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.
President Donald Trump delivers remarks
during a working breakfast with governors in the State Dining Room at
the White House on February 20, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
One analyst predicted Iran would close the
Strait of Hormuz and attack oil installations “in the hope of driving
oil prices to record levels” should the US strike.
US President Donald Trump on Friday confirmed that he’s considering launching an unprovoked military strike against Iran.
According to the New York Times,
Trump was asked by reporters on Friday if he was considering attacking
Iran, and he replied, “I guess I can say I am considering that.”
The US has for weeks been sending fleets
of warships, including the world’s largest aircraft carrier, to the
Middle East in apparent preparation for a massive military operation
against Iran.
According to a Friday report from Al Jazeera, the buildup is the largest by the US Air Force in the region since the 2003 Iraq War,
and it includes deployments of E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control
System (AWACS) aircraft, F-35 stealth strike fighters and F-22 air
superiority jets, and F-15 and F-16 fighter jets.
Trump has not given any justification for launching such an attack, nor has he asked the US Congress to approve it, even though the Constitution gives the legislative branch the power to declare war.
Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) have been pushing for a vote in the US House of Representatives on a war powers resolution that would require Congress to debate and approve any act of war with Iran.
It is also not clear what goals the president would hope to achieve with the attack. A Thursday CNN report indicated
that Trump is now weighing several options ranging from “more targeted
strikes to sustained operations that could potentially last for weeks,”
including “plans to take out Tehran’s leaders.”
Trita Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, wrote
in a Friday analysis of Trump’s reported attack plans that there is
little chance that the president will be able to achieve a quick victory
over Iran simply because the offers he has made to its government are
nonstarters.
“Since the US strategy… is to escalate until Tehran
caves, and since capitulation is a non-option for Iran, the Iranians
are incentivized to strike back right away at the US,” explained Parsi.
“The only exit Tehran sees is to fight back, inflict as much pain as
possible on the US, and hope that this causes Trump to back off or
accept a more equitable deal.”
Parsi acknowledged that there is no way
Iran can defeat the US militarily, but could “get close to destroying
Trump’s presidency before it loses the war” through a number of
maneuvers intended to spike the price of oil,
including “closing the Strait of Hormuz” and attacking “oil
installations in the region in the hope of driving oil prices to record
levels and by that inflation in the US.”
“This is an extremely risky option for
Iran,” Parsi conceded, “but one that Tehran sees as less risky than the
capitulation ‘deal’ Trump is seeking to force on Iran.”
This year’s Berlin International Film
Festival (Berlinale) has witnessed a growing conflict between a layer of
artists determined to speak out against the genocide that has taken
place and continues until this day in Gaza, and the Berlin festival
management, together with its backers in the German government,
determined to keep genocide off the agenda.
Bae
Doona, left, and Jury president Wim Wenders attend the press conference
for the Jury of the International Film Festival, Berlinale, in Berlin,
Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026. [AP Photo/Scott A Garfitt]
An open letter released February 17, and
now signed by more than 100 film artists, all of whom have attended
previous Berlinales, accuses the film festival of “censoring artists who
oppose Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the
German state’s key role in enabling it.”
The signatories include Tilda Swinton,
Javier Bardem, Peter Mullan, Mike Leigh, Nan Goldin, Adam McKay, Alia
Shawkat, Brian Cox, Hany Abu Assad, Joshua Oppenheimer, Ken Loach, Mahdi
Fleifel, Mark Ruffalo, Saleh Bakri and Sarah Friedland.
The open letter raises a serious
allegation made by the Palestine Film Institute to the effect that the
festival has been “policing filmmakers alongside a continued commitment
to collaborate with Federal Police on their investigations.”
The letter refers to those filmmakers who
spoke out on behalf of Palestinians and their rights on the Berlinale
stage at the 2025 festival being aggressively reprimanded by senior
festival programmers. The letter cites one film worker who told Film
Workers for Palestine: “there was a feeling of paranoia in the air, of
not being protected and of being persecuted, which I had never felt
before at a film festival.”
The open letter also deplores the
statement made at the opening of the festival that artists should “stay
out of politics”: The artists write:
We fervently disagree with the statement
made by Berlinale 2026 jury president Wim Wenders that filmmaking is
“the opposite of politics”. You cannot separate one from the other. We
are deeply concerned that the German state-funded Berlinale is helping
put into practice what Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom
of Expression and Opinion recently condemned as Germany’s misuse of
draconian legislation “to restrict advocacy for Palestinian rights,
chilling public participation and shrinking discourse in academia and
the arts.”
The letter quotes the Chinese artist and
dissident Ai Weiwei who described what was happening in Germany as
“doing what they did in the 1930s.”
