I was born in Poonch (Kashmir) and now I live in Norway. I oppose war and violence and am a firm believer in the peaceful co-existence of all nations and peoples. In my academic work I have tried to espouse the cause of the weak and the oppressed in a world dominated by power politics, misleading propaganda and violations of basic human rights. I also believe that all conscious members of society have a moral duty to stand for and further the cause of peace and human rights throughout the world.
A
thick plume of smoke rises from an oil storage facility hit by a
U.S.-Israeli strike in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, March 8, 2026. [AP
Photo/Vahid Salemi]
On Sunday, the United States and Iran
announced a ceasefire agreement in the war that the Trump administration
launched on February 28. Despite killing more than 3,000 Iranians and
triggering a global food and energy crisis, the United States has failed
to achieve the objectives for which it went to war.
A “memorandum of understanding” was
digitally signed on Sunday, and a formal signing ceremony is scheduled
for Friday in Switzerland. The 60-day framework reportedly provides for
the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the removal of the US naval
blockade and the immediate suspension of military operations, including
in Lebanon. It commits both sides to subsequent negotiations on Iran’s
nuclear program, sanctions and regional security.
Whether the agreement actually holds
remains uncertain. The actual text has not been released. Iran has
claimed that some $25 billion in frozen Iranian assets have been
unfrozen, which the US has disputed. Trump has reiterated that “Iran
will never have a nuclear weapon” and warned that the United States
“could attack Iran again if negotiations fail.” Israel, not a party to
the agreement, has rejected it and continued strikes on Lebanon the same
day.
Regardless, the outcome represents an
unqualified debacle for American imperialism. It is a case of a
schoolyard bully picking a fight and winding up with a black eye. The
Iranian government remains in power. Its nuclear program is intact. The
most concrete deliverable is the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, a
reversion to the prewar status quo.
There is a staggering chasm between the
braggadocio with which the war was launched and the reality of its
outcome. Trump promised the war would end with Iran’s “unconditional
surrender.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared on March 2 that the
United States was waging “the most lethal … air power campaign in
history” with “no stupid rules of engagement.” Days later he promised
reporters “death and destruction from the sky, all day long.”
Having spent the year trying to bring the
Iranian government down and calling on Iranians in February to “take
over your government,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday: “I never cared about regime change.”
The media is filled with commentary about the defeat of American imperialism. The Wall Street Journal
has called it “a strategic retreat short of achieving his war aims.” It
is the operational demonstration, before the world, that the period of
unchallenged American dominance that began with the dissolution of the
USSR in 1991 has come to an end.
The political character of the American ruling class’s response is captured in the editorial published by the New York Times, speaking for the Democratic Party, under the headline “President Trump Lost This War.” The Times’ concern is not that the war was waged through mass murder and assassination, but that it failed.
“Mr. Trump made a terrible mistake
starting this war,” the editorial declares. “He prosecuted it recklessly
and in open defiance of the law. The United States is emerging
weaker—militarily, diplomatically and economically—and will pay
strategic costs for years to come.” The Times bemoans the fact
that “On balance, Iran emerges the strategic winner of the four-month
war.” The American military “has shown itself unable to quash a much
smaller opponent even as it burned through many of its long-range
precision missiles and interceptors. The outcome damages this country’s
ability to deter other potential adversaries.”
The editorial’s prescription boils down to
the statement: “The Pentagon will also need to modernize and prepare
for the wars of the future.”
The wars of the future. The Times
takes for granted the framework of permanent imperial
confrontation, above all, with China and Russia, for which the Pentagon
must “modernize and prepare.” What is in question is only the competence
with which the framework is administered.
The Democratic congressional response
operates within the same framework. Senator Chris Murphy called the deal
“essentially surrender to Iran.” Representative Seth Moulton called it
“basically a surrender document from Donald Trump to the supreme leader
of Iran.” Senator Jack Reed complained that the United States was
getting “less than what we had under the JCPOA,” the Obama-era nuclear
deal. The Democrats endorsed the war when it was launched. They complain
about it now only because it ended without Iran being destroyed.
There was enormous popular opposition to
the war, but this found absolutely no expression within the framework of
official politics.
The end of this stage of the war does not
mean the end of the war. American imperialism will prepare new wars to
recover its position. The 2015 JCPOA framework established under Obama
was ended by Trump in 2018 and paved the way for the 2026 war. The 2026
ceasefire framework will pave the way for the war that follows.
The most significant consequences of the debacle, however, will be the consequences within the United States.
The war was launched, in part, in an
attempt to stop the structural decline of American capitalism. The
European Central Bank reported this month that gold has overtaken the
euro to become the world’s second-largest reserve asset, at 27 percent
of global reserves, up from 20 percent a year earlier. The federal debt
crossed 100 percent of GDP in March for the first time since 1946. The
failure of the war has accelerated the dollar’s decline and deepened the
structural crisis the war was meant to resolve.
The war was launched against the backdrop
of escalating social conflict. In the weeks before the war began, mass
demonstrations against ICE intensified after the murder of Renée Nicole
Good, a 37-year-old poet, and Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse, by
federal agents in Minneapolis. The Trump administration’s launching of
the war was, among other things, an attempt to deflect this mounting
opposition into the channels of patriotic war fever.
