USA – Asia Pacific Report

Eugene Doyle: Iran demands hundreds of billions in reparations for being attacked. Guess who’ll pay?

APR editor — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 09:53:32 +0000

ANALYSIS: By Eugene Doyle

If Iran succeeds in extracting reparations for the damage done to it in the US-Israeli war, it will be a world historic moment.

Iran may be bloodied but it remains unbowed and is seeking compensation from the Arab states over “direct involvement” in the US-Israeli war of aggression.

Iran sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres this month outlining its claim against Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan. They also intend to apply a transit toll on the Strait of Hormuz as an instrument of restorative justice.

Under international law — if anyone still pays attention to such things — the Iranians have a strong case. What will determine if justice is done, however, is victory over the aggressors.

More than 100 US-based international law experts, professors, and practitioners have released a letter stating that the United States and Israel violated the UN Charter by launching strikes on Iran on February 28. The signatories include leaders of prominent international law associations and former Judge Advocates General — the top legal advisors to the US armed forces. They cite the complete lack of evidence of an imminent Iranian threat that could support a self-defence claim.

Under international law the aggressor is responsible for all the destruction that follows. The white-dominated Western countries like the US, Australia and New Zealand should stop banging on about the illegality of Iran taking control of the Strait and address the root causes of why it did so.

The case against the Arab states
In the early days of the war, radar systems operating from these countries were fully engaged in the war. Thousands of US troops were operating from 14 US bases in their territories.

Attack planes, refuelling planes and aerial surveillance planes all operated from bases like Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd Air Base, as reported by Middle East Eye. Major Western outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times documented missile launches and multiple other ways Jordan and the Gulf States were directly involved in the war despite the mainstream media portraying them as innocent bystanders and victims of Iranian aggression.

Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have both described the Gulf States as fighting “shoulder to shoulder” with the US and Israel. In filing their letter with the UN the Iranians have also provided satellite and other data to support their claim.

Iran argues that the Arab states, under international law, are co-belligerents. The UN’s International Law Commission (ILC) Articles on State Responsibility (2001) defines the concept of “Aid or Assistance” in the commission of an internationally wrongful act. It is not hard for Iran to prove that these states did not maintain neutrality.

In reality, for Iran to get justice, deterrence and reparations, there is no international body or court to turn to; it must win by making a continuation too painful for the aggressors.

There are signs it might just succeed. Iran has achieved something few on the Western side anticipated: the destruction of most of the US bases. Marc Lynch, director of the Project on Middle East Political Science at George Washington University told Middle East Eye, “The bases around the region are suffering real damage, and I think it’s very unlikely that we’re ever going to go back and put our Fifth Fleet back in Bahrain. It’s too vulnerable.

“This is the physical architecture of American primacy, and Iran has essentially rendered it useless in the span of a month.”

The War on Iran is a long way from finished. Even if the ceasefire holds, the Israelis and Americans will see this only as a stage in their multi-decade project to wreck Iran as a major regional competitor.

The victims are usually the ones who must pay
At the end of imperial wars, the victims are traditionally made to pay.

In the 19th Century, the British fought the Chinese over the latter’s resistance to the British government’s lucrative opium trade into China. The imperialists won and imposed the infamous Unequal Treaties on China, including awarding to Britain the island of Hong Kong.

Queen Victoria even shamelessly named a stolen Pekingese dog “Lootie” after the British sacking of Beijing’s Summer Palace, one of the great cultural crimes of history.

When the genocidal US war on Vietnam ended, decades of harsh US sanctions on their victims began. As the US moved towards accepting it had lost the war, Nixon promised $3.3 billion in reconstruction aid under the Paris Peace Accords (1973). The Americans never paid a cent.

The US also pressured the IMF, World Bank, and UN agencies to block Hanoi’s applications for loans, seriously retarding reconstruction.

When the slave revolt in Hispaniola (present day-Haiti) drove out the French, the Western powers returned in force a few years later and imposed harsh “reparations” for being dispossessed of their “stolen” land and humans. From 1825, Haiti was forced to pay 150 million francs to France to compensate former slaveholders for their “lost property”. This debt was only fully paid off in 1947, permanently crippling the nation.

The US-Israeli war on Iran is something different. Iran, like the Vietnamese, the Algerians and the Indians may have what it takes to prevail over imperial aggression. Iran may also have something different: the power to impose reparations on the aggressor.

Across the West we are subjected to the astonishing chutzpah of Western leaders decrying the “illegality” of Iran’s declaration of sovereignty over the Hormuz Strait in response to the war launched against them. These same leaders stood silent and complicit and lifted no more than an eyebrow as hundreds of Iranian schoolchildren were killed, hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure destroyed, and leader after leader were assassinated.

Cowards, all of them, they at best offered whispered rebukes when Trump threatened the destruction of Iranian civilisation in a single night. But tax a barrel of oil and “Oh my god, this is intolerable!”

Iran has every right to insist on reparations but they will only come about if Iran succeeds in imposing its position on the belligerents. The Israelis and Americans are unlikely to face justice at the International Criminal Court (ICC) or International Court of Justice (ICJ), so reparations must be extracted from the other enabling states like the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and France. It is an elegant solution.

One thing the Iranians will hopefully recover soon is their stolen money. Experts estimate more than $100 billion remains blocked in foreign banks (including in the US, Qatar, South Korea, and Iraq).

We should remember that since 1979 the Western world has grievously damaged Iran’s economy via sanctions and the weaponisation of international trading systems, as well as blocking its integration within the community of nations.

A world historic moment is possible
If Iran succeeds in extracting reparations, it will be a world historic moment. It will be an achievement that will benefit countries around the globe which are similarly assailed by major powers. Nuclear powers like the US and Israel should respect the territorial integrity of non-nuclear states. They have done the opposite — and should face consequences.

For these reasons and more, I hope the Iranian government succeeds in its historic mission to preserve the territorial integrity of the sovereign state of Iran and that they can receive just compensation for the terrible crimes committed against them.

I will give the last word to Mohaddeseh Fallahat, a mother who spoke to the UN Human Rights Council this month about losing her daughter to a US airstrike at Minab at the very start of the US-Israeli war on Iran:

“As they walked out the door, they simply said, Mum, come pick us up after school. That simple sentence now repeats in my mind a thousand times. Each time my heart burns with pain. No mother ever thinks she will send her child off to school with a smile, only to be met with silence.”

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report and hosts solidarity.co.nz

No wonder Iran went cold on sham talks, considering the lying US-Israeli track record

APR editor — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:03:04 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Tim O’Shea

I don’t blame Iran for going cold on another sham negotiation session with the US.

After all, why would they take the US or Israel seriously? Or even remotely trust either of them when:

They both bombed Iran right in the middle of two sets of previous “negotiations”; and
Trump lied about Lebanon being included in the recent ceasefire agreement.

That inclusion was acknowledged by the mediators, Pakistan.

As a result, Israel continued to bomb Lebanon; in fact they stepped up their attacks and killed 300+ people in one day.

In the very latest agreement, Iran opened up the Strait of Hormuz as agreed, but the US (incredulously) continued with its blockade.

Yesterday the US escalated things by attacking and confiscating an Iranian merchant ship.

750+ Palestinians have been murdered by the IDF during Trump’s fake ceasefire in October 2025. They are slaughtering women and kids in Gaza and the West Bank every day.

Thousands of Israeli violations
Israel broke their ceasefire agreement signed in November 2014 with Lebanon thousands of times (according to UN peacekeepers in Lebanon).

Both Trump and Netanyahu have made numerous threats to obliterate Iran, to commit genocide and even holocaust.

They have bombed thousands of Iranian civilian targets in contravention of international law — residential buildings, government buildings, historic sites, bridges, police stations, schools, universities, pharmacy companies, factories, public transport, ambulances, medical centres and hospitals.

So WHY the hell would Iran have any confidence that anything that these devious and untrustworthy US and Israeli war criminals agree will ever be adhered to?

Both of these warmongering nations have displayed a total lack of integrity and credibility through their disingenuous words and actions over many decades.

I don’t see any other alternative than for Iran to play hard ball.

Time is Trump’s enemy, not Iran’s.

And now Trump has extended the ceasefire at the last moment.

Tim O’Shea is a New Zealand social, environmental political activist and commentator.

Who is breaking international law in the Strait of Hormuz? It’s not Iran, says scholar

APR editor — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:09:29 +0000

Democracy Now!

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

As we continue to look at the US and Israeli war on Iran, we’re joined now by Dr Maryam Jamshidi. She is an Iranian American associate professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School and a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute. She has written a new piece for The Nation magazine headlined “Only One Side Has Clearly Broken the Law In the Strait of Hormuz: And it isn’t Iran.”

Professor Jamshidi, explain.

MARYAM JAMSHIDI: Hi, Amy. Thanks for having me.

So, you know, what I was trying to get at in that piece is that, you know, there’s been a lot of international outcry about what Iran has done in the strait, specifically its efforts to regulate passage of ships through the strait and to charge certain ships a fee for going through the strait.

The international rhetoric has been that what Iran is doing is completely and clearly illegal. And from my perspective, that’s not entirely true. This is not a black-and-white issue. Iran does have a reasonable legal argument to regulating the Strait of Hormuz, as well as to charging fees.

By contrast, the criticism of what the United States and Israel has done to Iran, which is an aggressive and illegal war, has been more muted, in particular from Western states, as well as from some of the regional Arab states. And I think this contrast between these two reactions is very telling — on the one hand, total condemnation of Iran on legal issues that are far from clear, and very more muted criticism, more limited criticism of the United States and Israel when it comes to actions they’ve taken that are very clearly unlawful under international law.

I think this says a lot about the ways in which international law is being deployed in this moment as a way of restraining and regulating Iranian behavior, while effectively allowing the United States and Israel a free hand to do what they want against the Iranian government.

Who is breaking international law in the Strait of Hormuz? Video: Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think this unprovoked war that Israel and the US — this war of choice, as it’s called — have engaged in with Iran has done to international law and people’s perspective view of it around the world, and the consequences when people want to apply international law?

MARYAM JAMSHIDI: Yeah, I mean, it’s a great question. I mean, you know, over the last few years, we’ve seen the ways in which Israel, in particular, with support from the United States, as well as with support from much of the rest of the West, Western governments, has eroded and violated and scoffed at international law, in its actions towards the Palestinians, its actions in Lebanon, its actions in Syria, its actions in Yemen, its other actions in Iran.

And I think that, you know, these actions that Israel has taken has understandably led many to question the utility and importance of international law, whether or not it still exists or not. And, you know, now with this war against Iran, that, those concerns, those fears that international law is really meaningless, have only increased.

In this moment, though, I think what’s also important to understand is that states like Iran are also at the same time saying, “No, international law matters very much, and we expect to be treated as equals under international law.”

Iran, in this moment, is framing a lot of what it’s doing in international law terms, because it understands that if international law is truly going to be thrown into the dustbin, then it’s going to be far more vulnerable on the international stage.

So, we basically see a battle. We see a battle between, on the one side, states like Israel and the United States, states that are, by and large, Western, you know, basically saying, “International law doesn’t apply to us. We can do what we want,” and then other states, like Iran, states of the Global South, saying, “No, we want international law. We value international law. International law is necessary to ensuring that we are sovereign and equal to other states on the international scale. And so, we are not going to let international law just be taken away from us.”

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk more about the UN Security Council? You’ve noted multiple resolutions have been introduced to condemn Iran’s regulatory actions in the strait. Who is behind these resolutions? Meanwhile, the Iranian Parliament is reportedly considering legislation that would formalise its regulatory system, including the fee system, as part of its domestic law.

MARYAM JAMSHIDI: Right. So, there were — there have been multiple resolutions brought before the Security Council since the war started. They have mostly been focused on Iran and Iran’s actions in the Strait of Hormuz. The states that have been the real force behind these resolutions appear to be the Arab Gulf states, in particular Bahrain and the UAE, who have also been the subject of the most attacks by Iran.

What’s, again, very interesting and, I think, important to understand about these resolutions is that they very clearly and absolutely condemned Iran for its regulatory actions within the Strait of Hormuz. As I mentioned, even though those actions do have a legal basis, those resolutions presented them as being fully unlawful.

And one of those resolutions, which, thankfully, was vetoed by China and Russia, would have effectively authorised all UN member states — that’s over 190 states — to go to war with Iran in order to open the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, that is a very radical proposition, to basically validate and allow states to engage in armed conflict against another state simply for the purpose of opening a waterway.

So, you know — and again, there were no resolutions that were brought to the Security Council to explicitly condemn the US and Israel for their actions against Iran.

In terms of the domestic legislation inside Iran, you know, that the Iranian Parliament appears to be contemplating, as you mentioned, this legislation would basically make the regulatory scheme within Hormuz, in the Strait of Hormuz, a part of Iranian law.

It’s not entirely clear what the terms of that law are, you know, what the basis for it is, what kind of regulation it will in fact implement. But it does seem to have a fee system as a part of it. So, the Iranians are trying to take this ad hoc fee system that they have developed over the course of the last few weeks and actually institutionalise it within domestic law.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to end by asking you about [US President Donald] Trump’s comments. On Saturday, he told a reporter at Fox News, “If Iran doesn’t sign this deal, the whole country is getting blown up.” That followed two weeks before, when he warned, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” Professor Jamshidi?

MARYAM JAMSHIDI: These comments are absolutely unacceptable. I mean, they are borderline genocidal in their intent and in their implications. To say to the world that you’re going to obliterate an entire civilisation is, in fact, to make very clear that you desire to destroy an entire people.

You know, I don’t know if he thinks that this is an effective negotiating tool, but certainly from a legal perspective, from a moral perspective, it’s beyond the pale.

This article is republished from Democracy Now! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

Caitlin Johnstone: I hope the US loses and the empire collapses

APR editor — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:31:21 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

I don’t mind admitting that I hope the US and Israel suffer a crushing, devastating defeat in Iran.

I hope this war collapses the entire US empire. My only loyalty is to humanity, and being on Team Human in today’s world means being against the US empire and against Israel.

I hope the empire falls. I hope the apartheid state of Israel is dismantled.

LISTEN: A reading by Tim Foley

I hope humanity is able to pry the steering wheel from the fingers of the ghouls who currently rule our world, so that we can create a healthy planet and a harmonious future together.

I hope the US loses and other notes Video: Caitlin Johnstone

YouTube has banned the channel that’s been creating viral AI Lego music videos criticising the US war on Iran. The Google-owned platform claims the Lego videos somehow constituted “violent content”, but we all know it was to facilitate the US propaganda effort by shutting down effective propaganda for the other side.

Silicon Valley is a crucial arm of US imperial control.

It chooses to advance the interests of the empire at every significant juncture. It’s a branch of imperial soft power in the same way the military is a branch of imperial hard power.

Iran-linked accounts are circulating a new LEGO-style propaganda video portraying U.S. and Israeli leaders as corrupt elites tied to the “Epstein files,” part of a broader online campaign aimed at undermining support for the war.

The animation depicts President Donald Trump… pic.twitter.com/PdjcJGrjuy

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) April 9, 2026

❖

The US and Israel have so normalised the assassination of national leaders that the mainstream press now discuss it as a standard military tactic. The other day The Washington Post ran an article by Marc Thiessen arguing that the US should “carry out a final barrage of leadership strikes, eliminating the Iranian officials who had been spared for the purpose of negotiations”.

“Iran’s leaders must be made to understand that their lives literally depend on reaching a negotiated settlement to Trump’s liking. If they refuse to do so, they will be killed,” Thiessen writes.

At some point one of America’s enemies is going to assassinate a US official and my replies are going to be full of shrieking, outraged Americans acting like I’m the bad guy when I say Washington had it coming.

❖

Even if the US wasn’t directly responsible for the Strait of Hormuz situation, it would still be the last country on earth with any business whining about it. They’re openly imposing a fuel blockade on Cuba while complaining that nobody should be allowed to block shipping lanes, for Christ’s sake.

❖

The Democratic National Committee voted to reject a resolution denouncing the influence of AIPAC in US politics. Eighty percent of Democrats have a negative view of Israel today. The DNC’s main function is to keep the Democratic Party and its representation on the ballot from reflecting the will of the public.

❖

pic.twitter.com/K0kNiJYbKs

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) April 14, 2026

Dear Trump supporters, send me all of your money. I have a plan to make America great again. I will end all the wars and drain the swamp. Don’t worry if it looks like I’m not doing any of those things, I’m playing 4d chess, trust the plan. Send me your life savings right now.

❖

It’s important not to let them pin this all on Trump, in the same way it’s important not to let them pin Israel’s crimes on Netanyahu. Everything we are seeing with this disastrous Iran war is the product of the entire power structure which gave rise to it, not one guy’s dopey decisions.

The warmongers in the DC swamp have been pushing war with Iran for decades. Trump is just the guy who was chosen by Zionist oligarchs and bloodthirsty empire managers to carry out the deed. He happens to be the face on the operation, but if it wasn’t him it would have been someone else.

American warmongering insanity didn’t start with Trump, and it isn’t going to end with him either. Don’t direct your rage merely at the fleeting puppets who come and go from the imperial stage as the US murder machine trudges onward. Direct it at the empire itself.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

Trump’s naval blockade of Strait of Hormuz actually targets China

APR editor — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 23:39:31 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Lim Tean

Most of Iranian oil — 96.7 percent — is destined for China. If you note this figure, you will realise that the Americans are really trying to choke off the supply of Iranian oil to China by blockading the Strait of Hormuz.

This is a major part of the American containment strategy against China.

Now that America will most likely lose control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran, they are shifting their attention to the other most critical chokepoint in the world — the Strait of Malacca.

About 80 percent of China’s imported oil has to pass through the Strait of Malacca. Vessels come down the Strait, sail past Singapore which is at the southernmost tip of the Strait, before they swing upwards into the South China Sea to go to the Philippines and East Asia, including China.

The two most important countries which border the Malacca Strait are Indonesia and Malaysia, one on either side of the Strait.

A very interesting development took place on Monday in Washington when the Defence Minister of Indonesia Sjafrie Sjamsoeddin signed a cooperation agreement with US War Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Speculation on details
People are speculating about the details of the agreement:

Will it allow the Americans to base troops in Indonesia and use Indonesian airspace for their air assets?
Will American naval vessels be allowed to dock at the old Dutch port of Belawan, near Medan, in Northern Sumatra, which is near the opening to the Strait?
Will the Malacca Strait now become the focal point in this great power struggle between America and China?
What will Indonesia’s other BRICs partners, principally China and Russia think of Indonesia’s move in signing this agreement with the Americans?

To spice things up, Indonesian President Probowo Subianto was in Moscow a few days ago meeting with President Putin.

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform.

The two most important countries which border the Malacca Strait are Indonesia and Malaysia, one on either side of the Strait. Image: Lim Tean FB

What on earth just happened? Trump, Iran, and the unlikely ceasefire

APR editor — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 03:11:39 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Trita Parsi

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.

Those 10 points are:

The US must fundamentally commit to guaranteeing non-aggression.
Continuation of Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz.
Acceptance that Iran can enrich uranium for its nuclear programme.
Removal of all primary sanctions on Iran.
Removal of all secondary sanctions against foreign entities that do business with Iranian institutions.
End of all United Nations Security Council resolutions targeting Iran.
End of all International Atomic Energy Agency resolutions on Iran’s nuclear programme.
Compensation payment to Iran for war damage.
Withdrawal of US combat forces from the region.
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”.

How Trump’s White House demands as prerequisites for stopping bombings bit the dust

APR editor — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 11:22:24 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Yanis Varoufakis

Having launched an illegal, destructive war that brutally struck the entire planet’s economy (and confirmed once again Europe’s combination of irrelevance and hypocrisy), and after threatening Iran with genocide and “civilisational annihilation,” President Trump ultimately backed down on everything.

Like a Roman Emperor during the Empire’s declining years would declare victory and stage triumphs in Rome following massive defeats of his legions at the hands of Gothic warriors, so now does this modern American Nero struggle to convince us that he “won”.

In reality, Iran now decides which vessels pass through the Strait of Hormuz and, for the first time, charge them tolls for so doing.

The demands of the White House, which Trump had set as prerequisites for stopping the bombings, have bitten the dust.

The surrender of Iran’s enriched uranium, the demand for the destruction of Iran’s missiles, the vain hopes for regime change, the designs on Iranian oil — all of these goals were forgotten.

What has not been forgotten, and will not be forgotten, are the 180 schoolgirls that the US murdered on the first day of their attack by striking their school — along with the thousands of other killed and maimed civilians.

False sense of relief
Lest the world be overtaken by a false sense of relief, it is crucial to brace ourselves for the long-lasting economic repercussions of Trump’s idiotic war.

Make no mistake: the shockwaves of economic hardship caused by the US attack on Iran may wane but it will not be averted.

The wave of soaring prices, the blow to employment, the increase in interest rates and foreclosures will not disappear with this ceasefire.

On the contrary, because of the oligarchic cartels that also see this crisis as an opportunity, it will take political pressure by the many on the very few to reverse the negative consequences of this criminal war, as well as all the various crises that preceded it.

Republished from Yanis Varoufakis’ X feed.

‘Someone, everyone, stop them’ – and now Trump has pulled back from the brink

APR editor — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 22:59:59 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Marilyn Garson, of Sh’ma Koleinu – Alternative Jewish Voices

Vietnam survived Nixon’s madman theory and the world survived the era of mutually assured destruction. Now we face the moment of two super-empowered shitheads. There is nothing nicer to call them.

Who will stop two self-obsessed, very old men, already dedicated to tearing down humanity? Today Trump openly declares his intention to destroy a civilisation. They are apparently only able to see war personally, Netanyahu as the climax of 40 years of dreaming, and Trump as his arbitrary prerogative.

In lockstep they destroyed Gaza’s homes, places of learning and culture, health and modernity. They murdered civilians with abandon and drew pictures of capitalist castles on the beach — and still they failed, just as their over-armed predecessors have failed from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

People still live, in great need of our action.

The scorched-earth vision of Trump and Netanyahu rolls onward. Now in Iran and again in Lebanon, they make war on civilian homes and infrastructure. They destroy families and livelihoods, places of beauty and culture, the bridges that connect us, the industries that rebuild and the energy that lights the darkness.

They desecrate all of our religions. The list of their crimes grows daily.

Presidential communique on social media.

These two evil despots are content to erode the world’s supplies of power, fertiliser, manufacturing components. They are oblivious to the lives they imperil in Iran, Lebanon and Palestine — and countless other people who they will kill around the world by hunger and hardship.

Anything to rule, even over a landscape of bones and dust. They will fail but they must not be allowed to play this out.

We are beyond disgust. We are witnessing the end of an order indeed: America’s empire is flailing in its death throes. How many people will Trump take down with it?

Weighed down with dread, we have no words but these: someone, everyone, stop them!

Republished from Sh’ma Koleinu — Alternative Jewish Voices.

Trump may have backed down for now, but he’s shown how unhinged he is by threatening the death of a “whole civilization.”

I’m heading back to DC to try and get answers for the American people. Congress needs to return to the Capitol immediately and vote to end this war. https://t.co/vZLXb0anhq

— Senator Andy Kim (@SenatorAndyKim) April 8, 2026

Monsters of war – the men who have put the world at risk

APR editor — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 11:29:29 +0000

The war in Iran is in its second month. A war started by a criminal defendant, a convicted felon, and a blackmail network that explains everything Western leaders won’t say. Michael West Media reports.

COMMENTARY: By Andrew Brown

Two men are mainly responsible for the war on Iran. And then there are those — such as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — who wilfully acquiesce to their murderous whims.

It’s the men. Not their press releases. Not their carefully managed public personas. Not the language their communications teams have stress tested for maximum palatability.

It’s the men themselves.

Their records. Their legal jeopardy. And the extraordinary, historically unprecedented fact that the two primary architects of a war now costing ordinary Australians their livelihoods are both, in their own ways, running from accountability while simultaneously running the world.

Benjamin Netanyahu
Netanyahu is not merely a controversial leader prosecuting a controversial war. He is a criminal defendant. An accused man.

A person who, under the laws of his own country, not the laws of his enemies, not the laws of international tribunals, he can dismiss as biased, stands charged with fraud, breach of trust, and bribery.

