Iran rejects IAEA report alleging increased enriched uranium stockpile
Aljazeera, 31 May 2025
The UN nuclear watchdog warns Tehran could be close to weapons-grade enriched uranium, as negotiations with the US continue.
Iran has rejected a report from the United Nations nuclear watchdog that alleges Tehran has increased its stockpile of highly enriched, near weapons-grade uranium by 50 percent in the last three months.
Iran said on Saturday that the accusation from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was “politically motivated and repeates baseless accusations”.
It all comes as nuclear deal negotiations are under way between the United States and Iran, with the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi saying that his country would respond to “elements of a US proposal” his Omani counterpart, Badr Al-Busaidi, had presented during a short visit to Tehran on Saturday.
Araghchi said that the proposal would be “responded to in line with the principles, national interests and rights of the people of Iran”.
Tehran insists that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only.
The IAEA said that as of May 17, Iran had amassed 408.6kg (900.8 pounds) of uranium enriched up to 60 percent – the only non-nuclear weapon state to do so, according to the UN agency – and had increased its stockpile by almost 50 percent to 133.8kg since its last report in February.
The wide-ranging, confidential report seen by several news agencies said Iran carried out secret nuclear activities with material not declared to the IAEA at three locations that have long been under investigation, calling it a “serious concern” and warning Tehran to change its course.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry slammed the report, saying the agency had used “forged documents provided by the Zionist regime [Israel]” and reiterated “previous biased and baseless accusations”.
Iran refutes allegations of undeclared nuclear sites or activities, stressing that it has instead cooperated with the agency in providing all necessary access to the alleged sites, it said.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran, while expressing regret over the publication of this report, which was prepared for political purposes through pressure on the agency, expresses its clear objection to its content,” the statement added.
Araghchi reaffirmed the country’s longstanding position, saying Tehran deems nuclear weapons “unacceptable”.
“If the issue is nuclear weapons, yes, we too consider this type of weapon unacceptable,” Araghchi, Iran’s lead negotiator in the nuclear talks with the US, said in a televised speech. “We agree with them on this issue.”
‘Both sides building leverage’
But the report, which was requested by the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors in November, will allow for a push by the US, Britain, France and Germany to declare Iran in violation of its non-proliferation obligations.
On Friday, US President Donald Trump said Iran “cannot have a nuclear weapon”………………………………………………………… https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/31/iran-increases-stockpile-of-enriched-uranium-by-50-percent-iaea-says
Gaza’s Hospitals ARE The Target
Caitlin Johnstone, May 30, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/gazas-hospitals-are-the-target?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=164774998&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
It’s a relatively well-known fact that Israeli forces have attacked the overwhelming majority of hospitals in Gaza and have launched hundreds upon hundreds of strikes on medical services in the enclave.
Whenever anyone mentions this fact publicly they’ll get Israel apologists babbling about “human shields” and absurdly trying to claim that there are Hamas bases in all the hospitals. But these talking points are invalidated by the fact that we’ve seen multiple reports from doctors documenting Israeli forces actually entering hospitals they’ve attacked and destroying all the individual pieces of medical equipment in those facilities, one by one.
The latest of such reports appears in the Greek outlet Efimerida ton Syntakton from a specialist surgeon named Christos Georgalas, who was at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza from April to May of this year.
According to machine translation, Georgalas calls Israel’s onslaught “a war mainly against children,” and describes horrific injuries that Israeli munitions have been inflicting upon young Palestinians.
Georgalas also describes repeated Israeli attacks on the hospital where he was working, which include the following:
“A Spanish colleague told me that when the Israelis came to the hospital where the MRI machine was, they tried to destroy everything. But the MRI machine is a huge machine. It’s like a car. Even if you shoot it, it can be repaired. So they brought in a specialist engineer to permanently destroy it. Because even if a bomb went off next to it, it could still be repaired. They had to bring in a specialist who knew the heart of the machine to make it non-functional. And that’s exactly what he did last February.
In our hospital, the Israelis went through the wards that were the incubators and systematically broke them one by one. The incubators with the crowbar! This has been recorded by my colleagues. The hospital where I worked was occupied by the Israelis for two months, in February and March 2024. The doctors who had remained in the hospital were tortured. They were lined up one by one and beaten. A total of around 80 of them were kidnapped. Of these, we do not know where 40 are or if they are alive. They killed many on the spot.”
Because Israel has been blocking journalists from entering the Gaza Strip, doctors have largely become the de facto reporters on the ground there.
We saw another report documenting Israel’s pattern of systematically destroying individual pieces of medical equipment back in February of this year, this time at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza. Doctors Without Borders emergency coordinator Caroline Seguin reported the following:
“There is no health system anymore in the northern part of Gaza. Kamal Adwan hospital has been razed, while Al Shifa, Al Awda and Indonesian hospitals are seriously damaged and only partially functioning. We were utterly shocked to observe that in Indonesian hospital every medical machine seemed to have been deliberately destroyed; they were smashed to pieces, one by one, to make sure no medical care could be provided anymore. You have to ask: What is the motivation of such action? These machines are made to save people’s lives, mothers, fathers, children. It’s devastating to see the state of these hospitals.”
In April of this year Seguin’s report on the Indonesian Hospital was corroborated by an emergency physician named Clayton Dalton, who wrote the following for The New Yorker:
Sultan led me upstairs, to the I.C.U., where wind blew through broken windows. He wanted to show me something that he had discovered after Israeli forces left the hospital. He pointed to a cardiac monitor near a wall. It appeared to have a bullet hole in its screen. Next to it was an EKG machine whose screen had been smashed.
“We entered a large storage room in the corner of the I.C.U. which was crammed with medical devices: ultrasound machines, I.V. pumps, dialysis machines, blood-pressure monitors. Each had apparently been destroyed by a bullet — not in a pattern one would expect from random shooting but, rather, methodically. I was stunned. I couldn’t think of any possible military justification for destroying lifesaving equipment.”
Indeed, there is no possible military justification for destroying lifesaving medical equipment. They were destroyed so that they could not be used to save lives. Israel has been systematically destroying Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure with the goal of making it uninhabitable, so that the territory can be seized by Israel.
That’s three separate accounts describing Israeli forces systematically destroying medical equipment in Gaza, from doctors who’d stand nothing to gain from lying about such a thing. The evidence is too overwhelming to deny.
There were no Hamas fighters hiding in the MRI machine. There were no tunnels in the incubators. No arms stockpiles in the EKG machine. Israel has been lying about Hamas hiding in hospitals this entire time. Hamas was never the target. Hospitals are the target. Healthcare is the target. That’s established far beyond any reasonable doubt by now.
New Israeli Law Allows Palestinians as Young as 12 to Be Imprisoned for Life.
Israel often accuses children of terrorism for actions like throwing stones at Israeli soldiers or at cars, with Israeli forces killing many children for stone throwing over the decades and Israeli lawmakers passing a minimum sentence of three years for the act.
May 29, 2025 , By Sharon Zhang , Truthout, https://truthout.org/articles/new-israeli-law-allows-palestinians-as-young-as-12-to-be-imprisoned-for-life/
A group of UN human rights experts is raising alarm over a recently-passed Israeli law that allows children as young as 12 years old to be sentenced to life in prison, saying that the legislation is likely a violation of international human rights law.
The experts say that the law, passed late last year, is crafted specifically to target Palestinian children, as Israeli authorities often accuse Palestinian children of terrorism while not charging Israeli children the same way — one fixture of Israel’s apartheid system.
“[A]uthorizing up to life imprisonment for children as young as 12 years old is not consistent with international law,” the experts wrote in a statement this month. “Under [the Convention on the Rights of the Child], the arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child must be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.”
The statement was signed by UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestine territory, Francesca Albanese, as well as Ben Saul, special rapporteur on the promotion of human rights in counterterrorism; Farida Shaheed, special rapporteur on the right to education; and K.P. Ashwini, special rapporteur on racism and intolerance.
Israel often accuses children of terrorism for actions like throwing stones at Israeli soldiers or at cars, with Israeli forces killing many children for stone throwing over the decades and Israeli lawmakers passing a minimum sentence of three years for the act.
Israeli officials have also long framed all Palestinians, including children, as terrorists.
This has led to the detention and killing of huge numbers of Palestinian children under Israeli occupation. According to a recent report by Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP), the proportion of children in administrative detention — meaning that they are being held without charges — has reached a record high amid Israel’s genocide.