Social opposition will now escalate, and
it will be increasingly centered in the working class. Auto parts
workers at American Axle struck this month. Railroaders, meatpackers,
teachers and nurses have walked out. Wall Street rose on news of the
deal Sunday, but fuel and food prices remain far above their prewar
levels. PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures) inflation has hit 3.8
percent, the fastest pace since 2021. Consumer sentiment is at all-time
lows, worse than during the Great Recession or the pandemic.
Workers have absorbed the costs of the war
through rising prices while the corporations profited. The economic
impact will provide fuel for class conflict for years to come, in the
United States and internationally. The same crisis that produces the war
is producing a global movement of the working class against it.
The Trump administration will respond to
deepening social opposition with the methods it has demonstrated: ICE
raids, mass detention infrastructure, the deployment of the National
Guard against domestic protest, the criminalization of political
opposition and the consolidation of authoritarian state power. The
defeat in Iran will not moderate this trajectory. It will intensify it.
The American ruling class, confronted with the failure of its
imperialist offensive abroad, will turn with renewed savagery against
the working class at home.
The task is the construction of an
independent political movement of the working class that is
international in scope, socialist in program and politically conscious
in its objectives.
There is a popular view that this is a
pointless war, being fought for nothing. But that is wrong—there is a
purpose. Actually, there are several. You’re just never told what they
are.
On June 1st, despite a ceasefire
ostensibly underway in the US-Israeli war on Iran, Israel’s prime
minister launched a major escalation against Lebanon,
including threatening airstrikes against the Lebanese capital. The US
president called the Israeli leader, furiously demanding an end to
Israel’s escalation. Six days later, Israel attacked Beirut’s southern
suburbs, long understood to be a red line for Hezbollah.
The Lebanese resistance organization launched a limited response,
sending 11 rockets towards Israel, almost all of which were intercepted;
no one was hurt or killed. Trump called Netanyahu again, telling him in
a brief call that now that Iran and Israel had each “had their fun,”
that Israel should stand down.
Commentators across the Middle East and
beyond debated whether Netanyahu would abide by Trump’s demand. What
virtually none of them mentioned was that Trump had refused to even
mention his most important pressure point: that if Israel resisted his
order to stand down, the US would simply stop sending tons of weapons
and tens of billions of dollars to the Israeli military. The close but
sometimes divergent interests of the Middle East’s two powers, the
global and the regional, was on full display.
It’s now been 106 days since Trump
launched his preemptive and illegal military attack on Iran. On February
28, 2026, the world awoke to the fury of a new war in the Middle East
after the United States
and Israel had launched their joint assault against Iran, with
President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu standing shoulder to
shoulder against their common foe. Claiming unbridled hegemony was on the agenda for both.
The US-Israeli war on Iran is rooted in longstanding US imperialist strategy and Israel’s national goals.
Today, with yet more fresh promises of a so-called “peace deal” that is nearly ready to be signed by Trump and Iranian leadership, the Israeli military is bombing the suburbs of Beirut despite ongoing claims of a “ceasefire.” Trying to understand the current doom loop, it’s vital we remember how we got here.
In the opening salvo of the US-Israeli
attack, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, along with an unknown number
of other top military and political leaders, was assassinated with a
ballistic missile. Just an hour later, the US fired a Tomahawk missile
directly at the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in the northern
Iranian city of Minab—killing 156 people, 120 of them children, and destroying the school. The war’s official reasons, initially, were to eliminate the ostensible threat of Iran creating a nuclear weapon,
and to destroy its conventional military capacity. The no-daylight
US-Israeli partnership, Trump and Netanyahu as BFFs, the collaboration
between the US and Israeli warplanes, bombers, drones, missiles… all
seemed seamless and perfect.
Three months later, and half a dozen or so
“ceasefires” announced, renounced, ignored and denounced, headlines
around the world gleefully recounted a Trump phone call with Netanyahu.
Focused on Israel’s escalating bombing of Lebanon threatening to derail
the latest US-Iran ceasefire, the June 1 call reportedly started with Trump telling Netanyahu “you’re fucking crazy—you’d
be in prison if it weren’t for me.“ The US president then went on to
his ”Everybody hates you now“ remark. ”Everybody hates Israel because of
this,“ he reportedly said.
Trump acknowledged saying it, and then, as
is his usual style, moved on, quickly reclaiming his friendship with
the Israeli prime minister. As was true with so many earlier ceasefires,
Israel continued its massive bombing and its brutal occupation of south
Lebanon, making a US-Iran ceasefire impossible. In the meantime,
throughout the months of the war, commentators, politicians of all
stripes, journalists and analysts across the globe were struggling to
figure out what that war was actually being fought for.
War for What?
Real fear of an actual nuclear bomb was
certainly not the answer. After all, US intelligence agencies have
agreed for years that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”
Despite that clear assessment, US B-2 stealth bombers still dropped 14 of their 30,000-pound “bunker-buster” bombs
on Iran’s civilian centrifuges at Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz at the end
of Israel’s 12-day war in June 2025. Trump and his supporters bragged of
having “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities.
