As the war with Iran drags on, now suspended in a ceasefire as the combatants attempt to organize negotiations, the Nobel laureate economist Joseph E. Stiglitz has a harsh assessment of the results so far. According to Stiglitz, President Donald Trump’s decision to wage war against Iran was a ‘calamitous’ mistake, the consequences of which have been war crimes, death, and the destruction of the global economy.
“No decision is more important than waging war against another country. Yet the United States has done exactly that without even a nod to its own system of checks and balances and reasoned deliberation,” writes Stiglitz. “The disastrous result is now clear: America is once again embroiled in a Middle East war that has already cost thousands of lives — mostly civilians — and in which it has almost certainly committed multiple war crimes.”
What’s more, Stiglitz asserts that the longer the war lasts, “the greater the damage will be. But even if the war ends quickly, the effects will linger. After all, critical supply chains have already been disrupted, and oil and gas production facilities destroyed. Most estimates suggest that repairs will take years.”
The economic damage comes on the heels of Trump’s tariffs, which, along with the war, have contributed to rising inflation. With the world “already facing an affordability crisis that US policies have made worse, the risk now is that central bankers everywhere will either raise interest rates or at least slow the pace at which they were lowering them.” As a result, what economic gains were made as the world recovered from COVID have been lost.
This is going to exacerbate the affordability crisis, which will in turn worsen the housing and credit situation. At the same time, “Trump’s regressive tax cuts for billionaires and corporations now in force, the US has less fiscal space to buffer the disruptions he has caused.” What’s more, “Trump’s claim that the US will benefit as a net oil exporter is nonsense. Yes, Exxon will benefit, but US consumers pay prices that are set globally — and that have risen substantially.” So Americans will pay at the pump while big oil sees soaring profits. Stiglitz says there is little cause for optimism, concluding, “Yet another nail has been added to the coffin of the peaceful, borderless world that our forebearers sought to build after World War II. Under Trump, the country that laid the foundations of that world is now dismantling it… And with democracy in the US in such a weakened state, the human errors and their consequences are piling up fast.”
The US-Israeli war on Iran has given Gulf monarchies fresh cover to deepen repression, criminalize dissent, and tighten their grip over every version of reality that falls outside the state line.
Since 28 February, the US and Israel have been waging war on Iran, with consequences that reach far beyond the battlefield. Across the Persian Gulf, governments have seized on the conflict to expand repression at home.
Under the pretext of combating “disinformation” and “rumors” on social media, Gulf states have launched sweeping arrest campaigns against hundreds of citizens and residents, making clear that any expression outside the official narrative can now be treated as a “security threat” or even the “voice of the enemy.”
Calls not to photograph or publish footage did not arrive as casual advice. Interior ministries across the Gulf issued them as official warnings. At first glance, the arguments appeared plausible: avoid panic, protect national security, deny useful information to the enemy. Within days, however, these directives became the basis for a much broader campaign of repression, one that moved quickly from warnings to prosecutions.
The Gulf states have imposed a near-total blackout on the flow of information, claiming that independent content could spread fear, aid the enemy militarily, or amount to treason. In practice, the war on Iran has become a ready-made excuse to criminalize speech.
Bahrain: From emergency measures to mass arrests
Manama justified its tightening security measures through a series of official statements. The Interior Ministry’s Civil Defense Council announced a ban on gatherings “in order to maintain compliance with public safety responsibilities in light of the blatant Iranian aggression against Bahrain.” What appeared to be a response to regional escalation quickly turned into cover for a far broader crackdown.
Authorities arrested more than 260 citizens on charges including “misuse of platforms” and “sympathy for Iranian aggression.” According to human rights sources, three of those detained were women. Authorities also published photographs of detainees in an effort to shame them publicly.
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the arrests went far beyond any legal framework. On 4 March, dozens of men stormed the home of Munir Mirza Ahmed Mushaima. Some wore black uniforms and white helmets, while others were in civilian clothing. They arrested him without presenting a warrant, accusing him of running a social media account that contained “illegal content.”
The crackdown has not been limited to Bahraini citizens. Residents of various nationalities have also been arrested for filming, posting, or reposting videos related to attacks on the country. Bahrain’s Public Prosecution has even asked courts to impose the death penalty on people accused of “spying with the enemy.”
The campaign has also turned deadly. Mohammad Mohsen Mousavi, who was arrested in mid-March, reportedly showed signs of torture on his body during funeral preparations. The Interior Ministry responded by defending his detention and accusing him of links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The UAE and Saudi Arabia move to monopolize the narrative
Abu Dhabi has followed Bahrain’s path closely. Since the outbreak of the war on Iran, restrictions on the movements of citizens and residents, as well as on what they can post online, have sharply increased.
The Public Prosecution warned X users against circulating images or videos from attack sites. These measures followed months of tighter digital censorship linked to tensions with Saudi Arabia over Yemen.
Authorities in Abu Dhabi alone have reportedly arrested more than 100 people, including foreigners, on charges of filming, publishing videos, or spreading “inaccurate information.” The State Security Agency also announced that it had dismantled a network allegedly “funded and managed” by Hezbollah and Iran. Officials claimed the network was planning to destabilize the country’s financial system.
Content creators have also come under pressure. Authorities now require prior approval before influencers or public figures can post, even when discussing routine issues such as hotel overcrowding or the effects of the war on daily life.
According to UAE sources, prosecutors circulated lists of accounts accused of publishing “illegal content offensive to the state and its leadership.” Dozens of accounts were blocked on X, including “Elon Trades,” after it posted a video showing a fire at Dubai’s Fairmont Hotel that drew more than one million views.
Outside of the UAE, several prominent accounts reported receiving notices from X informing them that their profiles had been blocked inside the Gulf state following requests linked to Emirati authorities.
Among them were Yemeni lawyer Mohammad al-Maswari who insisted that his posts were “based on rejecting the division of Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, and Libya, and any support for terrorist militias”; Egyptian presenter Osama Gaweesh; Al Jazeera‘s Yemeni affairs editor Ahmed al-Shalafi, who received a message from the UAE Public Prosecution, “with charges of insulting state institutions, inciting hatred and sedition, and other charges”; and Doha-based academic Marc Owen Jones, whose work focuses on digital repression and authoritarianism in the Gulf. Their cases suggest that the crackdown is no longer limited to those inside the country, but is increasingly targeting critics abroad as well.
Saudi Arabia has taken a similar route. In early March, state agencies launched a media campaign under the hashtag “#التصوير_يخدم_العدو” – “filming serves the enemy” – to frame any attempt to document strikes as a threat to national security.
Riyadh crafted a campaign designed to portray cameras and mobile phones as weapons in enemy hands. The government also circulated memos banning what it called “infringing content,” “anonymous videos,” and “rumors,” while urging the public to rely exclusively on official sources.
