US President Donald Trump, flanked by US Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, speaks with workers painting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, DC, on May 7, 2026.
(Photo by Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images)
“It again raises urgent questions: Is this president fit to lead and make consequential decisions that impact countless lives?” said the National Iranian-American Council.
As he struggles to force Iran’s capitulation, US President Donald Trump issued what seemed to be yet another threat to commit an act of mass destruction against the country through nuclear warfare.
When negotiations have faltered in recent weeks, Trump has on multiple occasions defaulted to genocidal threats—including that the “whole civilization” of Iran would “die,” and that the whole country would be “blown up“—which have only seemed to anger and galvanize his Iranian adversaries rather than make them quake with fear.
While the Trump administration has continued to insist that the ceasefire with Iran was still in effect, the two countries have exchanged significant fire this week.
On Thursday, the US launched what it said were “self-defense” strikes on military facilities it claimed were responsible for attempting to attack three US Navy ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran called the attacks a violation of the ceasefire and said its attacks on US ships were in response to American bombings of Iranian oil tankers the previous day.
Trump told reporters on Thursday that if the ceasefire were truly over, everyone would know. “If there’s no ceasefire, you’re just going to have to look at one big glow coming out of Iran,” he said. “They’d better sign the agreement fast… If they don’t sign, they’re going to have a lot of pain.”
To many observers, this sounded like a threat from Trump to carry out a nuclear holocaust, though it could also be a redux of Trump’s threats to attack civilian energy infrastructure, which would still be a war crime.
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, the editor-in-chief of Responsible Statecraft, noted that if it were indeed a nuclear threat, it would be “ironic since the war today supposedly is to prevent Iran from getting… a nuclear weapon.”
The National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) said that “threatening to make Iran glow—with nuclear weapons or otherwise—is an almost unthinkable threat to commit a mass war crime against 92 million people. It must never be normalized.”
“It again raises urgent questions: Is this president fit to lead and make consequential decisions that impact countless lives?” the group said. “Would the chain of command refuse unlawful orders to make Iran ‘glow,’ killing millions of people?”
Trump’s pledge to wipe out Iranian civilization last month drew widespread condemnation and led dozens of Democratic members of Congress to call for his Cabinet to remove him from office using the powers of the 25th Amendment.
“Our leaders need to interrogate these questions seriously, and not write them off as the ramblings of a madman,” NIAC said. “Trump is the president, and may seek to act on these horrible, contemptible threats. This war needs to end, and so [does] Trump’s horrific threatening of war crimes.”
It has now emerged that Trump’s decision to pause the operation was driven by complaints by Saudi Arabia, two US officials told NBC News.
Saudi Arabia’s leaders had been angered by the announcement and the government told the US it would not allow American military forces to fly aircraft through Prince Sultan Airbase, located southeast of its capital, Riyadh.
Officials said the Kingdom denied access for any US aircraft to fly through Saudi airspace as part of Project Freedom.
A call is reported to have taken place between Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but the pair were unable to reach a resolution – forcing the US president to axe the operation.
Trump has ruffled feathers across the Gulf with seemingly unilateral decisions (Reuters)
The leaders “have been in touch regularly” and officials are also in touch with vice president JD Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio, a Saudi source told NBC News.
“The problem with that premise is that things are happening quickly in real time,” the source said about the announcement, adding that the country was “very supportive of the diplomatic efforts” by Pakistan to guide the countries towards an agreement.
A White House official told NBC News that “regional allies were notified in advance.”
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
A diplomat in the region said that the operation was not coordinated with Oman either. “The US made an announcement and then coordinated with us,” they said, adding, “We were not upset or angry.”
Trump’s project is said to have angered the Saudi leadership (Getty)
“Because of geography, you need cooperation from regional partners to utilise their airspace along their borders,” one US official explained about the success of the scheme.
The Strait of Hormuz is a vital shipping route for global supplies of oil, fertiliser and other commodities that has been virtually closed since the US and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February, causing global price rises.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth appears before a House Committee on Armed Services business meeting on the Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2027, on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, April 29, 2026, in Washington. [AP Photo/Rod Lamkey Jr.]
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday on the Trump administration’s plan to increase military spending by 50 percent, from $1 trillion this year to $1.5 trillion in Fiscal Year 2027.
Hegseth, who has rebranded the Pentagon as “the Department of War,” told the committee the budget would put the defense industrial base “back on a wartime footing.”
The request is the sharpest single-year jump in US military spending in the postwar era. It would lift outlays to 4.5 percent of gross domestic product, with House Republican leaders calling for 5 percent as the eventual target.
