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middle east
Big Idiot Trump and His Disastrous Loser of a War Against Iran
Donald Trump takes his place among the great buffoons of history, leading an imperial power that hasn’t won a single war of any sort since World War II ended.
Jul 17, 2026
I recently drove to a gas station in Massachusetts to fill my tank with regular gas, the cheapest around, and, to my surprise, given what’s going on, it was only $4.59 a gallon.
Okay, okay, I take back that “only” and admit it. It’s not good to joke about the nightmare of gas prices these days. But in truth, that may indeed still prove to be the good news, since Donald Trump remains at war (or perhaps at chaos) with Iran, a country a mere 6,300 miles or so from Washington, DC, and so crucial to American power on this distinctly overheating planet of ours (right?). And even as I was writing this, Iran had indeed again closed the Strait of Hormuz through which about 25% of global oil and 20% of global natural gas normally passes, and Donald Trump was threatening to take over the Strait himself.
The terrible (even terrifying) logic of what he is now doing is (or at least should be) overwhelmingly obvious to anyone who has even a faint memory of this country’s imperial history since it emerged victorious from World War II in 1945. And yet give Donald Trump credit. People deal with him as if he were a unique figure in American history and in some ways, of course, he couldn’t be more so. But not, it turns out, when it comes to American-style war. There, he seems almost boringly part of a story (now more than three-quarters of a century old) of how the seemingly greatest power on Planet Earth in the endless decades after World War II simply couldn’t—no, not ever!—win a war.
After all, Harry S. Truman got us into a major conflict in Korea, almost 7,000 miles from Washington, D.C., in 1950, and when it ended three years later, the US left the North Koreans with approximately half of the Korean peninsula.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy increased American support for what had been the French colony of Indochina (until its military lost the battle of Dien Bien Phu to Ho Chi Minh’s rebel forces in 1954). He would then oversee what would become a full-scale American war in Vietnam, a mere 8,500 or so miles from this country, as well as a war in Laos (also about 8,500 miles away) and Cambodia (nearly 9,000 miles away) that would last a mere 14 more years, ending in a chaotically disastrous US withdrawal and absolute defeat in 1975.
In 2001, President George W. Bush would launch a war in Afghanistan as part of what he labeled his Global War on Terror, a country a mere 7,000 miles from Washington. It would last just 20 more years before ending in—yes, of course!—a distinct American defeat and the grim withdrawal of the last US troops there by presidents Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden in 2021. In 2003, Bush would also launch a war in Iraq, a mere 10,000 or so miles from Washington, a conflict that would be ended by President Barack Obama, again in defeat, in 2011 (although Washington would continue to engage in some fighting there in subsequent years).
And that’s not even counting various other American war-making activities on this planet, including a never-ending air war in Somalia, launched by President George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s that continues today and still shows no sign of success.
So, just to make the obvious point, the greatest and—after the Soviet Union fell in 1991—only true imperial power on planet Earth hasn’t had a genuine war-making success to its name from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the Trumpian moment 80 years later. And, of course, we’re talking about the country that has by far the largest military on planet Earth, puts more money (still called “defense spending,” even if the department that spends it has now been renamed the Department of War) into its military than the next six countries combined, and accounts for 33% of all military spending on this planet. And mind you, that’s even before Donald Trump tries to raise this country’s military spending from nearly one trillion dollars annually to almost $1.5 trillion dollars. And yet, we’re also talking about the power that hasn’t won a single war of any sort since World War II ended.
Now, given all of that, what should we expect when it comes to Donald Trump’s war against Iran? Don’t, of course, misunderstand me. The American president and his military are clearly capable of creating scenes of utter destruction and devastation there (as was true from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq). They are also capable of killing staggering numbers of Iranians and turning that region into a potential disaster area. And President Trump is already insisting, of course, that he will reinstall the US blockade of Iranian ports, while calling himself and his country “the guardian“ of the Strait of Hormuz.
The one thing that history suggests, however, is that Trump and crew will not actually be capable of winning their war against that country.
When it comes to war and imperial powers on this planet, the US offers a staggering tale of defeat in our time (one that, it seems, Vladimir Putin may be repeating in Ukraine). And it may suggest why the country that’s clearly the next great imperial power on Planet Earth, China, has shown remarkably little desire to head down a similar road. Yes, in 1979, the Chinese did engage in a border war with Vietnam and, from 2020 to 2021, it also engaged in border skirmishes with India. And it certainly has built up both its military and its nuclear forces in these years.
Nonetheless, it seems to have remarkably little interest in heading down the usual imperial path of global warmaking, given the lesson that the United States has offered in spending staggering amounts of money on genuinely fruitless wars, decade after decade after decade to this very moment. There may never have been quite such a power and such a story in this planet’s imperial past.
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Iran Condemns Fresh US Bombing Campaign as 'Serious Threat to International Peace'
Iran's Foreign Ministry accused the Trump administration of "rendering futile all efforts made over the past several months to reduce tensions and restore stability."
Jul 13, 2026
The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Sunday condemned the United States' latest round of airstrikes as a "flagrant violation" of international law that threatens to permanently derail efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution to the war, which US President Donald Trump launched earlier this year in coordination with the Israeli government.
This past weekend, said Iran's Foreign Ministry, the US carried out "brutal attacks" and "acts of aggression" that pose "a serious threat to international peace and security, rendering futile all efforts made over the past several months to reduce tensions and restore stability in the West Asia region."
