Published date: 17 September 2026 19:31 BST | Last update:14 hours 29 mins ago
The United Nations has “reasonable grounds” to believe the US committed a war crime with its strikes on the Minab elementary school and a sports centre in the opening days of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
The US attack on the Minab school killed at least 150 people, including approximately 120 children. Another strike hit a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern Iranian city of Lamerd.
“The Mission found reasonable grounds to believe the United States committed the war crime of launching indiscriminate attacks resulting in the loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects,” a UN fact-finding mission wrote in a report released on Thursday.
The report is not a judicial ruling, but has been submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
The UN investigators noted that the Minab school was struck by a Tomahawk missile as part of ongoing strikes on an adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base. The researchers noted that the strike was not due to an errant missile.
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“The nearest IRGC facility [was] located approximately 72 metres from the school building,” the authors said.
“The Mission concludes that the building of the school was the intended point of impact and that the damage did not result from an errant strike or collateral damage from the attack on the adjacent IRGC compound,” the report said.
The New York Times reported that officers at US Central Command had created the target coordinates for the strike using outdated data provided by the US Defense Intelligence Agency, citing people briefed on the investigation.
Exclusive: Iranian girls killed by ‘double-tap’ strikes on Minab school
The US investigators probing the attack said the US military was most likely responsible for the strike, but the Trump administration has deflected any responsibility.
The UN fact-finders said another US strike hit a “clearly identifiable sports complex and residential area” in the southern Iranian city of Lamerd.
The New York Times revealed in March that the US used a previously untested ballistic missile in combat to attack the sports hall. The Precision Strike Missile, or PrSM, detonates just above its target, launching thousands of tungsten pellets.
“The Mission concluded that the US by choosing to use the PrSM missile in a populated civilian area, under the prevailing circumstances, launched an attack that struck civilians and civilian objects reckless as to the likely extent of death or injury,” UN fact-finders said.
The UN said that the US’s attacks were “indiscriminate” and violated “the principle of distinction” in international humanitarian law.
The report noted that the US used a weapons system that distributed approximately 180,000 tungsten pellets in an area with many civilians. The attack “could not be directed at a specific military objective and its effects on civilian and civilian objects could not be limited,” the UN researchers said.
Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader listens during a news conference July 2, 2012 at Public Citizen in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week.”
As Democrats campaign for the November midterm elections after helping kill the latest congressional effort to impeach President Donald Trump, progressive consumer advocate and four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader this week renewed attacks on the party’s leadership for abandoning their constitutional responsibility to hold the president accountable.
In a September 14 essay published by Current Affairs, Nader argued that Democratic leaders have effectively given up on impeachment even as Trump’s second administration faces continuing allegations of executive overreach and misconduct.
“The chronic prevaricator and delusionist Donald J. Trump knows that the worse his outlaw actions become, the less likely the Democrats in Congress are to impeach him,” the Public Citizen co-founder wrote. “The massive number of blatant, impeachable acts by the lawless, corrupt, violent, systemically racist, unstable, dangerous tyrant increases by the day.”
“The American public knows it,” Nader continued. “The majority of Americans favor impeaching Trump. Among Democrats, it’s 84% in favor, as well as a majority of independents. Polling even shows that most Americans think Trump is a ‘dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy.’”
Yet, “when asked about impeachment, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries [D-NY] replied: ‘We haven’t ruled anything in and we haven’t ruled anything out,’” he noted. “What? Every day, the mega-arsonist is burning down our republic and its Constitution, with tens of millions of Americans suffering and endangered. Yet Jeffries has been noncommittal about whether Democrats would pursue impeachment even if they had a congressional majority.”
In a column republished by Common Dreams earlier this month, Nader wrote, “What must Tyrant Trump be thinking about his opponents’ feeble, weak, cowardly responses to his daily torrent of serious, impeachable offenses?”
“Even his egomaniacal narcissism cannot fully explain his amazing good luck,” he opined.
Earlier this week, the House of Representatives voted 232-147 to table an impeachment resolution introduced by Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), effectively ending the measure’s consideration. Eighteen Democrats joined Republicans in voting to table it, while 46 Democrats—including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—voted “present.”
Green’s resolution accused Trump of high crimes and misdemeanors arising from the administration’s deadly anti-immigrant crackdown, including alleged violations of civil liberties and due process. Green said before the vote that the Constitution contains no provision requiring Congress to wait before confronting impeachable conduct.
Democratic leaders have attempted to justify their decision not to support Green’s resolution by arguing that impeachment requires a substantial investigative record, hearings, witness testimony, and document review. Jeffries, along with Democratic leaders Katherine Clark of Massachusetts—the House minority whip—and Pete Aguilar of California, the House Democratic Caucus chair, said they would vote “present” because “none of that serious work has been done,” as they jointly explained.
Nader rejects that reasoning. In Current Affairs, he argued that saying Democrats “don’t have the votes” misses the purpose of a sustained impeachment campaign, which he described as a way of building public pressure and organizing voters.
“Impeachment is a mobilizer for get-out-the-vote efforts,” he wrote, as well as “for educating and energizing the people back home.”