The buildup is preparation for war with nuclear-armed China and Russia, the two states Trump’s National Defense Strategy names as principal adversaries.
In the face of a broadly unpopular administration openly stating its intent to commit war crimes in pursuit of global domination, the Democrats on the committee made it their highest priority to emphasize—despite tactical disagreements—their solidarity with the Trump administration’s megalomaniacal program of world conquest.
Democratic ranking member Adam Smith of Washington opened by expressing his sympathy with the Iran war and with the 50 percent surge in military spending. “I think we should all recognize that our troops deserve nothing but our praise for the incredible job that they have done,” Smith told Hegseth. “We have demonstrated to the world that we have a highly capable military, and I hear the chairman on the need for an increased” budget.
Smith then condemned the mass popular opposition to the war. “I strongly disagree with the folks on the far left who say that we don’t really face any threats, that the US is a malign influence in the world and always has been. I don’t agree with that,” Smith said. “China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis,” he continued, “They want to push us aside.”
Republican Don Bacon of Nebraska summed up the bipartisan consensus for global war. “We are the most bipartisan committee out of 20 in Congress. We have a tradition of voting on NDAAs with large, large majorities year after year,” Bacon said. “And it’s important not to be a Republican first in here or a Democrat first. We’re Americans trying to ensure that our country is well defended. And in that spirit, I compliment the operations in Iran.”
Bacon is correct about the bipartisanship of the war drive. The Democrats funded the buildup before the Iran war began and refused to halt it once it was under way. The House passed the FY26 National Defense Authorization Act on December 10, 2025, by 312 to 112, with the entire Democratic House leadership voting yes; the Senate followed 77 to 20. On January 22, 2026, the House cleared an $839 billion defense appropriations bill 341 to 88. On February 2, 21 House Democrats supplied the margin for a continuing resolution to keep the government funded; the same day, a US F-35 from the USS Abraham Lincoln shot down an Iranian drone over the Arabian Sea. Twenty-six days later, the US-Israeli assault on Iran began. Once it had, both chambers voted down War Powers Act resolutions to stop it.
The plan’s largest line item, $71 billion, would massively expand the US nuclear arsenal—new ballistic-missile submarines, long-range bombers and intercontinental missiles aimed at China and Russia. Shipbuilding receives $65 billion. Bombs and conventional missiles get $25 billion. The “Golden Dome” missile-defense program is funded at $22 billion. The Space Force budget doubles. Procurement rises 76 percent and research and development 64 percent. Another $54.6 billion is earmarked for a Defense Autonomous Warfare Group to wage drone war, most of it contingent on a future reconciliation bill.
Hegseth said the budget would put 14 munitions production lines on a sustained wartime tempo—Patriot, PAC-3, THAAD, Tomahawk, AMRAAM and JASSM missiles among them—with companies offered multi-year demand signals to expand their factories. The active-duty force grows by 44,000 troops. The Pentagon claims to have triggered more than $50 billion in private investment, 280 new factories and 18 million square feet of American manufacturing floorspace. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine called the budget “a historic down payment on future security.”
Republican Mike Rogers of Alabama, chair of the House committee, framed the request around preparation for war with China. “China builds 47% of the world’s ships. The US builds one-tenth of 1%. We build fewer ships than Croatia or the Netherlands,” Rogers said. The Chinese military, he added, has become “a modernized military force capable of projecting power well into the Pacific.”
Caine said the Pentagon was reviewing “all three legs of the nuclear triad”—submarines, missiles and bombers—to make sure they were “reliable, redundant, and workable” for, in his words, “our nation’s most important day.” Hegseth warned the committee that “the country that dominates in quantum will dominate the future in C2, in comms, in every way that we fight.” Bacon called for a nuclear buildup expressly aimed at Beijing: “Russia, China needs to know no matter what they do, we can launch those 400 ICBMs.”
The defense secretary spoke the vocabulary of a crime boss. He said the spending would build a military that “instills nothing less than unrelenting fear in our adversaries.” He cited the year’s operations as proof. “That matters when you go 37 hours around the world for Midnight Hammer,” he said, referring to the June 2025 B-2 bombing of Iranian nuclear sites. “That matters when you go downtown in Venezuela and grab the indicted dictator of a country in the middle of the night.” Russian air defenses sent to protect Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro before his January 3 abduction, Hegseth said, “were defeated in 15 minutes.”
Democratic Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts questioned Hegseth over his March 13 press conference order to give boats in the Caribbean “no quarter, no mercy.” Moulton, a former Marine Corps officer with four combat tours in Iraq from 2003 to 2008, said, “An order for no quarter or no survivors is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.” Hegseth did not retract the order. “The Department of War fights to win,” he replied.