The public appeal points to the joint role
of the US and German governments in supplying Israel with the weapons
(including internationally forbidden US-made thermal and thermobaric
weapons) it requires to continue its campaign of ethnic cleansing and
genocide.
Noting that previous Berlinales had
publicly condemned “atrocities carried out against people in Iran and
Ukraine,” the letter concludes:
We call on the Berlinale to fulfil its
moral duty and clearly state its opposition to Israel’s genocide, crimes
against humanity and war crimes against Palestinians, and completely
end its involvement in shielding Israel from criticism and calls for
accountability.
In another significant development, Kaouther Ben Hania, director of the award-winning film The Voice of Hind Rajab,
refused to accept the “Most Valuable Film” award handed out at the
Cinema for Peace ceremony in Berlin this week after an Israeli general
was recognized at the same gathering. Also in attendance at the “peace”
gathering was the former US Secretary of State and war criminal Hillary
Clinton.
The Voice of Hind Rajab
While Cinema for Peace is not officially a
part of the Berlinale, the gathering has been held since 2002 on a
yearly basis to run parallel to the film festival and attract the same
audience.
In refusing to take her award, Ben Hania
said: “The Israeli army killed Hind Rajab; killed her family; killed the
two paramedics who came to save her, with the complicity of the world’s
most powerful governments and institutions.”
“I refuse to let their deaths become a
backdrop for a polite speech about peace. Not while the structures that
enabled them remain untouched,” she continued.
Ben Hania added that the death of the
six-year-old Hind was “not an exception, it’s part of a genocide,” and
she criticized those who described large-scale civilian killings as
“self-defense” or “complex circumstances” while repressing all
opposition.
“Peace requires justice and accountability, not glossy slogans,” she concluded.
In response to the artists’ open letter
directed toward the Berlinale, its management and supporters in the
German media have gone into overdrive to defend the festival’s stance.
Festival director Tricia Tuttle issued a
statement, evasively declaring: “We are representing lots of people who
have different views, including lots of people who live in Germany who
want a more complex understanding of Israel’s positionality than maybe
the rest of the world has right now.”
In one short paragraph, Tuttle repeats the
phrase complex/complexity in relation to Israel three times—the very
same words Kaouther Ben Hania criticised in her award rejection speech!
What is Tuttle talking about! There is no “complexity” when it comes to taking sides on the issue of genocide.
On the one side, are the broad masses of
the world’s population who increasingly regard Israel as a pariah state
responsible for one of the worst acts of genocidal violence since the
Holocaust. This opposition, which has taken the form of numerous mass
protests, demonstrations and strikes, also extends to those countries
which are the closest allies of the state of Israel, the US, Germany,
Great Britain and France.
Basel Sadra (left) and Yuval Abraham in 2025. [AP Photo/Markus Schreiber]
On the other side, are the governments
listed above, together with bourgeois regimes and nominal opposition
parties all over the world that continue to aid and maintain relations
with the war criminals in Tel Aviv, thus making a continuation of the
genocide possible.
In Germany, it should be noted, it was a Green Party Culture Minister Claudia Roth who in 2024 denounced a Berlinale jury team as antisemitic for awarding a prize to the film No Other Land,
which documents the crimes of the Israeli army and government against
the Palestinian population in the West Bank. More recently, a leading
member of the Left Party, Andreas Bรผttner, raised false claims of
antisemitism to close down an art exhibition held in Potsdam defending the rights of Palestinians.
The stirrings of opposition among film
workers to the complicity of cultural institutions in supporting
genocide is to be welcomed. At the same time, those engaged in the
culture industry in Germany should take note. The comment made by a
Palestine film worker cited in the open letter, “there was a feeling of
paranoia in the air, of not being protected and of being persecuted,
which I had never felt before at a film festival,” recalls a similar
comment by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.
A year ago, Albanese was prevented from
holding lectures in Germany on the situation in Gaza. Responding to the
threats and intimidation she had faced in Germany, Albanese commented:
“I have to admit that about 75 hours in this country have made me pretty
nervous and I cannot wait to get back to ‘peaceful’ Tunisia [where she
is a resident]. I have never felt this sense of lacking oxygen that I
feel here.”
This process is not restricted to Germany.
Across the globe, governments and a host of official institutions are
using police-state methods, recalling actions taken by fascist
governments in the 1930s, to arrest, intimidate, imprison without due
process and violently repress opposition to the mass slaughter in Gaza.
Genocide is being normalised by these forces in order to justify new
wars and new atrocities directed at the broadest layers of the world
population.
The report said that the base would take
up more than 350 acres of land in southern Gaza and is envisioned as a
future base for the international force that may deploy to the Strip
under President Trump’s plan for the Palestinian territory, though so
far, only Indonesia has announced plans to commit troops to the force.