Trump has already been impeached twice by the House, although the Senate failed to convict him either time. No other president has been impeached multiple times. Nader has pointed out that Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors are more grave than those for which then-President Nixon resigned from office in 1974 rather than face impeachment, and that Democrats’ fear of the consequences for impeaching Trump again is no excuse for their cowardice.
“The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week,” he wrote.
Ed Miliband’s decision to leave the military relationship with Israel intact raises serious concerns about Britain’s compliance with international law.
Elbit has an MoD contract to provide a simulation trainer for Challenger 3 tanks (Photo: Stephen Bardens / Alamy)
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Just days before Ed Miliband announced trade sanctions on Israeli settlements, more than 300 British soldiers participated in a “landmark” training exercise facilitated by Israel’s largest arms firm.
Elbit Systems UK boasted about its “key role” in the three-day training exercise which saw the soldiers battling against simulated forces in one of the largest ever exercises of its kind in the UK.
The exercise, named Pegasus Athena, represented a “step change in capability for the armed forces”, according to the company, because it allowed troops to train “without the need for external assets and… ammunition stockpiles”.
This training is just one small example of the enduring and tightly entangled role of the Israeli arms industry in Britain’s defence sector.
Declassified has found how over recent years the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has awarded scores of major tenders to Israeli weapons firms, worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
Israeli technology can be found in one of Britain’s key air defence systems as well as in missiles used by the Royal Air Force, while the Royal Navy relies on Israeli-made anti-missile systems and British soldiers train on simulators designed by Elbit.
In Miliband’s speech, the British foreign secretary said Britain’s finding that the Israeli occupation is unlawful brings it in line with the advisory opinion handed down by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2024.
That ruling found Israel’s occupation unlawful, but also obligated all states “not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation” created by the occupation.
The Israeli arms industry is tightly bound up with the Israeli state, and profits from the occupation by supplying the military hardware, ammunition, and surveillance used to enforce it.
It follows that international clients, including Britain’s MoD, are sustaining the occupation by awarding contracts to Israeli arms firms while benefitting from the occupation by purchasing items that have been “battle tested” on Palestinians.
The closeness of Israel’s arms industry with Britain’s military raises further questions not only about how difficult it would be to separate the two, but also the extent to which defence integration limits the prospects for meaningful diplomatic pressure on Israel.
Genocide scholar Martin Shaw told Declassified: “The government’s acceptance that the occupation is illegal means that it should act against Israel itself, not just the settlers it has installed.
“The ICJ was clear that states must do nothing that provides ‘aid or assistance’ to Israel in maintaining the occupation, and must ‘ensure that any impediment’ that the occupation causes to the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination ‘is brought to an end’.
“Through the UK’s military alliance with Israel and its comprehensive military-industrial cooperation, Labour still appears to be failing in these legal duties, despite Miliband’s announcements”.
Pegasus Athena was far from the first British military exercise assisted by Elbit.
In 2023, Elbit won MoD contracts to “develop and provide artillery and mortar training simulators” for the army and to “design, provide, maintain and operate” a simulation trainer for Boxer armoured vehicles and Challenger tanks.
The company’s Interim Combined Arms Virtual Simulation has also been “benefiting the British army since 2022” and was deployed that year in what it said was “the largest field army exercise in Europe for the past decade” involving 3,500 troops and up to 800 vehicles.
Another asset developed by Elbit Systems, the Joint Fires Synthetic Trainer, has “delivered over 12,000 hours of training to British armed forces and NATO allies” over recent years.
In addition to simulations, Elbit Systems won a five-year MoD contract in 2021 worth £102m for a Dismounted Joint Fires Integrator which “allows frontline soldiers to detect and engage enemy targets in seconds”.
Last year, Elbit UK delivered Ground Based Surveillance Radar systems to the UK’s Royal Artillery under a £14m contract signed in 2023, which “enhance the situational awareness of personnel on the ground”.
In 2021, Elbit UK became part of a joint venture named Affinity Flying Training Services Ltd to be awarded a £65m contract lasting 12 years for the operation of Texan T-C6 trainer aircraft for the UK Military Flying Training System program.
Another major MoD programme facilitated by Elbit, the Maritime Electronic Warfare System Integrated Capability, is helping British navy ships with anti-missile defence. This followed a £103m contract awarded to Babcock and Elbit in 2021.
The system “will be installed on current and future warships including the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, Type 45 destroyers and Type 26 and Type 31 frigates currently in build”, the government said last year.
Subsidiaries of Elbit UK have also played a key role in supplying the MoD over recent years.
In 2021, Instro Precision won a £11.5m contract to supply the British army with night vision goggles, with further purchase orders totalling over £16m made over subsequent years.
U-TacS, a joint venture between Elbit UK and French arms firm Thales, oversaw the £2bn Watchkeeper programme which supplied the British army with deficient drones.
Elbit’s Hermes 450 drones were also procured by the British army in 2007 under Project Lydian for operational support in Afghanistan at a cost of around £200m.
Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights, told Declassified: “This important investigation exposes precisely why the UK government’s recent measures are largely performative and designed to whitewash the multifaceted, shameless complicity of the UK with Israel’s regime of settler-colonialism, illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide.
“The UK has failed to end the economic relationships, trade agreements and academic relations with Israel that may contribute to its unlawful presence and apartheid regime in the occupied Palestinian territory, as it is obliged to do in order to comply with the ICJ ruling.
“It is absurd for the UK to sanction settlements while simultaneously purchasing and integrating Israeli surveillance and weapon systems that are field-tested on Palestinians into its own armed forces.
“Comparing these largely symbolic measures with the far-reaching sanctions imposed by the UK on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine affirms the UK’s colonial hypocrisy and loss of credibility on the international stage”.
Rafael
Rafael Advanced Defence Systems, Israel’s largest state-owned arms firm, has also been awarded major contracts by the MoD over recent years.
In 2024, the company was part of a consortium awarded a £38m tender for the procurement of systems to develop counter-drone capabilities for combat soldiers.
Rafael also won a £20m contract alongside Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land in 2023 for “cutting-edge new rocket and missile protect systems for Britain’s Challenger 3 tanks”, which are scheduled to enter into service next year.
In addition to this, the Israeli state-owned company supplies the “brains” for Britain’s Sky Sabre air defence system, which is deployed at sensitive sites such as the Falklands.
When Rafael won the Sky Sabre contract in 2017, a defence executive said: “Everybody was extremely surprised the MoD opted for Rafael. Politically, industry thought that was a route the UK government wouldn’t go down…It makes you wonder just what parts of the local defense industry the government is willing to defend”.
Rafael also manufactures Litening pods which are used by the Royal Air Force’s Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets for precision targeting capabilities.
Closer to home, Rafael owns a subsidiary named Pearson Engineering in Newcastle which recently won a £10m contract to supply the British army with “26 Track Width Mine Ploughs”.
The contract was awarded without any competition for “technical reasons”, indicating how no other provider was able to supply the items.
Documents published by Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS) have indicated the value that the MoD has placed on UK-Israel defence collaboration.
Around 2019, the British defence attaché in Tel Aviv, Jim Priest, prepared a presentation on Project HEZUK, a secret defence plan between the UK and Israel aimed at countering Iran and Hezbollah.
One of the slides focussed on joint UK-Israel defence collaboration, naming several of the “existing programmes” such as the Sky Sabre and MFTS.
Notably, Priest also outlined several “UK-ISR Joint Areas of Investigation” which included “autonomous warfare”, “space”, and “maritime”.
Next to a bullet point on Research and Development (R&D), Priest further outlined “Quantum, Additive Manufacturing, poss[ible] investigation on energy weapons and novel defence systems”.
One of the slides prepared by the British defence attaché in Israel around 2019
In addition to military collaboration, Britain’s intelligence relationship with Israel will be untouched, according to Miliband, and there are no signs that either the 2020 UK-Israel military cooperation agreement, nor the 2023 Road Map for UK-Israel bilateral relations will be suspended.
In response to Britain’s sanctions, Israel has said it will close the British consulate in East Jerusalem, remove UK representatives from the International Gaza Support Centre in Kiryat Gat, and terminate Britain’s role in training Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank.
Omar Barghouti added: “The UK has very clear obligations under international law, as triggered by the ICJ decisions of 2024 about Israel’s plausible genocide and its illegal occupation and apartheid.
“The UK must end all military, intelligence, trade, financial, academic and other relations with Israel that enable its illegal occupation, apartheid or genocide, as the ICJ has called for”.
Declassified asked the MoD how the awarding of arms contracts with Israeli firms which help sustain the illegal occupation of Palestine comply with the ICJ ruling, and whether it would commit to sanctioning the firms and cancel or not renew such contracts.
A government spokesperson responded: “As the Foreign Secretary has set out, we are taking clear action, including banning the import of goods from illegal Israeli settlements into the UK, and creating new designation powers to go after individuals and companies that support, facilitate or profit from illegal settlement activity. We are also banning the advertisement or promotion of land in the illegal settlements.
“We have robust processes in place to ensure all contracts are awarded fairly and transparently. All suppliers are subject to rigorous due diligence and must deliver value for money while complying with our security and legal obligations.”
John McEvoy is Chief Reporter for Declassified UK. John is an historian and filmmaker whose work focuses on British foreign policy and Latin America. His PhD was on Britain’s Secret Wars in Colombia between 1948 and 2009, and he is currently working on a documentary about Britain’s role in the rise of Augusto Pinochet.
The move came after seven House Republicans voted in favor of a resolution to end the Iran war
by Dave DeCamp | September 16, 2026 at 12:54 pm ET
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced he has canceled a planned House session for Thursday, sending lawmakers for an early seven-week recess and pushing back a vote to impeach US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth until after the midterm elections.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who introduced the resolution to impeach Hegseth, suspected Johnson might take drastic measures to avoid the vote, so he didn’t inform GOP leadership of his plan to introduce the resolution, which he did on the House floor on Tuesday.
