A response to The Guardian’s open letter: Opposing the war on Iran means rejecting war propaganda
By Carlos Martinez | Press TV | August 24, 2026
The Guardian has published an open letter to Iran’s “political prisoners,” signed by Angela Davis, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Rashid Khalidi, Robin DG Kelley, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Judith Butler, and Walden Bello, among others (although Kelley has since withdrawn his signature, and there is considerable doubt that Mumia Abu-Jamal knowingly lent his name to the venture).
These are not people to be dismissed lightly. Many have made important contributions to the anti-imperialist and Black liberation movements, and one of them is currently writing from within a US prison. Nevertheless, the letter is wrong and serves an objectively harmful purpose.
The central metaphor employed is that of “the two blades of a scissors”: the Islamic Republic on one side, and the United States and Israel on the other, with the Iranian people being crushed between them. Such an image manufactures symmetry between the perpetrators of an ongoing criminal war of aggression and the victim of that war; between the warmongering Epstein coalition and an independent country with no record of invading anyone.
The signatories justify their position by “rejecting the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism”. But how hollow, exactly, is Tehran’s anti-imperialism?
Iran: An anti-imperialist state
For four decades, while almost every Arab government made its accommodation with Washington and Tel Aviv, Iran armed, funded and provided diplomatic support to the Palestinian resistance. When the Abraham Accords put enormous inducements on the table – security guarantees, investment, technology, the lifting of pressure – Iran refused normalisation. As a matter of principle, it has consistently declined to recognise the legitimacy of an entity built on apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
Iran has paid a significant price for that principled stance: four decades of sanctions designed to strangle its development; the assassination of its scientists; the sabotage of its infrastructure; endless covert operations; and now a full-scale war in which an estimated 3,500 Iranian civilians have lost their lives, and schools, hospitals, apartment blocks, bridges, ports and oil depots have been bombed.
Tehran’s stance against the Empire has not been limited to Palestine. For example, under the West-backed Pahlavi dictatorship, Iran was a close ally of apartheid South Africa and a reliable supplier of its oil. After 1979, the Islamic Republic severed those relations and backed the liberation struggle, at a time when Washington and London still classified the African National Congress as a terrorist organisation.
In 1992, two years after his release from prison, Nelson Mandela travelled to Tehran to thank Iran for its support, referring to Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei as “my leader”. Apparently, Mandela did not find Iran’s anti-imperialism hollow.
Today Iran stands with Cuba as it faces a genocidal energy siege. It stands with Venezuela, which has suffered the kidnapping of its president and the theft of its oil resources. It stands with Yemen and with the resistance forces of Lebanon and Iraq – the only regional actors working systematically to block US hegemonism and Israeli expansionism.
Iran is a member of BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), and a crucial link in the Belt and Road Initiative – which is to say, Iran is part of the emerging multipolar trajectory that constitutes the actually existing opposition to the unipolar world order dominated by Washington and its allies.
“Hollow anti-imperialism” – as the open letter refers to – is a communiqué and a hashtag – or perhaps an open letter. Iran’s anti-imperialism has been measured in blood.
Propaganda war
The letter published by The Guardian sadly parrots tired tropes about an “evil regime” which “from its inception enforced absolute social and political control based on an exclusionary ideology”. No mention of the fact that this “exclusionary ideology” received the support of over 98 percent of the Iranian electorate in a referendum held in 1979, following a revolution against the absolute social and political control of the US-aligned Pahlavi regime.
No mention of the fact that many of the leaders of the revolution had themselves been imprisoned and tortured by the Shah’s machinery of repression. And no mention of the Iranian people’s impressive achievements since 1979.
Before 1979, roughly half of Iranians could not read or write; literacy now exceeds 90 percent and is near universal among the young. Women, once largely excluded from education, now make up the majority of students in Iranian higher education.
A country under one of the harshest sanctions regimes in history has built itself into a scientific, technological and military power capable of absorbing the combined weight of the United States and Israel and emerging with its sovereignty intact.
By painting the Islamic Republic as an “evil regime”, the letter erases the reality of the Iranian people’s achievements and the popular support for their government. Such a narrative undermines solidarity with a country under attack; it legitimises imperialism and delegitimises resistance. This is the real hollow anti-imperialism.
Where do we stand?
One can disagree with various aspects of Iran’s domestic politics. The question at hand is different: where do we stand in the global struggle against imperialism? Which side of the barricade are we on? Do we support a criminal war of aggression, or the resistance to it? Do we support the genocide in Gaza, or the country that has been the Palestinian resistance’s most consistent state ally for nearly half a century?
The letter dissolves the distinction. It asks us to refuse the choice. But in a war of aggression there is no third position available, because only one party benefits from your neutrality, and it is not the party being bombed.
The timing is also significant. The letter appears in a British newspaper, six months into a US-Israeli war, at the precise moment when Washington cannot win militarily and needs the political terrain softened.
