UN Report on Minab School War Crime a Nightmare to US

Alwaght- The US war of aggression against Iran continues as the aspects of attacks on civilians more than ever come to focus of the international organizations.

A recent report by the UN fact-finding committee about Iran provides one of the most important published documents about the US military and illegal actions in this war. The report says there are "reasonable grounds" to conclude that the US committed a war crime in attacking a school and a sports hall in Iran.

Bloomberg reported that officials engaged in Pentagon's internal prove have said that some of the Department of War had concluded in the early hours of the attack that targeted Minab elementary school was carried out by the US forces. They add that the attack was not a result of a single person decision, but was a product of a chain of decisions, errors, and lost opportunities that could avoid this tragedy.

UN admits to the US war crime

The UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Committee on Iran said in a new report that there are “reasonable grounds” to conclude that the US was responsible for two military strikes in southern Iran on February 28, and that the attacks amounted to war crimes. The two incidents under review are the strike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab in Hormozgan province and an attack on a sports complex in Lamerd, in Fars province. According to Reuters, the two attacks together killed at least 178 civilians.

In the Minab strike, the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school was hit. The fact-finding committee said the school’s civilian character was evident from visible markers, including children’s drawings, school signs, a playground and satellite imagery showing people identifiable as children in the courtyard before the attack.

According to published reports, more than 120 children were killed in the strike. The fact-finding committee said the US failed to take adequate precautions in identifying and selecting the target to ensure it was military in nature. In the committee’s view, the issue was not merely a simple operational error.

The significance of the finding is amplified by Bloomberg’s reporting. According to a report published by Bloomberg, some officials involved in the Pentagon’s internal investigation said department staff realized within the first hours that the Minab strike had been carried out by the US. Bloomberg also reported, citing officials involved in the Pentagon’s internal investigation, that the catastrophe was not the result of a single decision but involved a chain of decisions, mistakes and missed opportunities.

If its details are confirmed in official investigations, the report will carry particular weight for the debate over command responsibility and military decision-making, because the question is not only what weapon was fired but also why the attack was carried out on an elementary school.

The second US war crime confirmed in the report occurred in Lamerd. The UN fact-finding committee also examined the attack on a sports hall and surrounding residential areas and said the available evidence was consistent with an American strike. That attack also led to civilian deaths. US Central Command (CENTCOM), however, has denied responsibility for the Lamerd attack.

Although the fact-finding committee is not a criminal court and its report does not by itself issue a judicial verdict against individuals or the US government, its findings can be used as part of the documentary record in future investigations and judicial proceedings.

White House rejects the UN report

Washington has rejected the UN report. The White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly in response to the report said the body "accomplished nothing for human rights while spouting unserious nonsense for decades."

"The only party in this conflict that has committed war crimes is the Iranian regime,” Kelly claimed.

The US State Department has also said the Trump administration does not regard the UN Human Rights Council’s findings as credible and takes the responsibility to protect civilians very seriously. For specific questions about US military operations, the department referred reporters to the US Department of War.

Washington’s official position, then, is to reject the credibility of the UN report. The fact-finding committee, by contrast, reached its conclusion that there are reasonable grounds to believe war crimes occurred in the two attacks based on evidence including satellite imagery, video footage, weapons analysis and publicly available information.

Broad US war crimes in Iran

Beyond the US war crimes in the strikes on an elementary school and a sports complex in Lamerd, other documented reports indicate that the list of American war crimes against Iran in the recent war is far longer.

Attacks on residential areas in Tehran and other Iranian cities are among other examples of US war crimes in Iran. Amnesty International has also investigated some of the strikes on residential areas in Tehran and called for independent reviews of cases it says could constitute human rights violations and unlawful attacks.

Attacks on civilian infrastructure are another prominent category of US war crimes in the war against Iran. The strikes on the Karaj bridge, the desalination plant on Qeshm, gas and oil facilities in southern Iran, including in Assaluyeh and Kharg, and the steel industrial complex in Isfahan are among other examples of US war crimes in the recent war, each of which could be the subject of a legal case against Washington.

Continuous crimes

The US war crimes in the region are not limited to Iran. Actually, the Americans have a long history of committing war crimes against regional nations. Over the past two decades there were many cases of crimes committed by the US or the military coalition under its leadership in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen.

