“The world stands at the cusp of a new order.

As President Xi said ‘The transformation unseen in a century is accelerating across the globe,’ and I emphasize that the Iranian nation’s 70-day resistance has accelerated this transformation.

The future belongs to the Global South.”

Ghalibaf was referring to a passage in the speech made by Chinese President Xi Jinping during the visit to Beijing of US President Donald J. Trump in which Xi said, that a once-in-a-century transformation

“is accelerating across the globe, and the international situation is fluid and turbulent. Can China and the United States overcome the Thucydides Trap and create a new paradigm of major-country relations? Can we meet global challenges together and provide greater stability for the world? Can we build a bright future together for our bilateral relations in the interest of the well-being of the two peoples and the future of humanity? These are the questions vital to history, to the world, and to the people. They are the questions of our times that the leaders of major countries need to answer together. I stand ready to work together with President Trump to set the course and steer the giant ship of China-U.S. relations, so as to make 2026 a historic, landmark year that opens up a new chapter in China-U.S. relations.”

The transformation to which President Xi pointed is the rise of a challenger to an existing hegemon. A past such situation was the displacement of the British and French Empires by the United States and the Soviet Union after WW II. The eighteenth century witnessed the victory of the rising British Empire over the French in North America (the French and Indian War) and South India.

Xi pointed to the “Thucydides Trap,” the paradigm put forward by Graham Alison, based on the way the rise of Athens threatened Sparta and led to war, which holds that such challenges more oven than not lead to war. Of 16 cases examined by the Belfer Center, they found that 12 led to war..

On the other hand, the rise of Portugal in the late 1400s did not lead to war with Spain. in fact, the Pope even helpfully divided South America between the two, which is why Brazil speaks Portuguese. Likewise, the rise of the US in the first half of the 20th century did not lead to war with the British Empire, though if you read the diplomatic correspondence of, e.g., the British in Pakistan, there was a lot of grumbling about the arrogant Yanks taking over.

Xi is hoping that the ascent of China and the perceived threat it poses to US hegemony can be managed so as to avoid a war between the two.

From an Iranian point of view, however, the rise of China does imply that US hegemony is weakening and being limited, and Ghalibaf put forward the thesis that this relative American decline has been speeded up by Trump’s attack on Iran. The Israeli-American war signally failed in its major aims, of overthrowing the Iranian government, destroying its missile and drone capability, and perhaps even destroying Iran’s industrial base.

Interestingly, BBC Monitoring reports that the pro-government Iranian news service Farsnews reports that shortly after this posting, Ghalibaf was appointed special representative for China. President Massoud Pezeshkian made the proposal and it was approved by the August Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. The position had earlier been held by the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, a pragmatist centrist in Iranian terms, who was murdered by an Israeli air strike March 17, 2026. I say murdered because he was not in uniform or bearing arms and therefore was a civilian noncombatant.

Prominent analyst Hamidreza Azizi writes at “X,” that “For years, there has been criticism within Iran’s strategic community that Tehran has failed to fully capitalize on the potential of its relationship with Beijing.”

He says that for China’s part, it needed a more stable contact in the Iranian government in order to strengthen ties with Tehran. He implies that Ghalibaf’s appointment may be that more stable and reliable conduit.

Photo of Great Hall of the People, Beijing by Dominic Kurniawan Suryaputra on Unsplash

Oh, and there was another difference between us, come to think of it. Only one of us, possibly inspired by that very TV show, has the power to order that a fleet of new battleships — a “golden fleet,” no less (“They’ll be the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built”), including one to be named the USS Defiant — be constructed to fulfill his childhood war-making fantasies. And only one of us has the power as well to fire any Navy secretary, most recently John Phelan, who doesn’t seem to be working hard enough to make the president’s version of Victory at Sea into our global reality. As President Trump put it at one point, “The U.S. Navy will lead the design of these ships along with me, because I’m a very aesthetic person.” (Hey, the Trump fleet is going to be a stunner! Count on it!)

And oh (yet again), as it turned out, only one of us would have the power late in life to kidnap Venezuela’s head of state, try to claim Greenland as the property of this country, prepare for a possible future war with Cuba, blow ships out of the water in a never-ending fashion in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, launch staggering numbers of airstrikes in (yes, can you believe it?) Somalia — well, of course you can’t because, with the exception of Dave DeCamp at Antiwar.com, those bombings are barely covered in this country — as well as at one point in Nigeria, launch a genuine war with Iran in the Strait of Hormuz (brilliantly crippling the global economy while he was at it), and… well, count on it, in the next two-plus years of Donald Trump’s America, there will surely be all too many more examples to cite. In truth, it’s probably not even worth trying to imagine what countries might prove to be next for the “President of Peace,” as he’s distinctly unpredictable on such matters (on just about any matter, in fact).

Trump Reigns (But Doesn’t Rain) Supreme

Whew! I’m already out of breath! But who wouldn’t be since we’re all now living in his world? And given what the “peace president” has done so far, the second time around, I suspect that everything I just brought up will be no more than the start of a future list that could prove all too breathtaking — and possibly even planet-breaking. (Yes, I’m out of breath just from writing all of that and I know perfectly well that I haven’t even managed to cover it all.)

Oh, and I’m so sorry! I almost forgot to mention one more Trumpian set of acts of war, undoubtedly by far the most important and devastating of all: those he’s launched against planet Earth itself. I mean, we’re talking about the president who has done his — and this word couldn’t be more appropriate — damnedest to shut down wind farms of any sort, cut solar energy projects, and expand the burning of fossil fuels in just about every way imaginable, including by opening up 1.3 billion acres (no, that is not a misprint!) of U.S. coastal waters to further oil and natural gas drilling.

