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Category: iran

  • Iran Will ‘Never Seek To Build A Nuclear Bomb,’ Declares President

    While addressing the 80th annual session of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, September 24, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated his country’s resolve to not seek a nuclear weapon.

    Pezeshkian claimed that it is not the threat of sanctions or war but its religious conviction and the dictate of the country’s supreme leader which prevents Iran from developing nuclear bombs and any other kind of weapons of mass destruction.

    He questioned the countries accusing Iran of developing a nuclear bomb while they themselves possess the “largest nuclear arsenals” and have violated the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) through the years to make their weapons more deadly.

    Pezeshkian rejected the allegations as baseless and spurious, claiming Iran’s nuclear program has always been for peaceful purposes.

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  • ‘No Doubt They Will Attack’: Max Blumenthal Meets Iran’s President

    Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian arrived late to a September 24, 2025 meeting with American antiwar figures on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. He had come from a fateful tete-a-tete with Emmanuel Macron, where he attempted to cajole his French counterpart into delaying expiration of the JCPOA nuclear deal rather than instituting snapback sanctions. Pezeshkian’s lobbying was fruitless; the Europeans had already decided to ratchet up the economic war on Tehran. Meanwhile, Israel was preparing for another attack on Iran with American support practically guaranteed.

    “No doubt they will attack Iran. And we will defend ourselves vigorously,” Pezeshkian declared to his audience of about 25 antiwar journalists, activists and think tank analysts gathered inside a conference hall in a Midtown Manhattan hotel.

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  • Iran Recalls Envoys From Germany, France And United Kingdom

    Iran has recalled its ambassadors from Germany, France, and the UK for consultations, state media reported on 27 September, after the three European states triggered the UN mechanism to reinstate sanctions.

    The Foreign Ministry said the decision was taken in response to the “irresponsible action” of the European trio in reviving UN Security Council resolutions that had been repealed under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). 

    The sanctions, scheduled to take effect at midnight, will impose restrictions on Iran’s banking, shipping, arms purchases and nuclear cooperation.

    Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told reporters that Washington and its allies were seeking to topple the Islamic Republic under the guise of the nuclear dispute.

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  • BREAKING VIDEO: Iranian spies just ‘hacked Israel’s secret nuclear programme’

    Video published by an Iranian TV station claims to show footage shot by Iranian spies inside Israel’s nuclear facilities. Reports indicate that Iran’s agents have been able to obtain:

    ● IDs and addresses of 189 Israeli nuclear and military specialists and details of the projects they are involved in.
    ● Detailed geographic coordinates of sensitive dual-use military sites.
    ● Full blueprints for Israeli nuclear reactors.
    ● Details of current and past weapons projects.
    ● Details of joint projects with the USA and European states.

    Iranian spies just ‘hacked Israel’s secret nuclear programme’

    In an unprovoked attack in June, Israel killed one of Iran’s leading nuclear scientists and at least eight of his colleagues, despite US intelligence assessing that they were involved only in civilian nuclear power projects. The assassinations followed years of similar attacks by Israel on Iranian soil. In this context and that of Israel’s recent strikes around the region, even on the territory of supposed allies, the potential for Iran to retaliate against scientists involved in Israel’s nuclear weapons programme will be a serious concern to the Israeli regime.

    Featured mage via the Canary

    By Skwawkbox

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • UN Security Council Reimposes Comprehensive International Sanctions On Iran

    The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) voted to reimpose severe and comprehensive international economic sanctions on Iran intended to exert maximum pressure on the country’s economy, on Friday, September 19, following pressure from the UK, France, and Germany (E3). With sanctions looming over the West Asian nation, European leaders suggested there may be a chance for a last-minute negotiated settlement.

    E3 wrote a letter to the UNSC in August demanding snapback sanctions against Iran by the end of this month in the absence of a negotiated deal on its nuclear program.

    Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, however, claimed that the Europeans were reluctant to consider the latest plan Iran had presented to them and accused them of trying to find excuses to avoid a diplomatic solution to the issue.

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  • The “Fat Boy Posse’s” Impending Attack on Iran

    Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates. How many children in how many classrooms, over how many centuries, have been hang-glided through the past, transported on the wings of these words?

    And now the bombs are falling, incinerating and humiliating that ancient civilisation.

    On the steel torsos of their missiles, adolescent American soldiers scrawl colourful messages in childish handwriting: ‘For Saddam from the Fat Boy Posse’. A building goes down. A marketplace. A home. A girl who loves a boy. A child who only ever wanted to play with his older brother’s marbles (Arundhati Roy, 2004, p. 81).

    Arundhati Roy’s heartrending lament of course refers to the 2003 invasion and destruction of Iraq by the US and its Coalition of the Willing (the US, the UK, Australia, and Poland – a gang otherwise known as the ‘bullied and the bought’). An invasion and occupation that by some estimates have caused the deaths of up to 2.4 million Iraqis, a figure that does not include more than half a million children who died as a result of 13 years of harsh economic sanctions leading up to the invasion.  

    But Roy’s words could be applied equally to many other countries that have been subjected to ‘the broad-spectrum antibiotic of [US] “democratic reform”’, and they will be just as relevant to those countries – like Iran – for whom such treatment lies in store.

    Since 2003, more or less the same Fat Boy Posse (plus Israel) has been doing pretty much the same things in places like Afghanistan, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine, Somalia, South Sudan, and Syria. Countries that have been cast by the US and its allies (also known as ‘the international community’) as ‘peripheral countries that are either ‘state sponsors of terror’ (never mind that the US is the reigning world champion) and/or countries whose ‘governments are not in control of all of their territory’ and clearly are therefore in need of ‘stabilising’ with US ‘help’.

    So where will the Fat Boy Posse and friends strike next?

    The notable regional omission from the list of countries that have been ‘stabilised’, ‘democratised’ and saved from themselves by the US et al. is the ancient (ten-thousand-year-old) civilisation of Iran. It is the final and, arguably, the most important remaining target.

    A full-blown attack on Iran has been in the making for at least the last half century. It gathered pace with the identification of Iran as a prime target by the US in its pursuit of the Israeli 1996 ‘clean break strategy’ to remake the Middle East.

    Now – before Iran becomes too difficult to subdue and disintegrate – there is a sense of urgency in Israel and the US to complete the unfinished business begun with the 12-day war of June 2025. With the support of the West, whose elites have always sought control over the natural resources of the Middle East, Israeli and US bombs and missiles with similar inscriptions to those dropped on Iraq will soon be raining down on Iran.

    Except – unlike Iraq, Palestine and the other countries on the list – militarily Iran will be a much more resolute, well-armed and fearsome opponent. In a war with Iran, there will be many missiles flying in the opposite direction. Missiles whose steel torsos will bear inscriptions like, ‘For Donald and Benjamin from the Persian Immortals and Aswaran’.

    Drawing on Noam Chomsky and other recent analyses of the issues involved, in this essay, first, we will explain why war with Iran is almost inevitable in the short term. We shall do so by setting out the main factors that – historically – have determined the positions of the opposing sides towards each other and, in the process, expose the specious arguments or pretexts used by Israel and the US to justify their aggression.

    Second, we shall discuss briefly the necessary conditions for a just peace in the Middle East and say why we think its prospects are so poor.

    Third, we shall argue that the impending war is likely to be more devastating and costly in terms of lives lost than any other war fought in the Middle East, a war that will have significant regional and global ramifications and, according to Jeffrey Sachs, will be unwinnable.

    And fourth, on the basis of our discussion, we shall apportion responsibility for the imminent renewal of conflict among the three main combatants – the US, Israel, and Iran.

    The Israeli-US Position

    The ‘threat’ allegedly posed to US and Western interests and ‘security’ by a recalcitrant Iran has always been a function of its geostrategic importance in the Middle East, which has a number of important dimensions, some quite recently developed, and some of which have global ramifications.

    Iran’s Natural Resource Wealth. Iran has the second largest economy in the Middle East, which is dependent on its significant deposits of oil (with an estimated value of $10 trillion) and gas (about 18% of the world total) and, to a lesser extent, substantial reserves of coal, copper, iron ore, lead, and zinc, along with uranium and gold. Overall, in terms of natural resources, Iran claims to be the fifth richest country in the world.

    This is the historical bedrock of Western (capitalist) interest in the balkanisation of Iran. US control of the region would give it ‘a degree of lever­age over both rivals and allies prob­a­bly unpar­al­leled in the his­to­ry of empire… It is dif­fi­cult to over­state the role of the Gulf in the way the world is cur­rent­ly run’ (Stevenson quoted in Chomsky, 2019)

    Needless to say, these qualities will not have gone unnoticed by a ‘property development’- minded US president.

    Threat to the disruption of shipping in the Straits of Hormuz. Iran’s long southern sea border with the Persian Gulf enables it to disrupt shipping, particularly in the very narrow Straits of Hormuz. Approximately 20% of global oil consumption and a high percentage of global gas consumption passes through the straits.

    Iran’s improving relations with China and Russia. In addition to the above, the importance to the US of regime change in Iran has increased significantly as Iran’s economic and military ties with Russia, China and North Korea have improved.

    Examples include the recently opened Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) rail link from China to Tehran via Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which has greatly expanded trade between the two countries. Another rail link is planned that would traverse northern Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, also as a part of the BRI.

    China is now Iran’s largest trading partner and imports a significant proportion (some estimates indicate as much as 90%) of Iran’s oil output or about 11 million barrels per day or 15% of China’s oil imports.

    Clearly, the harm that regime change in Iran could do to China will be of considerable appeal to the current US administration and its allies.

    According to Michael Hudson, another threat to US interests arises from the warming relations between Iran and Russia, which portend the possibility of a Russian route to the Persian Gulf, via the Caspian Sea and Iran, which would enable Russia to bypass the Suez Canal.

    A sovereign Iran also gets in the way of the proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), announced by the US in 2023 as a counter to the BRI.

    Contribution to de-dollarisation. In conjunction with the rapid development of BRICS, the possibility – suggested by Yanis Varoufakis – that China might establish a new Bretton Woods, and the political frailty of some of the family controlled Arab states, these developments threaten to accelerate the de-dollarisation of the world economy. The reliance of world economies on the US dollar underpins US global hegemony.

    An impediment to a Greater Israel. The notion of a Greater Israel – one that expands its borders to include Gaza, the West Bank, and parts of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and even Egypt and Saudi Arabia – is a paramount and long-held Zionist objective and a stated ambition of Netanyahu’s right-wing government.