Citing numbers from the Israeli Prison Service, DCIP reports that nearly 40 percent of Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons are being held without charges. This amounts to 119 of the 323 imprisoned by Israeli authorities, which represents “both the highest number and the highest proportion” in DCIP’s records on administrative detention.
“These figures highlight Israel’s continued criminalization of Palestinian childhood and its deepening disregard for fundamental legal protections,” the group wrote, adding that children and their families are frequently forbidden from contacting their lawyers by Israeli authorities.
The Israeli Knesset has sought to further punish these families in another recent law condemned in the UN experts’ statement.
That law, passed last year, allows child welfare benefits to be taken away if children are convicted of terrorist offenses. Experts say that the legislation is “overbroad” and not backed by evidence that such a punishment would deter supposed terrorist acts.
“We note that Israeli law does not withdraw benefits from children convicted of other serious offences, suggesting that the Amendment does not legitimately aim to suspend benefits that may be unnecessary while the child is in detention, but serves an ulterior punitive purpose,” the experts wrote.
This legislation, too, is aimed at punishing Palestinian children and their families, experts say, and is likely a violation of international law.
Israel was put on the UN’s list of international violators of children’s rights last year due to thousands of “grave violations” against children throughout Israel’s genocide in Gaza. However, Israel has continued to act with impunity, and UNICEF reported on Tuesday that Israel has killed or injured at least 50,000 children since October 2023 — with other estimates of casualties being far higher.
Sorry If This Is Antisemitic But I Think It’s Wrong To Burn Children Alive
Israel has done more to promote hatred toward Jews in the last year and a half than Stormfront has in its entire existence. No white supremacist propaganda will ever be as effective at spreading hatred against Jews as openly mass murdering children under a Star of David flag.
Caitlin Johnstone, May 28, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/sorry-if-this-is-antisemitic-but?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=164612152&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Israel is burning children alive in Gaza. And call me an antisemitic Jew-hating Nazi terrorist lover if you must, but I happen to believe that’s wrong.
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Now that it’s been made clear that Israel’s goal in Gaza is the complete ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians, Israel apologists have been shifting from bleating about hostages and Hamas to arguing that ethnic cleansing is actually fine and good. Which makes sense; that’s really the only argument they can make at this point.
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Never forget that the US Congress gave Netanyahu dozens of standing ovations during a single speech while he was in the middle of perpetrating history’s first live-streamed genocide. This is who they are. It will always be who they are.
Israel has done more to promote hatred toward Jews in the last year and a half than Stormfront has in its entire existence. No white supremacist propaganda will ever be as effective at spreading hatred against Jews as openly mass murdering children under a Star of David flag.
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Support for Israel used to be the overwhelmingly dominant opinion in the western world. Luckily that’s changing, but the fact that this was the case until Israel exposed itself shows you really can’t just go along with majority opinion on any issue. You need to think for yourself.
Ignore what the crowd says. Ignore people who scream at you for disagreeing with their position. Look at the raw facts as free from your own cognitive biases as you are able, and have the courage to stand on your own if necessary.
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Gaza is such an easy moral issue to get right that there’s no way anyone who gets it wrong isn’t a shitty person in other areas of their life as well. I feel sorry for anyone who has interpersonal relationships with Israel supporters, because they’d suck to be around.
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World Food Programme director Cindy McCain is saying that she’s seen no evidence of Hamas stealing aid entering Gaza. Israel’s one and only argument for continuing to block aid to Gaza is being publicly debunked by a member of one of the most pro-Israel families in US politics.
The US has reportedly delivered some 90,000 tons of weapons to Israel since October 2023.
I mostly focus on the Gaza genocide these days, but sometimes figures like this make me zoom out a few clicks and think about how bat shit insane our civilization is as a whole. Just think how much good we could do in the world if we weren’t pouring resources into evil shit like this.
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Murdoch-owned publication The Australian came after me the other day for tweeting “Two Israeli embassy staff getting shot in Washington DC is less newsworthy than tens of thousands of Palestinians being killed in Israel’s genocidal land grab. It is less important. It deserves less attention. It is not the main story. Israel’s genocide in Gaza is the main story.”
They called me a “journalist” in scare quotes, which I guess is supposed to be an insult, but coming from the Murdoch press it can only be seen as a compliment.
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According to the official western narrative, Americans becoming violently radicalized by a US-backed genocide is a bigger issue than the US-backed genocide.
According to the official narrative, university protests against a transparent ethnic cleansing operation are a greater concern than the transparent ethnic cleansing operation.
According to the official narrative, western Zionist Jews feeling emotionally upset about opposition to a modern-day holocaust is a more urgent problem than a modern-day holocaust.
All of our institutions are backwards and evil. Our media. Our politics. Our education system. Our manufacturers of mainstream culture. This should be clear to everyone by now.
Every historical evil we were taught never to repeat is being repeated by our own rulers.
Everything we were taught to fear about the countries that the western empire hates is true of the western empire.
Every dark future we were warned about in dystopian fiction is true of the dystopia we are living in presently.
We live in a nightmare of a civilization, under an empire that is fueled by human blood. The closer you examine it, the uglier it gets.
This cannot be allowed to continue. It must not be allowed to continue.
The empire must fall.
Enough Is Enough. Israel Is Committing War Crimes- Former Israeli PM
SCHEERPOST, Ehud Olmert, Haaretz, May 27, 2025 .Ehud Olmert is the former Israeli prime minister from 2006 to 2009 and mayor of Jerusalem from 1993 to 2003. Olmert was a member of the Likud party from 1973 to 2006.
The government of Israel is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning and with no chances of success. Never since its establishment has the State of Israel waged such a war. The criminal gang headed by Benjamin Netanyahu has set a precedent without equal in Israel’s history in this area, too.
The obvious result of Operation Gideon’s Chariots is, first and foremost, the confused activity of Israeli military units deployed around Gaza. This is true particularly in neighborhoods where our soldiers have already fought, were hurt and fell while killing many Hamas combatants, who deserve to die, and many more innocent civilians. These have joined the statistics of pointless victims among the Palestinian population, reaching monstrous proportions.
Recent operations in Gaza have nothing to do with legitimate war goals. The government sends our soldiers – and the military obeys – to wander around Gaza City, Jabalya and Khan Yunis neighborhoods in an illegitimate military operation. This is now a private political war. Its immediate result is the transformation of Gaza into a humanitarian disaster area.
Over the past year, harsh accusations were voiced worldwide against the Israeli government and its military’s conduct in Gaza, including accusations of genocide and war crimes. In public debates in Israel and on the international arena, I’ve rejected such accusations firmly, though I didn’t shrink from criticizing the government. The international media listens to all voices in the public debate in Israel. It can discern between those who serve as mouthpieces for Netanyahu and his lackeys and his opponents, who view him, as the media is currently fond of saying, as the head of a crime family. I didn’t hesitate to give interviews in Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, the U.K. and elsewhere in the international arena. Quite often, I disappointed interviewers when I vehemently asserted that Israel wasn’t committing war crimes in Gaza. Excessive killing happened, but, I claimed firmly and with conviction, in no case did a government official give orders to hit Gazan civilians indiscriminately.
The great number of innocent civilians killed in Gaza was hard to fathom, unjustified, unacceptable. But all, as I have said on every media outlet in the world, resulted from a vicious war.
This war should have ended by early 2024. It continued without justification, without any clear goal and with no political vision for the future of Gaza and the Middle East in general. The military, charged with and duty-bound to execute government orders, acted in many cases rashly, incautiously, over-aggressively. However, it did so without any order or instruction or directive from military top brass to hit civilians indiscriminately. Therefore, as I understood it at the time, no war crimes had been committed.
Genocide and war crimes are legal terms that very much refer to the intent and responsibility of the people authorized to formulate the war’s objectives, its conduct and its purpose, the boundaries of fighting and the limitations on the use of force. I took every available opportunity to distinguish between the crimes we have been accused of, which I refused to admit, and the carelessness and indifference regarding Gazan victims and the unbearable human cost we’ve been levying there. The first accusation I rejected, the second I admitted to.
In recent weeks I’ve been no longer able to do so. What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. We’re not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government policy – knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.