On Saturday and Sunday, the US military bombed dozens of targets across Iran, which retaliated with strikes on American military installations in Kuwait, Bahrain, and other Middle East nations. Iran's Foreign Ministry accused those nations of illegally serving as launch pads for US strikes.
In response to the new wave of bombings, Iran announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, blaming the US for causing "insecurity" in the critical waterway. Trump claimed in an interview on Sunday morning that the strait is "open" after the US "bombed the hell out of" Iran the previous night.
"The US ruling establishment continues its campaign of disinformation and the dissemination of fake news in an attempt to distort the facts and justify its unlawful actions," said the Iranian Foreign Ministry, accusing the Trump administration of undermining talks between Iran and Oman regarding commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranian statement also voiced "regret" over what it described as the head of the United Nations' "unconstructive approach" to the Trump administration's "blatant lawlessness and bullying."
"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs underscores the responsibility of the UN secretary-general and the Security Council to address violations of international peace and security," the statement reads. "It calls for the aggressor parties to be held accountable and for those who ordered and carried out the crimes committed against the Iranian nation to be brought to justice and punished."
Earlier Sunday, Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, voiced concern over the "serious escalation and renewed military confrontations in the Gulf, including the Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the attacks by the United States on Iran, and the attacks by Iran on targets in the neighboring countries."
"These attacks must all stop," said Dujarric. "The secretary-general reiterates that a return to full-scale hostilities would have catastrophic consequences—for the peoples of the region, for international peace and security, and for the global economy. He further reaffirms the need for the restoration of full freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz."
The military exchanges came less than a month after the US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at facilitating a permanent end to the war. Last week, Trump declared the agreement "over" and said negotiations were "a waste of time," even as the US and Iran agreed to continue talks.
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) noted Sunday that "Iran and the United States have once again entered a cycle of direct military confrontation," adding that "what was presented as an end to the war now appears to have been little more than a temporary pause."
"The continued evisceration of diplomatic agreements will make any attempt to restore peace extremely difficult," NIAC argued. "Iran, fresh off new US attacks amid the late supreme leader’s funeral ceremonies, will view any US pivot back to diplomacy with even deeper distrust. US hawks will likewise paint Iran’s actions as the predictable irrationality of radicals, even if US actions have helped trigger Iranian retaliation every step of the way."
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Trump: The Embodiment of American and Planetary Decline
Give him another two and a half years and who knows what this president will be able to do—but the odds are that, by at least a 6-3 margin, he might indeed be able to take the Earth down with him.
Jul 11, 2026
Iran, Iraq, Irate.
What a world! It couldn’t be much stranger, could it?
And by the way, what is it about the Middle East? Since the Gulf War of 1990-1991, it’s just never really ended, has it? Who cares that the region is halfway around the world from Washington, DC? Yes, the US fought Iraq there from 2003 to 2008. And recently, of course, President Donald Trump has gone after Iran. If you want to spread out just a bit more, you could toss in this country’s relatively brief war in Libya and its almost endless one this century in Afghanistan. And don’t blame me if I left something out. After all, I’m almost 82 years old and starting to forget a few things.
I mean, Iran makes particular sense, right? After all, it’s a mere 6,000-odd miles from this country. Anyway, why not shut down part of the world’s supply of fossil fuels and threaten us all with global economic disaster? And since you asked, how could anyone be surprised? After all, since World War II, my country has indeed been the definition of a (if not the) global imperial power and it’s never really stopped making war.
President Trump should really be considered the equivalent of a giant piece of green algae from that Washington pool of his, but the pool he’s actually in is the United States of America—or, perhaps even more accurately, Planet Earth.
In my youth, for instance, Washington spent almost 20 years fighting in Vietnam. Of course, who even remembers these days, given all the wars that have followed?
Still, on a planet with so many other problems, particularly heat, you might wonder why our government continues to periodically turn up the heat in the Middle East and beyond, led, of course, by a president who, once upon a time (in the wake of his first term in office) in what now seems like another age and another universe, was proud of not going to war anywhere. Oops! Except—yes again, in the Middle East—Syria. Oh, double oops, and I almost forgot to look in the direction of Africa and so include his more recent brief bombing campaign in Nigeria and the seemingly never-ending one in Somalia—yes, Somalia!
And in case you hadn’t noticed, despite all those endless wars (without a victory in sight), the US military doesn’t exactly feel at the top of its game anymore either. Otherwise, despite Donald Trump’s promise of an unparalleled future Pentagon budget of $1.5 trillion—and no, that is not a misprint!—why would one US general after another be resigning, retiring, or—thank you, Secretary of (most distinctly) War Pete Hegseth—being fired?
These days, of course, if you want to be a—if not the—major power on this planet (and I’m thinking, as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, about China), there’s distinctly something to be learned from the previous great power’s three-quarters of a century of failed wars that (yes, again!) just never seemed to end (and may soon be added to, possibly not in the Middle East or anywhere near it, but in Cuba, or perhaps Greenland, or—since it’s Donald Trump—almost anyplace you care to imagine on Planet Earth.
Honestly, just in case you hadn’t noticed, what a truly strange world we now find ourselves in. I mean, from George Washington to Barack Obama, we’ve had presidents of all sorts, temperamentally speaking, but never one faintly like Donald J. Trump. And there have, of course, been endless leaders of powers in decline on this planet, but perhaps never one who so distinctly and personally embodied decline, not at least since ancient Rome’s Caligula or Nero.
