Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape was on an official visit to France last week, where he met French President Emmanuel Macron and held a number of important meetings to mark the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Topping the list, through a joint communiqué, came the announcement of the setting up of a new PNG embassy in Paris. Currently, the closest PNG embassy is in Brussels, Belgium.

The opening of Papua New Guinea’s embassy in Paris was based on the two nations “sharing a common commitment to democratic values, multilateralism, international law”, as well as in favour of “peace, stability and resilience in the face of climate change … and for the protection of environment and biodiversity”, including forest protection.

• READ MORE: Other France in the Pacific reports

On social networks, Macron described Papua New Guinea’s forests as “the true lungs of the Pacific”.

The diplomatic joint message also stressed the common will to “strengthen friendship and cooperation” relations.

Macron visited Papua New Guinea in July 2023, as part of a regional tour that also included New Caledonia and neighbouring Vanuatu.

On the political front, Marape also led a delegation to the French National Assembly (Lower House), which at the time was engaged in heated debates regarding New Caledonia.

The PNG delegation’s presence in the Parliament’s gallery was hailed and underlined by National Assembly Speaker Yaël Braun-Pivet, followed by a round of applause from the French MPs.

“Since we arrived, we have felt very much at home and very welcome,” Marape said.

But apart from his encounter with Macron on Wednesday last week, Marape also had significant contacts with major development aid stakeholder AFD (Agence Française de Développement) and the aircraft industry’s ATR, based in Toulouse in southwestern France.

More ATR aircraft on the way
The ATR call was said to respond to PNG plans to expand their current fleet of turbo-prop regional aircraft.

Since 2015, PNG Air currently operates 10 ATR 72-600 aircraft and plans to gradually expand its ATR fleet to 18 aircraft — a mix of ATR 72-600 (72 seats) and ATR 42-600 (42 seats).

ATR is currently finalising the construction of three aircraft to be delivered to PNG Air.

“Papua New Guinea is one of the most geographically challenging countries in the world, and aviation remains a lifeline service for our people, businesses, government services, and the broader economy,” Marape said in France.

Agence Française de Développement
Meeting the AFD top officials, Marape also touched on a crucial strategic development project in Rabaul in the East New Britain province, which is described as a “green port” project supported under the EU’s “Global Gateway” scheme.

The target would be for Rabaul to turn into a regional import-export hub, supporting cocoa, fisheries, sustainable timber, tourism, manufacturing and downstream processing.

At an estimated cost of over 80 million euros (about NZ$159 million), the project includes developments in terms of wharves, storage facilities, export-focused fish processing infrastructure, waste and wastewater systems, emissions reduction and port resilience measures.

From the total cost, AFD is proposing to fund 24 million euros.

The rest would come from the European Investment Bank (24 million euros) and from an EU grant (16.6 million euros).

Other projects supported by AFD include the “SONG” project (“Solwara Na Graun blo pipol”), which supports the conservation and sustainable management of forest and marine ecosystems through the establishment of marine and terrestrial protected areas, a major issue for PNG and the region.

The other project is a Green finance scheme to support the region’s green transition and provide better protection against climate change risks.

EU economic forum
Once the funding is finalised, a loan agreement is to be signed between France and Papua New Guinea during the European Union Economic Forum in Port Moresby on 2-3 June 2026, the AFD said.

During his visit in France, Marape said: “France is an important partner in the Pacific, and Papua New Guinea values this evolving relationship as we work together on shared regional priorities, including security, sustainable development, and economic growth”.

France is also a key player in PNG’s Natural Liquefied Gas (LNG) industry, through its company TotalEnergies.

The TOTAL LNG project is estimated to be worth some US$10-12 billion in development value, with and expected yearly output capacity of 5.6 million tonnes once operational.

In terms of security and defence relations, French and PNG armed forces have signed a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) in 2022.

Since then, PNG forces are regularly taking part in French-hosted military and disaster-related humanitarian relief exercises and simulations, including in New Caledonia (with the New Caledonian Armed Forces, the FANC, and other neighbouring Pacific islands military personnel), French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna.

Over the past 10 years, France has increased its engagement in the Pacific, where strategic competition grows across the region, including in the form of a struggle for influence between the United States and China.

Through New Caledonia and French Polynesia, France holds one of the world’s largest exclusive economic zones and maintains a permanent military presence in the region.

Birds of paradise show
Coincidentally, the Paris Musée du Quai Branly — Jacques Chirac, which is largely dedicated to first peoples and Pacific islands cultures, has inaugurated earlier this month an exhibition named “Plumes of Paradise: Journeys of an Extraordinary Bird from New Guinea”.

The exhibition lasts until 8 November 2026.

It focuses on the multiple representations of PNG’s iconic bird, including the use of its feathers and the influence it had on European cultures.

The exhibition features almost 200 pieces of birds of paradise feather-based art works (jewellery, paintings, stuffed specimens, fashion items and accessories).

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

Nauru’s government has issued a directive to all public servants and employees of state-owned enterprises in-country and abroad to adhere to the “One China” policy.

The Cabinet directive comes as the Micronesian island nation marks its 58th constitution Day this week.

In January 2024, Nauru became the first nation to switch diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China just two days after Lai Ching-te was elected president.

• READ MORE: Other ‘One China’ reports

Taiwan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry at the time accused China of “offering economic assistance as incentive to persuade” Nauru terminate diplomatic relations with Taipei.

However, since then Nauruan officials have described the relationship with Beijing as reaching “new heights” and “manifesting into concrete tangible actions” for the two countries.

“Following Cabinet decision on 15 May 2026, all personnel representing the Government and State-owned Enterprises of the Republic of Nauru in-country and abroad are further directed by Cabinet to observe the One-China Principle,” the government said in a statement on Wednesday.

It added officials must “ensure consistency in the use of terminology and references in official conduct, communications, engagements, and administrative practices across all government departments, instrumentalities, statutory authorities, state-owned enterprise, government-controlled enterprise, agencies, and affiliated bodies”.

It further advised officials to “avoid using terminology, symbols, flags, emblems, or representations which are inconsistent with the One China Principle”.

“All official communication relating to the Taiwan Province of China must comply with the diplomatic position of the Government of Nauru.

“Officials must not enter into official relations and arrangements with the Taiwan Province authorities or participate in programs funded by the Taiwan Province.”

Taiwan no longer has a diplomatic presence in Nauru after the island nation switched its allegiance to Beijing.

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

The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) has called on the New Zealand government to resolve a tenancy controversy over the Israeli embassy — by expelling the ambassador and staff.

Noting the world pariah status of the country after the International Criminal Court (ICC)  has reportedly sought arrest warrants for war crimes against up to five more Israeli officials, the PSNA said today the shift of the Israeli embassy into the Fisher Funds building in Wellington had concerned other tenants in the office high rise.

Citing The Post front-page article on Monday, it said only some occupants of the 13-storey site had been told that Israel was moving in.

• READ MORE: Israeli far-right minister Smotrich says ICC seeks his arrest
• Israeli Embassy on the move ‒ but not all new neighbours happy, despite heightened security promise
• Family pleas for kidnapped 3 Kiwis as Gaza flotilla demands global activists’ freedom from Israel
• Other Gaza genocide reports

PSNA spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said in a statement “the building’s owner was obviously trying to keep the arrival of the embassy a secret” to avoid objections.

“It’s pretty obvious why. The Fisher Funds building is owned by Prime Property Group, which is controlled by rich-lister and former Israeli Defence Force major, Eyal Aharoni,” she said.

“He’s looking after his own.”

According to Al Jazeera and news agencies, Israeli far-right Finance Minister ⁠Bezalel Smotrich said he had been informed that the ICC ⁠in ⁠The Hague ⁠had ⁠requested a warrant for his arrest.

Smotrich did not specify who had informed him about the warrant and said it was a “declaration of war”. The process of seeking warrants ⁠is confidential.

Displacement orders
The ICC accusations reportedly centre on Smotrich’s forced displacement orders for Palestinians, his support for moving Israeli settlers into occupied territory, and his claim it may be “justified and moral” to starve Palestinians in Gaza.

Another report, by the independent Haaretz newspaper, named five officials — including Smotrich — as the subject of arrest warrants, but the ICC described this as “inaccurate”.

In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for “crimes against humanity and war crimes” committed during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

Tamimi said the solution to the embassy location concern was the New Zealand government could expel the ambassador and his staff.

“We broke off diplomatic relations when it was discovered Israel’s Mossad spy agency had been getting fake New Zealand passports. So, there is a precedent,” she said.

“It all comes down to the fact that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. It’s the world’s worst atrocity of this century and shamefully its ongoing perpetrators are flying their flag over our capital city.

‘Kidnapping citizens’
“At this very moment, Israel is firing on the Sumud Flotilla trying to bring aid to Gaza and kidnapping and assaulting New Zealand citizens on that convoy.

“Our ministers are shaking hands with the people who represent this illegal violence in international waters.”

Tamimi said that although Fisher Funds did not own the building it operated out of, “it must have powers as the holder of naming rights”.

The signals are now coming from both sides of the negotiating table. American sources confirm it. Pakistani mediators confirm it.

The end of the US-Iran war is near, and the terms of that ending will echo across the international order for decades.

Let us be precise about what has happened here.

• READ MORE: Trump says Iran agreement ‘very possible’; Israeli forces bomb Beirut
• Iran’s Foreign Ministry says US proposal to end the war still ‘under review’
• In rare push, US lawmakers demand transparency on Israel nuclear capability
• Other US-Israel war/ceasefire reports

Iran, a nation under sanctions for more than four decades, subjected to assassinations, sabotage, proxy warfare — and finally direct military assault by the most expensively armed forces in human history, backed by a nuclear-armed Israel — has not been defeated.

It has not collapsed. It has not surrendered its sovereignty, its nuclear programme, or its dignity. It stood, absorbed the blows, struck back with precision, and forced Washington to the negotiating table.

That is not a stalemate. That is a victory.

Trump’s 10-day ceasefire declaration in April initially appeared like a pause. However, as days went by, it became clearer it was an exit strategy in search of a face-saving wrapper.

Silence terminal, not tactical
The Americans have not fired a significant shot since. The silence was not tactical. It was terminal.

Consider what Iran has demonstrated to the watching world. It faced two nuclear powers simultaneously, America and Israel, with all the military technology, intelligence infrastructure, and political backing that entails.

Strangely, Iran depleted American missile stockpiles to the point of a three-to-five-year restocking timeline. It struck American bases across seven countries.

It collected tolls on the Strait of Hormuz. It watched its adversary’s approval ratings collapse domestically while its own national resolve hardened.

Trump, the self-proclaimed dealmaker, cannot exit fast enough.

The man who launched this war with the language of dominance is now scrambling for the language of diplomacy, mediated by Pakistan, concluded on terms nobody in Washington would have accepted 12 weeks ago.

History will record this clearly. A civilisation several thousand years old, armed with ingenuity, patience, and righteous resistance, outlasted the last empire’s appetite for a fight it should never have started.

The war is ending. Iran is standing. The world has been watching, and the world has learned something.

Prince Taofeek Ajibade is an educator and digital creator from Ibadan, Nigeria.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has been on a strategic tour to prepare for two dramatically different paths that could unfold in the coming days — a return to diplomacy or a resumption of the war with the US and Israel.

While President Donald Trump has claimed that the Iranian government is in a state of internal chaos and his administration is waiting for Iran to capitulate, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site News that Tehran is establishing the conditions under which a new round of direct talks could take place.

“We’re currently moving forward with our own design, and we feel continuing negotiations doesn’t make sense until the US government lifts the maritime blockade,” said the official who has direct knowledge of internal diplomatic deliberations in Iran.

• READ MORE: Top US officials review Iran’s proposal to end war and open Hormuz Strait
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

He requested anonymity because he is not authorised to publicly discuss the negotiations.

“The scope of the conflict has expanded, and naturally the issue is no longer purely nuclear.”

Tehran, the Iranian official said, remained firm in its demand that the US naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz be lifted as a condition to move forward. If that happens, a formal second round of top level direct talks can happen.

“Araghchi is Iran’s top diplomat. So even if there’s a 1 percent chance for a breakthrough, he would embark on it,” said Hassan Ahmadian, a prominent Iranian analyst and associate professor at the University of Tehran.

A multi-phase outline
He told Drop Site that Iran has crafted a multi-phase outline for ending the war: A real ceasefire must be imposed on Israel in the region, specifically Lebanon, and a settlement must be reached in the Strait of Hormuz “without harming Iran’s national security and also regional security.”

Once these conditions are met, comprehensive negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme and a long-term non-aggression agreement could commence.

“The Iranians are saying time is working in our favor for the three Ms: munitions, markets, and the midterms. These three Ms help Iran in its position and weaken US positions,” Ahmadian said.

“Obviously in the US, they want something to say, ‘We squeezed Iran and we got this.’ My perception is that the Iranians are keen to deny the United States that — they wouldn’t give what Trump wants as a victory.”

While White House officials claim Iran presented the US with a “new” proposal over the weekend and pushed this narrative through their preferred media outlets, the Iranian official said the characterisation was false.

Trump claimed Iran softened its stance over the weekend, but not enough for a deal. Ahmadian said there has been a recent Iranian shift, but it is toward a clearer set of conditions for resuming negotiations, not acceding to American demands on its nuclear programme.

“There are changes, as I understand,” he said. “The main change is for Iran to insist on the stop of the war regionally. That’s pivotal in Iran agreeing to discuss other issues.”

Unprecedented challenge
As a practical matter, Tehran is facing an unprecedented challenge in dealing with Trump. Twice in one year, Israel and the US have bombed Iran in the middle of negotiations.

Trump is erratic and frequently contradicts himself — vascillating between expressing optimism for a deal and claiming Iran has surrendered to sweeping US demands only to turn around and threaten to destroy Iranian civilisation and to carpet bomb its civilian infrastructure.

Iran also believes that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been given unprecedented influence over US intelligence estimates and White House decision-making.

“Our country has had negotiations with the Americans at various levels over the past 30 years — formal and informal, public and back-channel,” the senior Iranian official said, referencing previous US-Iran negotiations that involved months — at times years — of diplomacy and technical talks.

“It’s as if they are showing up to a football match with rugby rules.”

Iran has total disdain for Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and views him as both oblivious of diplomatic processes and totally ignorant of technical issues. Kushner is viewed by Iran as Israel’s man at the table.

Iran, the senior official said, does not see any reason to deal with these two without a figure like Vice-President JD Vance present.

Flurry of speculation
Last week, the Iranian government announced that Araghchi would be visiting Islamabad for bilateral talks with Pakistani leaders. This set off a flurry of media speculation that a new round of negotiations would happen.

Trump announced that Vance was en route to Islamabad and once again characterised Iran as pleading for new negotiations. But Vance, it turned out, was not on a plane, and Iran continued to deny it had any intention of meeting with US officials in Pakistan.

Trump then said he was dispatching Witkoff and Kushner, and the media was flooded with stories about a meeting with Iran. Some news outlets, citing White House sources, claimed that planes were en route to the meetings, and the White House suggested Iran was lying about the forthcoming talks.

“The Iranians want to talk, they want to talk in person,” said White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt on Friday. “Steve and Jared will be heading to Pakistan tomorrow to hear the Iranians out.”

Iran continued to reject suggestions that any talks would happen.

“No meeting is planned to take place between Iran and the US,” Iran’s Foreign Minister spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said soon after Araghchi arrived in Pakistan. Iran, he said, discussed a range of issues, including trade.

On Sunday, Islamabad announced it was expanding the transportation of third-country goods through Pakistan destined for Iran. While the transit routes had been under discussion since 2008, the timing — with Trump claiming his naval blockade was “strangling” Iran — was impossible to ignore.

Scrambled to spin
After Araghchi left Islamabad on Saturday and flew to Oman, Trump scrambled to spin the narrative and control the damage, claiming he had actually called off the planned negotiations.

“Too much time wasted on traveling, too much work!,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Besides which, there is tremendous infighting and confusion within their ‘leadership.’ Nobody knows who is in charge, including them. Also, we have all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!”

Trump then claimed that as a result of his refusal to send his emissaries, Iran had softened its stance, submitting a new proposal to the US. “They gave us a paper that should have been better. And interestingly, immediately, when I canceled it, within 10 minutes, we got a new paper that was much better,” Trump said.

Trump continues to claim that he extended the initial two-week ceasefire agreed on April 7 because Iran’s leadership was in a state of disarray and infighting. This narrative has been widely parrotted in Western media.

“That’s part of the cognitive warfare on Iran,” said Ahmadian. “It’s targeted at the society, the elites, and the position of the Supreme Leader. It’s not news, it’s not intel that they’re talking about.

“It’s basically an agenda to create what they are calling division. And I think the main aim within Iran is to increase mistrust and decrease trust among elites, which I think the Iranians are now very well aware of.”

Ahmadian said that Iran’s perception is that it is the US leadership that is in deep disarray, as evidenced by Trump’s flip-flops, unrealised threats and the recent chaos over which officials would be heading to Islamabad to negotiate with Iran.

Clear Tehran message
During the first round of direct talks held in Islamabad on April 11, the Iranian team arrived with “a clear message coming out of Tehran, with a team that represents all of the system, and it came with a very strong case for showing the unity within the country,” Ahmadian said.

He added that the Iranian side left the talks with the impression that there were stark differences between Vance on the one hand and Witkoff and Kushner on the other.

“The Iranians see Witkoff and Kushner as representatives of the Israeli interests, not those of the United States, as opposed to Mr Vance, who is representing the US interests in those talks,” he said.

“They were divided in their way of approaching the Iranians.”

Jeremy Scahill is a journalist at Drop Site News, author of the books Blackwater and Dirty Wars. He has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and other countries.

Fiji’s Ambassador to Israel, Jesoni Vitusagavulu, has defended his country’s voting record at the United Nations, saying it is guided by principle, not pressure.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Vitusagavulu said Fiji carefully assessed each resolution on its merits rather than aligning with majority positions.

“Fiji votes at the United Nations on principle. We’ve consistently been one of the few nations to stand up against one-sided, anti-Israel resolutions,” he said.

• READ MORE: Fiji votes on Israel

“We don’t just follow the crowd; we evaluate every measure on its merits. For us, it’s about fairness and sovereign equality.”

He said Fiji’s approach reflected a broader commitment to balanced diplomacy.

“We believe that isolating Israel through lopsided resolutions is counterproductive to peace, and we choose instead to be a consistent voice for balanced dialogue,” Vitusagavulu said.

The ambassador stressed that Fiji maintained an “inclusive” foreign policy stance.

“We are ‘friends to all.’ Fiji is transparent about its values, so our partners know exactly where we stand.”

He added that supporting Israel did not equate to opposing other nations.

“Supporting Israel doesn’t mean we’re ‘against’ anyone else… It’s not a blanket endorsement of another country’s policies,” he said, referencing remarks by Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka.

Vitusagavulu said Fiji aimed to play a constructive role on the global stage.

“We believe that by keeping our doors open to everyone, Fiji can act as a moderate, honest voice for engagement in a very polarised world.”

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

• Asia Pacific Report: The UN General Assembly continues to pass resolutions critical of Israel, including a March 2026 resolution demanding an end to occupation and a December 2025 vote (123-7) directing withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights. Recent resolutions consistently emphasise the illegality of settlements, demand humanitarian access in Gaza, and act on International Court of Justice findings regarding the occupied territories.

AMY GOODMAN: Ship traffic has halted again in the Strait of Hormuz after President Trump ordered the US military to begin a naval blockade of all Iranian ports and coastal areas starting on Monday.

Iran denounced Trump’s move as an illegal act amounting to “piracy”. Iran has threatened to strike Gulf ports in retaliation.

Trump ordered the blockade after the US and Iran failed to reach a deal to end the war following 21 hours of talks in Islamabad, Pakistan.

The negotiations marked the highest-level talks between the two countries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. US Vice-President JD Vance headed the U.S. delegation, which included US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Iranian negotiators had flown to Pakistan on a plane they called “Minab 168” as a tribute to the 168 people killed in a US missile strike on an elementary school in the city of Minab on February 28. The plane carried images of the dead schoolchildren, along with blood-stained school bags recovered beneath the rubble.

Global oil prices jumped after Trump announced the blockade.

We’re joined now by Ervand Abrahamian, professor emeritus of history at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, the author of several books, most recently, Oil Crisis in Iran: From Nationalism to Coup d’État. His forthcoming book is 1979: An Inevitable Revolution.

So, your response to what transpired in Pakistan, the deal that was not reached between Iran and the United States, and what this means, Professor?

Trump orders naval blockade of Iran            Video: Democracy Now!

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Well, I think both sides actually presented, basically, ultimate demands which the other side couldn’t accept, so it was a false start. But the implications of the failure is going to be actually quite drastic on the United States, because Trump’s main concern has been to actually put a limit, a lid, on the oil prices going up, and they’ve already jumped from $88 a barrel to over $100. They’re going to increase more with the present crisis, with the embargo on the Strait of Hormuz.

And as the crisis escalates, I think the US will start bombing Iranian oil installations. Iran will retaliate by bombing the Gulf’s oil installations, gas installations. The oil prices then could really zoom up.

