From Tehran to Riyadh: How Israel Draws the Red Lines America Can’t Cross

Jamal Kanj

Image by Cole Keister.

Israel dragged America into another war, then sat back on the spectator bench and watched U.S. taxpayers foot the bill. Borrowed money burned into bombs. Billions more bled out at gas stations and in inflation, all to reopen a strait that was open before Donald was duped into fighting Benjamin’s war. Now Benjamin Netanyahu watches from a safe distance, gloating as missiles fly between the U.S. forces and Iran in a war he spent years pushing Washington to fight.

At home, flag-draped caskets of American soldiers arriving home from a war Israel instigated and American soldiers carried out. In Congress, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stood before the Senate requesting more money to keep the war running. Lawmakers asked to sign the check for a war they never voted to authorize, fought for aims Washington did not set, with no accounting of when — or how— it ends.

In occupied Palestine, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich tells a settler conference that “Israel has no interest in joining the campaign . . . a confined campaign between Iran and the United States, is the correct [situation] and best for us [Israel].” In layman language, let’s sit and watch Americans die and pay for our war.

Exhibit A: the U.S. military is depleting its own missile-defense stockpiles defending its bases across the region, while Israel hoards its interceptors in reserve. Israel isn’t spending down its stockpile. It’s waiting for the moment American stocks run dry and the Gulf states are left exposed. When that moment comes, Israeli interceptors will become prized leverage, offered to the UAE and the rest of the Gulf at a price.

Last Sunday on Fox News, Netanyahu outlined to America his goals for the war against Iran. A foreign prime minister, on American airwaves, essentially setting the terms and the finish line for an American war, fought by American pilots, funded by American taxpayers, and now apparently concluded at Israel’s discretion. Whatever Trump negotiates, whatever Washington decides, Netanyahu has already told America it doesn’t matter. He isn’t waiting to end the war on Israel’s terms. He’s informing it.

But it is not only America’s war policy that runs through Tel Aviv. It is diplomacy and commerce too. When Washington signed a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia, and the deal was announced, ink dry, both governments on record. Within a day, President Trump reversed course, declaring the agreement was contingent on Saudi normalization with Israel.

Israeli officials do not even try to be diplomatic on how they run Washington policy. Before Trump added the new condition, Israel’s Culture and Sports Minister, Miki Zohar, told Army Radio that “Israel has been clear with the United States about its red lines.”  Those are the words of a government that understands it holds a veto pen, set red lines, and where America listens.

Think about it, an Israeli minister speaks openly of red Ines over an American commercial and strategic agreement with one of the world’s largest oil exporters, a country central to Gulf security architecture Washington has spent decades building. It did not matter that the Saudi deal serves American energy and strategic interests. It mattered only that Tel Aviv had not yet signed off.

The issue isn’t whether Israel tries to shape American war strategy, or whether its leaders draw red lines Washington isn’t allowed to cross. The real question is why American leaders, across the political spectrum, permit a strategically insignificant country to wield such extraordinary influence over the foreign policy of the world’s only superpower.

Israeli red lines prompted America’s Israel-first loyalists to abruptly discover the agreement was a nuclear proliferation threat. For decades, they have defended, excused, or ignored Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal. Yet the prospect of a Saudi civilian nuclear program suddenly provokes moral outrage. The issue was never stopping nuclear proliferation. It was about sequencing. They would be willing to kosher a Saudi civilian nuclear program the day after, not before, it recognizes Israel.

If Arab capitals want an American relationship that serves their own security and economic interests, they need to stop mistaking proximity for leverage. For years the strategy has been to buy access, funneling billions to powerful intermediaries like Jared Kushner, treating him as the private door into the Oval Office. But Kushner is no neutral broker. He is an Israel-first advocate who built his post-White House fortune partly on Arab capital while shaping Middle East policy on Israel’s behalf and now uses his wealth to finance Jewish-only colonies built on stolen Palestinian land.

The United Arab Emirates lived this irony in hard numbers. Kushner sold Abu Dhabi on the Abraham Accords with a promise attached: normalize with Israel, and the most advanced American fighter jet in the world would follow, a $23 billion sale of fifty F-35s. The UAE delivered its half instantly, recognition, embassies, open skies. Washington delivered Israel every benefit of that deal. The jets never came. Years of “technical requirements,” stalled reviews, and quiet reversals later.

