In the coming years, if Iran survives as a sovereign state and retains control over the Strait of Hormuz, countries like Australia, New Zealand, the UK, South Korea and Japan will be made to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in reparations for the US-Israeli war on Iran.

For this to come to pass, Iran must fight the aggressors to a standstill and ensure they can impose, if necessary, a chokehold on the oil, gas and fertilisers vital to the global economy.

• READ MORE: Protesters condemn Luxon govt for failing to condemn illegal war on Iran
• President Trump, don’t listen to your sycophants on Iran, this isn’t reality TV
• US bombing targets bridges and Pasteur Institute – ‘symbols of Iran’s scientific strength’, says spokeswoman
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

So, when next you see an image of spectacular US-Israeli violence, think this: “I might have to pay for that”.

There is no doubt that US-Israel has succeeded in setting fire to Iran, inflicting a heavy death toll, and hundreds of billions of dollars in damages to the civilian infrastructure of the country.

As the Leader of the so-called “Free World” said this week: the aim is to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age.

The US and Israel have dropped well over 15,000 huge bombs and missiles on Iran. According to the United Nations, by March 17 the US and Israel had already destroyed 54,000 civilian homes.

Destruction now far worse
The destruction is now far worse, approaching 100,000 structures. By the end of March hundreds of schools, dozens of universities, much of the civilian infrastructure including major bridges, energy systems and cultural sites had been attacked by the Americans and Israelis. Does anyone still believe they have come to Iran to free the people?

Who should pay for reconstruction? The Iranian government is clear: we should — because this immense crime was, from their perspective, aided and abetted by Australia, the UK, EU, New Zealand and others, who, as with the genocide in Gaza, did nothing meaningful to stop it.

According to Lloyds, Iran has now set up a toll booth at the Strait of Hormuz — referred to by some as “The Aya-Toll-a Booth” — to tax ships that pass through the strait. It may be questionable under the Law of the Sea but this would be to quibble after the US-Israelis blitzkrieg.

The Majlis (Iranian Parliament) is finalising a law declaring Iranian “sovereignty, control and oversight” of the Strait, something it had never asserted before. The bill introduces a system of transit fees for commercial vessels passing the Hormuz Strait, effectively imposing a tax of up to $2 million per vessel that wishes to pass.

A large oil tanker has a cargo worth about $200 million so the fee is not excessive. Multiply that by more than 100 ship movements per day under peacetime conditions and Iran could be in receipt of tens of billions of dollars per year.

Given the rogue states who launched this war will never submit to international law or reparations it seems an elegant solution.

Under the system, ships must now provide their International Maritime Organisation (IMO) number, cargo manifest, crew names, ownership details and destination before Iran will issue a safe passage clearance. The law bans vessels from the US, Israel, and their allies, while granting safe transit to China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Bangladesh and other friendly nations.

Iran needs to win
For this to fully come to fruition, Iran needs to win.

Professor Robert Pape, a top US expert on warfare, based at the University of Chicago, says Iran will likely emerge from this terrible war as a super-power.  Many analysts, such as Colonel Daniel Davis, Mark Sleboda, Annelle Sheline, and Professor John Mearsheimer, now see an Iranian victory as likely.

Professor Pape himself has run simulations of US-Iran wars for decades and is clear: “Trump made a huge mistake.”

Professor Pape, who was one of the prime architects of the US Air Force’s war curriculum, told journalist Mahmoud Ansari that Trump and others are currently confusing tactical success with strategic outcomes. For the moment, the Americans and Israelis are enjoying success after success: killing leaders and school girls, blowing stuff up and so on.

“That can be mesmerising, and cause this illusion of precision control but it is not the same thing as a strategic victory. Iran before the war controlled 4 percent of the world’s oil. Twenty-six days later they control 20 percent of the world’s oil.”

As Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute pointed out this week, Denmark charged transit fees for 400 years for vessels to pass through the Øresund Strait into and out of the Baltic. Panama, Egypt and Turkey all charge transit fees.

The countries who played the starring supporting roles in the genocide in Gaza — Germany, UK, Australia — and supported Israel and America in their rampages across the Middle East for decades may — if they are lucky — get access to the Gulf again but may have to pay a heavy price for their role in the destruction of the lives of tens of millions of people.

NZ awaits eventual negotiations
The energy security of a minor henchman like New Zealand will have to await eventual negotiations between its major suppliers — South Korea and Singapore — and Iran.

Bloodied but as yet unbowed, Iran knows it can — and must — rise like the Phoenix from the ashes.

In the Iranian version of the Phoenix tradition — reaching back thousands of years —  the Phoenix (Simurgh in Farsi) must face death and destruction before being reborn and revitalised.

The Simurgh is so ancient it possesses the wisdom of the ages: in other words it knows how to survive calamities that would consume others. This is called civilisational resilience and it is baked into the DNA of the Iranian people.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region, and is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published on his Solidarity blog.

New Zealand’s government was taken to task today for its lack of a principled stand against Israel’s Gaza genocide and the illegal and unprovoked US-Israel war on Iran.

Several speakers at a rally in the heart of Auckland expressed disappointment and anger at Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s failure to condemn the war of aggression against Iran, one of the major supporters of Palestinian self-determination and justice.

The speakers from several cultures were scathing about New Zealand’s weak stance in the rally at Te Komititanga Square with a theme of “Welfare not warfare”.

• READ MORE: US-Israel attacks hit petrochemical, nuclear sites in Iran
• President Trump, don’t listen to your sycophants on Iran, this isn’t reality TV
• US bombing targets bridges and Pasteur Institute – ‘symbols of Iran’s scientific strength’, says spokeswoman
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

The criticism comes as US President Donald Trump is reportedly seeking a record $1.5 trillion in “defence” spending for the coming year along with massive social cutbacks, according to a White House details released yesterday, while New Zealand’s budget allows for an unprecedented NZ$12 billion four-year plan to overhaul the country’s military.

Bibi Amena, a twice-displaced refugee from Afghanistan who has experienced the devastation of war and lost family members while resisting the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, said the illegal assassination of a high profile head of state and respected figure among Shia Muslims around the world should have been condemned.

“At the very least our government should have condemned America and Israel in the strongest words possible,” she said.

New Zealand should have distanced itself from America and Israel “and their crumbling empire”.

Helen Clark quoted
She quoted former prime minister Helen Clark who at the beginning of this war described New Zealand’s response as “a disgrace” and that it was in the country’s best interests to keep advocating for international law.

“New Zealand is not a mighty country, and if we trample international law and forego an independent foreign policy, we are left at the mercy of countries far bigger and far stronger than us,” Amena said.

“Let’s be loud and clear when we say that Israel and America’s war on Iran is illegal — it’s illegitimate, unprovoked and immoral.”

A Tehran-born psychology student, Ali Reza, who migrated to New Zealand in 2013, was also strongly critical of the government’s weak stance over the war.

“Some politicians seem to have trouble with their spines. Iran has many excellent spinal surgeons who could help them with that.”

He praised the Palestinian resistance in the face of the 76th years “brutality, occupation, mass murder and mass displacement” by Israel.

“Meanwhile, the Sudanese people were suffering through a devastating civil war caused by the UAE (United Arab Emirates) and its master Israel. The enemy’s lies set records displaying psychotic levels of manipulation and exploitation,” he said.

“The enemy renewed their specialisation in the discipline of evil wrongdoings, pioneering in numerous fields, followed by their murderous campaign in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Iran, all funded by the United States.”

Choice for Aotearoa
Leeann Wahanui-Peters of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) called for a choice for Aotearoa — one between “the security of our whānau and the lies and profits of warmongers and their masters in Wall Street, the City of London, and the shadow bankers of Black Rock and company”.

“A choice between a home, a warm home and weapons,” she said. “A choice between a future of justice, peace and prosperity for all and a past of war and exploitation for the few.

“For decades, we have been told that the world is dangerous and that the only way to be safe is to spend more on the military.”

“This is a lie,” Wahanui-Peters said.

“The greatest threat to the safety of a child in Aotearoa isn’t a missile from a distant land. It is the coldness of a house their parents can’t afford to heat, or living in a car.

“It is their hunger in their stomach because their school lunch has been cut. It is the despair of a future with no jobs and no hope.”

And yet, said Wahanui-Peters, New Zealand’s “coalition regime” chose to be “fiscally irresponsible” and chose military assets ahead of the best interests of the country’s people.

‘Gateway for hell’
Bibi Amena said New Zealand’s silence over Israeli crimes in Palestine “opened the gateway for hell” in Iran.

“In the past 30 days of aggression, Israeli and American bombs have slaughtered over 3000 innocent Iranian children, women and men.

“They have attacked and destroyed energy and water supplies, civilian infrastructure, oil facilities, schools and hospitals. All of these attacks are illegal under international law.

“So why has our government remained silent? Why do we allow America and Israel to commit war crime after war crime with impunity?”

Amena referenced the first day of the illegal war on Iran, an American Tomahawk missile targeting a girls’ elementary school in the city of Minab, killing more than 160 girls aged between 7 and 12.

She ended her speech with a short quote “which went viral on social media” by Professor Foad Izadi from the University of Tehran: “Iran is fighting the Epstein class of the world, that either rapes little girls, or bombs little girls.”

Organisers of the Stop Wars Aotearoa coalition said there would be a major rally with the theme “No More Wars” in Auckland’s Aotea Square and a protest march to the US Consulate next Saturday, April 11, at 2pm.

A Constitutional Reform Bill dedicated to New Caledonia was rejected on Thursday by the French National Assembly (Lower House) without debate, by a gathering of opposition parties by a score of 190 to 107.

The rejection came in the form of the endorsement of a preliminary Bill filed by a left wing opposition, Emmanuel Tjibaou, on behalf of the GDR group (Gauche démocrate et républicaine).

The “prior rejection motion” means that if the rejection motion is adopted, then it closes the current sitting on the matter and the Bill would then have to come back to the other House of Parliament, the Senate, following the “shuttle” rule.

• READ MORE: Thousands take to Nouméa streets ahead of French Parliament debate on New Caledonia
• Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

Tjibaou, who is an indigenous Kanak pro-independence leader, is one of the two MPs representing New Caledonia in the Assembly.

The text was originally tabled for a vote to be held on 1 April 2026, but this was later delayed by one day, following an announcement by Speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet.

However, on Thursday, during a sitting that only debated motives from the government and its Minister for Overseas Naïma Moutchou, the rapporteur Philippe Gosselin and representatives from all parties present, it quickly became clear that most of the opposition parties were going to support the rejection motion, and vote against the text without further debate.

The sitting only lasted 01 hour 40 minutes.

Tjibaou, speaking in support of his rejection motion, stressed that the Constitutional Bill, in his view, was “not consensual”, because his party, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) was opposed to the text and that the Bill “did not seek to reach a compromise” between all stakeholders.

Tjibaou said this was in contradiction to the previous Matignon-Oudinot (1988) and Nouméa Accord (1998), which initiated a decolonisation process for New Caledonia.

The present Constitutional Bill derives from talks held in July 2025 and January 2026 between New Caledonia political stakeholders and the French government. This was on two occasions — in the small city of Bougival in July 2025 and later in January 2026 in Paris, at the French Presidential palace of Élysée, and the French ministry of Overseas territories in Rue Oudinot.

Hence the name of Bougival-Élysée-Oudinot (BEO) for a text and an expanded project.

The project also envisions the creation of a “State of New Caledonia”, with a correlated “New Caledonia Nationality” available to people who are already French citizens.

Other participating parties pro-France and pro-independence (two pro-independence members of FLNKS) have since split to create their own “UNI” (Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance).

They have maintained their commitment to the BEO process, including their legislative adaptation (in the form of a Constitutional Amendment and an “organic Law”, which would de facto become New Caledonia’s constitution).

Tjibaou: ‘a logic of assimilation’
But the BEO text, in August 2025, was unequivocally opposed by the FLNKS, one of the main components of the pro-independence movement.

The FLNKS later explained it saw these, as well as a planned process of transfer of more powers from Paris to Nouméa, was, in their view, just a “lure” of independence.

Tjibaou said on Thursday the text was at best “symbolic”.

“To us, this amounts to a perennial status within France… It’s a logic of assimilation… It cannot be compared to a decolonisation in accordance with the UN resolutions and the international law”, he told MPs.

He called on local elections to be held sooner than later, currently no later than 28 June 2026.

Tjibaou said it was ironic that “a pro-independence” should tell the Minister that “when our Kanak country is damaged, it is also France that is damaged”… Because “when you make decisions that are leading us to chaos, you are also jeopardising France’s place in the Pacific”, he said at the tribune.

Moutchou: ‘There is no other agreement’
Moutchou, in her reply, said the rejection of the Bill would have repercussions on New Caledonians’ everyday life.

She stressed what New Caledonians needed, after the riots of May 2024 and a severe economic downfall since, was “visibility”, especially on the part of economic stakeholders who needed stability in order to restore confidence and investment.

“There is no other agreement. The Bougival process was approved by 5 of the 6 political parties of New Caledonia.

“Some are mentioning the absence of FLNKS. I’ve always maintained the principles of transparency, dialogue information for all. And the door was never closed”, she said.

“And the politics of the empty chair cannot dictate the future of a territory.

“So what do we do? How much longer do we have to wait… To be responsible, we move on with those who are here… Consensus does not mean unanimity, consensus is not perfection, it’s a point of equilibrium”, she replied to Tjibaou.

“And while we have this text that is not perfect, but opens a way, those who say, ‘we will wait and see later’ risk bringing us back to a confrontational situation”.

Metzdorf’s disappointment
The other MP for New Caledonia, pro-France Nicolas Metzdorf, also took to the tribune to express disappointment.

“I don’t know what more we should do. After the 2024 riots, you asked us to find a political agreement. We did this and we made big concessions, we, the non-independentists. We did this for the good of New Caledonia.

“Then you said we had to meet again to further clarify… On Kanak identity and the self-determination process. So now we are back with two political agreements.”

“And now you are sending us back home without a debate… You know, New Caledonia may be far from Paris, but tonight, many are watching this debate on TV and they’re thinking ‘What will happen to us?”

“Many have lost their home, their work, but even worse, they have lost hope to live in peace in New Caledonia”.

“What I am asking (MPs) today is just to have the common decency to debate on this (Bill)… These agreements are being supported by the majority of New Caledonia’s political class (including the moderate pro-independence parties within the Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance), but also by the economic and business sector.”

“I’m asking for a vote on these accords and I’m asking to organise a consultation of New Caledonia’s people, because at the end of the day, we are the only legitimate ones to decide on our future.”

What now?
Following the rejection vote on Thursday, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said all parties that had signed the Bougival-Elysée-Oudinot Accord would meet “next week”, because this is what was agreed in case of a deadlock.

Commenting on future options, Metzdorf told French media in Paris that “all options are now on the table”.

After the National Assembly’s rejection, another possibility was to bring the text back to the Upper House (the Senate).

Another option (that was almost implemented a few months ago, but later abandoned) would be to bring back a process of “consultation” directly in New Caledonia in the form of a de facto referendum for or against the Bougival process.

But the sensitive issue of who is eligible to vote at local elections remains for the looming provincial elections (which would now have to be held no later than 28 June 2026).

Pro-France parties are still determined to have those restrictions changed to allow the “frozen” electoral roll to be more open, if not fully “unfrozen”.

This could be the subject of separate negotiations between New Caledonia’s opposing parties in the coming days.

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

An Iranian government spokesperson, Fatemeh Mohajerani, has declared that the attacked “bridges and the Pasteur Institute are symbols of Iran’s scientific strength” in response to the latest US onslaught.

She added that they were “the product of a civilisation that spans thousands of years” and that “its depth is hard to grasp for those who speak the language of the ‘Stone Age.’”

“For a land that has lit the lamps of knowledge for centuries, these threats carry only one meaning: you can strike the infrastructure, but you will not touch the roots of a nation . . .

• READ MORE: Steel plants, bridge hit as US-Israel attacks expand — Iran vows retaliation
• Iran’s president urges global health bodies to act after US-Israeli strike on Pasteur Institute in Tehran
• Iranian president calls on American public to challenge US war motives
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

“Iran will rebuild and continue moving forward,” Mohajerani said.

This comes as the United States and Israel have escalated their attacks on civilian infrastructure in Iran, destroying a historical medical research facility, as well as a vital bridge connecting the capital to other regions in the country.

The illegal and unprovoked US-Israeli war of aggression on Iran has targeted and destroyed the Pasteur Institute of Iran, one of the country’s leading public health and research institutions, in a direct attack on civilian and scientific infrastructure in the country.

JUST IN:

US and Israel have targeted Iran’s B1 Bridge in Karaj again, the tallest bridge in the Middle East.

The renewed strike occurred while rescue and relief teams were assisting victims from the initial attack… See more pic.twitter.com/EojvvsPp9V

— Ayatollah Alireza Arafi (@Realarafi) April 2, 2026

In numbers — human cost of the war on Iran:

• Iran: 1937 killed; 24,800 wounded
• Lebanon: 1345 killed, including 125 children; more than 4040 wounded
• Israel: 28 killed (all but one were civilians), including 10 Israeli soldiers killed in Lebanon, 3223 injuries hospitalised
• US: 13 killed in combat and two of non-combat causes, more than 200 injured
• Occupied West Bank: Four people killed
• UAE: 12 killed, 169 injured
• Bahrain: 3 killed
• Saudi Arabia: 2 killed, 20 injured
• Kuwait: 6 killed
• Oman: 3 killed
• Qatar: 16 injured
• Jordan: 20 injured
• Syria: 4 killed
• Iraq: More than 107 killed

New Zealand has joined Australia, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom in expressing “deep concern” about an Israeli bill expanding the death penalty for Palestinians.

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters posted on social media last night, indicating New Zealand had joined the other nations, and emphasising the country’s opposition “for decades” to the death penalty “in all circumstances”.

It comes as the Green Party tried yesterday to move a motion in Parliament on the issue, but failed to get the support of all parties.

• READ MORE: Israel passes extreme death penalty law targeting only Palestinians
• ‘Dangerous escalation’: World reacts to Israel passing death penalty law
• Other Palestine genocide reports

The ACT party told RNZ it did not support the motion being put without notice, and noted the Minister of Foreign Affairs was responsible for expressing New Zealand’s position on international issues.

Earlier this week, the Israeli Parliament finalised a controversial bill that would effectively expand the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorism and nationalistic murders.

The bill stipulated that residents in the West Bank who killed an Israeli “with the intent to negate the existence of the State of Israel” would be sentenced to death.

The Foreign Ministers of Australia, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom released a joint statement expressing their “deep concern” about the bill, saying it would “significantly expand the possibilities to impose the death penalty in Israel”.

‘Discriminatory character’
“We are particularly worried about the de facto discriminatory character of the bill. The adoption of this bill would risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles.

“The death penalty is an inhumane and degrading form of punishment without any deterring effect. This is why we oppose the death penalty, whatever the circumstances around the world. The rejection of the death penalty is a fundamental value that unites us.”

The statement also urged the Israeli decision makers to “abandon these plans”.

The Green Party wanted to highlight the issue in Parliament, and sought support from across the House to move a motion without notice.

Co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick told reporters yesterday afternoon convention stipulated motions without notice needed prior agreement from all parties.

“This stops spurious motions going up and clogging the time of our Parliament.”

The motion read that the “New Zealand House of Representatives expresses deep concern about Israel’s new legislation which extends the use of the death penalty against Palestinians living under unlawful occupation; shares the concerns of Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy about the “de facto discriminatory character’ of the legislation; and calls on the Israeli Government to reverse this legislation”.

Labour, Te Pati Māori supported motion
Opposition Labour and Te Pāti Māori parties both told RNZ they supported the motion.

Labour leader Chris Hipkins said his party would firmly support a motion in the House to condemn Israel’s use of the death penalty against Palestianians.

“It clearly discriminates against Palestinians — a point underscored by the fact that the law does not apply to Israeli extremists who commit similar crimes. There are major issues with the process including that it removes the right to an appeal. By condemning Israel, we would stand alongside the United Nations, EU and the UK.”

Te Pāti Māori told RNZ it supported the motion, and queried why other parties had not.

“This law further embeds discrimination into Israel’s justice system by allowing Palestinians to be sentenced to death while others are not subject to the same punishment for similar acts,” a spokesperson for the party said.

“It sits within the context of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people, and the backdrop of Israel and the United States’ illegal invasion of Iran and Lebanon.”

National and New Zealand First did not respond to queries but the ACT party told RNZ it did not support the motion being put without notice.

‘Symbolic motions’
A spokesperson for the party said it noted the Minister of Foreign Affairs was responsible for expressing New Zealand’s position on international issues, and “ACT supports that approach over symbolic motions in the House”.

“If the House passed a motion every time a country passed a law of concern, we would spend more time talking about other countries’ legislation than our own.

“All MPs have the right to put a motion on notice under Standing Orders.”

In response, Swarbrick said it was “deeply disappointing” and acknowledged the point was “symbolism”.

“I can point to many different examples when the ACT Party, for example, has put forward very similar motions, evidently for the very purpose of that same symbolism, which in turn means something on the international stage.

“It felt particularly pertinent for our country to take a stand against the perpetuation of abuse of human rights with the Israeli Parliament passing the ability to effectively murder, to slaughter Palestinian hostages and prisoners.”

She said a motion on notice did not have the status of being read out in Parliament and having the backing of every single parliamentary party.

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

This is a war of narratives with the United States administration trying to push forward its narrative of “victory” while the Iranian administration or establishment is trying to push its narrative of being suppressed and under attack.

The Iranian President, Masoud Pezeshkian, has clearly said in an open letter to the American people that Iran has never started a war, and that Iran has no hostility towards American citizens.

He invited the people of America to look beyond politics and rhetoric and reconsider the realities of the past and present.

• READ MORE: ‘Which interests being served by war?’ Iran’s Pezeshkian asks US public
• Is Iran war really ‘America First’, Iranian president asks in letter to US public
• Trump vows to bring back Iran to the ‘stone age’
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

He said that as the Iranian people harboured no enmity towards other nations, including the people of America, Europe, and neighboring countries, attacks on Iran’s infrastructure and the targeting of our people would have consequences beyond the country’s border.

“What we do in response is based on the legitimate right of self-defence, not an act of aggression,” he said.

So, given the fact that the Iranians have already denied that they’ve asked for a ceasefire, now we see the president is trying to present a narrative, a complete different narrative, and at the end, showing and preserving Iran’s right to defend itself.

President Pezeshkian urged a shift away from confrontation with Tehran, questioning both US policy priorities and the “machinery of misinformation” about his country.

“Is ‘America First’ truly among the priorities of the US government today?” Pezeshkian asked.

Judge Iran on experience
He also called on Americans to judge Iran by the experiences of those who had visited the nation of some 90 million people and the achievements of Iranian immigrants.

“Observe the many accomplished Iranian immigrants — educated in Iran — who now teach and conduct research at the world’s most prestigious universities, or contribute to the most advanced technology firms in the West.

“Do these realities align with the distortions you are being told about Iran and its people?,” he asked.

President Pezeshkian said “the world stands at crossroads”, and argued that continuing on a path of hostility toward Iran was “more costly and futile than ever before”.

He described the choice between confrontation and engagement as “both real and consequential,” warning that its outcome will “shape the future for generations to come”.

The Iranian president questioned whose interests were being served by US military action against Iran, framing it as costly for both Iranians and Americans.

“Was there any objective threat from Iran to justify such behaviour?” he asked.

Iran President’s open letter to the American people          Video: Al Jazeera

“Does the massacre of innocent children, the destruction of cancer-treatment pharmaceutical facilities, or boasting about bombing a country ‘back to the Stone Age’ serve any purpose other than further damaging the United States’ global standing?”

President Pezeshkian also questioned the role of Israel in the war, asking, “Is it not also the case that America has entered this aggression as a proxy for Israel, influenced and manipulated by that regime?”

“Is it not evident that Israel now aims to fight Iran to the last American soldier and the last American taxpayer dollar — shifting the burden of its delusions onto Iran, the region, and the United States itself in pursuit of illegitimate interests?”

Ali Hashem reports for Al Jazeera.

The full open letter by Iran’s President Pezeshkian to the American people:
To the people of the United States of America, and to all those who, amid a flood of distortions and manufactured narratives, continue to seek the truth and aspire to a better life:

Iran — by this very name, character, and identity — is one of the oldest continuous civilisations in human history. Despite its historical and geographical advantages at various times, Iran has never, in its modern history, chosen the path of aggression, expansion, colonialism, or domination.

Even after enduring occupation, invasion, and sustained pressure from global powers — and despite possessing military superiority over many of its neighbors — Iran has never initiated a war.

Yet it has resolutely and bravely repelled those who have attacked it.

The Iranian people harbour no enmity toward other nations, including the people of America, Europe, or neighboring countries. Even in the face of repeated foreign interventions and pressures throughout their proud history, Iranians have consistently drawn a clear distinction between governments and the peoples they govern. This is a deeply rooted principle in Iranian culture and collective consciousness — not a temporary political stance.

For this reason, portraying Iran as a threat is neither consistent with historical reality nor with present-day observable facts. Such a perception is the product of political and economic whims of the powerful — the need to manufacture an enemy in order to justify pressure, maintain military dominance, sustain the arms industry, and control strategic markets. In such an environment, if a threat does not exist, it is invented.

Within this same framework, the United States has concentrated the largest number of its forces, bases, and military capabilities around Iran — a country that, at least since the founding of the United States, has never initiated a war. Recent American aggressions launched from these very bases have demonstrated how threatening such a military presence truly is. Naturally, no country confronted with such conditions would forgo strengthening its defensive capabilities. What Iran has done — and continues to do — is a measured response grounded in legitimate self-defence, and by no means an initiation of war or aggression.

Relations between Iran and the United States were not originally hostile, and early interactions between the Iranian and American people were not marred with hostility or tension. The turning point, however, was the 1953 coup d’état — an illegal American intervention aimed at preventing the nationalisation of Iran’s own resources. That coup disrupted Iran’s democratic process, reinstated dictatorship, and sowed deep distrust among Iranians toward US policies.

This distrust deepened further with America’s support for the Shah’s regime, its backing of Saddam Hussein during the imposed war of the 1980s, the imposition of the longest and most comprehensive sanctions in modern history, and ultimately, unprovoked military aggression — twice, in the midst of negotiations — against Iran.

Yet all these pressures have failed to weaken Iran. On the contrary, the country has grown stronger in many areas: literacy rates have tripled — from roughly 30 percent before the Islamic Revolution to over 90 percent today; higher education has expanded dramatically; significant advances have been achieved in modern technology; healthcare services have improved; and infrastructure has developed at a pace and scale incomparable to the past.

These are measurable, observable realities that stand independent of fabricated narratives.

At the same time, the destructive and inhumane impact of sanctions, war, and aggression on the lives of the resilient Iranian people must not be underestimated. The continuation of military aggression and recent bombings profoundly affect people’s lives, attitudes, and perspectives. This reflects a fundamental human truth: when war inflicts irreparable harm on lives, homes, cities, and futures, people will not remain indifferent toward those responsible.

This raises a fundamental question: Exactly which of the American people’s interests are truly being served by this war? Was there any objective threat from Iran to justify such behaviour? Does the massacre of innocent children, the destruction of cancer-treatment pharmaceutical facilities, or boasting about bombing a country “back to the stone ages” serve any purpose other than further damaging the United States’ global standing?

Iran pursued negotiations, reached an agreement, and fulfilled all its commitments. The decision to withdraw from that agreement, escalate toward confrontation, and launch two acts of aggression in the midst of negotiations were destructive choices made by the US government — choices that served the delusions of a foreign aggressor.

Attacking Iran’s vital infrastructure — including energy and industrial facilities — directly targets the Iranian people. Beyond constituting a war crime, such actions carry consequences that extend far beyond Iran’s borders. They generate instability, increase human and economic costs, and perpetuate cycles of tension, planting seeds of resentment that will endure for years. This is not a demonstration of strength; it is a sign of strategic bewilderment and an inability to achieve a sustainable solution.

Is it not also the case that America has entered this aggression as a proxy for Israel, influenced and manipulated by that regime? Is it not true that Israel, by manufacturing an Iranian threat, seeks to divert global attention away from its crimes toward the Palestinians?

Is it not evident that Israel now aims to fight Iran to the last American soldier and the last American taxpayer dollar — shifting the burden of its delusions onto Iran, the region, and the United States itself in pursuit of illegitimate interests?

Is “America First” truly among the priorities of the US government today?

I invite you to look beyond the machinery of misinformation — an integral part of this aggression — and instead speak with those who have visited Iran. Observe the many accomplished Iranian immigrants — educated in Iran — who now teach and conduct research at the world’s most prestigious universities, or contribute to the most advanced technology firms in the West. Do these realities align with the distortions you are being told about Iran and its people?

Today, the world stands at a crossroads. Continuing along the path of confrontation is more costly and futile than ever before. The choice between confrontation and engagement is both real and consequential; its outcome will shape the future for generations to come.

Throughout its millennia of proud history, Iran has outlasted many aggressors. All that remains of them are tarnished names in history, while Iran endures — resilient, dignified, and proud.

Thousands took to the streets of the capital Nouméa on Tuesday — hours ahead of a scheduled French Parliament debate in the National Assembly in Paris to discuss the French Pacific territory’s political future.

An estimated 2500 came in support of local Association Un Coeur, une Voix (UCUV–One Heart, One Voice) to oppose the prospect of the next local elections (to elect New Caledonia’s three provinces) being held under the current “frozen” electoral roll, which excludes people who have not resided in New Caledonia before 1998 or their direct descendents.

During a one-hour peaceful march in downtown Nouméa, the participants were brandishing tricolour blue-white-red flags and other placards denouncing what they described as “second-class citizens” treatment and their perceived condition of self-styled “victims of history”.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

The march was designed to send a clear message to French MPs ahead of debates on New Caledonia later this week.

“I’m sorry for using harsh words, but it’s like we’re being robbed [of our rights],” UCUV president Raphaël Romano told local Radio Rythme Bleu.

“And now we have those MPs who are going to decide for us. They’re going to use New Caledonia for their own national political gains . . .  and make a mess”.

“If [MPs] can’t find an agreement, then they should let New Caledonians choose.

“It’s a shame for democracy, it happens nowhere else in the world”, Romano told local media.

His movement is strongly supported by several prominent pro-France parties, including Le Rassemblement and Les Loyalistes.

He said the situation affected all ethnic communities in New Caledonia.

“Those who can’t vote are men and women from all walks of life, all ethnic groups who live together in peace, every day,” he said.

“It’s hard enough to try and recover from the May 2024 riots, where people have lost their businesses and their job.”

The 2024 riots caused 14 deaths and more than 2 billion euros (almost NZ$4 billion) in material damage.

