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.
U.S. and Iran flags frame a symbolic diplomatic handshake. [Photo/AA]
Iran postponed the technical-level talks
with the US, which were slated for Friday in Switzerland, in protest
against “continued” Israeli ceasefire violations, mainly in southern
Lebanon, Pakistani government sources told Anadolu Agency.
The sources said that Tehran’s chief
negotiator Bagher Qalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi were “all
set” to leave for Switzerland to hold direct talks with Washington, but
they pulled out of their scheduled trip at the last minute following
“directives” from the “top Iranian leadership.”
They did not specify whether the
directives came directly from Supreme Leader Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei,
who has already said he has a “different view” on the US-Iran deal to
end the war.
No new date or venue for the talks has been decided, the sources added.
“Pakistan is in touch with both sides to
set a new date for the technical-level talks to reach a final
agreement,” a source close to mediation said.
The signing of the Islamabad Memorandum of
Understanding (Islamabad MoU) by US President Donald Trump and Iranian
President Masoud Pezeshkian had set the stage for direct talks between
Washington and Tehran in Switzerland on Friday.
The source said that US Vice President JD
Vance canceled his trip to Switzerland after Islamabad conveyed Tehran’s
decision to Washington.
“The logistics of these negotiations have
never been simple or predictable. As of now, the Vice President is not
departing tonight,” a White House spokesperson said.
“We look forward to beginning technical talks as soon as possible.”
The Swiss Foreign Ministry, in a
statement, said that the Friday talks on implementing the agreement to
end the war will not take place.
The Islamabad MoU gives officials and
experts from the two sides the next 60 days to chalk out a final
agreement, which is particularly focused on the Iranian nuclear program,
as Trump declared that Tehran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif
declared that the Islamabad MoU was effective immediately after signing
and said Iran and the US would take measures to open the Strait of
Hormuz for full international passage.
Sharif also signed the pact as “mediator.”
The pact calls for immediate and permanent
cessation of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,
with commitments not to resort to force and to guarantee Lebanon’s
sovereignty.
Soon after the US and Israel initiated war
on Feb. 28, Iran closed the Hormuz and later, on April 13, American
forces imposed their blockade on Iranian ports – making passage of
commercial ships nearly impossible through the critical waterway.
Israel has also waged attacks on Lebanon, killing nearly 3800, including civilians and soldiers, since the war began.
Over 3,300 people, including civilians and
soldiers, have been killed in Iran, while the US has confirmed the
death of 14 personnel, in addition to the loss of armed weaponry and
aircraft.
After securing a ceasefire on April 08,
Pakistan hosted the highest-level direct talks between the two nations
on April 12 and 13 since they severed diplomatic ties in 1979.
Senate
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat-New York, right, and House
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat-New York, outside the White
House in Washington, September 29, 2025. [AP Photo/Evan Vucci]
There are moments that expose the
fundamental character of the political system in the United States, that
notwithstanding the daily infighting between the Democrats and
Republicans, when it comes to the basic interests of American
imperialism, the two parties of American capitalism are united.
The publication Thursday of the terms of
the memorandum of understanding between the Trump administration and
Iran is such a moment. It has triggered an outpouring of criticism from
both the Democratic and Republican parties on the grounds that the war
US President Donald Trump launched against Iran in February failed to
secure American imperialism’s objectives in dominating the Middle East.
Republican former Vice President Mike
Pence called the deal “appeasement” this week and demanded that, short
of a harsher settlement, “we should let our Armed Forces finish the job
on our terms.”
The Democrats joined the Republican
condemnation of the agreement, criticizing it in much the same language.
Senator Adam Schiff of California called it “a thorough capitulation,”
writing that “Iran gets sanctions relief… and a $300 billion
reconstruction fund.” Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut called it
“essentially a surrender to Iran.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries
declared that “Iran is stronger and America is less safe” as a result
of the agreement.
