Reflections from news and commentary of the day
Subscribe To
Posts
All Comments
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
Tuesday, June 23, 2026
260622_Cure_US_China_FactSheet_unembargoed.pdf
260622_Cure_US_China_FactSheet_unembargoed.pdf
Session: Racing to Cures: the U.S.-China Biomedical Competitiveness Scorecard
BIO International Convention · San Diego · June 22, 2026 · Room 30DE · 4:15–5:15 PM PDT
The tale of two cities: the U.S. scientific edge
and the China development engine
Monday, June 22, 2026
Are we feeding conflicts or people? Aleteia Guest Post by Camille Dalmas
Are we feeding conflicts or people? - micheletkearney@gmail.com - Gmail
An exclusive service for Aleteia readers
At World Food Programme, Pope Leo XIV warns against bureaucratizing solidarity
During his visit to the World Food Programme headquarters in Rome, the Holy Father urged the international community to put people before bureaucracy.
by Camille Dalmas
“Conflicts are ‘fed’ more readily than people are nourished,” Pope Leo XIV noted at the headquarters of the World Food Programme in Rome on Monday, June 22, 2026. Denouncing the “progressive bureaucratization of solidarity,” he pleaded for reinforced multilateral action against hunger. The Pope stressed that it isn't only a matter of coming to the aid of people in need, but also of avoiding an “irreversible collapse.”
Cindy McCain, the American director of the WFP, welcomed the Holy Father to the headquarters. The Pope then spent a brief time in silence before an installation commemorating the Nobel Peace Prize, which the UN organization received in 2020. Financed solely by voluntary donations, the WFP collected $6.5 billion in 2025. That same year, it aided 121 million people by distributing 15.8 billion daily rations. The Rome-based agency operates in 120 countries.
An urgent task
Speaking to the WFP’s executive board, Pope Leo XIV highlighted how the institution’s commitment “resonates profoundly with the Catholic Church’s mission to uphold human dignity and to foster fraternity.” He affirmed that fighting hunger is an “urgent task” requiring leaders to tackle its “underlying structural causes.” He urged them to determine “why the system constantly produces the very problems it is then forced to correct.”
“The international order has become increasingly fragmented, arising in part from the crisis of the multilateral system,” Pope Leo XIV observed. Relying on his recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, he explained that this crisis comes from the “absence of a shared ethical horizon capable of sustaining genuine cooperation.” This gap pushes nations to increasingly allocate “their resources towards national security, economic growth, and domestic stability, disregarding the close link between these issues and multilateral cooperation.”
The Holy Father pointed out a paradox in the modern world, noting that “unprecedented global productive capacity exists alongside expanding zones of extreme vulnerability.” He added that the same factors "that drive economic growth often exacerbate exclusion and marginalization.” In this context, he warned that “humanitarian concerns increasingly risk being relegated to a secondary place.” He described this trend as the “progressive bureaucratization of solidarity alongside the quiet commodification of human life.”
Pope Leo XIV lamented that humanitarian action is “increasingly burdened by bureaucratic procedures that can delay assistance to those in need.” He also noted that access to essential goods, including food, is “too often influenced by economic or strategic considerations.” As a result, “conflicts are ‘fed’ more readily than people are nourished.”
Hunger erodes social cohesion
Denouncing a “fundamental imbalance in political and moral priorities,” the Pope said that the consequences of this crisis “extend well beyond those immediately affected.” He described a vicious cycle where hunger and wars feed each other reciprocally. “Hunger erodes social cohesion, heightens the risk of conflict and fuels forced migration,” he said. He also sees this dynamic as an obstacle to sustainable economic development for many nations.
Pope Leo XIV called for a “principle of shared responsibility” in the international community to support humanitarian action. “In this sense, the World Food Programme is more than a political, economic or technical actor; it is a concrete expression of international solidarity,” he stated. He explained that its presence “helps to prevent humanitarian crises from deteriorating into irreversible collapse.”
Pleading for a “renewed commitment to multilateral cooperation,” the Holy Father noted that “in an increasingly fragmented and multipolar world, no single State can address global challenges alone.” He appealed to governments, as well as the Catholic Church, to reinforce this commitment.
This means increasing the resources dedicated to fighting hunger and its root causes, while also removing the “obstacles that prevent aid from reaching those in need.” He proposed utilizing the Catholic Church — one of the largest humanitarian actors globally — as a local partner in “areas inaccessible to international actors,” working through Caritas, dioceses, and parishes.
A sign of hope
At the end of his speech, the Pope spoke by videoconference with several WFP employees, exchanging words with workers on mission in Venezuela, South Sudan, and Lebanon. “I know that many of you literally risk your lives,” he told them, paying homage to those who have died in the field.