“And there it is. Just as I predicted. They’re canceling Congress tomorrow to avoid the vote on IMPEACHING [Hegseth]. It will also make it harder for us to reach 218 signatures on the Epstein Discharge Petition before the election. We were at 190+ signatures last night,” Massie wrote on X after Johnson canceled the votes.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson talks with reporters about the House finishing votes today instead of on Thursday, in the US Capitol on Wednesday, September 16, 2026. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect)
While Johnson didn’t explicitly say the Hegseth impeachment was the reason for canceling Thursday’s votes, Reese Gorman, a reporter for The Washington Sun, reported right before the cancellation was official that some in House leadership “want to avoid a vote on the Hegseth impeachment set to come up tomorrow since it’s privileged.”
Johnson’s move also came after seven House Republicans voted against the Iran war by voting in favor of a War Powers Resolution that would direct President Trump to end the conflict. The bill passed 220-204, with all 213 Democrats present voting in favor.
The House has held multiple votes on the Iran war, but the Tuesday night vote had the highest number of Republicans supporting a resolution to end the conflict, signaling that Massie may get some Republican support over the Hegseth impeachment since it’s centered on the conflict with Iran.
Both the House and the Senate have already passed a concurrent Iran War Powers Resolution, which, under the 1973 War Powers Act, should direct the president to remove US forces from hostilities with Iran.
Massie argued in his eight articles of impeachment for Hegseth that passing the concurrent War Powers Resolution was one of the multiple ways Hegseth and the administration are breaking the law by continuing the Iran war.
The articles also address how Hegseth has ignored US laws designed to mitigate civilian casualties, his role in extrajudicial executions at sea (strikes on alleged drug-running boats), the attack on Venezuela to abduct President Maduro, the bombing campaign in Yemen last year, and his efforts to chill free speech.
FILE – President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House on May 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
The Trump administration has placed weapons in orbit around the earth, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink announced Monday. The United States “now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action,” Meink told the Air & Space Forces Association conference.
The announcement is a major step in the militarization of space and the escalation of war plans targeting nuclear-armed Russia and China. Meink spoke more than six months into the US-Israeli war on Iran, a day after Russian forces struck a passenger train near the Polish border and 10 days before Chinese President Xi Jinping is due at the White House.
The Wall Street Journal, praising the move in a Tuesday editorial, noted that it takes place ahead of Xi’s arrival: “The timing of the space announcement may be no accident coming ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington next week.”
Meink refused to say what the weapons are, how many there are or when they were launched. The Space Force said in a statement to ABC News published Tuesday that the weapons “can be employed for offensive and defensive purposes at the direction of combatant commands.”
Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation, a research group, told Defense One on Monday: “I don’t think any US government official has ever said that before. The US also now has to accept the Chinese and Russians doing/saying the same.” She told Al Jazeera Tuesday, “What this does is normalise weaponising space.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said Tuesday, “We urge the US side to stop expanding its military capabilities and preparing for war in outer space,” and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the same day that “space must be free of any weapon.”
In January 2025, US President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to build “proliferated space-based interceptors,” a program named Golden Dome that he priced at $175 billion that May. The Congressional Budget Office estimated this May that such a system would cost $1.2 trillion over 20 years, most of it for about 7,800 space-based interceptors.
The administration is asking $71.3 billion for the Space Force next fiscal year, nearly double the $40.1 billion requested a year earlier, inside the $1.5 trillion military budget it requested in April, a 44 percent increase over this year’s and the largest since World War II.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, to which 118 states, including the United States, are party, commits its signatories “not to place in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction.”
It reserves the moon and other celestial bodies “exclusively for peaceful purposes” but says nothing about conventional weapons in orbit, and the Space Force said Monday that its operations comply with it.
The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between Washington and Moscow barred each side from developing, testing or deploying missile-defense systems that are “sea-based, air-based, space-based, or mobile land-based.” US President George W. Bush withdrew from it in 2002, and Golden Dome’s space-based interceptors are the type of weapons it barred.
The Trump administration has abandoned or bypassed a series of arms-control agreements. In 2018, Trump pulled out of the nuclear agreement with Iran, and in 2019, out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which had banned a class of US and Russian missiles. In 2020, he left the Open Skies Treaty, which had allowed unarmed surveillance flights.
New START, the last treaty limiting US and Russian strategic nuclear weapons, expired February 5; Trump had given no formal answer to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to observe its limits for another year.
On October 30, 2025, Trump ordered the Pentagon “to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” and the next day the United States cast, for the first time, the lone vote against the annual resolution of the UN disarmament committee backing the moratorium on nuclear testing. The United States has not set off a nuclear explosive test since 1992.
On November 4, Alison Storsve, the US delegate, told the committee that the United States “must vote NO on the resolution” titled “Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space.”
“I don’t want to tell Beijing and Moscow what I’ve done,” Lieutenant General Gregory Gagnon, head of Space Force Combat Forces Command, said of measures to protect US satellites in February. “We also need, as part of our joint force, the ability to attack.” In December 2025, the administration announced a record $11 billion arms package for Taiwan.
