Ceasefire with Iran: Don’t hold your breath – Israel and US lie all the time
Donald Trump deceived millions of American voters with false promises of ending the wars, stopping globalization and industrial revival, and now he has proven himself to be one of the biggest puppets of Israel.
Trump: The United States will work closely with Iran, which we have determined has undergone what will be a very productive regime change! There will be no uranium enrichment, and the United States, in cooperation with Iran, will extract and remove all the deeply buried nuclear “dust”. (It is more than obvious that this ‘ceasefire’ is just a public relations gimmick and a plan to reset US and Israeli offensive operations.)
Bruce K. Gagnon , 9 Apr 2026, https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2026/04/ceasefire-with-iran-dont-hold-your.html
- Iran says the United States has agreed to the following:
1. A non-aggression commitment
2. Continued Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz
3. Acceptance of uranium enrichment
4. Lifting of all primary sanctions
5. Lifting of all secondary sanctions
6. Termination of all UN Security Council resolutions
7. Termination of all Board of Governors resolutions
8. Payment of reparations to Iran
9. Withdrawal of US combat forces from the region
10. Cessation of hostilities on all fronts, including against Hezbollah in Lebanon
- Axios, citing a White House official: The ceasefire will take effect as soon as Iran opens the Strait of Hormuz.
- Iran’s National Security Council: The agreement stipulates the lifting of all sanctions and the release of frozen Iranian assets abroad. It is emphasized that this does not mean the end of the war, and Iran will only accept the end of the war when, considering the acceptance of Iran’s principles in the 10-article plan, its details are also finalized in negotiations.
- These negotiations will begin with complete distrust on Friday, April 10, in Islamabad, and Iran will allocate two weeks for these negotiations.
- Greater Iran and the Origin of Civilizations: We did not abandon our allies in Yemen, Lebanon, and Iraq; this was a condition for a ceasefire in all these countries.
- Kan Hebrew Channel: If the agreement includes Hezbollah, we must burn the [Israeli] state down.
- During this two-week period, Israel will bolster its defenses, the United States will reinforce its forces, and the global economy will be revitalized. However, the negotiations could very well be a charade, as has happened before, with America launching a new offensive accompanied by assassinations.
- There’s a saying in Farsi which says: “My eyes aren’t watering.” من چشمم آب نمیخوره Which means: “I don’t think anything will come out of this.” But….if this truly does get implemented, this might be the biggest victory (for Iran) of all modern time.
- Donald Trump deceived millions of American voters with false promises of ending the wars, stopping globalization and industrial revival, and now he has proven himself to be one of the biggest puppets of Israel, the World Economic Forum and the Bilderberg Group.
- Over 55 US lawmakers called for invoking the 25th Amendment after Trump threatened to destroy Iranian civilization. Former Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene called it “evil and madness.” Tucker Carlson urged military personnel to refuse orders; the Pope and UN Human Rights chief condemned threats against civilians as violations of international law.
- Moscow and Beijing blocked a Bahrain-drafted Security Council resolution on Hormuz, with Russia’s envoy calling it a “greenlit aggression” that ignored the conflict’s root causes. The two powers submitted an alternative text calling for negotiated settlement. China’s representative said the vetoed draft would have “added fuel to the fire.”
- Around 10 AM today, Iran’s Lavan oil refinery facilities on Lavan Island were attack by the enemies. In response, Iran struck targets inside UAE & Kuwait.
- Iran’s UN representative: Israel must adhere to the ceasefire in Lebanon; continued attacks will further complicate the situation and have dire consequences.
- Lebanese Health Minister: Hospitals are overflowing with the injured and victims, and we have hundreds of martyrs and wounded throughout Lebanon as a result of the Israeli strikes. The raid that targeted Shamshtar occurred during a funeral procession, when the enemy bombed the place, resulting in the martyrdom of all those present. “Eternal Darkness” is the name given by Israel to the new aggression against Lebanon.
- Lebanese hospitals are appealing for blood donations due to the large number of injuries and deaths in the major zionist offensive.
- US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Let’s be clear, a ceasefire is a temporary pause. The US Secretary of Defense told US forces involved in the war against Iran: Stay prepared.
- Iran’s IRGC Navy warned ships near the Strait of Hormuz that they must obtain permission from the IRGC naval forces to pass, stating over radio that any vessel attempting to transit without authorization “will be destroyed,” according to a recording shared with The Wall Street Journal.
- Trump: The United States will work closely with Iran, which we have determined has undergone what will be a very productive regime change! There will be no uranium enrichment, and the United States, in cooperation with Iran, will extract and remove all the deeply buried nuclear “dust”. (It is more than obvious that this ‘ceasefire’ is just a public relations gimmick and a plan to reset US and Israeli offensive operations.)
- Iranian media, quoting a high-ranking Iranian military source: We have begun a wave of attacks on US-allied countries in the region as a warning message to implement a ceasefire throughout the region, including Lebanon.
- Spain has called Israel’s continued attacks in Lebanon “unacceptable,” despite the recent U.S.–Iran two-week ceasefire. Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said all fronts, including Lebanon, must stop.
- Israeli main opposition leader Yair Lapid: There has never been such a political disaster in all of our history. Israel wasn’t even at the table when decisions were made about the core of our national security. Netanyahu failed politically, failed strategically, and did not meet a single goal he set himself. It will take years to repair the political and strategic damage caused by arrogance, negligence, and a lack of planning. Israeli Channel 12 reports from a source: Washington will ask Tehran to cancel the ballistic missile program.
- U.S. Vice President JD Vance: Trump “lacks patience” to make progress on everything related to Iran. If the Iranians do not act in good faith, they will discover that President Trump is not to be trifled with.
- (Update): Iran has halted the passage of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz after Israel’s ceasefire violations against Lebanon — Fars.
The World Can Have Peace Or Israel, But Not Both
And Other Notes
Caitlin Johnstone, Apr 09, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-world-can-have-peace-or-israel?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=193682839&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Israel is already aggressively sabotaging the Trump administration’s two-week ceasefire with Iran by slaughtering huge numbers of civilians in Lebanon, a nation which is explicitly off-limits for any attack under the ceasefire conditions agreed to by Tehran.
The US and Israel are trying to claim that Lebanon is not part of the ceasefire agreement, but Pakistan, whom the US appointed to mediate the agreement, says this is false. The New York Times reports that the White House took part in Pakistan’s public messaging which explicitly included Lebanon in the ceasefire conditions, before changing its tune after Israel attacked.
Iran has reportedly responded to these violations by again halting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
This serves as yet another reminder that the world can have peace or it can have Israel — but it cannot have both. Israel is a genocidal apartheid state whose entire existence is premised upon a strategy of unceasing violence and abuse in the middle east. As long as that state continues to exist in its present iteration, peace will never be attainable.
❖
If your job hired a guy who kept getting into fights with your coworkers and saying it’s because they are racist against him, for a week you might believe him.
After a month, you’d have doubts.
After two months, you’d realize he’s probably just an asshole.
Israel has been doing this for eighty years.
Democrats in the House and Senate are finally moving on a War Powers Act to stop the US president from going to war with Iran, and I’d say better late than never but at this point that would barely even be true.
Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Chris Murphy are currently slamming the president not for his horrifying mass atrocities in Iran but for losing the Strait of Hormuz and failing to achieve objectives like completely disarming their conventional missile program.
As I have said here previously, it’s clear that the reason the Democratic Party failed to oppose Trump’s warmongering with Iran was because they supported it too.
The actual, official 2024 Democratic Party platform accused Trump of “fecklessness and weakness” for failing to go to war with Iran during his first term. Kamala Harris labeled Iran the #1 enemy of the United States. In their 2024 debate, Harris repeatedly slammed Trump for being too soft on America’s enemies and announced that she “will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.”
I’ve seen a lot of people trying to argue that Trump’s depravity in Iran proves everyone should support Democrats, but it’s clear the Democratic Party is just the more polite-looking face on the same evil power structure.
The Grayzone’s Wyatt Reed has an article out about a freakish BBC article which cited an anonymous Iranian who allegedly told them he supports the US and Israel “hitting energy infrastructure, using an atomic bomb, or leveling Iran.” Following public outcry, the quote was removed and replaced with completely different words — initially without any editor’s note of any kind.
Reed documents how the BBC reporter behind the story, Ghoncheh Habibiazad, is a London-based Iranian monarchist with an extensive history of agitating for regime change war against her home country, including with the US government propaganda operation Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Last month The Times ran an article titled “Some Iranians say one thing’s worse than bombs: no bombs”. Western powers are always aggressively pushing this self-evidently false claim that people in empire-targeted countries want bombs dropped on them, in much the same way slavery proponents argued that Africans were happiest as slaves because God made it their nature to serve.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s impossible to have enough disdain for the western press.
Xi–Zheng Meeting Sends Clear Signal: Peaceful Reunification Framed as Strategic Imperative for Chia’s Future
Author: Xu Jijun, founder of Han Tang Zhi Ku Analytical Centre, Apr 10, 2026
On the morning of 10 April 2026, inside the East Hall of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, met Zheng Liwen, Chair of the Kuomintang. The encounter marked the first meeting between leaders of the two parties in a decade. It unfolded at a moment of mounting global instability and heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait, giving it both historical weight and immediate political relevance.
The meeting was not merely ceremonial. It articulated a shared position that people on both sides of the Strait seek peace and oppose division. It also set out a political direction aimed at returning cross-Strait relations to a path of peaceful development, with the stated goal of eventual peaceful reunification.
