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.
Currently, Iran and its populace are being
devastated by the most brutal forces globally, namely US imperialism,
which is influenced by the Israeli Mafia, AIPAC, and Zionist
billionaires. The United States and Israel are systematically
undermining Iran in pursuit of Israeli expansion for Greater Israel. In
this conflict, Arab leaders and emirs align with the aggressors.
Although Iranians are brave and
courageous, contemporary warfare is conducted with advanced technologies
and weaponry, rather than rhetoric. Aside from its missiles, it
possesses no defence against the barbaric aggressors and enemies of
humanity. Consequently, a vulnerable nation lacking a robust defence
system is subject to the dominance of US-Israeli forces, who can freely
conduct aerial operations over Iran, inflicting death and destruction at
will.
The Israel-US war on Iran is engulfing the
entire Middle East and could escalate to global war. The economic
consequences are already severe and could become catastrophic. The
Strait of Hormuz carries approximately one-fifth of all oil traded
globally, and 30 percent of the world’s LNG. A sustained closure of the
Strait would trigger an energy shock without modern precedent.
The conflict is likely to spiral out of
control because the US and Israel are dead set on hegemony in the Arab
world and West Asia – one that combines Israeli territorial expansion
with American-backed regime control across the region. The ultimate goal
is a Greater Israel that absorbs all historic Palestine,
combined with compliant Arab and Islamic governments stripped of genuine
sovereignty, including on choices as to how and where they export their
oil and gas.
This is delusional. No country across the
region wants Israel to run wild as it is doing, murdering civilians
across the entire region, destroying Gaza and the West Bank, invading
Lebanon, striking Iraq and Yemen, and carpet-bombing Tehran. No country
wants its hydrocarbon exports under effective US control. The war will
end if and only if global revulsion at US and Israeli aggression force
these countries to stop. Short of that, we are likely to see the Middle
East in flames and the world in an energy and economic crisis
unprecedented in modern history. The war could easily turn into a global
conflagration, effectively into World War III.
Yet, there exists an alternative. The war
could stop on rational grounds if Israel and the US are decisively
called to account by the rest of the world. Ending the war requires a
set of interlinked steps to provide basic security for all parties, and
indeed for the world. Iran needs a permanent end to the US-Israel
aggression. The Gulf countries need an end to Iran’s retaliatory
strikes. The Palestinians need an independent state. Israel needs
lasting security and the disarmament of Hamas and Hezbollah. The whole
world needs the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and international
monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program to ensure it abides by the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, as Iran says it wants to do. And all countries
want, or should want, real sovereignty for themselves and their region.
Collective security could be achieved in
five interconnected measures. First, the US and Israel would immediately
end their armed aggression across the entire region and withdraw their
forces. Second, Iran would stop its retaliatory strikes across the GCC
and resubmit to monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency
under a revised Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which
President Trump recklessly abandoned in 2018. Third, the Strait of
Hormuz would reopen with mutual agreement of Iran and the GCC. Fourth,
the two-state solution would be immediately implemented by admitting
Palestine as a full member state of the UN. Israel would be required to
end its occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to withdraw
its forces from Lebanon and Syria. Fifth, the UN recognition of the
State of Palestine would form the basis for a comprehensive regional
disarmament of all non-state actors, verified under international
monitoring. The end result would be a return to international law and
the UN Charter.
Who would win in this plan? The people of
the region, of Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the
rest of the world. Who would lose? Only the backers of Greater Israel,
led by Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich, and Mike
Huckabee, who have brought the world to the brink of destruction.
Here are the five steps in more detail.
First: End the US-Israeli Armed Aggression.
Israel and the US would stop their
aggression and withdraw their forces. In turn, Iran would cease its
retaliatory strikes. This would not be a mere ceasefire. Rather, it
would be the first step of an overall peace agreement and collective
security arrangement.
Second: Return to the JCPOA.
The nuclear question would be resolved
through strict monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency, not
through bombing campaigns that merely put Iran’s enriched uranium
beyond international monitoring. The UN Security Council would
immediately reinstate the basic framework of the 2015 Joint
Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), under which Iran must strictly
comply with IAEA monitoring and agreed limits on its nuclear program,
while economic sanctions on Iran would be lifted.
Third: Reopen the Strait of Hormuz in an Iran-GCC Framework
The Strait of Hormuz would be quickly
reopened, with safe passage jointly guaranteed by Iran and the GCC. The
GCC countries would assert sovereignty over the military bases in their
countries to ensure that the bases would not be used as launchpads for
renewed offensive strikes against Iran.
Fourth: The Two-State Solution.
The two-state solution would be
implemented, by admitting Palestine into the UN as the 194th permanent
member state. This requires nothing more than the US lifting its veto.
Palestinian statehood is in accord with international law and with the
Arab Peace Initiative, which has been on the table since 2002. In turn,
the countries in the region would establish diplomatic relations with
Israel, and the UN Security Council would introduce peacekeepers to
ensure the security of both Palestine and Israel.
Fifth: An End to Armed Belligerency.
