radiofree.asia

Category: iran

  • Chris Hedges: Gaza’s Hunger Games – how Israel is weaponising starvation

    ANALYSIS: By Chris Hedges

    Israel’s weaponisation of starvation is how genocides always end.

    I covered the insidious effects of orchestrated starvation in the Guatemalan Highlands during the genocidal campaign of General Efraín Ríos Montt, the famine in southern Sudan that left a quarter of a million dead — I walked past the frail and skeletal corpses of families lining roadsides — and later during the war in Bosnia when Serbs cut off food supplies to enclaves such as Srebrencia and Goražde.

    Starvation was weaponised by the Ottoman Empire to decimate the Armenians. It was used to kill millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomor in 1932 and 1933.

    It was employed by the Nazis against the Jews in the ghettos in the Second World War. German soldiers used food, as Israel does, like bait. They offered three kilograms of bread and one kilogram of marmalade to lure desperate families in the Warsaw Ghetto onto transports to the death camps.

    “There were times when hundreds of people had to wait in line for several days to be ‘deported,’” Marek Edelman writes in The Ghetto Fights. “The number of people anxious to obtain the three kilograms of bread was such that the transports, now leaving twice daily with 12,000 people, could not accommodate them all.”

    And when crowds became unruly, as in Gaza, the German troops fired deadly volleys that ripped through emaciated husks of women, children and the elderly.

    This tactic is as old as warfare itself.

    Ordered to shoot
    The report in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that Israeli soldiers are ordered to shoot into crowds of Palestinians at aid hubs, with 580 killed and 4,216 wounded, is not a surprise. It is the predictable denouement of the genocide, the inevitable conclusion to a campaign of mass extermination.

    Israel, with its targeted assassinations of at least 1400 health care workers, hundreds of United Nations (UN) workers, journalists, police and even poets and academics, its obliteration of multi-story apartment blocks wiping out dozens of families, its shelling of designated “humanitarian zones” where Palestinians huddle under tents, tarps or in the open air, its systematic targeting of UN food distribution centers, bakeries and aid convoys or its sadistic sniper fire that guns down children, long ago illustrated that Palestinians are regarded as vermin worthy only of annihilation.

    The blockade of food and humanitarian aid, imposed on Gaza since March 2, is reducing Palestinians to abject dependence. To eat, they must crawl towards their killers and beg. Humiliated, terrified, desperate for a few scraps of food, they are stripped of dignity, autonomy and agency. This is by intent.

    Yousef al-Ajouri, 40, explained to Middle East Eye his nightmarish journey to one of four aid hubs set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The hubs are not designed to meet the needs of the Palestinians, who once relied on 400 aid distribution sites, but to lure them from northern Gaza to the south.

    Israel, which on Sunday again ordered Palestinians to leave northern Gaza, is steadily expanding its annexation of the coastal strip. Palestinians are corralled like livestock into narrow metal chutes at distribution points which are overseen by heavily armed mercenaries. They receive, if they are one of the fortunate few, a small box of food.

    Al-Ajouri, who before the genocide was a taxi driver, lives with his wife, seven children and his mother and father in a tent in al-Saraya, near the middle of Gaza City. He set out to an aid hub at Salah al-Din Road near the Netzarim corridor, to find some food for his children, who he said cry constantly “because of how hungry they are.”

    On the advice of his neighbour in the tent next to him, he dressed in loose clothing “so that I could run and be agile.” He carried a bag for canned and packaged goods because the crush of the crowds meant “no one was able to carry the boxes the aid came in.”

    Massive crowds
    He left at about 9 pm with five other men “including an engineer and a teacher,” and “children aged 10 and 12.” They did not take the official route designated by the Israeli army. The massive crowds converging on the aid point along the official route ensure that most never get close enough to receive food.

    Instead, they walked in the darkness in areas exposed to Israeli gunfire, often having to crawl to avoid being seen.

    “As I crawled, I looked over, and to my surprise, saw several women and elderly people taking the same treacherous route as us,” he explained. “At one point, there was a barrage of live gunfire all around me. We hid behind a destroyed building. Anyone who moved or made a noticeable motion was immediately shot by snipers.

    “Next to me was a tall, light-haired young man using the flashlight on his phone to guide him. The others yelled at him to turn it off. Seconds later, he was shot. He collapsed to the ground and lay there bleeding, but no one could help or move him. He died within minutes.”

    He passed six bodies along the route who had been shot dead by Israeli soldiers.

    Al-Ajouri reached the hub at 2 am, the designated time for aid distribution. He saw a green light turned on ahead of him which signaled that aid was about to be distributed. Thousands began to run towards the light, pushing, shoving and trampling each other. He fought his way through the crowd until he reached the aid.

    “I started feeling around for the aid boxes and grabbed a bag that felt like rice,” he said. “But just as I did, someone else snatched it from my hands. I tried to hold on, but he threatened to stab me with his knife. Most people there were carrying knives, either to defend themselves or to steal from others.

    Boxes were emptied
    “Eventually, I managed to grab four cans of beans, a kilogram of bulgur, and half a kilogram of pasta. Within moments, the boxes were empty. Most of the people there, including women, children and the elderly, got nothing. Some begged others to share. But no one could afford to give up what they managed to get.”

    The US contractors and Israeli soldiers overseeing the mayhem laughed and pointed their weapons at the crowd. Some filmed with their phones.

    “Minutes later, red smoke grenades were thrown into the air,” he remembered. “Someone told me that it was the signal to evacuate the area. After that, heavy gunfire began. Me, Khalil and a few others headed to al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat because our friend Wael had injured his hand during the journey.

    “I was shocked by what I saw at the hospital. There were at least 35 martyrs lying dead on the ground in one of the rooms. A doctor told me they had all been brought in that same day. They were each shot in the head or chest while queuing near the aid center. Their families were waiting for them to come home with food and ingredients. Now, they were corpses.”

    GHF is a Mossad-funded creation of Israel’s Defense Ministry that contracts with UG Solutions and Safe Reach Solutions, run by former members of the CIA and US Special Forces. GHF is headed by Reverend Johnnie Moore, a far-right Christian Zionist with close ties to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu.

    The organisation has also contracted anti-Hamas drug-smuggling gangs to provide security at aid sites.

    As Chris Gunness, a former spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) told Al Jazeera, GHF is “aid washing,” a way to mask the reality that “people are being starved into submission.”

    Disregarded ICC ruling
    Israel, along with the US and European countries that provide weapons to sustain the genocide, have chosen to disregard the January 2024 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which demanded immediate protection for civilians in Gaza and widespread provision of humanitarian assistance.

    "It's a killing field" claim headline in Ha'aretz newspaper
    “It’s a killing field” says a headline in the Ha’aretz newspaper. Image: Ha’aretz screenshot APR

    Ha’aretz, in its article headlined “‘It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid” reported that Israeli commanders order soldiers to open fire on crowds to keep them away from aid sites or disperse them.

