‘No to War’: Iranian Civil Society Issues Call for Peace as US Assault Intensifies

A heavily damaged bridge which was hit by a US strike is pictured along the road connecting Roudan and Bandar Abbas in southern Iran on July 18, 2026.

(Photo by Amir Hossein Khorgooei/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images)

“We believe that the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people desire peace and the right to live a dignified life.”

Stephen Prager, Common Dreams, Jul 20, 2026

As the US ramps up its assault against Iran with daily bombings and threatens a full ground invasion, hundreds of public figures from across Iranian civil society issued an urgent call for peace on Sunday.

Two hundred sixty-eight prominent Iranians—including political activists, academics, former members of Parliament, religious figures, labor leaders, and others—signed a joint declaration calling for a “complete and unconditional end of war, and the cessation of all threats, incitement to hatred, and warmongering.”

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“We believe that the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people desire peace and the right to live a dignified life,” the statement says. “Therefore, since no decision should be imposed upon the country against the will of its people… we firmly remind all governments, military forces involved in the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, and all members of the international community that violating this fundamental right of the Iranian people is a grave injustice against a nation that does not want war and stands for peace.”

“Despite all our differences, we raise our collective voice to say ‘No to War,’” the letter continued. “We sincerely call upon all our fellow Iranians—regardless of gender, political or ideological beliefs, religion, ethnicity, or any other distinction—to join this call and strengthen its echo by adding their voices.”

The declaration ends with a quote from the 13th-century Persian poet Saadi Shirazi: “Even if you possess the strength of an elephant or the claws of a lion, to me, peace is still better than war.”

The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) emphasized the “breadth of the signatories,” which span large swaths of political opinion and reflect “a rare convergence across Iran’s deeply fragmented political landscape.”

Among the signatories are Kak Hassan Amini, a Sunni activist; Faezeh Hashemi, a former member of Iran’s Parliament and the daughter of former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; teachers’ labor rights activist Maryam Kabiri; former Parliament members Elaheh Koulaei and Parvaneh Salahshouri; and former Central Bank Gov. Valiollah Seif.

The letter comes as the US has conducted nine consecutive nights of bombings following a short-lived truce in June. Earlier strikes targeted areas around the Strait of Hormuz—which Iran again sealed off as June’s memorandum of understanding collapsed.

In recent days, US strikes have begun to creep inland. In addition to military infrastructure, the US has attacked facilities relied upon by civilians, including bridges, roads, a train station, an airport, and energy infrastructure.

In retaliation for strikes that killed two US service members in Jordan over the weekend, the US launched another round of strikes on Monday that struck the construction site of a planned nuclear power plant, according to Iran’s atomic energy agency.

Iranian authorities have said that at least 50 people have been killed and at least 517 wounded in the latest round of US strikes. At least 3,500 Iranians have been killed since the US and Israel attacked Iran in late February, including more than 1,700 confirmed civilians, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA).

At least 17 US troops have been killed since the war began, with Iran’s strikes in Jordan killing 25-year-old 1st Lt. James Feehan and 19-year-old Pvt. Isabella Gonzales over the weekend. Another soldier has also gone missing and has not yet been publicly identified.

President Donald Trump vowed in a social media post on Monday that “every time Iran kills an American Soldier” going forward “they will pay for that killing many times over.”

With Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz once again causing global oil prices to soar, the Trump administration is reportedly mulling a full-scale ground invasion of Kharg Island and areas of coastline near the strait, which experts have warned would require hundreds of thousands of American troops and likely lead to many more casualties.

Democrats in Congress responded to the deaths of two more US soldiers by renewing calls to end the conflict.

“These brave troops gave their lives in service to our nation,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). “How many more must die for Trump’s war of choice?”

Trump’s escalations come despite the US House of Representatives and Senate passing a war powers resolution last month that directed him to withdraw troops from hostilities with Iran unless Congress authorizes them.

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NYT: Pentagon Withheld Dozens of Military Injuries in Days Leading Up to Attack That Killed US Troops

Two of the US service members killed in Jordan have been identified

by Dave DeCamp | July 20, 2026 at 2:16 pm ET | Iran

The New York Times reported on Monday that the Pentagon didn’t disclose that US troops had been injured by Iranian attacks on Jordan in the week leading up to the missile strikes that killed at least two US soldiers and left one missing.

US officials told the Times that in the days before the deadly January 17 attack, Iranian strikes on US facilities in Jordan injured dozens of US service members and damaged multiple US military helicopters.

Throughout that same week, US Central Command released multiple statements on the US airstrikes against Iran and other military operations but made no mention of the injuries, following a pattern of the US hiding casualties throughout the war.

Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, was killed by an Iranian attack on Jordan on July 17, 2026

A day after the deadly attack in Jordan, another US soldier was killed in Iraq during what CENTCOM called “a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone,” bringing the total number of US troops killed in the war in recent days to at least four, a number that includes the soldier missing in Jordan as CENTCOM said it found remains it was working to identify.

