Pakistan’s Ghazab Lil-Haq operation and the prospect of regime change in Afghanistan

Taliban forces in Afghanistan found themselves under attack from Pakistan's Operation Ghazab lil-Haq (Righteous Fury). Does Kabul have plans to try to push its military action all the way to regime change? / mod.gov.afFacebook

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By Syed Fazl-e-Haider April 11, 2026

On February 26, Pakistan launched Operation Ghazab lil-Haq (Righteous Fury) against the Taliban regime in Kabul. The operation is seen by some as an attempt by Islamabad to pursue regime change in Afghanistan.

Under Taliban rule, Afghanistan has effectively become a base for terrorist activities targeting not only Pakistan but also other Central Asian states, including Tajikistan. Russia has warned that Afghanistan-based ISIS seeks to expand its so-called caliphate in Central Asia, while China has expressed concern over the presence of Uyghur militants and other anti-China groups in the country. In this context, regime change in Kabul has emerged as a strategic priority for Islamabad and Beijing.

Meanwhile, the persistence of terrorist safe havens in Afghanistan and the ongoing war has stalled major trans-Afghan connectivity projects intended to link Central Asia with Pakistani seaports. 

BACKGROUND

Since 2021, following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan after the US withdrawal under the Doha Agreement, Pakistan has experienced a significant increase in terrorist attacks. Islamabad has accused Afghanistan-based militant groups of conducting cross-border operations within its territory.

Prominent among these are Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which have been responsible for numerous high-profile attacks. Pakistan has repeatedly urged the Taliban government to take action against these groups, which continue to operate from Afghan territory with relative impunity; however, these requests have largely gone unheeded.

China, which shares a 47-mile (76-kilometre) border with Afghanistan, has long been concerned that the country could become a sanctuary for Uyghur separatists in proximity of its Xinjiang region.

The Taliban government has assured Beijing that Afghan territory will not be used for activities against China. In return, China has offered economic assistance and investment to support Afghanistan’s reconstruction and development and has since emerged as the largest foreign investor in the country.

Other anti-China groups operating from safe havens in Afghanistan include the TTP and the BLA. Both organisations have been implicated in several high-profile attacks targeting Chinese nationals in Pakistan.

In March 2024, a suicide attack on a van killed five Chinese engineers working on the Dasu dam project in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. A similar attack at the same site in 2021 resulted in the deaths of nine Chinese engineers. The TTP was implicated in both incidents. The BLA, in turn, has conducted more attacks on Chinese nationals and assets than any other separatist organisation.

Notably, in 2022, the BLA deployed its first female suicide bomber, who carried out an attack outside the Confucius Institute at the University of Karachi, killing three Chinese instructors.

Although China has pursued a pragmatic engagement policy toward the Taliban since the US withdrawal in 2021, investing in mining, energy, and infrastructure, the Taliban have shown limited willingness or capacity to dismantle militant networks such as the TTP and BLA operating from Afghan territory.

Tajikistan, which shares a 1,400-kilometre (870-mile) border with Afghanistan, has also been affected by cross-border militancy. In two separate incidents in November 2025, five Chinese nationals were killed. Additional casualties resulted in subsequent clashes between Tajik security forces and suspected militants attempting to infiltrate Tajik territory.

Russia, the only country that has formally recognised the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, has expressed concern that the regime undermines regional stability by allowing jihadist groups to operate from Afghan territory. These concerns intensified following a suicide attack on February 24 outside Moscow’s Savyolovsky Railway Station, which killed a police officer. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov linked the incident to Afghanistan-based groups. 

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has estimated that Afghanistan hosts between 20,000 and 23,000 militants, including approximately 5,000 to 7,000 affiliated with the TTP. Notably, Russia released this assessment of terrorist networks in Afghanistan two days before Pakistan initiated its military campaign against the Taliban, a move that may be interpreted as implicit political support.

The Taliban have also moved closer to Pakistan’s regional rival, India. Islamabad has alleged that groups such as the TTP and BLA operate as Indian proxies, a claim that New Delhi denies. The Taliban’s growing engagement with India has further raised concerns in Beijing.

Amid mounting frustration over the Taliban’s inaction against militant groups operating from Afghan territory, Pakistan launched a large-scale military operation against the Taliban government on February 26, involving airstrikes across major Afghan cities, including Kabul.

IMPLICATIONS

Operation Ghazab lil-Haq can be interpreted as an attempt to impose regime change in Kabul, though Pakistan is unlikely to achieve such an objective independently, without securing China’s support and involving Tajikistan. It must also obtain backing from anti-Taliban groups such as the National Resistance Front (NRF), led by Tajik leader Ahmad Massoud, son of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud. Tajikistan presently hosts the NRF leadership.

Pakistan’s airstrikes against the Taliban regime may create opportunities for the NRF and other opposition forces to weaken the Taliban’s internal control over Afghanistan.

