Mauritania is not a marginal country or a geographical anomaly. It is a country of silent history, long patience, and sovereignty that cannot be bought. It is the land of jurists who taught the deserts the meaning of light, and poets who made pulpits of wisdom from the sands.
Our president visited the United States, as Arab and African presidents do, not to beg or sign anything that violates conscience, but to knock on the doors of partnership and convey the voice of a small country with great pride. Has every visit to the West become an accusation? Is anyone who meets with an American official considered suspect in the eyes of those writing from behind the media veil?
Mauritania stands independently, making its own decisions, and choosing its partnerships, far removed from dependency or empty alignment.
We know that there are those who are unhappy to see Nouakchott sitting with Washington without tutelage and negotiating its interests without permission.
We say it without hesitation, and in a high-pitched voice: Mauritania is not about to normalize relations with the Zionist entity, not now or tomorrow.
Not only because it would be a betrayal of a principle, but because normalization, for Mauritanians, is an unforgivable sin, as long as Israel occupies Arab land, desecrates our holy sites, and persecutes our people in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.
Anyone who knows this people knows that Palestine, in their conscience, does not represent a card in political discussions, but rather a constant, unwavering call.
The President of the Republic, Mr. Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani, known for his political moderation and adherence to national principles, has never wavered from his position in support of Palestine, and neither he nor his government has issued any indication of a deviation from this line.
We write not to offend, but to preserve the weight of this position. We respond not because we are weak, but because we refuse to have the image of an entire nation reduced to a single, insinuating line, or to have a fleeting accusation pinned on his sovereign visit. Mauritania is built on principles, not on momentary positions.
It is read through its history, not through tweets written from behind a political veil.
If you want the truth, Mauritania has never sought testimony from anyone, and it will not accept anyone dictating whom to visit or whom to talk to.
It follows its own path, does not sway where the wind blows, nor does it follow an extended shadow. It sits with the great, engages in dialogue with partners, and raises the Palestinian flag in its heart as well as in its streets. It does not need anyone to remind it of those who have always been with it, in good times and bad.
The writer is a member of the Mauritanian Parliament
The avowed declared intention of Benjamin Netanyahu, remains the destruction of Hamas, as he repeatedly says that the war against Hamas will not stop until it is totally disarmed and there will no more ‘Hamastan’.
This is while on the other side of the world is President Trump who is very much interested in a ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages while blowing hot and cold in his habitual manner of ambiguity regarding the future of of the Islamic organization.
This may cause a divergence of views between Netanyahu and Trump in their up coming discussions, despite the fact that Trump went the extra mile as he threatened to withhold aid to Israel if Netanyahu is taken to court whilst Netanyahu responded by returning the compliment, saying that a couple-of-months ceasefire and the release of the living hostages as well as the dead bodies, are not mutually exclusive with the ultimate aim of destroying Hamas.
Admittedly, one always had one’s own doubts about the destruction of Hamas, probably because one always believed that the objectives of Israel’s foreign policy is to have a weakened PNA by Hamas and Hamas weakened by the PNA, which meant that neither should be destroyed, rather, to be weakened as circumstances required.
However, having said that, the most recent menacing Israeli government voices are talking about more dangerous developments, the first being taking control of the West Bank, which basically means either the end of the PNA or merely becoming an Israeli Bantustan administration, rendering the concept, let alone the fact, of a Palestinian state superfluous.
While the other development, is the call for Gaza , with or without Hamas, to be under a future Arab administration. Now which Arabs are going to be part of this administration is still unclear, but certainly the implications are clear, basically the financing of reconstruction which requires wealthy Arab participation, by default a participation of normalizing Arabs with Israel, with enough muscle to keep Hamas at bay, armed or otherwise.
In any case something may well be hammered in Washington when Trump meets Netanyahu, and the Arabs are bound to know its consequences.
For the last four decades, each time a tragic event or another took place in the Middle East, the slogan that gets thrown onto the arena is that of a “new Middle East”. No one is certainly not against a new Middle East per se, but against the one in which someone acts stupidly and then against the stupid acts of someone else to stop the first one from acting stupidly.
Such a series of stupid events makes one think that the notion of the Middle East is supposed to be worse for the peoples of the region except most probably, Israel. Into the fray, is the idea of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who wants to change the face of the region, giving the impression this region is the face and Netanyahu is the make-up artist whom to make this “face beautiful” for Israel and probably with those grudging consent of those around it.
Now, considering what has been achieved on the ground as far as Israel is concerned in relation to Netanyahu’s end game may well be too early to tell, but at least one can say that Israel has gained a respite with its seeming regional supremacy.
The start was with crippling the threat capability of Hezbullah and although it has not been destroyed, the responsibility for dealing with this Iranian proxy is now left to the new Lebanese government, which means that the latter will have to bear the new/old responsibility.
