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.
The US ambassador also said that at some point, Iran may experience the ‘second kick of a mule,’ referring to another US attack
by Dave DeCamp, Antiwar. com, February 16, 2026 at 7:08 pm ET | Iran
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said on Monday
that the US and Israel are “absolutely aligned” on the need to “deal”
with Iran as Washington continues building up its forces in the Middle
East to prepare for a potential attack on the Islamic Republic.
Huckabee made the comments when addressing
the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in
Jerusalem, where he cast doubt on the idea that the US and Iran could
reach a diplomatic deal and said that another US attack on the country
is likely.
“At some point, the United States has to
say, enough is enough,” Huckabee said, according to Haaretz. “Either
Iran makes a radical change in direction, or it experiences what we call
in the South the second kick of a mule. There is no education in the
second kick. If you didn’t learn the first time, you won’t learn the
second.”
The US and Iran are set to hold a second
round of talks in Geneva on Tuesday. Israel wants any deal to involve
restrictions on Iran’s ballistic missiles, a demand designed to collapse
diplomacy since Tehran’s missiles are its only form of deterrence.
According to Iranian officials,
the US has dropped the demand for an agreement that includes missiles,
but President Trump and other Trump administration officials continue to
push the issue. Huckabee said that the US and Israel have agreed that
Iran cannot “continue building vast surpluses of ballistic missiles.”
President Trump has repeatedly threatened
to attack Iran if a deal isn’t reached, echoing threats he made in the
lead-up to the 12-day US-Israeli war against Iran that was launched in
June 2025, just days before another round of negotiations between
Washington and Tehran were scheduled to be held.
An empty warehouse is seen in Chester, New
York on February 8, 2026. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement
proposes a facility at a warehouse roughly two hours from New York City,
but many locals and officials have objected to the plan.
(Photo by Matthew Hoen/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
“Germany’s concentration camps didn’t start
as instruments of mass murder, and neither have ours,” wrote talk show
host Thom Hartmann recently. “History isn’t whispering its warning: It’s
shouting.”
President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration
agenda has supercharged opposition in cities where he has deployed
federal agents to conduct raids, and communities in states including New
York and Missouri are already working to block the next step the
Department of Homeland Security plans to take in its push for mass deportations: acquiring massive warehouses across the country to use as immigrant detention centers.
US immigration
and Customs Enforcement documents that were provided to Republican Gov.
Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire—one of the states where ICE aims to
acquire a building and retrofit it to house at least 1,000 people at a
time—show that the administration plans to spend $38.3 billion on its mass detention plan.
It would buy 16 buildings across the
country to use as “regional processing centers” that could hold
1,000-1,500 people. Another eight detention centers would hold as many
as 10,000 people at a time, with the detainees awaiting deportation.
The Washington Postreported that a review of state budget data showed that the amount of money the White House intends to pour into the project over the next several months is larger than the total annual spending of 22 US states.
“Thirty-eight billion dollars,” said
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.). “That’s what Trump is spending to turn
warehouses into human holding facilities. Not on schools. Not on healthcare. Not on veterans. On warehousing humans.”
Moulton also condemned ICE’s claim that
the new network of detention facilities will ensure the “safe and humane
civil detention” of immigrants.
At least six people died in ICE detention centers in January, and one of the deaths, that of Geraldo Lunas Campos at Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, was ruled a homicide.
Medical neglect and abusive treatment—including some that amounts to torture—has been reported at multiple facilities.
ICE has already spent more than $690 million purchasing at least eight warehouses in Maryland, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Michigan in recent weeks. Documents
posted on Ayotte’s website show the agency is pursuing additional
acquisitions in New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, and Georgia.
Communities are already rallying against the plan and questioning whether the small towns ICE has selected have sufficient water and sewer infrastructure to support thousands of people detained in a warehouse.
In New York, Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) said
last week that 25,000 people in his district have signed a petition
opposing the use of a local warehouse to house immigrants and pointed to
the “major corruption and graft” evident in the plan to purchase and run the warehouses.
“The site in my district that’s proposed
is owned by one of Trump’s multibillionaire donors, who would directly
financially benefit from this site,” said Ryan, referring to former
Trump adviser Carl Icahn.
As Common Dreamsreported Friday, private prison firm GEO Group raked in a record $254 million in profits last year as it secured contracts with the Trump administration to build new ICE facilities across the US.
ICE has attempted to make purchases in Oklahoma City; Kansas City, Missouri; and in Virginia, but those plans have fallen through, with the Kansas City Council passing
a five-year ban on new nonmunicipal detention centers after the public
learned that DHS was the potential buyer of a warehouse in the city.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has also
joined his constituents in speaking out against ICE’s $100 million
purchase of a warehouse in his state to house at least 1,000 people at a
time.
“This administration is spitting in the
face of communities from Minneapolis to Maryland and wasting our tax
dollars. We won’t back down,” said Van Hollen late last month.
The details of the administration’s planned conversion of warehouses were reported less than two weeks after Pablo Manríquez of Migrant Insiderrevealed
that a US Navy contract originally valued at $10 billion “has ballooned
to a staggering $55 billion ceiling to expedite President Donald
Trump’s ‘mass deportation’ agenda” and to help build “a sprawling
network of migrant detention centers across the US.”
At Common Dreams last week, talk show host and author Thom Hartmannwrote that the warehouses Trump plans to use to hold people—purchased by an agency whose own data shows
it has largely been detaining people with no criminal records—are best
described as concentration camps like those used in Nazi Germany.
“By the end of his first year, [Adolf]
Hitler had around 50,000 people held in his roughly 70 concentration
camps, facilities that were often improvised in factories, prisons,
castles, and other buildings,” wrote Hartmann. “By comparison, today
ICE is holding over 70,000 people in 225 concentration camps across
America,” with hopes to “more than double both numbers in the coming
months.”
