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White House actively discussing sending ground troops to Iran

July 17, 2026
Andre Damon@Andre__Damon, WSWS, 17 July

The White House has held meetings this week to discuss sending ground troops to Iran, according to a report published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal. President Donald Trump “is leaning toward expanding U.S. military operations in Iran after days of briefings from top aides,” the Journal wrote, citing US officials, with the options including “sending ground forces to seize Iranian islands near the Strait of Hormuz.”

A ground invasion of Iran would mark the war’s most dangerous escalation to date. Four and a half months of war, beginning February 28, have left the Iranian government in place, Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium sealed underground and shipping through the strait nearly halted. Washington is turning toward ground forces because bombing has failed.

Trump convened a meeting in the White House Situation Room Tuesday evening “to discuss the potential seizure of Kharg Island and other territory along the Strait of Hormuz using U.S. troops, as well as the potential bombing of a tunnel complex at Pickaxe Mountain,” the Journal reported. The discussion “was one of multiple formal and informal conversations Trump has held in recent days” with senior officials about an escalation of the war.

Trump told Fox News Tuesday: “Sometimes you need a ground campaign, but we have other people that will do the ground campaign for us.” In the same interview, he said it was unlikely that US forces would seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal, but would not rule it out: “If we degrade them far enough and deep enough back, I would do that.”

On June 14, Washington announced a “memorandum of understanding” to suspend direct attacks. Under the agreement, signed June 17, the United States lifted its naval blockade and paused oil sanctions in exchange for a 60-day guarantee of safe passage through the strait.

The “ceasefire” was condemned by all factions of the political establishment. Former Vice President Mike Pence, writing in the Journal on June 22, said the agreement “smacks of the kind of appeasement” Trump once rejected and urged him to “let the armed forces finish the job.” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it the “art of surrender,” and Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut described it as “essentially surrender to Iran.”

Trump declared the “ceasefire” over on July 8, and in a July 10 letter informed Congress that the United States had resumed “military action” against Iran—a notification the White House claims reset the 60-day clock set by the War Powers Act for the president to seek congressional approval of military operations. The bombing resumed the following night, and on Monday Trump announced the reimposition of the naval blockade, which took effect Tuesday afternoon.

Reuters reported Wednesday, citing US officials, that the strikes aimed at forcing open the Strait of Hormuz are “also targeting Iranian military capabilities the U.S. would want to destroy before executing more complex operations against Iran.” One of the officials called the strikes “shaping operations” and said: “This is helping set the stage, if needed.” Reuters wrote that another official said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “has been an advocate of escalating the military operation against Iran.”

Three boys play in the shallow waters of the Strait of Hormuz, as a plume of smoke rises from an explosion in the background, off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Monday, July 13, 2026. [AP Photo/Razieh Poudat]

Retired Marine General Frank McKenzie, who ran US military operations across the Middle East from 2019 to 2022, advocated a ground invasion of Kharg Island on CBS’s Face the Nation program Sunday: “That’s something we should think about doing because possession of Iranian soil would be a significant factor in future negotiations with Iran.”

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) estimates that Iran fields some 570,000 active-duty troops and 350,000 reserves, backed by coastal missile batteries, naval mines and swarms of fast attack boats. The US military said its strikes overnight July 7-8 hit more than 80 targets, including over 60 of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ small attack boats, but Reuters reported Wednesday that Iran is still fielding missiles and drones despite heavy losses. Retired General Philip Breedlove told Fox News this week that the 2003 invasion of Iraq required more than 300,000 US troops staged in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia; the American force now in the region number 50,000, but few are ground troops.

Manouchehr Mottaki, Iran’s foreign minister from 2005 to 2010 and a sitting member of parliament, said in a state media interview Wednesday that if US forces seize Iranian territory, Iran should storm a US base “through a combined helicopter-borne and ground assault” and take American soldiers hostage.Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones

The bombing has now run six consecutive nights. The wave that ended Wednesday night reached the Parchin military complex and the city of Pakdasht, near Tehran—the first strikes close to the capital in this round of the war—and hit a civilian airport in Semnan province, where Iran builds its ballistic missiles and runs its space program. A sixth wave began at 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time Thursday “to further degrade Iranian military capabilities,” the US military announced; Iranian state media said a bridge between Bandar Abbas and Lar and an airport in Iranshahr, in the country’s southeast, had been struck.

On Wednesday, US missiles struck Greater Tunb Island, one of three islands commanding the approaches to the Strait of Hormuz, and a barracks of the army’s 388th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, where Iranian state television said at least 13 missiles killed seven soldiers. At least 35 people have been killed and more than 300 wounded this month, according to Iran’s Health Ministry.

Iranian officials said a US strike Wednesday night hit near Shahid Baqaei Hospital, a children’s cancer center in Ahvaz, forcing the evacuation of 211 chemotherapy patients. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei called it “a cowardly war crime against the most innocent of human beings—children who are bravely fighting for their lives.”

Iran struck back Thursday at air bases housing US forces in Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain, with the Guard citing the strike near the Ahvaz hospital as justification. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator, declared Wednesday: “We are in an essential and existential war with America.” Iranian army spokesman Brigadier General Mohammad Akraminia warned Thursday that if Trump carries out his threats against Iranian infrastructure, “All the infrastructure in the region will be crushed under the steel blows of the powerful armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

The US military is now enforcing the naval blockade by attacking civilian ships. Within 17 hours of its taking effect, the military said it had “redirected” two commercial ships, and on Wednesday a US aircraft fired Hellfire missiles into the smokestack of the Belma, a Curaçao-flagged tanker sailing for Kharg Island, disabling it. “The ship is no longer transiting to Iran,” the military announced.