In conjunction with the two-state
solution, all armed belligerency in the region would end forthwith,
including the disarmament of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other armed non-state
actors. In the case of Palestine, the disarmament of Hamas would
underpin the authority of the Palestinian state. In the case of Lebanon,
the disarmament of Hezbollah would restore Lebanon’s full sovereignty,
with the Lebanese Armed Forces as the sole military authority in the
country.
The disarmament would be verified by international monitors and guaranteed by the UN Security Council.
The key point is that the Israel-US war on Iran has not occurred in a vacuum. The Clean Break
strategy, developed by Netanyahu and his American neocon backers in
1996, and implemented since then, calls for Israel to establish hegemony
in the region through wars of regime change, with the US as the
implementing partner. As NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark revealed after 9/11, the US drew up plans a quarter century ago to overthrow governments in seven countries: “starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”
We are therefore living through the culmination of a long-standing plan
by Israel and the US to dominate the Arab world and West Asia, create a
Greater Israel, and permanently block Palestinian statehood.
We are not optimistic about the likelihood
of our plan. The Israeli government is murderous and Trump is
delusional about US power. We are perhaps already in the early days of
WWIII. Yet because the stakes are so high, it’s worth laying out real
solutions even if they are long shots. We do believe, however, that the
non-Western world – the part that is not vassal states to US power –
understands the urgency of peace and security.
Who, then, could champion a peace plan
that the US and Israel will resist with every means at their disposal,
until the weight of global opposition and economic catastrophe leaves
them no choice but to accept it?
There is one main group, and that is the BRICS nations.
Brazil, Russia, India, China, South
Africa, and the bloc’s expanded membership, which now includes the UAE,
Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Indonesia, represent approximately half of
the world’s population and more than 40 percent of global GDP (compared
to 28 percent for the vaunted but overblown G7 countries). The BRICS
have the credibility, the economic weight, and the absence of the
historical complicity in Middle East imperialism to bring the world to
its senses. The BRICS should convene an emergency summit and present a
unified framework incorporating the conditions for peace and security,
which in turn would be pressed at the UN Security Council. There, world
opinion would tell the US and Israel to stop pushing the world towards
catastrophe, and would remind all countries to adhere to the UN Charter.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University
Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at
Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002
until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development
Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for
Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations
Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently,
of A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2020). Other books include: Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable (2017), and The Age of Sustainable Development, (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.
Sybil Fares is a specialist and advisor in Middle East policy and sustainable development at SDSN.
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Chris Hedges
Gaza is only the start. The new world
order is one where the weak are obliterated by the strong, the rule of
law does not exist, genocide is an instrument of control and barbarism
is triumphant.
The war on Iran and the obliteration of
Gaza is the beginning. Welcome to the new world order. The age of
technologically-advanced barbarism. There are no rules for the strong,
only for the weak. Oppose the strong, refuse to bow to its capricious
demands and you are showered with missiles and bombs.
Resources – as the Venezuelans know – are openly stolen. Food, water and medicine, as in Palestine, are weaponized.
Let them eat dirt.
International bodies such as the United
Nations are pantomime, useless appendages of another age. The sanctity
of individual rights, open borders and international law have vanished.
The most depraved leaders of human history, those who reduced cities to
ashes, herded captive populations to execution sites and littered lands
they occupied with mass graves and corpses, have returned with a
vengeance.
They spew the same hypermasculine tropes.
They spew the same vile, racist cant. They spew the same Manichaean
vision of good and evil, black and white. They spew the same infantile
language of total dominance and unrestrained violence.
Killer clowns. Buffoons. Idiots. They have
seized the levers of power to carry out their demented and cartoonish
visions as they pillage the state for their own enrichment.
“After witnessing savage mass murder over
several months, with the knowledge that it was conceived, executed and
endorsed by people much like themselves, who presented it as a
collective necessity, legitimate and even humane, millions now feel less
at home in the world,” writes Pankaj Mishra in “The World After Gaza.”
“The shock of this renewed exposure to a peculiarly modern evil – the
evil done in the pre-modern era only by psychopathic individuals and
unleashed in the last century by rulers and citizens of rich and
supposedly civilized societies – cannot be overstated. Nor can the moral
abyss we confront.”
The subjugated are property, commodities to exploit for profit or pleasure. The Epstein Files
expose the sickness and heartlessness of the ruling class. Liberals.
Conservatives. University presidents. Academics. Philanthropists. Wall
Street titans. Celebrities. Democrats. Republicans.
They wallow in unbridled hedonism. They go
to private schools and have private health care. They are cocooned in
self-referential bubbles by sycophants, publicists, financial advisers,
lawyers, servants, chauffeurs, self-help gurus, plastic surgeons and
personal trainers. They reside in heavily guarded estates and vacation
on private islands. They travel on private jets and gargantuan yachts.
