US voters don’t want to join Israel’s unprovoked war on Iran, or for it to become Iraq 2.0. Donald Trump and other politicians, however, are essentially admitting the US is already involved.
Iran’s foreign ministry didn’t hesitate in pointing the finger at the US after Israel’s initial attack, highlighting that it held the apartheid state‘s “primary supporter” responsible. But it seems Washington isn’t even trying to hide its participation anymore.
Israeli intelligence service Mossad allegedly has significant influence in the US, and in the interview above Cruz himself admitted he was fine with Israel spying on people inside the US. Pro-Israel lobby group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), meanwhile, exercises massive power in US politics. A simple look at how politicians display US and Israeli flags with equal pride represents an essential merging of the two settler-colonial states:
No, it's not the Israeli embassy, is the congress of the ZOG (zionist occupied government) I mean… the US congress.
Israel – along with its US backers – is the aggressor. And Iran is the victim. We don’t need to delve into the long history of Western interference in Iran to see that.
We must not allow our misanthropic rulers to push ahead with another devastating regime-change operation. Because they’re not just flamethrowing international law to cinders. They’re creating a world where only countries with their ownnuclear weapons can escape this kind of aggression.
IMPORTANT!
Former Head of the IAEA writes that what Israel and Trump are doing with this war of aggression will destroy the NPT and fuel proliferation, since only possessing nukes will be perceived as a guarantee against this type of aggression. https://t.co/pCi0GnnYjh
Footage has resurfaced of Ali Shamkhani, a top Iranian nuclear adviser who was killed by Israel last week, telling NBC News last month that Iran was ready to sign a nuclear deal under certain conditions with the US in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. pic.twitter.com/ls1QrzP7k4
“We did not have any proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon.” @iaeaorg Director General affirms his agency’s findings about Iran’s nuclear program. pic.twitter.com/TmHx7rtfjJ
Department for Work and Pensions publishes text of bill cutting benefits and claims three-month transitional period is ‘one of most generous ever’
Angela Rayner, the deputy PM, will be taking PMQs shortly. And she will be up against Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary.
When Kemi Badenoch became Tory leader, she did not appoint a deputy (or even a “de factor deputy”, a post that has existed in Tory politics in recent years) and she said she would decide who would stand in for her at PMQs on a case by case basis. Alex Burghart, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, got the gig the first time Starmer was away.
Chris Philp follows Alex Burghart in rotating for Kemi Badenoch at PMQs. One Westminster wag asks “When is it going to be Robert Jenrick’s turn?”
We have this profound challenge of the number of people joining the armed forces being outweighed by the outflow the people leaving. So ultimately its about retention.
And the number one issue reason cited in last month’s attitude survey for the armed forces for leaving was family life. We know the quality of housing is unfortunately poor. It’s due to the basically to the structural nature of those homes.
To wrap up this topic, the state of housing for the armed forces is in a poor state because your government did not do enough for it?
[The housing] which is not in a good enough state because of your government?
What did I do about it? I did something that hasn’t been done for 30 years – yes, it completed under Labour – and now we would recommend to the government, when they bring forth their housing defence white paper, that we set up a housing association.
The Big Picture Podcast host, New Zealand-Egyptian journalist and author Mohamed Hassan, interviews Middle East Eye editor-in-chief David Hearst about the rapidly unfolding war between Israel and Iran, why the West supports it, and what it threatens to unleash on the global order.
What does Israel really want to achieve, what options does Iran have to deescalate, and will the United States stop the war, or join it as is being hinted?
Hearst says the war is “more dangerous than we imagine” and notes that while most Western leadership still backs Israel, there has been a strong shift in world public opinion against Tel Aviv.
He says Israel has lost most of the world’s support, most of the Global South, most African states, Brazil, South Africa, China and Russia.
Hearst says the world is witnessing the “cynical tailend of the colonial era” among Western states.
The era of peace is over. Video: Middle East Eye
Iran ‘unlikely to surrender’
Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group, says Iran is unlikely to “surrender to American terms” and that there is a risk the war on Iran could “bring the entire region down”.
Vaez told Al Jazeera in an interview that US President Donald Trump “provided the green light for Israel to attack Iran” just two days before the president’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, was due to meet with the Iranians in the Oman capital of Muscat.
Imagine viewing, from the Iranian perspective, Trump giving the go-ahead for the attack while at the same time saying that diplomacy with Tehran was still ongoing, Vaez said.
Now Trump “is asking for Iranian surrender” on his Truth Social platform, he said.
“I think the only thing that is more dangerous than suffering from Israeli and American bombs is actually surrendering to American terms,” Vaez said.
“Because if Iran surrenders on the nuclear issue and on the demands of President Trump, there is no end to the slippery slope, which would eventually result in regime collapse and capitulation anyway.”
Most Americans oppose US involvement
Meanwhile, a new survey has reported that most Americans oppose US military involvement in the conflict.
The survey by YouGov showed that some 60 percent of Americans surveyed thought the US military should not get involved in the ongoing hostilities between Israel and Iran.
Only 16 percent favoured US involvement, while 24 percent said they were not sure.
Among the Democrats, those who opposed US intervention were at 65 percent, and among the Republicans, it was 53 percent. Some 61 percent of independents opposed the move.
The survey also showed that half of Americans viewed Iran as an enemy of the US, while 25 percent said it was “unfriendly”.
Trump may be about to drag the United States directly into a devastating regional war in the Middle East with an attack on Iran. In these critical days and hours, all people who oppose the war machine need to be in the streets! Protests across the country will take place on June 18, as part of a national day of action. Already, the administration has backed the brutal Israeli bombardment that has caused widespread civilian casualties — carried out with an arsenal paid for with our taxpayer dollars. But now, Trump may be on the verge of ordering direct U.S. strikes that would escalate the war to unspeakably dangerous new heights.
For nearly 30 years, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has driven the Middle East into war and destruction.
The man is a powder keg of violence.
Throughout all the wars that he has championed, Netanyahu [who is wanted by the International Criminal Court] has always dreamed of the big one: to defeat and overthrow the Iranian government.
His long-sought war, just launched, might just get us all killed in a nuclear Armageddon, unless Netanyahu is stopped.
Netanyahu’s fixation on war goes back to his extremist mentors, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin.
On June 17, Trump demanded the unconditional surrender of Ayatollah Khamenei, and said “Our patience is wearing thin.”
On June 16, Trump posted to his Truth Social and to Facebook, this warning for everyone in Tehran to evacuate the City:
He has said there that America is in this war not to invade Iran but to protect Israel. However if Iran will have any success, then Americans, and not ONLY Israelis, will be bombing Iran. (And, of course, virtually all of Israel’s weapons do already come from America.)
So, this invasion of Iran IS the policy of the U.S. Government, and not (as the propaganda describes it) ONLY the policy of Israel’s Government.
And here was Trump’s Truth Social post on that day:
In that post, he unintentionally made clear that he never actually “negotiated” with Iran; he ORDERED Iran to do Netanyahu’s bidding. And, NOW, he and Netanyahu intend to forcibly (militarily) regime-change Iran, simply because Iran refused to comply with Netanyahu’s (and Trump’s, and Biden’s) DEMAND (that Iran be subordinated to Israel).
This is now heading into WW3. On June 16, the excellent news-site, which analyzes international-policy issues of protecting Russia from the U.S. empire’s constant aggressions to weaken or replace Russia’s Government, en.topcor.ru/news/, headlined “CRINK Air Force Could Help Iran Stand Up to Israel,” and here was its grim but entirely realistic analysis:
The military defeat of Iran, if it also leads to the beginning of the process of disintegration of the Islamic Republic into a number of quasi-states, will become the gravest geopolitical defeat[that the] informal anti-Western alliance CRINK led by Russia and China [have faced]. The ally [member, actually: Iran is the “I” in “CRINK”] must be saved, but how, exactly?
At the moment, the war between Israel and Iran is characterized by a remote exchange of air strikes using aircraft, ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones, as well as sabotage and terrorist attacks by Israeli special services in the Iranian rear.
Given that they have no common border and the US’s stated non-interference, large-scale ground operations are out of the question, so sending international brigades of Russian, North Korean or Chinese volunteers to help the Persians makes no sense. However, Tehran would certainly not refuse help in the fight against Israeli aviation, so it is worth remembering that something similar has already happened in modern history.
“Flying Tigers”
Let us recall that even before the start of World War II, a war between the Chinese Republic and the Japanese Empire that had attacked it had already begun in the European theater of operations in Southeast Asia on July 7, 1937. At the same time, the Japanese were taking out the poorly prepared Chinese aviation with one hand. However, in that historical period, China enjoyed support not only from the USSR, but also from the USA.
Retired US Air Force Major Claire Lee Chennault, sent there as a military adviser, proposed creating a special air unit in which the pilots would be American volunteers flying American planes. And that was done. President Roosevelt officially allowed US Air Force pilots to take leave and fight on a purely volunteer basis on the side of China against Japan.
A special aviation unit called the Flying Tigers was then created, consisting of three fighter squadrons flying American aircraft purchased under Lend-Lease. Its pilots signed a contract with the Chinese private firm CAMCO (Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company), under the terms of which they received $500 for each enemy aircraft destroyed.
American volunteers successfully fought on the side of the Chinese Republic until 1942, after which the Flying Tigers were withdrawn from the Chinese Air Force and included in the 23rd Fighter Group of the 10th Air Force of the US Army, and in 1943 it was transformed into the 14th Air Force of the US Army, consisting of 60 bombers and more than 100 fighters. Their commander, Claire Lee Chennault, became a general.
Legion “Condor”
Around the same time, the Condor Legion, created in Nazi Germany to help the future Franco regime in Spain, was operating in the European theatre of military operations. The number of this “volunteer” unit was relatively small, reaching 5,5 thousand people.
However, in the Third Reich, Condor was seen as a training ground for personnel, a testing ground for modern weapons, and a source of up-to-date combat experience. In addition to four bomber squadrons and four fighter squadrons, the legion included anti-aircraft and anti-tank defense units, an armored group of four battalions, transport sections, anti-tank artillery, and flamethrower units.
