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 Trump has threatened to “blow up” the “whole country” of
Iran if Tehran doesn’t agree to a deal that he is demanding it sign, as
the very fragile ceasefire appears to be on the verge of collapsing.
Trump made the comments in an interview with Fox News reporter Trey Yingst.
“I just spoke with President Trump for about 20 minutes, and he told
me: ‘If Iran does not sign this deal, the whole country is getting blown
up.’ He went on to say that bridges and power plants will be targeted
if Iran does not sign this agreement,” Yingst said.
The threat from Trump came after Iran said it re-closed the Strait of
Hormuz after briefly declaring it was open to all commercial vessels.
The Iranian government said that the waterway was again closed due to
the fact that the US was maintaining its blockade on Iranian ports, a
violation of the ceasefire agreement.
President Trump at the White House on April 13, 2026 (White House photo)
After Iran said the strait was again closed, Iranian military vessels
reportedly fired on two ships, something President Trump referenced in a
post on Truth Social on Sunday, where he also threatened Iran with major attacks on its power plants and bridges.
“We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take
it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out
every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR.
NICE GUY! They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they
don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done,
which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last
47 years. IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!” the president
wrote.
In the same post, Trump said that his “representatives” were going to
Pakistan for negotiations with Iran, referring to US envoy Steve
Witkoff and Jared Kushner. In another interview on Sunday, Trump said Vice President JD Vance would not attend the negotiations due to “security concerns.”
Iranian media reported on Sunday that there’s been no decision in
Tehran to send negotiators to Islamabad and that there wouldn’t be “as
long as there is a blockade.” Iranian officials have also denied claims
from President Trump that Tehran agreed to allow the US to take Iran’s
uranium that’s enriched at the 60% level.
As workers around the world are hit with
the ever-worsening consequences of the US war on Iran—crippling rises in
petrol and gas prices, food price hikes and the growing threat of food
shortages in poorer countries—major corporations and banks are raking in
increased profits to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
First in line to benefit from the profit
bonanza, as could be expected, are the oil companies. But the flow of
increased money extends across the board.
The price of diesel is advertised at a gas station Thursday, March 19, 2026, in Hyattsville, Md. [AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough]
According to an investigation by the Guardian,
the results of which were published on Wednesday, with oil at around
$100 per barrel the major oil conglomerates in Saudi Arabia, Russia, the
United States, Britain and Europe will collect an additional $234
billion in profit for 2026, an extra inflow of $30 million an hour for
the rest of the year.
The biggest winner is Saudi Arabia’s
Aramco, which is expected to make a war profit of $25.5 billion, with
the Russian petro-giants set to make an additional $23.9 billion.
The US firm ExxonMobil will take in an
additional $11 billion. Shell’s revenue will rise by $6.8 billion, and
Chevron stands to make an additional $9.2 billion.
The additional profits are on top of the
$1 trillion the oil industry takes in every year while receiving
explicit subsidies which totalled $1.3 trillion in 2022, according to
calculations by the International Monetary Fund.
There are other benefits as well flowing
from the rise in share prices. The market value of ExxonMobil has
increased by $118 billion, while that of Shell is up $34 billion.
Apart from the oil producers, trading
firms which deal in oil, food, metals and other necessary commodities,
largely dominating global markets, are already cashing in. The Wall Street Journal
reported that the Swiss commodities trader Gunvor said it had already
made as much money in the first quarter of this year as it did in all of
2025 when it made a profit of $1.6 billion. Others will be experiencing
a similar boost.
Also not surprisingly, US arms
manufacturers have been cashing in. On the first day of the US attack on
Iran major firms recorded a rise in their total market value of up to
$30 billion.
The profit and price gouging extends across the US economy under conditions where, according to a recent article in the New York Times, corporate profits “have reached a record share of the US economy.” Corporate America intends to keep it that way.
Sonu Varghese, the global macro strategist at the Carson group, a financial firm, told the Times
that many companies viewed inflation from “outside shocks,” such as
war, “as an opportunity to raise prices and boost margins” and that
there was going to be some “margin expansion.”
This points to a repeat of the experience of the inflation surge of 2022 when, as the Times
reported, data from the US Producer Price Index “showed that
wholesalers and retailers generally expanded the margin between their
sales prices and their cost of acquiring goods.”
Major US banks have also been cashing in
on the opportunities generated by the war. The six major US banks
reported collective profits of $47.6 billion for the first quarter, much
of it generated because market volatility provided conditions for
significantly profitable trading.
Reporting on the profit hike, the Financial Times
noted that the first quarter was marked by geopolitical shocks—the
military operation in Venezuela and the Iran war—triggering volatility,
which is “good for investment banks which make money from financing and
facilitating client trades.”
JPMorgan led the way in absolute terms
with a 13 percent increase in profits, over the same period last year,
to $16.5 billion, with market jitters being characterised as a “gift to
trading desks.” Goldman Sachs reported a 19 percent increase in profits
to $5.6 billion. Citigroup reported a 42 percent profit surge and Morgan
Stanley’s profits rose 29 percent.
