WSJ report reveals UAE carried out strikes on Iran alongside US and Israel from start of war, operating as a third member of coalition
Foreign workers look at a tall plume of black smoke rising after an explosion in the Fujairah industrial zone in the UAE, on 3 March 2026 (Fadel Senna/AFP)
The United Arab Emirates carried out dozens of air strikes against Iran during the Israeli-US war on the Islamic Republic, according to a report on Friday by The Wall Street Journal, revealing a far deeper and earlier role in the conflict than previously acknowledged.
Citing people familiar with the matter, the newspaper said the UAE launched attacks from the opening days of the conflict and continued operations even after a ceasefire was announced in April.
The report suggests Abu Dhabi effectively operated alongside the US and Israel as a third participant in the military campaign.
The strikes were reportedly coordinated with Washington and Israel, which provided intelligence support. Targets included locations on Qeshm and Abu Musa Islands in the Strait of Hormuz, Bandar Abbas, the Lavan Island oil refinery, and the Asaluyeh petrochemical complex.
Several of the attacks hit Iranian energy infrastructure. One strike on the Asaluyeh complex, reportedly carried out in coordination with Israel, triggered international outcry and prompted Washington to urge Israel to halt attacks on energy facilities.
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Before the conflict, Gulf states publicly insisted they would not allow their territory or airspace to be used for military action against Iran. The report, however, suggests that Abu Dhabi abandoned that position at the outset of the war.
Iran responded by targeting Gulf cities, airports and energy infrastructure with missiles and drones in an attempt to raise the cost of the campaign. The UAE absorbed the bulk of those attacks, with more than 2,800 missiles and drones directed at the country.
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The UAE’s involvement also appears to have deepened divisions among Gulf states. According to the report, Saudi Arabia privately complained to the US in early April that Emirati attacks risked drawing Iranian retaliation against regional energy facilities, potentially disrupting oil markets and threatening the global economy.
Saudi officials reportedly pushed Washington to pressure Abu Dhabi to halt military operations and instead support diplomatic efforts.
The conflict also exposed tensions between Gulf leaders. Gulf officials cited by the newspaper said UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed became frustrated with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after Riyadh declined to join coordinated military action against Iran.
The scale of retaliation has shaken the UAE’s economy, disrupting air traffic, hitting tourism revenues, and rattling its property market. Companies have announced furloughs and layoffs as the fallout spreads across key sectors.
More than $120bn has been wiped from market capitalisation on the Dubai and Abu Dhabi stock exchanges up to the end of April, while over 18,400 flights have been cancelled.
While the US and international press are focused on the terms of negotiations between the Trump administration and Iran, Israel is massively expanding its rampage across the Middle East—moving to permanently occupy Gaza and escalating its bombardment of Lebanon.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Thursday that he had ordered the Israeli army to seize control of 70 percent of the Gaza Strip—well beyond the 53 percent Israel was allowed to hold under the cease-fire that took effect in October.
“We now control 60% of the territory in the strip. You know, we were at 50, we moved to 60. My directive is to move to … 70%,” Netanyahu told a conference in an occupied West Bank settlement. The directive would confine the strip’s 2.1 million Palestinians to less than a third of the territory.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday reiterated his calls for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. “We committed that Hamas will not rule Gaza civilly or militarily, and so it shall be, and also the voluntary emigration plan from Gaza will be implemented,” Katz wrote on X.
An aerial photograph taken by a drone shows the destruction caused by the Israeli war in Gaza. [AP Photo/Mohammad Abu Samra]
In Lebanon, an Israeli air strike on the Southern Beirut suburb of Choueifat killed a woman, her infant daughter and a Syrian child on Thursday—the first Israeli attack near Beirut in three weeks. The Lebanese Health Ministry put Thursday’s countrywide death toll at 14 killed, including a strike on a vehicle near Sidon that killed six people, among them a mother and her two children.
The Israeli army Wednesday ordered the entire city of Tyre to evacuate, declaring all areas south of the Zahrani River—about 15 percent of Lebanese territory—to be a combat zone.
Israel is systematically breaking the ceasefires it agreed to. A Gaza “ceasefire” took effect October 10, 2025. The Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli attacks have killed more than 900 Palestinians since the ceasefire took effect.