The US military identified the other two US Army soldiers killed in Jordan, which included a 19-year-old woman, Pvt. Isabella Gonzales of Carrollton, Texas, who died on Friday. The other soldier, 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, of Ewa Beach, Hawaii, died of his wounds on Saturday.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell initially rejected the Times’ report as “baseless and malicious” but then acknowledged that nearly 100 US troops have been injured in the war since July 7, though he downplayed the injuries.

“While nearly 100 service members were deemed to have some degree of injury since July 7, 2026, 96% have returned duty. They are determined to get back in the fight,” Parnell wrote on X. “The vast majority of injuries experienced were minor concussions. Further updates will be posted on the Defense Casualty Analysis System.”

According to the Pentagon’s numbers, at least 18 US service members have been killed, and more than 500 have been wounded in the Iran war since President Trump launched it on February 28.

US and Israeli attacks on Iran in that time have killed around 3,500 Iranians, including more than 50 since the US renewed strikes several weeks ago. In April, Iranian officials said nearly half of those killed were civilians, including the 120 school children killed in the US bombing of an elementary school in Minab, southern Iran.

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As American deaths mount, Trump escalates war against Iran

Andre Damon@Andre__Damon, WSWSD, 20 July 

 

USS Donald Cook (DDG 75) transits the Arabian Sea while an MH-60S Sea Hawk flies nearby, July 2025. [Photo: U.S. Central Command]

The Trump administration is engaging in a massive escalation of the war against Iran. The United States resumed the bombing of Iran on July 11, after President Donald Trump declared the June 17 ceasefire “over.” US forces have struck the country for eight consecutive nights, extending their targets from military sites to bridges, railways, ports and the power grid, while enforcing a naval blockade with missile fire.

Iranian missiles killed two American soldiers in Jordan on Friday. On Sunday the US military announced that a third soldier had been killed in northern Iraq and that additional remains, not yet identified, had been recovered at the base in Jordan. The Washington Post put the war’s American toll Sunday at 17, possibly 18, dead and more than 430 wounded.

The Jordanian base where the two soldiers died had been struck at least twice in one week; a strike a day earlier wounded about 20 soldiers, the Post reported Sunday. The Post also reported two further attacks in Jordan—one on King Faisal Air Base that wounded several soldiers, another on Prince Hassan Air Base that damaged Black Hawk helicopters—about which Pentagon spokesmen declined to comment. No Pentagon spokesman has taken questions on the war since May 5.

The Wall Street Journal reported July 15 that Trump “is leaning toward expanding U.S. military operations in Iran,” with options including “sending ground forces to seize Iranian islands near the Strait of Hormuz.” The Journal reported that a White House Situation Room meeting was held “to discuss the potential seizure of Kharg Island and other territory along the Strait of Hormuz using U.S. troops.” The journalist Seymour Hersh reported June 10 that Trump asked whether using low-yield nuclear weapons against Iran’s underground missile plants “was doable.”

“The U.S. is planning for a wider war,” a US official familiar with internal administration discussions told the Washington Post in an article published Sunday. The official said the Pentagon is sending more warplanes to the region, but warned that the military is running low on air-defense missiles and long-range strike weapons, and that battle damage limits how many more troops and aircraft can be brought in. “We do not have enough to safely sustain operations, and I don’t think the White House is aware of that,” the official said.

Iran is widening its response. The official quoted by the Post said Tehran regarded last week’s US strikes on the bridges and rail lines serving Bandar Abbas as an escalation and answered in kind: “They had less concern about inflicting mass casualties on the United States.”

Nearly five months of war have not destroyed Iran’s capacity to strike American bases across Jordan, Kuwait and the Gulf, or to keep the strait closed. An Iranian strike hit a Kuwaiti power-and-water plant for the second straight day Sunday, Jordan shot down three missiles, and attacks were reported on the port and airport of Aqaba. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard declared July 15 that with “American bandits” blocking Iran’s oil and gas exports, “they must await the closure of other oil and gas export routes that serve the interests of the U.S. and its allies.”

Military analysts told the Post that US forces were in no condition for ground operations inside Iran, which Trump has refused to rule out. “I think it would be a mistake to put ground forces anywhere in islands in the strait or onshore,” said Seth Jones of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I don’t think U.S. forces are prepared for standoff strikes from Iranians.”

American troops landing on Kharg Island would be subjected to waves of missile and drone strikes from the shore, and the casualties already sustained would be only a down payment. Each new loss would intensify the pressure for further escalation—up to the use of the nuclear weapons Trump has already discussed.

The logic of the war drives American imperialism to escalate because a retreat would mean a crippling loss of global prestige—the fear that gripped the ruling class throughout the Vietnam War, when President Richard Nixon declared in April 1970 that the United States must not act like “a pitiful, helpless giant.” But each escalation has widened the war and multiplied the dangers, and a landing of American troops on Iranian territory, against a prepared enemy and with depleted stocks, would be an act of colossal recklessness.

