The Chinese Fortune Cookie and The “Thucydides Trap”! A  View From Amman

The Story Behind The War on Iran

• marwan
• June 25, 2026

By Ismail Al-Sharif

Whenever the United States moved closer to improving relations with Iran, the war criminal [Benjamin] Netanyahu would call for a war, relying on repeated claims that Tehran was seeking to acquire a nuclear bomb to use against him. However, these claims were never supported by conclusive evidence. Iran consistently denied seeking nuclear weapons, granted UN inspectors complete freedom to inspect its nuclear facilities, and its Supreme Leader issued a religious edict prohibiting the production of nuclear weapons.

Under President Obama, things seemed to be moving toward de-escalation. In 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed, under which Iran committed to a framework for peaceful uranium enrichment, without any mention of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. Germany and France were tasked with monitoring the Iranian nuclear program through established monitoring and verification mechanisms. In return, the economic sanctions imposed on Iran were supposed to be partially eased. However, this commitment was not fulfilled.

The sanctions continued to tighten their grip on the Iranian people, and the war criminal Netanyahu continued his intense pressure on Washington to withdraw from the agreement, while also continuing assassinations targeting Iranian scientists.

For years, the nuclear weapons narrative was used as a pretext for targeting Iran, while the real objective to seek regime change there because of Tehran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas. Despite the widespread destruction inflicted on these two movements, attempts to eliminate them have failed.

The major shift came with Trump’s rise to power in 2017, when he tore up the nuclear agreement and reignited tensions. This move was accompanied by a broad media campaign against Iran that focused on internal issues, particularly women’s rights, and accusations of Mossad infiltration into Iran to instigate unrest similar to what occurred in Ukraine, Armenia, and Georgia.

These movements became known as “color revolutions,” where the CIA encouraged affiliated organizations to adopt specific colors as symbols of protest; pink in Georgia and orange in Ukraine, in an attempt to replicate the same model in Iran. This strategy relies on exploiting genuine grievances to ignite unrest, then co-opting the protests, infiltrating their ranks, and pushing them toward escalation, so that they are met with government repression. The resulting public anger is then redirected toward a path aimed at overthrowing the government and installing one loyal to the United States.

With Biden assuming the presidency in 2021, succeeding Trump, the momentum toward a direct military confrontation with Iran diminished, but sanctions remained in place, and negotiations did not resume. Today, with Trump back on the scene, the Israeli entity sees the moment as opportune to reopen the issue.

The “maximum pressure” campaign led to a sharp decline in the Iranian economy, and thousands of impoverished people and students took to the streets to protest living conditions. With the intervention and support of Mossad and the CIA, some protests escalated into violent clashes, met with a harsh security response that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of protesters and police officers. These events were quickly used as a new pretext for escalating tensions with Iran.

Once the government regained control, the warmongers reverted to their initial argument: the claim of a military nuclear program, a scenario reminiscent of what happened in Iraq when allegations of weapons of mass destruction were used as justification for the invasion, before their non-existence was proven. Demands then intensified for halting the Iranian missile program, which, if implemented, would render Tehran unable to defend itself against Israel.

Israel does not tolerate the existence of a regional power challenging its hegemony. It seeks to expand its influence and topple any regime it perceives as a challenge. From this perspective, Iran is not the final target; attention is also turning to Türkiye. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett described Turkey as the “new Iran” during his address to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, calling for the weakening of other regional powers after Iran and asserting that defense alone is insufficient to guarantee protection, whether with or without European support.

His speech also included mentions of countries like Egypt, Qatar, and Pakistan as potential adversaries, within a strategy based on waging continuous wars. This approach aligns with what is described as the American expansionist approach, articulated by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference in clearly expansionist language and colonialist terms, aimed at consolidating the Israeli entity’s hegemony over the region within a broader distribution of roles in the global balance of power.

The war criminal Netanyahu has finally succeeded in dragging the United States into a confrontation with Iran. Just as the fall of Iraq constituted a turning point that disrupted the Arab-Israeli balance of power, opening the door to a wave of unrest and revolutions, and leading to the disintegration of the regional order and the escalation of sectarian conflicts; If Iran falls, it will not be a passing or isolated event, but a pivotal turning point leading to complete Zionist hegemony over the region, a hegemony that will not stop at the borders of Iran, but will later extend to other countries.

This opinion appeared in the Arabic Addustour newspaper.

Occupation and Israeli Violence

• marwan
• June 18, 2026

By Najla M. Shahwan

In the context of Israel’s unlawful occupation and its imposition of a system of apartheid against all Palestinians, and against the backdrop of its ongoing genocide in Gaza, Israeli authorities have been recently accelerating its violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in pursuing its policy of ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank.