The combined increase in the profits from the trading desks of the major banks is estimated to be the highest in 12 years.
Much of this money is being used to
finance share buybacks to boost the portfolios of the banks’ senior
executives and big investors. The largest US banks spent a record $33
billion on buybacks in the first quarter, with JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs
and Citigroup making their largest ever repurchases.
The banks have benefited from the
relaxation of regulations under Trump. Bank of America chief financial
officer Alastair Borthwick said the bank was “encouraged by the work the
administration is doing,” as it bought back $7.2 billion of its own
stock in the quarter, the highest level in four years. The Trump regime
is moving to reduce the amount of capital the banks must hold as a
reserve, freeing up money for trading and buybacks.
The overall sentiment on Wall Street is
that the profit bonanza will continue, at least for now, with the
S&P 500 passing the 7,000 mark for the first time on Wednesday.
Inflation profiteering fuelled by the war is one factor. Another is the
wave of mass layoffs, hitting tens of thousands of workers in many
cases, especially in the high-tech industries.
Commenting on what it called a new era of mega-layoffs, the Wall Street Journal noted that “employers are seizing on the potential financial upsides of severing swaths of their workforces at once.”
In the past, mass layoffs by a company may
have signalled troubles or mismanagement. “Now, such a company is more
likely to get a big stock bump and praise from investors for acting
boldly.”
Giant corporations and banks are feeding
on death, destruction and the impoverishment of the working class the
world over. This makes it urgently necessary for workers and youth to
draw the sharpest political conclusions.
The war on Iran itself is not the product
of the individual Donald Trump, but is driven by the historic crisis of
imperialism, of which he is the most grotesque personification.
Likewise, the obscenity expressed in the
present day economic and financial system is not the product of the
individual greed of the ruling oligarchs, though that exists in
abundance. It is a product of the capitalist system itself, the
objective logic of which, as Marx explained 150 years ago, is the
creation of fabulous wealth at one pole of society and poverty, misery
and degradation at the other.
Today the necessity for its overthrow and the establishment of socialism is not confined to the pages of Das Kapital but is being written large in the language of daily life.
Direct talks in Washington for the
first time in 30 years continue a long history of overtures that
predate resistance and persist despite repeated Israeli attacks on
civilians
Lebanese protesters gather in Martyrs’
Square in Beirut to reject direct negotiations with Israel, expressing
opposition to normalisation and diplomatic engagement, on 13 April 2026
(Abdul Kader Al Bay/ZUMA Press Wire)
Since Lebanese
President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam assumed office in
early 2025, mere weeks after the November 2024 ceasefire between the
Lebanese resistance and the genocidal state of Israel, the new leadership, under strong US and Saudi advice, moved urgently to offer friendship and full cooperation to Israel.
Not only did they fail to protest the more than 10,000 ceasefire violations that Israel committed over the 15 months leading up to the US-Israeli aggression on Iran
in late February 2026 – including thousands of air strikes, drone
attacks and ground incursions that killed more than 500 people, most of
them civilians – but they went as far as offering, even pleading, for
direct negotiations to achieve permanent peace with the Jewish
settler-colony.
Rather than blaming Israel for its ongoing crimes against the Lebanese people, the two leaders blamed Hezbollah,
as if Israeli attacks were a response to the resistance, when in fact
the resistance has been retaliating against unceasing Israeli aggression
and occupation of Lebanese land.
Such magnanimous offers were last made by
the Phalangist president of Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, who collaborated
with Israeli invaders of his country in 1982, and his brother Amin, but
they were scrapped afterwards due to much opposition.
The Israeli government initially rebuffed
these recent overtures, which Salam repeatedly extended until it finally
agreed last week. Facing pressure from the Trump administration, Israel met with Lebanese officials in Washington
this week for their first direct talks in more than 30 years, even as
it continues to bomb Lebanon, including the capital, Beirut, killing
upwards of 2,000 people in the past six weeks alone.
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Israel has justified its multiple
invasions and incursions into Lebanon since the late 1960s, which have
killed tens of thousands of civilians, as efforts to defeat Palestinian
resistance fighters who moved there after 1969, and who were forced to
withdraw in 1982. It has since invoked the same justification to
confront post-1982 Lebanese resistance to its illegal occupation of
Lebanese territory, especially Hezbollah.
Yet present claims that resistance
movements provoke Israeli aggression, and that Lebanese leaders must
therefore normalise relations with Israel to achieve stability, obscure
the historical record: Israeli relations with Lebanese political and
religious figures eager to offer it friendship and cooperation date back
to the 1920s, long before the settler-colony was even established, let
alone the arrival of the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon or the
emergence of Hezbollah.
Indeed, Aoun and Salam are part of a long chain of Lebanese politicians eager to please Israel.
