The Year That Was: ‘Warmongers’ who mocked intl. law to aid, abet, prop up wars in 2025

By Maryam Qarehgozlou

From Gaza to Caracas, from Tehran to Beirut, wars do not erupt in a vacuum. They are designed, justified, funded, and normalized by people in positions of power who turn mass death into policy, ideology into weaponry, and diplomacy into cover for extermination.

Over the past two years, tens of thousands of civilians—overwhelmingly Palestinians—have been killed, maimed, starved, or displaced, not only by bombs and bullets, but by speeches, vetoes, arms licenses, financial donations, intelligence sharing, and media propaganda.

This is not merely the story of one war or one regime. It is the story of a transatlantic and global network of politicians, billionaires, lobbyists, and ideologues who have actively aided and defended genocide in Gaza and fueled wars elsewhere—from Iran and Yemen to Venezuela and beyond.

Through direct military support, diplomatic shielding, economic pressure, and rhetorical dehumanization, these war-mongering actors have helped transform international law into a hollow slogan and mass killing into an acceptable tool of policy.

As 2025 draws to a close, here is the list of figures—across governments, parties, and continents—whose actions, remarks, and advocacy materially contributed to wars and mass killings this year.

They are the ones who planned, choreographed, enabled, and facilitated war crimes, and then used their power and influence to conceal them.

Donald Trump

 

If there is a chief warmonger of this year, US President Donald Trump occupies that position with little to no competition.

His record on Gaza alone, where over 71,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed by the Israeli regime, is a case study in how genocide becomes state policy.

Trump openly promoted plans to remove Palestinians from their homeland, brushed aside Israel’s relentless violations of the ceasefire, and framed genocide as a strategic necessity.

Beyond Gaza, Trump’s warmongering extended across continents.

His so-called “war on drugs” against Venezuela functioned as a thinly veiled "regime-change" operation aimed at embezzling the country's massive oil reserves.

In West Asia, he engaged in direct and unlawful confrontation with Iran, including dastardly attacks on its nuclear sites, while offering Israel unconditional backing for its military aggression against the Islamic Republic, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Palestine—both militarily and diplomatically.

Under Trump, war was not a failure of diplomacy; it was its intended outcome.

Benjamin Netanyahu

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands as one of the most enduring institutional warmongers in modern history, and it only become worse this year.

His rule has been defined by endless war—most catastrophically in Gaza, tens of thousands of women and children have been killed under his command, but also across the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and through repeated escalations with Iran.

Beyond Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, he ordered an unjustified and illegal military aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran in June this year, which led to the martyrdom of over 1,000 people.

Netanyahu’s vision extends beyond immediate battlefields.

His rhetoric and policies have consistently aligned with expansionist ideas associated with “Greater Israel,” signaling ambitions of occupation and domination beyond Palestine.

Civilian death, under Netanyahu, is not collateral damage—it is a governing tool.

Itamar Ben-Gvir

 

Few political figures in the world embody open, unapologetic warmongering as clearly as hawkish Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Even after Israel was forced into a ceasefire with Hamas in October, Ben-Gvir immediately demanded a return to full-scale war, warning Netanyahu that restraint itself was dangerous.

He has explicitly called for the full occupation of Gaza, the complete halt of humanitarian aid, and the forced migration of Palestinians—policies that meet every legal definition of ethnic cleansing.

His statements that Gaza should be “flattened” and that negotiations are a “terrible mistake” reveal a man for whom extermination is not an unintended consequence but the objective.

Inside Israeli prisons, human rights groups describe his policies against Palestinian abductees as a continuation of the war by other means—through torture, medical neglect, and systematic dehumanization.

He not only backed the regime's aggression against Iran but also celebrated it.

Keir Starmer

 

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer represents a more sanitized, technocratic form of Western warmongering—one that hides behind legal language while enabling mass killing.

Under his leadership, the UK licensed more military equipment exports to Israeli-occupied territories in three months than the previous Conservative government approved in four years.

Between October and December 2024, the Labour government approved £127.6 million worth of single-issue military export licenses to Israeli-occupied territories.

The total value of military equipment exports approved under the Conservative government for 2020-2023 was approximately £115 million.

Starmer’s government also allowed British intelligence infrastructure to be used directly in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Royal Air Force (RAF) surveillance flights from Cyprus mapped the destruction of Gaza hundreds of times, turning Britain into an operational partner rather than a passive observer.

Welcoming Israeli President Isaac Herzog—known for his utterly genocidal rhetoric—into Downing Street in September was not diplomacy; it was endorsement.

He also refused to condemn Israel's aggression against Iran and went on to lead the campaign to trigger so-called "snapback" sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Friedrich Merz

 

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz revealed the moral collapse of Western leaders when he described Israel’s unprovoked aggression against Iran in June as “dirty work” done on behalf of the West.

The phrase was revealing: war outsourced, bloodshed subcontracted.