The result was a tightly controlled media environment in which the state monopolized the narrative and criminalized any attempt to challenge it.
Saudi authorities have not publicly announced arrests linked to the war, but Saudi sources tell The Cradle that several citizens and residents have been detained. Those arrested reportedly include Sheikh Hassan Al-Mutawa, the preacher of Al-Khader Mosque in Al-Rabiiya on Tarut Island in Qatif governorate.
Kuwait and Qatar widen the dragnet
As the war escalated, Kuwait issued Law No. 47 on “Counter-Terrorism” on 15 March 2026. The text of the law includes broad and vague language that can easily be used to restrict freedoms.
Article 1 defines a “terrorist act” as any act aimed at spreading fear among the population or endangering public safety. Such wording leaves the law open to broad interpretation and allows authorities to treat almost any form of dissent as a security offense.
Kuwaiti authorities later announced the arrest of dozens of alleged Hezbollah members, including Kuwaiti and Lebanese nationals, accusing them of plotting attacks and threatening the country’s sovereignty. At the same time, the Interior Ministry warned against publishing any photos or information related to strikes, claiming they could destabilize public opinion.
Authorities also detained several Kuwaitis and foreigners, including content creator Badr al-Husseinan. He was charged with broadcasting false news, harming national interests, and misusing a phone after posting a satirical video about the hardship people faced during the war.
On 14 April, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called for the release of US-Kuwaiti journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, who had been detained for more than six weeks over social media posts linked to the war.
Authorities accused him of spreading false information, harming national security, and misusing a mobile phone after he shared footage of a US fighter jet crash near a military base in Kuwait. CPJ said the material was already public and verified, describing his detention as part of a wider campaign to silence scrutiny and tighten control over the narrative.
Qatar has adopted many of the same measures. Since the beginning of the war, the Interior Ministry has banned the publication of photos and videos related to attacks inside the country, describing them as threats to national security.
The Department of Combating Cyber Economic Crimes announced the arrest of more than 300 people of different nationalities over the circulation of what it described as “misleading” videos and information.
One of those detained was Egyptian teacher Mohamed Tawhid, who lived in Doha. Tawhid commented on the breaking news broadcast by Al Jazeera in March about a drone attack on Al-Udeid Air Base. Quoting the Qatari Defense Ministry, the report said the attack had been intercepted.
Tawhid replied: “You are idiots who protect those who do not protect you.” He deleted the comment soon after posting it, but was arrested shortly afterward.
Screenshot of Egyptian teacher Mohamed Tawhid’s now-deleted X post, which was one of the main reasons behind his arrest by Qatari authorities.
Rumors also circulated that Jordanian researcher Fatima al-Samadi had been arrested. A source later denied the reports, but confirmed that she had come under pressure and temporarily deactivated her accounts before returning online.
Israeli spyware and the Gulf security state
At the time of writing, there is still no conclusive evidence linking spyware such as Pegasus, developed by Israel’s NSO Group, or Graphite, developed by Paragon Solutions, to the latest arrest campaigns across the Gulf.
Still, the possibility cannot be dismissed. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain have all previously been linked to Pegasus use against dissidents under the banner of “national security.”
In February, a Paragon Solutions employee briefly posted an image on LinkedIn that appeared to show details from the Graphite spyware interface. Before it was deleted, the image reportedly revealed operating logs, encrypted messaging data, and other technical details.
The Paragon employee’s now-deleted LinkedIn image that showed the Graphite control panel on the screen in the background.
There is no documented use of Graphite in the Gulf so far. Yet the history of Gulf states purchasing Israeli spyware and using it against dissidents means the possibility remains very real. Graphite can reportedly exploit security vulnerabilities without requiring the target to click a malicious link or interact with the device in any way. The absence of official confirmation does not mean such tools are not being used.
The Gulf states have shifted from claiming to defend national security to building systems of permanent repression. They have exploited the war on Iran to expand prosecutions under labels such as “combating disinformation,” “preventing rumors,” “treason,” and “sympathy with the enemy.”
What is taking shape is not a temporary wartime response, but a deeper transformation in the meaning of security itself. Across the Gulf, governments are imposing the official narrative by force and treating any alternative version of events as a punishable offense.
The repression machine continues in war as in peace.
Has the war on Iran given Gulf governments a new pretext to suppress dissent?Yes, the war is being used to justify a major expansion of repressionGulf states are reacting to real security threats, not targeting dissentThe crackdown began long before the war, but the conflict accelerated itRepression varies from one Gulf state to another
A memorial for the victims of the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school bombing is on display on March 28, 2026, in Tehran, Iran.
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The first casualty of war is the truth.
This truism — understandably repeated at the outset of each new U.S. war — is proving itself once again.
With all evidence pointing toward U.S. responsibility for the February 28 bombing of Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school, President Trump claimed that the attack “was done by Iran.” In spreading this blatant misinformation, Trump was not in fact shattering presidential norms — rather, he was continuing a White House tradition.
Back in 1945, in a public statement announcing the U.S.’s atomic bomb strike on Japan, President Harry Truman falsely described the city of Hiroshima as “an important Japanese Army base.” In fact, the overwhelming majority of those killed were civilians. The bomb targeted thousands of schoolchildren, including nearly 6,000 who died as part of a service patrol near the center of Hiroshima. In Nagasaki, more than 1,400 students and teachers at Shiroyama Elementary School were killed.
But like most students attending U.S. schools after World War II, I was taught that dropping the atomic bombs saved lives.
Radical economist Costas Lapavitsas discusses the crumbling of the dollar-backed world system and what could be next. By C.J. Polychroniou , Truthout
March 25, 2026
Long before George W. Bush asserted that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, dubious claims and outright lies served as pretexts for the U.S. to launch major wars. A jingoistic fervor following an explosion on the battleship USS Maine prompted the Spanish-American War in 1898. In 1964, LBJ cited a “phantom battle” to push the Tonkin Gulf Resolution authorizing military intervention in Vietnam.
Trump stands out mostly because he made little effort to sell his lies before going to war. In his prime-time address on April 1, 2026, he retroactively offered his first attempt to justify the war, claiming without evidence that Obama’s nuclear deal made Iran a greater threat and that Iran was on the cusp of aiming missiles at “the American homeland.”
Long before George W. Bush asserted that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, dubious claims and outright lies served as pretexts for the U.S. to launch major wars.
Calling truth a casualty of war may imply, however, that truth survives between wars. But the reality is that militarism and the warfare state are sustained by lies which stretch over decades. The ideology of American exceptionalism is driven by the myth that U.S. intervention plays a unique role in spreading freedom and democracy around the globe. Keeping the public uninformed and miseducated has been a key tactic to tamp down dissent.