In Iraq, Human Rights Watch examined cases of civilian casualties in airstrikes and ground operations in its reports on the 2003 war and warned about the use of certain banned munitions in urban areas. The group also called for reviews of cases where laws of war may have been violated.

In Afghanistan, the 2015 attack on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz became one of the most notorious cases of civilian casualties in US operations. The AC-130 gunship strike on the medical facility killed at least 42 people. A US military investigation identified some violations and errors, and human rights groups questioned the accountability process.

In Syria, too, the US-led coalition’s operations against ISIS, particularly the battle for Raqqa, were accompanied by numerous reports of civilian casualties. In its investigations into the battle for Raqqa, Amnesty International called for reviews of the attacks and the use of weapons in urban areas against women and children.

In Yemen, US drone strikes and so-called counterterrorism operations have a long history. Human rights groups have in some cases investigated and criticized attacks on wedding parties, villages and targets where civilians may have been present.

Together, these cases show that issues such as misidentification of targets, use of firepower in densely populated areas, reliance on incomplete intelligence and the extent of post-strike accountability have recurred repeatedly in US military operations, and that Washington has sought to evade responsibility for its war crimes by repeating such statements.

Now the Minab case stands on different footing. Here, a UN-affiliated fact-finding committee has said there are reasonable grounds to believe a war crime occurred, while Bloomberg’s reporting on the Pentagon’s internal investigation also speaks of US officials’ awareness that the attack was American and of a chain of errors and decisions that led to it.

In effect, the US strike on an elementary school in Iran could become one of the most important cases for examining US responsibility for civilian casualties in war, a case in which the issue is not only the number of victims but a far-reaching pattern of continued US war crimes under various pretexts.

Exiting the Human Rights Council: Way to escape responsibility?

Amid reports of the US responsibility for Lamerd attack, other reports suggest the US plan to exit the HRW. The record of the US treatment of the UN's rights body shows that whenever Washington found the performance of this organization running counter to its policies, it has avoid participation in it. In June 2018, the Trump administration withdrew the US from the Human Rights Council, with American officials at the time citing what they called the body’s “anti-Israel bias” and ineffectiveness. In February 2021, the Biden administration announced that the United States would re-engage in the council’s work and even ran for a seat for the 2022–2024 term.

But that return did not last either. In February 2025, Donald Trump announced in an executive order that Washington would not participate in the Human Rights Council, would not seek membership in it and would not allocate funding to the body. In explaining the decision, the US government accused the council of allowing human rights abusers to evade accountability and stressed that its work was not consistent with American interests.

In practice, the policy did not stop at the Human Rights Council. In 2025, the US also refused to take part in the periodic review of its own human rights record under the council’s Universal Periodic Review mechanism, a point the council president raised in a formal session, and after the US delegation’s absence, the Human Rights Council held a session on the country’s “non-cooperation” with the review mechanism.

All this comes as the US presents itself as a defender of human rights and international accountability while, at moments when international bodies investigate or assess its own record, it distances itself from participation in some of their mechanisms. Washington’s critics interpret this approach as an effort to ease human rights pressure and limit international oversight of US actions.

Now, the release of the UN fact-finding committee’s report on the two attacks in Iran, coinciding with the White House’s sharp stance against the Human Rights Council, has once again put a central question in focus: how can international mechanisms investigate and hold the US accountable, especially when Washington has halted its participation in those very mechanisms?

Within this framework, the case of war against Iran is not just about several specific attacks, but a test of credibility of the international accountability mechanisms. If the findings of the fact-checking committee, media reports, and human rights documents about attacks on civilians are finally ratified, the main issue is no longer the victims, but the question will be: What institution should ensure accountability of the those responsible and can the big powers be avoid political and legal consequences of their actions by simply withdrawing the oversight mechanisms? 

Mecca Attack amid War of Narratives: Three Clues to Settle the Riddle

Alwaght- Recent drone incident in south of the holy city of Mecca soon spiralled into a political and trans-regional case from a security issue regardless of the origin of the attack, its target, and the precise nature of the flight. Saudi Arabia rushed to claim the country's air defense downed a Yemeni drone before it could penetrate the Mecca airspace. Yemen's Ansarullah movement strongly rejected the Saudi allegation of its link to the drone.

Ansarullah's Political Office member Hizam al-Assad said that "the claims about attacking Mecca is a repeated lie already made and nobody will be deceived anymore."