They were also initially triggered by peaceful protests against a plan to have the French constitution modified, especially regarding the electoral restrictions.

The protests turned violent and out of control in Nouméa on the very day debates started in Paris.

The “freeze” was enforced in 2009, as part of the Nouméa Accord, signed in 1998.

Originally designed as a temporary measure, the restriction currently excludes up to 40,000 people, many of them born in New Caledonia.

‘Counter demonstrations’
Meanwhile, pro-independence movements have called for other “counter-demonstrations” outside of Nouméa.

One gathering took place on Tuesday, including in the outer Loyalty Islands of Lifou, while another demonstration is scheduled on Wednesday, in Koné (North of the main island, Grande Terre).

The voting restriction measure was originally included in the 1998 Nouméa Accord as a measure to prevent any erosion of New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak population’s voice.

The proposed text derives from talks held between New Caledonia political stakeholders and the French government.

This was on two occasions: in the small city of Bougival in July 2025 and later in January 2026 in Paris, at the French Presidential Élysée Palace and the French Ministry of Overseas Territories, Rue Oudinot.

Hence the name of Bougival-Élysée-Oudinot (BEO) for a text and an expanded project.

But the BEO text, in August 2025, was unequivocally opposed by the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front), the main component of the pro-independence movement.

Other participating parties — pro-France and pro-independence (two pro-independence members of FLNKS have since split to create their own “UNI” [Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance]) — have since maintained their commitment to the BEO process, including their legislative adaptation (in the form of a Constitutional Amendment and an “organic Law, which would de facto become New Caledonia’s constitution).

The project also envisions the creation of a “State of New Caledonia”, with a correlated “New Caledonia nationality” available to people who are already French citizens.

The FLNKS later explained it saw these, as well as a planned process of transfer of more powers from Paris to Nouméa, as just a “lure” of independence.

Reacting to the UCUV march, FLNKS said the “freeze” was ruled constitutional by France’s Constitutional Council in September 2025 and could only be changed if a “consensual” agreement was found.

But FLNKS considers the BEO-derived text “is not a logical continuation of the Nouméa Accord”.

The BEO-derived Bill, if adopted, could eventually replace the Nouméa Accord.

But it is now still undergoing legislative process.

The French Senate endorsed it on February 24, with a comfortable right-wing majority.

But this week, the same text is to be debated in the Lower House of Parliament, the National Assembly, which has been divided since the July 2024 French national snap election following President Macron’s decision to dissolve Parliament.

Current predictions are that since there is no clear majority within the Lower House, the Bill, which comes in the form of a Constitutional Amendment (with the capacity to replace the Nouméa Accord) is likely to be rejected.

The opposition to the current right-wing group comes from the left (far-left La France Insoumise -LFI-, the Socialists (who say the Bill is “heavy with threats and dangers”), the Communists, the Greens) and Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National (RN).

Last week, the Constitutional Bill came before the National Assembly’s Law Committee and suffered an initial rejection.

Parliamentary debates in the National Assembly are scheduled to begin on Wednesday (1 April 2026, Paris time) and could last for the next three days.

‘Barrage’ of three thousand amendments
Some opposition parties, especially the democratic and republican left (GDR, Gauche démocrate et républicaine, to which the pro-independence New Caledonian Kanak MP Emmanuel Tjibaou belongs) have already filed on the agenda a “prior rejection motion” to withdraw the Bill.

Some of those expressed strong reservations because the process and ensuing Bill was opposed by FLNKS and that, therefore, there was no unanimity.

Meanwhile, since last week, in a previously used barrage tactic, LFI has also filed over 3000 amendments.

Restrictions still apply under Nouméa Accord — French Constitutional Council
UCUV has been fighting for years to defend their rights, in front of what they term a “denial of democracy”.

Last year, they took their case to the French Constitutional Council, which ruled that in the present situation, the electoral roll “freeze” for local elections was part of the Nouméa Accord which was part of the French Constitution.

UCUV president Raphaël Romano said they now have no other option but to take their case before the European Court of Human Rights, even though they admit their hopes are “very weak”.

He said the deadline was 4 April 2026.

If the Constitutional Bill is rejected by Parliament, a new proposed calendar for implementation will automatically become obsolete.

And local provincial elections that have already been delayed three times since May 2024 will have to be held not later than 28 June 2026, instead of the proposed December this year.

If the BEO-derived text is rejected, then the Nouméa Accord applies again and the planned provincial elections will have to be held under the restricted — “frozen” — electoral roll system.

“The provincial elections will not be held under a frozen electoral roll. It’s just not possible”, Romano said.

Deadlock, imbroglio: what now?
Other possible alternative scenarios could include re-submitting a new, revised Bill, dedicated to the electoral roll, or organising a “consultation”, a de facto referendum with eligible New Caledonians.

Under the French parliamentary principle of the “shuttle”, the text could be sent back to the Senate.

Under the BEO text, people eligible for voting at local provincial elections can either be born in New Caledonia or having resided there for an uninterrupted 15 years (for the first five years of enforcement, then the minimum residence period would be reduced to 10 uninterrupted years).

From the French government’s point of view, an agreement on New Caledonia’s institutional future is the only solution to bring back stability and economic “visibility” for local and foreign investors.

“Everything is on the table to get things moving”, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu told French media last week.

Overseas Minister Naïma Moutchou is still advocating for the benefits a parliamentary approval would bring to New Caledonia in terms of a “framework” for economic recovery.

France has earmarked some 2 billion euros in a “refoundation” pact, structured to put the economy, social services and the crucial nickel mining industry back on track, provided necessary reforms are carried out.

“Let’s give a chance to this process, because in New Caledonia, the alternative to an open political process is never quiet: it’s uncertainty and, over there, it always ends up weakening civil peace,” she told Parliament last week.

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

One day in October 2023 I was walking down the supermarket aisle when I saw greenwashing in plain sight.

Fonterra’s Anchor butter was sitting in the chiller with a prominent claim on the packaging that it was Grass Fed.

I knew that Fonterra cows were fed on millions of tonnes of palm kernel. So I decided to do something about it. And today we finally won that battle.

• READ MORE: Fonterra settles activists’ misleading packaging lawsuit for ‘100 percent NZ grass-fed’ claims

Today, after Greenpeace sued Fonterra under the Fair Trading Act, Fonterra has published a statement admitting its “100% New Zealand Grass Fed” claim breached section 9 of the Act.

Section 9 makes it illegal to “engage in conduct that is misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive.” Fonterra has undertaken to not use this label again.

Thus Fonterra, New Zealand’s largest company, a multinational with $26 billion a year in turnover, was today forced to admit it has been deceiving its customers about a key claim it makes about its products — “100% New Zealand Grass Fed”.

Fonterra’s deception
While Fonterra was telling its customers that its Anchor brand butter was “100% New Zealand Grass Fed”, they were telling their milk suppliers that they could feed their dairy cows up to 3kg of palm kernel every day.

That works out at around 20 percent of all the food that a dairy cow eats. In practice dairy producers are probably on average providing about 6 percent to 8 percent of a New Zealand dairy cow’s diet from palm kernel, though it could be up to 20 percent in individual cases.

Palm kernel is one of the products of the palm industry in Malaysia and Indonesia — yes, the same palm industry that is destroying the last of the Southeast Asian tropical rainforests.

A million tonne deception
So on the one hand Fonterra was telling New Zealanders that they should buy Fonterra products because they are natural, 100 percent from New Zealand grass, while at the same time it was giving the green light to its milk suppliers to feed dairy cattle palm kernel from offshore.

And not just a little bit, I mean millions of tonnes of palm kernel.

In fact, Fonterra’s milk suppliers are using so much palm kernel that New Zealand is the world’s largest importer of palm kernel, at around two million tonnes per year, most of which is fed to dairy cattle.

During the period when Fonterra used the “100% New Zealand Grass Fed” label (they state from December 2023 to April 2025), New Zealand imported around three million tonnes of palm kernel, at a cost of around $800 million. Of this, around two and a quarter million tonnes went to Fonterra suppliers.

So not only was Fonterra deceiving their customers that their butter was “100% New Zealand Grass Fed”, but they were doing it on a massive scale. 

It looked like a huge lie in plain sight by New Zealand’s largest company. Someone had to do something.

Off to the Commerce Commission
So standing in the chiller aisle of the supermarket I had an idea — I should complain to the Commerce Commission, as it was a breach of the Fair Trading Act. It was deceptive and misleading advertising.

The Commerce Commission is responsible for the Fair Trading Act so surely they would care that New Zealand’s largest company was misleading millions of New Zealanders about a key claim of their products.

So I sent off my complaint in November 2023, received an automated acknowledgement, and then I waited. And waited.

Finally in June 2024 I chased them up and in July 2024 managed to get a zoom meeting with the relevant Commission investigator. The investigator explained that they had done some kind of investigation and had connected with Fonterra but they were planning to take zero enforcement action. Nothing.

So eight months after my original complaint, with zero effort by the Commerce Commission to contact me, I discovered they planned to do nothing about it.

I was pretty annoyed so I decided to make an Official Information Act (OIA) request to the Commerce Commission to find out what they had done.

Commission wrote Fonterra a letter, Fonterra carried on
And this is where it starts to get pretty interesting. The OIA showed that Commerce Commission investigators had actually done some investigating. Moreover, they had concluded that the label was likely to mislead consumers.

The Commerce Commission wrote to Fonterra in March 2024 stating that the label “may lead consumers to form an overall impression that the cow’s diet comprises of [sic] 100% grass… A reasonable consumer… may not … be aware that up to 8% of a cow’s diet may consist of supplemental non-grass feed… the use of PKE may not be clear to a reasonable consumer.”

If the Commerce Commission found the label was misleading, hence in breach of the Fair Trading Act, what would they do?

The Commission letter to Fonterra stated that “we do not intend to further investigate the complaint made against you at this time”.

So… the Commission wrote them the letter, and nothing else.

Fonterra received the Commerce Commission letter in March 2024 giving the commission’s opinion that the label was likely to be misleading but stating that the commission would take no further action.

And what did Fonterra do? Fonterra just kept using the label.

Greenpeace takes legal action against Fonterra
In late September 2024, we had had enough of the greenwashing by Fonterra and the failure of the Commerce Commission to take action and we initiated legal action ourselves.

Aside from the deceptive advertising issue, Greenpeace has campaigned on palm kernel for years. Palm kernel is driving tropical rainforest destruction in Southeast Asia as well as providing the feed for intensive dairy agribusiness in New Zealand, which is polluting fresh water and producing climate emissions.

We want the dairy industry to cut out palm kernel, and we want New Zealand consumers to know that Fonterra’s dairy products are driving rainforest destruction.

We sued them under the Fair Trading Act, doing the work that the Commerce Commission had failed to do.

This is no small matter for a New Zealand NGO to take on a $26 billion a year multinational corporation. Fonterra employed the law firm Chapman Tripp against us, the biggest law firm in the country.

If we were to lose the case and have costs awarded against us, it could have been disastrous, as both sides knew.

Fonterra stops using the deceptive label
And guess what? In April 2025, six months after we lodged our legal action, Fonterra quietly stopped using the deceptive and misleading “100% New Zealand Grass Fed” label.

And then finally in March 2026, as the court hearing date approached, Fonterra agreed to an out of court settlement in which they admitted they had breached section 9 of the Fair Trading Act by engaging in deceptive and misleading advertising. And they agreed not to use the label again.

We finally made Fonterra admit that they were using tonnes of palm kernel and that their milk is most certainly not 100 percent New Zealand Grass Fed.

Fonterra has a choice about how its milk is produced. It chooses to accept milk produced with palm kernel, chooses to accept destroying rainforests, killing orangutans and birds of paradise.

Multinational corporations are just machines for making money – we need to regulate them
Fonterra deliberately chose to use that misleading label back in December 2023. Presumably they did this to sell more of their products, to maximise profits.

Fonterra chose to keep using the label even after the Commerce Commission told them they thought it was likely to mislead consumers. It was only when Greenpeace took legal action against them that they were forced to change.

Fonterra spouts a lot of nonsense about how it cares for the environment or New Zealanders or whatever. But they are just a machine for making money for their shareholders. The practical benefit of all the corporate talk about “caring” is to avoid proper government regulation.

If we want to align the activities of multinational corporations with society’s values then we have to regulate them, as they will not do it themselves. By design, large corporations do not have “values”. They are just machines for making money, and whether they make money by destroying nature, or not, only depends on the laws under which they operate and whether those laws are enforced.

The Commerce Commission let the biggest corporation in the country get away with deceiving consumers – a deception that was millions of tonnes in size and repeated weekly to every New Zealander who walked down a supermarket aisle. And so that corporation just carried on doing it.

Greenpeace stood up and we won. But it shouldn’t have been up to us.

The role of the government is to act in our collective interest by regulating corporations, not only to make sure they don’t deceive consumers, but to protect a stable climate, to protect the biodiversity of our planet, and indeed to protect life on Earth.

Dr Russel Norman is executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa. Republished from Greenpeace Aotearoa with permission.

• Petition: Stop Fonterra using Palm Kernel

New Zealand’s national Māori radio network, Te Whakaruruhau o Ngā Reo Irirangi Māori o Aotearoa, is considering litigation over a potential loss of government funding which it says threatens the survivability of iwi radio stations.

Chairperson Peter-Lucas Jones (Ngāti Kahu, Te Rārawa, Ngāi Takoto, Te Aupōuri) — who was also chief executive of Far North iwi broadcaster Te Hiku Media — told current affairs series RUKU Māori radio was a right under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, not a government handout.

Recent and proposed actions targeting iwi stations, implemented primarily through Te Māngai Pāho (TMP), disregarded the treaty and exposed the Crown to credible legal risk, he said.

• READ MORE: Other Māori broadcasting reports

“This issue is not about resisting change, iwi radio stations have themselves funded transitions to digital platforms and new media without Crown support.

“The issue is whether the Crown can, through an intermediary, dismantle a treaty remedy without Māori consent.”

There are more than 20 iwi radio stations across New Zealand, from Te Hiku in the North to Tahu FM in the South.

Stations receive funding through Te Māngai Pāho to promote Māori language and culture.

Time-limited funding
TMP currently has $16 million of time-limited funding, equal to almost 25 percent of their total annual funding, which is due to expire on June 30.

Te Māngai Pāho said that while 2026/27 appropriations would not be confirmed until the Budget announcement in late May, the impact of this funding loss would be felt across the whole Māori media sector.

“Te Māngai Pāho is consulting with the Māori media sector, including iwi radio, on the future of our funding allocations. We have requested feedback to understand how any reduction of funding will be felt across the sector.

“Feedback will inform the board’s final decisions around funding allocations. We understand that the stability of iwi radio stations and content creators is threatened by this funding cut.”

Jones said iwi stations unanimously agreed at a special general meeting they would not accept any decrease in funding and would consider legal action in response to any cutbacks.

“Decisions taken by TMP that materially affect iwi radio funding, structure or autonomy remain Crown actions for treaty purposes.

“The Crown cannot discharge its Treaty obligations by delegation and then rely on that delegation to insulate itself from responsibility.”

Rapidly changing audience
The iwi radio network said it had been grappling with a wide range of issues including, rapidly changing audience expectation and emerging technologies, numerous siloed media outlets and an inadequate investment in workforce development affecting the ability to grow and retain a skilled workforce.

Minister for Māori Development Tama Potaka said Māori media, including iwi radio, played a critical role in supporting te reo Māori revitalisation and connecting whānau and communities across Aotearoa, shaping public understanding by sharing Māori stories and te reo directly with whānau.

He said no final decisions had been made through the consultation between TMP and the Māori media sector and it was premature to confirm impacts on funding levels, services, or jobs, including claims about specific percentage reductions.

“Earlier financial support of $16 million in time-limited funding was put in place under the previous government and is now coming to an end. The current consultation process is focused on how best to manage that transition within existing funding,” he said.

“As Minister, I do not direct or intervene in Te Māngai Pāho’s operational funding decisions. Those are matters for the board.”

Potaka said the Crown’s role was to ensure a strong and sustainable system for te reo Māori revitalisation.

High quality content
“I expect the consultation process to reflect the importance of Iwi radio and the role it plays in communities across the country, while ensuring funding is used effectively to deliver high-quality content on platforms that meet audience preferences.

“Māori media entities continue to adapt to changes in funding and audience behaviour, and I expect decisions to prioritise value for money while supporting strong te reo Māori outcomes.

“Any organisation is entitled to raise concerns or seek legal advice. However, there is an established independent process underway, and it is important that process is allowed to run its course.”

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

Israel’s Parliament has approved a one-sided death penalty measure to execute Palestinians.

It is one of the most extreme laws in the nation’s history, and will exacerbate the far-right government’s illegal system of apartheid.

Some members of the Knesset, including ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, were seen wearing noose pins in the Knesset yesterday, and celebrating with champagne on live TV after the bill passed.

• READ MORE: ‘Dangerous escalation’: World reacts to Israel passing death penalty law
• Other Palestine genocide reports

Ben-Gvir said hanging is “one of the options,” as is execution by the electric chair or euthanasia.

The law was passed with 62 votes to 48 in its final reading.

The bill drew international condemnation ahead of its passage, including from the European Union, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, and Amnesty International. Human rights groups have vowed to challenge the bill in Israel’s Supreme Court.

The legislation, which has garnered broad public support in Israel, authorises executions for “terrorists” who kill “with the intent to deny the existence of the State of Israel,” according to Haaretz — effectively ensuring it won’t apply to any of the settlers who routinely murder Palestinians.

‘Confessions’ by torture
In military courts in the occupied West Bank, execution by hanging will now be the default punishment for terrorism. Only Palestinians are tried in these courts, and 96 percent of people are convicted, though cases are largely built on “confessions” extracted through torture.

The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians condemned the bill yesterday ahead of the vote as an “extreme escalation in Israel’s genocidal policies against Palestinians”.

“The progression of the legislation marks not just a profoundly unjust and illegal act of discrimination under international law, but a far more sinister escalation of Israel’s apartheid legal systems,” the center wrote.

Israeli Knesset death penalty for Palestinians.       Video: Al Jazeera

Israel is currently imprisoning about 9500 Palestinians, according to the human rights group B’Tselem, and about half of them are held under administrative detention.

According to the group, the Israel Prison Service has already started to prepare designated execution facilities.

B’Tselem on Sunday called the bill “another official killing mechanism” that will further normalise the slaughter of Palestinians, as Israel continues its genocide in Gaza and intensifies attacks in the occupied West Bank.

Human rights violation
“The death penalty is a total violation of the most basic human rights, primarily, the right to life,” B’Tselem wrote.

“Israel enforces a comprehensive policy of killing and oppression against the Palestinian people in all the territories it controls. The Death Penalty Law gives Israel’s apartheid regime yet another tool for advancing that policy.”

On top of Monday’s bill, the Knesset is also considering another death penalty measure to impose on alleged October 7, 2023, attackers.

According to Amnesty International, that bill would effectively expand the unilateral powers of military judges and eliminate judicial safeguards.

The skies over Tehran and Natanz may still carry the lingering haze of joint US-Israeli bombing operations.

Yet the world, filtered through the dominant lens of Western media, continues to be fed a singular narrative: the latent danger of Iran’s uranium enrichment, perpetually described as being “one step away” from a nuclear warhead.

Amid economic sanctions, UN Security Council resolutions and preemptive military strikes that have devastated Iran’s civilian and military infrastructure, there exists a deafening silence surrounding the Middle East’s most tangible arsenal of weapons of mass destruction: Israel’s nuclear stockpile.

• READ MORE: Al Jazeera’s defence editor Alex Gatopoulos explains how things stand in the war on Iran
• Trump says wants to take Iran’s oil — Kuwait power site hit
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

In reality, the region’s security architecture is not threatened by a nuclear capability that might exist in the future, but by one that has existed for more than six decades.

In Israel’s Negev desert stands the Dimona complex — a black box untouched by International Atomic Energy Agency inspections, immune to sanctions and maintained as one of the international community’s most tightly guarded open secrets.

This contradiction represents perhaps the most blatant manifestation of global double standards, preserving Israel’s nuclear privilege above international law.

History shows that Israel’s nuclear ambitions were not merely a reaction to external threats but part of a broader geostrategic design to secure regional hegemony. Since David Ben-Gurion articulated the post-Holocaust doctrine of “Never Again,” nuclear capability has been framed as the Samson Option — a last-resort deterrent ensuring Israel can devastate the region if its existence is threatened.

 

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Bombshell deception
Yet this privilege did not emerge organically. It was constructed through deception, clandestine procurement networks and sustained diplomatic protection from great powers — the same powers that now present themselves as global guardians of nuclear non-proliferation.

Israel’s success in maintaining its status as the Middle East’s sole nuclear power rests on its policy of amimut, or nuclear opacity. Through this doctrine, Israel enjoys the strategic advantages of nuclear deterrence without incurring the political or economic costs.

This has fundamentally distorted regional discourse. The world is compelled to treat with alarm a state that formally adheres to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, albeit under scrutiny, while tolerating another that refuses to sign the treaty and is widely believed to possess hundreds of nuclear warheads.

The turning point that legitimised this international hypocrisy came in 1969. In a secret White House meeting, US President Richard Nixon and Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir forged an understanding that would shape US foreign policy for decades.

Washington would cease pressuring Israel to sign the NPT or allow inspections of Dimona, provided Israel maintained a low profile and refrained from overt nuclear testing.

In effect, the US became a diplomatic shield for Israel’s undeclared nuclear weapons programme — an irony for a country that has repeatedly invoked nuclear concerns to justify interventions elsewhere.

This marked a stark departure from the era of John F Kennedy, the only US president willing to confront Israel’s nuclear ambitions directly. For Kennedy, nuclear proliferation was a personal nightmare threatening global stability.

He warned Ben-Gurion that US support could be seriously jeopardised if independent inspections of Dimona were not permitted. Following Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, such pressure evaporated under the Johnson and Nixon administrations, replaced by a pragmatic accommodation that allowed Israel’s “bomb in the basement” to quietly expand.

This privilege has enabled Israel to develop an advanced nuclear triad:

• Jericho ballistic missiles;
• modified F-15I fighter jets; and
• Dolphin-class submarines capable of launching nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

With estimates ranging between 90 and 400 warheads, Israel possesses not only a deterrent but a potent instrument of diplomatic coercion.

When Arab states, led by Egypt, have consistently called for a weapons of mass destruction-free zone in the Middle East, the US and its allies have routinely blocked such initiatives to preserve Israel’s exceptional status.

This nuclear privilege has also created what many non-Western diplomats describe as a compliance trap. States like Iran, signatories to the NPT, face intense scrutiny and economic punishment for procedural deviations.

Meanwhile, Israel — operating outside the framework of international law — enjoys access to the most advanced military technologies from the West. This systemic inequity fuels instability, signaling that the most effective path to avoiding international pressure is not compliance but power.

Architecture of sabotage
To maintain its nuclear monopoly, Israel has pursued an aggressive geostrategic doctrine that routinely violates the sovereignty of other states. Known as the Begin Doctrine and formalised in 1981, it asserts that Israel will not allow any Middle Eastern country to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

This is an extraordinary claim of authority: a state with undeclared nuclear weapons asserting the right to destroy the nuclear capabilities of others, even those intended for peaceful purposes, under the banner of “self-defence”.

Its first manifestation came with Operation Opera on June 7, 1981, when Israeli fighter jets destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. Despite UN condemnation, the precedent was set: Israel effectively assumed the role of the region’s unilateral nuclear enforcer.

This pattern was repeated in 2007 with Operation Outside the Box, which destroyed Syria’s Al-Kibar facility. These preemptive strikes were driven by a clear calculation that major global powers would continue to grant Israel impunity, regardless of overt violations of international law.

Against Iran, this architecture of sabotage has reached unprecedented levels of sophistication and lethality. Over the past two decades, Israel has waged a shadow war involving the assassination of nuclear scientists in Tehran — sometimes using remotely operated weapons — as well as cyberattacks such as Stuxnet, which crippled thousands of centrifuges at Natanz.

These operations have often been conducted in close coordination with US intelligence, underscoring how Western non-proliferation policy has frequently functioned as an instrument to preserve Israel’s military dominance.

The escalation culminated in the Rising Lion campaign in 2025 and Operation Epic Fury in 2026. Backed by the Trump administration, Iran’s nuclear infrastructure has been targeted through large-scale airstrikes that largely disregarded the risks of radiation exposure to civilians.

Israel justified these actions by claiming that diplomacy had failed.

Yet this narrative omits a critical reality: Israel has consistently undermined diplomatic efforts, including by seizing Iran’s nuclear archives in 2018 to help justify the US withdrawal from the JCPOA.

The objective has never been merely to prevent an Iranian bomb but to preserve Israel’s monopoly on power.

Shadow alliance
The portrayal of Israel as a small, self-reliant state under constant siege is a carefully constructed myth. The history of its nuclear programme is one of covert international collaboration involving countries that now lead global anti-nuclear campaigns.

Without technological assistance from France, heavy water supplied by Norway via the United Kingdom and uranium sourced from Argentina, the Dimona facility would never have materialised.

France, now a vocal critic of Iran, played a central role by supplying a reactor and a plutonium reprocessing plant in 1957, partly as repayment for Israel’s support during the Suez Crisis.

Even more striking was Israel’s nuclear collaboration with apartheid South Africa in the 1970s. As two internationally isolated regimes, they developed deep military ties. Declassified documents suggest that Israel’s Shimon Peres once offered to sell nuclear warheads to Pretoria.

This partnership likely culminated in the 1979 Vela Incident, when a suspected atmospheric nuclear test was detected in the Indian Ocean. Despite strong evidence pointing to a joint Israeli-South African test, the Carter administration chose to obscure the findings to protect its ally.

Such collaborations demonstrate that, for Israel, international norms are secondary to strategic imperatives. While aiding a racially segregated regime’s nuclear ambitions, Israel simultaneously leveraged its diplomatic influence to block cooperation between its adversaries and other states.

This pattern persists today in the form of cyber and surveillance technologies exported to authoritarian regimes in exchange for diplomatic support.

Western backing has also extended to high-level intelligence operations to secure nuclear materials. In the 1968 Plumbat Affair, Israeli intelligence reportedly hijacked 200 tons of yellowcake uranium through a front-company scheme involving a cargo ship in Antwerp.

Rather than triggering sanctions or legal consequences, the operation was widely regarded as a remarkable intelligence success. Over time, the international community normalised such state-level misconduct, creating a skewed moral framework in which the security of one nation is deemed more important than the integrity of international law.

Deep double standard
Today, when the international community speaks of nuclear threats in the Middle East, the subject is invariably Iran. Yet the most immediate and substantial threat — Israel’s nuclear arsenal — remains untouchable.

This double standard has evolved into a kind of doctrine in global diplomacy, in which allegiance to Israel’s security necessitates the suspension of logic and justice. How can a state with hundreds of unmonitored nuclear warheads be framed as a stabilising force while another under strict IAEA oversight is cast as an existential threat?

This hypocrisy is especially evident in the NPT’s application. Intended as a universal instrument, it has instead functioned in the Middle East as a mechanism to constrain Arab states and Iran while allowing Israel to expand its nuclear capabilities unchecked.

The US has consistently used its veto power in the UN Security Council to block resolutions targeting Israel’s nuclear programme. Such policies not only undermine Washington’s credibility but also erode the very foundations of international law. When laws apply only to the weak, they become instruments of domination rather than justice.

Middle Eastern security will not be achieved through bombing Natanz or assassinating scientists in Tehran. As long as Israel is permitted to maintain its nuclear monopoly under the protection of Western double standards, the region will remain locked in a cycle of proliferation pressures.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others will inevitably seek their own nuclear capabilities to counterbalance Israeli dominance. Israel’s strategy of “mowing the grass” may delay conflict, but cannot resolve it.

The time has come for the world to stop feigning ignorance about Dimona. Any serious conversation about peace in the Middle East must begin with dismantling Israel’s nuclear privilege and demanding universal transparency.

Without equal pressure on Israel to join the NPT and place its facilities under IAEA safeguards, the rhetoric of non-proliferation is little more than diplomatic theatre. Regional security can only be built on a foundation of equality, not under the shadow of a nuclear monopoly sustained by global hypocrisy.

Ronny P. Sasmita is a senior international analyst at the Indonesia Strategic and Economic Action Institution, a Jakarta-based think tank.

Former Fijian President Ratu Epeli Nailatikau died on Thursday, aged 84.

Ratu Epeli, a chief and former Fiji military commander, served as president from 2009 to 2015.

He also served as Speaker of Parliament from 2019 to 2022.

Local media reported Ratu Epeli died at the Suva Private Hospital after being admitted earlier on Thursday evening.

• READ MORE: Ratu Epeli Nailatikau is no longer with us

In Saturday’s frontpage story titled “Nailatikau is no longer with us”, The Fiji Times described the late president as “widely respected for his leadership and dedication to the people of Fiji”.

The Fiji Sun described him as a “respected chief, soldier, diplomat and statesman”.

A former opposition leader and high chief, Ro Teimumu Kepa, said Ratu Epeli’s death had left many people in shock.

“The flowing tributes on social media shows how his personality touched many lives that he came in contact with,” she wrote in a social media post.

The ‘people’s president’
Fiji’s former Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum described Ratu Epeli as “the people’s president”.

“Ratu Epeli Nailatikau lived his life among his people, not above them. We see that in the countless stories coming in from across the country about his personal interactions with everyday people,” Sayed-Khaiyun said.

“He put his belief of the dignity of every Fijian into practice every day, including the day he promulgated our Fijian Constitution in 2013 which granted every citizen an equal voice in our democracy while concomitantly protecting everyone’s specific rights including the marginalised and the vulnerable.

“And as if God hadn’t given the man enough rare qualities — he had both a wonderful singing voice and the wits to know when to close out a long night in song and send us all home on a high note.”

The Fiji Labour Party said that as the great-great-grandson of Ratu Seru Cakobau — one of Fiji’s most significant figures — and the grandson of King George Tupou II of Tonga, “Ratu Epeli was undoubtedly a scion of royal lineage”.

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

Who is in charge of this war: Israel or the United States?

One side believes Israel lured Trump into a trap from which he cannot extricate himself. The tail is wagging the dog.

• READ MORE: US-Israeli war on Iran widens with first attack from Yemen
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The other believes that the US, as the world’s sole military super-power, is the one that writes the geo-strategic script. If Israel acts, it is only because it serves Washington’s interests as well. The dog is wagging the tail.

Certainly, the idea that the tail, the client state of Israel, could be wagging the dog, the military juggernaut that is the US, seems, at best, counter-intuitive.

But then again, there is plenty of evidence that suggests advocates for the tail wagging the dog scenario may have a case.