He then went outdoors to the organization's grounds, where several hundred employees awaited him. He underlined the importance of their mission in helping build community in a polarized world. “You represent, in a very real way, hope to the world,” he told them.
In the footsteps of Pope Francis
In 2016, Pope Francis also visited the WFP headquarters, where he similarly urged the international community to “debureaucratize” hunger. He denounced the institutional heaviness that sometimes slows down emergency aid to populations affected by food insecurity or famine, as is currently the case in certain regions of Sudan.
The WFP shouldn't be confused with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Also based in Rome, the FAO has a different and more technical mandate. It focuses on the development of agricultural policies, food security, and rural development. Successive pontiffs have visited the FAO on several occasions, from Pope Paul VI in 1970 to Pope Leo XIV, who visited on October 16, 2025.
Pope Leo XIV will visit the headquarters of UNESCO during his trip to Paris this coming September.
Sunday, June 21, 2026
US-Iran Deal leaves Lebanon in Limbo, Israel as Spoiler Guest Post
US-Iran Deal leaves Lebanon in Limbo, Israel as Spoiler
The Conversation 06/21/2026
By Mireille Rebeiz, Dickinson College
(The Conversation) – The United States and Iran inked a long-awaited provisional ceasefire deal on June 17, 2026. After months of uncertainty, the people of the Gulf region can, potentially, breathe a sigh of relief, and global markets look set to be boosted by the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
What about those who have endured the war’s spillover in Lebanon? After all, the memorandum of understanding signed is not just a peace agreement between the U.S. and Iran alone. Rather, on Tehran’s insistence, the deal is intended to provide a cessation of hostilities on all fronts – including in Lebanon.
President Donald Trump is framing the deal as a win for the U.S. and the closing of the latest chapter in Washington’s Middle East entanglement. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country was reportedly shut out of the diplomatic process, may have other plans that would challenge Trump’s authority in the region.
After news of the emerging deal broke on June 14, Netanyahu almost immediately announced that Israel will occupy Lebanon “indefinitely.” Israel then followed up with a fresh wave of airstrikes that killed four people in Lebanon.
A clearly displeased Trump publicly criticized those actions and even suggested that Syria could go in and dismantle Hezbollah, the Tehran-backed Lebanese group that has for nearly five decades fought Israel in southern Lebanon.
With Israel continuing to bomb Lebanon and remove Lebanese citizens from their lands – in defiance of Washington’s wishes – the fate of the U.S.-Iran deal in Lebanon remains obscure.
As a scholar of Middle East studies, I fear the agreement leaves more questions about the delicate situation in Lebanon than it solves. Moreover, any split in Israel-U.S. policy aims over Lebanon may have grave implications for Trump’s de-escalation attempts with Iran and also hamper hopes for a peace deal between Lebanon and Israel days before representatives of both countries plan to meet in Washington.
A defiant Israel
History shows that any U.S. failure to rein in Israeli military action north of its border can have disastrous consequences.
A similar scenario happened back in 1982 after Israel launched “Operation Peace for Galilee,” invading Lebanon and imposing a brutal siege on Beirut that killed over 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians and fighters.
In an angry phone call in August 1982, U.S President Ronald Reagan asked Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to stop the heavy bombardments of Beirut. “Menachem, this is a holocaust,” Reagan recalled saying.
But Israel ignored the U.S. demands for a ceasefire. As a result, Reagan sent a an international peacekeeping force into Lebanon. Composed of French, Italian and American troops, this multinational force in Lebanon was tasked to act as a buffer zone between feuding parties and provide port security to Palestinian fighters leaving Lebanon.
Not only did Israel ignore Reagan’s attempts at de-escalation, it also defied the multinational force, harassed its troops and endangered their lives, according to U.S. military leaders.
Ironically, when Israel invaded Beirut in 1982 and threatened the American troops, it did so using weapons supplied by Washington as part of the two countries’ long-standing defense arrangement.
History repeats itself
A similar scenario is unfolding today.
Just like Reagan and Begin’s clash in 1982, Trump and Netanyahu are engaged in what looks like a deadlock. In a recent phone call about Lebanon, Trump was reportedly overheard yelling at Netanyahu, “You’re f–king crazy. You’d be in prison if not for me,” while pressing the Israeli government to scale back its operation in Lebanon.
Today, as in 1982, Israel continues to benefit from U.S. support and arms sales. Congress has even moved to integrate U.S. and Israeli militaries.
Also, just like 1982, the American president is considering sending foreign troops into Lebanon.