Wednesday’s hearing made clear that the war on Iran is one phase of a global war the American ruling class is preparing for control of the world.
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Joshua Scheer
Jeffrey Sachs doesn’t raise his voice — he doesn’t have to. In this wide‑ranging conversation with Tucker Carlson, Sachs lays out a devastating, historically grounded indictment of U.S. foreign policy, the manufactured “Iran threat,” and the decades‑long fusion of American empire with Israel’s regional ambitions. What emerges is not a hot take but a cold, clinical autopsy of a war machine that has slipped beyond democratic control.
From the 1953 coup to the present blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Sachs traces how Washington’s obsession with dominance — and Israel’s pursuit of permanent military supremacy — has pushed the world to the brink of a conflict that could collapse the global economy in weeks. He dismantles the nuclear‑weapons narrative, exposes the bipartisan addiction to sanctions and covert warfare, and warns that the U.S. is now trapped in a crisis of its own making.
This is one of Sachs’ clearest, most unflinching interviews to date — a map of how we got here, and a warning about what comes next if the “grown‑ups” don’t seize the wheel.
Jeffrey Sachs Warns: The U.S.–Israel War Path Toward Iran Is Leading the World Into Economic and Political Collapse
Jeffrey Sachs has spent decades advising governments, studying development, and watching empires rise and fall. In his latest interview, he delivers a stark message: the United States and Israel are steering the world toward a catastrophic confrontation with Iran — and the window for avoiding disaster is closing fast.
A Global Crisis Triggered by a Manufactured One
Sachs argues that the current crisis is not an accident but the predictable outcome of decades of U.S. interference in Iran, beginning with the 1953 CIA‑MI6 coup that toppled Iran’s elected prime minister. That single act — the theft of Iran’s sovereignty and its oil — set the stage for 70 years of hostility, sanctions, proxy wars, and regime‑change fantasies.
According to Sachs, the present escalation is driven less by Iranian behavior than by Washington’s refusal to accept that Iran slipped out of U.S. control in 1979. The “Iran menace,” he says, is a propaganda construct — a way to justify endless pressure on a country that has not invaded another nation in more than a century.
The Strait of Hormuz: A Choke Point for the World Economy
Sachs warns that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — a direct consequence of the spiraling conflict — has already triggered a global economic emergency. Oil, gas, fertilizers, petrochemicals, and metals flow through this narrow waterway. With it blocked, the world economy is “reeling,” and the clock is ticking.
The off‑ramp exists, Sachs insists: de‑escalation, diplomacy, and reopening the strait. But it requires political maturity — something he argues is in short supply in both Washington and Jerusalem.
Israel’s Parallel Agenda: Regional Dominance at Any Cost
Sachs draws a sharp distinction between U.S. and Israeli motives. For Washington, Iran represents a rebellion against American empire. For Israel, Iran is the last major obstacle to full military dominance across the Middle East and North Africa.
He argues that Israel’s political leadership — backed by a powerful U.S. lobby — has long sought to neutralize Iran not because of nuclear fears, but because Iran resists Israeli hegemony. This, Sachs says, is the real engine behind the push for confrontation.
The Nuclear Lie
One of Sachs’ most forceful points is his dismantling of the nuclear narrative. U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly stated that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon. Iran has sought international monitoring and compliance frameworks — including the JCPOA — only to see the U.S. sabotage its own agreements under pressure from domestic political forces aligned with Israel.
Calling the nuclear rhetoric “Orwellian,” Sachs argues that the real goal is regime change, not nonproliferation.
A War That Would Reshape the World in Weeks
Sachs warns that a U.S.–Israel attack on Iran would not be a limited strike. It would trigger a regional war, destroy infrastructure across the Gulf, and plunge the global economy into chaos. Within weeks, he says, the world would look “profoundly damaged,” with the risk of escalation into a global conflict.
This is not hyperbole, Sachs insists — it is the logical outcome of the current trajectory.
The Real Question: Who Is Steering U.S. Policy?
Throughout the interview, Sachs returns to a central theme: the absence of democratic control over U.S. foreign policy. Decisions of war and peace are being shaped by lobbies, political vanity, and imperial reflexes — not by the interests of the American public.
The result is a government that no longer serves its citizens, a political class insulated from consequences, and a foreign policy apparatus that treats global stability as collateral damage.
A Final Warning
Sachs’ message is clear: the U.S. and Israel are playing with forces they cannot control. The world is at a fork in the road — diplomacy or disaster — and the people making the decisions are the least equipped to choose wisely.