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Facing debacle in Iran, Trump threatens to attack Iranian power plants and bridges

July 15, 2026
Andre Damon@Andre__Damon, WSWS, 15 July 2026

A small motorboat passes anchored vessels in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, Thursday, June 11, 2026. [AP Photo/Amirhosein Khorgooi]

US President Donald Trump threatened Tuesday to destroy Iran’s power plants and bridges, as the United States reimposed its naval blockade of Iranian ports and bombed the country for a fourth day.

“We’re going to hit them very hard tomorrow night. We’re going to hit them very hard the night after, and then next week it gets really bad for them, because next week comes the power plants. Next week comes the bridges,” Trump told Fox News. “We’re going to knock out all their power plants. We’re going to knock out all their bridges unless they get to the table and negotiate.”

The deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure is a war crime under international law. In April, Trump threatened to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages.” In June he posted that the United States might be “forced to militarily complete the job,” and that if that happened, “the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

Trump’s genocidal threats to destroy Iranian civilization, and his renewed attacks, are a testament to the deepening crisis of the war. Trump has achieved none of the war’s objectives, from overthrowing the Iranian government to controlling the Strait of Hormuz.

Underscoring the degree of the crisis, Trump backed off Tuesday from the 20 percent toll on the Strait of Hormuz that he had proclaimed only a day earlier. On Monday he had declared the United States “THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,” to be “reimbursed, at the rate of 20 percent on all cargo shipped” through the waterway.

On Tuesday, citing “highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership,” he announced that he would “replace the 20 percent United States Reimbursement Fee with Trade and Investment Deals that the various Gulf States will be making into the United States.”

The renewed blockade took effect at 4 p.m. Eastern time, one hour after US forces opened a new round of airstrikes across southern Iran.

Ship traffic through the strait, which normally carries about one-fifth of the world’s oil, has nearly stopped. The maritime data firm Kpler counted 10 transits Monday, against more than 130 a day before the war.

US forces began Tuesday’s strikes at 3 p.m., the military said. Iranian officials and news agencies reported strikes on the city of Bushehr, home of Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant, on the Abadan oil refinery, Mahshahr, the islands of Qeshm and Kish, Sirik and Bandar Abbas.

Over three nights beginning Saturday, US warplanes and warships had already hit more than 300 sites, by the military’s own count.

Iran has declared the strait “closed until further notice” and is enforcing the closure with missiles.

Early Tuesday, Iranian cruise missiles struck two tankers of the Emirati state oil company, the Mombasa and the Al Bahiyah, in Omani waters, killing an Indian crew member and wounding eight others, according to the UAE’s defense ministry.

Iran struck back across the Gulf on Tuesday, firing missiles and drones at bases housing US forces. Kuwait’s army said it intercepted a ballistic missile, five cruise missiles and 33 drones, and that four of its sailors were wounded; Jordan said it shot down four missiles. Sirens sounded across Bahrain.

The bombing continued into the night. Iranian state media reported new American strikes late Tuesday along the southern coast and said a “US projectile” killed three civilians in a town in Hormozgan province.

Tehran has ruled out talks under fire. “If the US thinks its military attacks and blockade will force us to request negotiations, it’s making a mistake,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi told Iranian state media Tuesday.

Iran’s parliament, meeting Monday night in its first open session in more than four months, took up a bill to require Iranian permits and fees for every ship in the strait, with American and Israeli ships barred outright, under a draft reported by Al Jazeera.

On Tuesday, about 180 lawmakers declared the deal with Washington void. “There is no longer any memorandum of understanding,” said Ebrahim Rezaei, spokesman of the parliament’s national security committee.Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones

The Trump administration claims that it can wage war again because it had a pause. The White House maintains that the June “ceasefire” ended the earlier hostilities and that its July 10 letter to Congress restarted the 60-day clock of the War Powers Resolution.

The response in major pro-war publications demonstrates the degree of the crisis gripping the Trump administration.

“The Trump administration wasn’t bargaining for an open-ended conflict when it rolled the dice in late February and joined Israel’s military campaign to eliminate Iran’s leadership and cripple its arsenal of ballistic missiles and launchers,” the Wall Street Journal’s national security correspondent, Michael Gordon, wrote Tuesday in an analysis titled “The Battle for Hormuz.”

“This is going to be a long-term effort,” Joseph Votel, the retired Army general who commanded US forces in the Middle East from 2016 to 2019, told the Journal. In the Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius raised the prospect of a war lasting years, citing an American negotiator’s forecast that peace “will come in two weeks, or two months, or two years.”

“In retrospect, this was clearly a war based on fatally flawed assumptions,” John Hannah, a former national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and now a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said in a New York Times analysis published Tuesday, “none more damaging than the president’s apparent conviction that Iran’s revolutionary regime was a flimsy house of cards ready to collapse in a hail of American airstrikes and bellicose Truth Social posts.”

The Financial Times’ editorial board wrote Tuesday: “The quagmire underlines once again the foolishness of the war launched by Trump against the advice of many of his allies and without much understanding of his enemy. A crisis of Trump’s own making has left Tehran with newfound leverage in the strait, which Iran had never before closed in the past.”

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed Sunday, 79 percent of Americans said they expect US involvement in Iran to “go on for an extended period of time.” Only 37 percent approved of the renewed strikes.