Meanwhile, the religious importance of Mecca triggered fast circulation of the incident, drawing attention to it beyond a usual military attack.

The false-flag operations that have been ordinary in Ukraine and West Asia conflicts have become a tactic to advance political and propaganda agenda of various sides in recent years. 

Here is where the main issue forms: If we place this incident within the broader arc of the war and the region's political shifts, who stands to gain from turning it into a wider sectarian and media firestorm? Answering that question does not necessarily mean identifying who carried out the attack; it means examining the conditions under which it unfolded.

War in a point where the balance is shifting

The first background is the field course of Yemen war. In recent weeks, Ansarullah has made major gains in the western coastal regions of Yemen, gaining control of the strategic city of Mokha, Bab-el-Mandeb, and some significant islands. The importance of these developments is not limited to the Yemeni internal geography and have to do directly with one of the world's most important waterways. Reuters, too, has described the Ansarullah's advances on Red Sea coast and liberation of Mokha the key developments of the new phase of war.

Under such conditions, the war's equation is no longer defined solely by front lines on the ground. Bab-el-Mandeb, the Red Sea ports, and Saudi Arabia's energy export routes have become part of the pressure campaign. This matters all the more now that disruption in the Strait of Hormuz has squeezed Saudi oil exports as well, leaving Riyadh more dependent than ever on Red Sea routes to keep its exports flowing.

International media have likewise spotlighted the link between Ansarullah's advance along Yemen's western coast and the threat to Saudi oil and shipping lanes at the port of Yanbu.

But these advances have not been confined to strategic areas. In recent days, Ansarullah have laid siege to al-Jawf province on the Saudi border, leaving Riyadh far more anxious about further Houthi gains and a possible penetration into its own frontier.

Saudi airstrikes, meanwhile, have failed to turn the tide, and the kingdom's absolute air superiority is fading in the face of new capabilities Sana'a has put on display. On Wednesday, Ansarullah said to have shot down a Saudi F-15 fighter jet over Marib province.

Yemen's Al-Masirah network aired night-vision video showing a missile striking a fighter jet. Another image showed the wreckage of a downed Saudi aircraft, with the Saudi flag painted on its charred tail.

Ansarullah had already downed several drones and even an advanced US F/A-18 fighter jet during clashes with American forces in 2025.

Viewed through that lens, the key question is whether targeting Mecca could have delivered gains commensurate with the political and religious costs it would impose on Ansarullah. Plainly, no. On the battlefield, the Houthis have a range of tools at their disposal to pressure Saudi Arabia and reshape the military and economic equation, and in recent weeks they have stepped up attacks on Saudi infrastructure and ratcheted up pressure on energy export routes. To attribute a deliberate strategic target to the Mecca incident, then, is at odds with the military and strategic logic of the war.

Turning the incident into something bigger than the Yemen war, by contrast, could hand Riyadh a political opening, reframing the issue from a conflict with Ansarullah into a question of "the security of Islam's holiest sites." The spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition has seized on precisely that framing, calling the security of Mecca and its pilgrims a "red line."

Battle for the Muslim world's public opinion

The second axis is public opinion across the Muslim world. Mecca is not merely a city in Saudi geography; it is a shared religious symbol for millions of Muslims worldwide. Any security incident around it can therefore quickly transcend a political dispute and become an emotional and religious cause.

Here, too, there is a critical distinction between what actually happened and the narrative constructed around it. Saudi Arabia has sought to anchor its narrative on the claim that an attack by Ansarullah targeted Islam's holiest city. Ansarullah's leaders, for their part, have dismissed the accusation as propaganda lies, insisting that targeting Mecca was never on their agenda. Even Iran, while condemning any assault on holy sites, has stressed that merely claiming to have intercepted a drone headed toward Mecca is not enough to pin responsibility on a particular party.

This clash of narratives shows that a major part of the battle is now being fought in the realm of perception and legitimacy.

In recent years, Ansarullah has sought to cast itself as a defender of Palestine and an opponent of the war on Gaza — a stance that has resonated with broad swaths of Arab and Muslim public opinion, and even with non-Muslim audiences elsewhere. Saudi Arabia, by contrast, has drawn criticism over its security cooperation with the US and Israel against Palestinian interests, above all, Riyadh's and its Arab League allies' failure to act to stop Israel's atrocities against the people of Gaza.