During the Spanish Civil War, the German army trained its best future aces and tested the latest aircraft that later fought in World War II. The Europeans intend to do something similar today, sending a so-called fighter coalition to Ukraine to help the Zelensky regime, which will protect Kyiv and the right bank from Russian missile and air strikes.
CRINK Air Army?
Returning to the topic of Iran, one must ask why, in fact, Russia, the DPRK and China should be interested in Tehran not losing and not following the path of Syria, which lost its sovereignty and turned into a terrorist enclave?
Our country needs Iran as a friendly partner, covering the southern flank and providing access to the Indian Ocean through the Caspian Sea. The oil fields that Israel threatens to bomb already belong to Beijing, which has invested huge amounts of money in the Iranian oil and gas sector. And for Pyongyang, Tehran has long been a technological partner in the development and production of various weapons.
What could the CRINK alliance actually do to help its ally, who has been dealt a vile blow and is being prepared to be destroyed by “Western partners” at the hands of Israel? Based on the above, there are two possible paths.
The first is the creation of an international volunteer unit of Russian, North Korean and Chinese “vacationers” who would receive modern fighters and air defense systems purchased by Iran under Lend-Lease and would go to gain real combat experience in air battles against the ultra-modern Israeli aviation.
Bearing in mind that the Russian Federation is facing a direct conflict with NATO, which has placed its bets on aviation, the DPRK has South Korea right next door, and the AUKUS alliance has already been created against China and a military operation against Taiwan is looming, such relevant experience in air combat would be, to put it mildly, not superfluous. Taking it into account, the Russian and Chinese defense industries could appropriately modify their aircraft and create a center for joint training of pilots from Iran, the DPRK, the Russian Federation and China.
The second path is a little less demonstrative and involves the creation of a hypothetical aviation PMC, for the needs of which Tehran could buy modern aircraft from Russia and China and hire vacationing pilots from the Russian Federation, China and, possibly, North Korea, who would be ready to cover Iran from Israeli air strikes.
There are options, if there is a desire.
All of the propaganda in The West PRESUMES that The West has decency and international law on its side and that all OTHER countries are inferior to it — less good, less decent, than are the U.S.-and-allied nations. The reality is the exact opposite.
The loose alliance generally represented itself in diplomatic addresses and public statements as an “anti-hegemony” and “anti-imperialist” coalition with intentions to challenge what it deemed to be a Western-dominated global order to reshape international relations into a multipolar order according to their shared interests. While not a formal bloc, these nations have increasingly coordinated their economic, military, and diplomatic efforts, making strong efforts to aid each other to undermine Western influence.[1]
Central to its opening paragraph is the Center for a New American Security (CNAS); and, as is made clear at one of the CIA’s NON-approved sites, the “Militarist Monitor”, their article “Center for a New American Security” (which thus is not used as a source by Wikipedia) makes clear that CNAS is totally neoconservative (a marketing-arm of the U.S. weapons-manufacturing industry), but even that site (MM) says nothing about who funds it. Another CIA-banned site, “WSWS”, has a far more comprehensive article about CNAS, titled “Democratic think tank plots war against Russia and China: What is the Center for a New American Security?”, and it makes explicit that CNAS’s main donors are “Defense contractors” (which sell ONLY to the U.S. Government and its allies) and secondarily “High tech” (which sell both to those Governments and to the public). In other words: the CIA represents the billionaires who are heavily invested in those two industries — as well as in the ‘news’-media (such as Wikipedia) that propagandize for America’s armaments companies in their ‘news’, editorials, and ads. (For example: even if a pharmaceutical company is simply advertising in these billionaires’ ‘news’-media, it is thereby funding the necon operation.) In 1922, Walter Lippmann invented the phrase “manufacture of consent” to refer to this then-new type of ‘democracy’; but it became big-time only after Truman started the Cold War and the U.S. global-hegemonic empire, on 25 July 1945.
The hegemonic (or “hegemoniacal”) global empire that U.S. President Truman started on 25 July 1945, needs now, finally, to be defeated decisively. This means without reaching the stage of a nuclear war against Russia, because that could end ONLY in the defeat of both sides and the end of all human civilization. However, I am personally inclined to think that The West have become SO desperate to rule the entire world, so that Russia — and perhaps all of the CRINK — need now to announce publicly that they will NOT allow Iran to be defeated, and that this means that they ARE willing to go nuclear against America and Israel, in order to PREVENT Iran’s defeat — if that’s what would be needed in order to PREVENT the U.S. from providing such backup to Israel’s invasion of Iran.
Trump (like Biden) never planned for that possibility. If there is to be a WW3, then the most evil empire in all of history, America’s empire, must be prevented from starting it (e.g., by extending Israel’s war against Iran into becoming fully a U.S.-Israel invasion of Iran). It must instead be started by their main targets — CRINK — if it MUST start, at all. The initiator of a war (such as Israel and the U.S. are, in regard to their joint war against Iran) always has the advantage of surprise (such as on June 13th), and thus the higher likelihood of eliminating the other side’s central command (as Israel has largely done). That way (by CRINK’s joining with Iran on this war), if there will be any future afterwards, it WON’T be dominated by the world’s most evil nations — the U.S.-empire nations. Planning for a post-WW3 world has now become important, because of Trump’s commitment now of greatly increased U.S. backup of Israel’s war to conquer Iran. Post-WW3 would be hell in any case, but simply allowing the U.S.-Israel-UK empire to take the entire world would LIKEWISE be hell. And that’s what we all are now heading toward.
In June 2025, the world witnessed the outbreak of a full-scale war between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Israel. This conflict, extending far beyond the military sphere, is reshaping political, media, and geopolitical landscapes. At the onset of hostilities, Israel initiated a surprise operation targeting several high-ranking Iranian military commanders and scientists. Tel Aviv saw this act as a significant achievement, anticipating it would plunge Iran into psychological disarray and delay its response.
Yet, this assumption proved gravely flawed. The Islamic Republic swiftly recovered and, within days, launched a series of unprecedented strikes on key Israeli cities such as Haifa and Tel Aviv.
The Solomon Islands Foreign Ministry says five people who completed agriculture training in Israel are safe but unable to come home amid the ongoing war between Israel and Iran.
The ministry said in a statement that the Solomon Islands Embassy in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, was closely monitoring the situation and maintaining regular contact with the students.
Ambassador Cornelius Walegerea said that given the volatile nature of the current situation, the safety of their citizens in Israel — particularly the students — remained their top priority.
“Once the airport reopens and it is deemed safe for them to travel, the students will be able to return home.”
The five Solomon Islands students have undertaken agricultural training at the Arava International Centre for Agriculture in Israel since September 2024.
The students completed their training on June 5 and were scheduled to return home on June 17.
The students have been advised to strictly follow instructions issued by local authorities and to continue observing all precautionary safety measures.
Ministry updates
The ministry will continue to provide updates as the situation develops.
Its travel advisory, issued the day Israel attacked Iran last Friday, said the ministry “wishes to advise all citizens not to travel to Israel and the region”.
Citizens studying in Israel were told they “should now make every effort to leave Israel”.
Meanwhile, a friend of a New Zealander stuck in Iran said the NZ government needed to help provide safe passage, and that the advice so far had been “vague and lacking any substance whatsover”.
The woman told RNZ the advice from MFAT until yesterday had been to “stay put”, before an evacuation notice was issued.
MFAT declined interview
MFAT declined an interview, but told RNZ it had heard from a small number of New Zealanders seeking advice about how to depart from Iran and Israel.
It would not provide any further detail regarding those individuals.
MFAT said the airspace was currently closed over both countries, which would likely continue.
The agency understood departure via land border crossings had been taking place, but that carried risks and New Zealanders “should only do so if they feel it is safe”.
Meanwhile, the NZ government said visitors from war zones in the Middle East could stay in New Zealand until it was safe for them to return home.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has suggested to President Donald Trump that he should use a nuclear bomb against Iran, urging Trump to listen to the voice he will “hear from heaven” and follow its guidance in making decisions about Israel’s war on Iran. In a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump posted a screenshot of the lengthy text he says was sent to him by Huckabee…
President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he doesn’t care that his own Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has said that according to the assessment of U.S. intelligence sources, Iran has not been pursuing the development of a nuclear weapon for over two decades — an assessment that undercuts the U.S. and Israel’s stated reason for the current attack on Iran. In March…
On June 13, Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran. Airstrikes hit buildings across the capital, Tehran, striking residential neighborhoods as well as military sites. In just one night, close to 100 people were killed. Among the dead were dozens killed while asleep in their beds. The attack came after eight months of calm, with not a single shot fired between Iran and Israel.
Israel is intensifying its war on Iran, bombing the headquarters of the country’s national TV network on Monday and assassinating another top military leader. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also suggested killing Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran has responded with barrages of long-range missiles targeting Israel. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has shown…
Western powers have given Israel a free pass to livestream its genocide in Gaza. But. with recent weeks bringing increasing criticism and resistance, the apartheid state is now trying to push its Western accomplices into backing its unprovoked war on Iran. Undoubtedly, many in the Western halls of power are salivating over the prospect of regime change in oil-rich Iran. However, it’s still possible to stop Israel’s provocation turning into Iraq 2.0.
Corporate commentators salivate over Iran’s oil
Israel has spent decades trying to push for war against Iran. Why? Because Iran and its allies in the Middle East have long been the only ones actually presenting a military challenge to Israel’s settler-colonial crimes in Palestine.
Before the disastrous US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example, Israeli war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu promised that ousting Saddam Hussein would be great for the region. In reality, his overthrow created ‘a thousand Saddams’, leading to the deaths of up to a million civilians amid skyrocketing non-state terror. Today, Netanyahu and other Israeli officials are repeating this playbook, threatening Iran’s leader with the same fate and trying to convince the world this would actually be good for the region.
The problem is, it’s so easy to expose Israel’s lies
In 2003, social media was in its infancy and mainstream propaganda still dominated. So the lies, illegality, pointlessness, and heartless chaos of the invasion of Iraq prevailed. But now, a quick search for the facts reveals that:
Iran was at the negotiating table, ready to pledge never to develop nuclear weapons.