Establishing US control over the Strait of Hormuz would require a massive escalation. Holding the strait would take a ground war, military analysts told the Associated Press Tuesday. “It’s very difficult to envision any scenario where you could satisfactorily secure the Strait of Hormuz absent ground forces,” said Jason Campbell of the Middle East Institute, a former Pentagon official—an operation, he said, that would require tens of thousands of troops, months of preparation and “very high costs.”

The forces such an operation would draw on are in place. The Abraham Lincoln and George H.W. Bush carrier groups, the assault ships Tripoli and Boxer with thousands of Marines aboard, and more than 20 warships in all are on station, with more than 50,000 US troops in the Middle East—by the military’s own account its largest force in the region since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

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Trump threatens to “decimate and destroy” Iran as US continues onslaught

July 13, 2026
Andre Damon@Andre__Damon, WSWS, 13 July 2026

USS Boxer (LHD 4) and USS Portland (LPD 27) transiting the Indian Ocean, June 30, 2026. . The Boxer Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and embarked 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit are currently operating in the Middle East. [Photo: US Central Command]

The US military bombed Iran throughout the weekend, striking about 140 targets Saturday night—the largest single barrage of the week—and launching at least two more rounds on Sunday. In all, the Sunday New York Times reported, US forces have struck some 310 targets in Iran over the past week.

Late Friday, US President Donald Trump once again threatened to destroy the entire country in a post on Truth Social. “1000 Missiles are Locked and Loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he wrote, declaring that the US military stood ready “for a one year period of time, subject to extension, to completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran—PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!”

The weekend attacks completed the abrogation of the “ceasefire” Washington and Tehran signed on June 17. “The United States has stated to them, in no uncertain terms, that the Cease Fire is OVER!” Trump wrote Friday.

The “ceasefire” itself marked the failure of the American campaign to overthrow the Iranian government and dominate the Strait of Hormuz. The Washington Post’s editorial board wrote Wednesday that of the four objectives Trump named in March—destroying Iran’s missile capabilities, destroying its navy, denying it a nuclear weapon and cutting off its proxies—“None of these objectives is fully complete.”

Even as Trump sought a temporary negotiated settlement, both factions of the US political establishment condemned it for conceding too much to Iran.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina—who died Saturday at age 71—told CBS’s Face the Nation on June 21: “If this deal fails, President Trump is going to take the Strait of Hormuz over by force,” adding, “If Iran contests control of the Strait of Hormuz by the United States, we will obliterate them.”

Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said June 17 that Trump had “offered concession after concession to the Iranian regime for next to nothing in return.”

The attacks continued over the weekend, with Democrats excoriating Trump’s failure to achieve the aims of US imperialism in the Middle East.

Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday that “all of the nuclear materials are still there. They’re just buried behind a bunch of rubble.

“The more concerning question, Jake, is the regime survived what the president promised us would be a regime-ending attack on them,” Himes told host Jake Tapper. “By the way, it’s not dust. The president keeps talking about nuclear dust. It’s not dust. This stuff is down there and recoverable.

“So my concern is that, on the backside of this war, Iran is going to be more motivated than they were a year ago to actually produce the weapon that they know will forever take off the table an attack on their country,” he said.

Senator Adam Schiff of California said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press: “Iran has realized that it has a kind of nuclear weapon already, and that is the ability with minimal force to close the Strait of Hormuz and to choke off a big part of the world’s oil supply.” He called the war a “huge strategic failure.”Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones

Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday that Iran had “forced the US to go back into kinetic activity,” and pledged: “We’re a partner, we’re an ally. If the United States calls on us to rejoin kinetic activity against Iran, we’re going to be there for the United States.”

Under the June 17 memorandum, Washington ended the blockade it had thrown around Iran’s ports in April and licensed Iranian oil sales, while Tehran pledged safe passage for commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, toll-free for 60 days.

US warplanes hit some 80 sites on July 7 and roughly 90 the next day, and the U.S. Treasury canceled the waiver that had let Iran sell its oil. On July 9, US strikes severed the rail line to Mashhad during the burial of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader the United States and Israel assassinated, along with members of his family, in the war’s opening attack.

On Sunday, six ships transited the strait, against more than 130 a day before the war. CNN reported Sunday that the United States has expended half its THAAD interceptors, nearly half its Patriot interceptors and about 30 percent of its Tomahawk cruise missiles—stocks earmarked for a future war with China. Gasoline, at $3.88 a gallon, costs 30 percent more than before the war, and the White House has asked Congress for another $87.6 billion in emergency war spending.

Launched by the United States and Israel on February 28, the war is now in its 135th day. Iranian authorities counted more than 3,400 dead by mid-June, before the past weeks of bombing, and Amnesty International has documented at least 39 political executions and more than 6,000 arrests inside Iran since the war began. The World Bank called the choking of the Strait of Hormuz “the largest oil supply shock on record,” and the International Monetary Fund cited the war’s energy shock this month in cutting its forecast for world growth this year to 3 percent.

The assault on Iran unfolds alongside Israel’s continuing onslaught against Gaza and Lebanon. Gaza’s Health Ministry put the death toll there at more than 73,000 as of July 6. In Lebanon, where a truce nominally took effect June 21, an Israeli drone strike on July 6 murdered a school principal, her mother and two others, and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz declared on July 9 that Israeli troops would remain in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.

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Iran Condemns Fresh US Bombing Campaign as ‘Serious Threat to International Peace’

July 13, 2026

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi speaks at a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq, on June 28, 2026.