President Trump should really be considered the equivalent of a giant piece of green algae from that Washington pool of his, but the pool he’s actually in is the United States of America—or, perhaps even more accurately, Planet Earth. And it seems there’s simply no way to clean him out.
Worse yet, he wasn’t just elected mistakenly once, but purposely twice by American voters (49.8% of them the third time around), who could imagine only him (and no one else) leading this country. What they seem not to have imagined, however, is the most obvious thing of all: where he might be leading the rest of us, which is, of course, directly down the planetary toilet, algae and all. Of course, it’s no news, historically speaking, that all great powers from imperial Rome to imperial Britain to the Soviet Union do go down sooner or later, but to think of Donald Trump simply as the president of American decline on this deeply disturbed planet of ours is to sell him distinctly short.
And unlike the rest of us, he’s getting just what he’s always wanted. Any day you look at the paper (and yes, I’m old enough that I still read a paper paper), his ultimate dream—a Trumpian headline—invariably awaits him. Friday’s (as I was writing this) in The New York Times was: “Trump Cut Big Mine Deal, and Sons Stand to Gain, $1.6 billion Pact for Kazakhstan Tungsten Furthers Pattern of Self-Enrichment.” And honestly, you don’t really have to read another word of it, do you? Tungsten in Kazakhstan and his family is going to make a fortune! Well, what’s new? Not much, really.
After all, in some mad fashion, we are now distinctly on a Trumpian planet of billionaires. (Note that I almost wrote “billionaires and a trillionaire,” but of course the first trillionaire in human history, Elon Musk, only recently lost part of his shirt and is once again a mere multi-, multi-billionaire.) And Donald J. Trump would never want his sons or himself to be left out of the action.
Nor would he ever want anyone to say to him, “You’re fired”—certainly not the six conservative (or do I mean deeply reactionary) Supreme Court justices who just allowed him by the usual 6-3 margin to freely fire the leaders of independent agencies or commissions any time he pleases. Or, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor put it in her dissenting opinion, “The Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once-coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”
Give him another two and a half years and who knows what this president will be able to do—but the odds are that, by at least a 6-3 margin, he might indeed be able to take this planet down with him. And in doing so, he’ll give that phrase of once-upon-a-time New York Yankees announcer Mel Allen for a batter hitting a home run—“going, going, gone!”—a distinctly new meaning.
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US and Iran Test Each Other's Red Lines Over Strait of Hormuz
This is a dangerous game.
Jul 08, 2026
For the second time since the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed, Washington and Tehran have slipped back into direct military confrontation. The United States struck “80 targets in Iran with precision munitions” after Iranian forces fired on several ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz without prior coordination with Tehran. The scale of the American strikes reportedly far exceeded the previous U.S.-Iran exchange, suggesting that Washington sought not merely to retaliate but to reestablish deterrence. The United States also reimposed sanctions on Iranian oil sales, reversing one of the central concessions of the MOU. The IRGC, in turn, claimed to have attacked 85 US military sites across the region, including the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain and Ali Al-Salem Air Base in Kuwait, and said eight were destroyed.
At the heart of the dispute are two competing interpretations of the MOU. Tehran's reading is that while the Strait of Hormuz is to remain open, all commercial traffic during the 60-day interim period must be coordinated with Iran as the parties negotiate a permanent maritime arrangement. Washington, by contrast, interprets an "open" Strait to mean that vessels may transit either the Iranian or Omani shipping lanes without coordinating with Iran.
For Tehran, this is not a technical disagreement but a strategic one. Iranian officials fear the United States is using the MOU to erode Iran's control over the Strait by rejecting any requirement for coordination and, in effect, establishing an alternative corridor that could remain open even if war resumes. Such an arrangement would deprive Iran of what many of its strategists regard as its single most important source of leverage in a future conflict: the credible ability to disrupt maritime traffic through Hormuz. From Tehran's perspective, commercial shipping can resume without surrendering that leverage—but only if all vessel movements continue to be coordinated with Iran, thereby reinforcing its nominal authority over the waterway.
Washington counters that the text of the MOU does not explicitly require ships to obtain Iranian authorization before transiting the Strait. Instead, it assigns Iran responsibility for ensuring the safe passage of commercial vessels, a distinction the United States argues falls short of granting Tehran operational control over all maritime traffic. Paragraph 5 of the MOU states:
Upon the signing of this MoU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles, and de-mining by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will be instated within 30 days.
Following the previous round of fighting, the two sides explored a compromise under which commercial vessels would coordinate their transit with both Iran and a designated Gulf Cooperation Council state. Under such an arrangement, ships would notify Tehran while also reporting to a GCC maritime authority, balancing Iran's demand for oversight with Washington's desire to avoid granting Tehran exclusive control. The talks, however, appear never to have been finalized before they were suspended for the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
During that pause, several commercial vessels—with their AIS transponders switched off—attempted to transit the southern shipping corridor without notifying Tehran. Iran viewed these voyages as a direct challenge to its interpretation of the MOU and responded with force.
Both sides are clearly testing each other's red lines. If the dispute were solely about ensuring the safe passage of commercial shipping, vessels could simply transit through the Iranian shipping lane. Tehran has not prevented ships from using the northern corridor. Instead, the insistence on using the southern corridor without notifying Iran appears designed to challenge Tehran's claim that it exercises authority over the Strait—a claim the United States and most Gulf states have long rejected. Beyond questions of transit tolls or administrative fees, no country in the region is eager to legitimize Iranian control over one of the world's most strategically important waterways. The current confrontation is therefore less about navigation than about sovereignty and strategic leverage.