    Iran’s geographical presence, which bestrides the Middle East, and its support of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis – the so-called Axis of Resistance to US/Israeli dominance of the region – is an impediment to this.

    In order for Israel to achieve its Greater Israel aims, regime change in Iran is a necessary and sufficient condition.

    Defiance and a threat to ‘world peace’. Like Cuba and Venezuela and other recalcitrants, since the election of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the Islamic revolution of 1979, Iran’s mortal sin has been to refuse to do as the US and Israel and the West generally dictate, which is taken and depicted as a threat to the US-imposed global order, otherwise known as ‘world peace’. Chomsky (2013) explains it in the following terms:

    We’re back to the Mafia principle. In 1979, Iranians carried out an illegitimate act: They overthrew a tyrant that the United States had imposed and supported, and moved on an independent path, not following U.S. orders.

    And, most dangerous of all, ‘Suc­cess­ful defi­ance can inspire oth­ers to pur­sue the same course. The ​“virus” can ​“spread con­ta­gion,” as Kissinger put it when labouring to over­throw Sal­vador Allende in Chile’ (Chomsky, 2019). Without absolute fealty to the Godfather, the whole system of domination will crumble. Miscreants must therefore be taught to behave.

    Moreover, the significance of disobedience to the US rises exponentially when it is tied to the possibility of nuclear deterrence, as Chomsky (2019) avers: ‘For those who wish to ram­page freely in the region, a deter­rent is an intol­er­a­ble threat — even worse than ​“suc­cess­ful defiance”.’

    The threat of nuclear weapons. Israel has long held that Iran intends to develop nuclear weapons, which would clearly constitute a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This assertion (unsullied by evidence to support it) has been at the centre of Israel’s long-standing pretext for its aggressiveness towards Iran, justified on the basis of self-defence and presented as the West’s first line of resistance against the threat that a nuclear armed Iran would pose to the rest of the world.

    The latter view was expressed explicitly by Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, on 20 June 2025 before the UN Security Council when he said that Israel was doing the “dirty work… for all of us”, and was protecting “civilisation” from “jihadist [Iranian] genocidal imperialism”, which wants to redesign the global order.

    No matter that, with US backing, Israel, Pakistan, and India all posses nuclear weapons and are not signatories to the NPT.

    Historical antagonism towards Iran. The last seventy-five years of enmity between Iran and the US and its allies began with the coup instigated by the UK with US support in 1953, which reinstalled Pahlavi as Shah. According to Chomsky (2013), since that time, ‘not a day has passed in which the US has not been torturing Iranians.’

    Its continuation to the present day has been marked by ‘cyberwar and sabotage …, numerous assassinations of Iranian scientists, constant threats of use of force (“all options are open”) in violation of international law (and if anyone were to care, the U.S. Constitution) (Chomsky, 2022)’, as the following critical incidents demonstrate:

    • First, the Islamic revolution of 1979, which overthrew the despotic US puppet regime of the Shah.
    • Second, the severance of diplomatic relations by the US in 1980 after Iranian students – who were protesting the admission to the US of the Shah for cancer treatment – broke into the US embassy and held 52 US citizens hostage for 444 days. Economic sanctions were also imposed on Iran.
    • Third, the provision by the US of support to Saddam Hussein in the Iraq-Iran war, which began in September 1980 and lasted for 8 years and resulted in the deaths of up to 750,000 Iranian military personnel and civilians, many of them killed by chemical weapons.
    • Fourth, the designation of Iran as a ‘state sponsor of terror’ by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. This followed an attack on a US military base in Beirut that killed 241 US military personnel. The attack was attributed to Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shia organisation backed by Iran.
    • Fifth, in July 1988, the shooting down of Iran Air flight IR655 by a US warship in the Persian Gulf, which resulted in the deaths of all 290 passengers and crew. Although it paid compensation to the families of those killed, the US never admitted responsibility or apologised. After the tragedy, the arrogance of the US and its disdain of Iran were typified by President George Bush’s infamous exclamation ‘I’ll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.’
    • Sixth, in 1995, the imposition of more sanctions on Iran by President Bill Clinton – which persist to this day – and have caused enormous suffering in Iran. At about the same time, in order to foment insurrection and bring about regime change, the US dramatically increased its funding of exiled Iranian monarchists and opposition groups within the country.
    • Seventh, in 2002, in the aftermath of 9/11, the designation of Iran as a member of the ‘Axis of Evil’ (with Iraq and North Korea) by President George Bush.
    • Eighth, in 2018, President Trump’s withdrawal of the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was designed to limit Iran’s nuclear activities (including a cap of 3.67% on nuclear enrichment) in exchange for an easing of sanctions.
    • Ninth, in Baghdad in 2020, in a drone strike, the assassination by the US of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
    • Tenth, in March 2025, the initiation by the US of fake negotiations for a new nuclear deal as cover for an attack on Iran by Israel and the US on 13 June 2025, which marked the beginning of the 12-day war.

    US/Israeli Orientalism and Islamophobia. Orientalists believe in the intrinsic superiority of the peoples of the West (Europe, the US and the Anglo settler societies) and Western civilisation over the peoples and civilisations of the Orient (the Middle East, North Africa, and South and Southeast Asia) or the “other.”

    As we have noted elsewhere:

    ‘The brutal and, all too frequently, genocidal consequences of Orientalism have a gory track record that is well known, but its manifestations today are more flagrant, more brazen, and more recorded than ever. The Western-perpetrated or sponsored atrocities of the 21st century, many of which are US- and Israeli-made, all bear its hallmarks.

    Carried to the extreme, Orientalism casts the “other” as sub-human, or vermin that are treated with revulsion and can be exterminated or deracinated without compunction, as was the practice in the colonies, in apartheid South Africa, in settler societies such as the US, Canada, and Australia, and as is happening now in Palestine. It amounts to institutionalised racism of the most pernicious kind that is both latent and manifest.’

    It is certain that a new war with Iran will be fuelled partly by the Orientalism and Islamophobia that are deeply ingrained in the governments of both the US and Israel, and which will include beliefs about the general inferiority and unworthiness of the ‘raghead’ opposition, their corruption and cowardliness, and US and Israeli superiority, exceptionalism and divine right.

    In this view, Muslim deaths can be discounted because they are terrorists and religious fanatics or because, if they are not, they carry the seeds of terrorism and religious fanaticism within them and are therefore richly deserving of their fates.

    The vitriolic responses of right-wing extremists in the US to the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September 2025 – such as Steve Bannon who said ‘Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country’ and Eon Musk: ‘If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die’ – are representative of the views of a president and government who they helped elect.

    According to Chris Hedges, ‘Kirk was a poster child for our [US] emergent Christian Fascism’. And, like all fascists, Kirk was Islamophobic, tweeting ‘Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,’ and that it is ‘not compatible with western civilization.’

    Presidential idiosyncrasies. Our recent parody of President Trump’s international ‘property development’ ambitions notwithstanding, it is necessary to qualify any attempt to apply the constraints of rational argument to US foreign policy by saying that the president’s psychological condition makes the ideas of ‘logic’ and ‘rationality’ anathema.

    We are not alone in thinking this. Commenting on Trump’s first term in office, Chomsky (2019) observed: “It is a mis­take to seek some grand geopo­lit­i­cal think­ing behind Trump’s per­for­mances. These are read­i­ly explained as the actions of a nar­cis­sis­tic mega­lo­ma­ni­ac whose doc­trine is to main­tain per­son­al pow­er, and who has the polit­i­cal savvy to sat­is­fy his con­stituen­cies, pri­mar­i­ly cor­po­rate pow­er and pri­vate wealth but also the vot­ing base.” Most would agree that the bizarreness and unpredictability of his behaviour have discovered new heights in his second term in office.

    Sachs (2020) also regards Trump as being ‘emotionally unbalanced’ and ‘psychologically disordered’.

    Even though in the cases of Iran and Palestine, the presidents’ whims are subject to gale-force headwinds from the irrepressible and irresistible Israel lobby in the US, and to some extent they will be channelled by Western elites led by his self-appointed pack of oligarchs, it is difficult to imagine any significant US military action against Iran not being subject to his flights of fancy.

    In the conclusion to this essay, we shall return to the complex question of presidential caprice and the extent to which it might be influenced by the factors that we discuss below. And we shall consider where the exercise of such caprice is likely to be at its greatest.

    Iran’s Position

    Historical continuity and resilience. Throughout history, for those with imperial ambitions in the Middle East, Iran/Persia has been a much sought after prize and, for would be conquerors, an implacable and formidable opponent.

    These qualities are exemplified in the ancient Iranian battle formation known as the Persian Immortals, which were 10,000 strong and were so named because their number seemed never to be depleted during battle, as dead and wounded were replaced immediately.

    The same incandescent bravery was displayed in the war with Iraq where ‘human wave assaults’ were often made by units of young volunteers.

    Despite being conquered by the Greeks under Alexander the Great, and others like the Mongols under Genghis Khan, Persian civilisation and cultural identity have shown remarkable strength and durability and have been an important unifying force and source of pride for its people to the present day.

    National sovereignty. Since the overthrow of the US puppet regime of the Shah in 1979, quite reasonably, Iran has insisted on being the master of its own affairs, free from the bullying of the Godfather in Washington and his enforcer in the Middle East, Israel.

    Regional religious solidarity. Iran’s backing of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, and the Houthis in Yemen can be interpreted as aid to the defence of the sovereignty of fellow (Shia, except Hamas) Muslims against the aggression of a US-supported Israel, that is, a legitimate version of the politically contrived ‘self-defence’ employed by Israel as an excuse for its aggression and endorsed by its Western supporters.

    Defensive posture and deterrence. Iran’s position vis-à-vis Israel and the US has been abundantly clear for at least the last 25 years.

    Fifteen years ago Chomsky (2011, p. 197) declared that, despite the ‘fevered rhetoric’ about nuclear weapons, ‘rational souls understand that the Iran threat is not one of attack – which would be suicidal.’

    Chomsky quotes a senior US intelligence official as estimating (in 2008) that the chances of the Iranian leadership making a nuclear strike (a ‘quixotic attack’) on Israel was in the region of 1%. First, because they realised that this would lead to their own annihilation and Iran’s instant destruction. And second, because the Iranian leadership would be reluctant to sacrifice the ‘vast amounts of money’ and ‘huge economic empires’ they had accumulated (again, the US should know as it is so well-versed in such matters) – now, presumably, even greater than they were then.