Officially, Beijing has called on both Islamabad and Kabul to exercise restraint and has advocated a ceasefire. However, Pakistan’s ongoing military campaign against the Taliban likely carries tacit Chinese approval and support for a potential regime change effort.

For such an operation, Islamabad would first need to secure control over the Wakhan Corridor in northeastern Afghanistan. This narrow strip of territory, often referred to as Afghanistan’s “Chicken Neck,” extends approximately 350 kilometres (217 miles) to China’s Xinjiang region, separating Tajikistan from Pakistan. Control of the corridor would provide Pakistan with direct access to Tajikistan and Central Asia beyond Afghanistan.

For China, the Wakhan Corridor represents a critical node for safeguarding its strategic connectivity with South and Central Asia under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). While China appears to be adopting a cautious, “wait and watch” approach, Pakistan is actively seeking to reshape Afghanistan’s political landscape.

The Pakistan–Afghanistan conflict is likely to adversely affect trans-Afghan connectivity projects aimed at linking Central and South Asia, whether in the planning, negotiation or implementation stages. For example, regional connectivity featured prominently in Pakistan–Kazakhstan discussions during President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s visit to Islamabad in February 2026. A proposed $7bn railway project envisaged connecting Kazakhstan to the Pakistani ports of Karachi and Gwadar via Afghanistan and Turkmenistan.

Similarly, the Uzbekistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan (UAP) railway project is a trilateral initiative designed to connect Central Asia with the ports of Gwadar and Karachi through Afghanistan. Envisioned in 2021, the 528-kilometre corridor is expected to provide the first direct railway link between Central and South Asia. The $4.8bn project, scheduled for completion by 2027, will connect Tashkent to the Pakistani city of Peshawar via Kabul.

The $10bn Turkmenistan–Afghanistan–Pakistan–India (TAPI) gas pipeline is a major strategic energy project intended to transport gas from Turkmenistan’s Galkynysh field, the world’s second largest, to energy-deficient markets in South Asia, particularly India and Pakistan. However, the project has already been delayed for over three decades due to persistent instability and conflict in Afghanistan.

Any attempt at regime change in Kabul that ensures peace and stability in Afghanistan would facilitate a conducive environment for the implementation and completion of strategic connectivity projects between Central and South Asia. Conversely, if such efforts intensify conflict in the already war-torn country, these projects are likely to face indefinite delays.

CONCLUSIONS

Officially, Islamabad frames its military campaign as an effort to compel the Taliban regime to withdraw support for Afghanistan-based militant groups targeting Pakistan. However, the operation also appears intended to convey that regime change is a clear option, should the Taliban fail to take verifiable action against such groups operating from Afghan territory.

For a comprehensive regime change effort, Pakistan, China, and Tajikistan would have to align their positions on the jihadist threats emanating from Afghanistan, which, after more than four years of Taliban rule, has effectively become a safe haven for militant groups. The outcomes of the current operation will in turn have a significant impact on the future of trans-Afghan connectivity projects.

This article was originally published by the Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst and is reprinted under a partner post arrangement with Eurasianet. It appears in Eurasianet here.

Syed Fazl-e-Haider is a Karachi-based analyst at Wikistrat. He is a freelance columnist and the author of several books. He has contributed articles and analysis to a range of publications. He is a regular contributor to Eurasia Daily Monitor, Jamestown Foundation. Email: sfazlehaider05@yahoo.com.

As Trump orders UFO data released, question hangs: If aliens exist, what would they think of us?


By AP

Published Apr 5, 2026 

A patron passes a painting inside the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, N.M., on June 10, 1997. AP-Yonhap

For generations, human beings have wondered: What would alien life from another planet be like? But we rarely ask the opposite: What would they think of us?

It's a question that can produce some, well, uncomfortable answers if you happen to be an earthling.

“If I were looking at Earth from a distance, I would be pretty disappointed,” theoretical physicist Avi Loeb says. “Most of our investing is dealing with conflicts to prevent other people from killing us or us killing others. Look at the Ukraine war over a little bit of territory. That is not a sign of intelligence."


The debate on whether little green men or UFOs are among us escalated in February when former President Barack Obama, responding to a podcaster's question, said aliens are “real,” but he ”hasn’t seen them” and “they’re not being kept at Area 51.” U.S. President Donald Trump later announced on social media that he was directing release of government files because of “tremendous interest.”

Stepped-up interest in UFOs also is swirling as the United States heads back toward the moon with Wednesday's launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission. The four astronauts aboard will do a fly-around of the moon before returning to Earth.