For Americans, the stakes are not abstract. Sachs argues that the economic, political, and moral costs of this conflict will fall squarely on the public, not on the leaders who helped create it.
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.”
Iranian attacks on US bases across the Middle East have caused far more damage than the Trump administration has publicly acknowledged, and an Iranian fighter jet was able to bomb at least one US base, NBC News reported on Saturday, citing unnamed US officials.
The administration has attempted to cover up the damage to US bases in the war, and has gone as far as requesting that Planet Labs and other satellite imagery companies black out war images, making it difficult to ascertain the damage.
The NBC report said that the Pentagon has also kept the information on the damage from Congress. “No one knows anything. And it’s not for lack of asking,” a Republican congressional aide told the outlet. “We have been asking for weeks and not getting specifics, even as the Pentagon is asking for a record high budget.”
Iranian missile and drone attacks have targeted US bases in seven Middle Eastern countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, Jordan, and Qatar. US officials said that an Iranian F-5 fighter jet was able to bomb the US base at Camp Buehring in Kuwait despite it having air defenses, marking the first time in many years that an enemy fixed-wing aircraft struck a US military installation.
Smoke rises from the direction of a US naval base after a missile attack on the service center of the US Fifth Fleet in Manama, Bahrain, February 28, 2026 (screenshot of social media footage obtained by REUTERS)
The US armed Iran with Northrop Grumman-made F-5 fighter jets before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and Iran has developed its own version of the aircraft, known as the HESA Kowsar.
Kuwait was also the site of a March 1 Iranian drone attack that killed six US Army Reserve soldiers and injured more than 20. The drone targeted a makeshift operations center in Port Shuaiba, and according to survivors of the attack who spoke to CBS News, the facility was unprotected despite claims from US War Secretary Pete Hegseth that the drone was able to “squirt” through air defenses.
The Pentagon has confirmed the deaths of at least 13 US soldiers and the injuries of more than 400 in the war. The bases across the region were mostly evacuated since they were so vulnerable to attack, something The New York Times previously reported. “Many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable, with the ones in Kuwait, which is next door to Iran, suffering perhaps the most damage,” the Timesreported on March 25.
The NBC report said that the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain “sustained serious damage” and that other US bases in the country also suffered serious damage that is likely repairable. The report also cited the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a Washington-based think tank, which said it assessed Iran hit more than 100 targets across 11 bases, and that the repairs would cost at least $5 billion, though the number doesn’t account for some of the radars, weapons systems, and other equipment that was destroyed.
A US legal memo reveals Iran war was launched at Israel’s request, contradicting Trump’s repeated claims of independence.
Key Developments
US document states war was conducted in “collective self-defense of its Israeli ally.”
Admission contradicts Donald Trump’s claims that Washington acted independently.
Memo frames ongoing war as legally continuous conflict, removing need for renewed justification.
US Memo Contradicts Trump Narrative
A US State Department legal memorandum has revealed that the so-called Operation Epic Fury, launched on February 28, was carried out “at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally,” directly contradicting repeated public claims by US President Donald Trump that Washington acted independently in its war against Iran.
The document explicitly states that the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with Iran “at the request of” Israel, framing the military campaign not as a unilateral American decision, but as part of a coordinated war effort aligned with Israeli objectives.
This admission stands in clear contrast to Trump’s earlier assertions that the United States was acting on its own strategic calculations, without external influence, in launching the large-scale military operation.
The memo goes further by constructing a legal argument that the war did not begin with Operation Epic Fury, but is instead part of an ongoing, long-term armed conflict involving the United States, Israel, and Iran.
‘Collective Self-Defense’ of Israel
According to the document, US military action is justified both as collective self-defense of Israel and as an exercise of Washington’s “own inherent right of self-defense.”
It argues that hostilities have been continuous for years, citing repeated US communications to the United Nations Security Council and asserting that no formal end to the conflict ever occurred.
“The United States is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally, as well as in the exercise of the United States’ own inherent right of self-defense,” the memo states.
By defining the war as “ongoing”, the document claims that Washington is not required to reassess legal justifications such as imminence or proportionality for each new military action.
President Trump on Thursday shared a post calling for the killing of Iranian leaders who won’t accept US demands, ramping up his threats against the country amid a very fragile ceasefire.
The post Trump amplified was written by Marc Thiessen, who served as a speechwriter for the George W. Bush administration. “If there are two factions in Iran, one that wants a deal and one that doesn’t, let’s kill the ones who don’t want a deal,” Thiessen said in a post on X where he was quoting himself from an appearance on Fox News.