The Saudis, then, have plainly lost the war of narratives on the soft-power front to Yemen, and in that sense the Mecca incident is a golden opportunity to recoup that loss and damage Ansarullah's image.

In its foreign ministry statement, Saudi Arabia even spoke of "repeated patterns of targeting holy sites and inflaming the feelings of Muslims everywhere."

In the statement, the kingdom calls on the international community to take a firm stance against Sanaa's attacks on holy sites, civilian and economic targets, and threats to freedom of navigation, tying the war to the defense of the security of the Two Holy Mosques and Hajj pilgrims.

This scenario matters in particular for shaping and laying groundwork within segments of Muslim public opinion, namely Pakistan and Egypt.

Pakistan and Egypt are the two military powers of the Muslim world with close military and security ties to Saudi Arabia, and public opinion in both countries is easily inflamed by events such as attacks on holy sites, given the strong influence of religious currents and the presence of major Sunni religious institutions like Al-Azhar and religious schools. Yet what is striking is that public opinion in both countries has never backed Saudi Arabia's warmongering in Yemen, the seven-year war, and their governments, despite a token presence in the 2015 coalition against Yemen, refrained from meaningful participation.

Now the Pakistani reaction to the Mecca incident is exactly what Riyadh wants. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in a post on X, condemned what he called the cowardly attack, expressing his condemnation in the strongest possible terms of the criminal and heinous drone attack on the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca. Muhammad Taher Mahmood Ashrafi, head of the Pakistan Ulema Council, also said the security and stability of the Saudi kingdom is "our red line," stressing that we will not allow it to be crossed.

The sanctification of the incident thus has the potential to shift the debate from the military and political conduct of the parties to the defense of the sacred, a shift that could sway the positions of governments and public opinion in Islamic countries.

Mecca and regional coalition-making

The third axis has to do with the coalitions equation. In recent years, Saudi Arabia has sought to build a network of regional and extra-regional support, leaning on its ties with the US, its claim to leadership of the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League, and new Arab cooperation and security arrangements with countries such as Pakistan and Turkey.

Yet for all the regional and extra-regional pacts Riyadh belongs to, it has in practice scored no success in building an effective coalition capable of defending it and joining the fight against the Yemenis. Meanwhile, the regional coalition of the Axis of Resistance has managed to align the equations of the Strait of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb and synchronize its forces from Lebanon to Iraq and from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea coast, advancing the battle against the United States and Israeli regime effectively on both the military-security and economic warfare fronts.

Under such conditions, an attack on Mecca, Islam's holiest city, ought to serve the party that has failed at coalition-building. That is, the sacred status of Mecca should compensate for Riyadh's inability to build coalitions around geopolitics and help bring such a coalition into being.

Main question: who does hold the narrative? 

The Yemen war has reached a stage where public opinion, political legitimacy, energy routes, and regional coalitions have all become arenas of competition alongside the geography of the battlefield itself. In such a war, Mecca can transform from a geographic location into a political symbol, one whose value to the parties lies not in direct military power, but in its capacity to reshape how Muslims perceive the conflict and to shape political coalitions.

Understanding the Mecca incident is therefore impossible without seeing this broader context. And the ultimate question is not simply "where did the drone come from?" but whose political and military equation the narrative of that drone will ultimately be built and cemented to serve. In a war whose battlefield balance is shifting rapidly, controlling the narrative can matter as much as controlling a port or a strategic island.

Iranian physician wins 2025 Kuwait Prize for control of cancer

TEHRAN – Amir-Ali Hamidieh, an Iranian professor at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, has won the State of Kuwait Prize for the Control of Cancer, Cardiovascular Diseases, and Diabetes in the Eastern Mediterranean Region.

The Foundation for the State of Kuwait Prize for the Control of Cancer, Cardiovascular Diseases, and Diabetes in the Eastern Mediterranean Region was established in 2003. Based on the recommendation of the Foundation Committee at its 72nd session in October 2025, the Regional Committee decided to award the Prize to Hamidieh for his significant contribution in the field of cancer.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the prize consists of a bronze medal and a sum of money; it will be presented in October during the 73rd session of the Regional Committee.

A distinguished physician, academic and pioneer in paediatric haematology, oncology and stem cell transplantation, Hamidieh earned his M.D. from Islamic Azad University, Tehran, and pursued postgraduate training in paediatrics and paediatric haematology/ oncology at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. He later completed advanced fellowships in haematopoietic stem cell transplantation at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, United States of America.