First, starving out Gaza. On this issue, the position of senior government figures is public and clear. Yes, we’ve been denying Gazans food, medicine and basic living needs as part of an explicit policy. Netanyahu, typically, is trying to blur the type of orders he’s been giving, in order to evade legal and criminal responsibility in due course. But some of his lackeys are saying so outright, in public, even with pride: Yes, we will starve out Gaza. Because all Gazans are Hamas, there’s no moral or operational limitation on exterminating them all, over two million people.
Israeli media outlets, each for its own reasons (some understandable) are trying to present a moderate version of events in Gaza. But the picture displayed around the world is much broader, much more devastating. It’s impossible to view it with equanimity and a nod, as if the world’s reaction is merely a widespread outburst of antisemitism, because everybody hates us and they’re all antisemites.
Well, no. French president Emmanuel Macron is no antisemite. I know him well. I’ve been talking to him over the last few months. When the hour was at hand, the French military stood on the front line to defend Israel and cooperated in intercepting Iran’s missile attacks. “We’re fighting with you against your enemies under my direction, and you’ve been accusing me of supporting terrorism,” Macron recently said. He is a friend of Israel, as are British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and many others who’ve joined them from within the ranks of Europe’s most outstanding and important cabinet ministers and leaders.
They’ve been hearing the voices from Gaza. They see the suffering of hundreds of thousands of civilians. They’ve been hearing the voices from Israeli cabinet meetings and realize the obvious: Israeli cabinet ministers, headed by crime boss Netanyahu, are actively, unhesitatingly and with malice aforethought are pursuing a policy of starvation and humanitarian pressure, with potentially catastrophic results.
Voices are already rising from Israel-friendly governments such as Canada, the U.K. and France, calling for concrete measures against the government, though these could cause grievous harm to Israel. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://scheerpost.com/2025/05/27/former-israeli-pm-enough-is-enough-israel-is-committing-war-crimes/
Does Tehran want the bomb?
by beyondnuclearinternational, Linda Pentz Gunter
https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/05/25/does-tehran-want-the-bomb/
Is Iran’s nuclear power program a tactical threat or purely commercial, asks Linda Pentz Gunter
“As a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on its religious and ethical principles, has never sought nuclear weapons and remains committed to the principle of non-production and non-use of weapons of mass destruction.”
That was the reassurance given by Iran’s foreign minister, Seyyed Abbas Araghchi, during the Tehran Dialogue Forum hosted earlier this month by the Center for Political and International Studies of Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
It’s a familiar refrain. Iran has consistently argued that it is exercising its “inalienable right” as a signatory to the NPT “to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes” as allowed under Article IV of the treaty.
But is it?
Iran has freely admitted that it has enriched uranium-235 up to 60% — considered at least “weapons usable” (higher than 90% is considered weapons-grade.) Why would it choose to — or need to — do this if it has no intention of seeking nuclear weapons production, as Araghchi and others before him have claimed?
The answer to that question seems obvious and one we have repeated ad infinitum when exposing the flaw in the NPT which, in granting the development of civilian nuclear programs to signatories, ensures the pathway to the bomb is left permanently clear.
Even should Iran never actually develop nuclear weapons, it can use its civil program as a threat to do so. It is no idle threat. The possession of a civilian nuclear program affords Iran the materials, equipment, personnel and know-how to transition to nuclear weapons should it so choose.
What might push Iran to make that choice depends a lot on how the current talks go. Keeping Israel at bay — which wanted to start bombing Iran’s nuclear installations immediately — was one of the few sensible decisions the Trump administration has made.
However, in the view of Mohsen Milani, Executive Director of the Center for Strategic & Diplomatic Studies and Professor of Politics at the University of South Florida, developing nuclear weapons has always been on Iran’s agenda. Milani was speaking during a May 20 webinar on the Iran nuclear talks hosted by the Quincy Institute. You can watch the full webinar below.
“I have always believed and I continue to believe that Iran’s nuclear program was based on turning Iran into a potential nuclear power,” Milani said. “That is a power that has the infrastructure, the expertise, to develop a bomb should they decide to develop a bomb.”
How close Iran might be to that achievement is also much debated. In July 2024, then Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, suggested Iran “is now probably one or two weeks” away from producing enough weapons grade material to make a nuclear weapon. Milani thinks Iran “is much closer than it has ever been,” but doubts the timeline is one or two weeks.
But the key is that “Iran’s nuclear program has never been the central part of Iran’s defense posture, nor has the axis of resistance,” Milani said, referring to the informal coalition of Iranian-supported organizations across the region united to counter the influence of Israel and the US. What Iran is doing is ensuring it can keep the nuclear option, “should there be a need for it,” Milani said. The Trump administration’s approach in these negotiations, in Milani’s view, “is they want to make sure that Iran is incapable of doing what it has tried to do for the past twenty years.”
The whole issue of Iran’s nuclear aspirations is squarely in the news again as the Trump administration continues talks with Tehran about its nuclear program. Confusion and uncertainty has been created by the US side, principally Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, who has told Iran it can enrich uranium to commercial grade (below 5%), then changed his tune and insisted Iran can have no nuclear program at all.
After four rounds of largely fruitless talks, the Iranians began to lose patience, laying down their red line. “To say that ‘we will not allow Iran to enrich uranium’ is a huge mistake,” warned Ayatollah Khamenei of the American threat. “No one is waiting for permission from anyone. The Islamic Republic has its own policies, its own methods, and it pursues its own agenda,” he added.
Pushing Iran around on this might lead to another negative outcome. Iran could leave the NPT. “As a founding advocate for a nuclear-weapons-free zone in West Asia and a long-time NPT member, Iran has shown good faith by engaging in indirect talks with the United States,” Araghchi said at the conference. “But the Iranian nation cannot forfeit its legitimate right to peaceful nuclear technology, including enrichment, which is enshrined in the NPT.”
The speakers on the Quincy webinar agreed that this public back-and-forth by both sides was a mistake and that Iran should deal directly with the United States instead of through an intermediary, and behind closed doors.
By last Wednesday, the Iranian parliament had also made its views known, declaring it would not be held to any uranium enrichments level caps.
By Friday, a fifth round of talks had taken place, again with the Omanis as intermediaries at least some of the time. It was unclear what, if any, progress had been made, with both sides sounding cautiously optimistic. However, a red line for Iran remains the prospect of shipping its entire stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia, as the Americans have suggested. Iran still insists it is happy to renounce any future nuclear weapons production, but not uranium enrichment. Further talks are planned.
But at the end of the day a larger question looms, which is whether nuclear nations like the US, which claims might and influence due to the possession of its nuclear weapons, has a right to tell another country it cannot have them?
Rather than perpetually wrestling with the nuclear hydra, the US could lead by a very different example and show the world that all of these extreme threats would be eliminated by disarming from nuclear weapons altogether. And given the template of flaws that Iran has laid out for us regarding our current disarmament treaties, that means abolishing nuclear power as well.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear and writes for and edits Beyond Nuclear International. Opinions are her own.
Trump warns Netanyahu off Iran strike as nuclear talks continue
28 May,2025 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/28/trump-warns-netanyahu-off-iran-strike-as-nuclear-talks-continue
US president says an Israeli strike ‘would be inappropriate to do right now because we’re very close to a solution.’
United States President Donald Trump has said that he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hold off on any strike against Iran to give his administration more time to push for a new nuclear deal with Tehran, as several rounds of talks have been held in Oman and Italy.
Trump told reporters on Wednesday at the White House that he relayed to Netanyahu a strike “would be inappropriate to do right now because we’re very close to a solution”
The Israeli leader has been threatening a bombardment of Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran has said it would respond with severity if any such attack were launched.
In the meantime, Iran may pause uranium enrichment if the US releases frozen Iranian funds and recognises its right to refine uranium for civilian use under a “political deal” that could lead to a broader nuclear accord, two Iranian official sources told the Reuters news agency.
The sources, close to the negotiating team, said on Wednesday that a “political understanding with the United States could be reached soon” if Washington accepted Tehran’s conditions. The sources told Reuters that under this arrangement, Tehran would halt uranium enrichment for a year.
The latest developments came as the head of the UN’s atomic watchdog group said that “the jury is still out” on negotiations between Iran and the US over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear programme. But Rafael Mariano Grossi described the ongoing negotiations as a good sign.
“I think that is an indication of a willingness to come to an agreement. And I think that… is something possible.”
The 2015 nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), placed limits on Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.