Gen. John "Jay" Raymond, Commander U.S. Space Command, left, and Chief Master Sgt. Roger Towberman, center, hold the Space Force Flag as U.S. President Donald Trump gestures to it during the presentation of the in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, May 15, 2020. AP-Yonhap

In a world riven by war, civil unrest, climate change and divisiveness, it's easy to wonder what newcomers to Planet Earth might make of us and our struggles. Whatever the case, well over a majority of Americans echo the sentiment of the slogan from “The X-Files”: “The truth is out there."

A 2021 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center showed about two-thirds of Americans said their best guess is that intelligent life exists on other planets. About half of U.S. adults said UFOs reported by people in the military are “definitely” or “probably” evidence of intelligent life outside Earth.

“We don’t want to think this is the only place in this extraordinarily and incomprehensibly large universe where life and intelligence and even technology have emerged,” says Bill Diamond, president and chief executive of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.


“It sort of says about humans, ’We don’t want to be alone.'"

Something is up there. But what?

Americans have been fascinated by the thought of life outside this planet following the recovery of debris in 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico. The military initially said the material was from a flying disc, only to reverse course and tell the public it was from a weather balloon.


A visitor walks past a line of posters for the forthcoming film "Star Trek," on the first day of ShoWest, the largest annual convention for the motion picture industry, in Las Vegas on March 30, 2009. AP-Yonhap

Hollywood ran with it. Flying saucers, little green men and eventually humanoid gray aliens became part of popular culture. April 5 even is celebrated annually throughout the iconic “Star Trek" franchise as “First Contact Day” to mark the date in 2063 when humankind, in “Trek” canon, first made contact with Vulcans.

Much in the popular culture suggests any aliens might be aggressive. Priscilla Wald, who teaches about science fiction at Duke University, has a theory as to why.

“It seems to me it’s a reflection on who we are, that we’re projecting onto aliens the way we treat each other," Wald says. "So the aliens are coming down, they want to conquer us, they’re violent. Who does that sound like? It sounds like us.”

In 2024, the Pentagon released hundreds of reports of unidentified and unexplained aerial phenomena. However, that review gave no indications that their origins were extraterrestrial.

Debbie Dmytro points to the spot where she first saw four silent golden lights flying low in the sky in 2023, in Royal Oak, Mich., as she poses for a photo, March 24. AP-Yonhap

On two separate occasions, Debbie Dmytro saw things in the sky over Michigan’s southern Oakland County. The greenish object Dmytro says she saw March 1 in the sky over Royal Oak, Michigan, looked like neither plane nor helicopter. Dmytro, a 56-year-old medical professional, acknowledges that it could have been some type of commercial or delivery drone.

What she saw in 2023 in the same general area north of Detroit is not so easily explained.

“Four yellow lights, yellowish golden lights and they were all flying very, very low,” Dmytro remembers. She says the lights were about 100 feet (30 meters) up at their nearest.

“I’ve never seen anything so low without any noise and flying in complete uniformity,” she says. “Is it something man-made? Is it something that’s not manmade? Who knows?”

A sign directs travelers to the "1947 UFO Crash Site Tours" in Roswell, N.M., June 10, 1997. AP-Yonhap

Who knows indeed? UFOs, the term for unidentified flying objects, has in recent years given way to UAP — unidentified aerial phenomena or unidentified anomalous phenomena.

“Absolutely, there are such things” as UAPs and UFOs, says Diamond, whose SETI — Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — seeks to explore, search and understand the nature of life and intelligence in the universe.

“People observe things in the sky that they can’t immediately identify or recognize as either human engineering such as planes or drones or helicopters, or animals, such as birds, and therefore they don’t know what they are," Diamond says.

Time for the truth

Like so many, Dmytro wants to know what the government knows. “I think there’s more information out there. I’m open to learning more,” she says. “I have an open mind. It’s always about scientific proof.”

This image from a 2015 video provided by the Department of Defense and labelled, "Gimbal," shows an unexplained object being tracked as it soars high along the clouds against the wind. AP-Yonhap

Retired Rear Adm. Timothy Gallaudet says evidence clearly shows there are UAP zipping around the airspace and in the oceans.

“The nonhuman intelligence that operates them or controls them are absolutely real,” Gallaudet says. “We’ve recovered crashed craft. We don’t know if they’re extraterrestrial in origin."

Gallaudet worked as acting administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He participated in a 2024 congressional hearing on UAP disclosure and says the release of government files promised by Trump is something people find of interest. He just hopes the president follows through.

There are billions of galaxies in the universe and each has billions of stars, so the likelihood life developed elsewhere is fairly high, according to University of Michigan Astronomy Professor Edwin Bergin, who teaches about looking for life elsewhere. He believes that if intelligent beings navigated vast distances to reach Earth they would make themselves known — despite humanity’s penchant for creating chaos.

“I would think that they would look at us like we were crazy ... but they would come out," he says. "I mean, why come here otherwise unless you’re going to sit and observe.”