The compromise discussed before the talks were suspended offers a sensible way out. Requiring vessels to notify both Iran and a designated GCC maritime authority would defer the sovereignty dispute without prejudging its outcome, allowing commercial traffic to continue while negotiations over a permanent arrangement proceed. Sacrificing the entire MOU—and the far more consequential regional framework it could ultimately produce—over the question of who nominally manages the Strait for the next few weeks would be a costly and unnecessary mistake.
The question now is whether the dual-notification arrangement can still be revived after the exchange of fire over the past 12 hours, or whether this latest escalation has closed the diplomatic window altogether. The coming hours are likely to provide the answer.
One final observation: by responding with both military force and the reimposition of sanctions on Iranian oil exports, Washington appears intent on establishing escalation dominance—not merely deterring further Iranian action but demonstrating its willingness to raise the costs far more sharply than Tehran. The contrast with the first post-MOU confrontation in the Strait is striking. This time, the US response has been substantially more severe, suggesting that Washington is seeking to redefine the deterrence equation before negotiations can resume.
There is, however, a danger in Washington's decision to rescind the general license permitting the purchase of Iranian oil. The license was intended to serve as one of the MOU's principal incentives for Tehran to remain committed to the agreement. But an incentive is only as valuable as its credibility.
Even before this latest escalation, Iran had struggled to attract new buyers. Many governments and companies were reluctant to enter long-term arrangements because they feared negotiations would collapse and the license would expire without renewal. That uncertainty alone diminished the commercial value of the concession.
From Washington’s perspective, Iran’s alleged violation of the MOU is serious and warrants a response. But if the United States is seen as issuing and withdrawing the license too readily, potential buyers may conclude that access to Iranian oil is too politically volatile to justify the risk. That would weaken one of Washington’s most important sources of leverage. The less valuable the license becomes in the marketplace, the less valuable it becomes at the negotiating table—and the less the United States can demand in return for restoring it.
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A Military Flyover Country Turns 250
As they try to normalize the militarization of our streets and skies here, these displays, framed as celebration and "freedom," also serve another grim reminder.
Jul 06, 2026
As the country and this administration launched its America 250 and Freedom 250 “Celebrations" over the holiday weekend, what we experienced in the nation’s capitol and a city of 700,000 residents replicated what the United States does to other parts of the world. The streets were invaded by the military, public spaces barricaded with multiple levels of security checkpoints, and the sky full of military flyovers, including a seven-hour schedule of flyovers on July 4th.
Military flyovers come at a devastating cost—economically, psychologically, and environmentally. The most recent ones came in the middle of a heatwave where even Trump’s American State Fair closed after people were baptizing themselves in the religious tent to prevent heat stroke. But flyovers are not new and have been used as a propaganda tool for military recruitment during NFL games and summer festivals. The militarization has been so normalized for so long.
This past weekend, thousands of people cheered on the flyovers, but many did not. The sounds of war shook windows, terrified children, animals, and those suffering from PTSD. Washington DC is made up of 700,000 people without statehood, leaving it little power to push back at the military occupation of the city, let alone the military playground.
In passing, I overheard folks sneering “Here’s where all our money goes,” and another asking “Is this what Iran sounds like right now?” These flyovers, an exercise of an illusion of force, domination, and strength. All to further prop up hyper nationalism and militarism. But we were lucky it was just for a “show”. The bombs did not drop on the occupied city of Washington, D.C., as they do from some of the same jets that fly over places like Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran.
As an Iranian immigrant, as I watched my children tremble and cover their ears at the roar of bombers and fighter jets over our home, so loud the walls vibrated, I was struck by a haunting duality. My heart broke because I knew what that sound means to children just like them back in Iran. My children know they can cover their ears, cuddle in close to me, and wait it out. The planes will pass, the ground will stop trembling, and we can return to their bedtime routines. But for children just like them in my home country of Iran, for their families, for our brothers and sisters in Palestine, Lebanon, and so many other places devastated by Western imperialism, those same sounds mean something entirely different. They mean bombs falling on schools, neighborhoods erased in seconds, families torn apart before they can say goodbye. They also cuddle in close to their loved ones, but they do so knowing it may be the last time.
As they try to normalize the militarization of our streets and skies here, these displays, framed as celebration and "freedom," also serve another grim reminder. We, in the diaspora, are forced to fund our own oppression twice over: first with the bombs dropping on our families abroad, then with that same taxpayer money reverberating back to our doorsteps here. Hovering over our neighborhoods and our children's heads, and terrorizing our communities instead of feeding, healing, and sustaining them. We must not allow ourselves to grow desensitized to the reality of what our tax dollars could be funding instead of the spread of surveillance, destruction, and devastation. And we must make it clear that we will never mistake the roar of engines overhead for the promise of peace, whether that is abroad or here.
Every dollar spent on one of these performative fighter jet overpasses is a dollar stolen from our communities. The budget is a clear reflection of what the country values, and right now, our budget says we value genocide, destruction, and the theater of war over the substance of peace and the actual betterment of our communities, our country.
The America and Freedom 250 celebrations ask us to reflect on what our nation stands for, a nation started by genocide, carried out by slavery, fueled by exploitation, and exposing how militarism, racism, and fascism are on full display. Why do we spend trillions to destroy and destabilize the world, while spending pennies on investments to make our own communities actually safe?
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Israel Is Out of Control—And No, It's Not Just Netanyahu
Netanyahu's defeat or exit won’t mean “Happy Days Are Here Again.” It’s an entire Israeli political culture that has gone off the rails.