(Photo by Murtadha AL-Sudani/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Iran’s Foreign Ministry accused the Trump administration of “rendering futile all efforts made over the past several months to reduce tensions and restore stability.”

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams, Jul 13, 2026

The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Sunday condemned the United States’ latest round of airstrikes as a “flagrant violation” of international law that threatens to permanently derail efforts to achieve a peaceful resolution to the war, which US President Donald Trump launched earlier this year in coordination with the Israeli government.

This past weekend, said Iran’s Foreign Ministry, the US carried out “brutal attacks” and “acts of aggression” that pose “a serious threat to international peace and security, rendering futile all efforts made over the past several months to reduce tensions and restore stability in the West Asia region.”

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On Saturday and Sunday, the US military bombed dozens of targets across Iran, which retaliated with strikes on American military installations in Kuwait, Bahrain, and other Middle East nations. Iran’s Foreign Ministry accused those nations of illegally serving as launch pads for US strikes.

In response to the new wave of bombings, Iran announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, blaming the US for causing “insecurity” in the critical waterway. Trump claimed in an interview on Sunday morning that the strait is “open” after the US “bombed the hell out of” Iran the previous night.

“The US ruling establishment continues its campaign of disinformation and the dissemination of fake news in an attempt to distort the facts and justify its unlawful actions,” said the Iranian Foreign Ministry, accusing the Trump administration of undermining talks between Iran and Oman regarding commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Iranian statement also voiced “regret” over what it described as the head of the United Nations’ “unconstructive approach” to the Trump administration’s “blatant lawlessness and bullying.”

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs underscores the responsibility of the UN secretary-general and the Security Council to address violations of international peace and security,” the statement reads. “It calls for the aggressor parties to be held accountable and for those who ordered and carried out the crimes committed against the Iranian nation to be brought to justice and punished.”

Earlier Sunday, Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for UN Secretary-General António Guterres, voiced concern over the “serious escalation and renewed military confrontations in the Gulf, including the Iranian attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, the attacks by the United States on Iran, and the attacks by Iran on targets in the neighboring countries.”

“These attacks must all stop,” said Dujarric. “The secretary-general reiterates that a return to full-scale hostilities would have catastrophic consequences—for the peoples of the region, for international peace and security, and for the global economy. He further reaffirms the need for the restoration of full freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.”

The military exchanges came less than a month after the US and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at facilitating a permanent end to the war. Last week, Trump declared the agreement “over” and said negotiations were “a waste of time,” even as the US and Iran agreed to continue talks.

The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) noted Sunday that “Iran and the United States have once again entered a cycle of direct military confrontation,” adding that “what was presented as an end to the war now appears to have been little more than a temporary pause.”

“The continued evisceration of diplomatic agreements will make any attempt to restore peace extremely difficult,” NIAC argued. “Iran, fresh off new US attacks amid the late supreme leader’s funeral ceremonies, will view any US pivot back to diplomacy with even deeper distrust. US hawks will likewise paint Iran’s actions as the predictable irrationality of radicals, even if US actions have helped trigger Iranian retaliation every step of the way.”

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Trump bombs Iran for third day amid Khamenei funeral

July 10, 2026

Andre Damon@Andre__Damon, WSWS, 10 July 2026
A massive crowd gathers for funeral prayers for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and members of his family at the Holy Jamkaran Mosque in Qom, Iran, Tuesday, July 7, 2026. [AP Photo/Ahmadreza Taheri]

The Trump administration continued its bombing of Iran for a third day on Thursday, striking the rail lines to Mashhad, as mourners buried Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader assassinated by US and Israeli forces on the first day of the war.

The strikes delayed the burial by eight hours, the Telegraph reported Thursday. Khamenei was laid to rest at the shrine of Imam Reza in the city of his birth, at the end of six days of funeral processions through Iran and Iraq that Iranian state media said drew up to 43 million people. Mourners carried red flags symbolizing revenge and banners reading, “We Will Kill Trump.”

The turnout demonstrated the failure of the American effort to overthrow the Iranian government and subjugate the country by force.

Khamenei, who had served as supreme leader since 1989, was assassinated at the age of 86 on February 28, in a US-Israeli strike on his compound in Tehran. The US and Israel also murdered his daughter, daughter-in-law, son-in-law and 14-month-old granddaughter.

The strike that murdered Khamenei came in the middle of negotiations, two days after US and Iranian diplomats held nuclear talks in Geneva. To assassinate an adversary under the cover of negotiations is an act of perfidy, illegal under the laws of war.

The Iranian government said US strikes hit a bridge 55 kilometers from Mashhad on Thursday, blocking passenger trains from Tehran, and that cruise missiles struck a second bridge near Aqqala, in Golestan province, on a line that carries the country’s overland trade with Russia and China. The Financial Times reported Thursday that these were “the first attacks on Iranian infrastructure in months.”

On Monday, at the White House, US President Donald Trump said: “We can knock down their bridges in one hour, we can knock out their energy supply.”

The rail strikes followed two nights of heavy bombing. The fighting began Monday, when projectiles struck three commercial ships near the Strait of Hormuz—a Qatari gas carrier, a Saudi oil tanker and a third vessel. The US military blamed Iranian forces; Tehran did not claim responsibility.

US warplanes struck more than 80 targets Tuesday night and about 90 more on Wednesday, hitting the ports of Bandar Abbas, Chabahar, Konarak and Sirik and, the Iranian government said, the perimeter of the Russian-built nuclear power plant at Bushehr. More strikes took place Thursday night.