It recycles a familiar vocabulary – sham trials, systematic torture, the targeting of minorities – largely without sourcing, in the genre that has preceded and accompanied every “regime-change” war of the past three decades, from Yugoslavia to Syria. Whatever the signatories intended, that is the function it will serve.
The lesson they taught us
Angela Davis was imprisoned by a state that told the world she was a terrorist. Mumia Abu-Jamal is imprisoned by that same state today – a state which, incidentally, holds more people in prison than any other country on earth.
These are people who know precisely what happens when an empire manufactures the moral case for crushing its enemies, because it manufactured the case against them.
They would not have signed, half a century ago, a letter denouncing both blades of a scissors – COINTELPRO on one side and the Black Panther Party on the other.
They would have recognised what such a letter was for.
The duty of progressive and anti-war forces is not complicated. It is to oppose the war, the sanctions, the assassinations and the “regime-change” operation, and to assert that a country defending its sovereignty against the most powerful military on earth deserves our solidarity.
Matters concerning Iran’s domestic politics can be settled afterwards, by Iranians themselves, in an Iran that has preserved its independence.
Carlos Martinez is a writer, analyst, activist, anti-imperialist and author of ‘The East is Still Red – Chinese Socialism in the 21st Century’.
Questions About The Shady Anti-Iran Letter Appearing In The Guardian
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | August 23, 2026
As the U.S. and Israel continue to wage war on Iran, the Guardian published an open letter signed by a number of academics- mostly U.S. and UK-based- condemning Iran’s internal policies.
The letter accused Iran of engaging in “deepening criminalization of the working class and unemployed, the targeting of Kurds, Arabs, and Baloch, and the scapegoating of Afghan migrants: all desperate attempts to kill the spirit of people they cannot contain” called to “reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism” and even called on anti-imperialists in the West to focus their energy on critiquing Iran’s internal issues as Western governments wage war on Iran, writing, “We invite global civil society and anti-imperialist activists and organizations to extend their unconditional support and solidarity to all incarcerated kin fighting for our collective liberation, to build relationships with Iranian political prisoners and uplift their voices, to put pressure on the Islamic Republic by challenging its narrative, and to call upon that government to immediately stop all the executions and free all political prisoners.”
Iran, like most countries, no doubt has internal issues that need to be solved, but asking Western academics to focus on those issues as the West wages a brutal war on Iranian civilization at the behest of Israel seems badly timed, to put it mildly.
Furthermore, the letter made no mention of the open meddling that Israel and the United States has done in Iran’s internal politics and disputes, including the U.S. sanctions on Iran designed to make Iran’s “economy collapse” which is why “the people took to the streets” in January, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent boasted.
The letter did not mention the fact that Israeli media has boasted that the Mosssad was “arming the protesters in Iran with live firearms, which is the reason for the hundreds of regime personnel killed” and that Israel “set up its own poison machine” in Iran to infiltrate the protests, nor did it mention the fact that Trump boasted that “The United States sent guns to the Iranian protestors … we sent them a lot of guns, we sent them through the Kurds and … the Kurds kept them, ‘we sent guns to the protests, a lot of them”.
The intentions behind the letter seem more suspicious given that it was published in the Guardian, a pro-war propaganda outlet which has manufactured consent for the war on Iran from day one.
The Guardian’s “rights and freedom” section, sponsored by the CIA-linked billionaire Pierre Omidyar, published endless atrocity propaganda claims in the lead-up to the Iran war, including the widely debunked claim that Iran killed tens of thousands of peaceful protestors in a matter of days in January.
More recently, the Guardian ran a smear piece on the journalist Bushra Shaikh for her reporting on the U.S. Israeli war on Iran on the ground, including by linking to a petition set up by pro-war Zionists calling for the British security state to investigate Shaikh for her reporting.
What makes the letter in the Guardian even more questionable is the fact that it appears that many of the signatories were tricked into signing it.
The historian Robin D. G. Kelley, whose name originally appeared on the letter, took his name off, saying that “the circumstances in which we were asked to sign the letter were a bit shady” and that “what appeared in print wasn’t exactly what I had initially seen”, implying that the letter was changed after getting signatures.
Even more shady is the fact that the authors of the letter appear to have fabricated the signature of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Journalist Vijay Prashad obtained a message written from prison on a paper plate where Mumia Abu-Jamal writes, “Iran is showing the world (especially the 3rd world) how to fight against the Empire. Their drones are rewriting the rules of war. And countries across the Global South are studying this phase of the war for that use! They remind me of Vietnam, a poor country that whipped the most powerful army on earth… That’s where we are today”.
Given that this is his actual view, it makes it highly unlikely that Abu-Jamal would sign a letter which accuses Iran of “hollow anti-imperialism”.