    The same official acknowledged that Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor did not end Saddam’s nuclear weapon’s programme, it initiated it.

    Clearly, the recent 12-day ‘feeler’ or ‘warm-up’ war was prosecuted by the US and Israel in the full knowledge that, first, if Iran had nuclear weapons (very unlikely), there was only about a 1% chance that they would use them against Israel; and second, if they didn’t, there was good evidence to suggest that an attack by Israel and the US would spur Iran into developing them, as it had done with Iraq.

    As we and others have observed elsewhere, in the light of the above, in Iran the balance of opinion in government is now likely to have swung in favour of developing nuclear weapons, as a deterrent.

    It would be the rational thing to do. Chomsky (2007) tacitly agrees: ‘It is easy to understand an observation by one of Israel’s leading military historians, Martin van Creveld. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, knowing it to be defenceless, he noted, “Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy.”’

    In the same paper, Chomsky asks the rhetorical question, ‘how would “we” (the US) have reacted if Iran had invaded Canada and Mexico?’ Of course, since then, the provocations and scope for rhetorical questions of this sort have got much worse.

    A Framework for Peace

    The framework for peace is the same as it has been since the turn of the century, namely, the creation of a Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone in the Middle East (WMDFZME).

    For some time, ‘global… support [has been] overwhelming for a WMDFZME; this zone would include Iran, Israel and preferably the other two nuclear powers that have refused to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: India and Pakistan, who, along with Israel, developed their programs with US aid’ (Chomsky, 2012).

    Straightforward enough for sane people who want to avoid catastrophe, but even more certain to be spurned now than it was then by the US and Israel for the reasons given above.

    The Likely Character of the Impending War

    At the beginning of this essay, we referred briefly to just some of the consequences of the invasion of Iraq by the US and its allies, which have included up to 3 million Iraqi deaths.

    In my own experience of post-invasion Iraq in 2011/2012, I found a much-underemphasised effect of its invasion and occupation to be as follows:

    For many citizens, perhaps most important of all, [is] the daily public humiliation at the hands of foreign occupying forces… [which] has stripped them of much of their sense of personal and national honour and pride, their dignity and their self-respect. All of this can result in something akin to mass psychological trauma in the population as a whole, and particularly among children.

    …in the immediate aftermath [of invasion and occupation], for the visitor to such places, it is this feature of the state that is among the most striking and emblematic. A deep and pervasive sense of national violation, sullen resentment of chronic injustice, combined with popular antipathy towards the invader and its vestiges are palpable and everywhere discernible in the statements and body language of ordinary citizens.

    These societal responses can last in uniquely damaging ways for generations.

    Over a period of three quarters of a century, we have shown in our discussion above that Iran has been subjected to similar indignities and humiliations by the same perpetrators, which in the brief war of June 2025 alone included the assassination of 30 Iranian military leaders and 11 senior nuclear scientists and the deaths of more than 500 civilians. For many, perhaps most, Iranians, the cumulative effects of these humiliations will be much the same as those I observed in Iraq in 2011/12, and which research demonstrates are very long lasting – over generations. Iranians will be incensed that the US and Israel can do these things to them repeatedly and with disdain and apparent impunity – as sane people anywhere would be.

    Partly for these reasons, a war between the US/Irael and Iran is likely to be much longer lasting, much more bitterly contested, and much bloodier and more destructive than previous wars in the region.

    But it will be so also because the opposing sides will be much more evenly matched militarily; because the weaponry used by both sides will be much more advanced and deadlier; because Iran is a huge country geographically – about twice the size of Iraq – and has a population of more than 90 million; because Iran will receive significant material support from other countries such as Russia, China, North Korea, and many Islamic countries; and because Iran has great pride in the continuity of its ancient civilisation and a long history of resisting and, eventually, overcoming invaders.

    Such a conflict could well result in WWIII, as Chomsky (2007) noted some years ago when the circumstances were not nearly as incendiary as they are now.

    Apportioning Responsibility

    Even in a case which many would suppose with good cause to be open and shut, it is necessary when apportioning responsibility for war to present and consider the evidence as we have tried to do above.

    To reiterate, in 2012, Chomsky observed that ‘Iran’s strategic doctrine is defensive, designed to deter invasion long enough for diplomacy to take effect. If Iran is developing nuclear weapons (which is still undetermined), that would be part of its deterrent strategy.’

    Even in the face of the increased and persistent aggression by the US and Israel since then, there is nothing to suggest that Iran’s position has changed.

    Indeed, despite the incessant provocation by the US and Israel – including credible alleged betrayal by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the whereabouts of the Iranian nuclear scientists assassinated by Mossad in June 2025 – Iran has resumed dialogue with the IAEA about the possibility of a new inspection arrangement.

    For the US, on the other hand, Chomsky’s (2015) words of ten years ago apply with even greater force now because the US government’s weakening grip on global power is likely to have increased its desperation: ‘[The United States] is a rogue state, indifferent to international law and conventions, entitled to resort to violence at will. … Take, for example, the Clinton Doctrine—namely, the United States is free to resort to unilateral use of military power, even for such purposes as to ensure uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources—let alone security or alleged humanitarian concerns. And adherence to this doctrine is very well confirmed and practiced, as need hardly be discussed among people willing to look at the facts of current history.’

    An administrative change made recently by President Trump – which renamed the Department of Defence the Department of War – is partly no doubt Trumpian bravado and bluster but it is also a strong statement of the increasing bellicosity of his government.

    For the US and Israel and Western capitalist elites in general, the economic and geostrategic incentives for regime change in Iran, which have always been great, now seem irresistible. Made urgent by the fact that delay will make the task much more difficult.

    For Iran, on the other hand, its posture remains defensive – because it recognises the immense human costs that a full-fledged and drawn-out war will entail; because its leadership, like any government, wants to remain in power (and, perhaps, as alleged by US intelligence some years ago, protect their personal fortunes); and because in the end such war will still be suicidal.

    The crucial difference is that Iran’s defensive stance now seems certain to include the rapid development of nuclear weapons, for deterrence. The longer that the US and Israel wait, the more likely this becomes.

    It is here, perhaps, that the two critical personalities on the aggressors’ side will most come into play. Egged on by the baying of Israeli Zionists at home, the powerful Israel lobby in the US, and the insatiable avarice of the hyena-like cackle of savage capitalists that Trump has assembled in his cabinet, the majestic self-assurance (omniscience) of Trump and Netanyahu combined with the conviction that all will be lost unless Iran can be brought to heel quickly make an imminent attack on Iran almost inevitable despite the strong likelihood that it will lead to a nuclear conflagration.

    This, together with the mycorrhizal relationship that exists between two extremely aggressive rogue states whose interests in regime change in Iran coincide, we believe has created an unstoppable momentum.

    One in which the trigger for war will be in the hands of a US president whose psychological propensities and fallibilities are so well known that the large number and heavy weight of factors in favour of an all-out assault on Iran can be packaged in a way that will make him squeeze it.

    And so a protracted and perhaps unwinnable war will be set in motion, another ancient civilisation (a fanatical ‘peripheral country’ that can destroy the world – no matter the oxymoron) will be incinerated by the Fat Boy Posse, the Middle East will be set ablaze, and a world war could follow. All to the accompaniment of the phocine clapping and honking of approval from Trump’s herd of domesticated oligarchs, the exultant hosanas of Israeli Zionists, and the celebratory tinkling of champagne glasses among capitalist elites.

    The post The “Fat Boy Posse’s” Impending Attack on Iran first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • House Speaker Mike Johnson Is a Leading War Criminal

    It’s a crowded field, I know. Soldiers are proudly publishing videos of their own gruesome crimes. Prime Ministers are touring the world in defiance of arrest warrants. But I want to make sure we’re aware of one prominent member of the list of individuals responsible for the crime of war: U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (Republican from the state of total submission to Trump).

    War is a crime under numerous laws and treaties, absolutely regardless of who does it. There is no exception for legislatures. But let’s assume that you define all distant murders (such as of Venezuelan boaters) as war, and that you commit to total non-recognition of all the laws against war (and of the U.S. Constitution’s mandate that treaties be the supreme law of the land) — in other words, let’s assume that you are the New York Times. Then you’re left with the problem that the U.S. Constitution allows Congress and not the Executive to declare wars.

    Mike Johnson is a war criminal

    In 1973, the Congress, overriding the veto of the Executive, created a new law called “The War Powers Resolution” which allowed presidents to do what they’d long been doing anyway, namely launch unconstitutional wars, but put time limits and reporting requirements on those wars, and established the means for any single member of either house of the Congress to compel a vote in that house on whether to, in effect, declare:

    “Not this time. This particular war, the Congress says no to, as the first branch of the government and the branch in possession of Constitutional war powers. End it immediately, or cease threatening and do not begin it.”

    If we were not steadfastly ignoring all treaties, we might note that threatening wars is always a violation of the United Nations Charter. Ignoring treaties or not, the U.S. Congress needs to do something to halt each war/crime. Just as every shipment of weapons to Israel violates numerous U.S. laws and treaties, yet we still require Congress to pass yet another law before the shipments are stopped, a U.S. war may violate numerous laws and yet roll on unless somebody does something to stop it. So, what can Congress do?

    This is where the War Powers Resolution comes in. It is a tool that can be used to, at the very least, compel our so-called “representatives” to vote yes or no on a deeply unpopular and malevolent war that their funders and party leaders expect them to keep rolling on.

    Or, rather, the War Powers Resolution used to be such a tool. Now, we have a man running the U.S. House of Representatives who is violating the War Powers Resolution by not holding the votes that it requires. By illegally refusing to hold votes on whether or not to halt wars, Speaker Mike Johnson has made himself responsible for those wars and every death, injury, traumatic impact, bit of destruction, degree of global warming, and brutal influence on our culture that stems from those wars.

    For decades, a single Congress Member, or a small number of them — Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul were a frequent “bipartisan” combination in relatively recent history — could introduce a resolution and force a vote, despite the wishes of the House “leadership” or the president or even the weapons dealers — on whether to end or forestall a particular war. The votes failed, over and over again, but they created pressure against wars and helped ordinary people identify which Congress Members needed to hear from them. (If someone has a detailed record of all such votes, I wish they’d tell me.)