Trump wants to sell Saudi Arabia the promise of a commercial agreement, but deliver Israel an immediate recognition. The Arab cow gets milked for capital, investment, and diplomatic goodwill, and when the moment comes to deliver, the payoff is led instead to the Israeli altar. Every dollar spent courting Kushner, every concession made in good faith, has purchased not access but the illusion of it, never enough to collect on.

Arab regimes must understand that neither buying access to the president through Israel-first loyalists like Kushner, nor hosting the American bases that fight wars designed in and for Tel Aviv, will change U.S. policy — not while Israel holds the lobby power to dictate red lines American leaders dare not cross.

Jamal Kanj (jamalkanj.com) is the author of Children of Catastrophe: Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Palestine/Arab world issues for various national and international publications.

Thank you, Israel, for overplaying the empire’s hand

by Junaid S. Ahmad

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and illegal Israeli settlers attend the inauguration ceremony of the illegal “Doren” settlement outpost, established south of Hebron in West Bank, on June 16, 2026. [Wisam Hashlamoun – Anadolu Agency]

One must give credit where credit is due: Israel, by behaving with the strategic subtlety of a chainsaw in a porcelain museum, has achieved what diplomats, clerics, monarchs, generals, and think-tank acrobats spent decades failing to accomplish. It has helped bury the old Sunni–Shia melodrama as the organizing principle of West Asian politics, and it has made the American “security umbrella” look less like an umbrella than a very expensive lightning rod.

This is no small accomplishment.

For years, the region was instructed to understand itself through sectarian grammar. Riyadh and Tehran were not merely rival capitals; they were presented as metaphysical opposites, civilizational antagonists, eternal enemies locked in theological combat.

Every battlefield was translated into sectarian prose. Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq: all were reduced to the lazy vocabulary of Sunni versus Shia, as though history itself had been outsourced to cable-news interns and intelligence cut-outs.

Then came reality, that most impolite guest.

China began the correction in 2023 by brokering the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement, assisted by the quieter groundwork of Iraq and Oman. Russia, too, contributed by helping normalize the idea that regional actors could speak across blocs without first asking permission from Washington’s imperial reception desk. But Israel, with its characteristic gift for turning every tactical victory into a strategic ulcer, has completed the process. Its rampage across Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran’s orbit has reminded the region that the primary contradiction is not sectarian identity. It is imperial architecture. It is Zionist violence. It is the American security order that protects both while charging its clients premium rates for the privilege of being endangered.

Whatever one thinks of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkiye, Egypt, or any of the regimes presently rearranging the furniture of West Asia is, at this point, almost secondary. These are not saints convening a moral congress. They are states, regimes, militaries, monarchies, and bureaucracies pursuing survival in a suddenly clarified environment. The significance lies not in their virtue but in their recognition.

Israel has forced them to see that the old sectarian game is now strategically obsolete. When the house is burning, one does not pause to ask whether the fire brigade prefers a different school of theology.

The Pakistan angle is especially revealing. To the untrained eye, Islamabad’s deepening role with Tehran may look paradoxical. Pakistan has long been close to Saudi Arabia, dependent on Gulf money, connected through labor, military cooperation, and ideological patronage. It is also the only nuclear-armed Muslim-majority state, a fact that gives every Saudi-Pakistani handshake a weight that no communique can fully conceal. How, then, does Pakistan become a trusted channel to Iran while remaining Riyadh’s intimate partner?

The answer is almost insultingly simple: because Riyadh permits it, and perhaps now requires it. Islamabad’s friendliness toward Tehran is not a freelance adventure. It is part of a larger Saudi recalibration. The choreography matters: Iranian officials in Islamabad, Pakistani leaders moving onward to Riyadh, Gulf money quietly underwriting political possibility, and the old American monopoly on mediation beginning to look like a colonial antique.

Pakistan is not replacing the Gulf; it is being used by parts of the Gulf as a security instrument less compromised by Israel, less exhausted than Washington, and more plausible to Tehran.

This is where Israel deserves its second thank-you note, preferably embossed and delivered with deadpan sincerity. By making American protection look so manifestly dysfunctional, Israel has accelerated the search for alternatives. The United States can still bomb, sanction, threaten, veto, bribe, and lecture. It can still move carrier groups around like imperial chess pieces. It can still deploy the sacred vocabulary of “stability,” that blessed word under which so much rubble has been produced. But the region has begun to notice something awkward: American protection often means becoming a target on behalf of American and Israeli priorities.