A venue heavy with history
For mainland observers, the deeper meaning of the Xi–Zheng meeting is tied closely to its setting. The East Hall has hosted landmark moments in China’s modern history, including events linked to the return of Hong Kong and Macau. Its reuse for high-level dialogue between representatives of the two sides of the Strait carries unmistakable symbolism.
The message conveyed is straightforward. Both sides belong to one China, and Taiwan is regarded as an inseparable part of it. External complexities do not alter this premise. Questions concerning the Chinese nation are framed as matters to be resolved internally, with peaceful dialogue presented as the appropriate course.
A world defined by conflict
The significance of the meeting becomes clearer when placed against the current global backdrop. Armed conflicts in recent years have illustrated the scale of destruction associated with modern warfare.
The Russia–Ukraine conflict continues to impose heavy losses. According to the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE Institute), in its March 2026 assessment, Ukraine has suffered cumulative income losses of approximately 1.7 trillion US dollars since the escalation of hostilities in 2022, including projected losses through the end of 2026. Urban areas have been devastated, energy infrastructure repeatedly targeted, millions displaced, and environmental damage described as long-lasting.
Since February 2026, military action by the United States and Israel against Iran has produced similarly severe consequences. Around 80 per cent of Iran’s air defence systems have been destroyed, along with more than 450 missile installations. Its capacity for ballistic missile retaliation has reportedly fallen by 90 per cent. Production lines for “Shahed” unmanned aerial vehicles have been eliminated, reducing output by 85 per cent. The Iranian navy has seen approximately 160 vessels sunk or disabled, its naval headquarters destroyed, and its control over the Persian Gulf lost. Up to 90 per cent of the defence industrial base, including key shipyards, has been destroyed.
After just 38 days of conflict, Iran’s military capability, built over four decades, has been largely dismantled. Regional shipping has been disrupted, energy markets have experienced sharp volatility, tens of thousands have been killed, and millions displaced. Regional stability has effectively collapsed.
These developments illustrate the destructive potential of modern high-technology warfare. Precision-guided munitions, drone swarms, and long-range strike systems can disable power supplies, destroy transport infrastructure, contaminate land, and set back economic and social development by decades in a matter of weeks.
Taiwan and the global economy
Against this background, the text argues that any attempt to pursue “Taiwan independence” carries serious risks. A conflict in the Taiwan Strait would likely exceed the scale and impact of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Taiwan occupies a central position in the global semiconductor industry. Firms such as TSMC hold a dominant share of advanced manufacturing capacity. In the event of war, supply chains would be disrupted immediately.
Simulations by international institutions suggest that, in a worst-case scenario, global GDP could fall by nearly 10 per cent in the first year of a Taiwan Strait conflict. Economic losses could reach 10.6 trillion US dollars, equivalent to around 333 trillion New Taiwan dollars. Taiwan’s own economy could contract by as much as 40 per cent. The shock would be felt across mainland China, the United States, Japan, South Korea, and the European Union.
The military consequences would be severe. High-density missile strikes, electronic warfare, and naval and air blockades could lead to large-scale destruction of infrastructure on the island. Casualties would be significant, while environmental and humanitarian damage could prove irreversible. Given the close social and cultural ties between people on both sides of the Strait, any armed confrontation would result in profound human cost. Regional tensions would escalate rapidly, posing risks to stability in East Asia and beyond.
Political signalling and red lines
Within this framework, the position presented is that “Taiwan independence” represents a path with no viable outcome. It is described as running counter to shared interests and broader historical trends.
The alternative, as outlined, lies in adherence to the 1992 Consensus and opposition to separatism. Zheng Liwen’s visit, described as a “journey for peace”, emphasised the notion of cross-Strait kinship and was framed as aligning with public sentiment and prevailing conditions.
The meeting between the leaderships of the Communist Party and the Kuomintang reaffirmed a shared political foundation. It also conveyed a clear warning that any attempt at secession would meet firm opposition from the Chinese population as a whole and would carry significant costs.
Peaceful reunification and national strategy
eaceful reunification is presented as both a collective aspiration and a structural requirement for what is described as the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. It is framed as a pathway to shared economic benefits and improved living standards for people in Taiwan within a broader national framework.
The argument also stresses its role in preventing war, preserving stability, and enabling joint prosperity. At a regional and global level, it is depicted as contributing to stability in the Asia-Pacific and demonstrating China’s role as a responsible major power.
Historical experience is cited to support this position. Periods characterised by adherence to the One China principle and the promotion of peaceful cross-Strait relations have coincided with stability and active exchanges. By contrast, deviations from this approach have led to tension and economic disruption.
A milestone with wider implications
The Xi–Zheng meeting is thus framed as another milestone in the trajectory of cross-Strait relations. It highlights what is described as the mainland’s consistent commitment to the principle that both sides form one family, alongside a stated willingness to pursue peaceful reunification with sincerity.
For the international community, the meeting is presented as an example of the principle that China’s internal affairs should be resolved domestically. It offers a contrast to conflict-driven approaches that have produced severe consequences in other regions.
The conclusion drawn is one of confidence. With sustained efforts on both sides of the Strait, the prospect of peaceful reunification is portrayed as increasingly attainable. The broader objective, the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, is framed as a long-term historical trajectory.
No external force, the argument suggests, will ultimately be able to obstruct this course.
Conclusion
Peaceful reunification is presented as beneficial in the present and significant for generations to come. The current moment is described as a critical historical opportunity. By deepening economic integration, expanding cultural exchange, and strengthening cooperation in social development, both sides of the Strait are encouraged to move towards closer family ties, more integrated industries, broader opportunities for younger generations, and greater shared prosperity.
The overarching message is clear. The opportunity should be seized in the interests of people on both sides of the Strait and in pursuit of a more stable and prosperous future linked to the wider project of national rejuvenation.
At last, a hint of backbone in Australia’s foreign policy
9 April 2026 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/at-last-a-hint-of-backbone-in-australias-foreign-policy/
For months, many of us have watched in frustration as our government responded to Gaza with caution, equivocation, and a reluctance to break from the familiar script of deference to powerful allies. It has felt, at times, like moral clarity was being carefully managed rather than clearly expressed.
Which is precisely why Anthony Albanese’s sudden intervention on Lebanon lands with such force.
By urging that Lebanon be included in any Middle East ceasefire, the Prime Minister has done something rare in modern Australian foreign policy: he has stepped, however briefly, out of line. Not dramatically. Not defiantly. But unmistakably.
This is not just a policy position – it is a signal.
A signal that Australia may be willing to acknowledge what much of the world can already see: that this is not a series of neatly contained conflicts, but a widening humanitarian crisis stretching from the ruins of Gaza Strip to the streets of Beirut. A signal that civilian suffering is not selective, and that our concern for it should not be either.
And yet, it is impossible to ignore the contrast.
Because while this newfound clarity extends to Lebanon, the same certainty has too often been absent when it comes to Gaza. The language has been softer, the urgency more muted, the moral line less clearly drawn. For many Australians, that inconsistency has not gone unnoticed – or unchallenged.
And perhaps most striking of all, it is a signal that the Prime Minister has finally “read the room.”
Because the room has changed. Public patience has thinned. Across Australia – including among Labor’s own supporters – there has been a growing unease with the language of balance when the images on people’s screens tell a far more unbalanced story. People are not asking for perfection, nor for reckless gestures. But they are asking for something that feels increasingly rare in public life: honesty, consistency, and the courage to apply our values evenly.
In that context, this moment feels different.
It feels like a government, or at least a Prime Minister, beginning to find his footing – beginning to speak not just as an ally, but as a representative of a public that expects more than quiet alignment and careful phrasing.
Whether this is the start of something more substantial, or merely a brief departure from the script, remains to be seen. Governments have a way of snapping back into old habits. The gravitational pull of alliance politics is strong, and Australia has rarely resisted it for long.
But for now, credit where it is due.
In choosing to speak up for Lebanon – and in doing so, gently but clearly diverging from the positions of allies such as the United States under Donald Trump – Anthony Albanese has shown a flicker of something Australians have been waiting to see.
Not a break with our allies. Not a dramatic realignment.
Just something quieter – and, perhaps, more important.
A willingness to stand, at least for a moment, on our own two feet.
The Empire Backs Down, For Now
Caitlin Johnstone, Apr 08, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-empire-backs-down-for-now?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=193539985&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Trump has announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran after previously threatening to exterminate their “entire civilization”, citing “a 10 point proposal from Iran” as the reason for the climb-down.
Trump and his cronies are spinning this as a colossal victory for the United States and framing Tehran’s 10-point plan as a major capitulation to the president’s threats. But some reporters are noting that Iran has had the same terms on the table for weeks — which would mean that it is in fact the White House who is backing down.
Hours before the president’s announcement, Drop Site’s Ryan Grim posted a TikTok video arguing that Trump could save face while walking back from his apocalyptic threats by simply accepting Iran’s 10-point peace plan and acting like it’s a new proposal the Iranians had only just put forward. Grim argued that Trump could get away with this because the western media have been completely ignoring Iran’s stated terms for a ceasefire this entire time.
Interestingly, this appears to have been precisely what Trump wound up doing. After previously rejecting Iran’s proposals as “not good enough”, the president turned around and framed the Iranian offer as a brand new response to the pressures his administration was able to impose upon them.
All the way back on March 28, Drop Site News reported the following:
“Among Iran’s terms for permanently ending the war are a longterm guarantee that the U.S. and Israel will not attack Iran again and that any ceasefire also apply to Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine; reparations for the damages done to Iran during the war; sanctions relief; and that Iran retain control over the Strait of Hormuz.”
