Welcome to Andy Worthington

25 photos from, and my report about the 38th monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, in which I also explain why the vigils remain important: firstly, because Guantánamo enshrined indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial, the hallmark of dictatorships, as US policy, echoing and drawing inspiration from Israel’s brutal, lawless prisons for Palestinians, and inspiring Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s ever-expanding ICE detention facilities for US immigrants; and secondly, because, as the last bastion of the “war on terror”, it is also a powerful reminder of how that “war” led not only to the establishment of horrific, lawless prisons, but also, via the invasion of Iraq in particular, to the notion that the US could invade a sovereign nation based on lies, and, via Obama’s drone assassination program, to the notion that the US could extrajudicially murder anyone alleged to be a “combatant” without any form of due process, both of which helped Israel to seek to justify its genocide in Gaza, and are now being used by Trump to seek to justify his joint “war” with Israel on Iran.

As the illegal US-Israeli “war” on Iran continues, with, last night, horrific attacks on Tehran’s oil refineries that enveloped the city in a toxic, apocalyptic black fossil fuel cloud, I examine what has led to this point: the grotesque convergence of the two most malignant ideologies in the world today — Zionism, under the malignant leadership of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Christian Zionism, its absurd but deadly offshoot in the US, whose adherents believe that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine and the wider Levant region is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. In prayer meetings in the White House, Christian Zionists lay hands on Trump and worship him as though he is Christ reborn, but while the godless Trump gave the go-ahead for the US to join Israel in its deadly crusade, he is growing noticeably more incoherent, and it is Pete Hegseth, the woefully unqualified Secretary of Defense (rebranded as the Secretary of War), who has become the more prominent face of the “war”, embracing Christian Zionism, and delivering grotesquely vile and violent speeches at press conferences, enthusing about the genocidal slaughter of the entire Iranian people. Can anyone rein in these dark forces before they collapse the global economy, through the massive disruption to the production of, and distribution of the fossil fuels on which the entire edifice of global civilization depends, or are we witnessing an unprecedented manifestation of extreme evil, which, between Trump, the Zionists and the Christian Zionists, now exists solely to rain down apocalyptic genocidal extermination not only on Iran and the rest of the Middle East, but on the whole world?

Although the US and Israel’s illegal and unprovoked “war” on Iran has, understandably, been dominating everyone’s consciousness for the last week, I wanted to find the time to celebrate an extraordinary indicator of hope that I wrote about a week ago, but then delayed publishing because the attacks on Iran had begun. That extraordinary indicator of hope is the victory, in a by-election in Gorton and Denton, in Greater Manchester, of Hannah Spencer, a local plumber standing for the Green Party, who comfortably defeated both the discredited Labour Party, which had previously held the seat, and the far-right Reform Party, dashing their hopes of capitalizing on their disturbing rise in popularity over the last year. Spencer led a refreshingly honest campaign in which she attacked the culture of the super-rich immiserating the lives of ordinary hard-working people, and emphasized the shared humanity of the area’s mixed white and Muslim populations, building on the successful message of “eco-populism” by the Green’s inspiring new leader, Zack Polanski, whose revival of left-wing idealism is so successful that the Greens are now the most popular party amongst all voters under the age of 50. In my analysis, I not only praise the Greens for single-handedly reviving hope; I also condemn the Labour government for their thorough betrayal of their roots, their support for war and genocide, their authoritarianism, their slavish dedication to big business, and their sweeping contempt for the people they are supposed to represent. I also celebrate the downturn in the fortunes of Reform, under the leadership of the racist opportunist Nigel Farage, whose giddy rise to become, over the last year, the UK’s most popular party now seems to be in reverse. Polling after the by-elections shows them now on 23% (down from a high of 35%), with the Greens up to 21% and Labour and the Tories both languishing on 16%, and we must all hope that their decline continues, as they are a genuine menace, increasingly aping the vilest policies of Donald Trump, and especially his enthusiasm for the mass deportation of immigrants. Just this week, other polling revealed, shockingly, that a majority of Reform’s members support not just the deportation of recent immigrants, but also the notion that all “non-white British citizens born abroad should be deported or encouraged to leave.”