They exist in another reality, what the Wall Street Journal reporter
Robert Frank dubs the
world of “Richistan,” a world of private Xanadus where they hold
Nero-like bacchanalias, make their perfidious deals, amass their
billions and cast aside those they use, including children, as if they
are refuse. No one in this magic circle is accountable. No sin too
depraved. They are human parasites. They disembowel the state for
personal profit. They terrorize the “lesser breeds of the earth.” They
shut down the last, anemic vestiges of our open society.
“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment
of the process of life,” as George Orwell writes in “1984.” “All
competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this,
Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly
increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment,
there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an
enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”Subscribe
The law, despite a few valiant efforts by a
handful of judges — who will soon be purged — is an instrument of
repression. The judiciary exists to stage show trials. I spent a lot of
time in the London courts covering the Dickensian farce during the persecution of Julian Assange. A Lubyanka-on-the-Thames. Our courts are no better. Our Department of Justice is a vengeance machine.
Masked, armed goons flood the
streets of the United States and murder civilians, including citizens.
The ruling mandarins are spending billions to convert warehouses into
detention centers and concentration camps. They insist they will only
house the undocumented, the criminals, but our global ruling class lies
like it breathes. In their eyes, we are vermin, either blindly and
unquestionably obedient or criminals. There is nothing in between.
These concentration camps, where there is
no due process and people are disappeared, are designed for us. And by
us, I mean the citizens of this dead republic. Yet we watch, stupefied,
disbelieving, passively waiting for our own enslavement.
It won’t be long.
The savagery in Iran, Lebanon and
Gaza is the same savagery we face at home. Those carrying out the
genocide, mass slaughter and unprovoked war on Iran are the same people
dismantling our democratic institutions.
The social anthropologist Arjun Appadurai
calls what is happening “a vast worldwide Malthusian correction” that is
“geared to preparing the world for the winners of globalization, minus
the inconvenient noise of its losers.”
Oh, the critics say, don’t be so bleak. Don’t be so negative. Where is the hope? Really, it’s not that bad.
If you believe this you are part of the problem, an unwitting cog in the machinery of our rapidly consolidating fascist state.
Reality will eventually implode these “hopeful” fantasies, but by then it will be too late.
True despair is not a result of accurately
reading reality. True despair comes from surrendering, either through
fantasy or apathy, to malignant power. True despair is powerlessness.
And resistance, meaningful resistance, even if it is almost certainly
doomed, is empowerment. It confers self-worth. It confers dignity. It
confers agency. It is the only action that allows us to use the word
hope.
The Iranians, Lebanese and Palestinians know there is no appeasing these monsters. The global elites believe nothing. They feel nothing.
They cannot be trusted. They exhibit the core traits of all psychopaths
— superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance, a need for
constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, manipulation and
the inability to feel remorse or guilt. They disdain as weakness the
virtues of empathy, honesty, compassion and self-sacrifice. They live by
the creed of Me. Me. Me.
“The fact that millions of people share
the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they
share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact
that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does
not make these people sane,” Eric Fromm writes in “The Sane Society.”
We have witnessed evil for
nearly three years in Gaza. We watch it now in Lebanon and Iran. We see
this evil excused or masked by political leaders and the media.
The New York Times, in a page out of
Orwell, sent an internal memo telling reporters and editors to eschew
the terms “refugee camps, “occupied territory,” “ethnic cleansing” and,
of course, “genocide” when writing about Gaza. Those who name and
denounce this evil are smeared, blacklisted and purged from university
campuses and the public sphere. They are arrested and deported. A
deadening silence is descending upon us, the silence of all
authoritarian states. Fail to do your duty, fail to cheerlead the war on
Iran, and see your broadcasting license revoked, as the Chair of the
F.C.C. Brendan Carr has proposed.
We have enemies. They are not in
Palestine. They are not in Lebanon. They are not in Iran. They are here.
Among us. They dictate our lives. They are traitors to our ideals. They
are traitors to our country. They envision a world of slaves and
masters. Gaza is only the start. There are no internal mechanisms for
reform. We can obstruct or surrender.
The move suggests the US is not seeking to wind down its war on Iran, despite boasting of success
US President Donald Trump, left, and US
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth arrive in Dover, Delaware, to receive the
remains of American soldiers killed in Kuwait, on 7 March 2026 (Kevin
Lamarque/Reuters)
Published date: 13 March 2026 20:17 GMT | Last update:5 hours 57 mins ago
A dispatch of up to 5,000 more American
marines and sailors is headed to the Middle East, The Wall Street
Journal reported on Friday, citing unnamed US officials.
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is said
to have approved a request from US Central Command (Centcom), the
Pentagon’s Middle East hub, for an amphibious ready group and an
attached Marine expeditionary unit, which includes three warships and some 2,500 US Marines.
The unit, per its dedicated website, contains F-35B Lightning II jets and also MV-22B Ospreys.
The USS Tripoli, based in Japan, is now headed to the Middle East. Such a journey typically takes two weeks.
The move suggests Washington is not
seeking to wind down its war on Iran anytime soon, despite repeatedly
boasting of operational successes that include killing Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and sinking 60 Iranian naval vessels.
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More than 1,400 Iranians have been killed since 28 February.