And then, eight months after that, in the early days of the US-Israeli
2026 war, those B-2s were back in the air, dropping more 30,000-pound
and some smaller versions of the bunker-busters on Iran. Seems they
don’t believe even their own intelligence agents.
They thought they could impose imperialism on the cheap—but it turns out not everyone is playing that game.
Rationales for the sudden war in 2026
(launched in the midst of US negotiations with Iran for a long-term
ceasefire) were tossed around like confetti, ranging from stopping a
nuclear threat (which of course didn’t exist because Iran didn’t have,
wasn’t trying to make, and hadn’t even made a decision to try to build a
nuclear weapon), to ending Iran’s support for its regional allies, to
destroying Iran’s navy, to crippling its missile capacity, to protecting
Iranian civilians or maybe encouraging a popular uprising, or perhaps
even full-scale regime change. Later, once Iran had responded to the
attacks by closing the Strait of Hormuz, Trump shifted to trying to
justify the war as a means of forcing the reopening of the Strait, in
effect waging the new war to get back to the situation that had existed
until the US and Israel launched the war in the first place.
Not a Senseless War
None were very convincing arguments. The
popular view emerged that this was a pointless war, being fought for
nothing. But that was wrong—there was a purpose. Actually, there were
several. The Israeli prime minister has shaped his political career, for
more than 35 years, around the claim that only he could bring down the
Iranian regime, falsely claiming it as an “existential threat” to
Israel. (In fact, even if Iran changed its internal decisions and
decided to try to build a nuclear weapon some day, it would not
represent an existential threat to Israelis but only to Israel’s 47-year-old nuclear weapons monopoly in the Middle East.) Netanyahu needed the war to continue—any ceasefire, under any conditions, would weaken him politically.
On the US side, some of the war’s goals
had to do with the personal obsessions of the president and his minions.
Trump’s fixation on expanding US power around the world, and more
importantly being seen as presiding over a return to the glory
days of unchallenged US global domination, remain a driving force—as
does his determination to “get a better deal” than Obama did with the
successful Iran nuclear deal in 2015. For his self-defined “secretary of
war” Pete Hegseth, the pageantry of a powerful military—not only “the
most lethal” force in the world but more white, more male, and even more slim than any other army—could compensate for Hegseth’s lack of experience. For Secretary of State Marco Rubio,
all roads lead to regime change in Cuba—and supporting all of Trump’s
military assaults, including attacks on fishing boats in the Caribbean,
kidnapping the president and seizing the oil resources of Venezuela, bombing Yemen, Somalia and Nigeria, all help set the stage for his life-long goal of destroying the Cuban revolution.
The Search for Hegemony
All those personal obsessions likely
played some roles. But the US-Israeli war on Iran is also rooted in
longstanding US imperialist strategy and Israel’s national goals. While
Trump has shown himself for years as far more committed to maximizing
his own and his family’s wealth and power than he is accountable to any
particular faction of US capital or US elite power (except perhaps “the
billionaires,” writ large), the trajectory of imperial expansion,
especially in an era of greater and rising powers around the world,
continues to shape much of US policy.
That is where the search for hegemony
comes to the fore. For Israel—and especially for its longstanding prime
minister—the attack on Iran both demonstrates and reinforces its role as
unchallenged regional hegemon. That means asserting its power—a
derivative power, given its strategic dependence on the United States,
but power nonetheless—to seize land, dispossess and expel whole
populations, and exert permanent control over countries, economies, and
people—whenever, wherever, and for however long it chooses. Without
being held accountable.
For Israel—and especially for its
longstanding prime minister—the attack on Iran both demonstrates and
reinforces its role as unchallenged regional hegemon.
To be recognized as the regional hegemonic power in the Middle East, Israel needs to not only “mow the grass” in Lebanon and in Gaza (as well as arming and empowering ideologically driven settlers in the West Bank to escalate their violent seizure of Palestinian land and ethnic cleansing
of its population), it needs to continue to weaken, threaten, and when
possible (with US backing) go to war against Iran, its sole challenger
for regional control.
Mowing the Grass
Israelis—military and government
officials, academics, journalists and others—routinely use the term
“mowing the grass” to describe Tel Aviv’s consistent attacks against
Israel’s neighbors. The phrase was first coined to describe Israel’s
brutal 22-day assault on Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, that began the day after Christmas 2008 and killed more than 1400 Palestinians, most of them civilians and including 300 children.
Since then, it describes the frequent attacks on Gaza or
Lebanon—ostensibly aimed at militant organizations but designed
originally to kill massive numbers of civilians, displace hundreds of
thousands or millions from their homes, and destroy huge swathes of
homes, schools, churches, mosques, businesses—to remind everyone who it
is who actually holds power.
Israel is saying that it will not allow
Iran to remain an obstacle to Tel Aviv’s claim of full-blown dominance
of the region. Netanyahu is making good of the threats he’s issued for
the last 30 years.
Iran has historically been the main
obstacle preventing Israel from consolidating that regional hegemonic
role, and part of Netanyahu’s political power depends on his ability to
keep the US-Israeli “special relationship” strong and to deal
effectively with Iran. So going to war against Iran in complete and
willing partnership with the United States serves to strengthen his
still-shaky political position. What’s different now is that Israel is
saying that it will not allow Iran to remain an obstacle to Tel Aviv’s
claim of full-blown dominance of the region. Netanyahu is making good of
the threats he’s issued for the last 30 years.
