March 25, 2026
Craig Murray
That is of course in stark contrast to Israel which specifically targets them in Gaza and Lebanon. The obvious revulsion of a U.K. public, that has been opposed to the war on Iran, at the destruction of the ambulances would far outweigh any possible gain. What precisely is the gain that Iran is supposed to have sought?
The notion that the Iranian state would discredit itself by choosing to attack an ambulance service in London is crazy. Iran has not even attacked any hospitals or ambulances in Israel. Iran has absolutely zero record of attack on healthcare facilities.
That is of course in stark contrast to Israel which specifically targets them in Gaza and Lebanon. The obvious revulsion of a U.K. public, that has been opposed to the war on Iran, at the destruction of the ambulances would far outweigh any possible gain. What precisely is the gain that Iran is supposed to have sought?
The organisation that, conveniently for the Zionist narrative, immediately claimed responsibility for the attack is Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia. This is a group which simply did not exist until the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran, when it suddenly appeared fully formed and started causing small incidents of property damage to Jewish communities in Belgium and the Netherlands.
From day one of its appearance, Israeli-backed think tanks and security groups instantly claimed to have linked it to Iranian militias.
These Israeli claims were first surfaced by regular Israeli security service outlet Joe Truzman of the “Foundation for Defense of Democracies,” who makes a living from fronting Israeli claims that all the deaths in Gaza were Hamas.
The first online “evidence” of the existence of the group was on March 9. On March 16, the entire Israeli Hasbara machinery in coordination went into overdrive on Harakat Ashab al-Yamin. Israel’s Diaspora Ministry issued a statement. So did Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So did the Institute of National Security Studies. So did BICOM – the British Israel Communications Centre.
All on the same morning. At a time when Harakat Ashab al-Yasmin had done nothing except allegedly start a small fire in Rotterdam. This frenzied publicity activity about this, by that point practically non-existent, group was prioritised by the Israeli state on the morning of some of the most intense missile and bombing attacks by Israel, the U.S.A., Iran and Hezbollah of the war.
There are some real red flags about its appearance. The first, as eloquently exposed by Lowkey, is that in its manifesto it uses the term “The Land of Israel” to refer to Palestine. No Islamic group, ever, referred to “The Land of Israel” and the phrase in Arabic is not even what complicit Gulf Arab elites use – they use just “Israel” or “The State of Israel.” “The Land of Israel” is unnatural in Arabic and evidently written by a Zionist and translated into Arabic.
The other strange thing is that this allegedly Iranian group doesn’t use Farsi. Iranians don’t speak Arabic. Nor would any Iranian government-aligned group ever talk of “The Land of Israel” in Farsi.
To add further to this, the group’s published logo appears to be AI-generated and the Arabic lettering on it is wrong. “Islamic” is rendered incorrectly and some of it doesn’t mean anything coherent at all – it is gibberish, presumably constructed by AI asked to produce a shield with Arabic lettering.
Unlike the Zionist propaganda-pumping U.K. media, Dutch media asked real experts and was openly sceptical of the claims about the group:
“Political anthropologist Younes Saramifar from Amsterdam’s VU (Vrije University) said the group was ‘completely unknown’ until this month. ‘Based on what I have seen, this is absolutely not an organised and coherent group,” he told NOS before the Zuidas explosion.
Saramifar said language mistakes in statements accompanying the videos suggest the makers are not native Arabic speakers and may not be part of a trained militant network.”
It is another remarkably happy coincidence that the group chose to attack the London ambulances just hours before Metropolitan Police Chief Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley was due to address a fundraising event for the Community Services Trust (CST), the group which receives enormous payouts from the British Treasury for consistently exaggerating the scale of antisemitism in the U.K.
Thankfully, nobody has ever been hurt in any of the “attacks” by “Harakat Ashab al-Yamin.” Isn’t that fact in itself a bit strange for a state-backed terror group? The ambulances in London were the worst damage ever done in the name of the alleged group.
To believe this is a false flag, it is not in any way necessary to believe that the ambulance organisation itself was complicit. Whether or not the ambulances were new, old or decommissioned is irrelevant to the bigger picture.
It is certainly true that the ambulance service has for years done a good job, and does not only help Jewish people. There is nothing sinister or wrong about the existence of the ambulance service.
I am unhesitating in condemning all attacks on the Jewish community in the U.K. Including those perpetrated by Mossad.
March 24, 2026
Ramzy Baroud
In a charged press conference on March 13, Hegseth did more than attack journalists for questioning his unverified claims about the course of the war in the Middle East. He singled out CNN, introducing a troubling dimension to the conversation. “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” he said.
Ellison, a close ally of President Donald Trump and a strong supporter of Israel, is widely considered the front-runner to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company that owns CNN. If there was any lingering doubt that such acquisitions are driven by political and ideological considerations, Hegseth’s remarks dispelled it.
Such statements reflect a broader shift in how the media is viewed by segments of the U.S. ruling class, particularly under the Trump administration.
During both of his presidential terms, Trump has invested much of his public discourse not in unifying the nation but in deploying deeply hostile language against journalists who question his policies, rhetoric, or political conduct.
“The fake news media is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Feb. 18, repeating a phrase that has become central to his political lexicon.
Yet American media entered this confrontation with little public trust to begin with, though for reasons that have little to do with Trump’s own political agenda.
A 2025 Gallup poll found that only 28 percent of Americans trust the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly, one of the lowest levels recorded in recent decades.
Historically, this mistrust has co-existed with Americans’ skepticism toward their government — any government, regardless of political orientation. But what is unfolding today appears qualitatively different.
The long-standing alignment between political power, corporate interests and media narratives now seems to be fracturing under the weight of widespread public distrust.
Israeli Media Mirrors Government’s Militant Posture
In Israel, however, the situation takes a different form. Mainstream media often mirrors the militant posture of the government itself, translating political belligerence into broad public support for war — whether in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, or wherever Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chooses to expand the battlefield.
Public opinion data illustrates this dynamic clearly. A survey released on March 4 by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 82 percent of the Israeli public supported the ongoing military campaign against Iran, including 93 percent of Israeli Jews. [“Those are North Korean numbers,” Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy told Democracy Now!]
Such figures reflect a media and political environment in which dissenting voices remain marginal and frequently isolated.
“With this kind of media, there’s no point in fighting for a free press, because the media itself is not on the side of freedom,” Levy wrote in Haaretz on March 12.
While there is little that can realistically be done to shift the dominant Israeli narrative from within Israel itself, journalists elsewhere carry an immense responsibility.
They must adhere to the most basic standards of journalistic integrity now more than ever.
This responsibility does not apply only to journalists in the United States or across the Western world. It applies equally to journalists throughout the Middle East.
After all, it is their region that is being drawn into wars not of its own making, and it is their societies that have the most to gain from a just and lasting peace.
Over the past two years — particularly during Israel’s genocide on Gaza — we have seen just how difficult it has become to convey reality from the ground. Journalists have confronted censorship, propaganda campaigns, algorithmic suppression, intimidation and outright violence.
Yet the consequences of this information crisis are far from abstract. When truth disappears, civilians suffer in silence. Political decisions are justified through distorted narratives. Wars themselves become easier to prolong when the public is denied the facts necessary to challenge them.
For years, many of us warned that if the promoters of war and chaos were not restrained, the entire region could descend into a cycle of deliberate destabilization. If this trajectory continues, shared aspirations will suffer for generations. Collective prosperity — already fragile — could be permanently undermined.
This struggle is not merely about journalistic integrity, nor even about truth telling as an ethical imperative. It is about the fate of entire societies whose futures are deeply interconnected.
Governments across the Arab and Muslim world warned against the military adventurism now engulfing the Middle East long before the current escalation. Their warnings went largely unheeded, and the consequences are now unfolding.
At this moment, journalists, intellectuals, and people of conscience must speak the truth in all its manifestations, using every available platform and opportunity.
For wars to end, truth must be spoken openly and without hesitation. Journalists must be allowed to work without fear or intimidation. Media ownership must not become a mechanism of control and censorship.
Politicians and generals risk reputational damage, the loss of office, or perhaps the disappearance of a generous holiday bonus if their wars fail. For the people of the Middle East — and for all victims of war — the stakes are far greater. They risk losing families, economies, homes, and the very possibility of a stable future.
For that reason, gratitude is owed to courageous individuals who continue to speak truth to power; to those who insist on unity during moments deliberately engineered to produce division; and to those who understand that honest journalism is not merely a profession.
It is a moral obligation.
Mark Curtis
An agreement to introduce such a zone could have curbed Iran’s nuclear ambitions which were then described as being at an “early stage”.
While the U.K. government supported a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East at this time, officials in the Foreign Office saw the “chief problem” to its implementation being Israel’s failure to sign up the U.N.’s Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
That treaty, signed in 1970, committed non-nuclear states not to acquire them.
Iran is a signatory to the NPT and had jointly proposed with Egypt the introduction of a nuclear weapons-free zone in 1974. In 1991, Egypt wrote to the U.N. secretary general calling on the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and also Israel, Iran and the Arab states, to formally endorse such a zone.
A June 1993 memo from Foreign Office official Jane Govier to Simon Buckle in the Middle East Department referenced Egypt’s letter and stated that the “the UK is in favour” of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East “and we lend support to the idea in the relevant fora.”
“However, we have never formally responded to the above letter and neither, to our knowledge, have the other permanent Security Council members. The chief problem in any case is one of the regional suspicions, including Israel’s failure to sign the NPT.”
‘Early Stages’
At the time, the Foreign Office believed Iran was exploring nuclear options.
Govier wrote, “Although we have no direct evidence, we believe that Iran is pursuing a secret nuclear weapons programme in contravention of their obligations as a non-nuclear weapon state party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.”
She added: “At present Iran is in the early stages of creating a nuclear R&D infrastructure and lacks key facilities which would enable it to produce the fissile material necessary for a nuclear weapon.”
She wrote that the “best way” to achieve a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East “would be for all states in the region to accede to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and place all their nuclear facilities under a safeguards agreements [sic] with the International Atomic Energy Agency.”
“However,” she added, “the participation of all states in the region, including Israel, would be necessary, and more progress will probably need to be made in the Middle East Peace Process before this is possible.”
U.S. concerns about Iran were similar to Britain’s. An American document contained in the British archives states:
“Iran could become another Iraq — with weapons of mass destruction programs far advanced and extremely difficult to stop or even slow… We need to prevent this from happening.”
It added: “Fortunately, Iran’s programs are at a relatively early stage of development. We thus have a crucial window of opportunity to stem Iranian proliferation.”
The evidence suggests this window of opportunity was never capitalised on as neither the U.K. nor the U.S. seriously pushed for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East.
Sir Richard Dalton, who served as Britain’s ambassador to Iran during 2002-06, told us:
“The Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone has long been a most promising proposal to underpin security for all in the region, but it has foundered, like so many other initiatives, on the rock of Israel’s U.S.-backed insistence on standing against multilateral solutions.”
Questions are currently being asked about Israel’s nuclear arsenal following attacks over the weekend by Iran near Israel’s main nuclear facility at Dimona in the Negev desert. Iran’s missile attacks on the city of Dimona follow thousands of air strikes by Israel on Iran since late February.
‘Unsafeguarded Nuclear Programme’
Files uncovered by Declassified previously show British officials were aware by the early 1980s that Israel was already a nuclear-armed power. But neither then, nor even still today, do they admit their knowledge of this open secret.
In January 1992, Margaret Thatcher’s foreign secretary Douglas Hurd issued instructions to British diplomats in Moscow to lobby the Russian government not to sell nuclear reactors to Israel or Iran.
He wrote:
“Like the Americans we too are worried about the proliferation implications of these sales. There are considerable concerns about the nuclear programmes of both states [Iran and Israel]. Israel has a substantial, sophisticated and largely unsafeguarded nuclear programme. Although a party to the NPT, Iran seems to have nuclear ambitions out of scale with any possible need for nuclear energy.”
“On Israel,” Hurd added, “you should refer to the recent speculation, point out the concerns about the Israeli nuclear programme, and ask them to reconsider the deal.”
UN Discussions
Discussions in the United Nations about a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East have continued over the decades. In recent U.N. General Assembly resolutions, Iran has voted in favour of the zone, along with over 100 countries, but Israel has abstained.
The U.N. secretary general’s report of July 2024 notes that “Many States expressed their concern at the negative impact on regional security and stability owing to the possession of nuclear weapons by Israel.”
It also refers to “many States calling on Israel to accede to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and submit all its nuclear facilities to IAEA comprehensive safeguards.”
Israel has long refused to sign the NPT and is known to be a significant nuclear-armed power that is currently modernising its nuclear arsenal.
The most recent substantive international discussion on the issue of a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East was a U.N. General Assembly conference in November last year which was attended by 22 member states and four observer states, including the U.K.
The U.N. report from the meeting notes: “Members to the Conference identified as a key challenge the continued absence of Israel from the sessions. They noted with regret that the United States of America was the only invited observer State that had not yet attended.”
Joe Lauria
Realizing he boxed himself in with his 48-hour deadline after Iran said it would respond to his threat by destroying the Gulf region’s electricity as well as desalination plants, Trump put out a statement Monday morning about “productive conversations” with Iran that allows him to extend his deadline by five days.
Arab Gulf leaders, some of his advisers, somebody must have gotten to him to tell him that the Iranians have so far always followed up on their threats to match whatever Israel and the U.S. have done to them first. Iran sees them and then raises the stakes — this time threatening fresh water for millions of people. Somebody got through to Trump about the disaster he was about to unleash with his stupid 48-hour deadline.
So he came up with this elaborate story of direct talks with Iran involving his two freelance negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, whose credibility with the Iranians (and probably the Russians too) is totally shot after twice pretending to negotiate while providing cover for a sneak military attack on Iran.
Iran stridently denied that any such talks with the U.S. are taking place, either “directly or indirectly.”
“No negotiations have been held with the U.S.,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker. He is rumored to be the official Trump has referred to as a possible leader the U.S. would want to install, as if that is up to the U.S. Ghalibaf said Trump’s postponement of his deadline was to “escape the quagmire in which the U.S. and Israel are trapped.”
On the tarmac at Palm Beach International Airport Monday Trump was asked by reporters about these denials by Iran. It is worth publishing here below the full transcript of Trump’s remarks, as he tries to claim some extraordinary things, such as that regime change has already taken place because of the leaders the U.S. and Israel have killed. The Islamic Republic, its constitution and its institutions still exist. The government has not been overthrown.
Trump says the direct negotiations are taking place with an Iranian leader the U.S. seems to trust (possibly meant to be Ghalibaf, who denied any talks). Trump twice dodged the question about direct talks, very likely because there aren’t any. The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman would only say there have been some messages passed through intermediaries.
Trump also told reporters Iran has already agreed to no further enrichment of any kind (something they were open to in the Oman talks before the U.S. double-crossed them by starting to bomb). After twice being fooled, Iran has been pretty clear about not agreeing to a ceasefire until several demands are met. These demands include reparations, firm international security guarantees for Iran, Lebanon and Iraq and the removal of the U.S. military from the region. If they don’t get this Tehran says it’s prepared to fight on.
With Iran more than holding its own against Israel and the U.S. after three weeks, it makes little sense for Iran to seek a ceasefire. Lots of people around the world are on social media hoping Iran will go further in striking a serious blow to Israel to make it think twice about attacking anyone again.
In the meantime, the war continues.
Trump Rambles With Reporters
“Reporter: Mr. President, Iran’s foreign ministry says you’re not telling the truth when it comes to productive conversations to end the war.
So, they called — I didn’t call, they called. They want to make a deal. We’re doing a five-day period. We’ll see how that goes. And if it goes well, we’re going to end up with settling this. Otherwise, we’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out.
Reporter: Who is Steve speaking with, Mr. President?
[A satirical look at this exchange with reporters.]
A Pattern of Retaliation
While the Western MSM won’t call the U.S.-Israel attack on Iran unprovoked aggression — though it is undoubtedly both — it does generally frame Iran’s military action as retaliation.
That is a back door way of admitting that Iran didn’t start the war. Instead Iran has been responding in kind to the attacks against it. The exception has been, until now, not to respond to a war crime with another.
For instance, when the U.S. killed around 175 schoolgirls in the opening hours of the aggression, Iran did not bomb an enemy’s school in the region. While Israel attacked the Gandhi Hospital in Tehran on the second day of the war, there are no reports of Iran bombing any hospital in Israel.
Destroying a civilian target like desalination plants upon which millions of people in the Gulf depend for drinking water, would be classified as a war crime, however. That would be in direct response to Trump’s threat to destroy civilian electricity generation, which if done deliberately and without military necessity would also be a war crime.
Iran ups the ante with each threat to respond.
As the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran’s military and industrial infrastructure, Iran responded by attacking U.S. bases in the region as well as the countries hosting those bases in an attempt to get the U.S. and Israel to stop their aggression. That hasn’t worked so far.
The tit-for-tat extended on Friday to energy installations. After Israel attacked an oil depot in Tehran, Iran said it would hit Gulf Arab energy facilities if it were repeated. When Israel ignored the warning and last week struck the South Pars natural gas field in the Gulf, which Iran shares with Qatar, Iran retaliated by striking Qatar’s Ras Laffan energy complex, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas processing and export facilities.
That led Trump to at first say the U.S. didn’t know about the Israeli strike. He later admitted the U.S. knew but did not approve Israel’s attack. Trump wants to keep energy prices down and covets Iran’s oil and gas. Netanyahu said Israel acted alone and wouldn’t do so again. Unnamed U.S. official said however that the U.S. did approve the strike in advance.
Given what Joe Kent, the whistleblower who resigned as the U.S. chief of counter-terrorism, said about the U.S. going to war for Israel, as well as what U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said about the U.S. joining the war after Israel’s decision, it is reasonable to conclude that Israel is at least equal with the U.S. in calling the shots against Iran.
The New York Times reported on Sunday that the Mossad chief was in Washington in mid-January convincing senior Trump aides that the Mossad would be able to spark riots inside Iran at the start of the war that would lead to the quick collapse of the government. This shows Israel’s dominant role in launching this failing war.
The U.S. and Israel have overlapping imperial interests in the Middle East. Israel’s is a regional empire, and the U.S. interest is global, with the Middle East a vital part of Washington’s quest for world domination.
Trump and Netanyahu are now confronted with the fact that Tehran has been able to respond to everything they’ve thrown at Iran. After the exchange of destruction of significant energy installations on both sides, Israel hit two of Iran’s nuclear facilities last week. On Saturday, Israel struck the Natanz facility.
Later on Saturday, Tehran responded with perhaps the most shocking counterattack of all against Israel when its ballistic missiles reached the towns of Dimona and Arad, just miles from the Dimona nuclear facility where plutonium is made for Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Israel’s interceptors failed.
This has apparently frozen minds in Tel Aviv and Washington. How far do they want to take this war? How far will Iran let them?
Craig Murray
Iran has a zero record of
attacking healthcare facilities, even in Israel. And there are multiple red
flags about linking the recently-emerged terrorist group, Harakat Ashab
al-Yamin al-Islamia, to Iran.
The notion that the Iranian state
would discredit itself by choosing to attack an ambulance service in London is
crazy. Iran has not even attacked any hospitals or ambulances in Israel. Iran
has absolutely zero record of attack on healthcare facilities.
That is of course in stark contrast to Israel which specifically targets them in Gaza and Lebanon. The obvious revulsion of a U.K. public, that has been opposed to the war on Iran, at the destruction of the ambulances would far outweigh any possible gain. What precisely is the gain that Iran is supposed to have sought?
The notion that the Iranian state would discredit itself by choosing to attack an ambulance service in London is crazy. Iran has not even attacked any hospitals or ambulances in Israel. Iran has absolutely zero record of attack on healthcare facilities.
That is of course in stark contrast to Israel which specifically targets them in Gaza and Lebanon. The obvious revulsion of a U.K. public, that has been opposed to the war on Iran, at the destruction of the ambulances would far outweigh any possible gain. What precisely is the gain that Iran is supposed to have sought?
The organisation that, conveniently for the Zionist narrative, immediately claimed responsibility for the attack is Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia. This is a group which simply did not exist until the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran, when it suddenly appeared fully formed and started causing small incidents of property damage to Jewish communities in Belgium and the Netherlands.
From day one of its appearance, Israeli-backed think tanks and security groups instantly claimed to have linked it to Iranian militias.
These Israeli claims were first surfaced by regular Israeli security service outlet Joe Truzman of the “Foundation for Defense of Democracies,” who makes a living from fronting Israeli claims that all the deaths in Gaza were Hamas.
The first online “evidence” of the existence of the group was on March 9. On March 16, the entire Israeli Hasbara machinery in coordination went into overdrive on Harakat Ashab al-Yamin. Israel’s Diaspora Ministry issued a statement. So did Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So did the Institute of National Security Studies. So did BICOM – the British Israel Communications Centre.
All on the same morning. At a time when Harakat Ashab al-Yasmin had done nothing except allegedly start a small fire in Rotterdam. This frenzied publicity activity about this, by that point practically non-existent, group was prioritised by the Israeli state on the morning of some of the most intense missile and bombing attacks by Israel, the U.S.A., Iran and Hezbollah of the war.
There are some real red flags about its appearance. The first, as eloquently exposed by Lowkey, is that in its manifesto it uses the term “The Land of Israel” to refer to Palestine. No Islamic group, ever, referred to “The Land of Israel” and the phrase in Arabic is not even what complicit Gulf Arab elites use – they use just “Israel” or “The State of Israel.” “The Land of Israel” is unnatural in Arabic and evidently written by a Zionist and translated into Arabic.
The other strange thing is that this allegedly Iranian group doesn’t use Farsi. Iranians don’t speak Arabic. Nor would any Iranian government-aligned group ever talk of “The Land of Israel” in Farsi.
To add further to this, the group’s published logo appears to be AI-generated and the Arabic lettering on it is wrong. “Islamic” is rendered incorrectly and some of it doesn’t mean anything coherent at all – it is gibberish, presumably constructed by AI asked to produce a shield with Arabic lettering.
Unlike the Zionist propaganda-pumping U.K. media, Dutch media asked real experts and was openly sceptical of the claims about the group:
“Political anthropologist Younes Saramifar from Amsterdam’s VU (Vrije University) said the group was ‘completely unknown’ until this month. ‘Based on what I have seen, this is absolutely not an organised and coherent group,” he told NOS before the Zuidas explosion.
Saramifar said language mistakes in statements accompanying the videos suggest the makers are not native Arabic speakers and may not be part of a trained militant network.”
It is another remarkably happy coincidence that the group chose to attack the London ambulances just hours before Metropolitan Police Chief Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley was due to address a fundraising event for the Community Services Trust (CST), the group which receives enormous payouts from the British Treasury for consistently exaggerating the scale of antisemitism in the U.K.
Thankfully, nobody has ever been hurt in any of the “attacks” by “Harakat Ashab al-Yamin.” Isn’t that fact in itself a bit strange for a state-backed terror group? The ambulances in London were the worst damage ever done in the name of the alleged group.
To believe this is a false flag, it is not in any way necessary to believe that the ambulance organisation itself was complicit. Whether or not the ambulances were new, old or decommissioned is irrelevant to the bigger picture.
It is certainly true that the ambulance service has for years done a good job, and does not only help Jewish people. There is nothing sinister or wrong about the existence of the ambulance service.
I am unhesitating in condemning all attacks on the Jewish community in the U.K. Including those perpetrated by Mossad.
March 24, 2026
Ramzy Baroud
We reject war. But for wars to
end, journalists must work without fear or intimidation, and media ownership
can’t become a means of control, writes Ramzy Baroud.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete
Hegseth appears to have little patience for questions that do not conform to
his preferred style of declaring unsubstantiated victories, whether against
South Americans or in the Middle East.In a charged press conference on March 13, Hegseth did more than attack journalists for questioning his unverified claims about the course of the war in the Middle East. He singled out CNN, introducing a troubling dimension to the conversation. “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” he said.
Ellison, a close ally of President Donald Trump and a strong supporter of Israel, is widely considered the front-runner to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company that owns CNN. If there was any lingering doubt that such acquisitions are driven by political and ideological considerations, Hegseth’s remarks dispelled it.
Such statements reflect a broader shift in how the media is viewed by segments of the U.S. ruling class, particularly under the Trump administration.
During both of his presidential terms, Trump has invested much of his public discourse not in unifying the nation but in deploying deeply hostile language against journalists who question his policies, rhetoric, or political conduct.
“The fake news media is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Feb. 18, repeating a phrase that has become central to his political lexicon.
Yet American media entered this confrontation with little public trust to begin with, though for reasons that have little to do with Trump’s own political agenda.
A 2025 Gallup poll found that only 28 percent of Americans trust the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly, one of the lowest levels recorded in recent decades.
Historically, this mistrust has co-existed with Americans’ skepticism toward their government — any government, regardless of political orientation. But what is unfolding today appears qualitatively different.
The long-standing alignment between political power, corporate interests and media narratives now seems to be fracturing under the weight of widespread public distrust.
Israeli Media Mirrors Government’s Militant Posture
In Israel, however, the situation takes a different form. Mainstream media often mirrors the militant posture of the government itself, translating political belligerence into broad public support for war — whether in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, or wherever Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chooses to expand the battlefield.
Public opinion data illustrates this dynamic clearly. A survey released on March 4 by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 82 percent of the Israeli public supported the ongoing military campaign against Iran, including 93 percent of Israeli Jews. [“Those are North Korean numbers,” Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy told Democracy Now!]
Such figures reflect a media and political environment in which dissenting voices remain marginal and frequently isolated.
“With this kind of media, there’s no point in fighting for a free press, because the media itself is not on the side of freedom,” Levy wrote in Haaretz on March 12.
While there is little that can realistically be done to shift the dominant Israeli narrative from within Israel itself, journalists elsewhere carry an immense responsibility.
They must adhere to the most basic standards of journalistic integrity now more than ever.
This responsibility does not apply only to journalists in the United States or across the Western world. It applies equally to journalists throughout the Middle East.
After all, it is their region that is being drawn into wars not of its own making, and it is their societies that have the most to gain from a just and lasting peace.
Over the past two years — particularly during Israel’s genocide on Gaza — we have seen just how difficult it has become to convey reality from the ground. Journalists have confronted censorship, propaganda campaigns, algorithmic suppression, intimidation and outright violence.
Yet the consequences of this information crisis are far from abstract. When truth disappears, civilians suffer in silence. Political decisions are justified through distorted narratives. Wars themselves become easier to prolong when the public is denied the facts necessary to challenge them.
For years, many of us warned that if the promoters of war and chaos were not restrained, the entire region could descend into a cycle of deliberate destabilization. If this trajectory continues, shared aspirations will suffer for generations. Collective prosperity — already fragile — could be permanently undermined.
This struggle is not merely about journalistic integrity, nor even about truth telling as an ethical imperative. It is about the fate of entire societies whose futures are deeply interconnected.
Governments across the Arab and Muslim world warned against the military adventurism now engulfing the Middle East long before the current escalation. Their warnings went largely unheeded, and the consequences are now unfolding.
At this moment, journalists, intellectuals, and people of conscience must speak the truth in all its manifestations, using every available platform and opportunity.
For wars to end, truth must be spoken openly and without hesitation. Journalists must be allowed to work without fear or intimidation. Media ownership must not become a mechanism of control and censorship.
Politicians and generals risk reputational damage, the loss of office, or perhaps the disappearance of a generous holiday bonus if their wars fail. For the people of the Middle East — and for all victims of war — the stakes are far greater. They risk losing families, economies, homes, and the very possibility of a stable future.
For that reason, gratitude is owed to courageous individuals who continue to speak truth to power; to those who insist on unity during moments deliberately engineered to produce division; and to those who understand that honest journalism is not merely a profession.
It is a moral obligation.
Mark Curtis
Mark Curtis reports that Israel’s
nuclear arms were seen by British officials as the major obstacle to achieving
a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, declassified files from the
1990s show.
Israel’s nuclear arms programme
was seen as the major obstacle to achieving a nuclear weapons free zone in the
Middle East, declassified files from 1993 show.An agreement to introduce such a zone could have curbed Iran’s nuclear ambitions which were then described as being at an “early stage”.
While the U.K. government supported a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East at this time, officials in the Foreign Office saw the “chief problem” to its implementation being Israel’s failure to sign up the U.N.’s Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
That treaty, signed in 1970, committed non-nuclear states not to acquire them.
Iran is a signatory to the NPT and had jointly proposed with Egypt the introduction of a nuclear weapons-free zone in 1974. In 1991, Egypt wrote to the U.N. secretary general calling on the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and also Israel, Iran and the Arab states, to formally endorse such a zone.
A June 1993 memo from Foreign Office official Jane Govier to Simon Buckle in the Middle East Department referenced Egypt’s letter and stated that the “the UK is in favour” of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East “and we lend support to the idea in the relevant fora.”
“However, we have never formally responded to the above letter and neither, to our knowledge, have the other permanent Security Council members. The chief problem in any case is one of the regional suspicions, including Israel’s failure to sign the NPT.”
‘Early Stages’
At the time, the Foreign Office believed Iran was exploring nuclear options.
Govier wrote, “Although we have no direct evidence, we believe that Iran is pursuing a secret nuclear weapons programme in contravention of their obligations as a non-nuclear weapon state party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.”
She added: “At present Iran is in the early stages of creating a nuclear R&D infrastructure and lacks key facilities which would enable it to produce the fissile material necessary for a nuclear weapon.”
She wrote that the “best way” to achieve a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East “would be for all states in the region to accede to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and place all their nuclear facilities under a safeguards agreements [sic] with the International Atomic Energy Agency.”
“However,” she added, “the participation of all states in the region, including Israel, would be necessary, and more progress will probably need to be made in the Middle East Peace Process before this is possible.”
U.S. concerns about Iran were similar to Britain’s. An American document contained in the British archives states:
“Iran could become another Iraq — with weapons of mass destruction programs far advanced and extremely difficult to stop or even slow… We need to prevent this from happening.”
It added: “Fortunately, Iran’s programs are at a relatively early stage of development. We thus have a crucial window of opportunity to stem Iranian proliferation.”
The evidence suggests this window of opportunity was never capitalised on as neither the U.K. nor the U.S. seriously pushed for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East.
Sir Richard Dalton, who served as Britain’s ambassador to Iran during 2002-06, told us:
“The Middle East nuclear weapons-free zone has long been a most promising proposal to underpin security for all in the region, but it has foundered, like so many other initiatives, on the rock of Israel’s U.S.-backed insistence on standing against multilateral solutions.”
Questions are currently being asked about Israel’s nuclear arsenal following attacks over the weekend by Iran near Israel’s main nuclear facility at Dimona in the Negev desert. Iran’s missile attacks on the city of Dimona follow thousands of air strikes by Israel on Iran since late February.
‘Unsafeguarded Nuclear Programme’
Files uncovered by Declassified previously show British officials were aware by the early 1980s that Israel was already a nuclear-armed power. But neither then, nor even still today, do they admit their knowledge of this open secret.
In January 1992, Margaret Thatcher’s foreign secretary Douglas Hurd issued instructions to British diplomats in Moscow to lobby the Russian government not to sell nuclear reactors to Israel or Iran.
He wrote:
“Like the Americans we too are worried about the proliferation implications of these sales. There are considerable concerns about the nuclear programmes of both states [Iran and Israel]. Israel has a substantial, sophisticated and largely unsafeguarded nuclear programme. Although a party to the NPT, Iran seems to have nuclear ambitions out of scale with any possible need for nuclear energy.”
“On Israel,” Hurd added, “you should refer to the recent speculation, point out the concerns about the Israeli nuclear programme, and ask them to reconsider the deal.”
UN Discussions
Discussions in the United Nations about a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East have continued over the decades. In recent U.N. General Assembly resolutions, Iran has voted in favour of the zone, along with over 100 countries, but Israel has abstained.
The U.N. secretary general’s report of July 2024 notes that “Many States expressed their concern at the negative impact on regional security and stability owing to the possession of nuclear weapons by Israel.”
It also refers to “many States calling on Israel to accede to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and submit all its nuclear facilities to IAEA comprehensive safeguards.”
Israel has long refused to sign the NPT and is known to be a significant nuclear-armed power that is currently modernising its nuclear arsenal.
The most recent substantive international discussion on the issue of a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East was a U.N. General Assembly conference in November last year which was attended by 22 member states and four observer states, including the U.K.
The U.N. report from the meeting notes: “Members to the Conference identified as a key challenge the continued absence of Israel from the sessions. They noted with regret that the United States of America was the only invited observer State that had not yet attended.”
Joe Lauria
A pattern has emerged in the war
that the U.S. and Israel can’t shake after three weeks: they hit Iran and Iran
answers with the same attack. This time
though, Trump has backed down.
Donald Trump has backed down
after threatening to destroy Iran’s electrical grid if the Strait of Hormuz was
not reopened by Monday night. To save face for his humiliating climbdown, Trump
has put forward a story that Iran “called — I didn’t call, they called” to
engage in “very strong” peace talks to end the war.Realizing he boxed himself in with his 48-hour deadline after Iran said it would respond to his threat by destroying the Gulf region’s electricity as well as desalination plants, Trump put out a statement Monday morning about “productive conversations” with Iran that allows him to extend his deadline by five days.
Arab Gulf leaders, some of his advisers, somebody must have gotten to him to tell him that the Iranians have so far always followed up on their threats to match whatever Israel and the U.S. have done to them first. Iran sees them and then raises the stakes — this time threatening fresh water for millions of people. Somebody got through to Trump about the disaster he was about to unleash with his stupid 48-hour deadline.
So he came up with this elaborate story of direct talks with Iran involving his two freelance negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, whose credibility with the Iranians (and probably the Russians too) is totally shot after twice pretending to negotiate while providing cover for a sneak military attack on Iran.
Iran stridently denied that any such talks with the U.S. are taking place, either “directly or indirectly.”
“No negotiations have been held with the U.S.,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliament speaker. He is rumored to be the official Trump has referred to as a possible leader the U.S. would want to install, as if that is up to the U.S. Ghalibaf said Trump’s postponement of his deadline was to “escape the quagmire in which the U.S. and Israel are trapped.”
On the tarmac at Palm Beach International Airport Monday Trump was asked by reporters about these denials by Iran. It is worth publishing here below the full transcript of Trump’s remarks, as he tries to claim some extraordinary things, such as that regime change has already taken place because of the leaders the U.S. and Israel have killed. The Islamic Republic, its constitution and its institutions still exist. The government has not been overthrown.
Trump says the direct negotiations are taking place with an Iranian leader the U.S. seems to trust (possibly meant to be Ghalibaf, who denied any talks). Trump twice dodged the question about direct talks, very likely because there aren’t any. The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman would only say there have been some messages passed through intermediaries.
Trump also told reporters Iran has already agreed to no further enrichment of any kind (something they were open to in the Oman talks before the U.S. double-crossed them by starting to bomb). After twice being fooled, Iran has been pretty clear about not agreeing to a ceasefire until several demands are met. These demands include reparations, firm international security guarantees for Iran, Lebanon and Iraq and the removal of the U.S. military from the region. If they don’t get this Tehran says it’s prepared to fight on.
With Iran more than holding its own against Israel and the U.S. after three weeks, it makes little sense for Iran to seek a ceasefire. Lots of people around the world are on social media hoping Iran will go further in striking a serious blow to Israel to make it think twice about attacking anyone again.
In the meantime, the war continues.
Trump Rambles With Reporters
“Reporter: Mr. President, Iran’s foreign ministry says you’re not telling the truth when it comes to productive conversations to end the war.
So, they called — I didn’t call, they called. They want to make a deal. We’re doing a five-day period. We’ll see how that goes. And if it goes well, we’re going to end up with settling this. Otherwise, we’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out.
Reporter: Who is Steve speaking with, Mr. President?
[A satirical look at this exchange with reporters.]
A Pattern of Retaliation
While the Western MSM won’t call the U.S.-Israel attack on Iran unprovoked aggression — though it is undoubtedly both — it does generally frame Iran’s military action as retaliation.
That is a back door way of admitting that Iran didn’t start the war. Instead Iran has been responding in kind to the attacks against it. The exception has been, until now, not to respond to a war crime with another.
For instance, when the U.S. killed around 175 schoolgirls in the opening hours of the aggression, Iran did not bomb an enemy’s school in the region. While Israel attacked the Gandhi Hospital in Tehran on the second day of the war, there are no reports of Iran bombing any hospital in Israel.
Destroying a civilian target like desalination plants upon which millions of people in the Gulf depend for drinking water, would be classified as a war crime, however. That would be in direct response to Trump’s threat to destroy civilian electricity generation, which if done deliberately and without military necessity would also be a war crime.
Iran ups the ante with each threat to respond.
As the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran’s military and industrial infrastructure, Iran responded by attacking U.S. bases in the region as well as the countries hosting those bases in an attempt to get the U.S. and Israel to stop their aggression. That hasn’t worked so far.
The tit-for-tat extended on Friday to energy installations. After Israel attacked an oil depot in Tehran, Iran said it would hit Gulf Arab energy facilities if it were repeated. When Israel ignored the warning and last week struck the South Pars natural gas field in the Gulf, which Iran shares with Qatar, Iran retaliated by striking Qatar’s Ras Laffan energy complex, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas processing and export facilities.
That led Trump to at first say the U.S. didn’t know about the Israeli strike. He later admitted the U.S. knew but did not approve Israel’s attack. Trump wants to keep energy prices down and covets Iran’s oil and gas. Netanyahu said Israel acted alone and wouldn’t do so again. Unnamed U.S. official said however that the U.S. did approve the strike in advance.
Given what Joe Kent, the whistleblower who resigned as the U.S. chief of counter-terrorism, said about the U.S. going to war for Israel, as well as what U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said about the U.S. joining the war after Israel’s decision, it is reasonable to conclude that Israel is at least equal with the U.S. in calling the shots against Iran.
The New York Times reported on Sunday that the Mossad chief was in Washington in mid-January convincing senior Trump aides that the Mossad would be able to spark riots inside Iran at the start of the war that would lead to the quick collapse of the government. This shows Israel’s dominant role in launching this failing war.
The U.S. and Israel have overlapping imperial interests in the Middle East. Israel’s is a regional empire, and the U.S. interest is global, with the Middle East a vital part of Washington’s quest for world domination.
Trump and Netanyahu are now confronted with the fact that Tehran has been able to respond to everything they’ve thrown at Iran. After the exchange of destruction of significant energy installations on both sides, Israel hit two of Iran’s nuclear facilities last week. On Saturday, Israel struck the Natanz facility.
Later on Saturday, Tehran responded with perhaps the most shocking counterattack of all against Israel when its ballistic missiles reached the towns of Dimona and Arad, just miles from the Dimona nuclear facility where plutonium is made for Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Israel’s interceptors failed.
This has apparently frozen minds in Tel Aviv and Washington. How far do they want to take this war? How far will Iran let them?
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