His trial has been grinding through Israel’s courts since 2020. It has not concluded. And critics, serious critics, within Israel’s own legal and political establishment, have made the case, with mounting evidence, that the prolongation of this war serves Netanyahu’s personal legal interests at least as much as it serves Israel’s security ones.

Think about what that means.

A man facing prison. A man whose political survival depends on remaining in power. A man for whom a ceasefire, a negotiated peace, a return to normalcy could mean the resumption of court proceedings that his wartime emergency has conveniently disrupted. A man whose far-right coalition partners have made clear they will collapse the government the moment the guns fall silent.

This man, this specific man, in this specific legal and political predicament, has been handed a blank cheque by Washington. Unlimited weapons. Diplomatic cover.

A US veto at the Security Council every time the international community tries to intervene.

And Anthony Albanese calls the objectives of his war appropriate.

ICC arrest warrant
The International Criminal Court did not call them appropriate. It issued an arrest warrant.

A warrant that sits unrequited and unenforced as Western governments, including Australia’s, conduct business as usual with a man the court has found reasonable grounds to prosecute for war crimes. This is not a technicality. This is not a diplomatic inconvenience. It is the most fundamental possible test of whether the rules-based international order that Australia constantly invokes as a guiding principle means anything whatsoever.

And Australia is failing that test, quietly, daily,

with a smile and a press release about shared values.

This is the casus belli we are never allowed to examine. Not the security rationale. Not the stated military objectives. The actual human being in whose name and for whose benefit this catastrophe is being prosecuted. And what that human being is running from.

Donald Trump
Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 carrying more legal and personal baggage than any president in American history.

A convicted felon. Civil judgments in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And something else, something the mainstream press, particularly in America and Australia, has handled with a caution so extraordinary it constitutes institutional cowardice — the Epstein files.

Jeffrey Epstein . . . not a lone predator, he was the centre of a network. Image: Michael West Media

Jeffrey Epstein was not a lone predator. He was the centre of a network. A procurement and blackmail operation, almost certainly intelligence connected, that ran for decades across the highest levels of American, British, and Israeli power.

The files released in dribs and drabs, fought over in courts, partially suppressed and heavily redacted, point toward a system of leverage that compromised some of the most powerful men on earth.

Trump’s name appears in those files thousands of times. His association with Epstein was long, documented, and by his own prior admission, enthusiastic. In a 2002 interview, he described Epstein as terrific fun, noting approvingly that he liked beautiful women, many of them on the younger side.

That statement was made publicly. It has not been retracted.

It has simply been absorbed into the general noise of a political culture that has lost the capacity for appropriate disgust.

But the Epstein connection is not merely a personal scandal. It is a geopolitical one.

Epstein’s operation did not exist in a vacuum. Ghislaine Maxwell, his co-conspirator, convicted and imprisoned, was the daughter of Robert Maxwell, the media baron confirmed after his death to have been a Mossad asset.

The intelligence dimensions of the Epstein network have been reported by journalists of unimpeachable seriousness across multiple continents. The suggestion that a blackmail operation of this scale, running through the power centres of American political and financial life for decades, had no connection to the intelligence services that specialise precisely in this kind of leverage is not a serious position.

It is wilful blindness.

The Mossad connection
Mossad is Israel’s foreign intelligence service and one of the most operationally aggressive intelligence agencies on the planet. It has assassinated scientists in foreign countries. It has conducted sabotage operations across the Middle East. It has run networks of influence, surveillance, and covert pressure in Western capitals for decades.

This is not conspiracy. This is its known, partially acknowledged, historically documented record.

What the Epstein network, the Mossad connection, the Maxwell lineage, and the drip feed of suppressed files collectively describe, if you follow the thread honestly and without flinching, is a Western political order in which deference to Israeli policy is not entirely or even primarily explained by shared democratic values and strategic alignment.

Some of it is explained by fear.

Some of it is explained by leverage.

Some of it is explained by the quiet, unspoken, never to be uttered in polite company reality that powerful men in Washington, London, and Canberra have made themselves vulnerable. To networks of kompromat, to relationships they cannot fully disclose, to the specific kind of coercive power that intelligence operations specialising in the exploitation of human weakness have deployed for as long as intelligence operations have existed.

This is why the charge of antisemitism is deployed so rapidly against anyone who raises these questions.

Not because the questions are antisemitic.

They manifestly are not, being questions about the conduct of specific governments, specific intelligence agencies, and specific individuals, not about Jewish people as a whole.

But because the charge works. It silences. It ends careers. It redirects the conversation. And the people with the most to lose from honest answers have every incentive to ensure the conversation never reaches those answers.

The International Criminal Court has issued its warrant. The Epstein files are dripping into the public domain. The Maxwell Mossad connection is confirmed historical record.

The leverage that may explain a generation of Western politicians who cannot bring themselves to say a single word of meaningful criticism of Israeli state conduct is no longer the province of conspiracy forums. It is the subject of serious investigative journalism on three continents.

And Australia’s answer, apparently, is to look away.

Anthony Albanese will not be the one to look squarely at any of this. He has already told us where he stands. On national television, he endorsed the war. He called it constructive. He offered the American justification back to an Australian audience as though it were Australia’s own sovereign conclusion.

It was not. It was obedience dressed as policy. And the men who benefit most from that obedience, a defendant in Tel Aviv and a felon in Washington, are laughing all the way to the next airstrike while ordinary Australians pay the bill, while journalists are prosecuted.

Tomorrow: How the Murdoch press is running cover for a war and pointing your anger at the wrong man entirely.

Andrew Brown is a Sydney businessman in the health products sector, former Deputy Mayor of Mosman, a Palestine peace activist, and a regular contributor to Michael West Media. This article is republished with permission.

Richard David Hames: When will we make war untenable for the power elites?

APR editor — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:08:22 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Richard David Hames

An Easter message. There’s no mystery about why wars start. They happen because someone, somewhere, decides that negotiation is more dangerous to them than to the people being bombed.

Look at what was happening this “Good” Friday. Iran. Gaza. The West Bank. Lebanon.

Thirty-six days of missiles and a Strait of Hormuz sealed shut while oil companies post record profits and defence contractors book forward orders through 2031. No one in those boardrooms is losing sleep over a negotiated settlement.

That would be the one outcome they cannot monetise.

The choice of war over negotiation is always deliberate. It’s what happens when the institutions built to make negotiation workable — the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and the mechanisms of international law — are systematically defunded, vetoed into paralysis, or simply disregarded by those states powerful enough to ignore them without consequence.

When accountability is optional, war is always cheaper than compromise. For the people making the decision, not for the people paying for it in blood.

And here is what makes this moment different from others: we’re not even pretending anymore. Israeli ministers speak of erasure openly. American officials wave away civilian casualties with the language of collateral necessity.

Actions become shameless
The international community issues statements of concern and then approves the next arms shipment. The gap between what is said and what is done has closed — not because the words have become honest, but because the actions have become shameless.

Negotiation requires recognising the humanity of the other party. That’s precisely why it’s rebuffed. You can’t negotiate with someone you have spent 20 years or more dehumanising. Make them monstrous enough and war stops requiring justification. It becomes necessary.

But nothing about this is inevitable. Wars end when the people with the power to end them decide the cost of continuing exceeds the cost of stopping.

That calculation is being made right now, every day, by people who are not dying. The question is not when they will choose peace. It’s when the rest of us will make their continuing refusal untenable.

Richard David Hames is an Australian philosopher-activist, strategic adviser, entrepreneur and futurist, and he publishes The Hames Report on Substack. This article is republished with the author’s permission.

President Trump, don’t listen to your sycophants on Iran, this isn’t reality TV

APR editor — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 07:00:38 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Robert Reich

Mr Trump, may I have a word?

Bad enough for you to insist — in the face of all evidence to the contrary — that you “won” the 2020 election.

But it’s another thing for you to pretend — in the face of mounting deaths and injuries, ballooning expenses, and rising prices — that you won, or are winning, the war with Iran you began on February 28.

“Let me say, we’ve won,” you told a rally in Kentucky on March 11.

“I think we’ve won,” you said on the White House South Lawn on March 20.

“We’ve won this war. The war has been won,” you said in the Oval Office on March 24.

“We are winning so big,” you told a fundraising dinner on March 25.

“We’ve had regime change,” you told reporters just a few days ago. “The one regime was decimated, destroyed, they’re all dead. The next regime is mostly dead.” Iran has now moved onto its “third regime,” and American negotiators are now speaking to “a whole different group of people” who have “been very reasonable,” you said.

You’re making this up
You’re making all this up. In fact, you’re losing your war. And so is America and much of the rest of the world.

After a month, your war has already cost 13 American lives, cost American taxpayers more than US$30 billion, cost American consumers at least a dollar more per gallon of gas than they paid a month ago, pushed up food prices and mortgage rates, and pushed down the value of 401(k) retirement plans.

It’s mangled supply chains for industries that rely on items such as fertiliser to grow food or helium to make computer chips. It’s also wreaked havoc across the Middle East with at least 1574 civilians killed in Iran, including 236 children, and at least 50 killed in Iran’s attacks on other Gulf nations.

You assumed Iran would give up its nuclear programme. Wrong. After more than a month of bombing by the United States and Israel, you’ve most likely stiffened the regime’s resolve to produce a nuclear weapon.

In this respect, too, America is worse off — more endangered than we were in 2018 before you withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by former President Barack Obama. In that deal, Iran agreed to restrict its nuclear programme — reducing uranium stockpiles by 98 percent and capping enrichment at 3.67 percent, and allowing inspections — in exchange for relief from UN, EU, and US nuclear-related sanctions.

Iran now holds a stockpile of approximately 970 pounds of uranium enriched up to 60 percent purity, according to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. That’s close to weapons-grade. No one knows where it’s stored.

You thought winning this war would be as easy as abducting Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela and setting up a puppet regime there. Wrong again. The old ayatollah is gone, but the new one and his regime are even more radical and hard line.

Embraced asymmetric warfare
You assumed America’s military might would weaken Iran’s military capacity. Wrong. They’ve embraced asymmetric warfare — using cheap drones and missiles and blocking the Strait of Hormuz — rather than take on America’s and Israel’s superior forces directly.

You thought the regime would soon cave. Wrong. It’s been over a month and they’re the ones playing the waiting game. They think they can withstand the mounting political and economic pressures better and longer than you and America can. They may be correct.

Reportedly, you’ve told aides you’re now willing to end the war even if Iran continues to block the Strait of Hormuz. Maybe this is your best option at this point. But it will allow Iran to decide in the future how much oil gets through and for whom, and could cause the economic damage to the US to grow exponentially worse.

Mr Trump, do you really believe you won this war? Do you really believe America is better off than it was when you began the war?

Maybe the people around you are telling you that you’ve won the war and we’re better off because you punish the bearers of bad news and reward those who tell you what you want to hear. Presumably you’re hearing the same fictionalised good news from Republicans in Congress, from sycophantic leaders abroad, from other assorted lackeys and suck-ups.

Or maybe you think that if you can convince enough people that you won and we’re better off, you will have won and America will be better off. Because for you it’s always about public perceptions of reality rather than reality itself.

No truth, only belief
Everything depends on hype, spin, exaggeration, and outright lies. For you there’s no truth, only belief.

Or maybe you think that if you keep saying you won or are winning, and America has come out on top, your magical thinking will in fact come true.

But this isn’t a game, and you’re not a magician.

This is real blood and guts. Real pain. Real deaths and injuries. Real price increases at the gas pump. Real hardships for real people — in America, in the Middle East, and elsewhere.

You can’t pretend, sir. This isn’t reality television. This is for real. And the reality is Americans are worse off now and less secure than we were when you started this.

Robert Reich is an American professor, writer, former Secretary of Labour, and author of The System, The Common Good, Saving Capitalism, Aftershock, Supercapitalism, The Work of Nations. He is also co-founder of Inequality Media. This commentary was originally published on his Facebook page and is republished under Creative Commons.

‘No kings’: What Americans can learn from other nonviolent civil activism movements

APR editor — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 06:12:51 +0000

ANALYSIS: Introduced by Robert Reich

From time to time, I post transcripts I’ve come across of particularly insightful conversations. Here’s one that’s particularly relevant to the US “No Kings” Day protests at the weekend.

Recently, The Conversation hosted a webinar in which executive editor and general manager Beth Daley interviewed John Shattuck, professor of practice at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and Oliver Kaplan, associate professor at Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs at the University of Denver and a visiting scholar at Stanford University.

Shattuck is the former president of Central European University in Hungary, where he defended academic freedom against a rising authoritarian government. Kaplan is the author of Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves. This interview has been condensed and edited for print.

READ MORE: ‘No Kings’ protests erupt across the US, with a Minnesota focus

BETH DALEY: What is an authoritarian regime, and what are their characteristics?

JOHN SHATTUCK: The authoritarian, often referred to as a “king,” is the ideal role from the point of view of the king, but certainly not from the point of view of the people. Authoritarian characteristics include centralised unlimited power, the opposite of democracy; no accountability and no rule of law; no independent courts; no checks and balances on how the king operates; rule by fear and coercion, and when necessary, in order to carry out the king’s orders, rule by by force.

There are no individual rights or civil liberties except those the king decides to allow those who are loyal to him to have, at least until he decides to take them away.

That’s a nutshell informal description of an authoritarian regime. A special threat today is that an authoritarian can emerge from a democratic election, and, indeed, a democratic election can be used to turn a weak democracy into an authoritarian regime.

But when this happens, it opens the door to challenge the authoritarian in a subsequent election if civic activism can defend the electoral process by which the authoritarian was elected.

BD: What are we seeing and not seeing in the US that other countries have gone through in terms of authoritarian government?

OLIVER KAPLAN: I think we are heading toward an autocracy, if not there already. In their 2026 report, the Varieties of Democracy Project writes that the US is no longer a liberal democracy and is moving into “competitive authoritarianism,” marked by executive overreach and erosion of judicial and legislative checks. The report notes that US democracy is being dismantled at a speed that is “unprecedented in modern history”.

We are seeing shifts in terms of concentration of power to the executive branch and a disregard of the rule of law, things like ignoring court orders and difficulty with holding the executive branch accountable. We are also seeing the militariSation of law enforcement, monitoring of US citizens, and what some refer to as the dual state — that the state is working for some people while causing more challenges for or oppressing other people.

One of the things we’re not seeing at full force yet is a complete shutdown of civic space. We’re able to hold this kind of conversation, and people are still able to dialogue and go out on the street.

There are some efforts at curtailing free speech, and I think there’s some self-censorship possibly happening. But there’s still this open space and a powerful mass movement growing in this country.

USA today:

7 million Americans in the streets today protesting for freedom.
3,000 cities and towns. Every single state. “No Kings” protests against the authoritarianism of the Trump. This is one of the largest demonstrations in American history.

pic.twitter.com/cLAwlXK69f

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) March 28, 2026

BD: John, you were on the front lines, particularly in Hungary as the head of Central European University. What did you see there that has parallels today to the US?

JOHN SHATTUCK: There’s certainly a parallel between Hungary and the US, even though the countries are very different in size, history and background. What I saw in Hungary when I became president of Central European University in 2009 was a weak, new democracy that was only established in 1990 after 70 years of fascism and communism.

I was in Hungary from 2009 to 2016 and, despite the differences, I could begin to see some parallels. Many people had grievances in Hungary about how their economy was operating, particularly after the global financial crisis that affected Hungary more than any other Eastern European country.

Then there was an urban-rural divide, the urban elite versus the rural majority in the country.

Along came a cynical populist-nationalist politician, Viktor Orbán. Orbán started manipulating these grievances, and did so to significantly divide Hungarian society. He attacked many of the institutions of democracy, which were increasingly unpopular because of people’s grievances.

He went after elites, and foreigners, and migrants, and the media. And he blamed all of them for the country’s problems. He then was able to ride these grievances into office.

Once in office, Orbán amended the constitution and laws relating to the Parliament. He undermined the independence of the media and the judiciary so as to centralise power. All of this happened while I was running an international university in Budapest, which remained independent because it received no funding from the Hungarian government.

We were able to resist the increasingly authoritarian regime over issues of academic freedom. The government tried to shut down our programmes of migration studies and gender studies, and tried to censor aspects of our history department.

These authoritarian attacks are similar to what we’ve seen happening in the US, and in fact, Viktor Orbán was greatly admired by Donald Trump, and a lot of the playbook that Orban has followed was mirrored in Project 2025 in the US under Trump.

BD: How do communities respond in different ways to authoritarian regimes?

OLIVER KAPLAN: Pro-democracy movements and protection types of movements at the local level often co-occur. For example, in Colombia there have been various leftist movements and political parties that have pushed for greater democratic opening while communities mobilise to keep people safe and help them cope with repressive conditions.

In places like Chile, El Salvador and Guatemala, communities built trust and support networks to provide aid, such as for people who needed food assistance. This provides space to independently operate and preserve the community.

The US has parallels, such as innovating early warning networks to get advance notice of risks and threats, by communicating using the Signal app. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, villages set up radio networks, and in Ukraine they have sophisticated early warning networks to get word of airstrikes and drone attacks.

Fact-finding and countering stigma are important, and in the US we’re seeing that in the form of the video recording and publicising of harmful actions. This has played out similarly in Syria with fact-finding to protect nongovernment organisations.

There’s also accompaniment where outside actors come in to provide support to communities. Around the world, church organisations play important accompaniment roles. We’re seeing clergy in the US step up and visit places that are at risk.

And then, there are protests, the most visible kind of action. In Minnesota, we’ve seen communities actually setting up community barricades, which has also happened in Mexico, Colombia and Northern Ireland. Communicating the nonviolent nature of these movements is important to avoid any pretext for additional crackdowns.

I think Americans have been taking similar actions to other places around the world in part because there are some similar background conditions: repression and strong social capital networks. Those two things come together to produce these strategies.

BD: Could you speak more about the need to build a clear narrative and a positive one?

JOHN SHATTUCK: There are two basic rules for how to resist authoritarianism that I’ve learned from experience: Build a diverse coalition and develop a unifying theme. You need a diverse coalition in order to appeal to a broad range of the public, and in order to do that, you need agreement on the goal and values of what you’re trying to accomplish.

You need a clear and unifying narrative. The narrative often involves economic issues and issues of corruption, since there’s often a great deal of corruption in authoritarian regimes.

Hungary will have its next parliamentary election in April in which Orbán will seek his fifth term as prime minister. The opposition has developed a broad coalition and a unifying theme, while Orbán is using the centralised instruments of government and media that he controls to try to manipulate public opinion.

The opposition coalition is headed by Peter Magyar, who was once a major supporter of Orbán’s government. Magyar’s name can be magical in Hungary — sort of like a “Joe America” in the US.

With Magyar as its head, the opposition is aiming to peel off supporters of the regime. It’s campaigning on economic grounds, with a positive message and on moderate terms. And most importantly, it includes parties from the left, right and center.

Poland has succeeded in doing what the Hungarian opposition is attempting. It managed to vote out an authoritarian government by putting together a broad coalition to defend the independence of the Polish judiciary. That became a coalition to elect parliamentarians in 2023, and that succeeded in changing the government.

BD: How important is the preexisting social fabric of a community to the success of a protest movement?

JOHN SHATTUCK: It’s important, but complicated. Hungary had a very weak civil society after 70 years of totalitarian fascism and communism. When I was there, the very word to “volunteer,” which we think of as the essence of community action and service, was seen to be a bad word in Hungarian because it was closely associated with collaborating with the regime.

In the US, we’re the opposite in a sense, although the US is now slipping on this. We have a long history of volunteerism, we have all these civil society organisations, we have a tradition of barn raising, people getting together with their neighbours and doing things in their communities. This is very much a part of the American spirit and a core value.

But today, I would say a combination of consumerism and economic individualism coming out of decades of economic deregulation has caused our civil society to fray. But the authoritarian challenge that we face now, and the way in which we are beginning to respond to it, is in fact bringing communities back together again.

I think what happened in Minneapolis is an example of that. And this may reflect a growing capacity to resist an authoritarian regime.

Republished from Robert Reich’s Substack, originally published by The Conversation. Republished under Creative Commons.

Jonathan Cook: Does the tail wag the dog? How both sides are missing the bigger picture

APR editor — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 11:53:09 +0000

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

The joint US-Israeli war on Iran has thrust back into the spotlight a divisive debate about whether the dog wags the tail, or the tail wags the dog.

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

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

The other believes that the US, as the world’s sole military super-power, is the one that writes the geo-strategic script. If Israel acts, it is only because it serves Washington’s interests as well. The dog is wagging the tail.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does that mean?

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

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

But the story is more complicated than that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This makes for a very messy arrangement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Americans’ sympathies in the Middle East crisis. Source: Gallup World Affairs surveys

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published on the author’s Substack and reepublished with permission.

‘Israel First’ – ex-Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy on why Netanyahu led Trump into illegal Iran War

APR editor — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:01:34 +0000

Democracy Now!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REPORTER: “By whom?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eugene Doyle: Trump celebrates Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour

APR editor — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 03:00:33 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

You can’t make this stuff up. The President of the United States, while sitting next to the Japanese Prime Minister in the Oval Office, just celebrated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

When asked by a Japanese reporter on Friday why the US didn’t consult with allies before launching the surprise attack on Iran, Trump said: “One thing you don’t want is to signal too much. We went in very hard — and we didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise.”

Then, turning to Sanae Takaichi, he said: “Who knows better about surprise than Japan?” Moments before, sitting on the plush lemon chair in the gold-encrusted Oval Office, Takaichi had been smiling from ear to ear. Trump wiped the smile off her face with one question:

“Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?” By now the Prime Minister was squirming uncomfortably. Trump looked straight at her and said: “Okay, RIGHT? He [the journalist] is asking me, do you believe in surprise?

“I think you much more so than us. And we had a surprise, and because of that surprise, we probably knocked out 50 percent — and much more than we anticipated doing. So if I go and tell everybody about it, it is no longer a surprise.”

For more than 80 years the US has claimed a moral high ground on the basis of its rejection of “sneak attacks”. In one rhetorical flourish Trump exposed the jarring desolation of what the US now stands for.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” speech was delivered on December 8, 1941, following Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbour the day before.

Responding to ‘unprovoked’ sneak attack
Roosevelt, like President Pezeshkian of Iran today, was responding to an “unprovoked” sneak attack. President Roosevelt pointed out that negotiations were ongoing and, for him, the aggressor’s conduct was false, deceptive and below contempt:

“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

As with President Pezeshkian of Iran today, Franklin Delano Roosevelt drew the obvious conclusion: the nation was facing an existential threat.

“The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.”

Last week, I interviewed US Ambassador (ret) Chas Freeman who emphasised that the Iranians fully understood that the US-Israeli war machine launched against them would not stop unless compelled to do so.

For the Iranians, the goal is nothing less than to drive the Americans out of the region. To understand the intensity of their determination simply hear the words of FDR from 1941:

“No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.”

I would remind US President Donald Trump that in referencing that other sneak attack he might have paused to ask: “Who won that war in the end?”

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

Israel – the parasite state sabotaging peace in the Middle East

APR editor — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 01:47:41 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Marcus Alexander

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.

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.

Iran’s National Security Adviser and chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani . . . assassinated by Israel, he represented the pragmatic wing of the Iranian establishment. Image: Wikipedia

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.

Israel caught in a permanent state of war mindset – peace is taboo

APR editor — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 02:31:12 +0000

INTERVIEW: C.J. Polychroniou and Idan Landau

Israel’s war on Iran is a direct result of a political culture that depends for survival upon a permanent state of war, says Israeli academic and left-wing activist Idan Landau in the interview that follows.

He observes that Israeli society on the whole has embraced a fascist mindset, “reflecting extreme paranoia and anxiety,” and thus intolerance for dissent.

Subsequently, peace is a taboo and there is total indifference to genocidal acts and human casualties. Moreover, there is very little hope for a different trajectory, argues Landau, “as long as the US and Europe continue to insulate Israel from the moral consequences of its actions.”