Jun 22, 2026
When looking at today’s Middle East, it is important to recognize that Israel is completely out of control, and no one has the will to rein them in.
This should have been understood back in July of 2024, in the waning days of the Biden administration, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington to address a joint session of Congress. His government had already committed atrocious war crimes in Gaza and Lebanon. They had killed Iran’s Ayatollah and many of its political and scientific leadership. They had also occupied parts of Syria, destroyed much of that country’s military capacity, and were working to deepen Syria’s sectarian strife. At the same time, Israeli violent settlers, backed by the military, were running roughshod over the West Bank terrorizing Palestinians and systematically demolishing the homes of thousands.
In his address to the Congress, Netanyahu boasted that this murderous behavior demonstrated that Israel had become the dominant force in the Middle East fighting and winning on seven fronts. You are not defending us, he claimed, we are defending you—terming his bloody rampage across the region as Israel leading the effort to protect Western civilization against the barbarism of the East.
As inflammatory and disgraceful as his words (and the actions they described) were, he was applauded by Republicans and some Democrats, with only a handful of Democratic members of Congress vigorously protesting. For its part, the Biden administration left it to Vice President Harris to deliver a mild rebuke to Netanyahu.
During the past five US administrations, it has been precisely this pattern of behavior—whether outright support for Israeli crimes or silence and timidity in the face of them—that has fostered Israel’s impunity, coupled with a megalomaniacal sense of mission. President Clinton termed Netanyahu impossible or ridiculous; Obama considered him “incorrigible”; and even Trump has described his frustration with the Israeli leader in harsh, obscene language. But none have taken firm steps to rein him in.
In the wake of President Trump’s half-baked “deal” attempting to end his ill-considered, costly war with Iran, Netanyahu has been quiet. He has left criticism to ministers in his cabinet and opposition party leaders. Vice-President JD Vance’s rebuke of Israeli critics was noteworthy but absent threats of serious changes in policy Vance’s words will be dismissed as nothing more than words.
At this point it must be noted that Israel’s dangerous impunity and expansive sense of mission is not just a Netanyahu problem. It is a deeper Israeli problem that historically has manifested itself in two ways.
During the Clinton and Obama years, when the US wanted the Israelis to stop settlement expansion or honor terms of agreements that were being broken, their administrations hesitated to take tough measures against Israel, or even use tougher language, for fear that it would embolden Israel’s hardline right and end up being counterproductive. As a result, there were no crackdowns on Israeli governments led by Yitzak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, and Naftali Bennet.
This deference toward Israeli leaders, out of concern for the problems they would face from hardliners should we force them to make hard decisions, is never shown toward Palestinian or other Arab leaders. The result of this coddling has been the emboldening and empowerment of Israeli hardliners to the point where they and their espoused views are the dominant political current in today’s Israeli politics. This is not to say that there aren’t “liberals” contesting Netanyahu’s coalition government. But their liberalism is defined by their opposition to Netanyahu’s corruption, his authoritarian instinct, and his courting of the ultraorthodox and the religious policies they impose on the rest of Israeli society.
The opposition parties that will be contesting Netanyahu in the next election are not only not challenging his war policies, but also now posing as more hawkish than he is with regard to Israel’s wars and its treatment of Palestinians. In fact, all of the main contenders to head a post-Netanyahu Israeli government have roundly condemned his agreement to ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon. They have uniformly denounced what they’ve called his displays of subservience to US President Trump thereby making Israel appear to be a humiliated “vassal state.” All have criticized the recently announced US-Iran peace agreement, with the self-described “liberal” Democrat party blasting the deal by suggesting that it threatens to “erase all of the gains Israel had achieved” in their war on Iran.
All of this should make it clear to liberals in the US that the problem in today’s Middle East isn’t just Netanyahu. His defeat won’t mean “Happy Days Are Here Again.” It’s an entire political culture that has gone off the rails. The only way it will change is if we make Israel pay a price by ending aid and political and military cooperation, thereby creating a shock that will force a political reckoning in the country. On the other hand, if we don’t act, Israel’s out-of-control rogue behaviors will continue to set the Middle East on fire and we will be complicit in all that they do.
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The Art of the Recycled Deal: Trump and the Outcome Israel Cannot Tolerate
110 days of a war that went nowhere to get here. And for what?
Jun 18, 2026
There are many lessons to be learned from the lates made-for-Israel war on Iran. The first and most damning is that the war resolved the very crisis it created. Donald Trump celebrated the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and the lifting of the blockade against Iran. Two conditions that were fully in place before Benjamin Netanyahu dog walked Trump into this war. The agreement that concluded the war took us back to exactly where we stood before America spent $200 billion, and where Americans continue to pay Israeli surcharge tax at the pump and grocery stores.
As for Iran's nuclear program, the arithmetic does not lie. The 400 kilograms of 60-percent enriched uranium that Iran possessed were zero before Trump — pressured by his largest Israel-first donors — tore up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran had fully complied not only with the IAEA non-proliferation agreement, which Israel has never signed nor accepted, but with the additional protocols governing verification and monitoring of its civilian nuclear program. Trump canceled the deal anyway, not because it failed America, but because it did not satisfy Israel’s veto.
The deepest irony is that Iran's nuclear knowledge and capabilities are more advanced today than when Trump discarded the JCPOA. Any new agreement—even one stricter in structure than the original—is therefore being negotiated from a fundamentally weaker position than the one that existed in 2018. No treaty can unlearn what Iran already knows.