“Germany’s concentration camps didn’t
start as instruments of mass murder, and neither have ours; both started
as facilities for people the government’s leader said were a problem.
And that’s exactly what ICE is building now,” he continued. “History
isn’t whispering its warning: It’s shouting.”
Thousands of Western nationals joined the Israeli military in its genocidal war on Gaza that killed over 72,000 Palestinians.
At
least 12,135 soldiers enlisted in the Israeli military hold United
States passports [File: Nasser Ishtayeh/SOPA Images/LightRocket via
Getty Images]
Thousands of Western nationals joined the
Israeli military amid its genocidal war in Gaza, raising questions over
international legal accountability for foreign nationals implicated in
alleged war crimes against Palestinians.
More than 50,000 soldiers in the Israeli
military hold at least one other citizenship, with a majority of them
holding US or European passports, information obtained by the Israeli
NGO Hatzlacha through Israel’s Freedom of Information Law has revealed.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s genocidal
war on Gaza has killed at least 72,061 people in military actions that
have been dubbed war crimes and crimes against humanity by rights
groups.
Rights organisations around the world have
been trying to identify and prosecute foreign nationals, many of whom
have posted videos of their abuse on social media, for their involvement
in war crimes, particularly in Gaza.
So, what does the first such data reveal
about the Israeli military? And what could be the legal implications for
dual-national soldiers?
An
Israeli soldier pushes a Palestinian man while military bulldozers
demolish three Palestinian-owned houses in Shuqba village, west of
Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on January 21, 2026 [Zain
Jaafar/AFP]
Which foreign nationals enlist most in the Israeli military?
At least 12,135 soldiers enlisted in the
Israeli military hold United States passports, topping the list by a
huge margin. That is in addition to 1,207 soldiers who possess another
passport in addition to their US and Israeli ones.
The data – shared with Al Jazeera by
Israeli lawyer Elad Man, who serves as the legal counsel for Hatzlacha –
shows that 6,127 French nationals serve in the Israeli military.
The Israeli military, which shared such
data for the first time, noted that soldiers holding multiple
citizenships are counted more than once in the breakdown.
The numbers show service members enlisted in the military as of March 2025, 17 months into Israel’s devastating war in Gaza.
Russia stands at third, with 5,067 nationals serving in the Israeli military, followed by 3,901 Ukrainians and 1,668 Germans.
The
aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford sails in formation with the guided
missile destroyers USS Winston Churchill, USS Mitscher, USS Mahan, USS
Bainbridge and USS Forrest Sherman in the Atlantic Ocean, Nov. 12, 2024.
[Photo: Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Jacob Mattingly ]
The US military is preparing for
“sustained, weeks-long operations” against Iran if US President Donald
Trump orders an attack, Reuters reported Friday, citing US officials.
The planned campaign would mark a far larger US assault on Iran than
anything previously carried out.
In a sustained campaign, the US military
could hit “Iranian state and security facilities, not just nuclear
infrastructure,” one of the officials said. The United States “fully
expected Iran to retaliate, leading to back-and-forth strikes and
reprisals over a period of time.”
Such a war could entail massive loss of
life and have incalculable global consequences. It would be illegal
under international law and take place in defiance of the popular will,
with 85 percent of the American population opposed to a war against
Iran, according to a YouGov poll.
Last June, the US launched “Midnight
Hammer” in coordination with a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign that
together killed over one thousand Iranians. Iran staged a limited
retaliatory strike on a US base in Qatar. What is now being planned is
qualitatively different—an air and missile campaign targeting the
Iranian state itself, with the expectation of extended back-and-forth
combat.
The buildup takes place just weeks after
the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest and newest aircraft carrier,
took part in the seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on
January 3. The Ford, which has been at sea for more than 200 days, has
now been ordered from the Caribbean to the Middle East, where it will
join the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group already in the region. The
same carrier used in the kidnapping of the president of Venezuela is
being redeployed to wage war against Iran.
Trump, speaking to troops at Fort Bragg,
North Carolina on Friday, said it had “been difficult to make a deal”
with Iran. “Sometimes you have to have fear,” he declared. “That’s the
only thing that really will get the situation taken care of.” Asked if
he wanted regime change, Trump responded: “Seems like that would be the
best thing that could happen.”
The Ford strike group includes the
guided-missile cruiser Normandy and destroyers Thomas Hudner, Ramage,
Carney and Roosevelt. The carrier holds more than 75 military aircraft,
including F-18 Super Hornet fighters and E-2 Hawkeye early warning
aircraft.
Satellite imagery analyzed by Reuters
shows a massive buildup at US bases across the Middle East. At Al-Udeid
air base in Qatar, the largest US facility in the region, Patriot
missiles have been placed in mobile HEMTT truck launchers, giving them
rapid mobility in case of an Iranian attack. The base houses an RC-135
reconnaissance aircraft, 18 KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft, and
seven C-17 transport planes.
At Muwaffaq Salti air base in Jordan,
images from February 2 show 17 F-15E Strike Eagle fighter-bombers, eight
A-10 Thunderbolt close air support aircraft, and four EA-18G Growler
electronic warfare jets—where none had been visible weeks earlier.
Additional forces have been deployed to Prince Sultan air base in Saudi
Arabia, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Dukhan base in Oman.
Approximately 112 C-17 Globemaster cargo planes have reportedly arrived
or made their way toward the Gulf region.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have warned
they could retaliate against any US military base in the region. The US
maintains bases in Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the
United Arab Emirates, Oman, Turkey and on Diego Garcia. Ali Shamkhani,
an adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, warned: “We will respond
decisively to any adventurism—our military readiness is high.”