In the piece, Thiessen argued that Trump should restart the bombing campaign against Iran. “Right now, the remnants of the Iranian regime are under the misimpression that Trump wants a deal more than they do,” he wrote.
“Trump needs to disabuse them of that notion. He has reportedly told Iran that it has three to five days to make a serious counteroffer. If it fails to do so, he should resume combat operations — starting with strikes targeting Iran’s recalcitrant leaders. If the Iranian regime is really ‘fractured’ between a faction that wants a deal and a faction that does not, there is a simple solution: Kill the faction that does not,” Thiessen said.
Thiessen said the US should maintain the blockade and claimed the US military could open the Strait of Hormuz by force and that it just needed 14 more days to “finish the job” against Iran.
The Trump administration has pushed the narrative that Iran’s military has essentially been obliterated, but Iran was able to continue missile and drone attacks throughout the entire war, and according to US officials speaking to The New York Times, US intelligence assesses that Tehran likely has access to the majority of its missiles and launchers.
Less than two months after fascist US President Donald Trump launched the criminal US/Israeli war against Iran in the dead of night on February 28, the conflict is having a devastating economic impact on tens of millions of workers around the globe.
American imperialism’s determination to consolidate its dominance over the Middle East, one of the world’s most critical energy-producing regions, has already claimed the lives of thousands of Iranians in six weeks of brutal and indiscriminate bombardment. But the economic fallout from the US-instigated war and blockade of the Strait of Hormuz could prove even more deadly.
Prior to the war’s outbreak, the Strait of Hormuz accounted for some 20 percent of global oil traffic and a significant portion of natural gas shipments. The consequences produced by the disruption of these energy supplies are already reverberating across the world economy. They include rising fuel costs, higher electricity prices and escalating transportation expenses for billions of people.
The Middle East is also a major producer of fertilisers, so prices have jumped amid the planting season for farmers in the northern hemisphere. The result is both increased production costs for crops and reduced harvests, as farmers plant less to cut costs or use less fertiliser, which will fuel a food-price spiral over the coming months and into 2027.
Shipping disruptions, compounded by heightened insurance premiums and rerouted trade flows, have further increased the price of food imports. The Containerised Freight Index rose 10 percent within a month of the war’s outbreak, underscoring that even traffic not directly impacted by the Strait of Hormuz blockade is affected.
On top of the destruction of schools, hospitals and other civilian infrastructure by US and Israeli missiles, the working class in Iran is bearing the economic brunt of the war. A government spokesman admitted that approximately 2 million workers have lost their jobs as a direct consequence of the conflict.
The impact of the war has been particularly acute across the Asia-Pacific region, due to its heavy reliance on oil imports from the Middle East. Over 80 percent of crude and LNG normally transiting the Strait of Hormuz is destined for countries in the Asia-Pacific, including major industrial economies like China and Japan. Fuel prices have risen sharply in India’s major cities, with petrol and diesel costs increasing by roughly 10-15 percent within weeks.
In Indonesia, nickel producers have cut output by at least 10 percent due to shortages of natural gas and sulphur, which are required to produce the high temperatures necessary for extraction and refining of the metal. Severe disruptions to the garment factories of Bangladesh have also been reported due to a lack of polyester and nylon, fossil fuel byproducts used to make clothing.
Another critical channel of impact is the disruption of remittances. Millions of workers from South Asia and Africa are employed in the Gulf region, sending vital income back to their impoverished families. The war has disrupted these flows, as economic activity slows and employment opportunities shrink.
Motorists queue up to get fuel at a pump, fearing a possible fuel shortage due to the US Iran war, in Ahmedabad, India, Monday, March 23, 2026. [AP Photo/Ajit Solanki]
The United Nations Development Programme estimated in a recent report that the war on Iran could cost 36 countries in the Asia-Pacific nearly $300 billion and plunge up to 8.8 million people into poverty. Five million of these people live in Iran, where the human development index has already lost 1–1.5 years due to the war.
The New York Times worried in a lengthy analysis published April 20 that countries throughout the Asia-Pacific may face “shortages [that] could push several countries into convulsions of unrest, followed by recession,” if the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked for just a few more weeks. Even high-end production, including of semiconductors essential for producing chips built in Taiwan, faces problems. Prior to the war, Qatar produced a third of the world’s helium, a critical component of the semiconductor production process. But it stopped production on March 2 after an Iranian retaliatory attack hit its gas facilities. As the Times put it, cuts to chip production “would roll through everything from electronics to cars.”