They can point to the fact that Trump launched this war of choice on Iran despite winning the presidency on an “America First” platform in which he promised: “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

Rushed into war
His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, openly stated that the administration was rushed into war, finding itself apparently unable to restrain Israel from attacking Iran.

Joe Kent, Trump’s top counter-terrorism official, noted in his resignation letter that the administration “started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.

Addressing the Israeli Parliament last October, Trump appeared to confess to being under the thumb of the Israel lobby. As he praised himself for moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the illegally occupied city of Jerusalem, he repeatedly pointed to his most influential donor, the Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson, before observing: “I actually asked her once, I said, ‘So, Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more, the United States or Israel?’ She refused to answer. That means, that might mean, Israel, I must say.”

A video from 2001 shows Benjamin Netanyahu, now Israel’s Prime Minister, caught secretly on camera, telling a group of settlers: “I know what America is. America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in the way.”

Former US president Barack Obama, who ran up against Netanyahu repeatedly as Obama tried and failed to limit the expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements, thought the same.

In his 2020 autobiography, he wrote that the Israel lobby insisted that “there should be ‘no daylight’ between the US and Israeli governments, even when Israel took actions that were contrary to US policy.”

Any politician who disobeyed “risked being tagged as ‘anti-Israel’ (and possibly anti-Semitic) and confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election”.

Obscuring the relationship
But any rigid, binary way of framing the relationship between the US and Israel obscures more than it illuminates.

I addressed this issue in my 2008 book on Israeli foreign policy, titled Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iran, Iraq and the Plan to Remake the Middle East. My conclusion then, as now, was that the relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv was better understood in different terms: as the dog and the tail wagging each other.

What does that mean?

Israel is Washington’s most favoured client state. It must, therefore, operate within the “security” parameters for the Middle East laid down by the US.

In fact, part of Israel’s job — the reason it is such an important client state — is because it has, until now, been able to enforce those parameters on others in the region.

But the story is more complicated than that.

At the same time, Israel seeks to maximise its ability to influence those parameters in its own interests, chiefly by shaping military, political and cultural discourse in the United States, through the many levers available to it.

Mobilised by Zionist lobbies
Zionist lobbies, both Jewish and Christian, mobilise large numbers of ordinary people to support whatever Israel claims to be in both its and US interests.

Mega-donors like Adelson use their wealth to cajole and intimidate US politicians.

Think-tanks with murky funding write legislation on Israel’s behalf that US politicians wave through.

Legal organisations, again with opaque funding, weaponise the law to silence and bankrupt.

And media owners, all too often in Israel’s camp, mould the public mood to stigmatise as “antisemitism” anything that opposes Israeli excesses.

This makes for a very messy arrangement.

The trouble with the idea that the US simply dictates to Israel — rather than that the two are constantly bargaining over what constitutes their shared interests — becomes apparent the moment we consider the two-and-a-half-year genocide in Gaza.

Desire to ‘disappear’ Palestinians
Israel has long had a fervent desire to disappear the Palestinians, whether through ethnic cleansing or genocide.

It wants the whole of historic Palestine, and the Palestinians are an obstacle to the realisation of that goal. Should the opportunity arise, Israel is also keen to secure a Greater Israel that requires grabbing and annexing substantial territory from neighbours, particularly Lebanon and Syria — as it is doing again right now.

After the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, Israel seized on the chance to renew in earnest the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians it began in 1948, at the state’s founding.

It carpet-bombed Gaza, creating a “humanitarian crisis”, to force Egypt to open the floodgates into Sinai, where it hoped to drive the enclave’s population. Cairo refused.

As a result, Israel tried to increase the pressure by slaughtering and starving the people of Gaza. In legal terms, that constituted genocide.

But the idea that the US was deeply invested in Israel carrying out a genocide in Gaza, or directed that genocide, or had any particular interest in the genocide taking place, is hard to sustain.

Washington — first under Biden, then under Trump — gave Israel cover to carry out the mass slaughter of the Palestinian population, and armed and financed the genocide. But that is very different from it having a geostrategic interest in the mass slaughter.

Indifferent to Palestinians’ fate
Rather, the US is and always has been largely indifferent as to the fate of the Palestinians, so long as they are contained. They can be locked up permanently in occupation prisons.

Or ethnically cleansed to Sinai and Jordan. Or given a pretend statelet under a compliant dictator like Mahmoud Abbas. Or exterminated.

The US will bankroll whichever option Israel believes best serves its interests — so long as that “solution” can be sold by pro-Israel lobbies to western publics as a legitimate “response” to Palestinian “terrorism”.

What Israel could get away with changed on 7 October 2023. The US was prepared to approve Israel shifting from a policy of intermittently “mowing the lawn” in Gaza — short wrecking sprees — to the incremental levelling of the whole of Gaza.

In other words, Israel worked all its levers to persuade Washington that it was the right time for it to get away with genocide. It sold to the US the plan that Gaza could now be destroyed.

To present that as Washington’s plan is simply perverse. It was decisively Israel’s plan.

That doesn’t diminish in any way US responsibility for the genocide. It is fully complicit. It paid for the genocide. It armed the genocide. It must own it too.

Similar Iran war analysis
A similar analysis can be applied to the Iran war.

The US and Israel share the same larger policy towards Iran: they want it contained, weak, unable to exert influence. But they do so for slightly different reasons.

Israel demands to be regional hegemon in the Middle East, an invaluable client state with privileged access to Washington policymakers. Its supremacy and impunity, therefore, depend on Iran — its only plausible rival in the region — being as weak as possible and incapable of forging effective alliances with armed resistance groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Equally, Washington wants Israel unthreatened, leaving its ally free to project US imperial power into the Middle East.

But it has a more complex set of interests to consider. It needs to ensure that the Arab monarchies remain compliant, and it does so by both wielding a stick — threatening to unleash the attack dog of Israel on them should they disobey — and proffering a carrot — promising to shield them under its security umbrella against Iran so long as they stay loyal.

The ultimate goal is to guarantee unchallenged US control over the flow of oil and thereby the global economy.

In other words, the US has to weigh far more interests in how it deals with Iran than Israel does.

Effects on the global economy
Unlike Israel, Washington has to consider the effects of an attack on Iran on the global economy, to assess any impact on the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and protect against rival powers like China and Russia exploiting strategic missteps.

For those reasons, Washington has traditionally preferred maintaining a degree of stability in the region. Instability is very bad for business, as is being demonstrated only too clearly right now.

Israel, by contrast, regards its struggle against Iran in existential terms. Many in the Israeli cabinet view it as a religious war. They are not interested in simply containing Iran – a decades-old policy they believe has failed. They want Iran and its allies on their knees, or at least in so much chaos that they cannot pose any kind of challenge to Israeli regional hegemony.

That point was highlighted by Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s former national security adviser, this week in an interview with Jon Stewart. He cited recent comments to him by Israel’s former military intelligence lead on Iran, Danny Cintrinowicz, that Netanyahu’s aim is to “just break Iran, cause chaos”.

Why? “Because,” says Sullivan, “as far as they’re concerned, a broken Iran is less of a threat to Israel.”

In other words, Israel wants to engineer instability in Iran, which is sure to spread instability across the region.

Those two agendas, as should be clear by now, are not easily compatible. Which is why Netanyahu has spent decades working every lever at his disposal in Washington to create an appetite for war.

Had war been self-evidently in US interests, his efforts would have been superfluous.

Israel deployed its lobbies
Instead, Israel has had to deploy its lobbies, marshal its donors and recruit sympathetic columnists to slowly shift the public mood to the point where a war was conceivable rather than patently dangerous.

And most importantly of all, Israel nurtured an intimate, ideological alliance with the neocons — hawkish, zealously pro-Israel US officials — who long ago gained a foothold in the inner sanctums of Washington.

Each recent administration has been a cat-fight over whether the neocons or more “moderate” voices would win out. Under George W Bush, the neocons dominated, leading to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Israel’s short war on Lebanon in 2006, and a failed plan to expand the war to Syria and then Iran.

I documented all of this in Israel and the Clash of Civilisations.

Under Obama, the neocons were forced to take more of a back seat, which is why his administration was able to sign a nuclear deal with Iran that held until Trump ripped it up in 2018, during his first term as president. Biden, as with so much else, dithered.

In Trump’s second term, the neocons seem to be firmly back in charge, again weaving their mischief. The result — an illegal war on Iran — is likely to be a strategic catastrophe for the US, and a potential, if short-lived, victory for Israel.

So isn’t this the same as saying the tail wags the dog?

Sole repositories of power
No, not least because that assumes the visible realm of US politics — the President, the Congress, the two main political parties — are the sole repositories of power in the system.

Even in this visible sphere, support for Israel has dramatically waned since the Gaza genocide. As the illegal war on Iran grows ever more costly, both in treasure and lives, support for Israel among US voters is going to fall off a cliff.

Israel is for the first time a deeply partisan issue, dividing Democrats and Republicans, as well as a generational divide between the young and old. It is even splitting the MAGA base Trump depends on.

This political polarisation will continue to get much worse, ultimately freeing braver figures in US politics to start speaking out in franker terms about Israel’s nefarious role.

But power in the US isn’t just wielded at the formal, visible level. There is a permanent bureaucracy, with an institutional memory, that operates out of sight. We have gained brief glimpses of its covert operations from the work of Wikileaks, Julian Assange’s publishing platform for whistleblowers, and from Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who revealed illegal mass surveillance by the US state of its own citizens.

Both suffered serious consequences for their efforts to bring a little transparency to a profoundly corrupt system of secret power. Assange was locked away in a London high-security prison for many years as the US sought to extradite him on trumped-up “espionage” charges, while Snowden was forced into exile in Russia to evade arrest and long-term incarceration.

That bureaucracy — sometimes referred to as the Deep State, or the military-industrial complex — doesn’t play or fight fair. It doesn’t need to. It operates in the shadows.

Curtailing Israel’s influence
Were it to so choose, it could undermine the Israel lobby, and thereby curtail Israel’s influence over the visible realm of US politics.

It could effectively do to the leaders of the lobby — AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the Zionist Organisation of America, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations, Christians United for Israel, and others — what it did to Assange and Snowden.

It could, for example, influence public discourse to begin questioning whether these groups are really serving US interests or acting as foreign agents. That would, in turn, free up space for the media and legislators to call for tighter restrictions on these groups’ activities, requiring them to register as such.

The permanent bureaucracy is doubtless capable of doing much darker, underhand things too.

The fact that it hasn’t chosen to do any of this yet suggests Israel’s goals are not seen so far to be significantly in conflict with US goals.

But that could be about to change. In fact, the current, all-too-public debates about Israel driving the US into a war against Iran — an idea already seeping into popular consciousness — may be the first salvoes in the battle to come.

If the war on Iran turns out to be a catastrophic misstep, as it gives every appearance of being, there will be a price to pay — and leading US politicians are likely to scramble to shift the blame on to Israel. It may be that they are already getting in their excuses.

The all-too-visible freedom Israel has enjoyed in Washington to buy, bully and silence could soon become a central liability. It will not be hard to argue that a system so clearly open to manipulation that the US could be bounced into a self-sabotaging war needs to be remade, to prevent any repeat of such a disaster.

This may be the biggest lesson Washington learns from the war on Iran. That it is time to stop the tail wagging so vigorously.

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. This article was first published on the author’s Substack and reepublished with permission.

Cuba’s Ambassador to New Zealand, Luis Morejón Rodríguez, last night made a passionate plea for his country’s sovereignty in defiance of the illegal US-led fuel blockade of the Caribbean nation.

Speaking at a packed Auckland Trades Hall, he warned that the three-month oil blockade and energy blackouts threatened the country’s public health system with dire consequences for many patients.

“In Cuba today, approximately 16,000 patients undergoing radiotherapy and more than 2800 patients receiving hemodialysis depend every day on a stable electricity supply in hospitals across the country,” he said.

• READ MORE: Cuban Ambassador denounces US aggression and violations of international law
• Two Cuba-bound aid ships missing after leaving Mexico

“These are life-sustaining treatments that cannot simply be postponed without risk.”

He said Cuba would continue to oppose Washington’s escalating military threats and economic pressure on his country.

Speaking alongside Ambassador Rodríguez was Dr Josephine Varghese, a Canterbury University lecturer who shared an eyewitness account of her recent trip to Havana.

She praised Cuba and “our collective fight against the global imperialism system”.

Military assault openly discussed
A military assault on Cuba has been openly discussed by US President Donald Trump and other White House officials since the illegal January 2 strike against Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and also during the current war on Iran.

Last week, Trump declared in an offhand manner that he could just “take” Cuba.

International humanitarian convoys are bringing aid to Cuba to protest against the US fuel blockade, as Cuba continues to fend off US threats of a takeover.

However, two Mexican sailboats on the Nuestra America Convoy that has just arrived in Cuba this week were reportedly missing at sea and coast guard authorities from Cuba and Mexico are looking for them.

Ambassador Rodríguez said solidarity aid flotillas were really important for Cubans as they demonstrated global support.

During his speech last night, Ambassador Rodríguez said that when energy availability became uncertain, hospitals needed to prioritise essential services, and non-urgent procedures often needed to be delayed, preserving electricity and fuel resources.

“In other words, restrictions on fuel do not only affect economic indicators. They directly affect operating rooms, diagnostic equipment, medical treatments, and ultimately the health and well-being of patients,” he said.

‘Coercion and collective punishment’
“That is why Cuba has described these measures as economic coercion and collective punishment.”

On January 29, the White House issued an executive order blocking oil exports to Cuba, which imports around 60 percent of its fuel.

Ambassador Rodríguez said the world was living in a moment when the international system was being tested.

“Increasingly, we see the logic of power challenging the logic of law.

“For countries like Cuba — small countries — international law is not an abstract concept. It is our main protection.”

He criticised President Trump’s claim in January that Cuba represented an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security.

“Let us pause for a moment and reflect on that statement. Cuba is a Caribbean island of 10 million people,” he said.

‘We do not project power’
“We do not possess nuclear weapons. We do not have military bases abroad. We do not project military power internationally.

“And yet we are described as an extraordinary threat.

“But this declaration is not merely rhetorical. It has very concrete consequences.”

With Cubans continuing to live under prolonged blackouts and the government preparing for military confrontation, the audience last night celebrated Cuba’s courageous resistance, saying it was an inspiration to the world.

The fuel blockade, enforced by the US naval armada in the Caribbean, piles pressure on top of Washington’s economic embargo that has been in place since the early 1960s.

Discussing the impact of the blockade on Cubans that she witnessed on her travel to Cuba in January, Dr Varghese said the unjust US measures “denied working people access to the most basic necessities, from medicines to electricity and transportation”.

She linked the Cuban crisis to the Palestinian, Iranian and Venezuelan struggles for peace and justice.

The Cuba Friendship Society, which sponsoring last night’s meeting chaired by retired trade unionist Robert Reid, noted that the only crime of Cuba and its people was that of overthrowing a US-backed dictator in 1959, and then defending their sovereignty and other conquests of their revolution in the six decades since.

The ambassador is also speaking at public meetings in Christchurch (March 17) and Wellington.

The Middle East is in flames. Britain is being dragged into an illegal war, the aims of which are entirely unclear, reports Richard Sanders of Double Down News.

“It’s a war of choice, and the man who chose it is Benjamin Netanyahu. Why, yet again, is the West dancing to Israel’s tune?

“I’ve made a number of videos exposing Israeli crimes. This one is different. It’s directed at conservatives and people generally who support the state of Israel.

• READ MORE: The End of Israel: The Ultimate Evidence — Richard Sanders
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“I believe our indulgence of Israel is not just morally wrong. It’s against the interests of the US and the UK and ultimately against the interests of Israel itself.

“It is leading us all to disaster. Palestine is the place you come thundering, crashing into the buffers, the limits of the Western liberal moral imagination.

“The tragedy and complexity of Israel is that it’s both a product of the most unspeakable racism and a cause of it. Zionism was born from the suffering of Jewish people in Europe, culminating in the Holocaust, from a desire for a safe haven, a territory where Jews would for once be the hosts and not the eternal guests.

“It was framed as a return to a historic biblical homeland. and for its supporters. These two factors give it an entirely different complexion morally from other enterprises where predominantly European populations have settled far-flung parts of the world.

Dispossession and subjugation
“There’s no doubt that the Zionist dream has enormous emotional power. The problem, of course, is the other side of the equation, the people. It was inflicted upon the Palestinians whose experience of dispossession and subjugation was no different from that of countless other peoples subjected to European colonialism.

“In fact, arguably, it’s been considerably worse than many, precisely because of the licence and indulgence granted to the Israeli state.

“Let’s lay out the bold, indisputable facts. In 1948, more than 80 percent of the Palestinian population of what became Israel fled their homes. Now, if you want to believe this was not an act of deliberate ethnic cleansing, fine.

“What’s undeniable is that they were never allowed to return. In 1947, they were there. In 1949, they were not. The granting of the vote to that small fragment of the Palestinian population that remained provided a democratic fig leaf for the new state, one that was blown away once the Israelis occupied Gaza and the West Bank in 1967.

The End of Israel                                     Documentary: Double Down News

“There Palestinians have no right to vote for the political entity, the state of Israel that controls their lives. Jewish settlers, on the other hand, occupying the same territory do.

“Even in East Jerusalem, which as far as the Israeli government is concerned has been formally annexed to Israel, Palestinians cannot vote. Political rights depend upon ethnicity. That is not democracy.

“Israel is and has always been a state whose defining feature is that it’s structured to ensure the domination of one ethnicity over another. What else does the term a Jewish state mean?

‘Elephant in the room’
“This is the elephant in the room. the simple, blindingly obvious, undeniable fact that the Western political media class has decided that we must never mention or acknowledge, despite the fact that all of the world’s leading human rights organisations, including the Israeli NGO B’Tselem, have denounced Israel as an apartheid state.

“Now scour the history of the modern world. No people has ever resigned itself to being second class citizens in their own country. Spend just 10 minutes at a checkpoint in the West Bank and you get it.

“The disfiguring dehumanisation, the humiliation of elderly men and women forced to stand in the sun for hours waiting for 18-year-olds to search them.

“The brutalisation of young men in particular, the daily control of rage that is the lot of every Palestinian. It is simply emotionally, psychologically intolerable.”

• Watch the full Double Down News video

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: An Israeli court has closed an investigation into the death of Walid Ahmad, a 17-year-old from the occupied West Bank who died in an Israeli jail six months after he was arrested, held without charges and accused of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers.

An autopsy showed Ahmad likely starved to death after suffering extreme weight loss, muscle wasting and untreated scabies. Human rights groups say nearly 100 Palestinians have died in Israeli jails since October 2023.

Meanwhile, local and international media outlets report Israeli forces recently tortured a Palestinian toddler in Gaza to coerce a confession from his father.

• READ MORE: Trump talks up deal with Tehran as Iranian missile, drone attacks continue
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According to reports from Palestine TV, Al Jazeera and others, the child’s father, Osama Abu Nassar, was detained near the al-Maghazi refugee camp after he came under fire from Israeli soldiers.

He was forced to approach an Israeli checkpoint, where he was separated from his 18-month-old son, stripped naked and forced to watch as soldiers used a cigarette to burn one of the toddler’s legs while using a nail to puncture the other.

AMY GOODMAN: This comes as a new UN report warns Israel is systematically torturing Palestinians on a scale that “suggests collective vengeance and destructive intent”.The report, titled “Torture and Genocide”, was written by Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory.

In July, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on her over her report naming dozens of companies she says are profiting from Israeli occupation and genocide in Gaza. Amnesty International blasted the sanctions as a “shameless and transparent attack on the fundamental principles of international justice”. Francesca Albanese’s new book is When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words and Wounds of Palestine. She joins us from Geneva, Switzerland.

Francesca, thank you so much for being with us. Why don’t you lay out what you found in your new report, “Torture and Genocide,” that you just presented at the U.N. Human Rights Council?

Torture and Genocide — a new UN report.     Video: Democracy Now!

Transcript

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Thank you. Thank you, Amy and Nermeen.

I’ve been investigating genocide for over two years now. So, five out of eight reports I’ve produced for the United Nations focus on genocide, acts of genocide, the context in which a genocide happens, why the genocide is not stopped, the layers of complicity from states and private companies, which is the reason why also I’m sanctioned by the United States, against which now my 13-year-old daughter, who’s an American citizen, is the only one to take action suing the Trump administration.

But of all the investigations I’ve carried out, this has been absolutely the most excruciating, that led me to say that Israel uses torture in a systematic and widespread fashion, intentionally and sadistically, to break the spirit of the Palestinians, not just as individuals, but as a people, considering the scale and intensity of torture.

And I monitored torture behind bars, collecting hundreds, hundreds of testimonies, directly and from Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations, but also analyzing what experts call torturous environment, meaning the cumulative impact of all the practices, of all the crimes that Israel has massively inflicted on the Palestinians — again, beyond the torture, sodomisation, raping in jail, the enforced disappearance, which is touching 4000 people.

This is new. This is a new crime, including for Israel, toward the Palestinians. But also starvation, constant forced displacement, not just in Gaza, but in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and home demolition, the fear of being always threatened with death or other crimes, it creates a torturous environment for the Palestinians, which is an essential element of genocide.

And it is genocide.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Francesca, if you could elaborate on this point that you’ve just made and that you make in the report, namely, that torture has effectively become state policy for Israel since October 2023? So, what are the kinds of transformations you’ve seen, both in terms of Israeli security personnel, as well as settlers, against the Palestinians?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah, I have to say that what I’ve investigated is something on which even the United Nations Committee Against Torture and the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on Israel/Palestine had shed light already, the fact that Israel, after October 7, has massively used torture to punish the Palestinians vindictively.

In fact, the concept of torture has become a state policy is something that the Committee Against Torture found out recently.

I have zoomed in: What does it mean, and where does it come from? Surely, one of the main engineers or architects of this, what’s been called — what he has called the “prison revolution,” is Itamar Ben-Gvir, was — immediately after October 7, has declared that the Palestinians in jail will not be afforded luxury treatment or five-star treatment anymore, as if it was a five-star hotel, what the Israeli prison system afforded Palestinians before October 7.

By the way, in 2023, in July 2023, I produced a report showing how widespread and systemic was the arbitrary treatment of Palestinian detainees, so, just to give a context.

But the conditions have become more and more brutal, and intentionally so. What does it mean? Palestinians have routinely been abducted — I mean, detained without charge or trial. They’ve been arrested, because Palestinians, if they were specific professionals, like journalists and doctors or headed medical personnel, all the more.

Seventeen hundred Palestinian healthcare personnel have been killed. Hundreds remain in jail. And they have been shackled, blindfolded, beaten, humiliated, stripped naked, photographed, filmed, exposed to Israeli civilians, including settlers, coming in to document and to film, to participate into this orgy of depravity, of how a person can be humiliated.

But the most painful, excruciating thing — and I’ve read some of the testimonies — is how Palestinian women and men have been sodomised, have been raped, with bottles, with knives, with metal rods. Even the prisoner who was sodomised through — was raped with a knife, brought to the hospital.

Five Israeli officials were identified and pressed charged against, and now the charges have been dropped. And the person who leaked the video from within the military apparatus is under house arrest on top of it.

So, not only that I’ve documented the vindictiveness toward the Palestinians, the humiliation, the continuous abuses against them in jail, really to break their spirit once and for all as a people, but also the fact that there has been almost something celebratory against the mistreatment of Palestinians in jail among the society.

The legislative power, the Knesset, has been discussing the right to rape Palestinians, and so other members of the executive. The judiciary has not looked into it. And as I said, even those who were found, caught on video, committing this crime were released.

AMY GOODMAN: Francesca, in this last 30 seconds, what are you calling for?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Oh, for justice. Justice. Israel must be stopped, because, Amy, I can’t even use the past tense. As we speak, there are still over 9000 Palestinian hostages, hostages to an unlawful occupation in Israeli jail.

The only thing this — International Court of Justice has spoken. Israel must withdraw the occupation, the troops, the colonies. And the exploitation of Palestinian resources must end.

Meanwhile, the settlers continue to terrorise people. Very few Israelis are engaged against this. So member states must intervene, cut ties and stop weapons transfers to Israel once and for all, and bring the perpetrators to justice.

AMY GOODMAN: Francesco Albanese, we thank you so much for being with us, UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory. We’ll link to your report, “Torture and Genocide,” and have you back on to talk about your book.

Republished from Democracy Now! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

A rift within French Polynesia’s ruling Tavini Huiraatira party has widened this week, pitting the leadership “old guard” against a younger generation embodied by the territory’s President, Moetai Brotherson.

The main reason for the rift is the outcome of the recent French municipal elections, especially in the capital city of Pape’ete.

Since the Tavini party came back to power after the 2023 territorial elections, Brotherson brought with him a new wave of young MPs, who sometimes were questioning the traditional political line.

• READ MORE: Other French Polynesian reports

This was often regarded as “radical” (in favour of a quick independence process), defended by the party’s iconic 81-year-old president Oscar Temaru and his close associates, including Territorial Assembly Speaker Antony Géros.

At the recent municipal elections, Géros was one of the most symbolic of Tavini casualties. He lost his stronghold city of Paea at the first round of votes to pro-autonomy Tapura Huiraatira leader Tepuaraurii Teriitahi, who secured more than 50 percent of the votes, making it unnecessary to hold a second round of polls.

Even though Temaru was re-elected Lord Mayor in his stronghold of Faa’a at the first round, other Tavini-held municipalities also suffered significant setbacks.

But it was in Pape’ete that the divisions between the two Tavini antagonistic trends materialised most visibly.

Two Tavini candidates
While no Tavini member was in a position to claim the lead (the new Lord Mayor remains an “autonomist”, in favour of continuing the current relationship with France under an “Autonomy” status), there were two Tavini candidates and lists — one officially endorsed by the party, under the name of Tauhiti Nena, who secured 11.03 percent of the votes.

The other was not officially endorsed but it fared much better. It was led by 25-year-old Tematai Le Gayic and received 23.3 percent of the vote.

Since the kick-start of the municipal elections campaign, Le Gayic’s list (Tutahi ia Pape’ete) was openly backed by Brotherson.

In his already long political career, despite his young age, Le Gayic’s was French Polynesia’s representative MP (2022-2024). He was once known for being the youngest French MP ever elected in the French National Assembly.

This week, the debate is now out in the open, sparking a controversy between the two antagonistic Tavini trends.

Adding fuel to fire, in an open letter to Temaru earlier this week, widely publicised through social networks, he announced his decision to leave Tavini and, as a member of the Territorial Assembly, will from now on sit as an independent member.

Family business
Brotherson reacted to the decision, saying Le Gayic’s move was a “responsible” decision.

Brotherson also belongs to the Tavini Huiraatira, a party led by his father-in-law Temaru (Brotherson’s wife, Teura, is Temaru’s daughter).

Since 2023, other young, newly-elected Tavini MPs had already voiced their questions about the party political line.

This was the case of Hinamoeura Cross-Morgant, a young female MP who has tried to get a few bills tabled in the Assembly.

She was later subjected to sanctions from the party, ranging from suspension to outright eviction.

Since then, she has been sitting as an independent MP.

Reactions from the other side (pro-autonomy) of the political spectrum were also swift.

Nicole Sanquer, who heads “A Here Ia Porinetia” party (and leader of the opposition in the current Assembly), said there were many subjects of discord within the Tavini Huiraatira which were never addressed.

“What we’re expecting now is the creation of a new group within the Assembly. You ask me, I call this the beginning of a political crisis”, she told local media.

Brotherson ‘not surprised’
Brotherson, 56, regarded as a moderate, favours a non-confrontational approach to the independence subject, vis-à-vis France.

He said the recent municipal election results were “catastrophic” and that the Tavini party he belongs to was now disconnected from reality.

He said he was not surprised at Le Gayic’s resignation.

“It was predictable. Tematai Le Gayic has been asking for Tavini’s support for months in his bid to contest (the municipal elections) in Pape’ete.

“He’s not the first one and unfortunately I think he won’t be the last if the party doesn’t react.”

“You don’t win elections through posturing,” he added, stressing the need to stay in touch with bread-and-butter issues when it comes to elections, especially municipal ones.

“Because voters simply don’t feed on ideology.”

He warned that as new territorial polls will take place in 2028, if the Tavini does not address the issue, it would face more “explosive” results and setbacks.

Speaking to local media Tahiti Nui Television on the recent municipal election results, Temaru admitted a few “tactical and strategic mistakes”.

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

COMMENTARY: By Eman Hillis

Displaced from my home in northern Gaza, I sit reading reports of the Iran war as my little sister, 6, struggles to walk across the room. Two months into the ceasefire, an Israeli soldier shot her in the head.

On my phone, a video of US politician Tommy Tuberville criticising the Iranian regime for “treating women like dogs” plays.

Another follows, showing Matt Schlapp suggesting the girls killed in a school bombing in Iran are better dead than living a “barbaric life”. To top it all, Israel celebrated International Women’s Day in Persian, posting an AI video of fake US, Israeli, and Iranian women frolicking together.

• READ MORE: US demands Iran accept ‘defeat’ as Tehran rejects talks, vows to fight on
• Epstein cabal play games with human lives in Iran while grasping for unearned riches
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Watching these statements and videos from Gaza, where women have been subjected to relentless violence throughout the more than two-year genocide, the sudden concern for women’s rights is difficult to take seriously.

I was among the hundreds of thousands of women displaced by Israel in Gaza. I experienced the suffering that Israel, backed by the US, subjected us to, and watched other women endure.

One month before the third US veto of a proposed ceasefire in Gaza, a sudden midnight strike hit the apartment next to where I was sheltering in Khan Younis. Human remains were scattered about — half of one man’s body was hanging on what had been a window on the seventh floor, the other half on a bus in the street.

No women were killed, but I watched them weep for loved ones, denied the chance to mourn them or even gather and bury the remains.

Fleeing women dragged children
The tanks then rushed in. Dozens of women, children, and men ran through the street — some women still weeping for those who had just been killed. Most of them dragged two or more children by the hand.

I was running with a woman who held a baby she had given birth to one week earlier, crying and gasping for breath. The tanks were advancing toward us, firing shells at a hospital nearby, while drones above us strafed us indiscriminately.

The violence did not stop with the killings and displacements. Israel made life even more miserable for women, without using missiles. It cut off water, then prohibited the entry of sanitary pads and painkillers, turning women’s periods into a living hell.

Israel’s policy of starving Gaza has raised miscarriage rates among women to 300 percent.

Israeli soldiers set dogs on Palestinian women, assaulted pregnant mothers, and threatened them with rape — all of this with US support and under the protection of six US vetoes.

“Terrorist organisations have brought disaster upon you,” was one of the most common statements that Israeli leaflets repeated in Gaza and Lebanon before launching a brutal attack on a certain area. The line was often followed by “for your safety, leave the place” or “the IDF has no intention of harming you”.