Meink’s announcement takes place amid the uncontrolled escalation of the war in Ukraine. The Kyiv Post reported Monday, citing an internal German government planning document seen by Politico, that Germany’s Defense Ministry plans to spend nearly €3.4 billion on US Tomahawk cruise missiles, with a range of more than 1,500 kilometers, and on Typhon launchers to fire them. The purchase would give Germany its first ground-based long-range strike force, and a ministry spokesperson confirmed that “the procurement of the US Typhon system with Tomahawk cruise missiles remains intended.”
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced in Kyiv on May 11 that Germany and Ukraine would jointly build unmanned weapons “at all distances, especially in the deep strike zone.”
On Sunday, the day before Meink spoke, Russian forces struck a stationary Kyiv-Warsaw passenger train with a drone at Yahodyn station, two kilometers from the Polish border. Ukraine had evacuated the 206 passengers about 15 minutes earlier, and nobody was injured. A train carrying former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was already inside Poland, and a third, with former CIA Director David Petraeus aboard, stood at the station and was not struck. All had attended a conference in Kyiv.
The European powers answered the strike with calls for more weapons. Pistorius called the strike Monday “a calculated escalation by Russia intended to frighten Europe,” and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said of Putin, “He thinks that he can stop us from supporting Ukraine and that he can undermine our unity. He is wrong.”
Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said Monday the strike was “a message to the Western world” and that “we should do exactly the opposite: we must show that we are there for Ukraine and we are not scared off.” On Tuesday, Poland and Romania scrambled fighter jets as Russian forces struck Ukraine with drones near their borders, and NATO fighters shot down a drone over Lithuania, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said.
Other imperialist powers are arming for space. French President Emmanuel Macron, opening the French military’s space command center in Toulouse in November 2025, said, “Space is no longer a sanctuary; it has become a battlefield.” Pistorius announced in September 2025 that Germany would spend €35 billion on military space over five years to “defend and deter in space.”
The space weapons the Journal credits with opening the door to the assault on Iran are now aimed at Russia and China.
Neither party in Washington opposes the program. The military spending bill that pays for the Space Force, $839 billion this year, passed the House in January with 149 Democratic votes. By Tuesday night no member of Congress had been quoted objecting to weapons in orbit.
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The Trump administration is planning to move forward with a massive military aid package for Israel that will include 40,000 2,000-pound bombs, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday, as the US continues to support Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and its wars and occupations in the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria.
The report said the sale, paid for with US taxpayer dollars, will include 20,000 MK-84s and 20,000 BLU-117s, each weighing 2,000 pounds. It will be funded by the State Department’s Foreign Military Finance program, under which the US provides foreign governments money to purchase US weapons.
Tucker Carlson first reported the massive transfer in a post on X minutes before the Post published the report.
President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on July 28, 2026 (White House photo)
“An American-made Mark 84 has a destruction radius of half a mile. It releases a thermal wave the temperature of the surface of the sun. Within 100 feet of the explosion, rock melts and human flesh turns to vapor,” Carlson said.
“The bomb collapses apartment buildings and leaves craters thirty-five feet deep. Until the war with Iran, the US military generally avoided using the Mark 84 in urban areas. It kills too many civilians,” he added. A recent US strike in southern Iran that hit a house hosting a wedding, killing at least five civilians, was likely carried out with an MK-84, according to an investigation from The New York Times.
Carlson noted Israel’s extensive use of 2,000-pound bombs in Gaza. “In the weeks after October 7, the IDF dropped nearly six hundred 2,000-pound bombs on densely populated areas in Gaza, including on more than 100 officially designated civilian evacuation zones. The slaughter was so grotesque and embarrassing that for a moment the Biden administration paused a shipment of Mark 84s. Those shipments quickly resumed under Trump. Now they’ve accelerated,” he said.
According to Carlson, the Israeli request for the massive bomb shipment “originated at the US Embassy in Jerusalem, which is run by Christian Zionist Ambassador Mike Huckabee and his aide David Milstein, who is the stepson of Fox News host Mark Levin.” He said it was quickly approved by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and now needs the approval of Senate leaders, though the Trump administration has previously bypassed the normal congressional review process to arm Israel with 2,000-pound bombs.
To examine the unyielding multi-billionaire dollar shield that the United States provides Israel is to confront the coarse mechanics of modern empire.
Washington has, for decades, maintained a posture of absolute defense, supplying advanced weaponry, providing diplomatic immunity, and rationalizing actions that human rights organizations and international courts characterize as war crimes, apartheid and genocide.
The mainstream narrative has relentlessly framed the U.S.-Israel alliance through the comforting lens of shared democratic values and mutual defense. This rendering, however, crumbles under the weight of reality. Nothing has dissuaded Washington from its entente with and acquiescence to Israel – not the regime’s racist policies; not even genocide.
Every U.S. administration has backed its brutal regimes, because they have buttressed American power and interests in the Middle East. This fatal alignment evokes the question: what exactly is Israel’s role, and whose interests are being served?