Landau is professor of linguistics and head of the department of linguistics at Tel Aviv University. He writes a political blog (in Hebrew) on Israeli affairs and has been imprisoned on several occasions for his refusal to serve in the Israel Defense Forces reserve.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: Since the Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel, the Netanyahu government embarked on a genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, expanded Jewish settlements in occupied West Bank and thus encouraged settlers to escalate West Bank terrorist attacks, exchanged fire with Hezbollah and the Houtis, then attacked Iran in what has been dubbed as the 12-Day War, and finally persuaded US President Donald Trump to go to war with Iran.

What is Israel’s endgame in terrorising the Middle East, and how has permanent war impacted Israeli society and the Israeli psyche?

IDAN LANDAU: I think the whole point of permanent war — I agree this is the most appropriate concept to use here — is that there is no endgame. Permanent war, with ever growing economic, emotional and political costs, is exactly what keeps the Israeli right-wing in power; it feeds on anxiety, paranoia and visions of imminent destruction (interestingly, our own and our enemies’ destruction, equally vivid).

Not being able to concentrate on and fully understand what’s going on is also crucial; the Israeli public is extremely underinformed about key issues, like the fraudulent nuclear talks in Geneva, the far-reaching proposals by the Lebanese government, etc. The media — always complicit, these days criminal — bombards us with caricatures of our surrounding countries.

That said, I think there is one constant, never-changing endgame lurking behind all the upheavals: The expansionist project in the West Bank. Not just Smotrich but a dedicated section within the Likkud, of right-wing religious settlers, are working tirelessly on this project, actually from the first week after October 7.

Plans for resettlement of Gaza combined with increased settlement in the West Bank (specifically, the northern Samaria, surrounding Jenin and Tulkarem) were immediately aired and pushed forward by the settlers’ lobby together with their MK partners.

The surge we now see in ethnic cleansing and forced displacement of Palestinian communities throughout the West Bank is inherent to the overall vision of this government, and it was stated as such even before October 7 — that only gave it a huge impetus.

The impact on Israeli society is perhaps the most depressing aspect of it all. Political discourse has been reduced to hollow slogans. Every single issue in foreign affairs in framed as either “existential threat” or “unavoidable use of military force.” There’s absolutely no room for talk about non-violent paths (“peace” is a taboo even on the left).

The Enemy is an undifferentiated mass of Hamas/Iran/Hezbollah/Houthis, in short, different guises of Amalek. Much of that, as I noted, is fueled by the deliberate absence of facts and evidence for rational conduct on the part of our enemies.

Israelis live in a peculiar state of mind: total disbelief in the possibility of normal life, clinging on to the very ideology that perpetuates this state of mind.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: Israel has actual and perceived enemies. But is Benjamin Netanyahu alone the actual problem behind Israel’s permanent state of war? I mean, even most of Israeli opposition supported the genocide in Gaza and it’s doing the same thing now with the war against Iran.

IDAN LANDAU: Netanyahu is the most able consolidator of all the dark impulses of Israeli society, but of course he didn’t make up anything on his own. If you go back to Begin’s speeches in the 1970s-1980s, they also constantly invoked the Holocaust as the ultimate justification for whatever Israel does.

The Messianic drive to settle the greater Israel predates Netanyahu, as well as the overall brutal, racist degradation of Palestinians inside and outside Israel. You can go on and on — nothing is new here. At most, as you note, it is the subservience of the “opposition”; I don’t recall anything like it in the past.

If you look at the governments that went to wars in 1973 and 1982, they faced considerable opposition, within the Knesset and outside of it, on the very issue of whether the war was justified (in 1973, it was clearly preventable; in 1982, it was pure imperial vanity). None of that is left today.

Which is why the temptation of permanent war is so strong: You’re guaranteed to make the willful silence of the opposition also permanent.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: In Lebanon, the Israeli armed forces are using Gaza tactics, attacking hospitals and killing medical staff, while in Iran they have engaged in what has been rightly described as chemical warfare on account of strikes on fuel depots. Isn’t the country concerned at all about its blatant assault on international law and that it has turned into a pariah state in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of the people across the globe? What happened to Israel’s labor party which combined socialism with nation-building?

IDAN LANDAU: As to the Labour Party, I always say that one should not speak ill of the dead. A handful of members of Knesset (MKs) that are obsessed with displays of liberal values and with welfare legislation when genocide is in full force and Apartheid shifts from de facto to de jure.

The other “opposition” parties are either led by generals (Golan, Eizenkot) who offer zero alternatives to military dominance, or by right-wing neoliberals (Bennet, Lapid). The only representatives of left values in the Knesset are the Arab MKs.

As to International Humanitarian Law (IHL), my impression is that Israelis are unconcerned insofar as Uncle Sam is, and it sure looks like he is, thoroughly unconcerned. The Trump administration vindictively sanctioned the International Criminal Court (ICC) judges presiding over the Israeli case, and quite explicitly stated that IHL does not apply to the US and its allies.

There’s a lot of duplicity in Israeli discourse regarding the so-called “Principle of Complementarity”; the official response to the ICC described the “independent and robust judicial system” of Israel, which investigates any suspicions for wrongdoings. Most Israelis simply think that the rules don’t apply to us since they don’t apply to Hamas (they do apply to both parties; I already said that Israelis are shrouded in disinformation).

But even the liberals that appeal to our own “independent and robust judicial system” look ridiculous in face of the massive cover-up we witness from the beginning of the genocide; the dropping of charges against the five torturers/rapists in Sde-Teiman is but the latest instance.

Hundreds of heinous crimes did not even yield any charges.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: Courageous voices against war and violence can be heard here and there across Israeli society and peace activists have organised scores of demonstrations in cities like Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem to express their opposition to the war in Iran.

Are anti-war demonstrations really seen as a threat to national security by the Netanyahu government and even segments of the Israeli citizenry?

IDAN LANDAU: These things happen and they do lift our spirit. In honesty, I don’t think anyone views them as “a threat to national security,” that’s fascist talk. The public atmosphere is just incredibly intolerant, with or without the presence of the police, with or without any legal process.

Just try to voice your opposition to the war — any war, pick your favourite — out in the street, and you’re sure to be harassed and probably beaten by random pedestrians within 15-20 minutes. So I think it is a typical fascist all-embracing violent climate, reflecting extreme paranoia and anxiety.

The mere verbal expression of “sacrilegious” opinions is seen as a personal threat to our carefully maintained peace of mind; so tenuous and feeble, that it cannot even stand to face dissent.

Point it out to Israelis and urge them to make out what it means for their confidence in what their state is doing that they must violently banish any expression of doubt and criticism (this is now the position of many journalists as well!) — well, see if you get an answer.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: Israel censored reporting on the genocide in Gaza. Is the same thing happening now with the war in Iran?

IDAN LANDAU: Luckily, the IDF doesn’t control the entrance and exit to Iran. So we don’t have the brute force censorship, instead it’s the good old “filter and distort and leave out the context” censorship.

They would report civilian casualties only if forced (because it’s getting too much international media), and you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the “human shield” trick is now applied reflexively, before any facts are even known.

In this sense, as all human right organisations pointed out, the Gaza genocide has set a shocking new standard of indifference to civilian casualties: All targets are criminalised by association to your favourite Amalek (currently the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC), and we stopped bothering about substantiating this association with actual facts; declaring it so makes it so.

In this context, one can watch civilian suffering in Iran with a level of detachment and blame it all on the IRGC. We should remember, though, that the Iranian regime is no more scrupulous in its choice of targets in Israel — the war crimes are on both sides.

Yet I cannot say that Israeli media covers the wider civilian effects of the war on Iranian citizens in any serious way. Pretty much 95 percent of what we get are silly, heroic odes to our courageous pilots and genius cyber fighters.

C.J. POLYCHRONIOU: In your view, is there a pathway towards peace in Israel? Is permanent peace even possible for Israel?

IDAN LANDAU: Ultimately there can’t be any other solution; wars eventually end, consuming nations. I just don’t think it will be “Israel” as we now know it that will see the fruits of peace.

It will be a totally different entity, somehow letting Jews and Arabs live together as equals. That’s not possible within the current regime. Sadly, the shift to non-violence only occurs after the level of death and suffering is insurmountable to both sides.

No one knows when that will be. As long as the US and Europe continue to insulate Israel from the moral consequences of its policies, it won’t change trajectory.

C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centres in Europe and the United States. His latest books are The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change (A collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky; Haymarket Books, 2021), and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (Verso, 2021).

Idan Landau is an Israeli social justice activist and professor of linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University.

Saige England: Journalists must stand up and report with the moral courage of abolitionists

APR editor — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 05:30:31 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Saige England

Every week, health prevailing, I march with our Palestinian friends and their supporters in Aotearoa New Zealand. And my country is one which — under Britain — was colonised.

Colonisation perpetrates injustices against indigenous people. This legacy is still felt by Indigenous people today.

All around the world we must dismantle our unfair systems. A fair system ensures that everyone has a flourishing start in life. But our systems are linked to Israel — and Israel demonstrates that colonisation is still practised.

“No peace without justice, no justice without right to return.” Image: SE

Israel headed by megalomaniacs ruling with a muscular thug army is proof that the Empire has not stopped because the Western Empire has supported this.

Far too many Western journalists report from the perspective of the abuser rather than the victims. They need to ask, “what if it was my child, my wife, my mother, my brother, my grandfather, suffering like this? What if I was forced from my home?”

Journalists must report from the perspective of people who are pleading for the right to breathe rather than reporting from the perspective of the landlord killing people when they resist eviction.

They must use their imagination to exercise empathy in reporting. Only then will they report the truth and only then will the real narrative emerge.

Colonisation unchecked
Colonisation is not checked, rather it is supported by countries engaged in Empire building.

Like South Africa under apartheid, Indigenous people are oppressed and if they resist they are dispensed with, in other words, exterminated.

But this system is enabled rather than disabled. The rampant megalomania is enabled by the US, Britain, Germany, and other nations.

Tens of thousands of children, women, and men have been robbed of life and the journalists I once worked alongside in conflict zones are complicit if they do not report this as a human rights atrocity.

We — journalists — must report on the evil that is the expansion of empire and we must report on it from the perspective of the victims not the perpetrators.

The extermination of Palestinians and expansion of Israel is clearly supported by the legs of the octopus — the countries that make up this Western Empire.

Standing by and reporting from anything other than the perspective of the victims is akin to standing by and watching slaves being bound, gagged and shipped under the name of empire.

Journalists must stand up and report with the moral courage of abolitionists. They must have the gumption to attack the rotten policies practiced in our own time.

Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Eugene Doyle: Will Israel and the US wreck the Gulf States along with Iran?

APR editor — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 23:40:41 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

The United States and Israel have, for decades, pursued the destruction of Iran as a sovereign state.

We are now in the opening days of what may be the final, decisive war to determine either the survival of the Iranian state or the expulsion of the US from the Arab lands and the creation of an entirely new security architecture for West Asia.

Sounds implausible? We live in truly unprecedented times and many scenarios are possible.

There are signals as to what may come next and to help identify them I spoke with US Ambassador (ret) Chas W. Freeman.

Whether intended or unintended, the US and Israel are in the process of severely damaging the economies of the Gulf States. By attacking Iran, they knew full well what the Iranians would do in response — after all, Iran had warned that any further attack on it would lead to a regional war.

Are we witnessing a brazen plan to destroy both Iran and seriously weaken the Gulf States, using Iran as a weapon to do the latter? Could this be a Machiavellian plan to throw a cluster bomb into The Great Muslim Reconciliation between the Sunni states and Shia Iran?

Will the war halt or accelerate the project to create an Islamic NATO which is based around last year’s Saudi-Pakistani defence pact? The Saudis have the dollars; the Pakistanis have the nukes and the troops.

Two women protesters with a “Hands off Iran” placard at Saturday’s Auckland rally against the Gaza genocide and the US-Israel war on Iran. Image: Asia Pacific Report

Permanent isolation of Iran
The permanent isolation of Iran was the centrepiece of the US-promoted Abraham Accords — designed to bring the Israeli regime into the circle of love and keep Iran out in the cold.

Anything that runs counter to this is a threat. The war comes at a time when Iran and the Gulf States had taken major steps to mend fences after decades of hostility.

The murder of top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani on orders of Donald Trump in 2020 was supposed to kill off a diplomatic rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Soleimani and other officials were killed in a US missile strike at Baghdad airport without the permission of or notification to the Iraqi government. He was, according to Iranian, Saudi and Iraqi sources, including Iraqi PM Adil Abdul-Mahdi, heading for a meeting with his Saudi counterpart to broker a peace deal.

The assassination was successful but the US attempt to kill off the peace process failed.

US sabotages diplomacy
A week before the US and Israel launched their latest attack, Egypt and Iran announced that they had agreed to fully restore diplomatic relations and exchange ambassadors. It was the latest in a series of such moves to bring Iran in from the cold.

As the Middle East Institute pointed out shortly after, “Within days of the Israeli strike, [Pakistan’s] Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif visited Doha in a show of solidarity. Seizing the crisis as an opportunity to elevate Pakistan’s strategic presence in the Gulf and the wider Middle East, its government voiced support for the proposed formation of a joint Arab-Islamic security force.”

The quickly signed Strategic Mutual Defense Agreement (SMDA) got a lot of attention in West Asia and was soon dubbed an “Islamic NATO” — an alliance that could one day replace American boots on the ground.

The Gulf States were also slowly coming to the realisation that America was unreliable, Israel was a genuine threat and Iran might be useful as a counterbalance to the US and Israel. A Pakistani nuclear shield and conventional military backup was being discussed as far away as Ankara; there were even whispers Iran might be invited to join.

Now, back to that question of whether the US is, through its war on Iran, deliberately weakening the Gulf States as part of a strategy to keep the Muslim world divided. I asked US Ambassador (ret) Chas W. Freeman and he replied, “I think you give far too much credit to the United States, and more particularly, to Israel, in terms of devious planning to do these things in the Gulf,” Freeman said.

“We’re actually pretty stupid and clumsy at what we do. Look at what we’re doing with the Peshmerga and the Kurds. How stupid do you have to be to do that?”

Ambassador Freeman is highlighting what has been a recurring cycle in US foreign policy – strategic betrayal — in which it uses groups like the Kurdish Peshmerga or the freshly-minted Coalition of Political Forces of Iranian Kurdistan (CPFIK) to attack US enemies only to throw them under the bus the moment they have served their purpose.

Luring Iranian Kurds
The CIA and the White House have tried to lure the Iranian Kurds into the current battle, Trump blurting out how “wonderful” it would be and how the map of Iran would be redrawn. This will only fuel Iranian nationalism.

Ambassador Freeman is numbered among those who believe that the US-Israeli defence shield is running low on interceptors and Iran could strike back hard in the coming weeks. He also surmises that the Iranians will have secretly signalled to the Gulf States that a condition of the war ending — if Iran gets to set the terms — will be the removal of all US military from the Gulf States.

None of us can say with certainty what the respective breaking points for the belligerents are but I certainly believe Iran is very far from out of the fight that the US and Israel has forced on them.

“Prior to the US-Israeli attack, the Gulf Arabs were moving — in their usual incoherent and inchoate way — toward some kind of coalition with Iran to balance Israeli military hegemony in the region,” Ambassador Freeman told me.

“Now Israel and the United States have given an opening to Iran to pursue its long term objective, which is to remove the American presence from the Gulf. Iran has turned a vicious attack on it into a strategic opportunity to force the Gulf States to do a cost-benefit analysis.”

Chas Freeman is probably right: the US didn’t intend to shatter the Gulf States as one of its war aims. That leaves the more plausible explanation: the Americans and Israelis are simply demented and war-crazed.

Either way, the US-Israeli war machine must be stopped for the sake of humanity.

War on Iran: ‘It’s abominable, the lies that the American mainstream media is telling the people’

APR editor — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 07:12:52 +0000

Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: The US-Israeli war on Iran has entered its 11th day. Its impact is being increasingly felt across the globe. Al Jazeera is reporting residents of Tehran overnight experienced “some of the most intense bombardment” of the war.

At least 40 people were reportedly killed near the city’s Risalat Square.

In Lebanon, the death toll from Israel’s attacks are nearing 500. About 700,000 residents have been displaced.

Earlier today [March 10], Iran reportedly fired drones toward Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates, where a large fire broke out in an industrial area home to petrochemical plants. A suspected Iranian missile also hit a residential building in the capital of Bahrain, killing one person and injuring eight others.

On Monday, the Pentagon posted online a photo of a missile with the words “No Mercy” superimposed on it. An accompanying message read, “We have Only Just Begun to Fight.”

But soon after, Trump told CBS News, “I think the war is very complete, pretty much,” he said. Trump’s CBS interview led oil prices to drop and for global stocks to quickly rise.

But after the Wall Street markets closed, Trump told Republicans in Florida the US hasn’t “won enough.” At a news conference on Monday, ABC News reporter Selina Wang questioned Trump about the conflicting messages.

SELINA WANG: Mr. President, you’ve said the war is, quote, “very complete,” but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning. So, which is it? And how long should Americans be prepared for this war to last for?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I think you could say both. It’s the beginning. It’s the beginning of building a new country. But they certainly — they have no navy. They have no air force. They have no anti-aircraft equipment. It’s all been blown up.

“They have no radar. They have no telecommunications. And they have no leadership. It’s all gone.

“So, you know, you could look at that statement. We could — we could call it a tremendous success right now. As we leave here, I could call it, or we could go further.

“And we’re going to go further. But the big risk on that war has been over for three days. We wiped them out the first — in the first two days.

AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, President Trump said he had a good call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who reportedly proposed a, “quick political and diplomatic end to the Iranian conflict”.

We begin today’s show with retired Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell during the run-up and early years of the US war on Iraq. He’s taught national security affairs at both George Washington University and the College of William and Mary.

Colonel Wilkerson, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you respond to what has taken place over this last 11 days, starting with the diplomatic talks in Geneva between Iran and the United States? And as those talks were just wrapping up, US and Israel attacked Iran and killed the supreme leader there. Your response?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Yes, and, Amy, for the second time, we violated international law in that respect, and just common human decency. And your comments at the opening of the show were spot-on, but not nearly broad and deep enough.

I come from an administration of George W. Bush and Richard Bruce Cheney that committed war crimes, war crimes that Colin Powell and his lawyer Will Taft and I agonised over in trying to present some message to the American people about them. This administration has committed more war crimes in the last few days than I think any country since Adolf Hitler committed. And that is an incredible condemnation of this entire process.

We have bombed civilians relentlessly. We have bombed a school. We have bombed a hospital. We have struck facilities in the nature of Iran’s oil capacity that is now putting black poison all over 10-plus million people.

And we are essentially not bombing ballistic missile sites and bombing war materiel. We’re bombing people. We took a lesson from the IDF, if you will. We are bombing people, as, incidentally, they are still doing in Gaza and doing now in Lebanon.

These are all war crimes. And one wishes with fond hope that someday we might be called before the bar of justice and have to account for these war crimes. And what you just talked about is a crime also in the eyes of international relations and people who want to keep decent international relations ongoing in the world. We’re destroying that.

And on top of all of that — and this is the real serious problem here for America — Trump and Hegseth and Rubio and the other entourage of their national security complex have completely misjudged the nature of this war, as has, to a certain extent, Bibi Netanyahu.

This is a country as big as Western Europe, with 93 million people, probably 90 million of whom will fight us to the bitter death, who live in terrain that almost killed Alexander the Great. It is entirely inhospitable to military operations.

And Trump is talking about — actually talking about putting ground forces there. And the only way he will be able to claim any nature of victory is to do that. Only that will be the end of the empire’s presence in the Levant and the Middle East in general, because we will not be able to sustain that economically, physically.

We do not have the soldiers or Marines to do that. But that’s what he’s talking about. This is pure nonsense.

There was a column in Haaretz yesterday, and the title of the column, essentially, was “Trump will chicken out in this war, too.” I’m sorry, he’s not going to chicken out necessarily. That might be the tone and tint he puts to it. He’s going to be defeated, as are we.

“End of the Trump Presidency” – retired colonel slams war in Iran Video: Democracy Now!

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Colonel, I wanted to ask you — we played that clip with Trump talking about all the damage that Iran has sustained, but there’s been very little acknowledgment by the US military or the White House to the enormous damage that has occurred to the US military footprint in the Middle East for decades. All of these bases and radar, multibillion-dollar radar, were established throughout the region. And what’s your understanding of the nature of the damage that has occurred to all of these bases, not just among the Gulf states, but also even in Iraq and other places of the Middle East?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Yeah, that damage is enormous. And I think what you’re witnessing right now is the initial steps of the empire, the American empire’s retreat from the Levant and the Middle East in general.

I don’t think we’re going to be able to sustain our presence there after what’s going to happen here, particularly if we stay at this for a long time and really do take significant casualties. We’re already taking more casualties than people know about, because the media is not being apprised of it.

Yes, we had the ceremony at Dover, but there are people getting ready at Landstuhl, our throughput hospital in Germany, right now to accept multiple casualties coming in. They’ve stopped their civilian service and so forth at that hospital. And other things are being geared up, too, like Walter Reed.

I don’t think they have even a modicum of appreciation of what kind of casualties are going to result, though, especially if we put ground forces into Iran. And that is the only way, unless he just lies completely about it, that Trump is going to be able to assert any kind of real force with regard to this population.

And to your point, in Bahrain, they have taken out billions of dollars’ worth of US radar and equipment, including the vertical missile loading cranes, so now ships have to go all the way to Diego Garcia to load these weapons.

They have essentially obliterated our capacity to carry out combat actions from a number of places in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Al Udeid is actually under under threat now, too.

And this is all part of the warp and woof of our ability to carry out combat operations in the region. I’m not even sure our biggest facility for passing on troops, throughput facility, that we used in both Iraq wars — is in Kuwait. I’m not even sure that that’s up now and able to do anything.

So, how would you even get Marines or soldiers, God forbid, into Iran? That’s a huge problem. They will sink the ships that are coming to deposit those troops wherever they’re coming.

We have not really damaged their ballistic missile capability. And the media blackout on Israel is keeping the American people from seeing the enormous degree of destruction to Israel, the latest component of which was a riposte to Israel’s having struck their oil facilities, on Haifa, their oil facility port.

And Haifa is being taken down much the way Eilat was taken down by the Houthis, the Allah Ansar, in the Red Sea, when we failed to be able to reopen the Red Sea. And that’s the next step.

The Bab al-Mandeb will be closed once the Houthis have gotten into action full time again. And 60 percent of the world’s commerce passes through the Red Sea. It’s not oil and gas exclusively. It’s all manner of things — foodstuffs, commodities and such.

So, this is a war with long legs. Trump has completely misinterpreted it. The only one who’s interpreted it correctly is Bibi Netanyahu, and I think he’s ready to use a nuclear weapon, should it become as bad as it looks like it might right now, because Iran has not even began to shoot its most sophisticated missiles.

And now the second and third class of those missiles is getting through almost without opposition. Imagine what these Mach 3, Mach 4 missiles, with huge warheads that have maybe a hundred different other warheads they display all across an area, are going to do to Israel once they’re fired.

They’re still there, and they’re still ready to fire.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Colonel, I wanted to actually — you mentioned the media coverage of what is going on in Israel. It has been amazing to me that all of the major US media are based in Israel, in Tel Aviv, yet we are seeing the least amount of coverage of what is going on within Israel.

I want to quote from a piece, an online piece, that CNN reporter Oren Liebermann posted earlier this week. And he wrote — and I’m quoting — “Every reporter in Israel — and every member of the public — is subject to a military censor. On national security grounds, the regulation authorises the censor to prohibit reporting or broadcasting any material that could reveal sensitive information or pose a threat to the country’s security interests.”

And he goes on to say, “This is particularly sensitive during wartime, where the military censor has made clear that broadcasting any images that reveal the location of interceptor missiles or military sites hit by enemy projectiles is forbidden, especially in live broadcasts.”

Now, they say this on their website, but they never mention this on air. And none of the networks are mentioning on air that they are strictly prohibited from showing any actual, real damage. I’m wondering your sense of the responsibility of the US media, especially since they’re always showing us the results of the plumes rising in Abu Dhabi or in Saudi Arabia or even in Iran, but not the direct hits that are occurring within Israel.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I’ll tell you what I told the senior editor to The Washington Post recently. I think it’s abominable, the lies that the American mainstream media, both video and print, is telling the American people. And they’re putting us in jeopardy in a real substantive sense, because the American people have no way of judging just how foolhardy, how stupid, how unwise, how violative of international dictum and rule this war is.

