By Jonathan Cook: For
decades, the United States and Israel have stuck closely to their
respective, scripted roles in the Middle East: the job of good cop and
bad cop.
The charade has continued despite Washington’s active participation in Israel’s 25-month slaughter of Gaza’s people – and a dawning realisation among ever-larger sections of western publics that they have been duped.
Here is my first prediction of 2026: this law enforcement role-playing is going to continue even after the Trump administration’s outrageously illegal abduction of Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, at the weekend, and Trump’s admission that the US attack was about grabbing the country’s oil.