But despite the American military and political support, Israel continues to brush aside any U.S policy that aims to place limits on its regional power, effectively showing a glaring limitation of U.S. dominance over the region.
Lebanon as an afterthought
When the U.S. and Iran initially agreed to a two-week ceasefire in April 2026, there was confusion over whether Lebanon was included in that deal. While Iran asserted Lebanon’s inclusion, Israel denied it and continued to bomb the country.
Lebanon became part of the equation because of Hezbollah’s actions after the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran in late February 2026. Similar to how the Tehran-backed group vowed solidarity with Hamas after Israel bombed Gaza in response to Palestinian militants’ attack on Israeli soil on Oct.7, 2023, Hezbollah struck Israel when Iran was hit.
It reignited the simmering Hezbollah-Israeli war. Today, Israel occupies south Lebanon and is threatening to annex it.
The U.S.-released text of the latest Iran peace plan explicitly includes Lebanon.
While that will introduce serious points of friction with Israeli designs on the country, the people in Lebanon, too, will have many questions and concerns.
I believe the deal will be seen as a welcome step but also a potential blow to Lebanon’s sovereignty. While the text aims to protect Lebanon’s “territorial integrity,” it does not reference Israel’s actual withdrawal from these lands, and it is unclear whether this issue will be discussed in future negotiations between Israel and Lebanon or between the U.S and Iran.
Furthermore, the new deal ignores Lebanon’s efforts to free itself from Iran’s influence in the country through its Hezbollah ally.
In an unprecedented move in May, Lebanon filed a formal complaint against Iran at the United Nations Security Council, directly accusing Tehran of violating the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations for interfering in its sovereign decisions and dragging the country into war.
In spite of Hezbollah’s open threats against the Lebanese government, Lebanese representatives held the first of several planned direct negotiations with Israeli counterparts in Washington.
Lebanon, Syria and a rocky path forward
Indeed, the new U.S.-Iran deal can be interpreted as a step back for the strength of an already weak Lebanese state. Indirectly, the deal cements Iran’s control on the country’s politics and, by extension, Hezbollah.
Furthermore, and just like in 1982, the U.S. is proposing a foreign force to enter Lebanon and help end the violence. In fact, Trump has now twice mentioned the possibility of Syria playing a role in Lebanon to enter and execute “a surgical attack on Hezbollah.”
It is unclear whether the U.S. president is using these comments just as a way to pressure Israel over Lebanon or whether there is an actual plan that includes a Syrian role in the country’s future. But just the mention of Syrian intervention evokes that country’s longtime occupation of Lebanon.
In fact, at the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1991, Syria established what amounted to absolute political, military and economic hegemony over Lebanon, during which thousands of Lebanese disappeared.
The assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005 and the Cedar Revolution that followed forced the Syrian troops out of Lebanon.
Photo by AHMAD BADER on Unsplash
The fact that the new leadership in Syria is Sunni adds another complication due to Lebanon’s delicate sect-based balance of power. If Damascus interferes in Lebanon, sectarian violence could follow, as the Syrian military presence would likely be interpreted as direct opposition to Hezbollah’s Shiite fighters.
This is particularly true since Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government was accused of violence against religious minorities in Syria, including the Alawites – a religious sect close to Shia Islam – and the Druze.
Whether Syria plays a decisive role in Lebanon going forward, there is little doubt that the future of the U.S.-Iran deal depends on both Iran and Israel’s actions. So far, Israel seems uninterested in following Trump’s leadership in the region and is gearing up to play a spoiler role.
For now, and absent new breakthroughs, Lebanon, with its sovereignty almost entirely eroded, seems destined to remain at the mercy of its larger neighbors in Iran, Israel and Syria – and the erratic involvement of the U.S. abroad.The Conversation
Mireille Rebeiz, Director of Dickinson Program in New Zealand & Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Otago, Dickinson College
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Saturday, June 20, 2026
[Salon] Fwd: "Russia vindicated as top U.S. intel confirms lethal Pentagon-funded biolabs in Ukraine." (Strategic Culture, 6/19/26) - Guest Post
[Salon] Fwd: "Russia vindicated as top U.S. intel confirms lethal Pentagon-funded biolabs in Ukraine." (Strategic Culture, 6/19/26) - micheletkearney@gmail.com - Gmail
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/06/19/russia-vindicated-as-top-us-intel-confirms-lethal-pentagon-funded-biolabs-ukraine/
Russia vindicated as top U.S. intel confirms lethal Pentagon-funded biolabs in Ukraine
6/19/26
The highest American intelligence official, Tulsi Gabbard, revealed that the Pentagon and other federal agencies have been supporting more than 40 laboratories in Ukraine involved in producing dangerous pathogens and diseases.