And when it gets to the point — I think this is the end of the Trump presidency, actually, because when it gets to the point where the pressure is so great and some of this has to come out and casualties are manifest, then the American people are going to ask really important questions: Why did you lie to us? Why did you tell us what you were telling us? Why did you start this war of choice?

Iran was no threat to the United States of America whatsoever. Did you go to war for Israel? We have heard you went to war for Israel. These are questions that are finally going to get out there in the hustings and going to have to be answered by someone, probably your local congressman, the supine body that has done nothing to check this president, particularly in the war power.

And we haven’t even talked about that.

This is a complete violation of the Constitution of the United States. Just as Kofi Annan said about the 2003 Iraq War, it’s an illegal war. And he went on to say it was a violation of our own Constitution. And he was absolutely right.

But this pales — or, that pales in comparison with what Trump is doing right now, and what he is going to probably have to do in order to seem to correct his errors.

And I’m truly worried that this destruction of Israel is going to reach a point — I listened to Netanyahu recently speaking in Hebrew to his clan, to his group — Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and others like that.

At the end of his remarks in Hebrew, which was translated for me very reliably, I think, he essentially said that if it went south, if it went bad, he was prepared to show the Iranians something they had never seen before.

I think he meant a nuclear weapon. And I go back to 1973 when Golda Meir told a BBC reporter — you can check, it was printed in London the next day on the front page — that she would use a nuclear weapon, in response to his question, “Would you use a nuclear weapon?”

Because at that time, they were pretty hard-pressed in the 1973 war. And she said, “Yes,” without equivocation. I think we’re back at that point again, and for probably a far more dangerous situation.

AMY GOODMAN: I know you have to go, Colonel Wilkerson, but I just want to point out you were the former chief of staff of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who dragged his feet on supporting the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, but ultimately gave that speech, that he would call a stain on his career, at the UN.

It was critical for Bush, President Bush, that it was Colin Powell who gave this speech, because he was seen as the reluctant warrior. And he gave that speech saying there was evidence of Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction. Can you make a parallel to what we’re seeing today?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I can, but I think this is far greater a travesty and a tragedy. That was bad enough. And torture was the thing that broke my back, and ultimately it sort of broke Colin Powell’s back, too, because we realised that we had signed up not only to a war that was not necessary, we had signed up to a president of the United States for the first time in the nation’s history making public policy torture.

Other human beings being tortured was made presidential public policy. This is far worse, I think, and it’s been building for some time. It’s been building all since Trump was elected, and actually since his first administration. And I think it makes what we did — not to discount it, but it makes it pale by comparison, and it makes me deeply concerned about the future of this republic.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you so much for being with us, Lawrence Wilkerson, retired Army colonel, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005.

Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License by democracynow.org on 10 March 2026.

Sanitising atrocities by the US or Israel and finding excuses is in the Western media’s DNA

Pacific Media Watch — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 03:13:51 +0000

COMMENTARY: By John Minto

I came across this statement from an independent media source this week:

“The mainstream media is doing what it always does in wartime: manufacturing consent, sanitising atrocities and platforming war criminals.”

It came to mind immediately when I read The Times newspaper obituary for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei which was reprinted in the Christchurch Press at the weekend.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was murdered by the US-Israel in the initial strikes of their illegal bombing and killing campaign in Iran — an assault that rips up international law and trashes the United Nations Charter.

The obituary was a straight piece of Western propaganda which did nothing to hide its blatant disinformation (deliberate misinformation). It may as well have come straight from an Israeli propaganda unit — it may well have for all I know — with its demonisation of the Iranian leadership.

The Times claimed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had “…approved the development of a clandestine nuclear weapons programme that could, if ever completed, threaten Israel’s very existence, destabilise the Middle East and imperil global oil supplies”.

This is an obvious lie. Israel’s Prime Minister — and well-known war criminal — Benjamin Netanyahu has been saying for 30 years that Iran is just a few weeks or months away from producing a nuclear weapon.

The fact is that all credible analysts, including inside US intelligence, agree Iran never decided to pursue nuclear weapons and the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) has never detected such a programme. In fact, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared nuclear weapons to be “religiously forbidden under Islamic law”.

The rest of the obituary is riddled with similar untruths and distortions in a ham-fisted justification of US/Israel’s assault on Iran. If The Times has set out to undermine confidence in Western media reporting on West Asia (Middle East) this would be an excellent example.

Platforming war criminals
How much Western media time and space has been given to Trump and Netanyahu in the past 11 days to spread lies and disinformation direct to Western audiences? And how much time has been given to the Iranian leadership, UN officials or international experts to debunk the US/Israeli justifications for war?

Meanwhile, the media have platformed Iranian New Zealanders, who oppose the Iranian leadership and support the appointment of the former Shah’s son Reza Pahlavi, to lead the country.

The previous Shah’s rule was a brutal dictatorship where tens of thousands were murdered or imprisoned by the Shah’s secret police, the Savak. The Shah’s dictatorship was backed by the US and Western interests till its overthrow in 1979.

The new proposed Shah is no different from his father, posing with Netanyahu and celebrating the bombing and killing in Iran.

So why has our mainstream media given so much attention to Iranians here who celebrate death and destruction in Iran alongside people waving the Israeli flag — a symbol of genocide and apartheid — and inviting Destiny Church to join them. A real horror show!

And when it comes to women’s rights, why is the Western media so happy to denounce restrictions on clothing for women in Iran but ignore Israel’s denial of rights to Palestinian women in Gaza whom Amnesty International this week says face the erosion of health and safety in Gaza in a “deliberate act of war targeting women and girls”.

A pro-war protest with imperial Iran and Israeli flags outside the Stop Wars Aotearoa public meeting in Auckland last night. Image: Asia Pacific Report

Sanitising atrocities
And why has the Western media all but ignored the US/Israeli missile attack on the girls school in Iran killing at least 165 children? Imagine if this were an attack on a school in Israel or the US? Imagine the apoplectic outrage. Imagine the rush to sanctions and war?

This attack and murder of Iranian girls is sidelined for the same reason Israel’s genocide in Gaza killing tens of thousands of women and children is being downplayed.

Sanitising atrocities by the US or Israel and finding excuses, justifications or explanations for them is in the Western media’s DNA.

The Press and Western media take all their stories from Western sources such as Reuters and Associated Press news agencies and Western newspapers such as The Times and Daily Telegraph. They would never dream of including stories from Al Jazeera or any Palestinian news sources.

I would once have lamented the loss of mainstream media reporting on issues but it’s no longer possible to pretend it is in any way a force for good.

John Minto is national chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the author’s permission.

Trump-aligned think tank proposes ‘Pacific Charter’, greater US involvement in the region

APR editor — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 22:11:48 +0000

By Kaya Selby, RNZ Pacific journalist

An American right-wing think tank is proposing a “Pacific Charter” that advocates for a greater United States presence in the region.

The Heritage Foundation, closely associated with the ruling Republican Party, wrote that China is “covetously” looking to the Pacific nations while they are vulnerable to major security threats, such as the transnational drug trade.

The think tank holds significant influence with US President Donald Trump, best encapsulated in its “Project 2025” platform that guided conservative policy leading up to the 2024 presidental election.

READ MORE: Other Trump and Pacific reports

Its latest report, A charter of Pacific values for a prosperous Pacific future, points out that Pacific nations are uniquely vulnerable at a difficult time, emboldening “outside forces” to take advantage.

Pacific countries are asked to “align” their policy agendas, while the US establishes a “Pacific Partners Commission” and installs a “Pacific Advisor” on their National Security Council.

“Broader intra-Pacific affiliations are being superseded by the interests of external actors, and the Pacific agenda is at risk of being shaped by powerful outside forces,” the report states.

Without Western involvement, it postulated that China, with its “willingness to use political leverage and intrigue to advance its narrow interest” would monopolise their hold.

‘Reaffirm fundamental ideals’
Rather than letting that happen, co-authors Allen Zhang and Brent Sadler proposed a non-binding Charter, not to “impose values and dictate outcomes” but rather to “reaffirm fundamental ideals and strengthen regional solidarity”.

It was noted this would pressure nations to resist the influence of Chinese cash, for example infrastructure deals. Further, the mood would be set for island nations and US defence forces to come closer together.

“The foregoing principles are frequently bypassed in favour of lucrative bilateral proposals … compromised when it is personally or locally expedient.

“When regional nations accede to a charter, they accept a standard of conduct beyond the mere expression of aspiration … overtime, states begin to rationalise strategic decisions against a set of baseline principles.”

The Heritage Foundation’s proposed Pacific charter published in ‘A charter of Pacific values for a prosperous Pacific future’. Image: Edited by RNZ Pacific

The White House has only recently turned its attention to Pacific countries in any public sense, hosting a business summit in Honolulu in early February.

Trump has also asserted his interest in critical minerals at the bottom of the Pacific ocean, leading to deep-sea mining talks with the Cook Islands and Tonga.

Jared Novelly, incoming US ambassador to New Zealand, said there was an “extreme opportunity” in the Cook Islands exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

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

French Polynesia urges Pacific to unite amid rising global tensions

APR editor — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 04:56:13 +0000

By ‘Alakihihifo Vailala of PMN News

French Polynesia’s President Moetai Brotherson says growing global instability is a reminder that Pacific nations must strengthen cooperation within the region.

Speaking to PMN News in an exclusive interview, Brotherson said the Pacific must focus on deeper partnerships with neighbours such as New Zealand to build resilience against external shocks.

“When we see the turmoil in the world, it’s a reminder to us, as all the Pacific Island nations, that our first and foremost vicinity is our region,” Brotherson said.

“We have to increase cooperation between ourselves to make us more resilient to outside crises.”

Brotherson has held the presidency since 2023 and previously represented French Polynesia’s third constituency in the French National Assembly from 2017.

He made the comments following discussions with New Zealand Foreign Minister Vaovasamanaia Winston Peters during Peters’ visit to French Polynesia.

Peters described the meeting as a unique opportunity to strengthen ties between Pacific neighbours.

“We had a very good, quite unique discussion,” he said.

‘Pretty special’
“Where in the world would you sit down like that, with a president, and have a friendly New Zealand-type discussion, or Pacific-type discussion? It’s pretty special.”

Peters said New Zealand must place greater importance on its relationships in the region.

“We underrate the value of this. Because when we talk about the Pacific, it’s not our backyard like we used to say decades ago,” he said.

“It’s our front yard. And the sooner we understand that, the better.”

Brotherson said the historical, cultural, and genealogical ties between the two nations provided a foundation for closer cooperation.

He said collaboration could cover areas such as climate adaptation, maritime and air connectivity, digital infrastructure, and economic development.

“We have many areas of cooperation that needed to be discussed, and these were the topics that were addressed during our meeting,” he said.

Geopolitical competition
The French Polynesian leader also raised concerns about the growing geopolitical competition in the Pacific, particularly between the United States and China.

“We don’t want to align with anyone. I mean, either China or the US,” he said. “We want to be able to discuss with everyone and to have relationships, be it cultural or economic relationships with everyone.”

The Pacific has become an increasingly contested strategic region in recent years, with China expanding its economic and infrastructure partnerships with several island nations.

The United States and its allies have also increased diplomatic engagement, development funding, and security cooperation.

Climate change remains another major concern, particularly for the low-lying atolls of the Tuamotu archipelago — the world’s largest chain of coral atolls, located in French Polynesia northeast of Tahiti.

The French territory consists of 118 volcanic islands and coral atolls across five archipelagos in the South Pacific. Comprising 78 low-lying atolls (like Rangiroa and Fakarava) spread over 3.1 million sq km, this destination is renowned for its remote, pristine lagoons, world-class scuba diving, and black pearl farming

“They are facing the same issues as Tuvalu or other Pacific island nations that are at the forefront of climate change and the sea level rise,” Brotherson said.

‘Salination of water’
“What we are seeing currently is a salination of the water lentils on those atolls, rendering life very hard. It’s not impossible.

“So water management is going to be a real issue in the upcoming years related to climate change but you also have the coastal erosion that we have to tackle.”

The President of the Government of French Polynesia and the Foreign Minister of New Zealand.

pic.twitter.com/z8QeiVsagB

— Winston Peters (@NewZealandMFA) March 8, 2026

For communities on these low-lying atolls, the impacts of climate change are already being felt through declining freshwater supplies, erosion, and pressure on traditional food sources.

Brotherson also reiterated his support for greater political sovereignty for French Polynesia. He said economic development and resilience must come first.

French Polynesia enjoys a high degree of autonomy under France, which retains control over defence, currency, and aspects of foreign policy.

Brotherson said the pathway toward greater sovereignty must be gradual and carefully managed.

He added that economic resilience will be key before any move toward full independence and said the territory could achieve political sovereignty within the next 10 to 15 years.

“It’s all about interdependencies, that’s how we’re going to build independence. When it comes to strengthening our economy, you know, we still have a lot of work to do on food security, on energy transition, and then we’ll be able to be more confident as a nation.”

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

The reporting on Iran and Gaza the US-Israel war machine can’t control

Pacific Media Watch — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 18:51:35 +0000

Drop Site News

Right now, the United States and Israel are continuing their bombardment of Iran.

As the confirmed death toll climbs past 1330 and hospitals, schools, and residential neighborhoods are hit daily, the media apparatus that sold you the Iraq war and denied Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinians for the last two years is now running the same playbook.

The Atlantic is laundering Netanyahu’s reputation as a “conflict-averse” leader while he tells the world this war lets him do what he’s “yearned for” for 40 years.

Bari Weiss is tweeting fire emojis at pro-war clips, falsely suggesting Iran has nuclear weapons, and devoting journalistic resources to tracking the Instagram likes of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife.

CNN is giving unchallenged airtime to International Criminal Court (ICC)-indicted Israeli officials claiming American soldiers have an “obligation” to die for Israel.

And that’s before the cable news network is taken over by Paramount, the Weiss operation run by the nepo-son of Larry Ellison, the single largest donor to Friends of the IDF.

The BBC, meanwhile, leads with nine dead in Israel while relegating some 180 children killed by the US in a girls’ school in Minab to a footnote.

This is what the legacy media machine looks like in wartime. It has always looked like this.

And it is exactly why we launched Drop Site less than two years ago.

On the ground reporting
While Weiss and CBS were manufacturing consent for this war, Drop Site has had reporters on the ground reporting the facts.

In just the last week:

Reza Sayah reported from Tehran on a double-tap bombing that killed over 20 people at a popular square during Ramadan, connecting the tactic to US strikes in Afghanistan, and Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza.
Drop Site correspondent reported from Minab, where a missile struck a girls’ elementary school and killed 180 children, and from Lamerd, where a sports hall full of teenage girls was bombed during practice.
We were among the first outlets on the ground verifying the strike in Minab as US and Israeli propagandists sought to deny and deflect.
We have consistently obtained exclusive information from senior Iranian officials who have contradicted claims by Trump, claims that have just as consistently fallen apart under scrutiny.
We exposed the fabricated CIA narrative about “tracking Khamenei for months” to his “secret location” — his secret location was his office, and he had refused to relocate.

Republished from Drop Site News. Subscribe to this independent news service.

The smallest coffins are always the heaviest. The US-Israeli killing of children must be stopped

APR editor — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 08:50:21 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

Three more schools and a major hospital have been bombed in Iran and more in Lebanon by the US-Israeli military, all within the first week of launching their latest war.

This is a pattern, not “collateral damage”. Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations Amir-Saeid Iravani said on March 7 that the US and Israel “recognise no red line in committing their crimes” against his country.

Densely populated parts of Tehran are being pounded by wave after wave of US and Israeli bombs. Shahid Hamedani School in Tehran was struck on March 6, the day of the funerals of schoolgirls (6-12 year-olds) killed in Minab, Iran.

UN officials have confirmed that the Minab attack killed 160 children and five staff.

The Palestinians, despite the genocide inflicted on them by Israel and the West, have never become used to the daily killing of children: “The smallest coffins are always the heaviest,” Palestinians say.

Israel has killed many times more women, children and babies than they have Palestinian resistance fighters. There is even a name for this depravity — the Dahiya Doctrine.

Israel’s Dahiya Doctrine and the law of proportionality
International media are reporting that Dahiya, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, is suffering another brutal aerial bombardment from the Israelis.

Dahiya — al-Dahiya al-Janubiya — is home to 700,000 civilians living in high-density housing. The suburb lends its name to Israel’s policy of using massive, disproportionate force against civilians and infrastructure to weaken an enemy’s resolve.

It is, of course, a war crime to do so.

In the 2006 Lebanon War, Israel attacked Dahiya, a popular stronghold of the Hezbollah movement. The massive bombing campaign wasn’t to achieve a military objective; the target was civilians and civilian infrastructure.

Hundreds of children were among the dead.

I have a fabric reproduction of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica on my office wall. It has been coloured red, green black and white – the colours of the Palestinian flag — to draw the important parallel.

The governments of New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Canada and all the others, with rare noble exceptions like Spain, support this depraved criminality. We share values with the Israelis and the Americans, our leaders tell us.

The Principle of Proportionality is critical to protect children
The Americans and Israelis have a bloodlust and openly brag about their destructive abilities. Operation Epic Fury screams to the world: “war crimes”.

What should constrain US-Israeli violence is international law and the principle that there are limits to what is acceptable in “incidental” harm caused to civilians.

Proportionality is one of the foundational concepts in international law, along with other important injunctions like the prohibition of force against sovereign states. Under the Geneva Convention, before undertaking military action states are obligated to consider: Distinction (separating civilians from combatants), Proportionality, Precaution (taking care to minimise civilian harm), Military Necessity (i.e. don’t launch wars of aggression), and Humanity — prohibiting unnecessary suffering.

This is the exact opposite of the Dahiya Doctrine and the American Way of War — from Korea to Iraq by way of Vietnam. Over six million civilians were killed by the US in just those three conflicts alone.

Article 51 of the Geneva Convention
The principle of proportionality is codified in Article 51 of the Geneva Conventions, and affirmed as binding customary international law applicable to all parties in all conflicts. This is further affirmed by the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Rule 14 which states:

“Launching an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, is prohibited.”

The West has torn up its copies of international law but we need to keep its spirit alive. New Zealand, Australia and most of the “civilised world” are signatories to various treaties that require them to enforce humanitarian law upon belligerents. Instead, our countries work day and night to support Israel and the US in their evil work. Evil is the appropriate word here.

I will give the last word to the Israeli commander who led the 2006 terror bombing of Dahiya, General Gadi Eisenkot, chief of Northern Command:

“What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. We will apply disproportionate force on it (villages) and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases. This is a plan. And it has been approved.”

Eugene Doyle is a community organiser based in Wellington, publisher of Solidarity and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam war. This article was first published by Solidarity.

New Zealand ‘shameful’ over Iran stance, says Peace Movement Aotearoa

APR editor — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:15:48 +0000

Peace Movement Aotearoa

“One can oppose a hateful regime and, at the same time, oppose an unjustified and dangerous military intervention,” says Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

“I once again call for immediate de-escalation, respect for international law, and the urgency of resuming dialogue.”

While some governments around the world have easily managed to express their opposition to the unlawful military attacks by Israel and the US and their opposition to the Iranian regime, shamefully New Zealand has failed to follow their example.

Instead, the government has issued a statement that condemns only Iran; “acknowledges” the military strikes were “designed to prevent Iran from continuing to threaten international peace and security”; and calls for “adherence to international law” — apparently blissfully unaware that the attacks comprise multiple breaches of international law.

In an interview on RNZ, the PM repeatedly responded to the question “Does New Zealand support these attacks or not?” by reading out “We think Iran is evil, we think it’s been repressing its own people.

“We think it’s been arming proxies and terrorist organisations. We think it has been developing its ballistic and nuclear programmes and years of diplomacy hasn’t actually paid any fruits.”

He also said more than once that New Zealand’s position was the same as Australia’s — the Australian PM has said they “support the United States acting to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons”.

Bizarre spectre
Which, aside from ignoring the US’s stated desire for forced regime change in Iran, raises the bizarre spectre of two nuclear-armed states attacking another state in case it might develop nuclear weapons — even though Iran is a state party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (#NPT), which Israel is not, and has opened its nuclear facilities to the #IAEA, which Israel has not. Indeed, the only state in the Middle East that does have stockpiles of nuclear weapons (entirely undeclared and unsupervised) is Israel.

New Zealand’s moral failure to condemn these military strikes, but instead to continue describing the Iranian regime as “evil” or “bad actors” as though that somehow makes armed attacks on a sovereign nation to assassinate its leaders to force regime change okay — regardless of civilian casualties — shows how far it has now moved from even the pretence of applying international law to the actions of its military friends and partners.

And what a missed opportunity to point out the urgent necessity for the elimination of ALL #NuclearWeapons — so much for New Zealand’s alleged commitment to a nuclear weapons-free world, and its promotion of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons #TPNW / #NuclearBan and the NPT.

Alternative Jewish Voices: Stop this Iran catastrophe!

APR editor — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 21:06:52 +0000

Alternative Jewish Voices — Sh’ma Koleinu

We, Alternative Jewish Voices, deplore Israel and America’s illegal war of aggression against Iran. We also condemned the repression of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but that does not justify this war.

International war will only bring — is already bringing — more civilian death and destruction. We support the right of the Iranian people to determine their own future.

America and Israel again attacked Iran in mid-negotiation, three days after Iran’s Foreign Minister, Sayed Abbas Araghchi tweeted: “Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon.”

No one has offered the slightest contrary evidence.

This war of aggression violates international and US domestic law. After the Second World War, the Nuremberg Tribunal called aggression “the supreme international crime”.

We see around us the world they were trying to avert: Israel has waged genocidal war on a trapped community and bombed six countries that were not at war.

This morning, Israel is occupying parts of Lebanon. Russia has invaded and pounded Ukraine for four years. Pakistan is bombing the cities of Afghanistan. US President Donald Trump doesn’t know what to grab next.

Imperial ambitions
We regard the attack on Iran as the latest enactment of longstanding imperial ambitions. How many countries has America tried to bomb into submission? How many times did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bomb the blockaded population of Gaza before America gave him the green light and the weapons to commit outright genocide?

This week, benefiting from the distraction of Iran, Israel has yet again sealed Gaza behind a total blockade. Aid agencies are again counting the days until they again run out of food.

Netanyahu boasts on camera that this war is “what I have yearned to do for 40 years”. Beware of men who prefer the risks of war to those of peace. Chaos and civilian misery are their signatures, but we share responsibility for their impunity.

Even after the horror of livestreamed genocide in Gaza, New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon acquiesces to more war and speaks as if Trump and Netanyahu are trustworthy public officials.

Luxon’s appeasement disgraces us. We must not support this unfolding disaster, not materially and not out of the side of the Prime Minister’s mouth. We must say “No” in a bold, principled voice; joining states like Spain and Denmark.

As this fire spreads, we must also peer through the headlines and focus on the people of Iran, Gaza, Afghanistan and Lebanon. Civilians need protection, intervention and an end to the games of these warmongers.

We urge our morally vacuous government to stand with the civilians, the law and our future.

Alternative Jewish Voices – Sh’ma Koleinu is a collective of anti-Zionist Jews from the Far North to Dunedin. It has a liberatory Aotearoa Jewish identity, whether religious or secular or cultural. It is part of a movement for collective liberation, in Aotearoa and in Palestine.

US-Israel’s war of aggression – Epic Fury or Epic Screw-up?

APR editor — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 11:28:38 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

Western countries, including Australia and New Zealand, were quick to line up to support Operation Epic Fury, the US-Israeli blitzkrieg on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

They were effectively throwing international law into a cauldron of blood and mayhem. These same Western powers — and the Gulf Arab states that stand with them — may soon live to regret it.

In an article on February 21, I wrote, “A precision strike on Qatar’s Ras Laffan liquefaction trains (that purify, cool, and compress the gas), for example, would drop a bomb into the world’s gas market.”

