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By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Every war led by Benjamin Netanyahu is framed not as policy, but as fate.

“There are moments in which a nation faces two possibilities: to do or die,” Netanyahu declared on October 28, 2023, as Israel expanded its genocide in Gaza.

The wording is familiar. The urgency is always absolute. The implication is unmistakable: Israel is not choosing war. It is forced into it.

For many, the claim is inherently contradictory. How can a state initiate war—and in Gaza’s case, sustain a genocide—while insisting that it is merely defending itself from annihilation? Yet within Israeli political discourse, and across much of Western media, this contradiction is rarely interrogated. It is normalized.

That normalization is not incidental. It is foundational.

Long before the establishment of Israel on the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948—the Nakba, or catastrophe, for Palestinians—the language of existential threat was deeply embedded in Zionist political thinking. Survival was never framed as coexistence, but as triumph. Security was never separated from expansion.

In recent years, that fatalistic language has returned with renewed intensity.

The events of October 7, 2023, brought a sudden end to what had been, for Netanyahu, a moment of unprecedented political triumph. Prior to the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, Israel was not merely secure—it was ascending. A parallel “flood” was underway: normalization.

Arab, Muslim, African, Asian and even Latin American states were steadily incorporating Israel into their political and economic frameworks. The so-called isolation of Israel was collapsing.

Netanyahu was openly celebrating this shift. In September 2023, speaking alongside US President Joe Biden, he said, as reported by Reuters: “I think that under your leadership, Mr President, we can forge a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia,” adding that such a deal would “go a long way first to advance the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict, achieve reconciliation between the Islamic world and the Jewish state.”

Days later, addressing the United Nations, he spoke of “the blessings of a new Middle East,” according to the official transcript of his September 22, 2023, UN speech.

This was not merely political rhetoric. It reflected a broader strategic project: Israel’s integration into the region, not through justice, but through power—through alliances with wealthy Gulf states, economic expansion, and geopolitical repositioning.

The genocide in Gaza shattered that trajectory.

Far from cementing Israel’s regional and global standing, the war has accelerated its isolation. According to a June 2025 Pew Research Center survey, majorities in most of the 24 countries surveyed held unfavorable views of Israel, while confidence in Netanyahu remained low across nearly all regions.

This shift is not limited to the Global South. It reflects a broader erosion of Israel’s legitimacy, even among traditional allies.

In response, Israeli political discourse has returned—almost instinctively—to the language of existential war.

Even when Netanyahu attempts to revive earlier narratives about shaping a “new Middle East,” the rhetoric repeatedly collapses back into warnings of annihilation. This reveals a deeper truth: within Israeli political thinking, the alternative to dominance is not coexistence, but destruction.

Part of this can indeed be explained through the logic of settler colonialism. Expansion is not incidental to settler-colonial projects; it is built into them. Such systems do not merely occupy land. They must continuously secure, reorder and enlarge their control, while presenting indigenous resistance as irrational violence.

Other settler-colonial societies remained colonial in essence while their territorial expansion was curbed by larger geopolitical constraints. Israel has never truly encountered such limits. It has not been meaningfully held accountable. Shielded by unconditional US support and enabled by Western powers that were themselves former or current colonial actors, it has had every structural incentive to continue.

But Israel’s fixation on existential danger even at the height of military superiority points to something deeper. It suggests a political culture haunted by its own origin story.

One possible explanation is moral and historical illegitimacy. Israel knows, at some buried but irrepressible level, that it was founded on the destruction of another people, on expulsion, massacre and erasure. A state built on the ruins of Palestine cannot indefinitely silence the history beneath it.

Still, there is more to the story.

Even before the genocide in Gaza, Israel was gripped by internal debates about its own continuity. In 2023, amid a profound political crisis, President Isaac Herzog warned of a possible “constitutional collapse,” according to Reuters. At the same time, Israeli discourse increasingly invoked the so-called “eighth decade curse,” the notion that Jewish political entities historically falter as they approach their eighth decade.

As noted in various newspapers, Netanyahu has been described as viewing himself as uniquely capable of leading Israel “into its eighth decade and beyond,” reflecting a deeper anxiety about national continuity.

October 7 brought these fears roaring back. So did the emergence of a more assertive regional pro-Palestine camp, particularly within what is often called the Axis of Resistance. True, several Arab regimes remained aligned with Washington and eager to contain the fallout. But in doing so, many only further exposed their own fragility.

From Israel’s perspective, this convergence of pressures reinforces both real and imagined fears—not only to state security, but to the ideological foundations upon which the state was built.

What makes this especially striking is that Israel has failed to secure decisive strategic outcomes in war after war. In Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and beyond, it has relied on overwhelming force without achieving lasting political resolution.

Here lies the central irony.

Israel’s fears, long framed as hypothetical or exaggerated, are being transformed into tangible risks—not by inevitability, but by Israel’s own actions.

The result is a self-fulfilling trajectory: a march toward deeper isolation, perpetual conflict, and internal uncertainty—driven not by necessity, but by an inability, or refusal, to imagine an alternative.

That march may yet reach its logical end.

The deepest irony is that Israel once had alternatives. It was not fated to choose this path. But a just coexistence—one grounded in equality and historical reckoning—has never been intelligible within Zionist political vocabulary. There, coexistence is recast as disappearance.

And so Israel is not merely confronting a crisis.

It is undoing itself, by its own hand.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

23 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak

In the middle of all the chaos in the world, Forbes magazine did not forget to celebrate its ritual of publishing its 40th annual World’s Billionaires List on 10 March 2026. The list not only reveals the continuing billionaire boom in the numbers and the growing concentration of power and wealth, but also highlights the rise of global inequality. Fortunes and fault lines move together in a world of plenty and pleasure controlled by so few, while the vast majority of people struggle to manage their everyday lives and to fulfil their basic needs for a dignified living.

According to the Forbes list, there are 3,428 billionaires in the world, and their combined net wealth has increased from $1 trillion in 2000 to $20.1 trillion in 2026. In the last year alone, billionaires’ wealth increased by $4 trillion from 2025 to 2026. In 2026, 400 billionaires were added to the list—the highest number since the publication of the Forbes Billionaires List began in 1987. This means the world has produced more than one billionaire per day over the past year while millions of people lost their jobs. In this year’s list, there are 20 billionaires with 12-figure fortunes as members of the $100 Billion Club, collectively owning $3.8 trillion, while 700 million people struggle to survive on $2.15 per day.

These billionaires are not merely the products of their own talent, hard work, creative abilities or family linages, just as the 700 million people living in poverty do not suffer because of a lack of hard work, skills, or talent. The concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and the suffering of marginalised masses, are products of the marketisation of politics in which people’s labour generates profits for these billionaires. States and governments create policies that facilitate the concentration of wealth by perpetuating conditions of poverty and inequality under the exploitative working conditions of capitalism, which defines and dominates the political economy of capitalist development across much of the world. Corporate-driven states and governments are responsible for producing these billionaires, who in turn control the state directly and indirectly—through funding, promoting propaganda for electoral manipulation, owning media, consultancies, public relations and advertisement industries and influencing policymaking to serve their interests at the expense of the people.

Geographically speaking, out of a total of 3,428 billionaires, more than half (1,757) are from the United States (989), China (539), and India (229). American billionaires own the lion’s share of global billionaire wealth—$8.4 trillion out of the total combined billionaire wealth of $20.1 trillion. These three countries face enormous challenges of rising wealth inequality amid a continuing billionaire boom, which creates very different life experiences based on ownership, access to power, and the everyday struggle to survive the pressures of marginalisation.The ten richest Indian billionaires alone own more than $1 trillion, while India’s GDP today is around $4.51 trillion. This not only reveals the scale of wealth ownership and inequality, but also reflects the nature of the state and government in India, which appears to stand with the billionaire class while leaving the working masses to face a deepening cost-of-living crisis.

The profit-making market machine is never dull for these individual billionaires, as the state and government stand firmly behind them. Meanwhile, working people make all the money: they produce all the goods and provide all the services, harvest all the food, and construct all the schools, colleges, universities, roads and communication networks, houses, and hospitals. Yet they themselves often suffer from hunger, homelessness, illiteracy, and ill health. These facilities are not accessible for working people. These conditions are not accidental; they are the outcome of the design of the capitalist system and its control over states, governments and their policies. In this process, billionaires have effectively transformed democracy into a form of billionaire oligarchy and society into an orderly marketplace of commodities, where profit over people has become the rule rather than merely an outcome.

The Forbes list of billionaires not only reveals the scale of wealth concentration as a form of economic injustice rooted in different regimes of capitalist exploitation, but also points to the political structures that facilitate such an economic system—one that benefits 3,428 billionaires who are not blessed by gods or goddesses, but by the policies of states and governments across the world. In a world of 8.3 billion people, only a tiny fraction—the 3,428 billionaires—live lives of extraordinary privilege, while the vast majority struggle to manage and survive in 2026. These numbers tell the story of the exploitation of the masses amid limitless wealth accumulation by billionaires that extends beyond the boundaries of nation-states. These billionaires are not merely wealthy individuals with corporate ownership; they are also powerful shareholders of capitalist system.