The military buildup coincides with the
Munich Security Conference, whose organizers titled their annual report
“Under Destruction.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz opened the
conference by declaring: “This order, as flawed as it has been even in
its heyday, no longer exists.” He warned that “a divide has opened up
between Europe and the United States.”
But while European leaders condemned
Trump’s tariffs and threats against allies, they have fully supported
the US posture toward Iran. On January 29, the EU unanimously designated
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization—all 27 member
states voting in lockstep with Washington’s escalation.
The Munich conference withdrew its
invitation to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, with Germany’s
foreign ministry declaring his participation inappropriate. In his
place, exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the Shah overthrown in
1979, was given a platform. Pahlavi called for “humanitarian
intervention” and an “equalizing factor”—that is, US military strikes to
“neutralize the regime’s instrument of repression.” He told the
conference that “help is on the way” from Trump and positioned himself
as the leader of a post-regime transition.Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones
Democratic Socialists of America
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke at the Munich Security
Conference on the subject of “The Rise of Populism.” In her entire
appearance at the conference, she did not say a single word about
Trump’s preparations for war against Iran—the most significant military
escalation of his presidency.
What she did say is revealing. She warned
that Trump is “looking to withdraw the United States from the entire
world so that we can turn into an age of authoritarianisms, of
authoritarians… where Putin can saber rattle around Europe and try to
bully around our own allies there.”
This is not opposition to war; rather
Ocasio-Cortez condemned Trump as being insufficiently aggressive against
“Putin”—i.e., being insufficiently committed to the war in Ukraine.
The Democrats have been silent as the
administration amasses approximately 50,000 troops and the largest
concentration of military firepower in the Middle East since the 2003
invasion of Iraq. Their earlier statements on Iran amounted to
endorsements of regime change in response to the emergence of localized
protests against the government last month. Senator Mark Warner declared
on January 11, “The Iranian regime is awful, and I stand with the
Iranian people.” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that month, “The Iranian
government’s violent crackdown on demonstrators is horrific.”
Far from opposing the war buildup, the
Democrats have actively funded it. On January 30, the Senate passed the
Consolidated Appropriations Act by a vote of 71 to 29, including $839
billion for the Pentagon—an $8.4 billion increase over the military’s
own budget request. Twenty-three Democrats voted for the bill, including
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Minority Whip Dick Durbin and
Vice Chair Mark Warner. In the House, the bill passed 341 to 88, with
149 Democrats voting yes and only 64 voting no. Republicans on the House
Appropriations Committee hailed the legislation as “America First,
Fully Funded.”
In the space of weeks, the Trump
administration has kidnapped the president of Venezuela, threatened to
annex Greenland, backed the Israeli genocide in Gaza and is now
preparing a sustained bombing campaign against a country of 88 million
people. Each of these operations targets nations whose resources
Washington seeks to control as part of its escalating confrontation with
China—Venezuela’s oil, Iran’s oil and natural gas and the Strait of
Hormuz through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes daily.
The working class cannot entrust the fight
against imperialist war to any faction of the political establishment.
The same administration threatening to devastate Iran is attacking
immigrants, gutting social programs, and constructing a police state at
home. Opposition to war must come from the independent mobilization of
the international working class against the capitalist system that
produces war, inequality and dictatorship.
Israeli forces have killed at least 10 Palestinians in new attacks across Gaza in the past 24 hours, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.
The number of Israeli violations of the US-brokered “ceasefire” now
stands at 1,620, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.
Earlier, the Israeli military launched several attacks
on southern Lebanon, targeting what it called warehouses used by
Hezbollah.
Israel’s genocidal war
on Gaza has killed at least 72,061 people and wounded 171,715 since
October 2023. An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the
October 7, 2023, attacks, and about 250 were taken captive.
A campaign of ethnic cleansing and
‘tectonic’ new legal measures are killing the two-state solution to
which other governments pay lip serviceThu 12 Feb 2026 20.05 CET
Protecting archaeological sites.
Preventing water theft. The streamlining of land purchases. If anyone
doubted the real purpose of the motley collection of new administrative and enforcement measures for the illegally occupied West Bank,
Israel’s defence minister spelt it out: “We will continue to kill the
idea of a Palestinian state,” Israel Katz said in a joint statement with
the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.
While the world’s attention was fixed upon
the annihilation in Gaza, settlers in the West Bank intensified their
campaign of ethnic cleansing. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed there
since October 2023; a fifth of them were children. Many more have been
driven from their homes by relentless harassment and the destruction of
infrastructure, with entire Palestinian communities erased across vast swathes of land.
With Israel heading to elections in
months, Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners are in a
hurry. While they and their allies have changed the facts on the ground
dramatically, and have steadily expanded Israel’s control, the bureaucratic measures adopted by the security cabinet last Sunday are “tectonic”, as one scholar notes.
They ease land theft, stripping away the very limited constraints on
purchase, and destroy the nominal authority of Palestinians in areas A
and B.
The White House has reiterated
Donald Trump’s opposition to annexation, but talks with Mr Netanyahu in
Washington on Wednesday focused on Iran. To the extent that the US
president thinks about Palestinians at all, he thinks about Gaza. Yet
this cannot be treated separately from the West Bank.
Arab and Islamic states central to his peace plan have warned that the
new measures will “inflame violence, deepen the conflict and endanger
regional stability and security”.
The declaration of a ceasefire in Gaza –
which has not stopped the Israeli military killing Palestinians there
either – has reduced the political pressure on other governments to act.
There are no signs that the outrage at last Sunday’s decision will
translate into action. The UK “strongly condemns” the measures. The EU
said that sanctions were “still on the table” but is clearly in no hurry
to act. Within Israel, only a handful dissent.
Hunger and desperation endure in Gaza
while the Trump administration promotes fantastical visions of a
glittering skyline. Israel has demolished the East Jerusalem headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa),
the UN body which supports millions of Palestinian refugees, and is
booting out NGOs, including Médecins Sans Frontières, from across
occupied Palestine.