    “The distribution centers typically open for just one hour each morning,” Haaretz writes. “According to officers and soldiers who served in their areas, the IDF fires at people who arrive before opening hours to prevent them from approaching, or again after the centers close, to disperse them. Since some of the shooting incidents occurred at night — ahead of the opening — it’s possible that some civilians couldn’t see the boundaries of the designated area.”

    “It’s a killing field,” one soldier told Ha’aretz. “Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They’re treated like a hostile force — no crowd-control measures, no tear gas — just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

    “We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there’s no danger to the forces,” the soldier explained, “I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire. There’s no enemy, no weapons.”

    He said the deployment at the aid sites is known as “Operation Salted Fish,” a reference to the Israeli name for the children’s game “Red light, green light.” The game was featured in the first episode of the South Korean dystopian thriller Squid Game, in which financially desperate people are killed as they battle each other for money.

    Civilian infrastructure obliterated
    Israel has obliterated the civilian and humanitarian infrastructure in Gaza. It has reduced Palestinians, half a million of whom face starvation, into desperate herds. The goal is to break Palestinians, to make them malleable and entice them to leave Gaza, never to return.

    There is talk from the Trump White House about a ceasefire. But don’t be fooled. Israel has nothing left to destroy. Its saturation bombing over 20 months has reduced Gaza to a moonscape. Gaza is uninhabitable, a toxic wilderness where Palestinians, living amid broken slabs of concrete and pools of raw sewage, lack food and clean water, fuel, shelter, electricity, medicine and an infrastructure to survive.

    The final impediment to the annexation of Gaza are the Palestinians themselves. They are the primary target. Starvation is the weapon of choice.

    Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This article is republished from his X account.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Operation Midnight Hammer: Were Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Damaged?

    The aftermath of Operation Midnight Hammer, a strike by the US Air Force on three nuclear facilities in Iran authorized by President Donald Trump on June 22, was raucous and triumphant. But that depended on what company you were keeping. The mission involved the bombing of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, and the uranium-conversion facility in Isfahan.  The Israeli Air Force had already attacked the last two facilities, sparing Fordow for the singular weaponry available for the USAF.

    The Fordow site was of particular interest, located some eighty to a hundred metres underground and cocooned by protective concrete. For its purported destruction, B-2 Spirit stealth bombers were used to drop GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator “bunker buster” bombs. All in all, approximately 75 precision-guided weapons were used in the operation, along with 125 aircraft and a guided missile submarine.

    Trump was never going to be anything other than optimistic about the result. “Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images,” he blustered. “Obliteration is an accurate term!”

    At the Pentagon press conference following the attack, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bubbled with enthusiasm. “The order we received from our commander in chief was focused, it was powerful, and it was clear. We devastated the Iranian nuclear program.” The US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, was confident that the facilities had been subjected to severe punishment. “Initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.” Adding to Caine’s remarks, Hegseth stated that, “The battle damage assessment is ongoing, but our initial assessment, as the Chairman said, is that all of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect.”

    Resort to satellite imagery was always going to take place, and Maxar Technologies willingly supplied the material. “A layer of grey-blue ash caused by the airstrikes [on Fordow] is seen across a large swathe of the area,” the company noted in a statement. “Additionally, several of the tunnel entrances that lead into the underground facility are blocked with dirt following the airstrikes.”

    The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, also added his voice to the merry chorus that the damage had been significant. “CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted airstrikes.” The assessment included “new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”

    Israeli sources were also quick to stroke Trump’s already outsized ego. The Israel Atomic Energy Commission opined that the strikes, combined with Israel’s own efforts, had “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir’s view was that the damage to the nuclear program was sufficient to have “set it back by years, I repeat, years.”

    The chief of the increasingly discredited International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, flirted with some initial speculation, but was mindful of necessary caveats. In a statement to an emergency meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors, he warned that, “At this time, no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow.” Cue the speculation: “Given the explosive payload utilised and extreme(ly) vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred.”

    This was a parade begging to be rained on. CNN and The New York Times supplied it. Referring to preliminary classified findings in a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment running for five pages, the paper reported that the bombing of the three sites had “set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months”. The strikes had sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities, but they were not successful in precipitating a collapse of the underground buildings. Sceptical expertise murmured through the report: to destroy the facility at Fordow would require “waves of airstrikes, with days or even weeks of pounding the same spots.”

    Then came the issue of the nuclear material in question, which Iran still retained control over. The fate of over 400 kg of uranium, which had been enriched to 60% purity, is unclear, as is the number of surviving or hidden centrifuges. Iran had already informed the IAEA on June 13 that “special measures” would be taken to protect nuclear materials and equipment under IAEA safeguards, a feature provided under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Any transfer of nuclear material from a safeguarded facility to another location, however, would have to be declared to the agency, something bound to be increasingly unlikely given the proposed suspension of cooperation with the IAEA by Iran’s parliament.

    After mulling over the attacks for a week, Grossi revisited the matter. The attacks on the facilities had caused severe, though “not total” damage. “Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.” Tehran could, “in a matter of months,” have “a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium.” Iran still had the “industrial and technological” means to recommence the process.

    Efforts to question the thoroughness of Operation Midnight Hammer did not sit well with the Trump administration. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt worked herself into a state on any cautionary reporting, treating it as a libellous blemish. “The leaking of this alleged report is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” she fumed in a statement. “Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets.”

    Hegseth similarly raged against the importance placed on the DIA report. In a press conference on June 26, he bemoaned the tendency of the press corps to “cheer against Trump so hard, it’s like in your DNA and in your blood”. The scribblers had to “cheer against the efficacy of these strikes” with “half-truths, spun information, leaked information”. Trump, for his part, returned to familiar ground, attacking any questioning narrative as “Fake News”. CNN, he seethed, had some of the dumbest anchors in the business. With malicious glee, he claimed knowledge of rumours that reporters from both CNN and The New York Times were going to be sacked for making up those “FAKE stories on the Iran Nuclear sites because they got it so wrong.”

    A postmodern nonsense has descended on the damage assessments regarding Iran’s nuclear program, leaving the way clear for overremunerated soothsayers. But there was nothing postmodern in the incalculable damage done to the law of nations, a body of acknowledged rules rendered brittle and breakable before the rapacious legislators of the jungle.

    The post Operation Midnight Hammer: Were Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Damaged? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Key Nuclear Allegation That Started War On Iran Was Coaxed From Palantir

    The sudden claim of Iran being very close to a bomb (that seemingly jumped out of ‘nowhere’ to leave Americans puzzling how could it happen that – in the blink of eye, we are going to war – was subsequently refuted by IAEA Chief Grossi to CNN on 17 June (but only after the abrupt attack on Iran already had taken place):

    “We did not have any evidence of a systematic effort [by Iran] to move to a nuclear weapon”, Grossi confirmed on CNN.

    This statement drew the following riposte from Iran by its Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Esmaeil Baqaei on 19 June:

    “This is too late, Mr. Grossi – you obscured this truth in your absolutely biased report that was instrumentalized by E3/U.S. to craft a resolution with baseless allegation of [Iranian] ‘non-compliance’; the same resolution was then utilized, as a final pretext, by a genocidal warmongering regime to wage a war of aggression on Iran and to launch an unlawful attack on our peaceful nuclear facilities.