The war against Iran is part of a conflagration that now extends from Ukraine, where Ukrainian weapons, provided and funded by the NATO powers, are raining down on Russian cities, to the economic strangulation of China. The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that Iran’s precision in striking sensitive targets has raised concerns among US officials that China or Russia is providing targeting assistance. Whether or not this claim is true, the Iran war is one front of a far broader global war.

The Democratic Party is playing its assigned role: demobilizing the widespread popular opposition to that war.

This weekend, as the war stood on the brink of a massive expansion, the Democratic Party staged more than 700 “Good Trouble Lives On” rallies, nominally in opposition to Trump’s attacks on democratic rights. At the flagship Good Trouble rally in Atlanta, three-and-a-half hours of speeches passed without the word “Iran.”

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US leaves 10,000 Iranians without drinking water following strike on desalination plant

Iran responded to overnight US strikes on civilian infrastructure by striking targets in Jordan, Bahrain, and Kuwait as part of Operation Nasr 2

 News Desk, The Cradle, JUL 18, 2026

 

(Photo credit: Getty / Morteza Akhoundi)

Around 10,000 people in Iran’s Hormozgan province are without drinking water following US strikes on a desalination plant in the coastal village of Bunji, Tasnim News Agency reported on 18 July.

The CEO of the Hormozgan Water and Wastewater Company stated that the attack “completely disrupted the supply of drinking water to 20 villages with a population of about 10,000 people.”

“These villages are facing a water shortage crisis,” the official added.

The desalination plant was one of multiple targets struck by the US military starting on Friday night, the seventh straight night of airstrikes on Iran since US President Donald Trump declared an end to the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced its forces “hit surveillance sites, military logistics infrastructure, underground weapons storage, and maritime capabilities.”

US strikes also knocked out 100 telecommunications masts, disrupting landline, mobile and internet services in northern Hormozgan province.

Photos circulated online showing multiple bridges destroyed by US warplanes in Hormozgan, which borders the Strait of Hormuz.

Local authorities said seven people were killed in US attacks across the province.

Since 27 June, US attacks have killed at least 50 people and injured 500, Iranian Health Ministry Spokesperson Hossein Kermanpour announced on Saturday.

“The fatalities include five women and two children under the age of 18, while there are 32 women and 18 minors among the injured,” he added.

Iran responded to the US escalation by striking strategic targets in Jordan, Kuwait, and Bahrain early Saturday as part of the 20th wave of Operation Nasr 2.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced that its Aerospace Force carried out a missile and drone attack on the US military base in Azraq, Jordan.

The IRGC said the operation targeted fighter jet shelters and a large runway at the base, destroying at least two US fighter jets and three other US aircraft.

“Your religious and humanitarian duty is to eliminate them by any means and cleanse the sacred land of Jordan of the killers of oppressed Muslims,” ​​ the IRGC statement urged.

Jordan’s military said it intercepted 10 Iranian missiles fired into its airspace overnight and that no damage resulted.

On Friday, CBS News reported that several US service members were injured during Iranian attacks on two Jordanian bases over the past week.

Tasnim reported further that IRGC naval forces launched drone and missile strikes successfully targeting a US fleet fuel support pier at Al-Ahmadi port in Kuwait, as well as a US signals and communications center in the country.

In Bahrain, Iran struck the Sheik Isa Air Base and destroyed a US intelligence data center, known as Batelco, Tasnim added.

Kuwait’s Ministry of Electricity and Water said on Saturday that Iran struck an electricity and water distillation plant, which led to a fire erupting in one of the plant’s components.

Iranian missiles also targeted an oil facility in Kuwait, causing significant damage and some injuries, according to Kuwait’s state news agency.

Tehran confirmed the suspension of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Washington in response to violations by the US.

“We have suspended our commitments under the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding. The US has violated and suspended all of its commitments,” Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi declared on Saturday.

“We have also suspended our commitments, are not currently implementing them, and are focused on defending the country.”

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Iran declares Islamabad agreement suspended, blames US violations

Tehran says Washington violated all obligations under the memorandum as it focuses on 'defending the country'

 

 

A plume of black smoke and flames rises over Mangaf, south of Kuwait City, after reported attacks on civilian infrastructure, 18 July 2026 (UGC/AFP)

MEE staff

Published date: 18 July 2026 

Iran said on Saturday that it had suspended all of its commitments under the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), accusing the United States of violating the agreement as military exchanges between the two countries continued.

The announcement by Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi marks Tehran's clearest statement yet that it no longer considered itself bound by the Pakistan-mediated agreement, which was signed in June to end hostilities between Washington and Tehran.

The 14-point MoU included provisions to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, lift the US naval blockade and begin a phased de-escalation after weeks of fighting.

"The US has violated and suspended all its commitments within the framework of the Islamabad MoU," Gharibabadi was quoted as saying by Iran’s Fars news agency.

He added that Tehran had also suspended "its commitments and implementation of the agreement" and was now "busy defending the country".

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Iranian officials had previously accused Washington of breaching the agreement and warned that continued attacks could jeopardise the deal.