The language is moral and protective, suggesting the action about to follow is a “rescue mission,” not an act of war.

US uses similar rhetoric
The US has long used similar rhetoric to justify its political ambitions abroad. In Iraq, it claimed to be saving the international community from “weapons of mass destruction.”

It claimed to be saving civilians from oppression by “terrorist organisations” when it backed Israel in its wars against Palestine and Lebanon.

In Afghanistan, the US-led invasion was often justified from a “feminist” lens to “rescue” women oppressed by the Taliban.

Now, the same strategy is being deployed against Iran. Women’s rights are weaponised as a pretext for airstrikes, sanctions, and military invasion.

Hundreds of Iranian women, including pregnant mothers, have been killed in US and Israeli strikes. Hundreds of thousands of homes have been destroyed, displacing millions of women and their loved ones within the country.

This is not to suggest that Iranian women enjoy full rights in their country, but feminism cannot be achieved through bombs.

This US and Israeli rhetoric contradicts a fundamental principle of feminism. By assuming that women are unable to fight and speak up for their rights, they deny women’s right of self-determination.

Struggling to address women’s rights
Notably, the same governments that attempt to act as the “saviours” of women struggle to address women’s rights at home. Israel, which struggles to curb incidents of sexual harassment against women, has been commodifying female soldiers to garner public sympathy during the Gaza war.

Meanwhile, one in five women in the US has experienced completed or attempted rape in their lifetime.

For women who have lived through US and Israeli wars, claims of defending Iranian women ring hollow.

The blood of more than 16,000 Palestinian women killed during the two-year genocide has not yet dried, yet the US and Israel present themselves as the guardians of women’s rights.

Those who kill and oppress other women cannot claim to defend women’s rights elsewhere. True feminism cannot defend the humanity of women in one place and ignore it in another.

Eman Hillis is a Gaza-based journalist and fact-checker reporting on war and disinformation from the ground during Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This article was first published by The New Arab.

Anti-apartheid campaigner Terry Bell has died at the age of 84. A lifelong activist, journalist, and educator, Bell’s life was defined by his unwavering commitment to justice and democracy.

His early journalism career spanned several South African newspapers, where he also helped found the non-racial South African Journalists’ Union.

Bell was deeply involved in underground activism, editing the clandestine publication Combat. Detained under the 90-day law in 1964, he fled into exile in Zambia the following year. There, he worked as chief reporter for the Times of Zambia before being granted asylum in the UK.

• READ MORE: Terry Bell, struggle stalwart and journalist of ‘impeccable principles’, dies at 84

In London, he studied international affairs, edited Anti-Apartheid News, and worked at the Daily Worker.

Bell’s activism took him across continents, from Zambia to New Zealand, where he helped launch the Anti-Apartheid Movement in 1972.

In 1979, he and his wife, Barbara, established the primary division of Somafco in Tanzania, drafting the ANC’s first primary school curriculum. Disillusioned by abuses within the ANC, the Bells resigned in 1982 and later supported striking miners in Britain.

Returning to South Africa in 1991, Bell settled in Cape Town, choosing not to rejoin the ANC. Instead, he advocated for democratic socialism, urging citizens to “Vote ANC, but build a socialist alternative”.

From 1992, he edited Africa Analysis and contributed incisive labour columns to Business Report, Fin24, and City Press.

He was also a regular contributor to Radio 786’s programming, and was a staunch voice advocating for the rights of Palestinians.

His writing combined sharp analysis with a deep empathy for workers and marginalised communities. Bell remained a freelance journalist and commentator until his final years, never ceasing to challenge injustice.

Terry Bell’s life reminds us that resistance, even in exile, can shape nations and inspire generations.

Republished from Radio 786 in Cape Town, South Africa.

Tributes are pouring in from across the region for “fearless” and “formidable” Vanuatu journalist Dan McGarry, who died on Wednesday.

McGarry, 62, fell ill after a trip to Papua New Guinea earlier this month, from where he had to be evacuated to Brisbane to undergo a heart bypass.

But he faced complications during his recovery and had remained in critical care for the past few weeks.

• READ MORE: Dan McGarry’s articles on Asia Pacific Report
• OCCRP mourns the loss of Dan McGarry, pioneering Pacific editor and investigative journalist

McGarry, who was a former editor of Vanuatu’s only national newspaper, the Vanuatu Daily Post, and Pacific editor of the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) at the time of his death, has left behind his wife and children.

“It’s with great heartbreak that I have to announce that the legendary Dan McGarry passed away earlier today,” Aubrey Belford, who was a co-editor with McGarry at OCCRP, said in a Facebook post.

“Dan was an absolutely dominating presence in Pacific journalism and in the region more generally.

“Dan was compassionate, sharing, and always motivated by a sense of justice and the common good. He was driven but also understood the importance of patience, friendship, and community.

‘A shell or more of kava’
“When home in Vanuatu he loved nothing more than finishing his day with a shell or more of kava, satisfied in the knowledge he had found his place in the world.”

Belford added McGarry’s loss was devastating not just for his family but for all journalists working in the region.

“He will be missed, and he will never be replaced.”

Another friend and colleague, Andrew Gray, said McGarry was “a good man”.

“After a hard life he finally found happiness in Vanuatu, and he did a lot more for the country than people appreciate. Last time I saw him he was planning his retirement at Lalwori.

“Condolences to Line McGarry Watsivi and their daughters.”

InsidePNG described McGarry as “more than just a colleague, a titan of regional journalism and a tireless advocate for the truth”.

‘Wealth of experience’
“As the former editor of the Vanuatu Daily Post, he brought a wealth of experience and a fearless spirit to every project he touched. Dan was absolutely instrumental in the birth of our investigative centre in Port Moresby.

“He didn’t just help set the foundation, he guided and mentored InsidePNG through our most critical work, building a lasting connection with our team that went far beyond professional duty,” the news outlet said in a social media post.

Kiribati journalist Rimon Rimon, who worked with McGarry, described him as “one of the brilliant minds I had the privilege of working closely with in our OCCRP investigations!”

The University of the South Pacific’s head of journalism associate professor Dr Shailendra Singh said McGarry’s passing is “profoundly felt across the Pacific media community, where his contributions as journalist, trainer and mentor have made a lasting impact”.

“He will be greatly missed. My thoughts are with his loved ones during this difficult time.”

RNZ Pacific manager Moera Tuilaepa-Taylor said McGarry’s presence would be missed.

“Dan McGarry was one of the best – a champion of the truth.”

Asia Pacific Report editor Dr David Robie said: “Vale Dan McGarry. A stunning loss to investigative journalism and media courage and integrity in Vanuatu and the Pacific. A friend and mentor to all.

“Farewell Dan and many thanks for your inspiration and mentoring. Deepest condolences to whānau. RIP.”

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

Described by analysts as a suicide mission, there are nonetheless rumours the US President has his eye on securing for the long-term the Iranian oil facilities on Kharg Island.

“Just take the oil” has long been his motto. But I am beginning to wonder if a desperate Donald Trump is preparing to deliberately throw US Marines into a meat grinder in Iran.

The attack on Iran has so far garnered little support from key parts of the MAGA base. Dead servicemen have traditionally helped to mobilise the American public into a war frenzy.

• READ MORE: Iranian military dismisses Trump’s claim of negotiations
• ‘Do not call your defeat an agreement’
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Could the sacrifice of a Marine expeditionary force be a price the 47th President thinks is worth paying? Would such a ploy work and revive his fortunes with the public?

Or will he have to pay the butcher’s bill in the US mid-terms?

The God of War
Money changer of dead bodies
Held the balance of his spear in the fighting
And from the corpse fires of Troy
Sent to their dearest the dust
Heavy and bitter with tears shed
Packing smooth the urns with ashes
Of what once were men.
They praise them through their tears
How this one went down splendid in the slaughter
How this one knew well the craft of war.
There by the walls of Troy
The young men in their beauty keep
Graves deep in the alien soil
They hated and they conquered.”

— Aeschylus 480 BCE

Aeschylus, the father of Western drama, a Greek who fought at the Battle of Marathon, knew a lot about wars, resistance to imperial armies, and the cruelty of wars of aggression launched by leaders with little consideration for the young men who are sent on missions of conquest — or the other young men, like him, who stood their ground and fought them.

I have read those lines so many times over the years that I know them by heart. They may even have informed the spirits of later war poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.

Aeschylus’s fine observations should give the Americans pause before, as we fear, they send boots and bodies into the valley of death on Kharg Island, the home to the oil so essential to Iran’s long-term survival as a viable state.

Another poet, Shakespeare, cautioned leaders like Trump and Macbeth against their “violent loves” which out-run “the pauser, reason”. Before he did the bloody deed Macbeth had enough insight to know that his actions would lead to uncontrollable consequences.

He understood that his actions were motivated not by love of kin or country but by vulgar self-interest.  He also realised that he stood “upon this bank and shoal of time” where “We still have judgement here”, meaning that there was still time to pause, to reconsider before the gates of hell opened and the dogs of war came rushing out.

I fear we are at such a moment — that a missile war will turn into a ground war and more. I also fear that like many presidents before him, Trump has neither the brains nor the humanity to step back.

Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf — or some other target the Americans choose to fling thousands of Marines at — may be the moment when we see a huge increase in servicemen dying for the US-Israeli Empire.  Throwing a first wave of Marines onto the sacrificial altar of Iran’s shores may be a deliberate act by Trump to dupe a gullible and patriotic US population into believing that more war, more killing is now justified.

US elites desperate
I hope not.  But the US elites are so dark and desperate that piles of Marine body bags may seem a good investment to swing the popular mood towards war. Again, I hope not. How long can people fall for this stuff?

Like the Greeks at Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis, the Iranians know the Empire will not turn back home unless compelled to do so.  Iranians, for their part, will fight with tremendous skill and courage to defeat the invaders. Nationalism – the love of one’s country — is such a powerful thing that, in the words of a compatriot of mine, “it banishes fear with the speed of a flame and makes us all part of the patriot game”.

But enough poetry, here are a few hard facts. Iran has a well-trained army of over 600,000 men. They have hundreds of thousands of militia members, many of them combat veterans of theatres like Syria and Iraq. They have 350,000 reservists. Yes, they have 1500 battle tanks, but likely more deadly to American forces are the thousands of artillery systems that are the centrepiece of Iran’s land defences and have yet to see action.

Wherever the Americans and Israeli invaders attack, hundreds of artillery pieces will be trained on them, thousands of drones will, as in the Russia-Ukraine war, make progress slow and bloody.

Every day the US President and Secretary of War tell us that Iran’s military potential has been, to use Trump’s favourite word, “obliterated”.  Every day the Iranians hit sites across the Middle East and have yet to deploy a single of their cruise missiles which US analysts say they hold in large numbers.

How, everyone is asking, could the Americans get to Kharg Island near the bottom of the pocket of the Persian Gulf?  If it is a seaborne assault, they might charge through the Strait of Hormuz, traveling 1000km along the Iranian coast in vessels under a blizzard of fire.

Or they could dispense with consent (geopolitical Epsteinism) and force an Arab country to submit to an expeditionary force moving through their territory.  Assembling the troops and the landing craft would be a huge, highly visible operation that would invite Iranian short-range missile and drone attacks that could wreak havoc before they even get near Iran.

Frightening way to land
Choppers and parachutes would be a frightening way to make land.

The Iranians have made clear, if the Americans come for Kharg Island, they will turn the region’s energy facilities into ashes. They showed their potential after the Israelis attacked the Pars gas field last week, striking back within a couple of hours and taking out 20 percent of the world’s biggest LNG production trains at Ras Laffan.

Hours after the US-Israelis attacked the Natanz nuclear facility (I thought that had been “obliterated” last year?), Iran pierced Israel’s missile defence shield and dropped a warning note — a massive missile — a few kilometres from Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant.  World energy will be in turmoil for years if the Americans attack and Iran makes good on their threats.

Alternatively, the US-Israeli invasion force might hit the beaches near the Pakistani-Iranian border — or somewhere entirely different.  There has been recent noise about smaller islands closer to the Strait of Hormuz. Wherever they choose, they will be met by Iranians who will be fighting on home territory and for their homeland.

Another consideration is the civilians. Kharg Island, for example, is home to 10,000 of them. As we have learnt over the decades – from Korea and Vietnam through to the genocide in Gaza – the US and Israelis have utter contempt for civilians’ lives.

For example, in the Russia-Ukraine war, child deaths represent somewhere between 1 percent and 3.6 pecent of the total killed in Ukraine in 2025, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and UNICEF.

The UN says about 43 civilians are killed per week in Ukraine. In Gaza, the UN Human Rights Office found that children and women accounted for nearly 70 percent of the total deaths, evenly split between women and children.

Nothing makes sense about the US attack on Iran. Nor do we really know what Trump has in mind for Kharg Island. If he succeeds in seizing it, will he ever willingly give it back?

There are clues. I will give the last word to Donald J Trump. In a televised address at CIA headquarters in 2017 Trump lamented that the US let the Iraqis hold on to their oil after the Gulf War.

“We should have kept the oil. But OK, maybe we’ll have another chance.”

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region, and is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. This article was first published on his Solidarity blog.

Political leaders and institutions have paid tributes for Lionel Jospin, the “father” of the 1998 Nouméa Accord, who died at the weekend aged 88.

Jospin was a socialist prime minister who played a significant role in supervising the signature of the 1998 Accord, which paved the way for increased autonomy for the French Pacific territory.

Ten years after the signing of the 1988 Matignon-Oudinot agreements which contributed to restoring civil peace after half a decade of quasi civil war, the Nouméa agreement was more focused on furthering the process.

• READ MORE: Other Kanaky New Caledonia reports

Its emphasis was to ensure a gradual transfer of more powers from Paris to Nouméa, the creation of a local “collegial” government, the setting up of three provinces (North, South and Loyalty islands) and the notion of “re-balancing” resources between the North of New Caledonia (mostly populated by the indigenous Kanak population) and the South of the main island, Grande Terre, where most of the economic power and population are based.

There was also the embryonic concept of a New Caledonia “citizenship”. One of the cornerstones of this re-balancing was the construction of the Koniambo nickel processing factory, in the North of the main island.

But the project is now dormant after its key financier, Glencore, decided to mothball the plant due to a mix of structural cost issues and the rise of other global nickel players, especially in Indonesia.

In 1988, the Matignon Accord was negotiated and signed by then French Socialist PM Michel Rocard.

Agreement signed
A decade later, it was under Jospin that the Nouméa agreement was signed between pro-France leader Jacques Lafleur and pro-independence umbrella leaders, including Roch Wamytan (Union Calédonienne).

The Nouméa Accord also designed a pathway and envisaged that a series of three referendums should be held to consult the local population on whether they wished for New Caledonia to become independent.

The three referendums were held between 2018 and 2021.

Although the pro-independence FLNKS called for a boycott of the third referendum in December 2021, the three results were deemed to have resulted in three refusals of the independence.

Since then, under the Accord, political stakeholders have attempted to meet in order to decide what to do under the new situation.

Since July 2025 and later in January 2026, negotiations took place and produced a series of the texts since referred to as “Bougival” and “Elysée-Oudinot”.

But the FLNKS has rejected the proposed agreements, saying this was a “lure” of independence and only purported to make New Caledonia a “State” within the French realm, with an associated “nationality” for people who were already French citizens.

Celebrated accord preamble
One of the most celebrated passages of the Nouméa Accord is its preamble, which officially recognises the “lights” and “shadows” of French colonisation.

The approval of the 1998 text came as a result of tense negotiations between the pro-independence FLNKS and, at the time, the pro-France RPCR was the only force defending the notion of New Caledonia remaining part of France.

RPCR has since split into several breakaway parties.

FLNKS has also split since the riots that broke out in May 2024, materialising a divide between the largest party Union Calédonienne (now regarded as more radical) and the moderate PALIKA and UPM pro-independence parties.

In 1998, some of Jospin’s key advisers were Christian Lataste and Alain Christnacht, who later served as High Commissioners of France in New Caledonia.

“He was someone who was negotiating, was discussing and who respected his interlocutors and the Kanak civilisation,” Nouméa Accord signatory Roch Wamytan told local public broadcaster NC la 1ère.

‘Obtaining solutions’
“He also had this method for obtaining solutions and a consensus, out of a contradictory debate”.

PALIKA party (still represented by one signatory, Paul Néaoutyine) also paid homage to Jospin, saying they would remember the late French leader as a “statesman”, a “man of his word” who managed to foster a “historic compromise”.

“Through the Nouméa Accord, he managed to see the realities of colonial history and open the way for emancipation,” the party stated in a release.

“The historic (Nouméa) accord was a major step in (New Caledonia’s) decolonisation and re-balancing process,” New Caledonia’s government said in an official release on Tuesday.

“It allowed to set the foundations of a common destiny between (New Caledonia’s communities, founded on the recognition of the Kanak identity and the sharing of skills”, the release went on, stressing the importance of a “climate of dialogue, respect and responsibility, which are essential for New Caledonia’s institutional and political construction”.

‘One of its greatest’ — Macron
In mainland France, tributes have also poured from all sides of the political spectrum.

French President Emmanuel Macron hailed “a great French destiny”.

“France is aware it has lost one of its greatest leaders,” former French President François Hollande wrote on social networks.

Manuel Valls, who was Overseas State Minister between December 2024 and late 2025, said as a young adviser in the late 1980s and later on, he had been inspired by both PMs Michel Rocard and Lionel Jospin when he was fostering negotiations and the resumption of talks between New Caledonia’s antagonist politicians in 2025.

The Nouméa Accord is still deemed valid until a new document is officially enshrined in the French Constitution.

Attempts to translate the Bougival-Elysée-Oudinot into a constitutional amendment are still underway in the coming days, this time through debates at the French National Assembly (Lower House), with a backdrop of parliamentary divisions and the notable absence of any conclusive majority.

In February 2026, the French Senate endorsed a Constitutional amendment bill to enshrine the project into the French Constitution.

But the text now required another endorsement from the Lower House, the National Assembly, and later another green light, this time from the National Assembly, then both Houses of the French Parliament (the Senate and the National Assembly, in a joint sitting of the French “Congress”.

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

Fiji’s human rights watchdog has warned that the country’s pro-Israel foreign policy and diplomatic engagement works against its international obligations and could be enabling “genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity” in Gaza.

The Fiji Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Commission (FHRADC) released a statement on Tuesday in response to the Fiji government announcing plans to establish a resident embassy for Israel in Suva.

The FHRADC said that the announcement “raises important questions” and is calling on the government to uphold its human rights obligations “in all aspects” of its diplomacy.

• READ MORE: Other Israeli-Fiji relations reports

As a state party to the Genocide Convention, Fiji is bound by international human rights law and international humanitarian law, the FHRADC said.

It added under the Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the country “is obligated to support international efforts to prevent genocide” and ensure those responsible for such crimes are held responsible.

“This includes ensuring that Fiji’s foreign policy and diplomatic relations do not assist, enable, or legitimise conduct by parties or states involved in serious violations of international law.”

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2024 said that claims are “plausible” that the rights of Palestinians in Gaza under the Genocide Convention are being “violated . . .  by Israel’s large-scale military operation in Gaza” a position firmly rejected by Israel, which has maintained its actions are necessary for self defence against Hamas.

“The duty to prevent genocide is a jus cogens obligation, a non-derogable principle of international law,” FHRADC commissioner Alefina Vuki said.

Legal responsibility
She said according to international law every state had “the legal responsibility to intervene and prevent the intentional or deliberate destruction of a group of people”, suggesting Fiji had failed to do this.

“No government can ever justify or excuse its failure to carry out this responsibility. States must ensure diplomatic relations that uphold, rather than undermine the duty to prevent genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity,” she said.

Fiji opened its permanent diplomatic post in Jerusalem in September last year.

Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said at the time that the opening of Fiji’s embassy in Jerusalem “reflects our desire to build bridges — not walls — between nations, cultures, and peoples”.

Fiji is one of a handful of countries to open a diplomatic mission in Jerusalem rather than Tel Aviv, which is controversial.

Diplomatic actions
According to FHRADC, the Fiji government has the “sovereign prerogative to determine bilateral relations”.

However, Vuki said Fiji must ensure that its “diplomatic actions do not violate international norms relating to occupation, self-determination, and the protection of civilian populations”.

“Any strengthening of bilateral relations must be carefully balanced against Fiji’s responsibilities as a member of the international community,” she said.

The FHRADC has offered to provide “independent and technical advice” to support the Fijian government with its foreign policy to keep it aligned to its international human rights commitments.

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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York, joined by, for the first time in six years except for yesterday, Juan González, also in New York. It’s great to be with you again, Juan.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Thanks, Amy. And welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.

As the US and Israel’s unprovoked war on Iran enters its 25th day, President Trump is claiming that Iran has begun negotiations with the United States, but the Iranian government has dismissed the claim as “fake news”, accusing Trump of trying to manipulate financial and oil markets.

Over the weekend, Trump threatened to, quote, “obliterate” Iranian power plants if Iran did not fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz by Monday night. But on Monday, Trump reversed course, extended his deadline to five days and repeatedly claimed the US was now in productive conversations with Iran.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: “With Iran, we’ve been negotiating for a long time. And this time, they mean business. And it’s only because of the great job that our military did, is the reason they mean business. They want to settle, and we’re going to get it done, I hope.”

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Earlier in the day, President Trump claimed he might personally take joint control of the Strait of Hormuz with Iran’s next ayatollah.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: “It will be jointly controlled.”

REPORTER: “By whom?”

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: “Maybe me. Maybe me.”

REPORTER: “You want the United States to be in control of the Strait of Hormuz?”

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: “Me and the ayatollah, whoever the ayatollah is, whoever the next ayatollah — look, and there’ll also be a form of a — a very serious form of a regime change.

“Now, in all fairness, everybody has been killed from the regime. They’re really starting off. There’s automatically a regime change.

“But we’re dealing with some people that I find to be very reasonable, very solid. The people within know who they are. They’re very respected.

“And maybe one of them will be exactly what we’re looking for. Look at Venezuela, how well that’s working out. We are doing so well in Venezuela with oil and with the relationship between the president-elect and us. And maybe we find somebody like that in Iran.”

AMY GOODMAN: Despite Trump’s claims of US-Iran negotiations, US Central Command says US forces, “continue to aggressively strike,” Iran.

Meanwhile, Iran has retaliated by striking other Gulf nations and Israel. Israeli officials said Iran has launched seven missile barrages since midnight, targeting Tel Aviv and other cities. The Israeli military said one of the missiles that hit Tel Aviv carried a 220-pound warhead. Israel’s Health Ministry said nearly 4800 people have been injured by Iran’s attacks on Israel since the war began.

We go now to London, where we’re joined by Daniel Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator under Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin. His recent piece for Zeteo is headlined “Why Netanyahu Duped Trump Into the Illegal War With Iran.”

Well, Daniel Levy, thanks so much for being with us again. Why don’t you explain that headline?

DANIEL LEVY: Well, good to be with you, Amy and Juan.

Netanyahu himself and other Israeli leaders, although he’s been at the helm for much of the last three decades, have, during an awfully long period, told us Iran is at the precipice of becoming a nuclear power.

By the way, we should always remind ourselves, Israel is the only nuclear-armed state in the region. But they’ve been telling us, “It’s imminent. We have to act now.” And they’ve been trying to pull successive American presidents into that war, to launch such a military campaign.

They’ve never succeeded. You have had American presidents across the decades, from whichever party has been in power, who have created an extremely indulgent, permissive environment for Israel in the region, and in particular when it comes to Israel’s consistent war crimes against the Palestinians.

What you have not had is a president who could be led into this kind of a military operation. And we’re seeing right now, in almost the last month of this war, precisely why. But this president is made of different stuff, less serious stuff, apparently, and Netanyahu saw his opportunity.

But the reason, I think, why this was of such significance for Netanyahu is we are in a new era. It’s not an era of a Pax Americana with — alongside all that indulgence of Israel, there were still certain brake mechanisms. This time, Israel sees us in an era of what I would call a Pax Greater Israel.

This is about how far Israel can extend its dominion, how much of a hard-power, dominant hegemon it can be in the region, seizing parts of Syria or of Lebanon, trying to finish an eradicationist approach to the Palestinians. And crucially, to do that, you have to weaken Iran militarily, to remove some kind of deterrent.

You can only do that with the US, so you need to pull the US into this war. If that means further accelerating American decline and even accelerating Israel’s loss of support in America, then it’s a price to pay. It’s kind of “use it or lose it,” because those things are happening anyway.

In saying all of this, I don’t want to suggest that America has no agency in this. There are things to do with the Trump administration, the neocons, the people who still have positions of influence in the US that have brought them into this. But that’s what Netanyahu is trying to achieve, to achieve Greater Israel, domination in the region, including the weakening of the Gulf, which is intentional, at the expense of America bleeding further reputational, political, economic assets in this war.

Trump’s ‘Israel First’ Iran War                       Video: Democracy Now!

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Daniel Levy, you’ve also written that, quote, “The idea that this is a war to serve American rather than Israeli interests resonates primarily in three spaces: the gullible, the true believers (especially of end times religious [thinking]), or those who are paid-up members of Israel’s echo chamber.” Could you elaborate?

DANIEL LEVY: Yes. I think there is a lot of attention being paid to this question of who does this serve. Now, you can make the case that you also have a US government that is locked into its own kind of logic of war.

You have, if I may suggest, a decline anxiety in the US. You have an attempt to reassert primacy and preponderance. I don’t think that is or can go well. You have Marco Rubio, for instance, telling the Europeans, “Join us in the next Western century of imperial domination.”

That can perhaps play out in the Western Hemisphere — the crime committed with the kidnapping of a leader in Venezuela, the illegal blockade on Cuba. But if you travel too far afield to find monsters to slay, and if you have an incoherent strategy and an incompetent administration implementing that strategy, then things are going to go very badly wrong, which was entirely predictable in this illegal war of choice launched by the US and Israel.

And therefore, if you look at this, and even if you factor in the attempt to assert American interest, this war would not have happened if Israel’s leader had not been there whispering in the president’s ear, making the case.

[There were] seven bilateral meetings in the first 13 months of the second Trump term between Trump and Netanyahu, two meetings in the eight weeks leading up to the launching of this illegal war, daily phone calls, we are told, now information coming out in The New York Times that the Mossad apparently bamboozled Americans with the idea that if you could decapitate some of the regime leadership, the Mossad could foment a coup on the streets, that you could arm Kurdish groups from the outside to take geographical parts of Iran to start dismantling the central state.

You really have to be, therefore, either extremely gullible, as I suggested, or a true believer that, well, this is high risk, but it’s worth it, because what maybe you’re ideologically committed to, the Greater Israel cause, maybe that comes from a place of evangelical dispensationalist belief in the end times, or you simply are part of an echo chamber whose wheels are greased very consistently.

And we see that play out over so many years in American politics. That’s what I’m suggesting. And I do think that the attempt to suggest this is more than Israel first, that somehow this serves America’s interest, are not going to go well, and Israel will pay a tremendous price for that over time.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you also — there appears to have been a shift in the last few days in how the Israeli government permits damage within Israel from Iranian attacks to be publicised by the press, because, clearly, during the first two weeks of the war, Israel essentially prevented any kind of images, from the US media especially, going out to the world.

Now, in the last few days, it’s almost as if Netanyahu and the government want their own people and the rest of the world to see some of this damage. I’m wondering your thoughts about this. Has there been a change in approach or tactics by the Israeli government?

DANIEL LEVY: So, I’m not so sure. I think it’s an interesting question to dwell upon. But what one might be seeing is an inability, and therefore a degradation of credibility if Israel tries to claim that none of this destruction is happening — in other words, an inability to prevent those images from coming out — when those strikes are now causing very significant damage. I don’t want to exaggerate that, either. I don’t think that is what causes this unnecessary war to come to an end.

But what one perhaps has to look to is, if you remember, early on in the war, one of the real questions, as this became a war of endurance, almost a war of attrition, was: Could the US and Israeli side sufficiently deplete Iran’s missile-launching capacity before Iran both sufficiently degraded the interception capacity on the Israeli and US side — so they have to be a bit more selective in terms of what they use the interceptors for, because they can’t take everything out and they are going to run out — and also Iran apparently holding back some of its heavier kit, because in its strategy, it assumed this could go on for a long time, and it had to have a plan for week one, week two, week three? And so, I think, to the extent to which we’re seeing more images, it is likely because that equation hasn’t played well for the US and Israel, and because we’re seeing more damage being done.

I think you have a war where Israel has a strategy. It’s an extremely ambitious overreach strategy in terms of not regime change, but regime collapse, state collapse, implosion, the dismantling of the Iranian state, where Iran has a strategy of escalating horizontally, testing American endurance and holding out and winning that way.

But I think you’d be really hard pushed to find a coherent strategy on the US side.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play a clip of President Trump speaking to reporters about US aims in negotiations.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: “No nuclear bomb, no nuclear weapon, not even close to it, low key on the missiles. We want to see peace in the Middle East. We want the nuclear dust.

“We’re going to want that, and I think we’re going to get that. We’ve agreed to that. … If this happens, it’s a great start for Iran to build itself back, and it’s everything that we want.

“And it’s also great for Israel, and it’s great for the other Middle Eastern countries.”

AMY GOODMAN: So, Daniel Levy, you are a former Israeli negotiator under two Israeli prime ministers. If you can respond to what he’s saying, and also to what Iran is saying, that the idea that there’s any negotiation going on is fake news intended to “manipulate financial and oil markets and to escape the quagmire in which America and Israel are trapped,” said the speaker of Iran’s parliament?

DANIEL LEVY: So, there are a couple of things going on here, and I want to try and disentangle those. First of all, the question of: Are negotiations taking place? And what I think is very clear is that there are channels of communication via third countries.

Those have been available all the time. Partly, one has to understand that countries in the region, who were not a party to launching this war nor to the decision to go to war, who, in fact, cautioned against this war, in the Gulf and elsewhere, they are feeling tremendous blowback and taking hits from this war, and they are keen to bring it to an end.

There may be some who, for some reason, still believe America can do the job and that they should trust America’s competence and coherence in attempting to do so. I think most are not in that camp. They know the cost is too high, and they are experiencing daily what it means to rely on America for your security, and the answer is not good.

So, there are a number of states, also beyond that — Türkiye has been super active, Pakistan, for instance, Egypt — who are maintaining open channels with both parties and obviously sending messages, because, by the way, the whole world is suffering from this — higher fuel, food, fertiliser prices, etc. So there are active channels. Are they talking directly? I don’t know. I doubt it. But I also think it doesn’t matter very much.

What matters is the question you kind of raise there, Amy, which is: Are these talks, first of all, intended to produce an outcome? Was this another American deployment of diplomacy as a ruse?