Loeb, director of the Institute for Theory & Computation at Harvard and head of the university's Galileo Project for the Systematic Scientific Search for Evidence of Extraterrestrial Technological Artifacts, believes in the likely existence of extraterrestrials.

Attendees playfully wear tin foil hats at the Edinburg UFO Festival, in Edinburg, Texas, April 5, 2024. AP-Yonhap

“They might be laughing at us,” he says. "They might be watching us ... to make sure we will not become predators, that we will not become dangerous to them.”

In the interest of national security

Much of the government’s secrecy around UFOs and UAP is tied to national security concerns, according to Diamond.

“We have pretty advanced technologies, satellite, ground-based that are for various purposes mostly national security and defense that are pointing at the sky or things on board aircraft,” Diamond says. “Sometimes these pick up objects. The technology behind it is sensitive and protected.”

Government data, including a “trove ” of UAP video the Navy is sitting on, should be shared with scientists for research and a better understanding of the characteristics of the objects, says Gallaudet, who spent 32 years in the Navy and viewed classified UAP video.

“When you look at these things in our airspace having near collisions with our aircraft, that’s a real valid concern,” he says. “We are just not sure of what they are and what they intend to do with their interaction with humanity. That could be a national security threat, or not."

“When has ignorance ever been a good national strategy?" Gallaudet asks. "Whether it be scary, harmful or not, or a mix, I think seeking the truth is in our best interest.”

Meanwhile, Diamond doesn't think any “true alien encounter could be kept secret.”

“If any civilization has mastered interstellar travel, they have technology and capabilities beyond our wildest comprehension,” he says. “If they want to interact, they will; if they don’t, they won’t. If they want to be seen, they will be, and if not, they won’t be!”

 Trump tells Pentagon to release files on UFOs and "alien and extraterrestrial life"

Joe Walsh
Thu, February 19, 2026 



President Trump on Thursday directed his administration to release files on UFOs and any "alien and extraterrestrial life," an issue that has drawn decades of public fascination — and spawned more than a few wild theories.

In a Truth Social post, the president told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other agency heads "to begin the process of identifying and releasing" any relevant files.

Mr. Trump also called for the release of "any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters."

It's not clear what files on UFOs might be released — or what information they might contain. The Pentagon has tracked reports of what it calls unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, for decades. But the military said in a 2024 report there's no evidence that any government investigation into UAPs has confirmed the existence of extraterrestrial life.

Mr. Trump's announcement came just days after one of his predecessors, former President Barack Obama, made waves by telling a podcaster that aliens are real. He later clarified that he never saw evidence of contact between humans and extraterrestrial life during his time in the White House, and he primarily believes that extraterrestrial life is real because "statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there."

Asked Thursday about Obama's comments, Mr. Trump told reporters he isn't sure whether or not aliens exist, but added that the former president "made a big mistake" and "gave classified information."

"I may get him out of trouble by declassifying," Mr. Trump said.

Public interest in UAPs has grown in recent years. Pilots and military service members have reported spotting hundreds of unexplained objects in the sky, leading some lawmakers to press the Pentagon to investigate the phenomena and determine whether they pose a threat to safety or national security.

Last year, one House Republican released a whistleblower video of a U.S. missile striking an unidentified glowing orb in the sky and bouncing off it. And in another case, a former Navy pilot told "60 Minutes" about frequent sightings of strange, fast-moving objects in restricted airspace.

A large number of UAP reports can be explained by birds, balloons, drones, satellites and other everyday phenomena, according to the military's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. But many cases remain unresolved.

"It is important to underscore that, to date, AARO has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology," the office said in a 2024 report. The office also noted that it has "no indication or confirmation that these activities are attributable to foreign adversaries."

Trump Makes UFO Announcement as Seth Meyers Predicted He Would After Epstein Revelations

Michael Luciano

MEDIAITE
Thu, February 19, 2026 


President Trump announced the release of government files on unidentified aerial phenomena and potential alien life, following predictions made by late-night host Seth Meyers.




President Donald Trump announced that he will order his administration to release files about unidentified aerial phenomena and potential alien life. The announcement comes after late-night host Seth Meyers predicted seven months ago that the president would make a declaration about UFOs to distract from revelations about Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump received a wave of bad press in July, as The Wall Street Journal reported that he sent Epstein, the deceased child sex trafficker convicted in 2008, a lewd birthday message in 2003. The message contained a fictional cryptic dialogue written inside a drawing of a woman’s torso. The president denies writing the message and is suing the Journal, which also highlighted a 2002 interview in which Trump called Epstein a “terrific guy.”

Two days later on July 23, 2025, the Journal reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi told the president that his name appears in the Justice Department’s files on Epstein.

“Whatever is in those Epstein files must be really f*cking bad,” Meyers said on the July 24 episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers. “They must be finding so many mentions of Trump, they’re going to have to change the name to the Trump files featuring Jeffrey Epstein. They’re so desperate to distract everyone.”

