TEHRAN – Jeffrey Epstein, 66, is an American financier and convicted sex offender for serial sex trafficking of women and girls.
Epstein became a millionaire through a successful financial career and built a social circle that included extremely wealthy individuals, prominent politicians, and even royalty.
Epstein allegedly hanged himself on August 10, 2019, while in prison and awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
Epstein had previously been convicted in Florida state court of pimping a minor and served a 13-month prison sentence in 2008, which was widely criticized as a very light sentence.
Writing in an article for Middle East Eye, British Tunisian author and expert Soumaya Ghannoushi said the Epstein leaks show how the Foreign Influence Network (AIPAC) controls the world’s most powerful country, the United States, through seduction, dependence and capture.
In an article headlined “The Epstein story exposes Israel’s iron grip on US power,” Ghannoushi noted that the Epstein leaks “reveal not a single predator, but a system built on moral decadence, foreign influence, intelligence engineering, and elite collusion.”
She said America’s “foreign policy remains tilted toward Israeli priorities.”
The text of the article is as follows.
Epstein’s leaks have reopened a door that many in Washington had hoped would remain sealed. The media is content to drown the public in gossip, but it is not the door to gossip, but the door to the machinery of American power.
These leaks don’t just reveal the downfall of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. They expose a sinister triangle of money, politics, and sex, the central thread of which is connected to a network of foreign influence that has learned to rule the world’s most powerful country through seduction, addiction, and capture.
This is not a conspiracy theory. It’s not an anti-Semitic delusion. That’s what the documents show, and that’s what Washington’s actions confirm. And that’s what the Epstein files reveal with violent clarity.
They first show that Epstein was more than just a genius fraudster who rose from an obscure math teacher to a wealthy elite. He was a sham, the social face of an intelligence agency designed to corrupt, compromise, and control.
His network was no accident. His closest friend, Ghislaine Maxwell, is Robert Maxwell’s daughter and was long reported to have worked closely with Israeli intelligence. Mr. Epstein’s investments flowed into ventures led by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who visited Mr. Epstein repeatedly even after his conviction for procuring children for prostitution. Barak headed Kerbin, an Israeli security technology company that Epstein secretly invested in.
An investigation by Drop Site sheds more light on the situation. Epstein did not just have close social ties to Israeli intelligence. He was operationally useful. The same media reported that Yoni Koren, a senior Israeli intelligence officer, was staying at his Manhattan home for long periods of time.
It also revealed that Mr. Epstein helped broker a security agreement between Israel and Mongolia, tried to establish a back channel with Russia during the Syrian war, and facilitated a security agreement between Israel and Ivory Coast. These were not social favors. These were state-level services.
vice without consequences
The leak also revealed something even darker: the mindset of the American elites who ran Epstein’s world. Schedules and emails reveal men who treated him not as a danger or an outcast, but as a companion, a gatekeeper, a magnet.
They sought him from boardrooms in Texas to palaces in the Emirates. Because he stands at the crossroads of wealth, intelligence, and elite luxury. Getting noticed by him means getting noticed by the network behind him as well. To please him meant being invited into a world where results evaporated.
Epstein became the public face of an octopus with a quiet and vast intellect. The elites didn’t fall into his orbit by chance. they pursued it. They recognized that he could offer what not even the presidency could offer: immunity, access, tolerance, and the patronage of foreign lobbies that had perfected the art of capturing the nation by feeding the appetites of its rulers.
And it was precisely this moral corruption, the elite’s thirst for vice without consequences, that made them so easy to control.
A compromising man is an easy man to deal with. The one who sins is the obedient one. Men who are afraid of being exposed cannot say no.
Epstein’s world, islands, apartments, and planes, became a factory of influence, a catalog of vulnerability, a marketplace of blackmail. But Epstein was just one tool, one tentacle.