    And then came Yemen. For the first time, a house of Congress — and in fact it was both of them — was not just forced to hold a vote, but saw the vote pass. (When one house passes one of these things, the other house has to vote too.) The bill was sent to President Trump 1.0, requiring an end to U.S. warmaking in Yemen. Trump vetoed, and Congress failed to override. The Congress then chose not to send the same bill to President Biden at all. But a new threat to the war machine had appeared.

    Now there are resolutions in the House that legally require swift votes on Venezuela and on Iran, but no votes are expected, because Mike Johnson doesn’t want them.

    Here’s how FCNL’s “War Powers Resolution Activist Guide” accurately describes the law, but not the reality:

    “Any member of the House or Senate, regardless of committee assignment, can invoke section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution and get a full floor vote on whether to require the president to remove U.S. armed forces from hostilities. Under the procedural rules of the War Powers Act, these bills are granted expedited status—requiring a full floor vote in the House within 15 calendar days, and in the Senate within 10 calendar days of introduction. This provision is especially powerful because it allows members of Congress to force timely debates and votes on the president’s use of military force, reinforcing Congress’s constitutional authority over decisions of war and peace.”

    (What the law actually says is 15 days for action in a committee plus three more days for a vote by the full house.)

    But, according to National Review, Johnson has “come out against” holding a legally mandated vote on war on Iran. That publication explains that “Johnson could remove the privileged nature of the resolution and prevent it from getting a vote, according to Politico.” That sounds as though Politico has made some legalistic case for Johnson’s right to violate the law. Still, you’ll find no such thing at the Politico link, which merely says: “Speaker Mike Johnson could move this week to kill the effort with language getting rid of the privileged nature of the resolution, according to a person granted anonymity to relay the private discussions.” But “language” is not a pass to violate a law.

    Congressman Ro Khanna has a statement on why the House should vote on Iran, but it focuses on the substantive reasons to vote and vote yes, noting on the legal requirement of holding the vote merely “It is structured as a privileged resolution, meaning it will receive a vote. Every member of Congress will have to decide whether they stand for diplomacy and the Constitution, or for endless war and executive overreach.” Will they?

    According to The Hill, Khanna and Congressman Massie could force a vote regardless of what Johnson wants. Can they? Why haven’t they?

    There are other required votes, including on the same war and on Venezuela, that have also not been happening. The Senate, meanwhile, has held a vote on (and not passed) a resolution to prevent war on Iran. I suppose there’s little risk to the merchants of death for the Senate to comply with the law and hold mandated votes as long as the House does not.

    H.Con.Res.38 on Iran has been waiting for a vote since June 17.

    H.Con.Res.40 on Iran has been waiting for a vote since June 23.

    Does that seem like 18 days to anybody?

    Each of these resolutions has an unusually large number of cosponsors for a resolution that only requires one sponsor to compel a vote, possibly because the new reality is one of people demanding that their representatives cosponsor these things, something they have infinite amounts of time to do, since there’s never any vote on them.

    This piece originally appeared on https://progressivehub.net/house-speaker-mike-johnson-is-a-leading-war-criminal/ 

    The post House Speaker Mike Johnson Is a Leading War Criminal first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • In the Aftermath of Israel’s Assault, Feminists in Iran Chart a Path Forward

    As we mark the third anniversary of Jina (Mahsa) Amini’s death in Iran and the uprising that sparked the global Woman, Life, Freedom movement, the voices that courageously challenged authoritarianism at home find themselves navigating an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape. In response to the June 2025 war between Israel and Iran, mainstream media outlets — both Persian-language and…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Five Actions that Definitively Disqualify Trump for his Coveted Nobel Peace Prize

    I am especially proud to be the first President in decades who has started no new wars.
    — Donald Trump, Farewell Address, 20 January 2021

    I am the Peace President and only I will prevent WW3!
    — Donald J. Trump, Truth Social, 6 September 2024

    I think I’m going to get a Nobel Prize for a lot of things, if they gave it out fairly, which they don’t.
    — Donald Trump, Washington Post, 23 September 2019

    Seemingly crushing Trump’s aspirations, Cross World News has headlined: “Donald Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize Push Rejected.”

    It has long been obvious that the self-described “president of peace” Donald Trump has been immodestly pining and campaigning for a Nobel Peace Prize. Trump figures if Barack Obama — audaciously though — was awarded the peace prize, then he should be as well. “They gave it to Obama. He didn’t even know what he got it for. He was there for about 15 seconds and he got the Nobel Prize.” Trump complained, “With me, I probably will never get it.”

    Nonetheless, Trump believes that he has the bona fides to win a vaunted and tainted Nobel Peace Prize. Trump prides himself on his having held negotiations with the DPRK and on his role in pushing for the Abraham Accords in the Middle East. In more recent times, he has taken credit for having ended seven wars. Even if all this were indisputably true, he still should not be in contention for a peace prize.

    Five solid reasons that invalidate peace credentials

    To start, a nomination from Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu — indicted for alleged responsibility “for the war crimes of starvation as a method of warfare and of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024” as cited by the  UN-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) — should raise some eyebrows.

    Even so, Berg Harpviken, who guides the Nobel Peace Prize committee said, “To be nominated is not necessarily a great achievement. The great achievement is to become a laureate.” Trump is just one of 338 individuals and organizations nominated this year.

    1) — More egregious for Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize aspirations are his administration’s actions that are strongly supportive of the Israeli government’s genocidal actions in Palestine.

    2) — There is the case of the ongoing US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. This was admitted by secretary of state Marco Rubio, in an interview with Sean Hannity, saying, “And frankly, it’s a proxy war between nuclear powers – the United States, helping Ukraine…” US involvement is cited as prolonging the fighting that has seen, according to retired US colonel Douglas Macgregor, over 1.7 million Ukrainian soldiers killed or missing in action, including over a hundred thousand Russians.

    3) — In March 2025, the United States launched Operation Rough Rider, a large campaign of air and naval strikes against Ansar Allah targets in war-ravaged Yemen.

    4) — On 22 June 2025, the US air force and navy bombed three nuclear facilities in Iran, this despite Iran having not attacked or threatened the US and being in negotiations at that time with the US over Iran’s nuclear program.

    5) — On 3 September 2025, the US Trump attacked a small Venezuelan boat, allegedly carrying drugs bound for the US, killing all eleven people onboard. The BBC cites experts calling the attack illegal:

    [Prof Michael Becker:] “Not only does the strike appear to have violated the prohibition on the use of force, it also runs afoul of the right to life under international human rights law.”

    Prof [Luke] Moffett said that the use of force in this case could amount to an “extrajudicial arbitrary killing” and “a fundamental violation of human rights”.

    The US narrative has since been heavily called into question.

    Subsequently, on 13 September 2025, according to the Venezuelan foreign minister Yvan Gil, the US navy further ratcheted up tensions by raiding a Venezuelan tuna boat with nine fishermen while it was sailing in Venezuelan waters.

    Conclusion

    Actively abetting a genocide, promoting a proxy war, launching attacks on nuclear facilities, bombing war-ravaged Yemen, and illegally bombing and raiding small boats in open water on unproven claims, separately, and definitively in totality, must rule out any consideration for a peace prize.

    The post Five Actions that Definitively Disqualify Trump for his Coveted Nobel Peace Prize first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • The desperation of Israel’s Qatar attack

    Israel might claim that they were not attacking Qatar per se, but rather Hamas in Qatar, but that is neither a distinction nor a difference. Qatar is considered neutral territory in the region, a place where representatives of Hamas, the Israeli government, the US, Egypt, and other interlocutors could meet and negotiate safely. Qatari territory was, until now, tacitly inviolable.

    Israel’s attack is clearly a sign of desperation. From Israel’s point of view, Hamas went too far in accepting Israel’s ceasefire terms. Those terms were designed to be unacceptable but to have the appearance of justification, so as to be able to condemn a Hamas rejection.

    Apparently, Israel made an offer that was unintentionally reasonable enough for Hamas to accept. Israel doesn’t want a ceasefire, only another pretext to continue the Gaza genocide to its ultimate conclusion. Not that a pretext is needed, from Israel’s point of view, but a fig leaf is always preferable to cover the last bit of embarrassing exposure.

    Nevertheless, the Israeli attack on Qatar reveals the depths of Israeli despair. Israel can no longer afford a ceasefire – not even to satisfy the demands for the release of Israeli captives. Its vaunted military consists of little more than an air force with unlimited US bombs and refueling facilities. The last ceasefire significantly reversed the ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza, and the infantry is so decimated by unaccustomed casualties, flight abroad, and refusal to serve, that it can barely muster the equivalent of a single division. A second ceasefire would be disastrous. Meanwhile, Hamas has more recruits than it can use, and an unlimited supply of unexploded Israeli ordnance to repurpose in workshops deep underground.

    Increasingly, it appears that the outcome in Gaza may include no ceasefire or pause, much less a truce, dénouement, or agreement, but rather a fight to the finish, with only one side left standing. Alternatively, Israel could decide to withdraw strategically rather than see its population dwindle inside a fortress of die-hard fanatics unable to dominate the territory that it covets.

    In fact, the uncertainties threaten to take us into unknown territory. Israel’s status as a pariah state is growing dramatically, while its dependence on a dwindling number of supporters makes the unthinkable increasingly plausible. Will the world finally defy or prevail upon the US to end the genocide? Will Israel use or threaten to use its nuclear arsenal on its neighbors to make them accept an unwilling Palestinian population into their territory? Will a joint Israeli-US attempt to destroy Iran unleash a global military conflict, with unpredictable consequences?

    We can only hope that a receding supply of saner minds will be adequate to the daunting task ahead.

    The post The desperation of Israel’s Qatar attack first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • The US Bankrolled Israel’s Attack on Qatar, Jeremy Scahill Reminds Us

    Global condemnation is mounting after Israel bombed Qatar’s capital Doha, attempting to take out senior Hamas leaders who had gathered to consider a U.S. proposal for a Gaza ceasefire. Hamas leadership survived the strike, which killed six. We speak with Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of Drop Site News, who has reported extensively on Gaza ceasefire negotiations and is one of the few Western…

    Source

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  • Veterans For Peace Condemns the Deployment of National Guard in Washington, DC, and the Misuse of U.S. Troops and ICE to Create Terror in Our Cities

    Veterans For Peace unequivocally condemns President Trump’s unlawful deployment of the National Guard to Washington, DC. This follows the outrageous deployment of National Guard and U.S. Marines to the streets and parks of Los Angeles in support of ICE terror tactics in a city where as many as one in ten residents are undocumented workers. Even U.S. military veterans have been targeted and deported.