New York Times reporter Maxine Jocelow caught this Trumpian moment on Planet Earth perfectly in a recent piece on the “triumphant resurgence in Mr. Trump’s Washington” of climate-change denial. She summed up the Trumpian viewpoint this way: “Climate change is a hoax perpetrated by ‘leftist politicians.’ Fossil fuels are the greenest energy sources. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be harmless.”

Buy the Book

And in its own way, that also sums up “our” president and his crew to a T in their search for Victory (with a capital V) — a word spelled d-e-f-e-a-t in the age of Trump — on Planet Earth. After all, in an address at the U.N. last year, he labeled climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” and insisted that, “if you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.” And his White House even released a document labeled “Ending the Green New Scam,” promising that “President Trump is committed to eliminating funding for the globalist climate agenda while unleashing American energy production.”

There really can’t be any question that this president is distinctly intent on nothing less than making war not just on specific nations like Iran, or on ships in the Caribbean Sea, or on anyone in or near the Strait of Hormuz, but on this very planet in every way imaginable.

It should be stunning, in fact, that on planet Earth at this moment such madness quite literally reigns (but unfortunately doesn’t rain) supreme in Washington, D.C., and will do so for (again literally) ever hotter years (at least two and a half of them) to come.

Defeat on Land, at Sea, and Anywhere Else Imaginable

Once upon a time, such wildly futuristic madness would have been left to the most dystopian of science-fiction novels — and undoubtedly not very popular ones at that, since such a plot and such a president would (once upon a time) have seemed far too unrealistic even for fiction. But now, thanks to President Donald J. Trump, the United States of America, in addition to all its other warring acts of recent months, is distinctly at war — and there’s no other adequate word for it — with Planet Earth (at least as a habitable place for future versions of us).

Someday, if anyone is still making TV series (since by then they’ll all undoubtedly be AI-created), I wonder if there will be one that young people, along with their parents, would be able to catch called not Defeat at Sea, but something far larger and more definitive like Defeat on Planet Earth. After all, we now have a president of the United States who seems ready not just to make war on Iran, but on more or less everything.

Hey, when the president’s military crew recently fired — and given what they’re doing to this planet of ours, they’re giving that word new meaning — Secretary of the Navy Phelan, it made perfect sense (at least in the Trumpian version of our world), given that he didn’t seem to be producing that Trumpian fleet in double (triple? quadruple?) time. Hey (again!), it’s strange that Phelan didn’t grasp the situation he was in, since it really wasn’t all that complicated. The only thing the president wanted from him was the most beautiful fleet of Trumpian naval vessels imaginable tomorrow.

And hey (yet again!!), since the president and I have so much in common from our childhoods, let me try to make some predictions about our Trumpian future on this beleaguered planet of ours. Let’s start with the fact — and it is a fact — that, despite everything Trump and crew are trying to do when it comes to destroying green energy in the United States, as the Guardian reported recently, “In March, the U.S. generated more of its electricity from renewable sources such as solar and wind than it did via [natural] gas, the first time clean energy has surpassed the planet-heating fossil fuel for a full month nationally, according to data from the Ember thinktank.” (And mind you, despite Donald Trump and crew, 2025 was indeed a record year for green energy growth in this country.)

And yes, green energy production has already become cheaper than new oil and gas production and, even with a president who couldn’t be clearer — “We aren’t allowing any windmills to go up and we don’t want the solar panels. Fossil fuel is the thing that works” — it’s still clear where we humans are headed in energy terms. Just not, of course, fast enough.

No, none of what we’re doing when it comes to clean energy is (as yet) faintly enough. And Trump and crew, while working as hard as they can to launch a thoroughly useless fleet of naval vessels, have also been doing their damnedest to heat this planet to the boiling point. He has literally decided to transform himself into a hell-on-earth president at a moment when renewable energy has beaten out coal as the primary source of energy globally for the first time ever. And, of course, one other thing “our” president has done is to functionally hand over the production and sale of green energy (and the equipment to make it) to that rising power on planet Earth, China, which has already poured hundreds of billions of dollars into such energy development (though it also continues to pour greenhouse gases from coal, natural gas, and oil into the atmosphere in a record fashion).

And don’t forget something else. With their endless nightmarish decisions on green energy and climate change, Trump and crew are, among other things, in the process of all too literally reordering this planet of ours. Though you won’t hear much about it in the media, we are all watching in real time (whether we faintly realize it or not) what not so long ago was the greatest power in history, the United States, turning the future (imperial and otherwise) over to China.

Someday, if any of us are around to see it, we are likely to witness what could prove to be a historic trade-off of great powers. After all, in these years, Donald Trump has put remarkable energy (literally and symbolically) into taking down the planet’s greatest power, the United States. (Of course, if it hadn’t already been heading down, he would never have been elected in the first place.)

And China, while remaining distinctly quiet in this otherwise all-too-loud Trumpian moment, has been building what could prove to be a near-monopolistic control over our planetary future by becoming THE country that produces green energy (or, more importantly, the equipment to make it) for the rest of the planet in a record fashion.

Donald Trump, of course, is distinctly intent on making war on planet Earth (including, by recently making war on Iran, pouring yet more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere). War, after all, may be the world’s most efficient producer of such gases and the U.S. military, even in peacetime (which, unlike during his first term in office, is no longer Trump time), remains the largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gases on this planet. In the process, he’s doing his damnedest to take both his country and the planet down with him.