Some people expect it to reach $200 a barrel. In that case, you know, it will have long-term implications for Wall Street and the whole American economy, not to mention the world economy. So, things that Trump has tried to avoid, he has got, actually, himself into the major crisis, economic crisis.

AMY GOODMAN: You have Robert Malley, who had previously been involved with talks with Iran, saying, “Twenty-one hours was 20 hours too many if the goal was to reiterate a demand Iran had already rejected. It was many hours too few if the goal was to negotiate.” Your response?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: He’s exactly right. And I think, I mean, what Iran sees as the present crisis is an existential one, because although the talk has been regime change, the Israeli policy, clearly, in the last 10 years has been more than regime change. It’s basically been the destruction of the Iranian state, Iranian nation. So Iran sees this as an existential threat.

There was a speech that Trump made when he launched the attack on Iran a couple of weeks ago. It was actually quite an interesting speech. He talked about various ethnic minorities being oppressed in Iran, and they were dying to be liberated from Iranian control. And he listed obvious ethnic groups, but then there was one ethnic group that, really, I’d never heard of.

So I scratched my head. What is this group? And I did what most people do: You google. And lo and behold, this ethnic group actually exists in the other side of the Caucasus Mountains in Dagestan.

So you wonder what reason they had for putting this ethnic group that doesn’t exist in Iran as one of the ethnic groups, unless there’s some sinister idea the Israelis have of a civil war in Iran, where they will recruit, actually, mercenaries from the other side of the Caucasus to bring into Iran.

Of course, this sounds far-fetched, but this is what actually happened in Syria. You had a lot of Chechens actually brought in to fight against Assad. So, the Israelis may be thinking in those terms of actually a long civil war in Iran, where they would be bringing in mercenaries from outside. So, for this reason, I think Iran sees this as a real, serious, existential war. It’s not just a question of a minor sort of fine tuning of relations with the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve written about oil in Iran a great deal. Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, tweeted on Sunday, “Enjoy the current pump figures. With the so-called ‘blockade’, soon you’ll be nostalgic for $4-$5 [per gallon] gas.”

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the price could go up to $200 a barrel, even more than that, if, basically, the Gulf oil — it’s not just Iranian oil, but the whole Gulf oil and gas — is actually cut off from the world market.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about what Iran wants right now and what the US wants. Ten o’clock am — we’re broadcasting right before that — Eastern time is when the US Navy blockades, apparently, the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

What exactly does this mean? How will the Gulf nations be affected? How will Iran be affected? Because it both exports oil, but, of course, it needs oil and makes a great deal of its own oil.

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yeah, I mean, it won’t break Iran, because it has — Iran has other ways of actually exporting oil. It’ll obviously be a hardship, but it’ll be a much worse hardship on the Gulf states, if Iran actually dismantles their oil installations.

And that affects directly United States economy, because so much of Gulf oil money, gas money actually goes into high-tech United States. And much of the American, basically, modern technology is funded by subsidies from the various Gulf states. So it would have drastic repercussions on US economy.

AMY GOODMAN: What does Trump want? His latest, and what Vance said — right? Vance leaves the Hungarian prime minister, campaigning for him, Orbán, who was soundly defeated, and then goes to Islamabad to lead this negotiation. He says it’s all about nuclear weapons. Vance said, “The simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them [to quickly] achieve a nuclear weapon.” Your response?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Exactly. I mean, that’s exactly what the Obama agreement was.

AMY GOODMAN: That Trump pulled out of.

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yes, which Trump pulled out of. But if you look at that agreement, basically, it said Iran had the right to enrich, but it had to be supervised to make sure it couldn’t enrich to the level of nuclear weapons.

So, Netanyahu cries it was vague agreement. In fact, it was very precise. Iran could enrich to 3.67 percent of uranium. That’s as precise as you can get. It was limited to 200 grams of enriched uranium. And also, it was — everything was supervised.

There were 140 international monitors, including American monitors. So, this was an incredibly tight procedure to make sure that Iran would actually fulfill its promise not to go into nuclear weapons.

When Trump pulled out of that, he basically unwound the whole system. And the best he can get is going back to that. So, demand that Iran should have no nuclear enrichment is a nonstarter. The best he could get is to go back, permit Iran to have enrichment, but with monitoring that it would not be weapon enrichment.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have a minute. In a call with the Russian President Putin, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said a deal is, “not out of reach.” So, if you can talk about whether — where you see this all headed?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Well, there are people in Iran in the — basically, in the National Security Council, including Pezeshkian, who think that they can make a deal with the United States. And they’ve been there a long time.

But there are also people now, I think, hardliners, who are stronger now than before the war, who are arguing that you can’t make a deal with Trump. Even if Trump makes a deal, he could, the following week, decide he’s going to pull out. So it’s a nonstarter, from their point of view, unless US can actually make full commitments. And I don’t see how they can do that, because Trump is basically untrustworthy.

So, from their point of view, I think the hardliners in Iran could argue, persuasively, the more the pressure they have, the more the prices are going to go up; the more it goes up, sooner or later, the patient will have a heart attack or a stroke. So they have an upper hand at the moment.

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

Iran’s ambassador has criticised New Zealand’s failure to condemn the US and Israeli strikes on Iran as damaging the relationship between the two nations, reports 1News.

Interviewed on TVNZ’s Q+A programme by Jack Tame, Ambassador Reza Nazar Ahari said New Zealand’s “silence” would be interpreted as tacit support for the attacks.

He said the relationship between the two nations had “shifted”.

• READ MORE: US military to block all Iran-bound ships from transiting the Hormuz Strait
• US delegation ‘failed to gain the trust of the Iranian delegation’
• Protesters rally across Aotearoa in condemnation of Israel, US ‘warmongering’ and ‘shameful’ NZ​
• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Ahari told Tame that New Zealand’s diplomatic “quietness” had damaged the relationship between the two nations, reports 1News.

He said the world had shifted from a “rule of law” to a “rule of the jungle”, where nations had given themselves the right to attack others without authorisation.

“A country like United States [has] made a military attack on Iran, and it is very clear that it is contrary to all international regulations, but New Zealand has not condemned that,” 1News quoted him as saying.

“Then that kind of quietness means that support. In Iranian culture, in many cases, quiet means positive reply,” he said.

Iran ambassador: New Zealand no longer stands up for peace   Video: Q&A

US navy blockade
Peace talks at the weekend between the US and Iran in Islamabad, Pakistan, resulted in no new agreement, after six weeks of strikes on Iran and the Islamic Republic’s retaliatory attacks.

US President Donald Trump has declared a navy bockade on Iran after the failed talks and oil prices have surged again amid a fragile two-week ceasefire.

A Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) spokesperson told Q+A on Friday: “Just today, New Zealand has signed onto a joint leaders’ statement with Australia, the UK and other world leaders which calls on all sides to implement the ceasefire, including in Lebanon.”

Yesterday began with Donald Trump issuing genocidal threats against Iran on social media and ended — just ten hours later — with the announcement of a 14-day ceasefire, on Iran’s terms.

Even by the volatile standards of Trump’s presidency, the whiplash is extraordinary. What, then, have the two sides actually agreed to — and what might it mean?

In a subsequent post, Trump asserted that Iran had agreed to keep the Strait of Hormuz open during the two-week pause in hostilities. Negotiations, he added, will proceed over that period on the basis of Iran’s 10-point plan, which he described as a “workable” foundation for talks.

• READ MORE: ‘Killing machine’: Lebanon mourns as Israeli raids shake US-Iran
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• Other US-Israel war on Iran reports

Those 10 points are:

1. The US must fundamentally commit to guaranteeing non-aggression.
2. Continuation of Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz.
3. Acceptance that Iran can enrich uranium for its nuclear programme.
4. Removal of all primary sanctions on Iran.
5. Removal of all secondary sanctions against foreign entities that do business with Iranian institutions.
6. End of all United Nations Security Council resolutions targeting Iran.
7. End of all International Atomic Energy Agency resolutions on Iran’s nuclear programme.
8. Compensation payment to Iran for war damage.
9. Withdrawal of US combat forces from the region.
10. Ceasefire on all fronts, including Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The United States has not, of course, signed on to all 10 points. But the mere fact that Iran’s framework will anchor the negotiations amounts to a significant diplomatic victory for Tehran.

More striking still, according to the Associated Press, Iran will retain control of the Strait during the ceasefire and continue — alongside Oman — to collect transit fees from passing vessels. In effect, Washington appears to have conceded that reopening the waterway comes with tacit recognition of Iran’s authority over it.

The geopolitical consequences could be profound. As Mohammad Eslami and Zeynab Malakouti note in Responsible Statecraft, Tehran is likely to leverage this position to rebuild economic ties with Asian and European partners — countries that once traded extensively with Iran but were driven out of its market over the past 15 years by US sanctions.

Also strategic
Iran’s calculus is not driven solely by solidarity with Palestinians and Lebanese. It is also strategic. Continued Israeli bombardment risks reigniting direct confrontation between Israel and Iran — a cycle that has already flared twice since October 7.

From Tehran’s perspective, a durable halt to its conflict with Israel is inseparable from ending Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon. This is not an aspirational add-on; it is a prerequisite.

The forthcoming talks in Islamabad between Washington and Tehran may yet falter. But the terrain has shifted. Trump’s failed use of force has blunted the credibility of American military threats, introducing a new dynamic into US-Iran diplomacy.

Washington can still rattle its sabre. But after a failed war, such threats ring hollow.

The United States is no longer in a position to dictate terms; any agreement will have to rest on genuine compromise. That, in turn, demands real diplomacy — patience, discipline, and a tolerance for ambiguity — qualities not typically associated with Trump.

It may also require the participation of other major powers, particularly China, to help anchor the process and reduce the risk of a relapse into conflict.

Above all, the ceasefire’s durability will hinge on whether Trump can restrain Israel from undermining the diplomatic track.

No illusions
On this point, there should be no illusions. Senior Israeli officials have already denounced the agreement as the greatest “political disaster” in the country’s history — a signal, if any were needed, of how fragile this moment may prove to be.

Even if the talks collapse — and even if Israel resumes its bombardment of Iran — it does not necessarily follow that the United States will return to war. There is little reason to believe a second round would produce a different outcome, or that it would not once again leave Iran in a position to hold the global economy hostage.

In that sense, Tehran has, at least for now, restored a measure of deterrence.

One final point bears emphasis: this elective war was not only a strategic blunder. Rather than precipitating regime change, it has likely granted Iran’s theocracy a renewed lease on life — much as Saddam Hussein did in 1980, when his invasion enabled Ayatollah Khomeini to consolidate power at home.

The magnitude of this miscalculation may well puzzle historians for decades to come.

Dr Trita Parsi is the executive VP of the Quincy Institute and an award-winning author. Washingtonian Magazine has named him one of the 25 most influential voices on foreign policy. Noam Chomsky calls him “one of the most distinguished scholars on Iran”.

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.

In a stunning resignation that has sent shockwaves through Washington, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent has exposed what many have long suspected but few have dared to state publicly — Israel is systematically undermining peace in the Middle East to serve its own expansionist agenda.

Joe Kent, a 20-year Army Special Forces veteran and Gold Star husband who lost his first wife in a Syria suicide bombing, didn’t mince words. His accusation is simple yet devastating: Israel is intentionally sabotaging diplomatic solutions because peace threatens its strategic objectives.

The most compelling evidence supporting Kent’s claim is the targeted assassination of Ali Larijani, Iran’s National Security Adviser and chief nuclear negotiator.

• READ MORE: Trump says no ceasefire as Khamenei tells of ‘dizzying blow’ to US, Israel
• Ian Powell: Iran, US imperialism and the New Zealand lapdog
• US counterterror chief says in resignation letter Israel ‘deceived’ Trump into attacking Iran
• Other US-Israeli war on Iran reports

According to Kent, Larijani wasn’t just another Iranian official — he was actively engaged in negotiations that could have de-escalated regional tensions.

“Larijani was eager to get us a deal,” Kent revealed in an interview with Tucker Carlson.

But instead of pursuing diplomacy, US-Israeli strikes eliminated him, along with his son and several staff members. The message could not be clearer — anyone willing to negotiate for peace becomes a target.

This wasn’t just another military operation. Larijani represented the pragmatic wing of the Iranian establishment — someone capable of conducting the sorts of talks needed to end conflicts.

By eliminating him, Israel ensured that the path to negotiation was closed, leaving only the path of escalation.

Energy warfare masquerading as security
Kent’s second explosive claim involves energy infrastructure. He argues that strategic opportunities — particularly Qatar’s gas potential to stabilise global markets — have been deliberately targeted to increase tensions rather than reduce them .

The facts support him. On March 18, 2026, Israel launched a significant aerial assault on Iran’s South Pars gas field, which provides nearly 70 percent of Iran’s domestic gas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted Israel “acted alone” in this attack.

The result? Iran retaliated by striking Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City — the world’s premier LNG hub — damaging approximately 17 percent of Qatar’s export capacity .

Global gas prices surged toward US$117 per barrel. The UK benchmark peaked at almost 183p per therm. Markets destabilised. And for what?

Here is the inconvenient truth, a stable energy market benefiting from Qatari and Iranian gas would reduce conflict incentives. By attacking this infrastructure, Israel ensured that economic interdependence — often the foundation of lasting peace — remains impossible.

Even President Trump distanced himself from the attack, stating the US “knew nothing about this particular strike” and describing it as Israel “violently lashing out”. When an American president feels compelled to publicly disavow his closest regional ally’s actions, something is fundamentally broken.

The ‘clean break’ strategy: 30 years of sabotage
Kent’s accusations didn’t emerge from nowhere. They reflect a consistent pattern dating back to 1996, when a group of neoconservatives — including figures who would later serve in the Bush administration — produced a policy paper titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”.

This document, prepared for Netanyahu, explicitly rejected the “land for peace” formula and proposed reordering the Middle East through military confrontations and regime change. It identified Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Iran as targets.

It called for “removing Saddam Hussein from power” and “weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria”.

Three decades later, we’re living the consequences. The Iraq war cost thousands of American lives. Syria descended into a catastrophic civil war. And now Iran faces sustained attacks. All while Israel’s security — not America’s — remained the central objective.

Kent’s resignation letter directly connected these dots: “It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby . . .  This is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war”.

The human cost
Perhaps the most damning aspect of Kent’s accusation is personal. His wife, Navy cryptologist Shannon Kent, was killed in Syria in a suicide bombing. Kent now describes that conflict as “a war manufactured by Israel”.

Think about that. A Gold Star husband — someone who paid the ultimate price for American foreign policy — is telling us that his wife died in a war that served Israeli, not American, interests. If that doesn’t demand scrutiny, what does?

Why this matters now
Critics dismiss Kent as antisemitic or claim he is leaking classified information. But ad hominem attacks don’t address the substance.

Did Israel target a negotiator actively seeking peace? Yes. Did Israel attack energy infrastructure knowing it would destabilise global markets? Yes. Does Israel have a documented 30-year strategy of military confrontation over diplomacy? Yes.

The situation in Gaza further illustrates the pattern. As one analysis noted, Netanyahu’s “ceasefire” effectively granted Israel breathing space to consolidate political control while evading accountability. Within days, Israel’s Parliament passed a bill paving the way for West Bank annexation. This isn’t peace — it’s a pause for rearmament.

The parasite metaphor
A parasite feeds on its host, weakening it while appearing inseparable from it. Israel’s relationship with American foreign policy fits this description uncomfortably well.

American blood and treasure fund Israeli objectives. American credibility suffers when allies act unilaterally. American interests in stable energy markets get sacrificed for Israeli security concerns.

Joe Kent’s accusations deserve more than reflexive dismissal. They deserve investigation. Because if a Gold Star husband and former counterterrorism chief is correct — if Israel is indeed sabotaging peace for its own ends — then Americans have a right to know why their soldiers are dying and their markets are destabilised for another nation’s strategic objectives.

The description of Israel as a parasite may be harsh. But sometimes harsh truths are the only ones that break through comfortable lies.

Israel has positioned itself as America’s indispensable ally. Kent’s resignation suggests it may actually be the parasite draining American power while sabotaging any chance of Middle Eastern peace.

Marcus Alexander is an independent writer in Doha and contributor to Channel Media Network.

High-ranking Fiji government ministers have formally approved plans for the establishment of resident embassies for Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in Suva.

The Fiji government has announced a double diplomatic expansion in a post-cabinet meeting statement on Wednesday.

Fiji and Israel established diplomatic relations in 1970. The government said Israel’s embassy in Suva “will further enhance bilateral cooperation” between the two nations.

• READ MORE: Fiji’s stance on Israel and new embassy stirs revived condemnation
• Iran warns of ‘zero restraint’ if energy facilities attacked again
• Other Fiji and Israel reports

In September last year, Fiji opened its embassy in Jerusalem. At the time, Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said it “reflects our desire to build bridges — not walls — between nations, cultures, and peoples”.

The government statement said that since establishing diplomatic relations over five decades ago, Fiji and Israel had been cooperating in areas such as peacekeeping, agriculture, security, and development cooperation.

“Bilateral relations have continued to strengthen in recent years, including through agricultural cooperation with MASHAV — Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation, and the opening of Fiji’s Embassy in Jerusalem in 2025,” the statement said.

The government said key areas that would benefit from the setting up of Israel’s embassy in Fiji included security, climate change, agriculture, and emerging technologies.

‘Significant milestone’
On the setting up of the UAE’s resident embassy, the government described it as “a significant milestone”.

Fiji and the UAE established diplomatic relations in 2010, with Fiji opening its mission in Abu Dhabi in 2012.

“The proposed mission will be the first diplomatic presence from the Gulf region in Fiji, with expected accreditation across the wider Oceania region,” the government said.

“The establishment of the UAE embassy will strengthen bilateral cooperation in areas such as renewable energy, climate resilience, trade and investment, education, and development assistance, while reinforcing Fiji’s role as a regional diplomatic hub in the Pacific.”

• The United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28 in a war that has thrown the Middle East into turmoil.

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

A professor of US and international politics at University College Dublin, says Washington’s objectives in the war against Iran are “slightly different” than Israel’s.

“They didn’t necessarily want regime change; they want regime surrender — the regime to give up its nuclear programme entirely, to give up its ballistic missile programme, to break its alliances in the Middle East,” Dr Scott Lucas told Al Jazeera.

“The problem here is that the regime doesn’t appear to be even giving way to those conditions, so where is the off-ramp?”

• READ MORE: Iran says US, Israel have hit nearly 10,000 civilian sites since war began
• Other US-Israeli war on Iran reports

For Dr Lucas, the only countries that have leverage in the current situation are the Gulf states, because of Trump’s personal and family investments, as well as oil and US assets in the region and strategic interests.

“If the domestic situation worsens for Trump, then there may be that opening for the Gulf states” to ask for a pullback, he said, adding that would be “especially true” if there is another surge in the price of oil in the coming days.

‘Spare the hypocrisy’, Baghael tells EU chief
Meanwhile, Esmaeil Baghaei, the spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, has said “spare the hypocrisy” in reaction to a speech by EU chief Ursula von der Leyen during which she said, “The people of Iran deserve freedom, dignity, and the right to decide their own future.”

Commenting on a video of von der Leyen’s speech, Baghaei said: “Please spare the hypocrisy. You’ve made a career out of standing on the wrong side of history — green-lighting occupation, genocide, and atrocities, and now laundering [the] US/Israeli crime of aggression and war crimes against Iranians.”

He accused the EU leadership of being silent “in the face of lawlessness and atrocity”, saying this “is nothing less than complicity”.

Funny . . . back when Russia invaded Ukraine, New Zealand didn’t wait for Vladimir Putin to tell us whether his acts of aggression were legal under international law. Instead, we immediately decided the invasion was illegal, and forthrightly condemned Russia’s actions at the time, and ever since.

Different story when it comes to the Americans. Apparently, we’re on Team USA when it comes to international law, which forbids aggression against a sovereign state in the absence of an imminent threat to the aggressor.

Repeatedly though, Christopher Luxon told RNZ this morning that it is up to the US and Israel to tell us whether their attacks on Iran are in breach of international law.

• READ MORE: US jets crash in Kuwait, Iran says no talks; Israel kills 31 in Lebanon
• Luxon defends NZ’s position on Iran attacks – same as Australia
• Al Jazeera live coverage
• Other US-Israel attack on Iran reports

Given that diplomatic negotiations were still under way in Geneva to find a peaceful compromise — a process supported by all of Iran’s immediate neighbours — there is no credible case that Iran was posing an imminent threat.

For 20 years, Israel has been claiming that Iran is on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon, but this threat has never materialised.

Last June, the US claimed to have “obliterated” Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon. (Israel, btw, has a large stockpile of them.)

Unfortunately, the babbling doofus we have in place of a Prime Minister seems to be intent on remaining in denial about such matters.

Luxon appears determined to exempt his friends — the US and Israel — from compliance with the rules of international law that apply to everyone else. So much for us being honest brokers on the world stage.

In reality, letting our traditional allies break international law whenever they see fit, is the surest way of undermining the entire system.

Regime change – how?
US President Donald Trump says he aims to bring about regime change in Iran. If so, that can’t be brought about entirely from the air, no matter how intensive the bombing campaign may be.