These billionalires club represent a class network of collaboration and cooperation without territorial boundaries, fuelling the forward march of right-wing reactionary forces and their war-mongering imperialist agendas. As cheerleaders of capitalism, they preside over a system that ruins the lives and livelihoods of people in order to amass wealth, undermines citizenship rights, and erodes economic justice—thereby breeding inequality and exploitation, the very lifeblood of capitalism. Therefore, the struggle against the capitalist system remains central to ensuring a more equitable distribution of wealth and to building an egalitarian society grounded in fairness and justice in all its forms.

Bhabani Shankar Nayak is a political commentator

12 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

Hindutva & Zionism: Exclusionary Religion, Racism, and Nationalism

A Formula for Forced Displacement and Genocide

By Areeka Khan, Genocide Watch

This report examines the historical origins and social impact of Hindutva in India and Zionism in Israel and Palestine. It explores how these ideologies shape national identity, citizenship, and belonging, and how they produce, sustain, and justify exclusion, forced displacement, apartheid, and genocide

1. Introduction

India’s soil is layered with memory. Under its surface are the wreckage of empires and the footprints of refugees. India’s air vibrates with Sanskrit chants from temple courtyards and azaans from mosque minarets. India’s markets resound with the polyphony of hundreds of languages. India is a multicolored tapestry woven from the braided threads of a thousand cultures.

India is not just a nation. It is a subcontinent where Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, and Christians have lived together for millennia. Yet, in the early decades of the twentieth century, a new imagination took shape, one that sought to tidy up the mess of history, to scrape away its sedimentary layers, and declare the land singularly Hindu.

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar called it Hindutva—not a religion, but a nation carved out of blood, ancestry, and devotion to a mythical Hindu civilization. In his 1923 The Essentials of Hindutva, he argued that being Hindu was not about gods or prayers but about ancestry, territory, and culture. India, he wrote, was a fatherland (pitrbhu) and a sacred land (punyabhu) only for Hindus, including reluctantly Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs, while explicitly excluding Muslims and Christians, whose holy lands, he spat, lay elsewhere. In a single stroke, Hindutva turned millions of Indians into strangers in their own homes.

Savarkar’s imprisonment by the British in the Andaman Islands hardened his creed. From his cell he seethed at the privileges granted to Muslim inmates—religious texts, communal prayers—while Hindus were denied the same. To him, this was not just prison politics; it was proof of an eternal conspiracy. Out of these resentments, he fashioned a theology of revenge, sharpened in later works like Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History and Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?

His writings sanctified violence, dressed up grievance as destiny, and suggested that cruelty was not only permitted but necessary. In Six Glorious Epochs, he mourned that Hindus, when invaded by Muslim rulers, had suffered the barbarity of rape, forced conversion, and slaughter. In Savarkar’s arithmetic, brutality against Muslims was not shameful, but payment of an unpaid debt, overdue.

A century later, Savarkar’s words are no longer confined to pamphlets on dusty bookshelves. They are government policy. They justify pogroms. They are expressed in lynching videos passed around on WhatsApp, like postcards of lynchings sold in the segregationist American South.

In 2015, Mohammad Akhlaq was murdered in Dadri over rumors of beef in his fridge. In 2017, Junaid Khan, fifteen years old, was stabbed to death on a train after being called a “beef-eater” and a“Pakistani.” Dairy farmer Pehlu Khan was lynched in Rajasthan despite showing his papers proving that his cattle were legal. Rakbar Khan died as police delayed his medical care. Tabrez Ansari was beaten for hours in Jharkhand and forced to chant Hindu slogans until he stopped breathing. These murders were not isolated crimes or accidents. They were the enactments of Hindutva’s script. They were warnings written on the bodies of Muslims.

Beyond the mobs, Hindutva has crept into law, schoolbooks, television anchors’ scripts, and judges’ verdicts. Anti-conversion laws, advertised as cultural protection, are weaponized to harass and humiliate Muslims and Christians. Textbooks are airbrushed. The architectural achievements of Muslim emperors are denied and turned to dust. Hindu kings glow in nationalist halos. Newspapers vomit conspiracy theories about “Love Jihad.” Police file cases against victims instead of their assailants. Courts stall or shrug until cases against murderers are dismissed. The state no longer merely tolerates Hindutva—it has become its open ideology.

What began as a cultural and political theory now masquerades as manufactured consent, shaping citizenship, subjecting food, love, prayer, politics, and history to police surveillance. Hindutva does not just govern India; it colonizes imagination itself.

2. Palestine: Memory, Exile, and the Birth of Zionism

Four thousand kilometers (2500 miles) away in Jerusalem, the maps of history were already ancient when colonial rulers redrew them. Ottoman rule had mapped its provinces, Crusaders had marched and fallen, empires had come and gone, but the land remained stitched together by villages, markets, olive groves, and marriage. Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived as neighbors—sometimes quarrelsome, sometimes close, always entangled in the ordinary rhythms of farming, trade, and worship. Palestine was not a blank canvas; it was a manuscript written and rewritten across centuries.

In the late 19th century, Jewish communities in Europe—trapped in ghettos, ravaged by pogroms in Russia, Poland, and Ukraine—lived in a continent that treated them as parasites and scapegoats. They fled, but persecution followed them. America turned them away. The Holocaust had not yet plunged Europe into night, but its darkness was already gathering.

Responses diverged. The General Jewish Labour Bund insisted on fighting for dignity where people already lived, adopting the Marxist languages of solidarity and class struggle. Others, like Theodor Herzl, Menachem Usishkin, and Vladimir Jabotinsky, conjured another answer: emigrate to Palestine. Herzl sought imperial patrons, Usishkin argued that Palestinians must be removed, and Jabotinsky declared that only forceful domination could secure survival. Chaim Weizmann polished Zionism to make it shine for diplomats, winning over Britain. The Jewish National Fund and Histadrut laid the groundwork for Israel by buying land, fencing it, and forbidding Palestinian labor.

In 1917, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, a colonial promissory note promising Palestine as a “national home for the Jewish people” without consulting a single Palestinian.

Between 1920 and 1947, waves of Jewish immigrants arrived under British protection. As settlements expanded, Palestinian farmers were displaced, and resistance committees—like the Arab Higher Committee—were dismissed as nuisances by the imperial office. The land was quietly being prepared for dispossession.

Under Nazi Germany, the Holocaust ravaged Europe. Six million Jews and six million others were exterminated in camps and forests, leaving survivors staggering into the ruins of Europe in nothing but death camp rags. For many Jews, Palestine became not just a future homeland but the only imaginable refuge. Zionism was fertilized by the ashes of crematoria—part survival instinct, part colonial opportunity, part imperial convenience.

In 1947, Jews owned 6.6% of Palestine’s land. In 1947, the UN Partition Plan (Resolution 181) carved Palestine into fragments, granting the Jewish minority 55% of the land while ignoring Palestinian opposition.18 What began as civil conflict between Jewish and Arab communities in Mandatory Palestine quickly escalated into a regional war following the declaration of the State of Israel in May 1948.

The ink on Israel’s independence declaration was hardly dry when all of Israel’s Arab neighbors attacked, determined to destroy Israel. By the time armistice agreements were signed in 1949, 5,000 to 13,000 Palestinians and 6000 Jewish Israelis were dead. Israel emerged controlling 78% of the territory of Mandatory Palestine — far more than was allocated under the UN plan. No Palestinian state was established.

Israel’s Arab neighbors attacked again in three wars. The Six-Day War ended in 1967, with Israel occupying the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. Israel’s effective control increased to nearly allof historic Palestine.

In 1948, the Nakba began. 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from Israel and over 400 Palestinian villages were demolished. Olive groves were abandoned. Palestinian families carried keys to homes they hoped to return to. Exile calcified into permanent forced displacement.

In 2026, Israel maintains military control over nearly all of Palestine, with 700,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Jewish settlements in the West Bank violate international law, including:

Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), Article 49(6) – which prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies;

UN Security Council Resolutions 242 (1967) and 2334 (2016), which affirm that territory cannot be acquired by war;

The Hague Conventions (1907) – which require an occupying power to administer the territory without making permanent changes for its own benefit.

2. The Impact of Zionism

Zionism, some scholars argue, is not only an ideology for ethnic and religious nationalism. It is also a justification for settler colonialism. Patrick Wolfe called it the “logic of elimination.” The slogan “a land without a people for a people without a land” justified two goals in one sentence: depriving Palestinians of ownership, and making Jewish settlement appear inevitable.

In 1975, UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 labeled Zionism as a form of racism. This designation was revoked in the Oslo Accords, reflecting the deep political and conceptual ambiguity surrounding Zionism itself.

For Jews, Zionism represents a national liberation movement, a refuge from persecution, and the hope of Jewish survival after the Holocaust.

Zionism was never unanimously supported by Jews. Bundists, Reform Jews, followers of the Lubavicher Rebbe, and advocates of accommodation with plural societies like the USA opposed Zionism. They argued that Jewish survival did not require emigration to Israel or dispossession of half of Palestine. But history, written in Jewish blood and Palestine’s soil, spoke louder than the voices of doubters.

For Palestinians, Zionism has been experienced as a settler-colonial project. Most Palestinians see Zionism as a justification for forced displacement of Palestinians and dispossession of Palestinian territory.