The Gulf monarchies have spent decades living under the American security umbrella. Yet the umbrella now leaks missiles, drones, oil shocks, reputational ruin, and strategic dependency. Washington tells its partners it will defend them, then drags them into the blast radius of Israel’s wars. It sells them weapons, then demands political compliance. It promises stability, then sanctifies the most destabilizing actor in the region. This is not security. It is hostage management with invoices.

Hence the turn toward Pakistan. Not because Pakistan is pure, democratic, stable, or immune to imperial manipulation. Far from it. Pakistan’s ruling establishment has often treated sovereignty as a costume to be worn in public and pawned in private. But geopolitics does not wait for moral perfection. Pakistan has geography, a large military, deep Saudi ties, working channels with Iran, strategic relations with China, and the one credential that still concentrates minds in a brutal world: nuclear capability. That does not automatically mean a formal nuclear umbrella. It does mean that Riyadh and others can imagine a security architecture in which Washington is no longer the only ceiling above their heads.

The UAE remains the interesting outlier: agile, wealthy, hyper-networked, and deeply invested in normalization with Israel. But even Abu Dhabi must eventually confront the question haunting every palace in the region: how long can one profit from alignment with an actor whose behavior generates permanent regional combustion?

The Emirati model thrives on logistics, ports, finance, surveillance, and ambiguity. But ambiguity is harder to monetize when Gaza is in ashes, Lebanon is aflame, Iran is mobilized, and the Arab street understands normalization not as modernity but as collaboration with Zionist mass murder.

Israel imagined it was restoring deterrence. In truth, it has demolished the mythology that underwrote the old order. It has shown Riyadh and Tehran that their rivalry is luxurious compared with the danger of a region permanently subordinated to Israeli impunity. It has shown the Gulf that American bases are not shields but magnets. It has shown Pakistan that its strategic relevance may lie less in serving Washington than in helping construct a post-American regional balance. It has shown everyone that sectarianism, while useful for television panels and proxy wars, is a poor guide to survival.

So yes, thank you, Israel. Thank you for overplaying your hand with such operatic arrogance. Thank you for making the unspeakable obvious. Thank you for reminding West Asia that the enemy of regional order is not the neighbor with a different sectarian vocabulary, but the settler-colonial war machine that turns every country around it into either an accomplice, a battlefield, or a future target.

History has a wicked sense of humor. The state that sold itself as the indispensable fortress of Western power may become the force that makes the West’s military presence in the region redundant. The regime that exploited Sunni–Shia fracture may become the undertaker of geo-sectarianism.

The pyromaniac has accidentally invented the fire brigade.

For that, at least, Israel may be thanked — not with admiration, but with the cold applause reserved for death cults who destroy their own strategy while mistaking the noise for victory.

Ali Khamenei and Palestine as the enduring axis of the Islamic revolution

by Sayid Marcos Tenorio

Large banners bearing the portrait of Ali Khamenei are displayed across city squares as part of the preparations for funeral ceremony for late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an attack launched by the US and Israel on February 28, in Tehran, Iran on July 02, 2026. [Fatemeh Bahrami – Anadolu Agency]

For Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, the defence of Palestine was never a circumstantial matter of foreign policy. Rather, it constituted the enduring axis of his political, diplomatic and strategic vision throughout nearly four decades as Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Palestinian cause has ceased to be merely a regional issue, becoming instead one of the founding principles of the Iranian state. Under Khamenei’s leadership, this commitment was deepened and consolidated as an expression of the struggle against colonialism, occupation and foreign hegemony in the Middle East.

In Khamenei’s view, Palestine represented the greatest contemporary injustice inflicted upon a people deprived of their land, sovereignty and right to self-determination.

For this reason, he consistently rejected initiatives that reduced the Palestinian question to limited negotiations or agreements sponsored by Western powers, arguing that no settlement could be considered legitimate if it preserved the occupation, denied Palestinian refugees their right of return, or continued to deny the Palestinian people’s national rights.

For him, the liberation of Palestine was a matter of historical justice and international law—not a diplomatic concession.