Decapitation strikes against the top tiers of Iranian leadership will also not, in themselves, bring about regime change. Others will surely replace the fallen.

Besides, the US and Israel can hardly urge Iran to negotiate a peace, while continuing to kill everyone with the authority to make a credible deal.

In all likelihood, it will take tens of thousands of foreign troops on the ground to (a) topple the regime and (b) protect from guerrilla action whatever regime the US puts in its place.

The last 20 years of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein should have taught the Americans just how long, bloody, costly and unpredictable that aftermath is likely to be.

Yet here we go again. As veteran political analyst Fred Kaplan put it on Slate:

“It is worth recalling that, in 2003, President George W. Bush sent 150,000 troops to depose Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, yet even they were unable to impose order but instead incited an insurgency and a civil war that lasted nearly a decade and destabilised the entire region.

“It is not clear how Trump’s stab at regime change without any ground support — in a country three times the size of Iraq — will be any smoother . . . [even] assuming the war succeeds in its strategic aim of regime change, the likeliest outcome will be a new dictatorship, a civil war among various armed factions, or utter anarchy and chaos, reminiscent of Libya after the killing of Muammar Gaddafi.”

Do we care about the outcome? Or are we waiting for the US to tell us not to worry out little heads about such matters?

Bombing is the easy part
Before launching this offensive, Trump made no attempt to enlist allied countries — in Europe or elsewhere — in this campaign. At present, this is solely a US/Israeli joint operation, with the indirect help of those states in the region that have American bases on their soil.

So far — cross fingers — Iran has chosen not to sabotage the Straits of Hormuz, a key transit route for oil and gas exports from the region, and a waterway on which global commerce depends.

At this point, Trump is talking of waging a bombing campaign lasting for days, or a week, after which . . . what? Trump has also called on the Iranian people to rebel. (That seems unlikely for a variety of reasons, including the ferocity of the suppression of Iran’s recent “cost of living” protests.)

The mullahs appear to be planning on a longer conflict. Reportedly, Iran has been limiting its initial missile responses in order to conserve its estimated 3000 missile stockpile for attacks on Israel and regional US bases in the weeks and months ahead.

From this distance, and given the internet blackout, it is impossible to gauge where the balance of public opinion currently lies in Iran.

No doubt, there will be elation in some quarters that the leaders of a hated regime are dead or suffering, and that the regime’s survival is now in question. “Anything but the status quo” is likely to be a common response.

Millions of other Iranians however resist the attacks, and have been out on the streets mourning the Supreme Leader. If the regime falls, its true believers will still regard it as their sacred duty to continue to resist, by all means possible.

Even the current elation is likely to be tempered by the knowledge that Iran’s “liberators” — the US, Israel, the Gulf states — do not have the wellbeing of the Iranian people in mind.

Meaning: the last democratically elected government in Iran was the Mosaddegh government. This was overthrown in 1953 by the Americans, who bankrolled a coup and then installed the Shah on the Peacock Throne.

The coup gave American oil companies continued access to Iran’s vast oil supplies, until the Islamic revolution occurred in 1979. In the 1980s, the West also backed Saddam Hussein in his war of aggression against Iran, a conflict that turned into a grinding deadlock estimated to have cost a million lives.

America has earned the hostility of Iran, over decades.

Iran, at a crossroad
Iran has a proud history, and a rich national culture. Normally, the mullahs could have relied on that fierce national pride to unite the country against foreign forces. In addition, Shia Islam has a strong tradition of sacrifice and martyrdom, commemorated annually in the day of Ashura.

That said, the recent slaughter of tens of thousands of people protesting the country’s economic conditions (caused by global sanctions) has put a question mark over how many Iranians will be willing to bury their differences, and fight back against foreign domination.

To repeat: the US had no credible reason for starting this war, and has no credible end game for it.

Over the weekend, Trump has desperately — and absurdly — delved back into history to paint Iran as posing an existential threat to the United States and the region, in order to justify this war to his MAGA sceptics.

Let’s be clear. Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States. Furthermore, its ability to intervene in the affairs of the Middle East has been sharply reduced over the past 18 months.

This hasn’t stopped the US from distorting the relevant history. For example: Trump and his minions have cited the deaths of 241 US Marines in Lebanon in 1983, and laid the blame at Iran’s door.

For the record, those 241 Marines — and 58 French troops — were killed by suicide bombers, in attacks claimed by Islamic Jihad, a Sunni extremist group only later linked to the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.

These attacks came in the wake of (a) the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and (b) the return of a multinational peacekeeping force to Beirut after (c) hundreds of Palestinians living in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps had been massacred by Christian gunmen, egged on by the Israeli commander, Ariel Sharon.

To paint this terrible episode as being caused solely by Iran is a travesty. Undaunted, Trump has also blamed Iran for the attack in 2000 on the American warship the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in the port of Aden.

Even the US intelligence agencies have attributed the USS Cole attack to Al Qaeda. Islamic Jihad and Al Qaeda are Sunni Islamic extremist groups, and were long time opponents of the Shia theocracy in Iran.

I’m not trying to defend the regime in Tehran. The point is to emphasise that there was no credible justification for the US offensive and New Zealand should be backing up UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in his criticism of the US aggression.

(Not) going nuclear
As for the nuclear weapons “threat” that Iran allegedly posed . . . In 2015, Iran signed a deal with the US via which Iran promised to forego the development of nuclear weapons in return for the US (and Europe) lifting trade sanctions.

This was a victory for the Iranian moderates within the regime.

Iran also agreed to allow in UN inspectors, who regularly confirmed that Iran was in full compliance with the terms of that deal. However, Trump tore up the deal as soon as he was elected, thereby boosting the hardliners in Tehran who had claimed all along that the US could not be trusted to keep its word.

Since then, Trump has engaged in indirect talks with Iran to re-negotiate a new version of the 2015 pact, and twice Israel and the US have bombed Iran and killed its leaders while those negotiations were still being held.

To the US and the Israelis, diplomacy seems to be merely a trick to lure out into the open the people that they have been planning to assassinate, all along.

Footnote: In Venezuela, the US has taken military action to secure control of that country’s oil reserves. It may well have oil wealth in mind in Iran, too.

If the US can install another puppet in Tehran as obedient as the Shah, Iran’s refineries will once again be at the mercy of US oil companies. No doubt, access to oil will be at heart of any further “negotiations” over a ceasefire.

Republished with permission from Gordon Campbell’s column in partnership with Scoop.

The joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran represent a further erosion of the international legal order. Under international law, these attacks are neither preemptive nor lawful.

Israel and the United States launched Operation Shield of Judah and Operation Epic Fury while diplomatic negotiations between Washington and Tehran were actively underway on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Just two days earlier, the most intense round of US-Iran talks concluded in Geneva, with both sides agreeing to continue. US President Donald Trump indicated he would give negotiators more time.

• READ MORE:  Death toll in Israeli strike on southern Iran school rises to 165
• Luxon defends NZ’s position on Iran attacks – same as Australia
• Trump says Iran attacks to continue until ‘all objectives’ achieved
• World leaders react cautiously to U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran
• Critics say weak NZ response over US-Israel attacks on Iran a ‘disgrace’
• UN’s Guterres condemns US-Israeli strikes, retaliatory attacks by Iran
• Other US-Israel attack on Iran reports

Then came the bombs.

The illegality of the attack
Israel said the strikes were “preventive”, meaning they were to prevent Iran from developing a capacity to be a threat. But preventive war has no legal basis under international law.

The UN Security Council did not authorise any military action, meaning the sole lawful pathway for the use of force for self-defence was never pursued.

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Preemptive self-defence, as we have argued previously, has extremely narrow prescriptions under the Caroline doctrine. It requires a threat to be “instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means”.

No such conditions existed with Iran on February 28.

Central to the current crisis is that it was Trump who ended the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2018, which had regional support for controlling Iran’s nuclear program. The US Director of National Intelligence testified in March 2025 that Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons, which the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency affirmed.

US intelligence also reportedly indicated it would take three years for Iran to build a nuclear weapon. Moreover, US and Israeli strikes on Iran last year had put the program back by months. Trump claimed Iran’s nuclear programme had been obliterated.

Regime change by force is unlawful
Trump said the attacks were intended to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program and bring about regime change. Trump urged Iranians to “take over your government”, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the goal was to “remove the existential threat posed by the terrorist regime in Iran”.

Forcible regime change violates the foundational principles of state sovereignty and non-intervention under the UN Charter.

The strikes targeted Iran’s supreme leader, president, and military chief of staff, as well as military infrastructure. Deliberately targeting heads of state also crosses a threshold that distinguishes military operations from acts of aggression.

Attacking heads of state is illegal under New York Convention, for obvious reasons of stability. With the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the power vacuum will only increase the hardship on the ground for Iranians.

We obtained the first known satellite image of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s compound in Tehran. There are several destroyed buildings. While the current whereabouts of Iran’s supreme leader are unknown, the compound is generally used as his official residence. : @Airbus pic.twitter.com/48krjclMBL

— Christiaan Triebert (@trbrtc) February 28, 2026

In addition, promises to return the Shah — Iran’s previous monarch — have not considered the authoritarian implications of such rule.

Reports that an airstrike on an elementary school in Minab killed at least 100 girls aged between seven and 12 underscore the human cost of unplanned regime change.

US and Israeli statements imply that regime change is prioritised over any plans of a replacement. But just like the aftermath of the death of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi that saw slavery return to Libya, or how Islamic State filled the power vacuum after the death of dictator Saddam Hussein in Iraq, regime change requires extremely careful planning.

In this case, there is no obvious plan to rebuild or stabilise Iran after these strikes. Western allies have expressed concern that Washington lacks a coherent strategy for the aftermath of the attacks, noting the minimal preparation for post-conflict reconstruction and government transition.

As Mexico’s representative stated at the UN Security Council following recent US actions in Venezuela, the historical record of regime change shows it has only “exacerbated conflicts and weakened the social and political fabric of nations”. According to The Atlantic, “complete chaos” is likely.

Strikes in Iran

Diplomacy as deception
Launching strikes during active negotiations violates the principle of good faith in Article 2(2) of the UN Charter. As the Arms Control Association noted, Iranian policymakers had already accused the US of bad faith after the June 2025 strikes disrupted previously scheduled talks.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry denounced the February 28 attacks as striking during negotiations, violating international law.

World leaders’ response
We should be dismayed by the worrying acceptance of increased brazen illegality by Western leaders, including Australia’s own prime minister. Anthony Albanese has supported the strikes as “acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon”. This places Australia, once again, in open contradiction with basic principles of liberal international order.

Australia stands with the brave people of Iran in their struggle against oppression.

For decades, the Iranian regime has been a destabilising force, through its ballistic missile and nuclear programs, support for armed proxies, and brutal acts of violence and intimidation.

Iran…

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) February 28, 2026

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement urging Iran to negotiate a solution, condemning Iranian retaliatory attacks. However, they did not directly comment on the US and Israeli strikes on Iran.

Their silence is deafening.

Russia and China criticised the US-Israeli actions and urged an immediate end to military operations and a return to diplomatic negotiations.

The international legal order is now in free-fall. When powerful states conduct illegal wars under the guise of prevention, weaponise diplomacy as cover, and openly pursue regime change, the “rules-based order” is literally dead.

Dr Shannon Brincat is senior lecturer in politics and international relations, University of the Sunshine Coast; Juan Zahir Naranjo Cáceres is a PhD candidate, Political Science, International Relations and Constitutional Law, University of the Sunshine Coast. Republished from The Conversation under Creative Commons.

Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, is due to arrive in Australia next Sunday. Why is a foreign Head of State asked to help heal an Australian community after an Australian tragedy?

Australia is being asked to accept something extraordinary as if it were normal.

Who invited Isaac Herzog in the first place, and why did Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese say yes? Presented to us not as diplomacy, not as geopolitics, not as a strategic signal, but as “healing”.

• READ MORE: Aly speaks after refusing to welcome Israeli president’s visit as nationwide protests planned
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Before we swallow that story, one question needs to be put on the table and left there until someone answers it.

Where does this community’s allegiance align? Australia or Israel?

The visit is being sold as reassurance for Jewish Australians after the Bondi attack last December 14. And yet the reassurance on offer does not come from Australia at all.

It does not come from Australian civic leaders. It does not come from Australian law or Australian institutions. It does not come from Jewish Australian faith figures, nor even from Israeli rabbinical leaders rooted in this country and this community.

It comes instead from a foreign head of state, and that single choice does more than any speech. It quietly rewrites the relationship between citizenship, faith, and state power in Australia.

So ask the obvious questions. Who requested this visit? Who lobbied for it? Who thought it was wise to import a foreign political figure into the emotional aftermath of Bondi? And why did the Prime Minister say yes?

Why did Albanese say yes?
If the purpose is truly pastoral, then the choice makes no sense. The visitor is not a rabbi. Not a spiritual leader. Not an interfaith presence. Not a community counsellor.

He is an Israeli president. A political figure. The constitutional face of a foreign state. Politics, not pastoral care. Power, not solace.

That is the first truth we are being asked not to notice, but the second truth is even more uncomfortable.

For years, Australians have been hammered with a single instruction, delivered with the confidence of a moral rule. Judaism is a religion. Israel is a state. Zionism is a political ideology. Keep them separate. Do not conflate.

If you blur those lines, you will be accused of prejudice, sometimes fairly, sometimes strategically, but always loudly.

That instruction has been enforced through the culture. In media commentary. In parliamentary speeches. In complaints processes. In campaigns to delegitimise critics who would not repeat the approved formula with sufficient reverence.

Fine. If separation is the principle, then separation must hold when it matters most. Especially when grief is raw, and symbols do their sharpest work.

Separation is abandoned
But at the precise moment symbolism matters most, the separation is abandoned. Not by critics. Not by social media hotheads. By the state itself.

At a moment of Australian grief, it is not faith that is summoned. It is the Israeli state.

Its president is elevated as the symbolic consoler. Its presence is framed as essential to the healing of Jewish Australians.

This visit does not merely blur the line between Judaism and Israel. It erases it. Publicly. Institutionally. With government endorsement of inviting a man who, according to Labor Friends of Palestine, doesn’t pass the character test for a visa application:

1. “A person does not pass the character test if … the Minister reasonably suspects that the person has been or is involved in conduct constituting . . .  the crime of genocide, a crime against humanity, a war crime, a crime involving torture or slavery or a crime that is otherwise of serious international concern; whether or not the person, or another person, has been convicted of an offence constituted by the conduct . . . ”
   
2. “A person does not pass the character test if . . .  in the event the person were allowed to enter or to remain in Australia, there is a risk that the person would . . . incite discord in the Australian community or in a segment of that community . . . ’ 

— Migration Act 1958, Section 501

Judaism vs Israel
You cannot spend decades demanding that Australians keep Judaism and Israel separate, then place an Israeli head of state at the centre of an Australian tragedy and expect the public to maintain the fiction.

You cannot demand absolute separation when critics speak, then collapse that separation when power needs a stage.

That is not an oversight. It is a choice, and it leads to the real debate Australia has been pushed to avoid.

If Jewish Australians are Australians of Jewish faith, then their safety, grief, and belonging are matters for Australia to address. Australian law. Australian civic leadership. Australian institutions.

Or, if faith is the organising principle, rabbis and religious leaders who actually carry pastoral authority. They are not matters for a foreign head of state. Not for an overseas government inserting itself into an Australian tragedy.

The moment a foreign political leader is presented as necessary to healing, the issue stops being faith and becomes allegiance.

And allegiance is not some abstract thing in Australia. It is demanded constantly. Migrant communities are told, again and again, that Australia comes first. That loyalty must be singular. That old countries are left behind. That this nation, its laws, its institutions, and its flag are the sole point of civic attachment.

Except here, the rules bend. Here, the separation we are warned never to breach is breached from above. Here, the state quietly endorses the idea that

Jewish identity in Australia is incomplete without Israeli political authority standing behind it.

Divisive double standard
That is why this visit is divisive. Not because Australians lack compassion. Not because antisemitism is not real. It is real, and it should be crushed without hesitation.

The division comes from the double standard. The division comes from importing a foreign political symbol into Australian grief, then scolding Australians for noticing what that symbol implies.

And once Israel is positioned as the emotional guarantor of Jewish life in Australia, the logic runs further, whether anyone likes it or not.

Why does responsibility stop at speeches? Why does it end in symbolism?

Why is the Australian taxpayer funding security, policing, protective infrastructure, and now a full diplomatic visit, while the implication being advanced is that Jewish safety here is inseparable from the Israeli state?

If Israel is to be treated as the natural guardian, then why is Australia carrying the entire material cost?

The Prime Minister has not merely allowed a diplomatic courtesy. He has endorsed a narrative. One that collapses the very separation it claims to defend.

One that institutionalises the question of allegiance while pretending the question is offensive to ask.

It is not offensive. It is civic. It is democratic. It is necessary. So ask it clearly, without malice and without fear.

Who asked for this visit? Why did the government agree? And what exactly are Australians being told, in symbols rather than words, about where allegiance is supposed to lie?

Because if the answer is Australia, this visit makes no sense.

And if the answer is Israel, Australians deserve honesty about what has just been done in their name.

US President Donald Trump has faced mounting pressure to respond militarily to Iran’s crackdown on protesters across the country.

Although Trump has, for the moment, refrained from authorising a strike, a military operation against Iran remains a distinct possibility. US officials indicate that another critical decision point may arise in the coming weeks.

This prospect alarms nearly all states in West Asia, with the notable exception of Israel.

• READ MORE: Trump says ‘armada’ of US warships is heading towards Iran
• Other Iran reports

These regional actors view US strikes on Iran as a perilous course for Washington that would expose neighbouring countries to severe geopolitical, economic, and security risks.

Stability over regime change in Iran
Many states in West Asia are deeply concerned about the immediate destabilising consequences of US-Israeli military intervention against Iran.

Rather than ushering in a stable post-conflict order, they fear that an attack on Iran would unleash prolonged disorder, potentially even civil war, triggering large-scale refugee flows that could strain already fragile political and economic systems across the region.

Such turmoil also raises the spectre of separatist movements in Iran’s peripheral areas that are home to the country’s minority groups with their own histories of secessionist drives, such as ethnic Arabs, Baluchs, or Kurds.

Such developments would pose acute security risks for countries like Turkiye and Pakistan. From this perspective, the danger lies not only in Iran’s internal fragmentation but in the wider regional contagion that could follow.

For most of Iran’s neighbours, regime continuity — however imperfect — is viewed as preferable to the unpredictability of the Iranian nation-state collapsing.

US intervention is widely seen as risking Iranian retaliation against energy infrastructure, shipping routes, and regional military installations, with immediate repercussions for trade, investment, maritime security, and domestic stability.

Governments worry less about the Iranian government’s survival than about uncontrollable second-order effects: cyberattacks, militia mobilisation, terrorism, market volatility, and cascading insecurity across Iraq, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen.

Put simply, most regional actors approach the prospect of escalation through a lens of risk aversion rather than ideological alignment.

The prevailing judgment among policymakers in most regional countries is that escalation is strategically irrational, while preserving the status quo remains the least dangerous option.

“Another regime-change effort gone wrong in the region would sew horrible chaos throughout the region. No one wants to see more chaos, refugees, and suffering in a region that has seen little else over the last several decades,” said Dr Joshua Landis, director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, in an interview with The New Arab.

Perhaps cynically, many of these countries favour a weakened Iran under the Islamic Republic, seeing in its fragility a measure of predictability that outweighs the uncertainties of radical change.

This strategic calculation concludes that a weakened but intact Iran may pursue its interests within a framework it can anticipate and manage. Revolutionary upheaval, by contrast, could produce outcomes no state can control.

These could include sudden power vacuums or the rise of militant actors capable of unleashing turmoil far beyond Iran’s borders.

The leaders of most countries in the region generally “see Iran today as a country that is under severe sanctions, that is constrained, that is internally pressured but is still governed by a centralised state,” Dr Karim Emile Bitar, a lecturer in Middle East Studies at Sciences Po Paris, told TNA.

He noted that the Saudi leadership is particularly apprehensive about chaos and fragmentation in Iran, whether from a sudden collapse of the Islamic Republic or US-led war-induced regime change. Officials in Riyadh are especially concerned about domestic security, including the potential for unrest among Shia communities in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province.

“Any escalation might empower radicals, embolden opposition movements throughout the region, and exacerbate sectarian polarisation,” added Dr Bitar.

Not lost in the equation is the fact that even states closely allied with the US and deeply wary of Iran are uneasy about many aspects of Washington’s foreign policy in the Middle East.

This scepticism is especially pronounced in the Trump era, where his unpredictability and missteps cast serious doubt on whether any coherent strategy underpins his administration’s approach to the region.

“The risk aversion is particularly understandable after the Iraqi, Afghan, and Libyan fiascos,” said Dr Bitar.

“The whole global war on terror turned out to be so extraordinarily counterproductive that even states that were, and are still, reliant on US support are very sceptical of US strategy, in case there is a strategy.”