In 2024, the UN’s international court of justice ruled that Israel should end its illegal occupation as quickly as possible. Last year international outrage over Gaza forced multiple governments, including the UK, to recognise a Palestinian state,
dragged by their publics. Those symbolic announcements look
increasingly hollow. Real action cannot wait, for Israel’s government
will not.
President
Donald Trump listens as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
speaks during an arrival at his Mar-a-Lago club, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025,
in Palm Beach, Florida. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]
US President Donald Trump held a
three-hour war council at the White House Wednesday with Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss plans for a massive military
assault on Iran. America’s would-be dictator has repeatedly vowed that a
new war would dwarf last June’s 12-day US-Israeli aerial bombardment of
Iran, which killed more than a thousand Iranians, the vast majority of
them civilians.
The US has surged vast amounts of military
personnel and firepower to the region since the beginning of the year,
while Trump and his aides have issued a steady drumbeat of bellicose
threats.
Led by the USS Lincoln aircraft carrier,
an American armada now surrounds Iran’s shores. Warships bristling with
Tomahawk cruise missiles and F-35 and F-18 fighter jets are deployed in
the Arabian Sea, at the Strait of Hormuz and further north in the
Persian Gulf off Qatar. Tracking data also indicates a massive influx of
Globemaster C-17 US military cargo planes arriving at US military bases
across the region, bearing no doubt all manner of weapon systems,
missiles and other munitions.
On Tuesday, Trump said he may soon
dispatch a second “armada,” that is, a second aircraft carrier battle
group to the region. According to reports, the US Navy is now poised to
start seizing tankers transporting Iranian oil, ratcheting up
Washington’s decades-long campaign to strangle the Iranian economy
through sweeping sanctions that are themselves tantamount to an act of
war.
The US started seizing tankers off
Venezuela shortly before last month’s illegal attack on the South
American country, the kidnapping of its president and Trump’s
announcement that Washington has seized its vast oil reserves.
The pathological liar Trump claims that he
is pursuing “negotiations” with Iran in the hopes of avoiding a
military clash. What a monstrous fraud! The talks are a mafia-style
“shakedown,” with Tehran being given the choice between capitulation and
war.
Following Wednesday’s meeting with
Netanyahu, Trump said his “preference” would be for a “deal,” then
menacingly added, “Last time Iran decided that they were better off not
making a Deal, they were hit with Midnight Hammer (the US military’s
name for its June 21-22 attack on Iranian nuclear facilities). That did
not work well for them.”
Earlier Wednesday, Vice President JD Vance
similarly threatened Iran. At the end of a trip to Iran’s northern
neighbours, Armenia andAzerbaijan, Vance told reporters that Trump has
“a lot of options” to attack Iran “because we have the most powerful
military in the world.”
Driven by predatory imperialist aims, this
policy is not just aggressive. It is reckless and could rapidly
culminate in a catastrophic war.
The massive deployment of US military
power to the region has its own political and military logic. With ships
carrying thousands of military personnel and billions of dollars in
weaponry deployed to the region, pressure to use them will grow. The
most aggressive sections of the financial elite and military-security
establishment will argue that failure to act carries its own risks, from
a potential preemptive Iranian attack to appearing “weak.”
In the event of Iranian counterstrikes
from any action, the resort of a rattled Trump administration to the use
of tactical nuclear weapons is entirely possible.
Washington is demanding Iran forsake its
sovereign right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to a civil
nuclear program; cease all support to Hamas, Hezbollah and the other
members of its “Axis of Resistance”; and accept sweeping limits on its
ballistic missile program. Acceptance of these demands would leave Iran
defenceless and powerless in the face of US and Israeli aggression and
reduce it effectively to the status of a semi-colony.
Iran is a historically oppressed country
whose development has been indelibly misshaped and thwarted over the
past century and a half by its encounter with first British and then US
imperialism. It must be defended against imperialist aggression
irrespective of the anti-working class character of its Shia clergy-led,
bourgeois nationalist regime.
With the support of the Democratic Party
and the pliant corporate media, Trump has advanced various pretexts to
justify the escalating military aggression against Iran. From stopping
nuclear proliferation to “defending” the Iranian people from state
repression, each is more grotesque than the last.
Ten years ago, under the UN-backed Iran
nuclear accord, Tehran agreed to dismantle most of its civil nuclear
program and to subject the remainder to the most intrusive regime of
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) surveillance ever devised. Yet
in 2018, Trump torpedoed the accord and unilaterally imposed a
punishing regime of sanctions, enforced through Washington and Wall
Street’s control of the world financial system, with the express aim of
crashing Iran’s economy and triggering regime change.
The US ruling class and its political
representatives, Democratic and Republican alike, have no more interest
in the democratic rights of the workers and rural toilers of Iran than
they do those of the Palestinians, or those who live under the Gulf
state absolutist monarchies and the blood-soaked dictatorship of Egypt’s
General el-Sisi.
Washington has never reconciled itself to
its “loss of Iran” as the result of the 1979 anti-imperialist upsurge
that toppled the tyrannical regime of the US-installed Shah. For decades
it has relentlessly pursued regime-change through sanctions, threats,
sabotage and military aggression.
The impending attack on Iran arises
directly out of the bipartisan project—initiated under Biden and
continued seamlessly under the second Trump administration—to violently
fashion a “New Middle East,” using Israel as American imperialism’s
attack dog. Since October 2023, Washington and Israel have gone on a
rampage across the region, using aggression, war and, in Gaza, outright
genocide to establish a Greater Israel within a Middle East under
unbridled US domination.
By seizing control of the Middle East,
which in addition to being the world’s most important oil-exporting
region lies at the juncture of three continents containing more than 90
percent of the world’s population, American imperialism hopes to gain a
stranglehold over all its great power rivals, beginning with China.