It collapsed after Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the agreement in 2018, leading to a sharp escalation in tensions and a breakdown in diplomatic relations.
The key sticking point
US officials have repeatedly said that any new deal must include a firm commitment from Iran to halt uranium enrichment, which they view as a potential pathway to building nuclear weapons.
However, Iran has consistently denied seeking nuclear arms, insisting its programme is solely for civilian purposes. It has rejected Washington’s demand to eliminate enrichment capabilities, calling it an infringement on national sovereignty.
It remains the critical sticking point after negotiators for Tehran and Washington met for a fifth round of Oman-mediated talks in Rome.
Instead, Iran has reportedly proposed that the US publicly recognise Tehran’s right to enrich uranium under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and approve the release of Iranian oil revenues frozen under US sanctions.
US protects Israel as Netanyahu vows to ‘take over’ Gaza, using hunger as as weapon
Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed to colonize Gaza, saying, “We will take control of all the territory of the Strip”. He is using starvation as a weapon, as Donald Trump tries to expel Palestinians to Libya or other countries. The US imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to protect Israeli war criminals.
GeoPoliticalEconomy, By Ben Norton, 22 May 25
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted that Israel’s goal is to colonize Gaza.
“We will take control of all the territory of the [Gaza] Strip”, Netanyahu pledged on 19 May.
Israel had agreed to a ceasefire in January, but unilaterally violated the agreement in March and restarted its brutal war on Gaza.
Donald Trump personally gave Israel the green light to break the truce, according to Israeli officials.
Israeli minister boasts: “We’re destroying everything… We are conquering, cleansing, and remaining in Gaza”
Israel’s extreme-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the Israeli security cabinet and Netanyahu ally, boasted that the IDF is “destroying everything left in the Gaza Strip”, and that “the army is leaving no stone unturned”, reported the top Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Smotrich admitted that Israel is intentionally killing civilian members of the government of Gaza, including those who are not part of Hamas. “We’re eliminating ministers, bureaucrats, money handlers”, he said with pride.
“We are conquering, cleansing, and remaining in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed”, bragged Smotrich.
In January 2023, before the latest Gaza war, Smotrich described himself as a “fascist homophobe”, telling Israel’s LGBT community, “I won’t stone gays, [as long as] you won’t feed me shrimp”.
In November 2023, just a few weeks after the war started, Smotrich publicly called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza, through so-called “voluntary migration”.
Then, in April 2024, Smotrich demanded the “total annihilation” of Gaza. He invoked a Biblical passage in which God ordered the complete destruction of the nation of Amalek, including the killing of all women and children: “You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven”. This was an explicit call for genocide.
After Donald Trump won the US presidential election in November 2024, Smotrich tweeted that 2025 would be the year when Israel fully colonized and officially annexed “Judea and Samaria”, the term Israeli settlers use for the West Bank — which according to international law is Palestinian territory that has been illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
In Gaza, Israel uses starvation as a “bargaining chip”, UN humanitarian chief says
As Israel unilaterally restarted its brutal war in March, it also imposed a suffocating blockade on Gaza, preventing food and medicine from entering the densely populated strip.
The UN humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, stated on 13 May that all 2.1 million Palestinians trapped in Gaza faced famine conditions.
Fletcher called on the UN Security Council (UNSC) “to stop the 21st-century atrocity to which we bear daily witness in Gaza”.
The UNSC has been unable to take action, however, because it has been paralyzed by the United States, which has repeatedly used its veto power to protect Israel. This was true under the Joe Biden administration, and it has continued since Trump returned to the White House in January.
Fletcher serves as the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.
“I can tell you from having visited what’s left of Gaza’s medical system that death on this scale has a sound and a smell that does not leave you”, Fletcher recalled. “As one hospital worker described it, ‘children scream as we peel burnt fabric from their skin’”.
The UN humanitarian chief stated that “Israel denies us access, placing the objective of depopulating Gaza before the lives of civilians”.
Instead of allowing in UN aid, the US and Israel created an alternative mechanism that Fletcher described as a “cynical sideshow” and “deliberate distraction”, which is merely a “fig leaf for further violence and displacement”.
The US-Israeli plan for Gaza “makes starvation a bargaining chip”, the UN humanitarian chief said.
A week later, on 19 May, Fletcher warned, “There are 14,000 [Palestinian] babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them”.
“We run all sorts of risks trying to get that baby food through to those mothers who cannot feed their children right now because they’re malnourished”, the UN humanitarian chief explained.
Israel’s mass starvation strategy
Israel is using mass starvation as a tactic to try to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, or kill those who refuse to leave.
The independent website Drop Site News reported on speeches given by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, which frankly outline their sadistic strategy.
Netanyahu revealed that he only allowed a few aid trucks to enter Gaza in order to minimize international condemnation and ensure continued US support………………………………………………………….
Trump plans to expel Palestinians and ethnically cleanse Gaza
Trump has floated various plans to try to ethnically cleanse Gaza and expel Palestinians to another country………………………………………………………………………
Trump’s ICC sanctions paralyze the Hague, protecting Israel from legal consequences
The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant in November 2024 for Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
In February 2025, just two weeks after he returned to the White House, Trump imposed sanctions on the ICC, accusing it of “engag[ing] in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel”.
“The ICC’s recent actions against Israel and the United States set a dangerous precedent, directly endangering current and former United States personnel, including active service members of the Armed Forces, by exposing them to harassment, abuse, and possible arrest”, the White House warned.
The Trump administration invoked the 2002 American Servicemembers’ Protection Act. This law, which was passed under the George W. Bush administration, is commonly known as the “Hague Invasion Act”, and threatens military intervention in the Netherlands to stop the prosecution of US officials and their allies.
The US-based Center for Constitutional Rights denounced Trump’s sanctions on the ICC as a “direct attack on the rule of law” that is “intended to embolden perpetrators across the world and to inhibit the pursuit of international justice against the most powerful”.
The Associated Press reported in May that Trump’s sanctions on the ICC have paralyzed the Hague and prevented it from investigating the crimes committed by top Israeli officials.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, who is a British citizen, had his bank accounts in the UK frozen.
Microsoft even cancelled Khan’s email account.
Microsoft has provided the Israeli military with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing services during its genocidal war on Gaza, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
A non-governmental organization that helps the ICC compile evidence had to move its money out of US bank accounts, due to Trump’s sanctions, according to the AP.
“The Hague-based court’s American staffers have been told that if they travel to the U.S. they risk arrest”, the AP added. https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/05/23/us-israel-netanyahu-take-over-gaza-hunger/
Extermination as negotiation: Understanding Israel’s strategy in Gaza
Behind the language of planning lies a campaign of sterilization and condensation — a vision of Gaza not as a home, but as a holding site. Leaked reports whisper of forced transfers, of Palestinians being sent to Libya or elsewhere in Africa, sketching futures of removal dressed in the language of pragmatism. In other words, Israel maneuvers, cajoles, agrees, renges, returns to blood, and ultimately remains hesitant in fulfilling even its own plans.
Whether it’s total conquest or managed containment, Israel doesn’t have a single grand strategy for Gaza, but it uses the possibility of both to prolong the war.
Mondoweiss, By Abdaljawad Omar May 23, 2025
In the weeks since the unveiling of “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” the renewed Israeli offensive to permanently “conquer” all of Gaza, it has become increasingly clear that Israel’s internal decision-making is not oriented toward a singular strategic endgame, but toward a recursive logic of exhaustion.
Israel isn’t choosing between total conquest and technocratic containment via an Arab-brokered ceasefire plan. Instead, it is deploying these options as devices to stretch the war and weaponize its duration rather than end it. Neither is an actual alternative to the other.
This is not a paradox, but a method. “Gideon’s Chariots,” with its objective to concentrate over two million Palestinians in Rafah and “cleanse” the remainder of Gaza, is not merely a plan of conquest. It is a fantasy of sterilization dressed in logistical rationality. Its brutality lies not only in its intentions — military and demographic — but also in its open-endedness, because it will be an occupation without governance or responsibility.
It imagines Gaza as a surgical field: empty of social density and politics, a flattened terrain where the Israeli army may operate unhindered and where civilians are transformed into captives or debris. This is where extermination can proceed behind the veil of humanitarian logistics. But this is the thing: while Israel announces its plan and leaks many of its contours, making sure that the endgame of extermination is out in the open, it also delays its fulfillment.