So Netanyahu remains committed to
continuing this war against Iran, opposing ceasefires regardless of
their terms—and most recently, escalating attacks against Lebanon
precisely because they could prevent or shatter any ceasefire. Following
the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire in 2024, UN peacekeepers on the ground
documented more than 10,000 Israeli violations of the agreement in just
the first year. When a wobbly US-Iran ceasefire was announced on April
8, 2026, Israel responded with massive force against Beirut, launching more than 100 airstrikes within 10 minutes across the capital and killing 357 people, many of them civilians and at least 101 of them children and women.
Back in the USA….
For the United States, going to war
against Iran could strengthen Washington’s longstanding commitment to
maintaining global domination—a goal particularly relished by its
power-obsessed and erratic president. The war was designed to both
demonstrate and bolster the US role as unchallenged global hegemon. And
doing so arm in arm with Israel, the regional version.
What a team they thought they would make.
What they didn’t reckon with was the reality of Iran—its military, its
government, its people. While there is no question US-Israeli military
might massively outstrips that of Iran, it turned out that Tehran was able to use its not-insignificant drone and missile capacity in ways that maximized its power.
While there is no question US-Israeli
military might massively outstrips that of Iran, it turned out that
Tehran was able to use its not-insignificant drone and missile capacity
in ways that maximized its power.
For example, Iran’s relatively few strikes
on US bases and sometimes domestic facilities in the surrounding
US-backed Gulf states had political consequences beyond their
comparatively low levels of casualties. They showed how “protection” in
the form of US military
bases, weapons and troops in those countries did not keep their people
safe, but rather laid a target on their backs. Most especially, Iran’s
few direct attacks on ships attempting to cross the Strait of Hormuz
early in the war, had the much broader effect of shutting down the vital
waterway entirely, as shipowners and insurance companies refused to
take the risk.
Miscalculations
When Israel carried out its guided missile
attack on the first day of the war, killing the supreme leader and a
number of other top officials, the cheering in Washington
and Tel Aviv reflected the assumption that the decapitation of the
government would lead to chaos and its inability to function. The
cheerleaders were wrong. As Narges Bajoghli and Vali Nasr noted in Foreign Affairs,
the US and Israel “expected a quick victory through targeted
assassinations of Iran’s leadership. But decapitation did not produce
regime collapse. Instead, it opened the door for a new generation to
take over.” Not only did Khamenei’s son take over his father’s position,
but younger military, political, and business leaders filled in the
gaps across the structures of power.
And while the Iranian leadership had been
significantly weakened by public mobilization against both governmental
inability to solve the escalating economic crisis and its increasingly
repressive attacks against protesters, it appears it was not further
weakened by the US-Israeli assault. As Nasr and Bajoghli describe the
situation, the public anger of January 2026 in response to escalating
repression of the mass uprisings, didn’t disappear with the US-Israeli
assault. They wrote:
The war’s destruction has been vast: public infrastructure,
factories, schools, hospitals, historic monuments, and even entire
neighborhoods lie in ruins. As Israeli and American bombs and missiles
pummeled the landscape, Trump threatened to arm separatists, redraw
Iran’s borders, crush its economy and annihilate its civilization.
Together, these military and rhetorical assaults provoked a nationalist
reaction that cut across political divisions. Public anger has not
disappeared. The grief, frustration and accumulated resentment of
decades of misrule and repression remain. What has changed is the
political landscape in which those feelings find expression. Dissent is
now refracted through a national struggle against a foreign enemy that
Iranians compare to Alexander the Great, who conquered the Persian
empire in the 4th century BC; the Arab armies that invaded in the 7th
century AD; and the Mongols, who came six centuries after that.
Contrary to American and Israeli
expectations, the war has not sparked street demonstrations. The longer
it went on, the less the regime appeared threatened by public uprisings.
Iranian society mobilized not against the state but alongside it,
holding daily rallies across the country, forming human chains and
gathering on bridges threatened by Trump. The sharp divide between state
and society that had characterized Iran in January blurred—not through
persuasion or repression, but through the shared experience of living
through the bombing and witnessing its destruction.
Palestine
There was another reason for the
US-Israeli war, that explains at least the timing, if not the overall
rationale—Palestine. Israel has been committing genocide
in Gaza for two years and eight months. There are now more than 73,000
known, identified, named Palestinians in Gaza who have been killed by
Israeli bombs, tanks, bullets, drones, missiles, almost all paid for
(and to a large degree produced) by US taxpayers. Thousands more lie
dead under the rubble of what were once the cities, towns, refugee camps
of the decimated Gaza Strip. The statistics belie the lives
lost—babies, elders, children. Journalists and health workers
in staggering numbers. And Israel’s genocide continues, people are
still being killed by Israeli bombs, tanks and drones, as well as
deliberately-imposed shortages of water, food, medical supplies, shelter.
The Gaza genocide is not unrelated or
incidental to the US-Israeli war in Iran—it is a primary enabler. It is
precisely the level of impunity, the absolute lack of accountability for
any of the perpetrators of this crime against humanity, that has given
Israeli and US leaders the confidence to go ahead with what many have
called the “Gazafication of Iran” and the “Gazafication of Lebanon”
without fearing there might be a price to be paid.