Who is behind this shady letter is yet to be seen, but it certainly has many hallmarks of a pro-war psy-op.
The impunity granted to Israel is as shocking as its violence
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | August 18, 2026
More incitement to violence from Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir exposes how colonial violence is aimed at the entire colonised population. Speaking on a podcast with former Israeli hostage Rom Braslavski, Ben Gvir said that Israeli forced should kill 30-40 Palestinians each night in Gaza.
Braslavski requested to act as executioner should Ben Gvir’s plan come to pass, to which the security minister replied, “I will turn the world upside down to make that happen. I promise you that I will do everything I can and turn the world upside down until it happens.”
As shocking as the comments are, both are the product of an enterprise that knows it can only sustain itself through ethnic cleansing.
In 2025, a poll by the Hebrew University Centre showed that 87 per cent of the Israeli government’s supporters perceived “no innocents’ in Gaza, while 64 per cent of Israelis held the same view.
Israel’s Channel 14 branded all Palestinians killed during the genocide as terrorists. Among settlers that normalise the killings of Palestinians, and which even glorifies those murdering them, Ben Gvir’s comments are unlikely to elicit any lingering shock. On the contrary, Ben Gvir’s wish for extrajudicial killings may well find willing participants. And while Gaza remains within reach of the Israeli military in terms of extrajudicial assassinations, the occupied West Bank faces both Israeli institutions and settlers.
Ben Gvir’s comments were aimed at Gaza, but Israel’s colonisation plans do not only include Gaza. The occupied West Bank, which faces daily violence from settlers, is much at risk from extrajudicial killings. In Ras al-Ain, south of Nablus, Israeli settlers besieged Palestinian families and cut off their electricity, water and food supplies. While attracting international attention, the UN as usual preferred to rely on its usual condemnations while Erika Guevara Ross, Amnesty International Senior Director for Research, Advocacy, Policy and Campaigns, described the siege as “an accelerating and well-documented pattern of coordinated and strategic settler terror, enabled, backed and funded by the State of Israel.” True, but what is being done with the information that is already mainstream knowledge to the rest of the world?
Likewise, Ben Gvir’s comments have not prompted a reckoning with world leaders or international institutions. Israel has already internalised such thinking – it thrives upon creating victims to sustain itself. The international community, supposedly a reference for human rights under the UN, does not seem to consider Ben Gvir’s threats dangerous enough. Even though Israel has a proven history of torturing and killing Palestinians.
Killing 30-40 Palestinians per night is not merely a fantasy. It has already been carried out by the Israeli military during the genocide; also exceeding that quota. Ben Gvir has also found someone willing to carry out the assassinations, even on a much larger scale. For Israel, as Ben Gvir again elucidated, Palestinians “are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.”
If, according to Ben Gvir, killing Palestinians is killing non-people, then Israel is already completely absolved of culpability. This is the type of impunity the UN is harvesting for Israel.
The Colombian factor in South America
The Latin American left has spent the last few years investing in an image of Colombia that does not correspond to the country’s historical reality
By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 16, 2026
In Colombia, the newly elected president, Abelardo de la Espriella, has initiated a strong rapprochement with the State of Israel. Relations that had been strained during the government of Gustavo Petro have not only been fully restored but have also deepened substantially – with the new Colombian government even recognizing Israeli “sovereignty” over the Golan Heights, a Syrian region illegally occupied by the Zionists.
The move was met with shock among South American left-wing circles, particularly in Brazil, where Colombia’s historical image as Washington’s main regional asset in South America appears to have been completely “whitewashed” by the years of Petro’s government. It is curious to see how short collective memory is in Ibero-America and how political debate in general is shaped by the emotions of momentary agendas – and how this childish mentality has repercussions even at the highest institutional levels.
Although Espriella’s measures shocked Petro’s supporters across the continent, there is really nothing surprising about what happened – except for the infamous detail that the decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights came amid the emergency caused by a devastating earthquake. Colombia has always been the gateway for U.S. imperialism into South America.
Since the days of the Korean War – in which Colombia participated by sending a large contingent of troops – Bogotá has served as the United States’ offensive outpost in the region. Colombia is home not only to U.S. military bases, but also to biolaboratories, intelligence centers, narco-trafficking militias, and private military companies (PMCs) armed by the United States.
Most of the U.S. offensive infrastructure in South America is concentrated in Colombia. It was from Colombian territory that U.S.-armed mercenaries invaded Venezuela in 2020 during the failed “Operation Gideon,” whose objective was to overthrow then-President Nicolás Maduro through an asymmetric warfare campaign.
Going further back historically, between the late 1990s and early 2000s, the United States and Colombia consolidated total security and defense integration through the so-called “Plan Colombia” – the U.S. policy of sending security personnel to the South American country supposedly to “combat drug trafficking” and illegal guerrilla groups. Colombia subsequently internalized the entire U.S. security apparatus, from the CIA to the armed forces and PMCs.