These are the same terms Iran is claiming it pressured the US to accept today. Iranian state media outlet Press TV cited Iran’s supreme national security council as saying “Iran achieved historic victory by forcing criminal US to accept its 10-point plan. US has accepted Iran’s control over Strait of Hormuz, enrichment right, removal of all sanctions.”
The New York Times reports the following:
“Two senior Iranian officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said the proposal included a guarantee that Iran would not be attacked again, an end to Israeli strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon and the lifting of all sanctions.
“In return, Iran would lift its de facto blockade of the key shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran would also impose a fee of roughly $2 million per ship that it would split with Oman, which sits across the strait. Iran would use its share of the proceeds to reconstruct infrastructure destroyed by American and Israeli attacks, rather than demand direct compensation, according to the plan.”
So as things stand right now this certainly looks like a humiliating defeat for the empire. Iran gets a lot of things it didn’t have before the war, including tolling the Strait of Hormuz and relief from the US sanctions that have been crushing its economy for years, while the empire gets to resume its shipping for a hefty fee and pretend it just rescued the world from a nuclear Iran.
Quite the turnaround from a White House that just last month was saying “There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!”
Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi, who always has great insights regarding western warmongering toward Iran, writes the following:
“I cannot emphasize this enough. A new dynamic will be at play when the US and Iran meet in Islamabad to negotiate a final deal based on Iran’s 10-point plan: Trump’s failed war has eliminated the potency of American military threats in US-Iran diplomacy. The US can still issue threats, but everyone will know that they no longer carry much weight. Essentially, war with Iran was tried and failed. As a result, negotiations will have to be based on genuine compromises from both sides, rather than coercion from either side.
There are of course many, many reasons to be pessimistic. The US and Israel have demonstrated time and time again that they will attack Iran during negotiations, and even if the US holds up its end of the bargain we can always see Israel sabotage the deal with its own aggressions. By now Iran has to know that the only way to protect itself from Israel is to impose costs for Israeli aggression on the entire western world; Tehran will have us all heating our homes with trash fires and growing carrots in our backyards if the west can’t find a way to rein in Israel.
For what it’s worth, Zionist Twitter is in absolute meltdown right now, with notorious Israel apologists like Laura Loomer, Eve Barlow and Eli David rending their garments in outrage that the killing has ended with Iran positioned as it is. I’m as skeptical about this ceasefire as anyone, but the fact that the world’s worst people are in meltdown about it right now does provide a faint glimmer of hope.
We shall see.
Ignoring genocide. The bill for Australia’s silence has arrived
by Andrew Brown | Apr 7, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/ignoring-genocide-the-bill-for-australias-silence-has-arrived/
There is a bitter truth that must be spoken before we can talk honestly about what is happening to us now. Andrew Brown on Australia’s quiet complicity in the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran, fourth in a series.
When the bombs fell on Gaza, Australia was quiet.
When the hospitals were destroyed, when the aid was blocked, when children were pulled from rubble in pieces, when the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and humanitarian organisations with decades of credibility in conflict zones used words like genocide, ethnic cleansing and collective punishment, Australia was quiet.
Not uniformly. Not entirely. There were protests in every major city, sustained over months, of a size and seriousness this country has not seen since the Iraq War.
There were independent senators who stood in Parliament and said what needed to be said, in plain language, without diplomatic hedging. There were journalists, academics, former diplomats, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary Australians who signed petitions, marched in the streets, and wrote letters that went largely unanswered.
Palestinian-Australian, Muslim-Australian, Arab-Australian communities, and many others with no personal connection to the conflict beyond a functioning conscience, screamed into a political void and were told, in effect, to calm down.
Or apprehended for wearing a t-shirt.
The country, as a political entity, its government, its major institutions, its official voice to the world, was quiet.
The cost of silence
That silence had a cost. Not just a moral cost, though the moral cost is staggering and will take generations to fully reckon with. A strategic cost. The cost of allowing a logic of unchecked military impunity to establish itself as the operating principle of the US-Israeli alliance. A logic that, once normalised in Gaza, did not stay in Gaza.
It never does.
Over 72,000 people killed so far. Over 171,000 injured. An entire civilian population, in one of the most densely populated places on earth, was systematically starved, displaced, and destroyed.
Journalists were killed in numbers that constitute, by any honest accounting, a deliberate campaign to eliminate witnesses. Paramedics were bombed. UN peacekeepers were struck. Aid workers from Australia’s own partner organisations were killed in strikes so precise they could not have been accidental.
Australia expressed concern.
“Calibrated, diplomatically worded, operationally meaningless concern.”
And then, when the same alliance, emboldened by eighteen months of zero meaningful consequence, turned its weapons on a sovereign nation-state, on Iran, on February 28 of this year, Australia expressed support. Called it constructive. Offered the American justification back to its own people as sovereign Australian policy.
Warnings ignored
The people warning loudest about Gaza were not merely warning about Palestinians. They were warning about a system. A system in which American military power and Israeli strategic ambition, freed from the constraints of international law and serious allied pushback, would expand. Would find new targets. Would come, eventually, for the stability of every country caught in its orbit.
“They were right. And they were called antisemitic for saying so.“
Iran did not come from nowhere. The assault on Iran is the direct and logical extension of the impunity normalised in Gaza. If you can destroy a civilian population with no meaningful consequence, you can bomb a sovereign nation.
If the ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu means nothing, then international law means nothing. And if international law means nothing, then the only operating principle is force. And the consequences of force are distributed not just to the combatants but to every country whose government chose alignment over principle.
Australia chose alignment over the people of Gaza. It chose it again over Iran. And now it is discovering, at the bowser and the checkout and the business bank account, exactly what that choice costs.
The war came home
Here is what makes this moment different from every protest march and every unanswered letter that came before.
The pain is no longer abstract.
When Gaza burned, the average Australian, cocooned by geographic distance, insulated by a media that kept the most confronting images off prime time, reassured by politicians who described it as heartbreaking while doing nothing, could maintain the fiction that this was someone else’s tragedy.
Terrible, certainly. Distant. Manageable. Something that happened over there, to people over there, in a conflict that had been going on forever and would presumably continue
“without any particular bearing on the school fees or the mortgage or the quarterly business figures.”
That fiction is now dead.
The fuel price spike is not over there. The supply chain disruption is not over there. The investment uncertainty showing up in superannuation statements, in business loans that just got harder to service, in the job that exists today and may not exist in three months. None of that is over there.
business loans that just got harder to service, in the job that exists today and may not exist in three months. None of that is over there.
The war came home. Not in body bags. Not in the specific grief of a military family. It came home in the way that imperial adventurism always eventually comes home to the countries that enable it. Through the economy. Through the slow, grinding, distributed punishment of a population that was never consulted, never warned, and never honestly told what their government’s choices would cost them.
Australia’s complicity
Australia was a participant in Gaza’s destruction. Not with weapons. Not with soldiers. With silence. With diplomatic cover. With the specific, material legitimacy that flows from a liberal democracy declining to formally object. And with the arms adjacent, intelligence and security cooperation that flows through Five Eyes and has never been seriously interrogated in the Australian public domain.
When you have the power to intervene, to sanction, to condemn, to withdraw diplomatic cover, and you choose not to, you are not a bystander. You are a participant. And participants, eventually, share in the consequences.
The Palestinian people could not make Australia listen with their suffering alone.
Not because Australians are cruel. They are not. But because the suffering was made distant. The media made it complex. The politicians made it delicate. The lobby groups made it professionally dangerous to say in plain language what was plainly happening.
“The whole architecture of managed consent did its job with brutal efficiency for eighteen months.”
But a forty percent fuel price increase cuts through managed consent, as does a wave of small business closures. And young Australians told to absorb the economic consequences of a war their government endorsed without their knowledge or consent. That cuts through everything.
The people who protested Gaza, who were dismissed and belittled and accused of antisemitism and told they were being naive about geopolitical complexity, understood something that the political class is only now beginning to grasp: That the world does not offer permanent non-involvement. That the wars you enable reach you. That the impunity you excuse comes back denominated in currencies you understand personally.
Fuel. Food. Jobs. Mortgages. Businesses. Futures.
This is that reckoning. The genocide in Gaza did not wake Australia up, the bill for enabling it will.And when Australia wakes, fully, clearly, with the focused fury of people who now understand exactly what was done to them, the politicians who called it constructive and the media that told them to blame the Energy Minister are going to find that managed consent has a shelf life.
That shelf life has expired.
Ceasefire on the Brink — The Day Genocide Became a Negotiating Tactic
once a leader openly invokes the destruction of an entire civilization, the threshold has already been crossed. The unthinkable has been spoken—and therefore made thinkable.
April 7, 2026 , Joshua Scheer. https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/07/ceasefire-on-the-brink-the-day-genocide-became-a-negotiating-tactic/
In the span of a single day, the United States came terrifyingly close to crossing a line that cannot be uncrossed.
A president publicly threatened the destruction of “a whole civilization,” only to pivot hours later to a fragile, last-minute cease-fire brokered through frantic diplomacy.
That whiplash is not strategy. It is the normalization of annihilation as a negotiating tool.
And now, the world’s leading human rights bodies are saying exactly what Washington refuses to confront: this is not just reckless rhetoric—it may be criminal.
Amnesty International warned that such threats reflect a “staggering level of cruelty and disregard for human life,” and could constitute a threat of genocide under international law.
Not hyperbole. Not partisan outrage. Legal language.
Let’s be clear about what was on the table.