The New York Times, in an
editorial headlined “President Trump Lost This War,” called the
agreement “a humiliating comedown” and named Iran “the strategic winner
of the four-month war.”
Jacobin magazine, the
semi-official publication of the Democratic Socialists of America,
criticized Trump’s deal with Iran in language indistinguishable from
that of the Republicans and the Democratic leadership.
Jacobin’s article, titled “Donald
Trump Has Nothing to Show for His War With Iran,” took the form of an
interview with Andreas Krieg, a professor of “defense studies” at King’s
College London. The article states that Trump “has ended up in a weaker
strategic position than when he started.”
Krieg told the magazine the war had
produced “tactical degradation but strategic regression.” Iran, he
noted, had not surrendered its enrichment program, its government had
not collapsed and “its ability to close Hormuz has been proven rather
than deterred.” It offers neither a word of condemnation of the war
itself nor any call to oppose it.
The Trump administration waged an illegal
war of aggression against Iran, in violation of international law. The
war opened with a series of assassinations, including Iran’s supreme
leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and much of the country’s military and
political leadership. This act of murder and perfidy under cover of
negotiations met with approval from both parties. Senate Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer said at the time, “I will not shed a tear for Ali
Khamenei,” while Jeffries called Iran “a bad actor” that “must be
aggressively confronted.”
Throughout the war, the Democrats sought
to stifle broad popular opposition to it through a series of meaningless
procedural votes, intended to fail. In the massive demonstrations of
millions of people under the banner of “No Kings,” Democratic Party
organizers worked to deliberately exclude any reference to the war.
But now that the war has failed to achieve
Trump’s objectives, the Democrats have found their voice, condemning
his “capitulation” to Iran. This is the same party that spent the last
year and a half presenting Trump as a colossus whose social and economic
policies could not be opposed because he had a “mandate” from the
electorate.
In reality, the Democrats, who speak for
the same ruling class as Trump, agree with broad sections of Trump’s
domestic agenda. Whatever their rhetoric, they believe, together with
Trump, that fundamental social programs must be slashed to fund the
expansion of the military and the enrichment of the financial oligarchy.
It is in defense of the interests of
American imperialism that they are intractable. During his first term,
the Democrats chose to impeach Trump not over his assault on democratic
rights, but, in 2019, for his insufficient commitment to war with Russia
and his withholding of military aid to Ukraine.
Trump’s deal has settled nothing. It is a
temporary retreat, and the war could erupt again at any moment. The
logic of the Democrats’ position is that were Trump to resume bombing
Iran, they would support it.
The Democratic response to the agreement
makes clear that their claim to represent any sort of “progressive”
opposition to the fascist Trump is a lie. They are ferocious defenders
of American imperialism, and should they come to power, there would be
no fundamental change in foreign policy.
A world separates the working class from these parties. From the first day of the war, the World Socialist Web Site,
the organ of the International Committee of the Fourth International,
defined the war by its social character, calling it “a criminal war of
aggression by an imperialist power against an oppressed former colony,
aimed at plundering its oil wealth and establishing control of the
Persian Gulf.” The Socialist Equality Party declared in a statement that
it “condemns this war unconditionally and calls on the working class of
every country to oppose it,” insisting that “the main enemy is at home”
and that American workers “have no interest in a war against the people
of Iran.”
The war against Iran is the product of the
crisis of American imperialism, which sees no escape from its impasse
except war. Every American war since 1991—against Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya and now Iran—has ended in failure, and each defeat has prepared
the ground for the next. There is every reason to believe that the
debacle in Iran, which has only deepened that crisis, will propel new
wars.
But the war has also detonated a social
crisis at home. It drove inflation to 4.2 percent in May, the highest in
three years, gutting real wages and setting off a rebellion across
American industry. Thousands of auto parts workers at Nexteer, Dana and
Bridgewater have rejected one concession contract after another—the Dana
local in Paris, Tennessee, voting one down by 288 to one—while 1,000
American Axle workers walked out on June 1 in their first strike in 18
years, 1,700 railroad workers across 11 states tore up a nine-year
contract and nurses from Boston to Chicago voted to strike.