A
photograph shows tents at a makeshift camp sheltering displaced
Palestinians in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, on February 16,
2026. (Photo by Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto)
The Guardian said that the plans
it reviewed “call for the phased construction of a military outpost that
will eventually have a footprint of 1,400 metres by 1,100 metres,
ringed by 26 trailer-mounted armored watch towers, a small arms range,
bunkers, and a warehouse for military equipment for operations. The
entire base will be encircled with barbed wire.”
The contracting document includes protocol for what happens if construction teams come across human remains, since the bodies of at least 8,000 Palestinians are missing
under the rubble. “If suspected human remains or cultural artifacts are
discovered, all work in the immediate area must cease immediately, the
area must be secured, and the Contracting Officer must be notified
immediately for direction,” the document says.
It’s unclear how much the base would cost
to build, but earlier reports suggested the US was planning to construct
a major military facility on the Gaza border at a cost of between $500 million and $600 million.
Trump convened his first “Board of Peace”
meeting in Washington on Thursday, which came as Israel continues to
violate the ceasefire deal, killing more than 600 Palestinians in the
Strip since it was signed. At the event, Trump pledged that the US would contribute $10 billion to the board.
Under Trump’s plan for Gaza, the
international force is supposed to replace IDF soldiers, who continue to
occupy more than 50% of the Strip. But there’s no timeline on when that
would happen, and Israel is threatening to restart its full-scale
genocidal war if Hamas doesn’t disarm.
A Trump advisor told Axios that there’s a
90% chance the US launches an attack in the coming weeks, while Israeli
sources say it could happen within days
The Trump administration is close to
launching a major attack on Iran as it continues a massive buildup of
military forces in the Middle East, according to a report from Axios reporter Barak Ravid.
Sources told Ravid that the potential US
attack on Iran would likely be a massive multi-week operation, much
bigger than the US operation to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas
Maduro. They said it would also be much broader in scope than the 12-day
US-Israeli war on Iran that was launched in June 2025. Reuters also recently reported that the US was preparing for a sustained, multi-week attack on Iran.
Israeli officials said that the Israeli
government, which is pushing for the US to pursue regime change in Iran,
is preparing for the possibility of the attack starting in the coming
days, and CNN later reported
that the US military is ready to start the war as soon as this weekend.
Other sources put the timeline a little later, saying the war would
likely start in a few weeks.
An
F/A-18F Super Hornet makes an arrested landing on the flight deck ofthe
aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea, January 30,
2026 (US Navy photo)
“The boss is getting fed up,” a Trump
adviser told Ravid. “Some people around him warn him against going to
war with Iran, but I think there is 90% chance we see kinetic action in
the next few weeks.”
The Axios report noted that there
has been little public debate about the potential war amid the major US
military buildup and said that Americans will likely be surprised by
the scale of the coming attack.
All signs indicate that if the US bombs
Iran, Tehran will not hold back in its response and could target
multiple US bases and warships in the region, leaving open the
possibility that the war could result in hundreds or thousands of US
casualties. The conflict could also have a major impact on the global
economy, as Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 31% of seaborne crude oil shipments passed in 2025.
The US and Iran held talks on Tuesday, and
while the Iranian side said there was a “clear path” toward a deal, US
Vice President JD Vance said that Iran was not acknowledging President
Trump’s “red lines.”
Vance claimed the main US demand was that
Iran must not pursue a nuclear weapon, but for many months, the
administration had insisted the June 2025 US strikes on Iran
“obliterated” Iran’s nuclear facilities, and there’s no sign Tehran can
enrich uranium at the moment. Iran has also made clear it’s willing to
enter a deal that would involve a commitment to low enrichment levels,
and Iranian officials maintain they don’t seek a nuclear bomb.
The real goal of any US attack on Iran
will likely be regime change or taking out Iran’s ability to fire
missiles at Israel. President Trump said back in December,
when he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his
Mar-a-lago resort in Florida, that he would support another Israeli
attack on Iran if the Islamic Republic “continued” its missile program.
What one can say with certainty about the Zionist rulers of Israel is that they have followed a systematic and consistent policy that was aimed at ethnically cleansing and marginalizing the Palestinians. That was their way of establishing a colonial power in the Middle East that would expand its power and influence to other parts of the world. Their biggest prize was to control the political establishment of the United States. Other Western powers bowed to them and dutifully followed their lead.
Have they failed or succeeded in their goals? If the success of a policy is to be judged by what it achieved, then the Zionist rulers of Israel have succeeded superbly well. No Zionist ruler of Israel has deviated from the original goals. Internal political struggles between the parties have been only for gaining power; otherwise, they all have followed the same course of gradual colonization, expansion, and consolidation of their power.