"We also likewise have suspended all of our commitments as a result; we are no longer implementing those commitments," added Gharibabadi, who also heads Iran's technical negotiating team. 

The announcement came as the conflict continued to intensify.

Iran's health ministry said US attacks since 6 July had killed at least 50 people and wounded more than 500, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warned countries hosting US forces of a "corresponding response".

US strikes overnight damaged a desalination facility in Iran, disrupting drinking water supplies to about 10,000 people as the conflict seems to have entered a new phase. 

Bahraini authorities repeatedly sounded air raid sirens, while Kuwaiti forces said they were intercepting incoming missiles and drones. 

Inspired by Trump, Israel Advances Plan for Crocodile-Ringed Prison for Palestinians

Senior Israeli police officials take a fact-finding tour of a crocodile farm in Hamat Gader on January 1, 2026.

(Photo by Israel Police)

“This is some Bond villain-level lunacy,” said one Reddit user.

Brett Wilkins., Common Dreams, Jul 17, 2026

The Israeli government this week stripped Nile crocodiles of their protected status in order to advance a proposal that National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said was inspired by the Trump administration’s now-shuttered Alligator Alcatraz to build a prison for Palestinians surrounded by a moat full of the ravenous reptiles.

“You read that right,” the liberal US Jewish group J Street said in response to the news. “When cruelty becomes a governing principle instead of an aberration within the Israeli government, something has gone deeply wrong.”

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Israeli Environmental Minister Idit Silman signed a directive Wednesday reclassifying Nile crocodiles as “specially managed wild animals,” a novel legal category enabling the government to keep them for security purposes.

Ben-Gvir, who heads the Israel Prison Service (IPS), said he was inspired by the Trump administration’s recently closed Alligator Alcatraz immigrant detention center in Florida. He is seeking to first introduce crocodiles into a moat around Ketziot Prison in southern Israel.

While it is not certain that the plan will come to fruition, Ben-Gvir celebrated Silman’s decree in a social media post showing him petting a crocodile, with the caption: “Cursed terrorist, thinking of trying to escape? Think again.”

Palestinians have occasionally escaped from Israeli lockups, such as in September 2021, when six men used improvised tools, including spoons, to tunnel out of the high-security Gilboa Prison. All six escapees were caught within weeks.

(Photo by Itamar Ben-Gvir/Facebook)

The move by Silman—who gained international notoriety by calling for the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip—came despite objections from her own ministry’s legal adviser and the Nature and Parks Authority.

IPS, which sent a fact-finding mission to the Hamat Gader crocodile farm in January, argued that its employees could handle the animals, citing the agency’s experience working with the attack dogs that Palestinian prisoners and human rights groups have claimed were used to maul and even sexually abuse detainees.

Silman’s approval is contingent upon IPS meeting animal welfare requirements and appropriate holding conditions.

Meanwhile, Ben-Gvir has openly boasted about the dramatic deterioration in conditions endured by Palestinian prisoners since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 and Israel’s retaliatory obliteration of Gaza, which United Nations and other experts describe as a genocide.

“We go into the prisons, and they wet themselves,” Ben-Gvir said of Palestinian prisoners during a speech on Friday. “I’m not joking. They’re afraid. Fear rules them, and that’s how it should be.”

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US broadens bombardment of Iran to civilian infrastructure

 Andre Damon@Andre__Damon, WSWS, 18 July

 

The US military destroys the Vessel Traffic Service tower at Shahid Kalantari Port in Chabahar, Iran. The approximately 60-meter structure was used to monitor and coordinate maritime traffic at the commercial port. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gloated over the attack on social media.

The United States military bombed bridges, a railway station, an airport and the control tower of Iran’s only deep-water ocean port on Friday, the seventh consecutive day of strikes, extending its assault from military targets to the infrastructure of civilian life.

Iranian state media reported strikes on at least five bridges in the southern province of Hormozgan, killing seven people in the port city of Bandar Khamir and hitting its railway station. Explosions were reported in Sirik, Ahvaz and Yazd after a new wave of strikes began at 3 p.m. Eastern time.

Iran’s energy ministry asked citizens Friday to use less electricity and air conditioning, as American strikes on the power system strained the grid in extreme heat. Since the fighting resumed, the strikes have killed at least 38 people and wounded more than 400, Iran’s Health Ministry said Friday.

Attacks on civilian infrastructure are war crimes. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court defines “intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects, that is, objects which are not military objectives” as a war crime, and customary international law—binding on Washington and Tehran alike, though neither ratified the treaties—specifically protects “drinking water installations and supplies.”

A spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres said Friday that Guterres is “particularly concerned about attacks on civilian infrastructure in Iran and across the region,” adding, “Such attacks are unacceptable.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth celebrated the destruction on social media. He posted a photograph Friday of the maritime surveillance tower at Chabahar collapsing in smoke, above the caption, “Iran does not control the SoH”—the Strait of Hormuz, 350 miles away.

Iranian officials said the tower, which fell after a third strike, guided merchant shipping and rescues of fishermen at sea. Ryan Costello, policy director of the National Iranian American Council, called the post “disgusting online revelry in the bombardment of Iran and its infrastructure.”