In Lebanon, a US-brokered ceasefire that took effect November 27, 2024, required Israel to withdraw from the south within 60 days; Israel never withdrew and continued bombing throughout. A further ceasefire that took effect April 16 is being broken by Israeli air strikes on a near-daily basis.
What Israel is doing in Gaza and Lebanon, with full support of the Trump administration, demonstrates the actual content of any US agreement made with Iran. It will not mean peace but only serve as the prelude for further attacks by the imperialist powers and Israel, aimed at expanding their domination of the Middle East.
Axios reported Thursday that US and Iranian negotiators had agreed on the draft of a 60-day memorandum of understanding to extend the April 8 ceasefire, gradually reopen the Strait of Hormuz, lift the US naval blockade and open second-phase talks on a moratorium on Iranian uranium enrichment.
Iran would commit in writing not to develop a nuclear weapon. Axios also reported that the agreement includes a $300 billion “reconstruction fund” for Iran, to be financed by Gulf Arab states, with China expected to contribute.
The deal awaits final approval from US President Donald Trump and Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. Vice President JD Vance told reporters in Colorado Springs on Thursday: “We’re going back and forth on a couple of language points … We’re not there yet, but we’re very close, and we’re going to keep on working at it.”
The US military bombed a drone ground-control station at Bandar Abbas overnight Wednesday—the second US attack on Southern Iran in three days. US forces had earlier shot down five Iranian drones over the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards retaliated by firing a ballistic missile at a US air base in Kuwait, which Kuwaiti air defenses intercepted.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said any further US aggression would draw a “more decisive response.” Iran’s foreign ministry denounced what it called “continuous ceasefire violations” by the United States.
The war launched by the United States and Israel on February 28 has killed thousands of Iranians and inflicted hundreds of billions of dollars in damage to Iran’s infrastructure, according to Reuters. Acting Pentagon Comptroller Jules Hurst put the direct US cost at $29 billion; the administration is preparing a supplemental request of as much as $100 billion to backfill expended munitions.
Despite the massive violence unleashed against Iran, the United States has failed in its central war aims. It has not overthrown the Iranian government, broken the resistance of the Iranian population or gained control of the Strait of Hormuz.
The war has triggered a deepening political crisis in Washington. Democrats and Republicans alike have attacked Trump from the right for what they cast as his insufficient defense of the interests of US imperialism.
On the ground in Gaza, Israeli forces have steadily advanced past the so-called “yellow line” marking the supposed ceasefire boundary. Israeli-aligned militias have evicted Palestinian families on threat of death.
A 26-year-old displaced Palestinian, Wael Nayef Abu al-Ajeen, told the Guardian that armed men entered his neighborhood at 1 p.m. and gave residents until 10 that night to abandon their homes. Muhammad Shehada of the European Council on Foreign Relations told the newspaper the Netanyahu directive “would be a death sentence for a lot of people who physically have no place to go.”
In Lebanon, Israeli artillery on Wednesday struck the 12th-century Beaufort Castle, a UNESCO-protected Crusader-era fortress, drawing condemnation from Lebanon’s culture minister.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, reacting to the killing of an Israeli soldier in Northern Israel, wrote on X: “For every drone that hits one of our soldiers, 100 buildings must be taken down.”
Israel is pressing the US to restart heavy airstrikes on Iran that would involve the targeted killing of Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, one of Tehran’s lead negotiators, and attacks on the country’s oil infrastructure, Capital & Empire reported on Thursday.
The report, which cited US sources familiar with a classified report circulating within the US intelligence community, said Israel is aggressively pushing for the US to abandon talks with Iran and insisting that destroying oil infrastructure in the country could bring about regime change while also downplaying the impact the renewed full-scale war will have on the global economy.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf hosts Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi in Tehran on May 17, 2026 (Office of the Iranian Parliament Speaker)
The New York Timespreviously reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had pitched President Trump on launching the war back in early February by making a series of predictions that proved to be wrong, including the idea that Iran was ripe for regime change, that its ballistic missile program could be destroyed within weeks, and that it would be too weak to close the Strait of Hormuz.
Israeli officials have been clear that they want to restart the US-Israeli bombing campaign and have threatened to kill Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who replaced his father, Ali Khamenei, after he was killed by an Israeli strike on February 28, the first day of the war.