Hamidieh currently serves as Professor of Pediatric Hematology/ Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, where he also directs the Pediatric Cell and Gene Therapy Research Center.

He is the founder of the Iranian paediatric stem cell transplantation programme and the national stem cell donor network, which established the country’s first human leukocyte antigen (HLA) registry.
 
He chairs the National Council for Development of Stem Cell Sciences and Technologies under the Vice-Presidency for Science and Technology and is a member of the executive boards of the Asia-Pacific Blood and Marrow Transplantation Group and the Iranian Food and Drug Administration.

His leadership has enabled the development of seven paediatric transplant centres across the Islamic Republic of Iran and the successful completion of more than 2100 paediatric stem cell transplants.
Hamidieh has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles on research spanning regenerative medicine, gene therapy, immunodeficiencies and paediatric cancers.

He has also led clinical innovations in CAR-T cell therapy and photopheresis across many countries. Through his academic leadership, clinical excellence and commitment to equitable care, Hamidieh has significantly advanced the field of paediatric stem cell transplantation in Iran and the broader Eastern Mediterranean Region.

Majid Ghayour Mobarhan, an Iranian professor at Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Davood Khalili, an epidemiologist and professor at the Center for Research on the Prevention of Metabolic Diseases at the Institute of Glandular Sciences at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Afshin Ostovar, a professor at Tehran University of Medical Science, and Fereydoun Azizi, the director of Iran’s Institute for Endocrine Sciences, won the prize in 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2007, respectively.

Tags

• Iran
• Kuwait Prize for control of cancer
• Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs)

The Shadow of Hindutva: Why Confronting RSS is as Necessary as Confronting Zionist State Terrorism

By Iqbal Jassat

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat. (Photo: Vishal Dutta/ Wikimedia Commons)

Human rights organizations, international legal scholars, and anti-racism advocates have strongly condemned both Hindutva and Zionism, classifying them as repressive, discriminatory, and structurally racist ideologies.

The upcoming visit of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat to New York has triggered widespread international protests. While organizers frame his appearance as a celebration of unity, civil society groups view it as a legitimization of an exclusionary ideology.

This moment serves as a critical reminder for it brings into sharp focus the global threat posed by the RSS and its founding philosophy of Hindutva.

Founded in 1925, the RSS is a right-wing, paramilitary organization modeled historically on European fascist movements. Its core ideology, Hindutva, seeks to transform India from a secular democracy into an ethno-nationalist Hindu state. Critics argue that this vision fundamentally reduces religious minorities—particularly Muslims and Christians—to second-class citizens.

For organizations committed to human rights and global justice, the RSS is not merely a cultural group, but an extremist apparatus responsible for systemic violence, state capture, and the erosion of democratic institutions.

From a global perspective, the mainstreaming of the RSS mirrors the rise of far-right, Islamophobic movements worldwide.

Under the political wing of the RSS—the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—India has witnessed a sharp increase in hate speech, state-sanctioned demolitions of minority property, and vigilante violence.

Human rights monitors, including the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), have frequently sounded the alarm over these developments. They have called for targeted sanctions against RSS leadership and the revocation of visas for figures like Bhagwat.

Allowing the RSS to use international platforms to launder its image under the guise of cultural pride is dangerous. The global community must look beyond the public relations veneer and confront the documented harm caused by Hindutva nationalism.

Combatting the spread of this ideology is essential to protecting pluralism, human dignity, and international human rights.

Scholars, political analysts, and human rights organizations frequently examine the historical and ideological parallels between Hindutva and Zionism.

Scholars point to the repressive occupation of Jammu & Kashmir and the Palestinian Territories as primary examples of policy convergence.

Following the Indian government’s 2019 revocation of Article 370—which stripped Kashmir of its special autonomous status—critics noted that new domicile and land laws closely mirrored Israeli settlement strategies used to alter demographics in the West Bank.

This ideological affinity is reinforced by a lucrative defense relationship. India has become the world’s largest importer of Israeli military hardware, adopting security tactics, drone technology, and surveillance systems originally developed and tested by Israel.

Both ideologies rely on altering demographics to maintain political dominance. In India, this is seen through controversial citizenship laws (like the CAA-NRC) and changing land laws in regions like Kashmir.

