inconsistent—because the initial argument itself was built on a "re-edited" document.