The US military said the targets included air defenses, coastal radar, missile and drone depots and more than 60 Revolutionary Guards boats. Iran’s health ministry said the bombing killed 14 people and wounded 78 across five provinces, including three dead at the port of Sirik.

Iranian forces fired missiles and drones at US bases in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar and, the Revolutionary Guards said, 10 ballistic missiles at the Azraq air base in Jordan, of which the Jordanian military said it intercepted eight. The price of Brent crude jumped more than 5 percent Wednesday to $78 a barrel, and the United Nations shipping agency urged shipowners to keep their vessels out of the strait, citing the danger to nearly 6,000 sailors in the region.

At a news conference at the NATO summit in Ankara on Wednesday, Trump declared the ceasefire over. “To me, I think it’s over,” he said. “I don’t want to deal with them anymore.” He called Iran’s leaders “scum,” “sick people” and “evil people,” said “let’s just finish the job.” He threatened to seize Kharg Island, the center of Iran’s oil exports, and to bomb power stations and desalination plants: “We’ll take them out if we have to.”Available from Mehring BooksThe struggle against imperialism and for workers’ power in IranA pamphlet by Keith Jones

The ceasefire Trump broke had taken effect June 17. Under it, the United States lifted the naval blockade it had imposed on Iran’s ports in April, and the Iranian government agreed to open the Strait of Hormuz toll-free for 60 days. On Tuesday the U.S. Treasury revoked the waiver permitting Iranian oil exports, the agreement’s central benefit for Tehran.

Congress had twice voted to end the war—the House on June 3, the Senate on June 23—the first war-powers resolution ever to pass both chambers. But the votes were non-binding, and Trump resumed the bombing without the authorization they demanded. Asked what the war had taught him about the limits of his power, he answered, “There are no limits.”

The war on Iran is only one front in a global eruption of imperialist violence. Trump oversaw the attacks from the NATO summit in Ankara, which was given over to expanding wars, above all, against Russia.

At the summit’s arms forum on July 7, NATO advertised more than $50 billion in weapons deals, though the Associated Press reported that no prices were disclosed and that several of the contracts predated the summit. Buyers lined up for Saab’s GlobalEye surveillance planes, Northrop Grumman drones and Airbus tankers, and Britain led a dozen European states and Canada, without the United States, in a $50 billion program to build missiles that can reach Moscow. NATO said financial institutions had “already mobilised $217 billion” for the buildup.

NATO’s leaders cheered the widening war on Russia. They praised Ukraine’s drone strikes deep inside the country, among them the attack on Russia’s largest oil refinery, at Omsk, 2,500 kilometers from Ukraine, which the Financial Times reported this week had cut Russian refining by a fifth to two-fifths. The US bombing of the Iranian rail line belonged to the same offensive. In a single week Washington struck the infrastructure binding together Iran, Russia and China.

At the same time, Israel is continuing its onslaught on Gaza and Lebanon. An Israeli drone murdered at least four people in Lebanon on July 6, among them a school principal and her mother. In Gaza, Israeli forces have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, and Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday Israeli forces would not leave Gaza, Lebanon or Syria.

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Iran’s Foreign Ministry Says US Strikes on Railway Bridges are a ‘Blatant War Crime’

July 10, 2026

by Dave DeCamp | July 9, 2026

Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday released a statement strongly condemning the latest US airstrikes in Iran and said the attacks that allegedly hit two railway bridges were a “blatant war crime.”

According to Iranian media, one US strike hit an important railway bridge in Iran’s northeastern Golestan province that links Iran to Turkmenistan and China.

Iranian media also reported that a US attack disrupted passenger train traffic between Tehran and Mashhad, a city in eastern Iran that’s the hometown of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Huge crowds have gathered in Mashhad as Khamenei’s body has arrived in the city for his burial.

Photo published by Iran’s PressTV, purporting to show the aftermath of the attack in the northern province of Golestan on July 9, 2026.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry said that it strongly condemned “the aggressive attacks carried out by the US terrorist military in the early hours of Thursday, July 9, against several locations in the southern coastal provinces, as well as two bridges in the eastern provinces along the railway route to the holy city of Mashhad.”

The ministry said that the attacks “unquestionably constitute a grave war crime.” So far, the US military has neither confirmed nor denied targeting the railway bridges in northeastern Iran. US Central Command claimed that its forces hit 90 targets, including “air defense systems, coastal surveillance assets, missile and drone storage sites, naval capabilities, and military logistics infrastructure along Iran’s coastline.”

Iranian officials have said that the two days of US airstrikes killed 14 Iranian military personnel and civilians and wounded 78 others.

The attacks came after President Trump threatened that he could bomb bridges, energy infrastructure, and desalination plants in Iran. “I would say in one day we could knock down every single bridge in Iran, there’s not a thing they can do about it. Their electric manufacturing facilities … they have desalinization plants, we’ll take them out if we have to. I’d hate to do that. That’s probably the one I’d like to do least,” he said on Wednesday.

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Israeli jets entered Iran to attack negotiator plane after Islamabad talks, NYT reports

July 3, 2026

Washington warned Tehran that Israel could target Araghchi as Ghalibaf’s plane made emergency landing

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi aboard a flight to Zurich ahead of negotiations on 21 June 2026 (AFP)

MEE staff

Published date: 3 July 2026

Israeli fighter jets entered Iranian airspace as Tehran’s top negotiators were engaged in diplomatic efforts with the United States, according to a New York Times report that says American officials feared Israel was plotting to kill two senior Iranian officials involved in peace negotiations.

US officials became increasingly concerned that Israel could target Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, on their return to Iran after peace negotiations between Washington and Tehran in Pakistan, the report published on Wednesday said. 