Israel, Iran, and shifting threat perceptions
Geopolitical dynamics further heighten regional apprehensions over potential US strikes on Iran. In the wake of October 2023, Arab states have increasingly regarded Israel, not Iran, as the foremost threat to regional stability.

This was starkly underscored during and after the 12-Day War of June 2025, when Israeli attacks on Iran derailed US-Iranian nuclear negotiations conducted under Omani auspices in Muscat and Rome.

“Ever since the US essentially lifted all restraints on Israel during the Biden administration, regional players have started to see Israel’s aggressive foreign policy as a direct and unmanageable threat,” Dr Trita Parsi, executive vice-president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told TNA.

“Israel has bombed seven countries in the region since 7 October 2023.

“If the alliance with the US does not protect you from what these countries see as Israel’s designs for regional hegemony, then you will need a new coalition to balance against Israel,” he added.

“Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey have moved in this direction. Though Iran is not officially part of this coalition, it does serve as a buffer against Israel. Chaos in Iran — or a pro-Israeli puppet being installed in Tehran — is seen as a very dangerous blow to the effort to balance against Israel’s increasingly aggressive regional posture.”

Gulf mediators: Diplomacy as a safety valve
What is striking is that, among the regional actors intent on averting a US strike on Iran, it was GCC states — particularly Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia — along with Turkiye, that mounted pivotal diplomatic efforts to persuade the Trump administration to seek a diplomatic off‑ramp rather than military confrontation.

Behind the scenes, these governments engaged in sustained high‑level dialogue with Washington, warning that an attack could unleash widespread instability across the Middle East and urging the White House to exercise restraint.

Noting that Muscat, Doha, and Riyadh offer Trump a “face-saving path” that looks more like leverage than retreat, while leaving room for a transactional deal, Dr Andreas Krieg, associate professor in Security Studies at King’s College London, describes Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia as the “the de-escalation entrepreneurs” of the Gulf, serving as vital channels between Washington and Tehran.

“Their influence comes from three assets: practical leverage over basing, airspace and logistics; credibility as intermediaries able to transmit messages and test offers, particularly Qatar and Oman, who complement their inroads into Iran, and a shared interest in avoiding a regional war that would hit energy markets and domestic confidence.

They also shape Trump’s risk calculus by arguing that limited strikes would be symbolic, while the retaliation and political consequences would be strategic,” he added.

While recognising these three GCC states’ role in successfully steering Trump away from military action against Iran, at least for now, Dr Parsi emphasised that “much more is needed to make this a sustained move away from war”.

The calculus of escalation versus restraint
In sum, the prospect of a US strike on Iran illuminates the intricate web of regional concerns that extend far beyond Washington’s immediate calculations. Most states in West Asia, despite varying degrees of mistrust or rivalry with Tehran, view military escalation as a high-risk gamble that could destabilise the region for many years to come.

From potential refugee crises and economic disruption to militia mobilisation and the rise of radical actors, the second-order consequences of conflict are widely seen as far more dangerous than the challenges posed by a constrained, yet intact, Iran governed by the Islamic Republic.

At the same time, the role of diplomatic actors in the Arab world, like Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, underscores the importance of diplomacy and risk management in a region acutely sensitive to volatility.

Their ability to provide Washington with de-escalatory paths highlights how regional actors are not merely passive spectators but active shapers of strategic outcomes.

The lessons of America’s military campaigns across different parts of the Islamic world — from Afghanistan and Iraq to Libya — have deepened this caution, fostering a widespread scepticism toward foreign-led military solutions.

Ultimately, the escalation versus restraint calculus reflects a pragmatic acknowledgement that chaos in Iran could ripple across West Asia, undermining both regional stability and global interests.

In this light, diplomacy, measured engagement, and regional consultation emerge not just as preferable alternatives but as essential instruments for maintaining a precarious balance in an already fragile geopolitical landscape.

Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics. He posts on X at @GiorgioCafiero This article was first published by The New Arab.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Wednesday that Israel has always tried to draw the US into wars fought “on its behalf”, reports Anadolu Ajansi.

“Israel has always sought to drag the US into fighting wars on its behalf. But remarkably, this time they are saying the quiet part out loud,” Araghchi wrote on the US social media company X, quoting a post by Tamir Morag, a diplomatic affairs correspondent for Israel’s Channel 14.

Araghchi said Iran’s streets are “soaked in blood,” accusing Israel of boasting about arming protesters, which he said was behind “hundreds of deaths.”

• READ MORE: Explainer – Why rising prices, falling currency, sets Iran’s economy on rocky road
• Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says missile stockpiles expanded as tensions mount with US

He added that if US President Donald Trump wants to stop the killing in Iran, he should address Israel to prevent the arming of protesters.

“With blood on our streets, Israel is explicitly gloating about having ‘armed protestors with live weapons’, and this is the reason for the hundreds of dead,” Araghchi said.

Morag earlier wrote on X that “Foreign elements are arming the protesters in Iran with live weapons, and this is the reason for the hundreds of dead among the regime’s people.”

“Anyone is free to guess who we’re talking about,” he added.

Meanwhile, the US mission in Saudi Arabia advised its personnel and American citizens on Wednesday to exercise “increased caution” in the region amid ongoing tensions.

US officials have escalated rhetoric against Iran amid anti-government protests that have swept the country since late last month over worsening economic conditions.

Thank you, Foreign Minister Araghchi, for this tweet, which makes it clear to President Trump just how stupid and susceptible to transparent manipulation you believe he is.

You will not be able to deflect attention from the bloodbath that you and your terrorist colleagues are… https://t.co/DPPNA3UMf7

— תמיר מורג Tamir Morag (@Tamir114) January 14, 2026

On Tuesday, Trump told CBS News that Washington would take “very strong action” if Iranian authorities carried out executions of protesters.

Iranian government officials have accused the US and Israel of backing what they describe as “riots” and “terrorism” amid the ongoing protests.

Iranian authorities have not released official figures on casualties or detainees. The Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), a US-based group, estimates that at least 2500 people have been killed, including protesters and security personnel, and more than 1100 others injured.

Republished under a Creative Commons licence.

Sāmoa is set to become the third Pacific nation to have an embassy in Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Laaulialemalietoa Polataivao Schmidt told a gathering of the Sāmoa branch of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem on Tuesday he had instructed the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to begin work on the opening of an office in Jerusalem.

He said he wanted the embassy up-and-running this year.

• READ MORE: Letter to the editor: Tuilaepa says Israel is not a Christian country
• Fiji’s stance on Israel and new embassy stirs revived condemnation
• Other Pacific representation in Israel reports

The move follows the establishment of Fiji’s embassy in Jerusalem last year, and the opening of Papua New Guinea’s embassy in the city in 2023.

Only a handful of countries recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — in 2017, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly (128-9) during a rare emergency meeting to ask nations not to establish diplomatic missions in the historic city as Occupied East Jerusalem is envisaged as the capital of the State of Israel.

In discussing his decision, Laaulialemalietoa talked about Sāmoa’s connections to Israel.

He touched on the meeting he had with Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel while receiving medical treatment in New Zealand last year.

“I am very grateful when the [deputy] Minister of Foreign Affairs came all the way from Jerusalem to visit me when I was sick in New Zealand,” he said.

‘Blessing’ for Sāmoa PM
“It was a blessing for me to know that Israel has also had an eye [on] Sāmoa, because we had a lot of connection in many ways.”

Haskel was in New Zealand briefly in November following a trip to Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

Fiji’s embassy, in September, was met with mixed reactions, with the coordinator of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre saying Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka was “not on the right side of history”.

Fiji’s government called it “a strategic step” to enhance cooperation between the two nations, and reaffirmed its support for a peaceful two-state solution “where both Israelis and Palestinians can live in dignity and security”.

“Fiji has maintained longstanding diplomatic relations with Israel while also supporting the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people,” it said.

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

Why is Aotearoa New Zealand aiding Israel in any way shape or form with a liaison officer?

NEWS ITEM:
NZ Defence Force deploys liaison officer to Israel
The NZ Defence Force has deployed a liaison officer to Israel, to help inform the government on next steps in the Gaza peace deal.

Defence Minister Judith Collins says the liaison officer will work from a United States-led Civil Military Coordination Centre, initially for six weeks.

She said it would act as a coordination hub for support to Gaza, monitor the implementation of the ceasefire agreement, and support the implementation of the 20-Point Peace Plan to end the war in Gaza.

“The deployment will improve New Zealand’s understanding of co-ordination efforts on the ground and enable us to better assess options for any potential future contributions to the centre or other initiatives in support of sustained peace in Gaza,” she said.

She said this would improve New Zealand’s understanding of efforts on the ground and enable a better assessment of future contributions to the centre, or other initiatives to support peace in Gaza.

Future deployments would be a decision for the government.

• READ MORE: Israeli minister who trolled Christopher Luxon visits Auckland, meets Brian Tamaki
• Fiji’s stance on Israel and new embassy stirs revived condemnation
• Israel still blocking most Gaza aid as military carries out more attacks in violation of ceasefire
• Other Gaza reports

Add this to our refusal to recognise Palestine.

Add this to the realisation Rocket Lab has been putting up surveillance satellites for the Israelis with the Gen-3 BlackSky satellites.

Add to this that the Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister, Sharren Haskel, visited NZ last weekend to thank evangelical Christian freaks who empower them and the Zionesik apologist groups who threaten everyone with anti-semitism for criticising Israel’s genocide and we are now in danger of being seen as an ally for war criminals.

We are on the side of genocide because this New Zealand government has no morality whatsoever.

Kiwis have cut their Jacinda off to spite their race to justify the way their post-covid bitterness has been manipulated into agreeing to this.

For shame New Zealand.

For shame.

Editor’s note: Deputy Foreign Minister Haskel met the PNG, Fijian and Samoan prime ministers on her week-long drumming up Pacific support last week, but while she met rightwing Destiny Church leaders, she did not meet any cabinet ministers on her unofficial visit to New Zealand. Republished with permission.

The rift between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is real. However, to understand it, one must see it for what it is — not a clash of principles, but of priorities.

Trump and the US establishment seek to expand the Abraham Accords, especially to bring Saudi Arabia on board. Tel Aviv, meanwhile, is fixated on accelerating its settlement project, beginning with annexations across large swathes of land in the West Bank.

Beneath this lies another tension. Israel wants to erase any talk of a Palestinian state, while the US, though never serious about Palestinian sovereignty, insists on keeping the illusion alive.

• READ MORE: Two years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza: By the numbers
• PSNA accuses NZ of giving ‘political cover’ to genocidal Israel over Gaza
• Other Gaza reports

For Washington, that illusion is useful leverage with Arab capitals; for Israel, it is an obstacle.

Trump’s plan even hinted at this illusion in its nineteenth clause: after certain “conditions,” a state might someday emerge. Yet annexation would shatter even that mirage.

Trump, a man known for lying, is sincere in one thing: his promise to Arab states to restrain Israel from annexing land in the West Bank. But his sincerity is tactical, not moral.

The restraint he offers is temporary, a pause meant to preserve the path toward expanding the Abraham Accords. It is not a strategic position, only a calculation.

Natural next step
Netanyahu, meanwhile, wants to force the world to accept that the West Bank is part of Israel, beyond the reach of UN resolutions or international law. For him, annexation is not a bargaining chip but the natural next step in completing the Zionist project.

Both men seek Arab submission to Israeli hegemony. Yet Washington has learned that Arab leaders, while complicit, remain wary. They fear that deepening normalisation, meant to evolve from official policy to popular acceptance, could backfire after Gaza’s devastation, Israel’s ongoing assaults, the seizure of Syrian and Lebanese land, and the aggression against Qatar.

Annexing the West Bank now, they worry, could blow up the illusion of peace that underpins normalisation itself.

For the US, that illusion is vital. The Abraham Accords are not just about recognition but about institutionalising a regional order, a military and security alliance led by Israel, with Arab acquiescence to its sovereignty over all of historic Palestine.

Netanyahu, however, sees no need for Arab consent. He believes force, not diplomacy, will impose Israel’s supremacy. His political survival depends on it: projecting strength, showing no retreat, proving that Arabs, defeated and divided, will ultimately rush to make deals with him.

And so far, he has reason to believe he’s right. The war on Gaza has not halted normalisation; no Arab state has suspended trade or energy ties.

On the contrary, cooperation, especially with the UAE, has expanded. Israeli analysts track this closely, confident that annexation may delay the process, but it will not derail it.

No Arab threats
Israel has concluded that no Arab state that normalised relations has threatened to suspend them, not even after the war of annihilation in Gaza, the incursions into Syria and Lebanon, or the demolition and settlement campaigns across the West Bank.

Still, Zionist and pro-Israel circles in Washington continue to warn the Trump administration that Netanyahu’s recklessness could destroy everything. They know Arab leaders find it difficult to deepen normalisation while Israel endangers regional stability and shows open contempt for their security concerns.

These leaders do not trust that their agreements can restrain Netanyahu’s excesses and take seriously his threats of expansion into Syria, Lebanon, and even Jordan, threats that have already begun to materialise.

Arab governments have managed, for now, to contain public sympathy for Palestinians and suppress popular opposition to ties with Israel. Yet they remain aware of the anger simmering beneath the surface, which could erupt if Israel’s aggressions continue.

It was this fear that drove pro-Israel circles in Washington to pressure the Trump administration to block, or rather, postpone, Israel’s annexation of West Bank land.

Trump was ultimately persuaded. Arab leaders had delivered the message to him directly: annexation would make normalisation politically impossible. He therefore pledged to prevent it, at least temporarily.

This exchange, Arab opposition to annexation and Trump’s tactical response, reveal that the Arab position can still influence Washington.

US needs cooperation
The United States cannot simply threaten every Arab government or sever all aid. It needs their cooperation to secure its regional goals, and that cooperation depends on a degree of stability.

If chaos benefits Washington, popular anger can be tolerated, but if stability is the goal, unchecked Israeli aggression becomes a liability even for the United States.

Trump’s response to the concerns of Arab leaders, especially those of Qatar, Jordan, and Egypt, revealed that they could have done more but chose not to. That, however, is another story.

What matters here is that Trump understood two key conditions for sustaining the Abraham Accords: maintaining a ceasefire and preventing Israel from annexing West Bank land.

The normalisation project aims to integrate Israel into the region and present it as an “indigenous” state, not a colonial one that expands by uprooting the land’s original population.

This has long been Israel’s dream, but Netanyahu no longer seems concerned with appearances. He imagines himself on the verge of a sweeping historic victory.

That fantasy is not his alone; Trump shares it as well.

Trump’s ego greater
Yet Trump’s own ego is greater. He now sees Netanyahu as an obstacle to his ambitions, a man jeopardising what Trump believes he has built and protected. Many within Zionist and pro-Israel circles agree: they want Trump to save Israel from Netanyahu.

Trump’s anger is therefore genuine. He and his aides, backed by influential figures from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, one of the central bastions of Zionist influence in Washington, are determined not to let Netanyahu endanger both US and Israeli interests.

This rift should be used by Arab states wisely, without illusion: it will not alter Washington’s strategic bond with Israel. However, I am under no illusion that they will do anything.

Still, Arab states, however weak-willed, can take a minimum position, to publicly reject Israeli annexation of West Bank land and any territory from Gaza, and to reaffirm their refusal to recognise Israeli sovereignty over occupied Palestinian land.

They can at least reclaim the language of rights as a peaceful weapon: legal, diplomatic, and moral.

That weapon gains power if Arab states act by filing a case against Israel and its settlements as violations of international law. Not to defend Palestine alone, but to defend themselves.

For if they fail to act, the threat will not spare their regimes, nor the region they claim to protect.

Lamis Andoni is a Palestinian journalist, writer and academic who launched The New Arab as its editor-in-chief.

A leading Palestine solidarity and advocacy group in New Zealand has accused an Israeli cabinet minister of “sneaking” into the country this weekend while on a Pacific tour as
Israel resumed its genocidal attacks.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel visited the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Fiji — where she welcomed a possible “peacekeeping” role — in a week-long Pacific friendship mission.

Both Fiji and Papua New Guinea have opened controversial embassies in Jerusalem, recognised as the capital of Palestine when statehood is granted.

• READ MORE: Israel signals possible peacekeeping role in Gaza
• Netanyahu praises Papua New Guinea with ‘deep gratitude’ for backing Israel
• Israel continues deadly Gaza truce breaches as US seeks to strengthen deal
• Other reports on Israel’s Pacific support

“It seems clear from media reports that Haskel is visiting Auckland this weekend as part of a trip to strengthen ties with New Zealand and other Pacific countries,” said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa co-chair Maher Nazal.

He said in a statement that he would expect New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters to “have had, or will be having, a secret meeting” with Haskel.

“Haskell wouldn’t come to New Zealand unless she was having a meeting with
Peters. Otherwise, it would be a diplomatic snub,” Nazzal said.

“Haskel wouldn’t tolerate that, and Peters is most unlikely to snub Israel.

“But if he’s turned her down, we’d love to hear about it.”

Mocking Luxon
The visit by Haskel is in spite of recently mocking Prime Minister Christopher Luxon with some sarcastic comments that New Zealand’s “worst enemies were cats and possums”, when Luxon said her boss, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had “lost the plot” in the genocidal war on Gaza.

Nazzal said: “The trip is a ‘thank you’ visit for New Zealand refusing to recognise Palestine [statehood]. Haskell had appointments with the governments of Fiji and Papua New Guinea earlier this week.

“They are the only two countries in the world, other than the United States, which both voted in the United Nations last year against requiring Israel to leave the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and they also have an embassy in Jerusalem.

“They are the greatest fans of Israel outside the United States.”

At a media conference in Suva on Wednesday, Haskel said Fiji’s neutral and highly skilled military could play a valuable role in future peacekeeping efforts once negotiations on Gaza’s next phase were complete.

“I have to say that we do trust the Fijian forces,” she said during the joint press conference with Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka.

‘Skilled, neutral military’
“We know that you have very skilled military forces that are neutral, which is something especially important for peacekeeping.

“We know this is a force you can trust, with skills, with morals and we’ve had close collaboration throughout history in many posts around the Middle East and surrounding our borders as well.”

She was referring to Fiji’s long UN history as a Middle East peacekeeping force, but admitted that the Gaza role would not be through the United Nations.

“Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war against Palestinians and withholding New Zealand aid from the people of Gaza,” Nazzal said.

“Why would we put out the welcome mat for a representative of such a monstrous regime?”

Haskel was recently interviewed by “genocide-denier Sean Plunket” on his radio show The Platform saying she would like to visit to “thank the New Zealand government for its support over the last two years”.

“That says it all. New Zealand has stood resolutely with a racist, apartheid regime as it continues to commit genocide against the Palestinian people – two years and counting,” Nazzal said.

Seven embassies in Jerusalem
Last month, Fiji inaugurated its embassy in Jerusalem — becoming the seventh nation to have its diplomatic mission in the city in defiance of the United Nations policy.

The other countries are: Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea and the United States.

Other nations that maintain ties with Israel have their embassies in Tel Aviv.

Papua New Guinea inaugurated its embassy in Jerusalem last year.

As Israel expands its relationships with Pacific Island nations, an activist is criticising the region for its “dreadful response” to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rooted in the 1948 Nakba and decades of seized land and expelled indigenous people, escalated after Hamas’ attacks on 7 October 2023.

Since then, Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to Gaza health officials.

• READ MORE: UN declares man-made famine in Gaza; 2 people starve to death in 24 hours
• Israel announces official visit to Pacific region to ‘broaden partnerships’
• Other Pacific and Israel reports

John Minto, co-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). says the Pacific has failed to show adequate support to Palestine and should be “ashamed”.

In an interview with William Terite on Radio 531pi Pacific Mornings, Minto said the Pacific was one of the few areas in the world where support for the Palestinians was diminishing.

“I think this is a real tragedy,” he said.

“They are coming under pressure from the US and from Israel to try and bolster support for Israel at the United Nations. For this part of the world, that’s something we should be ashamed of.”

Minto said several island countries, including Fiji, Nauru, Palau, and Tonga, had refused to recognise Palestinian statehood. But bigger Pacific nations like Papua New Guinea — and Fiji — had recently established an embassy in Jerusalem.

Fiji and Israel established diplomatic relations in 1970 and have developed partnerships in security, peacekeeping, agriculture, and climate change.

Watch John Minto’s full interview

In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced its commitment to diplomacy in the Pacific.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel will lead a delegation to the Pacific to discuss strengthening Israel-Pacific relations.

In a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced its commitment to diplomacy in the Pacific.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel will lead a delegation to the Pacific to discuss strengthening Israel-Pacific relations.

The Pacific region has been one of Israel’s strategic development partners, through numerous projects and training programmes led by MASHAV, Israel’s International Development Agency,” the statement read.

“This forthcoming visit, and the broader diplomatic effort accompanying it, reflects Israel’s profound appreciation for the Pacific Island states and underscores Israel’s commitment to strengthening cooperation with them.”

Minto highlighted the irony in the support for Israel from small Pacific nations, given their reliance on principles of international law in view of their own vulnerability.

“I’m sure there’s a lot of things that happen behind closed doors that should be happening out in the public,” he told Terite.