This is exactly what Russia uncovered more than four years ago when it launched its special military operation in Ukraine to confront the NATO-backed regime. However, back then, the U.S. government and Western media dismissed Russia’s claims as propaganda to “justify its invasion” of Ukraine.
Russian military investigators led by the late Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov compiled evidence showing that the Pentagon had spent years and hundreds of millions of dollars building up a network of biolabs in Ukraine. The pathogens and diseases that were identified implicated the laboratories in the development of biological weapons.
Kirillov was assassinated in December 2024 in a bomb attack at a residence in Moscow. Ukrainian military intelligence claimed responsibility for his murder. Weeks before his assassination, the British government labelled Kirillov as a war criminal, accusing him of overseeing the use of chemical weapons in Ukraine.
In reporting his death, the British state-owned BBC callously referred to Kirillov as a “Kremlin mouthpiece.”
The BBC report commented: “Kirillov earned his notoriety from the start of the war with a series of claims directed towards both Ukraine and the West, none of which was based on fact. Among his most outrageous claims was one that the U.S. had been building biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine. It was used in an attempt to justify the full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour in 2022.”
Now, the smear by the BBC and its intelligence handlers looks particularly odious in light of the revelations made by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
Tulsi Gabbard, who is stepping down as DNI due to her husband’s cancer illness, dropped a bombshell last week by releasing declassified documents showing extensive involvement of the U.S. government in running biolabs around the world. She said her findings were the product of months of research into files held by intelligence agencies. Gabbard said the information showed that the U.S. government had funded over 120 biolabs in 30 countries. One of those countries was Ukraine, where more than 40 laboratories were conducting biological research financed by the Pentagon and other federal agencies.
Gabbard warned that the biolabs in Ukraine were engaged in research on highly contagious pathogens. She did not describe the facilities as biological warfare, but that is the grave implication, as Russia’s military investigations have concluded.
DNI Gabbard stated: “Until now, evidence regarding the full existence and funding of these laboratories had been knowingly withheld from the American people. The information surrounding the existence, history, locations, and funding of these U.S.-funded biolabs has been intentionally covered up by powerful people falsely claiming that they do not exist and accusing anyone who says otherwise of being foreign assets and traitors to America.”
She added: “Many of these U.S. government-funded biolabs are currently or have previously engaged in research using hazardous and highly contagious pathogens, in some cases to include dangerous Gain-of-Function [more lethal] research, with very little visibility or oversight.”
Gabbard did not pull punches. She accused the Biden administration (2022-25) of lying about the biolabs. “Despite the obvious potential for catastrophic global impact research on dangerous pathogens in biolabs can have, politicians, so-called health professionals like Dr [Anthony] Fauci [former chief of Center for Disease Control and Prevention], and entities within the Biden administration’s national security team lied to the American people about the existence of U.S.-funded and supported biolabs, and threatened those who attempted to expose the truth.”
This is an astounding admission by the top U.S. intelligence official. It vindicates the well-founded claims made by Russian intelligence about the existence of lethal biolabs in Ukraine. It validates Russian concerns that the U.S. was running biological warfare programs targeting Russia.
It was not just Russia that held these concerns. Professor Francis Boyle, an internationally renowned American expert on biological warfare, highlighted the very same concerns as far back as March 2022, when evidence was being uncovered of Pentagon programs in Ukraine. See this interview with Regis Tremblay in which Prof Boyle detailed the history of U.S. violations of the 1975 Biological Warfare Convention, systematically pursuing the clandestine and illegal development of bioweapons. He believed that Ukraine was playing a vital role in the U.S. global network of secret biolabs.
The revelations also expose the sinister role of the U.S. and Western media in covering up the scandal. People like Prof Boyle, who died in January 2025, have been vilified as “Russian propagandists” for daring to ask questions and expose the truth. Regis Tremblay’s podcast was deplatformed from YouTube for broadcasting Boyle’s insights.
Even after the top intelligence report was released last week, the Western establishment media have kept silent, or have sought to discredit Gabbard as a “conspiracy theorist.”
To its credit, the U.S. publication, Military Daily News, reported with fair editorial comment: “Gabbard Releases Biolab Records Years After Disinformation Accusations”. Its reportconcluded: “The debate is no longer whether U.S.-supported laboratories exist overseas, as the newly declassified documents establish that they did. The larger question raised by Gabbard’s release is whether Congress, policymakers, and the public had a complete understanding of how many facilities existed, what research they conducted, and what pathogens they contained.”