If there is one country in South America capable of functioning as a military pivot for U.S. interests in the region, that country has always been Colombia. This has always been clear to any political analyst – or simply to any serious observer. Apart from Brazil itself – which has historically functioned as a “watchdog” for Washington while retaining a certain degree of autonomy – Colombia is the only country in South America truly capable of carrying out any U.S. military plan.
However, acting in an emotional manner, the left across the continent simply forgot all of this. Petro became a “revolutionary” icon because of his policies appealing to the left, particularly because of his performative response to the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip. Petro severed diplomatic relations between Colombia and Israel and strongly condemned the actions of the Zionist state in international forums. But that was where it ended. Petro did nothing beyond diplomatic theater, nothing to structurally alter Colombia’s historical ties with the United States.
Not only that, Petro himself had previously maintained – during the presidential campaign that brought him to power – strongly pro-Western rhetoric, even going so far as to advocate NATO participation in the creation of an “environmentalist” military force to protect the Amazon from problems such as wildfires and deforestation. Petro, like the continent’s entire liberal left, was completely aligned with the agendas of the Democrats and the European Union, with disagreements emerging only in relation to Donald Trump and the State of Israel.
Unfortunately, much of the left-wing political establishment across the Americas seems to act solely on the basis of fleeting political trends and emotions, without paying attention to the deeper historical and geographical context. In recent times, there has been an information-terror campaign about a supposed “danger” to the region posed by Argentina (an economically fragmented country) and Paraguay (a tiny country with no significant military relevance), simply because the current governments of these countries have adopted a more explicitly pro-U.S. and pro-Israel stance. Meanwhile, Colombia was ignored because it was regarded as an “ally” on account of Petro.
Now Petro is out of the picture. And Colombia is returning to what it has always been: the U.S. offensive base in South America. Reality is returning with full force, to the despair of activists who childishly insist on believing in the liberal democratic game.
Chad announces withdrawal from International Criminal Court Treaty
MEMO | July 28, 2026
Chad announced on Monday that it is withdrawing from the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court (ICC), saying it has formally notified the United Nations of its decision.
In a statement, Chad’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the ICC had become “a politicised and biased tool” against countries in the Global South, particularly in Africa, and argued that the court lacked balance and effectiveness in addressing cases from different regions.
The ministry said the court’s focus on African cases prompted the government to reassess its membership in the Rome Statute.
According to the statement, the decision followed what the government described as a comprehensive review of the ICC’s performance since its establishment in 2002. While criticizing the court’s effectiveness, Chad said it remained committed to promoting justice and protecting human rights through national and regional institutions.
Under Article 127 of the Rome Statute, a state’s withdrawal takes effect one year after formal notification is received by the United Nations. The treaty also provides that withdrawal does not exempt a state from obligations arising before the withdrawal becomes effective, including cooperation with investigations and proceedings already underway.
Chad’s announcement follows similar moves by several other countries. According to the Chadian government, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso submitted notices of withdrawal earlier this month, while Venezuela has also announced plans to begin the withdrawal process, citing concerns over what it describes as bias within the court.
The announcement also comes amid developments within the ICC itself. Member states recently voted to remove Prosecutor Karim Khan from office following allegations of misconduct. The allegations have received international attention, and the proceedings have taken place under the court’s internal governance procedures.
Nablus: When the killer becomes the victim
By Tamer Ajrami | MEMO | July 25, 2026
In the occupied West Bank, the story often starts too late.
It starts when an Israeli settler is killed, injured, or frightened. It starts when Israeli officials speak, when the army enters Palestinian villages, and when headlines describe a “clash” or a “terror attack”. Suddenly, the settler becomes the victim, the Palestinian village becomes the threat, and the occupation disappears from the story.
But Nablus cannot be understood from the middle of the story.
For years, Palestinian villages around Nablus have lived under daily pressure: land seizures, settlement expansion, military raids, road closures, intimidation, and settler violence.
This is not a normal conflict between two equal communities. It is a system where one side expands with weapons, army protection, and state support, while the other side is expected to remain silent.
That is why the recent events of yesterday near Nablus cannot simply be called a “clash”. The word sounds neutral, but the reality is not neutral. A clash suggests two equal sides. But there is no equality between armed settlers living on occupied land and Palestinians living in villages surrounded by settlements, checkpoints, and military control.
Of course, individual settlers can suffer. Death is death. Fear is fear. No human pain should be mocked or ignored. But the pain of one incident cannot erase the larger reality. A settler can be a victim in one moment, while still being part of a wider system that causes fear, dispossession, and daily suffering for Palestinians.
This is the contradiction: the executioner becomes the victim only when the story is cut away from its history.