    The post Key Nuclear Allegation That Started War On Iran Was Coaxed From Palantir appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • What Comes Next Following The US-Israeli War On Iran?

    The fighting between Israel and Iran, sparked by an illegal and entirely unprovoked attack by Israel, has abated for the moment. After the United States did what Israeli Prime Minister hoped it would do and bombed Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, including the one at Fordow with bunker buster weapons, U.S. President Donald Trump told Israel to stop its attacks and reinforced that order when Israel sent dozens of bombers toward Iran shortly after the ceasefire was enacted, claiming a response to two Iranian missiles.

    The entire battle, fought on the basis of a fictional threat of Iran being close to acquiring a nuclear weapon, demonstrated how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can manipulate intelligence, politics, and ignorance in the U.S. to provoke American action.

    The post What Comes Next Following The US-Israeli War On Iran? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Iran’s Army Chief Expresses ‘Serious Doubts’ Israel Will Adhere To Ceasefire

    The Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi, expressed on 29 June his “doubt” that Israel will adhere to the ceasefire with Iran, indicating Tehran’s preparedness to respond to any violation.

    The comments came during a phone call with Saudi Arabia’s Defense Minister Khalid bin Salman.

    “We have serious doubts about the continuation of the ceasefire and are prepared to respond to any aggression,” Mousavi was quoted as telling the Saudi war chief.

    “Israel and the United States have proven their lack of commitment to any international rules and norms,” he went on to say. “We did not initiate the war, but we responded to the aggressor with all our might and are prepared to deliver a decisive response in the event of repeated attacks.”

    The post Iran’s Army Chief Expresses ‘Serious Doubts’ Israel Will Adhere To Ceasefire appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Clark warns in new Pacific book renewed nuclear tensions pose ‘existential threat to humanity’

    Asia Pacific Report

    Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark has warned the country needs to maintain its nuclear-free policy as a “fundamental tenet” of its independent foreign policy in the face of gathering global storm clouds.

    Writing in a new book being published next week, she says “nuclear war is an existential threat to humanity. Far from receding, the threat of use of nuclear weapons is ever present.

    “The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists now sits at 89 seconds to midnight,” she says in the prologue to journalist and media academic David Robie’s book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior.

    Writing before the US surprise attack with B-2 stealth bombers and “bunker-buster” bombs on three Iranian nuclear facilities on June 22, Clark says “the Middle East is a tinder box with the failure of the Iran nuclear deal and with Israel widely believed to possess nuclear weapons”.

    The Doomsday Clock references the Ukraine war theatre where “use of nuclear weapons has been floated by Russia”.

    Also, the arms control architecture for Europe is unravelling, leaving the continent much less secure. India and Pakistan both have nuclear arsenals, she says.

    “North Korea continues to develop its nuclear weapons capacity.”

    ‘Serious ramifications’
    Clark, who was also United Nations Development Programme administrator from 2009 to 2017, a member of The Elders group of global leaders founded by Nelson Mandela in 2007, and is an advocate for multilateralism and nuclear disarmament, says an outright military conflict between China and the United States “would be one between two nuclear powers with serious ramifications for East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and far beyond.”

    She advises New Zealand to be wary of Australia’s decision to enter a nuclear submarine purchase programme with the United States.

    “There has been much speculation about a potential Pillar Two of the AUKUS agreement which would see others in the region become partners in the development of advanced weaponry,” Clark says.

    “This is occurring in the context of rising tensions between the United States and China.

    “Many of us share the view that New Zealand should be a voice for de-escalation, not for enthusiastic expansion of nuclear submarine fleets in the Pacific and the development
    of more lethal weaponry.”

    Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior . . . publication July 2025. Image: Little Island Press

    In the face of the “current global turbulence, New Zealand needs to reemphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament.

    Clark says that the years 1985 – the Rainbow Warrior was bombed by French secret agents on 10 July 1985 — and 1986 were critical years in the lead up to New Zealand’s nuclear-free legislation in 1987.

    “New Zealanders were clear – we did not want to be defended by nuclear weapons. We wanted our country to be a force for diplomacy and for dialogue, not for warmongering.”

    Chronicles humanitarian voyage
    The book Eyes of Fire chronicles the humanitarian voyage by the Greenpeace flagship to the Marshall Islands to relocate 320 Rongelap Islanders who were suffering serious community health consequences from the US nuclear tests in the 1950s.

    The author, Dr David Robie, founder of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology, was the only journalist on board the Rainbow Warrior in the weeks leading up to the bombing.

    His book recounts the voyage and nuclear colonialism, and the transition to climate justice as the major challenge facing the Pacific, although the “Indo-Pacific” rivalries between the US, France and China mean that geopolitical tensions are recalling the Cold War era in the Pacific.

    Dr Robie is also critical of Indonesian colonialism in the Melanesian region of the Pacific, arguing that a just-outcome for Jakarta-ruled West Papua and also the French territories of Kanaky New Caledonia and “French” Polynesia are vital for peace and stability in the region.

    Eyes of Fire is being published by Little Island Press, which also produced one of his earlier books, Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • How they got Trump to bomb Iran


    This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • ‘Bridge for peace – not more bombs,’ say CNMI Gaza protesters

    By Bryan Manabat in Saipan

    Advocacy groups in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) disrupted the US Department of Defense’s public meeting this week, which tackled proposed military training plans on Tinian, voicing strong opposition to further militarisation in the Marianas.

    Members of the Marianas for Palestine, Prutehi Guahan and Commonwealth670 burst into the public hearing at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Garapan, chanting, “No build-up! No war!” and “Free, free, Palestine!”

    As the chanting echoed throughout the venue on Wednesday, the DOD continued the proceedings to gather public input on its CNMI Joint Military Training proposal.

    The US plan includes live-fire ranges, a base camp, communications infrastructure, and a biosecurity facility. Officials said feedback from Tinian, Saipan and Rota communities would help shape the final environmental impact statement.

    Salam Castro Younis, of Chamorro-Palestinian descent, linked the military expansion to global conflicts in Gaza and Iran.

    “More militarisation isn’t the answer,” Younis said. “We don’t need to lose more land. Diplomacy and peace are the way forward – not more bombs.”

    Saipan-born Chamorro activist Anufat Pangelinan echoed Younis’s sentiment, citing research connecting climate change and environmental degradation to global militarisation.

    ‘No part of a war’
    “We don’t want to be part of a war we don’t support,” he said. “The Marianas shouldn’t be a tip of the spear – we should be a bridge for peace.”

    The groups argue that CJMT could make Tinian a target, increasing regional hostility.

    “We want to sustain ourselves without the looming threat of war,” Pangelinan added.

    In response to public concerns from the 2015 draft EIS, the DOD scaled back its plans, reducing live-fire ranges from 14 to 2 and eliminating artillery, rocket and mortar exercises.