The memorandum of understanding signed June 17 stopped the American attacks, reopened Iran’s ports and paused oil sanctions in return for 60 days of free passage through the strait.

US President Donald Trump pronounced the agreement dead on July 8, notified Congress on July 10 that “military action” had resumed, and the first of seven consecutive nights of bombing followed on July 11. By Tuesday afternoon the naval blockade was back in force.

The Trump administration is actively discussing a ground invasion. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Trump is leaning toward expanded operations, including sending troops to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal, and other territory along the strait, after a White House Situation Room meeting Tuesday. Reuters reported the same day that officials describe the current strikes as “shaping operations.”

On Friday, the Journal reported that the US was shifting jet fighters back from Europe and that the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, more than 2,000 strong, is operating in the region.

Trump has refused to rule out a ground assault. “Sometimes you need a ground campaign, but we have other people that will do the ground campaign for us,” he said on Fox News Tuesday, calling a seizure of Kharg Island unlikely, but adding, “If we degrade them far enough and deep enough back, I would do that.”

The bridge campaign itself executes a threat he made days earlier: “We’re going to knock out all their power plants. We’re going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.”

Iran answered with missile and drone attacks on US bases and other targets across Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan and Oman. On Friday, it damaged a Kuwaiti power and desalination plant—the country draws about 90 percent of its drinking water from desalination—forcing Kuwait to ration electricity in the July heat.

No member of the Democratic congressional leadership has publicly responded to the Journal’s report that the White House is actively discussing sending ground troops into Iran. On Wednesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries voted to protect $3.3 billion in military aid to Israel against an amendment striking it.Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones

When Trump signed the agreement with Iran in June, the party’s leaders denounced it as a capitulation. “This is not the art of the deal. This is the art of surrender,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on June 19, declaring that Trump “gave away the store” and that “the Iranians took him to the cleaners.”

Democratic Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts called the deal “basically a surrender document from Donald Trump to the supreme leader of Iran.” Their criticism was, in effect, a demand that the war be fought through to victory.

The war is overwhelmingly unpopular. In an Economist/YouGov poll conducted July 10-13, 57 percent called the decision to go to war wrong and 65 percent said Washington should strike a deal to end it as soon as possible. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll released Thursday put Trump’s approval rating at 37 percent, with 61 percent disapproving.

The economic toll is mounting. Brent crude settled Friday at $88.10 a barrel, up 4.6 percent on the day and more than 10 percent across the week, its sharpest five-day rise since April.

Gasoline has reached $3.94 a gallon nationally, up from $3.79 on July 7, according to AAA, and war-risk insurance for ships in the region has climbed from 0.25 percent of a vessel’s value before the war to as much as 10 percent.

The bombing of Iran is part of a broader war. In Gaza, the Health Ministry counted 73,250 dead as of this week, and Israel has sharply escalated its strikes—more than 40 in June, the most of any month since the ceasefire that took effect in October 2025.

On Friday a drone strike on a funeral procession outside a mosque in the Nuseirat refugee camp killed eight people, Al Jazeera reported. The Times of Israel wrote Thursday that the Israeli military “ramped up its strikes” in Gaza after the first round of the war against Iran wound down in April.

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White House actively discussing sending ground troops to Iran

Andre Damon@Andre__Damon, WSWS, 17 July

The White House has held meetings this week to discuss sending ground troops to Iran, according to a report published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal. President Donald Trump “is leaning toward expanding U.S. military operations in Iran after days of briefings from top aides,” the Journal wrote, citing US officials, with the options including “sending ground forces to seize Iranian islands near the Strait of Hormuz.”

A ground invasion of Iran would mark the war’s most dangerous escalation to date. Four and a half months of war, beginning February 28, have left the Iranian government in place, Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium sealed underground and shipping through the strait nearly halted. Washington is turning toward ground forces because bombing has failed.

Trump convened a meeting in the White House Situation Room Tuesday evening “to discuss the potential seizure of Kharg Island and other territory along the Strait of Hormuz using U.S. troops, as well as the potential bombing of a tunnel complex at Pickaxe Mountain,” the Journal reported. The discussion “was one of multiple formal and informal conversations Trump has held in recent days” with senior officials about an escalation of the war.

Trump told Fox News Tuesday: “Sometimes you need a ground campaign, but we have other people that will do the ground campaign for us.” In the same interview, he said it was unlikely that US forces would seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal, but would not rule it out: “If we degrade them far enough and deep enough back, I would do that.”

On June 14, Washington announced a “memorandum of understanding” to suspend direct attacks. Under the agreement, signed June 17, the United States lifted its naval blockade and paused oil sanctions in exchange for a 60-day guarantee of safe passage through the strait.

The “ceasefire” was condemned by all factions of the political establishment. Former Vice President Mike Pence, writing in the Journal on June 22, said the agreement “smacks of the kind of appeasement” Trump once rejected and urged him to “let the armed forces finish the job.” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it the “art of surrender,” and Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut described it as “essentially surrender to Iran.”