Sectarian myths
In Lebanon, a common claim is that
right-wing sectarian Maronite leaders only sought to befriend Israel
after 1948, in response to the arrival of more than 100,000 Palestinian refugees expelled during the 1948 Zionist conquest of Palestine by Jewish colonists – the majority of them Muslim – and the resulting demographic shift.
This, however, proves to be a fabrication.
Sectarian Maronite hostility towards Lebanese Muslims precedes the
arrival of the Palestinians by nearly three decades.
In March 1920, Jewish Agency representative Yehoshua Hankin and Lebanese Maronite representatives signed a treaty of cooperation
that also included “prominent Muslim families”, many of whom were
absentee landlords who sold land in Palestine to Zionist settlers.
In March 1920, Jewish Agency
representative Yehoshua Hankin and Lebanese Maronite representatives
signed a treaty of cooperation that also included ‘prominent Muslim
families’
Contacts between Lebanese Maronite leader Emile Edde
and Zionist representatives began in the early 1930s. During this
period, Edde expressed his support for establishing friendly relations
with Jewish colonists and “even of a Zionist-Maronite alliance”.
Edde was elected president of Lebanon in 1936 and remained in contact with the Jewish Agency for the next two years.
Edde’s prime minister, Khayr al-Din al-Ahdab,
the first Sunni Muslim to hold the position in Lebanon’s history,
offered his country’s guarantees of order and security to the Jewish
colonial-settlements along the Lebanese border. After leaving office and
seeking to regain power, Edde resumed his contacts with the Israelis in
1948 while vacationing in France.
This was followed by the signing of the infamous political treaty between the Jewish Agency and the Maronite Patriarch Antoine Arida, on behalf of the Maronite Church, on 30 May 1946.
The treaty established guidelines for
close ties between the Maronites and the Jewish colonists, based on
mutual recognition of rights and nationalist aspirations, including the
Jewish Agency’s recognition of Lebanon’s “Christian character” and its
assurance that the Jewish colonists had no territorial ambitions in
Lebanon.
In return, the Maronite Church supported Jewish immigration and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
Deepening collaboration
Edde, al-Ahdab, and the Maronite Church
were not the only parties in Lebanon offering love and friendship to
Israel. The Phalangists were next. Israel established relations with
them at the end of 1948 in the United States, through the mediation of
the Maronite priest Yusuf ‘Awad, who had contacts with representatives
of the US Zionist Federation.
The main Phalangist contact was Elias Rababi, who, along with other Phalangists, held several meetings with the Zionist representatives in Europe.
Rababi informed the Israelis that if the
Phalangists took over the government, they would establish diplomatic
relations with Israel. In exchange, he requested funding to support
Phalangist political activity and procure weapons.
While the Israelis were unconvinced of the movement’s strength, the foreign ministry nevertheless paid him $2,000.
In February 1949, three envoys of the Maronite Archbishop of Beirut, Ignatius Mubarak,
arrived in Israel and met with a foreign ministry official. The three
claimed that Mubarak “wished to know the position of the Israeli
Government on plans for a coup in Lebanon” against President Bechara
Khoury due to the latter’s support of integrating Lebanon in the Arab
world.
Emile Edde and Pierre Gemayel were said to
be parties to the plan. The Israelis responded by welcoming any attempt
on the part of Lebanon’s Christians to “liberate themselves from the
yoke of pan-Arab leaders”, but requested a detailed plan of how the coup
would be staged, what forces they had backing them and the level of
assistance required from Israel. The plan ultimately came to naught.
But the plan to install a pro-Israel government in Lebanon through a coup was an idea Zionists had entertained since the 1920s.
In response to former prime minister David
Ben-Gurion’s 1954 proposal that Israel encourage a military coup in
Lebanon to establish a Christian regime allied with Israel, then prime
minister Moshe Sharett dismissed it as “nonsense“, writing in his diaries that no movement was strong enough to establish an exclusively Maronite state.
Given the proposal’s unfeasibility, Moshe Dayan, who was the army chief of staff at the time, proposed in 1955 that Israel annex Lebanon south of the Litani River.
Before resistance
Just as there is a long history of
Lebanese politicians offering a loving friendship to Israel, Israeli
atrocities against the Lebanese people between 1948 and 1969 were also
the order of the day, long before the existence of the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) or Hezbollah.
During the 1948 war, even though the
Lebanese army did not engage in battle with the Israelis, Zionist forces
conquered southern Lebanon in what they dubbed “Operation Hiram”,
occupying 15 Lebanese villages as far as the Litani River.
Zionist commander General Mordechai Makleff
asked Ben-Gurion for permission to occupy Beirut, which he said could
be done in 12 hours, but the latter refused, fearing international
condemnation given Lebanon’s neutrality.
During their occupation of southern
Lebanon, Zionist forces committed one of the worst massacres of the 1948
war in the Lebanese village of al-Hula, where they slaughtered 85 civilians on 31 October. When the Israelis invaded it again in 2024, soldiers defaced the monument to the massacre, listing the names of those killed.