When the headline begins with Israeli pain, Palestinian pain becomes invisible. The settler becomes a civilian under attack. The Palestinian becomes a security threat. The settlement becomes a neighbourhood. The occupied village becomes a battlefield. The army becomes “protection”. Resistance becomes “terrorism”. And the occupation, which created this whole reality, disappears.
This is not by accident. This is how power protects itself.
The settlement movement has always tried to make its presence in the West Bank look normal. It wants the world to see settlers as ordinary residents, not as people living inside a political project built on occupied land. It wants attacks on Palestinians to look like isolated events, while every Palestinian reaction is used to say that Palestinians are violent and must be controlled.
But the truth is simple: a system built on domination cannot bring security.
It can bring temporary control. It can create fear. It can silence people for a while. It can build walls, checkpoints, settler roads, and military zones. But it cannot bring peace. When land is taken, when homes are attacked, when settlers enter Palestinian villages, and when the army protects one side only, violence is not an accident. It becomes part of the system.
This does not mean every settler carries the same guilt. It does not mean every Israeli death should be dismissed. It means that individual suffering should not be used to hide collective power. The victimhood of the settler cannot be used to erase the long victimhood of the occupied.
Yet this is what often happens.
The Palestinian is asked to explain his anger. The settler is rarely asked to explain why he is there. The village is asked to condemn violence. The settlement is rarely asked to justify its existence. The occupied are told to stay calm, while the occupier calls control “security”.
That is why the phrase “when the executioner becomes the victim” matters. It is not a denial of human pain. It is a refusal to forget the political reality.
A settler killed in one incident may be a victim of that incident. But the settlement project remains a machine of dispossession. The grief of one Israeli family does not erase the daily fear of Palestinian families living beside armed settlers, checkpoints, and expanding settlements. One tragic day does not erase decades of occupation.
Nablus shows this clearly. The more Israel protects settlements, the more tension it creates. The more settlers expand, the more Palestinian space shrinks. The more Palestinian life is controlled, the more resistance becomes likely. Then, when violence erupts, Israel presents itself as surprised, as if it had no role in creating the conditions.
This is the oldest trick of domination: create the wound, then cry when the wound bleeds.
The question after Nablus is not only who fired first. That question matters, but it is not enough. The deeper question is: who built the reality where armed settlers, occupied villages, military raids, and daily humiliation became normal?
Who allowed settlers to move through Palestinian land with confidence, while Palestinians move through their own land with fear? Who turned settlements into protected facts, and villages into security zones? Who decided that Palestinian life could be restricted every day, then acted shocked when this reality produced violence?
Until these questions are answered, every incident will be treated as a beginning, when it is actually only another consequence.
When the executioner becomes the victim, the world must be careful. It must see human pain, but it must also see the political structure. It must mourn the dead, but it must not forget the system that keeps producing death.
Because the real tragedy is not only that people die. The real tragedy is that occupation creates the conditions for death, then asks the world to feel sorry when those conditions return to its own doorstep.
Beijing blacklists 14 EU firms after Brussels targets Chinese companies in latest Russia sanctions package
The Cradle | July 25, 2026
Beijing prohibited 14 EU companies from obtaining Chinese dual-use goods on 24 July, targeting Europe’s defense industry shortly after the EU included 14 Chinese and Hong Kong firms in its 21st sanctions package against Russia.
Announcing the measures with immediate effect, the Chinese Commerce Ministry called the bloc’s conduct “egregious” and demanded the EU “immediately correct its wrongdoing, eliminate the egregious impact, and safeguard the overall interests of China–EU relations with concrete actions.”
The restrictions cover dual-use items, goods, software, and technology with both civilian and military applications, including rare earth elements used to build drones and chips.
Parties outside China are also barred from transferring Chinese-origin dual-use goods to any listed entity, though exporters may request permission in exceptional cases or when a shipment is deemed “truly necessary.”
Rheinmetall leads the list, alongside Polish electronics producer Vigo Photonics, Italian electric motor manufacturer Lafert, French drone developer Cavok UAS, Czech truckmaker Tatra, Dutch naval engineering firm IHC Merwede, and several optics and laser companies.
Germany and France each have three entries, Italy and Poland each have two, and the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Lithuania each have one.
China’s mission to the EU lodged a formal protest, voicing “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition” to the measures and rejecting attempts by the bloc to place responsibility for the war in Ukraine on Beijing.
It added that China “firmly opposes the EU’s unwarranted listing and sanctioning of Chinese companies and citizens.”
The 21st package subjected 51 entities to tighter export curbs on dual-use goods and technologies over their support for Russia’s military and industrial complex.
Companies based in India, Turkiye, and the UAE were listed alongside those from mainland China and Hong Kong.
Brussels targeted small trade and logistics operators in port cities like Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Dalian, while Beijing focused on Europe’s defense industry.