Although his government claimed to have briefly paused arms exports to the Israeli-occupied territories in June, the resumption of weapons sales following the Gaza ceasefire in October confirmed that concern for civilians was never the priority.

While much of the world moved toward recognizing Palestine amid genocide, Merz refused.

The flood of criminal complaints for his complicity in war crimes in Gaza reflects growing recognition that bureaucratic language does not absolve responsibility.

Javier Milei

 

President Javier Milei imported fanatical warmongering into Argentina’s foreign policy, proudly declaring himself a “fanatic of Israel” while Gaza burned.

He aligned himself fully with Netanyahu, rejected International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrants for Israeli regime leaders, and pledged to move Argentina’s embassy to occupied al-Quds.

At home, his hawkish stance on the Israeli-American genocide triggered mass protests, with Argentines rejecting their government’s complicity in genocide.

Milei’s rhetoric—branding Hamas “modern Nazism” while ignoring Palestinian extermination—served one function: moral cover for mass killing.

He also supported Israel's military assault against Iran and claimed that Iran was an "enemy" of Argentina, yet again proving his war-mongering credentials.

Miriam Adelson

 

Israeli-American billionaire and major political donor to Republican politicians Miriam Adelson represents the financial architecture of warmongering.

Through enormous political donations, particularly to Trump, she has helped shape US policy in favor of Gaza genocide, West Bank annexation, settlement expansion, and unconditional support for Israel.

Her dehumanization of Gaza protesters—suggesting they “should be dead to us”—is not rhetorical excess but ideological clarity of where she stands.

Adelson’s media empire has functioned as a propaganda arm for Netanyahu, while her funding of illegal settlements ties her directly to material violations of international law.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called on American politicians to reject donations from Adelson, describing her an “Israel First” donor who supports genocide.

Adelson and her late husband, Sheldon Adelson, were named in a lawsuit by Palestinian and Palestinian-American plaintiffs for being co-conspirators in a plot to remove non-Jews from occupied territories and aiding in war crimes, including genocide.

Her actions underscore the reality that genocide requires patrons as much as generals.

Maria Corina Machado

 

Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado’s case illustrates how warmongering can be laundered through both actions and behavior.

A vocal supporter of Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza, she praised Netanyahu’s actions and pledged to align Venezuela with US-Israeli regional strategy.

Machado even stated that, if elected president of Venezuela, she would move the Venezuelan embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied al-Quds.

Her political party, Vente Venezuela, signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Netanyahu’s Likud Party in 2020 to strengthen relations on political, ideological, and security matters.

She advocates for US military intervention to overthrow the Nicolas Maduro government in Venezuela.

Her advocacy for foreign military intervention in Venezuela reveals a consistent worldview: war as a legitimate political tool.

When she received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2025, activists rightly condemned the award as a grotesque contradiction—honoring a figure whose politics normalize sanctions, coups, and genocide.

Reza Pahlavi

 

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s deposed monarch, has increasingly positioned himself as a proxy warmonger, aligning his political ambitions with Israel’s regional wars.

Following the Hamas-led operation of October 7, 2023, and Israel’s ensuing onslaught on Gaza, Pahlavi openly backed Israel’s devastating bombardment of the besieged territory, echoing narratives that framed mass civilian death as a strategic necessity.

His warmongering posture extended beyond Gaza and included that country that he calls his own.

Pahlavi publicly supported Israel’s military aggression against Iran in June, viewing Israeli strikes as an opportunity to weaken the Islamic Republic regardless of the civilian cost.

His visits to Israeli-occupied territories in 2023 and again in 2025—where he met figures including Netanyahu—were widely publicized and interpreted as alignment with Israel’s military agenda.

A 2025 report further revealed that Israeli regime-linked sources launched Persian-language social media campaigns, using fake accounts and AI-generated content, portraying Pahlavi as Iran’s leading opposition figure, an attempt that failed to generate meaningful domestic support.

Lindsey Graham

 

US Senator Lindsey Graham has long functioned as one of the loudest and most dangerous warmongers in American politics, particularly when it comes to Gaza and Iran.

Despite mounting evidence from international agencies, UN experts, and human rights organizations that Israel’s war on Gaza constitutes genocide, Graham has repeatedly denied the charge, brazenly claiming that Israel has the capacity to commit genocide but “chooses not to.”

His rhetoric has gone far beyond denial. Graham urged Israel to do “whatever the hell you have to do” to win, even invoking the US nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as historical justification for overwhelming force.

He has said that Washington should supply Israel with whatever bombs are necessary to “finish the job,” language that treats civilian annihilation as an acceptable military outcome.

Graham has likened Gaza to post–World War II Tokyo and Berlin, insisting that it must be taken “by force” and rebuilt from scratch—after total destruction—to prevent the return of resistance.

He has aggressively defended Netanyahu against international legal accountability, threatening sanctions against US allies that dare enforce ICC arrest warrants.