“We are totally destroying the terrorist
regime of Iran, militarily, economically, and otherwise,” President
Donald Trump wrote on this TruthSocial account on Friday.
The war has proven unpopular with the American public, well before the acknowledged US casualties reached double digits. At least 150 Americans have been wounded.
US casualties mount
The US announced on Friday that all six of its soldiers aboard a KC-135 refuelling aircraft that crashed in western Iraq a day earlier were killed.
“The aircraft was lost while flying over friendly airspace March 12 during Operation Epic Fury,” Centcom said on X.
Hegseth says Gulf states ‘going on offensive’ against Iran
“The circumstances of the incident are
under investigation. However, the loss of the aircraft was not due to
hostile fire or friendly fire,” Centcom asserted.
“The identities of the service members are being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin have been notified.”
The deaths bring the total number of US personnel killed since 28 February and the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran to 13.
At a press briefing on Friday morning in Washington, Hegseth told reporters that “War is hell, war is chaos.”
When pressed by a reporter on exactly how
many American casualties there have been so far, and also the locations
where they were killed, Hegseth hesitated before turning to the chairman
of the joint chiefs of staff, Dan Caine, to answer for him.
“A bunch have returned to duty,” Caine said.
“We’ve had… in Kuwait, Jordan, down across
the southern flank… a variety of places, most from one-way attack
strikes,” he added, not providing any actual figures.
Hegseth jumped in to say that for the
purposes of “clarity”, the Pentagon is not indicating how many personnel
are “KIA” (killed in action) or “WIA” (wounded in action), but that “90
percent” have returned to duty.
The comments ultimately proved more confusing.
Trump had warned from his very first remarks on the war that Americans would be dying, and potentially in large numbers.
Iran has claimed hundreds of Americans
dead from its targeting of US assets in the Gulf region, but has not
provided any evidence.
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People, mostly Iranians who crossed from
Iran at the Kapikoy border crossing, pull luggage in Turkey’s eastern
Van province on March 6, 2026, as the US-Israel war on Iran drove a rise
in cross-border travel and displacement.
(Photo by Murat Kocabas/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
“If this evolves into a long-term war, and
particularly if internal conflict emerges in Iran, the humanitarian
consequences could worsen dramatically,” said the president of Refugees
International.
In less than two weeks, the US-Israeli war in Iran has caused a displacement crisis that Refugees International warns is “on course for cataclysmic civilian harm, displacement, and humanitarian need,” amid repeated strikes on civilian sites and infrastructure.
As many as 3.2 million people are estimated to be temporarily displaced inside Iran, according to a report released Thursday by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Most of those who’ve been forced to flee their homes have been in Tehran and other urban centers, where US and Israeli airstrikes have been the heaviest, the report said.
Since the war was launched on February 28,
Iranian authorities and humanitarian groups have reported widespread
attacks on civilian areas and infrastructure by US and Israeli forces.
The Iranian Red Crescent Society reported
on Wednesday that nearly 20,000 civilian buildings, including at least
16,000 residential units, have been affected by strikes, along with 77 healthcare facilities and 65 schools.
About 200 children in Iran are among approximately 1,300 killed and 9,000 injured in less than two weeks of war, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which cited figures from national authorities.
“The war launched by the United States
and Israel against Iran has been characterized by multiple strikes on
civilian sites and infrastructure by all sides, often with flagrant
disregard for civilian safety,” said
Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, on Wednesday.
“The United States/Israeli coalition has struck numerous civilian sites
in Iran, and the Iranian military has struck multiple civilian sites in
Israel and in multiple Gulf countries.”
“These attacks on civilians have already
caused hundreds of needless deaths and displaced hundreds of thousands
of people,” he added. “The humanitarian impact could expand
exponentially if this develops into a prolonged war.”
The deadliest single attack on civilians has been the bombing
of the Minab elementary school in southern Iran on the first day of the
war, where at least 175 people, mostly girls ages 7-12, were massacred.
Preliminary findings of an investigation by the Pentagon reportedly indicate
that the United States was responsible for the attack. Konyndyk said it
was “likely the largest number of child casualties in a single US military attack since the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968.”
“But the Minab strike is far from the only
strike on civilian sites. US and Israeli attacks have struck other
schools, multiple medical facilities, numerous residential areas, and a water
desalination plant. Iranian attacks have also struck civilian targets
and infrastructure, including a desalination plant and urban residential
areas,” Kondynyk said. “All such sites are protected under
international humanitarian law (IHL), raising the serious prospect that
these strikes could constitute war crimes.”
He added that “It is difficult to regard
the pattern of US strikes on civilian sites as mere tragic accidents
when the United States has systematically removed many of the safeguards
that once helped prevent harm to civilians.”
He condemned comments
by US Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissing the “stupid rules of
engagement” and his closure of a Pentagon office tasked with preventing
civilian harm in order to maximize “lethality,” according to a recent investigation by ProPublica.
Hegseth emphasized
last week that the United States was not planning to take in a, “new
wave of Middle Eastern refugees” that might be forced to flee the region
by continued attacks on Iran and other countries.