The comedian added, “I honestly think we’re just one Epstein story away from Trump announcing that UFOs are real.”

Eventually, the Justice Department released some of its files about Epstein, even though Congress passed a law in November compelling the release of all the material, with only victims’ names to be redacted. Even so, the DOJ did redact portions of the files that went beyond names and images of victims.

Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing or knowing about Epstein’s illegal activities. On Tuesday, he claimed he had “nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein.”

On Thursday, the president announced he would release documents about UFOs, writing on Truth Social:

Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters. GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Earlier in the day, Trump accused former President Barack Obama revealed classified information by claiming that aliens exist. Obama later walked back the comment, stating that he saw no evidence of aliens, but believes they could exist, given the vastness of the universe.

The government releasing material about UFOs and potential alien life is nothing new. Multiple presidential administrations have disclosed all manner of reports, videos, and testimony on the subject. Moreover, Congress has held hearings on the matter, which have yielded little in the way of proving aliens exist.

GOP Rebel Says New Trump Bombshell Is a Desperate Distraction

Ewan Palmer
Fri, February 20, 2026


Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Rep. Thomas Massie has accused President Donald Trump of desperately trying to distract from the Jeffrey Epstein files by directing the government to release information about alien life.

The Kentucky Republican, who spearheaded efforts to force the Department of Justice to release all documents linked to the late pedophile, accused the administration of deploying the “ultimate weapon of mass distraction” with the announcement.

“But the Epstein files aren’t going away… even for aliens,” Massie posted on X.

Thomas Massie has been a nemesis of Donald Trump for several years. / Anadolu / Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

The 79-year-old president posted on Truth Social late Thursday that he is directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon, and other relevant government agencies to release all files related to “alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).”

Trump said the announcement comes after “tremendous interest shown” in the question of whether extraterrestrial life exists. Last weekend, former President Barack Obama caused a stir after claiming on a podcast that aliens are “real,” but that he personally has not seen them.

“They’re not being kept in, what is it? Area 51. There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” he added.

Obama later clarified that he was suggesting that, “statistically,” it is likely that there is some form of life somewhere else in the universe, given how vast it is.

“But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens are low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us,” Obama posted on Instagram. “Really!”

Trump accused Obama of disclosing “classified information” with his comments about the existence of aliens.

“I don’t know if they’re real or not,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday. “I may get him out of trouble by declassifying.”

The Trump administration has been widely condemned for its handling of the Epstein files.

Massie’s and Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna’s Epstein Files Transparency Act directed the Department of Justice to release all its files connected to Epstein, who died in 2019, by Dec. 19, 2025.

The DOJ has released more than 3 million files related to Epstein, while acknowledging that nearly 3 million more were being withheld for various reasons, including ongoing cases and the sensitive nature of some materials.

Donald Trump is mentioned in the Epstein files hundreds of times, although the president denies being aware about his former close friend's child sex crimes. / Davidoff Studios/Getty Images

“The DOJ said it identified over 6m potentially responsive pages but is releasing only about 3.5m after review and redactions,” Khanna said in a January statement following the latest release. Khanna believes that “hundreds of thousands of emails and files” from Epstein’s computers are still to be made public.

Several Trump officials cheered on his “weapon of mass distraction” after he ordered the release of files on aliens and UFOs.

In a post on X, Hegseth shared Trump’s social media announcement with alien and saluting-face emojis.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt praised the move as “OUT OF THIS WORLD NEWS.”

Newsmax Reporter Asks Karoline Leavitt Point-Blank: ‘Does the Trump Administration Believe Aliens Are Real?’

Zachary Leeman
Wed, February 18, 2026
 Mediaite

Key takeawaysPowered by Yahoo Scout. Yahoo is using AI to generate key points from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about President Trump's beliefs on aliens after Lara Trump hinted at a prepared speech on the subject.See more

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked on Wednesday whether President Donald Trump believes aliens are “real” or not after his daughter-in-law teased a speech on the subject.

Newsmax’s Mike Carter noted at a White House press briefing that former President Barack Obama recently made waves by saying aliens are “real,” and Lara Trump suggested her father-in-law has a speech on aliens prepared.

“President Barack Obama, Karoline, was recently asked if aliens are real. He says they’re real, but he hasn’t seen them. President’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, told Miranda Devine of the New York Post that the president has a prepared speech on this issue that he prepares to deliver at the right time. Is that true, and does the Trump administration believe aliens are real?” Carter asked.

Leavitt said any such speech existing would be news to her.

“Well, a speech on aliens would be news to me. That sounds very exciting though. I’ll have to check in with our speechwriting team. And that would be of great interest to me personally, and I’m sure all of you in this room, and apparently former President Obama too. So we’ll keep you posted on that,” she said.

Lara Trump said this week that she believes her father-in-law will be discussing aliens in depth “at the right time.”