In Israel, it is maintained through the Denial of the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees alongside laws that prioritize Jewish demographic dominance.

And both regimes heavily criminalize human rights defenders, journalists, and activists who challenge state ideology, often using sweeping anti-terror legislation to silence critics and label peaceful opposition as a security threat.

Confronting this global rise of supremacist ideologies requires an unyielding, unified international response. Civil society, human rights organizations, and democratic nations must move past geopolitical convenience and economic self-interest to hold these regimes accountable.

Ultimately, the struggle against Hindutva and Zionism is a defense of universal human dignity.

– Iqbal Jassat is an Executive Member of the South Africa-based Media Review Network. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle. Visit: www.mediareviewnet.com

Iran’s "Self-sacrificers Exercise": A Strong Public Message to the US

Alwaght- As confrontation between the US and Iran enters its seventh month and clashes continue, the protraction of war has not shaken the people's resolve to turn to the streets in support of their country.

After months of organizing nightly rallies in support of the Islamic Republic and national security, on Friday people staged large-scale "Self-sacrificers' Exercise" to highlight their support to the country. The large gathering included people from all walks of life and social layers, stressing that their backing to the Islamic Republic, armed forces, and the Islamic Revolution is unwavering.

Iran’s large-scale "Janfada" exercise launched Friday with combat battalions and broad segments of the public taking part in Tehran and simultaneously across the country. In the capital, a 313,000-strong march, featuring Basij combat battalions, Janfada volunteers and other groups, wound from Imam Hossein Square to Enqelab Square.

President Masoud Pezeshkian and a host of military and civilian officials attended the event. Addressing the crowd, Pezeshkian called the massive turnout a clear symbol of the nation’s deep bond with Iran and its collective will to safeguard the country’s dignity, independence, territorial integrity and authority, and thanked citizens for their responsible and informed participation.

Hussein Taeb, head of the Basij Organization, described "Self-sacrificers"as a symbol of the popularization of defense and security.

“Janfada will be the embodiment of national authority and the country’s readiness to fight and defend against any threat, and to build the nation and conquer the peaks of civilization,” he said.

General Hassanzadeh, commander of Tehran's IRGC, announced that roughly 500,000 people had registered to take part in the Tehran exercise.

Participants spanned a diverse cross-section of society, from families and young people to war veterans, doctors, students, seminary scholars, shopkeepers, artists and members of other trades and social groups.

The Islamic Propagation Coordination Council said the event was meant to showcase society’s capacity to preserve cohesion, resilience and national preparedness under conditions of threat. A key feature of Janfada, then, was the effort to transcend the framework of a purely military drill and turn it into a public display of social readiness.

Among the notable sidelights was the symbolic presence of members of regional resistance groups, including Yemenis, as well as religious minorities such as the chief rabbi of Iran’s Jewish community.

Alongside the human turnout, the display of defense equipment was on the agenda. Iranian drones were showcased during the Tehran exercise, offering, alongside the popular forces, a picture of the country’s defense capabilities.

A women’s parade along the exercise route was among the other programs. In this way, organizers paired two elements: military capability in the field and social presence in the streets.

Even the media programming tied to the campaign has pursued military and relief training and the formation of popular units. Domestic media reported that the campaign had already drawn widespread interest, with registration for military and relief training within popular battalions continuing.

Held on the eve of Sacred Defense Week and after months of tension and confrontation among Iran, the US and the Israeli regime, the event was neither merely a military exercise nor a political rally. Its organizers sought to project an image of the bond between the country’s defense capacity and the social presence of its people.

Message to Israeli-American enemy

Since the public maneuver was held amid ongoing tensions between Tehran and the Israeli-American camp, the chants, as ever, focused on the two aggressors, highlighting resistance to threats by Washington and Tel Aviv.

Chants formed a central part of the gathering’s message, with slogans including "My soul be sacrificed for Iran", "Death to America," "Death to Israel," "Labbaik Ya Khamenei" and cries tied to resistance and steadfastness ringing out through the event. Janfada, then, was not merely the name of a popular maneuver, but it has become a framework for defining a kind of public participation under conditions of war and threat.

One of the exercise’s most important messages was a display of domestic cohesion in the face of foreign pressure. The commander Tehran's IRGC, had said before the drill that the enemy’s aim was to weaken cohesion and unity, but in his view the public’s turnout had shown those elements are only being reinforced. He also described the presence of people in squares and streets as a factor strengthening the armed forces’ deterrence.