The most common and continuous form these lies take is omission, erasing the pattern of U.S. war crimes from military records, history textbooks, and public memory. This record of erasure has proven so effective that many of those speaking out against war crimes do not seem to understand the degree to which they, too, have been miseducated. Chastising the Trump administration’s response to the school bombing, The New York Times’s David Wallace-Wells recoiled at the notion of a mass civilian massacre being “treated by U.S. officials as the normal cost of waging war.”
That civilian massacres have been a regular feature of warfare under Democratic and Republican administrations throughout U.S. history has apparently been lost on Wallace-Wells and countless others. Racism and xenophobia play a crucial role in this erasure, as they are used to rally support for war while devaluing the millions of nonwhite lives lost in pursuit of U.S. interests. As General William Westmoreland said bluntly during the Vietnam War, “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does a Westerner.”
In this way, war-related lies have been integral to the formation of our national identity.
Trump stands out mostly because he made little effort to sell his lies before going to war.
This is particularly true for the series of wars stretching across East, Central, and West Asia since the late 19th century that I researched for my book, American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism. Rudyard Kipling’s invocation of “the white man’s burden” in his 1899 call for the U.S. to colonize the Philippines was unmistakably racist. But in its time, it was meant to be instructive: Waging the “savage wars of peace” required Americans to shed their “childish” innocence and embrace the brutish nature of imperial power.
The message was sadly taken to heart by U.S. troops in the Philippines, where lynching, torture, concentration camps, and mass murder became all too common. Some atrocities continued long after the U.S. declared an end to combat. In 1906, American troops on Jolo Island in the southern Philippines killed 1,000 Moro people in what the U.S. recorded as a great military victory over Muslim fanatics in the “Battle of Bud Dajo.” Recounted by historian Kim A. Wagner, it was a horrific massacre, whose victims included women and children, as well as outgunned or unarmed men attempting to surrender.
Regarding the firebombing of Tokyo during World War II, Robert McNamara admitted, “In that single night, we burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo: men, women, and children.” After WWII, McNamara served as secretary of defense, overseeing the escalation of the Vietnam War that resulted in over 3 million deaths. The My Lai massacre, which was marked by wanton slaughter and sexual assault — was initially recorded as a successful defeat of “enemy” combatants in March 1968, but more accurate news about it finally broke through decades of silence on U.S. war crimes. Most Americans quickly bracketed it off, a horrific exception rather than the culmination of a pattern.
But My Lai was a near replay of tragedies from the Korean War that the U.S. military systematically covered up. South Koreans had long memorialized the hundreds of unarmed and defenseless civilians, from babies to elders, massacred by U.S. soldiers at No Gun Ri. It was only brought to the attention of the U.S. public, however, by a Pulitzer Prize-winning team of Associated Press reporters nearly a half-century later. Even today, mainstream histories largely ignore U.S. military involvement in the brutal partition and occupation of Korea.
And My Lai was far from the only civilian massacre in Vietnam. Indeed, on the same day, dozens of Vietnamese civilians in My Khe were killed by U.S. troops. American soldiers commonly used the most vile, racist epithets and dehumanizing stereotypes to characterize Vietnamese people — both combatants and civilians, friends and foes alike. “Murder, torture, rape, abuse, forced displacement, home burnings, specious arrests, [and] imprisonment without due process,” as author Nick Turse documented in Kill Anything That Moves, “were virtually a daily fact of life” for Vietnamese people.
The most common and continuous form these lies take is omission, erasing the pattern of U.S. war crimes from military records, history textbooks, and public memory.
Although the U.S. defeat in Vietnam caused veterans like Colin Powell to adopt a more protective approach to the deployment of U.S. troops, the pattern of civilian massacres continued. On February 13, 1991, over 400 Iraqi civilians taking refuge in a shelter were killed in Amiriyah by two laser-guided “smart bombs” in the U.S.-led war on Iraq. Though in this case U.S. officials did acknowledge the civilian deaths, they were largely dismissed as “collateral damage” from a strike on a military target.
Amnesty International investigated 10 incidents involving at least 140 civilians, including at least 50 children, killed in the U.S.-led war on Afghanistan, for which there were no war crimes prosecutions of any kind. Retired Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, the former deputy national security advisor, acknowledged, “We virtually never held anyone accountable for civilian casualties.”
Whether actively or passively, our culture — just as it fails to value all American lives equally — has internalized the lies that elevate the value of American lives far above those who look like the enemy.
None of this is meant to imply that the U.S. always targets civilians deliberately or to deny that America’s enemies have committed atrocious crimes against humanity. Lies and dehumanization are a common tactic that all parties use in war. But with America’s unrivaled post-WWII military and economic superpower has come the concordant privilege to act with impunity, to disregard what the rest of the world thinks of us, and to dismiss the suffering of others.
Civilian massacres have been a regular feature of warfare under Democratic and Republican administrations throughout U.S. history.
When the Tokyo Trials were set up after World War II to prosecute Japanese war crimes, the U.S. ensured that the conduct of its military was barred from review, setting in motion a chain of disregard for equitable governance under international law. Since 2002, the U.S. has failed to endorse the International Criminal Court. The Trump administration has gone much further, attacking and placing sanctions on its judges, while waging war on Iran with Israel as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted for arrest by the ICC for war crimes in Gaza.
The incremental steps our own government has taken have been rapidly reversed, as well. Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host turned self-proclaimed “Secretary of War,” bombastically declared that “We negotiate with bombs,” while expressing disdain for “stupid rules of engagement.” Signaling this intent last year, he dismantled Pentagon programs intended to mitigate civilian harm. Such actions complement the misinformation campaign to eliminate “controversial” and “unpatriotic” topics from our public schools and national monuments.
But as the latest wrongheaded war reveals another layer of the United States’s limitations and declining power, those imperial privileges are waning. Trump’s threat to obliterate Iran’s civilian infrastructure should be opposed because it is a war crime in the making against innocent people and because such attacks could boomerang into a global economic meltdown, intensifying suffering at home and abroad.
Holding the individuals responsible for these decisions accountable — at the ballot box and under international law — is just the first step that people in the U.S. can take to become responsible citizens of a global community and stop the next atrocities before they occur. But we cannot wait for change to come from those at the top.
Historian Judy Tzu-Chun Wu has chronicled the diverse U.S. activists who built transnational and multiracial solidarity through travels to Vietnam while it was under siege from the U.S. Since the 1990s, the International Women’s Network Against Militarism has brought U.S. educators, artists, and activists together with women in many of the places most impacted by war and the negative effects of permanent overseas U.S bases. Their multifaceted efforts to overcome militarism advance a decolonial model of solidarity crossing Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the Caribbean.
More recently, the humanitarian aid flotillas acting to alleviate starvation and death in Gaza and Cuba owing to Israel’s and the U.S.’s respective illegal blockades serve as important examples of the people-to-people relations necessary to break the chain of the lies that have torn us apart for too long. Reckoning with the legacy of empire ultimately requires a level of awareness that can best be achieved through these forms of solidarity from below.