The rejection of the Egyptian proposal for Gaza’s postwar governance, meanwhile, functions less as a strategic rebuttal and more as a temporal maneuver: it defers the stabilization of Gaza, suspends the possibility of a postwar architecture, and secures Israel’s role as the sole arbiter of movement, aid, reconstruction, and survival. The proposal — which secured the backing of the Arab League — offered a ceasefire, the release of prisoners, and the creation of a Palestinian technocratic administration in Gaza under regional and international auspices. The governing authority would be civilian, non-Hamas, and possibly linked to the Palestinian Authority. Arab security forces, primarily from Egypt and the UAE, would maintain public order. Israel, in theory, would retain the ability to strike if Hamas rearmed, but the core logic was one of pacified governance and externally monitored reconstruction.
But this alternative, while marketed as pragmatic containment, reveals its own structure of control. It does not offer Palestinains liberation or sovereignty. It does not restore Palestinian political life. Instead, it imagines a depoliticized Gaza, administered through foreign technocrats, where governance is reduced to management and resistance is metabolized into security threats.
Yes, it ends the massacres, but it continues the process of unmaking through other means. Yes, it stops ethnic cleansing and genocide, but it only offers a minimum respite. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Behind the language of planning lies a campaign of sterilization and condensation — a vision of Gaza not as a home, but as a holding site. Leaked reports whisper of forced transfers, of Palestinians being sent to Libya or elsewhere in Africa, sketching futures of removal dressed in the language of pragmatism. In other words, Israel maneuvers, cajoles, agrees, renges, returns to blood, and ultimately remains hesitant in fulfilling even its own plans.
………………………………..rather than shift course, Israel doubles down, leaning into ambiguity and attrition, hoping to exhaust global outrage the way it hopes to exhaust Palestinian resistance: through delay, confusion, the normalization of collapse, and of course, through coercion by the weaponization of antisemitism.
In this moment, what Israel seeks is a “stable instability” in which Gaza is rendered uninhabitable yet governed, massacred yet silent, present yet politically nullified. Both plans — the one it executes and the one it rejects — serve this grammar. Whether through total war or managed containment, the objective remains: to erase Palestine as a subject of history, and to replace it with a population that can be controlled, administered, or vanished. Whether this will succeed remains uncertain. But the cracks are visible in the disillusionment of soldiers and in the rage of Israeli prisoners’ families. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/05/extermination-disguised-as-negotiation-understanding-israels-strategy-in-gaza/?fbclid=IwY2xjawKiJnVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETFhMVJScjZYcDE0UEpFRko2AR6Ov_j6MzhAmpAl-ntfqrrz9g7gbweyo2JQZgXmQD20EFcLFNN_7U3rbw1FBA_aem_EoA46q1R_Hz9m5KhsFpSqw
Israeli Military Says It Will Occupy 75% of Gaza Within Two Months, ‘Concentrate’ the Civilian Population
The IDF’s plan is to force civilians into three small areas in Gaza
by Dave DeCamp May 25, 2025 , https://news.antiwar.com/2025/05/25/israeli-military-says-it-will-occupy-75-of-gaza-within-two-months-concentrate-the-civilian-population/
The Israeli military expects that it will occupy 75% of Gaza’s territory within two months and plans to “concentrate” the entire civilian population into three small areas in the Strip.
According to Israeli media, Palestinian civilians will be confined to the center of Gaza City, a strip of land in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah and Nuseirat, and an area in al-Mawasi on the coast in southern Gaza.
The IDF said the purpose of the offensive is to destroy Hamas infrastructure, although previous reports have said the plan is to destroy every remaining building in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already made clear that Israel’s goal was the full military occupation of Gaza and the ethnic cleansing of the territory, which he calls the “Trump plan,” although it’s unclear where the Palestinian population could go.
The IDF announcement about its offensive comes as a new US and Israeli-backed aid scheme is expected to be launched in Gaza, but there are conflicting reports about when it will actually start. According to Haaretz, the aid distribution, which will involve private American security contractors, will start Monday, although other Israeli media reports say it has been postponed.
The aid scheme has been rejected by the UN and other aid agencies that operate in Gaza, and it has been condemned as a transparent effort to forcibly displace starving Palestinian civilians into concentration camps. Amid the criticism, Jake Wood, the CEO of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which was created for the US-Israeli aid plan, announced his resignation.
“The aid program cannot be implemented while adhering to humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, fairness, and independence – principles I will not abandon,” Wood said. He called on Israel to “significantly expand aid delivery to Gaza through all possible means.”
Israel’s aid plan for Gaza is a key part of its strategy to expel Palestinians
Israel’s plan to handle the distribution of aid in Gaza via a U.S. private contractor is a key part of its plan to ethnically cleanse its population. Here’s how.
Mondoweiss, By Qassam Muaddi May 22, 2025
The forcible expulsion of the Palestinian people is now the explicit goal of Israel’s war on Gaza. Late on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would only end the war if “Hamas surrenders, Gaza is demilitarized, and we implement the Trump plan.”
Trump walked back his February plan for the U.S. to “own” Gaza, expel its people, and turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East,” but Netanyahu seized upon it all the same and took it as a green light to exterminate Gaza. The latest phase in this plan is Israel’s weaponization of humanitarian aid for the purpose of furthering the Gaza final solution.
The plan is simple: starve Gaza’s population, and only create one designated flattened stretch of land where they can come to get food rations — facilitated by the Israeli army and run by a U.S. private contractor. Gaza’s population will be forced to go to these collection points, where they will be corralled inside what would effectively be a concentration camp, located in what used to be the city of Rafah, now a flattened wasteland.
Netanyahu made all this clear in his latest announcement, which came a day after Israel said it would allow “minimal” amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza for “diplomatic reasons” — to avoid war crimes charges and images of famine.
On Monday, the Israeli war cabinet finally approved the entry of the aid, after two months of a complete Israeli blockade on the besieged territory. This forced starvation has led to the spread of hunger and disease, with the Gaza Government Media Office reporting that at least 70,000 Palestinian children have been hospitalized for severe malnutrition.
The cabinet decision followed intense negotiations with Hamas in Qatar, with the mediation of the Gulf state, and pressure from the U.S. envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. The talks started following Hamas’s release of Israeli-American soldier Edan Alexander earlier last week…………………………………………………………
Israel’s goal: Ethnic cleansing
When Israel announced its latest offensive aiming to control all of Gaza, dubbed operation “Gideon’s Chariot,” Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported that one of the phases of the the operation would include transferring the majority of the Palestinian population to the south of the Strip, especially in the Rafah area. These reports appeared simultaneously alongside Netanyahu’s statements to Israeli reservists last week that Israel aims to force Palestinians out of Gaza, and that the main obstacle is finding countries willing to accept them. The concentration of Palestinians in southern Gaza is seen by most analysts as a preparatory step for forcing them out. It is believed that this new plan to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza might be the last piece of this strategy…………………………………………………..
New aid plan
Even though the Israeli war cabinet approved the entry of aid trucks on Monday, the actual implementation of the entry of aid has been gradual. On Thursday, the Gaza Government Media Office announced that some trucks arrived in the Strip for distribution three days after they were due.
International organizations, including UN bodies such as UNRWA and the World Food Programme (WFP), have traditionally been key players in aid distribution in Gaza. But minutes following the cabinet’s decision this week, the Times of Israel reported that Israel would be adopting a new mechanism to distribute aid through the Israeli army, bypassing international organizations.
The most important component of this new mechanism is that aid wouldn’t be distributed to all parts of the Gaza Strip, but to specific distribution points where Palestinians would be required to move to receive it.
This Israeli plan has actually been previously announced as a joint U.S.-Israeli plan, which included the distribution of aid determined by limited rations to households. In Israel’s new plan, rather than working with traditional aid groups, the distribution would be organized by the recently established, U.S.-based Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. On May 4, international organizations present in Gaza unanimously voiced their rejection of the plan in a joint statement, saying that “it contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles and appears designed to reinforce control over life-sustaining items as a pressure tactic as part of a military strategy.”
The statement was followed on May 6 by a statement by UN aid teams, who said the plan “appears to be a deliberate attempt to weaponize the aid.”