Ceasefire not included: Lebanon begins ‘exploratory’ talks with Israel
In early 1949, Lebanese and Israeli officials began formal armistice negotiations at Ras al-Naqura, which proceeded “more smoothly”
than with all other Arab states. Rather than express horror at Israeli
atrocities committed against Lebanese civilians a few weeks earlier,
Lebanese delegates privately informed the Israelis that they “were not
really Arabs”. They also discussed the possibility of establishing
diplomatic relations with Israel.
The Israelis withdrew from Lebanese territory in March 1949.
This week’s meeting in Washington DC was a repeat performance by the Lebanese ambassador to the US, who did not condemn Israel’s recent massacres of Lebanese civilians but reportedly shook hands with the Israelis in a two-hour private meeting away from the cameras.
None of this will halt continued Israeli
attacks on Lebanese civilians, any more than the extra-friendly 1949
talks halted subsequent aggression.
In the 1950s and 1960s, long before the PLO guerrillas arrived in Lebanon, Israel attacked the country close to 200 times
– including raids and shootings, stealing Lebanese cattle, burning
crops in border villages and towns, destroying homes and property and
kidnapping Lebanese civilians – resulting in at least 23 killed, 39
injured and 81 abducted.
In 1965, Israel bombed a dam under construction intended to divert the Banyas, Hasbani and Litani rivers in Lebanon and Syria, in response to Israeli theft of water belonging to Arab states, which it sought to divert to the Naqab desert in violation of international law. It destroyed the project.
Atrocities continue
Perhaps Israel’s most daring crime during
this period was the machine-gunning of a Lebanese civilian plane in July
1950 by one of its air force fighters inside Lebanese airspace.
The attack on the plane, en route from
East Jerusalem’s Qalandya airport to Beirut, killed two people and
injured seven Jordanian passengers, including a five-year-old girl whose
leg had to be amputated. Among those killed were Lebanese radio operator Antoine Wazir and Arab Jewish student Musa Fuad Dweik, whose head was blown off by one of the bullets.
In 1967, Israel occupied the Shib’a Farms, even though Lebanon was not a party to the war. It continues to occupy them today.
The following year, in December 1968, two
days after two Palestinian refugees from Lebanon machine-gunned an
Israeli passenger plane parked at Athens airport, killing a marine
engineer, Israel bombed Beirut International Airport, destroying 13 civilian passenger planes worth almost $44m at the time, as well as hangars and other airport installations.
The Lebanese government is offering Israel
extensive support to neutralise Hezbollah, including criminalising the
only Lebanese resistance movement that ever liberated Lebanese territory
from occupation
All these atrocities were committed before
Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon began to launch resistance operations
against the settler-colony. Likewise, Lebanese politicians who offered
cooperation with Israel did so long before these developments were later
invoked to justify Israeli aggression.
Neither Aoun nor Salam is proposing anything new to the Israelis that previous Lebanese allies had not offered.
The Lebanese government is offering Israel
extensive support to neutralise Hezbollah, including criminalising the
only Lebanese resistance movement that ever liberated Lebanese territory
from occupation and disseminating anti-Iranian propaganda.
Lebanese Justice Minister Adel Nassar
posted on X this week the complete fabrication that Iran abandoned its
condition for a comprehensive ceasefire that includes Lebanon in return
for the Americans releasing its funds in western banks.
Yet despite all this help, nothing will
sway Israel from committing more atrocities in Lebanon, and no one – not
the Americans, the Saudis or the Israel-friendly Lebanese government –
will be able to stop the Lebanese resistance from fighting back against
this genocidal, predatory state.
Ultimately, Israel did not need to
orchestrate a coup in Lebanon to secure a regime allied with it. The
United States and Saudi Arabia did the job on its behalf and then some –
as Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter, who participated in
Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, affirmed when he emerged from this
week’s talks declaring: “We are on the same side.”
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Joseph Massad is professor of modern Arab
politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, New York. He
is the author of many books and academic and journalistic articles. His
books include Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in
Jordan; Desiring Arabs; The Persistence of the Palestinian Question:
Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, and most recently Islam in
Liberalism. His books and articles have been translated into a dozen
languages.
The US-Israeli war on Iran has
given Gulf monarchies fresh cover to deepen repression, criminalize
dissent, and tighten their grip over every version of reality that falls
outside the state line.
Since 28 February, the US and Israel have
been waging war on Iran, with consequences that reach far beyond the
battlefield. Across the Persian Gulf, governments have seized on the
conflict to expand repression at home.
Under the pretext of combating
“disinformation” and “rumors” on social media, Gulf states have launched
sweeping arrest campaigns against hundreds of citizens and residents,
making clear that any expression outside the official narrative can now
be treated as a “security threat” or even the “voice of the enemy.”