Should the Iranian state survive the terrifying onslaught, it has vowed to strike back in ways that could crash the global economy.

Early signs point to a long war
Two early signs of their potential to do so are the closure of all the civilian airports in the Gulf and the effective closure by Iran of the Strait of Hormuz.

The first one stops the daily movement of 500,000 international passengers through Doha, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and other airports, the second cuts off the shipment of 21 million barrels of oil and gas a day (20 percent of global daily requirements).

The knock-on effects of a prolonged war are almost incalculable but as I pointed out in a recent article if Iran manages to resist the most powerful military in the world, the shockwaves will soon transfer to our own economies.

I thought that would be a measure of last resort but Iran struck the site with drones on March 3 and — should they choose — could destroy the facility entirely which would take years to rebuild.

Qatar immediately shut down Ras Laffan, the source of 20 percent of the world’s LNG. UK wholesale gas prices immediately jumped 50 percent.

Countries like Australia and New Zealand may end up on the losing end of a bidding war for oil, LNG and agricultural petrochemicals if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.

One should remember that Iran has many thousands of short range missiles and countless mines sprinkled along its coastline which will be all-but-impossible to suppress.

“One should remember that Iran has many thousands of short range missiles and countless mines sprinkled along its coastline which will be all-but-impossible to suppress.” Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

Nuclear propaganda and mischaracterisations
For the moment, the assassination of the Supreme Leader may see champagne corks popping in Western capitals but, as I warned recently, a decapitation strike could lead a furious or desperate Iran to lash out, sinking a US aircraft carrier by using their hypersonic missiles.

There is also a non-trivial risk that the US and Israel could use nuclear weapons if things go sideways.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” the US president gloated on his Truth Social.

Ironically, Ayatollah Khamenei is in reality the man who has done the most to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa (religious decree) against Iran acquiring nuclear weapons in 2003.

Along with President Masoud Pezeshkian (who campaigned successfully on a platform on lowering tensions with the US) Khamenei was the target of a barrage of missiles this weekend. One Peace President trying to kill another Peace President.

So mendacious and incoherent is the Western empire that Trump can tout the total destruction of Iran’s nuclear programme one week and the next (on February 21) his negotiator Steve Witkoff can tell the world that Iran is “one week from the bomb”. Ponder that: for the past 20 years (more than 1000 weeks) Netanyahu has been pointing at his little bomb diagram.

I am in the camp of those who say this was never about nuclear weapons and most ludicrously nothing to do with democracy. 150 dead Iranian schoolgirls is a grim testament to that.

Advancing women’s rights or imperial ambitions?
The movements in Iran for women’s rights and political pluralism will be in no way advanced by this criminal attack by states currently committing genocide in Palestine. This is a forever war against a powerful sovereign Iran that acts as a major regional player capable of being a counter-balance to a supremacist Israel and the USA.

Arab leaders appear to have had second thoughts about the benefits of destroying Iran. Last week they expressed outrage after US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said he would be fine with Israel fulfilling both its Zionist project and its biblical promise (Genesis 15:18) of taking all the land stretching from the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates, a land grab which would cover modern-day Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and parts of Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

“It would be fine if they took it all,” the US Ambassador told Tucker Carlson. Not a single administration figure took him to task for the statement which he tried unconvincingly to rewind.

We should all fear victory by the US and Israel. Violent, tyrannical and expansionist, they will see victory over Iran as a stepping stone to yet more crimes against humanity. We truly are in the throes of a Thucydidean world where the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Unilateral violence must not trump law.

Lions versus parrots
The Spanish Prime Minister slammed the US and Israeli strikes on Iran. “We reject the unilateral military action of the United States and Israel, which represents an escalation and contributes to a more uncertain and hostile international order,” Sánchez wrote on X.

This marks Spain out as a rebel against a militant West that funds and fuels genocide, destroys country after country, kidnaps and kills leaders, kills negotiators in the midst of negotiations, and is the greatest killer of civilians — women, children, men and babies — in foreign lands in all the decades since the Second World War.

Cuba, itself undergoing a brutal blockade imposed by the Trump regime, made a valuable contribution: “President Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned the attacks, calling them “a flagrant violation of International Law and the UN Charter.”

Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated: “Strict respect for the principles of international law and the UN Charter must prevail, in particular the sovereign equality of States, non-interference in their internal affairs, the prohibition of the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, and the peaceful settlement of disputes.”

The New York Times expressed surprise at the bellicose position Australia took: “Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was among the few leaders who did not publicly urge restraint.”

They quoted Albanese saying: “We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security.”

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, a Hollow Man if there ever was one, threw his copy of the UN Charter down the lavatory when he said: “We acknowledge that the actions taken overnight by the US and Israel were designed to prevent Iran from continuing to threaten international peace and security.”

Compare those two quotes. Both PMs were clearly reading from cue cards supplied by Washington. Vassals.

We are truly living through Geopolitical Epsteinism: daily violations of the weak by a predatory axis headquartered in Washington. The West are behaving like tyrants on a rampage. We must be stopped.

How a US-Israeli attack on Iran could crash UK, German, NZ and Australian economies

APR editor — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 10:29:00 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

If Israel and the US attack Iran, the cosy worlds of Europe, Australia and New Zealand could be swept up in an economic catastrophe.

Should the Iranians survive a terrifying onslaught, they have vowed to strike back in a way that could crash the global economy. How they could quite possibly do this is the topic of this article.

The leaders of the Islamic Republic — love them or hate them — know that they face an existential threat; that the continued existence of a unified state called Iran is imperilled.

They also know that the collective West will not stand up for international law and the proscription on launching wars of aggression. Under these circumstances a state will sacrifice anything to survive, including hitherto unthinkable acts like sinking the USS Abraham Lincoln, the glory of the American war machine.

All the signs are pointing to a new Shock and Awe campaign by the United States.

The goal, as it was in the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, is a fast knock-out. Mission Accomplished in a few weeks.

War, however, seldom goes entirely to plan — the Americans never expected they would spend 20 years in Afghanistan and waste trillions of dollars to move from the Taliban regime to . . . the Taliban regime.

Here is a selection of options open to the Iranians if they survive the initial onslaught.

Shut down all civilian flights for the duration of the conflict
Without firing a single missile, Iran can likely bring all flights into and out of the entire Gulf region to a shuddering halt. That’s 500,000 passengers per day.

More than 180 million passengers pass through Doha, Abu Dhabi and Dubai every year.

Simply issuing a warning that the entire Gulf region is an air combat zone will put the brakes on all major airlines, effectively severing the primary link between Europe, Asia and Australasia for as long as Iran hangs on.

Insurance companies would issue a cancel note on all policies (for airlines, passengers, airports, provisioners) for the entire region.

No airline will defy this interdiction. Would Qantas, for example, fly one of its A380s loaded with mums, dads and kids into a potential kill zone? The Iranians could underscore the seriousness by firing a couple of missiles onto runways or using EW (electronic warfare tools) to spoof or harass planes.

In an interview with @CBSNews , Iran’s FM Seyed Abbas Araghchi said uranium enrichment is Iran’s legal right under the NPT, reaffirming peaceful nuclear policy and commitment to diplomacy
More: https://t.co/XqHaDqxOfl https://t.co/3tGlg9SJKL

— Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran (@Iran_GOV) February 22, 2026

Shut down all oil and LNG shipments
Iran will likely mine the Strait of Hormuz 33 km (21 miles) wide, making it instantly uninsurable for any oil or LNG tanker to move into or out of the Gulf. Huge numbers of smart mines (that can recognise the acoustic signature of a tanker) will be deployed as well as hundreds of semi-submersible drone boats.

Spread out across the Gulf are thousands of short-range anti-ship missiles that will be virtually impossible to suppress.

With no tankers in, no tankers out from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and Iran itself, the 21 million barrels of oil and LNG that passes through the strait every day will cease instantly.

The price shock will be greater than any previous oil spike. Smaller, out of the way places, like New Zealand could find themselves starved of diesel. According to a recent New Zealand government report our agricultural sector would crater within 90 days.

Once seeded into the Gulf, the mines could take months after the war has ended to clear.

Destroy Israel’s oil rigs and storage facilities
A high-value target for Iran would be the Leviathan and Tamar gas platforms in the Mediterranean. Iran, with saturation swarms of drones used in combination with high-velocity ballistic missiles, could likely break through the defences and devastate a pillar of the Israeli energy system.

Close the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to container ships and tankers
Iran, certainly for the moment, has the strike capability to close the Suez Canal.

Western countries have yawned with indifference and not lifted an eyebrow to support the Palestinians throughout the genocide or called out the US and Israel for violent attacks that have shredded the UN Charter.

Shutting the Canal, possibly for many months, will definitely get their attention. By severing this artery, Iran and its allies would transfer the shock wave of the war directly to the doorsteps of Western consumers and industry.

Combined, the Houthis and Iran have an arsenal of low-cost loitering munitions, anti-ship ballistic missiles and kamikaze boats that can enforce a blockade.

As with the Gulf’s airspace, simply by declaring a Maritime Exclusion Zone across the Red Sea, the Suez Canal route becomes uninsurable for the duration of the conflict, thereby forcing the re-routing of ships around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.

This adds two weeks to cargo shipments, ties up about 12 percent of global freight ships, harms modern just-in-time supply chains and spikes prices for countless products.

Attack Azerbaijan’s oil infrastructure
Very little attention has been paid to Azerbaijan and yet it could play a pivotal role in the denouement of the upcoming calamity. Azerbaijan, with Iran to the south and the Caspian Sea to the east, is a US-Israeli ally. It supplies Israel with 40 percent of its oil imports via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.

If Azerbaijan were to allow US or Israeli planes or militias to launch attacks from its territory, the Iranians might respond by destroying the pipeline and related oil facilities.

Destroy Qatar’s LNG facilities
After the US and EU largely cut off access to cheap Russian oil and gas, countries in Europe became heavily dependent on US and Qatari LNG.

This creates a vulnerability that the Iranians can use to devastating effect. A precision strike on Qatar’s Ras Laffan liquefaction trains (that purify, cool, and compress the gas), for example, would drop a bomb into the world’s gas market.

Iran has invested heavily in improving relations with its Arab neighbours; this would be a measure of last resort. Qatar’s Al Udeid is, however, the largest US military base in the Middle East and the country has more than 10,000 US troops based there.

Any use of force emanating from Qatar would open Pandora’s box.

Destroy Saudi and other oil facilities
Iran and Saudi Arabia have invested a lot of energy in restoring relations since the US assassinated General Qassem Soleimani in 2020 as he was reportedly en route to meet the Saudis in Baghdad to advance peace talks (ultimately successfully facilitated in 2023 by China).

Iran will hold off attacking Saudi facilities directly but will do so if there is any attempt to break Iran’s blockade or should the Saudis allow US forces to launch attacks from their territory.

Destroy the Gulf’s fertiliser storage facilities
This would also be a strategy of last resort and risk a renewal of hostility between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Desperate people, however, do desperate things.

The Kingdom is the world’s second-largest exporter of phosphate fertilisers, providing roughly 20 percent of the global supply (and approximately 63 percent of New Zealand’s urea imports). Without necessarily knowing its origin, many Australian and New Zealand farms depend on this resource for food production.

Sink the USS Abraham Lincoln or other major ships
The US President may launch his war of aggression against Iran, for example, with a decapitation strike on the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Who should be held accountable if the USS Abraham Lincoln — the most heavily protected vessel in human history — with up to 6000 US servicemen aboard, with a nuclear reactor on board, bristling with some 90 aircraft and hundreds of different types of missiles, was sent to the bottom of the sea by a salvo of Iranian hypersonic missiles travelling at Mach 8 (about 10,000km per hour)?

According to international law, that would be Donald J Trump, the Nobel Peace Prize aspirant. How would Wall Street react?

Send thousands of missiles into Israel to devastate the economy
In 2025, we learnt that Iran, using its older missiles and a swarm of drones, could turn the Iron Dome into the Iron Sieve.

Have the Israelis been able to acquire sufficient air defence interceptors to stop what could be a blizzard of thousands of missiles and drones aimed at the key infrastructure of the Israeli economy?

Probably not. Will Iran be able to deploy them? Who knows.

Support from Iranian allies in the region
Will the powerful Iraqi Shia militias rise to support Iran and make life untenable for the Americans and other Western interests in Iraq? How will Ansar Allah (the Houthis) respond? Will Hezbollah risk joining the attack?

In truth, none of us know what will happen nor what the Iranians will be willing or able to do after an attack. Time and American violence will provide the answer.

Eugene Doyle is a community organiser based in Wellington, publisher of Solidarity and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam war.

Caitlin Johnstone: More shockingly honest confessions from the Empire managers

APR editor — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 09:35:11 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

US Empire managers have been making some surprisingly honest admissions in recent days, with Senator Lindsey Graham saying the wars of the future are being planned in Israel and Secretary of State Marco Rubio calling for a return to old-school Western colonialism.

During a Monday press conference in Tel Aviv after a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Graham said that “I’ve been coming here every two weeks whether I need to or not.”

Why is a South Carolina senator traveling to Israel every two weeks, rain or shine? The bloodthirsty warmonger answers this question in short order.

LISTEN: A reading by Tim Foley

“The wars of the future are being planned here in Israel,” Graham said. “Because if you’re not one step ahead of the enemy, you suffer. The most clever, creative military forces on the planet are here in Israel.”

Sometimes, Senator Graham just puts it out in the plainest language:

“The wars of the future are being planned here in Israel.” pic.twitter.com/hs4MQGBK3n

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) February 16, 2026

Graham salivated about the possibility of a US war with Iran, acknowledging that such a war could absolutely result in American troops in the region being struck by Iranian missiles but saying the US should go to war anyway.

“Could our soldiers be hit in the region? Absolutely, they could. Can Iran respond if we have an all-out attack? Absolutely, they can,” Graham said, arguing that “the risk associated with that is far less than the risk associated with blinking and pulling the plug and not helping the people as you promised.”

During a speech at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio took the mask all the way off in an unsettling rant about the need to return to the good old days when Western powers dominated the Global South without pretence or apology.

“For five centuries, before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding — its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe,” Rubio said.

“But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting. Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an Iron Curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow. The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.”

This is insane.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio just gave one of the most explicitly pro-colonialist speeches I have seen in the 21st century.

The US empire wants Europe to help it recolonize the Global South.

Rubio praised Western colonialists for “settl[ing] new… pic.twitter.com/tl4NojNdmP

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 15, 2026

Rubio, a notoriously anti-communist gusano, is here admitting that socialism played a leading role in pushing back against the abusive colonialism and empire-building of the Western world in recent decades. A normal person would take this as a strong argument in favour of socialism, but Rubio says it like it’s a bad thing.

Rubio urged Europeans to join their white Christian brethren in the United States in re-conquering the brown-skinned communists and heathens who have been insisting upon their own sovereignty and the advancement of their own interests:

“Under President Trump, the United States of America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past.

“And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe.

“For the United States and Europe, we belong together. America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots began here on this continent long before. The man who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new.

“We are part of one civilisation — Western civilisation. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilisation to which we have fallen heir.”

MARCO RUBIO CALLS FOR RETURN OF COLONIALISM

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave one of the most overtly colonial speeches at the Munich Security Conference in Germany on Saturday, 14th February, where he reminisced about 500 years of Western colonialism and how it expanded to… pic.twitter.com/uZqC5Y4pwS

— Sovereign Media (@sov_media) February 16, 2026

It takes a special kind of psychopath to look back with fondness upon five centuries of unchecked Western colonialism and imperialism and then advocate a return to those horrific days. Mass genocides across entire continents. The African slave trade. The violent subjugation and enslavement of entire populations.

That is what Rubio is looking back on and sighing with nostalgia.

And this is of course to say nothing of the savagery his beloved “Western civilisation” is perpetrating in the present day. This is the civilisation of the Gaza holocaust. The civilisation that cannot exist without constant war, exploitation and extraction. The civilisation that is presently strangling Cuba to death and preparing for war with Iran. The civilisation that still to this day violently subjugates and robs the Global South. The civilisation of ecocide. The civilisation of Epstein.

Western civilisation is the most depraved and abusive civilisation that has ever existed. It doesn’t need a return to its prime, it needs to be stopped in its tracks and made healthy. This is obvious from a glance at the deranged empire managers this civilisation has been elevating to positions of leadership.

US designates two Micronesian leaders over corruption allegations

APR editor — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 05:00:44 +0000

RNZ Pacific

The United States has designated two high-profile public office holders from Palau and the Marshall Islands for “significant corruption”, the US Department of State says.

Palau’s Senate president Hokkons Baules has been designated “for his involvement in significant corruption on behalf of China-based actors,” while the former mayor of the Kili/Bikini/Ejit community in the Marshall Islands Anderson Jibas has been designated “for his involvement in significant corruption and misappropriation of US provided funds during his time in public office”, the department said in a news release.

The designations render Baules, Jibas, and their immediate family members ineligible for entry into the US.

According to the State Department, Baules abused his public position by accepting bribes in exchange for providing advocacy and support for government, business, and criminal interests from China.

“His actions constituted significant corruption and adversely affected US interests in Palau.”

Baules has dismissed the allegations, telling news media last April he was the target of a smear campaign aimed at ruining his name.

The department said Jibas abused his public position “by orchestrating and financially benefiting from multiple misappropriation schemes involving theft, misuse, and abuse of funds from the US-provided Bikini Resettlement Trust”.

Stolen funds
It added Jibas’ actions resulted in most of the funds being stolen from the Kili/Bikini/Ejit people who are survivors and descendants of survivors of nuclear bomb testing in the 1940s and 1950s.

“The theft, misuse, and abuse of the US-provided money for the fund wasted US taxpayer money and contributed to a loss of jobs, food insecurity, migration to the United States, and lack of reliable electricity for the Kili/Bikini/Ejit people.

“The lack of accountability for Jibas’ acts of corruption has eroded public trust in the government of the Marshall Islands, creating an opportunity for malign foreign influence from China and others.”

US laws allow the government to name foreign nationals and their close family if there is strong evidence they were involved in serious corruption or human rights violations.

The designations come at a time of intense strategic competition between the US and China over influence in the Pacific.

Both Palau and the Marshall Islands have Compacts of Free Association (COFA) with the US, which grant the US exclusive military access in exchange for economic aid.

“The United States will continue to promote accountability for those who abuse public power for personal gain and steal from our citizens to enrich themselves. These designations reaffirm the United States’ commitment to countering global corruption affecting US interests,” the State Department said.

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

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post guts staff in news cover ‘bloodbath’

Pacific Media Watch — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 23:00:43 +0000

The New Arab

The Washington Post, owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, began widespread layoffs this week that will drastically shrink the size of the storied newspaper and affect all departments, according to a recording of a company-wide call shared with Reuters.

The cuts will impact a third of all employees, according to the newspaper’s spokesperson.

The newsroom is losing “hundreds” of staffers, according to a spokesperson for the Washington-Baltimore News Guild union, which represents Post employees.

Executive editor Matt Murray informed the staff of the reductions, which will impact on the international, editing, metro and sports desks, and come just days after the newspaper, founded in 1877, scaled back its coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics amid mounting financial losses.

“For too long, we’ve operated with a structure that’s too rooted in the days when we were a quasi-monopoly local newspaper,” Murray said on the call, adding that “we need a new way forward and a sounder foundation.”

The Washington Post is undergoing wrenching changes to its readership and revenue. Other large city daily newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times, are struggling as consumers turn to social media for their main source of news.

One Post reporter, speaking on condition of anonymity, called the newly announced layoffs a “bloodbath”.

The impacted journalists include Amazon beat reporter Caroline O’Donovan, Cairo Bureau chief Claire Parker and the rest of the Post’s Middle East correspondents and editors, according to X posts from O’Donovan and Parker.

“The Washington Post is taking a number of difficult but decisive actions today for our future, in what amounts to a significant restructuring across the company,” the Post said in a statement.

“These steps are designed to strengthen our footing and sharpen our focus on delivering the distinctive journalism that sets The Post apart and, most importantly, engages our customers.”

Bezos bought the newspaper in 2013 for $250 million from the Graham family.

All departments impacted
News outlets have struggled for years to maintain a sustainable business model after the internet upended the economics of journalism.

The Washington Post last year made changes across several business functions and announced job cuts, saying then that the reductions would not impact on its newsroom. The newspaper had offered voluntary separation packages to employees across all functions in 2023 amid losses of $100 million.

Its 2025 paid average daily circulation was 97,000 in a city of more than 700,000 people, with roughly 160,000 on Sundays, representing a steep decline from its 250,000 average daily circulation in 2020, according to data from the Alliance for Audited Media.

“If Jeff Bezos is no longer willing to invest in the mission that has defined this paper for generations and serve the millions who depend on Post journalism, then The Post deserves a steward that will,” the Washington Post Guild, another union that represents Post employees, said on X.

The Post’s White House staff said in a letter to Bezos last month that their most impactful coverage depended heavily on collaboration with teams at risk of job cuts and that a diversified newsroom was essential when the paper faced financial challenges.

Murray said on last Wednesday’s call that all Post departments are impacted on by the cuts.

‘Politics remains largest desk’
“Politics and government will remain our largest desk and will remain central to our engagement and subscriber growth,” Murray said.

Bezos said at the time he bought the Post that he would preserve its journalistic tradition and would not lead its day-to-day operations.

But there “will, of course, be change” over the coming years, Bezos added.

Don Graham, the publisher of the paper between 1979 and 2000 and son of the late legendary Post publisher Katharine Graham, posted on Facebook about the layoffs:

“I am sad that so many excellent reporters and editors — and old friends — are losing their jobs. My first concern is for them; I will do anything I can to help.

“I will have to learn a new way to read the paper, since I have started with the sports page since the late 1940s,” Graham said.

Clashes with journalists
In recent years, The Post has clashed with some of its journalists, who have openly criticised Bezos after the newspaper decided not to endorse a candidate in the November 2024 US presidential election, leading to more than 200,000 people cancelling their digital subscriptions.

The newspaper, which appointed William Lewis as its CEO in early 2024, also revamped its opinion section last year, shifting its focus to “personal liberties and free markets.”

Bezos was among the several tech executives seen as making overtures to US President Donald Trump last year. Bezos was seated prominently at Trump’s inauguration, underscoring his shifting ties.

Trump was a critic of Bezos during his first term in office over what the Republican president called unfair coverage by The Post. Trump praised the tech billionaire in March 2025, saying Bezos was doing “a real job” with the publication.

FBI agents searched a Post reporter’s home on January 14 as part of an investigation into sharing secret government information, in a move that press advocates said threatened journalistic freedom.

“Today’s layoffs at The Washington Post are a devastating setback for the scores of individual journalists affected and for the journalism profession,” National Press Club president Mark Schoeff Jr. said in a statement.

Pacific Media Watch reports that critics, including the Al Jazeera Journalism Review, have condemned The Washington Post’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly regarding Gaza, exhibits a significant pro-Israel bias, structural linguistic imbalances, and the disproportionate omission of Palestinian perspectives.

Republished from The New Arab.

New Zealand holds out hope for halted PNG electrification aid project

APR editor — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 18:58:52 +0000

By Johnny Blades, RNZ Pacific bulletin editor

The New Zealand government says it hopes an electrification aid project that was halted in Papua New Guinea can still be completed if security improves.

Work on the Enga Electrification Project in PNG’s Enga province has stopped due to ongoing violence around the project area in Tsak Valley.

New Zealand spent NZ$6.7 million over the last six years on the project which aimed to connect at least 4000 households to electricity.

READ MORE: NZ pulls plug on $6.7m power project in Papua New Guinea amid tribal violence

It was part of combined efforts with the US, Australia and Japan to help 70 percent of PNG homes get connected by 2030, as agreed to in 208 when PNG hosted the APEC Leaders Summit.

However, contractors had to be withdrawn from the area after a surge in tribal fighting in August last year, according to a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

“Ending New Zealand’s involvement is a disappointing outcome, particularly given New Zealand’s longstanding and extensive efforts to deliver energy infrastructure in Enga Province,” the spokesperson said.

“New Zealand is working on a transition plan with partners in Papua New Guinea. It is hoped this will allow for the successful completion of the project if security improves.”