Because of this, many people can immediately see straight through the ridiculously embarrassing attempts by Western politicians and media outlets to convince people that the victim is somehow the bad guy and the aggressor is the good guy.
In 2003, meanwhile, the invasion of Iraq came under two years after the “single largest loss of life resulting from a foreign attack on American soil” on 9/11. So, the massive climate of fear in the US essentially opened the door for overall public support for the invasion. Only years later did many people actually wake up to the absolute disaster that it was.
2025 is different
Donald Trump, meanwhile, actually tried to paint himself as some kind of anti-war sage in a break from the Republican Party establishment that destroyed Iraq. He even warned that Barack Obama was going to start a war with Iran. But when Obama – as one of the few good things he did – actually made a deal with Iran, Trump trashed it as soon as he took office, unnecessarily ramping up tensions.
Israel is a “junior partner” – in Netanyahu’s own words – to US imperialism. But while the US fears few repercussions of the genocide it has funded in occupied Gaza, it is much more wary about taking on the more powerful Iran. And Trump himself knows that a big section of his base is against pointless foreign wars of aggression.
Israel, meanwhile, is haemorrhaging money protecting itself from Iranian retaliation. It is riling some US figures by holding US citizens hostage. And a full-blown war would impact the US economy at a time when it’s already struggling.
There was no 9/11 moment pushing the US to act. Trump does not have the overwhelming support of US citizens for a war that Israel stubbornly started amid a genocide that has everyone’s attention. And he risks severely undermining his political brand if he does attack Iran. So while nothing is off the table, and the drums of war are beating just as they were in 2003, there is still reason to believe 2025 will not see Iran become Iraq 2.0.
Israel have continued to terrorise Palestinians during their attack on Iran. Despite focusing their time and energy on attacking journalists in Iran, the genocidal warmongers have continued to kill Palestinians. Middle East Eye reported that:
Israeli forces killed at least 80 Palestinians and wounded hundreds in two ambushes at US-run aid distribution centres in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
Eyewitnesses told Middle East Eye that Israeli forces ambushed thousands of starving Palestinians, killing and wounding hundreds in the attacks.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that 30 people were killed in Rafah, and almost 50 were killed in Khan Yunis. Israel have reduced the entry of food aid trucks to less than a trickle. And, over the past weeks has made a pattern of attacking a starving population as they gather for what little food there is.
Israel’s cruelty
Journalist Sarah Wilkinson shared footage of Palestinians running in terror as Israeli forces opened fire:
Israeli air strikes target starving Palestinian civilians who were simply waiting for a distribution of humanitarian aid in Khan Yunis, south Gaza pic.twitter.com/EgDxr8dIzx
MintPress News also shared footage of panicked scenes in Khan Yunis as people ran for their lives:
BREAKING: Israeli forces open fire on Palestinians waiting for aid in Gaza
While Israel bombs Iran, its forces shoot starving civilians. This massacre occurred in the Tahlia area, east of Khan Yunis. pic.twitter.com/eEsO3sBdJg
In Rafah, Al Jazeera spoke to a young girl whose brother was killed by Israeli forces as he tried to find food:
This Palestinian girl in Gaza is mourning her younger brother who was killed by Israeli forces while trying to collect aid from Rafah. pic.twitter.com/hPA1fifjjq
Abdalla Elyyan, who lives in Khan Younis, toldMiddle East Eye:
We headed to the distribution point after hearing that wheat would be handed out – at 7am, we were ambushed in the Tahlia area.
Chaos erupted. People were strewn across the streets – so many killed and wounded
Can you imagine shells raining down on thousands of people packed into a small area? The number of people killed was staggering.
The American-Israeli collaboration, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), has been heavily criticised by legitimate aid distributors. One woman described how it has now become horrifically commonplace for aid spots to be sites of massacres:
It’s a trap, not an aid organisation. It’s a trap to kill our men…They set up this new aid mechanisms so they can lure our young men and kill them one by one.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid distribution mechanism reinforces control over the life-saving supplies that are so desperately needed by Gaza’s population, giving Israel the power to decide who receives aid and who will be left to die, while attempting to mislead the public into believing Palestinians are benefitting.
Settler attacks
Israel is currently occupied with retaliation from Iran, after the former’s unprovoked attack. However, it would appear that settler bloodthirstiness knows no bounds. Israeli settlers have been attacking Palestinian properties and setting them on fire.
Abdel Aziz, who owns a factory in al-Mazra’a al-Sharqiya in the West Bank described:
When we went to the factory, we found the settlers had set fire to the existing vehicles and mobile rooms.
They were all armed, and we tried to confront them, unarmed.
Despite having decimated infrastructure vital to life, Israel remains unsatisfied with the death and destruction it has spread in Palestine. Aziz said:
The settlers’ goal is to undermine the Palestinian economy in the eastern part of Ramallah, which is concentrated in our town.
He concluded:
They don’t want quiet, they want constant problems. They even destroyed the olive trees on the sides of the road. Everything in their ideology is terrorism
Terrorism
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, said:
Israel’s warfare in Gaza is inflicting horrifying, unconscionable suffering on Palestinians.
And, he urged those with influence to:
exert maximum pressure on Israel to bring this unbearable suffering to an end.
A reminder, were it needed, that the UK and in particular the US, could end Palestinian suffering if they wished to. The fact is that not only have they not exerted “maximum pressure” but have enabled, and facilitated Israel’s genocide. It’s simply not true that they’re complicit. Complicity implies only an implication in the crime. They’re guilty, outright.
After all, Israel couldn’t unleash all this terror without them.
This is a case of awakening Iran to really the full deceit and the full evil that is represented by Israel and the United States and Europe in my view this uh you know the history of the last 60 years for my country I’m ashamed of it. You know my country was supposed to be a place of freedom and liberty and promoting freedom, instead we become agents of murder and mayhem, and we kill foreigners with no regard whatsoever and then wonder why people don’t like us.
Because of nuclear weapons, and because a lot of countries have a lot of them, we [the United States] can’t defeat those countries. So the world is intrinsically multipolar in the sense: don’t mess with another nuclear superpower [it] can really wreck your day.
Columbia University economics professor Jeffrey Sachs restates an often heard and obvious maxim that speaks to nuclear deterrence. Military analyst Scott Ritter seems to dissent from the maxim of nuclear deterrence. In a video dated 15 July 2025, Ritter says, “Developing A Nuclear Weapon Will Be THE END Of Iran!”
“I’ll tell you, the quickest way to get America to drop nuclear bombs on Iran is for Iran to develop a nuclear weapons program. Iran will not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. That will not happen. No matter how much people think it’s justified, and all this. it won’t happen uh the United States has made it clear that, it’s uh, it’s red line for it using nuclear weapons against Iran is an Iranian nuclear weapon.”
“I turn to the Iranians and say: why then do you want to posture as a nuclear threshold state knowing that if you ever cross that line you bring about your inevitable destruction as a nation [by the US] …”
Yet, in a subsequent video, on 16 July 2025, Ritter seems to contradict himself, saying: “The Iranians are ready for what the United States can bring to bear.”
Ritter also admits, “The Israelis know that the Iranians don’t have a nuclear weapons program. They know it.”
Ritter complains, “Iran is being grossly irresponsible for going beyond that which is necessary for um doing its legitimate peaceful [nuclear] program.”
Providing one’s nation, a nation which is constantly threatened, with an effective military deterrence is irresponsible? Ritter ignores that Israel has been biting at the bit for several decades to attack Iran on the pretense that it is acquiring nuclear weapon capability… a similar trajectory that Israel undertook to acquire its nuclear weapons capability.
Ritter is flummoxed as to why Iran would pursue enrichment beyond 20% calling it “waving the red flag in front of the Israeli bull.” Well, that Israeli bull did not need a red flag to launch an illegal war, a cowardly war, and that is what a war is when you just sneak up to attack without the courage to first declare war.
Ritter’s argument is regressivist unless he applies the nuclear standard to all countries.
A US nuclear attack on a nuclear armed Iran would also threaten the end of the US as a self-preening beacon on the hill — if it isn’t already in the eyes of people around the world.
Why doesn’t an intelligent analyst like Ritter argue for every nuclear-armed nation to accede to Article 6 of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty instead of focusing his ire solely on a perpetually targeted Iran. If not, it comes across as prejudiced and discriminatory.
Israel attacked the headquarters of the Iranian national broadcaster, live on air, on Monday, 16 June.
Sahar Emami, the news anchor, was speaking live when the Israeli attack hit. Everyone watching could clearly see the explosion, followed by audible screams, while it was still live.
We then watched another journalist continue the broadcast from outside the building. He was visibly distressed, with his hands covered in blood. In the background, you could see the building burning.
The Geneva Convention
Article 79 of the Geneva Convention protects journalists in armed conflicts, meaning they cannot be targeted. Clearly, this does not apply to Israel.
Israel killed journalists in Gaza.
Israel killed journalists in Lebanon.
Israel just targeted an Iranian TV studio, killing a number of journalists.
This violates Article 79 of Additional Protocol (I) Geneva Conventions, but international law clearly doesn’t apply to Israel. pic.twitter.com/tt0AZdnFlX
As usual, Israel is taking their strategy from the same old playbook. Target whoever or whatever the hell they want and claim it was being used as some sort of military base. And, failing that, claim there were strategically important tunnels underneath.
According to The New York Times:
The Israeli military later said in a statement that its air force had struck the building to target a “communication center” that was being used by the Iranian military “under the guise of civilian activity.” The claim could not be independently verified.
Trying to silence journalists
Israel has a long history of murdering journalists. As of June 10, they had murdered 231 Palestinian journalists in Gaza. Additionally, they have assassinated 10 journalists in Lebanon, one in the West Bank, one in Syria, and now one in Iran, too.
Al Jazeera has published the names of every journalist killed since Oct 7th.
231 Palestinian journalists have been slaughtered in Gaza. A whole generation of reporters wiped out while many of their colleagues in the West simply shrugged. pic.twitter.com/2jlkO3Nl5N
Yet still, most of the West refuse to call it what it is – genocide. If Israel had nothing to hide, it wouldn’t be targeting journalists in broad daylight.