    Mark Hashimoto, executive director of the US Marine Corps Forces Pacific, emphasised the importance of community input.

    “The proposal includes live-fire ranges, a base camp, communications infrastructure and a biosecurity facility,” he said.

    Hashimoto noted that military lease lands on Tinian could support quarterly exercises involving up to 1000 personnel.

    Economic impact concerns
    Tinian residents expressed concerns about economic impacts, job opportunities, noise, environmental effects and further strain on local infrastructure.

    The DOD is expected to issue a Record of Decision by spring 2026, balancing public feedback with national security and environmental considerations.

    In a joint statement earlier this week, the activist groups said the people of Guam and the CNMI were “burdened by processes not meant to serve their home’s interests”.

    The groups were referring to public input requirements for military plans involving the use of Guam and CNMI lands and waters for war training and testing.

    “As colonies of the United States, the Mariana Islands continue to be forced into conflicts not of our people’s making,” the statement read.

    “ After decades of displacement and political disenfranchisement, our communities are now in subservient positions that force an obligation to extend our lands, airspace, and waters for use in America’s never-ending cycle of war.”

    They also lamented the “intense environmental degradation” and “growing housing and food insecurity” resulting from military expansion.

    “Like other Pacific Islanders, we are also overrepresented disproportionately in the military and in combat,” they said.

    “Meanwhile, prices on imported food, fuel, and essential goods will continue to rise with inflation and war.”

    Republished from Pacific Island Times.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The Strategic Fallout Of The Israel-Iran War

    On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a truce between Israel and Iran following nearly two weeks of open warfare.

    Israel began the war, launching a surprise offensive on June 13, with airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities, missile installations, and senior military and scientific personnel, in addition to numerous civilian targets.

    In response, Iran launched a wave of ballistic missiles and drones deep into Israeli territory, triggering air raid sirens across Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beersheba and numerous other locations, causing unprecedented destruction in the country.

    What began as a bilateral escalation quickly spiraled into something far more consequential: a direct confrontation between the United States and Iran.

    The post The Strategic Fallout Of The Israel-Iran War appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Why manufacturing consent for war with Iran failed this time

    COMMENTARY: By Ahmad Ibsais

    On June 22, American warplanes crossed into Iranian airspace and dropped 14 massive bombs.

    The attack was not in response to a provocation; it came on the heels of illegal Israeli aggression that took the lives of more than 600 Iranians.

    This was a return to something familiar and well-practised: an empire bombing innocents across the orientalist abstraction called “the Middle East”.

    That night, US President Donald Trump, flanked by his vice-president and two state secretaries, told the world: “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace”.

    There is something chilling about how bombs are baptised with the language of diplomacy and how destruction is dressed in the garments of stability. To call that peace is not merely a misnomer; it is a criminal distortion.

    But what is peace in this world, if not submission to the West? And what is diplomacy, if not the insistence that the attacked plead with their attackers?

    In the 12 days that Israel’s illegal assault on Iran lasted, images of Iranian children pulled from the wreckage remained absent from the front pages of Western media. In their place were lengthy features about Israelis hiding in fortified bunkers.

    Victimhood serving narrative
    Western media, fluent in the language of erasure, broadcasts only the victimhood that serves the war narrative.

    And that is not just in its coverage of Iran. For 20 months now, the people of Gaza have been starved and incinerated. By the official count, more than 55,000 lives have been taken; realistic estimates put the number at hundreds of thousands.

    Every hospital in Gaza has been bombed. Most schools have been attacked and destroyed.

    Leading human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have already declared that Israel is committing genocide, and yet, most Western media would not utter that word and would add elaborate caveats when someone does dare say it live on TV.

    Presenters and editors would do anything but recognise Israel’s unending violence in an active voice.

    Despite detailed evidence of war crimes, the Israeli military has faced no media censure, no criticism or scrutiny. Its generals hold war meetings near civilian buildings, and yet, there are no media cries of Israelis being used as “human shields”.

    Israeli army and government officials are regularly caught lying or making genocidal statements, and yet, their words are still reported as “the truth”.

    Bias over Palestinian deaths
    A recent study found that on the BBC, Israeli deaths received 33 times more coverage per fatality than Palestinian deaths, despite Palestinians dying at a rate of 34 to 1 compared with Israelis. Such bias is no exception, it is the rule for Western media.

    Like Palestine, Iran is described in carefully chosen language. Iran is never framed as a nation, only as a regime. Iran is not a government, but a threat — not a people, but a problem.

    The word “Islamic” is affixed to it like a slur in every report. This is instrumental in quietly signalling that Muslim resistance to Western domination must be extinguished.

    Iran does not possess nuclear weapons; Israel and the United States do. And yet only Iran is cast as an existential threat to world order.

    Because the problem is not what Iran holds, but what it refuses to surrender. It has survived coups, sanctions, assassinations, and sabotage. It has outlived every attempt to starve, coerce, or isolate it into submission.

    It is a state that, despite the violence hurled at it, has not yet been broken.

    And so the myth of the threat of weapons of mass destruction becomes indispensable. It is the same myth that was used to justify the illegal invasion of Iraq. For three decades, American headlines have whispered that Iran is just “weeks away” from the bomb, three decades of deadlines that never arrive, of predictions that never materialise.

    Fear over false ‘nuclear threat’
    But fear, even when unfounded, is useful. If you can keep people afraid, you can keep them quiet. Say “nuclear threat” often enough, and no one will think to ask about the children killed in the name of “keeping the world safe”.

    This is the modus operandi of Western media: a media architecture not built to illuminate truth, but to manufacture permission for violence, to dress state aggression in technical language and animated graphics, to anaesthetise the public with euphemisms.

    Time Magazine does not write about the crushed bones of innocents under the rubble in Tehran or Rafah, it writes about “The New Middle East” with a cover strikingly similar to the one it used to propagandise regime change in Iraq 22 years ago.

    But this is not 2003. After decades of war, and livestreamed genocide, most Americans no longer buy into the old slogans and distortions. When Israel attacked Iran, a poll showed that only 16 percent of US respondents supported the US joining the war.

    After Trump ordered the air strikes, another poll confirmed this resistance to manufactured consent: only 36 percent of respondents supported the move, and only 32 percent supported continuing the bombardment

    The failure to manufacture consent for war with Iran reveals a profound shift in the American consciousness. Americans remember the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq that left hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis dead and an entire region in flames. They remember the lies about weapons of mass destruction and democracy and the result: the thousands of American soldiers dead and the tens of thousands maimed.

    They remember the humiliating retreat from Afghanistan after 20 years of war and the never-ending bloody entanglement in Iraq.

    Low social justice spending
    At home, Americans are told there is no money for housing, healthcare, or education, but there is always money for bombs, for foreign occupations, for further militarisation. More than 700,000 Americans are homeless, more than 40 million live under the official poverty line and more than 27 million have no health insurance.

    And yet, the US government maintains by far the highest defence budget in the world.