For Europeans, Americans, Russians, and others, the meaning of Zionism has varied with diplomacy, ideology, and realpolitik, sometimes valorized, sometimes condemned.

At the time of the 1978 Camp David Accords, there were 7,400 Israeli settlers in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem), and 500 in Gaza. The Oslo Accords (1993–95) did not resolve the conflict between Israel and Palestinians. They created a labyrinth of split authority, with Gaza fenced off and the West Bank carved into checkpoints and cantons. Settlements spread faster than ever, and the so-called “peace process” became a process without peace, scattering Palestinians into disconnected territories.

International institutions circled but did not bite. UNSC resolution 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) called for Israeli withdrawal and negotiation. But the U.S. armed Israel, vetoed UN resolutions, and nullified international consensus. The world nodded and looked away.

3. When Religious Ideas Become State Ideologies

If Zionism and Hindutva were only ideologies, they might have remained utopian fantasies. But both ideas found states as sponsors, bureaucracies to command, and armies to enforce their logic. Once ideas seize institutions, they stop being debates and become daily life measured in checkpoints, laws, censuses, and corpses.

Institutionalization makes abstract ideas into concrete reality. In this reification of exclusionary religion lies the kinship of Hindutva and Zionism. They are not just parallel projects in different historical and cultural settings. They mirror each other. The founders of Hindutva studied Zionism and learned how to make myth into legitimate statecraft.

In India, the RSS and its political offspring, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), slipped from the margins of Indian politics into the center, carrying with them the dream of a Hindu Rashtra, a Hindu Nation. In 2014, Narendra Modi—whose tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat was soaked in the blood of the 2002 genocidal massacres—was sworn in as Prime Minister of India.

Under Modi, Hindutva ceased to be an ominous backstage whisper. It became state policy. Vigilante mobs lynched Muslims accused of eating beef. Courts looked away. Police filed charges against victims instead of their attackers. The state was no longer a neutral referee; it picked the side of Hindu bigotry.

In Israel, Zionism was adopted as a state ideology in 1948. The “Jewish and democratic” contradiction hardened into law as Palestinians inside Israel’s borders became “Arab Israelis,” citizens in name, but separated suspects in practice. The Occupation of 1967 extended Zionism’s reach from the UN recognized boundaries of Israel into Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Settlements rose like fortresses. Checkpoints were arms of muscular control. The Occupied Territories became testing grounds for domination: ID cards, permits, curfews, bulldozing Palestinian houses, and collective punishment.

Both India and Israel weaponized law. India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (2019) opened doors for every refugee from neighboring countries except Muslims. It defined legitimate citizenship along religious lines.

Israel’s Nation-State Law (2018) declared that only Jews have the right to self-determination as citizens of Israel, reducing Palestinians to permanent squatters in their own homeland.

In both countries, these laws were not just manifestations of exclusionary policies. They were declarations of the intent to impose apartheid.

Governance turned faith into surveillance. In India, the National Register of Citizens rendered Muslim refugees who came to Assam from Bangladesh in 1971 stateless overnight. Muslim families who had lived in Assam for generations, but who lacked paper proof of citizenship, went missing from lists that determined who belonged to India.

In Israel, family reunification laws forbade Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza from marrying Palestinians inside the 1948 borders of Israel, splitting families with merciless precision.

Both states spoke of “security.” Both meant exclusion.

Even landscapes were conscripted. In India, mosques were demolished, their sites rebuilt as Hindu temples.

In Israel, olive groves were uprooted to make way for bypass roads and separation walls. The soil itself was laid waste for belonging to the wrong people. The land was rebuilt according to scripture: temples for Hindus, West Bank settlements for Jews.

Religious governance is legitimized theology. Not secular law, but sacred decree enforced by state police. Not democracy, but majoritarian rule dressed as destiny. Hindutva and Zionism do not just govern the state. They govern memory, space, even time—deciding who has a past worth keeping, who has a future worth living.

4. The Enemy

Every empire, every racist, ethnic, or national supremacist project, needs its negative shadow. For Hindutva and Zionism, survival depends on conjuring an eternal Enemy—always present, never defeated, forever justifying violence. This is the deepest kinship between Zionism and Hindutva: the invention of the Other.

In India, that Other is the Muslim. Not simply a neighbor, not simply another citizen, but the ghost of Mughal rule, painted as the eternal invader even after seven decades of independence. Schoolbooks are rewritten so that centuries of coexistence shrink into a story of conquest and humiliation. From Babri Masjid to Aurangzeb’s tomb, the past is not history—it is weaponry. Hindutva propagandists. From Babri Masjid to Aurangzeb’s tomb, the past is not history—it is weaponry. Hindutva propagandists even claim that the Taj Mahal was not built by Shah Jahan for his late wife but was constructed by Hindus as a Hindu temple. Pogroms in Gujarat, lynchings over beef, riots in Delhi: each is narrated not as aggression but as self-defense against a permanent threat.

In Israel, the Palestinian is the eternal enemy. A refugee child in Gaza, a farmer in Hebron, a student in Jerusalem—all are collapsed into the personified “Other.” All are “terrorists.” The state does not distinguish between armed resistance and existence itself. A child throwing a stone, a grandmother keeping the keys to her demolished house, a poet writing of return: all are threats to national security. This flattening of identity is what allows Israel to bomb refugee camps in the name of “counterterrorism.”

The enemy is not only killed. He is made ungrievable. Judith Butler calls it the “differential allocation of grief.”

“Our” deaths are mourned. Deaths of “Others” are statistics. When a Hindu mob lynches a Muslim man in India, the news cycle frames it as “communal tension.” When an Israeli airstrike buries a Palestinian family, it is “collateral damage.” Euphemisms do the clean-up work for massacres.

Both Hindutva and Zionism depend on siege mentalities. Hindutva insists that 200 million Muslims are an internal army, waiting to divide the nation. Zionism insists that six million Palestinians are an existential threat to Israel. In this logic, numbers do not matter; even a starving child is cast as a danger to the state. For Israel, nuclear weapons are the necessary deterrent to Pakistan, Iran, or other Muslim nations that could use nuclear weapons to destroy Israel.

The “Enemy” is necessary to maintain an exclusionary ideology. Without the Muslim, Hindutva loses its fuel. Without Palestinians, Arab nations, and Iran, Zionism loses the mortal threats that justify Israel’s existence. The Enemy is the scaffolding that holds the edifice of exclusionary religion upright. That is why for extreme Zionists, peace with genocidal Hamas Palestinians, Hezbollah, and Iran is impossible. Peace would disarm the Enemy. Without the Enemy, the justification for a Greater Israel collapses.

Those who would attempt to make peace with the Enemy are traitors. That is why after he signed the Oslo Accords, Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist.

5. Citizenship, Belonging, and Exile

Hindutva and Zionism both understand that to truly exile the Other, you not only drive them from their land—you strip them of belonging to a nation. You turn them into ghosts in their own country.

In India, this work sharpened with the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)(2019). It opened the door to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians who are fleeing persecution in neighboring countries. But it slammed the door shut to exclude Muslims. The CAA law is not about defining the rights of refugees. It is about excluding Muslims from becoming citizens of India.

Coupled with the National Register of Citizens, millions of Muslims in Assam were rendered stateless overnight. Their names are now missing from government lists that record who has the rights of Indian citizenship, including the right to vote and the right to live in India. The lives of Muslims shrank into piles of documents: ration cards, voter slips, land deeds. A missing piece of paper could erase generations of residence in India.

In Israel, exclusion has been underway for decades. The Law of Return (1950) granted every Jew in the world the automatic right to citizenship, even those who had never set foot in Palestine. Palestinians expelled in 1948, meanwhile, were forbidden to return to their homes. In 2018, the Nation-State Law stripped away the pretense. Only Jews, it declared, had the right to self-determination as Israeli citizens. Palestinians became permanent residents in their own homeland, without citizenship, tolerated but never equal.

Both India and Israel stage belonging rituals as loyalty tests. In India, Muslims are asked to prove loyalty by chanting “Bharat Mata ki Jai” (identifying India as a Hindu state) on demand. They must accept their mosques as rebuilt on the sites of destroyed Hindu temples. They must bear their persecution in silence.

In Israel, Palestinians are asked to accept their dispossession as necessary to obtain jobs in Israel. They must prove at entry points and checkpoints that they have clearances from Israeli authorities that they are not terrorists. Arab Israelis must live in Israel invisibly. Israeli citizenship is conditional, always under review.

These requirements are exclusionary theology written in bureaucratic ink. The state is saying: your birth does not entitle you to civil and human rights. Your history does not anchor you in this nation. Your very existence is provisional. It is the slow violence of paperwork, the quiet terror of never being able to prove that you belong and are fully human.

6. Culture as Battlefield

If citizenship documents decide who belongs on paper, culture decides who belongs in practice. Hindutva and Zionism walk hand in hand—rewriting, erasing, renaming, demolishing. They are a religious form of Stalinism: expunging names, rewriting history, remaking maps, demolishing temples.

