Category: Middle East

  • This brutal war on Palestinians has not just unleashed Israel’s demons. It has unmasked our own regimes, as they crack down on humanitarian activism. Jonathan Cook reflects on Israel’s war on Gaza as the fragile ceasefire takes hold.

    ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

    Anniversaries are often a cause for celebration. But who could have imagined back in October 2023 that we would now be marking the two-year anniversary of a genocide, documented in the minutest detail on our phones every day for 24 months? A genocide that could have been stopped at any point, had the US and its allies made the call.

    This is an anniversary so shameful that no one in power wants it remembered. Rather, they are actively encouraging us to forget the genocide is happening, even at its very height.

    Israel’s relentless crimes against the people of Gaza barely register in our news any longer.

    There is a horrifying lesson here, one that applies equally to Israel and its Western patrons. A genocide takes place — and is permitted to take place — only when a profound sickness has entered the collective soul of the perpetrators.

    For the past 80 years, Western societies have grappled with — or, at least, thought they did — the roots of that sickness.

    They wondered how a Holocaust could have taken place in their midst, in a Germany that was central to the modern, supposedly “civilised”, Western world.

    They imagined — or pretended to — that their wickedness had been extirpated, their guilt cleansed, through the sponsorship of a “Jewish state”. That state, violently established in 1948 in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, served as a European protectorate on the ruins of the Palestinian people’s homeland.

    Desperate to control
    The Middle East, let us note, just happened to be a region that the West was desperate to keep controlling, despite growing Arab demands to end more than a century of brutal Western colonialism.

    Why? Because the region had recently emerged as the world’s oil spigot.

    Israel’s very purpose — enshrined in the ideology of Zionism, or Jewish supremacism in the Middle East — was to act as a proxy for Western colonialism. It was a client state planted there to keep order on the West’s behalf, while the West pretended to withdraw from the region.

    This big picture — the one Western politicians and media refuse to acknowledge — has been the context for events there ever since, including Israel’s current, genocidal endgame in Gaza.

    Two years in, what should have been obvious from the start is becoming ever-harder to ignore: the genocide had nothing to do with Hamas’s one-day attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. The genocide was never about “self-defence”. It was preordained by the ideological imperatives of Zionism.

    Hamas’s break-out from Gaza — a prison camp into which Palestinians had been herded decades earlier, after their expulsion from their homeland — provided the pretext. It all too readily unleashed demons long lurking in the soul of the Israeli body politic.

    And more importantly, it released similar demons — though better concealed — in the Western ruling class, as well as parts of their societies heavily conditioned to believe that the interests of the ruling class coincide with their own.

    Bubble of denial
    Two years into the genocide, and in spite of this week’s fragile ceasefire negotiated by US President Donald Trump and the three mediators, Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye, the West is still deep in its self-generated bubble of denial about what has been going on in Gaza – and its role in it.

    “History repeats itself,” as the saying goes, “first as tragedy, then as farce.”

    The same could be said of “peace processes”. Thirty years ago, the West force-fed Palestinians the Oslo Accords with the promise of eventual statehood.

    Oslo was the tragedy. It led to an ideological rupture in the Palestinian national movement; to a deepening geographic split between an imprisoned population in the occupied West Bank and an even more harshly imprisoned population in Gaza; to Israel’s increasing use of new technologies to confine, surveil and oppress both sets of Palestinians; and finally, to Hamas’s brief break-out from the Gaza prison camp, and Israel’s genocidal “response”.

    Now, President Trump’s 20-point “peace plan” offers the farce: unapologetic gangsterism masquerading as a “solution” to the Gaza genocide. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair — a war criminal who, alongside his US counterpart George W Bush, destroyed Iraq more than two decades ago — will issue diktats to the people of Gaza on Israel’s behalf.

    Gaza, not just Hamas, faced an ultimatum: “Take the deal, or we will put you in concrete boots and sink you in the Mediterranean.”

    Surrender document
    Barely veiled by the threat was the likelihood that, even if Hamas felt compelled to sign up to this surrender document, Gaza’s people would end up in concrete boots all the same.

    Gaza’s population has been so desperate for a respite from the slaughter that it would accept almost anything. But it is pure delusion for the rest of us to believe a state that has spent two years carrying out a genocide can be trusted either to respect a ceasefire or to honour the terms of a peace plan, even one so heavily skewed in its favour.

    The farce of Trump’s peace plan — his “deal of the millennium” — was evident from the first of its 20 points: “Gaza will be a deradicalised terror-free zone that does not pose a threat to its neighbours.”

    The document’s authors no more wonder what might have “radicalised” Gaza than Western capitals did when Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist group in the UK and other countries, broke out of the prison enclave with great violence on 7 October 2023.

    Were the people of Gaza simply born radical, or did events turn them radical? Were they “radicalised” when Israel ethnically cleansed them from their original lands, in what is now the self-declared “Jewish state” of Israel, and dumped them in the tiny holding pen of Gaza?

    Were they “radicalised” by being surveilled and oppressed in a dystopian, open-air prison, decade upon decade? Was it the experience of living for 17 years under an Israeli land, sea and air blockade that denied them the right to travel or trade, and forced their children on to a diet that left them malnourished?

    Or maybe they were radicalised by the silence from Israel’s Western patrons, who supplied the weaponry and lapped up the rewards: the latest confinement technologies, field-tested by Israel on the people of Gaza.

    Gaza most extreme
    The truth ignored in the opening point of Trump’s “peace plan” is that it is entirely normal to be “radicalised” when you live in an extreme situation. And there are no places on the planet more extreme than Gaza.

    It is not Gaza that needs “deradicalising”. It is the West and its Israeli client state.

    The case for deradicalising Israel should hardly need stating. Poll after poll has shown Israelis are not just in favour of the annihilation their state is carrying out in Gaza; they believe their government needs to be even more aggressive, even more genocidal.

    This past May, as Palestinian babies were shrivelling into dry husks from Israel’s blockade on food and aid, 64 percent of Israelis said they believed “there are no innocents” in Gaza, a place where around half of the population of two million people are children.

    The figure would be even higher were it reporting only the views of Israeli Jews. The survey included the fifth of the Israeli population who are Palestinians — survivors of mass expulsions in 1948 during Israel’s Western-sponsored creation. This much-oppressed minority has been utterly ignored throughout these past two years.

    Another survey conducted earlier this year found that 82 percent of Israeli Jews favoured the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. More than half, 56 percent, also supported the forced expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel — even though that minority has kept its head bowed throughout the genocide, for fear of reaping a whirlwind should it speak up.

    In addition, 47 percent of Israeli Jews approved of killing all the inhabitants of Gaza, even its children.

    Netanyahu’s crimes
    The crimes overseen by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is so often held up by outsiders as some kind of aberration, are entirely representative of wider public sentiment in Israel.

    The genocidal fervour in Israeli society is an open secret. Soldiers flood social media platforms with videos celebrating their war crimes. Teenage Israelis make funny videos on TikTok endorsing the starvation of babies in Gaza. Israeli state TV broadcasts a child choir evangelising for Gaza’s annihilation.

    Such views are not simply a response to the horrors that unfolded inside Israel on 7 October 2023. As polls have consistently shown, deep-seated racism towards Palestinians is decades old.