My analysis of how the US and Israel’s illegal and unprovoked “war” on Iran demonstrates extraordinary hubris on the part of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu — the Ancient Greek concept of fatal overreach through excessive pride and arrogance. For Netanyahu, this is the fulfilment of a dream he has cherished for 40 years, into which he has, one way or another, dragged Donald Trump, who has, increasingly, during his deranged second term, become deluded by his own self-importance. So blinded are both men by their own blinkered obsessions that they failed to take into account Iran’s size, its population, and its long and proud history, or how its first actions — assassinating Ayatollah Khameini and his family, as well as other senior officials — would make him a martyr and increase national solidarity, rather than encouraging regime change. So blinded are they by their hubris that they also failed to recognize that, since their 12-day war on Iran last June, the Iranians have been preparing for renewed attacks, stockpiling weapons and identifying targets in Israel and on US bases throughout the Middle East at least as assiduously as their enemies. They also failed to realize that their “war” would have unintended consequences — leading insurers to stop insuring vessels carrying essential oil and gas supplies through the Strait of Hormuz, and also leading countries in the Gulf to suspend production for safety reasons, causing an economic crisis that will bring misery to much of the world unless they can be prevailed upon to withdraw. Will they recognize their dangerous hubristic folly, or are they determined to do nothing but destroy, no matter the cost, even if it leads to their own destruction?

On day three of Donald Trump’s cataclysmically stupid decision to indulge Benjamin Netanyahu in his malignant 40-year dream of destroying Iran, I explain how, in some key respects, it’s starting to look as though it will backfire on him spectacularly. Firstly, Pentagon officials have stated that “Iran was not planning to strike US forces or bases in the Middle East unless Israel attacked Iran first”, undermining Trump’s claim that the joint US-Israeli attacks were aimed at “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime”, leaving him particularly vulnerable because he neither sought nor received approval for his unprovoked attacks from either Congress or the UN Security Council. Secondly, US allies throughout the Gulf have, as I describe it, “discovered that their long-standing alliances with the US, in which they were offered protection in exchange for allowing the US to establish military bases on their soil, have turned out, when tested, to be nothing but a mirage.” And, thirdly, Trump’s indifference to US casualties, which he announced when the military operation began, and reiterated last night in a video message in which he breezily dismissed further US military deaths as “that’s just the way it is”, will not reassure the majority of US voters who are opposed to the attacks that Trump has any fundamental interest whatsoever in the lives of US military personnel. As the fallout from the US’s selfishness continues to test the strength of long-held alliances in the Gulf, perhaps the most burning question concerns the reasons for Trump’s support of Netanyahu’s long-cherished dream. Can it really be that this is the US’s first pedophile blackmail war, undertaken because Israel has evidence of Trump’s sexual crimes that were deliberately hidden in the recent release of millions of pages from the Epstein Files?

My analysis of the shameful launch, this morning, of unprovoked military action against Iran, undertaken in joint attacks by the US and Israel, which were defended by Donald Trump, in a pre-recorded video message on social media, as “eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime”, even though no “imminent threats” exist, and this is blatantly a “war” of choice. Amongst the most sickening aspects of this unprovoked war are Trump’s complete sidelining of Congress, even though no war can legally be launched without Congressional approval, his disturbing suggestions that US military personnel might be killed, and fundamental questions about why he is so willing to support attacks that are a long-cherished dream of Benjamin Netanyahu, but that have no evident upside for the US. Is it because he has been bought? Is it because of blackmail, based on the Israelis’ possession of incriminating evidence from the Epstein Files? Or is is, as I suggest, because, like Netanyahu, Trump is a vile old man, nearing the end of his wretched existence, who clings to life solely to deliver as much death and misery as he can to as many people as possible?

My report about the inaugural meeting of Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” in Washington, D.C. last week, the day after Ramadan began, when the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip sought to bring their devastated homeland back to joyful life with lanterns, lights and celebrations. The meeting of Trump’s would-be alternative to the UN — whose newly-recruited members include autocrats, those seeking to curry favor with Trump, and the Gulf and Muslim countries determined to maintain influence over the “peace process” — was notable for its expansion of the vile, heartless and profit-obsessed techno-futuristic plans for a “New Gaza” that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, unveiled at Davos last month, dressed up as opportunities for peace and stability. Of particular concern was the revelation that the entire plan had originated in the earliest days of Israel’s genocide in Gaza by Yakir Gabay, an Israeli-Cypriot real estate billionaire, who, with the help of his good friend Kushner, had then sought out similarly-minded opportunists to make his grotesque plan a reality. Also deeply troubling was a presentation by the former Israeli intelligence official Liran Tancman, for the development, in Gaza, of a “cashless society” of total digital control, from which, of course, as I describe it, “anyone regarded as unwanted, for whatever reason, could be completely cut off from all economic activity — a scenario of ‘blackmail and pacification’, as described by the Palestinian political analyst Muhammad Shehada”, and one that numerous governments worldwide will be keeping a close eye on, as they seek to replicate it on their own populations. While Israel’s voracious hunger to resume its genocide is still largely being kept at bay, it continues to push against the rosy visions of the billionaire developers, but all their hopes require the disarmament of Hamas and the other Palestinian factions, which Israel has failed to achieve, and which Hamas itself has wisely refused to contemplate, offering only to hand over political control — and its weapons — to a Palestinian body empowered to establish autonomy; in other words, the Palestinian technocratic committee that is part of the peace process, but which everyone involved wants to keep sidelined. As I explain, however, “No other solution can bring the peace that all parties claim to want, and any alternative course of action will only expose the truth behind their masks: on the one hand, on Israel’s part, the most grotesque enthusiasm for genocide that any of us have seen in our lifetimes, and, on the other, the repulsive greed of the western investors who only ever see the world through the prism of dollar signs.”