What needs to be done urgently now is the commission of an independent and international investigation into the U.S. biolabs in Ukraine and dozens of other countries. These labs are not only potentially a criminal violation of international laws and treaties that Washington signed up to, but also constitute an extreme danger to global public health. Have recent outbreaks of Ebola, avian flu, tularemia, TB, SARS, MERS, COVID, and others been the result of clandestine biowarfare programs funded by the U.S.?
We have already seen the disgraceful role of the BBC in distorting the Russian claims as “disinformation” and smearing the Russian commander who led the ground-breaking biolab investigations in Ukraine as a Kremlin mouthpiece.
In that regard, the comments by Fauzan al-Rasyid, an Indonesian journalist and researcher with the Global Fact-Checking Network, were powerfully apt. Speaking to Russian news outlet TASS, he said: “The facts are finally out. They reveal a terrifying reality where the true disinformation didn’t come from the East. It was engineered in Washington, broadcast from London, and amplified by anti-Russian embassies across the globe – including in Jakarta – to persuade millions that Russia was lying, that reports of biolabs were nothing more than propaganda, and that Moscow’s warnings were delusions. The evidence now suggests otherwise.”
The journalist added: “This revelation does not just expose the Pentagon; it fundamentally destroys the credibility of the BBC, which acted as an unquestioning public relations megaphone for Western intelligence.”
The Western cover-up of the biolabs in Ukraine is part of the wider cover-up of the entire U.S. and NATO-led war in Ukraine, a war that threatens to spiral out of control into a world conflagration, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned again this week. The “Ukraine Project” is an integral part of a decades-long operation to wage war on Russia for geopolitical domination. The revelations by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence – the top intelligence official – are the ultimate vindication of what Russia has been consistently saying about the conflict, its root causes, the proxy NeoNazi regime in Kiev, and why Russia needed to take action to defeat the existential threat to its nation.
Friday, June 19, 2026
[Salon] Fatalities from Israel’s Vast Gaza Genocide Deliberately Undercounted - Guest Post by Ralph Nader
In the Public Interest
Fatalities from Israel’s Vast Gaza Genocide Deliberately Undercounted
By Ralph Nader
June 19, 2026
The mainstream media has no problem guesstimating the deaths (500,000) from the Assad Dictatorship’s Civil War in Syria, nor the estimated deaths in the wars in Ukraine, Sudan, or Iran.
Somehow, media editors do not let their investigative reporters assess the extent of Israel’s mass murder of civilians in Gaza—an exposed, defenseless population of 2.3 million people in an enclave the geographic size of Pennsylvania. The Associated Press notes that U.S. military historian Robert Pape believes, “Gaza is one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history” and that, “It now sits comfortably in the top quartile of the most devastating bombing campaigns ever.”
Why? One reason is that the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health certifies deaths in Gaza based on reports from hospitals and morgues that were mostly blown up well over a year ago. (They report presently around 73,000 fatalities.) But Hamas has admitted that there are tens of thousands of bodies under the rubble, thousands more blown into bits or incinerated and unidentifiable. They also say their figures do not include the collateral deaths (e.g., spreading fires) from the Israeli military F-16 bombings and relentless shelling of the people of Gaza or the deaths caused by the Israeli government-imposed blocking of food, medicine, healthcare, water, fuel, electricity and shelter. From other conflict zones around the world, the ratio of collateral deaths is anywhere from 3 to 13 times the deaths by violent weaponry.
The Israeli regime is fine with the Hamas undercount because they and the U.S. State Department know the real death toll (along with the injury count) is much, much higher. Hamas knows that on October 7, 2023, the multi-layered Israeli border security apparatus was shaky. They then launched what turned out to be a suicide-homicide assault over the border, resulting in some 1400 deaths as compared with the nearly 1200 people—about 400 of them soldiers and police—shot by the Hamas raiders. To this day, with most Israelis skeptical, Netanyahu has blocked an independent official investigation of the mysterious collapse of the multi-tiered Israeli border security complex.
Netanyahu attributes it to negligence. There were, however, too many separate warnings, including 24-hour Israeli spotters from the Israeli side, plus Israel having the Hamas plans a year earlier, to accept that improbable pretext.
Hamas, on the other hand, doesn’t mind the world media repeating again and again their minimal, identifiable death count. They certainly do not want the realistic estimate death count to further outrage their subjects because Hamas did not protect the civilian population, and did not have any air-raid shelters. Hamas certainly knew what was coming from the ultra-modern, savage Israeli military backed by co-belligerent Joe Biden’s U.S. ultra-modern and lethal military industrial complex.