The Capital & Empire report said that Israel has made the case to kill Ghalibaf directly to the US Department of War, and has focused on him since Khamenei’s whereabouts are unknown. The US intelligence report also determined that Israel wouldn’t target Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
Israel has a history of targeting officials involved in negotiations. In September 2025, Israel attempted to kill Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya in Qatar as he was involved in negotiations on a Gaza ceasefire deal. The attack killed al-Hayya’s son, and an Israeli airstrike in Gaza recently killed another son of al-Hayya as he was involved in talks with the US-led so-called “Board of Peace.”
Anti-war demonstrators gather outside Downing Street on 26 June, 2019 in London, England, to call on the government to publicly oppose the escalation of conflict between Donald Trump’s administration and Iran and demand that military action is ruled out.
(Photo: Wiktor Szymanowicz / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
The supposedly unlimited freedom of action attained by disdaining and trampling international law and institutions has proved to be a double-edged sword.
On May 24, Iran rejected President Trump’s latest fake peace deal, confirming that he had misrepresented what Iran had agreed to and that the two sides are still very far apart, on nuclear enrichment, on control of the Strait of Hormuz, on peace in Palestine and Lebanon, and on lifting US sanctions, paying war reparations, and Iran’s $100 billion in frozen assets.
Iran’s conditions for a peace agreement are necessarily uncompromising, in response to the US record of using negotiations as cover for sneak attacks, and the charade of one-sided “ceasefires with Israeli characteristics,” in which the US and Israel routinely ignore and violate every ceasefire they agree to, including the present ones in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.
Since no agreement with the United States or Israel is worth the paper it’s written on, it’s hard to imagine an agreement that would really protect Iran from future attacks. Without a more radical change in US policy, the United States and Israel will keep attacking Iran, in open violation of the UN Charter, no matter what they all agree to.
The only effective ways Iran has found to protect its land and its people are to build strong military defenses, including the capacity for devastating retaliation, and to retain control of the Strait of Hormuz, regardless of the impact on the world’s oil and gas supply and the global economy. By attacking Iran, the United States and Israel forced it to defend itself and triggered a war that is reshaping the Middle East and possibly the world.
The final sinking of the neocon dream in the troubled waters of the Persian Gulf provides the US and the world with a historic chance to recommit to a more peaceful and democratic international order.
Losing this war is forcing the United States to finally start reevaluating the neoconservative tactics it has blindly substituted for a rational US foreign and military policy since the 1990s: sanction; threaten; bomb; kill; destroy; occupy; escalate; leave countries mired in violence and chaos—in Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, Palestine and Lebanon—never admit defeat; never question American exceptionalism or superiority.
The systematic US disdain for the rule of international law that undergirds this policy appears to make peace impossible in today’s world. But the final sinking of the neocon dream in the troubled waters of the Persian Gulf provides the US and the world with a historic chance to recommit to a more peaceful and democratic international order.
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has effectively exempted itself from the entire system of treaties, international laws and agreements that are supposed to govern international affairs, starting with the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force between countries, and the Geneva Conventions, which protect civilians, prisoners-of-war and wounded soldiers and sailors from the impacts of war.
These treaties were drawn up and universally adopted in the wake of the Second World War, to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” as the UN Charter says in its preamble. President Roosevelt returned from his Yalta conference with Churchill and Stalin in 1945 to tell a joint session of Congress that they were designing the United Nations as a “permanent structure of peace.”
“It ought to spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries—and have always failed,” FDR told Congress. “We propose to substitute for all these, a universal organization in which all peace-loving Nations will finally have a chance to join.”
The UN Charter codified and strengthened the age-old common law prohibition against international aggression, and the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy in the 1928 Kellogg Briand Pact, which German leaders tried at Nuremberg were sentenced to death forviolating.
However, amid overblown Western triumphalism after the end of the Cold War, a new generation of US leaders, like Madeleine Albright andDick Cheney, came to see the UN Charter and Geneva Conventions as obstacles to their ambitions to further expand US global power by more widespread and unrestricted use of military force.
Believing that the new imbalance in military power freed them from compliance with post-1945 treaties and conventions based on the hard-earned wisdom of past leaders in two world wars, the US and its allies unleashed their armed forces toattack andinvade other countries, torture, rape and kill prisoners, andmassacre civilians.