    It is not former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant who started the trend of calling Palestinians “human animals”. Politicians and religious leaders have been depicting them as “cockroaches”, “dogs”, “snakes” and “donkeys” since Israel’s creation. It is this long process of dehumanisation that made the genocide possible.

    In response to the outpouring of support in Israel for the extermination in Gaza, Orly Noy, a veteran Israeli journalist and activist, reached a painful conclusion last month on the +972 website: “What we are witnessing is the final stage in the nazification of Israeli society.”

    And she noted that this problem derives from an ideology with a reach far beyond Israel itself: “The Gaza holocaust was made possible by the embrace of the ethno-supremacist logic inherent to Zionism. Therefore it must be said clearly: Zionism, in all its forms, cannot be cleansed of the stain of this crime. It must be brought to an end.”

    As the genocide has unfolded week after week, month after month — ever-more divorced from any link to 7 October 2023 — and Western leaders have carried on justifying their inaction, a much deeper realisation is dawning.

    Demon in the West
    This is not just about a demon unleashed among Israelis. It is about a demon in the soul of the West. It is us — the power bloc that established Israel, arms Israel, funds Israel, indulges Israel, excuses Israel — that really needs deradicalising.

    Germany underwent a process of “denazification” following the end of the Second World War — a process, it is now clear from the German state’s feverish repression of any public opposition to the genocide in Gaza, that was never completed.

    A far deeper campaign of deradicalisation than the one Nazi Germany was subjected to, is now required in the West — one where normalising the murder of tens of thousands of children, live-streamed to our phones, can never be allowed to happen again.

    A deradicalisation that would make it impossible to conceive of our own citizens travelling to Israel to help take part in the Gaza genocide, and then be welcomed back to their home countries with open arms.

    A deradicalisation that would mean our governments could not contemplate silently abandoning their own citizens — citizens who joined an aid flotilla to try to break Israel’s illegal starvation-siege of Gaza — to the goons of Israel’s fascist police minister.

    A deradicalisation that would make it inconceivable for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, or other Western leaders, to host Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, who at the outset of the slaughter in Gaza offered the central rationale for the genocide, arguing that no one there — not even its one million children — were innocent.

    A deradicalisation that would make it self-evident to Western governments that they must uphold the World Court’s ruling last year, not ignore it: that Israel must be forced to immediately end its decades-long illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories, and that they must carry out the arrest of Netanyahu on suspicion of crimes against humanity, as specified by the International Criminal Court.

    A deradicalisation that would make it preposterous for Shabana Mahmood, Britain’s Home Secretary, to call demonstrations against a two-year genocide “fundamentally un-British” — or to propose ending the long-held right to protest, but only when the injustice is so glaring, the crime so unconscionable, that it leads people to repeatedly protest.

    Eroding right to protest
    Mahmood justifies this near-death-knell erosion of the right to protest on the grounds that regular protests have a “cumulative impact”. She is right. They do: by exposing as a sham our government’s claim to stand for human rights, and to represent anything more than naked, might-is-right politics.

    A deradicalisation is long overdue — and not just to halt the West’s crimes against the people of Gaza and the wider Middle East region.

    Already, as our leaders normalise their crimes abroad, they are normalising related crimes at home. The first signs are in the designation of opposition to genocide as “hate”, and of practical efforts to stop the genocide as “terrorism”.

    The intensifying campaign of demonisation will grow, as will the crackdown on fundamental and long-cherished rights.

    Israel has declared war on the Palestinian people. And our leaders are slowly declaring war on us, whether it be those protesting the Gaza genocide, or those opposed to a consumption-driven West’s genocide of the planet.

    We are being isolated, smeared and threatened. Now is the time to stand together before it is too late. Now is the time to find your voice.

    Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the author’s blog with permission. This article was first published by the Middle East Eye and is republished with the author’s permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • IMAGE/Khaama Press
    VIDEO/Mirror Now/Youtube

    The Principal of Global School had asked his favorite Monitor to keep an eye on other students in the Middle East class.

    The Monitor’s family had given hefty donation to the Principal for running the school. In return, the Principal would overlook small or big mistakes, blunders, wrongs, of his favorite Monitor, and would do him great favors. For a very long time, the Monitor’s been mad and has been punishing some particular students. Since last two years, the Monitor went totally rogue; he beat the hell out of five students. One of those students, the first student, witnessed half his house burned down. The Principal, a peace loving person, avoids hassles and so didn’t say anything to the Monitor — and earned suggestions of his name for the Noble Peace Prize.

    Then one day the Monitor beat up the sixth student. It was a humongous dilemma for the Principal: the sixth student had given big donation too, and had gifted a fast vehicle to the Principal. It is a universal fact that the Principal rarely says no to the Monitor. The Principal has a doctorate in The Art of the Deal; he found a way out. Although he permitted to strike the sixth one. After fifteen or so minutes he called the student to inform him. The sixth student was crying: the Monitor had already finished his job.

    The Principal said: I called you the minute I knew. The Principal sensed the sixth one’s anger and decided to do something.

    When, the Monitor went to the Principal’s office to report how the Middle East class was doing, the Principal handed him a piece of paper with a written apology which the Monitor was ordered to read out to the sixth student, on the phone. The Principal didn’t want to piss off one of his big donors.

    The Monitor didn’t like it but then he thought: I control the whole Middle East class, I have so much power, unimaginable. After Principal, I am the only one with so much power — that power is due to money and fighting toys from the Principal’s family. I better say sorry, as it is small
    inconvenience to continue the abundance being received.

    The Monitor half-heartedly said sorry, but the humiliation he felt and the reluctance to apologize was clearly visible on his face. The sixth student just wanted to hear an apology to save his face. The Principal’s donations from that student are now secure.

    The Principal wrote a personal letter assuring the sixth student that from now on any attack on him would be considered a “threat” to the Principal himself.

    But it was the Monitor who got the last laugh. The Principal promised the first student that his half burnt house will be somewhat fixed and he’ll be permitted to reside there. But it is the Monitor at whose whim the repair will begin — it may be forever delayed or postponed.

    The post Surreal Reality: Global School Principal and His Favorite Monitor first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • As officials with Hamas say they will respond “soon” to President Trump’s ceasefire proposal to end Israel’s nearly two-year war on Gaza, brokered with Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, we look at the many other deals Witkoff and his family are involved with. A New York Times investigation reveals that when Witkoff, a real estate developer and longtime friend of Trump, began his new position as a…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The death of a female Iranian political prisoner in hospital following a series of seizures has sparked outrage from Iran’s two Nobel laureates and right groups who have labeled her death a state-sponsored murder. Somayeh Rashidi died after several days in hospital following her transfer from Qarchak Prison near Tehran, Iran’s judiciary-affiliated Mizan news agency reported on Thursday.

    Rashidi, born in 1983, was detained in April for allegedly writing anti-government graffiti slogans in Tehran’s Javadieh district.

    Nobel Peace laureates Narges Mohammadi condemned her death in custody, describing it as part of a pattern of abuse in detention. “This devastating loss of Somayeh Rashidi is not an accident but the result of a systematic policy of neglect and cruelty inside Iranian prisons,” Mohammadi said in a post on X.

    Rights groups and activists including Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi had previously raised alarm about Rashidi’s deteriorating condition, highlighting her urgent need for medical attention.

    Iran International reported earlier this month that Rashidi’s condition had severely declined, with doctors holding little hope for her recovery.

    Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi, who faced a death sentence and torture in prison but was ultimately released, called Rashidi’s death a deliberate act to suppress dissent. “Such deliberate disregard for political prisoners is an example of silent, systematic suppression and elimination of dissenters. Why should anyone be arrested for graffiti?” Salehi posted on X. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2024/05/25/vaclav-havel-international-prize-for-creative-dissent-2024-goes-to-iranian-hip-hop-artist-uyghur-poet-and-venezuelan-pianist/]

    Former political prisoner and women’s rights defender Hasti Amiri said Rashidi’s case showed deliberate neglect.

    Sources speaking anonymously to Iran International alleged that security officials pressured Rashidi’s family to describe her hospitalization as a suicide attempt, intensifying accusations of a cover-up.

    Qarchak deaths mount

    Human rights groups including the Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) have publicly called for the closure of Qarchak, describing it as “one of the darkest symbols of systematic human rights violations in the Islamic Republic.” Rashidi death comes less than a week after another prisoner, Maryam Shahraki, died in Qarchak last Friday. According to Norway-based rights group Hengaw Organizattion, three women have already died in this facility this year due to lack of adequate medical care — Jamileh Azizi on September 19, Shahraki on September 13, and Farzaneh Bijanipour on Januar

    https://www.iranintl.com/en/202509253807

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • In an extraordinary televised statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the Zionist faithful that the state of Israel will curtail its current ambitions as part of a longer term strategy. The statement is short on specifics, but it comes on the heels of several apparent major failures of Israeli policy.

    The most recent is the attack on Qatar, which has probably robbed both Israel and the US of the vaunted Abraham Accords, which had been a cornerstone in Israeli, US and Western policy in the region. Although Israel, the UAE and Bahrain are the only official signers, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait assumed (or gained assurances) that by “normalizing” relations with Israel and cooperating with the US and NATO countries, they could come under a protective American umbrella that would assure their security from common enemies, in much the same way as Jordan and Egypt, if not better. The bombing of Qatar was a message that not only can they not trust Israel to honor the arrangement, but that US protection – a supposedly rock solid foundation – was essentially worthless, even for a small, compliant country housing the largest US military base in West Asia to protect it. The fact that the Israeli bombings took place in the capital of Qatar, less than 20 miles from al-Udeid airbase leased to the US and heaquarters of the US Central Command, was not lost on the Qataris or the other Gulf monarchies. It was a grave shock to US interests in the region. Even if the US had taken pains to assure the Arab monarchies after the fact that it had been a foolish error of judgment that would not be repeated, these conservative and sensitive partners are not likely to take such assurances for granted anymore, and will be more open to offers from more reliable protectors.

    The US does not often rebuff or chastise Israel, and even less under a Trump administration so beholden to Israel and its US supporters for delivering the White House to him. But in this case even the threat of releasing Epstein files – which the Mossad is thought to hold – might not be enough to coerce such assistance to Israel for a second such episode. (You can only divulge the files once, after which they no longer have value.)

    This brings us to the threat of a US-Israeli attack on Iran. This, too, is probably receding, partly as an effect of the Israeli and US miscalculation in Qatar. Instead, the US is more likely to settle for the recent UN imposition of “snapback” economic sanctions on Iran, which were probably inevitable in any case. Even Iran and the rest of the world might prefer such sanctions as an alternative to a major regional war with unknown consequences. In addition, the Pentagon has expressed concern about the depletion of US weaponry through transfer to Israel and Ukraine. Netanyahu’s speech indicates that Israel might also be having second thoughts, related more to the effect of such a war upon an Israeli public already demoralized and by what seems like endless sacrifices to them. Another exodus of Israel’s population could have major long term consequences.

    For these reasons and others, it is possible that Israel is also trimming its ambitions with respect to Gaza. Already, Netanyahu has stepped back from his recent goal of depopulating all of Gaza. His military commanders have told him that they would need six infantry divisions to do that, while the current under-strength units amount to little more than one. Netanyahu has therefore adjusted the goal to ethnically cleansing just the northern third of the territory, consisting mostly of Gaza City. Nevertheless, this task is more difficult because few Palestinians in northern Gaza consider southern Gaza safer or more livable than Gaza City, even under attack. Netanyahu knows how to change that equation, but he won’t. Furthermore, the longer he pursues this objective, the less patient the Israeli population – including the military – will become, and the more casualties it will take from the literally underground resistance of Hamas and its allies. Israeli society is substantially exhausted and perhaps unwilling to stay the course.

    Of course, Israel is by no means throwing in the towel on all of its actual and potential occupied territories. It has captured substantial amounts of Syrian territory with relatively little opposition since the defeat of the Syrian army. Its military is also active in Lebanon, with the long term purpose of capturing, depopulating and annexing south Lebanon. Resistance there has been subdued since a ceasefire was negotiated November 27, 2024, despite thousands of Israeli violations, but Israel may decide that this is where it can advance its expansionist agenda more successfully than on other fronts. Nevertheless, Israel has failed at least six times at capturing south Lebanon since 1967, and it may prove beyond their means this time, as well. Hezbollah will undoubtedly have a say in the matter.

    Meanwhile, the rest of the world is becoming more activist in isolating and ostracizing Israel. Israel can survive even if its only lifeline is the US, but it could potentially become a caged existence that will last only as long as its support in the US, where the Jewish community seems to be growing at roughly the same rate that Israel’s shrinks, but where there is increasing concern that Israel is committing a genocide.

    These trends are reflected in Netanyahu’s speech and in the frustration and division within Israeli society itself. Is the Zionist experiment finally starting to fail? We know that it cannot survive without massive support and protection from the United States and its powerful Zionist lobby. But is this lobby reaching the limits of its power, as it seeks to circumscribe free speech, academia, the media and other aspects of American society, using antisemitism as a bludgeon? It is not clear that Americans, especially the younger generation, will tolerate such invasion upon their lives and freedoms.

    The post Israeli Overreach in Palestine and West Asia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The Israeli-US Position

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    As we have noted elsewhere:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Iran’s Position

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    A Framework for Peace

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

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

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

    The Likely Character of the Impending War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Apportioning Responsibility

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Almost exactly 24 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. House of Representatives voted this week to finally repeal a pair of more than two-decade-old congressional authorizations that have allowed presidents to carry out military attacks in the Middle East and elsewhere.

    In a 261-167 vote, with 49 Republicans joining all Democrats, the House passed an amendment to the next military spending bill to rescind the Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress in the lead-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War and 2003 War in Iraq.

    The decision is a small act of resistance in Congress after what the Quincy Institute’s Adam Weinstein described in Foreign Policy magazine as “years of neglected oversight” by Congress over the “steady expansion of presidential war-making authority.”

    The post ‘Forever Wars’ Authorization Finally Repealed By US House appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The speaker of Israel’s parliament has suggested that the country is ready to attack its neighbors across the entire region following Israel’s unprovoked strike on Qatar on Tuesday. “This is a message for the entire Middle East,” Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana said in Arabic in a post on X. Accompanying the text was a video of the strike, showing a large explosion which resulted in a plume…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The U.S. ambassador to Turkey sparked fury on Tuesday for chiding a group of Lebanese journalists to “act civilized” and not be “animalistic,” saying such behavior is responsible for the strife in the Middle East. During a press conference in Beirut on Tuesday, as reporters asked questions and clamored for his attention — a typical practice in news conferences around the world — Tom Barrack…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • U.S. envoy Thomas Barrack urges Lebanese journalists to be “civilized,” “kind,” and “tolerant,” rather than “animalistic.” The irony is impossible to miss. Anyone familiar with the history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East will understand the depth of the hypocrisy.