    The crime rate in Washington, DC, is at a 30-year low. The claim that an emergency exists requiring military policing is a blatant lie. The use of the U.S. military for domestic policing violates the Posse Comitatus Act, which reserves law enforcement for civilian authorities, not federal troops.

    Is it a coincidence that the cities targeted for occupation by federal forces are Democratic-led and often with Black mayors? Furthermore, the deployment of National Guard units without the consent of state governors, as in California, is highly questionable and likely illegal.

    Equally disturbing is the role of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in terrorizing entire communities. Wearing masks, without identification, often in plain clothes and unmarked vans, ICE personnel are becoming shock troops more reminiscent of fascist, totalitarian regimes. In recent days, at least one man was killed when he ran into traffic to avoid being detained by masked men. There are now reports of women being abducted and assaulted by violent criminals posing as ICE. How can anyone tell the difference?

    The ICE budget in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is larger than that of any branch of the armed services and larger than the entire federal prison system. New prisons—such as “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida, effectively concentration camps—are being built to imprison nonviolent immigrants with no criminal records whatsoever. Meanwhile, Trump brands undocumented workers as violent criminals and drug-dealing gang members—another blatant lie.

    The deployment of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers to the border with Mexico threatens border communities and Mexico itself, with Trump even claiming the right to invade with drones and the U.S. military in pursuit of “cartels.” U.S. leaders have leveled unsubstantiated claims, such as accusing Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro of running a drug cartel, while dangling multimillion-dollar bounties. These are the hallmarks of regime-change propaganda.

    Veterans For Peace stands opposed to racist violence in our communities. Behind the masks and lies of the Trump administration, we see the face of White Supremacy—and a growing trend of domestic repression. As the old warning goes: First they came for the immigrants and communities of color…

    The U.S. Supports Genocide in Gaza and Escalates Toward Global War

    At the very same time, the U.S. government continues to provide bipartisan support for the genocide and starvation of Palestinian men, women, and children in Gaza. The U.S. supplies the bombs that fall on Palestinian neighborhoods and the political cover for the systematic destruction of an entire people.

    The U.S. has bombed Yemen and Iran, both countries that sought to aid Palestinians. The Pentagon is openly planning war against China, simply because the Chinese economy challenges U.S. dominance. Military planners even discuss using tactical—or first-strike strategic—nuclear weapons. The U.S. is also fueling a devastating proxy war in Ukraine, where the priority should be to cease hostilities and pursue genuine negotiations. Meanwhile, escalating threats toward Iran risk plunging the region into another catastrophic war.

    When Veterans For Peace and antiwar activists protest, will we find ourselves in ICE’s concentration camps?

    Military Members: “This Is Not What We Signed Up For!”

    As veterans of the U.S. military—and too many questionable wars—we stand with our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters in today’s armed forces. They did not enlist to chase immigrants around parking lots or into traffic. They did not sign up to invade Mexico or Venezuela. They do not want to stand on the front lines of a nuclear war. Increasingly, we are hearing from GIs questioning their deployments and seeking advice on their legal rights and alternatives.

    Veterans For Peace will continue to support members of the military who are questioning whether their orders are morally or legally justified. We encourage military personnel and their families to call the GI Rights Hotline at 877-447-4487 to learn more about their rights and how to seek a discharge.

    Peace at Home, Peace Abroad!

    Veterans For Peace joins the majority of people in the U.S. who reject the deployment of National Guard, U.S. troops, and ICE to terrorize our communities and prepare the ground for fascist repression. We will work with civil society organizations resisting these illegal, authoritarian measures.

    We call for peace at home and abroad: an end to U.S. support for genocide in Gaza, an end to provocative military actions against China, Iran, Venezuela, and Mexico, and a permanent peace agreement in Ukraine.

    We invite like-minded people—especially fellow veterans—to join us in defending our communities and building a future of Peace at home and peace abroad.

    The post Veterans For Peace Condemns the Deployment of National Guard in Washington, DC, and the Misuse of U.S. Troops and ICE to Create Terror in Our Cities first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • West Asia Is Lurching Toward War

    There is extremely alarming news about the situation around Iran.

    In consultations with the Trump administration — rather, in deference to the command from Washington — the E3 countries (Britain, France and Germany) who are the remaining western signatories of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal known as JCPOA, have initiated the process of triggering the so-called snapback mechanism with the aim to reimpose all U.N. sanctions against Iran on the plea that it has breached the terms of the ten-year old agreement.

    A joint statement issued in the three European capitals on Aug. 25 notified the U.N. Security Council that Tehran is “in significant non-performance of its commitments under the JCPOA” to give a 30-day notice “before the possible reestablishment of previously terminated United Nations Security Council resolutions.”

    The post West Asia Is Lurching Toward War appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Plausible Parody: A ‘Property Development’ Theory of Geopolitics

    Since resuming residence in the White House a few months ago, it has not been difficult to detect in President Trump’s behaviour traces of his background as a real estate deal maker. Indeed, it could be said that his statements and actions since becoming president demonstrate a clear predisposition to perceive geopolitics predominantly as an arena of opportunity for ‘property development’. ‘Property’ defined in a broad sense to include any high value natural resource, land, or other asset that can be turned into profit.

    We argue that the acquisition of such assets by fair means or foul (mainly the latter) and/or the control of access (for example, waterways) to them are important features of the president’s megalomaniacal self-image as the world’s new colossus and that they have a determining influence on his view of geopolitics and hence on US foreign policy.

    In some well-known cases, such as Palestine, President Trump has already expressed his interest explicitly in these terms.

    Conveniently, and perhaps not coincidentally, the president’s predilections in these respects dovetail beautifully with the insatiable appetites of late-stage capitalism, which depends for its survival on the acquisition and consumption of ever-increasing quantities of ‘property’. You might say that it is a union made in oligarchic heaven.

    Below, as plausible parody, we outline a Property Development Theory of Geopolitics (PDTG) as follows: first, we set out the criteria employed to identify target countries for property acquisition; and second, on the basis of those criteria, we draw up a property development country hit list, which reflects our best estimates of countries at risk of invasion or attack.

    This list can be used to assess the predictive validity of our theory as measured by the vigour with which countries on the list are attacked militarily and in other ways by the US and/or its allies and proxies.

    Country Assessment Criteria and Hit List

    Countries that might be regarded as prime targets are identified in terms of the following criteria:

    First, the richness of their natural resources (a sine qua non). Does the country have enough ‘property development’ potential to warrant and maintain the president’s attention?

    Second, the ease with which the country can be demonised as a mortal threat to the ‘democratic way of life’ or as a terrorist haven, a source of refugees and/or drugs (etc.) and can therefore be made a ‘legitimate’ target for invasion or some other form of attack such as economic sanctions, targeted assassinations, and so on. This would enable the US to employ the tried and tested method of attacking the country concerned in order to save both its own people as well as the rest of the world, as was the case in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    Third, the military strength of the country and whether proxy states or other agents such as mercenaries can be used to do the dirty work for the US.

    Fourth, the degree to which the US government is subject to determining influences such as those exerted by Israel in relation to Palestine and Iran and/or strong pressure from major corporations and/or the target country has significant regional strategic significance.

    We have excluded Russia and China from our list because they are military superpowers that would not be susceptible to conventional US imperial smash and grab methods involving direct military attack.

    Neither have we included Ukraine. While undoubtedly asset rich, Ukraine’s notional status as a US ally and as the US/Nato proxy in the war with Russia largely exempts it from imperial smash and grab. It is conceivable also that the US will do an asset sharing deal with Russia and compel Ukraine and Nato to accept it.

    The absence from our list of erstwhile US target favourites like North Korea and Cuba is explained by the paucity of their assets and their relatively high military strength and the absence of suitable proxies. Their political misbehaviour in the eyes of the US is punished by extensive economic sanctions.

    We have included Palestine because we believe that the US will allow Israel to complete its occupation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the destruction of its infrastructure, and the expulsion of its inhabitants. Its asset richness stems from the high value and significance to Israel (and therefore the US) of the land it occupies and its reserves of natural gas.

    As we have suggested elsewhere, Iran’s heretofore underestimated military strength makes it a high-risk target for the US and Israel, but this is heavily outweighed by its maximum scores on the other criteria, making further military attacks against it a certainty in the short term.

    The first three countries in the high susceptibility category are all high value in terms of assets or ‘property’ and relatively low risk military targets.

    In particular, the DRC and the CAR have long been subjected to various forms of foreign state-supported corporate predation (using mercenaries etc.), are weak militarily, and the governance circumstances of the two countries have been reduced to ‘failed state’ status.

    By some calculations, the DRC is the world’s richest country in terms of natural resources.

    Regarding Venezuela, whose oil reserves are the largest in the world, President Trump’s ambitions were made clear in late August 2025 when he despatched three US warships armed with cruise missiles to the Venezuelan coast. Venezuela’s high demonisation score is accounted for by its socialist government.

    Panama and Greenland are less attractive for the reasons given in Table 1, but this does not preclude them from attack. Greenland’s inclusion as a semi-autonomous region within the Kingdom of Denmark and Denmark’s authority over its foreign and defence policies explain its score on military strength.

    Conclusion

    The serious purpose of this plausible parody is to identify in rank order a hit list of countries that according to our PDTG will become the next victims of US imperialism under President Trump or, where they are already subject to attack, US or US-supported aggression against them will be intensified.

    The other purpose is to demonstrate the depths to which international relations has sunk under the current US administration, which, given their normal abysmal state, required a deep dive.

    The implications for those countries that we deem to be either ‘certainties’ or ‘high risk’ are particularly sinister. Clearly, their interest in the predictive validity of our theory will be neither light-hearted nor academic.

    The post Plausible Parody: A ‘Property Development’ Theory of Geopolitics first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Nuclear Snobbery and Atomic Anniversaries

    How do we commemorate it? The atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War on August 6 and 9, 1945 by the United States remain the only examples of the use of such a weapon in history. Rather than banishing any temptation to use them, the wholehearted killing of tens of thousands of civilians through experimental designs laid the grounds for an arms race that has never dissipated. Once found, the military use of the atom was never abolished or dissipated. As Henry Stimson, US Secretary of War, put it to President Harry Truman in April 1945, “if the problem of the proper use of this weapon can be solved, we would have the opportunity to bring the world into a pattern in which the peace of the world and our civilization can be saved.”