The Gaza genocide is not unrelated or incidental to the US-Israeli war in Iran—it is a primary enabler.
The international arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against Israeli leaders (Israel assassinated the Hamas
leaders who were similarly charged) are ignored in most of the
US-allied countries that Netanyahu and his former defense minister might
want to visit. South Africa’s unprecedented effort to hold Israel
accountable at the International Court of Justice
for its violations of the Genocide Convention resulted in a powerful
preliminary ruling that Israel’s actions plausibly do constitute
genocide. Israel was ordered to carry out specific actions—starting with
an end to killing people in Gaza—but it has yet to face any
consequences for ignoring those orders. And no one knows when the final
ruling might be issued—or if it will lead to some level of enforcement,
either in the United Nations,
by a coalition of governments, or, most likely by a newly-enraged,
newly-engaged global civil society ready to move with ever greater
energy, strategic clarity and political power to impose serious
consequences on the governments and individuals responsible for the
first genocide in history to be carried out openly, proudly, and visible
to the world.
War Over War
For now, while the war against Iran
continues, it looks like both Israel and the United States are moving
into a different phase. They are still looking to claim power, still
working to reshape political relations and consolidate regional and
global power across the middle east. But rather than simply escalating
again, as Israel still is in Lebanon, or continuing a grinding daily
assault as it still is in Gaza—both actions armed and paid for by the
US—they are facing some changed circumstances. Just maybe Washington and
Tel Aviv are finding that it’s harder than they thought to re-order the
whole Middle East—and to do that in tandem is harder than ever.
Trump seemed to think he could accomplish
something dramatic and “beautiful” in Iran—encourage a popular uprising,
maybe seize the oil and replace the leadership’s political orientation
as if it were Venezuela—but then found that wasn’t so likely. Turns out
Iran is not Venezuela. Netanyahu has massive public support among Jewish
Israelis for continuing the war in Iran, though support for the war in
Lebanon is not so popular. (It should not be forgotten that after 18
years of occupying South Lebanon, Israeli troops were finally pulled out
in 2000 primarily because the government could not survive the
mobilization of Israeli mothers angry that their sons in the IDF were
occasionally being killed by Hezbollah’s retaliation actions..)
Trump seemed to think he could accomplish
something dramatic and “beautiful” in Iran—encourage a popular uprising,
maybe seize the oil and replace the leadership’s political orientation
as if it were Venezuela—but then found that wasn’t so likely.
At home Netanyahu may be able to get away
with claiming victory over Iran even if a ceasefire is imposed, by
continuing Israel’s longstanding practice of assassinating Iranian
scientists and political/military leaders, and occasional bombing raids.
But Israel’s plummeting losses in the war of global legitimacy are
certainly not likely to be reversed any time soon. The most recent Pew survey indicates sky-high majorities holding negative views of Israel and Netanyahu around the world—up to 95% in Pakistan, 78% negative in Sweden and Spain.
The global Palestinian rights
mobilizations and the even broader movements for ceasefire and an end
to genocide of course play a major role. Social movements and civil
society activists around the world will continue to hold up the ICJ
decisions and the UN General Assembly resolutions requiring governments
to impose arms embargoes, boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel.
And as the Strait remains closed and food
shortages mount in the poorest countries, as Arab governments fearing
public opposition at home reduce their ties with Israel and reject
expansion of the Abraham Accords, and as Israel continues to kill
Lebanese and Palestinian families, Trump’s claims will be less likely to
be believed. With the mid-terms only a few months off, his claims of “We’re the winner, we won” are already ringing increasingly hollow. It doesn’t mean he won’t make the claims, it just means they’re not going to work.
For Trump, given the unexpected level of
resilience in Iran, Tehran’s access to a virtually unlimited supply of
cheap drones that are doing real damage to Gulf Arab states hosting US
bases and troops, and its willingness to close the Strait as a pressure
point with global ramifications, it’s going to be difficult to claim
this war as a victory.
The search to consolidate regional and
global power continues. It’s a big part of the reason the US and Israel
are launching new wars and escalating longstanding attacks. People are
still losing lands and lives as these hegemons rely on war to
consolidate their positions. But neither Israel in the Middle East nor
the United States in the world are unchallenged. They thought they could
impose imperialism on the cheap—but it turns out not everyone is
playing that game. The search for hegemonic power is far from settled.
In the wake of the US and Iran announcing a
Memorandum of Understanding to end the conflict between the two nations
that includes a ceasefire in Lebanon, Israeli ministers have said
Israel isn’t bound by the agreement.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed that the IDF will not withdraw
from its so-called “security zones” in southern Lebanon, which include a
major swathe of Lebanese territory, and will also continue the
occupation in southwest Syria and Gaza.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I
are leading a clear policy that determines that the IDF will remain in
the security zones in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza, without any time limit,
to protect, from there, the border and Israeli communities against
jihadist elements,” Katz said.
Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon in April 2026 (IDF photo)
The Israeli defense minister said that the
IDF will continue its destruction campaign in southern Lebanon and its
forced displacement of Lebanese civilians. “We oppose an IDF withdrawal
from Lebanon, despite all the existing pressures and those that will
still come,” he said.