Terrified of the working class, Iran’s
beleaguered bourgeois regime is incapable of making any progressive
appeal to the masses of the region, let alone the workers of the world,
for a joint struggle against imperialism. When Trump boasts that Tehran
is desperate for a deal, he no doubt for once speaks the truth. On
Wednesday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian stated that the country
would open up its nuclear sites for “any verification,” in an apparent
attempt to reach some sort of accommodation. Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones
But the Islamic Republic’s repeated
attempts to negotiate a rapprochement with Washington stretching back to
the early 1990s have been rebuffed time and again.
American imperialism, meanwhile, has
suffered a massive erosion of its global economic power making it only
the more desperate and predatory. The gangster Trump is the
personification of its harebrained ambition to rule the world.
Based on its publicly stated positions,
Tehran views acceptance of Trump’s demands as regime suicide. In the
event of an attack, it has vowed to strike back at US bases across the
region and at Israel. On Wednesday, the 47th anniversary of the Shah’s
overthrow, millions, including many who no doubt have profound
grievances with the current regime, took to the streets across Iran to
voice their opposition to US imperialist aggression.
The course of events in the next days and
weeks remains uncertain. But Trump and US imperialism could at any time
set the Middle East ablaze, recklessly initiating a regime-change war
against a country of 93 million people that could rapidly engulf the
entire region and draw in other great powers.
The Trump administration, moreover, is
beset by crisis. It confronts mass opposition to its ICE-led terror
campaign against immigrants and, more broadly, its drive to establish a
presidential dictatorship, and a growing strike movement involving
teachers, health sector and other industrial workers. The Epstein
scandal has implicated the entire political and financial elite—and
Trump, members of his cabinet and key billionaire supporters directly—in
a network of venality and criminality, where obscene wealth provides
impunity.
Trump could well see a foreign war against
an enemy long vilified by the American media as a means of extricating
himself and his administration from its myriad crises. Undoubtedly, he
would seize on a war with Iran to intensify his operation dictatorship,
including by labeling antiwar protesters treasonous.
War is a well-trodden path for governments
and ruling classes facing intractable problems and mounting social
opposition. That was the gamble many of Europe’s leaders took in 1914,
most famously Nicholas II, the Russian Czar toppled in the first stage
of the revolution that brought the working class to power under the
Bolsheviks in October 1917.
A jackal is never more vicious and
dangerous than when it is wounded. American imperialism and the global
capitalist system that it has politically and economically backstopped
for most of the past century are visibly rotting on their feet. The same
objective processes that are impelling imperialism, led by the United
States, to aggression and world war, are fueling a global upsurge of the
working class that can and must be infused with a socialist
perspective.
Workers in the United States and around
the world must come to the defence of the Iranian people, demand the
immediate withdrawal of all US military forces from the Middle East and
the rescinding of all sanctions on Iran as part of the development of a
global movement against war.
The fight against war is a fight against
capitalism. It must be based on the revolutionary mobilization of the
international working class. Opposition to rearmament and war must be
linked to the struggle to defend workers’ living standards and social
and democratic rights, oppose oligarchy and dictatorship and for social
equality.
On February 4, Facebook suspended my
account when I shared two articles on Gaza. However, after some initial
problems, its controllers or censors restored my account on February 12,
when they accepted a photo copy of my passport for their ID purpose. To
avoid the possibility of being blocked from Facebook, I have decided to
work where I face no such uncertainties.
Consequently, I won’t use Facebook for
sharing views or articles on political matters, especially relating to
Palestine and the geopolitical aims of the US-Israel alliance, etc. I
will keep my Facebook account and occasionally post on some social and
cultural issues. However, instead of Facebook, I will continue to
publish and share political articles on these two blogs:
sudhan.wordpress.com
Nasir Khan Blog (at Blogger.com)
My deep thanks to all my friends and
readers for their comradeship and dedicated work. I also thank Facebook,
a private company, for allowing me to use its facility for political
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“We have a master plan … There is no Plan B,” remarked
Jared Kushner last month, during a Board of Peace (BoP) presentation
about Gaza reconstruction at the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos.
What has become apparent is that no coherent Plan A exists either.
Although Kushner’s father-in-law, US
President Donald Trump, was granted the legitimacy to build what he
calls the BoP on the back of pledges to implement his “20-point peace plan” and Gaza ceasefire, the BoP’s charter is notably absent of any reference to Gaza.
Furthermore, United Nations Security
Council (UNSC) resolution 2803, which legally authorized the BoP and was
explicitly about the Gaza ceasefire, was deliberately vague on how any
concepts proposed in the resolution
would be implemented. It deliberately avoided outlining any mechanisms
or obligations for reconstruction. Instead, two parallel schemes
emerged.
The first was the Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust (GREAT Trust) – a 38-page document
proposing to pay Palestinians $5,000 each to leave the territory.
Crafted by Israeli figures previously involved in the discredited Gaza
Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the plan, which envisions “AI-powered,
smart cities,” was less a roadmap for peace than a blueprint for ethnic
cleansing.
That same foundation, backed by US private
military contractors (PMCs), had already drawn international
condemnation for herding civilians into “aid zones” only to open fire. More than 2,000 Palestinians were killed in those operations.
PowerPoint colonialism
Later, in December, the Wall Street Journal
(WSJ) exposed that another proposal was put into circulation among
US-allied nations in the Arab and Muslim world. The 32-page PowerPoint
presentation, titled “Project Sunrise,” was set forth by Kushner and US envoy Steve Witkoff.
Like the preceding proposal, the new
vision outlined a similar AI-smart city model, but added even more
elements, such as high-speed rail infrastructure. According to the
PowerPoint slides, the total cost of this 10-year reconstruction
endeavor would amount to $112.1 billion, for which the US would commit to footing 20 percent of the bill.