Then Syria came along. After the demise of the Assad regime, all Syrian military capabilities became fair game for Israeli bombardement, but in fairness, they were already so during the past Assad regime. Now, however, Israel has gone further, occupying the buffer zone between the two states while expanding its security zone deep inside Syria. Here, the project being pursued is a push for a federal structure to make the country incapable of becoming a future threat to Israel.
As for the 12-day campaign of bombardment and counter-bombardment by Israel and Iran with US cameo appearance, it is hard to reach any conclusions because of the great damage on both sides that is not really known as it verges on exaggerations, either for seeking international sympathy or as a show of awkward display of power.
Here, the end game was for Iran to be stopped from backing its proxies in Yemen, Iraq, and Lebanon and to eliminate its nuclear capability, if indeed it has reached such a level. Here, again, it is very hard to say to what extent the Iranian nuclear program has been set back, and to what extent Iran will go on the diplomatic path to stop its military support for its regional proxies.
Inevitably, we go back in circles, to the bleeding wound of Gaza, bleeding for the Palestinians, Arabs and Israelis. End game, ideal scenario and possible solution are all lost between the Israeli genocide policy, Arab impotence and naïveté , EU flip-flopping in accordance with the change of wind, and Trumpist absurd proposals and change of mind.
The issue here is far beyond Hamas, it’s Gaza and its people. As things stand the strip is divided into three regions under starvation. A massive refugee camp for people on their own land which for all intents and purposes, will no longer be their land. All in all, Israel is, with the consent of all, will be the supreme power in the region.
Dr Janbek is a Jordanian writer based in Paris, France.
We became accustomed for a while to the mutual bombardment of Iran and Israel for the first a couple of days. Then Israel started declaring that it had achieved its objectives whilst Iran maintained its own momentum, saying it is also teaching Israel a lesson.
But now the new flaring conflict is lasting longer than expected. We really don’t know for certain what are the objectives as the declared intentions keep changing on daily basis and the hidden objections tend to be irrelevant, at least for the time being because we have no clue about them.
What is certain is that neither Israel nor Iran are naïve to think that, a protracted campaign of mutual bombardment, is in their interest. The reality however, is that a war of attrition is not in their interest of either, and may serve the interests of the two other regional powers: Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
But would both Israel and Iran willingly allow Turkey and Saudi Arabia to replace their influence? This is not very likely, as we can clearly see both sides are trying their best to drag others into the conflict by turning it into a regional conflgeration, by dragging the US and the EU on one side, and the Russians, Chinese, and Pakistanis on the other.
One at this juncture must say that a regional conflict, even by unintended consequences may lead to a wider global conflagration, quickly bringing in world powers and states that will not sit by the sidelines.
On the face of it, anyone cannot miss the fact that bombarding Iran came on the first day of the end of the two-month grace period which the US gave to Tehran to reach an ‘ironclad’ nuclear agreement. So at least on the face of it, the whole issue is related to forcing Iran to come back to the negotiating table with the US albeit with a weakened position.
But then again, the contradictory statement of the administration in Washington could mean anything or nothing, implying for certainty that it had prior knowledge of the Israeli attack on Iran.
Another idea which was thrown into the arena in a flip-flop manner, is that of helping in the process of regime change, but if one can say anything, is that when the Iraq-Iran war erupted, it was still in the early days of the Islamic Revolution and there was strong opposition to the mullahs regime.
And rather than creating a possibility for a regime, the war created a united nationalist response against the then Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. In a sense what started with a serious possibility of regime change ended up uniting the forces of the country.
Therefore, if the intention of the Israelis is regime change, then they better think twice about. Still, Iran is a country of more than 92 million people, with a territorial space of about 1.6 million kilometers so anything is possible. Just for interest, it is argued that Iran is 75 times the size of Israel.
So where do both parties go from here? One thing is for sure: One doesn’t know the extent of damage the two parties can do to each others’ nuclear arsenals. But if Israel feels it may not be able to destroy the Iranian nuclear infrastructure but can make it costly for them to re-start their programme, that would be naive because the Russians, the Chinese, and Pakistanis would be more than happy to offer their expertise.
One must add here however, that in the Near East, things can change very quickly.
Dr Janbek is a Jordanian writer based in Paris, France. He has contributed this article to crossfirearabia.com.
Israel’s latest strike on Iran had nothing to do with dismantling the Iranian (civilian) nuclear program. Despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assertion that “the timing was fixed back in November 2024,” the real zero hour was designated only to undercut possible diplomatic framework that could have legitimized Iran’s nuclear development under international, verifiable, supervision.
This war is not a preemptive blow against Iran —it is a preemptive strike against diplomacy itself. The Trump administration made a grave error by keeping Israeli officials closely informed of the sensitive progress in the secret negotiations. This privileged access allowed Israel to strategically time its military strike to sabotage diplomatic efforts at a critical juncture—undermining further progress just as it was beginning to take shape, and before any agreement could fully mature.