    Mr. Barrack implies that the “problem with the region”—the “chaos”— stems from Middle Easterners’ supposed lack of civilization, or worse, their allegedly subhuman nature. In truth, “the chaos” has been actively manufactured by the United States: sponsoring terrorism, violating sovereignty, propping up dictators, bombing cities and infrastructure, killing civilians, and plundering resources—just as it has done elsewhere in the world.

    It is no surprise, then, that many across the world view the decline of the American empire with some satisfaction, saying “inshallah.” For them, its downfall would not signify the end of human civilization, but perhaps the beginning of an opportunity for others to live with dignity and freedom.

    Despite being the richest nation in history, the U.S. has tragically failed to care for its own citizens—its “tired” and “poor”— while efficiently exporting misery abroad. Its foreign policy has consistently crushed the aspirations of peoples seeking self-determination—the “masses yearning to breathe free”—whether through coups, repression, or outright war.

    The reality is unmistakable: the gravest threat to human dignity and civilization today is not Middle Eastern journalists—scores of whom are silenced daily with American weapons and assistance—but the United States itself.

    The post “Who Is Uncivilized, Mr. Barrack?” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The story they sell is that “order” was built by reasoned men in sensible suits. The story we live is different. Multipolarity did not grow out of seminars or summits; it is the aftershock of five centuries of plunder, the recoil from wars and sanctions, and the refusal of the colonized to keep paying for someone else’s civilization. Its genealogy runs from the Bandung Communiqué (1955)—the first great gathering where the majority of humanity spoke in its own name—through the long detour of debt, structural adjustment, and counter-insurgency masquerading as “development.”

    Bandung’s promise was simple and subversive: sovereignty, peaceful coexistence, cooperation, and a say in the world economy for those who actually make the world economy run.

    The post When The Empire Chokes, The South Breathes appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • “Despite it all, I hold onto a small hope—that the future might bring justice, that our voices will eventually be heard, and that one day I can celebrate my birthday again, in peace, with the people I love, free from fear and loss.”  – Awdah Hathaleen, April 2025 Photo by: Emily Glick

    An Israeli settler shot dead a Palestinian teacher who helped film Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, according to the Palestinian education ministry and an Israeli-American activist who was at the scene of the shooting.

    No Other Land co-director Yuval Abraham said on X that a settler shot Odeh (also Awdah) Hathaleen in the lungs in Umm Al-Khair village in the occupied West Bank. Residents allege the shooter was Yinon Levy, who is sanctioned by the UK.

    Attorney Avichai Hajbi said he was representing a resident “who felt his life was in danger, was forced to fire his weapon into the air” after residents were “attacked by an Arab mob, along with foreign activists, with stones and violence”. Mattan Berner-Kadish, an Israeli-American activist at the scene, told the BBC that at about 17:20 local time (15:20 BST) on Monday, a bulldozer from a nearby Israeli settlement was driven through private Palestinian land, crushing a sewage pipe, multiple olive trees and two fences.

    Berner-Kadish and other activists, including Hathaleen’s cousin Ahmad, ran to block the bulldozer. The activist said the driver hit Ahmad in the neck and shoulder with a drill that extended from the bulldozer, with his footage capturing Ahmad falling to the ground. Berner-Kadish did not believe Levy was driving.

    While attending to Ahmad’s injuries, Berner-Kadish heard a pop. Running back to the village to get water, he saw Hathaleen lying bleeding from a gunshot wound and Levy, the only settler he saw, holding a gun.

    In a video believed to be filmed by a relative of Hathaleen and posted on social media, a man identified as Levy is seen holding a pistol with a bulldozer behind him, as men yell at him. Levy pushes at one man, who pushes back. Levy then raises his pistol and shoots ahead of him, then again into the air.

    The clip cuts off when the person filming turns around to run away as women are heard screaming. The footage does not show what or who the shots hit, if anything, and whether anyone else was shooting. There are no other settlers visible. Israeli police said it was investigating the incident in the area of Carmel, an Israeli settlement near Umm Al-Khair.

    “As a result of the incident, a Palestinian man was pronounced deceased. His exact involvement is under investigation,” police told the BBC. Police said on Tuesday morning they had detained an Israeli citizen for questioning. Israeli media later reported Levy was released on house arrest.

    The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also detained five Palestinians on suspicion of involvement in the incident, along with two foreign tourists who were present. Berner-Kadish said on Tuesday evening they were still detained. The activist, who began visiting the village in 2021, said Hathaleen was “one of my best friends in the world” and the two were days away from constructing a football field in the village. He added that Hathaleen was a “warm and loving” father of three young children.

    The Palestinian education ministry said Hathaleen was a teacher at a local secondary school. US congresswoman Lateefah Simon, a Democrat from California, said she was “heartbroken” over the killing of Hathaleen. He and his cousin, “both holding valid visas”, were detained and deported from San Francisco airport last month while travelling for a multicultural faith dialogue, she said.

    Abraham said Hathaleen had helped film No Other Land, the 2025 Oscar winner for best documentary feature that follows the legal fight between the Israeli government and Palestinians over Masafer Yatta, a West Bank community of about 20 villages.

    ..Levy, a leader of an outpost farm, was sanctioned by the UK in 2024, along with others, because he “used physical aggression, threatened families at gunpoint, and destroyed property as part of a targeted and calculated effort to displace Palestinian communities”.

    He was also sanctioned by the US under the Biden administration, along with others, last year, but President Donald Trump lifted those sanctions.

    Gilad Kariv, a member of Israel’s Knesset from the Democrats party, said on X in response to the video that “in the territories, armed Jewish militias operate unchecked”.

    Settler violence, which has also been on the rise for years, has surged since the outbreak of the war in Gaza. The UN documented at least 27 attacks by settlers against Palestinians that resulted in property damage, casualties or both, between 15 and 21 July, in the West Bank.

    see also: https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/statement-report/optisrael-statement-solidarity-palestinian-human-rights-defenders-risk-occupied

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c776x78517po

    https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Awdah_Hathaleen

    https://mailchi.mp/2a4342b25255/hrdf-10982507?e=51113b9c0e Read here the words of chairperson of the board, Sahar Vardi.

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza has been fueled by a surge in deliveries of military-grade jet fuel from U.S. providers. In this visual, we expose the companies and governments complicit in this supply chain, while highlighting grassroots efforts to track and disrupt this deadly cargo through direct action, boycott campaigns, and community resistance.

    The post Fueling Genocide: Inside the Global Supply Chain that Delivers Jet Fuel to Israel’s Military first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Did Iran Create or Cooperate with Regional Resistance? Much is made of the US military base-encirclement of Iran and the threat it poses but considerably less attention is paid to Iran’s Ring of Fire that threatens to engulf Washington and Tel Aviv. Resistance to the Imperialist project in the West Asia (Middle East) region has […]

    The post Iran And Its ‘Ring Of Fire’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • U.S. President Donald Trump seems to have largely moved on from Iran and is now setting his sights on instituting a broader new order in the Middle East.