The deliberate targeting of power plants, water systems, bridges, and essential infrastructure is not some abstract military option. It is the dismantling of civilian life itself—the systems that make survival possible. As Amnesty and medical experts warned, such attacks would deprive millions of access to water, food, healthcare, and basic human dignity, while potentially triggering environmental and even nuclear catastrophe.
This is not war in the conventional sense. It is the engineering of societal collapse.
And yet, in today’s Washington, even genocidal rhetoric is spun as leverage.
This is the deeper crisis: not just the war itself, but the erosion of boundaries that once constrained power. The idea that you can threaten mass civilian death to force compliance—and then walk it back as part of a deal—is not diplomacy. It is coercion dressed up as statecraft, a performance of dominance in which human lives become bargaining chips.
The cease-fire, reportedly mediated by Pakistan under intense global pressure, buys two weeks.
Two weeks to negotiate.
Two weeks to pause the bombing.
Two weeks for markets to stabilize and headlines to cool.
But what does it not do?
It does not undo the more than 1,600 civilians already reported killed.
It does not rebuild the infrastructure already shattered.
It does not erase the terror inflicted on tens of millions of people suddenly forced to contemplate their own annihilation.
And it does not undo the precedent.
Because once a leader openly invokes the destruction of an entire civilization, the threshold has already been crossed. The unthinkable has been spoken—and therefore made thinkable.
Human rights experts are warning that the danger is not only what might happen next, but what has already been normalized. As Amnesty put it, the very act of making such threats “brazenly shreds core rules of international humanitarian law.”
That is the real story here.
Not just a war spiraling toward catastrophe—but a global order in which the rules meant to prevent catastrophe are being openly discarded.
We have seen this trajectory before. Iraq was justified with certainty that did not exist. Afghanistan became a forever war without a clear end. Now Iran sits at the edge of something even more dangerous—not just invasion or occupation, but the explicit threat of civilizational erasure.
Even some of the president’s allies have recoiled, recognizing that this is not strength but instability masquerading as resolve. When threats alienate allies, embolden adversaries, and horrify the world, they are not strategic—they are reckless.
Meanwhile, Congress drifts. Calls for oversight, war powers votes, even removal from office have surfaced—but only after the rhetoric crossed into territory that international law was designed to prevent.
This is the central failure of American governance in the age of permanent war: the abdication of responsibility until crisis becomes catastrophe.
The cease-fire should not be mistaken for success. It is a pause forced by global alarm and the sheer gravity of what was nearly unleashed. It is proof that diplomacy still exists—but only under the shadow of something far darker.
Because the question now is unavoidable:
If threatening to destroy a civilization is part of the negotiating playbook, what happens when threats stop working?
History offers a grim answer: escalation.
And next time, there may be no last-minute intervention.
No diplomatic scramble.
No two-week pause.
Only the consequences of a line already crossed.
Trump says Tuesday deadline for Iran to accept ceasefire ‘final, won’t change’; Israel takes out experienced IRGC intel chief.
SOTT Signs Of The Times, Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, Mon, 06 Apr 2026
Summary:
A Sunday night Axios report on a US-proposed 45-day ceasefire has by Monday morning been rejected by Iran, which later on Monday issued a 10-point letter via Pakistan.- Israel strikes large petrochemical plant at South Pars, which is responsible for half of the country’s petrochemical production.
- Trump reaffirms Tuesday deadline before vital infrastructure gets attacked as ‘final’, calls Americans opposed to Iran war ‘foolish’ – saying it’s all about Tehran not getting a nuke.
- Israel kills experienced longtime head of IRGC intelligence; Iranian missile strike on Haifa residential complex kills 4.
With all that in mind, the odds of a ceasefire by April 30, 2026 are rising (but still low)…28%
IRGC Intel Chief Taken Out; Israel Suffers Heavy Casualties
The head of the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was killed in a Monday airstrike, according to confirmation in Iranian media. IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency reported that the IRGC Public Relations Department confirmed Monday that Major General Majid Khademi was killed earlier in the day during an attack by US and Israeli forces. However, Tasnim did not disclose the location of the strike.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) earlier stated on X that Khademi wasone of the IRGC’s most senior commanders with decades of experience. “Khademi worked to advance terrorist attacks worldwide, and was responsible for monitoring Iranian civilians as part of the regime’s suppression of internal protests,” it claimed.
RFE/RL reported that Khademi assumed the post last summer after Mohammad Kazemi was killed in Israeli strikes during the 12-day war. Before that, he led the Intelligence Protection Organization of the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics.Iran is now vowing to enact vengeance on Israel for his death.
Meanwhile Sunday into Monday saw significant casualties in Israel, after the IRGC claimed in a statement carried by state media that Iranian forces had targeted an oil refinery in Haifa. But instead, it appears that the missile slammed directly into a residential building, killing at least four Israelis. Search and rescue teams have spent some 18 hours pouring through the ruins of the complex, recovering two bodies early Monday after an initial two had been found. The casualties could climb amid ongoing recovery efforts. Another regional source stated that “Over 160 Israelis have been transferred to hospitals over the past 24 hours, Israel’s Health Ministry said on Monday.”
Trump: Tuesday Deadline ‘Final, Won’t Change’; Americans Opposed to Iran War Are ‘Foolish’
At a White House annual Easter event, President Trump reaffirmed the Tuesday deadline is final, and further said he has seen every proposal. While he acknowledged the new 10-point Iran proposal as a “big step,” he still said it’s “not good enough; will see what happens.” According to more:
- War could end very quickly if they do the things they need to do.
- People talking for Iran are more reasonable now.
- War is about one thing, Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.
- “If I had my choice, I would take Iran’s oil”.
- If Iran does not yield, they will not have bridges or power plants.
- UK has a long way to go.
There were interesting remarks also claiming that “As of this morning 45,000 protesters have been killed” in Iran – though it’s entirely unclear and dubious as to where he got such a figure. He said that Iranians need guns and that he had sent some but a “certain group” decided to keep them.
“The Iranian people wanna hear bombs because they want to be free,” he also claimed, while First Lady Melania added that the US is fighting for the “future” of children in Iran. Another interesting moment as some corners of MAGA grow increasingly skeptical and angry over the war:
The US president is speaking to reporters at the White House. Asked what he would tell Americans who are opposed to the war, Trump replied: “They’re foolish. Because the war is about one thing – Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” he said.
Iran Issues 10-Point Rejection of ‘Simple Ceasefire’
Per PressTV:
“The ten-point plan rejects a simple ceasefire, stressing the need for a permanent resolution that safeguards Iran’s interests. Key demands include ending regional hostilities, ensuring safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, lifting sanctions, and rebuilding affected areas.”
It’s no secret that Iran is seeking a permanent end to the war on terms that would ensure it is never attacked again.
- “According to IRNA’s foreign policy correspondent, in this response, which consists of ten paragraphs, Iran has emphasized the need for a permanent end to the war, taking into account Iran’s considerations, while rejecting a ceasefire.”
- “This answer includes a set of demands from Iran, including the end of conflicts in the region, a protocol for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, reconstruction and lifting of sanctions.”
Per PressTV:
“The ten-point plan rejects a simple ceasefire, stressing the need for a permanent resolution that safeguards Iran’s interests. Key demands include ending regional hostilities, ensuring safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, lifting sanctions, and rebuilding affected areas.”
It’s no secret that Iran is seeking a permanent end to the war on terms that would ensure it is never attacked again.
- “According to IRNA’s foreign policy correspondent, in this response, which consists of ten paragraphs, Iran has emphasized the need for a permanent end to the war, taking into account Iran’s considerations, while rejecting a ceasefire.”
- “This answer includes a set of demands from Iran, including the end of conflicts in the region, a protocol for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, reconstruction and lifting of sanctions.”
It appears similar to the outline that Iran issued some two weeks ago. At every turn, Tehran has rejected that direct talks with Washington are even taking place. Tehran also keeps rejecting White House ceasefire overtures. And yet the same Monday little dance keeps repeating itself……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.sott.net/article/505586-Trump-says-Tuesday-deadline-for-Iran-to-accept-ceasefire-final-wont-change-Israel-takes-out-experienced-IRGC-intel-chief
Trump and Greenland: Key war fighting base for Arctic control
April 04, 2026, By Dr. Dave Webb , https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2026/04/trump-and-greenland-key-war-fighting.html
At time of writing, the biennial NATO military exercise ‘Cold Response 26’ is taking place from March 9 to 19. It is being led from the Norwegian-US headquarters in Reitan, near Bodø, Norway. About 32,500 personnel are participating, including around 11,800 in Norway and 7,500 in Finland. The rest are at sea and in the air. Military from 14 countries are involved – Norway, the USA, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Canada, Spain, Turkey, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Belgium. It is basically a NATO show of force against Russia and the High North is being used by an expanding NATO as a military practice ground in which to rehearse future war fighting strategies and to test and develop new military technologies.
According to the official website of the Norwegian Armed Forces: “The main purpose of the exercises is to contribute to deterrence, strengthen defense, calm the population”. But how is the presence of the US military in Scandinavia expected to “calm” people, given Donald Trump’s flagrant disregard for international law and his wish to own Greenland?
What is that about? Greenland, the world’s largest island, is home to more than 56,000 people. A former Danish colony and now an autonomous territory of Denmark. Its capital city Nuuk is closer to New York than it is to Copenhagen and the US already has an active military base there.
Pituffik Space base, formerly known as Thule Air Base, is on the northwest coast of Greenland, 1,126 kms north of the Arctic Circle. In the 1950s aircraft made surveillance flights from there, over the pole, to inspect Soviet defences. In 1957 four Nike Missile sites were constructed around the base and in 1961 a Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) radar was built to give the US warning of a missile attack from Russia.