The United States has begun bombing Iran with B-52 bombers, setting the stage for a massive increase in the saturation bombing of the country of 90 million as the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran intensifies. “We’ve successfully started to conduct the first overland B-52 missions,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine announced Tuesday at a Pentagon briefing.
An Air Force B-52 Stratofortress aircraft deploys its rear chute after touching down at Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, April 9, 2016. [Photo: Tech. Sgt. Nathan Lipscomb]
The B-52 is capable of carrying 70,000 pounds of gravity bombs and nuclear weapons. It is the aircraft at the center of a US bombing campaign that dropped more tonnage on Indochina than was used by all sides in World War II combined, that carpet-bombed Cambodia in a secret campaign that killed an estimated 100,000 civilians, and that leveled entire cities in North Vietnam—where US bombing destroyed 85 percent of all buildings and killed roughly 20 percent of the population.
The United States, having failed to achieve its war aims through a month of airstrikes, is massively escalating the war. The administration is now turning to the methods it used in Gaza: mass murder and the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure.
The B-52 flights follow one day after President Donald Trump threatened to “blow up and completely obliterate” Iran’s power plants, oil wells and “possibly all desalinization plants.” The Trump administration declared from the start that the war would be waged without restraint. On March 2, War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced there would be “no stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no politically correct wars.” He has since vowed “no quarter, no mercy for our enemies” and prayed at a Pentagon Christian service on March 26 for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”
On Monday, Trump shared a 31-second video on Truth Social showing the bombing of Isfahan, Iran’s third-largest city and one of the supreme cultural monuments of human civilization. The footage showed 2,000-pound bunker-buster bombs striking targets south of the city, producing chains of secondary detonations and fireballs detected by weather satellites. Trump offered no caption—just the footage of a great city burning, posted for consumption like any other content on the scroll.
Isfahan is home to the Naqsh-e Jahan Square—one of the largest public squares ever constructed—Imam Mosque, Ali Qapu Palace, Chehel Sotoun Palace and Masjed-e Jameh, the oldest Friday mosque in Iran, a structure in continuous use for nearly a thousand years. All are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
The city was the capital of the Safavid Empire, a center of Persian science, where Omar Khayyam reformed the calendar and Ibn Sina—Avicenna—worked and wrote. Earlier strikes had already cracked a 17th century Safavid fresco in Chehel Sotoun, sent turquoise tiles from the Friday Mosque crashing to the ground, and shattered calligraphic panels. UNESCO had transmitted the exact coordinates of every protected site to both the United States and Israel. Both governments confirmed receipt. The bombing continued. Iranian officials report that at least 120 cultural and historic sites across the country have been damaged.
The Pentagon said the target was an ammunition depot. But Isfahan also houses the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Centre, Iran’s primary nuclear research facility, and the Isfahan Missile Complex, described as the country’s largest missile assembly and production site. The enriched uranium Washington claims to be destroying now lies beneath the rubble of repeated bombardments in a city of 2.3 million, under conditions that no international inspector can evaluate. Russia’s Foreign Ministry warned of “a real risk of catastrophic disaster throughout the Middle East.”
At Monday’s briefing, Hegseth raised the question of ground troops directly. “You can’t fight and win a war if you tell your adversary what you are willing to do or what you are not willing to do, to include boots on the ground,” he said. “Our adversary right now thinks there are 15 different ways we could come at them with boots on the ground. And guess what? There are. So if we needed to, we could execute those options on behalf of the president of the United States and this department.”
Troops are arriving. Reuters reported Monday that thousands of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division—including a brigade combat team and the division headquarters—have begun deploying to the Middle East. The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), carrying roughly 2,200 Marines, arrived in the Persian Gulf over the weekend. The 11th MEU is en route aboard the USS Boxer. The USS George H.W. Bush, a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, departed Norfolk on Tuesday with Carrier Air Wing 7 and more than 5,000 sailors—the third carrier strike group committed to the war, making this the largest US naval concentration in the Middle East since 2003.
According to the Washington Post Friday, the Pentagon has drawn up plans for ground operations lasting “weeks” and is preparing to deploy 10,000 additional troops. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that the administration is actively planning a special operations mission to extract nearly 1,000 pounds of enriched uranium from deep underground in Iran.Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones
Despite the overwhelming support within the US political establishment for the Iran war, there is growing recognition among sections of the US media that Trump’s war is creating a rapidly spiraling disaster for US imperialism. On Sunday, the New York Times published a column by Thomas Friedman, its main foreign policy columnist, who wrote:
If it wasn’t clear before, it is undeniable now. President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel started a war with Iran assuming that they would trigger quick and easy regime change. They vastly underestimated the staying power of Iran’s surviving leadership and its military capacity not only to inflict damage on Israel and America’s Arab allies but also to close off the most important oil and gas shipping lane in the world.
While Friedman makes this critique as a defender of US imperialism, it captures the recklessness and desperation of the Trump administration, which sees no way out of the deepening crisis triggered by the war except further escalation.
One month of war has produced a catastrophe. The human rights group Hengaw reported at least 6,900 killed in Iran through Day 29, including 720 civilians and 150 children. Iran’s Red Crescent reported more than 85,000 civilian structures damaged, including 64,000 homes and 600 schools.
Between 3.2 and 4 million Iranians have been internally displaced. In Lebanon, according to the Health Ministry, more than 1,247 have been killed and 3,600 wounded since Israel launched its assault on March 2. The Pentagon reports that 15 American service members have been killed and more than 300 wounded.
Benjamin Franklin said it best: “There never was a good war, or a bad peace.”
Now that war is again underway—the third attack on Iran in two years—people of healthy human consciousness must pray that the destruction and carnage is limited.
Yet the trajectory appears to be grim.
Wars often progress in unexpected ways. The Persian Gulf region is a tangled spaghetti plate of interests including economic, religious, cultural, and geopolitical. None of our politicians have proved capable of comprehending those interests and foreseeing the consequences of their elective wars. President George W. Bush was stunningly uninformed about the existence of Sunni and Shia factions when he invaded Iraq, a war that inadvertently empowered Iran. Officials who assured us that they knew where the phantom Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were, were quite wrong. Just as they were wrong when they foolishly assured us that the war would last “six days, six weeks. I doubt six months.”
Similarly, as many quipped after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Washington took twenty years, trillions of dollars, and four presidents to replace the Taliban with the Taliban.
Nor can it be allowed to slip down the memory hole that only a year ago the Deep State installed Ahmed al-Sharaa, the terrorist head chopper formerly known as al-Julani, as the president of Syria. It must not be forgotten that until recently al-Sharaa carried a $10 million dollar bounty on his head placed by the U.S. government. He was a State Department “Specially Designated Global Terrorist.” But now the new president of Syria, having been sanitized and empowered by the Deep State, is fêted by Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
The U.S. global military empire—the Empire of Lies—is capable of exerting force, but utterly incapable of understanding the consequences of its regime change wars.