There is another media reluctance operating. The reports by eyewitnesses, and scholarly and military weaponry specialists, who arrive at minimum and maximum ranges of deaths (most of whom are children and women) bring repulsive denunciations and charges of anti-Semitism.
Moreover, apologists for endless Israeli slaughter, like Bret Stephens, the mouthpiece of Netanyahu on the New York Timesopinion page, have used the low Hamas figures to counter charges of Israeli genocide. If it was genocide, they inaccurately claim, the death toll would be much higher. In 2025, two major Israeli human‑rights organizations – B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel – each issued reports concluding that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza (see reporting from Amnesty International).
Well, the death toll is much higher, over 600,000 lives destroyed or over 25% of Gaza’s original population. This leaves an improbable nearly 75% still alive, though most are sick, injured, or dying. Reporting reality would intensify the political, diplomatic, and civic determination to stop the killing, let in adequate humanitarian aid, and move toward resolving this conflict.
Analysts reported by The Lancet, international relief organizations, universities, and UN agencies all estimate hundreds of thousands of dead Palestinians from violent bombs, artillery, snipers, and the resultant, related secondary effects noted above.
For example, Professor Emeritus Paul Rogers of the University of Bradford in the UK, back in April 2025 estimated the tonnage of explosives dropped on Gaza was the equivalent of six Hiroshima bombs, but more lethal because these daily projectiles are more targeted. Tarek Loubani, a Canadian physician who has served tours of duty at crumbling Gaza hospitals, puts the estimate at “hundreds of thousands of dead.”
In a detailed, footnoted series of reports (“The Truth About Gaza’s Dead”), Feroze Sidhwa, an American trauma surgeon who worked in Gaza’s killing fields, has published much probative evidence by dozens of other health workers who experienced the ghastly horrors. These included the deliberate targeting by Israeli terrorist snipers of little children receiving bullets in their brains and hearts. (See Foreign doctors say Israel systematically targeting Gaza’s children: Report – Al Jazeera, September 14, 2025).
The recent report by Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, referred to a consensus of 680,000 deaths.
The respected chair of Global Public Health at the University of Edinburgh, Professor Devi Sridhar, long ago was offering estimates far higher than those of Hamas.
The Hill reported that in November 2023, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf testified to a House committee that the actual number of Palestinians killed in Gaza was likely higher than the figures then being reported by Gaza health authorities at that time. She was immediately silenced and never again spoke about Israel’s genocidal casualties. The State Department has been blocking a Freedom of Information demand for two years.
The huge Israeli bloc in Congress, of course, has allowed no hearings on the toll made possible by deadly U.S. weapons (including shipping over white phosphorus artillery shells)— costing billions of dollars paid for by U.S. taxpayers. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have reported that Israel used white phosphorus munitions in military operations in Gaza and along the Israel–Lebanon border shortly after the October 7 Hamas attacks.
Reporters could have gotten informed assessments and estimates about the Israeli-inflicted carnage in Gaza from Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, the World Central Kitchen, and other aid groups. Scores of infants and children in Gaza are dying every day from disease, malnutrition, and untreated injuries. There are no healthcare facilities for them. The shameful U.S. newspapers, magazines, television, and radio disrespect the Palestinians in both life and death, something they would never dare to do if the shoe were on the other foot!
Why aren’t brave reporters like Ryan Grim, Jeremy Scahill, Amy Goodman, and Sy Hersh looking deeply into the ghastly indifference to the undercount in Gaza? Truth and the mournful survivors need you!
[Salon] MOU: Iran Gains stature, Arab States Diminished, US Humiliated - Guest Post by Farhang Jahanpour
https://www.juancole.com/2026/06/turning-point-relations.html
MOU: Iran Gains stature, Arab States Diminished, US Humiliated
Farhang Jahanpour 06/19/2026
Berkshire (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The MoU agreed by Iran and the United States has stunned the world. Oil prices have dropped from a high of $120 at the beginning of the Israeli-US war against Iran to $77 per barrel, slightly above their level before the war. Stock markets have reached new heights, and the possibility of a global recession or even an economic meltdown has been averted, though choppy waters remain ahead.
It is still too early to assess the full implications of what is, without doubt, a major Iranian win and a humiliating US and Israeli defeat. Its ramifications will not only affect the US’s standing and relations in the Middle East, but may well affect its global power and its rivalry with Russia and China. It has totally transformed the public view of the GCC countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) as islands of stability and prosperity in a turbulent region, but as vulnerable small states at the mercy of bigger neighbours. It has enhanced Iran’s position as the only state in the Middle East which has stood up not only to Israel, but also to the greatest superpower in the world and has emerged undefeated, although sustaining great losses. It has opened a major rift between Israel and its greatest patron, the United States, has diminished the power of the Israeli lobby and has greatly weakened public opinion of Israel in the United States and in the world as a whole.