Speaking to media at the event, several participants stressed their reason for attending: "Our goal is to declare our readiness to fight global arrogance, the US, Israel and those who cast a covetous eye on our country. One attendee said, “We came here to show the US and Israel that we will not abandon our country.” Another, dressed in military unifirm, said, “Until revenge is realized, this combat uniform will not come off our bodies.”

Assurance to armed forces

Though this urban drill was different compared to the previous gatherings, its significance does not lie in the number of people present in the streets. The message is that the defense power does not merely lie in the equipment, missiles, drives, and military forces. Rather, social cohesion makes up a major part of the national power. Therefore, in such a context, popular turnout sends a message to the armed forces, telling that if foreign threats continue, they have a considerable social support at their disposal to rely on.

For this reason, one of the exercise’s main functions can be seen as generating a kind of “social reassurance” for the armed forces, the idea that the battlefield is not the only arena of confrontation with the enemy, and that behind the front line, a large part of society also sees itself as invested in defending the country.

The same meaning can be captured by the phrase “the battlefield for the armed forces, the streets for the nation”, a slogan that has become a central refrain at nightly gatherings since the war began, underscoring the link between the public’s presence in the streets and the armed forces’ role on the battlefield. While the armed forces bear the responsibility for military confrontation, the people, through cohesion and social readiness, form another part of the country’s deterrence capacity.

Maximum pressure fails

The exercise also unfolded against a backdrop in which external economic and political pressure remains a central axis of Iran’s dispute with the US and its allies.

Washington had sought to widen the gap between the people and the Islamic Republic through intensifying the sanctions and tightening the noose of a maritime blockade. But the public’s turnout can be read as a clear message to its adversaries: economic pressure and military threats cannot easily sever the bond among the people, the political system and the armed forces. The presence of diverse segments of society alongside the armed forces thus projected an image of solidarity and cohesion in the face of external threat.

In effect, the street at this exercise became a stage for displaying social backing, a message that the enemy cannot drive a wedge between society and the country’s defense forces by ramping up economic pressure and military threats.

The parade of organized popular forces, the presence of varied groups, the display of drone equipment, Iranian flags and resistance chants together formed a package whose core message can be summed up in a single proposition: Iran wants to showcase military capability and social cohesion simultaneously in the face of foreign pressure.

The broad public turnout carries this message for Washington and the Israeli regime: maximum pressure cannot automatically translate into a change in the behavior of Iranian society simply by increasing economic pressure or military threats. On the contrary, the greater the external pressure, the more important it becomes to preserve domestic cohesion and the bond between society and the system.

Generally speaking, the Janfada campaign has demonstrated that mounting external pressure does not necessarily erode Iranian society’s resilience, and can even add to its readiness and social cohesion. This means that Washington’s hope that sweeping sanctions can shatter the determination of Iranians and sow division between the people and Islamic Republic will go nowhere. 

The Bigger Picture: Why Israel is Backing Saudi Arabia’s War on Yemen

By Palestine Chronicle Staff

Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad Bin Salman. (Photo: US Department of State, via Wikimedia Commons)

Yemen could become a major threat to the Israelis and the Saudis already see them as an existential challenge.

Hebrew-language media reports have revealed that Israel has been aiding Saudi Arabia’s fight against the Ansarallah-led government in Yemen. The Israeli media has also been hosting a range of pundits and citing security officials who have become increasingly paranoid about the rapid capture of territory by the Yemeni Armed Forces.

Throughout the course of the Gaza Genocide, only one nation’s government decided to order direct military action in defense of the Palestinian people. The Sana’a-based government, led by the Ansarallah Party, almost immediately began firing missiles and drones towards Israeli targets, before imposing a blockade in the Red Sea to prevent all traffic to the Port of Eilat.

Previously, Yemen was never taken seriously by officials in Tel Aviv as a major regional threat. Despite the anti-Israeli rhetoric of officials in Sana’a, Hezbollah and Hamas were seen as the biggest security challenges behind the threat of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Therefore, despite the Israelis having participated in training Emirati-backed militants that were being prepared to enter Yemen and private Israeli security firms working as contract killers inside Yemeni territory, the Israelis had not invested an enormous amount of effort into the war.