Back then, Steven Cook, a senior fellow
for the Middle East Program at the Council on Foreign Relations think
tank, told WSJ that “they can make all the slides they want,” adding
that “no one in Israel thinks they will move beyond the current
situation and everyone is okay with that.” US Secretary of State Marco
Rubio had even expressed his concerns over how realistic the plan will
be, especially when it comes to potential foreign investment.
Then came Kushner’s presentation at Davos,
which instantly made headlines and was presented as a brand new
proposal called the “master plan.” According to Kushner, the project for
a “new Gaza” would now only cost $25 billion.
However, upon further investigation, it is
clear that what Kushner was presenting was simply “Project Sunrise,”
which was evident as the PowerPoint he used was filled with the same
exact slides from December. In other words, nothing particularly new was
being placed on the table that had not already been released over a
month prior.
“New Gaza” is a lab rat colony
Speaking to The Cradle, Akram, a
Gaza resident from Al-Bureij, states that the situation on the ground
does not reflect any of the positivity that appears in the media. “The
Israelis won’t let us even have mobile homes or proper structures to
live in, they still bomb us every day, and then we see AI images of Gaza
becoming richer than Israeli cities?” he says, with bitter sarcasm. He
added:
“Listen, do you really think they carried
out genocide for two years and destroyed all our homes, only to build us
a paradise, and that this will all happen if the resistance gives up
its weapons? No. They are trying to tease us, like they always did, by
saying, ‘if you give up your weapons, you will become Singapore.’ Nobody
believes it.”
Shortly after Akram spoke to The Cradle,
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech to a
special session of the Knesset, in which he made it clear that “the next stage is not reconstruction.” Instead, he asserted that disarmament would characterize Phase 2 of the ceasefire.
These figures are also dated, having been
produced in July 2024, so they do not account for over a year of
destruction. Israel has not stopped its round-the-clock demolition of
Palestinian infrastructure since the so-called ceasefire took effect on 8
October 2025.
A humanitarian NGO official working in Gaza tells The Cradle
that even the ceasefire’s Civil Military Coordination Center (CMCC),
ostensibly set up to enforce humanitarian standards, now functions as a
system of “intimidation” that “violates basic morality.”
On 21 January, Drop Site Newsreported on leaked documents
that revealed plans to create an “Israeli Panopticon” city, to be
constructed in territory remaining under its control in southern Gaza’s
Rafah. The Guardian then reported that the UAE is seeking to bankroll the project.
The leaked blueprints described a “case study” city where residents
would be monitored around the clock, like lab rats, and forced to submit
biometrics to enter.
Rafah as the prototype prison
The UAE has been accused of backing the five ISIS-linked
militant groups Israel created to fight Hamas, which it previously
intended to rule over a similar style concentration camp city in Rafah.
In fact, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had even ordered the
construction of such a “community” during the 60-day ceasefire in early
2025. The Israelis have long intended to displace 600,000 Palestinians to such a gated facility.
The Emirati connection in this scheme goes
beyond its recent offer to fund such a concentration camp city; it
dates all the way back to January 2024, when it officially opened six
water desalination plants along the Egyptian side of the Gaza border
area, coincidentally capable of supplying 600,000 people with water.
Prior to the ceasefire and the collapse of
the privatized aid scheme, the plot was to use the GHF PMCs in order to
lure civilians into such a city area. Once they get there, the
Palestinians who enter would be under the rule of Israel’s ISIS-linked
proxy militias.
According to forensic architecture analysis,
Israel is once again preparing land in order to implement such a
project. Meanwhile, UG Solutions – the firm that hired the GHF’s PMCs –
is again advertising job opportunities in the besieged territory.
Dispossession in disguise
Despite the dizzying array of slogans –
BoP, GREAT, Sunrise, Panopticon – the outcome remains the same with no
reconstruction, no sovereignty, and no end to occupation. The various
schemes are less about peace and more about forcing Palestinians into
containment zones policed by Tel Aviv and its regional clients.
From “Gaza Riviera”
fantasies to proposals limiting reconstruction to areas under Israeli
military control, what’s on offer amounts to PowerPoint projectionism. A
revolving door of schemes and slogans has produced nothing substantive.
Instead, the Israeli military continues its daily war of erasure on
Gaza’s land, people, and future.
Even Kushner’s $25-billion fantasy is just
that: a fantasy. In the three months since the UN resolution, all
Washington has offered is AI-generated cityscapes and recycled decks.
The only real plan on the table remains the one being implemented daily –
the destruction of Gaza.
England’s High Court has ruled that the UK
government’s ban on Palestine Action is “unlawful” after a months long
legal battle with the British government.
Justice Victoria Sharp has told the court
that the proscription of Palestine Action “did result in a very
significant interference with the right of freedom of speech and freedom
of assembly”.
The ruling found that the decision to
proscribe the group was discriminatory, however the ban remains in
force until a further order by the court.
The judgement ruled that “a very small
number of Palestine Action’s activities amounted to acts of terrorism”
as defined by terror legislation.
Friday’s judgment follows a judicial review challenging the July 2025 ban brought by Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori.
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Ammori hailed the landmark ruling as
a “monumental victory both for our fundamental freedoms here in Britain
and in the struggle for freedom for the Palestinian people, striking
down a decision that will forever be remembered as one of the most
extreme attacks on free speech in recent British history”.
Ammori added that the ban resulted in
“unlawful” arrests of “nearly 3,000 people – among them priests, vicars,
former magistrates and retired doctors” under terrorism laws for
holding signs in support of the direct action group.
“It would be profoundly unjust for the
government to try to delay or stop the High Court’s proposed order
quashing this ban while the futures of these thousands of people hang in
the balance,” she said.