Israel has long functioned as an imperial agent for Western powers seeking regional dominance. Initially, the British Empire was crucial in helping its Zionist proxies secure a foothold in Palestine during and after World War I. In the mid-20th century, the United States seized the geopolitical mantle from Britain, taking control of the resource-rich region and becoming Israel’s primary benefactor.
Since the 1950s, Washington has viewed the Middle East – a vital nexus of global energy routes, trade corridors and geopolitical leverage – through the lens of dominance and resource control.
Lacking permanent colonial possessions in the heart of the Islamic world, Washington engineered an alternative: a heavily subsidized, fortified and technologically advanced military outpost. For the Pentagon and State Department, Israel has functioned as an unsinkable aircraft carrier; a military stronghold to project force, suppress independent anti-colonial movements, and to act as a counterweight to Iranian regional influence.
The Washington-Tel Aviv partnership is reinforced by the military-industrial economy of the United States that thrives on perpetual conflict to drive demand.
Defense spending fuels the domestic economy. The billions in military aid funneled to Israel are, in practice, massive subsidies paid directly to U.S defense conglomerates like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. U.S.-Israeli wars have contributed substantially to the financial survival of these industries.
Occupied Gaza and the West Bank have long served as testing laboratories for advanced weaponry, surveillance technology and crowd-control systems.
Surveillance and weapons systems that have been battle-tested on captive civilian populations are subsequently marketed globally as “combat proven.”
This multi-billion-dollar defense network closely connects the interests of the U.S. military sector with the continuation of Israel’s military operations. It also ensures fierce bipartisan resistance in Washington to any meaningful arms embargo or policy shifts, since almost every congressional district in the country is tied in some way to the defense industry.
American politicians aggressively safeguard Israeli “exceptionalism” and fiercely buffer it from accountability. Robust networks of well-financed lobbying groups, political action committees and institutional gatekeepers ensure that unwavering support for Israel is a requisite for political survival in Washington.
When elected officials dissent from established foreign policy positions or condemn the slaughter of civilians, they become the targets of well-funded, organized efforts to end their political careers. As a result, domestic priorities are sidelined as Congress aligns itself with a powerful military lobby rather than the American public; a growing majority of whom oppose unconditional foreign military aid.
At its core, the relationship between Israel and the United States is rooted in a shared historical consciousness and legacy. Both countries developed as settler-colonial states built upon the systemic erasure, confinement and dispossession of native populations.
Allegations of apartheid, genocidal violence, and systemic racism leveled against Israel deeply resonate within the American political landscape, mirroring its own foundational legacy.
U.S. policymakers connect Israel’s regional supremacy directly to the preservation of Western influence and global dominance. Racism is not a mistake in the alliance; it is a core function. It ensures that non-Western, non-white casualties are viewed as dispensable; essentially acceptable “collateral damage” in the pursuit of geopolitical objectives.
America’s alignment with Israel is a product of strategic utility, not moral blindness. Washington’s defense of Tel Aviv’s brutal policies exposes the vacuity of Western rhetoric around human rights, international law and democracy. When imperial power, corporate profit and geopolitical dominance are threatened, universal human rights are treated as entirely disposable.
The “indispensable ally” narrative is foundering, as is the U.S. imperium. Israel’s U.S.-subsidized genocide and devastating wars on Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran have sparked intense global outrage and blowback, signaling the beginning of the end of American global dominance.
History will record that when major powers rely on the blunt instrument of war to “manage” a complex world – rather than to live in it as one among equals – they ultimately subvert the stability they claim to protect.
Dr. Behnam is a political scientist who specializes in comparative politics with a focus on West Asia. His “Cultural Foundations of Iranian Politics,” published by University of Utah Press, and still in print, was recognized by Choice as Outstanding Academic Book for 1987–1988.
Professor in the school of law at Queen Mary University of London and is a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences.
Published On 14 Sep 202614 Sep 20268 mins
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Doctor Victoria Rose, a plastic surgeon who has worked in Gaza, (L) addresses the Gaza Tribunal on September 04, 2025 in London, England. Jeremy Corbyn MP held an independent tribunal into Britain’s role in war crimes perpetrated in Gaza and to try and establish the scale of the British government’s complicity in the genocide against the Palestinian people. [Leon Neal/Getty Images]
History does not really repeat itself, but, as the saying frequently attributed to Mark Twain goes, it often rhymes. Take, for example, Britain’s involvement in the Middle East since the turn of the century. It took six years before the British government established an independent committee of Privy Counsellors to examine the United Kingdom’s involvement in the 2003 Iraq war, and an additional seven years before Sir John Chilcot and other members of the inquiry committee published their damning findings that former Prime Minister Tony Blair had misled the public and his own government.
The Inquiry found that the UK chose to join the invasion before peaceful options had been exhausted, that Saddam Hussein did not, in fact, pose an imminent threat and that Blair had deliberately exaggerated the danger and then promised former United States President George Bush: “I will be with you, whatever.” It also found that Britain’s intelligence agencies had produced “flawed information”, that Blair had ignored warnings about what would happen in Iraq after the invasion, and that the government had not tried hard enough to keep a tally of Iraqi civilian casualties, which, according to Iraq Body Count, amounts to between 187,499 and 211,046 deaths.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown would not have established the inquiry committee without unrelenting pressure from within Parliament and civil society, and it was only due to these persistent demands that the truth finally saw the light of day (even though Tony Blair has still not been held to account).