Following October 7, 2023, this then left the Israelis facing a major intelligence blind spot that they have since worked to make up for. The Mossad had not successfully managed to infiltrate the Ansarallah movement in any meaningful way and the target bank that Israel had was exposed to be extremely weak.

Meanwhile, throughout the Gaza Genocide, the Yemeni Armed Forces began developing more sophisticated long-range munitions, which they eventually succeeded in using to successfully attack a range of Israeli targets.

The most devastating blow landed on the Israeli regime, however, was the effects of the Red Sea blockade. In order to try and break the siege, the Israelis pressured the Biden administration into launching two failed operations against Ansarallah, followed by ordering the Trump administration to carry out a large-scale bombing campaign early last year.

As a result of the Red Sea blockade on Israel-linked shipping, the Port of Eilat was totally bankrupted. With the termination of the Port’s existence also came the elimination of countless Israeli businesses and an enormous blow to its southern economy. 

Following the so-called ceasefire in Gaza, Yemen ended its blockade in accordance with the deal struck between Hamas and Israel, meaning that Tel Aviv had sought to once again revive its southern Port and began preparations for this effort. That was, of course, until the recent offensive inside Yemen.

Yemen’s Armed Forces have swiftly liberated their entire western coastline from Saudi Arabia’s proxy forces over the past weeks, taking full control of the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait. While Yemen has not closed the Strait, which would halt all trade to Europe through the Suez Canal, the Israelis know full well that their future planned military operations could once again trigger a renewed blockade.

If Yemen once again seeks to impose a blockade on Israel, it can be done with much more ease than in the past. Some analysts have posited that closing Bab al-Mandab could be achieved even with light weapons and that the Ansarallah Party will prevent any Israeli ship from even attempting to pass the Strait. 

The Bigger Picture

While there can be no doubt that Yemen’s gains against Saudi Arabia’s proxies are causing alarm bells to ring in Tel Aviv, there are also much more threatening prospects of the ongoing campaign to liberate the nation’s territory.

If the Yemeni Armed Forces continue to capture more territory and eventually end up taking over the southern strategic port city of Aden, then the Israeli-aligned, US-backed Persian Gulf Monarchies could also come under threat. Their peoples could begin to take influence from the Yemeni government, which would be anti-Israel and independent.

Furthermore, a liberated Yemen with access to its resources and that even becomes open to part of the rest of the world will grow its strength exponentially. It has already demonstrated itself to be perhaps the second most dominant missile power in the region. If it is finally able to break free from Saudi Arabia’s blockade and to get access to its oil resources, what the Israelis could be facing is another Iran in the future.

This would be an independent Islamic government that has a foreign policy dedicated to the liberation of Palestine and supporting resistance across the region. Nobody is even capable of predicting what kind of military advancements the nation could make in the long run.

A number of military exercises have been held by the Israelis since early February of this year, preparing for the event of an invasion of Eilat from the sea. This demonstrates that they are very much taking Yemen seriously, especially as the Yemeni Armed Forces have themselves been training for an invasion of southern occupied Palestine and the seizure of Israeli military bases.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, is in a state of total desperation; they are taking enormous hits to their oil infrastructure, are being blockaded, and suffer daily military embarrassments, all as their proxy forces get driven out of more towns, cities and villages by the day. The problem Riyadh suffers is that it was pushed into this war by the US in 2015, refusing to accept its failures ever since. Now it has no route to victory, and the longer the war rages on, the worse predicament they will be in.

Riyadh has long maintained intelligence ties with the Israelis, allegedly even conducting a joint operation with them and the US last year inside Yemen. According to Israeli media reports, the Saudis requested US help with targeting Yemen’s Armed Forces, which was then extended to the Israelis. To cut a long story short, the Hebrew media says the Israelis are now reportedly aiding the Saudis.

Unnamed Israeli officials say that the information shared with Saudi Arabia is sent via US Central Command; this is almost certainly untrue. The reason why they would claim this is that there are no official security channels between Riyadh and Tel Aviv. Unofficially, they are in direct communication and Israeli security officials are able to travel to Saudi territory to meet with their counterparts. 

Saudi Arabia will not admit this and is likely frustrated that the Hebrew media is reporting on it, yet they don’t have any power in this equation to even tell their Israeli counterparts to stop bragging about their role. Yemen could become a major threat to the Israelis and the Saudis already see them as an existential challenge. It was only ever natural that both sides were to work together, as they have shared interests.