The Trump administration has let in virtually zero refugees from anywhere in the world since October, with the exception of white South Africans.
There are already around 25 million people
living in the Middle East who are considered refugees, internally
displaced, or had recently been returned after being displaced.
The defense secretary has said countries
in the region are “capable” of handling the new influx of potentially
millions more displaced people, even as the US has drastically reduced funds for international organizations that administer humanitarian aid and refugee resettlement.
There are more than 1.65 million refugees
living in Iran, around 750,000 of whom are from Afghanistan. Kondynyk
noted that many of them already “have limited access to their rights or
safe passage and already face rights violations and scapegoating by the
Iranian state.”
More than 800,000 people in Lebanonhave been forced to flee their homes this month, according to Lebanese authorities, following Israeli orders clearing over 100 villages in the south and outside Beirut.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of Gaza’s nearly 2 million people still remain displaced
after more than two years of genocidal war waged by Israel, which
destroyed most civilian infrastructure, according to the International
Organization for Migration.
“If this evolves into a long-term war, and
particularly if internal conflict emerges in Iran, the humanitarian
consequences could worsen dramatically,” Kondynyk said. “A prolonged
conflict risks creating displacement and humanitarian crises on a
massive scale, even as US cuts have kneecapped the global humanitarian
system built to respond to such crises.”
The U.S. president said a military
official told him it was “more fun” to kill rather than capture more
than 100 Iranian sailors in the Indian Ocean who had just finished a
training session. U.S. forces made no rescue effort.
U.S. Department of War photo of IRIS Dena
being sunk by a torpedo in the Indian Ocean on March 4, 2026.
(DoW/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
President Donald Trumpsaid
the U.S. Navy chose to sink an Iranian frigate, killing more than 100
sailors last week, because it was “more fun” than capturing the vessel,
even though the ship posed no threat.
Though death tolls vary, Iran’s state media organization, the Islamic Republic News Organization, reported
on Sunday that 104 crew members were killed in the attack and that 32
others were injured when a U.S. submarine torpedoed the Iranian warship IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean on March 4 as it departed from the Milan Peace 2026 naval drills hosted in India.
The Dena was more than 2,000
miles away from the Persian Gulf when it was attacked, far from the
hostilities unleashed on Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched a war
against Iran. Contradicting U.S. claims, Iranian and Indian officials
have said it was not armed.
In what political commentator Adam Schwarz described
as “the most blasé admission of a war crime by a U.S. president in
history,” Trump on Monday casually recounted the U.S. Navy’s decision to
attack the ship before a gathering of Republicans at a Congressional Institute event, a GOP-aligned nonprofit retreat organizer.
He suggested that the Navy blew the boat up not to neutralize a threat, but purely for its own sake.
After making the exaggerated
boast that Iran’s navy is “gone” following aggressive U.S. bombing,
Trump said at first he “got a little upset” with the military brass who
ordered the sinking of the Dena, which he said they described as a “top-of-the-line” vessel.
Trump said he asked: “Why don’t we just capture the ship? We could have used it. Why did we sink them?”
He said that an unspecified official told him, “It’s more fun to sink them.”
As the crowd laughed, Trump went on, chuckling himself:
“They like sinking them better. They say it’s safer to sink them. I guess it’s probably true.”
Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Saeed Khatibzadeh, described
the ship as operating in a purely “ceremonial” role and said it was
“unloaded” and “unarmed” at the time of the attack last week.
Rahul Bedi, an independent defense analyst in India, told the Associated Press that
while the ship may have used some limited non-offensive ammunition
during naval exercises, drill protocol requires “the participating
platforms to be unarmed.”
Dena during its commissioning in 2021. (MojNews /Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has claimed
the vessel was a “predator ship,” while the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command
has said claims that the ship was unarmed are “false.” However, it has
provided no evidence that it posed a threat at the time of the attack.
The attack itself was likely legal under the rules of naval warfare, even if the ship was unarmed, though its ethical and tactical justification has been called into question.
“A military ship might be a lawful target,” Phyllis Bennis, the co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies’ New Internationalism Project told Common Dreams. “But firing on any ship — any people, anywhere — for ‘fun’ represents the kind of immoral depravity that this White House is infamous for.”
Bennis added that “failing to do
everything possible to rescue those aboard is certainly a war crime,” as
the Second Geneva Convention requires militaries to take all possible measures to search for and collect the shipwrecked, wounded, and sick.
The Dena’s 32 survivors, as well as dozens of dead bodies, had to be pulled from the water
by a Sri Lankan joint rescue operation following a distress call. The
survivors were quickly rushed to a local hospital in Galle City.
Hegseth has previously come under fire for reportedly ordering a second strike on shipwrecked sailors who survived the bombing of an alleged drug trafficking boat in the Caribbean.
Many have described
that attack on Sept. 2 as an exceptionally blatant war crime in a
broadly illegal campaign that has extrajudicially killed at least 156
people.
In carrying out its war against Iran, Hegseth has emphasized that the U.S. would not abide by what he called “stupid rules of engagement.”