With its criminal genocide in Gaza, massacres and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and Lebanon and its attacks on most of its neighbours, implicating the United States in those crimes and pushing America to two unpopular and illegal wars of aggression against Iran, Netanyahu’s Israel has done great disservice to the United States and its global reputation. The prime minister has made Israel totally dependent on American power and has revealed its vulnerability, turning the world against the Zionist state.
Practically the entire world has breathed a sigh of relief at the end of the US-Iran war and has backed the deal, which was revealed for full effect by President Trump at the G7 summit in France. However, the Israeli government and its powerful lobby in the United States are up in arms and trying to sabotage the deal by any means possible.
It should be pointed out that both wars of aggression against Iran last June and on 28 February 2026 were launched at Israeli instigation. Immediately after the start of the June war, Secretary of State Marco Rubio dissociated the United States from the war, saying that it was launched by Israel without US involvement, although President Trump later joined the war and bombed the Iranian nuclear sites.
After the start of the second war, again Marco Rubio said that Israel had informed the United States that it was going to attack Iran, and knowing that Iran would attack US forces in return, the United States decided to pre-emptively bomb Iran. So, the main responsibility for both wars rests squarely on Netanyahu’s shoulders. It is now clear why Israel is so unhappy about the miserable failure of the two wars that it pushed the United States to join against Iran.
To appreciate the importance of what has happened, we must look back to the start of the recent conflict. After the landmark nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA) reached between Iran and the Obama Administration in 2015, Netanyahu and his cronies in the United States went wild. In an unprecedented move, Netanyahu addressed an AIPAC-dominated Congress, called the deal the worst deal ever and vowed to crush it. With President Trump’s election, Netanyahu found his opportunity and persuaded Trump to withdraw from the deal in 2018 and to reimpose crippling sanctions on Iran. During President Trunps’s second term, Netanyahu even went further to achieve what he called his 40-year dream and involve the United States in a war with Iran.
According to The New York Times, Netanyahu and the head of MOSSAD persuaded President Trump that by decapitating the Iranian leadership, the Iranian people would rise up and the Iranian government would collapse like a house of cards within a few days, and America could repeat its venture in Venezuela.[1]
President Trump called on the Iranian people to rise up and topple the regime, assuring them that the United States was behind them. He boasted that he would appoint the next Iranian Supreme Leader. He even threatened to obliterate Iranian civilisation, which would never return, to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, and demanded unconditional surrender. The MoU has, in fact, represented the US’s unconditional surrender to Iranian demands. It represents all the 14 points that Iran put forward as a basis of negotiations, which, allegedly, President Trump tore up and threw in the dustbin. Here is the text of the MoU signed by President Masoud Pezeshkian and US President Donald Trump separately on Wednesday.
1- The US and Iran, and their allies in the current war, “declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon.”
The Inclusion of Lebanon in the agreement, ensuring its territorial integrity and sovereignty, is very significant and positions Iran as the main supporter of Lebanon in the Middle East, and practically wins US support for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon
2- “The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America undertake to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs.”
This is the first time since the victory of the Islamic Revolution that the United States has so clearly recognised Iran’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and has pledged not to interfere in its internal affairs.
3- “The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America commit to negotiating and achieving the final Deal, in maximum 60 days extendable with mutual consent.”
4- “Immediately upon the signing of this MoU, the United States of America will begin the removal of its naval blockade and any disturbances or impediments against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and will fully end the naval blockade within 30 days…”
“Upon the signing of this MoU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa…”
This clause recognises Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz. Although Iran agrees not to charge a toll for the ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz for the next 60 days only, there is nothing preventing it from imposing charges for providing services for the ships. After all, technically, the Strait of Hormuz is not an international waterway connecting two open seas or oceans together. It is a passage only to the Persian Gulf, whose entire northern coastline of approximately 1,800 to 2,444 kilometres (1,120 to 1,516 Miles) belongs to Iran.
“The United States of America undertakes, with regional partners, to develop a definitive mutually agreed plan with at least USD 300 Billion, for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran…”
Ironically, this hefty sum, the entire amount that Iran demanded, is not paid by Israel and the United States, who started the war, but by the GCC countries, who opposed the war, pleaded with Trump not to start it and who suffered great losses as a result of the war.
“The United States of America undertakes to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the United Nations Security Council resolutions, IAEA Board of Governors resolutions, and all unilateral U.S. sanctions, primary and secondary, in an agreed upon schedule as part of the final deal…”
This actually goes even further than the commitments made in the JCPOA by the Obama administration.