    Trump’s vision consists of an Israel-centric regional order that sees Iran and Hezbollah defeated and normalization with Israel spreading across the region, from Lebanon and Syria to Oman and Saudi Arabia. Joining him in creating this vision is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is slated to visit the White House on Monday.

    While there are potentially many obstacles to enacting this U.S./Israeli plan, it is clear that one focus is to quash any Palestinian aspirations for freedom.

    The post Next Week, Trump And Netanyahu Will Meet To Plan ‘New Middle East’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • COMMENTARY: By Ahmad Ibsais

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • By Kaya Selby, RNZ Pacific journalist

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

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

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

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

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

    Pacific support for Israel runs deep

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Reverend Bhagwan said that the religious ties ran deep.

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

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

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • In April, Palestinian student activist Mohsen Mahdawi walked into an immigration office to obtain US citizenship. He left in handcuffs. The Columbia University student was detained by ICE and accused by the Trump administration of jeopardizing US foreign policy through his involvement in protests following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. On this week’s More to The Story, Mohsen talks to host Al Letson about his arrest by ICE, his role in campus protests, and his childhood growing up in a West Bank refugee camp. 

    Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson

    Read: Mohsen Mahdawi Has Been Released From Federal Custody (Mother Jones)
    Listen: Gaza: A War of Weapons and Words (Reveal)
    Read: Mahmoud Khalil, Finally Free, Speaks Out (Mother Jones)

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • RNZ Pacific

    Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape says the Middle East conflict was one of the discussions of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) in Suva this week — and Pacific leaders “took note of what is happening”.

    The Post-Courier reports Marape saying the “12 Day War” between Israel and Iran was based on high technology and using missiles sent from great distances.

    “In the context of MSG, the leaders want peace always. And the Pacific remains friends to all, enemies to none,” he said.

    He said an effect on PNG would be the inflation in prices of oil and gas.

    Yesterday morning, US President Donald Trump declared a ceasefire had been agreed  between Israel and Iran, and so far it has been holding in spite of tensions.

    Australia had stepped in to help Papua New Guinea diplomats and citizens caught in the Middle East.

    Foreign Affairs Minister Justin Tkatchenko confirmed last week that a group was to be evacuated through Jordan.

    There had been six diplomats in lockdown at the PNG embassy in Jerusalem awaiting extraction.

    Meanwhile, a repatriation flight for Australians stuck in Israel had been cancelled.

    ABC News reported that it was the second day repatriation plans were scrapped at the last minute because of rocket fire. A bus meant to take people across the border into Jordan was cancelled the previous day.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • President Donald Trump is touting a ceasefire deal between Israel and Iran, despite what he said were violations of the deal by both sides shortly after he announced it. Trump said he was especially angry with Israel and urged the country to stand down as he faces mounting criticism over the prospect of another U.S. war in the Middle East. “Part of the reason why Trump also was quite eager to…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • COMMENTARY: By Ramzy Baroud, editor of The Palestinian Chronicle

    The conflict between Israel and Iran over the past 12 days has redefined the regional chessboard. Here is a look at their key takeaways:

    Israel:
    Pulled in the US: Israel successfully drew the United States into a direct military confrontation with Iran, setting a significant precedent for future direct (not just indirect) intervention.

    Boosted political capital: This move generated substantial political leverage, allowing Israel to frame US intervention as a major strategic success.

    Iran:
    Forged a new deterrence: Iran has firmly established a new equation of deterrence, emerging as a powerful regional force capable of directly challenging Israel, the US, and their Western allies.

    Demonstrated independence: Crucially, Iran achieved this without relying on its traditional regional allies, showcasing its self-reliance and strategic depth.

    Defeated regime change efforts: This confrontation effectively thwarted any perceived Israeli strategy aimed at regime change, solidifying the current Iranian government’s position.

    Achieved national unity: In the face of external pressure, Iran saw a notable surge in domestic unity, bridging the gap between reformers and conservatives in a new social and political contract.

    Asserted direct regional role: Iran has definitively cemented its status as a direct and undeniable player in the ongoing regional struggle against Israeli hegemony.

    Sent a global message: It delivered a strong message to non-Western global powers like China and Russia, proving itself a reliable regional force capable of challenging and reshaping the existing balance of power.

    Exposed regional dynamics: The events sharply exposed Arab and Muslim countries that openly or tacitly support the US-Israeli regional project of dominance, highlighting underlying regional alignments.

    Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London). He has a PhD in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015) and was a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. This commentary is republished from his Facebook page.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    New Zealand’s opposition Green Party has called on the government to condemn the United States for its illegal bombing of Iran and inflaming tensions across the Middle East.

    “The actions of the United States pose a fundamental threat to world peace,” said Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson in a statement.

    “The rest of the world — including New Zealand– must take a stand and make it clear that this dangerous escalation is unacceptable.

    “We are calling on the New Zealand government to condemn the United States for its attack on Iran. This attack is a blatant breach of international law and yet another unjustified assault on the Middle East from the US.”

    Davidson said the country had seen this with the US war on Iraq in 2003, and it was happening again with Sunday’s attack on Iran.

    “We are at risk of a violent history repeating itself,” she said.

    “[Prime Minister] Christopher Luxon needs to condemn this escalation from the US and rule out any participation in this conflict, or any of the elements of the AUKUS pact.

    Independent foreign policy
    “New Zealand must maintain its independent foreign policy position and keep its distance from countries that are actively fanning the flames of war.”

    Davidson said New Zealand had a long and proud history of standing up for human rights on the world stage.

    “When we stand strong and with other countries in calling for peace, we can make a difference. We cannot afford to be a bystander to the atrocities unfolding in front of our eyes.”

    It was time for the New Zealand government to step up.

    “It has failed to sanction Israel for its illegal and violent occupation of Palestine, and we risk burning all international credibility by failing to speak out against what the United States has just done.”

    Meanwhile, Prime Minister Luxon said New Zealand wanted to see a peaceful stable and secure Middle East, but more military action was not the answer, reports RNZ News.

    The UN Security Council met in emergency session today to discuss the US attack on the three key nuclear facilities.

    UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the US bombing marked a “perilous turn” in a region already reeling.

    Iran called on the 15-member body to condemn what it called a “blatant and unlawful act of aggression”.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The zionist ethnostate has been spoiling for a war with Iran for decades. Who can forget the comedic, cartoonish, yet dark presentation of Benjamin Netanyahu to the United Nations in 2012 when he suggested that Iran was on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon. Netanyahu and other neocons have been peddling the false narrative about Iran’s nuclear timeline for decades, but this time is much different because it was acted upon, which has resulted in more death, more illegal acts that are egregious violations of international law and more global instability at the hands of the zionist ethnostate and its willing collaborators in the U.S. and the West.

    The post The Only Weapons Of Mass Destruction In The Middle East Are Zionism, Israel’s Nukes And US/Western Imperialism appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • By Giles Dexter, RNZ News political reporter

    The Defence Force is sending a plane to the Middle East to assist any New Zealanders stranded in Iran or Israel.

    The C-130J Hercules, along with government personnel, will leave Auckland on Monday.

    Airspace is still closed in the region, but Defence Minister Judith Collins said the deployment was part of New Zealand’s contingency plans.

    “Airspace in Israel and Iran remains heavily restricted, which means getting people out by aircraft is not yet possible, but by positioning an aircraft, and defence and foreign affairs personnel in the region, we may be able to do more when airspace reopens,” she said.