That is but one reason that the Constitution, often cited but seldom adhered to, lodged warmaking authority with the people’s representatives. The Founders knew from historical precedent that heads of states and executive branches have a propensity to make needless war. Thus they provided that the people who pay for it with their lives, limbs, and prosperity, would make the decision to go to war. Those decisions are to be made through their elected representatives who become more judicious about engaging in needless wars since they know they can be held accountable for their judgement and their votes.
No one—I repeat, no one—knows how events will unfold from here. Already President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are talking about the prospect of American soldiers—“boot on the ground”—in Iran, while Israel has clearly threatened the use of nuclear weapons. As reports, spin jobs, and chest-thumping proceed, the proverbial wisdom that the first casualty of war is the truth should be borne in mind. Despite the escalation that we are seeing, people of healthy human consciousness must pray that the destruction and carnage is limited. Our voices must be heard and echo throughout the marbled palaces of Washington.
What long-term lessons China, Russia and the Global South are learning from the abandonment by the entire West of the principles of international law, we shall see in the decades to come.
Gandhi Hospital in Tehran on Monday after U.S.-Israeli strikes. (Hossein Zohrevand/Tasnim News Agency / Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)
There has scarcely been an attempt to pretend any justification in international law for the attack on Iran and murder of its leader. The response of the U.K. government, focusing almost entirely on condemning Iran for exercising its legitimate right of self-defence, takes the Keir Starmer dishonesty meter further off the scale.
The RAF has been actively involved in genocide in Gaza for two years with its surveillance and logistic support for the IDF. It is now fighting for Israel again; intercepting Iranian missiles is not defensive; it is joining in the attack on an already vastly overmatched opponent.
I am afraid that the truth is the Iranian attempt to defend itself militarily will be less impactful than many anti-imperialists hope. The astonishing amounts of money spent by the U.S. government on military and surveillance technology simply do have real-world effect.
Here in Venezuela, having seen the major sites struck by the U.S. on Jan. 3, I have concluded that no act of betrayal was needed. Just overwhelming force and precision technology applied against a technologically unequal opponent whose key capabilities were all on open hilltops or in unhardened barracks.
Iran is much more militarily sophisticated, but facing exponentially more force. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in his own home, not hiding away. He is going to prove a lot more powerful as a martyr than as a ruler with his internal critics.
We are facing not only a period of unapologetic imperialism to which virtually all Western countries are prepared to defer, but a return of medievalism, both in the sheer barbarity and scale of physical abuse, as witnessed in Gaza and in general Israeli brutality, and in use of kidnap and murder as methods of high policy. Legitimising the killing and kidnap of leaders of opposing states is of course a double-edged sword.
Having sanctioned genocide, mass killings and deliberate destruction of medical facilities and staff, the mass murder of children, as well as the kidnapping and murder of heads of state, it is hard now to imagine almost any atrocity which the Western powers are in any moral position to condemn.
The reflection of the Palestinian flag in Ali Khamenei’s glasses at a funeral ceremony for Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Aug. 1, 2024. (Khamenei.ir / Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 4.0)
While Iran’s military ability to strike back is limited, the ramifications of this attack will not be. The rulers of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states have reverted to the norm of being not only reliable U.S. and Israeli satraps, but promoters of atavistic hatred of Shia Muslims.
The West is deliberately exploiting the Shia/Sunni divide, as it has for centuries; but this will now destabilise the region for decades. Iraq in particular is going to be convulsed, and so will Pakistan. In Bahrain, the Shia population has been held in check by its Sunni rulers using systematic Western-sponsored murder and torture. Using it as a base to murder the Ayatollah is going to blow back.
It would appear that we are going to witness an aerial campaign to destroy Iran’s civilian infrastructure, as in Iraq where 65 percent of clean drinking water, 50 percent of hospitals and clinics and 80 percent of electrical generation was destroyed by “liberation” by the NATO powers. The object is the destruction of Iran as a viable state.
It is worth recalling that Iran used to be a Western-style state with a reasonable democracy. It was the election of the Socialist Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1951, and his nationalisation of British Petroleum, which was met by the MI6- and C.I.A.- sponsored coup of 1953. The vicious and vainglorious rule of their puppet Shah was the cause of the theocratic revolution.
Mohammed Mossadegh, the prime minister of Iran who was ousted by a U.K.-U.S, coup, while under house arrest in Ahmadabad, Iran, in 1965. (Behnam Farid /Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)
Escalating Western sanctions were imposed by the U.S. or E.U. on Iran in 1979, 1984, 1995, 1996, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2025. There were U.N.-approved sanctions imposed from 2006 to 2016. These very substantially hampered Iran’s economic development.
The curious thing is that the founding myth of the Western powers is that economic development leads to an expanding, educated middle class which promotes both economic and social liberalism and produces the conditions for democracy.
By this reading, if you wished to cement in power an authoritarian government, then limiting economic development is the way to do it. There is something in this reading; I do not doubt that the West’s relentless efforts to strangle Iran – which have had some real success – have hampered its political development.
That is not to accept all the Western myths about Iran. Female education is very strong, and there is extensive female participation throughout economic and governmental institutions. Iran has an extremely good record of tolerating and even supporting minority religious communities, including the Jewish community.
There are plenty of women in Tehran without head coverings – Iran is far more tolerant in this regard than Saudi Arabia. While it retains a retrograde intolerance of gay people, it acknowledges gender dysphoria and assists trans people.
I am not prepared to give a moment of countenance to arguments that bombing Iran back to the 19th century is going in any way to improve the lives of its people. It did not do so in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya. It was a disaster which unleashed waves of refugees upon Europe, leading directly to the rise of the far right.
I think it is unlikely to change the form of government in Iran in any significant way. Regime change by bombing is a highly problematic concept.
What it has done is to remove Ayatollah Khamenei, whose fatwa on the creation of a nuclear weapon was the only reason Iran does not have one.
It is delusional to believe that Iran, with its excellent scientific base, could not have developed nuclear bombs in secret away from those monitored enrichment programmes, had it chosen to do so. What is likely to result in the medium term from this conflict, if it long continues, is a more primitive, more atavistic and nuclear-armed Iran.
The Iran nuclear deal torpedoed by Trump in 2018 had provided a rare moment of hope. With sanctions easing, there were chances of both smoother economic development and reform in Iran. That is why Israel wanted the agreement scuppered.
U.S. team on way to Iran nuclear negotiation meeting at U.N., New York City, 2016. (State Department)
The attempted obliteration of Iran is part of a systematic attempt to eliminate by physical force all pockets of resistance to American hegemony.