This position continued the legacy of Imam Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic, who transformed Jerusalem and Palestine into one of the fundamental pillars of the Revolution.

Even while confronting a devastating war, decades of economic sanctions, international isolation and persistent military threats, Khamenei never relegated Palestine to a secondary concern. On the contrary, he maintained that defending Palestine was inseparable from defending Iran’s own independence and sovereignty.

Throughout his leadership, Khamenei transformed this commitment into a permanent state policy. Tehran became one of the principal centres for dialogue among Palestinian resistance leaders.

During successive meetings with delegations from Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other organisations, Khamenei repeatedly reaffirmed the Islamic Republic’s political, spiritual and material support while encouraging greater coordination among the various resistance movements.

Beyond hosting these meetings, Khamenei played a significant role in fostering closer cooperation between Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, advocating permanent mechanisms for political and strategic coordination among resistance forces. His conviction was that fragmentation benefited the occupation, whereas unity strengthened the path towards liberation.

Iranian support extended well beyond rhetorical solidarity. Under Khamenei’s leadership, the Islamic Republic provided diplomatic backing in international forums, material assistance and support aimed at strengthening the resilience and capabilities of Palestinian organisations.

At the same time, Khamenei conferred moral and religious legitimacy upon the Palestinian struggle, presenting it as a collective duty of the Ummah. By regularly receiving leaders of predominantly Sunni movements, he reaffirmed that Palestine transcended sectarian divisions, transforming resistance to Zionist occupation into a point of convergence between Shia and Sunni Muslims.

This conception also explains the central place occupied by Palestine within what became known as the Axis of Resistance.

For Khamenei, resistance was never merely a military response to occupation. It was a regional political project dedicated to defending the sovereignty of nations against foreign intervention.

Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran came to form a common strategic architecture based on the conviction that lasting regional stability depends upon ending the occupation of Palestine and overcoming the colonial project represented by “Israel”.

This vision elevated the Palestinian question far beyond the geographical boundaries of the Middle East.

For Khamenei, Palestine became the foremost contemporary symbol of anti-colonial struggle, the right of peoples to self-determination and resistance against imperial domination.

It is therefore no coincidence that he transformed International Al-Quds Day into a permanent instrument of political mobilisation and international solidarity, ensuring that Palestine remained at the centre of global political consciousness even during periods when international attention diminished.

Ali Khamenei’s political legacy cannot be understood apart from Palestine.

More than simply supporting the Palestinian cause, he helped transform it into one of the principal axes of Middle Eastern geopolitics and a defining pillar of Iranian foreign policy.

For his supporters, his greatest contribution was demonstrating that resistance is not merely a military strategy but a political project capable of bringing together different peoples, Islamic schools of thought and liberation movements around a shared objective: ending the occupation and establishing a free, sovereign and independent Palestine.

From the West’s Dream of Iran’s Collapse to the Reality of Its Resilience

SCFR Online – Note: Articles from Western think tanks confirm that, contrary to Western assumptions, the war has failed to cause Iran's economy to collapse, and this situation has led Washington to seek a pathway for exiting the quagmire.

Mohammad Amiri – Expert on International Affairs

The Gap Between Pressure Theory and On-the-Ground Reality

The architects of the maximum pressure strategy never imagined a day would come when Iran would not only avoid collapse but compel them to request a ceasefire. Washington today finds itself precisely in such a position. Senior analysts at the American Brandeis University, in an article published by this think tank, have emphasized that Iran has endured decades of sanctions and economic pressure, and its capacity for adaptation to the conditions it faces has never been eliminated. Although the costs are extremely heavy, no signs of imminent collapse or strategic submission are visible.

The reaction of Western actors to this resilience indicates helplessness in confronting an unpredicted phenomenon. A recent report from The New Yorker reveals that the current ceasefire between Iran and the United States bears no resemblance to classical ceasefires at all. Analysts at this publication have termed it a “non-ceasefire ceasefire”—a situation in which neither full-scale war is underway nor has sustainable peace been established. Donald Trump, who once spoke of Iran’s rapid defeat, now seeks to sign a one-page memorandum to halt hostilities. The American negotiating team consists not of seasoned diplomats but of the President’s son-in-law and close friend, both of whom are real estate investors.