    The government was also in discussions with commercial airlines to see what they could do to assist, although it was uncertain when airspace would reopen.

    Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters said New Zealanders should do everything they could to leave now, if they could find a safe route.

    “We know it will not be safe for everyone to leave Iran or Israel, and many people may not have access to transport or fuel supplies,” he said.

    ‘Stay in touch’
    “If you are in this situation, you should shelter in place, follow appropriate advice from local authorities and stay in touch with family and friends where possible.”

    Peters reiterated New Zealand’s call for diplomacy and dialogue.

    “Ongoing military action in the Middle East is extremely worrying and it is critical further escalation is avoided,” he said. “New Zealand strongly supports efforts towards diplomacy.

    “We urge all parties to return to talks. Diplomacy will deliver a more enduring resolution than further military action.”

    Winston Peters & Judith Collins at the announcement that the Defence Force was sending a plane to the Middle East
    NZ’s Defence Minister Judith Collins and Foreign Minister Winston Peters address the media . . . “Look, this is a danger zone . . . Get out if you possibly can.” Image: RNZ/Calvin Samuel

    It will take a few days for the Hercules to reach the region.

    New Zealanders in Iran and Israel needing urgent consular assistance should call the Ministry’s Emergency Consular Call Centre on +64 99 20 20 20.

    New Zealand hoped the aircraft and personnel would not be needed, and diplomatic efforts would prevail, Collins re-iterated.

    The ministers would not say where exactly the plane and personnel would be based, for security reasons.

    Registered number in Iran jumps
    Peters told reporters the number of New Zealanders registered in Iran had jumped since the escalation of the crisis.

    How the New Zealand Herald, the country's largest newspaper, reported the US strike on Iran
    How the New Zealand Herald, the country’s largest newspaper, reported the US strike on Iran today. Image: APR

    “We thought, at a certain time, we had them all counted out at 46,” he said. “It’s far more closer to 80 now, because they’re coming out of the woodwork, despite the fact that, for months, we said, ‘Look, this is a danger zone’, and for a number of days we’ve said, ‘Get out if you possibly can’.”

    There were 101 New Zealanders registered in Israel. Again, Peters said the figure had risen recently.

    He indicated people from other nations could be assisted, similar to when the NZDF assisted in repatriations from New Caledonia last year.

    Labour defence spokesperson Peeni Henare supported the move.

    “I acknowledge the news that the New Zealand Defence Force will soon begin a repatriation mission to the Middle East, and thank the crew and officials on this mission for their ongoing work to bring New Zealanders home safely,” he said.

    While he agreed with the government that the attacks were a dangerous escalation of the conflict and supported the government’s calls for dialogue, he said the US bombing of Iran was a breach of international law and the government should be saying it.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The US-Israeli attack against Iran will intensify the forces that are already destroying international law legacies and the UN system in the Middle East and most of the world, writes Rami Khouri.

    ANALYSIS: By Rami G. Khouri

    Israel’s attacks on military, civilian, and infrastructural sites throughout Iran and the repeated Iranian retaliatory attacks against targets across Israel have rattled the existing power balance across the Middle East — but the grave consequences of this new war for the region and the world’s energy supplies and economies will only be clarified in the weeks ahead.

    It is already clear that Israel’s surprise attack did not achieve a knock-out blow to Iran’s nuclear sector, its military assets, or its ruling regime, while Iran’s consecutive days of rocket and drone attacks suggest that this war could go on for weeks or longer.

    The media and public political sphere are overloaded now with propaganda and wishful thinking from both sides, which makes it difficult to discern the war’s outcomes and impacts.

    For now, we can only expect the fighting to persist for weeks or more, and for key installations in both countries to be attacked, like Israel’s Defence Ministry and Weitzman Institute were a few days ago, along with nuclear facilities, airports, military assets, and oil production facilities in Iran.

    So, interested observers should remain humble and patient, as unfolding events factually clarify critical dimensions of this conflict that have long been dominated by propaganda, wishful thinking, muscle-flexing, strategic deception, and supra-nationalist ideological fantasies.

    This is especially relevant because of the nature of the war that has already been revealed by the attacks of the past week, alongside military and political actions for and against the US-Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing aims in Palestine.

    This round of US-Israel and Iran fighting has triggered global reactions that show this to be yet another battle between Western imperial/colonial powers and those in the Middle East and the Global South that resist this centuries-old onslaught of control, subjugation, and mayhem.

    Identifying critical dimensions
    We cannot know today what this war will lead to, but we can identify some critical dimensions that we should closely monitor as the battles unfold. Here are the ones that strike me as the most significant.

    First off, the ongoing attacks by Iran and Israel will clarify their respective offensive and defensive capabilities, especially in terms of missiles, drones, and the available defences against them.

    Iran has anticipated such an Israeli attack for at least a decade, so we should assume it has also planned many counterattacks, while fortifying its key military and nuclear research facilities and duplicating the most important ones that might be destroyed or damaged.

    Second, we will quickly discover the real US role in this war, though it is fair already to see Israel’s attack as a joint US-Israeli effort.

    This is because of Washington’s almost total responsibility to fund, equip, maintain, resupply, and protect the Israeli armed forces; how it protects Israel at the UN, ICC, and other fora; and both countries’ shared political goals to bring down the Islamic Republic and replace it with a puppet regime that is subservient to Israeli-US priorities.

    Trump claims this is not his war, but Israel’s attacks against Iran, Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon can only happen because of the US commitment by law to Israeli military superiority in the Middle East. The entire Middle East and much of the world see this as a war between the US, Israel, and Iran.

    And then today the US strikes on the three Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.

    Al Jazeera's web report of the US attacks on Iran today
    Al Jazeera’s web report of the US attacks on Iran today. Image: AJ screenshot APR

    Unconventional warfare attacks
    We will also soon learn what non-military weapons each side can use to weaken the other. Missiles and drones are a start, but we should expect unconventional warfare attacks against civilian, infrastructural, digital, and financial sector targets that make life difficult for all.

    An important factor that will only become clear with time is how this conflict impacts domestic politics in both countries; Iran and Israel each suffer deep internal fissures and some discontent with their regimes. How the war evolves could fragment and weaken either country, or unite their home citizenries.

    Also important will be how Arab leaders react to events, especially those who chose to develop much closer financial, commercial, and defence ties with the US, as we saw during Trump’s Gulf visit last month. Some Arab leaders have also sought closer, good neighbourly relations with Iran in the last three years, while a few moved closer to Israel at the same time.

    Arab leaders and governments that choose the US and Israel as their primary allies, especially in the security realm, while the attacks on Gaza and Iran go on, will generate anger and opposition by many of their people; this will require the governments to become more autocratic, which will only worsen the legacy of modern Arab autocrats who ignore their people’s rights and wellbeing.

    Arab governments mostly rolled over and played dead during the US-Israeli Gaza genocide, but in this case, they might not have the same opportunity to remain fickle in the face of another aggressive moral depravity and emerge unscathed when it is over.

    If Washington gets more directly involved in defending Israel, we are likely to see a response from voters in the US, especially among Trump supporters who don’t want the US to get into more forever wars.

    Support for Israel is already steadily declining in the US, and might drop even faster with Washington now engaging directly in fighting Iran, because the Israeli-US attack is already based on a lie about Iran’s nuclear weapons, and American popular opinion is increasingly critical of Israel’s Gaza genocide.