We have seen Rubio’s astonishing assertion of Imperialism as a positive force. Matthew Lynn in The Washington Post exemplified the new Western doctrine. He mocked China for its pacific policy. He argued that for China to build infrastructure for the Global South was futile because the United States might simply seize, blockade or destroy any infrastructure by military force. This he viewed as not shameful, but a great triumph.
What long-term lessons China, Russia and the Global South are learning from the abandonment by the entire West of the principles of international law, we shall see in the decades to come. None of this is going to be good for anyone.
It is not just a Trump phenomenon. Biden fully supported the Gaza genocide. Almost all major political parties throughout the West are under firm Zionist control, as is all of the significant major media and the ownership of every significant alternative media platform.
Iran has provided, directly and through proxies, the only military opposition to the creation of Greater Israel. This war is for Greater Israel. But it is also a wider effort to re-establish the failing economic dominance of the United States by military control of key resources.
There is no part of the world which will be safe from the fallout.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
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A demonstrator holds a ‘Stop Trump’s Wars’ placard during a protest against the war with Iran in Parliament Square, as USA and Israel launch attacks on Iran.
(Photo by Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Trump’s illegal, unconstitutional war on Iran is not only a moral and humanitarian disaster, but also a profound constitutional crisis.
Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) condemns Donald Trump and the Trump Administration, as well as their enablers in Congress, the media, and elsewhere for launching and supporting a reckless, illegal, unprovoked, and unconstitutional war on Iran over the past 24 hours.
Last June, we issued a statement denouncing Trump’s bombing of Iran because it posed risks of “spiraling into a regional or even global conflict that could shatter fragile economies and displace millions.” Trump’s unprovoked war on Iran is now confirming our worst fears.
This war is already inflicting significant humanitarian suffering, causing chaotic economic disruption, and risking grave damage to the international order.
The War on Iran has also precipitated a constitutional crisis, attacking the foundational principles of our democratic republic by blatantly violating the separation of powers. It also violates the War Powers Resolution of 1973.
We the People must not fail to meet this crisis. This latest precedent of unchecked abuse of power imperils our democracy, potentially fatally.
The US Constitution vests in Congress the sole authority to declare war (Article I, Section 8). Members of both parties have already acknowledged that Trump’s war against Iran without prior authorization from Congress is unconstitutional.
Senator Jeff Merkley, (D-Oregon), a veteran member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations said this war “shreds our Constitution, which assigns decisions of war to Congress.”
Member of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) called the war “blatantly unconstitutional.” Rep. Khanna co‑authored a bipartisan War Powers Resolution that would restrain Trump from launching such illegal, immoral, and reckless military operations.
Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) described Trump’s attacks as “acts of war unauthorized by Congress.” He is also leading the effort for the War Powers Resolution.
Senators Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) sponsored a similar Resolution. Sadly, Republican congressional leaders continue to block Rep. Khanna’s and his colleagues’ efforts to enact a War Powers Resolution in the House.
This unconstitutional, illegal war continues an alarming pattern of the Trump regime’s contempt for the Constitution, Congress, U.S. law, and international norms, as well as basic ethics and morality. Trump has previously ordered illegal attacks against Iran and Venezuela without lawful authorization.
The Trump administration has routinely trampled basic human and civil rights through violent, even deadly operations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement targeting US citizens and lawful residents. We cannot tolerate fascistic policies including fatal shootings, abusive raids, indefinite detentions, and family separations.
Trump, his Department of Justice, and other appointees have escalated their contempt for Congress and the constitutional separation of powers by publicly attacking members of Congress during hearings, by stonewalling and ignoring subpoenas, and by defying oversight powers, and by implementing illegal orders and lawless policies.
Trump’s illegal war on Iran and the rule of law establish an intolerable pattern of egregious abuses of power, directly threatening our constitutional order, our safety, and our way of life. These intertwined crises cry out for an immediate, decisive response by the Congress and the US public.
Therefore, PDA demands that all members of Congress, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike, uphold their oath of office to defend our constitutional republic. The Constitution offers one and only one remedy when President a repeatedly breaks the law and arrogantly refuses to abide by the limits on the power clearly laid out in the Constitution. That remedy is impeachment, followed by removal from office.
To effectuate that, PDA calls upon its hundred of thousands of supporters across the country—as well as every American who wants to preserve our constitutional democratic republic—to contact their Senators and Representatives by phone, email, social media, and in‑person visits to demand two things: 1. An immediate end to the War on Iran, and 2. The initiation of impeachment proceedings against Trump and all complicit Trump Administration officials.
Furthermore, we urge organizations and individuals across the country to launch protests and other forms of nonviolent civil disobedience to demand an end to the war. These could include boycotts, or a refusal to purchase any non‑essential goods and services, or some form of intentional non-participation, or any other lawful means until all US military operations against Iran cease and Congress initiates efforts to remove all lawless Trump officials from power.
Trump’s illegal, unconstitutional war on Iran is not only a moral and humanitarian disaster, but also a profound constitutional crisis. The Congress and the American people must oppose, rebuke, and punish Trump and all those complicit in the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on our liberty, our Constitution, and the rule of law. We the People must not fail to meet this crisis. This latest precedent of unchecked abuse of power imperils our democracy, potentially fatally. We can and must overcome these clear and present threats to our lives, liberty, and way of life.
The attack on Iran ordered by Donald Trump and his war-crazed cabal is a massive political crime, illegal under international law and in direct violation of the US Constitution. It has been launched, in collaboration with the genocidal Israeli regime, without even the figment of authorization from Congress, against a country which has not attacked the United States and poses no threat to it.
Within the first hours of this criminal attack, at least 24 students were killed in an air strike on a girls’ school in Minab in southern Iran. How many thousands, tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands will be killed in the days ahead?
Only four days ago, Trump appeared before Congress and the American people to deliver his State of the Union address. Even though he had obviously decided to launch the war, he concealed his decision and barely mentioned Iran in the course of his two-hour rant.
Now, Trump, baseball cap on his head, announced his decision in the dead of night, while most Americans were sleeping. He has set the United States and the entire world on a disastrous course. This war will not solve the internal social crisis of American society, nor will it reverse the protracted deterioration in the global position of US capitalism.
All these contradictions, domestic and international, will be intensified. The war itself will inevitably escalate and engulf the entire planet.
No amount of media propaganda can disguise the fact that the attack on Iran is precisely what was described at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders back in 1945-46 as a “crime against peace.”
In the future, historians will compare Trump’s February 28, 2026 attack on Iran to Hitler’s September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland. They are crimes of equal magnitude.
The Socialist Equality Party demands that the bloody assault on Iran be stopped immediately.
The same administration that has deployed ICE agents to terrorize American cities and neighborhoods, that is violating the Bill of Rights, is the same government that has launched this criminal war.
Call meetings in your factories, workplaces, schools and neighborhoods demanding the immediate end of this war.