On 21 January 1968 a US bomber from an Air Force Base in New York state carrying 4 nuclear weapons, crashed just outside the base. Luckily the failsafe mechanisms prevented a nuclear explosion but there was widespread radioactive contamination. In 2007 a BBC reporter claimed that one of the nuclear weapons was unaccounted for, but this was denied by the US and Denmark. Some details of the incident remain classified, however.
In June 1987, the BMEWS mechanically steered radar was upgraded to a two-sided, solid-state phased-array electronically steered radar system, similar to the one at Fylingdales in North Yorkshire. It then became a missile warning and tracking component of the US National Missile Defense System. After the US Space Force was established by Trump in 2019, the base was transferred to Space Delta 4, under the command of Buckley Space Force Base in Colorado. Thule Air Base was renamed Pituffik Space Base in April 2023 in recognition of the former Inuit settlement. Pituffik Space Base plays a key role in missile defence and satellite tracking and targeting. The recent retaliatory attacks by Iran on US missile defence radars is a dire warning to people who live on or near the base in Greenland and elsewhere (including Fylingdales!).
There is also a Pituffik Tracking Station, about 5.6 km southeast of the main base, which tracks and commands high-priority government satellites. It provides telemetry, tracking and command data for satellites that are used for surveillance, communication, navigation and weather. The Space Force says the base helps enable “space superiority.”
The 1951 Defence of Greenland Treaty with Denmark grants the US broad military rights, including the establishment of bases, provided Denmark and Greenland are notified, and unrestricted movement for defence purposes. However, Danish sovereignty over the territory is also recognised as part of the treaty which remains in effect as long as NATO does.
Trump has said that Greenland is needed for the ‘Golden Dome’ missile defence project, but the Pituffik radar is there already and part of US national Missile Defense, so what else might be needed? Perhaps the siting of anti-ballistic missiles there?
But there’s more – in January, Trump claimed the Arctic was covered in Russian and Chinese warships to justify his push for control of Greenland. Russia does have a nuclear submarine base in the Arctic, on the Kola peninsula, the other side of Finland and Russia and China have increased joint naval and air patrols in the North Pacific and near Alaska but there has been no evidence of “swarms” of Russian or Chinese military ships near Greenland as Trump claims.
Greenland is however, at a very strategic location. The GIUK (Greenland, Iceland, and the UK) gap is a critical maritime choke point in the North Atlantic, separating the Norwegian/North Seas from the open Atlantic Ocean. It is an important strategic, monitoring, and anti-submarine corridor that NATO uses to track Russian naval activity. The position of Faslane, guarding the GIUK gap, is also of great strategic importance to NATO.
There are also important commercial considerations. As global warming shrinks the arctic ice cap it allows more maritime traffic, mining and other commercial activity to take place in the high north. During the summer, shipping routes can operate for longer periods in the Arctic region. Shipping has risen by nearly 40% in the region over the last 12 years, according to the Arctic Council (a kind of common security organisation whose primary purpose is to advance sustainable development and environmental protection in the region, including of indigenous peoples).
These routes are particularly important for Russia and China. Russia has over 53% of the total Arctic coastline and controls most of the resources there, while China identifies as a ‘Near Arctic State’ with the opening-up of its ‘Polar Silk Road’ as a trade route, reducing travel time to Europe by 40%. The expanding China footprint in the Arctic is seen as a security challenge by the US.
Then there are the resources becoming newly available. The US Geological Survey estimates that over 87% of the Arctic’s oil and natural gas resource (about 360 billion barrels oil equivalent) is in seven key Arctic basin provinces including two to the east and west of Greenland. There are also rare earth metals present which are in high demand for electric cars and the manufacture of military equipment. A 2023 survey showed that 25 of 34 minerals considered “critical raw materials” by the European Commission were to be found in Greenland. China currently dominates global rare earth production and Trump does not like that, so controlling Greenland and its resources could really be about keeping China out.
However, the extraction of oil and gas is banned in Greenland for environmental regions, and investment in mining faces challenges – perhaps a new arrangement with Denmark could allow the US to build without planning permission and expand into mineral-rich areas?
The full details of the “framework of the future deal with respect to Greenland” announced by Trump remain unavailable and Greenlanders are concerned that they are being left out of talks between the US and Denmark. Trump seems to insist on “owning” Greenland and although there is a constitutional ban on the sale of land, Trump’s recent actions show that he has no respect for law or any other state’s sovereignty.
~ Dr. Dave Webb is the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space Board of Directors convener and also chairs Yorkshire Region CND. He is a retired university professor and lives in Leeds, England.
Trump’s Non-Address: The Strait of Trump and the Vandalism of Global Order
2 April 2026 David Tyler AIM Extra, https://theaimn.net/trumps-non-address-the-strait-of-trump-and-the-vandalism-of-global-order/
In reply to Bernard Keane, Crikey, The Regime Change we Need? Remove Trump in Washington, 2 April 2026
Bernard Keane puts it neatly: Donald Trump is either a toddler who has tired of his own game and flings away his toys, or a vandal who wrecks other people’s toys for sport. But after this week, even that framing feels too kind. On April 1, 2026 (April Fools’ Day, no less) Trump did not simply toss his toys aside. He ascended his playpen throne like a bored demiurge, surveyed a world too small to matter, and declared the Strait of Hormuz someone else’s problem.
“I don’t think about it, to be honest,” he said, shrugging off the worst energy disruption since 1973. “When we leave, the strait will automatically open.”
Then, as allies scrambled amid fuel rationing and power blackouts, he told them to build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT. The United States, he added, won’t be there to help you anymore.
The Non-Address Address
Trump’s prime-time speech was a masterclass in anticlimax: twenty minutes of reassurance for war-weary Americans, tough talk for the cameras, and nothing (absolutely nothing) of substance. Markets listened more closely than his cabinet. Stock futures dropped as he finished speaking, reversing two days of recovery on Wall Street. Oil prices jumped nearly four percent, as traders read the address not as a signal of resolution but as confirmation that the war would drag on, and the chaos with it.
If George W. Bush was America’s Miscommunicator-in-Chief, selling a fabricated WMD case for Iraq with at least the semblance of a plan, Trump is the World’s Biggest Liar, segueing effortlessly from babbling stream-of-consciousness to flashes of leadership genius such as “We’ll see what happens.” Bush, at least, believed his own lies long enough to commit to them. Trump improvises his from one press conference to the next, and the nuclear question is the most damning proof.
One day, the Florida Golfer-in-Chief insists thwarting Iran’s nuclear capabilities is the central justification for the war, the reason thirteen American service members have died. The next, he tells Reuters he isn’t remotely concerned about Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium: “That’s so far underground, I don’t care about that.” And the day before that, he had declared in the Oval Office: “They will have no nuclear weapon, and that goal has been attained. They will not have nuclear weapons” only to immediately hint that some future president might need to revisit the issue a long time from now.
Three contradictory positions in forty-eight hours.
This is not policy. It is improvised theatre, with live ammunition and a body count.
Regime Change as Absurdist Comedy
Trump’s regime change claim is its own genre of farce. Having repeatedly said he never sought regime change, he declares mid-speech that he had achieved it anyway. “We never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders’ death (they’re all dead),” he said. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable.
The more reasonable leader he has in mind? The incoming Iranian Parliament Speaker, a former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander responsible for brutal crackdowns on student protesters. This, apparently, is Trump’s definition of moderation.
And then there is the Artemis detail. In the hours before his war talk, Trump had been flooding Truth Social with posts about the Artemis II moon launch: “We are WINNING, in Space, on Earth, and everywhere in between. Economically, Militarily, and now, BEYOND THE STARS.” Seriously? The rocket lifted off at 6:30pm Eastern. The war talk followed three hours later. Did Trump himself know which was the main event? It doesn’t matter. The moon shot is to remind Americans, however briefly, of a time when the United States did something that looked like victory.
“We are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” he lies. He has never spelled them out. “We are going to hit them extremely hard. Over the next two to three weeks, we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing.”
Trump abuses US allies for not rushing to the aid of a United States in irretrievable decline, presided over by the Commander-in-Chief of indecision, degeneration and the mass murder of innocent civilians. The war machine, having run out of clean military targets, is now forced to obliterate hospitals, schools, ambulances and power stations. Three thousand five hundred and nineteen Iranian civilians are confirmed dead at last count (a figure the administration has not disputed and shows no sign of mourning).
This is no toddler in tantrum. It is the deity of dereliction, smashing the stage props of the world he once claimed to command, calling the wreckage proof of his own omnipotence. As Yanis Varoufakis reminds us, the problem is not that Trump has no Plan B. Trump has never had a Plan A.
The Strait of Trump: A Trap of His Own Making
The Iran war is Trump’s masterpiece of self-sabotage. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of global seaborne oil trade normally flows, has been effectively shut since Iran closed it following the US-Israeli strikes of February 28. Trump launched the war. Iran played its one trump card. Now, top administration officials have privately acknowledged they cannot both achieve their military objectives quickly and vow to reopen the strait within the same timeline.
The result is a global energy crisis of the administration’s own manufacture, with US crude oil settling above $100 per barrel for the first time since July 2022.
Trump’s response? He took to Truth Social to tell allies to build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT, adding: “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself. The U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore.”
This from the man who started the war, walked away from the consequences and is now billing the victims for the ambulance.