All too sadly, if he’s successful, American children of tomorrow, when they turn on their machines (whatever they may be), could witness not Victory, but Defeat at Sea, on Land, and Anywhere Else You Might Imagine.

Copyright 2026 Tom Engelhardt

Via Tomdispatch.com )

(The Conversation) – The US and Israel’s war on Iran has cast a long shadow over the Gulf. It has placed many of the economies that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) regional grouping – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia – under substantial strain.

Since the war began in February, the World Bank has downgraded its 2026 GDP growth forecast for the region from 4.4% to just 1.3%. Some thinktanks, including Oxford Economics, even predict that some GCC economies will enter recession in the second half of the year.

However, the effects of the war have differed across the region. While the Gulf states are often viewed as a unified economic bloc bound by a shared dependence on hydrocarbons, the conflict has revealed significant differences in their economic vulnerability and resilience.

Countries like Qatar and Kuwait have seen their oil and gas exports seriously disrupted by the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. But Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which have access to bypass infrastructure, have been partly able to circumvent this limitation.

Saudi Arabia has diverted 7 million barrels of crude per day through its east-west pipeline, allowing it to export oil from Yanbu on the Red Sea. The UAE, meanwhile, has utilised a pipeline from Habshan to Fujairah to export up to 1.8 million barrels of oil each day from the Gulf of Oman.

This infrastructure has enabled both countries to capitalise on soaring global oil prices. Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state oil company, reported a 26% jump in profits in the first quarter of 2026.

Disruption to energy exports is one part of the story. The war has also caused substantial physical damage to energy infrastructure across the region. Around 80 energy facilities, ranging from production plants to refineries and pipelines, have been targeted by Iranian missile and drone attacks so far.

It will take months – and in some cases years – to repair the damage (which stands at an estimated US$58 billion) once the war ends. Qatar’s liquified natural gas industry, in particular, has suffered serious damage. QatarEnergy, the state-owned energy company, says it will take up to five years to repair its Ras Laffan industrial hub alone.

Gulf diversification

The GCC states have adopted strategies to diversify their economies away from a dependency on hydrocarbons. Tourism and aviation are two central pillars of this, with GCC countries investing heavily in these sectors. The Gulf is now home to some of the busiest international airport hubs in the world.

But these industries, too, have been damaged by the war. Financial analysis firm, Moody’s, suggested recently that hotel occupancy in Dubai is set to plummet to 10% in the second quarter of 2026 from 80% before the war. Some Iranian attacks have targeted civilian areas, including hotels and residential buildings, prompting tourists to stay away.

The Iran war has also placed Gulf airlines such as Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways under increasing financial pressure. More than 30,000 flights to the Middle East were cancelled in the first month of the war and jet fuel prices – the biggest variable cost to airlines – are up 90% on the annual average.

The logistics sector is another area of Gulf diversification. It has grown rapidly since the early 2000s thanks to the region’s strategic position between east-west trade routes. The UAE’s Jebel Ali Port, for instance, is now one of the world’s largest container ports and the base of Dubai’s multinational logistics firm, DP World.

However, Jebel Ali has seen a 40% drop in vessels due to the war, with container carriers rerouting to alternatives such as Salalah in Oman and Colombo in Sri Lanka. And while DP World has opened emergency land corridors to ports outside the Gulf to keep cargo moving, these routes are costly and have limited capacity.

The UAE and Qatar also both serve as major air freight hubs, acting as bridges for cargo travelling between Asia and Europe. But this has been affected by the war too. Freight rates have increased following attacks on both Dubai and Doha that led to grounded flights and air space closures.

In the long-term, the economic impact of the war on the Gulf economies will hinge on its duration and political outcome. But the risks are firmly tilted to the downside. The fiscal outlook for some GCC states is deteriorating, with several facing scenarios where government spending exceeds revenue. Public sector debt in some GCC states is rising too.

Moody’s has downgraded its outlook on Bahrain, which was already facing longstanding financial issues prior to the war, from “stable” to “negative”. This will make it harder for Bahrain to access much-needed capital and increase future borrowing costs.

GCC economies invest their surplus oil and gas revenues through sovereign wealth funds, which collectively manage between US$4 trillion and US$6 trillion in global assets. Governments are likely to draw on these funds to support domestic spending on reconstruction and bolstering their defences after the war.

This could undermine their future potential to fund large long-term diversification mega-projects such as Saudi Arabia’s Neom City. Plans for Neom, which was initially proposed as a linear city to home 9 million people, have already been scaled down in recent years due to issues including funding pressures.

Doha, Qatar. ©️ Juan Cole.

The Gulf’s loss of “safe-haven” status due to the war, and the resulting reputational damage, cannot easily be reversed. Even after the conflict ends, higher risk premiums will persist for those doing business in the Gulf. Shipping disruptions could take months to unwind, and a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz would be likely to trigger permanent rerouting.

If the conflict drags on, structural shifts in global supply chains may deepen, with lasting costs for the Gulf economies.

Emilie Rutledge, Senior Lecturer in Economics, The Open University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

To be fair to Netanyahu, he has not been the only Israeli prime minister to push for a war with Iran. The same policy was followed by most of his predecessors, especially Ariel Sharon, but he has been the most persistent and the most extreme proponent of this idea. Although it was under Netanyahu that the false allegation that Iran planned to develop nuclear weapons emerged as a prime military concern, his predecessors, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, also began to drum into the Israeli public, and internationally, the danger that Iran supposedly constituted. Rabin described the revolutionary Iranian government as a “dark, murderous regime.” In 1996, meanwhile, Peres called the Islamic regime “more dangerous than Hitler.”