    Americans know the precarity they face at home, but they are also increasingly aware of the impact US imperial adventurism has abroad. For 20 months now, they have watched a US-sponsored genocide broadcast live.

    They have seen countless times on their phones bloodied Palestinian children pulled from rubble while mainstream media insists, this is Israeli “self-defence”.

    The old alchemy of dehumanising victims to excuse their murder has lost its power. The digital age has shattered the monopoly on narrative that once made distant wars feel abstract and necessary. Americans are now increasingly refusing to be moved by the familiar war drumbeat.

    The growing fractures in public consent have not gone unnoticed in Washington. Trump, ever the opportunist, understands that the American public has no appetite for another war.

    ‘Don’t drop bombs’
    And so, on June 24, he took to social media to announce, “the ceasefire is in effect”, telling Israel to “DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” after the Israeli army continued to attack Iran.

    Trump, like so many in the US and Israeli political elites, wants to call himself a peacemaker while waging war. To leaders like him, peace has come to mean something altogether different: the unimpeded freedom to commit genocide and other atrocities while the world watches on.

    But they have failed to manufacture our consent. We know what peace is, and it does not come dressed in war. It is not dropped from the sky.

    Peace can only be achieved where there is freedom. And no matter how many times they strike, the people remain, from Palestine to Iran — unbroken, unbought, and unwilling to kneel to terror.

    Ahmad Ibsais is a first-generation Palestinian American and law student who writes the newsletter State of Siege.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • GOP and Fetterman Block Senate War Powers Resolution Opposing US Attacks on Iran

    Nearly all U.S. Senate Republicans and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania on Friday evening blocked a resolution that reiterated Congress’ authority to declare war and would have ordered President Donald Trump to stop taking military action against Iran without congressional approval. Every other member of the Democratic Caucus and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) supported holding a final…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Eugene Doyle: Why Asia-Pacific should be cheering for Iran and not US bomb-based statecraft

    ANALYSIS: By Eugene Doyle

    Setting aside any thoughts I may have about theocratic rulers (whether they be in Tel Aviv or Tehran), I am personally glad that Iran was able to hold out against the US-Israeli attacks this month.

    The ceasefire, however, will only be a pause in the long-running campaign to destabilise, weaken and isolate Iran. Regime change or pariah status are both acceptable outcomes for the US-Israeli dyad.

    The good news for my region is that Iran’s resilience pushes back what could be a looming calamity: the US pivot to Asia and a heightened risk of a war on China.

    There are three major pillars to the Eurasian order that is going through a slow, painful and violent birth.  Iran is the weakest.  If Iran falls, war in our region — intended or unintended – becomes vastly more likely.

    Mainstream New Zealanders and Australians suffer from an understandable complacency: war is what happens to other, mainly darker people or Slavs.

    “Tomorrow”, people in this part of the world naively think, “will always be like yesterday”.

    That could change, particularly for the Australians, in the kind of unfamiliar flash-boom Israelis experienced this month following their attack on Iran. And here’s why.

    US chooses war to re-shape Middle East
    Back in 2001, as many will recall, retired General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe, was visiting buddies in the Pentagon. He learnt something he wasn’t supposed to: the Bush administration had made plans in the febrile post 9/11 environment to attack seven Muslim countries.

    In the firing line were: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon, Gaddafi’s Libya, Somalia, Sudan and the biggest prize of all — the Islamic Republic of Iran.

    One would have to say that the project, pursued by successive presidents, both Democrat and Republican, has been a great success — if you discount the fact that a couple of million human beings, most of them civilians, many of them women and children, nearly all of them innocents, were slaughtered, starved to death or otherwise disposed of.

    With the exception of Iran, those countries have endured chaos and civil strife for long painful years.  A triumph of American bomb-based statecraft.

    Now — with Muammar Gaddafi raped and murdered (“We came, we saw, he died”, Hillary Clinton chuckled on camera the same day), Saddam Hussein hanged, Hezbollah decapitated, Assad in Moscow, the genocide in full swing in Palestine — the US and Israel were finally able to turn their guns — or, rather, bombs — on the great prize: Iran.

    Iran’s missiles have checked US-Israel for time being
    Things did not go to plan. Former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman pointed out this week that for the first time Israel got a taste of the medicine it likes to dispense to its neighbours.

    Iran’s missiles successfully turned the much-vaunted Iron Dome into an Iron Sieve and, perhaps momentarily, has achieved deterrence. If Iran falls, the US will be able to do what Barack Obama and Joe Biden only salivated over — a serious pivot to Asia.

    Could great power rivalry turn Asia-Pacific into powderkeg?
    For us in Asia-Pacific a major US pivot to Asia will mean soaring defence budgets to support militarisation, aggressive containment of China, provocative naval deployments, more sanctions, muscling smaller states, increased numbers of bases, new missile systems, info wars, threats and the ratcheting up rhetoric — all of which will bring us ever-closer to the powderkeg.

    Sounds utterly mad? Sounds devoid of rationality? Lacking commonsense? Welcome to our world — bellum Americanum — as we gormlessly march flame in hand towards the tinderbox. War is not written in the stars, we can change tack and rediscover diplomacy, restraint, and peaceful coexistence. Or is that too much to ask?

    Back in the days of George W Bush, radical American thinkers like Robert Kagan, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld created the Project for a New American Century and developed the policy, adopted by succeeding presidents, that promotes “the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of US military forces”.

    It reconfirmed the neoconservative American dogma that no power should be allowed to rise in any region to become a regional hegemon; anything and everything necessary should be done to ensure continued American primacy, including the resort to war.

    What has changed since those days are two crucial, epoch-making events: the re-emergence of Russia as a great power, albeit the weakest of the three, and the emergence of China as a genuine peer competitor to the USA. Professor  John Mearsheimer’s insights are well worth studying on this topic.

    The three pillars of multipolarity
    A new world order really is being born. As geopolitical thinkers like Professor Glenn Diesen point out, it will, if it is not killed in the cradle, replace the US unipolar world order that has existed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

    Many countries are involved in its birthing, including major players like India and Brazil and all the countries that are part of BRICS.  Three countries, however, are central to the project: Iran, Russia and, most importantly, China.  All three are in the crosshairs of the Western empire.

    If Iran, Russia and China survive as independent entities, they will partially fulfill Halford MacKinder’s early 20th century heartland theory that whoever dominates Eurasia will rule the world. I don’t think MacKinder, however, foresaw cooperative multipolarity on the Eurasian landmass — which is one of the goals of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) – as an option.

    That, increasingly, appears to be the most likely trajectory with multiple powerful states that will not accept domination, be that from China or the US.  That alone should give us cause for hope.

    Drunk on power since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has launched war after war and brought us to the current abandonment of economic sanity (the sanctions-and-tariff global pandemic) and diplomatic normalcy (kill any peace negotiators you see) — and an anything-goes foreign policy (including massive crimes against humanity).

    We have also reached — thanks in large part to these same policies — what a former US national security advisor warned must be avoided at all costs. Back in the 1990s, Zbigniew Brzezinski said, “The most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran.”