Northern lines installed
The ministry said 13.5 KM of distribution lines in the North of the project area were largely installed but were yet to be commissioned or connected to houses.

It said 12km of distribution lines in the south of the project area remained at various stages of construction.

Meanwhile, PNG’s Foreign Minster Justin Tkatchenko told local media that New Zealand would hand over equipment from the project to PNG Power Limited, a state-owned entity.

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

PNG Power office, Southern Highlands, Papua New Guinea. Image: Johnny Blades/RNZ

The IDF in West Bank, the US in Afghanistan, or ICE? Take your pick

Pacific Media Watch — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 05:00:17 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Viet Thanh Nguyen

Is this the IDF in Gaza or the West Bank, or the US military in Afghanistan or Iraq, or ICE in Minneapolis?

The answer is that this is ICE in Minneapolis.

But the fact that it’s hard to tell whether it’s the IDF or the US Army or ICE is the whole story.

Both the United States and Israel are imperialist and settler colonial projects which support each other.

The United States spends trillions to be a hegemonic power and tests its weapons in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. It also sends billions of dollars in aid and military equipment to Israel to suppress Palestinians and to be an outpost of Western empire in Southwest Asia.

Israel develops cutting edge surveillance technology and repressive tactics used against Palestinians that are then exported back to the United States and to many other countries.

The tactics of occupation and the blurring of lines between the military and the police in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine are all reflected in the appearance, weapons, and tactics of ICE.

And let’s not forget: Israel is still engaged in kidnapping, imprisoning, torturing, detaining, killing, and expelling Palestinians during the so-called Gaza ceasefire.

At least 477 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since the ceasefire was declared on October 10, and the total death toll since the war on Gaza began in October 2023 is more than 71,000, mostly women and children.

Both US President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — wanted on an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant for crimes against humanity — and their far right supporters are intent on ethnic cleansing and terrorising whoever remains.

Pacific delegates warn against US fast-tracking seabed mining

APR editor — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 01:10:45 +0000

By Mark Rabago, RNZ Pacific Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas correspondent

Pacific delegates in the United States Congress are warning efforts to fast-track deep-seabed mining could sideline island communities and cause irreversible damage to fragile ocean ecosystems.

The concerns were raised at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing in Washington last week, held a day after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) finalised new rules streamlining permits for seabed mining.

The changes allow companies to apply for exploration and potential commercial recovery through a single process, replacing regulations dating back to the 1980s.

READ MORE: Other deep-sea mining reports

NOAA says the update reflects advances in deep-sea science and technology and does not weaken environmental safeguards.

But Guam Delegate James Moylan said decisions made in Washington had real and lasting consequences in the Pacific.

“The ocean is how we live. It feeds our families, holds our history, and connects our people to generations before us,” Moylan said.

American Samoa Delegate Aumua Amata Radewagen warned seabed mining could threaten fisheries, which she described as the lifeblood of island economies.

Northern Marianas Delegate Kimberlyn King-Hinds said Pacific territories “don’t get the luxury of being wrong” on ocean policy, warning that damage to the seabed would be permanent.

Industry representatives told lawmakers the streamlined process would provide certainty without weakening environmental reviews, while scientists warned deep-sea ecosystems could take decades to recover, if at all.

For Pacific delegates, the message was clear — faster permitting must not come at the expense of island voices or ocean protection.

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

Chris Hedges: We sowed the wind, now we will reap the whirlwind

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 09:56:56 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Chris Hedges

The murders of unarmed civilians on the streets of Minneapolis, including the killing of the intensive-care nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti, would not come as a shock to Iraqis in Fallujah or Afghans in Helmand province.

They were terrorised by heavily armed American execution squads for decades.

It would not come as a shock to any of the students I teach in prison. Militarised police in poor urban neighborhoods kick down doors without warrants and kill with the same impunity and lack of accountability.

What the rest of us are facing now, is what Aimé Césaire called “imperial boomerang”.

Empires, when they decay, employ the savage forms of control on those they subjugate abroad, or those demonized by the wider society in the name of law and order, on the homeland.

The tyranny Athens imposed on others, Thucydides noted, it finally, with the collapse of Athenian democracy, imposed on itself.

But before we became the victims of state terror, we were accomplices. Before we expressed moral outrage at the indiscriminate taking of innocent lives, we tolerated, and often celebrated, the same Gestapo tactics, as long as they were directed at those who lived in the nations we occupied or poor people of colour.

We sowed the wind, now we will reap the whirlwind. The machinery of terror, perfected on those we abandoned and betrayed, including the Palestinians in Gaza, is ready for us.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He is the host of show “The Chris Hedges Report”. This commentary was first published on the Chris Hedges Substack page and is republished with permission.

The Chris Hedges Report

Eugene Doyle: Mark Carney’s moment – a new non-aligned movement?

APR editor — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 22:30:47 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a speech at Davos this week that signals there may still be a leader in the West worth following.

“Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” he warned.

The Canadian PM was brutally honest about Western conduct in the world but shone a bright light on a better path forward.

READ MORE: ‘The end of the world as we know it’: Is the rules-based order finished?

At a time when the US has pivoted to a smash-and-grab deployment of hard power that now extends to its closest allies, Carney stepped up.

The speech wasn’t a rhetorical tour de force; it was better than that: it was a declaration by the leader of a major, middle ranked Western power that the snivelling compliance, the fawning and the keep-your-head-down approach that has typified the collective West’s response to Trumpism is at a strategic dead end.

We are at a moment which Carney defines as “a rupture in the world order”.

Nostalgia is not a strategy
“We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy,” Carney said.

At a time when the US is led by a criminal toddler who can’t stop whining about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize even as he attacks country after country, it is refreshing to encounter a leader who thinks and speaks like a statesman of the first rank.

“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.

“But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited,” Carney said.

A modern non-aligned movement
Carney did not reference the Non-Aligned Movement formed at the Belgrade Conference in September 1961 but it leapt to my mind when I heard him say:

“In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: compete with each other for favour or to combine to create a third path with impact.”

Carney also reaffirms the importance of the institutions that the West itself, including Canada, has severely weakened in recent years — WTO, UN and COP to name three. Russia, with its invasion of Ukraine, comes in a distant second in this regard.

With an assertive, aggressive US hell-bent on getting whatever it wants, Carney looks on the times we have entered with much-needed clarity. His call is for an alliance of middle powers.

In a word: collectivism.

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and what Carney is proposing have similarities, particularly structurally, but also significant differences, particularly ideologically.

Not least Carney is a reformer and not at heart an anti-imperialist. He is the former head of both the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada and will not be seen in a Che Guevara t-shirt any time soon.

As with the NAM, however, Carney advocates collective leverage, resistance to client-state dependency and using internationalism to resist divide-and-rule by great powers.

“When we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It’s the ‘performance’ of sovereignty while accepting subordination.”

The giants who formed the Non-Aligned movement were Josip Broz Tito (Yugoslavia), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Jawaharlal Nehru (India), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), and Sukarno (Indonesia). They gathered nations around the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence”: mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference, equality and mutual benefit, peaceful coexistence.

In a nutshell: the polar opposite of the Western Rules-Based Order. Carney’s speech echoed many of the same sentiments.

“The powerful have their power. But we have something too — the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.

“And it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.”

Brilliant. But converting a speech into a movement that mobilises countries in an effective way requires commitment and resources we need to see emerge at pace.

In the 1960s and 70s, it was about small and middle powers navigating a course between two superpower blocs — a passage between Scylla (Soviet Union) and Charybdis (United States). Today we all must navigate the rough and rowdy world of the US, China and a resurgent Russia.

Canada’s astonishing resistance to the Empire
What is astonishing is that this time around, the impulse to rally together comes not from a socialist country like the former Yugoslavia or a “black Third World country” (in 1960s parlance) like Tanzania, but from the beating heart of the white-dominated Western world – from Canada, one of the capitals of the Western empire. My, how times have suddenly changed.

This should act as shock therapy to somnolent countries like Australia and New Zealand who cleave to a past that no longer exists. Carney has shown the power of looking at the world through untinted lenses (though Macron did look pretty cool in Davos in his blue sunnies).

A rare moment of honesty about Western conduct
I don’t recall a Western leader being so open about the ear-splitting hypocrisy and double-dealing of the West. Most impressively, Carney gives a clear signal of what needs to be done to survive in this world of jostling hegemons.

More submissive leaders like Christopher Luxon of New Zealand and Australia’s Anthony Albanese should take careful note because, as Carney says, we are at a turning point in the world.

Carney, who previously mumbled his way through issues like Venezuela and Gaza, made a valuable contribution to confronting the desolation of reality:

“First it means naming reality. Stop invoking ‘rules-based international order’ as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.”

In time, this may open the door to Truth and Reconciliation. The genocide in Gaza is an example par excellence of the falsity of the rules-based order; Venezuela’s recent rape by the Americans, greeted with shuffling indifference by the West, traduced international law. The lawless bombing of Iran, the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Yemeni civilians in a blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia and armed by the US and UK are just a few of many such examples.

“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim,” Carney said.

Noting the standing ovation Carney received, the threat to Greenland has clearly acted on the Western countries as a shock therapy that the Gaza genocide, the bombing of Iran and the attack on Venezuela failed to deliver.

Carney stands on the shoulders of giants
I would point out that former leaders like prime minister Helen Clark of New Zealand have been arguing along these lines for years, advocating, for example, for a nuclear free Pacific and recommending “that we always pursue dialogue and engagement over confrontation.”

Warning that Trump was too unstable to be relied on, she told a conference in 2025 that New Zealand “should join forces with other countries across regions who want to be coalitions for action around these issues, not just little Western clubs.”

I’ll give the last word to the late Julius Nyerere, first President of Tanzania, from a 1970 speech to the Non-Aligned Movement. It expresses a worldview in accord with Carney’s speech but which is the polar opposite of 500 years of Western conduct from Christopher Columbus to Donald Trump:

“By non-alignment we are saying to the Big Powers that we also belong to this planet. We are asserting the right of small, or militarily weaker, nations to determine their own policies in their own interests, and to have an influence on world affairs which accords with the right of all peoples to live on earth as human beings equal with other human beings.

“And we are asserting the right of all peoples to freedom and self-determination; therefore expressing an outright opposition to colonialism and international domination of one people by another.”

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region, and he contributes to Asia Pacific Report. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

Eugene Doyle: Look where appeasing a bully has led the West – Greenland, and then?

APR editor — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 10:15:45 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

Donald Trump is a classic example of why you don’t let bullies prosper. “Trump is cutting the last threads of the tattered cloth of ‘the rules-based international order’ — the self-serving system that touted international law as long as it didn’t apply to the US and its allies.

The Canadians, the Danes, the Panamanians and the rest of us should wake up to reality and see we are objects, we are mere “things” to the Americans, not allies with some deeply shared “values”.

I wrote that in January 2025 in this article that I reproduce today. It provides a useful backgrounder, including historical precendents, to help us navigate through the times we are living through right now.

What do Panama, Canada and Greenland have in common? Could Trump be getting the US back to brass tacks, to a core strategy of dominating the Western hemisphere? Possibly, and he may be blowing away the fraudulent rhetoric about rules-based international order, territorial integrity, international law and the crusade to expand democracies.

Trump said this week that the US is prepared to use military force to assert control over Panama and Greenland.

“We need Greenland for national security purposes. People don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it but even if they do they should give it up because I’m talking about protecting the free world,” Trump said.

The world’s largest island is bigger than France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, and Belgium combined. It’s literally bigger than Texas (300 percent bigger) — and the US wants it.

“The US may pose a greater risk to the territorial integrity of the European Union than the Russians do. If they get antsy with the US, Trump will ‘tariff them’. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

A greater risk
Think about that. The US may pose a greater risk to the territorial integrity of the European Union than the Russians do. If they get antsy with the US, Trump will “tariff them”.

The Danes, like the rest of Europe, are frightened of the US. In response to Trump’s Greenland gambit, Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen timidly said this week that Denmark was “open to a dialogue with the Americans on how we can cooperate, possibly even more closely than we already do, to ensure that American ambitions are fulfilled”.

To ensure American ambitions are fulfilled. And this was the country that gave us the Vikings. If Ragnar Lodbrok, Eric Bloodaxe or Bjorn Ironside had been around when Donald Trump Junior swooped into Nuuk for his photo op, his skull would have been used as a drinking tankard for a blót sumbl feast that same evening.

Top independent strategists have for years despaired of the strategic brainlessness of US foreign policy — the Midas Touch in reverse, as Professor Mearsheimer calls it. Wherever they went — from Vietnam to Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Gaza — Americans embroiled themselves in conflicts of little strategic worth and left behind piles of bodies, millions of implacable enemies and a litany of failures.

President Trump . . . His rough woo-ing of Canada to become the 51st state, and his threat to use military force to seize both Greenland and the Canal, speak to a back-to-basics focus for American imperialism. Image: RSF

Trump’s rough woo-ing of Canada to become the 51st state, and his threat to use military force to seize both Greenland and the Canal, speak to a back-to-basics focus for American imperialism — a shift in US policy that will bring it closer to its core strategic interests.

That’s quite appropriate for a man who counts President Teddy Roosevelt (1901-09) as a role model. There is a whiff of the Rough Rider (Roosevelt’s cavalry which kicked over the Spaniards in Cuba in 1898) about Trump’s recent utterances.

Outside the American Museum of Natural History in New York you could see a magnificent statue of Teddy Roosevelt, cowboy kerchief around his neck, six-shooter hanging off his hip, astride a proud steed with two bare-chested Noble Savages — an African and an American Indian — walking on either side of the Great White Man.

Punkish metal spikes
I particularly like the slightly punkish metal spikes sticking out of his hair to stop birds crapping on his head. After 82 years, the City finally woke up to the fact that this was a racist, colonialist trope and took the statue down in 2021.

It is ironic that just four years after doing so an even bigger monument to Roosevelt is going up: Trump redux is lifting entire passages out of the Roosevelt playbook.

Roosevelt greatly increased the influence and interests of the United States, building on the recent seizures of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawai’i, Cuba and Guam. He wanted to Make America Great and to do so he would,”speak softly and carry a big stick”.

Big stick diplomacy – the willingness to use the military – was increasingly unleashed to assert US hegemony and business interests.

General Smedley D Butler, author of War is a Racket, spent his entire 33-year career (1898-1931) enforcing the rules as defined by Theodore Roosevelt and his successors. Smedley eventually realised he was fighting as “a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”

Like thousands of Marines he fought for the US in countries up and down the Americas, Caribbean and Asia, including Cuba (1898), Venezuela, Panama, Dominican Republic, Mexico, the Philippines, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and China.

President Roosevelt’s greatest legacy was the building of the Panama Canal. The US intervened militarily in Panama to drive out the Colombians and “liberate” Panama so the US could build the Canal.

‘Literally as one man’
He said that the people of Panama rebelled against Colombia “literally as one man” — to which a senator retorted, “Yes, and the one man was Roosevelt!”

Is history repeating itself – as tragedy or comedy? Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

Is history repeating itself — as tragedy or comedy? If Trump’s threats all sound either nuts or 19th century it’s because it is both those things — which doesn’t mean they won’t happen.

Here’s where it gets interesting. I think Trump has a very good point for a number of reasons (clue: none of them relate to international law or respect for the sovereignty of nations).

Greenland has a ton of energy, fishing and mineral resources the Americans would love to lay their hands on. The Arctic maritime routes are slowly opening and if you look at a map of the Arctic you’ll realise the USA has very little real estate, to use Trumpspeak, up there and Russia has a vast amount.

The third reason is equally important: incorporating Canada and Greenland into the US would give the country an enormous boost at a time when it is slipping behind China in all critical areas.

According to the IMF, the Chinese have already overtaken the US in share of global GDP based on purchasing power parity (19-15 percent). By 2035 this gap will likely explode out to 25 percent to 14 percent in Beijing’s favour.

How should the US respond? Its current China containment strategy of sanctions, tariffs and threats are failing as China’s manufacturing and tech sectors greatly outperform the US.

Losing its proxy war
Military planners say the US would almost certainly lose a conventional war against China over Taiwan; the US is already losing its proxy war in Ukraine. A course correction seems inevitable.

Trump is cutting the last threads of the tattered cloth of “the rules-based international order” — the self-serving system that touted international law as long as it didn’t apply to the US and its allies.

The Canadians, the Danes, the Panamanians and the rest of us should wake up to reality and see we are “objects”, we are mere things to the Americans, not allies with some deeply shared “values”.

Trump is refreshingly candid: he wants stuff and he’s prepared to dispense with the preachy posturing that we got with Blinken and Biden. America is not your friend.

This article was first published at Solidarity on 11 January 2025 under the title “A man, a plan, a canal: Trump might be on to something”.

One year into Trump’s second term – repressive US president on track to join world’s worst press freedom predators

Pacific Media Watch — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:37:26 +0000

Reporters Without Borders

After winning re-election in 2024, Donald Trump promised to be a dictator “on day one”.

When it comes to press freedom, he has kept his word, extending the war on the press he launched while running for his first term with grave attacks on access to reliable information worldwide.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which monitors “press freedom predators” worldwide, has compiled a timeline of his administration’s assaults on the media in the past year and warns that he risks sinking to the levels of authoritarian regimes.

President Trump’s hostility towards the media predates his return to the White House in 2025. For the past 10 years, he has labelled journalists and media outlets he disagrees with as “the enemy of the people” and “fake news”.

His attacks coincide with a broader decline in the news media’s public esteem: according to Gallup, only 28 percent of Americans have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the media.

In his second term in office, though, Trump has matched his history of violent rhetoric with a series of concrete actions that have severely damaged freedom of the press in the United States and around the world.

In the past 12 months, he has censored government data, dismantled America’s public broadcasters, weaponised independent government agencies to punish media that criticise his actions, halted aid funding for media freedom internationally, sued disfavored outlets, applied pressure to install cronies to lead others, and more

These actions echo the anti-press measures of the ruthless dictators in the “political” category of the 2025 Press Freedom Predators List, such as President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Similar alarming levels
RSF is concerned that Trump’s increasingly authoritarian tactics could eventually descend to similarly alarming levels.

The Press Freedom Predators List exposes systemic attempts to silence the free press by highlighting actors who wield an outsized, harmful influence on press freedom in five categories: political, security, legal, economic and social.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr has already made the 2025 list in the “legal” category, while Trump-aligned tech mogul Elon Musk was featured in the “economic” category.

“It’s easy for Donald Trump’s individual attacks on our press freedom to wash away into the constant churn of the news cycle,” said Clayton Weimers, executive director, RSF North America.

But put them all together and one conclusion is unavoidable: the US president is waging an all-out war on press freedom and journalism. Trump is a press freedom predator.

“Any coverage, journalist, or outlet that displeases him becomes a target, and not just with empty threats. He and his administration have gone out of their way to punish, investigate, damage, defund, and castigate the independent news media.

“Trump’s war on press freedom has dramatic consequences for American democracy and trustworthy news coverage worldwide, and needs to be stopped.”

January: the explosive start to Trump’s second term
January 7 – In an early example of a company prematurely complying with Trump’s threats, Meta guts its fact-checking programme. CEO Mark Zuckerberg and several other Big Tech executives attend Trump’s inauguration soon thereafter.

January 20 – Trump issues an executive order “ending federal censorship,” effectively eliminating government monitoring of misinformation and disinformation.

January 22 – FCC Chairman Brendan Carr reinstates previously dismissed licensing complaints against three major US television broadcasters, ABC, CBS, and NBC,for their 2024 election coverage, but declines to reinstate a similar complaint against Trump-friendly cable outlet Fox News.

January 29 – Carr launches a full investigation into public media networks PBS and NPR, complementing political efforts to cut their federal funding.

January 24 – Trump freezes almost all foreign aid, dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and cutting more than $268 million allocated by Congress to support media freedom worldwide. Independent news outlets around the world are thrown into chaos.

February: sanctions and censorship
February 3 – The Trump administration takes down thousands of US government pages covering information ranging from vaccines to climate change.

February 6 – Trump issues sanctions against International Criminal Court officials in retaliation for their investigation into war crimes committed by Israeli forces in Gaza, including attacks against hundreds of journalists.

February 8 – Trump demands a $20 billion settlement from CBS over the network’s editing of an interview with his election opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris.

February 11 – The White House bars Associated Press reporters from covering White House events in retaliation for their refusal to adopt Trump’s preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico.

February 21 – The Trump administration lays off workers responsible for handling FOIA requests for information, creating barriers for reporters’ access to vital data.

February 25 – The White House announces major changes to the White House press pool and declares it will be choosing who is allowed to attend press briefings.

March: US public broadcasters gutted
March 14 – Trump issues a decree dismantling the US Agency for Global Media, which oversees the allocation of funds to US public broadcasters Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), the Middle East Broadcast Networks (MBN), Radio and Television Marti, and Radio Free Asia (RFA). RSF soon files a lawsuit to save VOA.

March 14 – Trump baselessly accuses the news media of “illegal behavior” in a speech widely seen as encouraging the Department of Justice to target Trump’s perceived enemies in the media.

March 15 – The Trump administration places all Voice of America (VOA) personnel on administrative leave, stopping virtually all news production.

April: more cuts to public media
April 13 – Trump begins to punish law firms taking pro bonowork he doesn’t agree with, including the protection of journalists.

April 15 – The Trump administration announces that it plans to cut funding for NPR and PBS.

April 25 – The Justice Department rescinds a policy that prevented reporters’ phone records from being searched.

May: Pentagon access limited
May 13 – All wire service reporters are barred from Air Force One during Trump’s trip to the Middle East.

May 15 – Over 500 VOA employees receive termination notices, despite a court order injunction won by RSF and co-plaintiffs including VOA journalists and their unions.

May 24 – Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth limits access for credentialed press within the Pentagon, hindering vital reporting on the country’s defence headquarters.

June: police violence against reporters
June 3 – USAGM senior advisor Kari Lake lays out plans to cut more than 900 employees from the USAGM workforce.

June 8 – Trump sends the National Guard to Los Angeles following protests over immigration raids.

June 14 – Journalist Mario Guevara is detained while reporting on immigration raids in Atlanta, Georgia. Though the charges against him are dropped and he is ordered released, local police transfer him to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which begins deportation proceedings against him, despite his legal work status.

July: Trump critic taken off air
July 11 – Judge issues a temporary injunction against the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) for using excessive force. Since June 6, at least 70 attacks against journalists have been reported.

July 18 – The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is not renewed after the late night host Colbert criticises the settlement between CBS’ parent company Paramount and President Trump, casting a pall over the network’s political independence.

July 19 – Trump sues the Wall Street Journal for its report on his ties to disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

August: restrictions for foreign journalists
August 8 – The Department of Homeland Security proposes severe restrictions to visas for foreign journalists in the US.

August 26 – Trump-appointed ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack tells Lebanese reporters to “act civilised” and accuses them of being “animalistic” when they ask him questions.

September: crackdown fueled by death of Charlie Kirk
September 17 – In another dangerous precedent for censorship, ABC pulls late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel off the air after pressure from FCC Chairman Brendan Carr over Kimmel’s comments on Republican politicians’ reaction to Charlie Kirk’s death.

September 19 – The Department of Defence requires reporters to sign an unconstitutional oath pledging to only publish information “authorised for public release,” prompting the vast majority of the Pentagon press pool to walk out en masse.

September 28 – Reporter Asal Rezaei has a pepper ball shot through her car window outside an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois. ICE agents also pointed their guns at journalists, and several other reporters were hit by pepper balls in the following days.

September 29 – YouTube, one of the largest sources of news for Americans, agrees to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit with Trump after his social media accounts were suspended following the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

September 30 – An ICE agent assaults two journalists outside an immigration court in New York City. One of them, L. Vural Elibo from Turkish outlet Anadolu, is hospitalised.

October: journalist deported after months behind bars
October 3 – Mario Guevara is deported to El Salvador after more than 100 days in ICE custody.

October 17 – Trump refiles a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times for its reporting on the 2024 election.

October 18 – LAPD officers attack journalists at No Kings Protest in direct violation of an injunction issued in July.