In Africa, Nigeria has seen fuel prices rise by over 50 percent, despite the country being a massive oil producer and exporter. Since the country of some 240 million people is heavily dependent on imports of refined oil products, petrol prices have risen significantly, leading to increases in public transport costs and the price of staple foods. In Kenya, the fuel price regulator hiked petrol prices by over 16 percent and diesel prices by over 24 percent in mid April, following a 68 percent increase in the cost of oil imports.
Many African countries depend on imported fertilisers. The surge in natural gas prices has driven up costs for farmers, threatening lower crop yields and outright famine in areas where subsistence farming prevails. At the same time, currency depreciation in several countries is amplifying the impact of global price increases, making imports even more expensive, eroding real wages and pushing up already crippling debt repayment costs for financially strapped governments.
In Europe and North America, fuel prices have also risen sharply, placing yet another burden on working people’s budgets amid stagnant economic growth, mass layoffs and social attacks by the ruling elites in every country to pay for bloated military budgets and the enrichment of the financial oligarchy. In Germany, national airline Lufthansa announced the immediate closure of its CityLine subsidiary amid a strike by thousands of airline workers for job security and pay increases. The continent’s governments are investing trillions of euros in their own war machines to prosecute their predatory imperialist interests at the expense of workers’ livelihoods and social programmes.
Across the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal has announced the era of the “mega layoff,” with job cuts in finance, technology, entertainment and manufacturing.
By contrast, the war is proving to be a bonanza for the corporations and financial oligarchy. According to one investigation, the world’s major oil conglomerates will pull in additional profits of over $230 billion in 2026 alone.
The World Socialist Web Site has insisted that US imperialism’s war on Iran is one front in the early stages of a third world war, which includes the US/NATO war on Russia in Ukraine and preparations for a military conflagration with China. As the imperialist powers in North America and Europe scramble for the upper hand in the redivision of the world, they are totally indifferent to the impact on billions of workers from the global economic and social disaster produced by crisis-ridden capitalism and their crazed policies. But this very disaster creates the material conditions for the development of a working class movement to end the war and the capitalist profit system which is its root cause.
The parallels to World War I are striking, when food riots across Europe during 1916 and 1917 gave an initial expression to growing popular opposition to the imperialist slaughter. The most consequential of these were protests that erupted demanding bread in Petrograd in early 1917, marking the beginning of Russia’s February Revolution. Eight months later, the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky led the working class to power on a socialist programme that would bring the world war to an end.
Today, the world economy is integrated to such a degree that initial expressions of social unrest provoked by the war have already erupted in its first weeks. Beginning on April 10, tens of thousands of industrial workers in India’s national capital region launched strikes and protests against price hikes triggered by the war. Workers demanded wage increases to cover higher rents, fuel costs, and food prices. Protests have also erupted in countries as diverse as the Philippines and Ireland.
Now, as in 1917, the decisive tasks are the fight to develop a conscious, unified movement of the international working class and build a mass revolutionary party capable of leading the struggle for workers’ political power.
The global nature of the crisis demands an international response, transcending national divisions and opposing militarism. Workers in Iran, the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa share a common interest in ending the war and the bankrupt capitalist order that gave rise to it. This requires the independent political mobilisation of the working class on a socialist programme to place the commanding heights of the economy under democratic workers’ control, ensuring that production is organised to meet human needs rather than private profit.
Under these conditions, the upcoming International May Day Online Rally 2026 assumes critical importance. It will articulate the revolutionary socialist programme and perspective workers around the world require to fight imperialist war and its barbaric consequences. Register today to participate, and encourage your work colleagues and friends to do the same.
Joe Gill MEE, 21 April 2026 09:07 BST | Last update:8 hours 4 mins ago
Comparisons between the US-Israeli war on Iran, the Gaza genocide, and Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union are being made by scholars
A picture of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on fire during a protest against the US-Israeli military action in Iran, near the US Embassy in Manila, Philippines, 9 April 2026 (AFP)
It has long been considered offensive and antisemitic to draw comparisons between Nazi Germany and Israel, but on the specific question of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its wars of expansion, including the war on Iran, the dam has broken.
Norman Finkelstein, the eminent American Jewish scholar and son of Holocaust survivors, drew the direct comparison between Hitler’s war in the east and the war launched by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu on Iran on 28 February in a recent Middle East Eye interview.
I have long thought the comparison is merited, for a number of reasons, beginning in 2023 with the start of the war on Gaza.
Like Hitler’s Germany, Israel’s leaders made the fatal error of not knowing when to stop, and opening up several fronts – seven at one point. Each tactical victory – against Hamas, then Hezbollah, encouraged further audacious attacks. Having waged a genocidal campaign in Gaza, colonial expansion in the West Bank, and relentless attacks on Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, Prime Minister Netanyahu turned to Iran in 2025.