This is a very unfortunate reversal of the relations between Iranians and Jews, whose contacts go back millennia. The Jews have lived in Iran for over 2700 years, a continuous connection between Iranians and Jews not matched by any other nation. For most of that period, the relations between the Jews and Iranians have been fairly warm and friendly. According to the Book of Kings, in 722 BC, a group of Israelites was brought by King Shalmaneser of Assyria to Iran, and they “settled […] in the cities of the Medes.”1

One of the cities of the Medes where they settled was the ancient Iranian city of Hamadan, which has continued to be a major centre of Jewish settlement in Iran right up to the present time. Later on, they also moved to other major metropolitan areas, namely Rayy, Kashan, Isfahan, Shiraz, Natanz, Borujerd, Khomein, Arak, Nahavand, Malayer and many other cities. The antiquity of the Jewish community of Isfahan is also traced to the post-exilic and Achaemenid periods.

Compared to many countries in the region and certainly in the West, Iran has not had a history of anti-Jewish sentiment. Most Iranian Jews, even many of those who have emigrated to Israel, regard Iran as their home and have a strong feeling of affinity for Iranian culture, literature, music and cooking.

The Hebrew Bible speaks very highly of ancient Persians and reveals very close Jewish connections with ancient Iran and its kings. Fourteen books of the Bible either directly deal with an event that happened in Iran or have references to Iran. There are seven books out of the 14, which are in the form of memoirs of the Jews in the courts of the Medes and the Achaemenids, while seven others refer to events which happened in Iran.

In Jeremiah, we have a reference to the Medes as God’s sword against the enemies of Israel. Ezekiel is about the period of exile in Babylon, when the Jews were freed and allowed to go back home and to rebuild their Temple after Cyrus conquered Babylon. In Ezra, there is the story of the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem with the assistance of Cyrus and Darius.

The Book of Nehemiah is the story of the author, who was a high official at the Persian court in Susa. He was the cupbearer and confidante of Artaxerxes, King of Persia. The king is informed that Jerusalem is without walls, and resolves to restore them. The Persian king appoints Nehemiah as the governor of Judah, and he travels to Jerusalem to rebuild the city walls.

The book of Daniel is about the period of his service at the court of Darius and the forecasts that he made for that king. Daniel’s beautiful tomb in Susa, the ancient capital of the Elamite and Medes Empires, is a place of pilgrimage for Muslims and Jews alike right up to the present time. In Zechariah, we again have the story of the rebuilding of the Temple on the orders of Darius.

In Isaiah, there are many complimentary references to Cyrus and God’s support for him. It describes how God will make Jerusalem the centre of his worldwide rule through a royal saviour (a messiah) who will destroy its oppressor (Babylon). This messiah is the Persian king, Cyrus the Great, who is Yahweh’s agent to redeem the Jews.

The Book of Esther contains the story that marks the 14th of Adar, a holiday called “Purim”, which is the most joyous holiday on the Jewish calendar. It is the story of how Haman, an enemy of the Jews, wanted to massacre the Jews, but through the orders of the Persian king, the Jews were saved, and instead Haman and many of his accomplices were put to death.

It is sad that due to his intense hostility towards the Iranians, Netanyahu even distorted the Bible to blame the Iranians for the alleged massacre planned by Haman. During his address to the joint sessions of Congress on 3 March 2015, Netanyahu tried to sabotage President Barack Obama’s attempt to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran and to remove what Netanyahu had called the existential threat to Israel. In that speech, he distorted the story of Esther for the sake of cheap political propaganda, and he tried to portray the Iranians as responsible for the alleged murder of the Jews, as well as linking that event to what he sees as an existential threat to the Jews coming from contemporary Iran.

He boasted, “We are an ancient people. In our 4,000 years of history, many have tried repeatedly to destroy the Jewish people. Tomorrow night, on the Jewish holiday of Purim, we’ll read the Book of Esther. We’ll read of a powerful Persian viceroy named Haman, who plotted to destroy the Jewish people some 2,500 years ago. But a courageous Jewish woman, Queen Esther, exposed the plot and gave for the Jewish people the right to defend themselves against their enemies.”2

In view of the deliberate distortions of the story of the Book of Esther for political purposes, it is important to dwell a little on the contents of this book. First of all, it should be noted that there are many problems with the Book of Esther. It suffers from many contradictions, and there are some differences between the Hebrew and the Greek versions of the book.

The book tells the story of Esther, the Queen of Ahasuerus. There is no such name among the Achaemenian kings. However, the name is often taken to refer to Xerxes I (r. 519–465 BC), but according to some other details of the book, the name could refer to Artaxerxes I (r. 465 to 424 BC) or Artaxerxes II (c. 445–359/8 BC), or even Artaxerxes III (r. 359/58 to 338 BC). There is no record in Persian sources of any of those kings having a Jewish wife, or of the gruesome episode that the book contains. In view of many historical inconsistencies associated with the Book of Esther, many Biblical scholars believe that it should not be read as a historical book. John Barton, a leading Biblical scholar, wrote that most scholars believe that Esther is “a kind of novella rather than a piece of historical writing.”3

