Meet the General Who Was Told of the U.S. Plan to Attack 7 Muslim Countries After 9/11

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Cite

Hasan, M. (2026, September 11). Meet the General Who Was Told of the U.S. Plan to Attack 7 Muslim Countries After 9/11. Zeteo. https://zeteo.com/p/meet-the-general-who-was-told-of-us-attack-7-muslim-countries

Dated when The Aporia collected the article, usually within hours of publication. Check the original for its exact date and byline.

Zeteo · collected 2026-09-11 · by Mehdi Hasan commentary

Quick Summary

Former General Wesley Clark was informed at the Pentagon that the Bush administration planned to attack seven Middle Eastern countries in five years, including Iraq and Iran, after the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. has since attacked five of these countries. In a conversation with Mehdi, Clark also discusses his opposition to the 2003 Iraq invasion but support for the 2001 Afghanistan invasion, as well as his views on the "War on Terror" and its impact on the US. The interview was part of Zeteo's special week-long coverage of 9/11's 25th anniversary.
Written locally by qwen2.5:14b on 2026-09-11, using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the same event (that is the story summary below).

AI analysis runs on qwen2.5:14b, locally

Story summary

On the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, New York City's first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani, faces controversy over his decision to attend memorial events despite calls from some victims' families and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani for him to stay away. Mamdani, who lost an older brother in the attacks, insists on honoring those affected by reading out names at Ground Zero. Meanwhile, nearly 110,000 signatures have been collected through a petition urging Mamdani not to attend, citing concerns over his past associations and appointments that some see as conflicting with the solemnity of the event. Despite this opposition, Mamdani is moving forward with plans to release more than 170,000 pages of documents related to air quality around Ground Zero in the months following 9/11, aiming to provide transparency on what the city knew about toxic conditions and how they handled it.

Written for “9/11 Memorial Controversies” on 2026-10-27, grounded in this article and the 169 other(s) covering the same event.

Story

📰 9/11 Memorial Controversies
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Compared with similar articles

This article reads unscored and hedges 0% of its claims. Each row says how that neighbour differs.
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How this article was measured signals, leaning charts, publisher record, byline, topics and claims

Signals How these are calculated →

Claims extracted
7
sentences that state something as happening or true
Uncertain
0%
0 of 7 hedged ("reportedly", "may", "according to")
Leaning
withheld
no quote in the article backed the model's score
Publisher signals
not measured
these signals count newsroom corrections; Commentary has none to count
Outlets on this story
170
Politics
Same framing elsewhere
1
articles that frame the event the way this one does
Analyzed 2026-09-11 · how these are computed

How this is being covered How these are calculated →

Article leaning vs. publisher reliability
Source leaning vs. consistency

Publisher

Zeteo · 201 article(s) · 0 correction(s) detected
No corrections detected for this publisher. That may mean careful reporting, or simply that nothing has been checked.

Who wrote this

Mehdi Hasan
21 article(s) here · 0 carrying a prediction
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Nothing else under this byline is closely related to this article, so these are simply their most recent.
All 21 articles by Mehdi Hasan →

Topics

9/11 Iran Iraq U.S. Zeteo

Subjects

U.S. GPE · 6× Mehdi PERSON · 4× Iran GPE · 3× Zeteo PERSON · 3× Clark PERSON · 2× Iraq GPE · 2× America GPE · 1× Bush PERSON · 1× Middle Eastern NORP · 1× Pentagon ORG · 1×

Narrative

In this insightful and, at times, heated conversation, Mehdi asks General Clark: How he found out about the U.S.’s plans to attack the Middle East after 9/11 Why he was an outspoken critic of the 2003 Iraq invasion but supported the 2001 Afghanistan invasion Whether he believes the ‘War on Terror’ was a defeat for the U.S. Why he supports the war on Iran today and how he defines ‘success’ His affiliation with Iranian cult and controversial opposition group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s dangerous purging of the top ranks of the U.S. military. Paid subscribers can watch the full conversation above, in which Mehdi challenges Clark on the U.S. killing of civilians in Iran, while free subscribers can access a four-minute preview.
framing: assertive · carried by 1 article(s) · first seen 2026-09-11
2026-09-11 · Zeteo
Meet the General Who Was Told of the U.S. Plan to Attack 7 Muslim Countries After 9/11 · assertive framing

Claims (7 extracted, 0 hedged)

Note from our Editor-in-Chief: Friday marks 25 years since the horrific attacks on September 11, 2001. asserted
Friday → mark → September
It’s been 25 years since 9/11, which also means 25 years of the so-called global “War on Terror.” asserted
which → mean → Terror
But did you know that in the weeks following the attacks, a retired four-star U.S. general went to the Pentagon and was told that the Bush administration was planning to attack seven Middle Eastern countries in the span of just five years? asserted
administration → know → years
Since 9/11, the U.S. has attacked five of those seven countries. asserted
U.S. → attack → countries
That general, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, Wesley Clark, tells Mehdi, “It was clear at the time that we were going to have to do something to Osama bin Laden. asserted
we → tell → Laden
I also knew that we’d been scheming to find a reason to invade and finish off Saddam Hussein.” asserted
we → know → Hussein
In this insightful and, at times, heated conversation, Mehdi asks General Clark: How he found out about the U.S.’s plans to attack the Middle East after 9/11 Why he was an outspoken critic of the 2003 Iraq invasion but supported the 2001 Afghanistan invasion Whether he believes the ‘War on Terror’ was a defeat for the U.S. Why he supports the war on Iran today and how he defines ‘success’ His affiliation with Iranian cult and controversial opposition group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s dangerous purging of the top ranks of the U.S. military. Paid subscribers can watch the full conversation above, in which Mehdi challenges Clark on the U.S. killing of civilians in Iran, while free subscribers can access a four-minute preview. asserted
subscribers → ask → preview
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