US officials assumed that the new military imbalance so greatly favored the United States that neither the UN, international courts, other powerful countries, nor even the entire people of the world could enforce the rules of international law and the laws of armed conflict on the United States if it chose to ignore them.
It is ironic, and deeply frustrating and confusing to US officials, to find out that what they hailed as a position of overwhelming power and impunity has led them to squander America’s day in the sun and waste the chance that its great good fortune provided to improve the quality of life for Americans and their neighbors.
The supposedly unlimited freedom of action attained by disdaining and trampling international law and institutions has proved to be a double-edged sword. There is no such thing as unlimited military power, short of the mass suicide of nuclear war. The idea that America’s virtually unlimited investment in weapons and war would give it the final word in every dispute was a mirage, as even Trump is now finding out.
As Americans reexamine the state of the world and the conflicts by which warmongering US leaders have tried to define it, it is obvious that war and military power do not lead to peace or prosperity, for Americans or anyone else. The more countries the Pentagon and the CIA take aim at, the more people they kill, and the more resources our leaders throw at them, the more other people all over the world rightly come to see the United States as a threat to their own lives and futures.
Governments around the world face difficult choices between meeting the needs and aspirations of their own people or complying with the hegemonic and undemocratic demands of the United States.
After holding itself up as the champion of democracy and freedom for 250 years, the United States is only accelerating its own decline by wasting trillions of dollars, and what little is left of the world’s good will, on this failed, ill-fated bid for global imperial power.
When the United States rose to great power in the first half of the 20th century, its leaders were wise enough to recognize that exercising naked imperial power would not succeed in a world still fighting to free itself from the ravages of European colonialism. So FDR and his colleagues based the UN system on sovereign equality between nations, and created a framework for international relations that the whole world could agree to.
While the United States and Israel commit systematic and barbaric war crimes, presuming themselves immune from accountability, the world is slowly—too slowly—coming to grips with the international cooperation needed to enforce the “permanent structure of peace” that all countries have agreed to live by.
Like all legal and political systems, the success or failure of the UN system rests on whether the most powerful countries will agree to live by the same rules as the others. The veto is a poison pill that corrupts the system, as Albert Camus predicted when it was unveiled in 1945.
“If this report is accurate, … it would effectively put an end to any idea of international democracy,” Camus wrote in Combat, the underground French Resistance newspaper he edited. “The world would be ruled by a directorate of five powers… The Five would thus retain forever the freedom of maneuver that would be forever denied the others.”
However, the UN has developed the “Uniting For Peace”process, which allows the General Assembly to hold Emergency Special Sessions (ESS) on international problems when a veto prevents the Security Council from acting to resolve them.The General Assembly used that process to resolve the Suez Crisis in 1956, and it has been using it, albeit intermittently and inadequately, to address the crisis inPalestine since 1997.
In response to a request from the General Assembly in its Emergency Special Session on Palestine, the International Court of Justiceruled that the Israeli occupation is illegal and must end without delay. And so, the General Assembly passed a resolution demanding that Israel must bring “to an end without delay its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories… and do so no later than” September 2025.
Israel did not comply, so the General Assembly must take further steps, such as an arms embargo and an economic boycott. But it does have the means to do so and just needs to muster the political will.
While the United States and Israel commit systematic and barbaric war crimes, presuming themselves immune from accountability, the world is slowly—too slowly—coming to grips with the international cooperation needed to enforce the “permanent structure of peace” that all countries have agreed to live by, and on which the lives of millions of vulnerable people and the future of humanity depend.
While US leaders are finally realizing that they do not have the power to intimidate and conquer the whole world, the American people are gradually understanding that we have an even greater power, the power to refuse to fight their criminal wars, and to insist on making peace and cooperating with all our neighbors on this small planet that we all share.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said in a written statement on Tuesday that the US will no longer have a “safe haven” in the Middle East for its military bases, remarks that come after the Iranian military struck US bases across the region during the US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran.
In the statement, released to mark the Hajj season, when Muslim pilgrims travel to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Khamenei addressed other Muslim nations in comments that appeared to be directed at the Gulf Arab states that host US bases and were struck by Iranian missiles and drones.
Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei (PressTV)
“I, with sincerity and purity of intention, invite all Islamic countries and governments to friendship and cooperation in goodness, so that by working together we may take steps toward the advancement of the Islamic Ummah and the resolution of the Islamic world’s problems,” Khamenei said, according to an English translation of the statement posted on his website.
“What is certain in this regard is that the hands of time will not turn back, and the nations and lands of the region will no longer serve as shields for US bases. The United States not only will no longer have a safe haven for its mischief and for establishing military bases in the region but day by day, it is growing more distant from its former status,” he added.
The Iranian leader also referenced Israel, saying that the “shaken Zionist regime and the cancerous tumor of Israel are likewise approaching the final stages of their wretched existence.”
Khamenei has yet to make a public appearance since replacing his father, Ali Khamenei, who was killed by an Israeli strike alongside other members of his family on February 28, the first day of the joint US-Israeli bombing campaign. Western media reports have said that Mojtaba Khamenei was wounded in the strike but that he is still playing a critical role in shaping Iran’s war strategy.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that the Israeli leader made a secret visit to the United Arab Emirates during the US-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran, though Abu Dhabi later denied the claim.
“In the midst of Operation Roaring Lion, Prime Minister Netanyahu secretly visited the United Arab Emirates, where he met with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed,” his office said in a statement. “This visit has led to a historic breakthrough in relations between Israel and the UAE.”
In response, the UAE’s Foreign Ministry said that it “denies reports circulating regarding an alleged visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the UAE, or receiving any Israeli military delegation in the country.”
President Trump, Bahrain Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan sign the Abraham Accords on September 15, 2020 (White House photo)
“The UAE reaffirms that its relations with Israel are public and conducted within the framework of the well-known and officially declared Abraham Accords, and are not based on non-transparent or unofficial arrangements. Accordingly, any claims regarding unannounced visits or undisclosed arrangements are entirely unfounded unless officially announced by the relevant authorities in the UAE,” the statement added.
In response to the Israeli statement, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi suggested that Iran was aware of a visit by Netanyahu to the UAE. “Netanyahu has now publicly revealed what Iran’s security services long ago conveyed to our leadership,” he wrote on X.
“Enmity with the Great People of Iran is a foolish gamble. Collusion with Israel in doing so: unforgivable. Those colluding with Israel to sow division will be held to account,” Araghchi added.
The claim from Netanyahu’s office comes amid a series of revelations about the UAE’s ties with Israel and its involvement in the war on Iran.
“They were the first Abraham Accord member,” Huckabee said, referring to the UAE. “But look at the benefits that they have had as a result: Israel just sent them Iron Dome batteries and personnel to help operate them. How come? Because there’s an extraordinary relationship between the UAE and Israel.”
At the time of the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020, which also included a normalization deal between Israel and Bahrain, US and Israeli officials were clear that one goal of the accords was to create a regional alliance against Iran.
The UAE has also launched direct strikes against Iran, including an attack on Iranian oil infrastructure that came after the ceasefire between Washington and Tehran came into effect.
With the US ceasefire announced on April 8 all but over, the conflict with Iran is intensifying with President Trump escalating threats of renewed military attacks against Tehran.
On Monday, Trump dismissed Iran’s latest reply to the US proposal as “totally unacceptable,” called it a “piece of garbage,” and said he “didn’t even finish reading it.” He said the ceasefire—which effectively ended last week when the US fired on Iranian military targets—was on “massive life support.”
On Tuesday, before departing for China, the president continued with the posture that the US is dictating terms to Iran. When asked if he was going to discuss the war with Beijing, Trump said he would talk to President Xi about the war but mostly about trade and added that Iran was not really one of the topics because the US had it “very much under control.”
He told reporters, “We’re only going to make a good deal,” and then said, “We’re either going to make a deal or they’re going to be decimated. One way or the other, we win.”
Trump continued to insist that the US has already “won” and that a deal with Iran has little significance. Along with the threat to “decimate” Iran, Trump warned on May 7 that the US would soon have to “look at one big glow coming out of Iran”—a comment widely understood as a threat to use nuclear weapons.
Iran’s latest confirmed position, as reported by state broadcaster and other outlets, is that any settlement must include war reparations, sanctions relief, release of frozen assets and recognition of Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Tehran was “not asking for anything unusual” and that the country was demanding only its “legitimate rights.”