This policy has been implemented through the forcible displacement of Palestinians in refugee camps, Bedouin and herding communities in the West Bank, as well as the creation and expansion of settlements , acts that amount to the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer.

Palestine’s Permanent Mission to the UN on June 12 sounded the alarm over the newest largest wave of forced displacement of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

During a briefing held by the Palestine’s Permanent Mission to the UN in Geneva, Palestine’s Permanent Representative, ambassador Ibrahim Khraishi, warned of the unprecedented deterioration of conditions in the occupied West Bank amid the upsurge of colonist attacks, colonial settlement expansion, and the ongoing military offensive on the refugee camps of Jenin, Tulkarm and Nur Shams, which has triggered the largest wave of forced displacement in the West Bank since 1967, alongside widespread destruction of infrastructure, homes and civilian facilities.

He stressed that the West Bank was witnessing a dangerous escalation at the political, economic and humanitarian levels due to Israel’s unbridled annexation and settler-colonialism policies, arrests, extrajudicial killings, colonist violence, and the continued withholding of Palestinian clearance revenues.

On his part, UNRWA representatives outlined the latest developments in the northern West Bank, pointing to escalating destruction and the forced displacement of more than 45,000 Palestinians, attacks on infrastructure and medical facilities, and Israeli measures aimed at demolishing the Agency’s premises in occupied Jerusalem.

Israeli authorities have been accelerating annexation through a state-driven campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting Palestinian Bedouin and herding communities in Area C of the occupied West Bank, while committing the crime against humanity of forcible transfer.

The Israeli government has made formal annexation an explicit policy objective .

It has accelerated settlement expansion and land grabs, increased financial and logistical support to settlements, and has armed settlers, thereby enabling a brutal state-sanctioned campaign of settler violence and of forced displacement of Palestinians from Area C.

This area constitutes over 60 per cent of the occupied West Bank and has long been central to Israel’s efforts to control land and demographics, given its natural resources, vital grazing and agricultural land.

Communities in Area C have been facing growing risks of displacement and settlement expansion.

The Jordan Valley and South Hebron Hills have been areas under particular pressure where residents have faced repeated raids, demolitions and damage to infrastructure. Restrictions on access to land and essential services have also increased pressure on these communities and State -backed settler violence and home demolitions have forcibly displaced thousands of Palestinians in, emptying out over 100 villages entirely.

In the Gaza Strip , Israel’s ongoing military operations and evacuation orders despite the ceasefire have displaced roughly 90 per cent of the population (approximately 1.9 million people), with much of the civilian infrastructure destroyed to create long-term buffer zones.

Families have been displaced from their neighborhoods many times – and the last time they were uprooted, they were homeless for more than six months.

Israel’s ‘voluntary emigration’ plan from Gaza is its latest attempt to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the Strip .

Israel’s defense minister has advanced plans to remove Palestinians from the Gaza Strip through “voluntary emigration”.

Israel Katz said late last May that the plans would take place “at the proper time and in the proper manner”.

Israel’s security cabinet approved a proposal by Katz in March to establish a directorate within his ministry to facilitate “migration” from the enclave.

Despite the Israeli genocide in Gaza, which has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians and wrought utter destruction on the coastal enclave, the vast majority of Palestinians there say they will never abandon their home.

Proposals for the removal of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have been repeatedly raised during the course of the Israeli genocide.

Though some ministers have framed the move to remove Palestinians as a voluntary option, other Israeli officials have been explicitly calling for forced expulsion, which is a war crime.

Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from forcibly transferring , deporting or displacing occupied people from an occupied territory while the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court names deportation by “expulsion or other coercive acts” a crime against humanity.

Ninety-two per cent of Gaza’s homes have been destroyed or damaged. None of its 37 hospitals is fully functional. Aid trucks cut from 4,200 a week to 590 when Israel sealed the crossings in February, families burning trash to cook whatever arrives, children frozen to death last winter for lack of shelter materials Israel would not allow in.

The Yellow Line, the boundary of Israeli control drawn by the ceasefire, keeps moving west, swallowing water points and clinics, with Palestinians killed for approaching a line that approaches them. More than 986 Palestinians have been killed since the “ceasefire” was signed in October 2025.

Amid the expanding Israeli military incursions record levels of settler violence, and impending annexations , the overwhelming majority of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are fiercely resisting displacement , viewing it as a permanent severing from their homeland .

The writer is a Palestinian author, researcher and freelance journalist and contributed this article to the Jordan Times