In contrast, the Iranian delegation is led by senior executive managers and professional politicians. The Speaker of Parliament and Iran’s Foreign Minister have not only demanded the lifting of sanctions and the release of frozen assets but have also requested war reparations and the right to control the Strait of Hormuz—conditions that reflect confidence stemming from proven deterrence.

The Cost of War for Its Perpetrators and Supporters

Perhaps the most compelling evidence of the resistance strategy’s success lies in examining the costs borne by the aggressors themselves and their allies and supporters. The International Monetary Fund has projected severely negative economic growth for Gulf Cooperation Council countries in 2026: Qatar at -14.7 percent, Kuwait at -4.2 percent, Bahrain at -3.8 percent, the UAE at -1.9 percent, and Saudi Arabia at -1.4 percent.

However, the costs for the American side may be even more painful. A report from the Congressional Budget Office in mid-May 2026 announced that the cost of constructing, deploying, and operating the “Golden Dome” system to protect American territory over the next twenty years will be $1.2 trillion—a figure seven times greater than the Trump administration’s initial estimate, which some analysts believe is still lower than actual needs. One analyst has warned that the ratio of this system’s interceptors to enemy missiles could be as high as 1,000 to 1, and even $1.2 trillion may not suffice for complete defense. These are costs that were never previously factored into Washington’s strategic calculations and have now become a determining variable.

A Deadlock Called Costly Victory

Under such circumstances, claims of “victory” are neither heard nor tenable. A recent report from the Quincy Institute, citing a former senior military intelligence official of the Zionist regime, indicates that Netanyahu’s objective is to create a “state of endless war” with Iran—a strategy of “mowing the grass,” meaning periodic attacks to prevent the enemy from accumulating power. However, Iranians are in no way willing to accept such a situation in regional equations.

A senior analyst at the Chatham House Middle East institute also emphasized in an interview with The New Yorker that the international order has become severely fragmented and is no longer capable of providing solutions for sustainable peace. In such an environment, temporary ceasefires themselves become the new normal—a situation bearing no trace of peace yet granting no license for resuming full-scale war. Washington seeks a rapid, demonstrative victory, while Tehran seeks to consolidate the new equation. Now, after months of conflict, the on-the-ground reality is that none of the initial objectives of the US and Zionist regime’s war against Iran have been achieved. The inability to defeat Iran, the inability to fully control the Strait of Hormuz, and the inability to prevent the reconstruction of Iran’s military capabilities are not minor indicators. Perhaps the most significant achievement is nothing other than proving the proposition that maximum pressure, however severe, cannot bring a country with strong social backing and high capacity for adaptation and resilience to its knees. America now seeks a pathway to exit the quagmire—not out of benevolence, but due to calculations regarding the staggering costs of continuing the war—and this constitutes a strategic defeat.

The 4th of July: Tehran’s funeral and Trump’s birthday

by Dr Sahar Huneidi

An aerial view of thousands of people holding Iranian flags attend the funeral ceremony held for former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed during attacks launched by the United States and Israel on Feb. 28, and his family members at the Imam Khomeini Mosalla Mosque in Tehran, Iran, on July 5, 2026. [Iranian Leader Press Office/Handout – Anadolu Agency]

The  meticulously disorganised  250th  anniversary of American  independence was  branded as the dawn of a new ‘golden  age ’, with the largest fireworks and miliary aerial pageantry display in history, along with a presidential address from Mount Rushmore. It was Trump’s ultimate vanity project,  a celebration of American exceptionalism designed to dazzle the world. Instead , the world watched Tehran.

The broader ‘Freedom 250’celebration dissolved into a shambolic spectacle on the National Mall, where sweltering heat and power cuts left acres of exhibition fields humiliatingly thin.  Reports indicated Trump grew furious after seeing aerial photos of the sparsely populated fields during his separate D.C. campaign-style appearances. The calculatedly designed celebration is a reminder of how quickly spectacle can become farce.

At the same time,  millions upon millions  flooded the streets of Iran for the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his four family members.  The contrast could not have been starker.  The date of July 4 was chosen not by accident. It was designed to hijack America’s big day  and turn the funeral  into a global stage of Iran’s  narrative of  resilience and defiance.  It was a masterstroke of political upstaging.