    Belligerent and devoid of sound strategy, the Biden and Trump administrations have achieved just that.

    Can Asia-Pacific avoid being dragged into an American war on China?
    Turning to our region, New Zealand and Australia’s governments cleave to yesterday: a white-dominated world led by the USA.  We have shown ourselves indifferent to massacres, ethnic cleansing and wars of aggression launched by our team.

    To avoid war — or a permanent fear of looming war — in our own backyards, we need to encourage sanity and diplomacy; we need to stay close to the US but step away from the military alliances they are forming, such as AUKUS which is aimed squarely at China.

    Above all, our defence and foreign affairs elites need to grow new neural pathways and start to think with vision and not place ourselves on the losing side of history. Independent foreign policy settings based around peace, defence not aggression, diplomacy not militarisation, would take us in the right direction.

    Personally I look forward to the day the US and its increasingly belligerent vassals are pushed back into the ranks of ordinary humanity. I fear the US far more than I do China.

    Despite the reflexive adherence to the US that our leaders are stuck on, we should not, if we value our lives and our cultures, allow ourselves to be part of this mad, doomed project.

    The US empire is heading into a blood-drenched sunset; their project will fail and the 500-year empire of the White West will end — starting and finishing with genocide.

    Every day I atheistically pray that leaders or a movement will emerge to guide our antipodean countries out of the clutches of a violent and increasingly incoherent USA.

    America is not our friend. China is not our enemy. Tomorrow gives birth to a world that we should look forward to and do the little we can to help shape.

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • South Korean President Skips NATO Summit For First Time In Four Years

    Newly elected President of South Korea Lee Jae Myung will skip this year’s summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) starting on Tuesday, June 24. Lee cited the growing unrest in West Asia following the US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday as one of the reasons for the decision.

    The US bombed three Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday in an attempt to destroy its nuclear program. The bombings were part of the Israeli aggression on Iran which began on June 13 and killed hundreds of Iranians including scientists and some of its top military leadership.

    Iran responded to the US aggression on Monday night by attacking its military base in Qatar.

    The post South Korean President Skips NATO Summit For First Time In Four Years appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Iran Ratifies Ending Cooperation With United Nations Nuclear Watchdog

    Iran’s Guardian Council ratified a bill on 26 June to suspend all cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

    The move came a day after parliament overwhelmingly approved the measure in response to Israeli and US attacks on the country’s nuclear sites.

    France and Russia have both warned against the move, urging Iran to maintain cooperation with the UN agency and avoid escalating the nuclear standoff further.

    The law halts all IAEA inspections, oversight, and reporting, and will remain in effect until Iran receives guarantees for the safety of its nuclear facilities and personnel, along with recognition of its enrichment rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

    The post Iran Ratifies Ending Cooperation With United Nations Nuclear Watchdog appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • BRICS Demands End To Violence In West Asia

    The BRICS, the influential bloc of emerging geopolitical powers, demanded an immediate end to the cycle of violence in West Asia following the recent attacks against Iran. The group also pushed for the establishment of a zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in the region as a whole, a crucial measure to ensure long-term stability,

    The Brazilian government, the current president of the bloc, issued the forceful statement on Tuesday, June 24. The statement responds directly to the recent United States and Israeli military attacks against Iran, events that have dangerously escalated regional tensions.

    The post BRICS Demands End To Violence In West Asia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Adam Johnson on Media in War Mode

    Column: Lawmakers and Pundits Speed Run Iraq WMDs-Level Lies About Iran

    Column (6/22/25)

    This week on CounterSpin: Prosecutors at the 1946 International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg declared:

    War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

    After the Trump administration dropped bombs on Iran last weekend, without congressional approval, the media debate wasn’t about legality, much less humanity. The Wall Street Journal offered a video series on The Massive Ordnance Penetrator, “The 30,000-Pound US Bomb That Could Destroy Iran’s Nuclear Bunkers.” But it’s not just boys excited by toys; the very important Wall Street Journal is “examining military innovation and tactics emerging around the world, breaking down the tech behind the weaponry and its potential impact.”

    Most big media are consumed right now with whether those bunker busters did their bunker busting or maybe the US needs to buy bigger, better bombs to…do what, exactly? Well, now you’re asking too many questions.

    Things you should not question? Statements like that of Sen. John Fetterman that Iran is the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror.

    US corporate media in war mode are a force to reckon with. We do some reckoning with media analyst Adam Johnson, co-host of the podcast Citations Needed, Substack author at the Column, and co-author, with In These Times contributing editor Sarah Lazare, of some relevant pieces at InTheseTimes.com.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Antoinette Lattouf win against ABC a victory for all truth-tellers

    By Isaac Nellist of Green Left Magazine

    Australian-Lebanese journalist and commentator Antoinette Lattouf’s unfair dismissal case win against the public broadcaster ABC in the Federal Court on Wednesday is a victory for all those who seek to tell the truth.

    It is a breath of fresh air, after almost two years of lies and uncritical reporting about Israel’s genocide from the ABC and commercial media companies.

    Lattouf was unfairly sacked in December 2023 for posting on her social media a Human Rights Watch report that detailed Israel’s deliberate starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.

    Justice Darryl Rangiah found that Lattouf had been sacked for her political opinions, given no opportunity to respond to misconduct allegations and that the ABC breached its Enterprise Agreement and section 772 of the Fair Work Act.

    The Federal Court also found that ABC executives — then-chief content officer Chris Oliver-Taylor, editor-in-chief David Anderson and board chair Ita Buttrose — had sacked Lattouf in response to a pro-Israel lobby pressure campaign.

    The coordinated email campaign from Zionist groups accused Lattouf of being “antisemitic” for condemning Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

    The judge awarded Lattouf A$70,000 in damages, based on findings that her sacking caused “great distress”, and more than $1 million in legal fees.

    ‘No Lebanese’ claim
    Lattouf had alleged that her race or ethnicity had played a part in her sacking, which the ABC had initially responded to by claiming there was no such thing as a “Lebanese, Arab or Middle Eastern Race”, before backtracking.

    The court found that this did not play a part in the decision to sack Lattouf.

    The ABC’s own reporting of the ruling said “the ABC has damaged its reputation, and public perceptions around its ideals, integrity and independence”.

    Outside the court, Lattouf said: “It is now June 2025 and Palestinian children are still being starved. We see their images every day, emaciated, skeletal, scavenging through the rubble for scraps.

    “This unspeakable suffering is not accidental, it is engineered. Deliberately starving and killing children is a war crime.

    “Today, the court has found that punishing someone for sharing facts about these war crimes is also illegal. I was punished for my political opinion.”

    Palestine solidarity groups and democratic rights supporters have celebrated Lattouf’s victory.

    An ‘eternal shame’
    Palestine Action Group Sydney said: “It is to the eternal shame of our national broadcaster that it sacked a journalist because she opposed the genocide in Gaza.

    “There should be a full inquiry into the systematic pro-Israel bias at the ABC, which for 21 months has acted as a propaganda wing of the Israeli military.”