This is a massive list. It is one million percent obvious to any sane person that this is intentional targeting of journalists. https://t.co/jzdJ14t53V
Israel’s targeting of journalists started long before October 7. Back in 2021, The Canary reported on Israel detaining over a dozen Palestinian journalists. This included an Al Jazeera correspondent in the West Bank
In 2020, the Palestinian Centre for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) said Israeli forces committed “408 violations of the media” in 2020 in the occupied territories.
Israel seems to have a real issue with following international law, and allowing a free press would all too obviously expose its war crimes:
@IrnaEnglish
“Israel’s attack on Iran’s media center is a blatant assault on press freedom and a gross violation of international law. Targeting journalists is an attack on truth itself. This cannot be justified. #WarCrimes“
— Er DEV PRATAP SINGH (@riseuppresident) June 17, 2025
Previously, Israeli forces have attempted to smear journalists as terrorists in order to pre-emptively justify their murders. Because, when the state that has bombed five different countries in less than two years shouts ‘terrorist’, the West takes it as truth.
Ps: there are certain things that you as a military do not hit. There are rules of engagement for this specific reason. But then again we are talking about people who blow up hospitals just for the fun of it. https://t.co/eAIaoEiSyM
Israel has never played by the rules, and they’re not about to start now. Whether it’s children, hospitals, journalists, or now live TV broadcasts – nothing is off limits to the genocidal terrorist state. And let’s face it, nothing is about to change unless Western media and politicians find a shred of moral decency and a backbone.
A New Zealand journalist on the ground in the Middle East summarises events from the occupied West Bank.
UPDATES:By Cole Martin in Occupied Bethlehem
Fifty six Palestinians were killed by Israel in Gaza today, 38 of them while seeking aid, while five were killed and 20 wounded in an Israeli attack on aid workers northwest of Gaza City.
Al-Qassam Brigades reportedly blew up a house in southern Gaza where a number of Israeli soldiers were operating from.
Israel’s forced starvation and indiscriminate targeting of civilians continues.
Israeli authorities report 370 missiles fired by Iran in total, 30 reaching their targets. Iranian military report they have carried out 550 drone operations.
In response, Iran has issued a warning to evacuate the central offices of Israeli television channels 12 and 14.
An Israeli attack on a Red Crescent ambulance in Tehran resulted in the deaths of two relief workers.
Israel’s Finance Minister Belazel Smotrich, who is accused of being a war criminal and the target of sanctions by five countries including New Zealand, claims they have hit 800 targets in Iran, with aircraft flying freely in the nation’s airspace.
In the West Bank, the tension continues, with business continuing at a subdued level, everyone waiting to see how the situation will unfold.
Israel’s illegal siege continues, cutting off cities and villages from one another, while blocking ambulances and urgent medical access in several locations today.
Israeli and Iranian strikes are expected to continue, and potentially escalate, over the coming days.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues.
Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
Iranian missiles raining down on Tel Aviv as seen from the occupied West Bank. Image: CM screenshot APR
Israel targeted one of the buildings of the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) in Tehran on the fourth day of attacks on Iran, interrupting a live news broadcast, reports Press TV.
The attack, involving at least four bombs, struck the central building housing IRIB’s news department, while a live news broadcast was underway.
The transmission was briefly interrupted before Hassan Abedini, IRIB’s news director and deputy for political affairs, appeared on air to condemn the “terrorist crime”.
At the time of the attack, news anchor Sahar Emami was presenting the news. Despite the building trembling under the first strike, she stood her ground and continued the broadcast.
“Allah o Akbar” (God is Great), she proclaimed, drawing global attention to the war crime committed by Israel against Iran’s national broadcaster.
Moments later, another blast filled the studio with smoke and dust, forcing her to evacuate. She returned shortly after to join Abedini and share her harrowing experience.
“If I die, others will take my place and expose your crimes to the world,” she declared, looking straight into the camera with courage and composure.
Casualties unconfirmed
While the number of casualties remains unconfirmed, insiders reported that several journalists inside the building had been injured in the bombing.
Israel’s war ministry promptly claimed responsibility for the attack.
Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the aggression on the state broadcaster as a “war crime” and called on the United Nations to take immediate action against the regime.
. . . But after a brief interruption on screen as debris fell from a bomb strike, Sahar Emami was back courageously presenting the news and denouncing the attack. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei denounced the attack and urged the international community to hold the regime accountable for its assault on the media.
“The world is watching: targeting Iran’s news agency #IRIB’s office during a live broadcast is a wicked act of war crime,” Baghaei wrote on X.
The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) also condemned the bombing of the IRIB news building, labeling it an “inhuman, criminal, and a terrorist act.”
CPJ ‘appalled’ by Israeli attack
The Committee to Protect Journalists said it was “appalled by Israel’s bombing of Iran’s state TV channel while live on air.”
“Israel’s killing, with impunity, of almost 200 journalists in Gaza has emboldened it to target media elsewhere in the region,” Sara Qudah, the West Asia representative for CPJ, said in a statement after the attack on an IRIB building.
The Israeli regime has a documented history of targeting journalists globally. Since October 2023, it has killed more than 250 Palestinian journalists in the besieged Gaza Strip.
The regime launched its aggression against the Islamic Republic, including Tehran, early on Friday, leading to the assassination of several high-ranking military officials, nuclear scientists, and civilians, including women and children.
In response, Iran launched a barrage of missiles and drones late Friday night, followed by more retaliatory operations on Saturday and Sunday as part of Operation True Promise III.
In Israel, 24 people have been killed and hundreds wounded since hostilities began. In Iran, 224 people have been killed.
Plumes of black smoke billowing after an Israeli attack against Iran’s state broadcaster yesterday. Image: PressTV
Israel bombed the Iranian state TV building in Tehran during a live broadcast on Monday, seemingly devastating the building as Israeli military officials falsely touted attacks on military targets. A recording of the live broadcast shows the broadcaster, Sahar Emani, talking when suddenly there is an extremely loud, sustained explosion. The background goes dark as the broadcaster quickly…
Warning against “another endless conflict” in the Middle East, Democratic U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine on Monday introduced a war powers resolution aimed at preventing President Donald Trump from attacking Iran without congressional debate and authorization. Given its status as a privileged resolution, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate will be forced to swiftly consider and vote on the measure…
There is a throbbing complaint among Western powers, including those in the European Union and the United States. Iran is not playing by the rules. Instead of accepting with dutiful meekness the slaughter of its military leadership and scientific personnel, Tehran decided, promptly, to respond to Israel’s pre-emptive strikes launched on June 13. Instead of considering the dubious legal implications of such strikes, an act of undeclared war, the focus in the European Union and various other backers of Israel has been to focus on the retaliation itself.
To the Israeli attacks conducted as part of Operation Rising Lion, there was studied silence. It was not a silence observed when it came to the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Then, the law books were swiftly procured, and obligations of the United Nations Charter cited under Article 2(4): “All members shall refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity of any state.” Russia was condemned for adopting a preventive stance on Ukraine as a threat to its security: that, in Kyiv joining NATO, a formidable threat would manifest at the border.
In his statement on the unfolding conflict between Israel and Iran, France’s President Emmanuel Macron made sure to condemn “Iran’s ongoing nuclear program”, having taken “all appropriate diplomatic measures in response.” Israel also had the “right to defend itself and ensure its security”, leaving open the suggestion that it might have been justified resorting to Article 51 of the UN Charter. All he could offer was a call on “all parties to exercise maximum restraint and to de-escalate.”
In a most piquant response, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories stated that, “On the day Israel, unprovoked, has attacked Iran, killing 80 people, the president of a major European power, finally admits that in the Middle East, Israel, and only Israel, has the right to defend itself.”
The German Foreign Office was even bolder in accusing Iran of having engaged in its own selfish measures of self-defence (such unwarranted bravado!), something it has always been happy to afford Israel. “We strongly condemn the indiscriminate Iranian attack on Israeli territory.” In contrast, the foreign office also felt it appropriate to reference the illegal attack on Iran as involving “targeted strikes” against its nuclear facilities. Despite Israel having an undeclared nuclear weapons stockpile that permanently endangers security in the region, the office went on to chastise Iran for having a nuclear program that violated “the Non-Proliferation Treaty”, threatening in its nature “to the entire region – especially Israel.” Those at fault had been found out.
The President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, could hardly improve on that apologia. She revealed that she had been conversing with Israeli President Isaac Herzog about the “escalating situation in the Middle East.” She also knew her priorities: reiterating Israel’s right to self- defence and refusing to mention Iran’s, while tagging on the statement a broader concern for preserving regional stability. The rest involved a reference to diplomacy and de-escalation, toward which Israel has shown a resolute contempt with regards Iran and its nuclear program.
The assessment offered by Mohamed ElBaradei, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was forensically impressive, as well as being icily dismissive. Not only did he reproach the German response for ignoring the importance of Article 2(4) of the Charter prohibiting the use of force subject to the right to self-defence, he brought up a reminder: targeted strikes against the nuclear facilities of any party “are prohibited under Article 56 of the additional protocol of the Geneva Conventions to which Germany is a party”.
ElBaradei also referred anyone exercised by such matters to the United Nations Security Council 487 (1981), which did not have a single demur in its adoption. It unreservedly condemned the attack by Israel on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear research reactor in June that year as a violation of the UN Charter, recognised that Iraq was a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and had permitted the IAEA inspections of the facility, stated that Iraq had a right to establish and develop civilian nuclear programs and called on Israel to place its own nuclear facilities under the jurisdictional safeguards of the IAEA.
The calculus regarding the use of force by Israel vis-à-vis its adversaries has long been a sneaky one. It is jigged and rigged in favour of the Jewish state. As Trita Parsi put it with unblemished accuracy, Western pundits had, for a year and a half, stated that Hamas, having started the Gaza War on October 7, 2023 bore responsibility for civilian carnage. “Western pundits for the past 1.5 days: Israel started the war with Iran, and if Iran retaliates, they bear responsibility for civilian deaths.” The perceived barbarian, when attacked by a force seen as superior and civilised, will always be condemned for having reacted most naturally, and most violently of all.