Why? A messianic ideology of Jewish supremacy that drives the prime minister and the settler politicians on whom he depends. The politics of ethnonationalism, territorial expansion and hyper militarism are similar, if not identical, to the ideology of the Second World War fascist axis led by Nazi Germany. And this ideology of ethnic supremacy leads to overreach.
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Trump, as a white nationalist who believes in US exceptionalism, shares the same inflated belief in unlimited US power, but is less unequivocally bent on permanent war. (Trump bears some comparison with Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, whose record of failed imperial adventures more closely resembles Trump’s.)
Iran and the Soviet Union
Finkelstein, speaking of the Iran war, compared it to how the war of extermination waged by Hitler on the Soviet people inspired them to rally and defend the country. “This was the same mistake made by Trump. The more Trump turned it into a war of extermination like the Nazis did with Russia… the people rallied, it was the Soviet Union’s Great Patriotic war, a second time.”
Another parallel to the Second World War is that the West’s enemy is a revolutionary regime which is facing severe internal pressures. The Soviet Union in the 1930s was perceived as being weak due to violent internal upheaval; the similar position of Iran before the war encouraged Netanyahu and Trump to believe that a surprise attack would lead to a rapid victory.
The Soviet Union in the 1930s was perceived as being weak due to violent internal upheaval; similar to the position of Iran before the war
Both the Soviets and Iran lacked major global allies prepared to come to their defence. Like the Soviet Union, Iran had non-state groups in different countries that supported its international vision, but these groups pose a limited threat to the world’s most advanced military, and a nuclear-armed regional military power.
Like Iran, the Soviet Union had sought to avoid war by making agreements with its chief enemy, Germany, in the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939. In the case of Iran, the 2015 nuclear deal was supposed to end the threat of conflict. But Trump ripped it up in 2018.
Both Iran and the Soviet Union had been through very difficult years preceding this frontal military attack. Iran had faced comprehensive sanctions, which helped to spark three major uprisings against the regime, in 2019, 2022 and lastly in January 2026.
The Soviet regime, while in the process of rapidly industrialising, had waged a terror campaign against kulaks, national minority groups, and swathes of the Bolshevik administration, including the officer corp of the Red Army, in which millions died – a point explicitly made by Finkelstein (although he exaggerated by saying “tens of millions” died). As a result, Hitler saw Soviet Russia as weak and vulnerable. He predicted a sweeping victory over Stalin.
As Finkelstein explained: “The first months of the war were a cake walk, disaster for the Soviets… but the Germans made one big mistake: they wanted what was called living space, lebensraum, and [that] means they had to get rid of the people living there, and so they embarked on a war of extermination… Notwithstanding the brutality of Stalin’s regime, notwithstanding collectivisation and the purge trials, which eliminated the entire military and political leadership, the people embraced the “Great Patriotic War”.
Like the Israelis and the Trump White House, the Nazis had a racial contempt for their Slavic enemies who they considered to be inferior and not able to resist the advance of the German armed forces. Trump and Netanyahu likewise consistently belittle the capacity of their enemies, believed the Iranian regime would crumble under direct assault, and see their technological and military superiority as decisive over the “Arabs” and Iran. Trump called the Iranians “animals”.
These Iranians supported the US-Israeli war. Now they realise their mistake
The killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war was supposed to be the knockout blow. It would be as if Hitler had a rocket system that could accurately target Stalin’s rooms in the Kremlin and wipe out the dictator and his politburo. Would that have caused the Soviet regime to collapse amid invasion? Unlikely.
The first year of the Nazis’ invasion saw a devastating series of retreats and defeats for the Soviets. The Wehrmacht rolled through Ukraine, where the famine and terror of the previous decade had drained support for the Soviets, allowing the Germans to march rapidly on to the Russian steppe; in the north the Nazis advanced through Belarus to the gates of Moscow and Leningrad, imposing a brutal siege on the latter. Hitler had every reason to think victory over the Communist regime in Russia was all but certain.
But to successfully overthrow a regime one needs to find new, pliable rulers who are able to replace the old ones. This has not proved possible in Iran, with Reza Pahlavi shown to be wholly inadequate to the task, lacking political skills and wide popular support in Iran.
Germany, and the US and Israel, overlooked the lack of strategic route to defeat their enemies in the long run. In the short to medium term, they win based on superior air power, intelligence, and destructive offensive forces, but in the longterm, the outlook is more problematic, as people constantly attacked in their own lands are certain to resist.
Iranians have come to realise that Trump and Netanyahu are not interested in their liberation – they wish to destroy the country’s independent existence and to fragment it along ethnic lines.
