Middle East Press On: Israel, Iran, Gazans, BBC, Rafael, Human Rights: New Age Islam's Selection, 24 June 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
24 June 2025
Why Israel's War With Iran Has International Significance
For Most Gazans, Staying Hungry Is Better Than Risking Life To Get Aid
BBC’s Biased Coverage Of Israel’s War On Gaza
Netanyahu’s Delusional Pursuit Of A ‘New Middle East’
How The US & Israel Used Rafael Grossi To Hijack The IAEA And Start A War On Iran
Litmus Test For International Law And Human Rights – Will Gaza Unite Us?
Founding The United National Front: A Palestinian Imperative In This Critical Moment
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Why Israel's War With Iran Has International Significance
By Efraim Inbar
June 24, 2025
The US has joined the successful Israeli air campaign against Iran’s nuclear and long-range missile infrastructure by bombing the installations at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. While the war is not over, its significance in the international arena is visible already.
The US has been the beneficiary of Operation Rising Lion. The general perception is that Washington allowed Israel, its ally, to carry out a military campaign against Iran, which has challenged American dominance for several decades, with incessant calls for “Death to America.”
The US provided Israel with arms and a diplomatic shield. Washington initially participated in Israel’s air defence against Iranian missiles and armed UAVs, sending at a later stage its B-2s to complete the destruction of key Iranian installations. Israel’s feats weakened an anti-Western actor and strengthened the American position in the world.
Indeed, President Donald Trump decided to capitalize on the Israeli successes, showing that America is great again. The airstrikes on Iran – a member of the anti-American axis – reflect badly on China and Russia, Iran’s allies. Beijing and Moscow refrained from intervening, leaving Iran alone to carry the brunt of the assault.
If the regime collapses, doubts about Russia’s and China’s reliability as a strategic partner will increase, particularly in the Third World. Moreover, in such a scenario, Russia’s decades-long investment in the country will go down the drain, while China will lose a friendly state in the Middle East and a source of cheap energy.
Iran’s nuclear project also challenged the NPT regime, which has been a constant American foreign policy goal. Tehran enriched uranium, coming close to weapons-grade material, and worked covertly on weaponization. The IAEA, which swallowed Iranian lies for decades, finally found Iran in violation of its NPT commitments.
The destruction of the Iranian nuclear infrastructure and the decapitation of the nuclear scientific personnel by Israel strengthens the NPT regime and dissuades potential proliferators in the Middle East from trying to emulate Iran, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or Egypt.
The American bombing – the first time the US used force in a counterproliferation mode – serves as a potent warning. A nuclear Iran could have elicited similar ambitions in Central Asia and destabilized the nuclear balance in the Indian subcontinent and even the Chinese nuclear posture.
This time, the American support and Iran’s genocidal intentions led to less criticism of Israel, particularly by democratic states, than its previous preventive strikes in Iraq (1981) and in Syria (2007) against emerging nuclear threats. In 2025, the US issued a green light, the G7 supported Israel’s right to self-defence, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz praised Israel for doing the “dirty work for us” in Iran.
We can detect a change in the international legitimacy awarded to military action to prevent proliferation, which could affect the calculus of would-be proliferators. After all, it is difficult to hide a nuclear weapon program or make it invulnerable to preventive attacks, which receive greater legitimacy.
This new tendency is at the expense of the blind belief in the supremacy of diplomacy and the widespread aversion to war. Of course, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 contributed to the awakening on the part of the West and to its reassessment of the utility of using military force.
Iran's current predicament further weakens the anti-American Shi’ite Crescent (King Abdullah’s expression) – a process started by Israel after the Hamas October 2023 attacks. This affects regions beyond the Middle East, as Iran’s tentacles established dormant terrorist rings in Shi’ite diasporas in Latin and North America, as well as in Western Europe.
New radical Sunni axis on the rise
Yet, the defeats of Iran and its proxies create a vacuum that seems to be filled by the rise of a new radical Sunni axis embodied in a Qatar-backed Turkey. This is a dangerous development. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and much of his coterie are a Turkish incarnation of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), a radical anti-Western movement. Islamic fervor is mixed with longing for Ottoman grandeur.
Turkey’s military is the second largest in NATO, and Turks are ready to fight. Erdogan-led Turkey also has nuclear ambitions. The US has traditionally seen Turkey as an important ally, while Trump views Erdogan as a strong leader and friend, overlooking Turkish actions and excesses that deviate from American preferences.
Turkey’s capabilities and ambitions are enhanced by the financial largesse of Qatar, which is a long-standing backer of Muslim Brotherhood activities worldwide. It is the principal global propagandist of Islamism through its media powerhouse, Al Jazeera.
In contrast to Iran, Qatar benefits from Washington’s incredible blindness to its support for Islamic terrorists and anti-Western endeavours. Ironically, American current dispositions toward Qatar and Turkey are facilitating the emergence of the anti-American Sunni radical group.
The decline in Iranian power does not herald a new, more peaceful Middle East, which remains a conflict-ridden region. Moreover, many states have a weak central authority unable to prevent the existence of armed militias. The Middle East will continue to be a source of Islamist terrorism and violent crises. Use of force still is part and parcel of the rules of the game for all Middle Eastern actors.
The importance of airpower (expensive and labour intensive) versus a much cheaper missile-based force has been a subject of debate in many strategic fora around the world. The Israeli air campaign in Iran clearly shows the advantages of an effective air force. Missiles are important on the battlefield but are no substitute for manned or unmanned aircraft.
With the spread of missile technology and the greater danger of destruction from far away, Israel’s enormous investment in building adequate anti-missile defense systems was a lesson for threatened states. Similarly, the need for passive defensive measures and proper education of the population for missile attacks was proven.
The US, under Trump, has signalled that it is a great power still involved in international affairs. As for Israel, its audacious attack on Iran eliminated an existential threat and restored its deterrence that was greatly eroded by the October 7 events. Moreover, Israel has kept its monopoly over nuclear weapons in the Middle East.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-858718
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For Most Gazans, Staying Hungry Is Better Than Risking Life To Get Aid
By Motasem A Dalloul
June 24, 2025
After more than 100 days of complete Israeli ban on the entry of aid and goods into the Gaza Strip, Gaza residents are left with no choice except risking their life to get some food for their hungry children from the American-Israeli aid distribution centres located in a few points in the southern parts of the war-torn enclave.
Everything in Gaza, including food, water and medical supplies has run out. Fuel used to operate water and sewage pumps, hospitals trucks and vehicles used to remove tons of garbage accumulated in the middle of concentration camps has also run out.
There is nothing in Gaza except continuous Israeli bombing of civilians, homes, healthcare centres, schools, displacement camps and tents, communication facilities and water networks. In Gaza, people lose family members every minute.
“The Israeli occupation forces kill an average of one person every 15 minutes, a child every 20 minutes and a woman every 40 minutes,” Director of the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, Dr Moneer al Borsh, has said. This is beside the deaths that result from malnutrition and dehydration.
Amidst this dreadful reality, fathers in Gaza find themselves obliged to walk long distances on foot and risk their life in order to reach the US-Israeli aid distribution centres run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) in order to get some food for their children starved by the Israeli occupation that is backed by the US and most Arab and Western powers.
Getting a little amount of food from any of these aid centres is extremely dangerous and lethal as the crowds of starving fathers come under live Israeli tank and gunfire. Tens of them get killed and hundreds are wounded every time they try to reach these aid centres. Sometimes, the Israeli occupation forces use quadcopter drones to drop small bombs over the heads of starving aid seekers or fire artillery shells on them, tearing them into pieces.
Ahmad Yassin, a 35-year-old father of seven children and a husband of cancer patient wife, gave me a horrible account for his journey from the Gaza City to Rafah as he travelled 40 kilometres on foot to get food.
“I agreed with a number of relatives and friends to travel to Rafah and get food from the US-Israeli aid distribution centre located in the west of destroyed city. Everyone had two litres of drinking water in his back pack and started our journey at 12pm. We walked together through the coastal road, which had been destroyed by the Israeli occupation forces,” Yassin said.
The Israeli occupation forces allow only animal carts and motorcycles to move between the southern and northern parts of the occupied Gaza Strip. People have to pay high transportation fares to use these means otherwise they move between both sides of Gaza walking on foot.
“We arrived in Rafah after a 10-hour-walk,” Yassin said, “and everything was alright, but when we were about three kilometres away from the aid distribution centre, we started to walk amidst rubble of destroyed homes, and the Israeli occupation forces started firing towards us intermittently. We had to kneel down and run or sometimes to creep on our stomachs. We continued moving this way until we arrived in the aid centre.”
He added: “When we arrived, it was 1.50am but we were shocked when we found a plot of land with around 1,000 square kilometres surrounded with high sand barricades; it had only one long and narrow entrance with barbed wires on both sides. The Israeli occupation forces continued shooting around us. Every couple of minutes, someone fell down either dead or wounded. It depends on where he was shot.
“At 2am, we heard a voice via loudspeakers. We did not know its source, but it was accompanied with a greenlight and told us to move forward and collect the aid. At this time, all the shooting stopped, then total chaos erupted. It was completely dark, starving people stampeded and the worst thing was that there were not more than 500 food packages while there were more than 50,000 aid seekers. Therefore, each package was sought by at least ten people. They quarrelled, they pulled the package, ripped it and the aid – flour – rapped with paper was poured on the ground or damaged. Each one took one or two cans.
“Ten minutes later, a yellow light flashed and someone via loudspeakers warned us to leave the area very quickly within five minutes. People started to run away and after five minutes a red light also flashed and shooting from all directions began. People ran as fast as they could; a lot of them threw the aid they had in order to be able to climb over the sand barricades and flee.”
For Yassin, he had some bruises in both legs as he was trapped inside the barbed passage; it was a futile journey. He could not get anything for his children, and went back home empty handed.
Alaa al Sawwaf, 24, from Gaza City, told me he went to get aid from the GHF’s aid centre near Gaza Valley, which is about 10km far from his home. “I went there along with one of our neighbours. We arrived near the aid distribution centre and my neighbour was shot and wounded. Thanks to Allah, he suffered a minor injury in his thigh. I carried him on my shoulder and went back home.”
Imad Sarsour and his brother Bilal, both are teens, told me a similar account like Yassin’s. The only difference was the short distance from their home to the GHF’s centre in Gaza Valley. They went back home with 13 kilograms of flour and two small biscuit bags. Imad suffered from a light injury between his shoulders from a shrapnel of a bullet that hit a concrete block he hid behind it when the Israeli occupation forces opened fire at them. He was OK.
Yassan, Al Sawwaf and brothers Sarsour told me that they would never go back to get aid from the GHF’s aid centres. Iyad’s 4-year-old daughter told me: “I am happy that my dad is back wounded, not dead. I prefer to remain starving rather than asking my dad to go get some aid from the Americans.”
UNRWA’s Commissioner General Philppo Lazzarini along with many other officials from international organisations and rights groups have condemned the GHF’s aid distribution mechanism as a “death trap.”
“Aid distribution has become a death trap,” Lazzarini has said, pointing out to “mass casualties including scores of injured and killed among starving civilians” due to Israelis targeting them, stressing that this mechanism is “humiliating, dangerous, and exacerbates starvation.”
He also called it as dystopian “hunger games,” insisting that aid must be safe and dignified. “This ‘model’ will not address the deepening hunger. The so‑called new way of handling assistance in Gaza is most degrading, humiliating and puts lives in danger.”
According to Gaza Media Office, medical sources and human rights groups, as of 23 June 2025, the Israeli occupation forces have killed 450 starving civilians and wounded over 3,465 others near Gaza GHF’s aid distribution points. It also stated that there are confirmed reports about 39 missing.
Most of the casualties occurred due to live fire, drone attacks and crowd crushes during chaotic aid distributions. The majority of victims were starving civilians, including children and elderly, attempting to get food aid.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250623-for-most-gazans-staying-hungry-is-better-than-risking-life-to-get-aid/
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Bbc’s Biased Coverage Of Israel’s War On Gaza
Chris Doyle
June 23, 2025
Israel’s war on Palestinians from the outset has been fought in the media, and even at a more aggressive level since October 2023. Israel has poured huge resources into its propaganda drive, to persuade particularly Western powers that its war and actions were justified. It has denied journalists access to Gaza, and killed over 185 Palestinian media workers in the enclave in this period.
Few media networks have been under more sustained Israeli assault than the BBC. Its global reach of 450 million people puts it in the front line of Israeli government efforts. It parades its reputation for impartiality, but as a new data-driven report published last week highlights, when it comes to Palestinians this is far from the case. Some argue the BBC has become complicit in Israel’s war crimes. The Gaza coverage has been like walking on eggshells, the BBC refusing to call out what is going on. The abundant use of the passive voice where the party committing the crime is not identified is a notable feature.
The report from the Center for Media Monitoring, a Muslim Council of Britain project, examined the BBC’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza primarily between 7 Oct. 7, 2023 and Oct. 6, 2024. For this 12-month window, a total of 3,873 articles and 32,092 broadcast segments were analyzed using AI and human verification.
Some of the findings are jaw dropping. BBC presenters shared the Israeli perspective 11 times more frequently than the Palestinian perspective (2,340 vs. 217), even when interviewing neutral third parties, such as humanitarian organizations. That is not even close. BBC article headlines referred to Palestinian casualties just two times more than Israeli casualties, despite there having been 34 times more deaths in Gaza.
Statistics do not tell the whole story, as BBC editors are quick to point out, but this report highlights alarming patterns of coverage. The absence of proper context is stark. Previous Israeli wars and atrocities in Gaza get scant reference. That 70 percent of the population are 1948 refugees is not there. Even with the Israeli war on Iran, no mention is made of Israel’s nuclear arsenal and its refusal to sign up to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The BBC’s coverage of international legal issues is incredibly poor, and again favorable to Israel. The BBC rarely used occupation to describe the legal status of Gaza. Only recently did it finally get its international editor to pen a still timid piece on whether Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza. Since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the fact that he is wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity is rarely mentioned.
Worse, BBC presenters have actively shut down the widespread debate on whether Israel has been committing genocide in over 100 documented cases according to the report. This is extraordinary since the International Court of Justice determined that the situation in Gaza was so serious it had to order provisional measures against Israel to prevent genocide. That was in January 2024 and the situation is considerably worse now. Most human rights groups have determined Israel is committing genocide.
The widespread use of genocidal comments from Israeli leaders from the president down is also downplayed. This is extraordinary given that this constitutes a stated intent to annihilate Gaza, vital context when Israel obliterates civilian infrastructure, including the healthcare system.
Remarkably, according to the report, the BBC never once referred to the Hannibal Directive and the Dahiya doctrine. The former, which we now know was invoked on Oct. 7, allows Israeli forces to launch attacks even if they might endanger hostages’ lives, while the latter, certainly deployed in Gaza and Lebanon, permits the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure. These protocols highlight the mentality of the Israeli armed forces.
The report also demonstrated how the BBC’s coverage of Russia’s crimes in Ukraine was so different to Israeli crimes in Gaza. Israel’s attempts to justify its actions were included in 75 percent of articles in that year, but only 17 when it came to Russian actions. Take the killing of journalists. The research found that 62 percent of journalists’ deaths in Ukraine were reported, but only 6 percent of Palestinian journalists’ killings by Israelis.
The BBC’s handling of documentaries echoes the above failures. It already withdrew the documentary “Gaza: How To Survive a War Zone,” which had rave reviews, even in the right-wing media. It then opted not to show a further documentary, “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack,” on the way in which Israel has targeted the Gaza healthcare system.
Just as Western political leaders have given a green light to Israeli crimes and facilitated a climate of impunity that Israel still enjoys in its attacks on Iran, the BBC and other outlets help to create this permissive environment. In fairness, the BBC has many excellent reporters who have succeeded at times in breaching the managerial and editorial firewall against criticism of Israel with compelling storytelling. But in the overall picture, as this report highlights, the BBC simply continues to give this extremist Israeli government an easy ride.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2605522
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Netanyahu’s Delusional Pursuit Of A ‘New Middle East’
Dr. Ramzy Baroud
June 23, 2025
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu persistently declares his ambition to “change the face of the Middle East.” Yet his repeated assertions seem to clash with the unfolding reality on the ground.
Netanyahu’s opportunistic relationship with language is now proving detrimental to his country. The Israeli leader undoubtedly grasps fundamental marketing principles, particularly the power of strong branding and consistent messaging. However, for any product to succeed over time, clever branding alone is insufficient; the product itself must live up to at least a minimum degree of expectation.
Netanyahu’s “product,” however, has proven utterly defective. Yet the 75-year-old Israeli prime minister stubbornly refuses to abandon his outdated marketing techniques.
But what, exactly, is Netanyahu selling?
Long before assuming Israel’s leadership, Netanyahu mastered the art of repetition — a technique often employed by politicians to inundate public discourse with specific slogans. Over time, these slogans are intended to become “common sense.”
As a member of the Knesset in 1992, Netanyahu delivered what appeared to be a bombshell: Iran was “within three to five years” from obtaining a nuclear bomb. In 1996, he urged the US Congress to act, declaring that “time is running out.”
While the US pivoted its attention toward Iraq, following the September 2001 attacks, Netanyahu evidently hoped to eliminate two regional foes in one stroke. Following the fall of the Iraqi government in 2003, Netanyahu channeled all his energy into a new discourse: Iran as an existential threat.
Between then and now, Iran has remained his primary focus, even as regional alliances began to form around a discourse of stabilization and renewed diplomatic ties.
However, the Obama administration, especially during its second term, was clearly uninterested in another regional war. As soon as Obama left office, Netanyahu reverted to his old marketing strategy.
It was during Trump’s first term that Netanyahu brought all his marketing techniques to the fore. He utilized what is known as comparative advertising, where his enemies’ “product” is denigrated with basic terms such as “barbarism,” “dark age,” and so forth, while his own is promoted as representing “civilization,” “enlightenment,” and “progress.”
He also invested heavily in the FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) marketing technique. This entailed spreading negative or misleading information about others, while promoting his own as a far superior alternative.
This brings us to “solution framing.” For instance, the so-called “existential threats” faced by Israel can supposedly be resolved through the establishment of a “new Middle East.” For this new reality to materialize, the US, he argues, would have to take action to save not only Israel but also the “civilized world.”
It must be noted that Netanyahu’s “new Middle East” is not his original framing. This notion can be traced to a paper published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in March 2004. It followed the US war and invasion of Iraq, and was part of the intellectual euphoria among US and other Western intellectuals seeking to reshape the region in a way that suited US geopolitical needs.
The Carnegie article sought to expand the definition of the Middle East beyond the traditional Middle East and North Africa, reaching as far as the Caucasus and Central Asia.
American politicians adopted this new concept, tailoring it to suit US interests at the time. It was US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who largely rebranded “greater” to “new,” thus coining the “new Middle East,” which she announced in June 2006.
Though Netanyahu embraced the term, he improvised it in recent years. Instead of speaking of it as a distant objective, the Israeli leader declared that he was actively in the process of making it a reality. “We are changing the face of the Middle East. We are changing the face of the world,” he triumphantly declared in June 2021.
Even following the events of Oct. 7, 2023, and the Israeli war and assault on Gaza that ensued, Netanyahu never ceased using the term. This time, however, his emphasis on “change” rotated between a future possibility and an active reality. “I ask that you stand steadfast because we are going to change the Middle East,” he said on Oct. 9 of that same year.
And again, in September 2024, he proclaimed that Israel was “pursuing” a plan to “assassinate Hezbollah leaders” with the aim of “changing the strategic reality of the Middle East.” And again, in October, December, and January of this year. In every instance, he contextualized the “change of the Middle East” with bombs and rockets, and nothing else.
In May, coinciding with a major Israeli bombing of Yemen, he declared that Israel’s “mission” exceeds that of “defeating Hamas,” extending to “changing the face of the Middle East.” And, finally, on June 16, he assigned the same language to the war with Iran, this time remaining committed to the new tweak of adding the word “face” to his new, envisaged Middle East.
Of course, old branding tactics aside, Netanyahu’s Middle East, much like the old US “greater Middle East,” remains a pipe dream aimed at dominating the resource-rich region, with Israel serving the role of regional hegemon. That said, the events of the past two years have demonstrated that, although the Middle East is indeed changing, this transformation is not happening because of Israel. Consequently, the outcome will most likely not be to its liking.
Therefore, Netanyahu may continue repeating, like a broken record, old colonial slogans, but genuine change will only happen because of the peoples of the region and their many capable political players.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2605518
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How The Us & Israel Used Rafael Grossi To Hijack The IAEA And Start A War On Iran
By Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J.S. Davies
June 24, 2025
Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), allowed the IAEA to be used by the United States and Israel—an undeclared nuclear weapons state in long-term violation of IAEA rules—to manufacture a pretext for war on Iran, despite his agency’s own conclusion that Iran had no nuclear weapons program.
On June 12, based on a damning report by Grossi, a slim majority of the IAEA Board of Governors voted to find Iran in non-compliance with its obligations as an IAEA member. Of the 35 countries represented on the Board, only 19 voted for the resolution, while 3 voted against it, 11 abstained and 2 did not vote.
The United States contacted eight board member governments on June 10th to persuade them to either vote for the resolution or not to vote. Israeli officials said they saw the US arm-twisting for the IAEA resolution as a significant signal of US support for Israel’s war plans, revealing how much Israel valued the IAEA resolution as diplomatic cover for the war.
The IAEA board meeting was timed for the final day of President Trump’s 60-day ultimatum to Iran to negotiate a new nuclear agreement. Even as the IAEA board voted, Israel was loading weapons, fuel and drop-tanks on its warplanes for the long flight to Iran and briefing its aircrews on their targets. The first Israeli air strikes hit Iran at 3 a.m. that night.
On June 20th, Iran filed a formal complaint against Director General Grossi with the UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council for undermining his agency’s impartiality, both by his failure to mention the illegality of Israel’s threats and uses of force against Iran in his public statements and by his singular focus on Iran’s alleged violations.
The source of the IAEA investigation that led to this resolution was a 2018 Israeli intelligence report that its agents had identified three previously undisclosed sites in Iran where Iran had conducted uranium enrichment prior to 2003. In 2019, Grossi opened an investigation, and the IAEA eventually gained access to the sites and detected traces of enriched uranium.
Despite the fateful consequences of his actions, Grossi has never explained publicly how the IAEA can be sure that Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency or its Iranian collaborators, such as the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (or MEK), did not put the enriched uranium in those sites themselves, as Iranian officials have suggested.
While the IAEA resolution that triggered this war dealt only with Iran’s enrichment activities prior to 2003, US and Israeli politicians quickly pivoted to unsubstantiated claims that Iran was on the verge of making a nuclear weapon. US intelligence agencies had previously reported that such a complex process would take up to three years, even before Israel and the United States began bombing and degrading Iran’s existing civilian nuclear facilities.
The IAEA’s previous investigations into unreported nuclear activities in Iran were officially completed in December 2015, when IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano published its “Final Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues regarding Iran’s Nuclear Program.”
The IAEA assessed that, while some of Iran’s past activities might have been relevant to nuclear weapons, they “did not advance beyond feasibility and scientific studies, and the acquisition of certain relevant technical competences and capabilities.” The IAEA “found no credible indications of the diversion of nuclear material in connection with the possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.”
When Yukiya Amano died before the end of his term in 2019, Argentinian diplomat Rafael Grossi was appointed IAEA Director General. Grossi had served as Deputy Director General under Amano and, before that, as Chief of Staff under Director General Mohamed ElBaradei.
The Israelis have a long record of fabricating false evidence about Iran’s nuclear activities, like the notorious “laptop documents” given to the CIA by the MEK in 2004 and believed to have been created by the Mossad. Douglas Frantz, who wrote a report on Iran’s nuclear program for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2009, revealed that the Mossad created a special unit in 2003 to provide secret briefings on Iran’s nuclear program, using “documents from inside Iran and elsewhere.”
And yet Grossi collaborated with Israel to pursue its latest allegations. After several years of meetings in Israel and negotiations and inspections in Iran, he wrote his report to the IAEA Board of Governors and scheduled a board meeting to coincide with the planned start date for Israel’s war.
Israel made its final war preparations in full view of the satellites and intelligence agencies of the Western countries that drafted and voted for the resolution. It is no wonder that 13 countries abstained or did not vote, but it is tragic that more neutral countries could not find the wisdom and courage to vote against this insidious resolution.
The official purpose of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, is “to promote the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies.” Since 1965, all of its 180 member countries have been subject to IAEA safeguards to ensure that their nuclear programs are “not used in such a way as to further any military purpose.”
The IAEA’s work is obviously compromised in dealing with countries that already have nuclear weapons. North Korea withdrew from the IAEA in 1994, and from all safeguards in 2009. The United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China have IAEA safeguard agreements that are based only on “voluntary offers” for “selected” non-military sites.
India has a 2009 safeguard agreement that requires it to keep its military and civilian nuclear programs separate, and Pakistan has 10 separate safeguard agreements, but only for civilian nuclear projects, the latest being from 2017 to cover two Chinese-built power stations.
Israel, however, has only a limited 1975 safeguards agreement for a 1955 civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States. An addendum in 1977 extended the IAEA safeguards agreement indefinitely, even though the cooperation agreement with the US that it covered expired four days later. So, by a parody of compliance that the United States and the IAEA have played along with for half a century, Israel has escaped the scrutiny of IAEA safeguards just as effectively as North Korea.
Israel began working on a nuclear weapon in the 1950s, with substantial help from Western countries, including France, Britain and Argentina, and made its first weapons in 1966 or 1967. By 2015, when Iran signed the JCPOA nuclear agreement, former Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in a leaked email that a nuclear weapon would be useless to Iran because “Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran.” Powell quoted former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asking, “What would we do with a nuclear weapon? Polish it?”
In 2003, while Powell tried but failed to make a case for war on Iraq to the UN Security Council, President Bush smeared Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an “axis of evil,” based on their alleged pursuit of “weapons of mass destruction.” The Egyptian IAEA Director, Mohamed ElBaradei, repeatedly assured the Security Council that the IAEA could find no evidence that Iraq was developing a nuclear weapon.
When the CIA produced a document that showed Iraq importing yellowcake uranium from Niger, just as Israel had secretly imported it from Argentina in the 1960s, the IAEA only took a few hours to recognize the document as a forgery, which ElBaradei immediately reported to the Security Council.
Bush kept repeating the lie about yellowcake from Niger, and other flagrant lies about Iraq, and the United States invaded and destroyed Iraq based on his lies, a war crime of historic proportions. Most of the world knew that ElBaradei and the IAEA were right all along, and, in 2005, they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for exposing Bush’s lies, speaking truth to power and strengthening nuclear non-proliferation.
In 2007, a US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) by all 16 US intelligence agencies agreed with the IAEA’s finding that Iran, like Iraq, had no nuclear weapons program. As Bush wrote in his memoirs, “…after the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?” Even Bush couldn’t believe he would get away with recycling the same lies to destroy Iran as well as Iraq, and Trump is playing with fire by doing so now.
ElBaradei wrote in his own memoir, The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times, that if Iran did do some preliminary research on nuclear weapons, it probably began during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, after the US and its allies helped Iraq to manufacture chemical weapons that killed up to 100,000 Iranians.
The neocons who dominate US post-Cold War foreign policy viewed the Nobel Prize winner ElBaradei as an obstacle to their regime change ambitions around the world, and conducted a covert campaign to find a more compliant new IAEA Director General when his term expired in 2009.
After Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano was appointed as the new Director General, US diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks revealed details of his extensive vetting by US diplomats, who reported back to Washington that Amano “was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.”
After becoming IAEA Director General in 2019, Rafael Grossi not only continued the IAEA’s subservience to US and Western interests and its practice of turning a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear weapons, but also ensured that the IAEA played a critical role in Israel’s march to war on Iran.
Even as he publicly acknowledged that Iran had no nuclear weapons program and that diplomacy was the only way to resolve the West’s concerns about Iran, Grossi helped Israel to set the stage for war by reopening the IAEA’s investigation into Iran’s past activities. Then, on the very day that Israeli warplanes were being loaded with weapons to bomb Iran, he made sure that the IAEA Board of Governors passed a resolution to give Israel and the US the pretext for war that they wanted.
In his last year as IAEA Director, Mohamed ElBaradei faced a similar dilemma to the one that Grossi has faced since 2019. In 2008, US and Israeli intelligence agencies gave the IAEA copies of documents that appeared to show Iran conducting four distinct types of nuclear weapons research.
Whereas, in 2003, Bush’s yellowcake document from Niger was clearly a forgery, the IAEA could not establish whether the Israeli documents were authentic or not. So ElBaradei refused to act on them or to make them public, despite considerable political pressure, because, as he wrote in The Age of Deception, he knew the US and Israel “wanted to create the impression that Iran presented an imminent threat, perhaps preparing the grounds for the use of force.” ElBaradei retired in 2009, and those allegations were among the “outstanding issues” that he left to be resolved by Yukiya Amano in 2015.
If Rafael Grossi had exercised the same caution, impartiality and wisdom as Mohamed ElBaradei did in 2009, it is very possible that the United States and Israel would not be at war with Iran today.
Mohamed ElBaradei wrote in a tweet on June 17th 2025, “To rely on force and not negotiations is a sure way to destroy the NPT and the nuclear non-proliferation regime (imperfect as it is), and sends a clear message to many countries that their “ultimate security” is to develop nuclear weapons!!!”
Despite Grossi’s role in US-Israeli war plans as IAEA Director General, or maybe because of it, he has been touted as a Western-backed candidate to succeed Antonio Guterres as UN Secretary General in 2026. That would be a disaster for the world. Fortunately, there are many more qualified candidates to lead the world out of the crisis that Rafael Grossi has helped the US and Israel to plunge it into.
Rafael Grossi should resign as IAEA Director before he further undermines nuclear non-proliferation and drags the world any closer to nuclear war. And he should also withdraw his name from consideration as a candidate for UN Secretary General.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/how-the-us-israel-used-rafael-grossi-to-hijack-the-iaea-and-start-a-war-on-iran/
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Litmus Test For International Law And Human Rights – Will Gaza Unite Us?
By Haidar Eid
June 23, 2025
After the 1948 war, the founders of apartheid Israel, including its first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, established several “fundamental principles” that the newly established state must adhere to in future wars with its neighbours. Foremost among these “principles” was that Israel wage its wars on the enemy’s territory, never on its own. The second “principle” was that the war should be swift and intense, ending with the enemy’s annihilation.
Now, if we look back at the history of Israeli wars, the current one against Gaza—if we consider it a war— is the longest.
It thus breaks Ben-Gurion’s second rule. The longer the war lasts, which requires a resolute resistance, the more Israel will bleed to its core, both internally and externally.
Palestinians of Gaza have endured and continue to endure sacrifices unseen by any people in human history. Even if the Israeli war cabinet has decided to “take complete control of Gaza,” that doesn’t change anything.
On the contrary, the decision brings to the surface further disagreements between the military and the political leaderships, because the occupation’s two stated goals—eliminating Palestinian resistance and recovering the Israeli prisoners—are mutually exclusive, according to the new Chief of Staff, Eyal Zamir, who told ministers that Israel must be prepared for the possibility that the Israeli prisoners will never be recovered if it wants to eliminate Hamas once and for all.
But is it a “war?” Or rather, a combination of genocide and ethnic cleansing, as so many Palestinian and international intellectuals, legal experts, and governments have argued?
As I write this piece, I am told that tomorrow, most community kitchens in Gaza will close as food runs out and famine intensifies. And that more than 144 civilians have been killed and 560 injured in the last 24 hours alone.
Over 55,432 are now documented killed in Gaza by this genocidal spree in a year and a half, 70 percent of whom are women and children. That is not counting those beneath the rubble of their homes. And the more undocumented deaths that occur by untreated injuries, by deliberate starvation and thirst, and by communicable disease.
Those latter deaths are estimated to have been in the hundreds of thousands.
On March 18, Apartheid Israel decided to tighten its blockade on the Gaza Concentration Camp, leading to a severe shortage of food, medical supplies, and fuel. It has also cut off the only electricity line that reaches the center of the Strip, and which supplies the main water desalination plant and one of the main sewage plants there, compounding the tragedy of the already besieged population.
This came at a time when the newly appointed Chief of Staff of the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) at the time, General Eyal Zamir, revealed that he would implement a fundamental change in the process of distributing humanitarian aid and that his army would either handle the distribution process in the Strip or closely supervise it.
The plan was devised by the IOF during the genocide before the ceasefire, but it was not implemented, especially after reaching the agreement for the first phase of the ceasefire.
This is being done based on military plans to tighten the siege on Gaza, in a way that exacerbates the stifling humanitarian crisis that the residents of the tiny coastal Strip have been suffering from since the beginning of the genocide. This is why it has come up with the idea of establishing 4 “aid centers” run by American mercenaries.
What Apartheid Israel is doing in Gaza goes beyond being a traditional military aggression or a long-term economic blockade. Rather, it is a new model of cold wars of extermination, where we Palestinians are tested between the jaws of death by starvation or death by bombing, and where aid is transformed into a tool of collective torture and a prelude to uprooting us from our land.
In this context, the massacres accompanying the distribution of aid are no longer mere military transgressions or errors in coordination, but rather calculated milestones in a deep displacement project, ethnic cleansing, aiming to reproduce the Nakba with less noisy but more precise and effective tools.
What is striking about Israel’s policy is that it does not limit itself to destroying infrastructure and exterminating people from the air, but rather employs hunger as one of the most lethal and influential field weapons in the decision to survive and persevere.
Here, the Israeli occupation is not inventing a new weapon, but rather reusing old colonial tactics practiced by the major colonial powers in Africa and Asia, when they opened relief corridors in exchange for loyalty, displacement, or submission.
The only difference is that Israel is practicing this in front of the eyes of the world, under the banner of the United Nations, and the platforms of the Western media, which do not care about the names of the children killed as long as they are on the Palestinian side of history.
And the so-called ‘International community’? Brotherly Arab and Islamic worlds?
In fact, Europe and the US have merely watched. Apartheid Israel has carried on because it knows the West and its Arab allies make noises, but they do not stand up to Israel.
Worse, the colonial West has decided to directly get involved in a way that brings back the orientalist, racist clichés and stereotypes about “brown” Arabs, or, in the words of Israel’s Minister of War, “human animals.”
So, on behalf of the colonial West, Israeli political and military leaders deliberately unleashed the first live-streamed genocidal war to wreak havoc on Gaza, making it unlivable and severely punishing its population, especially women, children and the elderly for daring to challenge its colonial invincibility, for breaking its “fundamental principles”, for merely reminding it and the world of its original sin, namely the Nakba of 1948.
As the Palestinian BDS Movement has argued, Palestine has become a litmus test for international law and human rights.
Europe’s hypocrisy, shameless selective application of international law, and full partnership in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide against indigenous Palestinians are accelerating the collapse of the rule of law and respect for human rights – which will pose a serious threat to all justice movements. And this must unite all those seeking justice, considering the rise of the far Right in so many countries, including the United States, some European countries, and India.
I am writing this piece from South Africa, a country that managed to unite the world in the 1960s, 70’s, and 80’s against another inhumane system until it crumbled. Will Palestine, Gaza in particular, do the same?
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/litmus-test-for-international-law-and-human-rights-will-gaza-unite-us/
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Founding The United National Front: A Palestinian Imperative In This Critical Moment
By Jehan Helou
June 23, 2025
This short article may seem like a kind of sophistry, or a speech out of step with the political moment, but it is, in reality, a call to all the constituents of the Palestinian people for discussion—or more precisely, a call for initiative and action. And I hope it is not too late.
In the history of mankind, there are wise sayings that have proven true across generations. One of them is the necessity of unity, or the unity among different factions that share a common goal in the face of a shared enemy. For the past thirty years, the Palestinian people have lacked a unified front, which the PLO once represented for many years—until the signing of the Oslo Accords, which were rejected by the vast majority of the Palestinian people.
Despite the fact that the PLO, in its current form, lacks both representational and popular legitimacy, the organizations and national forces continue to emphasize that it remains the legitimate and sole representative of the Palestinian people, and they still demand its reform. Yet, even as the genocidal war escalates, calls for unity and reform are still met by the influential leadership of the PLO with condescension, stubbornness, and outright rejection.
The important question we pose to those who advocate for reforming the PLO is: How can we unite those who seek to rebuild the PLO based on the founding convention and national principles, with those who view compromise and negotiations as the only path to unity—despite ongoing defeats?
There is no doubt that the effort to reform the PLO is necessary and must continue. But the main question is: Why isn’t this effort accompanied by a national initiative to establish a unified national front that supports our people’s perseverance and confronts the Oslo Accords, with all their consequences and the plans to liquidate the cause—which have been laid bare during the genocidal war the Zionist entity is waging against our people today?
We stress here that the unified national front was—and remains—an urgent national necessity. It is not necessarily an alternative to the PLO in representing the Palestinian people, but rather a unified struggle arm of it, just as the experience of a national front in Palestine proved in the mid-1970s.
This brings us to another important question: Where is the Palestinian national movement today? What is its current reality? We can say that the inclusive national movement, once represented by the PLO during its ascendancy, has failed as an effective framework. Since leaving Beirut in 1982, we have seen no self-criticism, no accountability, no evaluation, and no renewal.
Take, for example, the question: Why did the top military leadership not stand up to the Zionist invasion of Lebanon in 1982? They withdrew from the south in the early days of the invasion, facilitating the enemy’s arrival in Beirut.
We must acknowledge that the Lebanese and Palestinian fighters confronted the invasion with heroism and perseverance, supported admirably by the Lebanese and Palestinian people. But it was disheartening that the siege of Beirut ended in an agreement that forced the resistance to leave Lebanon, thus closing the door on a promising phase of struggle—despite its flaws and challenges.
The existence of a national front as a unifying framework strengthens perseverance, mobilizes national energies, coordinates protest and solidarity movements, and communicates our national reality to the world.
There is no room here to revisit all historical phases—despite their importance—but we must stop at the disastrous phase ushered in by the Oslo Accords, signed by the PLO despite their failure to recognize the basic rights of the Palestinian people, most notably the right of return and the right to self-determination.
These accords stripped the PLO of its national legitimacy, in addition to its representational legitimacy, due to broad popular opposition—not to mention the opposition of key organizations within the PLO itself.
Oslo is an ongoing tragedy: it facilitated the settlement of nearly a million colonists and the partitioning of the homeland, accompanied by all forms of oppression and human rights violations, and culminating in the current genocidal war in Gaza and the West Bank. Oslo granted Israel recognition without securing even minimal recognition of Palestinian national rights.
It allowed Israel to disregard its obligations as an occupying power under international law—including providing medical and educational services, protecting civilians, adhering to the Geneva Conventions, and avoiding demographic and geographic changes in the occupied territories.
A dramatic collapse came in 1998, when key articles of the Palestinian National Charter—those affirming our right to all of Palestine and to armed struggle—were removed in a farcical and illegitimate spectacle. This change deepened division and weakened the representational framework of the PLO, which once reflected the national aspirations of Palestinians worldwide.
Among the contradictions and chaos within the PLO leadership is that, to this day, there has been no official adoption of the changes made to the charter—changes rejected by the Palestinian people as illegitimate, serving only the enemy and its occupation program, strengthening its economy, and expanding Arab and international recognition of the Zionist entity.
The PLO leadership has continued to distance itself entirely from democratic principles and from the foundational articles of its own charter. It has suspended the role of the PLO’s representative institutions and canceled elections. It is no surprise, then, that the PLO’s organizational and institutional structure reflects these failures. It has become an empty shell—hollowed out for over thirty years—and no longer represents the Palestinian people in all their diversity and active forces.
The same can be said for the Palestinian Authority, which is far removed from the ideals of legitimate revolution or democracy. It has lost what little popular legitimacy it once held due to the failure of its declared program, its glaring ineffectiveness, and its complicity in the security coordination agenda.
Due to the entanglement of the PLO and the Authority, the Palestinian Authority—backed by the PLO—now behaves like an absolute dictatorship. It has dissolved the legislative and judicial councils and unilaterally makes laws and decisions.
What is strange is that this leadership cannot point to any national achievement that justifies its surrenderist stance, its continued security coordination, or its invention of internal enemies at a time of escalating genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.
It also stubbornly blocks any serious attempt at national unity, knowing full well that any such effort must begin with dismantling the Oslo framework—something Israel itself has never upheld.
The Reasons Hindering the Birth of a Unified National Front
We must face a bitter truth: over the years, the Authority has drawn its strength from Palestinian organizations and from economic and cultural elites. These organizations reinforced the Authority’s legitimacy through their ambiguous position on Oslo. They did not treat Oslo as a red line; instead, they participated in its institutions and accepted its reality.
Let us suppose that in the early phase, participation in the Authority and elections was a tactical choice, made in the hope of change. It is still strange that the Hamas movement participated in elections despite its declared opposition to the Oslo Accords.
The question remains: why did the call for national unity continue—despite intensifying settlement activity, increasing concessions by the Authority to the occupier, and growing distance from the people—without demanding a full withdrawal from Oslo and without clearly defining a shared political program for national unity, especially in recent years?
In contrast, the president of the Authority has clung to the Oslo Accords and to security coordination. More than that, he arrogantly calls on opposition groups to join the Authority’s program and to recognize Israel. The failure to uphold promises and to engage in serious negotiations to form a strategic program based on national principles—and to unify the forces as part of a liberation strategy—has rendered calls for unity and PLO reform little more than empty repetition.
The clear truth remains: the leadership of the Authority/PLO is the primary obstacle to collective national struggle.
The persistent question is this: despite all the conferences and meetings, why haven’t we been able to form a unified national front to lead the national struggle—one that truly speaks for the Palestinian people? A broad front that reinforces resilience, upholds the values of resistance, and stands against efforts to liquidate the Palestinian cause.
Such a front would not be based on one ideology or faction, but on the minimum common program shared by all forces, institutions, and segments of society. Crucial and decisive positions should be declared through a collective Palestinian voice—not from Hamas alone, or the Authority alone, or the Popular Front alone.
The Authority exists and cannot be abolished—not yet—but the people have the right to oppose programs and actions that harm the national interest. Opposition has existed since the Oslo declaration, but it has not been unified, and its voice has not been effectively heard.
The unified national front is not organizationally contradictory to the PLO—only politically. In the 1970s, there was an active national front in the West Bank and Gaza, including during the First Intifada. It issued statements that the people anticipated—declaring positions, actions, and strikes. The front must always exist alongside the PLO, even if the PLO is functioning effectively.
The absence of such a front today negatively impacts the national situation, leads to factional polarization, and encourages tribalism over values of struggle and national interest. A collective national front strengthens perseverance, mobilizes capabilities, coordinates action, and speaks to the world based on our actual reality.
The Representation Dilemma
The other dilemma is international representation. For this reason, some treat the PLO as a sacred institution untouchable in this phase of weak power dynamics. In the past, the PLO leadership lost historic opportunities to hold Israel accountable—such as with the Goldstone Report, or the ICJ ruling against the apartheid wall.
But today, the situation is shifting. With the genocide in Gaza, the erosion of illusions around a two-state solution, and the mounting aggressions, the PLO is regaining some role in international forums. It accepted calls to bring cases before the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Yet, its monopolization of representation—backed by official Arab regimes—remains a dilemma. This will not last forever.
We will not lose faith in our people. The enemy and its allies cannot impose surrender. This is why founding a unified national front has become a pressing demand. We can start from the ground up—where initiatives already exist to build popular committees.
The Israeli genocide is escalating, reaching the refugee camps in the northern West Bank in monstrous ways, amid global silence. Meanwhile, Arab and even Palestinian responses are far below the level of the catastrophe.
We face a fascist, criminal, uncontrollable enemy bent on escalating genocide and pursuing its monstrous vision of a Greater Israel and total control over the Middle East.
The Palestinian people are facing genocide in all its forms, including ethnic cleansing. The most dangerous threat now is the imposition of false solutions—marketed as “national victories” that amount to surrender. A deformed Palestinian state is not victory. Will we resist this moment as we resisted the village leagues and all earlier schemes of ethnic cleansing and extermination?
Yes, we must develop new tools and forms of struggle—and the first step is to unify the national rank within a unified national front.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/founding-the-united-national-front-a-palestinian-imperative-in-this-critical-moment/
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