“The people of Sāmoa, Tonga, Fiji should be involved in developing their foreign policy. I think if they were, then we would have much stronger support for Palestine.”

Republished from Pacific Media Network (PMN) with permission.

It’s now more than a week since Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced his government had begun to formally consider New Zealand’s position on the recognition of a Palestinian state.

That leaves two weeks until the UN General Assembly convenes on September 9, where it is expected several key allies will change position and recognise Palestinian statehood.

Already in a minority of UN member states which don’t recognise a Palestinian state, New Zealand risks becoming more of an outlier if and when Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom make good on their recent pledges.

• READ MORE: ‘Moral imperative’: Hundreds of UK business leaders demand action on Israel

Luxon has said the decision is “complex”, but opposition parties certainly don’t see it that way. Labour leader Chris Hipkins says it’s “the right thing to do”, and Greens co-leader Chloë Swarbrick has called on government MPs to “grow a spine” (for which she was controversially ejected from the debating chamber).

Former Labour prime minister Helen Clark has also criticised the government for trailing behind its allies, and for appearing to put trade relations with the United States ahead of taking a moral stand over Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Certainly, those critics — including the many around the country who marched last weekend — are correct in implying New Zealand has missed several opportunities to show independent leadership on the issue.

The distraction factor
While it has been open to New Zealand to recognise it as a state since Palestine declared its independence in 1988, there was an opportunity available in May last year when the Irish, Spanish and Norwegian governments took the step.

That month, New Zealand also joined 142 other states calling on the Security Council to admit Palestine as a full member of the UN. But in a subsequent statement, New Zealand said its vote should not be implied as recognising Palestinian statehood, a position I called “a kind of muddled, awkward fence-sitting”.

It is still not too late, however, for New Zealand to take a lead. In particular, the government could make a more straightforward statement on Palestinian statehood than its close allies.

The statements from Australia, Canada and the UK are filled with caveats, conditions and contingencies. None are straightforward expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian right of self-determination under international law.

As such, they present political and legal problems New Zealand could avoid.

Politically, this late wave of recognition by other countries risks becoming a distraction from the immediate starvation crisis in Gaza. As the independent Israeli journalist Gideon Levy and UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese have noted, these considered and careful diplomatic responses distract from the brutal truth on the ground.

This was also Chloë Swarbrick’s point during the snap debate in Parliament last week. Her private members bill, she noted, offers a more concrete alternative, by imposing sanctions and a trade embargo on Israel. (At present, it seems unlikely the government would support this.)

Beyond traditional allies
Legally, the proposed recognitions of statehood are far from ideal because they place conditions on that recognition, including how a Palestinian state should be governed.

The UK has made recognition conditional on Israel not agreeing to a ceasefire and continuing to block humanitarian aid into Gaza. That is extremely problematic, given recognition could presumably be withdrawn if Israel agreed to those demands.

Such statements are not exercises in genuine solidarity with Palestinian self-determination, which is defined in UN Resolution 1514 (1960) as the right of peoples “to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development”.

Having taken more time to consider its position, New Zealand could now articulate a more genuine statement of recognition that fulfils the legal obligation to respect and promote self-determination under international law.

A starting point would be to look beyond the small group of “traditional allies” to countries such as Ireland that have already formally recognised the State of Palestine. Importantly, Ireland acknowledged Palestinian “peaceful self-determination” (along with Israel’s), but did not express any other conditions or caveats.

New Zealand could also show leadership by joining with that wider group of allies to shape the coming General Assembly debate. The aim would be to shift the language from conditional recognition of Palestine toward a politically and legally more tenable position.

That would also sit comfortably with the country’s track record in other areas of international diplomacy — most notably the campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, where New Zealand has also taken a different approach to its traditional allies.

Dr Treasa Dunworth is professor of law, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

A Pacific analyst and commentator says it is unlikely that Vanuatu will agree to any exclusive rights in the new security and economic pact with Australia.

Senior ministers of both countries, including deputy prime ministers Richard Marles and Johnny Koanapo, initialled the Nakamal Agreement at the summit of Mount Yasur volcano on Tanna Island, ahead of formal sign-off next month.

The two nations have agreed to a landmark deal worth A$500 million that will replace the previous security pact that was scrapped in 2022.

• READ MORE: Other Australia and Vanuatu security reports

Dr Tess Newton Cain of the Griffith Asia Institute said she did not believe Vanuatu would agree to anything similar to what Tuvalu (Falepili Union) and Papua New Guinea (Bilateral Security Agreement) had agreed to in recent times.

She said that the Australian government had been wanting the deal for some time, but had been “progressing quite slowly” because there was “significant pushback” on the Vanuatu side.

“Back in 2022, it took people by surprise that there was an announcement made that a security agreement had been signed while Senator Penny Wong, Australia’s Foreign Minister was in Port Vila. She and then-prime minister Ishmael Kalsakau had signed a security agreement.

“On the Australian side, they referred to it as having not been ratified. But essentially it was totally disregarded and thrown out by Vanuatu officials, and not considered to [be a] meaningful agreement.”

High-level engagement
However, this time around, Dr Newton Cain said, there had been a significant process of negotiation between Vanuatu and Australian officials.

“There has been a lot of high-level engagement. We have had a lot of senior Australian officials visiting Vanuatu over the last six months, and possibly for a bit longer. So, it has been a steady process of negotiation.”

Dr Newton Cain said the text of the agreement had undergone a much more rigorous process, involving input from a wider range of people at the government level.

“And in the last few days leading up to the initialling of this agreement, it was brought before the National Security Council in Vanuatu, which discussed it and signed off on it.

“Then it went to the Council of Ministers, which also discussed it and made reference to further amendments. So there were some last-minute changes to the text, and then it was initialled.”

She said that while the agreement had been “substantially agreed”, more details on what it actually entailed remained scarce.

Vanuatu Prime Minister Jotham Napat said earlier this month that he would not sign the agreement unless visa-free travel was agreed.

Visa sticking point
Dr Newton Cain said visa-free travel between the two countries remained a sticking point.

“Prime Minister Napat said he hoped Prime Minister Albanese would travel to Port Vila in order to sign this agreement. But we know there is still more work to do — both Australia and Vanuatu [have] indicated that there were still aspects that were not completely aligned yet.

“I think it is reasonable to think that this is around text relating to visa-free access to Australia. There is a circle there that is yet to be squared.”

Australia is Vanuatu’s biggest development partner, as well as the biggest provider of foreign direct investment. Its support covers a range of critical sectors such as health, education, security, and infrastructure.

According to Dr Newton Cain, from Canberra’s point of view, they have concerns that countries like Vanuatu have “more visible, diversified and stronger” relations with China.

“As we have seen in other parts of the region, that has provoked a response from countries like Australia, New Zealand, the United States and others that want to be seen to be offering Vanuatu different options.”

However, she said it was not surprising that Vanuatu was looking to have a range of conversations with partners that can support the country.

“China’s relationship has moved more into security areas. There are aspects of policing that China is involved in in Vanuatu, and that this is a bit of a tipping point for countries like Australia and New Zealand.

“So these sorts of agreements with Australia [are] part of trying to cement the relationship [and] demonstrate that this relationship is built on lasting foundations and strong ties.”

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

Leaders of the three Pacific nations with diplomatic ties to Taiwan are united in a message to the Pacific Islands Forum that the premier regional body must not allow non-member countries to dictate Forum policies — a reference to the China-Taiwan geopolitical debate.

Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, in remarks to the opening of Parliament in Majuro yesterday, joined leaders from Tuvalu and Palau in strongly worded comments putting the region on notice that the future unity and stability of the Forum hangs in the balance of decisions that are made for next month’s Forum leaders’ meeting in the Solomon Islands.

This is just three years since the organisation pulled back from the brink of splintering.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific Islands Forum unity articles

Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu are among the 12 countries globally that maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

At issue is next month’s annual meeting of leaders being hosted by Solomon Islands, which is closely allied to China, and the concern that the Solomon Islands will choose to limit or prevent Taiwan’s engagement in the Forum, despite it being a major donor partner to the three island nations as well as a donor to the Forum Secretariat.

China worked to marginalise Taiwan and its international relationships including getting the Forum to eliminate a reference to Taiwan in last year’s Forum leaders’ communique after leaders had agreed on the text.

“I believe firmly that the Forum belongs to its members, not countries that are non-members,” said President Heine yesterday in Parliament’s opening ceremony. “And non-members should not be allowed to dictate how our premier regional organisation conducts its business.”

Heine continued: “We witnessed at the Forum in Tonga how China, a world superpower, interfered to change the language of the Forum Communique, the communiqué of our Pacific Leaders . . . If the practice of interference in the affairs of the Forum becomes the norm, then I question our nation’s membership in the organisation.”

She cited the position of the three Taiwan allies in the Pacific in support of Taiwan participation at next month’s Forum.

“There should not be any debate on the issue since Taiwan has been a Forum development partner since 1993,” Heine said.

Heine also mentioned that there was an “ongoing review of the regional architecture of the Forum” and its many agencies “to ensure that their deliverables are on target, and inter-agency conflicts are minimised.”

The President said during this review of the Forum and its agencies, “it is critical that the question of Taiwan’s participation in Forum meetings is settled once and for all to safeguard equity and sovereignty of member governments.”

New Zealand is lagging behind the rest of the world through its failure to recognise Palestinian statehood, says Former Prime Minister Helen Clark.

Canada yesterday became the latest country to announce it would formally recognise the state of Palestine when world leaders met at the UN General Assembly in September.

It follows recent similar commitments from the France and the United Kingdom.

• READ MORE: What would New Zealand recognising Palestinian statehood mean?
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon suggested the discussion was a distraction and said the immediate focus should be on getting humanitarian aid into Gaza.

But, speaking to RNZ Midday Report, Clark said New Zealand needed to come on board.

“We are watching a catastrophe unfold in Gaza. We’re watching starvation. We’re watching famine conditions for many. Many are using the word genocide,” she said.

“If New Zealand can’t act in these circumstances, when can it act?”

Elders call for recognition
“The Elders, a group of world leaders of which Clark is a part, last month issued a call for countries to recognise the state of Palestine, calling it the “beginning, not the end of a political pathway towards lasting peace”.

Clark said the government seemed to be trying avoid the ire of the United States by waiting until the peace process was well underway or nearing its end.

“That is no longer tenable,” she said.

“New Zealand really is lagging behind.”

Even before the recent commitments from France, Canada and the UK, 147 of the UN’s 193 member states had recognised the Palestinian state.

Clark said the hope was that the series of recognitions from major Western states would first shift the US position and then Israel’s.

“When the US moves, Israel eventually jumps because it owes so much to the United States for the support, financial, military and otherwise,” she said.

“At some point, Israel has to smell the coffee.”

Surprised over Peters
Clark said she was “a little surprised” that Foreign Minister Winston Peters had not been more forward-leaning given he historically had strongly advocated New Zealand’s even-handed position.

On Wednesday, New Zealand signed a joint statement with 14 other countries expressing a willingness to recognise the State of Palestine as a necessary step towards a two-state solution.

However, later speaking in Parliament, Peters said that was conditional on first seeing progress from Palestine, including representative governance, commitment to non-violence, and security guarantees for Israel.

“If we are to recognise the state of Palestine, New Zealand wants to know that what we are recognising is a legitimate, representative, viable, political entity,” Peters told MPs.

Peters also agreed with a contribution from ACT’s Simon Court that recognising the state of Palestine could be viewed as “a reward [to Hamas] for acts of terrorism” if it was done before Hamas had returned hostages or laid down arms.

Luxon earlier told RNZ New Zealand had long supported the eventual recognition of Palestinian statehood, but that the immediate focus should be on getting aid into Gaza rather than “fragmenting and talking about all sorts of other things that are distractions”.

“We need to put the pressure on Israel to get humanitarian assistance unfettered, at scale, at volume, into Gaza,” he told RNZ.

“You can talk about a whole bunch of other things, but for right now, the world needs to focus.”

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

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

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

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

• READ MORE: Eugene Doyle: Why Asia-Pacific should be cheering for Iran and not US bomb-based statecraft
• Other Israeli war on Middle East reports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kia ora koutou,

I’m a Kiwi journo in occupied Bethlehem, here’s a brief summary of today’s events across the Palestinian and Israeli territories from on the ground.

At least 79 killed and 391 injured by Israeli forces in Gaza over the last 24 hours, including 33 killed and 267 injured while seeking aid at the US-Israel “humanitarian” centres.

*

Three killed and 7 injured by settler pogrom on the town of Kafr Malik, northeast of Ramallah; setting fire to houses and cars, and protected by soldiers. Israeli forces shot and killed 15-year-old Rayan Houshia west of Jenin as they retreated from resistance fighters, after using a civilian home as military barracks; also invading several towns across the West Bank, firing teargas into al-Fawar refugee camp south of Hebron, sound-bombs near the Jenin Grand Mosque in the north, and arresting several Palestinians.

• READ MORE: Israel kills more than 80 in Gaza; 3 killed in attack by Israeli settlers
• Other Middle East crisis reports

Al Quds/Jerusalem’s old city faced low visitor numbers even after restrictions were lifted by the Israeli occupation. Jerusalem Governate reported 623 homes and facilities demolished by Israel since October 2023.

*

Palestinian political prisoner Amar Yasser Al-Amour was released after 2.5 years without charge or trial in Israeli prisons. Thousands remain detained illegally in this way. Another freed prisoner Fares Bassam Hanani mourned his mother who passed away while he was imprisoned. Mohammad al-Ghushi, also freed, was taken to hospital to have his kidney removed due to torture and medical neglect he faced in Israeli prisons.

*

The unexpected ceasefire between Israel, America, and Iran appears to be holding for now. Iranian officials say the US “torpedoed diplomacy” and have passed a bill to halt cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA.

Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

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

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

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

• READ MORE: Fiji advocacy group slams Indonesian role in MSG as a ‘disgrace’
• New era for MSG as Fiji assumes leadership role
• Pro-independence advocates urge MSG to elevate West Papua membership
• Other West Papua reports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prominent lawyers are joining opposition parties as they call for the New Zealand government to denounce the United States attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Iranian New Zealander and lawyer Arman Askarany said the New Zealand government was showing “indifference”.

It comes as acting Prime Minister David Seymour told reporters on Monday there was “no benefit” in rushing to a judgment regarding the US attack.

• READ MORE: Trump says Israel and Iran have agreed to ceasefire
• RNZ Pacific live updates about the Middle East conflict
• Other Middle East crisis reports

US President Trump says Israel and Iran have agreed to a ceasefire to end the “12-day war,” with the truce taking effect in stages over 24 hours, following Iran’s missile attack on a US base in Qatar.

Follow our LIVE coverage: https://t.co/f0V5nlsAMR pic.twitter.com/XC4Xld0Q7U

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) June 24, 2025

“We’re far better to keep our counsel, because it costs nothing to get more information, but going off half-cocked can be very costly for a small nation.”

Iran and Israel continued to exchange strikes over the weekend after Israel’s initial attack nearly two weeks ago.

Israeli authorities say at least 25 people have been killed, and Iran said on Sunday Israeli strikes had killed at least 224 people since June 13.

The Human Rights Activists news agency puts the death toll in Iran above 650 people.

US attacked Iran nuclear sites
The US entered the war at the weekend by attacking what it said was key nuclear sites in Iran — including Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan — on Sunday.

On Monday, the Australian government signalled its support for the strike, and called for de-escalation and a return to diplomacy.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the strike was a unilateral action by its security ally the United States, and Australia was joining calls from Britain and other countries for Iran to return to the negotiating table

Not long after, Foreign Minister Winston Peters issued a statement on X, giving tacit endorsement to the decision to bomb nuclear facilities.

The statement was also released just ahead of the NATO meeting in Brussels, which Prime Minister Christopher Luxon was attending.

Peters said Iran could not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons, and noted the United States’ targeted attacks aimed at “degrading Iran’s nuclear capabilities”.

He went on to acknowledge the US statement to the UN Security Council saying the attack was “acting in collective self-defence consistent with the UN Charter”.

Self-defence ‘complete joke’
Askarany told RNZ it was a “complete joke” that New Zealand had acknowledged the US statement saying it was self-defence.

“It would be funny if it wasn’t so horrific.”

He said it was a clear escalation by the US and Israel, and believed New Zealand was undermining the rules-based order it purported to support, given it refused to say Israel and the US had attacked Iran.

Askarany acknolwedged the calls for deescalation and for peace in the region, but said they were “abstract platitudes” if the aggressor was not named.

He called on people who might not know about Iran to learn more about it.

“There’s so much history and culture and beautiful things about Iran that represent my people far more than the words of Trump and Netanyahu.”

Peters told RNZ Morning Report on Monday the government wanted to know all the facts before taking a position on the US strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Politicians at a crossroads
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour held his first post-cabinet media conference on Monday, in which he said nobody was calling on New Zealand to rush to a judgment on the rights and wrongs of the situation.

He echoed the Foreign Minister’s statement, saying “of course” New Zealand noted the US assertion of the legality of their actions.

He also indicated, “like just about every country in the world, that we cannot have a nuclear-armed Iran.”

“That does not mean that we are rushing to form our own judgment on the rights or wrongs or legality of any action.”

He insisted New Zealand was not sitting on the fence, but said “nor are we rushing to judgement.”

“I believe the world is not sitting there waiting for New Zealand to give its position on the legality of the situation.

“What people do want to see is de escalation and dialogue, and most critically for us, the safety of New Zealanders in the region.”

When asked about the Australian government’s position, Seymour said New Zealand did not have the intelligence that other countries may have.

Hikpins says attack ‘disappointing’
Labour leader Chris Hipkins called the attack by the US on Iran “very disappointing”, “not justified” and “almost certainly” against international law.

He wanted New Zealand to take a stronger stance on the issue.

“New Zealand should take a stronger position in condemning the attacks and saying that we do not believe they are justified, and we do not believe that they are consistent with international law.”

Hipkins said the US had not made a case for the action taken, and they should step back and get back around the table with Iran.

The Green Party and Te Pāti Māori both called on the government to condemn the attack by the US.

“The actions of the United States pose a fundamental threat to world peace.

‘Dangerous escalation’
“The rest of the world, including New Zealand, must take a stand and make it clear that this dangerous escalation is unacceptable,” said Green Party coleader Marama Davidson.

“We saw this with the US war on Iraq, and we are seeing it again with this recent attack on Iran. We are at risk of a violent history repeating itself.”

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi said the government was remaining silent on Israel.

“When the US bombs Iran, Luxon calls it an ‘opportunity’. But when Cook Islanders assert their sovereignty or Chinese vessels travel through international waters, he leaps to condemnation,” said Waititi.

“Israel continues to maintain an undeclared nuclear arsenal. Yet this government won’t say a word.

“It condemns non-Western powers at every turn but remains silent when its allies act with impunity.”

International law experts weigh in
University of Waikato Professor Alexander Gillespie said it was “an illegal war” and the option of diplomacy should have been exhausted before the first strike.

As Luxon headed to NATO, Gillespie acknowledged it would be difficult for him to take a “hard line” on the issue, “because he’s going to be caught up with the members and the partners of NATO.”

He said the question would be whether NATO members accept there was a right of self-defence and whether the actions of the US and Israel were justified.

Gillespie said former prime minister Helen Clark spoke very clearly in 2003 against the invasion of Iraq, but he could not see New Zealand’s current Prime Minister saying that.

“That’s not because they don’t believe it, but because there would be a risk of a backhand from the United States.

“And we’re spending a lot of time right now trying not to offend this Trump administration.”

‘Might is right’ precedent
University of Otago Professor Robert Patman said the US strike on Iran would likely “make things worse” and set a precedent for “might is right.”

He said he had “no brief” for the repressive Iranian regime, but under international law it had been subject of “two illegal attacks in the last 10 days”, from Israel and now from the US.

Patman said New Zealand had been guarded in its comments about the attacks on Iran, and believed the country should speak out.

“We have championed non nuclear security since the mid 80s. We were a key player, a leader, of the treaty to abolish nuclear weapons, and that now has 94 signatories.”

He said New Zealand does have a voice and an expectation to contribute to an international debate that’s beginning to unfold.

“We seem to be at a fork in the road moment internationally, we can seek to reinstate the idea that international relations should be based on rules, principles and procedures, or we can simply passively accept the erosion of that architecture, which is to the detriment of the majority of countries in the world.”

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

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

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

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

• READ MORE:  Leaders in US-affiliated Pacific react to surprise strikes on Iran
• NZ group slams Israeli ‘hoodwinking’ of US over nuclear strikes — Peters calls for talks
• US bombs Iranian nuclear sites – Iran fires missiles at Israel
• US strikes: Ignore the propaganda, 10 forces will shape the Iran-Israel war
• Other Middle East crisis reports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labour defence spokesperson Peeni Henare supported the move.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Trump trashed it and now has to start over.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Republished from Democracy Now! under Creative Commons.

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark believes the Cook Islands, a realm of New Zealand, caused a crisis for itself by not consulting Wellington before signing a deal with China.

The New Zealand government has paused more than $18 million in development assistance to the Cook Islands after the latter failed to provide satisfactory answers to Aotearoa’s questions about its partnership agreement with Beijing.