Calls not to photograph or publish footage
did not arrive as casual advice. Interior ministries across the Gulf
issued them as official warnings. At first glance, the arguments
appeared plausible: avoid panic, protect national security, deny useful
information to the enemy. Within days, however, these directives became
the basis for a much broader campaign of repression, one that moved
quickly from warnings to prosecutions.
The Gulf states have imposed a near-total
blackout on the flow of information, claiming that independent content
could spread fear, aid the enemy militarily, or amount to treason. In
practice, the war on Iran has become a ready-made excuse to criminalize
speech.
Bahrain: From emergency measures to mass arrests
Manama justified its tightening security
measures through a series of official statements. The Interior
Ministry’s Civil Defense Council announced
a ban on gatherings “in order to maintain compliance with public safety
responsibilities in light of the blatant Iranian aggression against
Bahrain.” What appeared to be a response to regional escalation quickly
turned into cover for a far broader crackdown.
Authorities arrested more than 260 citizens on charges including “misuse of platforms” and “sympathy for Iranian aggression.”
According to human rights sources, three of those detained were women.
Authorities also published photographs of detainees in an effort to
shame them publicly.
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW),
the arrests went far beyond any legal framework. On 4 March, dozens of
men stormed the home of Munir Mirza Ahmed Mushaima. Some wore black
uniforms and white helmets, while others were in civilian clothing. They
arrested him without presenting a warrant, accusing him of running a
social media account that contained “illegal content.”
The crackdown has not been limited to Bahraini citizens. Residents
of various nationalities have also been arrested for filming, posting,
or reposting videos related to attacks on the country. Bahrain’s Public
Prosecution has even asked courts to impose the death penalty on people accused of “spying with the enemy.”
The campaign has also turned deadly. Mohammad Mohsen Mousavi, who was arrested in mid-March, reportedly showed signs of torture on his body during funeral preparations. The Interior Ministry responded by defending his detention and accusing him of links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The UAE and Saudi Arabia move to monopolize the narrative
Abu Dhabi has followed Bahrain’s path
closely. Since the outbreak of the war on Iran, restrictions on the
movements of citizens and residents, as well as on what they can post online, have sharply increased.
The Public Prosecution warned
X users against circulating images or videos from attack sites. These
measures followed months of tighter digital censorship linked to tensions with Saudi Arabia over Yemen.
Authorities in Abu Dhabi alone have reportedly arrested more than 100 people,
including foreigners, on charges of filming, publishing videos, or
spreading “inaccurate information.” The State Security Agency also
announced that it had dismantled a network
allegedly “funded and managed” by Hezbollah and Iran. Officials claimed
the network was planning to destabilize the country’s financial system.
Content creators have also come under
pressure. Authorities now require prior approval before influencers or
public figures can post, even when discussing routine issues such as
hotel overcrowding or the effects of the war on daily life.
According to UAE sources, prosecutors
circulated lists of accounts accused of publishing “illegal content
offensive to the state and its leadership.” Dozens of accounts were
blocked on X, including “Elon Trades,” after it posted a video showing a fire at Dubai’s Fairmont Hotel that drew more than one million views.
Outside of the UAE, several prominent
accounts reported receiving notices from X informing them that their
profiles had been blocked inside the Gulf state following requests
linked to Emirati authorities.
Among them were Yemeni lawyer Mohammad al-Maswari
who insisted that his posts were “based on rejecting the division of
Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya, and any support for terrorist
militias”; Egyptian presenter Osama Gaweesh; Al Jazeera‘s
Yemeni affairs editor Ahmed al-Shalafi, who received a message from the
UAE Public Prosecution, “with charges of insulting state institutions,
inciting hatred and sedition, and other charges”; and Doha-based
academic Marc Owen Jones,
whose work focuses on digital repression and authoritarianism in the
Gulf. Their cases suggest that the crackdown is no longer limited to
those inside the country, but is increasingly targeting critics abroad
as well.
Saudi Arabia has taken a similar route. In early March, state agencies launched a media campaign under the hashtag “#التصوير_يخدم_العدو” – “filming serves the enemy” – to frame any attempt to document strikes as a threat to national security.
Riyadh crafted a campaign designed to
portray cameras and mobile phones as weapons in enemy hands. The
government also circulated memos
banning what it called “infringing content,” “anonymous videos,” and
“rumors,” while urging the public to rely exclusively on official
sources.
The result was a tightly controlled media
environment in which the state monopolized the narrative and
criminalized any attempt to challenge it.
Saudi authorities have not publicly announced arrests linked to the war, but Saudi sources tell The Cradle
that several citizens and residents have been detained. Those arrested
reportedly include Sheikh Hassan Al-Mutawa, the preacher of Al-Khader
Mosque in Al-Rabiiya on Tarut Island in Qatif governorate.
Kuwait and Qatar widen the dragnet
As the war escalated, Kuwait issued Law No. 47
on “Counter-Terrorism” on 15 March 2026. The text of the law includes
broad and vague language that can easily be used to restrict freedoms.
