While the US made a noticeable concession in the text of the agreement on Wednesday and presented it to Iran through the Qatari mediator, it also launched a media and intimidation campaign to suggest that Iran had backed down under the threat of bombardment.
But now, in the real world, Trump has backed down, accepted the same text from two weeks ago, and is awaiting final approval from Iranian officials.
Israel ordered the evacuation of the entire ancient city of Tyre, a Phoenician city-state, founded around the 3rd millennium BCE, more than 4,000 years ago, including 3 Palestinian refugee camps. Israel insists on the forcible evacuation of the Christian quarter, specifically mentioned in the evacuation order.
Imagine being this depraved.
That is a tent. A makeshift tent. The roof appears to be made of a tarp sourced from UNRWA. 🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️
People in Gaza are trying to create a few square feet of dignity, Wi-Fi, coffee, studying, and human life under siege - and the @nypost's editorial board looks at it and says: "luxury."
This is deranged atrocity propaganda for people who need Palestinians to look sufficiently miserable before they are allowed to be called victims.
"Genocide disproven because women are sitting under a tarp with laptops" is a level of moral rot that belongs in evidence folders at the Hague, not newspapers.
Anyone noticing a pattern? Every time Trump issues an insane ultimatum, someone (normally @BarakRavid) leaks a story about high-stakes negotiations that (1) allows Trump to climb down; (2) calms the markets); (3) Iran denies it ever happened; (4) Israel kills one more negotiator
Jim Hacker: Humphrey, I'm told there's a situation at Diego Garcia.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Only geographically, Prime Minister.
Jim Hacker: Geographically?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes. It's still in the Indian Ocean.
Jim Hacker: Humphrey, Iran fired missiles at it!
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Towards it, Prime Minister.
Jim Hacker: Towards it?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: One missile ceased to function and the other was intercepted. So the island remains entirely where it was.
Jim Hacker: I'm not worried about the island moving! I mean the implications.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Ah. Strategically speaking, the implications are extremely stable.
Jim Hacker: Stable?!
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes. Since nothing actually hit us, we can express grave concern without the administrative complications of retaliation.
Jim Hacker: But the base is on British territory!
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Indeed, Prime Minister. Which means we are in the enviable position of being attacked in principle while remaining uninvolved in practice.
Bernard Woolley: It's what the Foreign Office calls a very tidy situation, Prime Minister.
Jim Hacker: Tidy?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes. Untidy situations are the ones where the missiles land.
Here's a megathread on the war on Iran that focuses on the deeper dynamics, potential trajectories, and likely outcomes.
A lot will change over the next few weeks - this thread is about what won't.
Stay until the end for an announcement & an invitation.
In 1988, after the Burmese army crushed a popular uprising, I was so angry that I would have gladly welcomed any American miltiary intervention. In 1994, I wanted NATO invention to halt Bosnian Serb aggression (and resigned from my UN job in Sarajevo). But by 2001, I’d reached the same feelings I have now, that any intervention anywhere (1) will likely be in bad faith; (2) be poorly thought through and based on no understanding of the history or society of the country subject to crippling sanctions or being invaded; (3) there will be no accountability for the millions of lives destroyed, ever; and (4) though the absence of intervention won’t necessarily lead to a good outcome, positive and sustainable change, at far less human cost, will be more likely.
This perfectly captures what many of my family in Iran have been saying, and what my worst fears for the country have been.
We’re in a terrible position, and unfortunately the decision point was not during the massacres, or the 12 Day War but sometime in 2018 when Trump tore up the JCPOA. Negotiating a new deal then was probably one of the last chances to correct Irans current trajectory to being a failed state.
The war now greatly increases the chance of state collapse and unprecedented horror and suffering. It has little chance of successfully installing a new regime. And instead it leaves Iranians on an even worse trajectory.
I don’t know if anyone is really listening, but what’s happening in Gaza’s camps has gone beyond all limits.
So far, 21 people have died from the biting cold, including 18 small children who found only the fragile tents as shelter.Children shivering, naked without warmth, sleeping on wet ground, silently waiting for death.
The tents neither protect nor shield; the rain and cold are slowly killing us every day. No warm clothes, no blankets, nothing to save us from this hell.
A new weather front is coming tomorrow, and the tragedies will repeat without end.I live this pain, see it with my own eyes, breathe this fear, and document it all with deep sorrow.
These innocent souls are being mercilessly killed, while the world turns a blind eye, ignoring their death and silencing their cries.
Don’t stay silent, don’t stand idly by.
Every minute of delay means more children who will never see warmth or a tomorrow.The tents are not shelters; they are open graves waiting for more victims.
Likely raped to death.
A doctor. A stellar surgeon. The embodiment of Palestinian ethics.
Likely raped to death.
The racism of Western media who are not covering this, and Western politicians who are not denouncing this, together with the thousand other testimonies and allegations of rape and other forms of mistreatment and torture that Palestinians have suffered in Israeli jails, is absolutely sickening.
“Some scholars and scientists estimate the real death toll in Gaza at 680,000.”
“If confirmed, 380,000 of them are infants under five.”
—Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur
The Palestine laboratory rolls on.
I made a series about this very issue for @DropSiteNews that uncovers the thinking, ideology and practical reality of this dark trade:
https://t.co/YcT6vPyR9L
🔥BREAKING!
What Israeli forces are doing to 66 yo Marwan Barghouti (a symbol of unity) -accounts speak of torture, sever beating, broken ribs and teeth- reveals a depraved mindset and system, brutalising defenseless individuals as a way to break the spirit of an entire people.
BREAKING: A new UN report finds that Israel’s assault on Gaza - with the destruction of health care, education, infrastructure, even the banking system - has erased 69 years of human development, marking the worst economic collapse ever recorded.
This is not war: it is genocide.
NEW: Italian prosecutors are investigating claims that wealthy Italians and other foreigners paid to travel to Bosnia in the early 1990s for “sniper safaris,” shooting civilians in besieged Sarajevo from Serb-held positions.
The allegation—based on new testimony gathered by journalist Ezio Gavazzeni—suggests tourists paid different rates to kill men, women, or children.
Source: BBC