Regardless of its historical authenticity, contrary to Netanyahu’s assertion, the Book of Esther does not blame the Iranians for wanting to kill Jews. According to the book, a wicked man called Haman, son of Hammendatha, the Agagite, had developed a grudge against Mordecai, Esther’s cousin. It should be noted that the Agagites were not Persian or Iranian. According to the Biblical Encyclopaedia, the word Haman is of Elamite origin. This is how the Bible Encyclopaedia describes Agagite:

‘A title of opprobrium given to Haman (Esther 3:1,10; 8:3,5; 9:24). Jewish tradition always assigned the arch-enemies of Israel membership in the house of Amalek, the hereditary foe of the nation. Compare Ant, XI, vi, 5. The word Agag has properly been taken by Delitzsch as related to the Assyrian agagu, “to be powerful,” “vehement,” “angry.” In the Greek parts of Esther, Haman is termed a Macedonian (Esther 1:2-6; 1:6-10). The name Haman is probably of Elamitic origin. Oppert’s attempt to connect the term “Agagite” with “Agaz,” a Median tribe mentioned by Sargon, has found no supporters.’

As the Bible Encyclopaedia points out, Haman, a Macedonian, not a Persian, had ordered all the Jews to be killed. Esther learned of the plot and told the king about it. The Persian king saved the Jews and had Haman killed instead of Mordecai. A more bizarre and bloody episode follows. According to the Book of Esther, the king even allowed the Jews to defend themselves during the attacks by the Amalekites, as the result of which 500 attackers and Haman’s ten sons were killed in Shushan, followed strangely enough by a Jewish slaughter of 75,000 Persians.

The same distortion of facts continues regarding more recent events. Although the tone of the leaders of the Islamic Republic has been harsh and at times disgusting regarding the state of Israel, they have never posed an existential threat to Israel and have not even called for its elimination. Their attacks have always been directed against the “Zionists”, rather than Jews.

A case in point are the remarks made by Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013). In October 2005, he was asked to speak at a conference in Tehran in commemoration of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A sentence in his address was loosely translated as Israel should be “wiped off the map”. This sentence gave rise to a storm of condemnation and was extensively used as an example of Iran’s intentions towards the state of Israel.

It is important to analyse that speech and see what Ahmadinejad really said. Referring to Khomeini’s predictions that had been allegedly fulfilled, Ahmadinejad referred to several of Khomeini’s remarks in the past. Ahmadinejad said that Khomeini had said that the Shah had to go and he did. He had said Saddam Hossein had to be toppled and he was. He had declared that the apartheid state in South Africa had to end and it did. In a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev, he had said that the Soviet Union had no future and it fell. Ahmadinejad added that Khomeini had said that the Israeli regime had to collapse and it will.

Many scholars at the time, pointed out that the sentence, “Israel had to be wiped off the map”, had been mistranslated. He simply had called for the end of the Zionist regime, not Israel. The original Persian sentence that he used was “Iman Khomeini goft: in rezhim-e eshghalgar-e Qods bayad az safhe-ye ruzegar mahv shave.” The correct translation of the sentence is “Imam Khomeini said: this regime that occupies Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time”.

Speaking further about the issue of Israel and the Palestinians, Ahmadinejad said: “The issue of Palestine is not over at all. It will be over the day a Palestinian government, which belongs to the Palestinian people, comes to power; the day that all refugees return to their homes; a democratic government elected by the people comes to power.”

In his subsequent interview with Time Magazine in 2006, he added:

“Our suggestion is that the five million Palestinian refugees come back to their homes, and then the entire people on those lands hold a referendum and choose their own system of government. This is a democratic and popular way.”

It can be argued that Ahmadinejad believed in the Palestinian right of return, and was advocating a single state, including both the Palestinians and the Jews, and for a referendum by all its inhabitants to decide the form of the government. In February 2006 journalists interviewed Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki about the speech and he said: ‘Ahmadinejad’s comments had been misunderstood and that he had been speaking about the Israeli “regime” not the country and a country could not be removed from the map.’

In an article in Informed Comment, analysing Ahmadinejad’s remarks, Professor Juan Cole, an expert on Persian language and literature and Middle East politics, correctly pointed out that many of Ahmadinejad’s statements were “morally outrageous and historically ignorant, but he did not actually call for mass murder.”

He did not call for the violent overthrow of Israel, the expulsion of its people or “wiping Israel off the map”. It is important to make this distinction because words matter, and a mistranslation can sometimes be used as an excuse for war, as we have seen in a continuous denunciation of Iranians by Israel’s supporters, which has resulted in two unprovoked wars of aggression against Iran. In any case, some of the remarks of Israeli leaders towards Iran and certainly their genocidal remarks about the Palestinians are much harsher than the remarks attributed to Khomeini.

It should also be added that during the extraordinary Arab Summit in Cairo in October 2000, the Arab League unanimously approved to recognise the Israeli state provided it goes back to June 1967 borders. Subsequently, the same resolution was also approved by all the 57 members of the Islamic Cooperation Organisation, including President Ahmadinejad who had attended that meeting. Earlier on, President Mohammad Khatami officially announced that Iran would recognise any agreement between the Arabs and Israelis that was acceptable to the Palestinians. So, the allegation that Iran has always tried to wipe Israel off the map has been a false propaganda. The best way to bring Iran closer to Israel would be a rapprochement between Iran and the United States, but anytime that Iran has tried to improve its relations with the United States, the Israelis, led by Netanyahu, have tried to block any agreement between the two. The issue of the non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons is just an excuse to portray Iran as an implacable enemy and maintain billions of dollars of US assistance to Israel flowing.