A month earlier, on April 8, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres rejected Israeli control over aid distribution in Gaza, stating that it risks “further controlling and callously limiting aid down to the last calorie and grain of flour.” Guterres added that the UN “will not participate in any arrangement that does not fully respect the humanitarian principles: humanity, impartiality, independence, and neutrality.”
Meanwhile, Gaza starves
As Israel continues to be formally engaged in ceasefire talks with Hamas in Qatar, its decision to allow the entry of aid was presented as a step forward in the effort to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. However, if carried out according to Israel’s plan, the delivery of aid itself could become another step in the ongoing Israeli strategy to fulfill its now explicit goal of expelling the strip of its Palestinian population.
In the meantime, hunger in the strip accentuates by the minute, claiming so far the lives of at least 57 Palestinians, mostly children, since October 2023 according to the Palestinian health ministry, and provoking the miscarriage of 300 pregnant women due to lack of nutrients. Gaza’s government media office also said that an unspecified number of elderly people had died due to the lack of medicines, in the same time period.
All of this continues as Israeli forces escalate airstrikes across the strip, killing 82 Palestinians in the past 24 hours (Tuesday to Wednesday), according to the Palestinian health ministry. Since October 2023, the Israeli assault on Gaza has officially killed more than 53,000 Palestinians, with most estimates of the genocide’s total toll being much higher. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/05/israels-aid-plan-for-gaza-is-a-key-part-of-its-strategy-to-expel-palestinians/
Gaza “a Gaping Wound on Humanity:” Spain Convenes Int’l Conference to call for Arms Embargo on Israel
Juan Cole, 05/26/2025, https://www.juancole.com/2025/05/solution-international-meeting.html
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Spanish wire service EFE reports that delegations from 20 countries met Sunday in Madrid in a push to pressure Israel to halt its total war on Gaza and to establish a Palestinian state. Convened by Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares, the conference sought to move to concrete actions.
Israel had blocked all humanitarian aid for two months beginning in March, provoking a crisis of malnutrition in Gaza, almost all of whose people have been made internal refugees several times over by the Israeli military. Israel began letting a small amount of aid in last week, apparently under the pressure of the Trump administration, but United Nations officials decried it as “a drop in the ocean” compared to the urgent needs of 2.2 million Palestinians.
Addressing the attendees at the conference on Sunday, Madrid’s foreign minister said, “The sole interest that all of us gathered here today have is to stop this unjust, cruel, and inhumane Israeli war in Gaza, break the blockade of humanitarian aid, and move definitively toward a two-state solution.”
Of this last point, according to the Anadolu Agency, he asked, “What’s the alternative? Kill all the Palestinians? Send them, I don’t know where -— to the moon?”
Albares said, “Gaza is a gaping wound in humanity… There are no words to describe what is happening in Gaza—but just because there are no words doesn’t mean we will remain silent.”
He said that the proposed measures were not intended to be anti-Israel and that Spain recognized Israel’s legitimate security needs. “But,” he observed, “exactly the same right to peace and security that the Israeli people possess is also possessed by the Palestinian people.” He added,”the Palestinian people cannot be condemned eternally to the estate of a people of refugees.”
Albares called for three tangible steps, including the suspension of the EU-Israel trade agreement. As for the second, he insisted, “We all need to implement an arms embargo; there can be no arms sales to Israel.”
He said that the proposed measures were not intended to be anti-Israel and that Spain recognized Israel’s legitimate security needs. “But,” he observed, “exactly the same right to peace and security that the Israeli people possess is also possessed by the Palestinian people.” He added,”the Palestinian people cannot be condemned eternally to the estate of a people of refugees.”
Albares called for three tangible steps, including the suspension of the EU-Israel trade agreement. As for the second, he insisted, “We all need to implement an arms embargo; there can be no arms sales to Israel.”
Speaking of the gathering, he observed optimistically, “There is a lot of diplomatic muscle in Madrid.” He urged the breaking of the “vicious circle” of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
The Madrid Plus group of nations met once before with 10 attendees, including Western European nations that had recognized the State of Palestine (Ireland, Spain and Norway), along with the Middle Eastern countries of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkiye. The membership has doubled for this meeting. Germany, Italy, France, and Portugal joined this time, having been absent at the first gathering. Brazil was also there.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza: Israel’s Operation Gideon’s Chariots
a broader, ever more lethal offensive was in the offing with five new IDF divisions even as aid was being provided. This was implicitly telling. Did Palestinian civilians matter in so far as they should be fed, even as they were being butchered and encouraged into fleeing?
May 21, 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/the-ethnic-cleansing-of-gaza-israels-operation-gideons-chariots/
The latest phase of slaughter and seizure on the part of Israeli forces in Gaza has commenced. Following relentless airstrikes that have left hundreds of Palestinians dead, Operation Gideon’s Chariots is now in full swing, begun even as Israel and Hamas concluded a second day of ceasefire talks in Doha. The intention, according to the Israeli Defense Forces, is to expand “operational control” in the Strip while seeking to free the remaining Israeli hostages. In the process, it hopes to achieve what has, to date, been much pie in the sky: defeating Hamas and seizing control of the enclave.
The mendacious pattern of the IDF and Netanyahu government has become clearer than ever. It comes in instalments, much like a distasteful fashion show. The opening begins with unequivocal, hot denial: famine is not taking place, and any aid to Gaza has been looted by the Hamas authorities; civilians were not targeted, let alone massacred; aid workers were not butchered but legitimately killed as they had Hamas militants among them. And there is no ethnic cleansing and genocide to speak of. To claim otherwise was antisemitic.
Then comes the large dollop of corrective, inconvenient reality, be it a film, a blatant statement, or some item of damning evidence. The next stage is one of quibbles and qualifications: Gaza will receive some necessaries; there is a humanitarian crisis, because we were told by the United States, our main sponsor, that this was the case; and there might have been some cases where civilians were killed, a problem easily rectified by an internal investigation by the military.
Just prior to the latest assault, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in leaked quotes, revealed another dark purpose of the new military operation. “We are destroying more and more homes. They have no nowhere to return to,” he said in testimony before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee. “The only inevitable outcome will be the desire of Gazans to emigrate outside the Gaza Strip.” Here was a state official’s declaration of intent to ethnically cleanse a population.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was even blunter, something praised by Netanyahu. Israel’s objective, he revealed in a statement on March 19, was to destroy “everything that’s left of the Gaza Strip.” What was currently underway involved “conquering, cleansing, and remaining in Gaza until Hamas is destroyed.”
The Netanyahu government has also added another twist to the ghastly performance. On March 18, the provision of various “basic” forms of humanitarian aid into Gaza was announced. The measure was approved by a security cabinet meeting pressed by concerns from military officials warning that food supplies from UN sources and other aid groups had run out. The pressure had also come from, in Netanyahu’s words in a March 19 video address, Israel’s “greatest friends in the world”, the trying sort who claimed that there was “‘one thing we cannot stand. We cannot accept images of hunger, mass hunger. We cannot stand that. We will not be able to support you’.” How inconveniently squeamish of them.
That same day, United Nations aid chief Tom Fletcher said nine aid trucks had been cleared by Israeli authorities to enter Gaza through the Karem Abu Salem crossing. This was an absurd, ineffectual number, given the 500 trucks or more that entered Gaza prior to October 2023.
Fanatics who subscribe to the ethnic cleansing, rid-of-Palestine school were understandably disappointed, even at this obscenely modest provision of aid. “Any humanitarian aid that enters the Strip… will fuel Hamas and give it oxygen while our hostages languish in tunnels,” moaned National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. “We must crush Hamas, not simultaneously give it oxygen.” He also wished that Netanyahu “explain to our friends in the White House the implications of this ‘aid’, which only prolongs the war and delays our victory and the return of all our hostages.”
Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, also of Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, was in a similar mood, making the farcical resumption of aid sound like criminal salvation for a savage people. “This is our tragedy with Netanyahu’s approach. A leader who could have led to a clear victory and be remembered as the one who defeated radical Islam but who time after time let this historic opportunity slip away. Letting humanitarian aid in now directly harms the war effort to achieve victory and is another obstacle to the release of the hostages.”
The picture emerging from Israel’s latest mission of carnage is one of murderous dysfunction. It made little sense to Knesset member Moshe Saada, for instance, that a broader, ever more lethal offensive was in the offing with five new IDF divisions even as aid was being provided. This was implicitly telling. Did Palestinian civilians matter in so far as they should be fed, even as they were being butchered and encouraged into fleeing?