The world must know that the American people oppose this war and want no part of it.
As people are watching online and in person, American federal immigration enforcement is stepping up a policy of an authoritarian police state using violence against immigrants and their native-born backers. Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis is a primary case in point. It’s a thing of beauty to see the multiracial working class resistance rising there and across the US.
Let us pay tribute to those who have lost their lives at the hands of federal immigration enforcement. Federal immigration agents have killed two US citizens—Renee Good and Alex Pretti—in 2026. Meanwhile, six immigrants—Heber Sanchaz Domínguez, Victor Manuel Diaz, Parady La, Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, and Geraldo Lunas Campos—have died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention in 2026.
One thing is clear to me. Resisting Operation Metro Surge is expanding working-class consciousness about the corporate state’s responses to people’s resistance to oppression. The political point is that given such current circumstances, conditions of adversity can and do serve as a basis for working-class solidarity across demographic differences. Working-class people of all backgrounds struggle against an authoritarian police state of brute force waging a “might makes right” battle against freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.
Whether born abroad like Maryse Balthazar, a Haitian journalist and elder-care nurse caring for a World War II veteran, or stateside, like ICU nurse Alex Pretti, a union employee for the Veterans Administration whom ICE agents executed, workers sell their labor services to buyers, or employers. This marketplace transaction defines the class relationship between employees and employers, sellers and buyers of labor services.
Organized labor’s awakening is a positive action for the working class.
Halting this buying and selling of labor services, or “shutting it down,” hits at the power of the capitalist marketplace to rule people’s lives. In our time of a decaying US empire, the capitalists ruling the marketplace are the billionaires and monopoly corporations that fund Democrats and Republicans, America’s political duopoly. Their voter coalitions differ demographically but are similar economically. Both coalitions are majority working class, sellers of labor services, but the ruling class funds the two political parties. The so-called left-right, blue-red demographic lacks a political party that advances its material interests. Why? The donors’ votes cast with millions of dollars before elections set the policies of both political parties.
Additional differences between the sellers of labor services range from gender to race (a biological fiction) to religion and sexual orientation. These identities matter. However, class relations are at the center of these identities. The Democratic Party and GOP weaponize their coalitions’ identities as political strategies to compel voters to oppose their class interests.
Ideology from the start plays a big part in this political equation. In the US, for example, its beginning gets ideological spin as a great founding of democracy and freedom versus a slave-holding republic waging genocide against the native inhabitants. This fictionalized national history whitewashes (heh) the meaning of democracy and freedom so central to a national narrative. We hear some working-class people say the following in the face of an authoritarian police state waging war on US soil: “This isn’t America. We are a nation of immigrants.”
It’s easy to blame, deservedly, the GOP’s attack on the teaching of history. Republicans’ efforts to ban some books is a transparent attempt to miseducate a new generation of Americans about the past. (S)he who controls the past controls the present. The Trump administration’s bid to end the teaching of chattel slavery is a case in point. It’s as if 250 years of enslaved Africans toiling for the wealth of a Caucasian slavocracy never happened stateside.
Against this backdrop, the corporate state’s use of force to attack workers trying to organize to bargain collectively is a consistent theme in US history. While collective bargaining is not center stage in Operation Metro Surge, corporate state-sanctioned violence against the working class is a chip off the block of coercive measures against dissent.
Organized labor is pushing back against Operation Metro Surge flooding Minneapolis with violent federal immigration enforcement agents. “The Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO along with regional bodies throughout the state, including the Saint Paul Regional Labor Federation, the West Area Labor Council, the North East Area Labor Council, and the East Central Labor Council, have joined in solidarity to endorse a powerful unified statewide action on January 23: Day of Truth and Freedom.” A US working-class pushback didn’t stop there.
One week later, working class people of all backgrounds, in and out of unions, across the US took part in a national action: “Shut It Down. No work, no school, no shopping.” Hundreds of thousands of adults and youth protested peacefully against the violence of federal immigration forces following the marching orders of the White House. Those orders to target brown people for arrest and deportation flow from a white supremacist orientation that fundamentally misinterprets that fact the US itself lies on lands stolen from the native inhabitants and enriched via the unpaid labor of enslaved Africans.
Organized labor’s awakening is a positive action for the working class. Yet it would be remiss of us to ignore the role of the AFL-CIO in supporting the Democratic Party’s backing of the US empire and its dozens of militarized foreign interventions since the end of World War II.
The violence of federal fiscal policy is also a weapon to discipline the working class. Take the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services’ announcement on January 5 that it would freeze over $10 billion in federal funding for childcare providers in five Democrat-led states based on baseless and racist claims of fraud against Somali childcare providers. In the Golden State, this fiscal move represents over $2.2 billion dollars in annual funding that could be lost during a freeze. Working families would have to borrow money to bridge the funding gap, relying in part on credit cards with their 22-plus percent interest rates that enrich the big banks.
Meanwhile in California, there has been a rise in harassment from white supremacists against San Diego’s Somali community, including its childcare providers, according to the United Domestic Workers (UDW/AFSCME Local 3930). San Diego is home to the country’s second-largest Somali community, after the Twin Cities. Immigrants who perform caring labor there and across the US are essential workers.
Johanna Hester is the UDW deputy executive director and co-chair of Child Care Providers United. “For over a month,” she said in a statement, “Somali childcare providers have endured harassment by internet vigilantes who are dead set on exposing fraud in California’s highly regulated government childcare system. In the process, they are stalking and intimidating our members at their homes and places of business.”
“These provocateurs are sowing seeds of hatred and distrust of our neighbors after taking cues from the president who referred to Somalians as ‘garbage.’ We treasure our Somali members and their contributions to our families, our union, and our communities,” she concluded.
Using one part of the working class to control other parts of it is a proven method of class control. In this way, the capitalist class can and does attempt to weaken workers’ solidarity. In contrast, the capitalist class does not fund the control of corporations. The corporate state’s mission is to free the millionaires and billionaires from working-class influence. Economically speaking, the corporate state’s political duopoly has shifted income and wealth from the working class to the capitalist class since the end of the Vietnam War.
Recently in California, citizens pushed back against the AI warlords behind the scenes of violent federal immigration enforcement. For example, around 50 people interrupted a talk by Andrew Abranches, the vice president of wildfire mitigation for Pacific Gas & Electric, demanding the company immediately end its contract with Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley firm that sells mass surveillance software to ICE. Palantir also provides the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with militarized AI tools to maim and murder Palestinians.
There are four main products that Palantir provides. Here’s one, dubbed Gotham, according to the American Friends Service Committee. Gotham is “Palantir’s flagship product for military, intelligence, and law enforcement applications. It ingests, integrates, and organizes large amounts of data from many sources to detect patterns and insights. Gotham can also integrate with sensors and autonomous systems like drones and give them tasks.”