Zerubbabel shows Cyrus the Great a plan of the rebuilt Jerusalem. Jacob van Loo, 1650. Public Domain. Via Picryl

It should be borne in mind that there is still a large Jewish community living in Iran and, according to the testimony of many Western journalists, including some prominent Jewish journalists who have recently visited Iran, they live peacefully with their Iranian compatriots and freely run Jewish schools or synagogues, which do not even require any guards because they are not threatened. It is inexplicable that, in addition to hundreds of hospitals, residential blocks, universities, schools, banks, bridges, military installations and even UNESCO-registered monuments that have been bombed by the Israelis and Americans, an old synagogue in Tehran was also bombed and destroyed. All this shows that the Israeli and American hostility is not directed only against the Iranian regime, but against Iranian society and civilisation as a whole.

Instead of looking for every excuse to perpetuate the intense hostility between Israel and Iran, it is incumbent upon the rational leaders in both countries to put an end to the unnecessary conflict and to resume the long history of friendship and cooperation between these two ancient communities. After the two devastating wars initiated by Israel and dragging the United States to them too, it is difficult to see a path towards reconciliation. However, the wars have shown how ugly and destructive the continuation of current hostilities could be for both countries. They should provide an added incentive towards ending the conflict and opening a new chapter of cooperation, which is worthy of the long history of friendship between the two people.

Footnotes:

1. 2 Kings 18:11
2. See Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “PM Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of the US Congress”, 03 March 2015. https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/2015/Pages/PM-Netanyahus-speech-to-Congress-3-March-2015.aspx
3. Barton, John (2019). A History of the Bible. Viking. p. 33. ISBN 9780525428770.

Although it is advertised for “Americans of every background,” there is an immediate link on their website to register your church to join the event, even a “Church Engagement Toolkit.” Looking over the list of speakers, it is obvious what kinds of churches are behind this event: mostly Evangelicals and especially Baptists. This includes Jonathan Falwell, the Senior Pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church and Chancellor of his father Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. Jonathan replaced his brother Jerry Falwell, Jr., who resigned after a sex scandal. There are also charismatics, including Paula White, a spiritual advisor to Trump who seems to know more about glossolalia than the Gospels.

There are two Catholic bishops, one of whom is the conservative Catholic Timothy Dolan, who Pope Leo recently replaced as Archbishop of New York. A Black senator and a Nigerian singer are also part of the show, but no major African American pastor was invited. I did not find any speakers from the mainline Protestant sects, including Episcopals, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians and United Church of Christ. Nor are there any Latter Day Saints or Jehovah’s Witnesses. The only Jewish speaker is Orthodox Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, who offered prayer at the last Republican convention. There are no Hindu or Sikh speakers.

Not only are there no Muslim speakers, but one of the main stars is Franklin Graham, who has made his father Billy Graham’s Foundation an ultra-conservative political tool. Graham’s vitriolic hatred of Islam has a long history, including calling it a “a Very Evil and Wicked Religion.”  Graham not only supports Trump’s war on Iran, but has the delusion that “the church in Iran is among the fastest growing in that part of the world.” He insists that more Iranians have become Christians in the last two decades than the entire 1,300 years since Islam arrived in Persia. At last year’s Pentagon Christmas Worship Service, Graham told the military personnel assembled that God is not just about love, but also a God of hate and war.

Featured as a main speaker is Pete Hegseth, identified as the 29^th United States Secretary of War. Actually, since we have not had a Department of War since 1949, this number is off. Hegseth has promoted the war in Iran as a Christian duty with God on our side. This echoes the call of his religious advisor, Douglas Wilson, who argues that America should be a Christian nation and Christianity should dominate the world. Wilson also thinks women should not be allowed to vote, nor be in the military. Although it is not clear what kind of prayer Hegseth will ask for in his talk, he will probably not ask forgiveness for his previous adultery and drunken behavior.

I grew up in a small Fundamentalist Baptist church in northern Ohio, where my father often led the Wednesday night prayer service. I heard lots of sincere prayers from the elders, but none calling for God to kill someone. We were told that God hated sin, but Jesus died so that sinners do not need to be killed. They would be judged by God.  It was common practice to pray for the American President, no matter which party he came from. This small church supported two local missionaries, who went to India and Africa to save souls, not to judge them.

Every once in awhile there was an Evangelistic Service in which we were told to invite our unbeliever, i.e. not Baptist, friends so the Holy Spirit could convict their hearts when a Bible verse was read. This has been the teaching of Fundamentalists and Evangelicals for a long time. The proposed national prayer vigil is a politically glorified evangelistic service by ultra-conservative Christian Nationalists. It is not going to be a prayer ritual for peace, justice or tolerance. The special message that will be read by Trump, who apparently will not attend in person, will have been written by an aide for a man who has never read the Bible and certainly has no desire to do so.

Photo by Maurice Harris on Unsplash

There is a scriptural passage which well defines this national display streamlining Sunday across the country: “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves” (Matthew 7:15, KJV). There are many different kinds of sheep in our country, both those who are religious and those who do not belong to a formal religion. A good shepherd, the kind that anyone who recites Psalm 23 knows by heart, is one who protects all the sheep, not just a select few. That is the founding principle of the United States: a separation of church and state that prevents the state from defining which religion is best. Rededicate 250 is a non sequitor since our country has never been dedicated to a specific religious sect. Make no mistake, this call for Freedom is not about being free to worship or not worship who you please.