In India, history is rewritten with saffron ink. Textbooks quietly drop Mughal emperors, gloss over Partition, exalt myths as facts. Temples rise where mosques once stood. In 1992, the Babri Masjid was torn down brick by brick by bare hands and sledgehammers. It has now been replaced by a gleaming Ram temple, dedicated by Prime Minister Modi himself. Such destruction is less about faith than about conquest. It is meant to tell an entire people: “Your memory is rubble. Ours is marble.”

In Israel, the story is uncannily similar. Palestinian villages destroyed in 1948 are replanted with pine forests. Their Arabic names are stripped from maps. Their ruins are buried under parks and Jewish settlements. Mosques are shuttered. Palestinian Christian churches are monitored. Teaching the history of the Nakba is outlawed from classrooms. The word Nakba itself cannot be spoken except in whispers. The erasure of Palestinian culture in Israel is methodical. The forced displacement of Palestinians makes self-censorship necessary for survival.

Both Hindutva and Zionism share an obsession: to own the past to control the future. Every defaced shrine, every demolished home, every rewritten textbook repeats the same message: “You don’t belong here—you never did.”

This is why the battle is not only over land or law but over imagination itself. It is about who gets to dream, who gets to tell stories, who gets to say, “This was ours.” Hindutva and Zionism know that memory is the foundation for resistance. So, they seek to erase it, to police it, to bomb it out of existence.

Culture, then, becomes the front line. Not only in the clash of monuments and curricula but in kitchens, in lullabies, in prayers whispered under siege. It is in these quiet acts of remembering, that Hindutva and Zionism face their most dangerous adversary: the refusal to forget.

7. Fear and Narrative

Fear is the scaffolding of state power. Advocates of Hindutva and Zionism understand that violence is only half the work. The rest is in the mind. The Other must not only be contained. The Enemy must be imagined as omnipresent, omniscient, omnithreatening. Fear must become habit, ritual, doctrine.

In India, Muslims are cast as conspirators, seditionists, invaders dressed in local skin. Mob violence, legal harassment, and social media vibrate with the same pulse: “You are not safe here.”

In Israel, Palestinians are statistics instead of persons with names. The protester throwing stones, the mother holding her baby while lining up for food in Gaza, the old man weeping over the bodies of his dead grandchildren—each is framed as a mortal threat. Checkpoints, ID cards, airstrikes, settler patrols: all operate under the rubric of “security,” a euphemism that conceals dispossession.

Both the Indian and Israeli regimes weaponize history. Past humiliation becomes present entitlement. For Hindutva, centuries of “Muslim rule” justify lynching and legal discrimination. For Zionism, European anti-Semitism justifies forced deportation, occupation, settlement, and siege. Victimhood becomes a license to kill.

Trauma is spun into ethnic and religious supremacy.

Yet the Other is stubbornly human. Every demolished mosque, every lynched Muslim, every bombed school, every uprooted olive grove represents a life that refuses to vanish quietly. The existence of the Others, their grief, their memory—these are the cracks in the fortress of fear.

Fear is distributed through words, through laws, through media narratives. Citizenship, surveillance, and curriculum work together: the state tells the majority, “You are besieged,” and tells the minority,“You are disposable.” The same narrative is rehearsed endlessly, until it is accepted as fact: the Nation survives only by defeating the Enemy at every turn.

But fear has its limits. It may govern bodies, but it cannot govern memory, imagination, or solidarity. For every act of exclusion, every act of terror, there are witnesses who insist on visibility. Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, Dalits—they do not disappear. They speak, they resist, they remember. And in that stubborn insistence, the narrative of fear cracks and crumbles off the sand into the sea.

8. Resistance and Recognition

For every ideology that conjures the Other, there is resistance. For every state that demands obedience, there are people who refuse it. Hindutva and Zionism may wield armies, laws, and textbooks—but the human spirit bends neither to propaganda nor to fear.

In Palestine, resistance is woven into the very fabric of daily life. Gaza children fly kites over rubble-strewn neighborhoods, their strings defying drones. Families clutch the keys to homes bulldozed in 1948, passing the memory of those houses down through generations. Prayers are offered at checkpoints; poets and musicians transform mourning into song, grief into global witness. Even in the shadow of siege, Palestinians refuse erasure simply by existing, by naming their villages, by insisting the Nakba is not a footnote but an open wound.

In India, resistance takes its own forms. Women of Shaheen Bagh sat through the winter of 2019. Indian Constitution in one hand, hope in the other, they turned protest into pedagogy. Students at Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh raised their voices even as police batons fell on their heads, reclaiming public space through song, speech, and silent defiance.

Resistance is not only survival—it is creation. Counter-histories are written in exile; counter-spaces are carved out in occupied lands; counter-dreams are stitched from scraps of stolen memory. Each act, each chant, each poem, each carefully tended olive tree insists that plurality, justice, and belonging are not concessions from the state—they are rights. They exist independently of recognition.

Resistance and recognition are two sides of the same coin. To resist is to declare one exists; to recognize is to honor that existence. Hindutva and Zionism may write laws, redraw borders, and destroy buildings—but they cannot exorcise memory, nor silence the lives that insist on being seen.

9. The Future

The story is not over. Every empire, every ideology, imagines its own eternity. Zionism dreams of a secure, Jewish-only homeland, walled and surveilled, where Palestinians are contained or erased. Hindutva dreams of a Hinduized India, cleansed not by armies alone but by law, education, and imagined history. Both envision a world where the majority is permanent, the Other provisional, where democracy is a costume stitched over single hued religious supremacy.

The consequences of realizing these visions are stark. Democracy hollowed out, reduced to a game for those who fit the prescribed identity. Minority rights erased, subject to the whims of majoritarian law. Neighboring states guarding militarized borders, populations excluded, resentment festering into cycles of violence and migration.

The dream of a “pure” nation, achieved, is not triumph—it is a warning that the explosive mixture of exclusionary religion, racism, and militant nationalism may succeed for a time, as it did in Islamic jihads, the Crusades, European colonialism, US “Manifest Destiny,” Nazism, Stalinism, and Maoism. But its dominance comes at the cost of genocide, measured in millions of deaths, slavery, and tyranny.

Zionism and Hindutva may imagine themselves as permanent, unchallengeable, inevitable—but humanity persists. It is in that human persistence, in that stubborn refusal to be erased, that the true stories of India and Israel live on — in their lands, peoples, and histories.

This darkness is not inevitable. History is not a line but a braid: conquest, resistance, memory, imagination, solidarity and freedom movements intertwine. If the humanity of Others is cradled like a secret flame, a different world is possible. One where fear does not dictate who belongs, where plurality is celebrated rather than erased, where law protects rather than weaponizes, where memory is honored rather than buried.

The future is in the balance. It is written in keys Palestinians keep to homes that no longer stand. It is murmured in Urdu couplets and flown in kites in Gaza. It is whispered in protests at Shaheen Bagh and Jamia. It is carved in olive trees and ruined mosques. It is taught in lessons and sung in lullabies that never vanish. The erased write themselves back into life every day. The future is a page unturned and unburned. It is a place where love is stronger than hatred, and where justice is more powerful than genocide.

19 March 2026

Source: genocidewatch.com

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak

Anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, anti-apartheid, and anti-racist foundations of the Indian freedom struggle laid the foundations of the foreign policy and international relations of post-colonial India. Only fifteen months after Indian independence, on 25 November 1948, Article 40 of the Draft Constitution of India (1948) adopted the principle that “the State shall promote international peace and security by the prescription of open, just and honourable relations between nations, by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among governments, and by the maintenance of justice and respect for treaty obligations in the dealings of organised peoples with one another.” This draft article was later incorporated and enacted on 26th of January 1950 as Article 51 in Part IV—Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution of India, which directs the Indian state to pursue foreign policy to achieve the ideals in which “the State shall endeavour to— (a) promote international peace and security; (b) maintain just and honourable relations between nations; (c) foster respect for international law and treaty obligations in the dealings of organised peoples with one another; and (d) encourage settlement of international disputes by arbitration.”. These constitutional provisions provide the moral foundation of Indian foreign policy.

Unlike the Westphalian colonial, imperialist, and racialised capitalist nation-states of Europe and the United States, Indian foreign policy is not governed by self-centered and ficticiaous national interests sans the interests of people but by the principles of international peace, security, law, and justice. These principles provided direction to many post-colonial states in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to incorporate similar ideals into the praxis of their foreign policies. The moral fabric of Indian foreign policy has thus influenced the principles governing international relations in many post-colonial countries. India provided moral leadership to the world when the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, articulated the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, known as Panchsheel: (i) mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty; (ii) mutual non-aggression; (iii) mutual non-interference in each other’s internal affairs; (iv) equality and mutual benefit; and (v) peaceful coexistence. These principles were first signed by India and China and were later adopted as core principles of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). They were further deepened in the Bandung Declaration adopted at the Afro-Asian Conference held in Indonesia in 1955. In this way, these values and principles not only guided the foreign policy of India but also influenced the foreign relations of more than 120 countries under India’s moral leadership.

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) was not merely about maintaining an independent foreign policy or refusing to take sides. It was about taking the side of justice, equality, and freedom at a time when a bipolar world order was imposed upon the world during the Cold War period. NAM emerged as a collective and internationaist force that sought to shape international politics in favour of world peace and actively opposed the war-mongering policies of colonial, racist, and imperialist powers in Western Europe and the United States.