According to the New York Times, Washington was concerned that an Israeli assassination attempt could derail the talks and it asked regional countries to warn Iran about the potential threat.

“Any attempt to kill the Iranian leaders would end the talks and reignite the fighting,” American officials told the newspaper.

While Washington increasingly focused on securing a ceasefire and a diplomatic framework, Israel remained sceptical of negotiations that fell short of its broader war aims. 

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The New York Times reported that concerns peaked during negotiations that began in earnest in April, when Araghchi and Ghalibaf emerged as key interlocutors in talks aimed at securing a ceasefire and laying the groundwork for a longer-term agreement.

A US official and a Middle East official told the newspaper that the Trump administration learned that Ghalibaf was on an Israeli targeting list and asked Israel to refrain from any action against him.

Iranian officials quoted by the newspaper said Tehran also sought assurances from Washington, through Pakistani and Qatari intermediaries, that Israel would not target members of the Iranian negotiating team.

The concerns were deepened during an April trip to Islamabad, where Ghalibaf was scheduled to meet US Vice President JD Vance.

According to the report, Pakistani fighter jets escorted the Iranian delegation’s aircraft to and from Islamabad because of fears that Israel could attempt to assassinate senior Iranian officials. 

On the return journey, Iranian security services informed the aircraft carrying Ghalibaf that intelligence indicated Israel was preparing an attack and that two Israeli fighter jets had entered Iranian airspace from the western border near Iraq, the newspaper reported, citing Iranian officials.

Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Ghalibaf who accompanied the delegation, confirmed the account on social media.  

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The aircraft subsequently made an emergency landing in Mashhad, and members of the delegation completed the journey to Tehran by land, travelling for approximately eight hours, the newspaper said.

“Today Mr. Ghalibaf and Mr. Araghchi, and other members of the negotiating team, have put their lives on the line knowing the grave security risks and this is called a real sacrifice, not political manoeuvring,” Iranian lawmaker Mohsen Zanganeh told local media in April. 

The newspaper reported that while the United States pursued negotiations that ultimately led to a framework agreement in June, Israeli officials viewed the emerging deal as insufficient because it did not achieve objectives such as regime change in Iran, dismantling Tehran’s regional allies and significantly degrading its missile capabilities.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington declined to comment to the newspaper on the allegations.

Asked about the reported warnings to Iran, a US official told the New York Times that President Donald Trump wanted the peace process “to play out” and noted that talks between American and Iranian delegations were continuing.

Despite the reported threats, Araghchi and Ghalibaf continued travelling for negotiations, including meetings in Qatar and a subsequent round of talks in Switzerland in June with Vance and other members of the US delegation, according to the report.

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The U.S. oligarchy’s crime boss: Trump pocketed $2.2 billion in 2025

July 2, 2026
Barry Grey@wswsgrey WSWS, 2 July 2026

President Donald Trump speaks at a news conference, Monday, March 9, 2026, at Trump National Doral Miami in Doral, Fla. [AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein]

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump released his mandatory financial disclosure for 2025. It showed that he more than tripled his personal income during the first year of his second term, from $622 million in 2024 to at least $2.2 billion last year.

The scale of Trump’s self-enrichment renders the great corruption scandals of American history almost quaint by comparison. The Teapot Dome affair of the 1920s, which stood for a century as the byword for political criminality, centered on roughly $400,000 in bribes—about $8 million in today’s dollars—accepted by Interior Secretary Albert Fall in exchange for leasing naval oil reserves. Fall went to prison. Vice President Spiro Agnew was forced to resign in 1973 over kickbacks totaling perhaps $250,000, collected in envelopes of cash from Maryland contractors. By Trumpian standards, small potatoes.

The report provided some indications of the flagrant self-dealing and corruption that enabled the real estate swindler and media huckster-turned-US president to massively expand his fortune and that of his family. By last September, the collective wealth of the Trump family stood at an estimated $10 billion, having nearly doubled since the November 2024 election. Donald Trump Jr.’s wealth went from $50 million to $300 million, and that of Eric Trump rose tenfold to $400 million.

In the same year, labor’s share of the national income fell to its lowest level since records began. In the third quarter of 2025, labor’s share fell to 53.8 percent, down from 70 percent in 1947. These statistics translate in real life into poverty wages, impossibly high rents and living costs, and longer working hours for tens of millions of workers.

An annual income of $2.2 billion is equivalent to the incomes of 37,931 US autoworkers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ estimate of the average autoworker’s wage, based on a 40-hour workweek. An annual income of $2.2 billion computes to $251,000 per hour. At that rate, someone takes in $70 per second, more than twice what a UAW autoworker earns in an hour.

No wonder that at an Oval Office event this week Trump defended his refusal to sign a bill to increase low-income housing, demanding that Congress first pass his plan to disenfranchise millions of working class voters and calling the housing bill a “big yawn.”

In his first term, between 2017 and 2021, Trump broke with the practice of modern presidents who put their financial affairs in blind trusts. He refused to divest from his businesses and placed them in a trust he could still access. He used his Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C. as a cash cow, encouraging foreign delegations, lobbyists and Republican officials to spend money that flowed into his personal bank accounts. He granted his daughter Ivanka multiple Chinese trademarks while she served as a White House adviser, at the same time that US-China trade talks were underway.

That, however, pales in comparison to Trump’s second term. He refused to sign the ethics pledge he had taken in his first term, rescinded Biden’s presidential ethics rules, and fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics early in 2025, leaving it without a permanent director.