The Cook Islands is in free association with New Zealand and governs its own affairs. But New Zealand provides assistance with foreign affairs (upon request), disaster relief, and defence.

• READ MORE: Mark Brown: Cook Islands ‘not consulted’ on NZ-China agreements
• Other Cook Islands crisis reports

The 2001 Joint Centenary Declaration signed between the two nations requires them to consult each other on defence and security, which Foreign Minister Winston Peters said had not been honoured.

Peters and Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown both have a difference of opinion on the level of consultation required between the two nations on such matters.

“There is no way that the 2001 declaration envisaged that Cook Islands would enter into a strategic partnership with a great power behind New Zealand’s back,” Clark told RNZ Pacific on Thursday.

Clark was a signatory of the 2001 agreement with the Cook Islands as New Zealand prime minister at the time.

“It is the Cook Islands government’s actions which have created this crisis,” she said.

Urgent need for dialogue
“The urgent need now is for face-to-face dialogue at a high level to mend the NZ-CI relationship.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has downplayed the pause in funding to the Cook Islands during his second day of his trip to China.

Brown told Parliament on Thursday (Wednesday, Cook Islands time) that his government knew the funding cut was coming.

He also suggested a double standard, pointing out that New Zealand had also entered deals with China that the Cook Islands was not “privy to or being consulted on”.

A Pacific law expert says that, while New Zealand has every right to withhold its aid to the Cook Islands, the way it is going about it will not endear it to Pacific nations.

Auckland University of Technology senior law lecturer and a former Pacific Islands Forum advisor Sione Tekiteki told RNZ Pacific that for Aotearoa to keep highlighting that it is “a Pacific country and yet posture like the United States gives mixed messages”.

“Obviously, Pacific nations in true Pacific fashion will not say much, but they are indeed thinking it,” Tekiteki said.

Misunderstanding of agreement
Since day dot there has been a misunderstanding on what the 2001 agreement legally required New Zealand and Cook Islands to consult on, and the word consultation has become somewhat of a sticking point.

The latest statement from the Cook Islands government confirms it is still a discrepancy both sides want to hash out.

“There has been a breakdown and difference in the interpretation of the consultation requirements committed to by the two governments in the 2001 Joint Centenary Declaration,” the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Immigration (MFAI) said.

“An issue that the Cook Islands is determined to address as a matter of urgency”.

Tekiteki said that, unlike a treaty, the 2001 declaration was not “legally binding” per se but serves more to express the intentions, principles and commitments of the parties to work together in “recognition of the close traditional, cultural and social ties that have existed between the two countries for many hundreds of years”.

He said the declaration made it explicitly clear that Cook Islands had full conduct of its foreign affairs, capacity to enter treaties and international agreements in its own right and full competence of its defence and security.

However, he added that there was a commitment of the parties to “consult regularly”.

This, for Clark, the New Zealand leader who signed the all-important agreement more than two decades ago, is where Brown misstepped.

Clark previously labelled the Cook Islands-China deal “clandestine” which has “damaged” its relationship with New Zealand.

RNZ Pacific contacted the Cook Islands Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment but was advised by the MFAI secretary that they are not currently accommodating interviews.

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

Had Israel not launched its unprovoked attack on Iran on Friday night, in direct violation of the UN Charter, Iran would now be taking part in the sixth round of negotiations concerning the future of its nuclear programme, meeting with representatives from the United States in Muscat, the capital of Oman.

Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu claimed he acted to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb, saying Iran had the capacity to build nine nuclear weapons. Israel provided no evidence to back up its claims.

On 25 March 2025, Trump’s own National Director of Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, said: 

Even if Iran had the capability to build a bomb, it is quite another thing to have the will to do so.

Any such bomb would need to be tested first, and any such test would be quickly detected by a series of satellites on the lookout for nuclear detonations anywhere on the planet.

It is more likely that Israel launched its attack to stop US and Iranian negotiators from meeting on Sunday.

Only a month ago, Iran’s lead negotiator in the nuclear talks, Ali Shamkhani, told US television that Iran was ready to do a deal. NBC journalist Richard Engel reports:

“Shamkhani said Iran is willing to commit to never having a nuclear weapon, to get rid of its stockpiles of highly enriched uranium, to only enrich to a level needed for civilian use and to allow inspectors in to oversee it all, in exchange for lifting all sanctions immediately. He said Iran would accept that deal tonight.”

Inside Iran as Trump presses for nuclear deal.   Video: NBC News

Shamkhani died on Saturday, following injuries he suffered during Israel’s attack on Friday night. It appears that Israel not only opposed a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear impasse: Israel killed it directly.

A spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmaeil Baghaei, told a news conference in Tehran the talks would be suspended until Israel halts its attacks:

“It is obvious that in such circumstances and until the Zionist regime’s aggression against the Iranian nation stops, it would be meaningless to participate with the party that is the biggest supporter and accomplice of the aggressor.”

On 1 April 2024, Israel launched an airstrike on Iran’s embassy in Syria, killing 16 people, including a woman and her son. The attack violated international norms regarding the protection of diplomatic premises under the Vienna Convention.

Yet the UK, USA and France blocked a United Nations Security Council statement condemning Israel’s actions.

It is worth noting how the The New York Times described the occupation of the US Embassy in November 1979:

Now it is Israel conducting a “war on diplomacy itself”, first with the attack on the embassy, followed by Friday’s surprise attack on Iran. Scuppering a diplomatic resolution to the nuclear issue appears to be the aim. To make matters worse, Israel’s recklessness could yet cause a major war.

Trump: Inconsistent and ineffective
In an interview with Time magazine on 22 April 2025, Trump denied he had stopped Israel from attacking Iran’s nuclear sites.

In the same interview Trump boasted “I think we’re going to make a deal with Iran. Nobody else could do that.” Except, someone else had already done that — only for Trump to abandon the deal in his first term as president.

In July 2015 Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) alongside the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and the European Union. Iran pledged to curb its nuclear programme for 10-15 years in exchange for the removal of some economic sanctions. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also gained access and verification powers.

Iran also agreed to limit uranium enrichment to 3.67 per cent U-235, allowing it to maintain its nuclear power reactors.

Despite clear signs the nuclear deal was working, Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA and reinstated sanctions on Iran in November 2018. Despite the unilateral American action, Iran kept to the deal for a time, but in January 2020 Iran declared it would no longer abide by the limitations included in JCPOA but would continue to work with the IAEA.

By pulling out of the deal and reinstating sanctions, the US and Israel effectively created a strong incentive for Iran to resume enriching uranium to higher levels, not for the sake of making a bomb, but as the most obvious means of creating leverage to remove the sanctions.

As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Iran is allowed to enrich uranium for civilian fuel programmes.

Iran’s nuclear programme began in the 1960s with US assistance. Prior to the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran was ruled by the brutal dictatorship of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahavi.

American corporations saw Iran as a potential market for expansion. During the 1970s the US suggested to the Shah he needed not one but several nuclear reactors to meet Iran’s future electricity needs. In June 1974, the Shah declared that Iran would have nuclear weapons, “without a doubt and sooner than one would think”.

In 2007, I wrote an article for Peace Researcher where I examined US claims that Iran does not need nuclear power because it is sitting on one of the largest gas supplies in the world. One of the most interesting things I discovered while researching the article was the relevance of air pollution, a critical public health concern in Iran.

In 2024, health officials estimated that air pollution is responsible for 40,000 deaths a year in Iran. Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisi said the “majority of these deaths were due to cardiovascular diseases, strokes, respiratory issues, and cancers”.

Sahimi describes levels of air pollution in Tehran and other major Iranian cities as “catastrophic”, with elementary schools having to close on some days as a result. There was little media coverage of the air pollution issue in relation to Iran’s energy mix then, and I have seen hardly any since.

An energy research project, Advanced Energy Technologies provides a useful summary of electricity production in Iran as it stood in 2023.

With around 94.6 percent of electricity generation dependent on fossil fuels, there are serious environmental reasons why Iran should not be encouraged to depend on oil and gas for its electricity needs — not to mention the prospect of climate change.

One could also question the safety of nuclear power in one of the most seismically active countries in the world, however it would be fair to ask the same question of countries like Japan, which aims to increase its use of nuclear power to about 20 percent of the country’s total electricity generation by 2040, despite the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated that Iran’s uranium enrichment programme “must continue”, but the “scope and level may change”. Prior to the talks in Oman, Araghchi highlighted the “constant change” in US positions as a problem.

Trump’s rhetoric on uranium enrichment has shifted repeatedly.

So with Iran seemingly willing to accept reasonable conditions, why was a deal not reached last month? It appears the US changed its position, and demanded Iran cease all enrichment of uranium, including what Iran needs for its power stations.

One wonders if Zionist lobby groups like AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) influenced this decision. One could recall what happened during Benjamin Netanyahu’s first stint as Israel’s Prime Minister (1996-1999) to illustrate the point.

In April 1995 AIPAC published a report titled ‘Comprehensive US Sanctions Against Iran: A Plan for Action’. In 1997 Mohammad Khatami was elected as President of Iran. The following year Khatami expressed regret for the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979 and denounced terrorism against Israelis, while noting that “supporting peoples who fight for their liberation of their land is not, in my opinion, supporting terrorism”.

The threat of improved relations between Iran and the US sent the Israeli government led by Netanyahu into a panic. The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that “Israel has expressed concern to Washington of an impending change of policy by the United States towards Iran” adding that Netanyahu “asked AIPAC . . . to act vigorously in Congress to prevent such a policy shift.”

Twenty years ago the Israeli lobby were claiming an Iranian nuclear bomb was imminent. It didn’t happen.

Netanyahu’s Iran nuclear warnings.   Video: Al Jazeera

The misguided efforts of Israel and the United States to contain Iran’s use of nuclear technology are not only counterproductive — they risk being a catastrophic failure. If one was going to design a policy to convince Iran nuclear weapons may be needed for its own defence, it is hard to imagine a policy more effective than the one Israel has pursued for the past 30 years.My 2007 Peace Researcher article asked a simple question: ‘Why does Iran want nuclear weapons?’ My introduction could have been written yesterday.

“With all the talk about Iran and the intentions of its nuclear programme it is a shame the West continues to undermine its own position with selective morality and obvious hypocrisy. It seems amazing there can be so much written about this issue, yet so little addresses the obvious question – ‘for what reasons could Iran want nuclear weapons?’.

“As Simon Jenkins (2006) points out, the answer is as simple as looking at a map. ‘I would sleep happier if there were no Iranian bomb but a swamp of hypocrisy separates me from overly protesting it. Iran is a proud country that sits between nuclear Pakistan and India to its east, a nuclear Russia to its north and a nuclear Israel to its west. Adjacent Afghanistan and Iraq are occupied at will by a nuclear America, which backed Saddam Hussein in his 1980 invasion of Iran. How can we say such a country has no right’ to nuclear defence?'”

This week the German Foreign Office reached new heights in hypocrisy with this absurd tweet.

Iran has no nuclear weapons. Israel does. Iran is a signatory to the NPT. Israel is not. Iran allows IAEA inspections. Israel does not.

Starting another war will not make us forget, nor forgive what Israel is doing in Gaza.

From the river to the sea, credibility requires consistency.

I write about New Zealand and international politics, with particular interests in political economy, history, philosophy, transport, and workers’ rights. I don’t like war very much.

Joe Hendren writes about New Zealand and international politics, with particular interests in political economy, history, philosophy, transport, and workers’ rights. Republished with his permission. Read this original article on his Substack account with full references.

Opposition parties say Aotearoa New Zealand’s government should be going much further, much faster in sanctioning Israel.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters overnight revealed New Zealand had joined Australia, Canada, the UK and Norway in imposing travel bans on Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Some of the partner countries went further, adding asset freezes and business restrictions on the far-right ministers.

• READ MORE: Israeli forces kill dozens of Palestinian aid seekers in central Gaza
• US criticises allies as NZ bans two top far-right Israeli ministers
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

Peters said the pair had used their leadership positions to actively undermine peace and security and remove prospects for a two-state solution.

Israel and the United States criticised the sanctions, with the US saying it undermined progress towards a ceasefire.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, attending Fieldays in Waikato, told reporters New Zealand still enjoyed a good relationship with the US administration, but would not be backing down.

“We have a view that this is the right course of action for us,” he said.

Behind the scenes job
“We have differences in approach but the Americans are doing an excellent job of behind the scenes trying to get Israel and the Palestinians to the table to talk about a ceasefire.”

Asked if there could be further sanctions, Luxon said the government was “monitoring the situation all the time”.

Peters has been busy travelling in Europe and was unavailable to be interviewed. ACT — probably the most vocally pro-Israel party in Parliament — refused to comment on the situation.

The opposition parties also backed the move, but argued the government should have gone much further.

Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick has since December been urging the coalition to back her bill imposing economic sanctions on Israel. With support from Labour and Te Pāti Māori it would need just six MPs to cross the floor to pass.

Calling the Israeli actions in Gaza “genocide”, she told RNZ the government’s sanctions fell far short of those imposed on Russia.

“This is symbolic, and it’s unfortunate that it’s taken so long to get to this point, nearly two years . . .  the Minister of Foreign Affairs also invoked the similarities with Russia in his statement this morning, yet we have seen far less harsh sanctions applied to Israel.

“We’re well past the time for first steps.”

‘Cowardice’ by government
The pushback from the US was “probably precisely part of the reason that our government has been so scared of doing the right thing”, she said, calling it “cowardice” on the government’s part.

“What else are you supposed to call it at the end of the day?,” she said, saying at a bare minimum the Israeli ambassador should be expelled, Palestinian statehood should be recognised, and a special category of visas for Palestinians should be introduced.

She rejected categorisation of her stance as anti-semitic, saying that made no sense.

“If we are critiquing a government of a certain country, that is not the same thing as critiquing the people of that country. I think it’s actually far more anti-semitic to conflate the actions of the Israeli government with the entire Jewish peoples.”

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said the sanctions were political hypocrisy.

“When it comes to war, human rights and the extent of violence and genocide that we’re seeing, Palestine is its own independent nation . . .  why is this government sanctioning only two ministers? They should be sanctioning the whole of Israel,” she said.

“These two Israel far right ministers don’t act alone. They belong to an entire Israel government which has used its military might and everything it can possibly do to bombard, to murder and to commit genocide and occupy Gaza and the West Bank.”

Suspend diplomatic ties
She also wanted all diplomatic ties with Israel suspended, along with sanctions against Israeli companies, military officials and additional support for the international courts — also saying the government should have done more.

“This government has been doing everything to do nothing . . .  to appease allies that have dangerously overstepped unjustifiable marks, and they should not be silent.

“It’s not a war, it’s an annihilation, it’s an absolute annihilation of human beings . . .  we’re way out there supporting those allies that are helping to weaponise Israel and the flattening and the continual cruel occupation of a nation, and it’s just nothing that I thought in my living days I’d be witnessing.”

She said the government should be pushing back against “a very polarised, very Trump attitude” to the conflict.

“Trumpism has arrived in Aotearoa . . .  and we continue to go down that line, that is a really frightening part for this beautiful nation of ours.

“As a nation, we have a different set of values. We’re a Pacific-based country with a long history of going against the grain – the mainstream, easy grind. We’ve been a peaceful, loving nation that stood up against the big boys when it came to our anti nuclear stance and that’s our role in this, our role is not to follow blindly.”

Undermining two-state solution
In a statement, Labour’s foreign affairs spokesperson Peeni Henare said the actions of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir had attempted to undermine the two-state solution and international law, and described the situation in Gaza as horrific.

“The travel bans echo the sanctions placed on Russian individuals and organisations that supported the illegal invasion of Ukraine,” he said.

He called for further action.

“Labour has been calling for stronger action from the government on Israel’s invasion of Gaza, including intervening in South Africa’s case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, creation of a special visa for family members of New Zealanders fleeing Gaza, and ending government procurement from companies operating illegally in the Occupied Territories.”

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

The New Zealand Foreign Minster’s decision to issue a travel ban against two Israeli far-right politicians is little more than a tokenistic gesture in opposing Israel’s actions.

It is an attempt to appease growing opposition to Israel’s war, but the fact that Israel has killed more than 54,000 innocent people in Gaza, a third under the age of 18, still leaves the New Zealand government unmoved.

Foreign Minister Peters gave the game away when he commented that the sanctions were targeted towards two individuals, rather than the Israeli government.

• READ MORE: US criticises allies as NZ bans two top far-right Israeli ministers
• UK and allies to sanction far-right Israeli ministers Ben-Gvir, Smotrich
• Why Israel’s ‘humane’ propaganda is such a sinister facade
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

Issuing travel bans against two Israeli politicians, who are unlikely to visit New Zealand at any stage, is the easy option.

It appears to be doing something to protest against Israel’s actions when actually doing nothing. And it doesn’t contradict the interests of the United States in the Middle East.

Under the government of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, New Zealand has become a vassal state of American imperialism.

New Zealand has joined four other countries, the United States, Britain, Australia and Norway, in issuing a travel ban. But all four countries continue to supply Israel with arms.

Unions demand stronger action
Last week, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions demanded that the New Zealand government take stronger action against Israel. In a letter to Winston Peters, CTU president Richard Wagstaff wrote:

“For too long, the international community has allowed the state of Israel to act with impunity. It is now very clearly engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

“All efforts must be made to put diplomatic and economic pressure on Israel to end this murderous campaign.”

THE CTU has called for a series of sanctions to be imposed on Israel. They include “a ban on all imports of goods made in whole or in part in Israel” and “a rapid review of Crown investments and immediately divest from any financial interests in Israeli companies”.

The CTU is also calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador.

This article was first published on Steven Cowan’s website Against The Current. Republished with permission.

Israel’s military attack and boarding of the humanitarian boat Madleen attempting to deliver food and medical aid to the besieged people of Gaza has been condemned by New Zealand Palestinian advocacy groups as a “staggering act of state piracy”.

The vessel was in international waters, carrying aid workers, doctors, journalists, and supplies desperately needed by the 2 million population that Israel has systematically bombed, starved, and displaced.

“This was not a military confrontation. It was the assault of an unarmed civilian aid ship by a state acting with total impunity,” said the group Thyme4Action.

• READ MORE: Madleen Gaza flotilla: Ship, activists being taken to Israel
• Israeli forces intercept Gaza freedom aid boat Madleen – cut communications
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

“This is piracy, it is state terror, and it is a genocidal act of war.

Half of the 12 crew and passengers on board are French citizens and the volunteer group includes French-Palestinian European parliamentarian Rima Hassan and Swedish climate crisis activist Greta Thunberg and two journalists.

They all made pre-recorded messages calling for international pressure on their governments against the Israeli state. The messages were posted on the Freedom Flotilla Coalition X page.

The group Thyme4Action said in a media release that a regime engaged in genocide would send sends drones and armed commandos to detain civilians in international waters.

Israel’s ‘total moral collapse’
“We are witnessing the total moral collapse of a state, supported for years by Western governments to act with utter impunity, violate our global legal system, morality and principles.

“No amount of spin or military propaganda can hide the cruelty of deliberately starving a population, targeting children, bombing hospitals and bakeries, and then violently stopping others from bringing aid.”

Thyme4Action said the attack on the Madleen was not a separate incident — “it is part of the same campaign to eliminate Palestinian life, hope, and survival. It is why the International Court of Justice has already ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide.”

“This is not complicated,” said the statement.

“Israel has no legal authority in international waters. Under the United Nations Convention
on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Israel’s boarding of a civilian aid ship beyond its territorial waters is an act of piracy, unlawful kidnapping, forcible abduction and armed
aggression.

Under international humanitarian law, deliberately blocking aid to a population facing
starvation is a war crime.

Under the Genocide Convention, when a state intentionally denies food, water, and
medicine to a population it is bombing and displacing, this constitutes part of a genocidal
campaign.”

NZ silence condemned
The advocacy group condemned the silence of the New Zealand government as being “no longer neutral”.

It demonstrated a shocking lack of respect for international law, for human rights, and for the safety of global humanitarian workers.

“It reflects a broader decay in foreign policy — where selective outrage and Israeli
exceptionalism undermine the credibility of everything New Zealand claims to stand for.”

Thyme4Action called on the New Zealand government to:

• Publicly condemn Israel’s illegal assault on the Madleen and its passengers;
• Demand the immediate release of all aid workers, journalists, and civilians
abducted by Israeli forces;
• Suspend all diplomatic, military, and trade cooperation with Israel until it complies
with international law; and
• Support international accountability mechanisms, including referring Israel’s crimes
to the International Criminal Court and backing enforcement of the ICJ’s provisional
measures on genocide.

“This has to stop. This is not just a crisis in Gaza,” said the statement.

‘Crisis of global morality’
“It is a crisis of global morality, of international law, and of our basic shared humanity.

“We stand with the people of Gaza. We stand with the brave souls aboard the Madleen, and
we demand an end to this madness before the world forgets what it means to be human.

“We need a government that stands for all that is right, not all that is wrong.

“Aid is not terrorism. International waters are not Israel’s territory. And silence in the face of evil is complicity.”

Pro-Palestinian supporters in New Zealand have held protests against the genocide and demanding a ceasefire right across the country at multiple locations for the past 87 weeks.