Sunday’s call for prayer is clothed in religious rhetoric, but there is nothing sheepish about it. A good shepherd knows that wolves want to devour the sheep. The whole point of Sunday’s state-sponsored event is to promote a specific religious view that disenfranchizes the majority of American citizens. Evangelicals, not all of whom support Trump, represent less than a quarter of the population. The goal is to indoctrinate, not to provide a meaningful forum for the wide range of religious and spiritual views throughout our entire history as a nation. This event must be seen as nothing more than a wolf call for Christian Nationalism, ignoring one of the very reasons our country was founded to prevent this attack on freedom of and from religion.

( Middle East Monitor ) – Every year on May 15, the Palestinian people commemorate the Nakba that befell them in 1948, when Zionist militias and gangs forcibly displaced over 900,000 Palestinians from their cities and villages, completely destroyed approximately 531 villages, and committed more than 70 massacres in which over 15,000 people were killed. Seventy eight years later, the Israeli war machine is reproducing the same scene—but with far deadlier tools, and amidst a shameful international silence and unjustifiable inaction.

The 1948 Nakba – Founding Through Genocide and Displacement

The 1948 Nakba was not a passing war. It was the culmination of a colonial settler project that began taking shape in the late nineteenth century. Backed by colonial powers, Zionist gangs expelled between 780,000 and 957,000 Palestinians. Their society was destroyed, and they were displaced to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and neighboring Arab countries. The Arab identity of the land was erased: Palestinian villages and towns were wiped off the map and renamed with Hebrew names.

The land was lost, the people scattered, and “Israel” was born on the ruins of a nation and a people who continue to live the Nakba and its horrors. The settler colonial project did not stop there, as it continued through decades of occupation and settlement expansion in the West Bank and Gaza, steadily creating colonial facts on the ground and obliterating the Arab and Islamic identity of Palestine.

2026 – Genocide and Forced Displacement in Gaza

Today, seventy eight years after the Nakba, Palestinians in Gaza are experiencing a “second Nakba”—by far the worst. Since the outbreak of the genocidal war in October 2023, the Israeli war machine has committed mass atrocities. By May 2026, the number of martyrs had surpassed 73,000, including more than 20,000 children and 12,000 women. Over 102,000 buildings have been completely destroyed, and 330,000 housing units have been damaged.

As for displacement, about 2.4 million Palestinians have been forcibly uprooted within the Gaza Strip, now living in tents and makeshift shelters with none of the basic necessities of life. This genocide is a reenactment of the 1948 Nakba—only faster, more brutal, and infinitely worse because the world has watched it live, unlike the 1948 Nakba, whose horrors we have only a few documents and testimonies of.

The West Bank – Annexation, Judaization, and Ethnic Cleansing

The catastrophe has not been confined to Gaza. It has spread to the occupied West Bank, which is witnessing a systematic and dangerous escalation.

According to UN reports, the number of settlers in the West Bank has exceeded 778,000, distributed across 151 settlements and 350 settler outposts.

Sources indicate that about 45,000 Palestinians have been displaced from their homes in the northern West Bank, and more than 36,000 have been displaced in a single year. The UN has described this as “forced displacement on an unprecedented scale” that may amount to “ethnic cleansing.”

Just recently in the past few days, two dangerous developments took place by the Israeli government to entrench its occupation and colonial-settlement over the West Bank. The Knesset has recently passed a law establishing the so-called “Judea and Samaria Heritage Authority Bill” to take control of archaeological sites in the West Bank—a dangerous step that paves the way for the effective erasure of Palestinian history and identity that has existed on the land for centuries and millennia. The Israeli police have also created a new position, called “Head of the Farms Administration,” to give official cover to settler outposts. UN experts have confirmed that what is happening amounts to an “accelerated campaign of ethnic cleansing and annexation.”

An Integrated Plan

What connects the 1948 Nakba with what is happening today in Gaza and the West Bank is a single plan: the elimination of Palestinian existence, whether through genocide in Gaza or ethnic cleansing and annexation in the West Bank.

With the backing of its Western allies, Israel is reproducing the same colonial settler project in new forms and with new methods.

Nakba 1948 Palestine – Jaramana Refugee Camp, Damascus, Syria. Public Domain. Via Picryl

This plan is not hidden or accidental. It is openly discussed, legislated, and implemented through successive Israeli governments—from the 1948 massacres and village demolitions, to the 1967 occupation and settlement construction, to the current genocidal war on Gaza and the creeping annexation of the West Bank. Each phase builds on the previous one, with the same goal: a Palestine without Palestinians, or at least with as few of them as possible, confined to isolated and impoverished enclaves under full Israeli control.

Conclusion

On the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, the Palestinian people face the most dangerous phase yet of physical and political liquidation. This demands urgent action from the international community, the United Nations, and human rights institutions to stop the ongoing genocide and creeping annexation. It also requires tangible support for Palestinian steadfastness on their land, protection for prisoners and holy sites, and the maintenance of global popular momentum in solidarity with Palestine—including the growing boycott campaigns that have proven to be an effective tool in making the occupation heavy, costly, and unsustainable.

Failure to act will only allow the Zionist project to creep forward, advancing not only in Palestine but across the entire region.

Ahmed Asmar is a journalist and a PhD candidate in International Relations at the Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Turkey.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor .

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The term “Judaization” has been edited out as inconsistent with Informed Comment house style.