India, under its first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, demonstrated this principled and moral position by condemning the USSR’s Operation Whirlwind, which led to the invasion of Hungary, without any hesitation, even while maintaining strong and friendly relations with the Soviet Union. Such clarity and independence in India’s position during 1956 gave the country an extraordinary stature as a moral leader of post-colonial states and an uncompromising advocate of world peace.

India stood with Africa during its struggle against European colonialism and racist apartheid regime. Indian stood with Latin America in its struggle against American imperialism. India also stood with the Jewish people during the Nazi persecution of Jews in Europe. It provided refuge to Jewish communities, including those known as the “Tehran Children,” in India during 1943. At the same time, India was among the first countries to recognise the State of Israel while opposing Zionist politics that led to the occupation of Palestinian land. India strongly supported the Palestinian struggle and their right to statehood, advocating a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. India also stood with Arab countries in their fight against colonialism and feudalism. Indian, African, and Arab nationalist movements and states worked together to build the Non-Aligned Movement as a moral force for world peace.

These historical legacies of Indian foreign policy were first diluted by the Congress Party and its successive governments when they adopted neoliberal economic policies to pursue a free-market economy and formed economic and political alliances with Western European countries and the United States. American foreign policy, particularly through its Global War on Terror, gradually incorporated India into its strategic framework. The Indo–US nuclear deal, led by the Congress Party government, further strengthened Indo–US relations and softened earlier tensions and anti-India positions within American foreign policy. This growing Indo–US relationship, along with the War on Terror framework, also reinforced the existing ties between India and Israel and diluted India’s earlier position in strong support of Palestinian struggles for independence.

The ideological foundations and historical legacies of Indian foreign policy were further diluted by the first BJP government led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and later by the BJP government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which has been steadily dismantling the foundations of Indian foreign policy brick by brick. Hindutva, Zionist, colonial racist, and imperialist ideologies share significant similarities in their orientations, particularly in their grounding in supremacist ideas of puritan ethno-nationalism in the service of crony capitalism. These ideological convergences bring leaders such as Narendra Modi, Donald Trump, and Benjamin Netanyahu into close alignment. These three leaders are undermining the historical and ideological foundations of multicultural societies in Israel, India, and the United States. Rather than working for the interests of the American, Jewish, Israeli, and Indian peoples and their countries, their political orientations advance projects of imperial domination in pursuit of unfettered capitalism.

India, under Hindutva politics and the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has weakened India’s political and economic independence, as well as the moral ethos and constitutional foundations of its foreign policy. This has adversely affected India’s foreign relations and diminished its position in world affairs as a moral force for world peace. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has shown little moral or political resolve in opposing the Israeli war that has devastated the Palestinian people, undermining peace and stability in the Middle East, the Arab world, and West Asia. He has also failed to condemn American and Israeli attacks on Iranian targets, including schools and civilian areas, which have reportedly resulted in the deaths of schoolchildren, women, and unarmed civilians in the streets of Tehran. Such silence risks isolating India and weakening its long-standing historic and uncompromised reputation as a resilient moral force for world peace on the international stage.

Hindutva politics and its alliances with Zionist and imperialist forces are primarily about upholding the interests of crony capitalism in the name of national interests. This reactionary alliance has harmed lives and livelihoods, damaged the environment, and undermined world peace. The hollowness of Hindutva foreign policy, and its reactionary propaganda hidden behind the rhetoric of Indian nationalism, is now increasingly evident. The Hindutva government under Narendra Modi has failed to uphold the interests of the Indian people, the nation, and world peace. By forming such alliances and abandoning the internationalist ethos that historically guided Indian foreign policy, it has pursued a directionless strategy of so-called “multi-alignment.” This approach threatens India’s historic relationships and friendships with Russia and with countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Arab world, and Latin America.

Indians must defeat Hindutva in order to oppose Zionist imperialism and its system of racial capitalism, while resetting India’s foreign policy, foreign relations, and international friendships based on peace and solidarity. This would help re-establish the moral, internationalist and constitutional ethos of Indian foreign policy and its independence in the pursuit of world peace and opposition to all wars.

Bhabani Shankar Nayak is a political commentator

15 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Michael Albert

We win almost any social demand only when some elite figure(s) succumb and implement the sought change. We demand a higher wage, a new stop sign at a dangerous intersection, abortion rights, affirmative action, a wealth tax, an end to a war—whatever. In each case. the demand is either met or unmet when some elite or elites accept or reject it.

What can cause the involved decision-makers, DMs, to make a decision we seek? It is almost never that we teach the DMs new morals. It is almost never that we get the DMs to substantially agree with us. It is almost always, instead, that the DMs conclude that to to do what we wish will cost the DMs less than to not do what we wish.

First, how can I be so sure of that? Second, what can we do that raises unbearable costs for a DM who doesn’t implement wharf we demand?

The DM’s mindset is typically “I am intellectually superior in this and all domains. My interests are paramount. My understanding is definitive. More, to maintain my dominance, I must always dominate. To accede to pressure would risk unleashing more demands, more pressure. To accede to pressure risks slipping all the way to no dominance or even to being dominated.”

This mindset, which takes various forms, rationalizes DM agendas. But where does this DM mindset come from? To become a DM instills it. A DM presides over decisions that constrain others. For self justification, DMs convince themselves others are fools. For self justification, DMs consider themselves eminently wise and competent. To navigate up a hierarchy of power, DMs dismiss and trample those below. Garbage deems itself god-like. Garbage rises.

Consider local bosses, owners of firms, government officials who determine societal laws, guys who preside over a family, or a dominant race that represses other races. We encounter associated DMs when we make significant demands. Such DMs have disproportionate and often near complete say over the lives and circumstances others endure. But when a person navigates to such a position, they have to answer: why do I have such authority? Did I steal it? Or do I deserve it? They typically decide they have innate brilliance and wisdom that merits it. Or sometimes they decide their having successfully climbed over others and amassed essential talents merits it. Trump and Co. are the archetype exemplars of garbage rising. Yes, there are less delusional exceptions to all this, but the higher you go the rarer non delusional DMs are. And, of course, in any event, the constraints of their domineering roles always channel them.

A question arises. What can we do to raise costs for a DM? Valid answers nearly always take a similar form. We join together collectively. We organize to reduce their revenues, comforts, or power. We convince the DM that to reject our demands will cause our efforts to grow and strengthen. To avoid threatened losses the DM must give in to our demands. The DM will always try to reduce the likelihood of more people learning the efficacy of resistance. Indeed, even giving in to pressure, the DM will claim to have implemented the change that movements sought despite movement efforts, not because of them.

We want to win higher wages. We undertake a strike or a boycott or a workplace occupation. We persist and the threatened losses for the owner mount up until to continue rejecting our demands is a worse DM option than to grant them. The DM then claims to have ignored us. We know better.

We want to win a new law or policy, or to block one, and the same dynamic applies. For example, to end a war, if the war was undertaken with real elite reasons and high stakes, or to end fossil fuel addiction if the profits of its continued use are high, resistance will have to raise very large costs for the national government or the fossil fuel industry to succumb. Other times, to get a new stoplight at a dangerous street corner, a higher wage in a workplace, or a new restraint on one firm’s polluting practices, we can raise middling costs to win. All the details of struggles are contextual. But the logic is universal.

So what now? And what of No Kings?

We are now in an existential fight to end current wars, to protect surrounding ecology, and to remove fascistic DMs. The stakes are enormous. So too, sadly, are the costs we must raise for the involved DMs to meet our demands.

To turn out over and over with unchanging support and unchanging militance will not win. In that case, the cost for the involved DMs is to clean up our demo areas after we leave them. If our threat to them doesn’t grow, we are at most a nuisance. We have to do better than that. So how can we act in ways that raise the costs to the DMs steadily higher?

We need to grow our numbers and commitment each time. We need to move from very sporadic to more frequent actions. We need for each new action to say to the DMs that their intransigence will keep increasing our numbers and our militance. We need for our resistance to impact tiny and then medium level and finally king-like DMs to fear that our growth is going to inspire their subordinated constituencies to challenge them on steadily more fronts. They have to fear that our actions, growing larger, more diverse, and more persistent are going to in time challenge the very structures that ensure their dominance. They have to fear that our growing actions will increasingly cost them, and if our sought change doesn’t come, our actions will eventually remove them as DMs. Our actions have to challenge, threaten, and if they don’t deliver our sought changes cut into and in time even take away their wealth and power.

All this is not rocket science. In our upside down society, it is self evident. So what does it say to us?

Consider No Kings.

If higher DMs—Trump and Co.—see No Kings every few months and each time it happens on one day. Each time it does the same things. Each time it has the same focus. Each time it doesn’t reach into new audiences. And each time it doesn’t escalate its non compliance. Then they won’t see a growing threat. Instead they will see that their ignoring our demands will only require cleaning up the venues on the scheduled day every few months. Likewise, somewhat lower DMs like Senators and corporate heads won’t get nervous that their constituencies are learning to resist. They won’t feel costs that force them to add their voices to our voices also demanding higher DMs succomb.