We saw in the lead-up to this war that America played with negotiations, attempted that as a distraction, but actually intended to go for the military option. So, is this trying to buy some time while the US waits for a third aircraft carrier, more of your taxpayer dollars, to be deployed in the West Asia-Middle East region?

Was this a Monday-morning pre-stock market intervention on the part of the president? Because if there’s one thing he does pay attention to, it’s that. So, was he trying to calm the markets, give himself a few more days, or is this a serious attempt to chart a path to deescalation?

If it is the latter, then that would have to include an acknowledgment that in negotiations you have to listen to the other side. You have to take into account their interests. If you go in with maximalist positions, often designed by the worst elements of maximalism in your administration and by the Israelis intentionally trying to make sure that talks cannot succeed, then — guess what — the talks won’t succeed.

So, if you think you can impose on Iran in these talks things that you couldn’t achieve in your military assault or things that they weren’t willing to accept beforehand, then the talks are doomed to fail.

The one thing that may be working to our benefit is not who might host these talks. It’s certainly not the fact that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff might be involved, because that would be very bad news indeed, given their record of failure, if they’re the only people.

But the one piece of good news is that the loose and perhaps nonexistent relationship between what Trump says and the realities out there in the real world, that relationship means that Trump can claim what he likes, because what we’re probably looking for is three victory speeches, given in Tehran, Jerusalem and Washington, DC.

They won’t align. They won’t match up. But they might allow for a cessation and then for some of these issues to be addressed afterwards.

But as long as that doesn’t happen, we still have to contend with the fact that Israel has been driving a lot of the escalatory logic in this war. It will continue to attempt to prevent a ceasefire. It’s not alone. There are certainly American sources trying to do that, as well.

Israel is still on the impunity high from its Gaza genocide, which has led us here. And we have to contend with the fact that each time you try and get a “mission accomplished” victory image, you might escalate, leading to a further cycle of escalation, and then that can collapse any putative path out of this.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Daniel Levy, we only have about a minute left, but I wanted to ask you — while the war is continuing in Iran and Israeli forces are in Lebanon, the settlers in the West Bank continue to perpetuate violence against Palestinians, and the IDF continues to attack Palestinians in Gaza. I’m wondering your sense of how this has basically faded from the international view while the war against Iran continues.

DANIEL LEVY: Well, I wish I could say that it needed the war in Iran in order to shift attention away from this, in order for Israel to be able to continue to not be held accountable and to get away with these daily violations of international law and with these appalling atrocities against the Palestinians, but it didn’t take the war.

Israel is doing that, and it will continue to do that unless and until it is held to account, it is contained and deterred. And, of course, you also see 1 million displaced in Lebanon and the attempt, apparently, to reestablish a zone of Israeli domination there, still in control of territory in Syria, as well.

But I also want to challenge this notion that the problem in the West Bank is the settlers. There is no armed settler militia without the IDF. The settlers roam the West Bank with the active backing of Israel’s military.

Occasionally, they may call a handful of people to account and say, “No. Stop.” But most of the occupation and the entrenchment of a matrix of control and an apartheid regime, that is run not by lone settlers. That is run by the Israeli state. That is run by the IDF.

It is the IDF and the Israeli state that run that regime of control, that also, as you mentioned, despite the so-called ceasefire, are in control of about 60 percent directly of Gaza, carrying out daily military assaults, daily killings of Palestinians in Gaza, still not allowing the necessary humanitarian assistance or shelter into Gaza, and, in parallel, conducting the largest military intervention in the West Bank, the largest displacement and destruction, often focused on refugee camps, like Jenin, Tulkarm, Nur al-Shams, that we have seen since 1967.

I think this will ultimately end very badly for Israel and generate tremendous blowback. But in the meantime, it is again the Palestinians bearing the brunt.

AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Levy, we want to thank you so much for being with us, president of the US/Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator under Israeli Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin. We’ll link to your piece in Zeteo, “Why Netanyahu Duped Trump Into the Illegal War With Iran.” You can follow Levy’s writings on his Substack.

Republished from Democracy Now! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

The legacy of nuclear testing in the Pacific is unfinished business. From the 1997 disappearance of journalist Jean-Pascal Couraud to the 2025 return of the Rainbow Warrior, these stories are part of a continuous struggle for justice.

In the Pacific, the “Atomic Age” and the climate crisis are not competing issues, they are the same fight for habitability and truth. To face our future, we must first address the lingering shadows of the past.

In “French” Polynesia, there are concerns about the mysterious fate of former anti-nuclear investigative journalist Jean-Pascal Couraud, known as “JPK” (his byline),  who was editor of the now closed Les Nouvelles de Tahiti newspaper.

Early in 2015, a judge upheld prosecution against three men accused of a kidnapping that led his death in Tahiti in 1997.

More than a decade earlier, JK’s family lodged an allegation of murder with the police following claims that he had been assassinated by a (now disbanded) local presidential militia. An investigating commission had alleged that three men, Rere Puputauki, Tino Mara and Tutu Manate, had abducted JK and dumped his body at sea.

• READ MORE: Other Eyes of Fire reports
• The Rainbow Warrior bombing 40 years on: re-energising for global peace
• Eyes of Fire website (Little Island Press)

Twenty two years later, the family are still waiting for justice, and fed up with France’s “investigation”. When the Rainbow Warrior bombing on 10 July 1985 is set against its broader political context in the Pacific, it can be seen that this event was much more than the dramatic, isolated episode against the Greenpeace flagship as portrayed by most New Zealand media.

An “Eyes of Fire” video project in 2015, which included more than 40 student journalists, also demonstrated the importance of a continuing interpretation of these events for the future of Aotearoa New Zealand and its citizens. The students looked back at the past, but were asking questions relevant to the present and future when they interrogated me and my Greenpeace colleagues involved in the Rongelap voyage.

My own baptism in French nuclear arrogance and perfidy was thanks to the late Swedish activist, researcher, and writer Bengt Danielsson, who was awarded the 1991 Right Livelihood Award for “exposing the tragic results… of French colonialism”. He and his wife Marie-Thérèse Danielsson wrote the classic and chilling books Moruroa, Mon Amour and Poisoned Reign.

In 2021, a French investigation team published a book and website that introduced new revelations about the nuclear testing programme and its health and environmental harm inflicted on Tahitians. The book, Toxique: Enquête sur les essais nucléaires français en Polynésie, by Sébastien Philippe and Tomas Statius, and the associated website Moruroa Files, were a forensic analysis of about 2,000 French government documents declassified in 2013.

Consistently lied about the tests
According to former Auckland University of Technology scholar Ena Manuireva, who was born in Mangareva (an atoll near the French nuclear testing sites of Moruroa and Fangataufa), these publications confirmed what Tahitian people already knew: “That since 1966, the French government has consistently lied about and concealed the deadly consequences of their nuclear tests, which they now seem to acknowledge, to the health of the populations and their environment.”

Following the third test after French nuclear bombs began in the Pacific, on 7 September 1966, local Tahitian lawmaker John Teariki challenged then French president Charles de Gaulle by saying: “No government has ever had the honesty or the cynical frankness to admit that its nuclear tests might be dangerous. No government has ever hesitated to make other peoples — preferably small, defenseless ones — bear the burden.”

“May you, Mr President, take back your troops, your bombs, and your planes.”

De Gaulle ignored the advice. And it took another 30 years and 190 further tests before France stopped its ruthless nuclear pollution in the Pacific.

France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) was reported in early 2025 to have spent 90,000 euros in a big public relations campaign in a vain attempt to discredit the research in Toxique and the Moruroa Files, according to documents obtained by the investigative outlet Disclose.

The CEA published 5000 copies of its booklet, titled ‘Nuclear tests in French Polynesia: why, how and with what consequences’ and distributed them across Oceania.

The Rainbow Warrior bombing, with the death of photographer Fernando Pereira, was a terrible tragedy. But a greater tragedy remains in the horrendous legacy of Pacific nuclear testing for the people of Rongelap, the Marshall Islands and “French” Polynesia; associated military oppression in Kanaky New Caledonia; and lingering secrecy.

New Zealand and the PIF states should now require full investigation of nuclear testing in French Polynesia and seek a more robust compensation programme than currently exists. New Zealand and the PIF states also need to take a less ambiguous position on decolonisation in the Pacific, give greater priority to that issue and seek a “re-energising” of the activities of the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation.

This is especially important in relation to “French” Polynesia, Kanaky New Caledonia and the end of the Bougainville transitional political autonomy period with a unilateral declaration of independence slated for 1 September 2027.

Decolonisation is also a critical issue that has a bearing on New Zealand’s relations with Indonesia, particularly over the six Melanesian provinces that make up the region known in the Pacific as “West Papua” and Indonesia’s growing politically motivated role in the region over climate change aid.

A massive new transmigration programme under current President Prabowo Subianto is taking place at the same time as Jakarta’s “ecocidal” deforestation regime intensifies in the Melanesian region with the destruction of millions of hectares of tropical rainforest.

“The wealth of West Papua — gas from Bintuni Bay, copper and gold from the Grasberg mine. Palm oil from Merauke — has been sucked out of our land for six decades, while our people are replaced with Javanese settlers loyal to Jakarta,” says a West Papuan leader, Benny Wenda.

Taking the lead
It is critically important that New Zealand and the PIF states take a lead from the Melanesian Spearhead Group — at least those states other than Fiji and Papua New Guinea, which have both been co-opted by Indonesian bribery through economic aid.

They should take a more pro-active stance on West Papuan human rights and socio-political development, with a view to encouraging a process of political self-determination and a new, more credible United Nations supervised vote replacing the 1968 “Act of No Choice”.

With regard to climate change issues, it is essential to address the lack of an officially recognised category for “climate refugee” under international law. It is also important to seek an international framework, convention, protocol and specific guidelines that can provide protection and assistance for people crossing international borders because of climate change.

The existing rights guaranteed refugees — specifically the right to international humanitarian assistance and the right of return — must be extended to “climate refugees” or climate migrants.

This issue should be acted on systematically and with a practical vision by the PIF with the Australian and New Zealand governments. Australia and New Zealand need to respond to Pacific Island States’ (PIS) concerns over climate change and global warming with a greater sense of urgency and resolve.

Regional and country specific climate change plans and policies are needed to deal with large numbers of Pacific refugees or climate-forced migrants, in the event of worsening climate-change scenarios in the future.

This is especially important for New Zealand, as a country with a significant Pacific population (442,632 — 8.9 percent, 2023 NZ Census) with island communities well integrated into the national infrastructure and as a country that is well placed to welcome more Pacific Islanders.

In April 2025, the New Zealand government announced plans to double defence spending as a share of GDP over the next eight years under its long-awaited Defence Capability Plan.

Trump-inspired global arms race
However, the priority appeared to be New Zealand joining a new Donald Trump-inspired global arms race while the country faced no threat, at the expense of the climate crisis, nuclear free and Pacific peace-making capacity that have forged the country’s global reputation.

Speculation was also rife about the possibility of New Zealand joining a second tier of the controversial AUKUS security pact between Australia, the UK and the US, which would raise geopolitical tensions with little benefit for the Pacific region.

As Marshall Islands Journal editor Giff Johnson has remarked, the people of Rongelap changed the course of history for Pacific nuclear justice by taking control of their destiny with the help of Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior.

However, the relocation of the islanders four decades ago has revealed that the legacy of nuclear tests remains unfinished business.

“In the current global turbulence, New Zealand needs to reemphasise the principles and values which drove its nuclear-free legislation and its advocacy for a nuclear-free South Pacific and global nuclear disarmament,” says former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark.

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

“On the fateful last voyage,” reflects Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Dr Russel Norman, “the crew of the Rainbow Warrior, look at us in black and white through the lens of time, and lay down the wero — the challenge. They faced down a nuclear threat to the habitability of the Pacific.

“Do we have the courage and wits to face down the biodiversity and climate crises facing humanity, crises that threaten the habitability of planet Earth?’

To Ngāti Kura kaumatua Dover Samuels, the Rainbow Warrior was “probably the biggest battleship that ever traversed the oceans of the world. But she wasn’t armed with guns, she was armed with peace”.

An edited extract from the final chapter of New Zealand journalist Dr David Robie’s recent book Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior marking the 40th anniversary of the bombing. He sailed with the Greenpeace crew to Rongelap Atoll for the evacuation of the nuclear health-damaged community and remained on board for 11 weeks. This article was first published by Greenpeace Aotearoa.

• David is speaking about the Rainbow Warrior and nuclear justice tomorrow, 24 March 2026, at Grey Lynn Library, 6-8pm, as part of EcoFest.

Both my son Franz and I have been arrested, separately, for suspected thought crimes relating to Palestine and Israel.

We dared to display in public the words, “from the river to the sea”, using or displaying such words now being illegal in Queensland.

I say “thought crimes” because neither of our displays mentioned Palestine or Israel. So obviously they can only conclude we must have been illegally thinking the “wrong thoughts” about this conflict.

• READ MORE: Dorothy Day House raided by police over ‘From the River to the Sea’ banner
• ‘From the river to the sea’ is being outlawed in Queensland. How will the slogan’s ban work, and will it be challenged?
• ‘From the river to the sea’: What does the Palestinian slogan really mean?
• Other Palestine reports

For nearly two years a group of us have been gathering weekly outside the office of Boeing in Brisbane, to draw attention to their terrorist activity in making missiles, fighter jets, attack helicopters and other weapons of mass destruction, used in present conflicts, especially the Gaza genocide.

When the Queensland government made it illegal to use the words “From the River to the Sea” in public, I went to the usual Wednesday action with a large placard saying “From the River to the Sea, Brisbane will be Free — of Boeing”.

Eventually police came and arrested me. My arresting officer asked me what the words on the banner meant. I gave him a good rave about Boeing and why we wanted them nowhere in Brisbane, from the river to the sea.

He took a while trying to get me to “incriminate” myself by making reference to Palestine etc. Eventually, after exposing the farcical nature of the law, I was happy do so.

Interrogated by ‘anti-terrorism squad’
He took me to the watchhouse where I was interrogated about my thought crimes by the “Anti-terrorism squad” (that is not a joke by the way).

This gave me a good chance to explain why we wanted Boeing out of Brisbane, and a lot more — about free speech, terrorism, nonviolence, etc. After an hour and a half they let me go.

I go to court on the April 14.

Now, 42 hours later at 7am, the same ever vigilant anti-terrorism squad raided Dorothy Day house of hospitality, with a team of eight officers.

Franz immediately confessed to his thought crimes, and actual crimes of displaying a banner on the side of the house reading, “From the river to the sea — come and get us [Premier] Crisafulli”.

Now I guess it is an exaggeration to call this elite squad “ever vigilant”, as the banner had been on the wall of the house for over a week. And, being on a main road and very visible from said road, there is no telling how many innocent citizens may have been infected by the thought crimes emanating from it.

Once at Dorothy Day house, the police searched all the rooms for? Hmm, illegal thinking maybe.

Phone and laptop confiscated
Anyhow, as I said, Franz broke down and confessed, so they eventually left everyone else alone. They confiscated Franz’s phone and laptop — probably the main reason for the raid.

They also took the banner and the very paints used to commit the crime. I asked Franz if they took the paper placed under the banner during the painting process. But they did not.

Now, they could find out a lot of information from Franz’s phone and laptop. They could find out who were being infected by these thought crimes, and how far they were spreading.

Perhaps they could investigate the words of the songs on Franz’s laptop sung by his church choir, to see if there was anything about rivers or seas. Perhaps, with names and phone numbers of his fellow choir members they could instigate more raids. (I know for a fact some choir members weren’t even born in Australia!)

In the end the police told Franz they would let him know next Tuesday, if or what he would be charged with.

You can read the ABC news report of the raid of Dorothy Day house here. You can also see him interviewed on Brisbane’s Channel Ten news on March 20 (if you can find it — ABC Tiktok video removed).

So there you have it. Another week in the state’s never ending battle against terrorism. Or is it a battle against a few pathetic people who believe they are the ones resisting terrorism?

Is it terrorism to say “from the river to the sea”, or is it terrorism to slaughter tens of thousands of innocents with the help of Boeing, Pine Gap and the Australian government? You decide.

Jim Dowling is a human rights, free speech and anti-war activist from Brisbane, Australia.

In recent days, Israel and the United States have expressed outrage over the deliberate and indiscriminate targeting of civilians and civilian residences and infrastructure in Israel and the Gulf by Iranian forces.

They have cited the illegality of such attacks, urged global condemnation, and demanded that human rights organisations speak out.

Having spent years weakening the laws meant to protect civilians, they are now discovering that those same laws are too fragile to protect their own people.

• READ MORE: Trump threatens attacks on Iran power plants over Strait of Hormuz closure
• Israel – the parasite state sabotaging peace in the Middle East
• Other US-Israeli war on Iran reports

Israeli and US officials seem unaware that the crimes they now condemn are ones they themselves have long justified as legitimate military actions.

Take cluster munitions. Following Iran’s reported use of these indiscriminate weapons on March 9 around Tel Aviv, Israeli officials condemned their use in populated areas.

“The Iranian regime is firing cluster bombs at Israeli civilians. Their deliberate and repeated use against civilians shows that the Iranian terror regime is seeking to maximise civilian deaths and harm,” declared Israel’s Foreign Ministry, which provided an infographic explaining how the weapon — banned by 124 countries — is inherently indiscriminate.

The Pentagon echoed the criticism, with Admiral Brad Cooper, the chief of US Central Command, condemning Iran’s use of “inherently indiscriminate” cluster munitions.

4 million cluster munitions
Yet in 2006 Israel fired more than four million cluster munitions into southern Lebanon, turning large swaths of the country into a no-go zone while insisting their use was a military necessity.

Unexploded cluster munitions continue to terrorise Lebanese civilians, maiming and killing at least 400 people as they detonated years after the war. Israel reportedly resumed using cluster munitions in Lebanon in 2025 but would neither confirm nor deny doing so.

Israel’s vast use of these weapons in 2006 helped spur the 2010 Convention on Cluster Munitions, banning them as inherently indiscriminate. Yet Israel and the United States — along with Russia and Iran — have refused to ratify the treaty, insisting they may be used legitimately in wartime.

In 2023 and 2024, the Biden administration shipped large quantities of cluster munitions to Ukraine despite warnings that unexploded ordnance would endanger civilians for decades to come. The consequences are now clear — having challenged the ban on these weapons, Israel now finds its own civilians under attack from them.

Iranian attacks on Israeli and Gulf civilian infrastructure — from residences to schools to water desalination plants — have drawn similar condemnations as unlawful attacks on civilians, even though such strikes have been preceded or followed by unlawful attacks on Iranian civilians and infrastructure.

On March 8, the United Nations Security Council issued a resolution singling out Iranian attacks on civilians for condemnation, even though Israeli and US forces had also struck a girls’ school, civilian residences, and an Iranian water desalination plant, among other civilian sites.

Even AIPAC chimed in, bemoaning that Iran was “killing civilians” in Bahrain following a strike that killed a young woman on March 9.

Condemnations ring hollow
These condemnations ring hollow in the wake of Israel’s vast destruction of residential buildings, schools, universities, and agricultural lands in Gaza, leaving the territory buried under 61 billion tons of rubble and largely uninhabitable, and more than 75,000 people, the majority women and children, dead.

For more than three years since its latest war in Gaza, Israel has defended its assault on Palestinian civilians as military necessity, blamed Hamas for “starting” the war, and rejected condemnations as products of bias and antisemitism.

Israeli and US officials have gone further still, at times rejecting very applicability of international law. “I don’t need international law,” asserted President Donald Trump earlier this year; adding “my own morality” is “the only thing that can stop me”.

For its part, Israel rejects the status of Palestine as occupied territory under the Geneva Conventions and the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force; both US and Israeli officials reject the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

“Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth has suggested dispensing with international humanitarian law altogether, declaring that the United States should employ “maximum lethality, not tepid legality” and give “no quarter, no mercy to our enemies” — rhetoric that, when applied in an armed conflict, constitutes a war crime.

Such contempt for international law may seem convenient for states that believe their power shields them from consequences.

Weakened rules an invitation
But in a world where destructive force is widely distributed, weakening the rules meant to protect civilians invites others to do the same. The result is not greater security but a downward spiral in which every side claims necessity while civilians pay the price.

International humanitarian law was never meant to protect only one side’s people. It protects civilians precisely because it binds all parties equally.

When powerful states defy those rules, they do more than harm their adversaries; they weaken the only framework that can protect their own civilians in return. If governments truly want to safeguard their people, the answer is not selective outrage but consistent compliance — uphold the law, apply it universally, and defend it even when it constrains your own actions.

Sarah Leah Whitson is the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now and formerly executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division. Republished from Common Dreams under a Creative Commons licence.

You can’t make this stuff up. The President of the United States, while sitting next to the Japanese Prime Minister in the Oval Office, just celebrated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

When asked by a Japanese reporter on Friday why the US didn’t consult with allies before launching the surprise attack on Iran, Trump said: “One thing you don’t want is to signal too much. We went in very hard — and we didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise.”

• READ MORE: Trump threatens attacks on Iran power plants over Strait of Hormuz closure
• Israel – the parasite state sabotaging peace in the Middle East
• Donald Trump makes Pearl Harbour joke in front of Japan’s Prime Minister
• Other US-Israeli war on Iran reports

Then, turning to Sanae Takaichi, he said: “Who knows better about surprise than Japan?” Moments before, sitting on the plush lemon chair in the gold-encrusted Oval Office, Takaichi had been smiling from ear to ear.  Trump wiped the smile off her face with one question:

“Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?” By now the Prime Minister was squirming uncomfortably. Trump looked straight at her and said:  “Okay, RIGHT? He [the journalist] is asking me, do you believe in surprise?

“I think you much more so than us. And we had a surprise, and because of that surprise, we probably knocked out 50 percent — and much more than we anticipated doing. So if I go and tell everybody about it, it is no longer a surprise.”

For more than 80 years the US has claimed a moral high ground on the basis of its rejection of “sneak attacks”. In one rhetorical flourish Trump exposed the jarring desolation of what the US now stands for.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech was delivered on December 8, 1941, following Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbour the day before.

Responding to ‘unprovoked’ sneak attack
Roosevelt, like President Pezeshkian of Iran today, was responding to an “unprovoked” sneak attack.  President Roosevelt pointed out that negotiations were ongoing and, for him, the aggressor’s conduct was false, deceptive and below contempt:

“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

As with President Pezeshkian of Iran today, Franklin Delano Roosevelt drew the obvious conclusion: the nation was facing an existential threat.

“The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.”

Last week, I interviewed US Ambassador (ret) Chas Freeman who emphasised that the Iranians fully understood that the US-Israeli war machine launched against them would not stop unless compelled to do so.

For the Iranians, the goal is nothing less than to drive the Americans out of the region. To understand the intensity of their determination simply hear the words of FDR from 1941:

“No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.”

I would remind US President Donald Trump that in referencing that other sneak attack he might have paused to ask: “Who won that war in the end?”

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand, and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. This article was first published on his website www.solidarity.co.nz

When Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, was assassinated in the opening stages of the US-Israeli war against Iran, I didn’t mourn.

Khamenei was not someone who deserved to be mourned notwithstanding my contempt for the increasing use of assassination by aggressor nations; in this case the United States and Israel.

Having said this, had either US President Donald Trump or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu been assassinated I would have “not mourned” them even more.

• READ MORE: How should NZ respond to the US bombing Iran
• Trump poses headache for NZ
• Luxon’s fumbling, floundering response
• Risky Iran attack gamble
• Government response a disgrace

On the other hand, along with thousands of residents in the Iranian city of Minab a mass funeral, I did privately mourn for the at least 165 schoolgirls and staff killed in the opening hours of the US-Israeli strikes when one of their missiles hit a girls’ elementary school.

Two words distinguish Iran from United States and Israel
Understanding what distinguishes Iran from both the United States and Israel begins with two uncomplimentary words — repression and genocide.

Repression is the action of subduing someone or something by force. This can include suppressing thoughts or desires in people so that they remain unconscious. Iran’s theocratic political system is unquestionably repressive.

If, in some way, you question the regime or the governing values enough there is a high risk of repression. Keep your head down and you are likely to be safe. If not then you are likely to be in danger.

In contrast, genocide is the deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of a large number of people from a particular national or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.

Genocide a characteristic of Israel and US government policies
Israel’s policy of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homeland now incorporates genocide as the main means of achieving this objective, particularly in Gaza which is there for all to observe.

While Israel is the practitioner of genocide in Gaza, the United States is the enabler and main funder. This is in terms of both funding weapons supplies and political support for Israel’s brutal military occupation of this small remaining piece of Palestinian land.

Without this US support there would be no genocide in Gaza; like the West Bank, just ongoing repression.

While it is right to condemn repressive actions by the Iranian government, it is mindbogglingly immoral for these genocide supporting governments to make any judgment call on Iran, let alone declare war on the country.

Understanding the Islamic Republic
As discussed above, the Islamic Republic is a repressive government towards those who oppose it in some public way. But repression is not its only characteristic.

Iran is a highly diverse nation. While 61 percent of its population are Persian, there are more than 20 ethnic groups in total. Major minority groups include Azeris (16-24 percent), Kurds (7-10 percent), Lurs (2-6 percent), Baloch (2 percent), Arabs (1-3 percent) and Turkmens (2 percent).

As many as 99 percent of Iranians in the Republic are Muslim, predominantly Shia (90-95 percent) with the remainder comprising the Sunni minority.

While the Islamic Republic state is dominated by Shia Islam, there are recognised minority religions which are granted reserved parliamentary seats. These include Christianity, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism.

An exception is the Baháʼí faith, a world religion was founded in the 19th century mainly in Iran. It may be the second largest non-Muslim religion in the country.

Many Iranian Baháʼí have a previous Muslim background and are subjected to persecution. However, this is an inherited persecution that goes back to the mid-19th century.

Iran is not repressive towards minority ethnic groups because of their ethnicity. Azeris, for example, are not repressed because they are Azeris; only if they “put their heads above the barricades” so to speak.

The same can be said for Sunni Muslims and non-Muslim religions, except for Baháʼí whose repression is historical, predating the Islamic Republic by over a century.

But if the Republic is only seen as despotic, then an entire historical legacy explaining so much more than this is lost.

Iran is home to one of the world’s oldest continuous major civilisations, with historical and urban settlements dating back to the 5th century BC.

In spite of invasions by foreign powers, such as the Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols, the Iranian national identity was repeatedly asserted and preserved despite several changes in its dynastic empires.

The Pahlavi dynasty legacy
In 1925, Reza Khan established the Pahlavi (and last) dynasty. Following a military coup he became the new dynasty’s first Shah. In 1941, however, he was overthrown with his son Mohammad-Reza  becoming the second and last Pahlavi Shah.

Initially there were hopes of a constitutional monarchy. However, in 1951. Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq got sufficient parliamentary support to nationalise the British-owned oil industry.

In response, Mosaddeq was briefly removed from power in 1952. But, due to a popular uprising in support of him, he was quickly but reluctantly reappointed by the Shah. This enabled Mosaddeq to briefly exile the Shah in 1953 after surviving a subsequent failed military coup.

However, in August 1953, Mosaddeq was deposed by a successful US-supported military coup that was also actively supported by Britain.

The Shah then returned to power ruling Iran as a brutal autocracy with strong US support until the 1979 revolution and the Shah’s final overthrow.

Oil was central to the Shah’s policies. His government entered into agreement with an international consortium of foreign companies which ran the Iranian oil facilities for the next 25 years, splitting profits 50-50 with Iran. However, Iran was not allowed to audit the companies’ accounts or have members on their board of directors.

The Iran that the Islamic Republic inherited in 1979, on the one hand, had never been colonised; unlike much of Africa and Asia, for example. It had a proud national identity. On the other hand, under the Pahlavi dynasty, particularly in its last 25 years. it had become subservient to the United States and the oil companies.

The Shah’s autocratic regime was overthrown by a powerful mass popular movement. Among the forefront of this unstoppable movement were those that came to lead the new Islamic Republic.

The republic was the consequence of this popular will. While today there is strong internal Iranian opposition to the leadership of the Republic, there is also strong internal support for it

In 1979, Iran’s political system had changed from an autocracy to a theocracy. But there was more to it than this.

The hated legacy, under the last Shah, of the interests of Iranians being subservient to that of US imperialism, was powerful. In no small part this shaped the Islamic Republic’s politics. It was reinforced by US support for Iraq’s protected war against Iran in the 1980s.

Further, whereas the Shah held openly expressed racist views on Arabs, the republic saw it differently.

In particular, it intuitively supported Palestinian self-determination which put it at odds with Zionist Israel.

Iran also empathised with countries with quite different political systems, such as secular Cuba, that had been subjected to continuing US hostility and shared Iran’s antipathy towards US imperialism and supported for Palestine.

While your enemy’s enemy may not be your friend, nevertheless there may be principled shared interests.

Understanding the United States and its imperialism
Imperialism put simply is a policy of extending a powerful country’s economic power, exploitation of, and influence over other countries. Historically this has been through colonisation, invariably by the use of military force.

Historically the biggest imperialist power was the British Empire which, by the early 20^th century, included much of Africa and Asia (and beyond).

The United States is now the world’s strongest imperialist power.

The United States began as an imperialist power in the early 20th century, particularly in Central America, the Caribbean, and the Philippines. Since the Second World War it has become, by far, the biggest imperial power reinforced by the most powerful military.

Put simply, capitalism is an economic system relentlessly driven by the maximisation of wealth accumulation. Imperialism is the highest and most extensive form of capitalism.

In this context, particularly since 1953, Iran under the Pahlavi dynasty was a complicit pawn willingly exploited by US imperialism.

This ended in 1979 by the popular will that led to the establishment of the Islamic Republic; something US imperialism has never forgiven and the republic has never forgotten.

In other words, the US-Islamic Republic relationship is a recipe for continuous conflict and has reached its highest point with the current US-Israel initiated war.

False confusing justifications for the US-Israel war
The failure of the United States (and Israel) to acknowledge the above discussed escalating conflict to the point of outright war between them and the Islamic Republic has led to their muddled and changing false justifications for the war.

The truth of the matter is that the war centres on the republic’s firm opposition to US imperialism and support for Palestinian self-determination. The use of deceitful justifications is a public relations attempt to fudge this truth.

One false argument is that Iran was close to developing nuclear weapons. However, in the short war last June, the US and Israel boasted that they destroyed Iran’s nuclear weapons capability.

What is the lie — what they said then or what they now say? More likely it is both. After all Israel is the only country possessing nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Further, unlike Iran, it isn’t a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In fact, there is only one nuclear power in Middle East — Israel. But while Israel is ignored, Iran hypocritically is the focus of deceitful accusations and intense pressure, and now war.

Another false justification is that the US, in particular, wants to save Iranian lives by ending the repression. It is barely worth the time rejecting this claim from supporters and practitioners of genocide.