Cui Hongjian, a former diplomat who heads European studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the South China Morning Post (SCMP) that the disparity does not make the response any less reciprocal from Beijing’s perspective, noting that successive EU packages have named far more Chinese firms overall than China has named in return.
“Since this whole episode arose from the Russia-Ukraine war, I think it’s understandable that China is now pointing its retaliation at Rheinmetall,” Cui said. “From Beijing’s point of view, if it’s going to retaliate, the retaliation has to bite.”
Bankrupt and fraudulent: EU sanctions Russia while silent on U.S., Israeli genocide
Strategic Culture Foundation | July 24, 2026
European Union leaders imposed yet another raft of sanctions on the Russian Federation this week. This is the 21st package of political and economic strictures that the 27-nation bloc has deployed against Russia over the past four years.
The EU sanctimoniously claims that the measures are a demonstration of rebuke for Russia’s alleged unprovoked aggression and invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
This pretense of European principle is farcical.
Anyone who has objectively studied the Ukraine conflict knows that the United States and its European NATO partners incited the war by orchestrating the violent coup in Kiev in 2014, followed by the deliberate weaponizing of the NeoNazi regime that the Western imperialists covertly directed for a geopolitical confrontation with Russia. That many people aren’t aware of that history is largely due to the brainwashing propaganda of the Western media.
The EU’s sanctions policy is therefore properly understood as economic warfare, and as supplementary to a larger military strategy to defeat Russia. It is part of “Total War,” as a former French finance minister clumsily admitted in March, 2022.
While the NATO-armed Ukrainian regime steps up long-range air strikes deep in Russia in an attempt to damage oil and gas infrastructure and the Russian economy, the EU’s sanctions are aimed at achieving the same objective.
This has nothing to do with using trade and financial measures to show political and moral support for Ukraine as an alleged victim of Russian aggression. It is all about maximising confrontation with Russia to defeat it.
The use of unilateral sanctions is illegal under international law and expressly prohibited by the United Nations Charter. They constitute a form of criminal aggression. The EU is in criminal violation of international law, as is the U.S., which also blatantly wields sanctions to intimidate other nations, currently 30, including Russia, China, Iran and Cuba.
In any case, the EU’s policy meets the definition of insanity, as manifested by repeating a futile action multiple times and expecting a different result.
Russia is arguably the most sanctioned country in the world given the 21 rounds that the EU has fired and the hundreds of banks and other businesses that it has targeted. Yet Russia’s economy has not buckled, as desired.
Even more insanely, it is the European economies that have suffered grievously from the self-imposed exclusion of trade and business with Russia, particularly the loss of affordable energy supplies. The EU is rapidly deindustrializing due to soaring economic costs. Germany, once the economic powerhouse of Europe, is crippled as it imports more expensive American fuel in place of the traditional Russian supplies which historically underpinned Europe’s industries.
European citizens – a combined population of 500 million – are hit with a calamitous cost-of-living crisis that in large measure is caused by the sanctions policy of their political leaders. These so-called leaders are decimating their own economies and societies.
The bankruptcy is political and moral. The strains are showing within EU member nations, as seen from the wrangling and watering down of the latest round of sanctions. Several countries were clamoring for exemptions to limit damage to their national interests.
Greece wanted waivers on restrictions over its international shipping of Russian oil and gas. Germany and Portugal wanted exemptions from sanctions on Russian fisheries. Austria, Bulgaria, France, and Italy also appealed for curbing prohibitions to protect their various interests.
As Euronews headlined: “Chaotic sanctions negotiations expose cracks in EU front versus Russia.”
The outlet reported that the collective policy is starting to harm national interests, which is leading to infighting among the EU members.
“It’s getting more and more difficult to find common ground. We saw that this week,” said one diplomat about the fractious negotiations.
Another diplomat commented: “The [European] Commission [the EU’s executive branch] is running out of options for what to include. It has to become more creative, and every package is more complex and takes longer to negotiate.”
In other words, the policymakers in Brussels are insolvent from failing political ideas over their illegal sanctions. They are also politically bankrupt because these elitist, Russophobic officials are making European citizens suffer severe economic consequences without any democratic mandate. They are imposing a ruinous policy like a dictatorship, one that is aggravating tensions and hostilities towards all-out war.
European elites have caused two world wars already over the past century; they seem to be driving a third one.
But here is the kicker: this insane policy is a total fraud. It is bereft of any supposed righteousness or avowed concern for Ukraine and the defense of democracy.
The hypocrisy is glaringly exposed by the European Union’s indifference to war crimes that the United States and the Israeli regime are perpetrating on a massive scale.
As former European Members of Parliament Mick Wallace and Clare Daly pointed out this week, the EU leadership has said nothing about the United States waging a war of aggression against Iran now in its fifth month. Thousands of Iranians have been killed by American and Israeli bombing, and U.S. President Donald Trump is repeatedly making genocidal threats to destroy the nation, diabolically hinting at the use of nuclear weapons.