Katz added that Netanyahu “made these
points clear to US President Trump and to other senior American
officials,” which aligns with a report from Ynet
that said Netanyahu told Trump that Israel is not bound by the Lebanon
clause of the US-Iran MOU. Katz also said that if Iran strikes Israel
over its continued war in Lebanon, Israel will hit Iran “with full
force.”
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich slammed the agreement
Trump reached with Iran, saying it is “bad for Israel and for the
entire free world. Period.” Israeli opposition leaders also attacked
Netanyahu, with former Prime Minister Yair Lapid saying there has
“never, ever, been a more absolute failure than Netanyahu’s diplomatic
failure on the Iranian front.”
Iranian officials on Monday reaffirmed
that an end to Israel’s war in Lebanon was key to a lasting deal with
the US. “Lebanon and the termination of the war in Lebanon are an
inseparable part of the understanding on ending the [US-Israeli] war [on
Iran]. We have shown that we are determined in this regard and have
proven in practice that we are serious, and we will continue to monitor
developments carefully in the future,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry
spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei.
“The word Lebanon is used three times in
the understanding. It is mentioned that ending the war includes Lebanon
and respecting the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity … The
United States must honor its commitments and ensure that the Zionist
regime fulfills its obligation not to attack Lebanon,” he added.
Workers
clear debris near an apartment building damaged in an Israeli airstrike
in Dahiyeh, Beirut’s southern suburbs, Lebanon, Sunday, June 14, 2026.
[AP Photo/Bilal Hussein]
The United States and Iran announced a
ceasefire agreement Sunday, suspending, for now, a war that the Trump
administration began on February 28 and that has killed thousands of
people. “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete,”
President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social, ordering the lifting of
the US naval blockade of Iran and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
“Ships of the World, start your engines,” he wrote. “Let the oil flow!”
While the terms of the settlement remain
undisclosed, this much is already clear: The Trump administration
achieved none of the aims for which it went to war. It set out to
overthrow the Iranian government, destroy its nuclear program, break its
military and seize the Strait of Hormuz. It accomplished none of this.
Trump responded to the failure by denying
he had ever sought to overthrow the Iranian government. “As far as
regime change, I never cared about regime change,” he told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.
In reality, his administration had spent
the entire year trying to bring the government down. Early on, it funded
and armed protesters inside Iran. “We sent guns to the protesters, a
lot of them,” Trump said in April.
When this failed, the United States and
Israel turned to assassination. The opening strikes on February 28
killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Revolutionary Guard
commander Mohammad Pakpour and Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh, along
with much of the military command. The government did not collapse.
Khamenei’s son Mojtaba succeeded him, and it was the younger Khamenei’s
national security council that approved Sunday’s deal.
There followed a bombing campaign across
Iran that has killed at least 3,468 people, by the Iranian health
ministry’s count, and a naval blockade imposed on April 13. American
warplanes destroyed water reservoirs in Sirik that supplied more than
20,000 people and fired on oil tankers running through the blockade,
killing three Indian sailors aboard the Settebello this week. After two
months, the blockade failed to force Iran’s surrender, and the Strait of
Hormuz remained shut by Tehran’s decree until Sunday.
No agreement with American imperialism is
worth the paper it is written on. In 2015, the Obama administration
signed the nuclear accord known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action (JCPOA), under which Iran accepted strict limits on enrichment
and intrusive inspections. Iran kept to its terms—the International
Atomic Energy Agency certified as much in report after report—but in May
2018 Trump tore the agreement up anyway, calling it a “horrible,
one-sided deal.” Obama, who signed that accord, said Sunday it was
“doubtful that any agreement that arises is going to be significantly
different or a significant improvement from the deal that we had in the
first place… before we, the United States, pulled out of it.”
The pattern was repeated last year. Trump
announced a “Complete and Total CEASEFIRE” in June 2025 to end the
Twelve-Day War between Israel and Iran. That truce held until February
28, when the United States and Israel broke it, launching the war that
has now been paused.
Even as he proclaimed peace on Sunday, Trump threatened to resume the war. The New York Times reported
that in a phone call he said he would “restart military attacks on
Tehran” if Iran failed to reach a final nuclear accord, or else make the
United States “the guardian of the Middle East” in exchange for 20
percent of the region’s revenues.
Trump’s claims about the settlement were
as hollow as his account of the war. He boasted that the Strait of
Hormuz would be “permanently toll free,” but the memorandum suspends
tolls for only 60 days. Iran charged no tolls before the war—the deal
restores the prewar status quo. Trump said the inspection of Iran’s
nuclear material could wait: “We’ll get the nuclear dust later on when
we’re ready to go in and do it… there’s no rush.”
The agreement nominally covers Lebanon,
where Israel has waged a parallel war that has killed more than 3,700
people. Hours before the announcement, Israel bombed the southern
suburbs of Beirut, killing three, in a strike that nearly wrecked the
deal. Trump said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had shown “no
judgment” and told all sides to “stand down.” Israel, which was not a
party to the talks, has not endorsed the agreement, and Israeli
politicians across the spectrum denounced it.