Sources familiar with the matter have told Antiwar.com Editorial Director Scott Horton that the Trump administration is poised to enter Israel’s aggressive war against Iran directly. US airstrikes on Iran could begin as soon as Monday.
Please contact the White House by sending an email or calling the comment line starting at 10 am EST on Monday (202‑456‑1111). Tell them that you do not want the US to enter this disastrous war, which could lead to heavy American casualties at US bases across the Middle East.
The US Peace Council denounces the reckless escalation of the already dangerously volatile situation in the Middle East precipitated by Israel’s most recent bombing of the Islamic Republic of Iran. We uphold the right of Iran to self-determination and self-defense.
This unprovoked act of war was perpetrated with the complicity of the US and its NATO allies, which have provided weapons and intelligence to Israel along with diplomatic cover for Israel’s violations of international law. Israel’s ability to wage war on its neighbors with little to no consequence exemplifies how a militaristic state, with the backing of a nuclear and military superpower, can compromise another’s sovereignty.
Since the 1990s, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been unwavering in his strategic objective: stopping Iran’s nuclear program. At a time when even Washington was focused on peace deals and settlements with the Palestinians, Netanyahu was already fixated on Iran.
He criticized the peace agreement with the Palestinians but consistently highlighted the “Iranian threat.” At a time when this issue was not a global or regional priority, Netanyahu stood almost alone in warning against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
In the early 2000s, while Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon focused on crushing the Al-Aqsa Intifada and what he called “Palestinian terrorism,” Netanyahu was simultaneously warning about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on June 14, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
The war between Israel and Iran marks the culmination of decades of shadow-boxing between Tehran and Tel Aviv. This is a war that has long worn the mask of deniability, played out in assassinations, cyber operations, and various forms of entanglements from Damascus to the Red Sea. Its rules were unwritten but widely understood: escalation without full rupture. But now it’s unfolding in a surprise Israeli intelligence and military attack, which was met with a subsequent Iranian retaliation against Israeli military installations and strategic infrastructure.
While Israel’s capacity for precise targeting — its assassinations of nuclear scientists, the killing of Iranian commanders, and its strikes on enrichment sites — has rarely been in doubt, its broader strategic horizon remains conspicuously blurred.
Official Israeli communiqués gesture, with ritual ambiguity, toward the language of victory and denying Iran nuclear capability, but the underlying ambition seems at once more elusive and more grandiose: the execution of a blow so decisive it would not only cripple Iran’s nuclear program, but fracture the Islamic Republic’s political resolve altogether.
This, however, remains far from realized. Iran’s underground facilities remain intact, and its enrichment program, far from being stalled, appears now to be ideologically and politically emboldened. Hesitations around the acquisition of nuclear weapons will probably undergo a review. Iran, while suffering from a direct blow that crippled its chain of command and placed it on the defensive, was able to recuperate and launch several barrages of ballistic misslies into Israel.
And yet, behind this Israeli choreography of operational tenacity lies a quieter, more subterranean logic. It is not only Iran that Israel seeks to provoke, but the United States. If Israel cannot destroy Natanz or Fordow on its own, it may still succeed in creating the conditions under which Washington feels compelled to act in its stead. This, perhaps, is the real gambit: not a direct confrontation with Iran, but the orchestration of an environment of urgency and provocation that makes American intervention — at a minimum — on the table. In other words, Israel’s military theatrics are a trap for the U.S.
Israel isn’t simply assembling a reactive sequence of military gestures; it’s a calibrated strategy of provocations that create the conditions for American leverage. Israel acts; the United States, while nominally uninvolved, capitalizes on the fallout, and even invokes the specter of its own military involvement as both a deterrent and a bargaining chip.
The strikes are less about immediate tactical gains than they are about constructing a field of pressure. Their strategic ambiguity is weaponized to test red lines and gauge responses.
In this scheme, Washington appears to maintain a distance, but its fingerprints are never entirely absent. The more Israel escalates, the more the U.S. can posture as the moderating force — while simultaneously tightening the screws on Iran through sanctions, backchannel warnings, or displays of force in the Gulf.
The result is a strategic double-bind: Iran is meant to feel besieged from multiple directions, but never entirely certain where the next blow might come from.
Will Trump chicken out?
This, at least, is where the United States and Israel seem momentarily aligned. Yet the fault lines in this coordination are already visible.
On the one hand, the war hawks in Washington will view this as a strategic opening and an opportunity to decisively weaken Iran and redraw the balance of power in the region. They will pressure Trump to act in this direction.
On the other hand, a full-scale war with Iran, especially one that spills across borders, would ripple through global markets, disrupting trade, oil production, and critical infrastructure. The allure of military advantage is shadowed by the specter of economic upheaval, which is a gamble that even the most hardened strategists can’t ignore. Yemen’s Ansar Allah has already proven the viability of closing trade routes, and Iran is able to do far more.
But the story of “America First” is also approaching an inflection point. Donald Trump’s rhetoric — premised on the prioritization of domestic problems, national interest, and a transactional nationalism hostile to foreign entanglements — now finds itself strained by the prospect, or reality, of a regional war that bears the unmistakable fingerprints of American complicity. The transition (discursively, at least) from a president who vowed to extricate the U.S. from Middle Eastern quagmires to one under whose watch a potentially epochal confrontation is unfolding exposes the fragile coherence of Trump’s strategic identity.
The language of MAGA — no more “blood for sand,” no more American boys dying in foreign deserts, no more open-ended subsidies for unreliable allies — continues to resonate well beyond Trump’s electoral base. It taps into a deeper exhaustion with imperial overreach and a growing conviction that the dividends of global policing no longer justify its mounting costs.
And yet, even as this fatigue becomes conventional wisdom, the machinery of militarism persists — outsourced to regional proxies, framed in euphemisms, and increasingly waged out of sight. Nowhere is this more evident than in America’s unwavering support for Israel’s campaign in Gaza — a policy that, despite its genocidal overtones, encounters little serious resistance from the political mainstream.
This is the duality that marks the contemporary American strategic imagination, particularly in its Trumpian register. On one hand, there is a professed realism about the limits of military force and the unsustainable burdens of global responsibility; on the other, there is a persistent ambition to reshape the geopolitical architecture of the Middle East by less direct means.
In this schema, force may be held in reserve, but influence is not. The aspiration is to cultivate a calibrated rivalry among regional powers — Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Egypt. The U.S. seeks to tether them, however uneasily, to the gravitational logic of American centrality. If Pax Americana can no longer be imposed, then a managed dissonance among client states may suffice.
In addition, another kind of dissonance marks Trump’s worldview: not merely strategic, but psychological. For all his rhetoric about restraint and national interest, Trump retains a sovereign fantasy of dominance. He does not merely seek balance but craves submission. The belief that an American president can issue diktats to Putin, Zelensky, or Khamenei — and that they will obey — is less a policy than a symptom of an imperial reflex. It continues to linger even as the structure it depends on has been eroding. In these moments, Trump sets aside the logic of multipolar accommodation.
The current war initiated by Israel against Iran is an exemplar of this dissonance. It reflects not only Israel’s increasingly unilateral strategic posture but also the ambivalence that marks American leadership in the Trump era. Despite his anti-interventionist slogans, Trump was never immune to the gravitational pull of escalation, especially when framed as a test of strength or loyalty.
Indeed, the term coined by his critics — TACO, “Trump Always Chickens Out” — was circulated among financiers and neoconservatives not simply as mockery, but as diagnosis. It captured the oscillation between bluster and retreat, between the rhetoric of dominance and the impulse to recoil when the cost became tangible.
Such moments expose the uneasy alloy at the heart of Trump’s foreign policy: a mix of instinctual nationalism, imperial nostalgia, and tactical indecision. The result is a posture that often courts confrontation without preparation, and retreats from entanglement without resolution. If Israel’s strike on Iran was meant to provoke, it also tested the elasticity of Trump’s foreign policy instincts — and the contradictions that arise when strategic ambiguity meets theatrical resolve.
Operational success and possible strategic failure
It is undeniable that Israel, with both tacit and overt backing from its allies, succeeded in delivering a serious blow to Iran. The strikes reached deep into the Islamic Republic’s military and security apparatus, targeting logistical infrastructure and key nodes in the command hierarchy. Reports suggest that segments of Iran’s nuclear programme, alongside broader military installations, were damaged or set back. Civilian casualties, though predictable, were duly reported and then quietly folded into the wider logic of strategic necessity.
The initial reaction in Israel to the perceived operational success followed a familiar ritual — an almost theatrical display of militaristic pride and nationalist euphoria. It was less about strategic calculation and more about reaffirming a hardened, jingoistic identity: Look at us—striking deep in Iran, and assassinating leaders and scientists. Each moment of escalation was repackaged as proof of autonomy and power, even when the reality was far more complex. Beneath the exultation lay a quieter unease: that every act of defiance also illuminated vulnerabilities — strategic, diplomatic, and existential. But this euphoria did not last long as Iran regained its military command and initiated its own military operation, striking deep within Israel with ballistic missiles that targeted Israeli infrastructure within cities, with Israelis waking up to scenes of destruction.
There is a cruel irony at play. A state that has institutionalized the destruction of homes, memories, and lives in Gaza now cries foul. It flagrantly violates every norm — legal, moral, humanitarian — only to invoke those same norms when violence reaches its own doorstep. Overnight, the architecture of impunity that it has constructed becomes the basis for grievance.
But much of the world sees through this cynical hypocrisy. The exceptionalism, the selective outrage, the performative grief—all ring hollow to those who have watched a society cheer on genocide in real time. The tears fall flat, resonating only with the hardcore Zionist base, the political and media operatives who have long served as enablers, and the Christian Zionists like America’s ambassador in Israel, Mike Huckabee, who have fused theology with militarism.
Israel awoke to a moment of potential reckoning — but history teaches that its military establishment, and the social and affective structures that uphold it, are largely impervious to reflection. In fact, they are actively hostile to the very notion of reckoning. The idea of limits — whether of force, legitimacy, or consequence — sits uncomfortably within a system built on the presumption of impunity and supremacy.