On the other side of the world, as Wallace and Daly also note, thousands of children in Cuba are being starved to death under a maximum blockade on the island country by Washington. The EU has made not the slightest criticism of the U.S., never mind any condemnation of this barbarism.
This week, as European elites were drawing up their 21st round of dubious sanctions on Russia, the same officials declined to issue any sanctions against the Israeli regime for its ongoing genocide against Palestinians, a genocide enabled by the U.S. and, it has to be said, by European countries trading with Israel.
The double standard of the EU leadership is not just idiotic duplicity. It is proof of its political and moral bankruptcy and systemic fraud. There was a time when some European politicians would speak out to oppose U.S. wars and crimes. Not anymore. The entire European political class is putrid from corruption and complicity.
On so many levels, the EU sanctions on Russia are self-defeating. The ultimate defeat is the fatal corrosion of its own institutions and abject lack of authority. European politicians are delegitimizing themselves and their claim to govern. People of Europe and around the world can see what the EU has become: an elitist warmongering project that is sacrificing its own citizens.
Iran slams EU ‘Human Rights concerns’ as sheer hypocrisy
Al Mayadeen | July 25, 2026
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei has dismissed European Union claims of concern for human rights in Iran as “sheer hypocrisy,” criticizing remarks by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas regarding what she described as “human rights concerns” in the country.
Baghaei questioned how the EU’s professed commitment to human rights could be reconciled with its provision of logistical and technical support for deadly attacks “deliberately targeting the Iranian people, including civilians and vital national infrastructure,” according to the statement.
The spokesman noted that the EU has refrained from condemning “the most obvious war crimes” and has not expressed any sympathy for Iranian children killed by US and Israeli bombs and missiles, “the execution of which has been made possible by European logistical and technical support.”
Baghaei concluded by saying that this stance “is not just a loss of credibility, but a trivialization of evil and the most obvious form of hypocrisy.”
European Union announces new sanctions on Iran
On July 24, 2026, the European Union imposed new restrictive measures on five Iranian judges and a leading figure of an Iranian cyber group, citing alleged “serious human rights violations”.
The sanctioned judges serve on Iran’s regional courts in addition to Nima Salehi, founder of the Ashiyane cyber group, which the bloc said cooperates closely with Iran’s Cyber Police (FATA) and the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC). The EU accused the group of carrying out cyberattacks against domestic opponents and foreign institutions.
The new designations bring the EU’s Iran human rights sanctions regime to 269 individuals and 53 entities. The measures include asset freezes, travel bans within the EU, and a prohibition on providing funds or economic resources to those listed.
This comes amid continued US aggression on Iran, which has killed hundreds of civilians and targeted significant civilian infrastructure including bridges and desalination plants.
US attacks 16 cities in Iran in 13th consecutive night of aggression
The United States launched a new wave of attacks on Iran, marking the 13th consecutive night of US attacks, according to US Central Command (CENTCOM). The campaign, which Washington said aims to target Iranian military capabilities and threats to commercial shipping, began at 6:45 pm Eastern Time.
Iranian media reported explosions in multiple locations throughout the country. Local officials confirmed strikes in Bandar Abbas, Jask Port, Konarak Port, Ahvaz, Omidiyeh, Andimeshk, Khorramabad, Anarak, Nain, Borujerd, Taft, Shirkuh, Firuzabad, near Khondab in Markazi Province, and on Qeshm Island. Al Mayadeen’s correspondent reported that the US attacked 16 Iranian cities in total.
In Hormozgan Province, the deputy governor for political and security affairs said several civilians were injured during the attack on Bandar Abbas Port. IRNA reported power outages affecting parts of the port following the strikes, with provincial emergency officials later stating electricity would be restored within an hour. Iranian state television reported that air defenses were activated in Tehran as explosions were heard elsewhere.
The Khuzestan Province Council reported that four people were killed and five others were injured in attacks targeting the vicinity of Ahvaz.
Iran’s IRGC announced that its forces intercepted and destroyed a US Tomahawk cruise missile over Kahnuj in Kerman Province. According to Fars News Agency, the IRGC commander in Kahnuj said the missile was detected and destroyed while still in the city’s airspace.
The monopoly of arms: Why the doctrine is enforced only where resistance exists
By Sondoss Al Asaad | Al Mayadeen | July 15, 2026
For decades, the slogan of “restricting arms to the state” has been presented as a universal principle of sovereignty and state-building. Yet a closer geopolitical examination reveals a striking inconsistency: the doctrine is aggressively promoted in countries like Lebanon and Iraq, while it is largely absent from discussions in surrounding countries such as Syria, Libya, or other fragmented states where multiple armed actors continue to exist.
This selective application raises an uncomfortable question: Is the objective truly the consolidation of state authority, or is the slogan primarily employed where armed movements challenge Israeli military superiority and American hegemony?