The Democrats’ response to Trump’s moves
toward an agreement with Iran centered on the accusation that he had
failed to secure the interests of US imperialism. Democratic
Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts called the emerging terms
“basically a surrender document from Donald Trump to the supreme leader
of Iran.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, on
NBC’s “Meet the Press,” complained that the war had left the United
States worse off: “Things aren’t better for us. They’re worse. In fact,
Iran is stronger right now.”
A warning must be made. Whatever the
failures and setbacks of the past four months, American imperialism will
only redouble its efforts to dominate the Middle East and the world by
military force.
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It’s important to understand that, contrary to Donald Trump’s quip to Barak Ravid that Netanyahu has “no f***ing judgment,” the Israeli Prime Minister knows exactly
what he is doing: With a set of strikes at the Dahiyeh neighborhood in
Beirut, he is trying to kill both the pending US-Iran peace deal and the
fragile peace between Israel and Lebanon that would come with it.
There is a further strategic dividend.
Netanyahu is also seeking to preempt Iran’s attempt to establish a new
regional deterrence equation – one in which attacks on Beirut, and
potentially on Lebanon more broadly, would trigger a direct Iranian
response against Israel. By striking now, he is not merely targeting an
adversary; he is challenging the emergence of a regional order that
would constrain Israel’s freedom of military action.
Netanyahu even posted a video on his Twitter bragging about the attack:
תקפנו בדאחייה בביירות מטרות טרור של ארגון הטרור חיזבאללה. ישראל לא תסבול ירי לשטחה pic.twitter.com/wVARFCkDQe
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) June 14, 2026
The exchange of fire between Israel and
Iran last week was about far more than retaliation. After Israel defied
President Trump and struck Beirut’s Dahiyeh neighborhood, Iran responded
by attacking Israel directly – the first time Tehran had launched
strikes on Israel in response to an Israeli attack on Lebanon. Israel
defied Trump once more and retaliated against Iran, prompting another
Iranian response, after which Israel confined its next strike to
southern Lebanon rather than Beirut.
The cycle reflected Iran’s attempt to
establish a new regional equation: that attacks on Lebanon would no
longer be cost-free for Israel, but would carry the risk of direct
Iranian retaliation. For the first time in decades, a major regional
power was seeking to place hard-power constraints on Israel’s freedom of
military action beyond its borders.
Having reestablished its own deterrence,
Tehran was now attempting to establish extended deterrence to its
partners as part of a broader effort to rebuild its forward-defense
posture. Israel, unsurprisingly, viewed this as a direct challenge to
its long-standing freedom of maneuver and moved quickly to prevent the
new doctrine from taking hold.
Of course, extended deterrence can not be
established through a single exchange of fire. At a minimum, it would
require several rounds of action and reaction before either side
accepted it as a new reality. And even then, it would never be
foolproof. Tehran understands that its purpose cannot simply be to
eliminate Israeli strikes on Lebanon, but to force Israeli leaders to
think twice before authorizing them by attaching a new and significant
cost: the likelihood of direct Iranian retaliation.
It was therefore clear that Netanyahu had
not abandoned the fight. Yet for several days, even as Hezbollah and
Israel continued to exchange fire, he refrained from striking Beirut’s
southern suburbs and testing Iran’s new red line.
But today, just hours before President
Trump was expecting Iran to sign a memorandum that would end the
U.S.-Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Netanyahu crossed both
Tehran’s and Trump’s red line: keeping Beirut out of the conflict.
Netanyahu clearly timed this for maximum
impact. With a single set of strikes, Netanyahu may have advanced two
goals at once – torpedoing Trump’s peace deal and preventing the
emergence of a new deterrence equation that would impose meaningful
constraints on Israel’s military operations in Lebanon.
A diplomat involved in the talks told Fox News that: “This is a clear attempt by Israel to sabotage the President’s deal and drag the United States back into war.”
Trump, meanwhile, is once again reportedly “pissed off” at Netanyahu. In a Truth Social post,
the president declared that the strike on Beirut “should not have
happened,” while pointedly questioning whether it was a proportionate
response to Hezbollah’s latest attack on Israel.
“Israel has the right to defend itself
against threats,” Trump wrote, “but the attack it was responding to was
very small and meaningless. Nobody was hurt, injured, or killed, and it
should not disrupt this important process.”
The statement was notable not merely for
its criticism of Netanyahu, but for what it implied: that Israel’s
strike was neither militarily necessary nor diplomatically prudent at a
moment when a potential breakthrough with Iran appeared within reach.
Washington is frustrated by Tehran’s
insistence that Trump rein in Israel, even as American officials believe
Iran has failed to similarly restrain Hezbollah. It is equally
frustrated that a deal it urgently wants with Iran is now being held
hostage by Israel, ironically at the request of the Iranians, since it
is Tehran that insists that any ceasefire must be region-wide and
prevent Israel from having the ability to restart the war.
That frustration is understandable. But
Washington must also recognize a basic reality: the only way to delink a
U.S.-Iran agreement from the Israel-Lebanon conflict is to delink the
United States itself from Israel’s recurring resort to military
escalation.
As long as Israel retains the capacity to
drag the United States back into conflict, Tehran will see little reason
to separate diplomacy with Washington from the wars Israel chooses to
start and pull the US into.