Further their bombing has already killed more than 1400 Iranians (a reported 30 percent are children) and rising. More than 17,000 have been injured including over 1000 children. Hypocrisy at its peak.

A related occasional justification is restoring democracy. But the Islamic Republic is more democratic than the outright autocracy it replaced and no less democratic than the ruthless US ally Saudi Arabia; admittedly they are both low thresholds.

Perhaps the most damming indictment of the claimed justifications is the recent resignation of Donald Trump’s Director of the National Counterterrorism Centre, Joe Kent.

Explaining this dramatic decision, Kent referred to his concerns about the justification for military strikes in Iran. These included that, despite Trump’s claims, there was no imminent threat from Iran and that the US was “manipulated” by Israel.

Consequently Kent advised that he “cannot in good conscience” back the Trump administration’s war against Iran. Both optimistically and bravely he urged the President to end it.

In fact, Trump’s disingenuousness and underestimation of the strength of Iranian resistance and fightback have made a ceasefire improbable for some time.

Iran already agreed to a ceasefire in June. But the US and Israel broke it even though diplomacy discussions were underway.

US, Israel can’t be trusted
Why would Iran agree to another ceasefire just to give the US and Israel enough time to regroup and start another war against a combative but weakened Iran.

Iran now believes that the US and Israel can’t be trusted and it would be better to try to further weaken them instead. After all, what does Iran have to lose!

Words like reaping and sowing come to mind!

Since the mid-1980s successful New Zealand governments have had an independent foreign policy.

However, especially under the current government, we have drifted back towards being aligned with our former position of being a United States lapdog.

This observable drift was further escalated by the government’s response through Prime Minister Christopher Luxon (in an embarrassingly mashed way) and Foreign Minister Winston Peters.

In summary, while maintaining a loud silence on the US-Israeli bombing of Iran, they condemned Iran’s own bombing response in those neighbouring Arab countries with US military bases.

These US bases would be akin to Iran having its own military bases in Canada and/or Mexico (perhaps Cuba; just saying).

There has been considered media coverage of the government’s response to the war beginning with Bryce Edwards’ Democracy Briefing (March 1): How should NZ respond to the US bombing Iran.

Christopher Luxon fumbles and flounders in toe-cringingly style  

Edwards was followed by two Sam Sachdeva Newsroom articles (March 2 and 3): Trump poses headache for NZ and Luxon’s fumbling, floundering response.

To complete this considered coverage was international relations expert Professor Robert Patman, also in Newsroom (March 3): Risky Iran attack gamble.

However, it took former Prime Minister Helen Clark to demonstrate the type of political leadership we deserved to have (having herself demonstrated this over the disastrous US-led war in Iraq nearly two decades ago).

Her uncompromising criticism of the government’s response included calling it a “disgrace” (March 1): Government response a disgrace.

While Clark didn’t use the term “lapdog” to describe the government’s position, if she had she would have been right.

Repressed by Iranian government – but terrified of regime collapse
The insights of Iranians critical of the Islamic Republic’s repressive nature but even more critical of the US-Israel bombing of Iran are invaluable.

Below is an extract from a Facebook post (March 2) from an Iranian man’s YouTube channel. Consistent with the theme of my comments above, this Iranian expresses the paradox Iranians involuntarily now find themselves in — caught between an internal repressive regime and external narcissistic warmongers.

In his words:

“As an Iranian, I can tell you the situation is no longer just political — it’s existential. We are trapped between two collapsing structures: one internal, one external. On one hand, we face a deeply dysfunctional government, led by the Supreme Leader and the Islamic Republic’s unelected institutions.

“Decades of economic mismanagement, suppression of dissent, and brutal ideological control have alienated multiple generations. No one believes in reform anymore — because every attempt has either been co-opted or crushed.

“But here’s the paradox: We are also terrified of regime collapse — because we’ve watched the aftermath of Western intervention in countries like Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan. Each was promised freedom; each descended into chaos, civil war, or foreign occupation.

“So no, we don’t trust the US or Israel. Not because we support our regime — but because we know how imperial powers treat ‘”liberated” nations in the Middle East.

“Freedom, in their language, often means vacuum, fire, and permanent instability. Right now, many Iranians live with three truths at once: The Islamic Republic is morally and politically bankrupt. The alternatives offered by foreign actors are not liberation — they’re collapse.

“A bad government is survivable. No government is not. We are not silent because we agree. We are cautious because we’ve learned — too well — what happens when superpowers decide to “help”.

“In a sentence: Iran is a nation held hostage by its own regime, but haunted by the fate of its neighbors. We are stuck in a house we hate, surrounded by fires we fear more.”

The final word — and what a word it is
Sahar Delijani is an Iranian American author most known for her internationally acclaimed debut novel, Children of the Jacaranda Tree. It has been translated into 32 languages and published in more than 75 countries.

In her own courageous and insightful words:

I was born in an Iranian prison. My parents were held in their jails. My uncles lie in their mass graves.

Nothing you can tell be about the crimes of the Iranian regime that I haven’t lived in blood and bone.

That does not mean that I want my people bombed, maimed, killed, their homes in ruins.

If your vision of liberation is only through the destruction of innocent lives, then it’s not freedom you’re after.

These words are more than eloquence; more than heart rendering. They convert complexity into simplicity; they are powerful; they speak truth to power.

They deserve to be the last word in this article.

Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.

A global coalition of activists is preparing to launch the largest ever flotilla of aid ships aimed at breaking Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza.

The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), made up of civil society and grassroots groups from South Africa, Spain, Ireland, Türkiye, Norway, Brazil, France — and Aotearoa New Zealand — is planning to sail again in spring this year.

In October 2025, Israeli forces kidnapped the crew members of 41 aid ships as they approached the shores of Gaza.

• READ MORE: Kia Ora Gaza and NZ’s contribution to the blockade busters
• Activists announce new, bigger aid flotilla to set sail for Gaza in March
• Other Gaza Freedom Flotilla reports

Activist Greta Thunberg and Novara Media contributor Kieran Andrieu were among those detained for several days and subjected to violence and abuse by guards that they said amounted to torture.

Organisers did not specify how many ships would be involved this time, but in February the Nelson Mandela Foundation said there would be more than 100 boats.

Mandela’s grandson, Mandla Mandela, was among those who took part last year.

“Following the sailing of FFC’s Madleen boat in June 2025, a wave of new initiatives emerged, expanding the movement into a broader international effort to send not just one boat, but fleets, and not just a mission, but a coordinated, sustained challenge to Israel’s siege and violent settler colonial policies,” the FCC said in a statement.

“Our actions aim to uphold international law and to support the Palestinian people’s rights to freedom of movement, self-determination, and dignity.

“With our governments fueling genocide and failing to uphold their legal and moral obligations, the people of global civil society are rising together in larger and larger numbers.”

Despite agreeing to a ceasefire in October last year, Israel has continued its genocide in Gaza, attacking and killing civilians there on an almost daily basis, while severely restricting the entry of food, medicine and other essentials into the strip.

“This flotilla is collective action on a massive global scale — uniting activists, legal experts, parliamentarians, medical professionals, engineers, artists, journalists, and other people of conscience across the world,” the FCC said.

Joshua Carroll is a writer and journalist, and a contributor to Novara Media.

#MyAgendaSumud#GlobalMovementtoGaza#gazzesanageliyoruz#globalsumudflottilla pic.twitter.com/NX1mdhC0Vo

— GlobalSumudflotilla (@1ElegantFriends) October 1, 2025

When the Strait of Hormuz closes, you don’t need to be a military analyst to understand what just happened. You only need to understand what the world runs on.

Oil. Gas. Shipping lanes. Insurance rates. Container schedules. Energy prices that decide whether factories hum or go dark, whether households heat or freeze, whether governments fall or survive.

This is why serious analysts have been saying for years that Hormuz is not a “threat” Iran invented for propaganda; it is a structural red line that the US and its allies kept treating like a bluff because they could not imagine a regional actor actually pulling the lever that exposes a vulnerability — dependence.

• READ MORE: Iran vows ‘revenge’ for Larijani, Soleimani; 2 killed in attacks on Israel
• Thousands urge NZ prime minister Luxon to condemn illegal US-Israeli war on Iran
• As Israel keeps bombing Iran, Palestinians face growing violence in West Bank
• Trump scolds allies over Strait of Hormuz operation; UAE closes airspace
• Chris Hedges: The world according to Gaza – it’s only the start
• War on Iran: Australia should put trust in its neighbours not a modern Titanic rogue state
• Other US-Israel War on Iran reports

And this is why what we are watching now is a massive US miscalculation that will be studied later the way the Iraq invasion is studied today, with the same disbelief that decision-makers could be so arrogant, so blind, and so certain that the other side would fold.

Because Washington didn’t only miscalculate Iran’s will. It miscalculated geography, logistics, and blowback. It miscalculated the fact that the US empire in the Middle East is not a fortress; it is a web of exposed arteries: bases scattered across Gulf monarchies, troops housed in predictable locations, air defenses that are expensive and finite, radars and communications nodes that can be degraded, and a regional order that can be shaken with one choke point.

You can see the arrogance in the assumptions. For years, Iran warned that if its survival is threatened — if the US and Israel push the conflict into an existential zone — Hormuz becomes part of the battlefield. Washington heard that and filed it under “Iranian theatrics,” because the American political class is addicted to the idea that their enemies always bluff, while they alone possess the right to act.

But Iran was not bluffing. Iran was describing the rules of an environment where deterrence is the only language that keeps you alive.

Hormuz was always the red line
The Strait of Hormuz is the world economy’s pressure point, and the fact that it remained open for years was not proof of Western strength. It was proof that Iran understood escalation control, because keeping Hormuz open — even while under sanctions, sabotage, assassinations, and constant threats — was Iran’s way of signaling restraint.

The West interpreted that restraint as weakness.

That’s the miscalculation.

Washington assumed Iran would keep absorbing blows, keep taking “limited strikes,” keep responding in contained ways, because Washington has lived for decades inside a fantasy where escalation is something the US controls.

But in a real war environment, you don’t get to decide the boundaries alone. The other side gets a vote. And Iran’s vote is written in the geography of the Gulf.

Iran’s ‘Samson option’
I used the phrase “Samson option” not to be dramatic, but to describe the logic of a state pushed into a corner: if the enemy wants you neutralised, disarmed, and humiliated, you don’t respond only with missiles; you respond with the full spectrum of leverage you possess — military, diplomatic, economic, and psychological.

Iran’s leverage is not limited to striking targets. It includes making the war economically unbearable for everyone who enabled it. It includes turning a regional conflict into a global cost spiral. It includes demonstrating that the “free flow of energy” is not a natural law; it is a contingent privilege that can evaporate when a state is pushed past its red lines.

This is what the West still struggles to internalise. It thinks deterrence is only about bombs and bases. Iran thinks deterrence is about making aggression unaffordable.

And Hormuz is how you make it unaffordable.

The three “solutions” don’t solve anything
Once Hormuz becomes the choke point, you immediately hear the same three proposals recycled through Western media.

First: “military escorts”: The idea that you can escort tankers through the most militarised, most surveilled, most missile-saturated corridor on earth as if this is a piracy problem. But escorts do not remove risk; they merely concentrate it.

They turn commercial shipping into military convoys, and that increases the probability of a clash that escalates further. You can escort 10 ships. Can you escort everything, every day, indefinitely, under constant threat? And at what cost in interceptors, drones, naval assets, and insurance panic?

Second: “ceasefire”: The idea that Washington can call a pause and re-freeze the conflict after crossing lines that Iran considers existential. But a ceasefire is not a magic reset button; it is a negotiation outcome.

And Iran is no longer interested in ceasefires that reproduce the same cycle: war, negotiations, pause, then war again. Iran has learned — painfully — that diplomacy has been weaponised against it.

Third: “capitulation”: The fantasy that Iran will disarm itself and accept a future where it is strategically naked. This is the most delusional solution of all, because it assumes Iranians are incapable of reading the regional record.

Iraq disarmed and was invaded. Libya dismantled its programme and was destroyed. Syria gave up its chemical file and was still ripped apart. In that record, capitulation is not peace. Capitulation is an invitation.

So no, none of the three “solutions” solves the crisis. They only reveal the empire’s problem: it assumed it could impose costs without paying them.

Even The New York Times admits miscalculation
One of the most interesting developments is how even mainstream reporting — carefully framed, carefully sourced — has begun to concede what was obvious from day one: the Trump administration and its advisers miscalculated Iran’s response.

The New York Times, in the sections I cited, points to something the propaganda refuses to admit: Iran is not acting like a decapitated regime. Iran is adapting. It is learning. It is targeting vulnerabilities, not staging symbolic retaliation.

It is degrading key radar and air defence systems, hitting communications infrastructure, and shifting the battlefield away from the tidy “Israel–Iran” framing into a wider map that includes US assets and allies across the Gulf.

That matters because for years the West comforted itself with the idea that the Iranian response would be predictable and containable. The NYT reporting suggests the opposite: Iran is adjusting its tactics as the campaign evolves, hitting systems that matter to US coordination and defence, and doing so without the old “ample warning” pattern that allowed the US to frame everything as controlled.

In other words, Iran is making the environment less manageable for the US, which is exactly what deterrence looks like when you cannot match the empire symmetrically.

The miscalculation wasn’t only military
There is another layer that people avoid saying out loud, but it’s central: the US and Israel did not only miscalculate Iran’s missiles; they miscalculated Iran’s society.

Even Iranians who dislike the Islamic nature of their political system can still connect a basic dot: wherever America and Israel intervene, the country becomes worse.

People don’t need to love their government to recognise a foreign assault on their nation. This is why the fantasy of “decapitation + instant uprising” is so dangerous: it projects Western wishful thinking onto a society that is being attacked and then expects the society to celebrate its attacker.

That is not how national psychology works under bombardment.

‘They want Iran’s energy’ is the quiet part out loud
Now we come to the part that explains the deeper imperial logic behind all this: energy.

I referenced the mindset openly circulating among the empire-adjacent influencer class: the idea that “we need Iran’s energy for AI projects,” that the AI race with China will be decided by securing energy inputs, and that therefore this war is not only Israel’s war, but “our war”.

This is imperial logic in its purest form. It doesn’t even bother to hide behind democracy or human rights. It says: we need your resources for our future, and if you will not give them to us under cooperative terms, we will take them under coercive terms.

And here is the thing these people cannot understand, because their mindset is trapped in a 19th-century colonial reflex: cooperation is possible.

China shows that cooperation is possible. China buys resources, builds infrastructure, creates contracts, offers development pathways, and yes, does it for its own interests, but it does it through exchange, not through looting. The US model, by contrast, is too often: bully, sanction, destabilise, bomb, then pretend it’s about “order”.

So when I say this war has gone “too wrong” for Washington even to benefit from Iranian energy later, I mean something very simple: you do not kill people, destroy families, and then expect business as usual. You don’t kill children and then expect Iranian society to say, “Sure, let’s partner with you.”

This is where imperial arrogance collides with a proud, dignified Iranian society.

How Trump miscalculated                            Video: Syriana Analysis

Iran’s demands are not cosmetic
Now the crucial point: why Iran won’t stop now.

Iran is not continuing this because it “loves war”. It is continuing because the war created leverage, and Iran’s leadership understands that if you stop now, you waste the leverage you paid for in blood and risk.

This is why Iran’s demands are emerging with clarity.

First: deterrence restored. Not just for Iran, but for the wider deterrence ecosystem that includes Hezbollah. Iran wants to punish its enemy to a degree that makes future attacks psychologically and strategically unthinkable.

Second: US bases constrained or removed. Iran is not naïve; it knows it may not expel the US from the region overnight. But it can force a new reality where US installations become purely defensive or are reconfigured in ways that reduce their offensive utility against Iran.

In plain language: if Gulf monarchies host bases that are used to strike Iran, those bases become part of the battlefield, and Iran is signaling it wants to break that model permanently.

This is why the Iranian foreign minister’s tone matters, and why voices like professor Marandi’s matter: the message is no longer “we can negotiate and return to normal.” The message is “normal is what created this war, and we need a new security architecture.”

‘Deterrence or nothing’ framework
This is where Amal Saad’s analysis captures the logic cleanly: deterrence or nothing; total war or total ceasefire.

Her point is that the old conflict-resolution framework doesn’t apply, because Iran is not seeking a temporary suspension of hostilities; it is seeking to alter the bargaining space itself. Tehran rejects the framework in which negotiations are essentially arms control over Iran, and insists instead that the real issue is US-Israeli aggression and the regional order that enables it.

That is why Iran refuses a ceasefire that simply resets the cycle.

And that is why the US miscalculation is so profound: Washington thought it could strike under a cover of “diplomacy,” then return to negotiation as if diplomacy were a neutral channel. Iran now treats that as subterfuge, and it wants to make the weaponisation of diplomacy costly enough that it cannot be repeated.

Why Iran won’t stop now
So we return to the simple truth: Iran won’t stop now because stopping now would mean relinquishing the leverage it has finally acquired — militarily, economically, psychologically — at the very moment when the US and Europe are feeling pain they cannot hide.

Trump was elected on promises of prosperity. Now energy prices surge, markets shake, global supply lines tighten, and allies panic. From Tehran’s point of view, this is the rare moment when the empire is vulnerable enough that Iran can increase its demands instead of being forced to accept humiliating ones.

And when you understand that, you understand why this isn’t ending with a tidy “ceasefire” press release. Iran believes that if it accepts another temporary arrangement, it will simply be attacked again when the West finds a better moment.

So the choice Iran is presenting is brutal but clear: a settlement that restores deterrence and rewires the regional security order, or continued pressure through the one lever that forces the world to pay attention.

Hormuz.

Washington assumed it was a bluff.

Now the world is learning what happens when a red line is real.

Kevork Almassian is a Syrian geopolitical analyst and the founder of Syriana Analysis. This article was first published on his Substack Kevork’s Newsletter and shared via Collective Evolution.

Greenpeace delivered the petition to opposition Labour leader Chris Hipkins in Wellington today.

Standing on the steps of Parliament, Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Dr Russel Norman said: “This war is plainly illegal — it is not an act of self-defence nor is it sanctioned by the UN Security Council.

• READ MORE: Iran fires missiles, drones across Gulf, region remains in war crosshairs
• Thousands call on Christopher Luxon to condemn the illegal attacks on Iran by Trump and Israel
• Other US-Israeli war on Iran reports

“While we have come to expect that the US government approach to international law is more honoured in the breach than the observance, nonetheless international law is critical for the security of everyone on the planet but especially for a small nation like New Zealand.”

Dr Norman said Luxon was expected to advocate in favour of international law and hence condemn “this reckless illegal war”.

“Silence in the face of injustice is complicity, and thousands of New Zealanders agree that Luxon should be standing up to bullies like Trump, who is attempting to destroy any possibility of a rules-based international order.”

Greenpeace delivered the petition to the Parliament opposition who have been open about their condemnation of Trump’s illegal war.

Fossil fuel price war link
Greenpeace also made the link from this illegal war to the escalating price of fossil fuels.

“This illegal war has disrupted oil, gas and fertiliser supplies, exposing Luxon’s Trump-like obsession with outdated fossil fuels, leaving New Zealanders paying the price,” said Dr Norman.

“Luxon has collapsed the EV market by killing the clean car discount, making it cheaper to import gas guzzling cars. He’s ended public transport subsidies for young people, blocked funding for cycleways, but wants to spend billions of dollars to build new roads.”

The Prime Minister now wanted to expose the country even further to the volatile global fossil fuel market by charging New Zealanders a gas tax to build an LNG import terminal.

“The Luxon government should be investing in renewable energy and the electrification of transport to insulate New Zealanders from energy supply shocks and rising energy prices, as well as cutting climate pollution,” said Dr Norman.

Republished from Greenpeace Aotearoa.

To most of us in Aotearoa, the current illegal war in Iran feels distant. We see it in our news feeds, we feel it at the petrol pump, and we hear about it in “trade disruptions”.

We tell ourselves we’re just a small, peaceful nation caught in the crossfire of superpowers.

But behind the scenes, a deal is being negotiated that changes our role entirely.

• READ MORE: Project Vault: A minerals security backstop
• Red flags with Project Vault — Veronique de Rugy
• No minerals deal with Trump petition
• Other critical minerals reports

The New Zealand government is currently negotiating a critical minerals deal with the Trump administration. Under “Project Vault”, the US is aggressively stockpiling minerals from both land and sea through a blend of private mega-capital and government-backed loans.

And at the heart of the deal with New Zealand is an anonymous metal, Vanadium.

Vanadium is mostly unknown to New Zealanders. But the US Department of Defense classifies it as a top-tier strategic mineral. Why? Because you can’t build a modern war machine without it.

It is the literal backbone of the high-strength steel used in missiles, armour-piercing projectiles, and the jet engines currently flying sorties in the Middle East.

The industry arguments for mining the sea have long been around the need for supplying green tech, specifically batteries for renewables. But this has been widely dismissed as Greenwash, and several EV manufacturers have pledged not to use deepsea-mined minerals.

Certainly, the US administration is clearly citing munitions, not renewables in their desire for vanadium, making it clear that this is about war and superpowers.

The man tipped to become the next US ambassador to New Zealand, Niue, Samoa and the Cook Islands, Jared Novelly, has gone on record talking of his priorities for the Pacific region.

I had to laugh when I heard he told the US Senate he would be promoting a “free and open Pacific” while in office, which includes expanding the US security presence, and getting access to critical minerals.

Israel’s war on Iran is a direct result of a political culture that depends for survival upon a permanent state of war, says Israeli academic and left-wing activist Idan Landau in the interview that follows.

He observes that Israeli society on the whole has embraced a fascist mindset, “reflecting extreme paranoia and anxiety,” and thus intolerance for dissent.

Subsequently, peace is a taboo and there is total indifference to genocidal acts and human casualties. Moreover, there is very little hope for a different trajectory, argues Landau, “as long as the US and Europe continue to insulate Israel from the moral consequences of its actions.”

• READ MORE: Iran mourns Larijani and Basij chief; Iranian attack kills 2 in Israel
• As Israel keeps bombing Iran, Palestinians face growing violence in West Bank
• Trump scolds allies over Strait of Hormuz operation; UAE closes airspace
• Chris Hedges: The world according to Gaza – it’s only the start
• War on Iran: Australia should put trust in its neighbours not a modern Titanic rogue state
• Other US-Israel War on Iran reports

Landau is professor of linguistics and head of the department of linguistics at Tel Aviv University. He writes a political blog (in Hebrew) on Israeli affairs and has been imprisoned on several occasions for his refusal to serve in the Israel Defense Forces reserve.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: Since the Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel, the Netanyahu government embarked on a genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, expanded Jewish settlements in occupied West Bank and thus encouraged settlers to escalate West Bank terrorist attacks, exchanged fire with Hezbollah and the Houtis, then attacked Iran in what has been dubbed as the 12-Day War, and finally persuaded US President Donald Trump to go to war with Iran.

What is Israel’s endgame in terrorising the Middle East, and how has permanent war impacted Israeli society and the Israeli psyche?

IDAN LANDAU: I think the whole point of permanent war — I agree this is the most appropriate concept to use here — is that there is no endgame. Permanent war, with ever growing economic, emotional and political costs, is exactly what keeps the Israeli right-wing in power; it feeds on anxiety, paranoia and visions of imminent destruction (interestingly, our own and our enemies’ destruction, equally vivid).

Not being able to concentrate on and fully understand what’s going on is also crucial; the Israeli public is extremely underinformed about key issues, like the fraudulent nuclear talks in Geneva, the far-reaching proposals by the Lebanese government, etc. The media — always complicit, these days criminal — bombards us with caricatures of our surrounding countries.

That said, I think there is one constant, never-changing endgame lurking behind all the upheavals: The expansionist project in the West Bank. Not just Smotrich but a dedicated section within the Likkud, of right-wing religious settlers, are working tirelessly on this project, actually from the first week after October 7.

Plans for resettlement of Gaza combined with increased settlement in the West Bank (specifically, the northern Samaria, surrounding Jenin and Tulkarem) were immediately aired and pushed forward by the settlers’ lobby together with their MK partners.

The surge we now see in ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Palestinian communities throughout the West Bank is inherent to the overall vision of this government, and it was stated as such even before October 7 — that only gave it a huge impetus.

The impact on Israeli society is perhaps the most depressing aspect of it all. Political discourse has been reduced to hollow slogans. Every single issue in foreign affairs in framed as either “existential threat” or “unavoidable use of military force.” There’s absolutely no room for talk about non-violent paths (“peace” is a taboo even on the left).

The Enemy is an undifferentiated mass of Hamas/Iran/Hezbollah/Houthis, in short, different guises of Amalek. Much of that, as I noted, is fueled by the deliberate absence of facts and evidence for rational conduct on the part of our enemies.

Israelis live in a peculiar state of mind: total disbelief in the possibility of normal life, clinging on to the very ideology that perpetuates this state of mind.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: Israel has actual and perceived enemies. But is Benjamin Netanyahu alone the actual problem behind Israel’s permanent state of war? I mean, even most of Israeli opposition supported the genocide in Gaza and it’s doing the same thing now with the war against Iran.

IDAN LANDAU: Netanyahu is the most able consolidator of all the dark impulses of Israeli society, but of course he didn’t make up anything on his own. If you go back to Begin’s speeches in the 1970s-1980s, they also constantly invoked the Holocaust as the ultimate justification for whatever Israel does.

The Messianic drive to settle the greater Israel predates Netanyahu, as well as the overall brutal, racist degradation of Palestinians inside and outside Israel. You can go on and on — nothing is new here. At most, as you note, it is the subservience of the “opposition”; I don’t recall anything like it in the past.

If you look at the governments that went to wars in 1973 and 1982, they faced considerable opposition, within the Knesset and outside of it, on the very issue of whether the war was justified (in 1973, it was clearly preventable; in 1982, it was pure imperial vanity). None of that is left today.

Which is why the temptation of permanent war is so strong: You’re guaranteed to make the willful silence of the opposition also permanent.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: In Lebanon, the Israeli armed forces are using Gaza tactics, attacking hospitals and killing medical staff, while in Iran they have engaged in what has been rightly described as chemical warfare on account of strikes on fuel depots. Isn’t the country concerned at all about its blatant assault on international law and that it has turned into a pariah state in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of the people across the globe? What happened to Israel’s labor party which combined socialism with nation-building?

IDAN LANDAU: As to the Labour Party, I always say that one should not speak ill of the dead. A handful of members of Knesset (MKs) that are obsessed with displays of liberal values and with welfare legislation when genocide is in full force and Apartheid shifts from de facto to de jure.

The other “opposition” parties are either led by generals (Golan, Eizenkot) who offer zero alternatives to military dominance, or by right-wing neoliberals (Bennet, Lapid). The only representatives of left values in the Knesset are the Arab MKs.

As to International Humanitarian Law (IHL), my impression is that Israelis are unconcerned insofar as Uncle Sam is, and it sure looks like he is, thoroughly unconcerned. The Trump administration vindictively sanctioned the International Criminal Court (ICC) judges presiding over the Israeli case, and quite explicitly stated that IHL does not apply to the US and its allies.

There’s a lot of duplicity in Israeli discourse regarding the so-called “Principle of Complementarity”; the official response to the ICC described the “independent and robust judicial system” of Israel, which investigates any suspicions for wrongdoings. Most Israelis simply think that the rules don’t apply to us since they don’t apply to Hamas (they do apply to both parties; I already said that Israelis are shrouded in disinformation).

But even the liberals that appeal to our own “independent and robust judicial system” look ridiculous in face of the massive cover-up we witness from the beginning of the genocide; the dropping of charges against the five torturers/rapists in Sde-Teiman is but the latest instance.

Hundreds of heinous crimes did not even yield any charges.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: Courageous voices against war and violence can be heard here and there across Israeli society and peace activists have organised scores of demonstrations in cities like Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem to express their opposition to the war in Iran.

Are anti-war demonstrations really seen as a threat to national security by the Netanyahu government and even segments of the Israeli citizenry?

IDAN LANDAU: These things happen and they do lift our spirit. In honesty, I don’t think anyone views them as “a threat to national security,” that’s fascist talk. The public atmosphere is just incredibly intolerant, with or without the presence of the police, with or without any legal process.

Just try to voice your opposition to the war — any war, pick your favourite — out in the street, and you’re sure to be harassed and probably beaten by random pedestrians within 15-20 minutes. So I think it is a typical fascist all-embracing violent climate, reflecting extreme paranoia and anxiety.

The mere verbal expression of “sacrilegious” opinions is seen as a personal threat to our carefully maintained peace of mind; so tenuous and feeble, that it cannot even stand to face dissent.

Point it out to Israelis and urge them to make out what it means for their confidence in what their state is doing that they must violently banish any expression of doubt and criticism (this is now the position of many journalists as well!) — well, see if you get an answer.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: Israel censored reporting on the genocide in Gaza. Is the same thing happening now with the war in Iran?

IDAN LANDAU: Luckily, the IDF doesn’t control the entrance and exit to Iran. So we don’t have the brute force censorship, instead it’s the good old “filter and distort and leave out the context” censorship.

They would report civilian casualties only if forced (because it’s getting too much international media), and you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the “human shield” trick is now applied reflexively, before any facts are even known.

In this sense, as all human right organisations pointed out, the Gaza genocide has set a shocking new standard of indifference to civilian casualties: All targets are criminalised by association to your favourite Amalek (currently the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC), and we stopped bothering about substantiating this association with actual facts; declaring it so makes it so.

In this context, one can watch civilian suffering in Iran with a level of detachment and blame it all on the IRGC. We should remember, though, that the Iranian regime is no more scrupulous in its choice of targets in Israel — the war crimes are on both sides.

Yet I cannot say that Israeli media covers the wider civilian effects of the war on Iranian citizens in any serious way. Pretty much 95 percent of what we get are silly, heroic odes to our courageous pilots and genius cyber fighters.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: In your view, is there a pathway towards peace in Israel? Is permanent peace even possible for Israel?

IDAN LANDAU: Ultimately there can’t be any other solution; wars eventually end, consuming nations. I just don’t think it will be “Israel” as we now know it that will see the fruits of peace.

It will be a totally different entity, somehow letting Jews and Arabs live together as equals. That’s not possible within the current regime. Sadly, the shift to non-violence only occurs after the level of death and suffering is insurmountable to both sides.

No one knows when that will be. As long as the US and Europe continue to insulate Israel from the moral consequences of its policies, it won’t change trajectory.

C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centres in Europe and the United States. His latest books are The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change (A collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky; Haymarket Books, 2021), and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (Verso, 2021).

Idan Landau is an Israeli social justice activist and professor of linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University.

The United Nations in Papua New Guinea has met the leadership of the Media Council of PNG to advance collaboration in support of a strong, independent and responsible media sector, reports UNPNG.