Responding to the ruling, UK director of
Human Rights Watch Yasmine Ahmed said it was a “shot in the arm for
British democracy at a time when it is facing a barrage of attacks by
this government to undermine our rights to freedom of assembly,
expression, and speech”.
“Palestine Action is not a terrorist organisation and should never have been designated a terrorist organisation,” she said.
“Today’s verdict reinforces what many of
us having been saying all along – that the government’s misuse of
terrorism legislation was a brazen and gross abuse of power that served
to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel and those profiting from its
atrocities.”
The ban, introduced in July 2025, made
membership of the group, public expressions of support for it, or the
display of its symbols criminal offences punishable by up to 14 years in
prison under Britain’s terrorism laws.
Since the ban on
Palestine Action, hundreds of people protesting the proscription and
Israel’s genocide in Gaza have been arrested and charged with terror
charges.
The government outlawed the group days
after activists, protesting the genocide in Gaza, broke into an air
force base in southern England and targeted aircraft with paint and
crowbars that Palestine Action alleged were used to support the war. The
British government alleged that the incident caused an estimated £7m
($9.3m) of damage to two aircraft.
In written court submissions, the Home
Office argued that actions “can constitute terrorism if they involve
serious property damage even if it does not involve violence against any
person or endanger life”.
“Proscribed organisations are deprived of
the oxygen of publicity as well as financial support,” the government
submissions noted.
Meanwhile, the Home Office’s lawyer
Natasha Barnes argued the ban “has not prevented people from protesting
in favour of the Palestinian people or against Israel’s action in Gaza”.
Vance says ‘another option on the table’ if no nuclear deal reached with Iran
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Iran has accused Israel of sabotaging negotiations with the United States over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani claimed Israel is attempting to “destabilise the region” after prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Donald Trump on Wednesday.
The Israeli leader has reportedly been urging the US president impose the strictest-possible terms in any agreement reached with Tehran in nuclear talks.
Commenting on the nuclear discussions with
the US, Larijani told Al Jazeera: “Our negotiations are exclusively
with the United States – we are not engaged in any talks with Israel.
Iran’s
security chief Ali Larijani (C) has accused Israel of sabotaging
negotiations with the United States over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
(WANA)
“However, Israel has inserted itself into this process, with their intent on undermining and sabotaging these negotiations.”
He added that he believes Israel’s agenda
“extends beyond its alleged concerns about Iran”, and claimed it wanted
to “destabilise the region”
“They are gambling not only with Iran, but
also Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey,” he added, warning regional
leaders to “be aware of this.”
Israel has yet to respond to the security chief’s remarks.
Following the meeting in Washington, Trump
said no ‘definitive’ agreement was reached on how to move forward with
Iran, but he insisted negotiations with Tehran would continue to see if a
deal can be achieved.
Donald Trump met with Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House this week (file photo) (Getty Images)
Netanyahu, who had been expected to press
Trump to widen diplomacy with Iran beyond its nuclear program to include
limits on its missile arsenal, stressed that Israel’s security
interests must be taken into account but offered no sign that the
president made the commitments he sought.
”The Prime Minister emphasized the
security needs of the State of Israel in the context of the
negotiations, and the two agreed to continue their close coordination
and tight contact,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement after
Wednesday’s talks.
Trump has threatened strikes on Iran if no
agreement is reached, while Tehran has vowed to retaliate, stoking
fears of a wider war as the US amasses forces in the Middle East.
On Wednesday, Iran’s president Masoud
Pezeshkian insisted that his nation was “not seeking nuclear weapons …
and are ready for any kind of verification”.
Iran’s
president Masoud Pezeshkian has insisted that his nation was “’not
seeking nuclear weapon’ (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved.)
In a speech marking the 47th anniversary
of the Islamic Republic, Pezeshkian said: “The high wall of mistrust
that the United States and Europe have created through their past
statements and actions does not allow these talks to reach a conclusion.
”At the same time, we are engaging with
full determination in dialogue aimed at peace and stability in the
region alongside our neighbouring countries.”
Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan – who
has been involved in the talks between the US and Iran – also said both
sides are showing flexibility.
He told the Financial Times: “It is positive that the Americans appear willing to tolerate Iranian enrichment within clearly set boundaries.
“The Iranians now recognise that they need
to reach a deal with the Americans, and the Americans understand that
the Iranians have certain limits. It’s pointless to try to force them.”
Berlin’s sovereignty has been deeply compromised, and no talk of ‘collective guilt’ or ‘reason of state’ can explain this away
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz leave after a joint news conference
in Jerusalem on 7 December 2025 (Ariel Schalit/AFP)
Just one month after the announcement of a “ceasefire” in Gaza, with the whole world aware that its sole purpose was to enable Israel to continue its genocide, Germany once again spread a veil of silence over the process, launching a “normalisation offensive”.
Last November, after having met his Israeli counterpart Gideon Saar in Tel Aviv, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul declared that his “confidence in the peace process as a whole has grown” and that “the situation has stabilised noticeably”.
A few days later, 160 “young leaders” from Germany were not above accepting an invitation from Israel to soak up Zionist propaganda.
And in early December, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a wanted war criminal, thus
paying homage to a murderous regime that he continues to call a
democracy, while assuring Berlin’s continued unconditional support for
Israel’s crimes against humanity.
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German police followed suit,
eager to “learn from Israel” – apparently fascinated by the weapons
tested on Palestinians in Gaza, which they would soon have at their
disposal.
And then 2026 began, with German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt travelling to Israel to sign a pact
on “the development of a joint ‘Cyber Dome’ system, an artificial
intelligence and cyber innovation centre, drone defence cooperation, and
improved civilian warning systems”. Israel, Dobrindt said, was “a premium partner”.