    Racial justice organisation Democracy in Colour said the ruling “exposes the systematic silencing taking place in Australian media institutions in regards to Palestine”.

    Democracy in Colour chairperson Jamal Hakim said Lattouf was punished for “speaking truth to power”.

    “When the ABC capitulated to pressure from the pro-Israel lobby . . .  they didn’t just betray Antoinette — they betrayed their own editorial standards and the Australian public who deserve to know the truth about Israel’s human rights abuses.”

    Noura Mansour, national director for Democracy in Colour, said the ABC had been “consistently shutting down valid criticism of the state of Israel” and suppressing the voices of people of colour and Palestinians. She said the national broadcaster had “worked to manufacture consent for the Israeli-US backed genocide”.

    Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance chief executive Erin Madeley said: “Instead of defending its journalists, ABC management chose to appease powerful voices . . . they failed in their duty to push back against outside interference, racism and bullying.”

    Win for ‘journalistic integrity’
    Australian Greens leader Larissa Waters said the ruling was a win for “journalistic integrity and freedom of speech” and that “no one should be punished for speaking out about Gaza”.

    Green Left editor Pip Hinman said the ruling was an “important victory for those who stand on the side of truth and justice”.

    “It is more important than ever in an increasingly polarised world that journalists speak up and report the truth without fear of reprisal from the rich and powerful.

    “Traditional and new media have the reach to shape public opinion. They have had a clear pro-Israel bias, despite international human rights agencies providing horrific data on Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

    “Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people around Australia continue to call for an end to the genocide in Gaza in protests every week. But the ABC and corporate media have largely ignored this movement of people from all walks of life. Disturbingly, the corporate media has gone along with some political leaders who claim this anti-war movement is antisemitic.

    “As thousands continue to march every week for an end to the genocide in Gaza, the ABC and corporate media organisations have continued to push the lie that the Palestine solidarity movement, and indeed any criticism of Israel, is antisemitic.

    “Green Left also hails those courageous mostly young journalists in Gaza, some 200 of whom have been killed by Israel since October 2023.

    “Their livestreaming of Israel’s genocide cut through corporate media and political leaders’ lies and today makes it even harder for them to whitewash Israel’s crimes and Western complicity.

    “Green Left congratulates Lattouf on her victory. We are proud to stand with the movement for justice and peace in Palestine, which played a part in her victory against the ABC management’s bias.”

    Republished from Green Left Magazine with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Tactical Failure Of Israel/US Attacks On Iran Is Leading Both To Disaster

    A day after the Israeli settler-colonial apartheid state launched a sneak attack on Iran, an Iran that thought it was involved in a serious negotiation with Israel’s main benefactor, the United States, the Black Alliance for Peace declared that “the Middle East is on fire because Israeli and U.S. imperialism lit the match.” Twelve days later after a fierce response from Iran that saw major Israeli cities hit by Iranian missiles and an attack by the U.S. on Iranian nuclear facilities, Israel gladly accepted a ceasefire imposed on them by the Trump administration. What happened?

    There was never any ambiguity regarding the U.S. strategic objective to effect “regime change” in Iran.

    The post Tactical Failure Of Israel/US Attacks On Iran Is Leading Both To Disaster appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Netanyahu Asks to Postpone His Criminal Trial After Trump Calls to Cancel It

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has once again asked for proceedings for his criminal trial to be postponed, just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump called for the entire trial to be cancelled, deeming it a “witch hunt.” According to Haaretz, Netanyahu’s attorney made the request on Thursday, citing Israel’s war with Iran and other “regional and global developments” in a court…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Democrats Unveil War Powers Resolution That Gives Trump Leeway to Bomb Iran

    Amid heavy criticism over President Donald Trump’s unprovoked strikes on Iran, several top ranking Democrats have introduced a war powers resolution that effectively greenlights military action against the country, while posturing over a seemingly feigned opposition to Trump’s operation. The resolution, introduced this week, orders Trump to remove U.S. troops from any hostilities against Iran…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • White House Plans to Limit Intel Sharing With Congress Over Leaked Doc

    Democratic lawmakers in Congress are furious after the Trump administration announced plans to limit classified information that is typically shared with both houses of the legislature, following a leak regarding the U.S.’s recent military strikes on Iran. After President Donald Trump and members of his cabinet claimed his ordered attacks on three sites in Iran last weekend “obliterated” the…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Why most Pacific governments stand with Israel in spite of UN votes

    By Kaya Selby, RNZ Pacific journalist

    Amid uncertainty in the Middle East, one thing remains clear — most Pacific governments continue to align themselves with Israel.

    Dr Steven Ratuva, distinguished professor of Pacific Studies at Canterbury University, told RNZ that island leaders are likely to try and keep their distance, but only officially speaking.

    “They’d probably feel safer that way, rather than publicly taking sides. But I think quite a few of them would probably be siding with Israel.”

    With Iran and Israel waging a 12-day war earlier this month, Dr Ratuva said that was translating into deeper divisions along religious and political lines in Pacific nations.

    “People may not want to admit it, but it’s manifesting itself in different ways.”

    Pacific support for Israel runs deep

    The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on 13 June calling for “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the war in Gaza”, passing with 142 votes, or a 73 percent majority.

    Among the 12 nations that voted against the resolution, alongside Israel and the United States, were Fiji, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu.

    Israel and Iran two folded flags together 3D rendering
    The flags of Iran – a strong supporter of Palestine, along with a 73 percent support for a ceasefire at the United Nations – and Israel, backed by the United States. Image: 123rf/RNZ Pacific

    Pacific support for Israel runs deep
    The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on June 13 calling for “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in the war in Gaza”, passing with 142 votes, or a 73 percent majority.

    Among the 12 nations that voted against the resolution, alongside Israel and the United States, were Fiji, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu.

    Among the regional community, only Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands voted for the resolution, while others abstained or were absent.

    Last week, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, in an interview with The Australian, defended Israel’s actions in Iran as an “act of survival”.

    “They cannot survive if there is a big threat capability within range of Israel. Whatever [Israel] are doing now can be seen as preemptive, knocking it out before it’s fired on you.”

    In February, Fiji also committed to an embassy in Jerusalem — a recognition of Israel’s claimed right to call the city their capital — mirroring Papua New Guinea in 2023.

    Dr Ratuva said that deep, longstanding, religious and political ties with the West are what formed the region’s ties with Israel.

    “Most of the Pacific Island states have been aligned with the US since the Cold War and beyond, so the Western sphere of influence is seen as, for many of them, the place to be.”

    He noted the rise in Christian evangelism, which is aligned with Zionism and the global push for a Jewish homeland, in pockets throughout the Pacific, particularly in Fiji.

    “Small religious organisations which have links with or model selves along the lines of the United States evangelical movement, which has been supportive of Trump, tend to militate towards supporting Israel for religious reasons,” Dr Ratuva said.

    “And of course, religion and politics, when you mix them together, become very powerful in terms of one’s positioning [in the world].”