The meeting addressed recent incidents of threats and violence against journalists — especially attacks against women journalists and the growing risks they face while reporting.

• READ MORE: PNG Media Council calls for police probe into alleged assault over jail break report
• PNG Media Council calls for investigation after alleged assault of journalist
• PNG Media Council calls for investigation into assault of reporter by CS officers

Participants identified key priorities to strengthen media freedom and safety. These included:

• Improving journalist safety measures;
• reinforcing newsroom integrity and professional standards; and
• promoting responsible and accurate reporting in the lead up to the national elections.

The UNPNG statement said dialogue reaffirmed the shared commitment of the United Nations and the Media Council to “support a safe and independent media sector and to ensure that everyone in PNG can access reliable information that supports free and informed participation in public life”.

Present at the meeting were Media Council PNG president Neville Choi, secretary Belinda Kora and treasurer Genesis Ketan, UN Resident Coordinator Richard Howard, Human Rights Advisor Marc Cebreros, UNDP Country Representative (OIC) Aadil Mansoor, Chief Technical Adviser on Transparency and Anti-Corruption Alma Sedlar, Peace and Development Advisor Tony Cameron, and UNDP Assistant Resident Representative for Governance, Gender and Peace Zoe Pelter.

MCPNG president Choi thanked UN Resident Coordinator Howard and UNDP for the continued support of media freedom in PNG.

Earlier this month, the MCPNG condemned an alleged assault on a senior female reporter by warders at Bomana Prison and called on the police to conduct a full independent investigation into the incident on February 27.

Every week, health prevailing, I march with our Palestinian friends and their supporters in Aotearoa New Zealand. And my country is one which — under Britain — was colonised.

Colonisation perpetrates injustices against indigenous people. This legacy is still felt by Indigenous people today.

All around the world we must dismantle our unfair systems. A fair system ensures that everyone has a flourishing start in life. But our systems are linked to Israel — and Israel demonstrates that colonisation is still practised.

• READ MORE:  As Israel keeps bombing Iran, Palestinians face growing violence in West Bank
• Trump scolds allies over Strait of Hormuz operation; UAE closes airspace
• Chris Hedges: The world according to Gaza – it’s only the start
• War on Iran: Australia should put trust in its neighbours not a modern Titanic rogue state
• Other US-Israel War on Iran reports

Israel headed by megalomaniacs ruling with a muscular thug army is proof that the Empire has not stopped because the Western Empire has supported this.

Far too many Western journalists report from the perspective of the abuser rather than the victims. They need to ask, “what if it was my child, my wife, my mother, my brother, my grandfather, suffering like this? What if I was forced from my home?”

Journalists must report from the perspective of people who are pleading for the right to breathe rather than reporting from the perspective of the landlord killing people when they resist eviction.

They must use their imagination to exercise empathy in reporting. Only then will they report the truth and only then will the real narrative emerge.

Colonisation unchecked
Colonisation is not checked, rather it is supported by countries engaged in Empire building.

Like South Africa under apartheid, Indigenous people are oppressed and if they resist they are dispensed with, in other words, exterminated.

But this system is enabled rather than disabled. The rampant megalomania is enabled by the US, Britain, Germany, and other nations.

Tens of thousands of children, women, and men have been robbed of life and the journalists I once worked alongside in conflict zones are complicit if they do not report this as a human rights atrocity.

We — journalists — must report on the evil that is the expansion of empire and we must report on it from the perspective of the victims not the perpetrators.

The extermination of Palestinians and expansion of Israel is clearly supported by the legs of the octopus — the countries that make up this Western Empire.

Standing by and reporting from anything other than the perspective of the victims is akin to standing by and watching slaves being bound, gagged and shipped under the name of empire.

Journalists must stand up and report with the moral courage of abolitionists. They must have the gumption to attack the rotten policies practiced in our own time.

Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

As the US and Israel battle to control the narrative of their war against Iran, their messaging gets harder to defend, reports Al Jazeera’s Listening Post.

With the war entering its third week, the upper hand that the United States and Israel hold militarily is being countered asymmetrically by Iran which has been targeting various economic pressure points outside of its borders.

With censorship and propaganda shaping coverage on all sides, news audiences are having to navigate a confused and often misleading maze of information.

Contributors:
Vali Nasr – Professor, Johns Hopkins University
Michael Omer-Man – Director of research for Israel-Palestine, DAWN
Matt Duss – Executive vice-president, Center for International Policy (CIP)
Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi – Lecturer, University of St Andrews

On our radar
Israeli media outlets published near-simultaneous reports, citing anonymous officials, claiming Gulf states had attacked Iran. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates quickly denied the allegations, forcing corrections.

Critics say that the aim of the coverage was to suggest Gulf support for Israel and pull those states into the conflict. Tariq Nafi looks at how the episode has fuelled anger across the Arab world towards Washington and Tel Aviv.

Out Of Control: An escalating war accompanied by escalating war rhetoric    Video: AJ Listening Post

Battlefield AI: An interview with Matt Mahmoudi
Since the first attacks on Iran, the White House and Pentagon have been eager to test new military technologies.

As seen previously in Gaza, AI systems appear to be playing a central role in identifying targets and guiding strikes.

This raises serious ethical and accountability questions about how life-and-death decisions are being made on the battlefield.

Amnesty Tech researcher and assistant professor at the University of Cambridge, Matt Mahmoudi joins The Listening Post to discuss AI-assisted warfare.

ANALYSIS: By Chris Hedges

The war on Iran and the obliteration of Gaza is the beginning. Welcome to the new world order. The age of technologically-advanced barbarism. There are no rules for the strong, only for the weak. Oppose the strong, refuse to bow to its capricious demands and you are showered with missiles and bombs.

Hospitals, elementary schools, universities and apartment complexes are reduced to rubble. Doctors, students, journalists, poets, writers, scientists, artists and political leaders — including the heads of negotiating teams — are murdered in the tens of thousands by missiles and killer drones.

Resources — as the Venezuelans know — are openly stolen. Food, water and medicine, as in Palestine, are weaponised.

• READ MORE: Trump threatens NATO if allies fail to help with reopening Strait of Hormuz
• War on Iran: Australia should put trust in its neighbours not a modern Titanic rogue state
• Other US-Israel War on Iran reports

Let them eat dirt.

International bodies such as the United Nations are pantomime, useless appendages of another age. The sanctity of individual rights, open borders and international law have vanished.

The most depraved leaders of human history, those who reduced cities to ashes, herded captive populations to execution sites and littered lands they occupied with mass graves and corpses, have returned with a vengeance.

They spew the same hypermasculine tropes. They spew the same vile, racist cant. They spew the same Manichaean vision of good and evil, black and white. They spew the same infantile language of total dominance and unrestrained violence.

Levers of power
Killer clowns. Buffoons. Idiots. They have seized the levers of power to carry out their demented and cartoonish visions as they pillage the state for their own enrichment.

“After witnessing savage mass murder over several months, with the knowledge that it was conceived, executed and endorsed by people much like themselves, who presented it as a collective necessity, legitimate and even humane, millions now feel less at home in the world,” writes Pankaj Mishra in The World After Gaza.

“The shock of this renewed exposure to a peculiarly modern evil — the evil done in the pre-modern era only by psychopathic individuals and unleashed in the last century by rulers and citizens of rich and supposedly civilised societies — cannot be overstated. Nor can the moral abyss we confront.”

The subjugated are property, commodities to exploit for profit or pleasure. The Epstein Files expose the sickness and heartlessness of the ruling class. Liberals. Conservatives. University presidents. Academics. Philanthropists. Wall Street titans. Celebrities. Democrats. Republicans.

They wallow in unbridled hedonism. They go to private schools and have private health care. They are cocooned in self-referential bubbles by sycophants, publicists, financial advisers, lawyers, servants, chauffeurs, self-help gurus, plastic surgeons and personal trainers.

They reside in heavily guarded estates and vacation on private islands. They travel on private jets and gargantuan yachts. They exist in another reality, what the Wall Street Journal reporter Robert Frank dubs the world of “Richistan,” a world of private Xanadus where they hold Nero-like bacchanalias, make their perfidious deals, amass their billions and cast aside those they use, including children, as if they are refuse.

No one in this magic circle is accountable. No sin too depraved. They are human parasites. They disembowel the state for personal profit. They terrorise the “lesser breeds of the earth.” They shut down the last, anemic vestiges of our open society.

‘Intoxication of power’
“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life,” as George Orwell writes in 1984. “All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.”

The law, despite a few valiant efforts by a handful of judges — who will soon be purged — is an instrument of repression. The judiciary exists to stage show trials. I spent a lot of time in the London courts covering the Dickensian farce during the persecution of Julian Assange. A Lubyanka-on-the-Thames. Our courts are no better. Our Department of Justice is a vengeance machine.

Masked, armed goons flood the streets of the United States and murder civilians, including citizens. The ruling mandarins are spending billions to convert warehouses into detention centers and concentration camps. They insist they will only house the undocumented, the criminals, but our global ruling class lies like it breathes.

In their eyes, we are vermin, either blindly and unquestionably obedient or criminals. There is nothing in between.

These concentration camps, where there is no due process and people are disappeared, are designed for us. And by us, I mean the citizens of this dead republic. Yet we watch, stupefied, disbelieving, passively waiting for our own enslavement.

It won’t be long.

The savagery we face
The savagery in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza is the same savagery we face at home. Those carrying out the genocide, mass slaughter and unprovoked war on Iran are the same people dismantling our democratic institutions.

The social anthropologist Arjun Appadurai calls what is happening “a vast worldwide Malthusian correction” that is “geared to preparing the world for the winners of globalisation, minus the inconvenient noise of its losers.”

Oh, the critics say, don’t be so bleak. Don’t be so negative. Where is the hope? Really, it’s not that bad.

If you believe this you are part of the problem, an unwitting cog in the machinery of our rapidly consolidating fascist state.

Reality will eventually implode these “hopeful” fantasies, but by then it will be too late.

True despair is not a result of accurately reading reality. True despair comes from surrendering, either through fantasy or apathy, to malignant power. True despair is powerlessness. And resistance, meaningful resistance, even if it is almost certainly doomed, is empowerment. It confers self-worth. It confers dignity. It confers agency. It is the only action that allows us to use the word hope.

The Iranians, Lebanese and Palestinians know there is no appeasing these monsters. The global elites believe nothing. They feel nothing. They cannot be trusted. They exhibit the core traits of all psychopaths — superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, manipulation and the inability to feel remorse or guilt.

Virtues of empathy
They disdain as weakness the virtues of empathy, honesty, compassion and self-sacrifice. They live by the creed of Me. Me. Me.

“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane,” Eric Fromm writes in The Sane Society.

We have witnessed evil for nearly three years in Gaza. We watch it now in Lebanon and Iran. We see this evil excused or masked by political leaders and the media.

The New York Times, in a page out of Orwell, sent an internal memo telling reporters and editors to eschew the terms “refugee camps, “occupied territory,” “ethnic cleansing” and, of course, “genocide” when writing about Gaza.

Those who name and denounce this evil are smeared, blacklisted and purged from university campuses and the public sphere. They are arrested and deported. A deadening silence is descending upon us, the silence of all authoritarian states. Fail to do your duty, fail to cheerlead the war on Iran, and see your broadcasting licence revoked, as the Chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Brendan Carr has proposed.

We have enemies. They are not in Palestine. They are not in Lebanon. They are not in Iran. They are here. Among us. They dictate our lives. They are traitors to our ideals. They are traitors to our country.

They envision a world of slaves and masters. Gaza is only the start. There are no internal mechanisms for reform. We can obstruct or surrender.

Those are the only choices left.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This commentary was first published on the Chris Hedges Substack page and is republished with permission.

• The Chris Hedges Report

The United States and Fiji have filed separate declarations of intervention in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), alleging the country is committing genocide in Gaza.

While the US explicitly rejects the allegation that Israel is committing genocide, Fiji raises issues about how the 1948 Genocide Convention should be interpreted.

The 34-page Fiji declaration was filed on March 12 and is signed by Ambassador Ilaitia Tamata, Fiji’s Permanent Representative of Fiji to the United Nations and other international organisations in Geneva, reports The Fiji Times.

• READ MORE: Fiji files intervention in Gaza genocide case at ICJ
• Israel’s genocide in Gaza: Whatever happened to South Africa’s case at the ICJ?
• Palestine will continue to seek justice against Israel at ICC and ICJ, says The Hague ambassador
• More Gaza genocide lawsuit reports

In the declaration, Fiji said it was exercising its right under Article 63(2) of the ICJ Statute to intervene as a party to the Convention, arguing that the case raises important questions about how it should be interpreted.

The filing confirms that Fiji has appointed its Permanent Representative to Israel, Ambassador Filipo Tarakinikini, as agent for the proceedings.

The Fiji filing was made alongside separate interventions by Namibia and Hungary, according to a press release issued by the court on Friday, reports Middle East Eye.

All four states submitted declarations under Article 63 of the ICJ statute, which allows countries that are parties to a treaty under dispute to intervene in order to present their interpretation of that treaty.

Iceland, Netherlands also file
Earlier on Thursday, Iceland and the Netherlands also filed declarations under Article 63.

South Africa filed the case in December 2023, accusing Israel of breaching the Genocide Convention through its military campaign in Gaza following the Hamas-led attacks of  October 7 that year.

Pretoria argues that Israel’s conduct — including mass killings, destruction of infrastructure and the imposition of conditions of life threatening the survival of Palestinians in Gaza — amounts to genocide.

Israel denies the accusation and claims its war is justified by considerations of self-defence.

The US submission on Thursday stands out among most interventions for directly defending Israel against the accusation brought by South Africa. Taking sides in a case is highly unconventional under Article 63 submissions.

“It’s very unusual for an intervening state (US) to use language like that,” explained Professor Gerhard Kemp, a scholar of international law.

“States normally stick to the legal issues, which can even be helpful for both sides. But terms like ‘false’ or ‘wrong’ don’t really move the needle,” he told Middle East Eye.

“They are probably aimed at a different audience.”

US argues genocide claim ‘false’
In its declaration, Washington argues that allegations that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza are “false” and urges the court to apply a strict legal threshold when determining genocidal intent.

It says, uncontroversially, that genocide can only be established where there is clear proof of specific intent to destroy a protected group.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza: Whatever happened to South Africa’s case at the ICJ?

That intent should only be inferred when it is the only reasonable explanation for the conduct in question, it says.

The submission argues that the ICJ must be fully convinced before determining an act is genocide, due to the exceptional gravity of the crime. It also says civilian casualties and destruction during armed conflict do not by themselves prove genocidal intent.

“The United States submits that the Court should maintain its standard for inferring intent. Lowering the standard risks broadening the application of the term ‘genocide’ such that it no longer carries its original weight and meaning, and invites attempts to misuse the Genocide Convention as a gateway for bringing extraneous disputes before the Court,” the US claimed.

Hungary and Fiji’s submissions similarly advance legal arguments that align closely with Israel’s position in the case.

Narrow interpretation
Hungary’s declaration calls for a narrow interpretation of genocide and emphasises that civilian casualties and destruction during armed conflict do not in themselves demonstrate genocidal intent.

Fiji’s intervention likewise urges the court to apply an extremely high evidentiary threshold for genocide, and cautions against relying heavily on reports by international organisations or non-governmental groups when assessing allegations.

By contrast, Namibia’s declaration focuses on a broader interpretation of the Genocide Convention and emphasises how genocidal intent may be inferred from patterns of conduct and cumulative evidence.

Namibia argues that acts such as the denial of humanitarian aid, repeated displacement and deprivation of basic necessities could fall within the Convention’s prohibition on deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of a protected group.

Its submission also stresses that genocide can be committed through omissions, including a refusal to allow or facilitate life-saving humanitarian assistance to civilians under a state’s control.

Third-state interventions
The new filings add to a rapidly expanding list of states seeking to intervene in the proceedings.

Since April 2024, similar interventions have been submitted by Colombia, Libya, Mexico, Palestine, Spain, Turkey, Chile, the Maldives, Bolivia, Ireland, Cuba, Belize, Brazil, the Comoros, Belgium and Paraguay in support of the South African argument.

Palestine and Belize have also sought to intervene under Article 62 of the court’s statute, which allows states to apply to participate in proceedings if they believe they have a legal interest that could be affected by the court’s decision.

Under Article 63, intervening states do not become parties to the dispute. Instead, they are permitted to present their interpretation of the treaty at issue — in this case the 1948 Genocide Convention.

The interpretation adopted by the court in its eventual judgment will also be binding on those states.

The case has become one of the most closely watched disputes ever heard by the ICJ and has drawn an unusually large number of third-state interventions, which have reached 22.

The court has already ordered Israel in legally binding provisional measures to take steps to prevent acts that could violate the Genocide Convention and to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Israel ignores court orders
Israel has repeatedly ignored the orders.

A final ruling on whether Israel has breached the Convention is expected in 2028. But it could take longer, depending on the length of hearings and the two parties’ adherence to deadlines.

On Thursday, Israel was scheduled to submit its counter-memorial, or arguments in response to South Africa’s accusations, after several deadline extensions by the court.

The court has yet to announce that Israel has filed its evidence, however.

During its devastating onslaught, Israel has so far killed more than 74,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children. It has also destroyed most of the enclave’s homes, hospitals, schools and other infrastructure, rendering it largely uninhabitable for its 2.3 million civilians.

A UN commission of inquiry concluded last September that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza since 7 October 2023.

The UN report’s authors, including legal experts Navi Pillay and Chris Sidoti, told Middle East Eye that the report used evidence and a similar methodology in its analysis to that which will be used by the ICJ.

A peace advocate urged people in New Zealand today to get behind a “Stop Wars Aotearoa” campaign to oppose the illegal and unprovoked US-Israeli war on Iran and expand beyond solidarity with Palestine.

In the 127th week of protest against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and occupied West Bank, socialist trade union organiser Joe Carolan called on protesters to redouble their efforts.

Speaking in Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square, he praised a public meeting in Mt Eden this week that heralded the start of a rolling peace movement that echoed the efforts in a bid to halt the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq — “a war based on a lie” about non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

• READ MORE: US ‘hideouts’ in UAE ‘legitimate targets’ after Kharg Island attacks: IRGC
• US War Secretary taunts Iranian leadership for ‘hiding’ while they are defiant on street rallies
• War on Iran: ‘It’s abominable, the lies that the American mainstream media is telling the people’
• Other US-Israel War on Iran reports

Carolan drew comparisons between his native Ireland and the colonisation of New Zealand.

Apart from Christianity, the colonisers “needed another pretext to civilise great unwashed”. Militarism.

He paid tribute to “anyone who ran the gauntlet outside the public meeting on Wednesday that we held at the Mt Eden War Memorial Hall where we remember the price of wars — in fact working class lives — both here and abroad”.

“And we should remember the dead and not go to war again — that’s the whole point of a war memorial hall.

‘Ran the gauntlet’
“But those of us who ran the gauntlet of the people waving Israeli flags and lecturing us about human rights, waving the American flags and lecturing us about women’s rights when the place is run by rapists and pedophiles obviously – know it’s Operation Epstein Fury now.

“An operation so [US President Donald] Trump and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu can both avoid what is coming to them which is a long time in prison until they die.”

Netanyahu is wanted on an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and Israel is on trial for genocide with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a case brought by South Africa and 14 other countries.

“Many people didn’t show shock at all in the West, and condemn the murder of 170 school students — young women — that you guys purport that you want to liberate.

“You killed them. You liberated them from their lives and their blood is on the hands of those [US and Israeli] forces.

“And also Iran is a gigantic country of 90 to 100 million people. Of course, it’s not a monolithic country, there are people with many different views.

“I’ll give you two words in Irish, you might have heard them before, about who should determine Iran’s future, and that’s Sinn Féin — ‘Ourselves Alone’.

‘Run own revolution’
“Nobody has the right to determine the future of any nation, except the people who live in that nation themselves, including whether how they run their own revolution or how they run their own democracy.”

Sinn Féin is also an Irish republican political party, founded in 1905, striving for self-determination and ending British rule in Northern Ireland.

Tomorrow Te Komititanga Square is hosting an Irish cultural festival to mark the lead up to St Patrick’s Day on March 17.

Tayyaba Khan of Palestine Solidarity Network (PSNA) spoke about the mosque massacre in Christchurch on 15 March 2019 when a lone Australian gunman murdered 51 Muslims at Friday prayers in New Zealand’s worst case of terrorism. The gunman is serving a life sentence for his crimes.

Khan also remembered the survivors and their struggle to rebuild their lives.

Other speakers today highlighted how the rally was reminding the New Zealand government and the public that many in the country were totally opposed to the continuing genocide in Palestine.

“There is no ceasefire in Gaza and the US and Israeli Zionists continue to drive the Palestinian people out of their ancestral homes and land to colonise the region,” said a protest flyer.

“To everyone in the square today we invite you to join with us and the many peoples around the world in condemning the unlawful US and Israeli military assault on Iran.”

According to the Al Jazeera death toll live tracker, 1444 people have been killed in Iran, at least 15 in Israel, 11 US soldiers and 19 dead in Gulf states.

“We stand in solidarity with all the people of Iran and across the Middle East, particularly Palestine, including Gaza and Lebanon,” said rally MC Leeann Wahanui-Peters.

Al-Quds Day marked
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people around the world marked Al-Quds Day yesterday. This is marked annually to show support for Palestine and oppose the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem.

Reporting from the huge Tehran rally, Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi said Iranians hoped to both show their support for Palestinians and express “defiance and resilience” amid the US-Israeli attacks.

“They think that by killing us, we will be afraid, that by dropping bombs on our heads, we will be afraid. No, we stand by our country,” a woman demonstrator told Al Jazeera.

Another protester said Iranians had shown in their confrontation with the US and Israel that “the wall of oppression can be broken”.

“Today, with their presence in different squares, the people showed that it is possible to overcome injustice and break the wall of oppression,” he told Al Jazeera.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian was also seen at the rally in the Iranian capital — shaking hands with people and posing for selfies — along with other Iranian officials, including Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

The war on Iran has coincided with the release of large troves of US government files that documented the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to rich and powerful people, reports Al Jazeera.

President Donald Trump, who has denounced Epstein as a “creep”, had been photographed many times with the financier who abused dozens of young women and girls for years, writes columnist Ali Harb.

So Tehran has been trying to emphasise the links between Epstein and the ruling class in the US to portray its foes in Washington as morally inferior.

• READ MORE: Hezbollah vows ‘existential’ fight in Lebanon as Israel strikes Tehran
• Other US-Israel War on Iran reports

Yesterday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry said millions of Iranians marching at al-Quds Day rally in Tehran in support of Palestine faced an assault by the “Epstein gang”, referring to US and Israeli strikes.

Hours earlier, Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani also brought up Epstein when responding to US secretary of War Pete Hegseth who had claimed that Iranian leaders were hiding like “rats”.

Larijani, President Masoud Pezeshkian, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and other top officials had attended the Tehran rally earlier and footage showed them mingling with people.

“Mr Hegseth! Our leaders have been, and still are, among the people. But your leaders? On Epstein’s island!” Larijani wrote on X.

Last week, when Trump was pushing to be involved in the selection of Iran’s next supreme leader, Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf had a message for the US president, also involving Epstein.

“The fate of dear Iran . . .  will be determined solely by the proud Iranian nation, not by Epstein’s gang,” Ghalibaf said.

Pete Hegseth: “Iran’s leadership — desperate & hiding. They’ve gone underground. Cowering. That’s what rats do.”

Here is Iran’s Foreign Minister on the streets of Tehran not hiding or cowering but instead talking about the “incredible will & determination of the Iranian people.” pic.twitter.com/mWlnxOFePG

— Power to the People ☭ (@ProudSocialist) March 13, 2026

Araghchi said yesterday European countries thought they would get more support for Ukraine by backing the war against Iran, but instead, the conflict resulted in sanction relief for Russian oil imports.

With the exception of Spain and a few other nations, European countries and the European Union responded to the US-Israeli attack on Iran — which legal scholars say is unlawful — by slamming the Iranian government.

“Europe thought backing illegal war on Iran would win US support against Russia,” Araghchi wrote in a post on X. “Pathetic.”

AMY GOODMAN: The US-Israeli war on Iran has entered its 11th day. Its impact is being increasingly felt across the globe. Al Jazeera is reporting residents of Tehran overnight experienced “some of the most intense bombardment” of the war.

At least 40 people were reportedly killed near the city’s Risalat Square.

In Lebanon, the death toll from Israel’s attacks are nearing 500. About 700,000 residents have been displaced.

• READ MORE: Khamenei demands closure of US bases as Trump says war going ‘very well’
• Four possible outcomes with the war on Iran – but only one viable
• Other US-Israeli war on Iran reports

Earlier today [March 10], Iran reportedly fired drones toward Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates, where a large fire broke out in an industrial area home to petrochemical plants. A suspected Iranian missile also hit a residential building in the capital of Bahrain, killing one person and injuring eight others.

On Monday, the Pentagon posted online a photo of a missile with the words “No Mercy” superimposed on it. An accompanying message read, “We have Only Just Begun to Fight.”

But soon after, Trump told CBS News, “I think the war is very complete, pretty ​much,” he said. Trump’s CBS interview led oil prices to drop and for global stocks to quickly rise.

But after the Wall Street markets closed, Trump told Republicans in Florida the US hasn’t “won enough.” At a news conference on Monday, ABC News reporter Selina Wang questioned Trump about the conflicting messages.

SELINA WANG: Mr. President, you’ve said the war is, quote, “very complete,” but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning. So, which is it? And how long should Americans be prepared for this war to last for?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I think you could say both. It’s the beginning. It’s the beginning of building a new country. But they certainly — they have no navy. They have no air force. They have no anti-aircraft equipment. It’s all been blown up.

“They have no radar. They have no telecommunications. And they have no leadership. It’s all gone.

“So, you know, you could look at that statement. We could — we could call it a tremendous success right now. As we leave here, I could call it, or we could go further.

“And we’re going to go further. But the big risk on that war has been over for three days. We wiped them out the first — in the first two days.

AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, President Trump said he had a good call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who reportedly proposed a, “quick political and diplomatic end to the Iranian conflict”.

We begin today’s show with retired Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell during the run-up and early years of the US war on Iraq. He’s taught national security affairs at both George Washington University and the College of William and Mary.

Colonel Wilkerson, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you respond to what has taken place over this last 11 days, starting with the diplomatic talks in Geneva between Iran and the United States? And as those talks were just wrapping up, US and Israel attacked Iran and killed the supreme leader there. Your response?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Yes, and, Amy, for the second time, we violated international law in that respect, and just common human decency. And your comments at the opening of the show were spot-on, but not nearly broad and deep enough.

I come from an administration of George W. Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney that committed war crimes, war crimes that Colin Powell and his lawyer Will Taft and I agonised over in trying to present some message to the American people about them. This administration has committed more war crimes in the last few days than I think any country since Adolf Hitler committed. And that is an incredible condemnation of this entire process.

We have bombed civilians relentlessly. We have bombed a school. We have bombed a hospital. We have struck facilities in the nature of Iran’s oil capacity that is now putting black poison all over 10-plus million people.

And we are essentially not bombing ballistic missile sites and bombing war materiel. We’re bombing people. We took a lesson from the IDF, if you will. We are bombing people, as, incidentally, they are still doing in Gaza and doing now in Lebanon.

These are all war crimes. And one wishes with fond hope that someday we might be called before the bar of justice and have to account for these war crimes. And what you just talked about is a crime also in the eyes of international relations and people who want to keep decent international relations ongoing in the world. We’re destroying that.

And on top of all of that — and this is the real serious problem here for America — Trump and Hegseth and Rubio and the other entourage of their national security complex have completely misjudged the nature of this war, as has, to a certain extent, Bibi Netanyahu.

This is a country as big as Western Europe, with 93 million people, probably 90 million of whom will fight us to the bitter death, who live in terrain that almost killed Alexander the Great. It is entirely inhospitable to military operations.

And Trump is talking about — actually talking about putting ground forces there. And the only way he will be able to claim any nature of victory is to do that. Only that will be the end of the empire’s presence in the Levant and the Middle East in general, because we will not be able to sustain that economically, physically.

We do not have the soldiers or Marines to do that. But that’s what he’s talking about. This is pure nonsense.

There was a column in Haaretz yesterday, and the title of the column, essentially, was “Trump will chicken out in this war, too.” I’m sorry, he’s not going to chicken out necessarily. That might be the tone and tint he puts to it. He’s going to be defeated, as are we.

“End of the Trump Presidency” – retired colonel slams war in Iran      Video: Democracy Now!

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Colonel, I wanted to ask you — we played that clip with Trump talking about all the damage that Iran has sustained, but there’s been very little acknowledgment by the US military or the White House to the enormous damage that has occurred to the US military footprint in the Middle East for decades. All of these bases and radar, multibillion-dollar radar, were established throughout the region. And what’s your understanding of the nature of the damage that has occurred to all of these bases, not just among the Gulf states, but also even in Iraq and other places of the Middle East?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Yeah, that damage is enormous. And I think what you’re witnessing right now is the initial steps of the empire, the American empire’s retreat from the Levant and the Middle East in general.

I don’t think we’re going to be able to sustain our presence there after what’s going to happen here, particularly if we stay at this for a long time and really do take significant casualties. We’re already taking more casualties than people know about, because the media is not being apprised of it.

Yes, we had the ceremony at Dover, but there are people getting ready at Landstuhl, our throughput hospital in Germany, right now to accept multiple casualties coming in. They’ve stopped their civilian service and so forth at that hospital. And other things are being geared up, too, like Walter Reed.

I don’t think they have even a modicum of appreciation of what kind of casualties are going to result, though, especially if we put ground forces into Iran. And that is the only way, unless he just lies completely about it, that Trump is going to be able to assert any kind of real force with regard to this population.

And to your point, in Bahrain, they have taken out billions of dollars’ worth of US radar and equipment, including the vertical missile loading cranes, so now ships have to go all the way to Diego Garcia to load these weapons.

They have essentially obliterated our capacity to carry out combat actions from a number of places in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Al Udeid is actually under under threat now, too.

And this is all part of the warp and woof of our ability to carry out combat operations in the region. I’m not even sure our biggest facility for passing on troops, throughput facility, that we used in both Iraq wars — is in Kuwait. I’m not even sure that that’s up now and able to do anything.

So, how would you even get Marines or soldiers, God forbid, into Iran? That’s a huge problem. They will sink the ships that are coming to deposit those troops wherever they’re coming.

We have not really damaged their ballistic missile capability. And the media blackout on Israel is keeping the American people from seeing the enormous degree of destruction to Israel, the latest component of which was a riposte to Israel’s having struck their oil facilities, on Haifa, their oil facility port.