Viewed this way, No Kings, so far, has been a monumental achievement in creating a foundation to build on. Millions standing. But the building needs to grow. So what do we need? A broadening and diversification of demands. A growing base of support because the events themselves reach into new audiences with persistent face to face organizing and diversified demands. Plus a trajectory of growing non-compliance by way of associated marches, sit downs, strikes, and then occupations and encampments that display how new recruits become committed militants. We need all of it to say to DMs, look where this is going. You need to give in or you will endure still worse to come. Our threat is real. Our commitment is unequivocal.

In a couple of weeks No Kings returns with a hopefully larger and more militantly intense turnout even than last time. But then it needs to come back again in April. It needs to diversify its targets. It needs to march onto campuses to collect support and raise costs there. It needs to visit workplace entrances to collect support and raise costs there. It needs to go wherever there are potential allies. It needs to hear their concerns and add their demands.

It needs to challenge media at the doors of media monopolies. It needs to challenge ICE, complicit corporations, courts, churches, colleges, high schools and more, at their doors. It needs to threaten business as usual on every front. If we do that we can win and all continue on. If we do less, we may all lose.

The bottom line. Our words and actions need to convincingly convey what is ultimately a simple message. No more. We will not comply. We will not obey. We will raise costs for you DMs until you abide our demands. End military attacks. End Tariff attacks. End Police attacks. End sexist, racist, and classist attacks. End Trump and Co. It is all one big battle. Keep rejecting, and we will become one big movement of movements. Keep rejecting and we will move on to more fundamental change.

As we make our decisions about each new action of resistance, is that our mindset? Our agenda? It needs to be.

Michael Albert`s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc.

15 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Vijay Prashad

For Paki Wieland (1944-2026), who fought the cruelty of US imperialism all her adult life.

The morning of my departure from José Martí Airport, named after the father of the nation, I hugged everybody: the woman who checked me in, the man who stamped my passport, the ground staff. I had hugged all my friends tightly the previous day, my tears fighting for the right to stream down my face. It felt as though, through these hugs, I wanted to somehow transmit my trepidation about what could possibly happen to Cuba, the Cubans, the Cuban Revolution – all of it – because of the madness of Donald Trump.

**

What has the world become? It is as if billions of people have become bystanders of the atrocities imposed by the United States and Israel: the genocide of the Palestinian people, the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president, the pummeling of Iran without cause, and of course, the attempt to asphyxiate Cuba. The decadent brutality of the US government, sharpened by the foolhardiness of Trump, is unpredictable and dangerous. No one can accurately say what comes next. Trump seems trapped in Iran, where he did not anticipate the political wisdom of the Iranians in refusing a ceasefire now, only for the US and Israel to rearm and destroy their cities with greater ferocity in a week. Trump cannot seem to bring the war in Ukraine or the genocide against the Palestinians to a halt. Trump’s ally, Israel, has once again widened its war to Lebanon and thus threatens to shake up the streets of the Arab world, where there is already disquiet at their utterly pliant governments. Will he strike Cuba next, thinking it will be a quick victory?

It is hard for me to describe the impact of Trump’s cruel Oil Embargo to Cuba. There has been no shipment of refined oil to Cuba since early December 2025. This means that every part of modern life has been utterly disrupted. The roads of Havana are quiet because there is simply not enough fuel for cars and buses to take people around. Schools and hospitals—the temples of revolutionary Cuba—struggle to maintain basic services. Farmers struggle to bring food into the cities, and medicines are expensive, if they are available. Imagine being a patient who needs to have neurosurgery, with doctors simply unwilling to risk putting a probe into your brain amid electricity fluctuations and rolling blackouts. This was the starkest example of the dangers of the Trump Oil Blockade that I heard during my time in Havana. As I walked around the Malecon, I saw a few horse-drawn carts go by. It is almost as if the yanqui wants to punish the Cuban Revolution and thrust ten million Cuban citizens into the Iron Age.

**

I came to Cuba as part of a delegation of solidarity from the International Peoples Assembly, a platform of hundreds of organizations from around the world that are trying to reestablish movement-to-movement internationalism. Our delegation was led by João Pedro Stedile (national direction of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement), and included Fred M’membe (President of the Socialist Party of Zambia and the opposition’s candidate for president this year), Brian Becker (one of the leaders of the Party for Socialism and Liberation in the United States), Manolo De Los Santos (director of The People’s Forum), Giuliano Granato (one of the leaders of Potere al Popolo from Italy) as well as Manuel Bertoldi and Laura Capote (coordinators of the ALBA Movements). We visited many places, including the Latin American School of Medicine, the Institute of Neurology, the Martin Luther King Centre and Casa De Las Americas. We met with the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and the President of Cuba, as well as countless ordinary Cubans. We went to the main cemetery in Havana to pay homage to the thirty-two Cubans who lost their life defending Venezuelan sovereignty, and we walked around the city of Havana to meet people who were going about their everyday lives.

During one of the conversations, a friend asked how I found Cuba, a place I have visited countless times over the past thirty years. I said that I found the situation difficult but that the people seemed irrepressible. My friend was clear: the prevailing sensibility in the country was that the Cubans would fight to the very end to defend their right to a future and their refusal to return to 1958, the year before the Revolution.

During the early years of the Revolution, Fidel Castro made it clear that the urgency was to solve the people’s immediate needs and problems. This meant that the Cuban Revolution placed its emphasis on ending hunger and poverty, illiteracy and ill health, as well as providing housing and cultural spaces. To see the deterioration of life because of the harsh, nearly seventy-year Embargo and the new Oil Blockade is heartbreaking. The priority remains to ensure that every Cuban can live a life of dignity. This was the message as well from the President of Cuba, Miguel Diaz Canel, a man of great humility: we will resist, he said, but we will not permit the Revolution to squander its gains and its emphasis on the well-being of our people.

Sitting on a rocking chair beside my friend Abel Prieto, a former Minister of Culture, in Casa De Las Americas, was a tonic. As usual, Abel, my fellow Marxist-Lennonist (!), made me laugh aloud and at the same time feel sorrow. His comments ranged from an assessment of Trump (with “madness” being the word most often used) to his sense of the vitality of Cuban reality (the remarkable crowds that stood in pouring rain to pay homage to the remains of the Cubans killed by the US forces in Venezuela on 3 January). I felt comforted by his balance between humor and clarity, Abel’s literary sensibility in control of the fast-moving situation.

I accepted Abel’s view that perhaps the United States in its current form is a gigantic mistake– the arrogance of Trump a reflection of something inherent in the extreme idealism that the United States and its administrations know better than anyone else. They believe they know better what should be done to the Palestinians, the Venezuelans, the Iranians, and the Cubans. In the name of “democracy,” the democratic rights and existential rights of the people in these darker nations are utterly absorbed by the US President—the holder of preponderant power. It is an ugly vision but a real one, a reality that rips sensitive people around the world away from their own desire to shape a reality that is not so hideous. A third of the people killed in Iran by the United States and Israel are children, and the children of Palestine, whose names we honor, will never become adults.

**

On my last day, I saw a group of Cuban schoolchildren playing in a park, dressed in their school uniforms, their revolutionary scarves around their necks. They were chirping with laughter and chatter. I watched them from across the road playing a game, supervised by two smiling teachers, with some cones on the ground– a game that required them to weave between them. These children must have been about five or six, boys and girls who played in a cocoon of great happiness. I sent them a virtual hug. Be safe children. Aways. Hug Cuba for me every day.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, including Washington Bullets, Red Star Over the Third World, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, and How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa, written with Grieve Chelwa.

15 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Habib Siddiqui

For decades, Western governments and media outlets have insisted that Iran is the gravest threat to global peace—a rogue nation, a sponsor of terrorism, a destabilizing force whose very existence endangers the “rules‑based international order.” This narrative has been repeated so relentlessly that it has hardened into conventional wisdom in Washington, Brussels, and most major newsrooms. But repetition does not make truth. And today, as the United States and Israel escalate their joint military aggression against Iran, the gap between reality and Western storytelling has become impossible to ignore.

The uncomfortable truth—one that Western officials work tirelessly to obscure—is that Iran has not invaded its neighbors, has not launched preemptive wars, and has not violated the sovereignty of other states on a scale remotely comparable to Israel. Iran signed the Nuclear Non‑Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and remains under the most intrusive inspection regime in the world. Its leaders, citing Islamic jurisprudence, have repeatedly declared nuclear weapons forbidden. Meanwhile, Israel—an undeclared nuclear power with an arsenal estimated in the dozens if not hundreds—has refused to sign the NPT, rejects inspections, and has a long record of preemptive strikes across the Middle East.

Yet it is Iran, not Israel, that Western governments portray as the existential menace. This inversion of reality is not accidental. It is the product of a century‑long political project rooted in colonial dispossession, military domination, and the systematic erasure of Palestinian rights.

The roots of today’s crisis lie in 1917, when Great Britain issued the Balfour Declaration—an extraordinary document in which a colonial empire promised a national homeland in Palestine to the Zionist movement. As historian Arthur Koestler famously observed, it was “one nation solemnly promising to give to a second nation the country of a third nation.” The people of that third nation—the Palestinians—were never consulted.