    After eight decades, we have two diametrically opposed trends, babbling in separate halls. Non-nuclear weapons states, for the most part, are showing fortitude and resolve in stigmatising the nuclear bomb through such instruments as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Others, such as a neutered, heavily vassalized Australia, prefer the comfort of extended deterrence offered by the US nuclear deterrent. But the aristocrats and landed gentry of the nuclear club continue to retain their prized assets, seeking to modernise and refurbish them. Like prized livestock, these creatures need feeding and watering, not forced retirement. In 2024, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute documents, the US, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel “continued intensive nuclear modernization programmes […] upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions.”

    This whole process has been characterised by a certain snobbery, one encouraged by the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The document legitimised the sanctity of the nuclear club by means of bribery: non-nuclear weapon states could still avail themselves of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes while nuclear weapons states would abide by the promise of Article VI. “Each of the Parties to the Treaty,” states the article, “undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

    The NPT, and in particular Article VI, is looking increasingly worn. Executive director of Project Ploughshares, Cesar Jaramillo, is merely stating the obvious by referring to two stresses at work on those arrangements: an internal one marked “by the persistent failure of nuclear-weapon states to meet disarmament obligations” and an external one characterised by “shifting geopolitical dynamics that threaten to dismantle longstanding norms.”

    Unfortunately, the events of this year, particularly regarding the illegal attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and infrastructure by Israel and the United States, continues to demonstrate the appeal of such weapons. On the pretext of claiming how horrifying such arms are in terms of acquisition and potential use, the two countries demonstrated their quintessential value. The implications of Operations “Rising Lion” and “Midnight Hammer”, the respective names given to the Israeli and US bombing operations against the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities in June, bode ill. The absurdity of this action was laid bare by the fact that Iran had originally surrendered its quest for a nuclear weapon by joining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that the US decided to leave in 2018. That Tehran subsequently enriched uranium to the level of 60 per cent was something to draw the surly attention of the International Atomic Energy Agency, but it was still below the 90 per cent required for weapons-grade production.

    As the bombs fell, the grand defenders of international law were nowhere to be found. When they bothered to make an appearance, they scolded Iran for nursing nuclear ambitions of its own, sparing any chastening words for Israel, an undeclared nuclear power that decided years ago to join the nuclear club as a prancing upstart sneering at international treaties, even as it decided to deny the entitlement of any power in the Middle East to do the same. The words of Australia’s Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, were typical of this: “The world has long agreed Iran cannot be allowed to get a nuclear weapon, and we support action to prevent this. That is what this is.”

    The tragic lesson of the June attacks on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure adds succour to the proposition that not having such a military capability, and more to the point, being told not to acquire one, endangers the state in question. The North Koreans, having witnessed the demise of the regimes of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya to foreign invasion and interventions despite both having abandoned their nuclear programs, studied that lesson with avid keenness. In Europe, countries concerned about a loss of interest from the Trump administration in extending its nuclear deterrent – an infantile notion given the presence of some 100,000 US soldiers and 100 tactical nuclear weapons on the continent – are mulling over a collective option that could involve a “Eurobomb”. The pollen of proliferation is in the air.

    The nuclear club, to admit members, requires stupendously good references (is the candidate clubbable or not?), powerful patrons and shed loads of hypocrisy. Short of that, the country must acquire nuclear weapons clandestinely, a point Israel knows better than most. Once admitted to the inner sanctum, membership guarantees both security and an eternal reluctance that a sovereign option, once attained, should ever be relinquished.

    The post Nuclear Snobbery and Atomic Anniversaries first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Iran’s Parliament Vows ‘Decisive’ Payback To Snapback Of Sanctions

    The Iranian legislature raised the alarm in a closed session on Tuesday as the lawmakers reviewed for one and a half hours the repercussions of the anti-Tehran move on the country’s economy and other fields.

    Germany, France and Britain, the three European signatories — the European troika or E3 — to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), announced last week they would invoke the snapback procedure, a clause that reinstates pre-JCPOA era sanctions on Tehran over claims of the Islamic Republic’s “significant non-compliance” with the landmark pact.

    The snapback mechanism, defined in UN Security Council Resolution 2231, opens 30 days before the restoration of previously terminated UN Security Council sanctions against Iran.

    The post Iran’s Parliament Vows ‘Decisive’ Payback To Snapback Of Sanctions appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Europe Just Made War With Iran More Likely

    France, Germany, and the UK (E3) have announced they will trigger snapback sanctions on Iran at the United Nations. This will launch a 30-day process that will likely culminate in the full reinstatement of all U.N. sanctions lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal. The move will carry four major consequences.

    First, the U.N. Security Council will formally adopt the demand — pushed by Israel — that Iran cease all uranium enrichment. Israel designed this demand to sabotage nuclear diplomacy and edge the conflict toward war.

    Next, a U.N. arms embargo on Iran will return, potentially curbing Tehran’s ability to rebuild deterrence against future Israeli or American strikes, provided Russia and China treat the snapback as legitimate and enforce it.

    The post Europe Just Made War With Iran More Likely appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • France, Germany, UK Push to Reimpose UN Sanctions on Iran, Make War More Likely

    France, Germany, and the UK (E3) have announced they will trigger snapback sanctions on Iran at the United Nations. This will launch a 30-day process that will likely culminate in the full reinstatement of all U.N. sanctions lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal. The move will carry four major consequences. First, the U.N. Security Council will formally adopt the demand — pushed by Israel — that…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Expelling Iran’s Ambassador to Australia

    The rank odour of opportunity seems to have presented itself to Australia’s Albanese government. To balance its apparently principled promise to recognise Palestinian statehood come the 80th United Nations General Assembly next month, it seemed only fair that some firm measure be taken against another Islamic outfit to balance the ledger. The Israelis were watching closely, and a sense of concern had started to bubble along the diplomatic channel that Canberra was proving wobbly. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had made his views felt: “History will remember Albanese for what he is: A weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews.”

    On August 26, it all came to the fore. Iran had become the latest, if only briefest, of bogeymen for political consumption in Australia. The Islamic Republic, charged the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, had “directed at least two” attacks of an “appalling” and “antisemitic” nature. Expecting revelations of gleeful massacres involving whole families including livestock and uprooted orchards, we are told that these outrageous incidents were ones of arson: an attack on Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in Sydney in October last year, and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne last December. “These were extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression orchestrated by a foreign nation on Australian soil. They were attempts to undermine social cohesion and sow discord in our community.”

    Mike Burgess, the domestic spy chief, confirmed the claim that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) had identified “at least two and likely more attacks on Jewish interests in Australia.” These were linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and found through “painstaking investigation” (good to see that investigations at the spy agency are painstaking). The IRGC had been fiendish in concealing its role, using “a complex web of proxies to hide its involvement.” With shamanistic self-confidence, Burgess revealed that he had warned of this very thing earlier in the year. For a sense of restrained balance, he stated that Tehran may not necessarily be “responsible for every act of antisemitism in Australia.”

    The action undertaken seemed outsized, involving the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador Ahmad Sadeghi along with three other embassy officials. They have been given seven days to exit the country. The IRGC is also slated for proscription as a terrorist organisation.

    The head scratching question in all of this is: Why bother? The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have larger fish to skin, fry and broil. Tehran, for all its appetites in seeking power and influence in the Middle East, has tended to keep its targets beyond the region to Israeli embassies and property and, most notably of all, dissidents. To target the Australian Jewish community would seem to be a needless expenditure of effort and resources. Australia’s resident talking head on the wickedness of the mullahs, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, herself having spent time incarcerated in Iran on suspicions of espionage, is hardly illuminating in her explanation. “It’s difficult to say what Iran’s direct motivations are, other than to undermine Australia’s social cohesion.” She opts for the primary colour approach, streaked with syllogism: as the Iranian regime is antisemitic, and as Israel is the main enemy, it follows that all Jews, according to the dotty haters in Tehran, are “an extension of Israel.”

    The expulsion’s salience would have been more significant if it had been done in response to activities undertaken against members of the Iranian Australian community, a far more widespread and evident problem. Yet on this point, the Albanese government proved tardy, despite ample evidence of harassment and surveillance orchestrated at Tehran’s behest. In February 2023, the then Minister for Home Affairs Clare O’Neil stated in her Australian National University address that ASIO had “disrupted the activities of individuals who had conducted surveillance in the home of an Iranian-Australian, as well as conducted extensive research of this individual and their family.” The previous month, a spokesperson for Foreign Minister Penny Wong expressed deep concern at “reports of foreign interference, including the harassment and intimidation of Australians online and in-person.” These matters had been raised with Iran “in no uncertain terms.”

    Iran had also proved to be a more convenient, if selective target. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, for instance, Indian intelligence operatives have been creating much mischief, snooping, harassing and leaving their warning signs, most notably when it comes to the global Sikh diaspora. Concerned about the pangs of longing for the independent state of Khalistan, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not been above resorting to assassination. Melbourne taxi driver Harjinder Singh is one who can attest to threats from the Indian authorities regarding his pro-Khalistan activities, notably to his family back in India.

    To add to this, India was found to have engaged in such friendly activities as cultivating access to sensitive defence technology in Australia and securing airport security protocols. In 2020, Burgess announced that his agency had “confronted” the spies in question “and quietly and professionally removed them.” Despite this fuss, there were no diplomatic expulsions. A façade of excruciating politeness was maintained.

    Least surprising of all was the hearty approval of the Australian move by Israel. With Netanyahu venomously spouting at the Australian Prime Minister that he was feeble and incapable of protecting Jews in Australia, the expulsion was automatically assumed to be a product of constructive Israeli interference. Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer, after explaining the reasons for Netanyahu’s hectoring, thought it a “positive outcome” that Australia was “taking the threats against Israel and the Jewish people, Jewish Australians living in Australia […] seriously”.

    Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke dismissed efforts on the part of the Israeli government to claim the lion’s share of credit as nonsense. “We’ve taken this action because Iran has attacked Australians. No other country is involved in terms of that conclusion.”