Trump made the bulk of his 2025 income from his cryptocurrency businesses, which accounted for some $1.4 billion. According to an analysis in the New York Times, his crypto venture World Liberty Financial, which sells a digital currency called $WLFI, took in $799 million last year, compared to $57 million in 2024.

Three days before his second inauguration, Trump helped launch a memecoin, $TRUMP, which has generated another $636 million. He made $77 million from Mar-a-Lago last year, compared to $50 million in 2024, and $122 million from his Trump National Doral golf club, an increase of $11 million. He holds shares in his Trump Media & Technology group worth $875 million. At the end of 2025, Trump had investment assets of at least $857 million, compared to $236 million the prior year.

Trump’s crypto businesses directly benefited from his policy decisions as president. In January 2025, three days before his inauguration, an investment firm tied to the government of the United Arab Emirates bought a 49 percent stake in World Liberty Financial, generating $23 million in profits for the Trump family. Soon after, the Trump administration struck a deal for the US to export computer chips that power artificial intelligence to the UAE.

Trump’s memecoin business directly benefited from a February 2025 Securities and Exchange Commission statement notifying the industry that such tokens would no longer be subject to the agency’s oversight, reversing the position of the agency’s chairman during the Biden administration. And Trump signed legislation last July to promote a form of cryptocurrency called stablecoins four months after his family-backed firm introduced its own stablecoin.

Last October, Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, the richest man in crypto, who had pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money laundering laws and served four months in prison. Binance has since become a critical business partner to the Trump family’s own crypto venture.

Crypto, however, is by no means the only area where Trump has used the White House to promote his business ventures and increase his personal wealth. He has licensed the Trump name to properties in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Those two deals alone generated more than $14 million for Trump in 2025.

Last Sunday, the New York Times published an exposé about a multi-billion-dollar deal between the US and Kazakhstan for the development of tungsten mines in the former Soviet republic. The project directly involves the sons of Trump and his Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Billions in loans from the U.S. Commerce Department and the Export-Import Bank are being allocated to finance a venture that stands to generate untold millions in profits for the two families, as well as other billionaire cronies of the president.

Then there are the millions being made by members of the financial elite from bets in predictive markets on oil prices based on advance notice of White House announcements of bombings and/or peace talks with Iran. In a world dominated by oligarchs and their gangster representatives such as Trump, the lives of countless thousands become the stuff of profiteering from manipulated markets. Investigative reports have documented how Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has used his role in negotiations and Middle East policy to secure massive sums from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies for his private investment vehicles.

This is all in addition to the more mundane corruption of the Trump administration, including no-bid contracts to donors with business before the government for projects such as the White House ballroom and the Reflecting Pool.

Trump is not merely breaking the rules; he is rewriting them so that his enrichment ceases to be legally classifiable as crime. Corruption raised to the level of state policy—the legalization of the loot as it is looted.

These are not the crimes of a single individual. The staggeringly wealthy and parasitic financial oligarchy has installed Trump, a fascistic product of the New York real estate and gambling mafia, as the head of state. Nothing reveals the mores of this new aristocracy more than the Epstein scandal, which implicates the heights of official society and whose cover-up unites Trump, the corporate media and virtually the entire political establishment.

As for the nominal opposition party, the Democrats, they wring their hands and complain but do nothing to stop the plundering or hold the criminals accountable, because they are controlled by the same class of oligarchs and defend their system based on the private ownership of the means of production and production for profit.

This entire class must be expropriated, and the wealth produced by the working class must be used to meet social needs.

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‘We Should Go to Court’: Khanna Says Latest US Bombings of Iran a ‘Blatant Violation’ by Trump

June 29, 2026

Ro Khanna 1/15/26

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., talks with reporter after the last votes of the week outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, January 15, 2026.

(Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“Trump must stop this war now—or we will take him to court to compel him to do so.”

Jon Queally

Jun 28, 2026

Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna on Sunday reiterated his position that new bombings of Iran by the US military over the weekend are a direct violation of a War Powers Resolution passed by Congress earlier this month and said legal action was in the works to challenge the president’s ability to carry on with the unprovoked war he first launched alongside Israel in February.

“These strikes are a blatant violation of the War Powers Resolution that we passed,” Khanna said in a social media post Saturday after Trump acknowledged strikes on numerous Iranian targets. “Trump must stop this war now—or we will take him to court to compel him to do so.”

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In a Saturday statement on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the US had “struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites, for violating the Cease Fire Agreement, AGAIN!”

“It is very possible that they will never learn!” the president exclaimed. “There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started. If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

The latest direct exchange of hostilities—that began with US bombings of Iranian targets Friday and included Iran targeting US allies in Bahrain and Kuwait on Sunday—come over lingering disagreements about how vessels will or will not pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

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“Congress passed the first War Powers Resolution in history, legally compeling an end to war on Iran,” the anti-war group Just Foreign Policy said following Friday’s strikes. “This means Trump’s strikes today are an unprecedented Constitutional violation **Trump must be taken to court** to honor the American people’s demand that we exit this war — NOW.”

Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Sunday that “interference in [the Strait], any attempt to establish new or separate arrangements from those currently being carried out by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will only lead to further complications, delay the reopening of the strait of Hormuz, and increase the level of tension.”

Araghchi called for a regional agreement to settle the issue of passage through the Strait, but indicated the US should have no role in determining the outcome of the settlement. On Saturday, the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) said that the US—“whose very nature is characterized by breaking commitments and violating agreements”—was guilty of firing on coastal targets but that such attacks would not deter the Iranian military from exerting control over the Strait.