Three decades later, on November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The plan allocated 56 percent of the land to the Jewish state, even though Jews constituted roughly one‑third of the population and owned less than 7 percent of the land. Arab leaders, with the exception of King Abdullah of Transjordan, rejected the plan as unjust. Violence erupted, and armed Zionist militias—Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi—launched operations that resulted in the depopulation of hundreds of Palestinian villages.

The massacres at Deir Yasin, Qibya, and Kafr Qasim were not aberrations; they were part of a systematic campaign to empty Palestine of its indigenous inhabitants. By the time Israel declared independence on May 15, 1948, more than 770,000 Palestinians had been expelled or fled in terror. Many ended up in Gaza, where their descendants remain trapped to this day.

This foundational violence set the pattern for decades to come: territorial expansion, demographic engineering, and the use of overwhelming military force to maintain dominance.

A Record of Aggression, Not Defense

Since 1948, Israel has launched repeated preemptive wars and military operations across the region. In 1956, it joined Britain and France in invading Egypt. In 1967, it launched a preemptive strike against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, seizing the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula. In 1982, it invaded Lebanon, leading to the Sabra and Shatila massacres carried out by allied militias under Israeli supervision.

From Nablus to Jenin, from Tyre to Sidon, from the West Bank to southern Lebanon, the pattern has been consistent: overwhelming force, collective punishment, and the targeting of civilian infrastructure. The Oslo Accords, hailed in the West as a peace breakthrough, became a mechanism for deepening Israel’s control over Palestinian land through settlements, checkpoints, and a matrix of military restrictions.

Here I am reminded of Bertrand Russell’s final political statement, written in January 1970 and read aloud at the International Conference of Parliamentarians in Cairo shortly after his death: “For over 20 years Israel has expanded by force of arms. After every stage in this expansion Israel has appealed to ‘reason’ and has suggested ‘negotiations’. This is the traditional role of the imperial power, because it wishes to consolidate with the least difficulty what it has already taken by violence. Every new conquest becomes the new basis of the proposed negotiation from strength, which ignores the injustice of the previous aggression.”

Gaza, in particular, became the world’s largest open‑air prison. The blockade imposed in 2007 strangled its economy, restricted movement, and created a humanitarian catastrophe long before the events of October 7, 2024. That uprising—whatever one thinks of its tactics—did not emerge from a vacuum. It was the predictable result of decades of suffocation, the Israeli military metaphor of “Mowing of the Lawn”, dispossession, and despair.

Israel’s response was devastating: genocidal, the near‑total destruction of Gaza, mass civilian casualties, and the annexation of additional territory. Peter Maurer, the former President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), who saw the aftermath of the Operation Protective Edge and said, “in all of my life I have never seen destruction like I saw in Gaza.” The campaign soon expanded into Lebanon and Syria, and now, with U.S. backing, into Iran.

The Manufactured Threat: Why Iran Became the Villain

To justify this escalation, Western officials have revived the familiar script: Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism; Iran seeks regional domination; Iran threatens global stability. But beyond its support for Palestinian resistance groups—Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—Western governments offer little evidence that Iran poses a threat to Europe or the United States.

Iran has not invaded another country in over four centuries. It has repeatedly engaged in diplomacy, even when the United States violated agreements such as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It has sought a negotiated resolution to disputes over its nuclear and ballistic programs, consistent with the guidance of Imam Ali (R) to his governor Malik al‑Ashtar: pursue justice, avoid oppression, and seek peaceful solutions whenever possible.

Contrast this with Israel’s posture. Israeli leaders routinely describe Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iranians in dehumanizing terms—“Amalekites,” “human animals,” “existential threats.” Several Israeli officials face international investigations for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet Western governments continue to embrace Israel as a moral beacon and strategic ally.

That hypocrisy is now in full display. In a stunning display of moral bankruptcy, after more than two years of arming and enabling Israel as it pulverizes the Gaza Strip—even after an October ceasefire deal—the United States last week formally intervened at the International Court of Justice to help Israel fend off genocide charges.

The double standard is glaring. When Israel bombs civilian neighborhoods, it is “self‑defense.” When Iran supports groups resisting occupation, it is “terrorism.” When Israel violates international law, it is “complex.” When Iran asserts its sovereignty, it is “aggression.”

None of this would be possible without the complicity of Western media. Major outlets routinely adopt Israeli and U.S. government framing, marginalize Palestinian voices, and portray Iran as irrational and fanatical. Context disappears. History is erased. The aggressor becomes the victim, and the victim becomes the threat.

This narrative discipline serves a purpose: it prepares Western publics for war. It transforms a nuclear‑armed state with a long record of regional aggression into a misunderstood democracy under siege. It transforms a non‑nuclear state that has abided by international treaties into an existential menace.

The result is a political environment in which Israel and the United States can launch preemptive strikes on Iran—twice in less than a year—while claiming the mantle of peace and stability.

Israel’s strategic doctrine has always been clear: maintain overwhelming military superiority, weaken neighboring states, and expand territorial control whenever possible. From the Nile to the Euphrates, the vision of a Greater Israel has animated political and religious extremists for generations.

This is not speculation. Israeli leaders have said so openly. They have threatened to use nuclear weapons—the so‑called “Samson Option”—if their dominance is challenged. They have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to strike first and justify later.

A state with such a doctrine, armed with nuclear weapons, and backed unconditionally by the world’s most powerful military is not a stabilizing force. It is a recipe for perpetual conflict.

Time to Call a Spade a Spade

The world can no longer afford the comforting illusions propagated by Western governments and media. Iran is not the primary threat to Middle Eastern stability. Israel is. Its history of dispossession, occupation, preemptive war, and nuclear opacity makes it the most destabilizing actor in the region.

The tragedy is that this was not inevitable. A just peace was possible—still is possible—if the international community confronts the reality it has long avoided: Israel’s policies, not Iran’s existence, are the root cause of the region’s instability.

Until the world acknowledges this truth, the cycle of violence will continue, and the Middle East will remain trapped in a nightmare of endless war.

The time has come for the global community—especially nations of the Global South—to speak plainly. The time has come to reject the distortions that have justified so much suffering. The time has come to say what Western leaders refuse to say:

It’s Israel, not Iran, that endangers the region. And unless the world confronts this fact, the path ahead leads only to deeper catastrophe.

Dr. Siddiqui is a peace activist.

15 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Ismail Al Sharif

“We are in an advanced position, and we will decide when the war will end,” said Kazem Gharibabadi, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister.

President Donald Trump, in coordination with the Zionist entity, is igniting a regional war with Iran, an unprecedented event in the region. Analyses of the true motives behind this fateful decision vary. One school of thought believes the strategic objective lies in controlling Iranian oil wealth and containing growing Chinese influence. Another links it to the Epstein affair, based on claims of Zionist pressure threatening to expose him to sensitive information.

A third school argues that Trump is bound by political commitments made to Miriam Adelson, who generously funded his election campaign. Some go even further, alleging that Trump, known for his transactional negotiating style, received substantial financial compensation for engaging in this war. In a related context, however, recent reports indicate that Trump himself has blamed his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and several close advisers for instigating this latest military adventure.

Whatever the true motives behind igniting this war, one path seems almost certain to end it: Trump will hold a press conference declaring a unilateral and absolute victory. The precise timing of this declaration remains uncertain.

But the decision to cease hostilities does not rest with Trump alone; it is contingent upon the agreement of two other key parties: Tehran and Israel.

Israel shows no desire to end this war, as it is the primary beneficiary of its continuation. It systematically seeks to dismantle the structure of the Islamic Republic and sees no harm in the regime’s collapse leading to widespread chaos engulfing Iran and the entire region.

If Trump fails to restrain Netanyahu, the latter will not hesitate to continue his military operations even after any official American declaration of a ceasefire. This may explain why Trump has declared that any settlement to end the conflict would only be possible with Netanyahu’s consent and explicit blessing.

However, the Zionist entity might feign acceptance of a ceasefire while its Mossad intelligence apparatus works behind the scenes to fuel separatist and rebellious sentiments among ethnic minorities within Iran, such as the Kurds and Baloch, potentially threatening the cohesion of the Iranian state from within. In response, Tehran would have no choice but to continue targeting the entity, which would then retaliate swiftly, potentially drawing Trump back into a cycle of military confrontation.

Adding to Trump’s predicament is the possibility that he might ultimately declare a ceasefire unilaterally, without any fundamental change to the structure of the Iranian regime and without extracting any genuine concessions from Tehran regarding halting uranium enrichment, dismantling its missile program, or severing its ties with regional allies—the very pretexts used to launch the war.

Even more dangerous is the possibility that the Islamic Republic’s resilience and emergence from this crisis with its system intact could make it a unique and exceptional model: the first country to challenge American hegemony and emerge unscathed. This could encourage other countries suffering under the weight of Trump’s policies or ambitions—such as Venezuela and Greenland—to adopt resistance as a path, even if they lack Iran’s military capabilities.

It seems that President Trump may be following in the footsteps of his predecessor, George W. Bush, when he famously declared victory in 2003 from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which was then—as it is today—at the center of the American military storm. It is worth recalling that Bush’s speech was a highly symbolic and premature declaration, one quickly contradicted by events, as the war on Iraqi soil continued for nearly a decade afterward.