There was also a daylight division, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). If Epstein was a covert, psychological, compromising influence tool, AIPAC was a public, financial, legislative tool. Some captured the elite by their appetites. The other took control of Congress through the power of money. Some are tempted. I bought another one. Together they formed the shadow and surface of the same structure.
In 2024 alone, AIPAC poured more than $53 million into American elections, supporting 361 candidates across both parties. These were not donations. They were strategic acquisitions, compliance pressure valves, signals of who could be protected and who could be destroyed.
Crimp
But something is changing in the American political landscape. Robbie’s aura of inevitability is cracking. Its power is still immense, but it is beginning to become excessive.
AIPAC’s annual Congressional trip is falling apart. A total of 24 first-term Democratic politicians attended in 2023. This year, only 11 of the 33 participants participated, and seven withdrew just before the end of their flight reservations. Even Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, once a loyal attendee, didn’t go.
Other members of Congress are similarly hesitant. Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton returned AIPAC-related donations, while Morgan McGarvey, Valerie Foushee, and Deborah Ross announced they would no longer receive funding from AIPAC.
Voters, particularly young people and Democratic-leaning blocs, are rejecting candidates backed by pro-Israel lobby groups. Such support is now more likely to take away votes than bring them, according to polling by the Arab American Institute.
Pressure is mounting from all directions. Broadcasters and interviewers are now challenging politicians live, puncturing the old atmosphere of untouchability. This can be seen in the way Sen. Cory Booker squirms when asked whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. California Governor Gavin Newsom repeatedly called the topic of AIPAC “interesting.” And Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is under scrutiny for whether the lobby is distorting American policy.
Even Republicans like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Thomas Massey are now openly attacking the lobby, showing that AIPAC’s once untouchable aura is evaporating.
One progressive Jewish commentator said, “They’re not afraid of AIPAC. They’re afraid of having anything to do with AIPAC. The political rules of the past nearly half a century are changing before our eyes.”
AIPAC responded to all of this with a defense video claiming it is “funded by Americans.” This is not a sign of confidence. That’s a signal of panic.
Robbie, who once caused fear, is now a heavy liability. A sign of strength has become a sign of weakness. The direction of the wind is changing.
performative democracy
However, there lies a contradiction here. The pro-Israel lobby’s domestic legitimacy may be eroding, but its control over foreign policy remains intact. Just because something is no longer popular doesn’t mean it loses its influence. Power remains within the system long after the people reject it.
Public opinion can change rapidly. Machines aren’t like that. So even as candidates refuse to donate, voters revolt, and Democratic politicians distance themselves, U.S. foreign policy remains tilted toward Israel’s priorities.
Externally, the impact remains devastating. Washington’s decisions in Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Iran served Israeli strategic calculations, not American interests, and often came at staggering costs to the United States.
No empire in history has subordinated its grand strategy to the insecurities of much smaller states, except those whose elites have been violated, corrupted, and dominated.
Internally, democracy is corrupt. Elections are auctions. Representatives are an asset. Public opinion is shaped by a media ecosystem funded by the same networks that provide political careers.
“Democracy” has become a performance staged by a political class whose private lives are permanently vulnerable.
This is the real meaning of Epstein’s leaks. They do not expose a single predator, but a system built on moral decadence, foreign influence, intelligence engineering, and elite collusion. Epstein was not an anomaly. He was the model.
Mr. Trump remains the clearest example of this – a man wrapped in patriotism while bound by foreign influence and moral ruin. His “America First” movement was a play. The truth has always been Israel first.
The United States now faces a problem it can no longer solve. Who governs this country – the elected officials, or the foreign networks that own their secrets, finance their campaigns, and exploit their corruption?
How can a nation claim sovereignty when its leadership is so easily violated? How can a republic claim legitimacy when its elites are bought so cheaply?
How can a superpower that cannot even govern itself lead the world? When will the United States, with actions rather than slogans, assert that its government belongs to its people, not Tel Aviv?