“Henceforth,” said the IRGC, “vessels found to be in violation will be dealt with more firmly than before.”

On June 23, a 50-48 vote in the Senate saw a war powers resolution pass the upper chamber after the House also passed a similar resolution on June 3 to bring an end to the war started by the US and Israel on February 28. But as Khanna explained Sunday, speaking with journalist David Sirota, these votes have not been enough to curb the president’s actions.

🚨NEW: Congress just passed resolutions to block Trump from continuing the Iran War. The resolutions carry the force of law under the text of the 1973 War Powers Act. Now, @RoKhanna tells me he is working to organize lawmakers to bring an historic court case to enforce the law. pic.twitter.com/IBH7dbKcxG
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) June 28, 2026

Asked by Sirota what he would be doing to compel Trump to adhere to the congressional opposition to Trump’s ongoing aggression against Iran, Khanna said, “we should go to court.”

Noting that former Republican Congressman Tom Campbell, back in 1999, had taken former President Bill Clinton to court for violating a War Powers Resolution during the US-backed NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Khanna said he is preparing to follow a similar course.

“This is something that we should try to enforce,” Khanna said. “And I’m working with my colleagues to see how we can get a group to take this case to the courts.”

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Palestine Action Lawyer Faces Renewed Contempt Proceedings

June 27, 2026

Consortium News, June 26, 2026

Rajiv Menon, a leading British civil rights barrister, again faces contempt proceedings over his closing speech in trial of pro-Palestine activists, reports Dania Akkad.

“The Right of Juries” plaque outside of Old Bailey, UK, 2016. (Paul Clarke, Flickr, Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.0)

By Dania Akkad
Declassified UK

A leading British civil rights barrister faces contempt proceedings once again after a judge decided to refer allegations against him for a second time.

The original proceedings brought against Rajiv Menon KC were thrown out last month for procedural reasons.

But on June 22, Justice Jeremy Johnson ruled that Menon’s case met the necessary “threshold conditions” to proceed and that it was in the public interest to do so.

He said the case should be referred to a judge who can “deal with the matter expeditiously.”

“I stress that nothing in this judgement decides that Mr. Menon has acted in contempt of court,” Johnson wrote.

“My findings do not bind the presiding judge. The presiding judge will only institute contempt proceedings if they consider that it is the appropriate and justified step.”

Garden Court Chambers, where Menon has practised for three decades, said on Monday that the proceedings brought against Rajiv were unprecedented and have “sent shock waves through the legal profession.”

“The impact of these proceedings is already being felt by the criminal defence community, especially juniors, with concerns that public confidence in the independence of the Bar and the integrity of our system of justice will be damaged.”

Menon has more than 30 years’ experience spanning high-profile cases such as Stephen Lawrence, Hillsborough and Grenfell.

Prior to becoming a judge, Johnson represented a range of clients including MI6 and the Ministry of Defence.

The Defend Our Juries protest against the proscription of Palestine Action in London on Sept. 6, 2025. (indigonolan /Flickr/ Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 4.0)

How We Got Here

Menon is accused of violating Johnson’s orders in his closing statement in the trial of six Palestinian Action activists who broke into an Israeli-owned arms factory near Bristol in 2024.

The judge had warned defence barristers not to tell the jury that they could reach a verdict according to their conscience, a principle known as jury equity.

In his closing speech, Menon, who represented one of the activists, told the jury about the Bushell case, a landmark ruling from 1670 which established the independence of juries.

He read from a plaque at the Old Bailey commemorating the jury in that case, saying,

“it established the right of juries to give their verdict according to their convictions.”

In February, the jury acquitted all of the activists of aggravated burglary but failed to reach a verdict on several other charges.

The Crown Prosecution Service sought a retrial while Johnson filed the original contempt of court complaint against Menon.

In May, four of the defendants – Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio and Fatema Rajwani – were found guilty of criminal damage. Corner was also convicted of grievous bodily harm without intent.

Two others, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin, were found not guilty of criminal damage.

It then emerged, as reporting restrictions were lifted, that the four activists faced being sentenced as terrorists even though the jury had not been informed of that possibility.

?? ?? Four Palestine Action Activists Sentenced as ‘Terrorists’ in UK Legal First

Four activists who raided an Elbit Systems arms factory near Bristol in 2024 were sentenced as “terrorists” Friday at Woolwich Crown Court, in what supporters said is the first time UK protesters… pic.twitter.com/gC4MvAXfz4

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) June 12, 2026

In a marathon court hearing on June 12, Johnson ruled first that the four would indeed be sentenced as terrorists and then handed down a combined total of more than 25 years in prison.

Meanwhile, three court of appeal judges had ruled that the contempt proceedings levelled against Menon were unlawful.

They said that Johnson could decide whether to refer the complaint to another High Court judge, the Attorney General, to the Bar Standards Board or take no further step.

Now Johnson has made his ruling, it will be up to the new judge to decide whether contempt proceedings continue.

Garden Chambers said it was awaiting the outcome of “this already protracted process” and would continue to support Menon “through this difficult time.”

Kirsty Brimelow KC, Chair of the Bar Council which represents barristers in England and Wales, has previously said the contempt proceedings against Menon “risk a chilling effect on the profession” and called it a “troubling episode.”

Dania Akkad is an investigative journalist. She has won awards for her reporting on women’s rights in the Middle East, Saudi Arabian dissidents and California’s lettuce industry.  She served most recently as senior investigations editor at Middle East Eye.

This article is from Declassified UK.

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