The movement is not confined to the United
States. In Spain, 78,000 teachers in Valencia walked out this spring;
Italy and Portugal have each been stopped by a nationwide general
strike.
It is this growing eruption of social
struggle, centered in the working class that has been made to pay for
the war, that is the means to oppose the global offensive of American
imperialism. The development of this movement requires a break with both
capitalist parties and the building of the Socialist Equality Party,
the United States section of the International Committee of the Fourth
International.
Israeli attacks in Gaza since the
so-called ceasefire deal was signed in October 2025 have now killed more
than 1,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, as the IDF has continued its constant violations of the agreement.
The Health Ministry said that over the
previous 24 hours, Israeli attacks killed two Palestinians in Gaza, and
six Palestinians who succumbed to wounds from previous strikes were
added to the death toll, bringing the total number of Palestinians
killed since the deal was signed to 1,005.
Another 3,157 Palestinians have been
wounded in the time, meaning there have been more than 4,000 Palestinian
casualties in the eight-month period.
Mourners
react during the funeral of six-year-old Palestinian girl Mennatallah
Abu Libda, who was killed in an Israeli strike on a tent encampment for
displaced families, according to medics, in Khan Younis in the southern
Gaza Strip, May 25, 2026. REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Israeli attacks continued in Gaza on Wednesday, with witnesses telling the Anadolu Agency
that an Israeli strike hit beachgoers in the al-Mawasi tent camp in
southern Gaza. At least two Palestinians were killed, and six were
wounded.
The report said that the area that was
bombed was “crowded with beachgoers and displaced families, many of whom
had sought refuge by the sea as their only escape from soaring
temperatures and deteriorating living conditions in displacement camps.”
Besides the constant strikes, Israel has
also violated the deal by taking more territory in Gaza. After the
ceasefire agreement was signed, IDF troops occupied about 53% of Gaza,
but that has increased to about 60%, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu has said that he ordered the military to expand it to 70%.
In recent days, Palestinians have reported
IDF troops advancing the “yellow line,” the vague boundary that
separates the IDF-occupied side of Gaza from the rest of the Strip, and
several families were reportedly displaced in Gaza City on Tuesday as Israeli troops pushed tanks into the area.
The US and Israeli officials have accused
Hamas of violating the ceasefire deal by not laying down its weapons,
but the agreement that was actually signed didn’t commit Hamas to
disarmament.
The two sides agreed to a US proposal that
called for the “demilitarization” of Gaza as a framework for
negotiations, but the issue of disarmament was meant to be worked out in
follow-up negotiations. Hamas has also maintained that it won’t disarm
unless there is movement toward the establishment of a Palestinian
state. Negotiations on implementing the US plan for Gaza have been
ongoing, but there’s been no sign of progress.
Speaking from the G7 summit in the French
Alps on Wednesday, he said that a memorandum of understanding had not
been finalised but that he would go back to “shooting at them and
dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head” if he did not
like the agreement.
It follows the leak of a 14-point document reported to be the same as one digitally signed by the US leader, a US official shared with CNN.
Israeli forces were said to have carried
out an airstrike in the Nabatieh district and raids on the town of
Nabatieh al-Fawqa, according to Lebanese media and Al Jazeera Arabic.
There was no immediate comment from
Israel. Iran has warned of a “hard response” if Israel does not stop its
attacks on Lebanon, and Hezbollah says Tehran promised it would not
sign the final nuclear deal with the US unless Israel stops.
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.
![U.S. and Iran flags frame a symbolic diplomatic handshake. [Photo/AA]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/thumbs_b_c_83fbfd954e6d536e95e52f191c0df54b-1-1.jpg?fit=920%2C613&ssl=1)