The Funeral that Eclipsed  the News Cycle

By any measure, the funeral -lasting six days ( 4-9 July)-,  dominated  the global media coverage. Estimates placed mourners between 12 and 20 million across five cities, with delegations from over 100 countries, including Russia, China , Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. The procession  stretched from Tehran to Qom, then to Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, before concluding in Mashhad.   It was described as the ‘funeral of the century’, and arguably the largest funeral gathering in human history.

In the meantime, Trump’s birthday celebration struggled to generate headlines,  with performers reportedly pulling out citing partisanship. The event was branded less as an American celebration of America and more as a ‘Trump rally’ ; a show  of orchestrated narcissism of the first order,  complete with new ‘Patriot Passports’ featuring his photo,  and bookended by the Treasury’s legally-stalled prototype for a $250 bill with his face.  The birthday that was meant to unite the country exposed its deepening divisions, leading one  NYTimes writer ( Robin Givhan , 4 July 2026) to confess in her op-ed (Trump Ruined the Fourth of July for Me)  that ‘this year, I can barely tolerate the sight of red, white and blue. When combined into a maximalist display of nationalist cheerleading, the colours make my heart ache.’

In the streets of Tehran, the tiny coffin of Zahra Mohammadi Golpayegani, placed beside her grandfather’s , became the most haunting image of the day.  A 14-month old toddler, killed by the American-Israeli  strike, her small flag-draped casket turned a state funeral into a raw portrait of family loss, stripping the event of political theatre to reveal the human tragedy.

Trump, reportedly aware of the funeral’s scale, remarked that he was ‘surprised by the  turnout of Iranians in support of the late Supreme Leader… maybe it’s fake tears,’  he mused. ‘I was shocked to see Iranians crying at the funeral, as I thought people hated him’, he added.  Perhaps Trump truly expected to see ordinary Iranians dancing in the streets, assured as much by Benjamin Netanyahu and his hawkish congressional echo chamber, led by Lindsey Graham.

Trump  even went so far as to repeat his bizarre complaint  ( first revealed on 5 April 2026) that the Kurds hoarded the guns he sent them to spark an armed insurrection inside Iran. This arrogant attitude toward foreign-backed uprisings obscures the  lesson of modern US-Iran relations: the 1953 CIA and MI6 orchestrated coup  that toppled the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddegh.  For a nation whose modern identity is rooted in resistance to foreign-engineered regime change, such clumsy American interventionism does not spark liberation; it triggers deep historical trauma.

Historical  Ironies

When America was fighting for independence in 1776, Iran was in ruins. The once-mighty Safavid empire had collapsed in 1736, plunging the country into dynastic chaos. The historical irony is stark: by the time the American colonies declared self-governance, no single ruler controlled all of Iran, leaving a broken landscape caught between rival, warring tribal protectorates.

The juxtaposition of the two events on July 4th 2026  – the funeral and the birthday-, reveals something profound about the two nations.  America, the young empire, treats history as something to be marketed.  Iran, heir to a civilization thousands of years old, treats history as something to be studied and learned from. The successors of Iran’s political tradition understand something their American counterparts do not: power is not simply about bombs and dollars. As forty-five years of sanctions prove, it is about narrative, patience, and civilizational endurance.  

Trump’s birthday celebration was the opposite: it was a display of self-congratulation that the world largely ignored. It was a reminder that American power, for all its military might, is often blind to the forces that actually shape history. The US knows how to destroy, it does not know how to mourn, wait, or to transform loss into strength. This is the definitive lesson America refuses to learn: Iran is not a nation to be bombed into submission, but a civilization that has outlasted empires, invasions and revolutions.  Until that lesson is learned, the violence will continue, as evidenced by the fresh hostilities breaking out in the last 24 hours (July 8), a grim reminder that America’s leaders are merely fighting history, oblivious to a foundational law of the global order: empires end, but civilizations endure. Does Washington’s myopic leadership still not understand that while you can assassinate individuals, you cannot assassinate an idea?

The Ghost of the Eight-Year War

Taking the funeral to Najaf and Karbala, the holiest cities in Shii Islam, was a masterstroke. Najaf is home to the shrine of Imam Ali, and Karbala, the shrine of Imam Hussein, the third Imam martyred in 680 AD, whose death is the defining tragedy of Shia identity, making Karbala the ultimate symbol of martyrdom and resistance against tyranny. By visiting both sites, the funeral route directly connects to Khamenei’s death, framed as ‘martyrdom’, to this foundational narrative of righteous sacrifice. 