Starmer government blocks independent inquiry into Britain’s role in the genocide
Fast forward to the Gaza genocide. In June 2025, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn proposed a bill for a full, independent, public inquiry into Britain’s role in the genocide in Gaza. This inquiry committee would consider any UK military, economic or political cooperation with Israel since October 2023, including the sale, supply or use of weapons, surveillance aircraft and Royal Air Force bases, while also having the power to question ministers and officials about decisions taken in relation to UK involvement.
The bill secured the support of more than 50 MPs. However, when it reached a second reading, Keir Starmer’s government blocked its passage. The government said “there is no need for an inquiry” and that “such an inquiry would be unnecessary as there is no confusion about UK military operations in Gaza.”
The Gaza Tribunal
In response, Jeremy Corbyn decided to hold a public tribunal in the tradition of the Russell Tribunal organised by the great British philosopher Bertrand Russell in 1966 to investigate US war crimes in Vietnam. Corbyn invited Shahd Hammouri, an international law lecturer at the University of Kent, and me to join the Tribunal panel, and the hearings were held on September 4-5, 2025, in Church House, Westminster.
We heard 29 testimonies from witnesses, journalists and survivors of the Gaza genocide, as well as a range of international law experts, lawyers, medical doctors and whistleblowers. At the time, the official death toll in Gaza was nearing 65,000, of whom almost 20,000 were children. With more than 150,000 injured, Gaza had become the home of the largest cohort of child amputees in the world. Almost 80 percent of the buildings in Gaza had either been damaged or destroyed, including more than 90 percent of housing, 97 percent of schools, 33 of 36 hospitals, and every single university in the Strip.
The two days of hearings were among the most difficult in my life, given the emotional toll of listening to so many horrific testimonies. In addition to testimony after testimony describing the extent of the British government’s complicity in the mass murder and destruction, we also heard from a whistleblower about the culture of deception – to cover up the government’s wrongdoings – that had taken over the corridors of power. In the subsequent months, we analysed the findings and concluded that Britain had played a vital role in Israeli military operations in Gaza, including but not limited to:
The sale, supply and transfer of weapons that have been used to extinguish human life and destroy vital infrastructure in Gaza, the West Bank and beyond. This included individual export licences issued directly to Israel, as well as the indirect supply of components for F-35 fighter jets. The use of Royal Air Force surveillance flights over Gaza and British airbases to facilitate the transport, refuelling and maintenance of military equipment. The provision of political and diplomatic support, which has empowered Israel, enabling it to commit atrocities with impunity. This support has included the dehumanisation of Palestinians in political rhetoric, the justification of Israel’s actions, the hosting of Israeli officials, the failure to uphold the authority and decisions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the demonisation of international solidarity, including the proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist group.
In March 2026, Corbyn submitted the Tribunal’s findings to the ICC, encouraging the court to interview government ministers regarding British complicity in war crimes. Since then, he has continued to demand a full, official, independent public inquiry into any cooperation between the UK and Israel since October 2023.
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Corbyn knows that the Tribunal he organised is no substitute for a full, public, independent inquiry, and given that there is a new prime minister in Number 10 who said Labour “got it wrong” over Gaza, Corbyn wanted to know whether the current Labour government would finally commit to investigating Britain’s role in the genocide. Expressions of regret are certainly important, but if justice is the goal, then the UK public requires both truth and accountability.
Last week, the bill that Keir Starmer’s government blocked back in June 2025 was once again brought before Parliament, and once again the government blocked MPs from voting on it. The Burnham government’s decision to postpone the vote on Corbyn’s Bill is reminiscent of the way previous governments postponed the establishment of an inquiry to investigate the Iraq war. It appears that, like previous UK governments, the current government’s strategy is to demur and delay, with the goal of sending the Gaza inquiry bill to purgatory.
The ruling elite have lost the ‘common sense’
The problem for Burnham is that, today, he and other members of the ruling elite no longer have the power to define the “common sense” through which Gaza is understood. Public opinion on Israel has shifted, as the huge pro-Palestinian marches and opinion polls demonstrate. The majority of the UK population knows that Israel is committing a genocide and that it has been able to do so, in part, because of the support of Western governments. While the US and Germany were undoubtedly the most enthusiastic supporters – providing Israel with the lethal mechanisms and the diplomatic shield to carry out mass killings – the public also understands that Britain has played a vital role.
Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband’s recent – and I would say courageous – announcement that the UK government would ban imports from illegal Israeli settlements and sanction companies and individuals supporting settlement activity is a very important first step. Yet, it does not absolve the UK government of its alleged complicity in atrocity crimes.