My analysis of the recent, and almost entirely overlooked announcement by the Pentagon that it was turning down a plea deal negotiated in December 2024 with torture victim and Guantánamo prisoner Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, the alleged architect of the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. The decision prioritizes vengeance, and an unwinnable trial, over the reality that successful prosecutions involving the death penalty at Guantánamo are bound to fail, because of the torture to which the defendants were subjected over many years when they were held in CIA “black sites.” In 2023, this was recognized by prosecutors in the 9/11 trial, who then negotiated plea deals taking the death penalty off the table in exchange for full confessions and life imprisonment. These were agreed in August 2024, but were then immediately challenged by then-defense secretary Lloyd Austin, who succeeded in having them overturned by the D.C. Circuit Court last June, after he had already left office. Al-Nashiri’s plea deal was publicly announced in March 2025, also taking the death penalty off the table in exchange for a full confession and life imprisonment, but it was finally turned down, just two weeks ago, not by Pete Hegseth, but by the billionaire deputy defense secretary, Steve Feinberg, bringing the Biden and Trump administrations into a rare accord, in which both, shamefully, oppose the only viable outcomes for the 9/11 trial and the trial of Al-Nashiri that can bring “closure” and some measure of justice over a quarter of a century after the USS Cole bombing took place.

My detailed analysis of Trump’s mass detention and deportation after its first year, as an increasing number of news reports focus on appalling conditions in ICE’s detention facilities, including children held in the Dilly detention center in Texas, and as ominous news emerges of a massive expansion of detention facilities. This follows the unprecedented seven-fold increase in ICE’s budget via last summer’s shamefully-named “One Big Beautiful Bill”, which provided the scandal-wracked agency with $75 billion — $45 billion for the expansion of detention capacity, and $30 billion for immigration enforcement. In recent weeks, ICE has spent over $500 million buying seven empty warehouses in several states, with some intended to hold between 7,500 and 10,000 immigrants, causing consternation and anger in the local communities, who were largely not consulted, and who face a significant loss of tax revenues and as well as a colossal strain on local resources via the new facilities. The expansion comes despite widespread revulsion at ICE’s activities, following the execution of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and the increasing awareness that, over the last year, the number of ICE facilities and the number of immigrants held have doubled, even though almost three-quarters of those held have no criminal records, refuting the administration’s claims that it is only targeting “heinous criminal illegal aliens” for deportation. I also focus on the role of Stephen Miller, the profoundly racist driver of the mass deportation program, whose relentless target-driven approach to deportation has directly led to the massive overcrowding in ICE facilities, concerted efforts to broaden the scope of those who can be deported, and relentless assaults on the courts. Miller’s malignant obsession is such that, as I describe it, what he has been creating over the last year “is not so much a detention and deportation system, as a sprawling detention system in which deportation is largely a mirage, and the United States will end up holding vast numbers of people, never convicted of a crime, in a gulag of brutal and lawless prisons for years, if not indefinitely, at a cost that is almost unimaginable both economically and morally.” The only solution, I suggest, is that “Miller needs to be removed, and the entire detention and deportation system overhauled to resemble something that meaningfully recognizes that, while there may be problems with a small number of undocumented migrants with violent criminal records, most immigrants are, unreservedly, not the enemy, and have as much of a right to work and live unmolested in the United States as US citizens.”

Photos from, and my report about the “First Wednesday” monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay on February 4, 2026, marking the third anniversary of the vigils, and a return to the regular “First Wednesday” slot after last month, when the vigils were moved to Sunday January 11 to mark the 24th anniversary of the opening of the prison. Nine vigils took place across the US and around the world, including at the White House, outside the Houses of Parliament in London, and outside the European Parliament in Brussels, and after the London vigil campaigners also delivered a letter to 10 Downing Street, urging the UK government to continue to call for Guantánamo’s closure, and to repudiate its recent claim that it is solely the business of the US government.