    Short of WikiLeaks finding out the inner strangeness of this, we await further evidence why Iran would ever bother to expend any time on focusing on a country so far from its interests as to be satirically irrelevant. That said, the nature of much intelligence is that it is often short of being particularly intelligent.

    The post Expelling Iran’s Ambassador to Australia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Iran Demands Concrete International Action To End Israel’s Genocide

    Abbas Araghchi, Iranian foreign minister, called for more concrete collective action against Israel, asserting that mere verbal condemnations are no longer enough to prevent its “insatiable” Zionist ambitions to ethnically cleanse Palestinians and expand their occupation in the region.

    Araghchi reiterated that the Israeli war in Gaza “is not merely a fleeting military conflict or an ordinary humanitarian crisis: it is a systematic, full fledged genocide explicitly intended to achieve ethnic cleansing amid the complicit silence of the US and the West more broadly.”

    Citing the daily killing of Palestinians seeking humanitarian aid, Araghchi said that Israel has “turned hunger and famine into a new tool of genocide” and “food distribution centers into death traps for hungry women and children”, claiming that the war and genocide in Gaza is amongst the “darkest human tragedies of the modern era”.

    The post Iran Demands Concrete International Action To End Israel’s Genocide appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Australia Breaks With Iran; Sign Of A New War Coming?

    The Aussies just trashed their relations with Iran based on nothing but obscure say-so.

    Australia throws out Iran ambassador over alleged antisemitic attacks

    Canberra expelled Tehran’s ambassador after accusing Iran of masterminding at least two antisemitic attacks on Australian soil.

    Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the country’s intelligence services had linked Iran’s military to arson attacks in Sydney and Melbourne, throwing out an ambassador for the first time since World War II, a move The Sydney Morning Herald’s national affairs editor dubbed “the diplomatic equivalent of the nuclear option.”

    Iran rejected the charge.

    I have searched and read several news pieces on this issue and have found no mention of any fact that would connect two months ago arson incidents in Australia with Iran.

    The post Australia Breaks With Iran; Sign Of A New War Coming? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • After 12 day war, Iran readies for renewed conflict


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Intel Chief Fired For Contradicting Trump’s Claim Of ‘Obliterating’ Iran’s Nuclear Program

    The head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse, was dismissed from his post after his agency reported that US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities caused only “limited damage,” contradicting President Donald Trump’s claim of “total destruction,” officials announced on 22 August.

    Officials told Reuters and AP that no explanation was provided for Kruse’s removal, and he was not informed of the grounds for his dismissal. 

    The announcement later confirmed that two other officers, Vice Admiral Nancy Lacore, chief of the Navy Reserve, and Rear Admiral Milton Sands, who led Naval Special Warfare Command, were also fired.

    The post Intel Chief Fired For Contradicting Trump’s Claim Of ‘Obliterating’ Iran’s Nuclear Program appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Gordon Campbell: The lack of spine in New Zealand’s foreign policy on Gaza

    ANALYSIS: By Gordon Campbell

    The word “Gaza” is taking on similar connotations to what the word “Auschwitz” meant to a previous generation. It signifies a deliberate and systematic attempt to erase an entire people from history on the basis of their ethnic identity.

    As a result, Israel is isolating itself as a pariah state on the world stage. This week alone has seen Israel target and kill four Al Jazeera journalists, just as it had executed eight Red Crescent medical staff and seven other first responders back in March, and then dumped their bodies in a mass grave.

    Overall 186 journalists have died at the hands of the IDF since October 7, 2023, and at least 1400 medical staff as of May 2025.

    On Monday night a five-year-old disabled child starved to death. Reportedly, he weighed only three kilograms when he died. Muhammad Zakaria Khudr was the 101st child among the 227 Palestinians now reported to have died from starvation.

    Meanwhile, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters keep on saying that with regard to New Zealand recognising a Palestinian state, it is a matter of “Not if, but when.” Yet why is “ but not now” still their default position?

    At this rate, a country that used to pride itself on its human rights record — New Zealand has never stopped bragging that this is where women won the right to vote, before they did anywhere else — will be among the last countries on earth to recognise Palestine’s right to exist.

    What can we do? Some options:

    1. Boycott all Israeli goods and services;
    2. Engage with the local Palestinian community, and support their businesses, and cultural events;
    3. Donate financial support to Gaza. Here’s a reliable link to directy support pregnant Gaza women and their babies;
    4. Lobby your local MP, and Immigration Minister Erika Stanford — to prioritise the inclusion of hundreds of Gazans in our refugee programme, just as we did in the wake of the civil war in Syria, and earlier, in Sudan;
    5. Write and phone your local MP, and urge them to support economic sanctions against Israel. These sanctions should include a sporting and cultural boycott along the lines we pursued so successfully against apartheid South Africa
    6. Contact your KiwiSaver provider and let it be known that you will change providers if they invest in Israeli firms, or in the US, German and UK firms that supply the IDF with weapons and targeting systems. Contact the NZ Super Fund and urge them to divest along similar lines;
    7. Identify and picket any NZ firms that supply the US/Israeli war machines directly, or indirectly;
    8. Contact your local MP and urge him or her to support Chloe Swarbrick’s private member’s bill that would impose economic sanctions on the state of Israel for its unlawful occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Swarbrick’s Bill is modelled on the existing Russian sanctions framework.If 61 MPs pledged support for Swarbrick’s Bill, it would not have to win a private members ballot before being debated in Parliament. Currently 21 MPs (the Greens and TPM) formally support it. If and when Labour’s 34 MPs come on board, this will still require another six MPs (from across the three coalition parties) to do the right thing. Goading MPs into doing the right thing got Swarbrick into a world of  trouble this week. (Those wacky Greens. They’re such idealists.);
    9. We should all be lobbying our local MPs for a firm commitment that they will back the Swarbrick Bill. Portray it to them as being in the spirit of bi-partisanship, and as them supporting the several UN resolutions on the status of the occupied territories. And if they still baulk ask them flatly: if not, why not?
    10. Email/phone/write to the PM’s office, and ask him to call in the Israeli ambassador and personally express New Zealand’s repugnance at Israel’s inhumane actions in Gaza and on the West Bank. The PM should also be communicating in person New Zealand’s opposition to the recently announced Israeli plans for the annexation of Gaza City, and expansion of the war in Gaza.
    11. Write to your MP, to the PM, and to Foreign Minister Winston Peters urging them to recognise Palestinian statehood right now. Inquire as to what further information they may need before making that decision, and offer to supply it. We need to learn how to share our outrage; and
    12. Learn about the history of this issue, so that you convince friends and family to take similar actions.

    Here’s a bare bones timeline of the main historical events.

    This map showing (in white) the countries that are yet to recognise Palestinian statehood speaks volumes:

    Those holdout nations in white tend to have been the chief enablers of Israel’s founding in 1948, a gesture of atonement driven by European guilt over the Holocaust.

    This “homeland” for the Jews already had residents known to have had nothing to do with the Holocaust. Yet since 1948 the people of Palestine have been made to bear all of the bad consequences of the West’s purging of its collective guilt.

    Conditional justice
    The same indifference to the lives of Palestinians is evident in the belated steps towards supporting the right of Palestinians to self-determination. Even the recognition promised by the UK, Canada, France and Australia next month is decked out with further conditions that the Palestinians are being told they need to meet. No equivalent demands are being made of Israel, despite the atrocities it is committing in Gaza.

    There’s nothing new about this. Historically, all of the concessions have been made by the Palestinians, starting with their original displacement. Some 30 years ago, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) formally recognised Israel’s right to exist. In response, Israel immediately expanded its settlements on Palestinian land, a flagrant breach of the commitments it made in the Oslo Accords, and in the Gaza-Jericho Agreement.

    The West did nothing, said little.  As the New York Times recently pointed out:

    In a 1993 exchange of letters, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s chairman, Yasir Arafat, recognized the “right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security” and committed the PLO to peaceful negotiations, renouncing terrorism and amending the Palestinian charter to reflect these commitments. In return, Israel would merely recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people — and only “in light of” Mr Arafat’s commitments. Palestinian sovereignty remained remote; Israeli occupation continued apace.

    This double standard persists:

    This fundamental unfairness has informed every diplomatic effort since. The rump Palestinian government built the limited institutions it was permitted under the Oslo Accords, co-operated with Israeli security forces and voiced support for a peace process that had long been undermined by Israel. Led by then-Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority’s statehood campaign in the 2000s was entirely based on playing the game according to rules set by Israel and the Western-dominated international community. Yet recognition remained stalled, the United States blocked Palestine’s full membership in the United Nations — and still, no conditions were placed on the occupying power.

    That’s where we’re still at. Luxon, Peters and David Seymour are demanding more concessions from the Palestinians. They keep strongly denouncing the Hamas October 7 atrocities — which is valid — while weakly urging Israel to abide by the international laws and conventions that Israel repeatedly breaches.

    When a state deploys famine as a strategic weapon, doesn’t it deserve to be condemned, up front and personal?

    Instead, the language that New Zealand uses to address Israel’s crimes  is almost invariably, and selectively, passive. Terrible things are “happening” in Gaza and they must “stop.” Children, mysteriously, are “starving.” This is “intolerable.”

    It is as if there is no human agent, and no state power responsible for these outcomes. Things are just somehow “happening” and they must somehow “cease.” Enough is enough, cries Peters, while carefully choosing not to name names, beyond Hamas.

    Meanwhile, Israel has announced its plans to expand the war, even though 600 Israeli ex-officials (some of them from Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent to the SIS) have publicly said that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel.

    As mentioned, Israel is publicly discussing its plans for Gaza’s “voluntary emigration” and for the permanent annexation of the West Bank. Even when urged to do so by Christopher Luxon, it seems that Israel is not actually complying with international law, and is not fulfilling its legal obligations as an occupying power. Has anyone told Luxon about this yet?

    Two state fantasy, one state reality
    At one level, continuing to call for a “two state” solution is absurd, given that the Knesset formally rejected the proposal a year ago. More than once, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly denounced it while also laying Israel’s claim to all of the land west of Jordan, which would include the West Bank and Gaza.

    Evidently, the slogan “ from the river to sea” is only a terrorist slogan when Hamas uses it. Yet the phrase originated as a Likud slogan.Moreover, the West evidently thinks it is quite OK for Netanyahu to publicly call for Israeli hegemony from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

    Basic rule of diplomacy: bad is what they do, good is what we do, and we have always been on Team Israel.