For years, Israeli propaganda depicted Iran as an irrational, theocratic menace. But what, then, is Israel, if not a society governed by theological messianism armed with cutting-edge surveillance and military technology? The difference is that it is backed uncritically by both liberal and conservative elites across the West, with extensive institutional support in munitions and diplomatic cover.
And of course, it is a nuclear-armed state engaged in genocidal warfare, yet continues to claim moral clarity. The irony is as bitter as it is revealing: the caricature it projected onto Iran has become a mirror to its own reality.
An old adage warns: You can start a war, but you cannot know how it will end. Israel seems determined to test that truth.
Israel stakes its strategy on American leverage and the possibility of eventual U.S. involvement. What began as a targeted campaign against Iran’s nuclear program has already begun to morph, in both rhetoric and ambition, into something far riskier: regime change. The goalposts are shifting, the stakes escalating — not only for the region, but for Israeli society itself, which simultaneously craves dominance, fears accountability, and deeply distrusts Netanyahu’s judgment.
Despite that, the war is still ongoing; other Israeli operations against Iran that could induce further shock and awe are in play, while Iran is now using its various military capabilities to damage the sense of confidence in Israel’s missile shield and air defenses.
While the regional war commands headlines, in Gaza, Israel continues its campaign of annihilation — cutting internet lines, bombarding neighborhoods, and flattening what remains of the Strip. The war may be framed as an open-ended contest of force, will, and strategic calculation, but its consequences are brutally inscribed on Palestinian bodies. The horizon of this broader war — however abstract it may appear in policy circles — is being carved, violently and unforgettably, into the lives of Palestinians in Gaza, and increasingly, in the West Bank as well. This is Israel’s current addiction to possibilities opened by war: eliminating the Palestinians, dragging the U.S. into regional war, and waiting for the messiah to redeem it.
Following Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran, Britain’s Labour government has faced renewed scrutiny for arming and supporting the rogue apartheid state. Now – understandably – the media is asking Labour and its ministers if they’re clueless or misanthropic enough to drag us into a wider regional conflict. Alarmingly, the response from Rachel Reeves suggests they very much are.
We have, in the past, supported Israel when there had been missiles coming in. I’m not going to comment on what might happen in the future. But so far we haven’t been involved. We’re sending in assets to protect ourselves and also potentially to support our allies.
And when pushed on whether Labour would be foolish enough to join this war, she said:
I’m not going to rule anything out at this stage. It’s a fast moving situation, a very volatile situation. But we don’t want to see escalation.
Any reasonable person would agree that if the Labour doesn’t want to see escalation in a Middle Eastern conflict, then they probably shouldn’t be shipping in more weapons and troops (or trainingIsraeli soldiers, or sending regular flights from RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus, or pretending that the genocide in Gaza doesn’t exist). Indeed, many ordinary people did say this:
#Reeves calls for de-escalation then sends jets to war. We've seen this before: rising oil prices, wasted taxes, and no public say. This isn’t our war. Don’t repeat past mistakes. #TrevorPhillipspic.twitter.com/WthSaGardf
Rachel Reeves confirms the UK govt is sending military assets, including jets, to the Middle East to support our allies, & in the very next breath she says what's needed is de-escalation #trevorphillipspic.twitter.com/JATTe9sa1x
Reeves: "we are very concerned around Irans nuclear ambitions"
Some facts Reeves doesn't mention. Iran has no nuclear weapons. Israel does. Iran has signed the non-proliferation treaty. Israel hasn't. Iran allows IAEA observers to inspect its nuclear programme. Israel doesn't. pic.twitter.com/luqGbqkIpc
The British public did not vote for this! Parliament must be recalled immediately to decide on this before we start putting our military in harms way and to waste £billions which we need in our country! Israel started this! So they can deal with it! https://t.co/lXppmEZ4F2
Make no mistake – sending the UK army into this mess would mean sacrificing the lives of countless British people for the sake of propping up a crooked and genocidal regime (not to mention the countless more lives that our troops would cut short in the territories they invade).
For those who say that this is a necessary and just conflict because it will bring about peace and security: September the 11th was a dreadful event. 8000 deaths in Afghanistan brought back none of those who died in the World Trade Centre. Thousands more deaths in Iraq will not make things right. It will set off a spiral of conflict, of hate, of misery, of desperation, that will fuel the wars, the conflict, the terrorism, the depression, and the misery of future generations.
You cannot humiliate the Palestinian people in the way that they’ve been humiliated and not expect some problem in the future. You cannot arm regimes like Iraq, Iran, and many others, without expecting further problems in the future.
Our message, our message today here in London, a million and more strong, is this. We want to live in a world free from war. The way to free us from the scourge of war is to free ourselves from the scourge of injustice, of poverty, and the misery that’s associated with that. This movement, this movement is giving that message to the British government. Stop now, or pay a political price.
That figure was Jeremy Corbyn, and history has proven him to be right on both the invasion of Iraq and how the Labour right would behave if they returned to power.
Remember the disaster that followed the invasion of Iraq
a disastrous policy of de-Baathification – banning anyone who had been a member of the ruling Baath Party. This failed to take into account the fact that membership of the Baath was necessary to get government jobs in Iraq and did not indicate blind adherence to the regime. The ban also meant it became virtually impossible to keep the machinery of government running in an increasingly chaotic environment.
The occupying forces additionally made conditions for the Iraqi police forces intolerable, with Sengupta noting:
There was confusion, followed by anger when the American military decreed that patrols going out must be unarmed. Most of the Iraqi officers simply refused to set out and many walked off. Among them was Major Rashid Hussein Janabi who said, shaking his head in disbelief: “Do they even realise this is Baghdad?”
Sengupta highlighted how these decisions would go on to have staggering repercussions:
The conditions were brewing for a perfect storm. Many of the experienced Iraqi police and soldiers sent home under de-Baathification stayed away from the vicious insurgent war which followed. Worse, others joined the Islamist fighters, providing valuable experience and leadership.
One head of Isis military council, Abu Muhanad al Sweidawi, was a former member of the Iraqi military, as was his successor, Abu Ahmad al Alwani. Major Janabi, the disgruntled police officer I met in 2003, died fighting for Isis in Mosul 11 years later.
Within months of the regime’s fall, a savage insurgent war broke out, with bombings and shootings, kidnappings and murders. The death toll began to rise dramatically as Sunni insurgents stepped up their attacks on Western forces.
Then came an incendiary sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shias Waves of Sunni suicide bombers left Fallujah to wreak havoc on Baghdad, and Shia fighters, some in government-run militias, sought vengeance.
Insanity is repeating the same action yet expecting a different outcome
At this point, the impacts of the invasion of Iraq are well known to everyone. Now, just imagine the impacts of an even larger conflict overseen by an even more temperamental US president.
The horrors that will unfold really don’t bear thinking about, and yet Labour is immediately willing to sign us up.
“What does it mean to want to belong to an empire?” In answering, he interlaced the concept of belonging during our terrifying political moment — full-fledged war on DEI, First Amendment violations of protesters, and weaponization of American border security against students. His work is a call to action for the literature of dissent at a time when the right to dissent is under attack.
“I came into political consciousness around Asian American causes of rights, identities, and recognitions, which were framed as an issue of anti-racism, access to the United States, and belonging to this country. Over the last couple of decades, I’ve [begun seeing] all those things as subsidiary to a greater cause of decolonization. If we recognize that the political struggles that we’re engaging in should be around decolonization, then we can recognize how these seemingly disparate identities and histories are actually really connected. To connect the causes of civil rights and minority empowerment in the United States to the cause of anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian advocacy reveals how colonization deploys all these things in order to exploit and separate us.” – Viet Thanh Nguyen
Going from last back, the concert. Yachats Community Presbyterian Church: “Keith Greeninger paints masterful portraits of humanity using powerful images that come alive with his engaging guitar rhythms and husky vocals. $20 in advance or $25 at the door. 7 pm, 360 W 7th Street. FMI, go to kyaq.org.”
*****
So, these liberals, and the gray hair and droopy eyes, man, and the tie-dye and hippy hats and just that weird old person disheveled look of the sort of Obama- loving “liberal,” well, I was the only keffiyeh-wearing fuck of the day.
I was with a client, one of my other jobs, people with developmental or intellectual disabilities. High functioning, but alas, many of my clients of past always have a simple belief in prayer, a higher male god, America the Beautiful, respect of all laws, and so on.
But these people! No talking about genocide, no talking about more Jewish American/American Jewish-Directed War. Nope. I did hear a few goofy comments about how “cool it was” participating in No Kings Day, and it brought tears to their eyes to be part of that beautiful event.
The revolution will not be in a free speech zone.
Ain’t going to do a fucking thing.
Oh, the Ukraine Nazis:
Costco? That dirty stain is now infecting China:
“We’d like to apologise for the inconvenience caused to our members on our warehouse opening day in Shanghai,” Costco said in a statement posted on WeChat, the Chinese social media platform.
Do you feel that we are doomed? Yep, Israel and their tactical (sick) nuclear weapons have been reportedly used in Middle East**, and they have hundreds more and hundreds more missiles, and here we are, the Chinese so messed up by AmeriKKKa’s run on gigantic quantities of stuff, Costco, well, they are now getting close to the Story of Stuff just like the AmeriKKKans?
*****
In 2021, a scientific report in the prestigious journal Nature confirmed what I had been saying since 2006. “Israel” has, since its attacks on Lebanon in 2006 and those on Gaza in 2008 and 2014, used a new nuclear weapon, one which kills with a high-temperature radiation flash and with neutrons. This weapon, which leaves an identification footprint, but no fission products like Caesium-137, we now know was also employed by the USA in Fallujah, Iraq in 2003, and previously in Kosovo also.
The residues, inhalable Uranium aerosol dust, together with the neutron damage to tissues, cause a range of serious and often fatal health effects that puzzle doctors and defy treatment. Without knowing what caused such effects, which often mimic other illnesses or result in fungal infections that kill, doctors are powerless to help and just watch the exposed individuals die. (Source)
So, this guitar player, Keith, man, it was the same “white guy folk music,” but again, white guy with Christian allusions, you know, all that spirituality, and his song about a woman, yeah.
