by Qassam Muaddi | Apr 8, 2026 | Article, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, War
This story originally appeared in Mondoweiss on April 08, 2026. It is shared here with permission.
The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has temporarily halted, but Israel’s onslaught in Lebanon grinds on. Late on Tuesday, two hours before U.S. President Donald Trump’s ultimatum to Iran that the U.S. would obliterate the country’s “entire civilization,” a temporary two-week ceasefire was announced by Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, who mediated the deal. Sharif stated that the terms of the ceasefire would also include Israel’s war on Lebanon, but on Wednesday morning, Israel launched a massive bombing campaign across Lebanon, killing over 300 people, according to local sources. The Israeli escalation leaves the state of the ceasefire uncertain, with Iran reportedly threatening to withdraw from the agreement if Israel does not halt its attacks, according to Tasnim News Agency.
The Israeli bombing campaign, targeting multiple towns in the Baalbek region as well as the capital, Beirut, continued through the height of the midday rush hour. Lebanon’s Health Minister told Reuters that Lebanese hospitals are “crowded with victims,” and hospitals have called upon citizens to donate blood, while a state of emergency was declared across multiple parts of the country. The escalation on the Lebanese front is central to understanding the stakes of each side in the ceasefire, and it is already putting the prospects of a permanent agreement at risk.
Both Iran and the U.S. announced the deal with notably different narratives, each claiming victory. Although Israel is a main party to the conflict, it was not mentioned by either side, which makes its part in the ceasefire uncertain. What is also uncertain is whether the war will permanently
by Sharon Zhang | Apr 8, 2026 | Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Donald Trump, Genocide, Impeachment, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, News, War Crimes
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) has reiterated that the call for President Donald Trump to be impeached or removed from office remains as urgent as ever after his genocidal threat toward Iran, regardless of the president’s announcement of a temporary ceasefire on Tuesday evening. In a post on X, Ocasio-Cortez said the deal “changes nothing.” “The President has threatened a…
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by Jake Johnson | Apr 8, 2026 | Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, News, Pedro Sánchez, Spain
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Wednesday welcomed news of a two-week ceasefire in Iran as a step back from the brink of catastrophe, but said the war’s aggressors — the U.S. and Israel — deserved no praise for the temporary reprieve. “Ceasefires are always good news. Especially if they lead to a just and lasting peace,” Sánchez wrote on social media. “But this momentary relief cannot…
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by Negin Owliaei | Apr 7, 2026 | corporate mainstream media, Corporate Media, Donald Trump, Genocide, Imperialism, Iran, iran war, Israel, Lebanon, Mainstream Media, Nuclear Weapons, Op-Ed, Palestine, Resistance, War, war in Iran
Somehow, in a war already bent on turning Iran into a failed state, Donald Trump’s threats against the country have become increasingly disturbing. For days now, Trump has threatened to bomb key civilian infrastructure in Iran, from bridges to power plants. On April 5, in a terrifying screed, he wrote: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped in one, in Iran.” He went on to…
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by Negin Owliaei | Apr 3, 2026 | Antiwar, Antiwar Movement, Donald Trump, Gaza, Iran, iran war, Israel, Lebanon, No Kings, No Kings protests, Op-Ed, Palestine, Protests, Reza Pahlavi, US foreign policy, War, war in Iran
As I headed to my local “No Kings” protest on March 28, I tuned in to the livestream of the far right Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to listen to a man who is currently cheering on a war in order to rule as a monarch over my homeland. “Can you imagine Iran going from ‘Death to America’ to ‘God bless America?’” Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, asked the CPAC crowd…
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by Branko Marcetic | Apr 3, 2026 | Article, Gaza, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, War
This story originally appeared in Jacobin on April 01, 2026. It is shared here with permission.
One of the most appalling aspects of the Gaza genocide — besides its near-unprecedented slaughter of children and other innocents and its near-obliteration from existence of an entire society, unpparalleled in the modern era — is that officials in both the United States and Israel were overtly hoping to make it the new, horrifying standard for modern war. As we’re seeing right now in Iran and Lebanon, they’re not wasting any time applying that standard elsewhere.
Last year, as Gaza lay in ruins with more than 10 percent of its population killed or injured, the New Yorker ran a chilling story related to the Gaza genocide. The magazine reported that a variety of US military lawyers and legal experts viewed Israel’s spree of murder and destruction in Gaza as not just a completely acceptable way to prosecute a war but as “a dress rehearsal” for a future conflict with a US adversary like China: namely, one free of restraint, adherence to international law, and squeamishness about killing civilians.
What Israel did with full US backing in Gaza, in other words, should be the new normal for war, at least when “our side” does it.
The report sat uncomfortably alongside a pattern of US and Israeli officials incessantly invoking the Allies’ carpet bombing campaigns during World War II to justify the genocide they carried out. For almost the entire period after the war, those bombing campaigns were universally understood to be war crimes and a moral horror — including by Curtis LeMay himself, the psychotic general who led the firebombing of Japan and later itched for nuclear war with the Soviet Union —