The Hormuz blockade is affecting different BRICS countries differently. India, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia and Indonesia are suffering with high energy and gasoline prices. India’s shortfall in Liquefied Natural Gas because Qatar supply is cut off has caused restaurants to close. Russia is getting rich off the rise in petroleum prices. Brazil is cushioned by its use of ethanol for auto fuel, and China is cushioned by its huge oil reserves and its substantial electric vehicle fleet, the largest in the world. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are blockaded and suffering huge GDP losses.

The Hormuz stand-off is extremely inconvenient to most BRICS members apart from Russia. Still, Moscow is also critical of US policy, complaining of attempts to interfere with India’s purchase of Russian oil to replace lost Persian Gulf crude.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who attended as a non-member observer, told Iranian wire services that BRICS countries look at Iran with different eyes after what he called “the American failure” in its attack on the country. They consider, he said, that “the Islamic Republic” “has been able to establish itself as a power and actor in the region; an actor who has the ability to confront the greatest powers.”

He said many delegates were very interested in knowing how Iran stood up to the American onslaught and in benefiting from Iran’s tactics.

Since the UAE is a member of BRICS, he had pointed remarks for Abu Dhabi, condemning its close alliance with Israel and the United States against Iran and dismissing its complaints that Iran attacked it, insisting that Iran only targeted US and Israeli facilities and personnel in the Emirates that were part of the war effort. The UAE insists that Iran hit neutral targets in the Emirates. Abu Dhabi was rocked yesterday when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that he had flown to the UAE during the assault on Iran, underlining the tight alliance between himself and Emirates President Mohammed Bin Zayed al-Nahayan. MBZ’s office denied the Israeli statement, but the denial was undermined when the Israeli army chief of staff also said he had visited the UAE during the war.

Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar pleaded, “safe and unimpeded maritime flows through international waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, remain vital for global economic well-being.”

Tass reported that Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov remarked that for Trump and Washington, what drove the attack on Iran was petroleum interests. He said,

“When this aggression against Iran was launched, it was launched with a clearly stated goal: to supposedly end the 47 years during which Iran terrorised all its neighbours and the world. Just like for the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president [Nicolas Maduro] the theme of his involvement in drug trafficking was invented, only for it to later turn out that it wasn’t drug trafficking at all, but Venezuelan oil that the US was interested in. Just as now, with Iran, everything has been reduced to the oil that is meant to flow through the Strait of Hormuz.”

He added, “But it wasn’t Iran that blocked this situation, it wasn’t Iran that created the problem, including with the Persian Gulf countries.”

Photo by Maahid Photos on Unsplash

He pointed out that until Israel and the US launched their 28 February attack on Iran, the Strait of Hormuz had been entirely open to global shipping. He decried the attempt by Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to pressure China into strong-arming Iran to reopen the strait. Lavrov asked, “What does the People’s Republic of China have to do with this?”

Lavrov said it was an inappropriate form of international diplomacy for Washington to seek to have China solve the impasse that Trump’s own policies created, remarking that the US is basically saying,” We’ve started something, we’ve reached a dead end, and we need to unblock energy, fertiliser, and food supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, but it’s not really convenient for us to do it. Iran doesn’t want to, so you put pressure on Iran.”

( FAIR ) – While cuts to NOAA would substantially harm the agency’s work, the proposed “savings” of $1.6 billion is equivalent to the costs of 1.3 days of the war on Iran.”

The recently proposed budget from the Trump administration includes a $1.6 billion cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The reduction would eliminate NOAA climate, weather and ocean research labs; zero out grants aimed at improving rainfall and flood prediction; and cut the Integrated Ocean Observing System, which monitors what’s happening in the ocean, where hurricanes strengthen and where coastal flooding begins. This comes on top of the 2025 DOGE layoffs of some 880 people from the agency.

Some lawmakers are pushing back, either because they don’t think climate change is fake news, or they’re from flood-prone regions. But a detail being missed, as noted by Emily Atkin at Heated (5/7/26), is that while these cuts would substantially harm the agency’s work, the proposed “savings” of $1.6 billion is equivalent to the cost of 1.3 days of the war on Iran—which Popular Information estimated to have cost $72 billion in its first 60 days.

That figure is much higher than the one you will likely have heard in the news. The acting Pentagon comptroller put the figure at $25 billion when talking to Congress at the end of April, and he raised that number to $29 billion in widely covered hearings this week (USA Today, 5/12/26). CNN (4/29/26) said anonymous officials suggested the $25 billion figure was actually closer to $50 billion, once repairs to US bases in the region were included.

You’re likely to see lowball estimates of the true cost of the Iran war in corporate media (USA Today, 5/12/26). 

But Popular Information (5/6/26) did a cost estimate of the Iran War based on officials’ statements, military procurement and operations data, and reporting on deployments and armament use. It considered direct war costs—expenses for military operations, munitions and the like—but not indirect costs, including broader economic impacts, interest on the national debt and longer-term expenses like veterans’ care. It also corrected the flawed Pentagon method for tracking munition expenditures, which reflects historical costs rather than the much higher replenishment costs.

Harvard public policy expert Linda Bilmes (Fortune, 4/15/26) estimated that once indirect costs like lifetime disability benefits to US troops are included, the costs will run far higher: “I am certain we will spend $1 trillion for the Iran War.” 

You can find Popular Info‘s methodology on their Substack, and Bilmes’s detailed interview on Harvard’s website. But in the meantime, you can question lowball estimates of the costs of this illegal, reckless war.

Via FAIR

Letter to document and condemn Israel’s efforts at taking full control over and re-defining archaeological sites in the occupied Palestinian Territories