The Iranian proposal also reportedly included a willingness to dilute part of its enriched uranium and transfer the rest abroad, but not under terms that would amount to a complete capitulation to Washington.
The key political point is that Iran is refusing to accept the framework dictated by US imperialism which, with the support of Israel, has carried out the illegal war including targeting 13,000 sites with missiles strikes and murdering the entire political leadership of the country.
While the White House has portrayed Iran’s position as obstructive, Tehran has consistently and explicitly linked any peace agreement to compensation for damage done and an acknowledgment of its sovereign rights over the strategic waterway.
Over the past 48 hours, there has been no publicly confirmed report of an Iranian or US strike sinking boats in the Strait of Hormuz itself, but the waterway remains the central strategic flashpoint of the war. The US has maintained naval pressure and claimed it is working to reopen the strait, while Tehran has insisted it retains sovereign rights there.
In practical terms, the strait is not under “absolute control” by Washington despite the claim by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on May 4. The ongoing disruption, militarized patrols and negotiations show the strait to be a contested chokepoint which is not under US control.
The fact that Washington is publicly appealing to China to help “open” the strait is an open admission that the US cannot simply command passage through the strait by fiat. Reports on Tuesday that the UAE carried out a covert strike on Iran’s Lavan Island refinery demonstrates that the conflict over the strait involves multiple regional actors operating as proxies for US imperialism.
Although Abu Dhabi has not publicly acknowledged involvement, the reported strike caused a major fire and is expected to disrupt refinery production for months. A report by Reuters also stated, based on accounts from anonymous sources, that Saudi Arabia has been involved in covert anti-Iran operations. These reports confirm that the war is being conducted by a network of state actors, proxies and covert actions across the Gulf, all managed by the US government.
Hurst’s testimony exposed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s effort to cover up the escalating cost of the war in testimony before both House and Senate appropriations committees by refusing to answer any questions about the total cost of the ten-week war. Hegseth’s appearance before Congress came amid a White House request for a 2027 military budget of roughly $1.5 trillion.
The Iranian Ministry of Health has reported 3,468 people killed in Iran, including more than 1,700 civilians, and over 26,500 injured. US casualties include roughly 200 wounded service members and 13 dead.
In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump denounced media criticism of the war writing, “When the Fake News says that the Iranian enemy is doing well, Militarily, against us, it’s virtual TREASON in that it is such a false, and even preposterous, statement.” The administration’s attacks on public criticism are being paired with Pentagon restrictions that limit press access including credentials being revoked on “security” grounds.
Department of War policies have also targeted Pentagon reporters and, in the case of military publications, imposed tighter control over content and access. The aim is to silence criticism while expanding censorship and threats of legal action under wartime conditions.
Trump’s insistence that the US does not need any help from China clashes sharply with the fact that top US officials have been publicly urging Beijing to use its influence on Iran to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Secretary Bessent called on China to “step up” diplomatically, making clear that Washington is seeking Chinese assistance even while pretending otherwise.
In Lebanon, Israeli strikes continued, resulting in the killing of two paramedics in southern Lebanon on Sunday in strikes on health committee sites. The killing of medical workers—a strategic aim by the Zionist regime throughout the Gaza genocide—exposes the criminal character of the Lebanon campaign.
THE entire peace movement opposed the US/Israeli war against Iran. Opposition went well beyond those normally opposing US actions. It is widely understood that resistance by the peoples of Iran, Lebanon and Yemen, together with the war’s unpopularity in the US, led to Trump losing the first rounds of the conflict.
Even the Wall Street Journal, a fervent supporter of the war, admitted this: “Trump screamed at aides for hours. The Europeans aren’t helping, he said repeatedly. Gas prices averaged $4.09. Images of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis… had been looming large in his mind, people who have spoken to him said. ‘If you look at what happened with Jimmy Carter…with the helicopters and the hostages, it cost them the election,’ Trump had said in March. ‘What a mess.’”
But it is a misjudgement to believe that because the US and Israel lost the first battle, therefore they have lost the war and are resigned to this. Instead, the peace movement must prepare for a prolonged struggle to defeat US and Israeli attacks on Iran.
Some genuinely taking the right side in this war have written that the US has already suffered its biggest defeat since Vietnam, or even that this is a bigger defeat.