War abroad, directly in the case of military operations to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, and by proxy to fund the IDF’s extermination campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, is the flip side of the class war underway globally. Stateside in the guise of federal immigration enforcement agents rampaging against workers who dare to dissent on the streets of American cities, class war is raging as a workforce from around the world laboring on US soil is finding its legs.
The U.S. is on a fast track to authoritarianism like nothing I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, corporate news outlets are utterly capitulating to Trump, twisting their coverage to avoid drawing his ire while lining up to stuff cash in his pockets.
That’s why I believe that Common Dreams is doing the best and most consequential reporting that we’ve ever done.
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Published date: 6 February 2026 08:53 GMT | Last update:51 mins 11 secs ago
Clear away the fog of conspiracy theories, and both are the product of an imperialist framework built on a consistent process of dehumanisation
The US Capitol building is pictured in March 2022 (Samuel Corum/Getty Images/AFP)
The release of the latest Epstein files has upended social media, amid a scramble to verify the morality of the names that are on and off the list.
This obsession with “who is in the files” effectively exonerates US institutions, imposing a veil of individual deviance. By framing the Epstein network as a secret cabal of bad actors who are politically compromised by blackmail, this discourse fails to recognise that we are not witnessing an anomaly of power, but rather a manifestation of its most basic structural reality.
As a result, the dominant narrative across the political divide suggests that Washington’s unwavering support for Israel, and its direct complicity in the Gaza genocide, are the result of politicians being coerced by external intelligence assets.
This framework is analytically deficient, operating on the flawed assumption that the American political class is somehow guided by a liberal moral compass; that its support for mass slaughter is a departure from its otherwise benevolent values.
In reality, western colonial and capitalist elites don’t need to be extorted to justify their participation in the destruction of Palestinian life. The American-Zionist alliance is rooted in material and ideological imperatives, with Israel functioning as a key outpost for American hegemony and a strategic military-industrial laboratory in the region.
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From its inception in 1492, American empire has been defined by the systematic displacement, enslavement and extermination of indigenous populations in favour of the expansion of European capital.
The genocide in Gaza is the contemporary expression of this historical heritage. Suggesting that US support for the colonisation of Palestine is a product of political blackmail, ignores centuries of American atrocities around the world. The US commitment to the Zionist settler-colonial project remains constant regardless of who holds office, because the strategic interests of empire demand it.
‘Human animals’
This imperialist framework relies on a consistent process of dehumanisation – one that facilitates both state-sponsored genocide and sex trafficking. In both cases, the human being is systematically stripped of political and moral agency, and reduced to a mere object or commodity.
In Gaza, the dehumanisation of Palestinians is a prerequisite for genocide. When an entire population is characterised as a “demographic threat” or “human animals”, their elimination is no longer framed as a crime, but as a logistical necessity for the “security” of the settler-colonial state.
In the case of the Epstein trafficking ring, victims were reduced to expendable objects who could be traded and exploited for the interests and pleasures of an elite class.
It isn’t accidental that members of the same political and economic class facilitating the ethnic cleansing of two million people in Gaza appear on a list of potential sexual predators. This isn’t about a secret society that hijacked the state; it’s about a class of people whose ideological and materialist worldview is predicated on the absolute exploitation of others.
American empire is not being blackmailed into supporting genocide. It is performing its historical function
For imperialist powers, the body – whether of a Palestinian child in a besieged enclave, or of someone being trafficked on a private island – is simply an object for the sustainability of political hegemony and the pursuit of sexual predation.
The moral degeneracy shown in the Epstein files is the domestic extension of the depravity exported by these same elites to the Global South. Their private sexual predatory crimes reflect the same tenets of empire as their public violent political crimes.
Indeed, their sexual criminality is entirely consistent with their supremacist worldview. If the elite class is comfortable with signing off on the slaughter of children for geopolitical gains, their involvement in sexual trafficking shouldn’t be a surprise.
We must also reject the intellectual laziness that seeks to frame this imperialist and capitalist depravity through the lens of conspiracy theories. Such theories often rely on western antisemitic tropes to explain corruption and evil, effectively protecting western power structures by conflating Judaism with Zionism.
This conflation serves western decision-makers by creating a buffer class, which is blamed for the consequences of imperialist projects around the world. Within the structures of empire, public servants are agents of imperialism regardless of their religious or ethnic identities. Their primary allegiance and objective is preserving the global capitalist order.
False narrative
By reducing the Zionist project or the Epstein ring to the work of a “Jewish cabal”, the dominant discourse serves to exonerate broader western colonial structures and elites, essentially letting imperialist powers off the hook for a project they have historically championed.
This narrative wrongly suggests that the US-Israel relationship is a hijacking of the American agenda, rather than a calculated and strategic partnership between two settler-colonial powers. To frame the liberation struggle as a fight against a religious conspiracy is to naively ignore the material conditions of ethnic cleansing, land theft and resource control.
This distraction is furthered by the algorithmic economy of social media, which rewards engagement farming by prioritising sensationalist fabrications over structural analysis and accurate information.
Attempts to “collect” likes by sharing ridiculous theories undermines the political legitimacy of the Palestinian cause, amid a surge in viral tweets that shamelessly claim to uncover evidence of ancient religious rituals, based on nothing more than obvious digital errors.
From Epstein to Gaza: The depravity of the western elite is now fully exposed
As the conversation shifts towards such fabricated narratives, the architects of the Gaza genocide are portrayed as being driven by ancient myths, rather than by the modern materialist and high-tech military logic of resource exploitation and geopolitical hegemony. Even when ritualistic language is used by the perpetrators, the bombs dropped on Gaza remain tools of a clear settler-colonial project.
The conspiracy framework obstructs a proper understanding of the international order; namely, how elites and powerful institutions make decisions in service of western imperialism.
Conspiracy theories suggest that colonial powers are so clandestine and all-powerful that we must decode their secrets from leaked documents. Yet the actual plots of imperialist powers are rarely secret: they are published in the white papers of think-tanks, discussed by world leaders, and codified in American and international institutions.
The millions of victims over centuries of European and American colonialism highlight the true nature of these imperialist and capitalist projects. The truth is operating in broad daylight: American empire is not being blackmailed into supporting genocide. It is performing its historical function.
The moral degeneracy in the Epstein files isn’t an aberration. It is a true reflection of a colonial and capitalist class that feels invincible in its capacity to exploit the whole world. The Gaza genocide and the Epstein trafficking ring aren’t mysteries to be decoded; they are the logical outcome of a materialist order that has viewed human beings as a disposable commodity since 1492.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Raja Abdulhaq is a Palestinian political organiser and researcher. Raja is a co-founder of Quds News Network and a former Executive Director of Islamic Leadership Council of New York. Raja has a masters degree in Political Science from Brooklyn College.
Photo Credit: The Cradle
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