SOS! the volunteers on ‘Madleen’ have been kidnapped by Israeli forces.
Rima Hassan is a French citizen.
Pressure the foreign ministries and help us keep them safe!

E: alertes.cdc@diplomatie.gouv.fr & courrier.scec@diplomatie.gouv.fr
X : @FranceDiplo_EN & @francediplo &… pic.twitter.com/hypzpbwhV8

— Freedom Flotilla Coalition (@GazaFFlotilla) June 9, 2025

“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. It’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated.”

This statement was made not by a foreign or liberal critic of Israel but by the former Prime Minister and former senior member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s own Likud party, Ehud Olmet.

Nightly, we witness live-streamed evidence of the truth of his statement — lethargic and gaunt children dying of malnutrition, a bereaved doctor and mother of 10 children, nine of them killed by an Israeli strike (and her husband, another doctor, died later), 15 emergency ambulance workers gunned down by the IDF as they tried to help others injured by bombs, despite their identity being clear.

• READ MORE: Israel attacks Palestinians at US-backed aid hubs in Gaza, killing 36

Statistics reflect the scale of the horror imposed on Palestinians who are overwhelmingly civilians — 54,000 killed, 121,000 maimed and injured. Over 17,000 of these are children.

This can no longer be excused as regrettable collateral damage from targeted attacks on Hamas.

Israel simply doesn’t care about the impact of its military attacks on civilians and how many innocent people and children it is killing.

Its willingness to block all humanitarian aid- food, water, medical supplies, from Gaza demonstrates further its willingness to make mass punishment and starvation a means to achieve its ends. Both are war crimes.

Influenced by the right wing extremists in the Coalition cabinet, like Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s goal is no longer self defence or justifiable retaliation against Hamas terrorists.

Making life unbearable
The Israeli government policy is focused on making life unbearable for Palestinians and seeking to remove them from their homeland. In this, they are openly encouraged by President Trump who has publicly and repeatedly endorsed deporting the Palestinian population so that the Gaza could be made into a “Middle East Riviera”.

This is not the once progressive pioneer Israel, led by people who had faced the Nazi Holocaust and were fighting for the right to a place where they could determine their own future and be safe.

Sadly, a country of people who were themselves long victims of oppression is now guilty of oppressing and committing genocide against others.

New Zealand recently joined 23 other countries calling out Israel and demanding a full supply of foreign aid be allowed into Gaza.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters called Israel’s actions “ intolerable”. He said that we had “had enough and were running out of patience and hearing excuses”.

While speaking out might make us feel better, words are not enough. Israel’s attacks on the civilian population in Gaza are being increased, aid distribution which has restarted is grossly insufficient to stop hunger and human suffering and Palestinians are being herded into confined areas described as humanitarian zones but which are still subject to bombardment.

People living in tents in schools and hospitals are being slaughtered.

World must force Israel to stop
Like Putin, Israel will not end its killing and oppression unless the world forces it to. The US has the power but will not do this.

The sanctions Trump has imposed are not on Israel’s leaders but on judges in the International Criminal Court (ICC) who dared to find Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu guilty of war crimes.

New Zealand’s foreign policy has traditionally involved working with like-minded countries, often small nations like us. Two of these, Ireland and Sweden, are seeking to impose sanctions on Israel.

Both are members of the European Union which makes up a third of Israel’s global trade. If the EU decides to act, sanctions imposed by it would have a big impact on Israel.

These sanctions should be both on trade and against individuals.

New Zealand has imposed sanctions on a small number of extremist Jewish settlers on the West Bank where there is evidence of them using violence against Palestinian villagers.

These sanctions should be extended to Israel’s political leadership and New Zealand could take a lead in doing this. We should not be influenced by concern that by taking a stand we might offend US president Donald Trump.

Show our preparedness to uphold values
In the way that we have been proud of in the past, we should as a small but fiercely independent country show our preparedness to uphold our own values and act against gross abuse of human rights and flagrant disregard for international law.

We should be working with others through the United Nations General Assembly to maximise political pressure on Israel to stop the ongoing killing of innocent civilians.

Moral outrage at what Israel is doing has to be backed by taking action with others to force the Israeli government to end the killing, destruction, mass punishment and deliberate starvation of Palestinians including their children.

An American doctor working at a Gaza hospital reported that in the last five weeks he had worked on dozens of badly injured children but not a single combatant.

He noted that as well as being maimed and disfigured by bombing, many of the children were also suffering from malnutrition. Children were dying from wounds that they could recover from but there were not the supplies needed to treat them.

Protest is not enough. We need to act.

Phil Goff is Aotearoa New Zealand’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs. This article was first published by the Stuff website and is republished with the permission of the author.

How global power struggles are impacting in local communities, culture and sovereignty in Kanaky, New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands and Samoa.

In episode one, The Battlefield, broadcast today, tensions between the United States and China over the Pacific escalate, affecting the lives of Pacific Islanders.

Key figures like former Malaita Premier Daniel Suidani and tour guide Maria Loweyo reveal how global power struggles impact on local communities, culture and sovereignty in the Solomon Islands and Samoa.

• WATCH: The first episode of this new series

The episode intertwines these personal stories with the broader geopolitical dynamics, setting the stage for a deeper exploration of the Pacific’s role in global diplomacy.

Fight for the Pacific, a four-part series by Tuki Laumea and Cleo Fraser, showcases the Pacific’s critical transformation into a battleground of global power.

This series captures the high-stakes rivalry between the US and China as they vie for dominance in a region pivotal to global stability.

The series frames the Pacific not just as a battleground for superpowers but also as a region with its own unique challenges and aspirations.

Republished from Al Jazeera.

New Zealand has joined 23 other countries calling out Israel and demanding a full supply of foreign aid be allowed into the territory.

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters told RNZ Morning Report today it was “intolerable” that Israel had blocked any aid reaching residents for many weeks.

The UN is warning that 14,000 babies are estimated to be suffering severe acute malnutrition in Gaza and ideally they need to get supplies within 48 hours.

• READ MORE: Israel slammed over ‘cynical’ sidestep of global rulings on Gazan humanitarian aid
• UK, France, Canada threaten sanctions on Israel if Gaza war goes on
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

The UK, France and Canada have expressed their frustration, with the UK’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy telling Parliament the war in Gaza had entered a “dark new phase” and the UK was cancelling trade talks with Israel.

Although the situation had come about because of acts of terrorism by Hamas, for residents in Gaza it had become “intolerable”, Peters told Morning Report.

“We’ve had enough of this and we want the matter resolved and now.”

A full resumption of aid should have happened a long time ago and it was essential that the United Nations be involved in delivering it.

‘Had enough of it’
“… we’ve just simply had enough of it, utterly so [from Israel].”

The statement by the countries reaffirmed what had been said for a long time that Israel must make aid available.

New Zealand also opposed Israel’s latest expansion of military operations in Gaza, Peters said.

The Palestinian Authority and countries such as Egypt and Indonesia understood New Zealand’s position.

“We just want to sort this out and the long-term thing [Palestinians’ future alongside Israel] has got to be resolved as well.

“Israel needs to get the message very clear — we are running out of patience and hearing excuses.”

Asked if the Israeli ambassador should be called in so the message could be conveyed more clearly, he said it would be a symbolic gesture that would not help starving babies.

Israel already knew what this country’s stance was, he said.

It was an appalling situation that had started with “unforgivable terrorism” but Israel had gone “far too far” in its response, Peters said.

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

By Helen Musa in Canberra

Former Palestinian diplomat and long-time Canberra identity Ali Kazak died on Saturday en route to Palestine.

Sources at the Canberra Islamic Centre report that he was recovering from heart surgery and died during a stopover in Thailand.

Kazak was born in Haifa in 1947 and grew up in Syria as a Palestinian refugee. He and his mother were separated from his father when Israel was created in 1948 and Kazak was only reunited with his father in 1993.

• READ MORE: The third Nakba in Israel’s war of genocide: Why does the Albanese government shirk its responsibility?

In 1968, while at Damascus University, Kazak had been invited to join the Palestine National Liberation Movement (Fateh) and joined its political wing.

He migrated to Australia in 1970 where he became the founder, publisher and co-editor of the Australian newspaper, Free Palestine, also authoring among many books, The Jerusalem Question and Australia and the Arabs.

Kazak was the driving force behind the establishment in 1981 of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign and was appointed by the PLO executive committee as the PLO’s representative to Australia, NZ and the Pacific region.

In 1982, he established the Palestine Information Office, which was recognised by the Australian government in 1989 as the office of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and then further recognised in 1994 as the General Palestinian Delegation.

As Palestinian Ambassador, Kazak initiated the establishment of the NSW State and Australian Federal Parliamentary Friends of Palestine, as well as the Victorian, South Australian and NZ Parliamentary Friends of Palestine.

Always a passionate advocate, in 1986 he became the first person to call for adjudication by the Australian Press Council of stereotyped reporting of Palestinians.

After retiring from diplomacy, he became the managing director of the consultancy company Southern Link International, but continued to comment on Palestinian affairs and Gaza.

His most recent article was published in the Pearls and Irritations: John Menadue’s Public Policy journal on May 16, titled The third Nakba in Israel’s war of genocide: Why does the Albanese government shirk its responsibility?

Arrangements are being made to return his body from Thailand to Australia for internment.

Helen Musa is the Canberra City News arts editor. This article was first published by City News.

ANALYSIS: By Soumaya Ghannoushi

US President Donald Trump’s tour of Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and Doha is not diplomacy. It is theatre — staged in gold, fuelled by greed, and underwritten by betrayal.

A US president openly arming a genocide is welcomed with red carpets, handshakes and blank cheques. Trillions are pledged; personal gifts are exchanged. And Gaza continues to burn.

Gulf regimes have power and wealth. They have Trump’s ear. Yet they use none of it — not to halt the slaughter, ease the siege or demand dignity.

• READ MORE: Patients flee Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital after Israel forces displacement
• Key takeaways from day two of Donald Trump’s Middle East tour in Qatar
• Other Israel’s war on Gaza reports

In return for their riches and deference, Trump grants Israel bombs and sets it loose upon the region.

This is the real story. At the heart of Trump’s return lies a project he initiated during his first presidency: the erasure of Palestine, the elevation of autocracy, and the redrawing of the Middle East in Israel’s image.

“See this pen? This wonderful pen on my desk is the Middle East, and the top of the pen — that’s Israel. That’s not good,” he once told reporters, lamenting Israel’s size compared to its neighbours.

To Trump, the Middle East is not a region of history or humanity. It is a marketplace, a weapons depot, a geopolitical ATM.

His worldview is forged in evangelical zeal and transactional instinct. In his rhetoric, Arabs are chaos incarnate: irrational, violent, in need of control. Israel alone is framed as civilised, democratic, divinely chosen. That binary is not accidental. It is ideology.

Obedience for survival
Trump calls the region “a rough neighbourhood” — code for endless militarism that casts the people of the Middle East not as lives to protect, but as threats to contain.

His $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia in 2017 was marketed as peace through prosperity. Now, he wants trillions more in Gulf capital. As reported by The New York Times, Trump is demanding that Saudi Arabia invest its entire annual GDP — $1 trillion — into the US economy.

Riyadh has already offered $600 billion. Trump wants it all. Economists call it absurd; Trump calls it a deal.

This is not negotiation. It is tribute.

And the pace is accelerating. After a recent meeting with Trump, the UAE announced a 10-year, $1.4 trillion investment framework with the US.

This is not realpolitik. It is a grotesque spectacle of decadence, delusion and disgrace

Across the Gulf, a race is underway — not to end the genocide in Gaza, but to outspend one another for Trump’s favour, showering him with wealth in return for nothing.

The Gulf is no longer treated as a region. It is a vault. Sovereign wealth funds are the new ballot boxes. Sovereignty — just another asset to be traded.

Trump’s offer is blunt: obedience for survival. For regimes still haunted by the Arab Spring, Western blessing is their last shield. And they will pay any price: wealth, independence, even dignity.

To them, the true threat is not Israel, nor even Iran. It is their own people, restless, yearning, ungovernable.

Democracy is danger; self-determination, the ticking bomb. So they make a pact with the devil.

Doctrine of immunity
That devil brings flags, frameworks, photo ops and deals. The new order demands normalisation with Israel, submission to its supremacy, and silence on Palestine.

Once-defiant slogans are replaced by fintech expos and staged smiles beside Israeli ministers.

In return, Trump offers impunity: political cover and arms. It is a doctrine of immunity, bought with gold and soaked in Arab blood.

They bend. They hand him deals, honours, trillions. They believe submission buys respect. But Trump respects only power — and he makes that clear.

He praises Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Is Putin smart? Yes . . .  that’s a hell of a way to negotiate.” He calls Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “a guy I like [and] respect”. Like them or not, they defend their nations. And Trump, ever the transactional mind, respects power.

Arab rulers offer no such strength. They offer deference, not defiance. They don’t push; they pay.

And Trump mocks them openly. King Salman “might not be there for two weeks without us”, he brags. They give him billions; he demands trillions.

It is not just the US Treasury profiting. Gulf billions do not merely fuel policy; they enrich a family empire. Since returning to office, Trump and his sons have chased deals across the Gulf, cashing in on the loyalty they have cultivated.

A hotel in Dubai, a tower in Jeddah, a golf resort in Qatar, crypto ventures in the US, a private club in Washington for Gulf elites — these are not strategic projects, but rather revenue streams for the Trump family.

Reward for ethnic cleansing
The precedent was set early. Former presidential adviser Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, secured $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund shortly after leaving office, despite internal objections.

The message was clear: access to the Trumps has a price, and Gulf rulers are eager to pay.

Now, Trump is receiving a private jet from Qatar’s ruling family — a palace in the sky worth $400 million.

This is not diplomacy. It is plunder.

And how does Trump respond? With insult: “It was a great gesture,” he said of the jet, before adding: “We keep them safe. If it wasn’t for us, they probably wouldn’t exist right now.”

That was his thank you to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar; lavish gifts answered with debasement.

And what are they rewarding him for? For genocide. For 100,000 tonnes of bombs dropped on Gaza. For backing ethnic cleansing in plain sight. For empowering far-right Israeli politicians, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as they call for Gaza’s depopulation.

For presiding over the most fanatically Zionist, most unapologetically Islamophobic administration in US history.

Still, they ask nothing, while offering everything. They could have used their leverage. They did not.

The Yemen precedent proves they can act. Trump halted the bombing under Saudi pressure, to Netanyahu’s visible dismay. When they wanted a deal, they struck one with the Houthis.

And when they sought to bring Syria in from the cold, Trump complied. He agreed to meet former rebel leader turned President Ahmed al-Sharaa — a last-minute addition to his Riyadh schedule — and even spoke of lifting sanctions, once again at Saudi Arabia’s request, to “give them a chance of greatness”.

No US president is beyond pressure. But for Gaza? Silence.

Price of silence
While Trump was being feted in Riyadh, Israel rained American-made bombs on two hospitals in Gaza. In Khan Younis, the European Hospital was reportedly struck by nine bunker-busting bombs, killing more than two dozen people and injuring scores more.

Earlier that day, an air strike on Nasser Hospital killed journalist Hassan Islih as he lay wounded in treatment.

As Trump basked in applause, Israel massacred children in Jabalia, where around 50 Palestinians were killed in just a few hours.

This is the bloody price of Arab silence, buried beneath the roar of applause and the glitter of tributes.

This week marks the anniversary of the Nakba — and here it is again, replayed not through tanks alone, but through Arab complicity.

With every cheque signed, Arab rulers do not secure history’s respect. They seal their place in its sordid footnotes of shame

The bombs fall. The Gaza Strip turns to dust. Two million people endure starvation. UN food is gone.

Hospitals overflow with skeletal infants. Mothers collapse from hunger. Tens of thousands of children are severely malnourished, with more than 3500 on the edge of death.

Meanwhile, Smotrich speaks of “third countries” for Gaza’s people. Netanyahu promises their removal.

And Trump — the man enabling the annihilation? He is not condemned, but celebrated by Arab rulers. They eagerly kiss the hand that sends the bombs, grovel before the architect of their undoing, and drape him in splendour and finery.

While much of the world stands firm — China, Europe, Canada, Mexico, even Greenland – refusing to bow to Trump’s bullying, Arab rulers kneel. They open wallets, bend spines, empty hands — still mistaking humiliation for diplomacy.

They still believe that if they bow low enough, Trump might toss them a bone. Instead, he tosses them a bill.

This is not realpolitik. It is a grotesque spectacle of decadence, delusion and disgrace.

With every cheque signed, every jet offered, every photo op beside the butcher of a people, Arab rulers do not secure history’s respect. They seal their place in its sordid footnotes of shame.

Soumaya Ghannoushi is a British Tunisian writer and expert in Middle East politics. Her journalistic work has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, Corriere della Sera, aljazeera.net and Al Quds. This article was first published by the Middle East Eye. A selection of her writings may be found at: soumayaghannoushi.com and she tweets @SMGhannoushi.

On April 24, 2025, Indonesia made a masterful geopolitical move. Jakarta granted Fiji US$6 million in financial aid and offered to cooperate with them on military training — a seemingly benign act of diplomacy that conceals a darker purpose.

This strategic manoeuvre is the latest in Indonesia’s efforts to neutralise Pacific support for the independence movement in West Papua.

“There’s no need to be burdened by debt,” declared Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka during the bilateral meeting at Jakarta’s Merdeka Palace.

• READ MORE: Indonesia gifts $12 million grant to Fiji
• Indonesia: Racism, discrimination against indigenous Papuans
• Russia-Indonesia: 75 years of cooperation in international affairs
• Other West Papua reports

More significantly, he pledged Fiji’s respect for Indonesian sovereignty — diplomatic code for abandoning West Papua’s struggle for self-determination.

This aligns perfectly with Indonesia’s Law No. 2 of 2023, which established frameworks for defence cooperation, including joint research, technology transfer, and military education, between the two nations.

This is not merely a partnership — it is ideological assimilation.

Indonesia’s financial generosity comes with unwritten expectations. By integrating Fijian forces into Indonesian military training programmes, Jakarta aims to export its “anti-separatist” doctrine, which frames Papuan resistance as a “criminal insurgency” rather than legitimate political expression.

The US $6 million is not aid — it’s a strategic investment in regional complicity.

Geopolitical chess in a fractured world
Indonesia’s manoeuvres must be understood in the context of escalating global tensions.

The rivalry between the US and China has transformed the Indo-Pacific into a strategic battleground, leaving Pacific Island nations caught between competing spheres of influence.

Although Jakarta is officially “non-aligned,” it is playing both sides to secure its territorial ambitions.

Its aid to Fiji is one move in a comprehensive regional strategy to diplomatically isolate West Papua.

While the world focuses on superpower competition, Indonesia is quietly strengthening its position on what it considers an internal matter — effectively removing West Papua from international discourse.

The Russian connection: Shadow alliances
Another significant yet less examined relationship is Indonesia’s growing partnership with Russia, particularly in defence technology, intelligence sharing, and energy cooperation

This relationship provides Jakarta with advanced military capabilities and reduces its dependence on Western powers and China.

Russia’s unwavering support for territorial integrity, as evidenced by its position on Crimea and Ukraine, makes it an ideal partner for Indonesia’s West Papua policy.

Moscow’s diplomatic support strengthens Jakarta’s argument that “separatist” movements are internal security issues rather than legitimate independence struggles.

This strategic triangulation — balancing relations with Washington, Beijing, and Moscow– allows Indonesia to pursue regional dominance with minimal international backlash. Each superpower, focused on countering the others’ influence, overlooks Indonesia’s systematic suppression of Papuan self-determination.

Institutionalising silence: Beyond diplomacy
The practical consequence of Indonesia’s multidimensional strategy is the diplomatic isolation of West Papua. Historically positioned to advocate for Melanesian solidarity, Fiji now faces economic incentives to remain silent on Indonesian human rights abuses.

A similar pattern emerges across the Pacific as Jakarta extends these types of arrangements to other regional players.

It is not just about temporary diplomatic alignment; it is about the structural transformation of regional politics.

When Pacific nations integrate their security apparatuses with Indonesia’s, they inevitably adopt Jakarta’s security narratives. Resistance movements are labelled “terrorist threats,” independence advocates are branded “destabilising elements,” and human rights concerns are dismissed as “foreign interference”.

Most alarmingly, military cooperation provides Indonesia with channels to export its counterinsurgency techniques, which are frequently criticised by human rights organisations for their brutality.

Security forces in the Pacific trained in these approaches may eventually use them against their own Papuan advocacy groups.

The price of strategic loyalty
For just US$6 million — a fraction of Indonesia’s defence budget — Jakarta purchases Fiji’s diplomatic loyalty, military alignment, and ideological compliance. This transaction exemplifies how economic incentives increasingly override moral considerations such as human rights, indigenous sovereignty, and decolonisation principles that once defined Pacific regionalism.

Indonesia’s approach represents a sophisticated evolution in its foreign policy. No longer defensive about West Papua, Jakarta is now aggressively consolidating regional support, methodically closing avenues for international intervention, and systematically delegitimising Papuan voices on the global stage.