Article 1 defines a “terrorist act” as any
act aimed at spreading fear among the population or endangering public
safety. Such wording leaves the law open to broad interpretation and
allows authorities to treat almost any form of dissent as a security
offense.
Kuwaiti authorities later announced the
arrest of dozens of alleged Hezbollah members, including Kuwaiti and
Lebanese nationals, accusing them of plotting attacks and threatening the country’s sovereignty.
At the same time, the Interior Ministry warned against publishing any
photos or information related to strikes, claiming they could
destabilize public opinion.
Authorities also detained
several Kuwaitis and foreigners, including content creator Badr
al-Husseinan. He was charged with broadcasting false news, harming
national interests, and misusing a phone after posting a satirical video about the hardship people faced during the war.
On 14 April, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called for the release of US-Kuwaiti journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, who had been detained for more than six weeks over social media posts linked to the war.
Authorities accused him of spreading false
information, harming national security, and misusing a mobile phone
after he shared footage of a US fighter jet crash near a military base
in Kuwait. CPJ said the material was already public and verified,
describing his detention as part of a wider campaign to silence scrutiny
and tighten control over the narrative.
Qatar has adopted many of the same
measures. Since the beginning of the war, the Interior Ministry has
banned the publication of photos and videos related to attacks inside
the country, describing them as threats to national security.
The Department of Combating Cyber Economic Crimes announced the arrest of more than 300 people of different nationalities over the circulation of what it described as “misleading” videos and information.
One of those detained was Egyptian teacher Mohamed Tawhid, who lived in Doha. Tawhid commented
on the breaking news broadcast by Al Jazeera in March about a drone
attack on Al-Udeid Air Base. Quoting the Qatari Defense Ministry, the
report said the attack had been intercepted.
Tawhid replied: “You are idiots who
protect those who do not protect you.” He deleted the comment soon after
posting it, but was arrested shortly afterward.
Screenshot
of Egyptian teacher Mohamed Tawhid’s now-deleted X post, which was one
of the main reasons behind his arrest by Qatari authorities.
Rumors also circulated that Jordanian
researcher Fatima al-Samadi had been arrested. A source later denied the
reports, but confirmed that she had come under pressure and temporarily
deactivated her accounts before returning online.
Israeli spyware and the Gulf security state
At the time of writing, there is still no conclusive evidence linking spyware such as Pegasus, developed by Israel’s NSO Group, or Graphite, developed by Paragon Solutions, to the latest arrest campaigns across the Gulf.
Still, the possibility cannot be dismissed. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain have all previously been linked to Pegasus use against dissidents under the banner of “national security.”
In February, a Paragon Solutions employee
briefly posted an image on LinkedIn that appeared to show details from
the Graphite spyware interface. Before it was deleted, the image
reportedly revealed operating logs, encrypted messaging data, and other
technical details.
The Paragon employee’s now-deleted LinkedIn image that showed the Graphite control panel on the screen in the background.
There is no documented use of Graphite in
the Gulf so far. Yet the history of Gulf states purchasing Israeli
spyware and using it against dissidents means the possibility remains
very real. Graphite can reportedly exploit security vulnerabilities without requiring
the target to click a malicious link or interact with the device in any
way. The absence of official confirmation does not mean such tools are
not being used.
The Gulf states have shifted from claiming
to defend national security to building systems of permanent
repression. They have exploited the war on Iran to expand prosecutions
under labels such as “combating disinformation,” “preventing rumors,”
“treason,” and “sympathy with the enemy.”
What is taking shape is not a temporary
wartime response, but a deeper transformation in the meaning of security
itself. Across the Gulf, governments are imposing the official
narrative by force and treating any alternative version of events as a
punishable offense.
The repression machine continues in war as in peace.
Has the war on Iran given Gulf governments
a new pretext to suppress dissent?Yes, the war is being used to justify
a major expansion of repressionGulf states are reacting to real
security threats, not targeting dissentThe crackdown began long before
the war, but the conflict accelerated itRepression varies from one Gulf
state to another
The carefully planned destruction
of Iran’s healthcare infrastructure fits into a long history of
deliberate U.S. attacks on hospitals, writes Alan Macleod.
The aftermath of the attack by the United
States and Israel on Tehran’s Gandhi Hotel Hospital. (Hossein Zohrevand /
Tasnim News Agency / CC BY 4.0)
The United States and
Israel are systematically targeting hospitals in Iran. In one month of
bombing, the two countries have hit at least 307 health centers across
the country, according to reports from the Iranian Red Crescent.
The carefully planned destruction of the
Islamic Republic’s medical infrastructure fits into a long history of
deliberate U.S. attacks on hospitals. Since the end of World War Two,
Washington has targeted medical centers in at least 16 countries, and
the 307 Iranian sites hit does not even come close to the record for the
number of hospitals in any country destroyed by American bombs and
missiles.