Trump declared the “ceasefire” over on July 8, and in a July 10 letter informed Congress that the United States had resumed “military action” against Iran—a notification the White House claims reset the 60-day clock set by the War Powers Act for the president to seek congressional approval of military operations. The bombing resumed the following night, and on Monday Trump announced the reimposition of the naval blockade, which took effect Tuesday afternoon.

Reuters reported Wednesday, citing US officials, that the strikes aimed at forcing open the Strait of Hormuz are “also targeting Iranian military capabilities the U.S. would want to destroy before executing more complex operations against Iran.” One of the officials called the strikes “shaping operations” and said: “This is helping set the stage, if needed.” Reuters wrote that another official said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “has been an advocate of escalating the military operation against Iran.”

Three boys play in the shallow waters of the Strait of Hormuz, as a plume of smoke rises from an explosion in the background, off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Monday, July 13, 2026. [AP Photo/Razieh Poudat]

Retired Marine General Frank McKenzie, who ran US military operations across the Middle East from 2019 to 2022, advocated a ground invasion of Kharg Island on CBS’s Face the Nation program Sunday: “That’s something we should think about doing because possession of Iranian soil would be a significant factor in future negotiations with Iran.”

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) estimates that Iran fields some 570,000 active-duty troops and 350,000 reserves, backed by coastal missile batteries, naval mines and swarms of fast attack boats. The US military said its strikes overnight July 7-8 hit more than 80 targets, including over 60 of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ small attack boats, but Reuters reported Wednesday that Iran is still fielding missiles and drones despite heavy losses. Retired General Philip Breedlove told Fox News this week that the 2003 invasion of Iraq required more than 300,000 US troops staged in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia; the American force now in the region number 50,000, but few are ground troops.

Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran’s foreign minister from 2005 to 2010 and a sitting member of parliament, said in a state media interview Wednesday that if US forces seize Iranian territory, Iran should storm a US base “through a combined helicopter-borne and ground assault” and take American soldiers hostage.Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones

The bombing has now run six consecutive nights. The wave that ended Wednesday night reached the Parchin military complex and the city of Pakdasht, near Tehran—the first strikes close to the capital in this round of the war—and hit a civilian airport in Semnan province, where Iran builds its ballistic missiles and runs its space program. A sixth wave began at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time Thursday “to further degrade Iranian military capabilities,” the US military announced; Iranian state media said a bridge between Bandar Abbas and Lar and an airport in Iranshahr, in the country’s southeast, had been struck.

On Wednesday, US missiles struck Greater Tunb Island, one of three islands commanding the approaches to the Strait of Hormuz, and a barracks of the army’s 388th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, where Iranian state television said at least 13 missiles killed seven soldiers. At least 35 people have been killed and more than 300 wounded this month, according to Iran’s Health Ministry.

Iranian officials said a US strike Wednesday night hit near Shahid Baqaei Hospital, a children’s cancer center in Ahvaz, forcing the evacuation of 211 chemotherapy patients. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei called it “a cowardly war crime against the most innocent of human beings—children who are bravely fighting for their lives.”

Iran struck back Thursday at air bases housing US forces in Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain, with the Guard citing the strike near the Ahvaz hospital as justification. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator, declared Wednesday: “We are in an essential and existential war with America.” Iranian army spokesman Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia warned Thursday that if Trump carries out his threats against Iranian infrastructure, “All the infrastructure in the region will be crushed under the steel blows of the powerful armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

The US military is now enforcing the naval blockade by attacking civilian ships. Within 17 hours of its taking effect, the military said it had “redirected” two commercial ships, and on Wednesday a US aircraft fired Hellfire missiles into the smokestack of the Belma, a Curaçao-flagged tanker sailing for Kharg Island, disabling it. “The ship is no longer transiting to Iran,” the military announced.

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Trump’s Sanctions Against the ICC Are Unconstitutional, Rights Groups Say

 The human rights groups’ suit came as the Trump administration vowed to destroy the International Criminal Court entirely.

 

Noah Hurowitz, The Intercept, July 15 2026, 6:00 a.m. ET

Human rights groups sued the Trump administration and cited U.S. sanctions against U.N. special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, seen speaking at a summit in Brussels on April 22, 2026. Photo: Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images

Two pro-Palestine groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday that takes aim at U.S. sanctions against international human rights groups linked to efforts to hold Israel accountable for war crimes.

The lawsuit, filed in a New York federal court by Democracy for the Arab World Now, or DAWN, and Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide, seeks to reverse sanctions brought under Executive Order 14203.

The order, which President Donald Trump made in February 2025, grants the administration power to issue penalties against any person or group seeking to bring a case against the U.S. or its allies — namely Israel — before the International Criminal Court.

The plaintiffs, both of whom coordinate with international NGOs in an effort to hold the U.S. and Israel accountable for war crimes, are seeking a declaration that the ICC sanctions are in violation of their First Amendment rights because they create obstacles to free association. The lawsuit also asks for an injunction barring the Trump administration from using sanctions to stymie free speech.