Will the Pacific remember its soul?
The path ahead for West Papua is becoming increasingly treacherous. Beyond domestic repression, the movement now faces waning international support as economic pragmatism supplants moral principle throughout the Pacific region.

Unless Pacific nations reconnect with their anti-colonial heritage and the values that secured their independence, West Papua’s struggle risks fading into obscurity, overwhelmed by geopolitical calculations and economic incentives.

The question facing the Pacific region is not simply about West Papua, but about regional identity itself. Will Pacific nations remain true to their foundational values of indigenous solidarity and decolonisation? Or will they sacrifice these principles on the altar of transactional diplomacy?

The date April 24, 2025, may one day be remembered not only as the day Indonesia gave Fiji US$6 million but also as the day the Pacific began trading its moral authority for economic expediency, abandoning West Papua to perpetual colonisation in exchange for short-term gains.

The Pacific is at a crossroads — it can either reclaim its voice or resign itself to becoming a theatre where greater powers dictate the fate of indigenous peoples. For West Papua, everything depends on which path is chosen.

Ali Mirin is a West Papuan from the Kimyal tribe of the highlands that share a border with the Star Mountain region of Papua New Guinea. He graduated with a Master of Arts in international relations from Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia.

The advocacy group Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa has condemned the New Zealand government fpr failing to make a humanitarian submission to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) hearings at The Hague this week into Israel blocking vital supplies entering Gaza.

The ICJ’s ongoing investigation into Israeli genocide in the besieged enclave is now considering the illegality of Israel cutting off all food, water, fuel, medicine and other essential aid entering Gaza since early March.

Forty three countries and organisations have been submitting this week — including the small Pacific country Vanuatu (pop. 328,000) — but New Zealand is not on the list for making a submission.

• READ MORE: Saudi Arabian envoy asks ICJ to condemn Israel’s ‘hideous conduct’ in Gaza
• Israel accused at ICJ of using aid as ‘weapons of war’ and trying to ‘destroy’ Palestinian people
• Other ICJ on Gaza reports

Only Israel’s main backer, United States, and Hungary have argued in support of Tel Aviv while other nations have been highly critical.

“If even small countries, such as Vanuatu, can commit their meagre resources to go to make a case to the ICJ, then surely our government can at the very least do the same,” said PSNA national co-chair Maher Nazzal.

He said in a statement that the New Zealand government had gone “completely silent” on Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

“A year ago, the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister were making statements about how Israel must comply with international law,” Nazzal said

NZ ‘avoided blaming Israel’
“They carefully avoided blaming Israel for doing anything wrong, but they issued strong warnings, such as telling Israel that it should not attack the city of Rafah.

“Israel then bombed Rafah flat. The New Zealand response was to go completely silent.

Nazzal said Israeli ministers were quite open about driving Palestinians out of Gaza, so Israel could build Israeli settlements there.

“And they are just as open about using starvation as a weapon,” he added.

“Our government says and does nothing. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon had nothing to say about Gaza when he met British Prime Minister Keir Stamer in London earlier in the month.

“Yet Israel is perpetuating the holocaust of the 21st century under the noses of both Prime Ministers.”

Nazzal said that it was “deeply disappointing” that a nation which had so proudly invoked its history of standing against apartheid and of championing nuclear disarmament, yet chose to “not even appear on the sidelines” of the ICJ’s legal considerations.

ICJ examines Israel’s obligations in Occupied Palestine.  Video: Middle East Eye

“New Zealand cannot claim to stand for a rules-based international order while selectively avoiding the rules when it comes to Palestine,” Nazzal said.

“We want the New Zealand government to urgently explain to the public its absence from the ICJ hearings.

“We need it to commit to participating in all future international legal processes to uphold Palestinian rights, and fulfil its ICJ obligations to impose sanctions on Israel to force its withdrawal from the Palestinian Occupied Territory.”

• Official list of countries and other organisations submitting to the ICJ

Filipo Tarakinikini has been appointed as Fiji’s Ambassador-designate to Israel.

This has been stated on two official X, formerly Twitter, handle posts overnight.

“#Fiji is determined to deepen its relations with #Israel as Fiji’s Ambassador-designate to Israel, HE Ambassador @AFTarakinikini prepares to present his credentials on 28 April, 2025,” stated the Fiji at UN twitter account.

• READ MORE: Israel accused at ICJ of using aid as ‘weapons of war’ and trying to ‘destroy’ Palestinian people
• Israel’s restrictions on UN agencies in Gaza highlighted at world court
• Other Israeli war on Palestine reports

Tarakinikini is also Fiji’s current Ambassador to the United Nations.

In a separate post, Deputy Director-General Eynat Shlein of Israel’s international development cooperation agency said she was “honoured” to meet Tarakinikini.

“We discussed the vast cooperation opportunities, promoting & enhancing sustainable development, emphasizing investment in capacity building & human capital,” she said on X.

Fiji is only the seventh country in the world to open an embassy in Israel.

Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

Centre of controversy
Pacific Media Watch reports that Lieutenant-Colonel Tarakinikini was at the centre of controversy in Fiji in 2005 when he was declared a “deserter” by the Fiji military.

However, from 1979 to 2002, he served in the Fiji Military Forces, including eight years in United Nations peacekeeping missions, among them, south Lebanon and the Multinational Force in Sinai, Egypt.

Great honor to have have this timely briefing @EynatShlein, Ambassador Roi @IsraelMFA #Fiji is determined to deepen its relations with #Israel as Fiji’s Ambassador-designate to Israel, HE Ambassador @AFTarakinikini prepares to present his credentials on 28 April, 2025 … https://t.co/mGPKjYM5Qc

— Fiji at the UN (@FijiMissionUN) April 27, 2025

Beginning in 2003, he was the UN Department for Security and Safety’s (UNDSS) Chief Security Adviser in Jerusalem, as well as in Kathmandu, Nepal, from 2006 to 2008.

From 2008 to 2018, he served in numerous United Nations integrated assessment missions, programme working groups, restructuring and redeployments and technical assessment missions.

‘Weapons of war’
Yesterday, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) began week-long hearings at The Hague into global accusations of Israel using starvation and humanitarian aid as “weapons of war” and failing to meet its obligations to the Palestinian people in Gaza as the occupying power in its genocidal war on the besieged enclave.

Forty countries are expected to give evidence.

The ICJ has been tasked by the UN with providing an advisory opinion “on a priority basis and with the utmost urgency”.

Although the ICJ judges’ opinion is not binding, it provides clarity on legal questions.

In January 2024, the ICJ ruled that Israel must take “all measures” to prevent a genocide in Gaza.

Then in June, it said in an advisory opinion that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza was illegal.

Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted on arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In the absence of any measures taken by the New Zealand government to respond to the genocide being committed by Israel in Gaza, Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick is doing the principled thing by trying to apply countervailing pressure on Israel to stop its brutal actions in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

New Zealand is a state party to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948).

As a contracting party New Zealand has a clear obligation to respond to a genocide when it is indicated and which it must “undertake to prevent and to punish”.

• READ MORE:  ‘Wiped out’: Israel kills ‘entire family’ in latest attacks on Gaza
• Other articles by John Hobbs

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January 2024, deemed that a “plausible genocide” is occurring in Gaza. That was a year ago. Thousands of Palestinians have died since the ICJ’s determination.

The New Zealand government has failed its responsibilities under the Genocide Convention by applying no pressure to influence Israel’s military actions in Gaza. There are a number of interventions New Zealand could have chosen to take.

For example, a United Nations resolution which New Zealand co-sponsored (UNSC 2334) when it was a non-permanent member of the Security Council in 2015-16 required states to distinguish in their trading arrangements between Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank and the rest of Israel.

New Zealand could have extended this to all trading arrangements with Israel.

Diplomatic pressure needed
Diplomatic pressure could have been put on Israel by expelling the Israeli ambassador to New Zealand. Finally, New Zealand could have shown well-needed solidarity with Palestine by conferring statehood recognition.

In contrast, Swarbrick is looking to bring her member’s Bill to Parliament to apply sanctions against Israel for its ongoing illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza).

The context is the UN General Assembly’s support for the ICJ’s recent report which requires that Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem comes to an end.

New Zealand, along with 123 other general assembly members, supported the ICJ decision. It is now up to UN states to live up to what they voted for.

Swarbrick’s Bill, the Unlawful Occupation of Palestine Sanctions Bill, responds to this request, in the absence of any intervention by the New Zealand government. The Bill is based on the Russian Sanctions Act (2022), brought forward by then Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta, to apply pressure on Russia to cease its military invasion of Ukraine.

While Swarbrick’s Bill has the full support of the opposition MPs from Labour and Te Pāti Māori she needs six government MPs to support the Bill going forward for its first reading.

Andrea Vance, in a recent article in the Sunday Star-Times, called Swarbrick’s Bill “grandstanding”. Vance argues that the Greens’ Bill adopts “simplistic moral assumptions about the righteousness of the oppressed [but] ignores the complexity of the conflict.”

‘Confict complexity’ not complicated
The “complexity of the conflict” is a recurring theme which dresses up a brutal and illegal occupation by Israel over the Palestinians, as complicated.

It is hardly complicated. The history tells us so. In 1947, the UN supported the partition of Palestine, against the will of the indigenous Palestinian people, who comprised 70 perent of the population and owned 94 percent of the land.

In 1948, Jewish paramilitary groups drove more than 700,000 Palestinian people out of their homeland into bordering countries (Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, the UAE) and beyond, where they remain as refugees.

Finally, the 1967 illegal occupation by Israel of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. This occupation, which multiple UN resolutions has termed illegal, is now over 58 years old.

This is not “complicated”. One nation state, Israel, exercises total power over a people who have been dispossessed from their land and who simply have no power.

It is the unwillingness of countries like New Zealand and its Anglosphere/Five-Eyes allies (United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia) and the inability of the UN to enforce its resolutions on Israel, which makes it “complicated”.

Historian on Gaza genocide
One of Israel’s most distinguished historians, Emeritus Professor Avi Shlaim at Oxford University, in his recently published book Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine, now chooses to call the situation in Gaza “genocide”.

In arriving at this position, he points to the language and narratives being adopted by Israeli politicians:

“Israeli President Isaac Herzog proclaimed that there are no innocents in Gaza. No innocents among the 50,000 people who were killed and nearly 20,000 children.

“There are quotes from [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] that are genocidal, as well as from his former Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant, who said we are up against ‘human animals’.

“I hesitated to call things genocide before October 2023, but what tipped the balance for me was when Israel stopped all humanitarian aid into Gaza. They are using starvation as a weapon of war. That’s genocide.”

There is growing concern among commentators about the ability of international rules-based order to function and hold individuals and states to account.

Institutions such as the UN, the ICJ and the ICC are simply unable to enforce their decisions. This should not come as a surprise, however, as the structure of the UN system, established at the end of the Second World War was designed to be weak by the victors, with regard to its enforcement ability.

Time NZ supports determinations
It is time that New Zealand supported these same institutions by honouring and looking to enforce their determinations.

Accordingly, New Zealand needs to play its part in holding Israel to account for the atrocities it is inflicting on the Palestinian people and stand behind and support the Palestinian right to self-determination.

Swarbrick is absolutely right to introduce her Bill.

At the very least it says that New Zealand does care about the plight of the Palestinian people and is willing to stand behind them. It is the morally correct thing to do and incumbent on the government to provide support to Swarbrick’s Bill — and not just six of its members.

John Hobbs is a doctoral candidate at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS) at the University of Otago. This article was first published by the Otago Daily Times and is republished with the author’s permission.

New Zealand’s Pacific connection with the United States is “more important than ever”, says Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters after rounding up the Hawai’i leg of his Pacific trip.

Peters said common strategic interests of the US and New Zealand were underlined while in the state.

“Our Pacific links with the United States are more important than ever,” Peters said.

• READ MORE: Other Indo-Pacific reports

“New Zealand’s partnership with the United States remains one of our most long standing and important, particularly when seen in the light of our joint interests in the Pacific and the evolving security environment.”

The Deputy Prime Minister has led a delegation made up of cross-party MPs, who are heading to Fiji for a brief overnight stop, before heading to Vanuatu.

Peters said the stop in Honolulu allowed for an exchange of ideas and the role New Zealand can play in working with regional partners in the region.

“We have long advocated for the importance of an active and engaged United States in the Indo-Pacific, and this time in Honolulu allowed us to continue to make that case.”

Approaching Trump ‘right way’
The delegation met with Hawai’i’s Governor Josh Green, who confirmed with him that New Zealand was approaching US President Donald Trump in the “right way”.

“The fact is, this is a massively Democrat state. But nevertheless, they deal with Washington very, very well, and privately, we have got an inside confirmation that our approach is right.

“Be very careful, these things are very important, words matter and be ultra-cautious. All those things were confirmed by the governor.”

Governor Green told reporters he had spent time with Trump and talked to the US administration all the time.

“I can’t guarantee that they will bend their policies, but I try to be very rational for the good of our state, in our region, and it seems to be so far working,” he said.

He said the US and New Zealand were close allies.

“So having these additional connections with the political leadership and people from the community and business leaders, it helps us, because as we move forward in somewhat uncertain times, having more friends helps.”

At the East-West Center in Honolulu, Peters said New Zealand and the United States had not always seen eye-to-eye and “US Presidents have not always been popular back home”.

“My view of the strategic partnership between New Zealand and the United States is this: we each have the right, indeed the imperative, to pursue our own foreign policies, driven by our own sense of national interest.”

The delegation also met the commander of US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Samuel Paparo, the interim president of the East-West Center Dr James Scott, and Hawai’i-based representatives for Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands.

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

By Phil Goff

Like many others, I was appalled and astounded by the dishonest comments made about the situation in Ukraine by the Trump Administration.

As one untruthful statement followed another like something out of a George Orwell novel, I increasingly felt that the lies needed to be called out.

I found it bizarre to hear President Trump publicly label Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator. Everyone knew that Zelenskyy had been democratically elected and while Trump claimed his support in the polls had fallen to 4 percent it was pointed out that his actual support was around 57 percent.

• READ MORE: Explainer: What was actually wrong with what Phil Goff said?
• ‘We need to stand up for what is right’ — Phil Goff doesn’t regret Trump comments

Trump made no similar remarks or criticism of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and never does. Yet Putin’s regime imprisons and murders his opponents and suppresses democratic rights in Russia.

Then Trump made the patently false accusation that Ukraine started the war with Russia. How could he make such a claim when the world had witnessed Russia as the aggressor which invaded its smaller neighbour, killing thousands of civilians, committing war crimes and destroying cities and infrastructure?

That President Trump could lie so blatantly is perhaps explained by his taking offence at Zelenskyy’s refusal to comply with unreasonable and self-serving demands such as ceding control of Ukraine’s mineral wealth to the US. What was also clear was that Trump was intent on pressuring Ukraine to capitulate to Russian demands for a one sided “peace settlement” which would result in neither a fair nor sustainable peace.

It is astonishing that the US voted with Russia and North Korea in the United Nations against Ukraine and in opposition to the views of democratic countries the US is normally aligned with, including New Zealand.

Withdrew satellite imaging
It then withdrew satellite imaging services Ukraine needed for its self defence in an attempt to further pressure Zelenskyy to agree to a ceasefire. No equivalent pressure has yet been placed on Russia even while it has continued its illegal attacks on Ukraine.

Trump and Vance’s disgraceful bullying of Zelenskyy in the White House as he struggled in his third language to explain the plight of his nation was as remarkable as it was appalling.
What Trump was doing and saying was wrong and a betrayal of Ukraine’s struggle to defend its freedom and nationhood.

Democratic leaders around the world knew his comments to be unfair and untrue, yet few countries have dared to criticise Trump for making them.

Like the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, everyone knew that the emperor had no clothes but were fearful of the consequences of speaking out to tell the truth.

As New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, I had on a number of occasions met and talked with Ukrainian soldiers being trained by New Zealanders in Britain. It was an emotionally intense experience knowing that many of the men I met with would soon face death on the front line defending their country’s freedom and nationhood.

They were extremely grateful of New Zealand’s unwavering support. Yet the Trump Administration seemed to care little for that country’s cause and sacrifice in defending the values that a few months earlier had seemed so important to the United States.

The diplomatic community in London privately shared their dismay at Trump’s treatment of Ukraine. The spouse of one of my High Commissioner colleagues who had been a teacher drew a parallel with what she had witnessed in the playground. The bully would abuse a victim while all the other kids looked on and were too intimidated to intervene. The majority thus became the enablers of the bully’s actions.

Silence condoning Trump
By saying nothing, New Zealand — and many other countries — was effectively condoning and being complicit in what Trump was doing.

It was in this context, at the Chatham House meeting, that I asked a serious and important question about whether President Trump understood the lessons of history. It was a question on the minds of many. I framed it using language that was reasonable.

The lesson of history, going back to the Munich Conference in 1938, when British Prime Minister Chamberlain and his French counterpart Daladier ceded the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, was clear.

Far from satisfying or placating an aggressor, appeasement only increases their demands. That’s always the case with bullies. They respect strength, not weakness.

Czechoslovakia could have been part of the Allied defence against Hitler’s expansionism but instead it and the Czech armaments industry was passed over to Hitler. He went on to take over the rest of Czechoslovakia and then invaded Poland.

As Churchill told Chamberlain, “You had the choice between dishonour and war. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”

The question needed to be asked because Trump was using talking points which followed closely those used by the Kremlin itself and was clearly setting out to appease and favour Russia.

A career diplomat, trained as a public servant to be cautious, might have not have asked it. I was appointed, with bipartisan support, not as a career diplomat but on the basis of political experience including nine years as Foreign, Trade and Defence Minister.

Question central to validity, ethics
“The question is central to the validity as well as the ethics of the United States’ approach to Ukraine. It is also a question that trusted allies, who have made sacrifices for and with each other over the past century, have a right and duty to ask.

The New Zealand Foreign Minister’s response was that the question did not reflect the view of New Zealand’s Government and that asking it made my position as High Commissioner untenable.

The minister had the prerogative to take the action he did and I am not complaining about that for one moment. For my part, I do not regret asking the question which thanks to the minister’s response subsequently received international attention.

Over the decades New Zealand has earned the respect of the world, from allies and opponents alike, for honestly standing up for the values our country holds dear. The things we are proudest of as a nation in the positions we have taken internationally include our role as one of the founding states of the United Nations in promoting a rules-based international system including our opposition to powerful states exercising a veto.

They include opposing apartheid in South Africa and French nuclear testing in the Pacific. We did not abandon our nuclear free policy to US pressure.

In wars and in peacekeeping we have been there when it counted and have made sacrifices disproportionate to our size.

We have never been afraid to challenge aggressors or to ask questions of our allies. In asking a question about President Trump’s position on Ukraine I am content that my actions will be on the right side of history.

Phil Goff, CNZM, is a New Zealand retired politician and former diplomat. He served as leader of the Labour Party and leader of the Opposition between 11 November 2008 and 13 December 2011. Goff was elected mayor of Auckland in 2016, and served two terms, before retiring in 2022. In 2023, he took up a diplomatic post as High Commissioner of New Zealand to the United Kingdom, which he held until last month when he was sacked by Foreign Minister Winston Peters over his “untenable” comments.

The prime ministers of New Zealand and Papua New Guinea have signed a new statement of partnership marking 50 years of bilateral relations between the two countries.

The document — which focuses on education, trade, security, agriculture and fisheries — was signed by Christopher Luxon and James Marape at the Beehive in Wellington last night.

It will govern the relationship between the two countries through until 2029 and replaces the last agreement signed by Marape in 2021 with then-Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

• READ MORE: Other NZ and PNG reports

Marking the signing, Luxon announced $1 million would be allocated in response to Papua New Guinea’s aspirations to strengthen public sector institutions.

“That funding will be able to support initiatives like strengthen cooperation between disaster preparedness institutions and also exchanging expertise in the governance of state owned enterprises in particular,” Luxon said.

In his response Marape acknowledged the long enduring relationship between the government and peoples of New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.

He said the new statement of partnership was an important blueprint on how the two countries would progress their relationship into the future.

“Papua New Guinea brings to the table, as far as our relationship is concerned, our close proximity to Asia. We straddle the Pacific and Southeast Asia, we have an affinity to as much as our own affinity with our relations in the Pacific,” Marape said.

“Our dual presence at APEC continues to ring [sic] home the fact that we belong to a family of nations and we work back to back on many fronts.”

Meeting Peters
Today, Marape will meet with Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and leader of the opposition Chris Hipkins.

Later in the week, Marape is scheduled to travel to Hamilton where he will meet with the NZ Papua New Guinea Business Council and with Papua New Guinea scholarship recipients at Waikato University.

James Marape is accompanied by his spouse Rachael Marape and a ministerial delegation including Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko, Trade Minister Richard Maru, Minister for Livestock Seki Agisa and Higher Education Minister Kinoka Feo.

This is Marape’s first official visit to New Zealand following his re-election as prime minister in the last national elections in 2022.

According to the PNG government, the visit signals a growing relationship between the two countries, especially in trade and investment, cultural exchange, and the newly-added Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme that New Zealand has extended to Papua New Guineans to work in Aotearoa.

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