The extent of the horror has now reached the point where it is being acknowledged in the capitals of Israel’s close allies. A joint statement from the UK, France and Canada affirmed opposition to “the expansion of Israel’s military operations in Gaza.” Israel’s permission of “a basic quantity of food into Gaza” was wholly inadequate in the face of “intolerable” human suffering. Denying essential humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian population in the Strip “is unacceptable and risks breaching International Humanitarian Law. We condemn the abhorrent language used recently by members of the Israeli Government, threatening that, in their despair at the destruction of Gaza, civilians will start to relocate.”
For much time, the notion of consciously eliminating the Palestinian presence in Gaza, through starvation, massacre and displacement, was confined to the racial, ethnoreligious fringes of purist lunacy typified by Smotrich and Ben Gvir. Their vocal presence and frank advocacy have now made that ambition a grotesque, ongoing reality.
Trump’s Break with Israel: Genuine Shift or Political Theater?
May 19th, 2025, Kit Klarenberg, https://www.mintpressnews.com/trump-breaks-with-israel/289818/
When Donald Trump was re-elected president in November 2024, expectations were widespread that Israel’s assault on Gaza would intensify, and that the incoming administration would take a much more active role in neutralizing Tel Aviv’s regional adversaries. The affinity between Benjamin Netanyahu, many Israelis, and Trump is well-established. As Foreign Policy noted in October 2024, “Israel is Trump country, and Trump’s No. 1 supporter is its prime minister,” the magazine wrote. Trump’s victory was widely celebrated in Israel, both publicly and at the state level.
Just days later, former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta predicted the president would give Netanyahu a “blank check” to cause havoc across the Middle East, up to all-out war with Iran. After taking office in January, the president did little to dispel such forecasts—quite the opposite. In February, Trump outlined plans for “Gaza Lago”—a total displacement and forced resettlement of Gaza’s Palestinian population and the creation of a so-called “Riviera of the Middle East” in its place.
In March, Trump renewed hostilities against Yemen’s Ansar Allah, after the group reinstated its Red Sea blockade in response to Israel’s flagrant breaches of its cease-fire agreement with Hamas. Battering Yemen far harder than Biden ever had, U.S. officials boasted that the air and naval effort against Ansar Allah would continue “indefinitely.” Trump also claimed that Washington’s “relentless strikes” would leave the resistance decimated.
In early May, however, Trump declared the mission over after agreeing to a cease-fire under which Ansar Allah would stop targeting U.S. ships in return for free rein in its war against Israel. Tel Aviv was reportedly kept out of the loop, learning of the deal via news reports. Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, responded to backlash over the deal by stating that the U.S. “isn’t required to get permission from Israel” to make deals.
Huckabee, an ultraconservative evangelical and outspoken Zionist who vowed upon his nomination to refer to Israel in biblical terms such as the “Promised Land,” and who has frequently claimed that Jews hold a “rightful deed” to Palestinian land, surprised observers with the statement. Yet it seemed to mark the beginning of a dramatic shift in direction by the Trump administration, which, as MintPress News has previously documented, is stacked with pro-Israel hawks.
Since then, Trump has embarked on a tour of the Middle East, with Israel conspicuously absent from his itinerary. Instead, he has traveled to states in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Meanwhile, the president negotiated the release of the last living U.S. hostage held by Hamas and convened direct peace talks with the resistance group—in both cases without Tel Aviv’s involvement. There are rumors that Hamas may end hostilities in return for U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state, an offer Trump is reportedly open to.
Washington went on to sign a slew of deals with Riyadh across various sectors, including the largest-ever defense agreement between the two countries, valued at nearly $142 billion. In sum, a string of seismic developments strongly suggests that Trump’s administration is breaking with the previously unshakable U.S. policy of lockstep support for Israel and serving its interests in nearly every regard—an arrangement in place since the country’s founding in 1948. But is this previously unthinkable rupture real, or just for show?
From the United States to Europe, Criticizing Israel Is Becoming a Crime
After October 7, governments across the West are moving to criminalize criticism of Israel — placing free speech under growing global threat.
MintPress News·Kit Klarenberg·Apr 30
Trump Snubs Israel in Middle East Pivot
Purported rifts in the U.S.-Israel relationship are nothing new. Throughout Barack Obama’s presidency, multiple mainstream reports suggested the relationship was “strained,” especially due to sharp personal differences between the then-president and Netanyahu. Similarly, from the start of the Gaza genocide, major news outlets intermittently reported that Joe Biden was “privately” angry with Netanyahu’s behavior. Meanwhile, White House spokespeople and prominent Democrats, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, publicly insisted that the administration was committed to securing a cease-fire.
In both cases, though, the U.S. financial and military aid that is fundamental to Israel’s continued existence and erasure of the Palestinian people continued unabated, if not increased. In late April, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Michael Herzog, who served from 2021 to 2025, proudly declared that “the [Biden] administration never came to us and said, ‘Cease-fire now.’ It never did.” As such, skepticism about the sincerity and substance of the Trump administration’s abrupt break from its traditionally pro-Israel trajectory is well-founded.
Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of Gulf State Analytics, tells MintPress News that there may be a real shift underway in U.S. foreign policy, driven in large part by Trump’s determination to counter China’s rising global influence, particularly in the Middle East. It is this agenda that, for now, is pushing Washington to conduct “a foreign policy increasingly friendly to deep-pocketed states on the Arabian Peninsula, at the expense of the historic U.S.-Israel alignment.” As Cafiero put it:
Trump wants to pull Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE et al closer to U.S. geopolitical and geo-economic influence, while pulling them away from China to some extent. He likely won’t have much success in slowing down the momentum of Arab-Chinese relations in energy, investment, trade, logistics, commerce, AI, digitization, and so on. But in terms of defense and security, the U.S. will continue to dominate, and Trump will make clear these are uncrossable ‘red lines’ in terms of the Gulf’s relationship with China from Washington’s perspective.”
Trump’s large trade and investment deals with Gulf states play heavily into his “Make America Great Again” agenda and self-mythologizing as a dealmaker at home and abroad. The Gulf states are “ripe for lucrative deals” for U.S. companies, Cafiero says, adding that these agreements will create jobs and generate “good optics” for the administration at home.
Geopolitical risk analyst Firas Modad agrees that economic factors are central to Trump’s current course shift, and are alienating Tel Aviv. “Trump needs to sell F-35s. The U.S. defense industry needs the funds. The sale of F-35s to Turkey and perhaps to Saudi Arabia… a new deal with Iran, a Saudi civilian nuclear program — these will all be big bones of contention with Israel,” Modad said.
If nuclear negotiations succeed, Trump will likely seek to open Iranian markets to U.S. firms too. Israel doesn’t want this either. Trump is showing Netanyahu how much Israel needs the U.S., not the other way around.”
The Battle for the ‘Woke Right’: How Israel Is Dividing MAGA
A growing rift within MAGA sees right-wing influencers clashing over Israel and the ‘woke right.’
MintPress News·Robert Inlakesh·May 15
Gulf States Rise as Israel Loses Clout
Seyed Mohammad Marandi, a Tehran-based political analyst and professor at the University of Tehran, tells MintPress News that a “rift” between the U.S. and Israel does indeed exist, but that it is “difficult to say how significant or deep it truly is.”
Marandi believes the broader U.S. power structure recognizes that its support for what he calls the “Gaza Holocaust” since October 2023—“a 24/7 televised genocide”—has seriously damaged the West’s international image and soft power, telling MintPress News that “By default, this has greatly enhanced the soft power of China, Iran and Russia. The Global South looks to them, not the U.S. or its European vassals, for leadership, direction and partnership.”
Modad agrees, noting that in March 2023, Saudi Arabia unexpectedly reconciled with Iran “under Chinese auspices, without meaningful consultation with Washington.” Now that Arab and Muslim states view China and Russia as viable economic and military partners, the prospect of political scientist Samuel P. Huntington’s “Sino-Islamic alliance” becoming a reality is increasingly likely.
“The Americans will do whatever it takes to avoid resource-rich or militarily capable Muslim countries falling into Beijing’s orbit, even if that’s at Israel’s expense,” Modad tells MintPress News.
Marandi sees potential for shifts in U.S. relations with the region, saying “the space is there for progress”—though such progress remains “limited in scope and purely prospective for now.” He believes the current divide between Washington and Tel Aviv is largely tied to Netanyahu’s leadership.