Trump’s assault on the ICC — most recently including a vow to “dismantle” the court — has focused mostly on efforts to hold Israel accountable for war crimes. In November 2024, the court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another Israeli official, and an official with the armed Palestinian group Hamas for activities during the time period of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The White House executive order came down shortly after the arrest warrants were issued.

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The rights groups’ lawsuit specifically highlights sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the U.N. official tasked with probing human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories, and three Palestinian nongovernmental organizations. According to the plaintiffs, the sanctions impinge on their First Amendment rights by preventing them from engaging in protected speech activities with Albanese and the NGOs.

“The Trump administration is using the blunt instrument of economic sanctions not only to punish human rights defenders but to police the political expression of millions of Americans,” said Omar Shakir, the executive director of DAWN, which was founded by journalist Jamal Khashoggi before his assassination by the Saudi government. “The government is violating the constitutional rights of American citizens in order to shield officials of a foreign government who have committed a genocide.”

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The defendants named in the suit are Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and Brad Smith, the director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. (None of the American government officials immediately responded to requests for comment.)

Trump and his allies’ war on the international human rights community goes back years: In 2020, Trump issued sanctions against an ICC prosecutor after she called for an investigation into U.S. human rights abuses in Afghanistan.

Shortly after retaking the White House, Trump lifted Biden-era sanctions on Israeli settlers involved in violence against Palestinians and destruction of their property. Trump then issued Executive Order 14203, “Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court,” which placed visa restrictions and financial penalties on individuals and groups seeking to help the ICC in any potential case against the U.S., Israel, or other allies.

Months later, the administration issued sanctions against Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur. Albanese was briefly removed from the sanctions list in May after a federal judge ruled that the sanctions violated her rights, but the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which administers U.S. sanctions, added her to the list again days later, according to Al Jazeera.

The Albanese sanctions were followed in September 2025 with an edict sanctioning three NGOs: Al Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

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In addition to penalizing Albanese and the NGOs, the sanctions bar any U.S. people or groups from engaging with them and make it a federal offense to receive or provide any “service” related to designated groups and people — an action the plaintiffs argue is in violation of their First Amendment rights.

The lawsuit comes at a moment of heightened attention to the sanctions against the ICC. Days before the lawsuit was filed, Rubio launched a broadside against the ICC in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece laying out a case for “dismantling” the court. Rubio specifically cited calls by DAWN for an investigation into potential war crimes in the U.S. bombing campaign against Iran.

“The ICC is backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S.,” Rubio wrote. “Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC—brick by brick, if necessary.”

The timing of Rubio’s renewed attack on the ICC alongside the lawsuit appears to be a coincidence, but only serves to further underscore the stakes, according to Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, a spokesperson for DAWN.

“The fact that he mentioned DAWN in his Wall Street Journal op-ed shows that the risk [of prosecution] to Americans is real,” Schaeffer Omer-Man told The Intercept. “But our primary goal is to get legal clarity that we can continue to have a working relationship with Francesca Albanese, and, equally if not more importantly, that we can resume working shoulder to shoulder with Palestinian civil society and human rights groups.”

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Houthi leader says US, Israel ‘source of evil and instability in the world’

The Dawn, 16 July 2026

The leader of Yemen’s Houthi rebels has threatened Saudi Arabia after days of fighting between the two countries, Al Jazeera reports.

In a televised address, Sayyed Abdul-Malik Al Houthi has blamed the Saudi leadership for advancing US and Israeli objectives in the region.

“The United States and Israel are the source of evil and instability in the world,” al-Houthi says.

He adds that the US, Israel and their allies “fuel instability through warmongering and the plundering of the wealth of nations, from Palestine to other regions”.

Al Houthi also says that Israel’s aim of changing the map of the Middle East to create a “Greater Israel” is the “driving force behind all the wars in the region”.

“This axis has no respect for international agreements and United Nations resolutions, but also boasts of genocide against nations and the destruction of civilisations,” Al Houthi adds.

He alleges that Saudi Arabia’s attacks on Yemen have been ongoing for years, have no legal justification, and are “carried out within the framework of alignment and loyalty to the United States and Israel”.

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Facing debacle in Iran, Trump threatens to attack Iranian power plants and bridges

Andre Damon@Andre__Damon, WSWS, 15 July 2026 

 

A small motorboat passes anchored vessels in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Thursday, June 11, 2026. [AP Photo/Amirhosein Khorgooi]

US President Donald Trump threatened Tuesday to destroy Iran’s power plants and bridges, as the United States reimposed its naval blockade of Iranian ports and bombed the country for a fourth day.

“We’re going to hit them very hard tomorrow night. We’re going to hit them very hard the night after, and then next week it gets really bad for them, because next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges,” Trump told Fox News. “We’re going to knock out all their power plants. We’re going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.”

The deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure is a war crime under international law. In April, Trump threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages.” In June he posted that the United States might be “forced to militarily complete the job,” and that if that happened, “the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

Trump’s genocidal threats to destroy Iranian civilization, and his renewed attacks, are a testament to the deepening crisis of the war. Trump has achieved none of the war’s objectives, from overthrowing the Iranian government to controlling the Strait of Hormuz.

Underscoring the degree of the crisis, Trump backed off Tuesday from the 20 percent toll on the Strait of Hormuz that he had proclaimed only a day earlier. On Monday he had declared the United States “THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,” to be “reimbursed, at the rate of 20 percent on all cargo shipped” through the waterway.

On Tuesday, citing “highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership,” he announced that he would “replace the 20 percent United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States.”

The renewed blockade took effect at 4 p.m. Eastern time, one hour after US forces opened a new round of airstrikes across southern Iran.

Ship traffic through the strait, which normally carries about one-fifth of the world’s oil, has nearly stopped. The maritime data firm Kpler counted 10 transits Monday, against more than 130 a day before the war.

US forces began Tuesday’s strikes at 3 p.m., the military said. Iranian officials and news agencies reported strikes on the city of Bushehr, home of Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant, on the Abadan oil refinery, Mahshahr, the islands of Qeshm and Kish, Sirik and Bandar Abbas.

Over three nights beginning Saturday, US warplanes and warships had already hit more than 300 sites, by the military’s own count.

Iran has declared the strait “closed until further notice” and is enforcing the closure with missiles.

Early Tuesday, Iranian cruise missiles struck two tankers of the Emirati state oil company, the Mombasa and the Al Bahiyah, in Omani waters, killing an Indian crew member and wounding eight others, according to the UAE’s defense ministry.

Iran struck back across the Gulf on Tuesday, firing missiles and drones at bases housing US forces. Kuwait’s army said it intercepted a ballistic missile, five cruise missiles and 33 drones, and that four of its sailors were wounded; Jordan said it shot down four missiles. Sirens sounded across Bahrain.

The bombing continued into the night. Iranian state media reported new American strikes late Tuesday along the southern coast and said a “US projectile” killed three civilians in a town in Hormozgan province.

Tehran has ruled out talks under fire. “If the US thinks its military attacks and blockade will force us to request negotiations, it’s making a mistake,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi told Iranian state media Tuesday.

Iran’s parliament, meeting Monday night in its first open session in more than four months, took up a bill to require Iranian permits and fees for every ship in the strait, with American and Israeli ships barred outright, under a draft reported by Al Jazeera.

On Tuesday, about 180 lawmakers declared the deal with Washington void. “There is no longer any memorandum of understanding,” said Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesman of the parliament’s national security committee.Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones

The Trump administration claims that it can wage war again because it had a pause. The White House maintains that the June “ceasefire” ended the earlier hostilities and that its July 10 letter to Congress restarted the 60-day clock of the War Powers Resolution.

The response in major pro-war publications demonstrates the degree of the crisis gripping the Trump administration.

“The Trump administration wasn’t bargaining for an open-ended conflict when it rolled the dice in late February and joined Israel’s military campaign to eliminate Iran’s leadership and cripple its arsenal of ballistic missiles and launchers,” the Wall Street Journal’s national security correspondent, Michael Gordon, wrote Tuesday in an analysis titled “The Battle for Hormuz.”

“This is going to be a long-term effort,” Joseph Votel, the retired Army general who commanded US forces in the Middle East from 2016 to 2019, told the Journal. In the Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius raised the prospect of a war lasting years, citing an American negotiator’s forecast that peace “will come in two weeks, or two months, or two years.”

“In retrospect, this was clearly a war based on fatally flawed assumptions,” John Hannah, a former national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and now a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said in a New York Times analysis published Tuesday, “none more damaging than the president’s apparent conviction that Iran’s revolutionary regime was a flimsy house of cards ready to collapse in a hail of American airstrikes and bellicose Truth Social posts.”

The Financial Times’ editorial board wrote Tuesday: “The quagmire underlines once again the foolishness of the war launched by Trump against the advice of many of his allies and without much understanding of his enemy. A crisis of Trump’s own making has left Tehran with newfound leverage in the strait, which Iran had never before closed in the past.”

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed Sunday, 79 percent of Americans said they expect US involvement in Iran to “go on for an extended period of time.” Only 37 percent approved of the renewed strikes.

Establishing US control over the Strait of Hormuz would require a massive escalation. Holding the strait would take a ground war, military analysts told the Associated Press Tuesday. “It’s very difficult to envision any scenario where you could satisfactorily secure the Strait of Hormuz absent ground forces,” said Jason Campbell of the Middle East Institute, a former Pentagon official—an operation, he said, that would require tens of thousands of troops, months of preparation and “very high costs.”

The forces such an operation would draw on are in place. The Abraham Lincoln and George H.W. Bush carrier groups, the assault ships Tripoli and Boxer with thousands of Marines aboard, and more than 20 warships in all are on station, with more than 50,000 US troops in the Middle East—by the military’s own account its largest force in the region since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

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