On Monday, June 15, Trump heralded the end of war bragging that Iran agreed not to develop nuclear weapons. Item 8 of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), signed Wednesday, states: “The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons.” The word reaffirms is not incidental. It is a direct reference to Article III of the 2015 JCPOA, which Trump most likely never read, where Iran had already affirmed: “… that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.” Same commitment. Same language. Different signatures. Twelve weeks of a war that went nowhere to get here.
From “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” to celebrate an MoU to reopen a Strait that was open before $200 billion and countless American and Iranian lives were squandered. Trump's triumph is much ado about nothing. He canceled an existing deal that took years to negotiate, inflicted economic hardship on ordinary Iranians, and allowed Iran's nuclear advancement to leap forward. It is, in the most literal sense, like redefining water as H2O. The molecule did not change. Only the dressing did. Israel’s war took Trump back to the starting point, at twice the cost to American taxpayers.
The same special-interest group that pushed Trump to cancel the JCPOA, lobbied him long before the 2024 election. Israel-first donors poured hundreds of million into his campaign as a down payment for this war. Netanyahu visited Trump seven times in 13 months, manipulating, and scheming for another made-for-Israel war.
This war should also carry a lesson for the Arab Gulf states that long believed American military bases were a guarantee of their security. Instead, they found themselves sidelined and never consulted on a war waged, directly or indirectly, from their own soil, ultimately in service of an Israeli agenda. Foreign military presence does not deliver security. It delivers dependency. Lasting regional stability is built through regional cooperation, on terms beneficial to the region.
Foreign military presence does not deliver security. It delivers dependency.
More importantly, the region must now reckon with a pattern it can no longer afford to ignore: wherever Israel goes, instability follows. The so-called Abraham Accords brought Israel into the Gulf. What followed was bombs, drones and economic ruin not seen since the Second World War. I have lived in the Gulf. The only pop people could hear was the backfire of an aging car exhaust. In the last three months, friends shared recordings of ballistic missiles splitting the sky and drones buzzing overhead. Israel did not bring a defense shield; it brought a target. Its presence is a magnet for unrest. It is a carcass attracting wasps.
In fact, Israel is an agent of disorder and a parasite nurtured by chaos. It wraps itself in the language of partnership, mutual benefit, and shared values, deceiving others into believing the arrangement is reciprocal when it is entirely one-directional.
Israel record speaks for itself: a genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing across the West Bank, 1.3 million internal refugees in Lebanon, the occupation of Syrian land following Assad's fall, destabilization operations in northern Iraq and Sudan.
In Iraq, the American invasion and regime change did not satisfy Israel’s insatiable lust for total chaos. It targeted Iraqi scientists and waged war against knowledge itself. The blueprint, in this view, has not changed for Iran. Israel’s dissatisfaction over the MoU with Tehran is not that it fails to produce a non-nuclear Iran, but that it fails to wipe out knowledge. Its broader objective is the suppression of scientific and technological development across the region. Israel seeks neighbors unable to think independently. it wants consumers, not producers. It wants importers rather than innovators. It wants to maintain a monopoly over nuclear capabilities and control over regional scientific advancement.
Israel brought ruins to the US, too. The made-for-Israel Iraq war helped detonate the financial crisis of 2008, saddling future American generations with trillions in accumulated debt that has never been fully reckoned with. A war that Trump condemned, criticizing Democratic leadership for failing to impeach George W. Bush who “got us into the war with lies.”
The cost of Trump's made-for-Israel war on Iran requires no economist to explain. It arrives uninvited in every American home, at the meat counter, in every grocery bill, every gas receipt, every price that keeps rising without explanation. They may not realize its extent—not yet anyway. By the time they do, the damage to the US economy, as in 2008, will be too deep to reverse.
To undermine potential peace with Iran, the ungrateful Israel-first loyalists like Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin are already panicking and challenging Trump’s MoU. Israel will activate the constellation of media outlets controlled by Israel-first billionaires to shape what Americans see, read, and are permitted to question. The once-respected "60 Minutes," under a new Israel-first boss, Bari Weiss, allows Netanyahu to handpick his own interviewer. Who knows, maybe he submits his own questions, too.
Now, Netanyahu and American Zionists have 60 days to sabotage a final deal with Iran. Israel will mobilize its donors, lobby Congress, and if that fails, resort to what it has perfected. A false flag operation against American forces in the region, or another assassination in Lebanon. A conflagration ensues, and once again, it will be fought with American money and American lives. Because a Middle East free of American military entanglement is the one outcome Israel cannot tolerate—a prospect more threatening than any Iranian nuclear centrifuge.
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Embrace the US-Iran MOU, But Understand It's Only a First Step
What exactly has been agreed on? Much less than meets the eye.
Jun 15, 2026
Early Monday morning Islamabad time, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced that “Following intensive talks, we are pleased to announce that the Peace Deal between the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran has been REACHED. Both sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon. The official signing ceremony will be on Friday, 19 June in Switzerland.” Pakistan and Qatar had been the lead negotiators, though Qatar’s negotiating team appears to have sealed the deal Sunday with a marathon 14-hour session.
The White House concurred. US President Donald Trump posted that the deal with Iran is “complete” and that he would immediately lift the US blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and is announcing its “toll-free” opening. “Let the oil flow,” he said.
Al Jazeera reports that Iran’s National Security Council announced the end of all military actions, including in Lebanon.
Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted on an International Criminal Court indictment for war crimes, attempted to derail Sunday’s negotiations by bombing Beirut, an Iranian red line, but this petulant display failed in its purpose. Trump called Netanyahu “a very difficult guy” and insisted that he should be “very thankful” for the deal. Israel was not involved in the negotiations although it began the war in partnership with the US Having lost to Tehran, Netanyahu has been marginalized and is clearly increasingly seen as a problem by Trump and MAGA.
Tasnim, the pro-government news agency, reported that Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi confirmed that the text of the MOU had been finalized, that there has been an immediate end to military actions, and that it will be signed in Switzerland on Friday. Over the next sixty days, he said, issues will be negotiated in the lifting of US sanctions on Iran and the disposition of Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program and its existing stockpile of High Enriched Uranium, which the US and others fear could be enriched to weapons grade.
What exactly has been agreed on? Much less than meets the eye. It is a “Memorandum of Understanding,” not a detailed peace treaty of the sort the Obama administration negotiated in 2015. It is simply an agreement to stop fighting while further negotiations continue.
Although the US says that the Strait is open “toll-free,” the Iranians have changed their terminology and are speaking of collecting an “administrative fee.”
Sharif’s breathless announcement was the first sign of a breakthrough, though the leadership of Israel’s extremist far right government continues to insist that it will occupy and attack Lebanon at will, defying President Trump. Lebanon is one of the Iranian government’s “red lines,” and Tehran’s inclusion of it in the ceasefire is an attempt to project Iranian influence so as to counter Israeli expansion into south Lebanon.
Lebanon is a small country of 4 million people, about a third of them Shia Muslims, the same branch of Islam that predominates in Iran. Those Lebanese Shia live in the south of the country abutting Israel and were brutalized by repeated Israel invasions and attempts at occupation. Their chief paramilitary power is Hezbollah, which subjected northern Israel to repeated rocket barrages in response to the Israeli genocide against Gaza. Israeli politicians have expressed a desire to ethnically cleanse the Shia from the south, and have been destroying entire towns and villages and attempting to depopulate Tyre, the ancient major city of the south. The Israelis have also been bombing the disproportionately Shia Beirut district of Dahieh, killing and wounding civilians. Iran insists that this bombing cease as part of the agreement with Trump.
Netanyahu’s land-grab of fully 1/5 of Lebanese territory and his attempt to do to south Lebanon and parts of Beirut what he did to Gaza remains a wild card in US-Iran relations.
The MOU is good news, but it is only a first step.
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Trump’s Iran War Played Out Exactly as Anti-War Critics Warned It Would
Everyone should support this ceasefire deal to end a completely avoidable foreign policy disaster.
Jun 15, 2026
The following is a statement released in response to news of an interim agreement between the US and Iran for a ceasefire in the war started by the US and Israel on February 28, 2026.
With news of a ceasefire agreement to end the disastrous and unnecessary US-Israeli war on Iran, the tragic failure of Donald Trump’s Iran policy has now played out exactly as anti-war critics warned it would.
Trump said that his war on Iran would be quick, decisive and force the regime to totally capitulate or collapse. We warned it would become a quagmire that would fail to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program, ignite a regional conflict that could threaten the global economy, further strengthen the Iranian regime’s hold on power and cost thousands of lives–including American servicemembers. We were right.
This diplomatic agreement is critically needed to bring the disaster to an end, and must be fully and swiftly implemented. Nonetheless, the United States will be left in a weakened strategic position—not because of the contents of this agreement, but because of the utter failure of the reckless approach taken by Trump at the urging of pro-war groups in Washington, and a racist, corrupt Israeli Prime Minister.
US lawmakers from both parties should support the agreement to end this historic and completely avoidable foreign policy disaster. Just as importantly, both Congress and the White House must end the definitively failed approach of ever-increasing sanctions and belligerence toward Iran, and seek to build on this new opening for diplomacy to address the full range of issues–as well as potential opportunities–in the US-Iran relationship.
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Why Congress Shouldn't Mandate US Intelligence Sharing With Israel
Israel’s use of much US intelligence is apt to be contrary to US interests and the interest of peace and security in the Middle East, and for many of the same reasons underlying the reduced popularity of Israel among the US public.
Jun 10, 2026
Buried deep inside a 192-page intelligence authorization bill is Section 622, titled “United States-Israel Intelligence Sharing Enhancement.” It would require the president, acting through the director of national intelligence and as necessary the secretary of defense, to “expand and enhance intelligence sharing with the Government of Israel” on a list of subjects that encompasses almost every topic of intelligence interest in the Middle East.
The bill, put forward by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would prohibit any suspension, reduction, or limitation of such sharing “except on the basis of a specific and identifiable national security concern determined by the President.” Any such exception would require a report to Congress within 15 days detailing not only the reason for the change but also the categories of information involved. The same report would require an assessment of the anticipated impact on regional security and various other matters.
This proposal is one of several recent moves by those in Washington who carry the Israeli government’s water to keep the United States tied to Israel despite plummeting support for the country among the American public. The most salient form of US support to Israel has been more than $300 billion in economic and especially military assistance. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tried to get ahead of the declining public support and avoid embarrassing losses by suggesting it would be fine with him to phase out the military aid.
Israel’s strategy and that of its US supporters is now to rely on ties with, and support from, the United States that are not as salient as the military aid with its prominent price tag. The strategy includes forms of military integration that are less visible than congressionally appropriated grant aid and therefore less publicly accountable. Section 224 of a defense authorization bill currently in the House of Representatives embodies this form of integration.