Saudi Arabia: The Humiliation and the Handshake
On March 27, five days before his April 1 address, Trump stood on a stage built with Saudi money at the Future Investment Initiative Priority summit in Miami (a Saudi sovereign wealth fund event attended by 1,500 delegates, including the kingdom’s most senior economic policymakers). There, he told the assembled room that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman didn’t think he would be “kissing my arse.” He then added, for good measure: “He better be nice to me.”
The remark was no slip. It was a public declaration of hierarchy, delivered on Saudi-branded turf, using Saudi hospitality as the backdrop for MBS’s ritual humiliation. The Saudi Royal Court and state media issued no response. In Riyadh, silence is the dignified face of fury.
What Trump apparently does not grasp (or does not care about) is that in the Gulf, face is not a sentiment. It is a strategic currency. And the cost of losing it gets paid in procurement contracts.
Saudi Arabia had already been diversifying its arms suppliers before Trump’s FII performance, but the trajectory has accelerated sharply since the Iran war began. Since February 28, Riyadh has signed, accelerated or activated arms agreements with at least seven nations (the United States, China, South Korea, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and France) spending an estimated $20 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone. That’s roughly equal to the kingdom’s entire 2024 defence budget, compressed into weeks.
Turkey has been among the principal beneficiaries. Saudi Arabian Military Industries has signed MOUs with Baykar, the Turkish drone company whose Bayraktar TB2 became famous in Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh, and with the defence electronics firm ASELSAN. The flagship deal, for 60 Bayraktar Akinci unmanned combat aerial vehicles worth an estimated $2 billion, includes a local production line inside Saudi Arabia, with projections that more than 70 percent of components will be manufactured in the kingdom by the end of the year. Riyadh is also in discussions to join Turkey’s Kaan next-generation fighter jet program.
No American defence contractor has come close to matching those technology transfer terms.
This does not mean Saudi Arabia is abandoning American weapons systems: Patriot batteries and THAAD interceptors are not something you swap out during a shooting war. But the direction of travel is unmistakable. The oil-for-security compact that has governed the US-Gulf relationship since Franklin Roosevelt met King Abdulaziz on the USS Quincy in 1945 is being quietly dismantled, contract by contract, MOU by MOU, one Ankara handshake at a time. Trump’s genius for the crass remark or the totally inappropriate public insult is accelerating a process that will outlast him indefinitely.
The Strait of Trump? The Toxic-Narcissicist-in-Chief briefly floats renaming the Strait of Hormuz after himself, calling for Iran to open up the “Strait of Trump, I mean, Hormuz,” adding that there are no accidents with him. On that last point, at least, he may be telling the truth. “Trump of Hormuz,” however, may be how future historians will remember him.
Syria: The Jihadist Turned Plumber
The most arresting geopolitical diversion of the week did not come from Washington or Tehran but from Damascus. Syria’s post-Assad government (all spruced up and respectable, its budget nearly tripled to $10.5 billion, with energy infrastructure as its centrepiece) is formally pitching itself as the world’s energy saviour.
What was once Al Qaeda in Syria is now offering to reroute the Trans-Arabian Pipeline to its Mediterranean coast, proposing a new line capable of pumping up to four million barrels per day from northeastern Saudi Arabia to the Syrian ports of Baniyas or Latakia. There are also plans to extend a Qatari natural gas pipeline through Syria to Turkey and Europe.
The Tapline is not new. Built between 1947 and 1950 by Aramco as the world’s longest oil pipeline, it ran 1,214 kilometres from Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq fields to Lebanon’s port of Sidon, crossing Jordan and Syria. It was designed to bypass the Suez Canal and operated for three decades until the Lebanese civil war shut it down in 1983. Now, the pipeline that Aramco built to bypass Suez is being pitched in 2026 to bypass the clogged Strait of Hormuz.
Washington is not indifferent. US Special Envoy Tom Barrack bragged at a recent energy forum that Syria could serve as an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz in the future through the construction of pipelines, noting that earlier Syrian infrastructure plans envisioned the country as a junction connecting the Arabian Gulf, Caspian Sea, Mediterranean and Black Sea. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE are already moving. Saudi companies Taqa, Ades, Arabian Drilling and Arabian Geophysical and Surveying agreed in December to provide technical support, while the UAE’s Dana Gas entered a tentative deal with Syria’s state petroleum company. Overnight, the UK Prime Minister met Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa in Downing Street, discussing the need for a viable plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and agreeing to work with others to restore freedom of navigation.
But is it a real game changer? The obstacles are not trivial. Syria’s infrastructure is war-ravaged, sanctions are only partially lifted and the World Bank estimates reconstruction costs at $216 billion. Even the existing pipeline alternatives fall well short of replacing Hormuz. The combined capacity of existing bypass pipelines, including Saudi Arabia’s East-West line and the UAE’s Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline, amounts to around 9 million barrels per day against the 20 million that normally transit Hormuz. Syria’s offer, however real its potential, is measured in years and investment horizons, not weeks.
Yet the pitch reveals something Keane’s piece gestures toward without quite landing: Trump’s vandalism is reorganising the world’s geography of power in ways that will long outlast his presidency. When a reconstituted Syria, led by a former Al Qaeda jihadist turned pragmatic statesman, can walk into Downing Street and credibly offer Europe an energy lifeline that Brussels cannot refuse to consider, the old order is not declining. It is already dead.
The Tariff Rampage: Chaos as Policy
Trump’s tariffs and the uncertainty surrounding them have sent shockwaves through the global economy while failing to achieve a single stated aim. They do, however, represent the largest US tax hike since 1993, amounting to an average increase of $1,500 per US household in 2026. Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi calls it plainly: “The US is pulling away from the world, and the rest of the world is now pulling away from the US.”
Zandi is right that tariffs are a tax on consumers. But he is wrong to say they simply ruin trade. What they do is change the nature of trade from an unregulated race to the bottom on labour and environmental costs to a managed system that, in theory, prioritises domestic stability. In practice, under this administration, they prioritise chaos.
Keane is correct to note that the United States Studies Centre crew at the Financial Review would rather Australians fear China than the country whose actions have inflicted the actual energy and economic shock. This is the ideological laundering operation that Pine Gap makes literal. While the Australian public buys the official line that it is only a big radar station, the centre is increasingly being used to provide the intelligence the United States requires to target infrastructure across Iran. Canberra, meanwhile, maintains the polite fiction that its involvement is purely defensive.
Regime Change in Washington? Wishful Thinking
What Keane’s argument finally arrives at (regime change in Washington) is commendable but wishful thinking. Calls for the 25th Amendment have been creeping into conservative as well as Democratic circles since the Iran war began, with prediction markets now putting the probability of its invocation at 33 percent, up from 15 percent at the start of the year. Democrats have introduced multiple impeachment resolutions, including seven articles covering obstruction of justice, abuse of trade powers, international aggression, bribery, corruption and tyranny. None will pass a Republican House.
What remains? The November midterms. The courts. Sustained popular pressure. And the growing reality that while Washington dithers and blusters, some of the world’s energy architecture is quietly rerouting itself through Damascus.
The Strait of Hormuz may not rename itself. But it may yet make itself irrelevant. That, ultimately, is the most damning verdict on what Trump and Netanyahu have wrought: not just that they broke the old order but that they handed the blueprint for the new one to Ahmad al-Sharaa.
Unless, of course, it is all a piece of diversionary theatre and a convenient way of getting back at Tehran that nobody in Washington quite planned for either.
In Part Two, we’ll explore how Australia’s alliance with the US is reshaping its own energy and security calculus and why Canberra’s silence on Iran may be its loudest statement yet.
This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES
Ukraine actively involved in US-Israeli aggression against Iran: Envoy to UN
Monday, 30 March 2026, https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2026/03/30/766089/Ukraine-actively-involved-in-US-Israeli-aggression-against-Iran–Envoy-to-UN-
A senior Iranian diplomat condemns Ukraine’s admission to the dispatch of “hundreds of experts” to the region to confront Iran, saying Kiev is actively participating in the military aggression launched by the United State and the Israeli regime against the Islamic Republic.
Iranian Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations Amir Saeid Iravani made the remark in a letter to Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres and president of the UN Security Council on Monday.
“Ukraine’s admission that it has dispatched ‘hundreds of experts’ to the region apparently to help some Persian Gulf governments to confront Iran is in its essence considered to be providing financial and operative support for an unlawful military aggression, led by the United States of America and the Israeli regime, against Iran, which began on February 28, 2026.”
He said Iran rejects all unfounded accusations leveled by the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN which are devoid of any credible evidence and have been made with the clear aim of diverting attention from the ongoing US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Such allegations also intended to whitewash the horrific crimes committed by the US and Israel against civilians and non-military infrastructure, he said.
“Such interference is not accidental. It exposes active participation in and facilitation of the illegal use of force against a sovereign state and raises serious concerns within the framework of international law, including the principles governing state responsibility and the prohibition of aiding or abetting in the commission of internationally wrongful acts.”
“Ukraine’s illegal acts constitute participation in an act of aggression and violate the fundamental prohibition on the use of force enshrined in Article 2, paragraph 4, of the United Nations Charter,” he added.
Furthermore, the envoy reiterated, Ukraine’s attempt to justify or normalize the targeting of critical infrastructure is deeply concerning and inconsistent with fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.
Earlier on Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei told reporters that linking the conflict in Ukraine to the current developments in West Asia, particularly after the US-Israel military aggression against Iran, is a “very catastrophic miscalculation.”
In response to a question about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s offer to provide military assistance to the US allies in the region, Baghaei expressed hope that the countries in the region will be wise enough not to allow such a person, who exposed his country to a very destructive war over the past four years, to pursue his objectives.