Iran’s new leaders
Moreover, in the case of Iran, the wiping out of the older generation of leaders and commanders has changed the calculus of the regime, brought in new commanders, and if anything ended the restraint that was the policy under Khamenei. The attacks on Gulf states, the blockade of Hormuz, and the insistence that Lebanon must be part of a lasting ceasefire deal show how much Iran, post-February, is no longer afraid to directly confront the encirclement imposed by the US and its allies.
The wiping out of the older generation of leaders has changed the calculus of the regime, ending the restraint that was the policy under Khamenei
Iran, like Russia, is a vast continental nation, and presents huge challenges for any foreign power wishing to conquer or dismember it. Hitler openly saw the Soviet Union as part of the future Third Reich, as a vast colonial territory providing resources and agricultural lands to feed the empire, while turning its people into little more than slaves. After the victories of the first year of the war in the east, things turned sour for the Nazis at Stalingrad in late 1942.
Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders long declared their intention to remove the Iranian regime, using agents on the ground, assassinations and sabotage, and imploring Iranians to rise up against the ayatollahs. But after the mass protests and brutal crackdown in January, these calls have not been heeded. Iranians have rallied to the nation.
If, however unlikely it seems, the latest US-Iran ceasefire somehow transitions to a more permanent agreement to end hostilities on Iran’s terms, it would be seen as a historic defeat for the US, on par with Vietnam. And a break with the total war that killed tens of millions in the 1940s.
As of now, the US is blockading Iran’s ports and seized an Iranian ship, while moving thousands of troops into the region. At home, Trump is on a war footing, putting the auto sector on notice to convert to weapons production, while asking Congress for a $1.5 trillion “defence” budget, the largest ever. This does not look like imminent peace, but with Trump, who knows?
When will it end?
And what about Gaza? The genocide is far from over. For the Palestinians, this question is existential.
History offers some clues. No modern genocide has lasted more than four years. Rwanda’s lasted 100 days – the fastest, most brutal, in history. Cambodia’s lasted over three years until Vietnam invaded and overthrew the Khmer Rouge. The Armenian genocide lasted just over one year. Stalin’s special operation against the Poles, Ukrainians and other national minorities lasted 16 months. The German siege of Leningrad lasted 872 days. The Holocaust, the worst of all, lasted four years.
So far the Palestinians have endured 926 days of extermination and siege. According to a 2025 household survey and joint mortality study, the Gaza death toll had reached 84,000 by January 2025 and is likely now well over 100,000, on top of 6,500 killed by Israel in Lebanon, and thousands more in Iran.
The biggest defeat of all is not in Lebanon, or Iran, but in Washington. US voters have had enough of wars and Israel
Crucially, in most cases, genocide precedes the collapse or military defeat of the perpetrator.
Israel has always relied on unconditional US support, which culminated in Washington arming a genocide, then backing not one, but two unprovoked assaults on Iran, and a prolonged war against Hezbollah. All of them failed, at appalling human cost. And now that US weapons pipeline is in jeopardy.
The vote last week in the US Senate on supplying arms to Israel was historic. Even though it passed, 40 out of 47 Democratic senators voted for Bernie Sander’s resolution blocking a batch of military aid. By contrast, last April, only 15 of the Democratic caucus’s 47 members supported similar measures. This signals a dramatic shift against Israel in Washington.
Democrats who want to be re-elected in November know they must now distance themselves, not just rhetorically, but also financially and politically, from Israel and its powerful US lobby. Aipac is still spending hundreds of millions to get its candidates elected, but the taint of lobby money is increasingly electoral poison.
Netanyahu had his golden time with Trump’s first term, then Joe Biden, and Trump two. That time is coming to an end. Most likely, he will look for a way to prolong Israel’s campaign for regional supremacy and remain in office as long as possible, but he is running out of road.
He now faces his biggest defeat of all; not in Lebanon, or Iran, but in Washington. US voters have had enough of forever wars and Israel.
In Israel, as Finkelstein warns, it is not just Netanyahu, but the whole of Israeli society that “has turned into homicidal maniacs” supporting war on Iran, ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and Lebanon, and genocide in Gaza.
The final lesson of World War Two was that fascism was defeated after its leaders’ disastrous military overreach and defeat at the hands of the Soviet Red Army and partisan resistance. Today’s fascist war leaders have learned nothing from this history.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
Joe Gill has worked as a journalist in London, Venezuela and Oman, for newspapers including Financial Times, Morning Star and Middle East Eye. His focus is on geopolitics, economic history, social movements, and the arts.
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