Thousands of civilian targets, including schools, hospitals, and residential areas, have reportedly been attacked by U.S. and Israeli strikes, according to the Iranian Red Crescent.
As of Monday, Iranian Deputy Health Minister Ali Jafarian said at least 1,255 people have been killed, including 200 children and 11 healthcare workers.
Bennis said that even if attacking the
ship itself was lawful in a vacuum, it took place before a backdrop of
brazen “illegality.”
“This entire shocking episode represents a
clear U.S. violation of what the Nuremberg trials identified as the
‘supreme international crime’: the crime of aggression,” she said. “The
U.S. had no legal right to go to war against Iran. The [United Nations]
Security Council had not authorized the use of force, and there was no
‘armed attack’ from Iran against the US that required immediate
self-defense.
“Without either of those, the U.N. Charter
is very clear that no country may attack another country,” she
continued. “To do so, as the Nuremberg judges found, constitutes the
crime of aggression — the ultimate crime.”
Stephen Prager is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
The World Council of Churches’ new
campaign called “From Condemnation to Consequences” aims to pressure
governments to hold Israel accountable for its deepening occupation of
the West Bank and its accelerated program of genocide and ethnic
cleansing.
Scenes showing the widespread destruction of buildings and
infrastructure caused by Israeli attacks during the Gaza genocide in
Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. February 22, 2026. (Photo: Omar
Ashtawy/APA Images)
Last week, the World Council of Churches (WCC), headquartered in Geneva, launched a month-long campaign titled “From Condemnation to Consequences.”
The program calls its member churches—clergy leaders and lay alike—to
hold Israel accountable for its failure to fulfill its obligations under
international law.
George Sahhar, Advocacy Officer in the Jerusalem Liaison Office of the World Council of Churches, tells Mondoweiss.
“When attention is focused on the war in the Middle East, we want the
world to see that human rights violations by Israel against Palestinians
continue, and that annexation is ongoing and deepened.”
During a webinar
introducing the March 4-31 campaign, Kenneth Mtata, WCC Program
Director for Life, Justice and Peace, said, “[O]ur campaign needs to
remain focused on the commitments that the churches have made together,
with all their partners, to see how we move from the statements and
condemnation of the occupation and annexation of Palestine, and to try
to translate this into concrete changes and transformation.”
“When attention is focused on the war in
the Middle East, we want the world to see that human rights violations
by Israel against Palestinians continue, and that annexation is ongoing
and deepened.” George Sahhar, Advocacy Officer in the Jerusalem Liaison
Office of the World Council of Churches
In short, the World Council of Churches,
comprised of 356 member churches representing more than half a billion
Christians around the globe, has acknowledged that offering “thoughts
and prayers” alone is not enough to address Israel’s decades-long
occupation and its accelerated program of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
In an alert to be published by Kairos Palestine later this month, Dalia Qumsieh, human rights lawyer and Founder/Director of Balasan Initiative for Human Rights,
insists, “Churches are called to realize their power and leverage in
action, with a full understanding that statements don’t stop bulldozers,
condemnations don’t restore stolen lands and resources, and prayers
alone cannot restore families who were uprooted from their ancestral
lands. Only solid action will.”
The WCC’s appeal to members in the
pews—“reach out to your elected officials [and] your faith leaders to
call for renewed efforts for a just and sustainable resolution of the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict”—is an implied acknowledgement that with
few exceptions heads of church around the globe have not yet responded
to the pleas of Palestinian Christians to stand with them in solidarity,
to act with courage and conviction in naming the realities that
Palestinians are suffering: genocide, ethnic cleansing, and settler
violence.
The campaign, organized by the WCC’s Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), grounds its advocacy in decisive finding by the WCC (such as this) and the International Court of Justice’s provisional findings
regarding Israel’s violations of international law and the
responsibility of states to prevent genocide and to punish states
committing genocide.
“We call on states, churches, and
international institutions,” campaign material reads, “to impose
consequences for violations of international law, including targeted
sanctions, divestment, and arms embargoes. Full support must be given to
the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice,
and UN mechanisms both regarding investigations of crimes on all sides
as well as initiatives towards a just peace for Palestinians and
Israelis.”
Campaign resources
include stories from the field, factsheets, and talking points to
prepare people to approach decision- and policy-makers with a clear
explanation of the legal framework and explicit asks.
Peter Makari, Global Relations Minister related to the Middle East and Europe for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ, tells Mondoweiss,
“After over two years of genocide, renewed U.S. and global efforts are
needed to press our elected officials who support and enable Israel’s
many years of denial of Palestinian rights. The consequence of a lack of
accountability has resulted in devastating consequences for Palestinian
lives and rights.”
In a further move, the World Council of Churches sent a delegate to the People’s Congress for The Hague Group
meeting in Amsterdam last week. The group focused on widening the work
of civil society to insist that states meet their legal obligation to
end Israel’s program of genocide: instituting sanctions, closing ports
to weapons, ending corporate and institutional complicity, and
furthering accountability across courts, contracts, campuses and
communities.