Political philosopher Carl Schmitt argues that sovereignty ultimately belongs to whoever decides the exception.
Modern geopolitical practice appears to confirm his observation. The international order invokes legal principles selectively, depending on whether they reinforce or undermine prevailing strategic interests. The debate over arms, therefore, is not merely legal; it is profoundly political.
The Lebanese case illustrates this contradiction with exceptional clarity.
Following the November 2024 ceasefire, “Hezbollah withdrew from the north of the Litani River and ‘accepted’ that decisions regarding war and peace would rest exclusively with the Lebanese state and its armed forces”. The expectation promoted by Western capitals was that this would allegedly strengthen Lebanese sovereignty and reduce tensions.
The reality unfolded differently; the Israeli enemy, unable to establish a lasting foothold inside southern Lebanese villages during sixty-six days of warfare, achieved after the ceasefire what military operations had failed to accomplish. It maintained positions inside Lebanese territory, continued near-daily airstrikes across Lebanon, and expanded targeted assassinations while facing little meaningful deterrence.
The sequence of events inevitably fuelled a renewed domestic debate. If sovereignty means that only the state possesses weapons, what happens when the state itself lacks the capacity to prevent violations of its own borders?
This dilemma reflects what Thomas Hobbes identified centuries ago as the fundamental purpose of political authority: providing security.
The legitimacy of the state rests not merely on possessing legal authority but on its ability to protect those living under its jurisdiction. When that capacity weakens, alternative security arrangements inevitably emerge.
The issue extends beyond Lebanon; In Iraq, international pressure consistently emphasizes integrating or dismantling armed resistance groups under the banner of state monopoly over force. Yet comparable urgency is rarely directed toward states where numerous militias continue to operate without challenging Israeli strategic dominance.
Syria offers another revealing comparison. Multiple foreign militaries, including American, Turkish, and Israeli forces, remain active on Syrian territory alongside various local armed factions.
Libya remains fragmented among competing military authorities and militias. Yet the international discourse seldom revolves around an immediate imperative to monopolize arms before broader political settlements are achieved.
Such inconsistencies have led many observers to conclude that the slogan itself is not universally applied but strategically deployed.
French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that power operates through discourse by defining what becomes accepted as common sense.
The phrase “arms outside the state” has increasingly become one such discourse. It transforms a complex security equation into a simplified legal formula while avoiding a more difficult question: Can sovereignty exist when a state cannot defend its territory?
Iran denounces UK’s threat designation of IRGC as ‘unjustified, irresponsible, against intl. law’
Press TV – July 14, 2026
The Iranian Foreign Ministry has strongly condemned the British government’s decision to designate the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) as a “threat under the United Kingdom’s National Security Act,” describing the move as an “unjustified and irresponsible” measure that violates international law.
In a statement on Tuesday, the ministry said the decision contravened “the fundamental principles and rules of international law, including the principles of the sovereign equality of states and non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries.”
It stressed that the IRGC was an integral component of the official Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic and, alongside the Iranian Army, was responsible for safeguarding the country’s territorial integrity, national sovereignty, and national security.
It also defended the force’s regional role, saying its contributions to regional peace, security, and human dignity, particularly through its fight against the Daesh Takfiri terror group, were evident to all.
According to the statement, Britain’s decision to apply such a designation to an official institution of a sovereign state is “a disgraceful and provocative act” that violates international law and the United Nations Charter.
The ministry added that the measure was particularly ill-timed given the current tensions in the West Asia region and criticized Britain’s long history of interference in other countries’ internal affairs.
The statement further said that the United Kingdom “has no moral standing to level accusations against others,” reminding how the country had acted as “an accomplice and active participant” during the most recent bout of unprovoked American-Israeli military aggression against Iran.
Rejecting Britain’s allegations against the IRGC, the ministry said it was “particularly ironic” that such claims had been used to try to justify the decision while the UK, itself, “hosts and supports terrorist and violent networks and groups.”
Iran also warned that it reserves its rights under the UN Charter and international law to take reciprocal measures, adding that British authorities would bear responsibility for the political, legal, and diplomatic consequences of the decision.
The statement came after British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced that the IRGC would be designated a “national security threat under new powers in the National Security (State Threats) Act,” making support for the elite force a “criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.”
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From the Archives
A short history of British torture
ICC | December 2005
When the House of Commons was debating how much to increase the time limit for detention without trial the question of torture came up. Officially this was limited to the nice considerations of whether it was all right to send people to places where torture is used and whether Britain can use information collected by the use of torture in other countries. This discussion gave an impression of democratic Britain as the home of civilised behaviour where the very idea of torture is repugnant to our legislators – unlike, say, the US with its secret CIA jails… In reality, the British state has a long history of using and developing a whole range of torture techniques. … continue
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