    Anti-war protest at Parliament on Israel-Iran conflict.
    An anti-war protest at Parliament over Israel-Iran conflict. Image: RNZ/Mark Papalii

    Politics or religion?
    In Fijian society, Dr Ratuva said that the war in Gaza has stoked tensions between the Christian majority and the Muslim minority.

    According to the CIA World Factbook, roughly 64.5 percent of Fijians are Christian, compared to a Muslim population of 6.3 percent.

    “It’s coming out very clearly, in terms of the way in which those belonging to the fundamentalist political orientation tend to make statements which are against non-Christians” Dr Ratuva said.

    “People begin to take sides . . . that in some ways deepens the religious divide, particularly in Fiji which is multiethnic and multireligious, and where the Islamic community is relatively significant.”

    A statement from the Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat, released on Wednesday, said that the Pacific wished to be an “ocean of peace”.

    “Leaders also reaffirmed their commitment to the “Friends to All, Enemy to None” foreign policy to guide the MSG members’ relationship with countries and development partners.”

    It bookends a summit that brought together leaders from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and other Melanesian nations, where the Middle East was discussed, according to local media.

    But the Pacific region had been used in a deceptive strategy as the US prepared for the strikes on Iran. On this issue, Melanesian leaders did not respond to requests for comment.

    The BBC reported on Monday that B-2 planes flew to Guam from Missouri as a decoy to distract from top-secret flights headed over the Atlantic to Iran.

    This sparked outrage from civil society leaders throughout the region, including the head of the Pacific Conference of Churches, Reverend James Bhagwan.

    “This use of Pacific airspace and territory for military strikes violates the spirit of the Treaty of Rarotonga, our region’s declaration for being a nuclear, free peace committed zone,” he said.

    “Our region has a memory of nuclear testing, occupation and trauma . . .  we don’t forget that when we talk about these issues.”

    Reverend Bhagwan told RNZ that there was no popular support in the Pacific for Israel’s most recent actions.

    “This is because we have international law . . .  this includes, of course, the US strikes on Iran and perhaps, also, Israel’s actions in Gaza.”

    “It is not about religion, it is about people.”

    Reverend Bhagwan, whose organisation represents 27 member churches across 17 Pacific nations, refused to say whether he believed there was a link between Christian fundamentalism and Pacific support for Israel.

    “We can say that there is a religious contingency within the Pacific that does support Israel . . .  it does not necessarily mean it’s the majority view, but it is one that is seriously considered by those in power.

    “It depends on how those [politicians] consider that support they get from those particular aspects of the community.”

    Pacific Islanders in the region
    For some, the religious commitment runs so deep that they venture to Israel in a kind of pilgrimage.

    Dr Ratuva told RNZ that there was a significant population of islanders in the region, many of whom may now be trapped before a ceasefire is finalised.

    “There was a time when the Gaza situation began to unfold, when a number of people from Fiji, Tonga and Samoa were there for pilgrimage purposes.”

    “At that time there were significant numbers, and Fiji was able to fly over there to evauate them. So this time, I’m not sure whether that might happen.”

    Reverend Bhagwan said that the religious ties ran deep.

    “They go to Jerusalem, to Bethlehem, to the Mount of Olives, to the Golan Heights, where the transfiguration took place. Fiji also is stationed in the Golan Heights as peacekeepers,” he said.

    “So there is a correlation, particularly for Pacific or for Fijian communities, on that relationship as peacekeepers in that region.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • You Can’t Bomb Iran Into Zionism

    Israel and the USA have each attacked Iran in the middle of negotiations. Iran must not fall for it a third time. Negotiation is dead.

    Israel attacked Iran during negotiations between Iran and the U.S., with the next scheduled meeting just three days away.

    Trump then gave Iran a two-week ultimatum to agree a peace deal. Iran held one foreign-minister-level meeting with the U.K., Germany and France and scheduled a second meeting. Trump then attacked Iran with 11 days of the ultimatum still to run.

    Plainly the Zionist West not only has zero interest in peace, it is engaging in morally abhorrent levels of dishonesty and deception, attacking under a false flag of truce. The idea that Iran should now return to “negotiation” with such appallingly deceitful interlocutors is risible.

    The post You Can’t Bomb Iran Into Zionism appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • What The Hell Just Happened In The Middle East You May Ask?

    The US/Israel realized:

    that their regime change plans were not coming to fruition,
    that the Iranian govt had more support and stronger foundations than they had believed,
    that Israeli air defense was collapsing/exhausted and
    that an attrition war of long range strike was going to go badly for Israel.
    And Trump began to get freaked out over the rising price of oil with the Iranian threat of closing the strait of Hormuz.

    So they wrapped it up, declared victory, and demanded a ceasefire.

    Iran agreed because they too have been badly shaken through Israeli covert warfare and their own air defense all but collapsed.

    The post What The Hell Just Happened In The Middle East You May Ask? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Initial US Intelligence Assessment: US Didn’t Destroy Iran’s Nuclear Sites

    CNN reported on Tuesday that an initial US intelligence assessment has found that the US bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites didn’t destroy the core components of the sites and likely set back the nuclear program by only a few months.

    The assessment was prepared by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was based on a battle damage assessment from US Central Command, and it could change as the US gathers more intelligence. “So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops,” a source told CNN.

    The report also said that the US strikes didn’t destroy Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, and the centrifuges were largely “intact.”

    The post Initial US Intelligence Assessment: US Didn’t Destroy Iran’s Nuclear Sites appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • It’s Time to Put an End to the US-Israeli Fantasy of Regime Change in Iran

    As an Iranian, I felt a surge of relief — and cautious hope — when I heard news of the ceasefire between Iran and Israel. The bloodshed had gone on for 12 long days. The killing, the airstrikes, the relentless tit-for-tat violence — it all had to stop. If for nothing else, for the sake of the people on both sides. Now, of course, Israel’s massacre in Gaza must end, too. But even in that…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • NATO Members Agree to Raise Military Spending to Meet Trump’s Demands

    At the NATO summit in the Hague, almost all European nations reached an agreement to raise military spending to 5% of each county’s GDP. This comes as President Trump said the U.S. would not come to the defense of other NATO nations unless they hit 5% in military spending. “Trump wants to move towards a much, much more instrumental and crudely material, transactional politics…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Iran Cuts Ties With IAEA, Accusing It of Enabling US Airstrikes

    The Iranian parliament approved a bill Wednesday suspending its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The resolution states that weapons inspectors with the United Nations nuclear watchdog organization will not be allowed to enter the country unless it guarantees the security of Iran’s nuclear facilities and their ability to pursue peaceful nuclear activities.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Mike Johnson Suggests War Powers Act Is Unconstitutional

    Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), an ardent loyalist to President Donald Trump, is rejecting the idea that the current commander-in-chief must adhere to the War Powers Act, a half-century-old law that is meant to rein in presidential misuse and abuse of the U.S. military. Instead, Johnson told reporters on Tuesday that the law itself is unconstitutional…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • “Imperial Decline”: NATO Nations Boost War Spending at Trump’s Urging as He Defends Iran Bombing


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.