8- “The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America have agreed to resolve the disposition of stockpiled enriched material pursuant to a mechanism that will be mutually agreed upon, in accordance with the schedule mentioned in paragraph 7, with the minimum methodology to be down blending on-site, under the supervision of the IAEA. The two Parties also agree to discuss the issue of enrichment, and other mutually agreed matters relating to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear needs, based on a satisfactory framework being agreed upon in the final Deal. The final Deal will confirm the provisions of this paragraph…”
After attempting and failing to grab the 400kg of Iran’s 60% enriched uranium, this is a major climbdown to agree with Iran to dilute or get rid of the material under IAEA supervision, rather than allowing the United States to forcefully remove it.
“Pending the final Deal, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America agree to maintain the status quo; the Islamic Republic of Iran will maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program, and the United States of America will not impose any new sanctions, and will not deploy any additional forces in the region.”
This is another major concession to Iran to maintain the current status quo, even though the war was allegedly waged to put an end to Iran’s nuclear programme.
“The United States of America undertakes that immediately upon the signing of this MoU, and until the termination of sanctions, the U.S. Department of Treasury will issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products and derivatives, and all associated services including banking transactions, insurances, transportation, etc.”
The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America agree that an executive mechanism will be established to monitor the successful implementation of this MoU and the future compliance of the final Deal.
After signing this MoU, and subject to the beginning of the implementation of paragraphs 1, 4, 5, 10 and 11 of this MoU and the continuing implementation of these measures, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America will start negotiations regarding the final Deal exclusively on the other paragraphs.
The final Deal will be endorsed by a binding UNSC resolution.
This paragraph is also very important as the deal will not remain merely as an MoU between the two countries, but will be turned into a firm legal treaty by being “endorsed by a binding UNSC resolution.”
All in all, it means that Iran has achieved all its demands, while Israel and the United States did not achieve any of their stated aims. Of course, a lot can go wrong between now and the end of the 60 days, mainly by Israel trying to sabotage the deal, especially with its continued aggression in Lebanon.
Many opponents of the Iranian government maintain that while the Iranian regime has achieved a great deal as a result of this MoU, the Iranian people have gained nothing. I don’t necessarily think that is the case. If the regime does not moderate its policies and ease its restrictions, the struggles of Iranians for a better future will continue. However, the way they go about achieving their rights may change. The opposition will be in the form of mass action and peaceful protest, rather than resorting to force or relying upon foreign help, which has proved to be illusory. The killing of a large number of civilians and the destruction of a vast section of industry and infrastructure have proved to many Iranians that their salvation comes from within, rather than from violent action from outside.
Since the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran has functioned mainly in the form of collective leadership centred on the Supreme National Security Council, dominated by the elected president and the Majles Speaker, with minimum interference by the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. The late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was strongly opposed to his son succeeding him in that office, rejecting the logic of family succession. If and when the new Supreme Leader emerges from hiding, he should at most exert spiritual and moral guidance and allow the elected officials to carry out their duties through consultation in the SNSC. This major change will be more democratic, will create greater national unity, will calm the feelings of the opponents of the clerical regime and will put the country on the path of greater freedoms and national unity. I hope the Iranian authorities will seriously consider this option.
Photo of Versailles Palace by Hannah Falk on Unsplash
As far as Iran’s relations with its Persian Gulf neighbours are concerned, most of them have also realised that it is futile to rely on foreign powers that pursue their own interests to provide them lasting security from their own neighbours.
The GCC was formed after the victory of the Iranian revolution, mainly at the urging of Western powers, to increase the security of those small and weak states. However, instead of ensuring their security, it got them involved in the conflicts between Iran and Iraq and ultimately led to the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and the involvement of the United States, which decided to establish many bases in those countries and which, instead of protecting them, made them more vulnerable. In addition to the six current GCC countries, both Iran and Iraq also share the Persian Gulf with their neighbours. The Persian Gulf states must add Iran and Iraq into the alliance by establishing a common security zone and a form of common market which will enhance both their collective security and economic development.
Finally, after 47 years of fruitless hostility culminating in the last two wars, both Iran and the United States must realise that, in the current multipolar world, they need each other and can achieve much more through cooperation and friendship than through mutual demonisation and hostility. US leaders must limit the malign influence of foreign lobbies which want to achieve their own goals by fostering Iran-US hostilities and truly put America first. Iranian leaders must put national interests above some outdated ideologies. The two countries can help themselves and the world through cooperation, rather than through conflict.
[1] The New York Times, Israel Thought It Could Spare Rebellion Inside Iran”, 22 Mar 2026
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)