Unfortunately, this is a misanalysis. To prepare for the prolonged anti-war tasks to come, the situation must be seen accurately.
Precisely because if the US loses the war against Iran it would be its biggest defeat since Vietnam, it has no intention of giving up because it lost the first battle.
US ruling circles understand perfectly that US loss of the war would mean significant erosion of the credibility of its international threats, significantly weakening its global position.
They therefore simply conclude that the wrong tactic was chosen, and the US must change this to win the struggle. Even some forces in the US who believe launching the war was a tactical mistake believe that now it has started it must be won.
The Institute for the Study of War put it specifically: “Any US settlement or resolution of the conflict that enables Iran to control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz would represent a major US defeat.” As the Wall Street Journal summarised: “As the president said in his first term, the US shouldn’t start a war it doesn’t intend to win. His challenge now is to prove to Iran’s regime he meant what he said.”
The new US tactics to attempt to win the war can be clearly grasped if it is understood why it lost the first battle. Prior to the first military attack on Iran in June 2025, and the widespread assault launched in February, US policy under Trump had been to force Iran to capitulate to US demands by prolonged economic sanctions.
The US has now intensified this attack, after its defeat in the first round of the war, via its blockade of Iranian ships, with Trump claiming: “Iran is collapsing financially! They want the Strait of Hormuz opened immediately… Starving for cash!”
Such sanctions genuinely damaged Iran’s economy, creating a priority for Iran to attempt to break out of them, while the US can return to bombing anytime it chooses.
Israel, and some in the US, considered sanctions strategically inadequate. Iran is a huge country, 80 times Israel’s size geographically, larger than the EU’s four largest countries put together. Iran’s population is 90 million, compared to Israel’s 10 million. In real economic terms, parity purchasing powers (PPPs), Iran’s GDP is three times Israel’s.
Faced with larger states, Israel’s policy has been, where it is unable to help create governments favourable to itself, to attempt to disintegrate and weaken them — as shown in Iraq and Syria. Israel, judging it unlikely there will be a compliant Iranian government, has long sought to disintegrate that country. Therefore, Iran faces an existential threat from Israel.
The US itself turned to a military assault on Iran, as opposed to sanctions, because of its and Israel’s victories in its genocidal attack on Gaza and also in Syria — where reactionary forces, which Israel and the US supported, came to power.
Israel and the US miscalculated that they could now achieve the same in Iran. The US supplied thousands of Starlink systems and, as Trump publicly admitted, guns to demonstrators in Iran in December and January.
But not only did this fail to overthrow Iran’s government but when the US and Israel launched their full-scale military attack on Iran in February, as even Western media admitted, there was a “rallying around the flag” in Iran — in political terms, the great majority of Iran’s population, whatever their differences on other issues, or their attitude to Iran’s government, united in opposition to the US attack. This was the basis of the US defeat in the first round of the war.
But the US cannot retreat from this conflict due to the role west Asia plays in its strategy. A mistaken analysis was put forward a few years ago that because, due to fracking, the US has become self-sufficient in oil, it would be less interested in controlling west Asia.
The facts show the opposite. The US has waged more wars in the region — against Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran.
The US is no longer being itself dependent on West Asia, but constantly waging wars there, has led some to claim that this is because Israel controls US foreign policy — that the tail wags the dog. Any analysis of the relation of forces between the two makes clear this is untrue. Israel cannot produce the weapons it relies on to carry out military terror; the US merely has to threaten to cut off arms and Israel would immediately be brought to heel.
This reality was made clear for all to see when Trump, for short-term tactical reasons, openly enforced an end to Israel’s bombing of Beirut, declaring: “Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the US.” The US does not support Israel because it is controlled by it but because the US finds Israel useful for its own strategy.
Although the US does not need west Asia’s oil for itself, its strategy is to be able to deny it to others, particularly China.
Because this is key for the US, it will not give up its attack on Iran, only the forms will change. Therefore, the peace movement must prepare for a prolonged struggle against US aggression against Iran.
John Ross is senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, and a member of No Cold War Britain.
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.
A woman carries an Iranian flag during a pro-government gathering at Enqelab-e-Eslami, or Islamic Revolution, square in Tehran, Iran, May 4, 2026
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