Reprinted from The Realist Review. Washington is more united than is often thought. Despite the ruptures with an imagined past that have been said to have been caused by the chaos agent in the White House, the foreign policy consensus (underwritten by the national religion of American exceptionalism) has shown itself to possess a remarkable […]

A quarter-century has passed since the terrorist attack that killed almost 3,000 people in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. During the first seven years after that mass atrocity, Pentagon spending doubled. The aftermath of 9/11 was also a huge boost for “the intelligence community.” Despite – and because of – their failure to […]

The Trump administration sent Congress its civil nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia. Asked what the deal permits, the president wrote: There will be no enrichment of material. His own Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, has said the opposite. The agreement gives Riyadh a pathway to enrich uranium on its own soil, and in doing so […]

The death of Palestinian artist Sliman Anis Mansour stirred powerful memories. He passed away at Al-Makassed Hospital in occupied East Jerusalem on August 24, at the age of 79, bringing to a close a legacy that cannot truly be described, but only experienced. His life almost exactly spanned the age of the Palestinian Nakba. He […]

The jury took just two hours. Tony Greenstein – Jewish socialist, anti-Zionist – had faced fourteen years under the Terrorism Act for three social media posts and a blog article opposing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Crown called it “inviting support for Hamas.” The jury called it something else. Section 12 of the Terrorism Act […]

American bombs are now falling on Tehran, and while Donald Trump ultimately pulled the trigger, administrations before him—Republican and Democrat alike—constructed the gun, and even loaded it. In 1995, US president Bill Clinton issued executive orders banning US investment tied to Iran’s petroleum sector and, soon after, most US trade with and investment in Iran. […]

While many mainstream commentators blanch at the characterization of the United States as an empire, the hard data show that it is today impossible to seriously dispute. The U.S. military operates between 750 and 800 bases around the world, located in around 80 foreign countries and territories. Because there is no fixed or standard definition […]

There is a point in the decline of republics when the problem is no longer that government breaks its own laws. Governments will always behave unlawfully. The deeper problem comes when the constitutional machinery designed to prevent those acts stops functioning — when spending becomes detached from arithmetic, presidential power becomes detached from law, and […]

Reprinted with permission from Trita Parsi’s Substack. A final deal between the United States and Iran is slipping further out of reach. Since the Memorandum of Understanding collapsed in July, the prospects for reviving it have deteriorated by the day. While Tehran publicly demands a return to the MOU, Trump’s current position is that even […]

On August 30, U.S. forces struck two Iranian missile launchers on Larak Island near the Strait of Hormuz, saying the systems posed a threat to shipping. Iran answered by launching ballistic missiles at U.S. forces in Jordan. The exchange revived a seemingly simple question: What is the next response supposed to change? In the war […]

Today, the West Bank is a nightmare of vicious settlement expansion, land seizure, economic strangulation, settler violence and forced displacement. With the collusion of the Israeli military and police, the Israeli-occupied territories are effectively ruled by the Messianic far-right settlers who see their mob-like racist pogroms of Palestinians as a divine step to Final Redemption. […]

Reprinted from Andy Worthington’s website. Many thanks to Dr. Dianne Woodward, a former lecturer in Biological Sciences, and a manager at the Galilee Foundation, a UK charity empowering Palestinian youth since 2007, for writing a compelling article for Al Jazeera, “Toxic waste of war on Gaza reached Israel”, highlighting how the ecocidal impact of Gaza’s […]

Some people say that being anti-war is to be against “the troops” – the Americans who in the past were drafted to fight and today volunteer to serve. But that is a superficial criticism that distracts from what the criticism of U.S. wars really should be. Many of us believe in a strong national defense. […]

Albert Einstein is credited with saying, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Whether he actually said it or not, the definition stands. This definition also very well describes the Trump Administration’s war with Iran. According to media reports, President Trump was cajoled by Israeli […]

Childhood is meant to be a journey of gradual awakenings; an accumulation of sunlit afternoons, scraped knees, carefree school days and the gradual safe unfurling of identity. However, for a Palestinian child growing up in the Israeli killing fields of Gaza or the occupied West Bank there is no such protected sanctuary.  In the West […]

Reality doesn’t always line up with our wishes. For Pete Hegseth, this lesson has been learned the hard way. Six months into his war with Iran, top military officials are warning the Secretary of Defense that prolonged fighting would be “unsustainable,” according to new reporting from The Washington Post. These officials are echoing sentiments that […]

Reprinted with permission from Tom Engelhardt’s Substack:  I was born on July 20, 1944, in the midst of World War II. My father had just returned from Burma where he had been operations officer for the 1st Air Commandos in the China-India-Burma Theater. I, of course, remember nothing about that war – except that my […]

If you want to understand the bleak future awaiting the occupied West Bank, do not look away. Just pay attention to the events unfolding in the small Palestinian town of Qusra, south of Nablus. The story of the future of the West Bank begins here. While much of the media is treating reports emerging from […]

The base at Abu al-Duhur had been dead for thirteen years. Wrecked in the Syrian war, out of service since 2012, its runways cratered and its hangars stripped, it sat in Idlib province about 60 kilometers from the Turkish border, useful to no air force. On the night of August 18 eight Israeli missiles fell […]

When Donald Trump launched the Iran War on February 28, the usual suspects were in full support. From the moment the conflict ignited, many couldn’t help but immediately express admiration for the president, saying that only a brave, noble, and strong leader would’ve had the courage to do what Trump did here. For weeks, we […]