All this “normalisation” – the veiling of
genocide by the German government, young German “leaders” and the police
wishing to “learn” from war criminals and a minister making pacts with
them as “premium partners” – allows for little other conclusion than
that the Zionist police and surveillance regime has become a role model
for Germany.
Collective guilt narrative
Indeed, Germany’s transformation is
already underway. After Berlin police prohibited Palestinians and their
supporters from gathering in remembrance of the Nakba under dubious
justifications, the courts – both the administrative court and the high
administrative court – legally confirmed this massive infringement of civil rights.
Alongside the brutal actions of Berlin’s
militarised riot police against pro-Palestinian demonstrators, strongly
reminiscent of those carried out by Israeli security forces against
Palestinians, this should deeply concern everyone living in Germany.
After Nazi rule, nothing was more
important for West Germany than “normalising” relations with the newly
formed state of Israel, which had just committed crimes against humanity
in the Nakba.
Pretending that everything is ‘normal’ as
Israel continues its daily slaughter of Palestinians comes at a high
price: the ‘normalisers’ lose their own humanity
In a 1966 interview, former Chancellor
Konrad Adenauer, an enthusiastic supporter of Zionist settlement in
Palestine who paid reparations to Israel, said: “We
had done so much injustice to the Jews, committed such crimes against
them that somehow these had to be expiated or repaired, if we were at
all to regain our international standing … Furthermore, the power of the
Jews even today, especially in America, should not be underestimated.”
Author Daniel Marwecki pointed out
that this “illustrates the way in which the objective of German
rehabilitation was closely intertwined with a central idea of modern
antisemitism: that of Jewish power” – and Adenauer’s fear, as historian
Tom Segev has shown, was exploited by the Zionists in these negotiations.
Marwecki also shows how the reparations
had nothing to do with forgiveness on the part of Israel or German
atonement. Instead, one has to conclude, Germany allowed its sovereignty
to be compromised to facilitate its return to the international stage
as quickly as possible, while instilling a collective sense of guilt in
its own citizens, ensuring they would accept Germany’s future
subservience to Israel.
When these politics of collective guilt
became implausible for subsequent generations who had done nothing to
feel guilty about, former Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2008 trotted out the narrative that Israel’s security was “part of Germany’s reason of state”.
Proclaimed as if by an absolutist monarch
and repeated like a mantra by Germany’s loyal public and liberal media,
any democratic debate on this subject was to be nipped in the bud –
which is why today, any dissenting opinion on Germany’s support for
Israel’s genocide can easily be criminalised.
International law discarded
Interestingly, other parts of the alleged
reason of state, that might also from the experiences of Nazi rule, are
never mentioned: defending the dignity of every individual, complying
with international law,
obeying the decisions of global courts, defending human rights by all
means, and treating those who commit genocide as nothing less than war
criminals.
As the old saying goes: If you dance with the devil, you don’t change the devil. The devil changes you
Nothing remains of such maxims today, as
the Scholz and Merz administrations have willingly disregarded them in
order to support the genocide being carried out by the regime whose
“security” is so dear to Germany.
Not only has this enabled the destruction of Gaza and the killing of tens of thousands – if not hundreds of thousands
– of Palestinians, but Germany has also significantly contributed to
the destruction of the United Nations, the International Criminal Court,
the International Court of Justice and international law, which all
stand in the way of neoliberal imperialism.
As nothing remains from these high maxims
but the alleged obligation to protect Israel’s security, Germany is
doing the “dirty work” for the Zionist regime by “normalising” a state
that commits genocide in Gaza, ethnically cleanses the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, that systematically neglects Palestinian citizens of Israel and now introduces the death penalty for Palestinians only, intending to execute them not for what they allegedly have done but for what they are.
Berlin is further protecting a racist
ideology that feeds the fascist delusions of the vast majority of Jewish
Israelis, who welcome the extermination of the Palestinian people. It is also normalising a “moral” army of war criminals, sadistic torturers and rapists reduced to their lowest instincts.
Finally, Berlin normalises paramilitary militias and fascist hordes of Zionist settlers terrorising Palestinians in the West Bank and causing a second Nakba.
While Germany behaves as if all this were
“normal”, Israel has become radicalised within a specifically
settler-colonial dynamic; first, as Patrick Wolfe has made clear: “Settler colonialism is inherently eliminatory but not invariably genocidal.”
What is behind Germany’s complicity in Israel’s Gaza genocide?
World-leading genocide experts as well as Francesca Albanese,
the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied
Palestinian territories, leave no doubt that Israel today is such a
genocidal regime.
Second, French-Tunisian writer Albert Memmi points out
that “every colonial nation carries the seeds of fascist temptation in
its bosom” – and this seed has undoubtedly taken root in Israel, as
Holocaust survivors also explain.
Over time, the normalisation of Germany’s
relations with Israel has developed into a normalisation of all Zionist
crimes, no matter how repugnant. No talk of “collective guilt” or
“reason of state” can explain this away; it is a product of deeply
compromised sovereignty.
The veil of silence that Germany has cast over Israel’s atrocities for decades has become a blood-soaked shroud.
Pretending that everything is “normal” as
Israel continues its daily slaughter and dehumanisation of Palestinians
comes at a high price: the “normalisers” lose their own humanity.
As the old saying goes: If you dance with the devil, you don’t change the devil. The devil changes you.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Jurgen Mackert is Professor of Sociology
at the University of Potsdam, Germany. He was a temporary Professor for
the Structure of modern societies at the University of Erfurt, Germany
and a visiting professor for Political Sociology at Humboldt University
Berlin. His latest books include On Social Closure. Theorizing
Exclusion, Exploitation, and Elimination (Oxford University Press 2024).
Siedlerkolonialismus. Grundlagentexte und aktuelle Analysen (edited
with Ilan Pappe; Nomos 2024).
Photo Credit: The Cradle