“Then I have just heard just kind of around — I think he’s actually said it, I think my father-in-law actually said it — that there is some speech that I guess at the right time, and I don’t know when the right time is, he’s gonna break out and talk about [it]. And it has to do with maybe some sort of extraterrestrial life, so to speak,” she said.

Obama released his own statement clarifying comments he made in an interview stating that aliens are “real,” but professing to have never seen them.

“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify,” Obama wrote. “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us.”

Lara Trump reveals president has speech pre-written to announce the discovery of alien life after Obama claim

Isabel Keane
Wed, February 18, 2026 

Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, says the president has a speech pre-written and is ready to address the discovery of aliens.

Lara, 43, made the shocking claim in an episode of the New York Post’s Pod Force One podcast, published Wednesday, after she was asked about former President Barack Obama's apparent confirmation that aliens are real during an interview last weekend.

“I believe I’ve heard on your podcast that you’ve discussed with the president these UFOs. Do you think that he’s about to make an announcement about UFOs, because President Obama was just on a podcast talking about how he believes in UFOs and hinting that he saw something when he was president?” host Miranda Devine asked.

“What’s kind of funny is we’ve kind of asked my father-in-law about this cause we’re like, ‘Well, what do you know?...”Lara began.

However, the president reportedly “played a little coy” when she and her husband, his son, Eric Trump, inquired about the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

“Eric and I were like, ‘Oh my gosh, he won’t even fully tell us, maybe there’s more to it,’” she said.

“I have just heard kind of around that he’s actually said, my father-in-law has actually said it, that there is some speech that he has, that I guess at the right time...I don’t know what the right time is...that he is going to break out and talk about, and it has to do with maybe some sort of extraterrestrial life, so to speak,” Lara added.

Her comments come as Obama made a stunning admission over the weekend during an appearance on the No Lie With Brian Tyler Cohen podcast.

When asked about extraterrestrials, Obama replied, “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in — what is it? There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.”

The Internet went wild over his admission that aliens are real, prompting the former commander-in-chief to take to Instagram to clarify his stance.

“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it’s gotten attention let me clarify,” the former president wrote. “Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there.”

Barack Obama confidently said that aliens are real during an appearance on a podcast this past weekend (Getty)

“But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us,” he continued,

Doubling down on his claim, he added, “Really!”

Its long been speculated by many that aliens and UFOs are hidden at the mysterious Area 51 base in southern Nevada — and a documentary released last year suggested that Trump may soon confirm the existence of other life forms.

In The Age of Disclosure, director Dan Farah suggests that a massive government cover-up operation has concealed the existence of non-human intelligence, but that the cover-up will soon be exposed.

“I think it's only a matter of time before the release of this film is followed by a sitting president stepping to the podium and telling the world, ‘We're not alone in the universe,’” Farah told Entertainment Weekly in late November.

“It's the most significant moment a leader could possibly have.”

Despite Farah’s claims, Trump has not yet shared a definitive answer about the existence of aliens since returning to office.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for UAP

Not in My Jewish Name: From Israel’s (perpetual) Crimes Against Humanity to Slandering Ms. Rachel

Plus an excursion into other current manifestations of state-sanctioned criminality and mendacity

by Phil Rockstroh / December 11th, 2025

A tragic canard of history — i.e., the assertion: “Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people; therefore, we Jews have the right to return and establish a Jewish ethno-supremacist state.”

Only by a literal reading — i.e., cracked-brained — of Old Testament mythos can we Jews claim to be the people G-d choose to [ethnically cleanse] the Levant.

DNA analysis proves the Jews of the Torah are, wait for it, the Palestinian people (and that would include a certain rabble-rousing, empire-agitating rabbi known as Jesus of Nazareth). In contrast, my Jewish DNA reveals, my ancestors origins are from Europe e.g., Germany, France, Spain, Greece, with 4% traced to northern Iran and Iraq.

Thus we can conclude the “Israel is the ancestral homeland of the Jews” canard should be regarded as flat out, Flat Earth theory-level risible.

Conceived in lie Zionist perpetual crimes against humanity continue unabated:

A journalist and former detainee, identified as “Yahya” reports, during his year and ten month of incarceration in Sde Teiman prison, he was subjected to torture by electrocution, being beaten, starved, and was the victim of sexual assaults that were filmed by his jailers.

Yahya went on to relate he was sexually assaulted by a dog trained to inflict the act.

Yet Ms. Rachel is accused of all forms of depravity, including “blood libel,” by defenders of Israel — a crime against humanity disguised as a nation.

May be an image of child and text that says ‘PET ES RECYCLE > Meeting Rahaf from Gaza'”

These are the people, when I, as a Jewish person, object to the conflation of Zionism and Judaism, hiss I am a self-loathing Jew and I am committing an act of treason against my tribe.