“The People’s Congress is an important
space for civil society to collectively design its defense of
international law and human dignity,” said
WCC’s Mtata. “Churches and people of faith have an obligation to stand
in solidarity with the suffering and resist impunity. Our presence here
is part of a broader commitment to justice, accountability and,
hopefully, to a just and peaceful coexistence of Palestinians and
Israelis.”
While civil society organizations in the
U.S. are bringing people out into the streets in the tens of thousands
to resist the current administration, to advocate for Palestinians and,
now, to end the U.S./Israeli war on Iran, it remains to be seen if this
nascent program of the WCC moves an increasing number of church leaders
and grassroots Christians to name the realities Palestinians are
suffering and to make their voices heard.
The World Council of Churches’ new
campaign called “From Condemnation to Consequences” aims to pressure
governments to hold Israel accountable for its deepening occupation of
the West Bank and its accelerated program of genocide and ethnic
cleansing.
Scenes showing the widespread destruction of buildings and
infrastructure caused by Israeli attacks during the Gaza genocide in
Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. February 22, 2026. (Photo: Omar
Ashtawy/APA Images)
Last week, the World Council of Churches (WCC), headquartered in Geneva, launched a month-long campaign titled “From Condemnation to Consequences.”
The program calls its member churches—clergy leaders and lay alike—to
hold Israel accountable for its failure to fulfill its obligations under
international law.
George Sahhar, Advocacy Officer in the Jerusalem Liaison Office of the World Council of Churches, tells Mondoweiss.
“When attention is focused on the war in the Middle East, we want the
world to see that human rights violations by Israel against Palestinians
continue, and that annexation is ongoing and deepened.”
During a webinar
introducing the March 4-31 campaign, Kenneth Mtata, WCC Program
Director for Life, Justice and Peace, said, “[O]ur campaign needs to
remain focused on the commitments that the churches have made together,
with all their partners, to see how we move from the statements and
condemnation of the occupation and annexation of Palestine, and to try
to translate this into concrete changes and transformation.”
“When attention is focused on the war in
the Middle East, we want the world to see that human rights violations
by Israel against Palestinians continue, and that annexation is ongoing
and deepened.” George Sahhar, Advocacy Officer in the Jerusalem Liaison
Office of the World Council of Churches
In short, the World Council of Churches,
comprised of 356 member churches representing more than half a billion
Christians around the globe, has acknowledged that offering “thoughts
and prayers” alone is not enough to address Israel’s decades-long
occupation and its accelerated program of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
In an alert to be published by Kairos Palestine later this month, Dalia Qumsieh, human rights lawyer and Founder/Director of Balasan Initiative for Human Rights,
insists, “Churches are called to realize their power and leverage in
action, with a full understanding that statements don’t stop bulldozers,
condemnations don’t restore stolen lands and resources, and prayers
alone cannot restore families who were uprooted from their ancestral
lands. Only solid action will.”
The WCC’s appeal to members in the
pews—“reach out to your elected officials [and] your faith leaders to
call for renewed efforts for a just and sustainable resolution of the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict”—is an implied acknowledgement that with
few exceptions heads of church around the globe have not yet responded
to the pleas of Palestinian Christians to stand with them in solidarity,
to act with courage and conviction in naming the realities that
Palestinians are suffering: genocide, ethnic cleansing, and settler
violence.
The campaign, organized by the WCC’s Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), grounds its advocacy in decisive finding by the WCC (such as this) and the International Court of Justice’s provisional findings
regarding Israel’s violations of international law and the
responsibility of states to prevent genocide and to punish states
committing genocide.
“We call on states, churches, and
international institutions,” campaign material reads, “to impose
consequences for violations of international law, including targeted
sanctions, divestment, and arms embargoes. Full support must be given to
the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice,
and UN mechanisms both regarding investigations of crimes on all sides
as well as initiatives towards a just peace for Palestinians and
Israelis.”
Campaign resources
include stories from the field, factsheets, and talking points to
prepare people to approach decision- and policy-makers with a clear
explanation of the legal framework and explicit asks.
Peter Makari, Global Relations Minister related to the Middle East and Europe for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ, tells Mondoweiss,
“After over two years of genocide, renewed U.S. and global efforts are
needed to press our elected officials who support and enable Israel’s
many years of denial of Palestinian rights. The consequence of a lack of
accountability has resulted in devastating consequences for Palestinian
lives and rights.”
In a further move, the World Council of Churches sent a delegate to the People’s Congress for The Hague Group
meeting in Amsterdam last week. The group focused on widening the work
of civil society to insist that states meet their legal obligation to
end Israel’s program of genocide: instituting sanctions, closing ports
to weapons, ending corporate and institutional complicity, and
furthering accountability across courts, contracts, campuses and
communities.
“The People’s Congress is an important
space for civil society to collectively design its defense of
international law and human dignity,” said
WCC’s Mtata. “Churches and people of faith have an obligation to stand
in solidarity with the suffering and resist impunity. Our presence here
is part of a broader commitment to justice, accountability and,
hopefully, to a just and peaceful coexistence of Palestinians and
Israelis.”