    Iran’s allies tested
    The extent and capabilities of Iran’s allies across the Middle East will, too, be tested in the coming weeks, especially Hezbollah, Hamas, Ansar Allah in Yemen, and Popular Mobilisation Forces in Iraq. They have all been weakened recently by Israeli-American attacks, and both their will and ability to support Iran are unclear.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees this attack as the last step in his strategy to reorganise and re-engineer the Middle East, to make all states dependent on Israeli approval of their strategic policies. A few already are.

    Netanyahu has been planning this regional project for over a decade, including removing Saddam Hussein, weakening Hezbollah and Hamas, hitting Yemen, and controlling trends inside Syria now that Bashar al-Assad is gone.

    We will find out in due course if this strategy will rearrange Arab-Middle East dynamics, or internal Israeli-American ones.

    The cost of this war to Israeli citizens is a big unknown, but a critical one. Israelis now know what it feels like in Southern Lebanon or Gaza. Millions of Israelis have been displaced, emigrated, or are sheltering in bunkers and safe rooms.

    This is not why the State of Israel was created, according to Zionist views, which sought a place where Jews could escape the racism and pogroms they suffered in Europe and North America from the 19th Century onwards.

    Most dangerous place
    Instead, Israel is the most dangerous place for Jews in the world today.

    This follows two decades in which all the Arabs, including Palestinians and Hamas, have expressed their willingness to coexist in peace with Israel, if Israel accepts the Palestinians’ right to national self-determination and pertinent UN resolutions that seek to guarantee the security and legitimacy of both Israeli and Palestinian states.

    The US-Israeli attack against Iran will intensify the forces that are already destroying international law legacies and the UN system in the Middle East and most of the world. The US-Israel pursue this centuries-old Western colonial-imperial action to deny indigenous people their national rights at a time when they have already ignored the global anti-genocide convention by destroying life and systems that allow life to exist in Gaza.

    Rami G Khouri is a distinguished fellow at the American University of Beirut and a nonresident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington. He is a journalist and book author with 50 years of experience covering the Middle East. Dr Khouri can be followed on Twitter @ramikhouri This article was first published by The New Arab before the US strikes on Iran.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Democracy Now!

    Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, held talks with France, Germany, and the United Kingdom yesterday in Geneva as Israel’s attacks on Iran entered a second week.

    A US-based Iranian human rights group reports the Israeli attacks have killed at least 639 people. Israeli war planes have repeatedly pummeled Tehran and other parts of Iran. Iran is responded by continuing to launch missile strikes into Israel.

    Hundreds of thousands of Iranians have protested in Iran against Israel. Meanwhile, President Trump continues to give mixed messages on whether the US will join Israel’s attack on Iran.

    On Wednesday, Trump told reporters, “I may do it, I may not do it”. On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt delivered a new statement from the President.

    KAROLINE LEAVITT: “Regarding the ongoing situation in Iran, I know there has been a lot of speculation among all of you in the media regarding the president’s decision-making and whether or not the United States will be directly involved.

    “In light of that news, I have a message directly from the president. And I quote, ‘Based on the fact that there’s a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.’”

    AMY GOODMAN, The War and Peace Report: President Trump has repeatedly used that term, “two weeks,” when being questioned about decisions in this term and his first term as president. Leavitt delivered the message shortly after President Trump met with his former adviser, Steve Bannon, who has publicly warned against war with Iran.

    Bannon recently said, “We can’t do this again. We’ll tear the country apart. We can’t have another Iraq,” Bannon said.

    This comes as Trump’s reportedly sidelined National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard from key discussions on Iran. In March, Gabbard told lawmakers the intelligence community, “Continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.”

    But on Tuesday, Trump dismissed her statement, saying, “I don’t care what she said.”

    Earlier Thursday, an Iranian missile hit the main hospital in Southern Israel in Beersheba. After the strike, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz threatened to assassinate Ayatollah Khamenei, saying Iran’s supreme leader, “Cannot continue to exist.”

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the hospital and likened Iran’s attack to the London Blitz. Netanyahu stunned many in Israel by saying, “Each of us bears a personal cost. My family has not been exempt. This is the second time my son Avner has cancelled a wedding due to missile threats.”

    We’re joined now by William Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His new article for The National Interest is headlined, “Don’t Get Dragged Into a War with Iran.”

    Can you talk about what’s going on right now, Bill, the whole question of whether the U.S. is going to use a bunker-buster bomb that has to be delivered by a B-2 bomber, which only the US has?


    Another Iraq: Military expert warns US has no real plan    Video: Democracy Now!

    WILLIAM HARTUNG: Yeah. This is a case of undue trust in technology. The US is always getting in trouble when they think there’s this miracle solution. A lot of experts aren’t sure this would even work, or if it did, it would take multiple bombings.

    And of course, Iran’s not going to sit on its hands. They’ll respond possibly by killing US troops in the region, then we’ll have escalation from there. It’s reminiscent of the beginning of the Iraq War, when they said, “It’s going to be a cakewalk. It’s not going to cost anything.”

    Couple of trillion dollars, hundreds of thousands of casualties, many US veterans coming home with PTSD, a regime that was sectarian that paved the way for ISIS, it couldn’t have gone worse.

    And so, this is a different beginning, but the end is uncertain, and I don’t think we want to go there.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, can you talk about the GBU-57, the bunker-buster bomb, and how is it that this discussion going on within the White House about the use of the bomb — and of course, the US has gone back and forth — I should say President Trump has gone back and forth whether he’s fully involved with this war.

    At first he was saying they knew about it, but Israel was doing it, then saying, “We have total control of the skies over Tehran,” saying we, not Israel, and what exactly it would mean if the US dropped this bomb and the fleet that the US is moving in?

    WILLIAM HARTUNG: Yes, well, the notion is, it’s heavy steel, it’s more explosive power than any conventional bomb. But it only goes so deep, and they don’t actually know how deep this facility is buried. And if it’s going in a straight line, and it’s to one side, it’s just not clear that it’s going to work.

    And of course, if it does, Iran is going to rebuild, they’re going to go straight for a nuclear weapon. They’re not going to trust negotiations anymore.

    So, apparently, the two weeks is partly because Trump’s getting conflicting reports from his own people about this. Now, if he had actual independent military folks, like Mark Milley in the first term, I think we’d be less likely to go in.

    But they made sure to have loyalists. Pete Hegseth is not a profile in courage. He’s not going to stand up to Trump on this. He might not even know the consequences. So, a lot of the press coverage is about this bomb, not about the consequences of an active war.

    AMY GOODMAN: Right, about using it. In your recent piece, you wrote, “Israeli officials suggested their attacks may result in regime change in Iran, despite the devastating destabilising impact such efforts in the region would have.”

    Can you talk about the significance of Israel putting forward and then Trump going back and forth on whether or not Ali Khamenei will be targeted?

    WILLIAM HARTUNG: Yeah, I think my colleague Trita Parsi put it well. There’s been no example of regime change in the region that has come out with a better result. They don’t know what kind of regime would come in.

    Could be to the right of the current one. Could just be chaos that would fuel terrorism, who knows what else.

    So, they’re just talking — they’re winging it. They have no idea what they’re getting into. And I think Trump, he doesn’t want to seem like Netanyahu’s pulling him by the nose, so when he gets out in front of Trump, Trump says, “Oh, that was my idea.”

    But it’s almost as if Benjamin Netanyahu is running US foreign policy, and Trump is kind of following along.

    AMY GOODMAN: You have Netanyahu back in 2002 saying, “Iran is imminently going to have a nuclear bomb.” That was more than two decades ago.

    WILLIAM HARTUNG: Exactly. That’s just a cover for wanting to take out the regime. And he spoke to the US Congress, he’s made presentations all over the world, and his intelligence has been proven wrong over, and over, and over.

    And when we had the Iran deal, he had European allies, he had China, he had Russia. There hadn’t been a deal like that where all these countries were on the same page in living memory, and it was working.

    And Trump trashed it and now has to start over.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about the War Powers Act. The Virginia Senator Kaine has said that — has just put forward a bill around saying it must be — Congress that must vote on this. Where is [Senator] Chuck Schumer [Senate minority leader]? Where is [Hakeem] Jeffries [Congress minoroity leader] on this, the Democratic House and Senate leaders?

    WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, a lot of the so-called leaders are not leading. When is the moment that you should step forward if we’re possibly going to get into another disastrous war? But I think they’re concerned about being viewed as critical of Israel.

    They don’t want to go out on a limb. So, you’ve got a progressive group that’s saying, “This has to be authorised by Congress.” You’ve got Republicans who are doubtful, but they don’t want to stand up to Trump because they don’t want to lose their jobs.

    “Risk your job. This is a huge thing. Don’t just sort of be a time-server.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, according to a report from IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, released in May, Iran has accumulated roughly 120 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, which is 30 percent away from weapons-grade level of 90 percent. You have Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, saying this week that they do not have evidence that Iran has the system for a nuclear bomb.

    WILLIAM HARTUNG: Yes, well, a lot of the discussion points out — they don’t talk about, when you’ve got the uranium, you have to build the weapon, you have to make it work on a missile.

    It’s not you get the uranium, you have a weapon overnight, so there’s time to deal with that should they go forward through negotiations. And we had a deal that was working, which Trump threw aside in his first term.

    AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the foreign minister of Iran, Araghchi, in Geneva now speaking with his counterparts from Britain, France, the EU.

    WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, I don’t think US allies in Europe want to go along with this, and I think he’s looking for some leverage over Trump. And of course, Trump is very hard to read, but even his own base, the majority of Trump supporters, don’t want to go to war.

    You’ve got people like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon saying it would be a disaster. But ultimately, it comes down to Trump. He’s unpredictable, he’s transactional, he’ll calculate what he thinks it’ll mean for him.

    AMY GOODMAN: And what impact does protests have around the country, as we wrap up?

    WILLIAM HARTUNG: Well, I think taking the stand is infectious. So many institutions were caving in to Trump. And the more people stand up, 2000 demonstrations around the country, the more the folks sitting on the fence, the millions of people who, they’re against Trump, but they don’t know what to do, the more of us that get involved, the better chance we have of turning this thing around.

    So, we should not let them discourage us. We need to build power to push back against all these horrible things.

    AMY GOODMAN: Finally, if the US were to bomb the nuclear site that it would require the bunker-buster bomb to hit below ground, underground. Are we talking about nuclear fallout here?

    WILLIAM HARTUNG: I think there would certainly be radiation that would of course affect the Iranian people. They’ve already had many civilian deaths. It’s not this kind of precise thing that’s only hitting military targets.

    And that, too, has to affect Iran’s view of this. They were shortly away from another negotiation, and now their country’s being devastated, so can they trust us?

    AMY GOODMAN: Bill Hartung is senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His new piece for The National Interest is headlined, “Don’t Get Dragged Into a War with Iran.”

    Republished from Democracy Now! under Creative Commons.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Asia Pacific Report

    A leading Middle East analyst has pushed back against US President Donald Trump’s dismissal of the conclusion of his own national intelligence chief, who said in April that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.

    Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, said in an interview that Tulsi Gabbard, the US Director of National Intelligence, who issued the determination on Iran, “does not speak for herself” or her team alone.

    “She speaks for all the intelligence agencies combined,” Bishara said.

    “This intelligence is supposed to be sound. This is not just one person or one team saying something. It’s the entire intelligence community in the United States. He [Trump] would dismiss them? For what?

    “For a lie by a rogue element called Benjamin Netanyahu, who has lied all his life, a con artist who is indicted for his crimes in Gaza? It’s just astounding.”

    US senators slam Netanyahu
    Two US senators have also condemned Netanyahu while Israel continues to bomb and starve Gaza

    Chris Van Hollen and Elizabeth Warren, two Democrats in the US Senate, have urged the world to pay attention to what Israel continues to do in Gaza amid its conflict with Iran.

    “Don’t look away,” Van Hollen wrote on X. “Since the start of the Israel-Iran war 7 days ago, over 400 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed, many shot while seeking food.

    “It’s unconscionable that Netanyahu has not allowed international orgs to resume food delivery.”

    Warren said the Israeli prime minister “may think no one will notice what he’s doing in Gaza while he bombs Iran”.

    “People face starvation. 55,000 killed. Aid workers and doctors turned away at the border. Shooting at innocent people desperate for food. The world sees you, Benjamin Netanyahu,” she wrote.

    ‘A trust gap’
    The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, appealed for an end to the fighting between Israel and Iran, saying that Teheran had repeatedly stated that it was not seeking nuclear weapons.

    “Let’s recognise there is a trust gap,” he said.

    “The only way to bridge that gap is through diplomacy to establish a credible, comprehensive and verifiable solution — including full access to inspectors of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], as the United Nations technical agency in this field.

    “For all of that to be possible, I appeal for an end to the fighting and the return to serious negotiations.”

    UN Secretary-General António Guterres
    UN Secretary-General António Guterres . . . “I appeal for an end to the fighting and the return to serious negotiations.” Image: UNweb screenshot APR

    Meanwhile, in New Zealand hope for freedom for Palestinians remained high among a group of trauma-struck activists in Cairo.

    In spite of extensive planning, the Global March To Gaza (GMTG) delegation of about 4000 international aid volunteers was thwarted in its mission to walk from Cairo to Gaza to lend support.

    Asia Pacific Report special correspondents report on the saga.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • There are few differences between the lies told to ignite the war with Iraq and the lies told to ignite a war with Iran. The assessments of our intelligence agencies and international bodies are, as they were during the calls to invade Iraq, airily dismissed for hallucinations.

    All the old tropes have been resurrected to entice us into another military fiasco. A country that poses no threat to us, or to its neighbors, is on the verge of acquiring a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) that imperils our existence. The country and its leaders embody pure evil. Freedom and democracy are at stake.

    The post Chris Hedges: War Deja Vu appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Overnight, the zionist entity of Israel escalated its war of aggression against Iran by launching unprovoked attacks on the Islamic Republic. The notion that a rogue ethnostate that is currently carrying out a genocide believes that it possesses the right to determine which countries can and cannot develop a nuclear weapon is both bizarre and egregious as well as brazenly hypocritical, and further demonstrates that the State of Israel operates firmly within the structures of white “supremacy” ideology, colonialism, and imperialism. Iran, like all sovereign nations, has the right to defend itself from aggression and uphold its security in the face of repeated threats and acts of war.

    The post The Middle East Is On Fire; Israeli And US Imperialism Lit The Match appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.