And Haifa is being taken down much the way Eilat was taken down by the Houthis, the Allah Ansar, in the Red Sea, when we failed to be able to reopen the Red Sea. And that’s the next step.

The Bab al-Mandeb will be closed once the Houthis have gotten into action full time again. And 60 percent of the world’s commerce passes through the Red Sea. It’s not oil and gas exclusively. It’s all manner of things — foodstuffs, commodities and such.

So, this is a war with long legs. Trump has completely misinterpreted it. The only one who’s interpreted it correctly is Bibi Netanyahu, and I think he’s ready to use a nuclear weapon, should it become as bad as it looks like it might right now, because Iran has not even began to shoot its most sophisticated missiles.

And now the second and third class of those missiles is getting through almost without opposition. Imagine what these Mach 3, Mach 4 missiles, with huge warheads that have maybe a hundred different other warheads they display all across an area, are going to do to Israel once they’re fired.

They’re still there, and they’re still ready to fire.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Colonel, I wanted to actually — you mentioned the media coverage of what is going on in Israel. It has been amazing to me that all of the major US media are based in Israel, in Tel Aviv, yet we are seeing the least amount of coverage of what is going on within Israel.

I want to quote from a piece, an online piece, that CNN reporter Oren Liebermann posted earlier this week. And he wrote — and I’m quoting — “Every reporter in Israel — and every member of the public — is subject to a military censor. On national security grounds, the regulation authorises the censor to prohibit reporting or broadcasting any material that could reveal sensitive information or pose a threat to the country’s security interests.”

And he goes on to say, “This is particularly sensitive during wartime, where the military censor has made clear that broadcasting any images that reveal the location of interceptor missiles or military sites hit by enemy projectiles is forbidden, especially in live broadcasts.”

Now, they say this on their website, but they never mention this on air. And none of the networks are mentioning on air that they are strictly prohibited from showing any actual, real damage. I’m wondering your sense of the responsibility of the US media, especially since they’re always showing us the results of the plumes rising in Abu Dhabi or in Saudi Arabia or even in Iran, but not the direct hits that are occurring within Israel.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I’ll tell you what I told the senior editor to The Washington Post recently. I think it’s abominable, the lies that the American mainstream media, both video and print, is telling the American people. And they’re putting us in jeopardy in a real substantive sense, because the American people have no way of judging just how foolhardy, how stupid, how unwise, how violative of international dictum and rule this war is.

And when it gets to the point — I think this is the end of the Trump presidency, actually, because when it gets to the point where the pressure is so great and some of this has to come out and casualties are manifest, then the American people are going to ask really important questions: Why did you lie to us? Why did you tell us what you were telling us? Why did you start this war of choice?

Iran was no threat to the United States of America whatsoever. Did you go to war for Israel? We have heard you went to war for Israel. These are questions that are finally going to get out there in the hustings and going to have to be answered by someone, probably your local congressman, the supine body that has done nothing to check this president, particularly in the war power.

And we haven’t even talked about that.

This is a complete violation of the Constitution of the United States. Just as Kofi Annan said about the 2003 Iraq War, it’s an illegal war. And he went on to say it was a violation of our own Constitution. And he was absolutely right.

But this pales — or, that pales in comparison with what Trump is doing right now, and what he is going to probably have to do in order to seem to correct his errors.

And I’m truly worried that this destruction of Israel is going to reach a point — I listened to Netanyahu recently speaking in Hebrew to his clan, to his group — Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and others like that.

At the end of his remarks in Hebrew, which was translated for me very reliably, I think, he essentially said that if it went south, if it went bad, he was prepared to show the Iranians something they had never seen before.

I think he meant a nuclear weapon. And I go back to 1973 when Golda Meir told a BBC reporter — you can check, it was printed in London the next day on the front page — that she would use a nuclear weapon, in response to his question, “Would you use a nuclear weapon?”

Because at that time, they were pretty hard-pressed in the 1973 war. And she said, “Yes,” without equivocation. I think we’re back at that point again, and for probably a far more dangerous situation.

AMY GOODMAN: I know you have to go, Colonel Wilkerson, but I just want to point out you were the former chief of staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who dragged his feet on supporting the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, but ultimately gave that speech, that he would call a stain on his career, at the UN.

It was critical for Bush, President Bush, that it was Colin Powell who gave this speech, because he was seen as the reluctant warrior. And he gave that speech saying there was evidence of Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction. Can you make a parallel to what we’re seeing today?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I can, but I think this is far greater a travesty and a tragedy. That was bad enough. And torture was the thing that broke my back, and ultimately it sort of broke Colin Powell’s back, too, because we realised that we had signed up not only to a war that was not necessary, we had signed up to a president of the United States for the first time in the nation’s history making public policy torture.

Other human beings being tortured was made presidential public policy. This is far worse, I think, and it’s been building for some time. It’s been building all since Trump was elected, and actually since his first administration. And I think it makes what we did — not to discount it, but it makes it pale by comparison, and it makes me deeply concerned about the future of this republic.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us, Lawrence Wilkerson, retired Army colonel, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005.

Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by democracynow.org on 10 March 2026.

The Israeli military prosecution has controversially cancelled the indictment of five soldiers accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in southern Israel, reports Anadolu Ajansi.

“In light of significant developments that have occurred since the indictment was filed in the Yemen Field case, the military prosecution has decided today to cancel the indictment,” the Israeli army said in a statement yesterday.

The torture case dates back to July 2025, when Israeli soldiers tortured and sexually assaulted a Palestinian prisoner at the Sde Teiman detention facility, causing serious injuries and a tear in the rectum.

• READ MORE: Khamenei demands closure of US bases as Trump says war going ‘very well’
• Four possible outcomes with the war on Iran – but only one viable
• Other Israeli torture of Palestinian prisoners reports

Earlier, Israeli news media outlets, including the public broadcaster KAN, claimed that Israel released the tortured detainee on October 13, 2025, to the Gaza Strip as part of a group of prisoners released under the exchange deal with the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

Sde Teiman, which literally means “Yemen Field” in Arabic, is an Israeli military base in the Negev Desert in southern Israel.

Interrogators there have become notorious for physical and sexual abuse of Palestinian detainees from Gaza to the extent that it has been dubbed “Israel’s Guantanamo” in reference to the infamous US detention facility in Iraq.

The Sde Teiman prison has witnessed widespread violations against Palestinian detainees, including severe beatings, prolonged restraint, and medical neglect, which have killed people, according to Palestinian and Israeli media and human rights reports.

For a country with a record of large deforestation projects, Indonesia’s current activities in the far southeastern corner of the republic, South Papua province, surpass all.

With 2.5 million hectares of land being cleared for sugarcane and rice production for food and biofuel projects, alongside large oil palm concessions, Indonesia’s government has created a hugely consequential project right on Papua New Guinea and Australia’s doorsteps.

It is transforming the shape of an otherwise forest and swamp-dominated region, as well as the environment, culture and health of local Papuan communities.

• READ MORE: West Papuan doco Pig Feast exposes oligarchs, food security crisis and ecocide under noses of military — David Robie
• New film on West Papua highlights ‘ecocide’
• Other West Papua environmental reports

New film on West Papua highlights ‘ecocide’.     Video: RNZ

“The world should notice this. It’s not the Amazon, it’s just in our front door, in the Pacific here,” said Dandhy Dwi Laksono, director of Pesta Babi (Pig Feast): Colonialism in our Time, a new documentary film about the impacts of the deforestation in South Papua, the agri-business schemes behind it and the role Indonesia’s military plays in it all.

Laksono has been in New Zealand this week promoting the film with its producer, West Papuan journalist Victor Mambor, who said few people in other parts of the world know about what’s going on there.

“Maybe they only know [of] the conflict, military conflict, armed conflict in West Papua. But they never know the conflict like that,” he said.

The film sheds new light on the response by local Papuans in the wider Merauke region and its remote bush communities to an agri-business master plan attempted by several Indonesian presidents now.

Prabowo accelerated project
The current president, Prabowo Subianto, has accelerated the project and committed military support for it, saying the military is needed to secure the agri-business projects in Papua because of their scale and importance to Indonesia’s national food and energy security.

However, Mambor said the presence of Indonesian troops in Papua had long been problematic for Papuans, and was growing.

“This is the problem in West Papua. There will be more troops, and then of course because of more troops there will be more conflict. More troops, more conflict, more problem.”

Given the ongoing armed conflict between West Papuan independence fighters and Indonesia’s military in other parts of Papua region (known internationally as West Papua), this film offers a useful insight into a struggle that is less known, but no less concerning.

Papua has some of the world’s largest remaining tracts of native rainforest — and clearing this large region of forest and swamp systems is likely to add to carbon emissions, pollution haze and biodiversity loss.

According to the NGO Mighty Earth, estimates of the CO2 emissions from so much land clearance range from 315 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent (Indonesia’s first state-owned inspection, testing, certification, and consultancy company) to more than double that, according to a report by the Indonesian independent research institute.

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

ANALYSIS: By Qasim Rashid

This week Donald Trump threatened more war crimes on the people of Iran.

We are now in the most dangerous phase of this crisis, and pretending otherwise is reckless.

As a human rights lawyer, I do not view war as an abstraction, a chessboard, or a television spectacle. I view it in terms of law, civilian life, state accountability, and foreseeable human devastation.

• READ MORE: Oil tankers in Iraq hit amid Iranian attacks on Gulf; Israel bombs Beirut
• Sanitising atrocities by the US or Israel and finding excuses is in the Western media’s DNA
• Other US-Israeli war on Iran reports

If we are honest about the present moment, there are only four plausible scenarios from here. Three are catastrophic.

The fourth is the only one consistent with constitutional government, international law, and basic human survival. It is also the one Donald Trump appears least willing to accept — but one our Congress must rally to ensure happens.

As of today the United States’ and Israel’s illegal war on Iran has killed more than 1300 Iranians, mostly civilians. Up to one third of them are children — including the near 175 children killed by a US military Tomahawk missile.

Iran’s response has targeted military bases, resulting in reportedly 8 US soldiers killed and 13 Israelis. Now, Trump is promising “Death, Fire, and Fury” and “twenty times” the damage if Iran does not unconditionally surrender.

In other words, we are running out of time to end this illegal war and prevent global and irreparable catastrophe. Right now we have four possible paths ahead of us. It is critical we rally and demand Congress act to enact Option Number Four.

Option One
The first scenario is that Trump eventually admits defeat and withdraws from Iran. In purely human terms, that would be preferable to escalation, but it would still come after an illegal war already launched without constitutional authority and under a pretext that has not been substantiated.

The geopolitical consequences would be significant.

A failed American war would further erode US credibility and likely accelerate a broader shift in influence toward China and Russia. Iran, having survived direct US-Israeli assault, would emerge emboldened.

Oil may no longer be pegged to the US dollar as the global currency, devastating the US economy. None of this is favourable, though this is the bed Trump has made so far. But also, compared with what comes next, it is survivable.

Option Two
The second scenario is a ground invasion. Trump has not ruled that out. He has not ruled out a draft either. The Pentagon is already reportedly preparing to seek roughly $50 billion in supplemental funding for Middle East operations, a strong indication that the administration is contemplating a longer and more expensive war footing.

A quick reminder that politicians lie when they say we cannot afford to fund universal healthcare, free public college, free school lunches, or affordable housing.

Anyone speaking casually about invading Iran is either ignorant of the facts or indifferent to the lives that would be destroyed. Invading Afghanistan and Iraq was already catastrophic. As I’ve cited before, a Brown University study documents an estimated 4.6 million civilians killed by Western wars since 2001.

And Iran is not Iraq. Iran is about 1.63 million sq km — which is triple the size of Iraq. I has a population that recent estimates place in the low 90 million range — which is double that of Iraq. It’s largest city, Tehran, has a population of 9.6 million — larger than New York City. It is geographically vast, heavily populated, politically complex, and militarily formidable.

A US ground invasion would not be a quick operation. It would be a regional inferno. Potentially millions could die. The global economy would likely be pushed into a prolonged recession. And because major powers would not passively watch such a war unfold, the risk of a broader world war would rise dramatically. Thus, option three.

Option Three
The third scenario is the use of nuclear weapons by Israel or the United States. That is the scenario many people still resist discussing openly because it sounds too horrible to contemplate. But refusing to contemplate it does not make it less real.

This is not hyperbole. Research published in Nature Food and highlighted by Rutgers found that a large-scale nuclear war could kill more than 5 billion people through famine and system-wide collapse, even apart from the immediate blast deaths. In ordinary language, that means the deaths of four to six billion human beings within a relatively short period are well within the range of expert projections in a full nuclear exchange.

It would be worse than any Hollywood film can imagine because movies still assume that civilisation survives in recognisable form. Nuclear war does not promise survival. It promises planetary ruin. Thus, we must push for Option Four.

That leaves the fourth scenario, which is the only morally serious option:

Option Four
Trump resigns or is impeached, the war is halted, and actual peace negotiations begin. With Trump removed from power, there is at least a possibility of returning to diplomacy, de-escalation, and meaningful non-proliferation efforts. History gives us a model. In the mid-1980s, the United States and Soviet Union moved from existential nuclear hostility toward negotiations that helped reduce the risk of annihilation.

That kind of diplomacy is still possible, but only if the men driving this escalation are stopped. The obstacle, of course, is political cowardice. This would require the Republican Party to develop a spine and fulfill its constitutional duty. It would require Corporate Democrats to grow a spine and demand an end to this war. Instead, Hakeem Jeffries refuses to rule out funding this illegal attack on Iran with another $50 billion.

At present, it seems unlikely that Republicans and Corporate Democrats will grow a spine or a conscience. But unlikelihood is not an excuse for silence when the alternative is mass death.

Here’s the bottom line. This is not red versus blue. This is not left versus right. This is working people versus billionaires, civilians versus war planners, constitutional government versus authoritarian impulse. This is why the culture wars must stop. Because as bad as things are, they can get much worse.

Trump has not ruled out the worst options. He has not ruled out sending American troops into a catastrophic ground war. He has not ruled out escalating further. He has already shown that he will ignore constitutional limits, and too many members of Congress still behave as though strongly worded statements are an adequate response to an unlawful war.

There is also a deeper pattern here that should disturb every serious observer. In 2013, Trump claimed Obama would bomb Iran to distract from his failures. In 2023, J.D. Vance warned against repeating in Iran the same mistake made in Iraq.

Now they are doing exactly what they accused others of doing. That is not irony. It is the operating logic of fascist politics: accuse the other side of the crime you are preparing to commit yourself.

The legal and moral stakes are immense. Congress must act now to stop this war, cut off funding for unauthorised escalation, and reassert that the Constitution is not optional. Military service members must also remember that “I was just following orders” did not excuse unlawful conduct at Nuremberg, and it will not excuse it now.

To those cheering this war from a distance, understand what you are cheering for: possible nuclear confrontation, higher prices for families already struggling, and the deaths of ordinary soldiers while the sons of powerful men remain far from the battlefield.

We need option four, and we need it immediately. Trump must be removed from the machinery of war before his recklessness becomes irreversible. If we fail to stop this now, history will not say we were uninformed. It will say we were warned and did too little.

Qasim Rashid is a Pakistani-born American author, activist, and human rights lawyer. He is a member of the Democratic Party. This article was originally published on his Substack page Let’s Address This with Qasim Rashid. under the title “The War On Iran Has Four Possible Outcomes”.

I came across this statement from an independent media source this week:

“The mainstream media is doing what it always does in wartime: manufacturing consent, sanitising atrocities and platforming war criminals.”

It came to mind immediately when I read The Times newspaper obituary for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei which was reprinted in the Christchurch Press at the weekend.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was murdered by the US-Israel in the initial strikes of their illegal bombing and killing campaign in Iran — an assault that rips up international law and trashes the United Nations Charter.

• READ MORE: Oil tankers hit in Iraq, Tehran sets 3 conditions for peace
• Why Trump is in so much danger with his illegal Iran war
• Ramzy Baroud: Israel’s greatest weapon was fear – and it’s now failing
• An anti-war meeting in Auckland that was protested against by pro-Israel/pro-American Iranians
• Other US-Israeli war on Iran reports
• Other images and video fromthe Stop Wars meeting

The obituary was a straight piece of Western propaganda which did nothing to hide its blatant disinformation (deliberate misinformation). It may as well have come straight from an Israeli propaganda unit — it may well have for all I know — with its demonisation of the Iranian leadership.

The Times claimed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had “…approved the development of a clandestine nuclear weapons programme that could, if ever completed, threaten Israel’s very existence, destabilise the Middle East and imperil global oil supplies”.

This is an obvious lie. Israel’s Prime Minister — and well-known war criminal — Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying for 30 years that Iran is just a few weeks or months away from producing a nuclear weapon.

The fact is that all credible analysts, including inside US intelligence, agree Iran never decided to pursue nuclear weapons and the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) has never detected such a programme. In fact, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared nuclear weapons to be “religiously forbidden under Islamic law”.

The rest of the obituary is riddled with similar untruths and distortions in a ham-fisted justification of US/Israel’s assault on Iran. If The Times has set out to undermine confidence in Western media reporting on West Asia (Middle East) this would be an excellent example.

Platforming war criminals
How much Western media time and space has been given to Trump and Netanyahu in the past 11 days to spread lies and disinformation direct to Western audiences? And how much time has been given to the Iranian leadership, UN officials or international experts to debunk the US/Israeli justifications for war?

Meanwhile, the media have platformed Iranian New Zealanders, who oppose the Iranian leadership and support the appointment of the former Shah’s son Reza Pahlavi, to lead the country.

The previous Shah’s rule was a brutal dictatorship where tens of thousands were murdered or imprisoned by the Shah’s secret police, the Savak. The Shah’s dictatorship was backed by the US and Western interests till its overthrow in 1979.

The new proposed Shah is no different from his father, posing with Netanyahu and celebrating the bombing and killing in Iran.

So why has our mainstream media given so much attention to Iranians here who celebrate death and destruction in Iran alongside people waving the Israeli flag — a symbol of genocide and apartheid — and inviting Destiny Church to join them. A real horror show!

And when it comes to women’s rights, why is the Western media so happy to denounce restrictions on clothing for women in Iran but ignore Israel’s denial of rights to Palestinian women in Gaza whom Amnesty International this week says face the erosion of health and safety in Gaza in a “deliberate act of war targeting women and girls”.

Sanitising atrocities
And why has the Western media all but ignored the US/Israeli missile attack on the girls school in Iran killing at least 165 children? Imagine if this were an attack on a school in Israel or the US? Imagine the apoplectic outrage. Imagine the rush to sanctions and war?

This attack and murder of Iranian girls is sidelined for the same reason Israel’s genocide in Gaza killing tens of thousands of women and children is being downplayed.

Sanitising atrocities by the US or Israel and finding excuses, justifications or explanations for them is in the Western media’s DNA.

The Press and Western media take all their stories from Western sources such as Reuters and Associated Press news agencies and Western newspapers such as The Times and Daily Telegraph. They would never dream of including stories from Al Jazeera or any Palestinian news sources.

I would once have lamented the loss of mainstream media reporting on issues but it’s no longer possible to pretend it is in any way a force for good.

John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.

The seventh narco sub in Pacific waters was discovered last week as the wave of methamphetamine becomes the latest crisis challenging the region.

1News Pacific correspondent Barbara Dreaver has spent decades reporting on the region from this country, including the drug battle and subsequent HIV epidemic in some countries.

Dreaver has released her memoir — Be Brave: The Life of a Pacific Correspondent — on covering the Pacific through natural disasters, military coups and criminal activity.

• READ MORE: Barbara Dreaver: I’ve never defended who I am, why should I?
• Other Barbara Dreaver reports

She was detained and deported from Fiji before being blacklisted and not allowed to return for many years during former Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama’s reign.

Bainimarama was recently charged with inciting mutiny over allegations they encouraged senior Fiji Military Forces officers to act against the military commander in 2023.

She is a well known face within in Aotearoa, and in much of the Pacific where 1News is screened.

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

• Listen to her interview with RNZ Nine to Noon

ANALYSIS: By Ramzy Baroud

• Israel’s military strategy has long relied on psychological dominance and deterrence built on overwhelming violence.
• Massacres during the Nakba helped establish fear as a strategic tool to weaken Palestinian resistance.
• Doctrines such as the Dahiya Doctrine and “mowing the grass” reinforced Israel’s image of invincibility.
• The Gaza genocide and regional escalation have severely weakened Israel’s psychological deterrence.
• The war on Iran may accelerate the collapse of Israel’s most important strategic asset: fear.

READ MORE: Hormuz fears spike; Israel kills 19 in Lebanon; Gulf states face Iran raids
Other US-Israeli war on Iran reports

Wars are rarely fought only on battlefields. They are also fought in the minds of societies, in the perception of power and vulnerability, and in the political imagination of entire regions.

Israel understood this principle early in its history, and psychological dominance became a central component of its military doctrine.

From the earliest years of the Zionist project, the idea that power must appear overwhelming was openly articulated. In 1923, the Revisionist Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote in his famous essay The Iron Wall that Zionism would only succeed once the indigenous population became convinced that resistance was hopeless.

Only when Palestinians realised they could not defeat the Zionist project, he argued, would they accept its permanence.

The Nakba reflected the logic
The events surrounding the Nakba of 1947–48 reflected this logic. Between 800,000 and 900,000 Palestinians were expelled or forced to flee their homes, as hundreds of villages were destroyed or depopulated.

The expulsions occurred through a combination of direct military assault, forced displacement, and the collapse of Palestinian society under war.

Massacres played a crucial role in spreading fear. The killings at Deir Yassin in April 1948, in which more than 100 civilians were killed by Zionist militias, quickly reverberated across Palestine. But Deir Yassin was only one among many massacres that occurred during that period.

Killings in places such as Lydda, Tantura, Safsaf, and numerous other villages contributed to a climate of terror that accelerated the depopulation of Palestinian communities.

The psychological impact of these events was enormous. News of massacres spread from village to village, convincing many Palestinians that remaining in their homes meant risking annihilation.

The lesson was clear: war could function not only as a tool of conquest but as an instrument of psychological domination.

The Doctrine of Fear
Over time, this approach evolved into a broader strategic culture that emphasised deterrence through overwhelming violence. Israel’s wars were designed not only to defeat enemies militarily but to reinforce a perception that resistance against Israel would always end in devastating consequences.

Israeli leaders have frequently expressed this philosophy openly. In the early years of the state, Moshe Dayan, one of Israel’s most influential military figures, famously declared that Israelis must be prepared to live by the sword.

The remark captured the belief that Israel’s survival depended on constant readiness to use force and on maintaining a reputation for military ruthlessness.

Decades later, Israeli leaders continued to frame the country’s identity in similar terms. In the mid-2000s, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak described Israel as a “villa in the jungle,” a phrase that reflected a worldview in which Israel saw itself as a fortified island of civilisation surrounded by hostile and supposedly barbaric surroundings.

This perception reinforced the idea that Israel must always project overwhelming strength. Any sign of weakness, according to this logic, would invite attack.

The doctrine took more concrete form in the early 21st century. During the 2006 war in Lebanon, Israeli strategists articulated what later became known as the Dahiya Doctrine, named after the Beirut suburb that was heavily bombed during the conflict.

The doctrine advocated massive and disproportionate force against civilian infrastructure associated with resistance movements.

The purpose was not only to destroy military targets but to inflict such devastation that entire societies would be deterred from supporting resistance groups.

A similar philosophy guided Israel’s repeated wars on Gaza. Israeli strategists began referring to these periodic campaigns as “mowing the grass.” The phrase suggested that Palestinian resistance could never be permanently eliminated but could be periodically weakened through short and devastating military operations designed to restore Israeli deterrence.

For decades, this strategy appeared to work. Israel’s military superiority, combined with unwavering American support, reinforced an image of invincibility that shaped political calculations across the Middle East.

But psychological dominance depends on belief, and belief can erode.

Gaza and the crisis of deterrence
The first major rupture in Israel’s aura of invincibility occurred in May 2000, when Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon after years of occupation and sustained resistance from Hezbollah. Across the Arab world, the withdrawal was widely interpreted as the first time Israel had been forced to retreat under military pressure.

Israel attempted to restore its dominance in the 2006 Lebanon war, but the outcome again challenged the image of decisive Israeli military superiority. Despite massive bombardment and ground operations, Hezbollah remained intact and continued to launch rockets until the final days of the conflict.

Yet the most profound blow to Israel’s psychological doctrine occurred decades later with the events surrounding October 7 and the war that followed.

Israel’s response to October 7 was the devastating Gaza genocide. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were killed or wounded, and nearly the entire Strip was destroyed,

The scale of violence was unprecedented even by the standards of previous Israeli wars on Gaza. Yet the objective was not merely military retaliation or collective punishment. It was also an attempt to restore the psychological balance that Israel believed had been shattered.

This logic had been expressed years earlier by Israeli leaders. During Israel’s earlier war on Gaza in 2008–09, then-Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni openly suggested that Israel must respond in a way that demonstrates overwhelming force: When Israel is attacked, “it responds by going wild — and this is a good thing”.

In other words, war itself functioned as psychological theatre. But the Gaza genocide produced a very different outcome.

The myth begins to collapse
Modern wars unfold not only through military operations but through images that circulate instantly across the world. During the Gaza genocide, countless videos spread across social media showing Israeli armoured vehicles — including the once-feared Merkava tanks — being struck by relatively simple Palestinian anti-tank weapons.

For generations, Israel’s military power had been associated with technological invincibility. Suddenly, millions of viewers were witnessing something entirely different: a powerful army struggling against resistance fighters operating under siege conditions.

The war on Iran has intensified this psychological transformation.

For decades, Israeli society — and much of the region — believed that Israel’s territory was protected by an almost impenetrable defensive shield. The sight of waves of Iranian missiles striking targets inside Israel has therefore carried enormous symbolic weight.

These images challenge one of the most deeply embedded assumptions in Middle Eastern politics: that Israel is militarily untouchable.

At the same time, other actors are exploiting this shift in perception. Hezbollah continues to maintain significant military capabilities despite repeated Israeli attacks. Palestinian resistance groups remain active despite the devastation of Gaza.

Meanwhile, Ansarallah in Yemen has disrupted shipping routes in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, demonstrating how even non-state actors can reshape strategic realities.

Existential frame
Israeli leaders themselves increasingly frame the current confrontation as existential. Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly described the war as a struggle for Israel’s survival, echoing earlier language about living by the sword.

Yet the deeper crisis may not be purely military. Israel remains one of the most heavily armed states in the world. But the aura of invincibility that once magnified that power is fading.

Once fear begins to disappear, restoring it becomes extraordinarily difficult.

And that may be the most important consequence of the war on Iran — not the destruction it produces, but the collapse of the psychological doctrine that sustained Israeli power for decades.

Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of eight books. His latest book, Before the Flood, was published by Seven Stories Press. His other books include Our Vision for Liberation, My Father was a Freedom Fighter and The Last Earth. Dr Baroud is a non-resident senior research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). This article was first published by The Palestine Chronicle and is republished here with permission. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

French Polynesia’s President Moetai Brotherson says growing global instability is a reminder that Pacific nations must strengthen cooperation within the region.

Speaking to PMN News in an exclusive interview, Brotherson said the Pacific must focus on deeper partnerships with neighbours such as New Zealand to build resilience against external shocks.

“When we see the turmoil in the world, it’s a reminder to us, as all the Pacific Island nations, that our first and foremost vicinity is our region,” Brotherson said.

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“We have to increase cooperation between ourselves to make us more resilient to outside crises.”

Brotherson has held the presidency since 2023 and previously represented French Polynesia’s third constituency in the French National Assembly from 2017.

He made the comments following discussions with New Zealand Foreign Minister Vaovasamanaia Winston Peters during Peters’ visit to French Polynesia.

Peters described the meeting as a unique opportunity to strengthen ties between Pacific neighbours.

“We had a very good, quite unique discussion,” he said.

‘Pretty special’
“Where in the world would you sit down like that, with a president, and have a friendly New Zealand-type discussion, or Pacific-type discussion? It’s pretty special.”

Peters said New Zealand must place greater importance on its relationships in the region.

“We underrate the value of this. Because when we talk about the Pacific, it’s not our backyard like we used to say decades ago,” he said.

“It’s our front yard. And the sooner we understand that, the better.”

Brotherson said the historical, cultural, and genealogical ties between the two nations provided a foundation for closer cooperation.

He said collaboration could cover areas such as climate adaptation, maritime and air connectivity, digital infrastructure, and economic development.

“We have many areas of cooperation that needed to be discussed, and these were the topics that were addressed during our meeting,” he said.

Geopolitical competition
The French Polynesian leader also raised concerns about the growing geopolitical competition in the Pacific, particularly between the United States and China.

“We don’t want to align with anyone. I mean, either China or the US,” he said. “We want to be able to discuss with everyone and to have relationships, be it cultural or economic relationships with everyone.”

The Pacific has become an increasingly contested strategic region in recent years, with China expanding its economic and infrastructure partnerships with several island nations.

The United States and its allies have also increased diplomatic engagement, development funding, and security cooperation.

Climate change remains another major concern, particularly for the low-lying atolls of the Tuamotu archipelago — the world’s largest chain of coral atolls, located in French Polynesia northeast of Tahiti.

The French territory consists of 118 volcanic islands and coral atolls across five archipelagos in the South Pacific. Comprising 78 low-lying atolls (like Rangiroa and Fakarava) spread over 3.1 million sq km, this destination is renowned for its remote, pristine lagoons, world-class scuba diving, and black pearl farming

“They are facing the same issues as Tuvalu or other Pacific island nations that are at the forefront of climate change and the sea level rise,” Brotherson said.

‘Salination of water’
“What we are seeing currently is a salination of the water lentils on those atolls, rendering life very hard. It’s not impossible.

“So water management is going to be a real issue in the upcoming years related to climate change but you also have the coastal erosion that we have to tackle.”

The President of the Government of French Polynesia and the Foreign Minister of New Zealand.

pic.twitter.com/z8QeiVsagB

— Winston Peters (@NewZealandMFA) March 8, 2026

For communities on these low-lying atolls, the impacts of climate change are already being felt through declining freshwater supplies, erosion, and pressure on traditional food sources.

Brotherson also reiterated his support for greater political sovereignty for French Polynesia. He said economic development and resilience must come first.

French Polynesia enjoys a high degree of autonomy under France, which retains control over defence, currency, and aspects of foreign policy.

Brotherson said the pathway toward greater sovereignty must be gradual and carefully managed.

He added that economic resilience will be key before any move toward full independence and said the territory could achieve political sovereignty within the next 10 to 15 years.

“It’s all about interdependencies, that’s how we’re going to build independence. When it comes to strengthening our economy, you know, we still have a lot of work to do on food security, on energy transition, and then we’ll be able to be more confident as a nation.”

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