In addition, the procession carries a stunning geopolitical message.  Only 40 years ago, Iran and Iraq were locked in an eight year war, (1980-1988) instigated and bankrolled by Washington to crush the nascent Islamic Republic, a war that caused over a million casualties. Today, Khamenei’s body crosses the border with full honours.  This signals to the world that Iran’s influence in Iraq is now so deep-rooted that the country can host the funeral of a former enemy’s leader.  

The journey to Iraq -completely unprecedented in modern history- is the most eloquent part of entire week, making it a trans-national event, asserting that Khamenei was not just a leader, but a figure of global Shia significance entrenched in the region’s geography. As the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s multi-day funeral procession winds toward its final burial in the holy city of Mashhad, accompanied by a buildup of anti-American fury and symbolic defiance, Washington has already unleashed a renewed wave of air strikes. And as investors rush to the safety of the U.S. dollar and global oil prices spike past $73 a barrel, the world is reminded  once more of the steep, cyclical price of commercially minded deception. In the end, the administration did not achieve victory; it merely bought a brief moment of performative theatre, leaving the global economy and the Middle East more dangerously unmoored than before.    

There is a farcical asymmetry in Trump’s schoolyard diplomacy. He mused about wiping out Iran’s leadership ‘all in one shot’, oblivious to the fact that the regime he targeted anchors its authority in deep cultural sophistication. Khamenei’s intellectual background was shaped by rigorous seminary training and a deep engagement with both Islamic theology and secular literature. He  was  also highly regarded as a literary intellectual, a cleric who regularly attended poetry circles, possessed an aptitude for literary criticism, and famously read Western classics, citing Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables as a personal favourite. While he rarely spoke it publicly, he understood English well enough to read western literature, novels, and news reports without the aid of a translator. 

In the final analysis, it is becoming all  too clear that the highly publicized Memorandum of Understanding with Tehran was not a bridge to enduring peace, but an exercise in mercenary diplomacy.

The MOU ( signed on 17 June) can be discarded now.  Was this a diplomatic pause engineered simply to ensure that neither the glitz of the football World Cup nor the hollow vanity of the 250th would be disrupted by the inconvenient realities of war?  On July 7th,  Trump  yet again revoked what he had already agreed on.  Was all this deception from the beginning? Perfidious Washington has eclipsed its predecessor.

We did not have to wait long for Trump’s predictable next move:  as tensions with Iran slipped back into chaos on July 8th, the U.S. struck nearly 100 targets.  During a press briefing from Ankara alongside Nato’s pliant ‘Teflon’ secretary general Mark Rutte, – the alliance chief who notoriously appeased the president as ‘daddy’-, Trump effectively declared the MOU nullified with a characteristic shrug: ‘To me, I think it’s over,’ he announced.  ‘I don’t want a deal with them… As far as I’m concerned, it’s just a waste of time dealing with them.’ Then, turning his focus to Iran’s leadership, he concluded with great presidential eloquence: ‘They’re scum. They’re sick people, led by sick people’. He then added:  ‘Very, very probably hit them hard again tonight. I’ll give them a little warning. We’re going to hit them hard tonight… You know, we may take over Kharg Island. It’s not a thing they can do about it. But I said, don’t hit the pipes. Just hit everything else’. 

This is foreign policy reduced to the beat of an endless reality television monologue. By filtering a volatile regional conflict through a barrage of repetitive ‘maybes’ and juvenile insults, the executive branch has abandoned the gravity of statesmanship for  transient transactional hype, the international order completely exhausted by the noise.

How Israel and American Zionists are canceling First Amendment

by Jamal Kanj

Residents walk past colorful wall paintings as daily life continues under the shadow of destruction following the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Tehran, Iran, on April 5, 2026. [Fatemeh Bahrami – Anadolu Agency]

While the world’s attention has been consumed by the Iran war, the fragile Lebanon ceasefire, and Trump’s reality show — AKA the “Board of Peace” — in Gaza, Israel has been executing a methodical, largely unreported Jewish apartheid program in the West Bank. It is ethnic cleansing in slow motion: intentional, documented, and normalised by journalists too timid, media outlets too embedded, and editors too biased to cover it honestly.