But … BUT. He fucking yammered on and on and on with Crocodile Tears (just like a Scott Ritter or Joe Biden or George Bush gushes about America the Beautiful) about”this great nation, this day when, yes, we have a great country with two opposing sides today, and whichever person you voted for, well, just shows how great America is and how we all can still agree that there are many great things about this nation, and today, we celebrate our uniformed military, our brave men and women, who have sacrificed in Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan to protect our freedoms.”
D-O-N-E. Here is the song somewhere else, and he said almost the same spiel here in Yachats, except he had to deal with the No Kings Day, and he actually thanked the country for the parade, Trump’s orgasmic clown show, thanked our country for celebrating 250 years of our military, though, that is the US Army, man, this is sickness of Chlamydia Capitalism under the glare of the former hippies and their clapping and swaying to the music of the muscle man.
Yeah, I had a choice, man, and here I am with a client next to me, and again, here I am with fellow programmers and the president of the community radio station, and, well, in any other circumstance without the client, hmm, I would have stood up and turned my back on him, at least.
And I have been in that situation before, not standing for the pledge of murder and the national war anthem, and well, I have spoken out at events, and asked the tough questions, and, yep, younger versions of yesterday, berating me.
We left, as it was easy to prompt my client to leave since it had been a long day, 6 am to 8 pm, and he was tired.
The Congress of the Confederation created the current United States Army on 3 June 1784. The United States Congress created the current United States Navy on 27 March 1794 and the current United States Marine Corps on 11 July 1798. All three services trace their origins to their respective Continental predecessors.
Nothing to be proud of, Sicarios!
Grenade launchers using this technology include the XM29, XM307, PAPOP, Mk 47 Striker, XM25, Barrett XM109, K11, QTS-11, Norinco LG5 / QLU-11, and Multi Caliber Individual Weapon System. Orbital ATK developed air burst rounds for autocannons.
You all like those colors?
Northrup Grumman received a contract from the U.S. Army’s Project Manager for Maneuver Ammunition Systems (PM-MAS) to develop the next generation airburst cartridge for the 30mm XM813 Bushmaster® Chain Gun®. The gun and ammunition function as a system and will provide greater capability for the Army’s up-gunned Stryker Brigade Combat Team fleets.
The 30 mm x 173 mm airburst cartridge will feature a contact set fuze design with three operational fuze modes: Programmable Airburst; Point Detonation; and Point Detonation with Delay. The initial contract will fund the completion of the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) phase and final qualification by the Army.
Northrop Grumman will also begin deliveries this year of the first airburst type cartridge to support the U.S. Army’s Germany-based, 2nd Cavalry Regiment’s Stryker Infantry Carrier Vehicle (ICV) fleet that were recently ‘up-gunned’ with the company’s 30mm Bushmaster® Chain Gun®. The new airburst cartridge in development also will support additional U.S. Army platforms to include, but not limited to, the future Stryker Brigade Combat Teams.
The newly fielded gun system nearly doubles the range of the platform’s current .50-caliber machine gun. The addition of an airburst cartridge provides a complete family of ammunition that arms the crew to meet the challenges posed by peer and near-peer adversarial threat systems.
U.S. Air Force aircraft drops a white phosphorus bomb on a Viet Cong position in 1966.
The GBU-39, which is manufactured by Boeing, is a high-precision munition “designed to attack strategically important point targets,” and result in low collateral damage, explosive weapons expert Chris Cobb-Smith told CNN Tuesday. However, “using any munition, even of this size, will always incur risks in a densely populated area,” said Cobb-Smith, who is also a former British Army artillery officer.
Trevor Ball, a former US Army senior explosive ordnance disposal team member who also identified the fragment as being from a GBU-39, explained to CNN how he drew his conclusion.
“The warhead portion [of the munition] is distinct, and the guidance and wing section is extremely unique compared to other munitions. Guidance and wing sections of munitions are often the remnants left over even after a munition detonates. I saw the tail actuation section and instantly knew it was one of the SDB/GBU-39 variants.”
Ball also concluded that while there is a variant of the GBU-39 known as the Focused Lethality Munition (FLM) which has a larger explosive payload but is designed to cause even less collateral damage, this was not the variant used in this case.
“The FLM has a carbon fiber composite warhead body and is filled with tungsten ground into a powder. Photos of FLM testing have shown objects in the test coated in tungsten dust, which is not present [in video from the scene],” he told CNN.
Every war has an iconic and powerful image. The Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima boosted U.S. morale in World War II. A nine-year old girl burned by napalm during the Vietnam War became a potent anti-war image.
In the Hamas-Gaza War the image has become premature Palestinian babies struggling to live without incubators.
Some of this rant is precipitated by one of my Substack Subscribers, Bob Enough, his handle, and he’s from the UK:
“Just wanted to comment on the quote by Lawrence – “America is neither free nor brave, but a land of tight, iron-clanking little wills, everybody trying to put it over everybody else, and a land of men absolutely devoid of the real courage of trust, trust in life’s sacred spontaneity. They can’t trust life until they can control it.” – the rest is spot on.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I have been to the US many times on business and pleasure… and whilst there are beautiful places etc. to visit; the whole “culture !!??” and the brainwashed people are absolutely baffling to me. Just a few examples:
1. Met a UK mate over there with his girlfriend. Anyway, whilst talking away, she stated that she was Mexican. Intrigued I asked her “where from” ?, she told me and went on how wonderful it was.
I asked her, “how often she went “home” or back to visit relatives or friends etc….” …. her reply was “I have never been to Mexico” . !!!??????? WTF. She was born and bred by her parents in Houston, Tx.
2. Same bar as 1. above, looked around, US flags EVERYWHERE. Went for a smoke, close to a main road and every shop had a US flag on, even the cars and vans driving past had US flags or US flag bumper stickers on.
Same as Biden, gobbing off he is Irish.
3. Most have no idea of the World outside the US. Stated I was from England to 1 barmaid – she was lost, tried UK, Great Britain, Manchester everything… NO recognition at all … ended up shamefully saying “London” … where her brain popped open and she stated ” OH !!, on the other side of the Hudson river” … I mean.. what can you say to that ?.
4. You can see how they have been divided by their designations like – African Americans, Latino-Americans, Irish Americans etc etc.
Brainwashed, uneducated creatures – the most of them. Continuous wars = “The US has been at war 225 out of 243 years since 1776” … based on 2022 and the relatives and friends are proud when their loved ones are killed in battle for the great US of A…. Mad !
Ahh, the Ph.D’s, Bob, and even the diplomats and ambassadors, Bob, have been dumb-downed and lobotomized.
You have a fat happy (sic) un-Culture in the USA, and the place is huge compared to InBred UnUnited QueeDom. The land of great tribes was illegally and unethically and criminally invaded by the rubble of UK and EuroTrash, mostly, and so that is what is spinning in their DNA, that group of fucking freaky group.
Jonathan Kozol studied this, the functional illiteracy of Americans — and I have taught college since 1983 and been a newspaperman since 1976, and so my thumb has been on the pulse of that disaster of 40 percent up to 50 percent of folk not able to read a Time magazine article and discuss it, talk about main points, look at the rhetorical steps in the writing, so, then, here we are in 2025.
Few read books, and while there is traveling, cruise ships and eating and drinking tours, Americans have been McDonaldsified, Walmartified, Disneyfied, NASCARified.
Homo Consumopethicus.
Take a map of the world, and leave in the demarcations, and ask Americanos to at least put down 20 countries, and you will get some bad results. Same with the US map, really bad results. They can’t even put down a dot for their own towns, with that same blank map.
Not sure why you are looking at African Americans and Mexican-Americans as the target here. There are many Latinos who know their national origin, and same with Blacks, but again, dumb-downing is across all ethnic and racial lines.
As Lawrence says — We Americans need to follow the red man’s path, understand the depth of the red man’s cultures.
*****
While the scum buckets of the Trump’s Minyan watched the belching machines of death on the ground and in the air, the belching monsters of Jewish Israel were utilizing those aspirational machines of death:
Two months ago, on April 16, the New York Times provided detailed coverage of Israel’s close collaboration with the U.S. military in developing elaborate plans and scenarios to attack Iran. The plans required U.S. help “not just to defend Israel from Iranian retaliation but also to ensure that an Israeli attack was successful. The United States was a central part of the attack itself.” (tinyurl.com/47p3jyn3)
The Times reported that Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, with the blessing of the White House, began moving military equipment to West Asia. A second aircraft carrier, Carl Vinson, was moved to the Arabian Sea, joining the carrier Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea. Two Patriot missile batteries and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD) were repositioned to West Asia. B-2 bombers, capable of carrying 30,000-pound bombs, essential to destroying Iran’s underground nuclear program, were dispatched to Diego Garcia, an island base in the Indian Ocean.
The U.S. quietly delivered around 300 Hellfire missiles to Israel just days before Tel Aviv’s unprecedented attack on Iran, Middle East Eye has revealed. The transfer took place on June 10 while Washington was publicly signaling readiness to re-engage Tehran in nuclear talks, suggesting prior knowledge and coordination. Two U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, confirmed the shipment and said it marked a significant weapons resupply effort in anticipation of the strike.
The Hellfire delivery had not been previously reported. Meanwhile, U.S. forces were directly involved in intercepting Iranian retaliatory missiles aimed at Israel on June 13, according to Reuters. The scale and timing of the arms transfer now raise serious questions about Washington’s covert support for Israeli escalation, despite diplomatic posturing to the contrary.
In summary, the U.S. military would supply bombs, jet aircraft, intelligence and political cover, as they have for the past 20 months of Israel’s genocidal campaign against the people of Gaza. This is the same essential support the U.S. has provided to Israel for 75-plus years to carry out continuing attacks on surrounding Arab countries.
Bob Enough — Look at the USA Today propaganda crap above, and there are dozens of photos of those in the deplorable blob loving that dirty dirty rat Trump and Company.
Costco, Machine Guns, and LAWS anti-tank weapons:
Ahh, not as real as the Jews in Israel?