October 28 – Reporters are barred from covering an immigration hearing in Maryland. Journalists’ ability to access immigration proceedings are hindered due to a government shutdown.

October 31 – The Trump administration restricts media access in the West Wing of the White House, barring reporters from a second-floor area known as “Upper Press,” traditionally open to reporters and White House communications staff.

November: new government website created to smear media outlets
November 10 – Trump threatens to sue the BBC over its editing of footage from the insurrection instigated by pro-Trump supporters on January 6, 2021.

November 17 – The State Department announces new restrictions and press pass rules for journalists attempting to enter the Harry S. Truman building.

November 18 – Trump dismisses the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and defends Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman.

November 18 – Trump shouts “Quiet, piggy!” at Bloomberg journalist Catherine Lucey, one of several personal attacks he lobs at multiple women reporters throughout November and into the early days of December.

November 28 – The Trump administration launches a “Hall of Shame” webpage targeting various media outlets and encourages citizens to submit complaints to a White House-run tip line targeting journalists.

December: a court defied
December 2 – Trump announces he will close overseas VOA offices, contradicting a judge’s return-to-work order from April.

December 10 – Trump inserts himself into the potential merger of Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount and Netflix, pressuring for the sale of news channel CNN.

December 20 – CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss pulls a story about deportation from the programme 60 Minutes, sparking backlash over the politicisation of the network.

First published by RSF on 14 January 2026. Republished by Pacific Media Watch.

Eugene Doyle: Iran in the vortex – what’s really going on and the ‘invisible hand’ of Israel?

APR editor — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 09:01:00 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

If you want to understand what’s going on in Iran, abandon what the Persians invented centuries ago: Manichaeism. We use the term today to denote political framing which is simplistic, black-and-white, two-dimensional — a world of Angels (us) and Demons (them).

This article recognises multiple perspectives, including those of an activist associated with the anti-government Woman Life Freedom movement whom I interviewed this week.

First, however, let us look at the geopolitical manoeuvres at work and “The Invisible Hand of Israel”.

The invisible hand of Israel
Former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant told Israeli army radio this week that Israel must be ready to act when the Iranian “regime” is ready to fall.

“At this moment, when what matters most is the mass action on the ground, we need to stay in the background and steer things with an invisible hand,” said Gallant, who is the subject of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant.

Former CIA director and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted this week: “Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them.”

The Iranian regime is in trouble. Bringing in mercenaries is its last best hope.

Riots in dozens of cities and the Basij under siege — Mashed, Tehran, Zahedan. Next stop: Baluchistan.

47 years of this regime; POTUS 47. Coincidence?

Happy New Year to every Iranian in the…

— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) January 2, 2026

I don’t believe this was a case of letting the cat out of the bag; I think this is both true and a form of psy-ops (psychological warfare), trying to unnerve the Iranian government and encourage the kind of harsh crackdown that regimes resort to when they feel cornered.

MI6, CIA and Mossad are active in Iran, much to the frustration of many of the large numbers of anti-government protesters determined to end the rule of the clerics.

According to Israeli and Western sources, tens of thousands of Starlink terminals were smuggled into Iran to bypass any internet shutdown. Yet the government — apparently using sophisticated Chinese “kill switches” — were able to disable most of them, thus decoupling people within Iran from external coordinators.

Trump: ‘Help is on the way’
“Help is on the way,” Trump said menacingly on January 12. How did that kind of “help” go for Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan or so many other countries going back to the Guatemalan Silent Genocide or the Vietnam War?

American “help” resulted in the overthrow of the democratically-elected Mossadegh government and the installation of authoritarian rule under Shah Pahlavi in 1953. The West got their hands on the oil.

This time if they cannot get regime change they will be happy with regime destruction, civil war and the end of the multi-century project for a unified and sovereign Iranian state. So far, things have not gone to plan.

Long-standing Israeli security analyst Ehud Ya’ari told Israeli Channel 12 this week that the Iranian government remained firmly in control and that there was no evidence of momentum in the protests.

“I want to say things that disappoint not only the viewers, but also me,” he said. “At the moment, we do not see a continued expansion of the uprising.

“It is not taking on new and larger dimensions, as it did in 1978–1979 before Khomeini returned to Tehran.”

This is inconvenient if the West indeed plans to launch a war. The first Gulf War was partially sold on the killing of imaginary Incubator Babies, the Second Iraq War was sold on imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction, the genocide in Gaza was launched amid lurid tales of imaginary Beheaded Babies.

War propaganda peddled by our mainstream media demands worthy victims.

Western contempt for international law could get a lot of people killed

As shown in Palestine and in Iran, the West tends to have a spitting contempt for international law if it is their team that tramples on it. Two cornerstones we should never forget are:

Article 2(4) of the UN Charter – Prohibition of Force: All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

And, yes, that does include powerful white countries. And yes, that does include Russia.

As shown in Palestine and in Iran, the West tends to have a spitting contempt for international law if it is their team that tramples on it. Image: ww.solidarity.co.nz

Secondly, we should never forget the 1965 UN Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in Domestic Affairs.

Back in the 1980s the Reagan Administration secretly sold weapons to its enemy Iran to secretly fund Nicaraguan Contra death squads. In the 1984 Nicaragua Case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), international law was clarified by reaffirming that the principle of non-intervention “involves the right of every sovereign State to conduct its affairs without outside interference”.

Alastair Crooke, a former high-ranking member of Britain’s MI6, an expert on Islamist revolution, says Mujahedeen-e-Khalq fighters trained by the CIA in Albania, along with Kurdish fighters trained by the US in Syria, infiltrated Iran recently and played an important role in the violence.

“We’ve had demonstrations periodically in Iran but these were much more violent.” He suggests the ploy was to provoke retaliatory regime violence which could act as an accelerant to further popular escalation.

Some important truths about what is happening in Iran
There is a large anti-government portion of the population which has long-standing and genuine grievances. I know and admire a few of them. There have also been equally large pro-government protests, largely unreported in the Western media.

Foremost among the anti-government protesters are women and, for that reason, I interviewed Aida Tavassoli, an Iranian women’s rights activist with the Woman Life Freedom movement.

“I think the people of Iran are just so fed up right now,” she told me. “I’ve always said Iran is like a pressure cooker. Each uprising is like you put more steam in the pressure cooker. Eventually it will explode.”

Foremost among the anti-government protesters are women. Image: Amnesty International

Aida became active in advocacy for women’s rights in Iran in 2022 when Jina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died in a Tehran hospital after being arrested by Iran’s morality police for allegedly improper hijab wearing. Her death sparked major protests inside Iran and around the world.

The circumstances of her death are, typically, contested.

“The whole world basically erupted into protests over the lack of women’s rights in Iran,” Tavassoli says. “The entire legislation of Iranian law is against women; they treat us as second-class citizens. We have basically no right to divorce, to the custody of children, to say no to child marriage. There’s a lot of honour killings in Iran, which we think are perpetuated by these discriminatory laws.”

This time around the most prominent anti-government groups rally around Reza Pahlavi, the son of the deposed Shah, who lives in the US, is endorsed by Israel, the US and powerful parts of the Iranian diaspora. According to Iran watchers I follow, his popularity within Iran is limited.

Pahlavi is in direct contact with Trump. He publicly supported the American bombing of his own country last year. He has expressed a desire to be in Tehran sooner rather than later.

“We will soon be by your side.” he tweeted to protesters, urging them to stay on the streets.

Images of rallies around the Western world in support of the anti-government action inside Iran typically show three flags prominent in the protests – the Lion and Sun flag of the Pahlavi regime, the Israeli flag, and the US flag. This alliance between the monarchists, the Israelis and the Americans is concerning for many Iranians, including anti-government people like Aida Tavassoli.

“It almost feels like Reza Pahlavi and his dear friends — the Israelis and Americans — are stealing our revolution,” Tavassoli says. She emphasises any change should come from civil society inside Iran not external actors.

London-based Middle East Eye, with reporters on the ground, says “Iranian protesters reject US and Israeli interference”.

MEE quotes one of the protesters, Sara: “We want regime change, but we do not want our country to be destroyed. And given Israel’s record, it would not be surprising if they tried to exploit this situation.”

Not in any way discounting the validity and determination of many anti-government protesters, the events of the past month show all the tell-tale signs of a US “colour revolution”.

The Islamic Republic is under the kind of pressure that the West has become adept at applying.

The US reneged on the JCPOA nuclear agreement in 2018. Subsequent sanctions and further isolation are powerful. US-Israeli assassinations and missile attacks triggered the 12-day War last year.

Some believe the sharp decline in the Iranian currency this month was part of an orchestrated destabilization campaign. Combine this with corruption and what is widely assessed as incompetent economic management and you have all the ingredients for serious discontent.

Ordinary Iranians are suffering and frustrated; many are turning against the government.

Whether Iran is capable of reform is a moot point but all regimes crack down on dissent in the face of serious external threats. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

The US is moving more attack assets into the region; Israel apparently wants to try its luck again. Here we go, yet again.

Professor Glenn Diesen: “The result is always the same — from the Arab Spring onward. The country which was to be liberated is instead destroyed. So we’ve all seen this movie before.”

Government incapable of reform?
Protesters make the valid point that the Iranian government has shown itself incapable of the kind of reform that would recognise the pluralistic nature of Iranian society. Whether it is capable of reform is a moot point but all regimes crack down on dissent in the face of serious external threats and that is why I believe the US-Israel-EU approach is disastrous and counterproductive.

Change must come from within and not be imposed by powerful hostile countries — not least by ones actively pursuing genocide in Palestine.

China matches US contribution to Pacific environmental body a week after Trump pulls out

APR editor — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 02:17:59 +0000

By Kaya Selby, RNZ Pacific journalist

Just over a week after the United States announced its withdrawal from the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) — China has stepped in to fill the funding gap.

President Donald Trump included the scientific organisation among a list of others that US government officials were ordered to withdraw from.

In a post to his social media platform Truth Social, Trump called these organisations “contrary to the interests of the United States”.

READ MORE: Other SPREP reports

Others mostly consisted of United Nations bodies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN framework convention on climate change, and UN Oceans.

The US was SPREP’s second-largest financial backer in 2024, responsible for US$190,000, or around 15 percent of overall funding from member states. That number dropped from $200,000 in 2023.

China, a donor but not a member, gave $200,000 in 2024, with an additional $362,817 left aside in case SPREP ever needed it, according to SPREP’s statement for the financial year.

RNZ Pacific asked the Australian and New Zealand governments, both significant SPREP backers themselves, whether they were concerned for SPREP’s future functioning.

NZ not concerned
New Zealand said they were not concerned, nor had they been asked to make up any shortfall, while Australia said they were engaging with SPREP to understand the implications.

A little over a week after Trump’s announcement, the Samoa government-owned Savali newspaper reported a US$200,000 donation to SPREP from China.

“The cheque was handed over in a small ceremony this morning at Vailima by China’s Ambassador to Samoa, Fei Mingxing, to SPREP officer-in-charge and director of legal services and governing bodies, Aumua Clark Peteru,” the report read.

Peteru reportedly said that China’s contributions in December 2023 and September 2024 “provided essential organisation-wide support”.

NZ/China relations expert and Waikato University pro-vice chancellor, Al Gillespie, told RNZ Pacific the saga was “a real pity”.

“We are seeing that countries play favourites and for position. The US leaving SPREP (and so many others) will create voids all over the place that others will fill,” Gillespie said.

“In the Pacific, if NZ and Australia cannot pick up the pace, others, like the PRC [People’s Republic of China] will step in and become the leaders in these areas.”

SPREP has repeatedly denied RNZ Pacific’s requests for comment, saying that the US has not formally given notice to withdraw.

“Silence is commonly the best defence right now for many on a host of international topics,” Gillespie said.

The Samoan government and the Chinese Embassy in New Zealand have been approached for comment.

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

Tucker Carlson ‘tuckered out’ with Donald Trump and Israel – insights for New Zealand rightwing politics

APR editor — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 10:40:22 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Ian Powell

The origin of the expression “tuckered out” goes back to the east of the United States around the 1830s.

After New Englanders began to compare the wrinkled and drawn appearance of overworked and undernourished horses and dogs to the appearance of tucked cloth, it became associated with people being exhausted.

Expressions such as this can be adapted, sometimes with a little generosity, to apply to other circumstances.

READ MORE: Other Ian Powell articles

This adaptation includes when a prominent far right propagandist and activist who, in a level of frustration that resembles mental exhaustion, lashes out against far right leaders and governments that he has been strongly supportive of.

Tariq Ali . . . reposts revealing far right lament. Image: politicalbytes.blog

This came to my attention when reading a frustrated far right lament reposted on Facebook (27 November) by British-Pakistani socialist Tariq Ali.

If anything meets the threshold for a passionate expression of grief or sorrow, this one did.

The lament was from Tucker Carlson, an American far right political commentator who hosted a nightly political talk show on Fox News from 2016 to 2023 when his contract was terminated.

Since then he has hosted his own show under his name on fellow extremist Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter). Arguably Carlson is the most influential far right host in the United States (perhaps also more influential than the mainstream rightwing).

He is someone who the far right government of Israel considered to be an unshakable ally.

Carlson’s lament

The lament is brief but cuts to the chase:

There is no such thing as “God’s chosen people”.

God does not choose child-killers.

This is heresy — these are criminals and thieves.

350 million Americans are struggling to survive,

and we send $26 billion to a country most Americans can’t even name the capital of.

His lament doubled as a “declaration of war” on the entire narrative Israel uses to justify its genocide in Gaza. But Carlson didn’t stop there. He went on to expose the anger boiling inside the United States.

President Donald Trump . . . also the target of Carlson’s lament. Image: politicalbytes.blog

The clip hit the US media big time including 48 million views in the first nine hours. Subsequently a CNN poll showed that 62 percent of Americans agree with Carlson and that support for Israel among Americans is collapsing.

But Carlson went much further directly focussing on fellow far right Donald Trump who he had “supported”.

By focussing the US’s money, energy, and foreign policy on Israel, Trump was betraying his promises to Americans.

This signifies a major falling out including a massive public shift against Israel (which is also losing its media shield), the far right breaking ranks, and panic within the political establishment.

Marjorie Taylor Greene . . . another prominent far right leader who has fallen out with Trump. Image: politicalbytes.blog

It should also be seen in the context of the extraordinary public falling out with President Trump of another leading far right extremist (and conspiracy theorist) Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. In addition to the issues raised by Carlson she also focussed on Trump’s handling of the Epstein files controversy.

Far right in New Zealand politics

The far right publicly fighting among itself over its core issues is very significant for the US given its powerful influence.

This influence includes not just the presidency but also both Congress and the Senate, one of the two dominant political parties, and the Supreme Court (and a fair chunk of the rest of the judiciary).

Does this development offer insights for politics in New Zealand? To begin with the far right here has nowhere near the same influence as in the United States.

The parties that make up the coalition government are hard right rather than far right (that is, hardline but still largely respectful of the formal democratic institutions).

It is arguably the most hard right government since the early 1950s at least. But this doesn’t make it far right. I discussed this difference in an earlier Political Bytes post (November 3): Distinguishing far right from hard right.

Specifically:

…”hard right” for me means being very firm (immoderate) near the extremity of rightwing politics but still respect the functional institutions that make formal democracy work.

In contrast the “far right” are at the extremity of rightwing politics and don’t respect these functional institutions. There is an overlapping blur between the “hard right” and “far right”.

Both the NZ First and ACT parties certainly have far right influences. The former’s deputy leader Shane Jones does a copy-cat imitation of Trumpian bravado.

Far right Brian Tamaki has some influence but is a small bit player compared to Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Image: politicalbytes.blog

Meanwhile, there is an uncomfortable rapport between ACT (particularly its leader and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour) and the far right Destiny Church (particularly its leader Brian Tamaki).

But this doesn’t come close to meeting the far right threshold for both NZ First and ACT.

The far right itself also has its internal conflicts. The most prominent group within this relatively small extremist group is the Destiny Church. However, its relationship with other sects can be adversarial.

Insights for New Zealand politics nevertheless
Nevertheless, the internal far right fallout in the United States does provide some insights for public fall-outs within the hard right in New Zealand.

This is already becoming evident in the three rightwing parties making up the coalition government.

NZ Prime Minister Christopher Luxon . . . coalition arrangement starting to get tuckered out and heading towards lamenting? Image: politicalbytes.blog

For example:

NZ First has said that it would support repealing ACT’s recent parliamentary success with the Regulatory Standards Act, which was part of the coalition agreement, should it be part of the next government following the 2026 election;
National subsequently suggested that they might do likewise;
ACT has lashed out against NZ First for its above-mentioned position;
NZ First leader Winston Peters has declined to express public confidence in Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s leadership;
NZ First has publicly criticised the Government’s economic management performance; and
while National and ACT support the sale of public assets, NZ First is publicly opposed.

These tensions are well short of the magnitude of Tucker Carlson’s public attack on Israel over Gaza and President Trump’s leadership.

However, there are signs with the hard right in New Zealand of at least starting to feel “tuckered out” of collaborating collegially in their coalition government arrangement and showing signs of pending laments.

Too early to tell yet but we shall see.

Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.

Activist slams Pacific’s ‘dreadful response’ to Palestine amid growing links with Israel

Pacific Media Watch — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 09:45:14 +0000

By ‘Alakihihifo Vailala of Pacific Media Network

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.

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.

PNG Prime Minister James Marape (left) and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on 6 September 2023. Image: Israeli Prime Minister’s Office

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.

Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka (left) and his Israeli counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu met in 2023. Image: Fiji Government

“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.

NZ ‘lagging behind’ world by failing to recognise Palestinian statehood, says former PM Helen Clark

APR editor — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 19:18:59 +0000

By Craig McCulloch, RNZ News acting political editor

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.

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.

Is the international community finally speaking up about Israel’s Gaza genocide?

APR editor — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 12:28:12 +0000

Al Jazeera

International public opinion continues to turn against Israel for its war on Gaza, with more governments slowly beginning to reflect those voices and increase their own condemnation of the country.

In the last few weeks, Israeli government ministers have been sanctioned by several Western countries, with the United Kingdom, France and Canada issuing a joint statement condemning the “intolerable” level of “human suffering” in Gaza.

Last week, a number of countries from the Global South — “The Hague Group” — collectively agreed on a number of measures that they say will “restrain Israel’s assault on the Occupied Palestinian Territories”.

Across the world, and in increasing numbers, the public, politicians and, following an Israeli strike on a Catholic church in Gaza, religious leaders are speaking out against Israel’s killings in Gaza.

So, are world powers getting any closer to putting enough pressure on Israel for it to stop?

Here is what we know.

What is the Hague Group?
According to its website, the Hague Group is a global bloc of states committed to “coordinated legal and diplomatic measures” in defence of international law and solidarity with the people of Palestine.

Made up of eight nations; South Africa, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia and Senegal, the group has set itself the mission of upholding international law, and safeguarding the principles set out in the Charter of the United Nations, principally “the responsibility of all nations to uphold the inalienable rights, including the right to self-determination, that it enshrines for all peoples”.

Last week, the Hague Group hosted a meeting of about 30 nations, including China, Spain and Qatar, in the Colombian capital of Bogota. Australia and New Zealand failed to attend in spite of invitations.

Also attending the meeting was UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who characterised the meeting as “the most significant political development in the past 20 months”.

Albanese was recently sanctioned by the United States for her criticism of its ally, Israel.

At the end of the two-day meeting, 12 of the countries in attendance agreed to six measures to limit Israel’s actions in Gaza. Included in those measures were blocks on supplying arms to Israel, a ban on ships transporting weapons and a review of public contracts for any possible links to companies benefiting from Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Have any other governments taken action?
More and more.

Last Wednesday, Slovenia barred far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and ultranationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich from entering its territory after the wider European Union failed to agree on measures to address charges of widespread human rights abuses against Israel.

Slovenia’s ban on the two government ministers builds upon earlier sanctions imposed upon Smotrich and Ben-Gvir in June by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK and Norway over their “incitement to violence”.

The two men have been among the most vocal Israeli ministers in rejecting any compromise in negotiations with Palestinians, and pushing for the Jewish settlement of Gaza, as well as the increased building of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

In May, the UK, France, and Canada issued a joint statement describing Israel’s escalation of its campaign against Gaza as “wholly disproportionate” and promising “concrete actions” against Israel if it did not halt its offensive.

Later that month, the UK followed through on its warning, announcing sanctions on a handful of settler organisations and announcing a “pause” in free trade negotiations with Israel.

Also in May, Turkiye announced that it would block all trade with Israel until the humanitarian situation in Gaza was resolved.

South Africa first launched a case for genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice in late December 2023, and has since been supported by other countries, including Colombia, Chile, Spain, Ireland, and Turkiye.

In January of 2024, the ICJ issued its provisional ruling, finding what it termed a “plausible” case for genocide and instructing Israel to undertake emergency measures, including the provision of the aid that its government has effectively blocked since March of this year.

What other criticism of Israel has there been?
Israel’s bombing on Thursday of the Holy Family Church in Gaza City, killing three people, drew a rare rebuke from Israel’s most stalwart ally, the United States.

Following what was reported to be an “angry” phone call from US President Trump after the bombing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office issued a statement expressing its “deep regret” over the attack. The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

To date, Israel has killed more than 62,000 people in Gaza, the majority women and children.

Has the tide turned internationally?
Mass public protests against Israel’s war on Gaza have continued around the world for the past 21 months.

And there are clear signs of growing anger over the brutality of the war and the toll it is taking on Palestinians in Gaza.

In Western Europe, a survey carried out by the polling company YouGov in June found that net favourability towards Israel had reached its lowest ebb since tracking began.

A similar poll produced by CNN last week found similar results among the American public, with only 23 percent of respondents agreeing Israel’s actions in Gaza were fully justified, down from 50 percent in October 2023.

Public anger has also found voice at high-profile public events, including music festivals such as Germany’s Fusion Festival, Poland’s Open’er Festival and the UK’s Glastonbury festival, where both artists and their supporters used their platforms to denounce the war on Gaza.

Has anything changed in Israel?
Protests against the war remain small but are growing, with organisations, such as Standing Together, bringing together Israeli and Palestinian activists to protest against the war.

There has also been a growing number of reservists refusing to show up for duty. In April, the Israeli magazine +972 reported that more than 100,000 reservists had refused to show up for duty, with open letters from within the military protesting against the war growing in number since.

Will it make any difference?
Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition has been pursuing its war on Gaza despite its domestic and international unpopularity for some time.

The government’s most recent proposal, that all of Gaza’s population be confined into what it calls a “humanitarian city”, has been likened to a concentration camp and has been taken by many of its critics as evidence that it no longer cares about either international law or global opinion.

Internationally, despite its recent criticism of Israel for its bombing of Gaza’s one Catholic church, US support for Israel remains resolute. For many in Israel, the continued support of the US, and President Donald Trump in particular, remains the one diplomatic absolute they can rely upon to weather whatever diplomatic storms their actions in Gaza may provoke.

In addition to that support, which includes diplomatic guarantees through the use of the US veto in the UN Security Council and military support via its extensive arsenal, is the US use of sanctions against Israel’s critics, such as the International Criminal Court, whose members were sanctioned by the US in June over the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on war crimes charges.

That means, in the short term, Israel ultimately feels protected as long as it has US support. But as it becomes more of an international pariah, economic and diplomatic isolation may become more difficult to handle.

Eugene Doyle: Why Asia-Pacific should be cheering for Iran and not US bomb-based statecraft

APR editor — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 06:36:33 +0000

ANALYSIS: By Eugene Doyle

Setting aside any thoughts I may have about theocratic rulers (whether they be in Tel Aviv or Tehran), I am personally glad that Iran was able to hold out against the US-Israeli attacks this month.

The ceasefire, however, will only be a pause in the long-running campaign to destabilise, weaken and isolate Iran. Regime change or pariah status are both acceptable outcomes for the US-Israeli dyad.

The good news for my region is that Iran’s resilience pushes back what could be a looming calamity: the US pivot to Asia and a heightened risk of a war on China.

There are three major pillars to the Eurasian order that is going through a slow, painful and violent birth. Iran is the weakest. If Iran falls, war in our region — intended or unintended – becomes vastly more likely.