How the Iran War undermines the nuclear nonproliferation regime
Bulletin, By George Perkovich | Analysis | April 2, 2026
When President Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2018, he cracked the brittle foundation of the global nonproliferation regime based on the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This was not seen clearly at the time, so its implications could not be fully addressed. Now the ramifications are becoming clearer: The war on Iran raises doubt that the NPT can be a central pillar of international security. If not, will more countries seek nuclear weapons, including US allies or friends? And will China and Russia be emboldened to follow the US-Israeli example to forcibly try to stop them?
The US and Israeli leaders who pushed withdrawal from the JCPOA, including President Trump, did not know or care much about the NPT. Israel saw the Iranian nuclear program as an ipso facto direct threat, not as something that could be managed through the treaty’s core bargains. Those bargains posited that states that already had nuclear weapons as of 1967—the United States and Russia, most importantly—would reward states that forego such weapons. The non-nuclear-weapon states would gain security, cooperation in civil nuclear energy development, and progress toward the equity of global nuclear disarmament……………………………………………………………………..
Today it is clear that when the United States broke the JCPOA, Iran was condemned to a fate like Iraq’s in 2003. Objectives beyond nuclear proliferation became decisive for powerful actors in Washington, Israel, and the Gulf. Regime change. Reducing threats to the United States’ oil-exporting Arab friends and Israel. Countering terrorism. The JCPOA had “solved” the nuclear issue within the framework of the NPT bargains, but it did not address these other issues……………………………….
Now that Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump have attacked Iran without regard for international law or Iran’s rights under the NPT (and the UN-supported JCPOA), many commentators say nuclear weapon proliferation will be more likely. They say, the “lesson” of Iran today, like that of Iraq, Libya, and Ukraine—contrasted with North Korea—is that a country should acquire nuclear weapons if it doesn’t want to be attacked by a big nuclear power………………………………….
All of this highlights the shakiness of the NPT as an organizing construct for managing security, nuclear energy, and nonproliferation going forward. If nuclear-weapon states have clearly abandoned their commitments under Article VI of the NPT to cease arms racing and pursue nuclear disarmament, and nuclear-armed states have attacked other non-nuclear countries in violation of international law, why wouldn’t more countries feel justified to seek their own nuclear deterrents? If powerful countries have made trade and security accommodations for nuclear-armed India, how should others seek to apply limits on nuclear fuel-cycle activities?………………………………………..
More than threatening the NPT, the US-Israel war on Iran has removed bargaining from adversarial international relations more broadly. Washington and Tel Aviv demand that Iran stop all fuel-cycle activity, surrender all enriched uranium and ballistic missiles, end clerical rule, disarm the Revolutionary Guard, and cease supporting other regional actors that threaten Israel. The American and Israeli governments offer Iran no immediate or near-term benefits in response, except the possible end of military attacks and vague promises of Western corporate investment to help revive the Iranian economy. Essentially, the demand is for unconditional surrender. This is a different model of international affairs than the NPT was predicated on……………………………………https://thebulletin.org/2026/04/how-the-iran-war-undermines-the-nuclear-nonproliferation-regime/
Closing Air Spaces and Cracking Alliances: Trump’s Growing Problem with Allies
2 April 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/closing-air-spaces-and-cracking-alliances-trumps-growing-problem-with-allies/
With the Iran War groaning along, the Trump administration is getting increasingly indignant. Plumes of childish anger can be seen coming out of the White House and Pentagon. Having joined an illegal, joint enterprise with Israel in attacking Iran, allies are proving increasingly unwilling to play along.
That unwillingness gurgled to the top with Spain’s announcement on March 30 that it had closed its airspace to US aircraft participating in strikes on Iran. This added to Madrid’s decision earlier in the month to deny the US military access to its bases for military operations against Tehran. “We don’t authorise either the use of military bases or the use of airspace for actions related to the war in Iran,” Defence Minister Margarita Robles told reporters. Spain’s Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo, in an interview with radio Cadena SER, called the move consistent and “part of the decision already made by the Spanish government not to participate in or contribute to a war which was initiated unilaterally and against international law.”
The government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been singularly pertinacious in its characterisation of the Iran War, and more broadly illustrative of the current bad blood in transatlantic relations. In a piece for The Economist, Sánchez wrote of his country’s misplaced support for Washington in February 2003 when the then US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, told the UN Security Council most gravely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and needed to be attacked. The foolishly credulous Spanish Prime Minister at the time, José María Aznar, was convinced that the regime of Saddam Hussein had such weapons. “Today we face a similar situation, and my government’s position is the same as that voiced by Spanish society two decades ago: NO TO WAR. No to the unilateral violation of international law. No to repeating the mistakes of the past. No to the idea that the world’s problems can be solved with bombs.”
Italian authorities have also expressed displeasure at the presumptuousness of their US allies in taking liberties with their military facilities. In a March 31 report by Corriere della Sera, “several US bombers” that had intended to land at Sigonella air base on route to the Middle East were refused as they had not properly requested authorisation or consulted with the Italian military. A statement from Palazzo Chigi, the office of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, reiterated that Italy “acts in full compliance with existing international agreements and with the policy guidelines expressed by the Government to Parliament.”
Other allies are openly rebuffing requests by US officials to secure additional military equipment to the Gulf. Critical here are air-defence systems such as the Patriot batteries that have been dramatically depleted since the outbreak of hostilities. In the first 16 days of the war, some 1,285 PAC-3 Patriot missiles were used by the US military and Gulf states.
The Polish Defence Minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz could not have been clearer in his statement on whether Poland’s complement of Patriot air defence systems would make their way to the Middle East. “Our Patriot batteries and their armaments are used to protect Polish airspace and NATO’s eastern flank. Nothing is changing in this regard, and we have no plans to move them anywhere!” Fellow allies understood “the importance of our tasks here. Poland’s security is an absolute priority.”
As has become customary, US President Donald Trump has led the growls of grievance, billowing with anger on Truth Social about the reluctance of European partners to throw in their lot in what is, at best, a criminal enterprise. On the issue of depleted jet fuel supplies restricted by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, he brusquely suggested to his allies that they could purchase supplies from the US (“we have plenty”) and “build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT.” With a demented paternalism, he went on to declare that “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us.” With typically strained logic, he went on to suggest that any assistance would be minor, in any case, as Iran had been “decimated.” “The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!”
Special mention was made of mulishness on the part of the UK (“which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran”) and France. France, for instance, had refused to permit planes carrying military supplies destined for Israel to fly over French territory. “France has been VERY UNHELPFUL with respect to the ‘Butcher of Iran’, who has been successfully eliminated. The U.S.A. will REMEMBER!!!”.
Soon afterwards, a comically crazed and increasingly God loving Pete Hegseth struck a similar note in the Pentagon. “A lot has been laid bare, a lot has been shown to the world about what our allies would be willing to do for the United States of America,” grumbled the Secretary of Defense (he prefers War) to reporters. “When we undertake an effort of this scope on behalf of the free world, these are missiles that don’t even range the United States of America, they range allies and others and yet, when we ask for additional assistance or simple access… we get questions or roadblocks or hesitation.”
In his March 30 interview with Al Jazeera, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was also brimming with complaints. “If NATO is just about us defending Europe if they’re attacked but then denying us basic rights when we need them, that’s not a very good arrangement. That’s a hard one to stay engaged in and say this is good for the United States.” All this called for a reassessment. “All of it’s going to have to be re-examined.” The re-examination, notably judging from the temper of European states, is proving increasingly reciprocal and, in some circles, even welcome.
It’s all about the nukes
31 March 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark , https://theaimn.net/its-all-about-the-nukes/
The idea of nuclear non-proliferation has come in for some heavy punishment of late. For one thing, powers with nuclear weapons, pre-eminently the United States, have been shown up as blackguards in seeking to prevent other powers in acquiring the option. In its conduct of talks with Tehran, ostensibly to stem their nuclear ambitions, Washington was merely managing a front of chatter while the warmongers were busying themselves behind the scenes. In June 2025, this culminated in the US joining Israel with Operation Midnight Hammer, which saw, according to President Donald Trump, “Monumental Damage […] done to all Nuclear sites in Iran as shown by satellite images. Obliteration is an accurate term!”
Despite these celebratory self-awarded accolades, Israel and the United States would initiate a savage and ongoing encore that began on February 28, with Trump again stating that Iran could never have a nuclear weapon. Apparently, obliterated nuclear facilities must have had some inner life that needed expunging. Diplomacy on non-proliferation was further shown to be contemptible and hypocritical.
Last year’s strikes on Iran, and the current Iran War, reveal the central hypocrisy of those who insist on keeping the nuclear club closed and limited, something made comically grotesque by the fact that one of the belligerents, Israel, is an undeclared nuclear power buttoned up in strategic ambiguity. Countries possessing the murderous nuke have been keeping those without such weapons in a state of suspended anticipation for decades. The central bargain is to be found in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a document that keeps club members in fattened bliss while holding off future admissions with the promise of civilian nuclear technology. Iran’s case shows that even having a civilian nuclear program is not something that will be countenanced.
The hard lesson, and one studiously understood by North Korea, is that having nukes is the ultimate security guarantee in the great family of unruly gangsters known as the international community. This much was admitted by the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, in a March 23 speech at the Supreme People’s Assembly in Pyongyang. “Today’s reality clearly demonstrates the legitimacy of our nation’s strategic choice and decision to reject the enemies’ sweet talk and permanently secure our nuclear arsenal.”