Israel's savage destruction of Gaza and the mass killings of Palestinians for over 15 months has shocked most people around the world. Although this war was and is utterly gruesomer than the earlier ones, it was not an exception either; it was a continuation of the old Zionist plan of taking over what was still in the hands of a captive population. This time, the Washington ruling establishment and Congress gave full support as a co-sponsor of the Israeli war on Gaza.
The vicious and sustained campaign mounted
against Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation
of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, by
Israel and the U.S. now includes the German, Italian, French, Austrian
and Czech foreign ministers demanding her resignation. This campaign is
part of an effort by industrial nations to at once sustain the genocide
in Gaza — nearly 600 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the
sham ceasefire took effect — and silence all those who demand the
international community abide by the rule of law.
The latest assault on Francesca, part of a
concerted effort to discredit international bodies such as the U.N., is
based on a deliberately truncated video of a talk Francesca gave in
Doha on February 7 that distorts and misconstrues her words. But truth,
of course, is irrelevant. The goal is to silence her and all who stand
up for Palestinian rights.
Francesca was placed by the Trump
administration on the Office of Foreign Assets Control list of the U.S.
Treasury Department — normally used to sanction those accused of money
laundering or being involved with terrorist organizations — six days
after the release of her report, “From economy of occupation to economy
of genocide,” which documented the global corporations that make
billions of dollars from the genocide in Gaza and occupation of
Palestinians.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control list —
weaponized by the Trump administration to persecute Francesca and in
violation of the diplomatic immunity granted to U.N. officials — bans
her from entering the U.S. It prohibits any financial institution from
having her as a client. A bank that engages in financial transactions
with Francesca is banned from operating in dollars, faces
multimillion-dollar fines and is blocked from international payment
systems. This has cut her off from global banking, leaving her unable to
use credit cards or book a hotel in her name. Her assets in the U.S.
are frozen. It has seen her medical insurance refuse to reimburse her
for medical expenses. It has resulted in institutions, including U.S.
universities, human rights groups and NGOs that once collaborated with
her severing ties, fearing onerous U.S. penalties. The sanctions
followed those imposed in February and June of last year on The
International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Karim Khan along with two
judges for issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
By making Francesca, who receives frequent
death threats, the lightening rod, these governments seek to deflect
attention from the ongoing slaughter and humanitarian disaster in Gaza.
They seek to mask Israel’s system of apartheid and unlawful occupation
of historic Palestine. They seek to hide, most of all, their complicity
with their continuing weapons shipments that fuel Israel’s genocide.
The pace of the genocide has slowed, but
it has not stopped. Israel has seized 60 percent of Gaza and blocks most
humanitarian aid, including fuel, food and medicine. At the same time,
Israel is accelerating its seizure of the occupied West Bank, where more
than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands have
been displaced from their homes since October 2023.
The campaign against Francesca presages a
terrifying world where Western industrial nations exploit and prey upon
the weak, where the law is whatever powerful nations say it is, where
those who dare to speak the truth and stand up for the rule of law are
relentlessly persecuted, where genocide is another tool in the arsenal
to crush the aspirations and rights of the vulnerable. This is a fight
we must win. If we lose, if we let voices like Francesca’s be silenced,
we will usher in an age of blood and terror.
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The US ambassador also said that at some point, Iran may experience the ‘second kick of a mule,’ referring to another US attack
by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, February 16, 2026 at 7:08 pm ET | Iran
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said on Monday
that the US and Israel are “absolutely aligned” on the need to “deal”
with Iran as Washington continues building up its forces in the Middle
East to prepare for a potential attack on the Islamic Republic.
Huckabee made the comments when addressing
the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in
Jerusalem, where he cast doubt on the idea that the US and Iran could
reach a diplomatic deal and said that another US attack on the country
is likely.
“At some point, the United States has to
say, enough is enough,” Huckabee said, according to Haaretz. “Either
Iran makes a radical change in direction, or it experiences what we call
in the South the second kick of a mule. There is no education in the
second kick. If you didn’t learn the first time, you won’t learn the
second.”
The US and Iran are set to hold a second
round of talks in Geneva on Tuesday. Israel wants any deal to involve
restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missiles, a demand designed to collapse
diplomacy since Tehran’s missiles are its only form of deterrence.
According to Iranian officials,
the US has dropped the demand for an agreement that includes missiles,
but President Trump and other Trump administration officials continue to
push the issue. Huckabee said that the US and Israel have agreed that
Iran cannot “continue building vast surpluses of ballistic missiles.”
President Trump has repeatedly threatened
to attack Iran if a deal isn’t reached, echoing threats he made in the
lead-up to the 12-day US-Israeli war against Iran that was launched in
June 2025, just days before another round of negotiations between
Washington and Tehran were scheduled to be held.