    Over the course of the three decades since the Oslo Accords were signed, the West has kept on advocating for a two state solution, while acting as if only one of those states has a right to exist. On what land do Luxon and Peters think that a viable Palestinian state can be built?

    One pre-condition for Palestinian statehood that Luxon cited to RNZ last week required Israel to be “not undermining the territorial integrity that would then undermine the two state solution.” Really? Does Luxon not realise that this is exactly what Israel has been doing for the past 30 years?

    Talking of which . . .  are Luxon and Peters genuinely expecting Israel to retreat to the 1967 borders? That land was agreed at Oslo and mandated by the UN as the territory needed for a viable Palestinian state. Yet on the relatively small area of the West Bank alone, 3.4 million Palestinians currently subsist on disconnected patches of land under occupation amid extreme settler violence, while contending with 614 Israeli checkpoints and other administrative obstacles impeding their free movement.

    Here’s what the land left to the Palestinians looks like today:

    A brief backgrounder on Areas A, B and C and how they operate can be found here.  Obviously, this situation cannot be the template for a viable Palestinian state.

    What is the point?
    You might well ask . . . in the light of the above, what is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? Given the realities on the ground, it can only be a symbolic gesture. The reversion to the 1967 borders (a necessary step towards a Palestinian state) can happen only if the US agreed to push Israel in that direction by withholding funds and weaponry.

    That’s very hard to imagine. The hypocrisy of the Western nations on this issue is breath-taking. The US and Germany continue to be Israel’s main foreign suppliers of weapons and targeting systems. Under Keir Starmer’s leadership as well, the UK sales of military equipment to Israel have sharply increased.

    New export licensing figures show that the UK approved licenses for £127.6 million worth of military equipment to Israel in single issue licenses between October to December 2024. This is a massive increase, with the figure in this three-month period totaling more than 2020-2023 combined.

    Thanks to an explicitly enacted legal exemption, the UK also continues to supply parts for Israel’s F-35 jets.

    UK industry makes 15% of every F-35 in contracts [estimated] to be worth at least £500 million since 2016, and [this] is the most significant part of the UK arms industry [relationship]with Israel . . . at least 79 companies [are] involved in manufacturing components.

    These are the same F-35 war planes that the IDF has used to drop 2000 pound bombs on densely populated residential neighbourhoods in Gaza. Starmer cannot credibly pose as a man of peace.

    So again . . . what exactly is the point of recognising Palestine as a state? No doubt, it would boost Palestinian morale if some major Western powers finally conceded that Palestine has a right to exist. In that narrow sense, recognition would correct a historical injustice.

    There is also optimistic talk that formal Palestinian statehood would isolate the US on the Security Council (Trump would probably wear that as a badge of honour) and would make Israel more accountable under humanitarian law. As if.

    Theoretically, a recognition of statehood would also enable people in New Zealand and elsewhere to apply pressure to their governments to forthrightly condemn and sanction Israel for its crimes against a fellow UN member state. None of this, however, is likely to change the reality on the ground, or prevent the calls for Israel’s “accountability” and for its “compliance with international law” from ringing hollow.

    As the NYT also says:

    After almost two years of severe access restrictions and the dismantling of the UN-led aid system in favour of a militarised food distribution that has left more than 1300 Palestinians dead, [now 1838 dead at these “aid centres”  since late May, as of yesterday] . . . The 15 nations [at a UN meeting in late July that signed a declaration on Gaza] still would not collectively say “Israel is responsible for starvation in Gaza”. If they cannot name the problem, they can hardly hope to resolve it.

    In sum . . . the world may talk the talk of Palestinian statehood being a matter of “not if, but when” and witter on about the “irreversible steps” being taken toward statehood, and finally — somewhere over the rainbow — towards a two state solution.  Faint chance:

    “For those who are starving today, the only irreversible step is death. Until statehood recognition brings action — arms embargoes, sanctions, enforcement of international law — it will remain a largely empty promise that serves primarily to distract from Western complicity in Gaza’s destruction.

    Exactly. Behind the words of concern are the actions of complicity. The people of Gaza do not have time to wait for symbolic actions, or for sanctions to weaken Israel’s appetite for genocide. Consider this option: would New Zealand support an intervention in Gaza by a UN-led international force to save Gaza’s dwindling population, and to ensure that international humanitarian law is respected, however belatedly?

    Would we be willing to commit troops to such a force if asked to do so by the UN Secretary-General? That is what is now needed.

    Footnote One: On Gaza, the Luxon government has a high tolerance for double standards and Catch 22 conditions. We are insisting that the Palestinians must release the remaining hostages unconditionally, lay down their arms and de-militarise the occupied territories. Yet we are applying no similar pre-conditions on Israel to withdraw, de-militarise the same space, release all their Palestinian prisoners, allow the unrestricted distribution of food and medical supplies, and negotiate a sustainable peace.

    Understandably, Hamas has tied the release of the remaining hostages to the Israeli cessation of their onslaught, to unfettered aid distribution, and to a long-term commitment to Palestinian self-rule.  Otherwise, once the Israeli hostages are home, there would be nothing to stop Israel from renewing the genocide.

    We are also demanding that Hamas be excluded from any future governing arrangement in Gaza, but – simultaneously – Peters told the House recently that this governing arrangement must also be “representative.” Catch 22. “Representative” democracy it seems, means voting for the people pre-selected by the West. Again, no matching demands have been made of Israel with respect to its role in the future governance of Gaza, or about its obligation to rebuild what it has criminally destroyed.

    Footnote Two: There is only one rational explanation for why New Zealand is currently holding back from joining the UK, Canada, France and Australia in voting next month to recognise Palestine as a full UN member state. It seems we are cravenly hoping that Australia’s stance will be viewed with such disfavour by Donald Trump that he will punish Canberra by lifting its tariff rate from 10%, thereby erasing the 5% advantage that Australia currently enjoys oven us in the US market.

    At least this tells us what the selling price is for our “independent” foreign policy. We’re prepared to sell it out to the Americans – and sell out the Palestinians in the process – if, by sitting on the fence for now, we can engineer parity for our exports with Australia in US markets. ANZAC mates, forever.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Iran Security Chief In Baghdad For Talks On ‘Next Phase’ Of Resistance Axis

    The Secretary-General of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, arrived in Baghdad for two days of meetings with Iraqi officials regarding the future of the Axis of Resistance and the political stability of Iraq and the region, Shafaq News Agency reported on 11 August.

    An informed source told Shafaq that, “Gathering the so-called Axis of Resistance in the region and rearranging its cards, along with Iraq’s political role in calming the situation in the region during the next phase, are among the most important files that Larijani brought with him to Baghdad.”

    The secretary-general “stressed the need to employ tools and redistribute tasks after the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq according to the agreed-upon withdrawal schedule, and to find an official and protocol-based formula for this,” the source added.

    The post Iran Security Chief In Baghdad For Talks On ‘Next Phase’ Of Resistance Axis appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • How US Imperialism Blackmails The World With Nuclear Weapons

    On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped a uranium-core atomic bomb on Hiroshima, instantly incinerating most of the city. The nuclear blast, radiation, and resulting firestorms killed 90,000 people immediately, with the death toll surpassing 100,000 by the end of 1945.

    Just three days later, on August 9, the U.S. struck again, obliterating Nagasaki with a plutonium bomb. The explosion killed 40,000 on impact, while another 70,000 perished by year’s end from burns, injuries, and radiation poisoning. Tens of thousands more later succumbed to radiation sickness, bringing the total death toll to nearly 200,000. Even 80 years later, survivors and their descendants continue to suffer from the bombings’ horrific aftereffects, cancers, birth defects, and generational trauma. Yet the Japanese and U.S. governments have denied them full state compensation and proper medical care, abandoning those who endured this imperialist atrocity.

    The post How US Imperialism Blackmails The World With Nuclear Weapons appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Christian Zionist View of Foreign Policy Is Holy War

    “You’re very much into God in this room and that’s very nice,” President Donald Trump told a group of business leaders at a July 14 luncheon hosted by the White House Faith Office. In attendance were dozens of corporate executives, including Hobby Lobby CEO David Green and oil billionaire Albert Huddleston, along with senior administration officials. “You’re more than just CEOs and business…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Iranian Civil Society Calls for “Life for All, War for No One.”

    We believe that war, wherever and by whomever it is initiated, leads to violence, poverty, displacement, and the destruction of vital resources. The people of Iran, who have lived for years under the weight of war, sanctions, restrictions, threats, impositions, corruption, and environmental and economic crises, do not want another war.

    Continue now to read this new movement’s clear, short and informative homepage and share it wherever you can.

    TFF fully supports this initiative at the particular level, but also at the general level because the world needs much-much more people-to-people synergy and building peace through critical mass.

    We, the people — who governments arrogantly have called NON-governmentals (NGOs) — spend far too much time and energy responding to what governments and ‘leaders’ say and do. And they are, with few exceptions, nothing but NON-peoples’ organisations (NPOs).

    Share, re-post and build critical mass with the Iranian peace movement. Thank you!

    The post Iranian Civil Society Calls for “Life for All, War for No One.” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Iran Sets Conditions For US Nuclear Talks

    Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in an interview published on 31 July that Tehran is seeking financial compensation for Israel’s war, an explanation on why Iran was attacked during negotiations, and security guarantees for any resumption of nuclear talks with Washington.

    Araghchi told the Financial Times (FT) that Iran will not accept going back to “business as usual” after Israel launched its unprovoked war on the country in mid-June.

    “They should explain why they attacked us in the middle of … negotiations, and they have to ensure that they are not going to repeat that [during future talks]. And they have to compensate [Iran for] the damage that they have done,” Araghchi added.

    The post Iran Sets Conditions For US Nuclear Talks appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Gamaan: The Polling Op That’s Gaslighting The West About Iran

    The Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran (GAMAAN), an influential Dutch polling group cited by the New York Times, U.S. State Department and U.K. government, claims to capture the true views of everyday Iranians through unconventional online surveys.

    GAMAAN calls itself an “independent” research foundation, a label echoed by news outlets and think tanks covering the group’s headline-grabbing findings, which portray the Iranian public as far more secular and anti-government than data from organizations such as Gallup and Pew Research suggest.

    The post Gamaan: The Polling Op That’s Gaslighting The West About Iran appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.