Truth be told: if I acted as an apologist for Israel, doing so would amount to an act of treason against my soul and I would loathe myself as I made the utterance.

Update from the annals of the “most moral army on earth.”

A CNN investigation has revealed the IDF opened fire on starving Palestinians while they were desperately attempting to secure flour in Gaza. Then the IDF used bulldozers to bury their corpses in mass graves.

Their deaths were not chronicled, nor was the location of their bodies disclosed to their families.

According to the UN, since the US-brokered “ceasefire” in Gaza, the Israelis have slaughtered an estimated 360 Palestinians (and counting).

The above, since the establishment of Israel, has been the Zionist state’s conception of peace. Moreover, any act of retaliation or even resistance by Palestinians are termed as acts of terrorism.

In the late 1930s, the Gestapo entered my family’s home, arrested my grandfather, and imprisoned him in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. If he and his fellow prisoners had escaped and fought their way through the streets of Berlin, the Nazi regime would have termed them terrorists — yet history would have lauded them as heroes.

This is the context of the Palestinian struggle from 1948 to the Oct. 7 Gaza prison breakout. The response of the Zionist state: a rampage of collective punishment.

By the standards of international law, a flagrant war crime; by Israeli standards — the modus operandi of Zionist tyranny.

As brazen as SS (Schutzstaffel) officers who wore death-head skulls on their uniforms and US Jim Crow era Klansmen prone to brandishing lynching nooses, Ben-Gvir, Israeli Minister of National Security, Culture Minister Amichai Eliyahu, and other devotees to the radical right-wing death cult, masquerading as the Israeli government, have taken to affixing golden noose-pins to their lapels expressing their call for Palestinian detainees from Gaza be executed.

All as:

“An elderly woman and her son were among at least seven Palestinians killed in the latest Israeli attacks in Gaza, as the military continues to operate across the “yellow line” ceasefire demarcation.

“Health officials reported the killings on Saturday in Beit Lahiya, Jabalia, and Zeitoun, including a 70-year-old woman and her son, who were hunted down and killed by a drone in Gaza City.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said the woman and her son were chased by a quadcopter drone about one kilometre [half a mile] from the yellow line and “left there to bleed to death” as the aircraft continued hovering overhead, preventing anyone from reaching them.”

Yet Israel’s apologists bristle and insist on their perpetual victimhood because the world views their genocidal rampage through Gaza and observers posit the mindset of all too many Israelis is analogous to that evinced by racist sorehead denizens of the Jim Crow ruled US Deep South and the blood-drenched actions of the Israeli government are Third Reich adjacent.

The conduct of the Zionist state is an affront to the memory of my relatives who perished in the flames of The Shoah. Israel defenders, to their shame, represent a whole new bloc of Holocaust denialists.

Yet, through the horror of it all, the world has witnessed the true nature of the Zionist ethno-supremacist state: i.e., a perpetual crime against humanity disguised as a nation.

All the Zionist hasbara lies, including social media trolling as a national enterprise, will not cause the world to forget what we have witnessed. And the Israeli citizenry senses the fact. A recent poll reports: 40 percent of Israelis are considering or making plans to leave the country.

Personally, I will welcome them if they come in the spirit of repentance.

More from The Department of Not In My Name

Zionists are attempting to bulldoze the reality of their lawless actions, to bury the people of the world’s awareness of the massive crimes against humanity Israel perpetrates, from Gaza to the West Bank, and outward towards their neighbors in the region — rather than face the reality that Zionism, the dream of an ethno-supremacist state, has been manifested as the blood-drenched, waking-life nightmare that it is.

Israel’s apologists, relentlessly, attempt to whitewash away the nation’s perpetual transgressions by means of the proliferation of propaganda and character assassination with the soul-defying agenda of imposing censorship and intimidate critics into silence.

Withal, a comment/threat made by a Zionist troll on a recent post of mine on the subject:

From Vincent ******* “We are noticing you. Never again. #noticing Jew-haters”

I replied, “can you say that with a World Two era, Hollywood movie German accent to achieve its full effect?”

Speaking of acting in a Third Reich-adjacent manner, from the fascist-minded homefront, Donald Trump is demanding stripping US citizenship from individuals who refuse to swear absolute fealty to the tenets of what he terms: “Western Civilization.”

Quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi when asked what he thought of Western Civilization:

“I think it would be a good idea [if they tried it].” [A disputed quotation. — DV ed]

Withal, the US (a nation established in ethnic cleansing, slavery and genocide) has slaughtered over 4 million people of the Islamic faith since the early 1990s alone. Israel, a de facto Western nation, remains committed to ethnic cleansing and genocide, and the funds and weaponry to do so are supplied by the West.