The disturbing testimonies we heard during the Tribunal underscore the importance of formal scrutiny. The vote on Corbyn’s bill was postponed last week, but the need to reveal the role the British government played in Israel’s genocidal onslaught is not going away. Burnham and Miliband have a historic opportunity to prove that this new government is committed to the principles of international law and currently face a straightforward choice: Continue to block efforts to expose the truth and seek accountability, or break with the past and stand on the right side of history. History often rhymes, but it does not have to.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Neve GordonProfessor in the school of law at Queen Mary University of London and is a Fellow of the British Academy of Social SciencesNeve Gordon is a professor in the school of law at Queen Mary University of London and is a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences. He is the author of Israel’s Occupation and co-author of The Human Right to Dominate (2015), Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire with a new preface and epilogue about Gaza (2026) and The Gaza Tribunal: Britain’s Complicity in Genocide (2026).
Palestinian Prisoner Society says 19 are held under administrative detention without charge or trial
Layan Bsharat and Mohammad Sio
AA.Com, 13 September 2026
RAMALLAH, Palestine / ISTANBUL
Israel is holding 37 Palestinian journalists in its prisons, including 19 under administrative detention without charge or trial, the Palestinian Prisoner Society said Sunday.
The nongovernmental group said all 37 journalists were detained following the start of the Gaza genocide in October 2023.
It said Israel continues to target Palestinian journalists through arrests, prison sentences, solitary confinement and prosecution over their work and freedom of expression.
Among the latest detainees are journalists Muath Ammarna and Sabri Jibrin, who were arrested Thursday after Israeli forces raided their homes in Bethlehem in the southern West Bank.
The group said Ammarna has been repeatedly targeted by Israeli authorities and is now being detained for the third time over his journalistic work.
It also cited the case of journalist and writer Mahmoud Fatafta, who was sentenced to 48 months in prison over what Israel describes as “incitement,” one of the harshest sentences issued in such cases, according to the statement.
The society said Israeli authorities increasingly use “incitement” charges against journalists, alongside administrative detention based on what authorities describe as “secret files.”
Nineteen journalists from the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are currently held under administrative detention, accounting for 51% of all detained journalists, it added.
The group also highlighted the case of journalist Bushra al-Tawil, 33, who was transferred from Damon Prison in northern Israel to solitary confinement at Ramla Prison in central Israel.
It accused Israeli authorities of intensifying isolation and other restrictive measures against female Palestinian prisoners, alongside food deprivation, denial of medical treatment and poor sanitation conditions.
The society said detained journalists face the same conditions as other Palestinian prisoners, including hunger, medical neglect, torture, abuse, solitary confinement and denial of basic rights.
Journalists are also targeted through killings, enforced disappearances and direct attacks while carrying out their work, it added, describing this as part of a systematic policy aimed at restricting Palestinian reporting and documentation of Israeli crimes and violations.
The occupied West Bank has seen daily Israeli army raids and escalating attacks by occupiers since the start of the Gaza genocide in October 2023. The attacks have included killings, arrests, demolitions, attacks on homes, vehicles and mosques, destruction of agricultural land, restrictions on farmers, displacement of Palestinians and expansion of illegal settlements.
On Thursday, the Palestinian Prisoner Society said Israeli forces detained more than 100 Palestinians across the West Bank over the previous week, bringing the number of West Bank detainees since October 2023 to more than 25,000, in addition to thousands detained from Gaza.
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Washington is pressing its NATO allies to help “systematically dismantle” the International Criminal Court (ICC) and abandon its mandate, in an effort to shield US officials from war crimes prosecutions and Israeli leaders from accountability over the genocide in Gaza, POLITICO reported on 9 September.
US envoy Matthew Whitaker reportedly delivered the demand behind closed doors in Brussels in mid-July, in front of the alliance’s 32 ambassadors, urging member states to help take the court apart and to walk away from the Rome Statute, three anonymous NATO diplomats told POLITICO.
“We will be watching closely who stands with America,” Whitaker said as he closed his remarks, according to the three diplomats.
Alongside his intervention, the US mission circulated a document to NATO delegations stating “The United States will systematically dismantle the capabilities of the ICC … we firmly request that you immediately take steps to withdraw.”
The paper instructed allies to assess the court as a threat to their own governments, to publicly denounce its mandate as “overreach,” and to halt all material support to it without delay.
It closed by calling for an “end [to] the charade of the ICC once and for all.”
This comes after US State Secretary Marco Rubio announced on 13 July 2026 a sweeping Washington campaign to isolate and dismantle the ICC “brick by brick,” pressuring allied nations hosting US troops to reject the court’s authority or face retaliation, following Trump’s 6 February 2025 executive order that imposed asset freezes and travel restrictions on ICC prosecutors and judges investigating US and Israeli war crimes.
The campaign has already stripped lead prosecutor Karim Khan of his post, following a sustained Israeli effort that weaponized sexual misconduct allegations against him after he issued the November 2024 arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former war minister Yoav Gallant over their leading roles in the Gaza genocide.
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese was sanctioned in February, after US technology firms complained to the White House about her findings that they were complicit in Gaza.
Nine of the court’s 18 judges and both deputy prosecutors have since been placed under US sanctions.
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(Photo credit: Laure Boyer / Hans Lucas)
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