“There’s a chance he’ll be sacrificed to preserve and rehabilitate Israel’s image internationally, with blame for everything since October 7 placed squarely on him,” Marandi says. “It would be like blaming Hitler alone for World War II and the Holocaust, instead of the system he led and everyone who enabled it.”
Marandi doubts a broader U.S.-Israel split will occur, saying the relationship is “so substantial, it’s not going to completely wither and die” over current events. “The Zionist lobby in the U.S. remains very powerful,” Marandi notes, adding that while Israel “has been discredited worldwide and is internationally despised, with people across the West condemning and abhorring the Zionist regime, the lobby still exerts enormous influence over Washington’s domestic and foreign policy.”
Modad is likewise under no illusions about the Israeli lobby’s clout in Washington. He expects its affiliated groups—and the many lawmakers they generously fund—to aggressively push back against Trump’s shift. He also suggests the administration could respond to the pressure by forcing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to register as a foreign agent. Given AIPAC’s political clout, such a move would be unprecedented.
U.S. political scientist John Mearsheimer has described AIPAC as “a de facto agent for a foreign government” with “a stranglehold on Congress.” Indeed, the powerful lobbying organization has a disturbing success rate in helping to elect hardcore proponents of Israel to Congress and the Senate, and aggressively works to unseat anyone on Capitol Hill who expresses solidarity with Palestinians. This effort has only intensified since October 7, and the organization is so confident in its impunity that it openly advertises its activities.
For example, AIPAC publishes an annual report highlighting its “policy and political achievements.” The committee’s 2022 report boasts, among other things, of securing $3.3 billion “for security assistance to Israel, with no added conditions” and funding “pro-Israel candidates” to the tune of $17.5 million—the most of any U.S. PAC. A staggering 98% of those candidates went on to win, defeating 13 pro-Palestinian challengers in the proces
A network of figures like Ben Shaprio, think tanks, and foreign policy advocates helped shift the right from advocating free speech to embracing blacklists.
AIPAC Faces White House Resistance
Trump is not unaware of the Israel lobby’s outsized influence over U.S. domestic and foreign affairs. As Marandi notes, on Jan. 15, Trump shared a video of Professor Jeffrey Sachs in which he blames Benjamin Netanyahu for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq—a war that Trump has long criticized. The crucial role that AIPAC and its allies played in laying the groundwork for that war has largely been forgotten.
That’s likely due in part to the organization’s large-scale online cleanup operations in which evidence of their early cheerleading for a full-scale U.S. invasion of Iraq was quietly erased. In December 2001, AIPAC published a briefing for U.S. lawmakers on the “major threat” it claimed that Saddam Hussein posed in the Middle East, to U.S. interests in the region and to “Israel’s security”—accusing him of producing weapons of mass destruction and harboring terrorist organizations.
Both claims were false, forming the basis of Washington’s case for the invasion. AIPAC later removed the briefing from its website. In 2015, a committee spokesperson told The New York Times that “AIPAC took no position whatsoever on the Iraq War.” Later that year, AIPAC President Robert A. Cohen went even further, claiming that “Leading up to the start of the Iraq War in March 2003, AIPAC took no position whatsoever, nor did we lobby on the issue.”
Today, Israel and its lobbying network are pushing for another major conflict in the Middle East—this time with Iran. In April, The New York Times, citing anonymous briefings, revealed that Tel Aviv had drawn up detailed plans for an attack on the Islamic Republic that would have required U.S. support—plans that were reportedly waved off by Trump. Israeli officials were said to be furious over the leak, with one calling it “one of the most dangerous leaks in Israel’s history.”
While Tel Aviv is purportedly still planning a “limited attack” on Iran, The New York Times report sent an unambiguous message to Netanyahu and his government that the Trump administration would not support any such action under any circumstances. Opposition to belligerence towards Tehran is in itself quite an extraordinary reversal for Trump and his cabinet, given their past rhetoric and stances. Before even taking office, it was reported that the administration was concocting plans to “bankrupt Iran” with “maximum pressure.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had long called for tightening already devastating sanctions on Tehran, was at the forefront of this push. He was eagerly supported by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, a Pentagon veteran who previously sat on the House Armed Services Committee. At an event convened by NATO adjunct the Atlantic Council in October 2024, Waltz bragged about how Trump had previously almost destroyed the Islamic Republic’s currency, and looked ahead to doling out even worse punishment following the president’s inauguration.
However, the reportedly positive progress of nuclear negotiations between the U.S. and Iran today suggests Trump and his team have not only jettisoned these ambitions but are determined to avoid war. Cafiero believes this objective is one of the key geopolitical considerations driving the President’s current course in the Middle East. He notes such a conflict would inevitably be “messy, bloody, and costly,” and believes Netanyahu’s determination “to pull the U.S. into war” means Trump now sees Israel as a real liability:
Trump views West Asia as a region the U.S. has historically been sucked into, and he believes Washington shouldn’t be excessively entangled there anymore – no more costly and humiliating quagmires, diverting resources and attention away from other parts of the world, where China is making major economic and geopolitical gains. The Gulf monarchies are sources of regional stability – they’re diplomatic bridges and interlocutors, facilitating dialogue and negotiation, and assisting in winding down local and international conflicts, or at least U.S. involvement in them.”
A costly and humiliating quagmire conflict between the U.S. and Iran would certainly be – and were Israel to dare strike Tehran alone, Washington would likely suffer adverse consequences in any event. A September 2024 report from the powerful and secretive lobby group the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) spelled out in forensic detail that it would take “five minutes or less” for Iran’s ballistic and hypersonic missiles to reach most U.S. military bases in the Middle East and obliterate them.
Is US Support for Israel Ending?
Fears of such an eventuality, and the Empire’s repeatedly proven inability to prevail in battling Yemen’s Ansar Allah, surely lie behind Trump’s determined push for peace with Iran. Even if the administration’s current sidelining of Tel Aviv in favor of the Gulf states is temporary and conducted purely for expediency, given current geopolitical contexts, never before in Israel’s history have its leaders’ wishes and wills been so flagrantly and concertedly overlooked or outright contravened in American corridors of power.
Should this rocky period represent a mere transitory blip in the U.S./Israel relationship, the episode at least amply demonstrates that Washington isn’t as beholden to Israel as its leaders and the international Israel lobby like to think. With China’s rising influence and the newly anointed multipolar world going nowhere, U.S. leaders may think twice about being so deferential to Tel Aviv’s demands, its designs of endless territorial expansion, and its perpetual wars against its neighbors in the name of “security”.
Uranium enrichment to 93% is Iran’s right under Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, lawmakers tell UN watchdog
Iran International, May 14, 2025,
Iran’s parliament warned on Wednesday that any perceived infringement by the UN’s nuclear watchdog on its nuclear rights, including the right to enrich uranium up to 93%, would be met with backlash.
n a statement by lawmakers addressed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the group said that Iran’s rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — including nuclear research, development, and peaceful use — are non-negotiable and fully verifiable under the IAEA safeguards.
Read by presidium member Ahmad Naderi during a public session, the statement said, “According to Article 4 of the Treaty on the NPT, the great nation of Iran is entitled to three inalienable rights: first, the right to research and development; second, the right to produce; and third, the right to utilize nuclear energy.”
The lawmakers argued that in accordance with this article of the NPT, “the Islamic Republic faces no limitations in nuclear research and development and can proceed with enrichment up to 93% based on its scientific, medical, and industrial needs.”
The lawmakers also criticized the IAEA for what they called four decades of obstructing Iran’s peaceful nuclear development, and for relying on what they called politically motivated intelligence, particularly from Iran’s archenemy, Israel.
Last month, IAEA chief Rafael Grossi said in an interview with Le Monde that Iran was “not far” from being able to produce an atomic bomb, describing the country’s progress as “pieces of a puzzle” that could potentially come together.
Iran maintains that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and remains under IAEA monitoring.
Also on Wednesday, Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf condemned US President Donald Trump’s recent remarks in Riyadh in which he referenced Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program and Tehran’s support for military proxies, calling them “delusional” and blaming US policies for instability in West Asia…………………………………………………………………………………..
“Iran is not a warmonger, but we will never surrender. We are brothers with our neighbors and reject US efforts to stir division to boost its arms sales,” he said. https://www.iranintl.com/en/202505143023
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of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
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