Those who refuse to pursue such an option or have abandoned their ambitions in the face of pressure and empty undertakings given by the powerful, have been found wanting and ultimately dead: Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
The late Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was killed by Israeli and US airstrikes, despite having issued an expansive fatwa banning the development of nuclear weapons. The religious ruling had first surfaced at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2005. In its words, “[T]he production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam and that the Islamic Republic of Iran shall never acquire such weapons.” Iran’s leadership had “pledged at the highest level that Iran will remain a non-nuclear weapon State party to the NPT and has placed the entire scope of its nuclear activities under IAEA safeguards and additional protocol, in addition to undertaking voluntary transparency measures with the Agency.”
In February 2025, the leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) begged Khamenei to reconsider the edict in light of Trump’s return to the White House and the increasingly belligerent tone he had adopted towards the regime. “We have never been this vulnerable, and it may be our last chance to obtain one before it’s too late,” stated one official to The Telegraph. Another revealed that, “The existential threat we now face has led several senior commanders – who previously insisted on following the supreme leader’s guidance – to push for making an atomic weapon.” One of Khamenei’s advisers, Kamal Kharazi, said last November that the fatwa was the only impediment to developing a nuclear capability. “If the Islamic Republic of Iran faces an existential threat, we would have no choice but to adjust our military doctrine.”
In the meantime, Iranian policy became a ragbag of options that pushed it to a point where Tehran might be considered on the brink of the nuclear threshold without quite getting there. Deterrence could be achieved without actually acquiring a weapon. “Khamenei,” writes Tom Vaughan for The Conversation, “seems to have made a bet that achieving ‘nuclear threshold’ status, where a state has the potential to develop nuclear weapons at short notice, would be enough to do this and to deter US or Israeli attacks.” In failing to achieve this, Iran had “borne all the costs of being a ‘proliferator’, while reaping none of the perceived security benefits of nuclear weapons.”
Expanding nuclear weapons arsenals has also become modish. In the face of unreliable guarantees of extended nuclear deterrence offered by the United States in Europe, French President Emmanual Macron is inclined to the view that the next five decades “will be an era of nuclear weapons.” Keeping in mind “our national and European challenges, we have to strengthen the nuclear deterrent… We must think of our nuclear deterrent on a European scale.”
John Erath, former US diplomat and currently serving as a policy director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation says that more countries “feel insecure”, with nuclear weapons being the antidote. “There is no real alternative. Deterrence has so far prevented nuclear war, but often by luck.” Specific to Iran, reasons Ramesh Thakur, director of the Centre for Non-Proliferation and Disarmament in the Crawford School of the Australian National University, “nuclear weapons are now the only thing that will guarantee regime survival.” Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank, suggests that a nuclear weapon may prove “a faster route to restore deterrence for a regime that is now more radical and has been attacked twice in the midst of negotiations.”
Instead of being shaded into unusable insignificance and hopeful oblivion, these weapons of homicidal lunacy have been shown to be more attractive than ever. They are virtually the only way regimes and governments of all stripes can hope to deter potential belligerents. Survivors of Iran’s leadership, now facing that existential threat long warned against, will be only too aware of that fact.
Why is Iran being singled out while others escape scrutiny? : Erase nuclear apartheid
Israel maintains a long-standing policy of nuclear ambiguity. It neither confirms nor denies its arsenal, avoids international inspections, and remains outside the NPT altogether. Despite this, it faces no comparable sanctions regime, no sustained diplomatic isolation, and no credible threat of enforced disarmament.
March 30, 2026, by Ranjan Solomon, https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260330-why-is-iran-being-singled-out-while-others-escape-scrutiny-erase-nuclear-apartheid/
“The world cannot preach non-proliferation while practising selective permission. That is not law – it is hierarchy.”
The global discourse on nuclear weapons has drifted far from its stated goal of disarmament. What remains today is not a principled framework for peace, but a deeply unequal system of control – one that determines who may possess the most destructive weapons ever created, and who must remain permanently under suspicion.
At the centre of this unequal order stands Iran: scrutinized, sanctioned, and threatened, not for what it has done, but for what it might one day choose to do. This is not non-proliferation. This is nuclear apartheid.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which entered into force in 1970, was premised on a fundamental bargain. Non-nuclear states ag
At the same time, states outside the NPT framework – such as India and Pakistan—have developed and maintained nuclear weapons with limited global penalty. Most strikingly, Israel, widely believed to possess a sophisticated and undeclared nuclear arsenal, has never signed the NPT and remains entirely outside its inspection regime.
The result is unmistakable: a two-tier system – one for the powerful, and one for the rest.reed to forgo nuclear weapons in exchange for access to peaceful nuclear technology and a binding commitment by nuclear-armed states to pursue disarmament under Article VI. More than fifty years later, that promise stands betrayed.
The five recognized nuclear powers – United States, Russia, China, France, and United Kingdom – have not only failed to disarm, but have actively modernised their arsenals. Vast resources continue to be poured into enhancing nuclear capabilities, refining delivery systems, and ensuring the long-term viability of weapons that can destroy humanity many times over.
To understand why Iran is singled out, one must step beyond present-day accusations and examine history, law, and geopolitical power.
Iran’s nuclear programme did not begin in defiance. It began with encouragement from the United States under the “Atoms for Peace” initiative in the 1950s. At that time, Iran was a strategic ally, and its nuclear ambitions were supported rather than feared.
What changed was not technology – but politics.
The 1979 Revolution transformed Iran from a Western-aligned monarchy into an independent republic asserting sovereignty over its political and economic choices. From that moment onward, its nuclear programme was reframed—from legitimate development to potential threat.
Yet Iran remains a signatory to the NPT. It has accepted inspections and consistently maintained that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, even invoking religious prohibitions against nuclear weapons.
Contrast this with Israel.
Israel maintains a long-standing policy of nuclear ambiguity. It neither confirms nor denies its arsenal, avoids international inspections, and remains outside the NPT altogether. Despite this, it faces no comparable sanctions regime, no sustained diplomatic isolation, and no credible threat of enforced disarmament.
This disparity is not incidental. It reflects geopolitical alignment.
Similarly, nuclear-armed states—both within and outside the NPT—continue to expand and refine their arsenals without facing existential scrutiny. The international system tolerates nuclear weapons in the hands of allies while criminalizing their pursuit by adversaries.
Dimona’s Shadow: How Israel’s Nuclear Monopoly Warps Middle East Security
Iran is not singled out because it is uniquely dangerous. It is singled out because it is politically inconvenient.
The dominant justification for nuclear weapons remains deterrence—the idea that possession prevents aggression. Yet deterrence is not a neutral doctrine. It is a privilege reserved for those already in possession of nuclear weapons.
For states like Iran, surrounded by nuclear-armed powers and subject to repeated threats of military action, the logic of deterrence becomes difficult to ignore. The existence of nuclear arsenals elsewhere creates the very conditions under which others feel compelled to pursue them.
This is the central contradiction of the non-proliferation regime: it seeks to prevent proliferation without addressing the incentives that drive it.
So long as nuclear weapons are seen as guarantors of security for some, they will remain objects of aspiration for others.
Under Article X of the NPT, any state has the sovereign right to withdraw if it determines that extraordinary events jeopardize its supreme national interests. This provision is not exceptional – it is foundational.
If Iran were to exercise this right, it would not be acting outside international law. It would be exercising a legal option embedded within the treaty itself.
The real question, then, is not legality – it is legitimacy.
Why should a state remain bound by a treaty that is applied selectively? Why should obligations be enforced unevenly while privileges remain protected? A legal framework that lacks reciprocity cannot command enduring compliance.
The moral argument against nuclear weapons is not abstract – it is rooted in history. The Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, carried out by the United States, demonstrated the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear warfare. Entire cities were obliterated. Generations suffered from radiation, illness, and trauma.
These events should have marked the beginning of the end for nuclear weapons.
Instead, they marked the beginning of their normalization.
In response to this enduring threat, the international community has moved – however unevenly – toward prohibition. The Treaty on the Prohibition of nuclear weapons, adopted in 2017, represents a clear legal and moral rejection of nuclear weapons, declaring them incompatible with international humanitarian law. Yet none of the nuclear-armed states have joined it.
Once again, the pattern is unmistakable: law for some, exemption for others.
The path forward cannot be built on coercion or selective enforcement. It must be grounded in universality. A credible non-proliferation regime requires that all states—without exception – commit to disarmament. This includes the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, as well as India, Pakistan, and Israel.
The principle must be simple and uncompromising: no nuclear weapons anywhere, no exceptions, no hierarchies. Anything less is not non-proliferation – it is discrimination.
Talks without balance: Why Tehran and Trump remain locked in escalation
But disarmament cannot remain a rhetorical aspiration. It demands verifiable timelines, binding commitments, and enforcement mechanisms that apply equally to all states. Without such measures, treaties risk becoming instruments of pressure rather than pathways to peace. The authority of international law depends not only on what it proclaims, but on how consistently it is applied.
The current nuclear order is unsustainable because it is fundamentally unjust. It divides the world into those permitted to wield ultimate violence and those permanently denied that power under threat of punishment.
Iran’s case lays bare this contradiction with clarity. Whether one agrees with Iran’s policies or not, the principle remains clear: international law cannot survive selective application. A system that enforces restraint on some while excusing excess in others undermines its own legitimacy.
If the world is serious about peace, it must move beyond power and toward principle—beyond dominance and toward equality. Not a peace imposed by deterrence, but a peace secured by justice. Not a stability rooted in fear, but one grounded in mutual restraint and shared accountability.
Until then, the truth will remain stark and unavoidable:
There can be no peace with nuclear weapons. And there can be no justice with nuclear apartheid
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