Multiple independent leaks had pointed to progress in the Oman brokered negotiation between the U.S. and Iran, inclusive of intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections, capped enrichment, and restart of oil exports under strict monitoring. An agreement of that sort would have undercut Israel’s decades-long doctrine that only isolation and coercion can keep Iran “in its box.”
Rather than accepting a rules-based diplomatic framework that Netanyahu could not control or veto, he chose to hinder the potential agreement—with F-35s and cruise missiles.
This war is also part of Israel’s long-standing obsession with maintaining its monopoly on nuclear technology in the Middle East. Far from a purely defensive measure, Israel’s broader strategy has consistently aimed at preventing any regional power from acquiring—not only the infrastructure required to develop nuclear capabilities—but even the scientific expertise and human capital necessary to pursue such knowledge.
Hours after the first explosions, U.S. officials solemnly declared, “America did not take part.” But the denial was tactical, not principled. By remaining officially aloof, the Trump White House hoped to keep a seat at any revived negotiating table while still wielding the Israeli strike as leverage. Donald Trump’s own split-screen rhetoric—calling the raid “excellent,” threatening Iran with “more to come,” yet urging Tehran to “make a deal”—spelled out the gambit: let Israel be the cudgel while the United States courts concessions.
On the other hand, and in response to American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, claim that the U.S. is “not involved in strikes against Iran,” Israel declared that every phase of the attack had been “closely coordinated” with the Pentagon and that that US provided “exquisite intelligence” to attack Iran.
The yawning gap between the two narratives served both capitals. In Washington, it allowed officials to reassure anxious allies that the U.S. was not actively escalating another Middle East war. In Tel Aviv, Netanyahu exploited the ambiguity to provoke Iran into retaliating against U.S. forces—potentially drawing Washington deeper into Israel’s war. At the same time, he sent a calculated message to domestic hawks and regional adversaries: that Israel still enjoys unwavering American backing.
Netanyahu’s sinister calculus was familiar and transparent from Israel’s book to drag the US into its endless wars: derail the diplomatic channel, then dare Washington to pick up the pieces while Israel enjoys another round of strategic impunity.
Even in a region where Israel uses starvation as a weapon of war and genocide in Gaza, Israel’s choice to strike residential neighborhoods—ostensibly targeting senior officers, civilian leaders, and nuclear scientists—crosses a perilous line. The laws of armed conflict draw a bright red distinction between combatants and civilians; by erasing it, Israel has handed Iran moral and legal grounds to retaliate in kind. If Tehran targets the private homes of Israeli leaders and commanders, Tel Aviv cannot plausibly cry victim after setting that precedent.
The first wave of Iranian retaliation—targeting the Israeli Ministry of Defense headquarters in Tel Aviv, among other sites—marks the beginning of a new kind of war, one unlike anything Israelis have faced in previous conflicts. For the first time, a state with advanced missile capabilities has shown both the resilience to absorb the initial strike and the capacity to hit back ] deep inside Israel—an experience unprecedented in Israel’s 77 years of existence.
Unlike the sporadic and largely asymmetrical conflicts with non-state actors like the Resistance in Lebanon and occupied Gaza, this confrontation introduces a level of state-to-state warfare that challenges Israel’s long-held military superiority and assumptions of deterrence. What has unfolded so far with the Iranian retaliation is a harbinger of a more symmetrical and likely prolonged confrontation—one in which Israel’s own centers of power may be within range, and where the frontlines are no longer confined to Gaza, the West Bank, or southern Lebanon, but centered into the very core of Tel Aviv.
In the coming days, Washington’s true measure will be taken after the smoke clears. If U.S. Aegis destroyers in the Gulf or antimissile batteries in the region are activated to shoot down Iranian missiles and drones, America will cease to be an observer and become a co-belligerent.
Such presumably “defensive” steps quickly metastasize: one intercept invites another, and each exchange digs the United States deeper into a conflict created by a foreign country. History offers bleak guidance. Once American troops engage, momentum overrides strategy and the dynamics of war supplant planning. Political leaders feel compelled to “finish the job,” costs spiral, U.S. interests go unsecured, and the chief beneficiary is almost always the Israeli security establishment that triggered the crisis.
At the end of the day, Netanyahu’s success will not be measured by how many centrifuges he cripples or how many Iranian scientists he murders. It will be measured by whether he can lock the United States into yet another made-for-Israel Middle East war, paid for—strategically, financially, life, and morally—by Americans.
If Washington truly opposes escalation, it must say no—publicly and unequivocally—to any role in shielding Israel from the blowback it just invited. Anything less is complicity disguised as caution, and it will once again confirm that Israeli impunity is underwritten in Washington, even when it torpedoes America’s own diplomacy and ignites yet another Israeli-engineered war.
– Jamal Kanj is the author of “Children of Catastrophe,” Journey from a Palestinian Refugee Camp to America, and other books. He writes frequently on Arab world issues for various national and international commentaries. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle
CrossFireArabia
Dr Khairi Janbek