Beyond Gaza, Graham has consistently advocated direct US military action against Iran, praising strikes on Iranian nuclear sites as “historic” and calling openly for the destruction of Iran’s oil facilities and “regime change” in Tehran.

Howard Kohr

 

Howard Kohr, the longtime CEO of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), the notorious Zionist lobby group in the US, represents institutional warmongering at its worst.

For nearly three decades, Kohr oversaw the transformation of AIPAC into one of the most powerful lobbying forces in Washington, manufacturing bipartisan consensus in favor of unconditional support for the Israeli occupation and genocide—no matter the scale of violence.

Under Kohr’s leadership, AIPAC perfected the art of shielding Israel from accountability, even as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled it “plausible” in 2024 that Israel violated the Genocide Convention in Gaza.

Kohr dismissed such findings as “blood libel,” insisting Israel made “extraordinary efforts” to avoid civilian harm while more than 70,000 Palestinians—most of them women and children—were killed.

He was a central architect of efforts to secure billions in annual US military aid for Israel and consistently opposed any conditions on that aid during the Gaza genocide.

Throughout his tenure, Kohr framed Iran as the ultimate threat, lobbying relentlessly for confrontation while presenting permanent war as a cornerstone of US interests.

Jonathan Greenblatt

 

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, embodies a discursive form of warmongering—one that suppresses opposition, delegitimizes dissent, and clears the ideological space for mass violence.

While presenting the ADL as a civil rights organization, Greenblatt has turned it into a lobbying and pressure group that aggressively defends Israeli genocide and settler-colonialism. 

With an annual budget approaching $100 million, the ADL has worked closely with other US-based Zionist lobbying groups to justify Israel’s expansion into occupied al-Quds and the West Bank, oppose the return of Palestinian refugees, and support US military interventionism across West Asia.

ADL routinely smears critics of Zionism as extremists, terrorists, or antisemites.

Greenblatt has denied that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, instead blaming Hamas for all destruction, and has compared student protesters and anti-war activists to ISIS and al-Qaeda—a comparison condemned by civil liberties groups as reckless and dangerous.

By weaponizing accusations of antisemitism, Greenblatt has helped silence opposition and normalize policies that enable genocide.

He has also led the smear campaign against Iranian media outlets, particularly Press TV, falsely accusing it of antisemitism in order to persuade Western governments to impose more sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran's leading international media network.

Mike Pompeo

 

Mike Pompeo’s career illustrates the fusion of religious zeal and warmongering statecraft.

As CIA director and later Secretary of State under Trump's first administration, Pompeo was a chief architect of the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal and imposing unilateral sanctions that devastated civilian life.

He played a central role in the 2020 assassination of Iranian anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, an act that brought the region to the brink of full-scale war.

Following Israel’s June aggression against Iran—which killed at least 1,000 civilians—Pompeo described the strikes as “righteous” and “absolutely necessary,” later urging continued attacks whenever Iran attempted to rebuild its nuclear infrastructure.

On Gaza, Pompeo has consistently embraced a maximalist war position, claiming throughout 2025 that the only solution is the “crushing” and total elimination of Hamas.

He has derided ceasefire efforts as “appeasement,” framing diplomacy itself as a threat to US and Israeli dominance.

Alex Karp

 

Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, a surveillance company, represents algorithmic warmongering, where genocide is facilitated through data, surveillance, and AI-powered targeting.

Palantir’s technology has been used by the Israeli military during the Gaza genocide, making the company a focal point of global protests.

When confronted by protesters lashing out at Palantir for enabling the killing of Palestinians, Karp responded dismissively, claiming the victims were “mostly terrorists,” and referring to pro-Palestine demonstrators as “useful idiots” for Hamas.

He has equated support for Israel with support for “the West” and held Palantir board meetings in Tel Aviv as a symbolic show of allegiance for the genocidal regime.

Palantir’s “strategic partnership” with Israel’s ministry of military affairs provides technology explicitly designed for war-related missions, making it an integral component of Israel’s military infrastructure and its mass killing of Palestinians.

Ben Shapiro

 

Ben Shapiro’s role in this ecosystem is one of narrative warmongering, where genocide is justified through relentless and incoherent media repetition.

A conservative commentator with a vast audience, Shapiro has long advocated “peace through strength” and framed Israeli aggression against Iran and Gaza as both moral and necessary.

Since the start of the genocidal war on Gaza in late 2023, Shapiro has defended the Israeli military aggression without qualification, condemned Palestinian resistance movements, and dismissed civilian casualties caused by Israeli bombardment as unavoidable.

In April 2025, Israel honored him at its official Independence Day ceremony, with Transportation Minister Miri Regev calling him “one of Israel’s greatest supporters in the world”—a recognition of his role in legitimizing war from afar.

These figures represent different faces of the same warmongering ecosystem—one that sanitizes mass death, rewards impunity, and treats entire populations as expendable.

---

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir