
Reality means nothing to either the US or Israel, who launched an illegal and unprovoked war on Iran on February 28, and were then humiliated when Iran delivered devastating blows to the US’s outposts throughout the Gulf, pierced Israel’s defense systems, causing extensive damage that the Israeli authorities have desperately tried to hide, and dealt a massive blow to the world’s energy supplies by cutting off the transit of tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.
For the US, which had fallen for Israeli lies that the war would be swift, and that decapitating Iran’s leadership would lead to a popular uprising and the collapse of the government, this was a rude awakening, and after Donald Trump had spent days on his social media account posting increasingly unhinged threats against Iran, he suddenly backed down last Tuesday and announced a two-week ceasefire.
This was a tacit acknowledgement of defeat, but when a US delegation, led by Vice President JD Vance, headed to Pakistan for peace talks with their Iranian counterparts, they refused to leave their baggage of belligerent arrogance at home, and turned up with a delusional swagger, reflecting the depths of their leader’s derangement, and the extent to which their alleged “America First” policies has been entirely usurped by the tired old ghosts of the discredited neocon movement.

Yesterday, as perceptive observers marked two and a half years of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, Israel cemented its reputation as an unprecedented pestilential sickness on the face of the earth, contaminating everyone who comes into contact with it through its relentless barbarism, by launching almost a hundred devastating aerial attacks on Lebanon in the space of just ten minutes, rising to 137 in total in the space of just half an hour, in what the genocidal entity proudly proclaimed as “Operation Eternal Darkness.” Could the exercise of evil have a more transparently accurate name?
The attacks, in Beirut and across southern Lebanon, which rivalled in intensity the most violent attacks on Gaza in the early months of the Gaza genocide, were clearly indiscriminate — acts of terrorism, completely destroying numerous apartment blocks in Beirut, for example, and meant to kill as many civilians as possible, following the template established in Gaza, for which Israel has never been held accountable. At least 303 people were killed, and 1,165 wounded, and social media reports provided grim accounts not of murdered militants, but of unjustifiably slaughtered women and children.
Also, as In Gaza, the Israeli authorities sought to defend their actions by plying the complicit western media with unverified and clearly risible justifications for their actions, just as they have done so cynically and successfully in Gaza for the whole of their uniquely depraved descent into monstrous and devious inhumanity over the last 30 months.

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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