Indeed, the principal reason Tehran
insists on a region-wide ceasefire is to deny Israel the ability to draw
the United States into yet another war with Iran itself.
If Trump were to clearly establish that
the United States would neither participate in nor defend an unjustified
Israeli military escalation, Tehran might no longer see the need to
link a U.S.-Iran accord to the Israel-Lebanon front.
Such a calculated distancing from Israel
would serve American interests in any case. But the need for it has
rarely been more apparent than it is today.
Trita Parsi is the Executive VP of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
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”
Today is the birthday anniversary of Che Guevara (June 14, 1928).
Che Guevara was and is an inspiration to
all those who fight against and oppose imperialists and their lackeys
throughout the world. The centre of that power was and still is the
United States, the ‘leader’ of the warmongers, war criminals, weapon
industries and its allies who further the cause of American hegemony and
perpetuate the power of colonial powers like Israel.
Che Guevara and Fidel Castro stood against
the gangster policies of the United States and its wars of aggression.
For instance, the ethnic cleansing in Palestine that is still going on
is because of the power Zionists wield in America and direct the course
of US foreign policies.
In Iran, America and Britain toppled the
democratic government of Dr Mossadegh in 1953 and reinstated the pliant
regime of the Shah. The Washington rulers did the same with the
socialist-democratic government of Allende in Chile. America has been
the patron of all the right-wing dictatorships in Latin America.
The people who stood up against the
American domination in the western hemisphere were Fidel Castro and his
comrades like Che. They were the people who liberated Cuba from the
Batista dictatorship and heroically upheld the cause of freedom and
independence of the island nation despite all the efforts of the US to
destroy the Cuban revolution and the CIA’s hundreds of secret plans and
attempts to kill Fidel Castro.
—-
“Whenever death may surprise us, let it be
welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and
another hand reaches out to take up our arms.”
While talks in Cairo center on
disarming Hamas, Israel has kept killing hundreds of Palestinians
without accountability and is expanding its control over the strip
despite an alleged ‘ceasefire’
The US military has begun constructing a
“huge base” on the Gaza envelope to implement US President Donald
Trump’s plan to “take over” the strip, Israel Hayom reported on 13 June.
The US base, being built near the Israeli
military base at Reim settlement, will function as both a military and
civilian headquarters for the organizations and forces arriving in the
area to implement the Trump plan.
In February 2025, Trump proposed a US “takeover” of the Gaza Strip.
The plan called
for the forced displacement of approximately two million Palestinians
to neighboring lands and redeveloping the territory as a high-tech
business and tourism hub that Trump said would become the “Riviera of
the Middle East.”
The new base will replace the US facility
in the Israeli town of Kiryat Gat, established under the direction of
Trump’s Board of Peace in the wake of the October 2025 “ceasefire.”
Representatives from more than 24
countries staffed the multinational headquarters and were tasked with
overseeing the ceasefire and the entry of humanitarian aid.
The Kiryat Gat base was also meant to
direct the operations of an International Stabilization Force (ISF)
tasked with providing security in Gaza.
However, Israel has continued to severely
restrict the entry of aid into Gaza, recently suspending all shipments,
while the ISF has yet to be formed.
After the US and Israel launched a war on Iran on 28 February, the overwhelming majority of personnel left Kiryat Gat.
Israel Hayom noted that plans for
the new US base include the construction of a tower intended for the
command and control of forces in the field.
The US military has already begun issuing
tenders to private contractors, including for the supply of mobile
structures to house personnel and serve as a headquarters until
permanent buildings are established at the site.
The new base will also host troops from the ISF if it is formed.
Five countries previously agreed to send
forces to Gaza, namely Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, and
Albania. Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Azerbaijan have expressed a
willingness to participate but have made no firm commitment.
Currently, no countries are willing to
send troops due to fears that their forces will be tasked with disarming
the Palestinian resistance, as well as concerns about the ongoing
US-Israeli conflict with Iran.
The construction of the new US base is
being fully coordinated with the Israeli Defense Ministry. Military
officials expect the base to be constructed and staffed within a few
months.
The report comes as talks continue between Hamas and Israel via negotiators in Cairo.
Israel persists in demanding Hamas
disarmament before progressing the ceasefire, while simultaneously
continuing to kill Palestinians in Gaza without consequences and
expanding its occupation rather than withdrawing from the territory
seized during the genocide.
Israel has killed nearly 1,000
Palestinians in Gaza and expanded its control of the strip from 50
percent to at least 60 percent since the ceasefire.
One security source told Israel Hayom
that the “chance of renewed fighting in the Gaza Strip is greater than
the possibility that Hamas will actually be disarmed through a
diplomatic agreement.”
“Demilitarizing Gaza became a bigger aim than stopping Israel’s genocide; such is the absurd truth,” wrote author Ramona Wadi.
While “colonial expansion as the reason
behind Israel’s genocide in Gaza, utterly exposed for the entire world
to see, [it] is never discussed by the international community. On the
contrary, the Board of Peace promotes it and sets the conditions that
justify colonialism instead of preventing it, using an extension of the
same narrative Israel used to destroy Gaza,” Wadi added.
(Photo credit: REUTERS/AMMAR AWAD)