While civil society organizations in the
U.S. are bringing people out into the streets in the tens of thousands
to resist the current administration, to advocate for Palestinians and,
now, to end the U.S./Israeli war on Iran, it remains to be seen if this
nascent program of the WCC moves an increasing number of church leaders
and grassroots Christians to name the realities Palestinians are
suffering and to make their voices heard.
Israel’s new war with Iran coupled with slaughter in the Gaza Strip — where Israeli military operations have killed
more than 600 Palestinians since a “ceasefire” supposedly went into
effect last October, adding to the tens of thousands killed during the
previous two years — has diverted attention from events in the West
Bank.
That diversion is fine with those intent
on cementing Israeli control there and continuing the subjugation or
displacement of the 3.8 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank
and East Jerusalem.
Among the measures that Israel has taken toward that objective during the past few months is legislation in the Knesset making it easier for Israelis to purchase land in the West Bank. More recent actions
by the Israeli cabinet have furthered that same goal as well as
extending Israeli control over certain holy sites and portions of the
West Bank that, according to the Oslo Accords of 1993, the Palestinian Authority is supposed to administer.
At least as significant in creating facts on the ground has been violence
by Israeli settlers against Palestinian residents. That violence has
surged since the beginning of the assault on the Gaza Strip, with the
perpetrators evidently taking advantage of the diversion of
international attention to Gaza and now Iran. The increase in violence
continues. Nearly 700 Palestinians were displaced
by settler violence and intimidation this past January — the highest
monthly figure since the Gaza offensive began in October 2023.
The Israeli government is an accessory
to the settler violence. It has done little to discourage it and more
often condones it. Units of the Israeli Defense Forces have even participated in it.
The Israeli activity in the West Bank is
illegal and recognized as such by most of the international community.
It is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention
on the protection of civilian populations. By settling its own citizens
in Palestinian territory that Israel conquered in a war that it
initiated in 1967, it is especially violating Article 49
of that convention, which expressly prohibits the transfer of any of
the conquering nation’s civilian population to the territory it
occupies.
The United States, through multiple
administrations of both parties, has paid lip service to the concept of a
two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while doing
little to impede Israeli actions in the West Bank that have been putting
that solution out of reach. The Trump administration has carried these tendencies even farther. The administration’s posture is personified by the U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee,
an outspoken Christian Zionist whose statements appear designed less to
uphold U.S. interests in the face of Israeli actions than to support
religious rationales for Israeli expansionism.
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In a further move along this line, the embassy that Huckabee heads announced
last week that it will start opening “pop-up” consular offices in
Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This move can be seen as part of
the same policy that during Trump’s first term saw the closing of a U.S. consulate in Jerusalem that had long been one of the chief channels for U.S. relations with the Palestinians.
Notwithstanding the administration’s
assertion that last week’s announcement does not represent a policy
change, delighted Israeli officials and dismayed Palestinians each saw
it as a significant statement that bestows a U.S. stamp of legitimacy on
the settlements. It would be difficult to justify the move as merely a
matter of administrative convenience. The first settlement to receive
one of the pop-up consulates is only eight miles from the U.S. Embassy
in Jerusalem, where consular services already are available.
The administration says it opposes Israeli annexation of the West Bank. The White House said so
just last month. But that opposition refers only to formal, openly
declared annexation. What matters more is the de facto annexation that
has been going on for years. The administration policy toward that is
not opposition but instead a condoning of it and, as the move regarding
the consulates illustrates, active support for it.
Although some of the most extreme Israeli figures, such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have called
for formal annexation of most of the West Bank, the government of Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in no hurry to make such a declaration
because it is getting almost everything it wants from the de facto
annexation. A formal declaration would make it more difficult for that
government to deflect international criticism of its actions in the West
Bank. It would no longer be able to string along the international
community with the fiction of a possible two-state solution and instead
would have to defend its apartheid policies within what it says itself
are its national boundaries.
With moves such as the opening of
consulates in the settlements, the United States is associating itself
ever more closely with the Israeli expansionist project and its inhumane
treatment of the Palestinians. This is contrary to U.S interests,
partly because it puts the United States ever more conspicuously on the
wrong side of legality, morality, and international opinion.
Moreover, oppressed Palestinians will not
forever be submissive. The long history of this conflict has already
seen two intifadas, which have taken violent as well as nonviolent
forms, and there could be more. The conflict will continue to be a prime
source of instability in the Middle East.
Besides inhibiting any U.S. effort to “pivot” away from the region, the
close association of the United States with the oppressive policies of
Israel makes the United States more of a target for terrorism or other
reprisals.
Paul R. Pillar is Non-resident Senior
Fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University and a
non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
He is also an Associate Fellow of the Geneva Center for Security
Policy.
Scenes showing the widespread destruction of buildings and
infrastructure caused by Israeli attacks during the Gaza genocide in
Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip. February 22, 2026. (Photo: Omar
Ashtawy/APA Images)