The war has exhausted Iran and burdened it with immense hardships, making it seriously seek a cessation of hostilities. However, it simultaneously finds itself in direct confrontation with American will. Iranian officials have made it clear that any agreement on a ceasefire and the resumption of negotiations is contingent upon receiving firm guarantees from Washington and Tel Aviv that the aggression will not be repeated. Should Tehran manage to withstand and overcome this phase, it is likely to add to its list of demands the lifting of some of the sanctions imposed upon it.

Therefore, it appears that the Iranian strategy is essentially based on a policy of systematic attrition: simultaneously exhausting the United States and Israel by driving oil prices higher and threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s vital energy artery. This would impose heavy economic burdens that might ultimately compel Washington to reconsider its calculations and agree to a ceasefire.

In short, Trump will not be in a position to deliver a victory speech in the next week or two, and any such declaration without genuine cooperation from Israel and Iran will amount to nothing more than empty rhetoric devoid of any real substance on the ground. There is little doubt that President Trump has placed himself, his country, and the entire region in a highly complex strategic predicament, from which the way out may not be as easy as those who made the decision to go to war imagine.

This analysis was originally written in Arabic and reprinted in crossfirearabia.com

15 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark

The big drain on military resources has begun. A war apparently already won (and not), against an adversary supposedly without means to fight back, its air force and navy destroyed, its missile capabilities blunted, is now drawing the clumsy colossus of American power into the Middle East with embarrassing effect. The Middle East, where US President Donald Trump promised the “forever wars” would end, promises an end to his beginning.

The ledger of losses keeps rising with giddying pace. The US casualty list, for now, remains manageably low, but the military purse is being raided with manic relish. Operation Epic Fury cost US taxpayers $11.3 billion in munitions over the first six days, an estimate that excludes operating and maintenance costs of the engaged military force or the damage inflicted by Iran. The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) claims that the first 100 hours of the war cost $3.7 billion, approximating to $891.4 million each day.

Strain is also being placed on inventories. The US prides itself on deluxe, high brand killing and extermination of targets, using chic weaponry and dull doctrine. Expensive homicidal measures do have to be eventually accounted for. According to reporting from Bloomberg, “as the conflict extends toward a third week, the US war effort is showing unexpected signs of strain against an adversary whose military budget is smaller than the GDP of Vermont – but which has an arsenal of missiles and drones unlike anything the US has ever faced.”

Critical munitions are being depleted. With the campaign barely 100 hours old, 168 Tomahawk cruise missiles had been fired. (Each unit costs a mighty $3.6 million.) This is a staggering figure when compared to the rate of procurement: the previous five years had seen the production of 322 Tomahawks. According to a source quoted in the Financial Times, “The navy will be feeling this expenditure for several years.”

While the Pentagon gloats at reducing Iranian strikes by 80% or more, Tehran has gotten more economical with its targeting, successfully striking military and energy infrastructure across the Middle East with telling effect. Ballistic missiles have hit the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, destroying two AN/GSC-52B SATCOM terminals. A costly AN/FPS-132 early warning radar in Qatar – a facility estimated to cost some $1.1 billion – was successfully struck by a ballistic missile.

The AN/TPY-2 radar facilities used by the lauded yet hideously expensive Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system have also been struck in Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan Air Base, Al Ruwais in the UAE, Al Dhafra Air Base in proximity to Abu Dhabi and Jordan’s Muwaffaq Salti Air Base. A sense of how important that facility is to the operation of the battery is provided by N.R. Jenzen, a munitions specialist of Armament Research: “The AN/TPY-2 radar is essentially the heart of the THAAD battery, enabling the launch of interceptor missiles and contributing to a networked air defence picture.” Knocking out the radar blinds the system.

The outstanding feature of many of the strikes is their relative cheapness to the interceptor missiles used to destroy them. “The round’s we’re firing – Patriot rounds, THAAD rounds … these weapon systems, each around is millions of dollars,” laments Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly. “The math on this doesn’t work.” Shahed-136 one-way drones, each one costing $35,000, have played a starring role in upsetting “the math”. CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper has also noted that the majority of wounded US personnel – some 140 troops – have been injured in “one-way strikes.”

This has compelled the Pentagon to pay greater attention to its own Low-Cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS), which is now seeing service in some instances against Iranian attacks. But the department is also set to seek more cash, expecting to ask $50 billion in additional funding from Congress. Given the sheer unpopularity of the war, some lawmakers have reservations. “You’ve got to be able to provide us with more information as […] justification,” insists Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Don’t just take it for granted that the Congress’s role is basically to write the cheque.”

US military power is now being drawn from other theatres of interest to feed the Moloch of war. In a recent cabinet meeting, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung confirmed that Washington might relocate air defence material to the Middle East. Multiple launchers of the THAAD system have been or are in the process of being moved to Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, roughly 70km south of Seoul, with the interceptor missiles destined for the Middle East.

This shifting of pieces has not been without consequence. The THAAD batteries had been sent to South Korea in 2017 to assure it against threats from its nuclear-armed neighbour to the north. Depriving them of projectiles has gotten tongues wagging about increasing vulnerability. Besides, the ostensible security provided by US power for its allies and partners has been shown to be something of a dud, as Iran’s attacks on the Gulf states has so convincingly demonstrated.

Concern from Taiwan about such moves was registered in an interview by Chen Kuan-ting, a legislator and member of the country’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee. As US military assets and resources could not “be deployed in two places at the same time”, it was a case of priorities. And those priorities, it was implied, should lie in Asia. “Deploying the main military assets in Asia and confronting the US’s primary competitor here is more in line with US interests.” That may well be what he hopes for, but it is clear that Washington is battling through the another malady Trump had once campaigned against: the debilitating entanglement of a foreign war with ill-defined objectives involving a resourceful, obstinate foe.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.

15 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

The United States has carried out strikes on Kharg Island, a strategic Iranian oil hub in the northern Gulf, in what analysts describe as one of the most dangerous escalations in the expanding Israeli war between Washington and Tehran.

US President Donald Trump claimed on social media that American forces had “completely destroyed all military targets” on the island. He also warned that Washington could strike Iran’s oil infrastructure if Tehran continues to disrupt shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. The island contains no military targets; it mainly hosts oil export terminals, storage tanks, and shipping infrastructure.

The attack has drawn intense attention because Kharg Island sits at the heart of Iran’s oil export system. The small coral island, located about 26 kilometers off Iran’s coast and roughly 483 kilometers northwest of the Strait of Hormuz, serves as the main terminal for Iranian crude exports.

The Heart of Iran’s Oil Exports

Iran has relied on Kharg Island since the 1960s as the central hub for shipping its crude oil to global markets. Around 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports pass through the island’s terminals, pipelines, and massive storage tanks.

The infrastructure on Kharg is almost entirely civilian. It consists mainly of oil loading facilities, storage tanks, and ports designed for large tankers that cannot dock in the shallow waters near Iran’s mainland.

Because of this role, Iranian officials have long considered the island a red line. Any attack on its infrastructure could severely damage the country’s economy.

Iran currently exports between 1.1 million and 1.5 million barrels of crude oil per day, according to tanker tracking services. Data from shipping analytics firms shows that about 1.55 million barrels per day have moved through Kharg Island since the beginning of the year.

Before the war expanded, Iran had increased production and exports sharply. Shipments reached roughly 2.17 million barrels per day in February, and tanker tracking data recorded a weekly peak of nearly 3.79 million barrels per day in mid-February.

A Target Long Considered Too Dangerous to Hit

For months, military planners in Washington and Tel Aviv avoided striking Kharg Island despite their ongoing bombing campaign across Iran. Analysts warned that hitting the island would likely trigger a major regional escalation.

Richard Nephew, a former US deputy special envoy for Iran, told the Financial Times that attacking Kharg would represent a dangerous step.

He said such a strike could push Iran to retaliate against oil facilities across the Gulf, including infrastructure belonging to US partners.

Iran’s military has already issued similar warnings. Iranian officials said any attack on the country’s oil and energy infrastructure would lead to strikes on energy facilities owned by companies cooperating with the United States in the region.

Such retaliation could target oil installations in Gulf states that host US forces or cooperate with Washington.

Oil Markets on Edge

Energy markets are watching the situation closely because even limited damage to Kharg’s infrastructure could disrupt global supply.

Dan Pickering, chief investment officer at Pickering Energy Partners, warned that destroying the island’s export system could remove around two million barrels of oil per day from the market.

That loss would likely persist until shipping routes reopen or the situation in the Strait of Hormuz stabilizes.

Iran ranks as the third-largest oil producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The country produces roughly 3.3 million barrels per day of crude oil and another 1.3 million barrels per day of condensates and other liquids.

Iranian crude plays a major role in Asian markets, especially in China, the world’s largest oil importer. Shipping data shows that Iranian crude accounted for about 11.6 percent of China’s seaborne oil imports this year.

Tehran may now feel compelled to escalate in response. Iran has already restricted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway that carries roughly 20 percent of global oil supply.

Any broader disruption in the strait could trigger severe price spikes and destabilize global energy markets.

15 March 2026

Source: countercurrents.org