Jeffrey Epstein's Secret War Against Iran

Inside the emails that reveal Epstein’s covert crusade against Iran.

On the morning of August 10, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein was found unresponsive in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. The infamous JEwish financier and convicted sex offender was transported in cardiac arrest to New York Downtown Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:39 a.m. He was 66 years old. The circumstances of his death remain hotly contested to this day.

But while the world has fixated on Epstein’s crimes against young women and his web of powerful connections, another dimension of his life remained largely unexplored until recently. Leaked emails released by the Handala hacking group (an Iranian-linked collective) and documents from the U.S. House Oversight Committee in November 2025 have revealed something extraordinary.

Jeffrey Epstein was not merely a socialite predator. He was a shadow diplomat, a backroom operator, and a relentless advocate for military confrontation with Iran.

At the center of Epstein’s geopolitical machinations stood Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister and decorated military commander. The relationship between these two men defies easy categorization. Between 2013 and 2016, the pair engaged in what Drop Site News described as “intimate, oftentimes daily correspondence” spanning political strategy, business dealings, and their shared obsession with neutralizing the Iranian threat.

The leaked emails paint a portrait of Epstein as a tireless asset of world Jewry. Here was a man who could summon Larry Summers for dinner briefings on Middle Eastern geopolitics, who traded messages with Noam Chomsky about the Iran nuclear deal, and who maintained a direct line to one of Israel’s most powerful former leaders. Epstein moved through the corridors of power with the ease of a man who understood that in Washington and Tel Aviv, access is everything.

In February 2013, Epstein emailed Summers seven articles about Middle Eastern geopolitics to prepare for a briefing. The top article was a Wall Street Journal op-ed arguing that Iranian leadership was fundamentally unserious about nuclear negotiations and merely buying time to develop weapons. The subject line referenced “prep for dinner, israel pres briefing,” an apparent allusion to then-Israeli President Shimon Peres, who was a longtime friend of Summers and who allegedly introduced Barak to Epstein in the first place.

Epstein’s position on Iran was crystalline in its clarity. He despised the diplomatic approach. He mocked those who believed Tehran could be reasoned with. And he pushed, again and again, for the United States to take kinetic action against Iran.

In August 2013, when Bashar al-Assad’s forces were accused by Western governments of unleashing chemical weapons on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, Epstein saw an opportunity. He immediately emailed Barak, urging him to write an op-ed connecting Syria to the larger Iranian question. “I would use the opportunity to compare it with Iran,” Epstein wrote, his characteristic misspellings intact. “The solutions become more compelx with time not less.”

Then came the revelation of his true ambitions. “Hopefully someone suggests getting authorization now for Iran,” he wrote to Barak. “The congress woudl do it.”

Epstein had developed a pet phrase for critiquing American foreign policy, one he returned to obsessively. “Wait until it’s too late.” He told Barak that he saw this as the defining failure of Western statecraft. “I really like the Wait until its too Late, to be your critiqe of the communities foreign policy...”

When the Obama administration achieved what it considered its signature foreign policy triumph in April 2015, reaching an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program, Epstein and Barak were united in their contempt.

Barak penned an op-ed for TIME magazine titled “Iran Has Escaped a Noose.” In it, he argued that only crushing sanctions and credible military threats could restrain Tehran—standing in sharp contrast to the Obama administration’s more diplomatic approach.. He proposed a “surgical strike” on Iranian nuclear facilities that would set the Islamic Republic “five years backward” and deter future violations.

Epstein received this article and discussed it approvingly with Barak. The two men had found common cause in their conviction that American diplomacy was naive at best and dangerous at worst.

The intellectual game-playing extended further. Barak sent Epstein videos of Bill Clinton discussing North Korea’s 1994 nuclear deal, titled “Bill Clinton on Virtues of North Korean Nuclear Deal – History Repeats Itself.” The implication was clear. Just as North Korea had exploited diplomatic agreements to eventually develop nuclear weapons, so too would Iran.

Even with Donald Trump in the White House — a president who ultimately abandoned the Iran nuclear deal — Epstein remained unsatisfied. His correspondence with Steve Bannon from 2018 to 2019 reveals mounting paranoia that Washington might soften toward Tehran.

When Iranian President Hassan Rouhani won re-election in May 2017, Epstein lamented the result. “I told you this would happen,” he wrote to Bannon. “It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better.”

In one exchange, Bannon mentioned he was “all over Iran.” Epstein replied with what may be his most memorable assessment: “They are very very bad guys. Patient smart spread Shia.”

July 2018 provided a momentary high. When Trump made global headlines with an all-caps threat against Iran’s president, Epstein was giddy. He messaged Bannon, “Trump threatened Iran ;)”

But the following night, when Trump said the U.S. was “ready to make a real deal” with Tehran, Epstein’s excitement collapsed into contempt. He called it “nuts.”

Epstein’s obsession with Iran fed into a larger framework of fears, especially regarding China’s expanding footprint on the world stage.

In September 2018, he told Bannon that French contacts believed China was adopting a global “imperialistic strategy.” As proof, Epstein cited China’s growing presence in Iran, Venezuela, and Djibouti. For Epstein, Iran was not a standalone threat but a key node in China’s broader geopolitical ambitions.

Understanding Epstein’s unyielding hostility toward Iran requires a closer look at his underlying worldview and entrenched loyalties. A man of Jewish extraction, he consistently directed his wealth toward prominent Jewish institutions and pro-Israel causes.

Tax filings show he gave $500,000 to the Ramaz School, an elite Orthodox Jewish institution in Manhattan. He contributed $50,000 to the UJA-Federation in 2017. His foundation donated $25,000 to Friends of the IDF in 2005. Alongside Leslie Wexner, he bankrolled a new building for Harvard Hillel.

These were not casual donations. They reflected a sustained investment in institutions aligned with Israeli security and Jewish communal life. With Iran threatening Israel through Hezbollah, Hamas, and constant rhetorical aggression, Epstein’s hawkishness becomes more comprehensible. To him, confronting Iran was not only geopolitics — it was ideology and identity.

The Iranian government itself entered the conversation after the revelations of Epstein’s email correspondence. On November 3, 2025, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baqaei commented that the leaked emails revealed “the moral decay of Iran’s enemies.” He added: “A man guilty of human trafficking symbolizes the corruption of those who lecture others on human rights.”

The irony is stark. The man who wanted the U.S. to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities was himself a sexual predator. His geopolitical scheming — his cultivation of prime ministers, intellectuals, and presidential advisors — unfolded alongside his exploitation of the vulnerable.

Jeffrey Epstein wanted to shape the Middle East. He pushed relentlessly for war with Iran. He moved in the shadows of statecraft, influencing elites from Manhattan to Tel Aviv. And although he died before facing complete accountability for his crimes, the emails he left behind expose a man whose ambitions stretched far beyond depravity.

Epstein may be gone, but the shadow he cast over U.S. foreign policy is still very much alive in a Trump administration that is actively pursuing a radical Zionist agenda that would make the neocons of yesteryear blush.

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