Attacks that sabotage diplomacy are among the Israeli operations that might use shared US intelligence.
The mandating of intelligence sharing carries this strategy further by moving it into the shadowy world of relations between intelligence agencies. That world is even farther removed from public visibility and accountability than the defense integration, and even less likely to stimulate thoughts about American taxpayers’ money going to a foreign country. So far, Section 622 of the intelligence bill has received less attention than Section 224 of the defense bill.
The notion of legislating an intelligence liaison relationship in this way, with any foreign country, is bizarre. Liaison with counterpart foreign services, including exchanges of information, is an important but complex part of the intelligence business. The nature of a liaison relationship depends partly on the temperature of the overall political relationship with the country in question but also on other factors known mostly to intelligence officers. These include the collection requirements levied on them, their ability or inability to meet those requirements with national resources, their assessment of the foreign service’s ability and willingness to fill collection gaps, the role that any trading of information plays as quid pro quos in operational cooperation, and the risks of compromising intelligence sources and methods.
Moreover, no single liaison relationship exists in isolation. The US intelligence services need to consider possible implications for their other foreign relationships. For example, one generally does not share with country A information about country B if the United States has a relationship with B that is about at the same level as it has with A. Intelligence liaison involves a hierarchy of relationships, ranging from extensive cooperation with close allies to carefully limited ad hoc exchanges with adversaries. The intelligence community has a staff with the full-time job of monitoring and managing this set of relationships to prevent crossed wires. A congressional mandate regarding a single relationship increases the chance of crossed wires.
An irony is that the Congress considering this mandate is the same Congress that has in effect surrendered to the president its powers under Article I of the Constitution to set tariff rates and to decide whether to wage war. And yet, Section 622 would involve congressional micromanagement of a matter that by its nature needs to be the business of the executive branch and especially the intelligence agencies.
In intelligence, Israel is more of an adversary than an ally. Being an adversary in intelligence means indulging in the hostile act of espionage. Israel has a long record of conducting that type of hostile act against the United States. The best-known case involves the spy Jonathan Pollard, who stole such an overwhelming volume of US secrets that then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger stated to the court that sentenced Pollard that it was difficult “ to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by the defendant in view of the breadth, the critical importance to the US, and the high sensitivity of the information he sold to Israel.”
When Pollard completed his prison sentence and parole in 2020, he was given a hero's welcome, led by Netanyahu himself, on his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel. There was nothing noble in Pollard’s actions. Although he liked to say he was motivated by concern about Israel’s security, before selling his espionage services to Israel he offered to sell US secrets to three other countries and made the same offer to a fourth country even when spying for Israel.
The Israeli espionage threat to the United States has only intensified. Last week, NBC News reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency raised the threat level for such espionage, evidently a reflection mostly of US-Israeli differences over the Iran war. The New York Times quotes an official saying that Israeli intelligence operations aimed at senior US officials during the second Trump administration have become so aggressive as to be “unhinged.”
Any sensitive information, including intelligence secrets, shared with Israel entails a high risk of Israel passing it to other countries, including US adversaries. Israel has a long record of that, too, and not just because Israel probably passed some of the secrets Pollard purloined to the USSR, in exchange for Moscow allowing Soviet Jews to emigrate. Israel’s sharing of US-origin military technology with China has been an issue. That the partner may be a rogue state has not stopped Israel from military and technical cooperation, as demonstrated by its relationship with apartheid-era South Africa, which extended even to the development of nuclear weapons.
The risk of Israel passing sensitive US information to other states continues partly because Israel is hungry for cordial relationships—and especially establishment of new formal diplomatic relations—with any country willing to have such relations despite Israel’s continued subjugation of the Palestinians. Secrets from US intelligence would be very attractive to some of Israel’s partners or potential partners, and thus attractive to Israel as trading material. Those other countries may include China, with which Israel continues to have extensive technical cooperation, and Russia.
Even without any passing to third countries, Israel’s own use of much US intelligence is apt to be contrary to US interests and the interest of peace and security in the Middle East, and for many of the same reasons underlying the reduced popularity of Israel among the US public. Israel has started more wars and attacked more nations than any other country in the Middle East. In recent years it has inflicted more death and destruction on civilians through military operations than any other Middle Eastern state. It uses violence to seek regional hegemony and destroy Palestinian nationhood in ways that are inconsistent with US interests.
The current ill-advised war with Iran demonstrates the sharp divergence of US and Israeli interests. After being the principal influence on President Donald Trump’s decision to launch the war, Netanyahu’s government has been sabotaging efforts to end it. It currently is doing so mainly with relentless attacks in Lebanon that have killed thousands and displaced over a million people. The divergence of objectives was reflected in an expletive-laden phone call last week between Trump and Netanyahu that was mainly about those attacks.
Attacks that sabotage diplomacy are among the Israeli operations that might use shared US intelligence. The United States also will be blamed for aiding other violent Israeli operations because of the “enhanced” intelligence sharing, even if it were no longer paying for Israeli arms.
The supposed escape clause in Section 622 of the intelligence bill would in practice be so cumbersome as to be useless. The required report to Congress would dump the issue on Capitol Hill, where the Israel lobby would quickly depict it as a question of being for or against the security of Israel. The mandated intelligence sharing in the bill thus would tie the president’s hands and prevent any administration from using management of the intelligence liaison relationship as leverage to deter destructive conduct by Israel.
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