The numbers tell the story that Zionist-managed Western media outlets will not. The West Bank is experiencing its largest forced population transfer since 1967, according to a recent briefing to the UN Security Council. Israeli-enabled Jewish-mobs, sweeping movement restrictions, home demolitions, and race-based military repression have triggered the worst wave of systematic uprooting in nearly six decades.

More than 33,000 Palestinians have been uprooted from the Jenin, Tulkarm, and Far’a refugee camps alone. Over 70 percent of displaced households reported that threats against women and children, including sexualized abuse by Israeli forces, were a decisive factor in their displacement.

Israel has allocated $338 million—much of it supplemented by donations from American tax-exempt 501(c) organizations—to expand illegal Jewish-only colonies and Zionist youth outposts in the occupied West Bank. At the same time, it is accelerating “Jewish-only” land transfer in Area C, which comprises 61 percent of the total area. In the US, synagogues host real estate events marketing properties in these exclusive colonies to American Jewish buyers. US taxpayers, in effect, are subsidizing the Jewish-only entities, while tax-exempt synagogues are marketing the sale of misappropriated Palestinian land and reinforcing a system of Israeli Jewish-apartheid in the occupied West Bank.

This is not the byproduct of a so-called “self-defense” war. It is a part of a colonial policy bankrolled in part by the American taxpayer through tax-exempt organizations operating under the cover of Jewish and Christian Zionist philanthropy. Donations that enjoy the same IRS protections as a food bank or a children’s hospital are financing Palestinian ethnic cleansing, and the construction of Jewish-only colonies on stolen land. The American tax code has thereby become an accessory in promoting Israeli apartheid.

Displacement is not the only weapon. A 188-page report by the Palestinian Feminist Collective titled, “A Predatory State: Israeli Systemic Sexualized and Gendered Violence Against Palestinians,” documents what Palestinians have long known and what the Western press has long refused to print: sexual violence by Israeli forces against Palestinians in detention is not aberrant. It is institutional, systematic, and decades old.

Last March, Israeli military prosecutors canceled indictments against soldiers caught on video sexually assaulting a Palestinian detainee at Sde Teiman detention facility. Racist National Security Minister Ben-Gvir condemned the military for having attempted to charge them at all. No accountability followed. None was intended. This is the impunity apartheid requires, and the silence that sustains it.

Pro-Israel foundations fund Think Tanks and media organisations that set the parameters of acceptable debate before a single word is written. Social media algorithms suppress Palestinian postings while amplifying Israeli military statements as authoritative fact.

TikTok became a “Chinese security risk” the moment it fell outside their algorithmic control. American Zionists pressured Congress to force its sale, ensuring the last major social media platform joined every other American social media outlet under the thumb of Israel-first ownership.

Zionist influence over social media is not a conspiracy theory; it is an openly declared strategy. On 26th September 2025, during a meeting with American (paid) influencers at Israel’s Consulate General in New York, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called social media “the most important weapon.” He praised the acquisition of TikTok by an Israel-first Zionist as “the most important purchase … right now,” underscoring that expanding Zionist dominance from traditional media to digital platforms is central to keeping Western audiences captive to Israeli falsehoods and manufactured Hasbara.

A rare exception came in May 2026, when New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof published a 3,700-word investigation, “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.” Kristof interviewed 14 Palestinian men and women who described sexual assaults by Israeli prison guards, soldiers, settlers, and interrogators. Among the testimonies, one man said he was raped three times in a single day; a young woman recounted being stripped and abused at the start of every shift; another said interrogators showed her photographs of her rape and threatened to release them unless she cooperated with Israeli intelligence. Even three detained children reported sexual abuse.

Israel’s response was as revealing as the report itself. Rather than refute a single finding documented by two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Nicholas Kristof, Netanyahu reached for the oldest weapon, playing the victim card, crying “blood libel” and vowing to sue The New York Times.

Israel’s bullying of American activists critical of Israel and media outlets is not about defamation or even prevailing in court. It is a deterrence strategy by making the financial cost of covering Israeli war crimes high enough that editors think twice before approving the next investigation. 

And when credible reporting breaks through regardless — as Kristof’s did — Zionists weaponise American courts to silence it, carving out Israeli war crimes as the one exception to the American First Amendment.