Masked ICE thugs patrol US streets. The economic elite serially exploit all their greedhead minds survey, from the resources of the cupidity tormented earth to the bodies of teenage girls and women from power-devoid economic groups. As, all the while, rents, medical care, utilities, and food prices rise and rise when life’s necessities, in a civilized society, would be a birthright not a privilege of the few.

Yes, I agree with Mahatma Gandhi, we, in the West — where we have been brainwashed to believe our capitalist-imposed shackles are the very wings of liberty — should give civilization a go.

What else is on the minds of the civilized men of Western civilization?

Trump and his Heinrich Himmler toy soldier appointees to the US Department of War (Crimes) are careening towards an attempt at a military smash-and-grab of Venezuelan oil.

I thought I had witnessed the nadir of jingoistic stupid and soul-shriveling political class arrogance in the run up to the Bush-Cheney administration’s war of aggression waged against the people of Iraq. How could I have suffered from such pathology-based-optimism?

By any measure of sentience the history of imperial fuckery would serve to warn us off such a dance with catastrophe — in buying into such a dismal display of war mongering prevarication — such a psychopathic lust for mayhem and mass death.

The guiding god of empire (including the US imperium’s client state, Israel, is: Moloch, a God to whom the innocent are sacrificed. In modern imperium, his blood-crazed devotees, knowing his thirst is insatiable, proffer him libations of blood and oil.

Pete Hegseth insists his god is Jesus Christ but his guiding god is Moloch. This is the reason Hegseth does not, in any manner, regard the declarations of the Christian Messiah, The Prince Of Peace, blesser of the meek and peacemakers, Jesus Christ — who would demand of Tipplin’ Pete the question:

Why did God, the all-knowing Father, place the United States’ god-given oil beneath Venezuela’s commie soil?

Trump et al. are the emblems, in shambling human form, of the personality types i.e., one-dimensional, greed-crazed maniacs — human embodiments of the Second Law Of Thermodynamics — who cause the collapse of over-extended, corrupt-to-the-core empires.

Tragically, the remedy for the pathology of End Stage Empire is: the doubling down of said End Stage Empire by the dim and dismal machinations of belligerently obtuse imbeciles.

In this manner, Trump and his klavern of fools and tools have heard and are heeding the call of history.

Further dispatches from the realm of government-squatting fools:

The news has been “disclosed” by National Security State “whistleblower” insiders that “alien technology,” in the form of downed UAP/UFO craft and the remains of “nonhuman biologics” are in the (greed-rancid) hands of Military Industrial Complex (war) profiteers.

Of course, like a hammer that sees the world as an endless series of nails, these militaristic minded characters, straight out of a combination of Dr. Strangelove and Plan 9 From Outer Space, are warning us to watch the skies, and “be afraid, be very afraid!”

If we were not perpetually afraid, NSS and MIC types would be out of a job, wouldn’t they?

Think it through: If aliens possessed the tech they are purported to have, they could have blasted our species of bipedal, grifting ne’er-do-wells and genocidal knuckleheads to cosmic shitdust long ago and in an instant.

Same type of Big Lie storyline being deployed towards Venezuela — i.e., “narcotrafficking” Venezuelan fisherman, for the sake of US national security, must be bombed then survivors of the initial assault are to be “double-tapped” bombed.

Will we next be subject to official narratives reporting that UFO-manning aliens are the actual party delivering fentanyl to the decaying precincts of the collapsing republic?

If super intelligent aliens regard us at all, I suspect, it would be with the annoyance that we regard raccoons prone to upend garbage containers scattering the contents across the yard, albeit we humans, with our ecocidal, genocidal, and war making proclivities cannot be regarded as, in any manner, cute.

Consider this, the beauty and terror of it, at times, must be regard from what the poet Wallace Stevens termed to “central mind” of poetic imagination:

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,

We make a dwelling in the evening air,

In which being there together is enough. Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour, Wallace Stevens

As US empire, the global neoliberal order, and the Zionist state are falling apart — so are we.

We have been in service to a dictatorship of money, to a gangster imperium, and we are held and buffeted by the caprice of a soul-defying despotism that will kill what it cannot dominate.

Through it all, we are all storytellers conjuring tales of what isn’t and what has never existed. We are a fiction of possibilities, most of the latter being improbable.

How real is the tangible world that is invisible to us given its hidden-from-us order? Real enough to prove to us that it is us that must be regarded as unreal.

I am an ad hoc contrivance of myself. Only by surrendering to the implausible can I conjure a serviceable face to meet the day and to possess a modicum of plausibility I must allow myself to be transformed by the inchoate counsel of Impossible Angels.

You might not know it but, I suspect, the same goes for you.

Bear the above in mind as the world (we only believe) we know continues to fall apart.

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Phil Rockstroh is a poet, lyricist, and essayist. His poems, short fiction, poetry and essays have been published in numerous print publications and anthologies; his political essays have been widely posted on the progressive/left side of the internet.  Read other articles by Phil, or visit Phil's website.