Sunday, April 19, 2026
Iran war brings massive price and profit gouging
Nick Beams, WSWS, 16 April 2026
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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.
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.
Why do Lebanese leaders keep courting Israel?
MEE, 16 April 2026 12:11 BST
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.
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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.
Saturday, April 18, 2026
War on Iran, war on dissent: Gulf states weaponize fear to crush free expression
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.
APR 16, 2026
Photo Credit: The Cradle
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.
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.
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.
Poll
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
25 votes, 4 days and 15 hours left
Friday, April 17, 2026
US & Israel Bomb 307+ Medical Facilities in Iran
April 16, 2026
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.
Alan MacLeod is senior staff writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.
Thursday, April 16, 2026
US Sends Thousands More Troops to Middle East, Considers Ground Ops in Iran
by Dave DeCamp | April 15, 2026 at 1:05 pm ET | Iran
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.
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.”
𝐈𝐬𝐫𝐚𝐞𝐥 𝐎𝐰𝐧𝐬 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐩
JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER
APR 15
On 14 April 2026, I was on “Judging Freedom” talking with Judge Napolitano about Iran. My central point to the judge was that Trump is in no position to work out a deal with Iran that settles the ongoing war in a meaningful way. The reason is simple: Israel has no interest in a ceasefire, much less an agreement that satisfies any of Iran’s demands, especially its demand that it maintain the capability to enrich uranium. Israel would prefer to wreck Iran, much the way Syria was wrecked. And Israel and its enormously powerful lobby have the means to make Trump dance to their tune, as they have demonstrated repeatedly since Trump moved back into the White House in January 2025. The only circumstance where Trump might stand up to Israel and the lobby is if the world economy is on the verge of disaster, and the president feels that eventuality would be so dire that he has no choice but to stand up to Israel.
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