Mainstream New Zealanders and Australians suffer from an understandable complacency: war is what happens to other, mainly darker people or Slavs.

“Tomorrow”, people in this part of the world naively think, “will always be like yesterday”.

That could change, particularly for the Australians, in the kind of unfamiliar flash-boom Israelis experienced this month following their attack on Iran. And here’s why.

US chooses war to re-shape Middle East
Back in 2001, as many will recall, retired General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe, was visiting buddies in the Pentagon. He learnt something he wasn’t supposed to: the Bush administration had made plans in the febrile post 9/11 environment to attack seven Muslim countries.

In the firing line were: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah-dominated Lebanon, Gaddafi’s Libya, Somalia, Sudan and the biggest prize of all — the Islamic Republic of Iran.

One would have to say that the project, pursued by successive presidents, both Democrat and Republican, has been a great success — if you discount the fact that a couple of million human beings, most of them civilians, many of them women and children, nearly all of them innocents, were slaughtered, starved to death or otherwise disposed of.

With the exception of Iran, those countries have endured chaos and civil strife for long painful years. A triumph of American bomb-based statecraft.

Now — with Muammar Gaddafi raped and murdered (“We came, we saw, he died”, Hillary Clinton chuckled on camera the same day), Saddam Hussein hanged, Hezbollah decapitated, Assad in Moscow, the genocide in full swing in Palestine — the US and Israel were finally able to turn their guns — or, rather, bombs — on the great prize: Iran.

Iran’s missiles have checked US-Israel for time being
Things did not go to plan. Former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman pointed out this week that for the first time Israel got a taste of the medicine it likes to dispense to its neighbours.

Iran’s missiles successfully turned the much-vaunted Iron Dome into an Iron Sieve and, perhaps momentarily, has achieved deterrence. If Iran falls, the US will be able to do what Barack Obama and Joe Biden only salivated over — a serious pivot to Asia.

Could great power rivalry turn Asia-Pacific into powderkeg?
For us in Asia-Pacific a major US pivot to Asia will mean soaring defence budgets to support militarisation, aggressive containment of China, provocative naval deployments, more sanctions, muscling smaller states, increased numbers of bases, new missile systems, info wars, threats and the ratcheting up rhetoric — all of which will bring us ever-closer to the powderkeg.

Sounds utterly mad? Sounds devoid of rationality? Lacking commonsense? Welcome to our world — bellum Americanum — as we gormlessly march flame in hand towards the tinderbox. War is not written in the stars, we can change tack and rediscover diplomacy, restraint, and peaceful coexistence. Or is that too much to ask?

Back in the days of George W Bush, radical American thinkers like Robert Kagan, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld created the Project for a New American Century and developed the policy, adopted by succeeding presidents, that promotes “the belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of US military forces”.

It reconfirmed the neoconservative American dogma that no power should be allowed to rise in any region to become a regional hegemon; anything and everything necessary should be done to ensure continued American primacy, including the resort to war.

What has changed since those days are two crucial, epoch-making events: the re-emergence of Russia as a great power, albeit the weakest of the three, and the emergence of China as a genuine peer competitor to the USA. Professor John Mearsheimer’s insights are well worth studying on this topic.

The three pillars of multipolarity
A new world order really is being born. As geopolitical thinkers like Professor Glenn Diesen point out, it will, if it is not killed in the cradle, replace the US unipolar world order that has existed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Many countries are involved in its birthing, including major players like India and Brazil and all the countries that are part of BRICS. Three countries, however, are central to the project: Iran, Russia and, most importantly, China. All three are in the crosshairs of the Western empire.

If Iran, Russia and China survive as independent entities, they will partially fulfill Halford MacKinder’s early 20th century heartland theory that whoever dominates Eurasia will rule the world. I don’t think MacKinder, however, foresaw cooperative multipolarity on the Eurasian landmass — which is one of the goals of the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) – as an option.

That, increasingly, appears to be the most likely trajectory with multiple powerful states that will not accept domination, be that from China or the US. That alone should give us cause for hope.

Drunk on power since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has launched war after war and brought us to the current abandonment of economic sanity (the sanctions-and-tariff global pandemic) and diplomatic normalcy (kill any peace negotiators you see) — and an anything-goes foreign policy (including massive crimes against humanity).

We have also reached — thanks in large part to these same policies — what a former US national security advisor warned must be avoided at all costs. Back in the 1990s, Zbigniew Brzezinski said, “The most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran.”

Belligerent and devoid of sound strategy, the Biden and Trump administrations have achieved just that.

Can Asia-Pacific avoid being dragged into an American war on China?
Turning to our region, New Zealand and Australia’s governments cleave to yesterday: a white-dominated world led by the USA. We have shown ourselves indifferent to massacres, ethnic cleansing and wars of aggression launched by our team.

To avoid war — or a permanent fear of looming war — in our own backyards, we need to encourage sanity and diplomacy; we need to stay close to the US but step away from the military alliances they are forming, such as AUKUS which is aimed squarely at China.

Above all, our defence and foreign affairs elites need to grow new neural pathways and start to think with vision and not place ourselves on the losing side of history. Independent foreign policy settings based around peace, defence not aggression, diplomacy not militarisation, would take us in the right direction.

Personally I look forward to the day the US and its increasingly belligerent vassals are pushed back into the ranks of ordinary humanity. I fear the US far more than I do China.

Despite the reflexive adherence to the US that our leaders are stuck on, we should not, if we value our lives and our cultures, allow ourselves to be part of this mad, doomed project.

The US empire is heading into a blood-drenched sunset; their project will fail and the 500-year empire of the White West will end — starting and finishing with genocide.

Every day I atheistically pray that leaders or a movement will emerge to guide our antipodean countries out of the clutches of a violent and increasingly incoherent USA.

America is not our friend. China is not our enemy. Tomorrow gives birth to a world that we should look forward to and do the little we can to help shape.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

Eugene Doyle: How centrifugal forces have been unleashed in Iran

APR editor — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 00:20:39 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

The surprise US-Israeli attack on Iran is literally and figuratively designed to unleash centrifugal forces in the Islamic Republic.

Two nuclear powers are currently involved in the bombing of the nuclear facilities of a third state. One of them, the US has — for the moment — limited itself to handling mid-air refuelling, bombs and an array of intelligence.

If successful they will destroy or, more likely, destabilise the uranium enrichment centrifuges at Natanz and possibly the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, causing them to vibrate and spin uncontrollably, generating centrifugal forces that could rupture containment systems.

Spinning at more than 50,000 rpm it wouldn’t take much of a shockwave from a blast or some other act of sabotage to do this.

There may be about half a tonne of enriched uranium and several tonnes of lower-grade material underground.

If a cascade of bunker-busting bombs like the US GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators got through, the heat generated would be in the hundreds, even thousands, of degrees Celsius. This would destroy the centrifuges, converting the uranium hexafluoride gas into a toxic aerosol, leading to serious radiological contamination over a wide area.

The head of the IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, warned repeatedly of the dangers over the past few days. How many people would be killed, contaminated or forced to evacuate should not have to be calculated — it should be avoided at all cost.

Divided opinions
Some people think this attack is a very good idea; some think this is an act of madness by two rogue states.

On June 18, Israeli media were reporting that the US had rushed an aerial armada loaded with bunker busters to Israel while the US continued its sham denials of involvement in the war.

Analysts Professor Jeffrey Sachs and Sybil Fares warned this week of “Israel bringing the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon in pursuit of its illegal and extremist aims”. They point out that for some decades now Netanyahu has warned that Iran is weeks or even days away from having the bomb, begging successive presidents for permission to wage Judeo-Christian jihad.

In Donald Trump — the MAGA Peace Candidate — he finally got his green light.

The centrifugal forces destabilising the Iranian state
The other — and possibly more significant — centrifugal force that has been unleashed is a hybrid attack on the Iranian state itself. The Americans, Israelis and their European allies hope to trigger regime change.

There are many Iranians inside and outside the country who would welcome such a development. Other Iranians suggest they should be careful of what they wish for, pointing to the human misery that follows, as night follows day, wherever post 9/11 America’s project to bring “democracy, goodness and niceness” leads. If you can’t quickly think of half a dozen examples, this must be your first visit to Planet Earth.

Iranian news presenter Sahar Emami during the Israeli attack on state television which killed three media workers . . . Killing journalists is both an Israeli speciality and a war crime. Image: AJ screenshot APR

Is regime change in Iran possible?
So, are the Americans and Israelis on to something or not? This week prominent anti-regime writer Sohrab Ahmari added a caveat to his long-standing call for an end to the regime. Ahmari, an Iranian, who is the US editor of the geopolitical analysis platform UnHerd said: “The potential nightmare scenarios are as numerous as they are appalling: regime collapse that leads not to the restoration of the Pahlavi dynasty and the ascent to the Peacock Throne of its chubby dauphin, Reza, but warlordism and ethno-sectarian warfare that drives millions of refugees into Europe.

“Or a Chinese intervention in favour of a crucial energy partner and anchor of the new Eurasian bloc led by Beijing . . . A blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on the Persian Gulf monarchies.”

Despite these risks, there are indeed Iranians who are cheering for Uncle Bibi (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu). Some have little sympathy for the Palestinians because their government poured millions into supporting Hamas and Hezbollah — money that could have eased hardship inside Iran, caused, it must be added, by both the US-imposed sanctions and the regime’s own mismanagement, some say corruption.

As I pointed out in an article The West’s War on Iran shortly after the Israelis launched the war: the regime appears to have a core support base of around 20 percent. This was true in 2018 when I last visited Iran and was still the case in the most recent polling I could find.

I quoted an Iranian contact who shortly after the attack told me they had scanned reactions inside Iran and found people were upset, angry and overwhelmingly supportive of the government at this critical moment. Like many, I suggested Iranians would — as typically happens when countries are attacked — rally round the flag. Shortly after the article was published this statement was challenged by other Iranians who dispute that there will be any “rallying to the flag” — as that is the flag of the Islamic Republic and a great many Iranians are sick to the back teeth of it.

Some others demur:

“The killing of at least 224 Iranians has once again significantly damaged Israel’s claim that it avoids targeting civilians,” Dr Shirin Saeidi, author of Women and the Islamic Republic, an associate professor of political science at the University of Arkansas, told The New Arab on June 16. “Israel’s illegal attack on the Iranian people will definitely not result in a popular uprising against the Iranian state. On the contrary, Iranians are coming together behind the Islamic Republic.”

To be honest, I can’t discern who is correct. In the last few of days I have also had contact with people inside Iran (all these contacts must, for obvious reasons, be anonymous). One of them welcomed the attack on the IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps). I also got this message relayed to me from someone else in Iran as a response to my article:

“Some Iranians are pro-regime and have condemned Israeli attacks and want the government to respond strongly. Some Iranians are pro-Israel and happy that Israel has attacked and killed some of their murderers and want regime change, [but the] majority of Iranians dislike both sides.

They dislike the regime in Iran, and they are patriotic so they don’t want a foreign country like Israel invading them and killing people. They feel hopeless and defenceless as they know both sides have failed or will fail them.”

Calculating the incalculable: regime survival or collapse?
Only a little over half of Iran is Persian. Minorities include Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs, Balochis, Turkmen, Armenians and one of the region’s few post-Nakba Jewish congregations outside of Israel today.

Mossad, MI6 and various branches of the US state have poured billions into opposition groups, including various monarchist factions, but from a distance they appear fragmented. The Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) armed opposition group has been an irritant but so far not a major disruptor.

The most effective terrorist attacks inside Iran have been launched by Israel, the US and the British — including the assassination of a string of Iranian peace negotiators, the leader of the political wing of Hamas, nuclear scientists and their families, and various regime figures.

How numerous the active strands of anti-regime elements are is hard to estimate. Equally hard to calculate is how many will move into open confrontation with the regime. Conversely, how unified, durable — or brittle — is the regime? How cohesive is the leadership of the IRGC and the Basij militias? Will they work effectively together in the trying times ahead? In particular, how successful has the CIA, MI6 and Mossad been at penetrating their structures and buying generals?

Both Iran’s nuclear programme and its government — in fact, the whole edifice and foundation of the Islamic Republic — is at the beginning of the greatest stress test of its existence. If the centrifugal forces prove too great, I can’t help but think of the words of William Butler Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Peace and prosperity to all the people of Iran. And let’s never forget the people of Palestine as they endure genocide.

A war on diplomacy itself – Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran

APR editor — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 11:01:34 +0000

ANALYSIS: By Joe Hendren

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:

“The IC [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003. The IC is monitoring if Tehran decides to reauthorise its nuclear weapons programme”

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:

“But it is the Ayatollah himself who is doing the devil’s work by inciting and condoning the student invasion of the American and British Embassies in Tehran. This is not just a diplomatic affront; it is a declaration of war on diplomacy itself, on usages and traditions honoured by all nations, however old and new, whatever belief.

“The immunities given a ruler’s emissaries were respected by the kings of Persia during wars with Greece and by the Ayatollah’s spiritual ancestors during the Crusades.”

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.

“No, it’s not right. I didn’t stop them. But I didn’t make it comfortable for them, because I think we can make a deal without the attack. I hope we can. It’s possible we’ll have to attack because Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.

“But I didn’t make it comfortable for them, but I didn’t say no. Ultimately I was going to leave that choice to them, but I said I would much prefer a deal than bombs being dropped.”

— US President Donald Trump

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.

Iranian electricity production in 2023. Source: Advanced Energy Technologies

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.

He told Meet the Press on May 4 that “total dismantlement” of the nuclear program is “all I would accept.” He suggested that Iran does not need nuclear energy because of its oil reserves. But on May 7, when asked specifically about allowing Iran to retain a limited enrichment program, Trump said “we haven’t made that decision yet.”

Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a May 14 interview with NBC that Iran is ready to sign a deal with the United States and reiterated that Iran is willing to limit uranium enrichment to low levels. He previously suggested in a May 7 post on X that any deal should include a “recognition of Iran’s right to industrial enrichment.”

That recognition, plus the removal of U.S. and international sanctions, “can guarantee a deal,” Shamkhani said.

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.

Why Israel’s shock and awe has proven its power but lost the war

Pacific Media Watch — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 08:30:19 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Antony Loewenstein in Middle East Eye

War is good for business and geopolitical posturing.

Before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington in early February for his first visit to the US following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, he issued a bold statement on the strategic position of Israel.

“The decisions we made in the war [since 7 October 2023] have already changed the face of the Middle East,” he said.

“Our decisions and the courage of our soldiers have redrawn the map. But I believe that working closely with President Trump, we can redraw it even further.”

How should this redrawn map be assessed?

Hamas is bloodied but undefeated in Gaza. The territory lies in ruins, leaving its remaining population with barely any resources to rebuild. Death and starvation stalk everyone.

Hezbollah in Lebanon has suffered military defeats, been infiltrated by Israeli intelligence, and now faces few viable options for projecting power in the near future. Political elites speak of disarming Hezbollah, though whether this is realistic is another question.

Morocco, Bahrain and the UAE accounted for 12 percent of Israel’s record $14.8bn in arms sales in 2024 — up from just 3 percent the year before

In Yemen, the Houthis continue to attack Israel, but pose no existential threat.

Meanwhile, since the overthrow of dictator Bashar al-Assad in late 2024, Israel has attacked and threatened Syria, while the new government in Damascus is flirting with Israel in a possible bid for “normalisation“.

The Gulf states remain friendly with Israel, and little has changed in the last 20 months to alter this relationship.

According to Israel’s newly released arms sales figures for 2024, which reached a record $14.8bn, Morocco, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates accounted for 12 percent of total weapons sales — up from just 3 percent in 2023.

It is conceivable that Saudi Arabia will be coerced into signing a deal with Israel in the coming years, in exchange for arms and nuclear technology for the dictatorial kingdom.

An Israeli and US-assisted war against Iran began on Friday.

In the West Bank, Israel’s annexation plans are surging ahead with little more than weak European statements of concern. Israel’s plans for Greater Israel — vastly expanding its territorial reach — are well underway in Syria, Lebanon and beyond.

Shifting alliances
On paper, Israel appears to be riding high, boasting military victories and vanquished enemies. And yet, many Israelis and pro-war Jews in the diaspora do not feel confident or buoyed by success.

Instead, there is an air of defeatism and insecurity, stemming from the belief that the war for Western public opinion has been lost — a sentiment reinforced by daily images of Israel’s campaign of deliberate mass destruction across the Gaza Strip.

What Israel craves and desperately needs is not simply military prowess, but legitimacy in the public domain. And this is sorely lacking across virtually every demographic worldwide.

It is why Israel is spending at least $150 million this year alone on “public diplomacy”.

Get ready for an army of influencers, wined and dined in Tel Aviv’s restaurants and bars, to sell the virtues of Israeli democracy. Even pro-Israel journalists are beginning to question how this money is being spent, wishing Israeli PR were more responsive and effective.

Today, Israeli Jews proudly back ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza in astoundingly high numbers. This reflects a Jewish supremacist mindset that is being fed a daily diet of extremist rhetoric in mainstream media.

There is arguably no other Western country with such a high proportion of racist, genocidal mania permeating public discourse.

According to a recent poll of Western European populations, Israel is viewed unfavourably in Germany, Denmark, France, Italy and Spain.

Very few in these countries support Israeli actions. Only between 13 and 21 percent hold a positive view of Israel, compared to 63-70 percent who do not.

The US-backed Pew Research Centre also released a global survey asking people in 24 countries about their views on Israel and Palestine. In 20 of the 24 nations, at least half of adults expressed a negative opinion of the Jewish state.

A deeper reckoning
Beyond Israel’s image problems lies a deeper question: can it ever expect full acceptance in the Middle East?

Apart from kings, monarchs and elites from Dubai to Riyadh and Manama to Rabat, Israel’s vicious and genocidal actions since 7 October 2023 have rendered “normalisation” impossible with a state intent on building a Jewish theocracy that subjugates millions of Arabs indefinitely.

While it is true that most states in the region are undemocratic, with gross human rights abuses a daily reality, Israel has long claimed to be different — “the only democracy in the Middle East”.

But Israel’s entire political system, built with massive Western support and grounded in an unsustainable racial hierarchy, precludes it from ever being fully and formally integrated into the region.

The American journalist Murtaza Hussain, writing for the US outlet Drop Site News, recently published a perceptive essay on this very subject.

He argues that Israeli actions have been so vile and historically grave — comparable to other modern holocausts — that they cannot be forgotten or excused, especially as they are publicly carried out with the explicit goal of ethnically cleansing Palestine:

“This genocide has been a political and cultural turning point beyond which we cannot continue as before. I express that with resignation rather than satisfaction, as it means that many generations of suffering are ahead on all sides.

“Ultimately, the goal of Israel’s opponents must not be to replicate its crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, nor to indulge in nihilistic hatred for its own sake.

“People in the region and beyond should work to build connections with those Israelis who are committed opponents of their regime, and who are ready to cooperate in the generational task of building a new political architecture.”

The issue is not just Netanyahu and his government. All his likely successors hold similarly hardline views on Palestinian rights and self-determination.

The monumental task ahead lies in crafting an alternative to today’s toxic Jewish theocracy.

But this rebuilding must also take place in the West. Far too many Jews, conservatives and evangelical Christians continue to cling to the fantasy of eradicating, silencing or expelling Arabs from their land entirely.

Pushing back against this fascism is one of the most urgent generational tasks of our time.

Antony Loewenstein is an Australian/German independent, freelance, award-winning, investigative journalist, best-selling author and film-maker. In 2025, he released an award-winning documentary series on Al Jazeera English, The Palestine Laboratory, adapted from his global best-selling book of the same name. It won a major prize at the prestigious Telly Awards. This article is republished from Middle East Eye with permission of the author.

Is genocide the new normal? Could Israel and the US destroy Iran?

APR editor — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 04:09:19 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

“Just do it, before it is too late,” US President Donald Trump said.

The Western media described Trump’s and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s threats after the first wave of attacks on Iran as “warnings”. They were, in fact, expressions of genocidal intent.

“The United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come.

“And they know how to use it. Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire … JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”

FROM PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP:

“I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal…” pic.twitter.com/lsCQHkyT2f

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 13, 2025

As Pascal Lottaz and a number of other analysts pointed out on Friday, preemptive war or just war theory requires imminent threats not conceptual ones. As I also pointed out on Friday, the United States’ own intelligence agencies have consistently determined that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons programme and there has been no change to the regime’s position since the Grand Ayatollah issued a fatwa against such weapons in 2003.

Israel and the US may now have forced a change in that theology or calculus.

What we are witnessing is a war of aggression designed to trigger regime change and destroy Iran — to reduce it to the kind of chaos that Israel and the US have inflicted on Iraq, Libya, Lebanon and many other countries.

This is only possible because of the collusion of the Collective West. At the core of this project of endless violence towards non-white people is racism: contempt for people who are not like us.

Nearly half of Israelis support army killing all Palestinians in Gaza, poll finds.
Today an overwhelming majority of Israelis want to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians — one of the very definitions of genocide — not just from Gaza but from Israel itself. Nearly half of Israelis support the army killing all Palestinians in Gaza, a recent US Penn State University poll finds.

Genocide has been normalised in Israel. Yet our political leaders and much of our media tell us we share values with these people.

One of the sickest, most profoundly tragic ironies of history is that the long suffering of the Jewish people at the hands of Western racism has culminated in a triumphalist Jewish State doing to the Palestinians what the Plantagenets and the Popes, the Medicis and the Russian boyars, the Italian Fascists and the Nazis did to the Jews.

Europeans perpetrated the Holocaust not the Palestinians or the Iranians. Israel, dominated as it is by Ashkenazi Jews, has now been incorporated into the Western project to maintain global hegemony.

They are today’s uber Aryans lording it over the untermenschen. It is the grim fulfillment of what the Israeli scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned back in the 1980s was Israel’s incipient slide into what he termed “Judeo Nazism”.

‘We, the Israelis, are the victims’
Isn’t it time we woke from our deep slumber? Generations of people in Western countries were lied to for generations about the Zionist project. We were bombarded with propaganda that the Israelis were the victims, the plucky battlers; the Palestinians were somehow a nation of terrorists in their own land.

So too, the propaganda goes, are pretty much all of Israel’s neighbours, particularly Iran.

The propaganda shredded our minds, particularly people of my generation. It made most of our populations and all of our governments totally indifferent to the constant killing, repression and land thieving by generations of Israelis.

“We, the Israelis, are the victims.” They weep for themselves as they rape Palestinian prisoners — and call themselves heroes for doing so. In researching stories like this I had the unpleasant experience of watching videos of both the rape of Palestinians prisoners at Sde Temein (gloatingly shared by the perpetrators) and the repellent sight of Benjamin Netanyahu’s rabbi blessing one of these rapists and praising him for his work.

We are repeatedly told we share values with these people. I believe our governments really do share those values. I do not.

‘Hath not a Palestinian eyes? If you prick an Iranian do they not bleed?’
I’m a student of Shakespeare and have spent hours every month reading, watching and studying his plays. The Merchant of Venice, a complex play with highly contested interpretations, can be viewed as a masterful exploration of a dominant society enforcing its own double standards on a Hated Other.

The last time I watched it was a Royal Shakespeare Company performance with Palestinian actor Makram Khoury in the role of Shylock (the Jew).

Over the centuries Shylock had morphed from a pantomime villain, to an arch-villain to, in the 19th Century, a figure of pathos, dignity and loss, through to 20th Century interpretations of him as a powerful, albeit highly flawed, figure of resistance in the face of a supremacist society.

Palestinian Makram Khoury’s performance capped this transition and was an eloquent plea to see our common humanity whether we be Jewish, Muslim, Christian or any other slice of humanity.

“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

How would our reading of this passage change if we changed “Jew” to “Palestinian” or “Iranian”?

Only an utterly incoherent and damaged mind can continue to believe the propaganda coming out of the White House, the Pentagon, and out of the mouths of psychotic madmen like Netanyahu, Smotrich and the rest of Team Genocide.

It’s time to wake up. If not, we ourselves become victims. Only a hollowed-out heart and mind could content themselves with turning a blind eye to genocide, to turn a blind eye to the war of aggression just launched against Iran.

How will this end?