There was no warning. U.S. and Israeli airstrikes hit Gandhi Hotel Hospital in northern Tehran on March 1, and again on March 2.
Locals were fasting for Ramadan as
missiles tore into the building, shattering glass and wrecking its
neo-natal unit and ICU. Completed in 2009 and described
as “beacon” of Iranian medicine and one of the most advanced medical
centers in West Asia, the 17-storey building was among the country’s
most important hospitals.
Gandhi Hospital in Tehran on March 2, after U.S.-Israeli strikes. (Tasnim News Agency / Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)
Images
of the aftermath show a once proud building in ruins, with floor after
floor devastated. Gandhi Hotel Hospital is one of more than 300 medical
centers that have been hit by U.S. and Israeli strikes. Nine days
afterward, on March 11, the Persian Gulf Martyrs Educational and Medical
Center in Bushehr on Iran’s southern coast was targeted and severely damaged.
Missile explosions destroyed much of the
hospital’s medical equipment. Even as the glass was still falling,
authorities made the decision to rush patients to the nearby Nuclear
Scientists Martyrs Hospital, despite the fear of a double-tap strike,
like the ones often seen in Israeli attacks on Palestine.
On March 21, the Imam Ali Hospital in Andimeshk, Khuzestan Province, was targeted. Video footage
from the aftermath of the attack shows wards, waiting rooms, and
corridors completely devastated, with both walls and roofs collapsing
under the strain of U.S./Israeli bombardment.
The Imam Ali is Andimeshk’s only hospital,
and patients were forced to be bussed to healthcare facilities in other
cities, according to Hossein Kermanpour, head of public relations for
the Iranian Ministry of Health. “I wish [Donald Trump and Benjamin
Netanyahu] understood that this is a crime against humanity,” he said.
Other medical infrastructure, including a first responders’ center, an Iranian Red Crescent office, and the Pasteur Institute,
a medical research laboratory, have also been hit. “What message does
attacking hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and the Pasteur Institute
as a medical research center in Iran convey?” asked Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian;
“As a specialist physician, I urge WHO,
the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and physicians worldwide to
respond to this crime against humanity.”
The attacks have been largely ignored by
Western media. Few newspapers or TV news reports have even mentioned the
damage to the country’s healthcare system, let alone centered it as a
major news story.
Long US History of Bombing Hospitals
President Trump has a history of targeting medical facilities. Last year, U.S. forces carried out 14 separate airstrikes on the Al Rasool Al-Azam Oncology Hospital in Saada, Yemen, the centerpiece of the country’s healthcare network.
For a full investigation into the attack,
and the U.S.’ long history of targeting civilian medical infrastructure
around the world, see the MintPress News report: “With Yemen Attack, U.S. Continues Long History of Deliberately Bombing Hospitals.”
Repeated attacks against hospitals is more of a pattern than an aberration for Trump. In 2017, the U.S. carried out 20 strikes against a hospital in Raqqa, Syria, using white phosphorous munitions to do so, killing at least 30 civilians in the process.
Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, was not
less fond of targeting healthcare facilities. In 2015, his
administration ordered a bombing campaign against a Doctors Without
Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan.
The building was one of the largest and
most recognizable in the city, and an internal inquiry found that the
airmen aboard the gunship pushed back against the order, citing its
illegality. They were overruled and forced to carry out the strike,
killing at least 42 people.
Obama speaking on the military
intervention in Libya at the National Defense University, March 28,
2011. (National Defense University, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Obama’s attack on Doctors Without Borders
marked the only time in history that one Nobel Peace Prize winner has
attacked another one. During his time in office, Obama bombed seven
countries, including Libya, where U.S. planes struck a hospital in Zliten, leveling it completely. At least 11 people were killed in the operation.
Perhaps no nation on Earth has felt the
impact of American power in the 21st century as badly as Iraq.
Successive administrations attacked critical infrastructure there,
including in 2003, when President Bush bombed the Red Crescent Maternity
Hospital in Baghdad.
While many were killed in the strike, the real death toll, as UNICEF noted, was far higher, as with no medical care, maternal mortality spiked after the attack.
The 1990s is often remembered in the West
as a time of peace. Yet President Clinton used the period to target
medical infrastructure in three separate countries. In Yugoslavia, U.S.
planes bombed a number of hospitals, including dropping now-banned
cluster munitions on a facility in Niš, killing at least 15 people.
In Somalia in 1993, U.S. soldiers carried
out a mortar attack against the Digfer Hospital in Mogadishu, destroying
the building’s main reception area. They then proceeded to bomb the
journalists attempting to cover the incident. Meanwhile, in Sudan,
Clinton ordered a hit on the Al-Shifa medicine factory in Sudan.
Fourteen cruise missiles pounded the
plant, turning what had been the largest producer of medicine in the
country into a pile of twisted metal. The German Ambassador to Sudan estimated
that, without the antibiotics, antimalarials, and other drugs it
produced, the true death toll of the strike was in the “tens of
thousands.” Few Americans know about this incident.
The 1980s were a dangerous time to be a doctor in a country designated for regime change.
The U.S. invaded Grenada in 1983, in order
to put an end to the socialist revolution on the Caribbean island. In
the process, it bombed the Richmond Hill Mental Hospital, killing dozens.
In El Salvador, U.S.-backed death squads flying in American aircraft stormed
a hospital in San Ildefonso, killing five people. Paratroopers also
kidnapped, raped, and tortured the staff, including French nurse
Madeleine Lagadec, causing a major diplomatic incident.
Between 1981 and 1984, at least 63 health centers in Nicaragua were forced to close, due to attacks from U.S.-backed and trained “Contra” death squads, whom President Reagan labeled “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.”
The most well-documented case of U.S.
attacks on Vietnamese medical infrastructure occurred in December 1972,
when American planes dropped over 100 bombs on the giant Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi, killing at least 28 staff and an unconfirmed number of patients.
During a Congressional hearing on clandestine activities in Laos and Cambodia, lawmakers were told that bombing of hospitals in those countries was “routine.”
To this day, Laos remains the most bombed
country in history. North Korea, however, suffered the brunt of American
attacks. In the course of the Korean War, the U.S. military destroyed
an estimated 1,000 hospitals through bombing, as entire cities were
leveled.
Professor Bruce Cummings, America’s foremost expert on Korea, estimates that the U.S. killed around 25 percent of the entire North Korean population between 1950 and 1953.
Israeli Crimes & American Dreams
Special surgery building at Al-Shifa
Hospital in Gaza, after being bombed by Israel on March 21, 2024. (Jaber
Jehad Badwan/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0)
Israel, of course, is no stranger to
bombing hospitals, either. Virtually every health center in Gaza has
been damaged or destroyed. Israeli Defense Forces snipers have targeted healthcare workers inside hospitals, and have kidnapped, and tortured doctors.
A particularly noteworthy example is that
of Adnan Al-Bursh, head of orthopedics at al-Shifa Hospital. In December
2023, al-Bursh was arrested and detained for months, and was likely raped to death by IDF troops.
Israel is now systematically targeting
Lebanon’s health system, as it did with Palestine, shelling hospitals
deep inside the country. As a result, at least 57 Lebanese healthcare
workers have died. The U.S. attacks on Iranian infrastructure are part
of a wider regime change operation aimed at overthrowing the Islamic
Republic and installing a U.S.-compliant administration.
In recent times, Washington has
assassinated the country’s supreme leader, carried out protracted
economic warfare that has seriously harmed Iran, and fomented protests
aimed at destabilizing and dislodging the government.
Trump also confirmed
that his administration smuggled arms to Kurdish groups and to
protestors leading the recent anti-government demonstrations — a key
factor in the violence that erupted. Thus, while systematic U.S./Israeli
attacks on Iranian hospitals are shocking acts, they fit into a clear
pattern stretching back over 80 years.
As cataloged here, the United States has
bombed healthcare infrastructure in at least 16 countries since the end
of World War Two. Hitting hospitals may be a war crime, but it is as
American as apple pie.
The US is sending thousands of additional
troops to the Middle East and is considering restarting the bombing
campaign against Iran or launching ground operations in the country, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing unnamed US officials.
The report said that the forces include
6,000 troops aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush and its
accompanying warships. Notably, the Bush traveled around southern Africa
on its way to the region instead of going through the Mediterranean and
the Suez Canal, the typical route of US warships, signaling the US is
concerned the Houthis in Yemen could close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
About 4,200 other US troops, including
thousands of Marines, are heading to the region from the Pacific aboard
the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group. The Post said they are
expected to reach the Middle East by the end of April. Once both forces
arrive, the US will have more than 60,000 troops in the region.
Marines
aboard the USS Portland, part of the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group,
conducting weapons functions check during a drill in the Pacific Ocean
on April 9, 2026 (US Marines Corps photo)
The buildup and the US blockade of Iranian
ports are framed as an effort to get Iran to agree to US demands for a
diplomatic deal. But according to President Trump, the US is continuing
to demand that Iran make a commitment to never again enrich uranium for
civilian purposes, a condition that’s seen as a non-starter and will
likely lead to a renewal of the bombing campaign if the US sticks to it.
The current ceasefire between the US and
Iran will expire on April 22 if it’s not extended. Other reports have
said that President Trump has considered launching “limited” strikes in Iran to get Tehran to capitulate, but any renewed bombing campaign would mean a return to full-blown war.
Concerning possible ground operations, the
Post report said that Trump administration officials have “discussed
everything from launching a complex Special Operations mission to
extract Iranian nuclear material, to landing Marines on coastal areas
and islands to protect the strait, to seizing Kharg Island, an Iranian
export facility in the Persian Gulf.”
Photo Credit: The Cradle