Then, and now:
Army veteran dubbed Queen of Guns reveals firearms are the ‘love of her life’ and feels ‘huge excitements’ every time she pulls the trigger
Ahh, this is fucking absurd. Vietnam?
You don’t hold a military parade to intimidate other countries. You hold a military parade to impress the people who are supporters and intimidate the people who are the opposition.You also hold a military parade to overcompensate for the fact that a lot of your own people hate you. — Viet Thanh Nyugen
Iran’s security establishment still does not understand where they are.
This is an existential regime change war, not a bit of light evening sparring to be conducted in rounds of orderly missile salvos on select military targets.
If they do not switch to a more dynamic and expansive approach which has the possibility of rendering the Zionist entity inoperable, in concert with a wide-ranging assassination programme, the Republic will simply cease to exist in what is to come.
They seem, as has been the case since 2007, fundamentally incapable of even recognising Zionist military strategy, let alone beginning to match it. — David Miller, June 14
Jewish State (Occupied Palestine) even goes after the rappers.
In today’s show, we’ll be exposing the lengths to which Israel and its Western-based assets have gone to cancel critics of the genocidal Zionist colony.
In our first report, Latifa Abouchakra highlights how Kneecap, the Irish hip-hop band, has found itself in the crosshairs of these underhand tactics for speaking out against genocide.
Our next report reveals the duplicitous actions of the long-time music business executive, Paul Samuels, who in 2002 was a co-founder of Love Music Hate Racism.
Iran’s security establishment still does not understand where they are.
This is an existential regime change war, not a bit of light evening sparring to be conducted in rounds of orderly missile salvos on select military targets.
If they do not switch to a more dynamic and expansive approach which has the possibility of rendering the Zionist entity inoperable, in concert with a wide-ranging assassination programme, the Republic will simply cease to exist in what is to come.
They seem, as has been the case since 2007, fundamentally incapable of even recognising Zionist military strategy, let alone beginning to match it.
*****
No nations? It’s an all-too-easy event to mock. It’s hard to keep a straight face when the world’s rich arrive annually in their private jets to the luxury ski-resort of Davos to express their deep concern about growing poverty, inequality and climate change
Less well known is the fact that WEF since 2009 has been working on an ambitious project called the Global Redesign Initiative(external link), (GRI), which effectively proposes a transition away from intergovernmental decision-making towards a system of multi-stakeholder governance. In other words, by stealth, they are marginalising a recognised model where we vote in governments who then negotiate treaties which are then ratified by our elected representatives with a model where a self-selected group of ‘stakeholders’ make decisions on our behalf.
In the famously public-school-suppressed fifth verse of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” he fired a shot across the bow of the very concept of private property:
“As I went walking I saw a sign there/And on the sign it said ‘No Trespassing’/But on the other side it didn’t say nothing/That side was made for you and me.”
John Lennon asked the world to “Imagine there’s no countries,” because “it isn’t hard to do.”
And in the Dead Kennedys song “Stars and Stripes of Corruption,”
Jello Biafra sang, “Look around, we’re all people/Who needs countries anyway?”
On Monday, June 16, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) introduced legislation, a War Powers Resolution, to prevent President Trump from using military force against Iran without Congressional authorization. This will force all Senators to go on record supporting or opposing the following: “Congress hereby directs the President to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces for hostilities against the Islamic Republic of Iran or any part of its government or military, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or specific authorization for use of military force against Iran.”
Sen. Kaine, a longtime advocate for exerting congressional authority over war, blasted Israel for jeopardizing planned U.S.-Iran diplomacy. “The American people have no interest in another forever war,” he wrote.
When Israel launched a surprise military strike on Iran last week, it did more than risk igniting a catastrophic regional war. It also exposed long-simmering tensions in Washington—between entrenched bipartisan, pro-Israel hawks and a growing current of lawmakers (and voters) unwilling to be dragged into another Middle East disaster.
“This is not our war,” declared Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), a Republican and one of the House’s most consistent antiwar voices. “Israel doesn’t need U.S. taxpayers’ money for defense if it already has enough to start offensive wars. I vote not to fund this war of aggression.” On social media, he polled followers on whether the U.S. should give Israel weapons to attack Iran. After 126,000 votes (and 2.5 million views), the answer was unequivocal: 85% said no.
For decades, questioning U.S. support for Israel has been a third rail in Congress. But Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran—coming just as the sixth round of sensitive U.S.-Iran nuclear talks were set to take place in Oman—sparked rare and unusually direct criticism from across the political spectrum. Progressive members, already furious over Israel’s war on Gaza, were quick to condemn the new offensive. But they weren’t alone.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) called Israel’s strike “reckless” and “escalatory,” and warned that Prime Minister Netanyahu is trying to drag the U.S. into a broader war. Rep. Chuy García (D-IL) called Israel’s actions “diplomatic sabotage” and said, “the U.S. must stop supplying offensive weapons to Israel, which also continue to be used against Gaza, & urgently recommit to negotiations.”
Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) was even more blunt. “The war criminal Netanyahu wants to ignite an endless regional war & drag the U.S. into it. Any politician who tries to help him betrays us all.”
More striking, however, were the critiques from moderate Democrats and some Republicans.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, warned that strikes “threaten not only the lives of innocent civilians but the stability of the entire Middle East and the safety of American citizens and forces.”
Some pro-Israel Democrats are feeling comfortable speaking out on this conflict because it fits their anti-Trump critique. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) said: “We are at this crisis today because President Trump foolishly walked away from President Obama’s Iran nuclear agreement under which Iran had agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear program and to open its facilities to international inspections, putting more eyes on the ground. The United States should now lead the international community towards a diplomatic solution to avoid a wider war.”
Adding to this diverse chorus of opposition are some Republicans from the party’s non-interventionist wing. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) declared, “War with Iran is not in America’s interest. It would destabilize the region, cost countless lives, and drain our resources for generations.” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) lamented that “some members of Congress and U.S. Senators seem giddy about the prospects of a bigger war.”
And in a rare show of agreement with progressive critics, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) blasted the hawks in both parties. “We’ve been told for the past 20 years that Iran is on the verge of developing a nuclear bomb any day now. The same story. Everyone I know is tired of U.S. intervention and regime change in foreign countries. Everyone I know wants us to fix our own problems here at home, not bomb other countries.”
Of course, many in Congress rushed to support Israel. Senate Republican leader John Thune said, “Israel has determined that it must take decisive action to defend the Israeli people.” Democratic Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) voiced full support for the strike and urged the U.S. to provide Israel “whatever is necessary—military, intelligence, weaponry.” The most crass was Senator Lindsey Graham, who posted: “Game on. Pray for Israel.”
But these crude pro-war responses, once guaranteed to go unchallenged, are now being met with resistance–and not just from activists. With public opinion shifting sharply–especially among younger voters, progressives, and “America First-ers” – the political calculus on unconditional support for Israel is changing. In the wake of Israel’s disastrous war in Gaza and its widening regional provocations, members of Congress are being forced to choose: follow the AIPAC money and the old playbook–or listen to their constituents.
If the American people continue to raise their voices, the tide in Washington could turn away from support for a war with Iran that could plunge the region into deeper chaos while offering no relief for the suffering people of Gaza. We could finally see an end to decades of disastrous unconditional support for Israel and knee-jerk support for catastrophic wars.
Why the focus ought to be on Israel, not Iran. Israel has 90-400 nuclear weapons. Here is what a simple AI dialogue yields. Any journalist could do it. No one does.
Title: Establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the region of the Middle East.
Date: Most recently adopted on 6 December 2021 (and reaffirmed annually with updates)
Original Adoption: First introduced in 1974 (Resolution A/RES/3263 (XXIX))
This resolution:
Calls for the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East.
Urges all states in the region to place all their nuclear activities under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.
Reaffirms that the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region contributes to international peace and security.
While it is not legally binding, it reflects strong international consensus and is reaffirmed annually by the UN General Assembly, usually with overwhelming support.
*****
Connection to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (that Iran has signed but not Israel):
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), particularly Article VII, encourages the establishment of regional nuclear-weapon-free zones (NWFZs). The idea of a Middle East NWFZ was first proposed in the 1974 General Assembly Resolution A/RES/3263 by Egypt and Iran.
Here’s how they relate:
NPT Commitments:
Non-nuclear-weapon states under the NPT agree not to develop or acquire nuclear weapons.
Nuclear-weapon states (U.S., Russia, China, UK, France) agree to pursue disarmament and to help non-nuclear states use nuclear energy peacefully.
Middle East NWFZ Goal:
The NWFZ resolution builds on this by aiming for a region-wide ban on nuclear weapons, addressing concerns that Israel, which is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons but is not a party to the NPT, remains outside the regime.
1995 NPT Review Conference Resolution:
A key decision during the 1995 NPT Review Conference extended the NPT indefinitely conditioned on progress toward a Middle East NWFZ.
This made it a political obligation, especially for the nuclear-weapon states, to facilitate such a zone.
UNGA Voting on Resolution A/RES/76/30 (Example from 2021)
This resolution is adopted annually with wide support. Here’s how the 2021 vote (Resolution 76/30) went:
Votes in Favor: 178
Votes Against: Israel
Abstentions: United States
Notable Positions:
Israel: Votes against the resolution every year. It has not signed the NPT and maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity.
United States: Typically abstains, citing that such initiatives should include all regional states in negotiations, and often expressing concern that the resolution singles out Israel.
Arab States, Iran, and many others: Strongly support the resolution, viewing it as essential for regional and global security.
Despite the repeated UNGA resolutions and support from nearly all states, the Middle East remains the only region without a NWFZ, largely due to:
Lack of regional consensus.
Israel’s position on nuclear weapons and refusal to join the NPT.
Security concerns among Gulf states.
Here is Wikipedia’s very comprehensive account of Israel’s nuclear weapons and how it acquired them. It seems to have between 90 and 400 nuclear weapons.
(@broseph_stalin) June 18, 2025
BREAKING: Israeli forces open fire on Palestinians waiting for aid in Gaza
Tank massacre 
(@94_bastard) 
Photo credit: CODEPINK
Notable Positions: